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AZ: How do you feel when writers say that your music sounds very ‘80s?

John Maus: I must have done something terribly wrong that I can be so easily be put into this generality of “’80s.” I have no idea what they’re talking about. I mean of course I do, in one sense, but I would totally resist that. If that’s ’80s, what is now? Is it Animal Collective? Is it Wavves? What is the sound of now? Is it Kanye West? What’s right now? And see, I think that’s right now.  And moreover, my “’80s.” comes mediated to me through the early work I did with Ariel Pink. I never listened to any of that, aside from in my childhood I may have heard a lot of it, but a lot of these guys– I had no idea who they were until people started telling me I sounded like them. And that’s fine– that stuff is wonderful, and it’s certainly a thread we ought to carry over, but it’s not nostalgia. Maybe it is remembering in the sense that remembering is always mimetic, representational– a singular re-expression of some kind of idea. So it’s not finally a perfect copy. It’s contemporary

Read the whole interview here.