The science of making art rock with Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt

Yacht’s Claire Evans has built an intimidating résumé.

When she isn’t creating scintillating electro pop with Jona Bechtolt, Evans is the editor in chief of OMNI Reboot, an online science magazine. The Los Angeles band’s co-founder also is a science journalist and sci-fi writer and reviewer.

Those outside interests end up intersecting with Yacht’s music, which makes for an intellectual listen. (Count last year’s scary parody “Party at the NSA,” featuring comedian Marc Maron, as a pop hit and a statement on digital privacy rights.)

We couldn’t help but pick Evans’ brain when we spoke with her and Bechtolt on the phone ahead of Monday night’s show at RecordBar.

The Pitch: Yacht’s last record, Shangri-La, came out in 2011, so this tour isn’t in support of any new material, is it?

Evans: It is, actually. We are waiting until the last minute to release it, but we do have some new material that we’re putting out. For the tour, we’re going to have exclusive merchandise that we don’t want to talk about yet. It’s a group of new music that will be encased in an object that will only be available at the shows on this tour. It will be specific to the tour and available nowhere else, so if you want to listen to it, you have to come to the show. It sounds cryptic, but that’s how we like it.

I read an interview in which you talked about being disillusioned by the album format. Is that what inspired this secretive kind of release?

Bechtolt: I don’t think we’re disillusioned. I just think we see the album as being in decline, so we’re just trying to work with what we have. We’re trying to make lemonade out of the lemons that the industry is serving up year after year. We like making interesting things, and we treat ourselves as both consumers and creators, so we try to approach our music from that perspective: What would we enjoy? What would excite us?

Evans: For us, the format of the release should be as interesting as the content of the release. But it’s not wacky. It’s conceptual.

Claire, you’re involved in a lot beyond Yacht, too. You work as a science journalist and science-fiction writer, and some of those interests bubble over into your music. It’s not often that someone taps into both the artistic and the scientific parts of their brain.

Evans: Part of the reason I’m able to do both is that I write about science and technology from an artist’s point of view. There are things happening in science and technology that are fascinating and have far-reaching implications both philosophically and pop-culturally. But a lot of people don’t have access to that because it seems like a different world to them. I think it’s important to have people translating, and that’s what I try to do: Translate those ideas, and let them percolate through to this different, artistic world that I have access to. I’m fortunate to be in Yacht, in this band, because it’s capable of experimenting with medium and technologies that allow me to communicate ideas.

One of the main considerations that traditional artists have had in regard to technology is, how much of it is too much? I sleep spooning my iPhone, but I get freaked out when Facebook anticipates my purchases.

Evans: It’s definitely a double-edged sword. There are definitely times when I feel like I’m lost without my phone, and part of that’s because of the emotional stimulus of incoming texts and things. But my phone is also an incredible tool that contains so much. I think we tend to conflate our anxiety about social media with our anxiety about technology. Technology is bigger than that. It’s bigger than clickbait and your aunt and uncle sharing photos of babies. Technology has enabled the creation of content.

We always say that we live in a pretty unique position because people are receiving our media through all these planes — television, computers, iPhones — and it’s empowering because what goes into making those images is the same no matter who you are. You don’t need a 10-person team of designers to create a product anymore. As long as the finished product looks clean, then the medium by which it’s judged is the same. As artists, that allows us to have greater reach. It empowers artists, and that is something that we can never underestimate.

Like any generation, we are in the throes of a shift in the way we make and consume art. It happens in history. It’s always frightening when, like us, you have a leg in both eras. I remember a time before the computer and the iPhone, and that’s strange. There are teenagers that don’t remember that, and it’s less scary for them. But there are new opportunities with a new medium.

Bechtolt: As long as there are interesting and creative people in the world, there will always be ways of using technology to make compelling art. You just have to adapt to the landscape.