Talkhouse Podcast

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of fantastic musicians who’ve been intimately involved with each other’s lives and work for the past decade and a half: Cate Le Bon and Huw Evans. Le Bon and Evans each have their own incredible discographies that wouldn’t have been the same without the other: They’re not in a band together, but each has been a key component of the other’s work over the years, starting when they were young and romantically involved. Though they’re no longer in a relationship, they’re still a huge part of each other’s lives. And as you’ll hear in this conversation, they like to give each other shit—to the point where while recording I wasn’t sure if there was some real hostility happening. (There wasn't.) Evans records under the name H. Hawkline, and this week he’ll release his fifth album, Milk For Flowers. It’s his most personal and intense yet, though strong emotions remain shrouded in what he once called “strange pop.” Hawkline first found a bit of fame in his and Le Bon’s

On this week’s Talkhouse episode, we’ve got a couple of old friends who’ve made some great music both together and separately, and who record under interesting names: Chaz Bear and Hannah van Loon. Those aren’t even the interesting names I was talking about. Chaz Bear is better known as Toro Y Moi, a pioneer in the chillwave genre who started releasing records about a dozen years ago. But that microgenre never quite captured what Toro Y Moi is all about, because nothing really can. Chaz Bear loves to jump around sonically, dipping his toes into indie rock, hip-hop, and even some jazzy influences. He’s got enough excess energy that Toro Y Moi isn’t even his only musical outlet, and he also moonlights as a graphic designer. This spring and summer he’ll open shows for Caroline Polachek, and he’s also part of the new ReSet touring festival that’s hitting bit cities this year. Oh, and he’s still got time to collaborate with today’s other guest. Hannah van Loon has been making music as Tanukichan since 2016 or so,

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of women who came up together during one of the most exciting musical eras ever, and who’ve got the stories to prove it: Gina Birch and Vivien Goldman. Birch started the Raincoats with friends from a London art college in 1977, stepping right into the burgeoning punk scene with records that were notoriously challenging in a scene not known for being particularly welcoming to women to begin with. The Raincoats were never poppy enough to flirt with the mainstream, but thanks to Kurt Cobain, the band had a bit of a resurrection in the mid-1990s. At Cobain’s behest, Nirvana’s American label re-released the Raincoats catalog, complete with liner notes by Cobain, and the band subsequently made its first album in over a decade. They were even set to tour with Nirvana in Europe, but Cobain’s death scuppered that plan. But Birch didn’t slow down; she set out on a filmmaking career while still pursuing music; she even made music videos for the likes of New Order and The

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of pioneering musical searchers who came together for a Grammy-nominated record last year: Angélique Kidjo and Ibrahim Maalouf. Now, trying to encapsulate Kidjo’s career into the little space I have here is an even more daunting task than usual—and we’ve had some really accomplished people on this podcast. Born in West Africa, Kidjo has ably explored various musics over the past 40 years or so, winning fans with an incredible range of styles and interests. She’s played on Lilith Fair, won Grammys, been a muse for Philip Glass, started a foundation to empower girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa, collaborated with everyone from Carlos Santana to Ezra Koenig to Dr. John to Josh Groban to Kronos Quartet—and that list goes on and on. The only real constant in her career—besides a sort of deep, inexplicable beauty—is a restlessness. Kidjo is always looking for the next thing to spark her interest, which led to a recent Grammy-nominated collaboration with to

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of old friends who’ve both been trying new things lately: Hannibal Buress and Kristian Mercado.  Hannibal Buress just celebrated his 40th birthday, which means he’s spent more than half his life making people laugh for a living. He started out doing stand-up in his hometown of Chicago, winning audiences small and then eventually very large by telling pointed jokes with a sort of super laid-back style. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and you’ve almost certainly seen him on The Eric Andre Show or Broad City, or maybe one of his many stand-up specials. In the past few years, though, Buress has turned his attention to music, releasing a bunch of hip-hop tracks under the name Eshu Tune. Though rumors of his retirement from comedy seem to be exaggerated—he talks about that here—he is taking music seriously. Or maybe seriously isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s his focus. Check out the Eshu Tune song “Knee Brace” right here.  The other sid

