Indiecast - Mailbag: CDs, Emo, And Jeff Mangum’s Icon Status

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

This week, Steven and Ian are once again taking questions from listeners. One listener was interested in exploring the place of CDs in the modern music industry, both in terms of audio quality, as well as the best method of listening. The result is a spirited conversation about how CDs compare in quality to that of streaming and vinyl, and the sense of ownership that comes with holding in your hand a physical manifestation of music. Is there anything quite like gathering a stack of CDs to take on a road trip?Of course, an episode of Indiecast wouldn’t be complete without a chance for Cohen to sing his praises about emo bands, this week focusing on 'Ground Aswim,' the latest from Sinai Vessel. The record hasn’t been getting much mainstream attention this year, which begs the question of what it really means for an album to be “slept on” in 2020.In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is recommending new albums from Soul Glo and Record Setter, while Hyden can’t get enough of the latest from David Nance.Sign up for the Indie Mixtape newsletter at uproxx.com/indieSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's 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'll be answering questions from you, the IndyCast listener. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Steve, I'm doing all right.

And, you know, one week later, the people just want to know, will Joe Biden make punk rock great again? I love how that's like been, I love how that's been the consideration of like the past week or so, like, what's going to happen, you know, ostensibly if Joe Biden takes office. Like, what's that going to mean for indie rock? Because the way we rationalize in 2016, it's like, well, Donald Trump's going to make punk rock great again. People are like, I don't know, perhaps hoping that when Joe Biden takes office, you know, CMJ will come back and stuff will start sounding like Matt and Kim again. And, I don't know. I'm like kind of ready to revisit like late 2000s blog rock. Yeah, I think if we take like kind of the total package, maybe we get like recession era Obama comeback. I'm open. Well, I was going to say like it's not going to be punk rock. It's going to be like beardy indie folk. I mean, I think that as being the music of the first Obama administration. Yeah. I mean, we've already had the Fleet Fox's return.

That's true. Bonnie Bear is going to drop a new joint. We got to have, you know, maybe Mumford is going to come back. He's going to make Mumford and Suns great again. Yeah, all those bands, all those bands of that nature who went like electronic and started like collaborating with hip hop. They're just going to go right back to the acoustic guitars, beards. Like, we're going to have like flight of the Concord type bands.

Absolutely. Moving to cabins. Cabins. If you own a cabin, sell it now because it's going to be worth a ton of money. Indie rockers are going to want to buy your cabin. to record their masterpiece. It sounds miserable. Oh.

We'll see. I differ on that, my friend. I am from the Upper Midwest, so this is great. I mean, this is like the music of my region here. Bearded guys, sensitive dudes and cabins and acoustic guitars, singing unintelligible lyrics. I can't wait for the next four years. I think it's going to be beautiful.

Yeah, I think, yeah, so make Indie. felt great again. That's what's what we're going to have, I think, hot dog. For the first Obama administration. Thanks, Obama. So we're, normally we would have a mailbag segment in this part of the episode, but we're just going to answer mailbag questions like this entire episode. We've done this before, and we had a lot of fun, and we like engaging with our indie cast listeners. There was also nothing else to talk about this week. So it worked out perfectly. Yeah, let's not be it around Bush here.

this is generally like a pretty fallow time for the music industry and you just get a sense like in the past two weeks that like people aren't really into putting out music or talking about it much for that matter. I think everyone just needs like a couple weeks just kind of chill and I don't know, maybe you know rock with their PlayStation 5 or new Xbox. I think I think it's the Xbox's time to shine right now. I think so. I mean this is the time of year and I don't know if it's if this is true in California. because it's warm there all the time. But where I live, you know, it's getting cold. It snowed this week.

There's like, you know, four or five inches outside my office window right now. So this is the type of year, like, where you just feel like sitting on a couch and eating food. It's like that hibernation instinct. Yeah. So maybe the music industry is like that, too. Like every band right now is just on a couch, you know, overeating and, you know, watching Netflix instead of putting out music. As opposed to what it's been happening for like the rest of COVID, you know. That's true.

But at least you could like, at least you could like overread outside, you know, like, which is what I was doing. Now I have to overreed inside. So, yeah, looking ahead to the next few months, I think we're going to be leaning on our indie cast listeners quite a bit, hooking us up with some good questions. So we have something to talk about on this podcast. And fortunately for us, I mean, I'm really psyched about the questions that we have. These ones are good. Our listeners, I'm telling you, it's like, I really appreciate our listeners right now because, like, I wrote about Ryan Adams this week. So I was having, I was having some negative reader interactions this week on Twitter and in my email box.

I was having a couple angry men who didn't like what I wrote about Ryan Adams. So it's nice to come back to the womb of Indycast where it's just all love. all love and support. Our listeners love us. We love them. It's just a big old like, you know, hug between us and our listeners, I feel. That being said so I can relate to your situation, I actually did relisten to gold recently. And, man, I'm embarrassed for my 21-year-old self.

We thought that was like, I mean, there are some good songs, but like, I'm embarrassed for my 21-year-old self thinking that was like this thing that was going to get us all through a national healing process. Well, you know, I don't want to, I don't know how much we want to wait into Ryan Adams in this episode. No, we don't. I guess I would just say I wrote this in my piece that, you know, because I wrote about, so I wrote a mailbag column. I'm just answering people's questions everywhere, I guess right now. But someone asked me about, you know, are you going to listen to Ryan Adams again?

