Indiecast - Let's Induct Six More Albums Into The Indiecast Hall Of Fame

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Steven and Ian start off by looking at the recently announced lineup for the annual Chicago punk festival Riot Fest, which includes a surprising addition: The Beach Boys [0:00]. Then they talk about deeply divided opinions in the mailbag about the semi-regular Sportscast segment — some of you hate it, some of you love it. Either way, Sportscast will continue. [11:34]For the Fantasy Albums Draft update, they check back with Tunde Adebimpe and look at the latest LP by guitarist William Tyler [17:17]. Finally, Steven and Ian both induct three albums each into the Indiecast Hall Of Fame [20:04].In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks up emo band Key Vs. Locket and Steven goes for the singer-songwriter Jerry David DeCicca [55:31].New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 236 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 Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast on the show we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we induct six new albums into the Indycast Hall of Fame. Wow, it's been a while since we've done that. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He can't wait to see The Beach Boys at Riot Fest. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

You see, those poster makers knew exactly. what they were doing by putting Beach Boys right next to Knocked Loose. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Real Heads No in 2021, Knocked Loose made a EP called Terror in the Fabric of Life that sampled God Only Knows probably because they're like, yeah, Brian Wilson's never going to hear it. It's actually after a car crash and like that song plays on the radio. They figured if like Brian Wilson actually heard Knock Luce's brain would explode and

like they wouldn't have to worry about anyone suing them. but they apparently took it down from Spotify, removed the sample, put it back up. So Brian Garris, Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson, work it out on the remix. So if you haven't seen it, Riot Fest, the big punk festival in Chicago, they released their lineup this week.

They have the poster out. They're going on social media, trying to get pre-sales. And you look at the top line of this poster, pretty predictable. You got Blink 182, Weezer, and Gras. Green Day, pretty chalk. Second line, you've got the sex pistols with Frank Carter, not Frank Turner.

Yes. We've made this mistake in the past. I just want to clarify, not the folk punk Frank Turner, but some guy named Frank Carter, who I'm afraid I don't know who that is. Jack White and idols, idols are like the Muppet Babies on this lineup. They're like the kids. Third line, you have alkaline trio, yes, you expect them to be here. All time low, yes.

The Riloh-Kiley reunion. Yeah, you'd expect it to be at Riot Fest. Knock loose, as you said. And then the Beach Boys at the end of line three. And, you know, I can make a music critic argument for including the Beach Boys at a punk rock festival. I think Mike Love, as a vocalist, actually invented the pop punk. vocal style. You have Mike Love. Just compare Mike Love to Julia Ramon. A lot of similarities there. And then Julia Ramon, of course, that gets filtered down to millions of other bands after him.

But just like that sound of a grown man trying to sound like a teenager, you know, like Mike Love, like he pioneered that. So Mike Love, he's going to be at Riot Fest. Just looking at the fourth line here, job. Breaker, drop kick murpies, bad religion, the Pogues, who I didn't know they were still touring. I guess Shane McGowan hasn't been in the band for a while. I think he's also dead. That's what I was going to say. That's why I was surprised to see them on the bill because Shane McGowan passed away. But I think he's been out of the band.

He was out of the band before he died. One of the people you can convincingly do a weekend of Bernie's with. That was like his whole deal that he looked like 40 years older than he really is at all time. I think he was like a reverse weekend at Bernie's though, like where he actually was alive, but he looked dead for a long time. R.I.P. Shane McGowan, great songwriter. No disrespect to him. But yeah, the Beach Boys at Riot Fest, Mike Love, who I'm not going to look this up.

I'm guessing he is 114 years old. And he got Bruce Johnson, I think, is still in the band. Those are the only two guys, I believe, who are still in the Beach Boys. I'm not going to fact check of Johnson. is, I'm pretty sure he's still in. Jardine, though, is long gone. Brian Wilson, unfortunately, is, he's, he's been ill for a while now. I don't think he's touring at all. I mean, he's not in great shape, sadly, one of the great artists of the 20th century, in my opinion. But yeah, I mean, you got weird Al Yankovic, too, is also on the bill. I didn't mention him. He's a big deal.

Ride Fest, I mean, I don't think it's new this year. I mean, they're clearly targeted at like the 50-year-old Facebook user who's like a punk rock. Like, you know, like the punk rock Facebook person. Yes. And you see this on other social media platforms too, but like the 50-year-old punk rock person who's like, you know, loves punk and hates all music released after what, like 1991, 19. Yeah, they're like the people who thought the Green Day Bill Ward had some good points. Like it's, I mean, right, yeah, exactly. It's like, you don't want to get this person started on rap music.

You know, every now and then this person's going to get a Facebook post on rap music. They're going to give it a shot. I've given it a chance for like the 50th time. And let me just say, you know, you don't get crap without rap. You know, that's what I about, you know, yeah, that guy. that seems like the demographic for Riot Fest at this point. Yeah. And I mean,

you earn respect from us as a festival by knowing thyself. And this is like Riot Fest more than ever is cornering the market on a type of guy. I can't, I mean, I wasn't sure how to define said type of guy, but like Facebook 50 year old punk guy is absolutely that. I mean, going,

they've also got in that punk rock bowling sort of, uh, sort of genre with like, you know, the povs, drop kick Murphys and also bad religions on there. I mean, also with those bands on, what could social distortion possibly have better to do than be on Riot Fest?

I assume, it's going to say like the misfits aren't, like I know they play Coachella. Maybe there's like some sort of deal with that. But yeah, if I don't see the misfits, like the misfits are absolutely this type of band to play Riot Fest at all times. Like, if I don't see the misfits or taking back Sunday on the Riot Fest poster, I'm assuming it's a fake. Yeah, Mike Ness, I don't, yeah, there must be some feud going on with Riot Fest that he's not booked.

