Indiecast - Mailbag: Bad Concert Experiences, Best Driving Music, And Pop Music Ripping Off Indie

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

In all the years they've been going to concerts, Indiecast hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen have seen many great performances.... and some pretty terrible ones. This week on Indiecast, Steven and Ian dive into their fan mailbag to answer questions on bad concert experiences (30:58), the best driving music (24:47), and times pop music ripped off indie artists (40:15).Indiecast also discusses some of the biggest indie news from this week. Kate Bush is having a major moment thanks to her song "Running Up That Hill" getting featured in Stranger Things, prompting Steven and Ian to reminisce on Bush's initial critical reception (2:59). In terms of new music, The 1975 confirmed their fifth studio album is on the way (7:38). Plus, two early aughts bands, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Phoenix, dropped singles this week (14:34).In this week's Recommendation Corner (55:14), Ian raves about emo revivalists Algernon Cadwallader's reunion tour announcement. Steven shouts out Angel Olsen's newest album Big Time, which leans into alt-country territory.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 91 below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by 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 respond to a letter sent by you, the Indycast listener. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He just discovered Kate Bush by watching Stranger Things. Ian Cohen.

Ian, how are you? Hey, I learned about Kate Bush the real way, which was Pacebo's cover of running up that hill on the OC. So many, like, the Kate Bush discourse, this creek has, like, led to a lot of placebo discourse, which I am always a fan of. I think they've covered multiple Kate Bush songs. I was going to say, on the Ian Cohen hierarchy of Indycast references, ours is number one, and then placebo is number two.

If you couldn't work either a reference to ours or a reference to placebo, in, it's going to be a good episode. And this is an organic infusion because like you said, people were talking about how you discover cool music via uncool venues.

You know, like with Kate Bush, people were talking about her because the song running up that hill was included in the new season of Stranger Things. So now you got all these zoomers out there streaming the Hounds of Love. And I guess I guess there were some

grumpy people rolling their eyes about this saying, oh, you, you know, you should go to a record store and talk to record store clerks and that's how you should discover a record like this? I mean, was that actually happening or is this another one of those sort of like we're inventing grumpy people and reacting against that? But I heard Kate Bush can't even shoot. Yeah, maybe it's just a matter of the people I follow on Twitter, but I mean, if you really go out there, I guarantee you can find somebody who, finds issue with like Kate Bush being on Stranger Things as opposed to, I don't know, the Sex Pistols documentary.

But, yeah, it's not a documentary. That's a, it's a biopic. Is Machine Gun Kelly in this one? Oh, I wish you were. No, he was in the Motley Crew movie, The Dirt that was on Netflix. He played Tommy Lee. I don't think there's any famous people in this show. But I don't know.

A friend of mine saw it, and he said it was pretty good. was like the only person I've heard say nice things about that show. But the most part, it's getting clowned. Like all biopics are. It looks pretty cheesy. I know I'm a little tired of late 70s punk, you know, like talking about that era. It feels a little exhausted. You know, getting back to the Kate Bush thing, you know, obviously I think any way you discover a cool song is great.

And I know, like when I was younger, I would have, you know, I'm sure I discovered music in, ways that older people might have seemed done cool. I'm curious to get your take on this. I was thinking about Kate Bush and I could be completely wrong about this but I remember when I was a teenager growing up in the 80s

and 90s and going into my early 20s and reading music writing and starting to do music writing myself. I never really heard people talking about Kate Bush. She wasn't someone that was talked about as being one of the most important artists of the 80s.

I was looking at Pitchfork's list of the best albums of the 80s that they did in 2002, and The Hounds of Love was at 92 on that list. And then something happened like about 10 years ago where I feel like the Kate Bush discourse got kicked up a notch. And I don't know if it was because, you know, there was this new generation of sort of like artie rock singer-songwriters, you know, like St. Vincent and Lord. people that seem to be taking their cues from Kate Bush's 80s records, maybe that explains it, but it just seems like she suddenly became way more important as a touchstone for music critics. I remember seeing the 2018 list that Pitchfork did of the best albums of the 80s,

and on that list, the Hounds of Love came in at number four. Shaw Day was in the top ten as well, which I imagine was not the KHCC. there. But I just wanted to say like, okay, so Hounds of Love, it was ranked right ahead of Remain in Light. It takes an issue of millions to hold us back, you know, the public enemy record, and Daydream Nation, the Sonic Youth record. And I really like the Hounds of Love, but I feel like maybe that's overrating that record a little bit. I mean, it seems like that has a lot to do with maybe just the influence of that album on the current generation of indie artists. I mean, the... Does that make sense to you? I mean, am I wrong? Because I feel like,

her stature has grown exponentially in the last decade to me. I absolutely think so. I mean, I think an obvious thing is that when that original 80s list published, it was like a lot more, you know, dudes. Right. Of course. I mean, I think that's like the most obvious and maybe the most unsatisfying explanation, even though it's probably true.

But also I don't think that her influence was as profound in 2002 as it was in the 2010s. Like, again, you had this generation of indie artists who were really taking their cues, I think, from Kate Bush. And now you can see her as an artist that is maybe more relevant now than she was, you know, even during her time. I mean, it seems like she's more central in a way now than she was even in the 1980s. Absolutely. I mean, I think, and I think most legendary artists have a period of dormancy. Like, you mentioned, like, the 90s, no one really talking about Kate Bush. Like, I think, I'm pretty sure you've written about this, how Bruce Springsteen had kind of this like low ebb during that time.

Right. And yeah, I think in the early 2000s, there was more kind of like Tweed or dance punk. And actually the first time that I got reintroduced to Kate Bush was the Future Head's cover of Hounds of Love, which I don't know how people really feel about that one. To me, that's like the best Kate Bush cover I've heard because it doesn't actually try to replicate Kate Bush. It kind of sounds like Barbershop Pop Punk. And the future has record.

That's like a future Indycast Hall of Famer. But yeah, I remember seeing Kate Bush like a video for the Red Shoes, like maybe a couple of times on MTV in the mid-90s. The way that you would sometimes get like these legacy artists trying to reinvent themselves for MTV. Peter Gabriel really mastered that. But like, and I know that Kate Bush collaborated Peter Gabriel. But yeah, she was just someone who you would see occasionally, like in between Richard Marx and Nirvana and Jackal videos. Yeah, I feel like I remember that video too. And it was just, oh, this is like a very kind of tasteful, weird version of adult contemporary music.

I mean, that's how I felt at the time. But, yeah, it is interesting just how she has really asserted herself or how the culture has asserted her as this pivotal figure. and, you know, Stranger Things gave her another leg up here, which is great. I can't believe we've gone this long without mentioning that the 1975 might be on the verge of kicking off an album cycle. Yes. Yeah. So, wait, what's the deal? Like, there's a poster in London with, it says July 7th.

Yeah, but what year? And what does that mean? Is that for a concert? Is that, like, they're going to drop a single that day? Natty Healy returns to Twitter. Right. So we don't know what it means. It's a mysterious poster with a date on it.

Yes. But the important thing is that it's like, you know, that Simpson's line, like, hey, it's Bart and he's doing stuff. Like that, that for us is the 1975 because, you know, the 1975 and even if a 1975 album dropped like Beyonce, like one, like just, it dropped overnight. It would probably be good for at least four episodes worth of this. course, but an album rollout. See, they're making it up for what Father John Misty has robbed us.

Yeah, I was going to say, I'd be pretty disappointed if the 1975 did the surprise album drop, because I do feel like that's such a waste of content for us, because it is about the album rollout as much as the album, for me anyway, with the 1975. Look, I've slagged the 1975 on this podcast. I am on record as not being a fan of their... most recent record, whose title escapes me at the moment. What was that one called? Notes on a conditional form.

Right. Notes on a conditional form. I just blacked out that record, apparently. But I'm excited. I was excited to hear that there is activity in the 1975 camp because it is all about the content for me. They're a fun band to talk about. I'm glad that they're coming back.

My hope is that on July 7th, they release a single and that it's a spoken word track with Anthony Fauci talking about COVID. Or my other hope is that it's a song where Maddie Healy talks about going on Tinder at a wet-leg concert. Oh yeah. Reference to the infamous Pine Grove lyric. Yes, yes. Maddie Healy just pulling in all of the relevant contemporary references into the lyrics.

He's hashing out trends. He is the ultimate hasher out of trends. He's hosting a podcast within the songs of the 1975. They're about as long as a podcast, too, those albums. Well, I want to get your take on this. And I said this in my review of notes on a conditional form that the most radical thing in a way that the 1975 could do at this point is to do a 10-song 35-minute record where every song was good. But, like, as a fan of the band, would you not like that? Do you like the fact that every album is, you know, 22 songs and has, you know, spoken word tracks?

and filler and all that stuff. I mean, would that be disappointing to you if it was just a concise, you know, is this it type record? So it's interesting that you today, while we record just published a Smashing Pumpkin's article, because when I remember writing about machina, Machines of God, how you could potentially reduce that to a 10-song 40-minute banger that like probably wouldn't be anywhere near as maligned as the actual thing is. but it's like that's not what you come to the Smashing Pumpkins for.

Look, if the 1975 makes 10 songs as good as, you know, settle down or, you know, like the sound, that would be great. But man, the 175, like you say, it's about the content, it's about the banter. And I need that. Like, I just need the fill. Not even the filler, but the songs were like where Maddie Healy and George Daniel were not told. no. I mean, if they hit with the batting average of Billy Corrigan

Melancholy, you know, which is a 28 song album, and I would say you know, I don't know, there's maybe three or four duds on that album, like songs that I automatically skip. I think for the most part, every song in that album is good and many of the songs are great.

I'd also say, like, make a Siamese dream then. You know, like that's a 10th song record or, I mean, it's probably an hour long. I think it's like 13 songs actually. But still, relatively concise or Gish, you know, Gish is relatively concise. You can do that, Maddie Healy. We're just going to totally correlate your career to smashing pumpkins right now. I'm just saying if you're going to make melancholy every time, you should make a Siamese dream too. So like maybe this can be their Siamese dream, this new record.

I'd be down for that. I'd be down for, is this it? I'd be down for their Sandinista. I mean, I mean, everything is really on the table with the 1975. And I just hope they do the 1975. Like, I don't want them to make the, you know, the earnest singer-songwriter, Rick Rubin album. I don't want them to go pure, although I really do like their electronics, like, instrumentals. Like, I think they're really good at that. But, yeah, I was going to ask you, like, in this fan base, what's the, what's the feeling on notes on a conditional form? I mean, do you feel like, because that record was polarizing

critically, but do you feel like fans are on board with that record, or are fans also torn? I cannot speak for the 1975 fan base. Like, I, I, like, you're like the Jen Saki of the 1975 fan base. I'm looking to you to be the press secretary for, for these people. Yeah, I guess, like, maybe for, like, you know, 42-year-old music critics, I might be, but, like, the 1975 fan base cannot be spoken for with one person. Like, they are a wild, wild bunch. It's, like, a combination of, like, modern pop stand army, but also, like, the deep, deep nerdyness of, like, smashing pumpkins, like, in the 90s where, like, they were, like,

the first band of that time to, like, really have, like, you know, like, really in-depth tab books and, like, collections of bootlegs. I think they were a little ahead of their time on that regard. So, yeah, the night. And whenever I tweet like anything about the 1975, it somehow goes viral. So yeah, they got a great fan base. Yeah, great fan base. And so yeah, really hoping for a long album cycle.

Give us, give us three or four months. If we can talk about that. This is like the sports talk equivalent of Aaron Rogers. You know, Aaron Rogers last shit. It's like Colin Cowherd was just licking his chops over anything Aaron Rogers did because it was just great content. And Maddie Healy is like the indie rock Aaron Rogers at this point. So I'm very excited for what might happen there. We've got to talk about new songs by old bands that came out this week.

There's a new single from Phoenix and a new single from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's. Just again, more comebacks from Otts-era indie this year. You know, they're all coming back. Animal Collective was back. This year, now we've got Phoenix. We've got Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's. Great for our 36 to 44-year-old listeners out there, which I think is all about listeners. That's our bread and butter right there.

