60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Feist — “1234”

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Imagine, you’re on the road with an indie sleaze band making sock puppets sing obscenities when Sesame Street gives you a call. Leslie Feist’s career can most similarly be compared to the life of Benjamin Button with her most successful and youthful song, “1234,” coming later in her colorful and previously raucous music career. Rob breaks down Feist’s magical ability to bring new perspectives to covers and sing emotion into numbers before he is joined by Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levack. They discuss the role Feist’s music played in soundtracking Chandler’s college years and how this affected her most recent film, Mile End Kicks, which follows a young music journalist becoming increasingly more involved in the music scene she’s documenting. Listen to the songs from the episode: '00s #44 Feist "1234" Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Olivia Crerie, Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sayles Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Guest: Chandler Levack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the mid-2000s, weirdly fixated on that Kate Bush song, where she appears to sing the digits in pie out to the first 137 decimal places. Are you up on this? From her 2005 double album, Ariel,

here we have English intergalactic art rock superhero in Kate Bush, the best to ever do it, meaning the best ever do any of the rad, wild show. she does, including this. Here we have Kate Bush rapturously singing a song called Pi. That's P.I. Pi, the famous mathematical concepts.

Dude, don't ask me what Pi is or what Pi does or why it's got to be so long. I got two middle schoolers who could already kick my ass at math. Kate starts out singing 3.14. I knew that. And then over the course of this song, she takes a little breaks to sing other. stuff, words, and so forth. But yeah, eventually she wondrously rattles off her own proprietary combination of 134 additional digits in pie that I was less familiar with. Kate Bush, who really needs no introduction, because she ain't going anywhere where she might accidentally be introduced

to you. No offense. Kate Bush ain't going to her own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, for example. This lady keeps her own counsel. Right now, Kate's out roaming an English moor somewhere playing Twister with a flock of seagulls, like an actual literal flock of seagulls, like the birds, not the 80s new waveband, a flock of seagulls. Dig the fives and nines here, man, the impossibly graceful skywriting swoops of her fives and nines. That's why she's the best.

Left foot green. This song, Pi is track two out of 16 on Kate's 2005 album Ariel, which really, really got to me, dude. I had a whole bizarrely intense super emo thing with this record. I'd listen to it and then I'd have to go lie down. Rapturous domesticity. That's the vibe on Ariel. She's home with her family. She ain't going nowhere and ain't nobody coming to her.

She sings to her young son. She cleans the kitchen. She does some laundry. She thinks about Elvis and Joan of Arc. She thinks about her mother. She listens to a painter, talk about a painter he's painting. She talks to birds. She has an entire jovial, giggling conversation with a bird.

She and her husband, they watch the sunset. They drive out to the ocean. They go skinny dipping. They end up on a roof watching the sun. On rise. End of album. Whole thing takes 80 minutes. It's mesmerizing. In my late 20s, unmarried, but about to be married, and living in New York City, living on the internet in New York City, I found this record, Ariel, to be so bizarrely, completely engrossing, the spectacular mundanity of it, or what I erroneously took to be the mundanity of it. So this is what settling down is.

or what settling down can be if you do it right. Are you familiar with the phrase touch grass as it is used by someone who spends too much time on the internet to insult someone else for spending too much time on the internet? On Ariel, Kate Bush is touching more grass more often, more intimately than anybody you've ever even heard of. And also, she just sings five, as though it's the answer to all. all her prayers, as though it's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. No, sorry, that's another number. That's 42. Shout out to the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

Yeah, on Pi, Kate Bush just settles in and lets her rip and expounds mathematically for six minutes and change. She also apparently changes some of the digits in Pi. That's why I said she appears to sing the first 137 decimal places. But no, apparently, the 54th decimal place should be a zero, but Kate sings two numbers there. She sings 3-1 instead. Then she goes back to the correct numbers again. But then later, she gets to the 78th decimal place

and immediately skips 22 digits and jumps right to the 101st. At Katebush encyclopedia.com, you can compare real pie with Kate Bush pie. Side by side. Yes, absolutely, Kate Bush has earned the right to calculate her own pie and then sing that instead. The little background cricket chirps on the sixes and eights really do it for me. Eight, eight.

Here we have Kate Bush herself, talking to the BBC's Mark Radcliffe in 2000. And she's explaining why she turned pie into a song while her dog snores super loudly in the background. Because that's how Kate Bush rolls. It's often been said that Kate Bush could sing the telephone book and it would sound fine to me. And you kind of almost done it really. Because it's a sequence of numbers, isn't it? But why pie? Well, I think...

That's the dog snoring, by the way. Yeah, I don't think he thought much of that question. He's getting fed up. Shout out Kate Bush's blissful snoring dog. Kate Bush is reveling in hyper-idealized, secluded domestic bliss, even while she's talking to the BBC. Because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing, and it was really fascinating singing that.

Trying to sort of put an emotional element into singing about a seven, and you know, and to really care about that nine. And did you care about it? I mean, was that... I really cared about that line. But are numbers inherently unemotional as song lyrics until they're sung by a singer of Kate Bush's intergalactic superstar caliber? Sure, if you learn anything listening to Kate Bush sing her own bespoke version of pie,

you learn that Kate really did care about that nine. Now you really care about that nine also. But you know who else really cared about his nines? Tommy Two Tone did. Tommy Tutone really audibly cared about each and every nigh-yne in the San Francisco band's delightful, inexplicable, 1981, top-five pop hit, 8675309, Jenny. Though I'd argue the eights are the key here. The eights are the true emotional fulcrum of that chorus.

The jaunty little dip on the eight the second time through. It's six, seven. Tommy Two-tone is a band, actually, led by singer and guitarist and sole remaining original member, Tommy Heath. So I guess Tommy Two-tone is both his real name and his band name. It's a Shadei situation, I suppose, in that sense and in no other sense. Do you think the band tried out other phone numbers and landed on 867309 by process of elimination as the ideal, precisely balanced, emotionally resonant combination of syllables? I dare say there is a profound lasting emotional element to the way those particular fellas sing that particular phone number. Though maybe it's cheating using a phone number.

In the iPhone era, nobody remembers anybody's phone number. anymore. But like, as a mid-90s teenager, I once looked up a girl's number in the phone book, called her up, asked her if she'd go out with me, said, oh, okay, when she politely declined to go out with me, and then I hung up. And I'm here to tell you that phone numbers can have both pleasant and unpleasant lasting emotional valances. I don't remember her number now, but I remember finding that girl's number on that one page of the phone book. Her number was right above an ad We're friends on Facebook now. It's chill.

Moving on. Somebody try a lottery number or something. From their 2004 album, Punk Rock, here we have the exceedingly legendary shape-shifting Leads rock band The Meekons, remaking one of their earliest songs called 32 Weeks, originally released in 1978.

