Indiecast - Low + Favorite Fall Albums Of All Time. Plus: Certified Lover Boy!

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

This week, Steve and Ian are getting ready for festival season. Pitchfork Festival is finally here, featuring sets from Dogleg, Oso Oso, and Bartees Strange and marking the tripling of the fest’s notorious “token DIY/emo” acts. This year, festival season arrives in the fall, which leads into a question from a listener asking which albums are indicative of the changing of the leaves for our two hosts.This week’s episode is centered around Minnesota trio Low, who has been regularly releasing music over the last 30 years or so. Recently, Low’s consistent catalogue was starting to feel like they were tapering off, but their thirteenth studio album, Hey What, has them back in the saddle for their best collection of songs in recent memory. Perhaps this is the result of the prominence of the vocals on this album — where the voices were frequently buried amid the glitchy instrumentation on previous efforts, Hey What has the dual vocalists front and center, often cutting through the musical mayhem behind them.In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging 2012, the new album from Pittsburgh band Brightside. Meanwhile, Steve wants to bring your attention to the forthcoming album from Irish post-punk band Silverbacks.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. 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 Uprocks's Indy Mix tape. 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 Lowe. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, the new mayor of Chicago, Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

You know, you're going with the spoiler alerts in your introductions these days. Well, yeah, I like to shake it up. I mean, well, because you're, we're recording this pod a day earlier that we normally do because you are going to hop a plane. You're going to Chicago to see some Chicago blues, I think, because you're a big blues guy, right? Is that way you're going to Chicago? Yeah, going to Chicago, the Big Easy, as it's called. Have some deep dish pizza and have some Goose Island beer. I'm trying to think of other Chicago cliches.

Go see the bean, take a picture. my Tinder account. Now, I'm just playing. I got, it'd be old style light. That's the Chicago here. Not Goose Island, that's too niche. Yeah, but shout out to the Fay Webster collaboration with Goose Island. I hope

many people get drunk off that shit at Pitchfork Festival. But yeah, you know, every episode that we record in some way feels like a transmission from the future because we record it, you know, a day or so before it actually airs. And, you know, by the time this one airs, I'll have

gone on my, you know, been on my first flight since the pandemic. I'll be going to see my first festival since the pandemic, my first indoor show, um, since the pandemic. You know, after much deliberation, I decided the, uh, dog leg, oh, so, oh, so after party show was something that I'd be interested in seeing. Also, retirement parties playing too. Shout to them. Uh, so, I mean, more than anything, this is really just a fact-finding mission to see about the viability of us following through on kind of doing a college game day live version of Pitchfork Festival. Yeah, did we officially say you're going, you're not going to see Chicago Blues. You're going to see.

Oh, no, I'm going to see all. You're going to Pitchfork Festival. I'm going to Pitchfork Festival with leaving the, leaving, you know, some space open for me to see, you know, smooth Eddie Hazel or whatever, like blind, blind Justin Tipperton or whatever. Go see. Are we see Sun Seals? Do you know Sun Seals? No. What do most people call themselves these days?

Are they still using like Alka Hawk Slim or something like that? I don't think so. I think we've moved beyond that. But, you know, Sun Seals, that was a reference for all the fishheads in the house. They know who Sun Seals is. I don't know if we want to go too deep into that. But, you know, because they covered a Sun Seals song. Great Blues Man from the 70s, who I believe has passed on many years ago.

Um, so I mean, because I haven't been to Pitchfork Fest since 2013. 13. Yeah. I haven't been there in a while. And I realized this morning, I was like, why haven't I been there? And I realized that, uh, I used to live in Milwaukee. Right. I lived there in the late odds in early 2010.

That's when I worked at the A.B club. And it was, you know, Milwaukee's like an hour and a half away from Chicago. So I, it was very easy to go. Now I live about seven hours away. So it's a bit of a hike. I'm also going to Chicago the following weekend. to see John Mayer front the Grateful Dead at the Wrigley Field, Dead and Co. Priorities.

Well, you know, I'm going with former pitchfork writer Rob Mitchum, so it's sort of like a mini pitchfork fest for us. But are you actually going to watch the bands? Are you just going to be like, you know, talking to music writers the whole time? Because that's what most music writers do. You have the VIP section and you just drink free beer and talk with other music writers.

Okay, so now that I think about it, I think 2013 last year you went. I think that was the year we actually first met in person. I think it must have been. Yeah, because I remember that morning because I, you, you had visited Andrew Garrick's house where I was staying. Yes. And I have like a distinct memory of like after, like in the same kitchen, uh, that we were hanging out. Like later that day, I wrote, um, I was writing a review for the reissue of, uh, smashing pumpkins, Pisces is Scariet.

So, yeah, the story checks out. No, this is my first time. Mike Powell was there too. Mike Powell was there. Shout out to Mike Powell. I haven't talked to him in a while. We miss Mike Powell. We do.

