Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit are just about ready to unveil their upcoming record Reunions. The album’s release is just around the corner, but the group is keeping fans at bay by sharing a handful of singles. Following the most recent track “Only Children,” the group has shared the nostalgic track “Dreamsicle.”

Opening with intricate guitar picking, “Dreamsicle” arrives as both a triumphant and nostalgic effort. With his textured vocals, Isbell narrates the story of a boy coming-of-age and having a difficult time realizing he has to leave the town he grew up in. “Broken glass and broken vows / I’ll be 18 four years from now / With different friends in a different town / I’ll finally be free,” he sings. The story reflects Isbell’s journey, who left home at just 14 to join his first touring band.

Just ahead of the “Dreamsicle” release, Isbell announced that they are offering a way for fans to get ahold of Reunions early while also supporting local businesses. The band is releasing physical copies of the album to independent record stores across the country a week ahead of its scheduled release. This way, fans will be able to get their hands on the vinyl while keeping their favorite local record stores in business.

Listen to “Dreamsicle” above.

Reunions is out 5/15 via Southeastern Records. Pre-order it here

The Kansas City Chiefs, by nature of winning the Super Bowl, had the final pick in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. The Chiefs don’t have a ton of glaring holes, but one spot where they could have used a little help was running back. As such, they opted to draft former LSU ace Clyde Edwards-Helaire.

While Edwards-Helaire was not as high on the big boards of many prognosticators as guys like J.K. Dobbins, D’Andre Swift, and Jonathan Taylor, his ability as a pass catcher and as someone who can make defenders miss should be stunning in Kansas City’s relentless offense. It is a perfect mix of team and player, and as an added bonus, the move is popular in the eyes of the Chiefs’ franchise player.

According to Kansas City coach Andy Reid, the team phoned starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes and asked who he wanted with the pick. Mahomes responded with Edwards-Helaire, and soon after, the pick was made.

With how much firepower the Chiefs’ offense already possesses, giving them a player like Edwards-Helaire is almost unfair. Comparisons are oftentimes made between himself and guys like Brian Westbrook or Darren Sproles, while his performance in LSU’s win over Alabama last season showed that he’s capable of doing a little bit of everything. It makes a whole lot of sense that Mahomes would want him a player like him, and now, Edwards-Helaire is headed to the champs.

View Entire Post ›

A lot of artists are taking to platforms like Instagram Live and YouTube to put on livestream concerts for their fans, but other artists are approaching livestreaming in different ways. For example, Lizzo and SZA recently decided to team up to host a meditation session.

Lizzo guested on SZA’s live broadcast, and once the two got settled, SZA tried her hand at playing a Tibetan singing bowl, and of course, Lizzo brought out her trusty woodwind to complete the fully zen atmosphere. When the pair wasn’t setting the mood, they also chatted about how their lives have been during the pandemic.

This wasn’t Lizzo’s first rodeo with meditations: She hosted one by herself in March, for which she also had her instrument on hand, as well as crystals and incense.

Musicians are all about relaxation these days. Earlier this week, Diddy and Nick Jonas teamed up with Audible to release some stress-reducing program: Diddy offers a guided meditation, while the Jonas Brother helps you drift off to sleep by reading a bedtime story.

Let Lizzo and SZA guide you through a meditation in the video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The improv comedy world simultaneously celebrated and mourned this week, as Middleditch And Schwartz brought the first-ever longform improv specials to Netflix on the same day that the New York iteration of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater announced they would be shuttering their flagship Hell’s Kitchen performance space as well as their training center. The announcement came after a string of well-documented financial struggles that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the move uptown from Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen in December of 2017, UCB took a stab at coming out of the underground and trying to integrate its nightly shenanigans into the real New York City Theater-with-a-capital-T community.

“Hell’s Kitchen was an amazing opportunity to perform in a legit theatre on 42nd Street,” remembers Connor Ratliff, a longtime UCB alum who criss-crosses through The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as a guest star. “Whenever I was doing a show there and it was going really well, I would sometimes think, ‘wow, this is like a $12 show and I bet right now there are people down the street who paid hundreds of dollars to see something that isn’t quite as good as this.’”

But for an organization founded on the principles of DIY ethics and punk rock comedy, the attempts to “legitimize” the space exposed vulnerabilities in the governing structures, most notably the fact that the theater’s performers were not paid and expected to perform — and earn revenue for the theater — for not much more than “the love of the craft.” The move to Hell’s Kitchen also signaled the organization officially biting off more than they could chew, subsequently launching UCB into a state of disarray and financial struggles that resulted in mass layoffs and the ultimate shuttering of the New York venture as a whole.

