Indiecast - The Life And Legacy Of Steve Albini

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Steven and Ian begin today's episode with a quick recap of the seemingly on-pause rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake (0:25), as well as a Sportscast segment on Steven's bandwagon-jumping with the Minnesota Timberwolves (3:39). After that, they address the sad news about the death of Steve Albini at the age of 61 (16:11). They recap the musician/producer's illustrious career, and wonder whether his death marks the end of an era in indie music. Then the guys delve into a recent interview with a member of the shoegaze band Whirr and Ian's run-in with them back in the 2010s (38:02).In the mailbag, a listener comes up with a new term — Poochie band, after the famous Simpsons episode — to describe acts that have one song so good that it makes it impossible to hear any other song they have ever made (46:46). What bands apply as "Poochie" material?In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the latest effort from hardcore band Knocked Loose while Steven backs the new album by Amen Dunes (55:19).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 188 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and 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 indie mixtape. 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 talk about the life and legacy of Steve Albini. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He's still waiting for another Kendrick versus Drake disc track. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

Yeah, I actually, like, Steve's not kidding because this is maybe the first time in four. years of working at my current job where people have legitimately been asking me about my opinion, about something like asking my musical opinion. I don't want to step, I don't want to say things I might have to take back, but I didn't hear anyone talking about Taylor Swift at work last week. And it just goes to show how incredible of a story this is for a kind of blotting out a two-week-old Taylor Swift album. but also I think the end result is that it kind of shifted our song of the summer conversation as well. Because, I mean, the Achilles heel you used to have on Kendrick Lamar was that you'd get like DJs and whatnot saying you couldn't play his shit at the club that like everyone would start taking out their phones and reading genius annotations. But now in Atlanta you see like the beat drop and people sing along with the certified pedophile line.

So the song of the summer 2024 clearly deserves. serves, you know? Yeah, you know, this whole thing, look, I love musical rivalries, obviously. I've spent a lot of time writing and talking about this in my career. But when you start getting into, like, pedophile accusations, I'm tapping out. I just feel like the vibes on this whole thing have been off. I think when you rip somebody, it should be funny or it should be light. It should be like, you know, I'm trying to think of an example here.

Making fun of someone's appearance or making fun of their record being crappy. I don't know what it is. The pedophile stuff, it makes me feel a little dirty. Even being remotely associated with that as a listener. Yeah. Like, am I overreacting? I don't know. Just the vibes on this whole thing were a little weird.

I kind of started to check out when there, was like a song every other hour it felt like last weekend. I was like, all right, all right. I don't know about this anymore. Yeah, I think it was, I think the bigger problem was that like Drake was responding in ways that weren't fun at all. He was like doing a point by point rejoinder to the accusations made, one of which was that, hey, if I was really doing all this stuff, I would get caught because I'm that famous.

And Drake, you've been famous for like 15 years and I don't think that's how it works. Yeah, it's, it, yeah, it did get like kind of in a, moral panic sort of territory because the songs weren't good after a while but uh yeah and also the fact that um the day before we recorded joe biden uh made a version of euphoria that was like a don't trump this track which you don't want it with the best insult comic in politics and also this makes me wish no one under the age of 60 was involved in presidential politics but yeah i think that is a sign that yeah maybe it's time for us to move on like this is no longer fun I want to talk about something that is fun.

We've got some heavy things in this episode. I want to talk, we're going to do a sports cast here. I've lived in Minnesota now for nine years, and in the entire time, I have not felt comfortable cheering for Minnesota teams. I'm originally from Wisconsin. I remain loyal to my Wisconsin teams. I'm never going to be a Vikings fan because they're probably my most hated team in sports. So that's out the window.

The twins, they're a likable team, but I don't care enough about baseball at this point to really get into that. Ian, I'm ready to announce that I am joining the Timberwolves bandwagon. I am bandwagoning like hell on this team. The playoff game that they had, I guess that was on Monday against the Nuggets. Just an unbelievable defensive performance. Anthony Edwards, Kat, The rest of the crew, there's a game tonight. I'm saying tonight, because that's the day that this episode's going up on Friday night, game three here in Minneapolis.

I can't wait. Should I feel guilty about this? I mean, I'm trying to be up front here. I'm not claiming that I am a die-hard, you know, ride or die, been with them through thick and thin type team. I am bandwagoning on the Timberwolves as they take a two-0 lead. against the defending champs. This is like the easiest time to become a fan. I feel a little guilty about it.

I feel a little guilty being a bandwagon jumper. I feel guilty cheering for a Minnesota team. I mean, the Milwaukee Bucks aren't in the playoffs anymore, so I can't cheer for them anyway. Also, this Bucks team this year, just the worst vibes. Terrible, like Sixers-level bad vibes. I mean, when you're bringing in Pat Bev, you know you've crossed the Rubicon into truly bad vibes.

But should I feel any residual guilt about this? Not at all. Maybe for like, you know, not mentioning the Minnesota wild. I actually had to look up to see if they had made the playoffs this year and they did not. But yeah, I think the NBA lends itself well to bandwagoning. You know, we got to give a shot to the Block Spot God's Free Darko for the concept of liberated fandom, which I think works best with the NBA, given how individual and personality focused it is. And yeah, despite the fact that it has Rudy Gobert, like the one-man patient zero COVID outbreak guy,

it's so hard not to root for this Timberwolves team. You really can't go wrong with just about any team in the playoffs right now, especially in the Western Conference because they're young. All the teams are young. They're fun. The vibes are great. And also, it's a good distraction from the crushing inevitability of like the Celtics maybe winning the series. any sort of finals 4-1 or 4-2.

