J Mascis is a lot better guitarist, singer and songwriter than he is a conversationalist. As noted in the June 14 profile of the reunited Dinosaur Jr., which headlines the June 16 Westword Music Showcase, I quizzed Mascis back in 1991, when a group called Nirvana was opening for his…
As noted in this June 7 profile, Bloc Party has ridden the hype rollercoaster over the past few years. The band’s 2005 disc, Silent Alarm, was greeted with so many hosannas by British music journalists that their American counterparts reflexively portrayed the group as something of a letdown. Hence, the…
Norah Jones thinks her musical evolution is moving forward more rapidly than do many reviewers. Still, her latest disc, Not Too Late, is a modest step toward greater self-expression — she wrote or co-wrote all of the material on it — and other projects suggest that she’s interested in doing…
Ethan Iverson, keyboardist for the Bad Plus, had a lot more to say than could be squeezed into the profile that appears in the May 24 edition of Westword. But the web has plenty of room — so here’s the full Q&A. The topics discussed include the reasons behind the…
May 17’s Westword features a profile of Dimmu Borgir, Norway’s premier practitioners of symphonic black metal — but there’s a lot more mayhem where that came from. Below, find the entire Q&A with Erkekjetter Silenoz, the band’s guitarist, lyric writer and all-around conceptualist. Along the way, he discusses the narrative…
Westword’s May 10 profile of Ramble John Krohn, known to the music world as RJD2, finds the hip-hop producer turned pop-music maker complaining about the press taking comments out of context. There’s no danger of that here. Below, find the entire transcript of our RJD2 interview. The conversation touches upon…
As interview subjects, musicians tend to fall into a handful of predictable categories: the kind that offer canned answers, the sort who fall back on cliches, the ones just waiting for something to offend them, those who actually listen to each question and try to answer in a fresh way…
Here’s a bonus for fans of Joseph Arthur, who’s profiled in the April 26 edition of Westword. The published piece was based on an extensive Q&A reproduced below. Among the topics Arthur touches upon: his risky new solo album, Let’s Just Be, and why at least one song on it…
Andrew Whiteman of Apostle of Hustle, the subject of this profile in the April 19 Westword, is among the brighter singer-songwriters on the current scene, as the complete text of his interview indicates. Below, read about his first musical influences, a little-known poetry album that didn’t exactly fly off the…
This week’s Westword contains a profile of Goes Cube, a surprisingly heavy Brooklyn band on the rise. But the print edition only allowed a small portion of guitarist/vocalist David Obuchowski’s funny, incisive and revealing comments to be included. Below, find the entire interview, conducted while Obuchowski was throwing T-shirts in…
When a band has a name like Wicked Grin, you expect to see burned-out relics from the Revlon era rockin’ the spandex and skullets, churning out half-baked versions of everyone’s favorite cock-rock anthems. The material this act has chosen to replicate hails from a later decade but is no less…
