Indiecast - The Killers + Bleachers

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

It’s been a big week in the indie rock world, from the return of Big Thief to updated Covid policies across the live music ecosystem. Steve and Ian cover both of these topics in the opening minutes of the latest episode of Indiecast.The meat of this week’s episode comes in the form of a discussion of new albums from The Killers and Bleachers. The Killers are back with Pressure Machine, the band’s seventh LP that comes almost exactly a year after their last full-length effort, Imploding The Mirage, and finds the band exploring new sonic territory that is markedly more downbeat and introspective. Bleachers, on the other hand, found Jack Antonoff trying to go as Springsteen as possible on his third solo release, Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night. How do both of these albums stack up in their respective catalogues?In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging the new LP from emo greats A Great Big Pile Of Leaves, while Steve wants to shout out the forthcoming LP from Baltimore experimental hardcore outfit Turnstile.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 review new albums by The Killers and Bleachers. My name is Stephen Hayden and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Well, like most times we log on here, I'm thinking about, you know, the essence of Indycast.

What makes this podcast ours? And I think particularly today when we're, I guess, stress testing what indie means by talking about killers and bleachers. I think we, in some ways, we got to get back to the core of what we do, which is celebrate the underappreciated. Would you say that's kind of what we do here, right? Well, we try to, but, you know, other times we're just making, you know, jokes about, you know, big time pop stars. Yeah. So you never know. That's what fills the bank account, am I right?

But I think this week, you know, particularly in light of who we're covering, I just have to give a shout out to editors, you know, in general. Okay, first off, got to clear out, like, not the band. Like, even though Blood and Munich are two of the best, two of the best fake Interpol songs that came out of that era. I thought you were going to, like, steer us toward, like, an editor's appreciation episode. And, you know, maybe so because, I mean, with all of these, like, UK post-punk bands happening, like, I just want one band that sounds like that, you know? Like, the ones that are just shamelessly, like, shamelessly basic. Just ripping.

She wants revenge. I'm going to reference she wants revenge against on the show. Exactly. Get a band like that. Yeah. I mean, the problem is that the first wave of bands, I don't think, sell enough records to inspire the rip-off bands. You know, like you need one man that's really going to hit it big, so then you can get all those, you know, delicious rip-off bands that have like one perfect song. Exactly.

Well, editors have two. And Maximo Park have at least five. But we're, but not, but, you know what, I am totally down for like a second wave post-punk revival show. But we'll let the people tell us whether that's what they want. Because, yeah, I think this goes right back into what. what we were talking about with like editors in general because I mean like you're talking like editors for editors for real like the actual job the actual people who like take your 5,000 words of nonsense and craft it into something people besides yourself might want to read and I mean that's

like what people generally think editors do and you know it's why they don't get taught like oh who's your favorite editor on Twitter um I think that this week though we have to point out that the, like, maybe the least appreciated and, by extension, the most important job an editor does is save you from your own dad pitch ideas. Because, you know, we're writers. We get, like, something pops in our head. We get super excited about it. And, I mean, for example, like, tell me if this one sounds familiar to you.

You know, you just have this idea that pops in your head burning in your heart. You just need to get it out. And you tell your editor, like, hey, I have exclusive. access to an artist. This person does not do press at all. They've been dead silent for the past couple of years. I'm on board. I'm on board so far. It sounds good so far. People know who they are. They're pretty popular. They just straight up don't do press. They don't do press because they don't trust the press and they can't find someone who thinks they'll tell their story. So you come to your... Sounds amazing. Link check for you. Like, well, can I ask, who is this person that you have in

mind for this pitch. Okay, so check this out. I know this is going to sound off the wall, but what if we did this? And mind you, this is a big publication. This is not some blog. What if we did, it's 2020, we're going to tell the exclusive Ryan Adams story about what the fuck his life has actually been like post-cancellation. Now, look, I get it because as a writer, you got to pay bills. You want to do some story that's distinct from like the usual battery of like, hey, we interview Japanese breakfast. Isn't that going to be super cool? But also, like, any editor

would just say, like, I think that's a real, like, they might take a few days so your excitement dies down by the time they tell them this is a really bad fucking idea. Well, okay, so we should give some context here, because there was a story that came out earlier this week. It was a

profile that appeared in Los Angeles magazine of Ryan Adams. And it was basically his story, like his side of the story. People are dying to hear. Well, okay, this is an interesting thing because I've been thinking about this. Do you think that any story about Ryan Adams is a bad idea?

Because at one hand, the thing with this LA magazine story, and if you're interested in it, you can go look it up if you want, although I don't think it was all that well executed, in my opinion. And it's not really worth kind of delving into like the blow-by-blow problems with the story. But, you know, there is a part of me that would be curious to read a piece that was well written and was justifiably critical of the subject. Yeah. In a way that this piece wasn't. This piece was basically the writer being sympathetic to Ryan Adams to the point of acting as his public advocate.

in this story, which I don't think is necessarily the right approach to take with that. I mean, there is something, I am curious about the idea of someone like him who has been essentially abandoned by people that used to support him. And I think that's an interesting story where the catch is with Ryan Adams,

and this is based on reading that piece, because I think that piece is actually interesting if you read between the lines of that story. The point of that story that the writer's trying to make is that Ryan Adams has been wronged. But when I read it, when I read the story between the lines, what that story is is that Ryan Adams is not introspective at all about why people have turned against him. And he is basically, it seems to be that his strategy for coming back is to make people feel

sorry for him. And I don't think that that is going to be effective. Maybe for people who already are sympathetic to him, it will. but there's no point in the story where he just says, look, I was an asshole, I recognize it, I'm trying to be a better person. If you just said that, I really think there's still be people mad at him, but it would suggest to me a level of self-awareness that I think would make it more likely that he could come back.