See, I, okay, look, again, very casual NBA watcher. I've followed the NBA mainly through podcast this year, although I think that's how most people follow the NBA. It's almost like a totally online. It's like that or gambling websites. It's like TikTok clips and podcasts. That's how people follow the NBA these days. But the thing with the Celtics, it's like, yeah, okay, they beat the Cavaliers by 25 in

game one. the calves are a tomato can. Most of the teams in the east are tomato cans. I mean, assuming that they play the Knicks, and I hope they play the Knicks, because I hate the Pacers. Yeah, they're awful. They're just the one team I hate.

They are so fucking annoying. And I feel bad because I would be inclined to cheer for the Middle American team versus the New York team, but I just can't with this Pacers team. And I actually like Jalen Brunson, and I like this Knicks team. I think they're pretty likable team,

but, what are they going to do against the Celtics? Celtics are going to run through them. I just feel like the Celtics, they're not going to be challenged, really, until the finals. So that doesn't give you pause. I mean, if you look at the wolves,

they're going to be better. If they make the finals, they still got to beat Denver here, which isn't going to be easy, no matter how, you know, lopsided game two was, then they're either going to have to play Dallas or OKC. It's probably going to be OKC.

They're going to have a harder road. to the finals if they make it. And then when they get there, don't you feel like they have a size advantage on Boston? I mean, is Porzingis play? He's status unclear. I mean, if you look at most of the metrics throughout the year, the Celtics are playing at a historic rate.

But I'm like thinking that maybe the best case scenario is like a finals near and dear to my heart in 2001 where the Sixers played like what seemed like an equally unstoppable Lakers team. like Alan Iverson one game, kind of single-handedly, one game one, and then the Lakers took care of business in short order. That was the series where Destiny's Child got booed in Philadelphia, because I think it might have been Beyonce wearing like a Kobe jersey in the Sixers home court.

But, yeah, I mean, I think that even if it is like Celtics inevitably versus, you know, whether it's the Timberwolves, whether it's OKC, it's going to be fun. The NBA playoffs is as good as, you know, televised sports gets. Just the great personalities, great individual talents. People really step it up. And you also get to see, like, how pointless a lot of the NBA season really is, that they should maybe reduce it to 50 games. Yeah, or I was listening to a show the other day talking about lowering it to like 72 games.

Something, because they are half, it is very, even if I talk about like load management, like people are half-ass in it for real. Well, they were talking about how the highest rated NBA season of like the last 20 years was the lockout year where they only played 65 games, which is an interesting thing because usually when there's a strike, at least in baseball, it tends to make the sport less popular. But like with the NBA, people loved it. Because I think the season started on Christmas that year or around that time. And then there was like games every day. and it was packed and there weren't you know there were like what 17 fewer games and it just felt way higher stakes in the regular season but the NBA is about to sign these historically huge TV rights deals you know so what incentive do they have to reduce the number of games it just feels like

we're going to be stuck with these pointless regular seasons but I don't know man as a person who has at least literally been following the Timberwolves for days now. I like their chances. I just think if they make it to the finals, they're going to have to beat the defending champs. They're going to have to beat probably the number one seat in the West. And they're going to play Boston. They're going to have size advantage on them.

They're going to be more battle tested. You're going to have possibly the future face of the league on their team. And so cool. He is so cool. I don't know, man. I just feel like they're peeking at the right time. It feels like if they can get through Denver. I don't know.

Again, as a follower of the team for days, I think that they've got a good shot. I feel good about them. Nas Reid is a human recommendation corner. Unbelievable. So excited for the games this weekend. It's going to be great. Let's do a couple housekeeping things here quick.

I need to correct myself on two things I was called out for from last week's pod. Number one, Guerrilla Manor, the first local natives record. I said came out in 2012. It actually came out in 2010. Actually, I think it came out in Europe in 2009. Correct.

And then it came out here in America, like a few weeks later, in early 2010. I had someone call me out on that, on Twitter, with multiple exclamation points, yelling at me, but I got the date wrong. So I want to correct that. I knew that happened, but I'm like, I don't want to fuck up the flow.

And who's going to notice that? We can edit it around that. You got to call me out. This other one is more egregious that you didn't call me out on this one. And I don't know what I was thinking. This is a total just brain fart. But at the end of the episode last week,

I said bright country new road instead of black country new road. Did you notice that? I don't think I did. But now that like you mentioned it, Here's my theory. You were trying to remember some guys bright black,

bright black, oh my God, what the fuck is the name of the band? Bright back morning light, yeah. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe that's what's happening right there. I don't know what I was, but I mean, I know the name of the band.

That was just something where the words between my brain and my mouth didn't come out properly. So anyway, I just want to acknowledge that I know the name of the band is Black Country New Road, not Bright Country New Road.

So in terms of integrity, I want to make that clear. The other thing I want to announce, and I didn't announce this last week, even though it was announced online, but not on the podcast, is that there's going to be an in-person, we'll call it a quasi-indicast event in Los Angeles, June 11th at Book Soup. I'm going to be there promoting my book. There was nothing you could do. Bruce Springsteen's born in the USA and the end of the heartland.

And I'm going to be there with none of the other. than Ian Cohen. Hell yeah. He's going to be moderating the event. We're going to be there together. Going to be able to ask you in person. Ian, how are you? I can't wait.

Have you heard born in the USA in your life? I had a Springsteen phase in college. I remember, I'll never forget this. We were listening, it was a 21st century, it was a 20th century music class, and we were listening to dancing in the dark. and there was this like one guy who was kind of edge lord with it and he heard the drums and he called them oppressive this I swear this happened like 22 23 years ago wow and it was it just so envisioned my future discussing music wow where there was a guy where there's a guy who

like hears this you know universally beloved song and they the first thing they key upon is the drum sound, how it's oppressive. Max Weinberg, fascist. No man, I'm excited for that. I really appreciate you agreeing to do this with me. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. If you're in L.A. or you're in the L.A. area, if you have time, if you want to come down, it'd be great to see our listeners down there.

