This week: we unbox our first 2022 delivery of new albums from Blood Red Shoes, Yard Act and Eels. Also: large number inspo, being on twitter too much, Questlove agrees with us, albums of garbage, performative sadness, extremely northern, Cockerian belligerence, sportspod outro Easter eggs, feeling seen, wrong pronouns, the drugs do work, not realising how good we had it in the late ‘90s, RINGZZZ culture, “indie pop doesn’t necessarily have to be bad”, dominating every room and ancient oils.

Next week: new tunes from Spoon, Mlid Orange and a Mr Edward Vedder, each of which you can find on our album review playlist on Spotify. Everything we listened to last year is in our 2021 review archive, along with our 2021 tripping balls mixtape featuring our favourite tracks from new albums we reviewed last year (2022 version coming once we listen to enough stuff to start a mixtape.) The full list of all the albums we've ever featured on the show (including our top 5s from previous years) and Beeso's playlist for his boys are also available elsewhere on the internet. BALLS and tripping balls are available on their own RSS feeds, as well as being found together on Omny Studio, Spotify and Apple Podcasts (feel free to subscribe, rate and review) - and we welcome your reckons via Twitter, Facebook and email.