Sub Titles

Really exciting episode for Matt who gets to dissect The Pixies’ vibrant, enduring classic Doolittle , an album as influential as it was weird in 1989. The Pixies’ now basically patented loud-soft-loud (or soft-loud-soft if they were feeling feisty) stands the test of time and endures in many an album from the 90s and 00s, including The Mars Volta’s delightfully insane De-Loused in the Comatorium...

Tim takes Sunrise, the AFI movie this week, as a unique journey narrative, a Journey to Tilsit, that pushes couples to the brink. Dodsworth faces an uphill battle against Sub Titles-core movie Before Midnight, listen to see how well Tim fares selling the profound-in-its-uncomfortableness experience of both (He does well!). Keep your Myers-Briggs and enneagram, on this podcast we judge people by th...

Meet Me in the Bathroom, Lizzie Goodman’s essential oral history of the early 2000s NYC rock revival, chronicles the rise and coked out denouement of bands like The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Vampire Weekend, and the Walkmen. With The Strokes’ debut Is This It as this week’s Spin entry, Matt looks to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever to Tell and The Walkmen’s Bows + Arrows as essential documents of...

You might be thinking that this episode will be nothing but silly. Shame on you! It’s not only silly. Tim finds much pathos as he guides us through the relationship between vessel and captain in the mega-smash Titanic and not as mega-smashes but highly compelling 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Master and Commander .

Björk is a genre unto herself and Homogenic one of her earliest masterpieces. Apparently Iceland has fertile ground for growing experimental acts in general and we take some time to dig into Sigur Ros and mum, two acts pushing and ignoring genre much like Björk. Is it worth trying to understand what Jonsi is singing? Does mum take us to the limit of how much post-rock doesn’t need to, ya know, roc...

True to form, Tim and Matt end up hating on Gen X more than Boomers here. Listen to find out how! And to hear more about a few significant and ideologically loaded films that speak directly about and to a generation brought up on a hope quickly destroyed in the late 60’s and beyond. Easy Rider is the AFI entry for the week, which leads Tim to discussion of Shampoo and Modern Romance as we look bey...

Paul’s Boutique remains as thrilling and befuddling as ever, a deeply fun listen that somehow, someway remains on streaming platforms despite it’s impressively liberal usage of samples and references. To say a record still lacking a comprehensive list of samples used is dense feels like understatement. In this episode, Matt introduces two other exceptionally Dense albums in mewithoutYou’s appendix...

Tim slowly encroaches on Matt’s music territory with another week of musical theming, in the form of full interludes this week. With the Marx Bros’ romp A Night at the Opera as his inspiration, Tim guides us through two very-not-Marx-Bros-like films that also make weighty use of well-timed Musical Interludes: Short Cuts and Anatomy of a Murder .

Brian Wilson, he of Beach Boys fame and writer of such brilliance as “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows,” is notoriously shy and reclusive. His genius, however, is indisputable. In this episode, we take a look at three artists with shades of Brian Wilson: reclusive, a bit prickly, genius-level songwriters. The Magnetic Field’s 69 Love Songs , Spin’s entry for the week, showcases Stephin Merritt...

When Oliver Stone hits he hits hard. When he misses he whiffs entirely. Platoon has some of both. While Tim and Matt spend some time talking about the film’s war bonafides, and lack thereof, Tim directs us to the theme of Classical Needledrops, inspired by Platoon’ s use of “Adagio for Strings.” He then continues the reclamation of Heaven’s Gate and waxes about personal favorite The Right Stuff ,...

Public Enemy’s incendiary and essential Fear of a Black Planet prompts Matt to think about and present different ways of presenting and embodying black power in music. Still to his and Tim’s befuddlement, Ms. Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a viable replacement option and squares off here against scrappy underdog Things Fall Apart , The Roots’ jazz-hop classic.

In which Tim and Matt do a really good job of not just quoting Tevye and heaping praise on Topol. AFI gives Tim 12 Angry Men to work with, which he turns into the afore-referenced Fiddler on the Roof and Ratatouille. What connects a fourth-wall-breaking traditionalist and a rat-chef? Persuasion, of course! Come for the favorite Tevye moments, stay for an actually genuine discussion of rhetoric and...

