INTERVIEWS
Louis The Child Shift Gears With Black Marble Alias, a “Dark, Clubby, Gritty” Audiovisual Experience
Creativity is boundless for Louis The Child. Some fans may associate them with a glossy dance-pop style meshed with future bass, a sound made popular by hit tracks like “It’s Strange” and “Better Not.” But there’s more than meets the eye with Louis The Child. If their rave-inspired headline performance at Red Rocks last year was any indication, genres are fluid. They’re meant to be traversed across rather than confined within. Louis The Child’s latest event, Alter-Ego, took that idea up a notch. By inviting artists to perform sets exploring left-field tastes, Alter-Ego materialized an unabashed focus on defying genres. A sprawling crowd at Louis The Child’s sold-out Alter-Ego show at Brooklyn Mirage. Drew Cigna “We like the idea of giving artists a platform to do somethin...
Whitney’s 2000s-Era Pop Inspirations Hit Just Right on Spark
Whitney vocalist-drummer Julien Ehrlich and guitarist Max Kakacek came of age at a time when Usher, Ne-Yo, and Gwen Stefani ruled the pop world. And for the first time since forming the band in 2015, the duo haven’t been afraid to incorporate those inspirations into their own music. Indeed, their third original album, Spark (out Sept. 16 on Secretly Canadian), filters its gently jangling indie rock through a homespun prism of synth-kissed, head-nodding grooves. That the album was created during the pandemic in the wake of breakups and deaths makes its deeply felt music all the more revelatory, as if Ehrlich and Kakacek happily, accidentally stumbled upon the purest version of Whitney’s sound to date. In a Portland, Oregon rental house where Ehrlich had landed after the end of a long romanc...
“There’s Still Not Enough”: The Serpent Queen Star Samantha Morton on Powerful Roles for Women
The new Starz series The Serpent Queen brings modern flair and an extremely unreliable narrator to the well-worn genre of period dramas, as an older Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton) tells a servant girl (Sennia Nanua) about how her younger self (Liv Hill) came to control France for decades. In Morton’s hands, Catherine is a fascinating and complex character, and when speaking with the Oscar-nominated actress via Zoom, I really wanted to ask her about playing powerful women, a recent theme in her work. But I also admitted to her that I felt a little silly about it, as film and television currently feature a ton of examples of powerful, strong, and nuanced female characters. Morton, it turns out, agrees with that, but also says “there’s still not enough. I think in television, they’re ...
Sampa the Great’s Dynamic Leap
While studying at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, Sampa the Great encountered an “intense culture shock” — one that nearly stopped a journey of self-exploration and expression of her African culture. “Being visited with the actual reality of how the world works and how the world sees me as a young African girl, that experience was huge enough for me to actually stop expressing myself,” she says of this time period, which contributed to a two-year lull in writing. But that time in America was eye-opening for the now-29-year-old, helping her become one of contemporary rap’s most valued voices, thanks to her fearlessness and unparalleled ability to describe the world around her. Growing up in an artistic family, the Zambian-born, Botswana-raised Sampa Tembo started taking piano and...
Armor for Sleep Invites Listeners to Visit The Rain Museum
New Jersey’s Armor for Sleep first came onto the scene in the early 2000s during the rise of emo with their 2003 debut Dream to Make Believe. At a time when a sophomore record could make or break a band, Armor for Sleep found further success with their sophomore breakthrough, What to Do When You Are Dead (2005), a concept album following the protagonist’s suicide and journey through the afterlife. Then they followed it up with their major label debut in 2007’s Smile for Them before imploding and disbanding in 2009. But (like many of their 2000s emo compatriots) Armor for Sleep officially reunited in 2020, hitting the post-pandemic touring world and releasing their first album in 15 years, The Rain Museum (via Equal Vision Records). But unlike some of the nostalgia-fueled emo reunions, the ...
Adam Melchor Shares the Origins of New Single “I’m Ready”: Exclusive
Origins is our recurring feature series that provides artists a platform to dive into everything that inspired their latest release. Today, Adam Melchor takes us through “I’m Ready.” Adam Melchor has returned with “I’m Ready,” the latest single from his upcoming debut album Here Goes Nothing!, on Friday, September 9th. The dreamy indie-folk tune doubles down on Melchor’s knack for warm harmonies and frames him as wholeheartedly in love. As soon as the inviting, ocean-like ambiance introduces the tune, the tone of the song is immediately obvious. Before Melchor even utters the first line, you know it’s a love song. The instrumentation, with its finger-picked acoustic guitar and chime embellishments, simply feels like love incarnate. So, it comes as no surprise when Melchor proceed...