But, yeah, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head as far as, like, the actual purpose of, like, pitchfork festival. I mean, look, there's a lot of bands that I do want to see. I think it'll be great to see, you know, Oso Oso play, dog-like play, Bartese Strange play. I think we've, like, tripled. the token DIY slash emo representation this year. I was going to say, and those are three great acts to see the matchfork. If you're going to pitchfork, definitely see those three. Like, who are the headliners?

So Phoebe Bridgers, Saturday night is St. Vincent, and Sunday night is Erica Badu. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's just a little bit of an alteration from the one they plan on 2020, but it still holds up. But, I mean, you're right in that a lot of these bands that are. are playing or ones that I have seen or can see in a normal year, like a billion times. And like the explicit purpose of Pitchfork Festival, especially for someone like myself, is to meet all the people who like vaguely annoy me on Twitter and realize, oh yeah, I like that

person. Like it's a real healing process. And the fact that I haven't done it since 2018, I think has informed some of my attitudes towards music writing as a whole. It's really like a spiritual journey, if you will. I mean, one thought I had about you going to Pitchfork Fest is, is there like a senior section in the BIP? Because like for all the middle-aged writers like us,

because I remember when I went, I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And I feel like most of the writers there are in their 20s. So I wonder like if they can have like a seniors tour like they do for golf. have that for the older writers backstage. The rock and fun zone. Like comfortable chairs for you all to sit in, like some recliners, you know, in case your knees get tired, you know, all those types of things.

I wonder if they will do that for like the older writers there. Because now, you know, pitchfork's been around long enough now that the veterans are, you know, getting up there. Yeah, I mean, it's, look, as far as every, any festival that I've ever been to, like this one is the most amenable to people who want to sit down for most of the festival. Like it's, and I mean that in the sense that it's like, it is a collection of buying large,

you know, Chicago people and music nerds, you know, it's like maybe people go there to see and be seen to have, you know, candid pictures taken or they bring out their best like, problematic Indian headdress a la Cochella, but I don't know.

Are people still doing the headdress? I feel like there's no excuse. There was never an excuse for it, but now these days, hopefully now the festivals are coming back, we can now say, okay, no more with the headdress because that's a terrible look. Don't do that. Among other things, just like, why that in 100 degree weather?

But, I mean, I think that's an entirely different discussion and one that I would love to have about, like, how festival couture has changed since, I mean, I haven't been to Coachella since 2015. And I imagine that fashion has evolved like 15 times over. But, I mean, are this are the same jokes that that we've been making for years and years and years about like the way people dress and, oh, I'm going to go see Mac to Marco and Little Dragon and run the jewels like in future islands? I mean, I got to come up with new jokes, man. Like, this is actually really scary as we as we approach this new era of festival having.

So I'm just imagining like a losing my edge. type song where James Murphy is listing tour attire, like, throughout the years and, like, how, yeah, in 1968, I saw you with your flowers and your hair, blah, blah, blah. And now you feel like, okay, I've seen all this other stuff, but now it's 2021. I'm losing my edge. I don't know what the kids are wearing to shows. Are they still, you know, doing these elaborate get-ups, or maybe they're going in the opposite direction?

Maybe it's like Norm Core now. Normcourt, I feel like that term is probably five or six years old. I've just dated myself by saying that. I don't know. I mean, you'll have to do some reconnaissance at Pitchfork and you can come back next week and do some reporting and indie cast and investigation. Yeah, we're going into fashion, which was really the end game all along. I mean, like, I'm just going to spend while I pack tonight a good 30 minutes,

determining, okay, gray t-shirt, black t-shirt, white t-shirt? Like, am I going to go out on a limb here? Yeah. Or just like two black t-shirts and a gray t-shirt. So I got a lot of things to consider tonight. I mean, this seems like a great scheduling change in terms of the weather because Chicago and fall is going to be pretty lovely, you know, barring any type of rain or anything. Hopefully that won't happen. No, I think the weather's going to hold up. It'll probably be in the mid-70s, maybe low 80s. Mid-70s, the high-aise. The problem is, like, what the fuck am I supposed to do when it gets the 57 degrees at night?

Well, Ian, that's why it's good for you to come to Midwest. Good for you to come to the real America, the heartland. It'll toughen you up before you go back to California. You know, you'll feel some of that Midwest early autumn air. It'll only happen, I guess, late at night. If you're like out there, I don't think it'd be 57 still. I don't think it'd be that low like when the last headlander's playing when you're watching Phoebe Bridgers do her thing. With a chill over the air.

I don't know. Maybe it'll make me stronger. Odds are it'll just make me whineer about the weather. So, you know, there's also that possibility. What is it in San Diego these days? I'm going to, I haven't checked today, but I'm imagining it's 78. Let's consult my weather app. Oh, check this out.

It's going to be 82 today. Oh, shit. I'm missing a hot. Yo, it's going to be high 80s this weekend. God damn it. You know, this is a great thing for us, by the way, talking about the weather. Yeah. I hope people love it.

