RiYL
665 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★★ - 57 ratingsRecommended if You Like: longform conversation with musicians, cartoonists, writers and other creative types.
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Episodes
Episode 577: Mark Erelli
April 19, 2023 11:59 - 47 minutes - 36.9 MBSometimes your body knows innately, well before those reach your brain and sink their hooks into your consciousness. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Blindsided’s title was just one of those strange bits of cosmic irony. The word arrived well before Mark Erelli was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) a degenerative eye condition that almost invariably leads to blindness. The diagnosis would arrive in the summer of 2020, triggered by fuzzy vision during an outdoor live show. It...
Episode 576: Barbara Brandon-Croft
April 15, 2023 11:45 - 58 minutes - 45.7 MBWhere I’m Coming From arrived in the Detroit Free Press at the tail end of the 80s. The strip, based on Barbara Brandon-Croft’s friend circle, was a breath of fresh air amid often formulaic newspaper comics. Two years later, Croft’s work received national exposure, upon being syndicated by United Press Syndicate. The strip would go on to run in more than 60 papers, plus magazines like Essence, before ceasing publication in 2005. Earlier this year, Drawn & Quarterly celebrated the beloved and ...
Episode: 575: (Bonus) Chip Zdarsky
April 09, 2023 21:56 - 42 minutes - 33.2 MBThis bonus episode features the a full version of my recent conversation with the Batman writer for Publishers Weekly. The feature can be found here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 574: Paul Rainey
April 08, 2023 01:06 - 51 minutes - 39.6 MBThis has never been a podcast obsessed with spoilers. In fact, the topic has rarely comic up over nearly 600 episodes. But Why Don’t You Love Me is the kind of book you desperately don’t want to spoiler. The Neil Gaiman quote that monopolizes the entire back cover of the Drawn & Quarterly edition sums it up nicely, reading, in part, “The kind of story leading to a last panel that’s all pain and joy and delivers the whole thing.” I would like to say that’s why this conversation veers into all ...
Episode 573: Lee Fields
March 30, 2023 23:14 - 1 hour - 41.9 MBAfter more than two decades, Lee Fields left the music industry and strongly considered opening a fish store. “What do you know about fish?” his wife asked. Very little, turns out. He did, however, know soul. In the late-60s, his performances had earned him the nickname “Little JB” – an homage to long-time hero, James Brown. Re-entering music in the 90s, Fields began experimenting with home recording, eventually attracting the attention of the Daptone scene. Last year, he and the label joined...
Episode 572: Renee Scroggins (of ESG)
March 25, 2023 01:57 - 44 minutes - 32.3 MBFormed in the late-70s South Bronx, ESG has an almost impossibly wide-ranging impact on popular music. Factory Records-owner Tony Wilson spotted sister act performing in Manhattan, and within days they found themselves recording in Manchester and playing opening night at the Hacienda. The group’s self-titled debut EP prove a massive hit with critics, while its third track, “UFO,” would go one to become one of music’s most-sampled tracks following the birth of hip-hop – a mixed blessing, to sa...
Episode 571: Daniel Hunt (of Ladytron)
March 17, 2023 23:43 - 1 hour - 54.7 MBEven with nearly a quarter-century under their belt, five years was a long time to wait between Ladytron releases. The group had settled into a comfortable cadence of three year, but 2019’s self-titled album finally arrived after two major releases. Life can get in the way – take, for example, Daniel Hunt’s move to Brazil. Or his production of big name artists like Christina Aguilera. Or various movie scores. This year, the band happily returned with its seventh record, recapturing the magic ...
Episode 570: Charles R. Johnson
March 09, 2023 20:51 - 49 minutes - 34.7 MBEarlier this year, The New York Times Review of Books published All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End. The collection features cartoons dating back to the 60s and 70s, offering a glimpse into author Charles R. Johnson many have not seen. Decades before he won the National Book Award for Middle Passage, his historical novel about the slave trade, Johnson was being published as a cartoonist. The works contained in the volume are gag strips tackling some of the day’s biggest hot button topics, ...
Episode 569: Ivan Julian (of Richard Hell and the Voidoids)
March 03, 2023 23:33 - 49 minutes - 38 MBThere are those musical careers that follow predictable paths – and then there’s Ivan Julian’s. The child of a Navy officer, he found himself in far flung corners, including Guantanamo Bay. After spending his early teenage years as the front man of a Led Zeppelin cover band, he found himself in London, as a touring guitarist for The Foundations, eventually leaving the group behind to take up residence in Macedonia. It was his time in New York that ultimately put him on the map, however, as a ...
