Bigmouth
286 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 8 ratingsClever talk about pop culture.
Bigmouth is pop culture talk for discerning grown-ups. Music, TV, movies, books or something else entirely – we’ll enthuse, argue, squabble and pick over the bones of what’s happening in the world of the stuff we love.
Presented by WORD magazine veterans Andrew Harrison (ex-editor of Q, Select and Mixmag) and Siân “Stan” Pattenden, a graduate of the Smash Hits and Select Mag Schools of Excellence.
Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Farewell edition! John Cooper Clark, Foundation, Y: The Last Man, Trunk Records, Shep Pettibone’s 80s bangers
October 02, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourBigmouth bids farewell in the outside world! From now on you can get us at The Culture Bunker… but we’re keeping the Bigmouth Patreon going with a few special extras for the Patreon faithful. And of course you can hear the music in full from every edition on our rolling playlist. On this week’s tearful end-of-an-era edition we meet John Cooper Clark, the William Blake of Salford, on the occasion of his new collection of poems – and he reads us one too. Plus, have Apple TV+ successfully filme...
Culture Bunker: The Specials’ Lynval Golding, The Farewell on Netflix plus Public Service Broadcasting
September 26, 2021 10:00 - 1 hourHear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Our new weekend pop culture roundtable returns with special guest Lynval Golding of The Specials, and their latest album, Protest Songs. Journalist Ian Harrison joins us to chew on new films The Farewell and Sweetheart, and we all listen to Bright Magic, the latest offering from Public Service Broadcasting. "The history of music can almost be seen as one long protest song." - Sian Pattenden. "I was born in Jamaica, I am living in A...
Culture Bunker: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’s Dan Gillespie Sells, Sex Education Series 3, horror films
September 18, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourHear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Welcome to the debut of our new weekend pop culture roundtable, as the podcast formerly known as Bigmouth joins The Bunker. This week, special guest Dan Gillespie Sells, composer of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie joins us to talk over the musical’s transition to Amazon Prime film. Critic Michael Hann helps us unpack Sex Education Series 3 on Netflix, and The North Water. Plus friend of the podcast Naomi Smith joins to share her pick...
Culture Bunker: Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell, Steve Martin’s Only Murders In The Building, new albums
September 11, 2021 03:00 - 54 minutesHear the music from every edition on our rolling playlist. Welcome to the debut of our new weekend pop culture roundtable, as the podcast formerly known as Bigmouth joins The Bunker. This week, special guest Sarah Cracknell of pop couturiers Saint Etienne joins us to talk over their new album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You. Plus critic John Mullen helps us dissect the new Steve Martin/Selena Gomez/Martin Short crime caper Only Murders In The Building plus new albums from Antipodean punks Amyl ...
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Vigil, Sean Lock’s 15 Storeys High, Sparks’s Annette… plus BIG NEWS
September 04, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourWe say goodbye to the Upsetter and ponder the extraordinary circumstances that created Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry with guests Justin Quirk and Mark Hooper. Plus, never mind the ballast! Is the BBC’s murder-on-a-submarine drama Vigil seaworthy? We look at beloved late comic Sean Lock’s sitcom 15 Storeys High, now on iPlayer by popular demand, and Sparks’s “idiosyncratic” movie Annette. And stay tuned for very, very big news about Bigmouth… Book lovers! Why not purchase Mark Hooper’s The Great Britis...
White Lotus, Lorde, Brit horror pic Censor, great stuff you missed
August 21, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourThis week, why you should be watching WHITE LOTUS, Sky’s brutal new satire of America’s beach-bound bourgeois bohemians. LORDE’s Solar Power brings us the horrors of fame but do we want to hear about them? Audacious female-led horror movie CENSOR spits on our grave (in the best possible way). And we round up the good stuff you might have missed with the Telegraph’s Michael Hogan. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production b...
Nico, rock star estates, Villagers, The Strokes at 20
August 14, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourIt’s a double-doctorate edition as Dr Jen Otter Bickerdike joins us to explain the truth about Rock’s Ice Maiden® in her new book You Are Beautiful And You Are Alone: The Real Story Of Nico… and Dr Eamonn Forde returns to fill us in his latest, Leaving The Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates. Plus new Irish dream-pop from Villagers and The Strokes’ Is This It hits its 20th birthday. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. ...