When we talk about what the weather's like where you are, where I am, we'll talk about weather in the future, which will not be the future. When people hear this, it'll be maybe the past. I think it's a great development for us on this show. One thing we should talk about quick, because we're not going to review this album, but I feel like we should talk about it in the banter, at least, the banter section of our show, which is Certified Lover Boy, the Drake record,

which, by the way, like, did this even need to be an album? It should have just been the album title. Like, just the idea of an album called Certified Lover Boy, you don't really need actual music attached to it. And like that album cover, too. I wish it just would have been an album covered and an album title. Have you spent a lot of time with this record in the past? I mean, I've spent a lot of time with this record to the point where I have to just completely alter my expectations and my critical judgment.

It's like, I hear the with the hoe ratio, I'm like David Caruso. I'm like, that's an awesome line. It's like also like was it worth spending 60 minutes to get there? is like I'm really grasping for straws as far as my ability. You didn't like the I'm too sexy sample on that future. I guess. I mean, thugs.

That's all. I was kidding. It's terrible. It's terrible, but it's like great. It's like knowingly terrible. Right. And I think there's that component of it.

But, and I mean, Drake is someone who used to like, I'm going to sound like such, like such a lame right now. now by saying he used to make albums with a real narrative arc. But like he did and they were just as long as this one. But now, I mean, this is like content in its most pure form.

It is 80 minutes of music meant to be stripped mine for memes and Instagram captions. And you know what? Like he's really good at that. But also between him and Kanye, they've released like three hours of combined of music. that bore the shit out of me, which is, you know, imagine us having that conversation at the table at Pitchfork Fest 2013 in the year that, you know, we saw Yeezus and nothing was the same. Right.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, with Donda, and I said this last week, that I think that there are some strong moments on that record. If you had made it a 10-song record, I think that would have been a quite strong Kanye record. Even like 12 songs. 10 or 12 songs. With like two songs that, like, people think are terrible. so there's something to talk about. But it would have been like,

if it was that album, you would have thought, oh, this is like a pretty good album. Like, I'm surprised. This is maybe even like a mini comeback for him. Whereas the Drake album, I think, is more consistent throughout,

but there just aren't the peaks, you know. And, you know, I think the thing with Drake, I'm going to compare him to the alt metal band tool in a very narrow way.

We just end Indycast, how because this is like, this is like the terminus of Indycast where you make like a tool Drake comparison. Well, just in this respect that like I think with Drake you know Drake makes very long albums that a large cult of debautees will insist are all masterpieces okay which is very similar to Tool like Tool will make records that tool fans will love and that's really who they're making the records for and I think Drake for as big of a pop phenomenon as he has been in the past decade and it seems pretty clear that he is going nowhere single most influential pop pop artists of the last 10 years? I mean like in 2010's, like he was the man.

It seems like he's now transitioned to the, like I'm catering to the Drake people with this record. And the Drake people will love this record and they'll get very upset when Pitchfork gives it a 6.6. I think that's what they gave it this week.

Which was higher than Donda. Higher than Nanda. And higher than Peppa Pig. So above the PEPA perimeter. So congratulations to Drake to Drake on that. To trek. That was a Freudian slip there. Shots fired. But, no, I mean, again, I think this record is, like, pretty listenable when it's on. Yeah, it's totally listenable. But it just doesn't really stick with you, like, after the fact.

But I think that's kind of the point. Yeah, exactly. He's, you know, he's going to have a huge audience for the rest of his career, and they're going to eat albums like this up. Like, every time he puts it out, every, you know, a couple years, drop a certified lover boy kind of do the same thing those mid-tempo jams and like have some cheesy one-liners over it and people eat it up so you know

God bless Drake you got a thing you're like tool now you're the tool of pop wrap of the modern era so congratulations to Drake I don't even know where to take that but I mean I think that like the comparison

of like of Kanye and Drake I mean, I can imagine, I think him, his audience and Kanye's audience, although there's a lot of overlap, there's like a very different relationship with that music. For example, like 10 years from now, like 2030, if we're all still alive and music publications exist in some shape, form or fashion, I guarantee there is going to be somebody who is going to posit Donda as a misunderstood masterpiece. Oh, they're already doing that. There's lots of people. I mean, maybe not professional critics, but I see that online all the time. But there's people that, I saw someone the other day tweet that they felt like Donda was a good

entry point for young Kanye West fans, which blew me away. I didn't really understand. I mean, for people who have no working knowledge of old Kanye, maybe it is. But I also, but like, I don't know how you can, I don't think that's going to happen for a certified lover boy. Like the most, the hottest take. that you could possibly do. It's like, well, maybe it's actually better than views, which is like, whoa, man, because the Drake fan base also thinks views is the classic. Like, I think Drake has

reached a kind of a post, even he knows that these albums are just like kind of pointless for him. They're just like content minds. So good. You know what? Know yourself. He has a song called that. If it was like a post, nothing was the same great of hits album, though, with, like a Drake compilation, I think that would be probably pretty great. You know, like, if you just had, like, a 20-song compilation from, like, these last, what, like, three or four records that he's put out. I mean, I'd be curious to hear that. I'd like to hear a Drake Stan.

