Indiecast - The Indiecast Hall Of Fame, Part 4

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

In this week’s special Thanksgiving episode, Steve and Ian return to the Indiecast Hall Of Fame. In case you don’t recall, the honor was designed to honor 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. After paying tribute in past episodes to albums by Counting Crows, The Promise Ring, Saves The Day, Secret Machines, and many more, Steve and Ian are now turning their attention to albums from Jane’s Addiction, Robbie Robertson, The Stills, and The Jealous Sound.In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is vibing with Frailty, the new album from dltzk that is the first digicore album he’s ever really liked. Steve is enjoying Highway Butterfly’s The Songs Of Neal Casal.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.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 induct four new albums into our Indycast Hall of Fame. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. You can get in for 50% off on Black Friday. Ian Cohen, Ian How are you?

Yes, 50% off at Crypto.com. Yes. We're carrying that one over. Yeah, that's right. We're carrying that joke over. I love it. A little something in the comedy world we call a callback, man. Yeah, I'm stoked to, you know, talk about my favorite indie news of the week,

such as, you know, the unharalded artists such as Adele, Taylor Swift, Silk, Silk, Sonic, all of these bands that you can go get your favorite vinyl at your favorite independent licenser of music near you. I had a tweet on our, uh, Twitter recently where I made fun of people that say vials instead of vinyl. And apparently there's like a generational divide on this that younger people say vials and older people say vinyl, which I would just say that the older people are grammatically correct, that the plural of vinyl is vinyl, not vials. But there is a sort of like washed aspect, I guess, to saying vinyl and not in vitals. I was getting I was getting owned by some some young people on Twitter

for doing this, for you know, making fun of the vinyl's thing. So it was, I thought I was owning other people and I ended up the one being owned, which isn't that the story of Twitter in a nutshell? I think it's the story of being older than like 25 in the music writing realm. I just have to know like these younger people who are owning you. Like are we talking like 20? 25 or are we talking 18? Who knows? I mean, everyone younger than me just seems like they're 18. Yeah, because I mean, I sometimes...

They might be like 39 or something, but I would still be like, oh, you're, you just got out of high school. Exactly, yeah, because I mean, I do occasionally get owned by actual 18 year olds at work, and it's like the most... Oh, brutal. It's the most devastating thing in the world, especially when it's... Horrible. Yeah, when it's earned, like, and an 18-year-old, like, just completely owns, you. you for being like out of touch. I mean like one 18 year old at work is like asked me. It's like,

she, she asked like, wait, did you have mason jars at your wedding? Did you have a mason jar wedding? And I was just like shocked at how astute this person, like this person knows to make fun of mason jars, this trend from 2012, L.A. I honestly couldn't look or, no, I'm playing. It was actually, I was just so impressed that, you know, I just had to hand it to them, you know. I have mason jars in my kitchen right now, and I might go smash them after we're done recording after hearing this. It was the most devastating thing I had ever. Nothing I've ever seen on Twitter about Childish Gambino or Kid Cuddy or Airborne Toxic Event could touch that. I mean, the thing I always remember about myself is that when I was 18, I was already washed. So it doesn't really matter if I'm washed now.

I was always washed. I was washed when I was 11 years old. So it liberates me from a lot of these types of conversations. By the way, should we, for the sake of honesty with our audience, because I feel like we have a bond with our audience, they trust us, they know we're going to tell them the truth, we're never going to pull the wool over their eyes in any respect. Our takes will always

be honest, even when they're terrible. Should we tell them that this is a banked episode, that we're recording this more than a week in advance because I'm on vacation during Thanksgiving week. So, we're recording this

one week before Thanksgiving. So a full eight days before this podcast is going up. And again, I have that anxiety about us missing news, missing trends to be hashed out. So hopefully that didn't happen. I mean, it's a holiday week. I'm thinking it's going to be slow. I don't think we're going to miss anything big.

I think if anything, it's just going to continue. Like, there's an Adele album that dropped last Friday. And also, you know, Taylor Swift, not going away. stocking stuffers you got you got to get your vinals for the stocking stuff we got a big fat stocking for all that vinyl yes which are because there's at least 500,000 of them available that much we know I know the exact number of vinyl that was made by Adele for 30 because it means that a lot of my favorite pants can't put out records still 2023 I mean with is silk sonic on vinyl that's Has to be.

Like kind of guy, kind of bachelor guy, going to play the Silk Sonic album on vinyl at his holiday party. Yeah, I feel like that's, that's going to be like holiday party or like wedding music. I mean, I think the entire aesthetic of that band is like, hey, remember vinyl? Like, it reminds me of this whiskey commercial that I see whenever, like on YouTube a lot, like whenever they have the sponsored ads. Like, yeah, the sound of old vinyl, that's like this except whiskey. It's like, that is the silk sonic vinyl buying audience. How do we feel about Bruno Mars, though? Like, Bruno Mars, he seems like a pretty hard guy to dislike.

He works very hard to entertain people. He's playing like every instrument on stage. Which Kid Rock used to do, too, by the way. He did that at Woodstock 99. So it's not like that that should just be a get-out-of-jail-free card. But he seems like a pretty likable guy, and he's going with Anderson Pock going against the pop thing

kind of doing a more is that like alternative soul? Yeah like 70s funk or whatever Look I I cannot stand Anderson Pock's music Like to me It is not altogether different than like Chance the rapper

Like I spent like 2016 Feeling like an asshole Because I would hear his album And coloring book I'm like this is the most cloying bullshit I don't I don't want to, I just can. I mean, I think Chance the Rapper's more cloying than that.

Oh, well, Chance the Rappers are more cloying than anybody. So that's not a high standard to clear. You know, last week we did the confidence ratings for people. Like, what's the confidence rating on Chance the Rapper right now? Is he just done? I feel like he had his day and then he made the wife guy record and it was a kill shot. But am I wrong on that? Is he still popular?

I think he'll have a kind of a career. he'll have a different kind of career. I actually saw him pop up on this show. I think it was on Hulu or something like that with Taraji P. Henson. It's about like therapy or something like that and he was on there. Oh man.

And I'm like, oh, this fuck. Like I actually said this out loud while seeing this commercial like, oh, this fucking guy. And I think that's just kind of my opinion on shit. Or he'll continue to, I think he's like was kind of a quasi. as I, like, media mogul?

He was buying up this, like, alt weekly in Chicago. That was a story for a while. Well, and also the manager who wrote MTV. Well, yeah, and they're also in a lawsuit, apparently. Like, that was, I don't know. Well, yeah, the manager that wrote MTV and said, take down this negative review, now he's beefing with Chancel. Yeah, they're saying, like, if Chance the Rapper followed my advice,

he wouldn't make this wife guy record that tanked his career. But he signed off on coloring an album coloring book. Yeah, but he had no problem with that. Stevie Wonder would have called an album coloring book as well. So, I mean... No, he called it Talking Book. Yeah, I know. That's a much different thing.

It's not... Stevie Wonder wouldn't have, you know, gone into pretending like I'm seven years old type music. He went from Talking Book to Intervisions to Songs in the Key of Life. He just got more mystical and deep. Very true. He wasn't reverting to childhood.

Yeah. I think we've given Chance the rapper way too much air time on this episode. But, I mean, like, so... I wasn't expecting for... I wasn't expecting chance to the rapper discourse. This is what happens when we bake it out. Like, Silk Sonic, I also thought Silk the Shocker.

Sok the Shocker is an artist I fucking love. But, yeah, Silk Sonic, like, this just brings out the... I just, like, this brings out the fucking hater in me more than any other, like, acclaimed indie band. Like, music that just designs itself to be like, oh, it's fun. Like, how could you possibly dislike? like this. I'm going to find a way. Well,

she's not in the same category, but I feel like Adele, I mean, she's getting really good reviews. She got really good reviews for her most recent record. 30. I just feel like, yeah, 30. I feel like, I don't know.

I'm going to choose how I say this and it'll probably still come out sounding bad. But her music, it just seems like the most wallpaper-type music that there is. I know this is, like, her divorce record. But it,

I don't know. It's almost, it's, it's even on a different level from Taylor Swift, like the enormity of her popularity in, contrast to, I think the blandness of her music.

I just find her to be pretty bland. Yeah. Is that a hot take? I don't know. Am I talking out of turn? I don't know. I mean, I think we're in this,

like, weird spot right now where on the one hand, you know, music writers are like, You know, these artists like Taylor Swift and Adele, they're like causing a bottleneck in the vinyl, vinyl, singular supply chain. Or vinyl if you're under 25. Yeah. And also, this is like, let's, you know, like, let's just let's genuflect to power.

And I mean, same with like Harry Styles as well. It's like, I mean. Like Adele being on CBS with Oprah Winfrey? I mean, geez Louise. Is there anything more powerful? than that? I mean, that is, that is the middle of the road. Maybe this is like the biggest, the most important pop stars of our time, but I actually had to explain this to people at work. Like the people, I'll hear Taylor Swift a lot. A lot of the therapists are into Taylor Swift

and Adele. And they, you know, and I would explain, when I explain the music I like, it's like, oh, you like, do you like screamo, Ian? And they say screamo and like, weirdly enough, they think Slipknot is a screamo band. I don't get into correcting this. them. But, you know, with Adele, I wouldn't consider it wallpaper because when Adele's on, her voice is so big and powerful, you can't ignore it. But there's something more, I guess, aggressive about her music than like most of the hardcore I listen to because it puts forth this, you have to like this. Like, how could you possibly not like Adele or Taylor Swift? And I think it just kind of loses sight of the possibility that like maybe I don't want to listen to

this music that is so omnipresent in my life. Like in its own way, it's like, it's confrontational in a way I find quite disagreeable. I don't know. All this stuff just makes me really want just some hate and ass criticism to come back. Like just and actually I did see on a blog that I'm pretty interested in called No Bells. It's No Bells and Whistles, no bells.com. A nobells. blog, there is a review called the banality of Anderson Pock written by A. Beam. This is what I'm talking about. Great. Like, just voices everything that coves through my head about Anderson Pock when I hear it.

He compares him to Jack Johnson. Should I say it anymore? I don't think so. Man, this makes me wish that we had reviewed Silk Sonic on our show, even though that's pretty far afield from Indy Rock. The constituency in our audience that is, you know, don't you talk about actual indie rock? Like those people, they would have just, their heads would have exploded if we did Silk Sonic.

But I like hearing you get fired up about Anderson Pock to this degree. And I hope we get some clacking out in the Indycast community, sending us, you know, some keyboard clacking. Send us an email about Ian's anti-Anderson Pock position. Apparently, like, the review that Pitchfork wrote about Silk Sonic got like some, there were some of like brutal marrs and aerson pock stands as well like i didn't expect that i mean everyone now has the vocal block of people who are going to be mad i think pitchfork gave it a 6.5 yeah it was it was middling so right at the so right at the peppa perimeter they were like equal to peppa yeah thereabouts uh to me it's similar similar sort of function you know so i just wonder like what what did the

silk sonic people expect like what would have been an acceptable score well it's it's been it's been critically acclaimed like everywhere else so you know yeah oh we're listening to like stevie wonder like peafunk in their prime like also with like childish gambino red bone apparently fake peafunk is always considered profound so yeah oh this is what happens when we record two episodes in one day i just get on some real hater shit man i no i love it i love it it's great it's great it's like you're it's like you're all like licked up and you're like ready to fight right um one thing we should talk about quick is the year end list season, which is going to be upon us. And it's going to be

upon us for us because I have to put up my personal year-end list next week. So I think that means that our next episode is going to be the year-end list, even though the year goes through the end of December. It doesn't go through the end of November,

which I know. But again, I quote Hyman Roth from the Godfather Part 2. This is the business we've chosen. You know, I didn't ask who gave the order. I didn't Ask who gave me the order to make up a year-end list at the end of November. It's just the way it is.

We're all trying to get the eyeballs from people. I mean, the people that complain about year-end list coming out too early, I'm sympathetic to them, but I would also ask them, like, how many year-end lists do you look at? Do you look at every single one? Probably not. You're probably looking at the first couple that you see, because that's how most people are.

And that's why these year-end lists get bumped back farther and farther. I mean, what was the first year-end list you saw? Didn't mojo's come out? Yeah. November 12th or 13th around there? A couple weeks ago, I saw, I think at the same time, it was mojo and uncut. And I just thought it was so poetic that the first, the two magazines that I saw with the first year end list of 2021, they had respectively Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones on the cover. So I'm feeling like...

They didn't even put out albums this year. They did? Like, there's no Bruce album this year. These were old pictures of them. It was like Bruce from like the darkness on the edge of town, I think. But yeah. That is the best album of 2020. Yeah.

Darkness on the edge of town. People ask. Followed by sticky fingers. Those would be my top two albums of the year. Yeah. I just think of it. It's like, I mean, they are also, I think, print publications. They probably have to get on early.

But it just reminds me of how like the stereotype like old people eating dinner at 4.30, you know, going to Denny's. It's like for for the really, the. super washed reading Mojo, uncut, or whatever. Yeah, like, let's go ahead and put these out in November so they can take the rest of the year off. And I think the funniest part about it is that these two publications that seem very boomer, their respective number one albums of the year are Weather Station and, and Weather Station, not Weather Report. Like, I always wonder if I'm getting a mix up.

But, yeah, Weather Station and the floating points with Farrow Sanders album, which are like probably going to sweep all the indie list as well. So I don't know if that says more about the widespread appeal or the fact that those two albums which I don't particularly love are like super boomer shit. Yeah, so the top five from Mojo, Floating Points, the Farrow Sanders and London's Infinity Orchestra album, number one, number two, Daddy's Home?

Number two? Dude, we talked about this on previous episodes. St. Vincent is like raucous, she is like straight up raucous manna right now. Holy, I'm shocked. I mean, look, slip that in at number nine at least. Show some dignity for yourself. Number two? Yeah, like I really think the snarky Twitter discourse around St. Vincent is like so the minority.

So number three is Lana Del Rey, chemtrails over the country. Club. Number four, low, Hey, hey what? I like that one. Number five, I do two. That's going to be high up for me. Number five, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Carnage. That is... War on Drugs. Warren Drugs came out at number 17, right ahead of idols.

Idols is number 18. Boy, this sounds like the people I know in real life, you know, my age, who still kind of vaguely keep up with music. Like, that is like the starter pack for them. It is Idols, St. Vincent, Nick Cave.

Man, maybe that's where like all the people who like, maybe we need to do more to like court that audience. These are like the British people. I don't know. I mean, the coral? Oh, the coral. Number seven. Dude.

There's a Paul Weller. That is a Robert of the guys. Holy shit. Well, they have a Paul Well, they have a Paul Weller record number six. I mean, come on. He's like the British Springsteen, I think. That's awesome. Man, man.

Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, they didn't, they're really going for the veterans in the top ten. Yeah, where to turnstile turn up in that one? Let me look. I'm going to Google. They did not make the list. But also, Decibel magazine recently just released their top 40. And of course, they also had weather station in Lauderdale.

Right. No, actually it was carcass at number one. So, yeah, carcass, chemist, tribulation, apparition, Iron Maiden at number nine. Yeah, I just love the genre publications that, like, make no attempt whatsoever to try to, like, acknowledge the, you know, the weather station or the... They're talking to their readers, man. They have an audience.

Yeah, uncut. another British music magazine, number one, weather station, ignorance, number two, floating points. Number three, Nick Caven and Warren Ellis, again. I'm telling you, man. That record. Low, hey, what, at number four, again. Number four,

on both big, kind of old school British music magazines list. Salt, number five. My boys don't want to war on drugs at number eight. So they broke the top ten of Uncom. cut. This Nick Cave and Warren Ellis record. I remember when that came out.

Yeah. Man, I wonder how that's going to do stateside. I don't see that doing as well in America, but who knows? It can't do, it certainly can't do better in America than it's doing over in.

I think I called weather station as, I'm going to call that as the pitchfork number one. I'm calling that right now. I think I did that already. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I'll stick with that one. But yeah, low. Good to see Low doing well.

Holding now the number four. I love that it's the number four slot on both on Cut. And Mojo, yeah. Holding now number four. Let's get to our mailbag segment. And thank you all again for writing in to our show. We're at Indycastmailbag at gmail.com. You can also find us at Twitter at Indycast 1.

Do you want to read this one? Yes. So this is from Eric from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Oh, nice. Indie. Very indie cast. Upper Midwest. Beautiful. Yes. So my question is somewhat related to Steve's desire to bring CDs back. I'm 43. And for over two decades, I bought three CDs a month like Clockwork. I've listened to each one a bunch of times, loving the bangers, learning to enjoy the deep cuts. It was thoroughly enjoyable. I finally gave in to streaming music about three years ago. And I feel like my enjoyment of music a steadily decrease since then.

With the availability of everything all the time to paraphrase Bo Burnham, look, man, if you're going to quote everything all the time on Indycast and B-43, that better be a band of horses or idiotic reference. Oh, man. Nonetheless, Eric, we appreciate your...

Look, we got some Burnham heads in our audience. I mean, remember, I caused a stir. I think we both caused a stir by trash-talking Burham. I imagine there's a lot of crossover between Bo Burnham and idols fans anyway. It's a bit of a lot of... struggle to get through an album even once, and if I'm not listened to a banger, I feel like

I'm wasting my time. For a while, I would set self-imposed limits, like only listening to albums in my library and only adding one album to my library per week, but that became tedious. So my question is, how do you keep yourself from being overwhelmed by streaming music, and how do you feel streaming has affected your enjoyment of music? Eric from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So I feel like this question comes up a lot. I feel like I've heard this from people, you know, particularly people who, came up in an older era where

you were listening to physical media, you didn't have as much access to things, and it's just overwhelming to be on a streaming platform and feel as though you can't concentrate in the way that you used to be able to concentrate. Let's look at the big picture question here first. Do you feel like streaming platforms have lessen your enjoyment of music, Ian?

I mean, yes, and I don't think it's, exclusively responsible. Like, I, I, I, I, I don't think my relationship with music has changed, uh, like, so much with streaming as there was this event that happened, I think in 2019 where my, I used to have like a straight up iPod, like, you know, like a classy one, but one that wasn't capable of like, uh, doing streaming. It just didn't have internet access. And, uh, I would take that to the gym.

I like Eric would, you know, have a library and put advanced. albums that I got or stuff that wasn't on streaming and that worked for me. And then my iPod got stolen at the gym and I just never replaced it. So I've just been doing streaming. And I think I get a little overwhelmed by it because I use both Apple music and Spotify, Apple because I have to use it for advanced copies of records, stuff that isn't on streaming and better quality audio. You know, there's the Dolby Atmos app that Apple uses. so you can hear songs like Marcy Playground, Sex and Candy in the way that it's meant to be. And I use Spotify because it has so much better search engines, algorithms, and playlist.

It just seems easier to use. But, you know, the fact that Eric is like 43, you know, it's not too much older than myself. I think what's lessened my enjoyment more than streaming is just the fact that I'm getting old. You know, back even like five years ago when I was so much more almost, required as a job to keep up with the discourse. Like, I would give album second or third chances that I don't now because, well, I mean, part of the job. And also, I think there was much more of like a rhythm to music being released. It was still very, if we, like, I think if we did Indycast in 2016 or 17, we'd be able to have our schedules, like, planned, like, six to eight months in

advance. There was just a rhythm of like, okay, these are the albums that are coming out. It's probably going to be an album and we can focus on that. But, you know, I think the irony of all this is I need like blogs and music critics like more than ever to like help me sort out like what's actually good. And I think that something's been lost with, you know, a lot of this stuff being more like news and so forth. Like it's almost like sports coverage. So I don't know. Maybe this is just like the natural progression of being 41 years old and not really understanding stuff as much. And streaming certainly plays a part in it. But yeah, I do miss the time where I'd like buy a CD and that was the only album I could listen to for like the next week. Yeah, you know, I feel like what you're talking about and what our listeners talking about is really about like the loss of like ritual in listening to music that there's something very.

convenient about streaming music. Obviously, it's great having access to all these different songs, having access to albums as soon as they come out, the portability of it is obviously great. But it's also, it feels disposable as an experience. You're not experiencing music in the same way as you did maybe in an older time. And I am curious if this just pertains to people that came up in a different world, that if all you've ever known, known as streaming, I suspect that this isn't an issue at all because maybe you don't have anything to compare it to, so like the experiences that you have with streaming is great. And so maybe it doesn't apply to that.

But I think that this is the thing that is behind, for instance, the exploding vinyl boom, or at least one of the things. I mean, I think there's also a lot of sort of cheesy and even self-destructive, fashionable things about vinyl collecting that we're really starting to. see play out actually cause harm to bands, especially when they can't press records now and make a living, you know, because of the huge bottleneck that we have. But I think that there is a impulse or a desire out there to experience music in a way where it's not just coming out of your laptop, or it's not just coming through your earbuds on your phone. And, you know, for me personally,

I stream music a lot, especially during the day when I'm working, or if I'm going on a walk, obviously I'm streaming music there. But I also try, like when I'm done working, to carve out time to listen to music that isn't digital. That where I don't have my phone in my hand, where I'm not on my computer, I'm not connected to a social network or anything. It's just me wearing headphones.

And for me, lately, it's me listening to tapes on a boombox because that connects me to a younger version of myself. That was really how I first started listening to music when I was a kid. And I find that those experiences, they're a great palette cleanser for my enjoyment of music because it is a ritual to me

that just predates a lot of the technology that we have now that I think we get a little too wrapped up in. And I don't want to use the word authentic or pure because that's so awful, but to me it just feels a little less mediated.

It feels unfettered in a way that I don't think listening to music online does. So that would be my recommendation to you. Like, to me, the ideal way of listening to music is to mix streaming with physical media. Because I think streaming has convenience, it's portable, but the physical media, I think the experience of listening to it is often more enjoyable. I think it's fun to still go to a store and buy a record. Just being in a record store, I think is a lot of fun.

