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Jul 29, 2016 By Kristin Kontrol Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern Issue # 57 - M83

To end out the week, we ask Kristin Kontrol some questions about endings and death. Kristin Kontrol is the new solo project for Kristin Welchez (born Kristin Gundred), who is also known as Dee Dee, the frontwoman and main creative force behind Dum Dum Girls. Kristin Kontrol’s debut album, X-Communicate, is out now via Sub Pop. It was originally intended to be another Dum Dum Girls album, the follow-up to 2014’s Too Pure, but then Welchez decided to adopt her new stage name to free her from any preconceived notions listeners might have had if the album had been released as Dum Dum Girls. X-Communicate is more open than any Dum Dum Girls record, embracing the ‘80s pop music Welchez grew up listening to (Madonna, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and Janet Jackson are all cited by her). Read on as Welchez discusses how she’d like to die, what song she’d like played at her funeral (and whom she’d like to perform it), her concepts of heaven and hell, and her favorite endings to books, movies, and TV shows.

How would you like to die and what age would you like to be?

I would not mind dying so much if it were at the end of a failed skydive. I’ve had a recurring dream of flight my whole life and that’s probably the closest I’ll get. That seems like a fit death for a 44-year-old. Should I last longer, maybe 62 sounds nice, something slightly erotic and J.G. Ballard Crash-y. But probably what I really want is very old, like 94, and very gently, like a sleeping baby.

What song would you like to be playing on your deathbed?

When I first heard The Smiths by way of Louder Than Bombs (thank you, Andrew McNey), the cassette didn’t leave my Walkman for months. The collection’s closer, “Asleep,” resonated with my depressive collegiate state and now suggests a nice, slow surrender. My mother sang lullabies to me and the timbre of this song is that. I can hear the rocking chair. It’s cyclical; from womb to tomb.

What song would you like to be performed at your funeral and who would you like to sing it?

“I Go to Sleep” by The Kinks. When I hear it in my head, it’s The Pretenders version. Chrissie Hynde takes it to another place. Jessica Pratt would do it here, sat atop my casket, all wonderfully finger-picky and angelic cooing. Sorry, Jessica!

What’s your favorite ending to a movie?

Television time was severely restricted in my house, so I would often watch my favorite movies in short, daily doses, ad nauseam. Aged four, Splash was one of them. I named my puppy after Daryl Hannah’s mermaid. The slightly risqué parts went over my head. When Madison takes Allen back to the ocean (after he rejects Earthly-bound life and the wholesale produce business) and their love mysteriously allows him to breathe underwater, well, that just felt like a classic happy-ever-after.

What’s your favorite last line in a book?

“That’ll do, pig, that’ll do,” from Babe: The Gallant Pig. Perfect book, perfect movie, perfect ending of both. Please cry with me.

What’s your favorite series finale episode of a TV show?

Going with popular opinion, I think, but Breaking Bad was best. The whole series was brilliant enough that I even excitedly sought out the White home while driving through New Mexico on tour.

What’s your favorite last song on an album?

“All My Hate and My Hexes Are For You” from Crocodiles’ second album Sleep Forever. Incredibly underrated album of theirs, produced by the genius James Ford. A bias could be assumed, but Sting’s daughter currently covers it, so it’s not just me.

What’s your favorite last album by a band who then broke up?

Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. It’s not lush, but its starkness is the kind of beautiful that shocks.

What’s your favorite way a band broke up?

I honestly don’t have an answer for this. I’m not so into schadenfreude that I would revel in the drama or trauma of others unless they were real assholes, and I don’t know much about bands I dislike.

Whose passing has most affected you?

My mother’s (cue second Dum Dum Girls album, Only In Dreams).

If you were on death row, what would you like your last meal to be?

Whose idea was this? A bottle of red wine? Some dark chocolate? A pack of Camels? Same request applies to Valentine’s.

What’s your concept of the afterlife?

I’m hoping it’s something like that ending of Splash, or maybe it’s taking the bus home and my mom makes us cocktails all night and we listen to the Stones too loudly and she tells me all the things she wasn’t able to when she was still alive, but I’m fairly convinced and fine with it being literally nothing.

What would be your own personal version of heaven if it exists?

I like that Lana Del Rey took Belinda Carlisle’s sentiment and made it melancholy: “Heaven is a place on earth with you.” And I know that this is it. But I guess if I’m totally wrong, perhaps it’s taking a mid-afternoon nap on a beach in Baja. Covered in salt and sand, getting freckly, eight years old on school break, carefree and loved.

What would be the worst punishment the devil could devise for you in hell, if he exists?

Endless series of awkward and difficult confrontations starting at age five, when I become painfully self-aware, right up until 33—a weird year.

If reincarnation exists, who or what would you like to be reincarnated as?

Some sort of migrating bird? Certainly not a monarch butterfly. Once, while touring, our route ran straight into theirs and it was a bloodbath of thousands. I felt awful.

What role or achievement would you most like to be remembered for?

I want to show love to the unloved things. Unfortunately for me, as an ex-Catholic, I think it’s laid out pretty well in some old-fashioned prayer to Saint Francis. Oh, well.

What would you like your last words to be?

I’ll go out singing along to The Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll”—“and it was aaaaaaaalllllllllllllllll-riiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-ght!”

[Note: This article originally appeared in Under the Radar’s May/June 2016 Issue, which is out now. This is its debut online and a slightly longer version of the interview than what ran in print.]

www.kristinkontrol.com