Bigmouth

John 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 a Podmasters production.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What’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 join Siân and Andrew to deconstruct pop culture’s body politic. 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 choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’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 Select mag both – join Siân and Andrew for pop culture judgment hour.  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 choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sky 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 Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PAWN 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 entertainment journalist Michael Moran join Andrew and Siân to sort it all out. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is 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 Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sleeve 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 Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Under 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 critic and host of the Girls On Film podcast Anna Smith and co-founder of The Quietus, John Doran.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who 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 of nozin’ around. Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Soma lovin’, had me a blast… Can NBC do justice to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, with Harry Lloyd and Jessica Brown Findlay free-lovin’ their way across futuristic New London? It starts on SKY next Friday. Can the debut album by Todmorden noiseniks Working Men’s Club superserve both the mature Fall/Cabaret Voltaire fan and today’s young ravers? Are US electro plinkers Sylvan Esso any good? And a really affecting movie about the beauty pageant battles of black mothers and daughters in Texas, Miss Juneteenth.  Film writer Linda Marric and Joe Muggs, co-author of Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture join Andrew and Siân to work it all out.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi

Have Public Enemy really made a masterpiece with What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down, their first album for Def Jam in 22 years? A Pong From Under The Floorboards: David Tennant as Dennis Nilsen in Des. The discomatic return of Róisín Murphy with Róisín Machine. And is Katherine Ryan’s single mum comedy The Duchess just a bit too North London for its own good? Justin Quirk, author of Nothin' But a Good Time: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Glam Metal, and Craig McLean of The Times join Andrew and Siân to sort it all out.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week’s bloody assizes of pop culture… Does THE FLAMING LIPS’ new album American Head constitute the headstone of psychedelic culture or a state of the nation rallying cry to let your freak flag fly? Can Maisie ‘Game Of Thrones’ Williams cut it in revenge comedy TWO WEEKS TO LIVE, now on Sky? And what the hell is Charlie ‘Adaptation’ Kaufman’s I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS supposed to be about? Film critics Claire Biddles and Matt Glasby join Andrew and Siân to gaze in bafflement.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ultra-prolific gene-splicer of all musics Asian, Anglo and beyond Nitin Sawhney joins Will Hodgkinson of The Times plus Siân and Andrew for this week’s pop culture summit. WELCOME TO THE PALINDROME: Does Christopher Nolan’s mind-pretzeling Tenet make sense, and will it save Hollywood? MIND OVER PLATTER: New albums from leftfield jazz parper Nubya Garcia and house delinquents Disclosure.  STAX AND VIOLENCE: Why BBC4’s new three-parter Soul America – covering the rise of black music through civil rights, civil disturbances and beyond – is an unmissable milestone.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The weekend starts early! Just! Under the pop culture microscope this week… H.P. SOURCE – Sky/HBO’s Lovecraft Country: here’s that “Jim Crow-era American racism meets extra dimensional elder gods” mash-up you were looking for. But is it any good? GLAM RACKET – Is The Lemon Twigs’ magpie mid-70s power pop a wild pastiche, a glorious rock’n’roll adventure… or both? SAVED BY THE BELL (AND THE CLARKE) – Erasure are back back back!  POWER PILL – In Netflix super-action pic Project Power you neck a “Jimmy Hill” and get superpowers for five minutes. Bravura superhero reinvention, or just more stuff blowin’ up? Guests Adam Higginbotham (author of Midnight In Chernobyl) and Pete Brown, the don of beer writers and the author of Craft: An Argument: Why The Term ‘Craft Beer’ Is Completely Undefinable, Hopelessly Misunderstood And Absolutely Essential, join us to “sort it all out”.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production. 

This week on pop culture’s premier inquisition… I’M MANDY, TRY ME: Does Diane Morgan’s new mini-series MANDY hit the highs of Philomena Cunk? CHILL BY SOUTH: Melbourne electro gadabouts Cut Copy go ambient on new sixth album Freeze, Melt. Will it assuage our panel’s heatstroke? DOING THE LORD'S JERK: It’s Catholic guilt vs teenage sexual “self-discovery” time in new comedy Yes God Yes. Will our panel experience holy ecstasy (followed by immediate shame)? William Shaw – Smash Hits and Details veteran turned writer of splendid crime books – and Guardian podcasts queen Hannah Verdier join Andrew and Siân to sort the sheep from the goats.   Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the premier pop-probing podcast… MERSEY, MERSEY ME: The Real Thing, the 4-piece Marvin Gaye of Liverpool 8, finally get their props on a new BBC4 documentary. What do we think? DUBLIN UP: Fontaines DC are this year’s Great New Guitar Band. Will they excite our mature panel as much as they do the ragin’ teens?  GET IN THE RING: Leftfield dramady The Peanut Butter Falcon takes a Down’s Syndrome kid who dreams of being a wrestler on a Southern odyssey with Shia LaBoeuf. What’s the laughter:poignancy ratio here? Sophie Harris of Mojo and The Guardian and Jockey Slut veteran Jim Butler join Andrew and Siân to pronounce judgment…  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mojo mag contributing editor SYLVIE SIMMONS dials in from San Francisco to tell us about her new ukulele-powered album Blue On Blue and talk over this week’s pop culture stuff with fellow guest, award-winning podcaster KATE HUTCHINSON:   ISN’T SHE SCHLAFLY? Does Cate Blanchett convince as counter-feminist martinet Phyllis Schlafly in Mrs America? MOTHER FOLKER: Doyenne of traditional English music Shirley Collins deliver her second album after emerging from thirty years of silence. What do we think of Heart’s Ease?  LAUREL AND HEARTHROBS: Does Sky’s documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time tell us stuff we don’t know about the hippie epicentre beyond Woodstock, Manson and Altamont?  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p

Attention, earthlets! 2000AD comic creator Pat Mills joins us to talk about the romance of violence and anarchy for teenage delinquents plus his new comic Spacewarp. Plus… COCKER THE NORTH: Is Jarvis growing old gracefully with his new band Jarv Is… and its debut album Beyond The Pale? BLOOD WIMPLE: Holy terror in Netflix’s Warrior Nun. THE DIGGER YOU LOVE TO HATE: The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty on BBC2.  Bigmouth regular Michael Moran joins Andrew and Siân for another rock’n’roll roundtable of rock. And pop. And “miscellaneous”.  Produced and presented by Siân Pattenden and Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It couldn’t happen here… right? Philip Roth’s counterfactual of a fascist USA The Plot Against America gets a TV treatment from the team behind The Wire. The Streets return with None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive – will a lachrymose dad-rave “mixtape” bake our collective cake? And Family Romance LLC, Werner Herzog’s multi-layered tale of illusion and familial longing. NME and Loaded veteran Iestyn George and comedy writer and journo Sarah Morgan join us as we get judgy.  Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison and Siân Pattenden. Audio production by Alex Rees. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson and Jude Rogers of The Guardian and New Statesman join us for this week’s bloody assizes of pop culture. Does the BBC’s Arena documentary Keith Haring: Street Art Boy finally do justice to the wild style graffiti artists of early 80s New York? New albums from Tyneside toughnut Nadine Shah and 9ft tall trans electronica artiste Arca. And we revisit Nicolas Roeg’s still-bewitching antipodean rite of passage Walkabout on the eve of a new Blu-Ray release.  Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison and Siân Pattenden. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Bigmouth is a Podmasters production.  Get every episode of BIGMOUTH a day early when you back us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices