Indiecast - Our Favorite Albums Of 2025 So Far, Plus: New Music From Lorde And Mac DeMarco

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Steven and Ian begin with a conversation about Virgin, the new album by Lorde out today (2:20). Judging by the singles, it's not clear if this is going to be the comeback she needs. They also talked about Guitar, the new album just announced by Mac DeMarco, his first "proper" record of songs in years (15:15).Then they pivoted to a conversation about the weird state of music in 2025 (24:14), which already seems like a weaker year than 2024, before they each listed their five favorite releases of the past six months (30:26).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 243 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprocks's indie mixtape. 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 our favorite albums of 2025 so far. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. I'm looking forward to seeing where Morgan Wallens, I'm the Problem, ends up on Ian's year-end list. Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you? I love when we start with a bit where it may or may not be a joke because, look, I mean, with this emo thing, with the book, I think I've taken that as far as it can go.

And Morgan Wallon currently has three albums in the Billboard Top Ten. So I'm just going to roll with the winners. Maybe that's my next pivot. He has three albums? Because I know he has three singles in like the top ten right now. Does he have three albums too? I'm the problem. Number one.

Number two is A T's. I don't know who that is. Number five is one thing at a time Right between SOS by SZA And Short and Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter And number nine is Dangerous the Double Album Which is right between G&X by Kendrick Lamar And the Party Next Door and Drake album

Someone named Brandon Lake is number seven He seems like a kind of a country guy Yeah Yeah, that's the pop charts right now That's where I need to maneuver Yeah, we're gonna get into this later when we talk about our favorite albums of the year, this is a weird year.

It's a weird year in general. Very weird year for music. Pop charts are cooked. I mean, it's hilarious to me that, you know, the Poptimus won the war, and it's like, it's the post-apocalyptic landscape that they get to rule over now.

Like, you know, the wars of the 2010s between the Popimus and the Rockists, the Pop-Tomis win, but then it's just burned, charred-out rubble of like Morgan Wallin albums everywhere. I mean, that's what we're talking about now. It's a very weird year, very weird year for our corner of the world, too. Again, we'll get into it. But let's talk just quick, before we get to the meat of the episode, about two albums that did not make our year-end list.

I'm guessing that the Lord Record didn't make your year-end list, Ian. Can we do a spoiler alert here? I mean, you know, not this one, whether it ends up on the year end remains to be seen. We'll see. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely going to make our conversation at the end of the year just because the album cycle, like we've talked about, has been, you know, like, I've kind of described this not as, like, you know, one of the Yokic or, like, you know, Janus, all-timer MVP years.

more like a Joel M.B., James Hardin, Russell Westbrook MVP year. It's putting up numbers, but maybe it's just a week year, you know? Yeah, it's no daddy's home. Daddy's home would have like the 10-part Last Dance documentary about how great that album cycle was. Lord is not on my year-end list. We're talking about her album Virgin, which is out today. And no slight on the album. I actually haven't heard the whole record yet.

So I don't know if we're going to revisit this next week, maybe if you and I end up dipping into the actual album. I have heard the singles. There have been three of them. Thought they were kind of mediocre. It really feels, again, like a piece of what we've been talking about in the first half of 2025. These foundational 2010s artists who are putting out records this year and feeling a little underwhelming.

And I'm not going to give that verdict on Virgin yet because I haven't heard the whole record. but the three singles, not terribly promising. You mentioned the album cycle. She did this interview with Rolling Stone. Was this like a month or two? It was a while ago. We didn't talk about it when she actually did it. I think it was maybe in April or May.

Around the time that she did that pop-up thing in New York where she was in Washington Square Park dancing around and for her first single. I think that was like, wasn't that? April, I could look this up while we're talking about it here, just to confirm. But yeah, this Rolling Stone interview was pretty wild. And I want to be sensitive here because I think Lord is in a transitional moment in her life in many different ways. I always think of her as being older than she is because she's been in the public eye for so long.

You know, she came out with pure heroin in 2013. Very influential record. I mean, we've talked about this before 2013 being a real watershed year for a generation of indie artists who came in and really kind of brought pop aesthetics into the four in indie music. And Hym, who we talked about last week is another important figure in that regard. But I think Lord is a songwriter, and especially as a singer, has been very influential. You could make a case possibly for bad vocally. I mean, there's been a lot of bad Lord impersonators in the last dozen or so years. That kind of throaty style of singing has really taken over in ways that sometimes aren't so great.

She put out her second record melodrama in 2017. I think a lot of people feel like that's her best record. I would say it's her best record. I think it's a really great example of like indie pop of that decade. That was your number one of that year, wasn't it? I think it was number two. It was in the top five. To me, it was just like an undeniable record,

even if you weren't someone who normally gravitates to that kind of music. I think the songwriting, the production, credit words due to Jack Antonoff, I think that's maybe his best work as a producer. I think that's a really good record. She puts out solar power in 2021, and that record basically tanks, certainly critically,

and I think also commercially. And it brought in this pronounced kind of new-agey, self-help aspect to Lord's persona that I feel like it's really become more prominent in her interviews in recent years. You saw it in this Rolling Stone interview. She's talking about some of the issues that she's dealt with. She had a breakup in her life. Apparently she started dating like a New Zealand record executive when she was a teenager and this guy was like 17 years older than her. Yeah. A little kind of weird. Talking about having some like eating disorder issues, going through some like gender identity

sort of confusion or kind of working through that in her life. She's also talking about this water bottle that she loves that costs $185. I don't know if you saw that. She watched the entire Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson sex tape and loved it. So she's kind of all over the place in this interview.

It feels like her music is a little bit all over the place. There aren't any reviews a Metacritic for this album yet, which I thought was interesting. I have seen reviews. I know the ringer ran one. I don't know if there have been others. I don't know if there's like some sort of like embargo or something. I thought it was a little strange that there were no reviews yet. Well, to follow up on the mailbag question about album of the year versus Metacritic, there are a couple on album of the year. Exclaim, The Guardian, The Independent. It's four star, four star, three star. So, Okay.

All right. So pretty positive. Yeah. It's four out of five, I'm guessing that is from Guardian? Yes. Oh, my God. This is quite literally something I'm finding out right now. I clicked on the review, removed article.

Really? This article was removed on June 26th as it breached an embargo. It'll be reinstated on the correct date. The Guardian, you sly dog. So they actually pulled it down. after a publicist complained about it. I've accidentally broken an embargo before. I don't know if you've ever done this.

I think I have. I've accidentally done it, but we didn't pull the article down. I feel like once it's up, it's up. And you just got to say, I'm sorry. So apparently all the reviews are running today as we speak in this podcast. As we speak on the Friday that this post, that is we're literally speaking right now. Yeah, we're recording, by recording this podcast, we're breaking the embargo. But we haven't heard the record yet, though.

We're not talking about the whole album. Gotcha. We're just talking about the singles. So we, yeah, the, you know, the publicist version of ICE isn't going to burst in to our respective podcasting rooms in Hollis away. At least that's my hope. But yeah, I don't know. This record, it feels a little weird. Again, I haven't heard the album, so I'm not judging the record, but just in the way it's been presenting.

it feels like they want to present it as both a I'm back on track I'm giving you the bops that you remember type record and also I have all of these sort of personal travails I'm going through and it's going to be that as well yeah and I also got to say I think that was like the first time I've heard someone say or use the word bops in quite a long time which speaks to the kind of a It kind of speaks to the throwback nature of this. And I do think that there are these simultaneously, the simultaneous Lord is back narratives along with Lord is working some stuff out publicly in a way that I think, I don't want to say that critic proofs this record,

but I think the more that Lord, more this album rollout has gone on, people are starting to like really see that it's, there's absolutely nothing cynical about. this. I think at the beginning, it really struck me, and I, maybe you agree, as being very Trump 1.0 in its talking points and its language. But the fact that it's happening in 2020, makes me really, really think that, yeah, this person is working stuff out in public. You would not do this sort of thing if you thought it would make you look, I don't know,

cool or edgy. I mean, the first single was definitely post-brat, and I think people didn't really like that part of it. I think that sound, that meme, that whatever, I think people are ready for that to go away for a while, unless it's from Charlie X-E-X. But my prediction now is that I think solar power was kind of a good kind of flop in a way, because it's the sort of flop you can rebound from. it was like a real stylistic shift it didn't really signify that oh like Lord is washed maybe more that Lord took a direction

that wasn't particularly promising but now like if you remind anyone and I think the first single was really really meant to remind people of melodrama or pure heroin I think it'll be well received in that it will be whether or not the quality of the record

matches melodrama or pure heroin it will be seen as someone publicly working their stuff out and like, hey, I'm rooting for you, Lord. Like that sort. I think the Ringer piece kind of had that. I think the Rolling Stone interview kind of led to that as well. The little bits and pieces I've seen of the reviews before they got pulled down because they broke embargo kind of get to that as well.

I think, like, Lord is absolutely going to be a, you know, like a long-term artist, right? and each album, you know, comes out every three or four years, we'll be about like just her, you know, reconsidering her identity, what it means to be a big pop star. Because she's only really, I mean, she has been for her entire life extremely famous, you know. Well, it's interesting with her too, because I agree with you. I think she is going to be this, she's going to be a legacy artist, I think, because there's so many people who, you know, heard pure hair. heroin at a formative time in their life.

And that record made a big impact. And it is interesting how, like, that record, I think, still looms so large in her career. You know, that song Ribs, which was like a beloved deep cut from that record, that just reentered the Hot 100 because it became a TikTok song. So she's still having hits from Pure Heroin. And I would venture to guess that if you went on Spotify and looked at her most streamed songs, most of them are going to probably come from that first record. I heard Royals at 7-Eleven literally the other day

I mean to make an analogy to maybe artists from our 20s that's kind of like her hot fuss or her is this it you know it's like you have that big first record and then you've got the other records after it that people can argue about how much they like them or not but that first record is such a sort of place in time album

I think or I suspect that kind of doesn't really matter what she does after that. She's going to have a get out of jail free card with a certain generation forever because of that album. So we'll see. It is interesting how this is coming out at the same time as the Heim record because I think there's a lot of parallels between this record and the Heim record. Clearly, Daniel Heim going through some stuff on I quit.

I talked myself into liking that record because I like the rough edges of that album. And I'll be curious when I hear the Lord record if there's going to be a similar thing where similar to what you were saying like you forgive maybe some of the missteps because the artist is just maybe putting themselves out there in a more naked way than they normally do

and it's really interesting even if it doesn't always work so I don't know I'm curious if that's what happens I think also just these interviews with Heim and Lord and this 2013ness of it all I think we are trying to will a new 1975 record into existence.

