Is BBC1’s all-encompassing comedy drama of race, class, cities and, yes, sexual assault I May Destroy You as good as everyone’s saying? A pulsating polysexual solo debut arrives from Jehnny Beth of Savages while another frontperson-without-portfolio, ex-Maccabee Orlando Weeks, delivers a much more subdued one about – ahem – fatherhood. Which one’s the best? And is Spike Lee’s “Black Vietnam” movie Da 5 Bloods worth your Netflix time? Assessing it all with Andrew and Siân are undisputed world Bow...
Jun 20, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 207
This week in the Inner Sanctum of pop culture: Will McDonalds heist documentary McMillion$ supersize your evenings in? And which of its cast of oddballs and nutcases deserve their own spin-off? Run The Jewels’ fourth album lands in a none-more-timely fashion, right in the middle of the BLM revolution. What do the panel think? And we revisit Céline Portrait Of A Lady On Fire Sciamma’s Parisian banlieu drama Girlhood in Old Film Club. Lords of lockdown James ‘GQ and The Word’ Medd and Simon ‘Sunda...
Jun 13, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 206
This week in the Cell Block 9 of pop culture: Madness’s hair-raisingly criminal and violent joint autobiography Before We Was We is out in paperback, which is as good a reason as any to revisit it. Was Steve Carell wise to base an entire big-bucks sitcom on Trump’s whim toof creating a Space Force for the US military? And the cosmic sound of Orkney with post-folk mind-massager Erland Cooper. Men about town Justin Quirk and Dan Maier are our guests for the affair. Produced and presented by Andrew...
Jun 06, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 205
This week on the lockdown get-down of pop culture: Does Tim Burgess’s new LP I Love The New Sky cement his position as Captain Cheer-up of the COVID calamity? Netflix turn Bong Joon-Ho’s dystopian weird-out Snowpiercer into a series. Is this a good idea? And in Old Film Club we settle down with Adam And Paul, a heartwarming tale of two Dublin pals who share a dream, a deep personal bond, and a crippling addiction to heroin. Popcorn at the ready! Pop fiend and illustrator of amazing children’s bo...
May 30, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 204
Doyen of US pop journalist David Keeps of Star Hits and Details magazines fame dials from faraway Phoenix, Arizona to join Mark “Arena/The Face” Hooper, Siân and Andrew for this week’s bloody assizes of entertainment. In the dock: Netflix’s uncommonly clever clubbin’n’druggin’-in-Ibiza series White Lines, Mark and David’s choices of great albums for the Great Shut-In, and we revisit Martin Scorsese’s yuppie terror odyssey of 1985, After Hours. Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison and Siân P...
May 23, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 203
We loved his new album The Night Chancers and now we welcome Baxter Dury plus guest Hannah Verdier of The Guardian to this week’s conference call of pop. On the agenda: The new Sparks album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip! Do they still have it in their *checks notes* SIXTH decade in rock and/or pop? Baxter and Hannah suggest great albums of the Lockdown Era, including Jarvis Cocker’s as-yet unreleased Jarv Is. And what will the panel make of Andrew’s Old Film Club selection, Mike Judge’s fable of a d...
May 16, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 202
Will Quickies, an album of VERY short songs by maudlin mandolin merchants The Magnetic Fields, have your knees a-tremble? What about that Fiona Apple album, eh? Is Ryan ‘Glee’ Murphy’s Netflix extravaganza Hollywood quite the turkey that everyone’s saying? And in the absence of interesting new stuff we institute Old Film Club with a look at Sidney Lumet’s media satire Network. Guests Sophie Harris of MOJO and Will Hodgkinson of The Times are mad as hell and they ain’t gonna take it no more. Prod...
May 09, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 201
Does Beastie Boys Story, MCA and Ad-Rock’s hip hop TED talk, expand our knowledge of their journey from frat pack to woke MCs? The new Pretenders album Hate For Sale – they’ve put the release back but we’re talking about it anyway. And SURREAL ESTATE: will Kafkesque homeowning horror mystery Vivarium put you off househunting forever? Guests William Shaw and Claire Biddles join Andrew and Siân for another pop culture plenary. Remember you can watch this discussion in all its riveting detail if yo...
