Impressions. Hello. Hi. You got your unicorn horn on.
Yeah. You know what's funny? Is he actually has almost exact same hair this morning? Oh, really?
I wish I had a picture of it. Last night before bed she asked me to put her hair up in a top bun because she was feeling like she also she has very similar hair to you. She's like hair, lube hair and training. And so I put it up on like a top knot on top of her head kind of like a messy bun.
And it looked so cute that this morning I was like, I'm going to keep that in her hair. And I said, can I keep your hair in that top now? She said, sure. So I put a scrunchie over it and then I added two little hair clips.
It just looked really cute. Your hair is reminding me of that. It's like Australia is the place to do a hairstyle like this. It's like a beachy.
I don't know. Yeah. It's a generalization that I'm making about Australia. But I feel like you can do this.
You feel welcome there to do that? I can do this. I feel like it's still masculine here. They're not going to blink an eye.
Yeah. No one's like, ew, I mean as far as I know, who knows. But maybe we'll find out in the comments after we post this episode from Aussies because this is our Lou Talks About Australia episode. We're going to hear all about Australia right before he's home because he's nearing the end of his time in Australia with Dinosaur Junior and also popping in some fun solo shows here and there.
It's mattering. Yeah, I played in Perth last night. So you're in Perth still? I'm still in Perth.
I just finished a Dinosaur Junior show. It's evening for you. It's late morning for me. Yep, it's almost midnight and almost in February 29th.
Leap Day. Oh, right. I like that. Leap Day.
Oh, so this episode will be coming out on Leap Day. Leap Day. The Australian Leap Day episode for Val. This is for my mom.
My mom, sometimes when she's up on the episodes, she'll send me a text and say, you know, whatever, commentary about it. And this most recent message from her was, well, your father and I were wanting to hear more about Australia. And I said, oh, right. So I said, well, what do you want to know?
And then you said, ask your mom. Have her come up with some questions. Yeah, what do you want to know? I mean, because you and I could just talk about whatever.
Yeah, we often tend to go off the rails and off subject and whatever, wherever we are, we speak. Yeah. Yeah. And you've actually been so I'll treat this as more like interviewers style this episode.
Hello, I'm Adele Barlow coming to you from Greenfield, Massachusetts, Western Mass. And I'm going to be interviewing today my husband, Lou Barlow. He is in Perth, Australia, currently on tour with Dinosaur Jr. celebrating the 30th anniversary of where you've been.
How's that? Very good. Very good. Now you are not new to Australia.
You have been here many times. So I feel like these would be like your responses would be coming from a place of like having visited quite a few times over your adult life, right? From the time you were maybe what when was the first time you came to Australia? How old were you?
Oh, God, don't ask me that. Oh, okay. I'm assuming you can't. You can.
Yes, I was. Yes. Yes. I get it.
Only come here in your 30s. No, no way. It could have been like 95, 96. Is there a first time?
Oh, yes. I should have done some research, but yes. Oh, wait. Are you ever in Australia with Dinosaur Jr before you were kicked out?
No. Okay. That's a funny story though. They kicked me out.
They kicked me out of the band in 89 and then they went to Australia. Oh, so you missed your first. Okay. What have been your first tour in Australia?
Right. And I was like, okay, what they told me the band broke up. When they kicked me out, they were like, they came to my apartment and they said, we're breaking up the band. We're breaking up the band.
I'm like, okay. And then the next thing I knew, I heard that they were going to Australia. Well, you know, sometimes you got to say what you got to say to just get someone out of the band. Oh, exactly.
Looking back on it and retrospect it's like fair enough. Sure. But at the time, but I found out that they were going to Australia with a new bass player. Ah.
And they did. They did. They did. They continued the band.
Hop down a plane left your apartment with straight to the airport. They're like, hey, look at the bands broken up. What times are flight? Let's get out of here.
Oh, yeah, we got to go. That's funny. Funny to think of. I had a very cool, a cool moment tonight when I was playing, you know, on stage and I looked over, I just was taking in the specter, the like Murphy and Jay playing in front of me.
And I had this really, this kind of like real warm feeling tonight. We were on a carpeted stage, which also made it especially warm. I was playing in my socks on a carpeted stage. And I felt like I was in a rec room, you know, and I had this really, really cool feeling that I was in Australia with Dinosaur Jr.
When they kicked me out of the band and went to Australia. I had this really cool full circle moment tonight. But anyway, Australia, yes, I've been here a lot. Yes.
Okay. So should we get to Val's Valerie's questions? Okay. Val, this is my mother-in-law, Valerie Atkinson.
