Indiecast - We Answer Listener Questions About Concert T-Shirts, Art Brut, And More

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

On Indiecast, Steven and Ian try to keep the gap between what we talk about privately in the DM's and what we talk about on the show as narrow as possible. But given all the weird online discourse this week, that just wasn't possible in this episode. Between all the Boygenius gatekeeping and "state of music criticism" chatter, it was a very odd bunch of days online. Oh, and as if things were bad enough: Fall Out Boy released an updated version of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" covering the years between 1989 and now. The whole ordeal provoked another anti-Fall Out Boy rant from Steven (8:25).Thankfully, the guys found solace in the mailbag (16:14). Listeners came through with some very good topics: Is it possible to separate your "critic" brain from your "fan" brain? How important are record labels now as arbiters of quality? What makes a good concert T-shirt? Also, the guys "yay or nay" the aughts era indie band Art Brut, which prompted a Fall Out Boy-style rant from Ian.Finally, in Recommendation Corner (55:48), Ian talks up arty metalheads Loma Prieta while Steven stumps for the mellow Michigan folk-rock band Bonny Doon.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 145 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. 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 Uprox's Indy Mix tape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, we review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we answer emails from you, the Indycast listener. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He is no longer welcome at Boy Genius concerts. Ian Cohen, Ian, Ian, how are you?

Yeah, what Steve is alluding to is a very online discourse. one of the many that was happening this week. This one particularly about, like, boy genius concerts and who's allowed to attend or not attend. I'm, like, very hesitant to even dive into it. But, like, I think the one, if you know, if you've been online, you know this one, it's like, you know, don't bring your boyfriend, don't bring you and your straight boyfriend to the Boy Genius concert. And I think what the, like, based on the Boy Genius concert I went to about a month back, like, I don't. Where does this leave parents, you know? Like the parents who are bringing their like 15 or teenage, you know, daughter or son or what have you.

Like, they were kind of left out of this discussion. We need like kind of a PTA for how to how to properly attend boy genius shows. Well, you're presupposing that this discourse is rooted in sanity, which it is not. And I just kind of say, man, because, you know, like on this show, I think you and I, we tried to narrow the gap between what we talk about in the DMs and texts and what we talk about on the show. Because I think people, they listen because they want to hear us hash out the trends, like in an honest, forthright way.

However, you know, you can't talk about everything that you talk about in the DMs just for matters of decorum or, you know, professional stability. I just have to say that this week there's going to be a wider gap than I would normally like because this week was a weird week, man. There was like a lot of things going on, a lot of conversations in the indie world, in the indie-adjacent world that frankly were just insane and not rooted in any kind of reality or connection to reality. And it was just like one after another.

know, I don't even know if we should like reference it. Like we reference the boy genius thing. I don't even know if we should even like touch on some of these things. One thing I'm going to say is, and this is like a perpetual conversation that goes on, where you have people talking about the state of music criticism. This is like a popular topic. Got to talk about the state of music criticism. What is good music criticism?

what is bad music criticism and I'm going to throw a disclaimer out here that one of our questions in the mailbag is about music criticism so I could be accused of being a hypocrite here but I don't think it's the same thing where you have people just pontificating

about who's doing this wrong or who's doing this right and it just makes me think about how like let's say you go to the grocery store and the person who scans your groceries, they start going into a rant about the state of the grocery industry. Would you want to hear that? Probably not.

You just want the person to do their job. You know, you don't want to hear about problems with produce or about how the dairy guy isn't as good as the dairy guy back in the 2000s. You don't want to hear that. You just want them to scan your groceries so you can go on your way. And I try to follow that with my job. I feel like people just want you to do your job. You don't want to hear about the state of the music criticism business.

So I will reference that discourse because there was a lot of that going on this week. I think we should put that to bed. And I'm including myself in this because I have publicly pontificated about the state of music criticism in the past. And I always feel stupid, like immediately after I do it. Like, why did I do that? It's like, you know, it's like the equivalent of drinking too much and, you know, saying something offensive at a party or something. Like, that's how I feel like when I pontificate about this business of ours. Because really, honestly, who cares?

Nobody cares. Well, it's, I mean, we care. I mean, but, like, as far as, like, the grocery example, like, I would almost rather people, like, at Trader Joe's talk about, like, the supply chain or stuff like. that because, you know, better that than like asking you go, oh, what are you up to today? It's like nine o'clock on a Wednesday. I'm like, I'm probably going to go to work and put these groceries in a refrigerator. Not that, like, I don't like friendly conversation. But yeah, I mean, like when all else fails, the state of music writing, because I think, you know, in contrast to, I don't know, like, again, to use the example of the person at the grocery store, I think that like we as

music writers internalize and personalize so much of this because like why else would someone be doing what we do, you know, uh, on average, like if I, on average, if I like write like a review or like a 10 year anniversary piece, like the money's not like the money doesn't make sense, you know, like I'm not doing like I'm not doing this because, oh, this is a quick and easy way to get money or like keep the lights on. It's because like we at on the whole like care way too. fucking much about music and about the discussion of it. That's why we do what we do. But, you know, like, yeah, but this week was just like, it was like, it was like the shadow pod, you know, the one that takes place in the DMs and, like, text messages that, like,

comes very, very close to, like, leaking over to the real thing. It's like these two realms overlapping. And I'm sure there's, like, a horror movie I could reference, but I'm not, like, very deep on that. But, I mean, and there were, like, big, there were, like, big actual news going on. You know, there was like a new Olivia Rodriguez album. There's a new Jeff Rosenstock, armed album. There's a slow dive album coming out. But for the most part,

we got like, you know, AI, the AI conversations, like cancel culture stuff about like John Mouse. It was just really, really grim out there. So I think we... Yeah, what was John Mouse coming up?

Were people just bored and like, oh, let's talk about... John Mouse, yeah. Because the thing with him Is that he went to January 6th, right? Like, that's the thing? No, that's correct. I think his music sucks. But, like, it's like Ariel Pink, but like Ariel Pink at least had like five or so good songs.

And, you know, I don't even want to get into that because, I mean, there was like a time period. It's like, did you know John Mouch has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Hawaii? This man's a fucking genius. Like, God, the two. I don't want to revisit that. conversation, but nonetheless it's like, why is John Mouse being canceled? Because he showed up to the January 6th, you know, riots. I'm like, yeah, kind of.

Like, I mean, that's a pretty good reason. Well, okay, not to, I don't want to parse this too much, but like, there was the rally and then there was the riot. There are two different things. Like, he wasn't like taking a dump on Nancy Pelosi's desk, was he? That was the guy from Bobbner's, I think. Yeah, because, you know, you have a right to show up and to a rally or protest something. But yeah, if you're storming the Capitol, that's one thing.

You know, if people want to cancel him because he's a Trump supporter, that's something else. So I just want to, you know, I'm going to play his defense attorney in this discourse a little bit. Not that I have no feelings about him whatsoever. But I just want to straighten that thing out. Before we get to our mailbag, speaking of weird, stupid things that happened this week, did you listen to the Fallout Boy cover of We Didn't Start the Fire, where they updated the lyrics to cover everything that's happened

since the original Billy Joel song was released in 1989? Did you listen to this thing? I didn't because it can't possibly live up to the idea I have of this song. And like I've like gone to some like really fun places with this because like a straight up like hey, what if we do? We don't start the fire. But like, you know, add it. Apparently there are lyrics about like ISIS and like my chemical romance, the black parade. I was like just really.

First off, I got a thank fallout boy because like. No, you know. I do. I do. Because I feel like. You do not have to got a handed to them. I feel like they were a distraction from like all the minor shitty discourses. we named above and they just like jumped on the grenade but what I was hope they added to it they

added to the awfulness it's not a good distraction look my one question with this song is is rivers quomo mad that he didn't think of this first because this seems like something that rivers quomo would have done or is this too stupid even for rivers quomom I'm amazed they didn't like collaborate on that you know kind of doing the super what was that the like giant that big megator that it was them and green day and fallout boy I guess but I don't know. I thought it would be funnier if like Fallout Boy instead of doing, we didn't start the fire, tried to make a love it if we made it parody instead.

I mean, would you have like respected it more if they did that? No, I wouldn't have. Look, I think we've talked about this before. I've gone on a follow up boy rant in a previous episode. But I just feel like we have to revive the worst band of the last 20 years. conversation because you know you have a band like nickel back that gets so much grief or like imagine dragons is a big target follow-up boy to me is worse than either one of those bands i would listen to radioactive or uh you know how you remind me great song over any follow-up boy song

centuries yeah that song is a million times more obnoxious than any song by imagine dragons or nickel back. I looked it up. It has over a billion streams. And I feel like 900 million of those are at like basketball arenas. You know, like it's such a jock jam. But they're awful. I hate follow up boy. I hate them. I'm going to say hate with follow up boy. Patrick Stump's voice awful. Awful. Awful stuff. And they do this thing. Look, I'm a Billy Joel fan. I'm not really a fan of we didn't start the fire, although I don't hate it. It's like a, I think of it is like a kitschy song for my channel. It's like the Friday I'm in love of Billy Joel's like vast.

I don't. Friday I'm in love is a good song. But it's like, I was really hoping you were going to pivot. It's like, no, man. Like you got to put that hit song aside. There's a really deep interesting catalog here that all these new, I would be open for that Billy Joel type argument. I mean, you know, would I like it more, a fallout boy did a parody?

of Captain Jack or sees from an Italian restaurant No, I probably would hate that too. I can't remember if you defended Fallout Boy. I didn't. I like one song Thanks for the memories.

And I think that when you're talking about the difference between them and like Imagine Dragons or, you know, Maroon 5 or whatever, I think the fact that like Fallout Boy could like conceivably be taken seriously is at least like part of like a timeline and a movement. Like they were like a cultural phenomenon, uh, in a way that like nickel back and imagine

drag like those, those two bad, they just make hit songs. Like there's nothing there's like nothing more to it. But whereas like Fallout Boy, uh, you know, people kind of create an identity around having like that at some point. And so I think they're a little more pernicious because, you know, when they do something like this, it competes with what I think are like pretty. you know, pretty important, pretty influential songs. It's like, you know, kind of with like Weezer.

Like I would, Wieser wouldn't bother me as much if like, you know, the Blue Album in Pinkerton weren't such important albums, you know, for me at one point. Yeah, I mean, I can see that Follow Up Boys early stuff is important in the scene that they come from. But I just feel like their later career is so egregiously obnoxious. that it I guess it's worse than Weaser to me

because nothing that Fall Out Boy has done it means anything to me like as much as like early Weezer stuff does to me I mean I don't care about the early stuff I understand that it's important for the people who love it

but I don't personally I don't personally care about it at all and it's only the later stuff that I'm emotionally involved in and the emotion is strong irritation And I used the word hate before I'm regretting that Because I think that's a little too strong But it's very close to hate

It's definitely music hate You know like how you have sports fan hate Like you say I hate this athlete You don't really hate them But you sports fan hate them I have music fan hate for Fallout Boy I think more than any other band I think they are my most hated band

Of the last 20 years Like do you have a most hated band of the last 20 years Maybe we're going to talk about them in a bit In our mailbag I mean that's up there I don't think about the band that we're going to talk about enough to, like, truly say I hate them. But, uh, yeah, I'm sure they, I'm sure I do. But I, yeah, we'll get to it.

