LSQ

Talking about his band American Football’s latest return following a long absence, frontman Mike Kinsella invokes the notorious D.B. Cooper, saying, “I feel like we jumped out of a plane with a suitcase of money, except it was old demos, and then we faked our own death. We didn’t know we were faking it, we thought we were dead, everybody thought we were dead, and then it’s like, oh we’re alive, we have a new identity, we can do whatever we want.” American Football has just returned with an excellent fourth self-titled album (aka LP4), seven years after the previous one. Famously, earlier on for American Football, after the midwest emo legends released their genre defining self-titled debut album in 1999, they immediately broke up and it was 17 years before we got their next album. So Mike and I talk about that in this interview, we also discuss his personal creative history and his evolution as a songwriter, the influence of his older brother Tim, with whom he had the band Cap’n Jazz back in the day, and how artists like Depeche Mode and Dinosaur Jr. have deeply impacted his songwriting. American Football are on tour in North America right now, and you can get tickets here.

“Kneecap was born out of this need to represent the identity of young people who speak Irish in the city, an identity a lot of people around the world wouldn’t know exists,” says Móglaí Bap of Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap. “When I was growing up, you wouldn’t have seen the language on mainstream radio or BBC1 or in the cinemas, so as a teenager it wouldn’t have been that cool to speak Irish. So Kneecap was part of pushing that boundary and seeing what we could do, and also having a bit of craic, as we say.” 
In the lead up to their powerful new album, Fenian, Móglaí and bandmate Mo Chara joined me via Zoom for an in-depth discussion of their history. They talked about how the project evolved from being something they did initially for laughs and to get free tickets to festivals into a part of their larger fight against the marginalization of the Irish-language, of which they’re native speakers, and their desire to raise awareness of the harms caused by colonialism worldwide. We also discussed their childhood: Moglai’s memories of hearing his mother play traditional Irish music on her concertina, Mo Chara’s teenage experiences learning Oasis and Stone Roses songs on guitar at a Belfast youth club, how they found each other within the Irish-language community and started making music together, and how their approach to Kneecap has evolved since then. For the uninitiated, in addition to listening to Fenian and their previous album, Fine Art, I also highly recommend watching the biographical film Kneecap, which is funny and dramatic and poignant and a mix of fact and fiction, starring the band as themselves.  It’s awesome and it’s available on Netflix, Apple TV and beyond.

“I just remember being fascinated by language, it felt like this treasure I was discovering,” says Arlo Parks, of her childhood affinity with words. “I remember being obsessed with the word ‘pebble,’ and the sense of different shapes. Maybe it’s because I learned French before English, so my approach to the English language was quite, like, seeking and grasping and understanding as I went along. But the dictionary, I remember being obsessed with it.” If you’ve been a fan of Arlo Parks’ music over the course of her three beautiful albums, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to learn that the British singer-songwriter has been obsessed with words since childhood. In episode 137, she shares more about her early life explorations of poetry and song craft, memories of hearing Otis Redding from the backseat of her father’s car, discovering Miles Davis and Prince in her uncle’s vinyl collection, downloading Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs onto her iPod, trying to play all of Elliott Smith’s XO on guitar, and eventually beginning to make her own music near the end of high school. We also discuss her approach to her wonderful new album, Ambiguous Desire, and how going out to dance clubs and DJ nights brought new inspiration. And I especially loved that Arlo came over to my little LA bungalow to do this interview in person! Get tickets for her upcoming shows here.

“When I started going to rock & roll camp once a summer, I definitely always felt like there was a lot to be proven of being like a girl, a small girl,” says Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan. “My whole brain was just this ‘Be better than the boys, I have to in order to be able to even just exist’ thing, and that took some of the enjoyment out of it. But now I do have a bloodlust for getting better, and I don’t know if I would have that if it weren’t for having so much of an inferiority complex for so long.” In episode 136, Jordan delves further into how the perfectionism she developed early on, as a preciously talented kid guitarist at rock camp, has been both a blessing and a curse — on the one hand it has inspired her to constantly strive to improve,  on the other it has contributed to intense anxiety that she still battles. We discuss the theme of anxiety and obsession in her life, and the role those things played in the excellent new Snail Mail album, Ricochet. Don’t worry, we also get into a lot of lighter fare, talking about the artists she obsessed over as a kid during one of indie music’s heydays, when she poured over Tumblr to discover bands like Beach House and Warpaint and Purity Ring and St. Vincent and Lana Del Rey.  Lindsay also shares some details about the first big  Snail Mail tour for Ricochet, and some new things she and the band are trying for these shows. Get tickets and details here.

“I had never played a concert until I got a record deal with Sub Pop and they were like, ‘Well, you should consider going on tour,’" says Iron & Wine's Sam Beam. "I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ It’s a very atypical story, and it also made me suffer from a lot of imposter syndrome for a long time. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, that I had fooled someone along the way and they were gonna find out and the gig was gonna be up.” Some 24 years later, the gig is nowhere near up for Beam,  who’s been releasing beautiful music as Iron & Wine ever since his 2002 Sub Pop Records debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, and his latest, his 8th studio album Hen’s Teeth is another wonderful collection of music. It came out in late February and we talk about the making of the album in episode 135, and we also delve into his earlier creative history, how he began in visual arts (drawing and filmmaking) before getting his first four-track, and the inspiration he got from artists including Sebadoh, Cowboy Junkies, R.E.M., Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, among others.  We also discuss a future project he’s excited to develop — a Broadway musical! You can hear more about that near the end of the interview. Iron & Wine will be playing shows in Hawaii later this month and then embarking on a full-scale North American tour in late April. Get tickets and further info here.