Indiecast - New Albums By Zach Bryan + Jeff Rosenstock

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

This week's Indiecast was recorded a few days earlier than usual, so if there was some major indie news that is not discussed, that is why. Why did the guys record early? Well, Steven shipped off to Dayton, Ohio to see the 40th anniversary shows for Guided By Voices. Before he left, he previewed the weekend — which he dubbed "45-Year-Old Indie Fan Woodstock" — with Ian (1:45).After that, Steven and Ian review the new self-titled album from Zach Bryan, a country superstar who has some strong indie/emo guy tendencies (13:32). Then the guys discuss the new album by actual emo-adjacent star Jeff Rosenstock, who attempts to segue to a more mature sound with Hellmode. (30:20)In Recommendation Corner (47:54), Ian talks about a new EP from the darkwave act Drab Majesty, while Steven recommends the 1980s era Australian indie band Died Pretty in light of the recent death of lead singer Ron Peno.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 153 here 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 Uprox's Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about new albums by Zach Bryan and Jeff Rosenstock. My name is Steve Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's my Goldheart Mountain Top Queen Directory. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

I love how this shows the wavelength we're on because you could have picked any of the 550,000 guided by voices songs, and you chose the one that was infamously covered by, and you will know us by the Trail of Dead on their much maligned 2006 album, so divided. Although you could have chosen Game of Pricks because Jimmy World covered that one. You know, I don't remember Trail of Dead covering that song. Well, so divided, I think I dropped off by then,

because you had worlds apart, very controversial album in the moment where a lot of people didn't like it when it came out. And then it became an album that, you know, people wanted to defend. I think you're one of the people. I'm absolutely one of those people. Someone, I think it was Larry Fitzmaurice mentioned that the arms new album kind of has trailer that energy. And I'm like, I kind of wish they made it more worlds apart, though. Like, I am a worlds apart defender. our pal Riley Walker, massive worlds apart defender.

We are Legion. Wow. So I'm so divided, they were covering GBV. I didn't know this. I got to go back to so divided at some point and investigate this. I'm talking about GBV because this weekend, I'm going to be in Dayton, Ohio, for the 40th anniversary shows that Guided by Voices is playing in their hometown. You got an all-star support.

bill. You've got Dinosaur Jr., you've got built a spill representing the old guard. You've got young pups like Wednesday and Kiwi Jr. on the bill. You've got heartless bastards in there as well. They're somewhere in the middle between the old guard and the young pups. I'm really excited. I'm going with two of my best friends. I know a bunch of other people who are going to be in town. This is basically like 45-year-old Woodstock. If you're a 45-year-old, old indie rock fan or older because I'm 45, I'm about to turn 46. So I might be on the younger end of the average audience member at these shows.

All the people I know, I think I know like five people at least who are going. Our combined ages is like 250 years old. So, you know, this is, it's like middle-aged people coming together, listening to 90s indie rock. It's going to be beautiful. I wrote a piece recently about Guided My Voice. It's sort of a beginner's guide to the band because if you know anything about this band, you know that they have like a million albums and it's really hard to, you know,

figure out exactly where you're going to go. I mean, B,000, I think is the consensus album to check out first, but that's in the lo-fi era and maybe it might be hard to wrap your head around that. So I was trying to really give a bite-sized but also substantial portrait of how to get to this band. You don't really have any relationship at all with Guided by Voices, right? I really don't, aside from, like, you know, seeing B,000 on a lot. Like, that's the one that you would see on, like, a Rolling Stone list or like a pitchfork best of list. And Apple music lists B,000 in Alien Lanes as the essential guided by voices albums. Although, you know,

my relationship with them is like, yeah, this sounds good. I wish I was into, like, I wish I got started earlier on them because, I mean, when I read that, when I read a lot of the lists you do, and this one in particular, I'm just trying to add up, like, how many hours, just pure, like, hours have you spent listening to Robert Pollard projects? If you were to, like, put it all together. It would be measure it in weeks or months, even? Oh, man, a lot. And I feel like in the guided by voices world, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I,

I mean, I've seen them a lot. I have a lot of the records. I feel well-versed. I own relaxation of the asshole on vinyl. You know, so that's... I need to know more about this. I mean, does owning it on vinyl, like, really bring out, like, the nuance and warmth

in Robert Pollard's rant about Adam Turris? It's the only way to get it, because you can't stream it. I don't think there's a CD version or a cassette version. If you want relaxation of the asshole, this album that it's a compilation, of stage banter from Robert Pollard, who was very funny on stage.

And I love the record, because I love hearing Robert Pollard go on rants on stage. He often makes fun of other bands. It's very funny to me. This album is infamous because it got a 0.0 from Pitchfork. It's one of those albums. And it probably deserves a 0.0, even though I love it. But no, I bought it on vinyl because it was the only way to get it. so that's why I did it.