I'm sure someone has done that. But I think that would deliver. You know, I was wondering if, for you, like, you know, because there's this Kanye Drake feud going on and, like, Andre 3,000 got dragged into it. Yeah. And, you know, I'm someone, I love rivalries, you know, wrote a book about it. I used to do a podcast on it. There's something about this that just feels like pure marketing to me.

And it's hard for me to get into it for that reason. I mean, do you think this is like a legit thing between these two guys? You know, I think all rap beefs to a certain degree, at least, you know, post-Pock and Big are marketing. But I don't know. Who the fuck knows what either of those two are thinking? Neither of those guys have had like a normal day in at least 15 years. So I have no idea what's going through the minds of them. Like I don't even think that they're competing in any realistic way.

No, they're not. And I mean, the thing with both of them, and I get this sense listening to their latest records, is that I guess I wonder to what degree they're still invested in like being great. Or if it's just about brand management at this. point. I think they're both invested in being great. I just think they have very, very different ideas about what being great means for them at this juncture of their careers. Right. So, I mean, in terms of like Kanye is, his idea of being great is that somehow he wants to, you know, talk about his divorce and Jesus and like the prison state, like

simultaneously. Like, it's like he's all over the place. And Drake, like, what, What do you think he's trying to do at this point? Just be Drake. Just continue to just continue to like ease through mega celebrity. Because I mean like if you when you're when you're that famous for that long, there's usually like some sort of significant backlash or a dip in quality of music or someone. You just do something that really screws things up. Like even Jay-Z like someone who was otherwise.

like the model of consistency for hip hop. Like, he had an era where he retired, you know, he retired, then unretired, then made a bunch of albums that no one liked, but had huge hits. And Drake has just been just to keep the empire going. Yeah. That's again, I don't blame him. Yeah, exactly. This is why I just think it's more about, like, maintaining a brand than like,

I mean, I will say I think Kanye is trying to be great, Me as his own way with the album like Donda Because the album does have a lot of ambition Whereas Certified Lover Boy Does seem like, hey, I'm Drake doing my Drake thing again And didn't you like it the last time? You know, I guess we'll see. I mean, both of those albums are doing extremely well.

Oh, yeah, Donda is the biggest album of 2021 so far. Right, and Certified Lover Boy, I mean, we don't have the, we haven't number crunched this yet, but I would imagine. It'll be bigger. Do you think it'll be bigger than Donda? I think it definitely. Like, I'd be shocked if it wasn't, but... The Spotify numbers looked bigger than Donda's did after a week.

Just looking at the individual track numbers. But, yeah, I don't know. There were more songs on Donda, though. So, you know, maybe that gives Kanye the edge, just because he put up more content than Drake did. We'll find out soon. Let's move on to our mailbag segment. Again, if you want to reach out to us,

we're at Indycast Mailbag. at gmail.com. You can also hit us up on Twitter at Indycast 1. We've been having a good time over there. Basically, if you just like the jokes that we run into the ground on this podcast, we run them further into the ground on Twitter. So hopefully you'll enjoy that. This first question is from Will in Connecticut. Do you want to read this question, Ian? Oh, okay. Let's continue to mix it up. We are not coasting. All right, so this is Will from Connecticut. We just cracked 60 degree weather after this week's deluge as we received remnants of Hurricane Ida. As the crisp fall weather is, hopefully, just around the corner, I was curious what your quintessential fall albums are. This time of year

has always been so deeply connected to music for me, and I imagine the same is true for both of you. My guess is Ian would default to something like American football's first self-titled album, and Steve will say something like Harvest Moon by Neil Young. Will, obviously an astute critic of Indycast. I'd love to hear what your top three to five fall albums are. Love the show, Will. Thanks, Will. I love this topic.

I love fall albums. It's hard for me to delineate sometimes between my favorite albums and my favorite fall albums because fall was maybe my favorite season, and I love listening to music in the fall. that means any album I like would be a great fall album. I'm curious though for you, because you're in San Diego.

Yeah. It's like 78 degrees every single day. So you don't have a fall. Do you miss fall? So, yeah, just to underscore my lack of credibility in this topic, I've lived in L.A. from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2016, San Diego from the summer of 2017 to present day with,

there was one fall. one autumn in 2016, which I lived in Kentucky. And I was so stoked to experience seasons again. And what I remember is that it was super hot until, like, October. It rained for a couple weeks, and then it was winter. And so that that's what the South Midwest will always be to me. But you mentioned American Football self-titled. That is a distinctly end of the summer album for me, which is very different than a fall album.

I mean, the summer ends. For example, also, I'd put Death Cab for Cudy's plans in there as this album that ushers in the end, ushers the end of fall or the end of summer into the beginning of fall. I always associate that album with the beginning of college football season, which is really the only connection I have left to the season of autumn. And so, you know, when I think about like, okay, what albums do I listen to when the weather changes? and college football is back on a Saturday. So I have to think of Animal Collective's feels.

