RiYL

Our Little Secret isn’t an easy book, but it’s an important one. In her first-ever graphic novel, Emily Carrington delves deep into her history and self-conscious, to explore her childhood abuse and the resulting trauma. It’s story Carrington has waited half her life to tell, searching for the right way – and medium – to tell it. It’s a powerful debut from life-long painter, exploring the ins and...

Wild Tales begins at an impasse. At the tail end of the 60s, Graham Nash writes, his time in The Hollies had seemingly run its course. A trip to the U.S. to visit his then-girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, found him harmonizing with a pair of musicians who had recently left their own iconic groups. That particular story has a happy ending, of course. Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young) played a ce...

The transition into the 70s wasn’t an easy one of for The Rascals. But it had been an extraordinaire run before the wheels came off, penning several songs that helped define what could reasonable be called pop music’s greatest decade. Throughout it all, Felix Cavaliere never stopped working. It’s a rich and fascinating career, he eagerly narrates in the recently published, Memoir of a Rascal. He h...

Niineta opens unexpected. A call from inside the penitentiary. It’s a cousin of Joe Rainey’s – but one he considers close enough to call a brother. It’s a striking opening for a striking album that explores the traditional indigenous songs he grew up singing at Pow Wow, set to modern production. The music is both faithful and new. It’s a celebration of the communities carrying on these musical tra...

The last time we chatted was on stage in October 2019, not long before the world changed. Simon Giertz had recently dealt with some health struggles, chronicling her successful battle with a brain tumor in a very public way. Over the years, her wildly popular YouTube channel has served a number of roles for its creator, as she’s chronicled her builds from the functional (turning her Tesla into a p...

Life off the road is a strange thing after 18 albums and 30 years , but Anton Newcombe is thriving. After decades in San Francisco, he settled in Berlin with a wife, kid and a dog – the whole deal. He calls me from Germany, giving me a makeshift tour of his home, as he holds his phone to his face. We speak mostly of world events. It’s kind of inevitable, these days – the pandemic, politics, the in...

Facing an indeterminate period of isolation, Lyrics Born did what any rational person would: he started a podcast. While he’s quick to note that the last two years offered a period of reflection and a rare moment to catch his breath during an impressive 25-year career in hip-hop, Mobile Homies was, ultimately, less about working than connecting. The show offered an opportunity to connect with fell...

In 2019, Paul Cauthen gave the world a breakup record. That’s not to say that Room 41 didn’t offer hints of what would come next. “Cocaine Country Dancing” offered the hint a brashness its title suggests. But two years into a global pandemic, the Texas-based singer-songwriter comes out of the gate swinging on Country Coming Down. “Country as Fuck” leads of an LP littered with titles like “Champagn...

As I type this, Bob Mould has jumped back in with both legs. He’s quick to point out that he managed to get a handful of dates in at the end of last year, but the his solo electric distortion tour spans three months and finds him hopping between the U.S. and U.K. It took the world grinding to a screeching halt to get the musician off the road for a while, though he’s kicked 2022 off with a bang. T...

His voice echoes as he speaks. The walls are entirely empty ahead of a big move, but Jonathan Meiburg has carved out enough time to sit and speak. We get into the subject of caracaras fairly quickly. They’re strange little birds in the same family as falcons – though they sport personalities more in line with a crow or a raven. Meiburg was so taken by the creatures he devoted several years to penn...

He quotes his therapist when describing his latest album. It’s a conflict of external vs. internal wanderlust. Ramesh Srivastava spent the last several years exploring the former, but Eternal Spring charts his time with the latter. His second solo record since the dissolution of indie darlings Voxtrot finds the singer getting deeply personal in a way that didn’t come naturally in his earlier caree...

The album-making process has always been somewhat contradictory for Beach Fossils. Front man Dustin Payseur has never suffered from lack of inspiration, with hundreds of unreleased songs to his name, but releasing an album has always been about getting things just right. The Brooklyn-based band has released three LPs of original songs in its dozen or so year existence. The strange and seemingly un...

At the height of social distancing, David Christian (nee Feck) went solo. After 29 years as the chief wrangler of the ever-morphing indie pop act, the musician went to work on For Those We Met On The Way. It’s been strange couple of years for the singer – as it has for most of us. Christian and family left London for the pastoral French countryside. A mostly quiet life, as he describes it, with th...

