INTERVIEW: SUSTO (November 2017)

Abandoning a career in Anthropology to pursue music has been paying off in spades for SUSTO frontman Justin Osborne. Nevertheless, he remains an astute observer of human behaviour, capable of distilling complex emotions into relatable sentiments: “It’s a real hard time just being alive”, sighs the kiss-off to the brilliantly-titled ‘Gay In The South’ – just one of many fine tracks on their superb sophomore album, & I’m Fine Today.

Expanding the grit-laden Americana of their debut upward and outward, the LP’s exotic feel seems inextricably bound to the Peruvian folk painting which adorns its cover - a fortuitous discovery which parallels Osborne’s own use of music to exorcise demons, together with his travels in Latin America and experimentation with psychedelics. I talked with Osborne - a delightfully animated interviewee who frequently illustrates his points with excitable renditions of various musical elements – not long after the album’s release at the tale-end of last year to find out more about the varied ingredients which make up such an intriguing musical brew.

A bit of admin before we get started - is it pronounced “Soos-toh”, or “Suss-toh”? 

“Soos-toh”. We don’t really care if someone pronounces it “Suss-toh”, because it’s a Spanish word - so, like, in the English the ‘u-s’ is “us” - but it’s in Spanish, so it can go either way. We say “Soos-toh”, but if someone says “Suss-toh”, it doesn’t really bother us.

I’ve also seen it written a few different ways - is it all capitals, like an exclamation?

That’s like a branding thing, yeah - we do it in all caps mostly; that’s the way we do it just to differentiate ourselves from the actual word ‘Susto’.

So, first up, the feel of the album at its most experimental or exuberant is so bound up in that sense of exoticism that you get from the cover painting. I was wondering if you could give me a bit more of the background about your time in South America - and how that fed into the aesthetic of the band, and of this album in particular.

Well, I think it can be conflated, like... I actually spent time in Cuba, so it’s the Caribbean and Latin America, not South. And that kind of got me going with the band - like, I started the band in 2013 - but then our drummer, who kind of controls all the visual aspects of the band, he’s been in the band for a few years now, he was looking for album art and he came across this guy Pablo Amaringo, who’s deceased now, but he was a rainforest conservationist and artist, and also an Ayahuascara, which is like a shaman through Ayahuasca ceremonies. And the painting on the front is one of Pablo’s paintings.

Ayahuasca’s used for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is to combat Susto, ’cos Susto’s a folk illness that’s kind of present throughout Latin America, but mostly through Central America and northern South America - like, the Andean parts of South America where Pablo’s from. And so the painting that’s the front of our album is, like, a painting of Susto: a painting of inside the mind, of this battle that a human being deals with to overcome these things that can be stress or trauma-related, or whatever; these kind of psychological battles. And so when we saw that, when Marshall our drummer brought that to the table, he was like: “Look at this painting I’ve found by this artist that goes so much hand-in-hand with our band” - because the reason we named our band Susto was because a lot of our songs, the subject matter is dealing with a lot of these troubling issues in your life. The first record, there was a lot of me losing my religion, being separated from my family, also leaving home to move to Cuba having come out of a long-term relationship - and then you see some of that carried on to our recent album & I’m Fine Today, there’s even more conversations about those troubles you need to get through: like, the broader term ‘Susto’ is used to describe the pain of being alive, I guess.

So it’s kind of really incredible we were able to find this piece of art, and Pablo’s estate were really excited to work with us and let us use the painting for our album cover... it was just really cool to be able to find something that was a painting that was made to do the same thing that the album was made to do. Like, the album was made to convey Susto, and so was the painting, so it felt like a really kind of lucky connection - and another way, too: when we were making the record, there’s lots of little earworms in there that you may not hear the first time but you’ll hear the second, fourth, fifth, tenth time you listen to it. And I think the album artwork is the same way: there’s so much going on that you see it, and at first you see, like, “Oh, snakes, rainbows, plants”... and then the other times you look at it, you see different things. So we have a really strong connection to that piece of art, and we’re really glad we were able to use it for our album art.

So you actually found that afterwards, or did you have it in mind all along when you were recording the album?

