LSQ

When I learned that house and dance music legend Crystal Waters has been finishing her first new album since 1997 and was getting ready to share singles and do interviews and therefore might be up for talking with me, I was so geeked.  I’ve been a fan since the early 90s when huge hits like "Gypsy Woman" and "100% Pure Love" were all over the radio, and it was an honor to get to connect with her for episode 120 and a conversation about her songwriting process, how she got her start in music, and why this current creative phase is one of the most exciting in her thirty-plus year career.  Crystal recently shared a great new single called "You & Me" -- a collaboration with the Swedish duo ManyFew -- and she was also recently honored during Miami Music Week at the inaugural Femmy Awards with awards for The Voice of House and the Female Icon Award. And there will be a lot more new music coming from Crystal in the remainder of this year, and live shows, too!

In episode 119, I catch up with Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller, the noise pop duo better known as Sleigh Bells. I have been a massive Sleigh Bells fan since their first few singles back in 2009 — brash, genre-defying bangers like “Crown on the Ground” and “Infinity Guitars” that sounded unlike anything else, combining elements of pop, metal, hardcore, hip-hop and punk. They’ve continued to blow my mind with the leaps they’ve made since then. The three of us are also old friends at this point, and though we’ve done shorter interviews in the past, it was great to finally get to ask them some of the classic LSQ podcast questions about all the shit they were into as kids. In this episode, Alexis talks about what she learned from her experience in a teen pop band, revelations she had at the punk and hardcore shows she frequented during her New Jersey youth, and learning to integrate the diverse parts of her musical voice. Derek describes falling in love with the soundtrack to La Bamba as a kid growing up in Florida, and then discovering 80s pop greats like Janet Jackson and Cyndi Lauper before venturing into alternative and hard rock (Nirvana, Silverchair) and then having his mind blown by ground-breaking artists such as Radiohead and Björk, and then eventually joining metal core band Poison The Well in his later teens. They also share the story of how they came together to form Sleigh Bells, and how their current approach builds on the foundational principles they established for the band more than fifteen years ago.Sleigh Bells’ new sixth studio album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, comes out this week and it’s stellar. Find out more (and get tickets for their upcoming tour) at: tornclean.com

It's a good thing ANOHNI and I decided to leave the cameras turned off for the interview included in episode 118 of the LSQ podcast, because there were moments when she was talking --about her creative process, about using her voice and her music as a survival strategy, about what it felt like to grow up as a trans femme amidst the violence of patriarchy -- that I was nearly in tears, so moved by the way she described her experience. And since crying while interviewing is as cringe as "crying in baseball," it was a relief not to be seen in those moments. It was fascinating to hear ANOHNI's story of discovering her musical spirit as a child, motivated by a desire to reveal feminine emotion and power in a way that she felt her mother was not allowed to, and to learn how she developed her creative process from there. ANOHNI talks about drawing inspiration from artists such as Kate Bush, Boy George, Marc Almond, Alison Moyet, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Diamanda Galas and more, and how she has learned to adapt musical forms to suit her voice (both the literal voice and the symbolic voice). She also shares about her relationship with her mentor, the late Lou Reed, how greatly he encouraged her early in her career, and what it was like to recently perform some of his music live for the first time since he passed. You can keep up with ANOHNI here. This is also the first video episode of the LSQ podcast, with awesome illustrations and animation crafted by Jess Rotter and Andrew Deselm. Thanks to them for the wonderful work!

On the heels of the announcement last week of a much anticipated new album by indie folk band The Head and the Heart, I’m excited to be able to share the following conversation with the band’s Matty Gervais. This is one of your first chances to hear more about their exceptional new collection of tunes, Aperture, the band’s sixth LP, which will be out on May 9th. There are already a few beautiful introductory singles online now, including the anthemic "Arrow" and the newly shared album opener, "After The Setting Sun." It was a pleasure to connect over zoom with Matty to talk about the making of Aperture and how it heralds a new chapter of freedom and collaboration for THATH. We also talk about some earlier THATH history, how they have benefited in more recent years from band therapy, and his own personal creative process for this new album. And of course we start by delving into Matty’s early life experiences with music, growing up in Seattle during the grunge explosion, falling in love with recording his songs using a boombox technique he heard Dave Grohl describe in an interview, playing in bands with his brother and eventually joining THATH more than a decade ago. You can pre-order or pre-save Aperture, and get tickets for their upcoming shows HERE!Preview:3:30 - 13:00 - Early life experiences with music, learning to play drums, growing up during grunge, going to Bumbershoot with his parents, getting into Posies, Fastbacks, Supersuckers, The Presidents of the United States of America and other local bands13:20 - 21:00 - Writing and recording his own songs using Dave Grohl’s boombox technique, developing his sound, playing in various bands leading up to joining THATH21:15 - 31:00 - Observing THATH as a fan, joining the band, adapting to their fame:31:00 - 34:00 - Band therapy and its benefits35:15 - 40:00 - Aperture, how it started and the writing and recording processes that arose from there40:30 - 49:00 - "Forest Bath": Walking through the woods writing melodies and lyrics; the inspiration for “After The Setting Sun”

Welcome to season 8 of the LSQ podcast! I’m thrilled to kick off this season with an interview with Julien Baker & Torres, two artists whose music on their own I’ve admired for years: Julien, as a solo performer and member of boygenius, and Torres, which is the musical moniker of the singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott. Last year, they revealed that they had been working together on a country project and they shared a beautiful debut single, “Sugar in the Tank” that I fell in love with instantly. Now there’s an album coming and it’s so good! Send A Prayer My Way, a collection of gorgeous tunes that Julien and Mackenzie collaborated on during the past couple of years, arrives on April 17th via Matador. In the interview, we talk about the inspiration for the project, as well as their respective childhoods, growing up in the South, surrounded by country music and country music culture, and how their relationship with the genre evolved over the years and how it ended up informing the album. We also delve into the other music they loved as kids: Mackenzie talks about her early obsessions with Britney Spears and Broadway musicals like The Phantom of the Opera and eventually writing songs that were country songs with “a little bit of John Mayer”  flavor, and Julien shares how she went from loving Shania Twain to “being radicalized by Green Day” after seeing them on VH1 to discovering the metal bands like Underoath and Norma Jean that inspired her to start playing music herself. 

I learned a new word during this interview you’re about to hear with ⁠Big Thief⁠’s ⁠Adrianne Lenker⁠ and the deeply under appreciated singer-songwriter ⁠Tucker Zimmerman⁠: Numinous. It means “having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.” Numinous. That’s how Tucker described the experience of recording the album ⁠Dance of Love,⁠ with Big Thief as his backing band, and the album’s producer. Released in October, Dance of Love is a collection of absolutely gorgeous folk tunes, written and amassed by Tucker over many, many years. It’s beauty derives not only from what is actually on the album, but also from the spirit behind it — of kindred creative souls finding each other, across generations, across international miles, to make something gentle and singular and true. About twelve minutes into the interview, Adrianne tells the story of how she first heard Tucker’s 1980 album ⁠Square Dance ⁠while getting a tattoo in Colorado. She was instantly mesmerized, and introduced his music to her Big Thief bandmates. They were all baffled that they’d never heard of him before, baffled that he wasn’t more well-known, in general.  Now 83 years old, Tucker began releasing albums back in 1969, and there are so many treasures to be discovered in his extensive catalog since then.  In addition to discussing the collaboration and how it happened, they each share how they first connected with their own creativity as a child, and I couldn’t help but notice how profoundly their current artistic approach carries the long reverberation of their first, naive awareness of their creative side.  It was a joy to get these two back together (along with Tucker’s wife, Marie Claire, who has a cameo at the beginning) for a conversation I feel honored to have witnessed.  Tucker will be on tour in early 2025. Get tickets ⁠here⁠. Adrianne's latest solo album, ⁠Bright Future⁠, is nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.

