RiYL

Two years, Mark Oliver Everett interjects, isn’t really that long away from the road. In March, the Eels return to the road for the perfectly titled, “Lockdown Hurricane” tour.   Even as the rest of the world shut down, the band was never away for too long, releasing Earth to Dora in 2020, and returning this month with Extreme Witchcraft – their 14th album overall. It’s a hard rocking affair, a re...

2021 saw reissues of some of the most beloved albums in the Lilys’ 30+ year history. After many years out-of-print, A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, Better Can't Make Your Life Better and The 3-Way were all reissued. The band kicks off 2022 by revisiting those classics on tour. It’s been more than 15 years since the Kurt Heasley-fronted group has released a proper LP, but something is definite...

In February of last year, Oliver Ackermann launched a new label. For some, such a project could easily have been written off as a pandemic project or platform for launching a few pet projects. But from the outside, at least, the Brooklyn-based musician rarely takes half-measures. Dedstrange, “built from the smoldering decay of the music industry,” per its online bio, currently lists a half-dozen b...

There may be no singular figure in rock who has aged more gracefully than Nick Lowe. This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Convincer – perhaps the quintessential example of the singer-songwriter settling into a comfortable new role as a rock elder statesman. But while the artist notes that he’s happily left the Chuck Berry-esque rock and roll stage antics in his past, two decades later, he f...

In 2017, Greta Van Fleet did the seemingly impossible: broke through the pop music world as a new rock band. And while the Michigan-born quartet was chided in some critic circles as a throwback to the genre’s heyday, it’s a no less remarkable feat. That same year, the band’s second EP, From the Fires would go on a Grammy for Best Rock Album. In spite of its rapid climb to the tops of the internati...

Nine years after her last solo album, Julie Doiron returns with I Thought of You. Written and recorded prior to the pandemic, the album was shelved for a spell, in hopes of finding a more welcoming release window. Ultimately, Doiron and her label thought better – in part, due to the stark realization that this moment isn’t ending any time soon. While touring remains difficult, the record is a welc...

A self-proclaimed theater kid, Tahlena Chikami spent much of the past decade landing roles on film and television, including a number of beloved series like Parks and Recreation and Gilmore Girls. In 2019, however, her IMDB page takes a turn. A year after forming Bite Me Bambi with with ex-pats from a number of Orange County ska titans like Save Ferris and My Superhero, the band had already made t...

In September, The New York Times published a feature on Kevin Whelan bearing the headline,  “The 18-Year Wait for New Wrens Music Is Over. Sort Of.” The piece was exactly as bittersweet as the title betrayed, documenting the genesis behind Aeon Station, a musical project born out of the ashes of what would have been a final Wrens record – the first since the band’s 2003 masterpiece, The Meadowland...

More than anything, Ex Libris is a love letter to a medium. Framed as a meta-fiction mystery of sorts, the book is an exercise in flexible styles and genre, as the story leaps from book to book. It’s an ideal outlet for author Matt Madden, who happily serves the role of stylistic chameleon, expanding the short story form of his 2005 collection 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style into a boo...

Her music career wasn’t an accident, exactly. But it’s safe to say that Anika didn’t see it coming. A music journalist by trade, the singer assumed she was signing up for a guest vocalist gig on what ultimately became her self-titled debut. Largely comprised of covers, the LP featured a smattering of originals, cowritten with electronic rock band, Beak. After being handpicked by Portishead to perf...

“If a book is good,” Lou Mathews explains, “it will find an audience.” Finding a publisher, on the other hand, is often a different question altogether. “A writer writes” is perhaps a more appropriate adage for the author and educator who has thus far had two of his seven novels published. Luck, timing and connections are every bit as important in publishing. And thankfully, in the case of Shaky T...

There’s no lingering doubt after an hour-long conversation that Bonnie Bloomgarden believes in the power of music. And not in any abstract sense, mind. This stuff is transformative manifestations, filtered through almost ritualistic commutations of the spirit. But for many, such notions are understandably secondary to the power of rock. And by that measure, Under the Spell of Joy is a routing succ...

