RiYL

Happiness wasn’t too far from home. After stints in larger cities, following more traditional music routes, Morgxn settled just outside of Nashville – it doesn’t hurt, of course, when home is Music City USA. When not on tour or in the in the studio, you can generally find him at Fruity Farm, a plot of land he and his husband share. The joy is contagious, and something the songwriter is happy to sp...

A few months after celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut, Ledbetter Heights, Kenny Wayne Shepherd returns to the show to reflect on three decades in music. Upon release, much of the album's coverage focused on the fact that the guitarist was still in his teens. Writing or co-writing every track on the album, Shepherd was quick to silence critics looking to write him off as a novelty. All t...

A brute force approach helped Drew Stroik land a record deal. The unknown musician sent demo after demo to his favorite musicians, until one -- Andy Chase – responded positively. Chase pulled in frequent collaborator (and current Ivy bandmate) Bruce Driscoll to produce an album full of Stroik’s off-kilter bedroom pop. 65th and York finally saw the light of day last month – 15 years after its initi...

They didn’t go into the forest to create a record. One evening of music and words surrounded by nature was plenty enough reason to gather. Still, Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople emerged, as the first official document of the two long-time friends collaborating. More than 30 years into his career, Williams doesn’t have anything in particular to prove. The mid-90s saw him...

On 2022's I Don’t Know My Words, Anand Wilder embraced DIY in a different way, performing each song entirely by himself. Three years after Yeasayer's non-amicable split, the musician clearly had something to prove. Three years later, however, collaboration is back on the table with Psychic Lessons, a celebration of music making, genre, and just about anything else that popped into Wilder's head. H...

Nothing throughout the Descendents' long history can be taken for granted, started with I Don't Want to Grow Up. The band's second record, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this May, arrived after a two-year hiatus, which found singer Milo Aukerman at college (as the debut album helpfully noted) and drummer Bill Stevenson joining Black Flag. Certainly no one could anticipate, in spite of a few...

Bursting with the vitality of NYC's outer-boroughs, Laveda returned in September with Love, Darla. The Brooklyn by way of Albany harkens back to the heyday of noisy indie, while forging its own playful path. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A radical departure in a music career defined by them, Jamie Lidell's first full length in nearly a decade finds the artist exploring a new instrument, genre, tones, and collaborators. Born of the pandemic, Places of Unknowing is a work of ambient neoclassical piano music with no clear common sonic connections to the electronic-turned-soul musician's earlier work, beyond pervasive and de...

Debi Derryberry's fifth album, Go to Sleep, combines longstanding loves of music making and animation into a single YouTube project, pulling together nine tracks aimed at lulling kids to bed. The work is a labor of love for a voice actress with somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 IMDB credits to her name. Along with playing the title character in the long running Jimmy Neutron franchise, the actr...

Note: The interview was cut short and kind of sputters out at the end for weather related reasons I won’t go into here. We’ll have to get the band back on for a followup. Periscope at Midnight finds doubleVee plumbing familiar depths, as Barbara and Allan Vest revisit the latter’s previous band, The Starlight Mints, to put a spin on a pair of old tracks. Notes of the earlier baroque indie-pop act...

Earlier songs were political, but never as overtly so. There isn’t much value left to wring from subtlety these days. Battlewear is, fittingly, angry. It’s the product of navigating an unpredictable – and increasingly bleak – landscape. An hour before we hop on the call, a right wing reactionary is murdered in broad daylight. Kadhja Bonet believes in the power of art and community. And while they’...

Ahead of their upcoming Image series, Death to Pachuco, artist Rachel Merrill and author Henry Barajas discuss the process of bringing the historical fiction to life. Set against the backdrop of the Sleepy Lagoon Case and Zoot Suit Riots, the book explores themes of racial tension through a lens of hard boiled detective fiction. The pair also talk about picking up the mantle for long running newsp...

SunYears felt like starting over, in a very real sense. Peter Bjorn and John were on the backburner, and Peter Morén earlier solo work was decidedly more self-selecting, with Swedish lyrics touching on more experimental soundscapes. There was also a global pandemic to contend with. The Song Forlorn finds Moren happily reembracing his love of pop rock songwriting, with help from stalwarts like Ron...