But it's an amazing record. I consider myself a fan. But, you know, like, whenever you get into these, like, fan communities, you learn as committed of a fan as you think you might be, that there are super fans out there

who just know way more than you do. And for me, you know, it would be the superfan who has encyclopedic knowledge of, like, the last 15 years, of Robert Pollard's career and guided by voices. Like I've, especially lately, like, I've gone back to investigating the albums and digging

into them. There's, you know, like, the last five, six years, I think have actually been, like, a really strong period for Pollard. There's, like, a record, like, Space Gun from 2018, which is great. And, you know, please be honest, from 2016, that's a really good record. But there's people out there who, like, know everything. Like, they know every, like, Lexo and the Leepers record. You know, they can quote, go back snowball.

lyrics, you know, and I'm not on that level. I mean, they remind me in a lot of ways of a jam band. You know, there are parallels between what I see in the GBV community and like the Grateful Dead community and that you do have these tiered levels of expertise where you think you know a lot and then you meet somebody who can just rattle off, you know, tour statistics from the dead, how many times they've played, here comes Sunshine or something. I mean, like, with Guy to My Voices, like a jam band, or maybe like I said, any band, really. Like, the more time you put into it, like, the more you get out of it. Like, as you were saying, if you dabble in it, it can be hard to understand, like, why people like it so much.

Like, you kind of do have to go full on, you know, like Dennis Hopper and Apocalypse Now. Like, you have gone into the jungle and now you are committed to Marlon Brando. You know, you've joined the movement. You have to be like opera and apocalypse now to like think really get the full GBV experience. Yeah, I think of it like the Simpsons because like people who know me like think that I'm like this like Simpson's savant. Like wow, like you must you must be you must be a kind of a genius in that community.

And I tell them like, look, I went to a Simpsons trivia and I got my ass kick because like I know from like not I know like what you would consider like the B,000. into Under the Stars era and then I've not paid attention for the past 20 years and there are many people who have and so I guess I feel that sort of way about the Simpses. Wait is

Tobin Sprout like the Marlon Brando or the I'm trying to think of the apocalypse now like breakdown of it. I need you to tell me well Tobin Sprout is the George Harrison of guided by voices if we're transferring it to the apocalypse now I mean I wouldn't equate I guess

if you're going to say Pollard is like, because Pollard would be Malin Brando in Apocalypse now because he's like the, Colonel Kurtz, he's like the guru, he's like the person

that everyone is obsessed with. And I guess in this analogy, because we're shifting the analogy here a little bit, Sprout would be like Hopper in a way. Although not really, because he's not like

a fanatically devoted to Brando. Yeah, the Apocalypse Now comparison in terms of like likening the band to the film, it breaks down. I just meant in terms of, like, fan commitment. That was the metaphor I was going for. This is getting very convoluted. I should just say, I mean, you know, I was thinking about, you know, because I wrote this piece

and I'm going to these shows, I've been thinking about, like, Robert Pollard, the influence he's had on my life, which I think has been positive and negative in some respects. positive in the sense that the thing I always loved about guy to my voices is that they were this band from Ohio. They didn't become famous until they were in their mid-30s.

Robert Pollard stayed in Dayton and he has in many ways this sort of blue-collar mentality and yet at the same time he's incredibly artistic. He has like a real art-rock sensibility

even though he's working in the sort of like bowling alley milieu of living in a small town. I love that juxtaposition in the art. And in some ways, I've been influenced by that as someone who has stayed in the Midwest and also considers himself a creative person. On the negative side, binge drinking. Not a good influence in terms of that and justifying that.

So I don't blame him for that, but he was an influence on me in that regard. So anyway, one of my heroes, I'm excited. It is one of those things, too, where I wonder, I was talking about this with my, I think I was talking about this with my friend, Jake. I think this was him, Jake, if you're listening, you can correct me when I see you in Dayton. But we were talking about how we wanted to go to these shows because we wonder how much longer they're going to be touring. Because Robert Pollard, I believe, is going to turn 64 this year. His birthday's on Halloween, I think it's 1959.

So I think he's going to be 64. And he's like in good shape, shockingly. Like you see him smoke and drink all the time, but he seems like he's still in good shape. But you just wonder, he's reaching that age now where I'm like, oh, I don't know how much longer he's going to be on the road. And I definitely don't know how many more opportunities I'm going to have to get together with my friends, who I went to see shows with 20, 25 years ago. If we're going to be able to do that a whole lot longer, you know, it's harder to get together these days. since we all have our own lives. So I don't know, it's going to be a fun weekend.

It's going to be interesting and probably a little wistful. You know, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I think that we, with your talk about the influence, I need to bring up a line from the pitchfork review of relaxation of the asshole, which calls this album a seminal text on how to drink professionally for more than a decade. Yes. Yeah, you know, that review, it's funny because, again, it gets a 0.0, but I feel like that review is pretty affectionate.

Yeah, they say it deserves a 10 in the same way, as surely as metal machine music is a 10. So, like, I think the original view had like parentheses 1.0. Holiday Kirk from the new metal agenda brought that up to me on Twitter. And if he's like, didn't that, it's like, yes, if you know that, then it definitely happened. So I think that got lost in like the website redesign, but just no, I think they gave it both a 10 and a See, one thing I learned after writing this piece and people were, you know, replying to my post and talking about guided by voices is that there's actually an asshole part two. Like there's another album of banter, which I think came out the following year. And I had annoyed.