I'm also doing a book event in Brooklyn on May 29th with Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem. And I'm basically just going to have him tell Bruce Springsteen stories. It's like Bruce Springsteen's like his godfather. So that's going to be a lot of fun. That's at Powerhouse Arena. And Brooklyn, which is an amazing sounding venue, it's not literally an arena, I guess. It's just the bookstore.

But it sounds like we're going to be doing this book event in front of 20,000 people. So I'm excited for that. Excited to hang out in person. Sounds like you might bring your lovely wife. to the event. So excited to meet her as well. So it's going to be great. So hope to see you California people at BookSoup, June 11th.

Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I do like the fact that Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem is at Powerhouse Arena. And me, I'm at Book Soup in West Hollywood. That's right. That's right. yet. And I just want to say quick, too, that there's a chance I'm going to be doing other events and other parts of the country. There's one big city in the middle of the country that I'm hoping to do an event at. Hasn't been confirmed yet, but I will announce that as that happens. And again,

my book comes up May 28th, by the way. You can pre-order it now at a bookstore or bookseller of your choice. Let's get to the main topic this week, and it is, of course, the passage. The passage of Steve Albini. And I'll read from the news item that ran on Pitchfork this week. Steve Albini, an icon of indie rock as both a producer and performer, died on Tuesday, May 7th of a heart attack. Staff at his recording studio, electrical audio confirmed to pitchfork. As well as fronting underground lynch pins, including Shalak and Big Black,

Albini was a legend of the recording studio, though he preferred the term engineer to producer. He recorded Nirvana's in Utero, Pixie Surfer Rosa, P.J. Harvey's Rid of Me and countless more classic albums, and remained an outspoken critic of exploitive music industry practices until his final years. Chalach were preparing to tour their first album in a decade to All Trains, which is scheduled for release next week. Wow. Steve Albini was 61 years old. You know, it was fascinating to see the reaction. online to Albini's death this week.

You know, because in life, he was this provocative figure at times, even a divisive personality. I mean, he pissed a lot of people off over the years. But the reaction to his death was this overwhelming outpouring of love and appreciation and grief, even from people that he had, like, made fun of. Like, I saw a bunch of tweets from people who were like, Steve Albini said our band sucked, but we still loved him.

I saw that many times. But I feel like the overriding feeling was shock. I really feel like this is the most shocking, famous musician death since David Berman five years ago. And obviously, David Berman's death was shocking for a whole other set of reasons. but you in both cases have these legendary figures who appear to be in the prime of life. In Berman's case, he had just put out a masterpiece record. He took his own life the day before he was about to go on this big tour,

his first tour in many, many years. And with Albini, still working with bands, recording bands all the time. He had this record with Shalak that, again, it's coming out next week. I remember on Wednesday when the news broke, I saw someone promoting a magazine profile about Shalak in relation to this record. And then, like, an hour later, the news broke that Albini was gone. It really is, like, one of those, like, passings where you're like, you wake up the next morning

and you still don't fully believe that the person died. You know, like, I still, there's still a part of me that's like, is Steve Albini just, like, messing with us? You know, like, is he going to, like, come out and say, no, I'm not, I'm not actually dead. I, I, I just put this out as a joke. I'm sorry, it was in bad taste. There's, like, 5% of me that still expects that to happen because he doesn't seem like a guy that would be, I don't know, I'm just, I'm still, I can shock about it.

And I'm not, like, the biggest Steve Albini person in the world. I've just, he's just someone that, you know, if you're into indie music, alternative music, punk music, this guy's been in your life for most of your life. And if you like that kind of music, there's at least like one record that he was involved with that you love. I think it's almost impossible to like indie rock or alternative rock or punk music and not like a record that he either recorded or that he made himself. And there's probably like many more than one. There's probably like dozens of records. Do you know what I mean?

Do you feel that shock with this? Yeah, because even like, even if you don't know who Steve Albini is or, you know, you like, maybe you like the music that he's made. It's like, oh, wait, he produced that. Like, oh, I didn't, I didn't realize that. Like, you could be someone who,

as long as you're, like, familiar with both the sound and, like, the spirit of alternative rock, you like if you don't know who Steve Albini is, you know a lot of people like him. And I think that's why this feels like way more of a shock than it might have been if Steve Albini was just prime, like, you know, just solely known for his music. He resents, he, he, he represents this kind of archetype of a human being, which is so tied to its era. And I don't think that this type of person really exists anymore.

I mean, you hear echoes of it. and you see people try to do this kind of Steve Albini, like, you know, I'm just telling it like it is sort of thing. But I just think it's an end of an era. I mean, to the extent that like the era was still ongoing, it is just such a tremendous identity piece of liking music in the 90s and the 2000s. And, you know, I also think it was interesting because he, even in his later years he was like he he did a lot of like apologizing and you know making amends for

some of the edge lord shit he was doing in the 80s and 90s and ongoing and he set like maybe not like beastie boys level example of like kind of turning things around later years um but he did show that like you can acknowledge like you can acknowledge the dumb shit you said or did uh in the name of like Gen X, Edge Lord, and, you know, still be older and wiser and also still start beefs, like, where you're probably in the right. But, yeah, like, when people start reminiscing about the albums he produced, you know, you mentioned the big ones, but then you think about, like, he did Joanna Newsom's East and Lowe's Things We Lost in the Fire, you know, alongside the more modern, you know, raw rock

records, like, you know, the Gilleskes do Dallas and Cloud Nothing's Attack on Memory. I'd be remiss not to mention the one emo album he did, Al self-titled. It's just the death of an archetype as much as it is the loss of someone who just made drum sound fucking awesome, you know? Yeah, I mean, the persona part is such a big part of this story. And it's not just a persona because he did walk it like he talked it. He was a person who said that, like, I wasn't going to take points on records I work for. But what I mean by that is most of the time with a producer, they'll take a percentage of what the record earns. So if you have like a big time record, like in utero, like you can make literally millions of dollars as the person who produced it.

