The Awkwardness of Being Earnest

I love the British comedian Tim Key, primarily from his pandemic-era web series No More Jockeys, along with fellow British comedians Alex Horne and Mark Watson. It’s a game show, I guess, but an extremely lo-fi one, with the three of them spending about as much time playing the game as they spend just riffing and goofing. In every turn of the game, someone names a celebrity. After announcing their celebrity, they identify something about their name, and bar the other players from choosing celebrities whose name follow that example.

For example, just one that I’m making up off the top of my head: I might say George Washington, and then “No more people who have the same first name as a British monarch.” And now, the pool of celebrities you can name has gotten a little smaller. The game keeps going until someone screws up and breaks one of the rules, which keep accumulating. Most of the time, I don’t even recognize the names of the celebrities they mention, because they’re too deeply UK-centric, but it doesn’t matter. Their sense of humor, affability, and love of debating the ever-changing parameters of the game make me really feel like I’ve found my people. (Just reading this interview they did made me laugh out loud and love them more.) I discovered No More Jockeys years after lockdown ended, but I am very happy to stay in my house and hang out with these guys as they stay in their houses and hang out with each other.

All of that, however, is just the wind-up to my actual pitch: Tim Key co-wrote and co-stars in a new movie called The Ballad of Wallis Island, and it’s so charming, funny, and heartfelt that I’m on a mission to get everyone to watch it. It also stars Carey Mulligan and the other co-writer of the film, Tom Basden, as members of a folk duo, and Tom Basden wrote the original songs for the film, too. It’s wonderful to see those songs actually being played and sung on camera, simply and with humanity. It’s so much more satisfying and honest than the glossy simulacrum that you often get in films and TV, where a character’s hands on the instrument on screen are clearly doing something other than what you’re hearing, and their voice has been magically piped in from some pristine recording. Tom Basden’s character is a rock star, basically, who is very self-conscious about his cool image, and The Ballad of Wallis Island is all about disassembling the facade of being cool. I absolutely loved it, and if it’s not in a theater near you, you can rent it on demand, and watch it cozily at home.

At times, Tim Key’s character is painful to watch because he is unabashed in his sincerity, and you really want him to, well, be a little more abashed. He’s also pathologically unable to stop doing wordplay. (In my note on Letterboxd about this film, I said that I fear I possess the worst qualities of both Tim Key’s character and Tom Basden’s character.)

Along the lines of generally being extra with one’s feelings, over on Song Exploder, I just published an interview I recorded with Jeff Tweedy, frontman of Wilco, about his book How to Write One Song. We recorded it last summer, in front of a live audience at the Solid Sound Festival, at a time when I was just starting to record some new songs for an upcoming album. Jeff’s book had been a guide for me during the songwriting process, though for me, it was less about the practical songwriting methods he describes and more about a philosophy of life he espouses: not being precious, letting go of expectations, not being afraid of failure. All things that I’ve struggled with (see also: my last newsletter), and I think many people—not just songwriters—could benefit from what he shares in the book.

Maybe because I was in the middle of the recording process, taking all of these songs that I’d poured a lot of feelings into and trying to bring them to life, I basically turned that interview into a therapy session, with Jeff Tweedy as the therapist. Listening back to it this year, I am abashed at how much I revealed in front of him and the thousands of people who were in attendance, but it was a special conversation for me, and I hope that anyone who struggles with the creative process might get something from the episode. You can listen to it here.

And lastly, also in the talking-to-people-on-stage department, I have more live events confirmed with Samin Nosrat for this fall. I’ll be joining her to discuss her upcoming cookbook Good Things in six cities:

SEP 13, 2025
San Francisco, CA - Sydney Goldstein Theater - Tickets

SEP 28, 2025
Boston, MA - Emerson Colonial Theatre - Tickets

OCT 7, 2025
Austin, TX - The Paramount Theatre - Tickets

OCT 8, 2025
Houston, TX - Cullen Theatre at the Wortham Center - Tickets

OCT 9, 2025
Richardson, TX - The Eisemann Center - Tickets

OCT 18, 2025
Los Angeles, CA - The United Theater on Broadway - Tickets

Thanks so much!
Hrishikesh

Two of the stars of The Ballad of Wallis Island: Tim Key, and this sweater.