But when I read that story, I don't see any self-awareness. I see a guy who feels that he's been. wrongly maligned and he is looking for people to rescue him from this rather than do something about it himself. I mean, that was my read on that. So I don't know, like, can you profile a guy like that who I think seems fundamentally dishonest on some level and manipulative? I mean, or do you write a piece where you recognize that and you show him to be that?

I don't know. Because the journalist in me is always like, this could be an interesting story if it were done the right way. But I don't know. I mean, but I did see a lot of people who were just offended by the idea of talking to him at all. Yeah, like society has progressed beyond the need for, you know, this sort of guy. But I mean, but you can write about him in a way that doesn't endorse him. You know, you can write about him in a way that aims toward trying to understand a guy like that. I think on an objective level, it's like, what the fuck does this guy do with all this time? But also, it's, like they mentioned, this person has a crisis PR manager, and it seems like this is part of the gig where it's, I just get super cynical and see this is, okay, they're just. Well, did you see that the crisis manager didn't want to be named? Yes.

Which I thought was, I mean. I don't know. I think that's probably part of the crisis PR management job to not, to be heard and not seen. I suppose. I mean, the thing that strikes me with this Ryan Adam story isn't that, like, people are up in arms about it. It's that people don't care enough to be up in arms about it. Like, I actually felt that the response to that story was pretty muted.

Yeah. All told. I mean, you saw some people reacting to it. But, you know, and we've talked a little bit about Ryan Adams on our show already, and I'll reiterate something I said before, that if you like Ryan Adams and you think he's, canceled. Well, go to any streaming platform. You can hear his new records. You can go to his Instagram page, and I believe he's doing streaming shows pretty regularly. According to that

story, he has a tour in the works and a book in the works. So I don't know how he's any less accessible to people who really, you know, still want to hear his music. The only difference is that the media isn't covering him. And that seemed, again, to be the thrusts of the story, that, like, well, why isn't the media covering me as much as they used to? Even though Ryan Adams in that story, I think he likens being interviewed to a violation. Yeah, who can relate? Well, it's like, you're not, then you're not being violated all that much lately, Ryan, because there's not a lot of people who are interested in talking to you about your music. So, you know, maybe you should be happy about that on some level.

I don't know. I mean, there was also that Joseph Arthur story. Yeah, big week for L.A. dipships getting like getting hype for like doing things that make them pariahs. Yeah, because Joseph Arthur, we should say this. Yeah, hold on. Can you just tell me like

Joseph Arthur is a guy I keep getting confused with like other kind of like rootsy people who show up on like you know, like I might get this guy confused with like Ron Sexsmith up. in this bitch. Like, explain to our listeners who this guy is for a second. Well, Joseph Arthur, he's the singer-songwriter who has been on the scene for over 20 years. I believe that his first big record was released on Peter Gabriel's label, Secret World, in the late 90s, and I can't remember the name of the record.

Because Arthur, to me, is this artist who, he always, it seems like his greatest talent is collaborating with like really talented people who I guess think he's talented or maybe he's just like a good hang I don't know but you know like Peter Gabriel sent him to his label you know he's hung out with Lou Reed he's made like two albums with Peter Buck what they have a band called Arthur Buck yeah he's been involved in like other quasi supergroups where he's always like the least famous guy in the band but there seems to be this feeling in the in the musician community anyway that this is a worthwhile guy to hang out with.

But yeah, he was featured in the LA Times this week talking about how he's apparently now a big anti-vaxxer and it's threatening his career. I think he's lost some of his support team because of it. I think maybe he's like booking agent quit among other people. I mean, this is a little bit different than the Ryan Adams story because I think the LA Times story was more of a straightforward just kind of reporting what this guy thinks. I don't feel like the story was sympathetic to him.

I mean, maybe you could argue, like, well, why even give this guy any attention at all? Is he going to be like Ariel Pink getting on, like, Fox News now? Like this guy who's like not, who's been kind of under the radar, his like careers on a downslope, and all of a sudden because of this like stance that he takes, he's going to get like embraced by right wingers? Yeah, I don't know if people are going to make the case that he's being canceled.

Because, I mean, you could certainly make that case if you want to, but he doesn't seem like a guy who ever had like a great career anyway. And, you know, and in a sense, I feel like you could make the same argument about Ryan Adams, that, you know, he's at the point of his career where he was going to be playing music, for a cult of fans anyway, even without all of this scandal around him, how much do music websites cover 46-year-old singer-songwriters anyway at this point?

Especially someone like him who, I think most people would agree is about a decade or so, maybe more past his, like, creative prime. Content never sleeps. Like, I think people need to understand that about, you know, like, why is someone publishing this? Or like, why is, like, dude, it's, there is a constant need for content. I suppose.

Yeah. And you get, like, oh, Joseph Arthur. Yeah, that's vaccine. That's relevant. Yeah. Yeah. But, again, the thing with Arthur that always blows me away is how he gets all these people to make music with him.

