My Favourite Elliott Smith Song

Joining us for the final episode of the season is Naima Bock.  Naima is a London-based musician who started her career in the band Goat Girl. Since leaving them, she has pursued a successful solo career, releasing two studio albums - Giant Palm, which came out in 2022 and Below a Massive Dark Land, which came out in 2024.  Naima describes Elliott Smith's Either/Or album as foundational for her, so...

Today, we're bringing you the second part of our special recorded at New Monkey Studio's All My Rowdy Friends tribute show (held in August 2024).   Last time round, we had Sara Lov and Mehro on the show. For this one, we're joined by musician Kevin Devine. Kevin was our guest way back in episode 8 of season one, where he selected the Biggest Lie as his favourite song pick.  In this interview, he r...

We have a special episode for you today. We're bringing you two interviews recorded at New Monkey Studio's All My Rowdy Friends tribute show, which was held in Los Angeles in 2024. First up is Sara Lov, a musician who met Elliott and played in a band with his Figure 8 drummer, Scott McPherson. Then, returning to the show, is our season 4 guest, mehro. Both interviews were recorded before our guest...

Our guest today is musician Sofia Jensen of Free Range.  Despite still being only 22 years old, Sofia already has two acclaimed albums to their name: Practice, which came out in 2022, and Lost and Found, which was released last year.  They are now writing new material for the next Free Range record.  Sofia is also a huge Elliott Smith fan. In this episode, we discuss their favourite song selection...

Our guest today is Aaron Lee Tasjan. Aaron is a musician, songwriter and producer from Tennessee. We first connected with Aaron when he played at the All My Rowdy Friends Elliott Smith tribute show in Los Angeles hosted by New Monkey Studio in 2024, and we've been keen to get him on ever since.  At that event, he played Independence Day - the song he's discussing here. Hope you enjoy it! Extra lin...

Our guest today is Chan Kinchla, a musician and the guitarist in the band Blues Traveler. Blues Traveler are a long-running band combining blues, rock, and soul. In addition to performing with them, Chan leads his own band, W4rhors3. Chan chose “Clementine” from Elliott Smith’s self-titled album — a track we had never previously discussed on the podcast. He talks about only fairly recently becomin...

Hello! We're doing something slightly different in this episode. As we had two guests who both selected the same song, we’ve combined both their interviews together.  In this episode, you'll hear from Anthony Vaccaro, who is the guitarist in the band Beach Bunny and also a solo artist (he plays under the name Helicopter Leaves), and we also have Tess Parks a musician and photographer.  They're bot...

Our guest today is musician, Charlie Barnes.  Charlie is a singer-songrwriter and producer based here in the UK, who also plays with the band Bastille. Charlie's a big Elliott Smith fan and was kind enough to share his thoughts on track Bottle Up and Explode! from the album XO, as well as his interesting route to discovering the song, how Elliott has shaped his approach to music and much more besi...

Our guest today is Haley Fohr aka Circuit des Yeux.  Haley is a Chicago based experimental musician who has been releasing music under the Circuit des Yeux name since 2007. And she released her seventh studio album, Halo on the Inside, in March of last year.  Haley's been a big Elliott Smith fan since discovering his music while she was in high school. In this interview, she talks about taking lon...

Joining us for episode three of the season is Greg Mendez. Greg is a musician based in Philadelphia, who began making music in 2006. Although he had been playing for some time already, it was the success of Greg's 2023 self-titled album that brought him greater recognition. After releasing that album he also joined the Dead Oceans label, which he then released his EP First Time/Alone under.  Like...

Joining us today is musician, Madison Cunningham. Madison is a grammy award winning singer-songwriter who recently released her third studio album, which is titled Ace.  This podcast's co-host, Elizabeth Withstandley, recorded the interview with Madison backstage at last year's All My Rowdy Friends tribute show in LA hosted by the good people at New Monkey Studio - the studio that Elliott Smith us...

We're back! And joining us for a brand new season is musician and actor, Elliott Fullam. Elliott is known for his acting work in the films Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, as well as the Apple TV show Get Rolling with Otis. He's also a solo artist and releases music under his own name. Elliott is our first guest to be named after Elliott Smith, so we couldn't think of anyone better to kick off our new...

Joining us for the final episode of the season are Will Taylor and Nick Hill of Flyte. Will and Nick are very talented songwriters based in London. As Flyte, they have released three studio albums so far - with their most recent record, called Flyte, coming out towards the end of last year. They've also worked with some well-known names too, including the likes of Madison Cunningham, Laura Marling...

Joining us today is Claire Rousay. Claire is a musician and composer based in Los Angeles. She describes her work as 'emo ambient' and is just preparing to release a new album, Sentiment, which is out later in April 2024. The record is a follow-up to Claire's last studio album Everything Perfect Is Already Here, which came out in 2022. Claire says she listens to Elliott Smith at least four days a...

Joining us for episode 10 of the season is musician, Mikaela Davis. Mikaela is a harpist and songwriter based in Catskill, New York. Mikaela credits Elliott Smith with helping 'spark' her professional music career, as it was her cover of Twilight that helped bring her to the attention of a booking agent while she was still a college student. She's now a firmly established artist with her 2023 albu...

Our guest for today's episode is Rey Villalobos, who releases music under the name The Coral Sea.  Rey started out as The Coral Sea back in 2004 and has released several albums since then - including Golden Planet Sky which came out last year.  Before he went solo, Rey began his music career as a drummer. Playing in bands in Los Angeles and Portland - where we moved in similar ciricles to Ellliott...

Today we're joined by musician, Spencer Fox. Spencer is the guitarist in the New York-based band Charly Bliss. The band have released two albums to date with Guppy coming in 2017 and Young Enough in 2019, and they've recently been in the studio recording their third record too. We had a great time chatting to Spencer. He's a self-confessed major Elliott Smith fan and had a lot to say on his pick f...

Our guest today is Violet Mayugba. Violet is the guitarist and a founding member of the band, Destroy Boys. The group formed back in 2015 in Sacramento, California and have gone on to release three studio albums, with one more on the way - in fact, they had just finished recording it the day before this interview was recorded. Violet is a huge Elliott Smith fan. She talks about her favourite song...

Our guest today is Lily O'Farrell, who you may know by her online name @vulgadrawings. Lily is a cartoonist and writer based in London. She began publishing feminist cartoons on Instagram in 2018 and has since reached more than 300,000 followers. She's also published a book, released a podcast (her recent series No Worries If Not is well worth listening to) and, yes, even created a number of Ellio...

Welcome to our first episode of 2024 with Shannon Lay! Shannon is a solo musician based in Los Angeles, who's released four solo albums, as well as a collection of covers that came out last year. And on that covers album is a version of Angeles (by Elliott Smith), which you can hear at the very end of this episode. Before that though, we have the full interview with Shannon, where she discusses Fi...

Joining us for our last episode of the year is musician, Margaret Glaspy. Margaret, who is based in New York City, released her latest album - Echo the Diamond - in August this year. The record is Margaret's third full-length album, and follows on from 2020's Devotion and 2016's Emotions and Math. Margaret says Elliott Smith has been a big influence across her career, so in this episode we dive de...

Our guest today is John Vanderslice. John is a musician, producer and the owner of the legendary Tiny Telephone studio, which initially began in the Mission district of San Francisco. Bands who've recorded at Tiny Telephone with John include the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Okkervil River, the Mountain Goats, St. Vincent and many, many more. Embarking on his musical odyssey as a singer/songwriter...

Our guest today is Kimbra. Kimbra is a musician originally from New Zealand but is now based in New York City. You may have first heard of her when she sang on the track Somebody That I Used To Know in 2011 alongside Gotye, who wrote the single. The pair went on to win two Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. These two Grammy wins are part of a huge career, which incl...

Our first guest of the new season is author, Paul Rees . Paul has had a great career as a music writer. He's held senior positions at magazines such as Q and Kerrang, he's written several books including a best-seller on the life of Robert Plant, and most recently, penned a biography of Elliott Smith titled, Shooting Star. In this interview we discuss that book, how Paul decided to write about Ell...

Our guest for our final episode of this season is Lauren McCarthy.  Lauren is the Executive Editor of Nylon, a publication that covers fashion, entertainment and music. Through her work, Lauren has the enviable opportunity of interviewing some of the most exciting artists working today - people like Phoebe Bridgers, Beabadoobee and Snail Mail.   One interesting thing Lauren has noticed through her...