On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a very mellow, very lovely conversation between a woman known for her gorgeous voice and heartfelt songwriting and a man known for, as he calls it, “wobbly saxophone,” Beth Orton and Alabaster dePlume.Beth Orton has been making beautiful, often heartbreaking songs since the early 1990s, when she was a leading light in what I think is a now-forgotten genre called “folktronica.” She first found notice by contributing vocals to a few Chemical Brothers songs, then broke out with her timeless debut album Trailer Park in 1996. She has since created a lovely and varied body of work that’s explored a variety of sounds but that’s tied together by her unforgettable voice. Orton’s latest album is from last year: It’s called Weather Alive, which to me sounds like a spiritual heir to Van Morrison’s classic Astral Weeks, which may in part be because it features the saxophone playing of today’s other guest, Alabaster dePlume. Check out a little bit of “Fractals” right here, and definitely go see Orton on tour this fall; she’ll be back in the States this September. Bethortonofficial.com has all the dates.Alabaster dePlume picked up the saxophone in 2007, but sort of reinvented himself—including taking on that stage name—in 2015. He became a fixture in London’s improvisational jazz scene not long after, and a lot of what he does is centered around the recording studio/gathering place where this conversation was recorded, Total Refreshment Centre. DePlume broke out in 2020 with an album called To Cy & Lee, which was inspired by and named after some folks he helped as a mental-health support worker. In a couple of weeks, he’ll release a new album called Come With Fierce Grace, whose initial sessions were done during the pandemic with Tom Skinner, a drummer who’s currently also a member of the Radiohead offshoot The Smile. Check out “Greek Honey Slick” from the new album, and check out alabaster-deplume.com for his schedule, which includes a month of U.S. shows in September.As I mentioned at the top of this intro, this chat is both lovely and very mellow. DePlume is a soothing presence whose spirit seems powered almost exclusively by love, and Orton is happy to participate. They chat about the climate-activism event that landed dePlume in jail and found Orton chased off the stage; they talk about angry yoga and the joys of triangle chokes, and Orton points out how technological advances can help women artists. Find your zen and enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast and thanks to Beth Orton and Alabaster dePlume for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness on this very site. 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 a couple of singers who’ve devoted themselves, in slightly different ways, to keeping traditional music alive: Shirley Collins and Radie Peat.Collins is 88, and she’s had a pretty strange and incredible career. She started performing traditional songs in the mid-1950s, and she notably left England in 1959 to travel the United States with Alan Lomax, recording songs and singers in Appalachia and elsewhere that may otherwise have been lost to history. She recorded some incredibly influential records in the '60s and '70s with Davy Graham and, separately, with her sister Dolly Collins. And then Shirley left music entirely. It wasn’t until the 2000s that unlikely underground musicians would coax her back to performing: British apocalyptic-folk-industrial band Current 93 were the first, strangely. It wasn’t until 2014—38 years after her last album—that Collins made a new one, and it was gorgeous and well received. She’s since released a couple more, all for the hip Domino label, fitting for someone who’s been so quietly influential. Her latest is Archangel Hill; check out “Hares on the Mountain” right here.Radie Peat, singer for Lankum, is one of the many musicians who’ve been deeply influenced by Collins—and by the traditional songs that Collins helped to keep alive. But while Lankum is definitely part of the folk tradition, they modernize the sound in wildly interesting ways. Their fourth and latest album is called False Lankum, and I love this quote about it from Mojo Magazine: “If modern folk music needs its own OK Computer, its own The Dark Side of the Moon, or indeed its own F♯A♯∞, this may well be it.” (That last album referenced, in case you didn’t recognize it, is the debut from Godspeed You Black Emperor.) If that all sounds intriguing, you’ll probably love it. Oh, and the album was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Here’s “Go Dig My Grave” from False Lankum.Peat describes this conversation as “fangirling,” though I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. There’s definitely some mutual admiration happening here—Collins still keeps up with music, and she loves Lankum as well. They talk about Collins’ adventures in America with Alan Lomax, about other singers they admire, and how they share a pretty strong hatred for jazz. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Shirley Collins and Radie Peat for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. 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 we’ve got two guys who’ve known each other for decades, and who have a popular podcast, a post-hardcore band, and a new novel between them: Geoff Rickly and Jonah Bayer.Now Geoff Rickly is best known as the singer of the band Thursday, whose 2001 album Full Collapse is rightly considered a touchstone in the post-hardcore/screamo genre. That band had a full and varied existence, creating an impressive catalog that they still occasionally tour on. Rickly has also been part of other wild and wooly outfits: He stood in for the singer of legendary vampire-hardcore band Ink & Dagger for a tour, after their singer passed away—you’ll hear about that band in this conversation. But most recently, Rickly switched his focus to writing his first novel, which just came out. Someone Who Isn’t Me is most definitely not a memoir, though it is slightly more than loosely based on Rickly’s experience in being in a band, becoming addicted to heroin, and finding a path to treatment.The other half of this conversation is an old friend and bandmate of Ricky’s, Jonah Bayer. Bayer and Rickly were part of the mysterious supergroup United Nations, which put out a bunch of music while keeping most of their identities secret. There’s a small but powerful United Nations catalog out there, if you’re into confrontational, mysterious hardcore. Bayer is also a journalist and recently started working as a mental-health clinician, which maybe makes him the perfect guy to chat with Rickly about his book. Oh, and Bayer also hosts a really fun podcast with his sister Vanessa Bayer—of Saturday Night Live fame—called How Did We Get Weird that just launched its third season.In this chat, Bayer gets deep with Rickly about Someone Who Isn’t Me, diving into the odd structure of the book, whether it made sense to fictionalize his friends, and how to dramatize a psychedelic trip. The two also talk about how “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli fits into Rickly’s story, how Ink & Dagger deserves more recognition, and about a Kurt Cobain dream that Rickly once had. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jonah Bayer and Geoff Rickly for chatting. If you like what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. 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 two guys who’ve been friends a long time, but recently formed a new project together. Oh, and one of them happens to be the bassist in a little band called Pearl Jam: It’s Jeff Ament and John Wicks.Now Jeff Ament you’ve surely heard of, since he’s a founding member of one of rock’s biggest and most reliable acts, Pearl Jam, who’ve been going strong and steady since the early 1990s. That band released their latest album, Gigaton, right when the pandemic first hit us, so it scuttled some touring plans, but Pearl Jam is back out on the road this fall. Ament has always been a musical seeker beyond his main gig, though, experimenting both with solo records and side projects over the years. He’s also an accomplished visual artist. Not only is Ament the hand behind Pearl Jam’s iconic stickman logo, but he’s also an incredible painter and poster artist.John Wicks is an accomplished drummer probably best known as a founding member of the band Fitz & The Tantrums, though he’s also loaned his skills to the likes of Bruno Mars and Cee Lo Green. He teamed up with his old friend Ament to make the music for a TV series called Under the Banner of Heaven, and then the pandemic allowed them time to start an entirely new project that they’ve dubbed Deaf Charlie. Their debut album under the name is called Catastrophic Metamorphic, and it’s a weird, fun, occasionally dark set of psychedelic pop that’s also fully engaging. Ament sings lead on most of the songs, which is new for him. Check out “We are Doing It” right here.The chat you’re about to hear took place the day after Deaf Charlie’s first rehearsal as a full band; even though Wicks and Ament never really intended to play these songs live, plans changed and they’ll be making their live debut at the Ohana Festival in early October. Both of these guys live in Montana now, and they chat about Ament’s upbringing in small town Big Sandy, Wicks’ recent job as a professor at the University of Montana, how originality is often discovered through mistakes, and the unparalleled joy of finding yourself inside the music—or other art—that you’re making. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jeff Ament and John Wicks for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. 