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Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed?

In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy’ traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a battering ram against the state—creating a new musical language of resistance called Afrobeat.

For years, the world’s biggest stars made pilgrimages to Nigeria to experience Fela’s Shrine, the epicenter of his musical revolution. But when the mix of art and activism got too hot, the state pulled out its guns, and literally opened fire.

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man is an uncategorizable mix of oral history, musicology, deep dive journalism, and cutting edge sound design that takes listeners deep inside Fela’s life, music, and legacy.

Drawing from over 200 interviews with Fela Kuti’s family, friends, as well as scholars, activists, and luminaries like Burna Boy, Paul McCartney, Questlove, Santigold, and former President Barack Obama (just to name a few), Fela Kuti: Fear No Man journeys deep into the soul of Afrobeat to explore the transformative power of art and the role artists can play in this current moment of global unrest.

An Audible Original presented by Audible and Higher Ground. Produced by Western Sound and Talkhouse.

©2025 Higher Ground, LLC (P)2025 Audible Originals, LLC.

This week on the show, the Portland-based group of Roman Norfleet, Harlan Silverman, and Kennedy Verrett, aka The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. 

“Cosmic” is a term that has, thanks to critics and writers, become a little overused. Practically every indie rock band or country-based singer/songwriter with an effects pedal employs “cosmic” touches these days.

But in the case of the Trio? Well, it’s actually earned. Inspired by the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, the experimental outer space jams of the Sun Ra Arkestra, and the spacious, meditative soundscapes of Laraaji, the Trio’s sound is one based in deep harmonic resonance and the idea that music can, in a very real sense, heal listeners.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but listening to the deep and searching sounds of the group’s new self-titled album, out October 24 via Mississippi Records, we find ourselves contemplating notions of inner sound, of a kind of music that plays deep down, at the core of all there is. 

In this conversation, we speak with the Tones about a variety of topics, including the influence of Sun Ra, the musings of Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan, whose book, The Mysticism of Sound and Music is a foundational text for the Trio, the group’s ecumenical approach to musical spirituality.

“Cosmic” may be a loaded term these days, but as the Trio explains in this interview, we are each our own little cosmos; we hope the following conversation brings you into deeper engagement with the universal within you. It certainly did so for us.

We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

This week on Transmissions, we’re toasting harvest season with John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of The Autumn Defense, who release their first album in a decade this week. It’s called Here and Nowhere, out October 10 on Yep Roc Records.

You might know John and Pat from their work in Wilco; Stirratt is a founding member, and Sansone joined in 2004. But the duo’s work in the Autumn Defense stretches all the way back to 1999, when they formed the Laurel Canyon-style folk rock band in New Orleans. 

Here and Nowhere features everything you like about the band; sterling vocals, beautiful ‘70s style orchestration, replete with shades of the baroque pop that Sansone plays on Baroque Down Palace, his radio show on WYXR. Think Todd Rundgren, Bread, Carole King, and even ELO at their most rustic. It’s a tender, funny, and warming record.

We discuss the new record in the hour that follows, along with detours into other projects, some Wilco talk, and an extended reflection on the legacy of Big Star—a band that’s more than just influential to these two—as they actually play the Big Star catalog with drummer Jody Stephens live these days. Let's dive in with this all new episode of Tranmissions.

We’re brought to you by ⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Dan Wriggins of the Philly band Friendship. Earlier this year, the band released its fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Fans of the roots-informed indie rock of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman—frequent collaborators with Friendship—will find plenty of busted and bruised glory in these songs, which fall on the shaggy end of the alt-country spectrum. But for us, it’s Wriggins’ wry and sly lyrics that really seal the deal. Take “All Over the World,” in which a landscaper experiences “the beating heart of God/ laying down a roll of sod.”

That down in the dirt realness is what makes Caveman Wakes Up so captivating, and what earned it a spot on the Aquarium Drunkard mid-year review list, where we noted: 

“Friendship’s second release for Merge Records is an unhurried, mostly quiet, slow burn of a record, sustained by Dan Wriggins’ delivery and vocal tone and the band’s splendid musical accompaniment that’s hard to keep off the stereo…[it] contains many immediate classics — “Betty Ford, “Free Association,” “Hollow Skulls,” “Love Vape,” “Resident Evil” — that are filled with lyrical gems that leave you conflicted as to which should get tattooed on your body. Breakout album alert!” 

This week on the show, Wriggins joins us for a gentle ramble focused mostly on poetry, specifically, one of our shared favorite poets, the great James Tate. When Dan’s not putting out records with Friendship and under his own name, he writes poetry. His debut book of poems is called Prince of Grass, and was released in the summer of 2024. We get into it all, and more—this week on Transmissions. 

Welcome to Transmissions. This week, singer/songwriter Joan Shelley. Her haunted folk songs and crystal clear voice have long made her a favorite of the Aquarium Drunkard crew. Writing about her last one, 2022’s The Spur, Tyler Wilcox wrote: "At this point in her career, we would probably settle for a ‘pretty good’ album from Joan Shelley…But no, The Spur continues an unbroken streak of masterpieces for the Louisville-based artist.” 

And, while Shelley, and her daughter and husband, Nathan Salsburg, who’s appeared on this show, have moved from Louisville to Michigan, that whole “unbroken streak of masterpieces” things continues with her new album, Real Warmth. Cut with producer Ben Whiteley, and guests like Doug Paisley and Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station, the new album is lively, rhythmic, and captivating, with intimate reflections paired alongside protest music of a sort. 

She joins us here to discuss—plus, at the start of this one, we get a mini-check in from Nathan and their daughter. Cozy up for this reunion, you’re tuned into Transmissions. 

If you dig this talk, please visit reader-supported Aquarium Drunkard for more. We’re supported by our subscribers and over on the site you can find 20 years worth of conversations, playlists, reviews, essays and more.

This week on the show, Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Woodbury has been listening to Jens for just about 20 years—introduced by the 2005 compilation, Oh You're So Silent Jens. Though the comp features songs ingeniously constructed using samples, it was Lekman’s voice that made Woodbury such a fan. Not just his deep, sonorous croon; we mean "voice" in the writing sense: Lekman has a signature ability to sound funny and sad at the same time, or wounded yet somehow simultaneously hopeful. 

Jens has a new album out now called Songs for Other People’s Weddings, and it arrives complete with a novel of the same name co-written by David Levithan, who you may know from works like Boy Meets Boy, Wide Awake, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, The Lover’s Dictionary, and others.  Taken together, the novel and the record represent a little bit of reality, and a little bit of fiction.

Lekman really has worked as a wedding singer for most of his career—his first album, 2004’s When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog even features a song called "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)." But Songs For Other People’s Weddings is not about Lekman’s life per se—it’s about love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and ultimately, about the way music plays us through our lives. 

We're so pleased to have Jens join me for this conversation. We discuss the new album, when weddings indicate to him a sense of if a couple is going to make it or not, his thoughtful blog, and what it was like to re-record some of his classics albums after sample clearances were unable to be obtained. Join in for this conversation about love, music, and art on Transmissions.

If you dig this talk, please visit Aquarium Drunkard for more. We’re supported by our subscribers and over on the site you can find 20 years worth of conversations, playlists, reviews, essays and more. 

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Our guest this week is Marissa Nadler. Last month, she released her 10th album, New Radiations, via Sacred Bones Records. 

Like much of her work, New Radiations exudes—like how we didn’t say “radiates” there?—a spooky, haunted feel. Following 2021’s full rock band outing The Path of the Clouds, the self-produced new album finds Nadler focusing on sparser, more solitary zones, her subtle finger-picking augmented by touches of electric guitar, pedal steel, organ, and synths by Milky Burgess and additional synths by longtime collaborator Randall Dunn. 

“Psychic sensations (you know what you saw)/New radiations, have taken their toll on me,” Nadler sings on the title track, illuminating the strange darkness and fractured sense of reality that permeates the album. 

In these songs, which feature spaceships, lonesome pilots, cosmic collisions, holograms, and references to Martin Scorsese, Nadler draws dark shapes into the light, creating a bewildering science fiction folk epic that’s as enticing as it is foreboding. This week, she joins us for a discussion about cinema, making art, working a day job, her connections to the world of heavy metal, and dish about her new forthcoming band. 

Welcome to the kick off of Transmissions' new season with your host, Jason P. Woodbury, after a wonderful summer mini-series from Tyler Wilcox, All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast.

We first encountered this week’s guest, New Zealand songwriter, actor, and composer Bret McKenzie, as one half of the indie pop/comedy duo Flight of the Conchords in the mid-2000s. But did you know that before that, he was a member of one of New Zealand’s most popular reggae party bands?

"Just for context, reggae music in New Zealand is kind of rock music in America or maybe even country," McKenzie says. "Outside Jamaica, New Zealand has the highest sales of Bob Marley records in the world. And it's the music you hear playing in the background when you're out."

Since then, he’s gone onto composer for film and TV projects like The Simpsons, The Muppets, Spongebob Squarepants, and more, and in 2022, he released Songs Without Jokes via Sub Pop Records. Inspired by vintage Los Angeles pop, the record showcased McKenzie sans obvious jokes, but not without levity and good humor. His new album, Freak Out City came out on August 15.

Bolstered by vintage electric piano and groovy and psychedelic touches, it finds McKenzie expanding his Nilsson-esque palette with touches of Steely Dan, JJ Cale, and Todd Rundgren. McKenzie joins us on Transmissions to discuss the rabbit holes of modern life, cutting the record with studio legends like Leland Sklar, the Conchords specific brand of comedy, and shares details about his proposed Emmet Otter reboot with Ed Helms.

We’re brought to you by Aquarium Drunkard, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We’ve spent the summer talking with some great musicians and writers about the strange and wonderful Neil Young universe. And we’ve had a good time. But all good things must come to an end!

After today’s episode, we are handing the keys back to Jason P. Woodbury, the host of Transmissions and editor of Aquarium Drunkard. — he’s got an incredible season of interviews coming your way as summer turns to fall.

And hey, our final guest on All One Song is none other than Jason P. Woodbury! Jason is the guy who has been running a lot of the behind the scenes action for All One Song over the past couple months.

Transmissions is a consistently fantastic listen, packed with insight, wit and wisdom. The fact that Jason juggles about 50 other cool projects, from his music as JPW to his expanding WASTOIDS empire, makes it even more impressive.

We're already talking about more All One Song, but before that … we’ve got one more episode. All One Song has gone all over the place when it comes to Neil eras. But we haven’t delved too much into the 1980s. Jason is righting that wrong. He selected a tune from the generally un-loved 1987 LP with Crazy Horse, Life — “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks.” This aching ballad was played a lot in 1986 and 1987, briefly revived in the mid 1990s and then pretty much forgotten by its author. But maybe Neil will bring it back … just this past weekend, he just played “Long Walk Home” from Life for the first time since 1989 on his current North American tour. Anything can happen in Shakeyland! 

Neil’s producer David Briggs called “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” “a monster song—it should’ve been the ‘I Believe In You’ of the eighties for Crazy Horse—so pure, so simple. But they had no desire to make anything out of it, never played it good, never put anything special into it. It was a shame.”

We’ll have to agree to disagree, David! Anyway, we use “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” to drift back into a lot of different zones, from David Lynch to Michelob Lite. It’s always fun and provocative to chat with him. So without further ado, here’s Jason P. Woodbury on All One Song … 

Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. All summer long, we’re talking to some of our favorite musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. Or at least one of their favorite Neil Young songs.

This week, our All One Song guest is Ethan Miller. Ethan has been a longtime fixture in the underground, first coming to my attention back in the early aughts as the co-founder of the psych noise pioneers Comets on Fire. But Ethan is nothing if not prolific — he’s played with an array of awesome bands over the years, from Howlin Rain to Feral Ohms to Odyssey Cult. Ethan was also one-fourth of Heron Oblivion with our previous guests Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley … and he’s one-third of the Orcutt Shelley Miller trio, with another previous guest Steve Shelley. It’s all a rich tapestry, right? At least when it comes to Neil Young.

The upcoming — and totally amazing — Orcutt Shelley Miller record is being released on Ethan’s own label Silver Current, which is one the most reliable purveyors of sweet sounds both new and old. In recent years, Silver Current has brought us excellent, bootleg-styled archival hauls from Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500 and Earthless, alongside fresh tunes from Magic Fig, Julie Beth Napolin, Growing and many more. Suffice it to say, the Silver Current insignia is a true trademark of quality.

For his All One Song appearance, Ethan selected a terrific mid-90s deep cut — “Music Arcade.” This ghostly solo acoustic number showed up on the otherwise Crazy Horse-fueled Broken Arrow in 1996. It’s an enigmatic meditation on loneliness that doesn’t offer the listener any easy answers, like a comet in the sky.

Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.