Zola, Summer of Soul, Hannah Peel, Kurupt FM
August 07, 2021 03:00 - 57 minutesIn road trip movie from (and to) hell Zola a young African-American waitress finds herself conned into sex work, but she’s no victim. What will we make of this first movie based on a series of tweets? Plus the ravishing radiophonic of Hannah Peel, pirates of the airwaves Kurupt FM return in a documentary about the mockumentary, and we finally have our say on Questlove’s incredible Summer of Soul. NME and GQ veteran Iestyn George is our guest. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and pre...
Prince, Billie Eilish, The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, summer tunes and reading
July 31, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourOut early for Patreon people… Understated ASMR pop paragon Billie Eilish is the voice of a million teenage bedrooms, but how will her second album Happier Than Ever go down with our 45+ panel of oldies? Plus the perils of child stardom in jaw-dropping documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, Prince’s Vault disgorges Welcome 2 America, and ideas for what to listen to and read on that beach holiday you can’t take. Travis Elborough, author of Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular ...
Sparks movie, Joel Culpepper, Scritti Politti, Reclaiming Amy Winehouse
July 24, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourWill The Sparks Brothers – a fraternal rockumentary from Edgar Spaced Wright – cast new insight on Mael pattern creativity? Plus a remarkable contemporary soul debut from Joel Culpepper with the unimprovable title Sgt. Culpepper, Scritti Politti reissue two none-more-80s pop epics, and does BBC2’s Reclaiming Amy cast new light on the most tragic music story of the past two decades? Daryl Easlea and Michael Moran are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân...
Britney Spears in chains, Jam & Lewis, yacht soul… and Max Mosley?
July 09, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourIs the BBC’s new podcast series Pieces Of Britney a worthwhile exploration of a modern showbiz horror story, or just as exploitative in its own way? Plus the soul sounds of “newstalgia” with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, r’n’b goes all Miami Vice in Too Slow To Disco: Yacht Soul, and truly odd movie about F1 boss turned press nemesis Max Mosley. Michael Hann of the FT and Guardian and pop historian Lucy O’Brien are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pat...
Sault, Gaspar Augé, Black Widow, a Filipino thriller… and Love Island
July 03, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourYou want eclectic? Novelist and Richard Allen du jour John Niven and Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly join us for this week’s pop smörgåsbord. This week: Sault’s surprise album of boundary-breaking BLM r’n’b, bombastic Gallic prog rave from Gaspard Augé of Justice, a preview of Marvel’s Black Widow, and thriller from Manila On The Job – a real Netflix find. Oh, and we watch Love Island as a form of penance. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and And...
Another Round, Tyler The Creator, Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, WITCH
June 26, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourWill all-day drinking restore your creative spark and joie de vivre, asks new Mad Mikkelson movie Another Round? What do YOU think, respond our guests Linda Marric and Jim Butler. Also, new albums from the Dennis the Menace of hip hop Tyler, The Creator and the Terry and June of doom-bound independent rock’n’roll Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, and a truly different rockdoc: the heroes of Zambia’s insane “Zamrock” in Witch: We Intend To Cause Havoc. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden a...
John Grant, Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth, albums challenge
June 19, 2021 03:00 - 58 minutesCult UK director Ben Wheatley returns to his folk-horror roots with the post-pandemic shocker In The Earth. Will we be able to see the horror for the trees? John Grant’s new album Boy From Michigan is searingly powerful on its creator’s chequered life, but is it, you know, fun too? And guests James Medd (ex-The Word) and Kate Hodges of The Hare And Hoofe challenge Andrew and Siân with albums to broaden their horizons. What will we like and what will we hate…? www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast ...
Sweet Tooth, Loki, Time with Sean Bean, Deap Vally
June 12, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourThe BBC’s intense Sean Bean/Stephen Graham prison drama Time… Marvel’s Loki gets a wildly original Disney+ series to confound all expectations… new music from Deap Vally… and if you’re only going to watch one series about a deer-human hybrid boy lost in post-apocalyptic America, make it Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Journalist Catherine Meyer and beer writer Pete Brown join Siân and Andrew to cover this week’s pop culture waterfront. And Catherine tells us about The Problem Of Leisure, an album of ...
