Zander Schloss Talks to SPIN About Music, Recovery, and Modern-Day Mosh Pits

(Credit: Steve Hochman)

Written by Steve Hochman

Houses of the Holy is on the turntable, but it’s “The Blue Danube” that is coming out of the stereo. 

“I only listen to classical music on the radio, all the time,” says Zander Schloss, chopping some anchovies into paste for a salad dressing in his makeshift kitchen, downstairs in the back of a house in Los Angeles’ hilly Silver Lake neighborhood. 

A tri-tip steak sizzles in a cast-iron pan on an induction burner. A painted portrait of his mother, who died last summer, made when she was young, looks on from the opposite wall of the room. A few guitars and a small recording set-up line the room, where he crafts some of the most delicate, moving, melancholically poetic songs you can imagine.