We did it, folks. We made it to 5 years. We are now, as of the publishing of this episode, 5. We’re just starting primary school. Our minds are open and receptive to new ideas, new experiences, new cultures… If only that were true. This week we conclude our Kiss vs Motley Crue two parter in banterful fashion, addressing topics like who’s the biggest arsehole in those two bands? What notorious (and notoriously awful) shit did they do? What is their legacy? And we do answer these questions. Mark a...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 246
Whilst our fifth birthday is the 15th of December this (absolutely ridiculous) birthday episode turned into a two parter so we’re dropping part one a week early. The topic for this episode is a call back to an old joke that Mark made way back in February 2018 when we interviewed the wonderful Jonah Matranga. In an attempt at “banter”, he said that Motley Crue were better than Kiss. The reality is of course that Mark has no strong feelings on this, but Chris had VERY strong feelings about it and ...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 245
This week we decided it was time to dive into our bag of doom and do another covermount because we’ve somewhat indefinitely postponed our episode on The Gaslight Anthem. So, Crag joins us as we take a dive into this very hip (by 2007 standards) collection of indie, nu-rave and electronica from the 13th June 2007 edition of the NME. Apparently Muse curated this themselves, which is definitely up for debate because there are a fair few bands on this collection that were “cool” and all over the ind...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 244
After last week’s intro to Gene Clark, we continue the voyage into his career before circling back round to look at his wonderful 4th album No Other in its entirety. Whilst seen at the time by his record label, Asylum, as being a creative misfire, time has been incredibly kind to it. Maximalist (?) and refined, he was perhaps right in calling it his best work. Certainly, nothing he achieved before or since it ever came close to matching the overall quality of this album. Unique, daring and above...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 277
This week we’re not doing The Gaslight Anthem due to some scheduling issues, so we’ve pivoted to Gene Clark (y’know, of The Byrd’s fame) and his fourth album No Other. When it was released this album was seen as a bit of a misfire for Gene. It didn’t land well critically, and given that it was turned in way over budget, it appeared that even the label, Asylum records, were keen to drop it in the dust bin of history. Indeed, they deleted the record from their catalogue less than two years after i...
Nov 14, 2022•59 min•Ep. 242
We really need to come up with a much better name for this weird phenomenon. This week’s episode is inspired by a little known Glasgow(ish) band called Julia Thirteen, an act that gained some prominence in the mid-00s, signed to a major label then vanished into obscurity, only for all of their members to turn up in a bunch of different acts. In some cases, these were acts which were significantly more successful. We get into all of that in this episode. We use this band to talk about other artis...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 241
Wasn’t the interview with Lou Barlow himself last week just lovely? If you missed it, you can check it out here . This week we’re going to unpack a lot of what he said in the interview, and give our own reactions to it. We recommend you checking that out before you start that episode. After that, we talk about Sebadoh’s extensive discography, from the lo-fi beginnings to this year’s Act Surprised. And then, of course, we get into Harmacy itself....
Oct 31, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 240
Very rarely do the stars align on this podcast. Indeed, given Mark’s absence this week due a scheduling conflict, it’s possible that you could call this another case of the stars failing to align. However, we’re here to disprove that notion entirely because it just so happens that they week we chose to do Sebadoh, Lou Barlow himself just happened to be in town. Which means that our episode on the band’s sixth album. Harmacy, has now become a two parter where in part one, Chris chats to Lou Barlo...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 239
As fascinating as Lil Kim’s career is, what is also fascinating is the way her music helped to bring female sexuality “into the mainstream”. In part two of our deep dive into her career, we look a little deeper at this aspect of her music, as well as the legacy this particular approach has left. Often touted as a feminist, Lil Kim recently said that feminism has always been something of a grey area for her because first and foremost, for her, it’s all about supporting women. It’s clear that her ...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 238
We were supposed to do this episode months ago but we just couldn’t get someone with more than on X chromosone in the room. Once we asked our latest guest host Marisa if she fancied joining us though…well, it was GAME ON. So here we are. Doing an episode on the “controversial” Lil Kim. A protege of Biggie Smalls, she shocked the world with her debut album Hard Core then went onto craft quite the legacy for herself, challenging the norm in the male dominated hip-hop scene and, as some might argue...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 237
History is littered with bands that went “experimental” for one album and then broke up after said album. A lot of the time, fans and press assume that the reasons for that are simply because they couldn’t stand the rejection from their fans. That’s not always the case. Formed in 1989, The Drum also go by the name China Drum. If you were around in the 90s and read musi mags or followed the Britrock scene at the time, the name China Drum is probably familiar to you. At the end of the 90s, they de...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 236
If you were wondering why we had a small break last week and teased you with some of the sweet bonus content our subs get (which you can get access to by signing up at www.patreon.com/un sungpod - starting at £4 a month!) it’s because we needed a little time to get our research hats on. This week we’re bringing you another monster episode and the topic is Donny Hathaway. Donny Hathaway was a remarkable musician. That’s not in dispute. A prodigious talent from a very young age, he transitioned fr...
