Indiecast - The Indiecast Hall Of Fame

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

There are albums in the indie rock and alternative rock realm that were influential and beloved at the time of their release, but have since been lost to the test of time and sadly — some might say shamefully — left out of the widely accepted canon of the genre. On this episode, Steven and Ian are looking to right these wrongs with the creation the Indiecast Hall Of Fame. This week, Hyden and Cohen are using the episode as a way to give proper recognition to albums they love, and to make the case for why they remain important in the lore of indie rock history to this day. Included on the list are records from Counting Crows, The Promise Ring, Afghan Whigs, and more.In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen has been revisiting Tokyo Police Club’s Champ in honor of its upcoming tenth anniversary. Looking ahead, Hyden is excited about Drunk Tank Pink, the forthcoming effort from UK post-punk outfit Shame.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's Indy Mix tape. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums and we hash out trends. In this episode, we are inducting four albums for the first time into the Indycast Hall of Fame. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Hey, so I've been thinking about a few ways that we could kind of juice up this show.

for 2021. And first and foremost, I don't know if you remember back, like, I think it was like, what, early 2000s where Barry Bonds was chasing the home run record. And ESPN sent a guy called Pedro Gomez to basically hole up wherever he was playing and just report on that news as it was happening. I'm wondering now if we should just go ahead find a plucky intern who's just going to sit on Twitter all day as we do this live and report if Lana Del Rey has said. said or done anything because, I mean, the 12-hour gap between when this records and when this

runs, once again, and I said this last week, I just worried that we're going to be hopelessly outdated by the time that this airs and something possibly new happens, man. Like, can we get that in the budget somewhere? Yeah, yeah. Well, let's just announce it right now. We're announcing the Indycast internship program. If you want to apply, you know, we're looking for the best and brightest to, uh, to track Lana Del Rey.

Yeah, Lana Del Rey. Yeah, Lana was impeached this week. Oh, hey-oh. Here we go. Crossing the streams. No, she was impeached going after Complex, going after Rolling Stone, like a little bit. She had a long-term relationship, apparently, with Complex that she felt was violated because they reported on her talking about people storming the Capitol. And apparently it was implied that she was.

in favor of it, but she's saying I'm not in favor of it. By the way, I love any tweet that begins with, I don't appreciate you implying that I was in favor of people storming the Capitol. I feel like if your comments on people storming the Capitol have been misconstrued, it's probably not a good week for you. But, you know, God bless Lana Del Rey. You know, can we just, you know, we're going to be doing the Indycast Hall of Fame in this episode. Lana deserves her own sort of bust in like the discourse Hall of Fame. Like who has

given more to the discourse in the last 10 years than Lana Del Rey? And I am so hype for that album now. Like I can not wait for that album to come out. It's great. You know, it's, we've got like backlashes and backlashes to the backlashes and then a backlash to the backlash to the backlash. I don't know where people are going to stand on this record. And it's beautiful because we're in January, right now. Obviously, a lot of things are going on in the world at large, but in the music world, it's pretty dead right now. So Lana Del Rey just, like, pumping discourse juice into the music world right now.

And she always does. It's its own stimulus package. It's the music writer stimulus package that we've not. Like, it's that $2,000. Like, the $600 came, like, you know, with any given, like, news bit. but this is like the 2G1 and also with back pay. So that's what the equivalent is right here. It's great.

Yeah, I took a shot at Lana this week on Twitter, you know, because I do think it's hilarious that Lana del Rey of all people is complaining about media coverage, at least in terms of like her recent coverage, because I feel like her last record, Norman fucking Rockwell. That was like, yeah, it was very well received by critics. you know, likening her to like the greatest artist of all time in record reviews and, you know, praising her and all of this. And this is the moment that she chooses to turn heel. You know, like after that record.

And again, I think that's the brilliance of Lana Del Rey. I think Lana Del Rey is like, if I become too sort of accepted by music critics, it's going to be bad news for me. So I need to stir the pot and make it interesting. again. So hats off to her. I mean, I think, you know, in all seriousness, so many gifts to this course. And I think that it's, if there is some four-dimensional chess here going on, I think she's proving herself to be a master once again. My concern is that a lot of people were comparing her to Father John Misty, or like just like a flip side of Father John

Misty. And what I'm worried about is that like Father John Misty, she just maybe sees that doing press isn't worth it anymore and then we'll be robbed of like one of our greatest sources of discourse so i mean i really hope she stays the course but um i don't know we've got we've got till we've got till march man so hopefully our hopefully our hopefully our intern will be able to uh get us you know the the latest and greatest on that so we don't have to keep inventing topics well you know and my boy mattie healy was in the news because the 1975 canceled their 2021 tour. I'm surprised that they actually had a tour book this year, but I guess I didn't know that either. It was probably rescheduled, you know, from 2020.

And they're working on a new album, even though I thought they were not going to make albums anymore. But apparently they are going to make an album now. So that makes me excited. Hopefully that will drop. And then we can argue about that on this show. So Maddie Healy, I know we've had our differences in the past, but you are are also a gift to the discourse. So hopefully you guys are making like a 27-hour album of Greta Thunberg spoken word pieces. That's my hope for the next 1975 record. Or at the very least maybe, like maybe the Maddie Healy, Lana Del Rey collaboration that the world's been waiting for. Oh, man.