The Good Fight Cast and Creators on the Final Season: “We Got to Do Everything We Wanted”
The Good Fight star Sarah Steele wants to clear up one rumor she’s heard: Season 6 of the Paramount+ original series does not conclude with everyone dying. “That’s not how it ends,” she tells Consequence via Zoom. “The only show that ends like that is Six Feet Under, which is called Six Feet Under and is about death. But [when I heard the rumor] I was like, ‘that would certainly break the mold.’” “Break the mold” is a turn of phrase that has a lot of applications when talking about The Good Fight, because for six glorious seasons, the Paramount+ spinoff of CBS’s The Good Wife has defied all expectations of what a legal drama can, might, and should do. To put it another way, if rocks did fall and kill the entire cast in the series finale, that would not be the weirdest thing to have h...
Tour Mates Dirty Honey and Dorothy Talk Life on the Road, the State of Rock, and More
Dirty Honey recently kicked off a North American tour, and were just joined on the bill by Dorothy for the remainder of the outing. There’s a mutual admiration between the two acts, so touring together seems like fate. The tour extends through an October 7th show in Santa Cruz, California, with tickets currently available via Ticketmaster. “It’s exciting,” Dirty Honey singer Marc LaBelle tells Heavy Consequence of the two acts hitting the road together. “We met Dorothy for the first time on a show in Charlotte, North Carolina, and she was nice enough to jump on a show with us when Wolfgang Van Halen had to drop out due to COVID.” He continues, “There’s a ton of respect between both bands. I love her tunes, love what she’s doing, and we know a lot about her band already. She’s really t...
“He Will Always Miss Tim”: The Story of How Avicii’s Dog Was Inherited After His Death
Avicii may be gone, but his intrepid spirit lives on not only through his music, but also his dog, Liam. Intelligent, courageous, reliable—what can be said about Liam that hasn’t already been said of his former owner, an iconic artist whose imagination soundtracks our lives years after his death? The EDM community lost its lifeblood that tragic day in 2018. But Avicii’s fans can find solace in the fact that Liam, one of the last remaining vestiges of the legendary “Levels” producer, is living the high life in Italy. Liam now spends his days frolicking under kaleidoscopic sunsets on a lush property in Milan. It’s here where Liam’s trainer and current owner, Filippo Moretti, is earnestly fulfilling a “promise made to a great ...
How ‘Narco’ Became the Best Intro Song in Baseball
As 42,000 perpetually nervous New York Mets fans looked on as the team clinged to a one-run lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have the best record in baseball, on a breezy late-summer night in September. Ahead of the ninth inning, Australian trumpetist Timmy Trumpet waltzes out of the stands and onto the grass with his trumpet in hand. The 40-year-old musician is attending his second baseball game—the first was the night before—but he knows exactly what to do. With trumpet in hand, the musician fires up the crowd by clapping overhead until the Mets’ All-Star closer Edwin Diaz is visible to the entire stadium. The crowd roars its approval, and Trumpet cocks his instrument back and begins to sharply belt the notes to “Narco,” his 2017 collaboration with Dutch DJ duo Blasterjaxx. As thou...
Franc Moody’s New Album Is a “Funk-Fueled Odyssey” Inspired By the Wild West
You know how when you need to pee, all you can do is think about how much you need to pee? That’s how Ned Franc and Jon Moody, of British funk electronica outfit Franc Moody, spent their pandemics. Only instead of an urgent need to urinate, they were faced with an unscratchable itch to hit the road and go on tour. And instead of ending with the satisfying flush of the loo, they were left with an entire concept album inspired by their adventures of yore, as well as the ones they hoped still hung on the horizon. “We were longing, craving, to be back on the road in our little tiny tour bus, our tin can tour bus,” Moody told EDM.com over Zoom. “The reality would’ve been us stopping off in some petrol station ordering a horrible hot dog and fifteen thousand packets of crisps and spilling coffee...
Arkells and Tegan and Sara Share Origins of New Collaboration “Teenage Tears”: Exclusive
Origins is our recurring feature series that provides artists with a space to share the origins of their latest release. Today, Arkells and Tegan Quin take us through everything that went into the new Tegan and Sara collaboration “Teenage Tears,” from Arkells’ upcoming album Blink Twice. Canadian rock act Arkells return today (September 1st) with “Teenage Tears,” the latest single from their upcoming album Blink Twice (out September 23rd). The track, which sees the band connecting with Tegan and Sara for a dramatic tune that revels in the intensity of adolescent emotions, arrives alongside a video; get an exclusive first look below. “There’s a particular kind of intense emotional pain that reminds me of high school,” vocalist Max Kerman tells Consequence. “This song is about how ...