They're a very seasonal band. That's the one that feels most autumnal to me. Similarly, I would put my morning jackets Z in there as well. So more or less my experience of fall cuts off in 2005. So, yeah, if there's been any great autumno albums that have happened in the past 16 years, we're going to have to hear about it from Steve. So those are mine. It's funny that you mentioned my morning jacket Z because I had,

it still moves by my morning jacket. That's end of summer album to me. Initial list. See, why is the end of summer album to you rather than a fall album? Because I always think of it as like, what was I doing when it actually came out? And that one, I believe, came out in late August when I was still in Georgia. And it was extremely hot out.

side when that album dropped. And so, like, I'll always think of it as a very sweaty album. Likewise, when I saw that, when I saw them tour that album in Georgia, it was maybe like 105 degrees inside the 40 watt. So that is just a very, very, it came out on September 9th. How about that? So it really is like a personal connection for you. It's like, what evokes it in my mind?

Yeah, it's a very, like, it's just a very sweaty album. to me. Because for me, I tend to associate fall albums with a certain kind of like crunchiness like musically and then like a melancholy aspect because fall is a very

cozy season but it's also kind of a sad season because summer's coming to an end. You know winters around the corner everything's really beautiful but things are also dying and you can see that happening. So it's a I tend to like music that evokes that so I mentioned it still moves by my

Morning Jacket. I usually listen to Blonde on Blonde a lot by Bob Dylan. That's also like my favorite album of all time or one of my favorites. So that goes back to what I said before about just wanting to hear my favorite albums at this time of the year. I would also say like listening to live Grateful Dead Bootlegs from throwing copper. Oh, okay. Oh no, no. No, not, not, uh, yeah, you pause so long on live that I know. Likini's juice, that's like the heat of the summer. That's when you want the Likini's juice. But I was talking about like live Grateful Dead bootlights from the 60s specifically. 70s Dead is good too in the fall, but I really like 60s dead.

You get a good dark star in the fall on headphones watching leaves fall to the ground. It's pretty awesome. More recent albums, I would say Steve Guns, Eyes on the Lines, Great Fall album. And I would also include this album that I listened to a lot when I was at a cabin very recently, Tip of the Sphere by Cass McComb's great cabin album, great fall album that came out in 2019. So that's like a modern fall classic for me. I'd go with Catacombs on that one. Catacombs, that's a good fall album too.

That's a great album. But just like the last two or three Casmecumacombs records have been pretty crunchy, pretty jammy, and it's just like what I want to hear at this time of the year. But I could list 50 more, and I'm sure I'll think of that after we get done with this episode. Let's move on to our second question here. This is from Wes in Lakewood, Colorado. West writes, what interesting thing I noticed during the episode

about the new turnstile album was how you were talking about melodic hard rock and how not many bands seem to make it anymore. And I'm curious what you mean by this, because there's actually a lot of melodic hard rock out there these days. I can hear a good deal of it if I jump on the rock this playlist or the rock hard playlist on Spotify, or even if I tune into hard rock FM radio here in Denver,

bands like Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember in This Moment, Volbeat, five-figure death punch, and even bands like nothing but thieves in royal blood. I get that a lot of this kind of rock music isn't really talked about among music critics or the greater music discourse, and when it is, it's usually looked at with disdain. What do you guys think the reason for this is, and why is turnstile the band that seems to have turned a lot of heads

toward melodic hard rock as opposed to any other as opposed to any other band and that's from Wes in Lakewood, Colorado. Okay, I don't remember exactly what I said in that episode because I caught some flack for this on Twitter. I don't think I said that there's no

Moanaic Hard Rock bands. I think I meant like there's not enough good melodic hard rock bands. And I would include a lot of the bands that this listener just mentioned in the like not good pile. And, you know, the thing is, like, I want to make a case for, like, five-finger

death punch being this, like, underrated band that, like, critics aren't fairly ignoring. You know, I, like, I want them to be good. And actually, you know, he, the listener mentioned that band Volbeat, which is a band, they're a Danish band, although for a long time I thought they were German because they kind of reminded me of the scorpions. But I remember, I wrote something nice about them in 20. They put out a record called Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies. That's not a Sturgle Simpson album.

No, it's not. Have you heard that record? Outlawed gentlemen and shady ladies by Volbeat? You know, I got some homework to do on the flight. You know, I haven't heard that record since 2013, but I looked at my archives, and apparently I liked it in 2013. I don't really have any interest in playing it now, but I liked it eight years ago. But I don't know.