Yeah. And he comes off a little nutty in that L.A. time story, but he must be a good hang. He must be a guy. it's like, ah, he's a pretty good songwriter, but I love just, you know, hanging out at his pad in L.A. That's my only theory on why that would happen, because I don't really understand.

Maybe he's got a PlayStation 5 or something like that. Do we want to talk about the chromatics breaking up? Yeah, speaking of L.A., no, I'm just playing. They're a cool band, but I don't know. I just think it's, like, funny that it was, like, breaking news. The other people in chromatics announced that it's breaking up, which, I mean, I just thought that was, like, not unexpected.

I mean, I think for people of a, you know, people who still, like, wear leather jackets and 70-degree weather in L.A., like, Dear Tommy is more or less the Wrens album, something that's just, like, constantly teased. Like, mind you, I did a, I did a profile on Johnny Jewell. It started in 2014. It finally published in 2015 about the upcoming Dear Tommy album, which has never come out. and I like it's like the other guys in the shins and like the non-james mercer guys in the shins announced that the shins are breaking up you know it's I just like the fact that how it was framed as actual news Steve do you care about this band at all like I loved kill for love but yeah well and we should say for those who maybe don't remember chromatics was this synth rock group that was popular in the early 2010s I really associate them with the movie drive and how that movie I think helps set the tone

for a lot of indie culture in the 2010s as far as like fetishizing 80s aesthetics and chromatics were a part of that you mentioned kill for love I always thought that was like a cool record I mean my feeling on this band generally was that they were more vibe than substance

and that if I heard a song or two that was usually enough. I also think about that cover of Neil Young, Into the Blue, My, My, Hey, Hey, Hey, on that record. And how, I mean, is, am I giving that too much credit in terms of, like, setting the tone for movie trailers and, like, the ironic cover of, like, a classic rock song? Like, a sad cover of a classic rock song. I feel like that was, like, an early version of that.

Yeah, it's not ironic so much. like let's just pitch it down, like switch the gender of the vocals. But like so much of what we're going to view as like quote indie culture from the mid-offs, like you can draw a straight line between, you can draw a straight line from Kill for Love and Stranger Things or like the career survive that act. You can talk about like the movie trailers like you were mentioning how you just find like some pop song and do like a drumless like reverie dark cover of it. Um, yeah, it, it's like, it's like this monument. And the fact that it's not being followed up, probably for the best. Um, like, I mean, I think that gave us all we really needed from chromatics.

And, um, yeah, I'll pour one. I'll pour one out for this band. Yeah, I mean, again, I think, you know, we've talked about this on our show many times that there's, it's no sin to make a record that's dated. Yes. Uh, because it means that you've marked time. You've helped define the sound of a particular. era. And I think chromatics, kill for love, that whole thing. It definitely feels very early 2010s to me. Specifically, L.A.

Should we mention the new Big Thief songs that came out this week? I'm a little wary to talk about this band because Big Thief, I feel like this was a band that I was an early adopter of this group. I loved their first record masterpiece. Capacity when that came out, which I still think is the best Big Thief record. That's a take. Is it? I don't think it should be. But it is.

I really feel like the records that, like, say, pitchfork got on, like, are not as good as capacity. Like, the two records that they put out in the same year. UFOF and two hands. Yeah, which I, there's quite a lot I like on those records, but it's also the beginning of them, I think, sounding more like an Adrian Linker solo project than a band. Buck Meeks hat's doing a lot of work on those albums, though. He is, but I don't know. They don't sound as bandy to me, maybe as the first two records do.

But I don't know, the discourse around this band I've really come to not like very much. Well, it's got nothing to do with the band. It's the discourse around the band. What is the discourse around this band? I feel like they're, sometimes I feel like their attributes are exaggerated, and I feel like their weaknesses are exaggerated. And it's like everything in social media, it's very black and white. And I just feel like both sides are having a conversation about Big Thief that I don't really want to have.

I don't think that they're the best band in the world or best band in indie, but I also don't think that they're just like this boring hippie group. You know, that seems to be the two takes that you're allowed to have about them. big thief. And I actually feel like the truth is somewhere in the middle. Again, I guess maybe I'm in the minority at this point. I prefer their first two records to what they've done since. But I think they're a really good band. I think to reduce them to like this sort of hippie stereotype, which I understand because their photos are very much catering to that.

Anytime Adrian Lanker talks, like it really is hard to not have that view of them. I mean, they started out on Masterpiece as this essentially like all, yeah, kind of like all country band. And I guess people now might look at that as like a more basic version of the band, like that's their Pablo Honey or something. But I actually feel like the directness of a lot of those songs still really appeals to me. And I think on capacity, they took it in more of an art rock direction, which they've extended on their subsequent records. But it still was really.

in more of, I guess, band identity to me. It wasn't quite as meandering as some of their later records. I still like those later records, but I don't know. I mean, I liked little things. Yeah, that song's amazing. If that's the A side of the single. The second song, to me, was more in the vein of, like, a lot of Big Thief, Adrian Linker stuff where it's pretty, but it feels like a little, again,

to me. It doesn't quite as strong. It's a song like Mary, you know, which is like one of the great Big Thief songs. That's from capacity. That's like, I think that whole record, or Shark Smile, you know, I think that record is really like the great happy medium of them

having a more arty thing, but also rooted in more of like, I guess, like a old country type sensibility. What I like about Big Thief or appreciate about Big Thief is that they seem like because they're a band and they have that, like, hippie sort of ring to them

is that they're like one of the main characters of like music Twitter that you could still kind of clown because there aren't too like that you can clown in kind of like a way that's like look at their press photos or whatever because you know that was something you could do a lot in the aughts but nowadays

it's like you make like I remember like when someone said oh big thief kind of boring and that was like a two day controversy on Twitter like people are so not used to having bands like actually a bands and be like being able to just like make fun of their hats. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think, yeah, someone from the New York Times, they tweeted that like a big

deeps of boring band and people got upset. Yeah, they're not the big country emo star of the future. Right. And I know you said that you thought that was like the funniest mini controversy. It was funny. It was funny. But I was like, I know that there's funnier controversies than this. And one thing that immediately came to mind.

