Bigmouth bids farewell in the outside world! From now on you can get us at The Culture Bunker… but we’re keeping the Bigmouth Patreon going with a few special extras for the Patreon faithful. And of course you can hear the music in full from every edition on our rolling playlist. On this week’s tearful end-of-an-era edition we meet John Cooper Clark, the William Blake of Salford, on the occasion of his new collection of poems – and he reads us one too. Plus, have Apple TV+ successfully filmed th...
Oct 02, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Hear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Our new weekend pop culture roundtable returns with special guest Lynval Golding of The Specials, and their latest album, Protest Songs. Journalist Ian Harrison joins us to chew on new films The Farewell and Sweetheart, and we all listen to Bright Magic, the latest offering from Public Service Broadcasting. "The history of music can almost be seen as one long protest song." - Sian Pattenden. "I was born in Jamaica, I am living in America...
Sep 26, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Hear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Welcome to the debut of our new weekend pop culture roundtable, as the podcast formerly known as Bigmouth joins The Bunker. This week, special guest Dan Gillespie Sells, composer of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie joins us to talk over the musical’s transition to Amazon Prime film. Critic Michael Hann helps us unpack Sex Education Series 3 on Netflix, and The North Water. Plus friend of the podcast Naomi Smith joins to share her pick of ...
Sep 18, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Hear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Welcome to the debut of our new weekend pop culture roundtable, as the podcast formerly known as Bigmouth joins The Bunker. This week, special guest Sarah Cracknell of pop couturiers Saint Etienne joins us to talk over their new album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You. Plus critic John Mullen helps us dissect the new Steve Martin/Selena Gomez/Martin Short crime caper Only Murders In The Building plus new albums from Antipodean punks Amyl &...
Sep 11, 2021•55 min•Season 2Ep. 1
We say goodbye to the Upsetter and ponder the extraordinary circumstances that created Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry with guests Justin Quirk and Mark Hooper. Plus, never mind the ballast! Is the BBC’s murder-on-a-submarine drama Vigil seaworthy? We look at beloved late comic Sean Lock’s sitcom 15 Storeys High, now on iPlayer by popular demand, and Sparks’s “idiosyncratic” movie Annette. And stay tuned for very, very big news about Bigmouth… Book lovers! Why not purchase Mark Hooper’s The Great British Tr...
Sep 04, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 264
This week, why you should be watching WHITE LOTUS, Sky’s brutal new satire of America’s beach-bound bourgeois bohemians. LORDE’s Solar Power brings us the horrors of fame but do we want to hear about them? Audacious female-led horror movie CENSOR spits on our grave (in the best possible way). And we round up the good stuff you might have missed with the Telegraph’s Michael Hogan. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Ale...
Aug 21, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 263
It’s a double-doctorate edition as Dr Jen Otter Bickerdike joins us to explain the truth about Rock’s Ice Maiden® in her new book You Are Beautiful And You Are Alone: The Real Story Of Nico… and Dr Eamonn Forde returns to fill us in his latest, Leaving The Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates. Plus new Irish dream-pop from Villagers and The Strokes’ Is This It hits its 20th birthday. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio...
Aug 14, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 262
In road trip movie from (and to) hell Zola a young African-American waitress finds herself conned into sex work, but she’s no victim. What will we make of this first movie based on a series of tweets? Plus the ravishing radiophonic of Hannah Peel, pirates of the airwaves Kurupt FM return in a documentary about the mockumentary, and we finally have our say on Questlove’s incredible Summer of Soul. NME and GQ veteran Iestyn George is our guest. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presente...
Aug 07, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 261
Out early for Patreon people… Understated ASMR pop paragon Billie Eilish is the voice of a million teenage bedrooms, but how will her second album Happier Than Ever go down with our 45+ panel of oldies? Plus the perils of child stardom in jaw-dropping documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, Prince’s Vault disgorges Welcome 2 America, and ideas for what to listen to and read on that beach holiday you can’t take. Travis Elborough, author of Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Lif...
Jul 31, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 260
Will The Sparks Brothers – a fraternal rockumentary from Edgar Spaced Wright – cast new insight on Mael pattern creativity? Plus a remarkable contemporary soul debut from Joel Culpepper with the unimprovable title Sgt. Culpepper, Scritti Politti reissue two none-more-80s pop epics, and does BBC2’s Reclaiming Amy cast new light on the most tragic music story of the past two decades? Daryl Easlea and Michael Moran are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Patte...
Jul 24, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 259
Is the BBC’s new podcast series Pieces Of Britney a worthwhile exploration of a modern showbiz horror story, or just as exploitative in its own way? Plus the soul sounds of “newstalgia” with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, r’n’b goes all Miami Vice in Too Slow To Disco: Yacht Soul, and truly odd movie about F1 boss turned press nemesis Max Mosley. Michael Hann of the FT and Guardian and pop historian Lucy O’Brien are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden...
