No Filler Music Podcast - Punched Up Shoegaze: Narrow Head's Grunge Revivalism
Episode Date: July 11, 2022Over the past decade, there's been a definitive shift happening in the indie-rock scene that leans very heavily toward that iconic 90s rock sound that we all know and love. Whether it be grunge, shoeg...aze, or any flavor on the wide spectrum of the alt-rock sound, modern bands are taking all of those waypoints in rock and breathing new life into them. And we argue on this episode that no band does it better (or comes anywhere close) than Houston-based alt-rock group Narrow Head. We listen to a few tracks from their 2016 record Satisfaction and talk about the nostalgia that oozes from every track. Tracklist Cool In Motion Feels Like Sand Ashtray Nancy France Paranoid Hands Uncover See You Around Bulma This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gems that fill the space between the singles aren't our favorite records.
My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me, of course.
And, uh, man, this episode, Q is a long time coming.
Man, I'm freaking stoked, dude, really?
Like, just that intro clip got me pumped, man.
I'm stoked that you're stoked.
because this is hands down one of my favorite records that I've stumbled upon over the last decade.
And this band, I think, is one of the best rock acts to come out in a minute.
You know what I mean?
Just in general.
You know what I mean?
Not trying to put the, like not trying to limit it to any like one genre.
Just hands down, one of the best rock bands to come out in the last decade.
I'm pretty confident in saying that.
And as you could tell from that intro clip, which was, I believe, perhaps the only single on the record called Cool in Motion, you know, they basically have that 90s era alt rock sound perfected, right?
Yeah.
And they're sprinkling in quite a few other rock genres, you know, into the mix, which is amazing.
And they're doing it so well.
Yeah, they're doing it.
They're doing it just perfectly.
And I'm going to read a quote here that describes even better.
So this is a quote from the Houston Press.
They said, 20 years ago, there was a time when fuzz-infused rock seemed to be everywhere,
and you couldn't really escape it.
In today's crowded music climate, the bands that are making distorted guitar rock are few and far between,
but the ones who are making it are doing it better than many who came before them.
And I would agree with that, dude.
That's the thing about this group, right?
Is that they're doing it better than some of the bands in the 90s were doing it, right?
And like that's to me how it has to be.
If you're going to try to revive, you know, a beloved rock genre like grunge or shoegaze,
you better do it even better.
Put your own stamp on it.
You know what I mean?
And that's what these guys do really well.
Oh, and that's something that we talk about a lot.
and like a critique we have of, you know, a lot of like psychedelic rock bands or, yeah,
throwback 90s sounding, you know, grunge, alt rock kind of bands that are coming out now.
A lot of times it kind of feels like kind of like they're cheating almost.
Like it's like it's a knockoff.
Like nothing new, you know.
To cheap imitation or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So I don't think I've mentioned the record that we're doing today, but we're talking about,
shit have I even said the name of the band dude I may have just been so stuck I don't remember man
I thought you did a proper intro but maybe not we're talking about a band called narrowhead
today and they are from Houston which is cool because they're you know from at least from my neck of
the woods queue from our birth state yeah our birth state you know what I mean I know you're no longer
a Texan you did the smart thing and you left a few years back
You know what I mean?
Dude, it's been eight years, if you can believe it.
Yeah.
Good, good.
Good on you, dude.
Because here I am, you know, melting in the freaking heat.
Sweating bullets.
Yeah.
And I'm sitting here with, I'm sitting here with no central AC.
Every single day this week, over 100, with a high, the highest it gets is like 106 degrees.
That's not right, dude.
The hell's going to be.
The highest it gets up here is mid-70s.
We had one day.
I think last week that was, that maybe touched 90.
That's so great for you.
I'm jealous.
It's, dude, it's perfect right now up here.
Yeah, you just keep going, dude.
Keep going.
One day I might be a neighbor here.
We may do it.
Please, come up here, man.
Yeah.
All right.
So like I said.
Be close to your nephew, dude.
You're soon to be.
That's right.
It's about to make his debut.
TikTok.
not the social media app.
All right.
We're all over the map here, dude.
Let's get back on track here.
We're talking about narrowhead.
And like I said, they were formed in Houston.
And they've actually been in the biz for a little bit, dude.
They've been active since 2013.
Well, you know what, dude? Scratch everything that I said earlier.
I was under the impression that these guys just kind of, you know, formed this group not that long ago and then dropped this album in 2020.
No, no, no.
Satisfaction came out in 2016.
Don't let Spotify
It was re-released
When they joined Run for Cover Records
Okay
When they came out with 12th house rock
Well, even study
I didn't realize they were together since
Since 2013
So they've been doing this for a while
Yeah
So this record was self-released
Back in 2016
It's called Satisfaction
And I think this is kind of what
You know kind of got them
Some attention
You know what I mean
And for obvious reasons
So the lineup has actually changed since this record came out.
So I wanted to make sure I gave proper credit to the musicians here
because the lineup today is different.
And I also wanted to make sure I called this out correctly.
Because right now, the current iteration of the band,
they have three guitar players, right,
which is pretty key to getting that noise, rock,
shoegaze, wall of sound type vibe, right?
But this record in particular, only two guitar players.
But let me name the roster here.
Jacob D'ortay is the lead singer-gater player, and Carson Wilcox is the drummer.
And they're sort of like kind of the mainstays of the band.
And for this record, they also had Ryan Hughes on guitar and backing vocals, and Ryan
Seelig on bass.
So those two members are no longer.
No longer there.
But that's who is making up the band for this particular record.
So, Q, you have listened to this, but it's been maybe a year or two since you gave it a full listen.
Maybe longer than that.
Okay.
But I loved it.
Yeah.
Well, you're in for treats, man.
And if you're out there and you've never heard of these guys, number one, that means you don't listen to this show.
Because we've been, ever since I stumbled upon this record, they've kind of made.
made their way into either What You Heard episodes or Year In Best ofs.
In fact, they were on our very last What You Heard episode because they put out a new single called
Twin.
Right.
They were the intro song, right.
That's right.
So, yeah, when I stumbled upon this record, I brought a song called Feels Like Sand to the What
You Heard for that week.
I don't remember if this was, this was probably back when we were doing just one.
song a week, right?
Probably, yeah.
So anyway, I'm going to kick us off with that song.
And I got to tell you, man, this is, I can listen to this song on repeat.
Like, I have been the last few days prepping for this episode.
And there's just something about it, man.
And I think it's a good introduction to the band, I think.
And kind of their sound at the time.
Their sound has changed a little bit since this record.
So if you listen to some of their newer stuff,
or if you listen to 12th House Rock, which is their last record, their sound has evolved.
But we're focusing on this record here.
And what I like about it is, you know, like I said, self-produced, right,
they self-released or at least I should say.
So I think there's a little bit of a, I think that contributes to the sound, like the DIY sound,
the lo-fi sound a little bit.
Yeah, I'm sure it does.
But yeah, ShoeGaze is one of those sounds that gets kind of attributed to them quite a bit.
one of the genres that gets attributed to them.
And I think it could be because of the way this record sounds.
There's a lot of reverb.
There's a lot of wall of sound type things that you might associate with shoegaze.
But they're certainly not a traditional shoe gaze band.
So let's just jump right in here, dude.
And yeah, like I said, I think this is my favorite song on the record.
So I'm coming with the goods right out the gate here.
But here we go.
This song is called,
feels like sand.
What always stands out to me on this song, man, is the delivery of that vocal is sort of
like this wailing kind of sound, I guess.
I always feel like that comes off as a knock on it, but it's not.
No, no, I got, I get what you're saying.
You know what I'm saying?
Along with the harmonizing, too.
Yeah, the harmonizer's great.
There's even a bit, it seems like there's a bit more reverb on the backing vocals.
too. Yeah. And it just
sort of swallows you, man.
