Indiecast - No Meat Friday! Our First All Banter Episode

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

You've heard of meatless Mondays, but have you ever heard of meatless Fridays? This week, Indiecast hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are forgoing the meat of the episode in order to focus on the biggest indie news of the week. That's right — it's all banter to celebrate the last double-digit installment before Indiecast hits 100 episodes. That's partly due to Steven and Ian not being able to get their hands on an advance of Beyoncé's new album, but also because there's simply too much indie news to discuss. In this week's episode, Indiecast talks emo week (2:56), Joni Mitchell's first performance in two decades (23:04), 10 years of Frank Ocean's debut Channel Orange (12:32), and more.In this week's Recommendation Corner (50:38), Ian gives props to Chat Pile, an Oklahoma City band he hopes gains traction this year. Meanwhile, Steven gives a shout out to the Reigning Sound, a band formed in 2001 by Greg Cartwright who made eight great albums before disbanding.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 99 and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, we review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we introduce No Meat Friday. We're doing 100% banner today, y'all. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-hosts, an industry sci-op designed to recast the labors of love as pointless drudgery

if there isn't an immediate financial reward. Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you? And let's be clear, there is very much. an immediate financial reward to Indycasts. Like, we are totally in the pocket of big Delamitri. Like, every now and again, like, Rhino Records. You know, they're like cataloged people reach out to us and talk about, like, some band from like the mid-90s that, hey, could you make like a name drop of Fridie Johnson this

week? We're really hoping to move some units. So, I mean, Jimmy Neko, I think, bought you a beach house at this point. after all the hours references in Indycast. Yeah, I just want to say, how do you feel right now? Because, like I said, we're doing no meat Fridays. It's the first time we've ever done this. We have no meat in this episode.

It's all going to be banter. And I think we're doing that because, well, there is a big release out today. It's the Beyonce record, but we didn't get in advance of that. So we aren't going to talk about it. We might talk about it next week, even though her indie connections, it's even more tenuous than a lot of the artists we talk about. on this show. But, you know, there's a lot of other topics that aren't meatworthy that we want to talk about and we want to get into. So it just seemed like a perfect excuse to go vegetarian this week.

That's right. I'm like, you know, as a dietitian, I'm strictly anti-keto, anti-Palio, anti-Akins. But like someday you got to go, sometimes you just got to go to red lobster and fill up on the cheddar bay biscuits, you know, like that is, that's what we're doing here. If the thought of going to Outback simply to eat the bread appeals to you because you don't want like a 32 ounce like Porterhouse, you can't get a 32 ounce porter house. Yeah, this is the episode for you. By the way, I like the Red Lobster and Outback Steakhouse references there. If we don't score an endorsement based on that, then the people at Uprox, whoever's selling ads, they're totally dropping the ball. I mean, we should have a Red Lobster brings you indie cast.

thing by next week, I think. Yeah, I like that analogy. I think this episode, you may not be satisfied at the end, but you will be full. Okay, so we're not guaranteeing actual nutritional value, but you will feel like your stomach is full of banter. I feel like we've got to begin by talking about a big deal for you. Emo Week was this week over at the ringer, and you were a big part of that. And as you would expect, as you are the governor of emo music writers, the long tenured governor. So you've got to bring Ian Cohen in if you're going to talk about emo. I was looking at the discourse about emo week. And tell me if I'm wrong, but it seemed largely positive. Like you contributed to this list. I believe it was the best email albums of every year from like 85 to now,

right? Wasn't that like the big piece you did with Ariel Gordon? Yeah, it was the best songs of each year from Rights of Spring, you know, for want to the current day. And I actually showed it to like one of my co-workers. And she's like, oh, you wrote about Igor Stravinsky writes of Spring? That's so cool. Like, wow. I swear to God. Like people at my, my coworkers were like having an actual conversation about like being emo in high school, like unrelated to any. that was happening that day. And I'm just like, I'm in the, I am the they don't know meme right there.

It's like they have no fucking clue. It's like they're talking about Batman and like Bruce Wayne is right there. And Bruce Wayne can't say anything. He can't be like, oh wait, you just has to sit there and take it. I mean, I did see some people popping off about emo week. And it was mostly people from the middle age punk community who, feel like that's part of our audience, although maybe we have a tenuous relationship with the

middle-aged punk community. I mean, we were talking about middle-aged punks on Facebook recently that might have ruffled some feathers in that community. But I don't know, like, do you feel like people were genuinely supportive? It seems like something like this is just guaranteed to gin up some anger from people. I think before we go any further, we have to do a little bit of taxonomy about what it means to be a middle-aged punk because in the previous episode, we're talking about like former hardcore guys who like get pretty anti-vax and like live in like Huntington Beach, California is like kind of a hotbed for like MAGA slash like anti-vax all right stuff. Like we were talking about that kind of aging punk in the previous episode.

This one, the one that like you're referring to, and actually like the only people I saw having a negative reaction to emo weeker, the aging punk who is like kind of stuck in the 1993 Jesus Lizard show kind of thing where it's like Steve Albinie has moved on from like what he was doing in the mid-90s, but like these people haven't. And I just thought it was so funny that, you know, the very, very few negative comments that I received in, like, I just want to like point out like Emoe has been fan fucking tastic.