I feel like that just got to be like a legacy booking every year. You got to have Social D on the bill somewhere. I was just looking at the line below Weird Al Yankovic on the poster. This is a pretty chaotic lineup of bands. You have Hansen. Okay. You have the Bouncing Souls. Of course.

You have the Damned. Yeah. They just had a member pass away. I'm trying to remember who in the Dam just passed away. Maybe I can Google that here in a second. You have Inhaler, which is the band. That's Bono's son. He fronts that band.

Rico Nasty and then Screeching Weasel, which is the Chicago punk legacy band. Do you think people are giving Bono's son crap backstage at Ride Fest? Do you think people are trying to bait him by disparaging you two? Or are they pretty cool to inhaler? They probably don't even know that he's Bono's son because they haven't listened to any bands from like the last 20 years. Yeah, unless he, like, is wearing a t-shirt

that says Bono's son, they aren't going to know who this guy is. And frankly, if, like, I saw, you know, Bono Inhaler walking down the street, I probably wouldn't know who he is either, unless he's, like, doing the Wu Life thing where he's wearing his own jacket to the festival. Brian James, the founding guitar player of the dam, passed away in March.

That's the name I was trying to think of. So he will not be at Riot Fest. But whoever is in the Damned will be at Riot Fest. And like, look, I mean, we're making some jokes here. But it's not like we're that far removed. No. You and I from this demographic. So, I mean, it'd be a good time.

And we've talked many times on this show about how, if you're going to a festival, this is the kind of lineup you want. Like you do want bands that you're familiar with. Because like a festival setting, it's not ideal for actually listening to music. So if it's a band that you're maybe just getting into or you haven't heard much before, a festival, there is the benefit of just stumbling into a set. And maybe you didn't know this band beforehand and then you get to see them in a festival. So it can be good for discovery.

you know, maybe you're going to be at this festival and you're like, who are the beach boys? And then you wonder, like, wow, these old guys, they know how to rock. But I think at a festival, you know, it's a party atmosphere. You kind of want, you know, Weezer and you want Weird Al and you want the Beach Boys and that whole thing. So I'm sure it'll be a good time. Yeah, I can't wait to see who's going to show up to see Sparks. What did they? Sparks is on the bill.

Yeah, Sparks. And I don't know, maybe. People are thinking it's the legendary energy drink that fueled my Pitchfork Fest 2008. No, it's the great pop rock band. The great pop rock band originated in the 70s. Two dudes. It was a documentary Edgar Wright made about them recently. I'm a Sparks fan.

They're a really good band. Yeah, but yeah, so you're questioning whether the Sparks fan will want to go to Riot Fest to see them. Well, they're an old band. So I figure maybe there's just some sort of convergence on, you know, people who like the dam and also sparks. I think there may be, I think there's maybe some sort of crossover there. I just thought it was like, just really bizarre to see him like that low. Also, James, like how many times they got to play Laid, man? Well, one thing I thought was cool was at the very bottom of the poster. The very last name on the poster is the great comedian Emo Phillips. Hell yeah. Which you would think,

because Ride Fest punk festival, but also an Emo festival in many ways, but they're putting emo literally last on the bill. Where are the priorities here at Riot Fest? Yeah, I think actually, like, Riot Fest is, it's a little emo adjacent, but it's definitely the sort of people who think like emo is super wussy and not real music. I mean, Texas is the reason is playing there. That's super cool. But, like, that you're going to see more of the kind of meat and potatoes punk, less so

bands who fit within the, you know, emo revival, unless they're from Chicago. So, yeah. But I respect it. Again, I love, I love a coherent festival. So are you going to go to Riot Fest, you know, as research for your book about Midwest Emo? You're going to cover this? You're going to write about the year that the Beach Boys played the Riot Fest.

Maybe that can be the last chapter of your book. Yeah, it's my full circle moment, you know, that's what it's going to do. I'm going to, I'm skipping best friends forever. I'm going to Riot Fest, you know, out with braid and with alkaline trio. We have to get to our Indicats Hall of Fame here. I don't want to kill too much time before we get to that. But there are two other orders of business that we have to get to first. The first thing, this is going to be like a mini mailbag because I thought it was funny this week.

Getting feedback about sportscast. We haven't done sportscast in a while. There was a little bit of a break after the NFL season ended. And then I was like, maybe we should talk about the NBA playoffs. So that broke the dry spell of sportscast. And sportscasts easily the most divisive thing we do on this show. Some people love it, some people hate it. Just want to be clear that we're going to do it regardless.

Doesn't matter how much people complain. Because we're not the kind of band here that caves to public outcry. We're not thinking about the short-term reaction. We're thinking legacy. We're thinking long-term. We're thinking, what's going to be influential in 20 years when people start their own podcast and they're looking to the past, who they're going to be influenced by? That's who we're thinking of, the long game here, because all great bands do that.

You only care about the long game. You don't care about, you know, they're booing you here at this particular performance. You're thinking about the documentary that they're going to make about that, how you were booed and you stood your ground. So we're not going to ever cave on sport. Right. Am I okay in speaking? or do you disagree with that?

No, I'm at, like, I've read, and as the day we record is the NFL draft, and I have read approximately 50 hours of NFL draft previews, it is like my kind of stimming thing. Like if I don't know what to do with my brain for like five minutes, I'll just check the latest mock draft. So it's got to go somewhere. Yeah, and we're not even going to talk about the NFL draft, even though it's in Green Bay.

So that's totally in our wheel. house. I mean, it'd be, you know, you've ingested all this material. It's in my backyard where I grew up. We're not going to talk about that. I want to talk about, these are two emails we got this week, consecutive emails in the mailbag, okay? Could not have been set up any better. The first email is from Chrissy in Florida, and I'm going to read most of this. This is a little bit long, just for the sake of time. But Chrissy says, guys, I'm a big fan of Indycast and have been listening for a long time now. And I'm sorry to say this, but I'm really sick of the sports cast segment for a while. I would kind of tune it out for a few minutes rather than skipping it because I'm usually doing

something else while listening. But then I tuned in and I saw the Coachella was a topic of the episode and I was excited to hear your take. And I was enjoying the Bonnie Bear banter and the revisit of the arcade fire discussion. And then bam, time for sportscast. And I instantly wanted to slam my AirPods to the ground. Instead, I stopped folding my laundry, grab my phone, and hit the 30 second skip about five or six times. Still in sportscast. Another five or six skips.

