Welcome to the album nerds podcast with your hosts Andy, Don and dude.
What's up fellas.
I'm trippin balls.
I don't think I could say that.
Trippin ball is.
That was my Dave Matthews.
It was great.
Okay.
So this is the album nerds podcast.
Next time, dude, I got Andy and Don with me and you ready to get psychedelic.
I mean, neo psychedelic red pill, blue pill.
You take the red pill.
You stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I got this orange pill too.
I don't know.
I might try that one later and see what happens.
I think that's called a day quill.
Oh, well, it'd be fun to.
How are you doing over there, Don?
Wow.
When you just moved your arm, I saw trails.
Oh man, we're, we're reaching.
So as I said, this is the album nerds podcast.
We love albums, the album format, and we've got a great show for you today.
We're going to be highlighting three neo psychedelic albums.
We'll each pick one and break it down for you.
Don's going to ask us a deep question.
We have some shout outs to some album related items that we're digging.
And then of course we'll spin that wheel of musical discovery to find out what we're talking
about on the next show.
This week, it's time to take a trip.
So happy if I had a psychedelic lava lamp.
That's what I'm talking about.
Neo psychedelia, a genre that draws inspiration from the sounds of 1960s psychedelia has produced
a diverse array of albums that blend classic psychedelic elements with modern production
techniques and alternative music influences.
Psychedelic albums have continually pushed the boundaries of psychedelic music while
maintaining a connection to its roots.
Today each of us will present a neo psychedelic album.
Trippy.
Totally.
Yeah, I guess I never really thought about it.
There's psychedelic elements in music, but I hadn't ever really explored or thought about
this as a movement or genre.
So it's been an interesting week.
What other albums did you consider for this before making your final choice?
Anything stick out for you guys?
Yeah, this is a pretty wide genre.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in there.
I listened to most of the stuff in the 90s and 2000s.
Things like Primal Scream, Super Fury Animals, Spiritualized, Ween actually had some pretty
fun records in the 90s there.
The one I almost went with was from Animal Collective.
They had a really bunch of good records in the 2000s.
Merry Weather Post Pavilion was the one I came back to.
Really fun experimental elements of electronica, but also 60s pop is a big part of their sound
as well.
Yeah, I really love this genre personally.
It's one of my go-tos.
Of course you do.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
What did you find in your excursions then?
Well, I didn't go too far from my comfort zone.
There's a side project for Robert Smith of The Cure and Steve Severin from Susie and
the Banshees called The Glove.
It was released in 1983 called Blue Sunshine.
It's this just gothy psychedelic pop music.
Unfortunately, apparently Robert Smith had something in his record deal where he wasn't
allowed to sing for another group.
Most of the lead vocals are done by this person named Jeanette Landry, but it's definitely
an interesting album.
Never heard of it.
Interesting, fun.
It's actually a reference to Yellow Submarine.
Remember The Glove, like the big blue.
Yes, flying around.
Yep.
A lot of the things that Andy mentioned at the top, I explored those including Foxygen,
which was a band in early 2000s that I was really into, but it was more straight up psychedelic
for me and a little less neo maybe.
Fine line.
One that I really did consider for this just because it's an interesting, I think now very
appreciated album, Mazzy Star, so that tonight I might see.
Dream pop duo known for that ethereal sound and Hope Sandoval's voice fade into you being
the big hit.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, it's a little more sleepy.
So maybe for the come down, if you have to put it in psychedelic terms, but yeah, I'd
never actually listened to it all the way through before, so it was an interesting experience,
but not quite right for what I was looking for here.
So why don't we get into our choo choo choices.
You choo choo choose me?
All right.
For my neo psychedelia selection, we are talking about Tame Impala and their 2012 album Lonerism.
This is the second studio album for the Kevin Richard Parker led projects from Sydney, Australia.
Got Parker handling all the writing, producing and recording of 99% of the instruments and
vocals on this record.
Even took the cover photo, which I thought was impressive.
Looks kind of like someone just took a snapshot.
It's a snapshot, yeah.
That's not giving too much credit for that.
One of those disposable cameras.
Disposable cameras, yeah.
I just pulled out of his pocket.
Anyway, let's play the second single from the album.
This is called Feels Like We Only Go Backwards.
If you've ever written in Impala, it does feel like you're going backwards.
Hey, yo.
It's out of the car joke.
I didn't see that coming.
Nice.
No, me neither.
Parker said he wrote that to be inspired by the Beach House song Walk in the Park.
