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Episodes
J and Tim dig into the grunge, alt-rock, and indie albums that changed everything—the forgotten classics, the underappreciated masterpieces, and the legends worth hearing again. One album at a time. Let’s dig it out.
Episodes
Tuesday Jun 09, 2020
Tuesday Jun 09, 2020
Pollyanna's 1996 EP Junior and 1996 debut album Long Player scored them multiple hit singles in Australia and put them on the national radar, which means the sophomore follow-up Hello Halo in 1997 had expectations attached. As we discovered, the band expanded their pallet. While the record is full of radio-friendly alternative rock ("Peachy Keen" and "Brittle Then Broken)", where the group really excels is their willingness to take some detours, like on the horn-backed tracks "Pulling Teen" and "Butterman," or the Helmet-esque post-hardcore of "Tank." Thanks to the deft production of Paul McKercher (Violetine, Ratcat, Falling Joys, Spiderbait, You Am I), the diversity of approaches manages to stay consistent even if all the material isn't up to par.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Peachy Keen
12:01 - Pulling Teeth
15:20 - Butterman
20:03 - Tank
28:03 - Brittle Then Broken
Outro - Effervescence
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Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Thanks to a reliance on off-kilter retro sounds and lo-fi instrumentation, Eels were often compared to Beck (and not always favorably). On their second album, 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, they utilized one of the producers who helped Beck transition from one-hit-wonder status with Loser to the layered mastery of 1996's Odelay. But instead of matching the mayhem, singer/multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett constructs a sixteen-track somber affair with a few noisy interludes delving into personal loss at a bone-chillingly intimate level. What struck us was the deliberate shift from their debut that produced the hit single "Novocaine For The Soul," and wondering if like many, the lyrical content was too heady to digest, needing the growth and loss of maturity to fully appreciate the depths that E is willing to explore.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Last Stop: This Town
16:39 - 3 Speed
20:58 - Hospital Food
24:21 - Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor
38:52 - Cancer For The Cure
Outro - Climbing To The Moon
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday May 26, 2020
Tuesday May 26, 2020
When they released their debut album Showbiz in the US in 1999, Muse were one of a number of bands compared to the Pablo Honey/The Bends era of Radiohead thanks to Matt Bellamy's Thom Yorke like tenor and Johnny Greenwood's guitar acrobatics. But Muse were doing it as a three-piece, and over time the band shed the unfair comparisons to forge a path that paid as much homage to the bombast of classic Queen to the aural assault of Rage Against The Machine, all the while releasing a slew of hit singles, moving from opening slots, to sheds, to arenas across the globe, and becoming one of the few bands to still carry the dying torch of rock. We revisit their debut, their early EPs, and touch on their 2000s releases to trace the origins of the band that has gained a global audience while splitting fans over their embrace of poppier and dancier material.
Songs In This Episode:
Muscle Museum (from Showbiz)
6:40 - Cave (from Showbiz)
17:28 - Falling Down (from Showbiz)
23:47 - Uno (from Showbiz)
42:14 - Plug In Baby (from Origin Of Symmetry)
1:02:49 - Agitated (B-Side)
Outro - Sunburn (from Showbiz)
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Tuesday May 19, 2020
Tuesday May 19, 2020
Thanks to old friend of the show Chip Midnight, when patron Dewey Cole suggested revisiting the 1993 self-titled debut album from Dig, Chip reached out to lead singer and guitarist Scott Hackwith to have him join us to revisit this record. Dewey only came to record recently, so he provides a unique perspective of discovering an album seventeen years after its release. Chip interviewed Scott when the band was just starting out, gigging around the country with frequent stops in Ohio in the early-to-mid 1990s. Scott, who started out as a guitarist in T.S.O.L., learned to be a producer on the spot making the debut album, which led him to work on records by the Ramones, Spiritualized and other, shares stories and insights on album artwork, demo'ing tracks on a four-track machine, making music videos, and working on new Dig music.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Believe
32:22 - Let Me Know
37:24 - Feet Don't Touch The Ground
1:00:33 - Conversation
Outro - Unlucky Friend
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday May 12, 2020
Tuesday May 12, 2020
If you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know that we are not always in agreement about what works and doesn't work for us on various albums. One of the earliest disagreements was back in Season One when we checked out the 1993 album Four by Seaweed. Thanks to a recent listener suggested poll on our Patreon site, we're back ten years later to check out the 1995 follow-up Spanaway, the band's only release on the Hollywood Records label. While the band faced the tired "sell-out" label for signing to a major, in reality, the band stayed close to what they did well - a bombastic combo of East Coast post-hardcore and PacWest grunge, with some extra nuance thanks to the skilled fingers of Andy Wallace behind the mixing board, as well as guest visits in the drum throne by Barrett Martin (of Screaming Trees) and Matt Cameron (of Soundgarden). The question remains - has anything changed in our diverging opinions?
