LSQ

Best known for his work as a producer -- and one of the finest of his generation, at that -- James Ellis Ford demonstrated his gift for recording his own songs this year, with a beautiful and vulnerable album called Lost In Another World that he released over the summer. His second album under his own name, the latest LP was made under the most difficult and life-changing of circumstances, while Ford was undergoing treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. The album was literally written in his hospital room, between rounds of chemotherapy. In episode 147 of the LSQ podcast, we talk about that experience, but also delve into his entire creative history: how he started playing music as a kid at the local pub in his small town of Leek, setting up his first makeshift recording space in his basement and beginning to amass some of the gear he still uses in the studio, his time spent as a touring drummer for acid house legends 808 State when he was still in his teens, how his band Simian evolved into the electronic project Simian Mobile Disco, and how he began to work as a producer for other artists in his scene in the mid- '00s, building a catalog of credits that includes important albums by artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Fontaines DC, Depeche Mode, Geese, Beth Gibbons and more. 

“I guess I swapped my parents and my family for Bob Dylan,” says Robyn Hitchcock, remembering an evolutionary moment in his creative journey. “I just heard “Like a Rolling Stone” every day for two months  as I was going into my teens, it was my kind of bar mitzvah really. My molecular structure was changed over the course of 18 months and by the end of 1967 when I had gone through the change, and I was like a sort of skinny, dark haired version of what I am now I was writing the lyrics and I’d got a guitar. My parents, for their sins, gave me a cheap acoustic guitar. I just took it everywhere with me like a few years earlier I  would have taken my little panda teddy bear. I would always go everywhere with a plastic dinosaur in my pocket — I was a very OCD kid who wanted their comfort. And I just replaced that with the guitar and my Bob Dylan records and my portable record player. By the time I was 15 I haven’t consciously decided it, but there was nothing else I wanted to do.” In episode 146, hear the legendary singer-songwriter share more about his love for Dylan, his adolescent musical awakening, connecting with an attraction to art that is absurd or surreal, how he began writing songs and the discoveries that led to his work with The Soft Boys, insights into how his approach to music has changed and how he lets the songs find him, like birds finding seed. We also talk about his new album, The Confuser, his latest memoir, Stranded in The Future, and more! Robyn is on tour in Europe this month. Get tickets here. 

“I felt this really compelling amount of nostalgia and I was kind of living in the past, so I thought that maybe songwriting was a way to capture that and a way to protect it, because I felt like it was slipping away -- just... childhood," says Bedouine's Azniv Korkejian, talking about the inspiration for her beautiful new album, Neon Summer Skin. "I felt really sad about it and I started to write with that in mind and it was kind of more than anything kind of therapeutic for me, I understood that I needed to address it because I understood that it was all consuming.”It was such a pleasure to finally get to do this interview with Azniv. We’ve been friends for years, but there was still so much I didn’t know about her earlier life and her creative journey. In episode 145, we delve into that evolutionary stuff: singing along with Mariah Carey’s Music Box as a kid, falling in love with artists like The Strokes and Norah Jones as she got a bit older, working in sound editing for film and TV after college, and eventually starting to perform her own music a little more than a decade ago. And we also talk about the making of Neon Summer Skin and how it helped her process some of the bittersweet nostalgia she was feeling about childhood and the safety of family. Bedouine has a North American tour starting in mid-October. Get tickets here. 

“I started writing poems and singing them over instrumental songs I’d made, and I realized that the melody was coming to me as I read them, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s music in the words!,” says Alex Cameron, recalling how he first discovered his preferred method of songwriting. “The lyric had the melody in it. I didn’t have to come up with the melody and think about which words would fit, I just had to press record and sing the words while listening to the music and the melody’s in there. That’s why I love writing words first.” In episode 144 of the LSQ podcast, the Australian singer-songwriter discusses his impressive fifth studio album, Late To Set, an elevated showcase for his signature style of brooding, witty, character-driven songcraft. Cameron shares insights into his creative philosophies and the evolution of his approach to music. He also reflects on the artists he loved as a kid: Buddy Holly, Nina Simone, Dire Straits, Outkast, Aphex Twin, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, the Strokes and more. Alex is on tour in North America in September, and opening for The Strokes in Europe in October. Get tickets here.

Even during the past decade while he was busy with Stranger Things, Finn Wolfhard still has always found time to make music - whether with his teenage bands Calpurnia and The Aubreys, or more recently under his own name, starting with his 2025 album, Happy Birthday, an impressive debut recorded using four- and eight-track cassette. For his wonderful new album, Fire From The Hip, he’s elevated his approach in every possible way, expanding the sonic palette, fidelity and songcraft for a confident collection of indie rock tunes that evoke Wilco and Teenage Fanclub and Faces and of Montreal, among other touchstones. In episode 143 of the LSQ podcast, Finn talks about the making of the album, how he approached it differently from Happy Birthday, and the satisfaction he got from working with a community of artist friends. He also talks about how he first became obsessed with music as a kid thanks to the Beatles and the Ramones. And he shares some details about film he’s working on about The Replacements (based on Bob Mehr’s definitive book about the band), why he relates to bassist Tommy Stinson and a dream he had the other night about frontman Paul Westerberg. Finn is on tour now and has additional dates in the fall. Get tickets here.