The New Dad Rock

Happy Rock-tober everyone! Steve is back to work and back behind the wheel commuting. And what is a commuting man to do but catch up on some recent releases? Join Keith and Steve as they drive the latest additions to The New Dad Rock canon your way: Two rare live Pavement albums new to streaming services; The latest by San Francisco psych rockers The Osees ;  Perennial New Dad Rockers The Flaming...

Vinyl is poised to outsell CDs this year (2020) for the first time since 1986. A big part of that can be attributed to Record Store Day which has been raising the profile and interest in music on vinyl since 2008. From humble beginnings with just 10 special releases to this year's COVID-inspired four consecutive months of Record Store Days featuring hundreds of unique, exclusive, and early re...

By the late 80s, the halcyon sound of synthesizers and electronic drums had become ubiquitous. No artist was safe from the effervescent mechanical march that swept up Rush and resulted in Judas Priest's make most controversial album ( Turbo ). But this episode has literally nothing to do with any of that. You're welcome. No, this week The New Dad Rock delves deep into the uncanny valley....

I just heard a new band called the Osees. No, not Thee Oh Sees, or Oh Sees, or OCS, Osees. For the past 20-plus years, John Dwyer has been a musical chameleon appearing in several bands, half of which have a very similar sounding name. He's the musician Keith has seen live most often and no matter the venue or the band around him, he puts on a stellar show. We tell you all about it here. Alas...

Much to Keith's chagrin, it's time for another episode about metal. This time we take on perennial dad favorite: 80s thrash. While the average TNDR listener may know a couple Metallica songs, have heard of Megadeth and Anthrax , or even shouted, " Slayer !" at a concert, there is much more to the genre than just The Big Four. Steve conducted some market research (i.e., texted a...

Steve sings his way through Keith's slide show of his recent camping trip (and drive) to Lassen National Park. Along a meandering drive through the Sierras, they uncover more constituents of The New Dad Rock including Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Death From Above 1979, Jay-Z, and American Music Club. As Keith describes the scenic wonder, they reminisce on the halcyon days when every computer had a...

Gene and Dean Ween are the best songwriting duo since Jagger and Richards, or Lennon and McCartney, or maybe it's Rogers and Hammerstein. You get the point. They are geniuses. Their canon features hundreds and hundreds of songs played to perfection in every genre. Sometimes these songs are drenched in feedback or feature pitch-adjusted vocals. Other times they play Dylanesque odes to former l...

No, this isn't about the Dinosaur, Jr. album with the same name. It's weirder than that. In the decades since Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and dozens of psychedelic bands topped the charts, experimental music has been pushed to the side; ghettoized. But it has always been there and continues to evolve like a kaleidoscope. Steve takes Keith on a journey down the rabbit hole, deep underground...

Greg Dulli has compiled a successful career on over a dozen albums spanning the past three decades. From his anachronistic band of the grunge era, The Afghan Whigs, to his Twilight Singers project and back again, he has dazzled us with his debonair stylings. On August 1, he played two (mostly) solo concerts that were livestreamed. Steve, who is on record as 'a better Afghan Whigs fan than mos...

Oh, You Ate One Too? What is The New Dad Rock? What is Dad Rock? No matter how you define it, dads (and practically everyone else) love Van Halen. Their songs get the party started and it's almost impossible not to smile when listening to their music. Especially the David Lee Roth era. This week, Keith and Steve are joined by a special guest to discuss Van Halen's place in The New Dad Ro...

It's summertime, and that means it's time for the annual rite of passage: the family road trip. Miles upon miles of boring highway driving, traffic, detours, cheap hotels, children fighting, the license plate game, and, if you're smart, a great stack of CDs to listen to. Join Keith and Stave as they eat ice cream and share selections from the road. It's a New Dad Rock summer sp...

The New Dad Rock takes you on a surprise journey through the far too brief career of Juice WRLD. (If you don't know ask your kids.) In just a few short years, he went from a teen self-releasing rhymes on SoundCloud to a full-fledged, arena headlining legend. He toured the world and rapped with the biggest names in the business. He was on a flight higher and higher, until the demons he spoke a...