Nope, not done. Finally, 20 skips later. And I'm sure you've moved on, but my annoyance has not subsided. Just a quick pause here. I think Ian Grant, our editor, I think he timestamps our conversations. I don't know if it's. So if you look at. the description of the episode, it will tell you when sports cast is done. So you don't have to

wear out the skip button. Just throwing that out there. I know you enjoy talking about sports, and I would not want to take away your joy, but I would like to humbly and grumpily request that you move sports cast to the end after recommendation corner. Then I can enjoy Indiecasts all the way through without annoying sports interruptions. That's not a bad idea. But I don't think we're going to do that. That seems like a little too much work. So we're not going to move it. But I hear you, Chrissy. So Chrissy, she is voicing her annoyance over SportsCast.

I respect her opinion. Then the very next email in our mailbox comes from Mason. And the subject line was SportsCast. Keep it going, lads. Don't listen to the naysayers. Bright eyes, full hearts, can't lose, love Mason. Okay. I do want to point out, I want to point out one.

thing because in the email it spells hearts in all caps H-A-E-R-T-S which leads me to believe that Mason is referring to the indie pop band of the mid-2000s that I reviewed so that's a deep cut if true. Damn, Mason you're really bringing out the Easter eggs in this email. So I just thought that was funny. It was as if Mason knew that Chrissy was in the mailbox and he was responding to it Although there's no way he could have possibly known that.

So anyway, just throwing this out there, just wanted to reveal the audience the conflicting feedback we get about this segment. Some people love it. Some people hate it. We're going to do it regardless. This is our Dylan Goes Electric moment. Yeah. In conclusion, our mailbag is a land of contrast.

It is. It is. So, you know, Chrissy, I'm sorry. I understand your plight. I would just say, look at the episode description. I do believe that each segment is time stamped so you can skip a head. head before you get going in on the laundry. I know when you're folding laundry, there's a rhythm to it.

You don't like to be broken out of the rhythm. So maybe just check the description, skip ahead, and then you should be all good with Indycast. Yeah, or maybe Ian can break it down a little more so that maybe you're into sportscast, but less so about like the Packers and maybe more into baseball. So we're like 80% though of sportscast. You're not into the Packers. You might as well to skip that segment all together. Let's do a quick fantasy album draft update.

They're both concerning albums on my team. We talked a little bit about the new album from TV on the radio's Tunei Adideideide Adidepe that came out last week. The album title is escaping me at the moment. I'm going to do a quick Google search. The Black Boltz is the name of the record. And I think last week it was like at a mid-70s score. and now it's at 80.

So that's good for me. I predicted that. I figured, you know, the American critics would come through for me. That's the minimum of what I need that album to do, but I'm glad it's not in the 70s. So that's good for me.

And then the album that's out today is the latest from guitarist William Tyler, his record Time Indefinite is out. And that has an 88 from Metacritic at the moment. I'm not going to get cocky about that because there's four reviews. and two are from Uncut and Mojo, which are like, you know, William Tyler base. That is the base.

It's like basing election returns on like Newsmax and Fox News if you're Donald Trump. And I'm sure William Tyler does not appreciate that comparison. But I'm just saying those are those people, those publications love William Tyler. I would expect that score to come down a little bit as the American reviews come in. But as we have always said on the show, when you pick someone, someone like a William Tyler, you're banking on the one William Tyler fan in the freelancer pool to review the record, and it's likely that that person's going to like the record. So that's what I'm banking on.

So I'm thinking that's going to be like a mid-80s for me. I'm confident in like an 84-85 from William Tyler at this point. Yeah, totally. But I do like, I like William Tyler. Seems like a good dude as well, so I'm not like wishing for this. but I kind of want the one guy who would review a William Tyler record to be like, yeah, this is garbage. This is garbage instrumental haterism on music that just seems impossible to hate just for the love of the sport. Yeah, no chance that happens.

No. Unless, you know, William Tyler signs like with Interscope and is doing, you know, Addison Ray guest shots. If that happens like in the next week, maybe there can be some sort of backlash. against William Tyler. I don't see that happening. Yeah. I just remember, I remember one time I saw someone like go off on Juliana Barwick,

which is like kind of like the William Tyler of I guess like kind of like post group or ambient music. Like that's what I'm looking for. Yeah. Yeah, it could happen. Could happen. You never know. Okay. So we got those orders of business out of the way.

We could now finally get to the Indycast Hall of Fame. Ian and I, we do this. Well, we used to do it a lot more often. We have not done an Indycast Hall of Fame episode since, is it 2023? Yeah, November 20203. I thought that was like an error because like we keep an updated spreadsheet. No, not since November of 2023. That's how good we've gotten at banter and sports cast.

No, no thanks to you, Chrissy. No, I'm kidding. Well, is it because we're so good at banter or is it because that records of the past just haven't been very good until now. Like, have there just not been any qualified candidates for the Indycast Hall of Fame until just this very moment when we coincidentally also needed content during a slow week. Yeah, we were like the opposite of Riot Fest. We thought like no good music existed before 1991.

Right, exactly. But no, we're ready to go. I think we normally do two records each in the IndyCats Hall of Fame. We're going to do three each just because it's been so long. And we haven't contacted any of these bands, so they don't know that they're about to be inducted. They don't know that their lives are about to be changed by what we're going to announce in this episode. Do we have any kind of like special jacket for the Indycast Hall of Fame? It's a CD long box.

