No Filler Music Podcast - Antenna: Cave In's "Sell Out" Space-Rock Masterpiece

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

Fresh off the success of their 2000 release Jupiter, Cave In signed to major label RCA to record their next album. The result was Antenna: a masterful blend of alternative, progressive, and space rock. While largely met with criticism from the band's fan base for its polished and commercial sound, the truly record stands out for its epic textures and sweeping song structures. Cave In - Stained Silver Cave In - Luminance Cave In - Seafrost Cave In - Youth Overrided Cave In - Breath of Water Cave In - Inspire Crumb - Nina Unwound - Unauthorized Autobiography Codeine - Cave-In Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And welcome back to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me as always. And our next stop on the tour bus schedule is Cave In. We're going to turn up the volume a little bit here, Q, as we heard from that intro there. enough of these manby-pamby-pamby emo bands you know yeah dude enough of these emo kids man by 2003 when this record came out cue we were sick of that shit yeah man and we said give me some fucking distortion dude although the irony is but i think the next full length is gonna be the most emo of all emo bands uh that we've covered so maybe a little bit heavier as far as the screams go than these guys yes the angst is going to be cranked up Anyway, if you're disappointed that we're not covering another punk rock or email band today,

we will circle back to it here pretty soon. But for now, for this episode, I think we've been stoked about this record and our plans to talk about it have been since the origin of the podcast, really. And it took us this long to get around to it. But I'm super stoked, man. this record is exceptional. I think it, you know, like when we, I think we touched on this with some of the other bands. Like, you know, you listen back on it, it's more of a nostalgia thing, right?

Like with Hey Mercedes and Hot Rod Circuit, Blinkgoin 82, especially, dude. Blink 282, yeah. We acknowledge being removed from it, right, and no longer being in the age group that like, yeah, it's a little cheesy, it's a little corny. You have to have really been the right age to appreciate. it. But with this record, I think it's a truly a hidden gem cue, which is part of our intro. Right. This record is something else, man.

Yeah, dude, this is an album that I'm not just revisiting for nostalgia. And it's not like necessarily a masterpiece of its genre by any means. Right. But there's just something about the imagery and the lyrics and just the intensity of each song on this album. It stands the test of time for me, man. That song that we play in the intro was called Stained Silver. It's the opening track to the record we're talking about today, which is called Antenna. Came out in 2003 on RCA Records, and Q, I know you've got a lot to tell us about RCA

and the drama that came with RCA, but we'll talk about that later. Anyway, yeah, let's just get into it. This is going to be a music-heavy episode. Lots of clips. A lot of these songs are songs that you have to hear in its entirety, right, to really appreciate the impact of the song. So, yeah, we're going to have a lot of music. Yeah. And I want to focus on these lyrics, too, man. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So, Q, we've hyped this shit out of this record. I think we've been hyping it also for the last, like, two weeks. You know what, dude? I think the hype was over after the intro clip, dude, you know? I hope so. You hear that fucking 30 seconds worth of stained silver and you're, you know? like, hello, my ears are perked.

My ears are perked and you got my attention. Hopefully that's what the listener said. Hopefully. And you know what? If you're, if you, yeah, I'm reading it right here. I was going to say, if you, I'm curious to know how many, how many listeners out there are familiar with this record. Yeah, I don't know how.

So from what I've read, these guys made a name for themselves in the metal core genre. in the mid to late 90s. Founding members are two dudes, Jay Fraschetti and Stephen Brodsky. They formed the band in 95. Other members have gone in and out. And if you listen to their early, early stuff, they are a straight-up scream-o hardcore band.

That's the only way I know how to describe. They're in the metal genre, but it's not like, and help me out here, Travis, it's not like doom metal, like guttural yelling metal. It's more of the hardcore. Yeah. It's a different branch of the metal tree for sure. It's not more, quote, unquote, traditional metal. Like you said, it's metal, metal core, like screamo almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So, again, if you listen to Cave in, like when we start playing. these tunes from from these albums. We actually have two albums we're going to cover music from today. But you're going to think, where's the fucking metal in this? But that's because they changed vocalists pretty early on. The main vocalist from the beginning, his name's Jay, he ended up focusing on another band, kind of like how we were talking about with, with Braid. They lost one of singers. And then he ended up going and just focusing on this other band full time. So Stephen Brodsky took over as lead vocalist and I want to say like around 99. And so then they kind of changed up their style a little bit. And I'm going to quote Brodsky here. Being a quote huge metal fan,

he said, I realized I couldn't keep singing like that without destroying my voice. And on top of that, we were scared that we would be pigeonholed as a metal core band and we would be stuck playing shows with other metal core bands. We wanted to do something different. So then they start experimenting with their sound around 99, 2000, and they were quote described as a emo metal radio head. Man, if that doesn't get you excited. Yeah. I don't know. So with that, I want to play a clip from their five-song EP that came out in 99 called Creative Eclipses.

So again, at this point, they've changed hands with lead singer, and they're kind of doing a change in sound, which means nothing to most of you unless you happen to press pause and go play their early stuff. It doesn't matter. Here is a song from their five-song EP, Creative Eclipse. Eclipses. This song is called luminance. So what's interesting about that clip, having never heard it before, I've actually never listened to anything but antenna from these guys, is that you start to hear the makings of, you know, how they got from that to the antenna sound, you know. Yeah.

And I love the drumming. The drumming is really cool, man. Yeah, and me too. So the drummer, his name is J.R. Connors. and then we've got again, Stephen Brodsky on lead guitar and vocals, Adam McGrath on guitar as well, and then Caleb Schofield on bass guitar. That's the lineup at the time. Emo Metal Radiohead? I mean, is that what they were saying about that sound or the sound they had before that?

About creative eclipses. I would have to listen to more of it before I could say one way or the other, but maybe. Other people described them as Prague rock kind of like Rush but without the annoying singer. Whoever said that did not like the lead singer of Rush. No, but they, I mean, they, but I see that. They are classified as a progressive rock band. Yeah. Maybe that's why they get the Rush label, right?

Yeah. And so here's the thing with creative eclipses and with other albums leading up to antenna, leading up to getting signed to RCA, they were a lot more experimental and progressive in that their songs would, you know, progress in a certain way, and they would be seven, eight minutes long. They get signed to RCA,

and basically it turns into a full-time job, and they fucking hate it. And this dude, we have sung this tune time and time again on this podcast. You get signed to an RCA. You get signed to a major... I mean, the likes of an RCA, you can say that. You get signed to an RCA type label, a major record label,

and the life of your band just gets sucked dry. That's what happened to cave in, unfortunately. And this is something that we're learning right now. You know what I mean? Like, when we discovered this album, antenna was cave in to us. We didn't think about pressures from major record labels or any of that kind of stuff. We just listened to an album and appreciated it.

So it's, I don't know, I wouldn't say it's a bummer, but it definitely changes my feelings towards this album. Does it taint your experience of the album a little bit? It makes me feel for these dudes, because from the interviews that I watched and, and, you know, articles that I've read, for starters, they went into RCA and then RCA expected a certain sound from them. So they would go into their practice space and they would have their practice sessions and it would be from, they said, like, 12 p.m. to 5.30, six days a week. And they would be practicing one song and they would have been doing this song a certain way

for months and then overthink it and completely change the way that they went with a certain song and then just completely flip it and do it completely different after months and months of five and a half hours a day

practicing a way that this certain song sounds. And then they listen back to the album. There's a lot of songs on this album that are fringe-worthy today. I don't understand. So why did they decide to change it after hours of practicing us? Because of pressures and overthinking.

So RCA would tell them to change it? No, dude, from what I was hearing with these... That's their own fucking problem. But that's because of the pressures of the things that RCA expected for them. We need these cookie cutter, you know, verse, chorus, verse interlude chorus, whatever. Perfect little packaged four and a half to five minute radio songs. Yeah, yeah. You know, we don't want it any other way.

But that's the thing, like knowing this. record, I think there are some songs that probably fall into that, like, that are radio, quote-unquote, radio-templated, you know? Yeah. But there's some other ones that I think, I think it's safe to say that they got, they got what they wanted out of it, you know, especially, you know, C-frost is almost nine minutes long, right? Yeah. And that's track six.

I don't know if we're going to play that song. Oh, we're playing the hell out of C-frost, dude? You kidding me? All right, then exactly. It's the first one we're playing. Well, let's see, you know, knowing that, right? let's see if we come away from this saying that these are cookie cutter songs because I don't think they are. So, okay, I think more than anything, what they learned from this experience with RCA is that, you know, okay, we had all these people that were paid to do all these things for us as a band, which we were grateful of.

but we realized at the end of it that we could do all those things on our own and have complete control. And we wouldn't be absolutely, you know, shells of musicians and like we wouldn't have to think of this as a job. We can do this on our own and we can be successful at it without RCA.

And we'll get into a little bit more of it, but let's play a song. Yeah. This is up there for me as far as favorites on the record. This is track six. We're going to play two clips. This song is called Sea Frost.

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great song to play as our first assessment of this record here, because it's so, like, sweeping and, like, very, I don't want to say epic, because I don't like using that word. Well, you know what, dude, there's another song that we're going to play.

Yes. That is epic, my friend. And I'm glad. Gladly call it that. You're right. But what I'm saying is like if they were, if they were concerned about the cookie cutter song, like this is not one of those examples like. And there's even a quote from, and you may have had this in your notes too, cute,

but a review of this record on a publication called Delusions of Adequacy said kind of the same thing that we just talked about there. It said there are multiple songs here that are more than deserving of radio play and massive exposure. and the world would be a better place if that happened. On the other hand, there are also sprawling moments like the aforementioned sea frost, which allow the band to really spread its wings. Nice. There you go, spread their wings, right? Yeah, I like that.

