2000s Electronic (LCD Soundsystem, Editors, MGMT)

Welcome to the Album Nerds podcast with your hosts Andy, Don, and Dude. Beep boop boop boop, beep boop boop, beep boop boop boop. That's electronic music for y'all. This is the Album Nerds podcast. I'm Dude. I got Andy and Don with me. How you gentlemen doing, Andy? Doing great, man. Doing great. I got my stack of punch cards here ready. I'm going to load them in my computer here and make some music. It's a callback from all the 70s. Yes. My mom was a key punch operator.

You type on this thing, it punch holes in a card, you'd slip the card into the computer and put light through it. And that's how it was reading your input. You couldn't type directly in. You stack all your cards up and then that would mean something in the end somehow. Yeah. I think people need to know this stuff. Doc. What's up? I'm programmed to say fine. Okay. Is that the hamsters? I have no idea. That is a, that's happy hardcore guys. You need to be careful with that stuff.

It'll rot your teeth out in two minutes. So indeed album nerds podcast time, we love albums, the album format, talking about them, sharing them, discussing them and just reveling. So today we've got a great show for you. We're going to be talking about some electronic albums of the 2000s. And that's going to kind of be up for debate on what that definition is. So that'll be three of those. Don's going to be asking us a deep question.

Then we're going to do some shout outs to some album related items we're digging. And then we're going to spin that wheel of musical discovery to find out what we're talking about next time. This week, let's groove. Electronic music refers to works that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry based music technology and software, or general purpose electronics, such as personal computers in its creation.

Electronic innovation has found its way into rock and roll, R&B, jazz, hip hop and country. And many electronic specific genres evolved over the years, including breakbeat, synthpop, drum and bass, trance, dubstep, EDM and techno. Electronic music had a strong presence in the first decade of the 2000s, including a significant increase in the popularity of EDM, which is electronic dance music. Today each of us will present an electronic album from the first decade of this century. Cool, cool.

Of course, the first thing that came to mind when this topic came up was dance music is what I first thought about. But then as I did some research about electronic music, I was able to find some wiggle room in those other influenced sub genres. How did you guys do? Yeah, this is maybe a little more broad than we initially thought. I used to listen to this music quite a bit back in the early 2000s. So I brought back some old friends and I'll throw out a few and find a few new ones as well.

A few solely electronic comprised albums I mentioned here, Wagon Crys, MusiPole. It's a really fun just like bedroom DJ kind of sounding record, all sorts of clicks and boops. Bedroom DJ, sure. Well, the nice thing about electronic music is you can pretty much make it by yourself. You don't really need a lot of extra components to create it. That can be good and that can be bad. I'm watching a few more records here.

Boards of Canada, they were doing some pretty interesting stuff and kind of more experimental psychedelic space. The record GeoGadi from 2002, really fun sort of like trance sounding record from a group called Fuck Buttons. Terrible name. Kind of a fun record. You know, why not go with... I think Buck Buttons would have been even a funnier name. It depends how you feel about buttons. I mean, maybe they really hate buttons. Or one of them had a pet named Buttons that they were angry with.

Freaking Buttons. Get out of here. All right, and one last one. Dan Deacon, DJ and producer, listened to his 2009 record Brompsed, which was a lot of fun. Very innovative creative record there from Dan Deacon. How about you, Don? Well, listeners of the show probably know that synth pop is a space that I enjoy. It's in your blood. Yes. Of course, a lot of my favorite synth pop acts from the 80s made records in the first decade of the 2000s.

In particular, the Pet Shop Boys, I've mentioned them a lot lately. One of my favorite albums from them, Yes, came out in 2009. I think that album stands up against any of their 80s and 90s work. Another group that I haven't had a chance to explore before is this duo called Sparks. They've actually been around since the early 1970s. They've redefined themselves over the years, but they did a techno-y album in 2000 called Balls. Wow. Yeah, I've heard of them a little bit lately.