This song rules, dude. It's about how long you have to work your shitty job to buy certain things. A car takes 32 weeks and change. A mattress takes a week and a half. And whiskey takes two hours. I like the 2004 remake better. The screaming is a little less shrill.

And also, wow, that dude, I think it's Rico Bell of the Mekons. Rico just put his whole ass into that final. Erech! Phenomenal. Are lottery numbers cheating in terms of imbueing random numbers with unsettling emotional weight? I suppose that's also cheating. Binary Code.

Anybody want to take a shot at livening up some binary code? From their 2005 album Robot Hive slash Exodus, here we have the splendid Ariadite Maryland Stoner Rock Band Clutch with a song called 100-0-0-1-1-1-1. Just now I got really excited for a second when I thought the song title and the chorus had different numbers, but they're the same numbers. It's too bad. Anyway, clutch frontman, Neil Fallon bellows that particular string of binary code like he's programming the coolest, chillest robot that ever roamed the earth. Sweet. All right, anybody up for a VIN number?

From their 1998 album, The Way We Were, here we have excellent, growly, funky Brooklyn rock band Babe the Blue Oaks with a song called Mency, which appears to be dedicated to their long-suffering touring van and includes their long-suffering touring van's VIN number. Babe the Blue Ox singer Tim Thomas passed away in January, 2026. He was 59. Tim had also spent nearly 20 years as the development director for the extremely cool New York City classical music organization Bang on a Can, which puts on rad concerts and festivals all over the city. Pretty incredible body of work for that dude. This band Babe the Blue Ox is awesome, and they've been on my mind. VIN number is redundant, I suppose.

VIN, of course, stands for Vehicle Identification Number, a 13-character, alpha-numeric code, excited here by Babe the Blue Ox with the loving exasperation of a hard touring rock band that grudgingly considered this van part of the family, albeit the part of the family that constantly needed a new carburetor or whatever. Do you think Babe the Blue Ox had to look up their touring vans, Vin, to sing that part, or did they just have it memorized? I bet they just knew it.

They sing that eight in the middle there, like they really intimately knew that eight. Of course, many of us grew up singing various timeless, ultra-catchy songs featuring strings of numbers. It's just that those numbers were usually in order. Here we have a portion of the Almighty Pinball Countdown, a beloved series of animated Sesame Street. counting songs that premiered in 1977. We got Oakland pop R&B superstars the Pointer Sisters

on vocals. This is a top five pointer sisters song. Up there with Jump and I'm so excited and Neutron Dance. The wonderful irony of pinball countdown is that it's a simple, straightforward all-time earworm counting

song for children that also has a truly bonkers time signature situation. There's a YouTube video of just a dude sitting at a keyboard trying to explain how and also why pinball countdown changes time signatures like every 10 seconds. And that explainer video is 17 minutes long. This extra funky complexity may explain why back in the day. Every time pinball countdown came on your TV, the P-Funk mothership landed on your front lawn. I find that Sesame Street songs, via intense repetition ingrained in early, early childhood,

these songs have an especially shockingly powerful, nostalgic charge. You remember these jams even if you don't remember that you remember them. These jams will hit you even harder if you think you've forgotten them. In 2003, I went to see this Bay Area rock band called The Dead Hensons. Yeah, the Dead Hensons, who do surprisingly respectful in charge. cheerful covers of Sesame Street and Muppet songs, etc. Rainbow Connection and what have you. And at one point a dude strapped on a banjo and busted this one out,

and it hit like a mass electric shock. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, Lady Bugs came to the Ladybug's picnic. This is legit one of my most striking concert memories, just the pure, unironic joy bomb of this moment. Audible gasps from many of my fellow 20-something Bay Area cool kids when the Dead Henson's pulled out Ladybug's picnic. Shout out Jim Queskin, founder of the Jim Queskin Jug Band,

who were big in Boston in the 60s. Jim's on lead vocals on the original there. Bob Dylan has five songs, tops, better than Lady's. Lady Bugs Picnic. It would appear that Lady Bugs Picnic and Pinball Countdown are buried deep in the consciousness of many a 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s kid. And thus all those kids grew up with a profound, unshakable, subliminal, joyous emotional connection to numbers, to counting, to the numbers 1 through 12 specifically. But it's pretty impressive that this lady pulled off the same trick, and she only needed the first four.

One, two, three, four, monsters walking across the floor. I love counting, counting to the number four. And here we have the mononymous Canadian pop star Feist in 2008, doing an only slightly altered version of her hit song, One, Two, Three, Four on Sesame Street. I think it's beautiful, genuinely beautiful, that Feist personally talked. at least one little kid how to count to four.

And that kid will subliminally think of Feist whenever he or she counts to four for the rest of his or her life. Feist probably taught hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of kids to count to four. This Feist on Sesame Street video has more than one billion views on YouTube. Billion with a letter B.

Talking to the New York Times in 2019, more than a decade after first appearing on Sesame Street, Feist talks about filming this video and she says, quote, it kind of just felt like playing. It really didn't feel like we're filming something that will far outshine anything else that I will do in the rest of my life, end quote. I don't even think she's joking. This video is a way bigger deal than I thought it was. Pick your favorite Feist co-stars here.

I'm going with the Penguins. One, two, three, four chickens just back from the shore. One, two, three, four penguins that were by the door. One, two, three, four, monsters walking across the floor. What do chickens even do at the shore? In the New York Times, Feist says that parents are always stopping her at the airport and talking to her about this video and asking for a picture because their three-year-old has watched it 7,000 times or whatever.

And Feist says, quote, I say yes, but I always joke. You notice me because you're a grown-up. The three-year-olds are really only interested in the puppets. And without fail, the kids are just sort of looking at me like, who is this weird lady in the airport? End quote. Ah, come on, kids.

have some respect for that weird lady. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 44th episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s, Cole in the 2000s. And this week we are discussing 1-2-3-4 by Feist. From her 2007 album, The Reminder. I didn't know she was singing the words, For the teenage boys, they're breaking your heart at the end there.

But it turns out I got a lot of these words. wrong. I do miss the penguins in this version, but I'll get over it. Ad break. Hit the deck. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers

keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzler sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little palette cleanser for whatever's queued up. Which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twislers,

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that is undeservedly way, way, way less famous than one, two, three, four, or Ladybug's picnic. Did you know that in 1995, Telly, Telly the Red Monster who loves triangles and struggles with anxiety? Like, canonically, he has anxiety. Telly is the most relatable Sesame Street monster. Protect Telly.

Did you know Telly sang a version of Joni Mitchell's both sides now? But all the lyrics are about triangles, and it's called three sides now? Holy shit I look at three sides now they make me say Oh Sesame Street

Apparently aired this song once One episode This was too much truth For 1995 to handle I got to say That is the best puppet guitar fretting work I have ever seen In my life

Telly is throwing down Telly is actually playing that guitar. I'm convinced. Also, Telly is in the Feist 1, 2, 3, 4, Sesame Street video, and in that New York Times thing, Feist says that Telly was flirting with her the whole time. Real Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nick's potential with Telly and Feist. That's maybe not the best relationship model.

All right. Leslie Feist is born in 1976 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her father is an abstract expressionist painter. Her mother is a ceramics artist. When her parents divorced Feist and her older brother, Ben, they move with their mother first to Saskatchewan and then to Calgary, where Feist dances with a 1,000-member youth dance troupe during the 1988 Winter Olympics.

In high school, Feist joins the first of a truly impressive and seemingly endless series of punk bands, rock bands, etc. We got Placebo, the Canadian band, Placebo, not the English band, Plasebo of Pure Morning Fame. That's too bad. I love that song. She's the lead singer of Plasebo. She's the bass player in Noah's Arkweld. She's the rhythm guitarist and by Divine Right, who tour with Canadian superheroes, the tragically hip.

She plays a little guitar with the band Bodega, and perhaps most importantly and least appropriately, from a Sesame Street target audience perspective, Feist is a sort of hybrid, hypewoman, sidekick sock puppet artist for Peaches, the exceedingly bawdy, electro-clash-adjacent Toronto pop star Peaches. Here we have Feist and another young lady caressing and soon thereafter licking their bicycles. That is not a euphemism, but it is presumably a metaphor in the ultra-low-budget video for a 2000 peaches song called Lover Tits. One word. That's what this song's called, and there's nothing. you or I can do about that now. That song appears on the splendidly obscene Peaches album, The Teaches of Peaches,

released in 2000 and famously kicking off with a dainty little tune called Fuck the Pain Away. The sock puppet thing is not a metaphor either. While touring with and performing alongside Peaches, Feist would do the Running Man and various other dance moves with a sock puppet. on her hand. Here we have Peaches, Feist, and the rapper, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Chili Gonzalez, appearing on the BBC music show The Beat Room in 1999, performing live at a club in Glasgow, Scotland. Also, while collaborating with Peaches, Feist is officially known by the name Bitch Laplap. Three words. Sure, if you're watching Feist is the one with the sunglasses and the

sock puppet. That song, it's called We Wanted. It has been stuck in my head for the last three hours. I'm not even mad. Here we have the bitch Laplap scooching on her back on the floor, through the Glasgow crowd and humping the stage a little bit while singing the bike-licking Peaches song I mentioned earlier. The first one.

Don't even try to trick me into saying that title again. What we can infer from this footage, what can we infer from this early feist activity? Genuinely tremendous range to this person immediately. She plays a bunch of different instruments and a bunch of different bands and collaborates with a bunch of people of wildly varying temperaments. I think we can assume that Peach's vibe is radically different from anybody else's vibe. That's why she's great. That's the whole value proposition of peaches.

Speaking of radically different vibes, sorry, I almost forgot. The first Feist solo album comes out in 1999 and is called Monarch, Parenthesis, lay your jeweled head down, close parenthesis, and does not have any song titles. I'm embarrassed to say out loud. See? That song's called It's Cool. to love your family or just family depending on which version of this record you bought.

If you bought this record at all, which I doubt, because monarch parenthesis lay your jeweled head down, sold quite poorly, and then once Fice got famous, she pretty much stopped selling it to anybody, and that's too bad. Dig the genial distorted guitars. Dig the sprightly string section. Dig the loving and familial and sincere and not at all obscene vibes. She's not into any of it anymore. Talking to the journalist and author Michael Barclay for his 2022 book, Hearts on Fire, six years that changed Canadian music, 2000 to 2005. Feist describes her debut album as, quote,

an awkward yearbook photo. I don't even catch a whiff or a strand of somewhere I would end up. I hear it as full growing pains. End quote. Feist did sell the monarch album on vinyl. for a little while, but otherwise, forget it. It's a pretty good record, man. Take me anywhere.

That's my favorite song on the Monarch record. It's called Still True. The sneaky, melancholy little baseline really does it for me, amidst the melodica, amidst the noirish, dead-of-night torch song vibes. But really, it's her voice, right? Feist's voice radiates light and warmth, but also tremendous volcanic heat. She can belt in a way that always feels conversational.

Like she's pulling you closer, not trying to blow the roof off the joint. Though the words still true, blow the roof off the joint anyway. Yeah, I won't try to sell you on monarch, parenthesis, lay your jeweled head down as an underground classic, but it is recognizably a Feist album in its range and intensity and heat and warmth. You can find the whole record on the internet, but not with a frictionless ease, to which you are likely accustomed. Meanwhile, unless you were hanging out with Peaches in Scotland in 1999 or whatever, it's very possible that the first time you heard Feist's voice was right here. From their critically rhapsodized 2002 album, You Forgot It in People. Here we have the Toronto indie rock supergroup Broken Social Scene, with a social scene with a social scene.

song called Almost Crimes, featuring Feist on backing vocals, though even Feist's backing vocals have a way of becoming lead vocals, don't they? I have no idea what she's singing there beyond I Told You, and it doesn't matter what she's telling you. It rules. If you watch the Almost Crimes video, a pretty simple near-silet performance clip of various dudes rocking, once you've locked in on Feist dancing around and striking various Titanic rations, raised fist arena rock poses and twirling or microphone and whatnot, all those various rocking dudes kind of fade permanently into the background. I'm pretty sure Feist is singing, we got love and hate, it's the only way right here.

And suddenly that's the only thing that matters. I just noticed in the Almost Crimes video that Feist's microphone is conspicuously unplugged. She's holding the bunched up unplugged mic cord in her. other hand because it doesn't matter if Feist's microphone is unplugged. She is inevitably the loudest and most electrifying human on stage, even without electricity or amplification of any kind. This 2002 broken social scene record, You Forgot it and People gets one of the earliest, kindest starmaking out-in-now-where rave reviews and pitchfork, 9.2. And soon the bustling, chaotic Toronto rock scene is the subject of international fascination. Alongside Feist, the other truly startling voice on this broken social

scene record comes from Emily Haynes, lead singer of the great new wave-leaning Toronto band Metric. Emily here is singing a remarkably weird and absolutely shattering song called Anthems for a 17-year-old girl. And that, to me, induces the same anxious but serious, but soothing hypnosis as Kate Bush reeling off 100 plus digits of pie. Once you get on this song's wavelength, you might decide you'd be perfectly content listening to Emily sing, park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me, on repeat for the rest of your life.

Emily's got other shit to do, however. From their debut album, released in 2003 and called Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? That is metric with dead disco. Exceptional work on that contemptuous string of la-l-l-l-l-laz by Emily Haynes. That's a rock star right there. Though if you want the truth, my favorite broken social scene extended universe band is the dreamy, poppy, sneaky, prickly, and yet ultra-sentimental band Stars from Montreal

who put out a fantastic album of their own in 2010. called Heart. Because sometimes you need a band called Stars to put out an album called Heart that includes a song called Elevator Love Letter. And here we have Stars, guitarist, and keyboardist and co-lead singer Amy Milan, singing the line,

My Office Glows All Night Long, like it's the most romantic series of words you've ever heard in your life. And so it is. That's a rock star. right there. Suddenly we got a whole constellation of like-minded but also pointedly distinct Canadian rock stars. And honestly, this would be a great time for Feist to make a solo album that does not sound to her like an awkward yearbook photo.

The second Feist album is released in two kids out of their coat. The way the babies have them been born. The second Feist album is released in 2004 and is called Let It Die. This song is called Mushaboon. That's still a rock star right there, but Feist is now boldly expanded into folk, into jazz, into boss an nova, into lounge pop that exudes serenity but does not sacrifice momentum and excitement. It's the way Feist's voice deftly picks its way between the handclaps and the jaunty acoustic guitar and whatnot. It's that exceptionally not at all contemptuous string of oh, it's the way she casually rattles off the line, as youthful and universal and vivacious and tentatively hopeful as it may be years until the day my dreams will match up with my pay. leader Kevin Drew puts it in a 2006 feist profile in Magnet magazine is quote if you went up to her right now she'd talk to you her music doesn't say fuck off and neither does she end quote also those two dated for a while

maybe the key here is that mushabum and the whole let it die record and the whole feist project radiate coolness but without frigidity without elitism without hostility fuck off is a perfectly healthy and often necessary sentiment to express in a rock song or a vibe, chilled-out, time-warping pop song. But pointedly not saying fuck off can be just as shocking and revolutionary. Feist is not actually singing, oh, in this chorus. She's singing the word old, as in watching the fire as we grow old. We are reveling here in some enchanting future vision of hyper-eastern.

idealized, secluded domestic bliss. The Let It Die album is an even split. The first half is originals, and the second half is covers. The covers half peaks with Inside and Out, an absurdly charming version of the 1979 BG's disco boudoir classic Love You Inside Out, which actually, oh wow. Love You Inside Out is a remarkably peeper. Beach's coded song title. That's gross. That is a bicycle fondling song title. Wow. The Feist version is less explicitly raunchy but still gets the points across.

As delivered by Feist inside and out does not entirely discard the original Bee Gees love you inside out aspect, but she emphasizes the with my heart hanging out aspect, the emotional intimacy, the triumphant vulnerability. The coolest thing about this Let It Die record is that if you turn enough of your brain off, you can convince yourself that the cover's half is the originals half and vice versa. Inside and out is so fully inhabited that you could totally convince me it was a Feist original. And you could totally convince me that the Feist original one evening was a charge. Topping Bee Gees song.

I can't believe this song didn't come out in 1977. Bonus points for the one evening video in which Feist and noted Canadian rapper Buck 65 dance together awkwardly and endearingly. Feist is always dancing. Fice is always in motion. Always serenely mutating. What Fice can do better than anybody I can think of is create the illusion that you're driving late at night and flipping channels on a car radio and it's her voice on every station.

Feist howling on the classic rock station, Feist snarling on the alternative rock station, Feist purring on the jazz and folk and R&B stations respectively. Here we have Feist doing, let's say, a 60-40 split between purring and snarling on a traditional song called When I Was a Young Girl, the mid-20th century Appalachian folk singer, Texas Gladden did a version, so did Nina Simone. When Feist does it, though, she sounds 90% like herself and 10% like PJ Harvey. That's a great combination. It's the ominous serpentine baseline there, slithering amidst the handclaps that

really drives home the murder ballad adjacent menace of it all. But it's so wild to me that Fice can literally sing the line, and hell is my doom and still sounds so endearing and vibrant and alive. There is a natural overpowering buoyancy to this person that can't be held at bay for long. In all her bands, all her guises, all her iterations, even when her stage name was bitch laplap, She radiates this luminous kaleidoscopic dance party quality. Like she's a walking flash mob. But the rare flash mob that does not annoy you at all. As chaotically winding and unconventional and unpredictable,

as Feist's path might have been, I think we were always destined to wind up here. The third Feist record is released in spring, 2007 and is called the reminder. It is natural to want to rescue the rest of this marvelous and tranquil and reliably cool without leaving

you cold album from the modest supernova that the song One, Two, Three, Four became. But that's going to take some hard work. And I don't think there's any point in even trying to separate One, Two, Three, Four, the song from One, Two, Three, Four, the

expertly choreographed video. If you lived through this moment, this viral moments, though in 2007, viral did not have the punishing, totalizing connotation it has now. If you remember this, even if you're not currently watching this video, I'm guessing you can sense this video, the goofy, unembarrassed, deceptively casual joy of it. The video shot in one take, and Feist is wearing a sparkly blue jumpsuit and surrounded by a full troop of a bullion dancers and bright grocery store produce section colors,

all of which makes it easy to overlook the fact that Feist just sang the words, sleepless long nights, that is what my youth was for. I didn't know that's what she sang there. Speaking of, okay, okay, I'm going to be honest with you now if you promise to be honest with me.

Okay? This is a safe, space. Is this a safe space? Okay, I am going to be honest now and tell you that for 19 years, I thought Feist was singing those teenage hoes who have tears in their eyes. HOS. H-O-S. The impolites word. Did you think that? You thought it was hose too, didn't you? There is no way I am the only person on earth who thought that. Shit. Hopes, H-O-P-E-S, those teenage hopes with tears in their eyes. And the way Feist mimes crying, she uses two fingers to trace the paths of two tears rolling down her face in the video.

That's the best move in the whole video. Hopes. Excuse me. I was mistaken. That kind of changes the whole song for me, if I'm being honest. One, two, three, four is co-written by Feist and Sally Seltman. an Australian singer-songwriter who started out recording under the name

New Buffalo. Let It Die was half cover songs, but Feist is at least a co-writer on every song on the reminder. My Moon, My Man, was co-written by Chili Gonzalez, and Sea Lion is Feist's cover of Nina Simone's cover of an old folk song, etc. But Sally Seltman initially brought 1, 2, 3, 4 to Feist.