Sprawling, maybe that's the word I was looking for. It's very like, you know, that intro, the baseline is killer. Oh, yeah. And something that I've always loved about this record is just the, like the sonic quality of the guitars, you know, and just that wall of sound that they kind of pull off. Not in the way that like a shoe gaze band

would do a wall of sound. Right. Right. It's different. But it's, yeah, there's something about it. And do, with this song, um, I feel like they capture the feeling of the lyrics.

Yeah. I don't know, dude. Okay. I know what you mean. Let's dive in the lyrics real quick and then we'll get into clip two. I think it's, It's a metaphor here. This person is not literally freezing.

They're singing about a love that's gone cold. Classic heart breaks on. Dreaming lightly on your own, I wouldn't mind you being alone. Nothing here has been the same ever since this winter came. Oh, do you think he's talking about like Game of Thrones? Maybe. I mean, when did Georgie boy? I don't know.

Write that shit? No idea. Seized the engine in my heart and the cold could break my soul apart. Frozen on my knees, I pray, love will melt this all away. So he's got a cold heart, Q. He's got a cold heart. But like, I don't know. When I listen to this song, I get goosebumps, dude.

I get a little chill. There's several goosebumps moments on this record and we're going to play the most goosebumps of them. Oh, dude. Yeah. when we play Breath of Water. And we're going to talk about that moment, dude, when we get to it. Oh, all right.

Let's play Clip Two from C-Frost. We may have to do like a moment of silence after that part if I could hype it up a little bit more. But we'll get to that song later. So Clip 2 from C-Frost is basically just an outro. Something I wanted to mention about this outro cue. I think that this could lead a little bit of credibility to the radio head. comparisons that maybe they got in the past. Because I think some of the manipulations and stuff that they do to his vocals and

like kind of the cool sounds and stuff that they do, kind of Radiohead-esque, you know, if I can say that. Well, let's give it a listen, brother. Yeah, let's just hear it. Let's hear it. And then we'll see if I'm right or not. Here's what I appreciate about that song, dude. Rarely does a song end with a buildup.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because I was building up to something. Yeah. It felt like. Yeah. And then it just kind of descended into noisy chaos. But you can hear a little bit of maybe like a kid A era.

Yes. I was thinking that too, dude. And if you tried hard enough, you can hear a little bit of Tom York coming through. Yeah. A little bit. Tom York has. Yeah. Tom York has arguably one of the greatest voices in rock music ever.

So it's hard to reach the heights of Tommy York. work. But let me tell you, man. Stephen Brodsky's vocals is up there for me as far as like most, some of my favorite vocalists in the rock genre, dude. Yeah, he's got a great voice. I love his voice. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. All right, Q, what are we doing now? What's our next track here? Well, at first I want to quote, let's see, McGarth, who is the other guitar player. So Antenna comes out. They're on tour nonstop. They're interviewed all the time. And he says, we think we can do better than Antenna. Some parts sound labored over, and moments of the record seem like the life has been sucked out of it.

But we're very proud of Antenna as a record. Three years ago, if you said we'd write songs like this, I would never have believed it. Do you think he was talking about C-Frost? No, I just wanted to quote him on that because, like, yes, all the, you know, moments felt labored. and like the life was sucked out of them in these RCA years, but they were still really proud of what they did. And it was something they never thought that they could achieve even just a few years earlier.

Yeah, I mean, that's one of those things where it's like, you know, I'm glad that they were proud of it. You know what I mean? Because I've worked on projects that were a beat down, dude, and like deadlines that were super tight and we were overworked. Yeah. But at the end of the day, like, you know, if you're proud of the result, then,

then, you know, that's all that matters. Not to say that they weren't treated like shit by RCA, because I'm sure they were. But I'm glad that they don't look back at it and they're completely like, you know, regret it, right? Sounds like they don't regret it, which is good. Yeah, no, it's, they think of it as a learning experience. And there's more I'm going to say on it,

but I want to just play some more tunes. So we're going to jump down one track. Track eight off the record. This one is called Youth Overrided. Yeah, this has always been one of my favorite track. on the record. Same, dude. I love the lyrics. I love the guitar. Man. The guitar is killer. Yeah, dude. The lyrics are great. Like you're saying, uh, you know, it's a song about, uh, feeling like youth has passed you by, right? My favorite line, I guarantee you it's yours as well.

Uh, when he says, I just need something. Just fucking give me something to live for again, damn it. That wasn't all in it, but, I don't think that's, I was, not all of that was in it. He says, I just need something. I don't want to fear every dying year. Don't you dare tell me, I cannot be made to believe that the rings under my eyes are really blessings in disguise. I mean, listen, here's the thing, though, dude. We've spent the last few weeks being nostalgic about our youth, right?

I mean, that's what this back-to-school batch of episodes is about, is reflecting back on how great our youth was. Not everybody has or fortunate enough to maybe look back and have fond memories of their youth. I don't know which way, you know, he goes with his experience, right? But it sounds like it went too fast for him. And his youth was overrided, right? Yeah, he's saying like, I'm old already and everything's already been decided in my life. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you can interpret it in multiple ways, right? Yeah, you can. He's either the youth was stolen from him, meaning he had a shitty childhood. and he had a bad experience. Therefore, he wasn't really able to, you know, have a childhood, quote unquote. Yeah, his youth was stolen from him. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I love the lyrics, like you said.

The guitar has always stood out to me as well. I love how it starts with, I don't know if you know how to get that sound on a guitar, but you just kind of pluck the, like the below the nut or whatever, above the nut, but below the, I don't fucking know. I didn't even know there was a nut on a guitar. Other guitar players listening out there like, are you fucking idiot, it's the, it's, anyway, you can get that sound if you,

if you kind of, in a couple of different places. I like it, that, they've got that with basically some like, a little bit of echo on it, and they got this kind of cool like, harp sound almost to it, right? Well, I don't have another clip for this song, but.

Well, there's a cool guitar solo. How about you play the guitar solo, man? All right, dude. We'll just play the guitar solo for you. Yeah, so there you go, Q. to hear a little bridge there. And not really a proper guitar solo, but still like kind of a little, little ditty there on the guitar.

Yeah. And I like the lyrics too in the bridge or whatever you want to call it. He says, all these memories bailing out on me gone into the void. God must need them more anyways. It's like, you know what? It's fine. We all get old. It's fine.

I'm fine with it now. Yeah, exactly. Just, you know what? You just, you're, you're, you're, resigned. You've resigned to it. Fuck it. Oh, that's sad, man. Jesus.

All these memories gone into the void. Dude. Damn, dude. Hold on to your memories, man. That's all he got. God must need the more anyways, dude. So I'll let him happen. What does that even fucking mean?

I don't know, dude. So, speaking of, like, depressing, he don't even know until we play this next song. This next song, man. The lyrics are fucking killer. All right, man. But hey, before. we jump into our next pick, let's take a quick break.

Now, Q, are we going to, are we going to play, is this one of those moments where we can play this from start to finish? Should we? Because I, I, yes, I think we should. Okay. Because there are certain songs that you need to hear from start to finish to get the full impact. And I think this is one of those songs, man.

Otherwise, it's us, our fucking chuckleheads chiming in in the middle being like, who isn't that cool? Here's the next part. It's like when you're watching, you're trying to watch a movie. on TV and for some damn reason they cut to a commercial and like a really tense moment

in the film and they're like what the fuck you do it exactly and the thing about this song is you have to hear it from start to finish to really get the buildup and because of the story that he's telling and ultimately leading up to sort of like the climax release moment of the song

which is what we talked about earlier oh yeah dude you need that release yes this song man and until Tell our network tells us, listen, twin boys, you can't be playing full songs. We're going to fucking do it. Yeah. What, what, is RCA going to come knock on my door?

He's scared of RCA. RCA doesn't give a shit about us, dude. The dog, the little dog. I don't care about that little dog. Right. What's he going to do? He's captivated by that old-timey record player, dude. Exactly.

And I guarantee you he's not listening to K-Bin. So someone's got to do it. Let's do it, man. From start to finish, here we go. This song is called Breath of Water. Specials. Do we need to give that moment of silence, man? Yeah, I feel like we do.

Because, yeah, I mean, all right, so, yeah, I mean, I'm fucking dumbfounded, dude. Dude, the last time I heard you like this is when we listened to Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. Yeah. I don't remember which song, but you were like, I don't know. Because, like, it's one of those things where the music obviously, just spoke for itself. Well, and we can't read the entire song. No, no, no, but the beauty of those lyrics, let's just read at the very least.

I love the imagery here. And not to mention, like, the story that he's telling with this song. Yeah, dude. But, okay, so we're just going to read, I'm just going to read the lyrics or the chorus, because I love this shit. Hang on. Let me start off with the first verse, dude. Okay.

All right. It is time to tell the truth to anyone who cares to know what brought him to this point. Curled up into a ball, they stole the only things that could break his fall. Almost out of air, far beyond repair, doomed. Time is wearing thin. The technicolor is gone. See it all. Numb and black and white. Now, Travis, go ahead and read the chorus, dude. Okay. Because I love this shit. Yeah, me too, man. So now, please, it's your last drop of air. So now, breathe and take your very first breath of water. Allow yourself just one breath of water. Allow yourself this one last breath. I love the imagery of taking your last drop

of air and breathing in your first breath of water. I can't get enough of that shit. Go and read the lyrics for yourself. It's a really tragic story. beautifully written, wonderfully done, I think, as a group the way they approached this song. Yes. And especially the buildup to that end that we

insisted on playing the whole song so we could get the full impact of it. The guitar solo at the end, the buildup to that guitar part at the end, and then the chorus when the whole band comes together at the end. And then at the very, very end when he has

that moment where he's just kind of screaming breath of water over and over again. It just gets me every time, dude. Yeah, dude, I know. It's great. Yeah, and so, you know, we started out, they start out the song with, it's time to tell the truth to anyone who cares to know. You skip a few lines down, he says, I'd rather spare the truth from anyone who cares to

know. Like, I'd rather not really tell you, like, this full extent of the truth. Yeah. Of how we found him. But here it is. Yeah. Anyways. It's a beautiful song.

Right. And it's, it's, it's. it's, I mean, I would argue you can't make it any better. I don't, yeah. You know what I mean? And this is one's interesting about this song, dude. If they spent so much time agonizing over this record because of pressures from the studio, yeah.

I would like to know, was this song paired down in any way? Was there more to this song? Probably not. Remember I sent you a link to, um, oh, you're right. You're right. Yeah. At the end of creative eclipses, which came out in 99, they, have a demo version of this song.

Yeah, you're right. It is eight minutes long. So that's, you know, so that's, they did cut out a few minutes worth of, of tunage, but I think this version is better than their demo. Yeah, I think so too. But that tells you they had been working on that song for quite a bit. Yeah, for at least four years, probably longer, longer than that. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think this song is probably why they get the progressive rock label attached to them, because this is one of those songs that's got a very kind of progressive rock vibe to it. It's a story that they're telling, right? There's a lot of imagery involved. Yeah. So with their change in sound, they got a lot of backlash, mostly from the metal community, not so much from the fact that they signed to a major label.

So not so much coming from the independent world, but more so from the metal world saying, like how could, you know, how could you guys change your sound? Yeah. Derogatory, this and that. You guys went soft, basically. So they got a lot of shit from the metal world, but they said, you know what, we didn't want those kind of people around us anyways.

So I'm glad that we weeded them out. So, you know, with Stephen realizing, I can't fucking make a career out of screaming the entire time because, you know, my poor vocal, vocal cords. And he's got a great voice anyway, man. Yeah. So with him realizing just with the technical reasons for not wanting to continue in the metal core scene, to signing on to RCA, 2003, this album comes out. They go on this massive tour, worldwide tour with foo fighters.

They support the foo fighters. They support muse. They're just touring nonstop after this album comes out. By 2005, I'm going to quote, Steve. even again. He says, corporate cave-in is dead. And then they come out with an album called Perfect Pitch Black, where they get back on their own, or not their own, but they get back on a smaller label where they pretty much have complete control over everything. He says, corporate cave-in is dead. Perfect pitch black is the grave marker. So basically they're saying

corporate cave-in was birthed in 2003. By the time, re-release this album, Perfect Pitch Black, which came out in 2005. Corporate Cave-In is completely dead, and this is the grave marker for that. Here is proof that Corporate Cave-In is dead. If you listen to Perfect Pitch Black, it is like a perfect blend of... The Old &... Corporate Cave-in. Yeah, of Corporate Cabin and their old stuff. There's some heavy scream moments, but most of it is a little bit more dialed in and, you know, structured,

and it's really good stuff, dude. We're playing antenna because this is the album of theirs that we latched onto way back then. The funny thing is I like quote unquote corporate cave-in. Right. Me too. I don't know any better because I didn't really listen to any of the other stuff. Yeah. But I fell in love with corporate cave-in.

Yeah. So if we go back to some of the press around antenna, it's not like it was, like you said, some of the previous fan base wasn't happy with it. But it got, for the most part, pretty good coverage. Pitch of Work being the exception, of course. But alternative press, some publication, the author of that, it gave him a five-star rating out of five. And he said, this guy, his name is Brian Krause.

He says, this record should be in everyone's stereo this spring, as it may go down in the history books as the pet sounds for the aggressive rock world. Now that's a fucking compliment. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, I was bummed out when I found these interviews with these guys. I was super bummed out only because, and I'll post the link to this interview, these guys just looked, they just look absolutely drained.

Like, nothing about the interview is fun. they look every every single answer that they give to this guy that's asking them questions it seems like they feel obligated to answer them like they just don't want to be there it looks like they're backstage you know they just look completely exhausted and just completely over it i mean they got to tour with foo fighters man well i don't know where this interview where this is in you know in relation to that but sure but that was after the the album was released after also dude i i didn't even mention this and i'll I feel like it's worth mentioning because this happens so many times with quite a few artists that we've covered.

This is the story. Their A&R guy completely ditched them when they needed him the most. So same with Spoon. Like they just stopped getting help with promotions and help with touring and everything from RCA. Basically, they just cut all ties with them. Why did they though? Because people weren't, weren't latching on to the record the way that they thought. It wasn't as big of a success as they thought.

They released Anchor as a single, and RCA basically just thought Kavan was going to skyrocket with Anchor, and it didn't happen. So they just tossed them aside. So, Q, we don't have any more clips for this, for this track, right? For this album, right? No, this is it, man. Okay, so I want to mention this. I think we focused on more of the

sort of the heavier, not heavier, heavier, not like distortion and like tempo wise, but like more songs with some gravity to them, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to mention that there are a lot of songs on this record that are a little bit more uplifting, I guess.

