Indiecast - The Fall Of Jann Wenner and A Surprise Album From The National

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

It's been a week since former Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner gave a disastrous interview to the New York Times to promote his upcoming book of classic rocker interviews, The Masters. Thankfully, it lingered just long enough in the news for Steven and Ian to talk about it on the pod. The guys reflect on Wenner's legacy, why he chose to say out loud what many assumed were his feelings about women and black musicians, and what this means for the discourse overall. Also, they talk about the surprise re-emergence of Spin's Bob Guccione Jr. aka the guy Axl Rose threatened to beat up in "Get In The Ring." (:25)From there they talk about Laugh Track, the surprise new album by The National that dropped earlier this week (23:33). It's their second LP of 2023 after First Two Pages Of Frankenstein, and it sounds a lot like that record. Steven and Ian are somewhat lukewarm on both records, though Steven believes that a very good single National album could have been made from their best material. What's going on with this band, and have they lost the ability to self-edit?In the mailbag, a listener takes the guys to task for talking about sports too much (33:43), and another letter writer asks an important CD-related question: jewel case or digipak? (41:52)In Recommendation Corner (49:51), Ian talks about the Grimes-like singer-songwriter Yeule while Steven recommends the Summerteeth-like rock band Slaughter Beach, Dog.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 156 and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by 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 discussed the fall of Yon Winner and a surprise new national album. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. I wonder if he knows that Bob Cuccione Jr. is still at Spin Magazine.

Ian Cohen, Ian, how are you? Yeah, I'm, like, hesitant to say anything negative about Spin right now because just two days ago, their most recent check cleared for me. And I can't say that about every single publication I write for. So whether it's Bob Gucci-Oni Jr. Or Bob Gucci-Jr Jr. signing checks, I don't give a shit. But I do give a shit because this is fucking hilarious. I love that we're having like real deal Bob Gucci-Oni-Juner talk without having to like force feed, get in the ring.

Yeah, we're going to get to Bob Gucci-Jr Jr. here in a minute because he plays into this young winter story in a a surprising way. It was like the Yon Winter story. It was like running out of juice because for those who don't know, Jan Winnor, former publisher of Rolling Stone, gave an interview to the New York Times. I think it was last Friday,

the day our previous episode came out. And it's about this upcoming book of interviews he's putting out called The Masters, which is a hilarious title in light of this interview. But it's a collection of interviews with seven classic rockers. I'm going to try to recite this from memory. I think it's Bob Dylan, Bono, Pete Townsend, Jagger, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon. Am I missing somebody? You said Bono, right?

I said Bono, yeah. It's like literally, I see my copy on the shelf right now, and if I were to get up and get it, I'd fact check you. But now I'm just like, I have the promo copy, and man, John went to really tank the resale value of this thing. Or maybe he didn't. Is this book out yet? Well, okay, no, it's not out.

I don't think it's out yet. I think it's out next week. Okay. And, yeah, I want to talk about the impact on book sales here in a second. But just to wrap up the setup here, Jan Winter, he gives an interview to the New York Times about this book. And it is like the worst book promo interview that I can remember. It is Jan Winter pouring gasoline on himself.

and begging David Marchez who did the interview begging him to light a match and Marchez not wanting to light a match like he's like hey do you sure you want to do this Jan and Jan's like yes I want to be set on fire and so he was there's so many things

that were bad about this interview I mean the headline of the thing that and this is the thing that really sunk him was there's a part of the interview where David Marchez asks Jan winner you did this book called the Masters you got seven people in here. They're all white guys. By the way, I forgot to mention Bruce Springsteen.

That's the one I forgot. I forgot the boss. I forgot the boss. How could I forget the boss? You have this book called The Master. Seven people interviewed. They're all white guys. Why is that?

Why aren't there any women or black musicians or, you know, anyone who's not a white guy? And Jan Winnor, this is what he could have said. And he literally anything except what he did say. Well, what he could have said is, well, look, David, I'm a 77-year-old man. My favorite music was released in the 60s and 70s. These are my favorite artists. They're also my friends.

And I just wanted to do a book about people I care about. He could have said that. It wouldn't have nullified the criticism that the book is narrowly focused on one type of person, but it would have at least grounded the book in Jan Winners' personal preference. And you can't really, at the end of the day, rebuke that. It's like, it's my book, my perspective, and people can do their own books and have their own people in there if they want. He didn't say that.

What he said was that there were no women that were articulate enough. I'm paraphrasing here slightly, but he basically said there were no women articulate enough to be in the book and that there were no black musicians articulate on the same level as these white musicians for him to include in the book. That didn't go over very well. Firestorm of controversy, he actually gets booted from, the rock and roll hall of fame

after essentially being booted from Rolling Stone for the reasons in this interview like he is this out of touch boomer guy and the forces including I think one of his sons actually is in charge of Rolling Stone now

they realize like we can't just put Bono on the cover every month we have to get a little younger we have to get more diverse and that's what Rolling Stone is between. Every other month is fine not every month you know But, and there were other terrible things in this interview. Like, Jan Winter admitting that he shows interview transcripts to his subjects before they're published and allows them to make changes.