Yeah, like, other than the band we're going to talk about, like, is there another band that you say, like, that's my most hated band of the last 20 years? Well, oh gosh, I'm like just thinking of the only time someone threatened to, like, kick my ass for a music opinion in public is because I see. said that Sublime might not be the best band of the 90s. I heard what I got in an ice cream shop the other day. And like, I fucking hate that song so fucking much. Like, not even like the joke part where the guy's like, you know, like, I think I saw a tweets. Like, he says I can play the guitar like a motherfucker riot and then plays like the worst

guitar so you've ever heard. Like when people say like, hey, what do you hate about that song? And it's just like, it is so. hard for me to like talk about that without like just throwing the entire city of San Diego into the Pacific Ocean so I think the less said the better about that but like So Blime is kind of up there I mean he sings I can play the guitar like a motherfucking riot and then later in the song he says uh don't start a riot like he does the uh the Jamaican patois there that's like the so he says

riot twice in that song, but differently, both times. Yeah, there's a lot of shading in the meeting there. I don't hate Sublime. I'm not a fan, but like I do have memories of hearing them all the time in the mid-90s, usually in the context of smoking weed. So, I don't know. Sublime, as a whole, maybe not so much, but like that one song. Yeah. That one. Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I'm with you on that one. Let's get to our mailbag. We have a big. mailbag here. We had a lot of emails from the past month, just trying to catch up with them. Thank you all for writing in, by the way. It's always great to hear from our listeners. You can hit us up at Indycast Mailbag at gmail.com. I'm going to say this too. We haven't made a call for ratings and reviews in a while.

If you like the show, give us a good rating wherever you listen to pods. I guess that only really pertains to Apple Pods. I don't know if you can rate anywhere else. Or it doesn't really matter. Like if you're on Stitcher, and you leave us a review, it doesn't really matter. Like,

there's probably like 11 reviews on there. But if you can give us, if you're on Apple Pods, if you can give us, hit us with a five star. Don't go with this like gentleman's like 8.0 emo best new music thing. You got to go all five.

Yeah, don't be like, don't be overly cute about it. Like, well, you know. That's 7.8. I bet Ian would appreciate. that. Right. I'll give them a four because I would only give a five if like Jesus Christ and John Lennon did a podcast. Like that would be a five. That'd be boring as shit. What would they,

what would those who have to talk about? They could debate about who's bigger. Good point. Because John Lennon said we're bigger than Jesus. You got me there. Jesus can be like, hold on a second. So yeah, leave us a rating and review if you can. That'd be great. Okay, so let's get to our first letter here. This is from Ben and Philadelphia. Go birds. The quintessential Indicast Mailbag person. Yeah, I think so.

Do you want to read this one? So, hi, Stephen Ian. I work as a coffee roaster. Quintessential. Which means that... Yeah, like, do you think Ben is talking to people about the coffee industry? Do you think he's like...

Almost certainly. You think he's like, hey, wait a second. I know you got your cappuccino there or whatever, but let me tell you about the coffee roasting business. It's, you know, They're laying people off all the time. You know, you can't get a good job. He's not doing that.

He's focusing on the craft. I think so. But, I mean, the fact that he calls himself a coffee roaster means that he does take this, like, very seriously, kind of artisanal. And, you know, he's like, right. Like me when, like, oh, you're a blogger. I'm like, no, I'm a fucking music writer. I'm a music journalist.

Yeah. And it's good that he takes it seriously, but he's not forcing that on the people, is what I'm saying. Maybe we just need to reverse mailbag. Like, we need to ask questions of our audience. We need to switch it up. I think when Ben gets together with other coffee roasters, they're chopping it up about the business. You know, they're voicing their complaints, which is what you do.

But like when he's in the shop, he's not laying that on the customer. He wants the customer to be happy. That's what I'm saying. You don't want to lay a bum trip on the customer, is my point. Anyway. So, Ben, coffee roaster. Which means that even though I love coffee and know more about it than a normal person ever should, I have a lot of trouble simply enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning because I struggle to separate myself from the analytical tasting skills I use at work.

Inspired by Steve's frequent tweets about perfect patio albums, I decided over the weekend to take my coffee out into my back patio while I read a book and found myself finally relaxing my critical approach and appreciating the simple pleasure of a nice cup of coffee. There you go. Not reading my tweets. Love to see that, man. Enjoying the patio in the summertime. It's beautiful. So my question for you guys today is this. Do you find that your involvement in the music critic world occasionally cloud your ability to enjoy an album?

And how do you reset yourself when that happens? There are any specific scenarios where you put yourself into the quiet, where you can quiet the analytical part of your brain when listening to a record? I think we've got to toss this to the actual patio guy to answer this question. So this is a great question. And thank you, Ben, for writing in. A few things here. Just to answer the question, yeah, I can do that.

I can listen to music as a fan and I can listen to it as a critic. I have never had that problem. And I think it's because it's important for me to protect that part of myself. Whenever I'm done with work, like during the day, I'm usually listening to whatever new album I'm writing about. So that'll just be on all day long. And then when I get done working, you know, I've got the music that I'm into sort of just as a fan right now. You know, and I'll listen to that stuff. And it's a very easy thing for me to go back and forth.

And I think it's good to do that because it keeps the fan part of you, you know, thriving. And it also, I think, make sure you don't get burned out as a critic, you know, like, you want to keep that fresh as well. The other thing I would say is that, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to become a music critic was because I like thinking about music. Like, the analytical part is actually part of the enjoyment for me. And I would be analyzing this stuff even if I wasn't doing it professionally. So the fact that I was able to find a way to make a living doing it was really lucky and I'm very grateful for that. But that's always been part of me as a fan, like thinking about stuff and I just think it's fun. It comes from a place of fun.

The last thing I would say is that you're framing this question as does the critic part part of you, like, interfere with the fan part. For me, I make a big effort to kind of go the opposite way where, like, in my professional life, I try to think like a critic, but I try to write like a fan. You know, one thing I don't like about music writing is when it gets overly academic and dry, and it doesn't have that sort of authentic, passionate voice to it. That, I think, is, like, the worst kind of music writing. So I try really hard not to fall into that trap of just regurgitating the same cliches that all music writers use

and talking about music in a way that feels more authentic to what we do on the show where it just feels like people talking. You know, like that is what I aspire to in my writing. So really it's not so much like the critic interfering with the fan. It's like I'm kind of trying to infuse the fan always into what I do professionally. I don't know if that makes sense to you. I don't know if you relate to that, Ian, for you. Is this a balance? Because for me, honestly, it's not that hard.

