INTERVIEWS
5 Seconds of Summer Just Needed a Second to Breathe
Just as they intended, and never once doubted, 5 Seconds of Summer has lasted significantly longer than five seconds. In the over-300 million seconds since they formed in 2011, the Australian pop-rock quartet’s output has left fans with four albums, two live records, seven EPs, and enough tour dates to see this world from top to bottom. They’ve been on one hell of an impressive run ever since their self-titled 2014 debut that made them global superstars, and now they’re just months from launching their fifth LP as a band. But when you’re running like 5SOS has for the last decade, you need a breather. Thankfully, they were able to catch their breath on the way to creating 5SOS5, an opportunity that bassist Calum Hood could’ve used when guitarist Michael Clifford smoked him in the 800-meter ...
Gene Simmons on Life After KISS, Battling COVID and What’s Next for Rock
“I shit gold,” says Gene Simmons with a smile. “That’s your headline, SPIN magazine.” The KISS singer-bassist can’t help himself, forever basking in the good fortune he’s enjoyed ever since his band first stormed into pop culture in the 1970s, with flamboyant rock riffs, radio hits and pyrotechnics. Then and now, Simmons was the Demon on stage right, “Dr. Love” in dragon boots and kabuki makeup, breathing fire and flapping a lengthy tongue at fans from behind the mic. There were multiple platinum albums across the 1970s and 1980s, comebacks in the ‘90s and after, and now a final run before KISS retires from live performing, the End of the Road Tour, set to end in 2023. It’s been a decade since the band released a new studio album, 2012’s Monster, but for Simmons and his musical life-partne...
Dehd Are Embracing the Blue Skies
One of Dehd’s greatest strengths is their ability to write disarmingly simple songs. As a trio, they’re a band that embraces their limits to make the most of what they have: Emily Kempf’s powerful, shout-sung vocals and effortless basslines, Jason Balla’s reverb-heavy, single-string guitar melodies, and Eric McGrady’s insistent, pulsing percussion. The Chicago indie rockers don’t need anything more than that. “Really cool stuff can happen when you’re only given three tools, so figure it out,” Kempf tells SPIN over the phone. “You can only rely on your imagination when there are not a lot of tools.” On the group’s fourth album, Blue Skies, Dehd refused to second-guess themselves. After their 2020 breakthrough record, Flower of Devotion, catapulted them to new levels of success and critical ...
Duran Duran’s John Taylor: ‘I Wouldn’t Want to Be in Any Other Band’
When Duran Duran‘s John Taylor and Simon Le Bon co-inducted Roxy Music into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, the pair’s reverent, insightful speeches were informed by their own personal experiences with the Bryan Ferry-led band. Le Bon recalled Roxy Music performing “Virginia Plain” in 1972 on Top of the Pops, and how the group’s cumulative look and sound was akin to “pulp science fiction.” Taylor, meanwhile, told the story of the time he and future bandmate Nick Rhodes saw Roxy Music in 1974 in Birmingham and followed the band from the venue to their hotel. Taylor recorded the show and listened to the homemade cassette the following night; he didn’t have tickets to the second show. Nearly five decades later—a Friday morning Zoom in early May 2022—the bassist vividly recalls that ...
Samara Weaving on the Joys of Playing a Diva in Hulu’s The Valet
“It is quite fun being a little bit evil. It’s just a bit more interesting than being nice all the time,” says The Valet star Samara Weaving, who didn’t realize until this interview how many times she’s played a “crazy actress” (her words) in the past few years. The Australian actress (and niece of Lord of the Rings star Hugo Weaving) got her first screen credit in 2008, and since then has appeared in projects including the Oscar-winning drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the Showtime dramedy SMILF, and the delightfully twisty horror film Ready or Not. But she also played aspiring actress (and daughter of the studio head) Claire in the Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan Netflix series Hollywood in 2020, and in The Valet, she’s Olivia, a major star who convinces titular valet Antonio...
Time Traveling Expert Steven Moffat Answers Our Questions About The Time Traveler’s Wife
Steven Moffat’s had plenty of experience writing time travel stories, as the former head writer behind the iconic BBC sci-fi drama Doctor Who. But he’s very clear on the differences between that show and The Time Traveler’s Wife, his new adaptation of the best-selling Audrey Niffenegger novel about a man who gets constantly unstuck from time, and the woman who’s loved him her entire life, despite the complications of his condition. “Henry and Clare’s life is not an adventure story. That’s the big difference. It’s a story of people trying to have a marriage, trying to be in love, trying to get home at night, trying to grasp every day of happiness they can have while facing the irritant of time travel,” he tells Consequence. “The Doctor loves his time travel. He or she wants to run back to h...
