RiYL

Some time in six or so years since I last sat down with Adam Lisagor, something strange happened. He became a nationally broadcast product spokesperson. It wasn’t the career trajectory any of us were expecting, but here we are.  Over the years, the video producer had begun to appear on camera during his signature well produced startup ads. But it was TrueCar that made him a in inescapable presence...

In November 2018, Ace of Cups released their self-titled debut. The album arrived more than 50 years after the band’s formation. With several tours and a second double album on the way, it’s clear the group has every intention of making up for lost time. The groups was an anomaly during its first go-round. The all-female rock quintet shared stages at legendary venues like the Fillmore with the lik...

When he was 16, Lou Barlow formed Deep Wound. Two years later, he and the hardcore band’s  drummer, J Mascis would create Dinosaur Jr. (then simply Dinosaur), one of alternative’s most beloved and influential groups. Barlow stuck around for three albums — regarded by many as the band’s best. That would have been enough to have cemented his status in the indie rock pantheon, but the music would go...

Five years ago, Gastor Almonte quit his job and went all in on standup. It was no small commitment from a married man with two kids and a six figure sales job. But a supportive wife, encouraging family members and his position as a landlord in East New York, Brooklyn allowed him to take the leap. With the recent release of his debut album, Immigrant Made, things appear to be paying off. Almonte’s...

Things are a lot quieter. The last time I say down with Guster, the full band passed around a mic, seated at a table in the front of the sadly now-defunct Grassroots on St. Marks Place. Percussionist/drummer Brian Rosenworcel came alone this time, and the ambience is little more than an office air conditioner. It’s a welcome change and one that allows us to get to the heart of the group’s nearly 3...

The first thing you learn upon meeting Joanna Sternberg is that they want to be your friend. It’s nothing about you, specifically, mind. They would love to be friends with everyone, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. The second thing you learn, quite probably, is Sternberg’s lifelong love of Motown bassist James Jamerson. It’s a fact pertinent enough to be list in the two sentence bi...

Shortly after appearing on the podcast way back in 2015, Joe Biel sent me an email. Since the interview, he’d been diagnosed with autism (or “Asperger’s” at the time), a revelation that had already begun to have a profound effect on his life. Biel returned 30-odd episodes later to discuss the insight and impact. On a recent visit to New York City, the Portland-based publisher returned my apartment...

In 2006, a 19-year-old Yuna auditioned for Malaysian reality singing show, One in a Million, ultimately making it into the top 40 prior to elimination. After finishing up law school, the she threw herself into her songwriting at a time when Myspace was still a musical gatekeeper. Discovering her music online, agents flew to Malaysia to meet the singer, eventually signing her to Fader. The label re...

In February, “Peter Frampton Finale—The Farewell Tour” was announced. Running through October, the tour would find the musician going on the road one final time. Of course, in the world of older rock musicians, the “farewell tour” has become a kind of running joke. For Frampton, however, an artist whose work has been inexorably linked to the live setting since Comes Alive made him a household name...

At 15, Michael Mwenso was on stage with James Brown. It took the Sierra Leonean teenager four years to convince the godfather of soul to let him up there, through a combination of raw talent and persistence. But once he did, he wowed the crowds and Brown alike. It was then that Mwenso got a taste for the stage and learned the dos and don’ts of management from one of the late-20th century’s great b...

Prior to The Deconstruction, Mark Oliver Everett took a break. Four years passed between albums. Honestly, it’s not too long for most musical acts pushing a quarter century, but The Eels have released records like clockwork, with a dozen studio albums currently under their belt. For Everett (that’s “E,” to you), the last few years have marked a new chapter. He got did some acting married, got divo...

In March, a comic by Eli Valley landed him on the radar of Meghan McCain. There was nothing extraordinaire about the piece from a cartoonist who has long wading into the divisive world of U.S.-Israeli relations, but the commentary about the American right’s relationship with the country caused The View cohost to lash out on Twitter. That, in term, put a relatively unknown cartoonist in the nationa...

On a day in late October 195, Kate Slaugherback singlehandedly killed 140 rattlesnakes to protect herself and her young son. When she ran out of ammunition, she grabbed a nearby sign to bludgeon the venomous reptiles. Legend has it, the sign read “No Hunting.” It’s clear why Neyla Pekarek found the ideal subject matter in Rattlesnake Kate. She also found something of a kindred spirit. Playing cell...

