Some of Utah’s biggest music lovers aren’t only gathering at local concert venues, or in the aisles of beloved record stores — but once a month at the Salt Lake Art Museum.

This diverse group of people — across ages and backgrounds — meets and sits in circles in the still-developing main gallery of the museum. They’re ready to jump in with notes on their phones or scrawled in notebooks.

This gathering is known as the Album Club, founded by Jake Clements and Samuel Hart.

“The premise behind album club is that it is sort of like a book club, except instead of reviewing or discussing books, each month, we discuss albums,” Clements said.

April’s spin: Erykah Badu’s 2000 neo-soul classic “Mama’s Gun.”

Prompted by questions from a curated discussion outline, the club members talk about the album’s cover and title, their favorite and least favorite songs, the length and their listening experience.

Like a book club, they look for messages in the melodies and themes in the thrums of the double album.

Sometimes the discussions are so loud, participants strain to hear one another’s enthusiastic thoughts.

Sometimes, they find an unexpected connection. At this gathering, two of the four discussion circles say the Badu album reminds them of the smell of incense.

Music to bring people together

The album club’s first rotation was in September 2025, according to Clements. The idea came from Hart, who was living in California before he came back to work at the Salt Lake Art Museum.

“In California, I didn’t really have a place where it seemed like that could fit or work well,” Hart said.

He ran the idea past the Utah museum’s founder — Dr. Micah Bleiweiss Christensen — who greenlit it.

“The only problem was that I didn’t have the reach to get people excited or get people to know about it,” Hart said. So he reached out to Clements, who runs a music-first Instagram account (@reviewshoneybee), where he shares reviews and thoughts.

There’s one album club meetup per month, but the group rotates through three different categories of albums: a recent release, a classic album from the “Rolling Stone” 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list and a local album.

With the local album, the club has the artist or band visit the meeting for a live interview. Members can submit questions in the group’s Discord.

“It’s probably my favorite one, because I love to support the local scene,” Clements said.

Recently, the club had Bad Luck Brigade, a Salt Lake-based hip-hop group, visit.

Around 40-60 people come to the album club every month, bringing people together that might not have met otherwise.

Hart said he finds music can be a lonely experience when people can just turn on Spotify or go to a concert without talking to anyone.

That, he said, is a “missed opportunity” since “music is something that brings people together.”

A change of heart

The album club is a multi-genre gathering. The group has discussed pop, indie rock, folk rock, soul and hip-hop records so far.

One of the gatherings that sticks out in Clements’ mind — because a lot of people had a change of heart over the course of the discussion — was in February when they talked about the new “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack from Charli XCX.

“We had a bunch of really invested ‘Wuthering Heights’ fans there that were sharing the lore out of the book, the movie and interweaving their opinions with the record,” Clements said.

He said the consensus from that discussion was that “the soundtrack actually was a more faithful representation of the book than the movie was.”

At the “Mama’s Gun” meet-up, connections form slowly but surely between members of the discussion circles. There’s a beat of silence after the group leaders pose a new question, before someone jumps in to answer. Two women sitting next to each other in one group bond over being from the same country while answering a question about the album.

Isaac Mattingley loves the fact that the album club connects him to people of all different backgrounds of musical knowledge and taste.

For example, he went to the meeting where the group discussed “OK Computer” by Radiohead as a casual fan.

“I learned a lot about it … the historical context of the album,” Mattingley said.

He also enjoyed at the end of the year when the group did a show-and-tell style meeting, discussing their top 10 tracks of the year.

Even Clements, a music aficionado, learns new things. When the group talked about “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie, Clements learned a lot about Bowie’s discography from Sam Cannon, the owner of 3hive Record Lounge in Provo.

Cannon often comes to the album club meetings and sells the record the group is discussing, along with other, similar records.

Zahara Ali, another album club frequenter, learned about the group from following Clements’ music reviews on social media. Ali is also a local band manager and booker who works with The Drought, Club Mungo and Ethyl Cat.

She joined the club because she thought it would be a great way to connect with those in the local music community she hadn’t already met.

“Which is exactly what the album club has done,” she said.

Whether it’s your first or most recent time coming to a meeting, Clements said he hopes people will just show up and connect.

“You can go out of your way to talk to people. Either way, you’re going to be in a discussion, and so you’re going to be forced to talk to people, but you can make friends,” he said.

The next album club meeting will be held on May 13 at 7 p.m. at the Salt Lake Art Museum. The group will be discussing Lorde’s “Virgin” ahead of her Kilby Block Party set, as voted on by the club’s April participants.

Those interested in attending should RSVP via a form that will be posted on Clements’ Instagram.