INTERVIEWS
We Took a Moment to Question the Nature of Reality With The Dropout’s William H. Macy
The Dropout is a true-crime story that happened right in front of our eyes, as a young woman named Elizabeth Holmes (played in the Hulu series by Amanda Seyfried) became a Silicon Valley darling with her concept for a blood-testing device that could revolutionize the health care industry — if it worked, that is. One of the first people to decry Holmes as a fraud was Richard Fuisz (William H. Macy), a family friend of the Holmes who took offense at his neighbor’s daughter getting involved in medical technology — his field of expertise — without consulting him. His investigation into Holmes’ work ended up being key to the reveal that her company was raising a billion dollars of funding for fraudulent devices, even while his obsession with exposing Holmes as a fraud coincided with the end of ...
Band of Horses Survived…Barely
It’s taken nearly two decades, but Band of Horses frontman Ben Bridwell finally feels he has the capacity — and the Goddamn right — to follow his creative intuition. “Hopefully during this maturity process, I’ve learned to exert my own right in the band to say, ‘This is what the fuck we’re doing,’” Bridwell says of the long journey through Band of Horses’ history, one dotted with shifting lineups, various producers and a slew of record label deals. He pauses. “And I’m not going to listen to someone else’s fucking opinion, honestly. I’m tired of that.” It’s this no-nonsense path forward that guided Bridwell and Band of Horses to Things Are Great. Their sixth album, out on March 4, as Bridwell explains, is as much a lesson in relieving himself of the pressure he’d built around himself throug...
Light of Day
Given a few beats to think it over, Erin Rae — whose enchanting second solo album, Lighten Up is out now — concludes that she is, in fact, a happy person. Based on her lilting voice and the gentle smile on her new record’s cover, it seems easy to accept that at face value. Folky and folksy, her pleasant style pervades all 12 tracks, along with the alluring and disarming production from Jonathan Wilson that adds a feel of psychedelia. And it’s helpful, perhaps therapeutic, to consider the question, as she notes during a smiling and easygoing Zoom call with SPIN. Because her songs offer a message that “would be so much heavier if the music also conveyed that.” Rae knows better to just dump music and perform into a personal blend of therapy. “I definitely need other therapy,” she says, laughi...
Why Better Things Is One of TV’s Messiest Shows (On Purpose)
Pamela Adlon wishes her toilet worked. Not the toilet in her home, but the toilet seen occasionally on screen in the home of her Better Things character, LA-based actor Sam Fox. “Only when we had that super toilet in that one episode, did it flush,” she tells Consequence. “But I want everything to work. It has to be authentic all the time — everything.” Authenticity is a key part of the FX comedy, which ends its five-season run later this spring. The series, created by and starring Adlon, chronicles the ups and downs of Sam’s world as she tries to provide the best life possible for her eccentric mother Phyllis (Celia Imrie), and her three daughters Max, Frankie, and Duke (Mikey Madison, Hannah Riley, and Olivia Edward), despite all the frustrations they might inspire. While many creators f...
Bridget Everett Is Trying Her Best
“We’re all doing the best we can,” says Bridget Everett. A mantra of many, especially throughout the past two years, but particularly relevant for the cabaret singer/comedian/actress’ HBO comedy Somebody Somewhere. The series follows Kansan Sam (Everett, who was born in Manhattan, Kansas), who returns to her hometown and struggles to fit in while grappling with loss and acceptance. She has a saving grace, though: Singing. By harnessing her passion — and meeting a like-minded group of outsiders —Sam embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Is she making all the right choices? No. But she’s trying — doing the best she can. Says Everett, “there’s going to be some hiccups along the way, for sure.” Everett, 49, a longtime New York City cabaret staple, has found herself in the mainstream spotligh...
How Vikings: Valhalla Showrunner Jeb Stuart Went From Writing Die Hard to the Middle Ages
Jeb Stuart’s career has taken some twists and turns over the years, as he first established a name for himself writing a little film called Die Hard, following that feat up by working on Another 48 Hrs. and The Fugitive. But after stepping away from the business for personal reasons, Stuart has returned to writing for the screen. His current project is spearheading the new Netflix series Vikings: Valhalla, which has been greenlit for a three-season run, the first season of which has just premiered on the streaming service. Vikings: Valhalla is a continuation of fan-favorite historical epic Vikings, but set in a different period of time for Viking society with a brand new cast of characters — meaning that newcomers don’t have to have seen the original History Channel series, while fans of t...