Much has been said about UCB as a breeding ground for comedy legends, and as one of the last semblances of the counter culture in New York City. With its first theater in the city located underneath a supermarket in a (slightly) remodeled strip club, going to UCB Chelsea really felt like you were part of something special and truly underground, in a city where it feels increasingly difficult to find such a thing. But as the organization continued to expand throughout the city, from Chelsea to the East Village, and ultimately to its own training center in a Midtown Manhattan office building and flagship theater in Hell’s Kitchen, UCB became more than just a hot spot for silly goofs and future celebrities.

It created a community that made New York City a bit smaller, where most everyone that walked through the doors of the theater or training center was in search of something similar. At the training center, you could see people walking through the halls that you recognized from shows like Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, or even Stranger Things, and know that the playing field was, in a way, leveled. After all, you were both in the same place, at the same time, for a couple of hours of adult playtime.

“I learned more in my Improv 101 at UCB than I had learned in 5 years of acting training,” notes Ratliff, whose recent projects include the incredible Dead Eyes podcast, which follows Ratliff’s quest to figure out why Tom Hanks fired him from a guest role in 2001’s Band Of Brothers. “There is an image of an improv class being a bunch of people jumping around like idiots, but I learned how to be a more thoughtful performer and a more thoughtful person, generally. One of the best classes I ever had at UCB happened because an improv set went so horrifically off the rails that the teacher talked to us for 45 minutes about why it is important to think about why you’re even on stage as a performer, that you can’t just put pure nihilism onstage just because it’s shocking.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, UCB popularized a form of cognitive behavioral therapy delivered under the guise of comedy training. Students are forced out of their comfort zones and to conquer their social insecurities — if you can make a fool of yourself and make a room of strangers laugh, why not go ahead and voice your opinion in a work meeting, or stop thinking about the stain on your shirt at a party? The comedy in an improv scene doesn’t come from making jokes, but rather from just being a fucking weirdo. Rather than suppress your quirks in an attempt to fit in, UCB encouraged you to embrace your weird and exploit it, and that’s something that can never be forsaken, especially in light of the organizational struggles.

“No matter how you feel about UCB, you can agree that there was a strong community there,” notes Ian Abramson, creator, host, and full multi-character cast of Saturday Night Quarantine, which streams weekly on Twitch. Now, with Saturday Night Live starting to make a remote comeback, Abramson has elected to move his show to Sunday night, as to not compete. “I think that the most positive thing about comedy institutions is the community that they can help organize. [But] an institution owes it to its community to support the people in that community, in whatever way it can. I think the only way that you could ignore the community that you fostered in its time of need is with the philosophy of ‘don’t think.’”

Along with fundraising efforts like Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Tip Your Waitstaff’ livestream series, Saturday Night Quarantine is one of many ways that the community is taking matters into their own hands with these institutions closed or indefinitely on pause. “Creativity will take the shape of whatever it’s inside of,” Abramson explains.

In the case of Saturday Night Quarantine, the sketch show started out as a bit on Twitter, before evolving into a weekly sketch show written and performed, in full, by one person. As it turns out, this type of insanity is what people are flocking to in an attempt to shut out the true insanity awaiting them outside their home. Each week, a few hundred people tune in to watch Abramson perform for an hour. “We’re having a really great time trying to make this happen and I would love to keep doing it in some form or another, until it doesn’t make sense to.”

Despite the closures of all official UCB locations, the organization’s founders Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh (known as the UCB4) have declared in a lengthy letter to their staff that “UCB is not leaving New York City. The school and the theater will continue on in a pared-down form, which will be very similar to how we operated when we first started in NYC over 20 years ago.” As such, UCB-branded shows will still continue at venues such as SubCulture in Greenwich Village, while classes will be taught “at various locations across the city that we will rent on a per-class basis,” similar to upstart comedy ventures like the Brooklyn Comedy Collective.

Even so, the shuttering of UCB’s New York City theater and training center are a massive blow to the community, one that leaves a gaping hole begging to be filled. But instead of wallowing, let’s raise a glass to Two Trenchcoats In A Kid.

For five seasons of Better Call Saul, we have all been so focused on the moment that Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman that we didn’t seem to notice that Kim Wexler may have been transforming into Kim Goodman until the moment that she turned around and gave us the finger guns. We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. This is what the Breaking Bad universe is about: What makes a good person turn bad? We’ve seen that question explored with Walter White, with Jesse Pinkman, with Skyler White, with Mike Ehrmantraut and with Jimmy McGill. It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to see Kim Wexler’s moral compass fall out of whack, as well.

