Marked on folks calendars for the past six months, Luke Combs announced his “My Kinda Saturday Night Tour” in October spreading across North America and Europe over the span of 23 nights. These shows have been selling out quickly, becoming one of the hottest tickets of the year, and for good reason. The country star has showcased his iconic sound across the worlds biggest stages, introducing countless audiences to the genre. Coming off the heels of a busy year with headlining slots at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, and more, there’s never been a bigger time for Combs. Three weeks removed from his sixth record’s release, The Way I Am, this wave has been high for the singer/songwriter.

Appearing from the tunnels in the north end zone of Jack Trice Stadium came Luke and his band underneath the deluge of cheers as “Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked” played. Making a pit stop for a quick drink before his entrance to the stage, Luke and his Wild Cards all stepped up to their stations. Shaking the stadium from the start, Combs began with the song sharing the titular honors with the tour “My Kinda Saturday Night” as the crowd jumped to their feet. There was no slowing down in Ames, hitting qiuck with “Lovin’ on You” and “Hurricane” following it up. After, Combs dialed back the speed but not the hits, “She Got the Best of Me” brought all 60,000+ voices into one.

Coming in at #1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart this past week is “Sleepless in a Hotel Room.” Combs’ 20th song to reach that milestone proves he still has the secret recipe for a hit after a dozen years in the industry. “Sleepless in a Hotel Room” was one of ten songs performed from his latest record The Way I Am, holding over a third of what was played that evening. Tapping into other tunes from the record like “Back in the Saddle” and “Be By You,” these were some of the most entertaining numbers in the show. For the third night on the tour, the band made these weeks old songs sound like staples in the set.

Although there was a heavy dose on the new album, Combs didn’t forget what songs got him to stadiums. Sweetheart’s favorite jam “Better Together” was a catalyst for fans holding each other close and swaying as the temperature dipped into the 50’s. In the middle of the set, Combs and his band took to some barstools on stage as they sang some more heartfelt ballads. Speaking about the range of emotions it takes to write a song, these introspections were a welcomed addition to the set. Whether tapping into the love in his heart for his wife, or a sadness that sometimes feels paralyzing, this honest chapter in the night was a nice breath. “I Ain’t No Cowboy” and “Wish Upon A Whiskey” were absorbed into the crowd at Iowa State during this breakdown.

The lovey-dovey and sadness eventually scampered off and Luke was back to his rocking chart-toppers like “1,2 Many” and “When It Rains It Pours.” During the former, a Luke Combs tradition is following the lyrics of the song to a ‘T’ and shotgunning a beer. Joining the 2019 Country Artist of the Year was Iowa State Cyclones men’s basketball legend Georges Niang to blaring applause. The Indiana Pacers draftee of a decade ago was an eager participant and it was delightful to see him back on home turf. While there was no competition on loudest song throughout the night, closer “Beer Never Broke My Heart” would have taken the gold medal. A killer end to the main set, Combs had the audience in the palm of his hand.

The encore was a trio of arguably Combs biggest songs. Beginning with his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” bringing the crowd back down to earth after that bombastic finale. Chapman’s tune was first covered by Combs in 2023 for his record Gettin’ Old. Tracy came out for her first live performance since 2015 to accompany the North Carolina native on stage at the 2024 Grammy’s, where Chapman has walked away victorious four prior times.

Luke Combs finished the extensive evening with “Where the Wild Things Are” and his song for Twisters, “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.” The finale was grand and included all the jostling a song about tornados in the home of the Cyclones should cause. Despite the threat of rain, all 5 performers put on a knockdown show at Jack Trice Stadium.

Dierks Bentley

This was very much a country concert. Every musician was country, everyone was dressed country, but if I had to put Dierks Bentley into a genre, it would be ‘Dude Rock’. The definition of ‘Dude Rock’ is very vague, but the main idea is that its just a dude who rocks. And let me tell you, Dierks rocks. Hitting 14 songs spanning his 23-year career, there was everything a super fan, casual fan, and soon-to-be fan could want in the set. Classics like “Drunk On a Plane” and “Free and Easy” got the crowd going by the fourth and final opener of the evening. There was a invigorating and joyful energy put into the air by Dierks and his band as their banter and bits kept the smiles coming in between songs. Dierks Bentley will be on the road this year for his “Off the Map Tour“.

Ty Meyers

The youngest performer on the docket was Texas’ own Ty Meyers. At 18 years of age, there is a long and exciting road ahead of the “Thought It Was Love” singer. With a beat up stratocaster in hand, Meyers pulls on bluesy influence for the lead licks in his songs. His 2026 record Heavy on the Soul made up almost half of his setlist. Other notable plays included two covers, “Valerie” and Tyler Childers’ “Feathered Indians“. A busy year awaits Ty Meyers as he will continue a mix of opening sets and headlining dates across Europe and North America.

Jake Worthington

A little honky tonk never hurt anyone, and Jake Worthington is a prime example. Another Texas native was the second to hit the stage on Saturday, bringing his southern charm to Iowa. We heard four tracks from his 2025 record When I Write The Song including his closer “It Ain’t The Whiskey“. Worthington has already created an extensive collaboration list, including Miranda Lambert and Marty Stuart. This brief look into the the musicians young career was catchy. You can take a much deeper dive into Jake Worthington as his headlining “Intent to Tonk Tour” takes flight later this spring.

Thelma and James

The first band of the busy evening was faced with a slight rain delay, although that didn’t shake Thelma and James. Their hit “Happy Ever After You” spurred them into the spotlight as the two songwriters looked into their own careers on the stage much more seriously. The duo has one album out, Starting Over, released in 2025 and are just over a week removed from their latest single “Alternate Ending” dropping. A fun and sweet sound that welcomed folks as they filed into Jack Trice Stadium. Thelma and James will continue opening for Luke Combs on the rest of his North American dates throughout his “My Kinda Saturday Night Tour”.

Throughout all 5 artists, big and small, there was an energy pulsing in the stadium that was a joy to be apart of. I hope more artists will take advantage of the massive stadiums on college campuses, along with their passionate fan bases. Artists like Luke Combs, Zach Bryan, and Coldplay are paving the way for more collegiate stadium shows in a time when high capacity venues are selling out in minutes. Luke Combs will continue on his “My Kind of Saturday Night Tour” for the remainder of the spring. Jack Trice Stadium will host Post Malone in July.

The post Luke Combs: Live in Iowa appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Wednesday evening was exactly what I wanted, a rock and roll show. Isbell and his band did not hold back throughout the evening, and without an opener there was no time to blink. Touching on four records with The 400 Unit and all four solo LP’s, this was a career spanning performance for the group. Through Isbell’s first solo hits like “Dress Blues” from 2007’s Sirens of the Ditch through his latest record Foxes in the Snow with the tune “Bury Me,” it all felt as though these musicians had all been playing these tunes for decades.  

This concert was an approachable and engaging performance as someone who has never seen Isbell before, showing me a mix of the entry points I knew, and the deeper cuts that kept fans coming back. The show felt close, as though you were in the same rehearsal space as the band as they discussed the ever-changing setlist on this tour. Iowa City was treated to a heavy dose of Weathervanes with five tracks making an appearance compared to a few nights before in Pittsburgh where they received only 3 in exchange for some more Drive-By Truckers tracks. Isbell recently reunited with the Truckers for a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after his departure in 2007, and showing even more love as every night on his recent leg covering “Decoration Day.”  Near the end of the set, the icing on this very sweet cake was a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Let Me Roll It'” which fit The 400 Unit’s voices nicely, echoing the same force The Wings had when it released in 1973. This was the first time Isbell and The 400 Unit have ever played this live, but it sounded like a classic from the cabinets of their discography.

The casual and laid back approach Isbell and company had is what I loved so much about this gig, as they dabbled in more jam band tendencies than most. Songs with solos lasting upwards of 3 minutes as the musicians on stage traded bars back and forth. Jason Isbell taking plenty of solos for himself, sauntering around the stage with a rotation of a red Fender Telecaster, gold Gibson Les Paul, and a sunburst Gibson ES-335. While these beautiful instruments made the soundtrack to the evening, an circular gold plate caught the attention of most. Multi-instrumentalist WIll Johnson, Isbell’s latest edition to the band, was shadowed by a gong for the show. While jumping between drums, guitar, and whatever else the band needed, the gong remained untouched. That was until the back half of the setlist, when Johnson graced bronze ring to the satisfaction of the crowd and band alike. Isbell went on to calm and hopes that this would be a recurring instrument stating “if you hit the gong more than once, you’re not hitting the gong, you’re playing the gong.” I can’t fight that logic. 

Headlining the 1,800 seat palace was not the only feather in Isbell’s cap during his time in Iowa City as he spoke of his placing third in Tuesday Night Trivia at Joe’s Place. He let out some frustration that bronze was all they got, claiming a few folks may have been googling answerers on competing teams. These are serious allegations leveled to the patrons of Tuesday Night Trivia, but I can confirm there were far too many phones out for a fair competition. Nevertheless, trivia and a headlining gig sounds like a good 48 hours to me. Isbell and his band were electric in Iowa City once again, and I hope its much less than 30 months before we see his return. Jason Isbell is touring throughout the rest of the year, you can find tickets here.  

The post Jason Isbell’s Loud Return to Hancher, and His Bronze Medal in Trivia appeared first on KRUI Radio.

