We’ve got a bit of a strange one for you on this week's Talkhouse Podcast. Back during the darkest days of the pandemic, we hosted an Instagram live chat between Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and actor/musician Joe Keery, who at the time was best known as part of the cast of Stranger Things. Keery is also a musician, having released music with his band Post Animal, and he was just starting to release music under the name Djo. Keery had a pretty big viral hit with a Djo song this year: You may ...
Aug 01, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a fantastic chat featuring three boundary-pushing musicians that turns into a lovefest: It’s Daniel Lopatin, better known as Oneohtrix Point Never, along with David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, who were known together as Gastr del Sol. Lopatin has created an incredible body of experimental records over the past 20 or so years. His woozy, sample-heavy early material had him pegged as the inventor of vaporwave, but he never stays in the same musical place ve...
Jul 25, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got what might seem like an unlikely pairing, but one that makes sense when you dive into it: Rick Mitarotonda from Goose and M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger. If you’re not into the jam-band world, Goose might not be super familiar to you yet, but in that world, the Connecticut band is absolutely massive, moving from clubs to amphitheaters over the past few years. And while jam bands themselves are pretty common—the barrier to entry isn’t super high—ve...
Jul 18, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters who’ve both been through some tough times and emerged all the better for them: Ruston Kelly and Sasha Alex Sloan. There was no disguising the fact that Ruston Kelly’s third album, last year’s The Weakness, was deeply informed by his divorce from singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves, with lines like “My marriage ended and I moved up north to mend.” But the album isn’t weepy or wallowing; in fact, it’s musically the most lively piece of...
Jul 11, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 27, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 al...
Jun 20, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 13, 2024•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 musici...
Jun 06, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 30, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 23, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 th...
May 16, 2024•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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-h...
May 09, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 catal...
May 02, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Gon...
Apr 25, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Flee...
Apr 18, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 h...
Apr 11, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Ji...
Apr 04, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cere...
Mar 28, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 a...
Mar 21, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 def...
Mar 14, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Mar 07, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 th...
Feb 29, 2024•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 22, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 fir...
Feb 15, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello and welcome to the Talkhouse Podcast, I’m Josh Modell. On this week’s episode we’ve got a pair of friends who, as you’ll hear, have provided emotional support and advice to each other throughout interesting, winding careers over the past couple of decades; Mary Timony and Joe Wong. Timony is probably best known as the leader of the ‘90s indie-rock band Helium, but her catalog goes far beyond it. Prior to Helium, Timony came up in the DC punk scene as part of the band Autoclave, and after s...
Feb 08, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of visionary artists who came from different backgrounds but ended up in the same place—sort of. Dawn Richard jumped into the deep end when she auditioned for the reality show Making the Band 3 back in 2004. She made the cut and subsequently became part of the Diddy-manufactured girl group Danity Kane, which hit it pretty big for several years. Richard then formed Dirty Money, which eventually added Diddy himself as a member. But Richard’s artist...
Feb 01, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of friends who make sometimes challenging yet often incredibly catchy and tuneful music, one of whom you’ve seen and heard on Talkhouse several times before: Mac DeMarco and Kirin J. Callinan. DeMarco has been on the podcast before, and we keep inviting him both because we love his music and because he’s a great conversationalist. For the music part, DeMarco has been making dizzyingly catchy songs since around 2012, when his confusingly titled de...
Jan 25, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got two guys whose work I’ve admired for decades, but who I never realized were as close as they are personally: David Wain and Craig Wedren. Wain is a writer-director-actor (and more) who first came to fame with the hilarious sketch-comedy group The State, whose mid-'90s MTV show was and is a cult sensation—and still holds up to this day. Proof of that: The State has been doing reunion shows recently, and today’s podcast was inspired by the fact that I sa...
Jan 18, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello and welcome to the Talkhouse Podcast, I’m Josh Modell. On this week’s episode we’ve got the return of one of our favorite repeat guests in conversation with an equally fantastic songwriter making her first Talkhouse Podcast appearance. Sharon Van Etten is a singer and songwriter who’s been making records for the past decade plus, growing and changing and taking chances in exactly the way you hope truly talented people will. Her amazing early records were quietly intense, very confessional ...
Jan 11, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got an episode for the drummers and those who like a great story: Jon Wurster and Stewart Copeland. Copeland is of course the drummer for the legendary, gazillion-selling Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Police, who were called “the biggest band in the world” during their mid-'80s heyday. Their hits have endured over the decades, too, and that’s in no small part due to the special chemistry the trio enjoyed—and that chemistry, as you’ll hear, often manifest...
Jan 04, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