See, again, I'm someone, I consider myself a fan, but there is stuff out there that I don't know about guided by voices. and that's something I learned. I don't know if it's called asshole too or if it has a different title, but conceptually it's relaxation of the asshole part too, like another album of banter from Pollard. If you do want to hear samples of that album, you can go on YouTube and hear some of it,

along with other examples of Robert Pollard stage banter. That is a good way to kill an hour. Just like want to go on a YouTube rabbit hole thing and just listen to Robert Pollard drunkenly ranting on stage. It is a fun way to kill time. This is an early recommendation corner in this episode. Go on YouTube.

Look up Robert Pollard's stage banter. It's amazing. Let's talk about the first album we're going to be reviewing today. It's the latest from Zach Bryan. And if you know this guy, you know him as one of the biggest country music stars in the world right now. And it's been a pretty meteoric rise.

This guy's backstory is, I think, pretty fascinating. He was in the Navy for eight years, from 2013 to 2021. He grew up as a Navy brat. He gets discharged in 2021. The following year, he puts out his major label debut. And by the way, I should say that while he was in the Navy, he gained a certain amount of notoriety because he was recording songs that he had written while in the service and he was posting them online. He actually put out

like two records on his own during that period. And it gained enough attention for him to get a major label deal and he puts out this sprawling record in 2022 called American Heartbreak, 34 songs, two CDs for you CD buyers out there. I bought the CD myself. And it becomes a huge hit. It goes platinum. It rapidly makes him an arena attraction. The breakout song from this record is called Something in the Orange. And it's a huge hit, still a huge hit. It's 66 weeks on the charts at this point. I believe it's the longest running country music hit in Billboard history at this point. Gone five times platinum. It's been streamed about 500 million times on Spotify. So this guy's a big star. And, you know,

I described him as a country music star a minute ago, but what I find interesting about him is that I think in reality, musically, he's sort of tangentially country. I think he scans his country broadly, but if you dig into the nitty-gritty of what his influences are and the style of writing he does, I think it really kind of deviates from that. I want to talk to you about this because, you know, when you look at singer-songwriters that are in the mold of Zach Bryan, like if you even if you really, you know, just looked at him from a distance and you're like, okay, who does this guy resemble? Those kind of singer-songwriters, they typically fall into like one of three lanes.

The first lane is like you're an outlaw country throwback, you know, and in that respect, you think of someone like Sergill Simpson, you know, who's, you know, he sings and you think of Whalen Jennings immediately. Tyler Childers, I think, also could fit under that, although he's more in the like Chris Christoperson, Mickey Newberry wing, like more of like the thoughtful singer-songwriter wing of outlaw country. So you have that wing. The second lane is like Southern Rock.

And that would be like Chris Stapleton. You know, you listen to him, you think, oh yeah, this reminds me of like 70s, country rock, Southern Rock. I think Jason Isbell also falls under that, especially when you trace his lineage back to the drive-by truckers. They're in that lane. The third lane is basically like a pop rock with hip-hop accents type lane. And that would be Morgan Wallen, you know, who is, he is the biggest country star in the world.

Zach Bryan doesn't really fit in any of those lanes. He's somebody that, I think, in a lot of respects, points toward indie rock, specifically Saddle Creek, the bright-eyes stuff, early Rilkeli. Stuff that is inspired by country music, folk music, but is filtering it through this indie rock, somewhat emo-sense-of-of-a-sense-of-of-e. And Zach Bryant isn't doing exactly what those groups did, but he's clearly somebody who grew up listening to that and not Outlaw Country or Southern Rock, which makes sense because he's 27 years old. So he was born in the late 90s. He was a teenager when a lot of this sort of indie rock stuff would have been big. Obviously, Ryan Adams, you probably have to mention in there too as someone. Although I think Ryan Adams, he's.

generally is like a big influence on all of these people. You know, certainly Jason Isbell before he would have distanced himself from Ryan Adams. He was like working with Ryan Adams. Ryan Adams almost produced Southeastern, the big Jason Isbell breakthrough record. But I just think that's really interesting. And I think there's something about that element of what he does that has allowed him to translate with a younger audience that's also streaming music as opposed to a lot of country artists who historically haven't done great on streaming platforms, although that's changing in

the last year or two. But I don't know, I'm curious to get your take on this, because I loved American Heartbreak. I don't love this self-titled record that he just put out last week. That is already a huge record. I don't like it quite as much, and I'll get into why in a minute, but I'm just curious, like, have you investigated Zach Bryan at all? Because he is somebody that I think feels like he's outside of the country music world more than like a lot of these other people. And I think he's reaching an audience that doesn't really listen to other country artists. Yeah, you mentioned that like kind of three lanes of country adjacent. And to me, they all merge to what I consider

like college football music, which is like there is, and I know you're the one who's been on the Paul Feinbaum show, but yeah, it's like kind of countryish, but like not, it's like a little more rye, which kind of distinguishes it from like straight up

alt country. It's pretty left leaning and there's some dad rock elements. So yeah, like Sturgle Simpson. I'm thinking back to the stuff that I listen to in college, you know, like you're Todd's. Snyders and your La Lovett's and of course Jason Isbell and, you know, people who like this stuff tend to like Danny McBride projects as well.