That's our bread and... New songs by old bands could easily be our, like, tagline. Let's take it one by one. How do you feel about this Phoenix single? It's called Alpha Zulu. And I don't know if there was an album announced with this. I think it was just a standalone song, but presumably there's a whole album coming. Yeah, it would be their first in five years.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of what bands do more often nowadays. They release like one single or like two singles, and then like a month or so later they announced the actual album. And I don't think we'd be talking about a new Phoenix song on this episode. If it wasn't like, it is, I'm like just so impressed that they made a song this bad. Like Phoenix, to me is their quality. control, like, even if I don't like

their albums or, and I like all their albums. I don't think any of them really, like, is a banger all the way through with the possible exception of it's never been like that. But, you know, like, you hear a Phoenix song and it's going to be well-constructed. It's not going to make any weird tangents, but this one,

wow, it's, it kind of quotes Buster Rhymes in the chorus and it's sung a little bit like 20-22 Isaac Brock. There's some weird vocal affectations going on in the song that, again, to your point, you don't really associate with a band like Phoenix. They're a very smooth operation. There's something almost, you know, animatronic

about Phoenix to me, which is why, you know, there's a lot of Phoenix songs I like, especially, you know, those two late Otts albums. It's never been like that in Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Lots of good songs on those records. But they're also like a faceless band to me. You know, I don't really care. Have you ever spent any time wondering what Thomas Mars does outside of the band? Absolutely, because that guy lives a pretty charmed life. That's true. I guess he's chilling with Sophia Coppola.

Yeah, just making tons of sync money. I think Wolfgang Outta Bay's Phoenix was more or less the 2009, 2010 version of Moby's play. I mean, you could just not escape 1901 or Listomania. Yeah, like there's a song on that recent Harry Stals, record called Music for a Sushi Restaurant, and I think every song by Phoenix could be described as music for a sushi restaurant, like in a good way. Like, they're very good at that. But yeah, this, this song, I don't know. I don't hate it as much as you do. Like, you, you, you, uh, you messaged me last night and you're like, you got to listen to this Phoenix song, because we've got to talk about this

on the show. Like, trust me. And making it, you know, I don't know if you said this out right, but you made it pretty clear that you thought this song was a stinker. I don't hate it as much as you do, but I am with you in that it doesn't have the, that sort of sleek consistency that you expect from this band, which in a way you could make an argument makes it maybe more interesting

than a lot of their stuff. It's like you said, we probably wouldn't be talking about it if it was just like another nice Phoenix single. But yeah, it's odd. It's odd to juxtapose Phoenix and Buster Rhymes. I don't know if that really works. Yeah, I think at this point,

and I think this is also a science, point you're getting to is that like a really awful like a fucking terrible phoenix album would be so much more valuable to us as content uh farmers than like a pretty good phoenix album like the last one or bankrupt before that so again with us like the 1975 it's it's not about the music man it's about the content yeah it's too bad that we're just purely mercenary now you know it's not even about being music fans. We're just looking at it strictly for what we can pull from it

for this podcast. Just taking over our lives in some way. Going over to the AIS song, it's called Spitting on the Edge of the World, or spitting off the edge of the world. And this is another example. I don't, have they announced their album? I don't... I think they

did? I think they did. I think they did. And this is the first single from it. Yeah, it's called Cool It Down. It's out September 30th. Okay, Cool It Down is the name of the album. I like this song a lot. It sounds more to me like a Karen O single, like a solo track, than it does a band track. It doesn't really sound like that sort of post-punk gnarled energy that you expect from the Yeah, Yeah.

Do I expect that from them anymore, though? Well, that's true. But it doesn't sound like a band. It sounds like Karen O and like this sort of glacial synth-pop back. which is really cool. Again, I like the song. But yeah, I don't know. I'm curious if this is like reflective of what the whole album is going to be like. I'd be down for that. I mean, we talked a little bit about Mosquito. That was the one, right? In 2013, something like that. I could be wrong. Yeah, I like this new song. I think it does really well on that kind of like laser light slow motion in like 2012-ish indie pop.

I think if they released this song when Mosquito came out, we might be more excited for a Yay-A-A-A-A-A-S album than we are right now. But yeah, I think my expectations have been ratcheted to the point where it's like, you know what, if this song is good, then it's kind of great. So good for that. Yeah, it reminded me a little of that recent Sky Ferreira song that, like, pitch for it totally butchered.

Like, their review, like, did you read the review of that's... I did. I thought it was a little... too harsh. I don't think it's a great song, but they really took it to the woodshed in that review. You know what? I've been

there. I've written that review where it's like a band we formally love and you know what? It's just part of the process. I guarantee the person who wrote that is like, you know, super young and I wonder if they heard from the Sky Ferreira fan army,

but you know what? That is part of the game. Yeah, you got to earn your stripes. You got to, you know, and it is like going to war because, you know, the editors are the generals. And they're like, all right, you got to go out. We're all cannon fodder. We're storming the beaches of Normandy, like in Saving Private Ryan and the people in the front, they're all going to get shot in the head.

And then, like, the next row will be able to go on the beach. And if you're like the junior staffer, you know, you're on the front row going into Normandy. So it's okay. We all get shot in the head in the music critic. community. You got to get shot in the head every now and then if you want to earn your stripes. You all need PTSD from like a review you wrote like I get haunted

by my Kid Cuddy review. Yeah. Do you still get emails about that? Absolutely. I can I'm not even being like facetious about that. Like I got one like last week and it's more often than not it's from like a teacher like okay I'm not kidding like a 10th grade teacher

because it'll have their signature at the bottom. It'll say like such and such K to 12. And yeah, so I imagine that... Oh, man. Yeah, they're teaching like day and night as like a poetic device in their class. They're like the teacher turning the chair around. It's like, hey, kids, you know who else like, you know, doing the whole thing about like Shakespeare was the first writer.

