BC:
You mentioned a couple years back that you were working on a
covers album in which you were the object of worship; that it would basically,
be comprised of you impersonating iconic bands doing original Damien
Youth songs. Did anything ever come of that?
DY:
I will often start a project like that and then get distracted.
I think I take on gimmick projects to fill in those gaps when the muse
can’t be conjured. Then I start to feel a sense of pathetic bastardness,
and I’ll bail.
BC: I ask because I think that the concept itself is very telling about who you are as an artist. The idea that David Bowie would be covering Damien Youth, as opposed to vice versa, it’s well. . .
DY: Perhaps, what do you get from it?
BC:
I’ve always said that you sound like everybody, but nobody
sounds quite like you. There’s unquestionably an element of mimicry
in your songwriting, in your song Spy In My Tree you sing that
you “emulate the flight of fallen heroes.” I’d say that
you emulate out of tribute, and not for a lack of creativity.
DY:
Yes, that lyric did happen and a similar self analysis happened
on the last song from Onanisms called Nobody.“The
golden calf was up for grabs, with all of my heroes dead on the slab,
I felt myself filling the void that was left by the death of the wonder
boys. And the ghost you left lying 'round, through records and magazines
are swirling inside of me as I sing my songs to no one at all.”
