Talkhouse Podcast

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a great conversation between two guys who don’t necessarily have a ton in common musically, but who approach creativity in similar ways—and who happen to be great fans of each other’s work: Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius, and composer-performer-multi-hyphenate Max Richter.Hadreas, whom you’ve hopefully heard on the Talkhouse Podcast in the past, has been recording and performing under the name Perfume Genius since 2008, and he’s one of those artists whose music just inexplicably gets better with each passing day—even when you think it couldn’t. His records are this incredible combination of fearlessness and joy, whether he’s singing about dealing with homophobia or just making bodies move. The latest Perfume Genius record, which came out right as Covid was entering the world’s consciousness, bears the fantastic title Set My Heart On Fire Immediately. Perfume Genius will start playing shows again next month; check out perfumegenius.org for dates.As for Max Richter, it would take far more than this limited space allows just going over his resume. From contributing to a classic Future Sound of London album back in the ‘90s through his incredible score for HBO’s The Leftovers to a dozen other things, the musician/composer has an incredibly full plate. He composed an eight-hour minimalist classical piece called Sleep, which was performed for audiences that were provided with beds and encouraged to, y’know, fall asleep. (It’s now an app, too!) His latest release, just out last week, is called Exiles, and it features a lengthy new track that he composed for a ballet alongside some reimaginings of pieces he’s composed over the years.In this conversation, Richter and Hadreas talk about how making music is about articulating what can’t otherwise be articulated, where to start when you’re working on a soundtrack, and the joys of being influenced by other music. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

This week’s episode of the Talkhouse Podcast began somewhere not particularly known for good or fruitful ideas: Twitter. That’s where the poet Maggie Smith dropped a funny notion, which songwriter John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats picked up and ran with.Smith, whose was in the process of splitting up with her husband, suggested a photo essay in which she’d take her old wedding dress on a tour of the country, Weekend at Bernie’s style, only the dead thing isn’t a guy—it’s her marriage. Never one to shy away from life’s darkest moments, Darnielle jokingly suggested—or at least it seemed like a joke—that there was a song in Smith’s idea, and he suggested calling it “Picture of My Dress.” And then, wouldn’t you know it, he went and wrote the song, releasing it on last year’s excellent album Getting Into Knives.It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Darnielle came up with the song: He’s so prolific that it makes the average person—meaning me—really jealous. The Mountain Goats released two studio albums and a live album in 2020, and another new album this year, called Dark In Here. He’s also an accomplished novelist and served as a judge for the 2020 National Book Awards.Speaking of writers, Maggie Smith had the unusual distinction of being a poet who broke through to the wider world with a poem called “Good Bones” back in 2016. Last year, she released the well received essay collection Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change, and just last month released a poetry collection called Goldenrod. All are well worth your time, and Smith is on a sort of virtual book tour at the moment: You can check out the details on that at her site, maggiesmithpoet.com.In this conversation, Darnielle and Smith talk about the unusual nature of their kinda-sorta collaboration, a delightful thing she calls “the cake sound,” John’s failed attempt at writing a song about NASCAR, and much more. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Maggie Smith and John Darnielle for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and/or your social media. This week’s episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

Jason Narducy is a Chicago guy, but he spends a ton of his time—or at least he used to—on tour, playing bass for both Bob Mould and Superchunk. In early 2020, a local theatre mounted a production of a musical called Verboten, which was based on Jason’s life—specifically his time as a pre-teen in a punk band. As a grown-up, in addition to providing the low end for those other great folks, he fronts his own band, Split Single. Under that moniker, Narducy writes the songs and recruits incredible musicians to record and play with him. For the excellent new Split Single album, Amplificado, Narducy once again asked Superchunk’s Jon Wurster to play drums, and he summoned the bassist from a certain famous Athens, Georgia band to play as well.That’d be R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, who fleshes out the Split Single sound with his bass and backing vocals on Amplificado, which the trio recorded here in Chicago before the pandemic ground everything to a halt. Mills has kept himself busy since R.E.M. split up about ten years ago, playing with the Baseball Project and playing golf, as you’ll hear. (He’s earned it, right?) In this conversation, he also talks about a long-gestating solo album, a project that incorporates classical music, and his rescue pooch. In case you missed it, Mills’ R.E.M. bandmate Michael Stipe was on the Talkhouse Podcast just six weeks ago—we’re two for four!Elsewhere in this conversation, Mills and Narducy talk about the pandemic, of course, as well as hope for the future, passing the baton to the next generation, and the majesty of working with excellent drummers—specifically Jon Wurster and Bill Berry. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by The Range. Thanks for checking it out!

Nick Murphy is best known for his downtempo electronic project Chet Faker, which is confusing because it also sounds like a guy’s name—but which released one of the best albums of 2014, Built On Glass. But as you’ll hear in this Talkhouse chat, Murphy put the Chet Faker name on a shelf at the height of its popularity in order to go in a more organic route under his own name. He subsequently released a pair of albums—including one initially through a meditation app, which is very 21st century and awesome. This year, he decided to bring the Chet Faker name and sound out of the attic, and he’s just released a killer new record called Hotel Surrender.And that’s where the Belgian musicians/DJs Stephen and David Dewaele come in. The two are the principal players in a band called Soulwax, but they’ve made a massive second career as a DJ duo called 2 Many DJ’s. Back in the early aughts, 2 Many DJ’s reignited the mash-up trend with a classic mix called As Heard on Radio Soulwax Part 2. That’s right, they incorporate the name of their band right in with their other lives as DJs. They also recently opened a studio called DeeWee. Oh, and did I mention that they’re super in-demand, Grammy-nominated remixers as well? They are. And they remixed a song from the new Chet Faker album called “Whatever Tomorrow," which is what brought them together for this chat.This intercontinental conversation—Murphy is Australian but lives in New York, the Dewaele brothers are from Belgium—gets into a lot of great stuff really quickly, including the confusing but smart way both acts can diversify, how Murphy initially found the whole idea of EDM distasteful, and a little something called “spacebar energy.” I won’t tell you what it is, but I’ll say that you probably want your songs to have it. 0:00 – Intro2:23 – Start of the chat5:20 – Live versions of dance music with drummers11:28 – How Murphy initially found the whole idea of EDM distasteful13:40 – "spacebar energy" and Chet vs. Nick19:10 – "brick walls"22:57 – How Soulwax work creatively28:35 – Active vs. passive listening34:38 – We're "naive romantics"38:22 – "great people try and push you"Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast and thanks to Nick, Stephen, and David for chatting. Check out their various guises—you won’t be disappointed. This week’s episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and special thanks to Keenan Kush for stepping in to record it. The Talkhouse theme song is composed and performed by the Range.

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a pair of incredible young songwriter-performers whose music isn’t super similar, but who both embrace a sort of ultra-modern mish-mash of styles: Dorian Electra and Claud. Claud was the first performer signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ new label, Saddest Factory, after spending some time in a duo called Toast. Claud’s debut album, Super Monster, is most often described as “bedroom pop”—that term is brought up in this chat—but that’s only a small part of it. There are hints of all kinds of sounds here, from vaguely Latin-esque to pop-punkish on the delightful “That’s Mr. Bitch to You.”Dorian Electra has been at it a bit longer than Claud, having made a splash around ten years ago with playful, politically charged songs about money and gender fluidity, among many other things. Electra was featured on the Charli XCX track “Femmebot” a few years back, and in 2020 released their second album, My Agenda, which features everyone from Pussy Riot to Village People.Electra and Claud have a great conversation, tackling everything from the importance of Spotify playlists—which played a role in each of their success—to college to the complicated commercialization of Pride Month. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

Liz Phair crashed into the indie-rock world in a huge way in the early ‘90s with her instant classic album Exile In Guyville, and she was already the talk of the town—in this case Chicago—before she had even performed publicly. It was an auspicious start to a fascinating career that went from indie-world stardom to Lilith Fair to composing for films and TV to a consciously pop-leaning album to a fantastic memoir called Horror Stories. And it comes full circle, sort of, with her new album Soberish, which she created with the help of producer Brad Wood, with whom she worked on her early albums, including Exile. Zella Day took a very different path in her music life, starting out very young—at age 15—trying to write songs and make it in Nashville. That led to a revelation that she’d rather perform herself, and eventually a record deal and 2015’s pop-centric album Kicker. She played Coachella and other huge festivals, but wasn’t fully satisfied with where she was artistically, as you’ll hear in this chat. After relocating to L.A., she fell in with a slightly more serious crowd, included pals like Lana Del Rey and Weyes Blood, and her music shifted a bit. She’s currently working on an album with producer Jay Joyce, and recently released a song with Natalie Mering of Weyes Blood called “Holocene.”Phair and Day hit it off right away in this conversation, diving right into a conversation about restarting their careers post-COVID—Phair’s dad is a retired infectious diseases expert, which gave her some unique insight—as well as the challenges of not giving too much of yourself during an album’s promotional cycle. They also tackle the meaning of the word “sober-ish,” which is pretty great. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Liz Phair and Zella Day for chatting. This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