Episode 568: Rich Brown
February 24, 2023 12:45 - 1 hour - 49.6 MBBeyond Vaudeville is a perfect time capsule. It’s a pre-internet era, when public access provided a rare outlet for entertainers. As Frank Hope, Rich Brown was the neurotic calm in the storm. Along with stoic sidekick David Greene, the pair held together a 30-minute variety show that paired celebrities with outsider entertainers for a decade. In 1997, the show was reborn as Oddville, MTV, which managed to revive some of the magic, in a more formal format that partnered gen x names with buzzbi...
Episode 567: Marc Byrd (of Hammock)
February 18, 2023 03:10 - 53 minutes - 46 MBSometimes you can’t fully appreciate the power of music until you need it. For me, it was 2019’s Silencia, which helped me through the darkest period of the pandemic. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to speak to Marc Byrd on the occasion of Hammock’s 12th release, Love in the Void. Byrd happily discussed the healing role of music as a musician, as writing and performing pulled him through some of his own darkest moments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 566: Say She She
February 10, 2023 15:21 - 44 minutes - 34.7 MBPrism is a breath of fresh air in troubled times. The Brooklyn-based seven piece delivers sunshine psychedelic soul grooves transported from a different time. At the group’s core is the three-part harmony of Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown. Their ties to groups like Chicano Batman and the Dap-Kings betray the band’s rich and dreamy sound. The trio joined us to discuss their New York City origin story and the struggles of being a musician in the post-pandemic landsca...
Episode 565: Tom Gauld
February 03, 2023 15:04 - 46 minutes - 40.5 MBAhead of our conversation at Greenlight Books in Brooklyn, Tom Gauld and I sat down to discuss his career. The cartoonist was on tour in the States to promote his latest Drawn & Quarterly collection, Revenge of the Librarians. The book is classic Gauld, gag strips with historic and literary edges. These days, he’s probably best know for the latter, with a weekly strip appearing in The Guardian. As the book’s title implies, the artist has earned a loyal following among librarians for comics th...
Episode 564: Robyn Hitchcock
January 26, 2023 01:26 - 44 minutes - 34.9 MBHard as it is to believe, the half-decade preceding last year’s Shufflemania was the Robyn Hitchcock has gone between albums since 1979’s Soft Boys debut, A Can of Bees. That band, while wildly influential, wasn’t long for this world, breaking up shortly after their second album, Underwater Moonlight. Within a year, Hitchcock released his first solo album, Black Snake Diamond Röle. Shufflemania, meanwhile, marks his 22nd solo studio album. Were it entirely up to him, he explains, he’d release...
Episode 563: Sadie Dupuis (of Speedy Ortiz)
January 16, 2023 23:02 - 47 minutes - 38.4 MBHer second poetry collection, Cry Perfume, deals with a lot. There’s a lot to deal with, from overdoses to a society that allows its artists to simply scrape by as a result of making art. Her band, Speedy Ortiz, hasn’t toured for some time, owing to the constraints of the pandemic, but has still found her way back onto the road, coheadlining a book tour with cartoonist, Michael DeForge. Dupuis has been plenty busy on the music front, as well. In 2020, she released Haunted Painting, the second...
Episode 562: Tim Burgess (of The Charlatans)
January 13, 2023 23:36 - 37 minutes - 31.1 MBWith his sixth solo album, Tim Burgess left nothing on the table. The 22-track album found every last new song put down on record. The singer says he wanted to give listeners ever once he had left. Of course, for some, creativity is a renewable resource. Since its formation in the late-80s, the Charlatans have given the world 13 LPs, each of which cracked the UK Top 40. Burgess also spent much of the pandemic focused on Tim’s Twitter Listening project, which brought together top musicians ...
Episode 561: Anvil (with director Sacha Gervasi)
December 31, 2022 23:57 - 32 minutes - 23.8 MBIn April, Anvil! The Story of Anvil marked its 13th anniversary. Five months later, frontman Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner joined the film’s director, Sacha Gervasi, to screen for a limited re-release. The film, which captures the ups and downs of the long-lived Canadian metal band during the recording of their 13th LP, This Is Thirteen, has continued finding new audiences. The Story of Anvil captures a band determined to not just survive, but to one day crack the mainstream. In...