And Albini was like, I'm not going to do that. I want you to pay me like a plumber. You know, I'm a craftsman. Give me a flat fee. You know, I think it's unethical to take a percentage of the money that you're going to make as the band because you wrote the songs. it's your work. And, you know, the distinction between being a producer and being a recorder of bands, it was something that he always emphasized and made a point of saying,

I'm not a producer, I'm a recording engineer. And it does make it a little awkward when you're talking about his work on these records because it just sounds weird to be like, oh, he engineered this album. He engineered in neutral. He didn't produce it. But it does speak to how he approached these records where he, he's like, I'm not going to like shape the record. I'm not going to give you

my opinion. I'm here to do the best job I can in documenting what you do as a band. And it doesn't matter what I think. It's just about me making you sound from like an audio perspective as good as I can.

And he did that whether you were Kirk Cobain or like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page like he worked on that record. I did. It was like this is so weird because a couple of weeks ago, for reasons I cannot recall, I wanted to hear that song Most High, which I've not heard in like 25 years, but it's like, huh, and like I didn't remember that Steve Albini was on it.

It's not on streaming. You got to go on YouTube, walking to Clarksdale, Page Plant. Right. Yeah, I forgot he did that. That's a good record. But yeah, it didn't matter if you were Robert Plant or like Robert Nobody, playing in like a Chicago band. down.

He would do his best, whether it was a rock star or if it was just an obscure musician who wanted to make a record with Steve Albany. And he literally made like thousands of records. You know, there's all these famous records that he worked on, but the size of his discography, if you were going to map that out, I don't know if there is like a definitive Steve Albini discography records that he recorded. I mean, it would be, you know, I feel like they'd be like a much. mile long, literally, if you were going to try to put all those records together.

On top of the albums that he made himself with Big Black, in the 80s, I mean, that is a band. That band is in our band could be your life. They are one of the defining indie bands of like the 80s underground, that sound that you have in your mind of like what indie rock was supposed to be in the late 20th century and even like into the odds, noisy, uncompromising, experimental outside the mainstream, contemptuous of commercial music. Like Big Black was a part of that. So I think with Steve Albini, you have to talk about the music first with his legacy,

because again, it is very prolific and also the quality across the board is very high. You mentioned the drum sound of his records. It's incredible to talk about a... recording engineer having a signature drum sound. But with Steve Albini, it's like if you heard, if you heard that sound, that like, that sound where it feels like your head is inside the drum kit, that brutal, just heavy, thudding drum sound, you knew either Albini did it or someone was like trying to copy Albini. So distinctive.

So the music is there. But circling back to what he represented, what you were talking about. the opinionated outsider, someone who, again, is just contemptuous of commercial music, has no time for mainstream pop, is just all about working outside the system, DIY, independence from corporate structures. He walked that, but he was the signifier of that. He was the shorthand. Like, if you said, that's a Steve Albini type opinion, people knew what you were talking about. that represented something. And circling back to something I was saying earlier,

you know, there was something about Albini, I think, that when he expressed disdain for something, even if it was something that you liked, and if you were annoyed by his opinion, like when he's trashing Steely Dan or he's trashing the Grateful Dead, like you know, you could see that and you could roll your eyes at it. But you also thought,

I'm glad Steve Albini feels this way because it's consistent with who he is. It would be weird if Steve Albini likes Steeley Dan. Like he's not supposed to like Steely Dan. Even if I think they're a great band and I think what he said about them was completely wrongheaded, I was like, well, Steve Albini needs to have that opinion. You know, that is what he is here for. And, yeah, I don't want to get too melodramatic about it, but I do feel, you know, echoing what you were saying,

that there's still going to be people like that. Yeah. You know, who feel that way, but there's no one going to be that famous who feels that way, who is as important as Albini. Now it's only going to be guys in record stores who say that. You know, or guys... Or bartenders or Twitter guys. Message board people, whatever.

But, like, Albini was actually an important figure who represented that. And it feels like that archetype on that level is... maybe that's done with now. Yeah, I do want to also mention that regardless of, like, I mean, I think the definitive Steve Albini piece for me was when he, he also, like, wrote a lot of, like, music criticism, like, published in magazines.

And my favorite... He's a big music critic. I mean, that's a whole other conversation you could have, his legacy as a music writer. Yeah, three pandering sluts and their Chicago music stooge. This is when he wrote about, uh, Siamese Dream, Exile, and Guyville and Urge Overkill Staturation.

Jim Diro goddess. I mean, like, very, very wrong side of history. And at the same time, I'm like, yeah, I could, like, I'm glad someone wrote that in 1993. Uh, this just reminds me of like what that era was like. And, you know, like, in retrospect, be like, oh, everyone loved those records. But, like, nah, not if you were like in, you know, pre-drag city Chicago. Well, and what Ian is talking about for those who don't know is, like, I think it was

like a letter to the editor. that Albini wrote. It was about like the year-end wrap up, but the Chicago Reader did. And it was focusing on, like you said, Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair,

urge overkill, all Chicago artists who were getting a lot of hype, a lot of press. And Albini basically came in and he was like, music critics just will lap up anything that's overhyped. And these records are not going to stay on the test.

time and the people who are doing the real work, that's what's going to stand a test of time. Now, he's wrong because he's talking about Siamese Dream and Exile and Guyville. You know, those are two classic records. We both love saturation. Yes. That record's not as remembered. But those other two are, I think we could safely say he was wrong about those records not standing the test of time.

