Talkhouse Podcast

The inspiration for the pairing on this week's Talkhouse Podcast goes back 40 years, to one of the greatest concert films—maybe the greatest concert film—ever made, Stop Making Sense. We’ve got Jerry Harrison and Carlos Arévalo. Harrison was of course the keyboard player and sometimes guitarist behind one of the most influential and groundbreaking bands of the 1970s and 80s, Talking Heads. The band’s legacy can’t be overstated; they made eight incredible studio albums before splitting up in 1991, they’re in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and their impact on both other musicians and the culture at large has been enormous. And in addition to all of those studio records, Talking Heads—along with director Jonathan Demme—made Stop Making Sense, the audacious live document of the band from 1983. The film was lovingly restored for its 40th anniversary last year, with both the visuals and audio painstakingly refreshed—the latter in no small part due to Harrison’s efforts. Celebrating this reissue has been the clos

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’re diving deep into a chat inspired by two tribute albums to an incredibly influential musician, Sun Ra. Joining us are Meshell Ndegeocello and David Harrington. And oh man, do I have my work cut out for me in trying to introduce these incredible people and their careers—I won’t even scratch the surface. Meshell Ndegeocello’s biggest foray into the public consciousness, strangely enough, came on a duet with John Mellencamp in the mid-’90s, but that’s not at all indicative of her wide-ranging career, which also includes everything from go-go music to neo-soul to jazz to rapping on a Madonna song. These days, the Grammys had to create an entirely new category for what she does: She just won the first-ever Grammy award for Alternative Jazz for last year’s The Omnichord Real Book. It’s no surprise given her musical serachings that Ndegeocello is also deeply inspired by Sun Ra, the legendary out-there jazz composer and performer who traveled through time and space until leaving

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a popular comedian, podcaster, and actor in conversation with a musician-slash-director who released their first song together earlier this year: Marc Maron and Paige Stark. Maron is of course the host of the long-running interview podcast WTF, but that’s really just the headline on a long and winding career. He was of course first known—and is still known!—as a top-tier stand-up comedian whose shows are often discursive explorations of his own psyche while also being wildly funny. He’s also an actor, having been a regular on the Netflix series GLOW and a lead in a couple of dramatic movies, including To Leslie, which comes up in this conversation, and Sword of Trust, which was directed by Maron’s girlfriend Lynn Shelton, who died unexpectedly in 2020. That fact worked its way into Maron’s latest stand-up special, last year’s brilliant From Bleak to Dark. Oh, and he also dabbles as a musician, having played guitar in bands in his school days, and keeping it up most

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two singer-songwriters who both come from the tradition of socially conscious folk-punk. One of them you could credit with inventing the genre, the other may be its most popular current proponent: Billy Bragg and Frank Turner. Billy Bragg is a legendary British performer who came up just after the punk boom of the late 1970s and channeled that energy into the style of a solo troubadour. His early records were massively influential to all sorts of musicians, which is no surprise given their wit, their lyrical pointedness, and how beautifully they capture the spirit of youthful engagement. But that was 40 years ago, and Bragg has created an incredible body of work that’s always expanding but never losing that kernel of truth. It got really easy to catch up with the whole thing recently, as he released a massive 14-CD box set called The Roaring Forty, which you’ll hear a little bit about in this chat. Bragg also has some US dates lined up for this July. Check out a cla

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a favorite repeat guest alongside a newer name you perhaps haven’t heard yet: Amelia Meath and Fabi Reyna. Meath is half of the duo Sylvan Esso, which has been crafting gorgeous electro-pop for the past decade. It’s been amazing to watch Meath and her partner Nick Sanborn grow over the years, building a catalog and fanbase with songs that are equally enjoyable on headphones and in front of massive crowds. Speaking of massive crowds, Sylvan Esso has been trying to figure out for years how to play to all the people that want to see them in their adopted hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and this weekend marks their inaugural Good Moon Festival at a minor-league stadium. They’ll be joined by other great bands including co-headliner Fleet Foxes, plus a lineup of hand-picked bands including today’s other guest, Fabi Reyna. Reyna is the driving force behind Reyna Tropical, whose debut album Malegria was recently released on the Psychic Hotline label, which is run by no