It was the warmest day in two weeks, and people were enjoying it. Southbound from 3145 North Sheffield was a stream of hundreds of people. Whether the meteorologist was calling for rain, sleet, or worse, it wouldn’t have stopped this dedicated string of folks. Each one with at least one shared intent, to get as close to the stage as possible. The layered tiers inside quickly filled up as the crowd filed in, making split second decisions on which side of the sound booth they would go around. Within minutes, you could hardly move. Adorned with a red curtain and a circle of lights, the anticipation grew amongst the masses. 

On that stage would be Evan Honer and five of his best friends as they brought their It’s a Long Road Tour to The Vic Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. The Arizona born artist loaded up the sunshine from his southern state to a packed Vic in a vibrant format, blasting through 25 songs to his adoring fans. Honer is halfway through his 33-stop tour across North America in promotion of his latest record Everything I Wanted making his way from east to west. He gave love to new and old, playing nine songs off the latest venture and three from his debut LP West On I-10. A first-time listener would not be able to tell what tunes were new and old as fans belted every word from throughout the venue.  

Honer began his set the way he ended it, with a backflip. This might have been my first backflip on stage that I’ve seen, and for sure my second. That was a great prologue to the type of night Honer was about to give the crowd. Switching between a Martin acoustic and a cherry red Gibson ES-335, Honer took us along the journey of his catalogue whether sad and slow or animated and loud. These songs bleed honesty and experience, even in Honer’s young age. “Mr. Meyers”, the fourth track off Fighting For, tells the tale of watching a man lose himself in his own losses. Directly after in the setlist was the second song from the same record, “Brother”, discussing Honer’s difficult time understanding his own brother’s mental illness. A song that encapsulates the hands tied feeling of not being able to help someone you love.  These songs rip each chord out of your heart and try to plug it back in oh so delicately. An artist able to evoke such strong feelings from a crowd of 1,000+ is someone to not take for granted. 

He couldn’t let sadness linger in the air for too long, so Honer made the great call to bring man’s best friend on stage. Ushered on to thunderous applause was his dog, Leroy, accompanied by an all-to-brief cover of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by the legend Jim Croce. A quick dance with a bulldog lightened the mood as the band began a sprint to the end, hitting classics “Foolin’ Ourselves” and “Too Far Gone” from his first record. Sandwiched between those two was the first seed to Honer’s fame, his cover of Tyler Childers’ “Jersey Giant”. Honer’s maiden release from 2022 was an elusive track by Childers’ that does not have video of a performance from the author until 2025. With some synchronized choreography, a capo on the first fret, and a breakdown in the bridge, Honer the nearly impossible by making a cover sound like his own.  

Jersey Giant was not the only cover of the night, as the well-earned encore contained the 9x platinum single “Sugar We’re Going Down” by Chicago pillars Fall Out Boy. When I think of Evan Honer my mind does not immediately jump to From Under The Cork Tree but this faithful rendition shows his bands versatility and the dynamic voice he carries. His closer, “IDK Shit About Cars” left the crowd wanting even more as the house lights flared up. Clocking in at almost 2 hours, Honer’s set was well worth the price of admission and gives understanding as to why there are so many repeat customers at his gigs. 

The crowd was treated to Chicago native Michal Leah to begin the evening. Leah released her debut album Universe this past October with a deluxe edition, including three more tracks, in December. Alongside just her guitarist, she led the crowd through a showcase of her new discography, giving the audience a first listen to songs soon to be added to their playlists. She later reunited with The Vic, joining Honer for a rendition of “Waiting Ain’t Easy”. The combination of their voices felt like a fresh set of sheets as it wrapped around the whole theatre. In the audience was her father as well, who gifted the singer-songwriter flowers near the finale of her set. Leah provided a soothing, intimate, and strong performance to her hometown. You can follow Leah for updates here. 

The tour name implies the truth, there are many more nights of the It’s A Long Road Tour left for Evan Honer. Looking beyond this tour seems silly, but what lies ahead is exciting. This summer Honer will be hitting the road with the poet of his first release, Tyler Childers, on Childers’ Snipe Hunt Tour. This busy season is also sprinkled with headline dates and opening slots for Darius Rucker and The Head And The Heart at Red Rocks. As an independent artist, Honer has established himself and his record company, Cloverdale Records, as important pieces of the modern industry. You can follow Evan Honer for updates and find tickets for his upcoming shows here.  

The post Evan Honer’s Long Road Comes to Chicago appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Hayley Heyndrickx and Max Garcia Conover, ‘Song for Alicia’

Song for Alicia is a piece dedicated to Alicia Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican activist. While named after her, the song discusses a lot of various injustices done to her, but is ultimately more focused on the capitalist society of the United States of America. Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover started this song asking people to listen to his story if you, “have never believed in this kingdom of commerce we have lived in.” They call on people to listen to how people have been silenced and how the government can be bought out by those with money. They tell part of Alicia’s Story, about how she was arrested and her fight for independence. They sing of how she and other members of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña) group were abused in jail, and put into prison with “no trial or charge or conviction.” Max sings about various injustices that happen in Puerto Rico caused by American greed, saying to “just be patient while we burn your poets pages.” Beyond the moving lyrics, the song shows great sound with an amazing guitar backing the moving lyrics with amazing background vocals done by Haley. This song sounds beautiful and is written so well with lyrics painting this picture of freedom fighting, it is a very important song from this year.

-Will Clair

Ethel Cain, ‘Nettles’

In the summer, “Nettles” was released as a single to promote Ethel Cain’s new album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You and by my 9th listen I could easily declare it had become my favorite song. Six months later, I still feel the same way. This beautiful track offers a glimpse into the narrative of this album, the love story between the Ethel Cain persona and her first love, Willoughby Tucker, as they grapple with the hardship of the religious south in the 1980s from familial trauma, emotional turmoil and the fears that accompany a blossoming relationship. Ethel recounts a terrifying experience she imagined where her boyfriend is hit by shrapnel from a power plant explosion and is told that he has less than 24 hours left to live. The emotions in her voice and the depth of the anecdote almost make you forget this didn’t actually happen, but Ethel’s insecurities and fears keep her stuck in these fictitious scenarios where tragedy eventually reaches the two of them. 

Nettles immerses the listener with folk Americana instruments like the banjo and the fiddle, immersing us in the rural south of the 80s. The song starts out with delicate, rhythmic beats and steadily builds until the sound reaches its climax with the second chorus and ending, accompanied by vocal inflections, soft snares, drums and pedal steel guitar.

Ethel is deeply scarred by her environment, having suffered at the hands of loved ones and peers, “they did to me what I wouldn’t do to anyone.” In response to her trauma, Ethel developed a defensive shell, which can cause her to harm without intention, akin to a nettle. Because of this, she thinks being loved is a terrible burden, “to love me is to suffer me.” But Willoughby loves her. And she is deadly afraid of losing this one person who looks at her with adoration, afraid of not having enough time with him. She is afraid of tragedy, afraid of injuries, afraid of harsh white lights of hospital rooms and whispered prayers begging God for a miracle. As their community continuously pulls them down, Ethel and Willoughby cling to each other in the hopes of finding solace in each other’s arms, dreaming of a new home with gardenias on the tiles, “where it makes no difference who held back from who.” Where they can look into each other’s eyes and just be.

-Clara Carrion

Invariance, ‘Saint’

Consisting of the musical minds behind Black MIDI, Tom Hesh, and Oliva Dean, the supergroup Invariances‘ debut album takes all my favorite elements of the UK’s Windmill and New London Jazz scenes and combines them for an experimental experience at the forefront of contemporary music. Specifically, the track Saint caught my attention, as it takes both music scenes’ eclectic sonic traits to their final conclusion. 

The track combines the deconstructed post-minimalism approach of artists like Colin Stetson and the improvised jazz-rock instrumentation and lyrics of Soft Machine to create an eerie, droning atmosphere tinged with anxiety and swing. The vocalist, Kaidi Akinnibi, repeats the song’s string of lyrics louder and louder over 5 minutes until the track’s crescendo of sax (also performed by Kaidi) overtakes the song’s eerie progression with shouting horns and crashing symbols. While not a club banger, the song and the album Wish You Well, stood out more than any other amongst the chaff and offered an exciting glimpse of the experimental future of England’s music revival.

-Amman Hassan

Empty Parking Lot, ‘pictures of you by the cure’

Chronically online music fans may recognize the popular Instagram shitpost account, @midwest.merky for his emo-centered memes and Spotify playlists. Unfortunately, not enough people are aware of his myriad of musical projects, including the one man band Empty Parking Lot. I got the pleasure of seeing him and his other band, Breathing Techniques, live in Ames at the beginning of 2025. I got to listen to an hour of some of the most vulnerable and beautiful emo music of the last few years, with this track in particular being an incredible standout.

A clear homage to the classic track from The Cure, this also deals with heartbreak and obsession over a failed romance. Delving deep within his own insecurities that likely led to his downfall, “I’d rather stay home tonight, if that’s alright. It’s just that I’m so god damn scared of going outside and being looked at. I hate myself for wanting to stay home all of the time.” Combined with the swelling guitar’s and his painfully tragic vocal performance, you can really feel the emotional resonance that went into this song and that makes Empty Parking Lot such an exciting new voice in the current emo landscape.