And I wrote a what I thought was, I tried to be as thoughtful as I could about that. And because my answer was that I haven't really wanted to listen to him all that much. just because the context of his music has changed. I just think of him exploiting teenage girls when I listen to his music. So it's a little weird. But the thing about him, too, is that he is a pastiche artist, essentially, like at heart.

So, like, he is someone where, like, if you don't really want to listen to him, he's easily replaceable, like, by the artist that he ripped off. It's like, instead of listening to Cold Roses, you can just listen to The Grateful Dead. You know, instead of listening to gold, you can listen to the rolling. Rolling Stones or Graham Parsons.

You know, it's not, he's not so brilliant that, like, taking him out of your rotation is painful, at least with my experience. Yeah. So. But anyway. We'll leave it at that. Enough about Ryan Adams. Enough about Ryan Adams.

Let's get to our first question. This question is from Liz. And I just want to say at the outset that Liz, if you're listening, you are my favorite Indycast listener of all time. You are in the Indycast listener Hall of Fame. This is a question that I think people aren't going to really believe came from a listener. They're going to think that I wrote this question. The my five-year-old said this to me, like political meme on Twitter.

Daddy, like, why is Ryan Adams the bad guy? Right. No, this is not that. This is an actual reader, actual listener who wrote this question. And she says, hey, Steve and Ian, first of all, I absolutely love the podcast. I feel like you all are having the types of conversations I wish I could have with my friends, but they are also tired of hearing me talk about music and or music criticism. Liz, seriously, you're talking about music criticism with your friends.

Yeah, I can't help you there. Well, you've got to be friends with us here. That being said, this podcast has also been a source of validation for me. This is mainly directed at Steve. When it comes to two things I love, CDs and you too. As a 28-year-old, most of my peers find these obsessions odd. as you would imagine. In particular, my friends have been making fun of me for this CD thing constantly since they discovered that I'm holding a giant pile of them in my Bluetooth-enabled car.

But I have passionately defended my stance that CDs are great and highly underrated. So hearing you talk about your love of CDs on the pod has made me really happy, even if my friends will probably continue to make fun of me forever. Anyway, here's my actual question. What is your preferred way to listen to CDs? currently my only functional CD player is in my car. How much of a difference can you tell between streaming audio and CD or vinyl? I swear in my car I can tell the difference between CDs and streaming Spotify through the Bluetooth,

but my friends think I'm crazy. Thanks, smile emoji, Liz. Liz, amazing question. Thank you for writing in. I just want to say that I hope that this podcast becomes ground zero for the CD revival. I'm going to use this platform to pontificate against the vinyl boom that we've had, which I think is totally overrated at this point. And it's just like ridiculous, just like super overpriced, like charging like $40 for, you know,

a reissue of like the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack or whatever. I got to get that I got to get that Coke bottle variant, you know. It's all about getting the variance. But to answer your questions, I mean, I have a CD player in my office. I also have one in my living room, and I have one in my car. So I like listening to it in all those places, but the car is really my favorite place because it's the only place that I can listen to music really loud, unless I'm listening

to headphones, of course. And I do agree. I think CDs sound a lot better than streaming audio. I think CDs are generally louder to me, and they sound deeper. Like if you're playing them loud, they sound much fuller than streaming audio. Streaming audio also has that issue where if you are, say, driving in a less populous area, you might like lose your signal. The Bluetooth might not work properly.

It just tends to be really annoying in that respect. Whereas CDs, they always keep the faith. They're not going to screw with you. You will always be able to listen to them wherever you're driving. So, yeah, I think the car, listening, music in the car is like one of my favorite things to do in life. That's why I could never live in New York City or like any big city where I wouldn't want to have a car. It just seems like a miserable experience not to be able to just blast music as loud as you can. And I have a feeling

the same is true for you, Ian. I mean, you live in California. That's a great driving culture. I love like whenever I'm in California, I've been able to like rent a car on occasion like when I've been there for work things. And I just love driving in California and listening to music. Yeah, I remember one time this guy from New York came to Los Angeles when I was living there. And the one thing that he asked for me to do was to drive him around in my car listening to Celebration Rock. So he could hear what it sounds like in a car. Yeah, for me, like CDs are, the last time I listened to CDs was when I drove across the country to move to Kentucky. Like I put a bunch of mixes on CDs and turn it into a very ritualistic sort of thing.

And it was so satisfying because I had not owned a CD since 2006. I think Ghostface Killers Fish Gale was the last one. CDs did, however, come very much in handy. I would say through like 2008 to 2012-ish, like I would still get promo CDs from like PR companies. and I think there was like a Supreme Court case that said that we could continue to sell them back to like a used CD stores. So that would always be a way to like pocket a few bucks. But once they went it's all digital, you know, that really took down a important stream of income for me. But I do miss CDs mostly for like the visual aspect.

