Olympia favorites, The Window Smashing Job Creators, are set to release a new album soon. They’ve released a few songs early, which can be found on youtube or bandcamp. You can hear about upcoming shows on their Facebook or Instagram. I spoke with members about the new album, their musical journey, punk scenes, and revolution.
Captain ACAB (CA): I’m Captain ACAB, and helped start the Window Smashing Job Creators at first as a solo project and then into a band that just kept blossoming, with more and more amazing musicians helping to co author the project. I think the window smashing job creators can be best defined as a jazz klezmer folk punk band that touches on issues of politics, and philosophy more broadly, including psychology in particular, really focusing on anarchism and libertarian communism as core guiding ideologies that fuel the music.
Zoey Deschanel ZD: I’m Zoey Deschanel, I’ve been in the window smashers since 2019, I joined initially as a touring and fill in member and the upcoming studio album is going to be the first that I’m recorded on. Your description was fantastic, the one liner that I that I tiredly trot out at this point is that we’re punk with all the wrong influences.
I still think the classic punk with other instruments descriptor is cute. Instruments is that instruments is the old school joke. This is I don’t know. Like, we don’t we have a big variety of instruments. But more than that, we’re not we’re not really a punk band. We just kind of Yeah. Pick from every ear thing and everywhere. And and yeah, the punk part is I guess much more of the politics that are core to it
CPJ: So you have a new album coming out? Would you like to tell us about it?
CA: It’s a lot of vibes. There’s over 20 instruments throughout the album. We went all out. It’s going to be incredible, I think. It’s been a culmination of all the stuff that’s gone into the band up until now.
Z: This is reflects a similar leap in ambition to what that you saw between the first album and Full Unemployment.
CPJ: What are you trying to say with this album
It’s the same old theme is always in a certain sense of libertarian communist music. The last album kind of had the energy of a very thriving social movement sphere, that it was written under the context of the new stuff is just as hopeful, but far less optimistic, and therefore touches on some different themes than the last one. So it kind of has a different, different take and different perspective, while at the same time keeping true to ideals, with a lot of songs that can be thought of politically or completely, not politically, some songs that are going to have more or just as much relevance in certain respects, in a post revolutionary society, if we ever get there, which is a big even if it’s not inevitable, it requires people actually developing that. I’d say that’s the main way it differentiates from full unemployment, which really has a kind of absurd optimistic context that was written within in regards just local politics and the extent of victories that were forging and popular movements forging.
CPJ: Sounds like there’s like, you’re kind of saying more like, musical sense. But something I took away from what you said was like, you’re kind of trying to strike like a universal sentiment that like maybe a lot of people could relate to or, or maybe that’s just more of a musical thing than a sentiment?
CA: Yeah, that’s definitely the goal, because I think it’s dealing with at least some of the issues and it’s dealing with would stay true to the human condition, irrespective of certain social context, right. But they also are very much connected to the particular context of living with under a hierarchical society. There’s different ways that the songs can be interpreted either intrapersonally within one’s psyche, or otherwise, in regards to the social field and social change. The goal is for every song to, even though some of them do more than the others. So like one will lean more politically, one will lean more, potentially interpersonally. The goal is for every song to thoroughly make sense in both contexts. With some exceptional lines, because it’s really important at times to for a certain amount of bluntness, but also a large amount of metaphor, and distance that’s nonetheless thoroughly rooted in anarchistic and libertarian communist ideals. And having those ideals living under a hierarchical society.
Z: I would also say on a simpler level as an answer to this question, just like we’ve all seen some shit. Full Unemployment was released in a very different world.
CPJ: A pre 2020 world.
Z: I think that’s a reasonable way to wait a frame. That’s it. And I know, you talk about the like, consistence in presence of utopian in, in vision here. And I feel like this album also does have a bit of a tone of like, we’ve seen some shit, and consequently, like, we are aware that we’re going to have to have seen some shit to get through the other side.
CA: kind of resonates the one the one way I would frame it a little bit differently is that like, I think the old stuff was very aware of a dystopian context when I was writing it, but it was absurdly momentum and hopeful in spite of that, where I think this one really touches on the darker perspectives of the worlds in a way that the last album didn’t even though the last album still did, it’s just this one really emphasizes the dystopian reality we live in as well as our utopian potential, and a little bit more of a balanced way. That makes sense, given the odds.
ZD: Yeah, I certainly don’t mean to imply that full unemployment is like naive in any way. It just that this reflects a deeper exploration of these emotions.
CA: Very different, and maybe a bit more naive.
CPJ: Role of music and art in social movements?
CA: it’s just a big tension. I would say there’s a difference between your aestheticization of politics and the politicization of aesthetics. We’re definitely trying to do the latter, I’d say Aesthetics and music and art beautiful, but they’re no replacement for social movements. At best they can be one of many different catalysts there of I think that at the same time, musics very inspirational there’s a reason why there’s always been revolutionary music connected to different social movements. As far back as we can go. There’s always room for bards to get party buffs to the party, and to increase people’s spirits.
is that a game reference?
ZD: Like in a role playing game. People in a music making in class are usually in a Supporting Role.
