Indiecast - Our Mid-Year Indiecasties For 2023

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Before getting to the serious business of handing out their mid-year Indiecasties awards for indie music semi-excellence, Steven and Ian try to make sense of the most nonsensical TikTok trend of 2023: The Pinegrove Shuffle. Apparently, there are young people doing this weird dance to a deep cut by the rootsy indie-Americana band. Why? Who knows? Listen to two guys in their 40s try to explain it.In non-TikTok news, Steven is planning a trip to Dayton in September for two 40th anniversary Guided By Voices shows that also feature Dinosaur Jr., Built To Spill, Wednesday, and others. It's the middle-aged indie fan Woodstock! The guys also briefly discuss new albums out today by Queens Of The Stone Age, Sigur Ros, and Killer Mike.Finally, it's time for the Indiecasties! All of your favorite categories are back: Most Valuable Album Cycle, Most Annoying Music Writer Twitter Story, Most Memory-Holed Album, and more. No spoilers, but expect lots of fireworks from the likes of Boygenius and Foo Fighters.In Recommendation Corner, Ian recommends a new emo oral history from writer Chris Payne, Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, while Steven discusses the new 20th anniversary edition of the classic Drive-By Truckers album, The Dirty South.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 143 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 the show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, we review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we hand out our mid-year indie castes. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. Be sure to see him on TikTok doing the Pine Grove Shuffle. Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you?

I would just love to go back to 2018 and say that exact sentence to somebody and have them guess what it means to be on one TikTok doing to the Pine Grove Shuffle. But this is our first week, this is our first time doing two consecutive weeks of mentioning TikTok trends, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, we are trying to lower the median age of our listener from like 35 to like maybe like 34 and a half. Yeah. We're gradually moving it down a little bit. I'm going to let you take the lead on this one because you showed that. this to me yesterday. There's this trend on TikTok where you have zoomer people, young people,

doing this like weird shuffling dance to a song by the indie rock band Pine Grove, a band beloved in some quarters, beleaguered in others. I believe that they're currently on hiatus. That is correct. But they are getting like a big bump. from this TikTok trend. What is the song that people are dancing to? So it's a song called Need 2, which is from the, you know, the compilation album they put out prior to Cardinal in 2015. You know, it's an old song. It's like kind of like a harness your hope sort of affair.

But so I'll just explain as our list, as our 35-year-old average listener has their brains leaking out of their ears, I'll try to explain what's happening here. So someone, just some guy, like I can't explain it better than some guy. He posted a video of him doing some combination. It looks like an Irish jig, but also the shoot dance from J.B. Blockboy, if anyone remembers that from 2017. And it says Pine Fucking Grove. And so it's gone viral to the point where DJ Khalid has done a Pine Grove shuffle. And here's the funniest part.

And DJ Coward is dancing to the Pine Grove song. Yes, that is, to my knowledge. I've not done a lot of research on this. This is like breaking news as far as like Indycast goes. And did DJ Coward know who Pine Grove was before this? I'm guessing probably not. I don't know. I mean, like maybe he's caught up to it.

Maybe he's like fucking around with Cardinal and he's gotten the box tattoos on his arms. So you think that he was like already a fan? And then he saw this trend and he's, like, now I'm going to out myself as a Pine Grove fan. I bought Cardinal back in 18. You got the overlapping rectangle tattoos like everyone else. Yeah, but I'm keeping it under wraps. There's been some weird controversy with this band.

Maybe I don't want to publicly profess my love. But now there's a hiatus. Maybe there's some time passed. And now I'm going to out myself as a Pine Grove fan. Do you think that's a scenario here? Yeah, you know, next it'll be like, you know, money bag yo featuring evan stevens hall on the next dj callad album but there are two parts that like there are two parts of this which i find to be awesome the first of which is that you know pine grove is

more or less on hiatus and somebody somebody showed me that um they're on spotify they've like repackaged need to as like a new EP it's the same song like they haven't re-recorded it anything like that, but they've added three alternate versions, like a hyper speed version, a fat, like, you know, what they do on TikTok. And so now it's up on Spotify, you know, like as what tends to happen when bands have old songs that become, you know, TikTok hits like Surf Curse or like King Con and the barbecue show. And the, but the part that really, like, we've talked so many times about like what it might be like to be a little less online. And the tech articles that men like talk about this they have to kind of do a basic primer on pine grove where it's like they're a

rutsy literary indie band that has fans called pine nuts and they went on hiatus and wait wait wait wait is that a real thing pine grove fans are called oh absolutely that is extremely real that is was read any read any article about them from 2016 i think people tend to forget just how beloved this band was yeah i know but pine nuts yeah i know right look that fan always had like an element cornyness to them and, you know, that. The weirdest career. They have the weirdest career maybe of any indie band of the last 10 years. Is there like a weirder arc?

Like, I want to see their Wikipedia page. You know, like where you have the different sections that describe their career. It is such a weird arc. And it is confounding. Like there's so many things that have happened to them that I still don't understand. this TikTok thing, you know, you go online and you see people posting these TikToks and they'll be like, this goes so hard. Or I've watched like a hundred of these in a row.

And you just don't know, is there, is this ironic? Is this like a, we think this is legitimately awesome type thing? I don't know. It's so weird, but it's like another week. thing in this band's career. Yeah, and if you read any of the tech articles about this, it's like literally the 1975 lyric about not know, like they didn't know all the weird stuff.

Like nobody mentions anything about like the controversy, which I don't know. I mean, I think that's, there's something kind of in, not endearing about it, but it's like, like when I meet people, like I literally meet people in 2023 when the band brand new comes up. It's like, oh yeah, what happened?

Like, they got canceled? and I didn't know about that. Like, people who keep up with music. It's just wild, like, what sticks or doesn't stick when you're not completely online. And I know that's a very bizarre thing to say about a TikTok trend, but I don't know. Maybe Pine Grove, like, comes back to get signed to Atlantic Records or something like that, like all these other, you know, bands that get, like, kind of popping off TikTok. I don't think we're done with the weirdness.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that whole thing with the Pine Grove's stuff. scandal, it's still weird to me just because it was very vague. It's not clear exactly what happened. There's some sort of grooming perhaps going on there. Is that the story? Oh, my God. Like, we...

I don't know. Do we want to even relitigate that? I don't know. And I don't want to classify that as, like, weird because it is not just weird. But again, I don't even know what it is. So anyway, maybe just put that in a box for now over there. And I'll just say, man, this is like an amazing thing. the Pine Grove shuffle.

We'll see how that adds to the Pine Grove saga here. But yeah, definitely a very unusual career that band has had. Yeah, I'm hoping other bands from 2016 have TikTok trends. Let's get like a sidekick trend or maybe this is how like the hotel year comes back. Who's to say? Yeah, I don't know. It's just fascinating to me how these things develop. Yeah.

And how organic is it? And how is there any element of, like, record label, like, machinacons going on? But how would even, like, a publicist or a record label executive come up with an idea like this? It's such a random thing. Let's take this early Pine Grove song and let's have this earnest young man. What was it doing an Irish jig and, like, what was the other dance? You got to watch it for yourself. I can't do it justice.

I've seen it, and it does not make it any more, doesn't make any clearer to me. It's even more confusing after watching the video. Yeah, I mean, all these labels have tried to, you know, engineer something like that. You know, you've heard it from, like, Halsey and other pop artists where, like, it is very real that, like, labels want you to make a TikTok trend. And this, the one thing that I love about it is that it is so completely random. You can't engineer it. Like, you can try, but, like, it is impossible. to do so.

So pivoting away from the Pine Grove thing, because this is still very odd to me, I'm going to have to raise our median age for listener again into like 35 and a half, maybe even 36, because there was two shows announced this week, very near and dear to my heart, guided by voices, possibly my favorite band of all time, definitely in the conversation. They announced these two 40th anniversary shows Taking place in Dayton, Ohio There's a bunch of supporting acts Dinosaur Jr. and Kiwi Jr.

On the first night, I just noticed that they're both Junior Band. Where's Dale Arthardt Jr. Jr. in this when we need them? Yeah, their booker dropped the ball on that one. And then on the second night, you have built a spill Heartless Bastards in Wednesday. So just a jam-pack bill. or the 45-year-old indie rock fan.

It's going to be amazing. I'm actually going to these shows with two of my oldest and dearest friends. We used to go see guided by voices all the time in the early aughts. We would follow them around like they were the grateful dead of beer. You know, it was amazing. And now, like, we're all going to go to Dayton.

We already rented the Airbnb. I already bought the plane ticket. And I'm just imagining it as like, you know those movies like Wildhogs and Las Vegas? You know, like where you got like Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas and like Morgan Freeman. Yeah. And like Travolta, like all these old guys that get together for like one last adventure. There's also like the female equivalent where you have like 80 for Brady. Yes.

And book club. You know, it's like some combination of like Jane Fonda. Lily Tomlin, Mary Steenbergen. Diane Keaton, I'm sure, is involved somewhere. So I'm picturing this is my version of that. I'm not quite as old as those people. This is like 45 for Pollard, you know, instead of 80 for Brady. But I'm very excited about it.

This is middle-aged indie rock fan Woodstock, I think, for 2023. be amazing. I hope I don't overdo it. I'm older now. I'm not in my early 20s anymore. So I got to be careful with that. But I think it's going to be great. I think it will be good content for their show as well. Yeah. I mean, the men's room, the men's room situation is just going to be off the fucking chain. It's like the, uh, when my wife went to the Indigo girls concert last year and like they had to temporarily reassign most of the men's rooms to women's rooms. Like people, like I would not put it pass people to like wear an adult diaper because like you were saying like people might be drinking at this show as if we were back in the alien lanes days and when that like third miller high life

kicks in you do not want to be in line uh you know missing 15 different uh guided by voices songs yeah i mean do you know if uh robert pollard stage banters as good as it used to be oh yeah i saw them uh last year i think it was i think it was 22 it might have been 2021. It must have been 2022. And, I mean, the whole show was great. It was like one of my favorite times seeing them in recent years. But yeah, Pollard is hilarious. Okay. And, you know, I've never been to Dayton, Ohio. I'm excited to go to Dayton. I don't know if I've ever been to Ohio period. What? I'm trying to remember. I don't think I've been to Ohio. Ohio is not close to me. It is like, Ohio is

the Midwest sort of, it's like the edge of the Midwest or the beginning of the East Coast. And you might have to almost split it in the middle with that state. Dayton is on the west end of the state, so you could count that as part of the Midwest. I mean, I'm flying there because it's like an 11-hour drive from where I live, which would be fun on the way, because one of my friends who lives in Wisconsin, and he's going to drive part of the way. But the drive back is bad after a trip like that. I've done that before.

That's when you wish you had the Star Trek technology, you know, that you could just be beamed up. I'll pay $10,000 to beamed out of my hotel room and sent to my home. Yeah. And so I was like, I'm going to get a plane ticket mainly for the way back because it's going to probably, it's going to be a couple days of,

of hitting it and I'm going to be really tired. This is like Labor Day weekend too. Oh, Lord. I want to get back. Actually, Pearl Jam is playing in Minneapolis the day before I go on this trip. So it's going to be, this is like going to test my body here. It's right before I turn 46. I know.

I could have a stroke this weekend. Hopefully that won't happen. It's like the 24 hours of Le Mans for like a 47-year-old like, you know, rock guy. I mean, but I guess like, yeah, this is like, yeah, triathlete here. I'm going to have to be training these next couple months to make sure I'm okay

to survive this time. So it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. But yeah, it's going to be great. I'm excited to go to Dayton. I'm anticipating that there's going to be guest stars, which in the guided by voices world just means that like

some guy that Pollard played baseball with in the 70s will show up with a six-pack on stage, which for me would be a thrill. If that's what it is, it'll be great. Maybe Phoebe Bridgers will show up too. She could just show up with the guy from the baseball team in the 70s. You know, Phoebe just flies in because it's a cool event that she's got to show up at things. So yeah, I don't know. We'll see. It's going to be a good time, I think. Yeah, I'm hoping that, like, Dayton, like, really just lays it all out the way, like, you know, Indio does when Coach Shell is happening, where, like, you see,

these rando houses like yeah pay five dollars for parking in our front lawn it's totally cool like all the uh all like the liquor stores and 7-11s do like guided by voices themed sales and promotions i could see it man again it's labor day weekend so it's a confluence of you know it's already the end of summer you know it's it's it's the end of cookout season and then you've got this guided by voices thing going on it should be pretty incredible um there are some new um albums out this week. And we should touch on these like a little bit. You know, we're going to be getting to our indie cast these here in a minute in one of our categories, as always, is most memory hold album. And we have some candidates, I think, that are coming out this week. I'm

curious to see what kind of legs they have. You have a new Killer Mike record. Yeah, I've listened to, I've listened to that one. Like the first song has a hook from Seelow. It's like one of those albums where I'm just like kind of surprised there isn't any cancel culture bars within the first 10 minutes. But yeah, this sounds like real pull your pants up, dad rap. Well, I heard that there's like some wokeism content. Oh, cool. Is that right?

