Indiecast - Alex G's 'God Save The Animals' And Pavement's Reunion Tour

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

It's fairly common to see rock artists lean into pop territory these days, but what about pop artists who are turning to punk? On this week's Indiecast episode, hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen discuss Mariah Carey's rumored grunge album, which has been kept a secret since it was recorded in 1995. Plus, they review Alex G's new album God Save The Animals (23:00), talk Pavement's buzzy reunion tour (40:43), and Smashing Pumpkins' upcoming, massive triple album (48:22).Of course, Indiecast also had some trends to hash out this week. Another music-related course was added to NYU's roster, this time about Lana Del Rey, which prompted a discussion on the importance (or lack thereof) of studying music journalism in college (1:11). The biggest music news story this week was from Drake, who got into a public argument with The Needle Drop's Anthony Fantano, which probably boosted the music critic's cred more than it hurt it (9:11).In the Recommendation Corner this week, Ian notes ISIS' Oceanic 20-year reissue. Meanwhile, Steven praises Elkhorn's new album Distances.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 107 here or below 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 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 Uprox's indie mixtape. Hello everyone and welcome to IndyCast. 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 review the new album by Alex G and the current pavement reunion tour. And we look ahead to upcoming alt-rock LPs by Smashing Pumpkins and Mariah Carey. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He will be teaching a course next semester at NYU on the meta-narratives of Jimmy World's Clarity.

Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you? Just so we're perfectly clear, if there are any administrators at NYU listening to this show, I will absolutely teach this course. It doesn't have to be next semester. You know, maybe we talk about it in 2024. But, yeah, I mean, when we go into like what we're actually referring to here, I cannot hide my jealousy over somebody who gets to, like, talk at a bunch of college, a bunch of college students about their favorite albums.

I mean, I do that shit for free every single day. Well, let's get the background here. There was a story this week that NYU, I guess next semester, will be offering a course on Lana Del Rey. And it'll be diving into her music as well as her place and culture. I know NYU, they had a similar course on Taylor Swift recently. I don't know if they've done other courses on pop stars. But, you know, this story has gotten some attention.

And it's coming from all over the spectrum. Obviously, you have the people out there who are upset about the proposal to forgive college loans. And they see stories like this. And it makes their heads explode because, and you look this up, like NYU tuition for one semester is, what, like $30,000 or something? It is about $31,000 a semester. And that does plus fees. and that doesn't include housing, which, by the way, don't let the name fool you.

NYU is in New York City, specifically Manhattan. Oh, my God. So we're talking, I mean, it could be twice then, $30,000. If we're factoring and lodging, that could be another $30K, depending on where you live. I mean, or definitely considerable amount of money, and I'm going to do another shout out to my college hometown, O'Clair. I think I paid like $150.

rent when I lived there because I was living like with four or five other people. Regarding this Lana Del Rey saying I'm of two minds on this. I'm curious to hear what you have to say too, but I'm of two minds. On one hand, there's this thing going on and I see the music criticism and this is true in media in general that it seems like more and more the people who get in the door are people who go to very prestigious schools. and we talk about college loan relief, and I think that's great. But I would really like to see in the business community an effort to de-emphasize college

as a requirement for entry, especially in fields where you don't really receive training in college to do what you have to do. It's not like becoming a doctor or a lawyer. A lot of fields you have to have real-world experience in order to do it. And I just want to say that I think music criticism should lead the way on this. This should be the first business that says you do not need a college degree to do this job. And I know at NYU, I know that there's courses there on music writing. You know, and that's been true for a while.

And look, God bless, if you want to go to NYU and take a music writing class, that's fine. But that should not be a requirement to do this job. I'm going to sound like goodwill hunting here, but it's true. If you want to be a music writer, all you need, I guess at this point is an internet connection and a library card. You know, you've got to listen to music and you have to read a lot. You don't need to go to college. If you want to learn about Landau Ray, you don't need to pay $30,000 a semester to do that. On the other hand, speaking to your point earlier, if someone wants to pay me to teach a course called the dialectics of a long-de-s

at NYU, I would take that in a heartbeat. That sounds like a blast. I would love to do that. So, yeah, on one hand, I feel like, oh, too much emphasis on college in our culture. We're forcing people to go into debt in order to write record reviews. That seems crazy to me. But on the other hand, give me that NYU money to break down Adam Duritz's 1996 alt-rock classic along December. I would take that in a heartbeat. Yeah, I mean, I'm of two minds for it as well. because, you know, anytime we can get a shot at, like, you know, New York City or people who take, like, this academic bent to Lana Del Rey or Taylor Swift, which, by the way, I think it's worth pointing out that the Lana Del Rey classes in NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, whereas the Taylor Swift classes in NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. So two completely different schools within NYU teaching these classes. I mean, look, I was a music major in college.

Like, I was already there. And, like, I had just taken so many music courses. I figured I'd make it my major. It was not the reason I went to where I went. But, like, I mean, are these classes, like, really any less serious than, I mean, I remember I had a 20th century music class where, like, our teacher made us dance the bus stop while listening to Mary J. Blige. You serious?

Is that for real? That is extremely real. Also, there was one day where this guy also taught piano, we had to take music theory courses. There was like one day where he just basically said, Dog, I'm hung over, and like we listened

to Yola Tango's, you can have it all. I mean, so, again, I think that, not that we're saying, oh yeah, you need to like go to college to like learn straight up STEM courses. Like most college courses are complete bullshit. And once you're there, you might as well have

fun with it. And like, honestly, like, I feel like these are the type of courses that actually do prepare you for a lifetime in music journalism, you know, just trying to get academic about the most granular Lana Del Rey stuff. This is way more useful to you now than like learning the mechanics of sentence structure. Yeah, I just feel like, I mean, my, my biggest pet peeve with music writing is academic language that just pervade. record reviews now. I want to see less of that. And maybe you ought to be working at a convenience store when you're 19 and smoking weed

and listening to like music on headphones. Like that might be, to me, that's better training to be a music critic than going to an absurdly expensive school and having college professors over intellectualized pop music. I mean, I don't know. This is just one of my biases. I, you know, when you look at academia, analyzing pop music, I just feel like it goes against the spirit of what this is. And you end up like just taking the soul out of this stuff when it gets a little too chin strokey.

So I don't know. So this is definitely one of my, I guess, ingrained biases that I just have to deal with. I feel like we always hear about the announcement of these courses and there's like never any follow up as to what this course actually entailed. I imagine we have somebody in our audience who goes to NYU or is going to NYU. Like, please give us the reportage of what this class is actually like, what your grade was. Like, I just want to see someone who gets a C in this course. Like, what happened there? Like, we got to have, like, the George Costanza, like, people who got, like, a C in that course

just to let us know, like, what it takes to, like, just not cut the mustard. the dialectics of Lana Del Rey. Yeah, like, what, I wonder, like, what would be the take in the Lana Del Rey class that would, you know, get you a C? Like, are you going to argue that, like, ultraviolence is her best album instead of Norman fucking Rockwell? Like, would that be the thing that would upset the professor and, like, get up the red pen? I guess, do professors have red pens anymore?

You probably just submit everything electronically. I don't know. But anyway, yeah, NYU students, please write in. Give us some on the ground reporting here at IndyCats. If you're an IndyCast intern, that is the real world experience that you need to break into this business. Let's get to our mailbag segment. Thank you all for writing in. It's always great to hear from our listeners.

You can hit us up at Indicast Mailbag at gmail.com. Ian, you want to read this email? I do. Hey, guys. First time, long time. So, Anthony, I want to just say that he spells it font. He spells it wrong, which is kind of funny. So Anthony Fentano, of course you know who we're talking about, a YouTube music critic,

recently gotten a DM beef with Drake. What are your thoughts on how Anthony handled it and have you guys ever gotten in Beaves with artists you've covered? Also, I have something for the suggestion box. I love the mailbag segment, but calling it Mailbag is boring. Give the segment a better name, maybe something like first time, long time, or in the mailbag over the seat. I don't know. You guys can do better than Mailbag. Joe from Brooklyn.

Oh, man. Taking some heat for the name. Well, I feel like there's a convention in podcasting that you have to call it the mailbag when you get letters from people. And I think we're just following that. I like the idea of making it a little more indie-friendly. You know, he made the Nutri Milk Hotel joke. Do we call it snail mail bag?

That'd be another one. But that implies that people are actually writing us. letters long hand and sending them via the post office. So I don't know. We're probably going to keep the name, right? Or do you want to change the name, Ian? Don't quote me on this, but I would say that like mailbag, like it's just going to be, I don't know, kind of similar to how Led Zeppelin named all their albums like self-title.

We're just going to stick with the classics. We are staying true to the roots. Yeah. Well, we could call it Houses of the Holy if you want to go with the Led Zeppelin analogy. That's the first non-self title. into the out box? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good one. Out through the inbox. Wow. This is magic. You're witnessing like something akin to Trey Anastasio making magic on the MSG stage. Yeah, this is like that scene and get back where Paul McCartney writes, get back on camera. You know, this is similar to that, except way less consequential. Let's get to this Anthony Fantano story. And I'm just going to give a little background here for those who don't know. This story, I guess, broke last week. It actually broke, was it the morning that we recorded last week? So we weren't able to get to it last week.

But actually it was the day after, because according to variety, I'm going to read from the variety story about this. Rap superstar Drake is feuding with the internet's busiest music nerd YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano. On Thursday night, this is last Thursday. Drake leaked his own direct messages to Fantano on his Instagram story, which read, Your existence is a light one. and the one is because you are alive. A reference to Fantano's tradition of reviewing albums on a scale from one to ten, Drake continued, and because you somehow wiped a black girl.

I'm feeling a light to decent one on your existence. That's a little below the belt there, Drake. While Fantano scored Drake's latest album, honestly never mind an official not good out of 10 back in June. I love the not good score. It appears the artist's DMs were unprovoked as there are no prior messages between the two. So basically, Fantano, I think he has like a history of panning Drake albums. And of course, Fantano, he is the most popular music critic, certainly on the internet. I think he has close to a million followers at this point on Twitter.

I'm sure his follower count blew up after this Drake story. but Drake lashes out at him in the DMs. I think Fantano recorded a video where he responded to this. Yeah. And he might have called him a bitch or something like that. I mean, he got a little nasty and I could see why. I mean, Fantano, this just speaks to his prominence. And this is like a terrible story, but like his divorce papers were leaked online.

Yeah. Because there were people out there who didn't like his review of like some rap record. I don't remember which record. Yeah, I think it was like J.I.D. perhaps. It was one of those like, it was it was one of those rappers who like is super duper lyrical and like if you diss him then like you're like, oh man, you don't appreciate real hip hop son. So J.I.D. sounds about right. But yeah, it was definitely the result of it like, it's like, it's like, you know, it's like, you don't appreciate real hip hop son.

the result of it like it's like cause and effect like he made he he he gave a bad review to a specific rack record and then on reddit uh they leaked uh his divorce papers like it's a very clear a leads to be not yeah oh that just so happened around the same time and drake apparently is on reddit and he's reading anthony fantano's divorce papers it's pretty ugly i have to say when i saw this story that I was actually proud of Anthony Fantano. I don't know him that well. We've interacted a few times over the DMs, and those DMs have not been leaked.

But they were friendly, and I told them, you know, at one point, I was like, hey, I respect what you do. I mean, you have a huge audience. You know, you're doing your own thing. And I think if you're, you know, we're talking before about, you know, breaking into music writing,

if you want to be music critic, even if you don't like Anthony Fantano, You know, you don't, you think he has bad taste or whatever. You'd be insane not to study him and try to learn something from what he's done, just how he's built an audience, pretty much on his own. So I respect him a lot for that. Even though, like, his style of criticism, it's not really something I'm into. Like, he's basically just like a straightforward, I'm going to tell you what this sounds like,

and then I'm going to tell you whether I like it. And he doesn't really do any of the, like, big picture, subtextual things that print critics like me like to do. You know, just describing what a record sounds like is usually the most boring part of a review for me. But clearly, there's a huge audience for what he does. I think he's really good on camera. He obviously is able to connect with a lot of people.

So I think he's really good at what he does. And he inspires like a lot of negativity. Like in the music critic community. I mean, have you noticed this? I feel like there's like a lot of sour grapes toward this guy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I go back and forth, like you were saying, like sometimes, you know, it's kind of frustrating that just basically saying what the record sounds like, putting a score on it, you know, is the path forward as opposed to what we, what I think we try to do, which is find like kind of a happy medium between like the dialectics of Taylor Swift and YU school of academia and straight up like, this sounds like shoegaze or this. Like, basically. judging albums on how much they sound like

Death Grips. By the way, every single day on Facebook, I get a suggested there's a suggested page like the same picture of Anthony Fontano at a Death Gripps concert. That's all the group does. It posts the same picture and it's done that

for I think 700 consecutive days. But, you know, I respect what he does because he isn't really beholden to any type of publication. or he's really only beholden to himself. And he creates this like gravitational pull that is kind of unmatched in the music critic community. You know, like his say really matters to a lot of people.

And I think that there is a bit of frustration, you know, particularly amongst music critics, that like his style of criticism and his audience, like actually moves the needle in a way that, you know, perhaps Rolling Stone or Spin or Pitchfork might have in an earlier time. Yeah, I mean, I just don't think you should compare yourself to what he does if you are a music writer. You know, he's his own thing. YouTube critics in general are more popular than most print critics. And it's not just Fantano. I mean, there's, and we've talked about this on the show before, but you get into like your Rick Biotto's people like that, you know, who most print critics.

might not even know who that is, but he has... I don't know who that is. He's like this guy, he's like, it looks like he's like in his 50s or 60s who does these videos like where he'll break down various rock songs from a musical perspective. And, you know, his videos will get half a million hits or even like a million hits and he's got a lot of followers.

You know, that's not, I mean, it's a different kind of thing. And when you're on camera, you connect with people in a different kind of way if you're just a byline or even if you're just doing a podcast, getting to the other part of Joe's question where he was asking about our own beefs, I don't know if we want to rehash that. Certainly nothing on the scale of Drake.

I mean, my biggest feud was non-musical Michael Chea taking shots at me. Oh, yeah. Accusing me of molesting dogs and all that stuff. And I won't go deeper into that. Just Google me and dogs and Michael Che. You'll read about that story. But otherwise, in terms of music,

it's like, well, the guy from Ducktails got mad at me once. I think Will Toledo took a shot at me once on Twitter. That sounds about right. I've known people who have been in his crosshairs. Yeah, but I think other than that, I haven't really, certainly not Drake. And again, Fantano, hats off. Because I'm sure that was weird for him, but it's also like amazing for him. I mean, he comes out ahead in that.

Like when you are getting trolled by Drake, I think that's like a huge compliment at the end of the day. Yeah, I always wonder what like people of like Drake level celebrity do with their day. You know what I mean? Like and I, it just fascinates me to think of him, A, like watching the needle drop, which you know what? It's like if he is the most popular music critic on the internet, yeah, that's possible. but like just Drake taking the time to, you know, write that DM. Like, look, this is a guy who probably has to make people in his circle sign NDAs. Like, come on, you know this is going to get leaked, dude.

I don't know. Maybe we're going to find out this was like some sort of thing orchestrated by the two of them. And they're going to like collaborate. Like maybe there's going to be like an Anthony Fontano skit on the next 50 song Drake album. Yeah, that crossed my mind, actually. This might not be for real, but I just like to imagine Drake in his castle in Toronto, powerlifting in a rage while watching Anthony Fantano videos on YouTube. That's the image I have.

That's my workout regimen. Don't get it fucked up. He's just pumping iron and like, what the fuck? I'm going to fucking kill this guy. Why does he sound like a metal head in this scenario? Well, you know, I'm just imagining him lifting like 300 pounds. or something. Because Drake's pretty big now.

It seems like he can lift a lot. That being said, I think Drake's like kind of a guy who just does bicep curls. You know, the whole Curls for Girls thing. Like, he's the guy who skips leg day. Is that a bodybuilding terminal? The curls for girls? Is that like a dis in the bodybuilding community? It really is.

And, you know, I didn't talk directly to the guys in the armed about that, but it did come up in our interview. Yeah, there's a whole thing that you hear in gym culture where, you know, bicep curls, like the one that, like, you just do that, um, where you get like the dumbbells and you lift it up, like, that's not really good. That's like all show muscle. That's not like actual muscle. So hence the phrase curls for girls. By the way, not to go too deep into the gym culture conversation, but did you see that photo going around of the lead singer of Imagine Dragons? Yeah, he looks like Danny Elfman these days. Yeah, he's like Thor. This guy is like ripped. And, uh,

you know, he must have to get ripped because people always make fun of Imagine Dragons. And he's like, you're going to do that to my face? Look at me. I'll, like, destroy you with my thigh muscles. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he straight up, man. Like, I can't, you know what? Like, having an Imagine Dragons feature is definitely the sort of thing the armed would do. Oh, man. Although it would be better if it would the other way around and the armed run and imagine. Dragon's record because that would just blow up the armed. The arm could make it to the Super Bowl if they were on an Imagine Dragon song. So let's build that into existence by talking about it. We are shipping a Drake Anthony Fontano skit and also an Imagine Dragons, the Armed.

Why would we waste our time trying to rename our mailbag? This is the sort of magic we're dedicating ourselves too to Indycast. Well, I was thinking we should try to start a feud with Fantano. That would help our show tremendously. Maybe I can, because, I mean, I don't know him really, but we've DM'd. I think we're friendly. I could be like, hey, can you just make up a feud with us so we can get to like 10,000 followers on Twitter?

I mean, that would be mind-blowing for our show. We'll get the interns on that. Hopefully we can make that happen. Let's get to our list of topics this week. We're going to start by talking about the new album by Philadelphia's own Alex G it's called God Save the Animals and this is somehow his 10th record is that for is that for real so I have been doing an Alex G deep dive uh over the past couple of weeks I have a Alex G albums ranked list that should be publishing either today or on Monday on uprocks dot com and yeah like I this guy has 10 albums that you can

access on band camp some of them haven't some of them haven't some of them are available on band camp but not Spotify, some are on Apple Music. Then there are the singles that you can't really access. So this guy has a lot of music. And just to get just to give you a sense of like how long this guy's been around, um, I think for the most part, people really started paying attention to him on a national level with in 2014 with DSU. Um, and at that point, just to get into some real, remember some guys. Like here are the people. that critics who were just catching up with Alex G compared him to. You know, you have like Mac DeMarco or Ariel Pink, and there's this third guy.

I want to see if you can remember him. He had two albums. You reviewed one of them at Pitchford. I reviewed the other one. This is like real remember some guys type shit. Can you, similar sort of aesthetic. Can you remember who this guy is? Oh, my God.

Jackson Scott. Do you remember Jackson Scott? No, I reviewed a Jackson Scott record. You reviewed the good Jackson Scott album. I reviewed the second one, which was way, way worse. I have no idea. You could read that review to me, and I would not know I wrote it. You could have just quoted that review to me, and I'd be like, oh, wow, that sounds like a pretty great review.

I wonder who wrote that. You wrote that, like 10 years ago. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, he's not even 30 years old yet. He's 29, so he got started. That shocked me, yeah. He has this long career. He is like a wily veteran at this point, but he's still a really young guy. You mentioned that 2014 record, I also feel like him playing on Frank Ocean's blonde really put him on the map. Obviously, he was enough on the map for Frank Ocean to know who he was. But I feel like he got a lot of notoriety for that. And that obviously is one of the great acclaimed albums of like modern times. So that was a huge step up for him. it spoke to, I think, how influential he has been in the world of, I guess, internet indie,

if we want to call it that, or band camp indie. He's an interesting person because there's something about him that on one hand feels very traditional. You know, he does slot in a way as a singer-songwriter in the mold of someone like Elliot Smith, who he has been compared with, who we all know who that is, Jackson, Scott, we might have forgotten that, but we remember Elliot Smith. And there is something similar in the way that Alex G sings when he's in his like normal voice, although he has like a lot of other voice manipulations on his records,

as well as like his melodic sense on the guitar, I think is similar to Elliot Smith. So he has that aspect to what he does. But on the other hand, he is very much a creature of the internet in that you have all this other stuff that is melding with that kind of traditional type of songwriting. It's very modernist the way he combines that kind of music with pop influences, with R&B influences, with like really kind of noisy electronic type influences. And I think it's a really fascinating type of thing.

I'm curious, like, you said you just did this list of all of his albums. How did you feel about him before this latest album? Because I know for me, you know, I've interviewed him, at least once. I interviewed him for the Celebration Rock podcast, RIP. And my impression of him was that, you know, he seems like a nice guy. He didn't seem terribly introspective. He seemed a little bit guarded.

And, you know, you have to be careful making judgments about that because sometimes artists just aren't introspective or open with the media. They might be in their creative life, in the studio. I know he's talked about being. something of a control freak in the studio. So he obviously thinks about his music a lot, but he wasn't really articulating it. There's something very opaque about the nature of his songs, where it's even hard to know what he's singing a lot of the time because of all the voice manipulations. I think I had an impression of him until recently as this guy who makes pretty

music and music I like, but it seems a little empty. Like it's hard for me to access it beyond the surface. Was that your experience as well? What's your journey with Alex been like? So like a lot of the indie music that really excited me in the early 2010s, I heard about Alex G from like I guess non-traditional critical sources like Tumblr, Twitter, band camp comments section. He was kind of emo adjacent at that time being from Philly and having, you know, I believe DSU was reissued on Rump for Cover and he was kind of hanging around the Orchid Tapes crew. and these people, I mean, I can call them kids. You know, they were mostly high school, early 20s, college.

They would compare this guy to Elliot Smith. And, you know, Alex G has said recently he was listening to nothing but Elliot Smith between 15 and 19, which is when he first started making his records. And with that comparison in mind, I was like always underwhelmed by what I heard. Because when I think about like Elliot Smith, at least my experience with him, it's like these very straightforward devastating emotionally raw lyrics and very up front whereas Alex G kind of had more of a like you were saying it almost it reminded me more of like the ween song that sounds the most like Elliot Smith which is baby bitch right and I saw you make

that comparison in the outline and it never occurred to me but that is a I think it's a spot on comparison and I actually did some Google searching Alex G and wean and I think in the fan base anyway, there is like a wean contingent. And they're both from Pennsylvania. So there's that connection as well. But there is something too with Alex G. Like you were saying, you know, comparing him to Elliot Smith, the one area where it gets a little muddled is that Elliot Smith is this, you know, he is the quintessential autobiographical songwriter. You know, like you feel like he's pouring his heart and his anguish out in his songs, whereas Alex G is much more guarded and is, you know, because he's changing his voice all the time,

it is almost like he's singing in the guise of different characters in his songs, which I think is pretty interesting, but it is also like a little distancing at times with his songs. But that's another thing that's like very similar to wean, you know, like where they're always taking different forms and different genres and you can't really pin them down. Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's kind of created a barrier for me with him because, you know, in a lot of ways it is interesting. for him to embody these characters. And he does embody characters on songs. Like, you know, I know that, like, county from Rocket, it's about, like, a guy, a couple guys in jail, some gamblers, like, on Sugarhouse.

And also, it makes him an interesting person to be, like, one of the quintessential artists of his time. Because when you look at other people who have taken a similar trajectory from band camp to being signed to a bigger indie. you know, such as Japanese breakfast or Phoebe Bridgers or Mitzky or car seat headrest for that matter. Their actual personality, like them as human beings, is such a major part of fanhood. And Alex G is, for one thing, like a notoriously hard interview. Like I've heard from multiple sources that this guy's not going to say anything that's really quotable.

And you know what? That was my experience, too. And we were on a podcast, so that made it even harder to do. Which, yeah, and again, like a lot of artists are like that. I think he struck me as guarded, you know, that he didn't really want to talk too much about what he does or his process, which I get. Although, when you're interviewing someone like that, it can be a little bit of a struggle. Yeah. And so, up into, like, I like beach music more than most people, which is really odd because I think that was seen as, like,

someone of a disappointment. That was his domino debut in 2015. But after that point, I really don't think we can underestimate how much that Frank Ocean connection helped this guy out. And I think he was actually on endless. Yeah.

I think he was on blonde too, though. He was? Okay. I thought he was on blonde. Yeah, I was reading about that. That was around the time that I interviewed him, too. I guess we would have been talking about Rocket at that time. It was 2017 record. yeah you know and I like rocket

I like beach music I have to say that for me House of Sugar which was the record he put out in 2020 was the one where it really started to connect with me

and I think I finally got what he was doing that instead of trying to figure out his songs that you really do have to connect with them as a mood

and as a sound like the sound is the point the medium is the message with Alex G. And it's about combining these different elements of, again, a more traditional type of singer-songwriter combined with these more modernist elements of like internet music culture. It really creates this specific kind of melancholy, I think, on his records that is, even if it's not specific to something, it's not specific to like a confessional type song.

It still does, I think, have more of a. an emotional resonance. I think House of Sugar was the record where I felt like, okay, this is more than just like pretty songs. Like, this is moving me

in a particular kind of way. And that leads up to God save the animals, the new record. And I remember DMing with you this week. And I was like, I think this is like actually a great record. And I put a question mark on there.

Because I think that speaks a little bit to my ambivalence about Alex G. Someone who I've enjoyed, but I didn't ever fully get on board with. This is the record, though, think that he's been building up to. I think this is the record where you take his aesthetic, which is very vibey, and you are combining it with like a genuine emotional undertow that does linger

after you, you know, after the record is over. You know, you want to listen to it again and plug back into it. And again, it's like kind of melancholy of just combining like the old world and the new world. The juxtaposition there, it just creates like a feeling for me when I listen to his records, it just registers more for me on the last two. And I think this latest record, it really comes through. I think he's been honing this for a while. And maybe he's perfected it with this record. Yeah. So, you know, my experience with his Domino era albums have been, it sounded like pretty similar to yours in that, like, these were, I really enjoyed them when I first heard them and from that point forward I sort of lost sight of them you know they'd be if I was

driving in the car with my wife and I'm like okay I want to put on something indie but it's something like that won't rock the boat hey Alex G it would be either that or like beach house uh that was kind of the function of Alex G records for me and that I like them but I'd never really develop much of an emotional connection to them and I do realize that part of that is probably a generational thing because you know, by 2009 artists like Grizzly Bear or Beach House, which, you know, themselves aren't particularly emotionally demonstrative bands. Like, those are ones that are just tied up in my memories of coming of age as like an indie consuming person. With this new record, though, I don't know if it's going to, you know, to me, it's not something I'm thinking, oh,

album of the year right here, but I do think it is the best Alex G.E. or if not the best one, the one that really is a culmination of everything he'd been trying to do up to this point. That seems to be the general consensus. It has a wildly high score on Metacritic right now. And the issue I kind of had with his past couple of records were that they had that microcastle type sequencing where it would start out with the singles kind of go into this abstract middle part and then loop back around to a more accessible side B, which to me is interesting, but it feels a bit distracting. Like, I was always hoping for him to kind of consolidate those strengths

and not, you know, make me have to choose between the, quote, experimental ones and the songwriting ones. And every single song on this record to me is engaging in its own way. Like, there aren't as many, I don't want to use the word throwaways or even filler for that matter, but I could envision every one of these songs being a single, for lack of a better term. And it's the most engaging, like, front-to-back listen that I've had with an Alex G record. And I think also that he's tipping a bit more towards having something to really say in these songs. Like, the curious thing about, like, if you listen to his first couple albums, like Race or Winner, for example,

winner's the one that you can't find on streaming, his vocals are very upfront on those albums. And even though like he's, you know, writing lyrics like a 17-year-old, it's kind of strange to hear him front a band as traditionally as that. And now he, I don't want to say he sounds like an old soul because this guy is, he's actually 29 fucking years old. But there seems to be more of a spirituality or a wisdom or like at the very least a desire to be read more literally than he has in the past. But of course in his interviews, he says, you know, don't, you can't take this stuff at face value. I'm not necessarily saying what I mean, but I think he's canny of enough as a songwriter to make it clear that, like, you should be paying attention,

like that you might actually get a sense of like how Alex Gianna Scoli thinks about the world from here, which, you know, is kind of what I've been waiting for since getting into this guy in 2012. Yeah, it'll be curious to see what his 30s look like because, again, he's had a long career already. He has a big body of work. And, you know, this album, you could call it the mature Alex G record.

Although, and again, this is, you know, probably because of my own age, but he still seems like a kid to me. There's something boyish about him. How about how he's always presented himself? I mean, Alex G, it sounds like a kid in your sixth grade class or something. I mean, just the way he refers to himself. So, you know, like the 35-year-old Alex G. Like, what is that record going to sound like? Like, the older guy, Alex G.

I'm very curious to see how that evolves. But I think with this record, it seems like he's transitioning into that. You know, I don't know if I could have bought that a few years ago. But, like, with the last two records, I'm like, okay, I can see him moving, like, you say, to, like, a more emotionally mature place. That'll be interesting to see, like, how that evolves as he enters his old man 30s. Yeah. And the thing, and the thing I like about,

him moving into this more straightforward sort of expressive songwriting is that he's not doing so and like oh I got to make like a raw singer songwriter type album like there's paper pop there's new metal on this it's still quite modernist exactly and I think that's one of the most fascinating things about him is that he can be that singer-songwriter but he's not relying on the familiar singer-songwriter tropes you know and I think that's where he threads the needle as well as anybody. And you can see how he's been influential in that regard. Passively influential. Because what he's doing now, it feels a little more typical in the indie realm, but

like he's the master of it. And I think for his own records, I think he's doing that better on these last two records than he's done in his entire career. So definitely excited about where he's headed. This is a great record. Definitely check it out. With him and always, I almost said it always. With him and always coming back after a couple of years, it's really exciting to hear the masters of a sound that has probably inspired 85% of the music in my inbox that I ignore. And it's a great thing, and it also just shows like how weak a lot of the imitators are.

It's like, oh, man, like, they're just coming back to ruin so many records, you know, like, because you hear what Alex G does on this record. We'll talk about always in a few weeks. And it's like, wow, okay, yeah. The imitators really can't measure up. Let's get to our next topic here. I want to talk to you about a show I saw last night, Ian. I went to see Pavement at St. Paul's Palace Theater.

Packed show, lots of men and flattel shirts, lots of horn-rimmed glasses and beards. I saw a guy in a fish shirt. That was the first thing I saw when I walked in, which I thought was amazing. because pavement on many songs now plays with two drummers. So I think we can officially call them a jam band. That was amazing to see. But now this was such a fun show. This tour, I don't know if you've been following this,

because I know you're a pavement agnostic, and I want to touch on that briefly here in a minute. But this tour's been getting great reviews. Because you go see them on stage. They're very engaged. They seem like a band that has. hasn't taken 12 years off, you know, since their last tour. They're playing songs from throughout the catalog.

They're mixing up the set list every night, like, in pretty radical ways. Like, their set lists are virtually, you know, unalike every night. And it's such a great energy, and it makes me think about the 2010 tour, which I also saw, and the show I saw, I thought was fantastic. But I feel like that tour had kind of a weird reputation because the highest profile shows they did on that tour, were at these big festivals, and there was a show in particular at the Pitchfork Festival, which was not well received. And I feel like that gave that tour kind of a bad reputation,

even though I think once they started playing theaters, they straightened out, and it was really fun. And the show I saw, it really contradicts the image of pavement as this, like, slacker band that doesn't care, because they were powerful. You know, and that was true last night, too when I saw them. This is a powerful band with great songs and there's a

looseness to it, but it's not slack. It is, I mean, they are loose in a tight kind of way. And it made me wish like, man, I hope they can keep this going on a semi-regular basis

because it's so fun to see them. And again, I love the jam band signifiers coming in, seeing the fish crowd come in. Fish covered pavement in the 90s. They played gold sounds. You can look that up online. Pretty good cover. Have you ever seen pavement? I know, because again, I know that you are, you have like a resentment of this band. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if not a resentment of the band, a resentment towards like the music they influenced.

I mean, and maybe this ties back into like our Alex G. conversation where it's a format that is really eat. I talk about this in the Alex G article how like the key to influence in indie rock is to, you know, make people think simultaneously, oh, I can do that and also fuck, how'd they do that? And I think Pavement is a kind of band that is quite easy to emulate, but like hard to pull off the songwriting. And I think just the, uh, the amount of like just really awful music they influence is kind of colored, you know, kind of colored my view of pavement. Also for the fact that, like, pavement is seen as this, like, thing to aspire to. And most of the bands that I like are super try hard. But as far as, like, me seeing them live, I think I saw them live when I was, like,

14 or 15, like, one of the first concerts I ever went to. My brother took me. He bought, it was the Wowie Zowie tour. He got, like, the pavement Istrad T-shirt and got into a fight with his girlfriend. I don't remember much else about it. And I saw them, I think, at Coachella in 2010, maybe. I think, or no, I definitely saw him at Pitchfork Festival in 2010. And yeah, you were right. It was like pretty underwhelming. It reminds me in a way of what it was like to see at the drive-in reform for Coachella and just straight up cashing checks. No one was excited. But when they came back a few years later, it was like, oh, fuck yeah. This is like at the drive-in. drive in fully locked in. I think that it probably took pavement a little while to like get adjusted

to the idea of like playing together and like wanting to do this rather than making it, you know, making a financial decision. And of course I'm going to be interested to see how this plays out when Sunday Day real estate comes back. But it doesn't surprise me that they have such an overlap with jam band, you know, because Steve Malkmus has kind of been like a jam band guy in a solo career, right? Well, yeah. there's a lot of guitar solos with Steve Malcolmus and the Jicks. And, you know, there is like the indie jam community out there.

The people, I guess I would be part of this community who are into the jam band thing, and they also like indie rock. And Stephen Malcolmis, while he has never, like, endorsed really The Grateful Dead or Fish, he does have a similar aesthetic that attracts people to tape his shows. I remember there's this compilation online where it's called Jix Picks. And it's modeled after Dix Picks, the Grateful Dead live music series.

And it's just a compilation of like standout performances from various tours that the Jix did. And it's like over like a 20 year period. I mean, it's a very comprehensive compilation. So there's definitely those people out there that got into Malchmus. I think after pavement broke up. And then there was sort of like a retrospective. thing with pavement with that community that was contextualizing them that way. I think even Malcolm has joked about being a jam band on stage, like with pavement on this tour. I don't think that they're

literally embracing it, but if the dude and the fish shirt shows up at their shows, I'm sure they're happy to take that person's money. So, you know, it's a great thing. But yeah, this is a great tour. And, you know, I'm actually going to see another reunion tour this weekend. I'm going to see the Gaslight Anthem here. And they're playing a much bigger venue, by the way. Just speaks to how big the Gaslight Anthem are. I'm excited to see that show. The last time I saw the Gaslight Anthem was on the 59 sound tour,

and it was one of the loudest shows I've ever been to. So that would be fun. Speaking of Internet beef, yeah, I mean, me and Brian Fallon, like, we hash things out. But yeah, I reviewed their final album Get Hurt in 2014. and I was not kind to it. Yeah. Brian's a nice guy, though.

Brian's a cool dude. I fuck with Brian Fallon. Yeah. Even if you don't like get hurt, you can have no problems with Brian Fallon, the person. Very nice guy. The 50-9 sound fucking rules.

Yeah, exactly. I like the whole catalog. I wrote a weird review of handwritten for Grantland where I was negative about it. And I really like that record now. I think I thought it was like two over the top when it came out,

And now I love that because I think I end up loving these records retrospectively because I wish they were being made now. I wish there was a band that was on a major label, like the Gaslight Anthem, that just made like huge sounding arena rock records. Like you don't really get a whole lot of that now. So I think I took it for granted even 10 years ago, which there weren't a whole lot of records like that even then. We have to get to our next topic here. We have two more topics here. We're going to kind of fly through them a little bit, but we cannot let this episode go by without talking about the news of a new

Smashing Pumpkins record, which dropped this week. And I'm just going to read this thing from Pitchfork because there's a lot to unpack here. And we're going to have to do it fairly quickly, but this is from Pitchfork. The Smashing Pumpkins have announced their new album, Autumn. It's spelled A-T-U-M. Not like Autumn, A-T-U-M. but it's pronounced autumn. A 33 song rock opera in three acts that's billed as the sequel to Melancholy and the Infinite

Sadness and Machina, Machine of God. They had to get Machina in there. I love that they had to get that in there. Just for Billy Corgan's ego. Like, no, that record is as significant as melancholy. We're going to put that in the trilogy here. The new song Beguiled is the first taste from the new album. And it says each act of autumn will be, will be,

released every 11 weeks with Act 1 leading off on November 15th, Act 2 will follow on January 31st and Act 3 on April 21st. And then there'll be a special edition box set featuring all 33 songs plus 10 more songs, which I don't know if that changes the story of the rock opera, by the way. Is this like a like a prequel or a sequel to the sequel? We'll have to find out That comes out April 21st. Now, this is the part, the every 11 weeks thing, okay, you got that part of the album rollout. Now you have this other part of the album rollout where Billy Corrigan, he's announced a new podcast called 33 with William Patrick Corrigan. Each new episode will feature an unreleased Smashing Pumpkin song.

So there's going to be 33 episodes, at least, each one with a new song. So a very slow rollout here for the album. I want to get your take on this. This is like a quick tangent here. But like, have you listened or heard or seen the new Bill Maher podcast? I mean, I'm like debating whether I should be insulted for making, for like implying that I would like watch a Bill Maher podcast. I haven't even heard of this though. Well, okay.

So this comes up in my YouTube. algorithm every now and then. He has a podcast called Club Random. And it's basically, he's in his basement, which is outfitted to look like a bar. And it's him and a celebrity guest. Aaron Rogers was on recently. Oh, God, damn. Oh, there you go.

God damn, can you just, like, torture me more here, please, Aaron Rogers? And it's so clear from the show that Bill Maher wants to be Joe Rogan, because he's, like, smoking weed. throughout the pod. And the thing about the show is that he gets so fucked up so quickly that 20 minutes in, he's like incoherent. You know, it's like crazy. It's like, dude, pace yourself here. You're like, you're going to be falling down before you get to like the Squarespace ad read.

But anyway, it just made me think about Billy Corrigan having a podcast. Billy Corgan was a guest on Joe Rogan show. It's like every guy over the age of 50 wants to be like Joe Rogan now. And now Billy Corgan has this podcast that he's going to be rolling out his album one song at a time on this podcast. Do you know anything about it? Is it like a wrestling show? There's like a wrestling element to it or something? I read a Stereo Gum article about this rollout and one of the commenters apparently had listened to the podcast

and described it as two wrestling announcers stroking this madman's ego as he rambles for a solid hour plus commercials. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's like what, we are two of the only music critics at this point who are engaged with like a new Smashing Pumpkin's record. Like we'll talk about this on our show. We care about it.

But I'm already exhausted by this album rollout. The every 11 weeks thing, it's like, Melancholy, you drop 28 songs on one day. Why can't you just put out a record? I hate these, like, breaking up the album type rollouts. It's like my least favorite way to release a record. And then the podcast thing, it's like, give me a break. I'm not going to listen to Billy Corgan's podcast. I just cannot. There's only so many hours in the day. I just cannot do that. Yeah, I'm like already negotiating hazard pay with Pitchfork when they inevitably make me listen to this fucking thing. I mean, I reviewed

Sear, I guess that's how it's pronounced. It's like, that was the one that came out at the end of 2020. That was 20 songs long. And I say never again. In the same way I have to like preemptively say, no, I'm not going to review this fucking Weezer EP. Like maybe I just need

maybe I just need to like hold that line with smashing pumpkins. I mean what I want out of this, like you know, despite the fact that we're already exhausted, just talking about the rollout, I don't want to listen to the album. I don't want to listen to the podcast. What I really want is a Get Back style documentary about the making of this record.

Oh, yeah. I would just love to watch footage of James Iha, you know, sitting around the studio waiting for, like, Billy Corrigan to, like, overdub all of James' like guitar solos or whatever. And just, because, like, with Get Back, you can, it's, like, worth, like, getting through all the mundanity because you know that some genius is going to arrive. eyes out of this, but what it must be like for Jimmy Chamberlain or Jeff Schroeder, I think the other guy's name is to like... Wow. Wait, you know the hired gun base player's name in Smashing Pumpkins? It's Schroeder.

Something's in there. He's got to be playing bass, though. Or do they have like a female base player to replace Darcy? Because that's something he did. He brought him Melissa Offdumur. Offd Moore, yeah. You know, Offdumor. I think Paz, who plays in the Pixies,

like was in Zwan. By the way, like, of all this fucking effort this guy is doing to make what is essentially like royalty-free smashing pumpkin songs, like he can't sign the fucking paperwork to put Zwan on Spotify. Like, what, that is what the people, Billy, you want, you want the people to love you again. Put Zwan on streaming, man. Like, that's all it could take. He either doesn't like the record or there's some weird record label fight going on. I don't know. We need someone to dig into the Zwan mess. Well, it turns 20 next year, so maybe there's like going to be a 10 LP reissue of it that he's just priming the pump for.

Yeah, well, that's something that's another thing that only we will care about on the show. But we will dutifully cover the Zwan 20th anniversary. You have no doubt about that. We haven't even talked about the song yet, the song that dropped. Did you listen to the song Beguiled? Yeah, it certainly exists. So, I don't know, when I heard this song, the riff, it just made me think of, She Drives Me Crazy by Fine Young Cannibals.

Am I crazy? Am I crazy for thinking this? Like, I heard that, because it, it kind of sounds like that. Yeah, it just sounds. I kept thinking of Fine Young Cannibal. listening to this song. It totally took me out of the experience. I could not focus after that.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it does. Like, there are some songs on the past record that remind me of Thunder Kiss 65. So really what Smashing Pumpkins are doing is like they're just littering these 50-song albums with riffs that I remember from listening to the radio and the school bus or something like that,

which you know what, like, if that's what Billy Corgan is going to do, fine. But I just can't understand. The worst part about this all is that on the last album, Billy Corgan taught himself how to use logic on the, like, he self-taught, like, how to basically produce his own records. And so, I guess similar to Alex G when I listen, like the old Alex G albums, when I listen to news smashing pumpkins albums, I think, like, oh yeah, I know how to get that sound on my computer. Right. Yeah. I don't know, man.

I just like the idea of him recycling, like, old songs. I want him to do a smashing pumpkin song that sounds like Wild Wild West. Or beds are burning, you know, like, all bald guy riffs. Well, do you know, like, Wild Wild West? I'm not talking about the Will Smith one, like, the Escape Club. Escape Club. You better fucking believe I know Wild Wild West. Living in the Wild Wild West.

We are strictly an Escape Club podcast now. That's what we're doing for the people. So we have time, I think, here to talk briefly about the other big alt-rock news of the week, which was Mariah Carey, not normally a topic on this show, but she has found a way into the Indycast universe because, and this has been known for a while, that in the mid-90s, she recorded a grunge album. and it was called Someone's Ugly Daughter And was it under the name Chick? Or was it just... Okay.

And there have been songs from this album that have floated around for a while. Like you can go on YouTube And I think, like the song I heard was called Demented, I believe, is the name of the song? There's Demented and Malibu was the other. Malibu. Was that before the whole song? I think it was.

Yeah. Anyway, this album has always been rumored. I think she talks about it in her 2020 memoir. But now it looks like this album is finally going to come out. The Mariah Carey Grunge album, which is an incredible phrase, by the way. You know, they talk about Cellar. They talk about Cellar Door being one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language. I think Mariah Carey Grunge album is right next to that.

That's true anyway until you actually hear. hear the music? Because like we said, there are some songs that have leaked in the past. And did you get a chance to listen to these songs at all? Yeah, I was surprised that these songs actually exist. And I listened to them. And first off, I think we need to let, you know, as someone who's about to put a book about Pearl Jam out into the world, I think it's, you know, I think it's worth

mentioning this does not sound like grunge at all. No. Yeah. So these are more like... It's kind of like... How would you describe it? It's not really grunge. It's sort of like alt pop with like a sludgy, angry edge.

Like Meredith Brooks. Tracy Bono. Yeah, Tracy Bono. Yeah, not Meredith Brooks. That's a little more slick. This is more like Tracy Bonham, mother, mother type of alt rock. And the... Okay, like, this is some of the worst shit I've ever heard. Like, it's...

