Kreative Kontrol

On Saturday, November 29, 2025, the annual Letters to Santa Holiday Gala is taking place at the Chop Shop in Chicago. This year’s event is headlined by Fred Armisen and Jeff Tweedy and if you can’t make it to Chicago, you can learn how to livestream it and donate money to this remarkable and life-affirming and live-saving poverty alleviation initiative at letterscharity.org . People who are famili...

Hélène Barbier is here to discuss her excellent new record Panorama , difficulties an untrained musician might have playing music publicly in France compared to Montreal, being drawn to the low notes, imposter syndrome and loving low-key rock stars, being something of a homebody, dealing with a health diagnosis with some measure of humour, avoiding pigeonholing yourself in the press, writing songs...

Liam Kazar is here to discuss his lovely new album Pilot Light , parts of Canada, living in Brooklyn but missing Chicago, being in Jeff Tweedy’s solo band and working on his recent triple album, Twilight Override , performing on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert so soon after its impending cancellation announcement, constantly touring with Jeff, Waxahatchee, Sam Evian, Kevin Morby, and on his own...

My son, who is 14, and I have been to a couple of shows together recently, including taking a trip to Vancouver to see JID and more recently, a drive to nearby Sherwood Park to see Sloan, just ahead of us heading to the Aviary in Edmonton to see Julianna Riolino on November 23. And so, we decided to record a pod about these experiences and people, and ponder what it means to see live music togethe...

Ryan Davis is here to discuss the new Roadhouse Band double-album, New Threats From the Soul , Indiana/Kentucky cultural and college sport rivalries, his parents’ musical interests and what led him, as a boy, to write songs for Michael Jackson and mail them to him to sing, pondering songs as puzzle pieces on his albums, Will Oldham and musical multiverses, his penchant to reference pop culture in...

We did something like this successfully last year, and we’re doing it again: it’s the 2025 Kreative Kontrol Patreon subscriber drive ! From November 21 to 28, we’re aiming to reach 700 paid Patreon subscribers and we can do this! Also, a new gift will be announced daily and awarded via random draws among eligible paid subs! I will publicly announce each drive day’s prize pack in the morning on my...

Peter Jesperson , Jason Jones , and Elizabeth Nelson are here to discuss their work on Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) by the Replacements , Peter’s fondness for Elizabeth’s writing and her excellent liner notes for this edition, Bob Mehr’s decision to step away from the Replacements reissue campaign for now and its impact on this project, the ‘Mats’ penchant for cover songs, what this might signify, a...

Katie Stelmanis from Austra is here to discuss her new album, Chin Up Buttercup , food-related music interviews and relatable human beings, settling back in Toronto after living elsewhere, delving into heartbreak and the stages of grief to compose songs, diaristic writing about personal cataclysms and not being a words person, pandemic isolation, bubble babes, and living for Eurodance music, havin...

Ryan H. Walsh from Hallelujah The Hills is here to discuss Deck , the band’s new star-studded 52-song, four-record set and its playing card themes, our shared love for and interactions with the late David Berman, the Toronto Silver Jews show I saw, which the Hills opened, Berman’s generosity as a mentor and a friend, his “google purity” measure, and his music competitiveness, Ryan not being into B...

Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy from Sloan return to discuss their album, Based on the Bestseller , how their own bandmates inspire them to write better songs, why Chris’ “Open Your Umbrellas” reminds me of Dick Van Dyke and how Jay’s “Capitol Cooler” has its own whimsical yet pointed motif, connecting music, books, and movies, trying to have a fun album rollout, a funny observation about Chris by M...

Carla and Lynette Gillis from Overnight are here to discuss their new album, Put Me In Your Light , being so close, they’ve followed each other around North America, loving fashion and heavy metal, whether or not the androgyny of hair metal was more subversive than we tend to think, escapism and separation anxiety, loss, grief, and therapy, the surprising resonance of their old band Plumtree’s son...

Ed Kuepper and Jim White return to discuss their remarkable debut album, After the Flood , their recent Australian tour, when Ed played a show with Dirty Three in 1994 and became enamoured with Jim’s playing, the massive role Ed’s bands played in Jim’s development as a young drummer, revisiting and recording some of Ed’s songs in the Saints, Laughing Clowns, and from his solo albums, the lively, l...

Sean Wilentz is here to discuss co-producing Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 , New Jersey and New York City, his family’s roots in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk community, his Bob Dylan fandom origins, why he was asked to helm this volume, write its liner notes, and what he learned about Dylan, the variety of Dylan’s voices and gifts as a music interpret...

Shad returns to discuss his new album Start Anew , the connections between its title and his 2005 debut, When This is Over , and a Hayden song, persona, the person, and ego death, yearning for challenges in life and creative work, conquering the fear of stories ending, anti-capitalism, technocracy, and the fact that the inventor of A.I. believes there’s a small chance it might kill all of us and p...

Vincent Cacchione from Caged Animals is here to discuss the band’s new album Make Strange Friends , our encounter at Sappyfest this past summer, his move from Brooklyn to Canada and why he loves it here, working with Jon Mckiel, his work as a podcast producer, the unique radio play that ends the new album and features the esteemed writer, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, how his parents’ work in comedy,...

Tony Hobbs subscribes to Kreative Kontrol on Patreon at a monthly tier that offers people a chance to appear on this show and talk about things that might be relevant to its audience and wide-ranging interests. Tony’s here to discuss Lot Miracles , a limited-edition zine series he helped launch that is inspired by the music, art, and community surrounding the Grateful Dead, and features a new cura...

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns to discuss her new album Live Like the Sky , why people are so often air unaware, her book Theory of Water and how a world ending means a new one is beginning, the concept of generative refusal, lakes, oceans, skiing, running, and surfing, holding a tape recorder up to a car radio speaker to capture underground rock music in the 1980s and how those new wave and...

Andrew Mazerolle from Muncho is here to discuss his new album Is This Something? , life on both the east and west coasts of Canada, Muncho Joe and Munchos, the fried potato snack, singing in church and getting into Christian ska as a kid, falling in love with the Beatles, why Maritimes bands have such an affinity for 1960s Brit-pop, why he enjoys the limitations of four-track recording and being a...

Julianna Riolino returns to discuss her excellent new album, Echo in the Dust , hanging out in her childhood bedroom and reflecting upon life with our respective parents, being a particularly sensitive person and artist, existentialism, pondering the universe, and billionaires who wish to escape Earth, reflecting upon her time in and outside of Daniel Romano’s Outfit, theatricality on the new reco...

Carlyn Bezic from Jane Inc. returns to discuss her deeply personal new album, A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH , moving up in the world in her Toronto home, the end of a long-term relationship and beginning a new one, a life-changing near-death experience on the road, being diagnosed with cancer and how overcoming it gave her a greater appreciation for joy and grace, the emergence of her Jane Inc. alter...

Jasamine White-Gluz from No Joy is here to discuss their latest album Bugland , patios, porches, decks, and why she moved outside of Montreal, her Gord Downie-like penchant for placing the same lyrics in different songs, a shared affection for Canadian music television in the 1990s, representation, laziness, and making an effort to be a decent person to other people, a brief history of No Joy and...

Dan Bitney and Douglas McCombs from Tortoise are here to discuss their new album Touch , Dan being the lone band member I’d never interviewed before now, living in Chicago under fascism, how they met because of one of Dan’s earlier bands, how Touch was made with only two bandmates living in the same city, writing some of the shortest Tortoise songs ever, leaving Thrill Jockey for International Ant...

Esther Rose is here to discuss her new album Want , living in New Mexico and how locals regard Vince Gilligan’s groundbreaking TV shows, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul , growing up in Detroit and going to London, Ontario to attend punk shows, the raw, confessional work of John Lennon, dealing with trauma and exploring ketamine-based psychedelic therapy, giving up drinking and pondering alcohol’...

Hugh McElroy and Mike Kanin from Black Eyes return to discuss their first new album in 20 years, Hostile Design , the state of American socio-political discourse, the inspiring resistance that D.C. residents have exhibited as the federal government has sent military personnel and ICE agents into the area, American history and foreign policy and where power truly lies, songwriting themes and topics...

Cate Le Bon is here to discuss her lovely new album Michelangelo Dying , moving closer to home in Cardiff, her initial reticence about writing a record based on declarative sentiments about a failed relationship, why she invoked an iconic artist in expressing herself through her own art, the concept of aspirational jealousy, spirituality and gratitude, collaborating with John Cale on a song and th...