It’s only afterwards - we had the album pretty much finished, and we wanted something to... We knew we wanted the image of a rainbow, because we’d already decided that was going to be like an image we wanted to associate with the record, and we really wanted to incorporate a snake too, if possible. Because a snake is something that we use in a lot of our imagery, and in a lot of our merchandise; our tour posters and such. We have snakes hidden everywhere because a snake kind of symbolises rebirth: it’s always shedding its skin, and I think it’s something we can all learn from as human beings. But also the rainbow: the album & I’m Fine Today, the message of the album was supposed to be, like, we go through all this trauma, all these things, and at the end you have this song: “Jah werx, and I’m fine today”. You can still be okay even through all that stuff - you just have to remind yourself to be, and surround with things that make you feel okay. And so the rainbow, from the Biblical symbolism of this is, like: the storm is over, this is fine. We wanted to have the rainbow. So when Marshall our drummer was looking for art that had those two things, it’s like what I just told you, the symbolism of the snake and the symbolism of the rainbow - man, you’ve seen the artwork, we were like: wow, this is perfect, because it has both of those things... and for the same reasons, we assume.

Listening back to your first album, the new record feels like a more relaxed, or perhaps less personally intense, album than your debut - would you agree with that?

Yeah, totally. I think I was going through a certain amount of personal crises on the first record - and also, like, I was selling everything I owned, or pawning, and doing deals: giving away my publishing just to make that record. I was very broke, didn’t have a band; wanted to have a band. Because I started this band in Havana called Susto, came back to the US, and it’s really hard to get a record made, to get a vehicle to get your name out... I was doing everything I could, and so those songs kind of reflect that too because at the same time, my life was just changing a lot. And so it’s kind of intense.

I feel like in the second record, I personally reached a point where I was a bit more stable: I found myself in a healthy relationship which I’m still in, the first record had come out and we’d got our foot in the door a little bit; we’ve been able to be what I would call a “real band” - you know, we were touring regularly and getting pretty cool opening spots. But, like, the world was still crumbling around us: a lot of the record was made throughout the US election cycle last year and leading up to that - and also in general, besides politics, it’s just a time where I have a lot of friends that are gay that are close to me. I’ve seen their struggles, too - not only to gain acceptance, but to gain their rights to be able to live their lives freely. And so that’s something that’s going on - not just gay people, but also women, people of colour... Life’s just a struggle for everybody, and also some of the songs are reflections of friends of mine that I was losing at the time because of substances or one thing or another. So there’s... I think I was more comfortable with myself and my own voice, the writing process, but there’s still a lot going on - there’s a certain sense of urgency that’s not maybe as personal as the first one.

It’s interesting you should say that about the backdrop to the record - my favourite track is ‘Waves’, and you seem to make specific reference on there to the US as the place that you all live or come from. It strikes me as conveying a remarkable sentiment in the current political climate, so I guess my question is: do you think everything will be alright?

Uh... you know, I don’t claim to predict the future, but I have... I think ‘hope’ is the right word. There’s a lot of power in hope, and I think spreading positive messages and mining this positivity out of people, trying to fan that flame of positivity, is one of the only things to make everything alright: to not forget that things can be alright. And regarding ‘Waves’, it’s not just the West that I’m talking about: we live on this planet and we all know it, we all know that if we get a chance to be fed, and safe, and just look at where we’re at, and how incredibly beautiful it is that the grass grows from the ground, and rain comes and washes things away, and we have winters, falls and summers...

[Sighs] It sounds like some hippy shit, I’m sure, but I’m really blown away every time I stop to think about it. We live at the ocean, so my fiancée and I went out, we were going to just eat a couple of days ago, and we were a little bit early to meet for dinner - so we went to the ocean, just walked out for five minutes. And it’s cold here now - it’s not, like, summer, so there’s not people out there and stuff, but there’s the ocean, and the sunset was going down and we were walking through the marsh... I was like: “God, man, this is like... it’s just beautiful”. And it’s not just here: I’ve been lucky to get all over the place. I got to drive through Norway in the summertime, like: “Oh my god, this place is beautiful”. And, I dunno... when you fly into places, you can see even just cities, how we’ve created cities and everything.

