Indiecast - A Taylor Swift Backlash! Plus: New Albums By Antlers and Jay Som

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Steven and Ian begin by discussing Ian's weekend plans to attend an emo festival in Las Vegas, and the awkwardness of talking about music with friends and family in real life (1:35). Then they discuss the reaction to the new Taylor Swift album, The Life Of A Showgirl, which has sparked a critical backlash and millions more record sales (6:05).After that, they touch base on the Fantasy Albums Draft, including Steven's most questionable pick, and then do a "yay or nay" on country bad boy Zach Bryan (34:47). In the mailbag, they discuss the state of live music on college campuses (37:25), and delve into the sexual appeal of former Fuel singer Brett Scallions.In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the new album by blog-rock legends Antlers and Steven heralds the comeback of multi-hyphenate indie-pop star Jay Som (48:45).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 260 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprocks's indie mixtape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indicast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about the Taylor Swift backlash of 2025. And we also recommend new albums by The Antlers and J-SOM. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's going to Vegas this weekend to see some emo bands.

Does he know at a party or what? Ian Cohen? Ian, how are you? Well, I mean, there are post-hardcore bands as well. But I mean, I think one of the, I think one of the things that you miss out on and not being in an office is having to explain to people the music you like or like what you're doing. So I can either say, hey, I'm going to an emo music festival in Las Vegas. No, not that one that happens, I think, next week with when we were young. but it's more like the 90s stuff or you know just just forget it like here look at the lineup oh you know who jimmy world is great

or i could just like lie and say i'm going to Vegas for the weekend and hope there are no follow-up questions and just have them like assume oh he's going to like gamble or see a show those are my two choices and these are the real-life boots on the ground uh situations that uh you unfortunately miss out on Well, see, I don't get that, but I do get the situation where I am with other parents. You know, you're at some function for the kids and you're with other parents and eventually the conversation turns to what you do for a living. And I have to explain that I write about music on the internet, which is sort of like trying to tell people that I excavate rocks on the moon. You know, it just sounds like something you made up. Well, then they'll say like, oh, you're a blogger, aren't you?

I don't say that. Yeah, I mean, I think when you say you're a writer, people think, oh, he's trying to be a writer. He probably lost his job, and now he's, like, on the laptop trying to write a novel or something. I'm like, no, I actually make a living. Like, I'm the breadwinner of the house. Like, I can, you know, I am a working writer. It's just something that, again, you would have more luck saying that I slay dragons for a living. It just doesn't sound like a realistic thing.

In terms of music, I don't talk about music at all in real life. I avoid those conversations like The Plague. It's easy enough to do. I'm in my late 40s now, but people are not interested in music of my age. They want to talk about TV shows or films. I mean, sports, obviously a good topic of conversation. They're not really looking for my takes on geese. No one's to be like, hey, Steve, I heard about this geese record.

I'm a fellow 48-year-old here at the quiet. concert for the kids. Can you tell me about geese? That doesn't really come up, which I'm grateful for, because I really don't. The only, you know, the time this comes up, and this is like a very curbier enthusiasm-type gripe that I have, but I don't know if you have this. Like, when you're at the dentist, they always feel like they have to put you at ease by doing small talk. So, like, they'll ask you about your job.

That's another, like, job talk situation that I really, I've actually lied about my job. Same. At the dentist, just because I don't want to go through it, because it just leads to all these other questions. And me being in Minnesota, it just compounds the weirdness. I think if I was in L.A. or New York, being a culture writer would make sense.

But even in a big city like Minneapolis, people just have no clue, and they've never heard of anything that I'm talking about. They'll ask, like, what famous people have you interviewed? And I'm like, well, I just interviewed the producer of Ratsaw God, and manning fireworks. He's Alex Farrar. He's a really interesting guy.

No, I'm speaking a foreign language. It really shows that, yeah, our world is not the world. It is a very small and, you know, sort of tangential sphere compared to the rest of society. Yeah, and even that, like, when I say, like, what my real job is as a dietitian, then that can get into other conversations I am very uncomfortable of having because... That's true. Yeah, so, yeah, real... That's sports.

That's why. That's why I talk about sports. That's true. It's the great equalizer. Wait until your book comes out. If people ask you about your book, that's another conversation. Even now, I'm like, yeah, I'm writing a book. It's about music. And just hope and pray that there are no follow-up questions to it. The thing about book talk is that people always desperately want to know what you're working on. And they get offended if you don't want to talk about it.

Yeah. Because now when people ask me, I don't like to say what I'm working on because people never give a reaction. You'll say what you're working on and they'll maybe nod and they'll go, huh. And that's it. And like, I'm not looking for a big response, but I'm like, if you're going to ask me, can you at least like play act? Like, this is an interesting idea to you? You know, because if you're giving me the non-response as a writer in the progress of writing something, it just plays into my insecurity. And I'm like, oh, wow, is this like a boring idea?

Yeah, I know. I don't want to read this. But it's like, you asked, I'm not volunteering it. I would rather not talk about it. But, like, you asked, and I didn't want to talk about it, and then I could tell you're annoyed, that I didn't want to talk about it. So then I give in, and then you don't care. I don't know. Yeah.

That's my, this is the most curbinger enthusiasm stuff that I have in my life. It's all kind of career-oriented conversations that I have in my real life. Yeah, we're hitting our listeners off with highly relatable subject matter today. I guess. I guess. Well, let's go to the most relatable artists in the world right now. Taylor Swift, we talked about this last week. We did an over-under on what her metacritic score would be for the record she put out last week,

the life of a showgirl, which is a huge. huge record, by the way, before we talk about the reviews, which in the grand scheme of things don't really matter, I think, with a record like this. And that's the history of music criticism. These big ticket albums, I don't think music critics can really lessen an artist like this. I don't think they can, like, cut into the market share. I think the best we can do is shine a light on lesser known artists and help them in a positive way. I think that's what music critics do, but in terms of stopping a bohemist like Taylor Swift, it's, you know, it's a rhinoceros running over like an ant hill. I mean, that's what the reviews are. But

the record sales, 3.5 million. So, and the week's not even over yet. So this could be bigger. 3.5 million unit equivalent sales, including 1.2 million vinyl sales. So doing huge numbers, she's also got like 27 different editions of this record. So she's milking the the numbers for sure. But getting back to the Metacritic score, you said over under 80, and you went over. I did.

And I said under, and I said, I think it's going to be close to 80. I think it's going to be like 78, 79. But I think it's going to be under. Well, it's way under. Current score is 70. At one point, it was like at 68.

Damn. Which was horrible. It got raised up a little bit. There's some. Outlier reviews on the higher end. Like Rolling Stone gave it five stars to the shock of everybody. Variety gave it a really good review. New York Times gave it a good review.

One thing I think is kind of funny. You know, we talk about Taylor Swift and it's like, oh, we're white male music critics in our 40s. Can we really judge the quality of this music? And then you look at the critics who like this record the most. And not all, but most are like in our demographic. Like the white male music critics in their 40s and 50s. Love Taylor Swift. These are our people.

Yes. It's like Professor Frank on the sentence like with the roley thing where it's like, ah, you can't enjoy it on as many levels as I can. You know what I mean? Exactly. Exactly. It's like a step aside millennial women. Here come the middle age men.

We're the real appreciators of Taylor Swift. But yeah, this. record, you know, it's getting slagged, people making fun of the lyrics. There's the song about Travis Kelsey's Wang. There's the song where she's picking a fight with Charlie X-E-X. There's a song, maybe it's one of the songs I already mentioned. There's a song where she refers to herself as a girl boss flying too close to the sun. There's a lot of kind of like, what's the right, a lot of meme type lyrics on this album. Yeah. You know, songs that, Maybe we're designed to be viral either in a positive or an...

I mean, I got to think Taylor Swift, who is one of the shrewdest pop stars ever in terms of the business side. She had to know putting out a song called Wood about Travis Kelsey's, like Redwood Tree that he has, apparently, between his legs. She had to know that that was going to have a response that was not going to be entirely positive. but I think she said in an interview this week if you're saying my name that's a good thing

so she's got people to say her name I want to pose this to you Ian because you are a white male music critic in your 40s so you are the best judge of this record I was trying to think of like the separation between good Taylor Swift music and bad Taylor Swift music because I was reading this thing

Defector wrote a think piece this week and it was a pretty critical article and I mean it was quoting dos diefsky's the idiot has which people tend to do when talking about Taylor Swift exactly they're going deep and the the thesis of it basically was that greed has destroyed Taylor Swift's ability to make good music and I wrote about this on my substack evil speakers if you want to go subscribe to that I wrote a little thing about this album but more so about Taylor Swift as a corporation, because that's the thing I find most interesting.

As an artist, at this point, I don't think her impulses are at all interesting, which maybe we can get to in a minute here. But in terms of this greed argument, just the idea that, like, do people really think that she just started being greedy? Like, hasn't this been like a big driving force for her, along with this ambition, you know,

of a teenager who moves from Pennsylvania to Nashville, and then to New York and then just has this incredibly huge career that's been very well mapped out. Do people think that her success was just like a byproduct of like putting out successful music? I don't see how you become that successful without like wanting to be that successful, without that driving you. And yeah, that's ambition and that's artistic talent, if you want to say that. But that's also greed. And greed has motivated a lot of people throughout history to make art that I think a lot of us love. You know, like it doesn't all come from like pure artistic love and impulses.

Again, especially if you're someone like Taylor Swift, who I think has been pretty methodical about keeping herself on top for as long as she has, which is really like an unprecedented run. I mean, you look at pop history, no one has been this successful at the center of pop history. culture for as long as she has. So, I get you don't like this record, but like the records you do like, I think we're probably motivated by greed too. I mean, I think that's a big part of what she's done. So, like, the good and bad parts of her music, I think that blurs the line perhaps a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, with this unprecedented longevity and just being seemingly impervious to any sort of backlash, I mean, not to be too much of a downer, but do you ever get the feeling like nothing really matters anymore? You know, like, not like that things don't like aren't important, but there just seems to be no natural consequences for things, you know, like things that like would make people lose their job or like go to jail or like with Taylor Swift making an album that it seems like this is not just, hey, this doesn't, this doesn't line up with, let's say, red or night. 1989 or whatever the, you know, whatever the classics are. People are just like, yeah, this actually is actively bad and not in like a interesting bad way. Like you mentioned some print albums like around the world in the day or our boy Ian Grant compared to Bob Dylan's empire burlesque.

