Best Album For

We discover that we have very different ideas about what it means to decompress, from when that process should begin to how it should end. Should decompression be energizing after a long day, or should it help us unwind? We debate what makes for a good decompression album and make it through multiple genres along the way. Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner [SPOILER ALERT] Albums recommended i...

It’s part two of our superhero origin stories as we unpack Dave’s arrival at becoming ‘musically sentient’ — the first album he remembers where music meant to him what it means now. We journey through the Bangles and ‘Do the Bartman’ to arrive at a seismic shift in music history that Dave caught at the perfect age, and unpack the way we can attach ourselves to both music and musicians in powerful...

This week we’re releasing two new episodes on the same theme: the first album you remember where music held the place that is means to you now — what we call ‘becoming musically sentient.’ Caleb takes us way back to fifth grade when music videos on MTV were the most influential thing in the pop universe and a certain (extremely problematic) king of pop caused him to first diverge from his parent’s...

Summer is here and along with it comes numerous excuses to gather in someone’s backyard to grill out (or, barbecue / BBQ if you’re from the midwest. We see you, Texas.) What are the most important things to consider when creating your playlist for a backyard BBQ? From target audience to volume to what purpose music serves in these settings, Dave & Caleb have you covered. Don’t miss a cornucopi...

Two guys who have never done any hard drugs choose the best album for a hallucinogenic drug experience. Why? Because they’ve seen every movie and television depiction of the experience, good and bad, from the last 30+ years and have a pretty clear idea of how to establish criteria for such an experience. As long as, you know, you too are less interested in the actual experience and more interested...

In the last of the launch week episodes, Dave and Caleb figure out the Best Album For Apologizing to Your Kids. What music would work best in the background of modeling emotional health and doing the hard work of repairing with your kids? Along the way, they discover that many of the great apology songs are surrounded by songs that are completely inappropriate for young minds, do a deep dive on wh...

In the second of three launch week episodes, Dave and Caleb choose their Best Album For a nearly universal human experience — Cratering a Social Network. What kind of music would someone listen to if they were making the choices that a certain social media exec has been making over the last several months? Along the way, they get nostalgic for Walmart electronic sections with edited album covers a...

It’s launch week, and in the first of three episodes, Dave and Caleb present their picks for the Best Album For Starting a Podcast. They find a not-so-deep cut from 1995 that captures all of their hopes and dreams for this new venture, and then discuss what to do with albums that once fit the topic perfectly but now are shrouded in controversy and scandal, and try not to touch the third rail as th...