RiYL

For 20 years, Ben Snakepit has been building a magnum opus. Day in, day out, the musician-turned-cartoonist draws another daily strip recounting a scene from his life. It’s rare bit of constancy in a chaotic world. Of course, as with everything else, SnakePit does the strip his way. Bucking the ubiquitous world of webcomics, the artist releases the strips as a collection every three years, allowin...

It’s been a big couple of years for Shirley Manson — not something every artist can say, as a global pandemic stretches into its second year. Nor, is it something many bands can say staring down their third decade of existence. Our call is scheduled early — another rarity in this world. When we connect, the musician explains that’s she set to go exploring on a rare off day for Garbage’s tour with...

More than 30 years after Trots and Bonnie ended its decades-long run in National Lampoon, the strip finally gets a worthy collection. Shary Flenniken has moved on from the work in more ways that one, but the story of a teenage girl and her talking dog still feels as vibrant as ever. While she might be the last to admit it, Flenniken’s life has been every bit as fascinating as the work she’s create...

When the interview suggested he might be a spiritual person, Ben Chasny blanched, explaining, “I'm actually a total nihilist.”Sixteen years later, he confesses that the answer was contrarian to a fault. It’s easy to arrive at the conclusion, listening to a lengthy back catalogue that finds him releasing the 20th album under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker. But he’s also very much someone who...

My Begging Chart finds Keiler Roberts exploring the in between moments. She’s content to mind the little things that would not only find their way on the cutting room floor of most memoir, but might otherwise be forgotten by the end of the day. It’s not for lack of material. Conditions like bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis can loom large in her life, as they would anyones, but the cartoonis...

When it comes time to record, Laura Stevenson is honest to a fault. 2019’s The Big Freeze may well have been her most personal record to date, but the album has nothing on her recently released self-titled followup. Plenty had happened in the intervening years — some things she’s happier to speak about than others. Stevenson is clearly protective of the people around her, but when it comes to her...

Like many of us, Danny Elfman had big plans for 2020. For the first time in forever, the musician paused many of his perennial obligations, clearing all film scoring jobs from his calendar. The new year would be all about touring. And then the once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic hit. Relocating his family away from their longtime home of Los Angeles, Elfman buckled down and got to work on something...

The way Mike Doughty tells it, it’s a bit of a minor miracle Soul Coughing lasted for eight years. It was long enough, however, to generate three LPs, a handful of alternative rock radio hits and enough stories to fill a few memoirs. Attempts to reunite have, predictably, fallen short, but Doughty has carved a path as an extremely prolific singer songwriter, culminating in last year’s Ghost of Vro...

The latest issue of The Nation — a double-issue on the subject of utopias — features a sprawling cover illustration by Michael DeForge. A group of smiling people are making art, making dinner, making out. Throughout it all is the constant presence of technology. It’s a fraught subject for any artist, but DeForge especially, whose work so often touches on science-fiction and politics. A pioneering...

Even among a list of peers that includes names titles like Eightball and Hate, there’s a strong case to be made that Love and Rockets is the most influential comic of its generation. It’s a fact that puts the series high on the all-time list. The 40-year-old series began in 1980 as a self-published book that was soon picked up by Fantagraphics. Two years in, Gilbert Hernandez gave the world “Heart...

“I know that I literally wrote the best book about pencil sharpening techniques that has ever existed or ever will exist,” David Rees explains, confidently. It’s a hard claim to refute. Rees knows a good niche when he sees it. It’s a characteristic that has lead to a both fascinating and nearly impossible to define career. Perpetually-correct Wikipedia alternately calls him a cartoonist, humorist...

The pandemic found Lou Barlow enamored with a surprising new creative outlet. The musician took to social media like Instagram and YouTube, playing songs, performing covers and celebrating holidays with his young family. In one video, he’s dressed as the Easter Bunny. In another, he’s covering the Paw Patrol theme with his own lyrics. It’s a side of the Sebadoh/Folk Implosion/Dinosaur Jr. musician...

Thirteen is a long time for any act to go between albums. That’s not to say that Johnny Brennan hadn’t kept busy in the meantime. The years included plenty of voice over work — including, most notably, a regular gig on Family Guy, courtesy of long-time fan, Seth MacFarlane. The Jerky Boys, too (Brennan is quick to point out) stuck around as well, soldiering on after the departure of collaborator,...