So I think if you can mix and match those experiences, you might find that the enjoyment that you've had that you feel like you don't have now might come back. I think that's certainly been true for me. Yeah, we're not looking for totally, just slightly less fettered, you know? Yes. Like, just take a break. Or just, you know, because for me, like, part of the fun of listening to like a cassette or something is that I don't have my phone in my hand. If I have my phone in my hand and I'm going on Spotify, I'm probably going to go on Twitter. I'm probably also going to check my email.

And I'm not really getting away from the world. I'm kind of listening to music, but I'm also plugged in to everything. And it's nice just to plug my phone in, not have it in my hand, just have it off somewhere, and just have it be me and the music for a while. And I think that really adds to the experience. So I would recommend doing that at least for like a half hour, Consider it you're like your meditation with music. Take a half hour where you listen to music not on a computer.

And maybe if you like that, expand it to an hour or two hours. But also, yeah, streaming, perfectly fine to listen to us. Exactly. Well, maybe we have to start pressing our episodes on vinyl. Yeah, 2025 at the earliest. Right. It's right. Yeah, our hashing out trends, you won't actually be able to hear the hashing out trends

for several years after the fact. the trends have already been hashed out, but you'll still have a great physical memento of our show. We'll remember the laughter, yeah. We'll look into that. So let's get into the meat of our episode. We're back with the Indycast Hall of Fame. As you may or may not remember, the Indycast Hall of Fame is an institution that Ian and I have created to induct albums into our own canon that we feel like are great, but maybe they're under discussed or undervalued in some way. So we want to bring them back into the floor and get people excited about them again.

And I don't even remember what else is in our IndyCats Hall of Fame. We need to have some sort of list or a Google Doc or something that we can add. Yeah, I was definitely like, oh, wait, did I talk about this one in a previous episode? Oh, I did. Okay, gotcha. I feel like we're, so we have two albums apiece. I feel like we have both talked about the albums that we're going to be inducting today in passing and other episodes. Yeah.

But now we're going to be officially. valorizing them. That's right. Inducting them into the esteemed Indycast Hall of Fame. So, Ian, why don't you go first? What is the first record you want to induct? All right. So I tend to dip into a couple of categories for these selections. I typically love to hype up albums that, you know, might have otherwise been celebrated more had they been released like two years earlier. Albums that were, a little bit out of time. Just maybe a couple years past their sell-by date as far as sounds. And I also love to explore that period of 2000 to 2004 where the elite of Emo's second wave

either broke up or they started new projects or reinvented themselves because nearly all of them were like critical or commercial failures and often both. So the one that I want to talk about today was kind of mildly successful on both ends but deserved way better. It's the jealous sounds, kill them with kindness. the jealous sound was started by Blair Sheehan, formerly of emo semi-legens Napsack. You know, not like a Hall of Fame band, not even like a perennial all-star, but maybe like a occasional all-star, like, you know, Duran Williams or something like that.

Occasional transcendence, but not the people you'd put on the A-list. They had one kind of song where there'd be like a breathy verse and then the chorus would explode and, you know, Napsack did that over and over again. it was awesome, but a little bit, they did it a little too much. So after that band broke up, the jealous sound took everything that Napsack did, but did it in a pretty bald-faced attempt to get on alt-rock radio. And it was awesome. It's just like one of those times where you hear a band where selling out actually

suits them much, much, much better than being an indie rock band. and had this album come out in 2000, I could imagine it having a similar space to say the Get Up Kids or the Promise Ring, maybe not bleed American, but it hit those same sort of pleasure centers where it's a little bit of pop punk. It's definitely emo,

but still maybe more leaning towards, say, a sound like Food Fighters, the color and the shape. Problem is this album came out in 2003. And at that time, Emo had moved on to, I mean, that was the year brand news, Deja and Chindu came out, Fall Out Boys Take This to Your Grave. My Chemical Romance was just getting started. So bands like this one seemed a little bit outdated.

They just seemed like, you know, the old guys. And it was a little tougher to get as excited about them as you would from a band that was, you know, on an upward trajectory. So also, you know, even though it sounded like a major label album, it was on something called better looking records, which is, you know, kind of a, you know, a credible emo label, but certainly not even on the level of like V2 or something that would get you on Best Buy racks. It got, it turns out a 6.8 on Pitchfork, which is like an 8.3 when adjusted for emo deflation at that time. But, you know, it's just, it's definitely non-nindy rock record and it's sort of outside the realm of emo, but not quite pop. So it deserved a huge audience, but just couldn't.

really seemed to find one. And so I know there are some people, particularly, you know, emo diehards who love it. It got ranked number 31 on Rolling Stone's best emo albums list, and it got included in the Vulture Best Emo Songs list that I did as well. But it's just an example of a record that kind of had nowhere to go. I don't know if they broke up. And they didn't make another album until like 2012, maybe. And I don't remember. remember that one being particularly good. So it's just this like kind of one-off existing at its own space. But I hear echoes of it in newer emo bands.

Like any emo band that sort of sounds like the gym blossoms, that's kind of what you're talking about with jealous sound. Like whether it's Camp Trash or Jail Sox or any of the other bands I've mentioned in the in the recommendation corner. Well, now you have my attention because I'm going to admit I have not heard that record. and I'm going to guess that you have not heard the first record that I'm going to be inducting into the Indycast Hall of Fame. You are picking albums, I believe, your first record was from 2003. I think your second record is also from 03 or at least early odds.

