Sub Titles

Really exciting episode for Matt who gets to dissect The Pixies’ vibrant, enduring classic Doolittle, an album as influential as it was weird in 1989. The Pixies’ now basically patented loud-soft-loud (or soft-loud-soft if they were feeling feisty) stands the test of time and endures in many an album from the 90s and 00s, including The Mars Volta’s delightfully insane De-Loused in the Comatorium and Modest Mouse’s first masterpiece, The Lonesome Crowded West. Tune in to hear which album makes the most affecting use of Pixies-esque abruptness.

Tim takes Sunrise, the AFI movie this week, as a unique journey narrative, a Journey to Tilsit, that pushes couples to the brink. Dodsworth faces an uphill battle against Sub Titles-core movie Before Midnight, listen to see how well Tim fares selling the profound-in-its-uncomfortableness experience of both (He does well!). Keep your Myers-Briggs and enneagram, on this podcast we judge people by their favorite Before movie.

Meet Me in the Bathroom, Lizzie Goodman’s essential oral history of the early 2000s NYC rock revival, chronicles the rise and coked out denouement of bands like The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Vampire Weekend, and the Walkmen. With The Strokes’ debut Is This It as this week’s Spin entry, Matt looks to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever to Tell and The Walkmen’s Bows + Arrows as essential documents of a brief, shining moment in rock history.

You might be thinking that this episode will be nothing but silly. Shame on you! It’s not only silly. Tim finds much pathos as he guides us through the relationship between vessel and captain in the mega-smash Titanic and not as mega-smashes but highly compelling 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Master and Commander.

Björk is a genre unto herself and Homogenic one of her earliest masterpieces. Apparently Iceland has fertile ground for growing experimental acts in general and we take some time to dig into Sigur Ros and mum, two acts pushing and ignoring genre much like Björk. Is it worth trying to understand what Jonsi is singing? Does mum take us to the limit of how much post-rock doesn’t need to, ya know, rock? How many Icelandic bands does Matt know? Will Agaetis byrjun or Finally We Are No One stand as the Björkiest of them all?

True to form, Tim and Matt end up hating on Gen X more than Boomers here. Listen to find out how! And to hear more about a few significant and ideologically loaded films that speak directly about and to a generation brought up on a hope quickly destroyed in the late 60’s and beyond. Easy Rider is the AFI entry for the week, which leads Tim to discussion of Shampoo and Modern Romance as we look beyond the OK, Boomer of it all to see what went wrong.

Paul’s Boutique remains as thrilling and befuddling as ever, a deeply fun listen that somehow, someway remains on streaming platforms despite it’s impressively liberal usage of samples and references. To say a record still lacking a comprehensive list of samples used is dense feels like understatement. In this episode, Matt introduces two other exceptionally Dense albums in mewithoutYou’s appendix-and-Theology-course-necessitating Pale Horses and (it’s finally that episode, folks) Tool’s geometrically, spiritually, and Danny Carey-ly constructed Lateralus.

Tim slowly encroaches on Matt’s music territory with another week of musical theming, in the form of full interludes this week. With the Marx Bros’ romp A Night at the Opera as his inspiration, Tim guides us through two very-not-Marx-Bros-like films that also make weighty use of well-timed Musical Interludes: Short Cuts and Anatomy of a Murder.

Brian Wilson, he of Beach Boys fame and writer of such brilliance as “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows,” is notoriously shy and reclusive. His genius, however, is indisputable. In this episode, we take a look at three artists with shades of Brian Wilson: reclusive, a bit prickly, genius-level songwriters. The Magnetic Field’s 69 Love Songs, Spin’s entry for the week, showcases Stephin Merritt’s love of literal titles and his genuinely impressive range. After some, lively, discussion of 69 Love Songs’ relative merits, Matt brings D’Angelo back into the fold with Black Messiah and tries not to fanboy too hard about Fiona Apple and The Idler Wheel.

When Oliver Stone hits he hits hard. When he misses he whiffs entirely. Platoon has some of both. While Tim and Matt spend some time talking about the film’s war bonafides, and lack thereof, Tim directs us to the theme of Classical Needledrops, inspired by Platoon’s use of “Adagio for Strings.” He then continues the reclamation of Heaven’s Gate and waxes about personal favorite The Right Stuff, both of which are recontextualized by some surprising classical music drops.