I do think the like just the way they look leads me to maybe have a placebo effect where it sounds louder and crisper and maybe cleaner. But I just miss like kind of holding the CD. Sometimes I would go into like Amoeba back, you know, Amoeba music or what have you and just like look at CDs of albums released in like past 2015 just to see what they would look like. You know, like Celebration Rock, for example. Like I would find it and it like I wonder what the back cover looks like because I just had no idea. And it was just such a profoundly weird experience to know that this medium of music

was still being produced. I'm curious though, like, what albums like right now do you really want to hear on CD? For me, it's like a visual thing, like just especially like double albums for that. That is just something I associate with the CD era. And so M83's Hurry Up We're Dreaming. To me, that seems like the definitive, like, quote, unquote CD album of the 2010s, I think also because, as Anthony Gonzalez is such an immense smashing pumpkins fan. I just think of it sitting on my CD shelf the same way like melancholy and the infinite

sadness or the wall did. I might like, I mean, I might just buy it on CD just to own it, just to like handle it. That might be worth however much I pay for it. Yeah, I mean, generally, like most of CDs I buy are like older albums, sometimes albums that aren't even streaming. So that's another reason to buy it on CD because it's the only way to hear it sometimes. But in terms of like albums that have come out recently,

like one album I bought on disc was the Sufiann Stevens record, The Ascension, just because I felt like it's such a long record. And I feel like when you buy an album, it's more of a commitment to like immerse yourself into it. It's like... Yeah. And I'd say that that's generally true for me. Like with the albums that I've been buying,

you know, like I bought like the Waxahachi record. I bought like the Flaxi record. Phoebe Bridger's record. You know, these are all albums that I feel like, you know, I don't want this just to be something I stream for a week and then forget about. Like, I want it to actually kind of, I want to live with this album. I want to be able to put it in my car. I want to be able to take road trips with this record and live with it.

And I think that is, again, that's one of the many things I love about, I guess, just physical media in general is that when you can actually like hold something, I feel like it has like a greater sense of permanence, whereas if it's just on a streaming platform, it just gets subsumed by every other piece of data that's on there. And I just feel like it's easier to lose track of things. I'll also say, too, and I'm sure Liz out there, if you're listening, you will appreciate this. One of my favorite things to do, if I'm going to take a long drive, is to do the CD draft. You know, like, when you're looking at your shelf and you're like, what are my, like, draft picks for this drive? Yeah, the visor. Yeah, the visor.

on the uh on the on the on the on the whatever the right you pull down yeah that or the cd the logic binder or whatever what am i going to listen to on this drive and i i love bringing the stack into the car and you know this is these are going to be like my companions on this drive and you know they're it's going to it's going to soundtrack this drive but it's also yeah like they're writing shotgun with me and i i love that ritual that i would never want to give that up uh so that's another great thing about CDs. Yeah. So, okay, so

Liz, thank you again for that great question. This next question, I feel like that first question was like a slow pitch down the middle for me. Yeah. The second one is a slow pitch down the middle for Ian.

And this question comes from Joe. Joe, thank you for writing in. He says, hey, Steve and Ian, first, thank you for the very entertaining podcast, which I look forward to every week. By the way, if you compliment us,

it's a good way to get on the show. Like, if you give us a compliment, that there's a good chance we're going to read your email in here. Or if you, like, insult us in a very funny way. We'll probably read your question then, too. My question is tangentially related to the new Sinai vessel album, Ground a Swim, which is dropping this week, which I figure has a good chance of being brought up by Ian in the next show. Ah.

Which I'm not sure if you were going to bring it up, but like... I think I hinted at it on the previous one, but... Okay. Well, you know, you didn't have to bring it. it up now because Joe just brought it up for us. I note that Shane Plant, one of the singles released in advance of this album, sounds pretty reminiscent of Narrow Steyer's era Death Cab for QD, which leads me to the question, are or were Death Cab ever an emo band? And what is the relationship between their 2000s' Output and the 2010s Emo Revival? Now, I'm just going to say something

here quick, because I figure Ian is going to answer this for about 20 minutes, so I'll just step out of the way, but I'll just say that as an emo sort of, I'm a sympathist, but I'm certainly not a loyalist or I'm not as inside, certainly as you are, Ian. My impression of Death Cab is that they are quintessentially emo for their era. Like if I were to, like, if someone were to say, name a 2000s era, emo band, Death Cab would either be the first band I'd mention or the second. I don't know if they technically classify as emo, but certainly, I feel like, culturally, they signify something emo to me in rock music, certainly of that era. So that's all I'll contribute to this conversation.

Ian, I'll leave it to you. Yeah, so for what you're saying right there, it reminds me of what Mo said on the Simpsons, the Homer. It's like, in regards to the emo, it's like, I'm a well-wisher in that I don't wish you any specific harm. But with this album, I'm glad he brought it up because A, it's a great record. I would highly recommend, you know, if we can fast forward to Recommendation Corner, highly recommended.