I mean, I'm sure there is. Like I guarantee there's like a drive-by headline I saw. I thought it says something like killer Mike goes against wokeism. That is like the most predictable fucking. thing imaginable. Like all, like besides the fact that it's being produced by no ID and has like gospel flavor to it. I mean, the guy has a show called trigger warning.

Like, you know he's got like the Bill Maher sort of, you know, the, the Bill Maher trajectory going on where he's just asking questions. I mean, like, we could see this coming a mile away. I tried listening to it yesterday. I know that like a lot of people who are excited about a Queens of the Stone Age record are going to be excited about this too. but yeah, I could not make it halfway through it. Well, it's funny that you mentioned Queens of the Stone Age

because there is a new Queens of the Stone Age album out this week. And I will say, you and I are going to probably disagree on this. I don't know. I've been on a little bit of a Queens kick lately because I recently revisited, like, Clockwork, their 2013 album for a column I'm working on. That's going to come out next week. And I think that's like a,

a quite strong record. I remember liking it at the time, but it was really hitting the spot for me this week, and I definitely feel like it's like the best album they've made outside of the first three. My God is the Sun is, that's such a kick-ass song. And I sat by the ocean, and if I had a tail, and I don't know, there's like a bunch of bangers on that song, on that album. I think it's good.

This new album is called In Time's New Roman. And, um, I'm inclined to give a deferred judgment on this record at the moment because I've been listening to it a bit this week. It reminds me of the first record a little bit and that I think it's like Queens of the Stone Age and like they're weirder guys and like less sort of pop rock feel. Like there's not a ton of catchy songs on this record. It is more of them in that kind of like. dark, disaffected, more experimental mode. And, you know, Josh Omey's been doing all these interviews.

He's talking about how he recently had a cancer scare. And, of course, you know, we've talked about he's had problems. He's gone through a divorce and there's been like custody issues that have played out in the press. He also lost two good friends of his, Taylor Hawkins and Mark Lannigan died. So he's going through all this heavy stuff and you could feel. it on the record. And I don't want to dismiss this record outright because my initial impression is that it's not a great record. But I do wonder if it's going to have some of that like clockwork juice for me moving forward because I think the power of like clockwork is that

it's similarly kind of like a dark vibes type album. And it's not really meant to hit you in the face with a song like Feel Good Hit at the Summer or no one knows, you know, like, like, these undeniable bangers. It's not really made for that. It's more of like a vibe type album. So, well, I don't love this record yet. I don't want to throw it in the memory hole quite at this moment. I feel like I want to sit with this one.

I think it could become a grower record for me. That's another category we have in Indycast. It's like grower album of the year. Maybe this will be a grower album for me in the second half of 2023. Yeah, I listened to it. It's fine. Yeah, like I would, this is kind of spoilt. the comeback category that we have.

But, yeah, I'm like with, with, like, food fighters making, like, such a celebrated return after, you know, what is 10, 15 years of, like, kind of okay stuff. I think that, you know, puts pants like Queens of the Stone Age on notice that, like, hey, you can make a really awesome record this late in your career, you know, kind of similar to what Deftones did with Oms in 2020. of course, I got to mention Jimmy World's Integrity Blues. What would it take for Queens of the Stone Age

to have their version of that? I think that I'm not in a position to appreciate that because the early stuff, that's like, you know, peak dirt bag for both the band and myself. And neither myself nor Josh Homi

really needs to go back to that. Yeah, I don't know. It depends on what you define as a return to form where if you want a record like rated R I don't know if he's interested in that it doesn't seem like he's

been into that lately it is certainly on this record like I don't think he's attempting to do like what Foo Fighters did on their latest which was really go back to the sound of the first three albums and evoke that late 90s period like they haven't

I would say in like 20 years I think it's longer than just 10 or 15 I don't think that's what Josh O'Me is trying to do on this album And again, I'll stump for like clockwork I think that's a really good record I think they've only put out one other album since then I think Billens was the only other record

You're probably right And I can't remember a song from villains I have to say And I reviewed that album Did you know that? I'm sure I did too I'm sure I did too and I don't remember what I thought of it Look at this. On AllMusic Guide, like Clockwork, is a five-star album.

Yeah. It's a good album. It's a good album. I think it's like a quite, it's definitely the strongest album of their post three. First, like, trilogy of the opening salvo from them. Right. And I do get a similar vibe from this record. I think it could age into that, but I think it's an album that you got to give time to

because, again, you're not going to get the adrenaline rush of like a, feel-good hit of the summer from this record. And if you're wondering why we're talking about this band on Indie cast, I keep forgetting they're on Matador now. Yeah, that's true. See, yeah, they're Indy Rock. Yeah. They've been Indy Rock for a while.

I think, like, Clockwork might have been on Matador. It was, yeah. So that was like their first Matador. So they've been, yeah, they've been indie rock for, I mean, you know, for a decade. I mean, we're not normally this, you know, picky in terms of defining indie rock, you know. in terms of label affiliation. All right, well, let's get to our Indycastes here. You know, I mean, there is like that Seguer Rose album that came out this week.

Do we want to mention that at all? I mean, I feel like we should at least mention that that came out. Yeah, I reviewed it. I enjoy it. And, you know, it's funny because they, like Queens of the Stone Age, haven't put out an album or they did. No, they haven't put it out in a decade. I get Quaker and, like, clockwork mixed up in my mind.

Like, that was the metal album Sigler Ross tried to do. I think it was awesome, but it also came out the same day as Sunbather, which, like, rendered it, like, completely redundant. This new one's good. I think Sigler Ross is a future yay or nay for us. I'm very much in the yay category. Yeah, they're like a push for me, because I haven't really gone deep with this band. So I can't yay or nay them. What was the middle one?

The Niac? Neack. Oh, Niac, I try to remember, yeah. Named after that town. Oh, yeah, Niyak, New York. Nyeck, New York. I'll Niac that band for now. Let's get to our Indiecastes here,

because we've got a lot of categories to get to here. And, you know, award shows always run long. So we want to make sure that our listeners, you know, aren't waiting hours and hours throughout all of our categories. You know, I realized that, like, we didn't really list these categories in our outline in order of, like, maybe most anticipated. Is that a problem? Because I'm fine with the order as it is. We're about to find out if it's a problem.

Maybe this is just our way of, like, engagement, you know, or maybe that, like, your average award show. Maybe there's, like, one of the people in, like, the lower ranks at the Grammys or the Oscars listening to this. And it's like, hey, guys, I got this crazy new idea to change our format. Yeah, like, why not do it, like, the inverse. pyramid. Right. Like the news, you get the most important thing at the top and you get less and less important and people can decide whether they want to bail or not.

