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Category: Interview

  • Moviola Captures the Difficulty and Absurdity of American Life on ‘Earthbound’

    Moviola press photo by Carrie Klein
    Credit: Carrie Klein

    In the video for “Slage Wave,” the first single off Moviola’s recently-released eleventh album, Earthbound, the employees of Don’s Tiny Weenies toil over the grill as they dish out Doge Dogs and Pigs on a Golf Course.  “You’re a wage slave, from the cradle to the grave,” the song goes, “you don’t work, you don’t get paid, you don’t get nothin’.”

    Fate- or, rather,  the labor movement- intervenes in the form of a customer in a Johnny Paycheck, who hands over a “Take This Job and Shove It” sticker. A Pete Seeger-like musician follows, sliding a union handbook across the counter. It’s a video that almost has a happy ending, until the hot dog vending machine arrives.

    “We debated on how to end it,” says Jake Housh, who plays guitar and piano/keys in Moviola and also shot and edited the video, “but it seemed kind of realistic maybe that the machines will win.”

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  • Decoder Is the Punk Sci-Fi Film, and Soundtrack, You Need in Your Life

    Christiane F. and F.M. Einheit in Decoder
    Christiane F. and F.M. Einheit in Decoder

    Sometime during lockdown, I stumbled upon a movie called Decoder via Tubi and streamed it not knowing what to expect. By the time I reached the end, I wondered, how did I not know this film existed? Released in 1984, Decoder is a German sci-fi film with serious counterculture cred. It stars F.M. Einheit, then a member of Einsturzende Neubauten, and Christiane F. and also features appearances from Genesis P-Orridge and William Burroughs. P-Orridge composed the film’s main theme with Dave Ball of Soft Cell, whose song “Seedy Films” is featured prominently in the movie, alongside music from Neubauten, Einheit and The The.

    The Decoder soundtrack, which was just re-released on CD via U.K. label Cold Spring, is killer, which one might expect with that caliber of contributors. The movie, though, is even better. In it, Einheit plays a young man who realizes that the muzak playing in the fast food restaurant is a form of mind control and that he can manipulate the sounds to elicit a completely different response from the public. 

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  • ‘Ballad of Buttery Cake Ass’ Author Aug Stone Releases New Single of His Own

    Aug Stone musician and author of Ballad of Buttery Cake Ass and Sporting Moustaches "Rachel on the Rooftops" video still.
    Aug Stone in a still from the video for “Rachel on the Rooftops” (Photo courtesy of the artist)

    Aug Stone has been making music for decades, but it wasn’t until last week that he released his first single under his own name. “Rachel on the Rooftops” is power pop-tinged rock jam that showcases the musician and author’s knack for narrative. The single also features backing vocals from Rachel Love, best known for her time in Dolly Mixture, the seminal British indie pop band that would later sing backup on Captain Sensible singles like “Happy Talk.” 

    “They’re one of my all time favorite bands,” says Stone of Dolly Mixture. “It’s punky in attitude, but it’s like all the great girl pop of the ‘60s. I love all those songs.”

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  • On Lead Into Gold’s ‘Knife the Ally,’ Paul Barker Urges Musicians to ‘Challenge Yourself’

    Lead Into Gold Paul Barker Press Photo by Mahsa Zargaran
    (Photo: Mahsa Zargaran)

    “I really don’t want to listen to any of the music that I listened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I just don’t. I know that music so well, I don’t want to hear it anymore,” says Paul Barker. “It’s like listening to the Beatles. I love the Beatles, but I never listen to the Beatles because it’s part of our consciousness. You just grow up with it.”

    Barker’s urge to lean into less familiar musical terrain extends to his own work. Active since the early 1980s, he played in Seattle post-punk band The Blackouts before going on to spend close to 20 years in Ministry. He released his first album as Lead Into Gold in 1990 and the most recent one this year. Knife the Ally is the name of the latest Lead Into Gold full-length, which was released via Artoffact Records in June. “The ally is industrial music,” he says and the album is, in a way, a call to arms, to do something musically different.

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  • On Birds of Paradise, SAADI Reflects on Human Nature and Digital Lives

    Press photo of Boshra AlSaadi as SAADI by Laura Moreau
    (Photo: Laura Moreau)

    The urgency in “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” is potent. A galloping beat drives the song and the whip-slap sound of the snare comes in as SAADI sings, “You are a cowboy in a ghost town/You leave a dark legacy.” When I first heard the song, from the L.A.-based singer/multi-instrumentalist’s recently released sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, I thought it was about social media. There are references to shadowbans and people living in an “alternate reality.” 

    “It’s about Gaza, actually,” Boshra AlSaadi says when meet up for a video call.  AlSaadi has written a number of songs about Gaza, but “Cowboy in a Ghost Town,” she says, is her most overt. Listening to it again, I’m struck by the poignancy of it, from the mix of anger and helplessness that’s in AlSaadi’s voice to the protest-like chorus that rises near the song’s end to the clear references to social media. AlSaadi captures not just the horror of watching a genocide unfold on your phone, but the frustration of knowing that you can’t stay silent, even when you’re posting into a void. 

