Altered State
The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli Lights a New Fire
The Afghan Whigs are better now than they’ve ever been. The last decade of the band’s output, 2014’s Do to the Beast and three years later, In Spades, and, now, How Do You Burn?, reflect a streak unmatched by any other period in their storied, 35-year career. Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Afghan Whigs 2.0 is the rare sequel that outshines the original. This success is due in large part to the continual evolution, constant collaboration, and relentless experimentation of singer/songwriter Greg Dulli. “I really like the now,” Dulli tells SPIN over the phone. “I change so much over a year or two about what gets me off.” Dulli’s career has been defined by perpetual motion. Musically, he’s never stopped hurtling forward, always searching for what’s new and exciting to him. He’s never really...
Hooping With Perry Farrell
“I used to play high school basketball,” Perry Farrell says, serving as a message and warning statement, but not in the Al Bundy sense. Standing in the Lollapalooza press area mid-Friday afternoon, the Jane’s Addiction/Porno for Pyros singer (and Lollapalooza co-founder) has his eyes on one thing: a basketball version of Connect 4. His warning is well-taken — after all, he bested Post Malone in a game of beer pong at a Lollapalooza in South America back in 2019. Basketball and Lollapalooza may seem like an odd pairing, but Farrell said that legendary rock promoter Bill Graham kept a basketball hoop at Shoreline Amphitheater in Northern California, a reason why it was a favored destination during the festival’s touring years. Firing off mid-range jumpers amid a crowd of curious onlookers in...
The Kills Are Ready to Roar
At the old Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, fans are wound up for a smoldering night of jagged, turbocharged punk and deep blues. The Kills have come to reignite the present and reflect on their past amid the room’s angular, pre-Columbian temple decor and packed dance floor. At stage left is singer Alison Mosshart, with a mane of startling platinum, wailing to the riffs of “Murdermile,” a bleak tune from 2005. She grabs her mic stand and snaps her head forward and back, convulsing to the raw bursts of guitar from her creative soulmate, Jamie Hince, now blasting through his amplifiers. Together, Mosshart and Hince pause between riffs to growl and purr, “It’s a train wreck/You got me on the wrong track, honey.” This is only their third night back in the spotlight since 2019, part of a ...
Art Alexakis’s World of Noise: Everclear at 30
When Everclear‘s Art Alexakis logs onto Zoom, you can’t help but notice that he’s seated casually in front of a wall of platinum records. “You know, it’s funny, I’ve had them for years and before I got this studio I’d never put them on the walls,” he says. The studio is a space he shares with his wife, a scant mile and a half from their home in Pasadena. While Alexakis’s side is platinum records and endless racks of gear, his wife’s side is the tonal opposite. “She does healing sound baths and yoga stuff,” Alexakis says with a chuckle, taking a bite of microwave popcorn, “it’s more hippie over there and more punk rock on my side.” Alexakis is Everclear’s principal songwriter and long-running front person, a band made famous in the mid-’90s with the massive success of singles like Sparkle A...
Bob Stinson’s Stint With The Bleeding Hearts Finally Sees the Light of Day
Mike Leonard, the singer/songwriter/guitarist of the Bleeding Hearts still remembers one of the last times he saw Bob Stinson, the late, great founding guitarist of the Replacements and for a short stint, Leonard’s bandmate in the Bleeding Hearts and roommate. “He was sitting by Lake of the Isles [in Minneapolis],” Leonard recalls in a recent phone interview, in which he brought along bandmate drummer Pat McKenna. “He was listening to the record on a Walkman and he was like, ‘Why doesn’t she just put it out?’ He wanted it to come out.” Nearly 30 years later, Stinson will finally get his wish. Bar None Records, in conjunction with Fiasco Records, will release The Bleeding Hearts’ Riches to Rags on Record Store Day this weekend. Initially, it will be out on limited edition red vinyl before l...
The Strange Legacy and Unexpected Return of The Boo Radleys
Three decades ago, The Boo Radleys made a psychedelic masterpiece that was hailed by NME as one of the top albums of 1993. Their next album spawned a sunny Britpop hit and rose to No. 1 on the U.K. album charts, and the next one was rumored to have influenced Radiohead. So why is the band so overlooked today? “I think we just confused people,” says lead singer Simon “Sice” Rowbottom on the eve of the band’s first album in 23 years. Sice observes that the Boos’ willingness to transcend genre—originating as a My Bloody Valentine-inspired shoegaze outfit; melding roaring guitar with eclectic instrumentation and avant-noise psychedelia on 1993’s extraordinarily potent Giant Steps; then being labeled a Britpop act with 1995’s Wake Up!—left critics and fans unsure how to categorize the group. In...