And even though they worked it out together and sang it into a lap, top on a tour bus, that slight emotional distance. The song's starting out as more sallies than feists. That distance between 1, 2, 3, 4, and the rest of the album is then compounded by this song's weirdly massive success. It peaks at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only Fyce song to ever chart at all. Now add the video, the viral heartwarming whimsy of it.

There's a dude carrying Feist horizontally. as she pumps her legs like she's riding a bicycle through a spiral of motionless dancers while she sings the most devastating line in the whole song. I did not misinterpret this line exactly, but I never quite fully grasp that she's singing, Money Can't Buy You Back the Love That You Had Then. One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, and ten, money can't buy you back the love that you had there. And so in the space of one album, we've jumped from daydreaming about growing old on Mushabum to daydreaming about how we used to be young on 1234. We are somewhere between idealized youthful abandon and idealized rapturous domesticity.

Right, the Apple ad also. 1234 soundtrack, a 2007 ad for the iPod Nano, a tinier iPod with video capability. so you could watch the one, two, three, four video on a very tiny screen. It is what it is. In 2007, if you wanted your pay to match your dreams, you tried for an Apple ad. It was what it was. But that's another wedge to drive between this song and the rest of this album, and really the rest of Feist's whole body of work.

The Sesame Street clip is a wedge also, no offense to Telly. This song achieves an escape velocity that makes Feist viscerally uncomfortable. It achieves an escape velocity from Feist, really. I still love the big triumphant moment toward the end of the 1-2-3-4 video, where the dancers all cheer and whirlpool around Feist and start lifting her up into crowd-surfing position. The next Feist album, called Metals, takes four years and comes out in 2011. Talking to Pitchfork that year, Feist says, quote, one, two, three, four started to speak on its own behalf. You know when you stare at the sun and then you look at something and you can't see anything

because your retina's been burned out a bit, there was an external retina burning that happened with one, two, three, four, and it didn't really speak to the reality. It also cut a lot of tethers to the past that were really relevant to me. It was really double-edged. I had no motivation in me to try to get back to that place. So I needed to make sure that there wasn't a song on this album that that could happen with, end quote. Sometimes at Feist shows she plays 1, 2, 3, 4, and sometimes she doesn't. 1, 2, 3, 4 is a hit song so destabilizing, it can't ever be repeated and also probably shouldn't be.

I'm going to kick myself if I don't play you my favorite line from my first. favorite song on the reminder. The line is kick drum on the basement floor. This song is called I Feel It All. I love that line, that image, kick drum on the basement floor. Fyced the young punk playing in 50 bands. Fice to the Peaches, Hype Hipe crawling around the floor of a club in Scotland, feist on an old dirt road in knee-deep snow. The vocal harmonies on the words fly away to, wolf. Fly away to what you want to make. I love that line too now.

You can have a shocking, crazy, huge hit, but do it your way, mostly. And then you can deliberately never try to have a huge hit again. You can remember your past however you want and imagine your future however you want. And if you want to change some numbers and sing your own version of pie, you can do that too. We are so honored to be joined by the Toronto writer and filmmaker Chandler LeVac, director of two movies out right now. Roommates is available now on Netflix. And Mile End Kicks is now playing in a theater near you.

Chandler, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk about my favorite topic. Women from Toronto with Bain. An underserved demographic, and I'm so thrilled that you've corrected this. Mylan Kicks, it's a wonderful movie I saw it this morning. It's a coming-of-age romantic comedy sets in the Montreal music scene in the early 2010s. And I guess to start off, like, what was it about the Montreal rock scene that was special?

for you, you know, in that first decade and change of the 2000s. Like, what was in the water there at the time? Yeah, I mean, I kind of came to Toronto when I was in 2004 as like a young university student. And immediately, everyone was just talking about bands from Montreal, you know, that first arcade fire EP had just came out and the unicorns I was deeply obsessed with and stars. And it just felt like kind of like this nice counterpoint to like the sort of broken social scene monolithicness that was kind of invading Toronto like every single arts and crafts band and an offshoot of broken social scene like Apostle, Apostle, Apostle and Metric and Vice and yeah, Brendan Canning's solo project and whatever Kevin Drew was doing. And it just felt like Montreal that had this sort of sense of like bohemianness and experimentation. that just felt kind of like a life raft or something.

I have to say, I think Stars is my favorite band from this period, from sort of the broader Canadian 2000 scene. Like I go back to set yourself on fire, you know, or the first, or not the first record, but harsh, the one before that. Like, I love that band so much. Like, I love the baselines and I love just this sentimentality of it. Like, it's experimental, but, like, there's a hard on sleeve quality that's really explicit in that band

that I always really appreciated, you know? Yeah, it's like, it is very sincere, but they were kind of like sweeping and like sort of orchestral and dramatic and pretentious in a way that was exciting when you were like a 19-year-old girl. And an early 20-something boy as well, I think I can say historically.

One thing about the film as a non-Canadian that was fascinating to me is the tension between Montreal. in Toronto. Like, she moves from Toronto to Montreal, where she is treated, like, very explicitly as, like, a gentrifier is, like, a non-French speaking, you know, person here who's going to, like, screw up the culture. And can you talk a little bit about the tension between Montreal and Toronto, or just Montreal in the outside world? And, like, if you thought that that manifested at all in the music, in any of these bands, any of these records? Yes, I'm not, as I've learned from kind of

of the release of this film, you know, the burden of representation is extremely high. And I can only speak to my own experiences, which was as a, you know, 23-year-old music critic coming from Toronto for the summer specifically to try to like avoid everything and kind of reinvent myself in the myelin in the summer of 2011, not speaking French, not knowing that much about Quebecois culture, except like Xavier de Land movies. And, and being, you know, extremely ignorant. And, yeah, I think that the reason that Kepaqa culture is so strong is because there is like a deep need to protect it and like an identity that they have that is very separate and distinct

from the rest of Canada. And with that comes a lot of, you know, rightly so, like politics about that culture and what they want to protect. And so I think coming in as an anglophone, yeah, sometimes you feel like you're living in a place that doesn't want you to be there. Every interaction you have is like a little bit fraught. Sometimes in a nice way like that tension, but like, yeah, it's, it's difficult. But at the same time, you're not really worthy of any, any pity or empathy at the same time. Because you're kind of willfully like not doing the work to live there. So I've tried to live there on and off for

the last decade. And I, every time, every four, it's usually about four months in. I'm like, no, I can't hack it. So in terms of the music, yeah, I mean, I think also the things that make Montreal so special at the same time and really the most exciting place and most dynamic music scene I've ever kind of witnessed or written about or bit a part of, it's just that it's, at least at that time now it's changing with a lot more gentrification, but the rents were extremely cheap for very beautiful apartments. Same with like practice space and just these lofts where a lot of kind of the birth of these sort of emerging music scenes came out of, you know, like Arcade Fire bought an old church and repurposed it into his studio.

