Indiecast - New Albums By Charli XCX And Good Looks + The 20th Anniversary Of The Killers' "Hot Fuss"

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

After a brief Sportscast on the media meltdown over Caitlin Clark’s early stint in the WNBA (0:30), Steven and Ian have perhaps the least likely conversation in Indiecast history about Ian going to a Sarah McLachlan concert (!) and seeing a fight almost break out (!!) (7:21). They also talk about Steven’s upcoming book event on June 11 at Book Soup in LA that Ian is hosting (19:25).From there, they talk about the new album from Texas band Good Looks, Lived Here For A While, which is one of 2024’s best indie rock records along with being one of the easiest to root for (22:54). They also talk about Brat, the new album by Charli XCX, as well as a larger conversation about how “indie pop” became known as “middle class pop” (32:54). Finally, they conclude with a discussion of The Killers’ Hot Fuss, which turns 20 this week (42:51).In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks up the emo band Southtowne Lanes while Steven recommends the Indianapolis band Everything, Now! (53:47).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 192 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprocks's Indy Mix tape. Hello, everyone, and welcome to IndyCast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about new albums from Charlie XX and Good Looks in the 20th anniversary of the first killers album, Hot Fuss. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's the latest man to have a hot take on the WMBA.

Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Yes, and that hot take is that when Megan D. Stalian puts out her new album in a couple weeks, she should do a shot-by-shot remake of Master P's Make-M-M-Say video. We need more synergy between the WMBA and hip-hop. I think that's really what's going to make this, like, it's going to really elevate this league to a true spectator sport. Wow, you took a curveball with that one. I wasn't expecting a, like, a Megan D. Stallion reference here, but I like it.

I think that's a good idea. And it is the best opinion that a man has had about the WNBA this week. Really low bar, by that being said. Yeah, quick sports cast here. Yeah, there was a meltdown in the sports media about Caitlin Clark this week. If you were paying attention, you know last weekend, she was playing a game against the Chicago Sky. She's on the Indiana fever.

there was a play where Kennedy Carter, this player for the sky who, it's my understanding that she's the Patrick Beverly of the WMBA. That's how it's been explained to me. She's a irritant. She's a person that you bring on your team. And you love them when they're on your team because they bother the star player on the other team. But when you're playing against her, she's annoying.

Anyway, she like hip-checked. Caitlin Clark, Caitlin Clark takes a big spill to the ground. Kind of looks like a flop. Have you seen this? I'm sure you've seen the clip, right? It's kind of floppy. It's a bit of a flop.

She did get a hit. It's a cheap shot, but I don't know, she definitely put a little extra mustard on her fall. Anyway, the sports pundant class rose up to opine on this subject. And look, I think part of it is because Caitlin Clark is a big star, obviously. The other part is that we had this like ungodly long break

between the conference finals and the NBA finals. So there wasn't much going on. And it just created this perfect storm where there's this thing in sports media now, like where I feel like whenever something goes viral, it's usually a sports pundit talking about another sports pundit or they're talking about like their, like an executive at their company. or they're talking about like the state of like sports media in general. And I'm talking about Stephen A. Smith, obviously, you know, you got McAfee, you got like Unk,

Shannon Sharp in there, all these big stars. And it feels really, really bad in sports media. I feel like they've entered like the Fox News era over there at ESPN where it's just about the egos of like the opinion givers at this point. And this WNBA thing, it's just made it really unpleasant to think about, even though this should be a great story. You know, this league has been ascended for a while. You have all these young players coming in. They're all really talented. The games have been pretty cool. It should be a feel-good story. And yet the media has totally ruined the vibes around this league. At least,

for now. Yeah, it's funny that you say it's like Fox News when in reality, like to me, I would say sports media sounds almost more like music media where we talk about what we talk about when we talk about sort of stuff where it's like the meta-commentary on top of, you know, the things that are actually happening, especially at a time like this, which, you know, is typically a little more slow. And I imagine this will only continue through July after the finals are over and the Stanley Cup is over and there's like really not a heck of a lot happening. But, you know, like I think with like Stephen A. Smith, it seems like every single month there's like, oh, is Stephen A. Smith took it too far. And, you know, next thing you know,

he just like is doing the same shit a month later. Same with Pat McAfee. But, you know, if anything, if there's anything I want to see come out of this as far as, you know, like watching the WMBA, we talked about this a few months ago. the NCAA tournament, how it was like a throwback to, I guess, late 80s, early 90s, NBA where the teams, like, legitimately hated each other. And it's not just, you know, like in the NBA sometimes, it's like guys who played on the same AAU teams. And they're actually friends and hanging out and, like, under each other's Instagram.

I'm wondering if, like, we are in, like, the Jordan versus the bad boys' pistons era of the league where I guess Kate and Clark would be, like, the Jordan in this scenario where she just spends like the first three or some odd years of her pro-kering the shit beat out of her. Yeah. And eventually rises up. Every rookie though. That's kind of a stock thing.

I feel like for hot shot rookies coming into the league, the older players, they want to teach you a lesson or two. So they're going to rough you up. Like it's not unusual. That happens in the men's game all the time. Not with women yama. You can't fuck up a 7-4 guy.

Well, okay. But like Caitlin Clark, especially, I mean, she's smaller than a lot of these. these other players. Yeah. She's like, uh, she's like a huge target.

Not to say anything about like all like the, you know, like racial issues going out here as well, which I think is, look, if players are resentful of her, I think that's totally justified. Like, why wouldn't they be? You know?