You may consider Blind Melon a one hit wonder, if you think of them at all. While "No Rain" continues to be ubiquitous in 90s playlists, their three album run with Shannon Hook on lead vocals contains a surprising wealth of great tunes. From a personal connection with Axl Rose to the cover of Rolling Stone , Blind Melon blasted out of the gate with their eponymous debut album. However, d...

With a definition as wide as the Montana sky and featuring tales as tall as Kentucky bluegrass, Country music is as American as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Over the past several years, Keith has dipped his toe in the proverbial water of those stylings we reckon as Country music. Now, a gluttonous alligator stalks him, ready to latch onto that toe and drag him deep into the bog that represents said...

At long last, Steve convinces Keith to dedicate an entire episode to metal. From its roots in the late 1960s with Black Sabbath and Steppenwolf, through its evolution in the 70s, to mainstream acceptance in the 80s, and a terrible detour through the Nu Metal years they cover it all. So whether you're like Steve, rocking out with the sign of the horns raised high, or like Keith, cowering in fe...

How do you describe someone whose talent leaves your speechless? From an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in her early twenties, through her many award winning albums, prolific collaborations, and forays into other fine arts, Steve and Keith do their best to put into words how they feel about PJ Harvey. Join them as they present a career overview of the diminutive phenomenon from Engla...

Keith innocently asks Steve how he finds new music. Steve replies with a case study of how he discovered the rock band Baroness only to unwittingly become their biggest fan for a brief period in 2019. If you want to check out Baroness, here are a few songs to whet your appetite: "A Horse Called Golgotha" from Blue Record "Take My Bones Away" from Yellow & Green "Mornin...

In the year 2000, Modest Mouse graduated from the scrappy, low-fi punks that we knew and loved to became critically-acclaimed major label artists. Join Steve and Keith as they look back at the circumstances surrounding the release of The Moon & Antarctica , their initial reactions to the band's new direction, and an assessment of the work twenty years on. Along the way they delve into suc...

As parents, we are responsible for bringing out the best in our youth. Is censoring music, keeping them away from art, and limiting their expression the way to do it? Steve and Keith share the travails of parenting today against a backdrop of authoritarian credos aimed at them since adolescence. Having been raised under the guidance of the PMRC and Nancy Reagan's Just Say No! campaign, the sp...

Tours, concerts, and other large gatherings are on hiatus due to coronavirus. This has left millions of music fans missing their favorite artists. To sate their thirst for spectacle, many bands have been participating in Livestreams--appointment airings of classic concerts, rare footage, studio out-takes, conferenced performances, and various ephemera. Keith and Steve examine this phenomena citing...

Pavement is one of The New Dad Rock's favorite bands, but perhaps you are not well-versed in their oeuvre. Let Keith and Steve guide you through their career highlights, regale you with anecdotes tangentially related to the band, and otherwise guide you on your search for enlightenment. If you're up for further exploration, please enjoy this (by no means exhaustive) playlist of Pavement...

Steve and Keith take a trip down their memory holes back to 1993 and their late night all-request radio show, "Radio Static." It turns out they have always "struggled with the format." Songs by bands discussed in this episode include: " Radio Static " by Barkmarket; " Worlock " by Skinny Puppy; " Savory " by Jawbox; " Bronx Cheer " by Mer...

In 1999 , Pavement enlisted producer extraordinaire Nigel Godrich ( Radiohead , Beck , etc) for the recording of what turned out to be their swan song, Farewell Horizontal, err Terror Twilight. It was a contentious meeting of the minds. In the end, Nigel's favored track listing was discarded and the album was reordered by Spiral Stairs. Now, more than 20 years later, Keith and Steve describe...

The obligatory introductory episode. Steve and Keith establish their bona fides as musical tastemakers (or lack there of). They summarize their years as college radio DJs , album reviewers, and interviewers of obscure bands with strange names. There doesn't seem to be any definition of what Dad Rock is, but the following songs, which are all performed by bands mentioned within the episode, ma...