 The following is excerpted from an interview with Psmaul Ehlien, the creative force behind Small Alien.
Interviewer: Your music seems to me uncategorical in a way. That’s my impression. Do you get that from other people who listen to it or, I’ve been trying to figure out what to call it. There is, I think, a definite element of pop but then again they’re not your typical pop songs. How would you classify your sound?
Psmaul Ehlien: Well I think it is the sound of modern popular music, which is the sound of collage. Anything goes, stylistic mergings, blurrings- but it still has to have that special something, you know, that the great folk music had, that the Beatles had, great classic rock of the 60’s and 70’s, you know, the best of new wave of the 80’s, of alternative of the 90’s, now into modern music. Good stuff always has that same thing in common. And if you had a great, say, Flaming Lips song and you could transport it back in time to 1964 and the Beatles could play it, it would sound fantastic and it would fit right in, you know, it’s all, it’s kind of the same thing really. There’s just more possibilities now, with technology and a greater appreciation, understanding of the world and world cultures.
Interviewer: Ok. I’d like to focus on the lyrical aspects of your music for awhile. I mentioned before that your music had a pop quality. But the themes and subjects in your lyrics don’t seem at all what one typically finds in pop music. You make references to God, to plants, to friendships, to getting high- you mentioned earlier the Strophar- what did you call it?
Psmaul: Stropharia cubensis.
Interviewer: -the mushrooms, cowboys etc. You sing about love but it seems not in the typical fashion of pop “love”. Where do your lyrics come from? Can you talk about that?
Psmaul: Well they just come from my relationship with my reality and that interaction which sets up a vibration that I can transduce into music in a way that, makes me feel better I guess. Not that I feel so bad but- uh (laughs). I would say, uh, you know, the songs come usually in just, almost in an instant, you know, in 20 or 30 minutes a song comes and it’s usually born from one key idea and then I ramify and contextualize it into a song.
Interviewer: Ok, uh, I’ll try to get a little more specific here. I just picked this out, sort of at random but it’s a line that meant something to me when I listened to the cd that you gave me. In your song, This is What Love Looks Like you say, “And the voice said, sometimes you have to do it dirty to get it done”. What are you getting at there?
Psmaul: Well I just had a feeling that if one waited ‘til one felt prepared to act perfectly then one might be running the great risk of not ever doing.
Interviewer: So rather than not doing it at all…
Psmaul: The successive line kind of explains it, where it says, ‘sit smoking in the yoga pose’. If you wait ‘til you no longer smoke before you are willing to get into the yoga pose, that might be a problem. It might be better to go ahead and get into the yoga pose while you smoke.
Interviewer: Rather than try to be, have everything perfect or…
Psmaul: Yeah, otherwise it’s, yeah, dangerous.
Interviewer: Um, is part of music, do you think, to make people feel better?
Psmaul: I think so. I think so. It kind of attacks a different nerve center than speech or writing, um, I think, because of the vibrations, the way they interact with the physicality of our bodies and spirits that, uh, they’re able to sneak into perhaps hardened or off-use areas of the soul or a person’s mind and act in ways that they can barely even understand, kind of like psychedelics really. Music, like a psychedelic, can take you over. Music can bring you to your knees.
Interviewer: Well, I think that’s all I have for now. Um, thank you for the interview. We may have to continue this at some time.
Psmaul: Well thank you so much for coming out.
Interviewer: Nice meeting you. Do you go by Psmaul Ehlien?
Psmaul: Psmaul, I hope, you know. I mean many people still call me by my school name, Paul, and that’s ok, you know, I’m used to answering to that, it makes more sense to people generally.
Interviewer: So either way…people could call you Paul or…?
Psmaul: Certainly it always makes me happy when people call me Psmaul.
For the full text of this interview, visit http://smallalien.com/about.html
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