Across the lake to the north, the sky darkens, blue to grey. The wind whips. Pines and birches bend. But the skies above remain clear. We’re about fifty yards offshore, standing on and swimming around rocks a few feet below the surface. Waves rise and fall. The water is warm and splashes our faces. It feels safe, comforting, to be in this space, with a beer to sip, balance to maintain, and a distant storm to watch.
The Fastbacks provide go-to answers to at least two of life’s frequently asked questions. One of which is, What have you been listening to lately? It’s an expected question. I spend most of my waking hours listening to music and often fall asleep to records. I also enjoy talking about music. This combination would suggest I have some capacity for talking about the music I’ve been listening to lately. Yet when the situation arises my brain freezes, my current rotation blips away, and the Fastbacks swoop in.
It’s mid-afternoon and I’m washing dishes when my partner Joh and her son Shep arrive at the house. I’m surprised to see Joh is already wearing earrings. “Of course, it’s date night!” she says. We’re going out to dinner and to see Peter Evans. It feels good knowing Joh’s sense of anticipation matches mine. Plus, Shep knows he will have a fun night with my son Sean, about ten years older, babysitting. Good moods abound.
It’s been a busy year for Born Ruffians. The group is reading their new album Beauty’s Pride, which is set to be released on June 6. From there, the group is set to tour extensively in the U.S. and Canada in the second half of the year. I chatted with frontman Luke Lalonde about the genesis of this new album and what a certain memoir by Vladimir Nabokov has to do with it all.
Immersion, the duo of Malka Spigel and Colin Newman, have been making acclaimed music for a while, both as a duo and through their work in Minimal Compact and Wire, respectively. Their latest album, Nanocluster Vol. 3, is (as its title suggests) the third installment in a series of collaborations. This one teams them with New York’s stunning “ambient country” band SUSS; the result is an atmospheric, textured collection of music. I spoke with Spigel and Newman to learn more about this new album and their overall approach to the project.
For most of the 1990s, Tsunami combined deft lyrics and charged music to create some of that decade’s most enduring work. Now, the group’s discography has been collected by Numero Group as the collection Loud Is As, and the band is heading back on the road with longtime friends Ida. I spoke with Tsunami co-founder Kristin Thomson about the group’s return, the process of assembling the new collection, and the questions of art and ethics that they navigated then and now.
I was standing in the driveway, just home from work, watching the snow fall. I was still numb from the news about my dad. The flakes were big and gentle, floating on the breeze and slowly yielding to gravity. The tension I’d been carrying in my neck and shoulders began to melt. It was the first time since 1943 snow fell without my dad somewhere on the planet.
This December brings with it the release of two different works titled Lisa 2, v.1.0. The first is a novel by Nicholas Rombes about a playwright working on a new project, the a possibly haunted computer she begins working on, and the surreal occupation of the playwright’s husband. The other is an album by Mike Shiflet designed to act as a soundtrack and companion piece to the book in question. Shiflet and Rombes conversed about their respective works, their collaboration, and — as the saying goes — What It All Means.