Indiecast - R.I.P. Brian Wilson And Sly Stone

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

This week's Indiecast opens with a tribute to two fallen icons, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, who both passed away at the age of 82 within a few days of one another (0:00). The guys discuss their respective legacies and the influence they have on modern music. They also discuss a recent article on dad rock and how the term now is used to describe any form of rock music (13:07). Then they check in on the Fantasy Albums Draft, which Ian is suddenly dominating (21:34). In the mailbag, they answer several emails -- topics include the utility of Metacritic, a yay-or-nay verdict on Title Fight, and "tennis-core" bands (28:07).In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the SoCal emo band First Day Back and Steven recommends the Chicago indie group Beauty Saloon (51:17).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 243 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprocks's Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast on this show we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we respond to emails from you, the Indycast listener. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. God only knows what I'd be without him. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

Yeah, I didn't expect you to be such a sentimentalist about it. I thought you were going to hit me with a student demonstration time joke or something. Like one of the deep cuts. No, man, I'm feeling soft right now. This has been a hard week. Yes. Hard week. If you love rock icons.

Look, the word icon, I think, is so, it's been so degraded at this point. You know, people will say, oh, the shorts that Sabrina Carpenter wore in the latest music video are iconic. You know, we call everything iconic now. But when you're talking about Brian Wilson and Sly Stone. two just absolute legends both passed away this week. I mean, now we're talking about icons. This is what these are the kind of people that the word icon is reserved for. And it's really strange.

I mean, both guys are 82 years old. Both guys flourished in the 60s and then they had this, they had these extended wilderness periods marked by mental health and substance abuse problems. And then, you know, they sort of came back, Slystone, less so, although he had that documentary recently that Questlove made, which it's great that that came out while he was alive because hopefully he got to see all this appreciation being expressed about him. Brian Wilson, you know, he's been on the road a lot in the last, you know,

20-some years, and I feel like any room that he walked into, he got a standing ovation. I mean, people just love Brian Wilson. But, I mean, you're talking about two figures here, who are foundational influences on modern music. You know, Brian Wilson with the Beach Boys, I wrote a piece for Up Rocks just right after he died. I wrote it like a two hours.

So a very sort of quick response. But just talking about him being someone who clearly influenced a lot of indie rock, I think especially like in the 90s, like when we were coming up, it seemed like music that emulates Brian Wilson was its own genre of music. music, whether you're talking about like Flaming Lips, Soft Bulletin, or like Neutral Milk Hotel, or all the Elephant Sixthans, I think Wilco on Summerteeth, Elliot Smith, Fiona, the list is endless. But then there's just the idea of what Brian Wilson, I think, originated in popular music, modern popular music with pet sounds, this album that is like just a master stroke of production

and songwriting that was willfully disregarding the Beach Boys formula and disregarding popular trends and trying to do something different. Like just that as an archetype, which we don't even think of like, oh, who would have even originated that? Like, pet sounds is like, it's like, you know, the original. It is like, what, it is year zero for that. It is patient zero for that. So even people that maybe don't listen to the Beach Boys or even know who Brian Wilson is,

I mean, I think they're influenced because he made a record like that and set this as an archetype in music. It's really strange. I mean, I remember, like, I wrote this book, Twilight of the Gods, which was about this very thing of, like, classic rock people starting to pass away and that generation of people fading away. You know, and that book came out seven years ago. When I was writing it, like David Bowie died. And then I think later that week or maybe the following week, like Glenn Fry of the Eagles died. And then, of course, a couple months after that, Prince died.

This is like the first time in a while where you really kind of felt the mortality of that generation. Like where you have these two monumental people that passed away very close to one another. I think it was within like three days. Wilson died on Wednesday. And I think Slice Stone was Monday. Yeah. So it's pretty heavy. Yeah.

I mean, I remember when Prince died. Back in 2016, I went into work and, you know, I talked to some people. Like, hey, like our patients like, hey, Prince died. And like, you know, they knew him. And they weren't like, oh, my God, like, I got to go home. No one knew who Sly Stone was at work. And they heard of the Beach Boys, but Brian Wilson didn't ring a bell. That being said, I mean.

You're in Southern California. I know, they don't know Brian Wilson. Come on. They know the beach boys. But, you know, I also got the thinking, I mean, at least for our generation, to have that late 90s kind of renaissance for the Beach Boys. And I think that kind of carried over

into the early 2000s with Animal Collective and of course smile eventually seeing an official release. But it was such a jarring shift from, I mean, was their appearance on Full House like maybe the most consequential musician appearance on TV of its time? I'm not kidding. It's like to this day, John Stamos tours with them.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, it was fascinating with the Beach Boys because, like, if you're my age or our age, there was this thing with the Beach Boys where they were the full house band. Yes. And they were the band that made Kokomo. And, you know, you were, I was aware of their, I mean, the first concert I ever went to was the Beach Boys. It was an 87 or thereabouts. It might have been 88. I was nine years old.

And I knew, like, all their songs just from osmosis, you know, oldies radio, like hearing I get around and surf. and safari and surfer girl and all those songs. And I love the show. But the Beach Boys were a very corny band. I mean, they were associated with Mike Love, I think, more than Brian Wilson. Like, Mike Love was always on Full House. And then there was this period in the 90s, like, where those albums started getting reissued, the albums after Pet Sounds, which are the records that weren't popular at the time,

but they're the ones that ended up really making their reputation, I think, especially with younger generations. And then it was like, holy crap, this is like an amazing band. Brian Wilson, you know, it's just incredible. And I was obsessed with Brian Wilson as a teenager. I, you know, would listen to like these sad Beach Boys songs on my headphones in my room, the warmth of the sun. I just wasn't made for all these times.

