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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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Pet Sounds #63: Kinsella & Pulse, LLC’s Most Prized Employee Is Bomba the Cat

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

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From the Vault: Everclear’s Art Alexakis Recounts Every Detail of ‘Santa Monica’ While Revisiting the Place That Inspired the Hit Song

Posted in Interviews with tags , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Fifteen years ago, yours truly – while serving as Editor of Santa Monica Patch, a hyper-local news website owned by AOL – was fortunate enough to rope in Art Alexakis, frontman for hit-single machine Everclear, for a special interview. The premise? Our conversation would revolve entirely around the alt-rock band’s biggest song, “Santa Monica,” and be conducted as we walked along Palisades Park, which overlooks the setting where the song took place and what inspired him to write it.

For such a seemingly simple, radio-friendly song, Alexakis revealed that there was a genuine, heartbreaking story behind it. He spared nary a detail about “Santa Monica” during our 90-minute journey together; while the song’s lyrics consist of about 300 words, our conversation – presented in its entirety here, for posterity’s sake – totaled more than 5,100 words.

Everclear completists and pop fans curious about the stories behind some of the best-known hits in the past three decades, prepare for a quasi-extension course revolving around a single song and taught by one of the best alt-rock lyricists of the ’90s. We’re rolling it out in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Sparkle and Fade, on which “Santa Monica” appears; the 15th anniversary of our interview with Alexakis; and as Everclear tour into early November in commemoration of the former anniversary.

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On Tyranny: Malist Maestro Fights Russian Monarchs With New Project Crimson Crown

Posted in Interviews, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Inside Moscow, a once-US adversary that appears to be becoming more of an ally thanks to Donald Trump’s hero-worship of its dictatorial leader Vladimir Putin, is a man waging his own war against the same type of authorial rule that is taking hold in the U.S. If you’re acquainted with The Bad Penny’s On Tyranny series, in which we interview musicians who previously or are currently living under authoritarian regimes, you should be familiar with him: Ovfrost, an inspired young artist whose primary project Malist is recognized far beyond the borders of Russia thanks to its excellence in rebelling against tyranny, war and isolation with seething, searing and superiorly executed black metal.

As brave as the uncompromising music that Ovfrost unleashes with enviable proficiency practically every year with Malist, the longhaired prodigy graciously spoke with us candidly and without fear in 2023 and 2024 in opposition to his country’s invasion of Ukraine. During those conversations, he inspired the continuation of our On Tyranny series while many other rock critics and outlets began shirking away from the topics of tyranny, fascism and authoritarianism as Trump strengthened his grip on the U.S. and continued finding new ways to establish a unitary executive, i.e. making himself a king in these United States. As Putin keeps setting an example for Trump’s takeover, Ovfrost is setting an example for us on how to combat those anti-democratic efforts.

With Ovfrost’s courage in mind — keep in mind he lives a solitary existence, sans security detail, and is creating and even starting to perform live some of the most anti-establishment music on the planet — we sought his counsel for the third year in a row on how to deal with forces of evil that few of us would have imagined could effectively take over America. This time around, however, the music project of Ovfrost that we also focused on was his newer affair Crimson Crown — which, as you will soon learn, is even more brazen in its message to crush monarchic rule.

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From the Vault: Lou Barlow Opens Up About Opening For Dinosaur Jr.

Posted in Interviews with tags , , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

It is no longer possible to be antisocial. Because, if you could, Lou Barlow wouldn’t be on Twitter.

That’s right, the guy who couldn’t get out of his own head for most of his life is now having trouble getting back into it.

In an age when everyone’s modus operandi seems to be spilling their thoughts onto social-networking sites as frequently and quickly as possible, it seems that introspection has gone out the window. And Barlow, indie rock’s prince of pondering, agrees.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” he recently told IndiePit, replying with an amusing choice of words. “The time that I would spend in the past – just writing in a journal, let’s say – I now spend going on Facebook and doing 10 blurbs to people. Everything becomes, ‘Oh yeah, I gotta keep in touch with this person.’

“I like that I’m able to connect with people now and it doesn’t have to be on the phone – which I have a real hard time with,” he told us via telephone, “but at the same time, I was realizing, ‘Wow, you know, I haven’t really sat down to do a lot of journals,’ where I was just writing stuff off the top of my head that I can use later or that just helps me sort through. But after a year of touring, I think there will be plenty of isolation. I have to reclaim that part of my life.”

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Favorite 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 , , , , , , , 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”?

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