No Filler Music Podcast - Sloan: The Fab Four of 90's Alt Rock

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Throughout the mid-nineties as proto-grunge, radio-friendly Nirvana knockoffs were signing record deals like they were going out of style, Sloan took the road less traveled after signing with Geffen Records, even in the face of mounting pressure from the label to stay on that grungy, noise rock course. A second full-length album found the group heading in a more refined pop sound, a world away from the washed-out fuzz of their previous releases. Despite having been swept under the rug by Geffen, Sloan refused to bow down to the major label's demands, and have continued to remain steadfast and true to their unique brand of indie pop even after all these years.   Tracklist: I Am the Cancer Underwhelmed Median Strip 500 Up Penpals I Hate My Generation Snowsuit Sound Left of Centre A Pantheon Podcasts show and a proud partner of AKG by HARMAN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's usually what makes something interesting is like a little bit of double side of sweetness and a sourness, like the Velvet Underground or something, sweet songs and sort of perverse lyrics or the other way around sort of really in your face, like noise and sweet lyrics. Welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gems that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. With me, as always, is my brother, Travis. And today we are covering a little band called Sloan. And we're going to play some tracks off of their first two full-ing

the records smeared and twice removed. This is another one of those bands, Trave, that we would have known about if we grew up in Canada. Hmm, okay. They were, yeah, they're based out of Toronto. They're originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia. They came up around the early 90s, and were kind of like at the forefront of this kind of movement that was happening in the Halifax music scene. So this is, I think, a great band to cover

right alongside Swirlies that we covered last week. They kind of fall into that noise rock, sonic youth mixed with a little bit of pixies, very similar to Swirleys, dude. So I'm excited to get into these records with you. Do you know anything about this band? I only know the little bit that we maybe talked about when you brought one of their tracks to what you heard way back when. But yeah, I love that interview clip that you played to intro us in. He was talking about the sweet, sour dynamic, right? Because I think that there are several songs that we played last week on our Swirley's episode that definitely falls more under the sweet vocals and the sour, you know, loud noise rock, right?

like that dynamic. So would you say that Sloan falls under that realm as well, where it's like the sweetness comes from maybe the sound of the songs and like the melodies and stuff? Maybe the sourness is the lyric, like themes and stuff. Like they were saying Velvet Underground or whatever. No, the sourness, I think, comes from just kind of, you know, they'll throw in these rough and heavier sounding guitar bits tacked on to like a,

otherwise really, you know, just upbeat pop song. So I wanted to play songs from both smeared and twice removed because I kind of want to show how their sound progressed in a very short time. This is between 92 and 94. So just a couple years as a group. They kind of start to mellow out a little bit in those two years. And we'll kind of get into, to I guess, the repercussions of that. But real quick, I'll name off the roster. So one thing that this band is kind of known for is their sharing of songwriting. So all four members of the group write songs, all four members of the group will have a handful of songs, maybe not on each record, but where they are the lead singer. They all provide lead vocals. Yeah. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. So usually it's,

If they wrote the song, they're singing on that song. Oh, man. Okay. I can't think of another band that does that. I mean, maybe like songwriting credits, but not also like providing the lead vocals. I mean, that's cool. Yeah. And it was especially the case in their early days.

From what I've read, and I haven't actually listened to any other albums of theirs, but they're still together. That's another big thing about them. It's the same for guys. this whole time. They've been together since 91. I feel like that's a huge advantage because even if they're not all lead singing still, the fact that all four of them can write songs too? Yeah.

Now, do they collaborate on songs as well? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Like their songwriting credits. I'm sure they do. Yeah. That's cool, man. Yeah. And I'll be bringing some songs from each of them, which is kind of cool. I don't know if I have songs from all four of them as far as like lead singer. songwriter.

