Hello Talkhouse listeners and readers. We’ve got a special treat for you this week: Instead of the usual Talkhouse Podcast, we’re featuring the debut episode of a podcast called That’s How I Remember It. Craig Finn, as you hopefully already know, is the singer of The Hold Steady as well as a solo artist. He’s got an excellent new solo record called A Legacy of Rentals, and it inspired him to start a new podcast that explores the intersection of memory and creativity. The Talkhouse gang helped hi...
Jun 09, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Hello Talkhouse listeners; this week we’re resurfacing a talk featuring a frequent Talkhouse contributor who seems to be having yet another career moment: Michelle Zauner, aka. Japanese Breakfast. You may have caught Zauner and her band on the season finale of SNL, or playing your local theater, or on every playlist worth a dang. This talk, which originally ran on June 3, 2021—around the time the latest Japanese Breakfast album, Jubilee, came out—features Zauner in conversation with Rostam, the ...
Jun 02, 2022•55 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of electronic-music duos whose histories, as you’ll hear, are intimately intertwined: The Knocks and Sofi Tukker. The Knocks—consisting of James Patterson and Ben Ruttner—just released their third album, and it’s once again dancefloor-ready and heavy on the collaborations with indie icons. It’s called History, and it’s their first since 2018’s New York Narcotic, which featured the massive Foster the People collaboration “Ride or Die.” The guys us...
May 26, 2022•43 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of musicians from the UK who recently collaborated for the first time, Dana Margolin and Joseph Mount. Mount has been the driving force behind Metronomy since 1999, and he’s found success not only with a series of winning electro-pop records, but also by remixing tracks for big names like Franz Ferdinand, Gorillaz, and Lady Gaga. If you’re unfamiliar with Metronomy, a good place to start is 2008’s Nights Out, which is a sort of concept album abou...
May 19, 2022•39 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of guests who I can call legends without hesitation: Shirley Manson and John Doe. Doe is a founding member of the insanely influential punk band X, which started life way back in 1977 Los Angeles. They were part of a scene that leaned into hardcore punk, but X set itself apart by sneaking elements of country and Americana into their blistering records and live sets. And the chemistry between Doe and his co-lead singer Exene Cervenka was legendar...
May 12, 2022•52 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a legendary guitarist and songwriter in conversation with one of our favorite repeat guests: Mike Campbell and Margo Price. Campbell is best known as Tom Petty’s right-hand man, a position he proudly held for five decades until Petty’s untimely death in 2017. Together they wrote some of the Heartbreakers’ best known songs, including “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” and “You Got Lucky.” Campbell also produced a bunch of Petty solo and Heartbreakers songs...
May 05, 2022•35 min
On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two leading lights of modern psychedelic indie-rock, Melody Prochet and Lila Ramani. Prochet is the creative force behind Melody’s Echo Chamber, whose evocative name is taken from a dream she once had. Her debut album under the name, which Prochet recorded with help from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, was released in 2012. She has since released two more full-lengths while bouncing around the planet and raising children. The new one, Emotional Eternal, was...
Apr 28, 2022•33 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a lovefest between two musicians who came together to create one of the year’s most electrifying records: Eno Williams of Ibibio Sound Machine and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip. Ibibio Sound Machine has been mashing up sounds for just under a decade now, blending elements of Afrobeat and electronic music into a fierce combination that inspires dancing, chanting, and sweating—at least when they’re allowed to hit the road. Williams is a force of nature on thei...
Apr 21, 2022•33 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got two veterans of ‘90s rock who went on to form bands that referenced air travel in their name and whose biggest bands both start with Jaw: Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker and J. Robbins of Jawbox. Sorry if that was confusing, I’ll clear it up for you. Blake Schwarzenbach was and is the singer and guitarist of the band Jawbreaker, which had its initial run from 1986 until 1996, at which time they acrimoniously splintered after longtime fans turned thei...
Apr 14, 2022•40 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of Norwegian friends who both have excellent new records out this year: Sondre Lerche and AURORA. Lerche started writing gorgeous pop songs while he was still a teen in the suburbs of Bergen, Norway. It wasn’t too long before his music started finding its way out into the world, and he’s released a bunch of albums since the early 2000s. Though clearly starting from a pop background—his songs are incredibly catchy—Lerche has nimbly moved through ...
Apr 07, 2022•42 min
I’m thrilled to share a special preview of the Broken Record podcast from Pushkin Industries. In honor of the Red Hot Chili Peppers new album, Unlimited Love, the band members sit with their legendary producer Rick Rubin to share exclusive insights about the band’s dynamic. In this preview, Rick, John, and Anthony discuss John rejoining the band after a 10 year hiatus and how right it felt to be playing together again. You can hear the full episode, and more from Broken Record at https://podcast...
Apr 05, 2022•12 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters who share a serious dedication to the craft, a slightly sardonic outlook on life, and deep, incredible catalogs: Neil Hannon and Ben Folds. Neil Hannon is from Northern Ireland, and it’s safe to say that he and the band that he’s fronted for the past 30 years, the Divine Comedy, are a bit better known in Europe than in the States. Under the Divine Comedy name, Hannon has released a dozen delightfully clever albums, the latest of wh...
Mar 31, 2022•44 min
Sometimes Talkhouse Podcast participants have never met, sometimes they're acquainted, and on rare occasions, they know each other really well. For this week's chat, it became clear pretty quickly that Sasha Spielberg—a.k.a. Buzzy Lee—and Alana Haim already spoke the same language. As it turns out, and you'll hear this in the conversation, they're close enough to share a Hulu account. The occasion for this conversation is the debut full-length from Buzzy Lee, the excellent Spoiled Love, which is...
Mar 24, 2022•1 hr 5 min
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a funny pairing that proves that good things do occasionally result from the existence of social media: Steve Albini and Max Collins. You almost certainly know Steve Albini’s name and probably some of his work, too, but I’ll share this brief summary anyway: As a musician, he has played in some incredibly influential bands, most notably Big Black and Shellac. As a producer/engineer/studio owner, he has helped make records by thousands of small independen...
Mar 17, 2022•42 min
On this week’s Talkhouse episode, which we recorded as part of the On Air Festival, we’ve got a kind of unusually focused conversation about another person entirely: It’s Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie along with Meg Remy of U.S. Girls, talking at length about legendary artist Yoko Ono. It’s not just out of nowhere, though: Ben Gibbard, who you almost certainly know as the frontman of Death Cab For Cutie, whose impressive catalog has shaped indie-rock over the past two decades, recently cura...
Mar 10, 2022•40 min
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. Barlo...
Mar 03, 2022•51 min
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 event...
Feb 24, 2022•47 min
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, ...
Feb 17, 2022•36 min
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 year...
Feb 10, 2022•34 min
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 a...
Feb 03, 2022•41 min
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 ...
Jan 27, 2022•52 min
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 a...
Jan 20, 2022•50 min
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-...
Jan 13, 2022•43 min
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...
Jan 06, 2022•43 min
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 hersel...
Dec 16, 2021•48 min
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...
Dec 09, 2021•38 min
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...
Dec 02, 2021•50 min
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. S...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 2 min
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 ...
Nov 18, 2021•56 min
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 ...
Nov 11, 2021•49 min
