Talkhouse Podcast

This episode originally aired on December 16, 2021. We’ve hosted some incredible Talkhouse Podcast 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 herself and pushed herself into new spaces. Dessner is of course a founding member of the National, with whom he’s played for the past 20+ years. While his main band slowed down over the past couple of years, Dessner has been operating at hyperspeed. He was one of the main co-writers and producers on Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore albums. He won an Album of the Year Grammy for the former, and was nominated for five more Grammys for the latter. He somehow also

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of singer-songwriters who’ve taken interesting names for what are essentially solo ventures: Kevin Sullivan, aka. Field Medic, and Kristian Matsson, better known as the Tallest Man on Earth.  Matsson has been making music as the Tallest Man since about 2006, winning fans both with his largely spare, Bob Dylan-like songs and his incredibly forceful live shows. Though he’s from Sweden, Matsson is definitely influenced by the American folk tradition, especially on his early records, like the classic 2008 debut Shallow Grave. He’s since released a handful of excellent albums, and in this conversation with Kevin Sullivan, he drops some hints about a new one that he’s really excited about to be released in 2023. In the meantime, the Tallest Man on Earth just released his first all-covers album, and though he downplays it a little bit, it’s pretty amazing. It’s called Too Late for Edelweiss, and on it he covers songs written by everyone from Hank Williams to Bon Iver

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a hardcore legend and a fierce Ukrainian bandleader who recently worked on a record together: Walter Schreifels and Eugene Hutz. Hutz is the founder, chief songwriter, and energetic frontman of Gogol Bordello, which has combined elements of punk, folk, Eastern European, Latin, and myriad other types of music for the past 20+ years. It’s a remarkable career that’s taken Hutz from his birthplace, Ukraine, to places as far flung as Vermont, Brazil, and New York’s Lower East Side. He’s also had forays into the film world, collaborated with everybody from Madonna to Primus, and gotten crowds jumping at pretty much every festival you can think of. The war in Ukraine has naturally been on Hutz’s mind, and he’s organized benefits and spoken up loudly about it this past year. At least one song on the brand new Gogol Bordello album addresses it directly. Speaking of that record, Solidartine, and Hutz’s penchant for collaboration, it was produced by Walter Schreifels. Check out

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve gathered three guys for a very focused discussion about one of the year’s most exciting horror movies: Ti West, Tyler Bates, and Tim Williams. Ti West is a director who’s made his name with a string of what I guess you’d call indie-horror movies—though I’m not sure that does justice to the kind of auteurist vision he has. With films like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, he revealed a truly singular style. He tried his hand at a Western with the wild and wooly In A Valley of Violence in 2016, but returned to his horror roots this year with a pair of movies filmed back to back: X, which came out in March, and its prequel, Pearl, which is just hitting theaters now. For these two movies, which both star Mia Goth, West hooked up with indie powerhouse A24, which as you’ll hear in this chat, made a big bet on these two films—and since this chat took place, have now committed to a third in the franchise. If you like creepy, stylish horror, definitely check them out. A

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we have a pair of French electronic music pioneers who recently teamed up alongside a DJ who’s been responsible for some of the most exciting production of the past 20+ years: Braxe and Falcon with A-Trak. Alan Braxe and his cousin Stephane Quem—aka DJ Falcon—are legends of French house music going back decades: Braxe was one-third of the trio Stardust alongside Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter. They famously released just one song in 1998 before splitting up, but “Music Sounds Better With You” is a classic of the genre. Falcon’s biggest claim to fame might also be Daft Punk adjacent: He co-wrote and co-produced their song “Contact,” from 2013’s Random Access Memories. And though they’ve obviously been acquainted forever, Braxe and Falcon only recently came together for a project, and it’s pretty amazing. Their debut EP, Step By Step, includes a killer title track with an appearance by Panda Bear. Braxe and Falcon will make their live debut in November with two U.S. shows, one in

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a conversation between two young performers who are just this week starting a huge tour together: Marcus King and Neal Francis. King is a blues-rock prodigy who, at 26, already has a lifetime of music under his belt—both as leader of the Marcus King Band and, more recently, as a solo artist. Though he wasn’t alive for the 1970s, King clearly has an affinity for that decade, with nods in his music to players like Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top. He’s earned a huge following over the years, which makes sense since he’s been gigging since his teens. King’s first solo disc, 2020’s El Dorado, earned him a Grammy nomination, and for the brand new Youngblood he once again hooked up with producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. It’s a scorcher. Check out a little bit of “Hard Working Man” from Youngblood, from a recent performance on Jimmy Fallon's show. Neal Francis is similarly enamored of 1970s sounds, though he leans more toward the funk and soul sides of things. Francis was in

