Welcome to Episode 65 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast.

In Part 1, we review our Album of the Month. This month Nolan brings a big chunk of country (or is Heartland Rock?) with Zach Bryan's latest release 'With Heaven On Top'.

In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. This month the theme is 'New Music', tracks released since January 1st.

__________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Zach Bryan | With Heave On Top ____________

Zach Bryan is a relatively divisive, country artist who is HUGE in the states but can his latest album help him become (even more of) a global superstar? At 25 tracks and 1hr 18 mins he's giving the album every chance of making an impact.

This album has genuine, authentic heart. It's length is a big talking point, so is it's genre, is it country? Americana? Something else?

• Listen to the original album here.
• Listen to the acoustic version released 3 days after the original here.
• Watch an interesting conversation with Bryan and Springsteen here.

___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | New Music _____________________

Every 3 months we pick the theme 'New Music' and each pick 4 tracks that have been released in the last 2 month. Listen to our 16 track play list that we created for the New Music theme.

We then each pick select 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?

• Joey chose 'Aperture' by Harry Styles.
• David chose 'Miami' by Pigeon.
• Nolan chose 'Milk, Blue' by Pem.
• Guy chose 'Out of Phase' by Alexis Taylor and Lola Kirke

We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look - https://thisisnothappening.net/

Welcome to Episode 64 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast.

In Part 1, we review and Album of the Month. This month Joey brings perhaps the most critically acclaimed album of 2025, Rosalia's 'LUX'.

In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. As it's January and everybody is back in the gym or re-starting running program's we've picked 'songs to get injured to'.

_______________________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Rosalia | LUX________________________

This is a big one. Big in many ways. Massively popular, globally. But more importantly MASSIVE in scope, scale and ambition. Rosalia's 4th album takes a major turn from the reggaeton, digital urgency of Motomami. This a symphonic, spiritual, complex and challenging collection of songs presented in 4 movements (if you're on vinyl). It requires you to focus, engage and consume with purpose.

It's undeniable that it is ambitious, its brilliance is clear ... but will any of us actually like it? Does it make you want to listen to it? Are you drawn to come back to it?

• Listen to the album here.
• Watch some of the videos for the tracks here.
• Check out the Zane Lowe interview with Rosalia here.

___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Songs To Get Injured To _____________________

New Year New Me. The gyms are packed. People are begging to get injured. What should you chose as your soundtrack to that achilles rupture or that rotator cuff tear? The answer is probably in this 16 track play list that we created.

We each pick 4 tracks for the playlist and submit 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?

• Joey chose 'Baddadan' by Chase & Status et al.
• Guy chose 'Go' by Chemical Brothers.
• David chose 'Kool Thing' by Sonic Youth.
• Nolan chose 'Stop What You're Doing' by Apathy.

We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look - https://thisisnothappening.net/

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.

Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' ... will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.

To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here ... other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks ... here.

Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with ... have a good one.

Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.

We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look - https://thisisnothappening.net/