And they, and they'll stop being resentful if she like responds in kind and she plays really well. Like she'll earn their respect. But like, you come in, you have like a $28 million dollar shoe deal. You know,

you're getting way more attention than like, players who are better than you, of course they're going to be like, oh, let's clean her clock. Yeah. You know, like, who does this person think she is? Even though it's like not even her fault, really. It's just how she's been elevated. But anyway, yeah, I'm with you. I like it when athletes hate each other.

This is great. This is great stuff. Like Angel Reese jumping up to like hug Candy Carter after like Kendi Clark, you know, knocks Caitlin Clark to the floor. It's like, oh, this is great. Yeah. Real animosity here. Like, come on.

Like, this is why you watch sports. You don't want them to like each other. You want them to hate each other. It's great. We need more this in music, too. We need more bands who hate each other and talk smack and all that kind of thing. Yeah, even if it's like people within the same band who hate each other. Yeah, sometimes that's even better.

So speaking of ladies in fighting, transition here. Ian, you tweeted this week something that I want to hear more about because you didn't really go in depth in this. you tweeted this on June 3rd, which I guess was Monday? Last week? Yeah, Monday, I guess. Almost saw a fight break out at the Sarah McLaughlin concert last night before the usher broke it up.

Every part of that sentence is true. So, okay, so you were at a Sarah McLaughlin concert this week. Yeah, I had to first off preface that as being true because, you know, when I pitched covering this to our editor, He was like, I just got to make sure you're not going to talk shit about Sarah McLaughlinian. No, we are full yay on Sarah McLaughlin in the Cohen household. Yeah, we want to make sure. Yeah, we're protecting Sarah McLaughlin.

But anyway, okay, so there's a two-part thing to this tweet, though, because one, you're at a Sarah McLaughlin concert. That's intriguing. And then a fight almost broke out at the Sarah McLaughlin concert. So please, can you explain your tweet here? Like, what exactly happened here? All right. So, you know, being at this show, it's a sit-down gig at this place called The Rady Shell in San Diego. I saw like counting crows there last year.

We saw Steve Martin in Martin Short. So that's the kind of vibe that this venue has. It's right on the water. And you're going as a fan. I'm going as a fan. You're not just there as a member of the press. You're there. I'm guessing you wrote the review because you wanted to get press tickets.

That is absolutely true. because like, I mean, this is like a sort of venue where you buy like season tickets to see, you know, one day you might see, you know, classical, then you might see like Steve Martin and then you might see like the Commodores perform. And I don't know how much these seats cost, but I looked at, you know, a similar part of the venue where Melissa Etheridge and Jewel are doing a co-headlining show later this summer. And these are like $300 seats. Even in the back, like, you know, the more kind of general populace, those are still like 90 bucks. So I'm like, I want to see this show. Jewel and Melissa Etheridge, 300, 300 bones. Wow.

Yeah, but these are great fucking seeds. Plus, it's an incredible, like, view. You get, like, you're right on the ocean. But so, yeah, I wanted to see this show. And, you know, I want to write about it because, you know, Sam McLaughlin's had a pretty interesting critical reappraisal in the sense that, like, you look at the Will Affair. there was, you know, the obvious big influences on modern indie rock like Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, and, you know, Cheryl Crow as well. But Sarah McLaughlin, like, I'd love to, you know, frame my being ahead of the curve on the Sarah reappraisal

on things that might make me look better as a critic. But really, sometime in college, for whatever reason, I decided to listen to fumbling ecstasy when I was actually high. And it sounds like, that's when I got it. You know, the first line of possession, you know, like, listen as the wind blows across the great divide. And, like, yeah, I was there. Like, one of the very few times I actually got good weed in college.

But I love that whole study song, by the way, where Craig Finn talks about listening to fumbling toward Ex-Sy while being super high. I think that's a great song. You had me going for a second. But, yeah, like, now that, like, as the years have gone by, you know, I read about this album and it talks about how she was, like, inspired by Kate Bush. and talk talk and it's like, oh, I hear that now. But, you know, fumbling towards ecstasy, I think, is like the album that people gravitate towards this was a 30th anniversary fumbling towards ecstasy show. Surfacing was the one that made her a superstar.

That album more or less invented the genre of adult alternative airplay, which debuted in 1996. I had a really good time getting into the rabbit hole of that particular radio format. But, you know. That's the record with building. a mystery on it. Yeah, which won a Grammy, was the number one AAA song for like 10 weeks. It was also apparently the first song ever publicly played on an iPod. These are songs. And maybe the most played CBS song of all time. I mean, it would be, it's either that or barely breathing by Duncan Sheik.

Yeah, another AAA format Monster Smash. That home sold 8 million copies. I believe it. Yeah, 16 million worldwide. Yeah. 90s, baby. Yeah, like steroid-era numbers. And it was interesting because she played like a kind of a greatest hit set before doing Fumley Towards Ecstasy. Like, I Will Remember You was the third song she played. Like, that's an encore song.

It was a very strange choice. Anywho. So about the fight, because I know y'all want to hear it. It did not happen towards I will remember you. Let's hold off on the fight for a second because I want to talk a little bit about Sam McLaughlin. Because you mentioned I will remember you. like that is her most famous song now in a way because of the ASPCA commercials. Yes.

Where you see these, um, well, I'm sorry, no, that's not that. That's arms of an angel. Right. Angel. Angel was a song that she wrote apparently about, um, Jonathan Melvoin, the, the guitar, the keyboardist from the Smashing Pumpkins who died of a heroin overdose. Oh, right. And is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is by far her most popular song, at least on Spotify. Oh my god, that song I mean it's a cheer drinker anyway But like putting that song with images of like Dogs and crates

Yeah and you know sad looking cats I mean come on like unless you're A sociopath You cannot not be moved by that You could not be a puddle At the end of that commercial when you're hearing That beautiful Sarah McLaughlin voice singing this very melancholy song.

