Best Album For

Dave and Caleb have a close encounter of the third kind as they choose the best album for seeing aliens. Is music a universal enough language to avoid world domination? Do aliens even exist? Is it better to give them the best music the world has to offer, or the music that most stirs your soul?

Caleb presents our unidentified anomalous phenomena friends with Marvin Gaye's classic What's Going On?, and confesses something that leaves Dave stunned. And Dave finally presents DJ Koze and attempts to find words to explain why he is so spellbound. Plus, what song nearly ruined the total solar eclipse?

Discussed today:

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?

DJ Koze - Amygdala

Bad Bad Hats - Bad Bad Hats

Nia Arhives - Silence is Loud

Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

What's the right soundtrack for barreling down a highway in pursuit -- or being pursued -- in your very own General Lee? Dave & Caleb lay out the criteria, buckle in, and gun it to 95 with The Prodigy's Fat of the Land and The Reverend Horton Heat's It's Martini Time! Two albums from a golden era of the 90s when, for one shining moment, electronica and swing music improbably had its grips around our collective imagination. Plus, the single scariest moment of young Dave's life. Also, what we're listening to this week, including a band we love with the most unfortunate name.

Discussed today:

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time

The 90s swing era (including Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy)

DMX

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Waxahatchee - Tiger's Blood

Alice Coltrane - The Carnegie Hall Concert

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Check out our new playlist on Apple Music, Best Music For 2024. (Spotify coming soon.)

Special guest co-host Vince Brackett joins the podcast this week to discuss what it means to “sell out” for a variety of musicians, and the template for popular and highly successful musicians to “reverse sell out” with an album cycle (or more) marked by attempts to be taken more seriously as an artist. Along the way, they unpack the careers of the strangest bands to have ever momentarily hit it big (Primus, Butthole Surfers), artists who made giant left turns to restart their career (Rebecca Black!), aging rock stars who pump out albums that seem wholly disconnected from their vital days (The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder), bands that “real” fans never forgive (Green Day) and bands that everyone embraced despite doing all the things that sell-out bands do (Blink 182). Plus, Vince looks at a band who could have sold out but chose to forget their own path, The Roots, and their 1996 opus, Illadelph Halflife. And Dave unpacks Rihanna’s seminal Anti, and how she seemingly threw hit making to the wind and bet on her own taste. 

Discussed today:

The Roots

Rihanna

Butthole Surfers

Primus

Rebecca Black

Coldplay

Green Day

Lorde

The Black Keys

Blink 182

Stevie Wonder

The Rolling Stones

David Bowie

David Byrne

The Wailin’ Jennys

The Smile

We go deep on a roadmap for getting your kids to rap music, from Sugarhill Gang to whatever is happening in the genre right now. How do you approach conversations about lyrical content, specific life experiences that aren’t our own, and answer questions you never thought you’d have to answer (yikes.) Along the way we talk about A Tribe Called Quest’s timeless masterpiece, The Low End Theory, and Jurassic 5’s rap primer for white people, Quality Control. Plus, we build our rap album and artist hall of fame. Plus, what are we listening to this week?

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Jurassic 5 - Quality Control

Outkast - ATLiens, Aquemini, Stankonia

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly, Good Kid MAAD City

Jay-Z - The Blueprint, Reasonable Doubt, In My Lifetime Vol 2 (Hard Knock Life), The Black Album

Tupac - All Eyez on Me

Notorious BIG - Ready to Die

Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Madvillain - Madvillainy 

Nas - Illmatic

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, College Dropout, Yeezus

Kali Uchis - ORQUIDEAS

Sampha - Lahai

Dave and Caleb welcome in 2024 by naming the best albums for starting a new year. What albums best capture that fine line between eternal optimism and existential dread about what could come? Dave suggests Prince’s 1999, a party album preoccupied with nuclear proliferation in the early 80s, and Caleb brings Jamie xx’s dance party in a jewel case, In Colour. Along the way, they unpack what it was like to first be exposed to Prince as kids in largely conservative environments, and the daunting task that is working through Prince’s catalog. Before that, they talk through the things from 2023 that consistently brought them joy, and cap everything off with what they’re listening to this week. 

Albums discussed at length this week:

Prince - 1999

Jamie xx - In Colour

Dave and Caleb are wrapping up 2023 with our inaugural top tens of the year, plus loads of honorable mentions and singles. We count it down 10-1 and hopefully introduce you to some of your new favorite music!

Our favorite albums of 2023:

Alex Lahey - The Answer is Always Yes

Boygenius - the record

Bully - Lucky for You

Danny Brown - Quaranta

Jamie Branch - Fly of Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

Jamila Woods - Water Made Us

Militarie Gun - Life Under the Gun

Noname - Sundial

Roisin Murphy - Hit Parade

Sampha - Lahai

Slowdive - Everything is Alive

Slow Pulp - Yard

Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

There Will Be Fireworks - Summer Moon

Wednesday - Rat Saw God

Yazmin Lacey - Voice Notes

Youth Lagoon - Heaven is a Junkyard

Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume

This week we're doing something different, a game we call Let's Make a Mixtape. Our friend Hana Kim joins us as we draft 18 Christmas songs that we're publishing as a playlist you can listen to on Spotify or Apple Music. But there's a twist -- when it's someone's turn, they get to not only draft a song and performer, but also they get to draft where on the mixtape it goes. Merry Christmas!

Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

Spotify playlist

Apple playlist

December is here and we’re ready to get in the Christmas spirit! Or Dave is at least. Dave brings Caleb on a magical journey through a season of lights and traditions and a spiritually moving season, while Caleb keeps us grounded in the stress and consumerism of the holiday. But, one thing they can both agree on is that the nostalgia of 1987’s A Very Special Christmas with artists like Run DMC, Whitney Houston, Madonna and U2 can immediately get you in the spirit of the season. Meanwhile, Dave suggests an album that may be new to many listeners, the Will Scruggs Jazz Orchestra’s Song of Simeon: A Christmas Journey, which tries to bridge the gap between religious sentimentality and holiday pop that most Christmas music falls into. Grab some egg nog and a candy cane and join us for our first Christmas episode.

Discussed today:

A Very Special Christmas, Volume One (Various Artists)

Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You

Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas

Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship - Song of Simeon: A Christmas Journey

The Sufjan Stevens Christmas EPs

Danny Brown - Quaranta

Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions

The Smile - “Wall of Eyes”

Dave and Caleb celebrate their November birthdays by introducing you to one of their favorite bands, the Scottish indie rock legends Frightened Rabbit, and their seminal break-up album, The Midnight Organ Fight. 

Discussed today:

Frightened Rabbit’s catalog

Spiritual Cramp - Spiritual Cramp

Jamie Branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) 

The leaves are changing, the hot apple cider is brewing, the bonfires and bonfiring, and Dave and Caleb are ready to crown the best album for autumn. What are the albums that we pull out for just a few months each year that are elevated by the invigoratingly crisp air and the cozy trappings of fall? Throw on your favorite cardigan and re-discover Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago and Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, plus many, many more recommendations (but no Nick Drake, apparently. How did we forget about Nick Drake?)

Music discussed today:

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One

Big Thief - UFOF

Neko Case - Blacklisted

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness

Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

James Blake - Overgrown

The Cure - Disintegration

Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Slowdive - Slowdive

Feist - Metals

O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack

Jockstrap - I Love You Jennifer B

Slow Pulp - Yard

Thanks For Coming - What Is My Capacity to Love

Cleo Sol - Gold

Cleo Sol - Heaven

Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool