The 1 Trait Danger Interview

Originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of Vinyl Tap.

I recently got the chance to talk to Andrew Katz and Will Toledo over Zoom -- not only are they bandmates in the indie rock act Car Seat Headrest, but they also make up comedy rap group 1 Trait Danger. Their latest album, 1 Trait Bangers, is out now on all streaming services.

This interview is a transcription of a conversation originally recorded for broadcast on my show on 90.9 FM WCWM, “I Hate Music with John Dietz.” 

JOHN DIETZ: The first thing I wanted to talk about is comedy. All the 1 Trait Danger albums have elements of EDM, they have elements of rap, but first and foremost, these are comedy albums. So, I was wondering, who are some of your comedic inspirations?

ANDREW KATZ: Yeah, I would say Tenacious D is a good start, Weird Al Yankovic for sure. I got asked this question a few days ago when Will and I were in a Q&A, and those were the two that I gave, so I’ll stick to those.

JD: A big component of earlier 1 Trait Danger albums was jokes that you would come up with on tour as Car Seat Headrest -- what was the process of creating 1 Trait Bangers like considering that you didn’t have that more natural comedic outlet?

AK: The process was different, for sure, because we weren’t on tour, as you said. So it was mostly just this view that you’re seeing now, just some dudes sitting in a room, messing around and trying to figure out comedy. But it started with a lot of making beats on the computer or recording voice memos of stuff that I thought was funny, and then kinda trying to turn it into a song. Of course, that’s where Will’s expertise comes in, he’s a great songwriter. But yeah, I did a lot of voice memo work. And even in the song “Too Famous,” the beginning of that, where it says “A lot of muthaf-ers is talking,” I won’t swear, “but they ain’t saying *bleep*” (laughs), that line is actually ripped straight from a voice memo recording on my phone. That was an idea that I had, and then what I would do is throw it into Ableton and then try to turn that into a song, but I felt like that itself belonged in the song. But yeah, that’s kinda the process, just any little idea that comes into the mind. The problem when you’re not on tour is that it’s hard to get those ideas, cause you don’t have as many people to bounce stuff off of. But we made it happen.

JD: A major target of satire in all three of the albums so far is Pitchfork. Was there a specific incident that caused your disdain for them or is this just kinda a long-running hatred?

AK: My disdain for Pitchfork? Well, it originally started just cause they would write stuff about us and other people in the industry that was stupid, and they’re just kinda funny to pick on because they’re the big dog in the indie sphere.

WILL TOLEDO: But it’s also not -- I mean, Tim Schenectady doesn’t actually write for Pitchfork.

AK: No, the lore is that Tim Schenectady’s full name is Tim Schenectady Pitchfork News. He writes for a journal called Dirtplug. But obviously, it doesn’t come off like that on the albums, right? That’s just kinda the lore. But Pitchfork surely is just a case of it’s easy to pick on the big dog. You know, you can’t pick on a tiny journalist website, you know? That would be mean. It’s less mean to pick on the Big Dog. AND, they’ve made egregious mistakes in the past. They reviewed Twin Fantasy, they misspelled “Fantasy” as “Fantasty” in the headline of the article! Like, I don’t even have to make this stuff up, they’re just feeding me stuff on their own. It’s like a real-world episode of South Park. So it’s just super easy to go after them.

JD: I actually was gonna talk about the lore, which you brought up: I mean, in these albums, there’s so many different characters, there’s a lot of backstory. Does it ever get confusing figuring out “this character is who exactly?” or “wait, this happened when?”

WT: Andrew gets confused a lot! (laughs) A lot of this album was, I’d come and he’d have recorded something, and I’d say ‘This doesn’t work with the canon.’ (laughs) A lot of sorting out on this album, just trying to make it work with what we had already set up. And there’s a lot more plot on this album too -- you know, it all came into place kinda accidentally. On the first album, we didn’t have any overall plan, and then the second one, we came up with the idea of this world tour, which is where it got, I think, more satirical of the music world. And then this one was really just developing more the characters we had already set up on the first two albums.

AK: Yeah, I don’t deal with character arc and story. I just try to make funny singular songs and then it’s Will’s job to figure out how to put them together.

JD: I’m curious also about how the comedic skits come about, particularly ones like “ROCKET SHIP Intro,” which I’m gonna be playing on the show right after this. Is this a collaborative effort? Or do you write them yourself and then say ‘Hey Will’ or ‘Hey Seth’ or ‘Hey Ethan,’ you know, ‘I need you to come say this crazy thing.’

AK: Well, “ROCKET SHIP Intro” really started with the idea of ‘Okay, we need to have some sort of interaction between Grimes and Elon [Musk],’ like you have that framework, and then it’s discussing ‘how do we do that.’ I don’t remember how we came up with that.

WT: I mean, when I came, you already had the idea -- the song started with the idea that she was gonna steal a rocket ship, and part of that was the conversation when she wanted to go on a rocket ship. And the actual recording of that, I think I wrote out dialogue for that. Then, I did my lines, but you just kinda improvised the Grimes lines on top of mine. So it was collaborative once we were actually sitting down to write it.