I feel like I can, maybe I've just done it for so long. I can do it. I just feel like they work in tandem in my own brain. Yeah, I think that like there needs to be a distinction made here between like being a thinker about music because like I have been doing that my entire life. Even like prior to like having a blog or whatever like, you know, I would hear music and like think of it from a critical perspective

because, you know, I read spin, I read Rolling Stone. I did all of that stuff. But then there's like the, I guess, music journalist thing where I think, and I guess this, like one of the, I think one of the main differences we pointed out is that, you know, I am frequently reliant on like editors and other people and like what not to get my stuff published. I think you have like a bit more autonomy than I do. And that part can be really hard to shut off, like where I'm thinking about, I'm hearing something like, oh, can I pitch this or what are other people saying? and gosh, it is so hard for me to like turn that part off. Like I try a part. Like sometimes I'm like, you know what?

I'm just going to go kind of silent mode, get off music Twitter for like a week or so. But the voice, I can still kind of hear the voices of like, I know what people are saying about it. And I'm like preemptively getting annoyed by stuff I haven't read yet, but I'm sure is going on. And I know that's like a personal thing. But, you know, when I'm finding myself like overrun by that, I the reset I do is go back and listen to music from like say 1999 or 2000 from like before I started writing you know music in a in a professional sense like yesterday I was stuck in traffic on the way home and I'm like for some reason I just feel like listening to Utopia Parkway by Fountains of Wayne which is like

the like it's not considered an essential album on Apple Music the self-titled and and welcome interstate managers are. And, you know, despite the fact that, like, I hear this now, I'm like, this is super corny. Like, there's just so much that, like, I probably wouldn't be able to enjoy about it if I heard it now. But my memories of hearing that album in 1999 just override any sort of critical impulse. And I feel that, like, when it comes to, like, a refreshing sort of, like a refresher to get myself back in my, mind, like getting the right mindset, I just go back to the old shit. Like the stuff I listened to as an 18 year old or a 19 year old when I bought like 50 albums a year tops. And it didn't matter

if there were like one or two corny-ass songs. I feel like I can, like I can access what it was like to be that person then. And it's just straight up enjoyable. Like I'm not listening to Utopia Parkway all the way through. Uh, I'm, you know, fast forwarding through go hippie. But like, The fact that there's like a couple of skips, that doesn't bother me, which is really weird because, like, I bought that album for like 15 bucks. You would think I wouldn't want to maximize my investment. So, um, yeah, but they were probably, I think there's like 14 songs on that album, though. So like, you know, they're giving you like a pretty big feast.

Red Dragon Tattoo. That's on the record. Yeah, that guy from corn. Yeah. He looks a little bit more like Jonathan Davis, I guess, or was it fieldy. Man, I really wish I had the opportunity to ask him that question before he passed. RIP Adams-Lessinger. Yeah, that's definitely like the one question that is burning for all of us with him.

You know, I think, you know, listen to what you're saying, you're talking about 992,000. The other thing about that is that this is like pre-social media. And I think that changes how we listen to music. And that isn't necessarily because of being a music critic. We're just inundated with more opinions now. Like I remember when I first went online, how refreshing it was to read the opinion of strangers, like, we're not professional critics. They were just, like, regular people.

And, uh, because it was novel. And of course, now, as we were saying earlier, like, you, you want to get away from other people's opinions. It's like, they're just everywhere and they're awful. And like, it's like, I don't want this in my head. And I think what you were talking about of like, you know, letting other people kind of poison your feelings about a record. I think that would happen anyway if you weren't a critic.

It's just that you wouldn't have an opportunity to, you know, voice your own opinion, like, on a sizable platform. You know, like, at least you can get your feelings out now. If you, in the alternate universe, like, where you're not a music critic, you'd just be seething online, reading all this terrible opinions. And, like, in this scenario, pitchfork never ends up covering emo either. So, like, there's no emo revival on pitchfork in the last 10 years, unless there's, like, an Ian Cohen-like person in this ultimate universe, which I don't know.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, is this a state of music criticism conversation, by the way? I don't think it is. We're not talking about the industry. We're just talking about our approach. So I am banging the gavel that we are not hypocrites by talking about this. And this was something someone asked us anyway.

So they invited us to talk about it. But I think it was funny that, like, he mentions being a coffee roaster and that ruining stuff. Like, the one time I ate the least amount of ice cream in my life is when I worked at Ben and Jerry's. So it's a, you just never forget the smell of like having that ice cream mix with like the cleaning fluid. Like no amount of Fabriz gets that out. I'll take your word for it. Let's get to our next letter. This comes from Matt in Missoula, Montana.

That's three M's right there. It's kind of a long letter, but it's an interesting one, so I'll read it. Hey, Stephen and Ian, thank you for all the time and work you put into these pods each week. Actually, not much work in time that goes into these pods. I think that's pretty clear. We gotta keep the aura going. I'm sorry, it's like literally 20 hours a week of prep. Another 15 hours of recording.

Like, we're re-recording. It's like a Steely Dan album. We're bringing in Wayne Shorter to do a little sax solo in the middle of the pod. Anyway, love listening to you guys. Thank you, Matt. As a former artist manager for an act you've mentioned a lot on here, really, and who worked for and with record labels in the past, I was curious what you guys think about labels in 2023.

