ira glass are unafraid of entropy

The Opener is The FADER’s short-form profile series of casual conversations with exciting new artists.

ira glass make post-post hardcore that is playful, piercing and prodigiously loud. The Chicago quartet’s November EP joy is no knocking nation stacks semi-intelligible vocals atop brash saxophone and serrated guitar until total collapse seems all but inevitable. As daunting or even oppressive as the towering soundscapes might feel, ira glass (no relation to NPR) dart between these intense instruments with glee, clambering over each other with abandon in a precarious bid to be heard.

The frenzied sonic bricolage is the result of a committed recording process. “We did track everything live simultaneously in different rooms in the studio, and it was all recorded to tape,” the band’s co-founder and lead singer Lise Ivanova said in an interview last fall. “Logistically [it] proved to be a little difficult to dub over things, or we couldn’t punch in places as easily, which was torture to us.”

ira glass are unafraid of entropy, but joy is no knocking nation strives for catharsis amidst chaos. From the crashing waves of “it’s a whole ‘who shot john’ story” to the thicket of whispers on “new guy (big softie),” these songs carefully ratchet tension up and down in queasily thrilling cycles. The big payoff comes with “fritz all over you,” where a viciously punky frontispiece gives way to a sweetly disarming coda.

The FADER caught up with ira glass to chat about “Ville Mentality” by J. Cole, Breathless by Godard, matching tattoos, not having tattoos, and the best things they’ve bought for less than $100. You can catch ira glass playing shows across the Southern U.S. this week, or in Chicago and Philadelphia in March: check out their website for more info.

What’s the coolest thing to do in your hometown?
LISE IVANOVA: Probably go drink IPA at a bar-and-grill or microbrewery or go axe-throwing. Or go to an escape room.
JILL ROTH: Play ping-pong in the Microsoft campus communal hub while sipping your free choco milk.
LISE: Landon loves chocolate milk. He gets it at every diner we stop at on tour. He likes scrambled eggs and french fries too.

Tell us about the first album you bought and why.
LISE: I tried to download Danzig’s “Danzig II: Lucifuge” off Grooveshark illegally when I was 13 and the .zip was infected with malware that completely bricked my cyberschool-issued laptop. I had a jejune little psychological horror novella on there I was writing because I was hyperfixated on Stephen King and NaNoWriMo used to be a thing on Tumblr and that .docx is now lost to the ether.
I remember making a Spotify account when I was 16 just so I could listen to the entirety of “Ville Mentality” by J. Cole. Before that, I was using YouTube-to-.mp3 websites to download songs onto the Job Corps computer so I could upload them to my dumb phone. You could just switch out the SD card on your phone back then when you ran out of space; I miss that.

LANDON KEROUAC: “Gish” by Smashing Pumpkins. When I was in 7th grade, I was in IOP and my dad told me about the drummer of this band I was getting into, Smashing Pumpkins, and I equated all of my middle school Hot Topic social issues with this dude’s substance abuse problems. When you’re that young and vulnerable you let anything give you a sense of direction. He’s the reason I started playing drums.

What was the last movie you watched?
LISE: I host a weekly cinema club at my apartment. The last movie we watched was Faces (1968), dir. Cassavetes. I’d never seen any Cassavetes before. It was pretty good, but someone was smacking gum kind of loud throughout the whole film so I was a bit distracted.
JILL: I watched Breathless (1960), dir. Godard and found it to be goofy and sweet. The main character is a lovable asshole. Lots of interesting long shots.
LANDON: Klute (1971) at Lise’s cinema club. It was a fine movie but I thought it was strange they kept saying “it’s a Klute-eat-Klute world”.

When you’re not making music, how do you spend your free time?
LISE: I feel like I’m just washing dishes over and over. My side of the kitchen sink is never empty. I feel bad about it but also impotent; it can’t be helped. I’ve “been into” long baths, watching Intervention (with a critical lens), and listening to This Jungian Life. The “Soothe and Sleep” Dr. Teal’s Foaming Bath is pretty okay, though I haven’t tried the other formulations. You can get it from Target.
JILL: In a state of choice paralysis.
LANDON: I have this orange cat that I hang out with named Lazlo.