Sure. But yeah, we'll be playing some from a few of them. So we've got Chris Murphy on bass. And Chris Murphy is considered one of the two main singers of the group. So he writes and sings most of the songs as lead. And then Patrick Pentland is lead guitar. He is the other main singer of the group considered the other main singer, especially with their older, I guess, more recent albums.

he contributes a lot more to the songwriting. Then you've got Jay Ferguson on rhythm guitar and Andrew Scott on drums. So they formed in 91. Murphy and Ferguson were the first two to meet, and then the other two joined shortly after. These guys also started their own record label in 92, so this was a year into them as a group, and released records for local bands around Canada,

you know, Halifax, Toronto. And they released their own records. Okay, cool. Yeah, so they released this record called the Peppermint EP with producer Terry Pulliam. And that record made its way, one of the songs on that record is called Underwhelmed, made its way to this compilation record called Here and Now. It was a record with a bunch of other artists. It's kind of coming up around that time in Canada.

And that got the attention of Todd Sullivan, who's an A&R representative at Geffen Records. So they got signed to Geffen Records in 92, one year into being a group. And it was all thanks to this little self-produced with the help of Terry Pulliam, this little EP that they dropped. So did they keep their record label going this entire time?

Still going. Yep. Oh, man. Yeah. So they're like, you know, obviously they're going to go with Geffen, when Geffen knocks on your door or whatever. But I think it's funny that they had their own label, like, parallel to all this, like, success as a band.

Yeah, I don't remember where. So there's an interview from CBC News in 2021 that they interviewed, I think pretty much all the members in the band. and one of the members, I can't find it at the moment, so I can't quote him directly here, but he says like they kind of kept murder records around just kind of is it like an insurance, like a fallback. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, it's another source of income too.

Right, right. Yeah, actually, okay, I found the quote here. This is from Murphy. He says, we always kind of thought of murder records as an insurance policy for when we came crawling back looking to put out our own records. Dude, that's so funny because like we've, heard several bands have that same idea where it's like they're just they're waiting for everything to crash and burn you know they never think that they're going to have success and didn't the toadies

feel that way i think that was the yeah the toties i mean they never felt success they all um met at a record store and like they went to go record rubber neck and he was telling the owner of the record store like yeah i'll be you know i'll be back in a few months after you know after this little tour that we're going to do like know, whatever. I'll come back and work at the rocket store after this kind of flops. I'll just knock this tore out real quick and then it'll all be over. Kind of the creative, you know, your perfectionist kind of mindset probably where it's like you can always be better. Maybe you never, you know, you never think that you're good enough kind of thing. I think a lot of creative people are like that. Oh yeah, definitely, man. Let's take a quick break.

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And that song underwhelmed, which I mentioned is what got them the attention at Geffen, was completely re-recorded for Smeared. So this was one of their earlier songs re-recorded for their first full-length. But I'm going to play the original recording that shows up on the peppermint EP. Just so you can kind of hear, you know, this is the song that got Geffin'clock. attention. So here we go. This is, again, a song off of Sloan's Peppermint EP from 92. This song is called Underwhelmed. I feel like the lyrics are what stand out the most to me about this song.

They're really funny. Yeah, he's like the guy that, you know, feels like he has to correct people's grammar on a Reddit thread or something. Yeah. But he's basically like talking about this girl who isn't using proper grammar. And like there's a bunch of like interesting wordplay on words type of like wordplay and stuff throughout the song. It's interesting. Like it's very. It's lighthearted, right?

Yeah. I guess that's the sweet part. Yeah. He was talking about it. I've talked about it. I've talked about the sweet and sour dynamic. And that interview was from 93, I believe, the intro clip. So, yeah, that was from around this time.

So, yeah, they were still writing lyrics like this. Not that the guitar playing and the music and stuff is super heavy or anything like that. But it does kind of have almost like a punk quality to it. His vocals remind me as somebody I can't place it though right now, dude. Yeah, I can't either. It's right there on the tip of my tongue. But yeah, so Geffen kind of saw the potential in Sloan

as being, again, at the forefront of the Halifax scene. And at the time, it had been deemed the new Seattle, the quote, new Seattle following Seattle's grunge boom of the early 90s. Okay. Gaffin was thinking, oh, man, we got to jump on this. Like, all this stuff coming out of Halifax, you know, could be the new grunge. So, and this is the song, you know, that really caught their attention. So, you know, it's way more, I think it's like a good mix of like classic rock and not, and that's almost like a genre in itself. now, not classic rock like Zeppelin or Aerosmith, but, you know, like, it's a classic rock sound,

but with more the kind of sonic qualities of shoegays and distortion, you know, kind of more grungy distortion. Yeah, I mean, his vocals have definitely like an early 90s alt rock sound to them. Oh, and this is early 90s old work. Well, there you go. But no, if they're being called like the new grunge or the next grunge, right? Well, the new Seattle. You know, they were hoping to jump on Halifax and pick up some more grunge bands.

