Okay... my review. It's going to be kinda long so bear with me.
The album format. For quite a while now, I've held the belief that with regard to music, albums are the pinnacle of the artform. An album
represents a snapshot in time of what a band is experiencing creatively. An album has to be taken as a whole in order to understand what
the band/artist stands for at that moment. One great song can skew perception, it's hard to fake 10-12 songs... (unless of course you're
Milli Vanilli).
I found this podcast through a FB group that I follow (Fountains of Wayne, a story for a different time. If you don't know this band, get there.)
Someone from within that group posted a link to the This is Vinyl Tap - Fountains of Wayne - "Welcome Interstate Managers" episode.
I had recently become an obsessed Fountains of Wayne fan as their music hits all of my sweet spots. Their review of that record was
pretty much spot on and I was pleased when two of the three hosts seemed genuinely surprised at just how good this record/band was. A few
months went by and it popped up again on the group page, so I listened again. This time however, I dug into the "This is Vinyl Tap" website and
started poking around. Lots of albums that I love were listed, and many that I had no history with. I listened to a few episodes that pertained to
bands/albums that I like, and the bug bit me. I started from episode one, and steadily worked my way through every episode that had been
produced and now I'm hooked. The 3 hosts either have a tremendous amount of background on each band that they cover, some of it likely
due to extensive reading and resource gathering prior to talking about an album.
The biggest issue I have at the moment is that I was accustomed to listening to a new episode every day, sometimes two in the same day.
I'm all the way up through their most recent episode (The Youngbloods) and now there's a tremendous void in my daily routine.
At any rate, if you are a fan of the album format, do yourself a favour and dive into this podcast. My more detailed recommendation would be
to find a few albums from their catalogue that you are intimately familiar with, it will help with sussing out the format and style of the podcast
without being bogged down by trying to figure out the music and the podcast at the same time. If you get hooked, go all the way back to the
beginning: Season 1, Episode 1 (the actual beginning ends up not being about an album as "current events" superseded other considerations.)
As you move forward, it will become pretty noticeable when the hosts hit their stride and settle into a format. That process is pretty entertaining
by itself. My only (minor) complaint... sometimes the hosts step on each other a bit as two or all three try to get a point across at the same time,
which results in not being able to hear any of the points being made. Aside from that, it's a great podcast!