Alkaline Trio Talk With NME

Alkaline Trio
Jason Tate

Alkaline Trio sat down to talk about their new album with NME:

After going through the mindset of “it’s not done until we all love it,” the band landed on an album with some familiar noir themes. “Unfortunately, ‘Blood, Hair And Eyeballs’ is a dark record but I don’t think we had a choice,” Andriano explained. “There’s a fairly apocalyptic theme that runs through the record, because it seems like we’re living through the end of time right now.

“Humanity really needs to get its shit together, which means the record is broader than just Matt and I writing about our personal lives. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pull that off.”

Review: Green Day – Saviors

Green Day - Saviors
Adam Grundy

The 14th studio album by pop-punk legends, Green Day, called Saviors, lives up to its title as it very well may have saved the band from going down the unfortunate path that has haunted so many other legendary bands in their careers. While some bands have had trouble living up to the legacy of their past work, Green Day were getting dangerously close to this label after a bit of floundering after American Idiot. Sure, there were a few nuggets of gold to be found every now and then, but looking at the large body of work after American Idiot was a bit of a mixed bag. You had the strong 21st Century Breakdown record, followed by the hit or miss trilogy of ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré!, then 2016’s decent Revolution Radio, only to be succeeded by arguably the weakest LP in Green Day’s discography, 2020’s Father of All Motherfuckers.

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Interview: Sean Scanlon of Smallpools

Smallpools
Adam Grundy

Recently I was able to schedule a Zoom call with Sean Scanlon, the lead vocalist/keyboardist of Alt Rock band, Smallpools, to discuss everything that went into their great new single called “Night Shift.” In this interview, I asked Sean about how the band typically does most of their writing, his favorite songs in Smallpools’ discography, as well as the upcoming touring plans. Smallpools will be touring the U.S. with Grayscale starting this April and tickets are currently on sale.

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Green Day Talk With The Sun

Green Day
Jason Tate

Green Day talked with The Sun in a new wide ranging interview:

Mike says: “Social media is great for kids but if you’re finding your music via algorithms then that’s just fing lazy. I like to organically find new things. All I can say is just f***ing clear your search history to find new s***.” Tre laughs: “We say this now but as soon as we hang up, we’ll be making a TikTok account.”

Billie Joe adds: “I was told that Brain Stew was a sudden popular thing on TikTok with a lot of hip-hop kids dancing to it. And that’s cool. But I don’t have the patience to use it. It’s just like, eurgh. It’s cool for other people but we’re old- school man.”

That is why you won’t find the passionate and outspoken songwriiter venting on social media.

Billie Joe says: “My opinions are always in my songs. I don’t like to Tweet or Instagram about politics, because you’re contributing to insane people who are just bitching, arguing and taking sides. So I write about it in my songs. It’s funny as on New Year’s Eve, we played American Idiot [on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show] and we changed ‘redneck agenda’ to MAGA agenda’ [Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan]. Well, I woke up the next morning to people saying, ‘F***ng blah blah I can’t believe he said it’ or ‘it’s so awesome’ which was crazy. And then it’s on Fox News and Elon Musk and Tom Morello are saying things about it.  But it threw me as we’d pre-taped the show a month before and I’d forgotten about that lyric change. On actual New Year’s Eve, we were in our cover band, The Coverups, raising money for a chimpanzee sanctuary so I was like, ‘Hey what are you talking about? I was raising money for chimps’.”

Billie Joe Armstrong Breaks Down Some of the Band’s Singles

Green Day
Jason Tate

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day broke down some of their biggest hits:

There’s a band called 5 Seconds of Summer who wanted me to write a song for them. All of a sudden I was writing the lyrics, and I was like, “Oh my God, there’s no f—ing way I’m giving these guys this song.” There’s all those [lyrics] where it’s the last moment of someone’s life — it’s so intense. It’s just a song [from 2016’s Revolution Radio] about being a survivor.

Review: Definitely Maybe – “Are We Having Fun Yet?”

Adam Grundy

The latest single from Chicago pop-punk band, Definitely Maybe, called “Are We Having Fun Yet?” embraces the chaos of chasing your dreams head on. The band found moderate success with their last single, “One More Night,” and Definitely Maybe continue the momentum gained on this electric track. Singer/lyricist Courtney Clinkert remains as captivating as she’s ever been on this single that sounds reminiscent of the sound that Charlotte Sands and Yours Truly have gone for recently, with equally pleasing results here. The band shared, “’Are We Having Fun Yet?’ is a relentless exploration of the toll ambition takes on the soul. Delving into the highs and lows of chasing dreams, it offers an unfiltered look at the exhaustion and self-discovery that comes with the journey.”

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