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve put together the drummers from two of the UK’s biggest bands in recent memory: Dave Rowntree and Philip Selway. Rowntree came to fame with Blur, one of the original Britpop bands of the early 1990s. I probably don’t need to give you much biography on Blur, but in the band’s couple of long hiatuses, Rowntree has lived about a dozen lives. He’s been an amateur pilot, a professional lawyer, an elected politician, and a social activist. On the music front, he found yet another career creating soundtracks for TV and film, starting with the Bros documentary After the Screaming Stops. Blur is back together for some massive shows in 2023, but during the pandemic Rowntree got together—virtually, of course—with producer Leo Abrahams to make his proper solo album. Freed from the constraints of both his bandmates and showrunners, Rowntree did his own thing, and the result is Radio Songs, a delightful 10-song album that flirts with Britpop here and there, but flirts with other inter

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of multi-hyphenates who have recently joined music-world forces: Justin Tranter and Jake Wesley Rogers. Tranter first found music-biz fame with the band Semi-Precious Weapons, which had a decade-long run starting in 2004, and whose biggest claim to fame—besides their music itself—was opening for Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour. But Tranter pivoted after Semi-Precious Weapons split up, and started writing songs for and with other artists—but not just any artists. Tranter has written for and/or with Justin Bieber, Imagine Dragons, Selena Gomez, Gwen Stefani, and many, many more—chances are good you’ve heard a Justin Tranter composition on the radio, even if you didn’t know it. Tranter has also written a bunch of songs for the upcoming Grease prequel series, Rise of the Pink Ladies, and seven songs on the brand-new album by the massive Italian band Måneskin. Tranter has also been an incredible activist in the LGBTQ+ community and beyond, and their next move is bec

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, our guests begin as strangers and end their conversation as family: It’s Pamela Adlon chatting with Tegan and Sara Quin. Adlon has had an incredible career over the past 40 or so years; no matter what your pop culture diet, she has probably sneaked into your consciousness one way or another. Maybe you have vague memories of her character on The Facts of Life from the early ‘80s, or perhaps her roles on Californication and Louie in more recent years. Adlon has also had an incredible shadow career doing voices in animated shows, where she’s best known as Bobby Hill on King of the Hill. But perhaps the culmination of all that fantastic work is Better Things, the show that Adlon created, executive-produced, starred in, and let’s face it, gave birth to. Better Things just concluded its fifth and final season, and it stuck the landing so well. It’s one of those shows that hits that rare mixture of funny and true—and it definitely struck a nerve with the other half of today’s Talkho

For our first brand new Talkhouse episode of 2023, we’ve got a short but great chat with three guys from the rollicking Australian rock scene: Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Jack “Cool Breeze” Crowther, and Elliot “Dr. Love Wisdom” O’Reilly. Yes, they have excellent names, and so do their bands. Kenny-Smith is part of the super-prolific King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, which since coming together in Melbourne in 2010 has released an incredible 23 albums—three of those in October of 2022 alone. The band has built up a manic following along the way, building up a whole universe—people call it the Gizzverse—of characters and sounds that range from extended rock jams to jazz to microtonal exploration. If you’re not already familiar, there’s no perfect place to start, though last year’s Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava is accessible in its own way. In addition to non-stop touring and recording with King Gizz, Kenny-Smith also leads another band, The Murlocs, which put out their sixth album, Rapscallion, just

Happy Holidays. While we're on break, we'd love to share with you a recent addition to the Talkhouse Podcast Network, Noble Champions with Santigold. This episode originally aired on Nov. 7, 2022, and is titled "Questlove, Angela Yee and Tunde Adebimpe." Subscribe to Noble Champions with Santigold. In this episode, Santi rallies her longtime friends Questlove, Angela Yee, and Tunde Adebimpe, who are fellow artists, industry insiders, and cultural critics, to try to tackle the question, 'What exactly is Black Music?'. They discuss complex issues like what happens when you step out of the genre box - specifically when Black artists are making music that’s left outside the 'Black Music' box, who built the box, and what’s the bigger impact of caging in or boxing out music and the artists that make it? All this while geeking out about some of their favorite seminal recording artists like Bad Brains, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, The Last Poets and more.

