This week: Adam and Doc defend/celebrate/obfuscate their problematic faves in the form of bollox-disregarders the Sex Pistols and Californicators the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also: Skinner dipping, people used to listen to the radio, homeopathic dilutions, Sports Tonight outro montages, pivoting to popularity, rock spiders, too much sun, separating optics from reality, the Backstreet Boys of ‘70s punk, doing the same thing slightly differently over and over again, excess and wombling about, do it for the #content, old bands: you don’t need to release new stuff to tour your old stuff, Choirboys catching strays, there’s far too much of it about, the lone arranger, legacy act white whales, two weeks in 1991, the last time U2 tried anything, getting what you pay for, Win95 launch music, surprise Pinkerton and adult contemporary smoko time.

Next week: new tunes from Spoon, Mlid Orange and Eddie 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