Jethro Tull started their career as a hardcore blues band. Within a few years, they were a hardcore progressive rock band, writing album-long suites of extraordinarily complex music. While both of those eras are interesting, the brief period between the two - where the band had moved away from the blues, but hadn’t yet completely progged out - is some of the best music of its era. Sadly, it doesn’t get discussed nearly enough these days. In this episode, Phil, along with Ben, John, and Mike, get dive into this era with 1969’s Stand Up - a contender for the best album Tull ever released. So - don your codpiece, jump on one leg, and join in the fun as we discuss one of the best (and most overlooked) rock albums of 1969 (along with several contemporary singles that, while not on the album proper, are far too good to ignore).
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Returning guest Dave Weigel lived in England in the late ‘90s, the era of Tony Blair, New Labour, ecstasy, the European Union, and, most importantly of all, the Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met in a hi-fi shop in the early ‘80s and went on to make beautiful, quintessentially British dance music together for the next four decades (and counting!). For this episode, Rich leads Dave, Phil, and Will track by track through the duo’s 1996 album Bilingual, where Tennant and Lowe were inspired by a recent tour of Latin America, as well as a rapidly globalizing post-Cold War world. It’s not one of the group’s more celebrated albums, but it’s so, so dense with all of the tight, grandiose, literate popcraft that they do so well.
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In this episode, we dive into the Kinks' 1969 concept album Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, which has long been one of Ben's favorite albums. Arthur tells the fictional life story of Englishman Arthur Morgan, who was born during the glory years of the British Empire, and whose slide into mid-20th-century obsolescence mirrors that of his home country. Sound heavy? It's heavy. But it's also fascinating, and richly musical. Ben leads a discussion that touches on world wars, isolationism, the class system, parenthood - and, of course, some great rock and roll music. He's ably joined by Rich, John, and Mike, who have all waited years to express their opinions on those subjects. Especially British isolationism during the late 1930s. We could yammer on for hours about that.
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The Tragically Hip are practically Canada’s national band, but they’re virtually unknown elsewhere. Today we’re aiming to change that by covering one of their best albums, Fully Completely. Not only is this album packed full of references to Canadian history and culture, it’s also packed full of excellent rock songs. Our goal for this episode is to convert all of you into Hip fans, so come for the terrific music, stay for the Canadian history lesson!
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Often criminally overlooked among the ’90s indie-rock canon, Helium’s The Magic City is one of the most colorful and unpredictable albums to come out of Matador Records’ reign as kings of the genre. On their second and final album, Mary Timony and crew cast aside the fuzzy, lo-fi guitars for bright, lush arrangements that explore influences as diverse as medieval folk, progressive rock, and video game music. Climb aboard your mighty unicorn and follow Dan, Amanda, and Rich into the cosmos as we travel through this musically rich landscape of aging astronauts, dragons, and Chamberlins.
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The 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief was widely praised as a great album upon its initial release, but starting a few years later it became a consistent target of criticism from the band and fans alike. In this episode, John leads a discussion with Will, Mike, and Phil in which they try to make the case that this album, in which Radiohead largely consolidates the different approaches of its post-Bends work into something new and yet still something recognizably Radiohead, deserves a significantly better reputation than as “the Radiohead album with too many songs.” Come for the serious discussion of Radiohead’s take on the Iraq War and society’s failings, stay for the recurring sex jokes and Homestar Runner references.
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Pink Floyd is not exactly obscure, but it’s true that their pre-Dark Side of the Moon albums don’t get as much attention as they deserve. Rather than simply being the lead-up to their more well-known material, their first few albums are fascinating, groundbreaking, and democratically weird. Pink Floyd was a band that just wanted to make cool, interesting sounds that nobody had ever made before, and with Meddle, they succeeded spectacularly - in fact, this is where you’ll find some of their very best material. Come along with us as we fearlessly cut this album into little pieces.
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The Grateful Dead are such a ubiquitous cultural institution that many people don’t engage with their music - it’s frequently written off as slow, lazy music for stoners. Well, Phil isn’t a stoner at all, and he’s here to tell you all about why the Grateful Dead are great. While the group is perhaps best known for their marathon live sets and endless catalog of concert recordings, Phil decided to focus on 1970’s “American Beauty” - the album generally considered to be the band’s best studio LP. Short on jams and long on great songs and fantastic harmony vocals, American Beauty is a folk-and-country tinged masterpiece and is a wonderful entry point for beginning your voyage into the world of the Grateful Dead.
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HO-HO-HO, we’re HU-HU-HUNGRY like the wolf! Discord & Rhyme has held off on its namesake album for far too long, so Rich, Amanda, Phil, and returning guest Libby Cudmore are throwing a festive ‘80s holiday party with Duran Duran’s 1982 album Rio. The British music and fashion press were obsessed with the emerging glitter-and-puffy-shirts New Romantic scene when Duran Duran first hit the stage with their self-titled debut in 1981. The quintet was immediately branded as a “haircut band” and written off by the critical elite, and a series of exotic videos filmed in Antigua and Sri Lanka only reinforced this vapid public image. But Rich argues that their second album Rio, recorded during a hot streak for the band, is musically sophisticated, artistically triumphant, and makes for a fun discussion with some mulled wine.
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There are plenty of love albums out there and plenty of breakup albums, but apart from Marvin Gaye's fascinating Here, My Dear, how many romantic spite albums can you think of? It's a tough balance to strike, but Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle has created likely the ideal such creature on Tallahassee: a schadenfreude- and gin-sodden indie-rock epitaph for the Alpha Couple, two characters he'd been working with for years and whose relationship only got less healthy with time. Join Will, Dan, Rich, and returning guest Brent Heard, won't you, as we don our emotional headlamps and rotgut-protection boots and investigate the open throat of the Alpha Couple's cellar door?
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