Your Brother Should Know

As the second season of Your Brother Should Know draws to a close, our two long-lost brothers look back on the formative albums they discussed and dissected, to answer the immortal question: does your brother really need to know them? And more importantly, do you?

Without realising that Rob might just have heard of the super-influential soul-funk-pop icon, Dave pitches Rob one of Stevie Wonder’s many finest moments. In our final episode of season two, we stretch the YBSK concept to breaking point, and celebrate one of the greatest albums ever. But the big question, is this Stevie’s finest hour, and what should you listen to next?   ***NOT AI art***   Cover image a real, big and magnificent painting by Maddy Butcher @maddybutcher   

James Murphy, cynical genius or twisted narcissist? Maybe a bit of both on the basis of LCD Soundsystem's majestic second LP, an album as shiny as it is reflective.

In a Your Brother Should Know first, we publish an interview from Rob’s limited library of encounters with music’s great, good and mediocre. In the first category, we can safely file Midge Ure: guitarist, singer, songwriter, Live Aid founder, member of Thin Lizzy, Visage, and much more in between. Find out from the man himself what it's like to be simultaneously Brilliant (Ultravox, 2012) and Fragile (solo album 2014), where he stands on Scottish independence, and why he turned down the chance to be a Sex Pistol. If you’re really interested, then wind back to Rob and Dave’s companion episode on the classic Ultravox album Vienna, and find out just how much they got wrong about Midge’s life.

This is as far back down his personal musical memory lane that Dave can go. The enigma that is Ultravox –  a proper band with an engaging thirst for all things shiny and electronic? Or second rate rockers, papering over the cracks with third rate synthology? Dave thinks they remain full of Western Promise, but will Rob find they were Passing Strangers to talent, leaving him in a Sleepwalk? And who is Mr X anyway?

Bon Jovi’s These Days was the first album Rob ever fell in love with, and three decades later he’s convinced that this grunge-influenced left turn would be hailed as a masterpiece today had it been made by any other band.  Which is why, ahead of These Days’ 30th anniversary, Rob insisted his long-lost brother needed to hear it. Will the prog-loving poodle rock-adverse Dave fall for Bon Jovi’s uncharacteristically angsty, mid-90s masterpiece, or laugh it back to the footnotes of given-up glam metal lore?  Also, how much of this album was really down to MIA guitarist Richie Sambora, and what’s the deal with Jon Bon Jovi’s beleaguered voice today?   Notes and references Rob’s largely positive 2011 live review: https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/255317/Review-Bon-Jovi-at-Hard-Rock-Calling Rob’s not very positive 2015 review: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/review-bon-jovi-fails-to-hit-the-high-notes-at-abu-dhabi-concert-1.85326 Rob shitting on Burning Bridges: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/album-review-burning-bridges-bon-jovi-1.46827 Rob on seeing the band for a fifth time: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/wild-night-for-bon-jovi-fans-in-abu-dhabi-1.131995   

He finally went there. After 13 episodes doing everything he could to tangentially turn the conversation to prog rock, Dave forced his younger brother to actually listen to some. Rob did not come to the party without preconceptions – namely that 70s prog is the least sexy music in the world, listened to only by celibate Chemistry teachers in Middle England. Did Jethro Tull’s sprawling, tongue-in-cheek single-song opus change his mind? And, most importantly, who the hell is Biggles?

To celebrate a decade of You're Dead being in the world, we unpack the frenetic fusion and genre-bleeding majesty of FlyLo's afterlife-inspired masterwork.

Opium, abuse, prostitution, depression, addiction, gonorrhoea ... and plenty of pop ditties? The intrepid brothers attempt to unravel the conflicted muses (and deep Jacques Brel obsession) of Scott Walker's best-selling outing.

To celebrate the extended 30th anniversary release of Suede’s misunderstood masterpiece Dog Man Star, we present a suitably extended release of YBSK. We learn how Rob’s life has been inextricably entwined with the unlikely Britpop darlings, and why he probably should have pitched a simpler Suede album to his melody-hugging brother. Meanwhile Dave realises he can in fact be talked into liking a band, as just maybe what he thought was a dog, is really a star…

After 12 episodes of sharing the music that shaped them, long-lost siblings Dave and Rob talk through what they loved, hated and learned ... about music, and each other.

Dave ranks Elton John alongside Neil Young and Lou Reed. Rob sees a cheap entertainer in a Donald Duck costume. Will this early LP change his mind?

No Surrender, my Bobby Jean? With the greatest expectations, two long lost brothers play "count the pop culture references", and reconnect via The Gaslight Anthem's breakout LP, discovering a hot-blooded modern rock classic so earnest it almost makes guitar music sound vital again.

As YBSK turns 10, Dave gets all misty eyed over the first band he was into that hadn't spilt-up or died. Can he convince Rob that this thick slice of his personal history hasn't gone stale? And what was ruddy “crusty rock”, anyway?

In the wake of the Hackney Diamonds hype, Rob remains convinced that it's 2005 predecessor is truly the Stones' final masterpiece. Meanwhile, a sceptical Dave posists the unlikely argument that A Bigger Bang is, in fact, a concept album ...

Dave spent two summers in a campervan sobbing himself to sleep to the sound of Tori Amos' introspective third album. Rob only knows the one from a Gregg's commercial ... which he learns is all about big dicks, not sandwiches.

Rob was one of the zillions who found solace in Fiona Apple's DIY masterpiece during the pandemic, but Dave says he'd rather listen to Ed Sheeran...

Oo er – this is problematic … or is it? In episode six, Dave (un?)wisely revisits The Stranglers’ debut outing Rattus Norvegicus, which presents far more issues in 2023 than its silly name…

Is This It? It sure is – in episode 5, the brothers discuss this millennium’s most influential guitar album, two days after Rob caught The Strokes in concert. Was Dave converted by the ridiculously over-hyped record, and how do the band measure up live today?

For our fourth soul-searching summit, Dave flirts with his inner prog stan, riskily sharing the overblown opus of Supertramp’s breakthrough Crime of the Century – was not knowing it Rob’s crime of the millennium?

As Daft Punk’s party-starting throwback Random Access Memories turns 10, in episode 3, Rob gets all misty-eyed about attempting to “Get Lucky” on the dancefloor – and almost convinces Dave the album’s epic indulgences hold up a decade later.

In episode two, Dave wanders down a long dark night of the soul to present Disintegration by The Cure, an epic of despair and depression that Rob thankfully doesn’t have time for (anymore).

In our debut outing, Rob attempts to persuade Dave that, while it was released in 1989, the Pixies’ Doolittle is the greatest album of the 90s … and Dave is only 53% convinced.

Welcome to the music podcast about more than music. Your hosts might be siblings, but they didn’t meet until Rob was 16, and Dave was nearly 30. So now, separated by 6,000 miles, the estranged siblings are making up for a lost childhood by sharing the music that shaped them – one seminal, formative album at a time.