Talkhouse Podcast

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got everyone’s favorite Canadian twin-sister duo Tegan and Sara in conversation with powerhouse songwriter and artist LP. Now LP has had a fascinating, winding career in the music business, starting out in the late ‘90s as a performer whose incredible voice attracted lots of attention in the industry—you’ll hear about that in this chat—but who ended up kind of going through the wringer of that system. But LP turned their attention to writing songs for other people, which had an immediate and far-reaching effect: LP’s compositions have been hits for the likes of Rihanna and Celine Dion, and for a while it seemed like that’s where LP’s career would stay. But a return to performing about ten years ago has born some incredible fruit, and with a big personality like LP’s, it’s not surprising that TikTok and other social media has embraced them. LP’s latest album is the powerful Love Lines, check out “Dayglow” from that album, and catch LP on tour in the US right now through

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got an award-winning multi-hyphenate that you may have seen on TV, a Broadway stage, or packing out a big theater near you in conversation with a guy whose equally riveting work has mostly been behind the scenes: Sara Bareilles and Rob Moose. I’m not sure where to begin with Sara Bareilles’ resume: She found fame with her music, with songs like “Brave” and “Love Song” topping the charts. But in addition to making huge records, she’s been a judge on NBC’s The Sing-Off, she wrote the music and lyrics for—then eventually starred in—the Broadway production of Waitress, and she co-created the Apple TV series Little Voice and acted in the Peacock series Girls5Eva. And honestly, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. You will be surprised by how remarkably down to earth she seems in this conversation—I was.  Rob Moose met Bareilles when he was asked to do some string arrangements for her at a Lincoln Center event organized by Ben Folds. For the past 20 years, that’s the kin

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we have the pleasure of reuniting two intensely creative individuals who first worked together decades ago: Emily Haines and Olivier Assayas. Haines is, of course, the singer and primary songwriter for the band Metric, which she’s been fronting for the past 20-plus years, and which sprang from the same fertile Canadian scene that gave the world Broken Social Scene and Stars, among many others—in fact, it’s Haines’ voice that you hear on Broken Social Scene’s biggest (and I would argue best) song, “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl.” But her primary focus over the years has of course been Metric, which just released their ninth album of thought-provoking indie-rock anthems, Formentera II. It’s a sequel to the excellent album they released exactly a year prior, and another collection of danceable, fantastic songs. Check out “Just the Once,” from Formentera II, which Haines describes as “regret disco.” So what does a catchy Canadian indie band have to do with a fearless Frenc

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, a band that’s been releasing blistering music since 20

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of performers and songwriters whose work joyfully throws genre out the window in search of something bigger: Robert Glasper and Emily King. Glasper started his career pretty firmly in the jazz world, though as you’ll hear in this conversation he really started out by playing in churches in his native Texas. But in 2012 he released an album called Black Radio with his electric quartet, the Robert Glasper Experiment, which gleefully knocked down boundaries between jazz and hip-hop, and featured such artists as Erykah Badu and Lupe Fiasco—not to mention an awesome cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” His catalog before and since is too broad and varied to cover in any depth here, but in addition to jazz and R&B records, he’s done a bunch of movie and TV work—including a bit of acting, which you’ll hear about—won a handful of Grammys, and helped curate the Blue Note Jazz Festival, another topic of conversation here. Right now he’s in the middle of “Robtober,” his m

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of musicians with interesting backgrounds: one in computer engineering, the other in stand-up comedy. It’s Vagabon and Jaboukie. Vagabon, aka New Yorker Lætitia Tamko, just released her third album under the name, and as you’ll hear in this chat, it had been four years since her last. But Sorry I Haven’t Called was worth the wait, and another cool stylistic leap. Tamko’s first album, Infinite Worlds, felt like a fresh take on indie-rock; her second, a self-titled record from 2019, dipped more into more varied electronic pop. But Sorry I Haven’t Called, which was partly produced by former Vampire Weekend guy Rostam, takes things even a step further, with an eye toward something even bigger and bolder. And even though the songs were inspired by a dark time in Tamko’s life, they turned out incredibly buoyant and upbeat. Check out “Lexicon” right here. Jaboukie Young-White is best known as a stand-up comic, writer, and actor: You may have experienced his jokes on

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of artists who got to know each other over the course of the pandemic, and who got together in the same room for this chat—which is still kind of a rarity these days: Sarah Tudzin and Alex Lahey. Sarah Tudzin is best known as the mastermind behind Illuminati Hotties, the band she started as sort of an extension of her production and engineering work, which includes contributions to albums and songs by Boygenius, the Armed, and Eliza McLamb. As Illuminati Hotties, she creates pointed, sometimes funny, always catchy songs that she once described as “tenderpunk,” which is kind of perfect. Check out a little bit of “freequent letdown” from Illuminati Hotties’ 2020 release Free I.H., an album/mixtape that comes with an interesting backstory you can find online. New music is supposedly forthcoming pretty soon, so keep your ears open for that. Alex Lahey was born and raised an ocean away from Tudzin, in Australia, but she’s been spending a lot more time in Los Angele

