My Favourite Elliott Smith Song

Our guest today is Julia Shapiro. Julia is a musician who is perhaps best known as the lead singer and guitarist in the band Chastity Belt, which formed in Washington state in 2010. Chastity Belt have released four studio albums, including, most recently, 2019's self-titled record. Julia's work isn't just limited to that band, though, she's also part of the group Childbirth and has released solo r...

Our guest today is Elise Okusami. Elise is a New York City based guitarist and vocalists who performs under the name Oceanator. As Oceanator, Elise has released three albums so far, including, most recently Nothing’s Ever Fine, which came out earlier on this year. Elise has covered a couple of Elliott Smith songs during her career, including and the Biggest Lie, which we’re discussing today in thi...

Joining us for episode nine is musician Aaron Powell.  Aaron is based in Newfoundland, Canada and plays under the name Fog Lake. He’s been recording music for the last 10 years or so and his work has been referred to - quite interestingly - as ‘harrowing nostalgia’. Aaron’s released several albums to date, including 2021's Tragedy Reel, which reflects on his upbringing in rural Canada.  Aaron is a...

Our guest for episode eight of season five is Nilüfer Yanya.  Nilüfer is a musician from London. Nilüfer's first ever release came back in 2016 when she put out her debut EP Small Crimes/Keep on Calling and, since then, she's released two full-length albums: 2019's Miss Universe, which was then followed up by Painless earlier on this year - a record that's well worth checking out if you haven't he...

Joining us today is the musician Joshua Burnside.  Joshua is a singer-songwriter based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He’s released five albums across his career, with his first record, Ephrata, winning the Northern Ireland music prize in 2017.  Joshua is known for incorporating a wide range of influences into his work, from Colombian and Indonesian music, right the way through to one Elliott Smith...

Joining us for episode six of this season are Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten from the band Momma. Etta and Allegra have been playing music together since they became close friends while at high school in Los Angeles, California. Since those early days, they've gone on to record three studio albums, including most recently, Household Name which came out earlier this year. 2022 has been a grea...

Our guest today is the multi-talented, Lola Kirke.  As an actor, Lola has starred in the TV show Mozart in the Jungle and the film Mistress America, as well as many others. And, as a musician she has released two studio albums - most recently Lady for Sale which came out on Third Man Records earlier on this year.  Her favourite song pick is a great selection from Figure 8 and, in this interview, s...

Our guests today are Dan Alvarez and Jordan Dunn-Pilz, who together make up the band Toledo.  The pair have been making music together since they were 11 years old, growing up in Newburyport in Massachusetts After parting ways for college, Dan and Jordan are now reunited and living in Brooklyn, New York, and are steadily building a big following, with their debut coming out in September this year....

Our guest for episode three of season five is Orono from Superorganism. Superoganism are a band now based in London, though they started out more geographically dispersed. When the group formed, Orono would record her vocals separately from Maine, where she attended boarding school. After finding prominence with their debut single Something for Your M.I.N.D in 2017, Superorganism followed it up wi...

Our second guest of this season is Carmen Perry from the band Remember Sports.  Remember Sports formed back in 2012, when Carmen and her bandmates were studying at college/university. Since then, they've released five albums, most recently Like a Stone, which came out last year.  It was as a teenager that Carmen became an Elliott Smith fan. She discovered his music when she was searching indie art...

Our guest for the opening episode of season 5 of My Favourite Elliott Smith Song is Ruth Radelet. Ruth is a musician based in Portland, Oregon, who has recently started a solo career, after a long and successful stint with the band, Chromatics, a group she joined back in 2006. One of her first releases as a solo artist was, in fact, a cover of Twilight by Elliott Smith, which she recorded for the...

We're very happy to welcome Craig Thomas onto the podcast for the final episode of this season. Craig is a writer and producer perhaps best known as the co-creator of the comedy, How I Met Your Mother, but he's written lots of other things as well, including for David Letterman, American Dad and Oliver Beene. It was as a young writer living in New York City that Craig became a big Elliott Smith fa...

Our guest today is the musician and podcaster, Hrishikesh Hirway. Hrishikesh is the creator of the excellent Song Exploder podcast - where musicians dissect their songs and discuss how they were made - which has recently been made into a TV show by Netflix. He's also involved in other popular podcasts including West Wing Weekly, Home Cooking and Partners. But music is Hrishikesh's first love and h...

Today, we're joined by Elliott Smith's close friend and publicist, Dorien Garry. Although they had already known each other for a little while, the two cemented their friendship when Elliott moved to New York City in the late '90s and stayed for a while at Dorien's apartment. At this time, Dorien was also working at Girlie Action, the PR agency that represented Elliott. So, in this interview Dorie...

Joining us today is the musician, mehro. mehro is based in Los Angeles and has spent the 18 months or so of the pandemic amassing a huge following online. He hadn't released a song before February 2020 and has since put out a handful of singles as well as a debut album, SKY ON FIRE, which came out earlier on this year. He came to Elliott Smith's music relatively recently too, having been introduce...

Joining us today is musician Johanna Samuels. Johanna is a singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles, who put her first full-length album, Excelsior, out earlier this year. She's also a huge Elliott Smith fan and recently appeared singing Elliott Smith's Single File on a Kill Rock Stars cover record. In this interview, she discusses that tribute show, connecting with a good friend of Elliotts and of...

Our guest for this one is Steven Page. Steven is a musician, who is perhaps best known as the lead singer and a guitarist in the band Barenaked Ladies. He was one of the founding members of the group and was with them for just over 20 years until 2009, when he left to pursue other projects. Steven is now a solo artist and is soon heading out on a solo tour of North America.  He’s a big Elliott Smi...

Our guest today is the musician Matthew Caws.  Matthew is the lead singer and guitarist in the band Nada Surf, a band he formed in New York City in the early ‘90s with his friend, Daniel Lorca. In total, Nada Surf have put out nine studio albums, and their most recent, Never Not Together, came out in 2020. Nada Surf also had the pleasure of touring with Elliott Smith and the band Quasi in 1998, an...

Today, we're welcoming Phil Elverum onto the podcast. Phil has been releasing music for over 20 years now. First, through his band The Microphones and then under the name Mount Eerie - a project he started in 2003 and is still running today. Over the course of his career so far, Phil has put out more than 40 albums.  Phil discovered Elliott Smith’s music in the mid-'90s and even saw him play live...

Our guest today is the writer, Maggie Smith. Maggie is a poet and author based in Columbus, Ohio. She has published several collections of her poetry, including most recently Goldenrod, which came out in July 2021. After seeing her tweeting about Elliott Smith, I got in touch with Maggie to invite her on the podcast. We had a lovely chat about Elliott's music, her favourite song pick and why it mi...

Our guest today is the musician Ed Harcourt.  Ed has released six studio albums - one of which was nominated for the mercury music prize - and has written songs for lots of other artists too, including the likes of Marianne Faithful, Paloma Faith and Sophie Ellis Bextor.  Ed also counts himself as a big Elliott Smith fan. And in this episode, he talks to Elizabeth Withstandley about his favourite...

Our guest today is the musician Rebecca Gates. Rebecca is based in Portland, Oregon and was one half of The Spinanes before she left to release music as a solo artist. The Spinanes were a firm fixture on the Portland music scene and it was there that she met Elliott Smith for the first time and established a friendship that would lead to her recording backing vocals on the song St Ides Heaven, whi...

Mike Doughty is a musician and the founder of the band Soul Coughing. Mike set up the experimental group in 1992 and they released three albums before going their separate ways in 2000. Mike has since gone onto pursue several solo projects. Already an established fan, he met Elliott Smith during the 1990s and Elliott also recorded some vocal tracks for Mike during that period. He discusses those e...

We're delighted that musician Aaron Espinoza joins us to round off our third season. Aaron is a producer, who owns his own studio in Los Angeles called The Ship. He's also in the band Earlimart and it was when he was starting out with that group in the early 2000s, that he became friends with Elliott Smith. Aaron, Elliott, the members of Grandaddy, Lou Barlow and many others were all part of the s...

Musician Charlene Kaye joins us for our penultimate episode of season three. Charlene is a solo artist, who goes by the name KAYE. She's preparing to release her new album, Conscious Control, which comes out in November 2020. You may also know Charlene as the lead vocalist of the band San Fermin, which she was part of for five years. She's a big Elliott Smith fan too. And in this episode, we discu...