That's what it is. But, you know, there needs that, you know, because there's like the gold jacket. Is it a gold jacket at the master? It's a green jacket. At the Masters, I think there's a gold jacket for one of the Hall of Fame. I think maybe the NFL Hall of Fame. Yeah, the NFL has like a blazer. You get a blazer.

So we need some sort of, I don't know if there's any tailors in the audience that listen to the show, but if you can maybe get in touch with us right to the mailbag, Indycastmailbag at gmail.com, maybe we can get a conversation going about shipping out some blazers out to the winners here. But let's get to the induction here. Like I said, we both picked three records each. You actually told me your three records. I didn't tell you my three records. I wanted to make it a surprise for you.

Did you tell me because you thought I might pick one of your records? I don't feel like there's ever that danger with us. Although I did look at the Google spreadsheet, and there were records that I didn't remember whether you picked them or I picked them. Same. That's why I did that because I'm like, oh, what? I'm pretty sure that was me during Grantley Buffalo, but like, can I really? Yeah, that was you.

I could have done that, but though that was you. I write your rules. And I think you did the stills logic will break your heart, but I could have done that. There's absolutely no shot that anyone does the stills other than me. I'm like what Woo Life is. I'm like twice that for the stills. So, well, let's get to our first round of records here. Do you want to go first?

Yeah, so this one's a little bit timely. I believe it was last week or two weeks ago. Roy Thomas Baker passed away. He produced Bohemian Rhapsody. Also just really innovative use of glasses. All of his pictures just have him wearing like just wild like silk the shocker type glasses. But he did that. He did the car self-titled.

Did a couple of Journey albums. And the real heads though, he also did Local H's album from 19. 1998 called Pack Up the Cats. So this is one I've talked about on Twitter a lot. Local H, if you know them, you probably know their hit single, Bound for the Floor, also known as the Copacetic song. For the most part, they were seen as like a one-hit wonder in the mid-90s, maybe something along the lines of like better than Ezra or like Sponge or something like that.

But in 98, they come up with this concept record, just about this clueless rock guy. and all of his dumb handlers and just like music industry bullshit. And so it was kind of like a meta-narrative because they had a gold record and were these kind of bozos from Zion, Illinois, who got famous all of a sudden. And it's a really cool situation where a band that is, you know, previously viewed as a one-hit wonder starts to get serious and like critics start to take them seriously. And they also got Roy Thomas Baker to produce this album like a Mountainside studio. I interviewed Local H in 2018 for StereoGum. Great interview. Alt rock guys from the 90s, easily the best interviews.

But what makes this album really cool is that it's about just kind of flaming out in the industry. And about a couple weeks after it came out and their single, all the kids are right came out. Island, the record label, merged with Universal. And that was just an extinction level event for pretty much all non-A list rock band. which Local H is one of them. So the album just completely dies after that and becomes kind of a cult classic, a kind of meta-narrative about flaming out in the music industry, and then that actually happened to them. And you can hear the influence of local H.O. bands like Drug Church or Military Gun.

So it holds up really well. It's funny. It rocks. It's catchy. And it's just one of those kind of like Pinkerton or Jimmy World Clarity type albums that become a cult classic because it commercially failed. So yeah, it's timely and it's timeless, Local H. So I have not really listened to much Local H at all. Like that one hit song that they have is the only song I know, and I love that song. Yeah. One of the great late 90s, one hit wonder

songs. Or is that more mid-90s? It's mid-90s. Their second biggest hit is a cover of TV on the radio is Wolf Like Me. Um, but, uh, this is a good inspiration for me to dig further because they always seemed like a band that was smarter than their image maybe or smarter than their level of success. It seemed like there was always other layers to what they did that maybe weren't apparent and like their one hit song. So definitely want to dig in deeper and I think that's the record maybe I should start with. My first record I'm going to talk about two of the records I picked are by bands that have at least one other album that's considered like their great album

and it's the album that overshadows a lot of the rest of the catalog so I wanted to talk about deeper records in each respective bands catalog that I think have been overlooked and the first artist and record I think this is especially true for and the artist or the band is Sunbolt and if you know anything about Sunbolt you know about their first record trace, which is considered a classic of Alt Country.

I would call it the high watermark of Alt Country, certainly 90s Old Country. And then there's no other records by Sun Bowl that anyone ever talks about. So I want to talk about their third record, which came out in 1998. It's called Wide Swing Tremolo is the name. And maybe one reason why it hasn't been as exposed is that the album title is a little awkward to say, especially if you're talking about it on a podcast. But Sunbolt to me is a band that is newly relevant right now because I feel like I'm hearing a lot of bands that remind me of Sunbolt. But the interesting thing about that is I don't think that these bands are actually listening

to Sunbolt. What I think they're doing is they're listening to Dinosaur Jr. or bands of that ilk, like 80s, heavy guitar, indie rock bands. and also folk and country music and combining them together in much the same way that J. Farrar did when he started out with Uncle Tupelo and then moved on to Sunbolt. So they're ending up with like a Sunbolt like stew, but they're not actually listening to Sunbolt, which I think is very interesting.