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 235
After the EPIC Nina Nastasia two parter we decided take a wee week off. So this week so we’ve gone deep into our catalogue of bonus content and unearthed the next episode in a series that we’re calling Unsong. If you like what you hear, consider subscribing AND joining our record club here . It’s basically THE UNSUNG SINGLES CLUB. In it, we breakdown a single song to talk about why it works so well. On this episode, Chris has chosen Come Undone by Duran Duran. Let us know what you think of this ...
Sep 19, 2022•17 min•Ep. 268
It got pretty heavy last week, and whilst we’re not apologising for covering such weighty topics, we do understand that some levity is required. In the form of a mighty two hour opus about Nina Nastasia’s discography. Yes, you read that right - this episode is two hours long. It is perhaps our longest single episode to date. Even though Nastasia has a smaller discography than many of the artists we’ve covered in the past, both Chris and Vicki had a lot to say about her work, so we just let the c...
Sep 12, 2022•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 234
This week we have the first of two episodes on Nina Nastasia, as we go deep into her career, decision to vanish from the public eye, recent events and much, much more. It’s been a wee while since we did a head-to-head episode, but Chris and Vicki couldn’t agree which of her albums was the best, so here we are. Vicki has chosen her second album, The Blackened Air, whilst Chris has gone for her 2007 collaboration with The Dirty Three’s Jim White, You Follow Me. But there’s a bit of an elephant in ...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 233
Once, a little while ago, Chris, Dave and Mark decided to review their first ever demos. Soon after we asked people to send this their first demos so that we could have a wee listen and (probably) a wee laugh at what other people got up to in their first bands. Well, we’re happy to say that we revisit this concept this week with some listener submissions! We have demos from long time fans Greg Love and Thomas smart, as well as a demo from our very own co-host Crag Carrick. Glassjaw, Thrice, Fune...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 232
With Chris off on tour and Mark having just returned from holidays, we needed to do something fast that didn’t require a lot of research. Mark also had to find a host because, for the first time ever, Chris was not available to do a show. In stepped Crag, and with it the idea of doing another covermount CD. You may remember that, at the end of the last one we did back in April (also with Crag) Chris plunged his hand into the great big covermount bag of doom and extracted Brutal Bunch volume 2. W...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 231
With Chris now off on tour with his rather excellent band, Outblinker, we decided to split our Diamanda Galas episode into two as both of the bois were passing each other like ships in the night this last fortnight. So this week Chris and Vicki dive deep into The Singer by Diamanda Galás and a whole lot more…
Aug 15, 2022•57 min•Ep. 230
With Mark currently whirling his way around Europe, this week's (and next week's) episode fell to Chris and Vicki. The choice is somewhat...strange, and in this episode they take a look into the wild career of Diamanda Galás and all that weird noise she makes.