Ah, it's definitely 03. So my two albums are also from the same period, but about, say, 15 years earlier. I'm going to like the late 80s, early 90s records. And my first album is, I think, a great example of a record that would have sounded super dated about 10 years ago, but now because of changes in indie rock and maybe even rock generally, it actually seems like a fairly modern sounding album. And I'm referring to the self-titled debut by Robbie Robertson of the band, which came out in 1988.

and this record when it came out it was part of this wave of records by Baby Boomer rockers from the 60s who were trying to modernize their sound for a new decade. And of course very checkered history listening to albums by everyone from

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell from throughout that period you can see that some were successful and some were not. Robbie Robertson for his record worked with one of the hottest producers of this era, Daniel Lanwa,

who you will surely know from him co-producing albums like The Joshua Tree, which came out in 1987. He was the producer of Peter Gabriel So, which came out in 86. He went on to work on Octune Baby with U-2. He did Time Out of Mind with Bob Dylan in 1997. But he was really an in-demand producer in the late 80s,

really known for this reverb-heavy sound, vintage sounding instruments, very atmospheric. I would say that the Robbie Robertson record is like the most Daniel Lanwa produced record of all time. And it's like the Avengers, really, of Daniel Lanwa associated acts because U-2 appears on a couple of tracks on this album. Peter Gabriel sings back up on the first song, Fallen Angel. And, of course, if you know Robbie Robinson, you know the band,

He's associated with this very sort of rustic Americana sounding music. You know, the band really laid the blueprint for a lot of that kind of folk rock that's come out in the last 50-some years. But on this record, he really goes after this, again, huge sounding, atmospheric. One could say melodramatic heartland rock sound with a strongly RD edge. And if you're following that description, you could probably say, Oh, that's reminiscent of the war on drugs. And I would say that if you're a war on drugs fan, this is a record that, if you're not familiar with it,

I would definitely recommend checking out because there is a similar aesthetic of very kind of dreamy, almost shoegazy sounding records that also are combined with like sort of a classic rock type of songwriting. There's some pretty corny moments on this record. There's a song on here called Somewhere Down the Crazy River, which is like this spoken word piece where Robbie Robertson's talking about going to New Orleans

and listening to like Little Willie John and it's just like a signifier of of you know old-timey American music elements there. It sounds like a wean song except like not a parody. Very serious. And Robbie Robinson has this very kind of deep, sensuous voice.

It's a song that like if I was listening to it with you I would probably feel a little embarrassed because I'd be just wondering what was going through your head as you were listening to it. But even a song like that, I have a lot of affection for. And just generally speaking, like, I love the sound of this record. I love Daniel Lanwa as a producer. I know he can be hit or miss with certain people. But if that's an aesthetic that you enjoy, again, I would say that this record is the most Daniel Lanhua record of all time. It just pushes that to an extreme, that it's so romantic sounding, it's so epic.

On some level, I have to concede that it's a bit corny, but I love it just the same. So, Robbie Robertson, self-titled record, 1988, welcome to the Indycast Hall of Fame. What's your next record, Ian? Yeah, and you're right that I am hewing more towards the early 2000s. like for me, music doesn't exist before Siamese dream. So, you know, I was wondering, it's like, man, should I include, like, albums from, like, the late 80s and 90s like Steve. It's like, nope, the only albums that exist prior to that are like,

it takes a nation of millions to hold us back in disintegration. So I'm going to just, you know, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here. This album, I feel like we've referenced it quite a few times on Indycast without actually going deep into it. But I was inspired to include this album. after I reviewed a album by a band called Geese. If you're a New York music writer, you'll know Geese as the most important band do

emerge in the 21st century. Not Goose, not Goose, the reference last week? Yeah, the jam band. And Goose is probably way more popular than Geese is in the real world. But yeah, geese, they're all like 19 years old. Yeah, in New York, post-punk music.

Yeah, probably rich kids. I mean, like, but nonetheless, I just love the fact that like the old New York rock bias came out in such full force for this band that I almost like just have to respect it just from like as a blog rock throwback. But, you know, with Geese, they got me thinking about how with this new wave of post-punk bands that I was sort of wishing less bands would try to be like, you know, gang of four and the fall and just maybe be more like editors or the stills, um, which. whose album logic will break your heart I'll talk about here. And, you know, be careful what you wish for. I think geese kind of had that stills sort of vibe, but like they didn't have the songwriting chops.

So the stills, if you're unfamiliar with this band, I think it might be better to think of them in this framework. Like if the strokes and Interpol and white stripes were like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and I don't know, sound garden, the stills were stone tubble pilots. They were crass, they were polished, almost kind of shameless pop-oriented cash-in, but they were so good at being shameless that it kind of didn't matter.

And their records almost hold up better now than the ones that were seen as these paradigm-shifting ones. This out, like they absolutely are aware of how derivative they are. There's a song called Let's Roll, which about a year after Neil Young made his 9-11 song called Let's Roll. There's one named after Allison Krauss. There's one named after of Montreal. They're from Montreal. And there's just something really compelling about how they do this pretty boy stick. It almost like aligns the kind of dramatic, like the theater kid emo from that time with post-punk.

there's just a real theatrical dejection to it about like going to clubs, being wasted, just being depressed, but very theatrically so. And I just got to bring up the pitchfork review of this album is maybe the most 2003 style of writing you can ever find.

William Bowers, that guy is a wild man. Like one of my favorite. old school pitchwork reviewers. And I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. He doesn't seem to like the record, but it's just done in this very gonzo way that makes me feel nostalgic,

not just for the album, but that time period in general. So, yeah, I just think that, like, this record is so, it's hard to find albums of this style in that, I mean, ones that are derivative, ones that aren't critically acclaimed, but I can just kind of enjoy it for that aspect of it.