I'm going to have to, you know, leave that one to you whether or not it's true. But it doesn't seem to me like this, this wild artistic hair. It just seems like, oh, this is sort of like, what she was doing before except bad in some unquantifiable way. And I do understand the desire to compare it to, you know, Disney as you did or elsewhere I've seen like, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe because it is, or even like the New York Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys where it doesn't matter that they aren't performing. It's just you're a fan of the franchise.

But to me, well, but like it's too early to tell. Because people are buying this record this week without hearing it. You know, because they ordered the vinyl weeks ago. So I don't think that's necessarily a sign of how this album's going to age. I do wonder, I mean, the thing with Taylor Swift for me, getting back to what I said before about how I don't find her artistic impulse is interesting, is I feel like when you look at other artists that have been in her situation, like where they were on top of the world at the center of pop culture,

At some point, they tend to get bored by just perpetuating their own success. Or they get burned out by it. Or, you know, they start to just get sick of the public's attention. And they start to do things that lessen their popularity. You know, I mean, the Beatles are an extreme case where they, you know, they stop touring and then they decided to break up. But if you look at, you know, like Bob Dylan had a motorcycle crash and then he went into seclusion for almost a decade. You mentioned Prince.

When I brought up around the world in the day, I'm not saying that's a bad record. I love that record. What I'm saying about that record is that he was deliberately making weird music after Purple Rain, like those mid-80s albums, which still had hits on them. Around the World in the Day has Raspberry Bray, Parade has Kiss on it. But on the whole, those records are pretty weird. And not as commercial as Purple Rain.

And like a lot of artists, they kind of decide at some point, it's like I have house money. Like I've made it. I've played the stadiums. I'm a multimillionaire. Now I can just kind of be a self-indulgent artist. I mean, Kendrick Lamar did that a few years ago with Mr. Morrell and the big stepers. You know, like he made a record that even if it wasn't going to completely work, it's like he had house money.

He could do what he wanted. And to me, that's the kind of artist that I'm into, the artists who are going to do what they want and not always just make the most commercial record possible. And Taylor Swift doesn't have that impulse. She is just constantly trying to stay at the center of pop culture. That kind of seems like her MO above anything else. And that's why I compared her to Disney because I think that is more of a corporate mindset. You know, like every quarter we have to increase market share or us the shareholders are going to be upset.

And I think with Disney too, the other thing that I think extends that metaphor is that Disney is the greatest corporation ever at taking its audiences past and repackaging it and reselling it to them over and over again. And I feel like that's Taylor Swift. That's her product at this point. I mean, she re-recorded all of her albums in recent years, which really helped her blow up even bigger than she was before. And then you have a new album like this, but it's like she's still. talking about high school. She's still doing the Easter eggs. She's still having feuds. She's running it back with Max Martin and Shelback. I mean, it really is a record where she's like not re-recording her old albums, but she's definitely giving you something if you're a fan

that is feeding into your nostalgia for her old music and also your own childhood. And I don't know. To me, there's like a childishness to Taylor Swift. Like she's never tried to grow up. You know, all these other artists, whether you're breaking up the band or you're doing some crazy artistic lark, I feel like that's always been an attempt

to kind of break out of your old self and to grow up in a sense. And she's never done that. And like in my substack post, I was just kind of marveling over that. and like wondering why you wouldn't want to break out in some way. Are you just a corporation or are you an artist or a human being? And I'm not even saying like, yeah, stop making music.

But like, yeah, make your crazy like, like be Christina Gaines. Make a Christina Gaines record, you know, like whatever it is. But she doesn't seem wired that way. Yeah, I'm kind of shocked that I haven't seen this. comparison, but like aside from, you know, comparing her to like corporations or like non-musical things, what I haven't seen as anyone talking about it in the most obvious comparative point, which is like a latter day Drake album. You know what I mean? Where it's like if you don't care about Drake's, you don't care about like his beefs or like what's going on with him personally,

if you do not care about Drake as a person, it is so hard to get into his latter day albums. And I think that's kind of where Taylor Swift is as well, where it's someone who is not me will have to assess this. But when with Prince or with, you know, many other pop stars, you see this kind of trickle down effect of like what they do and the rest of the culture. But Taylor seems like this kind of self-contained universe. And I think with the way people follow her music, it is, it does play up a certain type of main character syndrome in people. And that any sort of criticism of like Taylor Swift's music, is that of Taylor Swift and therefore of the person listening to it. And so, yeah, I don't know the difference, like, difference between, like, good or bad.

