RiYL

  Launched in summer 2018, the Awkward Sex and the City podcast maintain the magic the has made the stage show of the same name a hit with New York City audience. Founder and host Natalie Wall is joined by fellow comedians who explore their own uncomfortable sex stories, celebrating the…less sexy elements of intimacy. Wall joins us to discuss her comedy career, getting personal on stage and the im...

Released in February, Mort Gerberg on the Scene is a loving celebration of the long time New Yorker cartoonist. For half a century, the artist has taken on contemporary city life and politics, capturing everything from basketball games to the Nixon administration.  It was the latter topic that found him guesting on The Today Show, live drawing the controversial president alongside Barbara Walters....

From the sound of it, Lou Doillon was surprised as anyone by her own musical successes. Her 2012 debut put her new career on the map, earning her a French Grammy for Artist of the Year, only to be catapulted to global fame with her 2016 followup. Fame as a singer-songwriter, at least. As an actress, model and the daughter of two famous parents, Doillon has never not been a known quantity, but maki...

We get the chance to talk to a lot of great seasoned artists, but there’s a wonderful change of pace to interviewing one who’s just getting started. London born and raised, Jnr. Williams released his debut EP Where We Start earlier this year on Arista. The singer-songwriter creates stripped-down, jazz-influenced R&B that taps into earnest and emotional subject matter. In this bonus episode, we dis...

It’s been a long day of press, but Bruce Hornsby is firing on all cylinders when he arrives for one final interview. Absolute Zero is the artist’s most-hyped record in years, courtesy of collaborations with the next generation of artists, including Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Hornsby, it seems, is just hyped up himself, speaking in pilot lingo, as he passes through reception. I jury rig a microphone...

Live from Book Are are Magic in Brooklyn, we sat down with Julian Glander to celebrate the launch of his new Fantagraphics title, 3D Sweeties. The book collects a series of short strips the cartoonist has been compiling over the years through freelancing for various outlets. It features Glander’s signature computer generated characters in vignettes that are sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful an...

When Before We Forgot How to Dream arrived, most of the coverage understandably centered on the songwriter’s age. At 19, Bridie Monds-Watson has released a remarkably worldly and mature record for Rough Trade. It’s been four years, the woman behind Soak having taken some well-deserved time off from recording and touring. She moved from Derry, North Ireland, to the perennial musical hot spot of Man...

I first met Shunsuke Aoki on a trip to Tokyo last year. The roboticist’s work fascinated me. From its brain-controlled cat ears and a robotic pillow with a tail that wags as you pet it, to more serious devices for older family members, Aoki’s Yukai Engineer has created some utterly fascinating products. On a recent trip to New York, Aoki and I sat down at Brooklyn cafe to discuss Aoki and Yukai’s...

In 2015 Carriers became Lauren Weinstein’s most critically acclaimed work to date. The five-part webcomic series found the cartoonist winning widespread recognition and a number of awards, including The The Society of Illustrators’ Gold Medal.  Weinstein’s work has never shied away from the personal, but motherhood has found her examining her own life even more intently than earlier work. The seri...

The band calls it “dog.” It’s an ever present quest to get heavier, and with each subsequent record, Health’s members demand more of it. Other groups that have been doing this for nearly 15 years might have slowed down or mellowed out, but for Health, there’s always a need for more dog. These days, John Famiglietti finds himself spending more time behind a computer screen than an electric bass. In...

Beulah hit like a tidal wave, marking a swift end to John Paul White’s music hiatus. It was a well-deserved break after the dissolution of the Grammy Award winning duo, the Civil Wars, but real life could only key the music at bay for so long. With his latest album due out this week, White reflects on Beulah as kind of an anomaly, an album that came almost effortlessly. The Hurting Kind, on the ot...

A lifelong Oklahoman, Ryan Lindsey is a happy Tulsa resident, these days. Half of Broncho resides in the Sooner State’s second largest city. The other two are a two hour drive away in Norman, the college town where the band got its start. It’s a Tulsa warehouse, however, that the band truly calls home. Before Broncho moved in, the spot was used to manufacturer hot tubs, and left some nasty chemica...