And I know you'll appreciate this, is that, like, when the last Japan droids record came out, do you remember, like, how that record was criticized because they didn't talk about Trump on that record? Yeah. Why is this Canadian Party rock band not talking about Donald Trump on an album that they made, like, prior to the election? Well, they were, like, the people in Saving Private Ryan that, like, get out of the boat immediately and get shot in the head. Because that record came out, if I recall, it was. January 2017, a couple weeks after, like the week after the inauguration. Yeah, exactly. So it was it was queued up to be knocked as like, well, these are like these two white men singing about friendship and beer.

This is not reflective of the current moment and yada, yada, yada. I mean, it was terrible timing as far as that goes. So I thought that was a funnier controversy. You know, it is interesting to me. Look, maybe I could be wrong about this, but I feel like on some level, a band like Big Thief, they're safer to make fun of in the music writer Twitter space because there's still this thing where it's okay to rip on an indie band.

But like if you rip on a pop star, that like you're like this raucist monster and like we have to defend the pop star. That's why, like, if speaking of funny mini-controversies on music writer Twitter, anytime someone takes a shot at, like, Olivier Rodrigo or music made by teenagers, you have to have like 50 music writers standing up to defend the sanctity of teen pop, you know, because that is beyond the pale to rip that. But you can rip the critically acclaimed indie band from Brooklyn. Like, that's still okay to do.

Well, yeah, and also it's easier to make fun of a band because it deflects some of, you know, like what you could say. Like, if it was, if Adrian Linker was, like, more or less big thief, like, she, like, if she was, like, a solo artist and there were no pictures of the other guys in the band, yeah, it would be a lot harder to say the same things about that person. It's a lot harder to make fun of, like, a single person than it is a band. And I think that's one of the differences we've seen, you know, in the past decade where, you know, more of the people are solo artists.

So when you take shots at their music, it's like you're taking shots at them person. And so Big Thief helps deflect that, which I appreciate. Same with like we talked about like Black Middy. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I'm curious to see where Big Thief goes on this latest record. I mean, we've talked about them before. You know, I feel like their biggest supporters now exaggerate their greatness a little bit.

You know, that to say that I, because again, I was an early adopter of this band. I like them a lot. I don't think that they're the best band in the planet. I think some of their music is a little samey. And I think they've almost been too prolific lately. And we've talked about this in the past that, like, you know, I think we liken them to Deer Hunter at some point, how Deer Hunter was so prolific.

And it almost oversaturated the market a little bit. Because, and then, I mean, they course corrected with that a little bit later on. But like in the late aughts, I mean, they were very polite. And now people who are like 24. years old cannot possibly understand what it was like when the world revolved around every move that Bradford Cox made. Yeah, but that's why they listened to our show because we put it up like every other episode. Let's go to our mailbag and thank you all for writing in.

If you want to send us an email, you can hit us up at Indycastmailbag at gmail.com. One letter we're not going to read is we got a very, we got a very colorful piece of hate mail this week that ended with a diatribe. I think I can call it a diatribe. Yeah. It's a fusillade maybe. Maybe more of a fusillade than a diatribe. Well, this reader who said that he hates listens to the show. So if he's hate listening right now, hello, we did read your letter.

But it ends with him essentially likening us to Nazis for encouraging people to get vaxed. So that's one letter that we got. I don't don't think that's representative of the indie cast community. No. But it's good to hear from... Not that we know of shit. Yeah, it's true.

Maybe there's more. Maybe there's more people out there. Maybe it's all hate listeners out there or 85% hate listeners. But this person doesn't hate listen to us, I don't think. His name's Jesse. He's from Washington, D.C. And he writes in to ask, what album covers do you two consider to be the best or your favorite?

To Pimp a Butterfly, of course, sends a deeper message. in the Great Burrito Extortion case. What is the Great Burrito Extortion case? You know, I read that and I'm like, oh, the Flying Burrito Brothers. It's a bowling for soup album. Oh, my God. I like that Jesse dropped that bowling for soup references. Yeah, like that was the first, like, what is the opposite of to Pimp a Butterfly?

Like, what is the polar, and it's like, oh, right, a 2006 bowling for soup album, where they're outside of a, it looks like Las Vegas, they're all in suits, and there is a burrito. Yes. Yeah, I guess it's, I guess it's like, oh, that's the one with high school never ends. And it's lesser singles when we die and quote, I'm gay. That's another one. See, I just, I appreciate his confidence that we would know the bowling for soup reference.

