Archive for the Interviews Category

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Exclusive News: SUMAC and Moor Mother Plotting Second Collaborative LP

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews, News with tags , , , on 09/26/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

SUMAC and Moor Mother, whose collaborative record The Film is one of the most universally acclaimed metal releases of the year, are already planning a follow-up effort, SUMAC frontman Aaron Turner confirmed to The Bad Penny on Thursday.

In response to The Bad Penny noting the widespread positive reaction that SUMAC and Moor Mother received for The Film, Turner replied: “I was very pleased that it got such a warm reception. It felt like a very challenging record. I was confident in what we produced but had no expectation in terms of how it was going to be received. We’re definitely talking with her about more shows upcoming in the near future, and then a little further down the road, to make another record together. I hope that happens.”

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White Reaper Frontman Reveals Which Songs on New LP Brought Him ‘Joy’ and ‘Trouble’

Posted in Interviews with tags , on 09/26/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

White Reaper frontman Tony Esposito candidly comments on each song featured on the Kentucky garage-rock band’s fifth full-length, Only Slightly Empty, in my feature story for FLOOD.

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Pet Sounds #66: Sangre de Muérdago Frontman Lives in Paradise With His Dogs

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , on 09/25/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Back in mid-July, we introduced you to Sangre de Muérdago, the only Galician Folk band you have heard of. The group uses Galician lyrics and a litany of instruments used in the Galician tradition to reflect on nature, mysticism and other themes.

We also exclusively debuted “O Abismo,” the first single from Sangre de Muérdago’s full-length album O Xardín, which came out 13 days ago. The band is led by Pablo Caamiña Ursusson, who handled almost too many roles to count on O Xardín. In addition to providing vocals, he also played classical guitar, hurdy-gurdy, music box, pandero cuadrado de Peñaparda, bells, pandeireta, shaker, and steel string guitar.

Another fact about Ursusson, and probably the reason you clicked on this article: He has some of the most gorgeous dogs you’ll see (at least today). We chatted up our favorite Galician musician about his pets and how much they mean to him.

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On Tyranny: Brett Bradford of Scratch Acid, Suckling Hopes MAGA ‘Will Eat Itself’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , on 09/25/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“Some who voted for [Trump] are not necessarily bad or gullible people. If that’s the case, they should very well now regret their decision and do what they can to right the wrong. They helped put the fox in the henhouse and should help to get rid of it.”

–Brett Bradford

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Recently, yours truly had the distinct honor of conducting an extraordinarily in-depth and all-encompassing interview with one of the most crucial figures in ’80s underground music and foundational guitarists in noise rock: Brett Bradford, formerly of Scratch Acid and now a member of indie-rock quartet Suckling.

The extensive feature will appear on Post-Trash on October 7, but in the meantime, we’re bringing you, separately, his thoughts on Authoritarian America as part of The Bad Penny‘s increasingly critical series called On Tyranny. Here is that portion of the interview, followed by some additional thoughts that Bradford later shared.

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Exclusive: Ivy Readying Second LP With Songs Featuring Adam Schlesinger

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews, News with tags , , on 09/25/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Ivy are in the process of piecing together a second collection of songs featuring their late band member Adam Schlesinger, the band told The Bad Penny in an interview on Thursday.

“[We have a] second record [featuring Schlesinger] that is basically done – recorded, mastered, everything,” Ivy guitarist/keyboardist Andy Chase revealed to The Bad Penny. “We have [yet] to figure out when it would be the right time [to release it].”

The news comes roughly three weeks after Ivy issued Traces of You, the indie-pop band’s first album in 14 years. The album consists of 10 songs Schlesinger made with Chase and vocalist Dominique Durand from 1995 to 2012—essentially the duration of the band’s career.

Chase and Durand reunited to complete the compositions along with backing keyboardist and guitarist Bruce Driscoll, who played a pivotal role on Traces of You with his writing, mixing, production, and engineering contributions (additional players included guitarist Jody Porter and percussionist Brian Young from Fountains of Wayne).

