No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack Double Feature: Longwave + French Kicks

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

When it comes to post-punk and garage-rock from the 2000s, it's hard to pick just one band for a sidetrack episode. So we're doing our first ever Sidetrack Double Feature (don't get too excited). Today we cover a couple tracks from Longwave's The Strangest Things and French Kicks Swimming. Tracklist: Longwave - Wake Me When It's Over Longwave - Exit French Kicks - All Our Weekends Leon Vynehall - Paradisea The Pillows - Stalker Longwave - Everywhere You Turn 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 gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. I've got my brother, Travis, with me as always. This is our sidetrack for our Stills episode, The Stills, that is. and we are bringing another album from the same year. We've been hanging out in 2003, dude, for like three weeks now. This is a band called Longwave,

and we're going to cover some songs from their album, The Strangest Things. Not to be confused with Stranger Things. Dude, do you think Longwave could, like, sue Netflix and stuff? No, dude. The Strangest Things. Netflix isn't, you know, that show is not about the strangest things. It's about things that are a little bit strange. Stranger than normal.

No. String for the normal. Well, Q, we're also going to do something a little bit different today, for a side track, at least. There's this band that I've been trying to, like, sneak in to the podcast for a while now, and it doesn't feel like they should get a full episode. It feels like they're more of a side track band, but they're also, like, the perfect match for the stills and Longwave, like the three of these bands, I think, pair really well together. So we're just going to do, we're going to play at least one track from this other group as

well. So this is going to be kind of a double feature sidetrack is what we're going to call it. Because, you know, typically sidetrack, we focus on one artist, maybe one song. We're going to sneak in another artist here. So I'm debating on if I should just pretend like that embarrassing thing didn't happen on our stills episode. Or if you want to call me out, dude. Yeah. Ricky mistakes, man. You know, this is why, you know, I always tell you. you got to monitor your audio. I know, man. I would have picked up on it.

You would have heard it. But yeah. I recorded, I managed to record an entire episode using the built-in microphone from my built-in webcam. If you haven't listened to last week's episode on the stills, fair warning. I sound like I'm, I don't know, talking to you from the other side of a window. Yeah, it sounded like you were calling in. from like your Nokia phone from the early 2000s or whatever yeah it's pretty bad apologies everyone yeah i mean it wasn't terrible it just you know it wasn't terrible we we all made it through you sounded

like just like you were calling guest or something like that which is you know we all made we all made it through but um but yeah we did we lost our what you heards though right because apparently your audio got so jacked up by the time we got to the what you heard that you had to scrap it i mean it's just funny how it was good timing that at least we got through the entire episode before it crept out. All right, Q, so, you know, long wave. In the proper sidetrack format, let's just get right into it here. So, you know, there's probably not much to say about these guys, right?

They were probably pretty short-lived. Well, so they were active from 1999 to 2008, and they actually reunited in 2018, and they released an album last year. Did you know that, dude? Yeah, I listened to it, and it was, you know, it was hit or miss, you know, like, okay. Okay. It was, it was okay.

So this was another band that was making its way downtown in New York City. Around the same time as all those other great bands during that garage rock revival period of the early 2000s. Yeah, strokes. Interpol. Dude, the strokes, yeah, Interpol. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking the Walkman.

So they were all, I'm sure they were all in the same scene, man. Yeah. And they released the album of theirs that we're familiar with is an album called The Strangest Things came out in 2003. And let's just say this, Q. Let's just say this. The intro song that played us in was the opening track, Wake Me When It's Over. That is one of my favorite intros to any indie rock song, I think, ever. I'm right there with you, dude.

It is one of those. I love a really slow, long build up in an intro. before any singing starts. I love it when a band does that because I think, I mean, I think it really sets the table, you know, and sets the mood, especially when it's an opening track to the album, right?

Dude, you know it is a great example of that? Interpol. Yes, man, Interpol's their intro to turn on the bright lights. Yeah, their opening track. Might be even higher on the list for all-time favorite song intros, man. Yeah, it's what is it, obstacle one? Or not obstacle one. It's untitled, I think.

Untitled, yeah. Yeah. Similar. Yeah, and it sets the mood for the entire album. So Longwave, that was the opening track that we played as our intro. And yeah, the funny thing is we're going to squeeze in three Longwave songs in a way, but we're only going to really talk about one, right? Yeah, our outro is going to be one of the singles from The Strangest Things. I actually, I don't know.

I don't know which ones are singles, dude. I'm assuming everywhere you turn was a single because I had a music video. Yeah. But yeah, we'll have that fade us out. So let's just get right into the song, man. So I'm going to play, we're going to jump all the way down to track 10. This song is called Exit. I like it.

I love the bass in that. I knew you would, man. Shout out to, I think his name is pronounced Marquesi. David Marquesi or Marquesse or Chessie. Marquise, something like that, sure. But yeah, there's another great example of the music, you know, that belonged to that punk revival scene. Like, the funny thing is a lot of times, I mean, we talked about it last week, the stills, you know, they got compared to Interpol and whatnot. And, you know, this song had Interpol-esque moments, but not to not too, to, to, you know,

make this about Interpol, but it just proves how amazing Interpol is, you know, because nobody did it. Nobody did it as effectively and, like, pitch perfectly as Interpol did, but as far as, like, the sound of the guitar and the bass player, I mean, Carlos D,

the bass player from Interpol is like, he's like sort of the, you know, the secret sauce in a way on Interpol, or at least part of it, part of it, you know. Yeah, I mean, that and Paul Banks' voice, dude. Yeah.

But anyway, what I like about this song is it's a little bit more, has a little bit more of a darker tone than, yeah. Than Wake me when it's over, you know, especially, what's it called? Wake me, the other one, the one we're going to play as the outro. Everywhere you turn. Yeah, everywhere you turn. Yeah, that one's a little more upbeat. Definitely, like you said, if it's not a single, they meant for it to be a single or they probably intended it to be a single because it just sounds so more poppy and packaged. And I'm just too lazy, dude, because I could just hop over to discogs right now and name off all the singles on this album.

But I'm just, I'm just too lazy today. Well, you know, Akia, that's understandable. And, you know, who cares? I don't think we can talk about Longwave without mentioning his voice, I think, is very similar to Julian, Casablancus. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, so his, so lead singer Steve Schultz. It's not as deep or in Monta Town. Not a deep, but there's some.

songs on here, dude. Pool song, I think, sounds just like a stroke song. Well, if they formed post 2001. Formed in 99. Okay. And that's the thing.

Strokes were probably playing the New York scene by then at that point, right? I mean, I think they may have, I mean, shit, they blew up like immediately, I think. Well, it says here long we've actually toured with the strokes. Really? At some point, yep.

Did we see them? Did we see them? No, did it? No. Because I know we've seen the, strokes a couple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have

remembered that, dude. But yeah, Trev, you mentioned you got a song in mind. Another band to bring at the table, what you got for us? I do. Now, this is not from 2003. Apologies for killing the streak, but

this album came out in 2008. So, you know, same vein, post-punk revival, indie rock. This band is called French kicks. And guess what, here? They also formed in New York City. They're years active.

So it's all the same era. They formed in 98 and they're active until 2009. So this is their last record. Really, there's not much to tell about them, which means I don't know much about them. So that's me basically getting out of having to read more right now. But yeah. basically this is their last record it's their first self-produced album which I think is interesting because I've listened to some of their older stuff and it is a little bit more

like what they're saying like stripped down because they were since here they were influenced by like hardcore more hardcore music more hardcore bands from like the DC area some of them are from DC and you know the DC Washington DC hardcore scene was is pretty well known. But anyway, so yeah, let's just, this was really hard for me to pick a song, but this one in particular, there's something that happens toward the end.

So we're going to play a pretty good chunk of the song. All right, so the name of this record is swimming, and we're going to listen to all our weekends. I liked that a lot. Really good. The way they repeat that line for the end of the song, that's really cool. Right. It's just a really pretty song, you know, like really intimate, really the way that they close the song by just repeating what to do. Like they're saying, what to do, what to do, what to do over and over and over. But the way that they change the, they drop it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then not to mention like the chorus, the way that they hold the word always, I don't know if you caught that, but like they held it for like longer than you would expect them to, which is.