    “Seeing it unfold on your phone is horrific,” she says. “It’s unprecedented also.” 

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  • Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra Captures Our Fractured Reality on Have an Existential Crisis

    Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra press photo by Becky DiGiglio
    SPO-20 (the robot) and Professor B. Miller (the human) of Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra (Photo: Becky DiGiglio)

    The first time I dropped the needle on my vinyl copy of Have an Existential Crisis, guest vocalist Spencer Moody kicked off the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra album with “Pick ‘Em Up.” 

    “I’m picking up the pieces/Of my belief system,” he sang in a voice that’s instantly recognizable if you ever listened to Murder City Devils. 

    On my second listen, the same song played. This time though, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra’s usual lead singer lamented the loss of core beliefs. 

    “It’s crumbling apart,” the robotic SPO-20 declares, “Fact/By fact/By fact”

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  • Nuovo Testamento Continues Their Dance Pop Experiments on Trouble

    Nuovo Testamento press photo by Kristopher Kirk
    Nuovo Testamento (Photo: Kristopher Kirk)

    Good things take time and Nuovo Testamento is a band that’s keenly aware of that. About a year after releasing their 2023 full-length, Love Lines, the L.A.-based trio returned to the studio and, just last month, they released the result, a five-song EP called Trouble. In the context of recorded music’s history, two-and-a-half years isn’t much of a gap between releases. Still, singer Chelsey Crowley says, during the in-between time, the band heard, “you guys haven’t put out music in so long.”

    It’s an extension of the art vs. content debate. How often should bands be releasing music? Should you pump out the jams to satiate the platforms or wait until the songs you want to make are ready? Crowley offers a definitive answer. “We prefer to have songs that we like,” she says. “We’ll let them marinate for a second.”

    It’s an attitude that’s reflective of the band’s roots too. While Nuovo Testamento’s music is steeped in late 20th century pop influences, they’re still punk to the core. They tend to tour extensively and are proponents of physical media. “It’s not just about this digital space,” says Crowley. 

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  • Rain Parade Reintroduces Listeners to Crashing Dream with New Deluxe Edition

    Rain Parade press photo by Billy Douglas
    Rain Parade (photo: Billy Douglas)

    If you already have the new, deluxe reissue of Crashing Dream, the 1985 sophomore album from Rain Parade, jump ahead to “Gone West.” Tap your foot to the steady beat and tune into the guitar jangle and spectral voices. Listen closely and you might hear an L.A. band that is steeped in ‘60s psychedelia, yet foreshadows the sounds that would emanate from the U.K. by the end of the decade, from The Stone Roses to Primal Scream to Ride to Teenage Fanclub.

    “We’ve always been hermits. We didn’t really know this until we started playing again in about 2012, but, at that time, we started running into these people, like Mani from the Stone Roses,” says Rain Parade co-founder Matt Piucci. “He contacted me on social media  and was like we love you guys and we wanted to be you guys.” Piucci heard something similar Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love. And, several years ago, he attended a Ride show and heard a Rain Parade album playing before the show. 

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  • The Uplifting Soul of Annie and the Caldwells

    Annie and the Caldwells (Photo: Annie Forrest)
    Annie and the Caldwells (Photo: Annie Forrest)

    As soon as Annie and the Caldwells took to the stage at Zebulon, I felt a sense of levity. It was early June and the mood in Los Angeles was heavy. ICE raids had triggered protests, which led to an overreaction that landed downtown, where I live, under an 8 p.m. curfew. Meanwhile, in nearby neighborhoods, like Frogtown, where Zebulon is located, it was business as usual. At least, that’s how it looked inside the club. The room was full and completely alive. As Deborah Caldwell Moore belted out the heartfelt lyrics of “Wrong,” we caught the groove and kept it going throughout the set. The tempo ebbed and flowed as they played, but the energy remained high. Hands were thrown in the air during “I Made It.” It wasn’t just a good show, but an uplifting one. 

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  • As Ships in the Night, Alethea Leventhal Casts Protections Spells

    Ships in the Night Alethea Leventhal press photo Protection Spells
    Protection Spells by Ships in the Night is out now on Metropolis Records (photo courtesy of Ships in the Night)

    Last May, Alethea Leventhal released her third full-length album as Ships in the Night , Protection Spells, with two Black Lodge Balls in Virginia. The David Lynch-themed events were planned before the director’s death and were a “labor of love” for the singer and her team. “Emphasis on labor,” says Leventhal on a recent phone call. There were costumes and cover songs. Leventhal herself performed “I’m Deranged,” the David Bowie song that appeared in Lost Highway. The show’s lighting designer projected a Black Lodge floor. “I wish I could have seen the show,” she says on a recent phone call. “I was on stage so I couldn’t see it in quite the same way.”

    In case it weren’t already clear, Leventhal is a David Lynch fan. In particular, the soundtracks from his work has been an inspiration for Ships in the Night. So has David Bowie, Kate Bush, Motown and Depeche Mode, whose 1990 hit, “Enjoy the Silence” she covers on Protection Spells. Leventhal recalls hearing the song for the first time, via a mix CD, when she was 13. “I heard that song and remember thinking what is this? How do they do that? What are those sounds?” she recalls. 

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