RiYL

There’s a video shot in 1991 of a 13-year-old Jen Shyu playing the hell of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on grand piano backdropped by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. A lifelong musician who studied theater and opera at Stanford and has performed at  Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Shyu’s current work veers into the experimental and avant-garde, all while paying homage to a wide range of mus...

A Change of Diet finds Elliott Moss living in the wake of a decade-long relationship. The singer writer grapples with the all of the major and unexpected knock-on effects of such a life change. It’s his most deeply personal record, intertwining such sentiments with a dense electronic soundtrack over the course of its 11 tracks, marrying the brutally honest with the willfully opaque. Like much of t...

Well before her debut album We Need to Talk arrived in April 2019, Tayla Parx had already established herself as a music force. As a songwriter, she’d penned tracks for some of the biggest names in the business,fFrom Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande, to K-Pop bands like BTS. A decade prior, Parx made her film debut, in the role of Little Inez in the adaptation of the stage music. At the ripe old of...

It was shaping up to be a banner year for Wire. When we sat down in the Musical Hall of Williamsburg green room, the band was in the process of adding a west coast leg to their tour in support of the band’s terrific new record, Hive Mind. The band also used the opportunity to announce 10:20, a second new LP released in conjunction with Record Store Day. The album finds the band taking a very Wire-...

At 19, Kelli Dunham was living in Haiti in the midst of a Civil War. From there, it was a fairly straightforward path to becoming a nun — albeit one that also required a conversion to Catholicism. These days, Dunham lives in New York City as a genderqueer nurse and standup comedian. It’s a natural combination for an artists who happily draws the line between comedy and tragedy, drawing on material...

When I first met Emily Panic, she was a touring musician. Her work as a bass player and backup singer brought tours with Foxygen, Run the Jewels, Sleigh Bells and Miike Snow. There was even a spot performing vocals on a Bryan Ferry album. In recent years she’s shifted into comedy — arguably an even harder racket than the life of a professional musician. But her sketch work has landed her a hosting...

The grandson of an opera singer, Michael Blume took to music at an early age, first learning the piano and trumpet and ultimately touring with an a cappella group while attending Yale. Yes, the it was the Whiffenpoofs. But the singer found his true voice after moving away from academia. Supporting himself in New York first through SAT tutoring and later wedding gigs, Blume has since become and idi...

A fixture in the New York indie comics scene for some years, Colleen AF Venable has made a name for herself designing covers for publishers like First Second. An accomplished author in her own right, Venable has released a number of children’s and YA titles, including Mervin the Sloth and the Guinea Pig series. Most recently, her young adult comic, Kiss Number 8, earned her and artist Ellen T. Cre...

At 19, Jamie Drake was sure that she was too told to break into the music business. Nearly two decades later, she officially has, with the arrival of Everything’s Fine. There was music in the meantime, of course, but the singer-songwriter is confident that she finally found her voice of what’s been deemed her debut LP. And indeed, she’s in fine form, as both writer and musician. On a trip to New Y...

In the music world, everyone sounds like someone — except Mary Halvorson. All musical touchstones feel like a stretch when attempting to describe the work of the New York-based musician. Avant-garde or free jazz works to the extent that either actually describe a musical style. There’s rock in there, certainly, and I’ve even seen the term “experimental flamenco” bandied about. But all belie the un...

In 2019, Saves the Day’s debut LP, Through Being Cool, turned 20. Unsurprisingly, the New Jersey band marked the event on the road, with a tour that found them playing the album in its entirety. Two decades and nine full lengths in, a lot has changed for the band, including several lineup shifts that have left frontman Chris Conley as the sole founding member. Now 40, the musician has come a long...

For those exclusively familiar with Nels Cline’s work as the guitar player for Wilco, Spinning Creature may come as a kind of surprise. But well before the musician began playing with the indie rock juggernaut, he was never afraid to let his freak flag fly. A student of jazz and the New York rock and avant garde scenes that gave birth to legends like John Zorn and Sonic Youth, much of Cline’s work...

Formed in Southern, California by teenage brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald, Redd Kross was never one to follow pop cultural trends. Torch bearers for a more classic rock sound, the band rose the through ranks with hardcore legends like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks (even sharing members in the process). But the group was never truly belonged to any scene — and somehow belong to them all, in the...