I just really believe in, like, our strengths - I’d just like to see other people... There are other people who believe in it too, and I just want to unite those people and recognise that we’re a special species: this doesn’t happen all the time, where you become what humanity has become - for good and for worse - but it doesn’t happen all the time where you get to live on a planet that’s like this, and we haven’t found anywhere else just like it. That’s really special to me.

I wonder if, from your point of view, that’s a product of seeing more of the world through travel, and being able to appreciate things from a more holistic perspective.

I dunno, maybe so - I’ve been kind of touring since I was about seventeen; my fiancée and I were cleaning out some old desks last night in our house, and I found this journal from my very first tour I went on when I was seventeen. I don’t really keep a journal now, but when you’re seventeen and you’re hittin’ the road for the first time, you’re like: “Wow, this is my dream come true”, you know. And I was reading my entries about, like, getting to get out and see things and get excited about it, and I think that definitely does help. I mean, now, that’s more than ten years ago, and I’m still doing this - I’ve gotten to go so many other places and see people... you see the good and the bad. I know the world sucks too, and I recognise that, but that’s not what I like to focus on if I can help it - even though we have songs about a lot of that, we have songs about losing people in really kind of fucked-up ways, and... I dunno, I think even a lot of the fucked-up shit in life can be beneficial for you, though.

I don’t know if you’ll take this as a compliment, but in terms of the sentiment and the feel, ‘Waves’ reminds me a little of ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World.

I’ve never gotten that reference, but I love Jimmy Eat World, so thank you - I do take that as a compliment!

What was the soundtrack to your emo youth when you were growing up?

Definitely Jimmy Eat World and Saves the Day... I was big into Taking Back Sunday too, I kinda was into all of that stuff, being the age that I am - I think it kind of started when I first heard Green Day’s Dookie on cassette whenever I was, like, nine or something, and that led into my first concert, which was New Found Glory. But then I also was really into 90s rock: big Oasis fan, big Third Eye Blind fan, Counting Crows and things like that, too. Also all the classic CCR, Jim Croce, Rolling Stones and that kind of stuff. But now, I still love all that, but I try and be more than just in the ‘rock’ vein and listen to other things too: I’ve always been a big Bob Marley fan, maybe that’s where my positivity comes from! [Laughs]

Away from the exoticism of some of the songs on this album, ‘Cosmic Cowboy’ and ‘Mystery Man’ are obviously very steeped in more traditional domestic sounds - I take it you’re a fan of the old Cosmic American Music, as Gram Parsons used to call it?

Yeah, yeah, Gram Parsons is definitely a hero of mine, the whole Bakersfield kind of scene - that kind of era of what I guess was really, like, Americana music, “Cosmic Country”, whatever it was, I definitely... I love that. I love the spirit of it, I love the spirit of the people, and just the songwriting... I dunno, there’s some comfort for me in that kind of sound. It’s nice to have those moments on the record where we’re taking chances, for us, taking chances on songs like ‘Jah Werx’ and even ‘Waves’, you know, like ‘Far Out Feeling’: we’re getting a little bit more psychedelic, a little bit more experimental. It’s nice to be able to come home to the traditional sound of the Cosmic Cowboy on, like you said, ‘Mystery Man’... I think ‘Hard Drugs’ has a feel like that, too.

There’s a sense of heightened reality to the record in quite a few places - several songs make reference to altered states, ‘Waves’ feels a little like an LSD trip, and ‘Far Out Feeling’ harks back to an Age of Aquarius, Summer of Love-type aesthetic. Better living through chemistry, or a cautionary tale...?

Uh... you know, I think ‘moderation’ is a really important word! My Dad didn’t drink or do anything when I was growing up, I grew up in a very religious house, but he always used the word ‘moderation’ for things. So I kind of remembered that when I started delving into psychedelics - I think I started getting involved with LSD whenever I was, like... the first time, I think I was maybe, like, twenty? I was at military school, and I accidentally took some but loved it... and so then whenever I started making the music, it was, like, not just me but the people around me. And also, for this record in general, we were reflecting a lot on our psychedelic times and things we’ve learned from that, because I think that if you can go into psychedelic exploration with a healthy appreciation of what it can do to you, negatively and positively, and you do it in a safe environment, which... We didn’t do it in the safest environment, but we always took small doses, and we did it around groups of people with one or two people who weren’t on a trip... I think it’s really beneficial. For me and the people I was doing it with, we became really close friends because we had these really sentimental experiences where we almost became children again together. And I wouldn’t take that back - but, that being said, I’ve definitely had some weird, strenuous... I don’t know if I would call them bad trips - but, like, some dark trips. But I think sometimes that can work, too - you need to work through some stuff in your head.