I like it when bands do that when like a lyricist, you know, it's the, it's the word is always, as in like, it's always this way or whatever they're talking about. So like holding that word, you know, gives some like, it gives a little more weight to the meaning. Well, yeah, the word is always. And like he's holding it for a long time, right? I can't think of other examples of songs that do that. Well, yeah, we talk about that all the time. are both big fans of lyricists who put a unique, you know, like cadence on the way that they

kind of squeeze in words sometimes and, you know, to fit in a verse or something and do it in a unique way. I'm all about it, dude. Yeah, because, like, it just makes you respect the thought that went into it, you know what I mean? Yeah. More so because, like, you know, everything is deliberate and done for a reason. Um, and here's something about this particular. the recording for this particular record that's interesting to me it says here the the guitar player josh josh wise said that the band used a lot of first and second takes and tried to preserve a sense of immediacy and discovery that comes from putting things down before you really have a chance to think too hard cool so it's one of those things if you know they self-produced this record

a a producer at a record label could have been like hey let's just have you know a few like let's have 10 fewer what-to-does on this song because you guys kind of repeat that over and over again it's redundant we don't need that versus that's what I like about it because you know the words what to do said over and over again that's like somebody's really struggling with with something right like what am I going to do about this like what to do and like you can almost see the guy pacing back and forth like an internal dialogue that's the kind of shit that I fucking love man but anyway um this is another another example of a great post-punk revival record. I'm not familiar with the rest of their catalog to know if this

is, if this band, if this record represents the band, like holistically, but this record at least, like from start to finish, is really solid. But yeah, anyway, Q, as I think we've said over and over again, we could stay in this decade, you know, and in this pocket of bands, right, these types of bands like forever you know what I mean so it's that could be our entire podcast yeah really really good but um you know any excuse to throw in another another band from this era um I'm gonna do it but honestly maybe we will circle back into a full a full episode on this record who knows because I'm telling you every single song is a is solid so we could we could do three or four songs three or four additional songs that's the funny thing so maybe one day we'll do that but anyway um so yeah that was

French kicks. And yeah, that's our sidetrack. So that means only one thank you. It's time for what churds. Oh, how exciting. Let me start first, brother. I got a doozy for you. You're going to love it.

Okay, we'll see. We'll see if I love it. All right. So this is our segment, if you don't know, where we each bring a track to the table. It doesn't matter what the track is. It could be any band, any genre. The only rule is it has to be something that we listened to.

in between recordings. So it's, you know, basically just we listen to a lot of music. So why not, you know, sneak to other songs on our episodes? Right. That's the thought at least. So, Kew, what you got? So as you know, Trave, I went back to school. Like, for real, legit, I for real went back to school.

You legitimately went back to school. Yes, I've been looking for, you know, this chill hop, lo-fi beats to study slash relax, too. Yeah. I've been wanting to say that all week, dude. Well, Q, you know, I always consistently talk about records and songs that I like to code to. So it's probably similar, right? Yeah, dude. This is your, this is your bread and butter, man.

So I'm wondering if you've heard of this guy. His name's Leon Vinehall. Never heard of him. Okay, good. So this is a little more dancey, but it's got that great down tempo, quality, you know, really great textures. and layers and we're going to have to play a pretty good chunk of this song, dude, because of that, as we've mentioned with down tempo,

really got to pay attention and you just got to, you know, embrace all those different textures in the way that they... The layers, cute. Loop and layer and all that, yeah. So this is an album called Rojas, I think. It's not Rojas with an A, but with a U. It came out in 2016, in parentheses, designed to dance.

So I need to be, if I'm not moving. If you're not moving and grooving, then this is just false advertising. Yeah, for sure. All right. So this is a song called Paradise. Paradise, but with the letter A, there we go. Paradisia. Thank you, James.

You're welcome. Yeah, I love that guitar that they brought in. It's all about, dude. That's exactly what we're talking about with like layers, you know. And that's what makes just kind of music. If you're willing to invest in it, you know what I mean? Like if you're willing to get into that headspace or whatever, like that's what this kind of stuff is all about. Yeah, my favorite thing about down tempo music is like you can kind of lose track of it in the background.

