The Best Damned Band In The Whole World!!!
The Best Damned Band In The Whole World turn folk, faith, absurdity and punk-minded brevity into a wonderfully eccentric run of singles
Five singles so memorable as a body of work. “Jesus Loves Me Pt. 2,” “Unicorns of Vengeance,” “I Like Nature,” “Sparkle Johns” and “Princess Crocs” sound like they belong to the same wonderfully strange universe and each approaches it from a different angle.
The economy gives the songwriting a DIY immediacy. Ideas arrive, make their point and disappear before they can become overworked. What I particularly enjoy is the collision of the sacred and the ridiculous. The songs sound like they were pulled from an alternate-universe children's television show. That contrast gives the catalogue a mischievous personality.
The Best Damned Band In The Whole World have built something small, funny, sincere, eccentric, and deliberately difficult to categorize. I recommend starting with all five!
Interview with The Best Damned Band In The World
(•)> These five songs arrived individually across 2024. Did you always imagine them as part of one larger musical world?
(•)> What came first with this project: the songwriting, the humour, or the deliberately outrageous titles?
(•)> “Jesus Loves Me Pt. 2” places the project directly in a Christian musical context. How do you balance sincere faith with the irreverent personality running through the other songs?
(•)> “Unicorns of Vengeance” is a particularly striking title. What inspired that song and its imagery?
(•)> “I Like Nature” is only 2:01. Do you deliberately prefer short songs, or do the ideas simply tell you when they're finished?
(•)> What makes “Sparkle Johns” different from the other songs in this run of releases?
(•)> “Princess Crocs” has perhaps the most surreal title of the five. Was the absurdity part of the songwriting process or did it emerge naturally?
(•)> Owen Gustafson is credited across the catalogue, with J. Hyde Hadaway and Sam Kozaczuk also receiving songwriting credits on different releases. How collaborative was the actual writing process?
(•)> How important is the folk tradition to the music, particularly when set against the project's stranger and more humorous ideas?
(•)> “Unicorns of Vengeance” has also been performed live at Whatcom Wav. Does the song change significantly when you take this material away from the studio and onto a stage?
(•)> Do you see these songs primarily as comedy, folk songwriting, Christian music, experimental music, or something that deliberately refuses those categories?
(•)> After making these five singles, what did you learn about what The Best Damned Band In The Whole World can get away with musically that you couldn't have predicted at the beginning?
(•)> That's all, Folks! Check out The Best Damned Band In The World on the Pigeon Opinion Playlist