The Purrs Interview: Inside Seattle Psych-Rock and Their Ninth Album, All Of Us Right Now!
Seattle psych-rock band The Purrs return with ‘All Of Us Right Now!’, their ninth full-length album, released on May 22, 2026 via Swoon Records.
The record arrives after a long and interrupted period for the band, with some of the songs already taking shape before the pandemic brought their usual way of working to a halt.
Formed in 2000, The Purrs have carried on through several eras of Seattle guitar music without losing the loose, weathered character that has defined them from the beginning. In this interview, Jim looks back on the band’s early days, including the classified ad in The Stranger that first brought him into the picture, as well as the strange rehearsal spaces, changing lineups and small practical decisions that helped shape the group.
‘All Of Us Right Now!’ was produced by Johnny Sangster and The Purrs, mixed by Sangster, and mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering in Seattle. For Jim, Sangster’s role has been especially important, not only as an engineer and producer, but as someone who gives him enough trust in the studio to stop overthinking his vocals.
Although the album carries a sense of anger, frustration and post-COVID dislocation, The Purrs Jim describes it more plainly as a continuation, “yet another damn near perfect Purrs album,” and talks about the work behind it in similarly direct terms…
The result is a record that comes from a band still committed to making music together in the same room, still suspicious of easy mythmaking, and still finding new reasons to keep going.
“We need to be in a room together, beating the shit out of a song, breathing the same fucking air.”
You’ve been at this for a long stretch now, long enough to watch entire scenes rise and, these days, partly vanish. When you listen back to your latest album, ‘All Of Us Right Now!’ in the context of those earlier records, does it feel like a continuation, or more like a reaction against your own past?
Jim: I would say this album is a continuation in the sense that it is yet another damn near perfect Purrs album!
There’s that line from Jim about being more depressed and angrier than ever, but the record moves with a strange lift. Where did that split come from? Was it conscious, or did the songs just refuse to stay down in the mood they were born in?
That was a nice thing to say.
I just said that because that was how I was feeling that day. Maybe if you had caught me on a day when the planet wasn’t a complete dumpster fire, I would have said something different.
The four of you are all writing on this one, and you can hear it in the way the songs lock together without feeling uniform. How did those ideas actually come into the room? Were you finishing each other’s fragments?
Okay, that was a nice thing to say. However, the songwriting process isn’t that organic.
I have a rule that whoever is serving time in the band at the time the song was written or recorded gets an equal share of the songwriting credit, whether they wrote the song or not.
A songwriting credit is one of the few ways a band member has any chance of making money.
In the unlikely event that one of our songs actually started making money, I want to make sure that whoever was serving time in my band at the time didn’t get screwed.
We’ve sold some songs to TV and movies in the past, so it is always possible, I suppose.
I’ve been bringing in the initial song ideas for the most part, but that is just one step in getting the song onto the album and onto the stage.
A lot of sweat and toil is required to get a song across the street beyond writing, and I want to make sure everyone gets some credit.
Johnny Sangster’s been around your orbit for a while. What did he pull out of these sessions that maybe wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise? Was there a moment in the studio where the record suddenly revealed what it wanted to be?
Johnny is awesome.
His ordered workflow is essential for getting our songs out the door.
I know I’ve probably said this before somewhere.
Personally, he has helped me over the years with my vocal confidence.
I will micromanage a vocal track into garbage if given the chance.
It is a matter of trust. With him behind the board, I feel free to let go. I trust him to tell me if my vocals suck or not.
He does that, although he would not use that word because he is a supportive, nice person.
There’s this feeling, I think, that’s running through the album that kinda feels very tied to the last few years. Not in a literal sense, but something more atmospheric. How much of ‘All Of Us Right Now!’ is rooted in that COVID-era dislocation versus older, unresolved stuff finally bubbling up?
COVID completely fucked up our band and our workflow.
The post-COVID world is absolutely in this album.
We started recording this album before the pandemic. Studio sessions were derailed three times because various people were getting sick.
It disrupted our rehearsal/songwriting schedule as well.
Some bands talk about being able to send files around and work on songs or whatever.
We are not one of those bands.
We need to be in a room together, beating the shit out of a song, breathing the same fucking air.
Most of the songs on this album existed in some embryonic form before the pandemic.
Separation between the band members was a problem. It was a great relief to get back together in a room and beat the crap out of these songs.
We are finally getting this album thing out the door, and I’m very excited about that.
Not only because I think it’s a great album, but because I have a lot of songs for the next one that I want to get working on.
Going back to the beginning for a second, that classified ad in The Stranger has become part of your origin myth. Do you remember what you were actually looking for at the time? And did the band you ended up with resemble that idea at all?
It is nice of you to say “origin myth,” but that is probably overstating the situation. Placing a classified ad in The Stranger was how things were done before the internet destroyed the income stream of so many independent papers.
I didn’t write the ad; I just answered it. I was new to town, and since high school, music was the only way I knew to make friends. I have no idea what those stoned motherfuckers were looking for, LOL.