Jul 09, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 258
You want eclectic? Novelist and Richard Allen du jour John Niven and Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly join us for this week’s pop smörgåsbord. This week: Sault’s surprise album of boundary-breaking BLM r’n’b, bombastic Gallic prog rave from Gaspard Augé of Justice, a preview of Marvel’s Black Widow, and thriller from Manila On The Job – a real Netflix find. Oh, and we watch Love Island as a form of penance. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew H...
Jul 03, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 257
Will all-day drinking restore your creative spark and joie de vivre, asks new Mad Mikkelson movie Another Round? What do YOU think, respond our guests Linda Marric and Jim Butler. Also, new albums from the Dennis the Menace of hip hop Tyler, The Creator and the Terry and June of doom-bound independent rock’n’roll Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, and a truly different rockdoc: the heroes of Zambia’s insane “Zamrock” in Witch: We Intend To Cause Havoc. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and ...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 256
Cult UK director Ben Wheatley returns to his folk-horror roots with the post-pandemic shocker In The Earth. Will we be able to see the horror for the trees? John Grant’s new album Boy From Michigan is searingly powerful on its creator’s chequered life, but is it, you know, fun too? And guests James Medd (ex-The Word) and Kate Hodges of The Hare And Hoofe challenge Andrew and Siân with albums to broaden their horizons. What will we like and what will we hate…? www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Prod...
Jun 19, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 255
The BBC’s intense Sean Bean/Stephen Graham prison drama Time… Marvel’s Loki gets a wildly original Disney+ series to confound all expectations… new music from Deap Vally… and if you’re only going to watch one series about a deer-human hybrid boy lost in post-apocalyptic America, make it Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Journalist Catherine Meyer and beer writer Pete Brown join Siân and Andrew to cover this week’s pop culture waterfront. And Catherine tells us about The Problem Of Leisure, an album of Gan...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 254
Out early for Patreon people… Is cosmic soul Londoner Greentea Peng’s debut album Man Made the spaced-out summer soundtrack we need? BritBox’s first original programming is Isle of Wight crime thriller The Beast Must Die, but can the streaming minnow’s own stuff compete with Netflix? Plus we challenge guests Sophie ‘Mojo/Guardian’ Harris and Simon ‘Wallpaper’ Mills to try an album they’ve never heard – and they challenge Andrew and Siân too. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented...
Jun 05, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 253
Contemporary stress drives Ben “Q” Whishaw to a strangely ecstatic breakdown in strange London thriller SURGE. Why Michelle Zauner aka JAPANESE BREAKFAST is the Korean-American sophisto-pop turn you should be paying attention to. And what the hell is going on with that Amazon sci-fi star vehicle SOLOS, with its Helen Mirren, its Anne Hathaways and its Morgan Freemans? International guests CHRIS HEATH of GQ (Brooklyn) and DAVID KEEPS of Details and Star Hits (Phoenix, AZ) dial in to help us sort ...
May 29, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 252
Billie Piper’s astonishing directorial debut RARE BEASTS: genius reinvention of the romcom, cinematic ordeal, arthouse triumph or all three? GRUFF RHYS of Super Furry Animals writes a concept album about how a Korean volcano explains the essence of humanity. Plus we revisit Riz Ahmed’s bravura deaf jam of a movie THE SOUND OF METAL and worship at the feet of BBC2’s GODS OF SNOOKER. Film critic ANNA SMITH and The Times’s WILL HODGKINSON are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and...
May 22, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 251
Crossover Episode! Our old bosses MARK ELLEN and DAVID HEPWORTH of A Word In Your Ear, Smash Hits, Q and Mojo fame join Siân and Andrew to mark our quarter century. On the agenda: the glory days of the Hits and why the music biz didn’t know how much it would miss the pop mags. “PAUL WELDER”’s new album. The Incredible String Band, Half Man Half Biscuit, Girl Band, Fargo on C4 and that BBC Mitford thing. Van Morrison’s harmonica redux. And “much, much more”! Thanks to everyone who’s backed us and...
May 15, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 250
Art-pop provocateur ST VINCENT returns with an album inspired by her dad’s 12 year jail sentence for multimillion dollar financial fraud. Is this the key to Annie Clark’s oeuvre (and is it any good)? Plus MATT ‘TOAST OF LONDON’ BERRY’S frankly marvellous psych-pop freakbeat album The Blue Elephant, Sky attempts a female take on I, Claudius with DOMINA, and a couple of off-the-beaten track movies you might like. Broadcaster Jamie East and novelist, screenwriter and Nik Cohn of scally Kevin Sampso...