And, you know, you mentioned how this is crossing over towards people who, you know, might not be listening to, you know, straight up country music. What put Zach Bryan on my radar, you know, aside from the fact that his album was showing up on like, you know, New York Times lists and so forth, he made this tweet recently about now that I got a major label deal, I'm going to make a good Midwest Punk record. And then he puts like this list, he puts this like little collage of like a Howdy album,

Joyce Manor self-titled, The Front Bottoms, and We Were Promised Jet Packs, which are like, it's like a Scottish post-rock band, which I love the energy here because I guarantee this guy loves that music and none of these bands are Midwest punk.

Right. Only Joyce Manor is punk. But it's still, I love that energy. I love being pandered to. And, you know, no lessen of authority of Jenny Lewis herself said it reminds her of lifted era bright eyes. And it kind of does to me as well because with this album, a lot of it seems to be in that

mold of, you know, nothing gets crossed out or method acting where the subject is Zach Bryant and his ambivalence to being someone who's up on stage and being listened to and being this, like authority on emotion when he just really is in his own own words like kind of a drunken asshole it's really hard not to hear heartbreaker era ryan adams as well on this you know maybe all the times he says carolina and just the prolift prolificity well he's an oklahoma guy i he puts oklahoma in a lot of his songs yeah yeah whatever yeah whatever whatever carolina was or north carolina was to ryan adams like that's what oklahoma is to

Zach Brown. There are a couple times where he like mentions Carol. I think the woman in some of these songs is from Carolina on the new album. But, you know, like he put out a record or a live album recently called All My Hommies Hate Ticketmaster. And, you know, overtime kind of sounds like a Menzinger's song. And all this just makes me sort of wish that more of that personality came through on the actual album. Like, I really wish he would actually put like, Brian. and Sella from the front bottoms or like Barry Johnson on this record. Instead, you know, he's collaborating with like the Lumineers and like the Warren Treaty, which is, you know, like one of those big soul revival bands. And there's like this compartmentalization between what seems like

a really awesome personality and the record itself, which seems very straightforward. And I'm hoping he can bring out more of that. Like it also seems like he'll put out an album next year. that'll be 20-something songs. Like, I want him to get more weird with it. I want him to embrace the Saddle Creek style thing. But that being said, what he's doing is clearly working, and I respect it. I imagine if I were, like, 22 years old, this is the sort of album I would, like, base my entire identity around. So it's cool to, like, go back to that.

But, yeah, I mean, I think he's overall a force for good. And I'm waiting for, like, the album that he's going to put out that really gets me. to invest. Yeah, you know, I mentioned earlier that I like American Heartbreak more than this record, and I think what I like about that album is what you just touched on. I do think American Heartbreak is a little bit more of a left field record. It definitely rocks more than this record does. And it just does, you know, many different things because it's like a 34-song album. It's like him throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and singing what sticks. And that's, for me, the excitement of that album, even though, you know, it's not a record that I'm going to ever listen to in one sitting.

It's like, it's a big buffet, you know, you got to like go there, pull out some songs and then go back like in another day or something. You don't want to gorge too much on that record. I think that this new album, it feels a little like a deliberate serious, I'm putting serious in quotes, type move as an artist. That he, I think, made a record that I think is like pretty downbeat for the most part. It's very introspective. It's pretty quiet. it kind of gets stuck in a mid-tempo guy with a guitar mode at times that I think, again, going back to American Heartbreak, like that has more of his band on the record.

And I think that's why I like that. And when he brings the band into this album, you mentioned the song, Overtime, which I think is, I'm sure when Jenny Lewis listened to this record, she heard that song. It's like the second song. Yeah. After the album begins with a poem, which is another very kind of. Orverse type thing to do, opening an album with like a spoken workpiece. And then you go into overtime and it has like the horns coming in and has like this big

sort of rushing forward energy to it that feels like early aughts bright eyes. It has that kind of same anxious energy that you get from those records. So I think that is where it plugs in. I think later on in the record where again he's collaborating with the luminaires and war on treaty, it does start to veer back to. a more conventional Americana record. You know, it's funny. That live record that you mentioned,

all my homies hate Ticketmaster, that is where I started to think of him in sort of like an emo lane because not so much because of the music, but like the audience reaction. Like, I don't know if you've listened to that record, but the audience is so intense and they are literally screaming his lyrics

back to him, like in every song. It's very dashboard. It's a dashboard. Totally. It's a very dashboard confessional MTV unplugged vibe more so than like a Sergill Simpson crowd. Like they're not doing that a Sergill Simpson crowd. So, you know, that's the sort of thing that makes me feel like, okay, what he's plugging into is maybe a little bit different than these other artists. It does feel a little bit more of an online phenomenon.

Online in the sense of like he seems to lend himself to like that tumbling. type of obsession, that kind of thing, more than maybe Jason Isbell does. You mentioned this being college football music, and I think you mean also sports writers love this kind of music. Yeah. It does seem to me that Zach Bryan's audience is younger than Jason Isbell's audience. I think Jason Isbell's audience skews more 30s, 40s, 50s. I think Zach Brian actually has a pretty young audience.

