Talkhouse Podcast

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got two of what I’m going to call alt-rock lifers, guys with vast catalogs and the stories to match, who’ve ridden the highs and lows over the years and continue to make fantastic music for dedicated fanbases: John Flansburgh and Matthew Caws. Flansburgh is half the core of They Might Be Giants, one of the two Johns—along with Linnell—who started making quirky pop records about 40 years ago. They’ve released nearly two dozen albums, wriggling their way into the mainstream on occasion, from “Birdhouse in Your Soul” to the Malcolm in the Middle theme to popular albums aimed at kids. It’s been a remarkable ride that shows no signs of stopping; They MIght Be Giants is still on tour, still making new music, and still seeming to have as much fun as they ever did. Their latest record is called Book—it’s available in many formats including, you guessed it, a giant book—and there are some sparklers on it, including one in particular that the guys talk about in today’s episode.

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a timely conversation recorded just hours after the presidential election was called, and yes, it was on their minds. It’s frequent Talkhouse alum Julien Baker and her old friend Nick Carpenter, aka. Medium Build. Baker is a powerhouse singer and songwriter who’s best known these days as one third of the supergroup Boygenius—you’ll hear her refer in this chat to Lucy and Phoebe, her bandmates Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. But we’ve been fans here since way before that; her amazing debut Sprained Ankle will be 10 years old next year, and she’s built herself an incredible catalog—and fanbase—since. Baker’s last solo album was 2021’s Little Oblivions, and I imagine there’s some new music coming in the not-terribly-distant future. She has loaned her powerful voice to other artists since, though, including her old friend Nick Carpenter’s project Medium Build—his new EP Marietta, out tomorrow, features a duet with Baker called “Yoke,” check out that song right here. Ca

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a special episode recorded live just last weekend in New York featuring two artists that appear on an amazingly ambitious new conceptual compilation album called TRANSA, Asher White and MIZU. The album comes from our friends at the Red Hot organization, was conceptualized largely by Dust Reid and Massima Bell, and features more than 100 artists honoring trans and non-binary artists. There are huge names like Sade, Sam Smith, Andre 3000, indie heroes like Julien Baker and Laura Jane Grace, and incredible up-and-comers like today’s two guests, who worked on separate tracks. The whole thing comes out November 22, and you can pre-order it now. I won’t say much more because former Talkhouse producer Mark Yoshizumi was on hand to introduce Asher and MIZU at the event. Enjoy. 0:00 – Intro 1:39 – Producer Mark Yoshizumi Intro 5:01 – Start of the chat 12:20 – MIZU and Asher's differing musical backgrounds 20:00 – Ad break 22:20 – "The music that I made is aesthetically diffe

A preview of the new season of Santigold's podcast, Noble Champions. Subscribe now. Episode 1 with John Jennings and Terence Nance dives into Afrofuturism and the power of human imagination in shaping our future. In a time of global uncertainty, art that envisions a better world is essential. Santi sits down with acclaimed graphic novelist, comic book author, illustrator, and professor John Jennings, alongside artist, filmmaker, and musician Terence Nance (creator of HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness) for a rich discussion. Together, they explore the tools of imagination, the role of rituals, the concept of deindustrializing oneself, nonlinear time, and much more.

Note: This episode originally aired on June 20, 2019. On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, two good friends, actor-writer-director Lake Bell and singer Santigold, sit down for a long-awaited chat together. The pair are both very busy performers – Bell is hard at work on the second season of her new show Bless This Mess and can be heard in the new animated feature The Secret Life of Pets 2, and Santi recently dropped I Don't Want: The Gold Fire Sessions and just came back from a U.S. tour – but are also highly involved mothers, and a large focus of their talk is on the challenges of balancing family life with creative work. They discuss how you can’t in fact do it all or have it all, how the making art changes after you have kids, how filmmaking and parenting are (kind of) the same thing, plus Santi’s social media struggles, where the roots of Lake’s comedy lie, what Lake is doing to address the current political situation, Santi’s move into directing, and much, much more. For more filmmakers music

