the black watch’s John Andrew Fredrick on ‘Varied Superstitions’: “Every One of Our Songs Is a Brilliant Failure”
the black watch have been making records since 1989, and they’re still at it. Their 26th album, ‘Varied Superstitions’, came out on February 27, 2026, through Blue Matter Records, the label run by Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond and Gary Urwin.
The band is led by John Andrew Fredrick, a songwriter, novelist, and former English professor based in Los Angeles. He has always been drawn to British music and culture, especially The Beatles, and that still runs through his work. He jokes about being a “recovering Anglophile,” though after a recent 23andMe test showed him to be 98 percent English, maybe there was more to it than he thought.
‘Varied Superstitions’ is a typical black watch record in the best sense. It moves around a lot. There are bits of jangle pop, shoegaze, New Order, The Cure, and stranger guitar moments, but it still sounds like Fredrick. The songs can seem bright at first, but there’s often something darker or more uneasy underneath.
Fredrick doesn’t like being called “prolific,” even after 26 albums. He’d rather be called a “fuzzy-janglepop genius,” which says a lot about his humor and how seriously he does and doesn’t take himself. In the interview, he talks about old influences, trying not to repeat himself, why he keeps making records, and why he still thinks of every black watch song as “a brilliant failure.”
That might be the best way to understand him. He keeps going because he still hears something worth chasing.
“Every one of the black watch’s songs is a brilliant failure.”
You once called yourself a “recovering Anglophile… something I’ll never recover from.” After the 23andMe result came back 98 percent English, did that feel like vindication or a bit of a cosmic joke, given you named the band after The Black Watch Regiment?
I suppose it’s a bit of both. I did have a very eerie experience when I first visited Scotland, however. It felt like some sort of eerie synchronicity, a feeling of having “landed” (the visit was by car, by the way) home. It could easily have been the astonishing beauty of the countryside, or a bit of whiskey, as I was hitchhiking and the guy who gave my best friend and me a ride from Gretna Green to Edinburgh insisted on stopping at some favorite pubs to buy us and himself drams. It was quite terrifying, actually, as the car, inconceivably nowadays, was a wee little three-wheeler, yellowish brown, and the driver was quite possibly dead drunk.
That year you were stuck in bed with the broken leg, reading English history and knocking out songs on that Silvertone… do you remember when it stopped feeling like you were just copying The Beatles and something of your own crept in?
That’s such a great question. Doubtless, something of The Monkees crept in as The Beatles ambled out! It’s so long ago now that it’s hard to recall. I reckon I was disappointed that more of the Fabs wasn’t present, as, at ten years of age, I don’t think I was too concerned with masking influences, which is a thing I think I’m quite conscious of to this very day. I was so very much in utter awe of them that I must have, in my little-kid way, resigned myself to never scaling the heights they did. That may still be an operant motif… to this very day!
You’ve made 26 albums, which is a kind of stubbornness most artists lose along the way. When you say you hate being called “prolific” and prefer “fuzzy-janglepop genius,” is that a joke, or is there something about the word “prolific” that misses the point for you?
I’m not so very egotistic as to think I am a musical genius, and yet I am bold enough to say that, yeah, my stuff smacks of a sort of genius. The problem, for me, with the “P” word is that it’s often the first compliment that leaps to the quotidian mind. It’s just what average, non-genius people/reviewers come up with quasi-automatically. So yeah: it’s irksome after a time, and of course it’s a joke and not a joke. Very Freudian, obviously. Which I embrace. It’s a great shame, I think, that university Psych departments, the bulk of them, I find, dismiss him. He got a lot of things right. I read and re-read his stuff… to this very day. Haha. I didn’t use to be able to take compliments of any sort, but I’ve had therapy, you see. Keep them coming, if you don’t mind. I’ve very much learned that to deflect the nice things people say dishonors them in a way. That’s not very nice. They went out of their way to say something sparkly about one. They didn’t have to, even if what they said was quite rote/rudimentary and perhaps crude or based in envy. End of lecture.
‘Varied Superstitions’ opens with a seven-minute track that doesn’t exactly ease the listener in. Was that a bit of mischief, or do you still like the idea of testing whether someone is really willing to meet the record on its own terms?
Again, a very pertinent and honest question. May I beg off and say it must have been a bit of both? I say “must” because I believe in the unconscious so much that I daresay that half the time or more I don’t know what my aim is. I think the art of the long song is a bit superannuated now for various reasons: modern attention spans, the sins/virtues of prog. I love prog, well, Yes and Genesis for sure. I do think hard about sequencing, however. And it’s interesting to think of the effect it has on the listener as well as the so-called arc of the record. But, quite frankly, I never ever think of the listener: I do/write what pleases the key listener, myself. That’s not said with hubris… or is it? I will say that I’m not out to “test” anybody. My days as a prof are over, thank fuck. I never have to grade a midterm again.
You’ve talked about wanting albums that feel as varied and melodic as ‘The White Album’. What does “varied” actually mean to you now, after decades of writing?
Another whopper! I live in mortal terror of repeating myself, which is of course harder the more one produces. Varied means the only things a songwriter has control over the course of an LP: keys, tempos, “feels,” oddities, not-oddities, as in straight-up pop songs, juxtapositions of songs, etc. Our old bassist Roger Butchers once observed to me: “Put on all the capos you want, John, and weird tunings to the max, but it all ends up G C D, occasional E minor.” He had a point, Rog did. And he was being flip and glib and wrong, really. There are flavors beneath the flavors of almost all we do. ‘Varied Superstitions’ is another punny title for us. And in real life I agree with the old adage that puns are egregious.
