Dazy on Singles, Spider-Man, and Shaking off the Boundaries

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it, along with a Screen Memories column every one or two weeks where I write about stuff I watched lately.

Today's installment: I've been a huge fan of James Goodson's pinwheel-firework bursts of song as Dazy, which are equally reminiscent of Madchester head-rush giddiness and the more sugary variants of '90s alternative rock. Few are better than him at the moment when it comes to making bite-sized sounds absolutely enormous in shape, and his latest collection MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs From 2023-2026 is the latest evidence of his ample talents. I hopped on the phone with James last week to talk about his impressive body of work so far, and I appreciated his perspectives on how he does what he does. It was a great convo and I'm happy to bring it to you today, check it out:

Let's talk about this method of releasing things as you go and putting them out compilation-style. Obviously, you have plenty of material here for another proper album, but you've taken a different route in general thus far, which is interesting to me.
When I first started doing Dazy, I had a bad habit of writing songs, sitting on them, and struggling to put them out sometimes. Releasing things in little bite-sized chunks, I find that to be a little easier and freeing. So I was doing that early on, and it was fun to do a collection of those before I did a full-length record. It's a whole different experience to make a proper album. I find it to be a lot more challenging. Albums are cool and important, and that specific format needs to represent a certain thing for a musician.

Coming out of [Out of Body], I was really itchy to keep releasing music, but I knew I didn't want to do an album again—and I also could feel the way I was writing songs was evolving. I wanted to experiment a bit more with the production side of stuff and get a little freakier with it— and the circumstances of my life were changing. I had a kid, and I was needing to have things be a little flexible. Also, when I was a kid growing up, a ton of the bands that I fell in love with early on—the Clash, the Misfits, the Ramones, all the early, classic standard-ass punk stuff—those bands all had singles collections. Even the Smiths had one. I've always thought that was a cool way to get introduced to a band. All these different things allowed me to release music at a pace that felt more natural to me.

It's also that I just literally think that collecting singles is cool. That's what I enjoyed as a kid, and I want to recreate that. I write a lot of songs, and I like being able to try things within them without feeling like everything has to be 10-to-12-song statements. I like to be able to create a little world within a smaller release—and, to be honest, I get a little frustrated sometimes with "It's got to be a record" or bust—like, if it wasn't on an album, then these songs didn't count. Doing a collection is my way off being like, "Well, here they are all in one place if you need them there." Because I understand that [singles are] just not the way some people consume music. It's me getting to do something that I want to do and making my teenage self happy. and I hope that it also makes it easier for people to discover some of those songs. I like to put a lot of new stuff on [these compilations] too, so even if you do know about all those songs, you want to still tap in. They make sense to me in a different way when you hear them all collected in one place.

It's funny, I remember Carl Newman saying to me almost ten years ago, "I don't know if the New Pornographers are going to make records anymore, because we're being told by everybody to make singles." That didn't totally bear out in terms of doomsayer situations. But also, as much as I love the Smiths, my favorite Smiths record is still Hatful of Hollow.
Absolutely. Obviously, all these things we're talking about are indicative of the ebbs and flows within the industry. Those singles collections, the bands were putting out lots of non-album material, and that's what I'm really drawn to: These bands were putting out essential music. They weren't like, "I have some loose music that's here to tide you over until the next album." They treated those singles like they really mattered, and that's a really cool way of doing it. There's a part of me that's trying to tap into that a little bit.

I also heard that all the time, where people were like, "It's going to be singles-only for a while. Nobody's going to do albums anymore"—and it really didn't come to pass that way. I don't know if that's just because the gravitational pull of an album is still pretty undeniable in terms of how to put out music. It's automatically going to get more attention. In the super-mainstream, maybe things went a little singles-y for a minute—but it never really switched over to everyone just bailing on albums. And, despite being a guy that's over here advocating for his 24-song singles collection, I'm glad that albums didn't go away. I really don't want them to.

Even for a three-year period, you've collected a lot of songs here. Talk to me about your overall creative output. What happens when you hit a creative block?
I find that music—the instrumental part of it—comes very naturally and easily for the most part. If I have an hour to spare and am put down in front of GarageBand with the guitar in my hands, some kind of music will get made. But when it comes to writing lyrics or really completing a song, that's where I tend to struggle a little bit more. I'll have songs sitting on my computer for months—years—where it's two verses, two choruses, and a vocal melody that's me just humming nonsense. Everything's there except for the final pieces to finish the song, and the lyrics are where I really struggle a little bit.

