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Hello there, and welcome to my conversation with Nova Twins, recorded on 28th July 2020. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and make sure you pick up their debut album “Who Are The Girls?” – visit their website for more.

[Content warning: occasional friendly swears.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• life in lockdown – finding new ways to connect with your audience when all your gigs have been cancelled
• the importance of knowing your goals
• how the landmark of releasing their debut album set them on the path to creating more longform bodies of work
• the benefits of being an independent band, developing your unique sound with no timetable
• why they won’t tell you which guitar pedals they use
• who do you want coming to your shows? How the Black Lives Matter movement inspired Nova Twins to use their platform to speak out about injustice and showed them who their allies are
• creativity, craft and commitment – behind the scenes of Nova Twins’ powerful music videos

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Explore Nova Twins’ work:

• Taxi
• Play Fair
• Vortex

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Nova Twins Recommend:

• Fever 333
• Fuck U Pay Us
• Kid Kapichi

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Other things we talked about:

Watch Nova Twins’ “Voices For The Unheard” Instagram shows here.

Guests so far have included Connie Constance, Sophie K, Shingai, Loathe, Fuck U Pay Us, Death Tour, Melanie Faye and Divinity Roxx.

---

About Nova Twins

This podcast is supported by Arts Council England and The National Lottery and powered by my Correspondent’s Club.

+ Get FREE music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful weekly email every Thursday – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Oh hello there, and welcome to my conversation with Estella Adeyeri, recorded on 12th August 2020. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and make sure you check out Big Joanie’s new single, their cover of “Cranes In The Sky” by Solange.

[Content warning: very occasional frustrated but friendly swearing.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• the role of libraries in our discovery of new ideas and music that spoke to us while growing up
• the benefits of being part of a supportive music scene when getting started in bands, and how to nurture and make space for others
• activism and music making – how the two can work together
• how a teen love of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Paramore led to playing in collaboration with others
• the joy of getting to a place where you don’t feel you have to pretend you know everything
• some of the stupid shit that sound engineers have said to us
• why are bass amps usually so heavy? A love note to Fender

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Explore Estella’s work:

• Big Joanie – “Cranes In The Sky” (Solange cover)
• Charmpit – “Cause A Stir”
• Estella’s solo work on Soundcloud

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Estella recommends:

• No Home – “A B- In This Economy”
• Screaming Toenail – “Get Cute”
• The music of Meet Me At The Altar

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Other things we talked about:

Estella talks about volunteering with Girls Rock London and Decolonise Fest. We talk about books that were big for us growing up and discovering new ideas; Estella mentions Bell Hooks and I mention “The Female Eunuch” by Germaine Greer and “The Women’s Room” by Marilyn French.

I mention finding Belly and Radiohead albums in the local library and having my life changed by them. Estella talks about her enduring love for Yeah Yeah Yeahs and growing up with Paramore.

Estella talks about DIY Space 4 London, a brilliant South London hub for music, art and activism. Shoutouts for Electric Voice microphones, Fender Rumble bass combos and cabs and York Fibbers, plus Sadie Dupuis of Sad13 and Speedy Ortiz, who was on this very podcast just last week!

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About Estella

Estella Adeyeri is a performing musician and multi-instrumentalist. She plays bass guitar in Black feminist punk band Big Joanie, and lead guitar in anarcho-pop punk outfit Charmpit. She has performed at leading music events such as SXSW and Lollapalooza Berlin, and has featured with Big Joanie on radio stations such as BBC 6 Music and KEXP, and in publications such as Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. She has toured extensively and has shared stages with artists such as Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill and Gossip.

Estella is a member of the organising team behind Decolonise Fest, an annual London-based music festival run by punks of colour for punks of colour. She is also a board member of the Good Night Out Campaign, which seeks to create safer nightlife spaces. She has volunteered with Girls Rock London since 2017 as a band coach, instrument tutor, and year-round organiser.

Follow her on Twitter and Soundcloud.

This podcast is supported by Arts Council England and The National Lottery and powered by my Correspondent’s Club.

+ Get FREE music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful weekly email every Thursday – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Welcome to my conversation with Sadie Dupuis, recorded on 29th July 2020. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and pre-order her new album “Haunted Painting” now.

