Talkhouse Podcast

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 out now. And of course, it's not too late to enjoy the latest album from HAIM, Women In Music Pt. III, which came out in 2020. The two old friends talk about young love, bat mitzvahs, "cozy boys," and songwriting. It's charming as hell.

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 independent bands and several huge mainstream ones, most notably Nirvana, with whom he recorded In Utero. (Other notable credits include PJ Harvey, Pixies, and the list goes on.) Albini is also a poker enthusiast who holds a World Series bracelet, though that part of his life doesn’t come up here. Throughout his career, Albini has been an outspoken champion of independence from the major-label system, and even penned a widely shared essay way back in the day about the general shittiness of the mainstream music business.Which makes it kind of funny that he’s speaking today with Max Collins, frontman for the band Eve 6, who were sort of a prime example of the major-label machinery in the ‘90s—though through no fault of their own. Signed to a huge deal just out of high school, the band had a pretty massive hit with a song called “Inside Out,” whose chorus features the phrase “heart in a blender.” Eve 6 largely disappeared after the turn of the century, but Collins found a hilarious new way to connect with fans during the pandemic: Twitter. His no-holds-barred tweets are funny and self-effacing, and they gained him an instant following. He refers to himself frequently—even once during this podcast—as the “heart in a blender guy,” and he openly shares his stories about other alt stars of the ‘90s, his opinions on current and older bands, and even some of his personal life. Albini, no stranger to no filter himself, became a fan after the two started playfully sparring about the relative merits of Counting Crows. A Twitter beef was born. If you don’t like that phrase, this is not the episode for you.Eve 6 has since started recording and releasing new music, and the two talk a bit about that in this episode. They also get into Eve 6’s financial history, the evils of major-label deals in the ‘90s, and for brief moment of non-playfulness, the idea of art as the antidote for the hellscape we all live in. Then there’s talk of starting a new beef, this time with Dave Grohl. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Steve Albini and Max Collins for chatting. If you liked what you heard, follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and please rate us—it actually does help. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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 curated a compilation that pays tribute to Ono’s music. He’s a man on a mission, which as you’ll hear is not to re-evaluate Yoko Ono’s vast catalog, but really to evaluate it in the first place. What people tend to know about Ono’s music doesn’t reflect the variety of her output, and her narrative as the villain in the Beatles story is ridiculous. To that end, Gibbard gathered a killer lineup to cover Ono’s songs for an album called Ocean Child. Musicians features in the collection include David Byrne with Yo La Tengo, Sharon Van Etten, Jay Som, Japanese Breakfast, the Flaming Lips, and of course Death Cab for Cutie themselves.Also included on Ocean Child is U.S. Girls, the musical project of Meg Remy. She’s been making music under the name for the past 15 years or so, amassing an impressive collection of records up to an including 2020’s Heavy Light–a Pitchfork best new music designee. She’s a perfect fit for a tribute to and conversation about Yoko Ono, since she’s not only a huge fan but clearly influenced by Ono’s sonic and political fearlessness.Before they get to chatting Yoko, Gibbard and Remy talk about Covid—there were some positives in it for Remy, who also gave birth to twins recently—and hotel notepads. Then it’s on to Yoko, whom they both deeply admire: They talk about her records, her art, and how the recent Get Back documentary kind of exploded the narrative on her vis a vis the Beatles. It’s a great chat about a worthy, misunderstood subject. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Meg Remy and Ben Gibbard for chatting. If you like what you heard, check out Ocean Child. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please follow, like, and rate Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!View the full transcript of this podcast here.