In 2022, Hanson will celebrate 30 years as a band. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for any group, let alone one whose members ranged from age six to 11. The group was propelled to success in its earliest days on the strength of its 1997’s Middle of Nowhere, a multi-platinum debut. Hanson’s seventh’s studio release, Against the World, arrived earlier this month. At first glance, the title is downr...

In 2021, Merry Clayton returned with a vengeance. In her solo first album in 27, years the singer once again poured her heart out on record. Beautiful Scars bears the mark of a musician who has suffered tremendous loss, but remains defiantly joyous and hopeful. Her voice remains confident and unmistakable, singing a title track that references, in part, a 2014 car crash that result in the loss of...

Released over the summer, Alone in Space offers brilliant glimpses in the process and work of a powerhouse cartoonist. The collection offers works from her teenage years and the classroom prompts that catalyzed her early works, include a Windsor McCay homage that would prove foundational her developing style. Walden’s books range from 2017’s deeply personal Spinning to 2018’s sci-fi meditation, On...

I spent a lot of hours and a lot of words exploring the world of vertical farming over at TechCrunch . The research, which resulted in this feature, was bookended by conversations with Dickson Despommier, a former Columbia University professor now regarded as the godfather of vertical farming. This final discussion with Despommier is a kind of coda to the piece, exploring his seminal book, The Ver...

Seems hard to believe that 40 years into a career of pushing boundaries and taking risks that They Might Be Giants still have anything left up their sleeve. But amidst a global pandemic, when the world is perpetually falling apart at the seams, the band has returned with a new album and accompanying art book. Book (the book) is a beautiful document celebrating Book (the album) with 144 pages of  p...

A citizen of the world, Cedric Noel has made his home in Montreal for the past five years. His musical influences are every bit as eclectic as his geographical background, result in songwriting that isn’t particularly beholden to any one form. Hang Time, released this year on Joyful Noise, continues his explorations, and a focus on deconstructing the fundamental elements of popular music, be it Sa...

The press copy describes Factory Summers as Guy Delisle’s “most personal book.” It’s a strange phrase for a cartoonist whose work often tends toward the autobiographical — but it’s hard to ignore. What begins as a memoir of teenage summers spent working the floor at a Quebec City paper factory ultimately grows into something deeper. Ultimately, the book is a mediation on the relationship between a...

Fictional Father begins with an apology of a kind — or, at very least, an acknowledgement. Told as a self-effacing autobiographical strip, the preface notes the accidental similarity to the real life story of Dennis the Menace and the 1999 novel, The Funnies. But maybe some stories are too good not to tell through a different lens. “I’m sure you’ll make it your own,” Seth tells Joe Ollmann in the...

2017’s What I Found in a Thousand Towns finds Dar Williams tackling urban studies. It’s new territory for the singer-songwriter, but one that builds on decades of fascination with the small towns she frequented on tour. The book has taken on a special sort of resident over the past two years, as the pandemic has spurred countless think pieces about the future of life in cities. It’s certainly top...

“We are the apes that are starting to understand the universe and our place in it,” José González says in a statement released ahead of his latest album, Local Valley. The comment refers specifically to the track “Visions,” but the sentiment can be applied to many of the thoughts that occupy this mind. A one-time PhD student for biochemistry, the musician’s social media outreach reflects the senti...

This month, Numero Group issued I Shall Wear a Crown, an expansive five-LP set that explores the life and work of T. L. Barrett, a Chicago-based Pastor and musician. It’s a testament to the musical genius and master communication of an overlooked artist getting a long-overdue second life. It’s what the label does best, through compilation series like Eccentric Soul and Wayfaring Strangers and spot...

The success of Azure Ray’s self-titled debut seemingly took everyone by surprise — not least the band itself. Following the breakup of their group Little Red Rocket, longtime friends Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink reconvened to pen a set of songs aimed at coping with the recent death of Taylor’s boyfriend. Heartfelt and emotional, the sad, dreamy songs would form the foundation for a duo now celebra...

Every time I speak to Mary Roach, I invariably get hung up on some minor detail — some story or person she’s teased out to unlock a fascinating new world. This time out, it’s the dried tiger penis lady, and really, how could it be anything else? The writer has a world class knack for finding fascinating tales in edges of the scientific world, from the dead bodies of Stiff to the space travel of Pa...