There was this legendary space, Rattel to Tango, where all of those albums that we just talked about, Wolfraid, Stars, the Dears, like, created amazing records. And you just had a little bit more of, like, space and time to kind of, like, fuck around and find out, you know, what your sound was and meet other people and really form a scene. So you would say broken social scene is a monolith. You forgot it in people, I think, comes out in 2002, and it gets this glowing pitchfork review and sort of blows up. Did it feel like a monolith, like it was sucking up all the oxygen,

you know, in the Canadian music scene broadly of the mid-2000s? You know, you talked about all the records, the spinoffs, you know, the whole arts and crafts scene. Like by the time that you're getting in there, do broken social scene, like, sort of feel like the over-exposed, like, you two of the scene or something and you're more interested in what's, that's a weird comparison, but I'll stand by it, I guess.

Were they already too big, you know, for this scene that thought of itself is very homegrown and very regional and very scrappy and an underdog? Were they already too big to be any of that? Yeah, I mean, they're very much a product of this thing called Toronto, which was like this moment in Toronto kind of related also to like city politics where everyone for about I would say five years in

Toronto was obsessed with like TTC stations wearing tiny buttons that said TTC stations. David Miller was our mayor before Ralph Ford and he was like writing a bike around and like giving public lectures on public space and there were like art events and just like creativity and there were all these kind of like DIY bands playing shows like you know there's this band called Dollarama, that they literally, their instruments were from dollarama, and they would just, like, a dollar store in Canada, and they would just, like, play on, like, whatever, tiny glockage spills. Ninja High School was, like, another really important one, this independent record label that was

all artists owned called Blocks Recordings Club and Final Fantasy, who became Owen Palet, was one of those musicians. And, yeah, broken social scene was, like, sort of a part of that movement. I really feel like that album you forgot it in people. I mean, I still think it's a really incredible record, but it just kind of became like the de facto album, like every coffee shop, every brunch restaurant, every, you know, dive bar that I was using my,

not even sneaking into, you know. And I think they just got too big. And I remember writing this article once about them for Maisonov magazine, and they had this cover package called The Music We Hate, and I wrote about broken social seats. and I don't know, I think it was a pretty snarky article, and I said something like, it was about their second record,

forgiveness rock record. Yes. And I said something like a kitchen would burn down from all those cooks, and I don't know. And then... It's a good line. That's a solid line. There's a lot of cooks in that kitchen.

That's legit. That's absolutely legit. And then I, and like, and I'm like kind of like running down all the, the side proxy. I'm like, why do I have to care about like a possible of hustle and, you know. Right. And then I was at the Polaris Prize, which is this juryed award that's kind of created by music critics in Canada where one artist wins like a huge cash prize. And Kevin Drew came up to me with his dad and he said, my dad read your article. He's really mad. And I'm like,

he kind of courted me. Oh no. It was a very, it was like the first time I think I felt like, oh, actually when I write things, people read them and they are affected by them. And like Kevin Drew, who has always seemed like just the coolest, like most impossible, like vision of what it means to be like a hipster on Queen West, like has read this and he's so mad about it that he's, he's getting into it with me and his father. Like, how is this happening? I'm a child. That's tough. That's a moment every rock critic goes in being confronted by the father of someone who you've slandered in the paper. I think that's just a right of passage. and I'm so glad this about that.

Chris Cornell's dad probably did it to somebody. Where does Feist fit into that for you? It was your first introduction to her through the broken social scene record. Like when did you first hear of her sort of get into her? And what did you make of her arc at first? I mean, I was obsessed with Feist. I think a lot of people my age were that first record.

before the reminder, let it die. Let it die. I was just in love with that. And I had roommates. There were two drama students, and we all lived in a basement apartment on Bathurst Street that had mice.

And it was just nonstop fights for about eight months of my life. Spice while we were doing the dishes, spice while we were making, you know, the one chicken curry that we knew how to make, vice while I was getting with spice. it, vice when we were, while the roommate relationship wasn't working,

Fice when I was moving out of the apartment. And so I think, yeah, that record is so intertwined with me being, you know, in second year of university. And but I loved all those songs. And I think, you know, like, whether it was like, and she, the kind of intrastuality of it, you know, the way that it was sort of like a lounge record, but also this kind of like ethereal sort of like singer-songwriter record,

the way that it was, she was covering both like Ron Sexsmith and the Beeji. and her voice was amazing and just like the songs were so, so good. And it kind of felt like at that time like a secret, like we could, it was like just for us, like just for people in Toronto. So you have such a personal connection with that record that I'm sure it's, you know, synonymous with that time for you. But one thing I love about that record, Let It Die specifically, is how timeless it feels.

As you say, like there's a cover of the BGs. There are songs that sound to me like, original, their original songs that sound like the Bee Gees. Like, it's hard to place it in time. One thing I love about that record is it feels like it could have come out in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s or the 2000s when it actually did. Like, does it feel dated to you now, you know, the way that like a 90s alt rock record feels really pinned down to that era?

Or is Feist able to sort of float above, you know, sort of the scene aspect and like what was cool at that time. Like, is there a timelessness to her in general? I really think that there is, like, especially that first record, it just feels like, you know, it's like Serge Gainsberg-esque or something, and it's, but it also, like, yeah, it feels new and old at the same time, and there is a nostalgia factor for me, but the songs are so good and, like, hooky and memorable that, yeah, I think it's funny. It almost feels like the reminder, like her next record feels more dated to me than the

than her first record. I can totally see that. I can totally see that, in part because of how huge, one, two, three, four became sort of how ubiquitous it was. And then that gets pinned to like the iPod Nano or whatever. Yeah.

Having a big breakout moment like that, I think sort of inevitably pins you. As you say, like let it die. Like it was a big deal among like critics or whatever. Like it did really well. But it was a secret, I think, in a way that the reminder you could not say,

that Feist was a secret anymore. Yeah, it's so interesting, and you're right. Like, suddenly she kind of became this, like, cultural figure and was, like, performing one, two, three, four with the Muppets and, like, on Steve, and it was kind of jarring. And, yeah. And, yeah, I remember trying to put, I feel it all in the opening credits of Milene Kix as, like, a possibility for, and it was, like, funny how it worked in a way that really, like,

tug at my heartstrings, but I was also like, this is so sincere that the movie cannot, like, allow it. I know exactly what you mean. Like, I'm trying to picture that now. And, like, the way the soundtrack works is so beautiful. And I do think that there's a benefit. Like, Feist sort of has the broken social scene monolith quality of, like, she's too big to only represent this city and this time. You know what I mean? Like, just hearing Feist so early in the movie. would sort of take you out of where the movie wants to take you. Like I think I love that song. I think I feel it all is probably my favorite Feist song.