Yes. She loves to hear about your travels. Yeah. Okay.
So the first one has actually kind of multiple questions. So do you get any unusual food down under or does the band food writer change depending on what country you're in when you're at a club or bigger venue? And is there a memorable food experience you've had in Australia? So I guess it's kind of like a three-ish part question.
Okay. We do get the same writer everywhere. Per country, wherever. And Europe, they just give you what they have.
But I thought in Europe, you guys always ask for that chocolate milk you like. We do. Yeah. Chocomile.
In Holland. What's on the writer backstage? Take me backstage, open up the fridge and show me the table. Tell me what's there.
There's roast beef. And there's turkey. And there's guacamole. And then there's a...
I don't want to say a ray because I feel like I'm saying the word array too much. But there's an array of kombucha. A variety of kombucha? A variety of kombucha.
I've got variety. Thank you. I need this word. Variety.
I'm saying array way too much. Variety. There's a variety of kombucha and cold coffee, canned coffee. There's pineapple.
There's watermelon. There is goat yogurt. Goat yogurt. Melky yogurt, which Jay likes.
There is bread, like the sort of keto bread. Jay makes toast. It seems to be part of his thing. There is a McCallen whiskey for Jay.
He nips a little bit of scotch. Single malt scotch that he likes to sip in the course of a performance. Is there beer on the writer? No.
There is not beer on the writer. Tonight, there was seven young Blanc on the writer. Which is what you like. Which is what I like but I don't put it on the writer because I don't drink.
Generally you don't drink. Yeah. I don't drink when I play. I don't like it.
But tonight there was some on the writer. Which is kind of cool because it was our last show in Australia. And sometimes I'm a little tired and sometimes I need a little bump. And so I got a little bump of something on Blanc and Australian something on Blanc.
But the roast beef in Australia is so good. And I don't know what, why exactly? It's different than the roast beef in the state. Have you looked at the package?
Is the cow from Australia? There's no package. It's just wrapped in paper. It was purchased in the super bowl.
It was deli. It was cut. Yeah. Well, it must be Australian beef.
No, I think it was. I think maybe it's all like grass head. I don't know. I don't know if they have, there's not a lot of grass.
But there's not a lot of grass. Yeah. Yeah, because it's a dry country. It's a sunburned country.
Where does the beef come from, Australia? Where does the beef come from? Let us know. I'll tell you.
The interesting thing about Australia is that it's like California. Like they take these places, these arid places and they transform them, I imagine, into agricultural oasis. Oasis. Oasis.
Oasis. Oasis. I don't know. I do want to know about the coffee.
So the canned cold coffee, that's like for Noel, the sound guy, right? And you also like that sometimes. Right? Or you have sometimes.
I imbibed tonight, but in general, in Australia, I like to stick to the, there's so many great cafes here. Well, there you go. So there's coffee shops there. So many coffee shops delivering like really good espresso.
Every like even just like little corner shops have big ass fucking espresso machines churning out like really good espresso. And then the beans they get, I don't know what's going on, but it's a less jittery coffee, almost uniformly with an Australia. So you can get really tasty coffee that doesn't fuck you up. I don't know why that is.
I don't know why that is. And not jittery. And in general, they really embrace breakfast here. Okay.
So there's like breakfast sandwiches everywhere, every little place, every little cafe. Like a bread or a croissant or like a croissant, a bagel, like an English muffin, like sour dough bread. There's so many, again, a ray. A variety.
A ray. Australia makes me think of the word array. So I've said the word array so many times, but I'm telling you everywhere I go here and there's just the places loaded every city that we've been to, the major cities, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney. There is when you get into the middle of the cities, when you get into the cities and even outside, there's so many like cafes.
That sounds lovely. It's kind of lovely. Yeah. And if they make so many of these breakfast sandwiches, can I ask you, have you partook and are they good?
Every breakfast sandwich I've had. Whether it be on the street near the hotel when I've walked out and I go to the first place that I see or at the airport, every sandwich is good. Good. When you get the egg, the egg will leak the oak onto the contents of the sandwich.
You kind of be careful. I might score it out. You know, I have to be careful because I don't have that many clothes with me. I don't want to ruin my clothes.
So when I eat an Australian breakfast sandwich, I give some distance between myself and the sandwich. I sure do. I hold it out approximately one foot. That's smart.
That's smart. Yes. I do. You should travel with a napkin that you, you know, one of our cloth napkins from home that you just kind of put over your crotch or something.
Or a bib. I should have a bit. A tour bib. Oh, lose tour bib.
