Talkhouse Podcast

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of songwriters with plenty in common, but who came up on opposite sides of the world: Sharon Van Etten and Nadia Reid.Sharon Van Etten will be very familiar to Talkhouse listeners; we’ve been huge fans of her music from the very beginning, and have followed her—as many of you have—through her early days of more spare guitar songs to the fully fleshed-out music she’s been making in the past few years. Her latest album was Van Etten’s first to be written and recorded with a band, and that band has a name that it shares with her latest album: Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory. Working out songs with her band has resulted in a looser, somewhat more experimental Sharon Van Etten, but it’s still unmistakably her voice and vision, which is to say it’s fantastic. Check out "Idiot Box" from Sharon and the Attachment Theory's new record.Today’s other guest, as you’ll hear, is a friend of Sharon’s from New Zealand, Nadia Reid. Reid has been making music for about a decade, and her latest album, called Enter Now Brightness, came out about a month ago—on the same date as Van Etten’s new record, as a matter of fact. Though Reid is from New Zealand, you might hear bits of what could be described as Americana on her records, which are overarchingly gentle, subdued, and deep. Enter Now Brightness was recorded while Reid was pregnant with her second child, and these two talk a fair bit about motherhood in today’s episode. Check out Nadia Reid’s “Changed/Unchained” from Enter Now Brightness right here.In this chat, Van Etten and Reid talk about parenthood, including bringing your kids on tour—and Van Etten’s son makes a brief appearance as well. They also get into how your band is truly like family and who’s given them great advice over the years. Enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro1:59 – Start of the chat4:07 – "I feel like the cards are stacked against [musicians]"5:40 – On bonding with your touring band8:37 – The making of Nadia Reid's 'Enter Now Brightness'11:00 – Sharon Van Etten on good and bad days in the studio 12:47 – On writing "Seventeen"14:49 – On parenthood19:05 – Balancing kids and careers22:25 – Bringing your kids on tour25:09 – A special guest26:28 – Who did you look up to (bands who brought their kids on tour)?29:10 – "You're one of my heroes"Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Sharon Van Etten and Nadia Reid for chatting. If you liked what you heard, check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com and in the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

On today's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got one of those episodes pairing an artist you’ve surely heard of, pun intended, with one you likely haven’t, but will. It’s Shirley Manson and Stephen McAll.Manson is of course the singer for the long-running, Grammy-nominated, chart-topping, Bond-theme-performing band Garbage, which hit it big right out of the gate in the mid-1990s. Manson and her bandmates have assembled a varied catalog since, including the biting 2021 album No Gods, No Masters. As you’ll hear in this chat, Garbage is still going strong, working on a new record that goes in kind of a different direction than the last one. Manson has always been a great talker; she even hosted her own podcast for a few years called The Jump, on which she talked with other musicians about the song that provided their breakthrough. She’s a huge fan of music, so it’s no surprise that she was excited to chat with today’s other guest, Stephen McAll.McAll, like Manson, is Scottish—that’s hard to miss—though he hasn’t been making music nearly as long. His debut album under the name Constant Follower came out in 2021 and was met with loads of critical acclaim in Scotland for his quiet, heartfelt, frequently intense songs—think Bon Iver or Low or even McCall’s favorite, Talk Talk. This week sees the release of the second proper Constant Follower album, called The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, another intense set that covers some of McAll’s intense personal journey, including addiction, fatherhood, and the violent attack he suffered that still affects his memory. Check out the song “Almost Time to Go” from The Smile You Send Out right here.In this lively but deep conversation, Manson and McAll talk about that awful attack and how it led, eventually, to Constant Follower. They also talk about longevity in the music business, the creative process—including The Artist’s Way that’s become a frequent topic in Talkhouse chats—and lots more, including the time that Rivers Cuomo laughed in Manson’s face—in a helpful way. Enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro2:25 – Start of the chatThanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Shirley Manson and Stephen McAll for chatting. If you liked what you heard, check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com and on the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by The Range. See you next time!Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

In this new spin-off series of the Talkhouse Podcast, host Nick Dawson introduces a new conversation format by setting out to ask questions that his guests have never been asked before in an interview. On the inaugural episode, he talks with Vera Drew, the writer-director-editor-star of The People’s Joker, one of the most acclaimed and talked-about films of 2024. In this wide-ranging chat, Vera and Nick talk about dreams, shoplifting, addiction, recovery, first love, self-love, self-care, polyamory, anxiety … as well as horny audiences, toxic yoga instructors and idyllic meetings with Elijah Wood and Lilly Wachowski. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

Josh Modell sits down with Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury to preview the new season of Aquarium Drunkard's podcast, Transmissions.Subscribe to TransmissionsRead more at Aquarium Drunkard

