Oh you love Yasi Salek? Name every episode of Bandsplain then.
The podcast host on travelling to see the Eras Tour, similarities between Depeche Mode and David S. Pumpkins, why music books are bad, and what Chris Black is *really* like.
VANCOUVER – As I sit here, in the darkness of my bedroom, watching the witching hour draw close, I am haunted by a single question: how do you explain a single person, let alone a whole group?
I thought, with enough hours spent listening to Yasi Salek it would be no problem. Clearly, I was mistaken. As the host of the popular Bandsplain podcast, Yasi weaves together different threads of music history, to form a new tapestry, complete with vocal fry and a killer theme song. With episodes that often tip the scales at three hours or more, the project is less Behind The Music and more Ken Burns, only if Ken lived in Los Angeles, identified as goth, and called everyone “babe.” I recently had the pleasure of refamiliarizing myself with Yasi’s idiosyncratic approach to music documentaries as I devoured her recent episodes on The Cure. I sent her a DM asking for an interview and the rest is, well, her-story.
Despite accidentally oversleeping because of her cat, Yasi was on her A-game when we chatted, gracefully sharing her perspective on everything from Robert Smith’s good looks to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, why twenty-year-olds write the best rock songs, and her interactions with the Bandsplain reply guys. Her skin was glowing and she kept sipping on a glass of water. At one point she briefly gave me a tour of her home, including the lovely backsplash in her kitchen. None of this is much of an explanation, I know. At this point, I suppose, you either get it or you don’t, babe.
Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ES: What’s your cat’s name?
YS: Franny.
ES: Oh that’s a cute name. Did you give it to Franny, or did Franny pick it herself?
YS: He’s a him, actually. It’s 2023 Ethan get with the program. When I got Franny, a hundred years ago, I was a really embarrassing person. I got two cats at the same time, Franny and Zooey.
ES: And Zooey’s no longer with us?
YS: Zooey passed away so it’s just me and Franny now, babe.
ES: That’s so sad. Have you considered getting another cat, or are you mom’d up at the moment?
YS: I’m thinking about it now. I love that this is the line of inquiry for this interview. It’s great.
Franny is getting old and I really can’t deal with the idea of there being no cat here at some point. But when I go out of town, which happens semi-frequently, I take him to my brother’s house because he’s not the kind of cat that you can just visit once a day with some food. He’s needy. But the thought of two cats seems difficult. What am I going to do, pack up two cats and take them to my brother’s house?
ES: Do you think if you had two cats Franny might be able to chill? Or would he still require around-the-clock care?
YS: I don’t know. What do you think? It feels like he’s needy of human attention.
ES: What I have learned from our dear friend Jackson Galaxy, who I’m sure you’re familiar with, is that cats are social creatures. Having a little buddy takes the pressure off you, it makes them happier, it might be better for everybody.
YS: Love Jackson Galaxy. Alright, well, I will look into that Ethan.
ES: I saw you were at Depeche Mode last night. What’s the review? I assume because you’re from Los Angeles you love that band.
YS: That’s a funny thing. I do love Depeche Mode. I always forget that they’re so big in L.A., and it’s not an all-of-America thing. I love Depeche Mode because I’m a goth. It was great. I hate going to The Forum. Where do you live Ethan – Canada?
ES: I live in Vancouver, but I’ve been to The Forum… It’s way out there.
YS: It takes like an hour to get there. The parking is a nightmare. I got some delicious chicken tenders with fries and a big Pepsi. I would have preferred Diet Coke but they don’t have that. So that part was fun. We had really good seats. I don’t know how you feel about bands of this age but my thing is… I want to go see them when I have the opportunity because you never know what’s going to happen.
ES: I had the same thought with The Cure’s recent tour announcement. While the thought of seeing old Robert Smith kinda bums me out in theory, I also would be remiss not to see him. But I know it won’t be the same person I’m picturing when I listen to Disintegration.
YS: I think The Cure might be better. It’s not like Robert Smith has ever been known for being a particularly physical or dynamic frontman. [Depeche Mode frontman] Dave Gahan’s whole thing is that he’s Elvis. Shaking his hips, which he was still doing. He was wearing body glitter, which I thought was a choice. [Depeche Mode guitarist and synth player] Martin Gore was definitely wearing a suit that was giving David S. Pumpkins energy.
ES: David S. Pumpkins is kinda goth so it all tracks.
YS: Exactly. They’ve earned the right to do whatever they want to do. It was a great show but I would not have chosen that exact setlist if I was a member of Depeche Mode.
