So, here's the thing. Morphine was one of the best bands to come out of Boston in the '90s. You can argue the point, and you can be wrong. Formed in 1989 by Mark Sandman, Dana Colley, and Jerome Deupree, Morphine combined blues and jazz elements with more traditional rock arrangements, giving the band an unusual sound. Sandman sang distinctively in a "deep, laid-back croon", and his songwriting featured a prominent ...

This week we listen to and discuss one of Aaron's picks: English rock duo Royal Blood.  Formed in Brighton in 2011, Royal Blood consists of Mike Kerr on vocals and bass and Ben Thatcher on drums. Their sound is anchored in Kerr's unique bass playing technique, in which he uses various effects pedals to make his electric bass sound like a standard electric guitar. Their self-titled debut album was released in August 2014. Th...

Chris and Aaron celebrate Esoterica the Podcast's first birthday by listening to the 1982 album Dog Police by Dog Police. On top of the album feature, they also discuss the unaired pilot for Dog Police from the 1990s featuring Adam Sandler and Jeremy Piven. 

Chris and Aaron also muse about the past year from documenting a raging pandemic accidentally, interviewing a bunch of celebrities, and drinking a whole lot of Esoteric bev...

This week we are joined by Nolan McGovern and Jake Perreault of The Fairview as we discuss their album Fresh Faced & Effervescent.

The Fairview is a pop punk DIY outfit from Southeastern Massachusetts / Rhode Island. Started in 2014 by Nolan McGovern and his friends from high school, the amateur band played small venues, colleges, and talent shows, including the local stage at Warped Tour MA in 2014 and 2016. 5 years and numero...

Welcome to our newest venture, Free Form Fridays! FFF is an opportunity for Aaron and I to do what we like best: Sample beers, muse about things, and discuss things that may not fit within the parameters of our regular show. We're not sure what every episode will look like, but we know it will be fun! For an added bonus, these episodes will be recorded on video and uploaded to our YouTube channel, so you can see what we're ...

In September of 1967, an eccentric young musician named Don Van Vliet released his debut album under his stage moniker, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. That album was called Safe As Milk.

Van Vliet was quite a character. He was a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist wordplay, and his...

This week we go North of the border to talk with Canadian rock duo cleopatrick about their 2018 EP the boys.

Childhood friends Ian Fraser and Luke Gruntz grew up in Cobourg, Ontario. They have been friends since age 4 and began getting interested in music around age 8 when they first listened to AC/DC. Later in their teens they began recording their own music.

The band's first music festival was the 2018 installment of Lollapal...

On this week’s episode, we take a listen to The HU‘s 2019 debut album The Gereg.

The HU is a band from Mongolia that blends heavy metal and traditional Mongolian throat singing. The band’s name, The HU, is the Mongolian root word for human being. They call their style “Hunnu Rock,” inspired by the Hunnu, an ancient Mongolian empire known as The Huns in Western culture. Some of the band’s lyrics include old Mongolian war cries and p...

This week we revisit a Season One favorite: Modern Baseball. This time around we're taking a look at their 2014 release "You're Gonna Miss It All."

Like their debut album Sports (2012), You're Gonna Miss It All was written while the band members were attending college. Unlike Sports which only featured Lukens and Ewald, "we were just excited to have a full band and make [You're Gonna Miss It All] that wa...

President of the Cryptic Corporation and long time manager of The Residents Homer Flynn joins Chris and Aaron once again to discuss Resident’s 1980 release, Goosebump.

The Resident’s Historical site describes Goosebump thusly:

“The Residents had long planned to produce a children’s record — of sorts. Goosebump is a collection of Mother Goose rhymes set to music with all of the “original sinister overtones” left in place. They teame...

Our hosts discuss the very definition of esoteric: Jean-Michel Jarre's 1983 Musique pour Supermarché ( Music for Supermarkets). Only a single copy was pressed and distributed, and its master plates were deliberately destroyed.