Death Valley Girls’ Islands in the Sky might look from the outside like a celestial new age outing, but it’s something else and all together unexpected: an old fashioned rock & roll album boasting consciousness boosting effects. Today at AD, Bonnie Bloomgarden of the band joins us for a discussion about the radical aspects of creativity.
Category: The AD Interview
Jenny O. :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Singer/songwriter Jenny O joins Aquarium Drunkard for a searching talk about Spectra, growing up in rock, jazz and classical music, learning to work within her own unique parameters and she’s through writing love songs and wants to dedicate the rest of her life to communicating about the climate.
Gina Birch (The Raincoats) :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
With their jittery harmonies and bounding rhythmic clangor, their insistence on doing it themselves, and their brash disregard of expectations, The Raincoats didn’t just talk about feminism: they enacted it. Nearly 20 years on after The Raincoats last album, founding member Gina Birch has made a solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, her first in a multi-decade career (unless you count a 1994 album by The Hangovers). We talk about her new record, her early days in squats, her love of reggae and the legacy of The Raincoats.
Jared Mattson :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Mattson 2 guitarist Jared Mattson joins us for a discussion about his solo debut Peanut, covering Ween and John Coltrane, inhaling tire rubber, and the underrated power of Andy Summers of The Police.
Steve Tilston :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Unsung Britfolk hero Steve Tilston joins us to discuss his sparse early ’70s gem An Acoustic Confusion, the influence of Bert Jansch, and that time John Lennon wrote him a letter…which he never received.
Andrew Broder :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Minneapolis-based producer and composer Andrew Broder joins us to discuss his soundtrack for Alan Moore’s dream-like detective movie The Show, plus his work with luminaries like MF Doom, Joe Rainey, Lambchop, and Alan Sparhawk and the late Mimi Parker of Low.
Old Fire :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
On John Mark Lapham’s second release under the moniker Old Fire Voids, the musician and filmmaker creates a sprawling and meditative odyssey through the darkest corners of the West Texas towns that continues to spark his imagination. A guest-filled journey with vocal and lyrical contributions by Bill Callahan, Adam Torres, Emily Cross and Julia Holter, Lapham pulls elements from post-rock, avant-country, spiritual jazz, and murky drones to soundtrack eroding structures that cast shadows in the desert for nefarious characters to hide.
King Tuff :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
King Tuff’s newest album, Smalltown Stardust, looks back fondly on the place where Kyle Thomas grew up, couching sunny melodies in soft 1960s psychedelia and folk arrangements. In this interview, we talked about small town life Vermont-style and the experiences that shaped Thomas.“ When there’s nothing to do, you kind of make it up. You’ve got to figure out how to fill the time. We would go play music together or just hang out,” he recalls.“I do think that boredom is a huge part of creativity.”
Jon Brion :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
As a prolific producer, composer, and session player, Jon Brion has been involved with some of the biggest movies and recordings of the last three decades. But with the recent archival release of his debut album Meaningless, listeners can finally hear him as a proper solo artist. Brion joins Aquarium Drunkard to discuss the album and what it means to him more than 20 years after its creation.
Meg Baird :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Meg Baird’s latest album, Furling, withdraws itself into small domestic spaces. It explores the partnership the songwriter has forged, both musical and romantic, with the guitarist Charlie Saufley. It meditates on the way that a piano can sit at the center of family life, making any house a home. And yet, it also faces outward, pushing out rollicking grooves and aching, pristine clarity. It makes the case for Baird, once again, as one of the finest singers and songwriters of her generation.
Horse Lords :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Comradely Objects is every bit as mathematical as it is melodic, and as already covered artfully here at AD by Brent Sirota, it is arguably the crowing achievement of the Horse Lords cannon. Fresh on the heels of their latest release, we caught up with guitarist Owen Gardner and bassist Max Eilbacher to discuss recording in lockdown, relocating to Germany, weaponizing the avant-garde, Cornelius Cardew, and what happens when lyrics fail.
Spiral Stairs (Pavement) :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg discusses Medley Attack, the influence of The Clean, and takes us deep behind the scenes of the blockbuster Pavement reunion.
Richard Dawson :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Richard Dawson of Newcastle Upon Tyne. This is how the songwriter credits himself on the cover of his new record The Ruby Cord—the third part of a possible trilogy (beginning with medieval Peasant, and modern times in 2020) which finds him delving into the different timelines of communities in England. Alex Riggs joins Dawson (and a cat named Trouble) to explore more.
That Last Train Is Back Again: A Conversation with Cindy Lee
Born Patrick Flegel, musician Cindy Lee walks around Seattle chain smoking cigarettes while his brother’s band, Preoccupations, plays a set for KEXP. He is surrounded by huge concrete slabs and dons an orange ski cap. We spoke via Zoom and for a while, we couldn’t see or hear him. When we do, he sort of looks like someone without a cellphone. Someone who walked into the last Radioshack and stole a few things. He is not in drag. Not yet. He looks like a man.
No Salt, No Lint, No Cassettes: AD Interviews Author And kranky Co-Founder Bruce Adams
Kranky Records co-founder Bruce Adams recently published a book, You’re With Stupid: kranky, Chicago, and the Reinvention of Indie Music, which succeeds as both a memoir and a cultural history of a brief wrinkle in time when a few Chicago neighborhoods seemed to comprise the center of a then-flourishing underground rock universe. Aquarium Drunkard spoke to Adams about kranky kommandments, the ways in which the world of publishing differs from the world of music, and the trappings of “functional” music.