-Tarik Krob

RAYE, ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’

This wasn’t the year I thought we were going to get a jazz revolution. But if I needed a reminder of anything this year, it’s that sometimes surprises can be good! RAYE’s upbeat, swinging, all-caps, instant classic, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! blew me out of the water in the best way possible this year and introduced me to this artist who’s bringing full orchestra accompaniments back into the mainstream, thank god. As a longtime fan of big band, swing, classic jazz, and funk, I’m delighted to see an artist out there who can play with the classic elements of the genres so masterfully. RAYE slips a groovy baseline underneath layers of big, resonant brass, mixes jazz drums with scat-like backing vocals, and crafts a melody so catchy, I raise my eyebrow at anyone who doesn’t even consider dancing along. There’s so much passion for the craft hidden within this song’s layers. As one YouTube commenter under the music video aptly notes, you can tell this song was made by someone who loves to sing.

And that’s not even touching on on the song’s lyricism, which feels at once ubiquitous and uniquely 2025. Internet discourse has been dominated this year by conversations about boyfriends, husbands, and relationships. From what I’ve been hearing, the consensus is that, for a (straight) woman, having a husband is embarrassing, but also a necessity. You’re not supposed to want one because you’re an independent woman, but you’re supposed to have one because your life would be incomplete without your other half. It makes sense then, that this song doesn’t linger too long on who the husband of the song actually is—what kind of man RAYE wants in her life—but instead focuses mainly on RAYE’s struggles without one. This gives the song a unique angle on the timeless story of looking for love. Not having a man is not a life-or-death situation—it’s just annoying. She’s not lying hopelessly in wait for her prince to save her, he’s testing her patience by taking so long to show up. This makes the song even more universal, in it’s own way. Regardless of who you are, you’ve been annoyed with a man at some point in your life (at least I know I have), and RAYE is able to vocalize this universal frustration in her own unique and snappy way. In my eyes, she’s been able to hit that sweet spot of music-making with a song many can connect to, and all can enjoy.

-Bailey Vergara

Meels, ‘Willow Song’

There is not an up-and-coming artist I am more excited about than Meels, and her track, Willow Song is my favorite song of the year. Accompanied by a charming Muppet-inspired puppeteer music video, Willow Song immediately transports me into 1979—back to a time when country music was good, sorry, but it’s true! Emulating John Denver and Bob Dylan, Meels is an expert storyteller and songwriter.

Here’s my favorite verse in the song, grounded in tried-and-true storytelling with a 21st-century edge, “When you run to the river and you ask for a drink It may not concede in the way that you think. Its surrender is painful and it cuts mighty deep. At least the painkillers around here are cheap.”

On Meels’ Instagram, she posted a self-proclaimed, “Bob Dylan–Joan Baez-esque love story,” song she had written. Had it been released already, it would have been my pick for my favorite song of hers. I can’t wait to see what she does next. She is definitely one to watch.

-Becca Warfield

Jane Remover, ‘Dancing with your eyes closed’

Watching the artistic trajectory of Jane Remover has been an incredibly fulfilling experience- there is no doubt whatsoever about that. The progression from a no-name artist dropping loose singles on Soundcloud in the early days of the hyperpop scene to establishing a name as one of the go-to producers in the genre, becoming so embedded that fans could hardly go a project without hearing something that Jane’s hands had touched. 

This, to the explosion of Teen Week, Frailty, Census Designated, and now in 2025… Jane’s proper mainstream EDM opus thus far, Revengeseekerz. As a longtime fan, I knew it was only a matter of time before Jane’s ear would translate to proper mainstream attention, as things had been trending that way for some time- but perhaps there was no better way of that happening than with the release of one of the singles for Revengeseekerz, titled Dancing with your eyes closed.

There is something unexplainable about much of Jane’s electronic dance compositions, an underlying bit of magic that is presented–a vitality, a heartbeat thumping at the speed of the BPM–a synthetic creche where the spirit resides, and inflates. While Revengeseekerz had its fingers in many pies, I find that once again, it is through dance that Jane Remover is most potent in her craft. 

-Evan Raefield

Sabrina Carpenter, ‘House Tour’

Do you want the house tour? Probably not, but I do. Personally, this song haunted my every second online this year, and I had no issue with that whatsoever. My good buddy, William Clair, will argue with me to hell and back about this take, but Sabrina Carpenter is easily the single best pop girl in the game right now. The alternative nature of this radio station matters naught to me when it comes time for end of year reviews. Last year I wrote about Miss “Jesus was a Carpenter” herself’s album, the Short n’ Sweet Deluxe Edition, but this year I have a more fitting pick than Man’s Best Friend, so Will gets to live without rolling his eyes back in his now bald head.

Enough Will Shade, House Tour meant an absurd amount to me this year. As none of you dearest readers can probably relate, I went through my first experience with formal sorority recruitment this year, and this song stayed in the back of everyone’s mind the entire time. It was the entirety of TikTok and Instagram for girls who just wanted to show everyone their house–especially their sorority house, and ignore the actual innuendo purposes of the song. My friend Kaitie and I even painstakingly made a video with this song for almost 12 hours at our house talking to probably 40-50 girls. We were exhausted and all we wanted to do was feel cute and special again. House Tour is without a doubt my favorite track from Man’s Best Friend. Sabrina’s brand of being this subtly-misandristic, silly girl is so important to me. She has this sort of Miss Piggy/Turner Classic Movies heroine/pin-up doll energy to her that’s absolutely timeless and fresh compared to other stars at the moment. Her lyrics and sound match her aesthetic to a T. Twitter, as always, had a lot to say about Man’s Best Friend, especially when the contentious album cover and track list were dropped early, but it still held up for me and I think the actual content of the album was a lot better than the assumptions people were making purely from the crumbs of ideas that were originally out there. Do I think some criticism was valid? Yes, but I also think a lot of it was unfounded and completely wrong after the album released. On House Tour specifically, the production quality and mixing was just so funky and even after months I haven’t gotten tired of it. Not to mention how catchy and genuinely hilarious some points of the song are. I can’t help but think she might’ve gotten inspiration for the house-body metaphor from Monster House, which I definitely watched far too young. Overall, another great year for Sabrina and I can’t wait to see where she goes next.

-Lee Nienhaus

Deafheaven, ‘Incidental II (feat. Jae Matthews)’

Having to pick a single song of the year always leaves me absolutely wrecked. Incidental II doesn’t even count as a true song, it’s an interlude from the blackgaze legends, Deafheaven off their recent (generally good) album, Lonely People With Power. Have I betrayed my many other darlings of the year by picking this? Though it’s far from being my most highly listened track, this one song stands out to me as the one song that made me feel actually scared. It begins with soft mechanical groans, a crackling synth creeping on top and forming this mysterious gentle fog from which Jae Matthew’s rasping voice emerges. Breaking up the oppressive vocals of George Clarke, she sings this haunting melody enrapturing the listener within every quiet breath and movement of her voice. The groaning instrumentals suddenly drop out underneath us, and we’re left flailing with nothing to hold onto but Jae Matthews and a light guitar accompanying her. We’re lost, alone, but with this sinking nausea that something massive approaches.

It’s one thing for a song to make you dance, to make you feel good. But when a song makes me physically anxious, I pay attention. This is a song where every choice builds this tangible dread, this song could snap and explode at any point, and strains that point of nervous tension until it snaps. Out of the silence and sweet voice, thunder erupts. Oppression does not begin to define the noise that follows. It’s every ounce of sound that Deafheaven can rip out of themselves, as their brutal wave crashes down.

The recording is incredible, each tone is perfectly processed and layered into this sickly mix, but it doesn’t compare to seeing it performed live. I had the chance to see them recently at their show in Davenport, where they used this song as an interlude to separate half of their set. It was the most incredible sound I had truly ever heard, just an absolute oppression condensed into noise. Deafheaven continue to reinvent the possibilities and emotions of metal with this album, unexpectedly found most intensely in this interlude.

-Pauly

The post Best Songs of 2025: KRUI Staff Picks appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Logan Melia: What are you drinking there?  

Jano Rix: I’ve got a black tea, a Fiji tips out-of-the-box from out there. 

Logan: Only the highest quality. 

Jano: Only the highest quality with nothing in it. Half a cup of water because that’s what it was like. 

Logan: You got to stay hydrated. Are you a coffee guy usually? Or are you tea?  

Jano: I have coffee in the morning. In fact, my whole life until I don’t know, two years ago, I never drank caffeine. 

Logan: Really? What changed? 

Jano: I don’t know. I started to like getting an espresso, like something sweet, like that one. And then I was like, I literally said, maybe I’ll see what getting a habit is all about with caffeine. And it’s on. So yeah. 

Logan: I just started like three months ago drinking coffee. 

Jano: Really. 

Logan: Yeah, like in college, I was like, I’m not going to do it because I can do it without it. I got this. And then over the summer, I worked at a golf course, and it was earlier mornings than I’ve ever had here at school. And that’s what made me fold. I’m a little disappointed in myself. 

Jano: Yeah, you know, it worked. Getting the habit worked. I got it. The thing about it, though, is that, I don’t know, it doesn’t really work that great if you didn’t get enough sleep. It makes you feel awesome if you got enough sleep, it’s even better. And if you didn’t get enough sleep, then you still feel like crap but jittery. 

Logan: Are you a full 8 hours guy or?  

Jano: I’m in a stage where, yeah, that’s good. Seven and a half. Seven and a half. 

Logan: You need it?  

Jano: I need it. Yeah.  

Logan: Do you feel like sluggish if you oversleep? Like if you are wiped, you sleep 10 hours, one day you wake up at, you know, 1130 A.M. 

Jano: If I, well on the road, 11:30 is reasonable. But I, it’s like all about timing. If it’s, I do believe in sleep cycles, at least for myself. So nine hours is awesome. 10 hours would suck. 

Logan: On the road, do you like the on the road thing? Does it mess with that schedule? 

Jano: Oh, I mean, yeah. It messes with my schedule. Yeah, last night wasn’t so great. You know, it depends on how the roads are, if the bus is going to stop in the middle of the night to fuel up. it depends on a lot of things.  

Logan: How long have you been touring for?  

Jano: 25 years, maybe? 

Logan: A little home on the road there, you know? You’re getting used to it. After the 25 years, maybe. 

Jano: Yes, I’m definitely used to it. I’ll tell you what, when I went away in COVID, I did miss it after a while. I loved it at first, actually. That particular thing of not touring, it was so awesome. I was home for months. And then after a while, it was just a huge part of my life, my expression, and also just being used to just seeing new places and waking up in a new place. And just, I don’t know, we have a tour family. I really missed it. 

Logan: When COVID first hit, were you like, I’m not going to do anything musical, I’m going to cleanse myself of this, or were the creative juices still kind of running for you? 

Jano: Oh, I mean, that was not a point in my life where I was like, no, I don’t want to do something musical. I had a point in my life, a few years before that, where I decided to quit music as a profession and that didn’t last. All that did was let me know that it was what I needed to do. It was good in that way. I tried to be a carpenter and I started working and doing like construction stuff. Working for a company and I quickly realized this is cool, but no, I need to put everything into music so that I can figure out a way to make a living doing this. I forget what year that was. I mean, 2009, something like that. But what was your question? Oh, COVID. COVID. Yeah. No, but it was just, I was, you know, I could do without the travel. So like stopping travel. I mean, I also spend the other, part of my artistic life is mostly spent in the studio. And that was mostly gone, but then we started doing sessions with masks and stuff, but touring was dead for a while. And I do remember vividly the first tour date, this live show date. 

Logan: What do you remember about it? 

Jano: Oh man, I cried. Like it was really awesome. I think it was outside, indoor/outdoor, like trying to do the COVID thing. At City Winery in Nashville and I think, what was it? Gosh, I’m trying to remember. Was it an Oliver Wood? I think we did an Oliver Wood Trio solo gig. And Seth Walker also played that night, like a bunch of people I’ve worked with and our friends and musicians I love. And I just, we played our set and then I just remember that felt amazing. And then I remember sitting in the audience, standing by the soundboard and watching Seth play. And I was just like, I was just so struck and moved by like how lucky I am to know these people and that we get to do this and I get to hear this, like after not hearing anyone play live music for so long. 

Logan: In those moments like that, is there like a song that kind of sticks with you from that exact time, or like maybe any other moments where you have a specific song that you remember hearing in a place during a time and you’re like, this is sticking with me? 

Jano: Oh, for sure. I don’t know if I remember a specific song from that night, but speaking of, it might’ve been, because I remember this from Seth Walker, hearing him, “Grab Ahold” which we’ve also done with the Oliver Wood solo stuff that I worked on. And I guess I worked on the original Seth Walker recording of that too. And he wrote that with Oliver and Oliver produced that first album and then I produced the subsequent ones. So I don’t know, that song goes way back and I’ve just, what really struck me, what I’m thinking about is hearing him from across festival grounds. Playing a daytime set, which can be tough in a festival early on, and telling a bunch of people there who didn’t know Seth, I was like, you have to go see Seth. And walking over to the stage and he was on the main stage and it was just like, you know giant fields, sun beating down, and he had everyone transfixed. Like you could hear a pin drop. When he gets into it, it’s remarkable. So I don’t know, there’s one. There’s one, yeah.  

Logan: You mentioned kind of coming out of your little, I’ll say, hiatus/retirement and realizing that you needed to do it more and more. When did you first realize that you needed to do it? Do you remember like how old you were or, you know, what’s really solidified that? 

Jano: I guess I wasn’t like a lot of people who were like, maybe, you know, they got a guitar in high school or something and they’re like in love with it. And I’m like, I think I want to do this because it was around me since I was a kid. My dad’s a professional drummer. And so I grew up, you know, from the time I was tiny, watching him play gigs. And like, there was a, I heard a cassette years ago of me playing when I was 4, playing and singing, and I was like that’s pretty good. I don’t really think I’ve gotten that much better from a four year old, I was just improvising a blues. My parents, they were outside and I went in the basement and just pressed record on a tape deck. And I played and made-up a blues about being all alone in the house, where they were and what they were doing. My dad’s in the shed, my mom’s out working in the garden and like. 

Logan: And here you are, all alone. 

Jano: Yeah. So I kind of, I wouldn’t say I knew I was going to do it because I was also, my mom’s a painter and I drew and painted growing up like equal time to music. So it was like, if I wasn’t skateboarding or something like that, because I also like to do athletic things, but I was drawing, painting, or working on music, piano or drums, mostly drums. So I don’t know, it was kind of bred into me. 

Logan: Who were your favorite artists or painters? 

Jano: My favorite artists or painters, here’s an inside one, Frank Frazetta. He did a lot of illustration, like he did a lot of book covers. My mom was really into illustrators and he was very much in a kind of fantastical fantasy sci-fi style, but fantastic craftsman and fantastic painter. Anyway, that’s kind of a random one to pick out because a lot of the greats I love too. I remember becoming obsessed with Picasso for a while. But yeah, I just saw someone wearing a Frank Frazetta t-shirt and I was like, where’d you get that? And she’s like, there’s this museum. I was like, you went? You know, it’s very inside, but in Pennsylvania, there’s just this Frank Frazetta museum. Yeah, so I don’t know. I was very, you know, that was another thing like my parents, my mom passed down that kind of stuff to me. So just, yeah, a bunch of illustrators I was into. That was a great one. 

Logan: Were you in the comic books at all? 

Jano: I wasn’t. I wasn’t, but I had a friend who really was, so I gained an appreciation of that. Actually, his name is Ben Mara, Benjamin Mara, and I was just seeing, he does amazing comic book stuff now. Really? He’s in it. He followed it all the way through. So I got an appreciation for what that was at the time, but no, I guess just more kind of like fine art stuff and painting. I don’t do too much of that. The most is like, people are like, Who painted that on your ‘shituar’? It’s like, Oh, I just did that. Randomly every few years, I’ll get the bug and I’ll like paint an owl on my ‘shituar’ or something. 

Logan: There you go, an owl on your ‘shituar’. Yeah. You mentioned skateboarding a minute ago. Now, when I think of a kid skateboarding, this music isn’t exactly, The Wood Brother’s isn’t exactly the music that comes to mind. So were you skating, listening to Rancid, or were you skating, like listening to John Prine? 

Jano: We were totally listening to The Misfits. You know, I think musically I had my own thing, but I was on the edge of that skate culture. So I did listen to that stuff. But musically, I was always kind of like, not with necessarily what my friends were listening to, because I had a very focused musical life and stuff I was into. I went through some phases with friends around, but I was really into Pink Floyd at that time. Like really, really into Pink Floyd. 

Logan: I was never a Pink Floyd guy. Me and some buddies put on The Wall for the first time I ever heard it. And it was a life-changing experience. You feel it over your whole body. It just washes over you. 

Jano: That’s cool to hear how someone else felt. I’ve never talked to anyone about what they thought of The Wall the first time. But yeah, I used to, I mean, I was young and I used to watch that movie. I didn’t know what the hell was going on in that movie. But it was like a feeling and they just were able to conjure certain feelings. And when I look back at it, they’re very patient. That music often moves very slow and there’s 16 measures, 32 measures in the middle of a song of just the groove vamp with maybe like 3 guitar licks. It’s like so patient and there’s so much space. And I think I’ve always gravitated to stuff like that. whether it was that or more funky music. Yeah. 

Logan: Do you feel like you incorporate some of that patience into your own music? 

Jano: I do. I don’t think about it consciously much. But if anything, like in the confines of making a record maybe, sometimes I listen back and I’m like, oh, I need to like, hit it a little harder sooner because there’s not enough time to be just patient. But I don’t think about it. It’s something that’s kind of automatic for me, I think. 

Logan: We talked about your mom’s influence a little bit. You were putting together an album with your father. Legacy. Not a whole lot of musicians are able to do that, you know? So I mean, obviously, I’m sure it feels incredibly special. But is there anything in that album that you just haven’t felt before while making music? 

Jano: Oh, good question. Yes. You know, and I don’t know if it’s purely a musical thing as far as like the aesthetics of the music, like the musical choices. But it felt very difficult. different to make that record. I make records all the time. I’m very lucky to have been doing that for a long time. Either as a musician or a producer and we have our studio, you know, me and The Wood Brothers in Nashville. But making a record with my dad was, I think I put more pressure on myself. Not that it had to be, it’s not going to be, I didn’t care if it was a commercial product, but it was just, it just felt more like, I don’t know, I wanted it to be good. I wanted him to like it. I don’t know. It was just, it was harder for me to finish it. I found myself dragging my feet, which is part of, I blame myself partially. We’re equally to blame why it took us 12 years from our first notes put down and recording to the end.

Logan: During those 12 years, were there any songs that you were able to get down in a day or get a good chunk of it down? Or were they all really laborious? 

Jano: Oh, I mean, in the end, I mean, we only had maybe five times we ever got together and recorded. I’d say probably 5 days. Total. 

Logan: To make an album, that’s a pretty good time to make album. 

Jano: There was a lot, okay, but there was a lot of… I spent other days myself, but I erased a lot of it because what we would do is we’d get together, the first time we got together at Southern Ground Studios in Nashville, and we spent an entire day, maybe it was two days, I think it might have just one day, and we tracked basics, just the two of us for, I mean, it’s only the two of us playing everything on the record. Yeah. And we got like half the record done that day. And then another day in the town where my parents live in New York, I went up there and we tracked again. We got basically the other half of the basic the tracks done. And then overdubs, I would work on them like in Nashville and I would add a lot. And in the end, it was just like, a lot of times I just stripped it back to mostly just me playing like a Fender Rhodes, my dad playing drums, our vocals. No, it can’t have been five days. I’m going to give us seven days, but totally working together. But I worked I worked a lot of other days on it myself, just adding little things, taking things away.

(Part 2)

Logan: Do you think you work best with simplicity?

Jano: Yeah.

Logan: In your dream scenario, what are the only things on a record or on a song? What’s the core that can’t be stripped away for you? 

Jano: Well, it could be anything. It could be anything, but I find myself often, like my favorite record by an artist is one with usually with like very little production. Sometimes there’s no crumbs on it, sometimes there’s, you know, not like the instrument I play like I necessarily care about hearing, you know. Like a Dylan record, like a really old one. That is just mostly just him. Yeah. Like, I’m like, oh, it’s not. No offense to my dad who played on Dylan Records. 

Logan: Your father played on Dylan Records? Which ones? 

Jano: The most known recording would probably be “Hurricane” or “Desire”. And he played on “Desire”, he’s playing with congas on that.  

Logan: That’s wild. You ever get to meet Bob? 

Jano: Unless I did when I was really tiny, no, but I heard plenty of stories. 

Logan: Any ones you can share? 

Jano: Oh man, my dad was on the Rolling Thunder Revue. Yeah, if you know that one, it’s like, that’s just a wild tour. Dylan was, I think the cool parts about it, some of the cool parts are he was tired of, he was such a big star at that point. He felt like his fans didn’t necessarily get tickets to the shows because everything was becoming expensive and would sell out right away. So he decided to do a tour, but not book it ahead of time. And he just got some buses, put the band together, because him and Rob Stoner put the band together. And they would just, as I know the story, show up in a town like the night before and just say, hey, we want to play your venue here like your veteran’s hall or something like that. And they would just put posters up, said Bob Dylan playing tomorrow night. And so it was very, to use the term freewheeling, and like, you know by the seat of their pants. And on that tour he kept adding artists and buses, just like pick up people. And then suddenly Joni Mitchell’s on the tour and Alan Ginsberg’s on the tour and like everybody’s on the tour. And it was, you know, so it was like this crazy social hang and wild tour, you know. 

Logan: That’s crazy. Is that something like, is there any off the wall ideas that you would ever want to do as an artist? Anything like a tour where you got, you got no direction in mind? 

Jano: I have, yeah, I have fairly ambiguous ideas that I haven’t really locked down of because I dance a lot. I don’t know if a lot of people know that, but like I teach dance. My wife and I teach Casino and Salsa. Casino is often called Cuban Salsa. But just through that world and interacting with music that way, I would love to incorporate that heavily for the audience into a set, as well as participating in rhythms in the music more than just clapping along every once in a while. Which goes to your question of, which I think this started out with a while ago, of what are the elements that you can’t get away from in music? And there’s a style of music that I really like, Cuban Rumba. And I love Huapango. And in Huapango, it’s just percussion and vocals. And man, music does not need any more than that. When anything’s grooving that hard, you do not need anything else, and all the space is wonderful. That said, I love guitars and keyboards and bass, but I love the simplicity of it too. I think that’s, and the rhythmic grooving nature of it. So I would just, and there’s something, our culture doesn’t have a lot of participation either. in dance socially, at least not white people. So social dances, that’s like, hardly anyone knows how to do those anymore, like partner dancing. But even just dance as a celebration and a ritual. And dance classes are for kids, you know, and then adults, unless they like to go to concerts and dance, they don’t really dance. So I would love to incorporate that, as well as, I think, everyone can play and sing and do music. It’s just like we’re not raised with that as part of our culture. And man, it’s very healing for people to do that. So I’d like to incorporate that. 

Logan: I remember hearing one time, one of my, I took choir in high school and a teacher said, singing and dancing is like running. Everybody can do it. doesn’t matter how good you are at it. And do you find that there’s a level that people need to cross them to be more comfortable dancing and doing that stuff? Do you find that there’s a switch that needs to be flipped because like, I think the average person isn’t maybe comfortable or think they’re capable of dancing. So is there some threshold that they need to cross, do you think? 

Jano: It depends on the person. Because in a way, no, because a little kid can do it. And a little kid can play and sing music and it’s perfect. It’s just what it should be. But I was that person who, I grew up on the bandstand on stage, I did not step foot, I did not dance until I was an adult. I was deathly afraid of dancing, which is probably why I got so into it once I conquered that fear of it, why it made such a difference to me. But yeah, so I was one of those people. It was not in my culture. And I was really afraid of dancing. And then my wife, we went to the Dominican Republic and we took some little dance lessons on the beach. We did some bachata lessons. And then we got back home and she’s like, I really want to take salsa lessons. And I was like, okay, I’ll go with you. And so we went week after week, I was kicking and screaming every week. I did not want to go and be bad at, because I was used to being good at art from the time I was little. I was like, I was like the one who was really good at the art, you know? And here I was terrible. I was terrible at dancing. And salsa requires, you know, a vocabulary, it’s a language. But once I finally got over myself and went to a social, which everyone told me to do, and just dance with people, which I was afraid. I was like, no, I’m going to get good first. They’re like, no, you’re not. You have to go and that’s going to make you get good. You just have to go and suck and dance with a lot of people. When I finally did that, I was so hooked. 

Logan: Really? 

Jano: Yeah, because you are basically dancing duets with different people all night. You’re improvising. It’s like a full body improvisation with music and another person. It’s just like a beautiful connection. It breaks the boundaries of physical connection. We don’t really touch much in our culture, except like with your lover. That’s it. Like otherwise you don’t really touch, you know, you pat your bro on the back. That’s that, yeah, that’s that. So yeah, it was like really opened my world and it was whole, opened my world to new cultures, new language, and the language of dance. So I don’t know, yeah. 

Logan: You mentioned it being like a full body, like experiencing that thing. Do you feel the same way when you’re on stage doing music? And is that, if it is, is it the same use of your full body or is it a different feeling? 

Jano: It’s a different feeling, but it can be very much the same and it should be. And dancing has informed me with my music because my music, has been a professional thing for so long. And in a lot of ways, I put pressure on myself since I was pretty young to perform at that. But dancing started as an adult, and I got to watch myself as it was like a third space. It was not, for a long time, it wasn’t professional and I became professional. And I also saw what that did to my experience of it, you know. And, but it made me aware that I was missing out on some of the joy I originally had in music. Because dancing, and I was like, I couldn’t believe I’d become this person who would just be like, no one on the dance floor, that’s me. You want to dance? Let’s go. I had no problem asking, going to an unfamiliar city somewhere in Europe and meeting everyone, asking them to dance. And it was just with so much joy, like that connection, just the joy of connecting in the moment to just that life between the two of you, between the music moving in the air. And so, yeah, you should have that with music too. And it is a full body experience. Even if you’re playing an instrument that mostly just your fingers touch some keys or something, your whole body’s involved, your breathing’s involved, you can dance with it. 

Logan: Do you feel like that kind of the love, that you’re describing, do you feel it growing every time you do it? Or do you find it to be maybe a little repetitive at times? 

Jano: Well, yeah, it goes through phases and it’s night to night and it’s moment to moment. And I think once you’ve done it long enough, at least for some of us, the only thing to really think about is to notice where you’re at. The music’s happening, like you’re playing the music, thinking about what you’re going to play next is a complete waste of time. Your conscious brain is really way too slow to do all the cool things that you can actually do. But you just kind of realize where you’re at, like, oh everything’s feeling hard. I’m feeling like I can’t hear, I’m annoyed with my in-ear mix, okay where am I at? Like, how am I feeling? Where is this in my body? Can I breathe? Can I just get curious about the sounds and where I’m at? And kind of sometimes I look at the lights in the room and that’ll like bring me back. I think you go through stages too, where it’s like all joy and you’re just excited about it. And then I noticed myself with dance and then I got a level of expertise with it, and I started teaching as people start looking up to you. And then you feel like you’ve got to be somebody. Like when you dance, people are watching you. And you’ve got to represent and you’ve got to, then the joy is gone. And you still might do some hot dance moves, but you’re not really connecting with your partner, you’re not really letting loose in the moment, and you’re not even modeling what you should be modeling. You’ll look back and you’ll, if people videoed you, see you’re not smiling.

Logan: How do you kind of disperse those expectations? When you feel them setting it, is there anything you do to make them go away? 

Jano: You schedule therapy.  

Logan: Not bad advice.  

