Unsung Podcast

A couple of weeks ago we joked that we had been cancelled. We haven’t (to our knowledge), but it did lead us to ponder - can we talk about a cancelled band? How would people react to that? And which band should we talk about? The answer wasn’t immediately clear to us at the time - there were a few options of course - but it became clearer when we spoke to someone we’ve wanted to have on the show f...

It’s crazy to think that this music went unheard for so long, and only properly came to the public’s attention in the late 00s. One listen to Death tells you that they had all the ideas that punk bands are STILL using way back in 1974. Before punk was even a thing. Indeed, a large part of this episode is dedicated to punk before punk was punk. Or rather, to proto-punk. Dr. of punk rock Ferro joins...

We’re back in superground territory (?) this week as Mark brings the debut album by mysterious, psuedo-anonymous screamo band United Nations. Fronted (at least, on most of the songs, albums and live shows) and partially conceived by post-hardcore legend and Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, in the early 00s, for a long time he was the only “official” member of the band. When they were sued by the ac...

Ok so the title is more or less a con - we’re not cancelled (we think?!) - but as an increasing number of artists we like/are aware of get cancelled (or in some cases - don’t even though they probably should) we always knew that one day we’d have to address cancel culture itself. But what does that actually mean? For some, it’s a blanket term that simply sees artists dismissed, leaving their credi...

Your favourite dynamic duo return for the second week in a row as we chat about the soundtrack for Kevin Smith’s debut film, Clerks. This idea came to Chris at about a day’s notice, but it did give us at least enough time to think of a through line for this episode: the Clerks soundtrack is something of an anomaly. Whilst the film itself cost just over $27k to make, the licencing for the soundtrac...

From the mind of one auteur to another - this week things get a little darker and introspective as we discuss It’s a Wonderful Life, the third album by Sparklehorse. The career trajectory of Sparklehorse is an interesting, if ultimately tragic one. Moving from lo-fi, one man band recordings to working with multiple indie music legends, as slowly as Mark Linkous’ career evolved, it did seem as thou...

This week we are delighted to welcome back our good pal Kapil Seshasayee as he talks about his upcoming album, his latest single and how this particular album by Lithuanian-American musician Vyto B was a huge influence on his early work.   Tricentennial 2076 is a contender for being the most obscure thing we’ve yet covered on this podcast. Borning in obscurity in 1976, its existence and the myster...

There’s probably not many podcast out there that would happily slam Meat Loaf, Oasis, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper together over the course of an episode, but that’s just what we do here at Unsung. And this week, things are going to get even weirder as we start to talk about some more of the first records that influenced us. No matter what you think of the albums on the last episode or this episode, t...

Last week we said we were going to to Lil Kim but we’ve been unable to wrangle together the people needed to tackle it, so we’ve decided to launch a brand new feature instead called Intros. The idea is simple: we talk about the first albums we ever heard. We’ve split this down into three categories: The first one you remember playing a big role in your life courtesy of your parents or a family mem...

Much like last week, a warning before we begin: this episode contains the discussion of some fairly charged and unpleasant topics, including some deplorable ideas and music. Please be aware in advance that this show features some isolated samples and we’ve added them into this episode because we’re discussing a difficult topic and we trust our audience to exercise their own discretion. Hopefully y...

Before we begin, this episode contains the discussion of some fairly charged and unpleasant topics, including some deplorable ideas and music. Please be aware in advance that this show features some isolated samples and we’ve added them into this episode because we’re discussing a difficult topic and we trust our audience to exercise their own discretion. Hopefully you find this to be an informati...

Your favourite Poundland album review show is BACK and we have quite the selection for you on this episode. The lads have gifted each other with the following three albums: Mark has Alisha Rules the World by Alisha’s Attic. Chris has Odelay by Beck. Dave has A Weekend in the City by Bloc Party. It’s an interesting and fun selection, with some highlights and a lot of lowlights. Does anyone actually...