You know what I mean? Gotcha. Okay. So I'm going to be quoting a lot from Adam Kamen, who interviewed Jay Ferguson in 2012 for Blog Toronto, says here of Smeard. Smeard took the best elements of the sounds de jour, namely shoegaze and sonic youth-inspired noise rock, filtered through the innate Beatles-esque pop sensibilities of four distinct songwriters. So think about that, dude.

Beatles, all four of them wrote and contributed to the catalog for the Beatles, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Very similar here with Sloan. and with the songs I picked, you'll see, Trave-How, they do start to mellow out. And, yeah, Gaffin isn't too pleased with it, but we'll get into that a little bit later. Okay. So I'm going to just jump right into the next pick. So again, this is going to be coming from Smeared, their first full-length record, their first record on Gaffin.

This was released in October of 92. We're going to play track four on the record. this song is called Median Strip. This lyric, man. So he's, this guy's really funny. I like the way he, well, is this the same writer? Yeah, it's the last song I'm wondering? Okay.

Yeah, Chris Murphy. Because I wonder if they all have their own unique writing style because like he's obviously all about the puns, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he's like, there's a line in here that says, point came for you. you to be Glenn close to me.

I know, dude. I was, I was going to read that lyric if you didn't. And then the next line, dude, it says, can't you see, I can't be P-P-I-M-I-S-S, I assess the situation differently. Yeah, clever. Is he spelling Mississippi backwards there? What's going on? What's happening? I don't know.

That's what I was trying to figure out. But, dude, any song that's going to throw our Glenn Close reference in? Right. I mean, that's, uh, yeah. 101 Dalmatians, right? Isn't that? That's probably her least... Of all the things she's done, dude. She played Corella DeVille.

She did, but... She was also the pirates that gets thrown into the boo-boos box and hook. I just think it's funny that, like, she's one of the most, like, well-renowned actors of all time, and you're like, wasn't she Carolla DeVille? My bad. The Disney movie. But, yeah, his lyrics are really funny. You know, he doesn't take himself too seriously, which, you know, I appreciate. But aside from...

the lyrics like the music is also i mean i can see why if geffen given thanks that this is what they got right and then they're like yeah all right here we go more of that right and then their next album under under them you know starts to sound different like i can see hey you know bands change all the time like we yeah but i mean yeah you know geffin's like we need more more of that last one please because we're trying to we need more grunge my friends yeah we're trying to compete with sub pop yeah exactly Yeah. So I think it should be noted, too, that Terry Pulliam is the producer again. So, yeah, so they brought him on Geffen to record this record.

And it definitely sounds like they had a nicer studio to record this in. But it says here on Wiki that it was recorded at a very low cost of $1,200. But, you know, compared to that peppermint EP recording of Underwhelmed, it definitely has a more like, you know, sonically pleasing mix, you know, and maybe that's just Geffen's hand, bring us this shugasey grunge boys. That's what we want. Next song I'm going to play might be my favorite song that I've heard from these guys between the two albums that I listen to.

And this one is actually written by their drummer, Andrew Scott. Is that why it's your favorite game? It's written by the drummer. Well, I don't know, dude. You tell me. Let me know what you think of it. Okay. So, and it should be noted, too, that all the great backup singing, harmonizing is Patrick,

who is lead guitar, one of the main singers of the group, but he does all the great backup harmony vocals. One thing I wanted to know about the song, we just played a media strip. I really liked the bass and drums, how, like, syncopated, like, how, how, like, how, like, how, like, aligned they were with each other, and then how their guitar came in, the second verse. Yeah, and it had kind of a pixies quality to it, the baseline and the drums. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.