May 02, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 200
Who’s Zoomin’ who? Guests Joe ‘Mixmag’ Muggs and Jim ‘Jockey Slut’ Butler join Andrew and Siân for our first-ever LIVE ZOOM recording. On the agenda: Alex Garland’s paranoid tech fantasy Devs, the spectacularly bloody Russian comedy thriller Why Don’t You Just Die?, and foul and funky behaviour in Beavis & Butthead genius Mike Judge’s Tales From The Tour Bus. Want to actually SEE all this? Sign up to Patreon for a full video recording (coming soon) so you can mock our interior decor choices....
Apr 25, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 199
Is Sky’s new Phoebe Waller-Bridge “screwball tragedy” Run up there with Fleabag and Killing Eve? How Radiohead-y is the first solo album by their guitarist Ed O’Brien? And would you watch US TV shows with titles like Murder House Flip in 8-minute bursts on your smartphone? New mobile media launch Quibi hopes so. Guests Adam Higginbotham – author of Midnight In Chernobyl – and Miranda Sawyer of the Observer dial into the COBRA meeting of pop’n’roll. Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison and S...
Apr 18, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 198
With all the quality releases cancelled, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Duran Duran’s covers album ‘Thank You’, acclaimed as perhaps the worst album ever made. Plus slash’n’stab satirist John Niven on why his new book The F*ck It List might get him banned from America, and fellow guest Kate “Worldwide FM/Last Bohemians podcast” Hutchinson helps us to dismantle Jim Carrey’s dark comedy Kidding and The Platform, Netflix’s gastro-horror sleeper hit from Spain. Produced and presented by Andrew...
Apr 11, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 197
Combating isolation frustration across the nation… This week, The Strokes are back! Is this a good idea? Bravura and very near-the-knuckle middle school cringe comedy Pen15, in which two 31-year old actors play themselves as 13. And does BBC3’s Mysterious Murder Of Nipsey Hussle do justice to the assassinated hip hop star? Guests Jude “Guardian/New Statesman” Rogers and Ralph “Mixmag/Muzik” Moore help us sort it all out. Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison and Siân Pattenden. Audio product...
Apr 04, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 196
Remotely-recorded for your safety and comfort… Disney+ is here just in time for the Lockdown. Will spaghetti Star Wars western The Mandalorian justify your hard-earned Imperial credits? Big cat murder mystery cult saga Tiger King on Netflix: has any true story this insane been seen on TV before? And Salford torch singer Ren Harvieu returns after years of hardship. Will she get a good revieu? Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly and Johnny Davis of Esquire magazine join us to sort it all out. Pro...
Mar 28, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 195
Excuse our sound quality… We’re all indoors for the foreseeable future, so you might as well enjoy the good stuff. In our first hygienic, remotely-recorded podcast guests Eamonn Forde (Guardian) and Martin Aston (MOJO) join Andrew and Siân to recommend what to watch, play and read in the self-isolation era. Plus Baxter Dury takes his urban dirty young man persona to “another level” and we assess next Friday’s BBC4 lock-in, the Eel Pie Island rock doc Rock’n’Roll Island. Do we learn anything new…...
Mar 21, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 194
THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE (even though it’s Saturday). As BBC4 dedicates a evening to The Story of Ready Steady Go! we ask just what it was that made the bob-haired Cathy McGowan modfest the platonic ideal of youth TV? Plus alien gross-out horror in a new movie adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s Color Out Of Space and Radiohead’s sonic masseur Nigel Godrich returns with his micro-supergroup Ultraísta, Frugging on the podium with Siân and Andrew this week are journo-about-town Michael Moran and Ian Harri...
