Indiecast - MGMT, The Last Dinner Party + Many, Many Upcoming Beatles Biopics

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Steven and Ian begin this week's episode with an impromptu Moviecast about the news that Sam Mendes is directing four separate biopics about each member of The Beatles. Steven has often said that he can't ever have too much Beatles content, but this might finally test that theory. The guys also try to think about music biopics that are actually good, and come up with 24 Hour Party People, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and the immortal made-for-VH1 classic about Def Leppard (7:00).From there, they talk about the latest album from MGMT, Loss Of Life, as well as the band's career (15:30). Shockingly, Ian has never heard Oracular Spectacular in its entirety! They also discuss the buzziest band of early 2024, the British export The Last Dinner Party, and the lineage of heavily hyped English rock bands (29:30).In the mailbag, they are asked to give a yay-or-nay verdict on the Lemonheads (39:30) and whether band lineup changes have ever helped bands in the long run (46:00).In Recommendation Corner (52:00), Ian pays tribute to Complex.com and a reissue of a lost classic by Curling while Steven recommends the latest from the jammy folk-rock outfit Itasca.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 177 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 indie mixtape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talked about MGMT and The Last Dinner Party. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's going to play Mal Evans and the Ringo Star biopic. Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you?

You see, I don't know who Mal Evans is, so you've already justified for this decision to make a book. Ringo biopic. Mal Evans was their roadie, long-time roadie, and you can see him in Get Back. He plays the

Anvil in Maxville's Silver Hammer, and he, a few years later, died via suicide by cop. Indie cast, everyone. I bet you weren't expecting that twist ending. He's like a very jolly guy, and he has

the saddest death of all time. Yes, for those who don't know, it was announced this week that Sam Mendez, the Academy Award winning director of American Beauty in 1917, Revolutionary Road, a bunch of films, he is going to make four authorized biopics of each member of the Beatles. A Paul McCartney movie, a John Lennon movie, a George Harrison movie, and a Ringo Star movie. You know, Ian, I've said on many occasions that there's no such thing as too much Beatles content for me. Like, I will slop up any documentary book that you throw at me. This might be too much Beatles content.

I think I might have finally reached the threshold here. I'm not sure how this is going to work for biopics. Apparently they're interconnected. This is going to be like the Lord of the Rings of Rock. movies, I guess. Do you have any thoughts on this? What do you think? Are you excited for this? You're not as big of a Beatles fan as I am, so I'm guessing you're not, but I'm curious for your thoughts. Yeah, I'm just going to wait until they all drop and play them all at the same time,

Zyrika style and get back out of it. And I think the Lord of the Rings of the Rock biopic is like the song remains the same. That's like kind of what this is doing, right? Where everyone's Well, Lord of the Rings, meaning there's like three movies, you know, and they're all like three hours long. I mean, so that's what I see this as being. I mean, I was thinking about this, and I actually think this would be more interesting if the movies focused on specific moments in their post-Beatles lives. Like, you could make a prison movie about Paul McCartney the time that he was busted in Japan for pop possession, and he was in jail. I think for seven days. Like, you could make a movie about that.

It could be like Midnight Express, but it's about Paul McCartney. Or 25th hour or something like that. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Or, you know, a buddy comedy about John Lennon and Harry Nielsen hanging out in L.A. in like 1974 and just getting, like, drunk every day. Like, that could be a great movie. I box out. Or like a traveling, a movie about George Harrison getting the traveling wheelberries together.

Like, that would be an amazing movie. Or Ringo Star, uh, making. the movie Caveman in 1981. Like you could do, like those would be cool movies. I'm not sure how this is going to work thinking that it's going to be focusing on the Beatles part of their lives.

I just feel like by the Ringo movie are even like the hardcore Beatles fanatics going to be running out of gas at that point? Yeah, I think that, well, my opinion of this movie was greatly influenced by seeing Sam Mendez's Wikipedia photo. And I was a, I was not expecting him to look like that.

He looks like the sort of guy who, you include him in like a Beatles documentary about a guy who like stole all their publishing rights. Or he just looks like a guy who's going to rip them off. Not very rock and roll looking is what you're saying. He looks kind of like a nerdy guy a little bit. Yeah, like a nerdy guy wearing a scarf thinking he's rock and roll. Yeah, just the guy who like gets put into the Beatles camp and thinks he's down. Like sort of like the therapist and some kind of monster.

like that's he's got that sort of vibe to him but yeah also like you mentioned Maxwell silver hammer I mean can any work of like quasi fiction about the Beatles match the pathos of the other three members of the Beatles watching Paul make that song and wanting to murder him we could get like a Roshaman style thing about that specific moment but I mean do you think these are actually going to happen well I mean apparently the Beatles gave uh they're authorizing these films they're giving rights to their music for these films. So, I mean, I feel like, you know, it's so rare for them to sanction films or to allow their music to be used in other people's movies.

So that makes me think it's going to happen. I do wonder if this will be modified into, like, a Apple TV, like, movie series type thing. I mean, it feels like a TV show. in a way, more than a series of movies. But are they all going to come out at the same time? You know, like you would, if it was on Apple TV, you're just going to drop them. That makes sense to me rather than, oh, the John Lennon movie comes out,

and then the McCartney movie comes out like a year later. I just feel like the juice for that is not going to hang in. But, you know, I was thinking about rock biopics in general, and, you know, this is a well-worn observation. but it's nonetheless true that after Walk Hard came out, it seems like making a biopic about a musician just became ten times harder. Not that it has prevented people from making biopics. If anything, more biopics about musicians are being made all the time.

