On their self-titled album as Mess Esque, Helen Franzmann and Mick Turner generate poignant and skeletal melodies that float in a self-contained dream pop universe. They joined us to discuss tuning their approach to each other and more.
Category: The AD Interview
The Aquarium Drunkard Interview :: Oren Ambarchi
Experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi is one of music’s most prolific and inventive collaborators, working with everyone from Keith Rowe and Keiji Haino to Jim O’Rourke and Merzbow in largely improvised sessions, then layering the results into intricate constructed pieces that blur the boundaries between jazz, noise, rock, minimalism, drone and electronics.
Cass McCombs :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
His tenth full-length, Heartmind at times feels like a representation of Cass McCombs’ own wandering mindset. While the album’s eight songs vary in tone and style, they all seem to hold a common thread, whether lyrically or musically. It’s an album that McCombs couldn’t have intended to make precisely, as to direct himself toward it, would’ve been to betray his own ambitions.
Tim Kinsella :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
In a longform, career-spanning conversation, Tim Kinsella of Cap’n Jazz, discusses the Gimme Altamont project with Jenny Pulse, writing “systems” instead of songs, acting, and more.
Cass McCombs :: Heartmind
In the liner notes of Cass McCombs’ tenth full-length album Heartmind is a rambling paragraph that hides within it a depiction of the creation process: “If I direct myself, I betray my direction, so I keep walking..” McCombs seems to be telling a story about caroming about the streets of San Francisco, but it’s also something akin to a lost Oblique Strategy. Within the album’s classic run-time of 8 songs and 43 minutes is a genuine attempt at avoiding betraying direction and attempting to understand more of the world around us.
Tav Falco :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
More than four decades into it, punk gentleman Tav Falco is still on the road, still tapping into flowing channels of primal rock & roll. Fresh off last year’s release of Club Car Zodiac, he’s united The Panther Burns for the “Rogue Male” tour, and plotting a course through the U.S. Ahead of the shows, Jared Artaud of The Vacant Lots/Alan Vega Archive caught up with Falco to discuss his recent work, relationship with Alex Chilton, and the fractured state of the union.
Hiroshi Asada :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Hiroshi Asada’s Greetings From Nashville (You Who’s In My Mind) turned 50 this year, the artist’s expressive aural love letter to Country Music and America. Spoken of reverentially by fans and artists from Japan and beyond, the LP was cut in Nashville at the Acuff-Rose studio with a grip of the industry’s most in-demand session players including members of Nashville’s Area Code 615.
Oneida :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
If time is a flat circle, the members of Oneida have figured out how to toss it like a frisbee. Nearly a quarter century since their debut album, the avant-rock quintet have returned with one of the most straightforward, riff-heavy records in their vast discography: Success. Bobby Matador and Kid Millions join us to discuss the record, the band’s history, and the Grateful Dead.
While We Wait: A Conversation With Kevin Morby
On the heels of his latest and seventh long-player, This Is A Photograph, we caught up with Kevin Morby to discuss Memphis, Butterflies, and his appreciation for someone who died 25 years ago. Hallelujah! Hallelujah.
The Aquarium Drunkard Interview :: OSEES’ John Dwyer
For his most recent OSEES album, A Foul Form, John Dwyer shifts again, this time revisiting the punk and hardcore that shaped his Rhode Island adolescence. And since he’s looking back, it seemed like a good time for us to look back, too, in an interview that spans the Dwyer career so far, from Providence skate punk to SF garage rock to Castle Face honcho to free improv experimenter.
Joseph Allred :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Stringed-thing wizard and tireless sonic explorer Joseph Allred is in the process of moving back to the only place that truly feels like home: The verdant sliver of rural Tennessee that inspired their new album The Rambles & Rags of Shiloh, a collection of 10 gorgeous instrumental works for acoustic guitar and banjo. We recently connected with Allred for a wide-ranging chat about Black Sabbath, Buck Gooter, being a hillbilly in a big city and finding a sense of belonging in music.
Oligarchs And Water: A Conversation With Daughn Gibson
The hymn of images is difficult to convey. Daughn Gibson has returned. His first new music in six years. We caught up with him to talk about his new EP, Kriminelle Energie. What was difficult now seems easy. He sings for us. Stay tuned.
Joan Shelley :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
We caught up with Joan Shelley on a summer Friday shortly after the Supreme Court upended Roe Vs. Wade, a weird and unsettled time for everyone, but perhaps particularly for a female artist in Kentucky with a new daughter. We talked about making art in a pandemic, the importance of collaboration and the difficulties of doing anything else when you have a young child, as well as the pleasures of listening to music all the way through, the way it was intended.
Lael Neale :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Singer/songwriter Lael Neale sits down at Schubas Tavern in Chicago to discuss her album Acquainted with Night, her collaborator Guy Blakeslee of Entrance Band, and where she’s going next.
Color Green :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Arriving July 22 via AD and Org Music, Color Green’s full-length debut is music of absolute forward motion, meant to be played from open car windows no matter the speed you’re traveling. The songs nod reverently to their forebears—from the Allmans-tinged sunshine of “Ill Fitting Suit” to the JJ Cale taillight lament of “Ruby”—before tossing up a wave and taking the whole show a little further down the road. With another record in the works and a road-tested band behind them, we caught up with Noah Kohll and Corey Madden as their Color Green hive mind ambles steadily toward its next incarnation.