The Watch - 'Sherwood' and British Crime TV, 'Werewolf By Night,' and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about the British crime series 'Sherwood' and what sets apart British true crime shows from ones made in America (1:00). Then they talk about the new Marvel TV movie 'Werewolf By Night' and how it shows what's possible for Marvel television (23:30), before Andy is joined by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard to talk about the band's new album 'Asphalt Meadows' (44:04). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Ben Gibbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. And I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, say it's Andy Greenwald. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.

What's up? What's up, buddy? I'm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I had to get to the center of the athletic universe. So I got myself on a flight to Philly. People don't realize this. You actually get called home. You know, it's kind of like the National Reserve.

The Beacon. But for civic pride. Yeah. It's like a tractor beam. and I just can't avoid it. They put the tasty cake logo in the sky, and you're like, I guess I got to go. Phillies are in the playoffs,

Eagles are undefeated, it's Cowboys Week, and the Sixers season starts next Tuesday. Phillies aren't just in the playoffs. Well, they're in the playoffs. They've stayed in the playoffs by advancing, by winning a series. I kind of consider the wild card game,

the getting into the playoffs, part of getting into the playoffs. Do you really think the, like a best of three series is like a real thing? I think, and I should say, because clearly I'm the guy with his eye on the clock, and I like to really keep this podcast timely. We're going to talk about some TV shows.

I've got an interview that's mostly about baseball, if we're being honest, with old pal Ben Giverd from Death Cab for Cutie. A lot of good stuff to discuss, but this wild card weekend was insane. I mean, it did make all sports fans that I know turn into Lloyd Bridges in airplane. Like, it is so weird to start your playoffs

by essentially free basing. You know what I mean? Like, there was no gateway drug. It was just like, this is the most intense, refined form of Walter White meth immediately. So how much, did you watch some of the Phillies, while you watched some of the Phillies Wild Cardinals? I did. Right. Okay.

Did you watch any of the Eagles against the Arizona Cardinals? I did. Yeah. I was on a flight for most of the Eagles Cardinals game sitting next to a drunk Cardinals fan, which would have been weird because I also had like a very, alarming mid-air incident with my plane, and I was like, this would be really strange to die next to this guy. You know?

I mean, I can't believe. I'm just impressed you found the Arizona Cardinal fan because he wasn't in his home stadium. I would have been also, like, if they had found my, like, I guess this is really morbid, but like, can you imagine if like the only thing left was this guy's cardinals hat? I can't. I mean, I think our listeners should know. They know this because they revere you. And part of your cool is literally your cool.

But in my experience, CR, no stress flying. He's Whitaker. I don't mind it. I like it. Yeah. I think flying is great. He's just fine with it, right? Yeah.

I've been in three American cities in four days. What a country. You know? That's amazing. Yeah. But when the plane went on full tilt, like a pinball machine, didn't bother you? Got to have a short memory. You got to be on to the next one.

I'm Belichick when it comes to that. I just got to keep a shark. that flight goes into the trash bin and I empty the trash make more room on the laptop of life How did the Cardinal fan take the The brief interruption with his life plan? I think he was definitely like I I just went to the bathroom you know like he was Because he had he had over served himself at O'Hare lovely airport

O'Hare yeah and he had I think he had a couple of publican Bloody Marys before he got on our flight Did you when the jolt stop and he was just like sweating Tito's Did you lean over and say like that's what it feels like real, I did like a real coping mechanism thing where I was just like, I just am going to listen to Zach and Bill, Zach Lowe and Bill Simmons as hard as possible. And it was just sort of like, I kind of temple grand in doubt. I was like, I'm just going to go into my hugging machine. I'm not going to think about the fact that this flight is doomed. And I think he was sort of left,

well, what do I do? You know, I've been trying to make small talk with everybody around me for an hour. You know, I'm wearing this Arizona Cardinals hat flying into Philadelphia. And he was sort of, you know, found his soul kind of abandoned. Did you lean over and whisper, Darius Slay is coming for you next? No, I did. But I guess here's the thing, and then we can move on from Airtok