ES: What was throwing you off about it?
YS: I wasn’t shocked or upset that it focused heavily on the new album. That’s to be expected... But the show was heavy on their later albums in general. Like post-Violator. The Depeche Mode episode of Bandsplain comes out in a couple of days, so I’ve been really deep in their back catalog. I’m so partial to some of the earlier stuff, which of course they aren’t going to play. Even when they played ‘Just Can’t Get Enough,’ I thought “This is crazy, you’ve been playing that song for 40 years.” That must feel insane. You are 63-years-old and you recorded this when you were 19 or 20. That is so nuts.
ES: That must be a hard place for a band to operate from, to know what an audience wants but to also have an artistic vision that you want to pursue.
YS: It’s their right. They have the audience in a chokehold. They know we’re going to wait until the end of the show and they can play whatever they want before then.
ES: You’re also coming off of seeing Taylor Alison Swift in Vegas.
YS: It was honestly incredible. Worth every penny, which says a lot because it was extremely expensive. She played for 3 hours straight. No breaks. Maybe a brief 45 seconds to change outfits or whatever but it was insane. I personally am a huge Folklore/Evermore fan and it was heavy on those two albums so I was particularly happy.
ES: Do you mind me asking, how much did you spend on the tickets?
YS: That’s between me and G-d, babe.
ES: Cause my next question is: is this the most expensive concert you’ve ever gone to?
YS: This leads to your next question “How much money is in your bank account currently?”
But yeah, 100% it is. I’ve never seen Taylor Swift and I’ve been a fan for a long time. Since I was a young woman. She’s probably not going to tour again for a while. It’s giving I-want-to-go-have-a-kid, fuck you guys. So I thought “Lemme get in here.” The other day I saw an Instagram post where someone was selling a VIP package to Coachella with hotel and it was 6-thousand dollars. Babe, people are out here paying 6-thousand dollars to go to Coachella. What I paid to see Taylor Swift was absolutely totally kosher… And it wasn’t that expensive.
ES: I love how you keep saying it wasn’t that expensive.
YS: It just depends on your values and what your definition of expensive is.
ES: Unfortunately some of us are paid in Canadian dollars… Did you see known Taylor Swift collaborator Ed Sheeran’s thoughts on music criticism making the rounds? He basically said who needs music critics anymore, albums are freely available so just listen yourself and make up your own mind.
YS: Did someone give him a bad review or something?
ES: I only saw the memes. I’m coming at this half-informed but I wanted your take on it because I find your approach to music journalism interesting.
YS: I’m not sure that I qualify as a music journalist on any level. As I like to say, that’s not what I’m doing here, I’m more of a jester’s privilege. A clown.
I don’t think he’s correct. Laughs. I think there’s a lack of quality music criticism. It definitely exists, and there’s an echelon of music critics who are so incredible and so smart. What they bring to the table with their criticism is contextualizing music in a way within the culture that I think is so powerful and important. That’s what we read cultural writing for, in general. And then there’s a swath of criticism that Ed is right, we don’t need. But to say we don’t need it at all is stupid.
ES: I wanna circle back on the idea that you aren’t a music journalist, but in your work, you consume a lot of music journalism, often from periods when music journalism was more robust. Is it harder to cover newer bands on Bandsplain because there is less literature than there was in the 70s and 80s?
YS: We don’t really cover newer bands per se. Someone asked me the other day where Bandsplain’s cut-off is and I’m not really sure. It’s probably in the early 2000s. Like a band that started in the early to mid-2000s. But the 90s were probably the most robust for music journalism. In America, there were 30 magazines that wrote reviews. Like, Blender and shit you don’t even remember. I’m not really interested in criticizing the music or qualifying it. I’m more interested in how it was perceived at the time, and how it was contextualized. Music journalists help in that sense because they contextualized it.
ES: I tend to think of you as an archivist. To me, that is music journalism. But I’m interested to know why you see it differently, or if you’re just being Yasi and joking with me.
YS: I’m a podcast bimbo babe, that’s what I do. I guess I just really sincerely don’t know if what I do qualifies as music journalism. But I don’t know what the definition of journalism is. I think we make a really brain-dead, vocal-fry music documentary, with a bunch of inputs, put through a very specific lens, which is my lens. It’s not as if it’s objective. When I say a song fucks, there’s no fact-checking that.
ES: And yet, most of the time, it’s indisputable.