B.I Opens Up: K-pop Star Talks Love, Ambition and the Year That Nearly Broke Him
B.I (Kim Hanbin) has spent a lot of time recently thinking about love and being young. He’s also been hitting the gym and studying for the Korean History Proficiency Exam, a test that’s notoriously difficult and usually taken by history buffs or those wanting to impress future employers. He’s not too keen on working out, an admission he makes sheepishly, but he holds the exam prep in a more favorable light: “I’m not getting smarter from it, but it’s fun and I’m doing it with my friends. When I was younger I didn’t study too much!” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news He persists in his gym routine for one reason: It’s important that he presents “the best version of myself” and, in turn, his fans’ appreciation creates in him a sense of conten...
Delta Spirit Share New Album One Is One, Break It Down Track by Track: Exclusive
With our Track by Track series, we ask artists to give insights into every song on their newest release. Today, Delta Spirit aren’t just giving us the inside scoop on One Is One, they’re giving us an early listen to the full album. Delta Spirit returned from a six-year hiatus in 2020 with What Is There, a statement piece of a comeback LP. Without any in-person promotion or touring to be had while much of the industry was shut down, the band began working on a follow-up before the album was even out. Today, Delta Spirit are sharing an early listen at those efforts, debuting their new record, One Is One, ahead of its official release. Written in the summer of ’20 and eventually finalized during sessions in New York and Vermont, One Is One was produced by the band alongside Jason Ki...
Music Supervisor Juliet Martin on Creating the Soundtrack of Conversations With Friends: “It’s a Team Effort”
In Episode 5 of Conversations With Friends, there’s a moment of quiet reconciliation between two of the central characters, Frances (Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (Sasha Lane): As two friends who seem stuck in a loop of hurting one another and acting selfishly, its a gentle, dialogue-free visual of the two women hooking their pinkies together that speaks to forgiveness. Then, “Nod” by Julianna Barwick and Nosaj Thing kicks in, and the whole moment takes flight. Juliet Martin is the mastermind behind this moment and many others on Conversations With Friends, although she’d probably dispute that description. Speaking with Consequence over the phone, she paints a portrait of how many of those needledrop moments come together. “People sometimes have a misconception that the Music Supervisor’s ...
Artist of the Month Jordana on How Self-Growth and The Strokes Influenced Her New Album Face The Wall
Artist of the Month is an accolade given to an up-and-coming artist or group who is poised for the big time. For May 2022, we’re celebrating Jordana and her irresistible new album Face The Wall. There was a moment of Tumblr fandom around 2013 where indie was more than just a record label status or music style. It was a cherished aesthetic, a place for young people to collect images and stories of untouchable cool, and, most of all, a place to bask in the stylish iconography of bands like The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, The Neighbourhood, and The 1975. Now that we’re in 2022 and in the midst of a supposed “comeback” of the indie sleaze aesthetics, those fans have grown up and begun music careers of their own; Jordana, Consequence‘s May Artist of the Month, is one of them. Her ...
Into The Void: Hot Water Music’s Enduring Punk Presence
Hot Water Music are many things to many people. For some of us, they’re a scrappy group of bearded punks we saw play at a VFW Hall in the midwest in the ‘90s as kids (outside unironically played Foursquare and passed out Why Vegan pamphlets). Others discovered them on the Vans Warped Tour in the wake of 2002’s breakthrough album, Caution. Still more people found the band after they reformed in 2008 and signed to Rise Records, who released Exister and Light It Up. Some people are just now discovering the band for the first time, on the heels of their ninth full-length album, Feel the Void. Feel the Void is also the first collection of music in their nearly 30-year history with a lineup shift, which comes in the addition of The Flatliners’ guitarist/vocalist Chris Cresswell. While Hot Water ...
El-P Looks Back at 20 Years of Fantastic Damage
There’s an accidental symmetry to El-P’s first three albums. He didn’t necessarily map it out that way, but each of his three records was released five years apart, making 2022 a year of noteworthy anniversaries: Cancer 4 Cure is 10 this month, its predecessor I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead turned 15 in March, and his debut, Fantastic Damage, is 20. In looking back, El-P can’t help but appreciate the parallels in hindsight. “It’s only cool 20 years later,” the rapper/producer tells SPIN with both amusement and exasperation over the phone from his New York City home. “At the time it was like, ‘Why does it take five years to put an album out?!’” Born Jaime Meline, El-P has spent the past decade as half of the bombastic Run the Jewels, trading verses with his longtime friend and creative partner...
