Indiecast - Reviews of New Albums by Phoebe Bridgers, L'Rain and Hovvdy

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Steven and Ian start with an extended riff on "Alt-Rock Is Dead" albums from 1996, including classics by Pearl Jam and Weezer as well as way too much conversation about Crash Test Dummies (1:35). Then they do their first fantasy album draft update in a long time (17:58), which eventually leads to discussion about new albums by Phoebe Bridgers (25:51), L'Rain (39:56), and Hovvdy (45:42). In Recommendation Corner (55:50), Ian recommends Hana Streetton and Steven recommends Sam & Louise Sullivan.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indicast is presented by Amazon Music. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we review new albums by Phoebe Bridgers, Lorraine, and Howdy. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's a big fan of the second president of the United States of America album, the one released in 1996. Ian Cohen.

Ian, how are you? I mean, I know we put a gag at the beginning usually, but you know damn well. I am more than familiar with their lead single, Mach 5. Wow. That got a little bit of airplay on WDRE in Philadelphia. So, yeah, it's crazy. I've not thought of that song for 30 years because- Dropping some second, which was called two, Roman numeral two,

the second president of the United States of America album. how many people listening to our show remember the presidents of the United States of America? Quite a few. You think so? I think it's pretty, yeah. I think just kind of based on, you know, the sort of people that were really sending us nice emails during our hiatus. Yeah. Yeah, I would say very, very likely to be high.

I also wonder how many of them are trying to think, like, where are they going with this? Well, okay, so last week on my substack evil speakers, I wrote a big essay about albums from 1996, which if you know math, you know it's the 30th anniversary of all these albums this year. And I was really fixated on what I call Alt Rock is Dead albums. albums that came out that year from bands that had huge multi-platinum success just a few years earlier, and then they put out albums in 1986 that at the time were considered letdowns or even failures, even though a lot of these records are now considered classics, and by modern standards, they would be considered successes. just to give some examples of what I'm talking about, Weezer's Pinkerton is an example of this.

No Code by Pearl Jam. Down on the Upside by Soundgarden. Tiny Music by Stone Temple Pilots. New Adventures in High Five by REM. Recovering the satellites by Counting Crows. How could I have not have mentioned that already? All these records, again, that we look back on and a lot of people are fan of these records. I'm a fan of these albums. These are some of my favorite albums of all time. But they're albums that I love, in part, because they were part of this year where it just felt like the rug was pulled out of alternative rock. Some of these types of records came out in 95. One Hot Minute by Red Hat Chili Peppers, I think, would fall under this category. One of your favorites of this kind, Exit the Dragon by Urge Overkill, was in 95. It will get to this, because you had albums that you were suggesting to me.

And I also thought urge overkill was a 96 album, but that is technically 95. I think U2 Pop also falls into this, but that came out in 97. It was supposed to come out in Christmas time of 96, but it got delayed. I mean, it should have come out in 96. But anyway, this was a genre that I love writing about. These were records that all came out, you know, my senior year of high school, and then my freshman year of college, so it was a transitional year for me as well. But I feel like you have opinions on this.

I wanted to bring this up on the show. 96 is an incredible year, I think, for music. But this specific type of album, this album from, again, like bands that were really, really kind of on top of the music world. And now, by 96, you've got new metal, like, like, corns, Life is Peachy came out, I think in the fall of 96. That's really the beginning, I think, of this new wave or part of the beginning of that. You got boy bands coming in. The late 90s are about to start. The early 90s are over.

I'll give the floor to you. Because you have thoughts on this as well. Yeah, at the moment you published this, I'm like immediately texting you. He's like suggesting other albums that you might have missed. This is so in my alley because I love how... I knew you would be into this. Yeah, because I was 16 at that time, which is also a very transitional year. But I love how, you know, the end of alt rock.

Alt Rock is dead is both true and not really true in the same way DJ Shadow would said like why hip hop sucks in 96, even though that was the year that reasonable doubt came out and AT aliens and, you know, Mob Deep's Hell on Earth. Like there are plenty of huge alt rock albums that came out in 1996. But at the same time, we're talking at a specific kind of Alt Rock album. And there were so many. Even before you kind of gave form to this, I thought of a lot of these as having very similar stylistic, very similar stylistic moves, which is that they would tune the guitars down to E flat from standard. They would have black and white covers that were kind of grainy, little Anton Corbin on a budget.

And unexpectedly, quote unquote, aggressive lead singles. I'm thinking Angels of the Silences by Counting Crows. the King of New Orleans by Better than Ezra, which had kind of a math rock breakdown. Right. And yeah, and they all have this spiritual sense of the party's over, right? Because like you were saying, these albums sold gold or like platinum, which was considered a flop. And I want you to remember, or the listener to remember, I know you know this, that CDs cost

1799, 1996. There was no equivalent streaming. There was no, there was no way to kind of cheat it. I did the math for inflation. I don't think CD prices would have kept going up if things remained the same. But 1799 in 1996 is $38 in today's money. Imagine paying that for, you know, Sponges Wax Ecstatic, which is classic in all of these regards. The lead single is so awesome.

Oh, yeah. But, yeah. Great, great STP ripoff. Yeah, I mean, well, it's funny because people pay that amount of money for vinyl now. Yes. So in a way, we are seeing people willing to pay those prices. But yeah, you're right. I mean, this idea of we're going to make a record that is challenging in some way,

that is maybe more abrasive than the music that we were known for. I mean, you mentioned counting crows, them being a classic example of, like, we used to make this folk rock music that, you know, I think that record sold like 8 million copies or something, just talking about August and everything after. And then they decide, we want to sound more like Pearl Jam on the second album. Right when Pearl Jam is deciding that we don't really want to sound that much like Pearl Jam anymore, like on their own album.

One thing that was really fun for me, doing this column, along with writing about these more famous records that I love, was really digging into the lesser-known albums, the albums that we don't remember. And just remembering how many bands at that time, time had really, really big success in 93-94, and now we're trying to follow it up and really had no shot at all. Yeah. At ever topping what they just did. I mean, my favorite example of this is probably crash test dummies, which again,

we're remembering some guys here early in the episode. But for those who don't remember, do you remember crash test dummies? Of course, yeah. That was like one of the few vocalists that can actually hit without Charlie. lying that hard. Right. So Crash Test Dumbies, the Canadian band, lead singer, I believe his name is Brad Roberts. You know his name is Brad Roberts. Very Canadian-sounding rock singer. They have this album from 1993 called God Shuffled His Feet, and the single was, mm-mm-mm-mm. I think it was three ums. Yes. And that's the chorus, like the guy sings, um-mm-in the chorus. And he just,

this ridiculous voice. It's like a basset hound is singing. This album, God Shuffled His Feet sold 8 million copies worldwide. Eight million copies. So it was doing August and everything after numbers? I can't believe that. Well, worldwide. I think August probably did better worldwide. I think it was about 8 million just in the U.S. Yes. Because again, you know, crash test dummies. They're from Canada. So they were an export, you know, so we're part of the international sales tally here in the States. But just to go back to your CD thing there, I mean, people were buying the CD for that one song for some reason. They heard that song on the radio and they thought, I want to hear this again, which is inexplicable to me that you would actually want your own copy of this song.

But anyway, 8 million copies of that album. and then they put out their next record in 96. Do you know what this album's called Ian? If you know this, I mean, you might have read it in my piece, so you might remember it from that. But do you know the follow-up to God Shuffle His Feet by Crash Test Dummies? I do, and it's a Worms Life, which I have to separate from Dog's Eye View, which was like, that was like Adam Durrance's boys, right? Like, Dogs Eye View?

Dog's Eye View? Yeah, I think that was like a sort of band that was put on in, around that time. They had a song called Everything Falls Apart. Which I can't. Yeah, but yeah, it's a worm's life. I have vague, but almost certainly real memories of reading probably a review in Rolling Stone. Like I would, you know, back before like the internet was the internet, what I would do to kill time is just read and reread Rolling Stone issues. And so I probably read a three-star review of a worm's life. or two and a half, whatever it was, probably five times. So it lives in my brain. This happened. It's very real.

And yeah, there's like a ton of other albums that fit this mold. Like, does this when Blind Melon Soup came out? No, that was the previous year. Blind Melon put out an album called Nico in 1996, which was a posthumous record of leftover tracks. Because Shannon Houn died in 95, I think right after soup came out. So I did write about Nico in that column. But, yeah, that's from 95.

One album I really got into from writing this column was The Lemonheads Car Button Cloth. I don't know if you've ever listened to that album. Oh, absolutely. I reviewed Come on Feel the Lemonheads. I did the reissue of that, which was hilarious because, how are you going to buy the reissue of an album that is available in dozens at every single you CD store? But yeah, I remember Car Button Cloth. If I could talk, I would tell you. That was the last great song. Great. And that whole album, I think, is really good. And it falls into this category

because you know, because you have the albums, like the crash test dummies type albums where it's like a band that sold an inexplicable amount of records earlier in the 90s. And then they're trying to come back in 96 and it falls apart. I mean, who did in the blowfish, Fairweather Johnson is like the Bellwether record of that. That of them sold like 2 million copies. Yeah,

flop, huge flop. Exactly. You know, like, cracked review sold like 14 or 15 million, which they were not going to do again. No. But they did 2 million of Fairweather Johnson. And look,

I'll defend Fairweather Johnson. Anyone out there in the streets? Tuckerstown. Tuckerstown. Old Man and Me? Yeah. Good song. You know, they're, I don't know.

I have a soft spot for Hootie. I think they're a totally fine college music type band, you know, from the 90s. I mean, they come from that same world, I think, as Dave Matthews band. They absolutely do, yeah. University of South Carolina, as opposed to Virginia, yeah. They're playing, like, the frat parties in the South, which, look, if I was at a fred party in, like, 91, and Hootie rolled up. and it's like the early 90s

and you're just hanging out in Virginia or something that'd be a good time dude people had stories about Dave Matthews bandit when I went to Virginia I went in 98 which was the year before these crowded streets came out but you would hear people talk about like yeah man I saw I saw Dave Matthews

at Delta Cig or I saw him at Millers and Boyd was hanging out like oh yeah yeah that blues traveler all the Horde tour bands right right you just have so many people talking about. Big Head Tot and the Monsters, if you were kind of more in the Mountain West,

Guster, if you were in the Northeast. This is a whole, we could go. They don't really have that to the same degree in the Midwest. I feel like in the East Coast, just because things are so much closer together, you could be a band like that and just tour frats and really make it big. So that scene, I'm a little envious of that.