with CR and AG. But I think I've told this anecdote before, but my worst flight experience recently wasn't really the turbulence. It was right before we took off, the guy was just like, everyone as you take your seat, just want to let you know

that we recently flew this flight from Los Angeles, and we're now returning from Albuquerque, and we experienced turbulence that I would describe as extreme. So we will not be serving you drinks. For the safety of my crew, I will not allow them to unbuckle themselves

during the duration of the flight. Yeah. If you consider this, if you consider yourself weak stomach, locate your air sickness bag now. Did you locate your air sickness bag? Chris, I locate it the second I, I bring my own.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't even need. to look, but like, I, my body went into some sort of just, I think we know now, I am not fight or flight. I am just complete shutdown. Yeah. Like I just lost, lost feeling and just disappeared into the headspace app, which was fine. It's just one of those things. They're usually, those situations are over pretty quickly, but you, you really do have to make peace with God up there sometimes. It's tough. Well, the worst thing is, then it wasn't bumpy. It was just a total head trip, right? And you were like, I could have had a gin and tonic.

Instead, I'm sitting here with my gin and tonic. Instead, I'm sitting here with my barf bag the entire side. Just trying to convey, like, charisma and competence to Kim Dickens, who is sitting a road in front of me. That's right. It's fine, Kim. You can trust me with your career. Yeah, hey.

What show do you want to talk about? Because, you know, I will skip House the Dragon this week. You can listen to me on Talk the Thrones if you want to hear my thoughts on Targaryen Succession. I made a joke about it in our intro. And I know you did see it. but we can skip talking about it this week. There was a couple of things.

I thought it was absolutely menchie of you to watch an episode of Sherwood for me. I really appreciate that. So you signed up for BritBox for that? Or did you already... Was that one of those? Like, I've somehow have already been paying for Brit Box for three years? That's AMC Plus. AMC plus, for me, it's like I remember one year in Brooklyn,

I went to the dry cleaner on the corner, and they had, like, pictures up of their, like, cruise vacation. that the very nice family had taken during the holidays. Yeah. And they were like, I was like, oh, he looks like you had a nice trip. And they were like, thank you so much for the trip. And I was like, what do you mean? They were like, we really, really thank you.

Because I guess my wife and I had really been like over, like really supporting them. Really? Went tarpon fishing in the keys. Which was good. Like you want to know if your money's going to the right place. But yeah. So, no, AMC Plus, like I keep being like, oh, I guess I got to sign up for it. Yeah, because every time I'm like, gangs of London's back and you're like, okay, and you're like, wait, I already get this.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about your... It's just an instant download. So, okay, so Britbox, we talked about this briefly last week. We're going to talk about the show, sure. Would I watch the first episode? I want to definitely discuss it. But I really didn't think I understood what Britbox was, as evidenced by me asking you last week, what is Britbox? So Britbox is an app service.

You can get it through the app store. You can go online. And it's a collaborative project, right, between the BBC and ITV to just give you, the best of, I guess now we have to say, his majesty's prestige content. And it is so... I would say that it is the best of. There is also BBC content winds up getting co-proed a lot.

So it winds up in different places. But go on. Okay. But I want to do an exercise with you, Chris, because I couldn't believe it, what I was seeing. Like, it absolutely felt like click hole to go on BritBritbox.

Okay. So I'm going to quiz you. I'm going to name six shows that are on the homepage, five shows that are on the homepage of Britbox and one is made up. Okay, I read a lot of Guardian, so you should know that going into this.

If I lose this, I'm going to be mad at myself. Here are, oh, wait, no, I have six real ones and one fake one, okay, ready? Scotland's finest. You don't need to answer until you're done. The barking murders. Murder in Provence. Stone mouth.

Trauma. suspect crime are you sure you weren't just looking at the like the verticals of genres yes although there was a vertical called docs

and I thought it was medical shows oh a doc I'm knowing the British it might just be documentaries about different peers so I would say Scotland's finest is not real

it was a trick they're all real. Okay. There's a show called crime. It's so beautiful. It's like when you watch a French cooking show and they're like, you must reduce the stock in such a way with a raft above it, it soaks up the impurities. And it's just pure, pure meat juice, right? Like that's what Britbox is for people who like crime shows.

I don't even think it's real. There was something with what's the great Julie Walters and it's just called, Mo. And it's about... Yeah, I'm sure she's like a detective, right? She's the pluckiest prime minister in Britain. It's just like, I love it. This tiny island is just extra.

It's a great thing. The thing is that one of the reasons why I really like this place, and I don't mean to damn it with faint praise, is that there is no sense of like, we need to scale this product. Yeah. It's just like there is a sustainable audience for Shetland. Yes.

And we will make content for them or make that content available for them. So shout out to them. Do you want to talk about, I guess we should talk about Sherwood. So I mentioned this last week. This is a show starting David Morrissey and Leslie Manville and Joanna Foggett.

And it's a mystery set in Nottingham in the present day, but one that has, it links back all the way to the 1984 minor strike in England, which I guess you're getting a crash course in now that you're watching this show. And I thought it was just like, excellently well-made television, which isn't like a really great angle to take on a show,

but I think that it has elements of it that feel cinematic and moody and very atmospheric, and then it has elements of it that are just like, these dudes know how to make a television show and like just get this mystery propped up. So what did you think of it? Well, also, I think you outed yourself last week.

You usually don't like to play favorites, but you said this is your favorite minor strike, right? Like of all the major minor strikes that you devote your first. free time to. Like this, this 1984 minor strike is the best of the best.

In the 70s, they had a minor strike and all the other industries or many other industries went along with them. Please, I'm sorry if I'm giving too much of a like

a Wikipedia version of this history. I'm getting some details. It is called Scotland's finest. And they had like, basically all the other industries are like, we're with you.

And there was, they essentially brought the country to its knees. And they had to give the unions what they wanted, which I'm sure they deserved. And then when they tried it on Maggie in the 80s, she was like, jokes on you.

I've been squirling away coal for a minute. Yeah. So we don't need the unions. And also, like, we're trying to take this whole thing private, hiring a bunch of scabs. Didn't go well. But that scab versus union dynamic pretty much fuels the tension and the conflict in this show.

Yes. And I mean, I don't know if this is right. I've watched one episode of how many are there? There's six, blessedly. It seems like the past isn't passed. You know what I mean? It seems like maybe some stuff from back then is going to be relevant to now.

Do you feel like that's an accurate assessment? Unlike me with my airplanes where I'm just like on to the next one, these guys are like, no, I'm still thinking about that strike, man. I really think you said it best, though, in setting it up in that, like, the most refreshing thing about this for me, and there's a lot to recommend it, and I really enjoyed the hour.

I wouldn't stick with the series. But I loved how in the pocket it was. Like, this is a show. about a place and a crime, here are these people. We're giving you details enough about all of them. We're not going to hold your hand, and here we go. And this doesn't need to be more than that. It does not need to have supernatural elements

to make it seem more important than it might be such as True Detective Season 1. It does not need to be shaped and designed to win an Emmy for one performer over another, which is the case, even in material we adored, like Marevistown, right? That is a Kate Winslet vehicle. It was packaged as such, sold and presented as such, and it worked.

I really, really appreciate the intention and scale behind the show. It's rare to see, I mean, you know what, it's probably not rare to see this at all when you're hanging out in the brick box. That's right. But when you're watching Mo? Where you're just getting those Eps of Moop? There was one show. It was just called, like, Crisis Season 24. Like, that's so many years of crises.

Also, for the headers for the different, like, comedy, it's just Eddie Azard. Yeah. It just, it felt. It's a small country, you know? I, we've talked about this, but, like, when you and I used to just rush to the record stores so we'd have the privilege of spending $8 on a 50-cent copy of Melody Maker, and it would just, I'd be like, I wonder if they're new singles by bands that I love out this week. Instead, it would be like Father Ted Christmas Spectacular, which I guess was a show about,

a rural priest that was really popular in the 90s that I sort of had to bluff. Anyway, it's really well done. It's really well done. And it's just like, it is such a cool, I mean, when we're watching Andor and we're like, oh my God, every actor is the best actor. That's the other thing about this crazy island, right? It's just like Leslie Manville, who is one of the best working actors, probably, right? You may know her from Mike Lee movies or from Phantom Thread.