Like going back to like 1970 with John Lennon in that very famous interview. So, I mean, he's done this for like 50 years, which is like journalistic malpractice. No one really talked about that because the sexism and racism parts were way worse. The part thing about this interview is that the content itself wasn't shocking if you know anything about Jan Winter Because I think if you if you read the magazine or you know about Jan Winter You would have assumed that he thought this way It's the fact that he said it out loud It is like the music equivalent of like interviewing Richard Nixon at the end of his life

And being like hey Richard what about Watergate and Nixon's like oh yeah I told totally did Watergate. Totally did it. Everything bad about me that you assume is true. And I admit it unapologetically. That is what this interview was. It's so crazy. Yeah. I mean, you're right in that the interviewer gives them so many opportunities to walk it back or at least come up with some degree of plausible deniability because, yeah, I mean, like people are like, oh, if you can't get like an good interview out of like Joni Mitchell, that's a skill issue. It's like, well, I mean, maybe he's not as good of friends with like Johnny Mitchell as he is with like Bono or Bruce Springsteen.

Like, these are his drinking buddies. And you know what? Like, what do you expect out of like Jan Wenner at this point? Like, I think that there are so many ways where he could just like kind of phone it in. And I mean, on some like some purely objective context-free level, you got to appreciate someone who's like that old and just doesn't give a shit anymore about like their press like this somehow like ended up way worse than the worst conspiracy shit you would come up with like yon winner it's like he he did he really did the eugenics frenology type shit uh has he apologized yet

he apologized okay um but yeah i mean you know you would think yon winner who whatever else you want to say about him, he has been very successful in media. He's built magazines. He's made hundreds of millions of dollars. You would expect him to be a little more media savvy than he was in this interview. But you're right. I think that there's a sense when you read this interview that he's just like, I don't want to put up a facade anymore. I don't want to go through the paces. There's actually a part in the interview where he says, you know, I could have put a woman in to, you know, deflect criticism, you know, for PR purposes, but I didn't want to do that. So, like, he's aware that this would be an issue, certainly in the media, that people would bring up.

And he just didn't care. And he didn't even give the more sort of politically astute answer to it. He just was straight up. I don't think women or black musicians are as interesting as these white guys. He just said that straight up. It's amazing. You know, I was thinking, though, about the impact on book sales for this. I do wonder, like, the audience that's going to buy this book, it's mostly, I'm guessing,

classic rock, loving baby boomers. Or, like, low-key racist, I don't know. Well, you know, to be honest, like, I would be interested in this book. I like the musicians who are in the book. I've read some of these interviews. These interviews have already run in Rolling Stone. The John Lennon interview from 1970 is a classic interview. Oh, he's not speaking to some of these people from beyond the grave.

That's what I assume from the book. This is much more boring. That would have been an incredible scoop. I think the only new interview, there's a new interview with Bruce Springsteen, who I love Bruce. I don't know what he's going to say at this point. That would be interesting. But anyway, you know, the people are going to buy this book.

Do you think they're going to care about this or even know about it? I have my doubts about that. I think if you are still a person who thinks Jan Winter is cool, you know, you probably either agree with him on this or you think that he's being railroaded by the media. Yeah. I really think that the people, I mean, I do think that this permanently tarnishes his, reputation. You know, when they write the obituary

about Young Winter, they're going to bring up this interview. And they're going to say, you know, for all his accomplishments, he also was a gatekeeper that kept out non-white guys in the canon.

You know, that's going to get brought up in this interview. It's damning. It's, you know, again, any assumption you had about this guy or anything you've observed

about him, he just confirmed it. It was way worse, though. It was somehow like way worse. Like, than I could possibly imagine. And that's like, that's like the amazing thing about it.

You know, it's like, this is straight up like Logan Roy type shit or like Rupert Murdoch, which by the way, shout to Rupert Murdoch stepping down. Yeah, I think that it also got like kicked off the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame committee that he started. Right. Which is like Donald Sterling or like Daniel Snyder being like forced to sell their teams. But I think the, the thing that like kind of bummed. me out, like, on a completely trivial level about this interview is that, like, 90, like, there was like a 99% chance the thing that we would be talking about on this podcast had he not,

like, got in some, like, weird race theory stuff is that he's getting shit 22 years later for the goddess in the doorway review. Yes. Have you ever gotten, like, shit on for this long, this hard for a positive review? I don't know if there's any precedent for this in music criticism. And honestly, you know, when I read that interview, I noticed all the horrible stuff in there. But the thing that made me laugh the most was that David Marchez brings up the five-star, God, it's in the doorway review of the McJager record. And makes Jan Winter apologize for it, essentially.

Like Yon Winder's like, I'm sorry, man, I was into the music. Maybe I was a little indulgent, but I'm privileged. You know, so what? I just love that. Among all the other things in this interview, you know, this is like the sixth or seventh paragraph if you're writing the story about this,

about this controversy. But yeah, he's still kidding shit on for the goddess in the doorway review. Do you have any in your history like that where it's like people bring it up like how excited you were about like some record? Well,

I joked about this on Twitter that when I'm 77, I hope that someone brings up my beach slang column from 2015. I think that would be the thing that if you're going to prosecute me on a music critic

crime, it would be the beach slang column from 2015. We've got to bring up Bob Guccioni Jr. We've got to bring up Bob Guccioni. We've got to get on our Axel Rose shit right now. And God bless Bob Guccione Jr. Because again, this story, it had run out of gas by the middle of this week.

to the point where I was like, can we still talk about this on the show? I felt like we were probably going to do it, but it felt like a little like old news, like maybe we missed our window. And then Bob Guccione, Jr., comes to the door like the Kool-Aid man with a think piece.

