You get a call in the middle of the night from your best pal, panicked and determined. Something unthinkable has happened. Things will never be the same. And now you have to pick the best album for burying a body with a friend. It’s a listener suggestion this week on Best Album For! Dave and Caleb are explore why people are so drawn to true crime and how they fine tuned their picks for such an unseemly topic. It’s a doozy, people. Along the way, they talk about how much screaming is too much in metal music, revisit their unfortunate brush with nu-metal and explore one of the finest musicians of their lifetime that hasn’t gotten her due. 

Music discussed today:

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

Deftones - White Pony

Deftones - Around the Fur

Deafheaven - Sunbather

PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love

PJ Harvey - Stories from he City, Stories from the Sea

Toadies - Rubberneck

Future Islands - Singles

bdrmm - I Don’t Know

Dave and Caleb lament how easy it is to lose momentum on work outs and pick their best albums for getting out of bed or out the door to get a work out in when you're really unmotivated. Caleb takes us into 1980s hardcore punk and Dave presents one of his all-time favorite albums that rarely gets its due. Plus, what we're listening to this week.

Music discussed today:

Minor Threat - Out of Step

The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

Discovery - LP

REM - Monster (and other music from The Bear Season 2)

Dave and Caleb explore their ideal work settings and choose the album for the inevitable times you’re stuck in a coffee shop with bad reggae covers playing in the background. Along the way, they explore where jazz music sits for them in 2023, and Dave reveals the origin of his very confusing AOL screen name.

Music discussed today:

Mark Farina - Mushroom Jazz Vol. 4

Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool

Quentin Coaxum - You & I

Nico Segal - Tell the Ghosts Welcome Home

DJ Koze - “Candidasa”

Queens of the Stone Age - In Times New Roman…

Dave’s longlist of early 00s electronic artists you can work to:

Amon Tobin

Bonobo

Cinematic Orchestra

Kruder & Dorfmeister

Luke Vibert

Mr. Scruff

Nightmares on Wax

Peace Orchestra

Pete Rock

Telefon Tel Aviv 

Tosca

Thievery Corporation

Ulrich Schnauss

Anything on Ninjatune

Dave and Caleb hit the open road and pick the best album for a road trip by yourself. Along the way, they talk about guilty pleasures, whether one can dance while driving a car, the scourge of hidden tracks on CDs, saccharine songs that haven’t aged well, and two unassailable albums for solo road trips.

Music discussed today:

Aphex Twin - “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f”

Christine and the Queens - Paranoia, Angels, True Love

Counting Crows - This Desert Life

Nico Segal / Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment - Surf

Prince - Purple Rain

Robyn - Body Talk

Roisin Murphy - “Fader”

Run the Jewels - rtj2

Slowdive - “Kisses”

The Smile - “Bending Hectic”

Tom Petty - Wildflowers

The Urge - Receiving the Gift of Flavor & Master of Styles

Youth Lagoon - Heaven is a Junkyard

Dave and Caleb present a special episode entirely dedicated to new music from this year as they count down their individual top 5 lists of 2023 music so far, plus a peak at what they’re excited about for the rest of 2023.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Albums recommended in this episode (not in this order):

boygenius - the record

Brutalismus 3000 - ULTRAKUNST

Debby Friday - “So Hard to Tell”

Indigo D’Souza - All of This Will End

Kara Jackson - Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?

Lil’ Yachty - Let’s Start Here

Wednesday - Rat Saw God

Yazmin Lacey - Voice Notes

Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)

We discover that we have very different ideas about what it means to decompress, from when that process should begin to how it should end. Should decompression be energizing after a long day, or should it help us unwind? We debate what makes for a good decompression album and make it through multiple genres along the way.

Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

[SPOILER ALERT]

Albums recommended in this episode:

Flume - Skin

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - The Undivided Five

Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa

Beach House - Teen Dream

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

D’Angelo - Black Messiah

Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Madlib - Shades of Blue

Moodymann - Sinner

Morphine - Yes

Morphine - Cure for Pain

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

The National - Boxer

Neko Case - Blacklisted

Open Mike Eagle - Anime, Trauma & Divorce

100 Gecs - 10,000 Gecs

Smashing Pumpkins - “Galapagos”

Water from Your Eyes - Everyone’s Crushed

It’s part two of our superhero origin stories as we unpack Dave’s arrival at becoming ‘musically sentient’ — the first album he remembers where music meant to him what it means now. We journey through the Bangles and ‘Do the Bartman’ to arrive at a seismic shift in music history that Dave caught at the perfect age, and unpack the way we can attach ourselves to both music and musicians in powerful ways.

We want to hear from you! What was the album where you awoke to music holding a deep place in your heart? We also would love to hear your suggestions for future topics. Email us at [email protected].

[SPOILER ALERT]

Music discussed in this episode:

Nirvana - Nevermind

Indigo De Souza - All of This Will End

Yazmin Lacey - Voice Notes

This week we’re releasing two new episodes on the same theme: the first album you remember where music held the place that is means to you now — what we call ‘becoming musically sentient.’ Caleb takes us way back to fifth grade when music videos on MTV were the most influential thing in the pop universe and a certain (extremely problematic) king of pop caused him to first diverge from his parent’s musical influence. (Dave’s episode will be released later this week.)

We want to hear from you! What was the album where you awoke to music holding a deep place in your heart? We also would love to hear your suggestions for future topics. Email us at [email protected].

[SPOILER ALERT]

Music discussed in this episode (other than ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic):

Michael Jackson - Dangerous

Garth Brooks - No Fences

Keli Uchis - Red Moon in Venus

SZA - SOS

Kelela - Raven

Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You

Summer is here and along with it comes numerous excuses to gather in someone’s backyard to grill out (or, barbecue / BBQ if you’re from the midwest. We see you, Texas.) What are the most important things to consider when creating your playlist for a backyard BBQ? From target audience to volume to what purpose music serves in these settings, Dave & Caleb have you covered. Don’t miss a cornucopia of honorable mentions to get you started on a legendary mix.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Today’s deep dives:

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Belle & Sebastian - Late Developers

Alex Lahey - The Answer is Always Yes

Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop

Two guys who have never done any hard drugs choose the best album for a hallucinogenic drug experience. Why? Because they’ve seen every movie and television depiction of the experience, good and bad, from the last 30+ years and have a pretty clear idea of how to establish criteria for such an experience. As long as, you know, you too are less interested in the actual experience and more interested in the imagination exercise of music to levitate to. It’s a public service, people. Along the way, they talk about two very important albums in the Dave & Caleb canon.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Today’s deep dives:

Radiohead - In Rainbows

alt-J (∆) - An Awesome Wave

Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!

Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot between Worlds)