Greentea Peng, The Beast Must Die, Nu-Grass vs Fusion
June 05, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourOut early for Patreon people… Is cosmic soul Londoner Greentea Peng’s debut album Man Made the spaced-out summer soundtrack we need? BritBox’s first original programming is Isle of Wight crime thriller The Beast Must Die, but can the streaming minnow’s own stuff compete with Netflix? Plus we challenge guests Sophie ‘Mojo/Guardian’ Harris and Simon ‘Wallpaper’ Mills to try an album they’ve never heard – and they challenge Andrew and Siân too. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produced and pres...
Ben Whishaw in Surge, Japanese Breakfast, Amazon sci-fi Solos
May 29, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourContemporary stress drives Ben “Q” Whishaw to a strangely ecstatic breakdown in strange London thriller SURGE. Why Michelle Zauner aka JAPANESE BREAKFAST is the Korean-American sophisto-pop turn you should be paying attention to. And what the hell is going on with that Amazon sci-fi star vehicle SOLOS, with its Helen Mirren, its Anne Hathaways and its Morgan Freemans? International guests CHRIS HEATH of GQ (Brooklyn) and DAVID KEEPS of Details and Star Hits (Phoenix, AZ) dial in to help us so...
Gods Of Snooker, Billie Piper directs, Gruff Rhys, The Sound Of Metal
May 22, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourBillie Piper’s astonishing directorial debut RARE BEASTS: genius reinvention of the romcom, cinematic ordeal, arthouse triumph or all three? GRUFF RHYS of Super Furry Animals writes a concept album about how a Korean volcano explains the essence of humanity. Plus we revisit Riz Ahmed’s bravura deaf jam of a movie THE SOUND OF METAL and worship at the feet of BBC2’s GODS OF SNOOKER. Film critic ANNA SMITH and The Times’s WILL HODGKINSON are our guests. www.patreon.com/BigmouthPodcast Produce...
250th EDITION! Mark Ellen and David Hepworth of A Word In Your Ear join us
May 15, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourCrossover Episode! Our old bosses MARK ELLEN and DAVID HEPWORTH of A Word In Your Ear, Smash Hits, Q and Mojo fame join Siân and Andrew to mark our quarter century. On the agenda: the glory days of the Hits and why the music biz didn’t know how much it would miss the pop mags. “PAUL WELDER”’s new album. The Incredible String Band, Half Man Half Biscuit, Girl Band, Fargo on C4 and that BBC Mitford thing. Van Morrison’s harmonica redux. And “much, much more”! Thanks to everyone who’s backed us...
St Vincent, Matt Berry, Domina on Sky, art film special
May 08, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourArt-pop provocateur ST VINCENT returns with an album inspired by her dad’s 12 year jail sentence for multimillion dollar financial fraud. Is this the key to Annie Clark’s oeuvre (and is it any good)? Plus MATT ‘TOAST OF LONDON’ BERRY’S frankly marvellous psych-pop freakbeat album The Blue Elephant, Sky attempts a female take on I, Claudius with DOMINA, and a couple of off-the-beaten track movies you might like. Broadcaster Jamie East and novelist, screenwriter and Nik Cohn of scally Kevin Sam...
Fifth Birthday special with guest NEIL TENNANT of Pet Shop Boys
May 01, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourDear God, it’s Bigmouth’s fifth birthday. We know, right? In celebration, we welcome the legend that is Neil Tennant plus “third Pet Shop Boy” David Quantick for a gala appreciation of the lost world of the music press that made us. Worst interviewees, biggest disasters, dinner dates with Freddie Mercury, the twilight of Marilyn’s career, the mags we’d bring back from the dead and more… plus we bring back the Smash Hits Nosey Questions for one week only. Bigmouth: it’s a party in a podcast. ...
Sisters With Transistors doc, Teenage Fanclub, Field Music, Mare Of Easttown
April 24, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourThe astonishing stories of the little-known women who shaped the genesis of electronic music are told in new documentary Sisters With Transistors. How would you like your guitar music: unflinchingly realist with Teenage Fanclub or boldly avant garde with Field Music? And is Sky’s much-touted new cop show Mare Of Easttown, starring a heavily de-glammed Kate Winslet as a disconsolate detective, an American Broadchurch or something more still more pungent? Our guests Jude “Guardian” Rogers and M...
Promising Young Woman, McCartney Remixed, Palm Springs, The Selecter
April 17, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourThe Carey Mulligan revenge thriller Promising Young Woman from Killing Eve writer Emerald Fennell: black comedy, proper serious commentary, or just too intense to enjoy? Up and coming young artist Paul McCartney hands over his music to everyone from St Vincent to John Home to Khruangbin, What will we think of McCartney III Imagined? Why time travelling subversion of the romcom Palm Springs is your new favourite movie. And The Selecter’s Too Much Pressure finally gets its pork-pie-hatted props...
Nomadland, Raf Rundell, Wellington Paranormal, Matthew E. White
April 10, 2021 03:00 - 1 hourIs Nomadland, with Frances McDormand as a van-dwelling “houseless not homeless” wanderer in the new America, really as good as all the awards imply? New albums by one-man rave-up Raf Rundell (ex-2 Bears) and cosmic soul man Matthew E White who’s gone all outsider art on us. And deadpan comedy in Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s NZ copumentary Wellington Paranormal. Strictly Kev AKA DJ Food and Michael Hann of the Guardian and the FT are our guests. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden...
The Fall, Dry Cleaning, Creation Stories, “militant funk”
March 27, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourPOD: SELFISH. In our most post-post-post punk edition ever, Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne and Tessa Norton join us to discuss Excavate! The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall, their magisterial co-edited hardback symposium on music’s most cryptic combo. Plus the debut album from post-Fall observationistas Dry Cleaning, a remarkable compilation of RADICAL! FUNK! from the Thatcher-bashing 80s… and what sort of truth does new biopic Creation Stories AKA I Am Alan McGee tell? Produced and...
Lana Del Rey, Falcon & Winter Soldier, The Flight Attendant, movie bonanza
March 20, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourWill disaster princess Lana Del Rey hold on to her title as the F Scott Fitzgerald of the blasé Instagram generation with Chemtrails Over The Country Club? After the phantasmagoria of WandaVision, will the newly Marvelized Disney+ audience take to the bleakly realist political thriller The Falcon And The Winter Soldier? Plus a round-up of intriguing new streaming movies – The Columnist, The Banishing and Silk Road – and why you really really really should watch Sky’s new comedy thriller The F...
Don Letts guests, Blitz club doc, Sananda Maitreya, Best Of Enemies
March 13, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourSpecial guest and all-purpose film-directing dread about town Don Letts joins us to talk about his new book There And Black Again plus untold tales from 40 years spanning Bob Marley, The Clash and B.A.D. up to the present day. And film critic Linda Marric helps us disentangle Sky’s latest New Romantic documentary Blitzed: The 80s Blitz Kids Story, Netflix movie The Best Of Enemies – in which a KKK leader develops an unlikely friendship with a Black civil rights campaigner – and the latest spr...
Poly Styrene documentary, WandaVision finale, Arab Strap, Ridley Scott’s The Terror
March 06, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourThe great punk misfit Poly Styrene features in new documentary I Am A Cliché, showing this week on Sky Arts. Will it earn her her proper place at last? Laura Snapes of The Guardian and writer Travis Elborough join us to examine it plus the first album in 16 years by Falkirk seediness connoisseurs Arab Strap and Ridley Scott’s The Terror, AKA I’m A Character Actor, Get Me Off This Ice Floe. Plus nerd squad Mike Moran and Alex Andreou parachute in for spoiler-laden look at the WandaVision serie...
I Care A Lot, The Anchoress, Zappa documentary
February 27, 2021 00:00 - 1 hourThere’s a con woman coining it in the care homes of America: will Rosamund Pike crime caper I Care A Lot on Amazon Prime Video scare us straight? The ecstatic grown-up grief-pop of The Anchoress. Andrew finally succeeds in turning the panel on to a comic book with The Department Of Truth – an X Files for the QAnon era (read Issue 1 for free here). And was Frank Zappa quite as charmlessly difficult as we thought? We take a look at a new documentary with guests Zöe Howe and William Shaw. Produ...