A lot of people are super pumped about it. There's been a huge variety of interesting articles. A lot of, uh, I love the playlists, uh, that the Ringer published because it covers, you know, not just the obvious stuff, but, you know, fifth wave. Um, and the people who got mad about it are like the people who have like defined themselves as being against Emo for like the past 30 years. All of a sudden, they, they want to like levy their opinion about what real. emo is. Like, repeatedly throughout this, my piece is, like I mentioned, the real emo only consists

of the DC hardcore scene in 90 Screamo copy pasta. Like, these are people who, like, didn't get the joke and are just super mad that, like, drive like Jayhu, whose drummer, Mark Trombino, produced Bleed American, Blink 182, and started an emo themed donut shop. And, like, was, was, like, in San Diego during, like, the white belt era, you know, know, where Screamo was invented, like, how dare you call them emo? It's like, yeah, maybe they weren't like super into that in 1992, but I mean, you got a grandfather of them in at this point. Well, it's good for the likes. You're going to get some likes if you do that. If you, if you wave the flag for the, you know, anti-Jimmy Eat World wing of the emo, you know, diaspora. I guess,

there's going to be people who are into that. But yeah, I mean, it seems like most people who were into that kind of music, they appreciated the celebration of the genre, even if they disagreed with particular choices that you guys made. I agree. I mean, it's kind of similar to, like, our conversation about the 1975 a couple weeks ago where, like, the day where the Internet is celebrating the thing that you really like and care about, I'm, like, thinking,

is this what it's like to be, like, a Beyonce or, like, a Taylor's, Swift fan every other week of the year where like the internet is like centered around the thing that interests you the most and you have a lot to say about it like it makes a pretty convincing case to go full pop to miss doesn't it well I was going to say you know because we've talked about this in the past there's always been this thing in the emo community I feel like in terms of you know talking about the music press that well the music press doesn't doesn't get us they don't like us they don't understand what we're doing and a lot of is derived from, like, say, how Pitchfork wrote about emo groups and, like, the aughts and all that

kind of thing. But are we officially at the point now where healing has taken place, where the emo people feel like, okay, we're getting our props here because, you know, you contributed to this thing. Vulture did a big emo thing. Obviously, you know, Pitchfork's doing features on the wonder years at this point. You know, I made a joke on Twitter that we have Emo Week, but what about Mo Week? Mo, lowercase M-O-E-P, period. The jam band, you know, it's close to emo.

What about a Mo Week? I feel like Mo hasn't gotten their respect yet. But do you feel like there's been healing at this point with the emo community in terms of the music press? There is some. And also, like I used and, that's a little bit of a dialectical approach for all you therapy heads out there. I do feel as if, like, very rarely does this stuff get, like, celebrated in the moment. like Emo Week primarily deals with stuff that's happened in the past. There was a huge feature on my chemical romance, the dashboard confessional MTV unplugged,

the history of emo nights. And, you know, I would very much love to see that same energy brought to say, you know, the pool, like the new pool kids album. That being said, I just saw an article about them in Vanity Fair of all places. So I wouldn't say the healing is complete. I think that, you know, I would love to see the same level of, you know, discourse and intelligence being brought to that music at, like, in real time. But of course, like, when you consider, you know, what the audience for Emo is, it's definitely not the same as it is for, say, like, Beach House or, like, Big Thief where you're going to see, like, a lot of, like, substantial writing about that. But Mo, yeah, I mean, Jambe.

Like, would you even like it if jam bands were, like, kind of given that sort of treatment? Or is there something kind of nice about, like, having that, like, little secret that, that little secret clubhouse that's separate from, you know, the central discourse? I mean, I think, like anyone, you want to see music that you're interested in be, like you said, at least taken seriously to the point where people are doing, like, real thinking about it instead of just making, you know, cheap shot, patch, pechooly jokes, you know, that. or super old. I mean, I was hardened to see, like, the Goose record got reviewed on Pitchfork, and it actually got, like, a fairly positive review. But the great thing about the jam scene, one of the things I love about it, is that the bands in that particular corner of the music world,

they don't have any expectation that they're going to get covered by the mainstream press, and that is so ingrained in how people operate it in that arena that they don't even complain about it, really, you know, because there's no expectation of it. There's no sense of entitlement. with it, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Indy entitlement in terms of the music press. We're going to touch on that topic again, as we have in the past on this show. So, yeah, I don't know.

The thing I love about the jam scene is that even if the press did cover them, I don't think it would change how the people who are actually in that scene think about it, because they don't really care about the press. And I think that's a positive way of looking at this. Yeah, also with Mo, like, we can do an episode where I do an oral history. of like the time I saw him. I think I was at a, yeah, it was New Year's Eve, Y2K,

I saw a Mo show in Philadelphia. It's like, hey, come to the Mo Show. We watched a football game that night, and it's like, what are you up to? He ain't come to a Mo show. Okay, I guess I'll go to a Mo show. See, you've seen Mo one more time than I have. What?

I've never seen, I only, I'm not actually like a Mo fan. I just made that joke because Mo is close to emo, and I thought it would be a funny thing to do on Twitter. It's not like I was actually stumping for Mo, but I love the fact that you've seen one more Mo Show than me, and I now feel like I have to see two so I can catch up to you and surpass you. You've done Paul Feinbaum, I've been to a Mo Show. Like, we have done like some real freaky Friday shit. That's amazing. So I did want to talk about something I wrote this week.