May 08, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 248
Dear God, it’s Bigmouth’s fifth birthday. We know, right? In celebration, we welcome the legend that is Neil Tennant plus “third Pet Shop Boy” David Quantick for a gala appreciation of the lost world of the music press that made us. Worst interviewees, biggest disasters, dinner dates with Freddie Mercury, the twilight of Marilyn’s career, the mags we’d bring back from the dead and more… plus we bring back the Smash Hits Nosey Questions for one week only. Bigmouth: it’s a party in a podcast. Prod...
May 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 247
The astonishing stories of the little-known women who shaped the genesis of electronic music are told in new documentary Sisters With Transistors. How would you like your guitar music: unflinchingly realist with Teenage Fanclub or boldly avant garde with Field Music? And is Sky’s much-touted new cop show Mare Of Easttown, starring a heavily de-glammed Kate Winslet as a disconsolate detective, an American Broadchurch or something more still more pungent? Our guests Jude “Guardian” Rogers and Mich...
Apr 24, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 246
The Carey Mulligan revenge thriller Promising Young Woman from Killing Eve writer Emerald Fennell: black comedy, proper serious commentary, or just too intense to enjoy? Up and coming young artist Paul McCartney hands over his music to everyone from St Vincent to John Home to Khruangbin, What will we think of McCartney III Imagined? Why time travelling subversion of the romcom Palm Springs is your new favourite movie. And The Selecter’s Too Much Pressure finally gets its pork-pie-hatted props. E...
Apr 17, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 245
Is Nomadland, with Frances McDormand as a van-dwelling “houseless not homeless” wanderer in the new America, really as good as all the awards imply? New albums by one-man rave-up Raf Rundell (ex-2 Bears) and cosmic soul man Matthew E White who’s gone all outsider art on us. And deadpan comedy in Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s NZ copumentary Wellington Paranormal. Strictly Kev AKA DJ Food and Michael Hann of the Guardian and the FT are our guests. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and...
Apr 10, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 244
POD: SELFISH. In our most post-post-post punk edition ever, Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne and Tessa Norton join us to discuss Excavate! The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall, their magisterial co-edited hardback symposium on music’s most cryptic combo. Plus the debut album from post-Fall observationistas Dry Cleaning, a remarkable compilation of RADICAL! FUNK! from the Thatcher-bashing 80s… and what sort of truth does new biopic Creation Stories AKA I Am Alan McGee tell? Produced and pr...
Mar 27, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 243
Will disaster princess Lana Del Rey hold on to her title as the F Scott Fitzgerald of the blasé Instagram generation with Chemtrails Over The Country Club? After the phantasmagoria of WandaVision, will the newly Marvelized Disney+ audience take to the bleakly realist political thriller The Falcon And The Winter Soldier? Plus a round-up of intriguing new streaming movies – The Columnist, The Banishing and Silk Road – and why you really really really should watch Sky’s new comedy thriller The Flig...
Mar 20, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 242
Special guest and all-purpose film-directing dread about town Don Letts joins us to talk about his new book There And Black Again plus untold tales from 40 years spanning Bob Marley, The Clash and B.A.D. up to the present day. And film critic Linda Marric helps us disentangle Sky’s latest New Romantic documentary Blitzed: The 80s Blitz Kids Story, Netflix movie The Best Of Enemies – in which a KKK leader develops an unlikely friendship with a Black civil rights campaigner – and the latest sprawl...
Mar 13, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 241
The great punk misfit Poly Styrene features in new documentary I Am A Cliché, showing this week on Sky Arts. Will it earn her her proper place at last? Laura Snapes of The Guardian and writer Travis Elborough join us to examine it plus the first album in 16 years by Falkirk seediness connoisseurs Arab Strap and Ridley Scott’s The Terror, AKA I’m A Character Actor, Get Me Off This Ice Floe. Plus nerd squad Mike Moran and Alex Andreou parachute in for spoiler-laden look at the WandaVision series f...
Mar 06, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 240
There’s a con woman coining it in the care homes of America: will Rosamund Pike crime caper I Care A Lot on Amazon Prime Video scare us straight? The ecstatic grown-up grief-pop of The Anchoress. Andrew finally succeeds in turning the panel on to a comic book with The Department Of Truth – an X Files for the QAnon era (read Issue 1 for free here). And was Frank Zappa quite as charmlessly difficult as we thought? We take a look at a new documentary with guests Zöe Howe and William Shaw. Produced ...
Feb 27, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 239
Fyre Festival/Lord Of The Flies vibes in Class Action Park, a frankly astonishing documentary about America’s most insanely hazardous amusement park now showing on Sky Documentaries. New albums from the Radiophonic Kate Bush of cosmic Cheshire Jane Weaver and young disco turk SG Lewis. And why Lupin is the biggest deal yet in French telly’s bit to take over the world. Acid house veterans Anthony ‘placid casual’ Teasdale and Jim ‘Jockey Slut’ Butler are our guests. Produced and presented by Siân ...
Feb 20, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 238