Songs In This Episode
Intro - Start With
18:45 - Magic Mountainman
22:53 - Assistant (To The Manager)
31:59 - Free Drug Zone
Outro - Last Humans
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Tuesday May 05, 2020
While we have chatted with many artists over the years, rarely have we been able to get the record label perspective on the various ups and downs of the 90s. For this episode, we're lucky to get singer/songwriter Michael McDermott, who has been making records for thirty years, and the A&R rep who helped kick off that career, Brian Koppelman. While Brian is better known for his screenwriting (Rounders, Ocean's 13) and showrunning (Billions), his life in the music industry dates back to high school with A&R stints at Elektra Records, Giant Records, SBK Records and EMI Records. We dig into the album Michael and Brian worked on together, 1993's Gethsemane, and the various trials and tribulations of releasing a singer/songwriter album in the heyday of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, the producer and songwriter relationship in the studio, why being too sympathetic to the artist can be a negative, and much much more.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro/1:47 - Just West Of Eden
17:03 - The Idler The Prophet And A Girl Called Rain
46:54/Outro - Need Some Surrender
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
While the 90s were dominated by the touring festival as opposed to the current day destination festival, the first half and second half had decidedly different approaches. Lollapalooza took a variety of artists from across genres with the intention of exposing artists across differing fanbases, whereas the Warped Tour, Ozzfest, H.O.R.D.E. Tour, and Lilith Fair each narrowed their focus. In the case of Lilith Fair, the simplistic history is that it was a female-centric folk tour, headlined by the likes of Sarah McLachlan, the Indigo Girls, Suzanne Vega, and Sheryl Crow. In reality, over the course of three years, the festival provided a much broader spectrum of female artists, including Queen Latifah, Bonnie Raitt, Letters To Cleo, Liz Phair, Dance Hall Crashers, K's Choice, Luscious Jackson, Nenah Cherry, The Pretenders, Missy Elliott, The Cardigans, Susanna Hoffs, Juliana Hatfield, and many many more. To help us revisit we invited back a pair of performers (Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo and Jill Cuniff of Luscious Jackson) and a pair of attendees (friend of the show Matt Shiverdecker and show announcer Katie Minneci), along with special call-in guests performer Tracy Bonham and attendee John Cornish.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Angel (Live) by Sarah McLachlan with Emmylou Harris
17:20 - Naked Eye (Live) by Luscious Jackson
24:49 - Surrounded (Live) by Chantal Kreviazuk
34:05 - The One (Live) by Tracy Bonham & telephone interview
41:27 - Not An Addict (Live) by K's Choice & memories with John Cornish
Outro - Here And Now (Live) by Letters To Cleo
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Forging a sound out of American grunge and alternative along with British Invasion hooks and power pop melodies may seem like a recipe for disaster, but on their 1996 debut Less Is More, the Melbourne, Australian trio Even find the right balance. Channeling a Kurt Cobain cadence on one track and a John Lennon howl on another works best when the band keeps the songs short and tight, with plenty of catchy guitar riffs toss around. While we dug the high energy performances that pre-date the garage rock revival to come at the end of the decade, some of the production and rhythm choices (or lack of) left us wanting.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Karmic Flop
14:35 - End To End
19:45 - Don't Wait
26:02 - Eternal Teen
31:29 - No One Understands Me
Outro - Dean Morris
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday Apr 14, 2020
Tuesday Apr 14, 2020
Once the alternative gold rush hit for bands in the 90s, one song could make or break an album. But for every Sex And Candy, Cumbersome or Possum Kingdom, hundreds of other bands failed to make the Top 40 for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the music. Take Vancouver, Canada's Odds, whose third album Good Weird Feeling is a smart combination of alternative guitar rock powered by two strong singers with a knack for lyrical twists. The two obvious singles, "Eat My Brain" and "Truth Untold" never found a home on American mainstream radio, and like so many of their northern counterparts, the band remains almost entirely unknown in the lower forty-eight.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Satisfied
17:41 - Oh Sorrow Oh Shame
20:55 - Break The Bed
24:56 - Truth Untold
31:07 - I Would Be Your Man
Outro - Eat My Brain
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Though not as lauded as grunge, Brit-pop, the rise of pop-punk or other 90s-centric genres, electronic music evolved throughout the decade as well thanks to subtler sounds coming out of the UK. While electronica and trip-hop each had their moments in the mainstream spotlight, groups like the brother-duo Boards of Canada from Scotland slid under the radar with slightly different takes, theirs being a more chill, downtempo approach utilizing vintage synths and drum machines, tape loops and field recordings. Music Has The Right To Children, their 1998 debut after several well-regarded singles and EPs, takes full advantage of the tools, creating atmospheric soundscapes backed by drum and bass loops that lived-in rather than dialed-up, giving the record a timeless element that so many of their contemporaries failed to achieve.
Songs In This Episode:
Intro - Telephasic Workshop
18:06 - Roygbiv
20:48 - Turquoise Hexagon Sun
27:09 - Aquarius
Outro - Open The Light
Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.