You know, just by him dropping the album title. And I'm sorry, Jesse, your confidence was misplaced because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. But now I do know the name of that Bullying Pursuit record. Anyway, he's making the point that some albums covers might seem profound, are they silly? We all have different criteria for what would make our favorite album cover. But he's wondering what are our favorite album covers of all time. Do you have any choices that kind of come directly to mind? Well, I mean, I have like the American Football album cover.

tattoo to my arm, so I assume that, like, one. Do you for real? Dude, have you, like, yeah, this, this, this is a, this is a real thing. And, like, the cool thing is, like, people see it and, like, that's a really cool tattoo. What is it? And they just think it's, like, a really cool looking house. Um, but I'll have, like, if we have to talk about, like, an album cover besides that one, which, you know, spawned an entire subgenre of, let's put a picture on the house, like, let's put a picture of the house on the cover. That'll get across like our adolescent, but like early adult yearning for the grand open spaces of the Midwest. But, I mean, you have to say like Big Bears doing things.

That's a pen and pixel. Like it's a rap album where it's a guy in a robe. His name is Big Bear. And he's surrounded by bears that are wearing jewelry and sunglasses. And I love that cover. And people will probably recognize that listening to Indycast. It's a very big deal amongst the 30-something. listening audience where it's an album cover that's like so iconic that like nobody's actually

listened to the album like you can reference that album cover also on a like Mercedes rear end it's it it's just like this album is this album cover is so good I don't even need to listen to the album itself like I can't think of another one that uh that like almost makes the music itself irrelevant in a good way. But otherwise, if we're like being serious, I have to say like loveless, battles mirrored, white pony, like the original gray one, not the weird one where the, uh, on, on Spotify, you know, just ones that like define like, yeah, I know exactly what this band's about. Um, there's probably a ton of them forgetting, but, uh, you know, those are like, it's just like, when you see it, it's like, oh, that would make a good tattoo. Yeah, you know, there's so many

covers that you that are just iconic that we probably don't need to discuss whether it's like abbey road or you know the cover of uh dirty mind by prince or you know Bruce springsteen born in the USA like all these classic covers like let's just push those to the side um one of my favorite album covers that I feel like is definitional for me in terms of like seeing it as a young kid and feeling like oh that's why I wanted to get into music and that's why I want to like care about rock bands is the of Electric Warrior by T-Rex. That's a good one. 171.

Mark Bolan on the cover. It's a drawing of him. There's a huge, like, Marshall Stack behind him playing this guitar. Awesome image. I'd also say the cover of Neil Young's time fades away,

which is actually hanging in my office. And if you don't know the cover, it's like a shot of a, it's like from the stage. It's like at the level of the crowd, and you just see all these people standing waiting for a show to begin. It's a very iconic,

looking thing, again, that just to me defines what rock culture is. Actually, in the movie almost famous, Cameron Crow recreates that cover at one point with a crowd shot, like waiting for still water to come on. As a

compliment to your Big Bear example, I would also bring up the John Mayer record, Sabra, that came out this year, which I actually do like that album, but I feel that, you know, a good maybe 60% of that album's appeal is the cover, which looks like an LP from the 80s made by... The nice price.

Yeah, it looks like the cover of like a Don Henley record or something from like 1983. And it's a great cover because it's a comment on album covers. Like if you've been in a lot of record stores and you've thumbed through the stacks, you've seen so many covers like that and just the way that it recreates that is really the best thing about that record you know, really. So, you know, even if you don't like John Mayer, you can appreciate that album cover

and not listen to the music, I think, and the cover works on that level. But yeah, there's so many covers. I mean, Dark Side of the Moon, obviously, has a great cover, but we don't need to talk about that. The Pink Floyd album covers that are on that every single college guy in the late 90s had the cover

where it's like all the covers are projected on the naked women's backs Right. Yeah. Exactly.

Which I wonder do the young people of today still have that poster or have we progressed enough or even 18 year old

boys would be embarrassed to have it on the wall? I don't know. If you're like part of our younger demographic Indycast listener,

please hit us up. And also, let us know if they have the John Belushi College sweatshirt one as well, and Vince Van Gogh's Starry Night. That is the starter pack for college dorm room late 90s. Does this still, like, are we completely out of touch here at Indycast? Yeah, like a Scarface poster or like a Boondock Saints poster. Are people still rocking that stuff? Yeah, definitely want to know about that. All right, we've now reached the meat of our episode. We're going to be reviewing two albums. in this episode. The first one is called

Pressure Machine. It's by a band called The Killers. And this is the first band, I think, that we've talked about twice in terms of new album releases. Prolething. Yeah, the previous Killers record, imploding the Mirage, came out in August 2020, right after we started. And here we are almost exactly a year later, after the release of that record. And here is another Killer's record. coming at us. Again, it's called pressure machine. And we talked last year about imploding the

Mirage being a record that I think we both felt was a comeback for the killers after a couple of records that really seemed to suggest that the band was losing their way. And I had an interview with Brandon Flowers that ran this week, where he himself says that records like Battleborn and Wonderful, while they might have their moments. He, he, he, he, basically says we were adrift. We didn't really know where we were going. And he felt like with imploding the Mirage, they got their feedback on the ground.

And they really got there because, well, I think in large part because they worked with a new production team, headed up by Sean Everett, who's worked with the War on Drugs on a bunch of recent records, as well as bands like Alabama Shakes, and Jonathan Rado, who used to be in the band Foxtogen, who we've talked about on the show. Yes, we have.