Because I record it all myself, there isn't really a difference between demoing and recording the songs for me. Early on, I used to be a little bit more like, "Okay, here's my scrappy little demo, and now I'm gonna, record it for real"—which would still just be me re-recording the guitars and vocals. The more that I did stuff, I realized that I want this process to all be the same thing. So I've set up my recording process and my demoing and writing process to all be one continuous flow of making the song. I'll get a pretty decent version of the song done, and then I'm just sitting on it for forever while I tweak little things into oblivion. But what always hangs me up is, I'll work on a song for forever, and I get to this point where I'm like, "Alright, it's now or never, you need to release this song or you're just wasting your time with it."

Then, I'll think of one little change that makes me fall in love with the song again, and it justifies the obsessive process. You're like, "If I hadn't sat on this for a year, I never would've come up with that one little bit." But I've come to accept that about my process. I used to fight it a little more and get really frustrated, and now I'm like, "This is just how you do it. You're a control freak, this is what the process is, and you just have to lean into it."

Let's talk more about the production end of things, which is definitely key to your music. There's a sense of texture that, if it weren't there, would make these songs sound completely different.
Sometimes you get really into the nitty-gritty with textures and ear candy, and you're like, "Does anybody notice this stuff?" But cumulatively, you're always hoping that that stuff comes across in the experience of hearing the thing. Early on, I was using the drum machines and more quasi-electronic elements almost out of necessity. I'm making all this alone, and I'm not gonna record drums in my house. At a certain point, I started to think, "Oh, this is what I like about it." I've felt more compelled to to dig further into make more intricate beats and loops, getting more into sampling and making the sounds themselves unique.

A lot of times, I record something with a guitar and I'm like, "That's cool, but I've heard that a million times"—not even necessarily in other people's music, but in my own. So I try to figure out a weirder way to do that. What if I record it with a piano instead? I'd get into taking sounds that I recorded on my phone and turning them into samples. I got really obsessed with every guitar lead being played in reverse. It's fun, and it keeps me interested and challenged.

With a lot of my favorite music, there's an element of people figuring something out. A lot of music I like is when you can hear somebody trying to go beyond their current skill level—and maybe they're not nailing it, but where they're landing is cool. I try to keep myself in that space of not always being totally good at what I'm trying to do. I don't think I'm super good at sampling, or even some of the more nitty gritty production stuff in general. I'm still an amateur, but I like the accidents and mistakes, and that's how I come up with a lot of stuff: Just stumbling around in the dark until something weird and cool happens, and then making the entire song around that. The better that I get at the production side of it, the more I try to find new ways to stay bad at it. Other musicians say all the time that the coolest stuff is the accidents, and I feel like I'm just constantly trying to create a situation where a cool accident might happen. I have a lot of friends who make music on the computer, like I do. They're all like, "Why do you not use Logic?" But I like using GarageBand because it's limited and shitty, and it forces me to think of weird ways to accomplish something that's easier to accomplish on a better system. I like that there's funny little boundaries.

Early on, I thought that Dazy was defined by loud, psycho guitars that are doing crazy feedback all the time. The more I was making it, I was showing music to friends and talking about how I really wanted to try other stuff. I felt confined by loud, crazy guitars. They'd look at me like, "What are you talking about, man? No one cares about whether the guitars are psycho loud or not. It's just your songwriting." It was this wake-up call realizing that it can be whatever I want it to be, and it was super freeing to apply that to songs over the past three years. But I can still hear myself in these songs, trying to shake off these preconceived boundaries that I put on my own writing.

You worked with Ryan Hemsworth on a few of these tracks, which makes a lot of sense considering that, with his forthcoming new album, he's doing something pretty similar to you genre-wise. Talk to me about how that creative partnership worked.
Right after I'd put out the full-length, I was finding myself trying to dip into these other sounds and get more into production. Ryan happened to DM me around that time and was like, "Hey, I like your music and I like that you mess around with breakbeats. Let me know if you ever want to do anything together." It was a perfect timing serendipity moment, because I really wanted to go further into the world that he's in, and I was already a big fan of his stuff as well as Bodysync. I sent him an absurd amount of music, and he was very cool and actually listened to all of it. He singled out "Forced Perspective," and we worked on it together and immediately got along. We could see that we trying to go to the same place from different directions. He's an electronic music guy who's trying to bring rock-y stuff into it, and I'm a rock guy trying to bring electronic things into it.

He showed me how much little details can matter. Whether or not people are instantly like, "Wow, what a genius move it was to move XYZ sample by 2 dB," that stuff does add up. He also helped with "Pay No Mind (To the Signs)" and really elevated that song a ton. I've also done stuff with Bodysync, and both those guys have such a unique way of looking at music that I really love. It's been really cool to do stuff with them, because not only do I like really like the music we make together, but I learn a lot from them because they have such a different approach.

