Sub Titles

A disproportionate amount of this episode is Matt railing on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which features one of the worst people in his estimation. Tim keeps things fair and moving though in his analysis of M*A*S*H* as a movie about terrible people maybe sorta learning to be not as terrible before talking Ferris, where no one learns a damn thing, and Five Came Back, where a lot of people learn some hard things they’d really rather not. Listen to hear which is the worst of them all in some productive way.

Remember the aughts when most indie music was dance-y? Good times? Good times. Innocuous times, if we believe the worry of one James Murphy who warns as much on the opening of LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver. Matt looks at the legacy, longevity, and punchiness, or lack thereof, of Murphy’s totem of an album. Up as replacements are Phoenix’s gargantuanly popular Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Hot Chip’s prickly, but no less beloved, The Warning where both are judged by their handling of emotional profundity and innocuous dance rock.

Tim and Matt have shown previous interest in naming the “Most” of various things - most 00’s, 90’s, and 80’s songs, for example. The things that best embody and symbolize an era or genre or concept. Tim returns that thought experiment here with three movies that are the Most their respective directors. North by Northwest has all the Hitchcock you know and expect, while Moby Dick and My Darling Clementine distill John Huston and John Ford, respectively, as much as they tell actual stories. But which Auteur is truest to themselves?

Tell us which option you would have chose, vote in our poll below!

Last week was Myth and History; this week is the Cosmos. The Moon and Antarctica, an album near and dear to Matt’s heart, tries to speak (with) God with layers of guitar in a Cosmos entirely of Modest Mouse’s design. Built to Spill, MM’s Pacific Northwest counterparts, and Hum, of Shoegaze Decile fame, have similarly searching and vast 90s albums in Perfect From Now On and You’d Prefer and Astronaut, respectively. One is more metaphysical and the other more astrological, both, however, investigate the stars of the universe.

Tell us which option you would have chosen, vote in our poll below! 

Tim, as is his wont, is working with another AFI list here in 100 Years…100 Thrills, a list that he and Matt decide is truly bonkers but in a charming way. Jaws - which, hey, good film - lands number 2nd on that list. The Exorcist is 3rd, which is the first Sub option since Tim can actually watch it now. And while Tim can’t use the movie in 1st, Psycho, he looks to another Hitchcock film, Notorious, in this battle of thrills, both the spectacular and the horrifying.

Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is probably the most widely beloved and respected debut from 2010s hip-hop, and which Kendrick album is his best is a Discourse deserving of the capital letter. Matt doesn’t wade into that, rather he considers GK, MC for the autobiographical origin story that it is, Kendrick’s concept album about the creation of Kendrick Lamar. Danny Brown’s Old and Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool go toe-to-toe in this episode about Concept Rap albums with a bent towards self-creation.

Y’all remember Rocky loses in the first one, right? Well Tim and Matt are here to remind you - and remind you why that’s a good thing - and Tim is being the depressing one this week when he talks about The Cincinnati Kid and Make Way for Tomorrow, two movies where loss looms large and some everyday folks are working hard to survive. Everyone loses, but who loses most meaningfully?

This is the first recorded episode after that summer break we took, so forgive any ring rust. No better way to get revved back up than with our favorite band to hate: Pavement. We say things about Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (we like it more! I think! Kinda!). Then Matt introduces Tim to two bands that draw on Pavement’s style. Speedy Ortiz’s Major Arcana and Cymbal’s Eat Guitars’ LOSE vie for indie rock supremacy while, crucially, not being mistaken for Pavement’s sound.

The sweetness of Chaplin making dinner rolls dance shines in The Gold Rush, and gives Tim his jumping off point for this episode. Things escalate quite a bit as we move from dancing bread to two antagonists realizing a secret, anonymous letter writing love, to dinosaurs and the sins of science. In each Tim finds moments of beauty and wonder. Tune in to see how he pitches all this to Matt, grumpy skeptic of most things happy.

Few things get Matt more excited than concept records and jarring indie music. Put the two together and you have In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic that’s beloved, hated on, called overrated, and beloved again in regular cycles. Anais Mitchell and Hurray for the Riff Raff aren’t as, well, batshit as NMH, but their albums Hadestown and The Navigator, respectively, are historical and mythological records much like In the Aeroplane. Listen to see which allegories Tim likes best.