Just like all these like brilliantly melancholy, self-pitying songs, which I still love. I'm trying to think of like a. example like that where you have a band that is sort of known for one thing, and that thing is sort of corny, and then people actually investigate and they find out, oh, they actually have a really cool past. Like,

is there a modern example of that? I'd have to be younger to know that. Like, are people going to do that with Weezer at some point? I'm going to be like, oh, like, Weezer actually made Pinkerton,

you know, I just knew them as the, she got hot band, or the, Ratitude Band or whatever. I love how she got hot is the one you choose, rather than like Beverly Hills or like the song they did with Lil Wayne. Like I forgot completely about she got hot.

That's a deep cut right there. But yeah, I think you would have to ask like the younger generation because I see, you know, there are bands that I think of like the cranberries. And it's not like exactly the same. But it's like they're seen as monumental as, you know, a lot of 90s bands. think like this is a stretch but like deaf tones now um you know they were known for i mean they were always popular always critically acclaimed but like i mean they're a band that could you know hold a festival like they're for like they're like smashing pumpkins possibly cure level for a new generation

perhaps for people who like grew up knowing them as like oh like a new metal band but nothing quite as extreme and you know maybe this will like take take you know take hold like years later because i mean like beach boys like this is wilderness period uh you know when we first got to know them and um yeah although they were thriving too in another sense i mean kokemo was like a number one hit enormous yeah and 88 so they were doing great but they just were this completely corny band and although i kind of have a soft spot for koko now i admit um and i loved it as a kid and then you you know you get older and you're like i hate koko but kind of have a soft spot for koko now i admit um and i loved it as a kid and then you you get older and you're like, I hate Kokomo, but kind of have a soft spot for Kokomo.

It's like sort of like Stevie Wonder, like I just called to say I love you or whatever, where like you just think of it as that like real soft batch song that you would always hear in Dennis's office, even though they've got like this monumental catalog. You know, you don't even want to say the names of the people of this generation that are still around because you don't want to jinx it. But I do think about certain artists, almost like a parent. Like I think about like, what's it going to be like when they do. die. Like they're and again, I'm not going to say their names because I don't, you know, God

forbid something happens and then I get blamed because I invoked them in this context. But there are certain artists who I think about like literally every day. I'm like, what am I going to do? What am I? Because as a writer, I think like, what would I write about them when they died? And with Brian Wilson, the challenge was, you know, you have to sum up what their impact is. And at some point, with some of these artists, it's impossible to do that. Because you can't capture the totality of their impact. Like, I wrote my thing, and I think it ended up fine. But even after I published, I was like, oh, I could have mentioned this.

I could have mentioned that. And at some point, you're going to be writing like a multi-volume book in order to fully get across how impactful this person was. You know, it's interesting. You're talking about Slice Stone. No one knew his name, which isn't surprising because... you know, Brian Wilson was still somewhat in the culture, I think, for a while. You know, after his prime, like, you would see him pop up in certain places. Or there's like a bare naked lady song called Brian, you know, whatever.

Like, he would just pop up like that. Sly Stone really, I think, faded for the most part. But his music is so elemental to modern music in terms of, like, hip-hop, R&B, and funk. I mean, when I first started listening to Sly Stone, as a teenager, you know, I got that greatest hits album, which is like one of the greatest, greatest hits albums ever. And I was amazed by how many parts of songs I knew because they had been sampled by other songs that I was familiar with. Like just one random example, that song, thank you for letting me be myself again. There's like a little part in the middle.

It's like a little breakdown. It's like a bass and drum part that's like maybe 10 or 15 seconds long. Not the main part of the song, but like I knew that. part because Janet Jackson used it for Rhythm Nation, the title track of that album. And she took that one part and made it like the whole song. And there's so many examples like that throughout Sly Stone's catalog. And we talked a little bit about Sly when that documentary came out. But, you know, he may be less famous, but his music, I don't know if it's more impactful than the Beach Boys, but it's certainly comparable.

And then certainly like in hip hop, I think it is enormous. Yeah, this is like comparing like Bowie and Prince when they both passed away. Right. Totally. Yeah, it's like it's related and like you just, I mean, these obviously like Brian Wilson and Slicestone like kind of spiritually similar in that they encompass like the totality of California. But yeah, you just like you can't do prints without Slice Stone. You can't like do outcast without Slice Stone. It's like explicitly modeled off that.

Also, I got to take you. I got to take you into account for when you talked about not encompassing the breadth of Brian Wilson's influence you did not mention swag surfing by Fast Life Youngstas that's like one of the most iconic Beach Boys takes of the past 20 years but I'll let you pass on that.

Also I thought you were going to mention the Turnstiles song when you mentioned thank you for letting me be myself Oh yeah. See yeah there's so many To this day. So many threads here that you could go down. So RIP, Brian Wilson, Slystone, two of the greats, two of the greatest of the

greats. Very sad to see them go. One thing we need to talk about, too, another thing before we get into the mailbag is this article that was on GQ last week. It was a Dad Rock article. You might be familiar with it out there. I'm talking to our listeners here. there was an article that GQ ran.