I don't know. I know, dude, I know you hate that. Fuck, I get it. I don't know how to say it, but, you know, there's some more upbeat songs. You know what? Let's just do something different right now. Okay.

Let's just play a couple, like, let's play a minute of a song that's a little more, quote, unquote, uplifting. I like Inspire. I'm a fan of Inspire. You want to play? Okay, Inspire, sure. And Inspire is one of my favorite tracks on the record. So let's just play a little bit of it. Just a little bit.

The other flavor that you get on this record, just in case we haven't convinced you enough with the tracks we played. There is a different side of this record as well. So, yeah, here's Inspire. Who inspires you, Travis? Right now, dude, nobody. And that's just all I'm going to leave it at that. Well, you know what, dude, this just shows how much this album means to us. And I don't, you know, maybe that doesn't mean anything to anyone.

This is a great track, though. And we had every intention of playing the song. But then we said, well, we got to play these other songs. Yeah, like we can't leave out sea frost or breath of water or youth overrided. Right. And we're like, well, how long do we want this episode to be? It's going to be one of the longer episodes. And I'm fine with that.

Because I'm glad we got to play Inspire. That's a great track. And I think it showcases, again, how exceptionally well they do that wall of sound. I wish I had better words to use, dude. Right, because wall of sound is like dedicated to the shoe gaze. To shoeges, right? But it's still, but it still applies here, I feel like. Yeah.

You know, right out of the gate. And what I love about that intro is how it starts with that very more like, in the baseline, dude, the base player's fucking killer, dude. Oh, yeah. I don't know if I've ever really given him credit yet, but the bass player is fucking bringing it, bringing the goods every track, man. Mr. Caleb's go-field.

But what I like about that song, how it transitions into that very, quote-unquote, I'm going to say generic, because it is kind of a generic rock riff that. It is. Yeah, how many times does that have been done? I know. But I like the way that they do it.

Anyway, all right, Q, we have to stop. Otherwise, we can keep talking about this record forever. Yeah, I do. Let's wrap it up, man. It's what you're heard time. Yes, yes, yes. All right. Anyway, this is a record that I can safely say.

There is no filler on this record. There is no filler. There's a single. But there's no filler. There is a single. But every single track is a banger. It's a record that you push play on and you got to listen all the way through. Now we say that a lot, but this is one of those records that you have to hear the whole thing.

and hopefully we've convinced you that it'll be worth it for you. All right, Q. So that was Cave-in. That was their album, Antenna, came out in 2003. One of my favorite records, probably of all time, dude, it's on that list. Same. It has a special place in my heart and not for the same reasons that some of their other records we've done recently have. I mean, this sits legitimately on my top records list, right?

Yeah. Not because of nostalgia or anything like that, because I legitimately love this record. and come back to it all the time. All right, man. Like you said, it's what you heard time. And I think we mentioned this last week. We have a Spotify playlist now where we are putting all of our What You Heard's.

So if you want a hodgepodge of music, like this playlist, like, it's all over the map, right? Which is the point of what you heard is to bring any and every type of song. It's randomly random. That's the whole point. Yeah. But these are our weekly What You Heard's, which is just basically a random track that myself and Quentin stumbled upon in between recordings, right?

Because we listen to music all the time, right? That's what we do. And the whole point of this podcast is to share music with people. So we thought, let's figure out a way to share even more music with people every week. And that was the birth of what you heard. I've done some shuffle plan. on this playlist a few times. And as random as it is, dude, it's a good listen.

Like, even if it goes from doom metal to jazz, you know, right? It's entertaining. And it's good. It's good stuff. Yeah. So, I mean, here's the thing. The funny thing about it is, like a lot of times if I share a playlets with somebody, I always tell them, hey, make sure you hit shuffle, right?

For this one, you don't, you really don't have to because it is, like you said, it's all over the map. Yeah. There's no need to shuffle. But feel free to shuffle if you want. Yeah. And the list is just in order of when we play it. Exactly.

Yeah. And I've got to add it in from the top down. So every week, the top song is going to be the new one that we just played. Yeah. The newest, right. And as we mentioned earlier last week, if you follow this playlist, you're going to get to hear our what you heard track before the episode drops. So if that incentivizes you. We got at least one person to follow us.

Probably Tyler, maybe. Tyler, are we shouting out to Tyler again, dude? I'll shout out to Tyler fucking every week. Tyler, if you listen and we love you. Hey, we mentioned Spoon in this episode. Did we? Dude, okay, Tyler, maybe you can help us out. How many times have we mentioned the band Spoon in this freaking podcast?

Yeah, Tyler, go back and listen to every episode again. Could you do some homework for us? Yeah. Because Tyler is our resident Spoon nerd. Let's just give them that title right now. Sure. All right. Anyways, let me go first.