“I’ve always been pretty attached to my dreams,” says singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt. “[Dreams have] consistently been this means of receiving symbolic information that feels important. They do feel somewhat connected — the mental space that I’m in when I’m writing and the way that I feel in certain kinds of dreams. Sometimes you have a dream where it feels very loaded and weighted in this way that you can’t really argue with, and I look forward to those. And sometimes it’s the same with songs, where you just get hit with something and you don’t know where it came from, and it feels like there’s no work involved, like it’s just sort of this thing that is delivered, and then that’s when you get really lucky.”  It was a pleasure to have this conversation with Pratt, whose gorgeous fourth full-length, Here In The Pitch, is one of my favorite albums of this year, and has rightfully been among 2024’s most critically lauded LPs. Given how often folks describe the album as dreamlike or hypnagogic, it was fascinating to hear Jessica talk about the similarities between her dream life and her songwriting process — one of the many subjects touched upon in this episode. I was also fascinated to hear from Jessica about how, growing up in the same household as her great-grandmother influenced her toward an early affinity with a bygone era of film and fashion, while her mother’s adventurous taste in music inspired her own artful leanings toward “if you know, you know” type albums by Captain Beefheart or Nazz, at a time when other kids her age were probably listening to things like Eminem or Justin Timberlake. She also talks about how her songwriting process has evolved over the years and how her approach to making music continues to follow from intuition rather than ambition. 

What an incredible joy it was to spend some time talking face to face with one of my all-time favorite artists — Julian Casablancas of The Voidz and The Strokes⁠ — for episode 113 of the LSQ podcast. We met up for this interview backstage at LA’s Orpheum Theater just after The Voidz played a mind-blowing set, including music from their awesome new album, Like All Before You. Although we’re old friends and have done more than a few interviews over the years, this conversation allowed us to touch on subjects we’d never reached in the past. In addition to talking about both of his bands and how their goals have evolved, we discuss Julian’s own development as a songwriter and musician, starting with his teenage years learning to play songs by Nirvana and Green Day on guitar as a springboard for writing his own tunes, how he gained the confidence to begin sharing his music with friends (at one point pretending that his own composition was a Rancid tune, just to see what people thought of it), and how long it took before he finally felt like his writing was on the right track (turns out it wasn’t until the Strokes song “Soma,” during the bands early days). He also shares about his songwriting practice (sometimes they come to him in dreams) and about the moments when he feels most inspired by the creative process. And more! Keep up with The Voidz here!

I kind of felt like I already knew Madi Diaz, even though we’d never met before, when we connected over Zoom this summer for the conversation in episode 112 of the LSQ podcast. That’s in part because we have many music friends in common, and I’ve heard a lot of great things about her over the years. But it’s even more the case because her songs are so beautifully direct and intimate; they give you a really vivid sense of her inner world, with all of its relatable nuances.   You can hear that gift on full display on albums like her 2021 LP History of a Feeling, and even more powerfully on her latest one, Weird Faith, which came out earlier this year, and of which a deluxe edition arrives later this month. In this conversation, we talk about creative experiences that have impacted her since childhood, whether it’s doing laps around her house while listening to her dad play piano, or singing along with Whitney Houston and the Beatles and The Mamas & the Papas as a kid in rural Pennsylvania, or connecting with Patti Griffin’s music during a difficult time in her family life, or learning to burst out of the constraints imposed by a judgmental guitar teacher during adolescence, in particular finding her voice and artistic footing during her recent years living in Nashville.  Madi heads out on tour with Rainbow Kitten Surprise in early November - get tickets here. 

I’ll never forget the first time I heard the music of the iconic noise-rock band The Jesus Lizard — it was more than thirty years ago, thanks to my older brother Michael playing me their song “Seasick,” from the band’s second studio album, Goat, released in 1991 and produced by the legendary Steve Albini.  That song blew my mind. It made me feel like I was actually inside of the tune itself, and that, like the narrator of the song, yowling about how he “can’t swim,” that I was somehow drowning in the music. Not in a scary way — in an empowering, visceral way. It’s a song I still go back to, and that album is one I go back to all the time. It was a thrill to get to ask David about that song, in particular, about working with Albini, and so much more. In this episode, David discusses his earliest creative inclinations as a visual artist, and as a music lover and musician, and how everything changed when he discovered punk rock at age twenty. We also delved into the making of the first new studio album by The Jesus Lizard in twenty-six years, their excellent, newly released LP Rack. Although he cites influences such as the Beatles and Queen and The Huns and Fear and Nick Cave’s band The Birthday Party, what David does is a thing unto itself. He is truly an inimitable performer and it was an honor to speak to him for this episode.