Exit Interview
Exit Interview: Self Esteem Reflects on Finding Contentment in Her 30s, Pop Stardom and Who She Wants to Work with Next
For Rebecca Lucy Taylor, her entire 20s were flooded with self-questioning like: “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I have that? Why aren’t I like that? Why haven’t I got that?” Once she stopped trying so hard to fix her life, it changed both on a personal and professional level. “Because I’m less fucking desperate for a hit or for my circumstances to change, there was no agenda really other than to create,” the singer says over Zoom from a London flat. Sporting bleach-blond hair and a black sweater that radiates off of the surrounding white walls, Taylor, who goes by the moniker Self Esteem is appreciative for the success she’s found from her sophomore album Prioritise Pleasure. “I think it’s cool I’m not a young, hot thing,” she quips. “I’m a 35-year-old hot thing.” After spending the majo...
Exit Interview: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard on Butterfly 3000, ‘Jammy’ New Music
When I call up Stu Mackenzie in mid-November for a year-end recap, there’s already way too much to talk about. His band, Australian psych-prog shapeshifters King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, recently announced a 2022 world tour; and they’ve brightened up this dismal pandemic era with three studio albums (including our 24th-best of 2021, Butterfly 3000) and two live LPs. But news breaks quickly in the Gizzverse: In the few weeks since, they released another live record, announced a remix album, expanded their tour, detailed their own New Year’s festival, and teased a limited-edition LP (available for free to all fest attendees). That prolificacy is nothing new: In their banner year of 2017, they put out five fascinating — and sonically unique — studio albums. In the time betwe...
Exit Interview: St. Vincent on Grammy Nod, Daddy’s Home, Curb Your Enthusiasm
“Can we talk Curb for a second?” The catalyst for our call with St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) is a 2021 recap, surveying her mountain of accomplishments over the past year: releasing her sixth LP, Daddy’s Home; staging a U.S. tour and several festival spots, covering Metallica and remixing Paul McCartney, earning a Grammy nomination. But the art-pop maverick is most excited to discuss the social misadventures of Larry David. “Here’s the thing,” she tells SPIN, her voice lighting up with excitement. “I know the premise is that, ‘Oh, Larry’s such an asshole,’ but I feel like I agree with him most of the time.” As should any rational human being. And it makes sense, at least creatively, that Clark appreciates Curb Your Enthusiasm: The HBO comedy originally emerged from a sort of met...
Exit Interview: Jason Isbell on the Difference Between Being an Artist and Entertainer
During a year when most of us racked up a lot of time streaming videos, Jason Isbell had a banner year: Not only did the Grammy Award winner head back on the road with his band the 400 Unit, he also recorded The Georgia Blue album to celebrate Biden’s victory in the state, recorded a twangy version of “Sad But True” for Metallica’s The Blacklist tribute album and found time to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon. Oh, and his beloved Atlanta Braves also won the World Series for the first time since 1995. In addition to all of these accomplishments, Isbell also made some personal growth along the way. “My therapist tells me that if I argue with people on Twitter, then I don’t have to do it with people I know and love and care about...
Exit Interview: The War on Drugs’ Frontman Adam Granduciel on Their Latest Album, Playing Live Again and That Time He Met Danzig
It’s certainly safe to say that 2021 was an unusual year for pretty much everyone. The rhythms of our new “normal” amid the pandemic began to feel more familiar, while the world itself remained in a state of incredible turmoil. For The War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel, 2021 felt especially unusual. After years and years of writing, recording, and refining, his group finally unveiled their long-anticipated fifth album I Don’t Live Here Anymore into a reality that little resembled the one that existed when they started the project. The record itself is vintage War On Drugs. Massive guitar hooks meld into tidal waves of electronic synth sounds, all the while Granduciel’s voice floats in and out to wax poetic about the myriad changes life brings, and how you end up wherever it is you end ...
Exit Interview: Nathaniel Rateliff Finds His Balance
Nathaniel Rateliff isn’t the sort of guy who emotionally skews in either direction. Down the middle. That’s sort of his thing. But even he can admit that following an 18-month stretch where a pandemic prevented him and pretty much every living musician from touring, heading back out on the road for some of 2021 was nothing short of a blessing. “Yeh, it feels like a success just to be able to tour again,” the singer and frontman for the typically bombastic Night Sweats says over the phone, reflecting on the past year. “We didn’t even know when we’d be able to play shows again or play any kind of live music and then we spent a lot of the summer and fall back in outdoor venues. So that seems like a triumph in its own right.” Add in the fact that he followed up a poignant and beautiful solo al...