I wrote a column about Channel Orange, the Frank Ocean classic record that came out in 2012. That album turned 10 this month. It was July 10th, I believe, was the anniversary of the release. And I wrote a piece because I read some of the anniversary pieces that were written about that record. And I thought it was really interesting that the Rolling Stone piece and the stereo gun piece had strikingly similar sentences where the writers in each case said that Channel Orange has arguably been overshadowed by Blonde, the second proper. Frank Ocean record, and I say that because nostalgia Ultra, the mixed that he put out in 2011, that's classified as a mixtape, not as an

official album. So Channel Orange is like technically the debut, even though it's like the second Frank Ocean release. At any rate, it's interesting to me that Channel Orange in the moment was I think a better reviewed album than Blonde, but over time, blonde has been the record that people point to as being like the definitive Frank Ocean record. And, you know, I think Pitchfork said that Blonde is the best record of the 2010s, and they put Channel Orange at number 10.

And basically the theory of my piece is that you can look at those two albums as signifiers of like the two different 2010s, the early 2010s versus the late 2010s. And how Channel Orange, I think in a lot of ways at the time, it signified this Obama-era optimism that the progressive gains that were made in that era were intractable. Like, you could never roll back. You know, the idea that we have a first black president

that, like, you know, gay rights were on the rise at that time. You know, there were all these other signs that it seemed like America was turning the corner. And I think Frank Ocean was, like, another example of, like, look at this guy, what he's been able to do. We want this guy to succeed. He's made a great record. And he just kind of represents these great changes happening in 2012.

And then you have blonde comes out in 2016, two months or I guess it's about three months before Trump is elected. Wow. That three months? And it was August of 2016 that that blonde came out. And when you look at the writing about that record, it really was retconed as this expression of what it was like to live in the late 2010s in the Trump era. Like the blurb that's written with the pitchfork list calling Blonde the best record

of the year, it talks about that specifically. And it just seems like that's part of the resonance of that record. And I wonder if for a lot of people, if Channel Orange is almost like, if it even seems older than a decade ago. Like just thinking back to that time, I was talking to Phil my boss here at Uprocks. And he was saying, you know, when he talks to the younger staffers at Uprocks, they look at Channel Orange as like an oldest record. And Blonde is like the record that they are more likely to respond to. I'm just curious for your thoughts on this. I mean, I'll just say, after revisiting both records recently, I think they're both great.

But I think I still lean toward Channel Orange. I just think it's a more dynamic record. It has the bangers. It also has the quiet songs. Whereas I think, blonde, as good as it is, it's much more of a mood piece where it's like on one level throughout the whole record for the most part. So that's where I give the edge to Channel Orange. I'm just curious for your thoughts than any of this.

Do you have a feeling for one record or the other? What do you think about my theory there? What are your thoughts on this? It makes me wonder whether these same conversations were being had when like Prince was making like, you know, 1999 and like purple rain, like whether there was this constant need to fit them into a broader social context or whether, you know, that stuff had to happen more slowly because there wasn't the internet. But yeah, it's funny to say that like, oh, Channel Orange is kind of an oldies record.

but I do think that it is in some ways more conventional than blonde. It reminds me of the dynamic between a good kid mad city and the pimpa butterfly. I like good kid mad city more, but like when you compare the two, good kid mad city seems like conventional. There are like, you know, there's like 12 songs and they're all songs. And blonde, on the other hand, I think that does kind of speak more towards, you know, a mood piece. the songs are, it's a bit more erratic because it's filled with like skits and songs where the direction isn't particularly, um, discernible and at a given point. Um, and you know, when I listen to Blonde now, there are times where like Blonde is the only album I really want to

listen to. Um, it reminds me sort of, uh, what it felt like to see Nope, uh, the new Jordan Peele movie last week where there's just like a ton of really interesting ideas. Um, and sometimes that's really fascinating. And other times it's like frustrating because I'm like, wait a Where's the story here? Like, do I care about the characters? But I think with, you know, blonde being like a mood piece, I don't think I'd relate to it as much if I were not, you know, living in an unfurnished apartment, completely isolated in Lexington, Kentucky at that time.

You know, that's about as close as I'll ever get to relating to solo. But I think you make a good point as far as, like, I think nowadays we have to separate. We can't do decade lists anymore. I think especially with the 2010, it's just so distinct pre-2016 and post-2016 that there's almost no relationship between at all. And I don't know, hopefully in the 2020s we'll have like, oh, early 2020s. That was pandemic era, but like maybe after we'll move on. Who knows?

Yeah, we'll have the president, Ronda Santos era. After 2024, I feel like that's what we're heading to at this point. Your point about Channel Orange being a more conventional record, I agree with that. In my piece, I wrote about how when Channel Orange came out, I think people were putting Frank Ocean in this continuum of other artists that were eccentrics, but also managed to make massively popular pop music. People like Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Prince. And with Blonde, I think Frank Ocean made that.

the case for starting his own paradigm, like where he's the beginning and people build off of what he's done. And I think we've certainly seen that in the last six years. I mean, that records feels like a touchstone for not just indie music, but pop music, you know, which is vibeer than ever. You know, that's a very vibe record. You know, another, I think, parallel that I would make to Frank Ocean would be Bonnie Verre, where I think the early, the self-titled Bonne Verre record from 2011 is very different from 20 to a million, which came out in 2016, and I think has a similar aesthetic to Blonde, where it's taking this established sound and just deconstructing it and making it more chaotic and blurrier and druggier in a lot of ways. And that feels like another very 2016

type record to me. I think there's a parallel there as well. And I think there's a lot of people now who feel like 22 million is the best Bunny Vair record. There's people also who hate that record too. But the polarizing aspect of it, I think, is what probably draws people to both of those records. Yeah, these are both records that kind of make me wish I was like a freshman in college in 2016 rather than like what I was actually doing. It makes me think of what it was like to hear Aquimini, let's say, or like Kid A,

which, you know, like these things that I guarantee would be. formative if I were younger. And, you know, we're, we are living in the post, uh, blonde post 22 a million era where it's like assumed like, oh, right, these are classics. These are touchstones. Like, these are the things that, um, these are like the true north for, I guess, whatever you could call what's remaining of indie music from here on out. So, but yeah, I'd say like, Channel Orange is like, it's basically like 1999 or something along those lines. It's like classic, but it's also like in its own way so, so perfect in a way that it's kind of hard to get inspired by it, you know?

Well, and again, just like these micro generations that take place, which you don't really see until after the fact. I mean, I think there was a similar thing in the 90s too, where you have the early 90s and you have the late 90s. And I'm like an early 90s person. And so I'm drawn more to like grunge and gangster rap and Brit pop. And then there's this other group of people who are, you know, where it's new metal and it's like Puff Daddy and, you know, like that era and boy bands. And, you know, like the emo stuff that was coming out at that time.

Like that's what they're, that's what like their 90s is. And it's just fascinating to see how those things take hold. I guess, I mean, the 2000s, what would be the divide there? I'm trying to think. where, I mean, I know where it would be in indie music, you know, you have like the New York stuff, you know, the strokes versus like animal collective or something. Like that would be the divide in indie. But I'm wondering what it would be in like rock or pop music on a broader level. Yeah, the 2000s. I don't know. I mean, I could say like 2007 felt like a pretty clean break. But there wasn't. I mean, you know, like Obama got elected. But that was like very much towards the end of the end of the decade. And more than. the point, like, by that time, like, you know, George W. Bush was, like, extremely unpopular. Like, the tide had really turned against them. But, yeah, I can't, I don't know. Maybe that's, like, a future, uh, all, all banter episode where we discussed, like, where, what, what the, what the,

um, you know, what the difference is between the say that, what is the channel orange of the 2000s and what is the blonde. Yeah, maybe someone can write us a letter if they have a theory on that. I'd like to hear what our listeners have to say about that whole. thing. We have to talk about the Joni Mitchell story, her appearing at Newport Folk Festival in a surprise appearance. She's singing. She was playing a guitar. What was the name of the guitar she was playing? It's a Parker Fly, which, I mean, just the contrast between this, like, godlike, you know, this godlike musician appearing out of the ether, like, are we ever going to see Joni Mitchell again and then she comes out with this like extremely mid-90s guitar world

advertisement looking guitar. Like people who were like 35 to 45 years old who may not have like listened to a Joni Mitchell album in a decade could see the Parker fly and think like fuck yeah. Like I'm glad somebody's bringing that back. It's cool that it's Joni Mitchell though. Well, and it's so Joni too because I think people, you know, the immediate image of Joni Mitchell is as this singer-songwriter. but she's also, you know, like a pretty radical guitar player as well.

I'm like my favorite thing, because there were all these cool videos that people shot of her performance, and there's some videos of her like playing like guitar jams, like little guitar solos. Shugal. And even more than seeing her sing, which was great, but I really got off on her playing guitar. I thought that was so cool to see. And like, look, there's so much negativity in the world. I feel like you have to savor just an unequivocal, like, feel-good story like this. I mean, Joni Mitchell, for those who don't know, she had a brain aneurysm in 2015 that affected her speech and movement.

I believe that there was a time where she could barely speak and barely move. So the fact that she is now on stage singing and playing music, this legendary figure, I mean, it's like the final scene of the biopic. type material. Like if you scripted this, they would throw out the script for being implausible. You know, it's just such a heartwarming comeback story. And I think even if you're not a fan of her music, it was so great to see. So I don't know, I feel like we complain about things here in the banter all the time, but since we're doing a no meet Friday, we have room here to just talk about a nice story. Isn't this like how Bohemian Rhapsody sort of kind of ended where it was like they played world like world aid or whatever that was called like live aid live aid there we go

thank you for fact checking i've not seen that movie but yeah i think it's totally plausible to have this be like the end point um but yeah because like that's how movies actually work but um yeah i think that like you know even if you're you said even if people you're not a fan of jony mitchell i mean like everyone's got to be a fan of jony mitchell like or something like there's got to be something you like for that yeah i don't like to play that whole there's something wrong with you if you don't like this artist game because you see that on Twitter a lot. But yeah, I mean,

Joni Mitchell's catalog is so rich and so influential that, like, there's going to be something that you appreciate. Even the wilderness period stuff, because there's definitely a wilderness period. Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean, she had like a blackface period, which is, like, kind of incredible

that she was able to move on from that. I mean, I know that was controversial at the time, but, you know, people have moved on thankfully for her case for that. But, you know, we were talking a little bit about Joni Mitchell's status right now, and it's kind of similar to Kate Bush. And I think this was true even before The Stranger Things bump happened for her, where, I mean, I feel like Joni Mitchell at this point is maybe the most universally praised musician

in the world of music criticism, certainly among the most praised. Like, there's no one who's going to write a bad thing. about Joni Mitchell at this point. And I was thinking about the Rolling Stone best albums of all time list that they put out a few years ago. And Joni Mitchell's blue is number three, which means it's ranked higher than like any Beatles record or Dylan record or, you know, anyone else.

