Bandsplain

Emerging from Seattle’s early 90s grunge landscape, Sunny Day Real Estate became legends of an emerging midwestern emo sound that began to redefine the boundaries of the genre. Meeting us there in the blue where the words are not is writer and podcaster Ian Cohen. Follow Ian Cohen on Twitter @en_cohen and listen to his podcast Indiecast @Indiecast1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rolling Stone writer and author Rob Sheffield joins us to dissect the long, storied history of the legendary Big Star, a band with a handful of records and an indelible legacy that reaches beyond the decades of their origin.   Follow Rob Sheffield on Twitter @robsheff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Offspring were one in a wave of southern California bands that ushered in a renewed interest in punk rock to the ears of the masses, becoming one of the best-selling punk rock bands of all time and here to help us come out and play is SPIN Editorial Director, Daniel Kohn. Follow Daniel Kohn on Twitter at @danielkohn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Third Eye Blind may have doot-doot-dooted their way to late 90s radio ubiquity, but there’s so much more to the story. Chris Black returns for a reconsideration of the earworm songwriting and complex lore of the singular Stephen Jenkins. Follow Chris Black on Twitter at @donetodeath. Subscribe to How Long Gone on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rob Harvilla and Yasi continue their epic trek through the Smashing Pumpkins story post-1993’s Siamese Dream, in which the Pumpkins transcend 1990s alt rock cultishness into rock phenom status with their opus double-album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Follow Rob Harvilla at @harvilla on Twitter and listen to his The Ringer podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rob Harvilla joins us for the noble effort of explaining The Smashing Pumpkins, one of the most commercially successful and musically impactful rock bands of the 1990s. Yasi and Rob cover the first half of the band’s breakthrough career and comb through the origin story of Billy Corgan’s emergent and unusual celebrity. Follow Rob Harvilla at @harvilla on Twitter and listen to his The Ringer podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bad Brains were one of the most influential hardcore bands of all time, from inventing moshing to being groundbreaking black punks who injected hardcore with a Rastafarian philosophy and reggae influence. Though they were “banned in DC,” they built the foundation for hardcore and the history of punk to come. Photographer and unofficial mayor of LA Atiba Jefferson brings his lifelong fandom to the table as he and Yasi chart the history of Bad Brains. Follow Atiba Jefferson on Instagram at @atibaphoto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ann Powers returns for part 2 of PJ Harvey, covering the next period of Harvey’s prolific career—from To Bring You My Love on—which was punctuated by confident creative expansions, big-hitting collaborations, flirtations with pop success, and continued artistic investigations into riveting subjects. Follow Ann Powers on Twitter at @annkpowers, and find her latest book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music wherever fine books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For Yasi’s birthday, she can have a two-part PJ Harvey episode as a treat. Ann Powers of NPR Music is welcomed back to Bandsplain to dissect the lauded work and cinematic life of Polly Jean Harvey, who Ann calls “the artiest rock star of the late 20th century” and a vector for deep discussions on gender, sexuality, mysticism, myth-making, and art. Follow Ann Powers on Twitter at @annkpowers, and find her latest book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music wherever fine books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Neutral Milk Hotel released only two studio albums in the mid-to-late 90s, On Avery Island and In An Aeroplane Over the Sea, but they’ve since been consecrated as quintessential indie rock classics. Emerging from the Elephant 6 musical collective, bandleader Jeff Mangum led this eccentric musical experiment that left much mystery, and a large cult following, in its wake. This week, Wall Street Journal’s rock and pop music critic and former editor-in-chief of Pitchfork Mark Richardson joins Yasi to explain Neutral Milk Hotel. Follow Mark Richardson on Twitter at @markrichardson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the mid-70s, four not-so-typical teenage girls came barreling into the nascent UK punk scene. The Slits split in the early 80s, but their impact on punk was profound and foundational. Zoë Howe, author of Typical Girls, the Story of the Slits, joins Yasi to talk about the revolution of the Slits. Follow Zoë Howe on Twitter @ladyzoe2dots, and check out her book, Typical Girls, the Story of the Slits, on her website, zoehowe.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Primus, led by bass-slappin’ virtuoso Les Claypool, emerged from the Bay Area’s funk-punk-metal hybrid scene of the late 80s and 90s, to become a textbook cult band—you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Music journalist Christopher Weingarten makes the case for the true cult fandom of Primus and the oddball, arty genius of Les Claypool. Follow Christopher Weingarten on Twitter @1000TimesYes and pick up his 33 ⅓ book on Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Operation Ivy was likely your favorite band’s favorite band, and Corbett Redford, director of the documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, tells us why. These teenage pioneers of ska-inflected punk were a flagship band of Berkeley’s 924 Gilman scene in the mid 1980s, releasing only one full length that galvanized a scene and several generations of future punks. Follow Corbett Redford on Twitter at @CorbettRedford and check out Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pitchfork’s Quinn Moreland joins us to explain the reverberations of Jenny Lewis’s reign as the queen of 2000s indie rock with her band of Los Angeles darlings, Rilo Kiley. Follow Quinn Moreland on Twitter at @quinnmoreland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re back with Cole Cuchna, host of Dissect and Key Notes, for Part 2 of Radiohead, starting from their revolutionary 2000 album Kid A through their continuing evolution both as a band and as individual artists. Steven Hyden, author of This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century, also joins us for an examination of Kid A’s impact on music criticism and the album’s context within rock music history. Follow Cole Cuchna on Twitter at @dissectpodcast and check out his podcasts Dissect and Key Notes, only on Spotify. Follow Steven Hyden on Twitter @Steven_Hyden, and check out his podcasts Indiecast and 36 From the Vault. Find his book This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century wherever fine books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices