Indiecast - The Returns Of Alex G, Grizzly Bear, And Fiery Furnaces, Plus: More Sleep Token Talk?

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Steven and Ian begin this week's episode by noting the returns of two indie-rock favorites from the 2000s — Grizzly Bear and Fiery Furnaces are both returning to the road later this year (0:42). (Given that Grizzly Bear's Shields was recently inducted in the Indiecast Hall Of Fame, could this be evidence of the vaunted Indiecast bump?)The guys also talk about an upcoming fall tour from Modest Mouse and Built To Spill, and weigh the catalogs of these iconic bands against each other (7:32). Then they discuss the latest song by Alex G, a teaser for his upcoming RCA Records debut LP (19:05). In the mailbag, a listener asks whether being a music critic makes it harder to be a music fan (28:19). The guys also answer an email about Sleep Token, which makes this the second consecutive episode with Sleep Token discourse.In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the latest from the UK band Caroline and Steven goes for the Chicago guitarist Eli Winter (53:35).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 241 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 X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprocks's indie mixtape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about indie rock comebacks, the return of Alex G, and more sleep token. Really? Wow, we can't get enough of that band. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He'll be in the pit with the other 45-year-olds at the Grizzly Bear show.

Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Yeah, look at my therapist. dog. I'm going to Brooklyn Steel. Love it. Love it. Yes. As I hinted at the introduction there, we have some indie rock comebacks that were announced this week. Grizzly Bear has come back together for their first shows, I believe, since 2019. Yeah, and I think I went to that. Like, this was, if I'm not mistaken, it might have been

at the Just Like Heaven Festival, like the first of them. That was like the, you know, quote-unquote blog rock nostalgia tour. They were good. That base was so loud. They sounded like death from above 1979. Well, they're coming back here. They've got a handful of shows. They're going to be playing Brooklyn, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, and Oakland. Presumably, if these shows do well, they'll expand to other places

possibly. We're not sure. I want to give us credit for this. I recently inducted the album Shields from 2012 by Grizzly Bear into the Indycast Hall of Fame. I believe that was like a month or so ago. Now, all of a sudden we get these reunion dates announced.

I think this is the Indycast bump in full effect here. Am I delusional? Probably. But I'm going to give us credit for that anyway. Yeah, there's really no other explanation. Yeah, because it wasn't like the streets were clamoring for Grizzly Bear to come back. Then we talk about Shields. The buzz starts building.

And then we have these dates that have been announced. I should also mention another band from the T's, 2000s indie rock era, fiery furnaces. They've also announced some shows. All those shows are in Europe. So I know you're going to be excited to go to that, Ian. You're going to want to hear those blueberry boat deep cuts. I mean, I'll just say, I love both of these bands. I'm hoping to see both of them if they come somewhere near me in the near future. I'll say too that they're both, I think sneaky great live bands. Sneaky, maybe not so much with fiery furnaces.

I think if you're a fan of that band, you know just how amazing their live shows are, like how they remake their songs and they turn them into these like hour-long suites, like with one song going into the next. There's actually like a great live record they put out last year called Stuck in My Head. It's a live in the studio record from 2021 when I think they were trying to have a comeback around that time and then COVID obviously was an issue. And then Grizzly Bear, I feel like their reputation is as this fussy, arty indie indie rock band. And people are basing that, I guess, on the records or on a reductive take on the records.

But they're a great live band. I saw them a couple of times back in the day. Vocally, just beautiful. Daniel Rosson's guitar playing, I think, really comes alive live. Christopher Bear is a drummer. Fantastic indie rock drummer Not really talked about In the lineage of great indie

Drummering Drummeries Drummers But he's fantastic So I think We'll see how they do I don't know if they're in the lab already If they're rehearsing

These shows for Grizzly Bear Don't start until October So we have some time here yet But yeah they're a great live band Yeah Grizzly Bear is cool Because they do the thing where They're all kind of aligned in a straight line rather than the typical setup

where the drummer's in the back. And yeah, just instrumentally, they all bring something really, really cool to the table. And yeah, they just like lock in live. It kind of sounds more like Colorado, like, which is my favorite song from Yellow House, seems like the best indication of like how things sound in a live setting.

I think the, like the question I had, you know, with this is, you know, you're asking about if they're in the lab, based on like what I knew about how things ended and you know Ed becoming a therapist this didn't seem super likely to happen but I think no one ever really stays broken up plus you know I'd be the first to tell you that a career in either the indie sphere and also in mental health those aren't the most lucrative so if you have a chance to you know get a good payday you got to take that even if you are like a licensed therapist now. I think that's so cool. You can go into your therapist's office and like, yeah, that's the guy who did two weeks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't know what the state of

their relationship is. I mean, Ed is in therapy. He's in the, the therapeutic arts in that field. So, you know, hopefully he's applied some of those skills to the intra-bandulations in Grizzly Bear. Hopefully they've healed whatever riffs were going on in the band back in the aughts in 2010s. And yeah, there's always the matter of money. You know, I don't know how this came about. I'm curious as to, like, why it's happening now. I know that they're doing some vinyl reissues of the catalog. So I don't know if the thinking is, hey, let's play some shows.

Maybe we can move some units, some of these expensive vinyl that we're going to be putting out there in time for the holiday season. Maybe that is something to do with it. I'd like to think that, as I was saying in our Indycast whole, Hall of Fame episode that we're at a point now where some of these bands from the 2000s and 2010s that were in a way pushed aside by the changing trends in indie music, this embrace of pop maximalism that happened in the 2010s that took a toll on the grizzly bears of the world and to a lesser degree the fiery furnaces of the world.

Fiery Furnaces never really a mainstream band. They got a lot of press in the mid-2000s because of blueberry. boat, but definitely more of a niche band always, great band, but more of an experimental underground thing. Grizzly Bear seemed like a band that, are they going to break through? Are they going to go to the next level? People wrote those think pieces about them. And then, you know, we have this generation that comes in, the Himes, the 1975s is the Lords that take indie music in a different direction and Grizzly Bear gets left behind a little bit. Maybe we're ready to bring grizzly bear back, though. I'd like to see that. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, those,

records sound great. They hold up. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, what they're doing is not instrumentally all that far off, I would say, from like a big thief or, you know, something along those lines. So, yeah, the time is right. If it's just them getting band back together to get a good payday, that's cool.

Hope to come to San Diego, not holding my breath. But, yeah, I mean, if we get another album of it, that's at least at the level of painted ruins. Like, hey, that's great, too. Three rings. Good song. And we should also mention another tour that is relevant to our interest that was announced. It's part of a modest mouse tour that's very sprawling.

I was looking at their tour schedule for this year. They're playing a ton of shows. They're going full jam band this year. They're doing the jam band circuit type schedule just playing all over the place with different support bands from the indie world. I know they're doing a date here in my neck of the world. woods, I think, with flaming lips. But then in the fall, it's going to be Modis Mouse and Bill to Spill coming together for Bill. I mean, we thought the 45-year-olds were excited about Grizzly Bear. We're coming out in full force for Modis Mouse and Bill to Spill. Obviously, these two bands have a

connection, both coming from the Pacific Northwest. I feel like Built to Spill is an acknowledged influence on Modest Mouse. And then, And then, Midas Mouse, of course, took it to a whole other level commercially and became a really big band in the 2000s. But you had the idea to talk about this. I don't know if we've ever pitted Modest Mouse and Built a Spill against each other. Not that we have any reason to do it, but it's a good conversation topic. So, Ian, if you and your loved ones were being held captive and had guns to your heads and these indie loving terrorists said to you, you got to pick one.

I don't know why they would kill you in this scenario, but let's just go through it anyway. Modus Mouser Bouselor built to spill. You got to pick one. Which one are you taken? I think the first thing I would say is like, yeah, I saw both of these bands play with brand new, and then they would just give me the sweet release of death immediately.

Oh my God. There you go, the brand new connection. Yeah, crazy. But, yeah, I think this just struck me as such a classic, like Stephen Hayden, Uprocks, Column, Discuss. because it's just like it gets into so many things like five album tests like longevity versus like a short bursts of genius but this is like a lot harder than I thought because um you know built a spill they have in my view like three undeniable classics that all them sound completely

different from each other and which ones are those just to be clear i would go with uh there's nothing wrong with love perfect from now on and keep it like a secret okay I would agree with that Yeah. Yeah, each of them just like completely different, just shocking, even though they all sound like built to spill. Plus, ancient melody is the future. I'll show some love for that one because that was a like 2001 when I'm buying like 50 CDs a year, maybe tops. I listen to that one a lot, even though it's pretty much like keep it like a secret except kind of less so. They have no guitar solos. It's that album without the guitar solos at the end, which I think is a big. negative on that album. But anyway. It's like their, it's like their sane anger. Whoa,

let's not go that far. But yeah, the guitar solo thing, I got it. I thought, for some reason I was thinking, like, does the snare sound bad

on 18 melodies? That's the Omnich Chord. The Omnichord is the Lars Orick snare. But, yeah, they got no bad albums. And like, even the ones that came after,

like, going against your mind, great song, hindsight, great song. All the ones that come after have at least like one A-tier track to it.

So, yeah, like, Build to Spill, they've been legendary, they've been consistent. Some of the live shows they've done recently have been pretty ass, in my opinion. But Modest Mouse, like, all that goes out the window when we're talking about the moon in Antarctica. That is just like one of those albums where I will tell anyone, yeah, I know it came out in college, but when I was in college, like maybe my third year. But, yeah, when I went to college, that is the peak of indie rock. I'm the first person to make this argument and is undeniable based on the moon and antarctic. Antarctica, just a mind-blowing experience. Plus, you know, the Lonesome Credit West, I don't listen to it as often, but it is also, like, probably more influential and just defines a certain era and ethos of indie rock.

That's the one for me. Okay. For me, it's the Lonesome Credit West. And look, I'm totally on your wavelength with this, because what we're talking about with these two bands is consistency with slightly lower peaks versus very high peaks, but you're kind of all over the place, and you have albums that genuinely don't work at all. And with Built to Spill, you're right, they have that run in the 90s, those three albums that are just touch-tone indie rock albums.

We would all, no one's going to argue against those three records. I would also say we built a spill in the later 2000s. There is no enemy, untethered moon. I guess that's 2010. You in reverse, they put out some pretty solid late period records that I feel like don't get talked about as much as maybe later records by Dinosaur Jr. or Yola Tango. But really good stuff. I'm going to disagree with you on the live show thing with Baltus Bill lately. They have a new rhythm section, and I've actually enjoyed seeing them.

I saw them at the guided by voices 40th anniversary to, again, shout out the 45-year-old indie rock fans out there. I thought they were really good. I enjoyed that set. I think I still saw them on a tour just on their own when they put out that record when the wind forgets your name. That was from 2022.

That's another really solid later period record. But the thing is, if I was going to make a top 10 list of albums put up by both of these bands, it would have more built to spill records on there. But like the number one album for me would be the Lonesome Crowded West, which I think is

one of the greatest albums ever made. Certainly one of the greatest indie rock albums ever made. I was listening to that again this morning as I was driving my kids to school. Trucker's Atlas, give me a break. You can't touch that. That is so good. The songwriting is great. I think the lyrics from Isaac Brock,

that's an advantage that he has over Doug March. I don't really think of quotable lines when I think of Doug March songs, but like Isaac Brock, like in his prime, so many quotable lines. You mentioned the Moon in Antarctica. That would have to be number two for me on the list. I would maybe put Perfect from Now On as 2B. Like 2A would be Moon in Antarctica, perfect from Noon 2B. There's the first Modus Mouse record that I like a lot.

You know, there's the record, good news for people who like bad news. That's where they start to fall off for me, but obviously a big record. So I don't know. To me, it's like it's the, more consistent band versus the band that made the Lonesome Credit West and the moon in Antarctica. And it's really hard. It is like the higher peaks versus the more consistent thing. Like what are you going to have a preference for?

Yeah, I do have to clarify that I saw built a spill a couple times. I would say like right before they got the new rhythm section where I didn't. And it was just like Doug playing with this like kind of like switchboard on stage. I must mention though there is no enemy. I know everyone who follows me on Twitter is going to point out that we have to talk about that album being leaked with like Mike Jones adlips on it. Like anyone who is listening, anyone who was down with the blog rock scene in 2006 knows the Mike Jones version of that record. And I also have to give a shout to when we were dead before the ship even sank. That was the one that came after Good News for People Love Bad News.

one of the great used CD store type albums of that era. If it came out, like, I mean, I know it came out on CD, but like, that is such a classic, like, 1996 DGC, find it in every single UCD store in the country type album. I think half of it's good. Half it is kind of not good. They also had Johnny Marr on there for some reason. He was in the band for a while. Yeah.

I think just for that one. I don't know if he was still on it, but yeah, I think that's just, yeah, whatever, man, like Isaac Brock, cooler guy to hang out with than Morrissey, you know? Yeah, I mean, like for me, Mattis Mouse, when they were a trio, is a different band from what they became afterward, where they expanded and then it became almost like an arcade fire situation where it was more of a collective that Isaac Brock was at the head of. But when you listen to those first three records, the interplay between Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green, and Eric Judy, I think, is such a special combination.

And for me, the peak of that is the Lonesome Card in West. Like, the instrumental firepower of that record. I mean, just Jeremiah Green. Come on, man. Like, we're talking about great indie rock drummers. Like, he is on the short list of, like, greatest indie rock drummers of all time. RIP, Jeremiah Green. I mean, I think I'm going to give the edge to build to spill overall.

Just because they are so consistent and they do have. have those three great records that if they're not quite as good in my mind as a Lonesup Crowd of West, they're still really freaking good. I mean, in particular, perfect from now on, I think is their masterpiece. Yeah, working real hard, working real hard to make Indycast cash. I do, I can't let it slide that you were listening to like Truckers Atlas with your kids on the way to school. Well, I was after I dropped them off. I didn't play it with them in the car. I dropped them off and then I put on Truckers Atlas because I knew I was going to talk about it. How long is that commute?

I'm like thinking. Is he taking like a 76 minute commute to school? Well, I might listen to the whole record. I just put on Truckers Atlas. It's a 10-minute song, but it earns every minute. So I'm going to take Bill to spill in a very narrow thing, although I think, again, my favorite record that either band is made is the Lonesome Cotted West. Where do you land?

I'm going with Modest Mouse on this, just because it's, I know, I know, know that the past like 10, 15 some odd years is maybe devalued modest mouse a bit, you know, even if they are like a very, very prominent influence on a lot of music I like. But yeah, if it comes down to like first love, like nothing can touch moon in Antarctica. That is just something that even 25 years later just takes me to a completely different, not a completely different space. I know exactly the space that it takes me to. But yeah, that's just that you just can't touch that. So I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with modest mouse. Yeah, it's a tough one. Because, yeah, I don't know. You're making me regret the pick. I kind of want to go with

modest mouse too, because, yeah, Lones of Crider West and MoonNet article, like our records that I'd love, I think, a little bit more than any built-to-spill record. But like, if you were just to pick a random built-to-spill record out of the pile versus a random modest mouse record out of the pile, I know what I would enjoy more. So it is an interesting philosophical debate. What do you value? Do you like the, you know, the reliable thing or do you like the thing that might thrill you or break your heart? You know, it's, I'm a middle-aged man now, so I'm going with the reliable thing. But when I was younger, I would have gone with the other thing. Let's talk about Alex G. We've talked a lot about old indie rock here in the first

20 or so minutes. Let's talk about a new, well, he's not new, a relatively young artist compared to who we just talked about. Alex of course, one of the most popular singer-songwriters working today in indie music. He's not really indie in the business sense anymore. He recently signed to RCA Records. And right before we started recording, he released the first single off of his forthcoming RCA Records debut. The album is called Headlights and the song is called Afterlife.

I actually got a preview of this yesterday, Ian, from the label because I'm a big shot here. So I've been listening to this song for the past 24 hours. I'm curious to get your thoughts on it. Did you get a chance to hear the song at all before we started recording? Well, the first thing I wanted to do was make a working for RCA joke. But it turns out that song's actually working for MCA. I just had to look that up a second ago. That's Skinnered.

Yeah. Yeah, I just couldn't believe what like the Jack Antonoff production, the Addison Ray features that have come. with him being on RCA. It just really changes shit up for me. Look, it sounds like Alex G except a bit spiffier. Did Antonoff produce this record?

No, not a no. I was kidding. Oh, okay. I was a, because I saw you put that in the outline. I was like, did Antonoff really produce this? But, okay, so he didn't.

No. I just like the idea of, like, RCA label people sitting this guy down and trying to have, like, uh, you know, like the,

the Yola Tango sugar cube video type thing. You said that a little too deadpan, though, and that's like a little too believable, like to read as a joke. Like, that could be just like a real thing. But, yeah, there's no Addison Ray on this record. That's also a joke, I believe. Well, I think about, I think about. And there's no tape McRae either. Yeah, I think about the fact that there was that time in 2015 or so where he had to go by Sandy Alex G.

Because there was like a female pop artist named Alex G. And maybe Jack Antonoff thought it was her. But, yeah. Anyway, what I love about this song is that I've heard that, like, probably in the hundreds, maybe not thousands, but Alex G knockoffs like that have emerged over the past decade. And yet, every time it's Alex G, you can totally tell it's Alex G with the guitar. Like, there's just no words I can really put to it. But there's just something so distinct about the tonality of, and like the melodic choices.

is and it's got a mandolin on it this time. Yeah, and it sounds, to me, I just want to say, I love this song. I like it to. It's a great song. I think it's like one of the best songs I've heard all year. I've been listening to it nonstop. And yeah, there definitely is like a mandolin going on. There's like a Celtic feel to the song too.

Like I feel like he's been working in this Americana lane now for a while, like an indie Americana. And it's gradually getting straighter. you know, it doesn't have that subversive Alex G thing that he has on his early records. I feel like he's kind of moving more and more like a more normal direction. While at the same time, like you said, retaining his voice. Like you don't feel like it's him making a sellout record or making a sort of concession to a major label, which I think is a big plus for him and it shows how distinct if he is as an artist.

Like when I was listening to it, I just kept thinking of like Led Zeppelin 3. And like the Pogues. Like it has, like, talking about Americana, this has more of like a British folk. Like, and again, like Celtic feel to it, but like in an Alex G mode. And I don't know. It's definitely a song I can hear getting a ton of airplay on the public radio station in your town that plays cool music. You know what I'm talking about? I feel like every big city has that kind of NPR affiliate that, uh,

Like here, it's called the current here in the Twin Cities. But I feel like every city has a place like that. And it's essentially artists that are within six degrees of Wilco. You know, like that is like the center of it. And you can go in more of a fokey direction, more of a rock direction, maybe more of an R&B direction. But as long as there's some sort of Wilco-ness to it, you get played on those stations. And I say that, of course, as a huge fan of Wilco. I don't know if San Diego has that radio station.

Really? They probably do. I want to keep talking. I'm going to look this up. I'm going to Google this as you thought. Yeah, it would probably be KVZT 94-9, but like, so San Diego alternative music. Okay, so the first thing that I'm looking at the website,

it's got hosier, Royal Otis, Rise Against, so. Yeah, does 89.5 this station? K PBS, listener-supported public radio, or is this just talk? I guess it's public radio. They don't play songs? Because, like, we have that here in Minneapolis.

I feel like most towns have something like that where it's listeners-supported and they play music and it's music for the 35 to 50-year-old demographic. Yeah, that kind of music. Whatever format that is, I think that's what this Alex G record is, or this song anyway, it sounds like that to me.

And it actually makes me, we've talked about this a little bit with Alex G, like what are the expectations for an artist like that on a major label? Hearing the song, if the whole record is like that, I think he nailed it. I think he actually can grow his audience and move into a different strata without losing the listeners that he already has.

Like it makes me think, like, can he become Mitzki-sized? do you think? Or can he... Or get to that boy genius level. I feel like probably not quite that, but maybe like the thing right below that, I would say. I think that's a good idea. Because I mean, like with Boy Genius and Mitzky,

there's like the parasocial component of it. Alex G has that too, though. I mean, he's very memeable. I just think, I'm Homer Simpson. I'm Homer Simpson. I mean, he's like a, good looking guy who has a big catalog he has a fan base that

is young and has grown up with him and I feel like this song I don't want to go over the top because I haven't heard the record but I feel like this could potentially reach out to people that have no idea who he is but they just think this song is cool and it won't lose

the people that already like him and I think that's the key to taking that next step where you're not playing arenas maybe but you're going to play like large theaters. Yeah, I'm thinking the Kyle Coastal Credit Union here in San Diego, that would be a pretty good place for Alex G to play. I think that's like where you might see like, I saw the 1975 there, like where you maybe see like glass animals or something like that. Yeah, I think

that he has that capability to do so. I hope he gets there. I think he deserves that. I think he's made like I think he's kind of earned his right to do whatever he wants, having made like 15 albums. I imagine RCA is like bringing him on for, you know, past results rather than like, oh, I think we can mold this guy. But yeah, maybe he gets like Modest Mouse float on level. Who knows? Yeah, let's not forget. I mean, he played on Frank Ocean records. He plays on blonde.

Or is it the other one? No, I think he was on endless. But when I saw Frank Ocean play like one of his two. blonde-related live shows at FYF, F, Y, F, F, F, F, F, F, Alex G, was there, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe he gets on rap songs. Maybe he gets on more rap songs, you know? I just, I feel like he's in a really interesting place because he seems very malleable in terms of, like, different contexts that you can put him into. And yet, it's also a pretty specific thing when he listened to his records. Like, he's able to thread that needle. So, I don't know.

You know, we're, we're, you know, speculating here. We're doing like the ESPN face of the league talk. You know, like how they were doing that all week about Anthony Edwards. I guess we're doing that now with Alex G. And I hate it when ESPN does that. You know, because you're just speculating on this sort of ephemeral career thing that is really hard to pin down. RIP are around the horn, by the way. I know that was a big thing for me.

Yeah. We got like a, we're shoehorning a mini sports cast here into the LXG conversation. I'll just say, though, about this specific song, I think it's a great song. And it makes me very excited about the record. So that should be more than enough to help him as he moves forward. I hope the rest of the record is as good as this song. All right, let's get to our mailbag segment. We're going to do a bigger mailbag today.

We haven't done, I don't think we did mailbag at all last week, did we? I can't remember. We talked about sleep token in the mailbag. And we got more sleep token coming. up here. So don't worry if you thought, oh, man, I wasn't sated by the sleep token conversation last week. Well, we got a little bit more coming up here. But let's get to our first email first. By the way, if you want to hit us up, we're at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. It's great to hear from our listeners. Hit us up. And if we like your email, maybe we'll read it on the show. So Ian,

want you read our first email here. Yeah. So this comes to us from Andrew from Mesa, Arizona. as he mentions, it is the home of Jimmy Eat World. And neighbors to the Jim Blossoms, AJJ, the refreshments, and meat puppets. That is very much a, that is a indie cast of characters. So Andrew wants to note, do you think being a music critic ever negatively affects her relationship with music? Yes, next question. Just kidding. As someone always interested in new music, I've often thought about what it would be like to work as a critic,

but ultimately I have little interest in the content creation aspect of the job. But I also wonder if it's a blessing that is just a hobby for me. If it was my job, I would feel pressured to follow the critical consensus and give more time to cool bands rather than what I really liked? Would the content creation aspect nudge me towards bands with narratives and experimental sounds over more ordinary albums I simply just enjoy listening to more? With the pressure to succeed at the job forced me away to some degree from what I truly like. I get the impression that both you handled this pretty well,

which is why I'm a big fan of the show. but how do you think your music fandom would be different if it was just a hobby? Andrew, Mesa, Arizona. Well, for you, it's not a hobby because you make a lot of money from it and you're writing a book right now. So you do more music writing than a lot of people who call themselves full-time music writers. But it is an ancillary thing for you. It's not how you make your living. No, it is not.

No. And I won't get into the details of it. my uncle met the manager of the band The Help this weekend. And this guy was shocked. I didn't make my living off music writing in the same way that like the people I work with at work are shocked that I don't make my living off music writing or music writers are shocked that I don't make my money off mental health. So yeah, I am making it's a necessary part of my income. But also it's just like a necessary part of like who I am, like what my thing is. And I've thought about this many a time because like.

Well, can I say, like, you have a very extravagant lifestyle, and that's why you need both hustles. Yeah. Because you, like, you're spending, like, Justin Bieber levels of money per month just to maintain, you know, all your, all your, your, your fleet of sports cars, your, your, your large mansion, you got the private plane, you got the boats. You got the, you got the PJ, yeah. You got the private zoo. You got to feed all the, you got to feed the giraffes. So that's why you got to work all these jobs. Well, you were joking, but, like, you got to.

To say that just strictly off like San Diego real estate, like I actually do need that also. Yeah, it's expensive out here. But do you feel like to get back to the question here? Because I have my own answer. Because I do make a living strictly as a music writer. And I've done that for a long time now. So my perspective might be a little bit different than yours. But do you feel like being a critic ever hamper's your fandom?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it has affected my relationship with music in a negative sense. And I think this most often pops up into the prior, what they call contempt prior to investigation that can come when, you know, someone I don't like reps for a band or my brain goes into chat GPT mode and immediately writes the review I know I'm going to see for an album. And, you know, then why do you do it, though? If you really feel that way, because I don't feel that way at all. I'll just say that right now. I feel like it enhances my fandom. And I think if it hurt my love of music, I wouldn't want to do this anymore. And there have been times where I felt that way. And it made me want to pivot to writing about something else.

Because I don't believe you. I don't believe you really think that because then you wouldn't do it. I think, I mean, right? I think it's true sometimes. I when I say like I it's a very very very subtle semantic thing where I say it has affected my relationships sometimes in a negative sense but I mean I think that um you know the the hustle to keep up it's much tougher now than it was when I was writing music writing about music more frequently or it took up more in my time but I also wonder if like my um you know my ability

to keep up with the narrative less and less it's just like a matter of of aging, you know, because I had a full-time job in 2010 as well, and I probably put more time into music. But, I mean, when I look at, come on, look at my life, dog, you know, like, I get to do so many cool things because of this job. I get, like, and it's enhanced my relationship with music as well, because I think when you are forced to some degree to keep up with things or to listen to an album a third time when, you know, casualist or a moment. I listen to it once. It just opens up things that I wouldn't be able to appreciate. And I think that's super important when I look at people who, you know, I grew up with or people I was friends with in

college who have like similar sensibilities to myself, but have really taken their foot off the gas and just don't keep up with music. And, you know, I see that I'm like keeping up. Like I'm, there's always new stuff that interests me. And a lot of that is due to the fact that, you know, I write about musing in a professional sense. It's nice that I get paid off it. But yeah, I'd say overall it's positive. And there are some things that, you know, make it a pain in the ass. But whenever I take a break from music writing, I still think the same thing. So I don't know if it's the matter of music writing so much as it is a nature of my personality. So I don't think this. any negative effect for me on my music fandom. If there is, it's like less than 1%, which means

it's not even worth really reflecting on. To me, it all depends on how you approach this. And we're talking about keeping up with things. And I keep up with things that I'm interested in. And the things that I'm not interested in, I don't keep up with. And I accept that that's okay. And I actually think that as a writer, it's positive to embrace those things because to be someone who writes about music for a living in 2025 does not mean that you have to write about everything or have an opinion on everything. I would say that one of the big shifts that's happened in music writing since I've started doing it is in the 2000s, there was a big focus on being a generalist, that you would make a year-end list and you'd have three indie rock albums and three indie rock albums and

three rap albums and two country albums and one pop album. And there were even blogs that would police this. Like, I don't know if you remember, like, I Dowdor would do this. Like, they would look at certain publications and they'd be like, no, no, no, no, too much indie rock on this list. Where are the rap records or where are the country records? And it was like, no, you have to be a generalist. You have to talk about everything.