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of fantastic songwriters from the indie-rock world: Kenny Becker and Doug Martsch. Martsch I’m guessing our listeners will know as the chief songwriter and sole consistent member of Built to Spill, the band that made Boise, Idaho famous. Built to Spill has been an ongoing concern since the early 1990s, releasing a ton of great albums at a fairly leisurely pace, including stone classics like There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and Keep it Like a Secret. The Built to Spill lineup has mutated a bunch of times over the years, and that’s never been more true than for the genesis of their latest album, When the Wind Forgets Your Name. Writing and recording the album was done with members of the Brazilian band Orua, but the latest live lineup features Martsch alongside a pair of incredibly talented young women from up-and-coming bands: Prism Bitch’s Teresa Esguerra and Blood Lemon’s Melanie Radford. They bring a new energy to this storied band. Check out the hilarious

New from Talkhouse: Join Björk in conversations with collaborators about her sound experiences. In the podcast you’ll learn about the moods, timbers, and tempos that vibrate through each album. Subscribe at: https://pod.link/bjork

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve paired a couple of friends who recently worked together on an incredible project: Ethan Hawke and Hamilton Leithauser. Ethan Hawke you surely know as the Academy Award-nominated actor in a million great films, from Reality Bites to Training Day to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy to 2018’s First Reformed. Hawke is also a writer and director, and the impetus for today’s conversation is his six-part HBO Max documentary The Last Movie Stars. The series tells the story of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, both their personal lives as a married couple and their professional lives as two monumental actors of their generation. Far from a typical documentary, The Last Movie Stars uses archival footage alongside dramatizations of interviews featuring current movie stars. It even gets a bit meta, with Hawke revealing some of his process during the series via Zoom calls with contemporaries. It’s a fascinating way to tell this incredible story. Another way that Hawke brought this s

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of old friends with a ton of records and history between them: Kelley Stoltz and Spiral Stairs. Spiral Stairs—aka. Scott Kannberg—is a founding member of indie-rock kingpins Pavement, a band he formed in Stockton, California with his high school friend Stephen Malkmus. What started as a noisy, ramshackle outfit bloomed into one of the most important and influential bands of the 1990s. Their albums have only grown in stature over the years, getting the sort of deluxe reissue treatment that was once reserved only for the gods of classic rock. And though Pavement split up in 1999, they’ve reunited twice—and are about to launch a pretty hefty tour of the US and Europe. Outside of Pavement, Kannberg has kept plenty busy releasing music under both his Spiral Stairs moniker and, for a while, as Preston School of Industry. He’s had an incredibly prolific last few years, too, releasing three albums since 2017—the latest is the fantastic Medley Attack!!! It was a recor

To celebrate the release of the new Deftones album Ohms, we paired frontman Chino Moreno with his old friend and tourmate — and long-time Deftones fan! — comedian/musician Reggie Watts for a Talkhouse Podcast conversation. The guys were very psyched to catch up, and their freewheeling talk took in the making of the new Deftones LP; the ups and downs of long-term collaborations; their very different writing and recording approaches; and… bikes. Turns out they're both waaay into bikes. Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast. —Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer For this week’s episode, everyone you hear recorded themselves. Our producer is Mark Yoshizumi. The Talkhouse Podcast theme song was composed and performed by The Range.

In Listening, a new series from Talkhouse and Mailchimp Presents, we invite some of the world’s most beloved and inventive musicians to create new compositions that allow us to intimately experience a time and a place in their lives. We’ll join each artist to hear about the creation of their piece, how deeper listening informs their process and how that practice can enrich all of our lives. Subscribe today!

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two old friends whose bands started around the same time, and who’ve had very different albums hit the 20-year-mark recently: Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World and Davey von Bohlen of the Promise Ring. I had the idea to pair these guys after seeing a bunch of “best of emo” lists floating around the internet ether lately, and it reminded me of the heady days of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and how many fond memories I have of those times. I saw the Promise Ring and Jimmy Eat World plenty of times back then; full disclosure: I was then and am now friends with the guys in the Promise Ring. It occurred to me that while the two bands had been on similar trajectories back then, that they diverged right around 20 years ago in a really interesting way. I figured it’d be fun to reconnect them and see what they had to say about it. The Promise Ring were at the top of the emo heap in the late 1990s, though everybody hated that word with a passion back then. They were early fans o

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a comedian and a musician who recently joined forces to make a music video: Joe Pera and Dan Wriggins. Joe Pera is a stand-up comedian who’s best known as the star and creator of Joe Pera Talks With You, the Adult Swim TV show about the beautifully modest existence of a middle-school choir instructor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s a show unlike anything else on TV, past or present, and it’s a direct reflection of Pera’s unassuming comedic persona: In other words, it’s hard to tell where Joe Pera the character ends and Joe Pera the guy begins. It’s also insightful, weird, and decidedly sweet. And while the show just finished its three-season run recently, it won’t be the last the world sees of Pera. In fact, he’s in the midst of a stand-up tour right now, and you can find dates at joepera.com. Oh, and he also just landed the role of James Bond, which you can hear all about on his recent Seth Meyers appearance. Seems like kind of a big deal. Yet Pera still has tim

