Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal has interviewed London punks Savages, who just released their sophomore LP Adore Life, in a new cover story for MAGNET magazine. The full piece is behind a paywall, but there are some interesting tidbits in the preview excerpt. Below, read an exchange between the musicians about love as a mental illness, a violent thing, something to be stalked, you know… all the sweet and gushy stuff. To read the full interview, order Issue #128 here.
[Josh] Homme: Is it a treatable mental illness? For you, the pursuit and trying to figure it out, is kind of like holding smoke, which is impossible to do. This album is so about love, but it’s a very slippery fish. You know? Love.
[Singer Jehnny] Beth: Love is a slippery thing, yeah.
[Bassist] Ayse Hassan: The record kind of represents all the sections that love can be. It can f**k you up, it can be amazing. I think everyone experiences love in such a different way. Even the love that f**ks you up, you can get so much from, and that can really shape you. With this record, especially with the lyrics, it reflects the sections of how love can be on so many levels.
Beth: It’s kind of a psychotic record in the way that it goes through very extreme moods, as well as the opposite. It looks to the future of how love can be one day and the freedom of that.
Homme: I sense that need to almost capture it. There’s almost like a stalking of it, in a certain way—and in other moments, there seems to be these realizations that love is this transitory thing and you can’t put a pin in it and hold it down. There’s a conflict, it seems like. Do you feel conflicted by the love that is in your past, in your present and in your future?
[Drummer Faye] Milton: Yeah, I think so. It can be a real conflict. Love and hate are so close, it’s like laughter and crying. They both contain each other, I think.
Beth: I think in Savages we’ve always been interested in bringing opposites together, sound-wise. Using that element of surprise, like true love sounds quiet or life and death. Bringing extremes together and seeing the collision it creates.