Exit Interview: Wolfgang Van Halen Won’t Back Down
On a brisk December afternoon, Wolfgang Van Halen is weary but in good spirits. The admitted late riser is sitting in 5150, the studio home of Van Halen [the band] since 1983, nursing a coffee amidst the construction taking place around us. Wolfgang leans carefully on the studio’s console, wrapped in plastic. He’s in the process of updating the legendary space with longtime studio manager Matt Bruck and his producer, Michael “Elvis” Baskette. Towards the end of our chat, I get a notification on my phone that I knew would get his attention. In the thick of Hanukkah, Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin have been plowing through their Hanukkah Session covers — and today’s selection? None other than Van Halen’s “Jump.” After I fumble with my phone for a second to get some semblance of service (we are ...
Exit Interview: Japanese Breakfast Reflects on a Best Selling Book, Her Grammy Nomination and the Activity That Kept Her Calm
If you told Michelle Zauner in early 2021 that she’d dominate the year-end lists — both in music and books — she would’ve thought you were nuts. But here we are. And she had a perfect spot to soak it all in: Onstage in early December during a warm Mexico City evening, her confident stage presence seemed to neatly encapsulate that trajectory as Japanese Breakfast. Performing on opening night at House of Vans in the Mexican capital city, the singer-songwriter let loose with the controlled intensity built up from a year in lockdown. Zauner led the sold-out crowd in the concert-venue-turned-skatepark in singalongs and anthems, even managing to slide in a cover of the Cranberries’ beloved 1993 alt-rock hit “Dreams.” Earlier in the day, before dazzling those thousand-plus fans, Zauner calmly too...
Exit Interview: Lucy Dacus Gets Personal on Home Video
On at least three occasions on stage this year when Lucy Dacus would launch into one of her highly personal songs, like, say “Thumbs” or “Please Stay” off her critically acclaimed album Home Video, she’d straight-up start to cry. “Yeah, there were maybe three shows on this past tour where it just really got to me and I fucking cried like a baby,” Dacus admits over Zoom of how impactful it was to play such personal material for her fans. “I don’t know if people really noticed me crying,” she says before pausing and adding, “well, yeah, there was one show where people really noticed.” Dacus has been open about just how difficult the pandemic was on her mental well-being and, to that end, returning to the road in 2021 was nothing short of therapeutic for the musician. “It’s just so meaningful...
Exit Interview: IDLES’ Joe Talbot on Crawler, Independent Venues, and Daddy Daycare in 2021
Joe Talbot has two more things he wants to accomplish before the end of 2021: Start working on IDLES‘ fifth album and win a bar fight. “Those two things. That’s it,” he says forcefully with a clap. Sitting on a cozy-looking couch, bearing a white, lightly plaid button-up shirt and thick-framed reading glasses in his Bristol home during our Zoom call, Talbot was taking some much-needed rest with his family in what’s left of the turbulent year of 2021. “Just living calmly … getting ready for the storm that is 2022.” The post-post-post-punkers—or something of that nature—wrote and released their stunning, thrashing, widely acclaimed fourth record Crawler, which was produced by Kenny Beats. In recent months, IDLES performed an exuberant string of shows throughout the U.S., bathed in ...
Exit Interview: Poppy on Canceled Tours, the New ‘Sonic Vibe’ of Her Next LP
Poppy vividly remembers her 2020 “Mission Impossible moment.” The pop-metal shapeshifter was gearing up for a European tour behind her acclaimed January LP, I Disagree, when her manager broke some unfortunate, pandemic-related news. “I got the call right when I was about to fly [over there],” she tells SPIN. “We were like, ‘Do you think we can get in and get out, just do the U.K. and come home?’ It was maybe four hours later, they were like, ‘Oh, the borders are closed.’ That phone call was crazy for me and will always stick in my head.” Like most musicians, Poppy suffered some tough breaks this year, including a postponed North American tour opening for metal giants Deftones and Gojira. On the bright side, she was able to “flow” through the insanity: performing (safely) on a WWE broa...
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...
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