I think it's called In Defense of Yon Winner. Yes. I think it's the headline. And it's a wild think piece. You feel like Bob has had this in his head for a while. all these thoughts, and he just was looking for an excuse to express them.

And Jan Winnor, the fall of Yon Winnor was a good excuse. He starts off the piece and he's saying, look, Jan Winter is wrong about what he said about women and black musicians, but what about freedom of speech? Are we taking away Jan Winter's freedom of speech by thinking that what he said was stupid? And of course, this is like the dumbest argument in the world that when you say something on a huge platform like the New York Times and the public, you know, lashes out at you over that, that that is somehow violating your freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want and no one can say anything back to you. Right. Just the dumbest old guy on Facebook.

argument in the world. I even feel stupid refuting it because it's such a dumb argument that the things that you say to refute it just seems so obvious. But then he goes from there and he goes into like a, like a Rosian Murphy tangent. I'm kind of shocked that like Bob Gutione Jr. knows who Rocheon Murphy is. He goes into that and then he goes to like the PMRC hearings in the mid-80s. And like you're, like I didn't read this.

I had to stop because I was like, this is too much. But I was scrolling down and I was like, oh, of course there's a photo of Frank Zappa in this piece. It was like the cherry on his Sunday. Yeah, where's the Frank Zappa interview in the Masters? I'm sure this guy, if he stayed alive, you would have had some very interesting, similarly interesting views on race and sex.

But, you know, and again, I didn't read the whole thing because it was too much for me. But I know there is a sentence where it begins with, as Bill Maher said. Oh, cool. And when you're starting a sentence with, as Bill Maher said, you're not in a good place. You might just want to press delete on that sentence and rethink what you're doing. I want Jan Wenner to do the Donald Trump thing. It's like, I did everything right and they indicted me. I want to hear like that sort of thing.

You know, like for free speech, like, you know, because that, if it was really about free speech, like Jan Wanner would be in like jail right now. he's just like, you know, suffering the consequences of his dumbass actions, which... Well, Yad Winter is Trump-like in the sense that he appears to have no proclivity for introspection. Like, he doesn't look at his own life or his career with any sort of regret or critical eye. There's a part in that New York Times interview, like, where Marchez is like, I interviewed Pete Townsend myself recently, and Pete Townsend was talking about, you know, where the boomers fell short, like where they failed in their generation. And, Jan, what do you think?

And Jan is just like, I can't think of anything that we didn't do well. You know, I can't think of any mistakes that we've made. And that applies to himself. There's just something in the boomer, like the aging rich boomer, that I don't want to use the word sociopath, like too loosely here. But, you know, I don't understand how you can live that long and not have any regret or not have any sort of self-awareness about your shortcomings. It's so alien to me that kind of thought process. But I guess in a way that is also the thing that enabled him to be a success. That he is just supremely confident, you know, no self-doubt at all.

But yeah, in the end, it will get you eventually. If you are not self-aware, you're not introspective at all. I think you end up in a situation like this in an interview where you're so arrogant. You don't even know that what you're saying is wrong. Because you can't be wrong because you think you're always right about everything. You think your opinion is fact. I think the main similarity between if we have to make a parallel between Donald Trump and young winners, is that both of them are like 77-year-old dudes who like love nothing more than bitchy gossip.

That's the stuff they live for. That's like the only thing that keeps them going right now. And that's the only time you see them light up. It's like when they get to bitch about like other rich-ass boomers. It's a shame. But look, I'm sure Yon Wendor's suffering enough by like watching Rolling Stone and like become more or less like a Taylor Swift fanzine. Well, that's something I wanted to bring up to. Just looking at this more broadly.

because we've got Yon Winner, you got Bob Gutione Jr. who was the founder of Spin. And I didn't know he was still there. I think he was gone for a while, then came back. I wonder if the actual spin people, like the people running it right now know that he's,

like, this guy like somehow someone taught him how to do CMS and he just published this thing. And the editors could just do nothing about it. Yeah, I'm willing to bet that the editors there were not happy about this. Yeah. I would guarantee you that they would not have run this if it was written by anybody else. But anyway, you got Jan Winter, you got Bob Gutiioni Jr. I'm going to bring Ryan Schreiber into this, too.

He didn't do anything wrong. Ryan didn't say anything this week. But just thinking about theuteur generation of music magazines and publications, you know, this idea that you've got a magazine or a website that is a reference. reflection of like a single person's sensibility and taste. You know, that's how Rolling Stone started. That's how pitchfork started. I think spin, you could say that about Gucci Jr.

