Discord and Rhyme: An Album Podcast

In Prog John’s first go-around as host, the Discord and Rhyme crew (John, Amanda, Mike, and Dan) turn their attention to the debut album of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, an album and band that everyone in this episode agrees is far better than consensus critical opinion would suggest. John offers a spirited defense not only of the band and this album, but also of prog rock in general as well as of o...

Do we really need to introduce Aretha Franklin? Undisputedly the best soul singer around — perhaps the best singer, period — her string of massive hits and modern classics is longer than some other artists’ entire careers. Her voice is so recognizable now that it’s easy to take for granted, but when she moved to Atlantic Records in 1967 and released I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, she made...

Everybody go put on your sundresses over babydoll t-shirts and turn your baseball caps backward, because this is a mid-’90s party! Amanda took the opportunity to make Phil, Rich, and Will revisit 1994 and Under the Table and Dreaming , Dave Matthews Band’s studio debut. We all enjoyed this album when we were teenagers in the ‘90s, but since then, at least one of us has soured on it considerably. C...

It's Discord & Rhyme's first hip-hop album! In this watershed episode, our producer, Mike, walks Rich, Will, and Phil through hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030's self-titled 2000 dystopian sci-fi opus. Deltron 3030, a collaboration between emcee Del the Funky Homosapien, turntablist Kid Koala, and producer Dan the Automator, is at once funny, action-packed, thematically dense, and searing in its...

We're talking about Ween today, so listener beware: Here be dragons, also salty language. For his first outing as host, Phil Maddox leads his co-hosts through New Hope, PA, alternative rock duo Ween’s highly idiosyncratic and mildly sophomoric 1997 release The Mollusk. Ween initially gained notoriety in the early ’90s, when major labels were snapping up every weird band under the sun in search of...

In Episode 2, we talk about an album all four of us know by heart and love passionately: On the Threshold of a Dream, the third album by the Moody Blues. We start with our own adaptation of “In the Beginning,” the poem that begins the album, and we couldn’t resist throwing in a Simpsons joke. (You get a bunch of thirtysomethings together, Simpsons jokes are inevitable.) We provide an overview of t...

For one of the most popular, beloved, and commercially successful bands of the 1970s, Earth, Wind, & Fire have become something of an afterthought by the 2010s. Bandleader Maurice White’s death in February 2016 earned a few loving obituaries, but mostly got lost in the shuffle between Bowie and Prince’s respective passings. More recently, Taylor Swift’s gentrified, tone-deaf cover of their signatu...