Mar 14, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 193
DON’T CALL ME BLANCA: Does BBC1’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s race-inversion counterfactual Noughts + Crosses work as drama as well as thought experiment? New albums from “queen of screwing up” Soccer Mommy and Toronto-based megapop torch singer U.S. Girls. And a lonely teen girl discovers her Hulk-like superpower is… incipient lesbianism? That’s I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix. Legendary presenter of THE WORD, 6Music DJ and “smellologist” Katie Puckrik and Michael Hann of The Guardian a...
Mar 07, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 192
BLAME IT ON THE COOGAN: Does Alan Partridge’s alter ego acquit himself better as a thinly-veiled pastiche of charmless retail plutocrat Sir Philip Green in Michael Winterbottom’s gaudy comedy Greed? Or as an even-thinner-veiled version of himself in the final series of The Trip with Rob Brydon? (Food notes: this time it’s Greece). We talk to guest Daryl Easlea – writer for Record Collector, Mojo, Uncut and more – about the new edition of his book Everybody Dance: Chic And The Politics Of Disco. ...
Feb 29, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 191
After the great ANDREW WEATHERALL’s untimely passing, we assemble Weatherall-watchers Anthony Teasdale and Peter Paphides to appreciate the life, legacy and inspirational madness of Lord Sabre, the polymathic Oscar Wilde of acid house. Plus… UNSUNG HEROES OF CHIP SHOP: Pete’s marvellous, hilarious and moving memoir Broken Greek, on how pop music changed – and saved – the life of a son of Greek immigrants who ran a Birmingham chippy in the 70s and 80s. YOU ARE WATCHING BIG BROTHER: Will GCHQ Chel...
Feb 22, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 190
HOME ALONE: Is Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-scarfing class-battle nerve-twister Parasite really as good as they say? POSTHUMOUS POETICS: There’s another version of Gil Scott-Heron’s final album I’m New Here out. Makaya McCraven jazzes it up into We’re New Again. What are the pros and cons of the collab beyond the grave? MEMOIRS OF SHOEGAZING GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES): What does the vast new compilation C90 tell us about the idyllic, bowlheaded world of pre-Oasis indie pop? Guardian TV and podcasts writer H...
Feb 15, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 189
It’s crime fiction week! We talk to Mat Osman of Suede about his genuinely excellent debut novel The Ruins, and our old Smash Hits/Select colleague William Shaw about his spectacular new career as an author of superior crime fiction. Plus, does much-lauded new chase movie Queen And Slim deliver on its promise as the Black Lives Matter Bonnie & Clyde? New albums from day-glo ice queen of the rave La Roux and yacht techno space Jesus Tame Impala. And much more besides. Produced and presented b...
Feb 08, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 188
This week, presenter of radio, podcasts and Thronecast Jamie East and Lydon/Tricky biographer Andrew Perry descend into the BigmouthCave. On the menu… THE ONCE AND FUTURE CRINGE: Curb Your Enthusiasm is back after three years. Does the comedy of squirm still work in a more censorious age? And how does Larry David stay away from caricaturing himself? CARRY ON FOLLOW THAT CAMPBELL: Former desert bluesperson and Belle & Sebastianist Isobel Campbell embraces the Laurel Canyon sound on her first ...
Feb 01, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 187
This week, TV oracles Julia Raeside of The Guardian and Michael Hogan of the Telegraph join Andrew and Siân to read pop culture’s spiritual aura. Submitting to past-life analysis this week… BLING ME THE HORIZON: Can phoner-in of broad and basic comedy roles Adam Sandler rediscover his hidden talents as an actual thesp for avant garde diamond business thriller Uncut Gems? And is this the tensest moviegoing experience around right now? ELECTRIC YOUTH: Rave spawn Georgia’s incandescent album Seekin...
Jan 25, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 186
Dance music guru Ralph Moore of Mixmag and well-dressed journo-about-town Justin Quirk join Andrew and Siân on the Pools Panel of pop culture. This week: BABYLON BERLIN: Recorded in the German capital, ‘Hotspot’ completes the Pet Shop Boys’ trilogy with superproducer Stuart Price. Are we in for sad bangers, what’s the laser quotient… and can you still rave in your seventh decade? (Spoiler: yes). CHEAP HOLIDAYS IN OTHER SPECIES’ MISERY: Armando Iannucci’s latest workplace satire is set on a space...