I think a lot of those bands, you know. that you hear on FM radio, and I'll just use five-finger death punch as sort of like the figurehead of that. I don't know, again, like I wanted to offend them, but when I actually listen to them, I just find it to be really obnoxious and horrible. I mean, I once wrote a piece defending Nickelback,

and part of the justification for that was I said that there's bands that are way worse than Nickelback, and I think I use five-finger death punch as an example. So I don't know. I mean, yeah, in one respect, critics, even if these bands were good, I don't think critics would be writing about them because it's just not something critics usually gravitate to

historically writing about hard rock, at least like mainstream critics. But a lot of these bands are terrible, aren't they? Or are you going to defend these bands? I'm on the same page. I mean, there's such a, there is such a lane open for some writer to be the champion for these bands.

But this stuff is historic. like not even mocked by critics like just not even acknowledged you know what in a lot of ways rightfully so um i mean you can you could say well you know critics like pop country but like there there is definitely a cachet to being like the country whisperer especially if like you're a coastal writer because it's got its own galaxy of like pop stars and pop songwriters and it it's almost tangential to like hip hop and the way it can move culture. But this, okay, like I think we just kind of have to acknowledge that a lot of music criticism is like cultural criticism as in like judging music based on its perceived fan base.

And you mentioned turnstile. It's like, well, why turnstile not these bands? These are the bands that like, Turnstile is playing a lot of the festivals that feature these bands. They usually take place in deeply, deeply red states, like maybe corn or stained or, uh, bands like that might headline and then turnstile might be on there. And these are the bands that take up like the second line of that festival. It's like these bands are huge.

They probably have racked up hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify's like rock this playlist. I remember hearing a theory of a dead man song when I had to listen to the radio and a van I had to drive for work. And this stuff is like actually bad. And, you know, more than that, it really, it's bad in a way that seems very regressive because it's almost like uniformly male. It's almost uniformly white. And it's uniformly kind of troglodyte in its views on certain things. So there's not a lot to salvage. That being said, like a band like Royal Blood, though, that can be.

that band is damn near a radio head compared to what they mentioned. Their new album sounds a lot like that death from above 1979 song, sexy results. There's something to that. And by comparison, a band like Wolf Alice can really be seen as like radiohead compared to what they're competing. Well, I was going to say, I think like the radio head of the sphere is Queens of the Stone Age. you know, like they're like the, like the brainy band that kind of can mix it up here. And because you mentioned Royal Blood, like their first record sounded like Queens of the Stone Age. Absolutely.

And there's some bands that are in that vein that can get on the radio. And that would be, I guess, the intellectual wing of rock radio, relatively speaking. But, you know, my feeling on this is that right now there's a music writer, a future music writer who's six years old or so. They were born in 2015, and that person in the year, like 2040, is going to write a think piece defending all these bands and shaming people like you and me for being snobs and not getting it. And I'll be in my late 60s by then, and I look forward to being outraged by that think piece. I welcome it. Yeah, exactly.

You know, if you're in this game as a music critic, you know that eventually, someone younger than you is going to, like, murder you in a restaurant, you know, like, figuratively speaking, you know, that the younger generation will rise up and they'll, they'll be mad at you that you didn't like a maligned band or genre from the past. Because I will vouch for a lot of the stuff I heard on alt rock radio as a DJ in 2001. Like, if you're listening, like, injected or edema or Chevelle. Right. Yeah, I fucked with some of your songs.

You know, I mentioned Nickelback earlier. I mean... Oh, this is how you remind me is a great song. I mean, Nicolbeck is like the Beatles compared to these bands. I mean, because Nickelback, whatever you want to say about them, they do have like... So they've got like a handful of songs that are like genuine pop hits. Inescapable. Yeah, they were like high charting songs like on the, you know, Hot 100.

You know, they were competing with, you know, the Mariah Careys and Whitney Houston's of the world, you know, for a while. Maybe not Whitney Houston at that point. you know and these bands don't have it they don't have a how you remind me they don't have you know i will say that i think the best nickelback song is actually that chad croger song from spider-man oh yeah josie scott yeah yeah the only guy in history to my knowledge who has collaborated with chad cragher j z and three six mafia is it is it cragher or croger i'm gonna say craigar it's o e so like i'm gonna go how do i not know how to pronounce this guy's name. I don't know if I've ever actually heard anyone say it out loud. I don't think I've

ever heard anyone say like the lead singer of Nickelback's name out loud. It's always like the Nickelback guy. Maybe I need to skip Pitchfork Festival and go to Rock, Oklahoma instead. I'm letting our people down. That's where we're going to do our college football game day. Yeah. That'd be amazing. Well, let's get to the meat of our episode here. For those who don't know, Lowe is a band from Duluth, Minnesota. They're centered on a married Mormon couple who are now in their early 50s, named Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. Based on that description, you might not expect them to be indie phenoms at this point. But their 13th album, which comes out today, today as in the day that this podcast goes live.