I mean, the Bob Marley movie that just came out, One Love, which, judging by the trailer, looked terrible. But apparently it's okay. Like, I haven't seen it. That topped the box office. last week. And, you know, it's not like it's super competitive this time of the year, but still

people came out to see the Bob Marley biopic. So, there's obviously an audience for this kind of movie. Do you have, like, a favorite biopic? I mean, there aren't that many good ones. It's kind of hard to think of, like, a really good movie about a musician.

Do any come to mind for you? I mean, I haven't seen one love yet, so I can't say whether that tops the rank. But yeah, biopics, are sort of like UK grime music where it's like the the parodies are like kind of better than the real thing. But the first one that comes to mind is 24 hour party people, even though I'm not exactly sure that counts. I think it does. Okay. Yeah, because I'm thinking it benefits from the fact that it was made in like the mid 2000s rather than like the current day where biopics are expected to

like, you know, buy for Oscar nominations. And it focused on Tony Wilson more so than like Curtis or really any, like, it was more of an ensemble cast, which I think kind of spread things out. And also any movie that, like, heavily features the Happy Mondays is can't take itself too seriously. Like, one fun fact I learned about Tony Wilson is that when he died, he had Bob's Your Uncle, the Happy Monday song playing at his funeral, which if you know anything about Bob's Your Uncle, that's, like, not a very elegic song. But, you know, I think that with biopics, the best we can really do is unintentionation.

comedy, which, I mean, the doors is like the gold standard for that. Oh, yeah. Or like, you know, the Hulu series about Motley Crew where I think we talked about this where like Tommy Lee gets booted from like Studio A because third eye blind is there. They have to cast an entire fictional third eye blind, which is awesome. That's the Pam and Tommy one, which I guess you could count as a musician by a pick because it was also the Netflix movie about Motley Crew, which was the dirt. With Machine Gun Kelly, right?

Yeah, Machine Gun Kelly playing Tommy Lee, which wasn't very good, but it was entertaining. I mean, I think you can make a case that the trashier musician biopics made for TV are in a way more entertaining because, like you're saying, in a way, they're almost not trying to be great. You know, like the more self-serious biopics, I think, sometimes all just because, you know, you see Rami, Malik and this terrible these terrible prosthetic teeth and you just can't take it seriously even though there's tens of millions of dollars being spent

on that film. I think about the movies that were on VH1 in the early 2000s like there was a biopic about death leopard called hysteria which you can see on YouTube if you've never seen it Anthony Michael Hall as Mutt Lang just a great performance

from Anthony Michael Hall. There's also another Beatles movie that came out in the early 2000s called Two of Us, which is about John Lennon and Paul McCartney hanging out in New York in 1976 with Jared Harris of Mad Men, Lane Price, playing John Lennon, Aidan Quinn of many films

Desperately Seeking Susan, maybe you know that one. He plays Paul McCartney. That movie's directed by Michael Lindsay Hogue, who's actually, in Get Back because he directed Let It Be the original documentary about the making of that record. So I like those movies. Again, just because they're TV movies, they're kind of campy and they're just fun to watch.

I mean, I've seen both of those movies at least three times. Very good movies. I also really like, this is another movie that, like, it was never officially released, but you can see it on YouTube. It's Todd Haynes' first movie, Superstar, The Karen Carpenter Story. Are you familiar with this movie? Yeah, that one, like, because May December was probably my favorite movie of last year. And, you know, with the Barbie conversation happening. Like, can you find this movie right now?

Like, I think it's on YouTube maybe. Like, or you got to get a VPN or some shit. No, you can look it up on YouTube. It's a very grainy version of it, but you can see it. That's how I saw it. It's about an hour long. And it's a, it's a movie about Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters. and everyone in the movie is a doll.

So it's all these Barbie dolls that are acting out Karen Carpenter's life. And the reason why it's unavailable is that Richard Carpenter, who's Karen Carpenter's brother and the other member of the Carpenter's, blocked the movie because Todd Haynes used all this Carpenter's music without permission. I mean, I think he was still in film school when he made this movie. I mean, it was very early in his career. But it's a great movie. It's actually, you look at it, you hear the concept of it, you might think, oh, this is like a jokey film, but it's actually very moving and he plays it straight.

And, you know, Todd Haynes does this sort of thing where he's sort of subverting film forms and doing things unexpected that have emotional resonance that might not have been apparent when you first started watching the movie. I mean, he also made I'm Not There, the Bob Dylan movie and Velvet Gold Mine, which is basically, a movie about David Bowie and Lou Reed, even though they have different names in the film. And those movies are good too, but if you haven't seen Superstar, looking up on YouTube, it's a really good movie.

So those are good biopics. So yeah, Superstar, Hysteria, The Deaf Leopard Story, and two of us. I liked Elvis well enough, you know? I liked Elvis too, actually. Yeah, because it was like so far-fetched out of reality that you kind of had to rock with it,

you know, And also, I think the Karen Carpenter movie made by Todd Haynes was banned because, like, Barbie wasn't particularly pleased with, you know, being heavily utilized in a movie where someone, like, dies of, like, complications of anorexia and nervosa. Yeah. Yeah, I think you just got, you got to get, like, trashy. Like, yeah, super serious. Like, there's just no real way to win it. And we aren't even going to talk about how I feel about Maestro, so. Oh, did you not like Maestro?