Because I would say that is true, certainly of my man, M.J. Lenderman, but also just the other artist in his orbit, in that North Carolina scene, Fust is a band that I've talked about on this show. I hear Sunbolt and their music, although again, I don't get the sense that Aaron Dowdy, the singer-songwriter of that band,

actually listens to Sunbolt. And I'm trying to rectify this a little bit, because I think Sunbolt is a really great band. They're a band that I think, one, is overshadowed, obviously, by Wilco. You know, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar being both in Uncle Tupelo, and then Jeff Tweedy going off and having this great career with Wilco, go, Wilco a much different band than Sunvold, a much more dynamic band going off in different

directions. Whereas Jay Ferrar, his blessing and his curse is that he has the perfect alt-country voice. Like, it's designed perfectly for that kind of music. And it just, in a way, puts them in this lane that is hard to break out of. And I think the criticisms of the records that came after Trace is that they basically just sound like Trace, but like a lesser version of that. You know, there's not a whole lot of stylistic change that happens on Sun Vault Records. I would make the case possibly that their third record, White Swing Tremolo, is a little more experimental, maybe, a little noisier, but like, not really. It's basically alt-country songs, a lot of sort of mid-tempo songs, a lot of Jay-Ferrard.

in my view singing beautifully, but if you're not a fan, it might just sound like he's sort of moaning through a lot of these songs. But if you like Alt Country, or if you think you don't like Alt Country, but you like a lot of bands now that are drawing from that sound, perhaps unknowingly, because I do think Alt Country, it did get a bad name. Like, no one uses that term anymore, but there's tons of bands that are clearly making that kind of music, no matter what you want to call it now, whether you want to call it Heartland Rock or Americana, whatever name. It's Alt Country, essentially.

And Sunvol to me makes that music as well as anyone. Jay Farrar, to me, is the king of Alt Country. He still is, he has the greatest voice for that. You know, Moonshiner, Uncle Tupelo, the greatest Alt Country vocal ever made. by anyone. He's the George Jones of the genre. Don't talk to me about Grand Parsons. He did something different. He was combining

L.A. hippie rock with country music. It's a very different thing from what was going on in the 80s where you had guys that like the Minutemen and Dinosaur Jr. making country music. It's a very different dynamic. But I would say if you want to get into Sunbolt and get beyond trace, White Swing Tremela

would be the record I would recommend as your next Sunbolt album. Straightaway's is good too. That's the second record. But I like the third record more a little bit. I think it's a little more dynamic than straightaways. One thing I got to ask you about with widespring tremolo is I'm looking at the album cover. So I was an all-country guy. I still am.

And I do think it's a good point that a lot of contemporary bands are like accidentally getting to that sound. I'm looking at the cover. It's got a little bit more color than the previous ones. Is this like in that sort of subgenre of the Jayhawk smile or Whiskeytown pneumonia? No. There's no strings or horn sections or anything like that. Yeah, All Country got super into the Beach Boys. And of course, for better or worse, like Summer Teeth kind of just absolutely destroyed that entire genre.

Yeah, and like, yeah, I feel like all of the All Country guys felt like they had to prove that they could make their own summer teeth or make their own sort of experimental pop record. Farrar never did that. Farrar stayed true to this sound that I think in the most. moment people thought like it was very narrow and he's just making records that sound alike all the time but I do think that bands like that when you look back on their catalog what maybe sounded samey in the moment actually actually sounds like a you know like an autourist touch you know it's like oh yeah this they have a personality that's consistent and I think that actually ages pretty well over time even if in the moment people might not get it so I actually like quite a few Sunvolt records

I think J. Farrar, again, because of the Tweedy comparisons, I feel like he has been kind of shunted off to the side. And he should only be really kind of compared in that alt-country lane. Like, that is where he operates. And I really think that he is one of the giants of that, like indisputably. And he should be looked at as such. All right. Well, let's get to our second round here. What is your next inductee into the Indycast?

Hall of Fame. Before I announced the record, I just want to go, allow me a little bit of a rant. So, I mean, this is no fault of, like, stereo gum or any of the other places to just have to, like, post what songs come in. But modern shoegaze, whether you call it heavy shoegaze or whatever, like sometimes, like, it's always at like three or four o'clock, my time, you know, at the end of the day, the kind of the news dump in. It'll be like, you know, shoe gaze band called Swoon drops their news.

single called Dive. It's just like a complete lack of creativity going into the band names and album titles. And so what happened a few days ago? And like, look, no disrespect to the band. The song could be great. But I saw L.A. Shugay's band called Luster drops their new single Sunday. And, you know, I've got some beef with Shugays nowadays. I feel like in a lot of ways it feels kind of creatively, if not creatively bankrupt. Just so many bands making a quick buck and not doing anything remotely interesting. And so I'm, I'm hoping that maybe Shugay's band start looking less at the same old influences and maybe look towards what I think is a phenomenal example of a Shugays album

from a band that doesn't really make Shoe Gays, which is Blonde Redheads 23. As a matter of fact, I don't even know if like this album is a Shugays album. The first song, the title track is absolutely a Shugay's song. It's got that Alan Mulder production. It sounds like a bullet train. It's like basically my Bloody Valentine's soon, but cleaned up and turned into a 90s old rock song, except it's released in 2007. And this is an interesting album because it's one of those situations where there's a band

that's critically acclaimed. They have a deep catalog really well respected. They actually played Coachella just this year. But I like kind of one of the albums. way, way, way more than others, and it's the outlier. Because Blonde Redhead was known, I know this is reductive, but they were kind of seen as like a junior Sonic Youth. You know, they were from New York.

They just always look cool. They still look extremely cool. But 23 is kind of their, I don't want to say sellout album, but if you heard it distinct from their other records, you would think, oh yeah, they're trying to make a pop album here. It has the title track, which is one of the best shoecase songs in the past 25 years. But, you know, also doing like dream pop, like kind of 90s trip hop and dead at alt rock. A solid album front to back, amazing production.

And I also want to bring them up because they are, they're joining Block Party on this tour that was supposed to have metric. But apparently Metric and Block Party have beef with each other that they're not talking about. so Blonde Redhead was put on the bill instead. And a lot of people are like, yeah, much better to have Blonde Redhead. Blond Redhead is probably a band. I should do a deep dive on. But 23, it just hits a lot of pleasure zones that we talk about when we do this Indycast Hall of Fame a Recommendation Corner where it's the album that you like way, way, way, way more than other

records in the catalog. It's the outlier. It's kind of a sellout. It's got Alan Mulder. It's, you know, I don't think, Flood was involved, but I think you can draw a pretty direct line between 23 and the second Pains of Peeing Pure at Heart album, which is kind of a de facto Indycast Hall of Fame because we talked about it on numerous episodes.