Yeah. And this
listening to this now, you know, with my
headphones and everything, it reminded me of
the sound of
the White Knuckles on Turned Wheels
album from Ethan Durel. And I think that's always
something that I, that added
to why that
album, you know, is a mainstay
for me because it's very,
I think it was probably self-preciated.
produce as well. I don't remember off the top of my head, but like, it's, you know, it's, it sounds,
the recording is DIY enough sounding, but like the way that they have reverb and how they
recorded their vocals and their guitar and everything, like, lended itself to the sound of the
record. I think it's the same for, for this record as well. Yeah. I mean, I think it, you know,
it doesn't come off as, as, like, studio quality, highly produced. But that's, that's, that's,
that's what makes it sound so great, in my opinion.
That's what contributes to the fuzzy, grungy sound.
You know, it helps.
You know what I mean?
Like, it actually helps quite a bit.
And, you know, it just, it's all packaged up in a way that just,
just works, man, on every level.
Totally.
And obviously, I played the whole song there because I feel like you have to hear
that whole song to really understand and appreciate.
how perfect it is, dude.
And here's the thing.
I want to say cool in motion I brought as,
okay, one year we did a year-end episode
where we did our favorite discoveries of the year.
Dude, that's what led to us deciding to do
what you heard once a month is a full-length episode.
Yeah, because we liked the format.
It was that format, yeah.
Well, anyway, I brought cool in motion
as one of my favorite discoveries of the year,
just to represent this band on that episode.
And so the point I'm trying to make is
all the songs that I'm playing from here on out
have not been heard on this podcast before.
So if your only exposure to Narrahead is through this show,
the rest of the songs, at least from this album,
have not been played on this show before.
So new territory for listeners
and probably cute songs that you may not have heard in years.
Yeah, we'll see if any of this sounds familiar to me.
I'm excited now.
So yeah, cute.
We got five more tracks to play here.
So strap in and let's play some tunes.
But I wanted to play before I kind of dive in and before we sort of assess like their sound, right?
Feels like Sand has a very aggressive kind of sound, right?
It's a little bit heavier.
The lyrics are pretty dark, right?
This next song shows another side of the band and starts to, you know, you can start to hear some more influences and other sound underneath the alt rock 90s, the 90s alt rock umbrella, right?
So here we go.
This next track here is called Ashtray.
Fantastic.
Those verses to me sounded just like Catherine Wheel.
the vocals are just the like the tone of the guitar everything about it i was listening to to um what's the blue
album cover katherine we all that you just listen to chrome yeah the guitar the guitar sound
yeah just the verse and what's cool about it is then like on a dime they just kick you in the face
with like heavy heavy distortion for the chorus yeah really cool and his vocals kind of sound
you know they take on sort of a like a post-punk punk punk
For sure.
Punk for sure.
I was getting punk on that intro song.
I can't remember what the name of it.
Oh, yeah.
Cool.
Cool in motion.
Yeah.
Definitely.
And I remember that was one of the things that I texted you about after
listening to this album, however many years ago that was.
I remember that was a thing that I picked up on like almost the pop punk kind of stuff
is there too.
Yeah.
And that's, here's the thing about that, too.
So the lead singer, his father, his father and his uncle.
Steve and Rudy D'Orte were members of a 90s emo pop punk band from Houston called The Tie That Binds.
So it's in his blood, dude.
He grew up listening to this stuff.
So I'm reading from an interview here.
So because D'orty was fed his father's musical taste at a young age,
one of the earliest musical pillars in his life was Blink 182.
Which that's dude, that's one of our earliest musical.
pillars, right? That's the first
drummer that I tried to emulate and
learn to play. But that's one of the first
bands that we sort of clung onto and said like, oh, this is
you know, like this is our band. It was Inima of the State.
Yeah, Enema of the State. Yeah, man. So it's possible, dude, that
Jacob is around the same age as well. Yeah. Yeah.
And that was what, 99?
Inam of the State? I think so, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah.
And that's kind of the beauty of this because it all gets thrown into this sound that they have, right?