You guys familiar with that kind of material, dream pop group Beach House?
No, sir.
I'll have to revisit them someday also from this era.
My clickbait headline for Lonerism is Parker's breakthrough success feeds an indulgence in
studio trickery and pop curious sounds.
I was a big fan of their debut album Inner Speaker.
I think we may have talked about it on the show at some point.
Big rock psychedelic sounds, kind of like spacey vibe to the whole thing.
This record is kind of a response to that, I would say.
This is much more of a shimmery, much less guitar sound, much more in that synthesizer
vibe here.
This is a lot more just studio wizardry happening here.
He spent over two years kind of recording and tweaking and bedazzling this record, I
guess you could say.
Bedazzling, that's about right.
It feels still very spacey, but more like inner space.
Is this the Martin Sharp movie you're talking about?
That too, I love that movie.
Somebody help me!
Not as funny as it was to me when I was 14, but it's still funny.
It's more of an inner exploration than an outer exploration.
It just sounds like someone, when you close your eyes and just let your mind wander.
Yeah, kind of like your inner thoughts, like being stuck in your own head sort of.
Yeah, there's a lot of sounds bouncing around in there and it does feel kind of contained
in this shimmering goo, I guess you would say, a cocoon of psychedelia.
Okay.
All right, why don't we play the first single from the record?
This is Apocalypse Dreams.
It's actually kind of hard to choose a clip from that song because it is kind of all over
the place.
So, you know.
A lot of these songs are for all of our picks, I think.
Yeah, that's true.
It's kind of the nature of the genre.
Yeah, do you want to get the vocals?
Do you want to get the jam thing?
Do you want to get the psychedelic sounding moments?
You know, it's tough.
So Kevin Parker supposedly recorded that track after watching the 2011 film Melancholia.
Have you guys ever seen that?
Kirsten Dunst, really kind of a dark movie.
There's like a meteor that's going to hit the earth or something like that.
I don't know, but it's kind of melancholy.
Yeah.
Meteor, you're my only friend.
I make a Joe Dirt reference to give you some context as to where my movie tastes lie and
why I'm not familiar with that film Don mentioned.
So Apocalypse Dreams, I would say it's epic.
I mean, a lot of songs, I think, on this album are kind of epic, but it's kind of all over
the place.
But it's got that sort of lush, dreamy sound, seemingly complex chord progressions, just
a lot of dramatic changes and stuff.
It's a lot to take in, but it's also, I think, kind of pleasing to the ear, which I think
is again true for most of the album.
The lyrics explore kind of existential questions, change, anxiety, personal growth, yada, yada,
yada.
But yeah, one of my...
Wow.
So in other words, it really stuck with you.
Well, it was a hell of a yada, yada.
Please, Mr. Impala, make with the pretty noises.
No more yada, yada, yada.
It is.
I mean, the vocals and the lyrics, they do seem sort of incidental.
I mean, it's such a musical experience.
It's kind of hard to...
Yeah, it's more like one of the instruments.
Yeah, it really kind of buries it in the mix there, I think intentionally.
Yeah.
So my clickbait headline is, Lonely Stoner discovers synths and accidentally creates
psychedelic masterpiece.
That might be a little strong.
I'm not sure it's a masterpiece, but it's a damn good album.
It's peace.
Yeah.
It's peace.
Not a peace-o, but a peace.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I went back and listened to the first album and there is significant growth, I think,
between both.
I think he is embracing more, I guess, electronic instruments.
And then I think after this album, he goes even further down that road.
I'm not even sure there's guitar on the albums that follow.
It's a good blend of sort of pop sounds, but also that sort of crazy, sort of psychedelic
vibe.
And even back to the 60s, I think we listened to that Zombies record, Odyssey and Oracle.
A lot of the best psychedelic things still has that pop hook or something to it, but
just surrounded by goofiness.
I think this and the other albums we're going to talk about, these seem less rooted in drugs
or trips or anything.
It's just more about the dreamy soundscapes being painted with psychedelic sounds and
music rather than some specific path.
Yeah.
Yeah, weirdly, this seems less focused on the trip and more the sound of the 60s.
Yeah, it's interesting how much pop has to do with psychedelia.
I didn't think about that originally before we started doing this episode, but it really
was like a focus for him on this record was making really kind of disposable pop-orientated
songs.
I found a ton of quotes for this album.
It must have been interviewed a lot during this.
The record said, pop music is in a way so much more pure than all other types of music.