Lupin, Class Action Park doc, Jane Weaver, SG Lewis
February 20, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourFyre Festival/Lord Of The Flies vibes in Class Action Park, a frankly astonishing documentary about America’s most insanely hazardous amusement park now showing on Sky Documentaries. New albums from the Radiophonic Kate Bush of cosmic Cheshire Jane Weaver and young disco turk SG Lewis. And why Lupin is the biggest deal yet in French telly’s bit to take over the world. Acid house veterans Anthony ‘placid casual’ Teasdale and Jim ‘Jockey Slut’ Butler are our guests. Produced and presented by S...
Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, The Hold Steady, Django Django, 12 Hour Shift
February 13, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourHot from the podcasting mill for the Patreon people… Is Adam Curtis’s latest think-about-it-yeah epic Can’t Get You Out Of My Head worth the eight hours you’ll need to navigate his “emotional history of the modern world”? New music from electro noise-tamperers Django Django and the litfest Springsteens that are The Hold Steady. And the busy life of a drug-addled nurse/organ thief in dark horror comedy 12 Hour Shift. Katie ‘The Word’ Puckrik and James ‘Condé Nast Traveller’ Medd are our guests...
Hip Hop history, slowthai, Stewart Lee’s Nightingales doc
February 06, 2021 04:00 - 59 minutesDoes AMC’s ambitious Hip Hop: Songs That Shook America (all eps now on iPlayer) expand our knowledge of the boom-boom-bap? What happens when Stewart Lee makes a documentary about Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales, a man who makes Radiohead seem hungry for celebrity. King Rocker is on Sky Arts right now. And are we taken by young persons’ rapper slowthai’s “mature second album”? John Doran of the Quietus and Kate Hodges of The Hare And Hoofe join Andrew and Siân for judgment hour. Produced an...
White Tiger, Call My Agent, Black Country New Road and more
January 30, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourBass player to the gentry Guy Pratt of Pink Floyd, Bryan Ferry and My Bass And Other Animals fame and Harry Hill scriptwriter Dan Maier join us to delve into the pop culture bran tub. This week: Dirty deeds in Delhi in the stunning White Tiger on Netflix. The post-rock post-jazz post-everything sounds of Black Country, New Road plus delinquent Aussie motorboogie from the Psychedelic P0rn Crumpets*. Yet that is their name. And we get absoluement fabuleux with the return of Call My Agent on Net...
It’s A Sin, WandaVision, Scottish indie doc, Steven Wilson
January 23, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourEverybody should be watching It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies’s riotous, heartbreaking and funny saga of AIDS in young London, and guests John “Kill Your Friends” Niven and Daryl “He’s the Disco Curator” Easlea will tell you why. Plus all the BMX Bandits, Vaselines and Shop Assistants you could wish for in Scottish indie rock-doc Teenage Superstars. Who is Steven Wilson and will his post-prog sounds freak your scene? And Alex Andreou of our sister podcasts The Bunker and Oh God, What Now? joins A...
Sleaford Mods’ Jason is our guest, Bowie biopic, Bicep, KLF
January 16, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourOn the actual day that new album Spare Ribs comes out, Jason from Sleaford Mods joins Siân, Andrew and guest Iestyn “NME/GQ/Golf Punk” George for pop’s most penetrating panel. On the agenda: that weird-looking Bowie movie Stardust (is it as terrible as they say?). Domestic bangers from Belfast’s Bicep. A movie about the KLF becoming undertakers – a grave experience? And the time Jason won a competition in Mixmag. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production ...
The Serpent, Viagra Boys, Soul on Disney+, 2021 movie preview
January 09, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourIs BBC1’s hippy-murderin’ heart of darkness horror show The Serpent what we need in a cold January? Why should you bone up on the new album from Viagra Boys? How did Disney/Pixar’s ‘Wonderful Life for kids’ Soul illuminate our Christmas? And a preview of the movies you might see in 2021. Deputy Editor of Esquire Magazine Johnny Davis and film critic Linda Marric (NME, HeyUGuys, Jewish Chronicle) join Andrew and Siân to sort it all out. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harr...