On this week's Talkhouse episode we’ve got a pair of talented musicians in a chummy chat about making songs and making a life while making songs. It’s Melina Duterte, aka. Jay Som, and Pascal Stevenson, aka. Fashion Club. Stevenson just released the second Fashion Club album, A Love You Cannot Shake, but it’s different enough than the first that it almost feels like a debut. That surely has something to do with the fact that it’s the first Fashion Club music since Stevenson’s gender transition; there’s a genre freedom that wasn’t as evident on the first one, which felt a bit closer to Stevenson’s indie-leaning band Moaning. A Love You Cannot Shake clearly honors big pop music but it frequently swerves before giving into any obvious trappings. She found some fantastic guests to add to the sideways fun, too, including Talkhouse Podcast alumni Perfume Genius and Julie Byrne as well as the other half of today’s conversation, Jay Som. Now Jay Som made a splash with her first couple of bedroom-pop albums in 2015

I’m gonna call this week’s Talkhouse Podcast a very special episode, since it’s focused on a specific topic and also offers a call to action and hopefully some inspiration for you, the listener. It certainly did that for me, the host guy. Our guests today are frequent Talkhousers Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath, better known as Sylvan Esso, along with fellow North Carolina musician Libby Rodenbough, who’s played with a bunch of bands, most notably Mipso. These three share a home state, North Carolina, which as you know was hit hard by Hurricane Helene just a couple of weeks ago. The devastation that hit the western part of the state didn’t seem to get a ton of national media attention, perhaps because Helene was followed so quickly by Hurricane Milton. But as you’ll hear at the beginning of this conversation, parts of North Carolina have been affected in ways that will take years to bounce back from. Just days after the storm, Rodenbough—along with David Walker and Grayson Haver Currin and lots of others—conc

We’ve had legends on the Talkhouse Podcast before, but perhaps none quite as legendary as Pete Townshend, who’s in conversation on today’s episode with a younger band he recently worked with, The Wild Things. It seems a bit silly to offer a short bio of Townshend—after all, you have chosen to listen to a podcast about music, so you’re probably familiar—but here goes: Pete Townshend is the guitarist and primary songwriter of The Who, a band that cracked open the world of rock and roll in the early 1960s and inarguably changed the direction of popular music forever. He’s often credited as the first guitarist to treat feedback as an essential part of his sound, influencing the likes of Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, among many others. And that was all 50 years ago: Townshend has built on the legacy of The Who since, continuing to make music with the only other surviving member, Roger Daltrey, as well as writing books, musicals, and opera. He also keeps his eyes and ears out for new music, even at age 79, which is

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a great chat between two guys who’d never met before: Steve Marion, aka Delicate Steve, and the one and only Reggie Watts. Delicate Steve is one of those monikers that describes both a person and a band, though Steve Marion has been the only constant member over the past 15 years or so. His music is largely instrumental, but you don’t miss the singing since his intricate, emotional guitar lines tend to do the work that a vocalist might otherwise do. His latest album is cheekily titled Delicate Steve Sings, and it’s a nod to records like Willie Nelson’s Stardust, mixing original compositions with covers and putting Delicate Steve’s inimitable guitar tone atop them all. Check out “I’ll Be There” from Delicate Steve Sings. The career of today’s other guest, Reggie Watts, can be tough to describe. He’s part musician, part comedian, I guess, but that doesn’t begin to describe what it’s like to see his performances, which can include jokes, beatboxing, a variety of sampl

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of guys who are big parts of hardcore’s current wave: Julian Cashwan Pratt of Show Me The Body and Graham Sayle of High Vis. Show Me The Body was conceived when Pratt was still in high school in New York City, enamored of the town’s history of aggressive punk—and that music’s propensity for political lyrics. But Show Me The Body, like other current hardcore bands making waves in the past few years, doesn’t stick with the genre’s typical signifiers. For one, Pratt’s primary instrument is banjo, and it’s attached to sounds that draw not only from hardcore’s past, but also electronic blasts of noise and even some hip-hop. Show Me The Body’s latest album is called Trouble The Water, and it’s both tense and intense. It’s a hell of a listen, though the band needs to be seen live to fully experience it. The other half of today’s conversation is Graham Sayle, whose band High Vis formed in London around 2016, and whose version of hardcore dials in a healthy dose of

