Patient listening for difficult records.
Prince: Track by Track is a music commentary project built around close attention to individual songs. In the recent Trout Mask Replica run, Joel Bakker and guests treat Captain Beefheart’s 1969 double album as something strange, deliberate, funny, bruising, and worth returning to.
PRESS PLAY
Prince: Track by Track is a close-listening music show with a simple promise: take the songs one by one and give each of them real attention. The recent Trout Mask Replica run stretches that approach across Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s 1969 double album. It is patient work. Joel Bakker, guest hosting for Darren Husted, opens episodes with plain track information, recording context, personnel, and a guest, then lets the conversation widen from there. The result feels less like a lecture than a listening session between people who have been puzzled and pulled back by the same record. The album is treated as difficult, but not as a dare. It is also treated as funny, severe, physical, rehearsed, accidental-sounding, and strangely moving. Guests return to the question of why this music, often shocking on first contact, becomes more fascinating with repeated listens. Some episodes focus on arrangement and performance. Others lean into lyrics, ecological anxiety, sexuality, band tension, or Don Van Vliet’s voice and saxophone. The show has room for technical detail without becoming sealed off from feeling. A passage about a repeated groove can turn into an argument for how a first listener might finally find a foothold. A discussion of a short track can become a meditation on movement through a damaged landscape. The conversations also keep acknowledging the human labor behind the record: rehearsals, memorized parts, frustration, instruction, production, and the musicians who made the impossible sound almost inevitable. It is warm, sometimes dry, and rarely hurried. The appeal is cumulative. By the end of an episode, a song that seemed like a strange object has usually become a small world with history, pressure, jokes, and emotional weather inside it. For a discovery platform, the show stands out because it does not merely recommend music; it models the process of learning how to hear it.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy detailed music criticism, track-by-track album study, Prince scholarship, Captain Beefheart conversations, and records that take time to reveal themselves.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its willingness to stay with difficult songs until their structure, humor, tension, and emotional force begin to show. It pairs track data and recording context with reflective guest conversations rather than quick verdicts.
A podcast covering every Prince song from 1978 to 2016. (Bonus episodes about Stevie Wonder 1971-1976) Most recent episodes guest hosted by Joel Bakker about Trout Mask Replica.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Close listening, informed guests and precise musical detail turn demanding records into sustained, approachable conversation.
Prince: Track by Track treats close listening as a conversation between musical evidence and personal response. Darren describes earlier runs through Prince, Stevie Wonder and a Beck album, while guest host Joel Bakker applies the same track-by-track method to Captain Beefheart…
Prince got the archive; Beefheart gets the microscope, if your liner-note habit can keep up.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A rougher recording still supports a careful look at Trout Mask Replica's final turn.
Track by Track closes its Trout Mask Replica run on "Veterans Day Poppy" with a clear ear for movement. Joel Bakker and Brett Hart trace how the song starts in chaos, pulls apart again, and then settles into a long groove that leaves room for a guitarist to do real work.
A tiny track becomes a clear study of how Trout Mask Replica was built.
Joel Bacher and Brad Schumacher take up Old Fart at Play as a compact but revealing stop on Trout Mask Replica, and the conversation stays centered on how much strangeness is packed into a one minute and fifty-one second cut recorded at Whitney Studios in Glendale in March 1969…
A close conversation that shows Beefheart's song keeps moving, while Greenberger sharpens its ecological chill.
Joel Bakker and guest David Greenberger spend this Track by Track stop on one of Trout Mask Replica's more direct songs, and the conversation makes a clear case for how "Still Softly Through Snow" keeps shifting from one part to another even as the lyrics repeat.
A strange late-album recitation opens onto the Hindenburg, studio lore, and Troutmask Replica's odder machinery.
Track 25 of Troutmask Replica comes through as one of the album's stranger side doors. The Blimp is framed through Jeff Cotton's recitation, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention behind him, and Don Van Vliet adding a little saxophone near the end.
A tender, clear-eyed farewell to the project and to the strange pull of Trout Mask Replica.
Joel Bakker closes Track by Track presents Trout Mask Replica with a measured reflection on endings, gratitude, and the odd afterlife of a record built to resist easy affection.
Darren's handoff to Joel frames a focused, lightly wandering conversation about artistic freedom and Prince's left turns.
A podcast handoff gives the episode its shape as Darren accounts for the long break in new installments and prepares listeners for Joel to take over Track by Track.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Annual Songlines Music Awards ceremonies spotlighting global artists, from Afrobeat to sevda.
A high schooler's music diary — Grammys press pass stories to family concert interviews.
Stephen Hyden and Ian Cohen argue about indie rock, one Metacritic score at a time.
Guest host Joel Bakker interviews singer Weeba Gerritsen about her cover of Captain Beefheart's 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' and discusses the album Trout Mask Replica.
Joel Bakker hosts the epilogue episode of 'Track by Track presents Trout Mask Replica,' reflecting on the podcast series covering Captain Beefheart's 1969 album.
Host Darren introduces a new direction for his Prince podcast, handing over to guest host Joel Bakker for a month-long series on Captain Beefheart's 1969 album Trout Mask Replica.
Joel Bakker opens with a warning about the audio, saying he recorded early on Skype and that Darren Husted cleaned it up.
Joel Bacher guest hosts and digs into Old Fart at Play, the 27th track on Trout Mask Replica and the next-to-last song on the album.
Joel Bakker opens with the album’s dense, surreal imagery and the recording details.
The Blimp sits at track 25, the fifth track on side four of Troutmask Replica.
Joel Bacher and Allison analyze Captain Beefheart’s “Hobo Chang Ba,” a 1969 track recorded at Whitney Studios and produced by Frank Zappa.
Guest host Joel Walker interviews author Mike Barnes about the track 'Sugar and Spikes' from Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica.
Guest host Joel Bakker and Marco Rossi discuss the track 'When Big Joan Sets Up' from Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica, analyzing its recording, personnel, and musical significance.
Guest host Joel Bakker and guest Ben Waters discuss the instrumental track 'Hair Pie Bake 2' from Captain Beefheart's 1969 album Trout Mask Replica, detailing personnel and recording context.
Guest host Joel Bakker interviews singer Weeba Gerritsen about her cover of Captain Beefheart's 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' as part of a track-by-track series on Trout Mask Replica.
Joel Bakker guest hosts a track-by-track analysis of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, discussing the song Neon Meat Dream of a Octofish.
Guest host Joel Bauchner and composer Samuel Andreev analyze the track 'Pachuco Cadaver' from Captain Beefheart's 1969 album Trout Mask Replica.
The host introduces a new direction for the podcast, explaining past coverage of Prince and Stevie Wonder and hinting at future guest-hosted episodes.