And that's why to me, if you're going to be a band that brings back this sound,
you have now, you know, three decades of rock to incorporate into that sound.
You know what I mean?
That's why I think the bands that do it well are able to, to, to,
sprinkling all these other influences that weren't there at the time.
Yeah.
When grunge hit, you know, and when shoegaze was taken off.
Well, yeah, and that's what I was going to say.
Like, that's the cool thing about it, too, is that, and I'm going to quote, I think it was
NME.
I ended up using it in the title for last week's episode on Band of Susan's, but like the 90s
was when rock really became like truly liberated, you know, and free flowing.
So you've got 30, yeah, you've got 30 years.
of rock post-liberation, you know, to pull from.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
All right, let's jump to the next track here.
This is a slightly more, I guess, upbeat song than Ashtran feels like sand.
So here's just another side to this coin, I guess, another flavor that Narahead put into this record.
So this song is called Nancy France.
Yeah, man, his voice a lot of times is very, very,
email.
Yeah.
And obviously like, you know, Blink was was pop punk.
But I mean, it's probably safe to say that he was probably listening to some of those other 2000s era emo bands, you know, the ones that we liked.
Yeah.
That we never associated with, with emo, but were emo bands, you know, all the same or whatever.
Right.
But, yeah, we weren't.
We just weren't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, we had, emo was very much in one, one particular sound I associated with email.
It was more hardcore emo, I think, is what we thought that was the genre.
Right.
We did not.
The screeno kind of stuff.
It's so funny, but we didn't realize that Jimmy World was an emo band, right?
And they were an emo band that came, that came from second wave into third wave, right?
Right.
Anyway, so let me read this quote here from Jacob.
He was interviewed by Decibel magazine back in 20.
the article was titled Miss 90s Alt Metal, Then Get to Know Narrowhead.
So that's interesting, Alt Metal.
And this was for, this was, you know, they were doing, making the rounds in the press for 12th House Rock.
And my guess is that alt metal, you could certainly use to describe hard to swallow, which is one of the singles.
But I would say 12th House Rock goes, goes more in the direction of, like,
like the smashing pumpkins sound of of shoegays and like, you know,
alt rock and more of the pop punk type stuff.
Yeah, I remember thinking that too with the single that you brought on our last
what you heard, that it was a bit on the smashing pumpkin side.
Yeah, psychedelic, a little bit of the psychedelic sort of grunge sound of smashing.
So there you go.
Speaking of smashing pumpkins, here's a quote from that interview.
This is the interviewer.
A lot of heavy shoegays bands worship at.
the altar of smashing pumpkins.
I like that you bring Norse Rock and occasionally even industrial-sounding drum machines into the mix.
And then Jacob says, I try to do it all, man.
I try to smash everything I like into one ball of rock.
I love smashing pumpkins, deaf tones, helmet, guided by voices.
I like to just throw it all in there and turn it into our own.
It's easy to rip off a song, but it's even easier to be inspired by a song and come up with your own shit.
Nice. I like that.
Yeah, and I listen to this.
Sometimes my favorite songs that I write, I'm like, oh, this kind of sounds sicker than a smashing pumpkin song I was trying to rip off.
Which is funny because he's acknowledging like, yeah, obviously I'm pulling from my influences here.
Yeah.
But what I end up with sounds even better.
You know what I mean?
Now, that's the right attitude to have.
And that's what makes narrow head so great.
They're not ripping off the band.
they're just, they're, they're rip, they're not ripping off the 90s sound.
They're just, they just picked up where it left off, you know what I mean?
They're just continuing it.
Yeah.
And that's to me what makes, what makes me excited about this sort of resurgence of the 90s,
grunge and shoegaze sound, post-rock, you know, noise rock sound.
Like, it's not only is it back, like it has, it's been, it's almost like it's been
revitalized.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this was the first band that I, that I really stumbled upon.
that I heard it and it was like, you know, these guys are doing it right.
It sort of led me down a rabbit hole of other bands under the same umbrella.