All right. Okay. Good. Because my song's going to knock your fucking socks off, dude. I'm not even wearing socks right now. So what are you going to do about that? Well, then it's already done. All right.

So I don't remember where I heard this song, but here it is. No, dude. I don't think so. Some fucking bar. You know what I, man, listen, some bar. I'm not going anywhere these days. And I usually listen to KexP in my car. And I'm not going nowhere's.

Okay? Well, shit. Anyways, this band is called Krum. And they have one full-length album that just came out last June. The album is called Jinks. They are a psychedelic rock jazz band. That's all I'm going to say. Okay, that sounds cool.

There is a killer fucking song on this record. I'm going to play it for you. This song is called Nina. Good track, solid track. I feel like that's very good. very similar to one of my What You Heard's from a couple of weeks back. Similar kind of sound. If you like that kind of jazzy psychedelic, then listen to the song Tops on the playlist.

I'm sorry, the band Tops, a song called Direct Sunlight that I played a couple of weeks back. Anyway, yeah, that's good, good stuff. Yeah, they remind me of, they're like a little bit more jazzy, groovy, cock and swan. Okay. Yeah, I mean, the voice is, I mean, Cockat Swan is kind of a shoegaze. Right. Not just with her voice, but more so with the groove. Like the beats, the drum beats. The groove. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I got you there. I'm with you on that one. I love it, dude. It's good stuff. I will say that's my favorite song on the album, but it's definitely worth giving to listen to. And again, this is their first full-length release. So again, that's a band called Crum. Album is called Jinks. The song is called Nina. All right, Chavez, what you've been heard in lately, brother?

All right, man. I found a record from the 90s that I fucking fell in love with instantly. You've been like swimming in 90s for the last couple weeks. That's true. Waiting in it, maybe. Yes, knee deep, maybe even waist deep at this morning. With your floaties on. So a few weeks back, my watcher heard, everything revolves around my watcher heard because it

reflects what I'm listening to, right? It reflects what you heard. It reflects what I've been heard. I brought a band called Hum, which a lot of people probably have familiarity with. They're a band from the 90s that had, basically they had one single called Stars, came out in 95. And I've been listening to their, I've been listening to mainly two other records. You'd prefer an astronaut and Downwardus Heavenward. Two great records.

I brought a track off a downward or seven word a few weeks back. So anyway, a lot of times when I do that, when I find a band that I love, I'm like, okay, can I have some more of that, please? And then I try to find similar bands, right? So, and the funny thing is I wouldn't call these guys similar at all. But I bounced to them from other bands that were similar to kind of thing, right, to hum. So here's, I'm going to shout Spoon out again, Tyler, if you're listening. I would say that this record reminds me of

one of my favorite spoon songs ever Minor Tough off of Fuck of me Sorry, I'm sorry Tyler I'm sorry I can't think of it either right now A series of sneaks

Jesus, man is right there Okay, it reminds me of Minor Tough and it also reminds me of Girls Can Tell era spoon Oh so that's like Primo spoon sound. Yes, but now I will say that it's a little bit more punk oriented,

but it's got that quality that Minor Tough has, which I think is more of a spoon song with a little more bite to it, right? Yeah, and you know, dude, I think it's time to just play the song. Okay, you know, I like to talk a lot. Yeah, dude. But you got to paint a picture, you know. Why don't we let the music paint that tune? All right, we're going to let this music paint.

So this band is called Unwound, and the record came out in 1996. It's called Repetition. This is their fifth record. And as the singer and guitarist Justin Trasper says, he says he likes that word. It sort of describes a lot of things. People have said that our music is repetitious.

So I thought it would be funny if we called our record that. Here's something different, Q. We've got to let this song play all the way through. There I said it. I'm sorry. I know this song, this, uh, episode is really long already. It's fine, dude.

I'm the one who edits it together, so it's just my problem. Yeah. You got nothing else on. You just sit back and relax. I'll do all the work. I will. All right. Let's play the tune.

This song is called unauthorized autobiography by a band called Unwound. Wait, hang on. Now, what's the band name and what's the album name? I already said it. I know, dude. I'm just fucking with you. It's repetition in all the right ways, dude. Thank you.

Right. I mean, that's, yes. I mean, that's the funny thing about that, right? He's right. And he said, you know, a lot of people said our music is repetitious, so we're just going to name our record that. Well, this is one of those moments, man, when you're just like, okay, cool. So the landscape of music was way more far along earlier on than I thought it was. As far as like, because of the age that we are.

Yes. When we got into, like, seriously got into music, you know, like when we did, the time that we did. Like, I didn't know that this kind of shit was already going on. I don't know. Well, that's the thing. It's like Spoon was doing this not, Spoon was doing this not too much later, right? Right. I mean, yes. And that's the thing. Here's what, here's what I've been doing lately, right? Is I think what you're trying to get at is like, uh, most of the rock bands of the 90s that we were familiar with, familiar with because we were only really tuning into the stuff that our brother was playing. Yeah.

which was more the mainstream stuff. It was more grunge, alternative rock. It was more, yeah, smashing pumpkins. Yeah. You know, the Nirvana and stuff like that. There was so much more to the 90s rock that I'm learning about, that I'm diving into. And I find that I really love this more obscure stuff, right? Bands like Hum, bands like Unwound.

