This week on The New Dad Rock, we’re diving headfirst into the messy, thrilling, and utterly unpredictable world of new music. From the FOMIES, the garage-fuzz band obsessed with obscure, badly recorded records in weird places, and their latest 12-track album Liminality to the cosmic textures of Hawkwind’s There Is No Space for Us, the chaotic energy of Viagra Boys, and a whirlwind of other sonic adventures.

Expect tales from fall concerts, a reformed Rush, the dream of seeing The Cure at the Sphere, and reflections on shows like Mountain Goats at the Ardmore, Joey Valence & Brae, AG Club, Geese, and Horsegirl. Keith wanders through pop duos like Frost Children, screamo, indie sleaze, glitch core, and the ever-confounding spectrum of punk (or “indie brat” as he likes to call it).

From new wave, post-punk, and synth wave (Automatic) to genre-bending surprises like Snooper, Maruja, and Princess Nokia, this episode is a chaotic, affectionate love letter to bands that refuse to be pigeonholed. Keith’s in the honeymoon phase with so much new music, and he’s scribbled down every note—sometimes legible, sometimes not—for your listening pleasure.

Get ready for punk energy, fuzzy guitars, cosmic escapades, and the joy of discovering your next obsession.

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Join us for a retelling of one of HP Lovecraft's most enduring tales of horror, The Music of Erich Zann.

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place; and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighbouring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognise them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d’Auseil was reached.

I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’Auseil. It was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met across the street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.

The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly. At first I thought it was because they were all silent and reticent; but later decided it was because they were all very old. I do not know how I came to live on such a street, but I was not myself when I moved there. I had been living in many poor places, always evicted for want of money; until at last I came upon that tottering house in the Rue d’Auseil, kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was the third house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all.

My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theatre orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theatre was the reason he had chosen this

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🎧 Episode 104: The Three Ds — Death Cab, Deerhunter & The Decemberists

It’s Q4, and while the rest of the world is deep in annual planning, Steve and Keith are focused on a different kind of alignment — the Three Ds: Death Cab for Cutie, Deerhunter, and The Decemberists.

In this episode, the dads unpack how these indie titans shaped the mid-2000s emotional landscape — from Plans and Halcyon Digest to The Crane Wife — and why their meticulous, introspective songwriting feels a lot like building a strategic plan for your feelings.

There’s talk of spreadsheets and heartbreak, budgets and bridges, OKRs and existential crises. It’s the perfect soundtrack for reflecting, recalibrating, and realizing maybe Death Cab had it right all along: “Everything ends.”

So grab your Moleskine, update your KPIs, and tune in — it’s The New Dad Rock: Q4 Edition.

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