Yeah. She's just in this, she's just on this show. and just cooking. You know what I mean? Who is the guy... So do you want to set up a little more of the specifics of the thing to get people?

Because I feel like people aren't watching this, so we shouldn't like... Yeah, I'll just say it's so basically it's done very well where they both set up the credit sequence,

I would say, is actually wonderful. And you could probably just watch the credit sequence and get like a little back pocket history of English labor struggles in the 1980s.

But essentially it's like this town that was largely made up of the rival union or the scabs against the NUM, which is the National United Miners, I think. And still in this town, there are little pockets of people who are in the NUM who are in this union.

One is a pretty mouthy guy, I believe, named Gary. I can't remember his name. Gary. Do you know who plays Gary? So it's Alan Armstrong, who's, I remember from that movie, Kroll, but is just that guy throughout the years. And he plays this really mouthy, retired mine worker named Gary, who's married to Leslie Manville's character. And there's like a wedding

in town that they're all going to, but they're still kind of cursing at each other under their breath. When they go to the pub, there's these near fights about this stuff that happened in the 80s. And a murder occurs. So I won't, without giving too much away from it, because one of the things this show is doing very well is what it's keeping mysterious versus what it's putting out on Front Street. So obviously, I think that the crime itself is not going to be incredibly difficult to figure out, but all the motivations around it and all the ways in which there's a sort of spider's web that it hits every single character in this town is going to be really fascinating. It's interesting to consider it too. And for people who enjoy watching TV, almost studying the form, like, it's not just that this was so particularly well made, because it definitely is.

I don't think we get shows like this anymore. There was a moment when maybe we would, but I do think the wow factor, the prestige factor, the IP factor is just so much more powerful now. And maybe it's also because, you know, in the same way that we don't get many remakes of foreign language shows, we just get the shows, that this particular niche, like the Britbox acorn, you just make this stuff and we just keep churning it out stuff, like feeds the need. Do you know what I mean? So whenever there's a show announced on an American prestige service that's like vaguely

mystery-ish or crime novelish. We're always going to be all over it, but it kind of feels like unless it's attached to something else or someone's attached to it, it's just not going to get made, right? Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I was thinking about there's been a couple on Hulu and Peacock recently of more true crime-themed shows or mysteries that are based on real events.

Obviously, Dahmer was hugely successful. And then post-release relatively controversial in the way we talk about or depict serial killers on screen. I thought that discourse was maybe even more interesting than the show itself. But there is something to be said for the... I mean, and the Brits are not above schlock for by any means.

But there's something to be said for this kind of classicist way of handling the material. And it really does, for lack of a better way of putting it, put like the focus on the humans around a crime rather than the crime or the sensationalization of like the criminal. Yeah. And I think that,

you make a good point by bringing up the true crime thing because that is clearly, it's just working for people. It is something, you know, it works on podcasts. It works in the publishing world. And particularly, like, Hulu seems to have just really doubled down on it. Like, this works for us.

This delivers for us. You know, I know we may have referenced this in the past because we didn't actually cover the show. But Candy, which was on Hulu a couple months ago, and, you know, the most attention, I think we only mentioned it because they were delivery the episodes daily, right? They were playing it out over five nights. And in my hidebound thinking, I was like, oh, they're burning it off. Like, there must be something that they're not into with that.

It's one of their highest rated shows of the year. It was a smash hit for Hulu. And there's another series coming to HBO based on the same crime. Now you have a friend of a family coming to Peacock. Like, it is a proven, proven lane to get people to watch your service. There are tons like them. I mean, there's like an entire vertical on Netflix that's essentially Scandy, You know, I mean, that that is like, people find comfortable vibes. And if you can reliably make stuff in that vein, I think that you'll always have an audience. Obviously, I'm watching Sherwood. So, like, I'm a, I'm part of the audience for murders set in the world of labor struggles in the 1980s.

