Last Seen Blogs
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September marks 25 years since the release of 69 Love Songs. The landmark triple-album cemented frontman Stephin Merritt's states as one of the finest songwriters of his generation.
A quarter-century later, the songs don't always come as easily to Merritt.
At his most prolific, however, the musician wrote more than enough to carry him through the rest of his career.
"No one would ever know if I never wrote a song again in my life," he explains, "because I could just use the ones I already have that I haven't found an album for yet."
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Ten years is forever in the rock world. There were times it seemed Camera Obscura might never return. The 2015 death of longtime keyboard player Carey Lander put the group’s future in limbo. For the first time since the mid-90s, the band went on indefinite hiatus. An invitation to perform at the Belle & Sebastian curated Boaty Weekender cruise brought the band back together in 2018. Plans to record an album two years later were themselves put on hiatus, courtesy of a global pandemic. On May 3, the band returns to form with Look to the East, Look to West.
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Episode 648: Emel Mathlouthi
For our conversation, Emel Mathlouthi popped into a Brooklyn coffee shop. It’s a little cacophonous, but also a fitting microcosm of the city she now calls home. The musician moved to the States after a stint in Paris, but a part of her home country of Tunisia always remains close. As she broadens her cultural and musical horizons, the North African country continues to inform both. Her latest album, MRA, pushes Mathlouthi’s explorations further still, courtesy of songs performed and produced entirely by women.
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Episode 647: Mary Timony
Fifteen years is forever in the world of popular music. But the number doesn't tell the whole story. While it's been a decade-and-a-half since Mary Timony released her last solo record, the low-key guitar god has been plenty busy. She's released a pair of albums as part of Ex Hex, a record with indie rock supergroup Ex Hex with members of Sleater Kinney and cofounded Hammered Hulls with childhood DC punk friend Alec MacKaye. Timony joins us to discusses her latest, Untame The Tiger.
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Episode 646: Don Was
Few individuals have left as an indelible a mark on late-20th century American popular culture as Don Was. As a producer, he work includes some of music’s biggest names, including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop. In the 80s, he found success on the other side of the microphone as one-half of the Was (Not Was). In 2012, he became the president of legendary jazz label Blue Note Records and six years later began performing regularly alongside Bob Weir in The Wolf Brothers. His latest project, Don Was and The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, finds the musician reconnecting was jazz performance by way of the city of his birth.
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Fun bonus episode this week, as we're joined by James "Murr" Muray and Brian "Q" Quinn of "Impractical Jokers. The pair discuss their upcoming tour and keeping the show fresh after 10 seasons.
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Health scares have a way of prioritizing things.
For Lauren Denitzio, undergoing heart surgery at the young age of 25 brought one key priority into sharp focus: music.
Since then, the musician has approached their creative venue Worriers as a form of pure expression, both musically and emotion.
The band's earnest, joyful music has earned it a place in the world of punk, including an upcoming tour opening for Alkaline Trio.
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Episode 644: Tom McGreevy (Ducks Ltd.)
Ducks Ltd. arrived out of nowhere with 2019's Get Bleak.
The tight four-song EP offered grad-level crash course on perfect indie pop hits.
This year's Harm's Way find the group plumbing the kind of jangle pop that made 2021's Modern Fiction a critical darling.
Tom McGreevy, the singing/rhythm guitar playing half of the duo joins us to discuss life in Ontario, railway disasters and balancing the darker side of life with bright music.
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There are more than a few points when Hey Panda sounds like the work of an entirely different band.
The songwriting is sharp as ever, but Sean O'Hagan gleefully pushes the High Llamas into new directions.
It's an impressive accomplishment in itself more than three decades after the band's formed.
O'Hagan was already a music industry vet by the time he founded the High Llamas in 1990, having spent the previous decade sharing songwriting credits for Rough Trade act, Microdisney.
