Like most of us during the dog days of the pandemic, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Zachary Cale found himself adrift, searching for inspiration in thoroughly weird times. He found it in a Red Hook art studio, where a piano sat, mostly unused. Cale’s primary instrument is the guitar — you can hear his expert playing all over his previous records. Composing on piano wasn’t his usual mode. But during those long nights in Red Hook, songs started to come.
Category: The AD Interview
Cornelius :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
From his home in Tokyo, Cornelius joined us to discuss the ethereal qualities that make up his current material, his longtime admiration for The Durutti Column, looking back on breakthrough album Fantasma, the Kraftwerk-inspired visual components that augment his live performances, and much more.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Will Oldham has known Daniel Higgs for decades, first in Baltimore in the late 1990s, later putting up the Lungfish auteur whenever he passed through Louisville. So when his friend, musical collaborator and Louisville neighbor Nathan Salsburg suggested covering a Lungfish song that he’d been singing to his infant daughter, it made perfect sense to Oldham.
Arab Strap :: I’m Totally Fine With It Don’t Give A Fuck Anymore
It’s no accident that Arab Strap’s eighth full album has a couple of emojis in the title. A disgruntled, disgusted masterwork, I’m Totally Fine With It lives in the belly of the digital beast, spewing blasted poetry at the dits and dots that move through its digestive tract.
Jeffrey Silverstein :: On The Far Out, Psychedelic Swampiness of Roseway
With his new EP Roseway, Jeffrey Silverstein continues his journeyman drift, wedding country ballads to funk boogies and laser-guided motorik drive to languid, swamp-ready guitars. With his Telecaster Deluxe strapped on, Silverstein cut the recordings with his band. The music picks up where his last full-length, Western Sky Music, left off. We caught up with Silverstein to discuss how it came together. Our conversation, edited for clarity and cohesion, is presented here.
Alan Braufman :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
“You don’t have grief without love.” Saxophonist Alan Braufman got his start in the early ’70s NYC loft jazz scene, where he took in shows by Sun Ra and other firebrand luminaries. More than 50 years later, he’s still at it with a post-bop stunner, Infinite Love, Infinite Tears. He joins us to discuss.
Catching Up With Bill MacKay
Locust Land, is Bill MacKay’s first album since 2019. It’s a mix of folky vocal melodies and transcendent instrumental reveries, intricate in execution but sublimely easy to listen to. We caught up to talk about MacKay’s life in guitar; the way that structured, sung songs and open-ended improvisations can say the same things in different ways, and how he hopes his music will land with people.
Clarissa Connelly :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
As thoughtful in her articulations about her artistry as she is imaginative in her tremendously vivid arrangements, Clarissa Connelly is a compelling conversationalist. Today, she joins AD to discuss her new album, World of Work, the power of dreams and the ongoing discovery of magic to be found in her music.
Jessica Pratt :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Here in the Pitch is a gorgeous slice of baroque pop, but also something gnarlier and more complicated. Recording for the second time at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn and employing a full band, Pratt’’s realized a lush, baroque 1960s pop sound akin to Vashti Bunyan’s work with Andrew Loog Oldham, Dusty Springfield, even Petula Clark.
Catching Up With Myriam Gendron
Myriam Gendron is balanced between opposing forces: between songwriting and poetry, English and French, acoustic folk and chaotic post-rock. Her third album, Mayday, is a continuation of this balance: a meditation on grief, sorrow, and most importantly, survival. Ahead of its May 10 release, we sat down with Gendron, discussing Leonard Cohen, recording with Jim White, and the intersection of poetry and songwriting.
John Carpenter :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Music is integral to the bleak zones created by filmmaker and composer John Carpenter. With his new album, Lost Themes IV: Noir, he taps into the spirit of classic film noir. He joins us to discuss the style, mood, and influence of classic noir: “Everybody’s doomed in these things. That’s what I find.”
Catching Up With Amen Dunes
With Death Jokes Damon McMahon has created a complicated musical and cultural tapestry, inspired by hip-hop sample density. “I just really hope that people take the time to pay attention to the details, because there’s so much in this album. Even my dearest friends are saying, ‘I didn’t understand it until I’d listened to it five times.'”
Water Damage :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Maximal repetition with minimal deviation: This is the guiding principle of Water Damage, the amorphous Austin, Texas-based collective specializing in 20-minute slabs of hulking, relentless drone-rock for people who think two notes is one too many. An awe-inspiring racket that sounds like Earth taking a crack at making dance music, or a bulldozer covering Faust.
somesurprises :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
somesurprises began modestly, but with the band’s latest record, the excellent Perseids, they’ve moved into a positively widescreen space. It’s a dreamy sound, occasionally reminiscent of such legends as Stereolab, Grouper, Mazzy Star or Yo La Tengo. But it’s not just dreamy. Beneath the gorgeous drones and sweet motorik pop-rock, there are plenty of sharp edges, both sonically and lyrically.
High Llamas & Healing Potpourri :: In Conversation
Sean O’Hagan’s High Llamas project has always followed its creator’s whims. But with Hey Panda, the Llamas embark on their most unexpected journey yet, straight into the heart of the auto-tuned, hyper pop fixated social media feed. Simi Sohota of Healing Potpourri joins O’Hagan to unpack the new album, consider the spiritual life of pianos, and reflect on the way the ’90s changed how musicians approach—and shatter—the concept of genre.