You are the poster child for that. That's right. Do you remember last week or the week before when you were like, can I be honest with you? I don't really care about Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, sure. Do you not care about labor struggles from the 1980s? Chris, I am your. brother in lockstep marching with you for the labor struggles of 40 years ago. It's serial killers.

Yeah. I don't find them interesting. I never have. I think I could admit that on the mic. I loved Mind Hunter, but I thought that that was a different way into it, you know, because that was essentially just about pathology and about people doing their jobs. You know, I really like that. I don't really think anyone is particularly normal. So when the premise of a show is they seemed so normal. and then it turns out that they were eating people. I'm like, I guess that's like, I don't really find that that, like, crazy of a conceit. Not that I think all of my neighbors are eating people

or anything like that. I mean, it's a terrible crime. But I just think that, like, the sort of veneer of like everything seemed so put together for this character, but it turns out. What is the weirdest thing you think about you that you're willing to admit on this podcast? Like, have you ever done something

that to you is normal and then in a public setting among friends or family people have been like I got a lot of shit for dipping French fries and mayonnaise does that count? Yeah, this is what I'm talking about

this is the level like we'll save the other stuff for the Patreon you know where you really admit it but like but that's because you're European right? Sure, right.

Well, I'm out here on Britbox. Can we talk about milk for a second? Actual milk? I feel like I don't know if I've said this on the microphone but what's happening on this podcast today? Don't we still have like an hour-long Ben Gibbard show. We haven't mentioned the Marvel show that we're talking about.

Oh, yeah, we're going to talk at the Marvel show, but I want to ask you something. Like, okay, you know that there's that Reddit, like, am I the asshole? Like, am I the weirdo here? Okay, so a couple of years ago, I was at Fire Island. Uh-huh. You know, a kitchen, you've been in many times. This is not my home, but this is a rental home that a group of our friends would sometimes spend time in, right? Yes. And a couple of our mutual friends were there, and the kids had gone to sleep.

So the adults are then eating the desserts that the kids had not finished, but left on the table. And someone was like, and I'm not a big dessert guy, but someone was like, would you like an Oreo cookie? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm not made of stone. You know, I like an Oreo cookie. And then people were talking, I took the Oreo cookie. A conversation continued. I stood up and I went over to the refrigerator and I poured myself a small juice cup

with some milk in it to pair with the Oreo cookie because that's a, it's a classic pairing. And it was like a record scratch. And everybody was staring at me. Come on. You can't trust East Coast Leeds with this kind of shit. What are you doing? They were like, are you drinking milk? I was like, yes.

They all drink milk. They just drink oat milk or almond milk or soy milk, right? Well, that was the thing. I was at a coffee shop here the other day. Well, maybe not it's in front of me. Right. Oh, so I am the weirdo. It was just a pair of the cookie.

Well, I guess that's more of like a creamer thing. So you were at a coffee shop the other day. It was a dairy Somali. And the people in front of me were like ordering their expensive drinks, as was I was intended to do as well. And the woman was like, what dairy would you like in it? And they were like, oh, does anyone drink anything else? And they all had like a big laugh. And I was like, ma'am, I would like a cortado please with the finest squeezed cows juice.

Because I am the savage that your previous customers are afraid of. Well, you've got very strong bones. But she was talking, the way people talk about psychedelic, she was like, oh, I didn't mean to offend you. I'll drink cow's milk sometimes. It suits a small serving. She didn't call it cow's milk, did she? Yes. What are we doing?

Yeah. It was in your neighborhood. I'm sticking to mine. Okay. Over the weekend, before we get to your Ben Giver interview, I wanted to talk a little bit about Warwolf by Night. I did too. A Marvel special presentation, I think they're describing it as.

Yes, they did. By famed TV and movie composer Michael Giacchino, right? Jaquino, yeah. Chiquino, thank you. Based on a character I didn't know existed, but is a essentially werewolf man hybrid. But only by night.

Only by night, which is good. I mean, like the daytime werewolf is an undiscover, like a really marked inefficiency if you ask me, but... It's a little wordy. Like, no one thought you were working normal nine to five hours of werewolf. But, uh, Guy-Garcia Bernal, Laura Donnelly star in this. It's basically an homage.

to classic horror from the 40s and 50s, you're Brett of Frankenstein, you're black and white, sort of very theatrical, very over-the-top horror. This is a really neat, cool little idea. Like, I don't know that I will ever watch it again.

