Tobias Jesso Jr. is a singer and pianist based in Los Angeles. His debut album Goon was released in March 2015. You can follow him on Twitter here, Instagram here, Facebook here and his website is here.
Jessica Pratt is a musician based in Los Angeles. Her latest album On Your Own Love Again was released in January, 2015 on Drag City. You can follow her on Twitter here, Instagram here, and her website is here.
This edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast features two of the more acclaimed new singer-songwriters of 2015: Jessica Pratt and Tobias Jesso, Jr. Both musicians have deep roots in the sounds of the ’70s, but two very different sides of the ’70s. Jesso’s piano-driven debut album Goon evokes superstar ’70s singer-songwriters like John Lennon, Carole King, Harry Nilsson and Elton John. But Pratt’s latest album On Your Own Love Again channels a very different, much more obscure side of the Me Decade: psychedelic folk from brilliant musicians such as Linda Perhacs and Vashti Bunyan.
We put these two together backstage at this summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival and they covered a wide range of topics: the recent Brian Wilson bio-pic, the difference between playing solo and with a band, dealing with stage nerves and insecurity, how malfunctioning equipment can be a blessing, the interview tricks journalists try to pull on them and the wonderfulness of the Train song “Drops of Jupiter.”
Jesso reveals his tricks for playing as few songs as possible in his set. Pratt recounts a synopsis of the film she has seen more times than any other: The Brave Little Toaster (1987), which prompts our guests to wrestle with a most vexing question: “How weird is it for a blanket to be chasing a kid through a forest?”
