Archive for the Features Category
Pet Sounds #65: Friendship Commanders’ Cats Are a Boxer and a Drummer … Sort Of
Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags Bear, Buick Audra, cats, Friendship Commanders, Jerry Roe on 09/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
If Nashville band Friendship Commanders sounds familiar, it could be because you’ve visited this website before (and if that’s the case, we’re very grateful). We met the melodic post-metal doomsters in May and interviewed one-half of the band, Buick Audra, about her new solo endeavor. During the conversation, we learned about the guitarist/vocalist’s affinity for cats, and tucked away that knowledge for future use as part of The Bad Penny‘s Pet Sounds series.
Well, now is the time we’ve decided to use that card and crown Friendship Commanders as the 65th participant in our ongoing series (which launched less than a year ago, if you can believe it). The timing of this installment is even more appropriate, as the band – which also features Audra’s partner, drummer/percussionist/bassist/synth player Jerry Roe – is releasing a new album, titled BEAR, on Oct. 10 through Magnetic Eye Records.
While a couple of weeks stand between Friendship Commanders and the celebration of their bottom-heavy beast of a record, today we introduce you to two of the band’s biggest, and by far furriest, supporters.
Continue readingPet Sounds #64: Emo Musician Andrea Neuenfeldt Derives Emotional Support From Her Kitties
Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags Andrea Neuenfeld, MK Naomi, Unseemlier on 09/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
On a cool, mid-May evening in Malden, Massachusetts, all seems calm in the quaint city located about 15 outside Boston (when rush-hour traffic isn’t choking Route 99, that is). But vocalist/bassist Andrea Neuenfeldt is stressed out, finding it impossible to be patient as new releases from her two principal projects are about to be released. In one month, soft pop-punks Unseemlier will unveil their debut LP, I Have a Screw Loose, Somewhere, two years after the Boston quartet joined forces. Exactly one week later, Neuenfeldt’s other band, emo-pop trio MK Naomi, will release their first EP, Dream Hiss. (That band describes itself as an “emo-pop hallucination … named for the covert CIA bioweapons program that ran from the 1950s-‘70s.)
While many musicians often know each other well enough to lower the temperature when one of them spazzes out, Neuenfeldt is at a disadvantage. For one thing, she’s just starting to get to know her new collaborators in the two projects. She’s even more of an odd-woman-out in Unseemlier, as her three bandmates are childhood friends who know how to talk one other off the proverbial ledge when their anxiety level skyrockets.
“It’s like sitting on pins and needles,” Neuenfeldt tells The Bad Penny, noting that Unseemlier is also booked to play FEST 23 in Gainesville, Florida, in October. “I’m very impatient — but I also like wanting to be super-respectful, because other people have [to deal with real] life shit.”
Fortunately, Neuenfeldt has special companions to scratch her itch while she longs to get onstage at this very moment. Those sources of emotional support for the musician are her three cats: Rufus, Wolfgang and Arnold.
Continue readingPet Sounds #63: Kinsella & Pulse, LLC’s Most Prized Employee Is Bomba the Cat
Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags Cap', Cap'n Jazz, Jenny Pulse, Joan of Arc, Kinsella and Pulse LLC, Tim Kinsella on 09/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
When The Bad Penny caught up with Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse earlier this year, they were living the high life. Fresh off the release of their third collaborative album, the deliberately misspelled Open ing Night, the musicians previously of Joan of Arc and Spa Moans, respectively, were taking a break between tours with Karate by staying at Kinsella’s cousin’s 400-year-old apartment in Italy. The indie-rockers, whose new project is called Kinsella and Pulse, LLC, had just eaten a five-course lunch by the ocean and seemed to be wanting for nothing.
Well, except one thing – of the furry variety.
Continue readingOn Tyranny: Jesus Lizard Vocalist David Yow Ditches US for Portugal
Posted in Essays, Features, News, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags authoritarianism, David Yow, Eugene S. Robinson, the Jesus Lizard, trump, tyranny on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
As our nation rapidly transforms into Authoritarian America, artists – who are typically among the first to be targeted when a dictatorship takes control of a country – are relocating to countries where their right to free speech is still protected.
One of the more prominent indie-rock artists to make the move is Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who relocated to Portugal earlier this year, according to multiple sources who recently confirmed the news to The Bad Penny. None of the sources said outright that Trump’s reclaiming of the presidency was their motivating factor for Yow fleeing the U.S., however.
When yours truly interviewed Yow and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison last year for a feature on FLOOD, the vocalist whose lyrics were historically apolitical admitted that he felt boxed in by the inexorable partisan strife in America and said he was compelled to address current events on the band’s comeback record, Rack.
“A larger percentage of the lyrics than I wished were based on the political climate in the U.S. for the last seven or eight years,” he confided in a video conference call.