I kind of wish I, you know, put on your best post. shirt, you know, in your best cargo shorts and go out to the frat party on a Saturday night, go here hooty. Carbon leaf. Yeah, that carbon leaves a deep cut. If you're from Virginia in the late 90s, you know carbon leaf. Some people got mad at me that I didn't write about, I did mention the Dave Matthews band

album that came out in 96, which is crash. But that's not part of this genre. No. They're not part of the death of Alt Rock. They were ascendant. I mean, Dave Matthews and Rage Against the Machine are like the two. And I guess you could group radio head in this too. We're O'Doway as well.

Yeah, Beck, yeah. I mean, there's definitely examples of artists that started in the 90s and then they were able to survive later on. Yeah, Odley coming out in 96. I didn't mention that in this column because that's not part of the death of Alt Rock. Beck was ascendant that year. So, man, we could do like a multi-part. series on 1996.

It is such a rich, rich text. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I feel like if I say anything else about this, we're going to be talking about it for another 20 minutes. So maybe we ought to move on. Because we do have a lot of new albums. Yeah, I know. To talk about this week.

It's a rare, it's definitely a change of pace for us. Well, I know. I mean, we survived the fallow period. July was a fallow period. Now we're getting a bunch of albums out this week. Next week there's a ton of albums coming out. August 21st. I don't know if you've peaked ahead to that.

I know about one of them because, you know, it's like the most indie cast band alive. Yeah, Wild Pink. They're dropping their record. Do you have it in you to have more Weezer discourse? Ian, there's another Weezer. Are we going to have the... You know what, this one has discourse. This one has discourse to it.

I know it's got Carly Hartman on the single, which I've seen at the gym somehow. Yeah, I think I'm ready to go back with Weasor Discourse. I mean, it almost be fun to do like a history of Weasor Discourse. Maybe I should write about this, where how many waves of are they back, they're not back, are they back? Are they back? You know, how many waves of that have there been? I mean, really, that's their whole career. I already talked about Pinkerton.

I mean, Pinkerton is the example of an album coming out. I mean, that album was voted. This is like a famous thing. Rolling Stone Readers voted that. like the third worst album of 96. Yeah, and I know that because I had to correct the record because so many people would say it was the worst one. Not true.

I think DJ Spooky was above that. And some other album I can't remember. It was definitely number three. I think that's the only 10 I've ever given a pitchfork. Oh, yeah. Great, great record. I loved it at the time. Same.

Screw the critics. But the thing with Weaser, too, is that I think critics perceive them as like a craft. Test Dummies or a Presidents of the United States of America type band. I think that is the context for a lot of those poor reviews. Because they thought, oh, this is just another band that had a big hit in 94. And they're, you know, like a corny alt rock band. And now they're putting up their heavy second record, but it's obviously trash.

And all of the blanket dismissals that they gave of those records, they applied to Pinkerton. and then they realized four or five years later, oh, no, no, no. This is the exception. This is one of the great records of 96. Yeah, and also it more or less got grandfathered into emo. So you're all about that in my book. That's that too.

Okay, see, we got sucked back in to talking about 96. It's very tricky here. And I'm blaming myself. Let's get to our fantasy album update. This will be a good way to segue into our reviews of, some of these albums because we haven't talked about the fantasy album draft in a while. I feel like

we've had to wait a bit for some of these albums that come out, but now a bunch are out today. Well, you've had a bunch of people come out already that we didn't talk about it. Who's on your team and how are they doing so far? Kalea's holding it down with an 86, about what I expected. When did that album come out? Was that last week?

No, it was a few weeks ago. I think it was like July 10th. I think it was like it came out the week we did. this episode we did the draft episode right okay yeah uh tyla 79 that's a flop um apparently i was uh one album too late on the queen of vampiano um lito pinienta not on metacritic which i feared so we're probably gonna have to do that thing that happened with the vj i air album back in the day where i choose three and you get to pick one or i think maybe you had to do that but um yeah what i what we can do next next episode is that I'll pick three undrafted and you get to choose which one I get.

That's how we did it last time. Right. Okay. That sounds good. When you said Tyler, first I thought you meant Taiga, who... Yeah, boy, am I looking silly for that one? Tiger, I got to admit, no idea who Tyga is. I do.

Tiger's a rapper, right? Yeah, he's like kind of a rap. So when I was going back to school at Cal State. Northridge, which has a huge Armenian population. They did this concert in 2013 on campus because he was dating with, he was dating Kylie Jenner at that time. And so it was like around the block. I think he did Rack City.

Rack City is a good song. But yeah, he's like a rapper, but like just that 2010 sort of, he's Jim Class Heroes adjacent. but yeah. People... Really? Yeah. I think he's like the cousin of one of those guys or something like that.

Wow. Or, yeah, something like that. But yeah, when I was at school at Cal State Northridge, and again, this is like a commuter school, so I wasn't in the dorms or whatever. But I was walking home and they had an on-campus concert with Taiga, and it was so packed just because, like, I think they thought they were going to see Kylie Jenner there. So, Tyga, the reason I brought this up, and I thank you for that. context. Tyga was reviewed on pitchfork this week. They gave it a 0.0. Yep. Uh, the first one in like two

decades. Yeah. Is, uh, is Travis Morrison, Travis Dan? Is that the last? No. And I'm, 0.0. Yeah. No, it is not. And, um, yeah, I think it, I'm not looking this up, but I'm going just straight off, uh, memory. I think there was like this album called This Is Indy or something like that, where, um, um, I'm pretty, um, I'm pretty, um, I'm pretty, um, I'm pretty, sure this was it where it was like it was like not at all indie bands it was the i guess like the i guess like the i i guess like the i i i mean that this is like the evil that faces us which is that people are mislabeling indie rock as like major label rock i think that's the one there are going to be people who immediately email me possibly jeremy larsen saying like yeah

you got that right you just named it wrong so i don't i didn't want to google it yeah well the 0.0 historians if you can come out of the woodwork. I love 0.0. By the way, I love that there's a 0.0. Just to rub it in a little bit. Because you could just go with the goose egg. Well, what do you, I mean, in a way a goose egg could be devastating on its own. Just the, just the austerity of like the single zero.

But to me, a 0.0, just to say like, we could have given this a 0.1. You could have gotten a fraction of a point at least And I've done that before I think I gave like a 0.3 to a ambient black Rebel motorcycle club album Oh man How could you? How could you?

Come on. I'm on board already With that. Didn't I get wet get like a 0.8 or something? 0.6, yeah. Because I re-reviewed that one, gave it an 8.6. I'm like, I'm adding 8 to it. Man, talk about revisionism.

Yeah, Robert Pollard's relaxation of the asshole. Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that is, that's like the deliberate 0.0. Because that album, if you don't know, relaxation of the asshole by Robert Pollard, it is a collection of stage patter from Robert Pollard.

There's no music on the album. It's just Robert Pollard drunkenly talking between songs, which, you know, for me, a 10 is too low for that but they gave it a 0.0 so I have Phoebe Bridgers that was my number one pick

I think I had the first pick or no you had did I okay yeah I that's right because you went with the two in the second in the second pick I was less bullish on the slate so I went with Phoebe Bridgers and I got to say Phoebe coming in big time

a 92. And she had the score immediately. This album was sent to critics last week. At least it was sent to me. I think it's possible that it was sent to some of these others. Because some of the reviews, because they send you the review,

or I'm sorry, they send you the stream and then usually it says you have to wait until this date to post your review. And usually for an album like this? I was a little surprised that it wasn't the day of or the day before because typically for an album like this, they want you to wait until the release date. They sent it, I think, on the 4th of August and then the embargo was like the 5th. And immediately there were a bunch of reviews up on the 5th. So people either had the album before the 4th or they listened to it for a day and they were like, this is a great album. But anyway, that score's only actually gone up.

in the week since. I think it was in 91 last week. Now it's in 92. And I don't think it's going to go down. Pitchfork just posted a rave review. They gave it an 8.4. I think Rolling Stone gave it like a four and a half stars. So very well reviewed album, which is great for me. Thank you, Phoebe. I believed in you. I'm trying to remember our conversation about this. I think there was like a little bit of doubt about how this album would be received. I feel like Phoebe's generation of indie stars have struggled a little bit. I wrote about this in 2025. You know, there were a bunch of albums. You know, speaking of like 96 being in a way for alt rock,

I think 2025 is going to be remembered maybe as a turning point. Similar to that. I felt like you saw a lot of 2010-era indie stars come out with albums that felt a little weak. It was all in a group of people. So it was like, is Phoebe going to be a part of that or is there going to be some fatigue? Like, oh, we're sick of boy, genius, all the coverage that that got three years ago. Clearly not. People love Phoebe Bridgers.

They don't care about the phones thing. The phones thing has been put to bed. So very good critical response. And this segues into our own review here. So you and I are going to talk about this album. We both have listened to this album. I wrote about this album. Unable Speaker, so if you want to read some thoughts there, you can.

I also ranked top indie rock stars right now, which could be a good topic for our show at some point. Get your take on that, but I'm curious for your take on this album. Do you like this album? You're not the biggest Phoebe Bridgers fan in the world, but I think you respect what she does. Am I representing that accurately? Yeah, I think so, because, yeah, I liked Pina Shero's. not an album. I revisited a whole lot. I mean, it's so inextricable from, you know, 2020. And so just kind of overplayed. Like, it's going to be a long time before I can revisit that and just

have, like, without the context. But yeah, I was not particularly bullish on this one's prospects. Like, I think I set the range as like an 81. But to quote, smooth Jimmy Apollo, you're right, 52% of the time. You're wrong, 48% of the time. Because despite, you know, six-year gap between albums. The Lost Boys, the lead single, just seemed to have an just okay reception, utter media blackout, probably a good move, although I expect a Rolling Stone cover story, probably the day after gets released. And yeah, I had wondered, also the fact that, like, Lost Weekend is a very nondescript album title. Yeah, you've probably have like 20 people making albums called that in the past 20 years.

But now all of a sudden it's putting up brat numbers and now it's like I've seen the scores. I've not read the reviews but are they trying to say that like Punisher is now going to lead up to this? But here's the thing. I don't get that impression. Okay. Myself. I think

a lot of the reviews are what you would expect really focusing more on the pariscial aspects of the record because you know this is a record where you know, She's talking about her father who passed away a few years ago. She's talking about some romantic relationships. You know, Paul Mescal, she broke up with him.

Now she's with Bo Burnham. And there's also a lot of the stuff that you would probably expect, like the post-fame type songs. That, I would say, are like the three main flavors of songs on this record. But I don't know if anyone is saying, this is topping Punisher, exactly. All right, maybe he's just like a catalog type artist. I could be wrong, though. Maybe someone has said that, but that's my impression.

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid it. But, yeah, I actually, look, I have a very not always functioning promo jukebox link. And it's, I mean, give me it. I don't have the cloud to have the download. But I, I. Nobody's getting the download of this, I don't think. I really, really like this. Like, it's sort of my getting killed in the sense that, like, wow, this is, like, better than the hype.