But again, the larger ideological expression there that Albini was talking about, and we're both talking about here. appreciate that even when I thought he was wrong or even when I thought he was obnoxious you know because there's many times where I thought Albini was obnoxious where he annoyed me where he would say something and I'd go dude really come on but it maybe I'm saying this because he's gone now but it makes me sad that there's not someone like that there needs to be someone like that the guy just the old punk guy who's gonna who's gonna hold the line you know and yeah

It also helps if you recorded, you know, Surfer Rosa. Well, exactly. That's what I mean. That's why I was saying before that there's still going to be that guy. But he's going to be on a message board. He's going to be in a record store. He's not going to be Steve Albini. No.

You know, because no matter how annoyed you could be with Steve Albini, it's like the dude has made so many great records. You always had to tip your cap to him no matter what. Yeah, I don't know. It's, I'm sad and I'm shocked. My thoughts go out to his family and his friends. I mean, the other thing about Albini, too, and you saw this over and over again,

is that he seemed like a very sweet person and a very generous person. There were many stories that you saw online of someone saying, I emailed Steve Albini because I just wanted to meet him or I wanted to go to his studio, and it seemed like Albini was very generous with his time. Yeah.

And so it wasn't just this judgmental, indie rock guy thing. I think that there was with him a genuine feeling of there's a right way to treat people, there's a right way to carry forth your business, there's a way that you can exist in the music industry where you're not just

exploiting people for your own game that we can all work together as a collective and bring each other up. And I think that was ultimately what he was trying to do. And, you know, when you look at the modern music industry,

there aren't a whole lot of prominent people that represent that sort of idea. And that is, I think, sad. Yeah, in a weird way, I think that, and this is going to sound like so contradictory to like what we were just talking about, but the fact that he was willing to work with Bush on Razorblade suitcase

just shows how equal opportunity he was. Like, because he could have said, no, like, you guys, you guys are a Nirvana ripoff band but he's like yeah come on in and you know you also hear the stories about i think this is a little overstated like there was the story about like how during the attack on memory sessions he would mostly just be like playing online scrabble as the band did their thing but then that's like seen as a sign of his like genius because like yeah i'm not going to touch it you guys do your thing and it's a fucking awesome sounding record so i mean well

and i think it's the you know this sort of like egalitarian aspect to what he was doing. I was talking about that earlier, this idea that, like, yeah, I'm working with the members of Led Zeppelin this week, but next week it's going to be some noise band from Naperville, you know, like, and it's all the same. Like, I'm going to do my job no matter what. I'm not going to judge this band because of their status, or I'm, in the case of Bush, like, I'm not going to work with them because of their status. I mean, it was always a funny joke to me to refer to Steve Albini as the producer

of Razor Blade suitcase. I'd made that joke before and I mean Razor Blade suitcase is a good record though. I mean so Greedy Fly, those drums man. Woo! Yeah, and it sounds great. He did a great

job. So yeah, I mean you had this idea, you had a thought experiment about like what bands would have been, like do we wish would have had the chance to work with Steve Albini? Like what, you know, because obviously, you know, we've lost that now, but what are your dream

scenarios here for like, oh, it would have been great if this band could have worked with him? Yeah, so I was thinking more towards, you know, the albums he did, like, say, like, 33 or low, where it might not be like a band that you typify as being super noisy or what have you. But, like, my starting point was I want a band that has, like, a really loud, prominent rhythm section because we talk so much about the drums and this one is like so on like it would never happen but that's kind of why I want to see it we talk many a time on this show about how we I mean I me personally wish the national would go back and try to make like a raw alligator style record and you know maybe we drop the Bryce Destner or Aaron Desner type production and get them in

electric audio and just like raw drum sounds like that's like crank up the drums like boxer style. I think that would just be interesting to maybe get the national out of this, I think it's fair to say, kind of stylistic rut that they're in. Maybe Japan droids LP4, that seems like a pretty natural scenario. You know, I'm thinking that way. I'm curious about, like, because you seem to have like a more intense, intimate knowledge of Steve Albini's discography.

So I'm really interested about where you're going to go with this. Well, I mean, I would never, I wouldn't put myself up as an expert. I mean, again, his body of work, especially as a producer, engineer, recorder, bands, whatever, is enormous. But one thought I had was M.J. Lenderman going in the studio, songs, Ohio style, farewell transmission style. You know, there's that famous story about Jason Molina recording farewell transmission in one take. and without a rehearsal. Do you know this story? Yeah.

And people were talking about it online a lot this week, but, you know, farewell transmission, this amazing song, the first song on Magnolia Electric Company. One take, there's like 12 musicians in the room or something, and just shouting out chord changes, essentially, if people was playing, and it sounds amazing. So I'd love, I would have loved for M.J. Lenderman to, you know,

he's a big Jason Molina acolyte for him to work in a similar fashion, maybe just go in the studio for like three days and bash out songs live with a huge band, bring Spencer Tweety in, bring in some other, because I think, well, the Twin Peaks guys are in, are playing with Waxahatchee now, but bring those guys, you know, bringing up all these Chicago people, MJ Lennerman ripping it out, farewell transmission style with Steve Albini.

That would have been cool. So again, Steve Albini, RIP, I'm still in shock, but I don't know. If you want to mourn the man, there is a ton of great music that you can play this weekend in honor of the great man who has left us. Let's talk about something lighter. At least lighter to me. Our friend of the podcast, Eli Ennis, one of the, Endless Scroll people, the only other indie rock podcast in the world.