I think when I think about her music and just the aura surrounding it, it's this unprecedented sense of oppressiveness where it just does not go away. Where, like, even with, like, Michael, I live through Michael Jackson, you know, I live through all the biggest pop artists in history. and there was never that wall-the-wall, endless presence of them. Because, you know, I know that maybe the previous record wasn't as beloved as once before, but then there was the ERIS tour. So you never, you never not are faced with Taylor Swift music. And that to me just, it's hard, man. It's really, well, especially, you know, in my workplace.

but. Well, yeah, and you're right. I mean, there's never, and I feel like it's accelerated. Yes. In the 2020s, because there were gaps in the 2010s between her albums.

She did have more conventional album cycles, and this is just like one long album cycle that's been accelerated by all those re-records that she did, that the media went along with treating as, like, new artistic statements. I mean, I do think that the re-record thing is, like, one of the most genius.

things that any artist has ever done. And I remember when she started doing it. I thought, there's no way this is going to work. And it was amazing how the public and again, the media responded to that where I feel like any other artists, just imagine any other artist who's like 15 years into their career and they start re-recording their albums. I feel like they would be mocked for that. I think that would be perceived as a straight up nostalgia move or I guess in her case

because it was part of trying to get her masters back. It would be looked at as just kind of hollow corporate shenanigans. And with her, it was treated as this artistic statement that kind of fueled this tour that she did that was, again, just hugely successful. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to me, I mean, the critical response to it, I think, is a fair assessment of the quality.

of the record. But again, we talked about this last week. I do think that it's also an excuse for people maybe to say things that they didn't feel safe saying. I think it's a lot safer now to criticize her because even a lot of her fans that I saw online aren't crazy about this record. So that fear that people had that, oh, I'm going to get dogpiled

if I say something bad about Taylor Swift. I feel like that's pretty much, gone on this album. Yeah, it does not feel quite the same. It really doesn't. I mean, I think the person who reviewed it for Pitchfork is private anyway, but yeah, I think it's safer in general, even if, like, this record was at the level of a red or 1989 or whatever. Like, people are definitely getting their licks in. And at the same time, I've never seen this with any other artists where you kind of have to qualify by saying, hey, I'm a fan. Like, let's just be very, very clear.

I'm a fan of this person. Right. Or just having to take it from more of like a sociopolitical context rather than just saying, yeah, these lyrics are ass. I don't care about this. This is not good. Like treating it in the same way that you would, like a Latter-day Drake or like a Benson Boone album or what have you like.

And you know what? We'll get to do the same exact thing next year, I'm sure. I wonder if that is in the process of. changing. I really wonder about like someone who's like 15 right now. How do they feel about Taylor? I mean, obviously a lot of kids like Taylor Swift, but you know, there's got to be a generation that is going to look at her as like my mom's music. I mean, my niece who turned, I guess, 14 this year is like enormous Taylor Swift fan. Like my niece is a nephew's big time into it, but you know, their mom is as well. So I mean, she might be like the Beatles of like,

Disney adjacent pop music, like where it just kind of perpetually has a new generation of fans. I mean, getting back to the greed conversation, and I wrote about this again in my little substack post, but I really think, you know, you can talk about the greed of Taylor Swift, but there's like a even bigger greed in the American public for like the product that Taylor Swift is giving them. That really is incredible. There needs to be like a professor of capitalism that can write a book on this because there's just like this unending appetite for product from Taylor Swift that feeds into people's nostalgia. Because I do think it's increasingly a nostalgic thing.

I think in the same way that Disney is, that you have this American fantasy of like a blonde white woman living a fairy tale life. You know, that's a big story that Disney has made a lot of money off of, whether it's Cinderella or Frozen or, you know, there's other examples you could bring up. And Taylor Swift has like locked into that where it's like beyond music, I think at this point. I think it's fair to say. And I think even her new records at this point are feeding into this design. You know, and you mentioned the MCU.

I mean, maybe that's true for like that that's like the male side of the equation. Like the people that still want to be the kid reading the comic books as a teenager. You know, we live in a culture now where you could just be that forever. And again, I'm not taking shots necessarily to anyone because I'm a music critic, which is a very childish profession. You know, so I'm listening to records all day. And I'm so you could accuse me of being locked in adolescence as well. But, yeah, I think that's her product.

I think that is the core of what she's selling to people. and there's just like an unending appetite for it. Like bring me back to this time of my life that is gone, but I want to just kind of live in forever. When you mentioned comparing them to the Beatles where it's just like, yeah, this is my parents' music and I go through a phase, I'm just imagining like an elephant six type collective in 2035

like making Taylor Swift songs on four tracks. Wasn't that the late 2010's? I feel like I feel like we. We've had a generation of indie singer-songwriters who were clearly Taylor Swift fans as kids. And now they're making the... And we're going to keep seeing that. I mean, that is definitely going to be a perpetuation, I think, moving forward. But...

All the terrible, like, indie singer-songwriter acts who make, like, a pop album on their third album, that, like, that is Taylor Swift's, like, main influence on indie rock. Yeah, like... You know, that, you know, Taylor Swift's red is to that genre with, what, like, blood on the tracks is to, like, you know, old singer-songwriter type type people. Let's look at the fantasy draft really quick here. My, uh, my pick, my mob deep pick, yeah, which was very suspect, and I feel like is probably already doomed my season here. This is like my J.J. McCarthy, I guess, uh, on my team. Anyway, that record called Infinite is out today.