Um, this, what's going on here is that it reminds me so much of, I guess you would call it, Dark was the Night style indie rock. This is our proxie war here is like the studio version of the Nationals Terrible Love, right? That is such a sticking point. Like that is one point you and I disagreeing on this because you like it apparently. and I hate it. Love it. I feel like they blew it by not doing it the way they play it live.

So this is interesting. Okay, so because I mentioned Dark was the Night in my review too. Oh. In a negative way. Oh. But you like that production style. Yeah. If you use the word turbulent in the review and imagining that that's what I would do,

I'm a sucker for that, especially because High Violet, I know it's not the same type of album as this. one but it has this very displaced liminal where am i what am i doing a theme and i think that's what's going because i think the difference between this album at least for me absorbing it and punishers that when i heard punisher like i got what i needed out of that album the first couple times i listened to it right it was all i mean it does have like layers and so forth but i think you get the idea from the first time you hear it and when i'm listening to this album i get to this album i get that's like oh man i need to like go back to that song like it has this kind of unity to it um it's got

references i love the fact that uh she's kind of revisiting her 2016 self where she would um post covers of american football and japan droids mike cancel is on this album apparently with justin broderick of jesu on one of my favorite songs bobby she has lyrical references to sunkill moon and jawbreaker. Uh, dudes rock. That seems to be the message here of Lost Weekend. But it's, um, yeah, it just strikes me as so much of an album experience, which is really what I've been looking for in 2026.

It just has this scope and grandeur that, um, I think that indie rock is, it's just what the game's been missing, so to speak. And I really, really look forward to having the streaming version and I can, uh, listen to this as a whole without having the song. interrupt and having to start over wondering if I have any more plays. Yeah, look, this is a PSA. And look, I know publicists, this isn't their fault. I think this comes from record labels.

Like labels, when they send these promo streams out to critics that don't work, like that affects the experience of this person who's writing about the album or talking about the album. Why do you want to make it more difficult for them to hear this record? I like no one is like who is pirating music in 20 are people really interested in downloading you know like bootleg streams I feel like we're like 15 years past then people have been anesthetized by the streaming era they don't even want these files on their computers anymore so can we just get like a decent workable stream here please all right end a PSA for that for all the music writers out there the ones who are still standing yeah um so I like

quite a bit too. I think I like it a little bit less than you do. And I'll just circle back to what we were just talking about. The issue for me is the production. I have an ongoing frustration with Phoebe Bridger's solo records where I just don't like how they sound. I feel like there's always this overcooked element to it where it sounds very muted and busy where you've got like the droney organs and like the squiggly string sections and like those floaty horns that are so national high violet era signifiers and look I prefer the sound of boxer and alligator the more sleek austere type sounding things where it sounds like a band playing like that's my preference even though I love the songs on high violet just like I really love the songs on this record I think

Phoebe Bridgers as a songwriter is one of the best in the game and she's really I think asserting that more so you know again going back to this idea of is this better than Punisher I think there's a lot of value in her just coming back every six years and reasserting okay I'm really good at what I do

and this album proves it and I can also expand my sound in different kinds of ways Alex G is part of the production team on this record and I was thinking about that song's a song on the record called Governor's Waltz which starts out

as a Phoebe Bridger sounding song and then at the end it kind of takes a left turn into this electronic ambient breakdown and I don't know who did what on this record but like that reminded me of something that Alex G did on God Save the Animals so I'm one of it was he involved

in that I mean it is in a way it's weird to talk about Phoebe Bridgers this way because she's still obviously a very young artist. But there are elements on this record where you, I feel like this is her trying to sound current, you know, or not like 2020. And that was that for me. And I also think having Cameron Winter on two songs is a really strategic move in a way to just say like, okay, I'm not part of what was going on at the beginning of the decade. I mean, obviously I was part of that, but I've also moved on and I can embrace new people and new influence.

It is interesting with her production team, how it continues to grow. It's not like she, you know, has collaborators and then moves on from them. Like this record is produced by Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska, just like her previous two albums. But then you've got Alex G. And of course, it got Jack Antonoff because it's the law that you have to have and produce your record at some point. I have to say, again, I think the production for me was a struggle for a while with this album. It did get better when I started listening to it on headphones. I think it's a much better headphone record than it is, you know,

coming out of a speakers type album. But once I did that, I made my piece with my production frustrations. The songs, again, they just appeal to me. I think especially, like, the first seven, eight songs are really good. You know, I think this album's maybe a little too long. It's 16 tracks. Although the songs at the end, I think, are quite good, too. so I'm not sure what I would cut.

But, you know, she has this great way of lulling you in with her voice, which is just like an inherently sad instrument. It's like a violin playing in a minor key, you know. You hear her sing and it just immediately makes you want to cry or it feels like a heartfelt lament. But the way she uses that voice, I think, is so interesting because she is to me like this ball of acid wrapped in velvet. There's so many cutting lyrics on this album.

And a lot of funny lyrics. I mean, I think her wit is pretty underrated. And it's unfortunate that she doesn't do interviews anymore because she is a great interview. Yeah. That side of her really comes out when you talk to her. She's very funny. It could be like pretty vulgar and just a great conversationalist. And then you hear her saying and it can be very very.

austere and pretty and you know like a a person singing to you on a mountain top you know type vibe but her actual words that she puts inside that voice are great I mean there's this song on the record I think it's Bobby where she talks about it's this love song apparently you know presumably about Bo Burnham and she's singing about how she's put away the thing that she used to fuck in a box. I'm paraphrasing here. It's a really funny line.

She's got lines like that throughout the record. And I just love how she can slip that kind of stuff in in a context where you might just be expecting the normal kind of everyday confessional singer songwriter stuff. I think she subverts that, I think, in a pretty clever way throughout her career, but especially on this record. Yeah, I also appreciate the fact that we don't have as many, you know, fuck around and find out type lyric.

here. You know, there are going to be some things that are quoted incessantly, especially on governor's ball, you mentioned. There is what appears to be a pretty overt shot at Gracie Abrams, which I don't think anyone's going to be upset about that. Maybe Gracie. You know, actually, you know, giving Gracie, I'm sure, should be like, oh, what an honor. It's an honor to be mentioned. Yeah, and Bobby's, that's a song that has, you know, Mike Concella on it, which he was teasing. And, yeah, I do think that, you know, the humor comes around. But it's like, in a a way that's like handled so expertly because a lot of what made me or made people in general a little fatigued by a boy genius or like the boy genius extended universe is just the

extent of the universe where you hear so many artists who sound like phoebe bridgers and just can't do it as well um and you know like look you've written a pearl jam book so you know what happens when a band masters a sound and you can't you don't want to hold their influence against them right but yeah from 2020 to 2023 or what have you yeah that was just all you would hear and and you know part of me had wondered in 2025 we had talked about this whether getting killed was the and like that that was the extinction level event for this type of indie rock and i just think it speaks so much to feebie Bridgers, not just of her talent, uh, that she made a great record like this, but she made a record which is being embraced to this extent in this environment when there is every incentive to,

um, you know, kind of see it as Biden core or something that is dated, right? So this had massive, not even flop, but just like, eh potential, but she cleared the bar. And this might, Al might go number one this week. Yeah, I mean, I think I think both things can be true. I think getting killed did signal the end of that, but Phoebe Bridgers is just she can transcend. Transend, yeah. Yeah, like I think a lot of her a lot of those imitators are going to fall by the wayside, but she's not. And that is the sign of someone who is a leader and not a follower,

and that's what she is. So, I'll praise the Phoebe Bridgers. Yeah, she did stick the landing for sure with this record. Let's talk about another record out this week, and that is Fatimorgana by Lorraine, the Brooklyn-based artist, better known or not better known, but known among her friends as Tasha Cheek. I actually interviewed Tasha last week in Brooklyn. We're going to have a special Indycast bonus episode with her. I think it's going to go up next week. I also interviewed somebody else in Brooklyn who has a very big indie rock.

album coming out, I guess, in mid-September. So the interview will probably go up around then. That'll be really good, too. But let's talk about this record. This is the fourth record by Lorraine. And Lorraine, again, is on your fantasy draft team this year or this quarter. We don't have a score yet for that. I expect that album to be really well reviewed.

Lorraine is one of the most critically acclaimed projects of the last 10 years. and it's interesting because it's really a group that I think doesn't belong to any genre. And that's something that a lot of artists like to claim for themselves that, like, I make music that can't be categorized. But I do think that Lorraine does genuinely lay claim to that type of statement. Because it's a, I think this record in particular, you could say that it has some indie music influences. I think Animal Collective in particular, I mean, this is something that Todd. a Cheek talked about when I interviewed her, that being a formative influence for her coming up, I think especially the way that she uses vocals is very much indebted to what Animal Collective

was doing in the 2000s. But there's also a lot of other stuff on this record. There's a lot of ambient type music. There's like jazzy elements to it. There's overt R&B and gospel and electronic influences. There's like a dance hall breakdown at one point. I always love that. Yeah, put a dance hall break down. You know, that's the lesson we've learned from flies got you where I want you. And it was interesting talking to her because one thing she said that was interesting to me, or among the many things she said that were interesting, was her self-awareness about being put in this sort of experimental music box and how the way that her music has talked about, it seems designed to get really good reviews, but to also maybe put off listeners who feel like,

oh, this might be too challenging for me, or this might be too difficult. And I think what always strikes me about Lorraine's records, and I would say that, again, that it's especially true of this one, is as experimental as they are and as dense as they are. I mean, it really feels like one big sound collage in a lot of ways. It's also like a really accessible record. And I would say, you know, we have this conversation all the time on the show about feeling some nostalgia for that 2000.

era indie period where it felt like you had groups like Animal Collective that were making weird music that was also in the middle of the zeitgeist somewhat and how it seems like that's more difficult to do now if you're going to get a lot of attention you usually have to be making like pretty poppy music and Lorraine to me really is a throwback to that kind of thing that we're talking about where I feel like she is one of the people in indie music where certainly in critical circles she has a high profile, but she's doing music that is resolutely unique and her own. And it doesn't sound like Animal Collective to me,

but it has that spirit to it. And I think it's great, and it's something that I'm really happy to see someone doing on the kind of level that she is. So this record to me, I really like this record a lot. And if you haven't listened to her before, I think that this is a good entry point for her catalog. It's a really interesting catalog.

But you might as well get started listening to her now. I think this is a good place to start. Yeah, when you mentioned the aughts indie rock connection, you know, Animal Collected being an influence, I think back to when I first heard her in 2017, because the first song on herself titled Heavy But Not in Way, it has kind of like a twinkly emo guitar in it. But that album had Kit Malone from TV on the radio doing guest vocals.

