For Rebecca Lucy Taylor, her entire 20s were flooded with self-questioning like: “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I have that? Why aren’t I like that? Why haven’t I got that?” Once she stopped trying so hard to fix her life, it changed both on a personal and professional level. “Because I’m less fucking desperate […]
When I call up Stu Mackenzie in mid-November for a year-end recap, there’s already way too much to talk about. His band, Australian psych-prog shapeshifters King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, recently announced a 2022 world tour; and they’ve brightened up this dismal pandemic era with three studio albums (including our 24th-best of 2021, Butterfly 3000) […]
“Can we talk Curb for a second?” The catalyst for our call with St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) is a 2021 recap, surveying her mountain of accomplishments over the past year: releasing her sixth LP, Daddy’s Home; staging a U.S. tour and several festival spots, covering Metallica and remixing Paul McCartney, earning a Grammy nomination. But the […]
During a year when most of us racked up a lot of time streaming videos, Jason Isbell had a banner year: Not only did the Grammy Award winner head back on the road with his band the 400 Unit, he also recorded The Georgia Blue album to celebrate Biden’s victory in the state, recorded a […]
It’s certainly safe to say that 2021 was an unusual year for pretty much everyone. The rhythms of our new “normal” amid the pandemic began to feel more familiar, while the world itself remained in a state of incredible turmoil. For The War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel, 2021 felt especially unusual. After years and […]
Nathaniel Rateliff isn’t the sort of guy who emotionally skews in either direction. Down the middle. That’s sort of his thing. But even he can admit that following an 18-month stretch where a pandemic prevented him and pretty much every living musician from touring, heading back out on the road for some of 2021 was […]
On a brisk December afternoon, Wolfgang Van Halen is weary but in good spirits. The admitted late riser is sitting in 5150, the studio home of Van Halen [the band] since 1983, nursing a coffee amidst the construction taking place around us. Wolfgang leans carefully on the studio’s console, wrapped in plastic. He’s in the […]
If you told Michelle Zauner in early 2021 that she’d dominate the year-end lists — both in music and books — she would’ve thought you were nuts. But here we are. And she had a perfect spot to soak it all in: Onstage in early December during a warm Mexico City evening, her confident stage […]
On at least three occasions on stage this year when Lucy Dacus would launch into one of her highly personal songs, like, say “Thumbs” or “Please Stay” off her critically acclaimed album Home Video, she’d straight-up start to cry. “Yeah, there were maybe three shows on this past tour where it just really got to […]
Joe Talbot has two more things he wants to accomplish before the end of 2021: Start working on IDLES‘ fifth album and win a bar fight. “Those two things. That’s it,” he says forcefully with a clap. Sitting on a cozy-looking couch, bearing a white, lightly plaid button-up shirt and thick-framed reading glasses in his Bristol […]