And that's, you know, ever since then, I've been sort of like just amazed by this sort of iteration of the sound, dude.
It's back, man.
And we've talked about how shoe gaze has kind of never left, right?
But now we're starting to go back toward the heavier side.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like the grunge side.
All right.
Speaking of heavier side, man, what a perfect.
I just teed that up perfectly for me, dude.
Because this next song is, is, dude, let me just tell you this.
Pay attention to the drums, dude, which I know you always do, but the drummer is amazing.
He's, like I was saying earlier, he's one of the founding members, Carson, Wilcox, dude.
He's a phenomenal drummer, and this song really showcases that.
So here you go.
This song is called Paranoid Hands.
Now, we're going to pick back up and play the next part of the song, but I just wanted to pause before.
the amazing solo happens, Q.
Great drumbeat, man.
Awesome, awesome drumbeat, yeah.
So another thing that, to me,
I am always reminded of the bass player
from Allison Chains,
or at least Dirt-era, Allison Chains.
And I have to assume that the bass player
for this record,
as name as Ryan C-Lig,
had to have been a huge Allison Chains
fan i mean i just especially you'll hear it in our outro song but yeah i'm reminded of alison chains
quite a bit and some of the stuff on this record and that's what i that's what i fucking love dude is
that they're they're pulling in that more aggressive heavier the heavier side of grunge you know
what i mean yeah it is cool how they how they pair it with with with the more like i said earlier
like the catherine wheel side of of things yeah you know where it's it's it's
not the more like or pale saints you know one of the other bands we covered um yeah it's really cool
how they how they mesh those two sides of of all rock and grunge yeah and kind of like from from
that quote that I read from him yeah what he's doing like he like he says he just he throws it all
in there dude yeah blends it all up real nice they do it better than better than any man better
than any really let me pick up where we loved off here because I want you guys to hear this
amazing sort of transition into this guitar solo here.
So let me pick up, let me rewind it back a little bit here and then we're going to play
the rest of the song out.
So again, this is a song is called Paranoid Hands.
I wanted to let that guitar solo kind of shine.
Oh, it's awesome.
Yeah.
Well, when you faded it out at that point, like it sounded almost like one of them had their
unplugged guitar miced.
Like you could hear the strumming of the, of the, of the,
yeah, the strings.
Chords of the strings, but like without any amplification of it.
Was I making that up, dude?
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I don't know.
No, I don't know.
That was really cool.
Yeah, you can hear that sound on a lot of different.
That's just kind of, yeah, like you said, it's all about the mic placement and stuff.
Yeah.
But, yeah, that was awesome.
But yeah, here's the thing.
This is why I struggled to, to describe, you know,
because I'm always, I'm always thinking, what does that remind me?
me of like who who does that solo remind me of because like when you listen to this record you're
hearing all of your favorite 90s alt rock and grunge songs like like you're hearing bits and
pieces of it so well executed that like it's like I'm hearing a song from my childhood you know what I
mean but it's a new but it's a new song that you've never heard yeah so like my brain is like
I've heard that before.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, there's so many artists that just kind of pop up into my head while we're listening to this.
Yeah, it's all being smashed into one ball of rock, as Jacob says, you know.
Yeah.
And so it's hard to kind of place it.
But it's, but that's why at some point you got to step back and say, this is, this is narrowhead sound.
You just say, yeah, who cares?
You know, who it reminds you of it.
It is.
Yeah, it's so uniquely narrowhead.
This is, yeah, this is narrowhead.
Or at least this is what they sounded like 2016.
You know, it's funny.
He actually, there's a quote from him when talking about, when they were on that press tour for 12thous rock,
he was basically saying to their fans like, if you liked our old sound, just give up now.
That's basically easy.
Now, in my opinion, I think 12,000 rock is a great evolution of the sound.
You know what I mean?
So I'm not disappointed.
Yeah.
But the sound you hear on satisfaction, you don't hear it again.
because they've changed.
And, you know, we've talked about this too.
Bands change.
Bands change.
And they should.
They should never feel stuck, you know.
