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Karly Hartzman started Wednesday in North Carolina (the only State she’s ever lived and, she says, will ever live it) as a solo project, until her sister made her put a full lineup together to play at her birthday. Things slowly grew, but 2023 was a supercharged year for the band when their forth album, Rat Saw God, became the year’s indie hit for all fans of indie- folk- and Southern-rock.

Next month the band will release the even better Bleeds. A strange album for Hartzman and guitarist Jake ‘MJ’ Lenderman, it was written in the final months of their romantic relationship and recorded post-breakup. They agreed to keep their split from the band until Bleeds was recorded. Following a year of huge solo success in 2024, Lenderman remains a member of Wednesday when they’re in the studio, but will no longer tour with them.

On this episode of the podcast – recorded in London last week – we discuss the split in the background of the band’s new album, how Karly has kicked social media with the help of a s**t phone, death by bears, and how Wednesday’s next album might be a hardcore punk record.

Listen above or via your podcast app of choice.

Further links and videos:

Karly’s weird and wonderful website

Wednesday’s website

Grizzly Man trailer

It’s the second installment of the Loud And Quiet Roundtable, where, this month, Sam Walton, Gemma Samways and Stuart Stubbs get the measure of 3 big albums released in June: Never Enough by US hardcore band Turnstile, Addison Rae’s shallow pop debut Addison, and Don’t Die Before You’re Dead by British rapper AJ Tracey.

Back under the microscope, too, is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Heralded as a classic in 2015, how does it stand up a decade later?

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts.

Further reading/viewing:

Stu’s Beyonce review

Stu’s Lana Del Rey review

Addison Rae on Jimmy Fallon

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Whether a teenager dancing in Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance in Vegas, a member of conceptual mid-00s pop band The Pipettes, or touring schools and clubs as a “Kwik Save Kylie”, Gwenno Saunders has never not wholeheartedly thrown herself into what’s in front of her. For the last 10 years though, she’s found her true voice as an artist popularising often psychedelic music in both the Welsh and Cornish language. Her forthcoming, forth solo album, Utopia, is her first to predominantly feature lyrics in English, and includes lessons learnt in desert and in London’s mid-00s indie scene.

Stuart Stubbs visited Gwenno at her studio in Cardiff this week to discuss her chaotic 20s and to convince her to do Eurovision.

Further links and videos:

My first interview with Gwenno from 2015

‘Dancing On Volcanoes’ video shot in Vegas

‘Pull Shapes’ video, by The Pipettes

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“My dream for this album is for someone to hear it and not know who I am as an actor beforehand,” says Finn Wolfhard on this episode of The Loud And Quiet Podcast. As the star of Stranger Things and the new Ghostbusters reboot, it feels like a dream that’s becoming more and more unlikely, but Wolfhard began playing and writing music long before he started acting, learning bass at the age of 7 to emulate his hero Paul McCartney.

Having already released records with his bands Culpurnia and The Aubreys, Wolfhard’s debut solo album, Happy Birthday, will be out in a couple of weeks, which gave me the perfect excuse to speak with him about the music he grew up on, his love of skateboarding, and what happens if his music career takes off.

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Extra viewing:

‘Objection’ video

Finn’s Lip Sync Battle

Facts’ ‘Retro Oceans’ video

Recording as we walked, Jack Barnett of These New Puritans joined me on this special episode of the podcast that captures the sounds of our shared hometown, Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

It’s hardly a place known for the type of progressive music that Jack and his twin brother George have made since forming the band in 2006, but during our conversation he confirms my suspicions – TNP have such a distinct, heads-down approach to making music, it really doesn’t matter where Jack bases himself to write and produce these albums of classical, industrial, jazz and ballad explorations. Records made in Berlin, London and Greece all have a distinct TNP feeling of bleak beauty. Kind of like Southend itself.

The band’s new album is called Crooked Wing (out 23 May via the Domino label) and has taken another 6 years to make. It features Caroline Polachek, choirs, church organs, field recordings and songs about cranes falling in love.

Upcoming live dates

The new video for ‘A Season In Hell’ starting Alexander Skarsgård

‘Industrial Love Song’ feat. Caroline Polachek

‘Bells’

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In the second part of my conversation with Patrick Wolf, the London-born musician who I met at his new home on the east Kent coast looked back at his previous major label record deals that took him from a life of DIY creation to a world where he suddenly had £250k to spend on a music video. What did he make of those days, and how does he feel about returning to music as an independent artist in a new world of hyper-self-marketing and content creation?

And then there was the question of new album Crying the Neck, Wolf’s first album in 13 years, and a punchy closer: is he happy with his career so far? Typically, he answered that one with the same candour that ran through our entire time together.

Patrick Wolf is making his return to music after a 13-year period that you wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Since his last album in 2012, he’s experienced grief following the loss of his mother to cancer in 2018, battled addiction to alcohol and hard drugs, been declared bankrupt, and was the victim of a hit and run.

When I spoke to him last week for this two-part episode of the podcast, I was struck by how he takes responsibility for all of it. Even being hit by a car.

Thank you to Patrick for being so open during our conversation, which took place in his garden studio in east Kent. We spoke for so long that I’ve chopped it into parts one and two, starting off with how the past 13 years have been, and how he got through it by building a new life for himself near the coastal town of Ramsgate, inspired by an Alan Bennett film.

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Listen on the Substack site or app, or search Loud And Quiet Podcast wherever you get The Rest is Politics.

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Boring fact: We originally started this Substack in 2020 solely as a place to host a subscriber-only podcast called Sweet 16, exclusively for readers who’d subscribed to our physical magazine during the pandemic. Each episode features a different artist recalling what the hell they were doing at the age of 16, inspired by a column of hopes, dreams and PTSD we used to run in the magazine. Somewhere along the line 2 episodes dropped off, hosted somewhere else for reasons that are too boring even for this. One was with Stephen Malkmus and the other was with Amy Taylor from Australian garage punk band Amyl & the Sniffers. It’s time these 2 stragglers were united with the rest of the pack, so here’s Amy’s episode, with a bit of extra blabbing from me.

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When Porridge Radio announced that their new EP would also be their final release, following 4 albums and a 2020 Mercury Prize nomination, my first thought wasn’t ‘why?’ but ‘I wonder how that must feel?’. Followed shortly by, ‘what was Dana Margolin’s career highlight?’, and ‘should more bands split up at a point when their fans feel like they’ve still got more to give?’

Last week Dana agreed to talk to me about the end of her band, having originally decided that it was too soon to discuss the matter.

A short introduction to the new Loud And Quiet podcast, from the dazzling music experts that brought you Midnight Chats

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