In the strongest sign yet that the quixotic quartet known as Chat Pile are neither to be underestimated nor to be considered a band that’s only willing to strike the iron while it’s hot, they have delivered Who Loves the Sun. While that news no doubt titillated fans, many of us wondered, “Yes, but do they have anything left to say?” The answer, of course, is an unmitigated yes.
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1. Najda‘s BSP Live Series: 2026-09-23 Tokyo
Home: Berlin, Germany
Genre: Experimental ambient doom metal
Label: Broken Spine Productions
2. Paper Girl‘s i (instrumentals of covers) EP
Home: Nashville
Genre: Instrumental ukulele bedroom pop
Label: Self-release
3. Genocide Kvlt‘s Promo 2025 EP
Home: Lubsko, Poland
Genre: Black metal
Label: Self-release
Welcome to the latest installment in our Favorite Films series, in which we chat up musicians about the movies they treasure the most. Today we host Radio Karma, a power-pop/rock project led by lyricist/songwriter Richard Rossi and multi-instrumentalist Joe Giddings, who was previously a member of Star Collector and has his own solo material to boot. Radio Karma recently released a three-song EP, We Were Gods, which we’ll tell you more about in the near future. But as it’s the weekend, when we bring you new installments of Favorite Films, we’re rolling out this part of our conversation with the gentlemen first.
Enjoy learning about Rossi’s and Giddings’ most treasured movies … we can virtually guarantee at least a couple of them will be new to you.
Joe Giddings’ Favorite Films
Evil Dead (1981): “I watched that in the theater 13 or 14 times. I started doing call-outs during the movie, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In one scene, the lady’s being dragged across the floor, drenched and covered in blood. And you see her from top to bottom, and there’s barely any blood on her. So there’s a continuity [issue] there, and as that’s happening, I’m yelling, “Got a tough stain?” which at the time was [a commonly used phrase in laundry detergent] commercials. Everybody in the theater cracked up. (2:45) Apart from that silliness, I appreciated the practical effects, the stop motion and the comedy that was involved.”
Mitski reins in her sometimes thudding humor, fuses the musical sophistication of her previous album with the mutant pop genius of Be the Cowboy and delivers easily the best album of her career. The songs on Nothing’s About to Happen to Me sear the heart, with the loose narrative of a woman losing herself preparing beautiful dramatic scenes of the storms of the inner heart in the midst of seemingly-mundane common life.
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While Bruce Springsteen and his band released the riveting song “Because the Night” in 1986, it actually originally appeared in 1978, on the studio album Easter — not by Springsteen, but by revered proto-punk poet Patti Smith (read my interview with the punk-poet legend here), who made it the best-known tune among Patti Smith Group tunes. The reason that occurred is because Springsteen allegedly couldn’t finish the tune, and engineer Jimmy Iovine (who later cofounded Interscope Record in 1990) facilitated the transfer of Bruce Springsteen’s unfinished song, “Because the Night.”
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Well, thanks, eardrums. It’s been real. Unfortunately we’re going to have to part ways at this point, as there’s a certain band from Phoenix playing Realms Arcade in Boise tonight, and they’re gonna rip you out of the ear holes of all in attendance. Why, you ask? Well, let’s let vocalist Alex explain …
Congrats on the release of your Pursuing One’s True Identity EP. How long was it in the making?
The EP was in the making since around February after we got off our first run of out-of-state shows. We took “Frail” and put it on the EP with the other four songs we made.
Did the EP turn out as you envisioned, or did it evolve in unexpected ways?
Not really. We wanted to make an album, but we slacked too long on making more songs, so it turned into an EP of the collection of songs we had made in those six months (plus “Frail”).
It seems to me that the EP really speaks to the pain that people – young people in particular, I imagine – are facing in this day and age, given that the world is so fucking hostile and cruel. “Frail” seems especially powerful because, at least in my interpretation, you’re empathizing with people who feel hopeless yet swaying them away from suicidal ideation. Is that at least somewhat accurate?
The EP name came from my issue with knowing who I am as a person, but the songs are were really just my emotions at the time – besides Frail. “Frail” is actually speaking about those who hold higher status than others and how they abuse it, the end is just saying how much I hate it.
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“I don’t like not being able to control my destiny.”
-Unto Others frontman Gabriel Franco
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Portland, Oregon’s Unto Others are no strangers to Boise, having graced stages in this city in November 2021, May 2022 and November 2024. Tonight marked the retro rock band’s fourth performance in the City of Trees and its first time playing at the Shrine Social Club. Unto Others set the table for Castle Rat‘s rousing, hallucinatory, medieval-fantasy performance – while simultaneously erasing all memory of superfluous opening act Wraith Knight, which refers to itself as “dungeon synth,” whatever the hell that is.
One of the many reasons Unto Others were the band that should’ve drawn the biggest crowd in Boise this evening – even with Iron and Wine playing at the Knitting Factory and lovable death-metal goofballs Nekrogoblikon hunkering down at the Shredder – is that Unto Others are a truly one-of-a-kind band in a music climate that seems to subsist on copycats. Unto Others’ sound is a blast from the past; no other band is busting out throwback dark rock with the acumen and authenticity that frontman Gabriel Franco and his pals are producing.
Last year, this writer penned a story about Unto Others for New Noise in which Franco rejected the lazy and inaccurate labeling of Unto Others as a “goth” band. While the article possibly helped deflate the erroneous pigeonholing, it presented just a small fraction of the extensive conversation Franco granted to yours truly. In honor of Unto Others’ fourth performance this evening in Boise, The Bad Penny now brings you the entire – dare we say definitive – conversation that Franco graciously granted to us on November 8, 2024.
Continue readingAlways at least a day late. But never a dollar short.
1. Emma Ruth Rundle’s “God’s Picture”
2. Thief’s “Moon and Kill”
3. BBBBBBB’s “Sexy Boy”
With 2017’s Time Well — gorgeously spacious, at times heavy and with a dose of folk at its roots — Cloakroom redefined how trust develops between the artist and the audience.
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