Celebrating its 40th birthday exactly one month ago, Rum Sodomy & the Lash requires no introduction. As epilogues go, however, one could do far worse than the alternately raucous and sublime tour pieced together by surviving members, Spider Stacy, Jem Finer, and James Fearnley. Stacy joins us to discuss the anniversary, the recent loss of frontman, Shane MacGowan, and his own fascinating music...

He may have had something to prove early on, leaving the relative comfort of a rocket ship success like Nine Inch Nails, but it didn’t take Richard Patrick long. Filter’s first album went platinum on the strength of its first single, and the band was off to the proverbial races. Its follow up was slow to surface, courtesy of inner turmoil, but it eventually emerged five years later, with an even b...

Thirty-three years, 10+ members, and a dozen albums later, Comet Gain hasn’t lost its step. Released in June, Letters to Ordinary Outsiders maintains the magic, once again. The group’s work is perpetually tied to the pop sensibilities of David Christian (née Feck), who joins us on a questionable WiFi connection from rural France. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jenni Rose announced herself in style, with a Rolling Stone interview, back in April. The article dropped a few months The Vandoliers’ fifth album, Life Behind Bars. With a record full of deeply personal songs dealing with – among other topics – her transition – she chose the celebrated music magazine to help tell her story. It’s a courageous move in an age when simply being yourself can be a defi...

In the end, New Radiations could only be a multimedia affair. Marissa Nadler seems to have her hands in nearly every medium these days, from music, to filmmaking, painting, photography, and even stop-motion. The Nashville-based artist seems to have her hand in every aspect of the process, from songwriting to production. The resulting 11 tracks comprise what may well be her most honest and personal...

What began as a poetry cycle quickly evolved into a dozen of Ketch Secor’s most personal songs. Story the Crow Told Me makes little effort to mask its autobiography, with stories of hitch hiking, busking, charting the earliest days of Old Crow Medicine Show. The singer joins us to reflect on the songs about the moments that made him.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...

There’s prolific and then there’s the Vitamin String Quartet. In its roughly quarter-century of existence, the outfit has produced more than 400 albums. It helps, of course, that VSQ is more concept than band – a stable of musicians that rotate between tours and records. With a focus on classical covers of pop hits -- including recent tributes to Frank Ocean and BTS -- the group has become a kind...

Sixteen years is a long time between solo albums, but Ben Nichols’ role fronting Lucero has kept him plenty busy. In that time, the Memphis-based punk-country band has released a half-dozen albums, three live records, and a pair of EPs. In the Heart of the Mountain finds the musician delving into the deeply personal, expanding his approach to songwriting and releasing what he calls, “the closest I...

Books, World War I pigeons, queer dating, bygone New York City haunts – Checked Out has a bit of something for everyone. Katie Fricas’ first book is a kind of, sort of memoir about a young cartoonist navigating her way through life in the big city. It’s a delightful and delightfully idiosyncratic take on lengths we go to make our art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Siouxie And The Banshees, The Psychedelic Furs, R.E.M., Cyndi Lauper -- Knox Chandler's resume reads like a who's who of late-20th century pop music. These days, however, the Kentucky-born musician is taking a decidedly more experimental and meditative approach to music making. His latest, The Sound, build on Chandler's unique "sound ribbon" approach to song construction. Hosted on Acast. See acas...

There are two distinct phases during the writing of Hue Mirror: before and after. Course’s third album is a product of pain, uncertainty and eventual diagnosis. The latter arrived in the form of ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease resulting in body-wide inflammation. Despite the initial uncertainty, however, Jess Robbins never shies away from the truth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...

Holy Lacrimony is a book about turning sadness into art. Also aliens, interpretive dancing and – in an unexpected way – the Scream franchise. Each component has a special meaning to Michael DeForge, not the least of which is Ghostface, the iconic antagonist from the latter. Released by Drawn & Quarterly in March, the book is surreal, funny – and much like DeForge’s art – more complex than it a...