Hit Record: A Very Unprofessional Album Review Podcast · Jetstream Radio

Hit Record Episode 75: Sinister Grift

·1 hr 46 min·5 clips

Rockstar fired employees after union discussions, while Clair Obscur came from a small team and a Reddit pitch.

1. Hit Record: A Very Unprofessional Album Review Podcast episode 75 centers on Sinister Grift by Noah Lennox, also called PandaBear, from Animal Collective. 2. Sam, Giddy, and Adam host the episode, and Adam returns as the guest after a long gap from the show. 3. The episode's purpose is to get back to reviewing an album after a previous comeback recording was lost to a Disco Elysium discussion. 4. The hosts say their last review was on July 25th, and they describe several missed months caused by stacked crises and scheduling problems. 5. Adam asks whether anyone has seen PandaBear and Wes Anderson in the same room, then says Wes Anderson music would sound like PandaBear. 6. The conversation keeps circling back to whether the episode can stay on the album without drifting into other topics. 7. Adam gives a short life update that includes moving house, getting a car named Frankie, living with Hannah, and getting a new role at work. 8. He says he watched all of Barry and struggled to explain it without spoilers. 9. He also says he played Silent Hill F as a follow-up because Barry got very dark, and then started Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. 10. Adam describes Clair Obscur as a game he thinks won an unusually large number of awards and notes that its combat can break damage caps like 9,999. 11. He says he also started Skate Story, which he calls the coolest game he has played this year, and describes it as a demon made of glass and pain trying to skate to eat the moon. 12. Giddy talks about Metroid Prime 4, says he is about five or six hours in, and complains about an annoying sidekick who will not shut up. 13. He says the bike section and a lightning-generator environment felt like being a ten-year-old again, because the music and machinery made the sequence feel right. 14. Sam later summarizes a trip to Canada, including Toronto, Vancouver, Whistler Mountain, whales, sea lions, and a night in the ER after getting extremely ill. 15. He says he also visited the West End for Hadestown and The Producers, and he notes that The Producers used a giant human-sized pigeon covered in swastikas. 16. Sam and Giddy talk about Everything Everything at the Barrowlands, including the decision not to end with No Reptiles even though the album order was shuffled. 17. The episode stays conversational, with the hosts interrupting each other, joking about being important, and switching between album talk and personal updates. 18. The tone is loose, self-deprecating, and digressive, with long stretches about games, gigs, and travel before the album conversation fully settles. 19. Listeners who like unfussy banter around games, theatre, and indie albums will probably enjoy this. 20. Listeners who want a tight, spoiler-free album review with no detours will probably skip it.

As heard by us

A delayed Panda Bear review that stays messy, funny, and worth the detours.

Hit Record circles back to Panda Bear's Sinister Griff after a long delay the hosts freely joke was their own mess to untangle, and that honesty gives the episode its loose charm.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a Panda Bear review that starts in chaos, meanders through side quests, and still gets to the album.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Hit Record: A Very Unprofessional Album Review Podcast