This week’s Talkhouse Podcast features a couple of names you almost certainly know, because each of these guys has had a pretty incredible career in music: Richard Marx and Jakob Dylan. Marx, of course, wrote and performed some of the most indelible pop hits of the late ’80s and early ’90s, including “Endless Summer Nights,” “Hold on to the Nights,” and the super smash “Right Here Waiting,” which comes up in this conversation. But even as the era of mullets and frosted jeans faded, Marx couldn’t...
Aug 19, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a great conversation between two guys who don’t necessarily have a ton in common musically, but who approach creativity in similar ways—and who happen to be great fans of each other’s work: Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius, and composer-performer-multi-hyphenate Max Richter. Hadreas, whom you’ve hopefully heard on the Talkhouse Podcast in the past, has been recording and performing under the name Perfume Genius since 2008, and he’s one of those artists w...
Aug 12, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week’s episode of the Talkhouse Podcast began somewhere not particularly known for good or fruitful ideas: Twitter. That’s where the poet Maggie Smith dropped a funny notion, which songwriter John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats picked up and ran with. Smith, whose was in the process of splitting up with her husband, suggested a photo essay in which she’d take her old wedding dress on a tour of the country, Weekend at Bernie’s style, only the dead thing isn’t a guy—it’s her marriage. Never ...
Aug 05, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jason Narducy is a Chicago guy, but he spends a ton of his time—or at least he used to—on tour, playing bass for both Bob Mould and Superchunk. In early 2020, a local theatre mounted a production of a musical called Verboten, which was based on Jason’s life—specifically his time as a pre-teen in a punk band. As a grown-up, in addition to providing the low end for those other great folks, he fronts his own band, Split Single. Under that moniker, Narducy writes the songs and recruits incredible mu...
Jul 29, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nick Murphy is best known for his downtempo electronic project Chet Faker, which is confusing because it also sounds like a guy’s name—but which released one of the best albums of 2014, Built On Glass. But as you’ll hear in this Talkhouse chat, Murphy put the Chet Faker name on a shelf at the height of its popularity in order to go in a more organic route under his own name. He subsequently released a pair of albums—including one initially through a meditation app, which is very 21st century and...
Jul 22, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of incredible young songwriter-performers whose music isn’t super similar, but who both embrace a sort of ultra-modern mish-mash of styles: Dorian Electra and Claud. Claud was the first performer signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ new label, Saddest Factory, after spending some time in a duo called Toast. Claud’s debut album, Super Monster, is most often described as “bedroom pop”—that term is brought up in this chat—but that’s only a small part of it. ...
Jul 15, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Liz Phair crashed into the indie-rock world in a huge way in the early ‘90s with her instant classic album Exile In Guyville, and she was already the talk of the town—in this case Chicago—before she had even performed publicly. It was an auspicious start to a fascinating career that went from indie-world stardom to Lilith Fair to composing for films and TV to a consciously pop-leaning album to a fantastic memoir called Horror Stories. And it comes full circle, sort of, with her new album Soberis...
Jul 08, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a special treat for the drummers and drum geeks out there: a conversation between Morgan Simpson of Black Midi and Bill Bruford of, as he says in their chat, about 101 bands. That number for Bruford isn’t too far from reality. Over a 40+ year career, he played with some incredible names in the world of progressive music, most notably Yes and King Crimson, but also his own projects, including Earthworks. He’s an astoundingly versatile and musical drumm...
Jul 01, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, former REM frontman Michael Stipe talks with veteran indie director Jim McKay about the production company they’ve run together since the late 1980s, C-Hundred Film Corp, and the amazing work that has come out of it. In a fascinating conversation, the two best friends not only walk us through the history of the company – its humble beginnings in Athens, GA, to creating PSAs with KRS-One and Natalie Merchant, and Michael making the *original* Orange...
Jun 24, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, director Edgar Wright chats with musicians Ron and Russell Mael of the beloved cult band Sparks, who are the subject of Wright’s deeply enjoyable new documentary, The Sparks Brothers. In a wide-ranging conversation, the friends and collaborators veer from gripping discussions about food to in-depth explorations of the Mael brothers’ longstanding love of their other creative passion, cinema, which finally resulted in Leos Carax directing their film ...
Jun 17, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Meghan Trainor burst into the public consciousness with her 2014 hit “All About That Bass,” which was accompanied by a triple-platinum album and loads of subsequent success. Two more albums followed, as did judging roles on the British version of The Voice, and perhaps more important to this conversation, a singing competition called The Four, where she was on a panel with Sean Combs and DJ Khaled. That show is where Trainor first encountered the spectacular singing voice of VINCINT, who wowed h...
Jun 10, 2021•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s Talkhouse podcast started with a little bit of serendipity in the form of album release dates: Both of our guests, Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast and producer/musician/former Vampire Weekend guy Rostam, have excellent records coming out on June 4. They’re also fans of each other’s work, so we figured it made plenty of sense to put them together. Zauner’s album, her third under the Japanese Breakfast name, is called Jubilee, and as you’ll hear in this conversation, it took a delibe...
Jun 03, 2021•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Gethard is a comedian whose stories are often so serious and touching that they make people cry, and Jeff Rosenstock writes and sings heartfelt songs that are also witty and funny enough to make you laugh. So it’s no wonder that these two are friends and comrades in arms: From practically the moment they met, they could tell they were on the same page. Gethard has had a boundary-defying career that I’ll try and fail to quickly encapsulate here. He’s been a stand-up comedian, but perhaps mo...
May 27, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blake Mills has the kind of resume that might make the average person feel really lazy. Not only is he an active musician, but also a Grammy-winning producer (for Alabama Shakes’ 2015 album Sound and Color), a collaborator to the stars—including the likes of Fiona Apple and Bob Dylan—and most recently, one of the guys in charge of the legendary Sound City studio in L.A. Mills’ newest musical project is a collaboration with legendary bassist Pino Palladino called Notes With Attachments. Just prio...
May 20, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we revisit a chat from last year, featuring Mac DeMarco and Dayglow's Sloan Struble. The second Dayglow album, Harmony House, comes out May 21. Check it out! ------------------- On this week’s show, a young gun picks a veteran’s brain. A youngish veteran, admittedly — Mac DeMarco’s only 30, but compared to 21 year old Spotify-wunderkind Sloan Struble, aka Dayglow, he’s already spent a lifetime in the music industry trenches. The two take in a lot in this conversation. We hear Mac’s or...
May 13, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The way that Mary Lattimore and Sarah Neufeld met is kind of a rock and roll dream. Lattimore went to see Neufeld’s band, Arcade Fire, before they were huge stars, and they got to talking. When Lattimore mentioned that she’d be moving to Philadelphia soon, Neufeld and her bandmates asked her to perform with them—so her first time playing on stage outside a more classical setting was in front of a huge Arcade Fire crowd, and it gave her the performing bug. Both Neufeld and Lattimore have released...
May 06, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s no secret that Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard deeply admires Norman Blake’s band, Teenage Fanclub. In fact, he’s called 1991’s masterpiece Bandwagonesque his favorite album of all time; he loves it so much that just a few years ago, he recorded and released a cover of the entire thing. With that album turning 30 this year, and with a fantastic new Teenage Fanclub album, Endless Arcade, out this week it seemed the perfect time to get the two together. For this conversation, the two old fr...
Apr 29, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Merrill Garbus and Jenn Wasner released monumental records just a week apart this year: Tune-Yards fifth album—sixth if you count their score to Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You—is called Sketchy, and it’s as puzzling and progressive as you’ve hopefully come to expect. Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner are never content to rest on their past glories: They’re always searching for new modes of thought and expression, and Garbus’ lyrics meld the personal and political into one fiery concoction....
Apr 22, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, we have two artists who recently became writer-directors after finding success in other creative fields: singer-songwriter Bonnie McKee and actor Carlson Young. McKee, a Grammy-nominated hit songwriter best known for her collaborations with Katy Perry, is now on the festival circuit with her powerful and very personal short April Kills the Vibe, while her friend Young, who broke through on the small-screen version of Scream in 2015, just made her f...
Apr 15, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast It might feel like a lifetime ago, but it was just over a year ago in February of 2020 when we got new albums from both Tame Impala and Caribou. For Kevin Parker, The Slow Rush was his fourth full-length record following an extended break after Currents. Caribou fans had a slightly longer wait for Dan Snaith's tenth record, Suddenly. Now both artists have rereleases in 2021. Kevin Parker and company recently celebrated ten years since their debut record, Innerspeaker. There's a new behind-the-sc...
Apr 08, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sharon van Etten and Jamie Stewart met a few years ago, when producer John Congleton recommended the Xiu Xiu frontman as a contributor to the singer-songwriter's 2019 album, Remind Me Tomorrow. Though their music isn't super similar sounding, each traffics in a kind of emotional honesty that's difficult to pull off but incredibly rewarding. Van Etten contributed vocals to the song "Sad Mezcalita" on Xiu Xiu's new all-duets album, OH NO, and the two chat about that collaboration here, along with ...
Apr 01, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we hear from old friends Dan Deacon and the members of Future Islands. Both came up in the super fertile Baltimore scene, and both released new albums in 2020. Future Islands asked Deacon to remix their recent track "For Sure," and he took it to epic new heights, which they discuss on this chat—along with the reality of staying home during the pandemic, what their writing/road-testing/recording processes are like, and a brand new genre that they hope to create w...
Mar 25, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Two very funny people have a very funny conversation on this week's Talkhouse Podcast: Michael Ian Black and Jen Spyra. Black you probably know as part of the sketch-comedy troupe The State, or from his many podcasts—the latest is Obscure—or maybe one of his books, including last year's more serious A Better Man. Jen Spyra just released her first book, a collection of darkly hilarious short stories called Big Time. The two were fans of each other's work before their chat, but you can hear them g...
Mar 18, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Bird and Jimbo Mathus have known each other for decades, going back to the beginning of Bird's solo career and Mathus' earliest days with Squirrel Nut Zippers. Most of their work together has been assistive—Bird would add his fiddle to the Zippers' records, and Mathus would return the favor with some horns. But a couple of years back, the old friends decided to write some songs together, and the result is These 13, a truly collaborative album featuring just their voices, guitar, and fiddl...
Mar 11, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Todd Rundgren is a legendary musician and producer whose list of credits is impressive as the man himself is down to earth. He had his own string of pop hits—including the novelty song “Bang on the Drum All Day”—and experimental albums, both as a solo artist and with the Nazz. He produced Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, as well as New York Dolls’ self-titled debut, one of the most influential. This month, he’s been on the “Clearly Human” tour, which—du...
Mar 04, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Ness and Ben Nichols both front bands that blur the already-blurry genre lines between punk, Americana, country, and more—so it's no surprise that the two get along. Nichols' band, Lucero, opened for Ness' band, Social Distortion, on a tour about a decade ago, and the two hit it off. Since then, Lucero returned the favor by taking out Jade Jackson's band—which features Ness' son Julian on guitar. The occasion for this Talkhouse conversation is the release of Lucero's newest album, When You ...
Feb 25, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tamara Lindeman and Julia Jacklin are spending the pandemic thousands of miles away from each other, but you’d never know if from the closeness of this Talkhouse chat. Lindeman, who’s based in Canada, just released her fifth album as The Weather Station—and Ignorance is already making waves. It got the coveted Best New Music designation from Pitchfork, as well as a five-star review in The Guardian, both well deserved. Jacklin, who’s from Australia, finished touring her last album, Crushing, not ...
Feb 18, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the third episode of McIntosh's "for the love of music..." podcast series presented by Talkhouse, Elia Einhorn spoke with one of the most recognizable names in popular jazz and soul: Gregory Porter. Gregory has been using his powerful baritone on both Broadway and concert stages for decades. His smooth take on classic American pop forms has earned him critical accolades, and fans the world over. The multiple Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has long had an intense touring schedule, and while ...
Feb 11, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jenny Lewis—she of Rilo Kiley, The Postal Service, and numerous excellent solo albums—met Chicago rapper Serengeti when they were both performers at the PEOPLE Festival in Berlin, back in 2018. They struck up a fast friendship that led to Serengeti asking Lewis to provide some music—a very specific amount of music—for him to rhyme over. They’ve since released two excellent songs together via Lewis’ Love’s Way label, “Unblu” and “Vroom Vroom,” and there are more on the way, as you’ll hear in thei...
Feb 11, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, the iconic actor Viggo Mortensen sits down with his longtime friend and fellow filmmaker Alix Lambert. The occasion for their talk is the release of Falling, Mortensen’s debut as writer-director, an intense family drama starring Lance Henriksen, Laura Linney and Mortensen himself. In a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation, Mortensen and Lambert discuss not only Falling and the pandemic, but also Viggo’s musical collaborations with the guitarist B...
Feb 04, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