But like Kid Cuddy was the new Shakespeare. Right. You know, I just like to imagine this teacher being like, okay, everyone, I'm going to need to read silently at your desk for 15 minutes. And then the teacher goes to his laptop and he's just writing hate and that. to Ian Cohen while his class is, you know, doing like independent study. You know, it's like he needed to carve out some time in the day to email you from his work account to complain about like a, like how old is that review? Is that 10 years?

It is. It would be like older than 10 years. It might be from 2010 or 11. But most of the time, I would say nine times out of 10 whenever I get hate mail, it's stuff I wake up to. So that means they, they do that stuff completely. off the clock. Oh my God. Well, I think you should bring in some of these emails and we can read them on the show.

They're bad. They're like really mean. Can you think that'd be all right? Can we do like a mail bag where it's just like your kid cuddly hate mail? You know what? I'm going to, I've deleted most of my emails prior to 2019 because that like otherwise I'd have, but I could probably find some recent ones. Oh, yeah.

Like even this, even this one from the 10th grade teacher, I think. I think our listeners would enjoy that on this show. That'd be a good mailbag. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that off mic, but a kid-cudy mailbag, I think, could be good. We have an all-mailbag episode here. So the meat is the mailbag. We've got four letters here to read.

I just want to say it's always great to hear from our listeners. Thank you for writing in. You can hit us up at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. We always need more. messages from you to talk about and to generate content for us. It's a real impossible burger of an episode where the presumptive filler is the actual meat. Yes, exactly. Do you want to read our first email? I do, as a matter of fact. So this one is from Nate in Chicago.

All right. He loved last week's episode on the 10th anniversary of Celebration Rock, especially when Ian, that being me, talked about the experience of driving. driving to the album. I remember being in a low place mentally and emotional years ago, and this album being the soundtrack in my car when things started looking up. It will forever have a special place in my heart because of that. Is there a particular album that you remember having in your car that will always evoke fond memories? Ian, you can't say clarity. Just kidding. Thanks, guys. Well, I mean, you're just daring Ian now to talk about clarity for a half hour. The Zed album, not the Jimmy Eat World One.

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, there's so many albums that I associate with fond memories of driving in the car. I mean, you touched on this a lot last week, but for me, too, it's my favorite place to listen to music in the car. And it's one reason, one of many reasons why I could never live in a place like New York City, where it's hard to have a car. You know, you can't just hop in the car and go drive out in like a wide open space somewhere and listen to records. that's such a big part of my life. It would make me sad not to have that experience. The first thing I thought of when he asked,

is there a particular album associated with driving? I thought about this drive I took in college, where I went to college, which is O'Clair, Wisconsin, on the west side of the state, home of Justin Vernon. And I was going to Appleton. Actually, I think I was going from Appleton,

my hometown to O'Clair. And I listened to the Cheap Trick album at Buda Khan six times in a row. Six times in a row. I've never done that with any other album. But I loved it so much. And I think I had just started getting into it. I was like 18 or 19 years old.

I just listened to it over and over again. It's a live record, one of the greatest live records of all time. And it's just wonderful, rolled down your windows in the summertime music. I was also going to say that jam band music is great in the car. And again, I think this is because I

live in kind of like a rural part of the country. Like you go from the city and you're driving in the country a lot as soon as you leave, you know, the city limits. So it's really good for that. I remember driving through a thunderstorm, a very intense thunderstorm that looked like it might turn into a tornado at any moment. About five or six years ago, and I was listening to the tweezer from Fish's Alive One, which is like a half hour long, very sort of evil sounding, very, gets way out there. Type 2 jamming. Lots of that in that song. For the jam heads out there, you know what I'm talking about, type 2 jamming.

I don't. Well, look it up. I'm speaking directly to my jam fan people out there. Type 2 jamming. Type 2 jamming is basically when you totally abandon the song. And like, because type 1 jamming is when you're improvising over an established chord progression. Type 2 is when you totally abandon that. And it's just like, you know, noise essentially, very ambient type exploration of sonic worlds. Anyway, those are two things that came to mind for me. What about for you?

Like, are you going to talk about clarity? I'm absolutely going to talk about clarity. First off, I'm Googling Type 2 jam. And the first two things that come up are Type 2 Jam and type 2 diabetes journal of American, of the American Medical Association Review. I'm not a fan of type 2 diabetes, not endorsing that at all. Type 2 jamming, though, I am a fan of. So, Clarity, like, and I did Google this while you were talking.

It is three, it's about three some odd hours from Appleton to O'Clair. And Clarity is about an hour long, and that is the drive from Richmond, Virginia to Charlottesville, Virginia, when I was in college. That's what we're just going to do. We're just going to talk about when we were in college. But that, I listened to Clarity after going to, like, the first wedding of, like, a friend. of mine, like, they were like 22, and this was like a couple of weeks after 9-11. So there was just like a lot of strange emotions in the air. Nothing better than to listen to clarity, especially if like you're on, if you're alone in the car.

And, yeah, that was like my first like, wow, adulthood. This is like overwhelming. That's what clarity is to me. Also, if we're going to talk about Jimmy Eat World, bleed American, the first time I listened to that album, I got a speeding ticket like 10 minutes in. So I think that is the difference between Jimmy World's Clarity and Bleed American. But as cliche as it is, Modest Mouse is really the go-to for long, hard rides. Because, yes, we're showing our age here.

But also, they're a rare band for whom travel is like an actual subject matter of their music. So it's sprawling, but like it has these moments of like repetition similar to driving. through, I don't know, any part of like the non-urban part of the country and points of like really loud, caffinous rock. So it mirrors the actual experience of driving across the country. And for me, that was the album we listened to when we, for some reason, a friend of mine and I, we drove at night from Charlottesville, the Charleston, South Carolina. He was driving. I was not in a sober state of mine. and that's when you really need to listen to the moon in Antarctica. Oh, moon in Antarctica.

For me, it'd be lonesome crowded West would be the driving album. But yeah, great call on modest mouse, you know, Truckers Atlas. Oh, yeah. That's a song I could listen to on repeat if I was driving. And it's about 10 minutes long. So if I was doing the drive from Appleton to O'Clair, what would that be? It'd be, you listen to that song 18 times in a row,

and it would get you from one place to another. I think I could listen to that song 18 times in a row. maybe I'll actually do that sometime. I would like that you looked at the distance there too because it made me realize that at Buda Khan is a half hour long. I listened to it six times in a row, so that's 180 minutes. So that would cover the three-hour drive. Yes.