I don't know that that isn't, that's not supposed to be damning praise. I thought it was like a very enjoyable way to spend 45 minutes, got me in that spooky season hashtag. I'm down for like, special presentations. I saw already that there are like

there are many adventures that Jack Russell could have. And also we could look into all the histories all the monsters who were painted on the walls in this place. Do you want to tell me a little bit or tell our listeners a little bit about what this is about? Yeah. So, you know,

one thing that's sometimes hard to remember is that these comic book companies that became famous and known for publishing the superheroes that dominate our lives today existed before the superhero boom in the 60s. Marvel was called timely comics. DC went through other names as well. But they were just publishing what people read.

And sometimes they were Western comics. And sometimes they were detective stories. For a long time, they were monster stories, monster comics. And there's a tradition of some of these characters, not just public domain characters like Dracula, but specific monsters, like the incredibly named man thing, who is in this series. He's Ted.

That's Ted. That in some cases, I think Man Thing was created later, but predate, you know, Ironman and Captain America. And over the last decade or so, it's been fun to watch more adventurous comic creators and writers try to fold in that completely anachronistic branch of Marvel history, for example, into the main history and say that these are all part of the same shared universe. but also more broadly that comic books aren't just superheroes and you can tell different kinds of stories with them. And I really loved the special

for its understanding of that concept and its fidelity to the fun spirit of that concept. And it didn't try to do too much. You know what I mean? In a way that felt really no-worthy. I mean, I know that everything about this is bracketed and parenthetical. It's like, hey, we're just having some...

fun here, it's Halloween, it's a special presentation, we're not saying that it's connected to the next six series or whatever, despite your correct observation that it could be. I hope they realize that's a feature, not a bug, right? That like the low-key nature of all this, including the sort of relatively

muted promotion for it, is a great thing. Yeah, and there's... This isn't as good as Andor, but its existence makes me have a few of the same good vibes for the larger MCU project in the same way that Andor does for Star Wars. The only thing wrong with this is that what's wrong with me, which is that my starting line for horror is to feel like I've had defib battles put on me.

So anything that's like not soft by any means, but tender or in the poltergeist zone of like, ah, spooky. That's like not necessarily my particular lane. But that being said, like I really enjoyed myself. It just wasn't like it. It wasn't like exactly what I go to, but I don't really watch a lot of monster movies or creature features. It's never really been in my bag. It fell kind of in between a bunch of things in a way that I think was charming,

but might cause problems going forward in the sense that it is a little bit tongue-in-cheek and winky, clever in the way that Marvel things often are. Gail Garcia-Bernal is awesome as someone who pretends to be a monster hunter, but is in fact a monster himself. But his performance is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, as is a lot of the accoutrement, if you will. of this special. And yet sometimes the violence is like, oh,

oh, she cut his arm off with an axe. Like, are we doing that? Like, it's no more gnarly than like Sam Ramey when Sam Ramey's doing his own stuff, but the line of what we're doing here in the Marvel universe on Disney is always a little bit blurry. And so that was curious.

I read Michael Jekino say that, like, he thought it was going to be TVMA for sure, but because it was stylized in black and white and you couldn't see the blood spatter, They got away with it being like TV 14 or something. Getting their arms chopped off and stuff? Yeah. Or like getting a silver bolt through the bottom of their chin and well,

Laura Donnelly holds them while they die. I mean, you know, that was intense. Yeah. But there was something that was, it was the style. I mean, I think Chokino gets a lot of credit here. It's black and white. There's some really nice shots. Did you know he was a director?

