INTERVIEWS
Christian Lee Hutson Just Wants You to Laugh
You can’t get far in a Christian Lee Hutson song before a pretty scene or gentle start turns sour, jarred by reality. Sometimes, the turn is crude; other times, sardonic. On his second album, Quitters, opener “Strawberry Lemonade” starts, “In a dream drinking strawberry lemonade/Feeding quarters to a pinball game,” then adds evenly, “Getting paid to look the other way.” Quitters, his hushed, pseudo-reverential singing over finger-picked folk starkly contradicts lyrics about betrayal, impropriety, and illness. The album relies upon mutated memory, half-truths, and sly one-liners to carry a cast of characters through an ever-changing California landscape. The songs’ vignettes are blurred and roving, with characters inspired by everything from Hutson’s own life to books and TV. In one, the na...
Composer Ramin Djawadi on Uncharted and Jamming With The National in Westeros
Ramin Djawadi, the Emmy-winning composer behind the scores for Iron Man, Pacific Rim, and Game of Thrones, isn’t sure that he has a signature sound to his works for film, TV, video games, and more. “I don’t know if I can analyze myself and say, oh, I sound like Ramin,” he tells Consequence. “I can definitely think of other composers when I hear their music, but I’m not sure if I can say it about myself. I don’t know. I think it’s up to others to decide if I have that or not.” While he might not be able to hear what makes it distinctive, Djawadi has nonetheless become quite in demand. His latest film, the Tom Holland-starring adaptation of Uncharted, is now available for rental, and on the horizon this year are two massive TV projects: Djawadi will be returning not just to compose the music...
MARO On His Upcoming Album, an “Audio Musical” With Its Own Universe
As an accomplished composer and music entrepreneur, MARO has a knack for storytelling. He has long been championed for the dark, heady sound design found in his potent electronic music productions. Look no further than his riveting songs on the official Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack, which remain some of the record’s most popular—a statement that speaks volumes considering it also features tracks by Grimes, Run The Jewels and Nina Kraviz, among others. Now, MARO is on the verge of releasing a new album, Rejects, which he affectionally calls an “audio musical” with its own visual universe. He tells us the album has not only a metaphysical backstory, but a formidable list of collaborators, like Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon. Ergo, he’s positioning to r...
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Keep Getting Bigger, And They’re as Surprised as Anyone
Australian rock band King Gizzard the Lizard Wizard are often dinged for their at times unbelievable level of recorded output — 20 studio albums since 2012, including five in 2017 alone (each in a different musical style), umpteen official and unofficial live releases, a tour documentary soundtrack, rarities collections, one-off singles and wickedly creative music videos. But as the group’s catalog grows, so does its worldwide audience, which is poised to make 2022 the biggest year in Gizzard history. Indeed, the band is achieving any number of new milestones in the weeks ahead, from selling out two Red Rocks shows eight months in advance (a third was just added), to playing their largest New York-area concert to date in October at the 13,000-capacity Forest Hills Tennis Stadium and reachi...
Matt Sorum Looks Back at Drumming for Some of the Biggest Bands in History
Matt Sorum has seen it all. If not all, well, then he’s seen a lot. From his days growing up as a hustler in Long Beach getting entangled in the drug trade, Sorum not only made it out alive but drummed for some of the monsters of rock. No one else can boast a resume that includes stints with The Cult, Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and a stint with Hollywood Vampires. These days, Sorum is living the good life out in the Southern California desert with his wife and young daughter. But, while there, he found time to write his autobiography, Double Talkin’ Jive: True Rock ‘n’ Roll Stories from the Drummer of Guns N’ Roses, The Cult, and Velvet Revolver . It took him and two writers four years to get it done, which was slowed down by the pandemic. Looking back at a nearly four-decade care...
Barry’s Anthony Carrigan on Showing a Whole New Side to NoHo Hank in Season 3
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Barry, Season 3, Episode 1, “forgiving jeff.”] It wasn’t perhaps the love story you were expecting to bloom when the dark HBO comedy Barry first premiered, but that just makes it a well-earned and also unexpected delight: Following the events of the Season 2 finale, as seen in the Season 3 premiere, the overwhelmingly cheerful NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and rival mob leader Cristobal (Michael Irby) are now romantically involved. Of course, Barry is not exactly a show built for happy endings, especially for the confirmed mobsters at its core, but for right now, Carrigan is just happy to play a new dimension to NoHo Hank, one which builds upon the character’s established desire to care for others, but with a whole new edge. “I’m excited t...