This week marks the 12th anniversary of Stop Podcasting Yourself. What began as a venue for two Vancouver-based comedians has since become one of the longest running and most beloved comedy shows in the medium. For more than six-hundred weekly episodes, the show has been a remarkable consistent — and hilarious showcase for cohosts Dave Shumka and Graham Clark, along with a rotating cast of establi...

The New Pornographers are running late. It’s hard to say whose decision it was to drive from midtown at this time of day on a weekday — likely not former New York City resident, Carl Newman, if I had to guess. These days the ringleader and frontman lives a far more idyllic life, a two-and-a-half hour drive away in Woodstock. To hear him tell it, it’s a veritable retirement home for rock legends —...

Punk rock, politics, history and some gracious nods to science — there’s a lot to like about The Future of Another Timeline. Annalee Newitz’s latest explores the possibilities of time travel in a world where the sci-fi standby is downright utilitarian. The book is a lovingly researched second novel for Newitz, who joined us back in 2017, shortly after releasing their debut, Autonomous, an explorat...

Fresh off her hiatus, Renee Holiday is ready to put on a show. Late last year, the artist formerly known as Shaprece (full name: Shaprece Renee Richardson) put on “Beautiful” in her native Seattle. The multimedia event was held at the Can Can, beneath the city’s iconic Pike Place Market. After “regrouping” to deal with both self-imposed and external pressures, Holiday release “Ain’t Got No Love” i...

With The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga found his perfect hook. Casting his go-to surrogate Glenn Ganges as an insomniac, the cartoonist discovered an ideal frame for storytelling that that runs the gamut from the beginning of earth to the dot com bubble burst. It’s peak Huizenga, really. The work belies the cartoonist’s love of learning, visualizing a stream of information that leans heavily on a...

We don’t have a lot of time. I’m setting up my gear in some Sirius-XM meeting room, while Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan order lunch. They get something nice, a welcome change from the usual road fare. The Milk Carton Kids just finished an appearance on Steve Earle’s show, chatting with the country legend following an appearance on the Howard Stern after show. It’s a bit of cultural whiplash, bu...

A lot has changed in Krewella’s world in the seven years since the band debuted with Get Wet. The group’s second full-length finds the one-time trio down a member, while having jumped from Columbia to their own label, Mixed Kids. But Zer0’s an album dedicated to fresh starts and sister duo Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf vibrate positivity as they discuss the project and their own positive life changes....

There have been plenty of opportunities for Daniel Clowes to get reflective in recent years. 2015 saw the release of The Complete Eightball, a massive two-volume hardcover set that collected the full eight year, 18 issue run of his iconic underground series. Next month sees the release of Original Art, a deluxe single volume book that examines his raw pencil and ink work, from Eightball to 2016’s...

When she arrives, Leslie Stevens is carrying a large beach bag. Protruding from its insides is a large cowboy hat sporting a massive feather. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter, whose career found her flirting a number of genres, including time as the frontwoman of the punk band, Zeitgeist Auto Parts. But her the twang of her latest, Sinner, is perfectly suited to he...

It hasn’t always been easy for Fastball. Some night, weeks and even years, playing rock and roll music can feel futile, especially when it’s not clear when the next show might be. But neither Tony Scalzo nor Miles Zuniga hesitate for a second when asked if they’re doing exactly what the should be. And while the future of the Austin band hasn’t always felt certain, the group has remained remarkably...

In 2019, Professor Richard Wolff was everywhere. He published two introduction to economics books — Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism — hosted a weekly YouTube show and podcast and made countless media appearances, all while serving as a visiting professor at New York’s New School. As he offhandedly points out during this conversation, we were his third podcast appearance of the da...

In hindsight, things happened quickly for Paula Cole. Before her first record arrived, she was on tour with Peter Gabriel, playing stadiums in Europe. The following year, she released her debut and deleted with Melissa Etheridge on VH1. Her sophomore record, This Fire, sported two decade defining hits in “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and “I Don’t Want to Wait.” It’s a tremendous rise for a kid...