When the interview suggested he might be a spiritual person, Ben Chasny blanched, explaining, “I'm actually a total nihilist.”Sixteen years later, he confesses that the answer was contrarian to a fault. It’s easy to arrive at the conclusion, listening to a lengthy back catalogue that finds him releasing the 20th album under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker. But he’s also very much someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed, as the industry was clearly attempting to do at the time, amid the burgeoning freak folk scene. But Chasny and Six Organs continue to break new ground, drawing on a wide range of influences, from the industrial bands of his youth to the hexadic card system he developed for composing music. 

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My Begging Chart finds Keiler Roberts exploring the in between moments. She’s content to mind the little things that would not only find their way on the cutting room floor of most memoir, but might otherwise be forgotten by the end of the day. It’s not for lack of material. Conditions like bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis can loom large in her life, as they would anyones, but the cartoonist possesses a laser focus for finding hilarity in the mundane. It’s a gift that makes so much of her work wildly relatable. Kicking off her virtual book tour, Roberts joins us to discuss untangling life from internal conflict, letting go of old work and the downside of nostalgia. 

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When it comes time to record, Laura Stevenson is honest to a fault. 2019’s The Big Freeze may well have been her most personal record to date, but the album has nothing on her recently released self-titled followup. Plenty had happened in the intervening years — some things she’s happier to speak about than others. Stevenson is clearly protective of the people around her, but when it comes to her own life, she’s much more of an open book. Born just as the pandemic was beginning to shut down businesses in the States, her daughter wakes up from an afternoon nap about halfway into our conversation. The difficult timing was, perhaps, fortuitous, stuck at home with a young child at a time when touring was an impossibility. With a new album in the world, touring is a possibility once again, but Stevenson is more than happy to take things one day at a time. 

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The way Mike Doughty tells it, it’s a bit of a minor miracle Soul Coughing lasted for eight years. It was long enough, however, to generate three LPs, a handful of alternative rock radio hits and enough stories to fill a few memoirs. Attempts to reunite have, predictably, fallen short, but Doughty has carved a path as an extremely prolific singer songwriter, culminating in last year’s Ghost of Vroom 2 EP. A collaboration with Andrew "Scrap" Livingston produced by Beastie Boy mainstay Mario Caldato Jr., the project finds the duo excited exploring new shades of the "deep slacker jazz” pioneered by his long bygone band. Doughty returns to the show to discuss the new project, his most recent memoir and the pandemic year. 

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The latest issue of The Nation — a double-issue on the subject of utopias — features a sprawling cover illustration by Michael DeForge. A group of smiling people are making art, making dinner, making out. Throughout it all is the constant presence of technology. It’s a fraught subject for any artist, but DeForge especially, whose work so often touches on science-fiction and politics. A pioneering — and prolific — cartoonist, DeForge has released eleven books over the course of the past decade, culminating with the short story collection, Heaven, No Hell. DeForge joined us to discuss the art in the era of Trump and Covid-19, the inevitability of writing about politics and the downsides of technology. 

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Even among a list of peers that includes names titles like Eightball and Hate, there’s a strong case to be made that Love and Rockets is the most influential comic of its generation. It’s a fact that puts the series high on the all-time list. The 40-year-old series began in 1980 as a self-published book that was soon picked up by Fantagraphics. Two years in, Gilbert Hernandez gave the world “Heartbreak Soup,” a story that kicked off Palomar, a long-running exploration of magical realism in a Latin American village of the same name. It’s Hernandez’s longest-running storyline, and the one which which he has become most closely associated. Four decades later, the artist continues to grow and experiment, as evidenced by the recently released Hypnotwist/Scarlet by Starlight, a collection of two graphic novellas that embrace dramatically different forms of storytelling. 

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“I know that I literally wrote the best book about pencil sharpening techniques that has ever existed or ever will exist,” David Rees explains, confidently. It’s a hard claim to refute. Rees knows a good niche when he sees it. It’s a characteristic that has lead to a both fascinating and nearly impossible to define career. Perpetually-correct Wikipedia alternately calls him a cartoonist, humorist and culture critic. You can also add musician, television host, writer and podcast to the list. And while he might dispute the former, he’s thrived with the latter courtesy of Election Profit Makers, a political betting podcast he hosts with Jon Kimball and Starlee Kine. 

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The pandemic found Lou Barlow enamored with a surprising new creative outlet. The musician took to social media like Instagram and YouTube, playing songs, performing covers and celebrating holidays with his young family. In one video, he’s dressed as the Easter Bunny. In another, he’s covering the Paw Patrol theme with his own lyrics. It’s a side of the Sebadoh/Folk Implosion/Dinosaur Jr. musician few have seen. Released in May, the fourth solo record under his own name (though, the counting is a bit tricky) Reason to Live finds the singer settling into a warm domestic life that mirrors those recent videos. 

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Thirteen is a long time for any act to go between albums. That’s not to say that Johnny Brennan hadn’t kept busy in the meantime. The years included plenty of voice over work — including, most notably, a regular gig on Family Guy, courtesy of long-time fan, Seth MacFarlane. The Jerky Boys, too (Brennan is quick to point out) stuck around as well, soldiering on after the departure of collaborator, Kamal Ahmed. Last year’s self-titled eighth album finds the brand returning to prank phone calls, a medium that catapulted the group to the status of pop culture phenomenon, hitting its apex with major motion picture in 1995. 

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