There are a number of theories we have had to explain Kim Wexler’s absence in Breaking Bad over the years. Maybe she dies. Maybe she leaves Jimmy (for Howard Hamlin, even). Maybe Jimmy dumps Kim for her own good. Maybe Kim’s career becomes collateral damage to one of Jimmy’s schemes. Maybe she and Jimmy remain together, but she isn’t privy to Saul Goodman’s shenanigans on Breaking Bad.

What few people could have predicted, however, is that Better Call Saul may also be a breaking-bad journey for Kim Wexler, too. She is just as capable of acting amorally in pursuit of just ends. Some may say that this journey is different for Kim Wexler because she’s doing it for the right reasons — she wants to open up a pro bono practice and help the downtrodden. Yes, but Walter White’s motivations were also initially pure, to make enough money to support his family after his death. So were Mike Ehrmantraut’s, to support his son’s family. And so were Jimmy’s motivations: all he ever wanted was to impress his brother, Chuck. And then to impress his girlfriend-turned-wife, Kim Wexler. In the end, in fact, it is Jimmy who gets pulled into this life, partially against his will by Nacho, who gives him no choice but to defend Lalo, who gives Jimmy no choice but to fetch the $7 million bond money. It was Jimmy’s choice to associate with unscrupulous people, but he did not necessarily choose to be a lawyer for the cartel.

Kim Wexler, on the other hand, appears to be taking this path voluntarily and with eyes wide open. She is so convinced of her own righteousness that she is willing to destroy Howard Hamlin’s life and career in pursuit of it. There is hubris in that; the same kind of hubris that destroyed Walter White. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn next season, in fact, that Kim pushed Saul deeper into his line of work so that he could support her public interest career. She may have convinced both herself and Jimmy that his work with Gus and Mike and Walter White was all in pursuit of “the greater good.”

“Tthe greater good,” however, is a dangerously slippery slope. What if Kim Wexler destroys Hamlin’s life in pursuit of her own moral agenda? What if Hamlin dies? What if the guilt of that combined with Jimmy’s obvious PTSD breaks Jimmy mentally? What is Saul Goodman is a manifestation of Jimmy’s deep-seated guilt and other mental problems? What if Saul Goodman ends up being the Jesse Pinkman to Kim Wexler’s Heisenberg? What if …

No one knows exactly what will happen in the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, not even the writers, who have just sat down to start work on the final season. I think, however, that we can make one assumption: that Kim Wexler probably does not die. That would not square with Vince Gilligan’s own prediction that Saul will have a better ending than Breaking Bad. Rhea Seehorn — who plays Kim Wexler — also believes that killing her off to get rid of her would be “way too simple.”

Viewers want to see Kim and Gene Taković reunite after the events of Breaking Bad. Viewers want to know what Kim Wexler was doing while Saul Goodman was advising Walter White to put a hit out on Jesse Pinkman. We don’t know what Kim Wexler’s role will be during that time frame, but we have for too long underestimated Kim Wexler’s capacity for bending the rules to get what she wants. She did everything right in her career, and she still ended up in a miserable job working with the likes of Kevin Wachtell and Howard Hamlin and Richard Schweikart to advance the interests of… banks. Now Kim Wexler wants to pursue more noble ends, but she understands that she may have to commit a light felony or three in that pursuit. We should not underestimate her ability to do so, because all we have done for five seasons is underestimate Kim Wexler. We underestimated her attachment to Jimmy. We underestimated her disdain for people like Howard Hamlin. And we have underestimated her eagerness to get her hands dirty for the right cause.

We know the danger that Saul Goodman poses. He wears his morally dubious personality on his sleeve. What’s so remarkable about Kim Wexler is that she might just be another form of Saul Goodman, disguised by a ponytail and a conservative suits, who wraps herself in moral pursuits. It’ll be very interesting to see how that plays out in the final season.

When the coronavirus pandemic first became serious, the city of Seattle was hit hard. In order to raise money and awareness for important organizations across the city, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard began hosting nightly livestream sessions (which have since become weekly affairs) as part of his Live From Home series. In Thursday’s live set, Gibbard debuted a brand-new song and performed a cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.”