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of fantastic songwriters in a sweet conversation about craft and life in general: Sima Cunningham and Roberto Lange. Lange has been making fascinating, lovely music under the name Helado Negro since 2009, mixing breezy indie-rock with electronic sounds, frequently with more than a passing nod to his Ecuadorian roots. His sonic world is always inviting, even as it’s sort of otherworldly, and he often matches those sounds with cool visuals—which is no wonder considering his background in computer art. Earlier this year, Lange released the eighth Helado Negro album; it’s called Phasor, and it’s among his best, mixing tranquil sounds with his searching spirit. You might be lulled and puzzled at the same time, which is a great feeling. Check out the song “Colores del Mar” right here. The other half of today’s conversation, Sima Cunningham, is best known as half the core of Chicago band Finom, originally known as OHMME. Finom released its Not God earlier this year

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got an absolute legend of a singer-songwriter in conversation with a guy who’s no slouch himself: Lucinda Williams and M. Ward. Williams has been writing and recording incredible songs since the late 1970s, though she didn’t really break through in a huge way until 1998’s stone classic Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which garnered her the Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy—her second Grammy—but also some of the most well-deserved critical accolades of that year. She certainly didn’t rest on those laurels, having released close to a dozen more revered albums since, many of which found themselves also at the Grammy and Americana awards ceremonies—as well as in the hearts of listeners and other songwriters. Last year, Williams released a fantastic memoir about her journey from small-town Louisiana to the music business and beyond. It’s a lovely look at a life well lived called Don’t Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You. The other half of today’s conversation is M. Ward, anot

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two women from different parts of the planet who share a common heritage and creative outlook: Serra Petale and Gaye Su Akyol. Petale is the guitarist for the multinational band Los Bitchos, which has been creating tough-to-pigeonhole instrumental music for the past seven years. The band’s membership and sound are both truly worldly: Petale is from Western Australia, and her bandmates are from Uruguay, Sweden, and the UK. As you’ll hear, they came together in London after Petale chased her musical dreams there, and they’ve made some incredibly fun music since, mixing sounds from Argentina, Turkey, and a sort of psychedelic surf-rock. Their first album, produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, came with the incredible title Let The Festivities Begin!, and they just followed it with another album, the fully delightful Talkie Talkie. Check out that album’s “La Bomba” right here. The other half of today’s conversation joins us from her home base in Turkey. Gaye Su

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a legend of ‘90s-era punk in deep conversation with a songwriter you might be hearing of for the first time: Kathleen Hanna and Jim Andralis. Hanna, of course, was a founding member of Bikini Kill, the band credited with starting the riot grrrl movement and inspiring an incredible number of young women to pick up guitars and claim their place in the rock universe. After Bikini Kill’s initial split, Hanna went on to perform in both The Julie Ruin and Le Tigre, though recent years have found her spitting fire with Bikini Kill yet again—they’re actually on tour now through September. Hanna also released an excellent memoir this year called Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, which is absolutely worth a read or an audiobook listen—Hanna reads it herself, and it’s awesome. Hanna’s people approached us about having her chat with songwriter Jim Andralis because, as you’ll hear in this chat, she might be his biggest fan. Andralis is a New Yorker whose day job is as a t

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a reunion of sorts, in celebration of a new release of old music: It’s David Pajo, Cassie Berman, and Tim Furnish. These three met in the fertile Louisville scene of the early 1990s. Pajo played guitar in the wildly influential band Slint and went on to play with Tortoise, Royal Trux, Stereolab, and Interpol at various times over the years—he’s currently a member of Gang Of Four. But the subject of this conversation is Pajo’s sorta-solo career, which went through various M-names, from just M to Papa M and Aerial M. As Aerial M, Pajo brought on some friends for a brief time to tour Europe, where they recorded a Peel Session—more on that in a minute. The friends that Pajo recruited to play in the Aerial M live band were Tim Furnish, whose legendary Louisville band Crain had broken up recently—and who has since recorded experimental rock with the band Parlour—as well as Cassie Berman and Tony Bailey. Berman had been kicking around in Louisville bands, too, and she wou

Hello Talkhouse listeners! Instead of new episode this week, we've revisiting a great chat from several years back between artist/musician/many other things Laurie Anderson and filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Black Swan, The Whale, etc.). The reason? Anderson has a new album out in a couple of weeks called Amelia, and it's all about famed aviator Amelia Earhart. If that sounds odd, it probably is, and in the best ways: Anything Anderson touches is worth your time. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Enjoy! Note: This episode originally aired on January 26, 2016. On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, in a special conversation recorded after a screening of Laurie Anderson's documentary Heart of a Dog, the acclaimed musician, artist, and filmmaker talks onstage with fellow New York director Darren Aronofsky, best known for his films Pi, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. The pair discuss Anderson's new film, which ponders questions of love, death, and language, and touch on such other d

If you had told 15-year-old me I’d be doing a podcast with today’s two Talkhouse guests, I would have asked you what the hell a podcast was before getting truly excited: It’s Perry Farrell and Daniel Ash. Perry Farrell almost certainly needs to introduction, but here goes: He first found fame as the singer for Jane’s Addiction, a band that bridged the gap between glammy metal and some burgeoning genre called alternative rock, and is pretty largely responsible the latter becoming a thing. The end of Jane’s Addiction in the early 1990s was the beginning of Farrell’s other big creation, the Lollapalooza festival, which continues to this day—the U.S. version was just this past weekend in Chicago, as a matter of fact. Farrell has played with other people over the years, and the legendary Jane’s Addiction has reformed in various incarnations over the years. But the big news for 2024 is that the band’s original lineup has reformed both to play shows and even to record some new music. Check out the band’s brand new

We’ve got a bit of a strange one for you on this week's Talkhouse Podcast. Back during the darkest days of the pandemic, we hosted an Instagram live chat between Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and actor/musician Joe Keery, who at the time was best known as part of the cast of Stranger Things. Keery is also a musician, having released music with his band Post Animal, and he was just starting to release music under the name Djo. Keery had a pretty big viral hit with a Djo song this year: You may have heard “End Of Beginning.” If you haven’t, check it out right here. Anyway, we figured that a lot of folks may have missed that conversation, so now would be the perfect time to resurface it in slightly edited podcast form. These two had never met, but they jump into a great chat about songwriting, Miley Cyrus’s house—which is where Coyne was dialing in from—and lots more, including how Coyne and his Flaming Lips bandmate Steven Drozd are like french fries and salt, about how listening is equally vital in music a

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a fantastic chat featuring three boundary-pushing musicians that turns into a lovefest: It’s Daniel Lopatin, better known as Oneohtrix Point Never, along with David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, who were known together as Gastr del Sol. Lopatin has created an incredible body of experimental records over the past 20 or so years. His woozy, sample-heavy early material had him pegged as the inventor of vaporwave, but he never stays in the same musical place very long. He broke through to a different audience with soundtracks for the Safdie brothers’ movies Good Time and Uncut Gems, and Lopatin is also heavily responsible for the sound of The Weeknd’s records, where he’s credited as an executive producer. The tenth Oneohtrix Point Never album, called Again, came out late last year, and once again it found Lopatin utilizing a new set of inspirations, one of which was the post-rock movement of the 1990s, which figures heavily into today’s conversation. More on that in a minut

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got what might seem like an unlikely pairing, but one that makes sense when you dive into it: Rick Mitarotonda from Goose and M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger. If you’re not into the jam-band world, Goose might not be super familiar to you yet, but in that world, the Connecticut band is absolutely massive, moving from clubs to amphitheaters over the past few years. And while jam bands themselves are pretty common—the barrier to entry isn’t super high—very few have reached these heights, and after a decade Goose already find themselves in the vaunted company of bands like Phish and Dead and Company. It’s kind of obvious why: They are fantastic players, and their songs offer more than just extended noodling. It makes sense that they’re not influenced just by their jam forebears, but by jam-adjacent indie kingpins like Radiohead. And they’ve even got the stamp of approval of Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, who asked them to cover his band’s song “2021”—and to stretch it