Jan 18, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 185
ROCK ON, TOMMY: Why there’s more to Sam Mendes’s nerve-shredding trench epic 1917 than total WW1 immersion horror. TYPE AAARGH! POSITIVE: Was Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Dracula update too kitsch, or not kitsch enough? BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO THE CHART RETURNS SHOP: The lost art of the Stealth January Number One. REN & SKIMPY: We gather the nerds for final judgment on Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. For the first Bigmouth of the Twenties we’re joined by Strictly Kev AKA Ninja Tune artis...
Jan 11, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 184
Blackstar! Inside No.9! Arrival! St Vincent! Kill List! Robyn! Shame! Bicep! All these and more feature in our end-of-decade bloody assizes. As the Clanging Chimes of Doom bring us to the end not just of 2019 but the TwentyTeens™ themselves, what were our favourites of the decade that’s about to cash in its “chips”? Guests Jude Rogers of The Word and The Guardian and Eamonn Forde of The Final Days Of EMI fame join Andrew and Siân to sort it all out. As the late great Dame himself once sang, “Tim...
Dec 21, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 183
Do we hear a middling mid-2000s rock track or is it time for the best, the best, the Best of 2019? Joining Andrew and Siân to reveal their favourite films, albums, tracks, and other things are musician, yogi and Mojo writer Sophie Harris, and King of the Music Writer’s bingo board and Craig Finn fan Michael Hann. Among the top dogs are Booksmart, the screwball teen comedy turning the genre on its head, the HBO series Chernobyl and Succession. Plus, the panel tries to avoid the waterworks - again...
Dec 14, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 182
It’s a bass-heavy podcast as we welcome dance music guru and Bigmouth regular Joe Muggs and photographer Brian David Stevens to talk about their book Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture. Pre-order it here and get free badges! Plus… CEMETARY GREATS: Mysterious dubstep person Burial compiles all his free-range experimental EPs under the name ‘Tunes 2011-2019’. How does this enhance our understanding of the Vangelis of the night bus queue? APOCALYPSE NEIN: A meteor is about to...
Dec 07, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 181
Devon is a place on Earth: West Country sons Coldplay release their new album Everyday Life - a concept album of two halves, Sunrise and Sunset. We discuss this disparate mix of stadium-bothering plus acoustic wibblings and why the hell Nietzsche is on the cover. I Beg Your Parton: Dolly Parton's new Netflix series Heartstrings brings to life eight of her songs and features Julianne Hough, Kathleen Turner and Dolly herself amongst many others. Is it at good as the tunes? The Big Tome: Suede sing...
Nov 30, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 180
Trawling through the muddy flats of pop culture this week… HELLO, I MUST BE COHEN: Leonard Cohen's posthumous album Thanks for the Dance is released this week. Compiled by his son Adam, did Leonard have more to say after 2016's You Want it Darker? POP YOUR CHERRY: "You can't sing, you look awful, you'll go a long way..." Can Charli XCX's new girl band Nasty Cherry make it big in the Netflix show I'm With the Band, despite in-band rivalries and zero experience? OF COURSE THEY CAN. Reed United: Th...
Nov 23, 2019•55 min•Ep. 179
Revealed in the tea leaves of pop culture this week… LEST WE FUGGEDABOUDIT: Does Martin Scorsese’s elegiac epic The Irishman put the capstone on mob movies forever? And who’s best in it: Bobby de Niro, little Joey Pesci, Al ‘The Animal’ Pacino or Stephen ‘The Scousefather’ Graham? ME AND MY SHADOW: Trip hop originator DJ Shadow rails against the digitally-saturated present on ‘Our Pathetic Age’. Modern hip hop masterpiece or old man shouting at iCloud? THE SPECIAL FKA: The fragile, suspended, su...
Nov 16, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 178