There's no score yet on Metacro? I thought I saw one review. Yeah, Pitchfork reviewed it. It was like 6.6 or something? Yeah. Yeah, so that's not great. We'll see, I don't know, can the skinny come up for me? Maybe the Europeans will like the posthumous Mobb Deep record.

I'll tell you what, that's like not that far of a stretch because so many of those, like, 90s rap artists do, tours in Sweden and places like that. They can't they cannot get enough of that stuff. So that might be your saving grace. Fingers crossed. Yeah, or I think what's more likely is that it just doesn't get enough reviews to end up on Metacritic and you just dodge a bullet there. But yeah, this made me feel kind of this made me feel a little validated because, you know, I am envious of your ability to, you know, put together these huge Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul Thomas Anderson, lists and I'm like, damn, like, I thought I really followed art. But, you know, I spent a lot of my

college years listening to Murder Music and like Prodigy solo albums. So I was prepared. That's true. That's true. Like in the 90s, I was listening to like, you know, deep cut kinks records while you were listening to Mob Deep Records. Yeah, second generation Wu-Tang solo albums. Yeah. Yeah. So that's shown right now. So yeah, that might be my saving grace. And I'll have to redraft. Do you want to draft an album this week. You got like one left, I think. No, there's one in the chamber. I'm like waiting for Bo Jackson to refuse to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and get them in the supplemental draft. There is one

I am so locked in on and I'm not ready, like it's not out yet. I don't know if it's coming, but I do have Hannah Francis coming out this week. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was, yeah. She, uh, stereo gum album the week. I feel pretty confident about that. We shall see. that's a good one so we'll see what happens we'll check in if mob deep isn't on there yet next week can i pick a new one or should we wait like three like a couple weeks maybe a couple weeks yeah maybe a couple weeks or you just have to draft one of those um albums being put out on naus nasapeel records

which is completely catering to the 50 like the the the beard o 50 the beard o 40 somethings who aren't reviewing taylor swift albums they're so locked and loaded for anything. released on mass appeal because it's got like the alchemist or like DJ premiere and so they can talk about how rap just isn't lyrical these days. So maybe I'll make you pick one of those. But yeah, yeah, Mophe doesn't pop up. We'll get, we'll figure something out. You know, I was thinking about this the other day about how there used to be a lot of jokes made about the white male music critic. And I guess I'm paying attention to this because I, I am this person, the white male music critic in their 40s who likes indie rock or like you know dad rock you'd make

fun of that person a lot and how maybe people were motivated to steer away from that kind of music because they didn't want to be the middle age guy that like like the national or whatever but then I realized that like any kind of music you like when you're in your 40s like you can make fun of that person for yeah like if you're like the white male music critic who's into rap you can you can fun of that person. Or the white male music critic in their 40s who likes pop music, you could definitely make fun of that person. But like the white male music critic in their 40s who's into jazz, I can make a lot of

jokes about that person. I mean, the common denominator is the white male music critic in their 40s, a very mockable person, no matter what they're doing. There is no kind of music that person can like where you, it's like, oh, they're untouchable now. It's like anything they do, I think you can make fun of. So, you know, you have to lean into that. You have to embrace it and accept it.

I think as a 40, as a 45-year-old male writing a book about 90s emo, I feel pretty bulletproof right now. I don't know about it. Well, you know, exactly. And, you know, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to become a joke. I think it's, I think that's a beautiful thing in life. Because what's the alternative?

You don't want to be a tragedy. Because if you're a tragedy, your life hasn't, you know, you took a bad turn at some point. But if you become a joke, I think that's a good thing. That's my take on that. All right, well, speaking of choices that one has to make, is this a good segue? That's a great segue. Let's do our weekly, yay or nay segment for the IG and TikTok kids.

And also for you listening on a regular podcast, this is where we take a topic or an artist or an album or whatever, and we give a very well-reasoned, yay or nay argument for that thing. This week we're going to talk about someone that we've already talked about on this show. fairly recently, and that is Zach Bryan. Now, you might remember we talked about Mr. Brian recently when he got into a fight with Gavin Adcock, who is not a butler or a fancy,

you know, concierge at a nice hotel, but he's a country singer, despite his name. And so Zach Brian almost got into a fight with him. He climbed over a fence. It looked like he was going to really come to blows with him. Now he's back. the news this week because he has a new song out. I don't think he's actually released it yet. I think he just previewed it. It's a snippet. Yeah. It's a snippet. Yeah, that I think he threw up on Instagram or something. It's a song where he talks about ICE and the snippet that he released was critical of ICE, which of course angered people on the right, which then prompted Zach Bryan to come out and say, whoa, well, when I put out the whole song, you'll hear that it's actually critical

of both sides, which of course made neither side happy when they heard that part. The left got mad at him that it wasn't this anti-ice song. So this seems like a good opportunity to talk about one of the biggest artists in America right now. So let's settle this once or for all, Ian. Zach Bryan, outlaw country genius or overrated Americana hack. Zach Brian, yeah or nay. So we've definitely talked about Zach Ryan in the podcast before in relation to the resurrection of Alt Country and like the new David Berman's and me wishing for something a little more edgy, a little more kind of shitty. And you know, where I realize what I'm asking for is 1997 to 2001 Ryan Adams. And it, you know, and the sad part is I realize like Zach Brian is in a lot of ways the closest thing we have, you know, super prolific. all adjacent, although Ryan Adams at his peak might not be able to fill Michigan Stadium

with 20 of his combined crowds. But I think with Zach Bryant, his kind of enfanteurably, however you pronounce that thing, his act is worn thin way more quickly. I imagine if I were younger and if I was exactly the kind of young guy I was in college, I'd probably be yay on Zach Ryan. That would be a load-bearing part of my personality. but I found his albums to be pretty dull. And every time he's in the news of late,

it's for doing something that makes the bro-country guys to which he supposedly a foil look like the better man. I think this last one seals the deal. Not even because it's just like the both-sizing of it all. I imagine he serves a purpose for a younger demographic, but I'm a nay on that. I don't even think I would check him out if he was at a festival I happened to be at already.

So before I give my birthday, I just want to reiterate again how huge Zach Bryan is right now because as much as we talk about him, I don't think it's quite been put in the proper perspective. I mean, just consider like last month he played the single largest ticketed concert in U.S. history. Okay? Like U.S. American history of all mankind. He sold like 112,000 tickets for one concert in Michigan. I mean, there's music festivals that.

have multiple artists that would want to do as well as that. So he clearly has a huge audience that's connected with his music. And he's done it basically by playing these like downbeat sad bastard songs where it's mostly just him and acoustic guitar and like minimal backing instrumentation. So again, that's like a huge achievement that I don't think should be undersold. I came on board with him back in 2022 with this album American Heartbreak, which I still stand by as being a really good record. There's a lot of songs on that album, but it's a good variety of music. It's really like the hardest rocking record that he's made lately. He's really kind of gone in a more mellowed direction on subsequent releases. And as a result, I found myself feeling less excited by his music.

He's written so many songs by this point that you can hear how formulaic a lot of the material is. And a lot of the songs, frankly, just kind of sound the same. And it really feels like the quantity his quality ratio has really started to get out of whack. So, yeah, I have this hope for him that he'll eventually slow down a little bit and put out like a 12-song record where every song is great. I think that would be a great turnaround and a positive direction for Zach Bryan, as well as, you know, not getting into fights and maybe staying off the social media. I think for now I'm going to say I'm a marginal yay,

but if he keeps moving in this direction, I could see myself being a nay. So I think we settled that one. Let's print that one, slap it up on the social media platforms. Yeah, we created a new category of marginal yay. You know, we've had NIA, and now we got marginal yay.

We are really expanding the brand here. Exactly, because the NIA is like a 50-50. A marginal yay is like about a 51-52. So you're still on the yay side, but it's not a very strong yay. Let's get to our mailbag segment. We haven't done a mailbag in a while. We have a lot of emails to get caught up on.

So let's dive in. And please keep writing us emails. You can hit us up at Indycast, Mailbag at gmail.com. Ian, you want to read this first email? Oh, I totally do. So because it starts out, hey guys, I'm a huge fan of the show. Love it. Yeah, I look forward to my Friday commute to work to listen and even take the long way home

Friday night to make sure I can finish the podcast. don't tell my wife. Oh yeah, this is great mailbag material. Love it, Sean. Thank you. I was an undergrad in the early 2000s, 2001 to 2005, in Rochester, New York. All the colleges in the area were guaranteed to have two or three shows a year, and I got the

opportunity to see more Guster and OAR shows than any human should, but also Our Lady Peace in a basketball gym and the French kicks in the underground on-campus speakeasy, both of which were amazing. Now that I'm in my 40s, I periodically look for shows at the college where I currently live, but I can't

find them. It made me ask whether or not the idea of the college show is dead, or if I'm so separated from the college music scene that I can't even recognize it. Love to hear your thoughts. Sean Huntsville, Alabama, P.S. Ian, Wahoo-Wah, GCS 13. Shout to the University of Virginia. This is absolutely my type of mailback question. And also, Huntsville, Alabama is pretty close to where my in-laws live now. So, oh, wow. Yeah, so there we go. But yeah, love any question. that involves our lady peace and OAR shout to a crazy game of poker. Guster, my roommate, my first year college roommate had six Dave Matthews band posters and two Guster ones.

He was from Maine. Wow. Yeah, this could be like a two episode arc, but I want to hear your take on things because, you know, your college experience based on Arbdale and Sebastian conversation was very different than mine. Well, yeah, I mean, as far as the state of college conference, concerts in 2025, I can't pretend to be an expert. I mean, I will say that that Zach Bryan show we were just talking about did take place technically on a college campus. So, I mean, that was a

college show, obviously much bigger than the kinds of shows you're talking about. I find it hard to believe that they're not still happening. It just feels like that's such a staple, not just for colleges, but for bands of a certain level. But yeah, just think about my own college concert experiences. The best show that was at my concert, well, okay, I actually just remembered another one.