There's no intellectual level.
It's just pure feeling.
That feels like what a lot of ways get into here.
There's not a lot of substance.
This is a lot of kind of style, which I think is, it's cool.
It's a cool sound.
I think this record to me does feel a little bit more disposable than his earlier album
and maybe even the one after this.
Not in a bad way.
It does leave an impact, but more of the collective sound, I think, leaves an impact on me, unless
the individual songs.
There are moments that do stick out.
I think one of those is probably this next song we're going to play called Elephants.
A bit of a departure from the dreamy tone of the rest of the album, but it's kind of
glam rock, arena rock almost.
Jock jams kind of vibes to it as well.
It's sort of of the time too.
The Black Keys were hot around this time, so I think this song was just goofing around
with that sound, but Kevin Parker described it as a satire of the bully archetype.
It's a guy who thinks he's great.
He's the jock.
He also said something about that he doesn't really like that song, but it paid for his
house or half of his house.
I read that.
He has mixed feelings about it.
Yeah, it was really popular for them.
It doesn't really fit with the rest of the record, I would say.
Maybe you like it.
You like it in there?
I kind of like the break.
It was kind of like a couple slaps in the cheek wake you up a little bit and then you
can ease back into the spacey journey.
Mike Clickbait headlined to describe the album, Lonerism.
What happens when Kevin Parker goes full Lenin on psychedelic soundscapes?
Never go full Lenin.
Yeah, the Lenin-esque nasal tones, particularly on this album, I think more so than some of
the others, maybe because of all the effects on the vocals across the universe by John
Lenin really came to mind at times here.
I'm surprised it doesn't get talked about more when it comes to Tame Impala.
The first thing I noticed about them, I think I heard this song and I was like, oh, kind
of sounds like John Lenin.
It's neo-psychedelia, but not.
It's also, I think it's a modern technology take on more of a traditional psychedelic
sound.
All in all, I thought it was a very pleasant listen, especially, I mean, I was cleaning
records at the time I was listening to this primarily and it was a perfect soundtrack
for just kind of being lost in this, I'm doing this repetitive motion and then this music
kind of fit it really well and I was able to focus on both things simultaneously.
It was nice.
It was a nice afternoon.
Thanks, Kev.
Well, if you're looking for a good accompaniment piece on whatever you're up to on your afternoon
or evening, check out this very modern take on the psychedelic sound from Tame Impala,
Lonarism.
Before we continue our neo-psychedelic journey, why don't we hear a few words from our friends
over at Getting Down and Wordy.
Riz.
Greetings.
Gendered language.
Onomatopoeias.
The Ick.
What makes some words sound funny.
Why just listen to music when you can overanalyze the words in the songs?
Music, language, and Eurovision all crammed into one podcast.
Getting Down and Wordy with Russell and Hannah.
Find us anywhere you listen to podcasts.
So go check out Getting Down and Wordy.
It's a very interesting way of analyzing music, really getting into what the words are.
So check them out.
My pick for a neo-psychedelic album comes from 1986.
It's XTC's Skylarking.
It's the ninth studio album by the band formed in Swindon, Wiltshire, England in 1972.
The band at the time featured singer, songwriter, and guitarist Andy Partridge, not part of
the Partridge family.
Well, I guess technically he is probably part of a Partridge family.
Not the one.
Not the musical family.
Also singer, songwriter, and bassist Colin Moulding, and guitarist, keyboardist Dave
Gregory.
The album also features drums by Prairie Prince of The Tubes.
Remember The Tubes?
And it's produced by Todd Rundgren.
He's coming up a lot lately.
Yes.
Yeah.
It was Psychedelic Furs.
And I think I also read that he did some remix on one of the Tim and Paula songs, right?
Oh, that's right.
There was a Todd Rundgren connection.
So actually, I guess the record label just was not happy with XTC's sales and they thought
part of the problem was they just sounded too English.
So they gave them a list of American producers and Todd Rundgren was like the only name they
recognized so they went with him.
Interesting.
So anyway, here's the opening cut.
This is called Summer's Cauldron.
Mom, do you ever get that not so fresh feeling?
Oh, God.
Oh, Peter Gabriel-y.
Yeah.
I see myself laying in the fields out there.
It's nice.
So Summer's Cauldron is an extension of an original poem Partridge wrote called Drowning
in Summer's Cauldron.
It's the opening cut of the record.
It kind of sets the psychedelic tone of the album.