I also read that DMC of Run DMC, that's a song that saved him from trying to commit suicide. So Angel has had a very, very, I mean, this is what happens when you sell 16 million copies of an album. You have this very odd ubiquity. And that also explains why she can play. You know, 30 years later, a venue like this one, which I think seats like maybe 10,000,

whereas someone like Chris Isaac and, and Natalie Merchant are playing Humphreys by the Bay, which is in Sandy. It's like a similar venue, which is about like a third of the size. Remember some Southern California music venues here, dropping some knowledge here. But yeah, I don't go deep with McLaughlin. I can't say that I've like fully investigated her albums. But like as a person who was listening to the radio in the 90s, I know what like six or seven of her songs. I could probably sing them word for word even without knowing it.

but if you played it, I would sing the words, just in a Pavlovian sense. I kind of think of her as, like, a new age, uh, Cheryl Crow. Yeah. Like she, like, she's more of like a hippie-ish Cheryl Crow where just writes great radio songs, but it's kind of like a more of like a mystical earth mother vibe to her. But yeah, dig Sarah McLaughlin. I remember when the video for possession came out, had a huge crush on Sarah McLaughlin. Like, I was in love with her for a little while after that video came.

came out. So anyway, okay, let's talk about the fight. We're set in the scene, Sarah McLaughlin playing beautiful songs on stage in this oceanfront music venue, just a serene setting. I'm just picturing just a beautiful night and yet it turns ugly. It turns Woodstock 99 for a minute. Can you tell us what happened? I absolutely can. So two seats to my right. There was, you know, a woman there. She, I would say like kind of mid-50s, a little bit of an Earthmother sort of vibe. And this, what she was doing is a gesture. If you've ever been to like, say the Saharanetan at Coachella, you'll know it or just pretty

much any festival, kind of doing this octopus arm Stevie Nix thing with a scarf while fully seated the entire time. With the exception of good enough, I believe she stood up and started dancing for that one song only. But, you know, it's in my peripheral vision. It's annoying, but like, it's not really getting in the way of my view. And also, I have to think for the fact, like, this person is clearly like a Sarah McLaughlin superfan, maybe not possession level super fan, but, you know, someone who probably paid like $200 or maybe even $400 to like experience this tonight. And so, it's just whatever for a while. And then, you know, I wanted to get up to go to the bathroom during

Circle, which is my least favorite song. It's actually the least streamed song on Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. It's the one that I think is the most dated. But what I see is there's an usher standing in between this woman who's doing the Stevie Nick's dance and the woman in back

of her. They're like face to face almost. And like, from what I gather, it's like the thrust of the conversation is like, could you please stop fucking doing that? We're all fully seated. I can't see I paid X amount of dollars for the ticket. And the usher is saying, like, you know, we can't really stop her.

She's allowed to do what she wants. And nothing really came of it, except I think that the woman started dancing a little, like, she bent her back a little more, maybe so it wouldn't be in the way. So, and that was about the size of it, you know, like, it's interesting because, you know, for all the violent punk shows that I go to, I rarely see a fight breakout. but like this was the closest I've gotten to seeing like actual physical altercation besides like the one time where a fight did break out

during a Shabazz Palace's set at Pitchfork Festival. So yeah that that is my I almost saw a fight break out at a Sarah McLaughlin show story. I mean that's the thing is yeah you can go to punk shows you go to like basement shows for the most part people are respecting each other not a lot of confrontations happening all of the like near fights or are

arguments that I've seen have been at like boomer oriented concerts where you have a lot of graying ponytails in the audience who don't want to stand except there's one guy that wants to stand and dance and it just pisses everybody else off and it just it creates violence it's violence in the air and it could be the most serene concert like in my experience I remember I saw crosbie stills in Nash in a theater late 2000s I think maybe 15 years ago, and there was a guy in front of me, graying ponytail, standing up, dancing to wooden ships, and there's a guy behind me just yelling at this guy,

just berating this guy, and finally the guy turns around, the guy behind me stands up, and they're going at it, I'm in the middle, and I'm like, I'm just trying to enjoy wooden ships here, fellas. Can we have peace here? You know, we're enjoying the music of the Woodstock generation here. Why do we need to be arguing? But yeah, it's always these like 70-year-old boomers getting really upset at the one person in their cohort who wants to dance. It doesn't want to sit.

Yeah, it's how violence happens at these shows. It's really fascinating to witness. Yeah, also shout to wooden ships with a J. That's definitely one of our favorite remember some guys, psych rock bands from the early. Late 2000s? Yeah. Yeah, late 2000s. I think they're still making records.

I'm sure they are. Good band. Quick housekeeping note here. If you want to see Ian and I talk in person, we are going to be in Los Angeles at Book Soup in West Hollywood. On June 11th, I'm doing a book event for my book. In case you don't know, there was nothing you could do.

Springsteen's born in the USA in the end of the heartland came out in late May doing well happy about it um you and are going to be there together talking about the book it's going to be a great time if you're in l.a we would love to see you this is going to be sort of like a de facto indie cast live episode even though we're going to be talking about Bruce springsteen we'll probably talk about indie rock at some point oh absolutely she horn that in but yeah it's going to be a great event. I've been looking forward to it. Yeah, I mean, I'm really looking forward to it as well, and I hadn't felt like any sort of nerves about, I don't know, like my capability to perform as a moderator until I saw your most recent tweet about this event and like certain people who have like,

you know, retweeted it or liked it or whatever. I'm like, wait a minute, this is Los Angeles. There might be like actually celebrities in this crowd. To that point, you know, I saw that you were on Tim Heidecker's podcast recently. Yeah, that went up Thursday. Yeah. June 6th, yeah. Office hours. Yeah, like, I just thought to myself, like, wait a minute.