We promised to make our covermount episodes a recurring feature and we are here to make good on that promise. This week Crag joins us again and we’re talking about a “collection” that was included with the June 2006 issue of Uncut Magazine imitatively called “The Playlist”. If you were to think of words that end in “able” the first one that springs to mind with this covermount is “forgettable”. Sa...

We’re men of our word. As we look to clear all of our outstanding commitments from our old Patreon model (info on the new one - the Unsung Record Club - can be found here), there was one album we were asked to do that we’d been putting off for a while - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges by Colin Stetson. Our top subscriber Cory Robinson asked us to do this a while back, but it took us ages to get...

Dads of the world, UNITE! How do you follow the Beach Boys? Well, apparently it’s by covering Electric Light Orchestra. Going from one grandad band to one dad band seems to make a crude kind of sense, even if immersing oneself in the music of ELO is…difficult.   Not because they’re terrible. No no no. They are by no means a terrible band. Some of their music has aged well whereas some of it certai...

Whether pretending to be surfers and getting slapped with fines from the manager for swearing or cavorting with transcendental meditation and falling out with one another, The Beach Boys were never quite what people thought they were. They were often at each other’s throats, relationships were fraught a lot of the time, members of the band seemed to withdraw from the group and return whenever the...

Did you know that The Beach Boys have 29 studio albums, 11 live albums and a staggering 61 compilation records? Before we agreed to do their 16th(!!!) album Sunflower at Vicki’s behest, we knew it was going to be a huge undertaking but good lord , it was bigger than we could have ever imagined. And that’s to say nothing of the tumultuous interpersonal relationships between the band members. On one...

We’ve called this episode “The Covermount Mixtape” for now, but it hasn’t escaped us that a covermount essentially IS a mixtape, only one that was put together by magazines (with what is probably a fair amount of label/PR interference, but we digress…). So until we come up with a better name for this new series, we’re stuck with this for the time being. In any event, this is the first in what will...

Some time ago we threatened to do an episode on covermount CDs. For Chris, Dave and many, many other teenagers, the covermount CDs found bundled with copies of Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, NME and numerous other magazines were an indispensable way of finding new music. At a time when these music magazines were still in high circulation, the covermount CD (or cassette, or vinyl) was also a great way for...

All genres are littered with bands that somebody somewhere thinks are unsung. Some are unsung because they influenced other, more successful acts, whereas there are artists that are unsung because they just didn’t land quite the right way at the right time. That Petrol Emotion are, arguably, the latter. Formed by the brothers O’Neill from the ashes of legendary pop punk band The Undertones, That P...

We loved the last Sound is a Pound so much that we thought we’d go away and record another. You know the drill - each of us goes into a Poundland and buys two albums for £1 then “gifts” them to the other two hosts. You’d be surprised at some of the gems you can find in a Poundland store, actually… But we opted not to buy any of those classics. Instead, we opted for something a little more…bland. M...

Are InMe an unsung band? Is Overgrown Eden a forgotten classic? Well…you can make up your own mind on that. Us? We’ve certainly made up our mind. In fact, we’re not even going to bother playing coy with you here - we only did this episode because we were asked to do it for “the patter” by friend of the pod Craig B. He also paid us a handsome sum of money for the “privilege” and we really wish he h...

We’ve taken a week off this week because we had a bunch of admin stuff to catch up with at Unsung HQ, but we will return next week with something real fun. This week we thought unlock a Patreon bonus episode, and it is the latest instalment of our Sound as a Pound series. The concept is simple: we each buy an album from Poundland for our fellow two hosts and then we must listen to it and report ba...

Ah, electronica, how we have missed thee. This week we’re talking about the debut Factory Floor album and Chris gets to wondering why he like this album in the first place. Are they a minimal wave band? Post industrial? Tech house? All of these categories seem to fit in their own way, and we talk a little about all three of these, what they are and why they might be relevant to this band. Many sty...

Hello, Unsungers! We hope you had an excellent festive season. We’ve been hyping some changes to the subscription levels for a few months. So here goes. We feel that via our extended musical family (that’s you), Unsung has the potential to materially help under-recognised artists whilst also becoming a more interactive experience for yourselves. First and foremost, all of our main shows will remai...