And how with all of these places, at some point, they get absorbed into like a corporate structure. And the autur gets displaced and replaced by a plurality of voices. And how in a lot of ways, that's an improvement because it ends up expanding the reach the publication, it gives it a more diverse set of voices, you end up covering a wider range of things. But I don't know, there's something about that Auteur era that for all of the many, many, many, many, many, many faults of someone like Jan Winner. You knew what Rolling Stone was when he ran it. You knew what was going to be on the year end list. You knew Mick Jagger's solo

albums. You're going to get five stars. You knew U-2. Any album they put out is probably going to be number one at the end of the year. You knew a new REM out would be their best sense automatic for the people, you know? And we can say these opinions are wrong or, you know, that it's outmoded, but it did have a personality that I don't know if any publication has now, you know, because it is run by, it isn't that autour model, it is like the plurality of voices. It's the committee thing. And again, I think that the committee thing, in terms of the actual product is oftentimes an improvement.

But I just wonder, is there ever going to be like a magazine or a website as powerful as Rolling Stone was at its peak or pitchfork was at its peak? That is also the reflection of like a single person. Anthony Fontano. Well, yeah, exactly. That is the modern equivalent of that. And I think, again, for all the of the criticisms you could make of like theuteur-driven publication, it does, I think, forge a more personal connection with the people who read it because you feel like, okay, this is, I know what this is.

You know, and when you don't have that, it ends up, you end up with a lot of publications that seem like they're alike and are covering the same kinds of things. And again, like I'm not saying, oh, put Jan Winderbeck in. Because obviously, I think he did a lot of damage with his, with, you know, this ideology that he had, you know, that he wasn't. covering certain artists because of some weird bias in his heart that he's now expressed. That's obviously a bad thing. But again, that octeur-driven sensibility

is something that is interesting to me. And I just wonder if that is never going to happen again. Like at a magazine or website. Well, maybe if someone's willing to take $60,000 to be theuteur leading paper magazine, you know, maybe there's a lane for that. But yeah, it's pretty grim. I mean, maybe it's just like the auteur is not going to be like some, you know,

like white guy from the Midwest or something like that. Right. I'm sure it could be, I'm sure it could happen. But like, you know, when we look at like the economy and just the music industry in general, you know, I don't even know what that would look like. Yeah, I don't know if that's something. I do think that when you have a single voice that ends up being more interesting than a committee of voices.

Because again, with someone like Jan Winter, you know, yeah, he had like a lot of like dumb things he did at Rolling Stone. But it was also kind of more fun to talk about Rolling Stone then. Yeah. You know, like you could like make jokes about Rolling Stone doing certain things.

And you just knew, like, Jan Winter for all his success, he still cared enough to like, you know, change the review of a Mick Jagger solo record that no one gives a shit about. You know, like the five-star review. That was going to do nothing to God us in the doorway.

But he cared enough or he wanted to impress his friend, Mick Jagger, when they're yachting together. That's another thing. That New Year Time story. Great shit. Yeah. We didn't even talk about, there was so much in that interview. That photo of Jan Winter and Mick Jagger on the yacht together. It's like, oh, my God.

That's that indie cast lifestyle. That's like us with, like, I don't know, the keyboard is from gang of youths or whatever. Oh, my God. Just beautiful. man, we could talk about this forever, but we should transition here to talking about the new national album that came out.

I guess that was on Sunday at midnight? Yeah, something like that. It was either Monday night, or it was either like technically Sunday night or Monday morning, I think. It was Monday at, it was Sunday at midnight. Got it. Although, is that Monday?

Yeah, I guess that's technically Monday. It's like the end of Sunday at the beginning of Monday. We'll say it that way. New national album It's called Laft Track And this is the second national album of 2023 if you remember

They put out an album called First Two Pages of Frankenstein Back in the Spring This album I think we can say is like Essentially from the same sessions I think maybe they did some stuff after stand From

First Two Pages of Frankenstein But it's certainly They're very similar records I think in a lot of ways There has been a discussion that I've seen that, like, Laf Track is a little looser maybe, a little more rocking. I think that's due mostly to the appearance of the last song, which is called Smoke Detector. It's the seven-minute epic that they, I think they recorded it at a sound check. It's very loose, easily the most rocking song they've put out in the last several years.

But for the most part, Laftrack is similar to first two pages of Frankenstein in the sense that there are a lot of of slow ballads. There are a lot of guest stars, famous guest stars. Taylor Swift is not on this record like she was on first two pages of Frankenstein, but you have Phoebe Bridgers on here again. Bonnie Vare is on this record. Roseanne Cash is on a song. Actually, one of the better songs on the record called Crumble.

That's probably the most surprising guest star appearance on the record. You haven't seen this yet, but I have a column running the day that this episode posts on Friday, where I came up with what I think is like a really good national album out of these two albums. I compiled a 12-track 60-minute record that essentially takes the most upbeat songs and packages them together and comes up with a record that I think is a lot more satisfying than these two albums are on their own. I think both of these albums are pretty uneven. I'm curious to get your take on this because we're both national fans going back many years.

