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/
Episode 11 of This Is Not Happening departs from the ethereal Weather Station to a debut album of rare and mighty impact from Genesis Owusu. Smiling With No Teeth comes from an Australian-Ghanaian whose melting-pot influences have created one of the most fascinating and memorable albums of the year for an artist capturing lived experience in the starkest and brutally honest way. Guy’s at the controls to sing about it from the rooftops. We also went big on music that the album inspired us to dive into.
In the second half of the show, we tasked ourselves with finding a hidden gem we should already know. So much fun to do this, with a longlist here. The four we chose are:
May’s album of the month and all our playlists, new music and discussions from the past decade or more can be found on our blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. Take a minute to dip in and you’ll hopefully enjoy what we’re talking about and if you like it, we’d love to hear from you on the socials (links below).
Episode #12 closes out our first year with David going mega-fan on St Vincent’s new album Daddy’s Home. The latest from the vaunted singer, guitarist and avant-garde musical shapeshifter will be coming to you before the end of May.
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/
Episode 10 of This Is Not Happening finds us sticking with female artists but switching from the UK to Canada with the Weather Station’s Ignorance. Tamara Lindeman’s group released its 5th album in 2021, and it marks another progression from folk-tinged songwriting to full-blown grown-up pop that touched on so many of our big influences. We all went on a journey with this, with Joey at the helm. We also put together an ‘inspired by’ playlist to sit with the album.
In the second part of the show, we jumped off the deep end by picking a new track, secret santa-style for each other! Here’s the longlist, but the four we chose are:
April’s album of the month and all our playlists, new music and discussions from the past decade or more can be found on our blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we ‘re talking about and if you like it, we’d love to hear from you. Socials are below.
Episode #11 will be digging into the kaleidoscopic debut from Genesis Owusu: Smiling With No Teeth . An Australian-Ghanaian whose melting-pot influences have created one of the most fascinating and memorable albums of the year. Coming to you before the end of May.
Listeners to the This Is Not Happening Podcast will be familiar with our standard format. The 1st half of each Pod is dedicated to an ‘Album of the Month’ (AOTM), the 2nd half of each Pod is dedicated to ‘Tracks of the Month’ (TOTM). Each pod we have a different theme for TOTM. We’ve had ‘new tracks’ and ‘favourite disco track’ but in Episode 10 (coming soon) we chose a new approach. We would draw straws, Secret Santa style, to find a new track for a specific member of the This Is Not Happening crew.
The track that we were selecting could be literally anything. An old classic. A hidden gem. Something brand-spanking-new that they’d never heard. Just in case we selected something that they already new we agreed to create a 4 track playlist so that we had a few back-ups. I was drawn to play Secret Santa to Guy. At first I thought this was a good thing and that my job would be relatively easy. And then i didn’t sleep for 2 weeks worrying about this selection.
Ahead of the podcast being released into the wild. I thought I’d share the long list from which I carved out my 4 track long list and my track selection.
You’ll find a pretty broad range of track selections here. Some of them I could have selected for Nolan, a couple I could have selected for David but I had good reason to believe that many, if not all, fitted into the overlap in the Venn Diagram of Guy and Joseph. The 2x 12 minute tracks were strictly for Guy!
I hope you enjoy my musical gift to Guy. I am sure he won’t mind you borrowing it.
Yes, we’ve done a podcast, but we haven’t talked about it much on here up to now. However, there’s a lot there for fans of any stripe, from EP1’s RTJ4 right up to Arlo Park’s Collapsed in Sunbeams in EP9. So consider this a refresher, or re-up (Omar comin’!) of where we have got up to. If you’ve not dipped into them all yet, or you’ve only braved one, here’s your chance to dive in! There’s a player below and after that a bit of a bite-size lump of what each is about. Enjoy.