That's kind of a watch the throne of like, you know, 30-something internet discourse. Now you're talking, man. I like this. I like willing that into the world. That'd be a beautiful thing if that happened. So yeah, I'm excited to get into our Indycast Hall of Fame. This is our first time doing it. We've got some good records picked.

I'm excited to get into those. But before we get to that, we have to do our mailbag segment. And this week's question comes from our listener, Audrey. Audrey, thank you for writing in. This is what she is asking, Ian and myself. I saw you talked about TikTok's impact on the album. That's talking about me. I wrote about that a little bit last week.

But I'm curious to hear what you guys think about TikTok's impact on the music industry in general, especially regarding really obscure stuff or stuff that hasn't been popular in years, totally blowing up due to trends as well as TikTok becoming a new platform for music blogging. I think she's referring to like the Fleetwood Mac song, dreams becoming like a hit again because it was featured in a TikTok viral video. There's also the C shanties fad going on on TikTok that's blowing up, which I think is going to bring back the Decembrus. I think that's going to be their big bump.

They've never gone away. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like, yeah, they have their core fan base. But in terms of bringing them back into, you know, people talking about them in the mainstream. And they haven't had a record in a while, have they? you're asking the wrong guy I don't know I'm a crane wife only Decemberus fan so

I like the Decemberus The last album of those I remember I remember liking is The King is Dead Which I think was 10 years ago That's the one with like Peter Peter Buck on it Like they were kind of doing an REM thing for a while Totally Which I thought was a good guys for them

I thought it worked well on that record That's the last one I remember really liking I know they've put out records since then. But anyway, that's a tangent here. Let's get back to Audrey's question. Are all these things with TikTok good? Are they bad? Are you neutral on them?

We'd love to hear some discourse. Yes. Thank you, Audrey. Audrey also added that she listened to Halcyon Digest for the first time because of this show. And she was super into it, she said. We're like TikTok. We're like TikTok for like 2010 albums. Exactly.

Yeah, Audrey said she was. that she's 22, so, you know, that album came out when she was in grade school originally. But anyway, Audrey, thanks for the great question, talking about TikTok. You know, I tend personally, I don't like to look at these things in terms of, like, being good or bad. I think when things happen in the music industry, they just are. And you have to sort of accept them and look at them and kind of see, like, yeah, there's maybe some benefits to this. and there's also like some disadvantages to this. Personally, I think anything that engages people and makes them like enthusiastic is a good thing.

I just tend to get annoyed personally, like when people try to make the argument that like whatever the new thing is, is going to completely replace like what is already there. You know, so like, you know, we've seen articles recently about how like TikTok is going to be the new music journalism or like TikTok is going to like, you know, eliminate albums. and all that kind of stuff. I don't really like that kind of conversation. I feel like that's kind of like binary thinking. I think TikTok is doing its thing, but people are still going to enjoy albums.

They're still going to be writing record reviews and all that stuff. I will say that for music journalism, just to tackle that part of the question, I do think it's good for, like, individual writers or critics to, like, have their own identities separate for who they write for. You know, like if you are known for writing for pitchfork or for Rolling Stone, and that's all you're known for, you tend to get kind of up a creek once you leave that publication, you know, if that's your entire identity. So like something like TikTok or podcast or YouTube videos or whatever it is that can allow a writer to kind of step forward like from behind a byline and have more of an identity of their own. I think that's great for writers.

And if you're someone who is maybe scoffing at TikTok and like, ah, that's not a credible place to do music criticism or whatever, I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't be shocked if we're on TikTok in a year, you know? Like, that's something that you can't really deny. I think whenever these changes come down the pike, it's worth trying to understand them and embrace them rather than to fear them. So that would be my sort of take on TikTok. What about you?

Yeah, I think that, you. you make a great point in that it's not it there's a there's this it was what we talked about last episode where the conflation of like music industry and music journalism like trying to see trends as like entire like see changes like TikTok will of course influence the industry in a very powerful way it already is I think you know our next generation of like pop stars like will be have will have gotten started on TikTok like in the same way like just and Bieber got started on YouTube or what have you. And it will blow up some bands.

I don't know like whether or not there will be anything sustainable about that. Like it's such a weird circumstance where like TikTok like a lot of spute song can be very popular on TikTok like life without buildings is another one. The caretaker like very obscure inaccessible acts and get like blown up for a little bit. but I don't know if that stuff can really be sustained, like, as far as helping them in their career. I know the New York Times ran an article about this Belorussian synth pop act who had kind of a viral hit on TikTok because someone was, like, dyeing their armpit hair blue. And aside from, like, the song itself, the, you know, the TikToker said, I didn't really listen to the band. So I think that we're still just trying to figure out, like, the long-term consequences of it. I don't think it's good or bad or neutral.

It's just a thing that exists. But I think that it also overlooks the fact that even if it is the popular thing that's happening, there is always going to be this segment of people who like wants to go against what's popular. You know, like any sort of publication that became like mainstream, be it Rolling Stone or spin or pitchfork, started out as like a reaction to what was happening in the mainstream. And I think that as far as like what it means for. music blogging.

