Being told you’re cancer-free should be cause for joyous celebration. But Gates vocalist/guitarist Kevin Dye was also struck by a more negative reaction when told an operation to remove a cancerous growth on his lungs was completely successful. It sent him into a deep spiral of existential depression. He’d first noticed something was wrong in […]
Comedian Josh Johnson is multi-talented. Comedian Josh Johnson is a hustler. Comedian Josh Johnson is an optimist. Not being able to figure out which way to start off a conversation about Johnson is a good thing because in this case, all three statements are true. For someone barely scratching the surface of his thirties, Johnson […]
It’s October 2015 and around 1:30 in the afternoon at the Austin City Limits Festival. An early day set at an event like this usually requires strength to mobilize. But my friends and I are standing in the pit, excited to see one of the ACL’s best rising new bands on the bill: British indie-rockers, […]
About two hours after finishing their set at the Constellation Room in Santa Ana, California, the night before vocalist/guitarist Alex Stoitsiadis’s 24th birthday, the four members of Dogleg (and their trusty photographer/singular crew member, Erika) sit around a corner booth at a Southern California diner. The Saturday night show where they blasted through a half-hour […]
Early in the pandemic, Death Cab for Cutie‘s Ben Gibbard seemed to be ahead of the curve. In March, he launched a solo performance stream, Live From Home, helping blueprint a detour for musicians swept off the road. But with the camera switched off, he was just as confused as anyone else — and it […]
Is mankind hurtling to its ignominious end, like so many lemmings over a cliff? Simon Neil is sure he’s seen the telltale signs. And the gallows-humored Biffy Clyro anchor isn’t afraid of covering the extinction topic on his trio’s surprise, lockdown-sculpted new album, The Myth of the Happy Ever After. With no apology, it opens […]
Trying to be all things to everyone is a fruitless pursuit. It’s impossible on a logistical scale, much less an imaginative one, and no one ends up being satisfied. That being said, Mastodon’s latest album Hushed and Grim (out Friday through Reprise) is, in a way, a Mastodon record for all Mastodon fans. Whatever era […]
Twelve years ago, Enjambre was on the brink of breaking up before taking off due to another pandemic, 2009’s swine flu pandemic. Fortunately, the band hung in there and have released seven albums that blended the romanticism of Mexican folk music with rock and roll that’s rooted in the U.S. Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, […]
“Balance and Surrender” is apparently the name of a yoga studio in Tamworth, England. It also could have easily been the title of My Morning Jacket’s ninth LP. First, the balance: It’s the only reason we even have this self-titled project, their first new album since 2015’s The Waterfall (and its temporarily shelved sequel from the same sessions, […]
When actor, novelist and musician David Duchovny was 10 years old, he failed his Grace Church School choir audition in front of a bunch of his friends. Even worse, they’d assured him that nobody gets rejected. As Duchovny tells it, he misunderstood the instruction. When he was told to sing the note “after” the one […]