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/
If RTJ hit the zeitgeist, anonymous collective Sault’s Untitled [Black Is] took that feeling to another level with its modern take on enveloping soul, roots, dub, and more, all wrapped up in lyrics that elevated black consciousness and lived experience. It really was a joy to talk through. We also took on our favourite afro-centric tracks from four different directions.
As the year came to a close, we cast our minds back over the last twelve months and counted down our top ten albums. For the first time in the twelve years of the blog, we mostly agreed on the top 3! We also brought our own tracks of the year to the table.
There’s lockdown albums, and there’s surprise releases from the biggest rock stars on the planet. McCartney III‘s homely rock and pop vision took us by surprise and showed that not everyone is a Beatles fan, to David’s shock! We also brought our best covers to the table, with some friction!
We hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast as much as we have making it. We have no grand plans, but we just want to talk about the music we love and hope a few others share that with us, whether you agree with us or not…. thanks again to everyone that’s listened up to now. See you at Episode 11 and Genesis Owusu!
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/
Episode 9 of This Is Not Happening lands on another massively hyped album from the last year: Arlo Parks: Collapsed In Sunbeams. From being crowned BBC’s ‘Sound of 2020’ and labelled ‘the voice of a generation’, the pressure on a debut album hasn’t been this heavy in a long time. We dissect it to see it lived up to the expectation, with Nolan at the helm.
In the second part of the show, we come back to picking our favourite new music since the turn of the year, with a really intriguing set of four great tracks We chose:
Episode #10 will be digging into The Weather Station’s latest album, Ignorance. Another female singer songwriter, but a departure from the world of Arlo Parks, for sure. Coming to you in late April.
It’s my turn for Album of the Month and as usual, I’ve not found my selection an easy choice. I’ve selected Ignorance by The Weather Station, the 5th full length album from 36 year old, Canadian Tamara Linderman. I wasn’t aware of her music before the single ‘Robber’ was released late in 2020. Her early albums fit neatly into the ‘singer / songwriter’ folk genre but with each successive release her sound develops in complexity and the band becomes bigger along with the sound. A journey that delivers ‘Ignorance’, which is hard to define by genre but it seems that many still refer to her as a folk artist. This feels like an old label that doesn’t fit this album. But on the other hand, does it really matter?
My hesitation in choosing this album was 100% down to the hype. Last month we discussed Arlo Park’s ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ a new, young artist from the UK managing the burden of expectation of being called ‘the voice of a generation’. The hype around ‘Ignorance’ is of a different kind; to come so early in 2021 but to be touted as a contender for ‘album of the year’. It’s a simple, undeniable fact that this changes your listening experience … at least it does for me. I vividly remember my first experience of this album. I had heard Robber, loved it and then saw an early review massively praising the album. I got on it straight away, and loved it. It was a 9/10 for me. I told the crew this was to be my Album of the Month. Can you tell there is a ‘but’ coming? But then, despite its luxuriant scope, scale and shockingly beautiful soundscape, I failed to connect to it emotionally. Which is odd as it ticks SO many of my boxes. The lyrical context and content being one of them. But it still failed to truly dent me emotionally. I found it a little cold and I stopped listening to it as a result.
So why have I chosen it? I’ve chosen it as I’ve gone on such a roller coaster with this album that I thought it would be an interesting choice for discussion with my friends who I know will have an opinion. I have connected more with this album over time. I think it demands close attention, it does sound best in headphones (I know, I know everything does) but I’d argue this is a different album in headphones. It’s so ‘pleasant’ on a surface level that it can be a perfect background music for life but I think due to the fragility or Tamara’s vocals and lyrics, a different level of appreciation can be achieved through a focused, concentrated listen.