[Content warning: friendly swearing present.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• producing and playing your own music – the adventure of going into a rabbithole as a one-person band and taking credit for your work
• music or lyrics first? Is there a *right* way to write?
• how to deal with chronic pain on the road for 10 months of the year
• how nomadic childhoods have helped us both in our chosen careers
• our thoughts on the future of live performances in the UK and the US
• the importance of delegation – Sadie gives me some much-needed tips!
• weight liftin’ for gear shiftin’ – how to stay healthy on tour in body and mind

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Explore Sadie’s work:

• New album “Haunted Painting” is out on 25th September 2020.
• The Wax Nine poetry journal is available online here, with submissions and donations welcome.
• The latest Speedy Ortiz album “Twerp Verse” is available here.

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Sadie Recommends: “Mustang” by Bartees Strange, Chicago band Ganser, new mixtape “Free I.H: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For” by Illuminati Hotties and rapper Backxwash.

---

Other things we talked about:

Sadie talks about the great work Girls Rock programmes do around the world. You can find your local camp via this handy website.

I mention the effect Cat Power’s album “What Would The Community Think?” had on me as a home recordist, and Sadie talks about getting into Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Mirah and Cat Power because of their lo fi recordings of awesome songs.

I mention the Pitchfork interview with Bjork where she opened up about being denied credit for her own music for a decade. Read it here.

Sadie mentions her friend Zoë Brecher’s music project Hush Puppy and talks about some great advice she got from Stephen Malkmus.

I reference Creative Pep Talk episode #283 featuring Jamie Drake (long, but highly recommended). I talk about the information-action ratio, which I first heard about when recording my podcast episode with Emma Pollock. Just recently I’ve been reading “Amusing Ourselves To Death” by Neil Postman which goes into this idea in more detail.

Sadie talks enthusiastically about her custom album tea blend, created by Philly-based Craft Tea. “Haunted Breakfast” is available now when you pre-order her new album.

At the end of the chat we talk about how great Computer Magic is.

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About Sadie Dupuis

For nearly a decade, poet and multi-instrumentalist producer Sadie Dupuis has been celebrated for her literary lyrics, accomplished guitar playing, and embodied ethos of empowerment, whether with rock band Speedy Ortiz or the pop-oriented solo project Sad13, which debuted in 2016 with Lizzo co-feature “Basement Queens.”

Self-produced debut album “Slugger” was released that same year, and followup “Haunted Painting” will be released on 25th September 2020.

Sign up to Sadie’s mailing list here or follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

This podcast is supported by Arts Council England and The National Lottery and powered by my Correspondent’s Club.

+ Get FREE music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful weekly email every Thursday – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Hello there! Welcome to my conversation with J. Willgoose, Esq. of Public Service Broadcasting, recorded on Wednesday 15th July 2020. Keep scrolling for links to everything we discussed in this episode, visit PSB’s website to explore their back catalogue and sign up to the newsletter and read J.W. (E)’s blog here.

09/21 update: PSB’s new album “Bright Magic” is available now!

[Content warning: a very small amount of friendly swearing.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• how an early encounter with Oasis and the realisation Paul Simon wasn’t the most talented musician on his stage spurred a young Willgoose on to a career in music
• the importance of “putting a shift in” – showing up when creativity seems very far from hand
• the challenge of redefining creative success when your band has already headlined Brixton Academy
• how maintaining genuine peril at the heart of your live show makes for the possibility of a great gig
• respecting your audience – choosing venues to play based on how comfortable they are for your fans
• how to dial down the fanboy when collaborating with one of your all-time musical heroes
• the concept of “the harder you practice the luckier you get”

---

The three songs J.W. (E) recommends from PSB’s back catalogue are: “Go”, “Spitfire” and “You + Me”. We also talked about PSB’s collaboration with James Dean Bradfield, “Turn No More”.

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Willgoose Recommends:

Music: Juana Molina’s album “Halo” (particularly the song “Cosoco”), Tangerine Dream and the music of Kelly Lee Owens.

Books: “Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity” by Carlo Rovelli and “Economics: The User’s Guide” by Ha-Joon Chang.

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Other things we talked about:

J.W, (E) quotes George Orwell, “our job is to make life worth living” – from his “Reflections on Gandhi”, published in January 1949, which you can read in full here courtesy of The Orwell Foundation.

I mention “flow state”, the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

We discuss knotty thrillers “The Wire”, “Dark”, “Lost” and “Twin Peaks”. Damn good coffee.

I mention the PSB documentary “The Making Of “Every Valley” – watch here, plus I quiz J.W, (E) on his excellent Tedx talk “Live music should go wrong” – watch that here – and whether he named his dog after Fyodor Dostoevsky.

J.W, (E) reminds me I’ve only managed to read the first chapter of David Byrne’s “How Music Works” book. Byrne’s website is brilliant – look. He also bigs up The National, we both say how much we respect Elbow, and I give a shoutout to Frank Turner, who starred in episode 4 of this podcast.

I quote from “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl, which I highly recommend to anyone, and finally, Daniel Kahneman’s Desert Island Discs comes up, because the Nobel Prize winning psychologist commented that people who choose to work in the creative arts are most likely to be unhappy. Oops!

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About Public Service Broadcasting

Public Service Broadcasting is the corduroy-clad brainchild of London-based J. Willgoose, Esq. who, along with drumming companion Wrigglesworth and multi instrumentalist JFAbraham, is on a quest to inform, educate and entertain audiences around the globe.

PSB’s uniquely spell-binding live AV transmissions see them weave samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material around live drums, guitar, banjo and electronics as they teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future – beaming our past back at us through vintage tv sets and state of the art modern video projection devices.

This podcast is supported by Arts Council England and The National Lottery and powered by my Correspondent’s Club.

+ Get FREE music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful weekly email every Thursday – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

Hello! Welcome to my conversation with Bright Light Bright Light, recorded on Monday 13th July 2020. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and visit his website to get your copy of “Fun City”, released on 18th September 2020.

[Content warning: occasional swearing.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Rod’s new album “Fun City”: a love letter to the LGBTQ+ community
• how setting a mission for your music helps keep you focused on what matters
• wearing your weird on your sleeve
• surviving as an independent artist in a genre full of gatekeepers
• record shopping with Elton John
• dealing with rejection – how to keep getting back up again
• tour practicalities – sprinting to the merch table in arenas
• how to dance in your own music video

The three songs Rod recommends you listen to from his back catalogue are: “I Used To Be Cool”, “In Your Care” and “Symmetry Of Two Hearts”.

The artists he recommends are: Caveboy, Shea Diamond’s “I Am America” and Beth Hirsch.

• Follow the “Attention Engineer” playlist here.

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About Bright Light Bright Light

Bright Light Bright Light is the moniker of Welsh-born, NYC living Rod Thomas, a singer, songwriter, producer, DJ and fully independent artist.

A pop culture geek, his songs are inspired by 80’s/90’s cinema (hence the name), video games, TV moments and dance sequences. He’s worked with Sir Elton John, Scissor Sisters, Alan Cumming and Erasure, and toured with Cher.

His forthcoming album “Fun City” is a love letter to the LGBTQ+ community and features a long list of incredible LGBTQ+ collaborators including Andy Bell, Jake Shears, Justin Vivian Bond and Madonna’s iconic backing singers Niki Haris and Donna De Lory.

Pre-order Bright Light Bright Light’s new album here.

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Hey there! Welcome to my conversation with Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse of Skating Polly, recorded on Sunday 20th October 2019. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and visit their website to explore their musical world and sign up to their mailing list.

[Content warning: occasional swearing.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• the all-encompassing nature of making music – planning ahead and thinking in albums
• the importance of dedication as a songwriter
• musical collaborations – what’s it like writing songs with people you admire?
• how making 30 music videos helped them find their audience
• blurring lines – how the immediacy of social media can lead to potentially unsafe situations
• tips for staying healthy and sane(ish) on tour with your family
• how dogs are better than boyfriends

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About Skating Polly

Skating Polly is an American rock band formed in Oklahoma City, playing their own inimitable brand of “ugly pop”. Founded by multi-instrumentalist step-siblings Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse in 2009, the band later gained a third member, Kurtis, their brother, who plays drums. A spectacular live force, Skating Polly have released five endlessly creative albums to date, collaborated with rock royalty and toured the world, leaving a trail of sweaty, openmouthed onlookers in their wake.

I had the good fortune to tour with Skating Polly around Europe and the UK in late 2019, and this conversation took place at the Hare And Hounds in Birmingham right before soundcheck.

Visit Skating Polly’s website for music, lyrics and videos and to sign up to their mailing list, and follow them on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

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Explore their work:

Kelli invites you to check out the songs “Little Girl Blue and The Battle Envy”, “They’re Cheap (I’m Free)” and “Long Ride”, and Peyton adds “Alabama Movies”, “A Little Late” and “Blue Obvious” to the list.

• Follow the “Attention Engineer” playlist here.

During lockdown, Kelli (and her dog Patsy) starred in this brilliant Pancake Mountain sketch and popped up in this ace new X video for “Alphabetland”.

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Kelli and Peyton recommend:

Clairo – especially a song called “Bags”, Lala Lala, Phoebe Bridgers, White Reaper and Starcrawler.

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Other things we talked about:

Kelli and Peyton talk about collaborating with Samantha Crain, Veruca Salt (watch “Hail Mary” here) and Exene Cervenka from X (watch “Queen For A Day” here) and share their dream collab wishlist: Kat Bjelland, Starcrawler, St Vincent, Lala Lala and Perfume Genius.

They talk about great experiences touring with Babes In Toyland, Kate Nash, X and Deerhof, and Kelli shares her love for Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple.

I mention “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport yet again (because it’s THAT great).

In the “Petfriend” section of the podcast, Kelli and Peyton invite you to follow @patsypollythepervert and @georgiebutt on Instagram, so their dogs can one day become Instafamous.

This podcast is 100% powered by my Correspondent’s Club. Thanks to every single member for your support!

New to my musical world?

+ Get two free songs music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful email every week – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer” are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Hello you! Welcome to my conversation with Emma Pollock, recorded on Tuesday 26th November 2019. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and visit Emma’s website to explore her back catalogue and sign up to her mailing list.

[Content warning: friendly swearing from the start and one allusion to suicide, in the context of Emma’s collaboration with Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• how singing in the bath and knocking at the wrong door led to a career in music
• from The Delgados to Emma Pollock solo – how breaking the spell of a band means starting all over again
• the magic of songwriting – balancing music theory knowledge with the quest for the unknown
• do Biffy Clyro travel on golden Segways?
• the brilliance of XTC
• “GPS Cat”
• the “information-action ratio” – how can we can protect ourselves from information overload?
• reading books in the daytime – an indulgence?

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About Emma

Emma Pollock is a Scottish singer-songwriter, musician, and a founding member of the bands The Delgados, The Burns Unit and The Fruit Tree Foundation. As a solo artist, she has released three albums to date, as well as a plethora of collaborative work. She co-runs independent record label Chemikal Underground and the chem19 recording studio.

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Explore Emma’s work:

Emma invites you to listen to “The Light Before We Land”, “The City Consumes Us” and “American Trilogy” by The Delgados, and solo songs “Old Ghosts” and “Dark Skies” from 2016’s “In Search Of Harperfield”.

Follow the “Attention Engineer” playlist here.

In February 2020, Emma’s co-write with The Warm Digits was released as the first single from their album “Flight of Ideas”. “The View From Nowhere” refers to the mid-century approach to psychotherapy which required the therapist to remove the ‘self’ from their view of the patient.

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Other things we talked about:

In the intro I mention touring the UK with comedian Robin Ince. Thank you, Robin, for inviting me and for introducing me to Emma and Paul!

Emma mentions the film “Garden State”, which is gorgeous and introduced me to the music of The Shins, and we both big up the skills of her husband (music producer and Delgados drummer) Paul Savage. Emma also talks about TV series The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.

She talks about the wonderfully creative music of XTC, and we get onto a discussion about the internet via Cal Newport’s books (I didn’t bring them up first this time!!). I also mention Creative Pep Talk, which is one of my favourite podcasts.