I don't know if that's synonymous with music journalism. I read someone on Twitter saying basically TikTok can have more of an impact on a band than like a pitchfork review from 2006, like referring to Life Without Buildings, the lean over which got super popular. And I think it will I create a new. I don't think publications are really going to have as much power going forward. Like I think they might become more niche in that. you'll get like a collective people who are more focused but I think the days of the broad scale like covering

everything influence of music journalism has maybe reached its peak and going forward they'll more resemble like ESPN where it's like news reportage with like light editorial with it so yeah yeah I think I think it's I think it's a promising thing I'm just kind of happy that I'm at a point in my career where I can just kind of dabble in it rather than have to be like thrust into it and I can kind of observe it. And I think we might be in TikTok on TikTok in like a month or something like that. Forget a year, man. Like the world moves fast.

Well, you know, as you're talking, it just made me think about how I think one of the trends of like certainly like our time in music journalism, you know, like the last, like, you know, 10, 15, 20 years is a move from sort of an institutional voice to a more personal voice where I think people are not as into, you know, taking music recommendations from like, just like this like monolithic voice that is like from up on high and dictating to you like what you should listen to. I think increasingly people want to like go to like an individual that they like. You know, I like this person's voice. I like their taste. And, you know, I'm more apt to trust that than, you know, something like a faceless sort of organization.

and TikTok seems like the latest iteration of that. You know, that like you can see this person. Like you feel like you know them. Maybe in some way you feel like, oh, this is like my friend, you know, recommending something to me or that I, you know, I just like the way that they talk about music or contextualized music. So I see like TikTok in a way as like a part of like a larger thing that's been going on for a while. and I think is going to continue to go on, you know, as we move deeper into the social media era that we're currently in.

That sounds like a voiceover from a 1975 album, Steve. I think, well, you know, they've fully infiltrated your brain. Well, I appreciate that. They've been very influential on me, you know, again, shout to Maddie Healy. Audrey, thanks again for the great question. And, yeah, if you want to write to us, uh, Send an email to me. You can send it at Hydensteevenatjimel.com.

Always love to hear from our listeners. Thank you for writing in. We have now reached the main part of our episode where we're going to be doing the Indycast Hall of Fame opening the doors of this hallowed institution, doing the ribbon-cutting ceremony in this episode. Basically, the concept of this is that Ian and I are going to be talking about records that are,

in the indie rock, alt rock realm, I would say, you know, dating back to the 90s, maybe like 80s or so, basically records that we love that aren't widely canonized. So we're making a case for why these records are great, and also why we think that they're important and why, you know, if these records have been forgotten a little bit, why they should be brought back and revisited by younger generations and maybe talked about more than they are right. now. Does that sound about right? Is there anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I think that these albums aren't real. They're like in that sort of space between super popular and obscure. Like if we, if we think about like what it means to be, you know, for lack of a better term, Indycast core in

2020, these are albums that like are the kind of bat signal if you know us like on Twitter or whatever. It's like when you bring up this album, it's a, it's one where you know we're going to jump to it because you can bring up like a super popular like canonized album that could be you know that can bring up like a widespread discourse but there's like what steve was saying with ticot you get to know certain people and like what their tastes are like these are the for lack of a better term like bat signal albums like if you talk about this one you know like this is where you get people in your mention saying hey people are talking about worlds apart again like you know ian's going to have to comment on this one so yeah these are

these are oftentimes like the lesser loved albums of bigger acts or just bands that were maybe ahead of their time or underappreciated or have now kind of come back as you know being prophetic in a way so hopefully the one the choices we have now really lay out the ground rules for the way this will go going forward on weeks where there are no great albums to talk about yeah and just to add too that like yeah i feel like these are records that um i think are worded of getting like a pitchfork Sunday review or like an anniversary you know think piece but like they for some reason don't because like they're 17 years old or something like that like we don't want to wait three more years to talk about this when it celebrates its 20th anniversary or whatever or they just

haven't reached that sort of like unspoken territory like where albums are considered in you know to be worthy of that kind of conversation like we all know like the records that are in that category and the ones that aren't. And there's kind of weird, arbitrary reasons for that that don't really make a lot of sense if you break them down. So we're tearing down the walls between... And building new ones. And we're building new ones.

So, Ian, if you don't mind, I'm going to do the first induction. I already have my tuxedo line. I see that you're still tying your bow tie here. So I will step up to the podium to induct our first album into the Indycast Hall of Fame. And that album is. and I'm going to do like a little drum roll on my leg here. I don't know if you can hear that.

Hopefully you can hear that. You can hear it? You can hear it? You can hear it? Yeah. The album is recovering the satellites by counting crows. And I'm going to pause here for the applause at home. I assume people are applauding after I announced that record.

Ian mentioned the bat signal before. If you know anything about me, you know that. this album is a big bat signal record for me, one of my favorite albums of the 90s. And as I was saying before, I feel like this is a record that like is overshadowed to some degree when we talk about 90s records and even when we talk about like Counting Crows albums. Because, you know, if any album by Counting Crows gets discussed, it tends to be their debut album, August and Everything After, which came out in 1993. Of course, that album was a huge hit.

I think it's sold somewhere in the neighborhood of seven million records. You, of course, have the hit single Mr. Jones from that record. And it's interesting to revisit that album now. I think it's a great record, but, you know, it's such a laid-back record in a lot of ways, and it's very sparse sounding. A lot of space in that record, you know, produced by T-Bone Burnett. So it's a pretty tasteful sounding record, of course. You know, a very tasteful-sounding Americana album.

