The Album Concept Hour

Every once in a long while, we get a chance to talk to a musician directly about their own music on this podcast. From our first encounter with Grant Summerland and his indie horror hip-pop album "Bigfoot Museum" to our exclusive first look at indie rock legends, Mommyheads' album "Age of Isolation" (courtesy of one Adam Elk)--to Spiral Cell's one man space opera with "The Maze in the Tree Rings",...

" I was bored as fuck Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff Like if anyone I've slept with is dead And I got stuck On death and dying and obsessive thoughts that won't let up Makes me feel Like I'm about to throw up " ...the album. OG crew today. Brad, Jon, and Dave! Episode Links: PUP music video playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKcGEIO7V0rUER80twWd3xahxQa8CEJSK Dungeons a...

Twenty albums. In ten years. If you're a fan of this podcast, you're no stranger to the fact that King Gizzard is prolific AF. The past few years, they have had to slow down and do just an album a year remotely, but they are back in the physical proximity of each other again, and it's time to celebrate. For King Gizzard, this celebration takes the form of an explosion of genres, calling back to th...

Time traveling babes... dimension hopping heroes... dinosaurs at war with system jumping surfing cyborgs... and of course the ever present Brahmatron... These are the kinds of things you can expect to encounter when you drink the Alchemist's Pink Lemonade. Be careful though. If you seek quick fixes, then you may just be a Fool... Seriously though, guys, this album slaps. With special guest from th...

Guys... it's time. It's finally time to talk about Brad's humble beginnings in a Christian Pop Punk band long, long, ago in the 2000s... by the name of... Alakrity. It was then that Brad was a founding member, bass player, and backup vocalist for a small group out of Beloit, WI with big dreams. They traveled from coast to coast, using their three guitarists to melt faces with gnarly double guitar...

The year is 2006. Nikki has been locked up 18 years for the murder of his lover, Mother Mary, which he didn't commit. Dr X, a political extremist, used Nikki's anger and heroin addiction to make him into a political assassin. His job was simple. He killed. He got smack. But when Nikki refused to assassinate his love, Dr X took matters into his own hands, murdering Mary, and framing Nikki for it. H...

This is getting out kind of late, so I'll leave it at this. Islans GOOD. With Brad, Jake, Nate from Side B, and special guest and folk musician Orange G! Links from ep: Orange G's bandcamp: https://www.orangeg.bandcamp.com "Can you kill the Ender Dragon with only bread?" video: https://youtu.be/vMzp4cwn0mQ deep cuts "A guide to King Crimson": https://youtu.be/KcdGDNNvUO4 Other Links: OUR DISCORD:...

We've discussed many albums on this podcast that are considered the album that fundamentally changed the band from that point forward. From Iron Maiden's guitarist Adrian Smith leaving after "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son"; to the immediate crumbling of the relationships in Pink Floyd during and after "The Wall"; sometimes bands need to change how they are doing things and who is involved. However,...

Guys, we've done a lot of concept albums. From the greats, like The Wall and Deloused in the Comatorium, to some of the less greats, such as Songs about Jane and Christmas in the Stars. But NEVER have we encountered a concept that has been so poorly executed as today's album. "Garth Brooks in... the Life of Chris Gaines" (or Chris Gaines' "Greatest Hits" as it was released) is like a fever dream....

Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars join forces to create the silkiest sound to hit the airwaves in decades. Let Silk Sonic take you to another world where things just hit different. Can we take it higher? Oh yeaaaaaaahhhhhhh........ Brad, Jon, and Jake "the Snake" Foster. Links from ep: Anderson .Paak's Tiny Desk concert: https://youtu.be/ferZnZ0_rSM Silk Sonic performs "Leave the Door Open" at the 202...

After two long months of waiting, fans of Low Level Owl volume 1 finally got their finale in the form of it's companion piece Low Level Owl volume 2. This half is much more experimental and moody, but no less impactful than the first. Although there are less 'hits', this second release resonates with it's listener, as it's vague descriptions of life's hardships make it an incredibly personal exper...

Much like the lyrics in this album, I'll be brief. The 2000s were a strange time for rock music, and it was dominate by angst and sadness, epitomized by emo and nu metal. Much of this was understandably seen as immature and lacking some world-weariness, but there were a lot of groups that either were coming from the previous shoegaze wave of music, or that changed their tune after a few years of a...