It's called Hey What. And I think it's maybe the album of the year. If the year ended today, this would be my album of the year. and I suspect that there will be other critics who feel the same way. This is a band, again, they've been along for a long time. They put out a dozen records before this. And I know that you're a fan of this record as well. And I'm just curious, like, before we get into the record,

I'm wondering what your relationship was with Lowe before this album. Because for me, this is always a band that I thought was good. I liked their albums. I thought they were very consistent, and I respected their catalog. But they were never a band that I loved. There's albums here and there, like The Great Destroyers, a record I like a lot.

Was it Drums and Guns? Is the record after that? Yeah, that's the one after that. Those records I like quite a bit, some of the 90s records I liked, but they never really blew me away, really until this album. And also, this album has made me fall in love

with the predecessor record, which was double negative, which was also produced by B.J. Burton. He's produced their last three records. And you may know him, he was one of the masterminds behind the Bonny Bear record, 22 a million. And you could hear some similarities

between what he did with Bonny Bear and what he did with Lowe. But I'm just curious for you, because to me, like, hey what is the first records of theirs that I really feel like this is like a masterpiece. Like, this is a great record. And it just made me kind of reconsider

their previous work. Like, where are you at with that? Yeah, you know, to me, they kind of existed on a level below, say, Yola Tango, maybe in the public eye. Like, they're a band that's, like, around married couple, like, at the center. And they always achieve this level of, like, it's always pretty good, even though they evolve almost constantly. So for me, my favorite album of theirs is the Great Destroyer.

It's the one produced by Dave Friedman. That's me too. Yeah, that's the one that sounds a little bit like Allison Chains sometimes. And I got to point out, Dave Ruposa is a guy. He's like one of the old heads at Pitchfork. He wrote like a 5.6 review of that album in 2005. And there's like this, there's like this little group of people on Twitter that, like, Dave's my dude. I just got to say that first and foremost.

But like every two or three months, like for the people. past 10 years. We just give them shit for that. It was basically like the turnstile time and space review of 2005. Let's just call it that. But yeah, that one was my favorite. I liked drums and guns a lot. That was a little more... That's an

album that I don't listen to a heck of a lot because it's just such a raw, distinct produced album. But, you know, after that, like, they were a band that I would like a song or two off their albums and just think, okay, New Lowe album. That's good. And I wouldn't

really revisit it. Like, uh, ones in six is, like the one produced by Jeff Tweedy kind of bored me. Um, right.

That's where it seemed like they were starting to fade into sort of like yeah, like we're an older band, we're making records, but like, like, it's getting a little snoozeville like by then. Like that,

what was that called? It was the narrow way, something like that. Uh, come on or? It was after come on. God. Uh,

anyway. The invisible way. The invisible way. The invisible way. I said the narrow way. Yeah. My record of like getting two out of three words in an album title correct continues. You're never going to miss, you're never going to miss certified lover boy though.

Let's just. Exactly. Again, that's the best part of that record is the title. But yeah, it's like double negative. You know, when I first heard the singles, I was excited to be excited about low again. I thought that album was pretty overrated overall because you mentioned B.J. Burton. I am not a huge fan of $22 a million, or I think that guy also does some work with James Blake,

and I think people are just always kind of suckers for vocal manipulation being the sound of the future. Like, I, double negative was interesting to me. Well, he manipulated the music, too. Absolutely. I mean, that whole thing, I mean, in my review, the analogy I made was that it sounded like a cassette tape that had been left in a washing machine.

Yeah, it was, was it their most chill-wave out? In a way, I think it definitely was like sort of like an evil chill wave record. Yeah. You could describe it as that. But the difference with hey what I find is that it has a lot of the experimentation of double negative. And you could definitely say, you know, I could see people making the argument that double negative is the bolder record because hey what isn't really doing anything that double negative hasn't already done. What it does, however, the reason why I like it more is that. the vocals on this record are so much more clear. And there's a greater dynamic range between the

music, which is, again, distorted and digitally manipulated, and you can't really tell, like, what instruments are doing what. It's a really fascinating record in that regard. But it's set against these vocals that come across so clear, and it's such a heart of the record, and I think it gives it an emotional impact, that even double negative, which I think is a powerful record, but that's more of like a mood piece. And this feels more like a complete album to me. Yeah, the vocals are what draw me into Lowe to begin with. And while double negative, like, it allowed me to reassess what I like about Lowe,

I think that it came at the expense of the vocals. And I also think that because that record came out in 2018, and it's just a great album title for the type of album it is, I think it got kind of sucked into, in this age of Trump type ambient dissatisfaction. But I think, hey, what does everything that album did as far as deconstructing the sound and being aggressive in its use of distortion and so forth. But also retaining things I love about Lo, which is like the harmonies and the relationship of Alan and Mimi. And just has like a real lyrical, you know, real lyrical thrust.

it allows me to not have to be, not have to, like, import other narratives onto it. I can really enjoy it for what it is. And also, like, this album is loud. Like, I don't know if it was just the promo I got, but it is, it sounds like twice as loud as, it sounds like a David Fridman album in that it, like if you put it on any of these songs on a mix,

the volume difference between this and everything surrounding it is so extreme that you think you may be. you have like a weird leak. Yeah, I mean, it's a great headphones record, although it might hurt your ears by the end of it. But I think, you know, I mean, I've listened to it in a couple of different avenues. You know, I listen to it in my car. I've listened to it on my laptop. But the headphones experience was the most satisfying for the record.