But, you know, this band in particular brought up a larger point and something that we tend to discuss here on Indycast quite frequently. The front person for, is it Sinai or Sinai? I remember my Hebrew school pronounced it Sinai, but I've heard Sinai a couple times. So if I pronounce it differently, it's, you know, that's just how I was raised. But Caleb from the band, he posted it on Twitter. that the world, and this is like a pretty humble guy, and he posted that like the world was seriously sleeping on the new record, which, you know, in a way, feels true. This album, Ground a Swim,

it's a self-release. The previous record, Broken Leg in 2017, came out on tiny engines. And I don't think it has gotten the same attention as that previous one, even though ironically, it's probably more, it's something that might interest mainstream indie rock listeners because he, talked about how it's influenced by big thief, whereas broken leg was more kind of traditional emo. But this brings the question to me, it's like, how do you even know if the album's being slept on in 2020? Usually in the past, you would say like, okay, you'd look at like how it's being reviewed, if it's being reviewed, if it's being covered, what do the gigs look like? But all the, like, there's what, maybe two music publications that regularly do reviews? There's no

touring happening. And so it seems as if like maybe all but 15 albums maybe from this past year could honestly make a claim to be slept on. Is it even 15? I feel like it would be less than 10. Yeah, it might be 10. There's like a small number, I mean, especially if we're talking indie albums. Yeah.

There's like a small number of albums that were released earlier this year that I still see being referenced. And I think there are all albums that we could all name off the top of our head. like a, you know, like Phoebe Bridger's Punisher, uh, would be one, I guess, like, the Fiona Apple record would be a one. Yeah, Waxahatchy, perfume genius and like, uh, that's really about it. Yeah, like what else? I mean, I have personal favorites, but yeah, just in terms of like records that you see

referenced, you know, continually, I, I, there's not many. Yeah, so I mean, yes, this album's being slept on, but like we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. I think music in general is being slept on. Like, I just don't think people have, like, the bandwidth to, like, I don't remember, I don't even remember anyone putting out, like, their first half to, like, you know, top albums or something like that. It's, it's just, like, is a blur to me. But. Well, and, like, I was, I was talking about this the other day on Twitter, like, Green Day put out a record, I think, in January that no one, there was a huge controversy behind it.

Right. And no one remembers that. That record was like, shot out of a cannon into a black hole in the sky. Never to be heard from again. And that's Green Day. You know, like pretty big band. I mean, they're past their prime,

obviously, but like, you know, they, there were billboards all over the country, like advertising that record. And, like,

Billy Joe Armstrong now is putting out a covers record. I guess, like, this month, just to... Maybe. I'll take your word for it. Just to remind people

that he still is in a band, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, times are tough everywhere. But yeah, like, Sinai Vessel, they're getting the Indycast bump right now. They're getting slept on even in a question about them specifically.

Like getting back to them, though, that, yeah, it's... Indycast bump. Yeah, Caleb said like Narrow Stairs was a influence on that particular song. But to me, that album sounds a little bit more like earlier Death Cab, you know, kind of before they had gotten to a major label. But I would also say that it's more Pedro the line. in there as well because many of the songs kind of struggle with like a religious upbringing. It's a lot more spare, like sometimes bass is a lead instrument.

If you kind of like Pedro, like winners never quit slash we have the facts and we're voting, yes. If that appeals to you, I think this album's going to be up your alley. But, you know, as far as like Pedro the Lion and Death Cab specifically, like where they rest in emo, I think Pedro the Lion definitely. but Death Cab I don't when we made that

also are the Vulture's best emo songs of all time that list that also happened this year like I

was Death Cab on that list Death Cab was absolutely on that list the movie script ending made it I believe at number 30

in the 30s I don't think there was ever any doubt that they were going to be on that list although there was

some kind of debate as to what would because I think like you were saying it's kind of impossible to conceive of the I guess the public's view of emo without death cab

it's like they are an essential band as far as formulating an idea of like what it means to be an emo person but as far as an emo band if you look back even at their most like quote unquote emo era like the early years they were kind of more of a Pacific Northwest indie band they were on Barsuk

the first album sounds a bit more like early built a spill or even low. Like that cat was pretty slow core in the beginning. And they didn't really have any roots in punk rock or I don't even think they really toured with too many emo bands. Like I did see the Death and Dismemberment Tour they did with the dismemberment plan, another band who is like, is it emo or is it not? They didn't make that list even though they were from D.C.

And produced by Jay Robbins. But as far as like how they've influenced the emo or revival. I think in a way, the quote, emo revival was in a way kind of going away from the public perception of it, whether it be like the Fuel by Ramen stuff or like death cab slash bright eyes. I mean, that stuff's coming back in a major way now because that's just the nature of cyclical trends. But you can see their influence in some bands who I would put in that realm. Like for example, Sinai vessel, Oso Oso, I think, particularly Unahon Mix Tables. had a lot of Death Cab in it,

maybe basking the glow to a lesser extent. Chris Walla, the guitarist slash producer, who was with the band up until I believe, he did a little bit on KSugi, which is easily Death Cab's worst album and like the one that kind of ushered in their era where they're now kind of just like the black keys in a way, where they put out a new album and it gets on K-Rock

just because it's them. Chris Wallet did produce, near my god from foxing and he's been on a couple other uh important records in that realm as well um so i would say like they're they're kind of in that like bright eyes realm where they're not exactly like emo if you think about it in terms of like the lineage of coming from emotional hardcore but also come on you can't keep that stuff that hard like if you play a movie script ending or the new year at like a virtual emo night or whatever like everyone's going to everyone's going to love it.

I have a feeling that some people can police it that hard. I'm sure. Oh, no, people do police it that hard. But like why? Look, I did a little bit of policing in my time, you know, especially when like Emo Night, LA was popping off or whatever. And like I regret every second of it. Yeah, yeah.