Like if you're playing it, you know, while you're like, I don't know, doing dishes or something. And then something like that will happen, like something different will happen and it'll catch your attention, you know. Yeah. And then it kind of forces you to pay attention. So yeah, that's a artist named Leon Vinehall. That is a song called Paradisia from the album Rojas. Rojuice. Rojas.

I don't know how to pronounce that. All right, brother. What you got for us? What you've been heard in lately? All right. This is fresh as far as what I've heard, because I just heard this, like this afternoon. Just heard it. I just heard it.

All right. So this is a, this popped up on my, on my Discover Weekly. So shout out to Spotify. But this is a really interesting soundtrack to an anime, a Japanese anime, called F-L-C-L. I have no idea anything about the anime at all. I just know that this is the soundtrack to it. And this band is interesting. They're called The Pillows.

And they're a Japanese rock band, sort of like an alt rock band that formed in 89. Whoa. Sweet. And, you know, so they put out some music in the 90s that was kind of like alt, not grunge, but alt rock, like light, lighter alt rock. From what I could tell. Is it more like that kind of like the math rock kind of stuff that does. A lot of great Japanese. No.

Well, not. I can't speak to their, their music that they put out. I listened to like, like 30 seconds of one track off of their 91 record just to get a feel for it. But anyway, this came on in November of last year, this soundtrack.

I'm not sure what, if this is like the latest season of the show or what, but that's not really important. So we're going to listen to just one track off of this. And then I'm going to talk about it. I don't want to spoil. no spill beans, but it is important that they were an all rock band from the 90s. I'll just say that.

All right. So, all right, we're going to listen to track number seven here. It's called Stalker. It's not often that you hear instrumental grunge rock like that. Yeah, definitely sort of, you know, bends toward grunge. But there are a few songs on the record that are like that, but most of them are just more kind of your alt rock uh lighter side of alt rock like r em or something like that okay but um and a lot of a lot of songs they actually sing on it and they sing in japanese um but anyway i one of my favorite

thing i love it when a soundtrack stands on its own right where like you don't need to know anything about the show or the movie or whatever um you could just listen to the soundtrack as it's a standalone piece of music you know what i mean i mean i feel that way about a lot of soundtracks but Also, a lot of soundtracks sound like soundtracks. You know what I mean? If that makes sense, like it sounds like, oh, this is obviously a scene where, you know, some actions going down versus this is just a collection of good alt rock songs with some, you know, a little grunge flare here and there.

But probably the closest example to that that I can think of recently of like a soundtrack that stood on its own. I talked about this last year. It was the soundtrack to this TV show. called It's the End of the Fucking World. Mm-hmm. Yeah, dude, you're a big fan of that one. Yeah, Graham Coxon.

Yeah. Put that record together. He's, you know, he's on Blur. He's a member of Blur, the band Blur. I didn't know that the guy from Blur is also part of the guerrillas. I didn't know that either, which is insane. You told me that the other day. Is it the same guy?

Graham Coxon? I don't think so. Man, we don't know shit about no goddamn gorillas. Let's find out. Probably not. Well, I probably don't know. Because there were more than one, more than one, members in Blurr, so.

Uh, yeah, probably not, because it's not popping up. Damon Albarn. That's the other, the other dude from Blurrer that formed the, they're considered a virtual band, Gorillas. Man, they were, they were so ahead of their time, Q. How did they know that we'd all be virtual? We should do an episode on the Gorillas. I think we need to do an episode on,

another batch of episodes on electronic music. After listening to your, what you heard just in, like we barely scratched the surface when we did our quote unquote electronic batch. It was like, there was nothing. I mean,

we could do a whole podcast on electronic music. That's another, another genre that we, both you and I like just love, right? You know what we could do, man? We could kick off 20, 21. with electronic tunes. I feel like that's how we kicked off

2020. 365 days. I feel like it's a long enough time. Yeah, all right. That's true. But I'm fine with that. We're trying to get away from like

a series of episodes devoted to one particular thing, but that's the thing about electronic music. It's so varied that we could, you know, guerrillas is not purely an electronic band, right? So maybe we can find some examples of to sprinkle in just to get,

you know, get a mix. I'll tell you who's a big fan of guerrillas, my wife. She, I was like her favorite band in college. Oh, shit. Cool. Like in high school and stuff. Dude, has she heard their new album? It's fantastic.