Fugazi played my school. UW O'Clair in 1999, which was a pretty cool show. I actually interviewed. Did you pay five bucks for it? I think, I can't remember if I paid or not because I was there covering it for the local,

not for the local TV, the campus TV station. A friend of mine and I had our own music show. show and I interviewed Ian Mackay backstage before the show on camera. And if someone at the University of Wisconsin-Oclair, if you want to excavate that video, I would love to see that. Actually, I probably wouldn't. I remember I bought a leather jacket right before this interview.

Because that would impress Ian McKay. Exactly. Because like Donnie Brasco had come out. Actually, a few years earlier, but like I love the movie Donnie Brasco and they wore all these cool leather jackets. So I bought this like, it was like a brown leather jacket. And I'm interviewing Ian McKay because I thought I'm a rock journalist. I got to wear a leather jacket.

Definitely called him Ian McKay, which was great. And he corrected me on it. But he was a nice guy. But then guided by voices played the semester before I got there. And I had a bootleg tape of it that a friend of mine gave to me because he did sound on that show where they did Under the Bushes, under the stars from front to back. And it was like the classic lineup of GBV, like right before they all got sacked.

So that's pretty amazing. But I missed that show. When I was at school, all we had were like these late 90s alt rock bands basically coming. Like Sugar Ray. I know Third Eye Blind came. I think Smashmouth came. Like all that stuff. We didn't really get any cool stuff when I was there.

And I guess it's all up to whoever's on the concert committee. like if you got like a cool indie rock person on the concert committee you would get good stuff but I don't think we had that when I was there not that I remember I think the Indigo Indigo girls came one year like in they're cool but that was more of the speed of the concert committee

like that kind of stuff so yeah and Guster Guster seems like more of like an East Coast and Southern thing I don't remember them I don't remember them being as big in the Midwest. Maybe I just missed the guster train, but I feel like East Coast and like Southern

schools. Like they must have just made a mint just playing those markets back then. Yeah, I mean, you might have gotten like O-A-R or like Big Head Todd and the Monsters. I don't remember AOR. They're Ohio, so I mean, I figured that would be kind of. Yeah, but they probably went more east though than West because it's, it's easier to tour on the East Coast. than the, because it's just so much more spread out once you start going on the other side of the Mississippi. So I bet they focused more going east than west. Yeah, I think with this question, we have to distinguish between the bands that come to a college town and like the college shows, the one where you're talking about with like the college committee

because, you know, at UVA, which is, that's like a college town and like a, you know, that's a place that bands want to come to. our version of the Zach Bryan concert was my last year where Dave Matthews finally played in Charlottesville at the football stadium. Scott Stadium was like maybe like 50, 55,000 people. They had to replace the entire turf. I did not go to that show. I found like the two other people who did not want to go and we watched the XFL championship that night. Oh, man.

Yeah, great, great memory with great memory there. Was he hate me in that game? He's the only. Yeah, no, no. This is like the original one. Tommy Maddox was the winning quarterback. This is, yeah, first year of the XFL. So, yeah, that was me.

But, yeah, otherwise we'd get one big concert a year at the basketball stadium. My first year of college, it was Blues Traveler. That was the night my dormmate Ed from West Virginia got so drunk, he woke up in the woods. We got Method Man, Red Man. We got Wyclef, Jean, because Outcast canceled. That was the one where Black Eye P's open back when they were like a break dancing. crew and just like spinning on their heads like pre-Fergy. Yeah, I think with, if we're wondering whether or not there is an economy for college

concerts, I wonder how much that has to do with the fact that, you know, like the roots don't have to do it anymore. You know, if you're in college from 1999 to 2008, there's a 95% chance you either saw the roots to Lib Quali or Jurassic 5 on your campus. maybe there's like a new guster that we're unaware of but otherwise I think that's a good point I wonder like where are the gusters now because yeah like college rock as a genre I don't know I feel like the jam world has some of that obviously and it did back then as well but like Goose they're not playing campus I mean they're playing on the campus like I they're playing at

San Diego state's venue like it's kind of weird for us because I live near the San Diego State like arena and it's kind of college-y. But like, yeah, it's not like, it's not like, you know, I'll see, you know, air there. But they'll have shows that are very much kind of geared towards, hey, we're doing this show at this venue because we have San Diego State's enormous campus there. That's true. Because they're, you know, because I live in Minneapolis and obviously I go to any show and I'm seeing a lot of college students there. But it's not on the campus. It's just, you know, they're coming to First Avenue or 7th Street entry or whatever, to see people.

