Old Flame

Tim Kinsella on Joan of Arc's latest

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Jul 15, 2008

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Tim Kinsella is Joan of Arc and Joan of Arc is Tim Kinsella. Though he has and has had other bands (such as the hardcore-lite Cap'n Jazz and the twitchy Make Believe), JOA is the most experimental and melodic of them all. As the band's only permanent member, the nervous-sounding front man has created some of pop's nastiest yet wisely informed and emotional songs. After 10-plus albums, JOA's new bluntly calm Boo! Human may be the finest and truest to that mission.

City Paper: People have mentioned how journalistic your lyrics are. Have you ever written in the traditional sense for any journalistic outfits?

Tim Kinsella: Though that term surprises me sort of in terms of my songs, I'd guess the aspect of my approach that people may be reading as journalistic would be the detached and non-judgmental perspective I hope to invest the songs with. I'm aware of feeling no more than a passive witness to my own strange life, and that little witness at the steering wheel behind and between my eyes might be the little guy from whom the songs are born.

CP: Are you comfortable juggling all your muses and all your music, separating Make Believe from JOA and such?

TK: There's only one singular, mysterious muse all my pursuits have in common, and that is some un-nameable, intangible life force I feel moved to praise. I mean simply, it is a joy for me to play music and I do so to celebrate my joy of being an earthling.

CP: You've made at least one JOA record every year since your start, save for the 2001-02 period. What happened?

TK: Those were pretty bleak years, honestly. I shared an apartment with this mysterious, beautiful young woman who wasn't my lover and I was stoned constantly and didn't say a peep to a single person. I guess in 2002 my wife sort of drew me back out into the world.

CP: How do Sam Zurick, Bobby Burg and Mike Kinsella manage to stay on with you? How did it come to pass that Boo! Human sounds a wee bit like So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness?

TK: Those guys are my friends and I'm their friend and we enjoy hanging out, working out strange puzzles and maps we each make and sorta nudge the others to sculpt a new path through. It probably sounds like that record a bit because it's a lot of the same people recording at the same studio with the same guy. This approach was determined appropriate purely out of selfishness and self-interest, as we all thought it would be enjoyable to spend our time together doing that.

CP: Lyrically, you're blunter about your brutality than ever before on this album. Yet, you seem so at ease and ruminative on "A Tell-Tale Penis." How did we get there?

TK: There are 100 million things happening every second, and we're each choosing which bits to filter out and deem worthy of our attention strictly according to our old conditioning and habits. How could I ever claim to understand my own mind? Peace happens.

Joan of Arc with Ponytail | Wed., July 23, 8 p.m., $10, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com

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