On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of fantastic songwriters from the indie-rock world: Kenny Becker and Doug Martsch.
Martsch I’m guessing our listeners will know as the chief songwriter and sole consistent member of Built to Spill, the band that made Boise, Idaho famous. Built to Spill has been an ongoing concern since the early 1990s, releasing a ton of great albums at a fairly leisurely pace, including stone classics like There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and Keep it Like a Secret. The Built to Spill lineup has mutated a bunch of times over the years, and that’s never been more true than for the genesis of their latest album, When the Wind Forgets Your Name. Writing and recording the album was done with members of the Brazilian band Orua, but the latest live lineup features Martsch alongside a pair of incredibly talented young women from up-and-coming bands: Prism Bitch’s Teresa Esguerra and Blood Lemon’s Melanie Radford. They bring a new energy to this storied band. Check out the hilarious video for “Fool’s Gold” from When the Wind Forgets Your Name.
Goon has a much shorter history than Built to Spill, having really started as Kenny Becker’s solo project around 2015. Along with some college friends, Becker recorded Goon’s dreamy debut album Heaven is Humming. But that lineup was slowly lost to attrition and now, like Martsch, Becker has an entirely new set of players alongside a brand new album, Hour of Green Evening. This new one was recorded in a more bandlike setting, as you’ll hear in this chat, and Becker even had some help from Alex Fischel of Spoon. Check out the sweet and tender “Emily Says” from that new record.
In this chat, Becker and Martsch talk about recording in a studio versus recording at home; they talk about finding those eureka moments in the studio, Built to Spill’s recent cover of a Cate Le Bon song, and getting musical ideas from TikTok. Enjoy.
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast and thanks to Doug Martsch and Kenny Becker for chatting. If you like what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all of the other Talkhouse network shows and written pieces 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!

Doug Martsch (Built to Spill) with Kenny Becker (Goon)

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On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a whopping four guys representing three bands, more or less: Ryan Hahn and Nik Ewing from Local Natives and Sean Cimino and Isom Innis from Foster the People but, perhaps more importantly for purposes of this chat, their side project Peel. 
Local Natives have been around since around 2005, but it wasn’t until their debut album Gorilla Manor hit shelves in 2009 that the California band had its first real moment. They rode a similar wave to bands like Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, with bits of folk and punk and psychedelia all wrapped up in songs that are frequently undeniable earworms. They’ve built a really impressive catalog since, and the sessions for 2023’s Time Will Wait For No One were so fruitful that they actually yielded a companion record that’s just coming out now, called But I’ll Wait For You. It’s another gorgeously layered set of songs that feels even a little weirder than what came right before it. Check out the song “April” right here. 
The other half of this conversation is Sean Cimino and Isom Innis, who are best known as part of Foster the People, which had a huge hit straight out of the gate in 2010 with “Pumped Up Kicks,” and which has been chipping away at incredible pop-inflected songs since. But Cimino and Innis recently released their debut album under the name Peel, which takes a much more psychedelic approach to songs, creating dancey dream-pop that sometimes looks back at the ‘90s through some gauzy glasses. Check out one of the dancier tracks from Peel’s album Acid Star right here. This is called “Y2J.” 
In this chat, these old friends immediately head into a conversation about the relative merits of U2 and other bands that you should or should not be ashamed to love. They also chat about their history together, which goes way back, and of course about their latest records. Enjoy. 
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Sean Cimino, Isom Innis, Nik Ewing and Ryan Hahn 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!

Local Natives with Peel

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two powerhouses in what I guess you might call modern indie-folk, though it’s a lot more than that: Gregory Alan Isakov and Jeremiah Fraites. 
Fraites is, along with Wesley Schultz, a founding member of the Lumineers, the band whose simple-yet-powerful take on folky Americana has been met with pretty massive success over the past couple of decades. The band’s catalog goes deeper than massive hits like “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love,” songs you’ve probably heard even if you’re not super familiar with the band. The Lumineers’ latest album is 2022’s Brightside, but that’s not Fraites’ latest: He just released his second solo album of intriguing, fantastic instrumental piano pieces—a big departure from the sound of his main gig, but great nonetheless. It’s called Piano Piano 2—you can probably guess what the first one was called—and it stretches into even more cinematic territory than the first. Plus, it features a guest vocal from the other half of today’s conversation. 
Gregory Alan Isakov may seem like an overnight sensation, but the Colorado-based singer-songwriter has been plugging away—sometimes quietly—for nearly two decades, building a fanbase for his intimate songs over the course of seven albums. His latest, Appaloosa Bones, came out late last year, and as you’ll hear in this chat, the songs ended up being a bit more fleshed out than those on his past records. He’s on tour now, and he’s featured on the new Noah Kahan single as well. So yeah, kind of a big deal. Oh, and as I mentioned a minute ago, he collaborated with Jeremiah Fraites recently, on a cover of Radiohead’s classic “No Surprises.” Check out a bit of the magic they wrung from making the song their own. 
In this chat, Fraites and Isakov talk about how songwriting never gets easier—sorry, budding songwriters—about Isakov’s teenage obsession with the Nintendo game Metroid, and what that has to do with music, and about finding intimate sounds in massive places like Red Rocks, aka the best venue in the universe. Enjoy.
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jeremiah Fraites and Gregory Alan Isakov 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! 
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/talkhouse