They're interesting. Yeah. They're weird. Yeah. I panicked basically, and I worked at a record store around this time, so I went for things I'd heard of like Moby Play, which I found quite bland and long. You have a lot of special guests on it and stuff. Yeah, Gwen Stefani and things like that. It was very popular. Very popular. Yes, it was very, very popular. That's why I knew it existed. And then Tricky, I tried a little trip hop blowback.

There were moments that I enjoyed, but all in all, it was a little much for the old dooder. And then I thought about some industrial type stuff, and this band Deadsy was quite boopy. Be bop boop boop boop in their songs. The album was Commencement. It was just really, really long, and they had a cover of Tom Sawyer by Rush on there. Oh, wow. That was interesting. Industrial Tom Sawyer. Interesting. And then there's one other notable thing about Deadsy, Elijah Blue Almond. It's his band.

He's the son of Cher and Greg Almond. Oh, interesting. Okay, so before we get into our picks, why don't we hear from a listener in front of the show? He's an event promoter and organizer at a variety of New York clubs and a big fan of electronic music. Why don't we listen to his recommendation? So my name is Drew, and that's about D-R-I-E-W. And yes, when you think of it backwards, it is weird. So I appreciate you guys having me on the podcast. EDM is definitely my favorite genre of music.

The album and artist that I picked is Deadmau5. Deadmau5 got his name by actually finding a deadmau5 in his computer. He is a DJ and producer. Interesting is a lot of DJs don't produce their own music. So having an album is really something that's unique to this world. The album that I picked is For Lack of a Better Name that came out in 2009. It starts off with a track called FML. The beat, the drops, really the bass line are just unique and something that were very different at the time.

They were this electro tech and the sounds that he created were all sounds that no one had heard before. There's also a couple of tracks that were hits like Ghost N Stuff, Hi Friend, Soma, and the 16th Hour and also Strobe. Strobe was a big track. So a lot of these tracks are dance tracks and these were really fun tracks and I remember hearing them for the first time and I was like, holy cow, this CD is amazing from start to finish.

So this, For Lack of a Better Name is something definitely to check out and I would definitely check out Deadmau5 in the future. He has a lot more to bring. He makes a good point about how a lot of electronic music at this time period was more like DJ mix type stuff, which really is more just playing other people's music as opposed to a handful of producers who are really creating music that's original. So I think that's a good distinction to create.

That's part of why it was a challenge when I started to find actual albums. Like I was looking for electronic dance music albums. I didn't seem to find much. Some of what Drew said really did explain that. So that was helpful. Thanks. Okay. Well, it's time for us to get into our album picks. Let's do it. You chew, chew, choose me? A lot of people that only know me now have this vision of me as being very on top of

things, which is like I was the worst disaster. Don't worry about it. Just make it. Stop overthinking it. Just make it and put it out. All right. That was James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem. I'll be talking about their second studio album entitled Sound of Silver that came out back in March of 2007. So LCD Soundsystem is a five-piece dance punk rock electronica collective formed in Brooklyn, New York in the early 2000s.

Came into a lot of notoriety pretty early on in their career, nominated for a few Grammys. This album in particular was nominated for best electronic dance album. We are going to play the lead single. This is North American Scott. Kind of sings like Jack White sometimes. Yeah. Much more musical than I expected. I'd heard of LCD Soundsystem, but just assumed it was stuff. So. Yeah. I mean, so they have an electronic component to their music, obviously.

Synthesizers and other electronics in the mix here. But they do have like live components too. I mean, there's like live drums and bass, et cetera. So I think they walked that line pretty well. My clickbait headline for this album is LCD Soundsystem's album Sound of Silver takes gold in best made album with severe bedhead competition. What's up with that guy's hair? His hair is like all over the place every interview I see of him. Looks like he just woke up.

Yeah, so I think this is a pretty polished up version of what their debut was trying to do. Yeah, their self-taught debut, a very lengthy double album. But at the time it was really exciting because it was mixing these elements of like punk rock and electronic and all these other influences. It was cool. It was exciting, but it felt very stretched out and maybe just didn't have a lot of really focused ideas.

That's all I think really takes his ideas and presents them in a much more polished up digestible sort of way. And it feels like he's kind of really found his niche here on this record. What really struck me listening to this is that taking electronic music, the next level of electronic music that was happening in the early 2000s and mixing it with these other genres is what pop music is now. It's just interesting how much this sounds like music that is being recorded now. I'll buy that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I think it was pretty influential at the time. Also, all the records we're talking about today are kind of like fusions of different genres kind of being mixed together here, which I think is a nice element of electronic music. It can really complement things well. When we play this, the next cut here is kind of like got an old synth pop feel. This is called Someone Great. Yeah, I actually had like a visceral reaction to that sound.

It just takes me back to like the first two Depeche Mode albums. Oh, in a good way. Oh, okay. Yes, yeah. Yeah. I thought you see his glow. I mean, the audience can't, but yeah, he's beaming. Yeah, so that was really the first moment where I really started to enjoy this album. It's truly just like a synth pop song, but kind of an interesting subject. It seems to be about loss, somebody dying.

Then on the fan boards or whatever, there's people suspect that it's about James Murphy's Therapist, which actually makes some sense lyrically because they're talking about the conversations they had and stuff like that. But yeah, I really enjoyed that song and that I think really helped me kind of get through the rest of the album. It's actually a pretty eclectic album, I'd say. The first track is more what I expected and then kind of gets a little funky in there.

Then we get to the synth pop stuff and then some songs just seem much more rock. But anyway, my clickbait headline is LCD Sound System Proves Worthy of D.O.N. Sound System. Sorry. Oh, that spells your name. Yes. Yeah. You like it. Exactly. Are you bumping this in the house? Yeah. I enjoyed this record a lot. I actually enjoyed it while running. It was a good record for that. Actually I think all these records were good for that. But it's not what I expected from Andy.

I thought Andy was really going to challenge us with some real dance floor. I do too. Well, there's more episodes to come. Yeah. So this certainly flirts with kind of that EDM stuff, but it doesn't go too far. All the songs have a structure to them. They're all catchy and hooky. There's a lot of sounds like real instrumentation in there. Yeah. I just expected a bunch of... It does have that element. It's in there, but it's mixed in.

But yeah, I'm very happy that I spent some time with this record. I think that track there he picked out on someone great. Along with really a lot of the tracks in the middle of the record there along with that he does a great job of building the pace or kind of building some emotion out of these tracks over the pretty long tracks, six, seven, eight minutes long.

I mean, one of the great things about dance music is you can kind of build momentum and builds energy over the length of a good mix or a long song. I think they really capture that here in a way that felt pretty organic to me, which is kind of cool to have those two components in a nice mix. I mean, they even make it clear at the end with that sort of traditional song about New York. I mean, these guys, I mean, they're musical, right? This isn't just two guys with a computer. Right.

Yeah. James plays quite a few instruments. I think bass being his primary instrument of choice, but yeah, they all have background in playing actual instruments, not just clicking buttons. All right. Why don't we play the most dance floor-orientated track on the record? This is the opener, Get Immaculous. This is not my favorite track on the album. I picked it because this is what I expected the whole thing to be. I think there's some like Kraftwerk sample stuff in there.

It sounds like what I expected and then the record took off from there in a much more accessible, I guess, way that I didn't see coming. That song is a commentary on the search for authenticity in an artificial society. I think we hear a lot of that in music. It delves into the anxieties and uncertainties of modern life and pretty much kind of reflect on your own pursuit of genuine experience in life.

The clickbait headline that I chose to go with for this album is LCD Sound System picks up where Don left off with his Casio SK-1. Snarky synth punk lives. I believe that if Don were a musician, this is the kind of music he would be making. That's just what I felt when I was listening to it because it had all the elements of the synth pop stuff that he loves, but it also sort of had a sarcastic vibe and it just seemed like what he would have tinkered on as a bedroom DJ.

Picture Ross on Friends, remember his music? I think that's more my style. We always end with an explosion. The rest of the album though, moving on from that song, was inventive, poppy, emotive with a sense of humor underneath. To me it kind of was like a techno talking heads. It had some of the same New York City feel, some of the same vibe to it. It doesn't sound like that. There's no African sounds mixed in.