Greetings, Talkhouse friends. Instead of a Talkhouse episode this week, I wanted to share another episode of my pal Craig Finn’s show, That’s How I Remember It, which is just starting its third season. Craig has an incredible array of guests lined up, and he’s switching to a new schedule where he’ll have new episodes every other week without a break. That means more amazing chats for you, including this one with Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck. Craig and Matt chat about the philosophy behind That’s How I Remember It—it’s a podcast about creativity and memory—as well as an early meeting between the two, Phosphorescent’s mighty “Song For Zula” and much more. I’ll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming, but for now, give That’s How I Remember It your attention. See you next week! 0:00 - Intro 2:41 - "Do you think you have a good memory?" 3:58 - The origins of That's How I Remember It 8:43 - Craig vs. Matt's approach to songwriting 13:14 - "Do you have a first memory of music? 23:00 - "Do

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two incredible singer-songwriters who sprung from the same fertile late '80s/early '90s scene, and who are still doing it right all these years later: Joe Pernice and Bill Janovitz. Joe Pernice first found notice in the country-ish pop band Scud Mountain Boys, whose home-recorded songs landed them a deal with Sub Pop in the mid-1990s. The Scuds weren’t around super long, but their end was the beginning of the Pernice Brothers, Joe’s long-running band that continues to put out excellent, often melancholy songs. The latest Pernice Brothers album—and by the way, he’s really the only constant member at this point—is called Who Will You Believe, and it stands up there with his incredibly durable catalog. In addition to writing and playing songs, Pernice wrote a great novel a while back called It Feels So Good When I Stop, and he even had a short stint writing for TV. But for now, he’s concentrating on music. Check out “December in Her Eyes” from Who Will You Believe. Th

This week's Talkhouse Podcast brings together two important figures from the ‘90s shoegaze movement—and beyond—Miki Berenyi and Debbie Googe. Berenyi was one of the two women at the front of Lush, the powerhouse band that burned very bright from the late ‘80s to a difficult end in 1996. Their fascinating story—and much more—is told in Berenyi’s recent autobiography, the excellent Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success. The book details everything from Berenyi’s childhood through a no-holds-barred look at her band’s successes and failures, from management woes to in-fighting to a stage dive on Lollapalooza that left her in literal stitches. Berenyi is about to launch a U.S. tour, her first in a while, that also marks the beginnings of a new band, the Miki Berenyi Trio. Details can be found at mikistuff.com. The other half of this conversation is Debbie Googe, best known as the bassist for My Bloody Valentine, perhaps the most legendary of the shoegaze bands. Googe was there almost from the volatile

This week's Talkhouse Podcast came together in a fun way, when a new-ish artist referenced the work of a more established band in a song, and the head of a legendary indie label thought they should meet. That sounds complicated, but don’t worry I’ll explain. Our guests are Claire Rousay and Kevin Drew. Kevin Drew is best known as one of the founders of Broken Social Scene, the influential Canadian band slash collective that’s been around for 25 years now. The band has amassed an incredible catalog that broke out with 2002’s unstoppable You Forgot It In People but all of its records reward a deep dive—as does the solo work that Drew has also released over the years. Last year he released a moving record about loss—among other things—called Aging, and as you’ll hear in this conversation, he hopes to reignite Broken Social Scene for one more run that includes some of the collective’s members that have gone on to big careers outside the band, like Leslie Feist and Emily Haines. I personally would love to see it.

This week’s Talkhouse Podcast is actually taken from a conversation that served as the online launch party for the second issue of our print ‘zine, The Talkhouse Reader, which was lovingly put together by Talkhouse music editor Annie Fell. The issue, which you can order at store.talkhouse.com explores the intersection of food and music, so naturally this episode does as well. Our guests are Jason Stewart and Rostam. Stewart is, along with Chris Black, the host of the popular podcast How Long Gone, in which the two discuss pop culture, fashion, and whatever else happens to come to mind, often with great guests—recent ones include Jenny Lewis, Waxahatchee, and Isaac Brock—but frequently just the two of them gabbing like better-read versions of your hippest friends. They’re part of the fabulous Talkhouse Podcast Network, and you can catch the How Long Gone guys live this June if you’re lucky enough to live in one of the cities they’ll be visiting. Tour dates and their deep catalog of episodes can be found on the

