Much like last week, a warning before we begin: this episode contains the discussion of some fairly charged and unpleasant topics, including some deplorable ideas and music. Please be aware in advance that this show features some isolated samples and we’ve added them into this episode because we’re discussing a difficult topic and we trust our audience to exercise their own discretion. Hopefully you find this to be an informative and a cautionary journey. Enjoy! Last week we put Ace of Base in t...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 218
Before we begin, this episode contains the discussion of some fairly charged and unpleasant topics, including some deplorable ideas and music. Please be aware in advance that this show features some isolated samples and we’ve added them into this episode because we’re discussing a difficult topic and we trust our audience to exercise their own discretion. Hopefully you find this to be an informative and a cautionary journey. Enjoy! Depending on how online you were in the early 2010s, you may hav...
May 09, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 217
Your favourite Poundland album review show is BACK and we have quite the selection for you on this episode. The lads have gifted each other with the following three albums: Mark has Alisha Rules the World by Alisha’s Attic. Chris has Odelay by Beck. Dave has A Weekend in the City by Bloc Party. It’s an interesting and fun selection, with some highlights and a lot of lowlights. Does anyone actually remember Alisha’s Attic? Are Bloc Party one of the most boring “popular” bands in recent memory? Is...
May 02, 2022•50 min•Ep. 216
We promised to make our covermount episodes a recurring feature and we are here to make good on that promise. This week Crag joins us again and we’re talking about a “collection” that was included with the June 2006 issue of Uncut Magazine imitatively called “The Playlist”. If you were to think of words that end in “able” the first one that springs to mind with this covermount is “forgettable”. Sandwiched in between (admittedly brilliant) tracks from the likes of Siouxise and the Banshees and Al...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 215
We’re men of our word. As we look to clear all of our outstanding commitments from our old Patreon model (info on the new one - the Unsung Record Club - can be found here), there was one album we were asked to do that we’d been putting off for a while - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges by Colin Stetson. Our top subscriber Cory Robinson asked us to do this a while back, but it took us ages to get around to it. Why? Well, we actually tried to do it earlier on in the year. We listened to the reco...
Apr 18, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 214
Dads of the world, UNITE! How do you follow the Beach Boys? Well, apparently it’s by covering Electric Light Orchestra. Going from one grandad band to one dad band seems to make a crude kind of sense, even if immersing oneself in the music of ELO is…difficult. Not because they’re terrible. No no no. They are by no means a terrible band. Some of their music has aged well whereas some of it certainly has not (we’re looking at you Discovery). One example of the former is their ridiculous foray into...
Apr 11, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 213
Whether pretending to be surfers and getting slapped with fines from the manager for swearing or cavorting with transcendental meditation and falling out with one another, The Beach Boys were never quite what people thought they were. They were often at each other’s throats, relationships were fraught a lot of the time, members of the band seemed to withdraw from the group and return whenever the mood suited them and that’s before we even mention Brian Wilson’s sometimes extreme battle with ment...
Apr 04, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 212
Did you know that The Beach Boys have 29 studio albums, 11 live albums and a staggering 61 compilation records? Before we agreed to do their 16th(!!!) album Sunflower at Vicki’s behest, we knew it was going to be a huge undertaking but good lord , it was bigger than we could have ever imagined. And that’s to say nothing of the tumultuous interpersonal relationships between the band members. On one hand, it makes sense that there would be some drama – they came up in the 60s and churned out recor...
Mar 28, 2022•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 211
We’ve called this episode “The Covermount Mixtape” for now, but it hasn’t escaped us that a covermount essentially IS a mixtape, only one that was put together by magazines (with what is probably a fair amount of label/PR interference, but we digress…). So until we come up with a better name for this new series, we’re stuck with this for the time being. In any event, this is the first in what will no doubt be quite a long series where we discuss and dissect a covermount CD. For this one, we’ve p...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 210
Some time ago we threatened to do an episode on covermount CDs. For Chris, Dave and many, many other teenagers, the covermount CDs found bundled with copies of Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, NME and numerous other magazines were an indispensable way of finding new music. At a time when these music magazines were still in high circulation, the covermount CD (or cassette, or vinyl) was also a great way for relatively unknown acts to find a new audience by being included on a CD with some of the biggest a...
