Talkhouse Podcast

This week's Talkhouse Podcast features a bit of a lovefest between two titans of the indie-rock world, Lou Barlow and Ben Bridwell. It’s a cliche, sure, but Lou Barlow probably doesn’t need an introduction around here. A founding member of Dinosaur Jr., he played on that band’s formative 1980s albums before not very amicably parting ways with frontman J Mascis. But Barlow found plenty of subsequent success in the 90s with Sebadoh, whose 1994 masterpiece Bakesale is referenced in this chat. Barlow also, weirdly, had kind of a mainstream hit with his side project Folk Implosion—and there’s some very interesting, unexpected Folk Implosion news in this podcast that I won’t spoil for you. Barlow eventually rejoined Dinosaur Jr. in 2005, and the band has found a fruitful third life, making vital new records. Speaking of vital records, the prolific Barlow has also found time to make new Sebadoh music and solo records. The latest Lou Barlow record came out just last year, and it’s called Reason to Live, and there was

As a music fan of a certain age, I can be a bit partial to the 1990s, and to that era’s emo-rock in particular, so this week’s Talkhouse pairing speaks to me: It’s Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World and Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional. Jimmy Eat World started life in 1993 in Arizona, pretty much straight out of high school. Before they knew what hit them, they had a major label deal with Capitol and a hearty underground following for their catchy, raw songs. A rollercoaster of a career eventually led to a massive radio hit in 2001: “The Middle”—you know it, believe me—which launched them to new heights but didn’t really change the band’s fundamentals. They’ve continued making excellent records since, up to and including 2019’s Surviving. One of that album’s best songs is the focus of part of today’s podcast, too: “555.”  Dashboard Confessional, which is the product of singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, started life a little later in the ‘90s, but also with a bang. His heart-on-sleeve lyrics almost immediat

This week’s episode, while not particularly hilarious, might set a new Talkhouse record for the sheer amount of laughter. You’ll see why when you listen: It’s the members of BadBadNotGood in conversation with Laraaji.  BadBadNotGood is a Canadian band that straddles the line between jazz and instrumental hip-hop, but has gone well beyond those two things in the last decade, incorporating electronic elements, Brazilian sounds, and much more. They’ve collaborated with everyone from Kendrick Lamar, who sought them out after seeing them at Coachella, to Tyler the Creator to Ghostface Killah to Future Islands’ Samuel Herring. The list goes on and on. BadBadNotGood returned last year after a five-year album gap with a collection called Talk Memory. On it, they proved more collaborative than ever, bringing in a bunch of incredible musicians to expand their sound. One of the musicians they called on was the legendary yet under the radar Laraaji, who’s had a remarkable career over the past 40 years or so. After a wind

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got an unlikely pairing of two performers who share a home state, but it would seem at first glance not too much else—though that’s just first glance: Britt Daniel of Spoon and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Now the genesis of this conversation was actually a comment that Britt Daniel made around the time the band announced its new album, Lucifer on the Sofa. About the song “The Hardest Cut,” he simply said that he’d been listening to a lot of ZZ Top in the years leading up to the album’s recording. And while the song is certainly no tribute to ZZ Top, you can hear the snarl and bite coming through in its tones and lyrics as well as on a few other place on this collection. It’s album number 10 for Spoon, who have had an incredibly strong run over the past almost three decades. Lucifer on the Sofa is out this week, and it stands among their best—catchy, considered, and a bit more raw than recent records. Maybe that’s because they recorded it back in Britt’s home state, which o

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got the guitarist-singer of a great young-ish band from Minneapolis in conversation with a hotshot guitarist who’s just starting to make a name for herself: Nathan Stocker of Hippo Campus and Yasmin Williams. Hippo Campus formed just under a decade ago, while Stocker and his bandmates were still in high school. They came out of the gate just as you might expect: eager and excited, releasing a series of EPs followed by a bang-bang pair of excellent albums and inspiring crowds at pretty much every festival you could think of. After touring behind 2018’s Bambi, Hippo Campus took some time to stretch their legs, with each member heading off into side projects of various sounds and sizes. But the band reconvened with fresh motivation and a clearer-eyed outlook last year, and they came up with a powerhouse of an album with the simple title of LP3. It’s slightly more mature in the best ways, but still incredibly catchy and true to their sound. There’s a lot of inward looking e