I think that's really going to complete the triumvirate, you know. Oh, man. Well, yeah, we need to get a Maddie Healy commentary on AI and Trump and, you know, I don't know, mass deportations, whatever. He's going to do some sort of cultural commentary records. Love it if we made it too, yeah. Or maybe he'll just go in the total opposite direction and do the thing that I've been asking for, which is just make a 10th song,

33-minute record, that's great. Just do that. I think that would be the best thing they could do. But I don't know. That may not be in there, DNA, but we'll see. The other big record, this record was announced this week. It's not going to be out until August.

But it's in line again with this theme of big foundational artists of 2010's indie, who haven't been visible in a while. I haven't put out a record in a while. Now they're back, and we're going to see how they received in 2025. And that artist is Mac DeMarco. He just announced his new record called Guitar. It's out August 22nd.

And I should clarify that MacDemarco technically has been putting out music in recent years. He put out that record, Five Easy Hot Dogs a few years ago, put out that insane record, One Wayne G, that like nine-hour record. Yeah. The thing with those two records is that they were instrumental records. And I would say it's fair to call guitar his first proper album because it's proper songs. He's singing on them. Even though it's called guitar, you would think guitar would be the instrumental record.

But it is an album of songs. It's his first album of like normal regular Mac to Marco songs since 2019. Here comes the Cowboy, which I don't know if you remember, that had the song. Oh, I absolutely remember. If we were doing this pod back in 2018, that would have, that is a Yokic, like Michael Jordan, a prime MVP album cycle. I mean, people getting mad, for those who don't remember, Mac DeMarco, we put out this record, here comes the cowboy in 2019.

Mitzki, I think her record, was it 2018? Yeah, that was 2018. Yeah, it was definitely first. I don't know. Yeah, I don't remember if that came out the same year or just, like, like kind of in proximity to it. But yeah, the MISCy one came first. Yeah. And so there was this idea that, yeah, her record came out in August of 2018 and was,

you know, the consensus favorite among critics as like the album of the year. That really kind of put her into the center of indie music and she stayed there ever since. And then DeMarco puts out this record, here comes the cowboy. And you get people online saying, oh, Mac DeMarco, he's, you know, or a swagger jacking, Mitzki, stealing her cowboy imagery or whatever. I mean, if you want to talk about Trump 1.0, that is one of the defining dumb controversies in the indie world of that era. Apparently, this new record, again coming out in August,

I'm reading from the press release here, was written and recorded in its entirety between November 18th and 28th, last year at his house in Los Angeles, so written and recorded quickly. Apparently he was working on another record, or he had made another record in the first part of November, called Hear the Music. But then he ended up kind of working on this record instead, and he's putting it out first. I don't know, I assume hear the music is going to be coming out at some point. But again, with Mac DeMarco, this is another artist who you can clearly see the influence of him.

a generation of singer-songwriters in the indie world. I mean, I think there are people now in their late teens, early 20s, where MacDemarco is, like, what, like, Neil Young or Bob Dylan? I mean, someone that they've grown up with. Yeah. You mentioned these, like, lost records that he's going to, like, you wrote this big thing about tracks, too. I wonder, in, like, in 25 years of MacDamarko is going to be putting out,

like, a Bruce Springsteen-like anthology of all of his lost records. That'd be a bit. He already put out this nine-hour record, so he's getting ahead of the curve there. But I'm curious, again, this is another example of someone who was huge in the 2010s, huge critically, huge commercially, has been away for a minute here. Now coming back, he's going to be on tour this fall. And I'm just curious, like, how people are going to respond to him. He has always been interesting to me because there's always been a disconnect between his music and his persona. If you listen to his music, it always reminds me of like, you know, 70s soft rock. Kind of has like a solo Paul McCartney vibe to it at times.

And yet he has this persona that is outrageous and polarizing. And, you know, a lot of people don't like him. Like I did my list of like the 100 best indie albums of the 21st century. and I swear the most complaints I got were about Tame Impala and MacDemarko. Like there's a certain kind of person out there who gets triggered, I think by those two acts who are very popular. Again, foundational 2010's indie acts, but I think for certain people, they look at them as being like, almost like softening indie rock or like turning it into this, I don't even know what you would want to call it. I just know that they inspire a lot of hostility. And with DeMarco, you know, he kind of has that Father John Misty thing too, like,

where, again, they make these sweet, romantic records sometimes and people have so much vitriol. I would say Father John Misty to me seems more provocative. Like he courts that more than DeMarco does. Maybe I've just forgotten controversies with DeMarco. I wonder how that's going to shake out at this point. Yeah, I mean, I think with back to Marco is like more. kind of like sketchy than problematic, you know? It's just, yeah, with Father John Misty and MacDemarko and Tame and Pala, I think those are all

just, and I'm just making up this now, like, college boyfriend music. It just reminds you of like your kind of shitty college boyfriend who like didn't dress super nice and just would like hang out with his friends. It's like kind of, it's kind of just like kind of regular dude music. And I think that's a big part of what makes people upset about him. I mean, me, I never really done. Or millennials. He's very millennial-coded, just like Lord is.

Maybe you got the MacDemarco boyfriend and the Lord girlfriend. And now they both have kids. And now, like, how are you going to carry over these younger person baggage that you have about these artists at this point? I just think about the hat with Mac to Marco. It's like that hat, like, really holds a lot of associations. And I think with Mac, I think the timing is right for him to, if not be re-appreciated. I mean, he's playing, I think, three sold-out nights consecutively at the Greek theater in L.A., which is like an outdoor amphitheater. I think he's still got the juice.