Like, there might be, like, actual quasi or actual famous people in that audience. Because that's just what happens in L.A., you know? Yeah, yeah. There were a couple celebs at the New York event. And I'll just keep it under wraps there. But a celebrity, too. And it is Holly Weird, as I like to. call it. So you don't know what famous people are going to come out of the woodwork.

I know that the bookstore is in the same neighborhood as the troubadour and the iconic restaurant, Dan Tannas, which for all of you fans of 70s L.A. Rock, two big landmarks of that scene. So I did put the ghosts of Glenn Fry and Jean Clark on the guest list. So hopefully they show up. Maybe Don Henley will. He's, Don Henley is not dead. Maybe the dead Glenn Fry in the living Don Henley will show up. That would be pretty amazing. Did Don Henley ever have beef with Bruce Springsteen? He seems like the type who would be a little jealous of the fact that a book about him hasn't been written, you know, like in the same way that there was nothing you can do.

There was like Irving Azov complained to Rolling Stone once about their coverage of Springsteen in comparison to the Eagles in the long. late 70s, but Henley and Springsteen are cool. Actually, when Springsteen was on Kirby Enthusiasm, he had a Don Henley reference. I don't know if you saw that scene. I did. That Springsteen was in. He's talking about how, because

there was some joke about how when someone plays Bruce Springsteen a tape, and then he feels like he has to avoid the person that gave him the tape. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. The person who gave it to him was Don Henley.

in that scene. He said Don Henley gave him a demo tape of some band. So anyway, that goes the Springsteen-Den-Henley connection. Speaking of Heartland Rockers, does that work as a segue? I think, yeah, plus us also joining forces, you know, to promote something. There you go. There's a new album out today by a band that Ian and I both like, We both wrote about this band this week.

You wrote about them for stereo gum. I wrote about them, of course, for Up Rocks. Your piece went up on Monday, was it? Monday, yeah. And mine is going up the same day that this episode posts on Friday. So after you listen to this episode, go to Uprocks, and you can read my interview with the lead singer of this band. The band is Good Looks, a band from Texas.

We both talked to Tyler Jordan, the singer-songwriter in the band. And I've talked about this band before. I was a big fan of their previous record, which was called Bummer Year. I put it on my year-end list. I believe that was 2022 that that came out. I could be mistaken. Yeah, that was definitely 22. It was 2022.

And this is the follow-up to that album. And I think this record builds on what they did on Bummery Year, and I think they take it to another level. This is a record I like a lot. it's definitely going to be high up on my mid-year albums of 2024. And just to give a little background in this band, Tyler, Jordan, he's a guy he's very easy to root for. He's been working in music for a long time. He turns 37 this month, so he has a little bit of that Robert Pollard.

I've been in the game for a long time, and now I'm hitting my stride in my mid-delay 30s. And the dynamic in this band is that Tyler is this very autobiographical songwriter who works in kind of like a classic Texas singer-songwriter type style. When I talked to him, he talked about Steve Earle being his favorite songwriter and also loving people like Towns Van Zanz and writers of that ilk. So you have that element of this band. And he's writing about a lot of personal things, and in particular he had like a very traumatic childhood. He's also writing about political things. He identifies as a socialist. So, you know, he's writing about things like gentrification and civil rights issues from a, you know, very much like a left point of view.

So you have these lyrics that put them in that kind of like heartland rock, kind of pure heartland rock type style. You know, like, he's writing about things that like John Mellencampo about in the 80s. and that bands that are identified as Heartland Rock today, whether it's, you know, war on drugs, the killers, on and on and on, those bands typically don't write lyrics like that. So Tyler is really much like a throwback to those older type of writers. But then you also have this guitar player in the band named Jake Ames, who I think is like one of the more inventive guitar players right now in indie rock.

Tyler was talking about how like pretty much all of his solos are improvised. And he is playing like a lot, like throughout this record. The guitar is very prominent. And I think it gives the record the secret sauce that makes me like it so much. Because you have these lyrics from Tyler Jordan, again, very personal, very heart-rending. But then you have Jake Ames, his guitar playing, this soaring guitar, almost like a post-punk guitar, more than like a Americana guitar. And it's what pushes the band away from like that Steve Earle singer songwriter lane more toward like a vision questy war on drugs type quality. And I just think that that combination, it's so good on this record.

And it just gives you what you want. It's a rock record. I think Jake Ames makes sure that it's a rock record, but that it also has all these other things tucked inside the record. The personal songwriting, the political commentary. It really is like a well-rounded meal of a record. And I'm guessing you feel the same. I mean, you wrote about it. I read your article.

I read it after I wrote mine. I didn't want to be influenced by what you said. And it's interesting because we got different things out of him. I feel like our interviews are pretty different. But, yeah, I love this record and I know you're into this band as well. Yeah, I mean, I liked the first record when it came out in 2022. It coincided with me going back. back to visit where I went to college for like our 20th reunion. And, you know, that album

struck me as, you know, there was that one song, 21 about like I wish I was 21, someone floating in the sun. And it just reminded me of a lot of alt country and heartland rock I was listening to in like 2001, 2002. This one is definitely a different. It's more of an evolved version of the band. The lead single, if it's gone, sort of reminded me of, I guess, the theme of The House that Heaven built delivered as a War on Drug songs. So it was pretty obvious both of us were going to like it. But as far as like an easy band to root for, like you said, Tyler Jordan's in his, you know, mid to late 30s.

