Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August - September 2017 i Under the Radar

If you have the inclination that you might have caught a quick glimpse of Kirin J Callinan’s penis, you can assume you’re correct. He does indeed flash his private parts in his music video for “S.A.D.” He also conjures the spirits of Michael Bolton and George Michael as he shows off sultry dance moves all over Cuba. “We wanted to explore the potential fine line between smut and art, beauty and vulgar, poser and provocateur,” said Callinan in a press release. That mission statement refers to more than just “S.A.D.” (which stands for “Song About Drugs”); it’s a lifestyle that the Aussie artist says goes as far back as adolescence. “Certainly as a teenager coming into adolescence, I always liked dressing up and being the center of attention. What teenager…

The second album in as many years from Brooklyn’s powerful folk rock group Big Thief is that work of impact that propels a band from a warm reception to commanding the discussion. Formed from a coalescence of peaking creativity and internal chemistry, Capacity expands on a cherished notion, that of connecting with people through intimate channels. Singer/songwriter and guitarist Adrianne Lenker has become increasingly aware of music’s correlation with humanity in this way, something that came across in mentioning what recently impelled her to make the acquaintance of a New York concert promoter who had always worked hard to book Big Thief. “I found out that artists never really talk to promoters, and I was like ‘that’s weird,’” muses Lenker. “I’m always reminded it’s an important…

“We spend a lot of time together outside Saint Etienne, hanging out and doing other projects,” Saint Etienne singer Sarah Cracknell reflects. “We end up making another record when the time feels right.” The English trio’s output may have slowed since their slew of ’90s hits but new Saint Etienne material is bound to excite any indie-pop fan. Cracknell got the ball rolling for Home Counties , their first new album in five years, recording demos with producer Shawn Lee that very much impressed bandmates Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. “She played us ‘Dive’ and ‘Take It All In’ quite early on,” Stanley recalls. “And they sounded fantastic. ‘Dive’ is like the great post-Spice Girls solo single that never happened. She set the bar very high…

“I hope for the best, but expect the worst and prepare for it mentally,” says Franklin James Fisher, singer in the industrial-soul unit Algiers. “I wasn’t surprised by Trump at all. Not by a country that let George Bush take the election the first time, and then after it was proven that he started two wars on false pretenses, voted for him properly the second time.” A political band since their inception, Algiers’ second album , The Underside of Power , takes its title from the bleak idea that one can’t understand true power until they’re on the opposing end of it. After touring the world for their self-titled debut, Fisher found himself back in NYC and working the coat check at a posh nightclub—a role he found to be…

The Undertones sang “it’s not so easy knowing we’ll be heard” and “a lot less time, but a lot more care” on “More Songs About Chocolate and Girls,” the opening track of their second album, 1980’s Hypnotised . They were talking about the difference between writing and recording 1979’s self-titled debut as opposed to their sophomore album. When asked if this was also the case when writing and recording Antisocialites , the sophomore album by Toronto five-piece Alvvays, frontwoman Molly Rankin says she prefers the band’s current situation. “When we made our first record, you do have that luxury of no one caring, but it’s also a problem,” she says. “We didn’t have very much support. I think I had two jobs,…

While Kate Stables is beloved for the haunting Celtic tinged melodies and evocative lyrics she records under the alias This Is the Kit, one of the most poignant moments on her new LP is taken from a far off land and sung in a language you’re not likely to understand. “By My Demon Eye”—a highlight from her fourth album (and her first for iconic British indie label Rough Trade), Moonshine Freeze— features a chorus from an African folk tale first unearthed by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, whose work Stables studies and draws inspiration from. Those exotic lyrics detail a time honored tribal tale about a tortoise and a hare, the latter of whom tricks the former into visiting a miserable old woman who lures liars to her cauldron of scalding hot…

At the heart of North London trio Girl Ray is a massive love for puns. From their debut album title Earl Grey to the band name itself, Girl Ray, Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell, and Sophie Moss are amused by a good play on words. “It’s actually Poppy’s brother that came up with [our band name] and it’s meant to be a pun on the artist Man Ray,” McConnell explains. More than a pun, it’s an inside joke between Girl Ray—they don’t even care that it’s only funny to them. McConnell and Moss speak at ease laughing at the interchangeability of made up phrase “chalt and Steve” and “salt and cheese.” It’s a testament to their closeness, as they playfully create a world only a grade school…

The quintessentially English pop trio, Saint Etienne are back with their first new record in five years. Home Counties is both an homage to and cathartic re-visitation of the suurbia surrounding London where Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, and Pete Wiggs grew up. Writing independently of each other, the band members convened at producer Shawn Lee’s studio in, ironically, central London to record an album that reflects their roots both geographically and musically while at the same time taking their usual unique look at the state of the world today (see Stanley’s thoughts on imagining David Bowie in “Whyteleaf” or his vision of a glam rock train drivers’ union). Fans will note the reappearance of connecting audio clips between songs, such as Stanley and Wiggs used to…