Mar 14, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 209
All genres are littered with bands that somebody somewhere thinks are unsung. Some are unsung because they influenced other, more successful acts, whereas there are artists that are unsung because they just didn’t land quite the right way at the right time. That Petrol Emotion are, arguably, the latter. Formed by the brothers O’Neill from the ashes of legendary pop punk band The Undertones, That Petrol Emotion immediately come across as a whole different proposition on their 1986 debut album Man...
Mar 07, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 208
We loved the last Sound is a Pound so much that we thought we’d go away and record another. You know the drill - each of us goes into a Poundland and buys two albums for £1 then “gifts” them to the other two hosts. You’d be surprised at some of the gems you can find in a Poundland store, actually… But we opted not to buy any of those classics. Instead, we opted for something a little more…bland. Mark got A Place in the Sun by Lit, Chris got Gran Turismo by The Cardigans and Dave got Deserter’s S...
Feb 28, 2022•38 min•Ep. 239
Are InMe an unsung band? Is Overgrown Eden a forgotten classic? Well…you can make up your own mind on that. Us? We’ve certainly made up our mind. In fact, we’re not even going to bother playing coy with you here - we only did this episode because we were asked to do it for “the patter” by friend of the pod Craig B. He also paid us a handsome sum of money for the “privilege” and we really wish he hadn’t. We also decided it was time to do this because we’re “clearing the decks”, so to speak, of ou...
Feb 21, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 207
We’ve taken a week off this week because we had a bunch of admin stuff to catch up with at Unsung HQ, but we will return next week with something real fun. This week we thought unlock a Patreon bonus episode, and it is the latest instalment of our Sound as a Pound series. The concept is simple: we each buy an album from Poundland for our fellow two hosts and then we must listen to it and report back. On this episode Mark has A Grand Don’t Come for Free by The Streets, Chris has Razorblade Suitca...
Feb 14, 2022•43 min
Ah, electronica, how we have missed thee. This week we’re talking about the debut Factory Floor album and Chris gets to wondering why he like this album in the first place. Are they a minimal wave band? Post industrial? Tech house? All of these categories seem to fit in their own way, and we talk a little about all three of these, what they are and why they might be relevant to this band. Many styles of electronic music are repetitive. Indeed, any music that humans want to dance to is repeitive ...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 206
Hello, Unsungers! We hope you had an excellent festive season. We’ve been hyping some changes to the subscription levels for a few months. So here goes. We feel that via our extended musical family (that’s you), Unsung has the potential to materially help under-recognised artists whilst also becoming a more interactive experience for yourselves. First and foremost, all of our main shows will remain free. Unsung is available to anybody that wants and can access it. You are under no obligation to ...
Feb 03, 2022•8 min
In the legendarium of hardcore and post-hardcore, there are a whole slew of bands that are arguably unsung. The big hitters are pretty obvious, right? Your Black Flags, Bad Brains, Husker Dus, Fugazis etc have lots of column inches devoted to their huge influence. This week we’ll argue that Jawbox’s third album, For Your Own Special Sweetheart, is just as, if not more influential, than some of those artists. Vicki joins us this week as we chat not only about the band’s small back catalogue, but ...
Jan 31, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 205
We’ve asked our friend of the pod Babs from the Over/underrated music podcast back to talk about one of her favourite bands - Belgium’s weird alt-rock quartet called Millionaire. This all came about because when we last had her on for our episode on Origin of Symmetry by Muse, it turned out that she and Chris shared common ground in the form of this band. It just made sense that an episode would follow. Millionaire are one of many projects by the Belgian artist Tim Vanhamel. Tim keeps some inter...
Jan 24, 2022•1 hr 52 min•Ep. 233
We always coming out swinging with something BIG after Xmas and this year is no exception as we talk about South of Heaven by Slayer. What is there to say about Slayer that hasn’t already been said? Formed in 1981, it goes without saying that they’re one of the most important metal bands of all time. The “Big 4” of thrash were called that for a reason, and it’s about more than just their rise to fame. Their influence is legion but Slayer’s sound had a massive influence on extreme metal. It argua...
Jan 17, 2022•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 203
The New Year is now well underway but we’re not quite ready to let the Christmas cheer disappear just yet. To that end, we now share the conclusion of our XMAS XTRAVAGANZA. Vicki and Chris are pished, we talk about our favourite albums of 2021, artists who should have joined the 27 club, our favourite discoveries of the year that we made via the pod and a whole lot more. Now seems like a good time to thank everyone for their continued support over the last four years. Next week, we will be doing...