I think I've been more interested in their recent work than you have been, although even I, I feel like these two records and I Am Easy to Find, which came out in 2019, the weakness of these albums is that for whatever reason the National have not been good at self-editing lately. I think I Am Easy to Find has like 18 or 19 songs on it. Very long record. These two albums came out this year. I think there's like 24 tracks or so between them. way more songs that I think

warranted being released a lot of songs that sound the same I think and I really believe like especially with these two albums it's a mountain of material I think that there was a good album to be made from this mountain of material

but they just kind of did this data dump with all of these songs and I don't know what is the state of the national at this point do you think you know when I heard the first song, the smoke detector was recorded at sound check. I think the obvious comparison of like at least what I was hoping for was, you know, their version of new adventures and high five, which was like REMs. Sort of like the, the closest thing they got to a data dump and it kind of did everything

they had done, you know, previously, but got away from, you know, like monster and, uh, automatic for the people having very, very, um, coherent sounds. And I mean, like, I'm kind of surprise that you're able to get like 60 minutes like I think there could be a good album to be made from these two it certainly wouldn't be 60 minutes long in my opinion because um yeah it's just like okay so follow me with this one like I know that like the guest stars like kind of dissipate the impact of the national but like I almost feel like they're so locked into Matt Berninger's whole thing that they can't really reinvent themselves and I don't know. I would hear like a, I would be interested to hear like a National without the National, like the Garfield without Garfield comic strips because, man, at this pace, like the National is like one of my favorite bands from back in the day. But now like these new albums hold about as much. They feel like listening to like a latter day interpol album or something like that, which, you know, like derogatory. I just can't find myself like being excited about what they're doing even in the same way that like, when.

when Wilco kind of does Wilco, at least there's like this level of craftsmanship. It just seems to me like Matt Berniger is just incapable right now, like writing about anything else than like feeling weird at parties and like feeling weird in his own mind. And yeah, I'm like really wondering what it would take for the national to, you know, make me excited about their music. And everyone's like, oh, they need to make a rockin album. him. But I feel like even then, if he's not screaming and they don't have Brian Devendorf cranked up way higher than every other instrument, I'm not going to feel it.

So just to correct myself quickly, I'm easy to find that has 16 songs on it, and there's 23 songs between these two albums out this year. So just want to make sure that the national heads don't count my slight errors with the song count from before. I got to send you my playlist of the album I made from the two albums from this year. I called it Frankenstein Laps. That's a good album title. I think so, too. Twelve songs that I think speak to what you were just saying,

that they are the songs where it sounds like them playing live in a studio. It sounds like Brian Devendorf is actually playing drums. It's not a drum machine. It sounds like Berniger, yeah, he's singing about feeling weird at parties, but I think he's also dropping some funny lines in there. And I don't mind him having the same subject matter. To me, I'm not really looking for him. Like, what is he going to write about?

Like, do you want to write about politics or something? I don't know what his new thematic territory would be. To me, the weakness of these Latter-day National albums is that it gets away from their chemistry as a band, which when you see them live, I think everyone agrees, even if you don't like the recent material, they are still a great live band. And I think their best albums showcase that chemistry that they have.

And they've just gotten into this rut. And I agree with you, like the, you know, Aaron Desner, like what he's been doing with Taylor Swift, just him as a producer. There is an element of these albums that sound a little bit like the Taylor Swift records that he worked on. And, you know, those records are fine, but this is a band. This isn't a solo artist. And I think when you have a lot of piano ballads that work really like the same vibe over and over again,

I just feel like someone needs to say, look, we only need about two or three of these songs on an album. We don't need like four or five per record. And it's just been overkill, I think, with that. And look, I am in the camp where I want them to make a more rock and record. But I would be satisfied with a record that was mellower but was just them. the five people, you know, bringing Padma, bringing, you know, some of the old guest musicians to back them up, but, like, not having these huge features all the time.

I mean, the Taylor Swift song and first two pages of Frankenstein, like that just, it, like, took me out of the record. Like, she's too big of a star to be on a national record. You know, it's like, I'm trying to think of an analogy for that. What about, like, Phoebe or, like, Boni Vare? Are they too big for the national now? Well, Phoebe's a different thing. Phoebe Bridgers, who again is an artist I like, but it is, she is like an ingredient now that has just been way overused.

You know, it's like putting avocado on everything. You know, like I love avocado. The pork bell, Phoebe Bridgers, P.B. Too much pork belly, too much Phoebe Bridgers. That's what we're seeing in the. Or like truffle fries. You haven't truffle fries everywhere. It's like, you know, they're fine, but, you know, it's too much.

And like, there's just too much Phoebe Bridgers in general. general, I think. She's got to take a year off. She needs to like, you know, Phoebe less here a little bit, I think. That's a different, that's a subject maybe for a different day, but I just feel like she needs to go away so we can miss her for a while. She just is like, omnipresent. It has been for like the last several years. But, uh, I don't know. The record that I made is going to be the record that I listen to from this era. And I think it's actually a really good record. I'm tempted to put it on my year-end list. I'm going to be that, I'm going to be that obnoxious about this because I think the National are still writing good songs. It's just like

they're not self-editing enough. And they're putting too much out. And I think, like, I am easy to find has some great songs on it. But you could cut about a quarter, you could at least cut a quarter out of that album. Get it down to 12 songs. And it would have been a much better record, I think. Yeah, I think it's funny with the national because, like, Matt's always like, yeah, I had really bad writers block for four years. And, you know, but somehow I came up with 16 songs. It's like me, it's like when I write a review and I'm like, fuck, how am I going to hit this 600 word count? And then like the night before the deadline, it's all of a sudden like 1,200. And it's not that it's good.