I don’t really go for it with psychedelics anymore - I microdose from time to time. I don’t know if you’re familiar with microdosing, but it’s really just like a mild stimulant: it’s like if you have a coffee, except it lasts longer and it doesn’t get you all jittery. It’s just kind of a very slight dose of LSD, and it’s not a trip at all: you function completely normally, you’re just a little bit more sharp, and I feel that it helps you think more clearly. I try not to do it too often: probably, like, once a month I’ll do it, or if we have a studio day where I really need to be on top of myself, I’ll take some LSD... I think it’s a wonderful substance that could be regulated and used in a positive way - but I also get that, you, know, you take a little too much LSD, and you can go fucking bonkers. I’ve seen it happen.

What’s the instrument that comes in in the middle of ‘Waves’ that really does create a sound like surfing on a rainbow - is that some kind of synth you’ve got going on there?

[Laughs] Man, I’m so glad that’s how you put it, that’s beautiful! I’m gonna tell the band that. Yeah, that’s a synth - it’s like an arpeggiated synth. I love that. Originally we had this rocking part, like: a “Bah-nah, nah-naaaaaa...” solo that was still pretty cool, it was a little, like, grungey. But I’m really glad we went with the electronic vibe because it just reminded me of, like, dolphins and all the stuff the song harkens to. Yeah, it’s just a synth pad with an arpeggiator on it, so it’s doing the “Buh-duh-doo-doo, buh-duh-doo-doo” kind of naturally. But then if you ever get to see us play live, our guitar-player Corey, he does that on the guitar - so it has the tone where it feels the same and everything, but he does it... he has a background playing, like, metal guitar, so he does these little sweeps where he’s playing every single one of those notes. And it’s a bit of a different vibe than... it’s not really a different vibe, it’s slightly a different vibe than on the record, but it’s cool to watch somebody do that in real time because he’s making the arpeggios. Whenever you’re doing that on a synth, you just set it to arpeggiator, press one thing and it goes “buh-duh-doo-doo, buh-duh-doo-doo”... press the next one and it goes “buh-duh-doo-doo, buh-duh-doo-doo”. Which is cool too - I mean, technology is brilliant.

There were another couple of moments on the record that I wanted to ask you about that seem really quite “out-there”. What’s the origin of the vocal break towards the end of ‘Diamond’s Icaro’ that sounds like a kind of tribal chant in the background?

Yeah, okay - so this song was written by our drummer. Our drummer Marshall is, like I said before, the one who found Pablo’s work to do with the Ayahuasca. I’m not going to say too much - we all have our different trips and our different things... our different journeys we’ve been down and stuff. But the song... Icaro is a sung eulogy that’s done in Ayahuasca ceremonies - and also, I think, the songs they sing in Ayahuasca ceremonies are called Icaros. So Marshall wrote the song about an old family friend: he and his family would always go to this mountain community once a year, and there were always, like, these different families that would go there at the same time every year, and so they grew up around these different families that he was close to. And one of them, an older gentleman who sort of like an uncle to him but not actually related, passed away and they had a big funeral for him - he was moved to write this kind of eulogy which used what he knew about the chants from Ayahuasca ceremonies to make it more like that. But at the same time, it’s got this kind of Appalachian feel to it.

So he played that song to me, and I was like: “Man, I’d really love to incorporate that into the Susto record”, because as much of the narrative is mostly mine, it’s a song I felt really fit in with everything, with the conversations that were being had. And so he was like: “Yeah, but I don’t want to be involved in the studio - if you want to take this song, y’all do that and make this song what it needs to be, and I’ll come back and we’ll see what will happen”. So we went in the studio with it; we took it and wanted to make it feel kind of tribal - he already had the [sings chant melody], and we just wanted to add on that. The song has this... I dunno, the song is about death, and death is this ritual that humanity has dealt with forever; you know, ever since we started to recognise loss, and start to celebrate or at least mark the deaths of people. It’s just a thing. And so we wanted to tap into that ancient feeling: this kind of primal yelling, indistinct... we wanted to leave language behind at some point, and just kind of go for the emotion. And Marshall was already doing that in the song by the “Toos”, like: “Tooooooo...”, but with all the extra stuff behind it in the recording, we wanted to go there: try and find that visceral tone, you know.

