No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Polvo - Snowstorm In Iowa

Episode Date: March 24, 2018

Fresh off the heels of last week's episode on Foals' debut album ​Antidotes​, this week's Sidetrack focuses on one of the "founders of math rock", Polvo, with music from their 1996 release ​Exploded Drawing.​ For more info, check out the shown notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/music-review-foals-antidotes#sidetrack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. And welcome to No Filler. This is our sidetrack episode for the week. And we are staying in the math rock vein today.

And talking about a band from North Carolina, performed in 1990, these guys are called Paulvo. I had never heard these guys. This is my first time listening to them. I really liked that little intro segment. I was definitely intrigued. It was different. Yeah, they've definitely got the 90s alternative rock sound.

You know what I mean? You wouldn't call them grunge. You know what I mean? Yeah. What year did this album come out? This album came out in 96. So the song that we played, the intro song that played us in

was called the Purple Bear and it was on the 1996 album Exploded Drawing So they are considered math rock I think mainly because of the guitar and drum stylings

But they're also considered a noise rock band And I think that'll be apparent In the main song That we're talking about today The sidetrack for this episode if you will. But yeah, I wanted to kind of talk about Math Rock a little bit more before we get into it. Because I feel like the more I've kind of dug into Math Rock, it seems like the style of guitar

playing that you and I listened to a lot of when we were in high school may be considered math rock. Math Rock is one of those things that like it's a term that gets loosely thrown around and it applies to a lot of bands and a lot of I don't want to say genres, but a lot of bands, I think, incorporate parts of math rock into their sound, but those bands might not be considered a math rock band, you know what I mean?

Because they might be like primarily considered, you know, you know, a punk rock or a Norse rock band like these guys. Well, that's like going back to Green River, the quote unquote first grunge band. Yeah, right. You know, and asking them at the time, would you consider yourself a grungeman? You know?

Yeah, and the funny thing is these guys, Paul Vaux, don't like the term Math Rock. So... Why is that? It just says that they disavowed that categorization. Let me see, let me open up this interview. Oh yeah, here we go, dude.

This is a fucking article called, You can call Paul Voh Mathrock, but the numbers just don't add up. Isn't that clever? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay, so this is an article on a online publication called Creative Loafing. They were interviewing the guys from Paul Vaux in 2008.

And the bassist, Steve Popson, he says, when all the press started coming back, people were seeing things about how Paul Vow were the founders of Mathrock. And I think that's insulting to people who play really good Mathrock. He laughs. We never thought of it like that. So basically, they don't consider themselves math rock because it sounds like he's saying, like, there's way better math rock bands out there. Don't lump us into that because we don't consider our music math rock, you know.

I would say that these guys probably fall more into experimental and noise rock. Maybe they were lumped into math rock because of their guitar styling, their angular guitars. And again, I think that's, that is, I think a lot of people when they hear, that style of guitar playing, they think math rock and they put that label on something, you know? Yeah. I feel like Foles is one of the,

Foles is one of the first bands that I associate hearing the term math rock be applied to. Yeah. So, but maybe that's because, you know, we didn't really start getting

properly into music ourselves until around the time ended notes came out. I think Foles like embraces the term. I mean, they have a song called Mathilletics, you know. And that was one of,

early singles. So, like, they, that's what they were, they were going for, Mathrock. Like, that's what they were doing. You know what I mean? It sounds like these guys. So really what we need to do is dive into Mathrack a little bit more, just, just on our own time, you know, because. Well, I've been doing that.

But, yeah, I mean, I, I've been doing that ever since we, we started talking about Foles last week, the week before leading up to it. And it just, like I said, it just seems kind of like a, it's hard to define. Like, that's just what it comes down to. Like, when you, when you trace the roots of it, you know. Yeah. When I listen to, so there's a black flag album called My War that people consider an early example of Math Rock because it included unusual polyrhythms.

That's it. That's the only reason. So, like, when I look at it. I feel like that's what Math Rock gets boiled down to. It's complex, yeah, complex rhythms. It doesn't matter what instrument is creating those rhythms. It's supposed to be about like non-standard time signatures and constantly changing meters. And also seems like with Mathrock, every single member of the band is contributing to that complex rhythm.

Yeah. So these guys are thrown into the math rock sound. And I can see why. And I tried to pick a song that I think is a good sort of tie-in to Foles. So this song is really short, so I think we should just play the whole thing. It's only like two minutes long. So let's play it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on a cue because this is the first time you're hearing it.

So again, this is Palvo, and the name of the album is Exploded Drawing. came out in 1996 and this track is called Snowstorm in Iowa. Yeah, it's a cool track, dude. Like it's, I mean, there's just a lot going on, man. Yeah, let me tell you why I loved it so much. This song sounds like you're listening to the members of this band during a jam session. Like, almost like it's on the spot kind of improvbing and playing off of each other, which I guess that's where they're making.

math rock comes in, you know, with the guitar players bouncing off each other. Yeah, and I think that's where the experimental rock label gets applied to them as well a little bit, you know, especially when you listen to this album as a whole. It's just under an hour long. There's 16 tracks. One of them is like 12 minutes long. The rest of them are about three minutes on average. So it's like there's a lot of different ideas on this album and a lot of different sounds. Yeah, yeah, dude, they reminded me so much of early modest mouse and the pixies. So this is the more like experimental side of the 90s that we didn't really get to hear much of at the age that we were, you know, we were pretty much just listening to what was on the radio in 96, you know? Well, in 96, man, we were nine.