YS: You’d be surprised, there’s always someone disputing what I say… The people who do [music criticism], and this is not an exhaustive list, but people like Ann Powers, Jon Caramanica, there’s some heavy hitters that are so brilliant and I’m not good at that.
ES: You talk about vocal fry a lot.
YS: Yeah.
ES: What is your take on the gap between traditional broadcasting, and its standardized approach to voicing, and new forms of media like podcasting? Is it more valuable just to speak the way you naturally sound?
YS: I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for that.
I feel like people enjoy podcasts, and I say this as someone who pretty much doesn’t listen to podcasts. It’s actually weird. People say “You must listen to such cool podcasts.” Like, yeah, I listen to this one called Ancestral Kitchen. It’s a woman in England and a woman in rural Washington who talk about churning their own butter… That’s the only podcast I listen to.
ES: Are you being serious right now?
YS: I am dead serious. It’s really good if you’re interested in raw milk and baking sourdough and tallow.
ES: Would you say you’re interested in raw milk ad tallow?
YS: Yeah. Twenty percent of my personality is being into music and the other eighty percent is being a weird food bio-hacker. I’m also really into skin care. No one asks me these questions, they only ask me about The Cure.
ES: I literally had “What is the skincare routine?” written on my list of questions. We’ll get to it.
YS: I don’t know if we will, babe, because that’s a whole other 30-minute thing… Back to your original question. I think the popularity of podcasts has to do with the fact that there’s something for everyone. If you are into a more traditional way of speaking or structure, there are podcasts like that. Isn’t The Daily just news delivered in that kind of way?
ES: The Daily is weird because it is news content presented in a “conversational” way. It’s not how anyone would really speak…
YS: See? I told you, I don’t listen to podcasts, I am so sorry, I’m outing myself. I’ve obviously listened to How Long Gone multiple times because they’re my friends… I didn’t answer your question, I don’t know.
ES: That’s okay, it might not have been a very good question. Between you and me, I’m low-key a big fan of How Long Gone. I wasn’t going to ask you about your appearance on that program, but what was your experience like working with [How Long Gone co-host] Chris Black on Bandsplain?
YS: Laughs. That’s a really funny question. What if I fake this answer just to contribute to the lore of Chris Black? That would be really fun.
ES: I could ask you about [How Long Gone co-host] Jason, but he’s so… forthcoming.
YS: Chris Black was so *difficult*, he demanded so many things.
ES: He screamed at one of your assistants and then threw his cell phone.
YS: He was like “What is this brand of fucking bottled water? I don’t drink this!” No, Chris is great. He’s an old friend of mine but also he is so much kinder than his persona would have you believe. He’s super nice, he’s super smart, he knows a lot about music. He was a great guest to have and he’s fun to talk to.
ES: That’s what I figured, which is why I wasn’t going to ask. Can we talk about Robert Smith for a second? Robert Smith is hot, but I want to know why you think he’s hot.
YS: What do you mean?
ES: You reference his hotness in Bandsplain’s coverage, but I want to know what it is for you that makes this human man so endearing.
YS: Well that’s a different question.
ES: Let’s follow that thread then.
YS: I think he’s objectively hot in his youth. Not to say he’s not hot now. But I think I was more struck by that because I think that fact was quickly obscured and buried because of the way he made himself up. No one really talked about the fact that he’s a gorgeous man. Look at the bone structure, babe. You can’t argue with bone structure.
ES: And speaking of skincare! The skin is always looking real good.
YS: It’s probably all that white makeup he wears. It keeps the skin fresh.
ES: You’re in the middle of a goth series on Bandsplain right now, with episodes covering The Cure, Joy Division, and Depeche Mode. How is the mental doing?
YS: Never that well. Laughs. All of the shows make me a little mentally unwell because I get too invested.
ES: You famously hate group projects, are you doing all the research yourself?
YS: Yeah. It’s not because I don’t think someone else is capable per se because I have great producers. It’s more that they can’t learn it for me. Part of doing research is plucking out what you find or deem to be the important part. If they do the research, they’re going to decide what they find to be important, but it has to be through my lens. I haven’t found another way for it to work.
ES: No one quite sees the world the way Yasi sees it. How long does the process typically take?
YS: Somewhere between two weeks on the low end and one month on the high end. The Cure took a month, Smashing Pumpkins took a month. Joy Division honestly took a really long time, too. You wouldn’t think they would but it’s a combination of how many albums they have and how iconic they are. They only had two albums but there are six books about them and a documentary. I can’t help but feel I need to consume all of it.
ES: What is something you learned about Joy Division in the process?