Absolutely did not. Absolutely did not. I don't think he has many other credits. No, he had done like a short on one of the start. track productions, like when they, you know, because before there were streaming services, sometimes people would do like for the DVD or whatever. Here's like a cool spin-off short of this or, you know, Marvel used to do shorts as well. Like they used to do digital shorts. So, yeah, I had no idea. I mean, he's seemed incredibly accomplished. Yeah, he's actually someone I'd

love to speak to, not just because of his great and long career scoring things, particularly with J.J. Abrams over the last few years and for Pixar recently as well. But like, I'm always curious when people who work in film move between jobs and what they bring from one job to the other. People who started as editors, because that was paying work, and then they find success as directors. What they've learned from doing one to the other actors is another one.

But scoring is a rare transition, and I wonder what he would say about just the idea of synchronizing different elements and pulling threads together to make things melodious. It's kind of interesting to consider. Yeah, because John Carpenter, there's a couple of examples of people who've done directing and scoring, but I would never say that John Carpenter was a composer first and a director later in life, obviously. The Great Forgotten, at least by too many people, indie filmmaker Hal Hartley, would make music for his own movies under the name Ned Rifle, which is a pretty cool name.

Speaking of, any listeners know when Hal Hartley stuff's come into streaming, you just holler at your boys. So there's no, Hal Hartley is not on criterion at all? I thought Simple Men was, but it's a lot. Is, am I wrong? Sometimes simple men shows up. Sometimes Henry Fool shows up, but like, unbelievable truth and trust. I don't ever know how to find them. Anyway, We'rewolf by night. Really good entertainment.

Recommended by the watch podcast. You know who else is really good? Is Laura Donnelly, who I'd seen only briefly in the Nevers, which sort of ill-fated Josh Weeden-Chevers. I watched the pilot. I feel like I'm on top of all this with you. Really? Yeah.

You snuck a pilot in there? didn't tell me about it? Was I away? You know, post Albuquerque, I feel like we kind of, if there's stuff that we are gentlemen passes on, we don't really talk about it that often. I think when it's too big to fail, like House the Dragons

and sometimes we got to mix it up, but generally, you know, we like to spread positivity on the podcast. You got to do it for me. My fucking guy, Amund, is ascendant. That's your dude. That dude did. Had a growth spurt. I love that for him. So he's like, was he playing in Europe?

You know, he does not distinguish between cow milk, Amon, Targaryen? He's just like, I'll take the milk. Amon is the one with the eyepatch? Yeah. And a double entendres. I just want to talk about people's like skincare regime and aging. Because let's just like, what does Damon do right to get the good genes? I think it's more of what Vassaris did wrong.

I had it absolute. I nearly had a heart attack yesterday when Mallory or Joan. or informed me. Do you know how old Viseris is supposed to be in the show? How old? 52.

Isn't that how old Bill is? I said the same thing. On the podcast. I said the same thing. I was like, Bill's 52. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's amazing.

So that disease really got after it with him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, here's my only note. We're going to, I have one more thing to say about World Wolf by night, but we'll hide inside of this the Easter egg of my one note for House the Dragon, which is I want Patty Considine to be on this show for 10 seasons.

So you didn't watch scenes from next week then? Nope. It's my favorite, it's my favorite comedic performance of the last 10 years. Yeah. And I think it's incredible. And I just, I love it. I love that even in his decrepit, literally leprous state, he found time to pull out the eyes wide shut mask.

Yeah. You know what I mean? He was just like, get me a nice dinner and get me Fidelio. Give me Fidelio. Let's go. I was thinking more Ed Norton from Kingdom of Heaven, but yeah. So last World Off by Night thing, maybe this is just, you know, Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football. But like, I came out of this really nicely paced, self-contained, almost entirely black and white until the end hour, being like, yeah, I would do more Bloodstone.

I'd like Laura Donnelly back. I like this. I like her in this part. This is fun. I really liked Gail and the man thing talking about getting sushi. Like, they did a really nice job with it to make me interested in this world. I don't disagree.