You've been a parent for a minute now. How has parenthood been, and how has it collided with creative life?
It's awesome. My son is really into music, and we listen to music together all the time. He has his own little opinions about it in ways that I just can't believe. Everything about being a parent is re-experiencing life through a fresh lens in a way that's really special and mind-blowing, and doing that with music is particularly cool to see. I like to play him songs that I'm working on, and he has this really unfiltered gauge of whether something works or not, because he doesn't have years of music opinions piled up in there. He just says, "Yes, I like this. No, I don't like this." It's so pure in a way that's really cool. When I'm singing on other stuff that I've worked on, he can clock it. "Dad, is that you on that?" Being a parent has made a big impact on my music in super direct ways, where I've written songs about being a parent and his toys make a lot of appearances on a lot of these songs. It's been cool to have that part of my life organically weave into making music.

Obviously, when you have a kid, your time management changes. It's definitely an adjustment to go from, "It's the weekend, I'm gonna spend six hours on a Saturday working on music and write three songs in a day," to not having that anymore and changing the way you write stuff. But, to be honest, it's a big part of what pushed me into trying new things. Instead of just sitting there with a loud guitar blasting for hours at a time, I got deeper into the beats and the production, learning more stuff with keyboards and different ways of writing that I don't know if I would've done if I hadn't had a kid. It pushed me into a lot of new territory.

I have friends who are musicians who are thinking about having kids, and they pick my brain about how it changed things. I think they're always a little surprised when I'm like, "It was a level-up. It helped me." Obviously, you have to manage your time differently, and that's an adjustment. But my friends are always like, "I won't be able to tour as much." That's just a conversation with your partner, and like I honestly have toured more since having a kid, which is insane—but you're not going to want to tour. You're going to want to be home. There's this other side of it that is just so unknowable before you have a kid.

What does your kid respond to in terms of music?
We're big music people, so we're playing music all the time, and it's always an ongoing playlist of songs that he's gravitated towards. It's really all over the place. One of the first songs that he really locked in on was "Sliver" by Nirvana, which is possibly my favorite song of all time—so having my son be obsessed with it has made me love it even more. I told him, "I love this song too," and there was a long time where he'd go, "Play the song you like." The other kids at school are into Spider-Man and Iron Man, and I was like, "You know, there's an Iron Man song," and I played him "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. He got really obsessed with that for a while. But yeah, it's all over the place. He loves the Beatles, and he's really into Kitty Craft, which we'd play a lot when he was little because it's very mellow. Since he started school, he's gotten exposed to a lot more "classic" kids' music, so K-Pop Demon Hunters has made its way in there. But there's also a late-era Primal Scream song called "Trippin' On Your Love" that he's really obsessed with, just because I happened to be playing it.

I love that. That's so funny. One thing I always hear from friends with kids is that, at some point, "Baby Shark" enters the conversation and it becomes inescapable. It sounds like you've avoided "Baby Shark," though.
Yeah, I think we made it right during the era where that would have been the go-to. There's been a little bit of that seeping in since he went to school, but the main thing is Spider-Man. There's a Spider Man cartoon where the guy from Fall Out Boy sings the Spider-Man song, so he loves that. Then I showed him the '60s Spider-Man theme song, and he loves that. Then, I showed him the Ramones version, and that's his big go-to Spider-Man song now.

It's also always nice to hear about little kids getting into Spider-Man. When it comes to children, he's a friendly figure! If you have a four-year-old who's looking up to Batman though, you're like, "Uh oh."
Exactly. That's the thing about Spider Man: He's the best superhero because he's just a nice guy doing his best. Apparently, there's a lot more Spider-Men now than there were when I was a kid. All the different spider people that there are now— that was a real learning experience.

Obviously, you and I have been in touch in the past because you're also a publicist. I'm always interested in talking to people are on both sides of the aisle in the music industry, and what that balance is like.
Being a musician has been the focal point of my life since I was 13 or 14. Working in music is the new thing for me. Because Dazy is the first band of mine that has gotten a little steam, there's a lot of people that know me as a guy that works in music, you know, and it's funny to have this role-reversal.

I fell into being a publicist just through being in bands. The band I was in got signed to this label 10 years ago, and one of the guys there had a PR company. He was like, "You know, I think you'd be good at being a publicist." I was like, "I literally don't know what that job is," and he was like, "I'll teach you." 10 years later, here I am, still doing it. I feel very lucky that I'm able to have a remote job where I can go on tour and do it. That's really helpful. Other than that, I mostly just try to do a good job at both. With the PR stuff, I've never hit anybody up about my own band. I always did both separately. So it was always really fun for me to have writers that I work with come out of nowhere and be like, "Wait, is this you?" That was always a good sign to me—that there were people who were genuinely like, "I didn't know that you did that." That's the way it should happen.

At the end of the day, everybody in music has a million different fucking hustles, because it's tough to make any money in music. For me, these are just my hats. But since I was a kid, all I've ever done is think about and work on music. At a certain point, you're like, "I'm a grown-ass adult, and my entire life revolves around songs." But it's been working out, so I'll try to keep it rolling.