S4E4 - New York Art Rock: Talking Heads (Overrated) & They Might be Giants (Underrated) - with Martin Zaltz Austwick and Sam Pay

Over/underrated: a music podcast with Fran and Babs

Our first episode with two guests! We're joined by Sam Pay and Martin Zaltz Austwick from the Song by Song podcast to chat arty NYC musicians.

Martin & Sam & Fran & Babs differ in opinion on how much - and why - they think Talking Heads are overrated. Discussions centre around whether the band's attitude is a bit elitist, David Byrne's standing in pop culture and how many different types of sounds DB can emit (Fran is deffo compiling a spreadsheet).

As for They Might Be Giants - who have, at time of recording, released 23 studio albums - Sam & Martin are keen fans, joking that they could devote another podcast to discussing TMBG's eclectic back catalogue. Fran was already a fan - he had the TMBG documentary on DVD, natch - but will they get Babs on board, given the occasional melodic playlist pick?

Martin is a musician, podcaster, performer, and Honorary Associate Professor at CASA (UCL) - find out more about his work on his website. You can also tweet him @martinaustwick.

Sam is an actor/musician working mostly in theatre. He's a pianist, accordionist and a "technically incompetent brass player who keeps his own songwriting as secretive as possible." You can tweet him @SamPay.

Check out their Song by Song podcast, devoted to the music of Tom Waits. Sam & Martin have set themselves the goal of listening to Tom Waits' back catalogue from beginning to end, devoting each episode to discussing each track. We obviously recommend starting with the Blood Money episodes Fran & Babs guested on.

You can find the playlist for this episode on Spotify - it includes all songs from our playlists, plus bonus ones from other artists we've discussed during the episode.

Download, subscribe and get in touch - especially if you have any suggestions for future themes or musicians to discuss! Follow us on social media - it's @OUmusicpod on Twitter, @overunderratedmusicpod on Instagram. You can also email us at [e-mail]. Thanks to Mark Abbott for our logo.