Their next record comes out in 96, recovering the satellites, and this is a much louder record. It's a little grungier. I feel like Pearl Jam was definitely an influence on Counting Crows at this point. Because of the guitars, there's also a lot of songs about, like, fame on this record. You know, and the, you know, alienation of people knowing your name and hearing your songs on the radio and all that stuff. Very 90-s sounding concerns. And this record, it was a hit in its time. It sold 2 million records.

It debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart. Of course, you have the song Along December, which is, I think, still like a pretty well-known song. I think a lot of people like that song, even if they aren't fans of Counting Crows. But recovering the satellites, it came out at a time. It was the fall of 1996, like when the alt-rock wave was really sort of, like, was really sort of, like breaking at that point. Like this was the same period when like Pearl Jam put out no code and like Weezer put out Pinkerton.

I think those two albums both came out in August of 96. Recovering the satellites came out in October. And I have pretty strong recall of this because this was the first semester of my freshman year of college. So it was also a lot of change for me as well. I was also going through my like, you know, alienation period, just like all these. bands. And I feel like, you know, as successful as this record was, in a way, I think it was one

of those phenomenon where you have a really successful debut and the second record kind of, like, piggybacks on that. And people buy the second record based on the success of the first record. Because really, after this, Counting Crows becomes a band that, like, still has, like, a pretty good commercial profile. Like, their next record, This Desert Life, still did pretty well. But they're really starting to kind of ease into being more of a cult band at this point and less of like a mainstream rock band. Of course, this is the era where like new metal was ascendant, teen pop was ascendant.

It was a much different period that we were about to enter going in to the late 90s. And County Cross to me still was like one of those bands that like even as like other 90s alt rock bands that were maybe once unfashionable get rediscovered and written about. But that still hasn't really happened with counting crows, unless you count me writing about them. That lot of people really talk about this band. But I still feel like Adam Dirtz to me is the most underrated songwriter of his generation. I think he's a great songwriter, and he's not really put in the pantheon of like, you know, the great artists of that time. And I really blame Mr. Jones for that, the over-exposure of that song. And also his hair.

Seriously blame his hair. Like the terrible, like, you know, dreadlock, you know, weave thing that he had going on. The sideshow Bob thing. It just made him a caricature of that era. And I think it made it easy for people to dismiss that band when I think there's, like, a lot going on there. I think in terms of their greater significance, and I think you can speak to this probably better than me. But I hear recovering the satellites. And it reminds me of, like, a lot of this sort of emo and emo-leaning rock records that we've heard.

in the last 20 years. I think County Crows is like a pretty big influence on a lot of those bands. And I'll say like just, you know, as a personal anecdote, when I lived in Milwaukee for many years, I was a friendly acquaintance of Dan Didier from the band, The Promise Ring and later Maritime. And we were talking about recovering the satellites once. And he mentioned that like when the Promise Ring were on tour in the late 90s,

that they would listen to this album in the tour van. And I feel like there were probably like a lot of other bands of that generation and later that we're also listening to recovering the satellites. So I think County Crows in general is still due for like a real sort of like a revisit or like a reevaluation. But I think this record especially should be put with the debut and maybe even ahead of the debut as like their defining work for me. Yeah. If you weren't going to put this in the podcast, I might have. I remember in 96 when I was like 16, I saw the Angels of the Silences video, which was the first single. Like, it showed them as like really rocking out.

Like, it was in a club. And I thought it was just like so unconvincing because of that first record. You know, when you mentioned the name T-Bone Burnett, you can't not say tasteful after that. But, you know, this record was produced by Gil Norton. And he was a guy who did a lot of the Slicker Pixies record. he also did a couple of very important proto-emo albums such as food fighters, the color, and the shape, as well as Jimmy Eat World's Futures. And one, like a few weeks ago, I, like, I posted from the Midwest emo posting Facebook group,

which I'm a part of. Someone had said that counting crows were like, you know, like super influential on emo or whatever. And I like post that screenshot on Twitter and people were like, yeah, absolutely like this is not a hot take this is something that's already established and um yeah and i think that's the case because like they do things like kind of rootsy um but also like i think angels of the silences kind of sounds like a get up kid's song um and just the kind of like tortured but also unfashionable nature of counting crows makes them a really um interesting touchstone for stuff that came afterwards like granted none of this none of these bands

are talking about like what it's like to be famous and like dating two cast members of friends. But it has that sort of, you can trace a line from this album to like Ockerville River to maybe something like Pine Grove or even something like man dancing like maybe more recently. And it's interesting because third eye blind has become like a very widely acknowledged touchstone. Cheryl Crow has become a widely acknowledged touchstone. And in between those two points is, you know, like counting crows. And I think this one's much more interesting to revisit because, as you've mentioned, August and everything after, is a bit overexposed. It actually got like referenced on a Touche Amore song on their most recent out talking about like the Wawa breakdown on round here.

And afterwards, like this desert life, you know, it. they became like much more kind of sedate. And so recovering the satellites is a great choice for this because it's still underappreciated. It's still like kind of this point where there's an instability in the band. So it's definitely the one I revisit the most. Ian, what is your album that you want to induct in the Indycast Hall of Fame? All right. So my first choice was kind of inspired by yours with Counting Crows in that it's a, it's an album taken from 1996 at this point.

where a lot of the popular bands from a few years previous were starting to get more tortured, less commercial, and, you know, less popular. And it also concerns a lesser-loved album from one of the more unconventional male sex symbols of the alt-rock era. And that would be Black Love by the Afghan Whigs. This album also came out in 1996. And what I find interesting about Afghan, like about Black Love specifically, it was the follow-up to their breakthrough gentlemen.