Episode 560: Douglas Rushkoff
December 25, 2022 20:58 - 52 minutes - 44.4 MBThe plan wasn’t to write a book. The money was enough, Douglas Rushkoff says with a laugh. But appearing in from of anonymous billionaires at a desert resort was more than ample fodder for a new volume. Survival of the Richest is an exploration on how the wealthy plan to survive seemingly inevitable catastrophe, and few are as well equipped to explore this rich vein as Rushkoff. The media theorist returns to RiYL to discuss the new book, and what it means for the rest of us when billionaires ...
Episode 559: Nick Drnaso
December 23, 2022 00:48 - 49 minutes - 38.8 MB2018’s Sabrina was, quite deservedly, a breakthrough moment for Nick Drnaso. The Chicago-based cartoonist was nominated for a Man Booker Prize and suddenly placing at the top of numerous best of the year list. Four years later, he returned with Acting Class, a book that was, in part, serialized in The New Yorker early on in the pandemic. Like its predecessor, Drnaso’s third book is a sparing look at the modern human condition that refuses to hold the reader’s hand, this time filtered through ...
Episode 558: Terre Roche (of the Roches)
December 13, 2022 22:39 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBThe new album is a product of a largely forgotten time in Roches lore. Before youngest sister Suzzy joined the group, the sister act was a duo: Maggie and Terre Roche. The pair produced one album: Seductive Reasoning. Terre’s latest project, Kin Ya See That Sun, explores the group’s early days, touring the country, encourage by early supporter, Paul Simon. It combines live track from the era with a book that began life as an oral history. The Roches found a bigger, more lasting success as one...
Episode 557: Rebecca Pidgeon
December 09, 2022 20:50 - 49 minutes - 37.8 MBLet’s talk about yoga. Let’s talk about the practice behind the familiar, physical movement. That deeper, spiritual resonance heavily informed Rebecca Pidgeon’s latest record, Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound. In fact, the tracks that populate the album were each influenced by different chakras and their corresponding deities. It’s a concept album of sorts, one deeply tied to daily practice under the instruction of Prashant Iyengar. Though focused on her music career, Pidgeon is best known as ...
Episode 556: Will Cullen Hart (of The Circulatory System/The Olivia Tremor Control)
December 05, 2022 00:33 - 50 minutes - 38.9 MBOne of our most requested guests returns to the show. It’s been nearly eight years since we’ve caught up with Will Cullen Hart. The Circulatory System/The Olivia Tremor Control front man has spent most of the pandemic focused on his painting. We discuss his artwork -- one of which falls onto his head, as the interview winds down. But our focus is his continued musical work, from some of the earliest Elephant 6 demos, to forthcoming Circulatory output. Ten years ago this July, The Olivia Tremo...
Episode 555: Seth Avett (of the Avett Brothers)
November 24, 2022 12:33 - 42 minutes - 35.4 MBRecorded in hotel rooms while on tour with the Avett Brothers, Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown finds the musician paying tribute to the titular singer-songwriter over the course of 10 tracks. After being temporarily sidelined by the pandemic, brothers Seth and Scott returned to the touring with full force. Though not even a global pandemic could keep them away for too long, with the band releasing its third Gleam EP in August 2020. Still, the past few years did offer a few moments of silent refle...
Episode 554: Mario Hernandez
November 18, 2022 17:51 - 43 minutes - 36.2 MBThis year, Love and Rockets celebrates 40 years as – perhaps – the single greatest American comic of all time. Mario Hernandez, along with siblings Gilbert and Jaime, was a principle driving force in the book’s formative years. Mario would soon take a back seat and ultimately leave the book to his brothers, instead focusing on supporting his family with non-comics work. He’s continued to work in the form over the years, including a number of collaborations with Gilbert. Now retired, he’s begu...
Episode 553: Susie Ulrey (of Pohgoh)
November 16, 2022 00:10 - 53 minutes - 41.1 MBWe postpone the interview a few days, as there’s a hurricane bearing down on Florida. Tampa staved off the worst of it, but it’s another one of those things – counting yourself lucky that you made it through another one okay. In addition to managing the occasional natural disaster, Pohgoh’s existence has been a series of ups and down. The group spent the better part of two decades in a kind of quantum state – together, but also not really – until it properly reunited in 2016. This year’s du u...