Space Force Director Ken Kwapis on Making Changes For Season 2
Over the course of several decades, director Ken Kwapis has established a career working in both film and television, with plenty of feature work including Follow That Bird and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but also notably directing the pilots for two truly game-changing series: The Larry Sanders Show and the American adaptation of The Office. It was the latter assignment which led to his most recent project: the second season of Space Force, created by The Office‘s Greg Daniels and Steve Carell. While the first season had plenty of charms, including a truly stacked comedy ensemble including Carell, John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Diana Silvers, Tawny Newsome, Jimmy O. Yang, and Don Lake, those involved have been open about knowing that the second season could improve on the first....
On Blossoms’ New Album, Tom Ogden Needed to Lean into the Past to Move Forward
When Tom Ogden began writing what would become Blossoms‘ fourth studio album, he was communicating through a character — one he dubbed “the writer.” The lead singer and guitarist was driven by a narrative that wasn’t necessarily centered around him — or so he thought. But it wasn’t long until Ogden had a realization: the character — the one at the center of the narrative, was in fact himself. For the past nine years, Ogden had been wrapped up in the whirlwind of being a busy musician: the tours, the planning, two No. 1 albums in the UK with their self-titled debut and Foolish Loving Spaces. In developing the character of “the writer” he realized that he hadn’t had time to actually reflect on the effects of that constant grind. “I felt like I blinked and got where I was in my career and fel...
Avril Lavigne Is Back and Ready to Rock on Love Sux
Ever since she broke on to the scene nearly 20 years ago, life for Avril Lavigne has been, well, complicated. Lavigne went from teenage pop-punk sensation to bonafide pop star to shifting away from the bright lights of Hollywood to focus on herself. She appeared in movies, launched a clothing line, formed a charity and got sampled in a massive Rihanna song. She dated celebrities, married rock stars and divorced them just as quickly. Hell, she even dealt with ridiculous conspiracy theories that the real her was dead and she was a body double. But now more than ever, Lavigne’s “just ready to rock the fuck out” — and on Love Sux (out now on Elektra), she does exactly that. Lavigne’s seventh studio album features a who’s who of multiple decades of pop punkers. Helmed by the combo of Goldfinger...
Sndtrak’s Brash Sample Flips Have Earned Praise from Madlib, 9th Wonder, and Ski Beatz
The “triple lindy” is a physics-defying dive composed of multiple flips completed between several diving boards. Rodney Dangerfield, comically unfit and forever disrespected, “completes” it (with stunt-double assistance and cutaways) in the 1986 comedy Back to School. Unlike Dangerfield, Sndtrak has garnered seemingly ubiquitous respect for his neck-breaking, jaw-dropping flips of familiar samples. Madlib, 9th Wonder, Ski Beatz, Battlecat—this is a shortlist of revered veteran hip-hop producers who’ve expressed admiration for Sndtrak. On the 32-year-old’s And Then There Was Light… (2021) and his latest, FLIPS V1: Triple Lindy, no TV show theme (“niteridin’), freaky ’80s funk hit (“supafreak”), mothership-made classic (“deepknees”), or blue-eyed soul jam (“nocando”) is safe. Though not conc...
On Squeeze, Sasami Creates Music for High-Fashion Tantrums
In February 2020, Sasami Ashworth packed her acoustic guitar and headed to a songwriter’s retreat in Washington state. The classically-trained musician thought she would return with Joni Mitchell-esque material. The night before the retreat, however, Ashworth found herself in a Los Angeles dive bar where sludge metal band Barishi was performing. As the cymbals and double-kick drum bounced off the venue walls, she was inspired by the band’s energy and aggressive volume. A folk follow-up would have to wait. “I didn’t realize, until I was at that show, that metal might be the certain brand of rock that can convey what I’m trying to achieve,” Ashworth tells SPIN over the phone. When Ashworth arrived at the retreat the next day, she was already writing what would become “Need it to Work.” The s...
How Carson McHone Turns Stripped-Down Country Music Into an Alt Rock Concerto on Still Life
Carson McHone’s dad was a local beer distributor in Austin and knew every bartender on the circuit. In turn, that networking helped her land gigs at honky tonks and dives across the city, until she, with only a handful of biographical songs and no record deal. McHone wound up opening for Shakey Graves in 2015, because they both emerged from the same scene and he took a chance on her “timeless country voice.” Her LP from the same year, Carousel, became an ethereal portrait of Central Texas, something akin to the voices of her fellow underground, regional raconteurs. It was hailed as a country record, but McHone has long wrestled with calling herself a country act, instead of existing somewhere in-between it and indie rock. “I felt like the people around me, who were embodying honky tonk mus...
