Dec 15, 2015
By Matt Fink
New Order
Bernard Sumner is in a chatty mood. Thirty-five years after they started, New Order is back with their best album in years, Music Complete, and Sumner is eager to explain just how new everything feels. You don’t even have to ask; he’ll tell you how exciting it was to work with a string section, about recording two tracks with The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands, about getting Iggy Pop to do a dramatic reading for the album’s “Stray Dog.” More
Dec 11, 2015
By Mark Redfern
Issue #54 - August/September 2015 - CHVRCHES
To end out the week, we ask Chelsea Wolfe some questions about endings and death. The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter/guitarist recently released her fifth album, Abyss, on Sargent House. It’s a collection that includes dystopian love songs and tracks about being stuck inside a dream, unable to wake up. More
Dec 02, 2015
By John Everhart
Issue #54 - August/September 2015 - CHVRCHES
“It’s sort of like Desmond in Lost pushing the button in the hatch,” says Michael Benjamin Lerner with a laugh, of the isolation he often experienced during the creation of the latest Telekinesis album, the synth-heavy Ad Infinitum. “You start feeling like him if you don’t have anyone around all day while you’re pushing buttons, and just a little crazy.” More
Nov 20, 2015
By Matt Fink
CHVRCHES
To hear them tell it, everything has been easy for the members of CHVRCHES since they officially formed in the fall of 2012. Well, maybe not everything—they’ve had to deal with the pressure of being an overnight blog sensation, the wear and tear of two years on the road, and the stress of creating the follow-up to their breakthrough debut album, 2013’s The Bones of What You Believe. More
Nov 19, 2015
By Matt Fink
Issue #54 - August/September 2015 - CHVRCHES
It’s a rare sunny day in Glasgow in early July, and the members of CHVRCHES are finally able to take a breath. After an intensive six-month period of writing and recording, they have (as of this afternoon) signed off on the final masters for Every Open Eye, their second full-length release. More
Nov 17, 2015
By Matt Fink
Low
Alan Sparhawk says I caught him on a chatty day, something that seems to surprise him as much as it does me. Knowing him only through the 11 resolutely inward-looking albums he has made with Mimi Parker, his wife and co-leader in Low, I don’t expect him to be quite so outgoing and approachable. More
Nov 16, 2015
By Matt Fink
Low
After 22 years as one-half of the husband-and-wife songwriting team in Low, vocalist/guitarist Alan Sparhawk has developed a thesis on longevity. Bands that have been around so long inevitably fall into one of two categories: they either survive by carving out a distinctly identifiable sound and repeating it over and over, or they never allow their aesthetic to fully congeal and attempt to reinvent themselves with each release. More