This week on the Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a special treat for the drummers and drum geeks out there: a conversation between Morgan Simpson of Black Midi and Bill Bruford of, as he says in their chat, about 101 bands. That number for Bruford isn’t too far from reality. Over a 40+ year career, he played with some incredible names in the world of progressive music, most notably Yes and King Crimson, but also his own projects, including Earthworks. He’s an astoundingly versatile and musical drummer, and we were delighted to hear that he’s still got his ear to the ground all these years later, as a fan of the relatively young band Black Midi.You can hear it in Morgan Simpson’s voice that he’s both pleased and excited to make Bruford’s acquaintance as part of the podcast—and it’s actually the first episode we’ve recorded in quite some time where the participants are in the same room with each other! Simpson pays Bruford the ultimate drummer compliment when he says that he can recognize his playing within a couple of seconds, and Bruford isn’t shy about his love for Black Midi. He even compares them—rightfully so—to King Crimson.Bruford himself actually retired from performing about 10 years ago, while Black Midi is just getting started. The band released their second album, Cavalcade, in May, and it’s a massively eclectic, fantastic collection of songs—a little more focused than their first, perhaps, but no less rangy and striking. They’ll hit the road for a huge tour this fall, kicking off with a slot at Pitchfork Fest in Chicago. Bruford and Simpson have a lot of fun, as you’ll hear, talking about other drummers—Phil Collins, Billy Cobham, etc—as well as the similarities in their own playing. If you’ve never realized that a snare drum could sound like you’re quote “being slapped around the head with a wet kipper,” then this conversation is for you. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks so much to Bill Bruford and Morgan Simpson for chatting. If you like what you heard, follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting service, and all available social channels. This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by the Range.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, former REM frontman Michael Stipe talks with veteran indie director Jim McKay about the production company they’ve run together since the late 1980s, C-Hundred Film Corp, and the amazing work that has come out of it. In a fascinating conversation, the two best friends not only walk us through the history of the company – its humble beginnings in Athens, GA, to creating PSAs with KRS-One and Natalie Merchant, and Michael making the *original* Orange is the New Black at the Sundance Film Festival back in the ’90s – but also touch on their latest projects (McKay’s new film, and the photography book which Stipe just published) and how the pandemic has affected them, both creatively and personally. 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.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, director Edgar Wright chats with musicians Ron and Russell Mael of the beloved cult band Sparks, who are the subject of Wright’s deeply enjoyable new documentary, The Sparks Brothers. In a wide-ranging conversation, the friends and collaborators veer from gripping discussions about food to in-depth explorations of the Mael brothers’ longstanding love of their other creative passion, cinema, which finally resulted in Leos Carax directing their film Annette – which opens the Cannes Film Festival next month! They also discuss record-store hijinks, the genesis of past projects, compare notes on trailers, and much, much more. A veritable smorgasbord of an episode, it’s a real pleasure to listen to three people who so obviously relish each others company. 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 episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.

Meghan Trainor burst into the public consciousness with her 2014 hit “All About That Bass,” which was accompanied by a triple-platinum album and loads of subsequent success. Two more albums followed, as did judging roles on the British version of The Voice, and perhaps more important to this conversation, a singing competition called The Four, where she was on a panel with Sean Combs and DJ Khaled. That show is where Trainor first encountered the spectacular singing voice of VINCINT, who wowed her and the other judges with his incredible stylistic range, culminating in a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” that was all around the internet a couple of years ago. VINCINT has since released a bunch of songs, and he’s finally ready to drop a proper debut album: There Will Be Tears is packed with what sound like future hits, and includes guest spots from Tegan and Sara, Parson James, Qveen Herby, and more.You’ll be hearing a ton more from VINCINT this month and year: He’s going to be on the Today Show, as you’ll hear in the chat, and he’s headlining HBO Max’s Pride programming. Trainor is awfully busy herself, having recorded and released a holiday album during quarantine and, in bigger news, signed a huge cross-platform deal with NBCUniversal that will include a comedy series at NBC. But she was so psyched about VINCINT’s album that she made some time to chat about it with him, and about their favorite songwriters, mutual acquaintances, and advice on dealing with stardom. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by The Range.