News
Frightened Rabbit: Exclusive Interview
Drew Fortune :: Friday, July 23rd, 2010 4:00 pm
Frightened Rabbit are having a hell of a 2010. Their new record, “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks,” started topping “best of 2010″ lists on first listens, and the band has been riding a wave of praise around the globe.
After playing a couple highly-anticipated shows at SxSW, the Scottish 5-piece was waylaid in a giant cloud of Icelandic volcano ash (the same one that derailed General McChrystal) and had to miss Coachella.
But unlike McChrystal, the cloud didn’t slow Frightened Rabbit down. They’ve continued barnstorming fans with their anthemic live show, and on August 8th they’ll get to make good on that festival gig at Lollapalooza. D+T writer Drew Fortune caught up with the band earlier this year to discuss their epic record, and what would become the Year of the Rabbit. MORE »
Interviews
Interview: Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene
Drew Fortune :: Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 5:59 pm
Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning is an odd Canuck. Last week, I sat down with him at The Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX amidst the surrounding chaos of SXSW. You probably know him best as the bearded and bespectacled multi-instrumentalist, with wild, unruly hair. When I sat down to meet him, I hardly recognized Canning without his iconic facial hair. MORE »
Events
The SXSW Diaries 2010
Drew Fortune :: Monday, March 22nd, 2010 6:41 pm
SXSW 2010. My first rodeo. My inaugural trip to Austin and SXSW was a bit like my first sexual experience: I didn’t know where I was half the time, there were a lot of events I wish I had been granted access, and it was completely overwhelming. I was reduced from jaded cynic to wide-eyed naïf the moment I set foot on downtown Austin’s Sixth Street, the hub and throughway of SXSW. It’s a bit like Mardi Gras for indie rock, with roving gangs of hipsters, hippies, tweakers, journalists and nonplussed locals pouring in and out of bars. Loud garage rock provides a constant buzzing, background score. MORE »
Film
The House of the Devil: Ti West Interview
Drew Fortune :: Thursday, February 25th, 2010 5:00 pm
Writer/director Ti West’s The House of the Devil (in stores now on DVD and Blu-Ray) is a loving throwback to those scrappy horror movies churned out in the 1980s by companies like Vestron and Cannon Video. Take a mental trip back to the horror section of your favorite Mom n’ Pop video store growing up, and you can imagine seeing a sun-bleached VHS copy of The House of the Devil perched on a dusty shelf, right at home next to a copy of Slumber Party Massacre 2 or 976-Evil. The film nails the details of that era with an uncanny eye for little details (the wood paneling, the old Pepsi logo on a paper cup in a greasy pizza joint). Although the film may give you pangs of nostalgia, House of the Devil is not an exercise in camp and West is not interested in winking at the audience. It’s a slow burn, steeped in dread, paranoia and old fashioned, haunted house chills. MORE »
Online Exclusives
Interview: Harold Ramis
Drew Fortune :: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 11:00 am
Yep, that’s Egon. If you don’t know already, Harold Ramis is one of the titans of comedy. He’s the man behind Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Vacation, and and the list goes on.
D+T contributing writer Drew Fortune was one of the lucky attendees at last week’s 50th Anniversary gala celebration of Second City, the Chicago institution that brought us everyone from Ramis and Bill Murray to Steve Carell and Eugene Levy. He was tenacious enough to badger Ramis into an exclusive interview for D+T.
Follow the jump for Fortune’s reportage from Second City and his interview with Harold Ramis.
MORE »
Issue 22, Magazine
Sufjan Stevens on His Orchestral Project, The BQE
Drew Fortune :: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 4:50 pm
For a man who has never shied away from grand ambition, Sufjan Stevens’s latest project, The BQE, a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, appears to have gotten the better of him—a project with a scope and feeling too large to fully capture. A sprawling undertaking, incorporating an orchestra of over thirty people, companion comic book, 16mm cinematography and choreographed Hula –Hoopers, the two-year endeavor is finally being released as a dual CD/DVD package on Asthmatic Kitty. Upon release, Stevens, the man who famously announced plans to release an album for each of the fifty states, is finally ready to take a step away from the epic and learn to appreciate the modest. Call it Stevens’s Apocalypse Now or Fitzcarraldo, the project may have been a vision impossible to realize, but the Detroit native is not beaten and, like his hometown, is slowly learning to rebuild from the ground up.
Speaking with Stevens from his home in Brooklyn, the boy who grew up playing too many instruments is enjoying some much-needed downtime. MORE »
Issue 21, Magazine
Japandroids “Just The Two Of Us”
Drew Fortune :: Thursday, September 10th, 2009 5:07 pm
The Japandroids are somewhere outside of Ontario, on a dark, lonely stretch of road, and the bottle rockets are starting to fly. I’m on the phone with guitarist/vocalist Brian King, and I can hear the bottle rockets zinging out the car window and exploding in the night sky. The two-piece garage rock revisionists are on the road following a high-profile gig at the Ottawa Blues Fest and spirits are high. And why shouldn’t they be? Brian King survived a near death experience at the beginning of the year, a perforated ulcer which demanded a six week re-cooperation, resulting in the band postponing their first major tour. MORE »