We've discussed the beginning of Outlaw country in the US with our episode about "Wanted: The Outlaws" from 1976 featuring the progenitors of the genre, Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser, Waylon Jennings, & Willie Nelson. It was the greatest collaboration between Outlaw country artists ever. It was, that is, until just about a decade later. In 1985, Waylon and Willie finally took part in the next g...

(This is a podcast ep about cuttin' muffins.) It has been 20 years since Adult Swim first graced our cable boxes, bringing us such absurd and weird programming as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, and eventually The Brak Show Starring Brak (along with all those new ones all the kids are watching). But before it was the mainstay of comedy that it is now, it was just a...

The year is 2002. Rap music is still on it's skyrocket to mainstream appreciation. Death Row and Def Jam had major success in the 90s and Rock-A-Fella was the new kid on the block that would take rap to the top where it would stay. There were a lot of amazing mainstream rappers like 50 Cent, Ludacris, and Eminem, but rap was getting more and more glamorous, and some rappers wanted to stay grimey....

Today we have an exciting interview and exclusive sneak peek into Mommyheads' brand new album “Age of Isolation” with lead singer/guitarist and producer of the album, Adam Elk! Mommyheads have created some excellent music over the years, gaining attention in the 90s indie rock scene before grunge, coming up alongside bands like Weezer and Radiohead. There was seemingly only room for a few indie ro...

We're doing something a little different today. Since we had to shuffle some things around, we couldn't record an episode so we decided to show you what our livestream “The Island” was like in it's place. Every other week, Nate, Reis, and Brad go back to the island to listen to a new location based playlist with a new genre every week. This episode is a real nostalgia-fest, as Brad tries to create...

The great SWIFT OFF is upon us! We teased it on our Pet Sounds episode, but now we are really getting INTO IT. We're going to dive deep into her career from 2008 with the original release of "Fearless" to 2021 with her own "Taylor's Version" of the album (which she painstakingly re-recorded start to finish), and we have a HEATED debate about the soul of modern country music! Are you team Taylor or...

We're crossing another epic album off the list today with Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions". By the time this released in 1973, Wonder had already completed 15 albums (16 if you include his greatest hits) for the Tamia label on Motown Records. Coming off the heels of "Talking Book", he was already a completely realized artistic force and he had no intention of stopping any time soon. With "Innervisio...

It's our 3rd installment in killer children's movie soundtracks and of course we have back our soundtrack aficionados, Griffin and Alex Woodchicken to break down another time capsule of a soundtrack, designed perfectly for a child growing up in the 90s. That's right, it's possibly the greatest(?) children's soundtrack ever conceived by corporate America: the Digimon: the Movie soundtrack. Where th...

It's not often that our guest walks such a similar path as the artist that we're discussing. The artist is Carole King, a studio musician and songwriter that wrote for legendary singers like Aretha Franklin, James Taylor, and Joni Mitchell—before solidifying a singer/songwriter career of her own with her album “Tapestry”. The guest we have on is Jordan Duffy, an engineer at the podcast network Ear...

In the second part of Jimmy's Journey to find out who he is and what he lives for, he seeks the comfort of Brighton, where all of his amazing experiences with the mods took place. After finding that Sting aka Ace Face, one of the coolest mods, has begun working at the hotel they once trashed just a few years prior. Jimmy is feeling more and more like what they did meant nothing and gets closer and...

We are winding down to the end of season two with just four episodes left until we start with a fresh new season after 80 episodes of the podcast! We did a lot of double albums in season two, so to start off our countdown to the end, we're talking about the first disc of The Who's "Quadrophenia", considered by many to be the quintessential Who album. Last time we discussed The Who, we were talking...

The 80s started in 1979. If one were to pinpoint a single thing that brought all the popular music of the 80s together, it would have to be the newly utilized “gated reverb” production technique for the drums. The drum solo that plays in Phil Collins' “In the Air Tonight” right before Mike Tyson punches Ed Helm—is the most popular example of that effect, and definitely one of the first. However, h...

It's episode 75 and we have a double feature for you guys! We've danced around jazz music up to this point, as it is an influence on many other music genres, but today we're finally diving in to jazz proper. Since there were so few tracks on these albums (and because jazz music is a little harder to discuss), we decided to do our first double feature for an artist. First we have Hancock's 1965 alb...