SSION's Cody Critcheloe Isn't Afraid Of Justin Bieber

Photo by Amos Mac

Cody Critcheloe of SSION is creating 24/7— be it pop songs, stop motion films, Tori Amos effigies, or extravagant music videos for his songs and fellow musicians’. The Midwestern artist says that being the only constant member of his pop group allows him to move at his own pace, and damn, is he moving quickly. We finally caught up to what this man of many mediums has created, and we’re beyond stoked to premiere his new video for the song “Earthquake,” a coming-of-age story like you’ve never seen.

Can you talk to me a bit about where SSION [pronounced shun] comes from and why it’s spelled that way?
SSION is not really a band, it’s more of my on-going pop project. I started it when I was in high school, in Kentucky, and then it sort of mutated throughout the years and right now I’m really the only remaining person. It’s spelled that way because, well, it was a joke—you know words like mission or passion or transgression. I was actually looking at a Mission of Burma record, and I thought, “Oh, I should just call the band SSION.” I thought it was really funny, like, if you shun something…I was like 16, so it was really clever to me. But I actually still like the way it looks! I like that no one knows how to pronounce it.

That’s cool that you’ve stuck with it for so long.
Yeah I’m surprised!

You said you grew up in Kentucky.
Yeah, that’s where I’m from, and then I moved to Kansas City to go to college, an art school there. Kansas City is a small city, but compared to the town that I grew up in Kentucky, it’s enormous.

Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas City, Kansas?
Kansas City, Missouri. They’re different! Have you been there?

I’ve been to both, actually! I went to KCMO for a debate tournament once…It has a lot of fountains, doesn’t it? Second in the world after Rome, I think?
Yeah, it does! But they’re really rinky-dink fountains and they’re mostly located in this part of town called the Plaza. Everything in Kansas City is sort of "pseudo-city" in a way. There’s the cool part of town, but it’s not real; it’s very fake. And the rich part of town, the Plaza, it looks like it’s made of cardboard or something. The fountains are teeny-tiny.

So are you based out of Kansas City still?
No, I actually live in New York now. I came here because I had an installation up at a gallery called the Hole. I was couch-surfing for a while, and then I thought, “Fuck it, I’m just gonna move here.” But I actually go back to Kansas City to do the videos because it’s so cheap to make stuff there. There’s a ton of space, and you can rent out a warehouse that’s 3,000 square feet for the month for $500. It’s a totally different reality. There are a lot of cool kids there though; they’re really proactive. So I still go back—in fact, we went back to shoot the video for "Earthquake" there.

Yeah, let’s talk about "Earthquake." In the lyrics, you compare heartbreak to an earthquake.
Hah, yeah, I wrote this song maybe 3 years ago. It was the first love song I ever wrote, so even when you said that it made me laugh, because it has this cheesy, sort of cliché thing to it. I wrote it after I got out of a relationship that was sort of doomed from the start, but it was the first time I had really fallen in love, so it was incredibly difficult to get over. When I was trying to come up with the concept for the video, I was trying to think of a much more interesting way of talking about how I’ve experienced relationships.

Tell me more about the video for this song.
It was shot in Kansas City and it took us a month to shoot it, and I worked with this incredible director/cinematographer Christopher Good. One of the main inspirations behind it was the show Desperate Housewives, actually. I was watching that a lot, and I was looking at how it’s shot and the certain colors that they use, and it’s just sort of gross. The whole thing was shot in the suburbs and looks sort of nasty, so we really tried to go for that and create an ABC soap opera feel to it.

SSION is known for having some pretty extravagant live shows. What’s the wildest thing you guys have ever done on stage?
I think SSION was the wildest when I was 19 or 20. We played this one show where I made this giant Tori Amos effigy and filled it with blood. I smashed it all over the stage.

Wait, real blood?
No! No, I wish…we were opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Mercury Lounge and I covered everyone in the audience with fake blood.

Your music video and Justin Bieber’s album are out on the same day. How do you feel about that?
Perfect timing, I’m ready to compete with that little shit! I’ll take him down. I feel bad for him, he’s really gonna struggle with this video coming out.

You made a short animation, The Lemon Cookie Revolution. It was a college project, right?
Yeah it was! How did you hear about that?

I’ve done my research…
I’m impressed.

In it you say, “My second favorite thing in the whole wild world is revolution." Why's that?
Well, that’s very tongue-in-cheek. It was sort of a pun on Bikini Kill. They were always talking about girl power and girl revolution, and I was a really big Bikini Kill fan. I’m the kind of person where, when I like something a lot, I make fun of it. So that’s what that was. The whole film is like that—I’m trying to reach cult status and, in order to do that, I’m killing all these cult figures with poisoned lemon cookies.

Were you big into the Riot Grrrl movement?
Oh hell yeah, that’s where it all started for me. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Huggy Bear, Sleater-Kinney, Heavens to Betsy…and you know, there’s something about "Earthquake," if you strip it down to its basics, it could kind of be a Bikini Kill song.

Was Riot Grrrl big in Kentucky?
No, not at all. How did I get into that? Oh yeah, I was really, really into Hole; it was my favorite band. I was obsessed with Courtney Love. So when she punched Kathleen Hanna in the face at Lollapalooza, I was interested. So I ordered the CD Pussy Whipped and I was a huge fan of that, and that opened the door for me towards all of that music. No one had even heard of Hole in my town though. It was so tiny, you had to drive 30 minutes to go to see the movie or go to the mall. When I first started SSION in high school, it was really influenced by Riot Grrrl. I was into Pussy Galore and noise wave, so the music got really noisy and was straight screech-feedback.

Do you have a specific process when it comes to writing songs or making videos?
I think it’s pretty normal, just like how a lot of people stuff. Usually it’s me sitting down with my guitar trying to figure out a hook and then going off that. This song I worked on with this dude, Ultrademon—he is responsible for seapunk, which is really funny. He’s from Kansas City actually!

Wait, really? That’s pretty surprising.
Yeah! Do you know that guy Blood Diamonds? He’s from KC as well! It’s so crazy. There’s a lot of surprisingly cool shit that comes out of there, it’s just that everyone is moving away. But what’s great about the Internet is that kinda stuff from Kansas City gets picked up…like seapunk, whatever seapunk is, I don’t even know what it is!

Yeah neither do I…
I wonder if the people behind it know.

Do you think they’re trolling us?
Maybe. Let’s hope so.

@shriekeliene