And on imploding the band, Mirage, it was really about the killers getting back to making these very shiny, splashy, larger than life, arena rock anthems, showing that they could do that again. And I think that record showed that they did. This new record is a very interesting contrast because I think it's a much different sort of record, whereas Employing the Mirage is deliberately, again, extroverted and boisterous and is really, I think, trying to win people over. Pressure Machine is like this difficult record in a lot of ways. It's their most lyrics-oriented record that the kids I've ever made, which you might not

think necessarily would be a strength that they would want to focus on. But I have to say that what Brandon Flowers is doing on this record, which he's essentially writing a song cycle about his boyhood home of Neffey, Utah. And he's writing these story songs. And then they also added real-life interviews. with people from the town that were essentially recorded at the last minute. They were recorded after the songs were written. But it's amazing how often the interview snippets reflect what the songs are about.

And it actually works really well. I tweeted recently that I felt like the killers were trying to make an early odds bright-eyes record. And really that was leaning on the spoken word aspects of this record. As well as some of the choices son. which again for a killer's record this is like a relatively low-fi record i know brandon flowers in our interview talked a little bit a little bit about Nebraska uh the bruce springsteen record being a reference point um and there's a lot things about this record that you would think wouldn't work on paper but i found myself being like really impressed by it and again it's it's not trying to be

Nebraska, it's more like a dusty New Order record. Or like if New Order made like a record about Small Town America, like that's what this record is. But I have to say like I really feel like the killers who were a band that I wrote off and said this band is finished. I think that they've made two of their best records in, you know, the early 2020s. And it's one of the more impressive comebacks that I can remember in music. like in the last maybe 20, 25 years. I mean, honestly, I think that they are really making good music right now, and I like this record a lot.

What did you think of it? Yeah, when you first said that, oh, they're trying to make an early bright-eyes album. Like, my first thought, like, no offense, Steve. But it's like, yeah, this person has clearly not heard any bright-eyes albums from before a wide-awakened's morning. And yet, you prove me wrong, because the first thing you hear is like a 30-45-second tape recording of some guy, like, talking.

I'm like, where the fuck is this going? But I was in a situation where I was just like listening to this album on the on the on the on the on the stream that the promo that was sent. And I'm like, wait a minute. Like this is like good, good. It's not just I think in a lot of ways the previous Killers album was like, okay, cool. It's good to have them back. It's good to hear them in a different context. They seem revitalized.

This sounds to me like an album with actual legs on it. I was just kind of shocked that it. It's so, I mean, in the past, the killers have made songs about, you know, people, but, like, you always assume that, like, they're not real people. They're just, like, these kind of confabulations of, you know, old Bruce Springsteen records and Journey and Bon Jovi, which I think is key to the killer's appeal. Like, they all see those bands as playing kind of the same game. But when he talks about, like, living in this, like, what's it, 600 people, like, live in this town of Neph? I think it's 3,000. Okay.

Three to five, four thousand. Yeah, but there's like no stoplights there. And you think about like this guy, Brandon Flowers, this like a person who like with all due respect to him does not come off like a man of the people. Like even Bruce Springsteen, no matter how popular he gets, you always think this guy could maybe go work at the car wash, you know, at some point or like, you know, work on the factory line. Like Brandon Flowers is just like an unbelievably well proportioned. a symmetrical face dude and he's talking about like these people in his hometown who like get caught up on meth and um you know just have these like go nowhere lives and and the fact that he does it it's still very killersy uh like the production is very loud like he said dusty new order i think

that's pretty on point um i i do wonder if like people will kind of view them as like these truth tellers now about these people who are speaking for this forgotten part of America and that there's maybe like more substance to their music in the past that people than people would generally allow like I think that this album compared to the last one might cause like the entire career of killer the killers to be to be reassessed which is about the most impressive thing like a you know a band like 20 years in on their eighth album or whatever can do yeah I mean to me it really is about these two albums together and how they show the range of this band because this was something that Flowers and I

talked about that when they when they started out they were very much coming from more of a British tradition yeah he said that like when he was growing up he loved Brit pop and he loved 80s UK undercrown music you know the cure the Smiths oasis groups like that and then around the time of Samstown they got into this American thing and they went way over the top with that on Samstown I think in a very entertaining way yeah but it was about trying to find a way to like put Bruce Springsteen and John Prine in the same context as New Order and the Smiths. And they've gone back and forth between those two extremes a lot throughout their career.

But on this record pressure machine, I think that they have combined those influences in the most interesting way yet. Yeah. Where like if this is their version of Nebraska, it still sounds like a band that listened to a lot of British music when they were growing up. You know, they're not going whole hog into like full on Bruceisms, which they've done at times in the past in maybe an overly derivative way. This record, it just seems like, this seems unique to them. And it's unique to them sonically and also, as you said, because Brandon Flowers is writing about this specific corner of America that he's from that.

Nobody's from. Yeah, no one's made a record about like rural Utah like this before. And look, I don't want to go overboard and praising this record. There's still some of the liabilities that all Killers' records have. It can be... A bit much. It can be a bit much at times. I think there are some filler songs here and there.

But for the most part, I think that the record really holds together well as an album. And I really have to tip my cap to them because, again, this is their seventh record. And I think it's totally unlike anything they've ever done before. And that's a pretty big achievement, I think, for a band, for any band, really, to be able to pull off. So, yeah, the killers, like, one of the surprises of 2021 and 2020. But, yeah, very excited about what they're doing right now. Let's move on to bleachers. Yes, another scrappy up-and-comer.

