INTERVIEW: Jerry Paper

WTBU DJ Danya Trommer chatted with artist and producer Lucas Nathan about his electropop project, Jerry Paper. Like a Baby, Nathan’s next album, is set to be released on August 12 on Stones Throw Records.

Danya Trommer: You say that in your projects, you try to provide a glimpse of an alternate reality.  I’ve noticed each of your albums have a very strong unifying style and story. Would you consider each album a concept album?

Lucas Nathan: Yeah they’re definitely all concept albums in the sense that while I’m working, I generally have a unified idea and am constantly making connections between different ideas. The connections are what is interesting to me, and there are certainly themes that recur within albums and even across albums. They’re not necessarily cohesive stories though. Probably the only album that approaches that in the fullest way is Toon Time Raw!, although it is really just a series of snapshots from one world. Like A Baby is also conceptually like that–scenes from a cohesive world, but a bit more abstract.

DT: At your show, you said you wanted to write a concept album about living in a mall, though it didn’t pan out to be a full album. How’d you come up with that concept?

LN: I had just moved to LA and was spending a lot more time in malls. Whereas living in New York you are so inundated with commerce at all times (living in New York is essentially like living in a giant outdoor mall…), LA has a more stark contrast of nature and centers of commerce. I was really enjoying spending time in malls and it got me thinking a lot about cycles of desire and I realized that there was so much of humanity you could map onto malls. At a certain point in trying to make that album though, I realized it would make for a more interesting and dynamic album if I branched out. And while still focusing on the same ideas and mapping them onto systems of commerce, I was able to expand and explore many different ideas in the same world. I’m really happy with how Like A Baby developed into what it is now.

DT: You used to draw a lot. Do you still create visual art?

LN: Nope.

DT: You say you started making electronic music to challenge yourself. In what other ways has Jerry Paper as a project served as a challenge?

LN: The entire project is a way of interrogating myself. It is a public form of growth. I want to show people that they can grow and change and move through difficulties and challenges, because that is a full life. Living a life isn’t deciding who you are and staying that way. Life is process.

DT: You used to be in a comedy rock band when you were a teenager. You have an incredibly fun and humorous stage presence. Do you consciously incorporate comedy into Jerry Paper?

LN: I’ve never trusted art that doesn’t incorporate at least some mild humor. If art is an attempt to reflect truth and life, then how could you reflect a life without humor? Either it is made by someone who is humorless, which is fucking unbearable, or it is simply an inaccurate recreation of experience. Even those in mourning can laugh. Maybe I’m biased because laughter is something that I hold to be central to life, maybe I am myopic in this view, but to me it feels like a more expansive embrace of life.