tripping balls (a music podcast?)

This week: for music ep 450, we revisit the music of 1996.  In a Very Special Episode to mark 450 music episodes (Big Round Number!) and kick off season 2026, Doc, Beeso and Adam draft, snipe and gripe their way through a snake draft of the biggest and best albums of 1996, and discover that the Venn diagrams of ‘biggest’ and ‘best’ might not overlap as much as you’d think. WARNING. NOSTALGIA IS AN...

This week: it’s Album Of The Year time. Doc and Beeso count down each of our five favourite albums of 2025, and talk near-misses, disappointments and trends from the year just gone. Also: Dead week revisited, yes-no-maybe, accepting your flaws, best releases vs best albums, immediately failed predictions, albums you neither enjoy nor recommend, NYC real estate, early mover advantage, Mrs Beeso Rea...

This week: it’s Bring Out Your Dead week , our last chance to review new albums for 2025, featuring albums from Alien Weaponry | Alison Wonderland | Automatic | Bee Bee Sea | De La Soul | Erick Sermon of EPMD | Mini Skirt | Powder Chutes | ROMES | These New South Whales . No we’re not doing timestamps for all that, it was enough of a hassle splicing in Beeso’s island-internet-addled voicenotes. Me...

This week’s new albums: Mungo’s Hi-Fi | Troy Kingi | Pabst Also: unexpected empathy, geographical separation, rejected premises, previous benchmarks of this genre , pulling stumps, group credit, previous benchmarks of this artist , planning ep 1 of 2027, fantasy booking album 10/10, hiphop AOTY, sample detectives, the least worst stuff Diddy did, back of a length, release the masters, 4000 postcod...

This week’s new albums: Avett Brothers & Mike Patton | Cheap Trick | Home Front | Dick Move Also, in a bonus-length holiday special*: 25% extra, country folk, now this is going to be fun , the wrong kind of WTF, it might be Tomahawk actually, tuatara evolution, big in Japan, five bands you’ve seen live, hello there and/or goodnight ladies and gentlemen, going home, heaven knows I’m not miserab...

This week’s new albums: Creeper | Psychedelic Porn Crumpets | Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers Also: Tech SNAFUs, more amateur dramatics, a million in prizes, unserious operators, live from Las Vegas, learning nothing and growing not at all, music to boomer to, Frenzal sledges, fictional 2002 girlfriends, painful and cringe, narrative throughputs, accidental fash, shouts to Canada, the most Beeso p...

This week’s new albums: DJ Premier twice over | The Vasco Era | Arseless Chaps Also: Interchangeable descriptions, throwbacks on throwbacks, the repeatability crisis, second verse same as the first, the two sweetest words in the English language, #ColesRadio, HAAY HAAY HAAY HAAY YEAH, Sizzletown Extended Universe, literal joke joker albums, Christian or emo?, Minecraft tributes,  weirdest timeline...

This week’s new albums: The New Eves | Militarie Gun | Mhaol Also: Add jingles, big hag energy, habitual lane selectors, Niamhe say Niamhe again, words vs music, no seriously the state of these lyrics , HJ Premier, singles night, our consensus (second) favourite album of 2017 , albums that don’t exist , getting away with it, running out of years, the best time to be beaten up, our first annual men...

This week’s new albums: Geese | GANS | The Pack A.D. Also: Listener feedback, mouse models, trying everything, dissonant shifts, the wisdom of crowds, it could even be a boat, old school 4ZZZ areas, liquid skin irritations, Kenny Beats strays, texting it in, greatest misses, first album energy, best laid plans, the least worthwhile GoFundMe in history, finally a working definition of post-punk, ma...

This week’s new albums: The Southern River Band | The Superjesus | St. Paul & the Broken Bones Also: Mineral extraction, late Foos, wasting heartbeats, knob and the attainment thereof, falling in the gutter, we have Airbourne at home, Greta drivebys , Gizzard drivebys, Thirsty Merc drivebys, hollow eyes, twenty years off, trapped in amber, going gangbusters, not looking for customer feedback,...

This week’s albums: New Olivia Dean and Rocket | Old Skunkhour Also: Byron piano fights, Shield chat, live from a grass hill at UQ, big label regret, festival mixtapes, non-existent albums, Stockdale discovers Grammarly, the best of the Grafton TAFE, sweet flat whites, soundtrack bait, aging rock chicks, chuck brick and two smoking barrels, your call is important to us, extended exposure to pop, T...

This week’s new albums: The Living End   | Say She She | Snõõper Also: Country pubs and rail trails, digital cleanliness, backloaded takes, this song is not profound, the two kinds of Taylor discourse, the last good website , failed segues, Beeso re-reads bios, Baggio copped worse for less , AI summaries, UN resolutions against the proliferation of the word ‘punk’ in music genres, everyone’s a dia...

This week’s new albums: Playlunch | Queen Rodeo | Bass Drum Of Death Also: Beeso hates your children, the Aunty Donna effect, PNW climate soundtracks, vibe dependency, future JJJ faves, garage bands on GarageBand, stealth mic’ing, drops without builds, Spotify genre or new hop varietal?, more slide whistle,  ten cent beer disco demolition night , stopped clocks, jetskis mitigate against creativity...