Happy Holidays. While we're on break, we'd love to share a preview of another podcast on the Talkhouse Podcast Network, Craig Finn's That's How I Remember It. This episode originally aired on Sept. 1, 2022, and is titled "Adam Duritz (Counting Crows)." Subscribe to That's How I Remember It. Adam Duritz is my guest on this week’s That’s How I Remember It and I am quite psyched about it. Adam is obviously the singer and songwriter of platinum selling band Counting Crows, and has been making thoughtful and great music for decades now. I met Adam when Counting Crows took THS on tour in Europe/UK in 2009 and was so excited he agreed to do this. We talked about how the details matter so much in songs, each of our first trips to Asbury Park, loving Christmas music, that dog., last year's fantastic Counting Crows EP, bootlegs, and the way that light attaches to a girl. That’s a wrap on season one of That’s How I Remember It; we’ll be back with season two before long. Listen, subscribe, and keep your eye on this spa

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of guys who don’t know each other well, but who’ve crossed paths a few times over the years—most recently at the Desert Daze festival, Nick Allbrook and Josh Conway. Allbrook is the frontman of the Australian psychedelic rock band Pond, which is sort of inextricably linked with another Australian band, Tame Impala. Allbrook was actually a member of Tame for years while also playing with Pond—which includes some current members of Tame Impala. But Pond, which has been around about as long, has built a sound of its own, much more hard charging than that other band, and released a whopping nine albums of frenetic, fun, fuzzy rock. If you’ve never heard the band, their album titles give a hint as to what they’re all about, from Corridors of Blissterday to Man It Feels Like Space Again. Pond’s latest album has a much simpler title, it’s called 9, and among its fantastic tracks is this one, “Lights of Leeming.” Josh Conway is a huge fan of Pond, though his own ban

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve paired the frontmen for two gruff-sounding, kinda scary noise-rock bands, but who as it turns out are a couple of sweethearts: David Yow and Andrew Falkous. David Yow began his music life in the Texas band Scratch Acid, which built its own legend before burning out in the mid-1980s, and then took his maniacal presence to The Jesus Lizard. That band built a following in the next dozen years both for its confrontational music and for Yow’s intensity in their live shows. You’d often find him drunk and half-naked, howling into the faces of stunned crowds. First you were scared, and then you loved it. The Jesus Lizard benefited from the grunge explosion in the mid-1990s, but they were always too weird and scary for the mainstream—even when they got an inexplicable major-label deal with Capitol. (You know, home of the Beatles.) The Jesus Lizard split in 1999, but have reunited a few times since then, with demand for Yow’s insanity peaking every few years. There hasn’t been a

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a lively conversation between two guys from different generations and geographical backgrounds, but some similar stories and experiences: Titus and Angelo Moore. Angelo Moore is the legendary frontman of the legendary punk-funk-ska-soul-etc. band Fishbone, which has been a frequently mutating unit since 1979. Fishbone were peers and friends with a who’s-who of that era’s Los Angeles scene, including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, and plenty of others, and they’ve been a huge influence on innumerable bands over the years. It hasn’t been the straightest journey, and there’s a pretty great documentary about the band that came out about 10 years ago called Everyday Sunshine. In addition to fronting the band, which still plays shows worldwide, Moore has embarked on tons of other projects over the years, releasing music as both Dr. Madd Vibe and with a group he calls the Brand New Step. Beyond that, he’s been touring as a vocalist with a David Bowie tribute tour

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, the creator-star of Hulu’s Ramy, comedian Ramy Youssef, talks with Dina Amer, whose debut feature as writer-director, You Resemble Me, is in theaters now. The film is a lightly fictionalized, emotionally resonant portrait of Hasna Aït Boulahcen, a radicalized Muslim who Amer covered as a journalist in 2015 when Boulahcen was implicated in the Paris terrorist attacks. In an engaging, wide-ranging conversation, Youssef and Amer – fellow Egyptian-Americans who have been friends for years – talk about the personal nature of You Resemble Me, the major deal Dina turned down, Spike Lee’s take on her doing the film her way, casting a “hot” actor as a terrorist, 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.