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, highly acclaimed actor Harry Melling and writer-director Amanda Kramer chat over Zoom from their respective homes in London and Los Angeles. The two recently collaborated as star and filmmaker on Kramer’s latest feature, Please Baby Please, which also stars Andrea Riseborough and Demi Moore and is the opening film at 2022 International Film Festival Rotterdam. In a wide-ranging conversation, Kramer and Melling touched on many subjects, from making Please Baby Please during COVID in Montana, to Harry’s love of dancing, why Amanda almost had a breakdown on set, actors’ misplaced obsession with playing real people, how Amanda expanded Harry’s love and knowledge of English cinema, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

This week’s Talkhouse conversation features a pair of indie musicians—one of whom is known a bit better for another career—who recently collaborated on a song, and who have lots to say about creativity and the current state of the music biz: Hrishikesh Hirway and Melina Duterte, aka. Jay Som. If you recognize Hirway’s name, chances are good it’s from one of his popular podcasts: The best known is probably Song Exploder, on which Hirway and a guest break down a single song, spending time to get at its component parts and to explore the creative process. (Perhaps it goes without saying that it shares some DNA with the Talkhouse Podcast.) Guests over the years have included Bjork, Spoon, St. Vincent—the list goes on and on. Song Exploder became a Netflix series in 2020, with Hirway acting host on the TV version as well. In addition to that, he’s behind some other great podcasts, including the fun pandemic-era food chat show Home Cooking, which he co-hosts with Samin Nusrat. With all of that on his plate, it’s ea

For the first new Talkhouse Podcast episode of the new year, we’ve got an unlikely pairing—which is one of our favorite kinds of pairings. But it wasn’t exactly our idea to connect Michael Vincent Waller and Lex Luger, it was theirs. The contemporary classical composer and the extremely prolific hip-hop producer made a really cool record together that came out in 2021, called Classic$. Waller is not your typical classical composer, he’s a real musical searcher. His compositions range from avant-garde to minimalist to slightly more classic-sounding classical music. But over his career he hasn’t stayed in one place musically for very long. He made a record back in 2019 with electronic producer JLin, which you may have read about in an interview with the pair right on this very website. So maybe it’s no surprise at all that Waller didn’t let genre get in the way of his love for hip-hop when he reached out to Luger for an assist on Classic$—which I should note is credited to MVW, rather than Waller’s full name, i

This week we’re resurfacing a delightful episode that originally ran in April of 2020, and which features two of our favorite songwriters/performers: Matt Berninger of The National and Aimee Mann. Their chat was inspired by the release of an excellent documentary about Other Music, the revered New York record store that closed in 2016. The conversation veers into many other areas as well, including creativity during the pandemic. The challenges of the past couple of years were no match for these two: Berninger released a solo album called Serpentine Prison last year, and Mann just released Queens of the Summer Hotel, a set of new songs inspired by the book Girl, Interrupted. Enjoy, and we’ll be back with a brand new episode next week. —Josh Modell This week on the show, we celebrate the wonderful Other Music documentary with two Grammy-winning artists: singer-songwriter Aimee Mann and the National's Matt Berninger. The two discuss the iconic record store and the creative importance of having physical spaces

We’ve hosted some incredible Talkhouse conversations in 2021, and for our final brand-new episode of the year, we’ve got two people responsible for some of the best records of this year: Julien Baker and Aaron Dessner. Baker released her third album, Little Oblivions, back in February, and it’s a doozy. Expanding her sonic palette massively, Baker delivered her powerful, vulnerable songs with much bigger sounds. That might have felt like a gamble, but it paid off massively—she produced it herself and pushed herself into new spaces. Dessner is of course a founding member of the National, with whom he’s played for the past 20+ years. While his main band slowed down over the past couple of years, Dessner has been operating at hyperspeed. He was one of the main co-writers and producers on Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore albums. He won an Album of the Year Grammy for the former, and was nominated for five more Grammys for the latter. He somehow also found time to release a new album with Bon Iver’s Justin