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In 1970, Mayo Thompson released his only solo record to date. It's a strange thing to write 50 years later, especially given the Texas-born musician's wildly prolific career as the sole consistent member of the eclectic and enigmatic Red Krayola. Ignored in many circles upon its release, Corky has grown in stature over the decades, which -- much like the Red Krayola -- has achieved the status of cult icon. Thompson has begun playing the album live in recent years, as he chart the course for a potential sequel, half a century later.
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The legend of McLusky has grown greatly since the the group's initial breakup in 2005.
The release of the three-disc Mcluskyism compilation is no doubt reasonable for much of that prolonged success. So, too, are the members' post-McLusky projects, including Future of the Left.
Formed by ex-members Andrew Falkous and Jack Egglestone shortly after breakup, the group carried on its tradition of sardonic and melodic noise rock. Falkous and Egglestone reformed McLusky in 2014.
The group's second stint is officially longer than its first as of 2024. The group is currently in the midst of an American tour, postponed by two years, due to Falkous' health issues. Here he discusses all of that and more.
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After half-a-decade with Montreal's dreamy synth pop group Tops, Marta Cikojevic took her own turn in the spotlight in 2022. The eponymous debut of her project Marci finds the musician embracing dance music, with one foot planted in yacht rock's golden era. Prior to her time in music, Cikojevic had a flourishing career in modeling that took her around the world, including a long stint in Hong Kong. The musician joins us to discuss finding her voice. Transcript available here.
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For a few decades now, it seems like Doug Gillard is everywhere. He's the second longest tenured member of the wildly prolific Guided By Voices, behind frontman, Robert Pollard, having been in and out (mostly in) of the band since the mid-90s. He is also a long-time guitarist for alternative rock stalwarts, Nada Surf, having played with the group since 2010. His work has earned him spots on the linear notes of many of indie rock's biggest names, as he continues playing with a variety of of groups, including the early Beatles homage, Bambi Kino.
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Episode 637: BLKBOK
On 2022’s self-titled debut, BLKBOK enlisted poet (and English teacher) Lauren Delaphena to record spoken work tracks, which served to break up instrumental tracks.
For the follow up, Charles Wilson III gave the job to his therapist, Dr. Felicia Thomas. Plenty of albums can be described as “deeply personal,” but in that respect, 9 is on another level.
The neo-classical piano tracks also serve as a homage to high school civil rights, the Little Rock Nine.
Wilson joins us to discuss the story behind the album and keeping classical music fresh for another century.
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Episode 636: Jillian Tamaki
By the time Roaming arrived last year, it had been nearly a decade since This One Summer, the last collaboration between cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki.
The comic was their second joint project, follow 2008's award-winning debut, Skim.
This One Summer won the pair an Eisner, Ignatz and Coldecott, before running afoul of overzealous censorship boards, due in part to its compassionate and humane approach to writing LGBTQ youths.
Targeted at a YA audience, Roaming's cast is older, but the book similarly approaches a budding queer relationship, as three college aged woman travel from Canadian to New York City for a whirlwind trip.
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World records can be tricky things. Rules enforced by governing bodies can disqualify potential contenders.
While there was no likelihood of enshrinement at the finish line, Pocket Vinyl went for it nevertheless and got their own book in the process.
How to Completely Lose Your Mind finds bandmates and husband/wife duo Elizabeth Jancewicz and Eric Stevenson racing to finish a tour of 50 states in 45 days.
Jancewicz joins us to discuss the book, tour and painting in front of a live crowd.
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Episode 634: Eugene Hütz (Gogol Bordello)
There's no one quite like Gogol Bordello.
The band has cultivated a wildly joyful mix of Romani and Ukrainian music, crossed with punk, polka and any other genre that might suitable serve the chaos.
Eugene Hütz stands in the eye of the storm, as frontman and ringleader. Growing up in Ukraine studying English language punk and folk, Hütz and family would move across the content to Poland,
Hungary, Austria and Italy as political refugees. In the early-90s, the band settled in the U.S.
By the end of the decade, Gogol Bordello began in earnest in Manhattan's Lower East Side
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