Plus, there's new, there's, you know, three other guys, three other members in there that are different.
It would be weird if it didn't sound different, especially as that, you know, with that being the case.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm going to jump to another great track here.
This song is called Uncover.
Have anything else to say about it, you know?
it's just perfect it's perfect yeah so good um totally that bridge man um that was again like
maybe maybe maybe maybe a little bit of that old metal corn bass line or something like that but definitely
allison jane's alison jane's bass but drums i feel like he was totally channeling grohl right nirvana
big time okay maybe i guess i just wasn't paying enough attention but yeah dude talk
about like the one of the fathers of of that style of drumming oh yeah yeah right you know he put his
fingerprint on that in that in the genre you know so early on yeah definitely and then every other band
started doing it yeah again man his vocals i can't get enough of it love his vocals i mean what more
can we say dude i got one more track and i want to end with a little bit more of a you know just to show the
other side of them because I feel like back-to-back paranoid hands and uncover real
a bit on the darker side of their sound.
But yeah, I wanted to end it on a higher note here.
So I got one more track.
But I think this does a good job explaining it here.
So this is a interview from the Dallas Observer.
Again, likely in 2020, they were all over the map.
Run for cover, definitely like push these guys out there.
and, you know, because they signed Run for Cover when they were doing a 12th House rock.
And Dallas Observer, yeah, here's what they said.
Houston via Dallas band Narrowhead is often classified as shoegaze,
but as the band's guitarist, vocalist, and only original member, Jacob Dwarte puts it,
I don't even think I like shoegays.
He elaborates, I like my bloody Valentine, slow dive, chapter house, all the main stuff.
But when it gets too on the nose, it's like, I need aggressiveness.
And is that not the perfect description?
I totally understand that, yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yep, I get where he's coming from.
Yeah, this is a random quote that just popped into my head.
But that reminds me of what I think it was Ireland.
Oh, yeah, of Kings of Convenience said about their sound and that quiet is the new loud sound.
You know, they started writing songs like that.
because they wanted to hear more of it.
They wanted to hear music like that.
And that's exactly what he's saying here.
Yeah.
And I bet you that has a lot to do with the surge of grunge and post-rock inspired bands right now.
It's like there's just not enough of it.
Even though, as we've shown, there's so much of it out there, so much great stuff from the 90s.
That is relatively obscure and something like that.
But, you know, it's funny, a lot of the bands that we've covered so far.
you know, maybe they reunited and dropped another record.
Oh, like HOM? Yeah.
Yeah. Or they, you know, had a 10-year stint and then now they're done. There's no more.
Like a lot of those bands, yeah, they're not still putting out music. And if they did, or if they are still, you know, you'd expect them to have evolved so much that it's nothing like what they were putting out in the 90s. So, yeah, we want more of it.
Yeah. Well, here you go. One more quote from the press here. This is from the same Dallas observation.
article. It says here, before
Shugays, like other genre
labels, was coined by music
journalists, the noisy, feedback
heavy styles of guitarists
such as my bloody Valentine's
Kevin Shields were commonly classified
as noise rock.
And then he goes
on to say, the buzzword became even more
widespread in the 2000s as
bands like Silver Sun Pickups and
School of Seven Bells led
its revival. And
naturally, hundreds of derivative bands
followed without their own distinctive twist on the genre.
Now that's important, right?
So let me finish this out.
This is perfect.
It's perfect, dude.
I'm going to put a bow on it.
The article goes on to say,
Narrowhead formed in Dallas in 2013 as a reaction against this tendency,
and it was Dorte's way of bringing punch back into the genre.
Along with a handful of other bands,
Narahead is one of the decades earliest to experiment with the infusion of
shoegays with punk and post-hardcore.
Nice.
That's it.
That's it.
And that's exactly what he's talking about.
Like, he needs some aggressiveness, right?
Yeah.
And as this guy put it, bringing punch back to the genre.
So, like, infusing it with some elements of punk and post-hardcore to make it, you know, a distinct twist on the genre, you know.
