Frank's Corner #7: In Conversation With Planning For Burial.
Collections, New TV, and Touring off the Beaten Trodden Path.
Hundreds of CDs engulf the dim room in which Thom Wasluck (Planning For Burial) situates himself. Collecting is an old pastime he tells me, an occasional habit of his consisting of guiding a finger along the massive collection, bringing it to an abrupt, random pause and playing the record he lands on at his own accord.
The magnitude of his disc catalogue is, perhaps, comparable to the vastness of his newest record It’s Closeness, It’s Easy; his first full length project under Planning For Burial since 2017. The metal? Scathing. Strings? Jagged and wild. Subject Matter? Beautifully cryptic and admirably self-reflective.
Buzzing, layered ambient tracks scatter themselves between chains of blatant, cunning misery screamed from a hill that us as listeners stand below and can’t help but applaud. It’s an admirable, honest tribute to the way things we know very well grow invisible as they sit with us for lengths on end.
I got the sick opportunity to hop on a call with Thom to chat more about this record, performing it live, time spent between shows (and yes, his CD collection.) This is one of my favorite records of the year and this chat was a real treat. Hope ya like it.
25F: Talk to me a little bit about how playing these shows has been as an official release?
Planning For Burial: I'm about 40 shows deep this year now. It's been really, really good.
Does it get repetitive? Still love it?
I still really love it. The thing is, some of the tracks from the album I've been playing live since 2019. I think there are a few tracks on the record that I didn't always play live over the last six years that I really kept in the sets. So that's been nice. But yeah, I'm still cool with it.
Do you feel like - because you've been performing some of these tracks since 2019 - that the official release this year diminish the sort of triumph or tension release of it all? Or was it still exciting for you to have an official release?
Well, it was all the official release, but I never released versions of the songs until this year. I was just playing them live. So there were no singles or anything like that over the years. But yeah, it was still very triumphant. I don't know if that's the word I would use, but yeah.
Did having all of those versions of those tracks for so long make it easier to recreate studio versions for this official release? Or was having all of these choices a little bit more overwhelming as opposed to starting completely fresh?
I felt overwhelmed with the idea of having to break all of these things back down and be like, "Alright, I've got to relearn this bass part that's been on a looper now for a while." And like, "What would I change? What's the difference?" That part was overwhelming. I was just constantly working on figuring that all out.
I’ve seen some people saying that this record is not one that they could listen to every day, but it's also still getting lots of positive feedback. Is that one of those things that when you hear that, you're like, "I've done my job well" or "I've done my job the way I'd like to"?
I think almost all my records are kind of similar. I'm not sure that they're everyday records. So I don't know. I don't think that's something I think about. The way people listen to it - I know everybody's going to be different, so I don't know. If people are listening to it in any form, I'm happy about that.
I also saw on your Instagram that you're keeping track of all the places that you've been playing with little pins. I'm curious how that's been feeling - if you're still updating the pins there. I saw that you're maybe doing most of the cities that you've already performed in, but if you're still doing that.
That's a new thing I'm doing. For years, I've kept a log of everything. I have a log of every show I've ever played, where, with whom, and the set list. So now it's just a bigger visual representation of it.
More regarding the theme of the record, I saw that “taking stock” and “stepping into middle age” are big aspects. Do you feel like that reflects more in tandem with the music itself, more in tandem with your personal life? Is it an even split?
I would say equally. I'm not sure about musically. I mean, maybe it is a little different. It's more of a summarization of everything I've ever done.
A big part of this record is recognizing things that you’ve lived with for so long, you sort of no longer see them. When you're discussing records like this, do you ever feel like you're abandoning that idea because you have to go back in and reevaluate these specific sorts of tidbits from the record?
Yeah, I absolutely do. Not to say anything about this chat, but today I was like, "I don't know if I have it in me to talk about Planning For Burial." I got home from work, I ate dinner with my wife quickly, and I was like, "I gotta bring up all these things or think about things that I actually have not thought about in a bit."
Is that ever frustrating?
No, it's not frustrating. Not at all. It's just sometimes like putting on a different hat or something. You gotta open up different parts of your brain and really think about this.
In terms of the type of music you're creating, it's generally pretty metal-forward. Since you've been doing it for so long, does it become easier? Or, since it's so heavy thematically (and literally,) does there come any hesitation or exhaustion to continue creating music like this?
I think a lot of the time it comes out naturally. Though you asked me earlier if I'm tired of stuff - it's not that I'm tired of it, but there's some part of me that sees things and I'm like, "I gotta switch it up just a little bit going forward." And it's not so much that I'm tired of it. It's just like, you know, I don't want to stay stagnant or do the same thing over and over.
I like the little ambient bit you have with the "Blueberry Pop" track. I was curious if, because you're dabbling in ambient and maybe listening to some ambient tracks, that's something that at all inspired the overall album? Or is that type of music something that you listen to more to escape?
I listen to that music a lot. I felt like, in all that time that I had all these songs and I was not recording the heavy stuff, I was recording and releasing little tapes or things that were more ambient. That's a world I sit in a little bit more. Not saying it's easy, but it's easier for me.
Does the record stay equally exciting to perform after a lot of reps? Or is that kind of a hard question to gauge if you still have more shows to go?
There are nights where I can just zone out a little bit, have a little conversation with myself, be like, "All right, this isn't working tonight. Maybe we'll change something up for a different transition or something." Or, "Okay, this one feels really good tonight." It changes. It's a nightly thing. It depends on a lot of - you know, mood of the day, what I eat, how long the drive was, those kinds of things.
Do you feel like the setting of the specific venue ever throws you for a loop of like, "Maybe I'll do this show sort of differently because XYZ looks different"?