I think about my brother-in-law, John. hopefully you're listening, John. He loves Zach Bryan. He was into Zach Bryan before I was. He's a guy in his early 30s. And he listens to a lot of the stuff that Zach Brian would be associated with on Spotify, like Turnpike Troubadors,

Warren Ziders, Cody Jinks, like these type of artists who maybe don't get written about a ton, but you look at their Spotify numbers, and they all have songs that have been streamed 100 million, 200 million times. And it does seem to me there is this thing on Spotify

where these artists help themselves because the algorithm leads back to this crew of people and Zach Brian is maybe just like the most successful version of it although Tyler Childers isn't that far behind you know he gets a he does huge streaming numbers too

so I don't know this is definitely a trend right now and we you know the Oliver Anthony story is like the most famous maybe or the strangest manifestation of it. But like this kind of music, doing well online, it's a real thing. You know,

and it's fascinating to see develop because it does feel like we are going to see more Zach Bryans as we move forward. Yeah, what I'm interested to see is, and by the way, you mentioned Turnpike Trubedores, there's apparently like a lot of lore with that new album. I looked a little at it and it's like there's like a phase,

and drugs and rehab. But what I wonder about this whole world is that when you look at guys like Zach Brian who clearly grew up listening to Indy Rock, are there going to be like in the same way that Paramore brought out foals and a block party on their tour? Are we going to start to see like band of horses and like, you know, deer tick and like those kind of bands like get this like bump from a lot of these bands from like Zach Bryan or like Tyler Choddlers?

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I could see, I mean, I could see Zach Bryan bringing a band, a band like Deer Tick as a support act, or some other, maybe they'll bring out the front bottoms on a tour, you know, or Joyce Manor, that'd be pretty wild. You get a tumbler, yeah. I mean, I could definitely see that happening. So, yeah, I don't know, this new record again, the self-titled record, I like the record. I feel like it could be a little bit looser. I do agree with you that there's a certain seriousness to it

that settles in, like in the middle of the record, that, you know, it feels a little samey. It feels like he's sort of playing by the rules, and I don't think that that's really where he excels. It's like where he is making this music that has that raw Saddle Creek aesthetic to it, and he applies it to, like, this commercial country template. That combination, I think, is really interesting.

And when he beers more into, like, straightforward Americana stuff, that's where I start to lose interest. So, I don't know, I would like for him to make another record like American Heartbreak. I like him working on this big canvas and doing, like, a lot of different things. I think that is where his more sort of eccentric, interesting side comes out. Yeah, more fevers and mirrors, less I'm wide awake, it's morning. Oh, you had to get that shot in. You had to get the shot in at I'm wide awake, it's morning.

We need a digital lash. Like, let's get, like, I don't know. Like, I don't know what the version of Jimmy Tamborello is in the modern day, but. I'm just imagining you on your deathbed, and they're like, what's your last words, Ian? And it's just you taking a shot at I'm wide awake, it's morning. It's like, my parting shot, I'm going to die as I lived, taking shots at I'm wide awake, it's morning. All right, well, let's get to the next album we're reviewing in this episode, and that is the latest from Jeff Rosenstock, The album is called Hell Mode. It is out today. And if you listen to this show, you know who Jeff

Rosenstock is. We've talked about him before on the show. He has a long career in the punk and emo realm. He was the member of the band's bomb, the music industry, and the arrogant sons of bitches. But really, in terms of the mainstream, he became a well-known figure with his 2016 album Worry. I think that's the record that for a lot of people remains his best record. It was that definitely the album that put him on the map, certainly with an indie rock audience. And his latest album is called, like I said, Helmode. And I think the headline with this album, and it's always weird when you say this about a record because it seems like an insult, but it could also be construed as a compliment.

This seems like the mature Jeff Rosenstock record. Like if you listen to the last couple records he's made, you know, you've seen him working again in that pop punk emo, um, mode. He also made like a ska record, and he's been very vocal about being a ska booster. And on this album, he has made, and I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this, but for me, this is by far the most indie rock sounding album he has made. You know, there's some like post-punk influences on this record. You know, there's songs that I think sound like the national at times on this album.

It's really interesting. And he still is singing like Jeff Rosenstock. So it has, it's always going to have that like, again, that pop punk emo edge because of his vocals. But musically, again, this seems like a much moodyer record. And again, you know, the double-edged sword of this word, but mature to me. It sounds like him consciously maybe trying to make a record that deviates a little bit from what he's done in the past and what he's known for. And I have thoughts on how successful he is in that regard. but I'm curious for you, because I feel like you were a big booster of worry.

And I also feel like you're skeptical of punk or emo artists whenever they move in this kind of direction. So I'm curious, like, how do you feel about this album? Do you feel like he is transitioning away from what we know him to do? Am I overstating that? Do you disagree with my classification of this record? How successful do you think this album is? I think we've got to ask first, like, if we're – the first – framework to evaluate an element like this.