Emma mentions the “information-action ratio” covered in Arctic Monkeys’ song “Four Out Of Five”. While discussing not being able to read all the books on our shelves, I allude to the Japanese word Tsundoku, which actually means buying books and letting them pile ups without reading them.

On the subject of reading, Emma talks about tackling “Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science” by Werner Heisenberg.

Post-Delgados, Emma has made great music in collaboration with other people, including The Burns Unit (with King Creosote, Karine Polwart and more) and The Fruit Tree Foundation (with Idlewild’s Rod Jones and more).

The song she co-wrote with Scott Hutchison (RIP) is called “Singing For Strangers”, and it’s beautiful. Listen here.

This podcast is 100% powered by my Correspondent’s Club. Thanks to every single member for your support!

New to my musical world?

+ Get two free songs music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful email every week – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer” are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Greetings, dear listener, and welcome to my conversation with writer Nikesh Shukla, recorded on Friday 3rd April 2020. Keep scrolling down for links to everything we discussed in this episode and order his new book “Brown Baby” now, wherever you get books.

[Content warning: friendly swearing throughout.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• striving for equity – how Nikesh uses writing to make space for other people
• from “shoddy raps” to bestselling books – this writer’s “hero’s journey”
• the challenges of parenting during the UK lockdown
• the potential dangers of narrating your life – how it’s ok to be alone with your thoughts
• the “relatability” myth – how important it is to read about yourself as the default before reading to learn about the experience of others
• how “The Good Immigrant” gave young people of colour their “Buddha Of Suburbia” experience

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Explore Nikesh’s work:

1. The Good Immigrant + The Good Immigrant USA

2. The One Who Wrote Destiny

3. The Boxer

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Nikesh’s reading recommendations:

Jia Tolentino‘s essays, “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion”.

“Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi.

“Nudibranch” by Irenosen Okojie.

“Rainbow Milk” by Paul Mendez.

Plus works by Zadie Smith, Niven Govinden, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead and Nikita Lalwani.

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Other things we talked about:

In the intro I talk about the Chuck Close quote “Inspiration is for amateurs”, which triggered last week’s blog post about habit tracking.

I mention having recently read “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver, which tells the story of one family (headed up by a particularly arrogant missionary) over three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Nikesh mentions bands Asian Dub Foundation and Flight Of The Conchords and writers Zadie Smith, Jia Tolentino, Leslie Jamison, Hilton Als, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Claudia Rankine and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. He also talks about screenwriter / director Craig Mazin, who wrote the Chernobyl miniseries, and the classic film “When Harry Met Sally”.

In a discussion about how novels are created I bring up “The Hero’s Journey”, as popularised by Joseph Campbell – a fascinating look at story structure and why we react to it in the ways we do.

Nikesh talks about the powerful effect “The Buddha Of Suburbia” by Hanif Kureishi had on him as a teenager, and the moment he realised “The Good Immigrant” was giving his young readers the same experience.

Shoutout to the very brilliant Josie Long, whose “A Hundred Days To Make Me A Better Person” project kickstarted Nikesh’s first novel.

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About Nikesh Shukla

Nikesh Shukla is an award-winning, bestselling writer of books and television.

His debut novel, Coconut Unlimited, was published by Quartet Books and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011. Metro described it as ‘a riot of cringeworthy moments made real by Shukla’s beautifully observed characters and talent for teen banter’. In 2011 he co-wrote an essay about the London riots for Random House with Kieran Yates, Generation Vexed: What the Riots Don’t Tell Us About Our Nation’s Youth. In 2013 he released a novella about food with Galley Beggars Press, The Time Machine, donating his royalties to Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. The book won Best Novella at the Sabotage Awards.

His second novel, Meatspace, was published by The Friday Project. ‘Like Douglas Coupland’s Generation X,’ according to the Guardian, ‘this novel captures a cultural moment.’ It’s been lauded by the New Statesman, BBC Radio 4, the Independent on Sunday, and the Daily Mail. 

Nikesh is the editor of the essay collection, The Good Immigrant, where 21 British writers of colour discuss race and immigration in the UK. The Good Immigrant won the reader’s choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards and is shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. A television show inspired by The Good Immigrant is currently in development. The Good Immigrant USA, co-edited with Chimene Suleyman, was released to acclaim from New York Times, Kirkus, TIME Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and more.

