Down And Dirty
Austin may be landlocked, but it was all about Dirty Beaches at this year's South By Southwest.
By Zach Kelly
Photographed by Jacqueline Di Milia
It's no surprise to hear that Alex Zhang Hungtai, the 30-year-old Vancouver resident better known as fractured pop artist Dirty Beaches, is a big David Lynch fan. Considering that Lynch is a master of contrast, often disrupting his seemingly antiseptic, cookie-cutter worlds by injecting antithetical, nightmare scenarios into them, it makes sense that Hungtai would feel some kind of a connection.
"Conceptually, that kind of fucked-up scariness, that harsh noise blended in with pure '50s pop, it definitely came from Lynch," he says on the phone from Los Angeles, sounding more than a little wiped out. Again, it's no wonder: Following the release of his break-through LP Badlands (which came out on March 29th in the wake of much South by Southwest-generated buzz), Hungtai is just wrapping up a month on the road supporting Dum Dum Girls.
Using 1950s croon-pop ("The music that my father loved," he explains) as a starting point and fragmenting it with noisier textures (guitar mixed with pre-programmed tracks), Hungtai has
managed to make Charlie Feathers, Elvis Presley and Suicide all talking points on the same record. "I like contradictions and I think that's the whole point of this project. It's about contradiction and balance."
Hungtai has created something that's both insular and cinematic. A shadowy tale about a traveler and his dark attraction to the road, Badlands feels fit to be letterboxed. Live, it's a stirring catharsis. "A lot of it has to do with blending fiction with your own experiences... It's a fictional character that I inject into myself, with which I douse my soul and set my heart ablaze on stage."
Hungtai doesn't expect everyone to understand. "They think I'm pretentious, that I pose too much. People think that I don't play my instrument enough. Whereas people who like it, I think they get it right away."
Dirty Beaches plays Mercury Lounge on May 12th and Glasslands on May 13th.
"Conceptually, that kind of fucked-up scariness, that harsh noise blended in with pure '50s pop, it definitely came from Lynch," he says on the phone from Los Angeles, sounding more than a little wiped out. Again, it's no wonder: Following the release of his break-through LP Badlands (which came out on March 29th in the wake of much South by Southwest-generated buzz), Hungtai is just wrapping up a month on the road supporting Dum Dum Girls.
Using 1950s croon-pop ("The music that my father loved," he explains) as a starting point and fragmenting it with noisier textures (guitar mixed with pre-programmed tracks), Hungtai has
managed to make Charlie Feathers, Elvis Presley and Suicide all talking points on the same record. "I like contradictions and I think that's the whole point of this project. It's about contradiction and balance."
Hungtai has created something that's both insular and cinematic. A shadowy tale about a traveler and his dark attraction to the road, Badlands feels fit to be letterboxed. Live, it's a stirring catharsis. "A lot of it has to do with blending fiction with your own experiences... It's a fictional character that I inject into myself, with which I douse my soul and set my heart ablaze on stage."
Hungtai doesn't expect everyone to understand. "They think I'm pretentious, that I pose too much. People think that I don't play my instrument enough. Whereas people who like it, I think they get it right away."
Dirty Beaches plays Mercury Lounge on May 12th and Glasslands on May 13th.
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