When Grizzly Bear released their debut, Horn of Plenty , in 2004, it would have been difficult to predict that they’d still be making records 13 years later. Essentially a solo album by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ed Droste, with drummer Chris Bear adding percussion and backing vocals, there was little indication that their future work would be defined by collaboration and the contributions of four unique creative personas. With Painted Ruins , their first new full-length release in five years, the band has opened up their songwriting process even, elevating bassist and producer Chris Taylor joining Droste and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen as a third voice in the mix, while also using Bear’s drum loops as the foundation for several tracks. The resulting…

Kevin Morby is calling during a rare moment of relaxation—a day off at his drummer’s place in upstate New York. The next morning he’ll fly to Barcelona for a festival gig, but his easy speaking voice jumps when he talks about the last four shows. He finally had the opportunity to debut songs from his new record, City Music . The crowd’s reaction was a validation of the record he set out to make—an electric guitar record—as he puts it, built with his live band. Conceived as a mind-out-of-body experiment, City Music is the second album Morby wrote, back-to-back, in Los Angeles during a solitary spell. Having just finished penning 2016’s Singing Saw , a lush folk album with backing vocals, horns, and strings, Morby played…

Everyone’s death grief model is unique. Kübler-Ross, the best known model, rarely encompasses its depth in the long term. There’s no manual in place for such a cataclysmic life event. For Michelle Zauner, who essentially is the Philadelphia based Japanese Breakfast, her first album Psychopomp tackled the subject in a fairly straightforward manner after her mother’s death. She never intended to use it as a marketing device, but interviewers caught on to the themes, and she found it to be therapeutic for her to discuss. On her second album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet , Zauner retreated to science fiction themes as a device to cope with her ongoing grief. “I’d been taking care of my mother while she was dying, and…

Though it seems like a distant memory, there once was a time when nearly every band that had a significant following would release a “B-sides and rarities” collection. These were the days when singles were released on physical media—vinyl 45s, cassettes, CDs—that would have extra space available for a previously unreleased song. But with the advent of singles being released in a digital format, B-sides are a bit of an anachronism and unreleased songs are often saved for bonus digital content or deluxe reissues, if they aren’t left to languish as little heard moments compiled by obsessive fans. It was these listeners that Beach House was hoping to reach with B-Sides and Rarities . “We realized there were a bunch of things and there was no…

Protest is our recurring feature where a musician writes about a political or social issue that interests them and then submits a photo of them holding a self-made protest sign relating to that issue. This issue’s participant, EMA (aka Erika M. Anderson), is no stranger to political songwriting. The South Dakota native’s last album, 2014’s acclaimed The Future’s Void , examined our culture’s addiction to technology and the Internet. Her new album, Exile in the Outer Ring , continues to hold up a mirror to modern society and is described as a “dark portrait of what it means to be American in 2017.” Read on as Anderson analyzes what automation may mean for artists. A friend of mine recently asked me how…

One might assume that a young indie rocker with growing critical acclaim would be earnestly, intensely set on making the next big step in their career. But instead of imbuing such seriousness, Willie J Healey opted to don a red paisley, painfully out of fashion shirt and a black cowboy hat, all of which make him look like a failed 1970s Nashville troubadour. The goofy getup was for his “Lazy Shade of Pink,” video—a clip that promotes one of the best songs on his debut album, People and Their Dogs. The video was just as funny as the costumes, featuring Healey striking overly dramatic poses for a director that seemed too enthused with his camera’s zoom function. The 22-year-old Oxford, England rocker says he shot the clip with director Joseph…

Since the release of their 2013 album Bankrupt! Phoenix have toured the world multiple times, headlined Coachella, performed across nearly every show on the late-night TV circuit, won a Grammy, and even appeared in Bill Murray’s screwball Netflix holiday special, A Very Murray Christmas (directed by frontman Thomas Mars’ wife, Sofia Coppola). So in the words of every Super Bowl announcer ever, “What are you going to do now?” If you’re Mars, Deck d’Arcy, Laurent Brancowitz, and Christian Mazzalai, you skip Disney World and make the admirable decision to head back into the studio the day after getting off tour. “I think it’s more pathetic, that’s how I would describe it!” Brancowitz laughs, calling from his home in Paris. “But we really…

