Talkhouse Podcast

Today’s Talkhouse podcast started with a little bit of serendipity in the form of album release dates: Both of our guests, Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast and producer/musician/former Vampire Weekend guy Rostam, have excellent records coming out on June 4. They’re also fans of each other’s work, so we figured it made plenty of sense to put them together.Zauner’s album, her third under the Japanese Breakfast name, is called Jubilee, and as you’ll hear in this conversation, it took a deliberate turn toward slightly happier themes than her first two. It comes hot on the heels of Zauner’s first book, a heartbreaking memoir called Crying In H Mart, that deals with her mother’s death—also a theme in her early music—and food, lots of food. It’s a really touching read, and an ideal companion to her musical catalog, which grew in really compelling ways with Jubilee.Rostam is best known as a founding member of Vampire Weekend, and even though he officially left the band a few years ago, he still contributes some songwriting and production work. He’s kept plenty busy otherwise, producing records and writing songs with an incredible array of other artists, from Hamilton Leithauser to HAIM to Clairo. His first proper solo album is the gentle, string-filled, fantastic Half-Light, which came out in 2017, and now he’s releasing Changephobia, which as you’ll hear ditches the string section and brings in a sax, among other things.These two jump right into a conversation that flits around from silly to deep: On one hand, they talk about childhood loves of chess and fencing and the importance of song five on an album. On the other, Zauner gets rightfully annoyed at interview questions she gets that other people don’t, and Rostam talks about being Persian in a band that was sometimes pegged as particularly white. It’s a funny, smart chat. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by The Range.

Chris Gethard is a comedian whose stories are often so serious and touching that they make people cry, and Jeff Rosenstock writes and sings heartfelt songs that are also witty and funny enough to make you laugh. So it’s no wonder that these two are friends and comrades in arms: From practically the moment they met, they could tell they were on the same page.Gethard has had a boundary-defying career that I’ll try and fail to quickly encapsulate here. He’s been a stand-up comedian, but perhaps more importantly the host of a public access show bearing his name that eventually ran for three seasons on a couple of different cable networks and was, to put it bluntly, kind of insane. He spun his stand-up into an off-Broadway show about depression, alcoholism, and suicide called Career Suicide, which later became an HBO special produced by Judd Apatow. Somewhere in there, he started several podcasts, the most popular of which is Beautiful/Anonymous, wherein he spends an hour with an anonymous stranger telling him their deepest secrets. I have yet to mention his books, his other podcasts, his appearances in movies and TV shows like Broad City and The Office, and more. The occasion for this conversation is the release of Gethard’s newest thing, called Half My Life, which is sort of a hybrid tour documentary and stand-up special that he recorded at ten venues around the country, including one with an audience of live alligators. It’s available on demand starting June 1.Jeff Rosenstock has been making music in various guises and with lots of people since the late 1990s, when he was in a ska-punk band called the Arrogant Sons of Bitches. He went on to greater renown in Bomb the Music Industry before launching a pretty incredible solo career, in which he combines super thoughtful, personal and political lyrics with catchy, genre-blending sounds. So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when, earlier this year, he released a song-for-song reworking of his 2020 album No Dream called Ska Dream, on which he re-recorded every track… but ska. He roped in amazing guests, too—from Angelo Moore of Fishbone to members of PUP and Deafheaven. In this conversation, Gethard and Rosenstock are, unsurprisingly, both funny and serious. They’ve got doubts about whether audiences will be there when they return from lockdown, but they’ve also got a relentless desire to create art and to do the right thing. It’s refreshing, and I hope you enjoy it.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme was written and performed by The Range.

Blake Mills has the kind of resume that might make the average person feel really lazy. Not only is he an active musician, but also a Grammy-winning producer (for Alabama Shakes’ 2015 album Sound and Color), a collaborator to the stars—including the likes of Fiona Apple and Bob Dylan—and most recently, one of the guys in charge of the legendary Sound City studio in L.A. Mills’ newest musical project is a collaboration with legendary bassist Pino Palladino called Notes With Attachments. Just prior to that, it was the Pitchfork Best New Music designee Mutable Set, from 2020.Nick Sanborn is half of Sylvan Esso, along with Amelia Meath. The duo recorded their third and latest album, the excellent Free Love, while they were constructing a brand new studio, called Betty’s, on their farm in North Carolina. The album came out in September of last year, which obviously meant touring was off the table, but Sanborn got plenty busy with production work, including helping to create the most recent Flock of Dimes record with recent Talkhouse guest Jenn Wasner. Since the album’s release, Nick and Amelia have kept busy, releasing videos, a killer remix of their song “Numb,” and a live album called WITH. And now they’ve rescheduled a big tour for this fall, kicking off at Bonaroo, where they’ll host the Super Jam. Check out sylvanesso.com for tour dates.Sanborn and Blake get right into it in this conversation, covering the intimate relationships that make for good records, the joy and trepidation about returning to public stages, and even how weird it is to do the Talkhouse Podcast. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse Podcast theme is composed and performed by the Range.

This week, we revisit a chat from last year, featuring Mac DeMarco and Dayglow's Sloan Struble. The second Dayglow album, Harmony House, comes out May 21. Check it out! ------------------- On this week’s show, a young gun picks a veteran’s brain. A youngish veteran, admittedly — Mac DeMarco’s only 30, but compared to 21 year old Spotify-wunderkind Sloan Struble, aka Dayglow, he’s already spent a lifetime in the music industry trenches.The two take in a lot in this conversation. We hear Mac’s origin story, and get a nice overview of his career. We get insight into what it’s like finding fast fame online in 2020, and the two dissect the term “DIY” and the changing definition of “indie.”Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.  —Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producerThis week’s talk was originally produced by Mark Yoshizumi and Elia Einhorn. This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse Podcast theme song was composed and performed by The Range.