Do you think this is like Guy Ozery? And he's talking about you too here. Do you think that's who this is? Yeah, hey, look, man, if it is like, you know, quote-unquote Matt, like, yeah, let's get the edge on here. Let's chop it up. All right, yeah, I'm going to assume this is Guy. Okay, they don't seem to be mentioned as much in the discourse

talking about record labels on your pods and elsewhere surrounding bands and new release. yet I do think they still hold significant weight, mostly in the background, when it comes to the state of music. When we signed my band to Domino, after building a cult-like following, they reach much larger audiences, landed big collaborators and opportunities, and the added financial support made things much easier overall in the music. It made things easier overall, and the music kept getting stronger and stronger. Domino or any of the other big indies, like the Secret League Group or Beggers' labels, really do support and value artistic integrity, despite what some people might think.

I also think that the role of a good ANR person is severely underrated and likely never part of the conversation when talking about an artist's vision. Aside from the role they play in developing artists, I also find them to be trusted sources for new music and I don't feel like they get enough credit as curators. This leads to my main question. How much do indie record labels matter to you both,

especially in a year like this one? Do they create any biases when reviewing or listening to new releases? Do they still help to validate artists or has that meaning shifted to more of a utility or resource for artists and their teams? We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. That's Matt in Missoula, Montana. So asking, what do we think about record labels? Do we think that they're important?

Well, you know, the first thing I think of, you know, in terms of like the way labels are talked about, like it kind of goes back and forth to, no, labels are important. It's like, no, you should never sign with a label. Like, you should be able to do anything yourself. like labels are useless and you know before we talk about labels I want to talk about toilets just because there's like a toilet needs to get fixed in our house and I could totally like you know find a valve watch YouTube videos and you know replace it myself or I could you know actually hire a plumber who's going to make sure it's done right they're probably going to

overcharge me but nothing's going to explode in my house and you know I bring that up because so much of the way what I see about labels the way they're talked about is like they're a I think about what it's like to be a musician and like to make music and like how annoying it must be to like send out emails about like PR or what have you. And I think it's worth reiterating because like so many the worst people in the DIY discourse act like if you have if you ask for help from a label or a PR person, you're like going to Ian Mackay's house and like wiping your ass with a vinyl cover of repeater. Yeah.

Which would hurt, by the way, it would. I wish there was a, or maybe like, I would say a Fugazi t-shirt, but I don't think they really made T-shirts. I think that was like their whole deal. So not the best metaphor, but like, you get the idea. But, yeah, I think like, when I think of labels in that regard, I'm like more amenable to thinking about what they do because like so much of the discourse talks about like how, you know, they're evil and they take money and like it should be DIY or die.

there's, just making music and like putting it out in the world are like two completely different skill sets. And boy, I'm sure you've interviewed people who should not be doing their own PR or like keeping their own accounting. But, you know, otherwise, like do labels still matter in 2023? Absolutely. Like, you know, places like say like Top Shelf or Saddle Creek, you know, they've built up a lot of goodwill with me over the years. And so I'm going to give bands they sign, you know, more attention than I would from, you know, kind of similar labels. Like, I'm going to put more, like, if I don't really like, or if it doesn't connect with me on the first list,

I'm still going to give it a shot because I've learned to trust them. So, yeah, I think they still matter, but, like, not in the same way of, like, you know, an aura that they might have had when I was kind of learning about the industry in, like, the 2000s. And, yeah, they matter on several ends. But, like, I don't, I think that there's, like, a middle ground rather than like like you don't matter it unless you sign to a label or conversely like no never signed to a label always do it yourself i just want to go back to your toilet analogy because

that reminds me of like uh collin cowherd always does that like he always like makes an analogy to like the real world we're talking about sports it's like yeah if you if you own a business you know you want to pay your employees right and that explains uh you know job morant bringing a gun to the strip club or whatever something like that he does that a lot um i can't really speak to whether labels matter to bands because i'm not in a band i'm not in that world i like all the things you say i think are correct i mean in terms of just having a support network uh also matt talks about all the things that a label can do you know i'm sure that's right but for me as a listener i don't really care about record labels at this point i i you know you

mentioned like top shelf labels like that i think they can matter when you have a label that's associated with a certain kind of music and maybe they're like a dominant label in that scene in the way that like top shelf is in like the emo world like that i think does matter but for the most part i can't say that there's a label right now where if i get a promo from them i feel like this is definitely going to be good uh for the most part i don't really pay attention to that. And, you know, it reminds me in a way of the conversation we had recently about regionalism in indie music, you know, the, in the old days where you had particular cities that were known for certain kinds of music, uh, and how that isn't as common anymore. I mean,

we had Philadelphia in the 2010s, which I think was associated with a certain kind of like guitar rock music. You could maybe use them as an example, although that feels a little bit like, runoff from New York being overpriced. You had like a lot of bands who went to Philly because it was like discount New York. But I feel like it's a similar thing with labels where in the same way it doesn't seem like it matters like what town you're from anymore as much. I don't know if the label matters as much as like a sign of quality to like in the way that you would talk about SST or subpop labels like that where that was like,

a sensibility. Like, I don't know there's a lot of labels now that have, like, a sensibility that you could define. Okay, let's move on to our next letter here. And it's going to be a good one. It's a yay or nay.

It comes from Jeff in Enfield, Connecticut. Very simple. Yay or nay, Art Brute. The Ott's era talky, post-punk band. Very snarky. Yeah or nay, Ian, an art brute Like, Jeff has to know what he's getting into with this one.

Like, why would, why else would anyone talk about Art Brut in the year fucking 20, 23? And this is like an app's, usually I try to see both sides. It's a dialectic, as they say in my in real life line of work. But Art Brut, like sometimes you got to take a stand. And this is an app, unequivably, absolutely the fuck not. Like, I fucking hate that. Oh, I fucking hate this. I don't know, maybe they got better after that one from 2005, which by the way, 2005, we've talked about this,

you know, as far back as like Celebration Rock, that pod, you know, your previous podcast. One of the best years of, one of the best years for indie rock in recent memory, maybe of the entire century, but this, this album was like number, it was like number three or number four on pitchfork's best of list. I fucking hate this band so much. And maybe they got better after that one. But, like, I almost, like, don't even want to continue to talk about it because... Oh, oh, oh, I have some follow-up questions for you.

