Life of the Record - Podcast Rankings and reviews

You know how when an album’s great you can’t pick your favorite song? You keep listening and you keep changing your mind. Same with Life of the Record. Is it the NEU! episode? Mission of Burma? Low? Elliott Smith or Heatmiser? OK, both of them. Luna? Yeah, Luna. But what about Big Star? Just start there.

The one thing wrong with this podcast is that there aren’t a thousand episodes of it already. Guess I’ll have to re-binge…

//

Come to think of it, the quality is so consistent that there are probably a few interviews that didn’t make the cut stuck on a hard drive somewhere. I can live with that.

This is amazing musical oral history — I’ve listened to the Mission of Burma and Violent Femmes episodes. They are both really well done, commentary and history on each track, and make me appreciate the music even more than I already do. Kudos to the host — who always stays behind the scenes and let’s the musicians do the talking. I’m looking forward to listening to more episodes soon.

I’m grateful that this exists not only as a podcast but as a historical archive of some classic indie albums and of some gems that have been woefully overlooked. This podcast feels like the days when you’d hear about a new band from a rando, er, *new friend* at a show, or record stor, or coffee shop and then find out about other bands by digging into that new band and on and on it goes. If you’re ever taking requests: Sloan ‘Twice Removed’, Bettie Serveert’s ‘Palomine’, Damien Jurado’s ‘Saint Bartlett’’, Andy Shauf ‘The Party’…. Love the pod, please keep going 🤘

I live hearing this kind of stuff and this podcast delivers. I’m having fun listening to the artists describe their memories about making the albums and then going back and listening to the album to hear some of the nuances mentioned. Started with Built to Spill’s “Perfect From Now On” and am working my way through the rest. Would love to hear what the questions are or some interaction with the host at some point, but having the artist speak for themselves is appealing too. Good stuff.