LSQ

“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. 

Remi Wolf is my favorite kind of modern artist: a young music-maker who truly doesn't give a flying eff what genre names folks might use to try to neatly categorize her sound. Remi knows that, as she once said, "genres are pretty obsolete at this point." She continued (in this interview with Spin): "I think artists are their own genre, where every artist is creating such a world for themselves that they are becoming the sound and the thing." The world Remi has created over the course of the past several years and two full-length albums, including her awesome new sophomore LP Big Ideas, is kaleidoscopic and soulful and trippy and funky and full of humor. I had a blast talking to her about her childhood experiences with music and her own creativity, and how they overlapped with her experiences as a serious athlete who was involved in competitive skiing until music proved to be a stronger calling. We talked about the stuff she heard around the house -- Prince, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin -- and the artists she got into on her own when she was a little older, from My Chemical Romance to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Amy Winehouse to Snarky Puppy, and how they informed her own music. She also shares what she learned from her brief experience as a contestant on American Idol back when she was seventeen (you can see her audition here), and how she found began to find her own sound as a songwriter during her college years. Remi and her band just started a huge North American tour and you can get tickets here.

On the heels of Foster the People's first new album in seven years, their excellent, uplifting and highly danceable new album Paradise State of Mind, hear from the project's creative mastermind about key moments in his musical journey: how he learned to play piano by ear as a kid, and was later inspired to play guitar by hearing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a kiosk at Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; how he discovered the value of a local music community through his city's metalcore scene; how his dad talked him out of joining the Air Force and persuaded him to move to Los Angeles to pursue his music dream instead; what he learned from the rejection and adversity of his early years in LA; how he overcame the fear he felt after having a hit with "Pumped Up Kicks" that he might not be able to do it again; what it felt like to open for his heroes The Beach Boys; how his songwriting has evolved since then, and more. Paradise State of Mind is out now, and you can get tickets for Foster the People's upcoming shows here.

On the eve of the release of her beautiful third studio album, Chaos Angel, singer-songwriter and actor Maya Hawke talks about how she arrived at her finest collection yet - a group of songs inspired by the idea of fighting one's own guardian angel. I loved getting to ask Maya about the creative path that led to this album, the music she was into as a kid, how she discovered her own musicality, the way her approach to songwriting and lyric writing has changed, even just in the months since she finished Chaos Angel, and more.

Garage rock prince Ty Segall joins the LSQ podcast on the heels of his awesome fifteenth (!!!) studio album, Three Bells, to talk about the roots of his sound: how he first fell in love with rock and roll thanks to oldies radio (Beatles, Ronettes, Kinks) and a pile of vinyl records gifted by a Laguna Beach neighbor (Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Bowie), doing musical theater in high school, moving to San Francisco in search of like-minded weirdos and finding his community there, and more. We also talk about his quest to always be trying something new, and what sounds and styles he still hopes to explore. Ty and his band are on tour in North America now. Get tickets and details here.

Since there was a major influx of new listeners thanks to last week's episode 105 with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, I wanted to bring back this super fun 2021 interview with VW bassist (Chris) Baio, which we recorded in the lead-up to his solo album Dead Hand Control. This is an abbreviated version of the episode, but you can find the full interview HERE. We talked about Sex and the City, Burnt, Spin Doctors, "Bohemian Rhapsody," Akron/Family, his dad's Columbia House CD collection, seeing Cranberries at Jones Beach Amphitheater, VW's early days at Columbia University, and more.