It's not quite as goofy in the vocal delivery, but it had an undercurrent of the talking heads to me. But I enjoyed the album, surprisingly. It was a good listen. Yeah, I think talking heads definitely are among their influences. These guys really wear their influences around their sleeves, I would say. They're not too shy about pulling from some previous group pretty closely, which can be good and bad, I think.

But yeah, I think this record is their strongest overall and it's the one I come back to the most. I'm looking for that kind of cool New York City punk dance vibe, which I think they do really well. So if you're not familiar, check out LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver. I'll put my shirt back on. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me.

If you're enjoying the show and we hope you are, do us a solid and leave a review on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app, maybe Spotify. Hopefully we made you laugh or you discovered an album you enjoy. So go ahead and leave us a review. It keeps the show going and helps other music fans find us. There are guitars on the record, but they're definitely more in the background than they

used to be. We've always used synths and things on our songs, but yeah, they've definitely come to the forefront on this record. So my electronic album from the 2000s is from Editors, an album called In This Light and On This Evening, released in October 2009. It's actually the third studio album from the English rock band formed in Birmingham in 2002.

On the album notes, they don't actually specify what instruments the band members play, but Tom Smith is the vocalist, Chris Urbonowitz traditionally plays guitar, Russell Leach on bass and Edward Lay on drums. But I guess maybe because it's an electronic album, I get the sense that maybe all of them were messing around on the keyboards and stuff. Really press the buttons. Exactly. It's a much more electronic album than their previous two efforts. Here's a cut called Bricks and Mortar.

So again, a very comfortable sound for me. Yeah. It just sounds a lot like the 80s. It's funny that this counts. I mean, it does. It's electronic for sure, but my God, man, this couldn't be more Don-ish. And the fact that it existed in 2009 is just shocking to me. It was actually important because in that time period, I started looking for new music to listen to. And this is one of the bands that I found. Actually, I even purchased the vinyl. I have that.

Oh. Yeah. So real quick, were you familiar with their previous records before you heard this one? No, I don't remember how I became acquainted with it, but it was the first time I was kind of excited about a new artist for a long time. Cool. Anyway, my clickbait headline is English band channels English greats, but fails to capture Don's heart. What? I loved this record for a while. I was really into it. And I don't know. I kind of left it behind.

And I mean, I still like it, but for some reason, it's I don't know. It doesn't have like staying power with me. I don't know. Really? Yeah. You would think it would because it's everything I like. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it also could have something to do with the emotional and memory connections that you built with it, you know, like you did with the music that inspired this. Yeah. I can't really put my finger on why, you know, this album, you know, kind of leaves me wanting.

But anyway, well, let's let's hear more. Here's a song called You Don't Know Love. Yeah, this this song gave me strong Don singing into a brush. Yeah, vibes like both the LCD sound system and this album. I just it was like it's the Don show this week. I'm sorry it leaves you wanting because this maybe it's just two on the nose. Maybe that's the problem. Yeah. So the song probes the depths of change in human emotion.

And it's you know, it's about affection and detachment and all that kind of stuff. And it's pretty clear. I mean, the lyrics are pretty straightforward. I mean, when you don't know love like you used to kind of from that Dracula singing style. The Dracula School of Music. Yeah, a little bit. The song is emotional just because of the chorus. I mean, the rest of the lyrics are cool, too. But that chorus sets the entire tone very effectively.

My clickbait headline for this album, editors found to be time travelers in 1982. Moody synth pop lost in time. Dark London streets, anyone? Smiths Morrissey with since anyone? Like it's it's just it evokes that stuff so effectively that if you had played this for me and said it was from 1982, I would have believed you and thought, wow, really clean production for 1982. It's true. It just sounds so authentic to that time and that feel and that vibe and lyrically, they pull it off.

Musically, they pull it off. And the electronic elements are, again, well woven into the fabric of it where it doesn't overwhelm. It's just the right amount where someone like me that ekes at too much electronic sound. This is a very nice mix and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Quite surprised. The song, The Big Exit. I really like the sound of that one as well. See, that one for me, I thought they got a little too dramatic on that track. It went a little bit to that campy zone for me. Right.