Nikesh’s third novel, The One Who Wrote Destiny, was published by Atlantic Books in April 2018. ‘A funny and moving novel about what we inherit and what we create for ourselves’ according to the Sunday Times.

This podcast is 100% powered by my Correspondent’s Club. Thanks to every single member for your support!

New to my musical world?

+ Get two free songs music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful email every week – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer” are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo

---

Ahoy podcast adventurer, and welcome to my conversation with Katie Harkin, recorded on Friday 3rd April 2020. Read on for links to everything we discussed in this episode and make sure you check out her new self-titled album “Harkin”. Thank you for listening!

[Content warning: one mild swear.]

In this conversation, we discuss:

• from Sky Larkin to Harkin – how making your own music, forging connections and being proactive brings unexpected rewards
• how a life filled with music makes the world feel porous
• making noises for a living – musical problem solving for artists including Sleater-Kinney, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile
• charting an artistic career through the rise and fall of different tech companies
• how fostering a DIY ethic has been useful for long term survival
• the new landscape of live music – how mainstream artists could help protect an income source for the wider community by leading a culture of paid-for streamed content

The three links Katie invites you to check out are:

1. “Nothing The Night Can’t Change” – Harkin

2. Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile – Sea Lice by the Seaside (live session)

3. “My Backwards Walk” – Harkin & Sarah Silverman cover Frightened Rabbit. You can support mental health charity Tiny Changes here.

Follow the “Attention Engineer” playlist here.

Katie recommends:

“This Is How You Smile” by Helada Negro, “Mutazione (Original Game Soundtrack) by Alessandro Coronas and “Heaven To A Tortured Mind” by Yves Tumor.

• 

Other things we mentioned:

In the intro I mentioned the Kanban method of organisation, using Trello and binging on Thomas Frank‘s productivity videos on YouTube.

Katie talks about the plague village of Eyam – such an interesting story.

She mentions being on tour with Torres as news of Coronavirus was unfolding. Listen to Torres here.

I can’t find the quote online about not overusing the word awesome (because what will we say when the aliens come?) – so if YOU can shed any light on that one, I’d be grateful! Answers in the comments please.

There’s a heartfelt shoutout to Brudenell Social Club in Leeds (one of my favourite venues too), PLUS the wonderful bunch of humans Hope And Social. They’ve released many brilliant albums, and here’s the Madonna cover I did with them a few years ago.

Katie talks about playing with Bright Light Bright Light and I mention seeing him open for Nerina Pallot a while back in London. It was a wonderful show.

Katie talks about supporting Broken Social Scene at The Leadmill in Sheffield and finding different ways to be inspired by other musicians.

I talk about talking to author Nikesh Shukla for next week’s episode, and I also mention a book called “Becoming A Writer” by Dorothea Brande.

Katie mentions launching a Patreon for Hand Mirror. Check that out here.

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About Harkin

Harkin has been touring since her teens and is one of the most prolific collaborators of her generation. Now, a lifelong collaborator steps into the singular.

In addition to her own band she formed as a teen (Sky Larkin), she has been a touring member of Sleater-Kinney, Wild Beasts, Flock of Dimes, and Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, plus she performed backing vocals for Dua Lipa on Saturday Night Live.

Harkin also dueted with comedian Sarah Silverman on ‘Tiny Changes: A Celebration of Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight”.

Her studio work includes contributions to Waxahatchee’s ‘Out In The Storm’, and outside of the music world, Harkin has composed for Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten and British comedian Josie Long. She even has a Saturday Night Live sketch named after her (Fred Armisen’s 2016 ‘Harkin Brothers Band’).

‘Harkin’ is released on Hand Mirror, with publishing support from Rough Trade Publishing. Harkin and her partner, the poet and live arts organiser Kate Leah Hewett, founded Hand Mirror in 2019.

This podcast is 100% powered by my Correspondent’s Club. Thanks to every single member for your support!

New to my musical world?

+ Get two free songs music immediately by joining my mailing list.

+ I send a thoughtful email every week – join The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier to receive it.

+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer” are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.

+ You can also follow me around the web, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Have a lovely day xo