If you’re a regular Talkhouse Podcast listener you know that we most often feature musicians on the show, but we’re always happy when creative people in other fields share a chat, too—especially when they’ve had the kind of interesting careers that today’s two guests have.Haley Joel Osment made a permanent mark on pop culture when he uttered the words “I see dead people” in 1999’s The Sixth Sense, made when he was just 10 years old. The line still reverberates today: Just listen to Kendrick Lamar’s "Not Like Us." Osment was nominated for an Oscar for his role as a psychic kid, and he has had a fruitful, relatively low-key acting career since—no scandals, no blockbusters, just a bunch of really interesting work. As you’ll hear in this podcast, he’s fully down to earth about his unusual journey—even ready to find a tiny bit of positivity in the recent L.A. fires, which completely destroyed both his and his parents’ house.He’s chatting here with his actor-comedian friend Matt Walsh, who’s probably best known for playing Mike McLintock opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on Veep. It was the perfect vehicle for Walsh, who made his name as an improv comedian in Chicago before his troupe, Upright Citizens Brigade, which also features Amy Poehler, took their show to New York. Walsh is one of those guys who brings the funny to every movie and TV part he’s in: If you don’t recognize his name, you’ll certainly recognize his face.The reason these two came together today is that a movie they co-starred in is just coming out: It’s called Not An Artist, and it’s an ensemble comedy about a group of artists who gather at a mysterious retreat—organized by no less than The RZA—to decide whether they’re actually cut out to be artists. It’s available on demand now.These two chat not only about that funny film, but also about Osment's experience with the L.A. fires, about Walsh’s Chicago background, weird Airbnbs, the magic of David Mamet’s dialogue and lots more. It’s a good one, enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro2:04 – Start of the chat2:18 – Osment on evacuating during the 2025 LA Fires13:00 – Walsh and Osment on making 'Not An Artist'20:32 – Osment on early career and David Mamet 28:19 – Walsh on UCB and early career37:17 – Walsh on challenging himself as an actor43:08 – Osment on working with Steven SpielbergThanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Haley Joel Osment and Matt Walsh for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and be sure to check out all the great stuff on the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

This episode originally ran on January 6, 2025 on the Jokermen Podcast. Subscribe to Jokermen.The Jokermen and Josh Tillman discuss creative process, theories of schmaltz, The Beatles, mental health, fatherhood and breakfast, among other thingsFind more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

We’re going a little bit country again this week on the Talkhouse Podcast—gotta keep you on your toes—with a pair of Nashville singer-songwriters who share a sensibility, some history, and sobriety, as you’ll hear. One of them, Margo Price, you’ve hopefully heard on the podcast before; the other, Lilly Hiatt, is a first-timer, but you’d never know it.Price was a critical darling right out of the gate, and for good reason: Her debut album, released by Jack White’s Third Man Records, kicked some new life into country by looking both backward and forward. Since then, Price has released a series of great records as well as a phenomenal memoir called Maybe We’ll Make It. Last time she was on this podcast, Price was talking to former Tom Petty sideman Mike Campbell about a collaboration they did. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and as you’ll hear in this chat, she’s got new music cooking, though nothing has been officially announced yet.Lilly Hiatt has a famous last name in the music world—her dad is John Hiatt—but she’s cut her own path through Nashville, too. She rides a more adventurous side of the musical line, getting almost alt-rocky at some points. She’s opened for everyone from Drive-By Truckers to Hiss Golden Messenger to the Mountain Goats, which should tell you something right there. This week Hiatt is releasing a new album called Forever, which is the result of some serious self-reflection and a different, entirely scrapped set of songs. The album was mixed by Paul Kolderie, known for working on early Radiohead and Pixies records. Maybe that’ll also tell you something. Check out “Kwik-E-Mart” right here.In this lively conversation, Price and Hiatt talk about getting back into the game, about working with their musician husbands—Jeremy Ivey and Coley Hinson, respectively—and they talk at length about getting and staying sober in a town where that’s not always so easy. I had never heard Nashville described as a “drinking town with a music problem” before. Enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro2:13 – Start of the chat3:34 – Trying to stay in good health9:36 – Finding balance in your work life11:20 – Being married to a musician16:06 – A day in the life21:26 – On Lilly Hiatt's new album, 'Forever'23:36 – On Nashville26:36 – Favorite songs on 'Forever'30:40 – On Price's upcoming record33:05 – On sobriety43:50 – Everything else on the horizonThanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Lilly Hiatt and Margo Price for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the good stuff in the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