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. Barlow also, weirdly, had kind of a mainstream hit with his side project Folk Implosion—and there’s some very interesting, unexpected Folk Implosion news in this podcast that I won’t spoil for you. Barlow eventually rejoined Dinosaur Jr. in 2005, and the band has found a fruitful third life, making vital new records. Speaking of vital records, the prolific Barlow has also found time to make new Sebadoh music and solo records. The latest Lou Barlow record came out just last year, and it’s called Reason to Live, and there was also an excellent Dinosaur Jr. album from 2021 called Sweep it Into Space.As Ben Bridwell points out in this chat, Lou Barlow has been making music in public for damn near 40 years, while the group that Bridwell leads, Band of Horses, is approaching 20 years now. As you’ll hear in this conversation, Bridwell moved from the South to various other cities, ending up in Seattle—and specifically at the legendary Crocodile Cafe—where he played in bands and listened to lots of music. He loved Sebadoh, as did pretty much everybody in the 90s, and it was one of the inspirations for Bridwell to launch Band of Horses, which subsequently found its own substantial fanbase—no surprise considering Bridwell’s passionate voice and fantastic songs. Band of Horses hasn’t put out a full length in more than five years—blame the pandemic for at least some of that delay—but is just now releasing a great new record that feels a bit more like their early stuff, and they’re about to head out on a huge tour supporting the Black Keys. The new album is called Things are Great.It’s clear from the very start of this conversation what a huge fan of each other these two guys are—and also that neither of them are very good at accepting compliments. Barlow talks about the magical moment he connected with Bridwell’s voice, Bridwell talks about discovering the power of that voice, they talk about how a Camel cigarettes tour brought them together, and eventually, Bridwell makes up his own segment for the Talkhouse Podcast called “rapid fire.” It’s a delight. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Lou Barlow and Ben Bridwell for chatting. If you like what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform and social media service. Oh, and rate us, too—it really does help! This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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 eventually led to a massive radio hit in 2001: “The Middle”—you know it, believe me—which launched them to new heights but didn’t really change the band’s fundamentals. They’ve continued making excellent records since, up to and including 2019’s Surviving. One of that album’s best songs is the focus of part of today’s podcast, too: “555.” Dashboard Confessional, which is the product of singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, started life a little later in the ‘90s, but also with a bang. His heart-on-sleeve lyrics almost immediately inspired sold-out shows and tear-stained singalongs. In other words, the “emo” tag actually makes some sense for once. The pandemic cut short Carrabba’s touring look back at 20 years of Dashboard Confessional, but it allowed him to finish a brand new album called All the Truth That I Can Tell.Now Carrabba and Adkins aren’t just here because they’re pals and they come from similar backgrounds. They’re also bringing their bands together through March on a co-headlining tour dubbed “Surviving The Truth" and then both bands will be part of the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas in October. All the dates can be found on either band’s website, naturally.Adkins and Carrabba chat a lot about songwriting here, specifically about techniques for letting a song find itself. They also ponder whether it’s better to have a big radio hit, like Jimmy Eat World did, or to be associated with a huge Spider-Man movie, as Dashboard Confessional was. And both seem delighted, even after all this time, to be able to make music their living. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Chris Carrabba and Jim Adkins for chatting. If you liked what you heard, check out Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform and social channels. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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, who sought them out after seeing them at Coachella, to Tyler the Creator to Ghostface Killah to Future Islands’ Samuel Herring. The list goes on and on. BadBadNotGood returned last year after a five-year album gap with a collection called Talk Memory. On it, they proved more collaborative than ever, bringing in a bunch of incredible musicians to expand their sound.One of the musicians they called on was the legendary yet under the radar Laraaji, who’s had a remarkable career over the past 40 years or so. After a winding road that included acting and stand-up comedy, Laraaji was eventually discovered while busking in Washington Square Park by none other than Brian Eno, who produced and released Laraaji’s Day of Radiance album as part of his Ambient series. Since then, he’s released dozens more recordings.Laraaji’s main instrument is an electrified zither, which as you’ll hear in this conversation, came to him in kind of a magical way. Once you hear him talk, though, that won’t surprise you: He’s obviously open to whatever experiences the world wants to bring him. On record that most recently includes a collaboration with the improvisational ensemble NOUS and his old friend Arji OceAnanda called Circle of Celebration.In this conversation, you’ll hear Laraaji laughing a lot, because in addition to his music, he leads laughter workshops—which are exactly what you might think they are. You’ll also hear about Laraaji’s past, about the brain that exists inside your abdomen, creative trances, and why the color orange has played a big part in his life. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Laraaji and the members of BadBadNotGood for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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 years leading up to the album’s recording. And while the song is certainly no tribute to ZZ Top, you can hear the snarl and bite coming through in its tones and lyrics as well as on a few other place on this collection.It’s album number 10 for Spoon, who have had an incredibly strong run over the past almost three decades. Lucifer on the Sofa is out this week, and it stands among their best—catchy, considered, and a bit more raw than recent records. Maybe that’s because they recorded it back in Britt’s home state, which of course is where the legendary ZZ Top was born as well.Billy Gibbons formed the band with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard way back in 1969, and the original trio rocked consistently for five decades until Hill’s death in 2021. The blues-inspired rock band gained traction in the ‘70s with songs like “La Grange” and “Tush,” then took off in the ‘80s as they became superstars of the early MTV era with “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs.” They were shoo-ins for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of course, and not even Hill’s death could stop them: His guitar tech and friend Elwood Francis stepped in, and ZZ Top will play shows with Cheap Trick this April—all the dates, naturally, are at ZZTop.com.Daniel and Gibbons talk a lot about what they have in common, which is the state of Texas and specifically its myriad Mexican restaurants. Daniel asks about the legendary photo inside ZZ Top’s classic 1973 album Tres Hombres, and Gibbons gets a chance to talk about some of his contemporaries and friends, including Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators and Bo Diddley, with whom he collaborated on a guitar design, among other things. Enjoy. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platforms and social media channels. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.