Lots of droning sounds.
There's a wobbly chorus to organ, which Partridge said it actually reminded him of the Beatles
Blue Jay Way from Magical Mystery Tour.
Yeah, I hear that.
Some melodica in there played by Todd Rundgren.
And so Prairie Prince, the drummer, was encouraged to play spastic drum fills in the style of
Jethro Tull's Sweet Dream.
So definitely a trippy way to start the record.
My clickbait headline for Skylarking is turn on, tune in, and drop out with nerdy Beat
Eleven Englishmen.
So it's very 60s.
I think a lot of it just feels like that British psychedelic scene.
Is it more British or is it more 60s?
It's a battle there.
So apparently Rundgren had convinced the band that the songs they had written could be a
concept album.
So it's supposed to be like a cycle of life or a year or something with significant milestones.
So there's like birth, young love, family, labor, illness, death, and then just kind
of random moments throughout your life.
Because you have like two distinct songwriters in the band.
So kind of like Lennon and McCartney, they would sing their songs.
Yeah, Molding and Partridge sort of have their own distinct styles.
That concept sort of made them connect in some way.
Just hear a track that is debatable whether it actually is on this album or not.
This is Dear God.
I found this one fascinating.
It's the potentially album closer.
I just I like the sort of simpler sound of it.
Maybe the more British sound of it and less psychedelic in ways.
But the critique of religion framed as a letter questioning God's existence.
Like how can you let these things happen and that kind of stuff.
I think it's something a lot of people think about and go through.
And it just felt very relatable.
Regardless of what side of that argument you fall on.
It's just nice to really connect with something because throughout the album it's kind of
hard to tell if they're being silly or serious.
And this one seems serious in the use of a little kid singing at the beginning really
adds some weight to it as well.
So I appreciate that about that song and it showed me that they take their craft seriously
and there's some real poetic deep thinking going on here.
My clickbait headline to describe the album, Forget Ecstasy, XTC's Skylarking will give
you a natural high.
It's dreamy and psychedelic, catchy, quirky lyrics at times.
What was that one song?
That's Super Supergirl?
Yeah.
It was moments like that where I'm like, what are they doing?
Parody or are they doing serious?
And it's okay either way I suppose.
It's just sometimes I wasn't sure what direction they were doing.
And maybe that had something to do with the different songwriters.
But it's lush and it really does channel that psychedelic sound.
It probably sounds the most like that.
It sounds the most like an album that could have fit in in the 60s.
There aren't a lot of modern elements.
I mean there's some post-punk sounds here but it leans more psychedelic.
Well, let's hear some more.
This is Season Cycle.
There's some of those claw-tooth moments right there.
Yeah, they'll play it pretty heavily from that 60s secondillia sound there.
In fact, there were rumors that XDC was actually claw-tooth.
Oh for real?
No.
No, because claw-tooth was rumored to be the Beatles.
It just continues with every generation.
Pass on the myth.
That's how I originally was inspired by the Beach Boys and their 60s album Smiley Smile
as Donald alluded to earlier.
The song particularly focuses on cycles of life and death.
That's the larger theme of the record, which I found to be pretty interesting and I kind
of appreciate that the more I listened to it and got more depth from these songs.
My click-bait headline for Skylarking is XDC continues England's tradition of creating
well-crafted pop songs and being kind of a prick in the studio.
From what I read, there was a good amount of tension between the producer there, Mr.
Rundgren and Andy Partridge, one of the primary songwriters here.
Definitely led to some well-crafted songs though.
I was really impressed with the quality of every track on here.
I think this album as a whole is really impressive.
My biggest critique of it is more the pacing.
I kind of had a hard time finding good moments on it to kind of separate the songs.
It kind of did all blur a little bit for me, but once I did take the time to really appreciate
the individual tracks, I thought they all held up really well.
There's some really interesting moments and some cool studio wizardry going on that you
might expect in a psychedelic record.
Yeah, I mean, I do agree with you as a point about the vocals maybe being a little cartoonish
at times.
You can kind of even hear it in the season cycle there.
It's a little bit kind of like a little show tune you sort of sounded.
But I think they pulled off.
I think it works generally.
It just keeps things interesting.
So yeah, I was pretty positive on this.
I would like to listen to it some more.
I think there's a lot of depth here that I'm probably not appreciating.
Yeah, I think revisiting it now, I'm surprised by how complex the music seems.
There's like a main melody going on and then there's usually like some sort of countermelody,
which is often like kind of distracting from the main melody.