This week’s Talkhouse episode features a pair of legends from the alt-country or country or No Depression or Americana worlds—you pick. It’s Jay Farrar of Son Volt along with singer-songwriter (and many other things) Steve Earle. Jay Farrar started his career as part of the seminal band Uncle Tupelo alongside another noted songwriter (and frequent Talkhouse guest) Jeff Tweedy. After their split, Tweedy went on to Wilco while Farrar formed the band Son Volt, which has since released an impressive catalog—their tenth and latest album was recorded during pandemic downtime, and you can hear it in the deliberateness of the songs. It’s called Electro Melodier. Steve Earle is one of those guys who makes you feel lazy. He’s not only an incredibly accomplished singer and songwriter with literally dozens of albums to his credit, he’s also a producer, an actor—most notably on The Wire—a novelist, a Sirius XM DJ, and as you’ll hear here, an aspiring TV show creator. His 2020 album Ghosts of West Virginia was spun off

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a lively conversation between some people whose relationship got off to kind of a rocky start, but who’ve since become friends: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and all three members of Mountain Man: Amelia Meath, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Molly Sarle. Now the occasion for this conversation is the recent reissue of the first Mountain Man record, 2010’s Made the Harbor, which features new liner notes written by Tweedy. This gorgeous, strange record was made back when these three women were just getting to know each other as college students in Vermont. Somehow, as if by magic—you’ll hear about that in this chat—their voices perfectly intertwined, and some of the very first songs that any of them wrote ended up becoming these timeless little gems. And then they went their separate ways for quite a long time: Meath ended up as half of Sylvan Esso, most notably. They’ve since regrouped for shows and more excellent music, most recently a live album called Look at Me, Don’t Look

Hey Talkhouse friends, this week we’re re-surfacing an episode that originally ran in May of 2020. Unlike most Talkhouse Podcast episodes, which feature two or more creative folks in conversation, this one is mostly just one guy talking: Joe Talbot of the band IDLES. It was recorded in front of a live audience in Glasgow, just before the pandemic hit, and it’s a fascinating look at an incredible artist—Talbot is a guy who’s unafraid to put it all out there, in both interviews and in his music. Speaking of music, part of the reason we’re re-promoting this episode this week is that Idles just released another incredible album: Crawler is the British band’s fourth, and it’s unsurprisingly being met with pretty ecstatic reviews. Check out this fascinating chat with Joe and a live audience, and have a great Thanksgiving. —Josh Modell ---- This week's show is a bit different from usual Talkhouse Podcast episodes. While it's nominally hosted by the legendary Alan McGee of Creation Records — the man who signed The

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a roundtable of old friends who are also, as it happens, all New York City legends: Cynthia Sley and Pat Place of Bush Tetras with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and director Jim Jarmusch. Cynthia and Pat — vocalist and guitarist, respectively — started the “groove-centric” post-punk band Bush Tetras in 1979 with Laura Kennedy on bass and Dee Pop on drums. They broke up just a few years later, but over the decades they’ve reunited periodically, and are back in action now — though, sadly, without Kennedy, who died in 2011, and Dee Pop, who passed away last month after the recording of this conversation. But as Cynthia told the New York Times, “Bush Tetras is a force that cannot be stopped.” Their pioneering work lives on, archived in a new box set called Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras, which came out on Wharf Cat last week and includes three LPs and a booklet featuring essays by Moore, Jarmusch, members of The Clash and Gang of Four, and many others.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, longtime friends and collaborators Rosario Dawson and Talia Lugacy sit down for a chat, on the occasion of the release of their latest film together, This is Not a War Story, the moving drama about combat trauma which Lugacy wrote, directed and stars in and Dawson executive produced. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two started off by talking about the recent tragic death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust and how it connects with persistent problems in both indie and studio filmmaking, and moved on to touch on everything from the human aspect of cinema, art as therapy and Rosario’s thoughts on directing, to their time as teenagers at the Lee Strasberg Institute with Scarlett Johansson and Hayden Christensen, the changing of the guard that is currently taking place in Hollywood, and the journey they have taken together, both creatively and personally. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in t