Yeah, it's like Kiss starting out every show with rock and roll all night and ending it. With what? Like, oh, sorry, ending it with rock. That's what I heard about Kiss is that they begin and end each show with rock and roll all like. Oh, really? I've heard that. I can't verify it, but.

I like it. I like it. All right. Let's get to our first category here. here most valuable album cycle. Now, for new listeners of the show, we've done this category before, and what we mean by most valuable album cycle is,

is this, like, what was the album cycle that gave us the most to talk about on this show? Like, what was the most entertaining? The album itself, like the quality, it doesn't really matter. We're not assessing that in this category. It's purely about the narrative of the album, the discourse. Did it inspire episodes for us?

Did it inspire think pieces for other people? Really kind of leaning into the word valuable here. We're talking valuable for us music pundits out in the world. These are the nominees. And you and I, you know, we both had nominees for this category. We've got Boy Genius, multi-nobes. nominated in the Indycastes this year, of course, because that's like one of the big albums

of the first part of 2023. You have the Dare. Hell yeah. You got the Dare in there. You've got Wednesday. You've got Moniskin. One of the most critically revived albums. Critically revived?

Reviled albums. Blonde Shell, that's you. Yeah. that's like the indie you know that's like the like the like the women talking nominee you know like probably not going to win best picture but you know you want to you want to recognize it and

will yaddy yes so we each picked a winner here so I know what my winner is like what was your winner in this category yeah I think if we're looking at like purely indie it's got to be Wednesday that album cycle made quite a few writers a bit of money. You know, like, everyone got to do an interview for that one.

But when I think of, like, most valuable album cycle, like, you were originally going to make a joke about, like, Joel Embed winning MVP. And, you know, I think of valuable, not in the sense of, like, the best, but, like, the most valuable. Like, if you take away this album cycle, what do we have to talk about? And similar, like, how the Sixers would be, like, a 15-win team without Embed, even if he isn't Yokic. And I'm going to go with the dare. I feel like this is just a, just such a sign of the indefat, I was about say indefatible. That's not a word I should, I should have practiced that word.

Yeah, that's you, that was you like putting up a half court shot right there. That is my, that is my, like, a swaggy pee heat check there. But I think the dare just shows the resilience of indie music Twitter. Like, you know, we always have a lot of doom and gloom on this show about, like, one publication going under and people losing jobs. But I'm of the belief that the indie music's Twitter narrative will always endure. And the dare is just such proof of that because, like we've said on previous episodes, this album is like not that popular. it's made so little impact outside of these little like these little sewing circles on you know, Twitter that it just shows just how resourceful we can be. You know, when there's like even just the tiniest bit of narrative to, you know,

it's like one of those like spongy dinosaurs where you put water on it and it grows to like 15 times the size. I got to say, like I got to say the dare is winning it in 2023. My winner is also the dare. I think this is the obvious choice. And to go back to the sports analogy, I think that you could liken the dare to the Miami Heat in the sense that the heat did not have a whole lot of talent.

They weren't that big. They had injuries. They were always the underdog. And yet they were able to maximize what they had to a degree that almost allowed them, to win the NBA title. And I think with the dare, again, as you said,

not actually that popular, only has one song that has over a million streams. He only has four songs total at this point. And I think that amounts to about 12 minutes of music. And yet, there are online,

if you Google the Dare, sex EP, I counted it up. There are 1.7 million think of. pieces about this record. I might be exaggerating that slightly, but I'm pretty sure I counted it

last night. 1.7 million think pieces about this album. Most of them slamming this album. Actually, it's not an album. It's an EP. Correct. And it's a very short EP. So maybe on a technicality,

it shouldn't even be in this category, because it's not technically an album cycle. But anyway, be that as it may. Yeah, this, this, this, This record has just maximized the outrage so much. And you just wonder, like, is the dare, are they going to have anything left over when they do drop an album?

Or have the think piece, like, resources, already been exhausted. That's going to be the thing that we find out with the dare. Can I just say, like, okay, since we both agree on the dare, I'm also going to throw some love to Monoskin, too. Because Modiskin actually is a popular band. and I've written about this band a few times and can I just say

did very good traffic both times not to break or anything but they brought in the traffic Moduskin so for that I love them but this was another band that people just felt emboldened to like take a shit on and you and I think are always inclined

to defend those bands absolutely because it's a little too easy sometimes to take shots at certain acts. You know, it's like it allows the writer to to sort of posture and strut around like they're this truth teller.

But you're really kind of picking on like the easiest thing that there is to make fun of. But yeah, man, Monoskin. I think Monoskin really gave us a lot to write about in the first half of 2023. So the dare number one, just because of what he maximized, like just the bare minimum material.

and just how much discourse got wrung out of that, I think is an amazing achievement. But Monoskin, I think, is a strong number two. And really, maybe the dare is like Joelle and Bede. And Monoskin is Yokic, because you have maybe the less deserving person winning number one and the actual winner being at number two. Well, I think the similarities between the Dare and Embed end with them being way too, both way too online. But, you know, when it comes to the discourse, the Dair's got that dog in him. He's Jimmy Butler when it comes to that. Yep. It does. Beautiful. All right. Well, now

let's get to our next category. And this is another big one. See, this is one that maybe should have gone at the end. I'm having second thoughts about how we're planning this. But that's okay. I think people will hang in with us. This is most annoying music writer Twitter story. And we've talked about this before on the show. We talked about it last. week how there's a strong favorite here in this category, the everything everywhere all at once of this category, which is the Taylor Swift, Medi-Healy madness. But you know what? I went into our archives to look at other things we talked about so far this year, and I was

surprised that there's actually like a pretty strong field against this frontrunner to the point where I feel like this is way more of a race. than I would have thought. So here we go. Here are the nominees. Taylor Swift, Maddie Healy. You got Frank Ocean at Coachella. You've got Meg White is a bad drummer.

That whole thing. You've got the Beyonce versus Harry Stiles thing at the Grammys. Literally forgot that happened. Yeah, that's this year. That's crazy. But that was this year. No, that was February. So those are the ones I nominated.

Then you had anything about the Eros Tour with Taylor Swift. Another Taylor Swift thing. I don't know. I guess she's double nominated this year. She's like Coppola doing Godfather Part 2 in the conversation. She's just on a roll right now. Dime Square, that whole thing. I guess Indy Slees.