It was on Friday. And it was like, why couldn't this have run on Thursday? This was designed for us to talk about it on Indycast. But it was this article saying basically that it's like the summer of Dadrock. And what did the tweets say if somebody if your main circle isn't talking about Dad Rock? Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. Like they called it the Silver Jews Summer, which, you know, should be like, yeah, that should really be like,

if our health and human services department and the government was actually functional, they would really be on the lookout for that. But yeah, the subhead was if you're a man in your 40s and your main circle, and I'm going to stop it right there because I think about one of my favorite, one of the, my favorite things that you've done,

which was your favorite band is killing me, the white, stripes, black keys. Oh, right. I worry about just like how difficult it is for men of a certain age to have a circle of friends. Exactly. Yeah, it's like, if I'm a man and my main circle, am I supposed to, like, did I supposed to have a main circle?

Does my, like, DMs count? But, yeah, if they're not talking about Cameron Rinter and MJ Lenderman. It's like there's my wife and then who else is in this circle. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's not really. My coworkers who did not know who Sly Stone was, I mean. That's right. Yeah, men in your 40s, you probably don't have a man circle.

That's one of the, you know, sometimes I think it'd be nice to have a main circle. But then at the other times, I'm like, do I really want a main circle? It's kind of nice not to have a main circle sometimes. But yeah, the idea was like, if your main circle isn't talking about Cameron Winter and elderberry wine, which is the latest Wednesday single and something else, like, what are you doing? Yeah. What's up with you? And this went viral.

A lot of people were dunking on it. I'm not going to dunk on it. I don't have a problem with it. I did feel a little personally sub-tweeted by you. this article because I like all the artists that were mentioned in the article, but I don't know if they really qualify as dad rock. So it's like, is anything I like automatically dad rock? Does that make something dad rock? Because Cameron Winter to me isn't really dad rock, I don't think. And Wednesday to me isn't either, except their latest single leans in that direction a little bit. I mean, there is a

A trend with the term dad rock where it's almost like yacht rock now, where like yacht rock is applied to anything that's like soft rock, really, from the 70s. You know, so like the Eagles are called yacht rock or Fleetwood Mac is called yacht rock. And it's not really in line with what the originators of the term meant, which was music of that era that is indebted to like R&B and jazz music and coming out of Los Angeles. It's a little more specific than that. And I think with Dad Rock, when I think about that sky blue sky review that my pal Rob Bicham wrote for Pitchfork, which popularized that term, I haven't read the review lately, but I think what Rob meant was that

he felt like that record was overly indebted to, like, comfort food, classic rock of, like, the late 60s and early 70s. and he meant it as a derogatory term in comparison to something like Yankee Hotel Foxtrap, which I think he thought was more experimental and forward thinking. But now I feel like people say Dad Rock

and they just mean any rock music at all. Yeah. And which to me is like, okay, now like, what are we doing here? I mean, it's a dumb term anyway. But it's funny how to me, I feel like Dad Rock when it started was meant as an insult.

And it's become over, time, it's turned into this term of endearment almost. Like I feel like people don't really mean it as a put down for the most part. Or they mean it as sort of like if they are clowning on it, they, it's like a

sort of soft clowning. It's not done out of spite. It's sort of like, oh, that's Homer Simpson sleeping in a chair with like, you know, a bag of Doritos on his belly. You know, like, oh, it's kind of cute. But they don't really mean it like in a sort of spiteful way, which I think it was it did have that, I think, in the 2000s.

Yeah, I mean, you can't criticize GQ for, like, turning it into a trend watch sort of thing. Because that's, you know, just, that's what they do as a publication. And, you know, they're mentioning, like, friendship in there. So it's not, they go a little bit deeper than one might anticipate. But, yeah, the moment I saw this article, like, I was, I don't know if concerns the right word, but I'm thinking, like, is Steve having, like, is my culture is not your costume moment?

Because, you know, to your point. about like is dad rock anything that i like i remember i made a joke about that with emo uh back you know back in the day when it was like starting to you know have its moment where it's being embraced and like you know stuff that was pop punk or a hardcore or just straight up indie rock was being called emo it's like yeah it's emo if i like you know people like kind of got on me for saying that but you know i was kind of joking with it but the thing about like your point of like what is dad rock like i i you know i my job i interact with actual dads, like, who are my age. And they're like into tool and weezer.

And, you know, like, but I know that's not what you mean by dad, like rock that dads listen to. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think people, you know, again, it's confusing because I think some people think, well, it's music that dads listen to where I think it was originally meant as like the sound of it. It wasn't so much about the audience. It was like how it sounded and like what it was inspired by.

but, you know, people talk about the national being dad rock, but it's like most of the national fans I know at this point are women. Yeah. You know, so that doesn't really fit. And you're right, like, because I am of dad age. And when I, you know, talk to friends or I know, I know people that I went to high school with, yeah, they all like 90s rock. They like the chili peppers.

And they like, you know, yeah, Weezer or they're listening to like Soundgarden or something. Like, it's the music of their youth. It's not necessarily, like, they're not listened to a, like, a friendship record. I mean, I wish they would. That'd be awesome. But, uh, yeah, it's, well, that, I don't know. It's like, oh, like, Pete, my, the dads in your main circle, uh, are not listening to friendship.