He published a lengthy interview on his substack, which we should get the name of that here so we can plug that. One of us can Google that here at some point, but anyway, he published a very long interview on his substack with Nick Bassett, who is the bass player and a shoegaze band called Were. and you may remember them they were banned, they put out some records in like the early to mid-2010s that did pretty well

and then they were essentially cancelled for and we'll bring up this word again Edge Lord I think type behavior a lot of you know one of those things like we have a young person who feels like

I'm going to say the R word a lot and I'm going to do this because this is going to show how you know provocative I can be and all that kind of stuff, but it just ends up being really obnoxious and annoying and pissing people off. Basically, that came to a head. I think there was a feud with the band Gloss back then.

Some transphobic comments were made at the time, and people were just like, forget this band, they're done. So they go away for a while. And now they recently had a resurgence because of the shoegaze revival that's happening on TikTok. So now Wur is like a pretty popular band again. So Eli sat down. with Nick and Eli's written about this band before he wrote a very long essay about

the controversy surrounding this band I think that was last year and uh do we have the name of his substack yet chasing Sundays chasing Sundays chasing Sundays chasing Sundays yes chasing Sundays Eli Ennis definitely subscribe to that uh substack uh but anyway the reason we're talking about this is that you Ian come up in this interview and I want you to walk me through this because you reviewed were for pitchfork if I'm not mistaken. I did. In 2013,

I think it was like an EP or something like that. Right. And this person called you a retarded pussy. I'm going to say, yeah, we're not even going to just like dance around it.

And we put that in quotes. We don't endorse that. No. Just what was said. But anyway, this person went after you and they talk up. So we walked us through this. This person,

feud between you and this band. I guess. I mean, it was sort of like you said, there was like beef between them and gloss, and I think it was pretty one-sided. It was funny, because I read that, like, Steve Albini chimed in on this saying, like, gloss, he said, like, gloss rips and worse, sounds like whole music, ran through a big muff, but, um, yeah, so were, as he said, like, they got, this is back in 2012 or 2013, where there aren't as many Shugay's band. So they were getting a bit of hype, you know, and Reddit and those other spaces, but they became known as being kind of edge lore. They like would take shots at Anthony Fontano. And I wrote like a 6.2 review of one, like an EP of theirs in 2013. So they or, you know,

people in the band, like it was never clear who was actually saying stuff. They called me a retarded pussy. They talked about like weeding out the pussies and their fan base. and when the gloss stuff happened, like they said, oh, it was like our merch guy who had access to our Facebook account. But, you know, that was a bridge too far for people. They kind of went away after that. And, you know, the kind of thing they were doing, it was more or less made redundant once the band Nothing came about. And Nick Bass was also involved in that band as well. And Def Heaven. So, but they remained pretty popular in a kind of sub-campus. sort of way. They kept making music. And, you know, like, I think the best indication of their

enduring popularity is Wisp. I don't know if we talked about her on this podcast before. I did an interview with her for Uprox a few, maybe like a month ago. And her Reddit handle name was were whore. So they're, in a weird way, they're deplatforming, almost made them like, Eli talks about this in another, other blog. It makes them, like, in a weird way, more popular. But, you know, this, I just want to point out, like, I'm looking at Chasing Sundays, Eli's substack. And, you know, a lot of his articles are really long. It's like 13-minute read, 15-minute read. This one is a 79-minute read. Yeah, it's like the Killers of the Flower Moon of, like, indie rock interviews. It's very long. It's extremely long.

And, of course, you know, my interest is like, I'm just going to skip down and see if they had the part where he or someone involved in the work camp called me a retarded pussy, and of course they got to it. And you know what? Like he was like, yeah, I don't know about the context in which I was being edgy. But, you know, I probably wouldn't say that now. It's like, okay. Which I kind of respect the fact that he, like, I guess through omission is kind of saying,

yeah, I agree with the substance of what I said. Perhaps I would have chosen different words in 2020. which, you know, like, that's relatable, because that's how I feel about a lot of shit I wrote in 2014. It's like, I look back on it. It's like, ugh, did I really have to, like, write it that way? But at the same time, I'll be like, yeah, I still think that sucks. And I think that's the same with were, like, a really mid-band. There's, like, yeah, they were, I guess, important in terms of, like, putting shoegaze back on the map for a certain type of seriously online person. but society has progressed beyond the need for them. And I'll stick to it.

I think that's like kind of the common theme amongst people who follow shoegays. But yeah, I just thought that there was like a real kind of synchronicity with the way they kind of copped to their edge lord pass. And apparently it's like the final, like Nick's not going to do any more interviews. So yeah. So there. So he admitted. that it wasn't the merch guy. That was actually him.

The merch guy who takes the fall. You know, you got to always blame the merch guy. So, so again, he's not apologizing for the sentiment, more of the terminology.

So maybe he would have used more socially acceptable words to describe you. Is that the gist of this? Yeah. What he says, like 100% I said that absolutely was me. and I knew it was offensive too at the time.

At this point, I don't remember the full context of it. There's not much context if you're calling someone a retarded pussy, but I don't remember what that reason was. I just kept pussying shit. And people around me were like, yo, man, you got to be careful. And I was like, ah, you're tripping, man. It's not a big deal. For the record, it's like when stuff is that obviously edge lord, like, I'm not that.

Like, I wasn't like, oh, my God, like, how am I going to recover from this? Like, there is so much more subtly wording. things that people have said about me that I'm like oh man that that one really hurts but it's like I I like it when it's that clearly over the top so yeah so is this like where does this rank on the like Ian Cohen band beefs pitchfork scale like are they top five I mean I guess in terms of like I guess the legs of it right yeah or people still bring it up yeah as far as me feeling. Faldish Gambino number one.

Yeah, that's like forever. Number one. Yeah, that's like citizen cane of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, I think that was another person in, I think that was also in vice where, uh, Donald Glover talking about, like, wanting to kick my ass. So, Vice magazine, I don't know if that was a Dan Ozzie piece, uh, the world one, but, you know, shout to my dude.