Probably about the time that we started buying our own records or CDs. I don't know about that. Maybe not quite. I think at nine years of age, we're listening to whatever our older brothers listening to, which at that time was 90s rock radio stuff. Like we've talked about before, like that's kind of just how it was in the 90s, dude. Right, right. But it was good.

It was good rock 90s. rock music, you know, like, uh, like we, like we, like we've, like we said in the, I think of the first episode, we kind of went through the list of like, smashing pumpkins, bush, you know, Stone Temple Pilots and all that good stuff. Yeah. You know, the, the, the, the, the main hitters, you know, so like, yeah, bands like, bands like this that were doing their thing in the 90s and bands like Spoon, which is interesting because both Paul Bo and Spoon started out on Merge Records around the same time. Um, we're doing this more kind of like, You know, the umbrella term is indie rock, but, you know.

Yeah, that was, that was under, way under our radar, unfortunately. Right, right. But you know what's funny about Spoon is that like, Spoon has always been like the indie rock band. You know what I mean? That I think of, when I think of indie rock, I've gone to Spoon. But the irony is I was brought on to Spoon for the first time when I saw them perform on either Lerick, or Letterman and they did the way we get by. But they had already broken out of like the small indie record label type deal and we're

doing a talk show. And that's how I first started going like getting into indie rock, the umbrella term indie rock, you know. Yeah. And by that time you were teenagers. That sound almost became a mainstream sound, you know. Yeah, you're right. Probably around that time, yeah.

But yeah, I really enjoyed that. And, you know, hearing that kind of stuff now always just makes me wish that I was old enough in the mid to late 90s to appreciate this kind of music, you know. Yeah, this is the kind of album that you'll hear playing, you know, at a, like a small record store somewhere, you know. This is the kind of like sort of under the radar stuff. Yeah. And bands like Modest Mouse and the Pixies had a major influence on my. taste in music, you know, I just wonder how it would have been if I got into them when they were releasing these albums. Same with, which has been Paul.

I mean, we were too young, dude. That's just plain and simple. We were nine years old, man. Yeah, it just makes me wonder, like, what my music taste would be like now if I had got into those bands back in the 90s. Well, there's going to be, we're going to cover a lot of bands from, from, from this era, dude. I'd love to do an episode on Bill to Spill at some point. And I know you're not very familiar.

I would love to. I honestly, I've never gotten into them. I'd love to get into them with you, dude. Yeah. We'll keep it like a secret. That is a great album. Is Bill to spill the band that the two brothers from Mars Volta? No, I'm thinking of at the drive-in.

Jesus Christ. But we got to do Mars Volta. Sure. Did you ever get into Mars Volta? No. You never listen to Mars Volta at all? Not really. Oh my God, dude.

All right. we're back. We had a little side conversation there and we didn't want to spill all the beans here, as Quentin likes to say. We basically just planned out the next four and a half months of episodes because we got really excited. But we got some greatness coming in the near future here for sure, starting with Shadee next week. And that's going to be awesome, dude. I can't wait to talk about Shade, man. That is an album and artist unlike any we've covered so far. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And that's another one of those artists that we have to thank old Papa Bear self for getting us into. Papa Bear, yeah. We're talking about Promise by Shade, which came out in what year, Q? 1985. So this side track didn't cover as much math work as I'm. I think we wanted to. I'm excited to listen to more of this exploded drying album.

Yeah. By Polvo. I'm really stoked about it, dude. Put it on your, put it on your queue on Spotify. Also, I would recommend putting an album by a band called Chavez, not to be confused with Chavelle,

which a lot of people probably think of. Definitely not. Chavez. Definitely don't want to confuse it with that, dude. No, you do not. You will be disappointed. Exactly. This album is called Ride the Fader

And it was another kind of early math rock type album It came out in 1996 So same year All right That's a side track, right? We're done So that's our side track episode If you want to hear our full-length episode

On one of our favorite math rock bands Check out our episode from last week We covered Foll's 2008 debut album Antidotes One of our favorite albums of all time If I may interject, I think I think antidotes to me is the quintessential

Math Rock album. If you associate Math Rock with angular guitar playing, I don't think anybody does it better than Falls, particularly on that album. I mean, and not to mention the drumming, dude. I just think it's like, it's the perfect math rock album. And if you...

I think they nailed it. it, dude. I think Paul's fucking nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. That album is something special. Yeah, so check that out. Be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes.

Give us a rating. Give us a comment. Let us know. Just give us something. Anything. Give us something. Yeah. Hop on to our website, no filler podcast.com.

There you can find our show notes for each episode. You can do pretty much everything on our website. You can listen to us on SoundCloud. And next week, we're going to be covering Chade's second studio album Promise, which came out in 1985.

I cannot wait, dude. I can't wait to get into some Chate. I'm super stoked about it. It's going to be good times, man. Yeah, I'm excited. All right, and that'll do it for us this week. My name is Travis. And I'm Quentin.

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