Today’s episode features Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and Low’s Alan Sparhawk—and it’s the first to be curated by Talkhouse’s new Executive Editor Josh Modell, who joins me to introduce it. (Welcome, Josh!)

Ben and Alan’s talk goes all the way back to the earliest days of their bands, and up to the present with the fantastic LPs they each recently dropped. We hear about the formative teenage moments when seeing bands changed their lives; staying open to new sounds as “men of a certain age playing rock & roll;” Ben blatantly ripping off Low on his earliest Death Cab material; and how Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock spent a long time looking like he’d just crawled out of a dumpster.

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—Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode was recorded at Bad Animals in Seattle, by Maija Jenson at KUMD 103.3 FM Duluth Public Radio, and by Mark Yoshizumi at Hook and Fade Studios in Brooklyn. It was co-produced by Mark Yoshizumi.

The Talkhouse Podcast’s theme song was composed and performed by The Range.