It was so, like, it. it was so obviously like going for an Oscar. Like it just strained under the ambition of like that. I think if like, I think what came across for me, it's like I never really got the sense of like, hey, wait a minute. Like why was Leonard Bernstein so important to begin with? It's,

I think it spent too much time like going over the kind of boring. Like it was weird that like I would want to see more about the music as opposed to like, you know, his relationship with Carrie Mulligan, you know? Yeah, but what about 65-year-old Leonard Bernstein dancing to Tears for Fears in a disco? Well, that fucking ruled.

That was amazing. You know, I like Maestro. I didn't love it. I see the flaws in it. I'm a Bradley Cooper fan. I'm going to say, I'm coming out. I'm coming out of the closet here as a Bradley Cooper fan.

I know I should be irritated by him, but I think he's a really good actor. I think he's a good filmmaker. Speaking of great biopics, A Star is Born, great biopic about Jackson Maine. One of the great rock stars of the last 20 years,

RIP Jackson, Maine. I loved A Star is Born. I thought that movie was great. But people are just piling on Bradley Cooper. It's like all these people want to win Oscars. Why is he the only one getting attacked for that? Is he any more sort of craving about this

than like anyone else? out here campaigning to win the award. I don't know. I feel like B. Coops, you get a bad rap. I'm defending you, B, Coops. I just think of the whole, like the sense, and the whole thing smacks of effort, man. Coop. You're cool with me, man.

You're cool with me, Jackson, Maine. You did, you paid proper respect to one of my favorite rock stars of the last 20 years. So that was like a movie cast there. We didn't announce, that was like a surprise movie cast. I didn't expect us to delve that deep into cinema at the top of this episode. But I'm glad we did.

That was fun. We got range. People need to recognize. We got it with sports, movies. I mean, there's no limit to what we can cover here. We could talk movies. We could talk sports. Talk music.

Go back to sports. Some more movies. Go to music. And like once every year to a bookcast. Yeah, every once in a while. Let's talk about MGM. They have a new album out today. It's called Loss of Life.

And this is, I believe, their fifth album. That's right. Am I right? Yeah, that sounds right. Because you got Arakular, spectacular. You have congratulations. Self-titled. The, what's the record that came out in 20?

Little Dark Age. Really good record. That was 18, I think. That was 18. Six years later, we got Loss of Life. Which just makes me real. I have to determine if they pass the five-album test. Maybe I'll figure that out by the end of this episode.

The self-titled record, I think, is the wild card in that run. Before we talk about the record, I'm curious about your relationship with MGMT, because I've written about MGMT many times in the past. I profiled them in 2018 when Little Dark Age came out. I actually went to New York, we hung out, and a bistro there, and then I went to go watch them rehearse, which was very exciting. And then I've written about congratulations, I think more than once. It's funny, with my editor, Phil, I once pitched him a think piece about congratulations.

And he slacked me back and he's like, you know, you wrote about this album like a year ago. I was like, what? I forgot. Apparently I'm just like constantly wanting to think piece about congratulations. But it is one of my favorite albums, I think, of the last 15 years. or so. Certainly one of my favorite second albums that has ever been made. Certainly in the 21st century.

Just a fascinating period for them, like, when they were just living high on the hog from the success of their first record. Seems like they were doing a lot of drugs, spending a lot of money, being very self-indulgent, made this crazy record with like a cartoon, what is it?

I think it's a bear? It's like a fox. It's like very Sonic the Hedgehog slash tails, you know? cartoon fox surfing on the cover just an amazing decision to make that the cover of that record so anyway I've thought a lot about this band

they're one of my favorite bands of the blog rock era and I want to talk about that in this conversation as well but what's your experience with this band are you a fan of them they're such a fascinating blind spot for me because there's absolutely really there's no reason I shouldn't be very up to speed on what they've done because

you know, it's not like I was above listening to MGMT in 2008. I mean, I feel like they were like halfway between what Vampire Weekend and Passion Pit were doing at the time, which are bands I very much listened to. But would you believe that the only album I can guarantee, oh, besides the new one, because, you know, I prepare for the pod. And this is the first MGMT album of the Indicast era. But prior to that, the only one I've listened to as a whole was the self-title because I reviewed it in 2013.

Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. You never listened to, like, Orakular Spectacular or Congratulations? Never as a whole. Like, I always kind of felt like, it was sort of like, I don't know,

I always felt like oracular spectacular was sort of like the hot fuss of its time where the singles were like so on the president. I never heard a single person vouch for the deep cut so you could figure, yeah, I get it. And, you know,

I think congratulations with its cover. I often get it, I often conflate it with yeasay There's Odd Blood, which has a similar sort of color palette. But, you know, I listened to Little Dark Age. I enjoyed it. But they, to me, they strike me as like a band that, and I appreciate what they're doing. But I don't think they're as weird as they think they are.

So they're a singles band that really believes they're making albums, which I respect it. But I like the new album, you know? Like, they just, you know, their thing, I get what they're doing. They're really strong songwriters. They have a lot of skill, a lot of craft, a lot. Like, they put 15 chord changes in each song. But, you know, I don't think it'll ever, like, an emotionally resonate with me, which is probably, you know,

a skill issue on my end. I feel like if, what, I feel like they're sort of like a wean band where they have, like, all this, like, kind of crazy, leturgic psych rock stuff. Covering up the fact, yeah, this song is about me being, doing a bunch of drug and being like super depressed. Yeah, you know, the thing I would say, you bring up wean and that's a natural comparison because that's another two-person band.

I've compared MGMT to Steely Dan. And I have to give credit to Molly Lambert because I think she was the first person to make that comparison, at least that I saw in a Grantland column many years ago, it's probably for the self-titled record back in 2013. But with MGMT, you have like these two

smart-alky guys who meet at an elite college on the East Coast. They have a sense of humor that only they really appreciate, you know, and the rest of the world is maybe a little confounded by. And then they start having totally unexpected commercial success, like huge commercial success. And they respond to that by just getting more and more perverse. And look, I know what you mean when you say, oh, they're not as weird as they think they are. but I do think that the reaction to the first record, especially on congratulations,

and even more so like on the self-talleled record, because I think there are catchy songs on congratulations. MGMT, the record is like, there's just like pure noise on that record. I mean, that's like a pretty kind of bonkers album, I think. Alien Days is a catchy song, but that even feels like more of like a fuck you type record than congratulations is.

They've really operated as a, a band that understood that they were always going to be defined by two songs, kids and electric feel. And they knew that those songs were going to probably pay the way for the rest of their lives. Like they didn't really need to make any more songs after that first record because those songs are so big. And they responded to that by acting like a band with house money, essentially.

It doesn't matter if our other records aren't as successful. We can just kind of pursue this psych rock. pop muse that we have on our other records. I have to say, having said that, their streaming numbers are like way better than certainly I expected and probably you would expect. Like, you brought a Vampire weekend before. Like, they are, I think, I think most people would say, like, they're the most relevant band to come out of that blog rock late 2000s era.

on Spotify they have like 6 million monthly listeners MGMT has 15 million monthly listeners Even like the title track from like Little Dark Age Great song Great song that's got like almost 600 million streams Which puts it in the neighborhood Of Electric Field Which I think has about 690 or so

So there's like a lot of people And I think probably a lot of young people that are into this band. And I can totally understand why. I mean, they have this aesthetic to them. Again, that sort of psych pop, you know, sound that, let's say you were into Tame and Pala as a teenager. Like, in a way, MGMT is like the weird version of Tame and Pala.

Like, if you're coming at it from that perspective, if you're like a 22-year-old that wasn't around really when Arakular Spectacular came out. This new record is interesting because it kind of sounds a little like Steely Dan. It's a soft rock record in a lot of places. Like they're really playing with different soft rock forms. There's a ton of fretless bass on this record. It really is like them kind of playing with music that you start maybe caring about more once you get into your late 30s and early 40s.

Like there's that cliche about people starting to get Steely Dan once they get married and have kids and live in the suburbs and they're balding and they have gray hairs coming into their beards and now they just want to listen to Goucho all the time. It feels like MGMT is in that era of their career. And I really like it. I mean, look, I'm one of those Steely Dan dad. So, of course, I would. But I don't know. It feels like a very natural evolution for them. Like Little Dark Age was definitely sounded like a record where they were maybe trying to recover some of the juice from the first record.

It's like the straightest record they've made since Arakure Spectacular. And this album is kind of them getting back into congratulations mode. Very catchy songs, but it doesn't seem like they're very concerned about any kind of commercial success with this record. Yeah. Another thing that was interesting, I didn't realize that they're. on mom and pop now. So they're kind of technically kind of sort of an indie band at this point. But I feel like a fun little quiz game that we could do is like, is this a non-single for

Miracular Spectacular or not? I'm looking at the streaming numbers. And I mean, little dark age, yeah, there's nearly 600 million and everything else. Like, I mean, it's way more than like the rest of the album combined. It's like almost like a midnight city type outlier. But yeah, but like when you die as like 136 million, that's like that's nothing. I mean, that's way more still than I would have expected. Yeah.

From like the fourth record from MGMT. Like I would not have, I would have guessed that it would be everything on the first record. And then everything else would be like maybe 10 to 20 million or something. So to get into like nine figures with those kinds of. kind of tracks. I mean, it's pretty surprising. And I think it does speak to their kind of crossover appeal to younger generations. Well, I think we have to mention the, like, one of my favorite Travis Kelsey Circa 2010 tweets where he's like, electric feel, who he's, he's just like brewing out hardcore to electric feel. And I think that MGMT probably saw that sort of element in their crowd. I mean,

I actually saw them perform at the 2019, just like Kevin Festival, which was like the blog rock. festival where like they didn't tell anybody like I don't think they told any of the bands beforehand what it was and so like I'm sure like grizzly bear so wouldn't have played it but yeah just to watch them go through kids and time to pretend I think they played electric feel and kids and they were just so like yeah let's just knock it out punch the clock it's almost like it's almost fun to like watch them like kind of hate perform those songs you know like that that's like an element of the performance Yeah, I mean, when I saw them on the congratulations tour, the main set, by the way, the opener for that tour, Tame Impala. Wow.

It was like inner speaker era. But anyway, they come out at MGMT and they did, I think the whole album in the main set. And then the encore is electric feel and kids. And I don't think they had the band with them. I think they just played the backing track. from the record and sang along. And of course, the audience went apes shit.