And what happened, I think, in the 2010s, which is when social media comes into play, is that the audience didn't want generalists. they wanted people that were into what they liked, and they would choose themselves who they wanted to listen to. So instead of reading Robert Criscoe to get his opinion on a metal record, when you know he doesn't really like metal at all, you would read actual critics that love metal, you know,

or you would read critics that actually love hip-hop, and you knew that they would have expertise in that, and the readers learned to curate their own reading in terms of what they wanted from music writers. And I was in the middle of that. Like I used to work for Grantland, and when I worked there, I was like a generalist music critic. That was the expectation,

which meant that I was going to write about whatever the big album was that week. And it didn't matter what it was. It could be Katie Perry's prism. It could be random access memories or whatever the case may be. And when I was doing that, it did start to kill my love of the game a little bit because I found that I could write about any kind of record. But if it was a record that I didn't personally care about, it was more of an intellectual exercise.

It wasn't something that I really had my heart into. And I think I could fake it pretty well. But it was more of like a thing that we were kind of doing before with Alex G, even though we like Alex G. But it was more about sort of like punditry about like how is this music going to do in the marketplace? Or like how culturally significant is this artist? You know, real think piece type stuff. But it wasn't my passion, really. And I found that whenever I wrote columns about things I did care about, that those were the columns that people liked.

And those are the columns that, you know, actually did well from a traffic perspective. And by the time I got to Uprocks, it was the first time in my career where my beat was right about whatever you care about. And I feel like I really flourished under that situation. And I learned, again, that if you are good at your job, the audience. wants you to follow your gut. They don't want you to follow other people's guts. They don't want you to follow the trends. They don't want you to follow like whoever's popular.

Because they can get that anywhere. They want what's unique to you. They want what's authentic to you. And that's true, not just in music writing, it's true across the board in media. And when I had that permission or I felt I had that permission, it was 100% like, oh, this is great. I can just be myself.

I can just do whatever I want. And I can figure that out. And it's going to be fun and I can express myself and I can also connect with people that care about that. And it's like our listener just wrote in. Like he says he likes listening to us because he can tell that we're into what we do. And people, that's all they want. They just want to know that you're into what you're doing and not just regurgitating the discourse. I mean, if anything, and this is a little bit into what you were saying, whatever's popular,

sometimes that puts me in the other direction, like a little too hard. You know, it's not like I feel pressure to go along with the crowd. I feel a sort of reflexive desire to go against it, which isn't always a positive thing. So maybe that's a little bit of a negative, but that's more about me as a writer and not so much me as a fan. So anyway, this is a long soliloquy monologue here that I'm giving. But I really think the way things are set up now,

if it's not enhancing what you do, then maybe you're doing the job wrong. If you're doing the job correctly, I think, it ought to feed into what you already love because I think that is what the audience wants from you. They want to see you. They want your authentic self on the page or in a podcast. Well, if you're looking for the authentic Ian on Up Rocks in a few weeks, you're going to see my Coldplay album ranking. And X and Y is going to be very, very high. That's beautiful.

I love that. It's your 2005 self because do you have X and Y from Coldplay? That is the angel. And I'm wide awake. It's morning by bright eyes is the devil of 2005. So this is the Ian Cohen polls that we love if we follow Ian Cohen. Let's get to our next email here. And the time has come to talk once again about sleep token.

This is an email from Wes in Denver. Thank you, West. Good to hear from you. We got a bunch of West Coast people. I guess Denver's not in the West Coast, but it's the Western part of America here. Hey, Steve and Ian, long-time listener, second time writing in, your recent conversation about Sleep Token got me thinking about a particular pattern I have noticed with how the, quote, big dumb rock bands tend to be strongly disliked, if not outright reviled by many music critics and greater music culture as a whole. I find it interesting that especially in an age where pop-timism largely reigns that the Big Dumb rock and Big Dumb metal bands are very popular punching bags. I remember Ian mentioning how there is generally some attempt to honestly engage with the Big Dumb Pop and Big Dumb Country Records of the Day, but none of that goodwill seems to extend to the world

of rock music. Why do you think that is? What makes Big Dumb Rock such an easy target as compared to its equivalent in other genres? So man, we're getting really meta here with more music criticism talk, which I always wonder if people care about, but I love doing it. So I guess we just got to barrel forward with it. Yeah. So when we're talking about, I think we have to define the terms for big dumb rock, because you could argue that like ACDC and Def Leopard or Big Dumb Rock, but I don't think that's really what is being talked about. I imagine that Wes is referring to contemporary

big dumb rock and I mean when I think about why people do what they do one of the more formative pieces in my assessment of this comes from Chuck Klauserman I think he said it in sex drugs and cocoa puffs where it's the easiest thing for a music critic to do to look smart is for like music they're not supposed to like and I think it was him going to EMP and seeing like a bunch of white music critics like nod their heads to like NWA or something along those lines and yeah I think with pop or country, there is that kind of touristy element to it where it feels like not slumming per se, but you're putting yourself within the masses.