AK: Yeah, Will had his iPad, wrote down a basic framework script. Obviously, we’re not actors, we can’t read a script well. I don’t operate like that. So it’s like, okay, I have a vague idea of what we’re supposed to say, and then I think I shine when there’s improv involved.

JD: In another skit, you get Matador Records founder Chris Lombardi to make an appearance on the intro of the album. What was his reaction to you asking him to do that and also to being the archvillain of both the album and the new videogame?

AK: Yeah, both of those phone calls were funny. Will was there for the call when I told him about Lombardi’s World. It was a lot of sighs, like deep sighs. Then the call asking him to be the record exec and do a phone call was also just like him laughing a lot, like ‘goddamnit.’ But he’s a great sport, and he was totally up for it. He reminds me of a dad that secretly loves being involved, but doesn’t wanna give off like he likes being involved, you know, cause he wants to stay cool. Deep down, I feel like Chris really likes doing this stuff, he just acts like he doesn’t cause he wants to stay cool, which is totally fair. But he was super down, and he read his lines great.

JD: Yeah, and it’s a great addition to the album, I think it’s hilarious. I also wanted to talk about the new videogame, Lombardi’s World. You had created a videogame before, called Cossett’s World, which was also related to the 1 Trait Danger lore, but this new game is more complex. The graphics are better, the storyline is more fleshed out: what was the process of going from Cossett’s World to Lombardi’s World like?

AK: Well, it was just experience. With Cossett’s World, I had literally never opened up a Unity project before, and that was the first thing I had ever done. So I went from knowing nothing to knowing a little bit, and the game was never re-tooled once I started knowing stuff. And you can see that through the game, you can see where I was experimenting with stuff. There’s literally a crashed rocket ship with weird meshes of a human in a T-pose flying out of it cause I didn’t know how to make fire. I got confused, and so I made human meshes instead of fire meshes. And I just left all of my learning in the game, so I just finished the game, and it was crap, like objectively a terrible game, but funny in some parts. And then of course I took that knowledge and just continued building and built Lombardi’s World, with a team of people to help me. I didn’t do it alone, it would’ve been not possible alone. So, yes, upgrading a team and upgrading skills is how you get Lombardi’s World.

JD: Another interesting thing to see is the evolution of Car Seat Headrest and how it’s starting to incorporate different elements of 1 Trait Danger, like the song “Deadlines (Thoughtful)” on Making A Door Less Open sampling “Drove My Car” by 1 Trait Danger, and Will kinda adopts the same character in both groups. Is this something that happened intentionally, and can we expect to see those lines continue to blur into the future?

WT: Well, I think they’ll stay blurred. Intentionally is hard to say, because we were just working on both at the same time, you know, 1 Trait Danger started around the same time I was starting to work on the next Car Seat album, and it was just sorta natural that they would cross over some. You know, a lot of the elements that came out on 1 Trait was stuff that I wanted to work into Car Seat Headrest, like working more with Andrew at his place and learning his style of production. He was more from the EDM school and that wasn’t something I had encountered before meeting with him, and so I was interested in looking at that and looking at how to put a song together in that way. MADLO (Making A Door Less Open) sorta became the record where I tried that -- I just wanted to see how to do that, and that was one of the seeds of that record. Other elements of 1 Trait Danger, like the characters, ended up coming along too, and that’s something that’ll play out more once we finally start touring on it, which is still sometime in the indefinite future.

JD: Awesome, and hopefully I’ll be able to see you guys as 1 Trait Danger sometime in the future. I have one more question: in the history of 1 Trait Danger, which song has been the most fun to make and why?

AK: I think, without a doubt, it would be “Saturday’s For The Boys” for me. There was just an absurd amount of laughter when we were making that song. We were just laughing the entire time.

WT: Yeah, well, for some reason Australia is the place for 1 Trait Danger. Was it both times we went to Australia we were working on it?

AK: We stayed in the same apartment when we made “Saturday’s For The Boys” and when we made “Melbourne, Australia.”

WT: Yeah, then we came back, and we made “Melbourne, Australia” and “the xx.” (laughs) So that’s just a really fruitful place for us.

AK: I think it’s because we have so many days off when we go there. We were just hanging out.

WT: Yeah, that’s true, when we fly into Australia, usually there’s a few days before the shows start. And, you know, it’s lovely weather, we usually go there in February or something when it’s winter here and summer there, and, yeah, it’s a really fun time to hang out and that’s what ended up happening there.

AK: Yeah, so, Melbourne. If anyone wants to make music, go to Melbourne, Australia. But yeah, “Saturday’s For The Boys” for me, for sure.

If you want to hear more from Andrew Katz and Will Toledo, be sure to check out “1 Trait Banger”s by 1 Trait Danger, out now on all streaming services! Or, if you’d prefer, you can listen to the Pitchfork-approved “Twin Fantasty” (error theirs).