Like if we're thinking of like Jeff Rosenstock as this leading figure in punk or, you know, he's never really been straight up emo. He's just been adjacent to that world. But I think like we have to ask ourselves like, is he Dad Rock now? Like in a couple, I mean that in a couple ways. Like not even the fact that he's made like Neil Young cover EPs over the past couple of years. But if you're like 18 years old when Bond the Music Industry's vacation drop, awesome album, by the way, like you're in your 30.

now. And so, I'm wondering, like, I think in this world, like, every band that, like, gets a bit of longevity, they end up kind of going that hold steady route, you know, like, where they're either, like, actively touring with the whole steady or they just kind of merge fan bases or, but, you know, with this album, the previous two, Post and No Dream, those were dropped, like, with no advance notice. Like a post, I remember, came out on New Year's Day 2018. Um, I listened to that album to and from the Rose Bowl where Georgia beat, Oklahoma kind of emerged the college football, uh, talk. And then No Dream dropped in kind of like the middle, like early pandemic with no warning whatsoever either. And so both of those albums had this real urgency to them. Like, you know,

they were largely political. Um, Post was more about kind of like the exhaustion of like the first of the Trump era. And so with this one, it's had like a more traditional rollout. Like you hear singles and you kind of have to hear them like without any context. And I mean, maybe this is just me being like a music writer in 2023. But it's a little bit hard for me to like gin up as much excitement about it. Because, you know, I hear the songs. I'm like, oh, this is a good Jeff Rosensock song.

You know, look, every album Jeff makes. I'm like, is this the one where it's like kind of, is this the one where he's going to like kind of topple over the top, topple over, because, you know, his voice is, you know, I would say still an acquired taste. And there's always that possibility of things just completely going wrong, which is what I love about him. But you're right in that this new one is like a Jeff Rosenstock album.

Like, it's not the best one of his. I still think worry is by far and away. If not just the best Jeff Rosenstock album, but like the best album about the Trump. election, even though it was released a couple weeks beforehand. But this is one where I might use it as like an entry point. We've talked about records like this with, you know, like trouble will find me or just records of that elk where it's like not the best out, but it comes along at a time where like

a new generation of fans might get into it because it's more accessible. I like it the more I listen to it. And at the very least at like the floor, it's like, okay, cool. I'm going to go to a show. I'm going to see Jeff. I'm going to be excited about it. And it's not going to be like, you know, some of my fears that he'd be in this, like, sort of Ted Leo sort of mole where he's, like, around.

He's making records that are, you know, well received. But there's not a lot of, like, relevance to it. So he holds serve on that front. But, yeah, worries the one I always go back to. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this record in the context of the some work by Pup, who I think in my mind, Pup and Jeff Rosenstock are in the same bucket in my mind, maybe because the albums that brought them to my attention

came out in the same year. It was worry for Jeff Rosenstock and The Dream is over for Pup, both in 2016. And I think with both of those acts, you see the struggle of being a band that writes this really rousing anthemic punk music and like, where do you go from that after you've done that for two or three albums, you know, because you can't do that all the

time without it becoming tired and maybe a little boring. And I think even boring for like the artists themselves. And I think we've seen this many times where, you know, artist comes out and they're making these really sort of, again, rousing, you know, let's get up off your feet. Let's rock really hard type records and we're going to scream our heads off and it's going to be amazing. and then it's like, well, I don't really want to do that again. I want to explore different textures. I want to really see what we can do as a band beyond just this one mode, where you turn it up to 11 and you're screaming in people's faces.

And that can be a very difficult transition, both for the band and for the audience, because sometimes bands of this ilk, like, they're not very good when they're not just turning it up to 11. That's what they're really good at. And if they do something that's maybe a little moodyer or a little quieter or a little more experimental, it falls flat. Or else they do it and it's intriguing, but like the audience doesn't want to go along with them because they love what they did in the past. And this record, you know, I haven't seen any reviews of this album. I don't know what fans are saying. I mean, it just came out.

So we'll see what the reaction is. If I had to predict the reaction to this album, I would predict that people will be a little, lukewarm on it in the moment. And then in 10 years, this will be the record that will be trendy to say is your secret favorite. Because it feels like that kind of record to me where it's not going to bowl you over right away, but if you spend time with it, it's going to seep into your system and it's going to speak to you in ways that maybe the other records don't, especially maybe as the audience ages. And like you said, if you're an 18-year-old bond, the music industry fan, and then you're growing up with Jeff Rosenstock,

maybe this is the album you want in your 30s. You don't necessarily want the records that he was making five, ten years ago. So I don't know. It just has that deal to me of like the sneaky favorite, but like in ten years. So that'd be my prediction for Hell Mode. Yeah, you mentioned Pup and, you know,

I think about Joyce Manor as well because, you know, early, I think it was early that it was either early, early this year, maybe late last year where I saw Joyce Manor Pupp. and Jeff Rosenstock play at like the Long Island Amphitheater, which is like an actual arena, and they filled it pretty admirably. And what I've seen with those bands every single time. And Joyce Manners brought this up as well, where their crowd like kind of renews. Like it's not just old people.