The audience was sort of listless during most of the show, and the band was into that part of the show, and then the MGMT guys were not into the encore, and then you just saw all these people getting up to dance for that. So it was a very funny juxtaposition there. But it does, even that kind of reminds me of Steely Dan. It reminds me of, like, Steely Dan playing like a yacht rock bill or something,

like how Donald Fagan, I'm sure, is not into the yacht rock scene. People wearing captain's hats and all that garbage. But it's still very lucrative for them to do that sort of thing. So it's like we don't like being associated with this, but it's also something that keeps our audience alive. So it's interesting. Yeah, I think that this album, just in terms of its quality, we talk a lot about bands of this, you know,

with like Arctic Monkeys and M83. you know, the bands that have been around for like 15 some odd years and are still putting out new music. I think the bar this album has the clear is like, will it be instantly memory hold? And the end, even if it's good. And I don't think the answer is yes. This one's like receiving pretty good reviews, which I think is kind of a makeup call for little dark age, not being given its due and its time. But I think this is what happens when you put out albums every five years that, you know, everything's influenced by whether or not like people were correct about the people. previous one. Yeah, I feel like with MGMT, they are constantly being memory holed, and then they get

brought out of the hole and into the light. And it's because, like you said, they put out records every four or five years. So one of their albums will come out, and I'll be like, oh, this is good. Like, this is a good band. I forgot how good these guys are. And then they just go away for a half decade. And then the next record comes out, and you're like, oh, yeah, these guys are good. I forgot that these guys are good. That just seems to be a recurring thing. with them and maybe they like it. Again, I could see that appealing to their sense of humor. They have a very singular and perverse sense of humor,

so they might get a kick out of that. All right, well, let's pivot from a legacy indie band to possibly the next big indie band. And of course, I'm talking about the last dinner party. This is a band from England. They put out their debut record earlier this month. That record is called Prelude to Ecstasy. which, again, to bring up Steely Dan,

very reminiscent of Countdown to Ecstasy. This is like the prelude to counting down, ecstasy. This record is getting a lot of hype, a lot of airplay on perhaps your favorite satellite indie station. They do seem like a band that is poised or at least the industry is trying to position them as this year's wet leg.

You know, like the British band that is composed of all women that comes out of nowhere and just wows critics, wins a lot of fans, and just immediately seems huge. And like Wetleg, there are aspects of their background that make maybe some people, we won't say us, well, to say some people, maybe think that they're an industry plant.

Like, for instance, this band, they played their first show in November of 2021. And it's funny, like I was looking at their Wikipedia page, and apparently they were inspired to become a band because they saw a black MIDI and they were just like, oh, this is an important band, and we want to be part of their scene.

It's just funny to me to think of black MIDI as like the Velvet Underground. You know, like, they're already like inspiring other bands to form because they're so forward thinking. But anyway, this band, they played their first show in November of 2021. They were signed to Q Prime Management in early 2022. So let's just say

two or three months later. And Q Prime Management for those who don't know, they manage Metallica, they manage Mews. They're like a big time rock management company. And again,

I do not know, like how does this kind of thing happen? I have no idea like how a band plays their first show and then is immediately signed to like one of the biggest management companies in the world.

I mean, do you have any insight into this? is one of their like dads like you know in the record industry or something i i don't know or are they that amazing are they just that amazing that they got signed so quickly i mean maybe i mean when you look at like what they're coming to the table with this is exact like if they didn't exist someone would have to invent them and i know that's like kind of a cliche and um i think where this band is like their whole like a lot of their deal is is just like kind of bringing accusations of like industry plant or whatever to the fore

and acknowledging right off the bat. But yeah, like I started hearing about this band last year. And, you know, just like, God bless the UK press, you know, like at a time when every single episode, not every episode, but like every other episode we have to talk about like some music publication dying out or like another is rock dead. think piece. Like the UK are just real true believers. And this album came up in the context of a couple of other big UK rock acts that are releasing

records now. Like, did you know that there's a, like a pretty hyped up British band getting a lot of good press right now called Crawlers? I just love the fact they're called Crawlers. Like this is 1994. They're starting a beef with Manic Street Preachers. And not to be confused with Creeper, who. who are doing, I think, more of like a new My Chemical Romance thing.

But, yeah, I also listen to the Declan McKenna record. There's a band called New Dad, which is not to be confused with Gay Dad. That's being produced now in Mulder. They are just, like, such true believers. Yeah, they're just churning out these kind of bands. And the last dinner party, you know, they are British in a very classic sense and that they have this theatrical aspect to what they're doing. theatrical in a way that like American bands typically are not.

And that of course goes back to David Bowie in the early 70s and glam rock. And there's just a whole lineage of very sort of over the top, melodramatic, theatrical, British rock bands. Haven't been so much lately. Like wet leg, I don't think really falls under that categorization. But yeah, this was a band that they came out. And, you know, the idea, the concept of the band name was this. And again, I'm reading from the Wikipedia page, inspired. by the idea of a huge debauch dinner party where people come together to celebrate with a hedonistic banquet.

And I'm just thinking about, you know, the big it rock band of 2023 Monoskin. They had a similar type thing where it's like, yeah, man, we're bringing debauchery back to rock music. But the last dinner party does that in a very sort of slick, accessible package. This isn't like a sloppy, dangerous rock band. They make very catchy, well-crafted synth rock songs that go down very easily. And this record in general, I would say, is good. Like, I've listened to it a bunch of times, and I'm not bowled over by it. Like, it doesn't have, I think, enough trashiness for me to love it.