YS: That they were so funny. I went into it thinking Here we fucking go, the world’s most depressing story of all time, fucking depressing music. And it was so funny. Especially Peter Hook, he’s hilarious and his book is incredible. it really humanized Ian Curtis. I think [Ian’s] been so flattened by time and this really tragic outcome, and then you pair that with the music and he seems one-dimensional. So it was cool to remember he was a three-dimensional person, not just Mr. Sad-sack. He was funny and did pranks and was a 21-year-old kid who would get drunk. It made me appreciate the music differently, I think.
ES: In The Cure episodes, you kept coming back to how old the band was when they were releasing what have since become iconic songs. This music feels timeless but then you realize it was coming from a 23-year-old…
YS: We talk about it a lot on the show. You probably know this as a listener but I really do think that the best rock music comes from the minds of young people.
ES: Why do you think that is?
YS: I just think that every other art form benefits from experience because experience gives you perspective, but what people love about music, particularly rock music, is the urgency. Like, “I’m going to die if you don’t love me back.” You have such a limited understanding of the world. And I think that helps you access this visceral-ness that is impossible to access later because you know better… You haven’t developed a thick skin yet. That and it’s sometimes better when you don’t know what you’re doing.
ES: You’re also naive enough to think you really can change the world. And in having that belief you sometimes can.
I wanted to ask you, not specifically about your dating life, but how is your dating life?
YS: Ethan! Babe! What is this?! Page Six?!
ES: This is an interview unlike any you’ve ever done before.
YS: This might surprise you but I don’t get interviewed a lot. Laughs. How is your dating life?
ES: I’m engaged, so I don’t have a dating life.
YS: Heavy sigh.
ES: Subtle flex, I know.
YS: It’s honestly patronizing.
ES: It’s just like a man to say that too.
YS: You know what Ethan, my dating life is fine.
ES: This leads me to my segue, which is that you have said, about your dating life, that no one reads anymore. I feel this very deeply in my bones.
YS: Maybe nobody wants to go out with me anymore because they’re worried I’m going to drag their ass on some music podcast around hour three.
ES: You’ve been very tactful about it. You never name names, it’s very nondescript.
YS: I would never! That’s so distasteful and tacky.
ES: But I do want to talk to you about reading. You seem like a very well-read person, but then you also operate in a medium that I sometimes like to blame for the death of reading.
YS: Wait, how annoying am I? I seem well-read? So annoying! Always talking about [french playwright] Sartre and shit fucking annoying bitch shut up.
ES: When you and [Bandsplain guest] Hanif Abdurraqib were referencing Baudelaire in The Cure episodes I was like what the fuck?
YS: The Nine Inch Nails episode is really deep because I was reading [french essayist] Roland Barthes and talked about it a lot for some reason.
I do like reading. Again, I don’t listen to podcasts so I don’t know what they take the place of. The only time I listen to Ancestral Kitchen or whatever is when my hands are otherwise occupied. When I’m cooking or maybe driving a car. I don’t drive very often. Book-reading time and podcast time are never at odds.
ES: What is the best music book you’ve ever read?
YS: Scar Tissue [by Anthony Kiedis].
ES: I knew you were going to say that. Why does everyone say that?
YS: Because it’s the best one. It’s so entertaining. It’s so in its own class. Can we talk about the fact that, and this is how I suffer for my audience, music books are not good. It’s mostly a slog but they tend to have information I need that I can’t find online.
ES: What’s your favourite book that’s not music related?
YS: I really like Eve Babitz, I really like Sheila Heti. I like novels. I also really like Somerset Maughm. So embarrassing. But his books Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge are two of my favourites.
ES: You just listed a bunch of stuff I’ve never heard of. Laughs.
YS: Do you not like novels?
ES: I like novels but I’m an idiot.
YS: Eve Babtiz is the coolest. She was the cool party-girl writer of Los Angeles in the 70s.
ES: I do know Eve, but mostly through her proximity to Joan Didion.
YS: Sheila Heti is Canadian so I’m surprised at your lack of knowledge about your own people.
ES: Self-hating Canadian over here.
YS: They all are.
ES: Every interview I do, I have to resist the urge to ask whether the person has been to Vancouver.
YS: I have, actually. Multiple times.
ES: Why?
YS: I had a lot of friends at a certain point who lived there who were in bands. And I was briefly in a band for a second, so I lived there for a month to rehearse.
ES: Tell me more.
YS: That’s all you get to know.
ES: What’s the band called?
YS: Not telling you.