They were really toughen it out for a while. Their first album was like put on pause because of the pandemic. And then Jake Ames, the night of their album release show in 2022, he gets hit by a car and like cracks his skull and his tailbone. It was in the ICU. so they had to heal from that. And so, yeah, it does something quite different than a lot of, like, quote-unquote, Heartland Rock, which is oftentimes more of a vibe.

But this album gets into not just, like, gentrification and Austin and income disparity, but, like, there's, like, also songs where he, like, talks shit about an ex-band member and his mom. He was very adamant about, like, yeah, I don't censor myself when I write. and, you know, like, I need to put that stuff out there. And I found that really refreshing. Had a lot of interesting things to say as well about, like, what it's like to be in a quote-unquote upstart band as someone that late in the game. It reminded me a little bit of, like, when I interviewed Bartiz Strange.

A few years back, it's another person who accumulated a lot of interesting life experience, like, before, you know, people wanted to know what they had to say about things. So it was definitely a lot more fun than, you know, some of the typical interviews I do where it's just like, hey, let's talk about the album and what your influences are. So I think it's one of the cases where if you read an interview with him, if you're like interested in this band, you'll like them more. Yeah, and I think that there's like a lot of layers to these songs that weren't even obvious to me until I talked to Tyler. Like you mentioned that song 21 from Barberia, which I like a lot. and you can listen to that song as just like a fun heartland rock

or all country-ish type jam but then he was telling me too how there's like references to Marxism in that song that I think again I'm like pretty well embedded but they're there if you know that they're there and I think if I could tie it back

to this book I just wrote about born in the USA I mean I do think that like one of the strengths that Springsteen had I think in the made 80s was that he could write songs that touched on political issues, but they were in the background. Like he was writing these really good character songs instead of like hitting you over the head like with polemics. And I think that with Tyler's songs,

even though he I think definitely has an ideology that he wants to express in his lyrics, I think he is good about putting it into a package where it's going to seep in gradually with the listener. It's not going to like bash you over the head with it. to the point where it just feels pedantic and it gets tiresome very quickly. These are songs that I think are very listenable. And if I can say patio music, it doesn't get more patio-friendly than this album this year. You can enjoy it as music and as like, you know, just fun summertime jams. But if you spend time with the record, I think the deeper parts of the record, again, the political parts and also the frankly traumatic things that he's singing about in these songs.

there's some heavy things going on. I mean, even in the single, if it's gone, I think if you know a little bit about his background, you can also read that as a song about him deciding to, like, leave home and basically distance himself from his family. Yeah, that's... He had this very strict religious upbringing that he talks about. I think he talked about that with you as well.

So, I don't know. I always love when records have layers, and you don't necessarily get everything you're going to get from it on the first or even the 10th, listen and I think this is one of the I think this is a record like that yeah if you're if you're an indie band right now that has like

a story about leaving a strict religious upbringing I'm probably going to want to interview you so just keep a note of that it's pretty interesting stuff well I don't have a good segue into our next segment so I'm just going to do a hard left

from good looks to one of the top stars in a genre known as indie pop, and I'm talking about Charlie X-XX. Her new album, Brat, was released today. It's the follow-up to her 2022 record crash. And in a way, it's like a meta record about her last record. Because in 2022, she put out this album,

and it was really looked at as her play for, like, big mainstream success. You know, she's been on this indie pop level now for, over a decade. I mean, I once did a Twitter thread, which was good-natured, but it was something that I've seen for a long time, where I took screenshots of articles about Charlie X, X, going back to like 2011, at least, maybe even 2010, calling her the future of pop music. Like, this was the narrative with Charlie X, CX for a long time. Every story about her would talk about the future of pop music, or she doesn't. doesn't want to be the future of pop music or she's reconsidered being the future of pop

music and it just went on and on for a long time and she was looked at as this sort of like vanguard on the edge of pop even though she was like well into her career and uh anyway she makes this record crash it's looked at being her attempt to you know kind of level up go to the next level it doesn't quite work there's a perception that the record is maybe a bit of a sellout And then she comes back with this new record, and she's retrenching, really, as what she was before. And it seems to be working. This record is being very well reviewed. And, I mean, you talked about this in the outline.

It's an interesting narrative with this album, because her last record, I mean, it did well with critics. I don't think it was perceived necessarily, at least in the press, as a debacle. but it seems like as the album cycle ended that that's how it was perceived by fans. Yeah, it's wild because I'm looking right now, like, I'm thinking to myself like, this album was like pretty critically acclaimed and the year end rankings for Crash. It was on Rolling Stones list. It was on pitchforks, vultures, NME, Billboard, Gorillaverse Bear, you know, most of them. And yeah, it's an interesting thing where so many.

many of the positive reviews are kind of throwing crash under the bus in a way because it seems like Charlie X, the X, X, X, is doing the same thing where there is this meta narrative about this album about being what it's like to be in, if not necessarily indie pop, like more in this thing that's being described as the middle class pop. There was an article in New York Times last year that came out that got into like, I guess Charlie XX and Carly Ray Jepson are like the Beatles and stones of this subgenre. This is where you can see, like, Troy Cvon, and like, I, I really wish I knew how to pronounce that guy's name. Caroline Polichek, Rita O'Rah. All these artists, I see their videos at the gym, but they might not be like the one percenters, you know, like Billy

Elish, Taylor Swift, et cetera. And so there's a lot of Charlie XX writing about, not just like to be compared to those sort of artists, but also her fiancee, I believe, is the drummer. from the George Daniel from the 1975. So I think in the first song she kind of has this intrusive

thought of like wanting them to break up so she doesn't have to feel I guess in competition with how many tickets they sell. But yeah, there's,

I've read a lot of like oh, Von Dutch is possibly an F.K.A. Twigsdiss? There's like a song possibly about Lord or Taylor Swift.

Is she the Kennedy Carter or middle class pop? I don't know. As far as like the album itself, I like it more than I expected. I think the Sophie tribute's pretty genuinely moving. But it just makes me think of like those TV shows that people talk about, like Vanderpump rules or what have you,

or they like genuinely like it even if it is kind of a little trashy. But it's like you kind of have to watch the show and then the podcast. Like the podcast where they like break it down is consider require listening. It's it's fun. it's exhausting and if like I were more I don't know invested in pop as a narrative I'd probably try harder with it but I think I'm gonna maybe revisit it once the immediate I don't know hype dies down so I want to go back to this term middle class pop that you referenced that was written about in the New York Times because it feels to me that that is the new way to say indie pop like indie pop is

a term I feel like fell out of fashion and I think I think the reason why was, you know, in the 2000s and like, even like early 2010s, there was this idea around certain artists. I think you could talk about like Robin being in there, like chairlift being in there, which is Caroline Polichak's old band. And other acts of that ilk that were grouped under the indie pop banner. And there was this idea that if you identified as an indie rock fan, that you could enjoy the music of Robin and still do. turn up your nose at Katie Perry. You know, that, like, this was like an elevated form of pop music.

And it was almost like methadone for indie rock fans. It's like, I don't want to take the heroin of Teenage Dream. So I'll, I don't mean that in the sense that, like, Robin is a weaker version of Katie Perry. I think Robin, in a lot of ways, is better than Katie Perry. I'm just saying that it was like a

replacement, I think, for a lot of indie rock fans who had hangups about listening to pop music. I think of it more like an aoli as opposed to like a mayonnaise you know like that's what it's like kind of the same thing but like it's a little more elevated it's like the pork belly and uh you know uh charred brussels sprouts because that was also hot in restaurants during that era or or like these restaurants that make their own ketchup which i always hate i'm like just give me ketchup don't give me your bullshit made up ketchup uh but anyway at some point that idea i think became unfashionable and

It was like, no, you should just enjoy pop music if you want to enjoy pop music. So the lines between like indie pop and pop blurred Charlie XX was a part of that blurring. I mean, where you could look at her as like, she is like a pop star, but she's also like not as disgust as like a lot of really big pop star. So maybe it's like a less annoying version of pop music because it's not being rammed down your throat, even though it's delivering a lot of the same, you know, thrills that they're. pop music delivers. One thing we should mention, too, is that the primary producer of this Charlie X-Cx record is A.G. Cook, who is the head of PC music and English label that was basically the foundation of indie pop or whatever you want to call it.

I think they were, like, kind of the future of pop. Like, that was a big part of, like, what they, because they were, like, actively courting that sort of thing. Right. And it was taking the tropes of. 80s and 90s pop and just maximizing it, like just taking it to the extreme.

To the point where I think on this record you said exhausting as adjective to describe your experience with it. And I have a similar experience. I feel like this is a record that there's not a lot of dynamics on this album. I feel like it's all bops

to use a term that I hate and I'm sick of hearing, but I feel like it's just nonstop bops. And there's people that just want nonstop bops. a record and God bless you, enjoy the record, but for me, it just becomes a little wearying after a while. And there's a lot of performative sassiness on this record, too, that I just find to be kind of grating after a while.

I don't know. Yeah. There's a lot of fourth wall busting on this. And I think, like, Charlie XX is somebody who absolutely knows that she's talking directly to her audience. Like it's seen as like this kind of two-way conversation, almost in the same way that like the 1975 is at times. Yeah.

And there's an element to her music. And we've talked about this with like certain prestige TV shows like where you feel like some of the songs are written in anticipation of like being turned into memes. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, like there's that line in 360 where she says like, I don't care what you think. And I'm like, okay. All right. Like you, you know what people are going to do.

with that you know like when they or like when you bring out like chloe savaney in the video i think that's 360 yeah the 360 videos kind of like uh i think it's seen as a update on that one uh track she did a couple years back called boys where it was it was sort of a similar sort of thing it's it's very it's very like of the internet and i don't know steve maybe like when we go to the club uh you know we're in west hollywood after the show and we hear uh these songs in like their natural environment the club, which we go to and all critics go to, we're going to understand it more. Yeah, it's like when you go to the club, you just notice the velvet rope where all the music critics are sitting.

And they're typing into their laptops as they write about the songs. It's really cool to see. That's like one of my favorite tropes that like critics talk about. Like they talk about the club. It's like, I want to see them at the club. I know. When you read about the critic writing about the club, it's like, get the fuck out of here. Come on.

Come on. Come on. We don't got a lie to kick it, man. You're not in the club, man. Come on. I know, because we were DMing about this album a little bit yesterday, and at some point I sent you the giff of Liam Gallagher saying,

not for me, mate. And I think that's my take on this record. I expect this record to end up being one of the most acclaimed albums of the year. I'm sure it's going to take the Caroline Poichek's slot on Year Endless. undoubtedly. That's all good. Not for me, mate. Not for me.