What I find interesting about this band is, or this record specifically, it's that it's the most, there is no way this would happen in 2021 album from one of the most, there is no way this would happen in 2021 bands of that era. Now, granted, Afghan Wigs still exist. They make really good records still to this day, but they're more toned down. And in the same way that you look at like Adam Duritz with his haircut and just like the kind of general earnest quasi-hipy. five of counting crows.

Greg Dooley, the frontman of Afghan Wigs, was such an unusual proposition at that time. Like, he was, I don't want to say problematic, but unlike a lot of the bands from that era, like Afghan Wigs were a band of four white guys from Cincinnati that played really fast and loose with a lot of concepts about, like, race and music. Whereas most bands of their ilk were pulling from like Neil Young or Led Zeppelin. They were really into like funk and black exploitation era music like Isaac Hayes, the Shaft soundtrack, Sly Stone. And they were very reverent about it.

Like they clearly loved the music. There was no ironic pose, but they did it in a way that was like very provocative. For example, the congregation, like they were on subpop for a while. And their album congregation had like a naked black woman cradling a white baby. So some of that stuff was a little on. the nose. And, you know, they were also an overtly sexual band. Like, most of the people in that era, like, were, you know, aside from maybe like Gavin Rossdale or Scott Weiland, like, unintentional as far as like the carnality of their music. But gentlemen isn't exactly like,

wasn't exactly like Pinkerton, but it was, it is kind of a classic of like self-loathing psychosexual neuroses for men. It's like, on that out of. On that, like Greg Dooley is kind of like Adam Sandler's character and uncut gems where his two modes are like, holy shit, I'm going to come and I'm so sad. I'm so fucked up. But afterwards, they make, they got like a movie deal from their label. Like they got the allowance to make a movie, which is the kind of thing you can do in 1996 on Elektro Records. And they make this album called Black Love, which again, you know, they're not subtle. And it's this concept record centered around revenge and. murder and redemption and betrayal. And I remember reading something in guitar world back then that suggested that it was a concept record about the OJ murders. And that's the kind of thing that like gets into your head as a 16 year old and, you know, doesn't leave.

And I got to interview Greg Dooley maybe in 2014. And I was like so pumped to like ask him about this. Because like I'm like, I know this is silly, but like I have to share this. with you and he's like that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard so um but none of but with this album it was definitely not a hit um it you know it it kind of not that they were super popular before but I mean I think you can just look at um the first single called Honkees ladder and the first line got you where I will got you where I want you motherfucker is the first lyric and oh my god like watch the video like what their outfits are there's like a whale

congregation and a church and you look at their performances on late night shows and they're wearing these ridiculous lapels. But nonetheless, I think this album is interesting because it is kind of outside the scope of Greg Dooley as a person and really more in, I hate to overuse this word, like cinematic. But I got into this album when I was, I got into him a bit later. I got when I was in my last year of college, which was like a really kind of debauched, like, I don't care about my personal health time, which is great to get into Afghan wigs. And what this album stands out to me now is a real totem of the Tarantinoification of alt rock in 1996 or so, where you had like urge overkill and fun loving criminals, this very weird sort of,

of scene where it was like bringing in ideals about like, you know, black exploitation films, but also like weird racial dynamics and weird sexual dynamics. And like, are they meaning it? Are they like are they being ironic? Are they being sincere? And yeah, you listen to this album now and it's just such a strange artifact of something that would be financed by like a six figure budget in, 1996. So, I mean, a great band, period, but this is their most unusual and daring. And I want to say,

you know, emotionally, uh, compelling record. It, just like, Fated is pretty much the, the Lela of 1996. It's got that long slide. It's got that slide guitar outro. And there's a great festival. There's a great, uh, YouTube of them playing that song live in a German festival where Greg Dooley just completely shit talks, someone who is. who comes up on stage. He's a king, man. They don't make him like Greg Dooley anymore. Yeah, I mean, I was going to say, like, with Afghan wigs that I never,

I don't know if I ever felt like they were ironic in the same way that a band like John Spencer Blues Explosion was, like, where you felt like, in a way, like, a band like that was, like, making fun of blues rock or R&B, where I felt like with Afghan wigs. I actually kind of think that they were, like, ahead of their time in terms of, like, their engagement with, like, black music. And, like, looking beyond the, typical canon of like classic rock and punk music that like most indie and alt rock bands were drawing from at that time like like I think that there was an element to them of like reacting

against like what else was happening in rock music at that time because absolutely it it was like I think pretty segregated and this was like right before you know obviously new metal took over and things really got kind of mixed up in like a big way you know mixing hard rock and hip hop but like early 90s it was like pretty much like you know bands that were either like you said drawing on like from like Neil Young or Zeppelin or The Who or like you know like fashionable like punk and post punk influences uh so I think Afghan wigs as provocative as they were you know and I agree I think that if like you were if you were like an all white indie rock band with an album called Black Love in

2021, you'd probably be the subject of some think pieces but I think ultimately because they came from a place of like knowledge of that kind of music and reverence for it that I think it dates better than it would otherwise. It doesn't have that

veneer of like 90s irony that like I think something like again John Smith's or Blues Explosion or like Fun Loving criminals would have now. So hopefully people will enjoy revisiting that record. agree, I think it's definitely worth going back to that album and all the other great Afghan Wigs records of that time.