You know, I think our stance on this show is defund the music police. Yeah. Let's defund the music police. You don't need to be policing this stuff. It's going to really hurt us in Georgia. No, I'm just kidding. You want to hear my opinion on Death Cat for Cutie? Sure, I do.

They're fine. That's it. That's all I have to say. I mean, they're fine. I don't feel passionately about them either way. There's some songs of theirs I like. Catalog overall leaves me a little cold, but I'm not mad at it. And it's fine, and I appreciate their place in history,

and I recognize that they're an important band. So, but... Death Cab, they exist. Exactly. That's my stance. They're fine. They're fine. Let's move on to our next question. This comes from Twitter. This is a username in Everglow.

Thank you for your question. This came a few weeks ago, actually. We were going to use this question, and we had to bump it because we had so many good questions, but I still wanted to get it into the show somehow. So here is Ann Everglow's question. This person asks, what's more impressive? A long career. of merely good albums, a short career of two to three great albums, or a long career consisting of both great and good albums.

This is a great question. This is something I think about a lot. I think if you know anything about me, the writing I've done, my answer will probably be pretty obvious. I love a long career where there's peaks and there's valleys. I like the idea that, say, Bob Dylan can make blonde-on-blond, and he can also make knocked out loaded. Or you can make Christmas from the heart, or you can make time out of mind. I love that as a music fan because I think, for one thing, great albums are always, it's exciting to get into a masterpiece, so you want those peaks. but I also, I almost get as excited to explore albums that aren't very good or aren't considered to be very good and to try to find something interesting about it, especially if it's made by someone who is a genuinely great artist. I think that a bad album by a great artist is more interesting than a good album by a good artist.

You know, give me a misfire by like a genius over, you know, a competently made album. by a good craftsman. You know, I like those huge misfires. I mean, I did publish a story this week defending Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu. So, you know, that is Exhibit A in my stance there. I guess the other thing I would say, too, you know, the short career of two to three great albums, you know, the examples I think that pop out of that, you know, the obvious ones being like, you know, Velvet Underground, Big Star. uh, Jimmy Hendrix, Nirvana. A lot of times that's not by choice. You know, usually it's because someone died or because there was some, you know, personnel shakeup and they decided to break up.

There's something undeniably impressive about just having a catalog of all like classics, like the way Jimmy Hendricks does or the way I think Nirvana does, but at the same time, it doesn't seem intentional. So if we're going to say impressive, I don't know if it's impressive as much as just a benefit and a curse of fate, maybe. So I don't know. And like the career of like all good albums, I think that's cool too.

I think someone who can just be consistent and is good all the time, although that can get a little boring too. I mean, I guess that's the curse of Spoon, for instance. Yeah, I was about to say, what's the example? But then again, like, I would say Spoon's got masterpieces. Oh yeah. That's true. They're like, they make

masterpieces in like pretty good albums. and that to me is impressive. Like, I think it's tough to really identify any band who is, like, simply, like, good for, like, their entire, like, make 10 straight good albums, but none of them are, like, great, none of them are bad. Like, nothing comes to, nothing even comes to mind. Like, who can be that consistent for that long? You know, there's one band that came to mind with that, which, do you remember that band, the men? Okay, I would say yes, but I think some of their albums were like actual bad. See, I like all of their albums, but I never felt like they made like a classic album.

I always felt like all their albums were good, but they never went to the next level. And maybe, and I think you're right. I think if you don't take that next step to greatness, you tend to just sort of fade. Even if you're just like, like, I'm a solid band, but like we're not, we've never really kind of done anything exceptional. I was thinking of the band Woods, who is like sort of in that same sort of realm as the men. Like I think the first like leave home and open your heart are like fucking awesome. Like maybe not classics. But then they kind of shifted more towards like a Neil Young sort of thing.

So I could imagine how you might, you know, be more into that sort of thing. But like Woods is an example of a band where I think of that like they put out a lot of albums. And I think like if you look at like all. music, like all of them got four stars. Like, that's impressive to me. Right. Like, and like all their metacritic scores are like 78. I think I actually like looked into that once.

It's like I think they are like the most consistent band of, the most consistent longstanding band of like our times as far as indie rock goes. Yeah, that's a good point. And because they show and they show up to pitchfork music festival like every two years to play the three o'clock. bot. It is like clockwork with woods. I mean, does real estate fall on that lane? I mean, I guess I feel like the first two real estate records I like a lot and I would

be tempted to call them great. I mean, they've only put out like four or five albums. I think Days is kind of a modern classic. They have like six albums now, I think. What? Let me look this up. Shows that I know. I think, I mean, because they put out a record, I think maybe earlier this year.

year. That was like... Oh my God. That that was like pretty strong. I'm looking this up. I am, I am Wikipedia. I know they had one They have five albums. They have five albums. Five albums and two EPs. So, I mean, they're definitely getting into that zone. Yeah, but I think Woods is a really good

example. I love that record at Echo Lake. That's one of their earlier albums. Ah, yeah. But I'd be loath to make a case for how that's decided different or better than their other records. I think it was just because the summer that that album came out, I hung out with my buddy and we drank beer and listened to that record on my back porch a lot. So I have good memories of it for that reason.