That song then dovetails really beautifully into ‘Mountain Top’, and the thing that sprung to mind for me when I heard them were the Werner Herzog films set in South America: Aguirre Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo etc. It almost seemed to capture the atmosphere of that setting, however ephemeral that may be.

Thank you, so much - wow, that is such a compliment! Thank you very much.

Is that actually what you were aiming for?

Well, I mean, not necessarily, but I’m a big fan of his work and his films, and the just kind of, like... the pace of ’em, too: there’s something in the pacing of ‘Mountain Top’ that just feels a bit like the fog around the mountain at times. And that’s also really a song about love, about being on different mountains - part of it was about when I was on the West Coast with my lady and another time on the East Coast at Appalachian mountains and just being, like... it goes back to, like, breaking past all these things that make us a part of society, and just being a human with somebody out in the middle of nowhere. And sometimes there’s drugs involved, but not maybe as much as the song insinuates - and, I dunno, just being a part of the landscape, but also this kind of drama of life. The main focus of that song was this one trip - it wasn’t, like, a psychedelic trip, but a camping trip my lady and I took to North Carolina. We were going to go hiking, and I was very much out of shape at the time - I’d been on tour a lot, and I was smoking cigarettes and drinking all the time and stuff. I was following her up this mountain, and she’s just killing it; you know, this was probably when we’d been together, like, three years or so, and I remember just watching her climb up and having this song coming into my head - sometimes this happens, I’m doing physical things: even ‘Waves’ happened one day when I was surfing and couldn’t get past the breakers or whatever... I just thought it up in my head.

Anyway, she’s going up and I’m like: “Your love is a mountain...” We finally got to the top and it’s all real - it’s dark, and we’re like: “Fuck, now we gotta go down this mountain!” and it’s kind of like this... what’s the word… it wasn’t intense… it’s kind of like this desperation to try and get down and back to our car before it got too... it’s urgency. They part where it says “We were walking through the night...” and it goes “Bom-badda-bom-bommm...”, we picked up our pace a lot; I can still see us shuffling down the mountain, trying to get down before we completely lost daylight. Yeah, so I really love that song - it’s really incredible getting to, like, take moments and recreate them in a different medium. The medium you experience them is life - but getting to, like... I’m sure visual artists feel the same way, but getting to take something and really try your best to recreate it in song is something that’s really challenging, but special and enjoyable.

I think, then, that if it all ties together with those films, you keep talking about dabbling in different types of music, and different types of substances - part of the underlying theme of some of Herzog’s work is the feeling of wanting to be a part of some other world, but never really knowing it, or being able to know it. That’s the sense of mysticism that I really get from this record.

Yeah, I think that’s pretty... that’s pretty close to the mark.

Speaking of dabbling - as someone who’s friends with Band of Horses, I presume you’re familiar with the BNQT album?

Oh, yeah, yeah - the BNQT album, is that something that Ben, ah...

Yeah, he’s contributed to it - it’s the guys from Midlake, and Ben [Bridwell, Band of Horses singer] does a couple of tracks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I don’t think I’ve heard the whole record, I’ve heard that song he did, ‘Tara’, like: “Tara... duh-duh-duh-duh-duh...” Yeah, when he was making that one, he brought it into the studio and showed it to us. I’ve heard, like, maybe half the record - I went to go listen to it when it came out, but then I lost service as we were driving through the mountains. Should I give it another try?

Oh, absolutely - these two albums go together really well; I liken them to bursts of sunshine in an otherwise fairly bleak and dark year...

Oh, well, thank you! I’m glad that we can be something like that. I’m going to have to listen to that BNQT record again today. B-N-Q-T, right? Cool!


& I’m Fine Today is available now on Acid Boys/Rocksnob.