So she's definitely been placed in the canon in a very high level. You know, I don't begrudge anyone who gets like super excited about seeing Joni Mitchell like playing live music in the year, 2020 after the health scares that she's been through. But because, you know, the content farm always needs new crops, you'll see similar to like Kate Bush, people's talking about like Joni Mitchell being underappreciated. And I can, I can see it. Like if I take a long enough view, I can see it. And it also makes me wonder, like, what is the proper level of appreciation that people want to see for Joni Mitchell.

Like, I think in these circumstances with, like, Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell, it's like until we are oversaturated with like documentaries and books and, you know, movies a la the Beatles or Bob Dylan, we're just not going to be satisfied. Like, I mean, do we want that? It's like, do we want them to be, do we want that oversaturation? Like, what is the argument here? Well, I think that, you know, we're still in a moment like where the canon of popular music is being reformulated, and I think there's an attempt, rightfully so, to make it more

diverse in terms of gender, race, all the way down the line. And Joni Mitchell, to me, is, I think in some way she's like a proxy for all, like, women musicians. And if you're going to redo the canon, it's like, this is like a big target to go after first, that, you know, we want to put Joni Mitchell, we want her to be as praise as Bob Dylan is. Because if you're looking at the canon of classic singer-songwriters, she seems like the closest analog to Bob Dylan, you know, coming out of the 60s and being a singer-songwriter. So I think, along with her just making great music and you're going to praise it anyway,

I also think that Joni Mitchell represents an effort to just remake the canon for like all women. And like maybe you do Joni first, then you Kate Bush, and then you kind of go down to like less prominent but also great female artists who maybe haven't got more good in the past. I think I think that's plenty fair. And, you know, maybe one of these days we're going to see like in the same way that you get like defenders of Bob Dylan's like Christian phase or like Neil Young's like let me get off my record label contract records. You're going to see like Don Juan's daughter being reappraised as well. That's when we really know we'll have reached peak Joni. I will be intrigued to read that piece. Whoever writes that, uh, I'll, uh, I'll

definitely want to check it out. So Ian, we've now reached a part of the episode where we have to make a crucial decision because there was a recent controversy in indie rock world that happened, I think, the day that we recorded our last episode. So, like, we're really behind the cycle here. So I don't know if it's worth talking about this. It's kind of interesting, but are we going to wait into the whole band camp dummy versus Wednesday?

controversy from this month? We were way too positive in that Joni Mitchell piece of banter. Like, we got to get back in the muck again. I mean, this is where the trends really get hashed out. And like, what's more like no meet all banter than a three or four day Twitter controversy involving music writers? Like, we have to do this. So, okay, so just to fill in on the background for those. of you who actually have lives and you don't have to worry about such things.

There was a series of articles that appeared on Bandcamp last week, and they were tour diaries written about this band called Dummy, who I believe they're a West Coast band. L.A. I think. They're from L.A. and a writer for bandcamp embedded with Dummy for quite a long period of time and wrote this tour diary about what it was like to be on the road with this band. And by the way, I should say Dummy, they're sort of like this psychedelic rock band. They have some like Crot Rock influences, a little bit of Cairn is in there.

Record collector music. It's total record collector music. And I like their records. I like their music. I like, I'm not a huge fan of Dumburg. me, but I like what I've heard. But in this story, the thing that people got riled up about is that there's a section, I think, in the second piece, and it's like a 10,000 word piece, by the way, just like a massive profile

of this band, where they're talking about the band Wednesday, which is a band that we've talked about on this show. They're a band from North Carolina. I think that they're a really good band. You may also know them because M.J. Lenderman is in that band, and I've talked a lot about his record that came out this. year called Both Songs, which I think is one of the year's best records. And anyway, this band dummy, they took issue with Wednesday because Wednesday they did this

tweet thread recently where they talked about how expensive it is to tour. And they basically did like an itemized list of like all the things you have to pay for when you're on tour. And they did it in the context of South by Southwest. And I believe that the original point was that, you know, we're going to the South by Southwest. We're not really getting paid to play any of these shows. And we also have to like spend all this money in order to tour. And that tweet thread eventually inspired a stereo gum article where they talked to other bands about touring and how difficult it is.

And basically, dummy, they come out in the story and they accuse Wednesday of being like this privileged rich kid band who's complaining about being on the road. And contrasting it with their own lifestyle, which is very DIY, very sort of nose of the grindstone, not complaining, just building a scene, you know, one show at a time. doing it the old school way. So sort of like a rich kid versus a working class band type situation is set up in this article. Have I described this accurately, would you say? Yes, and I think we could just point out the obvious irony of the LA record collector band being somehow the DIY knows the grindstone and the Asheville kind of gritty alt country band being seen as the rich kids. I think that's a, I mean, this whole argument is like pretty rife with contraobvious irony, but you laid it out pretty good because, yeah, when Wednesday made that article on Stereo gum,

you know, a lot of people, you know, it's like South by Southwest is a known ripoff. Like I interviewed Cole from Dive in 2013 about it, and he said more or less the same things. And, you know, it gets into like it's 20, 22, and we're still making. you know, arguments about the get in the van lifestyle or the book your own fucking life. And I just, yeah, I think you summed it up pretty good. In that, like, on the one hand, this is like a tour diary where it was meant to show what it was like to work without PR, work without a booking agent, and to, you know, make some headway in this industry where it can seem sometimes that everything is run through this filter of

