RiYL

Even with nearly a quarter-century under their belt, five years was a long time to wait between Ladytron releases. The group had settled into a comfortable cadence of three year, but 2019’s self-titled album finally arrived after two major releases. Life can get in the way – take, for example, Daniel Hunt’s move to Brazil. Or his production of big name artists like Christina Aguilera. Or various movie scores. This year, the band happily returned with its seventh record, recapturing the magic and consistency the electropop band has maintained for well over two decades. As contemporary acts and flash in the pan stars has come and gone, the group has maintained and thrived – an increasingly rare feat these days. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this year, The New York Times Review of Books published All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End. The collection features cartoons dating back to the 60s and 70s, offering a glimpse into author Charles R. Johnson many have not seen. Decades before he won the National Book Award for Middle Passage, his historical novel about the slave trade, Johnson was being published as a cartoonist. The works contained in the volume are gag strips tackling some of the day’s biggest hot button topics, primarily race relations at the height of America’s civil rights movement. Johnson joins us to discuss a wildly diverse career, as well as his time teaching drawing on public television and a long-time embrace of Buddhism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are those musical careers that follow predictable paths – and then there’s Ivan Julian’s. The child of a Navy officer, he found himself in far flung corners, including Guantanamo Bay. After spending his early teenage years as the front man of a Led Zeppelin cover band, he found himself in London, as a touring guitarist for The Foundations, eventually leaving the group behind to take up residence in Macedonia. It was his time in New York that ultimately put him on the map, however, as a founding member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Subsequent years found him collaborating with a broad range of musicians from Afrika Bambaataa to Matthew Sweet. These days, Julian lives in New York, running Brooklyn’s SuperGiraffeSound recording studio. He’s also gone on to release solo albums, including his newest, Swing Your Lanterns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beyond Vaudeville is a perfect time capsule. It’s a pre-internet era, when public access provided a rare outlet for entertainers. As Frank Hope, Rich Brown was the neurotic calm in the storm. Along with stoic sidekick David Greene, the pair held together a 30-minute variety show that paired celebrities with outsider entertainers for a decade. In 1997, the show was reborn as Oddville, MTV, which managed to revive some of the magic, in a more formal format that partnered gen x names with buzzbin bands. Brown has maintained a high profile show business career in the intervening decades, appearing as a Daily Show contributor and producing shows like Fear Factor and the Jay Leno hosted, You Bet Your Life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes you can’t fully appreciate the power of music until you need it. For me, it was 2019’s Silencia, which helped me through the darkest period of the pandemic. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to speak to Marc Byrd on the occasion of Hammock’s 12th release, Love in the Void. Byrd happily discussed the healing role of music as a musician, as writing and performing pulled him through some of his own darkest moments.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prism is a breath of fresh air in troubled times. The Brooklyn-based seven piece delivers sunshine psychedelic soul grooves transported from a different time. At the group’s core is the three-part harmony of Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown. Their ties to groups like Chicano Batman and the Dap-Kings betray the band’s rich and dreamy sound. The trio joined us to discuss their New York City origin story and the struggles of being a musician in the post-pandemic landscape. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ahead of our conversation at Greenlight Books in Brooklyn, Tom Gauld and I sat down to discuss his career. The cartoonist was on tour in the States to promote his latest Drawn & Quarterly collection, Revenge of the Librarians. The book is classic Gauld, gag strips with historic and literary edges. These days, he’s probably best know for the latter, with a weekly strip appearing in The Guardian. As the book’s title implies, the artist has earned a loyal following among librarians for comics that mine the absurdity of canonical classics. He’s also earned a fanbase in an even more unlikely place, with strips for New Scientist that take on the day’s scientific headlines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hard as it is to believe, the half-decade preceding last year’s Shufflemania was the Robyn Hitchcock has gone between albums since 1979’s Soft Boys debut, A Can of Bees. That band, while wildly influential, wasn’t long for this world, breaking up shortly after their second album, Underwater Moonlight. Within a year, Hitchcock released his first solo album, Black Snake Diamond Röle. Shufflemania, meanwhile, marks his 22nd solo studio album. Were it entirely up to him, he explains, he’d release a constant stream of music, but studios and schedules too often get in the way.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Her second poetry collection, Cry Perfume, deals with a lot. There’s a lot to deal with, from overdoses to a society that allows its artists to simply scrape by as a result of making art. Her band, Speedy Ortiz, hasn’t toured for some time, owing to the constraints of the pandemic, but has still found her way back onto the road, coheadlining a book tour with cartoonist, Michael DeForge. Dupuis has been plenty busy on the music front, as well. In 2020, she released Haunted Painting, the second LP from her solo project, Sad13. To mark the release of her new book, we sat down to discuss teaching, editing and the importance of killing your darlings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With his sixth solo album, Tim Burgess left nothing on the table. The 22-track album found every last new song put down on record. The singer says he wanted to give listeners ever once he had left. Of course, for some, creativity is a renewable resource. Since its formation in the late-80s, the Charlatans have given the world 13 LPs, each of which cracked the UK Top 40. Burgess also spent much of the pandemic focused on Tim’s Twitter Listening project, which brought together top musicians from Paul McCartney to Pulp and Pixies, each discussing seminal albums. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.