Columbia House Party

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by comedian Lauren Mitchell (host of the @cavernofsecrets podcast) to discuss Death Cab For Cutie’s enormous 2003 hit Transatlanticism. The podcast will explore bands that performed at The Bait Shop on the hit show The OC, which served as a snapshot and elevator of the early-2000s indie rock scene. Find...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are just two boys talking about Just A Girl as they dive deep on No Doubt’s 1995 classic Tragic Kingdom. They’re also joined briefly by Cassie Leigh Clancy (@cassleigh, co-host of the @restingonpod podcast) to discuss the fashion side of Gwen Stefani’s legacy. Find out more about some of the controversy around Stef...

We’re that band, Radiohead. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by music and culture writer Josh Terry (@JoshhTerry) to break down Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rainbows. With a handful of interesting Radiohead options, the guys go the In Rainbows route out of deep appreciation, but maybe not because it’s their No. 1 Radiohead album. You, too,...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy circle back to another influential album, The Cure’s 1989 masterpiece, Disintegration. Part two, as Robert Smith tells it, of a three-part trilogy that spans 18 years and eight of their 13 records, Disintegration is The Cure at their best, with Smith’s songwriting and vocals at their peak and the ambition of the ov...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by basketball and culture writer Alex Wong (@steven_lebron, stevenlebron.com) to break down Lil Wayne’s 2008 smash hit, Tha Carter III. At the very peak of his power as the self-proclaimed Best Rapper Alive, Lil Wayne goes way outside of the usual rap album construct to push himself and the listener crea...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy realize it was time for them to Give The Drummer Some by diving deep on Travis Barker’s solo album of that name. Yes, Barker had a solo album. Yes, it kind of rules. No, rap-rock will never die. Find out more about Barker’s sad and arduous road to creating his solo project, the incredible list of hip-hop artists Ba...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into one of a handful of blink side-projects, +44’s lone album, When Your Heart Stops Beating. The unofficial follow-up to blink’s untitled album, +44 sees Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker continue down that same road, with Hoppus trying to extend himself creatively but ultimately reining himself back in. Find ou...

Breathing deeply, walking backwards. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive back into one of the seminal works of not only the pop-punk explosion but of all of early-2000s pop culture, Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. It was time for a blink episode, as a key moment in the podcast’s origin story involved our hosts quite lubricated on the...

A can of matches, a can of kerosene, a bad idea. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy revisit what they agree to be the best Alkaline Trio album, 2003’s Good Mourning. Even with the podcast still in its relative infancy, this almost felt overdue – Jake and Blake began their friendship arguing about the ranking of Alkaline Trio albums on Twitter. Find...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into an album that is inextricable from every episode that’s come before or will come after, the 1989 classic Doolittle from Pixies. It’s just Pixies, by the way. The impact Pixies had on all of alt-rock, pop-punk, and the subgenres between is well established but becomes obvious through a deep re-examining of...

We are three Canadian aquarium drinkers. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Steve Sladkowski, the guitarist from PUP, to discuss Wilco’s 2004 album, A Ghost is Born. The album that necessitated the addition of Nels Cline – first as a touring guitarist and later as a full-time member – A Ghost is Born sees Jeff Tweedy take a necessary l...

Hit save on your English lit essay and close your history textbook. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Jake’s friend Wilson to revisit and reprocess The Decemberists’ 2006 album, The Crane Wife. There is a lot going on here, with two sprawling, multi-part songs that lean heavily on historical (or mythical) source material and a few sta...

In this week's episode of Columbia House Party, Jake and Blake go deep on one of the most well-regarded side projects of the 2000s, Give Up from indie supergroup The Postal Service. With Dntel synths, Ben Gibbard’s vocals, and Jenny Lewis’, well, everything, Give Up withstands the test of time as something greater than a pit-stop before Death Cab for Cutie blew up. Find out more about how the reco...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into Conor Oberst’s punk-rock side-project, Desaparecidos. Not unlike a wrestler’s excursion, Oberst took a brief aside from his ascension as a part of Bright Eyes and as the face (and bangs) of a genre to do something a little different before ultimately returning. Read Music/Speak Spanish is more political a...

Other podcasts don’t love you like we love you. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by culture writer Sarah MacDonald (sarahsmacdonald.com) to discuss the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s 2003 debut album Fever to Tell. Karen O features heavily in Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me In The Bathroom, an exploration of the early-2000s New York rock scene, and for good...

Everything is alright! In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into Motion City Soundtrack’s 2005 album Commit This to Memory. Not only did Commit This to Memory lock in a definitive, unmistakable sound that cut through the saturation of the genre for Motion City Soundtrack, it was also the first foray into production for blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. Wh...

Jake and Blake take you on a walk through the first snowfall of winter to the soundtrack of The Weakerthans. With sprinkles of Canadiana, a triumvirate of songs in iambic pentameter, and a track from the perspective of a cat, John K. Samson is at his absolute best on Reconstruction Site, the band’s 2003 album that directly inspired the next wave of emo-pop and many in the emo revival. Find out mor...

Are you listening? In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into Jimmy Eat World’s fourth album, the crossover success Bleed American. A follow up to Clarity, which is often debated as their best album, Bleed American shifted from an emo-oriented sound toward alt-rock, producing eminently recognizable singles thanks to accessibly simple lyrics and ex...

How many hits can you have and still be misremembered as a one-hit wonder? In the latest episode of Columbia House Party hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy try to find out by diving into Third Eye Blind's self-titled album. The successful debut produced five singles over the course of two years, landing them on era-defining compilation albums and every late-90s and early-00s coming-of-age soundt...

It won’t always be pop-punk and emo. In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into one of the decade’s best pop albums, Robyn’s Body Talk. Long after Robyn first broke through outside of Sweden with Robyn is Here, Body Talk represented her three-part return to the North American charts and consciousness. With two elite singles – both firmly in the to...

Sooner or later, Columbia House Party had to tackle 'The Only Album.' Hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Andrew Zuber of Sportsfeld to dissect the quintessential mid-2000s pop-punk album, Fall Out Boys’ From Under the Cork Tree. Dripping in sarcasm and self-deprecation, From Under the Cork Tree makes it’s sad, oft-unrequited lyrics more accessible with power-pop riffs, well-designe...

In the most-anticipated episode of Columbia House Party yet, Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into My Chemical Romance’s ambitious rock opera The Black Parade. A follow-up to their breakthrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, The Black Parade takes the MCR aesthetic up several notches and leans into a dark, quirky, ultimately redemptive single-story arc about The Patient. The album was a...

In this episode of Columbia House Party hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy dive into Weezer’s sophomore album, the cult classic and infamously divisive Pinkerton. A follow up to their wildly successful Blue album, Pinkerton came after a short hiatus that saw headman Rivers Cuomo undergo extensive surgery and commence studies at Harvard University. Disillusioned with his once-dream of being a roc...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by Sarah MacDonald (@sarahsmacdonald, sarahsmacdonald.com), to discuss Phoebe Bridgers’ 2020 sophomore album Punisher. This is the show’s first crack at covering a new album without the benefit of at least some nostalgia, so it’s good the hosts had Sarah to guide them. Find out more about Bridgers’ songw...

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy get a little more modern with Foxing’s 2018 album Nearer My God. The second most-recent album the guys have explored, Nearer My God ranked atop Jake’s 2018 album rankings and near the top of his all-decade list. Find out more about Foxing’s growth across three albums, where there was drama around some bagpipes, and...