Songwriters on Process

Hello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collective and individual writing processes, and we also discussed our shared love for the novelist Jennifer Egan.Hello Mary's latest album Emita Ox is out now on Frenchkiss Records. 

"Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus, told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 million records.) As you'll hear on this episode, Einziger's intellectual curiosity runs deep, expanding far beyond music into the world of physics; the overlap of these two passions, he told me, means that he is constantly "driven by curiosity. And when that happens, songwriting doesn't feel like work."

Here's a sampling of the authors and artists that Jake Duzsik of HEALTH mentioned in our conversation: Pascal, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Pynchon, Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy. And somewhere along the lines, we discussed postmodern prose. To be clear, Duzsik was not name checking. It reflects how deeply his creative mind operates. HEALTH's latest album Rat Wars is out now. And shameless plug: if you're a fan of HEALTH, you might also be a Lamb of God fan. So buy Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Mark Morton with Ben Opipari (me)!

Does writer's block really exist? Or is it just a reluctance to write the bad stuff? The writer Anthony Doerr once told me that writer's block is just "a failure of courage." Pete Yorn tends to agree. On this episode of the podcast, Yorn and I talk about the myth of writer's block, why you should always say yes to a creative project with your kids, and why he still keeps his songwriting notebooks from his days as a college student at Syracuse University. Pete Yorn's latest album, his tenth solo studio album, The Hard Way, is out now.

Wunderhorse is why you should always get to the show early to see the support act. I was introduced to Jacob Slater's band when I saw them open for Fontaines D.C. (here's my podcast with Grian Chatten of Fontaines) at a small club in Pittsburgh in 2022. I had never heard of Wunderhorse, but they won everyone, including me, over in the first thirty seconds with their volume and their energy. I've been a huge fan of Slater and his band ever since. And as you'll hear, we share a strong affinity for the amazing writer Breece D'J Pancake.Wunderhorse's fantastic album Midas is out now. 

It’s always fun to interview two songwriters who have a history together! Before his solo career, Kishi Bashi was a member of Kevin Barnes’ band of Montreal. Kishi Bashi’s new album Kantos is out now on Joyful Noise Recordings, and of Montreal’s Lady on the Cusp is out on Polyvinyl Records. Kishi Bashi’s “Omoiyari: A Song Film” has been nominated for an Emmy with the winners announced in September. 

Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin of Magdalena Bay love hybrid cars. While I’m sure they appreciate the environmental benefits, it’s the humming sound the cars make that the duo finds inspiring. In fact, they find inspiration in everything around them, visually and sonically—even the act of Swiffering, as you’ll hear on the podcast. Small surprise that Tenenbaum had 2002 voice memos of ideas on her phone when we spoke.  Magdalena Bay’s new album Imaginal Disk is out on Mom + Pop Records.  The band’s videos are incredible, so check those out too. 

"I'm always writing and always creating. I relate to the world by writing," Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss told me on the podcast. Besides songwriting, she's written a YA novel and is a big journaler. Heck, Hendricks even gets inspired while she's hanging laundry! And when those songs are close to fruition, they need to be perfect: Hendricks estimates that she wrote 50 different verses for the new song "Waiting For You."The new Charly Bliss album Forever is out on Lucky Number Records.

Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura has a superpower: she's able to write entire songs in her head before putting them to paper. If Campbell gets an idea and can't write it down immediately, she'll repeat the words over and over to herself until she can grab a pen and pencil. This superpower comes in handy when driving is an especially rich source of inspiration, as it is for Campbell. Camera Obscura's latest album Look to the East, Look to the West is out now on Merge Records.

Matthew Koma of Winnetka Bowling League stops by the podcast to talk about how writing a song is like solving a crossword puzzle, why he doesn't like to dig through discarded melodic and lyrical ideas for new songs, and how he gets inspired by being among the stores.Winnetka Bowling League's debut album Sha La La is out now. I'm a big fan.