Like I wish they really committed to this concept of, you know, we're this debauchous British band and we're going to have questionable taste in our, and I don't mean that in a lyrical sense. I just mean really going for it. And again, I'll refer to a concept that you love to talk about, which is shittiness. You love shittiness in bands. And that's always your thing with the 1975, why you love them so much. You feel like there's a shittiness to them. I feel like the last dinner party, their Achilles heel, perhaps, is that they're a little too tasteful. Like, I wish they were a little less tasteful and more tasteless.

But having said that, this is a well-crafted record. And like the Wet Leg Record, you know, I was being a bit facetious earlier when I was talking about how quickly they got signed. I mean, I understand why they got signed because they, it's a very commercial package. You know, an all-female band, very theatrical, really. catchy songs. There's a lot of hooks there. So I get why they've had this meteoric rise. We should mention, too, that they were opening for the Rolling Stones in 2022,

less than a year after their first gig. I mean, so they, again, we're put on the fast track to start them. I do wonder how they'll translate in America. It seems like they are building an audience here, but it seems like American audiences are a little slower to accept this sort of theatrical type British band. I just think about like Swade versus Oasis or like Swade versus Radiohead. I mean, that's a better comparison because they came out the same time.

Right, yeah, exactly. That eventually got them big, you know? Yeah, their dumb rock song is what got them big. You know, like in America, we gravitated to Radiohead and creep more so than Swade, who had more of like a glam rock sensibility and they were huge in England in 1993. or yeah, Oasis versus Blur. Blur had more of like a brainier sensibility than Oasis did. So again, I guess I'm faulting the last dinner party for not being dumb enough.

I keep saying this in different ways. I do think they could stand to be a little dumber. And I think they'd be better if they were just a little bit dumber. But I don't know. I like this record. I can't hate on it. I mean, do you, what do you think of this record? Yeah, my assumption based on like the narrative around it and the appearance was that

I don't know, this sounds like Florence the Machine fronting a late period Arctic Monkeys record, which is kind of what it is. And I think that there's something that kind of, you know, bugs me. It reminds me of a lot of like TV shows and movies now where they kind of try to get ahead of the backlash where they cheekily acknowledge like, oh, you're going to say we're industry plants or, hey, nice rock tropes. It would be a shame if someone subverted them. But it does feel, you know, kind of a little safe with it, a little too self-conscious. And more to the point, like, it's gotten nothing as far as I've seen except praise. So it feels like it's falling a little bit flat.

But, you know, it's fine. I don't mind it. Would I reach for it? Probably not. But I love the fact that we are, like, you know, time is a flat circle. We are getting back to the, like, the mid-90s conversations of can this British hype band break America? And I like that. Yeah, me too.

I'm all for it. I find that reassuring. And I like that the British press is still taking these bands from out of nowhere and just trying to build them up into the, you know, the biggest band in the world. Like you said, we're in a period of flux, to say the least, with the music media here in America. So to know that that's still happening in England, it's like, okay, it's not totally. disappearing. We still have some things that exist from like the 20th century and early 21st century. So yeah, last dinner party, best of luck to you. Hope you keep growing your audience. Let's get to our mailbag segment. Thank you all for writing in and sending us emails.

It's always great to hear from our listeners. If you can hit us up with some great questions, we always love to mix it up with you guys. So, you know, give us some good conversation topics. We're at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. We've got a couple emails this week, so let's move through them quick here. Do you want to read our first email? Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. So this comes to us from Johnny from Vermont, which...

Johnny from Vermont. It sounds like a Lemonhead song, so I'm glad that this is actually about the Lemonhead. So can we just call him Johnny Vermont? Yeah, that's great. You're Johnny Vermont. Johnny from Vermont. As someone born in 1997, oh my gosh. Okay, so as someone born in 1997 and coming to that stuff after the fact, I admire and love a lot of it,

but Ray stands above the pack to me. They're referring to it's a shame about Ray, largely considered the best Lemonheads record. How do you guys feel about the Lemonheads? To me, they're more timeless than a lot of major bands of that era, but seem lost in a no-man's land between the alt-radio stars like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and indie darlings like pavement and guided by voices. How were they perceived then and how do you feel now? Was Evandando just too hot?

So Johnny for Vermont has put me on to the fact that apparently they're releasing a new record, a Lemonhead's record, not an Evandando solo joint. So yeah, I don't think we've talked much about this band on the cast. So what do you think? I mean, I'm dying to hear what you think. I know what I think. Well, didn't they tour recently with like, Jawbreaker. With Jawbreaker.

Yeah, and they beefed with them too. Right. And I remember at the time feeling like that was a weird pairing in my mind. And of course, I was thinking of the Lemonheads in their mid-90s guys, less so in their late 80s, early 90s guys. Because they really were more of like a punk band early on. And then they evolved into this kind of country-tinged alt-rock band. Like, It's a Shame About Ray and then Come on Feel the Lemonheads. You know, for me, like, those are the two albums I know the most. It's a shame about Ray. and come on field of lemonheads. It's a shame about Ray in particular, I think is like a great record. I think Johnny Vermont here nails where they fall. I do think that there is a no man's land

between like the big alt-rock bands of the 90s like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Sound Garden and Stone Temple Pilots. And then the indie rock darlings, pavement, GB, built a spill, neutral milk hotel. And, you know, Lemonheads were banned that were kind of successful, but like they never really broke through.