Jano: Yeah, you know, and I don’t think there’s one solution, but over time, you get different home mantras to tell yourself. If you can remember to remember, then you, like this week I’ll tell you what it is this week on stage, it’s someone talked about curiosity. And so I just like try to get really curious. I mentioned that a few minutes ago, just get really curious about the moment. That’s what I’ve been doing this week, that word comes to mind. In fact, I wanted to paint it on one of my instruments, so I just see it. But I remember last week, I put a little, preparing for the tour, I put a little sign, put it on my rig, and it said, I think, smile, like smile with your body. And when I think of that, my posture gets better. My posture tends to smile and my chest comes up and I tend to breathe in. I smile with my face. And I realize, like, what are you practicing? Are you practicing being stressed out and worried about screwing something up and not being able to, not having your chops up for this tour? Because that’s how you’re going to feel on the tour. No matter, if you practice that for 1000 hours before the tour, you will still not feel ready for the tour, no matter how good your chops are because that’s what you practiced. So try to practice letting it flow and being curious and interested in the sounds as they happen, rather than trying to turn yourself into a machine, being constantly looking for your own faults. Because I can do that. I’m good at that. I spent years doing that. I can play like a machine, I know how to. 

Logan: But it’s better if you let it flow. 

Jano: Yeah. And you can. There’s machines, I mean, you can just have it tell AI to do it now. I think it can make you machine music. 

Logan: It’s not good music. 

Jano: It’s not good music, but it sounds, honestly, it sounds like lackluster music and a lot of people make lackluster music because they’re trying to treat themselves like machines. We’re lucky that’s not what our fans want. At least not with the Wood Brothers. Like they want to hear, like have a human, you know, they always say, God you guys sound so honest. I think it’s, we just let ourselves be what we are, you know, warts and all. 

With support from Irish duo DUG, The Englert was lively for The Wood Brothers. For over two hours, fans were showered with songs old and new with an encore of their hit “Luckiest Man”. It was a busy year for Rix as The Wood Brothers dropped their new album “Puff of Smoke” in August and “Legacy, Vol 1” from Jano and his father released in November. The Wood Brothers will continue their tour this winter, you can find dates here.

The post Interview: Jano Rix of The Wood Brothers appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Logan Melia: How are you doing? 

Molly Tuttle: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. 

Logan: Thank you so much for taking time for me. You’ve had an incredibly busy week. Congratulations on the two Grammy nominations. 

Molly: Oh, thank you. So exciting. 

Logan: Best Americana Performance, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, Best Americana Album, “So Long Lone with Sunshine”, and you’re touring that record. It’s a phenomenal, phenomenal piece of work there. How long was that process for you, writing the songs, putting it together, staying in the studio? 

Molly: I started writing some of the songs like four or five years ago. That’s where the seeds of this album started. And then I just kind of kept working on it. And then in the last year, I kind of felt like I had this burst of writing a bunch of songs that ended up on the record and then going back to some older ones and kind of, you know, rewriting sections, editing them a little bit to get them all to where I was really happy with them. And then we went into the studio last fall. spent about a month from the pre-production process to actually tracking all the songs. Went in with Jay Joyce who produced the record and we got together whenever I was off the road and then we had about a week of tracking and then mixed it. I think we got everything finished in last January. So it’s been a long time coming and it was really an exciting and fun process, I worked a lot on this record. I probably spent more time on it than any other record I’ve ever made, so that was just a fun process. I just love being in the studio. I’m just excited for what’s next and certainly excited to be going to the Grammys. 

Logan: Oh, absolutely. Now, when you’re writing these songs, are there any that just fall out of the sky? Is it a really laborious process for you? 

Molly: It really varies song by song, some you kind of have to work more to get them to a good place and then some of them just kind of happen all in one sitting. One of the songs on the record, “Old Me New Wig”, which is where we got the title for the album from, a line in that song. That one just kind of happened in one sitting, but some of the others spent, I like came back to them years later and just kind of kept working at it. 

Logan: You’re touring this new album and You’re still playing some songs from The Golden Highway. How do you create these set lists where you balance the old with the new? 

Molly: Yeah, we’re kind of playing about half the new record and mixing in different ones. There are certain songs off the new record that we still haven’t played live and we’re kind of workshopping them. At soundcheck, we’ll be working on a new song and getting it ready for the stage and so that leaves a lot of room in the set to work in stuff from all my other albums, last two Golden Highway records. Those had kind of become staples of my live shows the last few years so it was fun kind of reworking a bunch of those songs with the new band. And we always do like an acoustic portion of the set as well. So a lot of the set will be with drums and sometimes Ellen Angelico, who’s playing multiple different instruments. She’s playing Dobro, electric guitar, and pedal steel. Mary Meyer is another multi-instrumentalist, she plays mandolin, fiddle, and keys. And then we have Vanessa McGowan who plays upright and electric bass and Megan Jane will be on a full drum kit. And then for the acoustic portion, well, it’s all kind of acoustic because I’m always playing acoustic guitar and Mary’s off and on mandolin or you’ll have the Dobro, but we strip down to do a little one mic portion of the set. And that’s when Megan might go to a washboard or maybe we’ll just do like an acoustic trio portion of the set some nights. And so it’s really fun, it’s like a varied set list each night. I feel like it just allows for so many dynamics within the show to kind of, have some of the bluegrass tunes and then some of them we’ve reworked. And then there’s the new album stuff as well. 

Logan: You mentioned your band, a phenomenal, phenomenal collection of musicians. I’m sure there’s so many incredible ones in your circles, but these are all the best of the best. How did you pick these specific artists? 

Molly: Yeah, I reached out first to Vanessa, who’s the bassist. I reached out to her first, I’ve known her for years. And she’s had experiences being a band leader, which is often times in bands, they’ll be like the front person. And then there might be one of the other musicians who is kind of helping orchestrate all the music and putting it all together. And so she’s just knows everyone in Nashville and has all these connections. So I kind of worked with her to figure out the rest of the band, but I told her like that I would need people who are very versatile because I want to still be able to go from playing a bluegrass tune to playing like a more rockin arrangement of one of the newer songs on the record that might have a need like pedal steel or like keys and drums and this and that. So I really wanted to be able to kind of slide between different genres throughout the night when we’re playing the show. We talked about who would really work with that kind of format, and I think the next person we reached out to was Megan Jane, who’s the drummer, and I’ve actually toured with her before I toured with her in 2022 a little bit. Actually, maybe 2021. I can’t remember now. It was whenever we were coming out of the pandemic, we toured together. And so I knew I would love playing with her because I’d already played with her a bunch. And Ellen is someone I’ve known, Ellen Angelico, plays Dobro and guitar and steel. I’ve known her for many years here in Nashville, she’s worked at all these different guitar shops around town and she’s just a great multi-instrumentalist as well. And then Mary Meyer, who strangely enough, like I actually didn’t really know her before we ended up playing together, but she grew up in a bluegrass family band just like me, but she also kind of has like me branched out into all these different genres. So I feel like it’s just a perfect fit musically for her and I to play together since we both love bluegrass, but we do other stuff too. And it just makes for a really fun show because I feel like we’re all kind of on the same wavelength. 

Logan: You are kind of leading the charge for this new generation of bluegrass. I mean, my 17 year old little sister is like listening to Merle Haggard now because of you and Sierra Hull and Billy Strings and all this new wave of it. Can you kind of feel the excitement about your scene coming up? 

Molly: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think bluegrass music and roots music in general or Americana or whatever you want to call it, it goes through these waves and different generations that push it into new territories. People I looked up to like Alison Krauss and Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, people who are really pioneering new ways of playing this music. It just feels like a huge honor to maybe be part of that next wave coming along, that someone might look to kind of figure out where it could go next in the next generation after this. So yeah, it just feels kind of like it’s so important to keep this music alive and keep letting it evolve. 

Logan: Your artistry mixed with your phenomenal guitar playing has always put me in mind of Glen Campbell. Do you remember your first time ever hearing Glen Campbell? 

Molly: Yeah, I learned about Glen Campbell when I was a kid because I loved the song “Gentle on My Mind”, but I knew it as a John Hartford song. And then of course, Glen Campbell kind of made it famous. So I listened to his version and that was the first song I ever heard Glen Campbell do. So big fan. And that was kind of how I discovered him through being a big John Hartford fan. 

Logan: You just played that with Sierra Farrell, I think, right, “Gentle On My Mind”? That was a phenomenal video. You had a busy week last week. In addition to the Grammys, you released a cover of a personal favorite of mine, “Fairytale of New York”. 

Molly: Yes, yeah, that was a cover I’ve been doing for a couple years now. Ketch and I, Ketch Secore is the one who I recorded it with, and we’ve sung it together for a few years. I’ve been doing these holiday shows in Menlo Park near where I grew up, and we worked it up for those shows after Shane McGowan passed, who sang the song originally with Kirstie McColl and The Pogues. We’re both big fans of the song and of Shane and The Pogues and everything, so we worked that one up after he passed away. And then it just became kind of my favorite, one of my favorites to bring back around the holidays. And we ended up recording it last year after performing it a couple times. And I’m just happy it’s out in the world to get people in the holiday spirit, even though it is kind of like a depressing holiday song. It’s not your typical cheery Christmas song, but I think that’s what I kind of liked about it. 

Logan: Do you start listening to Christmas music after Halloween? After Thanksgiving? What’s your threshold? 

Molly: I don’t usually listen to it very early. I feel like I wait until after Thanksgiving is probably when I can pivot on to Christmas. I don’t have that many Christmas decorations, I feel like we put up a tree and stuff, but I’m, my house isn’t like the place where you walk in and it’s like, Christmas vomit of the ornaments and everything everywhere. Ketch and I live together and he is kind of the opposite. He has a million Christmas ornaments, so we find our balance of maybe we just put it in certain rooms. I feel like it makes me feel crazy when everywhere I look there’s Christmas stuff. I think he kind of brings out the Christmas spirit in me, but we listen and put on a lot of Christmas music in the weeks leading up to it. So far we haven’t really been playing it around the house, but we did release the cover. So that’s my first contribution. 

Logan: It’s quite the good contribution. It’s all a balancing act, you know? 

Molly: Yes, totally. 

Logan: Are you a big physical media collector? Are you a big like vinyls person or CDs person? 

Molly: I have a fair amount of vinyl that I’ve just kind of acquired through the years. Most of it is people will give me vinyl or I get it from my friends. I have a lot of vinyl from friends of mine who put out records and then some of my favorites I have on vinyl. So I don’t have a massive collection, but I do love spinning records when I’m just around the house, you know, kind of puttering around. It’s just so fun to have a record on. I feel like I miss the days when we all would just sit and  listen to one full record back-to-back. So that’s what it kind of brings me back to, is just appreciating a full album that someone put out. Whereas when I’m kind of like out and about, I might just be listening to music still, but kind of picking my favorite songs here and there, maybe not listening to a full record. So that’s what I like to do around the house is just pull out a record, maybe a classic one that I haven’t listened to in a while. I have Joni Mitchell‘s “Blue” is one of my favorites that I have on vinyl and Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” is another one I have, and a bunch of older ones like that, just kind of classics. I like just rifling through and picking out one that I haven’t listened to in a while. 

Logan: Yeah, I mean, those are some great picks right there. What is on your playlist nowadays? 

Molly: I’ve been kind of listening to… A couple different things like my playlist is always all over the place. I just found out about this band that I’ve been listening to recently called Geese, they’re like an indie rock band. 

Logan: So good.  

Molly: Yeah, they’re awesome. I only figured out who they were because I kept seeing their name on festival lineups and I thought it was Goose because we’ve been playing a bunch of festivals this year that Goose is on the bill. And then I kept seeing Geese and I was like, ‘What’s Geese?’. Like I’ve heard of Goose, but I haven’t heard of Geese. So I started listening to their music and I became obsessed. So I was listening to them a bunch this last week. 

Logan: Oh, they are great. This is going back to kind of your beginnings a little bit here. You’re a phenomenal clawhammer player. Do you remember like the first song you really got down on clawhammer? 

Molly: Yeah, the first song I ever learned on clawhammer was one called “Little Sadie”, and it’s like this old murder ballad. It’s a really creepy song so sometimes I don’t even like to sing it anymore because it’s like in the first line, he’s shooting someone. And I’m just like, it’s a creepy song. But there’s so many songs like that, the old kind of traditional songs, you don’t know who wrote them, but they tell these kind of disturbing stories a lot of the time. And some of them are really more inappropriate than others in our current day and age but that one is that one is fairly mild by comparison to some others. But that was the first song I learned on clawhammer guitar. That’s one that you can hear it. Like the Grateful Dead did it, Jerry Garcia would sing it and so many people have done it through the years. Doc Watson is another version I really like. So yeah, that was my first clawhammer guitar piece and I learned it from a guy out in the Bay Area, Michael Stadler. I had been playing clawhammer banjo but I’d never heard of clawhammer guitar and he kind of showed me that song and the tuning that I use for it. 

Logan: You mentioned these storytelling songs. The storytelling songs, and you write a lot of songs about the road, it’s kind of Springsteen-y in a way. Are you a Springsteen fan at all? 

Molly: A little bit. He’s actually someone I need to listen to more. I’ve been thinking about that recently. I’m like, dang, especially with like the Springsteen movie coming out. I’m like, I actually don’t know his music as well as I should. I know a few of the hits, obviously, but I’ve never really taken the time to dive in. But I’m sure once I did, it would be like a rabbit hole that I would love going down. Maybe that’s next on my agenda. There’s certain artists like that where they’re like, such iconic artists and I feel like I’ve missed them. Maybe that’s due to growing up just listening to bluegrass and then slowly figuring out like popular music when I was a little older. 

Logan: Are there any other artists on that list that you can think of off the top of your head that you’re like, I need to get into these guys? 

Molly: Yeah, other kind of classic artists that I feel like I haven’t fully, maybe I’ve just listened to like one or two of their records. Like Paul Simon, I feel is someone that, of course, I’ve listened to “Graceland”, but I don’t know that much of his other solo stuff. I’ve been thinking recently that I need to dig into his stuff as well. 

Logan: Thank you so much for taking time with me. You can see Molly at the Englert on the 16^th, later this week. I’m looking forward to a great show. 

Molly: Thank you so much. It’s going to be great. 

Molly Tuttle will play The Englert Theatre on Sunday, November 16th at 7:30. Tuttle will be supported by Joshua Ray Walker and Cecilia Castleman for her Iowa City debut. You can listen to “So Long Little Miss Sunshine” now, and can find tickets for her performance here.

The post Interview & Concert Preview: Molly Tuttle at the Englert, Nov. 16 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

This album grew on me—it wasn’t impressive the first time I popped in my earbuds.  That changed when I put on my headphones and listened through it again (and again).  There are intricacies living explored in the relatable moments which people live through every day.  Lyrics echo within songs, each having a distinct sound while examining all the different feelings accompanying loss. 

Nate starts calmly with “White Hills,” laying out the tensions that the entire album works through, those feelings of belonging, of longing while moving on, and of memories.  You’ll groove a little to “Bleed,” where the build into the chorus goes on just long enough for you to feel that release when he sings, “and I BLEEEEEED MY HEART OUT,” keeping you there for the last minute of the song.  You’ll start tapping your foot on “The Crying Wolf;” you know something interesting is going to happen when the tambourine shows up. Some tracks, like “5^th Avenue,” have long outros that hang on–perhaps too long–while tracks like “Ghost Town” and “I Don’t Belong Here Anymore” have short outros that finish just as intensely.  You’ll tap your foot again on “Let’s Stay In & Put a Dylan Record On.”  You meditate while listening to the calm “Wild Heart” before diving into the folksy “The Tamiami Trail.”  “Farewell, Savannah” and “The Highway” have lighter layers that form a space for Currin’s heartfelt lyrics.

For a post-breakup album, there’s a lot of movement.  On the cover, Currin stares back at where he came from, leaning against a parked Pontiac with the top down. He takes listeners on a physical journey in addition to an emotional one, making stops in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, ultimately ending the album with the command to “Get Back North.” Time doesn’t exist in Ghost Town.  The album lives in the moment straddling memory and feeling. Outros linger, intros build slowly, other voices chime in at the right times, and the last track primes you to start it all over again. 

While this album does not stray too far from his other work, Ghost Town does have a wide range of influences.  “Lover, Don’t Let Me Go” is, at times, slightly reminiscent of 80s pop.  We get Currin’s harmonica stylings on “Let’s Stay In & Put a Dylan Record On.”  There is more than a pinch of honkytonk sprinkled into “The Crying Wolf” (as well as a Lynyrd Skynyrd reference).

It’s a fast-paced world that we live in nowadays, which means there is even more of a place for the winding tunes of Nate Currin, for his thoughtful meditations on what it means to feel and emote, to remember and move on.  Like he says, “There’s so much I wanna say.  No, I’ll never be okay.”  But everything will be okay. And every time you dream about escaping, every time you go through a bad breakup, every time you think about your ex, you can listen to Ghost Town.

Nate Currin’s Ghost Town releases August 1^st on Archaic Cannon Records.

The post Album Review: Nate Currin’s Ghost Town appeared first on KRUI Radio.

With this their sixth album, their previous being 2023’s playfully lo-fi Grog, Frog set out to lean into that repetition, to see how far that original bit of inspiration could carry them. The album’s 11 tracks are unified by one common factor: they all carry the same chords. Although different tracks hit different emotional tones, and lyrical content is a scattershot variety of topics ranging from reflections of fatherhood to drunken doomscrolling, front man Daniel Bateman states that the album, in essence, all consists of the same song. “1000 Variations on the Same Song is a theme and variations. There are times in your life as a songwriter where you’ll start a bunch of stuff that all sounds alike, which can be a problem, something that you want to excise from yourself. This time, I decided to embrace it and take it as far as it could go,” Bateman had said about the record. 

With this ethos in mind, the album encapsulates the intentional and idiosyncratic alt-country that the band has become known for while also adding a level of improvisation and creative curiosity to their work. The most exemplary section of songs that emphasize this, after the bittersweet opener of “STILLWATER THEME”, are the first four variations, “TOP OF THE POP’S VAR.1” through “HOUSEBROKEN VAR. IV”, all of which were recorded in one continuous 15 minute sequence. Although Frog’s discography would typically never be characterized as disciplined, this embrace of freeform musicality and spontaneous inspiration allow for a unique conceptual arc to carry across the entire album. 