Best of 2020 Part 2 feat. Baxter Dury, Childish Gambino, I Hate Suzie, Khruangbin and more…
December 19, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 64.8 MBAn appalling year comes to a glittering crescendo as Alexis Petridis of The Guardian and Pete Paphides – rock’n’roll impresario at vinyl Mecca Needle Mythology and author of Broken Greek – join us to select their (and Siân’s!) “fave raves” of the year. And here’s the playlist… Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Best of 2020 Part 2 feat. Baxter Dury, Childish Gambino, I Hate Suzie, Khruangbin and more…
December 19, 2020 04:00 - 1 hourAn appalling year comes to a glittering crescendo as Alexis Petridis of The Guardian and Pete Paphides – rock’n’roll impresario at vinyl Mecca Needle Mythology and author of Broken Greek – join us to select their (and Siân’s!) “fave raves” of the year. And here’s the playlist… Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad ch...
Best of 2020 Part 1 feat. Mrs America, Paul Weller, Róisín Murphy, John Boyega, Cornershop and more…
December 12, 2020 04:00 - 51 minutesGod, is it that time of year again? Repeat offender guests Jude Rogers of The Guardian and Eamonn Forde of The Final Days of EMI: Selling the Pig fame join Siân and Andrew to choose their favourite albums, tracks, TV things and hidden gems of this terrible, terrible year for everything except pop and telly. More next week… And if you want to enjoy our guests’ music selections they’re all here on a Spotify playlist. Hurrah! Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio p...
Shane MacGowan biopic, Avalanches, Mank on Netflix
December 05, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBIn Julien Temple’s biopic Crock Of Gold, Shane MacGowan is a wheezing wreck of himself. Is the Pogues frontman a neglected poet, a cautionary tale, an Irish hero or all three and more? Plus The Avalanches take the cut-and-paste sampledelic collage to wildly ambitious new places. And is David Fincher’s Mank – about the self-destructive alcoholic who wrote Citizen Kane – a work of dedication or just Orson Welles cosplay? Hannah Verdier of The Guardian and Sophie Harris of Mojo and Rolling St...
Shane MacGowan biopic, Avalanches, Mank on Netflix
December 05, 2020 04:00 - 1 hourIn Julien Temple’s biopic Crock Of Gold, Shane MacGowan is a wheezing wreck of himself. Is the Pogues frontman a neglected poet, a cautionary tale, an Irish hero or all three and more? Plus The Avalanches take the cut-and-paste sampledelic collage to wildly ambitious new places. And is David Fincher’s Mank – about the self-destructive alcoholic who wrote Citizen Kane – a work of dedication or just Orson Welles cosplay? Hannah Verdier of The Guardian and Sophie Harris of Mojo and Rolling Stone...
Belushi on Sky, High Contrast, Mogul Mowgli
November 28, 2020 04:00 - 1 hourJohn Belushi: kamikaze genius, drug disaster, wounded soul or all three? An epic new biography on Sky Documentaries tries to explain. Plus guest Robin Turner on his memoir of Heavenly Records, grown-up jungle from High Contrast, and Riz Ahmed’s portrait of a hip hop star in crisis, Mogul Mowgli. Worldwide FM DJ Kate Hutchinson joins Robin and regulars Siân and Andrew to thrash it all out. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is...
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, Megan Thee Stallion, The Liberator on Netflix
November 21, 2020 04:00 - 1 hourWhat’s in Steve McQueen’s miniseries exploration of Black Britain, Small Axe? Can our panel of senior b-boys plus one b-girl relate to hip hop raunchstress Megan Thee Stallion? World War II animated drama The Liberator on Netflix – is war hell or is it just drawn that way? Plus tales of DIY metal pyro mishaps and the pubs and doubling glazing adventures of our favourite footballers One-man bible of terrace style Anthony Teasdale and Michael Hann of The Guardian, the FT, The Spectator and QPR...