I mean, not even so much because, like, the songwriting is like Piss Poor, it is. But when you listen to this music, like, at the very least, it should sound like a major label in the 90s put it out. And the guitars sound like a garage band plug-in, like the mix is, like, extremely off. Uh, the videos look very much in 1995, Buzzbin. I'll give it that. But, um, I mean, to think about, like, Mariah Carey singing these, I don't. don't, it would certainly make them more interesting. It wouldn't make them particularly good.

And you know what? Like if this music was really meant to be out there in the world, like, you were talking about a time when albums could go like platinum for no reason whatsoever. And this stuff was buried. So, I mean. Yeah, I wish this was like a Chris Gaines album that came out in 95. Like if there was, like when Moray Carey was at the height of her, you know,

pop career at that point. If she had pulled a Chris Gaines and put out Chick, that would have been interesting. I do wonder, because I agree that the mix sounds like crap. If this album is released, I assume it'll have a better mix. Like, it'll sound a little slicker. I mean, I like the idea of Mariah Carey making like a garbage record. Like that kind of record, like where maybe she's singing like in a lower register and it's this kind of industrial pop type thing.

or singing like only happy when it rains, like a song like that or stupid girl. That would actually be kind of cool, because she's obviously a great singer and you put her in that context, it could be good, but you're right, this just sounds like,

you know, like a no-brainer parody of that kind of music. But I don't know. I mean, I would be curious to hear her talk about this. I wonder, like, to what degree this was like a genuine direction for her. If this was something she felt really connected to,

or if this was like something she did for fun in the studio as a goof. You know, like, I'm not really clear on that whole thing. Or whether it's like, you know, the version of nowadays, like every pop star saying, oh, I'm going to make a pop punk record. You know what I mean? Right, right. I mean, it does go to show that something like this is probably better as an idea than as a,

a reality. Like to say like, oh, Mariah Carey made a grunge record and now you can just imagine what it sounds like, that's probably where this should stay. You know, where it's like a, it's a thought exercise for people that you could talk about at a bar or at parties and it's a fun thing. When it actually exists, it probably becomes like a lot less appealing. Yeah. Also, I just wonder if like you have a vote. vocalist like Mariah Carey, can you even be Grunge at that point? Well, you know, Chris Cornell is like the Mariah Carey of Grunge. You know, he had an incredible set of pipes.

He could hit the high notes. So, and then Chris Cornell, you know, he made his Timbaland record. Yes. Oh. So, you know, we're just crossing the streams right here. There it is. We've not reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week.

Ian, why don't you go first? So, you know, we like to give a peek behind the critical curtain here every now and again. And I'll just admit that there are certain bands that I name drop in reviews as reference points, despite the fact I've never actually listened to their music. And because I cover, you know, a decent amount of, like, what you might call post metal or sludge metal or what have you, I've done that with the band Isis. Like, you know, it's an unfortunate name. they existed from 1997 to 2010, a Boston band, which is largely credited with taking metal into more kind of

atmospheric and ambient sounds. And up until last week, I had never actually sat down and listened to one of their records. I just figured, oh, this is probably like Russian circles or something like that. Sounds good, but like I get the idea. And then I read a review about their 20th anniversary. of Oceanic, which is generally considered to be their best record. It's the one that has five stars on AllMusic Guide. And it described that their most well-known song, Wait, is 10 Minutes, and it has no vocals except for this female artist who was in an emo band in Boston, which, like, wait a minute, that's not what I expected.

And, yeah, having listened to Oceanic now, I'm thinking, like, where the fuck has this been all my life? I mean, it's been right out there in the open, but it's just a good reminder that, like, you know, old music still exists. And that, yeah, Ocean, if you like any of the bands that, you know, put out records like Holy Fawn or Russian Circles or Caspian for that matter, if you want to figure out, like, where, and also like, deaf tones are highly inspired by this. If you want to, like, figure out, like, where they get these ideas from, Oceanic is the Alman. to do it and start with weight. I guarantee if you like most of the stuff I talk about on here, this song will do it for you.

Didn't Chino Moreno make a record with a guy from ISIS? I remember that record, Palms. Palms, I reviewed that album. Yeah, that's a good record. And I think there's a guy from OSCEA, from ISIS, the band, not ISIS, the other people. I think he collaborated with someone from ISIS on that record. I could be wrong, though.

But if you didn't collaborate with ISIS, he's definitely inspired by ISIS, the band. But yeah, Oceanic, I will second that recommendation. I like that album a lot. When you were talking, it made me think about that band Cloak Room. I feel Cloak Room probably listens to Isis, the band. I definitely hear some shades of them in that band. I want to talk about a band from New York called Elkhorn,

and I'm just going to read the band camp description of this group, because they put it about as well as I could. It's a guitar duo featuring Jesse Shepard on 12-string acoustic and Dave Gardner on electric, interweaving the extended folk tradition with psychedelic improvisation, moving freely from pre-rock to post-rock and beyond. And that's a great way to put it. I feel like on a lot of the records that I've heard by Elkhorn, that it does fall in that pre-rock tradition, I guess like a John Fahey, instrumental Americana type sound. and I like a lot of records like that, although, you know, and I've talked about this before with instrumental guitar music, sometimes it can be a little in one year and out the other. It sounds more like playing than full-fledged songs.

Their new record, though, it's called Distances, and this is my favorite thing that I've heard from this group. And I think the difference this time with this record is that they use two drummers on this album. And I brought up two drummers earlier with Pavement, and that being a signifier of jam bands. I would say in the case of Elkhorn, it just makes them sound more like a band. And it makes the songs, which again are still instrumental, just makes them sound more epic. And I would say, too, that this record probably leans a little bit more on the electric side than other Elkhorn records that I've heard, which again, I think kind of gives that feel of, it's not quite rock and roll, it's not quite post-rock, and it's not quite pre-rock.

It's somewhere in between those different areas. but this is a record I've been listening to a lot this week. I have to give a shout out to Tyler Wilcox, a writer at Aquarium Drunker, the great music blog. He was talking up this record this week, and he inspired me to give it a shot. And along with the Alex G record, this was my most listened to album of the week.

So definitely check it out. Go on band camp. Look up Elkhorn. Elk-H-O-R-N. The album is called Distances. I think you'll really like it. Between the two drummers and talking about ISIS, I think we're like trying to conjure a Kylieisa reunion.

Shout to that band. That band fucking ruled. Yeah, that's another early 2010's favorite. I'm going to go listen to Jackson Scott after this. I want to, I mean, I gave it a positive review. I'm sure I was right back then. That's probably a good record. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indycast.

we'll be back with more news and reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix tape 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.