The way that Mary Lattimore and Sarah Neufeld met is kind of a rock and roll dream. Lattimore went to see Neufeld’s band, Arcade Fire, before they were huge stars, and they got to talking. When Lattimore mentioned that she’d be moving to Philadelphia soon, Neufeld and her bandmates asked her to perform with them—so her first time playing on stage outside a more classical setting was in front of a huge Arcade Fire crowd, and it gave her the performing bug.Both Neufeld and Lattimore have released fantastic records recently: Lattimore’s Silver Ladders came out last year on the Ghostly International label, and it met with widespread acclaim. Sarah Neufeld’s brand new record, Detritus, was born via a collaboration with Canadian dancer Peggy Baker. Neufeld wrote the songs that would become this album to accompany Baker’s choreography, and she even went on the road to accompany the dance performances. She later went into the studio and, with help from her Arcade Fire bandmate Jeremy Gara, set to recording them. It’s an incredible collection that blends her primary instrument with ambient electronics, drums, and other sounds. In this conversation, Neufeld and Lattimore talk about the night they met and subsequent nights they don’t remember, a harp that lives in Prague, writing music to accompany dance, and how a harp might actually help induce labor in an expecting mother. Enjoy.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by The Range.

It’s no secret that Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard deeply admires Norman Blake’s band, Teenage Fanclub. In fact, he’s called 1991’s masterpiece Bandwagonesque his favorite album of all time; he loves it so much that just a few years ago, he recorded and released a cover of the entire thing. With that album turning 30 this year, and with a fantastic new Teenage Fanclub album, Endless Arcade, out this week it seemed the perfect time to get the two together.For this conversation, the two old friends dive into what their pandemic lives have been like, which includes lots of songwriting and record collecting. They also talk about the joy that comes from being a lifer in the rock and roll business, how streaming has affected all of the above, and how deeply emotional a return to rocking is likely to be for both of them. Enjoy.

Merrill Garbus and Jenn Wasner released monumental records just a week apart this year: Tune-Yards fifth album—sixth if you count their score to Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You—is called Sketchy, and it’s as puzzling and progressive as you’ve hopefully come to expect. Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner are never content to rest on their past glories: They’re always searching for new modes of thought and expression, and Garbus’ lyrics meld the personal and political into one fiery concoction.Jenn Wasner is best known for singing and playing guitar in Wye Oak, and she’s also released albums with Dungeonesse and solo style under the name Flock of Dimes, in addition to being a recent touring member of Bon Iver. It’s her Flock of Dimes project that’s garnering some incredible, well deserved attention this year, including a huge feature in the New York Times. It makes sense, considering that the album she’s promoting is so extraordinary: Head of Roses will be both familiar to her fans and unexpected, with new sounds, textures, and lyrical motivations. The story is that it’s an album about heartbreak, but it’s so much more. It's a great conversation between two great friends. Enjoy.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, we have two artists who recently became writer-directors after finding success in other creative fields: singer-songwriter Bonnie McKee and actor Carlson Young. McKee, a Grammy-nominated hit songwriter best known for her collaborations with Katy Perry, is now on the festival circuit with her powerful and very personal short April Kills the Vibe, while her friend Young, who broke through on the small-screen version of Scream in 2015, just made her feature debut with The Blazing World, which world premiered at Sundance this past January. In their compelling conversation, the two talk about their journeys behind the camera, their COVID experiences, making movies as a form of psychodrama, Bonnie’s upcoming music-inspired film project, Carlson’s recent nightmare experience with a moving scam, and much, 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.

It might feel like a lifetime ago, but it was just over a year ago in February of 2020 when we got new albums from both Tame Impala and Caribou. For Kevin Parker, The Slow Rush was his fourth full-length record following an extended break after Currents. Caribou fans had a slightly longer wait for Dan Snaith's tenth record, Suddenly.Now both artists have rereleases in 2021. Kevin Parker and company recently celebrated ten years since their debut record, Innerspeaker. There's a new behind-the-scenes short film chronicling the 2010 recording process, a box set, and an upcoming livestream performance later this month, April 21 (more info on tickets here), of the full album from the Wave House. Dan Snaith has also been in the news recently, releasing Suddenly Remixes, featuring reworked tracks by Toro y Moi, Four Tet, Floating Points, and others.This conversation, which originally aired in October of 2020, never has a dull moment and features the pair chatting about how and when they first met, having confidence as an artist, and their "de facto lockdown albums." Don't forget to subscribe to the Talkhouse Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.—Keenan Kush, Talkhouse Director of OperationsThis week's talk was originally produced by Mark Yoshizumi and Elia Einhorn. This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse Podcast theme song was composed and performed by The Range.

Sharon van Etten and Jamie Stewart met a few years ago, when producer John Congleton recommended the Xiu Xiu frontman as a contributor to the singer-songwriter's 2019 album, Remind Me Tomorrow. Though their music isn't super similar sounding, each traffics in a kind of emotional honesty that's difficult to pull off but incredibly rewarding. Van Etten contributed vocals to the song "Sad Mezcalita" on Xiu Xiu's new all-duets album, OH NO, and the two chat about that collaboration here, along with the creative process, being open in their songwriting, and much more.This episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan. The Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.