And so I think sometimes it's not as receptive to the ear or something like on first listen.
I feel like after you hear these three or four times, they kind of make more sense.
It's kind of similar to like a Brian Wilson song in that way.
Yeah, I mean, I think in some cases you could say maybe some of the songs are a little too
busy or a little too, maybe they're not simple enough.
Sometimes it feels like they're being too clever.
Yeah, yeah.
You could maybe say that.
Yeah.
And that could have to do with all these kind of big personalities maybe having a lot of
different ideas in the direction.
I picture a lot of middle fingers being held up through the booth to the studio like while
singing or whatever.
So XDC's Skylarking brings kind of 60s psychedelia to the 1980s with kind of a charming English
pop sound.
So check it out.
Excuse me, I'd like to ask you a few questions.
It's time for deep questions, fellas.
There's never a better time to ask deep questions than when you're dabbling in some substances,
I guess.
Anyway, if you will.
Do you guys have any memorable psychedelic experiences?
So psychedelic.
Well, I can share one that was particularly memorable for me.
In my college years, I had just enjoyed a morning and afternoon tea with my girlfriend
at the time and I was just kind of coming down from that experience and I was driving.
Tea is code for lovemaking?
No.
No, it's a literal cup of tea.
Okay.
The tea was steeped with a vegetable which got too specific here.
Fungus.
Fungus, yes.
Fungus tea.
You were a fun guy in college.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, you get through this.
Anyway, I was coming down from that experience and was driving home along the river which
was near my college.
It was a beautiful sunny day, clouds around, blue skies and I was just like super at peace
with the world.
Just felt very happy with where I was in my life and with everything around me.
Just a moment of peace, you could say.
Then about two, three miles down the road, I had the unfortunate...
Unfortunately I ran over a family of possums that were crossing the street.
A family?
Jesus.
Yeah.
It just totally wrecked me mentally.
I was in such a good vibe in such a good place.
It totally wrecked me.
I still think about it and get emotional.
That's the universe's way of punishing you for taking that fungus tea.
It really did feel like some sort of message was being delivered to me.
How dare you feel good about the world?
How about you, dude?
So I never intentionally had psychedelic experiences.
Even through college and stuff, I was more of a booze hound than I really enjoy smoking
things or any of that stuff ever.
It's just never been my bag.
But one night a buddy and I had driven to a different college to visit some friends
of his and got really drunk on my signature cocktail at the time of Captain Morgan and
Dr. Pepper.
And got talked into taking a rip off the old bong.
I don't know if something was in it, but I immediately started feeling like I was melting.
My head hit the...
I was sitting on the floor and my head hit the floor and I thought I was in virtual reality.
And there were these gold circles in front of me that I had to push out of the way.
It turns out I ripped and bent my glasses off my face.
And then for hours I was silently puking and melting into the stairs I was sitting on.
Yeah, it was great.
So to this day, I just am not a fan of...
Even the smell makes me unhappy.
So yeah, that was my psychedelic experience.
Similar to you, Andy.
It was like, don't do that.
Someone was telling me, don't do that.
Number two, Don.
Well, I was thinking back to maybe the first few times that I tried the smoking.
And I just remember how good the music sounded and stuff.
That was the best part of it.
But for some reason, I guess I just must have really been off my head, but I would have
the urge to speak in tongues.
I can't do it when I'm sober.
But just sort of like...
So you just make gibberish sounds.
Yeah, just gibberish.
And so I would just be doing that.
And I just can't imagine what my friends would think of me.
I mean, they just must...
Are these people still in your life?
Because I have a guess as to why they're not.
That's exactly what I'd be doing minutes at a time.
Were you trying to channel something or was it just...
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah.
He was trying to catch the muse.
Yeah.
I was just being an ass, I think.
Oh, man, I thought it was interesting.
It's not one I've ever heard before.
Yeah.
Anyway, tell us about one of your memorable psychedelic experiences.
Hit us up on Instagram and Facebook or leave a comment on our website, albumnerds.com.
All right.
So for my selection, I went with the Stone Roses and their self-titled debut album, formed
in Manchester, England in 1983 by Ian Brown and John Squire.
By the late 80s, their sound with the psychedelic elements and danceable rhythms had started
to take off in the clubs.
And it was all part of this mad Chester scene with indie dance, indie rave, just this cultural
scene that developed in Manchester at the time.
So if we throw that term out there, I just want to get it loosely defined.