And a lot of the people who, you know, remember these controversies or were like upset about MacDamarko in 2012 or what have you, they probably aged out of the game or just like don't can't just can't get themselves to be mad anymore. and I wonder if like writers who were 15 when salad days came out are going to like come back in full force because there's an album we're going to talk about in my favorite of the year like these people were talking about how much like waves and surfer blood concerts changed their lives and so you know you get people in their late 20s who it's like yeah man like in high school salad days that was it right there man Like on the, yeah, I don't want to say the school bus because if like you're 15, you're probably like taking a car or something like that. But smoking weed in your friend's car and they're playing MacDemarco.

I mean, I'm sure that was a thing. Yeah, formative stuff. So I'm open to being more. I'm open to having, I'm open to revisiting the MacDamarko catalog. Although every time I've done it, it's just been like, yep, not my thing. I like him. I'm not a huge fan, but I appreciate him. And I did put Zawaday on that indie list because I really love that record.

And I also think if you're going to talk about indie music in the last 25 years, you've got to mention Mac to Marco. I just feel like he's a pretty big influence on a lot of people. A lot of others, a lot of readers, a lot of cantanker's folks that they're disagreed. That is their right. But you mentioned your year-end list. So let's segue to that. We are going to be talking about our favorite albums of 2025 so far.

I actually wrote about my favorite albums on Up Rocks. You can go check it out. I listed 23 albums. I listed them in alphabetical order. I'm only going to talk about five in this episode. So if you don't want to read, you just want to listen. I'm going to give you the short version, the five records that I like the most.

Ian, you pick five of your favorites. Before we get to that, just I want to have like a big picture conversation here quickly, just about the year. I alluded to this at the top, but the episode, I just feel like it's a very weird year for music. 2024, I thought was, I said this at the time, I thought it was like one, I thought it was the best year of the 2020 so far. And one of the best years of the 21st century.

Like if I made like a top five years of the 21st century, I think I would put 2024 up there. And 2024 only looks. better in the light of the first six months of 2025. Mentioned the pop charts. Have you heard this like Alex Warren song, Ordinary? Do you know what I'm talking about? The number one song in the country?

It is awful. It is an awful song. It will make you wish. Like is it post-Benton-Boon? I mean, like, what did you describe it? No, it's more like an even wimpier Ed Shearin-type song. with like Christian rock overtones. It's just repellent music.

But knowing what the pop charts are like now, it's probably going to stay there forever. Because I said this before, you know, there's three Morgan Wallen songs in the top ten. That Benson Boone song, beautiful things, the like Uber song of the decade, the Lyft song of the decade. That's still in the top ten.

That Shibuzi song is still in the top ten. Yeah, it's like, it's crazy. Again, the Pop-Tomist won, and they are ruling over a charred landscape of post-apocalyptic music right now. It is terrible on the pop charts. In our world, the indie world, a lot of records I like, but I don't feel like there's any instant classics that I've heard yet. You know, and look, a lot of great records, they age well over time, and you decide a year later or two years later or five or whatever that it's a class. But I don't know. Looking at my list, there's like a lot, I got a lot of records I enjoy that I think are really good.

But I don't think there's like any capital G great records. Yeah. That I've heard so on this year. I'm looking at Metacritic and like the number one is a bad bunny record, which dropped on January 5th. But I would like almost like what the next three are. Like I could give you all week and you wouldn't guess. It is something by a band named Heartworm. who were produced by Dan Carey.

They're like a UK post-punk band. The next is a band called Benefits. It is another UK band. And then Glory by Perfume Genius, which is, in my view, maybe like the third or fourth best perfume genius album. It's really good, but it's definitely not like taking the next level.

I think everything in 2020, it's so strange that like we were talking about 2025 being so fractionated and so quick to change. And yet, like, we also have concurrently this pop chart, which is just never moving at all. So it's, you have like both of these things at once where there's like more monoculture than ever, but even more microcultures. And by the way, as far as like what the pop charts are looking like, I want to talk a little bit about like the pop rock charts. Like I won't get into why, but I spent like two and a half hours at a 24 hour. fitness because someone locked my keys in my own locker and i watched all the videos of like bands like

naked and famous a jr Alex sucks like all these i guess pop rock like i like they're playing high on the festival but like i've never heard of them man it is it is dark times out there yeah like where's our candle box where's our bush our these are bad i mean even you know in terms of music critics, like that Addison Ray record is maybe a consensus favorite, but, I mean, that's like Stone Temple Pilots Charlie X-C-X, right? I mean, it just feels like it's just reiterating that, and we have to kind of go through the song and dance of, oh, it's such an innovative pop record. It's like, is it really, I don't know.

I just feel like we're recycling the same 80s pop signifiers at this point, and it could be very well executed and fun to listen to, but I don't know, the Addison Ray conversational has felt a little strained to me lately. I mean, you know, it's one thing to say this is a really fun record, but to crown that as like a year-defining album, I feel like, man, we're really stretching. I think it is a year-defining record, but like maybe not in the best ways, but yeah.

Well, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But it's like one of the very, very few that seem to have a conversation that last more than a week or two. there's not been a Cindy Lee, there's not been a brat, you know, the FKA Twigs album that came out in the beginning of the year, I'm sure, like, people still love it,

but it's so hard to tell like what's actually sticking because maybe it is, but there's no central water cooler in the way there was even two, three, let alone like five to seven years ago. So maybe it's happening, but maybe it's just happening outside of our view.