So I can imagine being, I can imagine being excited to hear it, but I can also imagine it. I don't think it sets the mood that you want to set. I think you need something not cooler, but something a little less known and a little less like associated with all this other stuff. Yeah,

it kind of made it feel like a Canadian commercial for like Canada Day or something. Yes. A tourist ad kind of. Yeah, like a via rail, well, a megabus ad actually, yeah. There we go. Has Megabus contacted you? Megabus is usually not very well

represented in films like these, but like it seems fairly reliable. Like she gets there, she gets back, there's no issues. Are there any sponsorship opportunities for you and Megabus down the road? Not as many as I wish there was. They've never offered me, you know, like a key to the megabus or anything. It's early.

I was just very excited to get to use it in a film and it was like because I mean that was like my pilgrimage. Like every time I would go to New York or Montreal, I would take the megabus. Sometimes at midnight. Sometimes it would burn down in Napani and I'd have to wait on the side of a highway. How many times did that happen to you specifically? I'm hoping just the once. Okay, all right. It's one bus fire is like, okay, like two bus fire.

I think that's worrisome to me. I'm glad that I don't happen to you once. But yeah, I mean, I was like, I was like, there's no movie if we, if it can't be the megabus. Like I, it, and just that like the, weirdly like the best lighting in the movie is the just natural beautiful black light of the megabus.

I've always thought that sitting in a megabus. It's like this is really, it's like the key light. It's like a moving key light that you sit inside. Yeah, Gordon, Gordon Willis wishes. There we go. this movie in part is about the harrowing experience of being a woman surrounded by like indie rock dudes in like various indie rock dude t-shirts like talking about husker do or whatever and i i couldn't help but think

about feist's experience like she played in all these bands you know from broken social scene on down like she's been in all these very high profile situations like surrounded by indie rock dudes like did you see feist as mirroring your own experiences with that sort of thing. I mean, I don't know her personally, so I could not say, I think she's obviously was extremely cool and deeply involved in kind of like an avant-garde Toronto scene too, like good, I think she was roommates with Peaches at one point. And they toured together. She was like, yeah, like a hype person sort of sidekick entity for Peaches.

There's some really wild footage out there. But I think she was, not to tell like Tales out of Squids. cool, but I think she was romantically involved with Kevin Drew at one point. God to help her soul. His dad's going to be contacting you again.

Just be careful. It's all I'm saying. And yeah, but then she sort of usurped them all, right? I mean, I think that was the interesting thing. And, you know, all of those sort of indie rock dudes that were, you know, had strong opinions

about Husker do, they, like, worshipped Fais. And she was kind of like a, you know, an object of lust for them. And also kind of like the one maybe woman in a band that you could be, you could get kind of brownie points for, for liking. So I think I think her just for popularity and just like the sheer talent of like her songwriting and just how good that those albums were kind of just made it. So she, she was like the most famous, coolest person to come out of Toronto, you know, for at least three or four years.

before Drake, I guess. All right, let's not even get into Drake. Drake is a whole other. He's like a harrowing pack of dudes like in one person. One, two, three, four is an interesting song for me because it became like so huge, like as a chart hit, like it's in the iPod ad. Like Sesame Street, Sesame Street has like billions of views.

Like it's priced on Sesame Street. Like she has sort of acknowledged as like the biggest thing she'll ever do. Like this is a song that I think sort of threatened to really overwhelm her. You know, and I think she's, she really explicitly said from that on, like, I don't want a song that big again. Like, I, when I make a record now, I, the next record that she made, medals, I think. Like she said, like, I didn't, this song achieved a sort of escape velocity from her and her career that she wanted to sort of insulate the rest of her career from it. Like, what's your sense of Feist's relationship to one, two, three, four now? Yeah, I mean, it kind of made her into, like, a cartoon character version of herself, you know?

And I think it's just the the music video also cannot be separated from the artist you know, the like sequin strapless blue jumpsuit and the sort of choreography that kind of becomes like a shell and it's all in a oneer

and a really wonderful music video that, but it's kind of you know, I watched it again just thinking about you in this conversation which we're going to have and I was like, oh, this is like millennial optimism in like oh god you're right like the song itself like i think it's interesting because it has this like funny tone of like being it's both very bittersweet but like immensely poppy and then it has that kind of like child like quality of of counting down obviously sesame street

love that and so there's a sort of like these different dimensions of it's both like the poppiest song you ever had about like one talking about like a breakup or their own melancholy And so that tension kind of like makes it kind of cut through. And so I think anyone can listen to it and like it. But yeah, it freaked her out. You know, we always sort of talk about, like you think about Beck and loser or Radiohead with creep, which are very, very 90s examples, but just artists who have this thing they're doing and then one song gets so big. And like it's responsible for so much in their career, you know, and it's undeniably a good thing.

but it also pins them to one moment in time. A millennial optimally, that's a great way to look at it. Like just that's a wonderful video. You know, it's like a flash mob, but without like the negative cringe aspects of a flash mob, right? Like it's a legitimately bright and joyful and beautiful thing, but that it just can't help but read different, feel different, you know,

to us sitting here now. And I just, I completely understand why she's grateful to the song. Like she didn't want to have a song nearly this big. ever again. Like I totally get that. Yeah. And then metals by contrast is such a like kind of copious and like slightly

dark and despairing record. And yeah, I could see how she would just be like, I want to do the exact opposite of this now. Like I can't be like codified as as a one, two, three, four. But it's funny. She really, she's still, all of her albums are great, but

she still hasn't made like another banger kind of. And I feel like the reminder has like four or five bangers like My Moon, My Man, um, 2, 3, 4. Um, I feel it all.

Like, there's a lot of really good songs on that record. See Lion Woman people, people dig. That showed up in, uh, uh, the hockey, the kissing hockey movie. Heeded rivalry. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

I know my moon, my man did, I think. There's like a big montage where they're like, sexting and playing hockey and so. That is basically what that show is. That's Canada. Yeah. That's what I associate with Canada now.

Every rock critic I know who's seen this movie loves this movie, and they all say the same thing about it. They all quote the euphoria line, is this fucking play about us? Like, it just, there's just the notion of like, you know, hold steady t-shirts, you know, and arguing about Nick Cave or whatever, and like trying to get a 33 and a third off the ground.

Like, were you explicitly trying to traumatize, multiple generations of rock critics with this film? Well, you know, it depends who you are. You could be the guy in the Nick Cave t-shirt behind the framed cover story of your own Nick Cave edition of the magazine. You could. Or you could be the, you know, 23-year-old girl asking if he could process your invoice. Right.

