Talkhouse Podcast

On this week’s Talkhouse episode, we’ve got some notable Canadians with tons of great music under their belts, including a recent collaboration—their first. It’s Ryan Hemsworth and Sara Quin.

Hemsworth—no relation to those Australian actor guys—is a musician and producer who’s made records with a really interesting array of folks over the past 15 years, creating beats and beds for everybody from E-40 to Mitski. Hemsworth just released his first solo album in nearly a decade, and Numbskull sounds like a guy who’s been bursting with pent-up creativity. It’s all over the map in the best way, with rock and even emo influences pushing up against his electronic tendencies. Unsurprisingly for a guy who gets around—musicially, I mean—it features lots of guest artists on various tracks, including the unmistakable voices of his fellow Canadians Tegan and Sara on one song. Check out that song, “Never Learned,” right here.

One of those voices of course was Sara Quin, half of the twin-sister duo that’s been surprising and delighting its fans for the past 30 or so years. Beyond their extensive musical catalog, Tegan and Sara have done graphic novels, a documentary, and a TV show. As you’ll hear in this chat, Sara recently became a mom for the second time, and she learned some lessons about diving back into work too quickly.

That’s just one of the many topics these two chat about: In addition to the joys and difficulties of parenting as a touring musician, they talk about the horrors of social media—Sara is not a fan—plus Ryan’s early Tegan and Sara fandom. Enjoy.

00:00 Intro

02:06 Start of conversation, setting up Sara’s studio, and Ryan’s room

04:03 On the most expensive thing they’ve bough for music, and recording in strange spaces

07:24 On getting to know each other, Ryan’s Tegan & Sara t-shirt, discovering music in high school, and starting to collab

10:36 On listening to and collaborating with very different artists

12:48 On Sara writing a book, and trying different things artistically

16:29 On promoting creative projects, hustling, and passion

19:00 On how having kids changes creative work and touring

24:14 On touring with Neil Young, Sara’s first tour, and how it compares to touring with her kids

27:40 On how artistic identity, promoting work, and using social media have changed, and on hating algorithms

33:49 On “going viral” horror stories, and how book promo compares to music promo

36:07 On pressure to stay present in the media and “prove you’re still alive”

38:17 On how their partners react to their downtime, when they find time to work, and pressure to work again immediately after having babies

42:18 On what they’re doing next

45:32 On big production tours and branding vs. more stripped back performances and artistic identities

48:09 On Sara’s ideas for her next tour, and creating good experiences for audiences

51:28 On eating in movie theaters, working together, and quiet gigs

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Ryan Hemsworth and Sara Quin for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme was composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

Find more illuminating podcasts on the ⁠⁠⁠Talkhouse Podcast Network⁠⁠⁠.
Visit ⁠⁠⁠talkhouse.com⁠⁠⁠ to read essays, reviews, and more.
Follow @talkhouse on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠.

On the latest episode of Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, Nick Dawson sits down with husband-and-wife writing and directing team Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, whose brilliantly inventive new movie, Wicker, starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage, is out Friday. In a lively and unpredictable conversation, they talk about Alex’s history with night terrors (and the injury they caused him just before Sundance), medieval polyphasic sleep rhythms (obviously!), Eleanor’s love of the Australian magpie, the unfortunate mullet Alex got last time he was Down Under, and much more.

Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That now has a Substack, so head there to check out all of our past episodes, plus subscribe to get access to exclusive audio and video content!

On this week's Talkhouse episode we’ve got four guys who have tons in common—including lots of soundtrack work— but who, surprisingly, hadn’t met before. It’s Son Lux and Dan Deacon.

Son Lux started out as the solo electronic project of Ryan Lott back in 2008, but by 2015 he’d been joined by fellow travelers Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia, expanding the group’s sound into something reviewers loved to call both “dense” and “orchestral.” So it makes sense that the trio would find its way into writing and performing scores for film, and they got a huge, high-exposure job with the massive Everything Everywhere All At Once. The film’s score involved a hundred cues and some killer collaborators, including David Byrne, Mitski, and Andre 3000. Nominated for an Oscar, it naturally led to other film-world work, including the score to the superhero movie Thunderbolts. But that hasn’t stopped Lott, Chang, and Bhatia from itching to write original Son Lux music, and last month saw two big releases—one the score to a new movie called Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and then a brand new Son Lux record called Out Into. Check out “Want You To Love” from that record right here.

The other half of today’s chat, Dan Deacon, has gotten so busy with scoring films and TV that he hasn’t released an artist album since 2020—as you’ll hear in this chat, he’s reasonably content with those circumstances, though he does plan on getting around to it. Deacon found audiences in the early 2000s with frantic live shows of his experimental electronic pop, and his entrance into the scoring world was incredibly strange, another story he recounts in this conversation. A blind email from Francis Ford Coppola led to his first job, but that movie—called Twixt—put him off soundtrack work for a while. He’s since become a staple in the scoring world, though, with a bunch of projects coming out right around now, including a new soundtrack for a documentary called Great Photo, Lovely Life.

In this lively conversation, the three members of Son Lux and Deacon talk a lot about creating music for other projects versus making their own records, including some interesting behind-the-scenes thoughts on how music gets used in movies versus, say, bus noises. Also, is every director the equivalent of Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings? Probably not. Enjoy.

0:00 Intro

02:52 Start of conversation & how often they put out albums

03:38 On work schedules, confidence, and momentum

05:46 On Dan’s solo and collaborative scores, music editors, and documentary scores

08:28 On how they got into scoring movies, how scores differ from other music, and working with Francis Ford Coppola

12:40 On improvisational and collaborative scores, and how scores influence their own projects

15:20 On the Venn diagram of creativity in film scoring, their record processes, and bad mixes in scores

19:37 On the dub stage of scoring and Everything Everywhere All At Once

23:08 On Dan’s future music plans, creative pressure, and exploring the ideas and skills Dan discovered through scoring

28:40 On writing songs, and why directors/composers are like Lord of the Rings characters

31:49 On Justin Vernon’s writing process and if records need stories about their process

33:03 On the pros and cons of touring

35:41 On Son Lux’s new album and upcoming score, and Dan’s crazy schedule for scoring Venom

38:20 On good manager relationships, and wanting people to find their new music

41:12 On future regrets, letting go of stress, types of fun, and making plans to check in again

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to the guys from Son Lux and Dan Deacon for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff 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!

Find more illuminating podcasts on the ⁠⁠⁠Talkhouse Podcast Network⁠⁠⁠.
Visit ⁠⁠⁠talkhouse.com⁠⁠⁠ to read essays, reviews, and more.
Sign up for our newsletter.
Follow @talkhouse on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Facebook, and Letterboxd.

On the latest episode of Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, Nick Dawson sits down with actress and writer Kathryn Grody, who previously appeared on the podcast with her husband, Mandy Patinkin. In a wide-ranging, funny and sometimes emotional conversation timed to a new run of Grody’s new one-woman show The Unexpected 3rd, Grody talks about: the joys of wandering, a very memorable biking vacation through Ireland (that Mandy all but forced to her go on!), how humor miraculously helped her father survive the Normandy D-Day landings, why she prefers Sherman Oaks to Paris, the huge impact losing her parents in her mid 20s had on her, and much more.

Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That now has a Substack, so head there to check out all of our past episodes, plus subscribe to get access to exclusive audio and video content!

Bloomberg journalist Ashley Carman sits down with Jad Abumrad (Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Dolly Parton's America, Radiolab) for a career-spanning conversation.

Find more illuminating podcasts on the ⁠⁠⁠Talkhouse Podcast Network⁠⁠⁠.
Visit ⁠⁠⁠talkhouse.com⁠⁠⁠ to read essays, reviews, and more.
Sign up for our newsletter.
Follow @talkhouse on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Facebook, and Letterboxd.