That's kind of like this guy was saying that wasn't happening for, you know, decades, you know.
Yeah.
That's it.
All right.
Here we go.
We're going to close this out.
My mouse isn't working all of a sudden.
Here it is. Connection lost. Now it's connected again. Here we go. Apple, you know.
What are you going? Can't play with it. Don't get me started, dude. Can't live without him.
Oh, I live with it. Just fine.
I know you do. All right. This song is the last track on the record, and it is called See You Around.
I mean, it's just like you were saying earlier. There's so many parts of that song. You'll pick it up in a guitar riff and then a bass line.
and then, you know, the melody and his lyrics that just feel nostalgic, you know?
Yeah.
That's the funny thing.
It's like when I...
So many different aspects of it.
And each piece is a different, you know, style of that rock from the 90s.
It's amazing.
It's great.
And the funny thing is like, when I listen to 90s music, certain songs will take me right
back to being a kid.
Very impression.
Listening to this music,
listening to this music gives me the same feeling of nostalgia,
which is something,
you know,
because I didn't experience these songs as a kid.
So,
like,
how can I have nostalgia tied to it?
But that's because,
like I was saying earlier,
it's like,
where have I heard that before, you know?
Like,
I've heard this before, man.
It's hypnagogic grunge, dude.
Yeah, hypnagogic rock.
Hypnagic rock.
Yeah, because we used to say that about
when you listen to,
to Tyco, some of his earlier stuff.
Yeah.
It's like, man, I feel like I'm having a wave of nostalgia hit me right now.
And that's that hypogadric pop that has been thrown on Tyco and a lot of bands that,
that, yeah, like washed out, I guess could be another one that or the chill-off sound.
Or even, you know, there's a lot of people out there.
You all know this about me if you've been listening for a while.
I love video game soundtracks.
Yeah.
And a lot of indie bands.
That's just like those two words always come out of my mouth.
indie games, you know, if you're making like a old, old school platformer, you know,
that kind of has that old art style.
Yeah, you might have a chip tune artist, musician, make your soundtrack.
And then it totally sounds like a, you know, Genesis game or something like that, right?
Right.
But anyway.
Yeah, so like with this song, you can totally hear, you know, the influence of, you know,
those bands that were fed to him from his father.
right the emo stuff um and the and the pop punk kind of stuff like blink way too like his vocals
almost kind of sounded a little bit like maybe a mashup of tom and mark a little bit yeah dude and
yeah and mark or not too i always get them mixed up i know you do too and it like my brain
figures out which one i'm thinking i'm trying to to talk about after the wrong after it turns out of
my mouth but tom would do that a lot you like the you know you're trying to describe this on like
like wailing or however, you know, it kind of undulates in like tone.
Yeah, Tom, that's Tom through and through.
Yeah.
All right.
Anyway, that was it.
I mean, this is a record that I don't have to say this, but I will.
Like, obviously, you got to go and listen to it right now, right?
It's just, dude, it's pitch perfect from track one to track 11.
Like, it is perfect.
And 12,000 rock is amazing.
we could do an episode on that record.
Maybe we will someday.
And hopefully, maybe they're working on new material.
I mean, obviously they came out with twin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
More to come.
Oh, I bet there is.
Maybe this is a single for a larger collection of songs, maybe just a little EP.
I'll take a four-track EP, you know?
Sure, man.
I'll take whatever you got.
Whatever you got.
So that was Narrowhead.
That was their 2016 record satisfaction.
Go listen to that record if you haven't already.
I will be revisiting it, dude, for sure.
I'm telling you, man, it feels like Sand gives me
gives me if I could chills every time I hear it, dude.
With the right headphones, or at least the right volume,
like this is a record you got to listen to on Blast, right?
I should have said that earlier in the episode, but...
Crank it.
And I think that's what's really interesting about this record is,
and this is probably why they got the shoegay sound attributed to them,
is because the reverb that they had in the guitars plus the fuzz,
makes it have that wall of sound like impact and feels like sand certainly has that that vibe to it
where it's just like an onslaught of noise, you know?