Episode 552: Stephanie Phillips (of Big Joanie)
November 07, 2022 16:59 - 40 minutes - 30.3 MBOne of the beautiful things about music is that it’s a seemingly bottomless resource. Whenever you begin to doubt it, something new and fresh quickly dispels the notion. Big Joanie’s sophomore LP, Back Home, is just such a record. It’s confirmation that the spirit of punk beats on in new groups, even as it charts new territories. Ahead of the album’s release, singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips joined us to discuss the band’s journey, Sleater-Kinney, music journalism and the power of Sola...
551: Linqua Franqa
November 05, 2022 21:04 - 48 minutes - 40 MBIt’s easy to feel hopeless in this world, but a 45-minute conversation with Mariah Parker makes you feel like you can do just about anything. A rapper, politician, activist and mother, the Athens, Georgia-based artist who performs as Linqua Franqa channels both sober pragmatism and hope for a better world. From being sworn in as City Commissioner with a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to the release of this year’s urgent Bellringer LP, it’s hard to know how they find the hours in the d...
Episode 550: Malka Spigel (of Immersion and Minimal Compact)
October 27, 2022 00:31 - 44 minutes - 37.2 MBLast year, Immersion released Nanocluster Vol 1. The album finds the duo of Malka Spigel and Colin Newman quickly composing and recording music with names like Tarwater, Laetitia Sadier, Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. Spigel and Newman – also a married couple living in the U.K. have their own impression back catalogs, as members of Minimal Compact and Wire, respectively. The former has been pioneering Israeli post-punk group that’s sporadically reformed over the course of 40 years. In this conv...
Episode 549: Will Sheff (of Okkervil River)
October 23, 2022 23:54 - 58 minutes - 47.1 MBAs the sole consistent member, Will Sheff has built Okkervil River into one of the smartest and most beloved indie rock bands to walk the earth. This year sees the release of Nothing Special, his first solo record in his nearly quarter century long music career. The milestone, coupled with a seemingly endless pandemic, have afforded the musician plenty of opportunity to reflect on the world around him.In this conversation, we discuss empathy for those we disagree with, the drive to make music...
Episode 548: Michael League (of Snarky Puppy)
October 16, 2022 22:14 - 42 minutes - 38.2 MBSince 2004, Michael League has remained Snarky Puppy’s one constant. For every album and every show, the bass player has been there to help shape the amorphous jazz collective. Empire Central is a rare concept album of sorts – a musical homage to Dallas, the city near the University of North Texas, where the band began life. The area is now half a world away from Spain, where League now calls home. He phoned me from Catalonia to discuss the new record, which is also the final recorded appeara...
Episode 547: L’Rain
October 14, 2022 23:20 - 53 minutes - 44 MBFatigue arrived like a breath of fresh air. The album is alternately complex and calming, but also deeply felt. The LP is Taja Cheek’s second under the L’Rain name, arriving in 2021. It’s a mix of soul, jazz, rock and field recordings, output into something wholly new. The Brooklyn native is a classically trained pianist and cellist, who began playing bass in rock bands during high school. She’s also served as a curator for MoMA PS1, a job well served by a keen eye for the power of juxtaposit...
Episode 546: Billy Bragg
October 03, 2022 23:14 - 57 minutes - 44.8 MBThere’s a video from last November featuring Billy Bragg speaking to the camera outside the Brighton Dome. He’s nearly drown out by the sounds of chants – antivaxxers come to protest venue mandate. The singer is patient and thoughtful, laying out his own nuanced take on the situation. It’s hard to imagine too many artists in his position being so generous with their time. This month, Bragg returns to the U.S. It’s his first time touring the country since 2019 – his longest break since his beg...
Episode 545: Jordan Crane
September 30, 2022 22:17 - 1 hour - 50.9 MBKeeping Two isn’t an easy book. It’s a book about loss, trauma and brains wired to project worst case scenarios – things to which many of us can no doubt deeply relate these days. It’s also a gorgeous book. That bit, at least, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Crane is, perhaps, not the most productive cartoonist when it comes to full length comics, but his latest is worth the wait. The artist joins us to discuss the planning and executing his latest, the importance of choosing the right colors a...
