August 14, 2019
A brief note: I think this post marks the first time I've ever typed out "mansplaining." Google flagged it as misspelled, suggesting I might have meant "mainspring" or "plainsman." I tried hyphenating but that lead to "splaining" getting the red squiggly with the replacement options "man-spraining" (too violent), "man-explaining" (too what-your-great-aunt-probably-thinks-it-is" and "man-splatting" (too ambiguously gross). But you're here for podcast recs. Right. Carry on....
SOMETHING NEW
SOMETHING NEW
I love music. Yet with my predilection for getting so lost in the podcast sauce, music listening opportunities are becoming fewer and farther in between. Frank Turner's Tales From No Man's Land is a new podcast that might just get me back into regular music listening. The concept album seeks to exhume the stories of forgotten women, many of whom have been lost entirely to the modern world, and the accompanying podcast riffs on that theme to a pleasant depth. In each episode, the singer songwriter goes deep to reveal the backstory of a track off the forthcoming "No Man's Land" (out this Friday, August 16, on Xtra Mile Recording). It is an album commentary like no other, giving extremely rich context for songs that leave one begging to know more.
Mirroring the structure of Song Exploder, the dissection on Tales From No Man's Land comes up front with the completed song debuting at the end. It is interview-based non-fiction buttoned up with a live rendition of the applicable song. As many of the interviews take place where the woman (or women) once lived, the subset of the podcast feed is becoming a sort of site-specific acoustic live album. It will be really interesting to see how the studio released cuts of these songs compare, and regardless of the sonic familiarity I’m sure to have a very different listening experience.
The women who fill these stories really run the gamut, from the recognizable (such as Mata Hari) to the infinitely unknowable (as we find to be the case with the women known as ‘Winchester Geese’ featured in “The Graveyard of the Outcast Dead”). The subjects so far have a streak of rebel in their stories. Sometimes it is breaking a convention of their era, while other times it being involved in “the world’s oldest profession.” Turner endows these women with the dignity time has neglected to bestow upon them, and likely introducing many listeners to names that should be widely recognizable.
The series began releasing episodes weekly on July 3rd, meaning the final track is slated to be covered in an October 3rd release. The timeline seems like an excellent PR move, allowing for hype to build before the album and then creating a cyclical album-podcast-podcast-album churn. This seems like a pattern that could extend the shelf life of both entities. Looking really far down the road, I wonder if fans will consider this podcast a companion piece to the album and if repeat listening will happen side by side.
I’ll be the first to admit that this whole thing could come off as an exercise in highly artistic mansplaining. Turner acknowledges the optics as both a man telling the story of women and as an amateur sleuth masquerading in the territory of serious historians, and every ounce of every episode conveys his genuine interest in having these stories told. It would be incredibly easy to create a bunch of treacly odes with biographical bits mindlessly inserted, but no - somehow the writing is rarely clunky, even when the musician does in fact include very finely detailed bits of life story. From my male perspective, the end product is a compelling collection of music and a fascinating chunk of podcasting.
Mirroring the structure of Song Exploder, the dissection on Tales From No Man's Land comes up front with the completed song debuting at the end. It is interview-based non-fiction buttoned up with a live rendition of the applicable song. As many of the interviews take place where the woman (or women) once lived, the subset of the podcast feed is becoming a sort of site-specific acoustic live album. It will be really interesting to see how the studio released cuts of these songs compare, and regardless of the sonic familiarity I’m sure to have a very different listening experience.
The women who fill these stories really run the gamut, from the recognizable (such as Mata Hari) to the infinitely unknowable (as we find to be the case with the women known as ‘Winchester Geese’ featured in “The Graveyard of the Outcast Dead”). The subjects so far have a streak of rebel in their stories. Sometimes it is breaking a convention of their era, while other times it being involved in “the world’s oldest profession.” Turner endows these women with the dignity time has neglected to bestow upon them, and likely introducing many listeners to names that should be widely recognizable.
The series began releasing episodes weekly on July 3rd, meaning the final track is slated to be covered in an October 3rd release. The timeline seems like an excellent PR move, allowing for hype to build before the album and then creating a cyclical album-podcast-podcast-album churn. This seems like a pattern that could extend the shelf life of both entities. Looking really far down the road, I wonder if fans will consider this podcast a companion piece to the album and if repeat listening will happen side by side.
I’ll be the first to admit that this whole thing could come off as an exercise in highly artistic mansplaining. Turner acknowledges the optics as both a man telling the story of women and as an amateur sleuth masquerading in the territory of serious historians, and every ounce of every episode conveys his genuine interest in having these stories told. It would be incredibly easy to create a bunch of treacly odes with biographical bits mindlessly inserted, but no - somehow the writing is rarely clunky, even when the musician does in fact include very finely detailed bits of life story. From my male perspective, the end product is a compelling collection of music and a fascinating chunk of podcasting.
From: Somethin' Else
Recommended for: Wayward music fans, history nerds, feminists
Drop Schedule: Thursday, Weekly
Average episode length: 30 minutes
Rating: Gotta Have It
THE LIST
Sam Greenspan is an audio producer whose work you may have caught on 99% Invisible. He is out with a new project called Bellwether, a podcast of speculative non-fiction, and the first episode is live now. Does that genre give you pause? Perhaps it should, because "01_AUTOPILOT OFF" is unlike anything else I've ever heard. It is cool and weird and special and I can't wait for the rest of the show. I hardly have adequate words to couch the episode, so I'll go with the text lifted from the project's Kickstarter page: "For the first time in history, a self-driving car killed a pedestrian. But who's really at fault?". Check it out, and if it leaves you as jazzed as I was after listening, by all means get your funding on.
Radiolab tells a story of identity and citizenship through the lens of American Samoa, and an odd loophole that oddly excludes an American passport from being conveyed to anyone born on the territory in the Pacific. Apart from Puerto Rico, I have never given much thought to the national identity of those who inhabit US owned lands that are not states. This is an excellent primer on the complexity of the thing, at least in one place, and it underscores that the American way of life is not always highly sought after.
This episode has all the lightness of a conspiratorial childhood plot - one woman's quest to follow through on a slightly inebriated boast that she could stow away on a cruise ship. Perfect for summer, and for anyone who ever tried to get away with something as illegal as it is inconsequential. I loved how this narrative wove historical tidbits in with the details of the crime, and how the whole thing is so utterly immature while also simultaneously very involved. The level of holistic achievement is enough to kick one's imagination into gear surrounding just what's possible to get away with....
Buildings are tangible reminders of empires, past and present. Architecture is history and culture and one of the things humanity builds with the best longevity - even after meaning is lost. If you’ve been lucky enough to have visited Berlin, this one will have a special resonance.
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