Let's talk about an album that is for me. And maybe not for you. This is the segment I'm most excited about, I know. Because I think you and I differ on this band and on this record. There could be some fireworks here. Some friendly fireworks. The 20th anniversary of Hot Fuss, the debut album by The Killers, was this week.

Although maybe it's actually next week because I posted, so I wrote a column ranking my favorite killer songs. It went up Thursday morning, which is the morning that we record the pod. After I posted it, someone sent me a screenshot of the opening credits of entourage because there is a poster of hot fuss on like some L.A. club wall. And it says coming June 15th. So I wonder if it came out in the UK on June 7th, in America on June 15th. I don't know. The entourage poster doesn't lie. So I got to go with that.

But anyway, I wrote about this band. This is a band that I have a lot of affection for, even when they're terrible. I love this band. And Hot Fust to me, I think, is one of the great rock records of the last 20 years. I'm going to throw that out there right there. And in my column, I make the case that this. is, in my view, the last great 20th century alternative rock record, even though it came out in 2004. Just because I feel like it's a record that is more in line with the cracked CD jewel case

classics of the 80s and 90s, whether we're talking about disintegration, Octune Baby, Siamese Dream. Now, you can argue about whether it's as good as those records, but I definitely feel like it is in the tradition of those records and it's made by a band that studied those records and wanted to make an album that had the shape of those records. And I think they pulled it off. One thing I want to talk about with you is, and this is something that I argue against in my column, is the idea that this record is front-loaded. Because certainly from like a hits perspective, it is. You got Mr. Brightside.

Somebody told me all these things that I've done. All on side one. Smile Like You Mean It was also a single, which I had forgotten until I started researching this column. I like that song a lot. It's a great song. That's a great song. But Side 2, I think, is great.

I love Side 2. I read your review of the greatest hits record, direct hits. You're taking shots at Andy You're a star and Midnight Show. I love those fucking songs. I keep swearing in this episode. I'm sorry, if you're listening with your kids, I don't know why I'm swearing so much. I'm getting passionate here about the killers. God help me. But I don't know. I don't think it's front-loaded. I would make the same case for the Joshua

tree. People call that front-loaded because the first three songs are where the streets have no name. I still am following looking for and with or without you. All huge hits. But I kind of love the idea of like a hits loaded first half and then the second half is almost like the less crowded lounge inside of the restaurant like david bowie's low yeah it's like you can it's like look sometimes you want to listen to hot fuss but i maybe you don't want to hear mr bright side so then you just go to the back half of the record and you hear believe me natalie and change my mind and midnight show andy star all those songs i love all those songs maybe glamorous indie rock and roll if you have like the uh bonus cut

Yes, or the Bout of Michael Valentine. We're getting really deep here with the outtakes. But I don't know. I think this record holds together very, very well. And to say nothing of like the other records, I actually think they have some other heaters in their catalog. They also have some clunkers. But like Samstown, I'll defend.

And I think the last two records have a lot of strong parts to them. So anyway, I'm monologuing here about the killers. I apologize for that. But talk to me about hot fuss. Do you still feel like this record's front-loaded? I feel like you are like one of the proponents of this theory. I think like you are partly responsible for this perception. So I want you to defend it if you still believe it or to apologize if you no longer believe it.

Yeah. So like I was trying to work a smile like you mean it gag in there. But one thing I just realized is that this is so fucking hard to believe that. that this album and My Chemical Romance, three cheers for I don't know, three cheers for sweet revenge

came out on the same day. Oh wow. Yeah, which is interesting because like I think of those two bands as like, my life would be a lot easier. I probably have a lot more,

you know, bylines if I like those bands more than I do. But, you know, Huffus is interesting because like you mentioned how there's this did it come out on the seventh or did it come out on the eighth or the 15th based on entourage?

I have so many confusing conflicting memories about how this album actually appeared in public. Like, because I remember they were this huge hype band and I thought somebody told me was the first single. But like Mr. Brightside came out first, but then there was a second video for Mr. Brightside. And, you know, my first experience with this album, because I had no money in the summer of 2004 was, I think I like burned, like I downloaded it illegally and all the songs were like kind of jumbled in different bit rates. And so it was just kind of a confusing jumble of a, you know, of an album to begin with just in my experience of it. As far as like its reputation of being kind of top heavy, like, yeah, I probably don't mean it as much. Like I think it was just like a fun thing to say.

And I mean, would I say that, oh, Andy or a star should have been a single? Well, nah, but I think this kind of gets to a point you made in your substack about the idea of, you know, purposeful ignorance versus feigned ignorance. I feel like I'm kind of locked into this idea of, you know, hot fuss being this avatar of what it means to be like a top heavy record. Because when I listen to it, it's like, yeah, I don't think that Andy or a Star is just like a bad song. It's just this uncanny experience you get sometimes when you listen to an album where there are

these extremely ubiquitous singles and songs that, you know, are like serious deep cuts. I'm thinking of Depeche Mode's violator comes to mind as a comparative point. Like when you hear these songs, like, you know, people,

like tens of millions of people have bought this album and so many people have heard it, but it's like, I don't, like, it's so, it's just this extremely weird uncanny valley. And the same experience I had just revisiting born in the USA where, you know, I listen to like Darlington County or like working on the highway, you know, like these songs that are just like

massively popular in a way, but not ubiquitous. And so, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to walk back a little bit. Wow. I'm going to walk it back a bit. Because like I think, we're making Killers history here. Yeah. This is Killers history. Your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, my stance of, you know, just like revisiting these stances I've hold as like something of a bit. That being said, the killers are a band I appreciate. I like them. I won't say I dislike them.