And, you know, the people who are listening to Cameron Winter and M.J. Lenderman and, like, Wednesday, like, these are, like, 20-year-olds who, like, live in, I mean, they're popular all over. But, like, Cameron Winter to me is, like, a 20-something. New York City people who read GQ type audience and tons of female fans too again like M.J. Lenderman

tons of female fans if you look at who reviewed that record it was a lot of like female critics so it but again I don't I would maybe call M.J. Linderman Dan Rock though in the sense of the original definition of the term

which is that he is drawing from a lot of the same source material that like Wilco was drawing from on Sky Blue Sky. So, you know, if we're going back to the text here, the Bible of Dad Rock, like it does apply. You know, we got to look at legal precedence here for Dad Rock. To me, that's what it means. It's not just like, you know, middle-aged guys, like what they're listening to. Yeah, no more Brat Summer. We're going to, like, now that they're looking for the left, the Joe Rogan of the left, there's going to be a co-option of like whatever Wednesday's album is or like,

Manning Fireworks, you know, to draw in the men that have been alienated on the left. Just you watch, man. We're going to be... Carly Hartzman. You've been drafted to be the Joe Rogan of the left. Yeah, this is our abundance policy. We're the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson of Dadrock. Let's do a quick fantasy draft update here.

I'm getting my clock cleaned right now, and I don't know what happened because last week I had, I think a, was it a, were we tied last week? I had one point lead. Because Billy Wood somehow, like some late arriving review knocked him down from an 88 or an 89 to an 88. But, uh, yeah, how, how, things have changed in the interim. Yeah, you're, you're like the Pacers coming back from like 20 down with four minutes left because, uh, Lil Sims cleaning up.

What is she at now? Like she's at an 89. And yeah, I mean, like, uh, I was a little. worried last week because like she was like an 84. I'm like dang that's like bonie vera numbers. I need like and yes, a lot more reviews came in like places like the independent, you know, the sort of places that will are basically guaranteed to give her 100 every time out. Music, OMH, DIY magazine. And so it's at 89 with 13 reviews trampled by turtles down to a 79. basically unless

we have like pitchfork which hasn't reviewed Little Sims yet or like Sputnik music going completely rogue I think I've locked this one down Yeah you're up by six I'm up by six but yeah I mean I could see it going down in 83

But I love the fact that Kind of similar to you know The Eagles winning the Super Bowl Like this is this is just back to basics You know it's like the run game and defense You know like old school So that for me relying on British rappers, indie-leaning R&B, and like the one rap guy that will finish in the year-end of all of like all music publications.

I'm getting back to my principles. Yeah, yeah, man, it's just, I was feeling pretty good about it. Then Sparhawk, well, again, the Lannadale-Ray thing totally screwed me, like when that didn't come through. But I thought Sparhawk was for sure a lock to be in the 80s. Who's lowering him to 79? Like, where are my 48-year-old music writers here? Why are you letting me down here? You got to be rubber stamping, you know.

The quietest, the quietest. That's what got you. Really, the quietest? Those guys? Oh, my God. Yeah. Aren't they known for, like, having, like, year-end lists where, like, no one has ever heard of any of the albums?

Oh, it's incredible, like, there's it. They like Caroline. I'll say that much. But, yeah, they're, and they love the, new Puritans. Like, that's the stuff. That's like where me and the quietest connect, but it's like probably going to be British. Ex-Easter Island Head was their number one last year. I know that off the dome because I tried listening to it. Yeah, if you like vibraphones, like vibraphones and lots of them, check that one out. There was like one really cool song on there though. I mean, I like,

I appreciate that they're not going with the pack, but I think they're trying too hard with their year-end list. It's like, come on. Like, where are you digging these records up? you're not going to have like at least a couple just records that are great that are on everybody's list. I mean, I again, I like that they're not repeating what everyone else does because the year-end list can get pretty boring. But I don't know, I think they're trying too hard here sometimes over there at the quietest. Yeah, I just, I appreciate them, but it's like I just like maybe at the end of the year we'll do a contest of like which one of us has heard more albums that made the quietest year-end list. And yeah, maybe maybe that'll be. If we get like low on content the year end,

which we're almost certainly going to, maybe that's like a bit we do. Yeah. Still house plants was number six last year. I'm looking at their year end. Okay, well, there you go. All right. Maybe I'm being too hard on the quietest.

I appreciate what you do. British Pish Fork. It's very cool. Keep recommending those vibraphone records, putting them at number one on your list. God bless. Let's get to our mailbag here. We have a bigger mailbag because this week has been in terms of new releases.

Gone before the storm. It's a little slow. I'd be tempted to talk about the new Van Morrison record here. 84 on Metacritic. This is doing numbers. I ordered that on CD. It's coming in. I'm going to be listening to that.

I'm going to be chilling with the new Van Morrison record. We could talk about that. I'd probably be fired immediately by my bosses. They want to keep it young. They want us to be speaking to the youth of the nation. So instead of the 41-year-old listeners out there, they want us to reach some like 38-year-old listeners. So no Van Morrison this week.

There's a new Neil Young record, which is probably not going to be very good. I hate to say it. The swell season, they're back. Ooh. What was that movie called? Once. Yeah.

