Altered State
Modest Mouse’s Aware-anoia and Singing Through the End Times
Isaac Brock is talking about the epiphany he had from the moment he became a musician. “From the inception of this band, there’ve been some pretty wobbly moments,” the Modest Mouse vocalist and guitarist admits. “There were moments where no one considered us fucking good … But I know what I like.” To suggest that the greatest screw-you towards anyone who attempts to push you down is to just live your life with emphatic passion and make the damn art anyway requires guts. The unapologetic kind. The archives of indie rock history are packed with songs lamenting the fate of the artist’s journey – an in-between channel where a quest for stories either frees us to create our own, or tethers us to our past. Brock intimately understands this state of mind while pacing around his warehouse studio a...
Tim Foljahn’s Dream of Life
Tim Foljahn has played in a lot of bands over the past 40 years, occasionally with some of the biggest names in indie rock, including Cat Power and Thurston Moore, and occasionally in more obscure outfits with names like Spastic Rhythm Tarts or Drop Ceiling. Foljahn grew up in Midland, Michigan, a small city 30 miles outside of Saginaw and also happens to be the same hometown as future Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. The two crossed paths in the local hardcore scene, playing together for the first time in Faith And Laurels, a band Foljahn describes as “kind of a Joy Division thing.” Even when Foljahn worked as a singer-songwriter, he did under the moniker Two Dollar Guitar, which he says was a product of “that ‘90s thing where you didn’t wanna work under your own name.” But since 2012 h...
Liz Almighty
It’s no coincidence Liz Phair’s new album Soberish was released just in time for the entire world to reemerge into existence. Since her powerhouse 1993 debut Exile in Guyville, Liz has proven herself an artist who lights the fire and leads the way. Liz doesn’t follow trends—she is the trend. It stands true, then, that Soberish—released June 4, her first album in 11 years—is a tapestry of Liz’s story thus far, and delivers a fierce and intimate musical portrait of who she is right now. Produced by longtime collaborator Brad Wood—Exile in Guyville, Whip-Smart, and whitechocolatespaceegg—Soberish reflects a welcomed hint of ‘90s nostalgia, mixed with something unique, honest and truly all her. Because the world was different, her process was too, and it became a period of creative self-...
Shirley Manson Aims to Find Truth on Garbage’s No Gods No Masters
At the onset of what became the tangled COVID era, practically everyone found themselves wrestling with serious existential questions. But Garbage singer Shirley Manson, at a wisdom-seeking 54, wound up grappling with a lot more than most. Figuratively, she began questioning either herself and society in general – as demonstrated on her band’s probing new No Gods No Masters treatise, their seventh overall — and in reality, through the cavalcade of music celebrities she’s been interviewing on The Jump, her new podcast, now in its second 12-episode season. And she’s learned a lot about herself in the process. Just pinning her peers down on the one crucial song that changed their careers, she says, has given her “a whole new appreciation of journalism, of music journalism, and just peopl...
Dave Keuning on New Solo LP, Moving Forward With the Killers
Like many artists in the smartphone era, Dave Keuning has “hundreds” of guitar riffs and musical fragments stockpiled in his voice memos. Some of these inevitably wither in digital purgatory. Some wind up on his solo LPs, including his upcoming second project, A Mild Case of Everything. Others are cherry-picked and presented to his bandmates in the Killers — a process that’s often trickier than fans may think. “I’ve shown quite a few things, and sometimes they just don’t stick,” he tells SPIN from San Diego, where he’s spent much of the pandemic “fishing around for ideas” at his home studio. “Being in a band can be awkward. I can’t make other people like my stuff. I’m way past the point of fighting about it. If they don’t like something, I’ll just try something else and save it for a rainy...
The Rain King
For the Counting Crows’ entire existence, they’ve been known for their blend of rock, country, pop and…singer Adam Duritz’s trademark dreads. Duritz’s hair has been as much of the Counting Crows aesthetic as the band’s hit-laden catalog. But then it was gone. Following a redeye flight from his New York City home to the UK in the summer of 2019, and with his girlfriend laying down in the other room, a jetlagged Duritz decided the best pick-me-up would be a quick shower. On his way in and armed with his clippers (for the uninformed, you still do have to cut dreads) in a haze and a bit dazed, Duritz looked in the mirror and did it: He shaved his head. As you can imagine, his girlfriend, who he only refers to as Z, was a wee bit surprised. “I woke her up and she was like, ‘how are you…AHHHHH,&...
Teenage Fanclub’s Next Chapter
When SPIN caught up with Teenage Fanclub songwriter Norman Blake in February to discuss the band’s new album Endless Arcade, the world was in a much more uncertain place than it is today. Prospects on when and how live music would be coming back were still marked with doubt. But Blake, as always, radiates with positivity for the days ahead. Even as the long-running Scottish band faced its biggest shake-up. With it being their eleventh album and first since 2016’s Here, there is a seismic shift that will be abundantly clear to longtime fans. It’s the first Teenage Fanclub release without longtime bassist and songwriter Gerard Love, effectively dismantling the three-pronged songwriter attack they have been known for throughout their 30 plus years as a band. Now, the lion’s share of the songw...
‘Natural Reverbs and Crazy Sounds’: 25 Years of Stone Temple Pilots’ Tiny Music…
It’s been 25 years since Stone Temple Pilots released their third album, Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, and (as we announced last month) that means it’s time to revisit it via Tiny Music… Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop: Super Deluxe Edition. The box set doesn’t release until July (via Rhino), but the band has all sorts of new goodies to share along the way. For instance, the Super Deluxe edition includes a live video that the band performed at a TV taping. “That was a really fun time because it was for MTV Spring Break in Panama City,” recalls drummer Eric Kretz about the included version of “Lady Picture Show.” “That was back when MTV kind of ran the world as far as music. Not only did it play videos, but they were breaking bands, influencing radio stations on what t...
The Offspring ‘Let the Bad Times Roll’ Not a Minute Too Late
For The Offspring, four decades as a band has helped them master the art of timing—so much so that they don’t even realize they’re doing it. While taking nearly a decade to finish an album sounds like their attempt to create a punk version of Guns N Roses’ Chinese Democracy (which they famously joked about in 2003), their long-awaited 10th album has an old-school punchy feel that’s pertinent to the pandemic era. “It’s almost like the time had to be right for this record for whatever reason it just wasn’t right until now,” frontman Dexter Holland told SPIN over Zoom, sitting with guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman in the band’s plush red studio in Huntington Beach. While there’s certainly been no lack of inspiration over the last few years, the title picks a simple way to sum up the world’...
Tomahawk’s Oddfellows Create Sonic Mobility
“Pandemic, pajamas, shit, fatigue, dog, California, music.” Mike Patton uses those words a lot during our interview, according to the transcription software that parsed our mid-March phone chat. And somewhere within those words is the genesis of the intense, stunning and diverse 12-song Tomahawk LP Tonic Immobility, which arrives eight years after 2013’s Oddfellows. The band, featuring Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard/Unsemble), Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle/Fantômas), Patton (Faith No More/Mr. Bungle, etc.) and John Stanier (Helmet/Battles), is not the primary lineup for any of its members, but the music has a primacy that belies that status. It might have been only five or so years between albums, however, “it just took me a minute to like, really get into the music,” Patton says from his ...
Mike McCready on His New Guitar and Pearl Jam’s Year That Wasn’t
Mike McCready, one of the most underrated guitarists of the past 30 years, should be celebrating the one-year anniversary of Gigaton out on the road. But fans all know what happened there: Pearl Jam was one of the first bands to postpone a tour at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — as bassist Jeff Ament told us last year, they had to act quickly and decisively. But McCready hasn’t been sitting idle during his pandemic year. Like his bandmates, he’s had the chance to work on other endeavors, like launching his own limited-edition signature Fender guitar. It’s based on McCready’s 1960 Stratocaster, which he thought for years was a 1959 model, the one his hero Stevie Ray Vaughn played. McCready says his Strat is the first thing he bought when the band took off ...
Dinosaur Jr’s Green Mind Turns 30
There’s a valid reason why Dinosaur Jr.’s most allegiant fans allude to Green Mind as frontman J Mascis’ inaugural solo offering: He not only produced the band’s 1991 major label debut but arranged all 10 songs, and tracked all of the vocals, every guitar lick, and — having unceremoniously booted a detached Lou Barlow — each bassline. What’s more, he handled the drums on all but three of Green Mind’s tracks. Not surprisingly, Mascis doesn’t see it the same way. “People say that, but it’s not really” a solo album, “because that wasn’t the intention,” Mascis explains, speaking to SPIN about the revered rock record, released 30 years ago today. “The drum parts, I had written for [longtime Dinosaur Jr.] drummer Murph. I wrote in his style. I wrote what I thought Murph would play. I would have ...