Probably not. She needs to give it a listen, man. Elton John's on there, man. Like, how new are we talking? Is that, like, brand new? Just came out like last month. Mm-hmm. Okay.

My favorite hip-hop group, Earth Gang, they're on there. It's a great segue into us talking about what's coming up here. So the rest of the year, we're going to be doing episodes on our top 20 picks from 2020. So we're going to spread that out over four episodes, and then we're going to do an additional episode where we pick a handful of songs that were submitted to us by our listeners on Twitter. By our listeners and also from a few of our past guests.

Yeah. We need to reach out to Mark. Hello. Yeah. All right. We're going to reach out the mark of CD addict slash Madroll. records. All right. Anyway, so that's coming up. Those are fun because it's just nothing but music, really. And it's, you know, at least knowing the picks that I'm bringing to the table, it's a pretty

wide range of genres and stuff. Oh, me too, man. It's going to be great. Yeah, it's just, it's just fun because it's literally just music. We don't really dig that deep into the artists or anything like that because it's not the point. We're just playing music, right? So it's five songs an episode. Yeah. And I'm trying to bring some songs and artists. that I haven't brought to the table yet as sidetracks or what you're herds. If I can't, you know, if, if I can escape. Sure. Yeah.

All right. So yeah, that's that. So the rest of the year, it's going to be a good time. Nothing but tunes and nothing but new tunes from 2020. The year that we all lost, skew, the year that lives had to be placed on hold in big ways, but music has always been there for us, Q. Lots of great music came out this year, man. Lots of really cool collaborations and, you know, different approaches to albums.

Yeah. Also, one thing we thought would be really cool is to also bring our favorite musical moments from this year and maybe do one per episode. Because there are some really cool things that happened this year in the world of music that we want to talk about that we haven't really talked about in any previous episodes throughout the year. Yeah, things that like we've been meeting to. just talk about it casually and we just always forget. But yeah, to to the point of like 2020 being such a weird year, there's a lot of things that happened in the world of music that would not have happened had it not been for, you know, the pandemic and quarantine and all that stuff. And we got some really cool stuff out of it. So yeah, we'll talk about a handful of things that

are that really stood out to us that we remember from this year in the world of music. And yeah, it's going to be a good time. So tune in. in the coming weeks, starting next week. It's going to be our year-end recap episodes. And, yeah, so if you need to find us, you can find us on Twitter at No Filler Podcast. Or you can go to our website, nofillerpodcast.com, where you can find all of our show notes, which includes track lists, any sort of source that we may have cited, any extra content that we may have mentioned. if we remember to throw it on there.

But every episode, going back to episode one, we're approaching 150 episodes. There's a lot of content. There's a lot of content out there, man. It's kind of mind-boggling if you think about it. Yeah, I know. It is crazy. And you can also find us on the Pantheon Podcast Network, which is the podcast network, which is the podcast network for music lovers queue. If you like our show, chances are you'll find some more podcasts on that network.

that you will also enjoy. So that's pantown podcast.com. And that's that. That's a wrap for this episode. We hope you enjoyed our double feature sign track with some post-punk revival from Longwave and French kicks. Yes, and we are going to fade out

with another one of our favorite Longwave songs. This is one of the singles on The Strangest Things, or is it thing? Is it plural? I think it's strangest thing. The strangest thing? Who knows? Strangest things.

That sounds weird, doesn't it? Strangest things. I'm just so used to stranger things. Yeah. So this song is called Everywhere You Turn, and that's going to do it for us today. Thank you, as always, for listening. My name is Quentin. And my name is Travis.

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92% stick with it. So can you. Try Peloton bikes, tread or row risk free with a 30-day home trial. New members only. Not available in remote locations. See additional terms at onepellaton.com slash home dash trial.