Podcast Episode 23 – Hurray for the Riff Raff – Life on Earth

EP. 65 | Zach Bryan | With Heaven On Top – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Welcome to Episode 65 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we review our Album of the Month. This month Nolan brings a big chunk of country (or is Heartland Rock?) with Zach Bryan's latest release 'With Heaven On Top'.In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. This month the theme is 'New Music', tracks released since January 1st.__________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Zach Bryan | With Heave On Top ____________Zach Bryan is a relatively divisive, country artist who is HUGE in the states but can his latest album help him become (even more of) a global superstar? At 25 tracks and 1hr 18 mins he's giving the album every chance of making an impact.This album has genuine, authentic heart. It's length is a big talking point, so is it's genre, is it country? Americana? Something else?Listen to the original album here.Listen to the acoustic version released 3 days after the original here.Watch an interesting conversation with Bryan and Springsteen here.       ___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | New Music _____________________Every 3 months we pick the theme 'New Music' and each pick 4 tracks that have been released in the last 2 month. Listen to our 16 track play list that we created for the New Music theme.We then each pick select 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?Joey chose 'Aperture' by Harry Styles.David chose 'Miami' by Pigeon.Nolan chose 'Milk, Blue' by Pem.Guy chose 'Out of Phase' by Alexis Taylor and Lola KirkeWe've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/

1. EP. 65 | Zach Bryan | With Heaven On Top 01:12:22
2. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX 01:13:15
3. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 01:20:41
4. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes 01:14:05
5. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey 01:12:50

Last month we shared our thoughts on ‘Dragon New Mountain I Believe In You’ by Big Thief.  This month This Is Not Happening stays in the broad genre of ‘Indie’ with Hurray for The Riff Raff’s ‘Life on Earth’ which we get into a deep discussion about in Part 1. In Part 2, we play ‘Spin It or Bin It?’ where we judge the tracks that we’ve chosen for this month’s theme.

Part 1 – Album of the Month

This month it’s Joseph’s choice, ‘Life on Earth’ by Hurray for the Riff Raff. We discuss the album in length, favourite tracks, what other artists’s energy we can hear in this music … and what has become the killer question for us; ‘is the production engaging or disengaging ?’ Big scenes on this pod guys!

There’s some great bits to link you to this month too;

• The Metacritic review page is always a good start and can be found here
• Check out this live performance of some of the album’s tracks here
• The following are podcasts that are really interesting to listen to if you like the album and want to hear more and/or other people’s opinions on it;
  • Blind Tiger Record Club Podcast
  • Launch Left Podcast
  •  Radio Menea Podcast
  • Living in This Queer Body Podcast

In the second part of this episode we get stuck into 4 tracks representing this months theme – ‘Minimalist Grooves’. We all pick a track,  introduce our track and ask the others the painfully binary critical question; ‘spin it’ or ‘bin it?’ 

After last month’s Spin it or Bin It ‘fiasco’, this month is a little calmer and another great chat. It’s a bit more of a love-in than last months with lots of ‘Spin Its’ but a couple of ‘Bin Its’ in there too.

1. Nolan’s track selection is – ‘In White Rooms’ by Booka Shade
2. Joey’s track selection is – ‘Dance’ by ESG
3. David’s track selection is – ‘Cranes in the Sky’ by Solange
4. Guy’s track selection is – ‘Weak Become Heroes’ by The Streets

Next Month

Episode #24 will be with you soon – Nolan will be guiding us through Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar and WOW, there’s a lot to talk about there! Have a listen and  share some thoughts with us on the blog or on our Insta. Its hard not to have an opinion on this one.