Drummer Jack Irons Is Still ‘Fishing’ for New Sounds
It may sound hyperbolic, but without Jack Irons, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam may never have come to exist. The 59-year-old drummer was key to the formation of both of those Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted bands, thanks to lifelong friendships with musicians such as Flea, Anthony Kiedis and Alain Johannes, and to his chance handoff of a 1990 instrumental, pre-Pearl Jam demo tape to a then-unknown San Diego singer named Eddie Vedder, who was afterward invited to join that band within a matter of weeks. In recent years, Irons has released a host of largely instrumental music on his own, boiling down the essence of his rhythmic prowess into tracks that at times recall the spookier side of trip-hop, the precision cool of Kraftwerk and the spaced-out syncopation of Can. On March ...
Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard on Reviving Loosegroove Label: ‘I’m Still A Kid in the Sandbox’
Flush with the success of Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut Ten, the band’s co-founder and guitarist Stone Gossard could have easily spent his hard-earned cash on any number of creature comforts. Instead, he teamed with longtime Seattle rock scene cohort Regan Hagar and in 1994 started Loosegroove Records as an imprint through Sony. Gossard utilized his good fortune to amplify friends and fellow artists pushing past the grunge-era sounds of the Queen City, like the saxophone-driven avant-rock of Critters Buggin, the hip-hop and funk-inflected Weapon of Choice and the rough-and-tumble Devilhead. “We knew so many people who were playing music, and I was meeting so many musicians that I was inspired by and excited by,” Gossard tells SPIN over Zoom. “Having had all this experience for 10 years in terms o...
Producer Brendan O’Brien Goes Behind the Making of the ‘Bittersweet’ Final Chris Cornell LP
Producer Brendan O’Brien was fresh off wrapping work on Pearl Jam’s sophomore album Vs. when he met Chris Cornell for the first time in the summer of 1993. Cornell and his bandmates in Soundgarden were nearly finished recording what would become their smash album Superunknown, and, per a recommendation from Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, invited O’Brien up to Seattle to discuss mixing the project. As O’Brien recalls, “We went out to dinner to talk about what we were going to do, and five minutes in, it was like, ‘Are we actually going to talk about mixing? We’ll put the songs up and make it sound good. What’s next? What do you want to talk about now?’ We all just laughed, and then bullshitted for the next hour-and-a-half.” Released the following March, Superunknown became Soundgarden’s...
Eve 6’s Max Collins on New Single ‘androgyne friend’ and Wanting to Collaborate With John Hinckley Jr.
Beginning with the release of their new single “androgyne friend” on the eve of December 6, Eve 6 (Max Collins vocals/bass, Jon Siebels/guitar, Ben Hilzinger/drums), will put out a song on the eve of the 6th of every month, leading up to the release of the rock trio’s self-produced fifth studio album, Hyperrelevisation [Velocity Records], late next year. A catchy, guitar-driven rock tune with baritone saxophone played by Jesse Molloy (Panic! at the Disco/The Midnight), “androgyne friend” melds sweet ‘60s melodies with punk spirit and finds Collins giving unwavering support to a close friend with whom he has a lot in common. “I will go into the dark to find you / and pull you from a deep dark hole / Your ex tried to suicide you / and I will throttle every hater that tries to approach,” sing...
Goo Goo Dolls’ John Rzeznik Reflects on Phoebe Bridgers Giving New Life to ‘Iris’ and Flaunts His Jersey Pride
For Goo Goo Dolls’ John Rzeznik, he never intended to make a Christmas album, but he needed a challenge. “I think we were all looking for some sort of solace and comfort during [COVID], and I love Christmas,” the bandleader says over the phone from his New Jersey home. While he and his collaborators remained in their own bubble which could admittedly be “a pain in the ass,” it was an experiment in process that he learned to embrace. “I barely played any guitar on record because I couldn’t,” he recalls. “I don’t understand that kind of music.” Instead, he absorbed what he could from musicians who were “better than him.” The album was also something that generally kept him busy during the pandemic — that and helping to save the movie theater in the New Jersey town where he resides (and this ...
Incubus’ Brandon Boyd Teases Third Solo Album With ‘Pocket Knife’
Brandon Boyd hadn’t actually planned to make a record during the 2020 COVID lockdown. The frontman for Incubus was content staying in his home in the Santa Monica Mountains, painting and spending time with his girlfriend. Each afternoon during lockdown, the two of them—both die-hard musicophiles—would share their latest musical discoveries with each other. It was during one of these sessions that set Boyd on the path to his new single “Pocket Knife” and his attendant third solo album, Echoes and Cocoons, slated for release in March. “It was a really strange period of time,” Boyd says over Zoom. “My girlfriend moved in with me over the course of the pandemic and she and I started sitting down every afternoon, having tea and we’d play music for each other. Just like, ‘Oh, I love this song, i...