All right, so let's jump down to track six. I got two clips to play on this one. This song is called 500 Up. At the end there. I know, man, I love it. I love the way the vocal, I'm guessing these are multiple singers. Like the vocal styles kind of go back and forth. like there's there's a singer that um is kind of just like almost spoken word yeah like just

kind of delivering the line in kind of a lazy way right i know for sure that patrick provides the the harmony vocals but yeah there could be three of them singing in this like you said there's like kind of that spoken word kind of thing that could be Andrew yeah could be someone else but yeah i love it man but yeah i like the way that uh the song too had had some definite shoegades moments in it and some moments that reminded me of swirlies where kind of or Sonic you think as where it's like there's those moments of like loud noise rock yeah you know and this one it's very quick and then it goes back but like I like and then it kind of transitioned into that spoken word thing which I thought was it was kind of cool and and worked really well like this song has a lot

of different moving parts to it and they all work really well together yeah I think this is a good example of that sweet and sour, you know, kind of thing that he was saying at the beginning there. Yeah, totally, totally. They have a lot of range these guys, right? And that's probably no wonder that they are able to start moving into a whole different direction, which is what sounds like the next songs we're going to hear are going to be different, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And you know what? Even on one album, track to track, there's a lot of, a lot of differences. And the perfect example of another band like that. It didn't even click when I was reading these, when I was preparing for this, but the Beatles, man, every track on a Beatles album might be totally different from the one before it

because you've got four songwriters in the group. To me, I feel like it's just so, so hard to compare a band to the Beatles, you know, because that bar is so damn high. But like, I mean, they have a lot of reasons, I guess, to be compared to them with the everybody writing songs, or contributing to stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. All right, so we're basically just going to play the rest of the song. I didn't really trim anything off of it. So here is clip two from 500 up. It was great, man. Yeah, I love that little breakdown at the end. Yeah, and I just kind of stopped on a dime and then went right back into it. That was really well done. That was really cool. Good stuff. Yeah, I love it when bands, you know, explore things like that, you know, like it let their song sort of

go in different places. You know, I feel like you don't get that very often anymore, you know. Right. Really craft, craft, like, this is going to sound kind of corny or whatever, but like, you know, craft a journey that they take you down and stuff. Right. You know? But that's what, you know, we talked about last week with swirlies that they're really good at. They would really keep you on your toes and you never really know what you're going to, what to expect as the song progresses, you know. And yeah, that song right there definitely had that five where it's like, you really don't know what you're about to hear.

Especially in that last, you know, they went in a whole different direction and then brought it right. back, you know. Yeah, dude. So we're going to jump right into twice removed. And like I had kind of alluded to, and actually, you know, we'll play, I'll play the first track before we really get into it, but kind of like you were saying there, what you, you know, appreciated about these guys. And I think what kind of makes them different from what was coming out around that time as far as in the shoe gaze grunge scene is, you know, how they approach their songs and how it is kind of different from one track to the next. It may not be cohesive, but it's, you know,

it's just so enjoyable to listen to from track to track. It's really cool that they were able to, I mean, survive, really as a band with four different songwriters, you know, how they're all able to kind of contribute to each song and not butt heads. Yeah, and I think it's really surprising that none of them wanted to branch off and do their own side project, you know,

where they could fully be dedicated as a songwriter. Right. Yeah. So that just tells you that they must have been a really pretty cohesive, like, team. You know, because, I mean, songwriters, man, you know, they got, they all got, you know, I guess the most famous example is maybe David Byrne of talking heads and how much of a ego that guy has, right? Yeah. And in the same vein, Julian Casablanca's, I thought that's where you were going, dude, lead singer for the strokes.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, two examples of that, right? where it's like, now you've got four of those egos potentially. But so, yeah, they must have, they must have worked well together, you know. Yeah. All right, man. So twice removed is the next full length that they drop on Geffen came out in 94. If you were a longtime listener of the podcast, this song might sound familiar to you.

This is the song that I brought as a watcher her track many moons ago. and I guess I didn't really dive into the history of the song or the album when I played it because I just read about this today and that's why I had to play it again because the story behind the lyrics so this is track one off a twice removed it's called pen pals and the lyrics are actually comprised from broken English fan letters written to Kurt Cobain oh okay yeah so So Chris Murphy somehow got a hold of these letters because, I mean, at the time, Nirvana was labelmates with them on Geffen. And they decided to write a song using contents of some of the letters. Was this after Cobain passed away?

I believe so, dude. So Cobain. That must be, right? Yeah. Right. So twice removed was released less than six months after the death of Cobain. I think it's really cool that, for one, somehow he got a hold of these letters, and two, that he wrote a song comprised of these letters.

On the reissue of this album that came out in 2012, those letters are scanned and in this really cool booklet that comes with the record, so you can actually look at those letters. That's awesome. Now, this is when you're going to hear a change-up in their sound, and you can kind of see why Gaffin's like, what the fuck, guys? So here we go. Here's track one off of twice removed.

This song is called Pin Pals. I just think that's a really cool concept. He doesn't change them at all. You know, you can hear that broken up English. Yeah, well, that's what's great about it is just from the subject matter of it, you know, and how the proximity to Cobain's death, it's just like they took all this, like, genuine, like, affection and stuff that all these people had for Cobain and Nirvana. Yeah.

And like, you know, put it, put it on a song on the same record label, you know. And track one on that, on that album, too. Yeah, it's cool. It's a cool concept. And then, like, musically, like, this totally sounds like a 60s Brit pop song, like, jangly pop kind of stuff that, like, the Beatles were known. I mean, it sounds like straight up, you know. Yeah. And that's kind of what Geffen was upset about.

And so here, so here's a quote, again, from, from Adam Kamen, who again, interviewed him in 2012. I like what he says here, kind of how he puts it. It says twice removed was released in August of 94, less than six months after the death of Cobain, unfortunately, in a period marked by an explosion of derivative proto-grunge Nirvana knockoffs tailor-made for radio play, the brilliantly direct songcraft of the mostly fuzz-free twice removed was perceived as a disappointment by the label, who famously dropped Sloan after all but sweeping the the album under the rug of the international market. So Gavin said, bye.

That, I'm actually, I'm actually annoyed by that, dude. Me too. I think that's stupid. Because you know what? It's not like, like they said, knockoff bands. Like did, did Geffen want Sloan to just be a fucking carbon copy of, it appears that way, all the grunt stuff that was happening? Or did they want them to be who they were or whatever?

It appears that way. It's like, in my opinion, like, Sloan was kind of like, sort of reading the room correctly because like grunge was kind of the really big grunge wave was kind of over at that point as far as like the big bands making the iconic records like it just became uh like they said uh you know what what was the word they used proto grunge nirvana knockoffs yeah nirvana knockoffs yeah and it just became like all just knockoffs of each other you know and and it sounds like that's what geffen was looking for which is yeah well you know what that's funny yeah and you know i i think back to that quote from Swerve Driver,

they decided to go to sign with A&M instead of Geffen because they thought that Geffen wouldn't give them enough attention. At the time, they said, you know, guns and roses, that's the only band that anyone cares about on Geffen. Why would they care about us? It's just funny that, you know, here's an example of a band that got screwed over by Geffen. Right.

All right, let's play another song here. This one, and, dude, Gaffin was, they were just wrong, man. You'll see. All right, so here we go. So this one is actually written by Jay Ferguson. So he is the rhythm guitarist, and he provides the lead vocals for this track. This song is called I Hate My Generation. What could you both possibly show?

I think they were heading in the direction that rock headed into. That's what I was thinking too, man. With like indie indie rock and stuff right around the corner, like, or the 2000s indie sound, right? I guess Geffen just wasn't ready for it. They wanted to milk that freaking. Grunge Cow. Yeah. Yeah, you're right, dude.

That's all they wanted. But it's a great track. And it's hard to, I mean, listening to it now, we're able to see why it's great. Maybe at the time, it's like everybody was so laser focused on the grunge movement that, like, Gaffin just wasn't able to see it or care for it. Yeah, and the way that Adam put it, that writer for blog, Toronto, they basically swept it under the rug. Yeah, that's stupid, man.

