Woodhouse Interviews

Metal and Country have more in common than you think. Like the void. The darkness at the center of Townes Van Zandt is the same consuming abyss that fuels Xasthur. Jordan Day knows that better than anyone. A metal guitarist at first, he’s now dedicated his art to old school, outlaw country plunging into the depths of the soul. His newest Learning to be Empty includes features from metal fiddle pla...

When Daughn Gibson disappeared, he left brief bursts of radio transmissions. EPs would suddenly appear on Bandcamp, taken down months later. Did that album even exist? It was an easy question to ask considering the noir, mysterious tone of his previous records. Gibson, bass-baritone sprawling out like a wounded animal moaning their last breaths, made three albums in the early 2010s that were too e...

Sometimes an album is a cage match. Sometimes that cage match is man vs self. Jab/cross from Spain’s Niños Luchando is the sound of a man fighting himself—or dancing with himself. With synth arpeggios spiraling like double helixes, spooky instrumentals jittering beside thumping kicks, this is self-reflection through the dancefloor. We talked with him below.

There’s a tendency to focus on a prodigy’s age and what they could do in the future. But that obscures what heavensouls has already done as a teenager. He became a RateYourMusic darling as one part of epic collage rap pranksters The Sidepeices. But his newest solo album westside trapped on its own is a remarkably self-assured, virtuosic effort, sparkling with the type of righteous anger that can l...

Take the Broad-Ridge spur straight to hell. Emily Moales’ version of Philly has baristas mingling with wizards and turnpikes to celestial realms. Its the mundane and the magical, but even dragons have to pay rent. Highway to Hell follows some lost soul in a Philadelphia-shaped purgatory, accompanied by chiming and lush pianos, skittering drum parts, and Moales own dreamy voice floating above it al...

“Condemn me” It’s the first sentiment on Belgian band Ão’s hypnotic, stunning album Malandra. Thumping electronic beats are bolstered by bellowing drums, labyrinthine guitar patterns entwining, and orchestral stings adding bloody drama. Singer Brenda Corijn brings alluring darkness from her Portuguese roots, the smoldering sadness of Fado, and the hope at the center of saudade, a moving, energetic...

Richard Carrick makes maps. Yes, he’s a pianist, and in the middle of a trilogy of albums inspired by North Africa, but each record outlines his cartography. l’Algérie, a tribute to Algeria, his mother’s homeland, sounds like a tour of antiquity and magic. The album is overflowing with captivating rhythms and motifs that return like old friends again and again. Somewhere in-between jazz, classical...

It’s the last day of summer, school is about to start, and the sun is setting. It still feels like heaven. Destination Heaven, the collaboration between East Coast sweethearts Euphoria Again and Dogwood Tales is a shaggy, ramshackle, lovely affair filled with the power of friendship. The swooning alt-country record is the perfect companion to long, hot nights with an Academy folding chair on a por...

Sculpture becomes painting becomes music. All is intwined. That’s the philosophy of Realf Heygate, musically known as Flaer. The multi-disciplinary artist explores family, grief, and nature in a vast swath of mediums, but they are all woven together, part of a mix media tapestry. On his newest album Translations, Heygate crafts ambient-folk, reminiscent of American folklorists Oregon, as he traces...

Si Me Ven Alegre is all push and pull, ebb and flow Laura Itandehui’s vibrant, infinitely danceable new album strolls through a bevy of Latin subgenres, always plucking the most colorful pieces for itself. Meanwhile, lovers are tossed across continent, the dead are ritualized through the power of rock’n’roll, and Itandehui’s band dances through tears of joy and pain. We talked to her below.

I NTERIA moves like a swan. Graceful on the surface, churning below to keep afloat. Nina Maia’s remarkably assured debut arrives with shimmering beauty. The production is sleek and lush by turns, her voice is pop diva perfection with a hint of smoldering, darker powers at the edges. But the influence of trip-hop detours and bursting walls of sound put INTERIA at an odd, intriguing place, even amon...

The Turning is a pulp novel turned into a metal album. And that is some of the highest praise I can heap on North Carolina stalwarts Bask. The churning mix of country, stoner metal, old school rock’n’roll, and cosmic storytelling lands The Turning somewhere between Conan and John Carter. It’s space cowboys with riffs. But this is no thudding slab of simple guitar chugging. The evolution of these e...

