Happy holidays from Discord & Rhyme! We got you a big enough umbrella, though you’ll probably still end up getting wet. To close off our fourth(!) calendar year as a podcast, Phil, Rich, John, and Mike have decided to sit around the fire and talk about an album we all know and love. When the Police recorded their final album, 1983’s Synchronicity, the trio of Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland were at the peak of their popularity, but were also on the verge of collapse, fracturing under the stress of three very different personalities moving in opposite creative directions. The album often receives criticism as a prelude to Sting’s solo career, but we argue that it’s much more nuanced than that, and that even at their most incoherent, the trio had a natural chemistry and an ability to check and balance one another’s excesses that all came together into some truly remarkable arrangements. Whether Synchronicity is the best or worst Police album is very much up for debate, but it’s certainly one of their most interesting.
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This week, the street-walking cheetahs of Discord and Rhyme take a stroll down the dark, sketchy alley that is Iggy and the Stooges’ 1973 classic Raw Power. Mostly ignored upon release, its primal, menacing energy would become a blueprint for countless punk and hard rock bands in the decades to come. In our discussion, we detail the drug-fueled, messy production of the record that yielded two radically different mixes of the album that continue to divide fans to this day. Shirts are optional.
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Pearl Jam might have had the most ambiguous relationship with fame of any major rock band. In the early nineties, they were arguably the biggest rock band in the world, but the group gave few interviews, made no music videos, and were difficult to see live due to their ongoing refusal to work with Ticketmaster. 1994’s Vitalogy captures the band in the midst of this era - struggling with the pressures of fame and trying hard to assert their independence from the drudgery of corporate rock. Vitalogy, despite its inconsistency, remains Phil’s favorite Pearl Jam episode, and he’s here to tell Dan and Rich exactly why he thinks it’s the most interesting Pearl Jam album - an album well worth listening to even if you never cared for the group’s earlier work.
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In this episode, we cover the (short) career of a great country singer (maybe?) who made a few albums’ worth of transcendent country music (except for all the little touches that aren’t country music). Gram Parsons was a polarizing figure, but Ben loves his 1974 opus Grievous Angel - made in collaboration with the golden-voiced Emmylou Harris - and Amanda and John dig it plenty. Along the way, they make a case for why country music is worth your attention, and for why Grievous Angel is a classic example of the genre (mostly) (it’s complicated).
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This is Halloween, this is Halloween! But instead of pumpkins screaming in the dead of night, we’re throwing a Dead Man’s Party with the help of Danny Elfman and his punk-new wave-ska-pop-rock band, Oingo Boingo. This classic album from 1985 marks a transition from Oingo Boingo’s earlier yelping weirdness into a more mature and radio-friendly sound, but never fear - they’re still just as creepy and strange as ever. The result is an album that’s intense, catchy, melodic, and fun, and has become a rightful Halloween classic. So leave your body and soul at the door and join us, because there’s always room for maybe just one more.
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Of all the genre-flouting “alternative” bands scooped up by major labels in the mid-‘90s, Soul Coughing boasted arguably the most enduring listening power. Their second of three perfect albums, Irresistible Bliss, landed an unexpected hit with the aggressively funky depth charge “Super Bon Bon.” In this episode, Will enlists the help of Phil, Rich, and Amanda in figuring out whether there’s some manner of locomotion that will get us to the mezzanine.
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At last, we’re talking about the Decemberists, a band that has come up multiple times in other episodes! But instead of going for the more obvious choices like Picaresque or The Crane Wife, we decided on an album that we feel has been underappreciated (even by some of us). What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World may not sound quite like the Decemberists of yore, but their unique identity hasn’t really changed, it’s just been channeled in new directions. Plus, this album contains Amanda’s most AND least favorite Decemberists songs! This is a good one for those of you who like the discord.
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The career of jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis from the late 1940s through his (temporary) retirement in 1975 largely doubles as a tour of every significant stylistic development in the jazz world during this time. By the late 1960s, after taking acoustic jazz as far as he believed it could go, Miles chose to immerse himself in the world of electric jazz fusion, and his 1970 album Bitches Brew remains both one of the most famous jazz fusion albums and one of the most famous Miles Davis albums overall. In this episode, Mike leads a discussion (Phil moderating, John co-hosting) on this monster of a listening experience: an album that that gets labeled as jazz-rock but often sounds nothing like either jazz or rock; an album that got dismissed by many contemporary jazz listeners and critics as a sell-out even though it's some of the least accessible music Davis ever made; and an album where producer Teo Macero proved that extensive tape manipulation could work every bit as well in the jazz world as it could in the rock world.
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In 2009, 25 years into their career, the Oklahoma-based eccentric alt-rock band The Flaming Lips released a dark, terrifying double-album that nobody could have expected when "She Don't Use Jelly" landed them a cameo on Beverly Hills 90210. Embryonic is an album that prompts strong love-it-or-hate-it reactions in listeners, and John (host), Rich, and Mike land among the album's lovers. Join us for a detailed look at an absolutely wild musical and emotional journey, where sheer beauty mingles with overpowering low-end, and where devastating looks at depression mingle with whimsical (yet melancholy) tunes about a woman who imitates a frog.
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You might know Sam Phillips from those lovely "la la la"s on the Gilmore Girls soundtrack, or as Katya, the silent assassin in Die Hard: With a Vengeance. But she's also a fiercely talented songwriter with an encyclopedic knowledge of music and a literary lyrical sense. She first cut her teeth in the contemporary Christian music world (as Leslie Phillips, “the Christian Cyndi Lauper”) before leaving Myrrh Records and forging a creative and personal bond with producer T Bone Burnett. But though her 1994 album Martinis & Bikinis is a secular album on the surface, it’s brimming with a spirituality that makes its point without resorting to dogma, as well as melodies and arrangements that reference the Beatles without slipping into pastiche. So join Rich, Amanda, and John for a Discord & Rhyme that’s one part Beatles study and one part Bible study, with a little bit of XTC and The Brave Little Toaster thrown in for good measure.
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