Our next album that we're inducting into the Indycast Hall of Fame is Kids in Philly by Mara. And this is a record that I was talking up on Twitter fairly recently, and I felt good that people actually remembered this record. Because I feel like... Yeah, I'm surprised. Yeah, it came out in 2000 and it got a lot of good press back then. I looked it up.

It was, I think, number 22 on the Pass and Jop album poll list back then. So it did pretty well. But I feel like this band and this record in particular have just been lost to time, which is why I wanted to talk about it in this episode. Mara was a band again. They were from Philadelphia. They formed in 1993. They put out their first record in 1998.

It was called Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later Tonight. And on that record, you could hear what was going to come, I think, into full flower on Kids in Philly. This was a band that was clearly influenced by Bruce Springsteen with, like, I think, a dash of the replacements added in. And to describe a band that way now doesn't seem all that unique. There's a lot of bands that draw from, you know, those two artists at this point. But I think in 1998, it was much more, I think, unusual to hear a band in like the indie alt realm, you know, certainly being a fan of Bruce Springsteen. I mean, Springsteen was not a fashionable artist at all in the 90s. That was starting to change toward the end of the decade when he reunited with the East Street band.

And, you know, the reunion tour was like very well received. and people started thinking about Springsteen again. But still, in the 90s, he was looked at as being this sort of like hokey throwback to like 80s corporate rock. Like that's how he was looked at at that moment of time. And Mara, I think, was a band that in a lot of ways, I think, helped in their own small way the revisionism that happened with Springsteen because they went back to like his early records.

Like the first record, let's cut the crap, I think is like their greetings from Asbury Park. And like, kids in Philly reminds me a lot of like the second Springsteen record, the Wilde, and it's Innocent in the East Street Shuffle. Like, it's less polished. The songs are more meandering. There's like a real scruffiness to it. And it's like this combination of like folk music and soul music. You have like a little bit of like a Van Morrison influence. You have like a more kind of pronounced James Brown influence. And, you know, it's not quite the version of like Springsteen-inspired indie rock that would really come into vogue, like later on in the aughts, like with, you know, the Hold Steady and Arcade Fire, and then later like the Killers and

Gaslight Anthem, bands that were really kind of drawing from like his more sort of like arena rock era. You know, this was like a more of like a scrappy version of Springsteen, like a more sort of like, I guess, grounded, a more relatable version. And on Kids in Philly, I feel like that record kind of marks like where everything came together for this band in a way that I think other bands would draw on from later on. Like there's a lot of just like unabashed worship of like rock mythology on this record. It's a very like proudly anthemic record. Like my favorite song on the album is called Round Eye Blues. And like they name check like Little Richard and James Brown and like Proud Mary is like referenced in that song. And it has like what I was. What I

would call like a knowing cornyness to it. You know, like this idea of like we're going for broke. We're sort of embracing the bigness of this, the emotionalism of this, and we know it's not fashionable, but it's inspiring and it's something that really kind of gets your blood pumping. And I feel like that, again, was something that like the other bands that I mentioned earlier, like the Hold Steady, Gaslight Anthem, The Killers, I think that's something that they also picked up on, like later on in the decade, like in their own record.

and like what they drew from Springsteen. Again, that sort of idea of like consciously embracing things that aren't considered to be cool, but like making them cool just from like your pure earnestness of it, like just kind of leaning into the cornyness of it and blowing it up and making it grand. And Mara did that on kids in Philly, I think, in a pretty great way. And again, it was like a record that was critically. acclaimed at the time, but I feel like it really wasn't the

ideal period to make a record like that. Like the following year is when the return of rock movement came in. And that was a much different kind of rock music, the strokes, Interpol, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really sort of like reinforcing coolness in being detached a little bit.

And I think Mara got lost in the shuffle because that came along, along with some of their own mistakes that they made. I mean, the records that made after that weren't all that great. So they've been lost to history. But I think, like, the first record, let's cut the crap in kids in Philly, they're both worth revisiting.

And I really recommend it. If you like those other bands that I mention, like the Hold Steady, Gaslight Anthem, I think Mara is like a great sort of like precursor band to those acts. Yeah, I got to speak from personal experience with this act because the Bolonko brothers, who are the main songwriters in this band, they want to. went to my high school. So shout to Plymouth, Wow. Yeah, they're old. I've never met them. They're like older than I am. And by the time like

kids in Philly came out in 2000, I was already in college and moved away from Philly. But yeah, they're seen as a band that kind of maybe missed their moment because of like Bruce Springsteen being a much more pronounced influence in bands like the Constantine's and arcade fire, hold steadying the killers who brought their own like they were Springsteen in few. whereas Kids in Philly was pretty much like Springsteen worship. And along with like Dylan and Van Morrison, like the bands that influenced Bruce Springsteen himself. And I think another reason this album didn't quite get the foothold that it did at the time is because, and I'm saying this is someone who grew up in Philly. You name an album Kids in Philly in 2021.