“[For On the Road ] I wanted a band that were young and actually out there on the road. Wolf Alice, at that point, had been on the road nonstop for a year. They’re a serious band, and a very hard-working band.” Following leisurely journeys across Northern England and Italy, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon set off due south in The Trip to Spain , the third and latest entry in British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s comedic Trip series. The film—which finds the two actors again playing exaggerated versions of themselves—follows them as they take in the country’s most breathtaking panoramas, drink its finest wines, and sample the best of its regional cuisines (and largely ignore it all as…

“T his is being alive!” There’s a moment, midstream through “1998,” where you can hear Murray Lightburn’s heartbeat. “This is being alive,” The Dears’ frontman sings over and over on the central track on Times Infinity Volume Two. It’s a buoyant, even bouncing, moment where the rest of the band frolics musically around Lightburn and his musical partner and wife Natalia Yanchak. It’s also about as happy as you’ll hear Lightburn. Such a moment is an authentic one for The Dears, a duo who are deeply committed to their craft, who come alive when making music. Even as mainstream attention has eluded them despite the critical acclaim and Polaris Prize nominations for albums like 2003’s No Cities Left , 2006’s Gang of Losers , 2008’s Missiles, and 2011’s Degeneration Street…

“I’m not a stranger to shame and redemption,” states actor Jon Bernthal. “This notion of paying for your sins, and the fact of life that you’ve got to move forward. You’re only going one way. Sometimes there are characters that are so scarred and so deeply remorseful or horrified of their pasts that it colors every breath that they take moving forward. I think there’s a level of devotion to that, whether it’s to your family, to God, or whether it’s to your own shame and sense of regret.” Bernthal is speaking of his role in the medieval action film Pilgrimage . Set in the 13th Century, he plays a strong, silent warrior referred to only as The Mute, who has dedicated himself fully to protecting a group of monks…

Timing is everything. Seminal early ’90s U.K. group Ride broke up prior to the release of its—at the time—final album, 1996’s Tarantula . Much was made of this split, marking it as acrimonious, when in reality it only lasted a few weeks with the members returning to each other quickly, albeit as friends, not band mates. The disbandment of the shoegazing pioneers was the result of too much: too much living in each other’s pockets, too much independence away from their families, too much fame, too much success, too much excess; all far too soon at too young of an age. Months shy of the release of Nowhere25 , the 25th anniversary edition of the group’s 1990 landmark debut album,…

Midnight Sister, on their debut LP Saturn Over Sunset , are emblematic of the analog swell of early Broadcast, The Free Design, and The United States of America. They also convey a cinematic sweep on tunes such as the opener “Canary,” evocative of the ethereal leanings of the score of Rosemary’s Baby . The Los Angeles based band, composed of Juliana Giraffe and Ari Balouzian, aren’t offended by film comparisons in the least, as they’ve cut their artistic teeth in that medium to varying degrees. “I’m a filmmaker, and this is the first time I’d used music to tell a story,” says Giraffe. “I’ve directed music videos and short films.” Balouzian has been involved more on the compositional end, working with both…

2017 has been a period of nascency for Azniv Korkejian, a.k.a. Bedouine—as we’re settling in for our interview, the Syrian-Armenian singer is in Houston with her family, welcoming her newborn nephew into the world. Between that and the release of her self-titled debut album, Korkejian is in the midst of a very fruitful season. “It’s been a long time in the works,” she says of her LP, “and I wasn’t really sure it would get heard by anyone, so it all just feels like a bonus at this point.” The seeds of Bedouine (a verbal twist on the Arabic Bedouin nomads) began germinating over three years ago, when Korkejian had just moved to Los Angeles. Trained in sound design with a degree from Savannah College of Art and Design, she…

It’s a story that has now become inseparable from the music: The War on Drugs’ Lost in the Dream was the account of Adam Granduciel sinking into depression and despair, struggling with the realization that the high of playing music every night with his friends had faded into the loneliness of everyday life. That album, arguably the most universally-acclaimed release of 2014, sent the band around the world several times, inspired more than a few think-pieces, and landed them on late-night TV. And all the while, Granduciel was writing. During the downtime between shows, during little breaks between legs of touring, during the times when other musicians turn their brains off and relax—he was laying the foundation of the next War on Drugs album, making sure…

It’s time-honored wisdom that sophomore albums are more difficult to record than a band’s debut and this certainly appears to be the case for the Toronto-based band Alvvays and their sophomore album Antisocialites . We spoke with singer Molly Rankin about the differences between it and their 2014-released self-titled debut, as well as touching upon why there was a three-year wait between albums, Rankin’s experiences playing with Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub (who appears on the new album), singing with The Jesus and Mary Chain at a festival in Australia, and her lack of desire to conform to expectations. Rankin grew up on the remote Nova Scotian island of Cape Breton before forming Alvvays in Toronto in 2011 alongside guitarist Alec O’Hanley, keyboardist Kerri MacLellan, and…