And both those genres, like pop, country, hip hop, there's always some anchor in the respectable forms of itself. And, you know, the mass pop, the mass country, the mass hip hop, that always tends to be on the right side of history in retrospect. So in order to understand, I guess, culture as a whole, you need to have some sort of vocabulary and what's happening to that. And moreover, it helps you understand teenagers, certain marginalized ethnicities,

or sexualities. But when it comes to big, dumb rock, and I'm thinking of this in terms of maybe like Aftershock festival or louder than life. Or like, I mean, let's talk about like Monoskin or Greta Van Fleet, like other bands that have gone viral

for getting trashed in the music media. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we're talking about. Okay, because I'm like thinking, is this person talking about asking Alexandria or like breaking Benjamin or like five-finger death punch or well I mean those scripts don't even get reviewed really I mean like to me like we were talking about big dumb rock in relation to sleep token because they were knocked by pitchfork but I think you could I mean I'm the one who said that and I was saying that in a funny way just to talk about again like the monoskins

of the world the Greta van fleets I just feel like easy targets when they put out records and you talked about this how it feels like a lot of times like when the equivalent of that kind of music in like the hip-hop world the pop world the country world when that comes out it feels like there's more of an honest attempt to engage with it

rather than just to make jokes at the expense of these bands like Morgan Wallin for instance got reviewed by pitchfork this week got a 6.4 for his 37 song two-hour record and look we also have to take into account

the individual quality of these bands. I mean, I don't think Sleep Token is a very good band. And Monoskin, I don't think, was a very good band. Greater Than Fleet, I've been known to defend on some level, but more of like a sort of just bewilderment that there was a band from Michigan in the 2020s that wanted to sound like Led Zeppelin. Like there's something endearing about that to me.

But I think the explanation for me, and this is, I think, somewhat related to what you were saying, about the tourist element of writing about some of these other forms of like massively popular music. I think when you look at music critics generally, and I am generalizing here, but I think it's generally true, for the critics that care about like guitar music or rock music, they're almost all coming from like an indie punk alternative type background. Like that is the music that a lot of those writers cared about when they were younger. And with that, comes an ingrained bias against mainstream rock bands. And I think as critics

grow up and they come to embrace other kinds of music, that bias never really goes away. Like, that is something that I think it just always works as something to decry, because there's not going to be anyone really defending those bands. Like the audience for those bands isn't really paying attention to this conversation anyway. So you don't really have to defend, you know, ripping nickelback or ripping, you know, Greta Van Fleet, or any of these bands that are in the mainstream, these big, dumb rock bands that get trashed.

I really think that there is that sort of indie punk coding that needs to be sort of in concert with a mainstream rock band in order for critics to get behind. it. And I think a very obvious example of that. And we're going to be talking about this band next week, so I won't go too deep into it. But it is Turnstile to me. Is a band that is critically acclaimed. You know, Pitchfork just ran a big review, or not a review, it was an interview with the band this week. And, you know, I'm reading this profile. And there's so much in this article about, like, the hardcore punk roots of Turnstile.

And as I'm reading the article, I'm listening to a promo stream of the record. And I'm thinking, this sounds way more like incubus than it sounds like minor threat or whatever. You know, like, there's a lot in the DNA of Turnstile that I think would be disreputable to a lot of music critics if Turnstile didn't have this background in hardcore punk in Baltimore, Maryland. Yeah. And they're able to do that because of their background. And I'm at knocking turnstile. I'm a fan of Turnstile, by the way. And we'll get more into it when we talk about the record.

But it's just really funny to me that I think if Turnstile were a band from Los Angeles that started out, you know, on Roadrunner records. Are they on Roadrunner? Yeah, they're on Roadrunner. Which is like the house that like nickel back and slip top belt, you know. If they were just a band on Roadrunner from L.A. that had no background in punk. And, like, their favorite bands were, you know, I don't know.

Just, like, five-figure death punch and shined down, POD and shine down or whatever. And they loved Incubis. Like, they just talked about, like, Morning View and science all the time. And they had no roots in punk at all. But they sounded exactly the same. I think the response to this record or glow-on or, like, even time and space before that, even time and space was not that critically.

acclaimed, if I recall. Okay, so I- That record didn't do as well. So I will mention that because like I, I was gonna do a spin cover story for that, but then it just got two out of hand in terms of time commitment and Zo Camp did that one. That was critically acclaimed. The pitchfork review of that album is so, I don't think that person wrote another review. It was so clear they have, but like that is like what you would see in the scenario that you're talking about where it is this, a band that was on Roadrunner kind of off the top, and they were, like, Clayman Incubis or POD. And, you know, like, if they were just a Roadrunner band, you knew nothing else about them, and you listen to the record. Like, that's how that review would have turned out.

And, like, because Time and Space is the record where I came in on Turnstile. And I love the mainstream rock aspects of it. But I think so much of how they're talked about is based on their pedigree and not how the record sound, which I feel like critics wouldn't like this, band if they didn't have this pedigree. It's just very fascinating to me.

