RiYL

It’s easy to feel hopeless in this world, but a 45-minute conversation with Mariah Parker makes you feel like you can do just about anything. A rapper, politician, activist and mother, the Athens, Georgia-based artist who performs as Linqua Franqa channels both sober pragmatism and hope for a better world. From being sworn in as City Commissioner with a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to the release of this year’s urgent Bellringer LP, it’s hard to know how they find the hours in the day. But conversations like these make you glad there are people like Parker out there who still do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last year, Immersion released Nanocluster Vol 1. The album finds the duo of Malka Spigel and Colin Newman quickly composing and recording music with names like Tarwater, Laetitia Sadier, Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. Spigel and Newman – also a married couple living in the U.K. have their own impression back catalogs, as members of Minimal Compact and Wire, respectively. The former has been pioneering Israeli post-punk group that’s sporadically reformed over the course of 40 years. In this conversation, Spigel talks pandemic productivity, production and a potential reunion.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the sole consistent member, Will Sheff has built Okkervil River into one of the smartest and most beloved indie rock bands to walk the earth. This year sees the release of Nothing Special, his first solo record in his nearly quarter century long music career. The milestone, coupled with a seemingly endless pandemic, have afforded the musician plenty of opportunity to reflect on the world around him.In this conversation, we discuss empathy for those we disagree with, the drive to make music and the end of the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since 2004, Michael League has remained Snarky Puppy’s one constant. For every album and every show, the bass player has been there to help shape the amorphous jazz collective. Empire Central is a rare concept album of sorts – a musical homage to Dallas, the city near the University of North Texas, where the band began life. The area is now half a world away from Spain, where League now calls home. He phoned me from Catalonia to discuss the new record, which is also the final recorded appearance by the group’s mentor, Bernard Wright. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.