Desert Island Discourse

On the show this week, we tackle the too-short lifespan of your favorite band's favorite band: Big Star. From hanging out down the street to starting a love revolution, come along with us September Gurls as we kick off October.

FEATURED

Watch the Sunrise

The Letter - The Box Tops

Feel

The Ballad of El Goodo

When My Baby’s Beside Me

Life is White

September Gurls

Daisy Glaze

Jesus Christ

Kizza Me

Kanga Roo

Love Revolution

Femme Fatale

O, My Soul

Nature Boy

We dive into one of Stephin Merritt’s many side projects, the tongue-twistingly titled “Wasps’ Nests” by The 6ths. FEATURED SONGSWinter in July Falling Out of Love (With You) San Diego Zoo Aging Spinsters Puerto Rico Way When I’m Out of Town

This week, we explore the impeccable pop sensibilities of Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields. How much can one songwriter love the moon? Does Holland-Dozier-Holland need defending? And did she send flowers, or just say she sent flowers? Tune in to find out!

Desert Island

Railroad Boy

10000 Fireflies

Candy

The Saddest Story Ever Told

Swinging London

Strange Powers

Born on a Train

Why I Cry

The Village in the Morning

The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure

All My Little Words

Long-Forgotten Fairytale

Washington, D.C.

Abigail, Belle of Kilronan

I Don’t Believe You

I Thought You Were My Boyfriend

California Girls

You Must Be Out of Your Mind

Everything is One Big Christmas Tree

Andrew in Drag

Your Girlfriend’s Face

’74: No

’93: Me and Fred and Dave and Ted

’14: I Wish I Had Pictures

All the Umbrellas in London

Papa Was a Rodeo

Young and Insane

This week, we discuss the 1971 edition of the Jackson 5’s Greatest Hits, from all-time-great basslines to inappropriate lyrical content. FEATURED SONGS: ABC I Want You Back Never Can Say Goodbye Goin’ Back to Indiana I’ll Be There

Let it never be said that we're not a podcast of the people. Yes, our past few episodes have been deeply entrenched in the kind of hardcore esoterica that birthed a thousand blogspots, but that doesn't mean we can't devote our latest to literally the best-selling musical artists of all time: Michael Jackson (no, we do not recognize The Eagles on our island).

Which is pretty hard to do—what's left to be said about the King of Pop? You know Michael Jackson. You know he started as Motown's child star, you know he created some of the greatest singles in music history, you know he was buds with Kevin McAllister. Hell, you were probably born into the world singing "Billie Jean". But now that his music has become the background radiation of the universe, it's easy to forget how he got to that point, and why he was so skilled to begin with. We know his singles by heart, but his albums? Not so much. There's a lot to dig into here.

And digging is what desert islanders do best, my friends. So there's plenty of talk about the soggy Motown of his pre-Off the Wall solo career, about the ineffable heights of his creative peak, and the weird and winding path he took to the bottom. It's a complete retelling of HIStory, with all the fawning and groaning that entails. Also: Imitations of Hair, the Joe Jackson Bullet Train to Hell, and the strange, pirate-filled fate of the Free Willy franchise.

Music:

Love Never Felt So Good

Ben

People Make the World Go Around

Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough

Rock With You

Working Day and Night

Thriller

Billie Jean

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

Liberian Girl

The Way You Make Me Feel

Smooth Criminal

Jam

She Drives Me Wild

Will You Be There

Scream

Childhood

You Rock My World

Burn this Disco Out

Somebody’s Watching Me (feat. Michael Jackson) - Rockwell

This week, we celebrate the life and work of a recently passed legend: Aretha Franklin. RIP, Queen of Soul.

Woof, are we getting esoteric this week. Merely a fortnight after the self-indulgence of "If I Haven't Heard It, It's New to Me" month, and we're already getting deep in the weeds, covering a wide swathe of a music scene that isn't even huge in its own country. Specifically, we're talking about Japanese Shoegaze, from 2000-2018.

For all intents and purposes, shoegaze burned out in the 90's—it was big for a blip, and then quickly became a niche of a niche, the kind of genre beloved by hardcore fans and ignored by most everyone else. But the massive, dreamy guitars of My Bloody Valentine made quite an impact it Japan, planting the seeds for a shoegaze resurgence that continues to flourish. The Japanese shoegaze scene is massive and far more active than elsewhere in the world, quietly churning out some of the best music of the millenium.

It's also a side of the genre that Max is obsessed with. Why wouldn't she be—it's the source of dozens of new great shoegaze bands. And while we hope this survey is somewhat informative, a sample of a vibrant scene that isn't talked about as much as it should be, it's also completely influenced by subjective taste. So our bands range from poppy electronica to melodic post-hardcore, and the year window is significantly wider than we'd usually entertain, just so we could fit all of our favorites in. You'll have to take our word for it: there's so much more Japanese shoegaze where this came from. And it's great. Hell, even Andrew likes it.