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got the frontman for a band that recently made a welcome return after a long absence, and the producer who helped him find the sounds and songs to do it: John Gourley and Jeff Bhasker. Gourley is the singer for Portugal. The Man, which started making music in their home state of Alaska back in the early 2000s before finding success and relocating to Portland, Oregon. The band has an impressive catalog that runs the pop gamut, and weirdly they hit it huge pretty deep into their career, with the 2017 song “Feel It Still,” which is still on pop radio six years later. Just this year, PTM finally released a new album, called Chris Black Changed My Life, which both mourns and celebrates the band’s close friend, for whom it’s also named. The album was also partly inspired by the daughter of Gourley and his bandmate Zoe Manville; Frances Gourley has a rare genetic disorder that’s touched on in this chat. But the album and Gourley’s story is by no means grim: He’s all about celeb

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got an actor-director you’ll likely recognize along with the musician-slash-composer who made beautiful sounds for one of his films: Jesse Eisenberg and Emile Mosseri. Eisenberg is best known as an actor; he was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, which is just one of his dozens of credits. You’ve also seen him in Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale, the Now You See Me movies, and lots of indies. He also starred in the TV drama Fleishman is in Trouble last year alongside Claire Danes and Lizzy Caplan. And if that isn’t enough, Eisenberg is also a writer, playwright, and director. His feature debut as a director came earlier this year with When You Finish Saving the World, which began life as Audible original—which he also wrote. The movie stars Julianne Moore and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard, and it was released by A24, a trademark of quality. And… segue time… music for the film was composed by today’s other guest,

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of musicians who create with an air of mystery, but who have a fantastically straightforward chat here: Ethel Cain and Adam McIlwee. Ethel Cain is a character created by Hayden Anhedonia, though one that’s been sort of all-consuming. Anhedonia began releasing music under the name in 2019, finding her sound and her vibe over the next couple of years before releasing the absolutely epic Preacher’s Daughter in May of 2022. The album, a concept collection about the life and ultimate demise of Ethel Cain, skillfully moves through sounds from a sort of Gothic Americana to slowcore to ambient sounds to who knows what, exactly, other than it’s thoroughly engaging. The album was pretty quickly hailed as a masterful debut, and Cain found herself not only the darling of the music world, but with some prominent modeling gigs as well. As you’ll hear in this chat, though, the spotlight has gotten a little bit bright for her taste lately. She’s currently on the European fest

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of young artists and friends who share more in their outlooks than they do in their sounds: Alaska Reid and Ekkstacy. Alaska Reid, despite her name, actually grew up in Montana, as you’ll hear in this chat, but she splits her time between there and Los Angeles, and you can sort of hear that in her music—polished indie-rock that’s got an edge you kind of have to look for. She’s released a bunch of fantastic singles over the past couple of years, and just last month released her debut album, Disenchanter. You may have seen Reid opening for the likes of Charli XCX or Caroline Polachek, and she’ll embark on a headlining U.S. tour this September, and it’ll probably be your one and only chance to see her play in relatively small venues for a while. Check out “French Fries” from Disenchanter right here. Ekkstacy is a Canadian musician who makes emotional songs that are deeply indebted to early-’80s new wave—a sound he definitely didn’t experience firsthand, since he’

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two guys who were part of monumentally influential bands in the 2000s, and who continue to make groundbreaking music today: Paul Maroon and Noah Lennox.  Maroon is behind the incredible, instantly recognizable guitar sound of The Walkmen, a band that sort of split up a decade ago but reunited just this year for what has turned into an incredibly jubilant tour. The band is currently in Europe, where they just played a show in Lennox’s adopted home country of Portugal, and they’ll return for a string of U.S. dates this fall, culminating in a hometown—that’d be New York—show in October. Since the Walkmen split, Maroon has mostly turned his attention to composing classical music and the occasional film score. He put out a really engaging record with the pianist Jenny Lin called 13 Short Piano Pieces, with each of those pieces inspired by and named for a different place Maroon has lived—he currently calls Seville, Spain home. Check out “El Raval” right here, and go to Pau

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a very mellow, very lovely conversation between a woman known for her gorgeous voice and heartfelt songwriting and a man known for, as he calls it, “wobbly saxophone,” Beth Orton and Alabaster dePlume. Beth Orton has been making beautiful, often heartbreaking songs since the early 1990s, when she was a leading light in what I think is a now-forgotten genre called “folktronica.” She first found notice by contributing vocals to a few Chemical Brothers songs, then broke out with her timeless debut album Trailer Park in 1996. She has since created a lovely and varied body of work that’s explored a variety of sounds but that’s tied together by her unforgettable voice. Orton’s latest album is from last year: It’s called Weather Alive, which to me sounds like a spiritual heir to Van Morrison’s classic Astral Weeks, which may in part be because it features the saxophone playing of today’s other guest, Alabaster dePlume. Check out a little bit of “Fractals” right here, and de