Yeah, another scrappy up-and-comer. another, I guess, Bruce indebted indie act. Yeah. If you want to call them indie. They have a new album that came out, I guess, it came out in late July. It was originally going to come out in mid-August. But it came out about three weeks early. It's called Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night.

Yeah, that's a title. It's a very, you know, speaking of Japan, droids. Or even like a, that's more like a beach slang album title in a way. Thank you. But this is the third Bleacher's record. And of course, before that, Jack Antonoff, who's the main person in Bleachers, he was in the band's fun and steel train. Steel Train.

And he had great success with fun, but of course we now know him best as the producer of some of the biggest female singer-songwriters on the planet, including Taylor Swift, Lord, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, and Clero. I don't know if I missed anyone there. Did I miss any huge superstars that he's worked with lately? And it's really, like, through his production work, that he's built his name and also has created a backlash against him. There's been a lot of pieces written about him.

I wrote something about him for Ask a Music Critic column. The headline was, is Jack Antonoff overrated? That was a question from a reader that I tried to answer. And on one hand, it seems. like a little unfair because he does just seem like a nice guy and it appears that a lot of artists trust him.

And so I assume that he is someone who's good to work with and is a good collaborator. But there's a couple things about him. He seems to have, how can I put this delicately? Like that online...

Don't put it delicately. Go there. Well, you know, you know that thing like the like the the aggressively online male feminist energy. Like that guy when he's on social media

who's like a little too eager to promote how enlightened he is and how that can be a turnoff for both men and women. He seems to have that a little bit and I wonder if that turns people off. And there's also just the fact

that he's massively over-exposed at this point. And you could be the nicest guy in the world but if you're If your mug is around every corner, people are going to get sick of you. And it is almost like a joke now that like any time a big time album by a female artist has announced that Jack Antonoff is like trailing that person like a little comet. You know, like immediately after that's announced.

Do you think people are being unfair to Jack Antonoff? I mean, what's your take on this guy? You know, the more I interact with his music, the less I find myself able to like, formulate the sort of, the more I find myself unable to formulate a sort of anger around him, because like everything you said about, you know, a lot of like female fans of like female artists, like whenever one starts to come up, they'll be like, keep Jack Antonoff away from, say, like, Billy Eilish or whatever, whereas a lot of like the, you know, a lot of guys are just like, there's something about this guy that just seems kind of off. And so, you know, it's a firm

person to debate. But like, when you listen to his records, whether it's the production or bleachers itself. I'm like, what does this guy actually, like, what does this guy do? And I mean that, like, I know that he's kind of like, you know, he's like a musician and a producer and just like an ideas guy. But, you know, I can't even identify his distinct touch the way I could with, like, Rostom, you know, the guy from, because a lot of this Bleacher's album sounds a little bit like deboned Rostom in that, like, some, songs remind me a little bit of like vampire weekend or they remind me a little bit of like that guy's own solo work and you know I I like I if I if I know a lord album is coming out I'm like I can oh yeah

that's jack antonoff but if I heard it in the wild like would I be able to identify what this guy actually does so I mean like deep well how would you describe what he actually well I mean I think that when he started when he started getting famous I feel like what he was associated with was this 80-style maximalism. Okay. Taking moments that you remember from big-time 80s pop records and rearranging them and re-contextualizing them and injecting them into modern pop music. So, you know, like fun, like we are young, like a song like that.

I feel like his example of that. Or you listen to an album like 1989 by Taylor Swift, which like really put him on the map as a pop producer. I think that was true of those records. It does seem that as time has gone on, that he doesn't really have a distinct sonic personality, even in the way that he did, like, in the mid-2010s. And maybe, you know, that's his strength

in terms of who he's collaborating with because he's not a guy who's going to just impose his own style on an artist. He does seem like someone who's malleable enough to work with different kinds of people and to let them play their strengths, which just speculating on this, I mean, it seems like that is maybe part of what people like about them.

That's my best guess with that. Because I'm in the same boat as you. I listen to his records, and it's not like listening to say the Neptunes in the late 90s. It's in early 2000s. Well, you heard their records and you knew was the Neptunes.

And they had a signature, and it was exciting to hear it. Or even Steve Albini for that, Matt. You know like you can kind of tell like you can think of oh that's like either They were produced by Steve Albini because it's super dry and close Mike But yeah or even like you know we mentioned Sean Everett and Jonathan Rado working with the killers I mean Rado was also worked with Father John Misty Sean Everett of course with the war on drugs And there's certain things about their records where you're like oh yeah I can hear

Connections between different things that they've worked on right in a way I think that's harder with Antonoff. I, okay, so, getting back to this Bleacher's record, I was not a fan of the previous Bleacher's records. I found myself enjoying this album more than I expected, and maybe I just had a low bar. I know that, like, when I looked at the tracklist and I saw that he did a song with Bruce Springsteen,

that I was like, I'm probably going to like this, and Ian will probably hate this. And I heard it. It's a song called Chinatown. I actually thought that song was all right. I didn't mind that song. I mean, the thing about this record is that I actually feel like this Bleach's record does have a more distinct personality. It's sort of like a magnetic fields record after like lots of ice cream.

You know, it's like a very sugary, upbeat thing. But it still has that, it has kind of like a lo-fi indie pop sensibility to it. It seems like he's downscaling his superstar status on this record and is trying to make essentially a bedroom pop record. And I don't, I mean, it didn't blow my mind, but I found myself enjoying it more than I expected. Yeah, I kind of begrudgingly enjoy this.