I want to plumb these depths a little bit. But just for people who may not remember, Art Brute, their big record from... Was it 05 or 06? It was 05. It was definitely 05. The record was called Bang, Bang, Rock and Roll. And the only song I remember from that album is formed a band, which I believe is the first song. And, you know, they were part of that, like, self-aware strain of indie music that was popular at the time. You could group the hold steady in there, I think, as an example of that.

LCD sound system would be another example of that where it's like these middle-aged, or I don't know if the middle-aged, probably like guys in the 30s. They were probably like 29 and we thought they were middle-aged. But, you know, kind of, you know, like, smart white guys who know a lot about music and, like, they're talking about it in their lyrics in a semi-ironic kind of way. Especially early, hold steady. I feel like people forget that, like, almost killed me is, like, a much snarkier record than, like, later on. Like, they became more earnest starting with Separation Sunday. But, like, almost killed me. there is an element to that record where it's,

it feels like it's having fun with like arena rock cliches. And in the same way that LCD sound system, with losing my edge, doing something similar with punk and post-punk music, and then you have Art Brute, who I think you could say is like the midpoint maybe between the Hold Steady and LCD sound system. You know, they feel like they have,

there's like a little bit of, elements of both of those bands in Art Brute. Got an 8.9 from Pitchfork. Review written by my friend Rob Mitchum. And in a way, you're adversary. I feel like you and Rob are like adversaries in terms of like what you liked in the aughts. Yeah, Rob Mitchum was like part of that group of people

who are still around to this day who like were, we're like just terribly mocking like Pedro the Lion and like Jimmy World Albums for some reason. But yeah, he said like he liked emo more than like a lot of those people. Anyway, I'm not going to get in the middle of that. Art Brute, though. Because I was ripping on Follow Up Boy before, and I was saying the most hated band for me of the last 20 years,

and you were like, you know, you talked about sublime. But, like, Art Brute, they've got to be your most hated band of the last 20 years, right? You know, if I think hard enough, I could probably come up with a better thing, like a better option. Because, like, Art Brute is a band that I don't have to think. think about like ever unless we're going into some like remembering some guys type memory hole like you know they they existed they happened before i was really involved in like the music writing world and then they had the decency to go the fuck away like almost immediately i know they made more records

but you know just when i think about like the qualities of music i dislike like sublime i kind of get it It's like made for, look, I live in San Diego. I know, like, it does things for people, like a large number of people. But Art Brute to me, you mentioned hold steady and LCD sound system. You know, despite what I've said on this podcast, I find things to like about them, you know. Some hold, I like some hold steady songs. And at the end, they got riffs. LCD sound system, I think the first two records are amazing, even if I don't kind of vibe with, you know, the mindset.

But like, art root is just like. a straight up by critics for critics sort of affair it takes like you know the talky post-punk sort of thing but also this kind of snarky academic like you know most like the music critic who will like corner you at pitchfork fest to talk about television personalities or whatever um and there's like there are a few things worse than um you know bands who like approach music from like we're funny because it's like very hard to do and it's a very hard quality to maintain

especially if they think they're like clever and I see this stuff trickled down and stuff nowadays like I think the closest descendant we have to this band is like cheekface or something like that which I won't say any more about that we haven't talked about that band

on this show maybe we'll table that for another episode yeah we will table that one that's a DM's conversation band for sure Yeah, that is definitely we read we we we search ourselves on Twitter ban so I'm going to hold off on that. But yeah, this is just like a isolated phenomenon. And look, I don't doubt that the people was made for like this band. I don't think there was anything like, you know, I know that like sometimes people like stuff or like clout or whatever like for the wrong reasons.

Like I don't doubt for a second that the people who really connected with Art Boot really connect. with it, but like, oh my fucking God, like, this, this, this band just like takes everything I dislike. Not about, like, pop music, but about, like, being a music critic and just combines them into this one noxious little, like, black hole of annoying music critic cliches, like, bands for music critics. And, yeah, but Rob, man, like, I guess this is how you must have felt. reviewing Pedro the Lion's Achilles' seal. I'd be surprised if Rob has heard this record in the last 10 years,

and maybe even 15 years. I don't know, maybe he's like fucking around listening to like modern. I remember that song like, Modern art makes me want to rock out. That's like the one song I remember besides we formed the band. There is a Art Brute album from 2018 called Wham, Bang, Pow, Let's Rock Out, Four exclamation points in that title. I literally want to end the podcast.

podcast right now because I kind of want to die. But you can tell from that album title that they're mining similar material on that record as they did on bang, bang, rock and roll. I just wanted to hear you rant about that band. So I didn't even feel, I don't feel that compelled to offer my own take on this group. I mean, I need to know what you think. I mean, yeah, now I need to know. I'm going to push.

I'm going to knee act this one. Oh, God. Because I really don't have an opinion on this band. Like, they were, I remember them being really big, uh, in critical circles in 05. And it wasn't just pitchfork. I mean, there were a lot of places that liked this band. And really, 2005 was maybe the last year that a band like that could have like the number three critically adored record of the year.

I mean, it seems very much a product of like the last stand of a certain kind of music critic, which honestly, like broadly speaking, like you and and I are in that class, even though we're not maybe a fan of art brute, but like, we'd be in... By the way, this guy is like 43 years. This guy's my age. Eddie Argos? Yeah. Okay, so he would have been, yeah, mid-20s, I guess, then? Or, like, when... Like, he would have been 25 years old. Like, he is, like, literally, like, a couple months older than I am.

Yeah. I mean, you know, like, we talk about how there's certain artists now who seem critically adored because music writers feel like, oh, that could be me, or that could be my friend. that was the equivalent in 2005. Art Brute was like, oh, if I had a band as a music writer, I could be an art brute. That seems approachable to me, because they're not that musical. The guy can't really sing,

but he has opinions and he's, you know, he could think of funny lines or lines that he thinks are funny. Just look at this guy. Just Google image search. It's almost like he looks like he looks like he was 43. but like in 2005 and there's almost like a it's like a Jason Schwartzman type trying to play like someone in Fallout boy

I don't know man like I'm just getting I get this should probably be like address in therapy like how much I hate this fucking bad I love it just reminds me of like the worst parts of like being a music writer which is what I am I love it I love it I love your hate I love your hate for Art Brute it's great thank you That was a great year, Nay, Jeff, thank you.

I think he was. I hope that Jeff was teeing you up with that. I'm hoping that he saw a tweet from you. And he's like, I'm going to tee in up to talk about Art Brued. Let's get to, I think this is going to be our last letter. We had another letter. We'll hold that over for next week.

You want to read this letter? Yeah. So this one's coming from Ariya in Teaneck, New Jersey, which, TNAC. Fuck you. That teaneck, New Jersey. Great. Great name.

As a concert tea collector, what's your take on buying merchant shows, specifically T-shirts? When do you get them? When don't you? What are the qualifiers of a great concert shirt and what makes a bad tea? Personally, my faves have a front and back design, no skimping on front only. Back should ideally have tour dates. Front design should feel intricate and epic. No lazy single, small image like an R.E.M. Monster Tour shirt.

Okay, RIA is definitely one of our fucking. people. Yeah. Like, I, I think, like, we should, we should absolutely have, like, a monster episode because that was just such a formative experience for, I think, so many people of our age. Oh, my God. Buying it, seeing that. I saw that tour.

Grantley Buffalo opened. Good times. Yeah, I saw that tour, Luscious Jackson, was my opener. Just missed Radiohead. I think they, I think they either got on the tour or left the tour, like, right before my show, but that would have been Ben's era, Radiohead. That would have been pretty incredible. great letter great question i love that he's from teaneck and he's asking about t-shirts

you know there's like a he was from yeah v-shirt v-neck t-neck i-a right love it love it um so i'm i'm with uh aria here in terms of like t-shirt design like i used to buy concert t-shirts all the time like in my twenties and thirties i feel like most of the shows i went to i would buy a shirt and uh the result of that is that concert t-shirts make up the bulk of my wardrobe, like to a degree that's kind of embarrassing. Like, I actually haven't bought many concert t-shirts lately. I think at part because I have so many.

And I have so many shirts from bands that I don't really like anymore. You got to elaborate on that. Well, okay, I mean, I don't want to pick on a band here. There's one band in particular where I love the shirt, and I love this band in the arts. but I don't really like them anymore, but I still like the shirt, but I feel weird wearing the shirt because it's like... It's brand new, isn't it? It's Ackerville River.

Okay. It's a really cool, Ackerville River. You know, no shots at Ackerville River, Black Sheep Boy, stage names, like that era. Yeah. I was on board, and then I drifted away after that. But it's a nice shirt, but you feel like if you're wearing the shirt, you're endorsing the band. So I feel a bit like a phony if I'm not really on board. And there's always that chance that you're going to be out, and they'll be like, oh, Ackerville

River. Did you buy their latest record? And I got to be like, I don't know. I've listened to him like 15 years, but I like the shirt. Like, oh, really, you're that guy. Will Sheth's last album was actually really good. I know you did a profile of him for that record. Um, see, it's happening right now. See, I'm getting pressure to get back on board. Um, but I'm with, I'm with RIA here. I think a problem, another problem why I haven't bought a lot of concert shirts lately is that too many bands, they're way too cute with their shirts. Like, they're throwing like a animal head on there, you know, like a chicken head or something.

And there's like a weird font. You know, there's all this like abstract imagery going on. It's like the band's friend who has a passion for graphic design. You know, they're coming in. And you can't even tell like who the band is. And it's like, let's just simplify. throw the album cover on the front, band clearly identified across the chest,

tour dates on the back. It's a simple formula, it's basic, but that's what I want from the concert shirt. You know, simple design, doesn't have to be the album cover, but something simple, band name clearly identified. And I love the tour dates on the back,

and I like the date, like say the, you know, such and such tour, 2023. So then like when you're wearing the shirt, shirt in 10 years it's like oh this is like a marker in time like that's a cool thing don't just throw up some abstract thing it's like a chicken playing video games and like death metal font and it's like what the hell is this like you're overthinking it just give us a simple tour t-shirt man like that's what i want well uh you know i i love how like part of this question is like what's your

take on buying merch it shows like i i don't want to you know assume things from you but yeah we're generally in favor of buying. Of course. Even if it is like that, you know, chicken head playing video games with the death metal font, like fucking buy it. Like, give bands money. I know,

but like, I'm just saying, come on, give me, do like one basic option and one, you know, your friend who has a passion for graphic design, give him an option too.

But one for the studio, one for yourself. Exactly. Exactly. One basic one. So, you know, as far as this goes,

like, there's a difference between like, the concert shirt and band shirts. Like the ones that like have the tour dates, I don't know if I've ever bought one of those because, you know, most of the bands I like probably, you know, they either don't make them or it just kind of, it doesn't make sense for me to like wear a Joyce Manor, let's say, 2023 U.S. Tour T-shirt. And I also think unless we're talking about like, you know, an ERAs tour or like, you know,

Coachella where it's got all the bands listed, I think those shirts, unless you're like a pop fan you don't want to wear those for like the next 10 years. Like you want to like buy it and have it appreciate like a fine wine. But this conversation gets me think of like how few band shirts I've actually bought in my adult life. And when I do buy them,

they're like almost like band flavored graphic t-shirts. They're like as a matter of fact, if you can't tell what band it is, the better. The ones that I've thought... Oh, so we're diametrically opposed then on this. Yeah. The shirts I bought, like the ones I can recall, there was one really, really great one that I had from the band, Women.

Like, that great band remember some guys like classics. And it said, like, in really, really small font, like women, barely legible. But, like, the graphic design was cool. I also, one of my favorite band shirts was... I think in, like, it was Pitchfork Fest 2010. There was, like, a huge rainstorm. And so I bought a... bear in heaven t-shirt to replace the one I was wearing, which was soaked. It had the

beast rest, fourth mouth cover album on it. Great record, by the way. And the only one I currently have is from Algernon Cadillotter. I bought it at the reunion show. It's got like the band's name, but like in this very distressed, like abstract design. So you can't really, you have to ask who it was if you didn't know the band. So yeah, I mean, I think I kind of, not to get all Colin Coward on you, but we wearing band t-shirts. I think you alluded to this with the Ockerville River. It's like I never really wore like sports jerseys either. Like not ones where it said Cohen on the back nor I don't know,

whoever would have been in like Randall Cunningham or whatever. Just something about like wearing another person on a shirt never really sat right with me. But which is ironic because like I have like numerous tattoos of like album covers. So I don't know what it is about like wearing a t-shirt that makes me feel more uncomfortable than like literally having the American football house permanently etched on my arm. Yeah, that makes no sense to me whatsoever. The thing that you take off at the end of the day, that is somehow, it feels weird that you're like representing a person, but you're literally putting it on your body.

That isn't weird? That seems more extreme to me, but that's just me. I don't know, man. I just want more. I think that would actually be cool if you had like an indie band who was maybe only doing like a five-day tour but like you had like a 10-day tour but then like on the back you had the tour dates it's at like world tour 2023 yeah international tour where it's like one canada date it'd be great i mean yeah i i love that kind of stuff and i think that if you're in like the

the jam community or you're you're in the metal community like those two communities are like so merch uh you know it merch is so important in those scenes like you go to show you shows and like people are wearing like the tour shirt from like 10 years ago because like they're representing like hey I've been in this for a while man I'm not just like some Johnny come lately I've you know I saw them back in the day or I saw them back in the 90s you know like and I think that's maybe the mindset that I come from I actually like that I think that's pretty cool because it does it's just a marker in time I think the date on the shirt is very important and not enough fans do that

whole abstract thing I'm not a fan of, or at least that being the only option. I feel like that's often the old, like you have like three shirts and they're all kind of wacky. Need one for the basics. One for the basics out there, man. We want those shirts. We now reach the part of our episode that we call Recommination Corner where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week.

Ian, what you go first? All right. So I've mentioned this on Twitter a few times, but this today, a band called Loma Prieta is putting out an album called Last. It's their first since 2015. And how would I describe them? You know, they could probably tour with metal bands. They could probably tour with post-hardcore bands. They're on Death Wish, Inc. if we're talking about, like, the importance of labels. I think that one's super important because if I had to do a recommended if you like for this band, it's like bands on death wish, you know, and that includes, you know, whether we're talking about like Converge or

whether we're talking about like Greet Death. But this. This is a band kind of working in a, for lack of a better term, if you'll like Sunbather, another album that was released on Death Wish, you'll probably be into that. This is a little more from like a post hardcore, but like there's an occasional piano on there. They're not nine-minute songs. They're five-minute songs. And it is, if you're into like, I like post-rock, but I want it to be a little more ambitious, this is the record for you. You know, none of their previous albums really connected. with me all that much and maybe this is just kind of a last band sort of standing in this genre

phenomenon but this one um yeah i want to like hype this up because if you like this style of music at all this is definitely a band that knows what they're doing they've been doing it for a while and this one is just the right amount of ambitious but accessible um and yeah i i i recommend this one quite highly you know when you brought up sunbather just to go back to our band t-shirt conversation. It reminded me at the time where I was in a bar in Appleton, Wisconsin, mid-2010s. There was a trivia night going on, and I was wearing a deaf heaven t-shirt, and a dude on the other side of the bar saw me in the shirt, and he heckled me because he's like one of those, like, you know, I don't like, metal purists. Yeah, I don't like hipster metal type people.

Right. So anyway, it's a funny story. That's one of my funny band T-shirt stories. Anyway, my recommendation this week is a band from Michigan called Bonnie Dune. They put out a record this month called Let There Be Music. This is their third album overall. It's their first in five years. They put out a record in 2018 called Longwave.

That's around the time that I got on board with this band. There's a self-titled album from the year before. They had an interruption in their career. around 2020 when they were enlisted by Waxahatchie to be the backing band for her landmark record, St. Cloud, and I believe they also went on the tour with her. So they haven't had a chance to do their own music for a while, but now they're back with this new album. And, you know, we had a reference earlier about patio music.

I tweet a lot about, like, patio Hall of Fame albums. Well, Bonnie Dune is from an adjacent genre to that, which is cabin music. This band sounds like they make music that was recorded at a cabin. I don't know for sure if that's true, but it sounds like it was. But it's definitely the kind of music that you want to put on. If you're heading up into the great north woods of the Upper Midwest, of where I am a resident in Bonnie Dune, they're from there as well. Going up to your cabin, you want to put this music on.

It's very warm and homey-sounding folk rock. a lot of just kind of simple songs, very strummy guitars. They are not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination. But they're just really good at songwriting. They have a really good chemistry as a band. And it's just good vibes. Like this record comes on. You instantly go to the fridge.

You pull out a light domestic beer, discount priced. You put it in a can coozy. You sit in like a patio. chair, you watch the sun go down. That's what this record is. Let There Be Music, Bonnie Dune, the Cabin Rock Album of the Week. There are others,

but this is the one you want to put on this weekend. Whether you're at a cabin, or you want to imagine that you're at a cabin. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely going to check this out, but like, you know, when you talk about their last album, of course we got to give a shout out to the band long way. Exactly. We are

title way fans over here, produced by Dave Fridman in 2003. That is, yeah, classic, like the classic of the B team, meet me in the bathroom, people. Yeah, Long Wave, yeah, it's too bad, you know, they didn't call this album The Stills, you know, that would have been cool if this record was called The Stills or... Or if Long Wave comes back and makes the album called Bonnie Dune.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Indiecast. We'll be back with more news and reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix Taped Newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.