Well, and again, I just want to stress that, a great record doesn't have to be sort of instantly recognized as great. Obviously, albums can slow burn, and at the end of the year, we might feel a lot different than we do now about the first half of the year. So just saying that as a caveat, like that's obviously true, but I'm just saying, you know, there are certain records that just announce themselves as being great, and people know it, and they get excited about it, and there's a certain energy around it. and there's a lot of records I like, but that sort of ineffable thing, that vibe of greatness that hasn't existed yet. And I'm looking at the horizon, I'm not seeing what that record's going to be in the

second half of the year, but, you know, I'm sure it'll happen and I hope it will happen. Should we get into our lists here? Yes. Okay, why don't you go first? What is, did you rank your list? I didn't. I'm going to go alphabetical order just like you. And I've not seen yours. So I'm hoping we don't get overlap. I'm doubting we will. I'm doubting it too. I would be surprised. Just looking at the five I picked, I would be surprised if you had any of these on your list. Yeah. So the first one I'm going to go with is Bath's Gut. We've talked on our Indycastes about the best, like the comeback of the year. And there's like a lot. There's like a lot. Lord type comeback where you're a huge artist who makes kind of a flop and then you generate enough momentum to really have a comeback. I think the higher degree of difficulty comes with indie artists who

were kind of buzzy at the beginning and they never made a bad record, but they just kind of slowly faded from view and they're no longer at the center of things. I'm thinking of like that youth lagoon album in 2023. That was really good. Symbolsie guitar is another example. And Baths, not a very prolific artist as that name. Will Wisenfield put out a lot of music, like ambient. But he started out as this kind of chill wave post-flying Lotus beatmaker in L.A. With Seulian, great record from 2010. And whatever he's done, he's still stayed in more of an electronic pop vein,

like Obsidian was super dark. And then his next record, his next record, I was about to say a washed out record's name, was more kind of like video game style pop. this one he was influenced by gillaband and i gotta hand it to him proto martyr so it's this electronic pop slash post-punk hybrid and the songs are almost exclusively about him going out and seeking uh you know seeking sex like it is the most gay sex record he'll say it it is outwardly unapologetically gay but it's like funny because it's about like the like the very embarrassing aspects of gay hookup culture.

And he just puts it all out there. It's an acquired taste for sure, but it's such a daring out there record, which I think would be given more attention had it not come from an artist who's been around for 15 years. And yeah, I think this album should be getting more attention. What does that even mean to get more attention? But they've done something really fun, really original, and just really. really antagonistic in a way that I find super interesting. So it's not an everyday listen, but the first song will draw you in.

Iwall is such a good song. Well, this is related a little bit to the first artist I'm going to talk about, not the gay sex part of it, but the veteran indie artist part of it. And that artist is Bill Fox and his record is called Resonance. I wrote about Bill Fox this year. You may know him. He's kind of an obscure cult hero. Started out in the 80s.

He was a part of this band called The Mice, a very influential, although not very famous, underground indie rock band. In particular, they were a big influence on guided by voices and other artists kind of in that sphere of like Ohio indie music in the 1980s. Then he went solo and put out two just stone classic records in the 90s. that really kind of stripped his music down. Having this like beetle-esque melodic sense, but like Bob Dylan-like instrumentation, a lot of acoustic guitar and harmonica, but they just sounded like the kind of records

that, you know, you discovered a record shop at the bottom of a pile and you put it on, you're like, this is like some of the best songwriting I've ever heard. And then he went away for a long time, and off the grid, no online presence. and in the 2000s he put out a record, then he was gone again for a while, and then this year he reemerged with this album Residence,

and it's a record that it's unclear exactly when he recorded these songs. I think a lot of these tracks probably date back 10, 15 years. You get the feeling with Bill Fox that he's constantly recording at home, like he does a lot of stuff on four track, but he doesn't put a lot of it out. There's a song on this record, for instance, It's an anti-war song that references Norman Schwartzcoff. So, you know, that might have been recorded or probably was recorded in the early 90s.

But it's just beautiful songwriting. It's a great story. Kind of similar to the Cindy Lee's story in a way. You know, this is a guy. Put out this record, it's a very sort of low-key, independent label thing. Didn't have a PR person at all. And it actually did end up getting some good reviews. I think Pitchfork reviewed it.

was an interview in New York Magazine with Bill Fox, the first interview, I think he's ever done in like almost 30 years. And I wrote about it, obviously. So he's getting some attention. But again, he's just one of those guys that some people know about him, but not enough people know about him. But it's not because this music is like abrasive or too obscure. Like if you listen to his songs, you're going to like it. It's this great pop rock songwriting of the highest order. And it's a record I like a lot. Again, it's Bill Fox. The album is Resonance. Okay, so what is your next record, Ian? All right. So this is an artist I picked in one of my fantasy drafts earlier this year. It's Benjamin Booker, his album Lower. And I picked it, not having heard it, not really having

heard his earlier stuff. I just kind of assumed it was going to fit the, if we're doing like the Mock draft player comparison thing, like Brittany Howard. that sort of indecoded real roots music sort of thing. And there is that element of it. If you hear songs like same kind of lonely or show and tell, which come later in the record, you can imagine hearing that alongside like a Black Keys or an Alabama Shakes album. But overall, this is just a really fascinating record. It was co-produced by Kenny Siegel, who is someone I will be talking about in a subsequent

album of the year choice. you probably figure out which one that is. But this album, it does have that kind of bluesy element to it. But in a very, and I can't believe how many times we referenced this very, very niche of style of music from the late 90s, DreamWorks core, which is sort of like the post Beastie Boys Grand Royal. It's got some sampling. It's got some hip-hop beats. It's got some blues guitar. And Benjamin Booker's voice, it's very kind of breathy in a Mercury Rev sort of way.