 On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of singers who’ve devoted themselves, in slightly different ways, to keeping traditional music alive: Shirley Collins and Radie Peat. Collins is 88, and she’s had a pretty strange and incredible career. She started performing traditional songs in the mid-1950s, and she notably left England in 1959 to travel the United States with Alan Lomax, recording songs and singers in Appalachia and elsewhere that may otherwise have been lost to history. She recorded some incredibly influential records in the '60s and '70s with Davy Graham and, separately, with her sister Dolly Collins. And then Shirley left music entirely. It wasn’t until the 2000s that unlikely underground musicians would coax her back to performing: British apocalyptic-folk-industrial band Current 93 were the first, strangely. It wasn’t until 2014—38 years after her last album—that Collins made a new one, and it was gorgeous and well received. She’s since released a couple more, all for the hip Domin

On this week’s Talkhouse episode we’ve got two guys who’ve known each other for decades, and who have a popular podcast, a post-hardcore band, and a new novel between them: Geoff Rickly and Jonah Bayer. Now Geoff Rickly is best known as the singer of the band Thursday, whose 2001 album Full Collapse is rightly considered a touchstone in the post-hardcore/screamo genre. That band had a full and varied existence, creating an impressive catalog that they still occasionally tour on. Rickly has also been part of other wild and wooly outfits: He stood in for the singer of legendary vampire-hardcore band Ink & Dagger for a tour, after their singer passed away—you’ll hear about that band in this conversation. But most recently, Rickly switched his focus to writing his first novel, which just came out. Someone Who Isn’t Me is most definitely not a memoir, though it is slightly more than loosely based on Rickly’s experience in being in a band, becoming addicted to heroin, and finding a path to treatment. The other half

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got two guys who’ve been friends a long time, but recently formed a new project together. Oh, and one of them happens to be the bassist in a little band called Pearl Jam: It’s Jeff Ament and John Wicks. Now Jeff Ament you’ve surely heard of, since he’s a founding member of one of rock’s biggest and most reliable acts, Pearl Jam, who’ve been going strong and steady since the early 1990s. That band released their latest album, Gigaton, right when the pandemic first hit us, so it scuttled some touring plans, but Pearl Jam is back out on the road this fall. Ament has always been a musical seeker beyond his main gig, though, experimenting both with solo records and side projects over the years. He’s also an accomplished visual artist. Not only is Ament the hand behind Pearl Jam’s iconic stickman logo, but he’s also an incredible painter and poster artist. John Wicks is an accomplished drummer probably best known as a founding member of the band Fitz & The Tantrums, though he

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters from relatively similar locales but different generations who also happened to record a song together that’s finally coming out: Stuart Murdoch and Suki Waterhouse. Stuart Murdoch is the primary force behind the delightfully wry and smart Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, which shyly emerged from Glasgow in the mid-'90s but quickly became one of those touchstone indie bands—or as Waterhouse puts it in this chat, a legacy band. Belle and Sebastian have released a dozen terrific albums over the years, and they’re still capable of surprising their devoted fanbase. The band’s latest, Late Developers, was released early this year, hot on the heels of the band’s 11th album, A Bit of Previous. If you haven’t availed yourself of the band’s charms in recent years, this new one is a great place to jump back in. Suki Waterhouse is probably best known as an actor and model—you may have seen her in the music-focused Amazon Prime series Daisy Jones & The Six

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 manifested itself in fights between Copeland and his old bandmate Sting. Copeland has made a fascinating career for himself since; he directed a documentary about his old band that made interesting use of their music, and he’s got a new album and tour called Police Deranged for Orchestra, which features those classic songs redone in wild new ways. As you’ll hear in this chat, Copeland also found a side career as a film composer, working on everything from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street to the classic Francis Ford Coppola movie Rum

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters separated by thousands of miles who came together recently for a killer single: Remi Wolf and Benny Sings. Wolf has been writing songs since her early teens, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that her neon pop jams starting getting some social media attention. A major label came calling, and Wolf spent a good chunk of the early pandemic making her full-length debut album Juno, which she named after her recently adopted dog. It’s one of those deceptively sunny records that hides some bigger emotions inside huge hooks, and it led to a bunch of amazing singles like “Anthony Kiedis”—that’s the name of the song— and tours: Wolf will play Coachella next month. As you’ll hear in this chat, Wolf met Dutch singer-songwriter Benny Sings when both were playing a Spanish festival that had some kind of Medieval theme. Wolf was already a fan of Benny’s work, both as a performer and a producer: Not only has he released a ton of great music on his own,

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two performers who’ve got friends in common, and became fast friends themselves while recording this chat: Maya Hawke and Sabrina Teitelbaum. Maya Hawke is best known for her day job as an actor, most visibly in a little show called Stranger Things, and she was also in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the new Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City. But as you’ll hear in this chat, she might be most excited by a side path as a singer and songwriter. Hawke has released two understated but fantastic albums so far, and she’s basically finished another. The vibe is sort of indie-folk, sort of floating and ambient but lyrically really engaging. She’s worked with some cool folks to realize her musical vision, including Christian Lee Hutson, who’s the “Christian” referenced in this conversation, just so you know. Check out a “Sweet Tooth” from Hawke’s 2022 album Moss right here. Sabrina Teitelbaum just released her debut album under the name Blondshell, and i