HATE! Comic, Cabaret Voltaire and Paranormal – the Egyptian X-Files
November 14, 2020 04:00 - 57 minutesIt’s a broad appeal edition this week as we look back at Peter Bagge’s HATE!, the infamously gross and hilarious ’90s comic book that stands as Generation X’s Great American Novel. How does it come across now in luxury box set form? Plus Cabaret Voltaire bring the electro paranoia back for the first time in 26 years. And why you should be watching horror nerve-twister Paranormal, Netflix’s first Egyptian series. Ian Harrison of Mojo magazine and arts TV producer John Mullen – veterans of Sele...
ICONS Music photography doc with Gered Mankowitz, Dizzee Rascal and more
November 07, 2020 04:00 - 1 hourSky Arts’ epic series Icons: Music Through The Lens tells the history of rock photography on album sleeves, mag covers, publicity shots and beyond. Legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz – yes, he took that Hendrix shot!! – and director Dick Carruthers join us to discuss the stories behind one of the best music documentaries we’ve ever seen. Plus: Dizzee Rascal, piping-new country-folker Katy J Pearson and a woman who recorded every second of live TV for 30 years… Produced and presented by Si...
The Queen’s Gambit, Kylie’s disco, Sophia Coppola’s On The Rocks
October 31, 2020 00:00 - 1 hourPAWN COCKTAIL: Is brilliant Netflix chess psychodrama The Queen’s Gambit the true apotheosis of the Bunty comic cruel orphanage story – or is it really a superhero tale? STUDIO 5’4”: Kylie Minogue returns to her (and our) happy place with new album Disco. OVERDUE BILL: Does Sophia Coppola/Bill Murray/Rashida Jones caper flick On The Rocks recreate the magic of Lost In Translation? Lucy O’Brien, author of She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Popular Music, and multi-purpose entertainme...
Trial Of The Chicago 7, Gorillaz, saving Pepe the Frog
October 24, 2020 03:00 - 1 hourIs Aaron Sorkin’s Trial Of The Chicago Seven a timely look at the corrupt roots of cop/state bad vibes or just more burnishing of the hippy myth? Gorillaz: the only valid model for 21st Century pop or a big ol’ ego trip for Damon Albarn? And a startling BBC documentary asks if Pepe the Frog can be saved from the clutches of the alt.right. Select mag veterans Adam Higginbotham and Clark Collis join their old colleagues Andrew and Siân to thrash it all out. Produced and presented by Siân Patte...
Simon Halfon’s album covers, John Cooper Clarke, Annie, more London Film Festival
October 17, 2020 03:00 - 1 hourSleeve designer to Weller, Oasis, George Michael and Madness Simon Halfon tells us about a life in pop art and the untold tales and unseen art in his new book Cover To Cover. Film critic Linda Marric brings us more gems from the London International Film Festival including eye-opening sneaker investigation One Man And His Shoes. MAD MANC: John Cooper Clarke’s brain-bursting autobiography. And Norwegian popstrel Annie returns with some quality sad bangers. Produced and presented by Siân Patte...
Ivor Cutler, Autechre, Kajillionaire at London International Film Festival
October 10, 2020 03:00 - 1 hourUnder the electron microscope of pop culture this week: Outsider artist Ivor Cutler in a SKY documentary/love letter from KT Tunstall. Have Autechre, creators of bass-driven Barbican Centres of brutalist electronics, made their “accessible album” with SIGN? Can Good Sad Happy Bad bring back the shoegazin’ days of ’91? And we hit the London International Film Festival – now accessible to the whole country, thanks COVID! – for Kajillionaire, Shirley, Honeymood and more in the company of film cr...
New Romantic with Dylan Jones, White Riot, Idles, Fleet Foxes
October 03, 2020 03:00 - 1 hourWho will win this week’s pop culture smackdown? The troubled peacocks of our guest Dylan Jones’s new epic work Sweet Dreams: The Story Of The New Romantics? Contemporary agit-punk shoutmongers Idles? Their spiritual forebears The Clash and other Rock Against Racism alumni, immortalised in the documentary White Riot? Or Mr Autumn Man himself Robin Pecknold, currently hermitlike sole operator of Fleet Foxes? Culture writer Travis Elborough joins Dylan Jones, Siân and Andrew for another session...