So, yeah, if you're just tired of the kind of shoegaze that's happening now where it's either like they're gutting a body of water ripoffs or like hum ripoffs or like the Sunday's ripoffs, this is a good example of what people should be aiming for. I like it. Good pick. So when we started the Indycast Hall of Fame, I think one of the criteria that we had or one of the thoughts we had going into it was we wanted to pick records that wouldn't get their own Sunday review from Pitchfork. They're maybe looked at as being really good records, but they aren't in that next echelon of records that people want to go back and write retrospectives about. And my next record, I felt like really fell into that camp. But I was a little sort of taken aback when I looked up the Pitchfork review of this record because it got a 9.1 when it came out.

And it actually ended up being in the top 10 of the year at Pitchfork. So I was like, well, is this record maybe more critically acclaimed or more loved than I remember? And I really do think that maybe it was well reviewed in the moment. But culturally, I feel like it got lost in the shuffle a little bit, maybe because, just public tide was turning against this kind of indie rock in the moment. So I still feel good about putting it in the Indycast Hall of Fame. And the record I'm talking about is by Grizzly Bear, and it's called Shields. And it came out in 2012, in 2012.

And 2012 being a year, which is really fascinating. I mean, we often talk about 2013 being this very pivotal moment where this new generation of pop-oriented indie stars really started to come into the fold, like the 1975 and Lord and and Hym and that whole thing. But the year before was the year that a lot of the big, arty indie indie rock bands that had been popular in 2009 came out with their follow-up records. I mean, this is the year of Animal Collective, Centipede Hertz, that record, the dirty projectors, Swing Loma Jellon came out, which, again, I think that record was

also pretty well reviewed. It was. And then you had Grizzly Bear Shields. And I do think that even if the initial reviews of these records were positive, that there was something, again, culturally happening. And clearly there was a shift going on away from this more arty Brooklyn sensibility to more of like a pop-friendly bop type sensibility that was really going to come into fold the following year.

And one thing I was thinking about with Grizzly Bear was there was there was. was an article written in New York magazine. I don't know if you remember this. Oh, I remember this extremely well. I've written about this one a lot. That is canon. And by a great music critic, I think one of the great music critics, he's like the Barry

Sanders of music criticism in the 21st century. I'm talking about Nisou Abebe, because he retired in his prime, and now he's an editor at New York, at the New York Times magazine. But when he left, he was to me the best working music critic in the moment, and then he

got a job that enabled him not to do that anymore. But he wrote this piece about grizzly bear. And, you know, it was a very, I think, thoughtful piece. And one of the thrusts of the piece was talking about how, you know, there was a gap between grizzly bear's press profile and, like, how they were actually doing in their career. And I think Nisi was trying to make a point that at the time, I think, was still unique. I mean, now we talk about this all the time. But I think at the time, it was actually pretty novel to write a story pointing out that just because an artist is getting a lot of press coverage doesn't mean that they're actually making a lot of money. And that oftentimes an audience assumes that, oh, you're getting a 9.1 from Pitchfork, you must be a millionaire. And I think that was the point of that story to point out that gap.

But I think what that story did accidentally was communicate to people that, oh, there's all these indie bands that are getting a lot of press. and maybe they don't actually deserve it because they're not actually as popular as the press makes them out to be. And that was used perhaps in my mind anyway, I would argue, to justify marginalizing those bands in the media. And it led, or at least it fed into this wave that was already happening. And it just led to the shift that we have now seen for a long time away from bands like that and toward more of the bop friendly. pop artists, whether they're in the mainstream or in the indie world. So Shields to me kind of represents that in a lot of ways. And I haven't even talked about the record yet.

I think the record, you know, I don't think it's the best Grizzly Bear record. I would still argue it's either Vecatimus, the record before or Yellow House. Those two, I think, are a little bit better. But Shields is really fantastic. And I think it's the record where they sound most like they did on stage, where Grizzly band, Grizzly Bear, you know, critics,

people who didn't like the band, like to paint them as this sort of like wimpy, cerebral band. But like live, they were actually like, pretty stunning band. And there was actually like a lot of muscle to what they were doing

in a live setting. And I think you get that sense more on shields than you do on the other studio records. Along with the songs just being fantastic. And I don't know, I revisited this album, along with all the other.

the Grizzly Bear Records when I did my big indie albums column and I hadn't listened to them in a while and it just made me, it reminded me how great this band is and it made me nostalgic for them and sad that they're no longer with us because Shields is the kind of record where they should have been in a place and maybe, you know, I know they had interdiscension so maybe it had nothing to do with audience reaction, but there should have been a world where Grizzly Bear made a record like this every three or four years and we could just be like oh it's another great grizzly bear record you know like i wish there were maybe three or four more records like this i know there's one after it painted ruins which is a good record but this is a great band i wanted to give them their flowers so i'm putting shields in

the indecas hall of fame yeah i mean that article you know i mentioned it's canon and i think you're absolutely right in terms of like how it may have been received in bad faith because it would be it could be seen oh there here's this guy like complaining about the lot of the indian musician because he said like you know i live in the same like tiny ass brooklyn apartment that i have since like 2004 um and you know like it it did create this wedge of like oh why are we giving so much attention to these indie bands like we should give coverage to the bands that are already getting the most coverage fun fact i'm looking at the wikipedia it debuted in the billboard top 200 and top 10 at number seven uh selling 39000 copies um yeah i like this album like i find

it to be pretty dense and forbidding. When I'll often be thinking like, you know, I think I've got Yellow House and Beck and Timis pretty figured out. So why don't I just try Shields? And like the first song, Sleeping You is awesome. That is such a good song. And then it gets a little bit, yeah, just too dense. It reminds me a little bit of the most recent Black Country New Road album. No.