During the lengthy set, Gibbard debuted the song “Proxima B.” Ahead of performing it on piano, the singer explained that it is written in response to the discovery of a new planet in our solar system:

“This one I wrote a while ago. I’m planning on putting it out as a single. I was going to have it out as a single for this solo tour I was doing, a more ramped-up guitar version. But, obviously, the show’s not happening so we’re going to push that to the fall. This is a song I wrote about a planet that was discovered deep, deep in the cosmos, way out there, called Proxima B. The three things you need to know about Proxima B to understand the song is: One, there was a planet called Proxima B that they think has water on it. It’s somewhat Earth-like. Secondly, it orbits the star called Centauri. And three, there’s been a lot of talk of ‘Ooh, maybe we can get there at some point.’ So I wrote this song in response to that.”

After debuting the new track, Gibbard moved into a cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” Gibbard said that Nirvana is one of his “favorite bands” and he’s lately been feeling nostalgic for an earlier era.

Earlier in the set, Gibbard explained the meaning behind his Narrow Stairs track “Ice Is Getting Thinner.” The singer said he had originally been tapped to write and “uplifting” song about polar bears for a movie, but it fell short of the mark:

“This is going back to about 2006, 2007. And I got asked to write a song about a movie. It was a documentary about polar bears. They needed a theme song for the movie, or an end credit or something. I think it was for the end credits. They thought, ‘Who better to write an uplifting song about polar bears then the guy who writes all those sad bastard songs?’ I turned in what became this song. A lot of lyrics are fairly similar. And I think you’ll agree it’s not a shocker that they didn’t choose it. This has been a trend in my career. People have asked me to do things not really knowing that I’m probably not the best person for certain things. If you want a sad-ass song about polar bears, I’m your guy. But not if you want something uplifting.”

Watch Gibbard’s Live From Home set above. See him debut a new song at the 33:57 minute mark, and hear him cover Nirvana’s “All Apologies” at 39:03.

Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Without realizing it, Kendrick Perkins backed up everything he’s just told me about winning, buying into a role, and basketball greatness in one simple story. Dime caught up with Perkins over the phone on the day ESPN, where he’s transitioned into a utility man role since retiring from the NBA, re-aired the 2008 Finals between his Boston Celtics and rival Los Angeles Lakers. The network is also between installments of “The Last Dance,” the documentary series capturing every sports fan’s attention and generating another round of conversation around the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls.

I asked Perkins about his memories of winning the championship in 2008, and his brain jumps to one moment. It’s the start of the second half of Game 4 and the Celtics returned to the floor down 18. Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol had combined for 25 points in the first half. Boston coach Doc Rivers slotted Kevin Garnett in at center to create a mismatch against the Lakers’ big front line, which sparked a torrid Celtics comeback. They’d go on to win the game, 97-91.

Noticeably absent from that strategy? Starting center Kendrick Perkins, who played just two minutes in the second half. He was ready for that possibility, though, because it helped the team experience something “beautiful:” winning a ring.

“Between Doc [Rivers] and Danny [Ainge], I don’t know where I would be without those guys,” Perkins said. “They were always honest with me, they always told me the truth. Not what I wanted to hear, but what I needed to hear. When you have a coach like that and a GM like that, the sky’s the limit.”

In “The Last Dance,” we see what happens when a team’s relationship with an executive like Jerry Krause frays. Sometimes, the greatness of individual players like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen can help overcome fractured connections, but most of the time, you need buy-in and trust from all parties to be great.

Though Perkins didn’t enter the league until 2004, after Jordan’s third retirement, he got to play with guys like Garnett and Sam Cassell, competed against Jordan and the other great teams of that era.

“When you’re able to be around those types of vets, you get a different feel and a different vibe of how to approach the game,” Perkins said. “You get this mean streak and hard work about yourself, that this is how the league is supposed to be.”

Later in his career, Perkins became one of those veterans, continuing the circuit of mentorship. He was a starter for three-plus years in Oklahoma City, starting every game en route to the Thunder making the Finals in 2012. Later on, he joined as an end-of-bench piece in Cleveland during LeBron James’ second stint with the team. It wasn’t always as smooth a build-up as it was for those Celtics, which won a championship in their first year together.

“It did happen immediately with the Celtics because KG took a back seat and Doc Rivers nipped it in the bud from the jump,” Perkins said. “KG first got to the Celtics and he said this is Paul Pierce’s. It’s his team. I’m going to set screens for Ray Allen, I’m going to do my job and anchor this defense, and this is how we’re going to roll with it if we’re going to be successful doing it.”

This is the process we see play out during “The Last Dance.” NBA teams use the fall to come together, something that is prominently displayed in the second episode of the series: Pippen recovers from surgery, Dennis Rodman pulls it together for long enough to win some games, the coach strikes the right tone, and on and on.