Heavenly reverb is suddenly shattered. Jack Tobias loves ruptures. That’s clear from his work in YHWH Nailgun, where machine gunning synths burst through previously coherent sonic thoughts. On his solo EP Warm People, he pulls off the same trick, enshrouding the songs in ethereal production, then the hammer drops. We talked to him here on The Woodhouse.

The names in Fragile Wings suggest softness; tenuous and brittle. And there is desperation in “Hopeless Magic,” “Three-Headed Moth” and, of course, the album title. But the album is anything but fragile. A deft mixture of progressive, death, and post-metal, Australia’s Cave Sermon delivers a rousing manifesto, in the same echelon as Deafheaven or Baroness, able to match impenetrable sludge with ro...

Stockholm duo Alex Zethson and Johan Jutterström’s new album is a beautiful, minimal reflection on perfectionism and failure. Through an intense and intimate recording process that picks up the clack of saxophone valves, and the humming of piano strings, It Could/If I refuses to let anyone forget there are two flawed, imperfect humans behind the music. The album reaches into melancholy and uncanni...

A pyromaniac haunts Points of Origin. John Leonard Orr, a serial arsonist who was also a fire investigator, shambles through Will Stratton’s excellent new album as a wayward grim reaper. But fire itself does not haunt Points of Origin. How could it when it’s the blazing heart of the album? From the former conman forecasting his propane-fueled death to the eon-spanning “Red Crossed Star,” which cha...

“I’m a savage/I’m a sad bitch,” slurs Quinton Barnes. He’s more the former than the latter on CODE NOIR. The Canadian rapper blends R&B, hip-hop, house, hyperpop, and anything else that would inject his beats with color and panache. There are moments of vulnerability, but Barnes is mostly here to celebrate and giggle. We talked to him below.

Supplication offers a path. Christianity, heteronormativity, they promise a program. Follow us, do not question, and you will be rewarded. What happens when you stray? That’s a core question behind Baths. Will Wiesenfeld’s electronic project has asked it again and again, especially on 2013’s brilliant Obsidian. And the uncertainty has come roaring back on his newest Gut. Gut refers to Wiesenfeld’s...

Ghosts litter Drinking Songs. The damned drowned, dying soldiers, innocents packed onto a train before it explodes; there’s not a note on Drinking Songs that isn’t haunted. Released 20 years ago this year, Drinking Songs marked a foundational shift in Matt Elliott’s life. He abandoned his work in the drum & bass group Third Eye Foundation and found a different way to pedal dread. Elliott compo...

The voice is an instrument. The voice is the narrative. Flipping between at least four different languages, and darting across each others’ vocal ranges, Catalan duo Tarta Relena offer a confounding, exhilarating version of vocal-focused music. Drawing from Gregorian chant, autotune forays, and Drum & Bass, their newest album És pregunta , could’ve been a total mess, but Helena Ros Redon and M...

We open by discussing an Irish goodbye vs a French exit. The phraseology is different but the outcome is the same; “Leaving the Party Early.” The first song on Trust Fund’s excellent Has it Been A While? and a perfect introduction to the introspection, paradoxes, and uncertainty all coming from a core human experience: terrified of being known, and knowing that’s the only way to be loved. Trust Fu...

Wrestler, rapper, world champion, pharmacist. Ahmed, With Love. might have the strangest resume of any MC alive. The Dublin-based rapper has joined a growing throng of Irish artist embracing a colorful, playful wave of hip-hop, influenced by ‘90s rap greats, but also a smattering mix of Brazilian beats, electronic silliness, and rave euphoria. We talked to him below.

Can you have a pleasant haunting? Sanje thinks so. “You can be Casper!” he says with a laugh. The lead single from his stunning debut, De Repente Otra Vez, is “Buen Fantasma,” the story of a long lost soul following those it once loved. But Sanje doesn’t envision any Paranormal Activity shenanigans, instead, this phantom wants to dance, hug, and watch over those it was connected to. It’s a lovely...

It’s autumn, and everything has changed. Band members come and go, songs mutate, the seasons shift. There’s an acceptance, both in title and general mood, for Clasping Hands with the Moribund, another entry into the U.K.’s recent salvo of excellent folk-rock. And as these prog-infused songs suggest, acceptance through art is one of the few ways to survive meteoric changes. We talked to Lifter belo...

Albums are not usually conversations. Or if they are, they’re pretty one way. Not so for Scott Orr’s Miracle Body, a deeply comforting slice of jazz, new age, and sophisti-pop that melds together into one of 2024’s most welcoming records. With his fluttering falsetto Orr ushers us in, sits us down, and offers tea and conversation. We talked to him below.