LSQ

An all-time favorite artist sits for an all-time favorite interview! Bon Iver's Justin Vernon is my guest in this episode of the LSQ podcast — the final episode of 2025 and season 8 of the show. We recorded this at his home studio back in June, shortly after the release of Bon Iver’s brilliant latest album, SABLE, fABLE, which recently earned him another couple well-deserved Grammy nominations. I loved this conversation so much, and I’m so grateful to Justin for his openness in a talk that explores his entire history as a creative person and music maker. Justin and I go back a ways and have done shorter interviews over the years. But this gave us a chance to go super in-depth, and I loved hearing stories about his early life and definitive creative experiences — about listening to John Prine’s “Hello in There,” on his Discman in the back of his my parents’ minivan and realizing music was his calling, about discovering music he loved by Fugazi, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the Dave Matthews Band, and Baaba Maal, about his dad driving him and his friends from Eau Claire, Wisconsin to Minneapolis to see Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden, about the deep camaraderie of his high school band with friends he still collaborates with today, and the vital growth that came from moving the band to Raleigh, North Carolina when he was in his twenties. Oh, and you’ve also gotta hear the story about Prince coming to a Gayngs show at First Avenue, and nearly joining the band onstage.

Indie rock legend Evan Dando joins me in episode 130 to talk about The Lemonheads’ excellent new album, Love Chant — their first LP of originals in twenty years. We also discuss the Townes Van Zandt covers album he’s currently working on, his recently released memoir, Rumors of My Demise, and we delve into important creative influences past and present: Sylvia Plath, the Replacements, Big Star, Love, the mentorship he received from Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis, and more. Dando also answers a couple of fun guest questions submitted by our pals Adam Green (who co-wrote the song “Wild Thing” from the new album) and Ben Lee. 

It was awesome to finally get to interview Neko Case, whose music (both on her own and with New Pornographers) I've admired for ages. In late September she released an awesome new album called Midnight Grey, Neon Green, and in the interview she shares about the inspiration for the album, which she describes as a tribute to music and musicians, and "a tribute to joy, and the joy that music makes you feel." We also explore her creative evolution, early band experiences, learning how to embrace her talents rather than being self-deprecating about them and how she approaches writing nowadays. She also shares a bit about the writing of her beautiful best-selling memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, as well as talking about the music she's been crafting for a long in-the-works Thelma & Louise musical. You can subscribe to Neko's Substack here and get tickets for her shows here.

For episode 128, I spoke with the brilliant Mdou Moctar, a Tuareg singer, guitarist and songwriter whose sound combines rock, blues and contemporary Saharan music into songs that range from shreddy and electrifying to beautiful and contemplative, and all the stops in between. I highly recommend digging into his catalog, which is now several albums deep. His latest releases with his band were a pair of interconnected albums: 2024’s Funeral For Justice, which is of the fiery rock & roll variety, and Tears of Injustice, which was released this year and features acoustic versions of the same songs — gorgeous renditions whose sound harkens back to the more sparse style Mdou employed on his early albums, before he had a full band supporting him. During the summer, I connected over Zoom with both Mdou and his bassist, Mikey Coltun, who also produces their albums, and that is the main interview in this episode. But I also had the pleasure of meeting up with the band in person, following our Zoom, to moderate an event they did at LA’s Grammy Museum. The Grammy Museum is an awesome non-profit that, in addition to preserving the history of the Grammy Awards and offering very cool interactive exhibits, also presents a series of live events where incredible artists like Mdou Moctar give talks and stripped-down performances for truly intimate audiences. Big thanks to Kimber Kristy over there for allowing me to use some of the audio from that conversation in this episode, because there were a couple of moments from it that I wanted to share. So we’ll listen to a bit of that, and then get into the longer interview. 

"I got the writing bug very early," says Suede's iconic frontman Brett Anderson. "I was fascinated by the simplicity of what was in front of me: You have six strings, and a limited number of notes, and 26 letters in the alphabet, and all of these things simultaneously mock you and inspire you. And it became a sort of an addiction for me quite early on, trying to search for that song, trying to reach for those chords, trying to write that album, and it still is. I still love it.”In the lead up to Suede’s excellent new album, Antidepressants, which the Guardian has hailed as a “late career triumph,” I had the pleasure of connecting over Zoom with Anderson for a conversation about his creative evolution. One of my favorite things about our interview was hearing him describe his passion for the process of writing and the fact that, even though it can be torturous, it’s ultimately so satisfying. He said that he resonates with the famous Dorothy Parker quote, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” And so we talked about writing throughout Anderson’s life:  as a kid, when he first connected with his urge to put pen to paper and evoke notes from an instrument, the early days of Suede and moments when he first knew he had hit on something so powerful, and writing of the new album.