But that's kind of what makes it feel 80s to me is very over the top. Yeah, that's true. Well, let's hear another. This is Eat Raw Meat Equals Blood Drool. Yeah, obviously. Sure. Yeah. Classic. Sounds a little Dave Matthews-y there, doesn't he? So, interesting song. I found that song pretty catchy immediately. Lyrically, there's such odd phrasing in this album. I didn't really know what to make it. Lots of heavy metaphors or just richly steeped in metaphors. Just odd though.

I don't know if it's like a British thing, the way he creates some wordings here. This feels strange to me, but I found it interesting. My clickbait headline is, editors edit themselves into another genre. I was vaguely familiar with this group. Their debut record was pretty well received from what I recall. That was much more guitar focused. This record is interesting because they really kind of abandoned that almost completely and go with this synth heavy sound.

You can still tell they're good musicians and they play well together. I think it works pretty well. Just maybe not quite as interesting to me as what they were doing in the past. Okay. Yeah, I think for me, because of my expectations of what the show was going to be this week, I was delighted with everything that was picked because it was rooted in pop or rock music and with Electronica being a strong supporting cast member, but not all it was.

I think I probably have delusions of grandeur with these records because I was just so happy that it wasn't an hour of boop, bop, boop, beep, beep stuff. Yeah. Well, there was one kind of beep, bop, boop component to this record that did stick out to me as maybe not being, I didn't love as much. There's a drone sound throughout this record of varying pitch that kind of seems to fill in what the guitar distortion used to do for the band, just kind of like a background rumble.

Yeah. For me, that type of drone sound just doesn't have nearly as much emotion in it as a guitar distortion does, which feels more volatile to, I guess, than to sort of like can sort of version of that, which we get here. I liked that sound because it sounded like London fog to me. It's at that dark streets tone, but- Yeah, it does lead into the darkness. It's a good point you're making. It might sound better if it were more organic.

Well, so the album is produced by Flood, who's another one who did my favorite Depeche Mode album and U2 and stuff. I think I decided why I am not in love with this record. I think it's because it's like AI just generated a Dawn album. I think it just doesn't challenge me. I guess I still, like underneath, I still want to be challenged in some way, and I guess it doesn't. That's probably not fair to them. Anyway, so that's Editors with In This Light and On This Evening.

Excuse me. I'd like to ask you a few questions. Now Deep Questions by Dawn. All right, fellas, we're going really deep again this week. What were your favorite electronic devices in the early 2000s? Yeah, we're going to be dating ourselves here pretty quickly. All right, we'll talk about my MP3 player, which is like probably from about 2002, I want to say. This was pre-iPod explosion. It wasn't really an option.

So I had gotten this like $300 MP3 player, which was three gigabytes, which nowadays could fit like your thumbnail. But back then that was like an insane amount of space. It had a spinning hard drive in it, so you couldn't really jostle it around at all, or it would just stop working completely. The battery life was about maybe 30, 40 minutes, I would say. You could almost get through an album. So you pretty much had it plugged in. But I used that thing. I used the hell out of it.

It was so great. It had a really nice line in, so you could do recordings onto it, and you could fit like maybe like 15, 20 hours of music on it, which at the time was like just mind blowing. You could have that much music within your pocket. I mean. Right, not one of those giant folios with all your CDs. Yeah, that was the alternative really. It was just carrying like 15 pounds of CDs with you. Yeah, I love that.

It's from Creative Arts. I don't know if they're even around anymore, but they used to be popular doing computer stuff. Yeah, so that was fun. Dude. Yeah, for me, I'd go back a little earlier because I didn't have a computer in the early 2000s. My roommate Don did. But I didn't have like the idea of ripping CDs and taking my MP3s and putting them on other, that just was beyond me at the time. And I worked at a record store, so physical media was still predominant with me.

And CD Walkman with skip protection changed the game. Because it's huge. That was one of the biggest problems with trying to have a portable CD player, which you would plug in to an adapter that would go into your cassette deck in your car. But every time you'd hit a bump or even turn, it would skip. So having the skip protection on the CD player, that was huge. It allowed me to put my folio of CDs in the car and be able to listen to them.