And then they tried to make a more serious the band influenced record in 2006 called Without Feathers and never heard from again. You like this record, right? Yeah, this is an album that I almost thought that we had already inducted it. Just because we've talked about it, I feel like off and on throughout this show's existence,

It seems like if you hadn't inducted it, it would have, you know, it would have had squatters rights. Yeah, it almost seemed a little too obvious. No, but like it's, it's, I agree with everything you said. It's a really just, like, it's one of those records that critics will never give higher than a 7.0 because it's not doing anything dramatically innovative. It's not shifting the paradigm is real no narrative with it. It's just like really nice songs that are catchy. and that you hear 15 years later and it still holds up really well. So, yeah, I have a big fan of that record.

Love the William Bowers reference. The last time I hung out with my friend Rob Mitchum, he was telling William Bowers stories. Oh, man. I feel like he has an outsized sort of presence in early pitchfork history. So the kids out there, Google William Bowers, read his reviews. No one writes that like that anymore. No one would be allowed to write like that. I tend to feel, I have mixed feelings about his actual writing,

but I love the idea that he was doing writing like that. Yeah. Because it's such an early internet style of writing that, you know, was forced out when things got overly professional in music writing. My last record that I'm going to induct, I had some reservations about whether I should do this because I was wondering if this record is too famous are already too acclaimed to be inducted.

But then I decided that even though I know this record is loved by some people, I don't feel like it has the stature that it deserves. And I don't feel like this band has the stature that they deserve for various reasons. But the record is Ritual DeLo Habitual by Jane's Addiction from 1990. And this is a band, well, first of all, this is a band that could never exist today. As you can tell from the band name, they're very much cut from a cloth of sex, drugs, and rock and roll type bands that have been completely outlawed, I think, in 2021. You know, the closest thing we have to that is a band like, say, the Red Hat Chili Peppers, who were a contemporary of Jane's Addiction. I don't think that they were as good as Jane's addiction, certainly not in this period, but they've carried on a similar.

type vibe, and they've now aged into, I mean, they're not even middle-aged at this point. They're reaching the senior years of their trajectory, but there's something a little harmless about them now. But Jan's Addiction, I think, is a band that they were abridged from, say, like the hair metal scene of the 80s to the alt-rock scene of the 90s, and they were never really part of either camp. And they ended up breaking up after this record came out. They did a long tour that ended at the end of 1991.

and they broke up. And as we all know, end of 91, that's really like when the alt-rock boom starts to kick in with Nirvana and Pearl Jam and smashing pumpkins

and Soundgarden. And Jane's Addiction, like they set the table for that, but they weren't really able to take advantage of it. I don't know if you know this story, but there's a famous part of the Pearl Jam origin story that when Stone Gossard and Jeff Amet

were playing in the Bann Green River with Mark Arm and Steve Turner, toward the end of their existence, they were playing in L.A. They were opening for Jane's Addiction, and Jeff Amit and Stone Gossert were just blown away by Jane's Addiction.

They were like, this is the kind of band we want to be in, whereas Mark Arm thought they were a joke and just hated Jane's Addiction. Green River broke up soon after that. Mark Arm goes on to form Mudhoney. Of course, Amit and Gossert form Pearl Jam. And you can see the divergence there

of Pearl Jam not being as color, I think as Jane's Addiction was, but certainly aspiring to that epic rockness, tons of guitar solos, very much looking back to the age of Led Zeppelin and the Who and bands like that, that you hear on a record like Ritual Deo Deo deo habitual. I just think of the song Three Days on this record, which, look up this song if you don't know it. It's about 11 minutes long. And it's one of those songs where you feel like when you're listening to it, oh, this is, the epic guitar solo. And then two minutes later, oh no, this is the epic guitar solo. Two minutes

later, oh no, this is the epic guitar solo. There's like about three or four just of the wankiest, most overplayed but gloriously like arena rock guitar solos of all time in that song. And it just speaks to the spirit of this record where, you know, you mentioned Siamese dream before. I feel like in a way Billy Corgan was trying to do something that Jane's Addiction achieved in three days. And as great as Smashing Pumpkins are, I don't know if they quite topped three days. You know, a song like Starla or something gets there,

but they're not quite there for me. I just feel like three days. It's one of the most incredible rock songs, I think, of this period. And the thing with Jane's Addiction is that, you know, they had this record, they had nothing shocking, which came out in 1988. I think they're both masterpieces. But really this band is defined.

think by maybe being the most squandered talent rich band of their era. In particular, Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, especially Dave Navarro. I mean, there was about a two or three year window where I think they were like the new Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. And then Jane's Addiction fell apart. And we've had about 30 years where these guys have just been like walking nipple ring hanged. you know, you know,

like that's what they are. You know, Dave Navarro has the Livmas meme. You know, Perry Farrell, you know, is Botoxed to the extreme. He's Botox to the Gills right now.

And I think people overlook, like, how great this band was for like a small window of time. And, you know, maybe if they had continued, that would have been different,

or maybe if they would have continued, they wouldn't have topped those records. I don't know what the story is, but those two albums, I think are far more crucial than they get credit for. And I feel like Jane's Addiction, they don't get talked about with the pixies and the cure and the smiths and other great bands of like the 80s going into the 90s. I'd like to see them more put into that conversation because I think they deserve to be,

no matter what those guys did after those records. Well, I think the reason they don't get talked about as much, I mean, even if you think about like how Perry Farrell like, you know, made law, blues and more or less like, kind of invented alternative rock in that sense. I mean, how can you be influenced by Jane's addiction the way you can be influenced by the cure? Like, you can take elements of the cure of the Smiths, and pickies and integrate that. Like, you can't do Jane's addiction without sounding like Jane's addiction. If you try to sound like Jane's addiction, you'll probably end up sounding like the red hot chili peppers or something like that. But yeah, I think that, I don't know if it's

squandered talent. Like, honestly, like maybe if, I don't know, Peripheral, died in 1992, they'd be like considered more legendary. But yeah, I think what, you know, there was always like the reputation of them being these like kind of LA like street urchin, like bullshit con artists, but that made great music. And then, yeah, they continued to do things like Perry Farrell made, you know, porno for pyros and just started saying like dumb shit in the media and Dave Navarro joined Red Hot Chili Peppers and made a record that kind of. killed their career a little bit.