Code Orange Were Born to Be Coachella Misfits
For a few minutes as Code Orange’s gear was being set up for a daytime gig on Coachella’s opening weekend, things were looking grim. The festival’s club-like Sonora tent was mostly empty, with scattered fans up front and rows of couches along the walls filled with reclining festival-goers recovering from the desert heat. It wasn’t an ideal scenario for one of the band’s usual wild, enraged performances. When the six players finally stepped onto the stage (to the ethereal, cerebral sounds of Bjork’s “Hunter”), they looked like they were ready for a fight. Dressed as commandos and garage-rockers, Code Orange quickly erupted with the single “Out for Blood,” all crushing riffs and industrial-strength rage. Singer Jami Morgan, sporting a motorcycle jacket and black shorts with the sides of his ...
Kiernan Shipka and Diane Kruger on How Real Hollywood Can Be Just as Brutal as Swimming With Sharks
Kiernan Shipka has some unconventional advice for getting to know a new co-star — do drugs with them. Or pretend to do drugs with them, as she tells Consequence. The Mad Men and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina alum stars with Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure) in Swimming With Sharks, a six-episode limited series that was originally produced to debut on the dearly departed streaming service Quibi. After Quibi shut down literally as the series was finishing up production, it (along with other Quibi series) was rescued by the Roku Channel for distribution. Based on the acclaimed 1994 indie film about a young assistant dealing with a tyrannical Hollywood boss, creator Kathleen Robertson flipped the genders of the leads to introduce the character of Lou Simms (Shipka), an as...
ILLENIUM Joins Forces With DC Comics and Electric Family for Stunning “Batman” Merch Collection
ILLENIUM is the hero Gotham needs right now. The electronic music superstar has teamed up with DC Comics and leading apparel brand Electric Family for a rare Batman merch collab. The DC-branded, limited edition collection is available now. One look at the threads is all it takes to realize the undeniable synergy between the DJ’s and superhero’s respective imagery. The dark skies of Gotham are an ideal canvas for ILLENIUM’s incandescent “phoenix” emblem and likeness, which glides around the iconic Bat-Signal. A t-shirt from Electric Family’s new “Batman” collection in collaboration with DC Comics and ILLENIUM. c/o Electric Family Electric Family has long operated in the vanguard of electronic dance music and fashion. Over the years, the compan...
From Teenage Internet Fame to Alt-Pop Coachella Sets: The Chaotic World of Rebecca Black
It’s been exactly 585 Fridays since Rebecca Black released “Friday.” In that time, she’s gone from a 13-year-old with pop star dreams to one of the most eternal and viral internet sensations of all time to an electronic alt-pop singer capable of putting on one of the most over-the-top and ridiculous Coachella DJ sets in recent festival history. During her early Saturday evening “Rebecca Black & Friends” set at the Do LaB, Black introduced a wide variety of guests, including Big Freedia, bass phenom Blu DeTiger, and Slayyyter (with who she collaborated with last year) — while also busting out a stadium-style t-shirt cannon to fire into the crowd shirts reading things like “REBECCA BLACK REPLACED KANYE WEST AS THE COACHELLA 2022 HEADLINER” and “I LIKE REBECCA BLACK AND I CAN PROVE IT DUE...
Fontaines D.C. Are at the Height of Their Powers With Skinty Fia
Only four years ago, Fontaines D.C. released their first set of singles — one of which being “Boys In The Better Land,” an anthemic romp about the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side. Now, the boys of Fontaines D.C. have moved to London to see for themselves. For their brilliant third album, Skinty Fia—which is undoubtedly their most complex and nuanced album yet—the Irish rockers are digging even deeper into their Irish identity, looking both outward and inward, and offering empathetic observations and plainspoken truths. The expansive sound that Fontaines D.C. employs on Skinty Fia (out Friday, April 22nd) is a logical advancement from 2020’s Grammy-nominated A Hero’s Death, but the storytelling throughout points to a band totally unafraid of the unknown. “There ...
Anthony Carrigan Loves Surprises
Polite and cheerful Chechen mobster NoHo Hank is so singular a character that it’s easy to forget that Anthony Carrigan, the actor who portrays him on the HBO comedy Barry, actually hails from Boston. When SPIN caught up with Carrigan about what’s in store for the upbeat murderer on the series’ third season, it seems like even Carrigan loses the distinction for a second. “I almost slipped into Hank there,” he laughs as the Chechen accent slithers into a description of Hank’s complicated friendship with discharged Marine-turned-hitman Barry Berkman, played by series co-creator Bill Hader. Not that anyone can get enough of the character that, at one point, was going to be offed in the pilot. Regularly referred to as the show’s scene-stealer, NoHo Hank has become the character whose storyline...