So that and around the same time I got my first cell phone, one has become life. The cell phone, the mobile phone, mobile device, and CD Walkman are three bucks on eBay. It was cool at the time. Well I remembered I had a Palm Pilot. Do you guys remember those? Sure. I remember yours. I just was like, what the hell is this thing for? Yeah. It was a pen and everything. Yeah. So it's kind of predated the Blackberry and then the smartphone. But it had the little pen.

And you had to learn like a version of shorthand. Oh yeah. They had their own language. So instead of doing a full letter, you would just do a couple of lines. So there was a learning curve with it. And off air, dude actually reminded me that I dropped it and the lid broke off of it and stuff. So it didn't last long for me. Well you were doing a promotion for the radio station you worked for and you're running down the field at the sporting event.

And I saw it pop out of your pocket and hit the ground to break it to pieces. You didn't have one of those belt clips everybody had back then where you just put it on like a... It was probably in my giant cargo shorts. That's what I was going to say. Always with the shorts. Very 2000s. What were your favorite electronic devices of the 2000s? Let us know on Instagram or Facebook or leave a comment on our website, albumnerds.com.

Boy, that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. So my electronic album choice is by a band that was originally called The Management, but due to conflicts with other bands, they had to change their name to MGMT, American sort of psychedelic rock band formed in 2002 by a couple of college freshmen, Andrew Van Weingarten and Ben Goldwasser. In 2007, they released their debut album, Irracular Spectacular, kind of a critical success, breakthrough album. Why don't we give a little listen to the first track, Time To Protect.

This song reminds me a lot of when the iPod came out. I feel like this was featured on some commercials or just like I equate the two together. Yeah. That sounds about right. So I mean, the album itself, just their sound is this catchy melodies, psychedelic influences, electronic elements, and it's a little more interesting than I thought. I just at the time wrote them off as a couple of rave kids. I saw the album cover.

It looked like they had just gotten done at Burning Man and I never listened to any of their music until last week. The track, Time To Pretend, I guess the keyboard melody was inspired by their pet praying mantis that was named Cuvilla. It was named after their experimental music professor who advised them on their senior project, which was music, which is what kind of turned into their whole thing. Would have been cooler if this was the project, like this album. Faithless.

The track was originally titled The Mantis Sailing Home and was inspired by the tempo of Abba's Dancing Queen. So yeah, I guess a few years ago it was in the trailer for the movie, Spider-Man Homecoming and went viral on TikTok. So it still has some legs in life and the band just released an album. They're still doing their thing. Clickbait headline, MGMT take garage rock to the dance floor and lost their shirts along the way. As you'll see on the album cover.

So why don't we listen to a little bit of, this is hard because it's got of. Why don't we dig a little deeper and listen to the next track of Moons, Birds and Monsters. Hard to connect what we just heard on the single there to that track. Yeah. Interesting though, from my perspective. Another clickbait headline is management lets workers have free reign on the B side.

Yeah, so they definitely packed all the hits in the front half here and the B side, I feel like there's kind of like, had free reign and got into some interesting psychedelic space here at times. They still have like that pop sensibility. They have like the kinks and their songwriting here. There's definitely a garage rock undercurrent where this is like in the eighties synth pop kind of put synths on a punkier sort of sound.

And then I feel like they did this with the garage rock revival of the early 2000s kind of turned into this because it does have some rolling stones swagger to it. And there's some, especially on that second half, like you said, it's a little more straightforward psych rock. Yeah. Surprising. I think there's even some room for experimentation too. They got into some interesting moments here. Maybe they don't work perfectly.

Songs like The Handshake, I didn't think was great, but you can definitely hear the production influences and a lot like flaming lips, I would say, especially the closing track, Future Reflections. Shared to producer. Yeah. Yeah, overall, I mean, I guess I'd like this more than I expected to. It's hard to deny that they can write a catchy hook and just have a good sense for writing a good pop, a pop hook.

