RiYL

It’s been a big couple of years for Shirley Manson — not something every artist can say, as a global pandemic stretches into its second year. Nor, is it something many bands can say staring down their third decade of existence. Our call is scheduled early — another rarity in this world. When we connect, the musician explains that’s she set to go exploring on a rare off day for Garbage’s tour with fellow alternative icon, Alanis Morissette. In June, the band released its well-received seventh LP, No Gods No Masters, which found Manson’s lyrics taking no prisoners in a world that too often appears to be coming apart at the seams. Late last month, the singer also kicked off a new season of her critically acclaimed interview podcast, Jump, which features frank conversations with artists like Patti Smith and David Byrne.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More than 30 years after Trots and Bonnie ended its decades-long run in National Lampoon, the strip finally gets a worthy collection. Shary Flenniken has moved on from the work in more ways that one, but the story of a teenage girl and her talking dog still feels as vibrant as ever. While she might be the last to admit it, Flenniken’s life has been every bit as fascinating as the work she’s created, as a member of the Air Pirates comics collective in the early 70s, editor at Lampoon at the end of the decade and a long-time illustrator and cartoonist across a wide range of titles. Flenniken speaks fondly about her time working at a hardware store and frankly about the time she worked in end-of-life care.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the interview suggested he might be a spiritual person, Ben Chasny blanched, explaining, “I'm actually a total nihilist.”Sixteen years later, he confesses that the answer was contrarian to a fault. It’s easy to arrive at the conclusion, listening to a lengthy back catalogue that finds him releasing the 20th album under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker. But he’s also very much someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed, as the industry was clearly attempting to do at the time, amid the burgeoning freak folk scene. But Chasny and Six Organs continue to break new ground, drawing on a wide range of influences, from the industrial bands of his youth to the hexadic card system he developed for composing music.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My Begging Chart finds Keiler Roberts exploring the in between moments. She’s content to mind the little things that would not only find their way on the cutting room floor of most memoir, but might otherwise be forgotten by the end of the day. It’s not for lack of material. Conditions like bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis can loom large in her life, as they would anyones, but the cartoonist possesses a laser focus for finding hilarity in the mundane. It’s a gift that makes so much of her work wildly relatable. Kicking off her virtual book tour, Roberts joins us to discuss untangling life from internal conflict, letting go of old work and the downside of nostalgia.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When it comes time to record, Laura Stevenson is honest to a fault. 2019’s The Big Freeze may well have been her most personal record to date, but the album has nothing on her recently released self-titled followup. Plenty had happened in the intervening years — some things she’s happier to speak about than others. Stevenson is clearly protective of the people around her, but when it comes to her own life, she’s much more of an open book. Born just as the pandemic was beginning to shut down businesses in the States, her daughter wakes up from an afternoon nap about halfway into our conversation. The difficult timing was, perhaps, fortuitous, stuck at home with a young child at a time when touring was an impossibility. With a new album in the world, touring is a possibility once again, but Stevenson is more than happy to take things one day at a time.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many of us, Danny Elfman had big plans for 2020. For the first time in forever, the musician paused many of his perennial obligations, clearing all film scoring jobs from his calendar. The new year would be all about touring. And then the once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic hit. Relocating his family away from their longtime home of Los Angeles, Elfman buckled down and got to work on something new. Big Mess is, at once, something familiar and entirely new. His second record and first studio album since the waning days of Oingo Boingo, the LP finds him returning to guitar-based composition. There are notes of his beloved band, including a reworking of the song “Insects,” but unique time signatures and dives into the avant-garde find the musician exploring new sonic realms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The way Mike Doughty tells it, it’s a bit of a minor miracle Soul Coughing lasted for eight years. It was long enough, however, to generate three LPs, a handful of alternative rock radio hits and enough stories to fill a few memoirs. Attempts to reunite have, predictably, fallen short, but Doughty has carved a path as an extremely prolific singer songwriter, culminating in last year’s Ghost of Vroom 2 EP. A collaboration with Andrew "Scrap" Livingston produced by Beastie Boy mainstay Mario Caldato Jr., the project finds the duo excited exploring new shades of the "deep slacker jazz” pioneered by his long bygone band. Doughty returns to the show to discuss the new project, his most recent memoir and the pandemic year.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The latest issue of The Nation — a double-issue on the subject of utopias — features a sprawling cover illustration by Michael DeForge. A group of smiling people are making art, making dinner, making out. Throughout it all is the constant presence of technology. It’s a fraught subject for any artist, but DeForge especially, whose work so often touches on science-fiction and politics. A pioneering — and prolific — cartoonist, DeForge has released eleven books over the course of the past decade, culminating with the short story collection, Heaven, No Hell. DeForge joined us to discuss the art in the era of Trump and Covid-19, the inevitability of writing about politics and the downsides of technology.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Even among a list of peers that includes names titles like Eightball and Hate, there’s a strong case to be made that Love and Rockets is the most influential comic of its generation. It’s a fact that puts the series high on the all-time list. The 40-year-old series began in 1980 as a self-published book that was soon picked up by Fantagraphics. Two years in, Gilbert Hernandez gave the world “Heartbreak Soup,” a story that kicked off Palomar, a long-running exploration of magical realism in a Latin American village of the same name. It’s Hernandez’s longest-running storyline, and the one which which he has become most closely associated. Four decades later, the artist continues to grow and experiment, as evidenced by the recently released Hypnotwist/Scarlet by Starlight, a collection of two graphic novellas that embrace dramatically different forms of storytelling.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I know that I literally wrote the best book about pencil sharpening techniques that has ever existed or ever will exist,” David Rees explains, confidently. It’s a hard claim to refute. Rees knows a good niche when he sees it. It’s a characteristic that has lead to a both fascinating and nearly impossible to define career. Perpetually-correct Wikipedia alternately calls him a cartoonist, humorist and culture critic. You can also add musician, television host, writer and podcast to the list. And while he might dispute the former, he’s thrived with the latter courtesy of Election Profit Makers, a political betting podcast he hosts with Jon Kimball and Starlee Kine.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.