Jan 10, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 202
Happy new year to all you fine folks. I hope you’ve shaken off the hangover and are ready to re-immerse yourself in real life. Part two of our CHRISTMAS XTRAVAGANZA is upon us and we’re having a grand old time. The port is flowing, the opinions are getting gradually more ramble-y and everyone is in an altered state of consciousness. Our questions this week include: what artists are shit but have one, or a few, great songs? If you had to watch one artists every night for the rest of your life, wh...
Jan 03, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 201
Merry Christmas one and all! There will be no coal in your stocking this year, oh no. This year you get a big fat Xmas three parter with both David and Vicki joining Mark and Chris. Aren’t you lucky?! As is now tradition, we have canvased our loyal fanbase for fun questions and set about answering them over the course of three episodes that start fairly acceptable and descend into drunken madness. This year’s Xmas special is a little different though because it begins with episode number 200! Th...
Dec 27, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 200
Well, it was going to strike one of us down eventually. It just so happened to coincide with our fourth birthday and our 200th episodes… That’s right folks, one of us went got the ‘rona. Chris was struck down with COVID-19 just a few days before we were due to record our Xmas special on December 10th and as a result, we were left with no episode, and our plans to release our 200th episode on our 4th birthday were deposited right in the bin. But fear not. We have something else for you. Something...
Dec 20, 2021•58 min
Pitchfork do get it wrong from time to time. That is why we’ve just dedicated two full episodes to how often they, and music journalists as a whole, get it wrong. This week we’re discussion three albums that we think they it got it the most wrong with: Futures by Jimmy Eat World Lateralus by Tool Wishville by The Catherine Wheel With the exception of The Catherine Wheel, who broke up shortly after Wishville came out, and whose break up had nothing to do with how they were received in the press, ...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 199
Over the last few episodes we’ve discussed how the music press can make or break a band’s career, and even have a lasting effect on band members psyches’ long after they receive critical acclaim/indifference. My Vitriol and The Sound provide two fascinating case studies in that regard: The former were a band who gained massive buzz in the dying moments of the physical format era. The turn of the 21st century saw a frankly obscene amount of cash, coverage and opportunity being flung at bands. Now...
Dec 06, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 198
Our favourite Italian post punk encyclopaedia Ferruccio Quercetti joins us this week. He’s nominated the hugely influential, yet strangely underappreciated album Jeopardy by The Sound. Being contemporaries with bands like Wire, Echo and the Bunnymen and Joy Division (to name a few - Ferro gives even more detail in the episode), it’s something of a mystery as to whey The Sound never quite reached the heights that those bands did. Indeed, if any band could be seen as one that could take the post p...
Nov 29, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 197
We’re back in action! This week our friend Neil from The Accordion podcast joins us to talk about the mythical My Vitriol, and their highly praised debut (and so far only) album Finelines . First off, a little on Neil himself. He hosts a podcast called The Accordion which, if you like ours, we’re absolutely sure you will love. He has interesting conversations about his favourite albums with an array of guests and it’s just as deep as ours, so if you like analysis and good chat, you’ll love his s...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 196
We’re going to be 4 years old soon and for pretty much every single week of those 4 years (with the sole of exception of around this time last year when a technical issue made us lose an entire episode) we’ve been able to release an episode a week. However, this week we just couldn’t. Some life things got in the way and we had to take care of that. We couldn’t just leave everyone hanging though, so we decided to reach way back into our vault of bonus content and excise this little gem from back ...
Nov 15, 2021•32 min
What you hear in this second episode is the sounds of three people getting gradually drunker whilst a Scottish ex-pat in Australia looks on aghast. Yes, whilst, much like last week we were all jazzed to talk about Caught Up by Millie Jackson, and her career, the night was getting long and it’s well past 1am local time as we record this one. If you thought the first part sound merry then hoo boy, do you have a treat in store for this episode. It’s also pretty fucking hilarious too. One of our ver...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 195
What you hear in this first episode is the sounds of four people on the second attempt at recording. Yes, whilst we were all jazzed to talk about Caught Up by Millie Jackson, and her career, a catastrophic technical issue turned this two parter into a mammoth 5 hour recording session. So when you hear how this rapidly begins to sound like a Christmas special, you know why. The booze was flowing as the Scottish contingent did their best to keep the banter flowing until 3am. One of our very first ...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 194