But yeah, it was cool to see that they maybe have roots in psychedelia and open to some experimentation. So yeah, I was overall pretty pleased with this. All right. Why don't we get to the big one, the big track. It's called Kids. Yeah. So that is a catchy little ditty. All their lyrics are kind of strange. I was reading some interpretations of it. Most people were kind of interpreting it literally, about sort of growing up and learning to moderate, take only what you need.

And actually, somebody compared it to, I guess, a children's book or a children's story called The Giving Tree. Have you guys ever heard of that? Of course. Of course. She's also Silverstein, right? Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. She's a witch from the tree, eventually the tree dies. So I don't know if that's a family of trees haunting. I don't know if that's really a reference to The Giving Tree or not. It might be. I don't know. My clickbait headline is oracular spectacular. No, but it's pretty good.

I think we'd all agree there. Yeah. I mean, I enjoyed the album and I'll probably return to it. I love kind of psychedelic, goofy music and this is certainly that. But they have a great sense of melody and they borrow from a lot of areas. Even that like second song, Weekend Wars, it kind of reminded me of like Ziggy Stardust era Bowie. I guess like all three of these albums, it's of its time, but it certainly refers back to the past.

And they effectively used electronica to carry some of the melodies, to modernize the sound and to this point because of the way that popular music has moved, this stuff still sounds fairly modern. It doesn't sound dated because it's got such a mix of influences that are familiar to everyone that it feels comfortable. It kind of shocks me with an electric feel. I read one review and I just liked the one phrase. It was out of Rolling Stone.

They called it Synthesized Heartache, I think is a cool thing. And maybe that's like what I've always listened to, right? It is Synthesized Heartache. Synthesized Heartbreak. Yeah. Anyway, it's a nice album. If you haven't or you just kind of forgot about them or they used to be your jam or whatever it takes, I think you should listen to this MGMT album. It's an interesting listen. There's something to grab onto for everyone. Yeah, MGMT, oracular, spectacular. Can you dig it?

Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Okay fellas, well, I guess we can unplug those synthesizers and talk about some other things that we're digging. What are you digging, Andy? Yeah, I got a couple things I'm digging here. It's instrumental music actually. First one up from Julian Lange. Lange? Lange? Lange? Lange. Lange. I like Lange. It could be like La-ye. Isn't there the yogurt that's spelled like Faige, but it's Fa-ye? Yes. Okay, first one up here is from Julian Lange. The record is called...

It's probably Laige. It's probably Laige. Poor Julian. The record is called Speak to Me. It's an instrumental guitar based record. I found it pretty compelling. My first listen through, got back to it a couple times since. That sounds pretty cool. I like it. So the whole album is instrumental? The whole album is instrumental. Okay, okay. I'll check that out. It gets much more bluesy on some songs. I can freestyle over it. Yes. That's perfect for you. It's like a karaoke album for you to sing to.

I got one more for you to add your vocals to here, Don, from a... A last name you guys may recognize, Sean Ono-Lennon. Ever heard of him? No. The album is called Asterisms. First time hearing his music. This guy just has like instrumental sort of jam band quality to it. Very loose, only a handful of tracks, but a fairly long record. Enjoyed what I've heard from him so far. So that sounds a little prog rocky. Is that the vibe throughout? Yes. Okay. All instrumental as well? Pretty sure.

There's no vocals on that. Yeah. All right. Last one for me is from an artist by the name of Moore Mother. Her new album is entitled The Great Bella. We've talked about that on the show. We may have talked about her a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yes. Very interesting, experimental, spoken word artist. Though she does do elements of like hip hop, I would say, occasionally as well. This album is very focused on like race relations, I would say, is the crux of this one. Oh yeah, now I'm remembering.

Heavy duty stuff, even on the previous album. It kind of sounds like something you would listen to like in a museum exhibit or something like that. Yeah. Or a documentary. Yeah. That's what my nightmares sound like. Guilty. Guilty. Oh boy, what secrets are you hiding? Any one in law enforcement, his name is Don. All right. Well, I had the pleasure of seeing the legend John Mellencamp last week. I really enjoyed the show in preparation for it, as I often do when I see artists.