Shout to the first. frames, burn the maps. That record's really good. There's a new King Gizzard record, of course. It's like their orchestral record. Okay. There you go. There's a new Buck Cherry record. Oh, hell yeah. For the movies is a banger. Yeah. Roar like Thunder is the name. How many, what's the over under on songs about strippers on the Buck Cherry record? Are we going to go like three, four? It's great. It's like, yeah, it's got to be at least four. I think maybe that's what we'll do next time. Well, once, you know, if Indycasts like ceases to exist in its current iteration, maybe we

just do live reactions to like the Van Morrison and the Buckcherry album. We have to do that. This is a Slick Rick record. Huh. I wonder, I wonder if it's been a while for Slick Rick. That's a great name, by the way. It's like one of the great rapper names of all time. The artist storytelling, great album.

I remember listening to all the time in 1999. You know, rapper names have gotten so obscure now. I feel like it's just like a bunch of consonants in a row And then maybe like one vowel at the end Like that's every rapper name Can we get back to just like rhyming words You know like slick Rick that works Can there be like you know

Fat Pat? Well he passed out Fat Pat I was gonna say Fat Pat That was a real guy and he passed away so Yeah Well Fat Pat Jr. Can we have a Fat Pat Junior maybe Or Fat Pat the second That'd be pretty awesome All these GLP ones man

They're taking away our big rappers Let's get to our mailbag segment. Thank you all for listening. It's great to hear from our listeners. You can hit us up at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. This first one, it's not a question, but I did think it was worth reading on the show, Ian. So why don't you read this one? Yeah, I'm stoked for this one.

So this comes to us from an actual pitchfork writer. Yeah, Peyton Thomas. Peyton Thomas. Shout to them. hope you're doing well. I was just listening to your Indycast regarding the Miley Stans reporting Pitchfork to Metacritic. You were wondering if this had ever happened before and I'm here to say it happened to me, LMAO. I reviewed a Tovlo album for Pitchfork a few years back and I was pretty critical and her fans did mobilize to report the review to Metacritic saying I'd been misogynistic.

Metacritic held firm and my review's still on there. So yes, this is a Stand Army tactic. I feel like they have to know it's not going to lead to anything. They just need somewhere to vent their outrage in solidarity. Peyton. That's a very, yeah, that's like very much holding up the other pole for the stand base. Peyton Thomas wrote a Sunday review of Zeropa once. I remember reading that and enjoying it. So, kudos to you, pay. They also tackled Daddy's Home, which, you know, our everlasting, you know, respect. And also the Peppa Pig album, two icons and dacast banter.

Peyton Thomas, this is your life. We're going to just mention everything you've ever written for Pitchfork. So last week I made a joke that like that the term Miley Cyrus Stan is like one of the saddest phrases in the English language. I wasn't aware of Tovlo Stan. I think that is actually sadder. It just makes me wonder how far down the food chain of pop stars do you have to go before the stands don't have an army for you? Like does Jesse Jay have an army? Probably. Does, like, Clay Aiken have an army? Oh, yeah.

Clay, so, and, like, if you're in the Tov Love, Stan Army, are you just riding for Tov Lowe? Are you, like, a member of, like, other armies as well? Like, can you, can you enlist in multiple Stan armies? Are you, like, also harassing writers who don't like, you know, who, like, pink? Are you going to go after the pink critics? You're going to go after, you know, who, you're going to go after, you know, whoever you're going to go after like the Sabrina carpenter critics i i wonder like what the protocol

is for that yeah also uh if we're going to do a follow-up on this one the last review peyton did for pitchfork was a 5.0 for you know honorary lesbian at least according to lucy dacus hosier i wonder if the stand army came for Peyton for that or did they just like kind of calmly sit sit him down and say do better you know because that's what oh yeah exactly it's just like an army of guys and man buns coming after Peyton and complaining. Or like Lucy Dakes fans now, but yeah, I've wondered that too about like whether you have

like if you can have dual allegiance in Stan armies, you know, like or whether you just be like a mercenary traveling from Stan Army to Stan Army. I feel like you shouldn't. I think you're only allowed to harass people for one pop star. If you're doing it for multiple

pop stars, that feels, that should be against the law. There should be a congressional bill pass that restricts you to just one stand army yeah we cannot have we cannot have like you know our black water uh of just just sending out like people to like these far off regions to fight these dirty wars against music critics because like the way i kind of viewed it was like to be a tooplo stand or to be a jessie j stand like yeah i'm getting i'm in college football mode right now it's about a month left till the video game drops and you know i'm i'm like reading previews a place

is like Louisiana Monroe and Troy and thinking about like the backup offensive lineman who's going to do two a days the entire summer to like not play on a two and ten team. And I'm like, I don't know. Like how do these like how do you feel the team knowing that? I just cannot get in the mindset of those people. And I wonder if that must be what it's like to be, you know, part of the Jesse Jans, Jesse J's stand base. By the way, all standbases need. You know, you got the barbs. you got, I forget who else, you know, the names that the stands give themselves.

I need to know what the Tovlo people are. I need to know what the Jesse J people are. I need to know what the Sprino Carpenter people are. So if you're an IndyCats listener who's in that world, let us know. Yeah, when they tov low, we go high, right? Is that the thing? That's great. All right, let's get to our next email.

This one comes from, and I don't know how to pronounce this, is it on. Andre? It's Andri. It's A-N-D-R and then two eyes. It's a listener from Italy. Okay. So I don't know. I'm not going to do an Italian accent. The only time I've seen two eyes at the end of the last name is Minnesota Twins legend Tori Hunter. So I'm just, let's go with that. Tori Hunter, not Italian. Andre is. I have a question. Why do you keep using Metacritic scores for the draft competition? I feel their approach can be a bit questionable.