And then Evan Dando had this sort of dicey reputation at the time, you know, hanging out with Courtney Love and he had, you know, some drug issues. And he did maybe seem like a pretty boy to some people. He was almost too handsome to be that good of a songwriter, you know, as weird as that is to say. Like Tom Petty had a quote about that once in Rolling Stone. Someone asked him because they,

that sitcom wings made a joke about Tom Petty being ugly. Wings cast. Yeah, and Tom Petty said something like, you know, you can be too handsome sometimes. And I think that was true of Evandando. Like people just couldn't, you know, rationalize this model-looking guy with these beautiful satsack folk rock songs

that he was writing in the mid-90s. I don't know, like Johnny Vermont then ask us to yay or nay the lemonheads? I mean, do we just want to yay or nay them? I think that was implied. Okay, because I would definitely yay them, even though, again, I don't go deep in their catalog, but it's a shame about Ray,

definitely a great 90s rock record. No question about it. And come on feel the lemon heads. Not quite as strong, but that's a good record too. Yeah, I've thought about this a lot because I reviewed a come on feel the lemon heads deluxe reissue last year, which for people like us who were, you know,

buying CDs in 1997 as a opposed to being born. Like, the idea of paying $40 for a deluxe version of that album is just so hysterical, because you could literally not give that album away in 1996. Like, every UCD store had at least three copies, and it was roundly acknowledged of being like 30% filler. But, yeah. It's like 15 songs long, isn't it?

I mean, it's like a long record. And there's like a 15-minute, like, noise jam. Like, Rick James is on there. Like, it is, like, total, it is total. Miller, but some great songs. And I think you're right in that you can see it as a no man's land, but I think for like a while there was this possibility that Evan Dando was going to be this Kurt Cobain like emissette, like what Kirk Cobain was like for like Olympia. You know, Evan Dando was going to be for like Massachusetts because their early records were like Dinosaur Jr. ripoffs.

And, you know, they're like one step removed from, you know, Mission of Burma or, you know, the Blake babies, bands like that. But, you know, for someone in my age who had nobody to guide them, I would see them as a band who was along the same lines as like, I don't know, sponge. But yeah, shame about Ray, great record. And very, very, not, I don't know if Ford thinking is the right word, but it did predict what was happening a lot, you know,

on run for cover or like Philadelphia labels like Lamo, where it's, there's some, you know, there's some college rock and maybe a little grungy all pop, but like some country leanings as well. And you could hear, you know, what was happening, what was going to happen 20 years later. And I think the interesting thing to think about with the Lemonheads is how because Evan Dando was so hot that he, like the Lemonheads were like the rare male band that was subject to a lot of the same standards as, you know, female fronted rock bands from that era where it was fair game to talk about like Evan Dando's drug habits or like who he was dating. And yeah, it was a weird like, you know, shoes on the. other foot sort of thing. But look, I mean, Evan Dando's had a rough go.

I hope he finds some peace. But, yeah, otherwise, and Carbuncloth has some good songs as well. Well, you know what? I think he has found some peace because he's following me on Twitter. So he just started following me recently. So I think this is him learning how to center himself, reading my tweets. Hopefully I can do my part, have another. It's a shame about Ray, resurgence.

here in the 2020s. I'll read our second email. This comes from Devon in Northwest Connecticut. And then he says the nice part. I thought all Connecticut was nice. Is there a bad part? Oh, that is not at all true. Oh, really?

Willimantic, where the world is a beautiful place, and I'm no longer afraid to die originally from. That's, like, known as Heroin Town. Oh, man. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of bad parts of Connecticut.

So they mean heroin town in a bad way? Yes. Okay. Very much, though. The bad meaning of that. Okay, so Devin from the good part of Connecticut, he says, Hey, guys, in honor of Goose introducing their new drummer and releasing new music, Connecticut band, by the way, Goose. And then Devin says, I'm expecting to hear about Ted Tapes 2024 and recommendation Corner,

Stephen. I haven't listened to it yet. I've got to dig into that. Ted Tapes, 2024. And we didn't talk about the new drummer and Goose. and the, I don't want to say shady, but there was some controversy with them getting, you know, their old drummer left, Ben, Atkind, they have two drummers. So they got a second, they got a new second drummer, but Ben was the original drummer. Anyway, we don't need to get into that right now. That's a whole little soap opera. What band personnel changes had the best and worst effects on their band, and which were your most and least favorite changes?

A good question here about lineup changes, which were improvements or upgrades and which were downgrades. Yeah, I mean, and I'm a surprised you are. We're not talking about goose or geese, you know, but I'm hoping that you come with more positive vibes than I do, or at least, you know, ban changes that occurred within, you know, prior to 1998. But, you know, I tend to think of like personnel changes along the lines of. like once that kind of ended the band as we knew them. For example, I think Carlos D, you know, we could argue that Interpol was losing steam by the time he left the band.

But like once he did leave, that just closed off their, you know, for lack of a better term, shittiness era, that kind of danger and edge. And, you know, they replaced them, I think, with a guy from Secret Machines who, look, that's like one band with as big of a rhythm section as Interpol. But you could just tell they were like a lot. legacy band from that point forward. Similarly with Death Cab and Chris Walla. Now, Chris Walla was a guitarist and also the producer, but once he left the band, he was

replaced by a guy Dave Depper, and that effectively changed Death Cab into a band that appears on K-Rock. And also, you know, Dave Depper is a guy who's like Ben Gibbard's marathon buddy and, you know, like after Ben Giver got sober. And we can also make an entire episode of the bands that, like, got way worse. once they got sober, a kind of a shitty topic, but, you know,

it's, this is rock music. But I think of, like, the positive personnel changes is like the really weird ones, like Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse. Same with a smashing pumpkins on

with Tommy Lee on the drums. This is our second Tommy Lee reference, uh, in this episode. But I think the most impactful, you know, as far as modern bands is cloud nothings, bringing in Jason Garras.

Like, the best. drummer in my opinion of like the past 20 years in rock music, listen to the self-titled and then listen to Attack on Memory. This is a great lesson for a lot of the bedroom bands that are happening right now. Like get a real drummer. Like get a real drummer. You'll be absolutely amazed what you're able to accomplish.

And so I think those are the ones that come up. But I guarantee you're going to think of like some Hall of Fame type shit. Well, it's funny how changing the drum. drummer has really helped a lot of bands. And maybe, you know, if you're a fan of goose, you can take this to heart. I mean, let's start with the Beatles. You know, they have Pete Best on the drums for a long time. And then along comes Ringo Starr, and they just shoot to superstardom almost immediately.

I mean, that's like the definitive example of that. All Ringo. But then you got, like, Neil Pert in Rush. You know, they got some other guy playing drums on the first record. Neil Pert comes in. Not only is he like one of the all-time great drummers, he's also like, hey man, I read Ein Rand, I write lyrics, I'll write all of our lyrics. So you got a lyricist and a drummer coming in, Neil Pert. There's a little guy named Dave Grohl coming into Nirvana.

Kind of a big deal. You know, he comes in, joins for Nevermind, and they just are transformed and they become the biggest band in the world. Topper Heiden in The Clash comes in on the second record. He's an amazing drummer. takes them to the next level. I'm also going to throw in Matt Cameron for Pearl Jam. I think you could make a case that Pearl Jam might have broken up if Matt Cameron hadn't come in.

I mean, he was like this stabilizing presence in that band and he's the longest 10-year drummer now. I mean, they went through like tons of drummers in the 90s and now Matt Cameron's been in the band for like 25 years and they're just a touring machine with him in the band. So, yeah, I think drummers, For whatever reason, they just make a big difference, and it can transform your band from like a good band into a great band.

It's like maybe the most underrated thing. You know, like sort of like the little like magic potion or pixie dust that you can sprinkle on a band to make them really great as if you just bring in a powerhouse drummer. Well, I think with Interpol, I mentioned that Carlos D. leaving. Their original drummer was from the classic screamo band Seisha, but then they got replaced by Sam Fogarino, who was like 10 years older than the rest of them

and just completely transformed them. Shout to the four-year health song. Hey, did you know that the drummer from Seycho was in Interpol? We've now reached the part of the episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, went to go first? All right, so on a sad note, it looks to me like Complex Magazine is, you know, following the footsteps of so many other publications,

where it's being just kind of tossed back and forth through private equity. Complex gave us some of the best, some of my favorite hip hop lists of all time, including Cameron's Ten Most Ignorant Moments and Seifah Sounds listing the 75 best tunnel bangers. I referenced that list all the time. So, you know, it just sucks to see a long-term, like, successful publication, shut down. So my heart goes out to the people there. But as far as what I'd recommend musically, so there was a band called Curling, who they're kind of split between Berkeley and

Japan. And they released an album in 2023 called No Guitar, which is kind of like a Japanese translation. But it's being deluxe reissued now. So you can hear the album now and then you get a deluxe edition. And they described themselves as cap and jazz meets Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I don't know if I would call it. But yeah, listen to the first song. To me, it sounds like Midwest emo being played with like 12-string Rickenbockers and maybe fronted by Matthews Sweet on vocals. Kind of fascinating that this album wasn't discovered earlier. And believe me, this is like my fault because this is way up my alley. But yeah, you can hear it now. You can go to band camp. and check out no guitar, but there's a deluxe edition that's coming out, I believe, March 1st,

but yeah, just go ahead and check it out now. It's out there. So curling, no guitar, there's actually plenty of guitar on it. That's my recommendation this week. So I want to talk about an album called Imitation of War, and it's from a band called Itasca, I-T-A-S-C-A. This is a project of a singer-S-Rongwriter named Kayla Cohen. No relation to Ian. This album came out a few weeks ago, and it's been really taken over my life lately, especially at dusk. I love playing this album at dusk, and has such a great sun going down type vibe to it. And the way I would describe it is, like the guitar tones to me remind me a lot of my favorite Joni Mitchell record, Hajira from 1976,

that kind of very airy, wiry, somewhat jazzy type guitar sound that that that record has. I just feel like it's so unique to that album. And at times this album reminds me of that. I think Cohen's vocals, too, are a little Joni-esque from that period, where Joni's singing in, like, her lower register. Kayla Cohen has, I think, a similar vocal quality. But it takes that Higira blueprint, and it just kind of blows it out a little bit

into these just beautiful, low-key guitar jams. On the show, I've talked about the band, Roe City Band. and I feel like they have some of that Roe City band element to what they're doing as well, like that more laid-back side to The Grateful Dead maybe in the guitar jams on this record. Really great record, great songs, and again, just a really entrancing guitar sound that I just feel like goes perfect at the end of the day. So again, the album's called Imitational War. The band is called Itasca.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I'm sure I'm not. It's spelled, again, I-T-A-S-C-A. Really good record. Wasn't it Adjera, like, one with fretless bass as well? Yeah, Jacko Pistorius plays on that. Yeah, this is Frontless Bass Cast. Love Fretless Bass.

You know, Jeff Amet, too. Big component of the fretless bass in the 90s. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indicast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the indie mixtape 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.