It used to be that my daily listening included audio drama, music discussion, book discussions/audiobooks and a lot of politics. These days I’ve dropped to politics for the most part and have happily found more music discussions.

Discord & Rhyme has been running for seven years (164 episodes as of this writing) and is one of several music panel shows I listen to regularly. The format is usually three or four out of a group of seven regular panelists (plus occasional guests) discuss an album that one of them has chosen for the episode. The person who chose it tells the history of the artist up to that point and why they picked the album. They then talk individually about their histories with the album/artist (if any) and then dive in, talking about the album song by song. Finally, they suggest to listeners where to go next if they liked the album in question.

All of the panelists have a great love for a fairly wide variety of music, though most of the albums they’ve covered are in the pop realm to some degree (with a fair helping of prog – including seven (and counting) Moody Blues episodes). Once they get down to the tracks it’s primarily a matter of ‘I love/don’t love this track, and here’s why.’ And they really dive in – recent episodes run well over an hour. They took two for Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral and over three (divided into two episodes) for Prince’s Sign O’ The Times. The thing that makes this podcast even more interesting for me is the various digressions into the sources of songs, who played what on each track, where a track has been sampled, and so forth.

The discussion of Prince’s The Cross is a good example of the variety of opinion they bring to bear. One panelist commented that he didn’t like the song because there’s no musical development in it – it’s the same short piece of music over and over. Another (John McFerrin, I think) went into how it appeals to him because it accumulates, like Ravel’s Bolero. It starts with something very quiet and then the instruments just pile on one by one until there’s this grand explosion of sound. And I always joke that as a Jew, it’s weird that The Cross is my favourite song on that album. While I’d never thought about it that way, I’m quite fond of that kind of music as well, no matter the genre.

I’ve mostly listened to episodes on albums I know but I look forward to going back into albums I don’t. They clip generously so even a newcomer to an album can get what they’re talking about.

Another interesting thing that comes up in their discussions is what makes a perfect album opener, what makes for a great track two. The idea of a good album having a statement of purpose that sets up what’s to come. For many pop albums this is an ideal rather than something put into practice, but given the entire crew’s love for progressive rock (probably the genre that set the stage for this kind of musical analysis), this comes into their discussions pretty regularly. In considering my own efforts (some on this very blog) into album reviewing, this isn’t something that has come to my mind before. At least not in so many words.

I have a variety of responses to their analyses based on how well I know or love an album or an individual track, but that’s not surprising. The hosts are all about my same age (mid 50s) and part of what I enjoy is the common experiences we have with the albums that came out in the 80s and 90s. There’s something comforting in that. Or amusing when one of them might say, ‘My first experience with this album was when that week’s host chose it for this podcast.’ The fresh ears they sometimes bring helps to open my ears to things I may have forgotten.