Music:

Million Flags – Kei Hiyamuta

Playstar Vista – Supercar

White Surf Style 5 – Supercar

Fairway – Supercar

Good Morning – Coaltar of the Deepers

Star Love – Coaltar of the Deepers

Harunogyouninzaka – Coaltar of the Deepers

Breakbeats – Pasteboard

Flipper – Pasteboard

Ukiyogunjou – Cruyff in the Bedroom

Last Night in Antwerp – Cruyff in the Bedroom

Cry – Cruyff in the Bedroom

Zero Comma Iro Toridori No Sekai – Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

One Day – Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

Sanzameku – Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

Open Air – Tokyo Shoegazer (東京酒吐座)

Turnaround – Tokyo Shoegazer (東京酒吐座)

HELLO – POLA

おとぎの国 (Fairytale) – POLA

Excuse – She Her Her Hers

Brain-Train – She Her Her Hers

Foehn – She Her Her Hers

Somehow Hear – Cattle

Birth – Cattle

Soon – Yuragi

Night Is Young – Yuragi

Sleeptight – Yuragi

Made (Jounetsu Mix) – Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

Stereochrome – She Her Her Hers

Kinoshita Fuyou – My Dead Girlfriend

Welcome to the latest episode we've ever posted! Due to several unfortunate circumstances with regards to work and life, we're getting this B-Side in right under the wire. Luckily, before long this will all be dust and no one will notice.

Speaking of dust and the ravages of age, welcome to the second installment of Nostalgia Check! In this recurring-but-not-even-a-little-bit-regular special, we each take a band from our youths and reexamine them in the harsh light of adulthood to see if they can withstand it, or if they will simply burn up like so much garbage. This week, we're once again bringing together a pop-punk band and an early-oughts indie darling: Sum 41's All Killer No Filler and Pete Yorn's Musicforthemorningafter.

The result is as much an examination of our former listening habits and the strange entry points we take as it is of entirely pleasant if unremarkable pop music. It's basically therapy, but far more public and shameful. Also: the Tender Heart Blenders, your first slice of pizza, and the first time anyone has ever spoken of Sylvester Stallone prison drama Lock Up

Music:

Fat Lip

In Too Deep

Rhythms

Life on a Chain

Black

On Your Side

Closet

WE MADE IT TO EPISODE 50 Y'ALL. Can you believe it? We certainly can't—like most amateur podcasts started in times of immense unemployment, we sort of assumed this was going to sputter out after a couple of months. But NO. We've defied the odds, and to celebrate this arbitrarily momentous occasion (counting the B-Sides we actually have something like 78 episodes, but who counts the B-Sides?), we're discoursing about one of the bands that brought us to this accursed island in the first place: Talk Talk

Talk Talk are one of those whose reputation wildly varies depending on who you talk to. To most of the world, they're the one-hit new wave band behind that one No Doubt song where Gwen Stefani gets executed; to Britain's most pretentious musicians, they're a legendary art-rock institution; and to everyone who ever recorded with them, they're the devil. But to Andrew and Max, they represent connection, a band that fostered that one of those beautiful moments that this podcast is all about: when a stranger brings up a band you love, and you realize y'all are going to have an awful lot in common.

In truth, they're all of those things. In proto-Radiohead fashion, they started off making hit records, catchy new wave things in the style of Tears for Fears that earned them a lot of leeway with their record label. And then as soon as they hit their biggest commercial success, they took a hard right and made two relentlessly strange albums that alienated them from their label and invented post-rock in the process. 

Which makes Talk Talk the perfect band for our treatment—we get to chart that incredibly unlikely trajectory, and see if we can figure out how it could possibly make any sense. Spoiler alert: it doesn't. 

Also: Max's inexplicable hatred of Tears for Fears, the latest news on Necco Wafers, and the return of our letters section!

Music:

Stump

Talk Talk

It’s My Life

It’s You

Happiness is Easy

I Don’t Believe in You

Living in Another World

Life’s What You Make It

The Rainbow

Eden

I Believe in You

Taphead

Ascension Day

After the Flood

New Grass

5:09

We're coming up on our 50th episode, folks, and it's gonna be a big one—Talk Talk. But we're sensitive folk, and we can't just jump into the deep end—we need to ease into it! And what better way to ease into Talk Talk than by discussing the last album any of its members ever released—Mark Hollis by Mark Hollis.

A sort of distant epilogue to the stunning & criminally ignored career of his former band, Mark Hollis' eponymous solo album is the opposite of what you'd expect from a genius coming out of retirement for one last ride. It's not an announcement of return—rather, it actively shuns all attention, every potential spotlight shining right through it, dissipating its delicate calm. In short, it's quiet as fuck. And while Talk Talk were no strangers to silence, they never plumbed the depths of just how quiet you can be before you disappear like this before.

So while it's chronologically an ass-backwards way to start our Talk Talk fortnight with the end of their publicly released work, it sonically makes perfect sense. Next week, things are going to get fuckin' weird. For now, let's just enjoy the silence, eh? Also: relative gayness, Thom Yorke's library etiquette, and our final Chicago siren.

Music

The Colour of Spring

A Life (1895-1915)

Westward Bound

The Gift