New Jersey’s own Garcia Peoples open Nightcap at Wits’ End with an arch, vaguely evil-sounding riff that signals what’s to come: a set of songs that would feel equally at home soundtracking a backyard hang, a rousing game of D&D, or a solitary night at home considering the universe. Founding members Danny Arakaki and Tom Malach join us to discuss the band’s progward drift and open source creative flow.
Category: The AD Interview
Black to Comm :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Black to Comm’s Marc Richter has been making electronic music since the early 00s, piecing found sounds into intricate, multilayered compositions.
We caught up with the composer as he talks about his beginnings in music as a young man in the Black Forest region of Germany, the experiences that pointed him towards electronics and the art and artists who have inspired his latest work.
Earl Freeman: Poems and Drawings
Earl Freeman was a bassist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, poet, and artist. We spoke to Adam Lore from 50 Miles of Elbow Room and Michael Klausman from Wry Press about Earl Freeman: Poems and Drawings, the origin of the project, and the man himself.
Going Home With Kevin Morby
Kevin Morby fled the midwest as a young man. What’s brought him back and how has it inspired his new album, the accepting and fervent Sundowner?
Tobin Sprout :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Tobin Sprout was the other songwriter in early-1990s Guided by Voices.
But, in addition to his historic stint with one of lo-fi’s most exuberant bands, Sprout has done a lot of other stuff. He’s a well-regarded photo realist painter, an author and illustrator of several books and, every few years, a solo artist. In 2020, he released his eighth solo album, Empty Horses, a gorgeous but somewhat unexpected detour into Americana sounds and Civil War imagery. We talked about his new focus on country sounds, his art and his books and the band that started it all for him, all those years ago.
Angel Olsen :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
“They’re very different songs, even though they’re the same songs.” That’s how Angel Olsen puts it regarding Whole New Mess, an alternate timeline vision of the album that would become 2019’s All Mirrors. But the record isn’t a mere collection of demos. It’s a snapshot of Olsen at one point in a ongoing processing of thoughts and feelings, alive in a single moment.
A Terrible Word Called Kismet :: Tim Heidecker on Fear of Death
On Tim Heidecker’s Fear of Death, one of the funniest, most absurd, surreal, and reliable entertainers on the planet gets serious, about life’s truest inevitability. But let’s be clear: Heidecker isn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, the record’s rather buoyant and spirited, uniquely and retroactively American in a way—cynical and sharp as a Salem cigarette.
Sylvie Simmons :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Author, songwriter, and legendary music journalist Sylvie Simmons latest album, Blue on Blue is intimate, dreamy and beautifully melancholic. It carries a lifetime of in-depth musical exploration, but also the devastating experience of a life-altering accident.
Wendy Eisenberg :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Wendy Eisenberg is an improvising guitar and banjo player with an extraordinary command of their instruments, flitting effortlessly from intricate, off-balance jazz riffs to oblique 20th century classical motifs to rock and folk and Latin sounds. Trained in classical music and jazz, the artist employs considerable skills in the service of what sound like enigmatic pop songs, which draw on soul-wrenching experiences in a very formal, well-regulated way.
I Don’t Know is a Good Mantra :: Catching Up With Devendra Banhart
Devendra Banhart is well aware of how good he’s got it right now. While he’s taken a financial hit by not being able to tour and has the occasional freakout about the state of the world, the singer-songwriter is in a comfortable enough position to be able stay home and stay busy. He’s continued to work, demoing a new record that he’s making with his regular collaborator Noah Georgeson and, with his longtime backing band, remotely recording a dreamy, elegiac cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” …
Eddie Chacon :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Soul singer Eddie Chacon has spent years navigating the music industry. But on Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, his new album with John Carroll Kirby, Chacon sounds reborn as a cosmic R&B mystic. Here, he shares a playlist of some of the songs that inspired the lp and walks us along the many creative paths that led him here.
H.C. McEntire :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
On her second solo album Eno Axis, North Carolina’s H.C. McEntire sounds at peace. With her band luxuriating in gospel, soul, and country grooves behind her, her voice hovers above the down-home mix, buoyed by contentment. Inspired by time spent sinking into domestic routines and the blooming of a new relationship, the record feels like a cool breeze in this fiery summer. “I felt really centered in my body,” she says. “I was anchored down, I was in a great spiritual place. Everything about this record felt—I don’t want to say easy—but it had an ease to it.”
Sven Wunder :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Following Sven Wunder’s Lagniappe Session from July — with his interpretations of traditional Japanese songs — we had the opportunity to catch up with the enigmatic musician. Dig in as we discuss the ideas behind the beguiling project, including working under a pseudonym, the unexpected success of the albums, how Sweden funds music projects, how their musical journey became a learning experience, and the endlessly complicated debate over cultural appropriation.
Dirty Projectors :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
On the eve of the release of Dirty Projectors third EP this year, we caught up with Dave Longstreth to discuss the mosaic aspect of the EPs, the intense beauty of harmony, the band’s current line up, and the mighty influence of the great João Gilberto.
Unwelcome Jazz :: Jah Wobble Talks Bass, Brian Eno and 25 Years of “Spinner”
We’ve had 25 years to reflect on the strange, oscillating chasm of Eno/Wobble’s collaboration, which in many ways feels as relevant now as it did in 1995. The music feels as cold and mesmerizing as the surrounding atmosphere of the moon, its synthetic ripples swelling into great oceans of sound. Wobble brought a zealousness to Eno’s ambience, one that stirred a great fire in the belly of an ether otherwise shapeless and benign.