PR and so forth. But this, in the process of spilling like two parts, 10,000 words, it aired like a decade's worth of grudges. And that's why we're talking about this article. It's not because, you know, this piece illuminated things that we might not have known before. It's that they had some slick stuff to say about a ton of music writers, like a ton of band and propped up dummy as this, like, not exactly Fugazi-esque paragon of ethics, but something

close to it. Yeah, you know, I just want to say at the start that the complaint against, you know, sort of music or art being taken over by people from privileged backgrounds, like, that resonates to some degree with me. Because, you, I work in the media, and over the last 20 years that I've been in the media. I've seen more and more people from Ivy League schools come into positions that you wouldn't need that kind of education for in the past. Like there's music writers now who went to Harvard and NYU and Brown University and all that stuff. And nothing against those writers. I, you know,

but I look at myself, someone who went to like a state school in the middle of the country. And I wonder, like, would I be able to break in now, like if I were, you know, 23 in 2022 with my background. So that argument I'm sympathetic to. I also, you know, I remember a time when indie bands didn't want to talk about how difficult it was to tour because there was this idea that talking about that kind of thing, it made you a careerist, that if you are going to go on the road to share your art, that you should be willing to do it just for the sake of it and not expect to make money from it. I think that's a very classic idea. I remember interviewing musicians in the past, who would talk about that.

And obviously in the reaction to the Wednesday tweet thread in the Stereo gum article, there's still that sentiment out there. So I understand that too. I also love rivalries and I love feuds. So I'm all in favor.

I don't think shit talking is necessarily bad. You know, I find it entertaining. And I appreciate a band willing to be honest about not liking a band. All of that said, you know,

when I read that Serial gum article and I saw the tweets from Wednesday, my interpretation of it was that they were trying to educate people, us music fans basically, about how difficult it is to do this. Because I think in the streaming era, there's still people who feel like, well, I don't need to buy a record because I'll just go see the band live. And that'll be my way of supporting the band. And while I think listeners know in the abstract how difficult it is to tour, I think it is helpful to have like a list of expenses, you know, that we can see that encourages us ultimately to be like, well, maybe I should buy a record or I should buy a T-shirt.

You know, maybe just buying a ticket isn't enough. Like, if I love a band and I want to support them, you know, I should be, I should recognize this, that I'm part of an ecosystem and I need to support this. And I feel like that's a message that's certainly band camp of all places with support. I feel like that's like what their stated mission is. Like people shop at band camp because they feel like they're getting more money to the artist by buying their music through that platform. So, you know, to describe it, and I made an allusion to this earlier,

but to describe the Stereogum article, and I want to get this quote right, where is it? As some industry sciop designed to recast the labors of love as pointless drudgery if there isn't an immediate financial reward, that just seems like the worst case bad faith reading of what Wednesday wrote or what the Serio Gum article is. I don't really see that. I feel like you're actually on the same side,

you know, because you're both bands that are trying to make it in this sort of independent music world. You know, as far as the feud goes, I think I would respect it more if they just went full Liam and Noel Gallagher. And we're just like, we don't like this band because we think their music sucks. Or we don't like this band

because they're annoying. Or they get more attention than us and we think we deserve the attention that they get. You know, like, in other words, like own your pettiness. You know, don't dress like your shit talking in this veneer of like altruistic, you know, DIY mandating.

You know, like we're striking out against the 1% of critical darlings and big-time music sites. Because, you know, you're a band being written about on Bandcamp, which is a site I love, by the way. But it is a for-profit music retailer owned by a video game company. You know, that is what BandCamp is. It's not a zine. It's not a DIY operation being run out of someone's basement. You know, like they are part of the machine.

They are literally in the business of selling music. So, I don't know. Just have some perspective here. You know, and own the pettiness. Talk shit and don't go on the moral high horse when you're doing it. You know, just slag them off in an honest, direct way. Yeah. I think that would be the best way to go.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with it. And, you know, the funny thing is, like, there's just, like, a lot of bands talking privately about, like, what they thought of this article. And, yeah, like, you know what? If you don't like Wednesday, or if you, like, you don't think that, like, their music deserves to be heard. Yeah, talk shit. I mean, now, granted, like, that can be its own sort of messy thing.

But as far as, like, kind of interpol, like, trying to frame it through this, like, moral, uh, this moral code, I think that's where the blowback that's where the blowback came. Because any time, like, you do that, there are just so many holes you can poke on that argument. Um, because, you know, like, uh, dummy eventually. they have a PR company, they have a booking agent, which, you know, look, to be in a band, you shouldn't, like, what if you don't like doing your own press? Like, what if you don't like doing your own booking? Like, in so many ways, in so many parts of our lives, we pay people to do the stuff that we don't feel we're particularly good at. I can't, I'm sure there are plenty of artists out there who think, yeah,

self-promotion, not really my thing. I'd rather have someone else take care of it, which is, you know, which is great in a way. Also, I think the one part that I have to take issue with is, you know, if we're going to trace back to emo week, I remember in 2013 or 14 people who were, you know, naturally predisposed to hating pitchfork would say they're only covering emo now because of the clicks. Like, as if, you know, the world is a beautiful place was like bringing in a ton of money to pitchfork. Like, people let their grudges, let them. That is the dumbest thing that. ever says about this kind of thing, that, yeah, like, the websites are covering these bands for the clicks, like an indie band for the clicks.

