Transmissions

• Transmissions :: William Tyler (2025)

  This week, a return appearance from William Tyler. As a guitarist and sideman, William has worked with the Silver Jews, Lambchop, and other forward leaning acts, balancing a deep understanding of tradition with experimental energy. His own records have found him drifting from Takoma School style finger picking to a zone that hovers in-between krautrock and country; in recent years, he’s expanded even further, with incredible beat driven collaborations with Four Tet and the fried psychedelia of his full band Secret Stratosphere project.  His latest work is called Time Indefinite, out this week via Psychic Hotline. It’s a strange and meditative record, and it’s a new high water mark for Tyler. On this episode of the show, we toss out the script in favor of following Tyler’s thoughts; like the indefinite time his new album references, linearity isn’t always the focus in this talk. And while we touch on more than a few heavy topics, including addiction, climate change, and the sad state of satirical art, this one is an entry in our "hangout episodes" series, the DAW rolling along just for good measure.  You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.

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• Transmissions :: Jeff Bridges

  That's right, we've got The Dude hisself: Jeff Bridges. This week on Transmissions, he joins us to discuss his new archival record, Slow Magic, 1977-1978. Listening to the record sounds like eavesdropping on the coolest Hollywood party you’ve never been invited to: Bridges and co. sound like they are blowing off steam more than making a proper record, their wild music sound, as Bridges’ frequent musical collaborator Keefus Ciancia put it, “like The Band playing at CBGB With The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” There are members of Oingo Boingo on hand, and Burgess Meredith delivering some bewildering and beautiful spoken word. Sourced from an old cassette tape, it was released on Record Store Day by our friends at Light in the Attic, featuring a great set of liner notes by the fantastic writer Sam Sweet, and it’s a blast.  Film, music, art, Buddhism—in this conversation, we cover it all and get into some fascinating countercultural tangents, touching on Buckminster Fuller, John Lilly, Ram Dass, Captain Beefheart, and more. It’s a fascinating talk and Slow Magic is a tremendous listen, so press play and abide. You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.

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• Transmissions :: Joe Pera (2025)

  This week on Transmissions, a return guest, the great comedian, writer, actor, and podcaster Joe Pera. Joe first appeared here on Transmissions in 2020 alongside his friend and collaborator James Wallace aka Skyway Man, and we've wanted to have him back ever since. This talk is a blast, covering everything from the beauty of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport to representations of Catholicism in science fiction to Joe’s experience seeing the late Mitch Hedberg live. Pera’s TV show, Joe Pera Talks With You, ran for three seasons on Adult Swim between 2018-2021. Quiet and restrained but deeply funny, the show’s gentle slice of life stories and meditative pace made it an utterly unique project. Joe’s latest work includes the 2023 stand up special Slow and Steady and Drifting Off With Joe Pera, a podcast designed specifically to help lull listeners to sleep. In addition to standard episodes covering topics like pre-bedtime drinks, wind, New York City ghosts, and soup, there are extended 8-hour versions of episodes as well, allowing for maximum slumbertime engagement. Close your eyes and settle in: here’s an episode of Transmissions you might be able to doze off to.  You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.

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• Transmissions :: Mekons

  Welcome back to Transmissions and we’re going to start this week’s show with a reading from Jennifer Kelly’s review of the new Mekons album, Horror.  “Things are very bad, but then again, they always have been. That’s Horror’s argument in a nutshell, the 26th album from the legendary Mekons, a Leeds-born gaggle of instigators of punk rock anarchists that has been doing business for half a century now. It’s a bracing thesis, enough to make you pull the covers off your head and stop moaning for a minute, because however insane and stupid and evil life becomes, it’s oddly comforting to think that it’s been this way for centuries...Though exacting and sometimes specific, [Horror] runs absolutely free of footnotes. Instead, its tales of ambition, colonialism, murder and pillage come wrapped in a bumptious swagger of rock ‘n roll noise—dipping into dub, country, punk, new wave and desolate torch singing to make its point." This week on the show, Jon Langford and Sally Timms of Mekons. They join us for one of the most directly political talks we’ve taped here for this show, as well as how current events shaped Horror, the gee-whiz space race imagination of America in the mid century, Judge Dredd, and much more. You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.

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• Transmissions :: The Weather Station (2025)

  Call it “brain fog,” call it “attention economy burnout,” call it the dregs of late capitalism: however you label it, Tamara Lindeman has been feeling it. With “Neon Signs,” our favorite song from her 2025 album as The Weather Station, Humanhood—out now on Fat Possum Records—she gives names and shapes to the sense of dread so many of us feel permeating our daily existence.  “I’ve gotten used to feeling like I’m crazy—or just lazy,” she sings in her signature flinty voice at the start of the song, articulating the ennui of being stuck in a cosmic rut. Unending conflict, climate anxiety, and the always-on buzz of the internet—all of it has rendered so many of us inert. But the pulsing piano, swirling flutes and strings, and insistent beat do powerful work here, adding forward motion to Lindeman’s existential angst. A protest song of a stripe, “Neon Signs” feels like a spiritual update of The Who’s “We Don’t Get Fooled Again”—a cautionary tale wrapped up in defiance. Untangling the politics of want and need, of trust and fear, of lust and genuine connection, Lindeman wanders a glittering landscape in which every flashing light demands notice and every notification could single doom. Is cutting through all that noise possible? “Neon Signs” doesn’t make it clear, but Lindeman tips her hand in favor of the possibility of human flourishing in spite of it all—if only we can get honest with ourselves: “I swear to god I saw real love once/But nothing needs you so badly as a lie, so lonely, drifting, unmoored from real life/if nobody believes it all it can do is die.” This week on Transmissions, she joins host Jason Woodbury to discuss Humanhood—the album, sure, but also the concept of what makes us human. We're so pleased to share this talk with you.

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