I need a bib. Okay. So let me say, is there a memorable food experience you've had in Australia? Is it the breakfast sandwich?
Sushi. Okay. Everywhere. Anyplace that we've been so far right to the sushi.
There's a lot of conveyor belt sushi going on. Those are restaurants where you sit down and it literally comes by you on a conveyor belt, right? And then you grab what you like and then at the end you pay for kind of like what you've chosen or you pay and they put the color of the plate determines the price. Oh, that's so smart.
That you pay. Okay. They do it in California as well. California and Australia are sort of spiritually or, you know, food linked.
There's a lot of similarities between Australia and California. Nice. That I love a lot. That's cool.
Yeah. That's delicious. That's delicious. That's delicious.
Fresh fish and fish in general. Cooked fish. That's great. I had a steak tonight.
The steak was fucking great. And it was an Irish pub. It was like an Irish pub during quiz night. But should we move on to the next question?
Okay. Please. Yes. So they have been watching a show that's filmed in Tasmania, Deadlock.
Is that in Australia? Okay. Yeah. Okay.
And it's an island. It's an island south of the continent of Australia. Oh, maybe Deadlock is the name of the show or something? Anyway, I don't know.
They're saying that they have to have subtitles on because the accent is so strong and they're slaying and they're dialect. They're wondering, have you noticed that? In Australia, obviously they have an Australian accent there. But is there certain areas where you hear that stronger in certain parts of Australia versus others and some cool local slang that they say?
I love the Australian accent. But I haven't really met anyone that I don't understand. But in Tasmania, perhaps. Yes.
I'm going to go to the island off the coast of Australia and there very well could be places there where, I mean, actually anywhere outside of the cities. I only go to the cities. So there's a lot of suburbs. I do have my friend Adam Harding and I have met his mother and she has a very particular accent.
And where's he from? It's sort of, he's from Jollong. So they have a really interesting nasally sort of accent when they say no, they say no. But I've never, when I travel in England, every little micro region has a very particular accent that you may not understand.
And then when you get to Scotland, it's like, well, it's a little more heavy. Where you're just like, whoa, you literally, I mean, they have to really hang people's words. I have not encountered that in Australia. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
And I'm sure it does. Aussie's you weigh in on all your different accents. Let us know. Can you just talk about the difference between like New Zealand and Australia?
Since you're going to be leaving Perth and then going to New Zealand. What could you say about New Zealand? What's it like in New Zealand? Well, in New Zealand, they speak much tighter, like their lips are tighter.
They speak like in a similar accent, but they're listening to a lot of... What about also New Zealand, just in general? Is it a smaller country? Oh, it's way smaller.
But we're playing in Auckland, which is the North Island, which is very volcanic. That's the other thing. It's super volcanic and there's tons of earth. I mean, like New Zealand is on the Ring of Fire.
So there's a lot of earthquakes. And there's a lot, I mean, there's like, a lot of, and Auckland itself is fascinating because it's like full of these dormant volcanoes. And they're like these big green branches within the city. Like these round...
It's incredible. Like the family, I've been there and like, seemed... Really? They're these green craters.
So they're not active volume? You know, where you go down into the... No, they've been dormant for a long time and that's the way they're probably hoping it will stay. But it's really, it's a very volatile geological region.
I would love to experience both of those. And so much. Yeah. Maybe we have to come up with a solo tour where we just go for like two weeks with just a solo tour and then we have some days off in between.
And is Auckland kind of the main big city of New Zealand? And does it have skyscrapers and things like that? Like, is it like, you know what I mean? Like a big, big city?
Yes. Auckland is like a big, big city. It does have skyscrapers. The other cities don't, you know?
Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch. Christchurch was kind of leveled by an earthquake a few years back. But yeah, it's like, it's a, because it is volatile. And but beautiful beaches.
Really interesting stuff. Like just on the coast of New Zealand, this beach with these huge, perfectly round boulders planted in the sand. And in the west of New Zealand, it's like, you know, snow covered with huge mountains. Snow covered mountains.
You know, like a ridge, a ridge of them. You know, and it's cold. It's a little colder there. Like New Zealand is, it's not, it's so different from Australia.
Thank you, everyone. Kind of. Thank you. Thank you, Melbourne.
And Andrew at Boys and City Records for my inn store. Phoenix Central Park. Beautiful. Beautiful performance of space.
So beautiful. So beautiful. Thank you so much for reaching out to me so I can play a show there. Thank you to Adam and Perth for my show at the Rose Mount Hotel.
That was incredible. I could have never expected that many people showing up. I had a wonderful show. Thank you for all the good breakfast sandwiches.
Pressions.