The other thing great teams need are players, like Perkins, who can fill in gaps and be content with not being a superstar. After a while, he admits this to me. Apart from a Robin who’s “OK with being Robin,” role players are the next biggest ingredient on a championship roster. In “The Last Dance,” one such player is Steve Kerr, now the coach of the Warriors.

For Perkins’ Celtics and Thunder teams, he was one of those vital role players, despite coming into the league out of high school as a first-round pick. Those players oftentimes have sky-high expectations, but for Perkins, finding himself in a situation where the weight of the world wasn’t placed on his shoulders was crucial.

“If you come across a great coach like I did with Doc Rivers that instilled in me that it was OK to be who I was as a player and be a star in my role, you can have a long NBA career,” Perkins said.

By Perkins’ estimation, Robert Horry, another “star in his role,” is the best role player of all time, with seven rings to show for it. That’s a tough bar to clear, but the consistency, longevity and sacrifice clearly show a guy who knew what success as a pro would look like for him specifically.

“You need that veteran in your ear, you need the right people in your corner outside of basketball, and you need people that are going to tell you the truth,” Perkins said. “The average NBA career is three to four years, but you could be a Jared Dudley or you could be a Kendrick Perkins and go above that if you can be a star in your role. But you have to be willing to accept it.”

As Perkins adjusts to days doing “Hoop Streams” for ESPN in quarantine, the network has given him an opportunity to revisit and re-evaluate greatness. Players like Perkins can sometimes be forgotten parts of the championship equation, but the psychological work of becoming a “star in your role,” as Perkins describes himself, is at least comparable to the psychological work of a superstar like Jordan that is dissected in “The Last Dance.”

It is less appreciated, and veers in the direction of surrender rather than consumption, but Jordan needed Kerr just like the Celtics or Kevin Durant needed Perkins. They make the whole thing work, even if sometimes their biggest achievements don’t get the attention of the headline-grabbing moments. The greatest achievement of your career might come while you’re on the bench, but if a player can embrace that, they can achieve incredible things.

Earl Sweatshirt is back again after the release of his Feet Of Clay EP, dropping off the woozy single “Whole World” featuring fellow LA underground rapper Maxo. “Whole World” has a hazy, guitar-strumming beat courtesy of The Alchemist, who recently completed a whole EP with gritty New York rapper Conway The Machine. For around three minutes and thirty seconds, Earl and Maxo trade introspective, intricate bars about self-reflection and the skeletons in their respective closets.

Late in 2019, Earl found another outlet for his crowded, cloudy thoughts via a sit-down discussion with distinguished law professor Cheryl I. Harris — who just so happens to also be his mom — at Los Angeles’ Museum Of Contemporary Art. Over the course of the conversation, they touched on Earl’s sudden rise to fame in the last decade with Tyler The Creator and the Odd Future crew, as well as the unintended results of garnering an impassioned fanbase that didn’t yet understand the lines between themselves and the public figures they admired.

Earl previously teamed up with The Alchemist on the 2018 track “E. Coli” from The Alchemist’s Bread EP. Meanwhile, Maxo is a little over a year removed from his Lil Big Man album.

Listen to “Whole World” above.

Earl Sweatshirt is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

DC Comics fans have not been shy about their quest for a Harley Quinn romance (on the fantastic DC Universe show that will soon be available on SyFy) between the title character and her best friend, Poison Ivy. Kaley Cuoco, who voices the profane antihero, has been onboard that loose campaign as well, and given that Ivy’s the only one who can dole out tough love to Harley (with Harley not throwing it back into Ivy’s face), it only seemed like a matter of time before an animated lip-lock (and more) would happen. On Thursday night, Conan O’Brien welcomed Cuoco for a quarantine-style interview, and he revealed that he’s also looking forward to seeing magic happen. Her response was both wonderful and awful but undeniably awesome.

To briefly recap, Conan brought up the subject and casually tossed out, “I just wanna say, I’m all for that.” In response, Cuoco declared, “Let me put it this way: Harley’s gonna need some calamine lotion.” Conan chuckled, ever-so-sheepishly, to which Cuoco completely owned her remark. “That was a funny joke!” she insisted. “I just thought of that off the top of my head… the Poison Ivy, get it?” The host’s response? “Oh yeah.”

A whole lot of fans to Conan: “Same.”

Well, it certainly sounds like a Harley-Ivy romantic romance truly sits on the horizon, and as sensational as that might seem, it’s certainly the healthiest relationship that Harley has ever known. Mr. J will hopefully no longer even be a memory at some point, at least for Harley, and her current animated show’s still currently barrelling through Season 2 on the DC Universe streaming service.