Best Album For Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

What's the right soundtrack for barreling down a highway in pursuit -- or being pursued -- in your very own General Lee? Dave & Caleb lay out the criteria, buckle in, and gun it to 95 with The Prodigy's Fat of the Land and The Reverend Horton Heat's It's Martini Time! Two albums from a golden era of the 90s when, for one shining moment, electronica and swing music improbably had its grips around our collective imagination. Plus, the single scariest moment of young Dave's life. Also, what we're listening to this week, including a band we love with the most unfortunate name.

Discussed today:

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time

The 90s swing era (including Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy)

DMX

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Waxahatchee - Tiger's Blood

Alice Coltrane - The Carnegie Hall Concert

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Check out our new playlist on Apple Music, Best Music For 2024. (Spotify coming soon.)

Special guest co-host Vince Brackett joins the podcast this week to discuss what it means to “sell out” for a variety of musicians, and the template for popular and highly successful musicians to “reverse sell out” with an album cycle (or more) marked by attempts to be taken more seriously as an artist. Along the way, they unpack the careers of the strangest bands to have ever momentarily hit it big (Primus, Butthole Surfers), artists who made giant left turns to restart their career (Rebecca Black!), aging rock stars who pump out albums that seem wholly disconnected from their vital days (The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder), bands that “real” fans never forgive (Green Day) and bands that everyone embraced despite doing all the things that sell-out bands do (Blink 182). Plus, Vince looks at a band who could have sold out but chose to forget their own path, The Roots, and their 1996 opus, Illadelph Halflife. And Dave unpacks Rihanna’s seminal Anti, and how she seemingly threw hit making to the wind and bet on her own taste. 

Discussed today:

The Roots

Rihanna

Butthole Surfers

Primus

Rebecca Black

Coldplay

Green Day

Lorde

The Black Keys

Blink 182

Stevie Wonder

The Rolling Stones

David Bowie

David Byrne

The Wailin’ Jennys

The Smile

We go deep on a roadmap for getting your kids to rap music, from Sugarhill Gang to whatever is happening in the genre right now. How do you approach conversations about lyrical content, specific life experiences that aren’t our own, and answer questions you never thought you’d have to answer (yikes.) Along the way we talk about A Tribe Called Quest’s timeless masterpiece, The Low End Theory, and Jurassic 5’s rap primer for white people, Quality Control. Plus, we build our rap album and artist hall of fame. Plus, what are we listening to this week?



A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Jurassic 5 - Quality Control

Outkast - ATLiens, Aquemini, Stankonia

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly, Good Kid MAAD City

Jay-Z - The Blueprint, Reasonable Doubt, In My Lifetime Vol 2 (Hard Knock Life), The Black Album

Tupac - All Eyez on Me

Notorious BIG - Ready to Die

Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Madvillain - Madvillainy 

Nas - Illmatic

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, College Dropout, Yeezus

Kali Uchis - ORQUIDEAS

Sampha - Lahai

Dave and Caleb welcome in 2024 by naming the best albums for starting a new year. What albums best capture that fine line between eternal optimism and existential dread about what could come? Dave suggests Prince’s 1999, a party album preoccupied with nuclear proliferation in the early 80s, and Caleb brings Jamie xx’s dance party in a jewel case, In Colour. Along the way, they unpack what it was like to first be exposed to Prince as kids in largely conservative environments, and the daunting task that is working through Prince’s catalog. Before that, they talk through the things from 2023 that consistently brought them joy, and cap everything off with what they’re listening to this week. 



Albums discussed at length this week:

Prince - 1999

Jamie xx - In Colour

Dave and Caleb are wrapping up 2023 with our inaugural top tens of the year, plus loads of honorable mentions and singles. We count it down 10-1 and hopefully introduce you to some of your new favorite music!



Our favorite albums of 2023:

Alex Lahey - The Answer is Always Yes

Boygenius - the record

Bully - Lucky for You

Danny Brown - Quaranta

Jamie Branch - Fly of Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

Jamila Woods - Water Made Us

Militarie Gun - Life Under the Gun

Noname - Sundial

Roisin Murphy - Hit Parade

Sampha - Lahai

Slowdive - Everything is Alive

Slow Pulp - Yard

Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

There Will Be Fireworks - Summer Moon

Wednesday - Rat Saw God

Yazmin Lacey - Voice Notes

Youth Lagoon - Heaven is a Junkyard

Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume

This week we're doing something different, a game we call Let's Make a Mixtape. Our friend Hana Kim joins us as we draft 18 Christmas songs that we're publishing as a playlist you can listen to on Spotify or Apple Music. But there's a twist -- when it's someone's turn, they get to not only draft a song and performer, but also they get to draft where on the mixtape it goes. Merry Christmas!

Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

Spotify playlist

Apple playlist