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got the Scottish singer and songwriter behind some of the catchiest songs of the past two decades along with the super producer who helped bring those songs into the world: Fran Healy and Nigel Godrich. Healy is the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter of the band Travis, which really broke big with 1999’s The Man Who, scoring mainstream hits with songs like “Why Does it Always Rain on Me” and “Turn.” They’ve since created a deep catalog that numbers nine albums. But for today’s purposes we’re going to concentrate on 2001’s The Invisible Band, which Travis is giving a belated 20th birthday celebration for at the moment, including a US tour that starts this week. It can be difficult to follow up a massive success like The Man Who, and Travis turned once again to Godrich to help them chart the proper course. It wasn’t the beginning, but rather the continuation of a long and fruitful relationship. Check out “Sing” from The Invisible Band. Godrich, by the time Invisible B

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of singer-songwriters who don’t sound much alike, but who’ve traveled similar paths and have similar outlooks on life—oh, and who did a duet earlier this year—Frank Turner and KT Tunstall. Turner is a sort of folk-punk troubadour who’s built an incredible catalog and following over the past couple of decades from his home base in England. Like his hero Tim Barry of Avail or even Billy Bragg before him, Turner infuses truly catchy songs with a punk spirit, and he’s made a career buoyed by the fact that he never stops moving: He’s always on tour—including a recent “50 States in 50 Days” run—and always making new music. Not even the pandemic could stop him, though obviously it slowed down the live performance. During lockdown, Turner recorded his ninth album, a sort of back-to-basics affair called FTHC, which of course stands for Frank Turner Hardcore. Check out “A Wave Across a Bay” from that album, which was written as a tribute to Turner’s late friend, Scott H

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a musician and an actor who also both happen to host their own podcasts—do they let just anybody do that now?—Rhett Miller and Busy Philipps.  Miller is best known as frontman and primary songwriter for the Old 97’s, a band that’s celebrating its 30th year together in 2022 and which is at least partly responsible for the phrase “alt-country” coming into existence. But don’t hold Miller responsible for lazy genre tags: He has written literally hundreds of incredible songs that transcend any pigeonhole you might want to shove him in. In addition to a dozen Old 97’s records, he’s also put out eight solo albums, and he tours regularly both on his own and with the 97’s. All that and, like I said, he’s got a podcast: Wheels Off features Miller in conversation with other creative folks, talking about creativity—kinda like the chat you’re about to hear! Before that, check out “Go Through You,” from Rhett Miller’s new solo album The Misfit. You can see why Miller has won some

This episode originally aired on December 16, 2021. We’ve hosted some incredible Talkhouse Podcast 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

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of singer-songwriters who’ve taken interesting names for what are essentially solo ventures: Kevin Sullivan, aka. Field Medic, and Kristian Matsson, better known as the Tallest Man on Earth.  Matsson has been making music as the Tallest Man since about 2006, winning fans both with his largely spare, Bob Dylan-like songs and his incredibly forceful live shows. Though he’s from Sweden, Matsson is definitely influenced by the American folk tradition, especially on his early records, like the classic 2008 debut Shallow Grave. He’s since released a handful of excellent albums, and in this conversation with Kevin Sullivan, he drops some hints about a new one that he’s really excited about to be released in 2023. In the meantime, the Tallest Man on Earth just released his first all-covers album, and though he downplays it a little bit, it’s pretty amazing. It’s called Too Late for Edelweiss, and on it he covers songs written by everyone from Hank Williams to Bon Iver