Jeremiah Fraites (The Lumineers) with Gregory Alan Isakov

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got a rare trio episode for you, since two of our guests created something very cool together: Jo Firestone, Marissa Paternoster, and Joe Steinhardt. 
I’ll start with Jo Firestone, the actor, writer, comedian, podcaster, game inventor, and probably some other stuff that I’m forgetting, who you may have seen on the show Joe Pera Talks With You or, like a million other things. She’s done stand-up specials and albums, she’s written for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and she hosts the game-centric podcast Dr. Gameshow. Firestone is currently the head writer on After Midnight, the comedy/game show hybrid that airs late every night on CBS. In other words, she’s busy. 
But not too busy to chat with her friends Marissa Paternoster and Joe Steinhardt about their new graphic novel, Merriment. You may recognize Paternoster are the singer and guitarist for the amazing, recently broken up band Screaming Females, and Talkhouse readers and listeners may even recognize her illustrations, which have appeared on the site over the years. Paternoster continues to make music, but the focus of this chat is Merriment, her first graphic novel. Paternoster put her eerie, singular images to a story by her old friend Joe Steinhardt, head of the long-running independent label Don Giovanni Records, which has been home to a number of incredible bands over the past two decades, including Screaming Females. 
These three have a fun, loose chat about Merriment, which in case I didn’t say it yet, you should definitely check out, as well as Steinhardt’s not-so-secret desires to be a comedian, Paternoster’s can’t-fail movie idea, how Firestone was once tasked with selling St. Louis pizza with a New York attitude, and a game I’d never heard of called “Somebody Pooped in the Salad.” Enjoy. 
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jo Firestone, Marissa Paternoster, and Joe Steinhardt 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! 
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/talkhouse

Joe Steinhardt and Marissa Paternoster (Screaming Females) with Jo Firestone

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two songwriters whose music bursts with personality, but in oddly different ways: CMAT and John Grant. 
CMAT is the stage name/alter ego of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, who’s already hit it pretty big in her native Ireland with funny, frank, and flamboyant songs about break-ups and time travel and everything in between, I guess you might say. She was recently nominated for a BRIT Award for Best International Artist—she wore a jaw-dropping dress to the ceremony—and her second album, Crazymad, For Me went to number one in her home country as well. Now she’s ready to take on the States a bit, to see if her music—queer-friendly, over-the-top pop—can make as big a splash here. Check out “Where are Your Kids Tonight,” which features today’s other guest John Grant, and catch CMAT on tour in the US right now. Dates are at cmatbaby.com. 
John Grant is a tough guy to explain: On the surface, his music can sound like party-friendly electro-pop, but the themes and lyrics run deep and often pretty intense. Grant started out in the Denver band The Czars, but it wasn’t until he spread his wings as a solo artist—starting with 2010’s Queen of Denmark, which he made with help from members of the band Midlake—that he really found his unique voice. Since then it’s been a series of fascinating records with a series of fascinating collaborators, including Cate Le Bon, who produced his 2021 album Boy From Michigan. Grant just announced the release of his sixth album, The Art of The Lie. It comes out in June, and it promises a no-punches-pulled look at America in 2024, yet with some funk to help ease the medicine. Check out the song “It’s a Bitch” right here, and you can pre-order the whole record at johngrantmusic.com. 
In this conversation, Grant and CMAT have pretty dissimilar demeanors—she’s brash, he’s a more quiet sort of intense—but it works: Clearly these two are fans of each other’s work, as you’ll see, and they have a great chat about language, the ugliness of social media—especially for queer and/or female artists—and CMAT’s ass crack, which was “pixelated by the Daily Mail.” Enjoy. 
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to John Grant and CMAT 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!

John Grant with CMAT

This week’s Talkhouse episode was recorded live at the On Air Festival in Brooklyn recently—that explains why you’ll hear some audience questions at the end—and it features Hamilton Leithauser and Randall Poster, two interesting guys who were just meeting for the first time. 
Leithauser is best known as the frontman for The Walkmen, the New York band that put out a string of incredible records between 2000 and 2013 before going on a hiatus that lasted a decade—they reunited for a tour last year and have some festival dates lined up for this year. But Leithauser kept plenty busy during the band’s downtime, releasing three great records on his own—and he’s apparently got another one just about ready to go. Perhaps more relevant to this conversation, at least a bit, is the fact that he’s recently gotten into making music for film and TV. Avid Talkhouse listeners will remember that he was on the podcast last year talking with Ethan Hawke about a Paul Newman documentary they worked on together. Leithauser’s latest project in that realm is music for a doc series that just premiered at Sundance, and he also just finished up his yearly residence at the posh Cafe Carlyle. 
You may not immediately recognize the name of today’s other guest, but Randall Poster has almost certainly played you a song that you love at some point over the past few decades. As the go-to music supervisor for some incredible filmmakers, he’s helped set the mood for more than 200 movies. Perhaps most notably Poster has worked repeatedly with Wes Anderson, a director for whom the soundtrack is massively important. Watch the credits next time you love the song choices in a movie, and you might just see his name. Poster also recently curated a huge 20-LP box set called The Birdsong Project Collection, which you’ll hear about in this chat as well. 
Elsewhere, Leithauser and Poster talk about their jobs, about other podcasts—including one they had in common, called Call Your Grandmother. They get into the story of how Poster got into his unusual profession, and Leithauser talks about a Springsteen cover he recorded that may never see the light of day. Leithauser also talks about the time the presence of Christian Bale basically ruined a Walkmen show, though he can’t quite remember the movie it was surrounding: Guys, it was Terrence Malick’s already-kinda-forgotten film Song To Song. Enjoy. 
Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Hamilton Leithauser and Randall Poster 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! 

This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/talkhouse

Doug Martsch (Built to Spill) with Kenny Becker (Goon)

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