Podcast Ep. 53 | Father John Misty | Mahashmashana

EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/

1. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 01:20:41
2. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes 01:14:05
3. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey 01:12:50
4. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer 01:11:11
5. EP.59 | Little Simz | Lotus 01:11:16

Another month, another pod. Welcome to Episode 513 of This is Not Happening (TINH), an Album of the Month (AOTM) Podcast. In Part 1 we deep dive into an Album that one of us has chosen and in Part 2 we play ‘Spin it or Bin it’.  This is where we pick a theme and each select a song that represents that theme. We judge each others selections by asking the question ‘Spin It or Bin It’?

This month, in Part 1, Guy hosts an interesting discussion on Father John Misty’s (FJM) latest album, Mahashmashana. 50% of the Pod love FJM, 50% don’t!

In Part 2, Spin It or Bin It, our theme this month is ‘Location, Location, Location’, or ‘songs about places’ and it’s a belter!

Part 1 | Father John Misty | Mahashmashana

We often review artists that we all love. This month this is not the case. 2 of us love FJM, one of us gets very angry when listening to FJM and one of us doesn’t really have an opinion. Can this album keep the fans happy and win over the angry and the non-plussed?

Given the above, this is a surprisingly well mannered and coherent conversation about FJMs latest album. There’s only 8 tracks but they’re all pretty long. We discuss songwriting, song length and album themes like ageing and the associated ego deaths that accompany it.

• Listen to the album … HERE
• Watch some of the videos for the tracks discussed …  HERE
• Watch the World Cafe interview that we reference on the pod … HERE
• Watch a live performance of lead single ‘She Cleans Up’ … HERE

Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | ‘Location, Location, Location’

Songs about places are really common. It’s a theme explored by many (most?) artists at some point in their songwriting. This was a great chat and 4 great track selections.

• Guy chose Paris by Friendly Fires feat. Au Revioire Simone.
• Nolan chose New York State of Mind by Nas.
• Joey chose Welcome to Jamrock by Damien Marley.
• David chose Tobacco Road by Bobby Gentry.

Here is a 16 track playlist where we all contribute 4 Location, Location, Location themed tracks to an extended playlist.

See you on Episode 54…