Book Club
Book Club: Open Mike Eagle Started Crate Digging With X-Men
Book Club is a monthly series from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Open Mike Eagle. For his witty and unflinching music, Open Mike Eagle has found inspiration almost everywhere he’s turned—from the music and comedy scenes of his native Chicago, from TV shows like Adventure Time and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and, according to a years-ago AMA, from listening to T. Rex while he reads. “I don’t know what possessed me to do that!” he laughs, after I ask ...
Book Club: Santigold Recites Rumi by Heart
Book Club is a monthly series from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Santi White, the imaginative and futuristic artist best known for her music as Santigold. Santi White weaves a seamless web of captivating influences into her complexly glorious pop as Santigold, with her erudite love of punk, breakbeat, new wave and dancehall informing four singularly voiced albums and two aesthetically broad mixtapes. Santigold’s one-of-a-kind visuals—from costumes...
Teenage Zola Jesus Read Cooler Books Than Any of Us
Book Club is a new monthly series from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Nika Roza Danilova, the songwriter and producer behind Zola Jesus. Over her 14-year musical career, Zola Jesus’ Nika Roza Danilova has recorded and toured six ethereal albums touching on baroque pop, industrial goth, and art rock, including this June’s Arkhon. As I discovered while researching for our conversation, almost every interview she’s given along the way has included a h...
Send Perfume Genius the Salvador Dalí Cookbook, Immediately
Book Club is a monthly series from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Mike Hadreas, a.k.a. Perfume Genius. Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas studied to be a painter, and he brings that honed sense of aesthetic balance to his songwriting, too. “When I’m writing lyrics for my songs, I like to see them written out,” he says. “And I think about that when I’m reading poems—how the words look together.” Poetry played a major role in Hadreas’ first two records, 20...
Book Club: Belle & Sebastian Is Dissecting Rock Memoirs at Band Practice
Book Club is a new monthly series exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian. Stuart Murdoch fell in love with books in his early 20s, and obsessing over literature shaped some of his earliest Belle & Sebastian songs. “My book phase changed my life,” he says over the phone. “I felt that with every book I was reading, I was being changed as a person, more so than music ever did for me.” Though he characterizes a lot of his earliest reading mate...
Book Club: Damian Abraham Is Sleepless Over Zines
Book Club is a new monthly series exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. This month, we speak to Damian Abraham from the band Fucked Up. Damian Abraham is best recognized as the energetic singer of Toronto hardcore auteurs Fucked Up. But a quick glance at his extracurriculars—his long-running Turned Out a Punk podcast, his VJ gig for MuchMusic, his VICE TV documentary series about wrestling—are indicative of his unending desire to learn more about his world and its histories, and to soak up its pop artifacts...
Book Club: Jenny Hval’s Little Words Buzzing Around
Book Club is a new monthly series exploring the literature that inspires some of our favorite musicians. Whether it’s a music biography that got them through the slog of tour, the poetry collection that eked into their most poignant lyrics, or the novel that sparked a rock opera, we’ll get to the bottom of it so you can add it to the top of your book stack. The first edition features Jenny Hval. Jenny Hval has scattered allusions to her vast literary influences across three novels and eight wide-ranging solo albums—including this month’s Classic Objects, the experimental artist’s poppiest outing and first record for 4AD. But after adopting a Finnish Lapphund named Soba, she found her reading attention turned to dog behavioral guides. “She’s a very high-pitched, loud, dramatic dog—very...