No way. In terms of its composition, I really think so. Just in terms of the moving parts there is and pronginess. I disagree with that. I think there's actually a lot of pop appeal on this record. I know what you mean. I think that that was a feeling initially, but I think over time, I don't know the last time you listened to it was,

but it's a lot catchier and accessible than I remembered. Yet again, that's like one of their easy, that's one of the most accessible pop songs in their catalog. And there's other moments like that on the record. Don't compare them to the Black Country. Road. I'm trying to bring people in. That repel them. We talked last week. Black Country New Roads got shooters, man. Yeah, that's true. Maybe they'll like it. But yeah, I mean, maybe so. Yeah, I'm a big grizzly bear like fan. Yeah, and there was at like, another thing that they didn't really talk

much about in our call is like they were not getting a long at all. So, yeah, they might have fallen apart anyway just because of interpersonal things. But I miss Grizzly Bear. I'm giving them their flowers. I think they're a great band and they should be remembered as such. Totally. So my last one is kind of on a similar wavelength in that it was really critically acclaimed by the few places that reviewed it back when it came out and it fell off the map a bit. Maybe because other bands kind of took what they did and went further with it or they just kind of retreated from the background. So NBA playoffs, like that to me is. really the first, when the NBA and NHL playoffs, like, start to me. That's the first day of spring.

Because, you know, it's like a day where you can just like chill, listen to music and just watch games all day. And I associate that for whatever reason with 2004, because that was a time in my life where I was in between semesters and I could just watch the NBA playoffs for like 10 straight hours. And a soundtrack of that was, and this is the album that I wanted to, I thought maybe you would pick it at some point. It's Dunyan Tadette Lung, a classic of 2004 pitchfork. I think it got like a 9-3 or something like that.

Swedish band playing psych rock, very analog recording. And I want to say this album was kind of ahead of its time. A friend of the pod, Jeff Weiss, will tell anyone who will listen that it should be Dunian play like headlining Coachella and not Tamein Pala. because...

Yeah, that's such a Jeff Weiss argument to make, and I say that with love to Jeff Weiss. By the way, I believe he has a book on Britney Spears coming out in the summer. That looks really good. It's abundantly clear why Taman Paula is at Coachella and not Dunyan, starting with the fact that, you know, Kevin Parker sings in English.

That's a pretty big deal. It also writes much easier to understand pop songs. But anyway... Yeah, and Dunian, their lyrics are in Swedish. Yeah, exactly. And when you read the lyrics, like, wow, man, it's probably better that it's in Swedish. Not because they're bad, but it's like, oh, wow, I had no idea. This is what you're saying.

This is such a cool record. And I think it does kind of presage the audience, you know, like Austin Psych Fest or Levitation or whatever you want to call it that is super, like super doper into psych rock, but also a little more kind of like punkish stuff as well. Dunian, I think, can play those festivals nowadays because, like, in the time since Tadat Long, they kept making records that really lean more into the, like, the site kind of billowy, sort of, not jam band, but kind of jam adjacent, where it's like just stone rock. It's music that sounds good when you're high. It's got some flutes. They really, really got into flutes later in their career.

Kind of jazzy drumming. Yeah, like just music that sounds like it was made. in the late 60s, early 70s, and making no real concessions to mainstream sounds. So, yeah, I think they were not ahead of their time, but maybe like a couple years before they could have gotten even more popular than when they were. Also, you look at 2004 and it's like, wow, this is like nothing like what was happening at the time. So I'm glad it was put on my radar.

It rules so hard. I mean, it sounds awesome anytime you listen to it. The production is just so good. All, you know, they got like all the real authentic analog amps and pedals. And, yeah, I imagine if, like, you're a King Gizzard fan, like, whenever I listen to, like, certain King Gizzard albums, I'm thinking, like, if I, like, listen to this with an open mind, would it be basically what Dunya was doing? So if that endorsement means anything to you, I wholeheartedly recommend checking that out. But kind of given the demographics, they're probably like, yeah, Dunyan rules. I'm glad he talked about that one.

Yeah, I mean, I love this record. I love the next Dunian record whose title escapes me. I just know it had like an awesome black and silver cover. Yeah, that one was cool too. It's like Tio something. Yeah, Tio Batar, Tio Batar, yeah. Tio Bitar. That's a really cool record, too.

Jeff Boyce loved that album too. We were hanging out pretty regularly at that time. Yeah, I mean, I think Dunyan, to me, they were always more of like a vibey band. Yes. And they had cool songs, but it was more about, there was sort of like a chill aspect to them. They're almost like, like if Kerrangbin had like way more oomph. Yes. You know, they're more in that vein to me than Tame and Paula.

I think the Tame and Pala comparison makes sense because they're both in this psych rock lane. but Taman Paula really didn't blow up until Kevin Parker transitioned to making songs that sounded like Michael Jackson. Like that's when they really went to the next level. And Dunyan just went into more of like a, you know, psychedelic, like, soul jazz direction. You know, they went in the opposite direction from accessibility on like their later records. But to me, Dunian, it begins and ends with their drum sounds. Like they have some of the awesomest drum sounds. ever going to hear on a rock record or any other kind of record. Just really cool stuff. And

yeah, if you are in your phase of smoking a lot of weed, like you will not find a better record than this one. It's a great, just get baked and listen to it. I'm well past that period in my own life, but if you are in that era of your life, this is the record for you. My last album is the newest record, I think either one of us I've talked about. This record came out in 2016. But it sounds like a record that could have come out in any year between 2016 and like 1972. And it's a record called Eyes on the Lines and it's by Steve Gunn. And last week I was talking a little bit about aquarium drunkard music, which I have always been a fan of going back many years. And if you are a fan of the blog, Aquarium Drunkert, you are, you know that there are different

eras of Aquarium Drunkert music. I feel like when I first found that blog, they were really into sort of like vintage soul type stuff, like Sharon Jones, Gap Kings, derived things. And then there was a period in the 2010s where if you sounded like the Grateful Dead cross with television, then you were going to be in the Aquarium Drunkard zone. And to me, you were, you were, eyes on the lines is the ultimate example of that. Like this is the peak of 2010's Aquarium Drunkard Corps. And Gunn has had an interesting career. He started out in the instrumental guitarist lane. And you know, there's a lot of artists working in that lane. You know, Jack Rose, I think, is maybe the most celebrated person and certainly

the most influential on modern guitarists in the last, you know, maybe 15. or so years, I should say the late Jack Rose, sadly he passed away. Steve Gunn started in that lane, but then in like the mid-2010s, he started transitioning to like more of like a singer-songwriter type sound that also had like really cool guitar parts on it. And he made a trilogy of records that I like a lot called Time Out is the first one. Way Out Weather is the second. I think I'm getting the order of those correctly.