Oh yeah.
But, you know, in the best way possible, obviously.
All right.
So that was that.
I had to get that out of our system eventually doing an episode on Arrowhead.
And we picked a good time for it.
Maybe the reason we weren't doing it's because we were doing our batch of electronic episodes
or something like that back in the day.
But this is the perfect time to talk about Nairhead because they are, they pick up the baton where all those bands that we've been talking about this year where they dropped it off back in the 90s or whatever, you know.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
They're doing it better.
They're doing it better than some of these other bands.
Absolutely.
Hands down.
Yeah.
They picked up the torch.
Yeah.
So I feel like we're kind of doing a 180 next week.
But it's a 180 within sort of the same morale.
No, it's a 180.
We're going to talk about a band called Pink Shiny Ultra Blast.
And I am super, another record dude that I'm stuck to talk about.
But they are more of your traditional shoegaze, like straight up.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And Dream Poppy, if you want to throw that on there.
But they're this great, great, great,
shoe gaze band from Russia, incidentally enough.
So we'll get into that.
And that is just, that's a, that's a record, dude, that'll have you floating.
I'm ready for it, man.
Okay.
Well, thank you for turning in, everybody.
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
And, yeah, give us some love to narrowhead.
Go pick up their records, man.
Go purchase their records from Bancamp.
I wonder, let me see, let me see, if you can still get satisfaction because I was so disappointed, dude.
But when I first heard about their record, they,
I was following him on Instagram and they had like,
hey, yeah, you know, we got a few more copies of satisfaction
that we just put back up on band camp.
And I went over there and I sold out like that.
Did I remember your disappointment?
I'm pretty sure.
Like, dude, you could have figured that out.
I think you may have like found that out while we were recording.
I remember you like looking into that.
Maybe it may have been on record here on no filler.
That's possible.
Your disappointment in that, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember that, man.
So they did reissue the record.
record, and this is the copy that I picked up, and you can still get it on band camp.
So this is a limited edition purple pressing of the record.
And it's got sort of a new iteration, or at least a new, like, color way of the same
album art.
Right.
But that was another thing.
Do you remember when we first discovered this?
We're trying to tie all these pieces together because, like, the same color palette is
used on, like, the remaster of Siamese Dream.
Simon's dream, yeah.
Yep.
Which is, that can't be a coincidence.
No, dude.
It's the same three colors.
Yeah.
Anyway.
So yeah, go pick up some of their music.
Go support these guys.
They're, you know, they're Texas natives.
And they're amazing.
Next week, pink shiny ultra blast.
In the meantime, reach out to us on Instagram.
If you want to chat with us, find us on there.
Just search for No, If you look podcast.
We'll pop right up.
And, of course, you can also.
So find us on the Pantheon podcast network.
That is the home of many great music-centered podcasts, including our own music-centered.
I guess that's the right way to put it.
Let's put it this way.
If you like our show, you will find guaranteed at least one, maybe two or three more shows
under the umbrella of the podcast, of the Pantheon podcast network that you will enjoy.
There's dozens and dozens of shows under the network.
every single one of them is music related.
So check that out, pantheonpodcast.com.
And yeah, that's it.
What are we outtrying with, dude?
I almost forgot.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So this is interesting.
So like I said, they put out a single called Bulma in 2018.
And I think I'm going to play the single version of it because they actually
re-recorded it and threw it on the 12th House Rock.
So it's actually a track on 12th House Rock.
but it originally came out in 2018.
And I'm going to play the single version of it that came out in 2018 because, you know, this was, I think there's still before they came on to run for cover record.
So it's still got that DIY kind of sound to it, right?
So here we go.
I'm going to intro.
We're going to close out with a song called Balma, again, by Narahead.
And next week, we're going to talk about pink.
shiny ultra blast. And I'm stoked about that, dude. It's going to be great. All right. Well,
thank you for listening as always. My name is Travis. And I'm Quentin.
Y'all take care.