Episode 544: Kate Beaton
September 23, 2022 18:14 - 40 minutes - 31.2 MBThe book took around a year to draw, but Ducks was more than a decade in the making. The foundation of the book arrived in 2014, as a five-part webcomic, documenting her time working in the Alberta oil sands. Fresh out of college, she took a job at the mining site in an effort to pay off her student loans. While the work follows her experience, the story paints a much broader picture, shining a light on the industry’s impact on workers, the indigenous people who live near the site and unaddre...
Episode 543: Rhett Miller (of Old 97s)
September 16, 2022 02:04 - 48 minutes - 39.1 MBThe last time I spoke to Rhett Miller, the conversation turned to 9/11, as it sometimes does. The Old 97s singer was living in New York, not far from ground zero and has a fairly harrowing story to tell. Today, it’s a brand-new collective trauma, nearly three years into a global pandemic. Living out in the country with his family has given the music time to decompress, slow down and spend time getting to reconnect with his kids, after years on the road. As I type this, however, he’s back on t...
Episode 542: Kenny Becker (of Goon)
September 06, 2022 15:45 - 43 minutes - 34 MBPaint By Numbers 1 was a pandemic album in just about every sense. Recorded at home with no budget, it was a band release in name only. Life intervened for Goon's members, effectively rendering it a solo release. Along the way, Goon reemerged as a full band, centered around Kenny Becker's song. The result is Hour of Green, an attempt to capture the quiet of suburban pre-dawn. Becker joins us to discuss Goon's evolution, painting and the power of metaphor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...
Episode 541: Eyedress
September 03, 2022 01:18 - 42 minutes - 32.8 MBIn 2019, Idris Vicuña was suddenly everywhere, an overnight success several years in the making on the strength of “Jealous.” The single found the L.A. musician shooting up Spotify charts on the back of viral TikTok videos. “Romantic Lover” and “Something About You” found their own success as gold records, over the next two years. As with its predecessor, 2022’s Full Time Lover finds Eyedress in full collaborative mode – an element that’s been a key to his art, ever since he found likeminded ...
Episode 540: Patterson Hood (of The Drive-By Truckers)
August 26, 2022 23:51 - 40 minutes - 29.8 MBAfter a pair of albums steeped in the polarizing politics of the era, Welcome 2 Club XIII finds The Drive-By Truckers in a reflective mood. Frontmen Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley find themselves warmly embracing stories from the band’s earliest days. It’s driven, in part, by the manner of reflective soul searching many of us have undergone, over a difficult past few years. The phenomenon was coupled with a brief, pre-pandemic reunion of the pair’s late-80s band, Adam’s House Cat. It’s the i...
Episode 539: Emily Haines (of Metric)
August 19, 2022 22:07 - 50 minutes - 39.5 MB“Here’s to the next 20 years,” Emily Haines concludes with a laugh. Nearly a quarter-century into Metric’s existence, the band’s frontwoman is looking forward at the lifelong project. As many of their peers burned out or faded away, the Canadian indie-rock darlings have continued to release some of their strongest work, including 2022’s Formentera. A meditation on a rough couple of years for the world, the album finds Haines and co. laying the groundwork for what’s to come. Hosted on Acast....
Episode 538: Mary Gauthier
August 11, 2022 01:05 - 35 minutes - 27.4 MBThe pandemic hasn’t been easy, of course, but it has provided at a new way for Mary Gauthier to engage with her music. Her story songs have comfortably made the jump to virtual performances, as she’s embraced the talk show host inside. Earlier this year, she released Dark Enough to See the Stars – her 11th album overall and the first in eight years made up entirely of her own songs. The album follows 2018’s Rifles & Rosary Beads, a collaborative effort that found providing music for lyrics p...
Episode 537: Tom Scharpling
August 04, 2022 20:17 - 42 minutes - 32.4 MBEvery so often, he makes a fist and gently punches his hand, trying to stave off a yawn. I don’t take it personally. It’s less than two days after the 24 hour Best Show marathon, and Tom Scharpling is exhausted. It was, by all accounts, a moment of triumph. The marathon marked both the paperback publication of his 2021 memoir, It Never Ends, as well as a kind of return to form for the beloved radio show-turned podcast. Old friends returned, new names called in and above all, it presented an o...
Episode 536: Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes)
July 30, 2022 00:59 - 53 minutes - 49.3 MBNothing last forever in the music world – breakups least of all. In February of this year, Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer announced he was getting the band back together after a four year hiatus. Two months later, the beloved Victoria, BC-based band released its comeback record, The Bees. It was a triumphant return for a band that never really went away, so much as temporarily morphed into a new project, Soft Plastics. The band’s return – coupled with the pandemic – have offered a unique moment for ...
