Jim Adkins discusses taking a breather from Jimmy Eat World by going solo for the first time, exploring and reinterpreting ‘50s and ‘60s pop music, and why he’s releasing his songs individually instead of as an album.
Interview: Jim Adkins
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Interview: Mike Shinoda of Fort Minor
Mike Shinoda explains why he is bringing Fort Minor back, details his new song “Welcome” and its 360 video, describes his evolution as a musician and lyricist, talks about collaborating with Harvard, and reflects upon the past and future of Linkin Park.
Interview: Ellie Rowsell and Joel Amey of Wolf Alice
Frontwoman Ellie Rowsell and drummer Joel Amey talk about the inspirations behind Wolf Alice’s debut album My Love Is Cool, what some of the different reactions they’ve come across thus far have been like, and why learning to follow your gut is important.
Interview: Dustin Kensrue
Dustin Kensrue discusses his long-awaited second solo album Carry the Fire, collecting old ideas and turning them into songs, approaching love songs from a different perspective, improving as a storyteller, and what it’s like for Thrice to be back.
Interview: Chuck Comeau of Simple Plan
How’s it feel to finally have your new song, “Saturday,” out?
We’re excited! It’s been a long time since we’ve put out new music. The last thing we did was like this little EP that was a little bit of a b-side, I guess, quote, unquote — songs that were leftover from the Get Your Heart Onalbum. We take a little bit of time in between records because we go on tour for two, two and a half years on each cycle. Then we stop for a few months, catch our breath, and then we start writing and we write for a long time. We wrote for like a year and a half on this album. We wrote like 70-75 songs. It’s definitely exciting. People have been waiting and we’re finally able to give them something they can listen to and get stoked about the album. It feels good to feel like, “Okay, we’re kicking up in gear,” and we’re slowing switching from writing, making the record, and recording it, to actually having music out and going back on tour and planning some shows and the album cover and all that. So it’s exciting that we, as a band, have the luck and the privilege to be doing it for a fifth time.
Read More “Chuck Comeau of Simple Plan”Interview: Miguel
Miguel Pimentel discusses wanting to establish an identity on his third album Wildheart, what being wild-hearted represents, how he’s grown as a songwriter and live performer, and why his L.A. roots will always play an important part in who he is.
Interview: Nate Ruess
Nate Ruess explains the decision to go solo on Grand Romantic, why he always ends up writing about heartbreak, and how lucky he’s been to work with the people he’s met throughout his career.
Interview: Keith Goodwin and Dan Schwartz of Good Old War
Lead singer Keith Goodwin and guitarist Dan Schwartz discuss Good Old War’s new album Broken Into Better Shape, the challenges of continuing as a two-piece, their positive outlook on songwriting, and how they are able to get all those gorgeous harmonies.
Review: Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material
Country music is ripe for a civil war.
Over the course of the last few years, Nashville has segmented into two very distinct groups. On one side of the industry, there are the people who are willing to play the game, to sacrifice the classic core of the country music genre—ostensibly, deep and unusual storytelling—in order to sell records. This group is where you will find the “bro country” collective, “artists” like Luke Bryan, the Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Billy Currington, Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean, and pretty much every male singer on country radio. These guys write songs (or often, accept songs from other writers) that extoll the virtues of drinking, driving trucks, and objectifying women. Said songs are usually hollow, derivative, and overproduced, but boy, do they sell.
Read More “Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material”Interview: Sam Harris of X Ambassadors
Frontman Sam Harris discusses the autobiographical concept behind X Ambassadors’ debut album VHS and its hit single “Renegades,” how a love of film influences his music, what it’s like co-writing for Rihanna, and why endurance is the key to success.
Interview: Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou
Vocalist Aaron Weiss unpacks the apocalyptic imagery inside mewithoutYou’s newest release Pale Horses, why he likes to explore each album from a different perspective, and how that left him at his most unguarded while trying to reconcile his love/hate relationship with religion.
Interview: Jon Foreman
Jon Foreman discusses his new solo undertaking The Wonderlands, the challenges of writing a song for each hour of the day and working with 24 different producers, why embracing the chaos in life is important, and what’s next on the horizon for Switchfoot.
Review: All Time Low – Future Hearts
Properly appreciating All Time Low’s Future Hearts requires a bit of background education. While the Baltimore quartet’s newest effort is impressive in its own right as a complete and well-rounded pop record, the gravity of All Time Low’s current success, in songwriting and in relativity, weighs more when it’s put in context.
Put simply, the argument can be made that All Time Low shouldn’t be in this position; they shouldn’t be releasing Future Hearts at all, and certainly not to this much fanfare. The band didn’t just face a major crossroads after the release of its 2011 major label debut Dirty Work, but a question of whether they should still exist.
Read More “All Time Low – Future Hearts”Review: Death Cab For Cutie – Kintsugi
The word ‘Kintsugi’ means a “style of art where they take fractured, broken ceramics and put them back together with very obvious, real gold. It’s making the repair of an object a visual part of its history.”
It has understandably been a hard four years for Death Cab For Cutie since Codes & Keys came out. First, Ben Gibbard’s divorce makes for a departure from the newfound love that existed in songs like “Stay Young, Go Dancing” on Codes. Second, guitarist and founding member – and perhaps most importantly long-time producer – Chris Walla decided to leave the band, with this being his final album. The result of these situations is Kintsugi.
Entirely true to its name, the album expresses the void felt by Gibbard – the need to fix (or fill) something that is broken, to find something that is missing. The opening “No Room In Frame” begins with music that feels desolate and incomplete before Gibbard solemnly admits, “I don’t know where to begin.” The eerie music carries on, as the choppy guitars and drums add weight to the heartbreak of the line “And I guess it’s not a failure we could help / And we’ll both go on to get lonely with someone else.” The repetition of “with someone else” adds another blow to the gut, really letting the sheer desolation of the song sink in. One track in and we already have the fractured heartbreak that resonates throughout Kintsugi, just as the name implies.
Read More “Death Cab For Cutie – Kintsugi”Review: Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves
”I’m listening to a new Modest Mouse album.”
For a very long time, that seemed like a sentence no one would ever be able to utter honestly. As the years wound past following 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank—a record that dropped when I was 16 years old—the same pattern repeated over and over again. First, the band would make some comment about writing songs or heading into the studio; then, fans would throw Modest Mouse on their most anticipated lists, saying things like “IT’S GOING TO BE THIS YEAR!!!” And then, inevitably, December would come to a close without any word about a new record. Soon enough, we’d all start the vicious cycle all over again.
Read More “Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves”