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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a little more focused conversation than usual, as Matthew Houck—the driving force behind the band Phosphorescent—chats with legendary songwriter Nick Lowe, largely about Lowe’s recently reissued 2001 album The Convincer. Even if Nick Lowe’s name isn’t super familiar to you, some of his songs almost certainly are. He’s had an incredible career that stretches back to the late 1960s, with his biggest mainstream moment coming via his dear friend Elvis Cost...
Nov 04, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve put together a pair of tourmates—past and present—who are separated by decades but united by a deep respect of American music: Patterson Hood and Carl Nichols. Patterson Hood has been in rock bands since he was a pre-teen, and he’s been the co-leader of Drive-By Truckers since 1996. The band has explored the sounds and ideas of Southern rock—Hood is from Alabama—over the years, with sounds and lyrics that stretch the boundaries well beyond the world of Lyn...
Oct 28, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week’s Talkhouse conversation features a pair of performers who came up in the ‘90s, and who have followed each other’s careers since: Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, and Joan Wasser, aka. Joan as Police Woman. Tim Burgess has had a fascinatingly diverse career: He first came to prominence as singer of the Charlatans, who were part of the early '90s Madchester scene along with the likes of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. But unlike many of their contemporaries, the Charlatans have had a l...
Oct 21, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s Talkhouse Podcast episode, we rounded up a pair of friends who deeply admire each other’s playing and songwriting—and who ultimately met because of a different episode of the Talkhouse Podcast: Kurt Vile and Julia Shapiro. Kurt Vile first came into music fans’ consciousness as part of The War On Drugs, though it wasn’t long before he decided to dedicate his time to his solo material. He’s released a string of incredible albums since, including 2013’s instant classic Wakin’ On A P...
Oct 14, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters separated by a generation, but united by a serious dedication to the craft: Carl Newman and Liam Kazar. Carl Newman—aka. A.C. Newman—is best known as the gravitational center of The New Pornographers, the lark of a supergroup that he started back in 1997 but that quickly found great enough success that it became his main gig. As you perhaps already know, the band also features the prodigious talents of Neko Case and Destroyer’s Dan...
Oct 07, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, Tiller Russell – the man behind both the doc series The Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer and real-life drama Silk Road – sits down with Oscar winner Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee’s screenwriting partner on BlacKkKlansman, Chiraq and Da 5 Bloods and a fine director in his own right om films such as C.S.A: Confederate States of America and The 24th. In a fascinating conversation, the two filmmakers discuss the parallels between their work, the...
Sep 30, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of friends who both happen to have new but very different projects out this month: Amber Tamblyn and Mac McCaughan. Tamblyn is an actor-writer-director-poet-activist with a wildly diverse resume. She may be best known for roles on Joan of Arcadia and Two and a Half Men, but that’s only the tip of a pretty incredible iceberg. She’s written well received books of poetry—including 2015’s Dark Sparkler. She directed the 2016 film Paint it Black, wh...
Sep 23, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a fabulous cross-generational conversation between two women separated by a good number of years but united by a punk spirit: Kathy Valentine of The Go-Go’s and Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13. It’s no overstatement to say that Kathy Valentine has a massive place in music history as part of The Go-Go’s, who burst from the L.A. punk scene of the late ‘70s and into the musical mainstream in the early ‘80s. They were the first (and still only!) all...
Sep 16, 2021•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Comedian Joe Pera (Joe Pera Talks With You) and singer-songwriter David Bazan (Pedro The Lion) have elevated self-aware open-heartedness and detailed observation of humanity into, well, art. When David discovered Joe's show, he fell for it hard, and reached out to Talkhouse to see if we could arrange a convo. We loved the idea, and think you'll really enjoy the result. Joe and David discuss a lot, including: their granular writing techniques; appreciating the gentle joys of life, like wearing gr...
Sep 09, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a lively conversation between a pair of Nashville friends who also happen to be incredible songwriters and performers: Margo Price and Tristen. Price grew up in small town Illinois, but made her way to Music City and played in a couple of pop-leaning bands before giving into the allure of country music. (It can be hard not to, and she’s great at it.) After going solo, Price released a pair of albums on Jack White’s Nashville-based Third Man Records and...
Sep 02, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got one of those fun conversations where the reverence is on full display from the get-go. When we asked singer-songwriter Beabadoobee who she’d be interested in speaking with for the podcast, she immediately responded Nina Persson of The Cardigans—one of her heroes, as you’ll hear. For those unfamiliar with Beabadoobee, she was born in the Philippines, raised in London, and found fame over the past couple of years via social media platforms like TikTok. ...
Aug 26, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