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 a pair of songwriters from relatively similar locales but different generations who also happened to record a song together that’s finally coming out: Stuart Murdoch and Suki Waterhouse.Stuart Murdoch is the primary force behind the delightfully wry and smart Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, which shyly emerged from Glasgow in the mid-'90s but quickly became one of those touchstone indie bands—or as Waterhouse puts it in this chat, a legacy band. Belle and Sebastian have released a dozen terrific albums over the years, and they’re still capable of surprising their devoted fanbase. The band’s latest, Late Developers, was released early this year, hot on the heels of the band’s 11th album, A Bit of Previous. If you haven’t availed yourself of the band’s charms in recent years, this new one is a great place to jump back in.Suki Waterhouse is probably best known as an actor and model—you may have seen her in the music-focused Amazon Prime series Daisy Jones & The Six recently—but she’s been passionate about music forever as well. Her debut album came out last year on Sub Pop; it’s called I Can’t Let Go, and it’s perfect for fans of Fiona Apple or Lana Del Ray. And music isn’t just a side thing for Waterhouse; she jumped right in the van, as you’ll hear, to tour her songs as soon as her acting gig allowed it. She also recorded a song with Belle and Sebastian a few years back, which has finally been released as a Sub Pop single, and it’s the reason we ended up here together. The song is called “Every Day’s a Lesson in Humility.” Check it out.Waterhouse and Murdoch hadn’t seen in each other in a while, but they picked up the conversation like old friends, talking about breakfast, peptides, a funny nickname that Murdoch got when he started his short-lived career as a roadie, and the difficulties of pooping as a touring musician. Yes, you read that right. We also hear about some incredible Los Angeles advice that Murdoch got way back when. It’s a charming chat, and I hope you enjoy it.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Suki Waterhouse and Stuart Murdoch for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out the many wonderful written pieces and other goings-on at Talkhouse.com. 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 episode for the drummers and those who like a great story: Jon Wurster and Stewart Copeland.Copeland is of course the drummer for the legendary, gazillion-selling Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Police, who were called “the biggest band in the world” during their mid-'80s heyday. Their hits have endured over the decades, too, and that’s in no small part due to the special chemistry the trio enjoyed—and that chemistry, as you’ll hear, often manifested itself in fights between Copeland and his old bandmate Sting. Copeland has made a fascinating career for himself since; he directed a documentary about his old band that made interesting use of their music, and he’s got a new album and tour called Police Deranged for Orchestra, which features those classic songs redone in wild new ways. As you’ll hear in this chat, Copeland also found a side career as a film composer, working on everything from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street to the classic Francis Ford Coppola movie Rumble Fish. Check out a little bit of “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic“ from Police Deranged for Orchestra right here.Now the other half of this conversation is a drummer from a later era and, as you’ll hear, a huge fan of Copeland’s work. Jon Wurster is a renaissance man who’s played most regularly with Superchunk, the Mountain Goats, and Bob Mould, but whose list of credits goes way beyond those amazing acts. He’s also a comedy writer and half of the duo Scharpling and Wurster, which gave birth to some of the funniest characters in radio comedy ever. This summer, Wurster will tour with both Mountain Goats and Bob Mould, so chances are good that he’ll be in a city near you.In this conversation, Wurster—as I had hoped he would—gets deep into specifics with Copeland, asking him right off the bat about a gig from the early 1980s. They also chat about how Copeland’s orchestral tours actually work and about his forays into the soundtrack world—I had never heard the term “shit chord” before. They get into the fights that Copeland had with Police frontman Sting, and about how band therapy helped sort that all out. Wurster also gets a chance to ask about the lyrics to a deep cut called “On Any Other Day.” Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jon Wurster and Stewart Copeland for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com. 