There are no clicks in indie rock, all right? The clicks are in Marvel movies, it's in stranger things, it's in writing about huge pop stars, and when you see your favorite indie site, cover that stuff. It's because they also want to write about the indie stuff. And if you want to write about the indie stuff, you also have to write sometimes about this hugely popular stuff because the hugely popular clicks pay for the indie rock clicks. That is how this thing works. No one is protecting Wednesday because they are some click gold mine for a website.

That is the dumbest thing. If you say that, I know immediately you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Even like a man like Big Thief, you know, they're not generating big time clicks. If you look at the whole of like internet traffic, It's peanuts compared to the stuff that really moves the needle. You know, so the people who write about the stuff, they're doing it because they like it and they care about it. And sometimes, yeah, you got to write about dumb stuff to justify,

or not to justify, but to make it possible to do the other things. Because if you just did the indie rock stuff for a lot of places, your lights get shut off. So, you know, again, that's part of being in the machine. We're all in the machine. We all live under capitalism. We all sometimes have to do things that maybe aren't the favorite thing to do, but you do it so you can do the things that you love.

That is part of being a grown up in the world that we live in today. A part of me empathizes with like the statements made in this piece because it's like a mutant strain of shit, I believe. That was 22, like about how the music writing industry works. But look, I mean, all these conspiracies like A, people should know better. and B, it gives like most music writers way too much credit to think we can construct this, like, weird sort of multi-level marketing thing as opposed to, oh, hey, let's just write about this bang because, you know, we like it. Well, that's the other thing, too, is that, you know, there's way too much power ascribed to the music press, you know, and like, I'm a member of the music press. I like to think that if I write about a band,

that maybe that it will be helpful to them. But, you know, I have a friend, I think I've talked about this on the show before. I have a good friend who's a program director at a radio station. And occasionally I go to concerts with him. And it's a whole other world when you're with radio people, how they are treated, you know, in these places as opposed to a music writer. Like you are on the low end of the totem pole as a music critic.

In terms of what they actually care about, things that really matter, it's radio, it's streaming, it's that kind of stuff. Those are back rooms that, you know, it's like the Mahalo and Drive, like the dudes like in the chairs, you know, with the fuzzy ears, those guys. That's what happens in those rooms.

I don't even know what's going on there. But anyway, I don't know. We're all just in the squid game. Like that is what music writing is. We are all just like fighting to the death. over scraps. And, you know, I get that's why these conversations get as heated as they do. But, I mean, we, this, we, we can learn from fifth wave emo. Like, they'll just, like, talk shit about modern baseball and title fight because they think they suck. They're not, not because, like,

they think there's, like, they're, like, morally compromised in any sort of way. Like, you know, talk shit, but own it. Like, be it, if you're going to be a hater, be a hater all the way. Okay, well, after that, I think we have to end on a podcast. positive note here. Talk about a band that we both love who announced their new album this week. We're talking about Wild Pink. So they announced their new record this week.

What's it called Ian? I-L-Y-S-M. It's, you know, they're trying to get that zoomer demographic with the internet slang. It's I-L-Y-S-M. I love you so much is the title track, which was put out on Wednesday. So, yeah, they decided to make it an acronym

rather than like the album title. When I got the album from the band included that like phrase like I-L-Y-I-Sam. I'm like, wow, that's like a really earnest thing to say to a music writer. It's like, oh, right, that's the album title. Like John Ross doesn't actually love me so much as far as I know. Oh, man. So you were feeling the love there for a second and then it just got pulled out from under you. So this record, it comes out October 14th, like Ian said,

single was released this week. And you and I both were hyping this record big time. I almost felt like, oh, am I hyping this too much? Because in my tweet, I said that Wild Pink, they took a stab at making their Yankee Hotel Fox Trout with this record. And I don't want to delve too much into this, because I want to save the analysis for when this record comes out. But I just want to explain that when I said this, what I meant is that this is a record where I think John really turned the sound to the band Inside Out and really made this experimental record that also manages to be incredibly emotional. And I mean, you, you're already calling it the album of the year. So you're not holding back. I'm holding back a little bit here because I want to, I don't want to like go overboard yet,

but you're calling it album to the year already. Yeah. I mean, it's, you, I also kind of describe it as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in the sense that it's like still pretty rootsy, but it goes in a very experimental, almost maybe even more like a ghost is born, sort of ghostly sort of way, especially because like a ghost is born, it's connected with a serious medical diagnosis. John Ross got diagnosed with cancer. He's in a kind of a remission phase of that. I also compared it to Foxing's near my God, you know, which is I have to put my twist on it because it's like 12 songs. It's about an hour. It's just, wow, I did not know this band was capable of making something this massive.