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 and inspiring crowds at pretty much every festival you could think of. After touring behind 2018’s Bambi, Hippo Campus took some time to stretch their legs, with each member heading off into side projects of various sounds and sizes. But the band reconvened with fresh motivation and a clearer-eyed outlook last year, and they came up with a powerhouse of an album with the simple title of LP3. It’s slightly more mature in the best ways, but still incredibly catchy and true to their sound. There’s a lot of inward looking existential lyrics, but wrapped in fantastic hooks.It was Stocker’s idea to chat with guitarist Yasmin Williams, who he had recently come across via NPR’s long-running, always reliable Tiny Desk concert series. That performance was particularly captivating, because you’re not just hearing what Williams can do with an acoustic guitar, but you’re seeing it as well. She takes the foundation built by fingerstyle masters like John Fahey and Michael Hedges but brings a modern sensibility to it: In this conversation, she talks a lot about her love of metal and math-rock, bits of which you can almost hear in her beautiful playing. Williams has released two albums so far, and as you’ll also hear in this chat, she’s working on a third. The latest is Urban Driftwood.Williams and Stocker didn’t know each other at all prior to this chat, but it turned out that she’s a Hippo Campus fan. The two talk about gear nerd stuff, YouTube videos by Andy McKee, being in competition with yourself, and of course the inspiration for Williams’ interest in music to begin with: a little game called Guitar Hero 2. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.

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 Please Baby Please during COVID in Montana, to Harry’s love of dancing, why Amanda almost had a breakdown on set, actors’ misplaced obsession with playing real people, how Amanda expanded Harry’s love and knowledge of English cinema, and much more. 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.

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 at its component parts and to explore the creative process. (Perhaps it goes without saying that it shares some DNA with the Talkhouse Podcast.) Guests over the years have included Bjork, Spoon, St. Vincent—the list goes on and on. Song Exploder became a Netflix series in 2020, with Hirway acting host on the TV version as well. In addition to that, he’s behind some other great podcasts, including the fun pandemic-era food chat show Home Cooking, which he co-hosts with Samin Nusrat.With all of that on his plate, it’s easy to overlook that Hirway spent many years making gentle, melancholy indie music under the name The One AM Radio. That part of his life took a backseat to his other pursuits, but music called him back, and he spent some time over the pandemic recording some songs that he’s slowly releasing under his own name. The first was a collaboration with famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and just this week came the second: a collaboration with today’s other guest, Melina Duterte, who’s better known by her project’s name, Jay Som.The two met because Duterte was a guest on Song Exploder, where she spoke about her song “Tenderness.” Though he didn’t actually host that episode, Hirway loved what he heard, and the two struck up a friendship that led to Duterte guesting on the touching song “Home.”If you like what you hear, the Jay Som catalog is thoroughly fantastic. Her last album under the name was 2019’s Anak Ko, but she’s spent time producing and collaborating with other folks over the past couple of years, including production duties for the latest album by Julia Shapiro of Chastity Belt—a recent guest on this very podcast. Jay Som’s music is often called “bedroom pop,” but after people hear this conversation, they may have to start calling it “attic pop,” since Duterte recently relocated to a private top floor of her own. Elsewhere in this conversation, she and Hirway talk about the hot mess that is the music industry, the software they sometimes use, and the alt-rock band that Duterte obsessed over as a pre-teen. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Hrishikesh Hirway and Melina Duterte for chatting. Check out their collaborative song, “Home,” and be sure to follow them both—and Talkhouse!—on your favorite social media channels. See you next time!