Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

Francine Thirteen landed from Venus in Dallas, TX, where she began her earthly life. She is a proud Libra/Scorpio who creates in a genre/aesthetic she calls &#8220;Ritual Pop.&#8221; She really likes making soup and baking gluten-free bread.

Francine Thirteen

Music

Francine Thirteen Stands as Priestess

Mackenzie Howe is one of the singers, songwriters, and guitarists of The Wild Reeds. The Los Angeles band released their third studio album, Cheers, on March 8th via Dualtone Records. The band will be touring throughout the U.S. this spring. Check out dates <a href="http://thewildreedsmusic.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Mackenzie Howe

Queen of the In-Betweens

Alt-rock godfather and Chainsaw Kittens frontman, Tyson Meade, is back yet again with another fabulous new album, Robbing the Nuclear Family. Like his critically-acclaimed 2014 solo release Tomorrow in Progress, which included fantastic contributions from Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlin, Other Lives’ Jesse Tabish, and The Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown, Robbing features contributions from elder statesmen of the Beijing rock scene PK 14, Shanghai violinist Haffijy, The Flaming Lips’ Matt Duckworth, and Grammy-award winning drummer Rob Martin. Robbing also has the heavy imprint of multi-instrumentalist David “Immy” Immerglück of alternative rock greats Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven, and the Monks of Doom.
Through the years, Meade has toured with Iggy Pop, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction, the Meat Puppets, and many others. Butch Vig and John Agnello have produced his albums, and Spike Jonze, George Salisbury, and Phil Harder have directed his videos.

Tyson Meade

A Billion Dollar Baby on the Desolate Plains

Leah Capelle is a pop/rock singer-songwriter from Chicago and is currently based in Los Angeles pursuing a B.S. in Music Business at USC Thornton School of Music. Earlier this year, Capelle released a visual for “Settle Down,” a dauntless feminist ballad exploring identity, acceptance, and empowerment. We see Capelle completely vulnerable and exposed while also carrying a weight on her — a myriad of paint colors symbolizing societal projections and expectations placed mainly on women. The single — produced by Grammy-winning Jeff Bova (Eric Clapton, Celine Dion, Cyndi Lauper, Yoko Ono, Billy Joel, and many more) — dropped ahead of the new year along with Capelle’s Giants EP.
(Photo Credit: Ryan Saradjola)

Leah Capelle

Every Songwriter Is More Than Just a Voice

Morgan Enos is a musician, essayist and music journalist specializing in classic rock. He records and performs as <a href="https://finalhouse.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://finalhouse.bandcamp.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567703426703000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE969PQS5H6jwcQaH3Zb_8LZ4WVew">Other Houses</a> and has bylines in Billboard, HuffPost, the Recording Academy, Vinyl Me, Please, TIDAL and more. He is also the co-founder and editor of <a href="https://northoftheinternet.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://northoftheinternet.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567703426703000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGi0xmSRKyGPRseoPZ41v4L7WkbQw">North of the Internet</a>, a series of conversations with creative people. He can be found at <a href="https://www.morganenos.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.morganenos.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567703426703000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG79-8vfghEO9sl4msNRI9Ts-3rdQ">his website</a>.
<div class="yj6qo ajU"></div>

Morgan Enos

John Coltrane Was the Most Important Homework Assignment I Ever Had

Composer, songwriter, performer Mark Mallman has spent the last 20 years releasing albums, touring, and becoming a Minneapolis music legend. His expansive catalog of infinitely catchy and masterfully orchestrated songs has rocked the airwaves worldwide from MTV to NPR. He reached a new level of creativity and intimacy with his debut book The Happiness Playlist, a memoir written about the six months he spent listening exclusively to uplifting songs as an experiment to make his way through varying bouts of grief brought on by the death of his mother, the end of a relationship and winter in the frozen city of Minneapolis. His latest album, The End Is Not The End, was released in 2016. The Happiness Playlist is his first book.

Mark Mallman

Let Mark Mallman Add Some Music To Your Day

Since the project’s inception, The End Of The Ocean have been the subject of great expectations. Upon the release of their 2011 full-length debut, Pacific-Atlantic, the Columbus, Ohio band was immediately christened a torch-bearer in the second wave of American post-rock. Their new album &#8211;aire was released in January of 2019 on Equal Vision Records.

The End Of The Ocean

Quarter Life Crisis

Jolie Holland is a bandleader and multi-instrumentalist who lives out of suitcases. She writes non-fiction and music, and she makes a very mean heart tartare. Her band is based out of New York City. You can follow her on <a href="http://twitter.com/JolieHolland" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jolieholland" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, and her website is <a href="http://www.joliehollandmusic.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.

Jolie Holland

How Do You Know You’ve Been Slimed?

Izzy True (they/them pronouns) is a musician and artist living in Chicago, IL.
(Photo Credit: Andi Carbaugh)

Izzy True

SXSW Season Can Be a Weird and Sad Time

Years before he hit the road as one half of the Americana duo HONEYHONEY, Ben Jaffe 
kickstarted his career as a solo artist. He was a young Massachusetts native living in Los 
Angeles, rolling his sharp songwriting, multi-instrumental chops and vocals into songs that were 
honest and experimental. A decade later, Jaffe returns to that career with Oh, Wild Ocean of 
Love, his first full-length release as a solo artist.
Jaffe continues to broaden his career beyond the confines of the recording studio 
and the stage. He composed, recorded, and produced the lm score for Joy Joy Nails, a short 
film that screened at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, building on a resume in TV and Film that 
includes work on the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants and various other shows and films.

Benjamin Jaffe

A Tale of Two Ben Jaffes

It was one of the music industry’s stranger stories: a young girl who’d grown up in a household where music was banned, her burgeoning interest confined to stolen moments at the practice room piano and a single dance music CD stashed in her desk at school. Phildel Ng lived for the bulk of her childhood under the rule of an abusive, strict Islamist stepfather, from whom she only escaped in a separation that lost her the rest of her family too. From the experience came her 2013 album, The Disappearance Of The Girl, a dark and breathtakingly intimate suite of songs exploring the gothic fantasies that sustained her through an unhappy time. Though written in a vacuum, Phildel’s intense piano and electronica music quickly spread to millions, sound-tracking ads for Apple, Expedia and Marks &amp; Spencer; she was an inspiration to Mariah Huehner, author of True Blood, and her songs featured in the live shows of fashion designer Henrietta Ludgate.
At the time of her debut, Phildel was trying to bring the man who had abused her to justice: she took her story to the police, but there was no prosecution — her mother and sister closed ranks, and though the case remains open, there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest. She had to make the devastating decision to cut herself off from her family entirely. Wave Your Flags is the story of that fracture and the self-repair that followed – a strong, sparse album of powerful songs re-enacting cycles of loss and renewal. The fairy tales are over. In a post-#Metoo era, Wave Your Flags is a work about the importance of speaking up and finding your way in the world &#8211; regardless of whether or not you are believed.
Phildel now lives in Brighton with her partner and identical twin boys.

Phildel

Phildel on Recovering from Trauma Through Her Art

Musical maverick Mark de Clive-Lowe seems an impossibility at first sight — juggling piano, synths, live sampling and beat making all on-the-fly, brought to life with a casual ease that’s mind-boggling. The Japanese-New Zealander was raised primarily in New Zealand where he learned piano from a young age developing an avid passion for jazz through his father’s record collection. In high school, he fell in love with Native Tongues hip hop and early UK jungle — laying the foundation for what was to come next
During his hugely formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, MdCL helped evolve broken beat alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music. Since 2008, MdCL has called Los Angeles, California home where his acclaimed club night CHURCH has taken his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe.
He has performed with Harvey Mason, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Dwight Trible and Jean Grae; remixed Shirley Horn, Hiatus Kaiyote, Mantombi Matotiyana and Jerry Goldsmith; and recorded as producer and collaborator with artists all over the planet. Having contributed to over 300 releases, to call MdCL prolific is something of an understatement.

personal essay