I like to immerse myself in their latest work. So I went back. It's from last year, John Mellencamp's Orpheus Descending. We've kind of flirted with doing it on the show before. We may have even mentioned it, but we never actually did. Yeah, I actually, it's a solid record. His vocal delivery has changed a little bit over the years. He's much more, it's gravelly. Yes. But yeah, gravelly, but this album has a little bit more of the heartland rock sound. A lot of his recent solo albums have not.

They've been more folky or just very dark. So I can hardly even recognize his voice anymore. Yeah. And it's super political, which I enjoyed. And he's just a little more laid back vocally than he used to be as well. But aren't we all? Still puts on a good show. Awesome. All right. So I came across a surprise that I wasn't expecting. Just looking at new releases, I happened to click on this band, Mild Life, their album chorus. They're an Australian jazz fusion band.

And just some of it struck me as very 70s, but modern and jazzy. I'd never heard of them. So it's a band to explore a sound you just kind of sink into. So I found myself just kind of getting lost in it. And we'll have to see where that leads. But I didn't know there were jazz fusion bands anymore. Especially in Australia. That's cool. Yeah. All right. So then back to my usual Judas Priest Invincible Shield album is fully released. And I don't know how Rob Halford sounds as good. He's in his 70s.

The band sounds great. It's an hour and four minutes long. It's a long record. And there's some of the songs that probably carry on longer than they need to. But it's still fist pumping good times. Don't any of these guys have like roxoidus or anything? Melon Camp on the Halford voice program. Yeah, Halford plan. And then as I like to do, I did pick up, actually, my wife bought it for me when we went to breakfast and the record store this weekend. It's an album I've loved for a long time.

We've talked about it on the show. Patti Smith Horses. And I had it on CD, but I did not have it on vinyl. So we picked up a copy and it's been a lot of fun to have around. Yeah, that's a good one. Did you say you had breakfast at the record store? There's a breakfast place directly next to the record store. Cool. They share a wall. It's very convenient. Nice. Okay. Well, what are you digging? Let us know. You can find us on the socials Facebook and Instagram or on our website, albumnerds.com.

It will be a discovery of extraordinary value. Well boys and girls, it's about this time on the show and I'm reminded of the great American innovator and businessman, Mr. Steve Jobs. One more thing. That's right. One more thing. He said, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

With that in mind, let's bring out my friend and yours, Wadbot. See what we'll be listening to on next week's show. In the 1980s, hip hop began to establish itself as a musical movement to be reckoned with. MTV assisted by bringing rap and hip hop into homes all over the world on the program, Yo MTV Raps. Next time, you will explore albums by artists that appeared on Yo MTV Raps. Yo MTV Raps. Nice. I mean, I used to catch that when I could at friend's houses because we didn't have cable.

Obviously, he broke the door down, but Yo MTV Raps helped get hip hop to the masses. Into the living room. Dr. Dre and Ed Lover. A different Dr. Dre. Wait, there's two Dr. Dre's? Yes. Oh my gosh. Things to learn. Yeah. Exploring probably hip hop of the 80s and 90s. So nice. Yeah, should be fun. Don't forget, we do have one ongoing Elm Nerds Hall of Fame vote in progress. There's one week left to vote for Meatloaf's Bad Outta Hell.

If you think that album belongs in the Elm Nerds Hall of Fame, sound off. Go to our website, ElmNerds.com, or let us know on socials at Elm Nerds. Get that album in its rightful place in the Elm Nerds Hall of Fame, or keep it out. What's your favorite electronic record? What do you remember from Yo MTV Raps? What else are you listening to? Leave a comment on our website or email us at podcast at elmnerds.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and threads at Elm Nerds.

And please subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite podcast app. And if you'd like to support the show, you can do so via PayPal at elmnerds.com slash support. Thank you for joining us once again here on the Elm Nerds podcast. We'll catch you next time with some classic hip hop, Yo MTV Raps style. Thanks for listening everybody. See you next week. I'm blue da ba dee da ba da ba da ba dee da ba da. Bye bye, West Green. Bye for 65.