Totally works. Okay, so let's get to our second letter. This comes from Brendan in Burbank, California. I was in Burbank not too long ago. I wonder if I saw Brendan hanging out there among all of the the tourists and the Universal Studio traffic there. He says, hello, Stephen Ian,

big fan of the podcast, challenging the L.A. is an Indycast country narrative. Have we said that? I probably said that. I lived in L.A. for 10 years, so it's kind of self-deprecating, but... Right. I'll take it. We welcome. I love L.A. I love visiting L.A.

Was inspired to write by your recent Celebration Rock anniversary episode. I, too, loved that Japan Droids album in 2012, so are eagerly made plans to see them live when they came around in spring of 2013. I caught them at the new parish in Oakland on a bill with another Faye band from that time. Cloud Nothings, I remember that tour. I was super excited for the show and then totally let down.

I know you spoke of their inconsistent live shows, Stephen, but this concert was a bummer. And it lowered the band in my esteem for quite a while afterwards. Has this ever happened to you? Where a live performance lowered in any way or it changed your opinion of a band that you loved on record. Side note, I'm even more confounded by Ian's hate of the hold steady after hearing him gush about Japan droids.

Join the club, Brendan. This is an ongoing conversation between Ian and I that has gone on for a decade or more. But we'll put that one aside. We don't want to get sidetrack with that. Brendan's asking, have you ever seen the band live that you loved, but then they

sucked live and it made you like the man less? So, you know, as we're prone to do here on Indycast, I got to mention local H, specifically, all the kids are right. This is a great song. It's like from a doomed album, an Indycast Hall of Famer, if there ever was one, about how they played this show after they got a whole bunch of online hype and, um, and, and like, oh, it turns out they sucked live and all the kids turned on them. And I mean, this song came out in like 1998. So this was at least 10 years before like pitchfork or what have you were like catapulting these buzz bands onto stages. They had absolutely no right to play. I'm talking

about, you know, the waves meltdown or clap your hands say, yeah. And I think that was kind of the way I would evaluate live shows in the past where it's like, can they pull off what they did on the record? That's super important to me. Like, I don't want to feel like I was being lied to by this album. But, you know, in the same way that when we talk about bands or albums nowadays, we're real, most of the people are just like kind of talking past the music and like talking about the fan base, like what it's like to be amongst people who like that music. I think that's also the case with seeing music live where what is on stage is almost like tangential to the experience of like,

are people talking during this show? Like, am I annoyed by the audience? And a live experience that kind of merged those two things recently, our friend Christaville wrote about this at Stereo Gum, but watching Phoebe Bridgers headline Pitchfork Festival, like it was a good choice in 2021. Like certainly a level of fame to warrant it. But her music was like drowned out by like Yeagia on the other stage, a lot of bass.

Like the music didn't scale up. So, you know, there was a discrepancy between like her level of fame and like that, the music itself. But more than anything, and I've heard this be like a real thing at Phoebe Bridger's show is that people talk during her. or like they try to banter with her. Like, oh, I, like, maybe if, like, I can be as clever as Phoebe Bridgers on stage. Yeah, I just remember, like, the times I've seen her just being super annoyed to the point where I can't really enjoy the show. And I think that's become, we talked about this on a previous episode about, like, how

this is becoming more and more prominent, you know, post-COVID, where, like, I saw it at a perfumed genius show, people just talking throughout the entire show. set. It happened at a Manchester Orchestra show. I don't know if there's any specific band where I've had a lowered opinion, but maybe it's just like live music in general. So, yeah, live

music, kind of overrated now. Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't think live music is overrated, but I will say that my feelings about indie bands seeing them live has really shifted over time. I used to have this stance, which I guess is kind of like a rockist

stance that if I liked a band on record, I had to see them live to confirm that I liked them. And it was like the live music tests. Like if they can bring it live, then they're actually like a really good band or a good artist. And, you know, about five, six years ago, I stopped thinking that way because there were so many indie bands that I went to see live that I just thought were not any good on stage. and that period it coincided with the rise of, I guess what we'll call the band camp era, where there were a bunch of artists that came to prominence first because they were popular on band camp. And then they had to become bands in order to tour. And it was almost like they had to tour for a while to come into their own as performers.

You know, like that old thing about how, you know, bands, they tour for several years, they play the clubs, and then they get signed and then they put out a record. And when they are in the spotlight, they've had the experience on stage to be really good, you know, like when they actually are seen by a lot of people. And it just seemed like there was this era, and maybe we're still in it, where there were like a lot of artists who,

if you saw them the first time, they'd be bad, and then you see them the second time, they'd be, like, okay. And then maybe by the fourth or fifth time, they would be, like, really good. Like, I would say car seat headrest, is the example I think of when I say that. I mean, I saw them several times around the time of teens of denial, like that era, and they just got better each time I saw them.

But if I had decided to stop after that first time, I just would have thought they were a shitty live band. I don't know. I don't know how you feel about this, but it has maybe more selective, like when I go out to shows now, because there are certain artists who, like, I like them on record, but I can just tell that this. won't be good life.

And Phoebe Bridgers... Phoebe's probably an example of that because I like her records a lot, but, you know, thinking of seeing her play those songs at a festival like pitchfork, it does not seem at all appealing to me. It's just not the right context for what she's doing.

So I don't know. I mean, there's still, like, lots of great live bands out there, obviously. But I just think in the indie world, especially with young bands, you know, they're really used to, like their early tours to get better. They're not good right away.

So it can be like a pretty frustrating experience to go to these shows and just kind of be bored out of your mind. I mean, I feel like that happens a lot in the indie world. It absolutely does with, and especially like with what you mentioned, the band camp hour. The first thing that comes to mind is Alex G. Like a notoriously erratic

live experience. And you know, I've seen bands that I really like and have become solid live like Soccer Mommy or J-SOM. For example, like these these bands where it's like, oh shit, we now got to be, we got to be on tour and I got to get a band. And it's, and it looks like four or five people who like just met each other like a month ago. But like once they become permanent members of the band and they start appearing in the videos, like I think with the most recent soccer mommy single, you know, it becomes a better experience.

