David Duchovny talks about music like someone who’s been hoarding liner notes his whole life — riffling through Neil Young deep cuts, dissecting Paul McCartney’s melodic overkill, and explaining why a good riff needs air in it, like an AC/DC groove you can step inside. On Gestureland, he’s chasing those moments: the fuzzed-out wallop of “Nights Are Harder These Days,” the ghostly pop glide of “Everything Is Noise,” the protest/personal hybrid of “Layin’ on the Tracks.”
Take “Nights Are Harder These Days,” a fuzz-and-mud Neil Young-style rumble with a title that flips the phrase in a way that short-circuits your brain. Duchovny says the phrase came first, and he immediately knew he could build an entire song around it. “It’s like A Hard Day’s Night — it turns something upside down. It short circuits you in a good way.”
The sound came from guitarist Pat McCusker, who Duchovny credits with nailing the Zuma-era Crazy Horse feel he was after. “We just pinned the song on that riff and drove it forward. A good riff needs air in it. Like AC/DC — there’s space, not just a wall of noise.” He talks about riffs like a scholar, name-checking “Start Me Up” and “Cortez the Killer,” and daydreaming about a “riffology” course to understand why some get under your skin and never leave.
He’ll just as quickly detour into Paul McCartney’s “melodic hoarding.” “Sometimes he has five songs in one song and doesn’t know how good each one is. That could’ve been a whole song,” he says. “I feel that way about Paul all the time.”
Even the more political-leaning “Layin’ on the Tracks” is as much inward-looking as outward-aimed. Sure, it name-checks the president, but Duchovny insists it’s about taking personal responsibility as much as calling out anyone else. “Your pain is my suffering. If I look away, I’m guilty.” That blurring of the personal and the universal is the trick, he says, citing U2’s “Pride” and Neil Young’s “Ohio” as examples of songs that anchor themselves to a specific event but still burst open into something bigger.
He’s not above dreaming about song placements — The Chair on Netflix will use his “Mind of Winter,” and The X-Files once featured a punk cover of his “Unsaid Undone.” But he’s careful not to over-layer himself into his own projects. “There are plenty of great songs I could use in Truly Like Lightning without using my own.” Still, he shrugs, “Why not? None of this is real, it’s just some dream we’re all having.”
Touring is on his mind, too, though schedules and greenlights for acting projects will dictate how far he can roam. “Nothing crazy — but some of these songs, ‘Nights Are Harder,’ ‘Layin’ on the Tracks,’ they’re going to be so much fun live. Just wall noise.” Spoken like a man who knows when to let the guitars take over, let the air in, and get out of the way.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