As I recall, the ad name-checked several bands I gave a shit about.
I answered the ad, and they told me to come over. Although I was recording demos on my own, I was hoping to join up with a band that already had something going on. Just fill a slot and make the scene.
It was pretty obvious from the initial jam sessions that some cool guitar sounds were going on, but there was no direction.
I started bringing in my ideas. Some people left. Some people stayed.
Pretty quickly, we started playing shows, and it started working out. We made our own scene.
Could you take me back to the very beginning a bit, what kind of idea, if any, you had for the band when it first came together? And how did you all actually meet and lock in as a group? I’m also curious what you were each doing before that. Were you playing in other bands at the time?
Like all good things, the beginning is hazy.
We rehearsed in a cool space in the South End dairy ghetto. We were surrounded by dairy trucks in our practice space. We would take breaks, go out to this balcony, and there would be this sea of milk trucks. Milk trucks and junkies.
I really liked rehearsing there.
I recall I got super stoned one night because Jason advised me to. As Hunter Thompson would say, he’s my attorney. 🙂
Almost immediately, I got “the fear.”
I got the fear, and I was convinced everyone in the band wanted to kill me. Maybe it was a premonition.
Because I was in this remote location surrounded by milk trucks, I absolutely knew no one would ever find my body. I remember thinking that the next time anybody saw my face, it would be on the side of a milk carton.
As far as what anybody in the band might have been doing before, it is irrelevant.
Nothing we did before maps to what we are doing now.
If we stepped into your teenage bedroom back then, what would we find scattered around? Records, fanzines, posters… what were you living with day to day?
I can’t speak for anyone else regarding what they were doing in their past.
I was a rock and roll music fan as far back as I can remember.
I will never not be a fan of rock and roll.
I’ve been playing in bar bands since I was 16.
I might be asking a bit much here, but would you be up for walking through your discography and sharing a sentence or two about each record? Just whatever pops into your head first when you hear them again.
Yeah, actually, that is a lot to ask, lol.
Rest assured, every single one of our albums is a classic treasure.
I suppose how we use “time” has tightened up a bit. I think my lyrics have improved.
Our album titles have gotten shorter.
On this new record, the lyrics carry a lot of personal grievance, but they never feel sealed off from the outside world. When you’re writing, do you draw a line between the personal and the political, or do they just blur into the same voice?
Again, that is a nice thing to say.
However, I am just not that deep.
I write lyrics using the “vowel movement” method and then flesh them out with my English lit degree and life experience.
I am constantly writing words into blank books.
Just random words.
Nine albums in, there’s always the risk of instinct taking over, of knowing how to make a “Purrs song” without thinking too hard about it. Did you have to disrupt that comfort at all while making this one?
Wow, nine? Sigh…
Yes, I guess it has been a long ride.
I would be lying if I said that every song is somehow a new experience. But I am not phoning this stuff in.
I write songs. Some of them are good, some of them are not. Sometimes my bad ideas become good songs. Sometimes things I think are winners wilt on the vine. Sometimes I will bring back an old idea, and it just works this time around.
Our song “Sex Symbols” was something we wrote in 2001.
It is more of a blue-collar sort of endeavor.
Ed Brooks handled the mastering at Resonant, and there’s a kind of cohesion to the record that feels almost physical, like everything’s sitting in the same dim room. Were you chasing a particular sonic atmosphere from the start, or did that come together late in the process?
The mastering process is basically what you described: sitting in a dim room.
We pay Ed to do that shit.
I spent that time in a bar.
Basically, a different dim room.
We each have our place.
After everything that’s fed into ‘All Of Us Right Now!’, the anger, the stall, the sense of fracture, where does it leave you now? Does finishing the record feel like release, or just the start of another kind of unrest?
For me, it totally feels like a release, as you say.
My goal is to play the hell out of these songs and give them many cycles on various stages where they belong.
And then I want to get on with the next album!
Okay, last one, I promised. What are some of the albums you enjoyed recently?
For me, there are so many. I listen to music constantly.
I listen to my friends’ bands.
I listen to bands my friends recommend.
I listen to bands whose names seem interesting.
I listen to old albums name-checked by artists I admire.
I listen to every kind of genre you can name.
I compare music consumption to panning for gold.
I see live music whenever my agoraphobia allows. I rarely regret the experience.
The latest New Candys LP.
The new Bevis Frond album is stupendous.
The last Red Kross album. I can’t remember what it is called, but it is red. LOL
Almost anything Brian Eno wipes his ass on.
Same for Dean Wareham.
I miss Joey Ramone’s voice.
I miss Joe Strummer’s voice.
So many new, good guitar bands are putting out stuff.
I’m extremely excited about young kids using guitars to make rock and roll.
For a while, I thought it was going to die.
I’m so glad I was proved wrong.
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Ernie Sapiro
The Purss Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Swoon Records Website / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube
