Stereo Embers: The Podcast

"Real Life Evolution" With close to ten brilliant albums under her belt, including Real Life, To Survive and The Classic, it's hard to think of a more critically-acclaimed artist in recent memory than singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joan As Police Woman. After studying music as a violinist at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University with her lifelong friend Mary Timony of Helium,...

"Beach Bongo Bloodbath" Bob Bert's Beach Bongo Bloodbath might be the most alliterative album title of the year, but it also happens to also be one of the year's very best. Before we get to Beach Bongo Bloodbath, let me give you a little Bob Bert Backstory. The alliteration with Bob is seemingly unavoidable. Influenced by the Beatles, the Stones, Andy Warhol and the band's that packed CBGB's, the...

"Notes To Self" For the past 11 years, the Ohio-born Jon Lampley was on your television four nights a week as part of the house band on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. A versatile brass player who is accomplished on the trumpet and sousaphone, Lampley is also a singer-songwriter, a composer and now a bandleader himself who effortlessly presides over his own cocktail of soul, R&B, gospel and ro...

"Highway To Heavenly" The Oxford indie-pop outfit Heavenly formed out of the ashes of another Oxford outfit, the beloved indiepop band Talulah Gosh. With the addition of singer/keyboardist Cathy Rogers, by the time the band's second album Le Jardin De Heavenly hit shelves, their low-fi jangle became augmented by lush and spellbinding harmonies. Throughout the '90s put out a handful of winning albu...

"Maybe It's Just Me" The indie rock outfit Lost Leaders were formed in 2011 by pals Byron Isaacs and Peter Cole. Isaacs' resume was already pretty full at the time, thanks to his work as the bassist for the Lumineers and playing with the Levon Helm Band and Ollabelle. If that doesn't sound busy enough, Isaacs has also recorded and performed with Bruce Springsteen, Roseanne Cash, Jackson Browne, Am...

"Garage Glamour" It's hard to think of a more dynamic and exciting band as the Claudettes. The Chicago-based rock/blues/pop outfit have been at it since 2010 and with six albums under their belts, including their riveting new one Garage Glamour, The Claudettes have established themselves as one of the most singular outfits on the planet. From Dance Scandal In The Gymnasium to High Times In The Dar...

"Of Ghosts And Gods" The New Jersey-born, Harvard educated David Berkeley is one of modern music's true renaissance men. Now, people throw that term out a tad lazily but in the case of Berkeley, it truly fits. Aside from releasing close to ten perfect albums, including The Confluence, Some Kind Of Cure and Oh Quiet World, Berkeley is an author, a label owner, and he's been a river rafting guide, a...

"Crying The Neck" With seven marvelous albums under his musical belt, including 2003's Lycanthropy, 2005's Wind In The Wires and his latest album Crying The Neck, which broke a nearly fifteen-year hiatus from recorded music, Patrick Wolf is a wondrous talent. The London-born musician is one of the most arresting artists on the planet--his songs effortlessly meld trip-hop, electronica and indie roc...

Porto" Over their nearly twenty-album history, the Canadian outfit 5440 have proven themselves to be one of the most enduring rock and roll bands of all time. Their career highlights are numerous, so bear with this partial list of their achievements. They've been nominated for 8 Juno Awards, have had #1 singles and Gold albums in Canada, had their song "I Go Blind" covered by Hootie and the Blowfi...

"But What Time Is It Really?" Because their legacy is so vast, their musical output so singular and their influence so far-reaching, telling you a little bit about Cabaret Voltaire is like telling you a little bit about outer space. A long tine ago, say 1973, in a galaxy far, far away, say Sheffield, England, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson got together to, in their words, make...

"Together Again" When it comes to the Wisconsin-born John McCutcheon and the Chicago-born Tom Paxton, there's no way to condense their amazing careers into a three-minute introduction, but that's the challenge I have before me, so I'm going to do the best I can. Putting it simply, McCutcheon and Paxton are two of the most towering figures in the history of folk music. Let's start with McCutcheon....

"Homecoming" Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “I regarded home as a place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.” That is exactly the sentiment that has fueled Mark Crozer's marvelous new album Homecoming. The Oxford-bred Crozer left home as a young man and in many ways he never looked back because he was always moving forward. And that forward thing worked pretty well. The singer/songwr...

"Illegal Hit" The Swedish-born Björn Yttling is a singer, songwriter, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and record label owner. And you thought you were busy. Yttling is the Björn in the indie pop band Peter Bjorn and John and his resume' is so vast when I give you just a partial glimpse of what he's done, you'll realize you really haven't been busy. At all. Among other instruments, Yttli...

"Milestone" It all started over 50 years ago in Florida and decades later with sales of close to 25 million albums under their musical belts, 38 Special remain one of the most enduring rock and roll bands of all time. Formed in the early '70s by the core unit of Don Barnes and Donny Van Zandt, 38 Special from the very beginning evinced a steely work ethic. It also demonstrated their versatility--a...

"Obviously Five Believers" Formed in 1980 by the Kentucky-born former roadie for X, Top Jimmy, his band Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs were local L.A. heroes. Playing a wicked blend of American roots music and scrappy R&B, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs were a band that sizzled with equal parts howl and groove. Top Jimmy was a wildly charismatic frontman once described as an unholy combination of Ho...

"Songs of Douglass and Littell" It's hard to think of a more beautiful voice than that of Inara George. Filled with elegance and finesse, the Maryland-born, L.A.-raised George is one of my favorite singers on the planet. She's got this subtle power that glides through each composition with subtlety, nuance and harmonic sophistication and grace. George's body of work, from her time in the Bird and...

"Song Writers On The Run" Perhaps best known as one of the co-founding members of the late great Australian band The Go-Betweens, singer/songwriter Robert Forster has been putting out critically acclaimed solo albums since his 1990 debut Danger In The Past. His new novel Song Writers On The Run has just been released to rave reviews and he talks about the writing process in this chat. As for his m...

"I Should Be Happy" Singer/keyboardist Anne Richmond Boston showed up on the musical timeline in the late '70s when she joined the Atlanta indie rock outfit The Swimming Pool Q's. Before the goldrush of bands like R.E.M., Soul Asylum, O Positive, Big Dipper and Poi Dog Pondering signing to major labels, The Swimming Pool Q's kind of led the way, inking deals in the mid-'80s with A&M and Capitol Re...

"Louder Than You Think" Like many Gen Xers, I knew Gary Young as the drummer of Pavement, but for anyone from Stockton, he was way more than that. Let me back up. A key figure in the Stockton underground, Young played in a bunch of bands like The Fall of Christianity and he was responsible for bringing Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys to play shows in Stockton. Though almost twenty years older tha...

"My World Is The Sun" It's true, Dominique Fils-Aime--by the way, my pronounciation of her gorgeous name verifies one thing: I'm from California--Dominique Fils Aime did indeed have a comfortable office and a job she loved and all was well, until she realized something was wrong. It wasn't her office, or her job, it was that something else was calling her. In other words, she found the thing she l...

"Sonic Amadea" Over the course of five perfect albums with Catherine Wheel, including Ferment, Chrome and Adam and Eve, guitarist Brian Futter made his mark as one of the most dynamic players in modern music. Armed with blazing effects and cascading crescendos, Futter's distinguished playing gave the legendary British band their signature sound. After global tours, heavy airplay on MTV, rave revie...

"Happy Birthday, Peter Hook" There’s nothing about Peter Hook that I can tell you you don’t already know, so let’s just do a refresher run through his musical CV. In the late '70s Hook formed Joy Division with childhood pal Bernard Sumner after the two friends saw the Sex Pistols play in Manchester. The band only put out two albums and one of those albums, the legendary Closer was put out two mont...

"Straight From The Hat" The New Jersey born Ben Vaughn has put out close to twenty albums, including personal favorites of mine like Beautiful Thing, Mood Swings and Ben Vaughn Blows Your Mind. Aside from his own records, Vaughn has produced records by Ween, Los Straitjackets, Nancy Sinatra, and Charlie Feathers, had his songs covered by everyone from Marshall Crenshaw to Deer Tick and collaborate...

"Fighting Fit" For a little over a delicious decade the London band Gene put out four glorious albums. And since we're here and we have time, let me name them: Olympian, Drawn To The Deep End, Revelations and Libertine. From 1993 to 2004, the band's resume just kept building: They were on the cover of Melody Maker and the NME the latter of who also gave them the inaugural BRAT award for Best New B...

"If You Go There I Hope You Find It" Over the course of seven shimmering albums, the Paper Kites have elegantly moved from strength to strength. The ARIA-award nominated Melbourne five piece, led by singer/songwriter Sam Bentley, have quietly been lodging platinum record sales, registering millions of streams and playing sold-out shows across the globe. I saw them play a sold-out show here in San...