And it's like, you know, like I. And that's the thing. Like I don't blame these artists for not being able to bring it, you know, to replicate their bedroom, uh, pop. record on stage and more to the point like I'm 40-something years old I don't need the I don't need to like go and see just like you know the 500 some odd people in San Diego who happened to like JSON as much as I do you know I don't need that sense of confirmation the way I used to yeah yeah that's definitely like the age definitely influences that and to your point about being annoyed by an audience that's probably an age thing too you know like but you just see people talking

or with B.B. Bridgers, they're trying to engage her in banter. I think that really speaks to the gap between her music and her online persona, where she's like a really funny person online, but her songs aren't, I mean, her songs have humor in them, but, you know, the music is more somber than what her persona is. So I think that maybe creates some dissonance at her shows a little bit, because you get these wisecracking people, like, oh, be funny like you are on Twitter. And it's like, well, no, this isn't what, we're not on, Twitter right now. We're in real life.

Twitter is real life. I think that's like another theme of Indycast. You know, like new music by old bands and Twitter actually is real life. Absolutely. You want to read our next letter? I love this next question. Yeah, I'm really glad that someone asked about this. So this is from Corey in Connecticut. And they've come up with countless emails to you guys in my head.

And of all of them, this is possibly the least necessary. but after Steve's column, I couldn't resist. Making a difference out there, Steve. Yes. In short, Harry Styles, same as it was, has the drum track from the strokes, hard to explain. And it also has the bloopy synth from Steve's personal favorite song, New Light by John Mayer. Great song. It's all I can think of when I hear the song.

Not since Kelly Clarkson since you've been gone. Have I heard such a patchwork of indie rip-offs? Since You Been Gone is literally the end has no end by the strokes. I also say it's got like the city by dismemberment plan in there on the chorus. I like that Corey is implying that John Mayer's indie rock. Or the strokes. Yeah, but I know what you mean, Corey. I know what you mean.

In question form, whether or not you agree with my specific observations, what are some examples of popular music that have brazenly borrowed from any type of indie music that you have noticed and is accepted and enjoyed by the general public? What are the best examples of individual songs or long-term trends? Keep talking about the biggest indie news of the week, reviewing albums and hashing out trends in the free world, Corey in Connecticut. Thank you, Corey. That is a good question.

The example that came to mind for me right away when I saw this letter is really like the, not even the recent work of Taylor Swift, like the bulk of her career after she crossed over from being a country star. I still think with the album, 1989, I felt this at the time and I still feel this way, that that was her reacting to what was

going on in indie music in 2013. You know, 1989 came out in 2014. Like, to me still, it sounds like her version of like a Haim record. You know, like, indie music at that time was very much starting to look back to the 1980s of being influenced by that. And I think

Taylor, you know, absorbed that into her own music. And she didn't rip it off necessarily. There's no songs on her record that sound like a specific indie song. It's more about like jacking a vibe. And I think that more than anything is what pop has been doing for the past decade or so,

where indie music really is like the farm system for pop music, as opposed to being this like oppositional culture, like the way it was really before, you know, the 2010s. I was also thinking too about the weekend, doing that in reverse in a way because like you look at the early part of his career, you know, the mixtapes he put out in the early part of the 2010s, which proved to be really influential on mainstream music, obviously, as the decade unfolded.

But then he himself became a superstar when he started glomming on to, you know, the most popular music of the 1980s, you know, by the middle of the decade. So he kind of did it, he kind of influenced pop music, and then he let himself be absorbed by pop music, and he started making very big-time records in that way. So those are the examples that came to mind for me.

what about for you? I mean, do you feel like there's examples of like specific songs being ripped off or is it more of just like absorbing influences from the indie world? I had such a hard time originally answering this question and you know, part of it is because

I don't engage with pop music as much as I did, you know, in the since you've been gone days or, and you know, mentioning 1989 is kind of a turning point in history. I think that in a way, the distance between indie and pop music is closed to the point where, you know,

I can imagine many pop songs that could be ripping off Tame and Paula or the National or, you know, say at one oh, Trix Point never, the war on drugs. But more often than not, they just get Kevin Parker in the studio. They just get like Aaron Dessner to produce the record or they get, you know, Daniel Lopatin to do it as well. And I think Lemonade by Beyonce was like a very prominent example of that where, you know, Father John Misty, Ezra Kanig, they were just all brought into the fold. But I think what really hit me here is that I think Corey is kind of asking the question in reverse because I can't think of too many pop artists who are like ripping off indie bands in the current day, at least not ones that we talk about here. But like the opposite is happening all the fucking time, which is the same.

say that like so many indie artists are ripping off pop acts and that I see clear as day. I've seen so many bands particularly in like the I don't know like whatever you want to call DIY punk emo sphere uh you know change course and you know hey we decided like we listened to Taylor Swift in the van and we don't want to hide that anymore so therefore you see like them pivoting to sense they like try to sound like Carly Ray Jepson or Robin or the weekend. And, you know, in the same way that we talked about saving Private Ryan, it's like, you know, my personal, you know, my personal war is seeing so many fallen comrades to the, like taking the canon of pop optimism.

That's kind of a mixed metaphor. But, yeah, like, I would love to see, like, I don't even know what sort of indie artists, like a pop band could rip off nowadays. I don't know if any indie artist is like big enough to rip off. I mean, you can talk about maybe like Japanese breakfast or what have you, but like that to me is an example and I think a good example, like a positive example of an indie artist who is taking on like pop music. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like you said, I think instead of ripping things off, you just bring the person in. So, yeah, like again, going back to Taylor Swift, oh, I like the national. I'm going to bring an Aaron Desner and I'm going to make a record that kind of sounds like the last couple national records, or I'm going to bring in Justin Vernon, and we're going to do a duet.

It's going to have kind of a Bonnie Bear vibe because he's on the song. The stigma that used to exist about pop music and how if you were in the indie world, you couldn't participate in the pop world or else you're a sellout. I mean, that's so ancient now that calling it a ripoff

doesn't even seem like the right word for it. I mean, going back to the Harry Styles song, I mean, I really think, it's not so much an indie rip off. To me, it's like ripping off the weekends rip off of Take On Me. It's like his version of Blinding Lights to me

more than, you know, the songs that he was mentioning. So I don't know. Again, like pop music has just absorbed like the rest of the music world. We're just like kind of living in a world ruled by Taylor Swift in the weekend and Harry Styles at this point.

All right, let's get to our last letter. This comes from Juan in Mexico City, he has written us before. Oh. And we've read his, so he's like a two-timer. I don't know if we're going to have like a, like, SNO has like the five-timers club. Maybe we should have like the five-timers club for our mailbag.

Is this the first double dipper? It might be. It might be. Juan, congratulations. Let's get our intern on this. We need to keep track of this store of stuff. Yes. Well, in the meantime, Juan asks,

what's your guys take on ambient music? I'm probably biased on this because I've had anxiety problems since I was a kid, so this type of music helps me a lot sometimes, but I also think it could be very emotional. Also, what do you think about ambient tracks on non-ambient albums, like Treefingers on Kid A or The Haunting Idol, from Lost in the Dream by the War on Drugs? I feel like ambient music can be seen as just background music,

but for me, there's a wide array of emotions it can evoke. So how do we feel about this kind of music? Ian? Great question. And yeah, I love the fact that we're talking about, like, I love when people ask us to discuss like genres of music that we don't typically hear. I think there's like an irony of ambient music, and I don't know if I should pronounce it ambient or ambient.

Yeah, I don't know. I was feeling unsure as I was reading that. I'm sure I'm going to get like a pissed off letter from like an Apex twin fan. Yeah, the Eno Stan Army is out there. I don't even know how I pronounce it, but I'm just going to go with ambient from here on out. Ambient music is like, if I were, like, the one kind of music that I could play in the common area of work, that people would ask me to shut it off immediately. Like the one thing that is supposed to be used for, because, you know, at my job where I'm around, like, you know, real people with, you know, pretty normal taste.

It's either the Spotify feel good indie playlist or like Taylor Swift. Like that is my workplace's version of ambient music. And I put on groupers dragging a dead deer up a hill one day while I was in my office. And that was like the one time people were like, please turn this off. This shit makes me want to feel like I want to die. I like that Juan brought up tree fingers and the haunting idol. Like by and large, ambient tracks on non-ambient albums, that just shows me that they really are going for it. It's like you're, and the 1975, another example of that.

I think they had a song called streaming on the last album. That just shows they're really swinging for the fences, that they're really trying to make an epic statement. Stuff like early Apex Twin, I love that as well. But like, I think this gets into definitional aspects of ambient music, because I think about like, you know, selected ambient works, and there's like drums on that. And it's like, if there are drums, can that be,

ambient music. I mean, same with like emeralds. Their music has no drums as far as I know, but it's like pretty loud still. And I guess the mystery that always fascinates me about ambient music, it's like, I want to hear a

bad ambient album. Like, who is like the Greta Van Fleet or like the Jack Harlow of Ambient? Like I want to find like the person who reviews all, like Philip Sherburn. I got to holler at that dude to pitch for it. Like, tell me who is like making like some basic, like, clown shit in the ambient world.

Yeah, that's one thing I'm curious about, too, because, like, I'm going to say ambient, too. I'm just going to follow your lead. I'm going to say both, because then I'll be a little bit wrong, a little bit right, instead of all wrong or all right with the pronunciation here. But obviously, you know, I'm a fan of, like, the OGs of the genre. You know, love Brianino, love his collaborations with Cluster. You know, Tangerine Dream is awesome. There's the late Klaus Scholesi, who recently passed away, passed away earlier this year.

All the Germans, love the Germans from the 70s, are great. And then you get into the 90s, you've got Apex Twin, and you've got boards of Canada, that kind of stuff. That's all cool. But yeah, I'm curious, like, how fans of the genre feel when there's a song like Tree Fingers on Kid A, do they just roll their eyes at that? Is that like the nickelback of their genre? You know, like these rock guys who are dabbling in our world, like, do they just feel like that's obvious or like overly derivative of, you know,

what you would have heard on side two of low, you know, the David Bowie record? Because I have no perspective on that at all. I mean, I feel like when rock bands put an ambient track on their record, it is, like you said, a hint to the audience that, this is going to be an epic record, you know, that we are taking you deep inside the mind of your own consciousness and this is going to be part of like the journey of it, you know.

But I just wonder like how that reads to someone who listens to this kind of music all the time, if it just feels like, you know, musical tourism, maybe, like when rock bands do it. I do think, like that Juan brought up the war on drugs because that's an element of their music that has been excised pretty much from their records where, you know, like on slave ambient, slave ambient, there you go. Another ambient reference. And Lost in the Dream, there were these more kind of like segue tracks that would go on for a while that gave those records a real vibe. kind of like a kind of like spooky vibe that like has been excised in favor of just like more straightforward rock anthems on the last couple records

it's kind of made them more of like a conventional rock band than they were early on. Great car record. I listened to the slave ambient the other day during Memorial Day. It is a great car record. And I'll say too that I like the midsection of that 1975 record. I like it when you sleep, yada, yada, yada.

Isn't there like sort of like ambient part in the middle, like where it gets kind of spacey for about 10 minutes? The name of that song is Please Be Naked. But yes, that is like kind of a notorious dip. It's also like on Deer Hunter's Microcastle. That's another example of like where the middle of the album, they really test you and they put a couple of like ambient tracks in there. I think Bradford Cox was good at that.

Like an example of like a rock musician who I think did something. Again, I could be totally full of shit when I say this, but it did seem like he was a little bit more thoughtful working in that arena than maybe other rock musicians. Because it does feel like sometimes the ambient track on a rock record does feel like an interstitial song that people don't really even consider a full-fledged song.

I mean, that's definitely the case with tree fingers, I think. People treat that as an afterthought on Kidd A. Even though I don't think it should be, I mean, I like that track as like a mood setter in the middle of the record. But, you know, those tracks tend to be kind of looked at almost as like the rap skit of like a rock record. Yeah. Treefingers was like a notorious, um, a notorious, notorious victim of like Napster downloading because people were like,

fuck, I waited 25 minutes to download this song with no words on it. Fuck out of here. Like, a lot of people would have their Burt copy of Kid A prior to it being released and it's like, yep, Tree Fingers, that shit can go. 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 again, very true to form. On Wednesday, Algernon Cadwalader announced their reunion tour, and I'm stoked about this because, you know, I can ask my wife,

hey, sweetie, do you want to see the band Algernon Cadwalader in L.A. or Santa Ana? And then she can use that name to her friends. But this is like a huge deal, you know, in the emo world and I think maybe filtering into the indie world as well. But their debut album, 2008, some kind of Cadwell Otters, basically the cap and jazz of the emo revival. It's like the gold standard for everything that came before, ripped off by tons of bands. They all went on to do a lot of interesting things. Joe Reinhart, the guitarist, went on to join Hopalong. He produced Joyce Madder's Never Hung Over Again.

Modern Baseball's Holy Ghost. And they broke up in 2012. They're getting back together for a fall tour. And they're playing like shockingly big rooms. Like I know there's a lot of excitement for this band, but how this plays out and brick and mortar spaces will be interesting. But yeah, so I mean, they're playing like a thousand plus cap rooms in L.A. and Chicago multiple dates in Portland. And, you know, this is recommendation corner because like, please listen to their album.

Some kind of Cabell Otter is the Emo one. Parrot flies is a little more jammy. I think Steve might like cruising, which is the last song on parrot flies. They sound a little more like pavement sort of jammy. But I'm very interested to see how this plays out compared to the Sunday Day Real Estate tour that got announced. Algernon, they're super stoked to be together.

It's every original member from the band. Like everyone, so you're going to get two drummers and like two guitarists. Whereas Sunday Day Real Estate, like seeing like it took a lot of lot more elbow work to get happening. And they're not going to have Nate Mendel as well. So, yeah, I'm just interested to see how the crowd reaction is for these compared to sunny day real estate. I'm going to go to both.

I'm super excited for both. And yeah, emo fans, we are eaten in the fall of 2020. Can I just say that I was impressed every time you landed the pronunciation of that band name. Like, you landed every single one. I don't know if you were doing, you know, tongue exercises before the episode. because it just seems like a hard name to land. I'm not even going to say the whole name.

I just want to say that's a very Prague rock name. We've talked about this in previous episodes. There's definitely crossover between the emo world and the Prague world. I mean, are they Prague-y at all? There's accidentally Prague-y. It's not like they have all these weird time signatures in the way like yes, do. But it's, yeah, not Prague-y, a little more mathy. You know, like whether it's math or Prague, it's like, you know,

Billy Corgan said hipsters unite. Like this is the exact opposite. This is all the nerds unifying. I mean, Math Rock, I think, is, you know, punk. It's like the punk version of Prague, basically. So there's definitely a lot of parallels there. I don't know. Has anyone ever written about emo and Prague?

I'm sure. I feel like that's got to be a deep dive. I'd be curious to see that. I want to talk about a new album that's out today from Angel Olson. It's called Big Time. and I have to say that this record surprised me a little bit because I've always appreciated Angel

Olson's work. I've written about her in the past, but I have to be honest that her albums, while I enjoyed them, they never really hit me on a deeper level until now. This album is, I think, by far my favorite thing she's ever done. I like the record a lot. It's a very emotional record. I'm going to describe it in a way that will guarantee that Ian will never listen to this album.

I would say that it has a vibe, that's similar to sea change, the Beck record, but I think it's better executed, certainly in like the soundscapes that surround her songs. This record was produced by a guy named Jonathan Wilson, who you may know as Father John Misty's longtime producer. And this record has a similar vibe of like Southern California, Laurel Canyon, very kind of 60s and 70s. But there's more of like a country vibe to this record.

It's almost like a psychedelic country record. Like if, you know, Grand Parsons had lived a little bit longer. Like, he might have made a record that sounded like this in like 1975 or so. But there's a real, you know, emotional gut punch quality of this record. You know, the backstory, if you don't know it, is that Angel Olson's parents both passed away within two months of each other. And I forget what year it was. It might have been 2020 or 2021, so fairly recently. So the record, it's definitely a grieving record processing the loss,

you know, very profound loss in her life. And it's paired again with music that I think is so gorgeous and it's so well produced. Again, lots of pedal steel guitar, just great sounding drums. And to me, I feel like some of her recent work has been a little overblown from a production standpoint. And then she, I think, overcorrected by making a very spare record from the same song, that were on that very sort of orchestrated record that came out. I believe that was All Mirrors. All mirrors, yeah.

From that record, that record, All Mears. Which is a good record, again, but I just feel like this album, for me anyway, is a breakthrough with Angel Olson, and it's probably going to send me back to listening to her older work. Sometimes it's like that with an artist who you like, but then you hear an album of theirs that you love, and it makes you re-appreciate other albums that you've listened to, and maybe they haven't hit in quite the way that you would like them to. So again, the record's called Big Time. I like this record a lot.

I think it's definitely one of the best albums that have come out so far here in 2022. So definitely check that one out. I don't think you'll listen to this record, Ian. Do you have any interest? I'm going to listen to it. Just because above all else, we serve the narrative. And if I, you know, Angel Olson is like a constant threat to be in the top 10. anytime she drops a record.

So if nothing else for the sake of like maybe this is the one that hits me, I don't know. I'm about doing a lot of driving. Maybe it sounds good. I know she lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm going to be driving through the mid-south a lot in the next couple. Oh, man. So maybe this is it.

Maybe this is it. That seems like the perfect setting for this album. I envy you. I would love to take a trip to the South while listening to big time. Perfect environment for it. that about does it for this episode of Indycast. Thank you all for listening. 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.