They pull from a limited number of review sources, and sometimes they even assign scores to reviews that don't include a numerical rating. How do they even calculate those? Some albums have very few reviews, which isn't really enough for a reliable median score. That feels a little unfair, especially when compared to albums that get a lot of reviews, making their scores more volatile, which I have discovered this week with Alan Sparhawk, although you benefited from more reviews. That actually raised the little skims score. Maybe it could be worth considering something like albumof the year.org. I personally prefer that site.

It feels more transparent in how they present reviews in as much more advanced as an aggregator. Just a suggestion, of course, curious to hear your thoughts. What do you think, Ian? Should we change in the third quarter to albumofthe year.org? I've never been to that site. I have because it's actually a great site for things that may have fallen under the radar a little bit in each given week. like, oh, this thing is super high. Let's see, let's give this a run because it also has like user reviews and that you can get a

sense of like how things are actually going out in the wild. But the problem with album of the year is that it's like straight math where they take all the numbers, they add them up and they divide by the number of places that are reviewed. Plus it like includes, I mean, if you have like some issues with some of the metacritic places, like you you will be amazed at what's there on album of the year. But the problem with that is I think the secret sauce aspect of Metacritic, which is, you know, kind of having weights on certain scores like weighing certain publications happening in the others, make it draft more exciting.

And, you know, it has strategy in it. And I think also Metacritic ensures a certain level of quality control because everything ends up on album of the year. But Metacritic, these got to be things that are, you know, published. published by five places, which by the way, as I've been doing it, you say there's like a lot of places out there, as I've been doing album ranking lists by, you know, like Spoon and Coldplay and Caribou, bands that have been around for the total of like the 21st century, you'll look at every review, every album Metacritic in like 2010 had like 35 reviews. Now it's like eight.

Wow. Yeah. So it's a little, uh, a little, a little hard. mumbling, I guess, to see that. There's just fewer review places, I guess, at this point. Uprock's still not on a Metacritic, by the way. Metacritic, I don't know. I don't know what's going on there.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like Metacritic, it's sort of like the NCAA, and that it's a very flawed organization, but it's just part of what we do at this point, and it feels weird not to take them away. And I'm with you. I think that some places should be weighted, You know, like the Rolling Stone review or the pitchwork review, I think that makes sense.

And, yeah, how they come up with numerical scores for like the New York Times review, for instance. I don't know how they do that. I don't know if there's like, you know, a like Russell Crow in a beautiful mind. You know, someone who can just read these reviews and like he just comes up with numbers in his head and he figures it out. It's very strange, but it's part of what we do. So we got to keep it. And albumoftheyear.org. I mean, do they only do professional reviews or are they also doing, like, user reviews?

Well, they have two separate, they have two separate numbers. The first of which is, like, the critic review, which is, like, you know, places like, like, pitchfork or whatever. And then there's the user, like, there's users on the site who will give it a review. And it's really funny because you see a lot of times the discrepancy between a lot of, like, these hyped British albums and, you know, what the users think of it. And, you know, they're not like always the most, let's just say, mindful places. You know, you get into just some message board, Reddit type stuff in there. But the one thing I want to see, here's something I learned in researching this.

You know that like Los Thu Thunaka album on Pitchforth? It got a 9.3. Yeah. That's the only review of that place. So I kind of wish that was on Metacritic just so we could see how it's weight. like whether it's like that's like a 110 you know or if there's like it can break that 100 ceiling or whatever but yeah I think that we're going to stick to Metacritic we just love the mysteries of the universe yeah is that is that like the anti Cindy Lee in that like I feel like that album hasn't caught on

the way I mean not at all pitchfork wasn't the only one to write about Cindy Lee but you know that I think they gave it like a 9.1 or something. They gave it a really high score. Yeah. And it really helped raise the profile of that record. Whereas that other record, which I can't even pronounce the title of it. How do you pronounce it? Fuck, man.

I'm gonna, Loz through Thanaka. I'm going like phonetically. But yeah, DJE was like the last one they did. But yeah, it's been, I mean, we haven't had a brat this year, nor have we had a Cindy Lee. You know, through, I think there's maybe been some efforts. for that, but man, 2024 was a, we were eating really good

with the nap. Yeah, yeah, this, uh, it's been kind of a week year, I think, music-wise.

We'll talk about this more in a few weeks when we talk about our favorite albums of the year so far, but it, it feels, it feels weaker than last year. And I definitely feel like I've heard more albums that I didn't really like. Like a lot of, my reviews lately have been a little bit more negative,

just because I feel like a lot of the sort of bigger ticket indie records have not delivered. really in 2025 so far. But we'll table that conversation for a future episode. Let's get to our next email. Do you want to read this one, Ian? Yes, I do. So I think this is a very Ian coded question.

Oh, it is. Definitely. All right. Hey, Stephen Ian. Quinn from Austin here. Still not yours. Yes. This is Arch Manning Fireworks territory in UT now.

They're number one team in the country. I think maybe this is the year. for them. Anywho, this year marks the 10-year anniversary of Title Fights' last album Hyperview. They haven't released music since Indycast became a podcast, so there hasn't really been a reason to discuss them. Not true. We talk about all sorts of bands that don't release music. But I was curious how you two felt about this band, Title Fight, yay or nay, appreciate you two, and here's the most important part. Shout to Sportscast. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Quinn.

Do you think it is actually Quinn yours? You think he was just trying to throw us off the scent saying that it wasn't Quinn yours? I don't think so. I think we, like football, I think has the least kind of interaction with indie rock. You can find like some baseball players who are into cool music or like some basketball players for sure,

but football is just like kind of indie free zone. Quinn, he's probably like a Zach Bryan fan. Absolutely. And that kind of stuff. Title Fight, Yay or Day. I'm going to say yay, for sure. And Hyperview, when I did my favorite indie rock albums of the century so far, I put Title Fight Hyperview in my top 100.

So, like, I am a fan of that record. I love that record. It's interesting, and you would know this better than me, but I feel like among the title fight heads, Hyperview maybe isn't as well regarded as some of their earlier records. I just get the sense. the discourse that people knock it. And I don't know if it's because it's a little less punk and it's more shoegaze sounding.

People just think it's a little weak in that regard. Am I right in that or am I off base? I think there are two coexisting fan bases where there are the people who, you know, disregard like hyperview is some like, you know, shoe gaze bullshit or they don't like Will Yip's production or what have you. And then there are the people who think it's like their best album. And, you know, I think those two things can't exist without each other. And it's, yeah, I think you could do a Hyperview anniversary show and it would be very well regarded.

Or you could do a title fight reunion that they don't touch Hyperview at all. And that would be equal. That would be bigger. I mean, I think title fight is one of the whales of the reunion industry, at least, you know, with Fest or best friends forever or any, or basically any festival that, you know, has bands like this on it. Or Sound and Fury, for that matter. But for me, I mean, Hyperview is by a long distance, the title fight album I would listen to the most. This is, this question feels a little bit like a trap because the answer is obviously yay,

but not quite as emphatic of a yay as you might think based on the music I gravitate towards. I do think that title fight is a band that if you were like 16, or whatever when you first encountered them. Like they're just extremely important. You know, the first song of theirs I heard was Head in the Sealing fan, which was from Floral Green. I think that was 2012. And that's like kind of the shoe gaze outlier on that album. And I think that's like one of the most important songs of the past 15 years in the emo,

hardcore punk indie fest sphere. I don't think you can imagine heavy shoe. gaze being what it is right now without it. Like bands weren't copying hum back then, especially in the punk world. But yeah, but like floral green and shed, I try with them and it's just not fully connecting with me. I really think this is the sort of like you had to be of a certain age to love it. And I just don't think that those albums have a quality that's self-evident to people

who are just not into this. Like, you know, with Sunday Real Estate Diary, you can not be an emo, but you can give that out to someone, like, and they would know that, yeah, this is like the ultimate document of this genre. I like spring songs a lot, too. That's the 2013 EP with, it's like kind of more poppy. But yeah, I mean, like title fight, yeah, love them. Just not really a guy who's going to pitch a Sunday review for Flor Green. Although I've thought about it. That's just a situation where there's a band.

where if I love them more, it would be more beneficial for me. But yeah, I just can't get there with them. I can't fake it. Yeah, I like Hyperview a lot. I don't go deep on their catalog.

I think I'm drawn to Hyperview because it, it's them leaning into like the 90s alt rock side of what they do. And that's just more of where I live than maybe the more emo side. So, and I feel like at that time, I feel like that's a lot more common now than it was 10 years ago when that record came out. It felt like fresh when that album arrived in 2015, and obviously I think that record influenced other bands to move in that direction over the next decade.

So big record, important record, Hyperview, definitely yay on that and yay on Title Fight for me overall. Let's get to our last email. This comes from Garth in Annapolis, Maryland. Party on Wayne, party on Garth. Sorry, you probably heard that a million times. I had to do it, though. In terms of the great sportscast debate, I have mixed feelings,

but this is mostly because I only follow one sport, tennis. And we don't get any tennis talk from y'all, aside from recent discourse about the indie-pop duo tennis, of course. I thought of the pod as I was watching the finals of the Italian Open a few weeks ago. Who popped up in the audience? none other than future Indycast Hall of Famers, Monoskin. Wow, so were they, like, together? Like, was it the entire band?

I guess, like, in Italy, they just appear at any public event. It's not just one guy? I don't know. They're a band. It's a bunch of people. They're all pretty colorful characters. This got me thinking, what is tennis core music? It's certainly not Monoskin, and it's probably not the actual band tennis.

Vampire Weekend seems like an overly easy. match. For me, it's got to be an elegant band with just a little bit of shittiness. These players are wildly petty. This might grind Ian's gears, but I have a working theory that the members of Los Campesinos play tennis. Thoughts.

Hmm. Yeah, I don't think they play tennis. Los Campesinos are very much like a football, like soccer. That's a soccer band right there. So many lyrics in their albums are about soccer. Almost none about tennis. But this

is an interesting question because I'm starting to get a sense that tennis, the sport, not the band, is becoming or is sort of like Formula One or soccer that a certain segment of my Twitter follows are super into. Like you know that feeling when you, it's like a Saturday morning and you see like four or five people you follow say, Jorge Cantu, that's a bad man. And like you have no idea what they're talking about. It just turns out it's like a Premier League soccer. soccer coach or something like that. So I think tennis is kind of getting to that realm.

