LSQ

• Crystal Waters

  When I learned that house and dance music legend Crystal Waters has been finishing her first new album since 1997 and was getting ready to share singles and do interviews and therefore might be up for talking with me, I was so geeked.  I’ve been a fan since the early 90s when huge hits like "Gypsy Woman" and "100% Pure Love" were all over the radio, and it was an honor to get to connect with her for episode 120 and a conversation about her songwriting process, how she got her start in music, and why this current creative phase is one of the most exciting in her thirty-plus year career.  Crystal recently shared a great new single called "You & Me" -- a collaboration with the Swedish duo ManyFew -- and she was also recently honored during Miami Music Week at the inaugural Femmy Awards with awards for The Voice of House and the Female Icon Award. And there will be a lot more new music coming from Crystal in the remainder of this year, and live shows, too!

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• Sleigh Bells

  In episode 119, I catch up with Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller, the noise pop duo better known as Sleigh Bells. I have been a massive Sleigh Bells fan since their first few singles back in 2009 — brash, genre-defying bangers like “Crown on the Ground” and “Infinity Guitars” that sounded unlike anything else, combining elements of pop, metal, hardcore, hip-hop and punk. They’ve continued to blow my mind with the leaps they’ve made since then. The three of us are also old friends at this point, and though we’ve done shorter interviews in the past, it was great to finally get to ask them some of the classic LSQ podcast questions about all the shit they were into as kids. In this episode, Alexis talks about what she learned from her experience in a teen pop band, revelations she had at the punk and hardcore shows she frequented during her New Jersey youth, and learning to integrate the diverse parts of her musical voice. Derek describes falling in love with the soundtrack to La Bamba as a kid growing up in Florida, and then discovering 80s pop greats like Janet Jackson and Cyndi Lauper before venturing into alternative and hard rock (Nirvana, Silverchair) and then having his mind blown by ground-breaking artists such as Radiohead and Björk, and then eventually joining metal core band Poison The Well in his later teens. They also share the story of how they came together to form Sleigh Bells, and how their current approach builds on the foundational principles they established for the band more than fifteen years ago.Sleigh Bells’ new sixth studio album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, comes out this week and it’s stellar. Find out more (and get tickets for their upcoming tour) at: tornclean.com

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• ANOHNI

  It's a good thing ANOHNI and I decided to leave the cameras turned off for the interview included in episode 118 of the LSQ podcast, because there were moments when she was talking --about her creative process, about using her voice and her music as a survival strategy, about what it felt like to grow up as a trans femme amidst the violence of patriarchy -- that I was nearly in tears, so moved by the way she described her experience. And since crying while interviewing is as cringe as "crying in baseball," it was a relief not to be seen in those moments. It was fascinating to hear ANOHNI's story of discovering her musical spirit as a child, motivated by a desire to reveal feminine emotion and power in a way that she felt her mother was not allowed to, and to learn how she developed her creative process from there. ANOHNI talks about drawing inspiration from artists such as Kate Bush, Boy George, Marc Almond, Alison Moyet, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Diamanda Galas and more, and how she has learned to adapt musical forms to suit her voice (both the literal voice and the symbolic voice). She also shares about her relationship with her mentor, the late Lou Reed, how greatly he encouraged her early in her career, and what it was like to recently perform some of his music live for the first time since he passed. You can keep up with ANOHNI here. This is also the first video episode of the LSQ podcast, with awesome illustrations and animation crafted by Jess Rotter and Andrew Deselm. Thanks to them for the wonderful work!

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• The Head And The Heart - Matty Gervais

  On the heels of the announcement last week of a much anticipated new album by indie folk band The Head and the Heart, I’m excited to be able to share the following conversation with the band’s Matty Gervais. This is one of your first chances to hear more about their exceptional new collection of tunes, Aperture, the band’s sixth LP, which will be out on May 9th. There are already a few beautiful introductory singles online now, including the anthemic "Arrow" and the newly shared album opener, "After The Setting Sun." It was a pleasure to connect over zoom with Matty to talk about the making of Aperture and how it heralds a new chapter of freedom and collaboration for THATH. We also talk about some earlier THATH history, how they have benefited in more recent years from band therapy, and his own personal creative process for this new album. And of course we start by delving into Matty’s early life experiences with music, growing up in Seattle during the grunge explosion, falling in love with recording his songs using a boombox technique he heard Dave Grohl describe in an interview, playing in bands with his brother and eventually joining THATH more than a decade ago. You can pre-order or pre-save Aperture, and get tickets for their upcoming shows HERE!Preview:3:30 - 13:00 - Early life experiences with music, learning to play drums, growing up during grunge, going to Bumbershoot with his parents, getting into Posies, Fastbacks, Supersuckers, The Presidents of the United States of America and other local bands13:20 - 21:00 - Writing and recording his own songs using Dave Grohl’s boombox technique, developing his sound, playing in various bands leading up to joining THATH21:15 - 31:00 - Observing THATH as a fan, joining the band, adapting to their fame:31:00 - 34:00 - Band therapy and its benefits35:15 - 40:00 - Aperture, how it started and the writing and recording processes that arose from there40:30 - 49:00 - "Forest Bath": Walking through the woods writing melodies and lyrics; the inspiration for “After The Setting Sun”

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• Julien Baker & Torres

  Welcome to season 8 of the LSQ podcast! I’m thrilled to kick off this season with an interview with Julien Baker & Torres, two artists whose music on their own I’ve admired for years: Julien, as a solo performer and member of boygenius, and Torres, which is the musical moniker of the singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott. Last year, they revealed that they had been working together on a country project and they shared a beautiful debut single, “Sugar in the Tank” that I fell in love with instantly. Now there’s an album coming and it’s so good! Send A Prayer My Way, a collection of gorgeous tunes that Julien and Mackenzie collaborated on during the past couple of years, arrives on April 17th via Matador. In the interview, we talk about the inspiration for the project, as well as their respective childhoods, growing up in the South, surrounded by country music and country music culture, and how their relationship with the genre evolved over the years and how it ended up informing the album. We also delve into the other music they loved as kids: Mackenzie talks about her early obsessions with Britney Spears and Broadway musicals like The Phantom of the Opera and eventually writing songs that were country songs with “a little bit of John Mayer”  flavor, and Julien shares how she went from loving Shania Twain to “being radicalized by Green Day” after seeing them on VH1 to discovering the metal bands like Underoath and Norma Jean that inspired her to start playing music herself. 

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