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 a pair of songwriters separated by thousands of miles who came together recently for a killer single: Remi Wolf and Benny Sings.Wolf has been writing songs since her early teens, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that her neon pop jams starting getting some social media attention. A major label came calling, and Wolf spent a good chunk of the early pandemic making her full-length debut album Juno, which she named after her recently adopted dog. It’s one of those deceptively sunny records that hides some bigger emotions inside huge hooks, and it led to a bunch of amazing singles like “Anthony Kiedis”—that’s the name of the song— and tours: Wolf will play Coachella next month.As you’ll hear in this chat, Wolf met Dutch singer-songwriter Benny Sings when both were playing a Spanish festival that had some kind of Medieval theme. Wolf was already a fan of Benny’s work, both as a performer and a producer: Not only has he released a ton of great music on his own, but he also co-wrote a hit with Rex Orange County and has worked with the likes of Mac Demarco. Benny’s music has a sort of classic soft-pop vibe; he playfully mixes in hip-hop and island vibes on occasion, too, making the sort of breezy songs that easily get stuck in your head. When it came time to record his brand new album Young Hearts, which comes out next week, he reached out to Remi for some vocal assistance. The result is a delightful little nugget called “Pyjamas.” Check out that song right here.In this chat, Remi and Benny talk about collaborating on the video for “Pyjamas”—she directed it, adding some of the visual flair she’s known for. They also chat about songwriting in general—whether it’s craft or divination, and they get into whether technology is good or evil—and whether these two would survive a tech-pocalypse. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Remi Wolf and Benny Sings for chatting. If you like what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. 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 two performers who’ve got friends in common, and became fast friends themselves while recording this chat: Maya Hawke and Sabrina Teitelbaum.Maya Hawke is best known for her day job as an actor, most visibly in a little show called Stranger Things, and she was also in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the new Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City. But as you’ll hear in this chat, she might be most excited by a side path as a singer and songwriter. Hawke has released two understated but fantastic albums so far, and she’s basically finished another. The vibe is sort of indie-folk, sort of floating and ambient but lyrically really engaging. She’s worked with some cool folks to realize her musical vision, including Christian Lee Hutson, who’s the “Christian” referenced in this conversation, just so you know. Check out a “Sweet Tooth” from Hawke’s 2022 album Moss right here.Sabrina Teitelbaum just released her debut album under the name Blondshell, and it’s one of the best of 2023 so far. She describes it in this conversation as an emergency album—meaning a bunch of songs that she felt almost desperate to write, record, and unleash on the world. It’s direct and angry in spots, but also darkly funny and completely unafraid. She’s toured with the likes of Horsegirl and Porridge Radio, which might give some indication of what you’re in for. Or I could just play you Blondshell’s opus, “Salad,” right here. Check it out.These two have a fantastic conversation, and just in case it’s not clear from the context, they’re both good friends with the singer Samia, and each has contributed to a Samia covers series called Honey Reimagained. Blondshell did a song called “Charm You,” which is available now. Elsewhere in this chat, they talk about Hawke’s playing “body air guitar,” the weird emotional hit you get when a tour is finished, and the difficulties of stage banter. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Sabrina Teiltelbaum and Maya Hawke for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

For this week's Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a special two-part episode featuring both members of one of my favorite bands, Wye Oak, in conversation with some other fantastic musicians, so be sure to stick around for both halves!First up it’s Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, both of whom have new music coming out, coincidentally, on June 23. Samuels has been making beautiful, deeply personal music for the last decade or so, and her new one is a doozy. The album is called Bystander, and it was recorded with Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman—he’s the Josh you’ll hear referenced in this chat. Check out “Ugly on the Inside” from Bystander right here.Samuels is joined here by Talkhouse pal Jenn Wasner, who’s probably best known as half of Wye Oak, but has also recorded music recently under the name Flock of Dimes. It’s no wonder that Wasner and Samuels get along, as both are incredibly thoughtful and sincere in their musical pursuits: They’re looking for something much bigger than a hooky song to sing, they’re out to connect on a deeper level. Wye Oak has sort of morphed into a different kind of band in recent years, choosing to stay away from the make-an-album-then-tour-forever cycle and instead release singles and one-off songs as Wasner and Andy Stack are able. A bunch of those songs have just been compiled on an