Aug 08, 2022•48 min•Ep. 229
We’d been working hard over the last few weeks to try and secure our next interview and we’re pleased to deliver this wee gem with Chris Spencer from Unsane/Human Impact/Lamb Unlimited (and more). A lot of prep goes into interviews so that’s why don’t do them very often. Also, we get offers to interview people all the time but it’s rarely people who we think might fit the mold of this show. Unsane tick all the boxes as being an unsung band, really. It just so happens that this coincidenes with a...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 261
Taking a canter through the career of a band is often one of the best and most enlightening things about doing this podcast, and we hope it’s something you appreciate too. In fact, we know it is, cause that’s why most of you tune in. But when it comes to going through the back catalogue of Brand New, well it can start to feel a little icky. Once again, emo scholar and new friend of the pod Marisa Androvik joins us to dissect the band and in particular their acclaimed third album. We touched on t...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 228
A couple of weeks ago we joked that we had been cancelled. We haven’t (to our knowledge), but it did lead us to ponder - can we talk about a cancelled band? How would people react to that? And which band should we talk about? The answer wasn’t immediately clear to us at the time - there were a few options of course - but it became clearer when we spoke to someone we’ve wanted to have on the show for a while… So we enlisted the help of emo scholar and all round wonderful person Marisa Androvik. H...
Jul 18, 2022•55 min•Ep. 227
It’s crazy to think that this music went unheard for so long, and only properly came to the public’s attention in the late 00s. One listen to Death tells you that they had all the ideas that punk bands are STILL using way back in 1974. Before punk was even a thing. Indeed, a large part of this episode is dedicated to punk before punk was punk. Or rather, to proto-punk. Dr. of punk rock Ferro joins us this week and we go deep into the world of proto-punk, whilst also talking about the staggering ...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 226
We’re back in superground territory (?) this week as Mark brings the debut album by mysterious, psuedo-anonymous screamo band United Nations. Fronted (at least, on most of the songs, albums and live shows) and partially conceived by post-hardcore legend and Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, in the early 00s, for a long time he was the only “official” member of the band. When they were sued by the actual United Nations in 2010 around 30 people were listed as being involved with the band, but for th...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 225
Ok so the title is more or less a con - we’re not cancelled (we think?!) - but as an increasing number of artists we like/are aware of get cancelled (or in some cases - don’t even though they probably should) we always knew that one day we’d have to address cancel culture itself. But what does that actually mean? For some, it’s a blanket term that simply sees artists dismissed, leaving their credibility in tatters and making the very concept of things like “forgiveness” impossible. On the other ...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 256
Your favourite dynamic duo return for the second week in a row as we chat about the soundtrack for Kevin Smith’s debut film, Clerks. This idea came to Chris at about a day’s notice, but it did give us at least enough time to think of a through line for this episode: the Clerks soundtrack is something of an anomaly. Whilst the film itself cost just over $27k to make, the licencing for the soundtrack actually cost more, coming in at $28k. Some of the music on this is used in the movie - Alice in C...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 223
From the mind of one auteur to another - this week things get a little darker and introspective as we discuss It’s a Wonderful Life, the third album by Sparklehorse. The career trajectory of Sparklehorse is an interesting, if ultimately tragic one. Moving from lo-fi, one man band recordings to working with multiple indie music legends, as slowly as Mark Linkous’ career evolved, it did seem as though he was an artist that was genuinely passionate about seeing how many different ways he could make...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 222
This week we are delighted to welcome back our good pal Kapil Seshasayee as he talks about his upcoming album, his latest single and how this particular album by Lithuanian-American musician Vyto B was a huge influence on his early work. Tricentennial 2076 is a contender for being the most obscure thing we’ve yet covered on this podcast. Borning in obscurity in 1976, its existence and the mystery of its creator seemed to grow in the decades since its inception. Due to a couple of exceptional pie...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 221
There’s probably not many podcast out there that would happily slam Meat Loaf, Oasis, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper together over the course of an episode, but that’s just what we do here at Unsung. And this week, things are going to get even weirder as we start to talk about some more of the first records that influenced us. No matter what you think of the albums on the last episode or this episode, the fact is that we are only here because we found them. Without those records, this podcast wouldn’t...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 220
Last week we said we were going to to Lil Kim but we’ve been unable to wrangle together the people needed to tackle it, so we’ve decided to launch a brand new feature instead called Intros. The idea is simple: we talk about the first albums we ever heard. We’ve split this down into three categories: The first one you remember playing a big role in your life courtesy of your parents or a family member; the first one you ever bought; and one that also hold special significance for you and is taken...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 219