So, on to the music? This a 40 minute, 10 track album. Hallelujah! Thank you Tamara. It is SO dense (I mean this in the ‘good way’) that overstepping the 10 track mark might have been problematic. There are a couple of 5 minute tracks but generally we’re in the 3-4 minute track mark … so this must be pop music right? I think the answer to that is ‘yes’ you could go ‘art pop’ if you wanted people to snigger behind your back but I am going with ‘pop music’ and I’m ok with that. ‘Side A’ (by which i mean tracks 1-6) is upbeat and rhythmically driven giving way to a more melancholic ‘Side B’. Regardless of the tone of the tracks there are tons of melodic, rhythmic and lyrical hooks. Let’s get into a few of them.
‘Robber’ … wow. What a way to open an album. There’s an albums worth of motifs, trills, frills, strings, woodwind and spiky yet intriguing ideas in one track (and of course we all know I love a big organ). It’s a surprisingly anxious, urgent and threatening track to start an album with and I think you could argue that it could have closed the album? It constantly threatens to veer off into jazz noise but never quite carries through on the threat.
The album then opens up into 9 more tracks that, while they rarely play with the oddness and complexity of ‘Robber’, there’s a hell of a lot going on. How many influences can you hear in this album? Are they deliberate? Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush, Springsteen (Atlantic / Tried to Tell You) and a host of other 80’s radio rock smeared with synths (I can genuinely hear shades of Dire Straits!) but then also the strings and hints of 80’s ‘sophisti-pop’ chucked in for good measure. David will love the disco-tinged-drive of ‘Parking Lot’ and I think we’ll all appreciate the magical backing vocals on ‘Loss’.
There is loads to love about this album; pop hooks with scope, scale, ambition and complexity. An artist playing with a wide sound palette and clearing enjoying the process and the results. I am still yet to fully connect with it emotionally but I can feel that this building slowly over time.
Some questions that I think might be interesting to discuss;
What is hell is this (and as always, does that even matter)?
How do hyperbolic critical reviews impact your experience of an album?
What influences do you hear in it?
What do you think might be preventing my emotional connection (reading a wide range of reviews – I am not the only one)
In episode 7 of our podcast, alongside McCartney, we bring a favourite cover to the table. But what makes a good cover? Why do you connect to it? Do you have to love the original? Or is loving the original a reason to doubt any rework of that track? Do you need to be reverential or do something totally different? Like any music, it’s such a personal thing, that we probably all have different views on it.
For me, (Guy), you have to bring something new to the party. What is that? I can’t define it, but it is all about the feels. And here’s some of my favourite covers, from the sublime (Jeff Buckley) to the ridiculous (The Fall). What do you like, and why?
With all 2020 gave us, music was one of the positives. From artists we have always loved such as Caribou and Run the Jewels, to artists such as Sault and Phoebe Bridgers planting their flag for a constant spot at the table to fresh new sounds like Troy Kingy, Khruanbin and Arlo Parks.
As we wrap up 2020 there have also been some unexpected surprises; Paul McCartney, Black Thought and most recently Parallel by Four Tet.
With a positive bounce in everyones step looking ahead to 2021 there is not only optimism in the air for things finding some normality around the world but also for new music. The hope being that many of our favourite artist have spent the last 12 months creating new material for us.
So far we know the following artists are ready to roll: Arlo Parks, Bicep, Darkside, Foo Fighters plus a Madlib & FourTet collaboration which all should be solid.
Plus unconfirmed but expect there will be new albums from Kanye West, Adele, Julia Stone, The Staves, Travis Scott and A$AP Rocky to name a few.
It’s been a while in the making but….. we decided that we wanted to talk about music just as much (ok, even more) as we write about it.
So in July, we decided to launch This Is Not Happening the podcast, timing it with one of our best albums of the month, Run The Jewels 4. Every month we’ll be talking about our latest album of the month, and tackling another subject each episode. In July, it was our favourite lockdown bangers, and in August, alongside Jessie Ware’s silky What’s Your Pleasure, we’ll be going into what music chills us out.
We’re pretty excited to be going in a new direction alongside the blog, so join Guy, Nolan, David and Joey every month for This Is Not Happening in podcast form!
thisisnothappening.net 