There's a ton of other bands that I'm saving for the next few weeks. Here's who I was reminded of. And I had to remind myself just now, after being reminded of this band, that they also have been doing since the 90s, modest mouse. Yeah. Like that kind of sound where when you compare it to the quote unquote mainstream, which is funny to put grunge in the mainstream, it's hilarious to me. But that's what I mean.

I can hear Cobain just wrong over. Dude, I know. But like, yeah, that shit was going on in the 90s, way into it. And we just happened to discover bands like that, you know, 10 years later. And the thing, but yeah, that's a funny thing is that probably the bands that we heard in the 2000s that we thought were like indie bands, like Interpol. Interpol has some of that sound too a little bit. They were probably influenced by these guys. Yeah, dude.

I'm totally, I'm so into this, man. I'm excited to listen to more of it. Yes, I was going to say, listen to repetition. You know, they've got several records before that. I listened to repetition and then I listened to the album after that, the one that, the one that. the album that came out right after that one was called Challenge for a Civilized Society. But everything I've heard from them is good. Like I've skipped around here and there.

Awesome. Have you listened to Fake Train? So that's their first album. It came out in 93. Have you gone back that far? Yes. And it is more, it does sound more punk rock oriented, you know?

They're not proper punk rock. They're more like, you know, post-punk, as, you know, if you will. But repetition is a solid fucking record, man. All the way through,

it's great. I'm excited. to give to go. And I went back and forth on which track I wanted to play. The first three tracks on the record are killer. Corpse Pose, Track 2. Yeah. Is fucking dope, dude. It's a great record. It's great band. It's one of those records that I hit playing it instantly connected with it, you know, and just fell in love with it, man. So anyway. Well, I'm, dude, I'm looking at the timestamp on this. All right. All right. And, man, I'm going to have to really hone in my producing skills to narrow this puppy down because this one is lengthy.

You'll get it down, dude. You'll get it down, dude. Yeah, you know what? It's fine. I'll take care of it, dude. You just sit back, relax. I will. These guys are from Washington, by the way, Q.

Of course they are, dude. Olympia? Olympia? Fuck, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You know, Kirk Cobain lived in Olympia. Well, there you go. Does the word tumwater mean anything to you, cute?

Yeah. Okay, well, they're from Tomwater slash Olympia. Cool. So there you go. All right, man. All right. Let's get on with it. Have we?

We still haven't decided who we're going to cover as a sidetrack for Kavan, but we'll figure it out. We've got a week to do it. So, as always, you can find us on the Pantheon podcast network. There, you can find a lot of other awesome music-centered podcasts. You can also check us out on our website, no-filler podcast.com. There, you can stream all of our episodes as well as dive into show notes for each episode. You can also find us on pretty much any podcast app,

including iTunes. Should be able to find us there. Hey, you know what? Go on to iTunes and give us a review. Yes. Thank you, Tyler for doing that. Yes. Another shout out to Tyler.

Tyler gave us a glowing review. Yes. You don't have to glow. You can be honest with us if you want. Give us zero stars, dude. Give us zero. No, no. Only five stars on iTunes.

Okay. If you want to give us a zero star, then just yell at us on. on Twitter. I'm joking. Do whatever you want, but we prefer five stars for iTunes. I mean, I would prefer six or seven stars, but that's not an option. You can do that, Q. All right, well, so for the outro, today, we're going to play a song from Kodine off their 1991 album Frid Stars. Guess what the song name is, dude? Oh yeah, that's right. It's called Cave in. That's right. and that is the reason why these boys decided to name their band.

Kavin is an homage to this band. They are a post-hardcore band from the early 90s. That's the same wheelhouse that my what you heard was from, dude. So this is great. Yep, it's good stuff. It's a great song. I'm glad that I found it. Well, I feel like it found me by popping up on the Wikipedia page for Kaven.

I didn't fucking find it, dude. I didn't do shit. You know? It found me. Give yourself credit. What? I'm not giving myself credit for that. Okay.

You read, I mean, you, you read a Wikipedia article and you found it. I mean, therefore, you found it. I mean, I guess. You feel like someone else found it before me, you know? Yeah, the fuck it came in. That's why they named their ban after it. I don't know, man. I just, I don't like to toot my horn.

Like, check this out, dude. No one else knows about it. I found it. Come on. All right. Man, we're trying to wrap this up. All right. Thank you so much, as always, for listening. My name is Quentin, and my name is Travis. Y'all take care.

You may have heard of the sex cult nexium and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story until now. People assume that I'm like, this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed, and in my new podcast, I talked to Allison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma at other people? I don't even know how to answer that question. Alison After Nexium from CBC's Uncover is available now on Spotify.