A few minutes into our conversation, Hannibal Buress injects mid-question, “How is it my first interview in Nigeria is with a white dude?” busting up mid-way through. The whole scene’s admittedly odd. We’re seated across from each other in my Lagos hotel room. My wheeled suitcase is flipped upside down on the coffee table, with my recording setup gingerly placed on top. The comedian hasn’t slept t...

When Penguins arrived late last year, it was the latest in a long line of projects from a seemingly restless artist. The Fantagraphics book found Nick Thorburn taking the plunge into comics for the first time, amid a long career as a critically acclaimed indie musician. His first published work is a remarkably adept one, showcasing a keen knowledge of the subtle art of wordless story telling. It’s...

A move to Los Angeles may have mellowed Matthew Murphy out a bit. The warm weather and sunshine has tends to have the effect on people, and the results have certainly begun to manifest themselves on The Wombats’ fourth album. But as the title Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, clearly indicates, for all the talk of slowing down, the biting sarcasm that has come to define the Liverpool group’s o...

In 2014, Drawn & Quarterly published Over Easy. It was a story that had been percolating for decades in cartoonist Mimi Pond’s mind, but life, family and the daunting task of actually sitting down to write it got in the way. By the time the cartoonist was ready to pitch the story, the publisher insisted on breaking it up into two volumes. In 2017, the second part, The Customer is Always Wrong, arr...

In a career spanning four decades, screenwriter Ed Solomon has worked on some of Hollywoods biggest titles, from X-Men to Charlie’s Angels. But it’s his film, co-written with longtime collaborator Chris Matheson, that may well be his most iconic. 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure remains one of the most wholly original major studio films in recent memory. The 1991 sequel, cowritten by Solomo...

A lot can happen in six years. It’s the entire lifetime of some prominent bands. John Vanderslice has certainly been through plenty, including the death of a close family member and what might well have been the end of his own music career. In April, however, the musician with return with The Cedars, a sonically complex and emotionally rich new record, inspired by personal upheaval and a recent ob...

Unhappy as a creative director at Nickelodeon during the heady days of Ren and Stimpy, Lu Olkowski left the board room and offices behind to pursue her long time passion for public radio. The major career change found her starting over from scratch in a related, but still completely foreign field. Inspired by shows like This American Life, Olkowski entered the world of public radio as intern, redi...

Relentless optimism may well be Michael Franti’s defining characteristic. It’s a rare trait, especially in these days of ideologically-driven, social media-fostered detachment. But for all the positivity of a record like Stay Human Vol. II, Franti and Spearhead never avoid the harsh light of reality. In fact, the album doubles as a soundtrack to the Franti-directed documentary that finds the music...

Prior to Shades, music had never been a full-time pursuit for Vera Sola (Danielle Aykroyd). Splitting time between New York and Los Angeles, voice acting was her primary gig, until things went pear-shaped. Sick family members, the ends of relationships and myriad other issues knocked her flat. But encourage from peers helped instill confidence, first as a touring musician with indie folk singer El...

It’s never quite clear where the memoir ends and the fairy tale begins in Passing for Human, and for Liana Finck, the distinction is incidental at best. Growing up, her home life was spent in a fantastical house built by her architect mother, provide a warm escape from the sometimes harsh realities of school life. These days, the artist is far more social, with a pool of friends in New York City a...

Due out in February, Post Earth is only their second full length, but the members of FEELS going way back. A quartet of of Los Angeles natives, the members have been playing together in various iterations for well over a decade. And it shows. All four are crowded around a microphone, sometimes speaking in unison, as they discuss how their Tim Green-produced album became a kind of accidental politi...

When Douglas Rushkoff asks you to chat, you say yes. We’ve spoken to the visionary media theorist a dozen times over the years, and each opportunity always yields fascinating new results. These days, Rushkoff is peddling Team Human. What began as a weekly interview show with a wide range of subjects is now a book — a kind of manifesto for socializing in particularly bleak times. Along with uncanny...

After years of writing about music, Taleen Kali decided to create it. She began performing live sound collages, before heading in a more rock oriented direction with the quartet, TÜLIPS. Last year, the musician released her first solo record, Soul Songs on local Los Angeles label, Lolipop records. She also keeps busy as a yoga teacher and the driving force behind the literary publication Dum Dum Z...