And yeah, I guess there's a lot of joy. and also like extreme trauma in kind of thinking about that time and what it meant to me and how it shaped my adolescence. And also kind of going back into the archives of my past and my own emails and just trying to kind of remember like how I really felt at the time. And I think one thing that still feels very romantic to me is the idea about writing about music. And I really love the scene where she gets the show in a Newsom record and she, and barfewsum record. and Barbie made this wonderful choice, which I did not direct her to do, where she like tears it apart with her.

She did. It was loving. I know exactly what you're talking about. And that was a really beautiful moment. I mean, that's a very heavy moment as well. Like in the film, you know, emotionally that's the most devastating scene in the movie

just sort of split up with like Joanna Newsom, like her delight at getting a Joanna Newsom CD and opening it like that. And then, you know, 30 minutes of movie time later listening to it, like, it's a very different experience. Like, that's sort of the key to the whole movie right there, that

scene. Yeah. And I, you know, there, I can't believe that's how they, like, made money and survived for, like, many years in my life. Just not many years, at least five. And, like, just the joy of, like, yeah, putting, sliding

the little CD into the disc drive, and then, you know, your iTunes pops up and then you click on play on number one. And then you just sit in an empty office at like 12 a.m. and listen and start writing. Like it's it's like I'll never do that again. And it was it was very beautiful to get to kind of depict that in all of its like angst and and wonder. I have to say my favorite moment in the entire movie is there's it's a very brief glimpse at her if I ever have sex playlists. list on her computer screen. And I think it's six songs.

And the third or fourth, the third or fourth song is I'm so tired by Fugazi. And I laughed out loud. It was just the funniest thing in the world. Is the, okay, all right, that's, that's just such a beautiful moment for me. Thank you. Thank you for that.

I can't remember what else was on it. I think for yourself in glide by like, which gross. That play was probably needed some work, yes, but that was a very inspired moment. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is the band name Bone Patrol, which is a phenomenal S-tier fake band name. Thank you. And as a connoisseur of fake band names, or I'd like to think that I am like, please tell me everything about the moment when the fake band name Bone Patrol occurred to you. Was it like an actual Eureka light bulb moment? Set the scene for me.

Yeah. I was like, E equals MC squared and bone patrol. I honestly, I don't know. I think I was just thinking of like, you know, I love fake bands in movies and I think it's really hard to do a fake band justice. And a lot of times like the fake bands and movies, like they just, they totally get it wrong.

you know. I mean, there's like the clash at demonhead and in Scott program, which is kind of modeled on metric. That one's pretty great. And the metric song is great in the movie. Still water, obviously, the best. But I feel like Bone Patrol is kind of taking a page from singles like Citizen Dick. That's very, it's, that's a beautiful, I didn't immediately think of that, but you're absolutely like what a, what a proud lineage you're carrying on. You could put sex Bobham in there as the other Scott Goldroom band if you wanted to, yeah. They're actually really cool.

And I think Kevin Durin and Beck wrote the songs for that. Right, that's right. That's right. Also, there is one more that's escaping me. Oh, hey, that's my bike. That's Ethan Hawks' background reality. That's really good. That's an excellent. It's hey comma, right? It's way, that's so much better than it's hay comma. I think it is.

Yeah, and the banner behind, yes. Okay, good. Ethan Hawke. But Bone Patrol, I think I was just like, okay, what would be like sort of an ironic stupid band name that you know might be something that a guy would say like as a joke and then I just was like oh we're going on bone patrol tonight and then it kind of came to me like that's incredible and then I was like what does this band sound like and then I was like oh they sound like archers of low webb in front that became like the big you know north star for me A fantastic song.

If you're going to build a fake band, Web in Front is the exact right song to build an entire fake band around. That's a great choice. Oh, yeah. And then, yeah, their big single is called Age Sex location. Because I was like, oh, it should be something

from like childhood, like when you're on MSN. And then I don't know if everyone will remember this. But when I was a child, yeah, you'd go on Microsoft Messenger and then if you talk to strangers in chat rooms, you'd say ASL and that meant asex location. So you could see who the person you were talking to where they're from. That's if you wanted to have a lot of cyber sex. So there we go.

What a time to be alive. Yeah, that's what I'm bringing to the cinema discipline. That's beautiful. Just to wrap up, you sort of mentioned Stillwater. I think there's an almost famous poster in her bedroom. Like you've talked in interviews about Almost Famous, which came out in 2000, right? Like, this is one of the first big movies of the new millennium.

And I think it's the movie that people mostly still associate with music journalism, with rock critics and just the science fictional premise that in the 70s, you could just get on a bus with a band and like never leave it. Like, what's your sense of what rock journalism like was really like in the 2000s? And is it anything like that now? Yeah, I mean, I became a music critic because I loved all my. famous so much when I was 15 that I was like, how do I just live inside of the movie? Well, I'll just become the main character.

There you go. You'll become William, yes. And then I actually read my first issue of spin when I was 15 because the strokes were on the cover. And then they had an excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's wonderful book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. And then that just like completely changed my life and made me go, oh yeah, I did. definitely want to be a rock critic now I want to just I want to sound and think about pop culture exactly like Chuck Kostromen does so I emailed him and then he just told me to like I was like

I want to be a rock critic just like you like what do I do and he said right for your school newspaper so that's what I did and then two like a three years later I was interning it at spin just fully in my um yeah era um um um um yeah um yeah um um yeah And, you know, I think there was that, yeah, obviously that film presents like a much different fantasy than, you know, the era where instead of talking to like Glenn Fry from the Eagles, I was interviewing like the bass player of Passion Pit or something. Yes, that's a different experience. But it was still amazing. And I think what that movie really talks about so well. And I guess what I connected to the most as a teenager was this idea of like the.

the uncool and sort of what it means to be like an observer and how you'll never really actually gain access to like, you know, this sort of lifestyle or sort of sense of freedom and being an artist that other people kind of effortlessly project. But you'll also kind of get an early glimpse of like what it means to get your heartbroken and, you know, experience things. And then the things that you experience become the things you get to write. about. And I think just what it means to really earnestly love music. And I hope that my film captures that too because I love music so much and I especially love pairing songs with a film. But yeah, there's a lot more angst involved, I think, when in my maybe. And more

SDGs as well. guys any period appropriate a movie would have to address the STDs of it all i think you did so very gracefully um this has been wonderful chandler everybody please go watch my island kicks right now it's a fantastic movie thank you so much for talking of my favorite writers ever so this is a real treat for me too that's so kind of thank you so much thanks very much to our guest this week chandler levaac Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Juliana Ress, Justin Sales and Chris Sutton, additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Callitin, additional art by Matt James, and special thanks to Cole Kushna.

And thanks so much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to 1, 2, 3, 4 by Feist. See you next week.