Constantly Hating With: Asher White
It’s not easy to differentiate yourself when you get compared to Elliott Smith and Burt Bacharach, but Asher White makes everything look easy. The young iconoclast boasted she had a record of Jessica Pratt covers on a lark, and by god did she deliver. Her version of the self-titled came out February 4 on Joyful Noise, and while it is excellent, it is not at all what we went over, lol. (Recorded on January 30, 2026)
Asher White: I love your DJ Screw shirt!
Constantly Hating: Thank you!!
I like, love the bootleg black market grind, it’s the last vestige of a true bygone internet I feel.
I just got a bootleg Bart the other day, and it’s saying Fuck the Packers.
Where are you right now?
I’m in Brooklyn, but I lived in Chicago.
Where in Chicago?
I was in Andersonville, and Rogers Park.
That’s where I was conceived! Well it sucks, cause I’m from around the Main St Purple Line stop, do you know where this is? 3 blocks north of Howard? So it is effectively Rogers Park, but technically Evanston. And people are like, oh, you’re like Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles,
Very John Hughes.
Yeah, I’m trying to explain, I’m being forever lambasted for claiming Rogers Park when I’m from Evanston. It’s not driveways around there, it’s a real place to be.
Nah Evanston is still Chicago and like, love the North Side but it’s not very cool, y’know. If you’re from Evanston or Skokie it’s like, well…
Skokie has a swag of it’s own because it’s so upsetting to be in Skokie because it’s basically O-Block for white people.
That’s kind of an insane, uh, put on that on the record?
Put that on the record.
The most famous modern KKK rally.
Facts, my grandparents were there probably. Not at the KKK rally, they were Jewish. I’d like to make that totally clear, I come from peasant Skokie stock, working-class Jews, thinking that it was very cool to leave the city and move to Skokie and that it was very luxurious, but it’s a pretty humble place.
It’s become very exurban.
In high school I was the one who hung out in Logan Square and Pilsen, and I feel like I was the one who gentrified it. I just remember the first $16 chai tea milkshake in Logan Square…
Oh my god you’re like “this is the beginning of the end…”
Well I just remember thinking “Oh this is awesome” cause I was 12 and from Evanston, wait how old are you?
I’m 29. Are you also in Brooklyn?
Yeah, and I’m 25. Right now I’m in a really nightmarish recreation room of a luxury condo in the West Village where I’ve been a personal assistant to this woman for the past month.
What kind of work is that?
Emotional psychic drainage. I’m just like calming her down, but it’s like first non-service industry job I’ve had.
I ask about Brooklyn cause I saw the press photos were taken by Jessica Rovinelli, who is also a friend, so I was wondering if you knew any of those people.
I’m not in the extended harem of the Ridgewood transsexual community, I feel like I’m not far enough on estrogen to qualify on that front.
~Zoom call breaks up~
I’m so sorry, I feel like a diva.
Nah it’s not very divaish to have phone issues—actually it is a little.
I feel like isn’t it you get the big phone interview and you get them and they’re a little bit distracted and despondent and looking at their own image in the Zoom monitor the whole time.
I wouldn’t say you were distracted I just thought it was funny that you had audio issues and it was like oh bad bitches have awful quality phones.
(laughs) Are you like a tech savvy individual?
Not really, I just have an iPhone 14.
How’s your relationship to your phone?
Like I’m on that bitch too much? Probably.
I feel like people are a bit fascistic or fearmongering about having high screen time like I think it’s probably more acceptable cope than people allow themselves to believe, but do you ever flatten it?
I’ve never felt, me personally, that’s it’s ruining my life, but maybe it’s my fault.
It’s like being drinking age or having an Adderall prescription. You go through phrases where your relationship is sort of helpless and destructive and try and keep it in check, but I don’t really believe in abstinence or like sobriety.
That is a very mid-20s take.
Oh cause you’re 29?
Hey I’m trying to stop myself but shit’s tough, you feel invincible…
In honesty, yeah, I have some indulgence issues, but I think me not believing in abstinence is more about that I believe in moderation.
Yeah that’s a better way than the “American” way of being sober in being extremely militant and virtuous and less of an evil.
I’m so glad you identified it as American I’m trying to signal that virtue a little more.
It’s very um, uh what’s the religious domination…oh man not Baptist, Lutheran…(he’s thinking about Puritanism) but it infests our culture more than cultures that have become more secular over time.
Oh, I don’t know, wait you have DC area code?
Oh no, this is Cleveland.
Oh word, so you have like real Midwestern integrity.
(laughs) In a sense, Midwest pride at the end of the day.
Both city slicker and rural claim, or mostly metro area?
Yeah I’ve never lived in a rural area, most rural I’ve been was in college.
Where was that?
Appalachia, I went to Ohio University. But I was born in DC, then moved to Chicago, then Cleveland, and now New York, so never really lived anywhere but cities.
How long have you been in New York?
Since 2023, coming up on 3 years, it’s mad fun.
Literally, it’s fun. I feel like I came to have fun.
Yeah, definitely proximity is the most important thing it can boast.
For me it’s like an interesting existential/material/fiscal question that was answered, like I was living really really cheaply and very functionally in Providence for a few years, because I’m so young because I’m incredibly young that was a major part of my life. And would I pay $500 more a month to not be lonely? The answer is yes! My rent was $600 in Providence, I could work 4 days a week and still have time to make music and stuff, but I was literally just so sad and bored cause Providence is a small city and I’m approaching my mid-20s and I can’t be continuing to match with Brown University seniors once I’m older than 23. I’m like: “I guess I’ll just sacrifice a few hundred dollars a month to stop that” and I did.
It’s completely worth it, and especially, I don’t think people realize, I think you probably had the same thing that I did in Cleveland—these cities are small. Once you meet a lot of people, it contracts the city.
Not even just meeting a lot of people, once you have a lot of geographic experiences in those neighborhoods, you begin to retrace the memories of your college experiences, like it becomes very bleak when you’re in your college town for too long. If you’re not building a life very intentionally, it becomes very easy to myopically rewrite and retrace and circumscribe your life inwards until it’s completely eroded into a fine dust.
It helps here cause you have a different experience every day.
Your situationship margin is much higher.
(laughs)
The psychic turnover rate here is like, in Providence I would see one thing per day, and it was someone like overdosing, or an MFA student playing chess in the park, and that would color the week because there’s nothing else. In New York you go outside and it’s someone’s quinceañera and they’re whisked away and someone’s throwing up and they’re whisked away and it’s people kissing—you’re just shuffling through so much life all the time it’s so generative and beautiful.
Does that come up a lot in your music or is it more interior for you?
I dunno, in some ways every song I’ve ever written is about infrastructure policy and like urban development. This is kind of a joke but I also totally mean it and it is true.
I’m an open book for what you mean about your music.
A lot of it is like allegory or like textual references to city planning, so in some ways it’s inspired by the city but it hasn’t really changed much between the cities that I’ve lived in. I think it’s maybe affected by the lifestyle that I’m living at the time, which obviously the city has an effect on. But I wouldn’t say that any of my records are a Providence record or a New York record in the way that a record is like very clearly, immediately emblematic of a city. I fantasize about it though, when I have the means I’d like to make an LA record or something.
What kind of LA record?
Like The Chronic.
You think you can pull The Chronic off?
I think I could probably do The Chronic or Doggystyle, yeah.
Okay, I’d like to see it.
(laughs) What is the modern LA record? Like Weyes Blood? Weyes Blood or Haim?
Kendrick or Tyler are the biggest ones.
I was thinking like white female singer-songwriters.
Julia Holter is very LA.
Yes! The other thing is the Chicago-to-LA thing, like Jeff Parker, International Anthem, Andre 3000, Carlos Nino thing, the LA jazz world is probably one of the more important American scenes right now.
The guys I think of are Thundercat and Kamasi Washington.
Yeah, Terrence Martin, listen, the first time I ever had an opportunity to do an interview, I was like, this is my opportunity to die for Flying Lotus, who I think is the most brilliant visionary and important artist of the 21st century. I think Flying Lotus, Steven Ellison, who by the way is Alice Coltrane’s fucking nephew, is responsible for Knxwledge, for a ton of the LA beat people, arguably responsible for Kendrick abnadoning good kid era for jazz rap, he totally set the whole thing up.
Yeah I think, because he’s sort of out of the zeitgeist, we’ve lost sight of how brilliant Flying Lotus is.
It’s crazy, you go back and listen to those records he made in 2010 and it still sounds insane, still sounds so fresh and predicts everything that would happen in popular music over the next 10 years. Even in rap and in indie rock, it’s everything.
I’m glad you brought up FlyLo kind of impromptu cause fuck it he deserves his flowers, that’s something I feel like people don’t give him as much anymore.
He’s so underrated—he’s my biggest influence, truly the reason why I make music, cause when I was 13 discovered Flying Lotus. He also has a major thing about his interviews, he’s like really reverent about musical lineage and that’s how I found about Dilla, and this insane vein of collage music. If there’s any governing methodology behind the way that I produce, the way that I envision songs, it’s entirely off of Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus and the records that were inspired by it. Knxwledge too, and Kaytranada, though I think Kaytranada’s not LA.
Yeah but he was in that milieu, like kicks it with Anderson. Paak and stuff.
Malibu came out my freshman year of high school, or maybe my sophomore year. 2016? I just remember being like “Oh this is the most important era of music ever”. This is honestly a nostalgic norm that I don’t believe in, though.
It came out in college for me, so I’m the boomer here, comparatively.
It’s so good, anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, LA. I’ve never been.
(laughs) Someone’s gotta set up the tour then.
I’m touring the West Coast in May, actually!
Hopefully you’ll be able to link and build and make your Chronic or Until the Quiet Comes.
That’s my goal. I can’t think of any other LA records, but I do love Julia Holter. That’s funny that you mention Julia Holter because that’s another person who I think is criminally underrated and who I want to be the most.
I can see that in your music for sure.
I think she doesn’t get enough credit for how her music is incredibly difficult and demanding and like incredibly pretentious and high-concept, and I think if left unchecked, if I were smarter and went to grad school or something, I could dive myself in a way where I could write these ambient rock operas about Greek mythology or whatever. Like highly referential, literate stuff. So it’s inspiring to me because it’s like the flagship of that, that’s the beacon. But I also think she’s a true, raw nerd but has one foot on the other side, like tapped into this level of total emotional devastation that she’s able to dive into and retrieve portals from in contemporary classical, really ornate jazz rock records—I don’t know how you describe that music, but I really love Julia Holter.
It’s funny you say super smart, avant, grad school but when I interviewed her for her last album, it was funny cause, no offense to Julia, she’s not super forthright about her music or super explanatory. It’s not like she does it off vibes but she’s so talented it’s like—
Like it’s a mystery to her?
Not like it’s a mystery but something she’s able to evoke so cleanly within music theory and composition and it’s probably harder to put it into language.
The big thing for me is that it’s really audacious, like it’s the most ambitious stuff ever, in vibe, because—except for Have You In My Wilderness, which is a great pop album and I think, a huge flex, because she’s like “oh yeah, all this time I can make very beautiful songs”—Loud City Song can basically only soundtrack itself. It’s the most specific vibe it cultivates. And when you think about music that does well, even music with a lot of integrity, a lot of domain and agency, that’s complex and good on its own right, you can still imagine a Radiohead song playing in an episode of Euphoria. You can imagine Geese, y’know, music that we can agree is very specific and artful and interesting, still has a vibe that’s like, fathomable.
But what is so amazing about the Julia Holter stuff is that no one’s ever felt that way. And no one probably will. She’s articulating a thing that’s really, really myopic and so insanely specific but brutal. If I was a record label I’d never ever put out any of those records. I’d be like “Who would listen to this?” The answer’s me.
It’s head music for sure. For those who know.
I bet she has a really bad time at the merch table of her shows. I bet it’s the worst guys in the world talking to her. I’m sure she has the most insufferable guys being like “hey when you modulate to the major 7th on when the harpsichord comes in, really sick!”
Especially when she does not seem interested in the minute small talk.
That’s so cool you interviewed her.
Yeah it was really sick to do it for Bandcamp, I went to the Domino listening party that was at Public Records. It felt booming, if you ever have the chance and your label hooks you up, having a listening party there is very clutch.
Was it in the cafe room?
It’s in the upstairs. There’s this big soundsystem and it’s cacophonous. There’s parts where I thought about Playboi Carti, which I told her and she was kind of bemused. (laughs)
I mean Public Records is one of the best venues in the city. I think I’ve only been there a few times but I think I saw YHWH Nailgun there, which I expected to sound not good, cause it needs to be in a fucked-up space, acoustically—but it sounded like the record, unbelievable. It was totally awe-inspiring. We played there opening for someone last year or 2 years ago and I was like “this is crazy” like I’m not even playing but listening to myself, it was amazing. Shoutout to Public Records.