It was the beer record. But what do you think about the question overall? What's most impressive to you out of those three scenarios? Yeah, like you were saying, I think you have to look at a band's intentions. To make two or three great classic albums and then kind of stop. that's usually not an artistic choice and it's extremely impressive when you can do that. Like for example, I think of a band like the hotel year. Now they put out like one album, it never goes out, which is, you know, pretty good pop punk album.

Then they put out Home Like No Place Is There, which is by most people's estimation is the greatest demo album of the 2010s. And then in my estimation, goodness is the best indie rock album of the 2010s. now. And I don't think I'm ever going to hear another record from them as a band. Like, I think Christians out there are just going to play poker for the rest of their time. And I think they've just basically said, we haven't really made music that interests us lately. Like, and I don't begrudge them for not doing that. I think if they ever do come back to do a 10-year anniversary or for home, like no place is there, it'll have a lot more juice to it than if they just put out a couple records that, you know, didn't quite hit those marks because they just felt like they needed

to. But when I was a CD buyer, now if we're going to trace back to that first question, easily I would say, like, I like the peaks and valleys. Like I, it was such a formative experience to go to disco round, which was the UCD store. And like when you would see like Prince or the Cure or Spring Scene, like one of their lesser known albums and you would pay $6.00. for the privilege of like trying to talk yourself into like the top or around the world in a day. Because like you were saying, it's like it's an investment. It's something that's going to sit on like quite literally the biggest piece of furniture that I have at the time. And also I have to point out that a reason I can never really go back to the CD era is that

when you move across the country, you got to think about how much it costs to ship literally thousands of compact discs. And also in California, we don't have as much space to live in. Right. So, you know, either he need to have that or like no bookcase. But I think if you're going to talk about like whether it's more impressive to have like great albums and like terrible albums, I think they need to be kind of interspersed within each other. For example, like, you know, like you mentioned Bob Dylan. Like he went through a period in the 80s or Neil Young when he was was going through his like weird phase where they eventually come back and you can kind of explore like what they were doing in between those classics like for example smashing pumpkins

is a band that has made in my estimation classic albums and really terrible albums but they're not as much fun to explore because the quality drops off so drastically after 2000 uh there's just there's it's not much fun when you have a band that like does their classics early on and they're just continues to go on. Just making like not very good albums. Now granted, you could be a contrarian and say, no, their new stuff is just as good as their old stuff. But I think it's hard for me to like think about what it's like to experience bands

that put out those peaks and valleys as they're happening. I think they're more fun to visit in retrospect, especially back when I guess I had the ability to go through quote unquote a phase. of an artist like being in college, having a Springsteen phase and doing the deep dive there. It's like, it's not as much fun to do a deep dive in the streaming era because there's really nothing at stake. You can listen to like 10 minutes of, you know, like, like wild mood swings by the cure and decide, yeah, not, not doing it. Yeah, but I think there's some catalogs though you can do that with where, I mean, you know,

just to name a band that I often name check on this show, the strokes. I do like going back, because I do feel like they have a catalog that's pretty up and down, and I do feel like they have had late period records that I would count as a comeback. I think the same with the killers, for instance. I think they have, like, very spotty albums, and they also have great albums, and it's kind of fun to explore the less good albums and how they got back to making better records. I was thinking about going back to the idea of artists that make two or three classes, and then disappear and how generally it doesn't seem like it was intentional.

I feel like I was trying to think of someone who like walked away after making classics. The only example I can think of is neutral milk hotel. Absolutely. Like Mangum has to be the only, I mean, maybe there's someone else, but like, because, you know, they put out an EP in 2011. It was the first thing they put out since in the airplane over the sea, but that was just old song. So it wasn't like he wrote anything.

for that. That's the only example I can think of of someone who, like, yeah, made two very well-loved records and then just deliberately walked away. I mean, you can think of like Talk Talk. I know Mark Hollis made like a solo record and just like never really came back. But I don't think they're quite, you know, at the level where like people think of them as like Neutral Milk Hotel. Like, I mean, they walked away for real.

Neutral Milk Hotel, you could see them play, you know, festivals and so forth. And, you know, Jeff's voice definitely. down a notch or two. You can hear it like maybe like a step. But yeah, I think in, I don't think it's going to quite hit us and, you know, for a couple more years like whether there's any artist

like that doing a contemporarily. Like, you know, my bloody Valentine, they came back. And moreover, like they spent a lot of years promising a new record. That never was the case with Neutral Milk Hotel. He's just done like reunion tours and

you know, or, but that, yeah, I haven't really heard any talk about him making a new record. I wouldn't want to hear it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, does neutral milk hotel hold up for you? Like, those records, it doesn't hold up as well for me at this point. I appreciate it, but I don't know. Like late 90s indie rock, there's a lot of other albums I'd rather listen to than in the

airplane over the sea. And I am definitely in the minority on that. Do I feel as passionate about that album as I did in like, you know, know, 2002 or 19, like, I don't feel about passionate about, like, just not anything that was happening at that time. I think it's become, like, an easy album to kind of joke about because of, like, the cult surrounding it. Another album that, like, when we think about, like, Peaks valleys, I mean, Weezer comes up as well. Like, that's another band where it's kind of fun to, now, granted, I, I think that there are a band who hasn't released anything, like, that's top,

hey pretty good since Pinkerton, which is, you know, another album like in the airplane over the sea that gets kind of mocked online for, you know, I guess what some might consider its regressive sort of gender relations. I still love that record. See, I'll defend the, Weiser Records. You know, Weezer, I think the White album, I remember thinking that was like pretty good. I mean, that everything will be right in the end, I thought was pretty good. That was pretty good and I never listened to it again. Well, yeah. That is what, that's what Weezer albums. provide for me. It's like, hey, this is pretty good. Like, this, this is pretty good. And then to never listen to it again. And that's how, that's how they keep going. Now, one of these days, maybe, I don't know,