I know she's open for TV on the radio during their reunion tour. So, you know, that connection is, you know, pretty solid. But, yeah, I like this album a lot too. Lorraine is this, I put her in the same, not box or what have you, but just, I think it were similar in lines of like Nula Fyriyanya, who has a kind of similar aesthetic of like bringing together a lot of different elements of indie and R&B, electronic, ambient. But it ever sounds like just one of those things. And whenever I listen to their albums, I'm always thinking, man, why don't I listen to this more often?

Yeah, fatigue, great record, one of the best of 2021. This one's great too. And it's a sort of artist where I think she'll just continue to make great records for the next 10 to 15 years. The only variant is going to be how much attention gets paid to them, you know, like whether she slips into that last pick of the fantasy draft role where, yeah, we guarantee it's going to get an 83. But I also love when people throw like one dance. Hall part into an album. Always a big fan of that. One or two.

I just think of Joe Burroughs tweeting about Yeezus. I like when the Jamaican guy's on. I'm a similar sort of dude here. But yeah, great record. Can't wait to spend more time with it. We have one more album to review here in the meat of our episode. And that is a group that I know you're a fan of Ian and I enjoyed this group as well. It's a band called Howdy.

This is a two-person band from Austin. They've been putting out records since the mid-2010s. They have a new album out today. It is called Big World. This is their sixth album in 10 years. I talked last week in Recommendation Corner about this band Kiwi Jr. from Toronto, where I think they're in a similar lane for me as Howdy, where it's bands that have built like a pretty sizable catalog in like not a ton of time.

and like you blink your eyes and all of a sudden it's like wow are these guys actually like wily veterans at this point I mean it feels like that with with howdy I know that you were a fan Ian of their previous record which came out in 2024 it was a self-titled release and it was a double album so in a way a magnum opus type statement for this group and I have to say I really liked that album when it came out a few years ago but I think I even prefer this new album, Big World to that. I actually feel like a double album might have been a little too much howdy for me. Because this is a band that I think has a pretty simple formula where you've got like simple guitar chords, usually like a simple beat, often electronic beat.

And then you have the vocals of the two main guys in the group playing off each other. So there's not a ton of variance in the way the song sound. And I think over a double record, for me anyway, it was maybe like, okay, I get the idea this is a little bit too much. Whereas on this new album, you have 12 songs, 36 minutes, each song three minutes long, and each song kind of perfect in its own way. And just to circle back to the simple formula thing for a minute. You know, and I mean this as a compliment, it's going to sound weird.

But there is almost like a school cafeteria aspect to this band. where they're able to take meat, potatoes, and like a piece of bread, and turn it into like 15 different meals that are equally satisfying. And I really think that that's true of this record. There's a song in here called Blast that is one of my favorite songs of 2026. And it's a song, you look at the lyrics. I actually felt like this before I even looked at the lyrics, but it's kind of referencing like a small town.

There's like a football references. it reads a little like a pocket episode of Friday Night Lights. And I feel like a lot of their music has that feeling for me where I listen to it. And I can just imagine a sunset in Texas over a football field and like that feeling in your chest where you feel happy but you also feel kind of sad. And you could just cry at any moment and you don't know why. But it's just the vibe of what is being created here. and that's definitely true of blast for me, but I think this whole record has that same kind of thing

where it's not sad in the way that a Phoebe Bridger's album is sad. It's more like a, I'm remembering the good times type sadness, which is a very specific flavor of melancholy, but these guys explore it, I think, so effectively, it's so evocatively, along with just writing songs that are extremely tuneful that you can listen to over and over again and not get sick of, which is also obviously a very great talent onto itself.

But yeah, I don't know. It's another hit for Howdy. I enjoy all their albums. I think they only make good albums. I don't know if this is better or worse than the other records, but I know I love it whenever it's on. Yeah, I mean, the scene that you mentioned of that kind of Friday night lights slash dazed and confused, Texas.

The video for Ruin My Ride from 2019 is one of the, like, that's one of the definitive for me before times, songs and videos. They're just clearly like Austin indie rock people, but they're doing like line dancing. And as the video progresses, the suns go down and they're starting to get drunk. And yeah, that one is to me, like one of my favorite pieces of audio visual art of the past decade. I like, yeah, you got to watch that video. It's like, it is like Texas, the Texas, the Austin Chamber of Commerce should adopt that video. It is such a compelling argument to move to Texas and to be 23 or 24 and live in a crash pad and, you know, drink Shinerbach. Yeah,

this is like the sort of band where if like I was in college and I was the kind of person I was in college, which say I liked, uh, yeah, I, I went to school in the South, but I kind of wanted something a little more indie than what all the, you know, fraternities and sorority girls were listening to. I say that as a compliment. I would, this would be like my favorite band in the world. Uh, as a 46 year old, I just really, really love what they do. Um, by the way, speak, I think this appeals to us directly. This cover, very RICO disc, uh, 1996 UCD bin. I mean, I'm not saying that as an And so, but just like the color scheme, the font, it's very 1996 to me. See, I was, I was going to say something similar about the Lost Weekend cover, which

actually makes me think of a little bit later, like a... Yeah, that's 98. That's 98. That's like my electronica, uh, adore era type thing. Kind of like, you could kind of see your face, but it's abstract and blurry. I'm like, oh yeah, this is like the, uh, you know, I used to do acoustic music. now I'm working with William Orbit To William Orbit

Great producer who passed away Yeah If that Phoebe Bridger's album with that cover Came out in 1998 There is absolutely no doubt It would begin with a dial-up modem sound Oh yeah that'd be brilliant That'd be brilliant

Yeah Howdy Yeah like this album is I think the biggest Refinement of their sound Like it's just all the catchy songs From Howdy Look I loved when they branched out. I loved

bad news. I loved their cover of Cold Place warning sign. This is a bad that's very much on my wavelength. And you know, it made me think about, and again, this is a compliment. Zach Bryan came to San Diego a few weeks back and he played

the San Diego State football stadium twice. And when I was on the trolley, I was going to a different show. You would see just wave upon wave of San Diego State fraternity and sorority girls, like dressed up like they lived in Oklahoma. They had the cowboy boots. They had the denim shorts.

And I know Zach Bryant, his love of Howdy was one of the biggest things they had going for them for that self-titled. And I think to myself, man, I bet at least half to 75% of the people on this trolley would love give it away. Or the Howdy song give it away. They probably also already like the Ratt Chili Pepper song. there in Southern California or blast. I'm not saying like, oh, this could make them huge. I think they already are a pretty big band, but if like the right song broke for them on TikTok,

I could easily see them as a band who would appeal to the Noah Kahan listener. I mean, or if they did the thing where they sang in a slightly more southern accent and they invited, yeah, like they had like a slightly more southern accent. and they juiced up the beats a little bit more where it was more like a hip hop beat and then you get like Shabuzi on there and do like some like guest vocals I think they could definitely

have a country hit. They've got some of that DNA in their music. Now I hope they don't do that unless they want to do it. It doesn't seem like that's maybe in their interest. But I think they could make like a bro country song very easily. Yeah. And they kind of did that on that last

album with Forever, which had like the record scratches because they, I joke to them. Like, dude, this is like South Padre Island, 1998, MTV Spring Break and like, yeah, you kind of got me there. So, yeah, I mean, look, this is sort of like, it's, it's, imagine if this and while Pink came out in the same week, but this is like such a down the middle indie cast band. They did the celebration rock type pose on the cover of Howdy. yeah i love this band i also love the fact that um where they came from because like if this i don't know if i would like be as amenable to this if like how'd he started here but hearing their progression

has made me a lot more uh you know willing to give this type of music even though it's like you know a little bit outside of scope what i usually listen to um yeah i'm along for the journey their early stuff's great too true love great album heavy lifter great album cradeline Canberry great album. It's just such an interesting trajectory from what they call pillowcore back in 2016. Like this is back when like people weren't really listening to Duster as much, but it's like, oh, wow, this band sounds like Duster. And now they are making like verge of broke country indie rock bangers, which is like,

get these guys on college game day. You know, get them wearing a University of Texas hat. I think they could do that. Life is a journey, man. Life is a journey. We've got reached a part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talked about something we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? So in San Diego, and I know that, like, I get shit per se, like complaining about the weather in San Diego, but this past week, it's been unusually hot, and we don't have buildings

that are prepared for it. So it's been really hot, which leads me to sleeping really poorly, which leads to me seeking out more calming music as I do my morning routine and the one I'm listening to this week is Hannah Stratton. The name of the album is T-R-N-T-I-A-R-N. I guess you would call this artist a sound collagist, which usually isn't my thing, but this one's more song-oriented than that description might imply. It's somewhere between, say, Gruper and Gia Margaret. Very distant, very serene, but it's got vocals and samples that keep it ground in its sense of place. She recorded this in New South Wales, which I learned on Chopo Trap House yesterday, is the gambling and cocaine hub of Australia. I know you have writing music.

I don't, but I do have thinking music, which is what I, you know, conceive of what I'm going to write, walking around. And this album's really hit the spot for me. So Hannah Stratton, T-Rn, look it up. I don't know how to pronounce it. So I want to talk about a brother-sister duo from Philadelphia named Sam and Louise Sullivan. They recently put out their third album. It's called Love and Devotion. And listening to this album, it made me very nostalgic for a period of my life that I would say occurred from my 20s until like maybe my mid-30s where I was smoking weed almost every day and listening to 70s singer-songwriters on vinyl, particularly like more culty type stuff.

Emmett Rhodes, Todd Rungren records, things like that. This combination of like Prague rock and soft rock and classic rock, which in many ways is still one of my home bases for music that I love. And listening to this record, I can tell that these two love Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney's Ram, or that they love that Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nix record that they made before they joined Fleetwood Mac. music that is made by some of the most popular people in the world, but is slightly off the beaten path in terms of what people associate with those artists. And I think that that aesthetic carries over to this record,

where it is a very catchy pop rock album that's a little off-kilter. And look, I don't want to cast any aspersions, but it sounds like there was like a lot of weed smoked during the writing and the making of this record. way that I support, even though I do not smoke weed anymore. But it's just a record that, again, I think that if you are part of that vinyl aesthetic of I want to dig out records and I want to listen to cult singer-songwriters who are getting a little experimental in the studio but are also just delivering pitch-perfect pop songs, this duo delivers that over and over again. It's a really

fun record. I really enjoy listening to it. And you know it if you like it, if I am speaking gibberish for the past few minutes to your ears, you know you're not into it. But again, the record is called love and devotion. The duo is named Sam and Louise Sullivan. Very charming band. Very charming record. Yeah. In addition to doing bonus material on 1996, we need to do bonus material on the dirtbag era of Stephen Hayden you just described. Oh man. Well, yeah, that's a not. That's a non-average. novel onto itself. But until then, we'll be back next week with more news reviews and hashing out trends. Next week.