Jessica Pratt feels very singular in the same way as Julia Holter—in that it doesn’t soundtrack anything but itself, especially the album you’re covering, and I listened to your version and couldn’t even fathom ever transitioning those songs into what you theorized. It was really impressive.
Thanks! I’m very flattered you called it “theorized”, it’s so the opposite of theoretical. When I was trying to get people to listen to that album, the original, people were like “yeah it just sounds like indie-folk” which I find very grim. And I find this in myself too, where I dismiss a lot of voice and guitar stuff, because a lot of it is so bad and because it’s so hard to find records that occupy that wavelength but are incredibly substantive and generous. I’m so excited by that Jessica Pratt record because it is one of those records, it’s very modestly presented but those songs are really, really unbelievable.
And I thought it would be a fun exercise; more challenging myself, and sort of an indulgence. I always have more production ideas than I do good songs that I’ve written, I don’t really write that many good songs. I like making beats. And I thought “oh this’ll be fun since I just get to make the beats cause the song’s already written”. So I’ve cracked the case, I get to make an album that counts as an album I made, but I only do the fun part, which is no emotional labor. I’m only recording and playing; I don’t have to dig into my soul and say something that means something to me and hopefully someone else, which is so exhausting and terrifying. This is a really fun break, all these words I don’t have to take accountability for, I’m just putting loud guitars on it.
It’s a good gig if you can get it. It’s cool, cause people don’t do “standards” much anymore, and covers were such a big part of the early part of pop music and pop music in general, so it’s cool to hear a left turn from you on this album.
I wrote about this in the little blurb about the album, which is that, we don’t really have that many American standards now, that have been written in the past 50 years. “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith, embarrassingly, is actually one of them. And maybe, like, “Wonderwall”.
Well that’s British, so.
Fuck! You’re so right.
(laughs)
What’s an American standard?
Uhhh like “Sir Duke”? Maybe at this point “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? There’s also the whole Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday standards.
I mean in the past 30 years though. Over the first 50 years of the 20th century, we had it in the bag. Between Motown and Brill Building, we were just churning out banger after banger that could just be endlessly iterated and covered by anyone, like Motown and bossa nova have a total of like, 10 songs. There’s so few original compositions, but every Temptations record has the same track listing as every Gladys Knight & the Pips record, and they’re all worth listening to because they’re all good, and everyone was doing these standards. Then, I don’t know, the Beatles ruined it? After the 60s no one did standards, and definitely no one was writing them.
Right, music became very wide, as opposed to consolidating a couple songs.
Totally, and people were like “the point of music is for me to express my ideas as a songwriter” as opposed to tapping into a tradition of a song. For a while, the way a singer/songwriter would establish themselves is by singing standards. The first Phil Ochs records or Tim Hardin records, obviously Bob Dylan—those are all covers. You would make three records of covers and now I’m going to write originals. That’s very much not en vogue anymore.
This is a way of bringing back the reverence.
Totally, tapping into and wrestling the torch out of her hand even though she’s very much still running with it.
There’s very much a focus on futurism and the now nowadays.
Yeah, futurism and in that nature, individual accomplishment and, I don’t know, I don’t know if any of this is printable actually. Just delete everything so far. Basically I’m interested in other people covering these Jessica Pratt songs. I want “Half Twain the Jesse” to go viral on TikTok.
I’m interested to hear how you think that would happen.
I just want people to do ukulele covers, I think a lot of these songs would be good ukulele covers—I don’t have a ukulele so I didn’t do that—but I think it’s worth doing that. I think if you like an album and you think it’s underrated what you should do is reinterpret it. It’s an amazing exercise for yourself, and I was gonna say you “purchase shares in it” but that’s so apocalyptic of a metaphor. You break off a piece of the wall and put it in your pocket—wait that’s Zionist though…I’m struggling to find the right metaphor.
People will understand, you do give it a piece of yourself. Once you make that kind of music it becomes shared, communal.
Yeah, it’s a form of prayer, not to be pretentious about it, but I really did feel when I was recording some of these songs I was like “oh she did this” in the same way when you recite The Lord’s Prayer, you’re reciting words that everyone in your religion has, everyone who’s died and everyone who will be born will recite, tapping into this infinite choreography that extends in either direction. I’m reprising, I’m retracing her steps, how sacred.
I did not expect Jessica Pratt to have this kind of reverence but that’s really the highest compliment you can get as a songwriter.
Are you historically not a fan?
No Jessica Pratt is sick! As much as I love music, getting to a spiritual level with it is the highest form of praise.
