On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got the frontman for a band that recently made a welcome return after a long absence, and the producer who helped him find the sounds and songs to do it: John Gourley and Jeff Bhasker. Gourley is the singer for Portugal. The Man, which started making music in their home state of Alaska back in the early 2000s before finding success and relocating to Portland, Oregon. The band has an impressive catalog that runs the pop gamut, and weirdly they hit it huge pretty deep into their career, with the 2017 song “Feel It Still,” which is still on pop radio six years later. Just this year, PTM finally released a new album, called Chris Black Changed My Life, which both mourns and celebrates the band’s close friend, for whom it’s also named. The album was also partly inspired by the daughter of Gourley and his bandmate Zoe Manville; Frances Gourley has a rare genetic disorder that’s touched on in this chat. But the album and Gourley’s story is by no means grim: He’s all about celebrating life, as you’ll hear on this track, “Summer of Luv,” which features some assistance from another recent Talkhouse guest, Unknown Mortal Orchestra. You’ll also hear the fingerprints of producer Jeff Bhasker on that track. Bhasker is best known for co-writing and co-producing smash hits like Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk.” He’s one of several names that Portugal. The Man brought in to help realize Chris Black Changed My Life. The two talk about how that process worked, and in particular how Gourley is—unlike some songwriters—always happy to have more creative voices in the room. They also chat about which of them is a better singer, about playing at the Hollywood Bowl, about Gourley’s life-changing jaw injury, and about Gourley’s daughter Frances and the challenges they face. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to John Gourley and Jeff Bhasker for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great 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!

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got an actor-director you’ll likely recognize along with the musician-slash-composer who made beautiful sounds for one of his films: Jesse Eisenberg and Emile Mosseri. Eisenberg is best known as an actor; he was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, which is just one of his dozens of credits. You’ve also seen him in Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale, the Now You See Me movies, and lots of indies. He also starred in the TV drama Fleishman is in Trouble last year alongside Claire Danes and Lizzy Caplan. And if that isn’t enough, Eisenberg is also a writer, playwright, and director. His feature debut as a director came earlier this year with When You Finish Saving the World, which began life as Audible original—which he also wrote. The movie stars Julianne Moore and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard, and it was released by A24, a trademark of quality. And… segue time… music for the film was composed by today’s other guest, Emile Mosseri. Now Mosseri spent years in bands, most notably The Dig, but really seems to have found his stride in recent years as a film composer. In 2020 he did the music for both Miranda July’s Kajillionaire and for Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, for which Mosseri was Academy-nominated for Best Original Score. He’s also worked on Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Jonah Hill’s Stutz, which you’ll hear a little about in this conversation. Earlier this year, Mosseri released his first album of original songs under his own name, which is called Heaven Hunters. It’s a really personal, intimate record that sounds best on a pair of quality headphones, as it’s sort of cinematic and somehow also small and quiet. Check out one of Eisenberg’s favorite songs from Heaven Hunters, this is “My Greedy Heart.” These two get right into a great chat, talking about the various neuroses that fuel their art and stifle their ambition: Mosseri even talks about choosing whether to spend money on his therapist or an awards-season publicist. Eisenberg talks about his experiments using AI on a script—they don’t go well—which leads to a discussion about whether AI will impinge on creative jobs like theirs in the future. It’s a great, fun chat—enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Jesse Eisenberg and Emile Mosseri for chatting. If you liked what you hear, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great 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!

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of musicians who create with an air of mystery, but who have a fantastically straightforward chat here: Ethel Cain and Adam McIlwee. Ethel Cain is a character created by Hayden Anhedonia, though one that’s been sort of all-consuming. Anhedonia began releasing music under the name in 2019, finding her sound and her vibe over the next couple of years before releasing the absolutely epic Preacher’s Daughter in May of 2022. The album, a concept collection about the life and ultimate demise of Ethel Cain, skillfully moves through sounds from a sort of Gothic Americana to slowcore to ambient sounds to who knows what, exactly, other than it’s thoroughly engaging. The album was pretty quickly hailed as a masterful debut, and Cain found herself not only the darling of the music world, but with some prominent modeling gigs as well. As you’ll hear in this chat, though, the spotlight has gotten a little bit bright for her taste lately. She’s currently on the European festival circuit, though she’ll head back to the States in October for sold-out shows at really interesting venues. Check out “Crush” right here. Cain and today’s other guest, Adam McIlwee, go way back. He was an early supporter of her music, and appears on her Inbred EP under his most prominent alias, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. Though he started his musical journey as part of the pop-punkish band Tigers Jaw, he’s moved in a dozen other directions since. He founded the emo-rap collective GothBoiClique back in 2012, which briefly counted Lil Peep among its members. As Wicca Phase, though, McIlwee combines synth-pop with more acoustic sounds and more hammering beats, depending on the track. His latest release under the name is self-titled, and it just came out in June. It’s well worth checking out. In fact, check out “Moving Without Movement” right here. Now for two people who’ve created such interesting mystiques, this is a refreshingly down-to-earth conversation in which they talk about trying to carve out space as middle-class musicians who don’t expect to conquer the charts with their music—but who’d love to be able to make a decent living at it. They talk about what to do when you hit a touring wall—this chat took place not long after Cain fainted onstage in Australia—and how great Vicks Steam Inhalers are for singers. Hey Vicks, you might have a couple of spokespeople here if you play your cards right. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Hayden Anhedonia aka Ethel Cain and Adam McIlwee aka Wicca Phase Springs Eternal for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the other podcasts in our ever-expanding network. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a pair of young artists and friends who share more in their outlooks than they do in their sounds: Alaska Reid and Ekkstacy. Alaska Reid, despite her name, actually grew up in Montana, as you’ll hear in this chat, but she splits her time between there and Los Angeles, and you can sort of hear that in her music—polished indie-rock that’s got an edge you kind of have to look for. She’s released a bunch of fantastic singles over the past couple of years, and just last month released her debut album, Disenchanter. You may have seen Reid opening for the likes of Charli XCX or Caroline Polachek, and she’ll embark on a headlining U.S. tour this September, and it’ll probably be your one and only chance to see her play in relatively small venues for a while. Check out “French Fries” from Disenchanter right here. Ekkstacy is a Canadian musician who makes emotional songs that are deeply indebted to early-’80s new wave—a sound he definitely didn’t experience firsthand, since he’s barely old enough to drink. Ekkstacy is known for both songs and interviews that wear their emotions on their sleeves: He puts it all out there, and it often seems like he’s exorcizing his most negative feelings through catchy songs. Sample song titles from last year’s album Misery include “I Just Want to Hide My Face” and “Wish I was Dead,” and his big breakthrough single was “I Walk This Earth All By Myself.” But he’s no sad-sack: Ekkstacy is passionate about what he’s doing, and he wants to make it big, as you’ll hear in this conversation. Check out “I’m So Happy” right here. As a person of a certain age—by which I mean way older than these two—I found this chat fascinating. Alaska and Ekkstacy talk about growing up plugged in, and how that can affect your personality. They talk about how much you’re obligated to engage with a live audience. And Ekkstacy talks about a run-in with Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio, and how he wants what they’ve got, though not exactly. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Alaska Reid and Ekkstacy for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the delights 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!

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two guys who were part of monumentally influential bands in the 2000s, and who continue to make groundbreaking music today: Paul Maroon and Noah Lennox.  Maroon is behind the incredible, instantly recognizable guitar sound of The Walkmen, a band that sort of split up a decade ago but reunited just this year for what has turned into an incredibly jubilant tour. The band is currently in Europe, where they just played a show in Lennox’s adopted home country of Portugal, and they’ll return for a string of U.S. dates this fall, culminating in a hometown—that’d be New York—show in October. Since the Walkmen split, Maroon has mostly turned his attention to composing classical music and the occasional film score. He put out a really engaging record with the pianist Jenny Lin called 13 Short Piano Pieces, with each of those pieces inspired by and named for a different place Maroon has lived—he currently calls Seville, Spain home. Check out “El Raval” right here, and go to Paulmaroon.co for info on his solo stuff, or thewalkmen.com for tour dates. Maroon released a seven-inch recently that featured singing from his friend Noah Lennox, who’s perhaps better known by the name he uses as part of Animal Collective, Panda Bear. Lennox has been part of that massively influential experimental rock band for nearly 25 years, and he’s released a ton of great music both with Animal Collective and as a solo artist. His latest release, though, is a collaboration with Pete Kember, also known as Sonic Boom. Kember was a member of Spacemen 3 way back when, and he’s also released incredible music as Spectrum and E.A.R. He’s also earned his production stripes over the years, producing records for Beach House, MGMT, and… Panda Bear. Last year, Kember and Lennox released a collaborative album they recorded during the pandemic called Reset, and they just followed it with a dub version of the album remixed by Adrian Sherwood called Reset in Dub. Check out “Gettin’ to the Point” from Reset. In this conversation, we learn that Lennox was in attendance for the first-ever Walkmen show; we hear about their adventures living in Portugal and Spain, the difference between a good show and a bad show, and whether these two are “daily guys.” Lennox also makes an accurate prediction about the NBA Finals, even though, as you’ll hear, this is not a basketball podcast. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Noah Lennox and Paul Maroon for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow us 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!