Even if people were going to like it, if there was an appetite for it, they would have never heard it because they weren't they weren't uh repping it exactly it's annoying man and i mean prophecy foretold dude like chris murphy said you know we kind of kept murder records around his insurance and that's exactly what they do and after this they just from that point on their blueprint was to do everything themselves produce release do everything on murder records they don't have to rely on anyone else you know they were perfectly capable of doing that on their own and that's what they did. So here's a little bit of the interview from Adam and Jay Ferguson. So Adam says twice removed is a world away from the washed out fuzz of Smeard and the earlier peppermint EP

and is the first indication of the refined pop milieu Sloan has worked in since. What brought on such a sonic change from your first album? And Jay says personally touring smeared for the better part of two years was taking a toll on my eardrums. I was happy to play a little quieter at the time. I also felt that the musical climate was getting overstuffed with half-baked noisy guitar bands, and we wanted to take a turn away from that sound. Perhaps it wasn't the right thing to do commercially. And then he says, I think that what, I think that was Geffen's frustration with twice removed and that it didn't follow logically from the sonic template of Smeared. I slash we were happy to pull from different references like Fleetwood Mac or Plastic Ono band or the third

Velvet Underground album and to try to chart a different musical course that would set us apart hopefully from the glut of noisy indie groups that followed in the wake of the great My Bloody Valentine and Nirvana. So they knew exactly what they were doing as far as like they wanted to go in a different direction. Yeah. They didn't want to be what Gaffin wanted them to be, which is just like, give us more of that sound, please, you know?

So yeah, I respect them for that. Yeah, and he ends it here by saying, it does seem that twice removed perhaps set the template for what followed with every member singing and writing and no particular set style or format of the songs contributed. So that's what they continue to do, is all members contribute, no particular style from track to track. I love it, dude.

Yeah, no, that's good, man. So here is, let's see, do I have, I think I have one more, yeah, got one more song to play it. Trev, you're going to love this one, dude. And I am looking forward to you immediately telling me what band this sounds like, because it's pretty on the nose, dude. So this is track 10 on the record. This song is called Snow suit Sound.

Obviously. Yes, sir. Especially with the claps, right? Yeah. But maybe that's just proves our point. even more that like they were they were going in the direction that the indie rock was going in and spoon was right around the corner if not already making music at this point yeah i'm trying to think like when did spoon like their early ePs when were those coming out i want to say around this

time maybe 97 at the latest yeah they they were definitely making music around this time yeah their first epip nefarist was in may of 94 so that's the same year is twice removed there you go yeah right So Sloan, you know, had just, they had gone through the grunge thing and were doing the shoe gate's grunge type deal that everybody else was doing and said, you know, we're going to start hitting in a new direction. I think, you know, you got to give them credit for that for sure. They did not bow down, dude. That's what's cool about it. Yeah, that is cool. Yeah.

So that's all I got, brother. Again, dude, it's like, I mean, a Canada-based band, it's no one that we hadn't ever heard of them before. And it makes even more sense knowing that. Geff and screwed them over and provided a little support for their second release. And then they went back to releasing stuff on their own record label. So that probably kept it more local to Canada for a while. Oh yeah, great, great band. What happens after this?

Like, I mean, have you listened to, like, do they continue to kind of evolve? Yes, for sure, yeah. So, you know, I didn't read this whole article. There's another interview. Actually, I mentioned this interview from CBC News earlier in the, the episode. A guy named Richard Woodbury interviews him in 2021. This kind of talks about how they survived. So they split up very briefly after twice removed came out. They just kind of got burnout on the tour with twice removed. And they were contractually obligated to continue these shows

through 95, even though they already knew that they were dropped from Geffen. And they just, they did start budding heads a little bit on the road. And so, you know, they just kind of split up and regrouped in late 95. And that's when they decided, all right, you know what, we can just keep releasing. We don't need a big, fancy major record label. We'll start releasing stuff on murder records again. And, you know, like they said, we continued with that blueprint of just kind of having all four of us contribute and not really sticking to a particular style.