But what happens is they'll play like the news songs and it won't get like a huge reaction. And it'll seem disappointing. And then they'll say like, yeah, we come back like two or three years later. and like everyone loses their mind for that. And like, you know, so I think with those three bands, it, you're right in that they all like are clearly trying to find a way out of it. Not a way out of it, but a way to expand. And I think the really cool thing is that like the fans,

because they've been established over such a long period of time in a very organic way, they'll roll with it in a way that wouldn't necessarily happen if like Jeff Rosenstock was an artist who, you know, got indie big on his first album. So I think what we're seeing is something like really wholesome in a way. Like I just think Jeff Rosenstock's music is very wholesome in that way. And that maybe Jeff Rosenstock is like the rock band that you still listen to when you kind of stop listening to other stuff, you know? All right. Well, let's get to our mailbag segment and thank you all again for writing in.

Always great to hear from you. Please head us up at Indycastmailbag at gmail.com. Ian, you want to read our letter this week? Yeah, let's hear from Cooper from Washington, D.C. And, you know, as someone who is very familiar with the Northern Virginia area, Cooper, I mean, are we talking Silver Spring, or are we talking Arlington? Or are you, like, really a D.C. guy? So, I don't know. But either way, Cooper wants to let us know that he's been catching up on the last couple episodes,

and something Ian said brought up a question that comes up a lot. Ian says he listens to a lot of antisocial music and I do too. Yeah. That is, it's not really anything you would put on casually in a group of people. It might be too soft, too whiny, too harsh. Most of it is stuff you guys talk about, but very little of it would go down smooth at a gathering. So, do you guys have a strategy for what to do when someone hands you the proverbial ox court or the actual ox court? I try and usually fail to keep a running list of my head of Goalance for that situation,

and I have one or two playlists from my phone of indisputable classic rock and pop. What I need in that moment is usually very different from whatever I've been playing in my headphones that week. And I still kind of panic a little when that time comes. So, would love to hear how you guys manage this issue that, while not constant, does come up pretty persistently. Thanks, love the show. Cooper from D.C. How do we handle the ox quartsitch? Yeah, that's a good question, Cooper. You know, I was thinking about this question, and I think that a real sign of maturity,

for any music fan as they get older is that you eventually lose the desire to impress people with your music taste. Like when you're in your 20s, you know, you want to like, if someone's heading you with the ox cord, you might be more inclined to like, oh, I'm going to drop some obscure shit on these people.

I'm going to blow their minds. I'm going to be John Cusack in High Fidelity playing in some beta band. I'm going to, you know, turn them on to like whatever obscure stuff that I love and they're all going to become fans of it. And you grow up a little and you realize No one gives a shit.

No one, that, like that scenario is never going to happen. They're either going to ignore the music or they're going to think, why is this on? Who pick this? I'm not having a good time. You know, and they're going to judge you, but in a negative way. You know, it's going to backfire on you. So I do find, in Cooper, it sounds like you do this too.

I have a couple of playlists on my phone that are just, money in the bank. Because I am in a situation often like in family group gatherings. People are like, oh, you like music. I guess you're a music writer. I guess that's what you do for living. We don't understand what that is as a career. It seems like something you've made up. You're probably drug dealing or something, but you say you're a music critic, so you obviously know something about music. So why don't you play some music? And yeah, I have a oldies playlist that like works every single time. Because no matter who you are,

you want to hear some monkeys. You want to hear This Diamond Ring by Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Do you know this Diamond Ring, Ian? Do you know that song? If you have no follow-up questions, I will say yes. If you listen to Oldies Radio,

like I did a lot in the 90s when I was a teenager, you know this Diamond Ring, you know the Dave Clark Five, you know all the bands of that ilk. So that always. works for me. And so that's the one I often will go to. That's a really good playlist. It's like five hours long. And it's tried and true. And yeah, I don't know. Do you have like a list, Ian?

I mean, because again, I think that going safe is the way to go. It's not about you. It's not about impressing people with how great your taste is. You got to play to the crowd. You got to pander to the basic tastes of the people in your family or the people in your friend group. and just be a crowd pleaser. I think that's usually the best way to go. Yeah, by and large, I kind of don't want to talk about music when I'm in social settings. And also, like, I cannot remember the last time I was offered the Ox Corps. Like, this comes up so rarely. I mean, maybe it's just like, oh, we don't want to give it to Ian, or maybe just people don't want to, like, give it up to anyone to begin with.

You know, most of the time, people in my in real life social group, they're all pretty discerning music. fan so like if the functions at their place like they're going to want to play their music and you know what let them do it like that's their thing i'm not going to impede upon people um and also at work in the times where like you know there's music going on in like a common area like absolutely no like i don't even know what i would do because everyone wants to hear taylor swift or you know more frequently i'm hearing a lot of like pop hits from the mid 2010s like this is becoming like the soundtrack of, you know, like when you go to like fast casual restaurants or the mall. But if I was in that situation, like there has happened very, very rarely.

And so how do I like, how do I like stick the landing where it needs to be something that's like popular and something that's like contemporary? Because, man, if you think I'm bad with not listening to music that's old, most of the people I work with who are like under the age of like 25 or whatever, like no music exists. from more than five years ago. And so if I needs to be contemporary, it needs to be crowd-pleasing, and it needs to have some degree of, like,

I don't want to say edge, I just said edge, but like just something that lets you know it's like a little bit different from, you know, what's on pop radio. There's only one answer and it's Tame and Pala. Like, that's it.