It all comes together in a really, really cool way. And just subject matter of the album is also really interesting. You know, there's kind of paranoia about the surveillance state, a song called Slow Dance and a gay bar, which is pretty self-explanatory. Very beautiful song. Songs about like old congresspeople in the slave-owning era and also like abject alcoholism. So it is one of the most unique and interesting. sonically and lyrically records of the year. And I'm just not sure why this one also hasn't become a record that this conversation is centered

around because it hits all the notes. I think maybe he's just kind of a reclusive guy. I know we came to an agreement to do a piece for Uprocks, but, you know, we never got it together. Maybe it just doesn't like to do interviews. I don't mind. But yeah, this is a really cool record. And I do think it might start popping up in year ends.

But I'm a little surprised at, you know, just. how it already isn't getting mid-year love. Yeah, you've been a big backer of this record. I remember you being excited about it earlier in the year. I need to circle back. I have not really listened to this album. I think I sampled it when it came out, and then I got distracted by something else

and didn't go back to it. But the way you're describing it sounds like it's really cool. So I might have to dig into that. My next record, it's part of, I guess, a micro trend with me. I really like F-word bands this year. And I guess you can even put Bill Fox in this as well. The F-section of my list was very deep. And it continues with my second choice here,

which is the band Fust. This is the band from North Carolina. They put out their latest record, Big, Ugly, back in the spring. And this is just a great record. And it's part of that constellation of North Carolina bands spearheaded by Wednesday and M.J. Lenderman, who are essentially making alt-country music, even though we don't use that term anymore. It was totally outmoded, I guess, by the end of the

90s, but it's really had a comeback in the 2020s. I guess you could call it Indi Americana, if you want to make it more convoluted sounding. But this band, I think, is one of the finest sort of practitioners of that kind of music. They're led by this guy named Aaron Doughty, who is a professor of literature, and you can tell how well-read he is. Like when you hear these songs, he's really good at using language in a way that evokes a particular time and place.

He incorporates a lot of southern sort of terminology and slang into his lyrics that really make you feel like you're visiting this small community and you're going into, like, the corner bar and you're observing life. Like, it feels like that, listen to these records. And it's married to music that is just really robust and muscular and has great guitar solos. There's a song on this record called Spangled, which I've tweeted out many

times. I feel like this year, it's one of my favorite songs of the year. It just sounds like a classic drive-by trucker song, except instead of being in the deep south, it's in the sort of southeast of the country. But a beautiful record, I really recommend it. It hasn't gotten a ton of press. I don't think pitchfork actually reviewed this record. But I think it's a really strong record. It's one of my favorites of the year. And I'd recommend you check it out. If you haven't yet, it's called Big Ugly by the band Fust.

Yeah, I like this record a lot too. And yeah, it seems like a very interesting person at the forefront of it. It's really interesting to see what records of this ilk get, like, carried up in the wave and which ones don't. But, yeah, I think that this one will, the people who have heard it, like, are super into it, myself included. This is going to be one of those slow burn records, I think, where hopefully by the end of the year,

people have caught up with it and they're going to be talking about it. Yeah. Well, my next record is definitely not one that's a slow burn. It's being celebrated pretty loudly already, and is Billy Woods Goliwog. One of the best reviewed records of the year. Follow up to his album with Kenny Siegel from 23, MAPS, which was my number one of that year.

and yeah hip hop has been kind of a tough sledding for me because on the one side you have like your post playboy cardi or playboy cardi type opium albums you know like himself ken carson uh that just sound like the most thrilling music imaginable for five minutes and then you see like oh my god this 25 song 45 minute album is never going to end and on the other side you have you know your post mike very insular like soft boom map uh introspective uh rap uh rap rap wave that never really stuck with me and so um billy woods exists somewhere in the middle of that without being like too old school like you know run the jewels dad rap um this album is a lot more uh unruly than maps it doesn't quite have the same conceptual consistency uh it's got a ton of producers on it including lp which there's one song on there Corinthians, him and Despot, like, please,

LP, make a new run the jewels with Billy Woods. Killer Mike, falling off the map, please. And I get something new out of this every time I hear it. Like Billy Woods' lyrics are just so dense and elusive. It is something that I do have to check on

Genius.com to see what he's talking about, but that's okay. And yeah, every time I revisit this record, it just gets more more strong. Corinthians is definitely going to make my top 10 songs if I do make a songs list. And it's just really cool to see an artist

like Billy Woods who's been plugging away for like 15 years really hit his peak and be celebrated for it without having to make his music any more accessible or unchallenging. It is, I am sure, a record in year-end list that people will say, this is the album that captured our fractured political landscape. And they're not going to be wrong about that.