And yeah, man, they've been active. It really, like, no one really considers that breakup, like, a split of the group because it was such a short time. You know, they just kind of took some time apart briefly after those contractually obligated shows were up, kind of just figuring out what to do. But yeah, yeah, I listened to a few songs on one chord to another. And, yeah, they do continue to evolve.

they always kind of stick to that Beatles-esque pop mixed with a little bit of that indie shoegaze sonic qualities. I think what makes these guys stand out is the lyrics and the vocals. They write music that's very similar. All four of them are very similar in their songwriting. Yeah. I played songs from three of them. The last one I played was another Jay Ferguson song, and they even say.

sing similarly. They all have very similar voices. Right. So yeah, it's cool that all four of them came together and I don't know if it's just influences that they've had on each other and, you know, just being a close-knit group that they started to write music similarly. But it's cool that to have four members, each one of them contributing to the songs and all of them sounding, you know, working so well together. Yeah, that's unique for sure. So that's that, brother. I don't know if we, if we, are going to continue in this. You know, I entertain the, the idea of trying to stick in the 90s era through the rest of the year, if we can. I mean, we're only halfway through the year, man.

Okay, well, let's just try, you know. I think that would be a five challenge. I think we can do it. We talked about this last week. We could do Beck. Oh, right. And see where that takes us. That's a good idea, dude. Let's do mellow gold. Melo gold. And Odelae have always been like, to get my favorite record. Like there's songs on those records that are just like 90s rock staples, right? So it'd be interesting to play the ones, which is what we're, what we do around here on this show, play the songs that you don't know so well from the singles.

Because like I said, those songs are just like huge, huge 90s rock hits, right? We're talking devil's haircut and all that kind of stuff. Loser, yeah. Loser, of course. Yeah, and I have not listened to the rest of those albums. I don't know all the songs off those records. There's some great, great stuff. I think Devil's Haircut might be one of my favorite tracks.

That's on O Delay. But new pollution. I think I'm naming singles, dude, which is what our challenge is going to be, is to pick some non-singles that are stand out and give them a spin. Let's do it. So yeah, maybe we could do both. So we could do Mellow Gold and O Delay. Sounds good.

That'll be fun, man. But before that, dude, next week, let's do another What You heard for the month of June. That's right. Yeah. So next week is What You Heard. It's time. Excited about that. There's always, you know, it's always a blast.

Yeah, so that's our monthly mixtape is what we call it. We'll each bring five songs to the table just of artists and songs that we've been checking out in between recordings. So that'll be next week. And then we'll come back with some Beck to kick off the month of July. That'll be good times, man. Yeah, dude, I'm excited. All right. And, you know, dude, I'm going to say it again because crickets so far.

But if you all want some no-filler merch, some T-shirts, let us know if you're interested. You know what I was actually thinking, man, and we failed again. What do we do? I was actually thinking that we need to put this call out at the beginning of the episode. Oh. Because, you know, you never know, man. People might, they hear us say, all right, well, that's it for that record. And then they bounce.

they bounce. You don't want to hear us talk about Instagram and shit. Yeah, you're right. So, you know what? Next week, we'll put this. And you know what? If we hear crickets, dude, for the next few weeks, then fine. No t-shirts. Okay, we hear you. Not unclear. And yeah. And maybe I'll just make a t-shirt for myself to rep, you know? Yeah. I'd rock a no-filler t-shirt. And I'm not just saying that. My wife actually did make me a no-filler t-shirt, which I thought was really very sweet. That is very sweet. Did some sleuthing and got the logo probably from you or something. She did, yep. It does not fit anymore, did.

It's shrunk. That's a bummer. So I need more, I need another shirt, basically. So just, please, just somebody to say that you want a shirt and we'll do it. So yeah, email us at No Filler Podcast at gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram. Let us know if you'd like a T-shirt. Give us some recommendations with some of your favorite artists and music from the 90s. Let us know what you've been heard.

If you like what we hear, maybe we'll outro. next week's what you heard with a song that you pick for us. And as always, you can find us on the Pantheon Podcast Network, the network for music lovers at Pantheon Podcasts on Instagram or Pantheonpodcasts.com is the website. As always, we'd like to give a shout out to AKG for supporting the show and the network. And we're going to fade out with another track from Sloan

that I'm a big fan of. track nine off of Smeared. It's kind of a sing-songy spoken word kind of thing that he does. I'm a big fan of it. It's a Chris Murphy track again. So again, this is a track called

Left of Center that we're going to fade us out with. Until next week, thank you. As always for listening. My name's Quentin. My name is Travis. You all take care.