People know exactly what you're talking about. And there's an audience for it. But in 2000, like I think Philly. was still kind of seen as like a loser city. There really wasn't much of a like a popular consciousness of what what Philly was. All we knew is that it wasn't New York. And so like you were saying with the New Rock Revolution, that really focused things on New York City where there was a better popular understanding of what it meant to be from that particular city. I think Mara was a little bit ahead of their time as well in the sense that they, as you mentioned, they were critically acclaimed, but they were critically.

acclaimed attached to one person in the same way you can see like one person on Twitter raving about things now and that's Nick Hornby the guy who wrote about a boy high fidelity and he wrote this just like it was damn near PR article about Mara and this was like a few years after he wrote his definitive I don't get kid A piece like people are like bullshit like bullshitting when they say they like kidday. So I will happily step. I think it was the same year. Yeah, well, because kids in Philly came out in 2000, just like Kid A did.

So it was like around the same time. But yeah, it really made it really kind of like put, I think I think if you read Hornby Trashing Kid A and then like praising Mara, it was easy to look at Mara as like, oh, this is like the conservative band. You know, this is like the reactionary band. Exactly. Which I don't think was totally fair for them because I think in their own way, they were were like doing something that was different for the time.

You know, it was certainly more backward looking than like KDA was. Although KDA was doing a fair amount of backward looking too, really on that record. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. You wonder, like, to what degree, like, the Hornby boosterism of this band, like, actually hurt them in the long run. It gets brought up in every single review thereafter. But, yeah, I'll happily step aside so Nick Hornby can be a guest on Indycast so you guys can you know, fight over Kid A and like, you know, agree on Mara.

But yeah, I think what, what happened afterwards is they also made this album called Float Away with the Friday Night Gods, which was produced by Owen Morris, a guy who produced Oasis albums, and it like flopped horribly. But what I find interesting about this band is that they were ahead of their time, not in the sense that they could have been this like celebrated indie band along the lines of like arcade fire and killers. but like if I don't know a label like epithetath or something like that were to release let's cut the crap in kids in Philly like right now like not even mention that it's an old record. It's like hey, here's this Philly band called Mara.

I think they could be something like the Menzinger's or a band that's like wholly embraced by like the fest audience that cares way less about coolness and more about like the scrappy beer drinking lovable loser sort of thing. So, yeah, I think Mara was ahead of their time just not in the way that people usually say they are. And one thing I have to kind of mention as far as Bruce Springsteen and his accolites, like he actually did guess vocals on that disastrous Brit rock album they did. And that was the end of Mara as far as like, you know, a public thing. And he also did guest vocals on one headlight with the wallflowers. And that was kind of where they started to go down as a public thing. copier thing and then he did

guest spots with the whole with gaslight anthem and then they kind of declined I mean in a way it's like if you if you're a Bruce Springsteen loving band that gets Bruce Springsteen to endorse you like that's that's the beginning of the end for you you know. Just don't let them on your record

you know because yeah it's hard to stand next to Bruce and still look like you're like you know what you're doing so yeah don't let Bruce in the house so we have one more record to talk about what is our final inductee into the Hall fame. I love how you like, you know, unintentionally kind of evoked that I was going to be talking about this one. But I mean, you want to talk about, if you want to talk about like

bat signals and albums that I am just not willing to wait till 2022 to do an anniversary piece on, I'm going to talk about an album called Woodwater by the Promise Ring. Oh, of course. The A4 mentioned band, their all country sort of commercial. critical disaster of an album that came out in 2002. So for those of y'all who are unfamiliar with The Promise Ring, they're like one of those bands. Like if you have to understand, if you have like an hour to understand emo music,

like they're a band you would go to. Of course, songwriter Davey von Bollin came from Cap and Jazz, band that also split off into American football and Joan of Arc. And nothing feels good. Their second album is also the name of the, probably the most prominent book ever written about emo by Andy Greenwald. Absolute classic,

like a definitive Midwest emo album. And as they got into their fourth album, they did something which is much more familiar now, which is they're an emo band that doesn't want to be seen as emo anymore. And the reason that didn't happen as much prior to the early 2000s is that because emo bands didn't make it to their fourth album. So after they make very emergency, which is their kind of power pop album, they start doing sessions with a guy from Citizen King, who's the, I've seen better days, that band. They also did a- Hey, hey, I know Citizen King, man.

I'm from Wisconsin. This is like my backyard here. Oh, they're from Wisconsin. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, these are all, this is all Milwaukee crew here.

And they also started doing sessions with Mario Caldado Jr., who, if you've heard a Beastie Boys out, album, you might hear them mention him as their engineer. Mario C. Yes, exactly. And they also jump from Jade Tree, which is one of the seminal emo labels to epitaph originally, which is at the time still kind of seen as the SoCal punk label that was built on offspring records. So they have this concept where they just want to start making a little more lush kind of country,

more laid back music. and so they eventually end up at anti-records, which in 2002 was releasing stuff by like Nico Case and I think the tricky album that had Ed Quaulchik on it, but still mostly known as still mostly known as a label that was created for the sole purpose of putting out Tom Waits records. I suppose like I hope anti, like,

I hope that's on their Wikipedia page that like, yeah, we're the label that put out the tricky album with Ed Kowalach on it. Like I love it. I'll have to fact check that. But so what happened with that album is they ended up working with Stephen Street, a producer who did like The Queen is Dead and a lot of Smith's records. And it had like this lush green album cover. It had a lot of like synthesized strings. Kind of sounded like softbolt in a way.

Kind of alt country. And it was more or less an album about not wanting to be a band anymore. Davey von Bowen had gotten infection on a tumor, I believe. even he had a steel plate insertened in his head, you know, like a life-threatening illness. And that's when he started shaving his head and wearing a hat on stage. And you can hear that in songs like Stop Playing Guitar, which was the first single. And my life is at home. And it was not well received.