But they're a band. I've never had a phase with them in the same way I had with like bands at their level like Coldplay or, you know, Weezer for that matter. I just kind of wish I liked them more than I did. but you know like I enjoyed the most recent albums which were and I think they would say like pretty brazen war on drugs ripoffs so yeah I mean I like them maybe I need to revisit maybe I need to maybe they need to like put out a greatest hits that also incorporates their more recent stuff so yeah I'm pro killers but I can never write an article like a list like you did you know I haven't

I haven't seen it yet I wanted to go in not seeing your rankings but I'm going to revisit them after reading your list. I'm a little surprised you don't like them more than you do. Me too. Because when I look at the killers and not to bring up this band into the podcast again, it's sort of like saying Candyman three times in the mirror. But when I look at the killers, I feel like they're a better version of the 1975. Like when I listen to the 1975 and I pull out the things I like about them,

I feel like it's the things I like about the killers. You have an arrogant but charismatic lead singer. You have these big rock songs that have like a dancey edge to them. You have this really strong sense of style that sometimes gets dismissed as style over substance. I think there's a lot of parallels there. I just feel like the killers are a better version of that because to me, the 1975 don't have a song like Mr. Brightside or somebody told me or when you were young or these like larger than life just smash hit songs.

And it's got to be said, Mr. Brightside, against all odds, really, is one of the most enduring rock songs of the 21st century. It's got to be that. It's that in Seven Nation Army. Yeah. Like those are the two biggest ones. And like on Spotify, Mr. Brightside has been streamed more than Seven Nation Army. It's over two billion streams for that song, which is remarkable to me.

I heard it at a wedding recently. I think I referenced this wedding on a previous episode. And like, that's a song you can end a wedding with. Get everyone on the floor. It just, I don't know when this happened, but it, it's sort of like leveled up again. Sort of like Wonderwall did, you know? Right. Yeah, it's one of those songs that it just feels like it's in the canon.

And maybe like the wedding music, canon is the most important one of all. You know, like the songs you know will kill at a wedding. because that's an audience. You've got old people, you've got young people, you've got people who don't care about music, people who love music. It's a very wide demographic that you're trying to appeal to. So if you can kill at a wedding,

you've reached, I think, a rarefied status, and Mr. Brightside is certainly at that level. You've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? So I kind of owe this band because I gave them in recommendation corner on our lost episode,

the one where we had the greatest Kings of Leon conversation that no one will ever hear, unless we recreate it word for word at the Book Soup event. We might have to. We might be like, hey man, sorry, no Bruce talk. We're going to recreate our conversation about this Kings of Leon album. No one remembers.

So they are a band from Eugene, Oregon, called Southtown Lanes. I know it sounds like a hold steady song name, but they are, I would describe them as a pretty classic emo revival band in the sense that like they were making albums in the early 2010s. So their first album in eight years came out a few weeks ago. It's called Take Care, Not to be confused with the Drake album. And the way I've described this to people is that it's the best 2014 emo album of 2024, which is to say that if you liked, you know, a hotel year's home like no place is there or a lot of

Butte's room of the house or just emo albums about like parents dying, that sort of level of intensity. This is going to be right up your alley. It's on dog nights, which is a great label, most of the time for like screamo. But this is, this gets into something that is I've seen discuss more and more this year, which is that like there's just no legs for anything other than the biggest like pop albums. And I just feel like this is an album that could, it's far and away. the best emo album in the year, but it just needs a little bit of a nudge.

I think if people started talking about it, it would have that word of mouth success. So that's why I don't feel particularly disinclined to talk about it, even though it's a couple of weeks old. Once again, South Town Lanes, take care. You'll know from like the first minute of this album, whether or not it's going to be your ship, but I think it will be. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that back.

It's nice to see our lost episode slowly trickle in the world. world. So at least the recommendation Corner album survived. I want to talk about an album that one of my followers on Twitter recommended to me. He was like, this seems way up your alley. This is total patio music. You're going to like it.

And a lot of times when people are doing that, I don't agree with them, but I actually like this record a lot. It's called Hideout Mountain. It's by a band called Everything Now. And this is the kind of band similar to good looks that I always want to cheer for because from Indian

Minneapolis, they've been putting out records since 2003. This is their first record in 13 years. You know, they've just been putting out records, doing their thing, keeping the dream alive, and making really good music. And, you know, it's good to give a band like this a hat tip, and I'm happy to do it. This is a record that I actually think would be a good companion with good looks when you're listening to that record this weekend. This album has a similar type of, you know, like middle American rock and roll vibe. I think this album is probably like a little bit more rock and roll than the Good Looks record. There's sort of like a psychedelic pop element to what they're doing along with more kind of

straightforward power pop type stuff. But just a really pleasurable record, really good songs. Love the band's vibe. Love the band's palette, as my friend Jake Longstrette would say. Just good stuff all around. I think people are going to, if you hear the Good Looks record and you're, like this record's great i wish i had something to pair this with go on band camp check out this band everything now it's everything comma now exclamation point they were called that before the arcade

fire song well before that maybe arcade fire heard this band love them and decide to pay tribute to them i don't know but again that record's called hideout mountain really good stuff yeah i think hideout mountain is like absolutely like you can tell what this album's going to sound like just from that title. It kind of sounds like Lookout Mountain, the drive-by trucker song. I don't know if these guys are trucker fans. They don't really sound like the drive-by truckers, but, you know, somewhere all-American, middle-American vibe.

Yeah, although the exclamation point in the comma, that's like emo revival punctuation. So I have to check this out now, too. A little bit, a little bit. They don't want to be pinned down to any one scene or genre. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indycast. we'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix Tate 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.