“I shit gold,” says Gene Simmons with a smile. “That’s your headline, SPIN magazine.” The KISS singer-bassist can’t help himself, forever basking in the good fortune he’s enjoyed ever since his band first stormed into pop culture in the 1970s, with flamboyant rock riffs, radio hits and pyrotechnics. Then and now, Simmons was the Demon […]
One of Dehd’s greatest strengths is their ability to write disarmingly simple songs. As a trio, they’re a band that embraces their limits to make the most of what they have: Emily Kempf’s powerful, shout-sung vocals and effortless basslines, Jason Balla’s reverb-heavy, single-string guitar melodies, and Eric McGrady’s insistent, pulsing percussion. The Chicago indie rockers […]
When Duran Duran‘s John Taylor and Simon Le Bon co-inducted Roxy Music into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, the pair’s reverent, insightful speeches were informed by their own personal experiences with the Bryan Ferry-led band. Le Bon recalled Roxy Music performing “Virginia Plain” in 1972 on Top of the Pops, and […]
Hot Water Music are many things to many people. For some of us, they’re a scrappy group of bearded punks we saw play at a VFW Hall in the midwest in the ‘90s as kids (outside unironically played Foursquare and passed out Why Vegan pamphlets). Others discovered them on the Vans Warped Tour in the […]
There’s an accidental symmetry to El-P’s first three albums. He didn’t necessarily map it out that way, but each of his three records was released five years apart, making 2022 a year of noteworthy anniversaries: Cancer 4 Cure is 10 this month, its predecessor I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead turned 15 in March, and his […]
It’s not every day you get to chat with the Sports Entertainer of the Week. When Chris Jericho joined SPIN for a video chat (we’re over using the “Z” word) on a Sunday, he spent the previous week appearing on two of All Elite Wrestling’s weekly shows, Dynamite (where he threw a fireball at a […]
The risk of making progressive and prescient art is that you may be unappreciated in your lifetime. But N8NOFACE never cared. Music has been his therapeutic outlet since his teens — a means of coping with drug-fueled risks while sharing grim tales of friends and family who sell and succumb to narcotics in his hometown […]
Kevin Morby grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb roughly 20 minutes outside of downtown Kansas City. We’ve both lived here at different points in time, and as we chat in Union Station, a historic landmark in the heart of the city, we instantly make connections over high schools, street intersections, and formative memories. The […]
The comedian Joe List is set to premiere his newest special, entitled This Year’s Material, on his popular YouTube channel, continuing a trend of DIY releases, such as Mark Normand’s Out to Lunch, Shane Gillis’s Live in Austin, as well as List’s own excellent 2020 set I Hate Myself. Each of those specials have garnered […]
You probably wouldn’t have known it by looking, but The Head and the Heart were pretty burnt out following the 2019 release of their fourth album, Living Mirage. After a few stops and starts, co-founding member Josiah Johnson left the band for good during the sessions, and the remaining members were struggling so hard to […]