RiYL

Fatigue arrived like a breath of fresh air. The album is alternately complex and calming, but also deeply felt. The LP is Taja Cheek’s second under the L’Rain name, arriving in 2021. It’s a mix of soul, jazz, rock and field recordings, output into something wholly new. The Brooklyn native is a classically trained pianist and cellist, who began playing bass in rock bands during high school. She’s also served as a curator for MoMA PS1, a job well served by a keen eye for the power of juxtaposition. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a video from last November featuring Billy Bragg speaking to the camera outside the Brighton Dome. He’s nearly drown out by the sounds of chants – antivaxxers come to protest venue mandate. The singer is patient and thoughtful, laying out his own nuanced take on the situation. It’s hard to imagine too many artists in his position being so generous with their time. This month, Bragg returns to the U.S. It’s his first time touring the country since 2019 – his longest break since his began traveling across the Atlantic nearly 40 years ago. Many of the songs are new, but the messages are the same – empathy and compassion in an effort to spread hope during an era that can desperately use it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Keeping Two isn’t an easy book. It’s a book about loss, trauma and brains wired to project worst case scenarios – things to which many of us can no doubt deeply relate these days. It’s also a gorgeous book. That bit, at least, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Crane is, perhaps, not the most productive cartoonist when it comes to full length comics, but his latest is worth the wait. The artist joins us to discuss the planning and executing his latest, the importance of choosing the right colors and the processing trauma through art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The book took around a year to draw, but Ducks was more than a decade in the making. The foundation of the book arrived in 2014, as a five-part webcomic, documenting her time working in the Alberta oil sands. Fresh out of college, she took a job at the mining site in an effort to pay off her student loans. While the work follows her experience, the story paints a much broader picture, shining a light on the industry’s impact on workers, the indigenous people who live near the site and unaddressed issues of personal safety and assault. It offers another side of an artist who rose to prominence through her online historical strip, Hark, A Vagrant, present a warm and thought picture of what a comic memoir can accomplish. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last time I spoke to Rhett Miller, the conversation turned to 9/11, as it sometimes does. The Old 97s singer was living in New York, not far from ground zero and has a fairly harrowing story to tell. Today, it’s a brand-new collective trauma, nearly three years into a global pandemic. Living out in the country with his family has given the music time to decompress, slow down and spend time getting to reconnect with his kids, after years on the road. As I type this, however, he’s back on the road. It’s a band tour, followed by solo dates, to promote his latest solo album, the Misfit. It’s a Tom Petty inspired affair that finds him learning to let go and once again write from the heart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paint By Numbers 1 was a pandemic album in just about every sense. Recorded at home with no budget, it was a band release in name only. Life intervened for Goon's members, effectively rendering it a solo release. Along the way, Goon reemerged as a full band, centered around Kenny Becker's song. The result is Hour of Green, an attempt to capture the quiet of suburban pre-dawn. Becker joins us to discuss Goon's evolution, painting and the power of metaphor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2019, Idris Vicuña was suddenly everywhere, an overnight success several years in the making on the strength of “Jealous.” The single found the L.A. musician shooting up Spotify charts on the back of viral TikTok videos. “Romantic Lover” and “Something About You” found their own success as gold records, over the next two years. As with its predecessor, 2022’s Full Time Lover finds Eyedress in full collaborative mode – an element that’s been a key to his art, ever since he found likeminded individuals after years of searching. The musician joined us from his L.A. home to discuss a childhood spent moving around and his continued growth as an artist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a pair of albums steeped in the polarizing politics of the era, Welcome 2 Club XIII finds The Drive-By Truckers in a reflective mood. Frontmen Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley find themselves warmly embracing stories from the band’s earliest days. It’s driven, in part, by the manner of reflective soul searching many of us have undergone, over a difficult past few years. The phenomenon was coupled with a brief, pre-pandemic reunion of the pair’s late-80s band, Adam’s House Cat. It’s the ideal moment to catch Hood for a long, career spanning interview about the ups and downs across a quarter-century of the Drive-By Truckers. The sound quality is a bit hit and miss, due to technical difficulties. Hope you still enjoy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Here’s to the next 20 years,” Emily Haines concludes with a laugh. Nearly a quarter-century into Metric’s existence, the band’s frontwoman is looking forward at the lifelong project. As many of their peers burned out or faded away, the Canadian indie-rock darlings have continued to release some of their strongest work, including 2022’s Formentera. A meditation on a rough couple of years for the world, the album finds Haines and co. laying the groundwork for what’s to come. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pandemic hasn’t been easy, of course, but it has provided at a new way for Mary Gauthier to engage with her music. Her story songs have comfortably made the jump to virtual performances, as she’s embraced the talk show host inside. Earlier this year, she released Dark Enough to See the Stars – her 11th album overall and the first in eight years made up entirely of her own songs. The album follows 2018’s Rifles & Rosary Beads, a collaborative effort that found providing music for lyrics penned by Iraq War veterans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.