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got what might seem at first to be an unusual pairing, but that has its genesis in some serious fandom: Taylor Bennett and Matt Johnson. Taylor Bennett is a musician, entrepreneur, and community activist who has helped guide the career of his older brother Chance the Rapper while also busting genres on his own records. Bennett is a restless musician, rarely content to make the same moves twice. He raps and sings, and has proudly been sample-free on his last few records. A few years back, he released Be Yourself, a manifesto of sorts that championed inclusivity and positivity—he also told the world around the same time that he’s proudly bisexual. For this year’s Coming of Age, Bennett once again found inspiration in all different kinds of music, even bringing in some guests from various areas on the musical spectrum. One guest he was particularly excited to work with was Matt Johnson of Matt and Kim, the New York indie duo behind some of the past two decades’ most invigo

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve paired up a couple of old friends and onetime tourmates, Sharon Van Etten and Jonathan Meiburg. This pairing was especially fun for me, since I had the pleasure of putting these two together in a different context many years ago, when I was editor of The A.V. Club: Sharon and Jonathan performed an amazing version of the Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” for the site’s A.V. Undercover series. Seeing their faces together brought back that fun memory, and it was great seeing them reconnect. 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 affairs, but she burst from the seams with subsequent releases. In 2019, she released Remind Me Tomorrow, which brought in bigger sounds and colors and an entirely different kind of confidence to her songwriting and

This week we’re revisiting a Talkhouse episode that was originally released in October of 2020, when perhaps you missed it because you had other things on your mind. It happens. This one features a great chat between two women at different phases in their careers: Carly Rae Jepsen and mxmtoon. You might recognize mxmtoon’s name from her podcast 365 Days, which is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Speaking of, did you know we have a network full of other great shows, including Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, Sing for Science, Craig Finn’s brand new podcast That’s How I Remember It, and What Had Happened Was with Open Mike Eagle? We do! Anyway, just before this episode, Carly Rae and mxmtoon had just collaborated on a track called “Ok on your own,” and they dove right into a great conversation about songwriting and much, much more. Check it out, and we’ll be back with a brand new episode next week!   To celebrate Carly Rae Jepsen and mxmtoon's rad collab track "ok on your own," we paired the pop stars for

On this Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got one of those chats that feels like it’s going to lead to something bigger down the road: Jonathan Davis and Danny Brown. Neither of these guys probably needs an introduction, but here goes anyway: Jonathan Davis is the frontman of the band Korn, which basically invented a sound and subsequent genre about 30 years ago. I’m not sure if people still say “nu metal,” but whatever you want to call it, it never really seemed to leave the cultural zeitgeist once it took hold. Korn always seemed to have a wider variety of influences than some of their peers, taking bits and pieces from goth, metal, and hip-hop to make a strange new brew. They’ve released an impressive 14 albums, taking stylistic turns like 2011’s The Path of Totality, which incorporated dubstep and drum-and-bass elements. The band’s latest is Requiem, which was written and recorded during Covid’s enforced ban on touring. It’s a bit of a return to their classic sound, and it’s gotten incredibly positive reviews from

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of musicians who both suffer from the effects of LSD—that’s lead singer disease—Stuart Murdoch and Ramesh Srivastava. Ramesh was and is now again the lead singer and chief creative force behind the Austin, Texas band Voxtrot, which burned bright but maybe too quick in the early 2000s. They released a series of rapturously received EPs and one LP that were beloved by fans of deeply British institutions like Sarah Records and The Smiths. But the band had split by 2010, and Ramesh went on to release a pair of solo albums that didn’t quite have the impact his band did. For a while, he was content to leave Voxtrot in the past, but gathering material for two reissues gave him the spark to get thing going again. The next few months will see the release of both Early Music—which gathers the band’s beloved EPs—and Cut from the Stone, which features rarities and B-sides. And then, like some unstoppable force of nature, Voxtrot will tour the U.S. again. Dates can be foun

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters who are meeting for the first time, which we haven’t had in an episode in quite a while. Martin Courtney and Tim Darcy. Until recently, Darcy was the frontman of the band Ought, which released three fantastic, brainy art-punk albums from their home base of Montreal—despite the fact that Darcy is, in fact, “secretly American.” Ought split up pre-pandemic but that wasn’t really public news until the announcement of the existence of Darcy’s new band, Cola, which he started just a couple of years ago along with Ought bassist Ben Stidworthy and Weather Station/US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright. Just last month, Cola released their debut album, Deep In View, and it feels like a sort of back-to-basics take on their old band—but still fresh and exciting. Darcy is a guy who takes his lyrics seriously, and though he clearly had a great time making the record, there’s a darkness to it that recalls the best post-punk and trebly art-rock of the past 40 years,