Like this album makes me want to listen to, like I've been thinking of late that I probably just need to be listening to the radio or just like some satellite radio because my brain is so poisoned by music Twitter that I make up my mind about stuff a lot before I hear it. And this is like if I were to be told that, hey, this is some new indie rock author on Dead Oceans.

Like I'd be thinking, oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's maybe a little derivative of like The Last Vampire Weekend album or what have you, but it's still pretty good. But, you know, the fact that like it's Jack Antonoff, a lot of it, it's hard for me to connect with it emotionally, especially a song like, it's called Chinatown and it involves Bruce Springsteen. Like, it, to me just, it reminds me of this, I'm going to use Largo core, you know, the

Largo space in Los Angeles that has like a lot of like Amy Mann and Fiona Apple would be there. Just like this real kind of cleverness about songwriting. Like, it's really about the craft, man. That just really turns me off. But, you know what? It's not altogether that far removed from like the Foxing record, but like whereas Foxing is kind of coming from a point of like more emotional investment.

I don't know. Like it's hard to hate. It's fine. I like it. I mean, I think Antenov, I think he's invested. He strikes me as a pretty earnest person. Yeah. I don't look at him as being detached.

You know, I think the issue with Antonoff sometimes is why this guy. You know what I mean? Like, why is he the one who is the Svengali, or not Svengali, but like the go-to producer of so many big-time artists because he doesn't necessarily strike you as a genius, like when you listen to his records? Well, maybe that's what's appealing about it. Like, do you really want, like, a genius trying to overshadow, say, Lord or Lana Del Rey

or, like, someone coming in to change that? Well, that's my theory. on him is that he is like his mild matteredness is part of his appeal for his collaborators because he's not going to muscle in and he's going to make a point to give

all the credit to the people he works with which again I mean that's an admirable thing I mean if we're just looking at him as a dude he doesn't seem like a jerk or anything seems like a pretty nice guy seems like a good collaborator but I to me like what

He's confounding about him is that he doesn't seem exceptional. You know, you just wonder, like, what is it about this guy that makes everyone want to work with him? I mean, he obviously is a very talented guy, and he's obviously produced a lot of hits. But I don't know. His music never has the wow factor for me. There's very little that he's done, especially lately. I mean, I think melodrama is a great record. I think he certainly has co-written and produced some.

like really good songs, but like on his own and like by and large, I don't know. Yeah. It's, it's, it seems kind of me a lot of time. Yeah, what you're saying is that you're a steel train truther and that you really hope that they get back to the trampoline era, you know. Steel train forever, baby. Yeah. All right, we now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where

Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? All right. So I want to talk about the new, a great big pilot. of Lee's album called Pono and I just got to clarify right off top for Steve. This is not a reference to Neil Young's MP3 player. It's actually from, it's, it's the Hawaiian word for righteousness. Oh man. I know. Disappointing, right? Yeah, that's crushing. Yeah, I did an interview with these guys a little bit, a little while ago for stereo gum about them coming back, uh, after eight years. In 2013,

they were like one of the first emo revival bands you could really write about, uh, from that. glorious summer. And yet, like, there's really not that much emo about them. To me, they play kind of, like, jazzy, chill indie rock about, like, you know, getting ice cream, get, like, going to the pool, just summer stuff. Very low-key, in a way, it makes me think of what people who liked Mac DeMarco or, you know, just stuff from that, like, the kind of chill bro era of, like, the mid-aughts might hear, than like, oh, this is pretty chill.

But, you know, they do it from like a very complicated musicianship standpoint. And the new record does what the last one, you're always on my mind did. Like, there's really not much that sounds like them. But if you like the idea of just like chill kind of indie rock, but also with a little bit of like jazz complications in there, like a 13-4 time signature.

and also one of the like one of the few emo bands is singing a low voice I think this one it's very low stakes low key but I enjoy it a lot and they're back after eight years to you know

it's one for the heads you know so I want to talk about well this is an album that isn't out yet I feeling that we're going to talk about this in a few weeks but this is a chance for the Indycast listener to get an early preview of what I think is one of the really enjoyable rock records of late summer,

which is Glow On by a band from Baltimore called Turnstile. They put out a new single this week called Fly Again. And if you go on streaming platforms, you can basically hear about half the record at this point. They've put out a lot of songs from Glow On. And this is a really fascinating band because they've been described as a super group of sorts. There's members of various Baltimore hardcore punk bands in turnstile. But turnstile, even though they are described sometimes as hardcore punk, to me they're basically just a melodic hard rock band,

which is a genre that I've always loved, and you don't really hear that much anymore of. Like just hard rock bands that aren't going the metal route or aren't going like the Fast and Furious Punk rock, but are just playing. heavy riffs that are also really pretty and melodic and themic and beautiful

and turnstile really does deliver on that level. They put out a record in 2018 called Time and Space that I know Ian and I both really liked and I think if you are a fan of the show and you are a fan of like 90s alt rock you will like this band a lot

so again I don't want to go too much into this because I've been feeling that we're going to talk about Turnstile in a few weeks but I just wanted to give a heads up that you can hear a lot of this record right now on most streaming platforms, and I would really recommend checking it out. So just look up Fly again. That's the name of the single, and there's, I think, six or seven songs listed with that on streaming platforms. So check that out, and we'll reconnect again in a few weeks to talk more about turnstile. So we've now reached the end of our episodes. So 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 time.

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.