I'm pretty sure Time Out. I'm sorry, Time Off is first, then Way Out Weather. And then the third record is Eyes on the Lines, which I think is the best of that. And, you know, I've talked about this. Other people have talked about the concept of indie jam. You know, indie rockers who are influenced by jam-yer sounds of the past, kind of like a jam band, indie rock hybrid. And I think this record falls into that camp, although this record isn't very jammy.

You know, there's definitely cool guitar solos on it. But it's very well composed. And I actually saw Steve Gunn in this era. He was touring with Kurt Vile for a while. He was in Kurt Vyle's band, and then he was opening up for Kurt Vial during the Waken on a Pretty Day era. And it was interesting seeing him live because I felt like the audience wanted every guitar solo to be like 10 minutes long.

And Steve Gunn was very disciplined about not doing that and not making it too jammy. And there's something with eyes on the lines where I feel, like, I don't know what was going on in his headspace, but it feels like he deliberately backed away from what this record was. And his subsequent records have moved in kind of a different direction. And he's made a lot of good music since this record. And I, you know, respect him for doing what he does. He's also, you know, done the instrumental guitar thing, too. He has kind of of his more singer-songwriter records and he has his instrumental guitar records going on into kind of

two separate silos. This record to me, though, is still my favorite. And I thought about it, I guess, at this time of the year specifically, because I feel like this is his greatest patio record. Like, this is a patio Hall of Fame record. This is like a put it on at dusk and watch the sunset type album. So good. Great songs.

And again, just that sound, you know, Tom Verlaine and Jerry Garcia coming together in one band. That's what this record sounds like. And I'm a sucker for that. So I'm going with that. Eyes on the Lines by Steve Gunn. We've now 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? All right. We are getting in some real emo music right here. Like, I don't know how many Spotify listeners they have, but this is an artist called Key versus Lockett. The only thing I know about them is that the Twitter profile reads 20-year-old musician Brazilian girl. And And the only other, well, I know one other thing is that the album I felt like a sketch is doing

gangbusters on the type of places that can actually elevate an emo album nowadays. You know, your Reddit, your album of the year. And, you know, like I was saying, with shoegaze, there's a certain type of emo that, like, I get just, like, it just washes right over me. It feels like so tired. And these are the bands that are kind of doing the origami angel thing, but, like, they don't have the kind of verve or the songwriting. And that's not really totally.

what's happening here, but I think there are some parts of it that have, you know, the post fifth wave origami angel, lots of chord changes, lots of time signature changes. There's a little bit of the post-weather-day noise pop, home recording thing. But they're also like, because I believe this is a Brazilian artist, there's a lot of Brazilian pop style chord changes. The way it's all put together is it makes the hype around it really well-deserved. There's just a lot of really cool musicianship going on, a lot of good hooks, a lot of surprising hooks. So you get the sense that this person has like a real vision as opposed to, oh, I went to an origami angel show or I heard like weather days come down and decided to start a band.

I'm really interested to see where this one picks up throughout the year. So key verse locket, key VS period locket. The album is called I felt like a sketch. I want to talk about an album called Cardiac Country. It's by a singer-songwriter named Jerry David De Sica. And this is a long-running artist. He's been making records for, I feel like, 20 years. Could be, give or take a few years on that.

But he started out in a band called Black Swans. And then he split off from that band in the early 2010s, and he's been making solo records ever since. Currently based in Texas, really feels like he's part of that Texas tradition of great singer-songwriters. I like his work generally, but I feel like on his last couple records, he's been really on a role and certainly pushing a lot of my personal aesthetic buttons. His previous record came out in 2023.

It was called New Shadows. And I would describe it as an attempt to make an 80s Dylan record, which coming from me is a compliment. You know, if you want to hear a record that, you know, someone loves infidels, you know, that would be the album for you. New Shadows. Really good album. His new record is, as the title suggests, more of a kind of return to like a rootsier sound, definitely has a country feel to it. There's a pedal steel player on the record called B.J. Cole, who goes back many, many years, played on a lot of classic records. He is very prominently featured on this album. And look, you hear a lot of pedal steel like on a lot of modern records right now.

But this record to me, if I had to make a very specific comparison, and this won't mean anything to most of you, but if it means something to you, you will want to hear this record. The vibe of this album, it reminds me of, like, watching an episode on YouTube of Austin City Limits from the 90s, and it's, like, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely,

and maybe, like, Guy Clark shows up. Like, you know, that vibe where it's, like, 1992, and you're watching it on YouTube, it's a little grainy, but it has that, vibe. That's the vibe of this record. So if that means anything to you, walk, don't run to your platform of choice and punch up cardiac country by Jerry David DeSica. Yeah, that paints a real picture. That is 1992 Austin City Limits. Like, I am there. Exactly. Not like 2000 once they started having cool indie rock people on. I'm talking like the real roots, Austin City Limits. You're having like the real

true blue Texas singer-songwriter show up on the show. That's the vibe I'm going with this album. Thank you all for listening to 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 Mix Taped 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.