Which is also interesting because you listen to like nonstop feeling, which I think was 2015 or 16, the first record. And I just remember what was getting it notice in, you know, hardcore or emo or punk adjacent circles. It's like, you know, these guys kind of sound like 311 and rage against the machine. So they've been. And so I think that it's, it's, it's, they got big because of that. Like, I think they were fostered in a community where people.

weren't as like hung up on that ironically enough. And by the time they had gotten big enough to make a time and space and make a glow on, that stuff was so baked in. I think the idea that, oh, they're just pissing off hardcore. Like, I don't think that's really been true. No, but I also feel like their popularity is more tied to them sounding like a mainstream rock band than their hardcore background. And I think that the critics put more emphasis on that because it allows them to justify

loving this band who I think we're really like big footing our turnstile conversation from next week because to me that's the narrative that's what's fascinating about it is that I feel like they kind of get permission to critics to like this kind of band when if they were just another

roadrunner band I don't think they would be into it as much but I could be wrong about it. You're absolutely right and I also think that at this point in 2025 them talking about like legitimately loving incubus would be way more interesting than hearing them talk once again about Baltimore or jazz. Look, I don't want to get too far ahead on this.

But yeah, it does sound like ink. We talked about never enough sounding like it kind of gets POD with it. There's another song that sounds like, you know, the cure like Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, era. There's the police. By the way, they've been doing the police type stuff from the beginning. But we won't go more into that. But I also think that like when it comes down to why critics don't like.

like big dumb rock and if we're talking about like monoskin or greta van fleet or uh whatever other bands that come to mind it's just like i mean that's the music kind of sucks you know like yeah yeah yeah exactly no and that is true we should yeah like like monoskin is and i said this earlier i don't think they're a good band but i also think there's a lot of garbage pop music that gets a pass i think that's the only conversation here it's not like yeah like i'm not standing up even for grita van flea who I've written about as sympathetically as maybe any music critic, it's certainly like in the internet world outside of like the rock magazine complex. You know, there is definitely not an ironic appreciation,

but it's again more of a bewilderment. It's like I'm writing about like a fire-breathing dragon walking down the street. Like I can't believe this exists. That's mainly my attraction to Gertivan Fleet. But again, I feel like to the letter writer's point or the email writer's point is that I feel like a lot of garbage pop music gets engaged in a way that the garbage rock music doesn't. And it is interesting how that continues to play out. Yeah. I also think, though, with like country and like pop, there's like songwriting teams and you can kind of follow it in that sort of way where people follow directors or people follow like, you know, sports general managers.

there's like a craft that even the, I guess you would call the worst pop songs that I don't think it, I think with like rock music, even though there are song doctors, like unless we're talking about like a Max Martin or a Mutt Lang, there's just isn't that same sort of interest in getting granular with it. So, yeah, I think this is a situation where maybe the most, you know, the correct explanation is probably the most obvious one. It's like, dog, listen to this like louder than life stuff. It is just some of the worst stuff you'll hear.

And you'll, like, go begging to run back to, like, Joe Jonas or Tate McCray or whoever your B-lister is. We've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, or Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? All right. So, a record that I've been listening to a ton over the past couple of months since I got it in advance is a... It's called Caroline 2. It is the second album from a group called Caroline. So I probably talked about their first album in 2022.

They are an eight-piece UK post-rock band. It scores a lot of points with me. And they come from the general Black Country New Roeb Black Midi Galaxy, but with more of like a post-rock big feelings sort of music that first time around they said, yeah, we're influenced by like Appalachian Folk, and they put Midwest Emo in there and like walked it back in every single interview they did after the fact. But surprise, this new one sounds a lot like American. American football, if they didn't break up after making their first record and they moved to

Chicago and hooked up with a Gasser del Sol and tortoise. Really, really interesting composition on this record, really interesting recording. Go read the story about their song, Coldplay cover for an example of it. They got Caroline Polichick on there. And yeah, big step up in every way from their last one. If you heard the singles, Total Euphoria and the one with Caroline Polichick, which the title confusing. Pretty good idea of what to expect. By the time this episode airs, you might see my review on pitchfork.com or it might run Monday. Not sure yet. Just know it'll be very positive.

And I imagine that you will like it if any of the things that I mentioned so far sound good to you. All right. I want to talk about a record that came out earlier in May. I think it was around May 2nd. This album dropped. But I wanted to make sure I got it into the corner. It's called A Trick of the Light, and it's by an artist named Eli Winter. Eli is a guitarist and composer originally from Houston, who's been based in Chicago, I think, for quite a while now. This is his sixth record, I believe, and I enjoyed his other records. This album, I think, feels like his most fully realized.

I've talked other times in Recommendation Corner about Aquarium Drunkard music, and talking about the great music blog Aquarium Drunker, been around for many years, gotten many music recommendations from them. I don't know if they've covered this record. I imagine that they would have because it really feels

in that blog's wheelhouse. Eli Winter makes instrumental guitar music that has a lot of jazz flavoring to it. When I listen to his records, I'm never quite sure how much of it is composed and how much of it is improvised because there's definitely a very sort of free-spirited, free-flowing vibe to his records. The first song on this latest album is 16 minutes long, and it really has a sprawl to it

that if you're into this kind of music, I think it really draws you in, and it's part of the power of the record. But also, I think what makes these records stand out is that Eli Winter is a true composer. When I listen to his songs, I feel like even when he's going off on these tangents with guitar solos and you've got, you know, saxophone coming in and it's, it feels like it's kind of going off into outer space. It always returns to this core that feels very kind of put together and beautiful and like a sort of like a modern slice of like cosmic Americana music. So I think that balance of composition and improvisation really carries forward for me on this record. And I feel like that mix, it just achieves full flower on this record. And I think it's a really good achievement here. The record is called A Trick of the Light.

The artist is Eli Winter. And yeah, check it out. I recommend it. We've now reached the end of our episode. Thank you so much for listening to Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews. and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations,

sign up for the Indie Mix tape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.