Doom jazz trio Stinking Lizaveta hit the Bottleneck this Thursday, July 27

Stinking Lizavetta. // photo by John Singletary

Earlier this summer, Philadelphia instrumental doom-jazz trio Stinking Lizaveta released their ninth album, Anthems and Phantoms, via SRA Records. The trio show no signs of slowing down or stopping in their quest to create music both hypnotic and powerful. They’re coming to town this Thursday, July 27, opening for Iowa doom duo Telekinetic Yeti at the Bottleneck, so we took the opportunity to reach out to Stinking Lizaveta’s guitarist, Yanni Papadopoulos, about the new album. As is appropriate for a member of an instrumental act, his answers were quite concise.

The Pitch: Nine albums in, what keeps you making music?

Yanni Papadopoulos: I’m always learning more about the guitar. I hear the music people are making and I hear what they are missing. As long as the Riffs keep coming, we will keep rocking.

Over the years, your touring schedule has gotten less hectic than it once was. Does that make tours such as this one more special?

It might seem like we tour less, but we had that COVID thing in between, and it takes a year to get vinyl pressed. It is special for us to get to the West Coast, we usually do half nationals. The West Coast was great to experience again.

How do these songs change in live performance?

We constantly discuss ways to improve our songs. We have actually cut a couple parts out here and there. Just glad to play them for people.

It’s been six years since your last album, and Anthems and Phantoms sees you on Philly label SRA Records. Why the switch?

We did two records with Translation Loss, The Seventh Direction and Journey to the Underworld. Both of them are great records. Seventh Direction was done with Sanford Parker in Chicago, and Journey was done by Steve Berrigan in New Orleans. We knew what to expect from TL and just needed a change. The energy of SRA has been phenomenal.

Where do your songs come from–does each member bring something in, or are they born out of jamming in person?

We all come up with ideas individually, then jam them out together to find out if they work for us.

Stinking Lizaveta plays the Bottleneck on Thursday, July 27, along with Telekinetic Yeti, Rifflord, and Digester. Details on that show here.