I’m stating the extremely obvious here, but the music business has changed a bit since I started listening to and even writing about music—in some bad ways for sure, but also in some that are pretty fascinating and welcome. You can complain all you want about lowered attention spans, but social media has allowed a lot of talented voices to essentially skip past all the gatekeepers and get right to people’s ears.Take today’s Talkhouse Podcast guests, Bayker Blankenship and Waylon Wyatt. They’re aspiring country stars from very small towns—Livingston, Tennessee and Hackett, Arkansas, respectively—who found fans—and each other—via TikTok. Both started out playing covers of big hits, but quickly pivoted to writing their own stuff, too. Blankenship has had viral hits with sweet, simple songs like “Tennessee Sunset” and “Maxed Out.” The two of them eventually met up in Nashville, convenient to both, and to the music world, and wrote a song called “Jailbreak,” which lit up social media. Check out that song right here.These guys are much younger than your average Talkhouse guest—much younger, really, than most musicians who’ve gotten as far as they have, and it’s fun to hear them chat about their inspirations and their goals, which seem pretty modest at the moment: good tours, being able to meet fans, eventually getting a tour bus. I imagine they’ll have all that and more soon enough. They also cover a funny topic that I think more seasoned musicians have already dealt with—what to do when you’re on stage and nature calls. And they both talk about an abiding love for their mommas, which I’m sure their mommas will appreciate. Enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro2:05 – Start of the chat4:38 – Upcoming 2025 gigs8:40 – What to do when nature calls on stage11:14 – Timing your sets12:14 – Tour logistics15:36 – Reflecting on finding success on TikTok19:45 – Takeaways from 2024Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Bayker Blankenship and Waylon Wyatt for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the other great shows in our ever-growing network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

So picture this: It's 1994. The Pixies had been music-world darlings for half a decade or so, releasing some incredible records before fizzling to a stop. Their enigmatic singer, Black Francis, changes his name (again—his parents named him Charles Thompson) to Frank Black and embarks on a solo career that feels a little vexing at the time. His self-titled debut felt deeply connected to his old band, but for the next one, he struck an even richer songwriting vein: The songs kept coming and they turned into the double album Teenager of the Year, recorded with a crack studio band that included Eric Drew Feldman of Pere Ubu both as a player and producer.Teenager of the Year wasn't particularly well received upon its release 30 years ago, but it has slowly been recognized as a high point in Black's career, celebrated as his masterpiece by those paying the closest attention. It may not get the widespread attention that Pixies' Doolittle does, but the love it gets might even run a little deeper, both from its creator and his biggest fans. It's meaningful enough that Black and the original band that created it have just embarked on an anniversary tour during which they'll play the whole record, and it's being re-released on gold vinyl, a gold record that should have been. You can find dates online, they'll be hitting major US cities throughout January, ending in New York February 1 before heading to Paris and London.As a high school student, Paul Banks came to the Pixies via a love of Nirvana, and eventually found his way to Teenager of the Year, an album that—as you'll hear in this conversation—was massively important to him. Banks would of course go on to form the band Interpol, for which he has been the singer and guitarist since 1997. Their latest is 2022's The Other Side of Make-Believe, but Interpol has also been revisiting a beloved album recently, touring on the anniversary of their classic second record, Antics.These two have a great chat about Teenager of the Year here, plus they talk about Black's kids and their musical ambitions, lyric writing in general, and the time Black was asked to audition for the part of a serial killer in a David Fincher movie. They also get into some specifics about Teenager of the Year songs, including a great story about album opener "Whatever Happened to Pong?" Enjoy.Chapters:0:00 – Intro2:28 – Start of the chat8:30 – Paul Banks on 'Teenager of the Year'13:52 – The making of 'Teenager of the Year'15:51 – How Frank almost became the Zodiac Killer (on the big screen)18:10 – On characters in music21:10 – On writing lyrics24:15 – Film and book recommendations28:22 – The formation of Frank Black's solo band33:00 – On "Pong" and Pong38:30 – Paul Banks on when he decided to become a musician44:15 - The freedom of releasing musicThanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Frank Black and Paul Banks for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform and check out all the great shows on the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.

This episode originally aired on September 7, 2023.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 festival circuit, though she’ll head back to the States in October for sold-out shows at really interesting venues. Check out “Crush” right here.Cain and today’s other guest, Adam McIlwee, go way back. He was an early supporter of her music, and appears on her Inbred EP under his most prominent alias, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. Though he started his musical journey as part of the pop-punkish band Tigers Jaw, he’s moved in a dozen other directions since. He founded the emo-rap collective GothBoiClique back in 2012, which briefly counted Lil Peep among its members. As Wicca Phase, though, McIlwee combines synth-pop with more acoustic sounds and more hammering beats, depending on the track. His latest release under the name is self-titled, and it just came out in June. It’s well worth checking out. In fact, check out “Moving Without Movement” right here.Now for two people who’ve created such interesting mystiques, this is a refreshingly down-to-earth conversation in which they talk about trying to carve out space as middle-class musicians who don’t expect to conquer the charts with their music—but who’d love to be able to make a decent living at it. They talk about what to do when you hit a touring wall—this chat took place not long after Cain fainted onstage in Australia—and how great Vicks Steam Inhalers are for singers. Hey Vicks, you might have a couple of spokespeople here if you play your cards right. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Hayden Anhedonia aka. Ethel Cain and Adam McIlwee aka. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the other podcasts in our ever-expanding network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!-------------------Find more illuminating podcasts on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.Visit talkhouse.com to read essays, reviews, and more.Follow @talkhouse on Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter (X), Threads, and Facebook.