Interview

Greys

Phone Interview by Koen van Bommel
Photos shot by Chelsee Ivan in Toronto, Canada

Interviewing Shehzaad Jiwani from Toronto rock band Greys about déjà vu was kind of creepy. First of all, he claims he frequently has the sort of super-déjà vu that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of The X-Files. But apart from this, the entire interview felt so strangely familiar, that at times it didn’t even feel like an interview at all. Weird…

Greys 1Hi Shehzaad! How are you?

I’m good, I just finished up a haircut and I was running some errands before we fly over to Europe.

What kind of haircut did you get?

The broke teenage punk-rock-boy haircut is what I got. The, uh, homeless teenage boy.

So, I’m not sure if you’ve experienced this before, but I’d like to talk to you about déjà vu. When was the last time you had one?

Interesting! I have a weird relationship with déjà vu. How would you define déjà vu yourself? It’s a feeling of familiarity, right? So with me – and I’m not making this up – I’ll have that to a very strong degree. I’ll feel like I’ve not only been to a place before, but also done the exact action I’m doing. Like, for example, last night I sat down with my girlfriend and I knew the next thing she was going to say because I remembered it from a dream that I had. And it lasts for just a few seconds, but I have that fairly often. To me, it feels more specific than just déjà vu.

Do you feel like your déjà vu is different than other people’s?

Yeah, from what I’ve heard from other people, they don’t have it as in-depth and detailed as what I go through. What they describe is more of a feeling, whereas I’m describing specific actions. I just find it very weird and I wonder why people aren’t doing studies on my brain.

What’s your explanation for what you experience?

I don’t have one! I wish there was an X-Files episode about me. I’d love for someone to explain it to me. It doesn’t make sense that you can experience something in a dream and then experience it in real life, months or years later.

Greys 2Does this change how you think about life or see the world?

No, it doesn’t, because the things that happen in the dreams are so mundane. It’s not like in a movie where I can predict someone getting hit by a car, it’s just very mundane and nondescript. I mean, maybe you could also experience déjà vu when you listen to our album, because we rip off so many other bands.

Do you actually call it that yourself? Ripping off other bands?

Ha-ha, no. Someone else might call it that, though.

There’s been this recent surge of interest in the 90s – not just in music, but also in movies that are being remade, and in fashion. Would you call that a collective déjà vu?

Yeah, absolutely. To me it feels like, at least in North America, we’re experiencing a cultural déjà vu, which to me is artistically bankrupt. It seems to me that people are afraid of listening to something new, and they would rather watch a terrible remake of an old film rather than experience and create new history. They prefer to relive this comfortable past that they’ve already lived through. To me this is the opposite of what humans should do to progress and evolve. I think it’s dangerous and I hope it ends very soon.

Could it be escapism to a time when things were easier?

That’s exactly what it is. You selectively remember the things that were easy. And then Urban Outfitters repackages it and sells it to you. But the funny thing to me is, when you look at what they played on MTV in the 90s, I mean, Nirvana was the biggest band in the world and they’re not exactly the easiest band to listen to. Stuff like PJ Harvey and Beck and all these bands that were very challenging, and they sounded like nothing that came before them. And they still sold millions of records with music that was very progressive.

Speaking of music that short-circuits your brain, is this something you also want to achieve by making such loud music?

Yes, absolutely. That’s actually the best approximation of what we try to do that I’ve ever heard. We want to distort your mind with what we’re doing with our guitars and what not. We want to expand your idea of what you’re supposed to be getting from a rock’n’roll band. Because I think a lot of bands will give the audience what they want, but we prefer to give the audience what we think they need.

Greys 3

Greys play on 7 November at OCCII, Amsterdam. The show is free for Subbacultcha! members.