Podcast Ep. 26 | Hot Chip | Freakout Release

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

We’re back again this month with our usual format. In Part 1 we go deep on Hot Chip’s latest album, in Part 2 we play ‘Spin It or Bin It’, where we choose a theme and each bring our choice of tracks. This month the theme is ‘Dance-Pop’.

Part 1 | Album of the Month | Hot Chip | Freakout/Release

It’s Guy’s choice this month and he chooses the one of his favourite band’s latest release. It’s always interesting when one of us chooses a band that they love and have loads of history with. 

Listen to the album – Here

The chat focuses around our initial impressions, favourite tracks, the difficulty of maintaining relevance and engagement on your 8th album … and we all have something to say on the sequencing of tracks on this album.

Guy has curated a 28 track playlist called ‘Hot Chip’s Hot Hits’ – have a listen to it here

During the chat there were loads of references to Hot Chip side projects, here are a few links for you to check out;

• The 2 Bears – Click Here
• New Build – Click Here
• Alexis Taylor – Click Here

Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | We all choose a Dance-Pop Track

In tribute to Hot Chip, the theme for Spin It or Bin It this month is Dance-Pop. Over the course of the month we all create a play list of our favourite Dance-Pop, a shortlist of 4 tracks and then choose a track to delight (or in my case annoy) the team. This month, the 4 tracks were …

1. Nolan chose – Robyn | Dancing On My Own
2. Guy chose – Cassius | The Sound of Violence
3. Joey chose – The Knife | Pass This On
4. David chose – Soulwax | NY Excuse 

The 16 track playlist of each of our 4 shortlisted tracks can be found here and it’s a belter!

Next Month

I (Joey) will be running the show and hosting the discussion on Sudan Archive’s 2nd album – Natural Brown Prom Queen

Other episodes of the pod and 10 years of the blog;

If you enjoyed this episode, please check out the others. If that’s not enough for you then there’s 10 years worth of music discussion on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We’d love to hear what you think