Continue readingFavorite Films: Point Break 2 Frontman Cops to His Guilty-Pleasure Movies: ‘Mortal Kombat,’ ‘Terror,’ ‘Elvis,’ More
Posted in Favorite Films, Features, Guilty Pleasures, Interviews, Lists with tags Maximum Overdrive, Megalopolis, Mortal Kombat, Point Break 2, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Flag, The Terror, These Are Powers on 09/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Earlier this month saw a new release by Point Break 2 – no, not a sequel to the immortal 1991 surfing-undercover-cop-thriller-pseudohomoerotic-unintentional-comedy-action masterpiece starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, but rather a fresh record by a band using that amusing name as its moniker. Featuring members of Brooklyn indie bands These Are Powers and The Flag including Ted McGrath, Point Break 2’s self-titled EP dropped on Naturally Records.
McGrath originally assembled Point Break 2 to bide his time while The Flag’s second LP was in the works. But he hit it off so well with Flag bandmate Ryan Crozier, Jason Robira of Sunwatchers, Fixtures’ Kris Liakos and Billy Bouchard (Ice Balloons, Dancehall Crashers) that they decided to formalize Point Break 2 as a full-fledged project.
And how could they not, with a fuzzy, skronky song as infectious as lead single “Hall of Justice”?
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #11
Posted in Features, Fun And Games on 09/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Solution here.
For previous rebuses (rebi? Reba?), give these a go:
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #10
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #9
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #8
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #7
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #6
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #5
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #4
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #3
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #2
Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebus #1
Pet Sounds #62: Wolves Bassist Is Obsessed With His … You Guessed It: His Cat
Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags Pet Sounds, Wolves on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Earlier this month, post-rock and post-metal heathens Wolves dropped their latest record, which is self-titled but features snarky artwork referring to the effort as This Is a Record Called Self-Titled by a Band Called Wolves. Issued through Ripcord Records (whose mascot features a cat’s face), it finds the five-piece gnawing at the confines of genre with a ferocity that commands a feral-like instinct to pay attention on both carnal and cerebral levels.
Wolves, founded in 2016, consist of Mark Howes (vocals, guitar); Andrew “Beard” Rodger (guitar, vocals); Ryan Tyrrell (guitar, vocals); Andy Price (bass, vocals); and Robbie Tewelde (drums). They’re based throughout the Coventry in the Midlands County of England. If you just overlooked the fact that four of the five dudes contribute vocals, you won’t when you hear their seismic onslaught of a sound, which will reel in fans of Dillinger Escape Plan hook, link and sinker:
Incidentally, it’s not just Ripcord that’s obsessed with cats; so are the musicians who comprise Wolves. And many of their names are equally colorful and hilarious. Among Tewelde’s cats is Pharrell Williams, Howes’ cat is named Chairman Meow, (nicknamed “The Chairman” or “Mr. Bitey”). Price has one too, and in celebration of Wolves’ new, certifiably and quantifiably insane beast of a record, we invited him to participate in the latest edition of our long-running series, Pet Sounds.
Continue readingFrom the Vault: Exclusive – Russian Circles’ Track-By-Track Tour of Geneva
Posted in Features with tags Russian Circles on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Maybe the guys in Russian Circles were told that too many times by their moms. ‘Cause they’re certainly not the types to open their traps.
The Chicago cell is just about ready to introduce to the world the third Russian Circles record, Geneva – and like its predecessors, the heady adventure is vocal-free. Fortunately, though, we got guitarist Mike Sullivan to pipe up to us about the record.
Relaxed and genial, Sullivan quickly allayed our suspicions that social awkwardness might be behind Russian Circles’ speechless approach to heavy rock. We’re pretty sure he isn’t a hermit, even if he is in a band. Well, pretty sure.
From the Vault: Inside the Label – Ipecac Recordings
Posted in Features, Inside The Label with tags Desert Sessions, Faith No More, Greg Werckman, Ipecac Recordings, Josh Homme, Mike Patton, Queens of the Stone Age, Trevor Dunn on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
You know a label is cool when it doesn’t even bother keeping track of how many records it sells. And while such slackerish business practices would seem to spell doom for any label, Ipecac Recordings is puking in the face of its naysayers as the company founded by Mike Patton and Greg Werckman blows out 10 candles this year.
“We don’t really count record sales that well,” Werckman sheepishly admitted to IndiePit in a recent chat. “For Mike and I … we’ve only been around 10 years, but man, we’ve done these records. And the records we’re proudest of are definitely not always the ones that sell the most. It’s just cool to work with so many talented people.”
Lest ye doubt the merit of Werckman’s word, try on for size the Melvins, Isis, Peeping Tom and Queens of the Stone Age – just a small nibble of the big cookie that is the Ipecac Recordings oeuvre.
“We have a foundation of artists who have been around for a while and have a built-in fanbase,” Werckman says of the aforementioned acts. “It would’ve been pretty hard for us to fail completely. … We have a base of Mike Patton’s projects since Faith No More – that’s a pretty strong fanbase. And then, right off the bat, we had the Melvins, who have a good, strong fanbase. The one band we’ve been able to grow and establish a fanbase with is Isis. And then Josh Homme, a good friend of ours from Queens of the Stone Age” who is a constant co-conspirator.
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