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a little more focused conversation than usual, as Matthew Houck—the driving force behind the band Phosphorescent—chats with legendary songwriter Nick Lowe, largely about Lowe’s recently reissued 2001 album The Convincer. Even if Nick Lowe’s name isn’t super familiar to you, some of his songs almost certainly are. He’s had an incredible career that stretches back to the late 1960s, with his biggest mainstream moment coming via his dear friend Elvis Costello, who covered Lowe’s “(What’s so Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” and made it a hit. Lowe also produced Costello’s first five albums, as well as a bunch of other classic British records, in addition to his solo work and his time with the band Rockpile. Today’s conversation is focused largely on Lowe’s 2001 album The Convincer, which was something of an artistic rebirth for him. He wanted to age gracefully and continue to challenge himself, which he did with a trilogy of albums that ended with this one

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve put together a pair of tourmates—past and present—who are separated by decades but united by a deep respect of American music: Patterson Hood and Carl Nichols. Patterson Hood has been in rock bands since he was a pre-teen, and he’s been the co-leader of Drive-By Truckers since 1996. The band has explored the sounds and ideas of Southern rock—Hood is from Alabama—over the years, with sounds and lyrics that stretch the boundaries well beyond the world of Lynyrd Skynyrd. As you’ll hear in this conversation, Hood is a nuanced thinker and writer. You’ll also hear that, of course, on his records, both as a solo artist and a Drive-By Trucker. The band actually released two albums last year, The Unraveling back in January, and then its companion, The New OK, in October. Carl Nichols, aka Buffalo Nichols, toured with Drive-By Truckers in the past, and he’s in the midst of another touring opening for them now. Nichols, as you’ll hear, has an interesting musical history of his

This week’s Talkhouse conversation features a pair of performers who came up in the ‘90s, and who have followed each other’s careers since: Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, and Joan Wasser, aka. Joan as Police Woman. Tim Burgess has had a fascinatingly diverse career: He first came to prominence as singer of the Charlatans, who were part of the early '90s Madchester scene along with the likes of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. But unlike many of their contemporaries, the Charlatans have had a long and prosperous career, releasing more than a dozen albums in addition to Burgess’ solo output. This week sees the release of a massive Charlatans box set called A Head Full Of Ideas that spans their career and includes hits and rare tracks. In addition to the box set, a Charlatans tour that’s just about to start, and a solo album slated for next year, Burgess has kept himself busy through the pandemic with a fun concept he named Tim’s Twitter Listening Party. It’s simple enough: He coaxes other musicians to ess

For this week’s Talkhouse Podcast episode, we rounded up a pair of friends who deeply admire each other’s playing and songwriting—and who ultimately met because of a different episode of the Talkhouse Podcast: Kurt Vile and Julia Shapiro. Kurt Vile first came into music fans’ consciousness as part of The War On Drugs, though it wasn’t long before he decided to dedicate his time to his solo material. He’s released a string of incredible albums since, including 2013’s instant classic Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze and 2018’s Bottle It In. As you’ll hear in this conversation, he’s been hard at work, writing "too many" songs for a new album. In 2017, Vile collaborated with Australian singer Courtney Barnett on an album called Lotta Sea Lice, and it was Barnett who turned him onto Julia Shapiro and her band Chastity Belt. When Barnett and Shapiro chatted on this very podcast back in 2017, that sealed the deal for Vile, who became a huge Chastity Belt fan—and eventual friend of Shapiro’s. Now Chastity Belt, which star

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters separated by a generation, but united by a serious dedication to the craft: Carl Newman and Liam Kazar. Carl Newman—aka. A.C. Newman—is best known as the gravitational center of The New Pornographers, the lark of a supergroup that he started back in 1997 but that quickly found great enough success that it became his main gig. As you perhaps already know, the band also features the prodigious talents of Neko Case and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, though Newman does the vast majority of the songwriting. The band’s latest album is 2019’s In The Morse Code of Brake Lights, but as you’ll hear—maybe for the first time?—in this conversation, they’ve spent part of the pandemic working on a new one. If that’s not enough, the band’s classic debut Mass Romantic has just been reissued on vinyl, and in November and December the New Pornographers will do a tour on which they perform both that album and 2005’s Twin Cinema in their entirety. Newman has also been s