Ca: increases like a little spirit in a party and if you will, and I think that you know, music has that one role that it does have connected to social movements, an important one that I think inspires a lot of people to get involved. It can be a really beautiful, joyous experience. And it can propagate ideas in a really important way that other mediums of art can’t touch upon, and that you don’t get from just like an essay format. It allows for a kind of metaphor and distance, while also at the same time communicating really intense political views. So yeah, I think it’s like one feature that can augment movements. But it becomes a problem when movements become overly reduced to different sub cultural scenes, because it’s supposed to be movements that are of buy in for commoners, if you will. And it’s not just about the punks, or what have you, or people into niche subcultures that go to youth 18-25, just as important as that is, it’s one of many different places for people to interact. And because art is very, has a very subjective dimension to it. It’s not it’s just no replacement for a community, it’s made out of many different cultures coming together to solve common problems, to achieve common projects. So I think it’s important for different subcultures to be like one force augmenting a broader movement. But if the, the movement can become reduced to those shows, while at the same time, I do think shows, especially benefit shows, are really important to have fun, get money to the good causes, get out literature to people en mass. And this band, in many ways, functions to simultaneously achieve a lot of those different functions. Without I hope, well, I hope not being I hope, that we’re not also diluted at the same time to thinking that that is a replacement for what really needs to happen in terms of a broader movement.
ZD: I would say that as much as you know, our music might have like, a direct, like political points that is trying to communicate, I would say, the most valuable form of political communication that we did, at least these pre COVID was, was the way in which if we could try to have show spaces and places like that lead by example. And that is something that we’re still going for now. I mean, that’s part of the reason for our band, having one of the more stringent COVID policies, is we’re still not accepting indoor gigs yet. And we’re requiring vaccination, and just just in general, like, I think people going to a show or going for a good time, not a lecture, but I think that being a living example, or even a small scrap of self organization, and then being a band that has a couple of consistent principles that we maintain. Like I said, those on top of like trying to as much as possible, NOTAFLOF and all ages is, in general create spaces is that empower folks, when I show is self organized, it demonstrates the power of self organization. And, subcultures are always going to be niche, but at the very least, they as we can make stepping into those subcultures a beautiful little example of what’s possible…
I Think the spaces that we create are more important than the words that we say. Not to take anything away from your lyrics
CA: I think we’re able to make small pockets or freedoms that shows Yeah, they’re very temporary. And I think that’s also its limit, right. That’s what allows them to happen in the current context. But also, there’s the chronic insufficiency of the temporary zone of freedom, as opposed to one that’s continued. And I think that the small pockets can show though, seeds of what that can look like, I think that’s really important.
What do you see as the loss of the house show scene from Covid?
CA:I don’t know what it means yet. Because we haven’t seen the kind of Fallout, I think fully..It seems like it decimated stuff. And people have to rebuild a lot of stuff from the ground up even a lot of small venues that were rather prominent, closed down during COVID. It’s just gonna make things pretty difficult because there’s not as many like DIY spaces that are ready to take people in. So it’s time for people to reimagine and recreate a lot of spaces and communities that have gone away during the COVID. Period. And we’re starting to see it but slow process.
But isn’t afforded to acknowledge but yeah, I don’t know, like reimagining spaces and like recreating spaces, like, hopefully, you know, spaces that are more like, inclusive of people with disabilities and like, I mean, a compromised and in my personal life that I don’t know, if just inclusiveness of spaces has been on my mind.
Yeah, if we have to rebuild anyway. I’m hoping that we can build structures that are more consistent with both the ways that this has brought particular accessibility deserves to mind but also, though, applying those principles more broadly.
ZD: When I think about it, also like the fact that we do have to do some level of rebuilding from the ground up is really disappointing, but it also again, like they like allows us to think about the community things that we could do better because I know as much as I just been romanticizing these spaces, is like, there are a lot of opportunity is for improvement and growth. And honestly, as a personal one, I would love to see more sober spaces.
CA: Sober but thoroughly for 420 friendly. That’s the ideal for me.
CPJ: all the ways in which anyone might feel alienated from a punk show. You know, I don’t know, hopefully,
CA: yeah, my favorite shows are ones that are like, it’s not centered around the drugs. And there’s people there doing drugs and enjoying themselves. There’s people that are not doing drugs and enjoying themselves, and that there’s a greater message that’s bringing people there together to party. It’s not just partying for the sake of partying. But yeah, there is some of that too. But it’s combined with a kind of unity in regards to an ideal or a cause combined with a music interest. I think that creates a more meaningful show environment
CPJ: There’s space for everybody in their individual different needs that they have.
ZD: Yeah, at the end of the day, I’m not a musician, because I think that is the most effective way of creating change. I’m a musician because I love making music and I love the wave is that it brings people together. And if I’m going to devote so much of my life to something like that, it feels almost unconscionable for it not to be an ideological project, especially since projects with no ideological intense will often wind up as Stevens in favor of the status quo, through lack of
CPJ: Any final thoughts?
CA :Check out an anarchist program by Malatesta conquest of shreds, by Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism and other essays by Emma Goldman. And ecology of freedom by Murray Bookchin. What else is there? A lot of other stuff. Oh, social anarchism and organization by FARJ.
ZD: I was just gonna say keep wearing your mask. This getting credit endorsed social situations. Playing shows. I don’t care about going on mass is in the grocery store. I just want to play
Update: “The Power of Friendship” is now available on Bandcamp.
