Although it could have done without the rather pathetic and oh so familiar ‘isn’t this artist so clever, he references Socrates and Lacan, we couldn’t possibly keep up, and don’t worry dear reader you won’t either’ editorial line of Pitchfork, this interview with post-Noise pop artist John Maus is, as ever wih Maus’ erudite and analytic self, a highly interesting affair. The interview is publicising the release of Maus’ Rarities collection, which includes material right back to 1999, when Maus was only nineteen:

It was really something else. You listen to a song you did 10 years ago and it takes you right back to that time and place– everything you had then and don’t have now, and everything you have now and didn’t have then. Above all, it’s an encounter with audacity, which is something people in their early 20s have much more of than people going on 32. It was an encounter with that dare. I was teary-eyed at times [working on the album], thinking about when I was 24 and how intense everything seemed to be. I’ve always been hard on myself, and listening to some of those songs again, I thought: “Why was I so hard on myself?