Tag: Tom Lanham
Cover Story: Elbow • Love & Friendship
In Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical film covering his early mid-‘70s music-scribe years, Philip Seymour Hoffman — channeling legendary rock critic Lester Bangs — has some sage advice for Patrick Fugit’s earnest teen hopeful William Miller. In the cold, cutthroat new world he’s entering of publicists, exotic junkets, free booze, and possibly drugs, it’s all […]
Featured: Q&A with Peter Case
During the pandemic, we all sought small bastions of sanity wherever we could find them. Especially visually, locked in at home with so many relatively new streaming services available like Netflix — you could latch onto an uplifting movie like “Eurovision Song Contest — the Story of Fire Saga” and dodge the doldrums, […]
Feature: Circa Waves
“Keep calm and carry on” was a mass-produced British poster from 1939 intended to help rally spirits in the face of a looming WWII and its attendant Blitz-strafing air raids. But it’s since become a much larger metaphor for the traditionally stoic, unflappable English constitution, in general, the type of personality that remains virtually […]
Hello My Name is Sam from The Bobby Lees
Sam Quartin knows she might resemble a misanthrope. But the powerhouse Bobby Lees front-woman simply despises modern technology and all of its cold, clinical trappings. Don’t ask her about any currently popular memes, viral videos, or TikTok influencers — she’s never online to see them, she swears, and she’s proud to note that she has […]
Hello My Name is Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds
On the surface, it’s difficult to believe that 13 long years have crept by since brainy producer/multi-instrumentalist Ian Broudie released Four Winds, his last picture-perfect pop album as The Lightning Seeds, a dormant period the Brit is finally breaking with the shimmering new See You in the Stars, out last month. And when he […]
Cover Story: Elle King
If you’re craving some homespun wisdom in these complicated, hi-tech times, you need look no further than old episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, a popular CBS TV series that ran from 1962 to 1971 (and 1993 film) and applied old-saw simplicity to complicated modern society. For any Gen X-, Y- or Z-er who might have […]
Feature: X-Mas Tidings with Exene Cervenka
It’s not like Exene Cervenka has suddenly been transformed — through the charming stop-motion animation process of Rankin-Bass — into a warm, fuzzy feel-good protagonist this year. But the formerly feisty X firebrand has chilled out, post-pandemic, and actually become one Humble new Bumble as her four-decade-old combo heads out on its annual X-Mas Tour […]
Lollapalooza Preview: Hello My Name is “Murph” from The Wombats
The overnight popularity of Liverpool power trio The Wombats back in 2007, via its post-ironic breakthrough hit “Let’s Dance to Joy Division,” was a welcome post-Britpop surprise. Bandleader Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy and crew proved to be clever, shrewd-hooked songwriters who pinballed through multiple music genres, from pop to punk, folk, R&B, and even vintage disco, […]
Feature: Elle King – The Lost Lockdown Interview
IE: Where are you now? ELLE KING: I am sheltering in place with my sister and her three children, and I live at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills. So I am a true Hollywood hillbilly — I have an inflatable hot tub, I have an above-ground pool, and we’re just motoring through. And in […]
Cover Story: Sarah Shook an the Disarmers • ” The Four Agreements”
Collectively, it’s relatively easy to look at the last couple of soul-trying pandemic years — wherein one entire political party in America continues to deny not only the science of climate change but the enactment of any constructive legislation that could thwart it or at least slow it down — and say that we, humanity, […]
Feature: Little Boots • Alliance with Abba
Long before she conquered overseas charts with her dazzling 2009 dance-pop debut, Hands, British keyboardist/vocalist Victoria Hesketh as Little Boots worked with top-flight talent like current Adele producer Greg Kurstin, who helmed recordings by her all-girl outfit Dead Disco. And even though she just finished producing her upcoming album herself, she still knows the value […]
Photo Gallery: Wolf Alice at The Vic Theatre • Chicago
Wolf Alice The Vic Theatre November 8, 2021 Chicago, IL Recap and photos by Curt Baran On their third album Blue Weekend, London’s Wolf Alice went all-in with a big, vibrant sound and heavy emotions to match. Their tour of the same name recently brought them to the Vic Theatre, and the quintet (fleshed out this time […]
Hello My Name Is…Billy
You’ve got to hand it to storied Cult guitarist Billy Duffy — he doesn’t bury the lede when it comes to late-breaking news stories. Only a minute into a recent phone call to discuss Coloursound — the ephemeral side project he and Alarm vocalist Mike Peters launched, then abandoned with a single album back in […]
Cover Story – Pale Waves
If anyone didn’t know it when she first got into showbiz as a wide-eyed, small-town British naif, they know it now — Pale Waves front-vixen Heather Baron-Gracie pulls no punches, suffers no fools gladly, and always shoots straight from the hip. She’s justifiably proud of her newfound industry acumen, and she’s even developed an alter […]
The Lockdown Interviews • Hen Ogledd
Given the turbulent, truly batshit-crazy year that we’ve all just staggered through, it was easy to overlook a lot of great, often idiosyncratic albums that continued to be released, pandemic be damned. And we’d like to pause, catch our mask-in-place breath, and bring you up to speed on a few obscure aural delights you might […]
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