What’s a motto you think everyone should live by?
LANDON: It has to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.

Explain a lyric of yours that people misunderstand.
LISE: I don’t think anyone reads my lyrics or can really tell what I’m saying because I don’t enunciate well and ask to be buried in the mix. But we used to cover Jonathan Richman’s “I’m Straight” and people had plenty of wrong ideas about that.

What’s a song you’d want to cover and why?
LISE: I always thought it would be kind of interesting to cover a GG Allin song as a woman, but I don’t think I could get the rest of the band on board.
LANDON: “Diana” by Comus. We tend to take our covers and make them more evil or something while also respecting the source material. This song is already kinda evil but it’s on all acoustic instruments so I’d love to see what we could do with our setup. Plus Comus rules; I’d cover any song off First Utterance.

What’s the best thing you’ve bought for $100 or less?
LISE: Humidifier.
JILL: 99 cans of organic black beans.
LANDON: One of those foam rollers for your back.

Tell us about your favorite tattoo OR your favorite accessory.
LISE: I don’t have any tattoos because my parents were Gen X psychobilly (spiderweb elbow tattoos, Rosie the Riveter American Traditional sleeves, this kind of thing) and it put me off the idea. I don’t really wear accessories because I’m a worthless bore. Maybe Jill or Landon can comment.
LANDON: I woke up one morning and discovered I had a tattoo of a pigeon wearing a propeller hat on my right thigh. Jill gave me a tattoo of Garfield on my left thigh. It is hard to choose between those two.
JILL: Landon and I’s matching Garfield smoking pipe tattoos. When we were on our last tour, we found another person with the same tattoo.

Best advice you’ve gotten
JILL: Sleep on it.

Worst advice you’ve gotten
LISE: To post more.
LANDON: If you have a lot of vertical motion in your Reels, it’ll trick the viewer’s brain into thinking they’re scrolling and you’ll get more engagement.

What’s the ideal level of fame and why?
LISE: I got a pre-apprentice certificate in carpentry and a GED when I was a teenager through the now-defunct government program Job Corps and sometimes wished I’d continued in the hard trades instead of pursuing something dependent on an audience. I hate thinking this way.
JILL: The kind where you can hide away in the mountains and reappear briefly to the public eye every 5-10 years.
LANDON: I want everyone in the world to say, “Oh, I’ve heard of them”. Being vaguely referenced is much better than being known.
LISE: Everyone already says this about us. We joke that no one has ever seen a show of ours.

Describe the best concert you’ve attended.
LISE: I was blown away by Lightning Bolt at Empty Bottle on October 1st, 2024. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I was coming down with a terrible fever that night and remember just bouncing back and forth, drenched in sweat, fully disassociating. My skull was throbbing but I couldn’t hold myself back from thrashing around. I was also sick when Landon and I saw Jerome’s Dream at ZBR Fest in 2023. I didn’t think they were very good because they only played their new dude-y fry scream material, but we had a lot of fun yelling, “Play Double Who!”. At some point, someone found a lost phone in the pit and held it up, yelling “Phone! Phone! Phone!” Me and Landon started screaming, “Jerome! Jerome! Jerome!”
LANDON: I went with my friend and her dad to see Japandroids when I was 14 or something and I was in the mosh and crowd surfing and stage diving, doing all that rowdy stuff. They shared a bill with A Place to Bury Strangers and Oliver played his guitar with a strobe light and it gave me permanent ear damage. Very formative experience for me.

What’s the last thing you wrote in your notes app?
LISE:
– 40% iso alcohol
– Neosporin
– Gloves
– Paper towels
– Celsi
LANDON:
– AC
– 100Hz should kiss the top of limits
– BO
– 100Hz level > 1kHz level
– at least 1-2 dB higher
– suede pads: typically 2dB below lamb
JILL:
– confirmation number 6023562609