I mean, I went to a school in a town where, like, no bands came there unless they were playing the school. Because it just wasn't a big enough town. And we were on the way to Minneapolis. So, like, if you wanted to play, like, another market, you could do that. I know, like, MJ Lenderman, for instance, like when he played Minneapolis last year, he played O'Clair the next night, but it wasn't on campus. It was at a local bar. So, yeah, I don't know. know. Someone's got to dig

into this. We got to do like an investigative get some boots on the ground journalism here at Indycast, find out the state of the college concert. I'm very intrigued by this now. Yeah, the one thing that me, you and Sean have in common is the 90s alt rock thing. My first show the first show I saw in college

while UVA was fuel. Oh, nice. Did they play Jesus or a gun? You better believe it. And yeah, I went with a girl had a huge crush on and she said at the end of the show, Brett Scalions is a dime. I don't even think people were saying that back then. That memory will never, and then she, like, hooked up with the same guy who, like,

spiked my joint with ketamine while we watched the song, remains the same. This is the Sun Kill Moon song right here. I was going to say, man, like, she had no idea that she was going to start a lifelong feud between you and Scalions, and that you were going to be, like, a music critic for an influential publication. Did you ever write about fuel and, like, take out this anger on Scalions? No, he was, like, a good-looking guy. I can't deny that. Like, Brett Scalien.

in 98, that was a 12 out of a 10. But I don't think he's in the band anymore. I think fuel, there's like some weird thing happening with fuel kind of similar to live where like fuel exists right now, but I don't think they have Brett Scallions in the band, but like Brett Scallions is doing like fuel refuel. Again, we need people looking into this. But I also saw RLadyP set tracks. Shout to Tracks at UVA.

I'm looking at Scalions right now. He kind of looks like... A grunge Brett Michaels. Yes, that's exactly what he is. But you got to think about what Brett Michaels was like when he was Brett Michaels. I suppose. Did he ever wear bandanas on stage like Brett Michaels? Probably.

Yeah. Where have you gone, Scallions? That sounds like more like a soprano's like third level goon. That's true. Well, who was that guy that was cheating for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan? What was that guy's name? Oh my God. Taking the photos?

Yes, yes. The Michigan, like, not Ramon Sessions. That's a football. That's, uh, what, Connor Stallions. Connor Stallions. Okay. Yeah, so he could, yeah. Connor Stallions could have been the lead singer of fuel.

That would absolutely be great. Or Days of the New or any of those bands. We've now reached part of our episode that we call a recommendation corner where Ian and I talk about something we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first. Well, what a better way to celebrate the past. of Amazon Prime Day, then a concept album about conspicuous consumption and the existential threat of what are we going to do with all this trash? I'm talking about the antlers and their new album Blight. Very interesting arc for this band. I don't know if we've covered them on Indycast because

their last album came out in 2021, but Hospice from 2009, obviously an Indycast Hall of Famer, prime example of 2009 emo covert ops. And in the time since, they've transformed into kind of a quasi radio headband on Burst Apart. They transformed into like kind of a stoner's psychedelic jazz outfit. And then with their last album, Green and Gold, they were kind of doing porch music like upstate New York style. And now with Blight, it's something in between. It's very lyrical, very piano-based, very beautiful, but also about how our world is completely going to shit. Maybe the most rewarding career arc of the late blog rock, best new music gang, maybe aside from Joe Dagestino, but, you know, he started another band with empty country after cymbalzy guitar so antlers is just a very very cool

way to see a band evolve on their own timeline uh this new album's great uh once again i don't know what album of it is theirs because before hospice they had a bunch albums and no one ever heard so antlers blight i'm going to also talk about an artist that you might remember from the 2010s who has kept on making good music and that is j-sum and they have a new record out today called Belong. J-SOM, of course, is the name that Oakland native Melinda Dutarte performs under. She first started garnering rays back in the mid-2010s when she was part of what I refer to as the band camp generation of millennial musicians who got popular online from posting music on band camp, and then they formed bands and started to tour. And J-Som put out some, like,

really, I think, well-crafted and well-produced indie pop back then. and it really gave her a reputation for working not only on her own records but with other artists as well. She went on to have a career as a producer, like she produced a Chris Farron record. She also joined the touring band of Boy Genius and toured with them back in 2023. But it's been a while since J-SOM has put out a new record, and it's actually been six years since the last one. And now she's back with Belong, and it's, uh, Again, just like a really well-made indie pop record that I wonder if it's flying under the radar. I haven't heard people really talking about this album at all, even though J-Som was, I think, pretty acclaimed back in the 2010s.

But this is an album that isn't like flashy. It's not trying to bowl you over with like grand artistic flourishes. It's just like really good songs that you want to play over and over again. And I just think she's like a really talented artist and songwriter and performer who can, you know, she plays, she can play any instrument. She can produce. She can write songs. Just can, it's capable of doing so many different things. And this is a really good record.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit. So again, the artist is J-SOM. That's S-O-M with the last name. And then the record is called Belong. Yeah, I like this record too. It's got a really cool song with Jim Adkins from Jimmy World. I thought if you were going to connect this album to mine, because I was talking about late blog rock best new music, you would bring up the second Paints of Being Pure at Heart

album, which is also called Belong. I know you're a fan of that one. Wow, this is like you were really connecting the dots with various directions. Well, yeah, that's a good record too. Yeah, but I didn't expect Jason to make a record. I'm really happy this comes out because I thought she was going to go the route of just like being behind the boards and it's been so long. yeah, this is a cool record.

Very low-key and something I'm going to enjoy listening to for the rest of the year. So that about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mixape newsletter. You can go to Uprocks.com backslash indie. And I recommend five albums per week and we'll send it directly to your email box.