If I have the OXCorp, Tame and Pala, now if it's for people under the age of, say, 28, it's got to be anything after lonerism. that version of the band does not exist to them. Like, it is currents and going forward. Otherwise, if it's like, you know, maybe like 30 to 40, I'll put on loanerism. Like, that's it. Like, it is so, it is so reduced to Tame and Paula.

Like, I can't think of other stuff. It's just them. And, you know, maybe that is, I don't mean that is a slight against Tame and Pala by any means. but I just had a lot of trouble answering this question because it's like no one gives me the ox cord anymore and also like we have Spotify so who the fuck needs an ox cord like most people have Bluetooth capabilities yeah Tame Impala is that platonic ideal

where if you like the band you can enjoy the songs but if you don't care about them it melts very easily into the background so it creates a vibe that you can plug in or not, but yeah, it's music you can enjoy or ignore. I mean, maybe that is like the social gathering formula here. Music you can enjoy or ignore. Maybe that should be the slogan of our show. We've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I

talked about something that we're into this week. Ian, why didn't it to go first? Ironically, this is an album that actually would go well if I were to be given an ox court at a real-life social function. So it's a new project from a band. I guess you would call them a band. They're more like a project called Drab Majesty. It's called an object in motion. And it's like an EP in the sense that there are four songs.

But it's like a half hour long because one of the songs is 15 minutes. And this is the style of music we don't really talk about much on this podcast. Like dark wave, cold wave, like cold cave, I guess. this this genre this like these subgenres of like cruel world stuff that is still like super popular in real life but never really has its moment in the narrative this stuff is really really big in Southern California in particular and so Drab Majesty has been one of the bigger figures from this role for a long time and I tend to be pretty a la carte with their stuff you know like one song will come out on an album that like yo this sounds pretty tight but then otherwise it sounds pretty derivative and But this project, maybe it's just because there wasn't a lot of stuff I was listening to this week. I was largely listening to the new season of blowback.

But it's more condensed. You know, there's one song featuring Rachel from Slow Dive. They have a new aisle mouth this week. There's one instrumental that's a pretty obvious Derrudey column ripoff. And I want to give a shout to the Bear soundtrack. They put a Derutie column song on there and inspired a deep dive. And another was like a Mad Chester-y sort of thing. So, yeah, this is,

I always want artists who have been around for a long time to release a definitive album as like a statement. But, you know, for something like this or, you know, the soft moon or the drums or any of the bands that operate in this kind of Smith's but also kind of New Order world, maybe it's just EPs. Like I think that this is a good entry point for Drab Majesty if you're not familiar with their, you know, what's a pretty intimidating body of work. So I want to talk about a band that is not new, but they are new to me, and they were new to me for sad reasons, but I'm glad this band came into my life. It's a band called Died Pretty, and this is a band from Australia. They got started in the 1980s, and they were a big deal in Australia. I actually was texting with my friend Dave of the band, Gang of Youths, and he was talking about how this is like a huge band in his home country of Australia, sort of like the R.E. EM in a way of that country.

And I think they had like some impact here on college rock radio back in the 80s, but never really broke through in a big way. But I started listening to this band because the lead singer, Ron Pino, passed away on August 11th. And I saw some tributes to him and people posted songs from Died Pretty. And I listened to them. I was like, wow, this band's really good. And I dug into their back catalog.

And I've been really enjoying them a lot this month. I would in particular recommend their first album. which came out in 1986. It's called Free Dirt. And when you listen to this record, it really does introduce you to the aesthetic of this band that I think they really developed over the next couple of records.

And it's this combination of taking a lot of 60s rock influences, in particular the Velvet Underground and the doors, and filtering it through this, again, 80s college rock lens. Again, REM, I think, was definitely an influence on them early on. and just that combination of influences creates like this big sky sound that I associate with like a lot of bands from Australia you know it seems like that is a country where

if you're looking for just like beautiful just big sounding rock records you know gang of use being a perfect example of that I think Died Pretty was doing that similar kind of thing but like 40 years ago so again you know it's always sad when you like discover a band because a band member dies.

I always feel like, wow, why couldn't I have heard about this band earlier? But I don't know. I love this record free dirt. The next record is called Lost. I've been listening

to that record as well, and I've just been working my way through the catalog, and it's kind of amazing. Like, I'd never heard of this band, and yet they sound like my new favorite band. It's just always fun when you can discover something

from the past like that, that you're amazed that you hadn't heard of it before, but then it comes into your world, and you're like, wow, this is like, it's like a new band, even though they came out in 1986. So again, the band is called Died Pretty. They're from Australia. And if what I described sounds interesting to you,

I guarantee that you will dig this record. Yeah, when you mentioned like the REM of Australia, it makes me think that a future, yay or nay, would be midnight oil. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because they wanted to be like REM, but also the clash and rage against the machine. Like, I feel like that's a band that it would be fascinating to revisit.

Well, and like, I mean, to me, like, I always kind of likened them to, like, U-2. Like, I feel like they had, right, that, yeah. They had, like, more of like a U-2-type vibe. And because they were political, the clash, too. But, yeah, we'll talk some midnight oil at some point. I'd be curious to talk. Dead heart, good song. Yeah, they got some jams for sure.

Thank you 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 Mix Taped newsletter. You can go to Uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.