As we’re about to start, Scott runs to the kitchen to check on dinner. He’s making chicken, breaded with Shake ‘N Bake. He’s up a few more times during the conversation, once to proudly present the final product to Zoom call. Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini see each other a lot, these days. They’re prepping for a rare live performance in Philadelphia and spending the rest of their time writing. In...

There was no guarantee we’d ever see another Midlake album. The eight year gap since their last album was more than a simple break before records. Tim Smith’s departure in 2012 left the band with a major gap to fill, suddenly staring down life without a princjple songwriter. Eric Pulido stepped into the role, and the band scrapped two years of recordings, in favor of starting from scratch with Ant...

Last year saw the release of The Horses and the Hounds. James McMurtry’s 10th album was easily one of the year’s best, showcasing a seasoned songwriter at the top of his game, 35 years after entering the industry. The musician is quick to point out that his songs are essentially all fiction, something that has, perhaps, become something of a sticking point after so often inhabiting his characters...

Faced with an indefinite touring hiatus, Josh Caterer improvised. The musician recorded a pair of “live” albums – The Space Sessions and The Hideout Sessions. No audience, no overdubs – just a trio of well-rehearsed musicians putting new spins on old classics. Caterer’s vocal range tends toward crooner as many of the song veer into jazz territory. That’s nothing new, of course. His unique vocal de...

A talented flautist trained as an opera singer, Melanie Charles wanted to make a splash with her Verve Records debut, Y'all Don't (Really) Care About Black Women. She taught herself to sample and tackled a slate of songs by some of jazz’s all-time greatest vocalists, from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln. The result is a bold and expansive meditation on music an...

Editor’s note: Apologies for the rough audio quality this time out. Just shy of hallway through Tunnels, two of the books leads engage in a spirited exchange. The Israeli and Palestinian characters are debating who got there first. The moment is central to the plot of Rutu Modan’s latest graphic novel, while reflecting the underlying tensions of an on-going conflict that informs much of the artist...

The past two years have afforded us all plenty of time to reflect – for better and for worse. For all of those who’ve devoted pandemic hours to reaching into past and wondering how we might change the past, given the chance, The Garden presents an ideal metaphor. Over 16 tracks, Basia Bulat revisits her past, breathing new life into old songs with the aid of a band and string arrangements. It’s an...

Nostalgia is a strange thing for any artist – particularly so for a group like Pere Ubu. Perpetually striving for change and innovation, the band’s evolution has afforded little time for reflection. Last year, however, saw front man David Thomas remixing the group’s 11th and 12 albums,  Pennsylvania and St. Arkansas. It provided a rare opportunity to revisit and reflect on a pair of 20-year-old al...

Two years of pandemic couldn’t keep Melvins down. In 2021 alone, the group released a pair of LPS: Working with God and Five Legged Dog, their 24th and 25th, respectively. The latter found the band revisiting their back catalog with acoustic reimaginings of 36 tracks. Last month, the group released the four-song EP, Lord of the Flies, a preview for yet another full length due out later this year....

When she hops on the call, Naomi Yang is still in the middle of an editing project. It’s one she’s not quite ready to talk about. At it for a little over a decade, filmmaking is a relatively recent passion, but she’s managed to compile an impressive list of projects, including the 2013 short film Fortune and a number of music videos for artists including Marissa Nadler and Waxahatchee. An accompli...

Fresh off a rescheduled tour opening for Drive-By Truckers, I manage to catch Carl Nichols at home. In the not so distant future, he’ll be back on the road, with a headlining stint bookended by tours with Houndmouth and Valerie June. It’s a far cry from the years and months spent at home during quarantine in his newly adopted home of Austin, Texas. Still, he sounds restless. Having graduated from...

In July 2013, Lester Chambers was attacked. Performing at a Bay Area blues festival, the singer had just launched into the Impressions’ classic, “People Get Ready,” as a woman charged through the crowd incensed that he had had dedicated the song to Trayvon Martin. It’s something of a dramatic understatement to say Chambers is a survivor. The musician has seen the heights of music stardom, from fro...