The Stone Roses recorded an album released in May of 1989.
It combines the jangly guitars, the groovy bass lines, cryptic lyrics, and a lot of swagger,
which I really like.
And it kind of marked a moment in British music, kind of bridging that gap between 80s
indie and that Brit pop explosion of the 90s that was to come.
It's dreamy.
It's cool.
Very atmospheric.
So why don't we jump in with a little bit of the track Waterfall.
It's kind of cascading, kind of like a waterfall.
Yeah.
I think I'm getting a little wet over here.
Okay.
Jangly guitars there and the lyrics are sort of about, I guess, freedom and escape maybe.
And it has this really cool seamless transition into the next track, Don't Stop, which is
a reverse remix of Waterfall turned into this kind of trippy experimental thing.
It's an interesting choice.
I thought that works really well.
I think so too.
It's as if it's one song.
I think that's part of why I like it so much is it's just this perfect book ended beginning
and end.
I don't know.
I've never heard anything quite like that before.
To me, it sets the tone for what this album is at moments where you just kind of get lost
in the flow of the water and just get soaked.
Right, Andy?
Yeah.
I clickbait headlined to describe the album.
The Stone Roses, the album that kicked off Britpop, even though no one told them to.
I guess the bands like Oasis were really inspired by these guys and they kind of missed out,
right?
On their own, the thing that they supposedly helped kick off.
In terms of the notoriety and the fame.
Yeah.
Yeah, especially in America.
There was a five-year gap between albums because they signed an eight-album deal with their
little record label.
They wanted out of it and it became a mess.
But there's this ease to this album and it's like if you throw a bunch of ingredients together
and you make this dinner and it's like, oh my God, that's perfect.
This is so delicious.
And you didn't write down the recipe.
That's what feels like happened here.
It all seems to have come together perfectly on this record.
And it has Beatles melodies, resonant guitars like the birds.
There's some Smiths-ness to this with the way that they use humor in some of the vocal
delivery.
And there's an arrogance to it as well, which I think for me is something I look for in
rock and roll.
That's what the British shunning through, I think.
Why don't we jump into one of the other tracks on this record?
It's made of stone.
Yeah, I love the sound of that song.
So easy and breezy.
Yeah, it's got a nice flow to it.
That's the second single off the album.
Super cool guitar solo there.
We just heard the end of and some studio trickery kind of helping sell that psychedelic sound.
I think it works really well there.
And there's a handful of tracks on this album that I think are just super sharp and really
well-written songs.
The psychedelic moments seem like these little splashes.
It's not driving the sound.
There's these little breakdowns, little guitar solos, little sounds, little 30 second moments
in the song.
It's like, whoa.
There's some embellishments that come up and you're like, oh yeah, I see some trails, man.
All right, let's go back to the music.
Yeah, it's cool.
All right, so I clicked the headline for the Stone Roses is an understated success that
helped proliferate a generation of music nerds with better taste than you.
This always feels like one of those records to me that music snobs point to as being like,
this is the greatest record no one's ever heard of, no one appreciates this kind of
thing.
I feel like it's a little bit overhyped from that standpoint.
I do enjoy the record, but I think it's maybe a little inconsistent throughout the playtime.
It gets lost in all the reverb and particularly the vocal.
I think it gets lost a lot.
I don't know, there's moments where it works great, especially when there's a good strong
drum beat, which there are many of the songs here.
And when the guitar has some space to play in the mix, I think it works really well.
John Squire on guitar, I think he's a really excellent guitarist.
But there's so much just happening in the sound here, I think is maybe detracts a little
bit from the overall strength of the album to me.
But I do enjoy this album.
I saw people saying this was like the best album released ever in the UK.
Like I'm more than a few publications.
I was like, come on.
I mean, it may have inspired a lot of young musicians in the 90s.
That kind of talk I think is trying to make up for it being sort of ignored in America
anyway in the late 80s and early 90s.
So I think it's kind of overcompensation.
It reminds me a little bit of the story of the laws and sonically too, another what could
have been and they broke barriers.
But it's more after the fact that everyone's like, this is so awesome and you missed it.
All they wanted was to be loved and adored.
So why don't we listen to a little bit of the big one off of this one, I Want to Be Adored.
I like this song just because it has so few lyrics, but it's still like kind of powerful.
It's basically just that line.
It's just that line over and over.
I don't need to sell my soul.
He's already in me.
I want to be adored.
So I don't know.