In June of last year, Chris Carrabba’s motorcycle crashed. It was another terrible event in a year of them. A handful of months after the pandemic engulfed the U.S., the singer embarked on a series of surgeries and rehab. The world had thrown another wrench into what should have been a triumphant year for Dashboard Confessional. To mark its 20th anniversary, the group planned a tour, greatest hits...

It’s clear that Pell is calling in from a hotel room. He’s back in Los Angeles, wearing a Dodgers hat to match his former adopted home. Like so many, however, the pandemic brought the importance of home into stark relief for the rapper/producer. This latest trip to Southern California mostly involves moving some belongings and tying up some loose ends. The past year has found Pell sharing the spot...

This January, Chris Murphy was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. Later that month, the Sloan bassist posted a photo on Instagram, stating, in part,  "It’s a drag but it could be worse. I have a great doctor who is on top of my treatment. Of course, I hope I get better. If I had to sum up my feelings in a facial expression, it’s the one I have." It summed up the musician’s general approach to things — s...

In February, Steve Lukather released I Found The Sun Again. The guitarist’s eight solo album arrived alongside an LP by Joseph Williams, featuring heavy contributions the Toto singer, along with bandmate David Paich. Lukather and Paich have maintained constants across the band’s 44 year history (though the latter has been forced to retire from touring over health-related reasons). It’s a timeline...

A quarterly of reissues from Drawn & Quarterly has offered a fresh opportunity to reexamine King Cat. Not that there’s every a bad time to revisit John Porcellino’s work. The cartoonist has self-published nearly 80 issues of the series over the past 32 years. The black and white mini comic remains both deeply influential and extremely singular, built from a DIY ethos that informs all of his work,...

[Spotty audio warning] Released in February, The Pahrump Report chronicles Lisa Carvers years in the titular Nevada City. A strange town in the desert some 90 minutes outside of Las Vegas, the writer found her new home on something of a whim. When we caught up, Carver had already left the town for other locations in Nevada and was planing an escape to Africa. Pahrump, for all of its magic — and, p...

The past few years found her trying something new — or, rather, old. With a pair cover albums, Juliana Hatfield first tackled the song of Olivia Newton-John and the then Police — both to rave reviews. Earlier this month, the singer-songwriter released a new solo album — her 19th. Titled Blood, the LP explores the divisiveness and psychological tole the last four years have had on much of the Ameri...

Released in 2020, And Now, Sir — Is This Your Missing Gonad features familiar faces from Jim Woodring’s Frank universe. As ever, the artist’s masterfully fine-tuned art marries the precious with the horrific, but this time further obfuscates meaning with the addition of seemingly random captions. More than 30 years after first putting frank to paper is his self-published mini comic, Jim, Woodring...

By his own admission, George Lewis Jr. makes too much music. He describes it like an addition — referencing a folder on his desktop started in late 2019 with 150 song he confesses no one will likely ever hear. Of course, there’s plenty has shared, as a producer, songwriter and, most notably, as Twin Shadow. After a move to Brooklyn, the project began in earnest with 2010’s release of Forget, which...

The third in a trilogy, For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her is McKinley Dixon’s most personal and deeply-felt work to date. The musician has taken in new experiences and explored new sounds, all while looking to explore stories that don’t get told nearly enough on record. Like much of Dixon’s work, the album sets thoughtful hip-hop verses to live jazz instrumentation. It’s electric and vibran...

There are all manner of reasons The Secret to Superhuman Strength was eight years in the making. For one, Alison Bechdel was dealing with the rather surreal experience of watching her book, Fun Home, be adapted into a successful Broadway musical (soon to be a major motion picture). There was also the matter of turning 60, which the cartoonist did last year — a perfect beat on which to end a book b...

As the conversation winds down, I go grab my painting off the wall for the artist to describe. It’s a rare opportunity. It’s also the second time in a month that I’ve done this on Zoom call, following a recent one with friends where we all realized we had Keenes on our wall. In certain circles, Steve Keene’s work has become a fixture. A generation discovered the artist through his cover paintings...