Schlesinger was one of the first well-known American cultural figures to die from COVID shortly after the pandemic hit. The universally beloved musician was better known as the frontman of Fountains of Wayne and the stockpile of awards the profusely prolific producer/writer amassed for his work in the TV and film industry: three Emmys, one GRAMMY, and an ASCAP Pop Music Award; to boot, he notched Oscar, Tony, and Golden Globe nominations.

Bar/None Records released Traces of You on September 5.

Go to Ivy’s Bandcamp page to buy a copy of the record.

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Mildred Tapped 23 Musicians for Their LP; Next Up, Chino Moreno? Or Yeule?

Posted in Interviews with tags , , , on 09/24/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

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“The desire to make something different for the sake of being different or recognized for intellectual prowess is not only pretentious but reductive and asinine. That’s the death of art to me. Great art is made equally for fulfillment of the self and to give back to the world which we are infinitely indebted to for allowing us to be or exist in the first place.“

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Today marks the end of a very, very long journey completed by a young group of particularly talented musicians. It seems almost mythical, the story we’re about to relate to you, but rest assured that every scintilla of it is true. Even if it was relayed to us by fresh-cheeked rock ‘n’ roll fans who could pass as teens. And even though they hail from Los Angeles, where fiction is often truer than the so-called truths that its residents tell one another.

Before we tell the tale of Mildred, which concludes tonight in Colorado, consider for a moment how shitty it is that society derides young people for being idealists, for having dreams, for wrapping themselves in a warm blanket of hope that they’ll lead a pleasant life because that’s what innocent human beings such as them deserve. Pause for a moment to reflect on the damage done to young people, perhaps aspiring artists in particular, when their parents or teachers or counselors decide to lower their expectations out of a misguided abundance of caution. Dreams aren’t always dashed or crushed by the failure of the individual who had the audacity to concoct them. Oftentimes dreams are disregarded because it can be a pain in the ass for the caretakers of children to help youngsters achieve them.

Fortunately, reassuringly and inspirationally, this is a story about a group of young musicians who stuck to their guns and didn’t cede their aspirations as soon as the going got tough. Much to the contrary, what you are about to read is — with all due respect to military veterans and disabled people — the act of resilience personified. And boy, can’t we at least all agree how that is in such short order these days?

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From the Vault: Fine Print – Sunny Day Real Estate Frontman Jeremy Enigk’s OK Bear

Posted in Essays, Interviews with tags , on 09/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Isn’t Jeremy Enigk adorable? Cute as a bear, the softhearted might even say.

In the off-chance you’ve never heard of him before – or the even offer-chance (?) that you’ve never heard of Sunny Day Real Estate, the recently reunited post-rock pioneers – Enigk doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s all grown up now. In fact, the sweet-sounding singer/songwriter is actually celebrating his 35th birthday on Thursday, as the stalkers among us are probably well aware.

Since the above photograph was snapped, Enigk has put out a backpack’s worth of albums. But his recently released solo effort, OK Bear, actually marks the first time he’s slapped an image of himself onto a cover.

Why? Well, it’s funny you ask, because we just asked Enigk during his recent IndiePit interview, the first part of which we posted last week (you might wanna read that article before going forward with this one, since in it he provided all the 411 on OK Bear). In addition to what you read prior, we also chatted with him in detail about the album imagery and beyond.

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Pet Sounds #65: Friendship Commanders’ Cats Are a Boxer and a Drummer … Sort Of

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , , , 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.

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From the Vault: The Rising – The Hero and the Victor

Posted in Interviews with tags , , on 09/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Alan Lomax, who passed away at age 87 in 2002, will likely go down in the books – or the Kindles, or whatever – as one of the most important figures in music history. The late, great ethnomusicologist captured the essence of countless cultures as they manifest themselves in sound. He created “field recordings” – the primal beat of humanity itself; and compiled “oral histories,” the narrative counterweights.

But beyond Lomax, it’s rare to find points where anthropology – at least in the academic sense – and music meet.

Enter David M. Mendoza, a cultural anthropologist, elementary-school teacher – oh, and rock-band frontman – who is as eager to talk about music as he is ancient Mayans who predicted that the world would eventually be overcome by galactic drift.

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Pet Sounds #64: Emo Musician Andrea Neuenfeldt Derives Emotional Support From Her Kitties

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , 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.

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