This new series highlights on-the-record conversations that didn’t make it into the published feature, with text directly lifted directly from the transcript. Anything off the record remains off the record. By the time I interviewed Ace for his February 5 Albums I Can’t Live Without feature, the weekly series was in its third year. He […]
It’s 8:00 a.m. in Los Angeles and Mark Laita’s already been up for five hours. If you’re one of the over 6.6 million who subscribe to his YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly, you’ve witnessed the heart-wrenching, disconcerting stories he’s captured in nearly 3,000 videos; up-close tales told by real people, many suffering from addiction and […]
You just released Magickal. So many great collabs. The opening track with Jem Cooke sets the tone. We recorded face to face on this record in Mark Ralph’s studio in London and she’s a proper professional. I like to think that the album will stand the test of time. It’s not going to be something […]
On May 21, 1998, I saw Garbage at what used to be The Palace in Hollywood. I wasn’t there for Garbage—I came for the opener, bizarrely, Talvin Singh—but I left singing Garbage songs. I knew all the singles. How could you not in the ’90s, when their music was everywhere? Even more than the songs […]
One evening in the spring of 1985, as we were preparing our second issue (having, initially, seriously, forgotten we had to do that, so were now scrambling), I walked into Art Director George DuBois’s office and he was talking to a skinny, fresh-faced young man. “Look at these,” said George, handing me some paintings. I […]
As I pull up to Sunny War’s small, red and black Craftsman bungalow, the last remnants of the 4 inches of snow that fell earlier in the week are melting under the blue, cloudless sky over her historic Glenwood neighborhood in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She invites me in to sit at her small dining room table. […]
We all walk around with the burden that, at some point, we could get cancer. After all, roughly 1.9 million Americans will receive that bad news in 2022 alone. But most people are too busy living their lives to expect it. When John Ross was diagnosed in June 2021, at age 34, he was in […]
It took five years for Alvvays to release a follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2017 album Antisocialites, but the Toronto-based band didn’t intend to be away for quite so long. The odyssey to get to their third album, Blue Rev (out now via Polyvinyl and Transgressive), was rife with setbacks and challenges. In fact, Alvvays […]
Depeche Mode co-founder Martin Gore bursts into laughter, amused by the international flavor: a British band with a French name whose members live in the U.S. (frontman Dave Gahan in New York, Gore in Santa Barbara, Calif.) doing press from Germany about its upcoming Latin-titled record. “We’re multicultural!” Gore exclaims, throwing his hands in the […]
Real talk? The cumulative weight of changing trends, the major-label system and cruel fate have all failed to cushion Lamb of God’s blunt-force velocity. Their latest, Omens (out on Oct 7), is a throttled-out, high-decibel jetstream with a series of cautionary tales and psychic explorations couched inside its 10 songs. Whether addressing ecological ruin, psychological […]