Is that the devil in you?
That's kind of the spirit of rock and roll, I think.
Yeah.
I was actually listening to this and my dog was in front of me and kind of reminded me
of him because he just kind of sits there and soaks up your adoration.
But there's definitely like a moody post-punk feel to this, which I certainly love.
It has kind of an iconic baseline from Gary Monty Moonfield, or Monty I think is his nickname.
But yeah, great track.
My clickbait headline for the Stone Roses is Post-Punk is Manchester's drug of choice.
So I mean, I still would put this in kind of the post-punk category, but now it's sort
of going backwards.
So you're reaching back to the 1960s and adding some of that vibe to it.
I forgot.
I think maybe it was the guy from OMD was talking about how with like Britpop and then
grunge.
It was like finally like when music started going backwards again, because he felt like
the 80s was all a progression with synth pop and post-punk, but then all of a sudden we
started going back.
And so certainly this and then I mean, the Laws album came out just after this, kind
of recapturing some of that 60s British sound.
That track Elizabeth, My Dear, which I think is loosely based on Scarborough Fair.
Yeah, which is like a 16th century folk song or something.
But when I first heard it, I was thinking, oh, like was this from that zombies record?
Again, that Odyssey and Oracle album.
It feels like it belongs right on that album.
Yeah, it's not as overtly psychedelic as the other two records we talked about.
The close of the album, I Am the Resurrection and Fool's Gold probably sound the most mad
Chester and probably the most danceable and psychedelic of the tracks, like in a more
traditional sense, like more consistently throughout them.
They're good songs.
I mean, I can't really point to one song that I think is bad, but I Am the Resurrection
and This is the One.
She bangs the drums all just sound radiant and anthemic.
Instrumental jams, which I think they did a lot of live.
You could hear those moments.
I Am the Resurrection is almost fish-like in some ways.
That's true.
Yeah, there's just a magic on the album.
It's kind of just like an unexplainable thing.
But like, as you said before, it all kind of comes together.
I'm really surprised at how good it is.
I think it's so much better than anything Oasis ever did.
Yeah, I would agree.
I would say it's more like Oasis wrote some more memorable songs, probably catchy, I guess
you could say.
Maybe.
But yeah, this is the consistency of what this is, is a full album, which I think I
appreciated the most.
And the album cover just, you know, kind of Jackson Pollock style abstract painting, but
weird callbacks to things like either the French flag and the lemon slices that are
featured on the album cover that I guess were used as a tear gas remedy during the Paris
riots.
Just, you know, these little, there's all these details in this record that just all
kind of work and it's nice.
So yeah, if you haven't heard it or you haven't heard it in a while or you want to be a music
snob like us, go check out the Stone Roses self-titled album.
Can you dig it?
Well, this week was a long, strange trip.
Have you guys been digging anything?
Yeah, I've been digging a few other things here.
It's kind of like year-round time.
So we got a lot of year-round lists coming out from different personalities around the
internet.
In your satchel?
Oh, that's right.
I need to put them inside something.
I think they could be in Tupperware containers because it's 2024 leftovers, right?
From the holidays.
Yeah, we got a lot of leftovers here.
So it's perfect.
Yeah, we'll keep them fresh here.
We've got a couple.
First one up from Gordy Greep, the former frontman of Black MIDI.
He has a new album out called The New Sound.
Let's play, Jode Jode.
Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of this when I listened to it earlier in the year.
Yeah, it's pretty bizarre.
It took me a while to get into it.
Kind of like rock, jazz, hybrid.
All the songs are kind of written from the perspective of different people he had met
in bars around England.
It does have that kind of eclectic personality.
I've been enjoying it.
But the album cover makes it look like it's going to be metal or something.
Yeah, no.
It's got some violent cartoon imagery on it.
Not so much.
And this one for me here is from English singer-songwriter Laura Marlene.
She has a new album out called Patterns in Repeat.
The eighth studio album for the singer-songwriter.
First after having her daughter, deals with kind of life cycles and tradition, passing
things on.
It's really pretty records here.
Patterns.
I thought it was going to be parallelograms.
No.
It did have that vibe for a second.
Parallelograms, yeah.
That's right.
Dental hygienist.
What you been digging on, Diane?
Well, I'm not sure I'm digging it.
But I just, you know, when I was looking at a list of kind of new things that are out,
I saw King Diamond, you guys familiar with King Diamond?
Yeah, scary.
Kind of this goofy metal singer.