Eli, I’m very very scared of death, I’m really really scared of dying, I don’t wanna die. It’s like the whole thing, like every moment I’m shuddering with terror or rather, with dread, with the knowledge that I have to die. It’s absolutely paralyzing to me, I really hate this, I think about it all the time. And I think I was born in the wrong body so it’s like “Oh god, I’m gonna die and it was short and the whole thing was messed up”.
Anyway, the only times I felt a glimmer of invincibility and immortality and oneness, transcendental meditation sublimation into the void and universe and transformation into the eternal continuum where it’s all going to be okay is when I’m in my freezing cold fucked up Providence studio, headphones on, tapped into the mainframe of a song. It feels arrogant when it’s my own and beautiful and generative when it’s someone else’s, but those are the times where I have my finger on and part of my foot in the pool of the infinite.
Hell yeah.
It’s easier to get there when the songs already exist because these experiences, there’s a blueprint, y’know? The footsteps are here, there’s literally choreography for me to follow, but I definitely got it with my own music too, where, oh wow, this is a finite, sensory experience but the implications of it are immense and endless. For a moment we were infinite. (laughs)
You’re really tapping in.
(laughs) I’m locked in!
I’m going to guess you’re a fan of Brian Wilson and Hideki Anno then.
And who? I don’t know Hideki Anno.
The guy who did Neon Genesis Evangelion.
OH, yes, I’ve actually only seen the movie, I haven’t watched the show.
(laughs) What happens in the show is very important to what happens in the movie!
I saw the movie and it really ruined my month. It shook me to my core and it was that type of thing where you watch something and everything you look at reminds you of it.
(laughs) When I was listening to you describe the catalyst between life and death, I’m like “this is some End of Eva shit right now!”
I love that movie. (laughs) This is gonna sound so dumb stoner, and I don’t even smoke weed—I knew in theory that there was other media that was related to it and was perhaps predicated on, but it didn’t occur to me that I was missing anything. In that movie it’s like, oh I’m being barraged with a lot of information that I have to connect myself.
It’s both extremely esoteric and inscrutable, and also the most straightforward evocation of life and death ever.
It’s also an immediate sensory pleasure, like heady, deep and cerebral and stuff but truly pleasurable throughout the whole movie. It’s gripping and riveting, which I feel things like that can often be not that way.
So do you feel when you’re in that zone of connection in the recording, do you feel like you’re in The Third Impact?
(laughs) Yeah I feel like it cuts to a wide shot, and it’s unclear; there’s an impossibly dense void behind me, I’m glowing and adrift, and you can’t zoom out far enough. You can zoom out and zoom out and zoom out and it’ll never be far enough. It’s like something infinitely large crushing something infinitely small.
Shit, there you go.
Can you tell I haven’t done this in a while? I’m not media-trained, I don’t really know how to do this.
That was actually so fucking sick, don’t worry. You know, I don’t need to ask anymore questions, cause that’s really what’s it all about, to be honest.
Okay, cool. Can I just tag on things that are important to say?
Yeah, any addendums?
In keeping with the, life is short et cetera, [it’s] a collection of incredibly transient, brief, fleeting sensory experiences that, in the way that absolute value means that negative and positive are equal, you are experiencing things in general: immense pain, immense pleasure, it’s such a blessing from God that we get it at all. And also, because of this, we’re indebted, and what we must do because of that is resist against ICE and free Palestine and post bail and find the actual concrete results your human experience can do because it’s all incredibly urgent. I guess that’s it; it’s all urgent.
Absolutely. It’s an expression of love in the most powerful order, at all times.
Everyone wants to be interviewed about their Jessica Pratt cover album, everyone wants to have the opportunity to make a Jessica Pratt cover album by themselves and get interviewed about it and everyone deserves to have that experience and it’s a completely unimaginable and insane thing that some people are. But I feel, given the opportunity, every single person alive would do that—not with Jessica Pratt, but like—
Nah, everyone deserves their own Jessica Pratt cover album, it’s true.
Everyone deserves to make the cover album, to teach themselves the cover album of their dreams, and it’s insane and cruel that it can’t be done. It’s very hard to reckon with.
Period.
Thanks for reading my wonderful interview with Asher White. If there is any interest, I have a little bonus 10 minute extra where I commiserate with Asher over Ridgewood trans girls, Tiny Mix Tapes and how much that website influenced her. Let me know if that would be worth paying for. Love y’all.