A lot of your songs sound bright on the surface, but there’s something a bit off underneath. When you were writing ‘Some People Will Believe’, did you feel that while it was happening, or only later?
Thank you for “getting” that. Yes, there is a dark/light, cheeky/sincere dialect involved in many of my songs. I’m a bit off, surely, Klemen! Not in a proud way, I don’t think. But maybe. I refer to what I said earlier about the unconscious. I think patterns appear only after a bit of time.
You gave producers like Rob Campanella more freedom on this record, and it sounds like parts of the album took on a life of their own.
I really trust Rob’s taste and his instincts, but I may have to rein him in if he does the next recordings. It was really drummer and guitarist and producer of the ‘Weird Rooms’ album Misha Bullock who sort of took liberties, that thrilled Rob and me, by the by. He took some risks and we did as well, and I think they paid off. Someone told me that a prominent DJ played ‘It Is What It Is’ the other week and observed: “This band put that song first on their new album and nothing on the record even comes close to that towering track.” Interesting opinion, that. He might be right. He might not. For him, it scaled heights, I guess. I rarely say this, but I absolutely love that song, how it turned out, at least. I’ve heard it a zillion times, mixing it and all, and it still thrills. It’s trippy and it’s fun. It approximates drug-taking, I think. Sort of? Which is something I very rarely do anymore. Been there, you know.
There are shades of New Order, The Cure, even a hint of Will Sergeant creeping into the guitars.
New Order, that’s a comparison I don’t mind at all. Especially guitar-tone-wise. The Cure I love and am conscious of masking that influence when I can, but you can only suppress so much. The Bunnymen tone was all Misha Bullock’s guitaring, not mine. I’m a much bigger fan of Eno and Kevin Shields.
You’ve described yourself as a quitter in almost every area except music. What is it about making records that you just can’t seem to walk away from, even when you threaten to?
Just seeing what I can do. And the magic, as it were, of something appearing out of nowhere. I got a PhD in English not because I wanted a job but on account of I love to read and it was a proper challenge. I had to beg my way into grad school; I don’t test well! I did call a record from 2020 ‘Brilliant Failures’. Every one of the black watch’s songs is a brilliant failure, I think. So I must try, try, try again. Or so I reckon. It’s never enough, somehow. I think most artists think that way. Harold Bloom said in his incendiary/controversial way that a poet has a duty to “write himself out.” I keep waiting for the day that my Epiphone Casino and I have reached that point. It might be close, but this week I “got” three new songs I am itching to record and see how they turn out. Pretty manic/compulsive as well, don’t you think?
You don’t seem to buy the whole “everything happens for a reason” thing. When you’re writing, are you pushing against that, or just trying to make some kind of sense of the mess?
My worldview makes heaps of room for the essential chaos of the universe and fate. I hate that phrase with a passion and roll my eyes when people utter it. It’s such a rationalization. There are reasons; I just think we think we know so much more than we do. And that the past is the only thing that’s real. The present evaporates instantly, and the future never comes. No, I’m not stoned right now. I will say that I am trying to make sense of my mess. The world and its wife is on its own!
You’ve got another LP and an EP already waiting in the wings.
Two more LPs, actually, are ready to go. Sometimes “industry” people say that it might be good to put out something under a different name like Robert Pollard does. Who’d be fooled, though? There’s a guy, speaking of, who doesn’t seem to give a toss about the listener. And, for me, GBV repeat themselves ad infinitum. Very little quality control, though his rabid fans would say me nay, and I do think Mr. Pollard has written some immortal songs. I think I move so fast, as you say, because I think I’ll die before I get my ‘The White Album’ out. I am not by any means a death/goth rocker, though I like a lot of it, but I am constantly thinking of death. Isn’t that the philosopher’s and the quasi-philosopher’s job, as Plato or Aristotle or Sally Rooney once said?
Last one, a bit selfish. When someone comes to a black watch record for the first time, maybe this new one, what do you hope they feel by the time it ends? Not what they should think, just what you’d like them to carry with them.
Hmm. It’s nice if they’re pleased with what they’ve heard, but again, I’ve no control over that. I try to make beautiful things first and foremost, so if they find some beauty there, then good for them. I’m a pure (impure?) aesthete, so I don’t hope they’ll find meaning ’cause it’s nowhere in art to be found save fleetingly, perhaps. If they get that tingle you get when you hear a piece of music that gets you, great, wonderful. I think I’ve made it painfully clear that I don’t think at all about the listener, until someone asks a question about him or her… like this one. I think people who mechanically/professionally write “hits” for people have that sort of ostensibly calculating sensibility. Maybe I should try it one day. I would feel such a phony, though. I’m a Virgo. We hate phoniness… in art, in people. I don’t buy much of what astrology is all about, but both Jung and Chaucer saw a lot in it! Thinking about the listener: that way madness lies. I don’t even know what I think half the time. People embrace all the time bands that are popular and, for me, complete rubbish and unlistenable, Oasis, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Lemon Twigs, and now fucking that band Geese, to name a few pet favorites, so why should I go a-pandering? Contrivance of any sort makes me mental. And the aforementioned seem to me to be among the most contrived.
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: the black watch (Photo by Michael Tracey)
the black watch Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
