Podcasts I listen to and watch, July 2010 edition

At Liz’s request, here’s what I’m listening to and watching on my iPhone at the moment. Note that some podcasts are daily (or even more frequent), many are weekly, a few are monthly and others are just updated whenever the creator gets around to it. These can all be found via iTunes or your podcasting client of choice.

* APM: Marketplace Morning Report
* APM: The Dinner Party Download
* BlizzCast: The Official Blizzard Entertainment Podcast
* Buzz Out Loud
* Coverville: The Cover Music Podcast
* The Current Song of the Day – Minnesota Public Radio
* Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
* IndieFeed: Alternative/Modern Rock Music
* IndieFeed: Blues Music
* IndieFeed: Indie Pop Music
* KCRW’s Film Reviews
* KCRW’s Martini Shot
* KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic
* KCRW’s The Business
* KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune
* KQED’s The California Report Podcast
* Loaded (HD)
* The Loh Down on Science
* The Loh Life
* Loveline
* The Moth Podcast
* The Nerdist
* NPR’s On the Media
* NPR: Hourly News Summary Podcast
* NPR: Pop Culture Podcast
* NPR: Science Friday Podcast
* NPR: Story of the Day Podcast
* NPR: World Story of the Day Podcast
* Official Disneyland Resorts Podcast
* Onion Radio News
* Our Ocean World
* OutDPS! Hunting Party Podcast
* Peter Day Music Podcast
* PRI’s The World – Geo Quiz Podcast
* PRI’s The World – Global Hit
* PRI: The Sound of Young America
* The Roadhouse
* Shark Week 2009
* Shifted Sound
* StarDate
* The Takeaway: Story of the Day
* Tap that App (HD)
* Texas Blues Cafe
* That Sound
* Tiki Bar TV
* Today in the Past
* WNYC’s Radiolab
* The 404

I’m starting to prefer short podcasts of under 10 minutes in length. I recently found myself heading out the door each morning with nine hours of podcasts to listen to in an eight-hour day, and purged a lot of them, or traded full-length shows for highlight podcasts.

Liz Phair’s “Funstyle”

Without any warning, Liz Phair released a new album over the Fourth of July weekend, “Funstyle.” The 11-track album is available online only, via her Web site, and for a mere $5.99.

“Funstyle” was apparently a shelved false start that she decided to release online while everyone waits for the “real” album to be finished.

At least half of the tracks feature her frustration at Hollywood, labels and fans who want endless regurgitations of her debut, “Exile in Guyville.”

“Funstyle” is interesting in that it highlights both how much of the last two much-despised albums were her, and not her label (a lot of the instrumentation sounds very similar), and how much they weren’t. There’s a lot of kookiness here, for instance, which hasn’t been seen in full effect since at least “whitechocolatespaceegg.” At one point, she rhymes “genius” with “penis,” for instance (but it’s an insult, and not old school dirty talk this time around).

In fact, the whole album is very much in the vein, musically, of WCSE, although the subject matter is no longer about her dissolving marriage and her relationship with her son, but rather her career. That’s always dangerous territory, creatively: The audience for discussions and complaints about the entertainment industry is relatively small, especially for an artist who made her bones speaking about broadly understandable topics.

At other times, it sounds like she went into the studio with Cornershop, given all the references to the Indian subcontinent and the dense layering of voices and instruments on some tracks. (This works for me: I love Cornershop.)

While “Funstyle” isn’t not the best album ever, it definitely feels like we’re getting to hear her, and not what some A&R guy packaged up, and that’s a real improvement.