It's just that it's like, yep, here it is. You fucking deal with it. All right, let's get to our mailbag segment here. And it's about time we did the mailbag. We haven't done mailbag here for the past. past few weeks. And I feel like we haven't had a ton of subject matter to talk about, but for whatever reason, we always run out of time.

And we can't do mailbag. So we're somehow stretching what we're talking about to get out the mailbag. So anyway, we've got multiple letters here in the mailbag. Excited to get into it. Our first letter here, it's a bit of criticism from our audience. Do you want to read this letter? Yeah, this one comes from Brandon. No address.

so just Brandon from I guess the internet. Hey, Stephen and Ian. I've been a listener and follower for several years at this point. I receive your weekly emails. I listen to most episodes. I follow all your social media. So not every episode. You've introduced me to tons of new music,

as well as reinforce my feelings on trends and music news. And, of course, satisfied my nostalgia when thinking of indie music over the past several decades. I am writing you today to say that every time you switch to sports cast without fail, turn off the podcast. I have been a massively obsessed music fan my entire life and have never followed sports. Maybe you should do a separate sidecast to cover sports?

Because I can only assume your core audience of music fans do not care about the NFL. Sorry I'd be running in with the complaint. I still listen to the episodes that don't turn into a sports podcast. I should probably delete this and not send it. That's Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Yeah, Brad Brandon up in the fucking mailbag. Brandon, thank you for writing.

Thank you for your support. Appreciate you listening and reading and following the tweets and everything. I just got to say, Brandon, you don't have to stop listening when sportscast comes on. I don't know if you're aware, but like sportscast traditionally lasts about five minutes. We go into sports cast for a little bit and then we get out. Maybe it'd be 10 minutes. When we were debating NFL versus college football, I think that went on for a while. I think that's the episode that inspired Brandon to finally write.

in and give us a peace of his mind. But I would just say, Brandon, if sports cast comes up, just fast forward. We'll get back to music. You don't have to, like, stop the episode or throw your phone out the car window or whatever the case may be. We're just going to go in for a little bit, man. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal.

Just skip ahead. I hope that's not like an epidemic in our listenership. If they just, for some reason, think we're dropping indie cast this week. We're only going to do sportscast No sportscast. It's a mini Little thing in the middle of the episode. It's like the instrumental. I love it.

It's like the instrumental some artists throw on the album sometimes, you know. A spoken word track, spoken word track maybe of our episodes. Yeah, it's the little post-rock ambient interlude. Yeah, so I mean, we're not going to stop. No. We're not going to stop sportscast because you've got to have sports cast every now and then.

I do think that there are are people in our audience who like sports cast, who like the NFL. I feel like there's more intersection of sports and pop culture than ever, don't you? Well, I mean, I look, we are boldly existing at the intersection of sports and pop culture, which no podcast has done before or since. So, you know, there's going to be some audience members who are not brave enough to follow us into this bold new territory. But I think this idea that, you know, sports and music fans. There's like this wall between them is like very outdated. It's also, I mean, look, we live in an era where like theater kids and comic book nerds are more or less running like

pop culture on like the highest level. And also like this jock sports sort of thing. I mean, I guarantee a lot of the bands that Brandon's gotten into through us have like multiple fantasy sports teams. One of my favorite, one of my favorite little bits of interview trivia is when I interviewed He'd want O' Trix Point never. This had to be back in 11 or 12. He would talk to me about how on one of his monitors on stage, he would have his fantasy basketball stats up. Massive Celtics fan, that guy.

I think that most indie, or just a lot of the stuff that we cover, patio music, college football rock, that stuff. People are into the NFL, if not like, you know, wearing a, if not like wearing a Jordan Love jersey on stage. But, like, didn't like, Bob Mastanovich wear like a, It's like a Malcolm Brogden, Buck's jersey at the most recent pavement show. Yeah, Malcolm is a huge fantasy sports guy. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a big intersection.

And since we're on this topic, because we were going to talk about this in the banter segment, but can we talk about the Thursday night football theme song that dropped this week? You got Chris Stapleton. You got Snoop Dog, who, like, does Snoop Dog actually perform? in the song? Because in the video I saw, Snoop like gets out of a car wearing sunglasses. But I don't actually, I don't think he wraps or anything. Is he like, does he actually rap in the song? Yeah. I think he like, he provides some sort of like flavoring to it. So. And then you got Cindy Blackman, the great drummer. She's in there too. It's a cover of in the air tonight by Phil Collins. This is the new Thursday night football theme song.

Was there a previous Thursday night football theme song? I'm familiar with it. With the Carrie Underwood, I've waited all day for Sunday night to the tune of that, what's that Joan Jett song? I hate myself for loving you. Right. To the tune of that, I've waited all day for Sunday night. And then she does lyrics specific to the game. Yeah, which is great. I love that.

You got Dak Prescott in. Yeah. Daniel Jones She's just Danny Dimes Yeah I love to how like She might be just like us doing last minute Like outline shit It's like oh fuck like Sequan Barclay's out with like

With an ACL injury like we Like what the fuck am I gonna come up with about Matt Braida Oh by the way we're like talking about like the nitty gritty of the New York Giants running back Depth Char we're losing Brandon I know I just love this like image of Underwood in a room with like a team of Nashville songwriters. They got the Google Doc open and they're like, shit, kickoffs in 10 minutes, man. You know, like, look up ESPN.com.