10 years from now, there's going to be someone who comes on and, like, just stumps for, like, mid-period weas or, like, Rattitude or. That happens now. I see that now. Oh, yeah. I, I, well, we could, Can you really make a claim for yourself as like a critical, like, Andrew Untenberger on here from Billboard. He'll definitely stand up for those records, I feel like. I think he was the one that defended the Teal album, which was all the covers, like the Africa album. That wasn't this year, was it?

No, that was a couple years ago. I mean, I think it was 18 or 19. It wasn't, I mean, Africa's, that was a hit. I think that was 19. That was 2009. The album came out in 2019, but maybe Africa came out in 2000. Like, I just, please God, don't let me find out that the teal album happened this year too. I think, I think like Craig Jenkins over at New York Magazine gave that a positive review too.

So that has some defenders. I mean, the thing with Weezer for me, too, is that, like, listening to them as like a middle-aged man is, like, just seems kind of depressing to me. I get a little depressed if I find myself listening to Weaser. I'm like, oh, I'm this guy. I'm a 43-year-old man listening to Weaser. I don't know how I feel about this. How did I get to this point in my life? It's an embarrassment that you feel like that you don't feel when you're listening to

like actual teen pop that's like happening in 2020. It's like somehow this feels like more regressive than listening to music that is specifically designed for teens in. Like, you know, a 43-year-old probably should be listening to Weezer, but also, like, they probably shouldn't. Well, there's something specific about them because, like, there's other 90s bands, I'm fine revisiting. I don't feel that. But there's something specific about Weezer that, I don't know. It's a little weird.

I think I do know. It's a little bit. Yeah, like Pinkerton has some things that, like, may hit a lot harder when, you know, you're this. like a repressed 16 year old that it's like wow like that that that hit at a certain time but now it's like yeah I'm beyond that like I don't feel that way if I were to revisit say even like a bush or a sponge album or something that I should be embarrassed to listen to it's the fact that they hit on a very teenage or adolescent slash teenage level and in some ways you feel like you were kind of suckered not suckered, but it just kind of hit you at a time when you were vulnerable enough to hear it.

And, you know, hopefully, hopefully you don't feel that same way. I don't know. It's not so much that for me as like, just the way that Weezer has aged, they just strike me, they just remind me of, like, the guy who's still going back to his high school 20 years later and, like, you know, talking about, like, the latest trends because he wants people to think that he's still cool and young. and there's something kind of like off-putting about that. I think that's just been like Rivers Cuomo's thing.

Like he's like the, yeah, he's the Steve Bishemi Giff, you know. I don't know. I think there's something like, I think there's something like, I think there's something so genuine about like Rivers Cuomo's approach to music that I can't see it. I can't hate it. Like I think he's just really just kind of a weird guy. I don't think there's anything manipulative or like cynical. about what he does. So that to me is why, no matter like how bad they get, I can't possibly

hate Weezer. Yeah, I don't hate them. I'll always be fascinated by them. And this conversation that we're having on this podcast, it confirms a theory I've always had that if you get two guys who are between the ages of like 38 and like 45 in a room, they will end up talking about Weezer within like 15 minutes. It's just the law. You know, like if you were, born like you know late 70s early 80s uh you'll be end up talking about weezer which is what we ended up doing on this show and like we have some more questions to answer but we're i think we're running out of time here so we'll have to table our two remaining questions for another episode we got side track by weezer man yeah it happened all the yeah it is the oldest trick in the book you know no matter

what it is it just ends up coming about weezer you know maybe that when this evolves into like Weezer cast in 2021. Like, we'll look back on this episode as the real tipping point for it all. All right. We've now reached the part of our episode that we call a recommendation corner. This is where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? Okay, so I was only kind of joking when, you know, when we made the joke earlier at the

episode about, like, Joe Biden making punk rock great again. On the last Friday, November 6th, there were two hardcore albums. hardcore screamo, whatever you want to call it, that I think really kind of, in some ways they were so perfectly suited for the moment because there's something celebratory about listening to screamo. It's like a big release, but also it's very angry. So in the same way where it's like,

I think Biden won, but like we're not quite sure yet. It allowed us to exist in this kind of state where we're just like completely anxious, but kind of on the verge of like letting out this great release. And so two records came out that day. The first of which I've talked about a lot here, record setters, I owe you nothing. Just give a little bit about that because I've talked about it so much. I would call this probably the best, like, hardcore album of maybe the past couple of years.

