Desert Island Discourse

Wellp, it finally happened—Max is officially an old maid. And in a desperate attempt to fend off thoughts of her own mortality, she's looking as far back as possible, to her very first favorite band: Depeche Mode. 

Depeche Mode has always been the kind of band that inspired fervent devotion, which is apparent in the fans that take over their Facebook account and the rabid crowds that still pack arenas to see them. But they're also a band that became defiantly less accessible over time, starting with a sugary sweet synth pop album (courtesy of a pre-Erasure Vince Clark) and evolving over the course of two decades into a dark, pseudo-industrial act with impeccably arranged songs about addiction, suicide, and S&M. So, the perfect band for an 11 year old kid to obsess over.

Of course, one's taste can change a lot after 19 years, and Andrew's exposure to the band amounts to his Dad's poorly assembled copy of one of their least popular albums. Will they come to their own personal Jesus? Or decide to enjoy the silence instead? Also: The Residents play Ed Sullivan, God dies again, and we discover the albums that shook Polish rock.

The world is a cold, dark, terrible place y'all—and we're not just saying that because Max is about to hit the existential crisis point that is "turning 30". So we're returning to the two things that have always brought us joy in troubled times: ridiculously obscure EPs and post-punk.

While this podcast started as a celebration of the discography above all else, that criteria excludes some of our favorite music, and no genre has been more slighted by that than Post-Punk. Even with our multi-album survey last year, so much of the best music under that umbrella is left out, relegated to 12" singles and EPs that went out of print more or less immediately. So this week, we're making an excuse to finally dig into that esoteric crate, starting with Max's absolute favorite examples of the form (it is, after all, her birthday week).

We start with The Chameleons' gorgeous swan song, Tony Fletcher Walked on Water La La La La La-La La-La-La (around here we like to pretend Why Call It Anything? never happened), move into the best thing Happy Mondays ever recorded (their first single, ironically), and finish off with one of best examples of pure pop songcraft in any genre—The Wake's Something That No One Else Could Bring. Along the way, we also confuse sand worms, struggle to explain 24 Hour Party People, and hope to someday find our own individual saviors. Enjoy!

Happy anniversary to us! As of today, we have been stranded on this disc-filled island for a year, and what better way to commemorate the occasion than to bring back our first ever guest for one of the most love-filled episodes in our catalogue? Yep, this fortnight, Caroline Rayner makes her triumphant return to our nerdy shores to talk about possibly her favorite musicians ever: Allison and Katie Crutchfield (spoiler alert, we like them a lot too). 

And what's not to love? From their first band together (when they were teenagers!) to the continued evolution of their respective solo careers, Allison and Katie have left an indelible mark on the world of indie rock with their heart-stabbing lyrics and the kind of rock-solid hooks you can set your watch to. There's so much to love here, you can hear us grasping for the language to capture it, gasping and going silent in the wake of so many stunning songs.

This music is also just really damn fun, as is apparent from our unbridled enthusiasm and inability to shut up all throughout. We challenge you not to feel the same way by the end. Also: regular Chumbawamba's, what does and doesn't rip, and what happened to Andrew the night of the Prince episode.

On January 15th, 2018, Dolores O’Riordan passed away, and we found ourselves devastated once again. As the lead singer and co-songwriter for The Cranberries, her voice has been a part of our collective consciousness for decades now, coloring the childhoods of your good good music pals to the point where we didn’t even realize how deep her art had reached. In memory of her incredible talent, we’re rectifying that, and digging into what we think is the best album of the entire Cranberries discography: No Need to Argue

After Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? blew up on the backs of classic singles like “Dreams” and “Linger”, the Cranberries simultaneously widened and deepened their focus, branching out into fuzz tones, synths, and all the other colors of the jangle-pop spectrum while turning their lyrical gaze to the horrific violence scarring their native Ireland. The result is weirdly controversial—“Zombie” is treated more like a punchline these days than a stirring statement—but also a gorgeous, cohesive piece that shows the band pushing at their limits.

So this week, we’re examining the whole work, its context, its influence, and the era it defined. We talk extensively about both the Troubles and the influence of our families’ music, and Max still somehow manages to make a quick jab at Better Than Ezra’s expense. It’s ok. They’re good sports.

It's been a long time coming, but this week we're finally talking about Andrew's favorite upright piano players/erstwhile neighbors: The Walkmen. As one of the few bands to make it out of the New York post-punk revival intact (although not without some Harry Nilsson-centric stumbles), The Walkmen hold a rarefied place in indie rock history. They escaped the bounds of their own scene to create album after album of solid, ever-evolving, critically acclaimed music right up to their 2014 hiatus

But the methods by which they achieved this are the very ones that have often split this island in twain, shifting from the cold, lonely, angry music of their youth to increasingly streamlined and downright old-fashioned rock n' roll. Will Andrew's album-by-album autobiography be enough to show Max the Lisbon light? Or will her dad-rock biases blind her to the later albums of one of her favorite post-punk bands? Also: Punctuation is observed, oats are eaten, and Max and Andrew lock horns over horns.