Like, what's the latest status updates on this game? We've got to write some lyrics. I don't know if they're going to do that for the Thursday night game. Probably not. You know, Chris Stapleton. They're playing on short wrist on Thursday night. I can't believe they didn't, like, her H-E-R is not involved with it or unless, like, they're in an exclusive deal with just to do

NBA songs. Like we got to have one country singer. Yes. Country. Because you know, you got Hank Williams Jr. Of course, back in the day. That is the old, like, I'm sure Hank Williams Jr. has written entire concept albums about like the how Thursday night football is in a front to like American Pride.

Well, yeah, because I think he got booted. I'm sure. Right? Because he made some comments. He got, you know, he was like the yon winner of his day. Made some comments. Yeah, tired of being Johnny be good. and I want to be Johnny Reb. Hank Williams Jr., man. Some of those songs, man. There's, like, songs where he's, like, literally complaining about, like, the price of paper towels.

I've heard them all. There was, like, back in the LimeWire days, I would just, like, look up the Hank Williams Jr. songs with, like, the most ridiculous titles. Yeah. And just, like, hear what he has to say. And it's, like, real. It was, like, Latter Day Sun-Kill Moon, like, going on about, like, grocery stores and shit. I love it.

You know, you don't hear enough. paper towel songs these days. I mean, these musicians, they're just out of touch with the working man. You know, we need some paper towel songs. Let's get to our next letter here. I will read this one. It's about a topic near and dear to my heart. This is from

Mitch in Sydney, Australia. I know they're Australian. They love us down there. Yeah, what's our Australian numbers? Phil, if you're listening, you've got to get us the Australian numbers. Maybe we can do like a little tour of Australia. Yeah, and also Maybe maybe and more into like rugby.

That's like going to be our sport. We're going to cover the all blacks. I know that's New Zealand, but yeah, whatever it takes to like somehow finagle like our Australian tour. That'd be amazing. Hey, Stephen Ian. CDs. That's the first sentence. Yeah.

We're for them. Love it. Yeah, you got my attention, Mitch. Back in the day or in Steve's case, last week probably. And you're joking, but I actually did just get a bunch of CDs because I. a gift card for my birthday. If the option was there, did you have a preference for a jewel case or a digipack and why? Amazing question here.

Jewel case versus DigiPack. Where do you landy in? Okay. So I just love this question because, I mean, we've talked on this show before about like how certain albums from, you know, the 90s or even the early 2000s are like CD albums. Like you cannot think of them in any other type of format. But now this question makes me realize there's actually subgroups of CD albums. And that includes like DigiPacks.

Like, do you want to explain to like people who have maybe never bought a CD what a DigiPack is? DigiPack is basically packaging that's made out of like paper cardboard. And it is, uh, it was introduced in the 90s because it was more environmentally friendly, as opposed to the jewel cases made out of plastic, you know. And this is back. in the day so there's like you know but millions if not billions of CDs in the world

filling up landfills so yeah so DigiPack was kind of considered like the more sort of kinder gentler alternative to the jewel case and that's why like they kind of start like when I think about like specifically DigiPack albums like these are the ones that come along will come along like the late 90s

but you know when like Funeral like Arcade Fire's funeral DigiPack album the frat The fragile, the nine-inch nails double album, that's DigiPact. But melancholy and the infinite sadness, that is definitely a jewel case. That is definitely a jewel case album. And the double jewel case too, which is a beautiful thing. Yeah, I mean, look, jewel cases, I mean, I know they're like made out of plastic and they're like meant to be shipped all over the world.

But like they have like the structural integrity of like Tiffany Crystal. So, like, there would never fail to have, like, to have, like, just the fat crack on the, on the front of the CD, which somehow, like, messed up my listening experience. If I had, like, a crack on the CD, it somehow made me think less of the music therein. But, like, when I think about, like, why I loved CDs, it's not necessarily about, like, the fidelity of the sound or anything like that, but the ability to use them as interior decoration, I really miss having that wall of CDs be like the biggest, if not the only

piece of furniture I had in many of my living spaces in my 20s. And whereas jewel cases, I mean, vinyl can't even give you this. Like the jewel cases give you the spine, which clearly lists out the name and most likely the album title. So like you can kind of get a sense of like what this person has. Jewel cases, they fold up all funky. The spine has no like structure to it and they just might like sink into the morass of thousands of CDs. So if I had to choose one, you know, specifically now like why I liked CDs so much, we got to go with the jewel case. Yeah, I'm a jewel case person too for the reasons that you were saying

when you display your CDs. It's a uniform size so they line up really well. Like you said, you can see the album title clearly on the spine. So as you're perusing your collection, you can find the album that you want much easier. There's a thing now with CDs where the modern DigiPack, they're trying to make it look like a mini vinyl essentially. So sometimes it's taller than a conventional CD. And if you're putting that on your shelf, it just screws everything. Bitology.

Like that, God, that one really fucked it up for real. Exactly. That just screws up your shelf because if you're putting any CDs above that one, it's going to stick up in the row. and it just creates chaos. I really like your concept of like the Digipak album versus the Jewel case album. I love that we're getting this granular with the CD album. Now we're getting into subgenres of the CD album.

