I wanted to share this conversation that I had with my friend Jason Mantzoukas earlier this year. It was on stage, here in Los Angeles, at my album release show on May 14, 2026. Before playing my songs, I had this in-depth conversation with Jason about music and creativity, and my own creative process. And if you don’t already know Jason Mantzoukas, he is a comedian and actor and improviser and writer and podcast host—you might have seen him in John Wick, or The Good Place or Parks and Rec, or The League, or you might know his voice from Big Mouth—or you might know his podcast How Did This Get Made? I love talking to Jason about music and film and TV, and our conversation kind of touched on all of those things. But principally, it’s about this album that I made called In the Last Hour of Light, which is my fifth full-length, but my first one in 15 years, since before I started making Song Exploder.

You can get the vinyl or CD of In the Last Hour of Light here or stream it here.

You can buy or stream “Never Going Anywhere” here.

You can also access the Dropbox archive of demos, photos, and more from the album here.

Photos by Alex Farias.

discussed in this episode:
Adrianne Lenker and producer Philip Weinrobe
Ken Pomeroy
Sam Beam AKA Iron & Wine
Memory Palace – podcast
Fenne Lily
Partners – podcast
The West Wing Weekly with Joshua Malina
Home Cooking with Samin Nosrat
Merritt Wever
Allison Janney talking about memorizing lines on The West Wing Weekly
Sea Wolf and Jon Hopkins
Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick, and Matthew Modine
Mustafa the Poet
Arthur Russell and The Innocence Mission

Allison Russell is a singer and songwriter originally from Montreal and now based in Nashville. She’s a Grammy-winner and an eight-time Grammy nominee. And she’s also won Canada’s Juno Award, an Americana award, and more. She starred in Hadestown on Broadway. She spent years in bands and collaborating with others before she released her first solo album in 2021. Her most recent album came out in 2026, and is called In The Hour of Chaos. But for this episode, Allison and I talked about the title track from her second album, The Returner, which came out in 2023. She recorded it with an all-female ensemble that included Wendy & Lisa of The Revolution. It was co-written with JT Nero, her husband, and Drew Lindsay, her brother-in-law, and the two of them also co-produced the song with Allison.

You can buy or stream “The Returner” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

in this episode:
Lisa Coleman – piano
Wendy Melvoin – bass
Megan Coleman – drums
Megan McCormick – electric guitar
Joy Clark – acoustic guitar
Elizabeth Pupo-Walker – percussion
Larissa Maestro – string arrangements, cello, vocal harmony
Chauntee Ross – violin, vocal harmony
Kerenza Peacock – violin
Monique Ross – cello, vocal harmony
Brandi Carlile
Joni Mitchell
Birds of Chicago
Chaplin Recording Studios

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Elvis Costello is a singer and songwriter whose career spans five decades and over 30 albums. He’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter Hall of Fame. He’s won Grammy Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, a BAFTA, and he’s on Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest songwriters of all time. He put out his first album, My Aim Is True, in 1977. This month, he released a 49th anniversary edition of the album. So for this episode, I spoke to Elvis Costello about the making of “Alison,” from that debut album. Coming up, you’ll hear the isolated tracks from the original recording, as well as some additional parts that didn’t make the cut. And, in discussing the origin story of his song, we also ended up talking about the origin story of Elvis Costello himself.

You can buy or stream “Alison” here and you can buy the 49th Anniversary Edition box set of My Aim Is True here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

in this episode:
Nick Lowe – producer
John McFee – guitar
Johnny Ciambotti- bass
Sean Hopper – keyboards
MMicky Shine – drums
Stiff Records
Clover
“Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver)”
Pathway Studios
“Ghetto Child” – written by Thom Bell for The Spinners
“Alison” cover by Linda Rondstadt

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