And then Rihanna, quiet quitting the Super Bowl, which you could almost group with Frank Ocean. That could almost be like the same thing where it's people defending bad performances for dubious reasons. I mean, that's the common thread there. So anyway, a strongfield here, who's your winner out of all these nominees?

Yeah, so the fact that we're like double dipping on, you know, the Erestor, like I think that we just need to bring up this one article which blew my mind. It's in Forward. It says Taylor Swift fans have amnesia, so did Jews after Sinai. Swifties can learn how to process their memory loss from the tall mood. I won't get into how this plays it out, but, you know, this has been kind of the baseline for discussion about it. But, you know, if I got to choose one that's like the most annoying, like you would think Taylor Swift and Maddie Healy would win this in a walk. but you know that to me is just like sort of gossip rag type stuff the most annoying music yeah but like there's the element of like oh taylor swift ruined her reputation right with many i think it's more of that stuff and like just going insane right about her love life

more than like them dating period like that is the annoying part of that anyway so for just want to clarify that and that is that's an important clarification but if i'm like reading this like word for word, most annoying music writer Twitter story, it's got to be Frank Ocean at Coachella because people really saw this as some sort of extinction level event in music or at least in like the indie rock narrative. People were talking about like how yeah, this is the end of like the 2010s or how you know artists don't want to be radiohead anymore because people just wouldn't accept the fact that, like, Frank Ocean, you know, maybe didn't think this performance entirely through. And, like, it, not to the same degree that I forgot the Harry Styles versus Beyonce at the Grammys thing happened, but, like, I can't, like, I hadn't thought about this until I saw it in the outline. Because the way people talked about Frank Ocean at Coachella and, like, the, I guess the half-life of that story was just so,

out of proportion that it just seemed to me like, yeah, I was right to be annoyed about this. Okay, I got to say, this is a weird thing. I'm going to agree with you again. Frank Ocean at Coachella, that's what I had written down. I don't know if, like, Taylor Swift and Medi Healy, if that was too strong of a frontrunner and we got fatigue with that, and now we're looking at alternatives. I think it burned too bright too quick. But I think Frank Ocean at Coachella, what is annoying about it to me,

is that you had the material there for this to be one of the most fun stories of the half year because you have this pop star headlining at Coachella with an insanely elaborate show that doesn't make any sense. He's got like figure skaters in there. He's got like all of this production going on. And it just seemed like at some point he realized

that this was like a shit show and it just wasn't going to work. And I just feel like there was so much material there for us just to have fun with it to like laugh about it. But no, you can't do that, especially with someone like Frank Ocean, where there's a cohort of people out there that will take every single thing that he does with so much seriousness. And it's like to laugh at Frank Ocean is like, you know, you know, urinating on the crucifix or something, like for a Christian person. Like it's like a sacrilege for people. And I think.

think it's that aspect of it that I find the worst part of that story. Because this ties to the Rihanna thing is that we're in this era now where you can't just sit back and laugh at pop stars failing. They used to be like a reliable

source of entertainment. Like a pop star would go on television. They lay an egg. People crack a bunch of jokes and we move on. And it's just the gay old time that we have. You can't really do that as much anymore. It's like, no, we have to read in, we have to do like the four-dimensional chess with

this. And we have to look at Frank Ocean or Rihanna. And we have to say that on some level, it's noble that they, you know, shit the bed with these performances, that they were doing something intentional with this, that this is something that you ought to salute. And I should say, in fairness to Rihanna, Rihanna is pregnant. She was at the Super Bowl. So I cut her a lot more slack. Frank Ocean, I think. And I even cut him some slack. Because in terms of like, you know, him being in the situation where he's over his head and it just didn't work and it's kind of a disaster. But yeah, I think just the conversation about it, it's so lacking in like a sense of fun. You know, and it's so like goddamn serious about these people.

Like, can't we just laugh about this disastrous Coachella thing? Like, I just feel like that would be healthier for all of us to be able to do that. Yeah, I just want to point out that you mentioned both shitting the bed and pissing on the cross. I mean, I just got to point out to our audience that Steve has been watching The Idol, so maybe he's going for a slightly more edgy talk about it. That's true. Yeah. But yeah, I think you're right.

I'm just like, if we have like post-production, Brian can, like, pipe in Led Zeppelin. Does anyone remember laughter? Does anybody remember laughter? Yeah, we just up the demographic age to like 45 with that joke. Oh, my God. We were doing a piss-poor job of appealing to the youth. But, yeah, yeah, we're going to have like AARP commercials in this show, like, before we know it. But, yeah, I don't know.

I'm amazed how much we're agreeing so far. I was not expecting us to agree. I think we're about to have some disagreements, I think. I'm looking forward to it. Judging by our outline, we have some disagreements coming up. But right now we're on the same page. Let's get to our next category. Most memory holdings.

album. Now we talked about this already with some of the records coming out this week. If we wonder if those are going to be memory hold. Memory holing, of course, this is where we're talking about records that just came and went very quickly and just seemed very forgettable like already. And it's not necessarily that these are bad albums. They just don't seem like particularly like impactful albums, particularly for the artists that we're talking about. These are all artists who are like significant, you know, who are famous, who have put out much beloved music in the past, who you would expect to have a little bit more of an impact, but it just seems like they put out records that people forgot pretty quickly. So the nominees here are M83. I'm going to do

a heavy sigh before this first one. I feel bad about this. I'm not saying they're going to win the national. Gorillas. Don't feel bad about that. at all. And then you put Shania Twain and Miley Cyrus. I did. Those are two good choices. Shania Twain, I don't remember

her album at all. So maybe I should pick that one. I do feel like Shania Twain is like a way past her commercial prime. I guess there is this thing of like people wanting to

reassess her catalog. I mean, is that what you mean? that there was an opportunity to do that and it didn't exactly happen? Yeah, absolutely. The only reason I would have, like, Shania Twain and Miley Cyrus, and I think we could put, like,

Ray Shremard in there as well, is that you get, there's like this buildup, this, like, ambient sense that, you know, like most things from, you know, previous ever that were popular and perhaps not taking all that seriously as pop that, like, people were really gearing up

to, like, make a full body defense of, like, yeah, they're, like, better than ever. And like, and then they just really, release these albums that just kind of flop and you can just sense the disappointment in people where it's like man I like I know I hate when I have like a narrative built up to like talk about a legacy act and like they just don't come through for me so I could see the air coming out of the balloon with those particular acts well what's your winner here we've got some pretty strong candidates here I think I know who I'm going to pick but I'm curious like what's your most memory hold album

So I'm not willing to write the national off just yet because of the tour that's happening. And by the way, I got to mention the 11-year-old girl that I saw at the Boy Genius show wearing a 2023 The National Tour T-shirt. Nice. I'm dying to know what her favorite song is. But I'm going to go with gorillas here, and I'll tell you why. Like, maybe it's not the biggest flop of the bunch. But my favorite, I just love the possibility. I'm not saying this is happening,

but just the mere possibility that this album flopped so hard that Damon Alburn actually felt like fuck, I got to make a blur album now. So we might be seeing like the real-time impact of Gorillas kind of flopping here. Yeah, I mean, again,

we've talked about this on the show. Like, Gorillas is a... I don't understand, like, how that's a legacy band, but they are, undeniably. It's very weird to me, though, like the career that they've had, that they are bigger than Blur, at least in America. But as you said, now Damon Alburn is going back to Blur.

I don't really know if that's like an upgrade for him. Like, that's a record. I don't see anyone younger than us caring about. That is like a memory hold, like, that is the, that is in pole position for, you know, the second half. I'm going to go with M83 And I don't feel good saying that Because I actually kind of like that album There's a couple songs in particular

There's a song Laura on that record That I think is really beautiful And I go back to that every now and then But I just go back to the fact that M83 has I think The best or the biggest indie pop hit of the 2010s In Midnight City Like this incredibly popular

Very influential song And it's kind of it after that. You know, you've got, like, that record they put in 2016 with the Muppet on there. What's that record called? Junk. Junk.

Yeah. And this was Anthony Gonzalez, you know, purposely going back to his classic sound. And it just seemed like maybe you and I care and other people of our generation. It seemed like nobody cared and that album just disappeared instantly.

So I don't know. it's one of those things where you look at it and you go, oh yeah, I guess M83 isn't as big of a deal as I would have thought. You know, like, this is like, okay, this has been a reality check for me with this band. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt until I see them on tour, which is happening in the fall. Like, I just, I feel like I'm a little too biased, like to call it the most memory hold album, even if it is a strong candidate. Because, you know, I've interviewed Anthony Gonzalez a bunch of times. and if it were up to him, like, this is exactly the kind of, this is exactly the kind of response he was looking for,

where it's just like, yeah, maybe he won't shit on it as much, but I don't want to get bigger than I already am. And, you know, like, it's not like the foo fighters, like trying to go back to their sound or something like that. But, yeah, it's, they're kind of in that MGMT sort of mode right now where they, if they can just put out albums every five or six years, and I think that Anthony Gonzalez likes Midnight City more than MGMT likes kids or electric feel. But yeah, it's definitely not a bad choice.

Let's get to our next category here. It's called Comeback of the Year. Big category here. The nominees are Foo Fighters, Yola Tango, bully, youth lagoon. And look, okay, you're going to have to explain this last one. This is definitely like the Louis C.K. winning a guy. Grammy nominee here at the Indycassies. You put Arcade Fire and comeback of the year.

Now, can you explain why you put them there? Yeah, because our listeners can't read our outline. Like, I can't make the Twitter, like, in parentheses, derogatory joke. But they're low-key getting booked for festivals again. Like, they played, I think, something in the water, the Ferrell Festival in Virginia, and I see them at the top of other one. I, look, I didn't, it's not that, like, I find it. wholly unexpected, but I didn't think it would be this quick. This is definitely like,

you know, Dave Chappelle or like Louis C.K. Netflix special type career arc going on. Who knows what, like, maybe they're just going to, I'm really going out on a limb here, but like, I get on Facebook and through emails, like, advertisements for like Ryan Adams coming into town. And these shows, like, do pretty well. so I don't know if they're just going to be a mega version of that, but yeah, they did not go away for very long. Well, next year is the 20th anniversary of funeral, and I assume that they'll do some sort of anniversary tour for that,

which may be the real comeback for them on the road. But yeah, you said, like, Ryan Adams is touring with the Cardinals this year, and he does well with his solo acoustic stuff. It just goes to show again, an old truism, that only the people who like you can cancel you. If the whole rest of the world thinks you're a scumbag, it doesn't matter. As long as there's 20,000 people in every city on the tour map that wants to buy a ticket to your show, you can make a living doing that.

I mean, I'm curious to see what their situation will be when the album comes out, like their next record. Because, you know, it's not the Win Butler band. There are other people in that band. You know, and maybe if you're a publicist, you say, well, what about the rest of the band? Right. You know, maybe that's the angle. I don't know.

They're not going to win this category, though. They're not for me anyway. Yeah. Who's your winner and comeback of the year? All right. So, I mean, for me, like, a comeback, like, as far as the most interesting comeback, it's not, like, the one where you, you know, come back from, like, a long hiatus and function at a high level, you know, like, my buddy Valentine did.

Nor is it a situation, like, you'll always. tango where, you know, every 10 years they come back and make, like, they make great albums, and then they come back, like, every 10 years, make a really great album. You know, that is just what Yoletango does. So it's not entirely unexpected they would, you know, come through in 2023 with, you know, their most celebrated album in a long time. To me, the most, like, the highest degree of difficulty for a comeback is to be, like a band that was, like, kind of popping for a while, like, you know, a blog rock buzzbin, or, you know,

a blog rock type, buzzy band. like kind of disappear for a bit and then make an album that's actually like, wait, this is actually really good and have it be celebrated. I think we saw that with like, say, Simblesi Kuit Cuitars with Luz. And so this is why I'm going to put Youth Lagoon in there. I know this is like kind of a recent one, but like when you look at the trajectory of that band, their first two records fucking awesome still hold up. But, you know, there are a band that people could lose sight of.

There are a remember some guys type early aughts band. And for like a very long time, he wasn't even doing stuff under Youth Lagoon. Like, first off, his name is Trevor Powers, which is an awesome name. I would never have chosen, you know, an artist's name. But he was doing kind of like a, you know, we have perfume genius at home sort of art rock thing. And, you know, when I heard his new album, which is having as a junkyard, came out last week, I'm like, wait, this is not only good. This is really good. And that is such a high degree of difficulty.

I think we can put bully in there a bit as well. Maybe less so because she's been more consistent over the years. But it's not the biggest comeback of the year, but it's the highest degree of difficulty. So I got to celebrate that. Yeah, when you were doing your preamble, I thought you were going to say bully, who if I was going to go with your argument,

that's the band I would have chosen out of our nominees. and it's a little bit different because, you know, Alicia from Bowley, she's been making records pretty consistently over the past six, seven years. And I've liked her records to varying degrees, but it did feel like maybe she was starting to fade a little bit. It felt like the records were a little samey to me. I was definitely less excited to hear her fourth album than I was, like her first or second album.

