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Talkhouse

Damon Krukowski is a musician (Damon &amp; Naomi, Galaxie 500) and writer. His new book is <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/new-analog">The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World</a> (The New Press, 2017).

Damon Krukowski

Music

Listen, Listen: Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) on Sounds as Silence

Chad Clark is a producer, singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He leads the semi-electronic band Beauty Pill, whose EP Instant Night is out now.

Chad Clark

Chad Clark (Beauty Pill) on Preparing to Tour With a Musical Hero

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1945, Homer Flynn spent the first twenty-four years of his life submerged in the repressed but charming naiveté of The South. Seduced by the fantasy of easy sex, cheap drugs and loud music, Flynn was unwilling to commit to the life of a concrete truck dispatcher attached to a pregnant, but unloved girlfriend and fled to San Francisco in 1969. Guilty, but free, he drank deeply from the cup of youth culture, ingesting, imbibing and fornicating any and all.
For over forty years, Homer Flynn has been involved with the murky aesthetics of San Francisco&#8217;s music, performance and video group, the Residents. As their chief visual designer and co-owner of The Cryptic Corporation, the Residents&#8216; business and public relations interface, Flynn has been involved in nearly all of the group&#8217;s improbable projects since the mid 1970s. Currently, he lives in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with his charming wife, Leigh Barbier.

Homer Flynn

When It Comes to the Residents, Obscurity Is Its Own Reward

Chris Forsyth is a lauded guitarist, composer and bandleader whose work assimilates art-rock textures and vernacular American influences. Long active in underground circles, he’s recently released a string of acclaimed records of widescreen guitar rock, and in 2013, he assembled the Solar Motel Band.
<div class="c-message__content c-message__content--feature_sonic_inputs" data-qa="message_content">His most recent release is the 2019 double album All Time Present (No Quarter). Raves have been universal with four stars from Mojo Magazine and five stars from The Guardian. Pitchfork said he “seeks the third path between classic-rock peaks and floating experimentalism&#8230; [and] achieves a scope only hinted at on [his] previous full-lengths.” NPR Music previously named Forsyth “one of rock’s most lyrical guitar improvisors,” and the New York Times called him “a scrappy and mystical historian… His music humanizes the element of control in rock classicism (and) turns it into a woolly but disciplined ritual.”</div>
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<div>(Photo credit: Constance Mensh)</div>

Chris Forsyth

The Past is Future and the Future is Past: On (and Against) Shred

Having toured since her teens, Katie Harkin&#8216;s reputation as an in-demand multi-instrumentalist has seen her pass through thirty countries whilst writing and releasing three critically acclaimed records with her own band Sky Larkin. Her work garnered the attention of friends and fellow former Leeds dwellers Wild Beasts, with whom she worked across their Smother tour, and reverberated across the pond to urgent cult trio Sleater-Kinney, who recruited her as a touring member upon their triumphant return to the live stage. Most recently, Harkin has performed across North America with Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak&#8216;s solo project, Flock of Dimes and across the UK with Low. Now, (as she unveils her debut solo project) the collaborator steps out as the singular, her new setup giving further platform to her idiosyncratic, muscular guitar-playing and revealing a body of work that is equally propelled by a life on the move and anchored by her romance for the North of England.

Katie Harkin

Shamir is Shamir and remains Shamir through and through, no matter what the universe puts him through. You may know the singularly named artist (think—Madonna or Cher) from his 2015 debut hit record Rachet, beloved by NPR listeners and club kids alike. After quickly rising to underground fame with his Northtown EP in 2014, the DIY pop star made a sonic splash with Rachet’s lead single “On The Regular,” a poppy banger that had extensive commercial usage. But how to follow all that up? Shamir, who came from the dusty dunes of Las Vegas, to Brooklyn’s Silent Barn, to the Philly indie scene (and all over the world in between), wanted to go back to what had inspired him from the beginning. Outsider music, country &amp; punk. Raw and vulnerable tunes, stripped down to their emotional core. 2017’s Revelations explored a new avenue of guitar driven hooky indie rock and was widely critically praised in the US and overseas.
Shamir’s most recent releases, the brilliant Room 7” on Father/Daughter, and his self-released limited edition album, Resolution, are pinnacles in the catalog of the increasingly fascinating artist’s career. Room and its b-side Caballero celebrate Shamir’s love of country music, while Resolution is a deeply introspective look into the fabric of society and the artists’ own mind.  With these two releases he has refined his craft exponentially and done so in less than six months from the release of Revelations.

Shamir Bailey

Jenn Wasner is a songwriter, musician, producer and human being. She has released solo music as Flock of Dimes and collaborates with others as a member of Wye Oak and Dungeonesse. She is alive, at work and at play in the city of Durham, NC. You can follow her on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/wyeoak" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here.</a>

Jenn Wasner

Mercury-nominated British art-rock band Wild Beasts released their fifth album, Boy King, in 2016. The four-piece, led by frontmen Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming, are known for their knotty, complicated lyrics addressing modern masculinity, sex, love and fear. They are currently on the Boy King world tour.
(Photo credit: Tom Andrew)

Tom Fleming

Katie Harkin (Sleater-Kinney, Sky Larkin) on Songs About People the Protagonist Hasn’t Met Yet – [Updated]

Chad Peck is the singer/guitar player in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kestrels/?fref=ts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kestrels</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/weneedsecrets/?fref=ts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We Need Secrets</a>. He also runs Noyes Records. He is based in Lornevale, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he teaches high school English.

Chad Peck

How I Came to Play with Dinosaur Jr. in a Bike Shop

Jamie Stewart was born in 1978 in Los Angeles. He began Xiu Xiu in 2002 and began to waste his life.

Jamie Stewart

Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) Remembers That Time Pharmakon Charmed the Cops

Sevyn Streeter has cemented herself as a rising singer-songwriter with the success of her solo EP Call Me Crazy, But…, which debuted at number 5 on Billboard&#8216;s Top R&amp;B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In addition to making her mark as a solo artist, Sevyn is also a Grammy-winning songwriter, having written six songs from Chris Brown’s Fame, as well as two songs from Alicia Keys’ Girl on Fire. Her songwriting also include Tamar Braxton’s “All The Way Home,” Alicia Keys’ “New Day” and Ariana Grande’s chart-topping hit, “The Way.”

Sevyn Streeter

Sevyn Streeter on that Time She Crashed Chris Brown’s Session

Talkhouse Music editor-in-chief Brenna Ehrlich (until March 17, 2017) is the founder of the small press/label for weird teens, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allagespress" target="_blank">All Ages Press</a>. She previously served as senior pop editor for MTV News, editor for MTV Hive, associate editor of media and entertainment at Mashable and columnist for CNN. Her first book was Stuff Hipsters Hate: A Field Guide to the Passionate Opinions of the Indifferent, so it makes sense that she lives in Brooklyn with three cats and spends her weekends trying not to die in moshpits. Brenna also plays drums and sings in the band <a href="https://mediummystic.bandcamp.com/releases" target="_blank">Medium Mystic</a>.

Brenna Ehrlich

How Being the Editor-in-Chief of Talkhouse Music Finally Made Me Start a Band

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Louise Goffin is a songwriter, musician, and producer with a rich, multi-decade career, spanning 10 solo albums as both a major-label act and her current status as an independent, business-savvy creator both on and off stage. Goffin became a dedicated musician at an early age, opening for Jackson Browne at the world-famous Troubadour when she was 17 and releasing her debut, Kid Blue, as a teenager. She has since performed with some of music’s biggest names; a personal highlight was playing lead guitar and singing harmony on tour with Tears For Fears. She also is a trained producer — recently a graduate of a six-month course at Nashville’s Blackbird Academy — who produced Carole King’s GRAMMY-nominated LP, A Holiday Carole. A natural historian who remains dedicated to exploring, preserving, and demystifying iconic songs, Goffin is behind the newSong Chronicles podcast, the successor to the acclaimed podcast she co-hosted with Paul Zollo, The Great Song Adventure. As the creative director of The Goffin &amp; King Foundation, Goffin also works to preserve the legacy of her parents, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, through providing educational opportunities for songwriters, performers, and musicians. Goffin’s latest release, 2020’s Two Different Movies, is a cinematic record that finds its creator nodding to multiple influences: classic pop, rootsy rock ‘n’ roll, jazzy piano ballads, strutting glam, and the California folk-pop that&#8217;s emanated from her Laurel Canyon stomping grounds for decades. The album cover is special, too: it is a hand-drawn portrait of Goffin by Joni Mitchell, which connects her inspired present with her equally inspiring past.
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<div class="col-sm-6 twitter-block">(Photo Credit: Victoria Gold)</div>
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Louise Goffin

The Art of Listening and Thinking for Yourself

Todd Fink (born Todd Baechle) and wife Orenda Fink converged first on tour, then in love and now in music. CLOSENESS, the couple’s first group together, is the result of two incredibly talented musicians melding in life and in art. Both halves of this new project have work spanning a variety of venerated musical outfits. Todd is most notably the frontman of the Faint, while Orenda is best known as one-half of the slick Azure Ray, and has credits including Moby, Bright Eyes, Paul Kalkbrenner, Eric Bachmann, Delerium, Sparklehorse and Isaac Brock.
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Orenda Fink

How Heart Problems Led this Couple to Finally Form a Band

Stephen Lee Clark is a Brooklyn-based musician and songwriter from the Bay Area.  He performed as a touring musician for many years in projects such as Deafheaven, Monuments Collapse and his solo project Field Agent.  Stephen is an avid reader, writer, walker and runner.  He spends most of his time outdoors or thinking and talking about football and the Oakland Raiders. He once cried while visiting the National Air and Space museum.  When he is at home he is usually plugging away on Ableton or having long in-depth conversations about space and football with his beautiful cat The Red Pill.

music essay