It's like supposed to be kind of satanic.
Yeah.
And it's another one of those situations.
Well, he was in Merciful Fate, but then King Diamond is also the name of the band too,
kind of like Alice Cooper.
Right.
You know, gets confused.
But anyway, he has a new record coming out in 2025 called St. Lucifer's Hospital 1920,
which is supposedly going to be part one of this horror trilogy.
Anyway, here's a single Spider Lily.
His vocal style is no big.
Yeah.
Stubb.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Very wily.
That's the King.
Yeah.
And, you know, I guess just because I've been listening to a lot of conversation about music
of the past year, one of the big themes is how there's these, you know, female pop stars
that are kind of dominating.
So I figured I'd check out one of them.
So Chappelle Rhone, her album, which actually came out in 2023, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest
Princess.
Here's a song called Femininominem.
Femininominem.
I've dabbled in some of this stuff that's coming out.
I mean, a lot of it has sort of a 80s Cyndi Laupery kind of feel.
I like that.
Yeah.
I think all these, like even the Charlie XCX and the Taylor Swift, like I feel like all
of it has sort of some like 80s synth mixed in.
I'm glad at least that that sound has come around.
And it's an interesting record.
Give it a closer listen.
How about you, dude?
I did some of the same kind of looking back at stuff and there was an album by a band
called Early Moods called The Sinner's Past, number 14 on my 2024 list.
And we never got a chance to mention it on the show.
They're a Los Angeles based traditional doom metal band formed in 2015, 70s inspired, kind
of New Wave of British heavy metal influenced.
This is their second album.
So let's listen to a little bit of Blood Offerings.
Well, it's a 70s move.
There's some moments in here where there's like voices like, oh, give me a blood and
stuff like that.
And I enjoy that kind of goofy and my metal.
So it's just a fun listen and it captures a lot of those sounds of, you know, they are
Iron Maidens, but even then you're your Black Sabbath type stuff.
So check that one out.
The next one on my list is Jesse Ray and the Carolina Catfish.
I have this one on vinyl.
It's live and off the record recorded in early 2024 by this Michigan based rock and roll
blues duo, swaggering vocals, bluesy guitar riffs.
It's very raw and that energy is captured live recorded off the record, which is the
record store I go to.
They've formed their own label.
They have these live performances in the store and they're going to start pressing them and
releasing them on vinyl and you can catch them on all the streaming services.
It's cool.
Here's a little bit of Jesse Ray and the Carolina Catfish with Man's Back slash Parade Zone.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Some good acoustics off the record.
Yeah.
And you know, it's very high quality recording too.
I'm very impressed with what Benji and the crew were able to pull off getting this thing
produced and released on vinyl.
Prada Benji for making his record store a place to be and a place that actually produces
its own music.
So go check that out for sure.
So what are you digging?
Let us know.
Join us on the socials, Facebook, Instagram, threads, blue sky.
Also on our website, albumnerds.com.
It will be a discovery of extraordinary value.
Well, it's about that time on the show and I'm reminded of the great British musician
and pioneer of the psychedelic sound, John Lennon, who said, whenever in doubts, turn
off your mind, relax and float downstream.
With that in mind, let's bring out my friend and yours, WildBot, who we'll be talking
about on next week's episode.
Get ready for a wild ride into the world of funny albums.
Next time you will be diving into three records that mix sharp satire, parody and musical
mayhem, proving that humor and music are a perfect match.
Interesting funny albums that can be complicated.
What's funny?
But we'll have to figure it out.
Albums that are somehow lighthearted or does it amuse you?
Yeah, some sort of usual.
Got to be some chuckles and a real challenge from the wheel of musical discovery.
She's kicking it off early in the year, making us think.
Just laughing in our faces.
Damn you.
All right.
What's your favorite funny album?
What else are you listening to?
Leave a comment on our website or email us at podcast at albumnerds.com.
You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, threads and bluesky at albumnerds.
Please subscribe, rate and review on your favorite podcast app and please tell your
friends if you like the show.
Thank you for joining us here on the Album Nerds podcast.
We'll catch you next time where we're going to yuck it up.
Some funny music.
Laugh it up, buzz ball.
That's good.
Yeah, that's a big episode.
See you next week guys.
Happy New Year everybody and thanks for listening.
Eat it, eat it, eat it.
Oh Lord.
This is what we're in for.
We didn't get any of our psychedelic jokes in here.
What's the psychedelic with you?
I don't know.
Bye bye.