But yeah, I just like it as a rap record for the beats, the lyrics. That's if you're a 45-year-old person who just kind of sort of kind of misses old LP, this is going to be for you. My next record is maybe has nothing in common with the Billy Lewis record. Sonically or, well, maybe in terms of the subject matter, because I think this record does have some, It definitely has a political consciousness sort of embedded in the record that you have to listen to it for a while, I think, to get to it because the music is so sort of shambolic and chaotic and just flat out rocking. Like you just kind of get distracted by the music.

I'm talking about an album by a band from Philadelphia called Flory. The record is called Sounds Like. I should say Flory is spelled F-L-O-R-R-Y. Don't put an I-E in there or anything. It's with a Y at the end. And this is a band that came on my radar a few years ago with a record called The Holy Bible, which to me just sounded like the first indie record I had heard in a while that sounded like Exile on Main Street or like Tonight's Tonight. Well, not Tonight's Tonight's The Night. A lot of records have been drawing from that.

But that sort of early 70s loose, just drunken and stone style of like just boogie rock, you know, which is completely out of fashion right now in indie music. But Flory is bringing it back. They're making it, they're making indie rock rock again. And this band is just so fun on record. I saw them live a few weeks ago. And the lead singer and guitarist, Francie Madash, is just soloing all over these songs.

And she just has like a major guitar face on every song. And it's like, man, this band is doing it right. They're hitting cowbells. They're, you know, having these like awesome like just guitar duels on stage. It's so much fun. And the songwriting, again, I think, has a layer to it where, because of the looseness of the presentation, sometimes you might miss on the nuances that's going on with the storytelling on this record. Again, I think there is a political consciousness on this record. I know when I saw them live, they had like a Palestinian flag that they were playing in front of. And I know

that's a cause that means a lot to this group, the Free Palestine Movement. But it's just a, again, It's an indie rock record that actually rocks. And I just love it so much. And I think they're even better live. If you get a chance to see them, one of the most enjoyable live bands, I think, in indie rock right now. Again, the band is called Flory. The record is called Sounds Like.

Yeah, that record sounds like super cool. And that's another record that I think a lot of people are, that's a slow burn one as well. It's been celebrated, but I think by the end of the year, the Flory faction will come to the four. that is very alliterative all right this one

my fourth choice is probably pretty predictable the fact that you said we probably don't have anything shared leads me to believe that this is not your top buy because it's the most

it is the token Ian gets to write a best new music review of the year so it's an album from a band called Caroline and it is called Caroline too it is the follow-up to their first album

which was also called Caroline and How would I describe them? It is part of that scene which produced Black Middy and Black Country New Road and Squid, but they are more along the lines of a early 2000s like eight person collective. There's some broken social scene in there. There's some Joan of Arc in there. You know, that's a word that you can't really say.

But there's some late 90s emo going on there. And the thing I love about this record is that their first album, they mentioned Midwestern emo and the press release and then immediately started trying to walk it back in all their interviews. This one's more emo. We always love when a band gets more emo with time. And it just got really cool production, really cool arrangements. It sort of sounds like if I had to describe it to someone who has checked out from music since 2003, imagine broken social scene. anthem for a 17 year old girl kind of run

through a sampler and that's what a lot of the songs bring very beautiful, very unsettling very unpredictable I would love to see them live but apparently they lose a lot of money when they go on tour as a band from the UK

that's eight people deep I expect this one to be in a lot of year end list maybe not at like the top 10 but it's got very number 22 kind of feel to it. Can't wait to hear what this band will do. I imagine every record they'll do will be interesting and very different. But yeah, this has been like, what do I want to listen to?

This has been my go-to. Yeah, I like this record a lot. I put this on my master list. That's on uprocks.com. It was among the 23 records. I called my favorites. And this is one of those albums where maybe we'll end up amending our statement or my statement about they're not being like a classic record.

This feels like an album that there's some genuine like mind-blowing moments, I think, on this album. Like there's a wow factor. I think particularly like that first song is like so unique. And you're listening to it. Every time I listen to it on my laptop computer, I feel like there's multiple tabs playing different songs. It just sounds like that because the parts are like out of place.

And it feels like what is going on here? It's so disorienting, and then it somehow comes together at the end and pays off. And there's a lot of elements. There's a lot of songs like that on this record, which almost feel like magic tricks sometime, and how they come together. Like, how are they going to get out of this? Like, how are they going to actually make this work? And then they do, and it's really cool. My next record, it's the last F-word band slash artists that I have on my list.

And the band is Friendship. The record is called Cave Man Wakes Up. This is, I think, in the running for like my favorite album of the first half of 2025. This is another band from Philadelphia, Philly, continuing to rule the indie rock landscape. And they're also part of, again, that sort of extended Wednesday, M.J. Lenderman cinematic universe that was a clip. I don't know if it's, it wasn't a viral clip in the wider sense. It was a viral clip on my social media feed of M.J. Lenderman and Dan Riggins.

the lead singer of friendship doing darkness on the edge of town at a recent concert. Friendship, I think, opened for MJ Lenderman in, I think it was Philadelphia. But Riggins is definitely part of that generation. You know, we talked about Mac DeMarco being a very influential singer-songwriter. I think it's also fair to say that David Berman is just a huge influence and continues to be on this emerging generation of songwriters, many of whom, you know, would have been probably in high school when Berman passed away and certainly were very little and maybe not even born when all those silver Jews records were coming out in the 90s.