And yeah, I think just like the excess of Jane's addiction is made them seem unfashionable, particularly as like grunge broke out. And to this day, it's like it's music about, you know, three days. And that's like about having like a threesome or something like that. It's an 11-minute song about like that. And then there are just songs about like, you know, drug addiction. And, you know, Pariferell just being just total asshole, like stealing royalties. so forth.

And, yeah, but when you listen to, like, nothing shocking and this record, they're perfect. Those, and then also, they did continue to make an album. They made an album called Strays, which I think that's the one with the entourage theme on it, right? I don't know. They're done after ritual for me. I don't dig into the records after that. But, you know, they had a, they had the theme song of Entourage, which, you know, even in 2006, now it seems like how could you possibly make a show like that now?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't make a show like Entourage. You couldn't have a band like Jane's Addiction now. They're totally upmoded. I think, like you said, you can't sound like, you can't be influenced by them without sounding like them, but like what they sound like and what they act like and what they embody

and all that. It's totally the opposite of like what is considered acceptable or fashionable in 2021. but again in the context of their time and just sonically those records kill and I love them so much so if you're not familiar go back and again just just drinking the epic guitar solos one after another in three days yeah I would say that like some of my friends who are similar in age to me when they hear turn style they days like oh this guy sounds like peri ferrell well let's bring them back yeah come on let's do it all right we now reach the part of episode So that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this

week. Ian, once you go first. So I think one of the issues with making your end list so early is that, you know, without fail, there's a record that comes out of nowhere in November after I turn my list in that just completely upends everything and, you know, makes sorting through, you know, the list of promo seem worth it. For me, this year, it's an album by someone named Delete Zeke. It is style of it. It is style. D-L-T-Z-K. There are no E's, but it's pronounced Delete-Zek. And his new album, and their new album, Frailty, which dropped on November 12th.

This is from a world that is sometimes called Digi-Core. I think Delete-Zek uses DaryaCore. Like, that's how fast this moves. Like, when you think you understand what the genre name is, it's already moved on something far more obscure. But I believe they're 18 years old living at their parents' house in New Jersey. Jersey and this is a style of music that I've tried to be interested in because it's kind of associated with both emo rap and hyperpop, but it just seems so ephemeral to me and just impossible to dig into.

This is like an actual album. The songs are five minutes long. It's about 50 some odd minutes. And if you can imagine a world where Porter Robinson and Passion Pit are someone's Beatles and Rolling Stones, this is it. This album, Frale, just blew me the fuck away. It's, There's elements of shoegays, elements of noise pop, a lot of emo in there as well. It's almost kind of fifth wave emo in terms of how it aligns synthesizers and just really dejected, almost rap-like cadences. Yeah, this is the sort of record, which I don't know how it's going to be viewed by the critical realm as well. I think that this stuff in hyperpop is just this zone where people really don't know what to do with it,

because it seems so like is this guy going to disappear? Who is this? Like, can they play live? But this is like a rare record that actually makes me feel like there's a cutting edge that I can actually grasp in the way that I haven't with their previous work or artists similar like Midwest or whatever. If you like what I typically recommend here, this one's going to be right up your alley. And also, I see this one as having the potential to break a lot.

bigger. So the record I want to talk about is a tribute record. It's called Highway Butterfly, the Songs of Neil Casal. And if you don't know Neil Casal, he was an artist that put out a series of really beautiful records in the aughts in 2010s. He was also known as a sideman who played in a lot of different bands. He was in Ryan Adams and the Cardinals for many years. He played in the Chris Robinson Brotherhood after that. And while he was a sideman in those bands. To me, he was always like one of the main attractions because his guitar playing was so good. And he also had just really lovely backing vocals. I actually got to meet Neil Casale in 2019. I ran into him at the LAX airport. And it was one of those situations where I was nervous to come up to him.

Like, do I want to bother him? But I decided, I'm just going to go up and say that I like your music. And he was very appreciative. And I was very glad about that, especially because he ended up passing a away a few months after that, he took his own life in August of 2019. Very sad story. But this tribute album, I think, or it's my hope anyway, that it will help shine a light on the many wonderful songs that Neil wrote. It's a very expansive collection. There are 40 songs, 41 songs in all. Some of the people covering his songs include people like His Golden Messenger, Jonathan Wilson, Vetterver. There's contributions from Bob Weir and Phil Lesh,

which I'm sure would have thrilled Neil Casale because he was a big fan of The Grateful Dead. And it's just a really well-done collection of covers. I mean, I feel like tribute albums like this can be pretty hit or a miss, but you can really tell that the people contributing to this record really loved his music and they do a really great job with it. So if you're not familiar with Neil in his music, I think that this would be a really good introduction

to a great artist who met a very tragic and sad end. Again, the record is called Highway Butterfly, the songs of Neil Casal, and you can find that online, and definitely go check that out. We've now reached the end of our episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news and reviews

and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix Taped 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.