Like, he always manages to, like, kind of slide that in there. I think he did it with, like, an interview. He did with Man Man as well. So, you know, Dan's my dude. but, like, he, I always love it when he, like, kind of, like, slides that in there. Yeah, well, are we going to call this Resolve now? Yeah, I think so. I think our beef is settled.

All right. Bang the gavel. It's settled. Let's get to our mailbag segment here. Thank you all for writing in. It's always great to hear from our listeners. If you want to hit us up, we're at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. I really like our letter this week.

Do you want to read this one? Yeah, this one's fucking. great. This is like such a like in the weeds indie cast listener. So, uh, this comes to us from Shane in Boxborough Massachusetts.

Ooh. Is it like Boxborough or Foxborough? Like, no, Foxborough is spelled differently. This is definitely Boxborough. Wait, there's a Boxborough and a Foxborough? Yeah, Foxborough is like F-O-X-R-O-R-I. Right. Because I've watched a lot of football. Right. That's where the Patriots play. But I love, there's a Boxborough too?

Yeah, that's a Massachusetts-ass name I've ever heard in my life. Is there like a Soxborough or a Coxborough or a Zoxborough? I wonder how many like Oxborough type towns there are in Massachusetts. We need to get a Massachusetts correspondent that can report on this for us. The funny part is that I'm looking at the Wikipedia page. The town name is often simplified to Boxborough, similar to Foxborough on highway signs and official documents. It's a town.

I'm looking at the town hall, Middlesex County, Incorporated 1680. This is Massachusetts as fuck. Anywho, Shane, listeners since day one, big fan of the pod and all this diversions and subpods. Nice. Exactly. You're getting what you want here, Shane. I was taken aback the other day when one of my friends who I trust a lot for music told me his favorite band was Silver Sun Pickups. We should end the letter here.

I'm with you, Shane, on that one. I'm taking aback too. It's sucking is sort of an odd choice because they're what I term a poochie band. is the reference to the Incredible Simpsons episode with Poochie. Possibly the greatest episode of all times as far as I'm concerned. It's definitely up there. Poochie the Rock and Dog. That is a band who has one song so great and representative of what they do well, in this case, lazy eye.

On disagreeing, I think Panic Switch is up there too, that any time I try to listen to their other songs, I find myself wanting to listen to their other song instead. Where's Poochie? The other band that immediately jumps to mind as a Poochie band, maybe. because they did the same kind of music is Joy Formidable with Waring. It's not, yeah, good call. This is not say these bands have no other good songs, just the one they have often early in their career that towers over the rest of their work.

I also think of Molly Hatchet. Oh, my God. Lurton with disaster. Molly fucking Hatchet mentioned. I also hear an argument for the killers for Mr. Brightside or even food fighters ever long. I'm curious if you guys can think of any fun examples that I might be missing.

Oh man I'm tripping off the Molly Hatchet I can not fucking believe that this is I love it I love it so I love this concept I love referencing Pucci Like I did this in my Pearl Jam book

When I referred to Dave Abruzizet Their second Well wait I guess Okay I'm not gonna count out the number of drummers he is He's the drummer from 91 to 94 Because he was just He looks like a rock and dog

and then he was there and then he was gone. So it was like a different approach to the Pucci concept. I was approaching it as someone who's a vital character for a short amount of time and then disappears. But you're doing it in kind of like a novel way. Like you're talking about Pucci as someone that you're always missing. Like, where's Pucci?

And you're doing it with these bands that you feel like have one song that towers over the rest of their catalog. The Joy Formidable choice, I think, is perfect. Because, like, whirring is, that's like song if you talk to a certain kind of person people have such good feelings about that song that is like one of the great

radio rock songs of the 2010s from the big roar I like that album overall too but like Hardin and I that worrying isn't a poochy song or so good such a poochy type band the band I thought of immediately and I don't agree with this opinion by the way

But I think a lot of people would make this case for the Walkman and the Rat. Again, I disagree because I actually like a lot of the later Walkman records. Lisbon, you and me, Heaven. Like, I like those records, the quieter records that they made. But I think for a lot of people, people love the Rat so much. And there was this narrative with the Walkman's career that they didn't make another just relentless rock song like that that I think

many people would make that case so I'm going to throw that out with the Walkman even though I think it's a little unfair I think that's fair it's so funny because there used to be a time where Spotify had links to genius or whatever

and I remember the rat came up and like the one like the kind of introduction is like the Walkman don't have many songs like the rat that was like the one thing they said even though that record Bose and arrows has like a lot of like really hard rockers on there.

Right, totally. Yeah, and also, like, their appearance and meet me in the bathroom was, like, mostly about how much the rat rules. But I, this, so I love this question because if you were to, like, say, poochie band, like, with no context, I would think about the Rooney episode of the O.C., which I'm, you know, often prone to do because, like, every 10 seconds, they're like, hey, you're going to the Rooney show? Yeah, I'm going to, like, the Rooney Show sold out.

We got to get tickets for the Rooney Show. Also, because it sounds like Pootie. Or like the I need to go, I must go now, my planet needs me. A scene of Pucci where you have like girls or Tobias Jesso Jr. where this band like makes this huge impact and they just kind of disappear without any real notice. Or maybe like 311 or Jeff Roads and Stock further. Maybe let's rostify him 10% gag. But, you know, in light of the Shane definition, I like the Walkman as an example.

I also feel like Churches is a Pucci band. Like the mother we share is such like, especially since it's like the first song on their first record. And I think you have to kind of throw a purity ring in there as well, like where they have like just one song. If it does nail the aesthetics so hard that no one really, you know, it's tough to want anything else from them. You know, since you mentioned Joy Formitable or Joy Formidable, I'm not sure which is the proper one. I think it's formidable. Okay, cool. Maybe that's the Australian pronunciation.