I saw a lot of people posting about the French Open this weekend because apparently like Al-Karaz Sinner, that was like legendary tennis. Like I've heard this from like numerous people who usually don't talk to me about tennis. But this is so this is a great question because it can be it can take it can take two routes. The first of which is like is this music that accompanies tennis the sport. And yeah, Vampire Weekend, I think giving up the gun. I think that video had tennis involved in some way, shape, or form?

Or is it like the music whose qualities are similar to that of tennis culture? I mean, to me, the obvious answer here is Stephen Malkmus or Pavement. Because Malkmus is the most famous tennis aficionado in Indy Rock. I mean, there was just a New Yorker interview with him where it was about him playing tennis. And then, you know, you've got, you know, like stop breathing. is like a song about tennis, like one of the greatest pavement songs. So to,

and, like, Malcolm's looks like a tennis player. Yes. And I'm guessing that he's probably pretty good at tennis. He's been playing for a long time. He's playing like into his like later 50s.

So I'm sure he can, uh, really work a racket. Do people say that in tennis? They can work a racket. I don't know what the tennis terminology is. That doesn't sound, uh,

very natural to say. I mean, I like tennis. My problem with tennis is that I never know like when the big, tournaments are and I always find out like you with the with the British football thing like people will be tweeting about it and they'll just be like oh this five-hour match this is what sports are made of and that kind of stuff so I don't I don't get to watch it I also currently don't have YouTube TV yeah I cancel it when football's not on so it's hard for me to

watch network television sometimes so I missed it but I like I like tennis a lot of grew up watching tennis. I played a little bit of tennis in my life. But yeah, Pavement, Stephen Malcolm is to me quintessential tennis court music. Yeah, I thought about that too. And as far as my tennis history, I was on the JV tennis team in junior year of high school or something like that, just because I thought it would help my college application. We had to play all of our matches away because our tennis court just got ruined by all the

skaters. And there were just like these massive cracks on it. It was just like looking like the San Andreas fall. But yeah, when I was thinking about tennis, like pavement came to mind. And also, though, if I'm thinking about the music that is best suited to tennis culture, I think when I think about tennis players nowadays, or just at all times, it is a sport that requires such an insane amount of training and discipline. And also the fact that it's like an individual sport, you've got to be somewhat sociopathic

to dedicate yourself that much to it. And so when I think about the combination of just like chops, mind-blowing proficiency and a kind of abrasive, anti-social personality, to me, it's Jordy Greep or Black Middy. Like that to me is tennis right there because there's all these like time signatures that are just completely incomprehensible. He is a weirdo. And I think that's what tennis players are.

When I think about like, you know, your John McEnrauss, your I think for a while, these were kind of more robotic players. But now I think they're getting a little bit more, there's a little bit more texture in the personality. So, yeah, black midi, anything of that elk. Tennis is kind of prod to me. We've now reached part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about something we're into this week.

Ian, why don't you go first? I mentioned this one on Twitter recently. So it's a band called First Day Back. That is 99.9% certain to be a Braide reference or could be, you know, the reference to the second Somos album, First Day Back, very underappreciated. Violent Declined, great song. But nonetheless, I'm thinking that it's a braid reference because they sound like braid or they sound like cap and jazz with a violinist. And so that's pretty much an automatic conclusion of recommendation corner, especially since this album, which is called Forward, is really, really well done and kind of a nice break from the like the kind of tapity tap emo that's dominated

the past few years like the origami angel uh influence kind of music um so i'm going to recommend this album just based on how it sounds based on the fact the songs are great like yeah it's classic recommendation corner core the coolest part for me they're from santa cruz and i mean i know that like tim kinsella supposedly wrote all the lyrics do schmap and schmaz in one night on an acid trip but no there's no city less emo i think than santa cruz i just love when you get an emo ban from a place where emo shouldn't exist and yeah santa cruz is what i know that as is just like psych rock and drugs that's it but you know if any emo band out there wants to integrate some comets of fire a comets on fire into their sound i'd be

down for that too so i'm going to talk about a record that was recommended to me by a listener of this show, Taylor Grimes shouted out to me on a DM. He's like, I think you're going to like this record based on my recent recommendation of Flory. That great record, band originally from Philadelphia, that record sounds like, one of my favorite albums of the first part of 2025. And the record that he recommended is called BS, and the band is called Beauty Saloon, not Salon, but Saloon, Saban from Chicago.

And it's interesting because I could definitely see the Flory connection. Flory, of course, is this very sort of ramshackle band that is really drawing from a combination of like indie rock and a little bit of like Rolling Thunder era Bob Dylan and like Exile on Main Street, Rolling Stones. It has that vibe. And Beauty Saloon, I could sort of see it in that vein. But to me, this is like looking at that sort of indie Americana thing

that's going on right now that I'm a big fan of that derives, you know, not derives, but it's been popularized by like MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, artists like that. It's approaching that from a perspective where it's less about like drive-by truckers and more about pavement. Like it has a little bit of like

a dusty, crunchy vibe, but it definitely has like a strong sort of indie bedrock sound to it as well. The guitars on this record are awesome. They're very liquidy. It sounds like they're sort of melting into one another. And there's a real languid pace to a lot of the songs. But there's also like a real sly sense of humor going on as well.

And it's just really good songwriting, really good vibe. Again, this is patio music through and through. I think it's a really good record. I've been listening to it a lot lately. Again, it's called BS. And the band is called Beauty Saloon. If you're into a lot of the records that I've been recommending lately, slot this into,

wherever you listen to music, you're definitely going to be into it. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news, reviews, and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix tape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.