I think there's also like DigiPack bands and Jewel case bands. Like Wilco, for instance, they were DigiPack going back to being there. And they go to Jewel cases sometimes. I think Somertyth is a jewel case. Yankee Hotel Fox Trot is a jewel case. Sky Blue Sky, though, I believe is a DigiPack. I stopped buying CDs at that point, so I'm going to trust you on that one. Actually, I think there might be a jewel case version and a DigiPack version.

I need to check that. Cass McCombs, he's like all DigiPack, and it makes sense with his sensibility. He's more of like a, he's a crunchy guy, a granola guy, so he'd be in the Digi Packs. I like the idea that you too. is mainly a jewel case band, but when they put on Octune Baby, that is a DigiPack. And it was almost like them saying,

yes, we're reinventing ourselves in every possible way. Well, that's the thing. Like, yeah, originally it's a DigiPack, but if you bought the album, say, through Columbia. I was about to say, like,

because I have seen many, many, like, you know, parents' house, like, that I'd go to in the 90s. I have seen, with my own eyes, Octung Baby, as a jewel case, never seen it as DigiPacket.

pack. I, man, may God strike me down if I'm wrong, but I believe that the original packaging was a digipack and then, you know, because jewel cases are cheaper, presumably, as it got produced for like the Columbia House version, that would have been like a jewel case. And maybe jewel cases were produced like as the record was pressed as time went along. But I'm almost sure. We have to, we're going to fact check this. We'll get back to you all next week. I want to get this right. Pearl Jam was a long box band

and a DigiPack band, which is like they really run the gamut. Well, they began as a jewel case band, and then with Vitology, they go into the DigiPack era, continues through no code and yield. And I think they remain

a DigiPack band from there on out. And again, I'm sure Eddie Vedder, socially conscious rocker, he's like, hey, man, I don't want to fill the landfills. fills with yield and

and binoral I'm going to put these in Digipak form 10 is like 10 is the ultimate long box album Oh yeah, oh yeah for sure And then with verses Maybe the Digipack technology just wasn't They didn't quite have enough sway yet

They were like well 10 was a big band Let's see you do it again And then versus huge record And then Eddie Bender's like hey man Digipack time You can't stop me. I'm doing it. Taking on Ticketmaster and Longbox, like this guy, man. Fighting all of the most important battles of 90s, Alt Rock.

We've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? All right, so there's an album out today from an artist called Yule. I've looked it up. That's how it's, she actually said, like, yeah, I pronounce it several different ways, but you could call it Yule. It's her new album, Sophe.

Scars. So they had an album come out in 2020 that I enjoyed a few songs off it. I got some, you know, pretty significant critical acclaim. I liked it in a sort of society has progressed beyond the need for Grimes sort of way. And if you read their interviews, even now, there's just like a lot of talk about like cyborgs and post-humanism, like stuff that is like, is, you know, pretty fascinating if you take away, you know, all the other stuff surrounding Grimes. But, but, But, you know, that previous album was very, very online music. And this one, I'm going to, you know, take a pretty reductive, but I think accurate take on it, which is that it sounds like, you know, Art Angels Error's Grime doing Siamese Dream.

A lot of the lyrics are like really just like piercing and brutal about like body dysmorphia and like what it's like to be a human being in 2023. But the music itself has this kind of like cybernetic skew gaze sound that like I don't want to say reminds me. of orgy, but like kind of reminds me of that like post-electronica rock era where it's, it's kind of trashy in its own way, but also like very beautiful and like soft and harsh and, you know, right up my alley. So it's not that far away from like the Olivia Rodriguez album in the sense that like if you're our age, you're going to find a lot of reference points from like the 90s and, you know,

forward. But and it's also, you know, maybe the lyrical content, you won't relate. to it as much if you're not like a young woman. But yeah, this is the sort of album that like you could say like, try this, not that. It's got a lot of edge to it. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite albums of more recent times. All right.

I have not heard that album. It sounds cool. I'm going to check it out after I get done recording and recommending my album this week, which is called Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. It's the new LP by a Philadelphia band called Slaughter Beach Dog. You may know the main person in this band, Jake Ewald from his former band, Modern Baseball. But if you know modern baseball and you don't know Slaughter Beach Dog, this is a much different band. Modern Baseball, of course, was an emo band.

Slaughter Beach Dog is this hybrid of like Roots Rock and Power Pop, essentially Summer Teeth Arrow Wilco, I think is the obvious comparison point to make with this band. And, you know, Jake has been working with this group for about 10 years now. going back, I think it was originally a side project for modern baseball. Now it's his main thing. And this album feels like a breakthrough. You know, I've enjoyed things that he's done with this band in the past, but this is, I think, the best record he's done. And it's the kind of album, again, you know,

I talk about seasonal music a lot on this podcast, but I do think that this record, if you're looking for, okay, I want something to hear in the fall, something that's like a little melancholic, but also beautiful and melodic and with some crunch in the right places. That's what this record is. Again, it has that Summer Teeth Wilco feeling to it.

Really good record. Again, it's called crying, laughing, waving, smiling. The band is called Slaughter Beach Dog. Really good record. And, you know, with the comparison to Summer Teeth, I think we are establishing the Slaughter Beach Dog. Definitely a DigiPack band. Oh, absolutely.

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.