Discord and Rhyme: An Album Podcast

Shut up, already. Damn! Prince was one of the most interesting popular artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and Sign o’ the Times from 1987 was the culmination of one of the most interesting periods in a career full of interesting periods. After various circumstances caused him to abandon a double album (Dream Factory), and other circumstances caused him to abandon a single album (Camille) that he didn’t plan to relea...

Shut up, already. Damn! Prince was one of the most interesting popular artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and Sign o’ the Times from 1987 was the culmination of one of the most interesting periods in a career full of interesting periods. After various circumstances caused him to abandon a double album (Dream Factory), and other circumstances caused him to abandon a single album (Camille) that he didn’t plan to relea...

Amanda has been fascinated with murder ballads for many years, so in this episode she's telling you (and Ben and Mike) all about them! This isn't an exhaustive overview of the genre, just the backstories behind a few great songs. From a couple of murdered girls in 18th-century England to a stolen hat in 20th-century America, these tragic stories have been transformed into compelling songs that we're still singing today.

Some notes:

You might think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by choosing The Present for our annual Moody Blues episode, but that’s not true at all. Even though the band themselves hated it, and it’s quite polarizing among Moody Blues fans, all of us here at Discord and Rhyme think it’s terrific. As with Long Distance Voyager, you need to be prepared for the ultra-slick ‘80s production, but underneath that gloss there are some top-notch...

Discord & Rhyme kicks June off with a feel good hit of the summer. Join Dan, Mike, and Rich for a ride through Queens of the Stone Age’s 2000 sophomore release Rated R, an album that seemed like a refreshing antithesis of mainstream rock trends at the turn of the millennium. Building off the desert rock DNA of Josh Homme’s previous band Kyuss and infusing elements of psychedelia, pop, and punk with a healthy sense of creative, quir...

Whether you’re a fan of ‘60s jazz, ‘70s funk, ‘80s electro, or things inspired by any of the above (or you just watched a lot of Sesame Street growing up), the music of Herbie Hancock has probably affected your life in some way. So Mike thought it was time to take us all on a good old fashioned head hunt. 1973’s Head Hunters redefined the course of Hancock’s career, was enormously influential on music as a whole, became the first j...

Nick Drake was an outstanding artist: a gifted songwriter, a wonderful singer, and one of the greatest guitarists you’ll ever hear. But his personality was entirely unsuited to the world of popular music, and his art didn’t gain the popularity it deserves until decades after his death. Ever since he unwittingly helped Volkswagen sell cars in 1999, more and more music lovers have discovered his beautiful sincerity, and he’s more pop...

In this episode, Phil takes Discord & Rhyme further down the spiral with an album that is a harrowing descent into one man’s decaying psyche. If that sounds like a blast, you’re in good company with the millions of people who bought Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral in 1994. It’s one of the bleakest, most pitch-dark albums to ever achieve massive commercial success, and it still sounds great in 2025, owing to the coherence of Tr...

Rich, Ben, and John answer a super-sized mailbag of listener questions, with subjects including jukebox musicals, James Bond themes, songs that give them the happy chills, sample-based hip-hop producers, the usual suite of Moody Blues questions, and a philosophical discussion on how we all listen to music and how this has changed as we've gotten older. This episode also features an interlude on experimental music from Producer Mike...

Everyone has an opinion about the Doors - whether you think they’re transgressive and mind-blowing, or you find them silly and overrated, or - like Ben - you just think they made some killer music. With invaluable help from Amanda, Dan, and Mike, Ben makes the case that the Doors’ 1967 self-titled debut album contains more killer music than many people realize. It might even blow your mind a little, too. 

Cohosts: Ben Marlin, Amanda...

It’s taken us nearly seven years, but the time has come. Midnight Oil, one of Australia's quintessential bands, is probably best known for its tireless political activism as expressed through hits like "Beds Are Burning" and "Blue Sky Mine," as well as the on-stage acrobatics of their 6′4″ frontman, Peter Garrett. But behind the sloganeering and agitprop, the Oils are a fiendishly creative and charmingly oddball band, and their 198...

Discord & Rhyme continues its slow walk through the world of Post-Rock with an examination of the 1996 album Millions Now Living Will Never Die by the Chicago-based group Tortoise. John has been fascinated by the concept of Post-Rock for many years (even if many of the acts associated with it, Tortoise included, rejected it as a useful descriptor), and a large part of this fascination stems from a love he has had for this album for...

If you only know Talk Talk for their ‘80s night staple “It’s My Life,” you might well wonder what an experimental weirdo like Mike is doing hosting an episode about them. However, if you know a little more about their strange and fascinating career trajectory, it makes perfect sense. The sparse, atmospheric Spirit of Eden couldn’t be more different from Talk Talk’s synth-pop origins or from anything else in the musical landscape of...

Due to some technical difficulties, we had to push back our Talk Talk episode, so to fix the hole in our schedule we are talking about the Beatles again! We've discussed covers of Beatles songs before, but there are millions of them so there will always be more to talk about. We're covering a lot of sonic ground in this episode, with a few songs we all love and a few that are more polarizing. Also: important information for Apple u...

We all know that Elton John is a top-tier singles artist, but he is also a top-tier albums artist. His run of nine albums from Empty Sky in 1969 through Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in 1975 may very well be unmatched in modern music history. It was really hard to pick one to talk about on Discord & Rhyme, but we settled on Honky Chateau because it’s the perfect encapsulation of what Elton John and lyricist Bernie Tau...

Well, sit right down, my wicked son, and let us tell you a story, about the subject of this year’s Discord & Rhyme holiday episode: the Pixies! (Or technically, just Pixies.) Hailing from Boston, the alternative rock quartet dealt with mounting intra-band tension with little to nothing to show for it financially, leading bandleader Charles Thompson (alias Black Francis) to break up the band via fax in 1991. But the band’s critical ...

Discord & Rhyme are taking a trip to Canterbury, England - UNESCO World Heritage Site, home of the Canterbury Cathedral, and birthplace of prog-rock legends Caravan. Springing forth from the rich Canterbury scene, Caravan created a style of progressive rock that managed to be complex while retaining a real sense of warmth. The group is not particularly well known outside of progressive rock circles, but Phil has loved them for a lo...

We're departing from our usual format for this episode. Everybody needed a pick-me-up, so instead of discussing an album, we're talking about songs: specifically, the ones that make us love music. Some of these are the songs we loved as little kids that built our musical foundations, and some of them are illustrations of specific things we adore. We went all over the map for this one and had a great time, so please enjoy the episod...