As far as, like, actual, like, hardcore screamo. This just puts together basically everything that you could possibly want from the genre. I think they put together a like a playlist for top shelf records their label recently and it had you know like Ostraka and like these other like hardcore screamo bands that kind of flew on the radar but also like boys life and Oso Oso

so it has both that very abrasive like 12 people in a basement screamo thing going on but also like real deal melodies like sort of like type like a much angrier title fight I think that's a record that's being slept on just by nature of the fact that people don't tend to gravitate towards aggressive music but

I feel like I've seen a lot of people talking about that but maybe that's just my Twitter feed maybe yeah I think that is because I mean stereo gum I think called them a band to watch I mean that was the story yeah I wrote that yeah but yeah once again it's hard to tell if something's being like slept on I think compared to other hardcore bands maybe they're like seen as like oh my god

like they really made it they got a stereo gun profile. But to me, it's like that's something that is like a modern standard. But the second one that came out, and I think one that's gotten even more attention than records that are, and you know, I think perhaps deservedly so is a band called SoulGlow. They're from Philadelphia. They've been around for, I would say, the greater part of the past half decade. They're more of a, I guess, they're kind of like a more purist screamo band in a way or more of a purest hardcore band. Very political. They are a black,

hardcore band from Philadelphia, who for the most part, writes a lot about what they feel is often like tokenization in their scene or like the limits of white allyship. And just like very abrasively political

and somewhat of a, in a way like I'd say like more that has in common with like the coup than public enemy. But they put out an EP on Jeremy Baum, the lead singer of Tushé Amore's label, called songs to Yeat at the Sun.

It's a five-song EP, 12 minutes, and it just, it is like the perfect thing to listen to on the day where people were wondering whether or not Joe Biden was going to be elected because everything that they talk about on this record, which kind of goes from like suicidal tendency style thrash, and there's also like a death grip style rap song in the middle as well. It talks about like what it's like to be so broken.

off student loans, you're eating like hot sauce off your hand or being like subject to extortionist pricing on, you know, medication or SSRIs or defund the police or anything like that. It just talks about like all these problems that have come up recently, but like have are going to continue most likely. Like people are still going to be broke. They're still going to be harassed by the police. Their last album, I had a picture of them getting pulled over in Missouri, and they had a GoFundMe that raised, I think, $15,000 for bail. But yeah, but the political aspect of SoulGlo, just in terms of like what's happening right now, they just speak to all the things that people were fighting for in the past election,

like, you know, Black Lives Matter, defund the police, Medicare for all. And you get a sense of like, yes, this anger is so righteous. and also none of this is probably going to be solved. And also, it's 12 minutes and it kicks ass. So it costs you nothing to check this out. So Soul Glow, Song, C8, the Sun. I think this one, I think people are going to look back on this one is another pretty landmark release in terms of hardcore.

Very cool. Looking forward to checking that out. My recommendation this week is a Nebraska rocker named David Nance, and I've been a fan of this guy for a few years now. He has an album that comes out today. It's called Staunch Honey. It's one of my favorite albums of late 2020. I've been listening to this record a lot the past few weeks. On this show, you'll hear me talking about my love of Chugel. Huge Chugel fan. I love Chugel Rock. David Nance is one of the finest practitioners of Chugel Rock that we have right now. This Stanch Honey record is so good.

came into, I first got into him a few years ago when he put out a record called Peast and Slightly Pulverized, which is an excellent record. That record is actually credited to David Nance Group, and it is more of like a loud rock and roll record. Pretty long songs, like lots of guitar solos, like if you like that sort of like mid-70s crazy horse sound, that record is definitely in that lane. The new record is a little quieter, a little folkier, but like not like a wimpy, wispy type of folk. It's very

robust, really cool, like, rhythm parts. And again, it has that chugel to it. It has the chugel rhythm, which I cannot get enough of. And I would also recommend that he put out a live record on Band Camp on Band Camp Friday last week. It's called September 20th, 2020, and he played a backyard

concert just for some friends. And he plays a lot of the songs that are on Stanch, how many, on that record. So I'd recommend that you listen to Staunch Honey, dig into that record, and then also check out that live record. It's just those songs presented in a more raw form. You can also maybe kick David a couple dollars. I think you could probably use it. The other great thing about him, too, like once you're on his band camp page, one of the things I really loved about Nancy as I got into him and I ended up interviewing him a few years ago, is that he's also put up several covers an album in its entire.

entirety. Like he covered the Rolling Stones Goatshead Soup, he covered Lou Reed's Berlin, Beatles for sale, but they're not straightforward covers. They're like pretty dramatic reimaginings to the point where if you didn't know that they were covers, it would be hard to tell sometimes that he was actually drawing on that source material. But as someone like me, who is interested in that classic rock lineage and also how artists today take those source materials and they twist them and they take him in different directions. I think David Nance is one of the really more interesting people working in that realm and I think he's done some really great thing. So again, his new album is called Staunch Honey. Definitely go check that out. I think

you'll really enjoy it. I think we're out of recommendations and also out of time in this episode. So thank you again for listening to this episode of Indycast. By the way, if you like our show, please give us a rating on iTunes or like wherever you get. get your podcast. These things help the show. It gives us a little bit better exposure. There's like algorithms that determine which shows get promoted on different platforms and shows that have a lot of reviews and a lot of ratings tend to do better in the

algorithm. So if you like our show, give us a rating. If you don't like our show, scream into your pillow for a minute or so. You'll feel better after this episode. But yeah, thank you for listening to this episode of Indycast. We will be back with more reviews and news and hashing of trends next week. Peace. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix tape newsletter.

You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie. And I recommend five albums per week and we'll send it directly to your email box.