Their alt-rock aspirations collide with intimations of rap, Daniel Bateman was apparently listening to a lot of Kodak Black while conceiving the album, in “HOUSEBROKEN VAR. IV”, with lyrics like, “My niece was seven when she felt chinchilla / Fucking up the track like my name J Dilla / Topped Michael Jackson I outsold Thriller / No cap, just facts man, a stone-cold killеr,” being set against steady guitars. This melancholic mumble rap transforms into something more sensual on the jittery album highlight “JUST USE YR HIPS VAR. VI” with the lines, “Southside outside is the place we rest at / House full of down to rides / Yes they do keep a strap / If no dollar sign is implied or attached / Then baby doll of mine you can miss me with that.”

This willingness to transform rudimentary means into an array of dexterous songs is the album’s ultimate strength, finding inventiveness in the uninventive. With their distinctly Americana instrumentation of banjos, pianos, and guitars, all married together with Daniel’s warbling falsetto, 1000 Variations on the Same Song finds a broad spectrum of emotionality within its set sonic template. It’s an album that proves that there are a multitude of sounds and experiences to be discovered in artistic redundancy and in building upon what is already known.  

The post Over and Over Again on Frog’s “1000 Variations on the Same Song” appeared first on KRUI Radio.

At the center of my admiration stood Karly Hartzam, the singer and song-writer who stood about ten feet away from me, and next to her, her then partner, MJ Lenderman. If you weren’t looking for them, they could have hidden in the crowds of shag mullets and thrifted clothes. But everyone was looking for them, at them, in a contained excitement. I stood in a paralyzed shyness, a silent admiration, and tried to drill my eyes into something else, like my hands or the stitching on my boot. Draag finished their last song and I turned back around to the loose cattle of barstools to find the band had disappeared. 

About 30 minutes later in the night, I was cramped between two very large, dying potted plants, right in front of the stage. In front of me, MJ Lenderman was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt, one that had Mike Kelly’s “Dirty Alien” smiling down at me. Lenderman on the other hand was not smiling. Looking back now, it reminds me of the dead faced gaze he holds all through the music video he made for “She’s Leaving You”.

I found myself amused the entire concert by the intensity of his focus. His flat expression, his eyes that seemed to analyze the crowd so intensely that it felt as if he could leave the show and sketch a 150 person portrait in the tour van on the way to the hotel. My amusement turned to a hushed shyness when his eyes met mine, and from the couple times the two of us had made eye contact, he could have drawn a pretty accurate caricature of me staring up at him like a deer in the headlights. He continued to dissect the crowd the entire night, simultaneously performing each song with a practiced comfort, occasionally leaning into his microphone to sing alongside Karly. 

The album begins with the title track, “Manning Fireworks”, a somber, gentle strumming joined by Lenderman’s soft crooning voice. It reminds me of a dejected, drunk cowboy, his hat hung low, riding a tired, bow-spined horse who is a few steps from death. At the same time, it reminds me of a numbness that conjures tears, a flat heart and an imprint in your bed. It’s even more fitting with the context of Lenderman and Hartzman’s recently confirmed breakup. The two forming an incredibly complementary pair, the commitment of their creative collaboration shows at the end of the song, and throughout the entire album. Though the two are now apart, Karly’s voice softly accompanies MJ’s as he sings the final lines of the song, “Once a perfect little baby/Who’s now a Jerk/Standing close to the pyre, manning fireworks.”

As soon as the final words of the first track can sink into your chest, “Joker Lips” follows. The second single released before the album, the track holds a slightly faster pace, but an equally despondent, exhausted tone. Like many songs Lenderman writes, it masters the feeling of a hangover in its slow, dripping sound. It feels like regret, loneliness, and empty beer bottles on a beige motel carpet. 

“Rudolph” plays next with a gentle fury in its storytelling, like the narrator holds an indignation towards the idiot he’s become. The song has been around a while, released as a single over a year ago, but seems to belong best here, nestled in with the feeling of yearning and making mistakes not easily undone.

There is an earnest vulnerability that shines through, with a feeling of shame seems to seep through the lyrics, and even a poignant, catholic guilt in lines like, “How many roads must a man walk down ’til he learns/He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns/I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you/If I could be with you.” It’s the same catholic guilt that can be found in a song like “Catholic Priest”, which has a stunning live recording on Live and Loose, and acts as its own confessional to the urge to abandon the ordinary life and all its awful heartbreak and complications for something larger than you.

Somehow, Lenderman is able to balance his longing for catholic fidelity with childhood cartoon characters like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Lightning McQueen within “Rudolph”. Even with calls to modern day culture, he contrasts it with an intensely intimate vulnerability that reminds me of the staggering moments when even my most unserious friends whisper their fears, half drunk and on the verge of crying. 

Following that is “Wristwatch” another incredible hit on the album, which comes off as a sarcastic defense through its clever lyrics. The attitude stains the song with an undeniable impulse to sing along, in its false empowerment. Stretching over strong instrumentals, Lenderman sings in a voice that can see its defeat, but not yet admit it. The song drips with a tone of false victory, but slips into desperate moments of truth: whatever money can buy, it’ll never beat the love the narrator has seemingly lost. The wealth and unsatisfying success of the narrator reveals the last line of the song, “I’m on my own.” 

The catchy first single release that revealed the album to the world chases after “Wristwatch”. The lyrical repetition of “She’s Leaving You” cements it as an easy hit, and it avoids some of the strong imagery evoked in other songs in substitute for a more sobering declaration. This far into the album, the sense of loss and heartbreak only makes Hartzman’s vocals stand out more as the two harmonize the title of the song. Departing from bargaining, shame, and loss, the words of the song echo like a mantra, or an obsessive acceptance of reality. By the end of the song, Hartzman’s vocals stand alone under the spotlight, as she repeats the phrase two more times like a final staggering acceptance. 

Finally, ”Bark at the Moon” checks out of the motel room and gets back on the road in exactly ten minutes. Looking back at the mess that has exploded and gathered itself back into a walking, talking man, the song feels like a final send off from a lover, from someone you look to for guidance, for someone who now without, life feels a bit lost. At just two minutes and forty three seconds, the song speaks its final words, “I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa/I’ve never rеally left my room/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hеro/Playing ‘Bark at The Moon.”

It seems at this point that the protagonist, the hungover cowboy with no horse to ride, gets up from his bed with a staggering sobriety, a forming clarity, and walks right out the door and down the street to whatever’s next. Playing out our cowboy is a slow instrumental dissent into distorted, screeching guitars that expands out for over seven minutes. In my chest, the weight of the heartbreak seems to dissolve, like a figure in the far distance melting into the horizon. Lenderman’s presence dissolves too, as the album ends, and a new moment in life begins, baptized by the cold sweat of hangovers and heartbreak. 

Manning Fireworks feels a long way from Lenderman’s first, self-titled album released when he was just 20 years old, or his hidden, unreleased 2017 album Him which may be one of the best things I’ve ever heard. Still, it’s in no way departing from his clear, distinguished style across every single song he touches: crooning vocals, pining, heartbreak, a bit of alcohol in the system, constant failure, a strong love for his hometown in North Carolina, dreams of being a good catholic boy, shame for not being one, waiting for the right time, waiting for the right thing to do to reveal itself, the feeling of being everything and the feeling of being nothing at all.

If you like MJ Lenderman in any degree, you might like: Bill Callahan, Smog, Frog, Friendship, Wednesday, Greg Freeman, Silver Jews, David Berman, Songs: Ohia, Jason Molina, Mount Eerie, Sparklehorse, Neil Young, Roger Miller, Bill Fay, Blake Mills, F.J. McMahon, Townes Van Zandt, J.J. Cale, Nick Drake, Tia Blake. That should be enough to get you started.

All drawings by Jillian Abreu

The post Who Needs a Beer When You Have MJ Lenderman?  appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Goodman was organically acoustic and crisp in rhythmic melody. The audience watched and listened intently to her endearingly heartfelt set, ripe with tenderness and genuine sincerity. In her performance, what a person is able to recognize is the power of using one’s own voice to amplify others, by telling stories that can be applied to many who share the same narrative. Within her set, one acknowledges this strength of collective catharsis, as the crowd conjointly participates in releasing bottled-up emotions and feelings.

While the discography of Goodman is reposed and serene, there is a potent intensity that drives the effects of the music into something more passionate. In the flecks of her embers, golden and tinsel, we come across a horizon, abundant with fields of ambition to beckon toward the other side, where things are much more sanguine. In this, we breach the secrets that may lead to the answers of questions asked about this messy, frenzied world. We ask the question, “Why are things this way?” Goodman answers with, “Because of the possibility of changing how things are, for the better of our self expression.”

As Goodman’s compassionate voice echoed through The Englert atrium, glimmers of meaningful introspection came as a queer woman recounted her experiences from a rural area that initially had not been the most welcoming of arms. To the messages that linger within her lyrics, as listeners, we find that we picked up a few things from her songs that we could connect and share a rapport with. At least once in our lives, we have experienced the feeling of being left out or being out of place in an area we lived in. Within the extent of Goodman’s discography the audience is grasped by a sense of belonging and acceptance that might not have been found in the places that had once refused us for who we are. What she creates is a safe space for one to settle within their own body, being done honestly and truthfully.

During the set, Goodman occasionally looked out to the audience, as well as the light that beamed upon her. While performing, she reflects on how far she has gone, finally being one with herself. By the end of the set, the crowd exited the venue with a newly born appreciation for themselves. Goodman’s set was able to whisk everyone into a dimension at which all are free to be who they are with no apparent hesitancy to embrace the candid self.

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