He's almost like the Hank Williams of like in Iraq at this point. Like a like just a distant singer-strongwriter who passed and has an influence that just carries over after his death and just becomes someone who, even looms larger, I think, in the afterlife than he did, sadly, while he was with us. But Riggins, I think, has a similar thing. I mean, he has a similar vocal style to Berman. I think he also has a similar sensibility in terms of mixing humor and pathos. You know, there's, there are situations on this record where, you know, he's talking about, like,

Resident Evil at some time. And then, and the next line, he's, like, contemplating, like, existential crises and the dark abyss of life. I mean, both of those things commingle, I think, in a very sort of David Berman-esque kind of way. The music is, kind of has that ramshackle, country rock thing that Silver Jews and Purple Mountains had. Just a really good record. This band, I think, continues to get better with each album. And this one, I think, is clearly their best. Another maybe slow burn album that I think a lot of people are going to get into as the year progresses. It's called, again, Caveman Wakes Up. The band is friendship. I've seen a lot of people who like this record call it their favorite of the year.

So yeah, it's up there for sure. So with the son, this, this, this, my last album sounds not a lot like friendship, but I deals with the same sort of themes because the band's name is greet death. Now, we're not going to do recommendation corner on this episode, but I'm going to bring up an album that would have been in there because it drops today. I did an interview with, uh, them for uprocks, which came out on Tuesday. You can read that now. Logan in the band, one of,

maybe the funniest stage banter in the game right now. If you've not gotten a chance to greet death, the great band to begin with, but the stage banter is just so on point. It's awesome. So this is their new album. It's their third called Die in Love. It is their first album,

like their first proper album in six years, New Hell came out in 2019, and they did an EP called New Lo, and they are, I think, easily the finest of this wave of bands that have combined. I guess you would call like heavy shoegaze, but matching it, like they're from originally Flint, Michigan, and matching that with early Red House painters or Jason Molina kind of rust belt yearning. Every record, they've stepped things up. And this one isn't necessarily like, oh my God, it's an amazing.

They've leveled up. They've taken the leap. they just do everything they've done on previous records and do it better, whether it is integrating their, you know, more of their country side of things, whether it's matching to very, very different vocalists.

Harper has a vocal style that I've compared to like Dan Behar or Brian Mouko from placebo, whereas Logan has more of like kind of the deeper drone voice. There's just some really, like legitimately pretty acoustic ballads on. here that don't have any of the pile driving riffs. It is just beginning to end solid record, not a weak moment on it. I'm not sure how much this one will get traction in the bigger world because, you know,

they've talked in this interview about how they're not trying to be a careerist band. Logan in a stereo gum interview said that if he woke up with the career of either Billy Corrigan or Chapel Rhone, he'd want to kill himself. Yeah, because as he said, in our view having a career in music is mad busted. Just from being on the road and seeing things though. I mean, and he's like an Amazon delivery guy and he loves that job. So, yeah, it's, if you love some of the bands we've talked about here, like cloakroom or nothing or Thunder Dreamer,

I mean, if you want like an actual heavy shoegaze indebted record that has great songwriting, which is a rare breed in the current day, greet death, die in love. One of my favorites from this year. I like that band a lot. I haven't heard that record yet, but it sounds really cool. I'm looking forward to checking it out this weekend. Might have to bust it on the patio. We'll see what happens.

My last record is the album that I think I might want to say is my favorite of the year. It's this or friendship. I would also toss in, and this is with a caveat because it didn't come out this year. It came out very late last year. but the Cameron Winter record, heavy metal, if that album had come out like a month earlier, I think that would have topped a lot of year-end list. I just feel like Cameron Winterstock has gone up so much this year,

and there's going to be a geese record that drops later this year. I'm very curious to see what the conversation about that is going to be like, because I think there were a lot of people, myself included, who came to the last geese record 3D country like a little bit after the fact that ended up on my year-end, list, but I didn't really talk about it when it first came out. But that's a really cool record. And then heavy metal is an album that if you're into it, you probably love it. Like, it just has, you know, we're talking about like mind-blowing type records. That album has some real kind of

mind-blowing moments on it. I also know people who can't stand the vocals on it. So I get that perspective as well. But setting that record aside, because it's technically not 20-25. I'm going to go with hotline T&T, uh, their latest record, rather than that. I'm going to go with Hotline T&T, uh, their latest record, We just talked about this last week. I would say, you know, the friendship record really appeals to me lyrically. I think that there's a lot of emotional moments on there. I do like the music on there as well. Raspberry Moon is just like a hot fudge Sunday of guitar rock to me.

Like if you like big blown out rock songs with big choruses, this is the record for you. And it's the album that I just turned to, I think. Certainly, like, in the last month or two, the most. If I want something to listen to and I can't decide, I'm going with Hotline T&T. I think Julia's War, one of the best songs of the year, one of the catchiest songs. I feel like that song is constantly in my head. Just a really good rock record. Coming after Cartwheel, the breakthrough record by this band in 2023, I was curious to see how people would respond to this record because it is cleaner sounding.

you could say it's a slicker sounding record, but it seems like people are on board with this album. It's gotten a good amount of acclaim for the kind of record that it is. And I would really like to see this band have a good career because I think that they have a good track record of just putting out quality rock records. And we talked about this last week,

them may be having a career like Cloud Nothings, like where every two or three years, you're just going to get another great Cloud Nothing's record. and that's more than enough because no one is really having that kind of consistency in this space. So Hotline T&T, Raspberry Moon, possibly my favorite of the year along with the Friendship Record. Well, that about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix 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.