Has the winter fog settled in where you are? We wouldn't know, since our island is in a permanent state of miserable sunshine. But we've found a pretty close approximation in World of Echo, by famed composer/cellist/disco-ist Arthur Russell. As the one official album released in his tragically short lifetime, World of Echo holds a unique place in his mostly posthumous discography. Where the vast majority of the albums that have built up his legacy were thematically curated by the heroic archivists at Audika, World of Echo was a purposeful release, designed, composed, and recorded to be an album. As such, it is, in many ways, his most definitive artistic statement.

CW: Homophobia, mention of r*pe

We're mid-way through the first month of 2018, and already we're beset with strife on all sides. At times like these, we must ask ourselves the eternal question: can we kick it? To find our answer, we're going on a leader quest mission with Max's all-time favorite hip-hop group, A Tribe Called Quest. Like most journeys, this one starts all sunshine and roses and De La Soul shout-outs—but the ending may surprise you.

Started in 1985 by teenage MC's Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Jarobi, as well as DJ-turned-NPR host Ali Shaheed Muhammed, A Tribe Called Quest quickly made a name for themselves as positive jammers with a relentlessly innovative aesthetic. Over the course of their first five albums they would pioneer a (mostly) progressive lyricism, bring jazz to the hip-hop world, and team up with a little-known producer named J Dilla to create some of the weirdest albums of the era. And it's that latter fact that makes them such perfect candidates for the island—they were one of the few rap acts at the time that were truly album-focused, creating complete and deliberate artistic works that defied cherry-picking, even as they wrote a string of iconic singles that still influence artists.

A Tribe Called Quest is one of those bands that made us remember why we love doing this show, and that plus a rather strict time crunch has produced an episode as tight, shining, and artificially inflated in value as a diamond. Also: Max hears Langoliers on the wind, Andrew reveals the kinky undertones of Moby Dick, and we discuss duck penises. Again.

Happy New Ye! It’s 2018, and we’re frankly in disbelief that we’ve made it here alive, much less still podcasting. So it only makes sense to start the year by covering Kanye West, an artist whose made it his job to defy belief since the very beginning.

From his much-anticipated debut to an album that was finished in front of its own audience, the path of Kanye West from soul-sampling upstart to pop icon is wild and wooly, packed with unexpected detours and massive, genre-defining singles. But how do the albums themselves hold up in a post-Pablo world? And how on earth did Kanye get from sampling terrible Steely Dan songs to transforming Arthur Russell into a modern banger? Only Andrew’s suddenly hi-fi voice knows the truth. Also: Crispy Cothren debuts, Foil Cat returns, and a special surprise awaits potential reviewers.

If you are reading this, you have made it through this year, and it didn't kill you, and dammit we're all going to celebrate that fact. Of course, being a music podcast, we can only celebrate this occasion by doing what we do best—picking the albums of this year that helped us get here. So in this part two, we pick our most disappointing albums, our most surprising, and, yes, our Top 5 Albums of 2017. You'll also hear even more returning guests revealing their own top fives, including a blast from our very distant past. So join us in salvaging the only things worth keeping from this blasted hellscape of a year, secure in the knowledge that we have survived, and that we may continue to survive, at least long enough to hear the next Guided By Voices album. Also: impersonations of dear friends, hardcore emotional realness, and the official sign of every song on Lorde's Melodrama.

Thom looks awfully sad up there, and for good reason—2017, as a year, mostly served to prove that no dumpster fire is so heinous that it can't be made even more dumpster-fiery. But because the universe is just packed with ironic twists, this was also one of the best years in music in recent memory (and not just because this was the year when your illustrious hosts first crashed on this awfully esoteric island). So, starting on this fine Saturnalia, we're taking a break from our discographic discourse to look back at all the music that made existence just a little more bearable, even as the walls crumbled down around us.

The one issue with our format is that, while we get to explore so much music history in-depth, we rarely get to talk about all the contemporary artists that are making history right now. So there's a lot of pent-up joy coming out in this episode, as we discuss top 40 surprises, the continued relevance of Flying Nun, and whether not having heard something really does make it new enough. And like any good Christmas special, we also take this time to look back at the work we've done, and even bring back a few fan-favorite guests to give us their take. 

This episode, we go through podcasts past and our top five songs. Stay tuned next week for our top five albums!