Altered State
The Tracks of My Years
The more I listened to Billie Joe Armstrong’s cover album No Fun Mondays, the more it dawned on me that Billie Joe, despite the p-rock trappings, is really a power-pop guy and his choice of tracks to cover really underscores where his heart is. When I spoke with Billie Joe, he confirmed my instinct about pop and punk being more closely aligned than many might think. Billie Joe is living proof of that theorem, illustrated perfectly as he walked me through the album’s tune stack. It only makes sense that an album catalyzed by a pandemic should kick off with “I Think We’re Alone Now.” The song, written by Ritchie Cordell and an uncredited Bo Gentry, was a huge hit for Tommy James & The Shondells in 1967. The song’s narrative is truly cinematic. it’s a record you can, in a...
Eve 6’s Max Collins Is More Than Just the King of Music Twitter
No one was more surprised than Max Collins when the Eve 6 singer-bassist became the King of Music Twitter. In the past week, Collins has won over new fans and made headlines for his off-the-cuff, rapid-fire tweets comprised of random musings (“i had a famous song in the nineties and i cant afford health care”), amusing ‘90s alt-rock anecdotes (“i ever tell you guys about the time the guy from third eye blind told me he fucked my girlfriend?”) and wry observations (“most nineties bands just tweet like hey we’re comin to minneapolis april 23rd with like a photo of them with wallet chains”). Collins’ resurgence started on Dec. 18, after tweeting that he was “literally a virgin” when he wrote the “heart in a blender” song — a playful reference to his band’s 1998 breakthrough hit, “Inside Out.”...
Exit Interview: Mark Lanegan Reflects on a Prolific Literary Year, Leaving the U.S. Due to the Pandemic
In the decidedly dark, surreal year we’ve all just experienced, some artists refused to be lulled into the most obvious reaction — reflective coronavirus complacency. Instead, they got busy, making more and more art, sometimes for therapeutic reasons but — more often than not — just because creativity still remained their lifelong Prime Directive. And if there were a 2020 award for MVPP — Most Valuable Pandemic Player — one of the top candidates would be ex-Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan, who pretty much hit the ground running amid the chaos and never stopped. First, his harrowing autobiography, Sing Backwards and Weep, was published in April, followed by a stark, skeletal solo album, Straight Songs of Sorrow, featuring dirges that parallel chapters from the book. After a brief init...
Matt Cameron’s New Project Aims to Make Up for a Lost Year
Matt Cameron expected to be on the road with Pearl Jam for most of 2020. In March, the band released Gigaton, their first new album in seven years, and they planned several U.S. legs and a European run that would have kept them busy for the rest of the year. Those plans, obviously, changed. But instead of retreating after Pearl Jam’s short-circuited year, Cameron went back to work on his own material. First, he got cracking on his second solo album; then he dusted off another project that had been in the works for a few years. While recording Gigaton, Cameron had bounced a few loose ideas off of his pals, including Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and the Melvins’ Buzz Osborne and Steven McDonald. When Hawkins threw some vocals on a few cuts and made some other suggestion...
How No Need to Argue Turned The Cranberries Into Stars
By the time the Cranberries went into the studio to record their second album No Need to Argue, the Irish alt-pop quartet were already a success. Their previous full-length, 1992’s Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? spent months on the charts in the U.S. and UK, buoyed by radio and MTV airplay of its second single, “Linger,” and landed in the top spot of the albums chart in England and Ireland. The group aided their own cause by touring for nearly two years straight, graduating from small clubs to enormous theaters by the end. But when Argue was finally released in 1994, preceded by the grinding first single “Zombie,” the Cranberries ascended to stardom. It was a dizzying time for the group that came with all the accompanying delights and chaos of any rock star moment. Stil...
Dan Wilson on Semisonic’s First Music in 19 Years, Solving Songwriting ‘Puzzle’
With his 2004 memoir, So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, Semisonic drummer Jacob Slichter offered an unflinching look back at the band’s sudden whirlwind of success with their 1998 hit “Closing Time.” It’s the kind of intimate, rear view perspective that frontman Dan Wilson could never commit to undertaking. “I’m the least reminisce-y person,” he tells SPIN. “I’m just not nostalgic and don’t really reminisce.” Wilson has maintained a forward-facing ethos over the past decade-plus: After the band’s 2001 record, All About Chemistry, he developed a second career as a Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, working with the likes of the Chicks, Adele, Taylor Swift and Pink. Still, his band’s past has never strayed far. He jokingly admits how Semisonic bassist John M...
Old Men on the Back Porch: Presidents of the United States of America’s Debut Turns 25
It’s been a quarter-century since the Presidents of the United States released their eponymous debut. And while the record found its way onto virtually zero year-end lists, its quirky tunes have somehow — against the alternative odds — endured. Name another band that incites a shopper to look around the fruit aisle at the local grocery store in preparation of warding off an ensuing ninja attack. Or a band that has, for the last 25 years, caused you hum, “kitty at my foot and I want to touch it…” Peaking at number six on the Billboard 200 Chart, Presidents of the United States of America produced four singles (“Lump,” “Peaches,” “Kitty,” and “Dune Buggy”) that dominated mid-‘90s radio and earned heavy MTV rotation back when the network actually played music videos. [embedded con...
Katie Jane Garside on Why She Took a Break From Sailing Around the World by Boat to Record a New Album
Any port in a storm? Not exactly, argues former Daisy Chainsaw/Ruby Throat — and now Liar, Flower — frontwoman Katie Jane Garside, who not only grew up at sea with her sister and sloop-loving parents but recently returned from a four-year, often danger-fraught voyage around the world with her significant other and musical partner Chris Whittingham and their eight-year-old daughter Leilani. In their trusty, storm-battered sailboat Iona, the family traveled from Falmouth through the Canary, Galapagos, and the Marquesas Islands before heading down to New Zealand, Australia, Mauritius, South Africa, and the Azores. And choosing the proper port was of paramount importance. It could be a life-or-death decision. “You aim for more forgotten, less frequented moorings, so we would anchor as far from...
Spacehog’s Antony Langdon Would Do It All Over Again
When Spacehog guitarist Antony Langdon was 22 and working at a production company, which included a day spent frothing beer for a Stella Artois commercial, he never envisioned his path — including stints as a bicycle messenger and cutting up melons for models as a fashion photographer assistant — would include playing in an of-the-moment rock band. Langdon formed Spacehog in 1994 after he and his younger brother Royston both moved to New York City from their hometown Leeds, U.K.. With Antony on guitar and Royston on vocals/bass (along with drummer Jonny Cragg and guitarist Richard Steel), Spacehog shot to fame almost instantly on the strength of their first single, “In the Meantime.” The undeniably catchy tune (which sampled Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s “Telephone and Rubbe...
Live’s Ed Kowalczyk Talks Band Reunion and Planning a New Album in Quarantine
Since reuniting in 2016, Live hasn’t stopped touring. They had to be stopped. And from a logistical standpoint, quarantine couldn’t have happened at a better time for the group. While Live never quite had the iconic power of tourmates like Counting Crows and Bush, the passion of their performances (and inescapable hits like “I Alone”) has helped them steal the show on numerous occasions. Those loyal to classic alternative radio are widely familiar with 1994’s Throwing Copper, the record that landed a number of singles and topped the charts in 1995, but the band’s catalog runs deeper with more mature songs — particularly on 1997’s abrasive Secret Samadhi and 1999’s more melodic The Distance to Here. In 2018, they didn’t overthink things and surprised everyone with the Local 717 EP...
