Photo by Fabiola Carranza

Pitchfork: Given your tangled relationship with the idea of pop music, I wonder if a song like “Dream Lover”—which has this blown-out Springsteen feel—is poking fun at people who like Bruce Springsteen.

DB: Well, I don't like to think of songs as toying with people, or doing clever things, or relating to society, because it gets too depressing for me. My songs all just have to be striving for the light. [laughs] All I know is when I'm writing, I’m trying to get to the heart of something. And then when I’m singing, I’m trying even harder to get at the heart of something. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I’m really starting to find myself as a singer now. This is the first record that I've ever done that comes close to my idea of myself as a singer. I’m finally getting to this point where I can inhabit a song in a way that seems emotional but still recognizable to me and to my idea of what melodiousness can be. I used to revel in abandoning melody, and then on Kaputt it was just like, “Focus on the notes, sing the notes, be the notes.” Finally, with this record, I've gotten to a place that's more than either of those things.

That said, I don't really like Bruce Springsteen—but I can accept defeat if someone says [“Dream Lover”] sounds like Wild and Innocent... or whatever album that "Rosalita" song is on. That's just a matter of taste, though, because if I like “Young Americans” and don't like Springsteen, my whole thing is shit really. Over the last 11 years or so, I’ve mostly just listened to Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. What speaks to me in Van Morrison’s music is that it's real—there’s basically a religious need in his music, and his approach doesn't stray from that. Also, I like the fact that jazz exercises a dubious influence on him, as I hope it exercises a dubious influence on me, too.

Pitchfork: There are several allusions to religious ideas and figures throughout Poison Season, which made me curious about your own religious background.

DB: My mom's Jewish and my dad was Spanish and raised Catholic, and together they raised us as nothing at all. So it's just a style of writing that I am attracted to. It's moving to me because involves a struggle and very noble futility—divine futility. It could also be a really hack songwriter path for me to follow after listening to Christian-era Dylan or Christian-era Van Morrison. But that version of a struggle for meaning is pretty front and center to what someone like Leonard Cohen does, too, even if it's all from the place of a fallen man and ideas of redemption.

Pitchfork: Those songwriters were often living out their beliefs, but it sounds like you’re approaching religion from more of an arm’s length.

DB: I can’t live it, but I don’t think you have to live it to have it be something that it sparks you to open your mouth. You can’t really write anything in the shadow of death without that struggle rearing its head, right? If you address death or decay, you’re bound to hit it.

I would keep any kind of doctrine at arm's length, as opposed to any kind of furious mystical writing, which I would not keep at arm's length and would generously embrace. There's a big difference. In the end, the mystic tradition is way more typical with those singers; when they actually went to bat for one of these religions, it just came off as hokey and something they would cast off quite quickly, like what Bob Dylan did in the early ‘80s. But what stayed behind is this mystic resonance to the songs, which is still there, stronger than ever, right now.

Pitchfork: These people you’re talking about all have been making albums for many decades with ups and downs along the way. You have been making records for about 20 years now and have yet to start sucking. That’s pretty rare.

DB: I feel like the time-release poison could still be inside of me; I'm ready to completely lose sight of all that is good. [laughs] Being from North America, the proper backdrop for me to age gracefully as a singer/songwriter/poet type generally entails me embracing some form of Americana or roots or folk music. And while I listen to tons of that stuff, I don't gravitate toward it when I make music. I always end up doing these things that half sound like pop music to people; I can tell you as much as I can that it's not pop music, but I don't know if that counts.

It really is rare for singer/songwriters to not end up shitty, but with rock bands it's just impossible. There's something about rock where if you're going for it in your 40s, you're doing something that's either different than what you were doing in your 20s or you're aping your younger self, and that's definitely not blowing people away. But at the same time, not to defend my own age group, but pop culture is ageist. If you're a singer or a dancer or an actor and you get to your 40s, you're fucked—and 99% of me thinks it serves people right for getting into showbiz in the first place, so I don't want to plead their case. [laughs] But some small part of me thinks that it must be possible to address concerns that aren't specific to teenagers in music and have it be good. It can't be this impossible feat that it currently feels like. There must be some other force at work.