But yeah, I think like hum with stars was kind of that way for a while. I don't know about that. Yeah. Well, I think that they, it's like almost shifted to where like that's like seen as like an outlier. But I think France Ferdinand maybe counts as that. Yeah, for sure. Or Best Coast with boyfriend. That, you know, they've made a lot of music and I think that's been well received.

But it's not necessarily like a one-hit wonder. But, you know, where the one-hit is. so much more popular than anything else they do that they're kind of like a one-hit wonder in practice. I think maybe that's sort of true. I think we've mentioned this before on the show with bands like M83 or Future Islands. Yeah, M-83, I think Midnight City, even though I, I mean, their last record I liked, but that feels like a potential candidate for this. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not necessarily one-hit wonders, but it's... It's where you just, and I think this happens earlier in their career, which is why I'm maybe less likely to put M83 in this category. I mean, MGMT might be a better example of bands that just like nail a certain style so off the bat that it's really hard to like want anything else, which you could say that's a good problem for a band to have. Well, MGMT, though, wouldn't be one song.

It'd be like that one album. Yeah, totally. Is it kids or time to pretend or electric feel? Which, or is it congratulations? Let's say it's congratulations for MGMT. But yeah, this is a great concept, though. We might have to bring this back sometime on the show. We could just do like a poochy episode.

I'd love that. All right, we've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? All right, so I've been spending most of my week writing a review for this new knocked loose album called You Won't Go Before You're Supposed to. So they're a band from Kentucky, Oldham County, Kentucky, which sounds way more like justified than it really is.

It's kind of a nice part of Louisville. But they've been steadily growing over the past decade to become like the biggest, one of the biggest, if not the biggest thing in hardcore, which you will call them if you want to sound cool or like indie metalcore, if you kind of want to be more accurate. They played Coachella and Bonneroo in 2023. Like they were pretty much the, I don't want to say token, but maybe like the sole representative of like contemporary heavy rock music, which is pretty amazing. Go check out the YouTube.

Those shows are fucking wild. So their new album, once again, you won't go before you're supposed to. It's on the same label that put out the CU Space Cowboy album I mentioned a few weeks back and also Cloud Nothings. So pure noise killing it in 2024. And so this album is interesting to me, not only because it fucking rules, but, you know, for the past three years, people have been trying to find the next glow on. You know, like, what's, like, what's the next band that's going to break big and hardcore?

And I think the way I view this album is that if glow on is like Metallica's the black album in terms of opening up a lane for popularity for metal bands, this is more like the Pantera far beyond driven in that it's like, you know, more southern, more nasty. And they kind of take their popularity as a mandate to get even like heavier and noisier and more aggressive. You know, this album's 28 minutes long. like no clean vocals, no alt metal choruses, just like breakdown after breakdown after breakdown. And I think, you know, I got to mention Eli Anis again.

He mentioned that like the breakdown is really the lingua franca of metal, not the riff. And this is as good as it gets in terms of breakdowns. Like I don't imagine there will be much to convince people who aren't into this music already to listen to it. But it does for gym music what like the Howdy album does for porch music. Yeah, you got to start doing gym music. albums. That should be your thing. Have the Jim Music Hall of Fame. You need more Hall of Fame

I'm going to talk about a record that we talked about a little bit last week, but it's out today, so I wanted to talk about it again. It's called Death Jokes, and it's by Amen Dunes. And we were talking last week about how much we both love the record Freedom, which was the previous A Man Dudes

record came out in 2018. And this is a much different record. I mean, you know, Eam and Dudes has been around for a while. I think a lot of people looked at freedom as, like, the mainstream breakthrough. It's a very easy record alike, a very, again, shimmering, beautiful, anthemic guitar rock record. And I think there might have been the feeling that, okay, this is going to be the kind of music this band does now. Like, this is the mainstream breakthrough, and the subsequent music is going to be more accessible.

And yet here we are, six years later, a long, break between records. And this new album, Death Jokes, is not Freedom Part 2 by any stretch of the imagination. And it's a much blurrier record. It's glitchier. It's off-kilter. Lots of dark vibes. A deliberately unsettling record, I think, at times. And I'll be honest, it took me a while to get into this record. And one reason I wanted to put it in Recommendation Corner is that I really want to encourage people to spend some time with this album. If you put it on this weekend and you're like, this isn't grabbing me like those jams from Freedom did, don't set it aside. You know, maybe take a break from it, revisit it a few days later, take some time with it. Because I know for

me, over time, this record really revealed, I think, the beauty inside of the record, which, again, It's not as immediate as, you know, the other work that Amand Dues has done. But I think it is like a really rewarding record. And I think it's a fascinating piece of work. So really want to encourage people. If this record doesn't grab you right away, spend some time with it. I think there's some really good songs on this record. We're checking out.

The album cover is amazing too. A riff on Woody Allen short story collections from the 70s, those little paperbacks. It's the same kind of font. looks like, I think the book's side effects is the one that it's quoting specifically, but it's a cool cover. I did not catch that reference. Hey man, I'm here for the Woody Allen paperback short story collection references here. But anyway, really good record. Definitely should check it out.

Yeah, I thought it had more of like a truly tasteless jokes kind of vibe to it. Yeah, this record I like it, it's, it is pretty off kilter because the sequencing is like, like pretty bizarre. There's like these little one minute interludes, a lot of which get put at like the beginning of the record. So yeah, kind of like that 1975 album, which we collectively love so much. But yeah, I like this one. I'm going to be listening to it throughout the year. I don't know if it's going to be as celebrated as freedom, but it's definitely, I'm definitely going to, I'm definitely going to return to it a lot. I already have been. All right. Well, that about does it for this episode of Indycast.

Thank you for listening. 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 tape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie. And I recommend five albums per week and we'll send it directly to your email box.