But yeah, you're right. It's like they play quiet songs very loud, you know, like they're still. that quiet stillness that you expect from a low record. But again, just the intensity of the quietness is like pretty extreme. And again, I think it's like so unique to this band that, you know, I mean, I think I've seen people liken this to, you know, like even like a record like loveless or something, you know. I was thinking more like Yeez-Sus. Yeah, or like a Yeez-is where, again, you have these like very abrasive textures,

but then you have moments of beauty interspersed. But I don't know. It's hard for me to think of another example of a band that's been around this long and been this respected that has made this turn in their career so late and it had to pay off so well. Because again, this is the moment where bands are kind of, it's like we have our thing and we're going to do it. And you admire bands that can still execute.

well and everything, but you don't expect something like this, which is like a total left turn that ends up being one of the best things they've ever done. I can think of examples of it, but it's... Well, the Sun Kill Moon example. Or swans, for that matter, but like, yeah, we, if we're trying to think of like non-canceled bands, it's, you know, it's really hard to come by. But yeah, I think it's just so crazy to think that in 2021 with everything. else being so deconstructed,

especially like indie rock, as it were, that this band that's been around since 1993 or so and never has been like the center of discussion, even with things we lost in the fire, might be the, you know, this might be the consensus album of the year, you know, barring any sort of like late Frank Ocean or Beyonce or Kendrick drop, which actually if any of those three drop,

it has not been a good year for a pop star. and like people of that nature. So I don't know. Like if Lowe somehow becomes the album of 2021, like, fuck, man. Like, like, maybe this is, maybe this is the year for something like that. Yeah.

And, you know, you talked about those other acts being canceled. Is Lowe like the least likely act to be canceled? Like, I can't imagine either one of them, Alan or Mimi, doing something controversial. Yeah, them or super chock. or Yola Tango, like those bands with a long relationship at the center. But you have like the religious aspect and they're living like in this like small Minnesota town.

I don't know. Maybe they're dealing meth on the side and we don't know that yet. And we're going to find out in five years and we'll all be disappointed. But I don't know. They seem pretty wholesome otherwise. And they're also making brilliant music. So shout out to Lowe. All right.

We've now reached a 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, so as per usual, I'm going to bring up an album that's been overlooked even within like deep emo Twitter. There's a band from Pittsburgh called Brightside. Makes them very hard to search on the internet without finding the killers instead. They, I guess, surprise dropped an album called 2012 recently.

And by surprise drop, I mean, I'm just sort of surprised they're still going. And I mean that with all due respect, because they've been careful. I'm thinking around since, say, 2010. I think I saw them open, or I know they opened for the co-headlining The World's Beautiful Place Foxy Tour in 2015. And they're just one of those bands that just can't seem to connect

with the larger audience. They were on Broken World Media, which is kind of a canceled album, kind of a canceled record label. And they put out songs here and there. But, you know, this album 2012, It kind of does what they have been doing before, which is a little shoegasy, a little indie pop. And by indie pop, I mean like 2011-ish indie pop.

I think foals are becoming this band that's retconned into modern emo, which I'm all for. But this album, it just sounds like a very well-constructed indie pop album that sounds a lot like 2012. Not in a way that seems like desperate or that seems like they're just trying to do things to be successful. but it's a style of music that connect with a lot of people back then, and it still sounds good now. So very low stakes, but very enjoyable indie pop with a little dash of emo or shoegaze or all those other associated things. So Brightside, 2012. That is my recommendation for today. And the band I want to talk about is called Silverbacks, not Nickelback, who we talked about earlier in this episode, but they're called Silverbacks.

They're a band from Ireland. They put out their debut album called FAD in 2020, and it was under my radar at that time. I didn't really hear that record until I heard about the new Silverbacks record, which actually I don't think has been officially announced. They released a single this week called Where Are My Metals, that I like a lot. And it's teasing an album that I believe will be announced soon. But this is a band that in one,

respect, you could group into that generation of post-punk bands that have come out of Europe in the past few years that we've talked about on the show. There's definitely that influence on their music. But they also bring in this 60s jangly guitar rock influence, almost like an elephant six element, into the music. So it has the post-punk thing. You have some talky, witty lyrics, but there's also, I think, a greater melodic sensibility to this band than like a lot of the post-punk groups that have come out of England and Ireland in the past few years. So I definitely recommend going on your streaming platform of choice and looking up the song, Where My Metals by Silverbacks.

Really good single. And then go back and check out FAD, which is a good debut record. I actually think the next record that will be announced soon, I believe, is a better record than FAD. But FAD is, I think, a good debut. So definitely a band worth keeping an eye on that is Silverbacks. the sequel to Nickelback. Thank you 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 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.