The Beaten Track

We're back (again) to recap our favourite albums from 2024 so far. Join us as we take you through the best albums month by month, including albums from The Smile, Charli XCX, Adrienne Lenker, and Vampire Weekend.

We're back for our end of year round up. It's the only end of year list that matters, forget the rest. Who will come out on top of Louis and Joe's 2023 list? Will there be fights or will there be harmony? Featuring albums from PJ Harvey, Caroline Polachek, King Gizzard, Lana Del Rey, and Olivia Rodrigo.

This week we talk all things Manchester and the region's significant contribution to music. We focus in on A Certain Ratio's Sextet, a classic experimental album from the early Factory Records era. Contemporaries of Joy Division, this album saw them branch out into a new world music influenced sound. Elsewhere, Joe names his favourite Mancunian, Louis talks about the Verve for too long, and they both disagree on the best pub in Manchester.

We're feeling a little bit of nostalgia as two giants of the old radio rock world have come back with new albums recently. Queens of the Stone Age and the Foo Fighters have both supplied acclaimed new records and Louis and Joe discuss their favourite tracks, the differences between the bands, and some truly terrible song titles. Elsewhere in the episode we discuss our Glastonbury favourites and there's a Pitchfork quiz.

This week we discuss our new website and platform beatentrackpod.com. There's a discussion of what we're listening to at the moment including but not limited to; Wednesday, Model/Actriz, Pet Shop Boys and Queens of the Stone Age. We also touch on Kakashi, an ambient jazz record from Japanese composer Yasuaki Shimizu. Oh and yes, there's a really bad quiz at the end as well.

We're throwing out the rule book. If the Beaten Track has been known for anything it's a maverick attitude and unwillingness to bend to the popular will. Joe and Louis are back to take you through 2023 so far and in the new format we're not just talking one album, but multiple. We take you through our favourites of the year such as Boygenius, Lana Del Rey, Black Country New Road, Caroline Polachek and more. Also discussed is the not very popular Ticketmaster, the potential return of Supergroups, and the little people from Suffolk.

It is an exact science. Don't listen or read any other album round ups. This is the only one that matters. Joe and Louis count down the definitive top ten albums of 2022. Will BCNR top Joe's list two years on the bounce? Will Arctic Monkeys take each of the ten spots available for Louis? Listen to find out..

All bangers, no clangers! A seminal album to get us back into the swing of things. Few records sound as angular and mechanically violent as Gang of Four's minimalist post-punk classic 'Entertainment!'. From tracks such as 'Natural's Not in It' to 'Love Like Anthrax', the album will worm its way into your consciousness for good. Endlessly quotable, much like Joe and Louis.

The long awaited collaboration between the acclaimed producer Danger Mouse and Philadelphia's legendary Black Thought. Embracing old school hip hop soundscapes and dipping into 60s and 70s soul, psych and jazz sounds, this record is a triumph in producer/rapper collaborations. Joe and Louis discuss their favourite tracks on the record, including the feature from the late MF DOOM. Oh, and the quizzing features cheating, exploding cigars and bulletproof bananas.

We took our time with this one, ensuring we got each position in this top 5 album list exactly right. Elliott Smith deserves such close attention as well, with his remarkably strong discography which stretched from lo-fi demos to power pop ambitions. Louis and Joe take on the mammoth task of ranking classics like Either/Or, a posthumous release and the slap of Figure 8's full band sound.