In this episode Matt explains a subgenre you might have heard of but remains mysterious, much like the swells and swirls of the music it produces. We talk Shoegaze in all its gauzy and aqueous goodness via My Bloody Valentine’s still gorgeous Loveless , and Matt presents two other Shoegaze heavyweights to illustrate the different spirits of the genre and to determine which is the best representati...

The 1938 screwball classic Bringing Up Baby is the AFI entry for this episode, and man is the leopard cute. Tim talks through the zany...everything of the film before casting it as an example of Patrician Romance. With that theme Ernst Lubitsch makes his second appearance on the podcast in Heaven Can Wait , which goes against Dorothy Arzner's Craig's Wife in a battle of rich folk being various deg...

A battle of hip-hop heavyweights this week. Jay Z's The Blueprint is the Spin entry, an album that functions as both a statement of success and as a model for how to Grow Old in hip-hop, a genre notorious (in 2001) for not having many artists with long careers (or even lives). Matt talks through Nas' Stillmatic and The Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death as other examples of how rappers deal with...

With the Philadelphia of it all as his guide, Tim remarks on the importance of Pennsylvania to The Sixth Sense and then to The Irishman and Witness . We talk about the twist, marvel at the performances in The Irishman, giggle about Al Pacino devouring scenes as Jimmy Hoffa, discuss the sight of peak Harrison Ford in Amish country, consider the stark differences between parts of PA not but an hour...

Sonic Youth were part of a vanguard of bands in the late 80s redefining what guitar music and American rock could sound like. In this episode, we look at more recent artists that wield Distortion with a similar verve to Sonic Youth: Silversun Pickups and Mitski. We discuss how such heavy, fuzzy effects can increase emotional impact. We also realize that Rock Band II has to be the subject of a futu...

Swing Time is really a showcase for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in all their grace and beauty. In this episode, Tim brings for consideration two other films that are showcases of talent. One is a powerhouse, and inimitable, solo performance by Judy Garland in A Star is Born (‘54); the other may be the most beloved ensemble in history. Listen to see if and how Matt might talk himself out of the...

D’Angelo’s simply incredible Voodoo kick-started a truly impressive year for albums in 2000 with its concoctions of soul, R&B, hip-hop, funk, blues, and damn near everything else. Heady arrangements with visceral kick is basically the D’Angelo brand, which Matt discusses in this episode before introducing two other vitally important Neo-Soul albums that came before the crest that was Voodoo :...

Full as they are with Content, Sub Titles episodes don't always allow Tim and Matt to slow down on niche topics, as is their wont. We'll be doing just that after every tenth episode, dedicating a bonus episode to topics we want to discuss further, and differently. On deck for this inaugural episode is Tim trying to convince you all that he does actually like Meryl Streep, with a ranking of her per...

Meryl Streep acts the hell out of Sophie’s Choice in a way few could. See if that’s enough to warrant kind words from Tim who discusses two other movies driven by women making choices in dire straits. Sub Titles darling If Beale Street Could Talk and the multi-dimensional chess game that is A Letter to Three Lives present Women on the Verge and having to make often impossible choices.

Do you like Pavement? Do you even remember Pavement? If you’re of a certain age you might. Otherwise, join Matt in slagging and dragging Pavement for their grating aloofness. While Pavement does the whole “it’s ironic, get it” shtick, Matt turns focus to two bands where the shtick is the Form: Ween and Art Brut.

Goodfellas (somehow only 91 for AFI!) ends with Henry Hill eating egg noodles with ketchup like a schnook. While it's hard to sympathize with a Henry Hill, the moment probably feels real to many of us, as do the events of two other films following schnooks, The Crowd and Wendy and Lucy . Join us in this episode to hear Tim sing the praises of Goodfellas and then lead us through the somber, affecti...

Endtroducing….. remains a masterclass in hip-hop production and sampling, and is an ode to DJ Shadow’s record store and collection. An album recorded on a simple four-track, Endtroducing….. prompts this episode’s discussion of Home Recording in which Matt discusses Iron and Wine’s The Creek Drank the Cradle and Jay Som’s Turn Into as exemplars of taking potential recording limitations and making t...

I have but one thing to say: suicide condors. Okay fine, I’ll say more. Join us to hear Tim discuss the Eye-Popping and shocking nature of The French Connection while I make jokes about Gene Hackman’s hat and see how we get to screwball war acting troupe turned screwball actual war resistance group and aforementioned divebombing condors along with random shootings of main characters.