And I think you make a good point as to, you know, when I thought, when I had all these thoughts in my head and then I put it out there in the world when the song finally dropped, then it's like, oh my God, am I being one of those annoying people? Like, am I one of those people who are going to turn people off to Wild Pink because they, they don't like me and they think that I'm going way too overboard on it? Yeah, but look, I've lived with this album for a while. I think it gets, I mean, we got to talk about the guest list. I mean, it's got Julian Baker, it's got Pete from Antlers, it's got Riley Walker,

Yasmin Williams, rap boys in there. They're touring with Trace Mountains. This is like Indycast Final Boss shit. Yeah, this is like the last waltz of Indicast right here. You got all the people coming together for a big project. Yeah, someone quote tweeted me and said, oh, I rolled my eyes when I saw this tweet, but then they listened to the single and they were like, okay, this actually sounds pretty awesome. I don't know. Wild Pink has definitely been one of our mascot bands here at Indycast.

We talk about them a lot. I feel like they've made some inroads over the course of their first three records. This does feel like a potential, like, Bellwether type record for them, where if this isn't the record that people go Gaga for, I don't know what it's going to take. I mean, I think it is like a really special record. And again, we're going to talk about it more as we get closer to the album. But yeah, I don't know. If you've heard us talk about this band and you're like,

I don't know if I should check them out. The time to wait is over. This is the record you're going to want to get in on. I think it's really great. Yeah, but we also have to mention that if like on October 14th, you'd rather give your attention to the Red Hot Chili Peppers double album, which comes out that day that they just announced, we understand.

Isn't that the day that the 1975 comes out too? We are doing like all day. We are doing like all day indie cast on October 14th. It is just going to be like a Twitch stream. We are going 24 hours. Like we just got the funions and the Diet Mountain Dew going on. Cannot wait. Cannot wait.

All right. We'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? All right. So the record that I'm super into this week is a band called Chat Pile. Albums called God's Country. And, you know, kind of given what we had talked about earlier in this episode, I do have to, like we made a little bit of a Jesus lizard joke before.

And, you know, this kind of sound, this, you know, Ophetamine Reptile, Steve Albini, guy complaining about, you know, the state of affairs in the world sound, it never goes away. And it's a little hard for me to get into it sometimes because, and this is just, like a point about it and being impossible to be objective in music writing. It makes me think about someone who's going to be on the internet talking shit about like turn style or big thief. It's like when I hear like that sound, when I hear those scraping guitars, I'm thinking like, oh, this person has a lot of opinions about like pitchfork or whatever. But there's been a real void for this sound,

I think, since, you know, daughters got canceled and pissed jeans kind of went on high. And hiatus or whatever they're doing. And this is just like one of the feel bad hits of the summer right here. There's songs about like why the second song sounds like it sounds like almost like a cool Keith song complaining about like why people like have to live outdoors and push their stuff around in a shopping cart. But it's also like fairly ridiculous as well because it's so over the top. And also I think I appreciate the fact that from Oklahoma City as opposed to say like

New York or LA, I think that gives them a little bit more credibility. And maybe that's just like me projecting, you know, my, my Midwestern values onto people. But yeah, if you just want like the exact opposite of what the Beyonce album is doing, chap high will get you there. So for my recommendation corner, I want to do a shout out and I guess sort of an RIP to a really great band called The Raining Sound. This is a band that's been together for about, 20 years or so.

They recently announced that they're breaking up. It's sort of an interesting dynamic because the main guy in this band, his name is Greg Cartwright. And you might know him. He's a legend of Memphis garage punk bands. He was in a band called the Oblivians. Back in the 90s, there was also a band called the Compulsive Gamblers that he was in. And then he started this group, the reigning sound.

He was the only, I guess, charter member of this band. A lot of different people came in and out of the band. So it's a little odd to say, that they broke up. I mean, he could decide next week that he's going to make another reigning sound record, but he said that he's retiring the name. And I just want to say, like, if you haven't checked out this band,

definitely get into them. You know, as I mentioned, he kind of came out of that same, like, Memphis Garage Punk scene that, like, Jay Retard came out of, he was like a little bit after Greg Cartwright. But with the Rating Sound, he really, I guess, meant more in, I guess I would call it, like, greasy Americana.

You know, where it's not, like, the typical acoustic type stuff that you hear from that scene, you know, there's a lot of, like, you know, gnarly guitars and, like, great organ parts, but it has that kind of rootsy, rock and soul type vibe to it. And he, I think, did that as well as anybody in the last 20 years. There's a record that he put out in 2002 called Time Bomb High School, which I think is totally, like, an underrated classic. Like, if you're looking for, like, if you wish that Wilco sounded more like the Rolling Stones. That's a record for you. You're really going to love it. Raining Sound put out eight albums altogether. Their last record was called A Little More Time with

the Raining Sound, and that was a cool record because it was the original lineup of the band that came together. It seems like a real kind of full circle moment for the band. But out, out of all the eight records that they put out, all of them are worth hearing. I would definitely start with Time By I'm High School. Then too much guitar in 2004, another really great record. So yeah, you know, hats off to great cartwright, great musician, great singer-songwriter. Raining sound, really good band. And I'm sorry to see him go, but I'm sure Greg Cartwright will be doing something else great very soon. Yeah, call in with your favorite Greasy Americana records.

I'm dying to explore this one. I'm dying to explore this subgenre more. Yes, it demands to be heard, more greasy Americana. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indycast. We'll be back next week with our 100 episode. If you can believe it. And we'll be doing more reviews and news and hashing out trends. We'll see you later.

And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix tape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.