Oh, yeah. Whenever I get into situations, like, even bands or crowds, sometimes, I'll be like, "I'll change something because this or that is happening." There are just lots of factors. Sometimes, like I was saying, I'll be talking to myself in the middle of the song. But maybe that song, I've only talked to myself in the middle of it once out of 40 shows. But on that night, it's like, I'm having a thought about something while doing something completely different in another song.
Are there any particularly memorable places, or any weird stories or amazing cool stories from touring this?
You know, there came a point where I realized my brain went into autopilot because I was doing these shows alone. I was doing all the driving, making sure I had a hotel or a place to stay with friends, packing the gear, and selling the merch. So there were times when I wasn't putting as much thought into the overall "what is actually happening" aspect.
The thing I did enjoy is that I went to a lot of places that are considered off the beaten path. I went to smaller cities that kind of get looked over a lot. Fargo, Billings, Missoula, Reno, other smaller cities that I feel like, even when you were there talking to people, they were like, "Yeah, why doesn't this band come here?" And I'm like, "I don't know, because this fucking show ruled." That was the biggest takeaway for me from the tour. I'm from a small town, and we don't get a lot of touring acts through here. So I understand where they're coming from.
How have the crowds been?
Good. I think it's been pretty even keel across the shows. I did have a little freak-out before leaving. I was like, "Man, I'm going to be playing these shows to no one." And it's been lively. It worked out.
Curious what you've been up to when you're not touring or what you like to do to kind of get away from it, to keep it exciting.
I just work a lot.
What do you do?
At my day job, I'm a union insulator. I worked like 60-some, 70-some days straight before leaving on tour. Back into work six days a week, 10-hour days. I don't have much time for things right now. I'm taking days off of work to go play a couple shows here and there, still. Only a couple leftover now. So right now, my downtime is like, I shower, I eat, and my wife and I might catch up on some shows that we haven't gotten to catch up on.
What are you watching?
Right now, we are in between shows. We just finished the latest Daredevil. We like that kind of stuff. I think there's a season of Andor that I haven't gotten to see.
Oh my gosh. My dad is addicted to that show right now. He's obsessed with it.
Yeah, I'm not even a crazy Star Wars person, but I think that show is one of the best things in the whole Star Wars universe.
I've heard good things about it. I'll have to check it out.
Yeah. So now I'm like, "All right, we've got to watch the second one."
Are you listening to any music right now? Who are some people you're loving right now?
I'm constantly in love with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. His new record is unbelievable.
I listen to a lot of Mogwai.
That's the other thing - with all these crazy hours I'm working, I'm not listening to music like I was. I get about a half hour, 40 minutes in the morning, and then the evening. Sometimes I'm lucky on a job site, if I'm working alone, and I can have some stuff on. In those cases I've been listening to early '90s hip hop or just late '90s, early 2000s, instrumental hip hop. So that's kind of where I'm at right now.
How many CDs do you have behind you there? How long have you been collecting those?
I'm 41. I have probably been collecting since I was 10 years old. This is just a portion. This is the middle of P, and it goes down to S over here. That back here is T through Z. And then way down the line, and then across the room is more stuff.
I have stacks of things that I haven't ripped to my computer yet. Stacks of stuff that need to go on the shelves around the corner here. I got bookshelves built into the basement wall, so there's books, and then there's probably three or 400 cassettes. I have all these records here too. I don't actually get away from music. Collecting is just my thing.
With those, are you just pulling a record out and listening to it? Are you just doing it for the - it's just a habit of yours?
Yeah, so my wife, for my birthday, bought me a six-disc CD changer. So now I will just go through and grab at random. Or sometimes she'll just pick a shelf, and she'll go with her fingers and she'll say, "Stop." And we'll pull stuff and put it on.
Do you have a prized possession?
I have a lot of really cool Mount Eerie. That's some of my favorite stuff. I have everything, including test presses and promo versions. I have Japanese and European imports.
Where does one even source something like that?
A lot of times it's from touring and just hitting up CD and record shops over the years. Sometimes it's getting on Discogs or eBay.
Fire. Back to the record quickly; any outstanding meaning at all behind the cover art, or if that was just like "cool picture, let's do it."
A little bit "cool picture, just do it." But there was just something about it. The hues and everything about it just have a loneliness to it. There are two chairs so it's kind of like being lonely together. It sounds weird, but that's my take on it.
You know what's funny I hung out with Megan who took the photo when I was in LA, and I meant to ask her her take on it, but I know a lot of it probably was that she did it on a cross country move and she was just documenting where she was and it was just a cool scene. But maybe she sees more meaning in it, and maybe I'll have to ask her now. For me though, that's what it is.
Does she have a series of other photos that she took in tandem with that one?
There's a bunch of them. It's called "In the Desert." All the photos I used from the record are from that trip. I got a bunch of her stuff, and it was all from that same trip of hers. She moved from the East Coast to the West Coast.
What are you going to do after tour? Will you do anything for leisure?
The tour itself is pretty much done. I’ve got a couple of weekenders coming up. There's going to be some kind of release of a cover song in November, which I have to finish up. There's another cover song I have to work on for something bigger.
I took a lot of footage while I was on tour mostly from my dashboard - just the boringness of driving, but also the beauty of America. And then there's some live show stuff in there, and I'm going to try to put some of that together to like maybe a half-hour, 40-minute little tour documentary. I'm going to do an ambient accompanying soundtrack for it. Probably a wintertime thing.
Check out “It’s Closeness, It’s Easy” out now on Spotify and Bandcamp. Follow Planning for Burial on Instagram here.