Episode 535: Rory Phillips (of The Stereo, The Impossibles)
July 23, 2022 01:51 - 54 minutes - 45.7 MB“If anybody has someone in their past that you would still like to maintain some sort of relationship with,” Rory Phillips explains, “but you have some traumatic event that you’ve never talked about, I highly recommend getting a couple of microphones and talking about it.” Fresh off the breakup of The Impossibles, Philips was pair with Jamie Woolford – himself having recently left fellow ska-punk band, Animal Chin. Following the release of their Fueled By Ramen debut, 300, the band soldier on...
Episode 534: Laura Veirs
July 16, 2022 02:06 - 46 minutes - 38.1 MBTwelve albums in, Laura Veirs is ready for a fresh start. Emerging from a breakup album dealing with the detachment from her husband and longtime producer, Found Light arrives this month like a jolt of light night. It’s been a strange and fascinating journey to get here. After studying geology and Mandarin, she threw herself into music full-time and never looked back.nAs a songwriter, she’s wildly prolific. For each of the dozen records, a hundred or more songs are written. As processes go, s...
Episode 533: Wayne Kramer (of MC5)
July 04, 2022 15:53 - 43 minutes - 32.3 MBFor their many downsides, the past few years have offered an opportunity to reflect and reconnect with friends, family, projects. For Wayne Kramer, 2022 represents a full-throated embrace of a specter that’s loomed large for decades. This year, the musician released the first new songs under the MC5 banner in more than half-a-century. It’s a reinvigorated collective that culminates next month’s arrival of Heavy Lifting, the first LP under the moniker since 1971’s High Time. Kramer’s been plen...
Episode 532: Diane Coffee
June 30, 2022 12:25 - 49 minutes - 40.9 MBThere are birds chirping. Shaun Fleming is making the most out of this beautiful spring day in Los Angeles, taking the call from the front porch. We get into a little lore about some parrots that have colonized Pasadena. Things get personal quickly, as they tend to with these conversations. And while he’s quick to note that his latest record, With People, arrives under the Diane Coffee monitor, it’s still a personal one. The name, after all, has been a fluid one. It’s sometimes a band, someti...
Episode 531: Joan Osborne
June 20, 2022 13:52 - 39 minutes - 30 MBFresh off the release of a new record and suddenly unable to tour, Joan Osborne got the work. The musician dug through the closets in her Brooklyn home, pulling together live recordings from across her 30-year career. The resulting compilation, Radio Waves, paints the picture of an evolving artist often paying homage to the decades’ most influential artists, from Sky and the Family Stone to Bob Dylan. It’s a nice reminder of precisely how electric and essential live performances are, in an er...
Episode 530: Janet Weiss (of Slang, Quasi)
June 16, 2022 00:59 - 47 minutes - 33.9 MB“I’ve always been in more than one band,” Janet Weiss notes. Even during the nearly two-and-a-half decades she spent as one-third of Sleater Kinney, she’s kept busy. Since 1993, she’s been half of Quasi and had overlapping stints with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and Wild Flag – to make no mention of the albums she’s performed for indie rock darlings like The Shins and Bright Eyes. When we sat down to speak, she was prepping for a joint tour as Quasi and the drummer for Jon Spencer’s lates...
Episode 529: David Toop
June 10, 2022 13:16 - 57 minutes - 40.2 MBAmbient music helped me survive the darkest moments of the pandemic, and David Toop’s 2001 classic, Ocean of Sound, gave me the context to fully appreciate what I was listening to. He is a rare bird, with dual careers as both an accomplished musician and historian/cultural critic. In a world where artists are so often concerned about overthinking, Toop revels in it. I reached out on hearing that a pair of his 90s works – Pink Spirit and Noir World – had been reissued on vinyl. It was equa...
Episode 528: Emily Carrington
June 03, 2022 23:33 - 51 minutes - 40.8 MBOur Little Secret isn’t an easy book, but it’s an important one. In her first-ever graphic novel, Emily Carrington delves deep into her history and self-conscious, to explore her childhood abuse and the resulting trauma. It’s story Carrington has waited half her life to tell, searching for the right way – and medium – to tell it. It’s a powerful debut from life-long painter, exploring the ins and outs of a new form of storytelling. In this intimate conversation, she discuss her process and ho...