Like you would hear stories about like people going to Promise Ring shows in 2002. And they would like get booed. or have like stuff thrown at them whenever they played Woodwater songs because like they were not like a very aggressive or like angsty emo band like you know nothing feels good as a very upbeat smiley sort of record but like they'd play these like slow kind of counting crozy songs about not wanting to be in a band and it was also really like pitchwork was never kind of the promise ring but the review of Woodwater is particularly like wow they are just like the Brett D. Cushenzo went a little too far on this one.

But, like, what did they give it? Like, in the threes. I don't, like, I can't remember offhand. But, oh, man. Yeah. And, which was actually kind of high compared to, like, I think what they gave, like, you know, electric pink. But this was, I bring this album up because it's from an era of,

of a time where, like, emo bands, like the legendary emo bands of the second wave, we're trying to kind of go for a more indie rock crossover. sound. This is the era of, let's say, get up kids on a wire. The album they had produced with Scott Litt, who did REM records. Saves the Day, did in Reverie, which was their DreamWorks debut, which they went in a more kind of psychedelic power pop direction. Sunny Day real estate's, The Rising Tide, the anniversary is Your Majesty. I could go on and on. In all of these records, the emo kids hated them and the critics were like, what's this emo band trying to do, like, making indie rock this fucking sucks and these are all albums that have been re-appreciated in you know the

latter years because this is exactly what happened uh like in 2014 where emo and indie rock started to conflate with each other and these albums can now be seen as like uh kind of being ahead of their time and more to the point the reason this album resonates with me is because one of my one guy i know on twitter he was talking about like talking with davy von bol and when this album was released and Davy said it's something to the extent of like it's a feel it's about like feeling like you're already washed up at 25 or that like you know the your best the best things you done are behind you and this album came out when I graduated college so you know it was it was this feeling of like oh man the good times are really over like I thought it was super profound at 22

and I think it's super profound now it's so rare to hear a band struggle with I don't know if this is really the life I want to make for myself and create really compelling art out of it. And also, Busy Phillips, she, I believe, was on TikTok posting about how much she loves say goodbye good, say goodbye good, which is like the song they did with Mario Calado with the choir. I think that song is terrible actually. But nonetheless, it's like, hey, you know, it's still, it's still being talked about today. And I think it's such a more rich document for exploration than their classic album. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to me, like, because I revisited this record when you said you wanted to talk about it.

And by the way, I saw a show on the Woodwater tour. They played Summerfest in 2002 after Guided by Voices. I was there to see GBV and then Promising played after them. So it was like a hometown show for them. And I don't remember people throwing things at them, but like it was definitely they were not into it. Like you'd think like that'd be the friendliest crowd that they would probably have at that time. and it was definitely like more sedate, I think, than you would have seen it like a, like a, you know, a prior, a promise ring show in prior years. But, you know, listening to it, it is interesting because like you mentioned some of those other records of, you know,

emo bands like trying to make a crossover record, you know, do the big, you know, major label sort of like sellout album, you know, saying that in like a friendly kind of way. And I feel like Woodwater isn't quite in that camp because there's, there's something about it to me that seems like almost engineered to like drive them into a ditch. Like it reminds me of like Big Star Third, like an album like that, like where you just hear like a band kind of like falling apart a little bit in the studio like as they're making the record. Like there's not a lot of enthusiasm on this record. There's definitely a sense of like world weariness to it that I think suggests that like they weren't really trying to like make hits, you know, or trying to get on the radio with this record. it really was like an expression like you said of like feeling like you know do we still want to even do this

and yeah i think that is what makes the record really compelling it gives it this like kind of like deep melancholy that gives those promised ring albums like a real arc you know like if you listen those albums in sequence it's like well yeah this kind of feels like a natural end to like the band uh at this time i have to say too that like even if they had made like the you know prototypical like sellout record, like where they were trying to make like snappy, like radio hits. It seems like again, and I'm going to, I'm going to bring up like the return. That was very emergency. Very emergency was that album.

But like if they tried to do that in 2002, I'm going to bring up the return of rock movement thing again. I mean, that was the peak of like every magazine cover just having like a band from New York on the cover. And, you know, I think that there is this recurring trend where, you know, and we've talked about this on the show before. but like you go from one decade to another and there's an instinct or an impulse on the part of like music writers

to like kind of throw out the previous era's bands. It's like, okay, you had your time. Now there's these shiny new toys over here and we want to embrace that. So I wonder like if they would have been screwed by that. You know, even if they had made a record that was like sort of more obviously commercial or catchy. So in a way I think it's, you know, certainly in terms of like looking back on,

and in retrospect, it's kind of great that they made a record like this at this time. Because again, I think if you look at their discography, it just gives it an arc that seems logical now, even if at the time people were like angry that they made a record like this. Also, those maritime records are good, too. You should check that. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right.

Well, like most award shows, this one ran long. So we're going to have to cut our recommendation corner. segment for this week. But we hope you enjoyed this episode, and hopefully you will enjoy listening to these records or revisiting them if you already liked them. And we will be doing Indycast Hall of Fame again, I'm sure very soon.

It's always, I had a great time doing this. Yeah, this was fine. So thank you again for listening to this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more hashing out trends and reviewing records and all that stuff 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

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