And then she puts out this record this year called Lucky Flee. for you. And it's one of those albums where you kind of have to do a double take because I remember this came out. I saw it in my email box and I was like, oh, it's a new bully album. I'm not going to rush to hear that. And then you see other people talking about it being like, no, this is actually like a really good record. And then I went to listen to it and I was like, wow, this is actually maybe my favorite thing she's ever done. Like I like this album a lot. And it just goes to show, you can make one of your best records on like your, what, like fourth or fifth album. Yeah.

Sometimes it takes a while to really have things come together. I mean, that used to be a more common trajectory, I think, in the pre-internet era, where you had the time to build up to a really good record. But I think it really worked for bully. So I like that record a lot. I put that in my top 15 albums of the first half of the year. I like it quite a bit. But for me, the obvious choice is Foo Fighters.

You know, you've got Taylor Hawkins passing away. It's unsure of whether they're even going to continue as a band. You also have the fact that, you know, they've been around for like 30 years. And, you know, I love the first three albums. I like Wasting Light from 2011. But other than that, there's a lot of sort of samey-sounding arena rock records that I don't dislike, but I don't really love. And then this album comes out, and I'm just kind of blown away by how much I liked it. I think there's a lot of good songs on that record.

It's an album that was so surprising to me that I had to check myself that I wasn't overrating it. I do think that some of the response to it has been like a little over the top. Like, you know, people have called it a masterpiece. I don't think it's a masterpiece. But I do think it's their best record since the late 90s. And I think it's like the best possible version of a Food Fighter's record that you could get. The songs on that record, they feel more. like the more personal statements

that Dave Groh was doing on records like the color and the shape and like the self-titled record as opposed to like him trying to be like the mayor of rock again. You know, these broad statements where I'm going to experiment or I'm going to show that rockers

can also play songs by the Bee Gees and, you know, that kind of stuff. Or I'm going to go on the Grammys with Dead Mouse and I'm going to, you know, show the versatility of a band like this. This is just about writing like good, honest rock songs and it was really refreshing for me. And that's another record that I put on my top 15 list.

I like that record quite a bit, way more than I would have expected. Let's get to our last category. And this is the Them album of the year. This is the album where for us, there's the biggest discrepancy between the critical acclaim and how we personally feel about the album. So, like, you look at the reviews and you say,

them, they're getting all this stuff. The nominees are, boy genius, foo fighters. You put foo fighters. I put food fighters on there. Even though you reviewed the album for Pitchfork. I did. So you're part of the critical acclaim, but you're also theming your own review, essentially, in this category, possibly. Let's pause that for a second.

I want to hear more from you on that. Eve's two more. And then JPEG Mafia, Danny Brown. Now, I disagree on Eust two more. I think that's a great record. I haven't really listened to the JPEG Mafia Danny Brown album. I mean, I think it's between those two that I'd mentioned first, right? Well, I feel like there's not a lot of drama in this category.

Unless you're going to pull a curveball on me. Because I feel like you want to say foo fighters here. Oh, let me just explain, because you were absolutely correct in that I was part of the critical acclaim, but I gave this album a 7.0, which I think puts me way at the bottom of the reviews happening for this. Like, I dragged down that Metacritic score. I think this, at 7.0 might be the highest of Food Fighters album has ever gotten in pitch for. I remember, like, looking at, like, through it and, like, the color and the shape when it was reissued, I got to put Stuart Berman on blast here. like this guy gave it a, yeah, it was a 5.8, which is really something else.

But here's why, because this is one of the most celebrated, like one of the most, not even most celebrated, most critically acclaim. Like you're talking about people are calling it masterpiece. And look, I'm pro food fighters. Everlong is my take for like the best rock song of the 90s. When I'm spicier, I'll say it's better than any Nirvana song, which is more or less saying the same thing, but just different ways of phrasing it. And look, the first Food Fighters album, the color of the shape, I wouldn't even say those are

masterpieces. Like, they're good albums. I enjoy them. But, I mean, there's filler on the color and the shape. There are songs that are cringe on the color and the shape. So I get where people are coming from. And I'm going to let Dave have his moment. But I think that it's an album that, like, people allow themselves to get carried away with.

but otherwise I'm surprised you didn't put Caroline Polichick in here Yeah well okay here's the thing with Caroline Polichick Is that that record is actually Grown on me a bit more Since it's come out Like we did have a category We had to cut it for time here

Because our show is running along But we had a grower of the year category And I already talked about how 100 Gecks really grew on me over the year And that became one of my favorite albums of 2023 so far. Caroline Polichick hasn't risen that high for me yet, but my only

thing with that is that that is the most well-reviewed album of the year, according to Metacritic. It has a 94. That's like to pimp a butterfly, like fetch the bolt cutters type numbers. So I would only maybe pick that album

just in terms of like the praise that I don't think it deserves a 94. But the album I did choose, and I don't want to keep picking on this band, but the obvious choice for me, as obvious as Food Fighters are comeback of the year, for me, like the Them album

is Boy Genius, which is the second highest reviewed album of the year. It has a 90. Which is pretty much higher than any album that the individual boy geniuses have done on their own. And I've said this before on the show.

I don't want to beat this horse to death, but I just don't think this album is as good as what these artists have done in their own. And I don't really even like it as much as like the, the, the, the original Boy Genius EP. I think that there was a certain amount of bloat with the coverage of this record this year, where it felt, I don't know, there was like a definite lack of critical discernment, I think, with this record. That I think over time is probably going to hurt this record because I don't think it lives up to the press that it got.

And that says that's not to take anything away from the individual songwriters because I like them all on their own. I think they all do good work. But to me, this is an example of three streams of goodwill being at their peak and it paying off here. And maybe this wasn't the album that deserved that amount of payoff. I just don't think that these are like their best songs. I think there's some good songs on there. I also think that there's some pretty weak songs. on there as well.

I think that there's certain songwriting traits that all three of them have that could be looked at more critically and I think they're being encouraged in a way that I don't think is going to be helpful to their art later on. I think that there could be more of a discerning eye with some of the lyrics

that they wrote on this record. There's some real groaners on this album and I wouldn't necessarily say that about their previous records. There's just like a real sort of high on their own supply. feel to this album to me that I think is maybe

going to make it aged not quite as well when we listen to it in a year or two. But maybe you'll say that about my take on this album. I don't know. But that's just how I feel about this record at the moment. Yeah, it's interesting because the people I talk about my friend

Ali is like a boy genius fan and they're like the stereotypical boy genius fan. Like they're 29 like recently non-binary was wearing a boy genius shirt and I talked to her about the concert that from last week and she was like, yeah, you know, I like the first couple songs. Then it got kind of samey.

Like, I think a lot more people have that opinion than are willing to let on. But yeah, I mean, but it makes sense. And also, like, I put the JPEG Mafia Danny Brown album in there to kind of bookend the Boy Genius album because, you know, as everyone who's familiar with that album knows, the JPEG Mafia Daddy Brown album is called Scarein the Hose. So, you know, there's kind of a self-awareness to that, which, you know, for a certain subset of music listeners, like the album of the year or rate your music kind of nerds, that's their version of Boy Genius.

So, and, you know, I think it's overrated. I think that the Billy Woods' Kenny Segal album fit that same bill and did it much better. But I'm going to go with a little bit of a curveball. and, you know, I understand the, I understand like kind of the parissocial aspect of Boy Genius and JPEG Mafia and Danny Brown, but Eve's tumor is the one that baffles me the most. I think that Eve's tumor visually, like they do a lot of things that people say they want out of rock music. And I don't think it's a bad out by any stretch of the imagination. But particularly with this one, I find myself going back to their earlier material because the newer stuff just seems kind of conventional. to me in a way that's like not really satisfying like it reminds me of like how people would talk about like

St. Vincent is like St. Vincent's the new Bowie, St. Vincent's the new like talking heads. And for Eve's tumor, it's like, man, this is just like Prince. And I can't remember a single song from the new album. I think Eve's tumor kind of sort of like St. Vincent is becoming this avatar for like what Rock is supposed to be or the future of Rock but it's always framed through like a backwards looking lens

so not a bad out by any stretch but I think that there's just kind of this reflex that Eve's tumor brings up that I find that isn't really given a lot of scrutiny so yeah I disagree with that I don't think of them as like the future of rock

I think of it more as like a more decadent alternative to what currently feels awfully wholesome in the mainstream of indie music. We are definitely in a period where things just feel very straight, I think. And when you have a record, like that E's Toomer record, which is bracing more of like a decadent type aesthetic, it just feels refreshing. And this goes back to the indie sleeves conversation. It goes back to like monoskin.

You know, like this has been like a thread, I think, in 2023, where you are seeing people reacting against the sort of singer-songwriterification of indie music. And like, look, I love singer-songwriters as much as anyone, probably more than most people. But we are awfully singer-songwriter heavy right now. And it just feels like we maybe need something else here. You know, something that's like a little sexier, grittier. again, more decadent. That, I think, might be something that people want more and more as this decade unfold. It's going to be interesting to see how that happens because we're coming out again of

like the COVID era. We're all sequestered, you know, in our homes. We're very separate from people. But now, you know, we're starting to like rub shoulders again. We're maybe a little less afraid of germs. You know, people want to be swapping different kinds of fluids maybe. don't know. I don't want to go too deep into that. That could just be like what we see in the 2020s.

I'm very curious what the young people out there are going to embrace as we move forward. Yeah. And I think Eve's tumor like goes for that in a way that I find admirable. But I remember someone I was talking to about the first record, or not the first record, but the first one that came out on XL, like the one with void on it, which is my favorite Eve's tumor song. They said it sounds like orgy. And I'm like, man, I really wish the new. new stuff sounded more like orgy, you know, like the real trashy pop bangers. The orgy asance is upon us.

We'll see what happens. I will ride for Stitches. Like, if you follow me on Twitter, like every couple of weeks, I was just post about how Stitches is just such a fucking awesome song. So if you're listening, Eve's Tumor, I, you know, I'm kidding because I love. I'm trying to help you out here, man. Now we've now reached a part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? So, yeah, I got to give a shout out here to our pal, Chris Payne.

Friend of the pod, a friend in person. He wrote for Billboard for a long time. Comes out to San Diego every now and again for Dia de los Deftones. But his book came out called Where Are Your Boys Tonight? The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion, 1999 to 2008. shout out to Chris for not kind of stepping over the book proposal I'm putting together. He's covering more of the, you know, MySpace, basically like Fall Out Boy, but also Coburn Starship, Jim Class Heroes.

And his goal was to create a Meet Me in the Bathroom, but for emo of that era. And even if that just sounds like the most repulsive thing to you, to me it's not. I like the music. I like the oral history format. If you could also read Meet Me in the Bathroom, even if you could also read Meet Me in the bathroom, even if you don't like the strokes or Interpol, because there's always fun stuff happening when there's money in the music industry, particularly for, like, you know, rock bands who aren't particularly self-aware. And so you get a lot of the gossip, you get a lot of the cool

stories. If you like the music, you get to see where these guys kind of evolved from in a way that's, like, entertaining, but also edifying. So I'm also in this book. You know, I think that's worth mentioning. So, you know, I'm like changing stories with like Max Bemis from say anything in a way that feels, you know, it feels very validating for me. So if you like the stuff I talk about, if you like that music and if you like, you know, indie dirt gossip, where are your boys tonight out in stores? Yes, and I'll recommend this book as well. I actually blurbed this book. So I've read it. I enjoyed it for all the reasons that you said. I mean, these books are always super fun. You can just pick it up, put it on your coffee table, you know, just crush a chapter.

You're going to just have a good time. You're probably going to want to read more than one chapter in a row because it's just that kind of book. I got to shout out my boy Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers. He has an archival release coming out this week. It's the anniversary edition of the Dirty South. I guess this is billed as the 20th anniversary of the Dirty South, even though that record came out in 2004, so it's technically the 19th anniversary of the Dirty South. But this is an interesting version of the record instead of just like giving you the record you already own and throwing in some bonus tracks or outtakes or whatever. They've actually reimagined this album, added three songs, they remix four songs.

And perhaps most like controversially, they re-recorded two of the vocals. And I just got to say, you know, I love the Dirty South. We've talked about Drive-by truckers on the show before. this is my favorite of their albums. So I have mixed feelings about going in George Lucas style and changing a record that I already love. But if you just imagine that this is just like an alternate version of the album, it's very fascinating.

And it's interesting to see, you know, where their heads were at when they were making the record and like how they look at it now. There's a big booklet in the record that goes deep into the making of the album. And you've got Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell all doing like track by track commentary in there. So it's great. And it doesn't replace the original album,

but it's like a good sort of adjunct to this record that you may already love or if you haven't heard it yet, you will hopefully come to love because I think it is a masterpiece. I will use that word with the Dirty South. So yeah, definitely check that out. 20th anniversary of the Dirty South. Great record. Very interesting archival release of that album.

Yeah. I'm predicting a TikTok. praise that, you know, doing the Danko manual shuffle. That would be amazing. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news and reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mixedape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie.

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