The K Chronicles has been an alternative weekly staple since the 90s. The strip, which mixes the personal with the political, has weathered the bumbling of George W. Bush, the hopefulness of Obama and the existential dread of Trump. All through it, cartoonist Keith Knight has balanced family with a multimedia career including comics, music (most notably the five-piece hip-hop group, the Marginal P...

A veteran of the New Oreans slam poetry scene, Tarriona “Tank” Ball’s career only really caught  fire when she embraced her musical impulses. She became a member of collective stylized on the success of The Roots, backed by a handful of local musicians. But as members fell away to embrace family and other life obligations, Tank and a core group of Bangas held on. In 2017, the band won NPR’s Tiny D...

In 2017’s The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Ben Lindbergh and co-author Sam Miller detailed the season they spent running an independent baseball team with strict adherence to sabermetrics, analytic-based analysis that has come to define the past decade of management. This year, Lindbergh and fellow baseball writer Travis Sawchik take on the majors with The MVP Machine. The recently released book d...

In Cannonball, Kelsey Wroten tells the story of a a young writer dealing with the successes of her first novel. After her debut graphic novel became a hit in its own right, Wroten has seen some of the book’s events come to life first hand. Of course, the cartoonist isn’t her character. The Kansas City transplant had already made a name for herself as an illustrator, her work appearing in such publ...

Seeing Freaks at 19 was a formative experience. A small public viewing of the film in a Greenwich Village loft left Bill Griffith feeling baffled and fascinating, with the overwhelming desire to express the experience through art. This was well before he became another convert of the underground comics movement, eight years later, his best known and longest lived creation bore the clear influence...

Released last year on Secret Acres, Little Stranger presented a much welcome retrospective of Edie Fake’s more recent comics work. The book collects an assortment of pieces published in various zines and anthologies since his seminal series, Gaylord Phoenix. After stints in Chicago and Los Angeles, Fake currently resides in the California desert of Joshua Tree. Here they largely focuses paintings...

2010 to 2012 was a busy time for Bad Books. By the end of its first two years, the band had two LPs and a tour under its belt. It was easy enough to hit the ground running, of course. Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull and Robert McDowell met Kevin Devine on tour, an opening act slowly ingratiating himself into the band’s live set. The fit was so perfect the trio began a new group with a new name. B...

Law school didn’t work out for Rachel Kramer Bussel. After failing to complete her studies as NYU, she began writing erotic on the side, while working as a paralegal. Twenty years later, she continues to write and edit works in the genre, even after moving to a far more suburban life in New Jersey. In the intervening years, she’s edited dozens of collections, including the Best Sex Writing series....

Like many of his fellow Pittsburgher cartoonists, Jim Rugg’s work lives at a fascinating cross section of mainstream and indie comics culture. It’s a phenomenon Rugg and cohost Ed Piskor happily explore in their YouTube series, Cartoonist Kayfabe, which breaks down the earlier days of Wizard Magazine, issue by issue. His work, too, is the product of a confluence of distinct influences, from the sk...

In Satan Goes to the Mind Control Convention’s eponymous essay, Joseph Flatley visits a convention of therapists dedicated to uncovering repressed memory, a fascinating artifact from the Satanic Panic that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s. His upcoming followup, Finders, is set to explore similar territory, this time focusing on a rumored kidnapping ring with CIA ties. Since leaving the world of tech...

When she arrives for the interview, Cara Beth Satalino has her luggage in tow. She’s gearing up for a handful of shows ahead ahead of the release of Outer Spaces’ sophomore release, Gazing Globe. It’s a nice spot ahead of a second record, having honed their chops in Baltimore, the trio has held its own alongside indie vets like Ted Leo, Waxahatchee and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Though the musician...

The way he tells it, The Hard Times was a hit right out of the gate. Some perfect combination of zeitgeist and internet algorithms had the satirical site racking up a million page views via social media sites like Facebook almost instantly. It’s a far cry from the sort of hard luck grinding stories one usually hears about the punk scene — but when it’s right, it’s right. Initially focused on the p...