ES: Why not?
YS: Again, it’s between me and G-d. You have to have a little privacy, you have to have a little mystery.
ES: Can you tell me what instrument you played in the band?
YS: I played bass. But I was Sid Vicious-ing if we’re being honest. I never learned how to properly play my instrument.
ES: Has it been difficult for you to host a show about a genre of music that is very popular with white men, as a woman of colour?
YS: Difficult? No. It’s been amusing. As I love to say, it is not illegal to not listen to the program. And yet some people act as if I came to their house and was shouting the podcast into their ears with a megaphone. They get very upset about stuff.
ES: What is most likely to trigger your audience?
YS: By and large the audience is gorgeous and awesome and supportive and so cool and it’s so nice to hear that they like hearing their favourite band get talked about. In the beginning, they complained a lot about the vocal fry. I used to famously look at the subreddit. But I’ve stopped because I’m on my journey to health. It never super bothered me but there’d be funny comments like “Why are you doing The Clash? That’s lazy and boring.” That episode fully took me a month, it was very hard!
ES: Do you know how many records The Clash has?
YS: They’re like The Beatles. Eight documentaries, literally twelve books. It took me forever. But their complaints are not my concern, Ethan.
ES: You have to tend to your own garden.
YS: I guess it’s a generational thing, but it never once occurred to me, never once crossed my beautiful mind to send a message to a stranger to criticize a thing that they do, that has nothing to do with me.
ES: Something you do basically for free.
YS: Basically for free. I mean, it’s nice. When I’m feeling generous I say “Oh it’s coming from a place of love.” But also, babe, get-a-life-dot-org. Sips water.
ES: Can we talk about mixtapes? You’re of the age where I assume this would have been part of your life.
YS: This is the portion of the interview where you call me old.
ES: Listen, you’re old as hell. Can we talk about mixtapes?
YS: I got my best job ever because of a mixtape. I wanted to work at the record store in my college town. And the man there would not hire me. I would come every single day and bother him and say “Is there a job yet?” He’d say no. And I had turned in a mixtape with my resume. I’d ask, “Have you listened to the tape? Have you to the tape?” Until finally, he was like “Okay fine you can fucking work here, you’re so annoying.”
ES: What was on that mixtape?
YS: Pavement, The Replacements, probably similar shit to what I would put now. PJ Harvey.
ES: Did you have a mixtape staple song? Something that went on every single one?
YS: No.
ES: Fair. Next question.
YS: They served different purposes Ethan what can I tell you? I did put blink-182’s ‘Wasting Time’ on a lot of my mixtapes, probably including that one for the record store.
ES: I don’t know why I was surprised to learn you’re a fan of blink.
YS: I’m from Torrence, babe.
ES: Are you a fan of the collected works of blink-182, or do you have a cutoff point?
YS: I don’t have a cutoff point where I think things turn to trash. But my deep fandom pretty much only extends through Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. The self-titled record is pretty good.
ES: For a long time the only thing I knew of Robert Smith is that he was on that blink-182 song.
YS: Ethan. Babe.
ES: Listen, I’m not here to impress you.
YS: You better put that in the article.
ES: I have nothing to hide.
YS: You’re so vulnerable and honest. Well, I guess they introduced a new generation to The Cure.
ES: I often think I know things about music and then I chat with someone like yourself and realize I know nothing.
YS: It’s my job.
ES: I know, but were you always a completist in that sense?
YS: Not that I was a completist, but when I got into music as a teen, the only way to know more was to go buy magazines, go buy zines. Save up your money to buy the record. That resulted in a sort of obsessive quality if you were into music because it was hard. It took work. I always joke that my job is just being a teenager. Like, see dad? You always said I couldn’t make a career out of this. Who’s out here reading about Joy Division?
ES: Who’s here talking to this random Canadian about her podcast?
YS: Who is famous enough to talk to this random Canadian for his free newsletter? I really gotta get a publicist.
Yasi Salek is a goth bimbo podcaster and the host of Bandsplain. She lives in Los Angeles.
Every interview I have read or listened to with Yasi is someone that is clearly in love or lust with her but also so far out of her league and also someone who seemingly has never spoken to a woman before. It seems very much like Yasi desperately wants to have an audience that has people that identified as female and not exclusively white men who care too much about guitar music. I do hope Yasi becomes famous enough to have a publicist. I also hope that Ethan finds it easier to talk to women in the future and that he listens to more of the cure and less of blink 182 (and whoever he interviews it isn't about their pets or podcasts they listen too).