album called Every Day Like the Last. They sound as good as anything the duo has done, which is to say they sound great. Check out “I Learned it From You” right here.In this conversation, Wasner and Samuels talk about the magic of the Newport Folk Festival, how great it is to work with Josh Kaufman, and how to express heavy thoughts within joyful music. You’ll find out whether these are women of mystery, and you’ll hear Wasner refer to herself as “a big golden retriever of a person.” Enjoy.In the second half of this epic Talkhouse two-parter, we’ve actually got three speakers: Andy Stack, who’s best known as half of Wye Oak, but who’s also made some solo records under the name Joyero. Along with him is Jay Hammond, with whom Stack recently made a great instrumental record, and Joe Westerlund.I’ll start with Westerlund, and I’ll try to do his bio justice: He started out in the Wisconsin band Deyarmond Edison, which has a massive retrospective box set coming out this year, and which is best known as the band that started Justin Vernon of Bon Iver down his musical path. Westerlund has also contributed to lots of other song-based music over the years, drumming for the likes of Califone and his project Megafaun. But it definitely feels like Westerlund has found his true calling in his solo instrumental work, including the recent Elegies for the Drift, whose compositions were largely inspired by important people in his life who’d passed away recently. It’s a gorgeous, emotional ride. Check out “The Circle,” which is dedicated to Akron/Family’s Miles Cooper Seaton, a friend of Westerlund’s who tragically died in a car crash in 2021.It makes sense that Westerlund got together for a chat with Andy Stack and Jay Hammond, because they all have North Carolina in common: It’s become something of a refuge for a bunch of bands over the past few years, with their friends in Sylvan Esso building a studio there, and lots of folks—including both members of Wye Oak—taking up residence there. Stack and Hammond got together recently and struck gold with a series of electro-acoustic improvisations that they winnowed down to album length and titled Inter Personal—a nod to the connection that they deepened by making this music together. Check out “Life on a Ship” right here. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Johanna Samuels, Jenn Wasner, Andy Stack, Jay Hammond, and Joe Westerlund for chatting. 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 the ringleader of the year’s weirdest experimental hip-hop album, who also happens to be a well known comedian, along with two guys who helped him make it: James Acaster along with NNAMDÏ and Quelle Chris.Now Acaster isn’t a household name in the States just yet, but he’s definitely a known quantity in the UK, where he’s from. He’s a stand-up comedian, a TV presenter, and an author—he wrote a great memoir a few years back called Perfect Sound Whatever, which uses music as a starting point for telling his own story. Which sort of bring us to his musical project, which he calls Temps. Before his comedy career took off, Acaster was an aspiring musician, and he jumped back into that pursuit during the pandemic, creating a collective of over 40 contributors to make an album called Party Gator Purgatory. It’s a wild mix of experimental hip-hop with rock and jazz elements, and it’s chaotic in all the right ways.For this conversation, we put Acaster together with two of the guests he brought on to help out with Party Gator. NNAMDÏ seemed like a natural choice for a multiple-personality record like this one, since he’s one of the most restlessly engaging musicians working right now. The Chicagoan’s latest album, Please Have a Seat, was his first for Secretly Canadian, and it’s a blistering mix of hip-hop, electronic music, trap, and lots more—all tied together by his voice and outlook. Also in this chat is Detroit’s Quelle Chris, who’s been making records as a rapper, producer, and writer for the past decade plus. His latest album, Deathfame, also came out last year, and it’s a smart, politically pointed collection of songs that showcases both his incredible flow and sense of humor—again, it makes perfect sense that Acaster would’ve called on him to bring something special to Party Gator. Let’s check out one of the album’s tracks that features all three of these guys; here’s “no, no.” In this fun and insightful conversation, these three guys talk about collaborating long-distance, how whoever’s mixing an album is incredibly important, whether or not one should order cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory, and how Macklemore ruined thrift stores. Allegedly. Enjoy.Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to James Acaster, NNAMDÏ, and Quelle Chris for chatting. The record is credited to Temps, and it’s called Party Gator Purgatory. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite platform, and check out all the goodness at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!