This week’s new albums: Faithless | TV Death | GHOSTWOMAN Also: good old Collingwood forever, bring your kids to work day, Death Stranding 3 Juventus 4, chronological fails, Marmite vocals, unacquired tastes, big noise and big gestures, Jesus and the Mary Chain, it’s the vibe, haunting the group chat, annual assignments, get in on the ground floor , the very definition of a joker album, the future...

This week’s new albums: The Beaches | The Beths | The Hives Also: homeopathy, chicks can be guys too, apologetic swag, Tarantino source material, Denny Green albums, straw polls, bad places to get music recs, Sons of Gallagher, on them things, depression diptyches, respectful listening, anti-social media, NFL Bluesky , festival acts vs stadium acts, never use an interlude, pub rock phylogeny, the...

This week’s new albums: Pendulum | Dinosaur Pile-Up | Nunchukka Superfly Also: the full Hetfield, legacy confirmation bias, outlap heroics, resolutely turn of the century, lamb chops play-along, jungle revivals, what killed triphop, big noises and teenage sneering, guiltiest pleasures, living through the worst versions of every ‘00s genre, great modern cover albums, volume shooters, celebrity kara...

This week’s new albums: Dojo Cuts | The Unknowns | EPs from Lammping and Cult Python Also: make Australia 1982 again, written warnings, oversouled, don’t phake the phunk, recycling last week’s shownotes jokes, shouty chookpen renovations, tapas plates, forever 1996, House music, Britpop vibes, live fact-checking, newsletter rusted-ons, your gig guide for two weeks ago in Milton Keynes, sound of th...

This week’s new albums: The Black Keys | As December Falls | NO CIGAR Also: Mid maxing, the kids are alright, self-service, Marmite 90s U2, black and white comparisons, losing everyone early, punk phylogenetic trees, not that close, great truckin’ songs have a renaissance, binary scales, mid-oughts everywhere except where it should be, Find My Flatmate, coming up next: Tonia Todman, drummer exchan...

This week’s albums: new Hotline TNT and Skinner Brothers | old (and new) Hilltop Hoods Also: Minimal viable product, meaningless terminology, doing too much, like and subscribe, front-loaded nostalgia, Em bits, Uncle Beeso’s Story Time, growing old together, SIX60 drivebys, 25 years in, say no to (some) drugs, shouts to Koolism, being objective vs being objectionable, on the cusp of a nosebleed, w...

This week’s new albums: Public Enemy | Kokoroko | NODEGA Also: wintering in Beenleigh, that JJJ Australian all-time H100: it could have been worse?, Oz hiphop’s diversity hire, failed segues, the disease of more, never go full Duckett, the rise and fall of activist hip-hop , offline translation, only getting what you give, conversation stoppers, prioritising the bit, self-explanatory vibes, the fi...

This week’s new albums are from Panic Shack | Benjamin Booker | His Lordship . Also: who he play for, VPLs, neurodiverse ranting, it’s over for Beeso, overpromising and underdelivering, Brett Suede, dead climbers and deranged bikers, salt and vinegar chips, two wrongs make a wronger wrong, distrusting Substack, revenge of the colonised, Brooklyn Vegan recs, American country slush, Triple J’s engag...

This week: new music from Loaded Honey and Wet Leg | an underground classic from Danger Mouse and MF DOOM | remembering Mu from Fat Freddy’s Drop Also: overcommitting in relationships, coaching trees, third wheels, old mate bangers, heavy ‘Flo, it’s 2025 and tedious indie music purity tests are somehow still a thing, horny on main, unexpected theme weeks, the Janet English Finishing School, random...

This week’s new music: LPs from Zig Zags + Teen Mortgage | EPs from Roxferry + Polish Club Also: time dilation, enjoying Rockhampton, a degree of riffage, how do you do fellow kids, you can take the girl out of Lismore, albums of the century , getting off the gear, upsetting metaphors, Warish -ish, schlock horror, dudes rock, through the fame vortex, we want to get loaded, on the job with Mike Pat...

This week: a SOLO MAN mini-ep from the Doc in which he conspiciously fails to do any better than a certain 60-something inner-west MP at making Australian song lists. REJECT THE REMINISCENCE BUMP. Background reading: Staffo's Graun piece on Albo's list Next week: we're back with new LPs from Zig Zags & Teen Mortgage and EPs from Roxferry and Polish Club Spotify playlists: 2025 revi...

This week’s new albums: Saya Gray | Frankie and the Witch Fingers | Gardna Also: Frente goes to Austin, hurling yourself off a cliff, wild energetic flailing, irresistable interstitials, we’ll do it live , Triple J’s latest normie-magnet countdown, Fatboy Slim Dusty ,  who listens to the radio, public playlist anxiety, HRC to HRT, shouts to Joe Don Baker, Aerobics Bristol Style, vibes guys, that c...