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a whopping four guys representing three bands, more or less: Ryan Hahn and Nik Ewing from Local Natives and Sean Cimino and Isom Innis from Foster the People but, perhaps more importantly for purposes of this chat, their side project Peel. Local Natives have been around since around 2005, but it wasn’t until their debut album Gorilla Manor hit shelves in 2009 that the California band had its first real moment. They rode a similar wave to bands like Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, with bits of folk and punk and psychedelia all wrapped up in songs that are frequently undeniable earworms. They’ve built a really impressive catalog since, and the sessions for 2023’s Time Will Wait For No One were so fruitful that they actually yielded a companion record that’s just coming out now, called But I’ll Wait For You. It’s another gorgeously layered set of songs that feels even a little weirder than what came right before it. Check out the song “April” right here. The other half

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two powerhouses in what I guess you might call modern indie-folk, though it’s a lot more than that: Gregory Alan Isakov and Jeremiah Fraites. Fraites is, along with Wesley Schultz, a founding member of the Lumineers, the band whose simple-yet-powerful take on folky Americana has been met with pretty massive success over the past couple of decades. The band’s catalog goes deeper than massive hits like “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love,” songs you’ve probably heard even if you’re not super familiar with the band. The Lumineers’ latest album is 2022’s Brightside, but that’s not Fraites’ latest: He just released his second solo album of intriguing, fantastic instrumental piano pieces—a big departure from the sound of his main gig, but great nonetheless. It’s called Piano Piano 2—you can probably guess what the first one was called—and it stretches into even more cinematic territory than the first. Plus, it features a guest vocal from the other half of today’s conversation. G

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a rare trio episode for you, since two of our guests created something very cool together: Jo Firestone, Marissa Paternoster, and Joe Steinhardt. I’ll start with Jo Firestone, the actor, writer, comedian, podcaster, game inventor, and probably some other stuff that I’m forgetting, who you may have seen on the show Joe Pera Talks With You or, like a million other things. She’s done stand-up specials and albums, she’s written for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and she hosts the game-centric podcast Dr. Gameshow. Firestone is currently the head writer on After Midnight, the comedy/game show hybrid that airs late every night on CBS. In other words, she’s busy. But not too busy to chat with her friends Marissa Paternoster and Joe Steinhardt about their new graphic novel, Merriment. You may recognize Paternoster are the singer and guitarist for the amazing, recently broken up band Screaming Females, and Talkhouse readers and listeners may even recognize her illustr

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two songwriters whose music bursts with personality, but in oddly different ways: CMAT and John Grant. CMAT is the stage name/alter ego of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, who’s already hit it pretty big in her native Ireland with funny, frank, and flamboyant songs about break-ups and time travel and everything in between, I guess you might say. She was recently nominated for a BRIT Award for Best International Artist—she wore a jaw-dropping dress to the ceremony—and her second album, Crazymad, For Me went to number one in her home country as well. Now she’s ready to take on the States a bit, to see if her music—queer-friendly, over-the-top pop—can make as big a splash here. Check out “Where are Your Kids Tonight,” which features today’s other guest John Grant, and catch CMAT on tour in the US right now. Dates are at cmatbaby.com. John Grant is a tough guy to explain: On the surface, his music can sound like party-friendly electro-pop, but the themes and lyrics run deep

This week’s Talkhouse episode was recorded live at the On Air Festival in Brooklyn recently—that explains why you’ll hear some audience questions at the end—and it features Hamilton Leithauser and Randall Poster, two interesting guys who were just meeting for the first time. Leithauser is best known as the frontman for The Walkmen, the New York band that put out a string of incredible records between 2000 and 2013 before going on a hiatus that lasted a decade—they reunited for a tour last year and have some festival dates lined up for this year. But Leithauser kept plenty busy during the band’s downtime, releasing three great records on his own—and he’s apparently got another one just about ready to go. Perhaps more relevant to this conversation, at least a bit, is the fact that he’s recently gotten into making music for film and TV. Avid Talkhouse listeners will remember that he was on the podcast last year talking with Ethan Hawke about a Paul Newman documentary they worked on together. Leithauser’s latest

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters who broke out in the ‘90s and early 2000s and have had fruitful careers since—and who happen to be old pals—Ben Kweller and Brendan Benson. As you’ll hear in this chat, Kweller got his rock life started early, learning guitar as a teenager and hustling hard for gigs in the small Texas town where he grew up. His first band, Radish, got a big record deal while Kweller was still a kid, and while they never exactly blew up, there’s definitely some love out there for the band’s early records. Kweller went solo in the early 2000s with the classic album Sha Sha, which was an early release on Dave Matthews’ record label ATO—and which last year got the deluxe anniversary reissue treatment. He’s had a run of great solo records since, and was in a supergroup called The Bens with Ben Folds and Ben Lee. He also started a music collective called The Noise Company, which is a sort of hybrid studio/management/record label. They’re having a big blowout at this

This episode originally aired on October 19, 2023. On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two women who lead fierce, fantastic rock bands: Karly Hartzman and Marisa Dabice. Hartzman is the driving force behind the band Wednesday, which started as a solo-ish vehicle for her songs back in 2017 but has blossomed into a full band with an already-sizable catalog. Everything they’ve done is worth checking out, but it sure feels like Wednesday hit exactly what they’d always been striving for on the album Rat Saw God, which came out earlier this year. Hartzman’s lyrics are both pointed and poetic—amazing in their specificity and delivered with some serious passion, whether in a country-ish moment, or one that feels almost metal. Today’s other guest, Marisa Dabice, thinks Wednesday sounds like Black Sabbath meets Sparklehorse, which is both accurate and something that’s probably never been said about any band before. Check out “Bull Believer” from Rat Saw God. Marisa Dabice is the voice behind Mannequin Pussy,

I’m so excited to to share this week’s episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, which features a fascinating, deep yet kind of low-key conversation between two really talented people that you might not have expected to be paired up: Bob Odenkirk and Marcellus Hall. I’m guessing most people listening to this podcast will know who Odenkirk is. A longtime comedian and writer, he and his pal David Cross gifted the world some of the funniest TV ever created in Mr. Show With Bob And David, and if that was the only thing Odenkirk ever did, it’d be plenty. But of course the other really huge thing in his career is his portrayal of Saul Goodman on both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, two dramas that stand among some of the best TV ever. And I haven’t even mentioned his books, the movies he’s produced and directed, or the many things he’s starred in. Without Bob, there would be no motivational speaker Matt Foley from SNL or any Tim and Eric Awesome Show. He’s a legend, and he probably wouldn’t want me saying that, which ma

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a very cool episode that was inspired by a very cool performance coming up in Los Angeles soon. It’s David Longstreth in conversation with Phil Elverum. Longstreth is the focal point of the band Dirty Projectors, which formed about 20 years ago in Brooklyn, and was part of a scene that kind of elevated indie-pop into something more serious and timeless. It’s been clear throughout the years that Longstreth is a musical searcher, having never been content to repeat himself. That’s led to an incredibly varied catalog that can even border on pleasantly confusing, and the huge undertaking that he’s in the midst of—and the starting point of this conversation—is no exception. About 10 years ago, Longstreth began working on what I’d guess you’d call a contemporary classical song cycle called Song of the Earth, which he performed with the ensemble stargaze a few years back. He’s since been refining and reworking the piece, and along with Dirty Projectors and the world-renowne

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriting visionaries who came to prominence in the 1990s with well respected indie bands, and who both have vital new music out now: Jason Lytle and Gruff Rhys. Lytle started making music under the name Grandaddy back in 1992. He was a pro skateboarder who found a second passion in home recording, and as you’ll hear in this chat, kind of stumbled upon some guys who helped him flesh out the sound into something both humble and grand. The first run of Grandaddy albums—including Under the Western Freeway and 2000’s classic The Sophtware Slump—felt a bit like quieter, more heartfelt cousins to the music the Flaming Lips were making at the time. After that initial run, the band eventually split up, only to reform sporadically over the years. Lytle also recorded some really fascinating solo records while also taking time—as you’ll hear—to try and leave the music world behind a little bit. But he’s been called back to the Grandaddy world with a brand new album