I hope that the lessons learned are more, let's do more special presentations. Yeah. This is a good length for a one-off. And if the one-off is like, whoa, we got something here, by all means, do what you got to do with it. but I thought that this was knowing that this was just

like a one-time thing to check out on the East Coast in the fall black and white it's night I fired that up I just got so excited by it it's really nice to not be like and now I have eight more episodes or we have to figure out whether or not Reed Richards are showing up and that's like you and me

that's our issue with it but there's like you said a treasure trove of characters like they're often bandying around oh there's 1800 Marvel characters and we've only begun to scratch the surface. And I think one of the things that makes us griseled old milk drinkers that we are a little bit. Milk of the poppy, mind you. A little bit like, you know, fatigued with all of this is the idea that each one of those 1800 characters are going to get their own eight

episode limited series that then has to intertwine with 15 other limited series that are being shot simultaneously and nobody knows anything and nobody knows how to cut. This is a new way for them do this stuff. After the experience of that post-pandemic burst of content that came out in Disney Plus with Wanda Vision and Hawkeye and Falcon, you know, like all that stuff, that was one quote-unquote phase. And I hope that they do more shit like this. I hope that they're like, hey, why don't we make like a 55-minute movie that we can shoot on the soundstage in Atlanta? That seems really cool. Like, fuck it, man. Put Renner back in the Hawkeye outfit. But like, have him doing one case in 50 minutes?

I don't know. What's the bad part? Does everything need to be interconnected and part of a larger phase of storytelling? I mean, from your lipstick, the ears of Kevin Faggy's ninth assistant who can then whisper down the line to him that. That podcast that talks about Brit Box,

they think we should stop doing the enormously successful franchise storytelling. I'm not listening to those milk drinkers. I think that it would be pretty cool, though. I think you're right. If like, okay, so this is their Halloween franchise. So next year, revisit it with another hour. And let's just move on as gentlemen and friends.

Like, that's totally fine. And I agree with you. I think, I do think the economics, which many, many companies at least, you know, are behaving like they're immune to, factor in here. Because to take a character, for example, and I don't know what they're going to do with her. And I hope they do right by her, but this character of Ironheart that is, you know, an Ironman, from the Ironman.

Iron Man Coaching Tree, let's say. It's basically the Iron Man armor falls to a teenage super genius, who's an African-American kid in Chicago. And I think it's already been announced. There's going to be a Disney Plus series. She's going to be in, or she appears, or the armor is in Black Panther in Wakanda forever. No, she's in it.

There's a shot of her in it. It's confirmed. Okay. So. I can confirm that, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Like, what's it like Joe Blow News, whatever the site is, is your other job?

Confirmed. Chris, I want you to just sort of rebrand yourself as someone who tweets reactions despite the embargoes when Marvel movies premiere just be one of those dudes who's just like, not supposed to say this, but Kevin has done it again. Literally crying in my milk duds. R.N. Yeah, that's you. But like, it would be better, I think, for everyone, for there to be an Iron Heart special presentation. Introduce the character with a really sharp 50 minutes. And by the way, the people who wrote Werewolf by night, Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron, are in-house people. They did Wanda Vision. They worked on Hawkeye, right? Yeah. They worked on Hawkeye.

And so... That's the thing is you can also, like, if you're looking, let's just say, I know that this is not how these things work, but let's just say they were. If you were the programmer of Disney Plus, you could kind of look and be like, ooh, a little soft spot in the schedule right here. Or like, hey, it's this season. Why don't we try and do this, you know? What's your Easter content, Disney Plus? you know? Yeah. Marvel special presentation.

Can we get some resurrection content going on? Well, that's all comic books. But just to finish the thought that like the economics of these shows is so outrageous now. I mean, Tony Gilroy said it to us that like, oh, now they're willing to spend $200 million to make a TV show. The expectation is we've been having these CGI conversations even on shows we're not watching like She Hulk. You can't cheap out on it, right? And so you couldn't make the economics work to build the sets and get the CG and everything going for Ironheart if you weren't going to amortize it over 16 episodes over three years. The Breakfast Club with Rie Williams is just like a kid in high school.

Are you atoning for your William Rhodes thing by knowing the name of Ironheart's alter ego? No, isn't that the actress? No, that's the character. Oh, so you didn't know. Okay, good. I was worried. By the way, we got,

I don't want to out friends of the pod, but our pal Damon Lindeloff was really mad at us for when we talked to Evan Moss Backrack last week and then we were like embarrassed that we knew Grito

and he didn't. It's kind of hard. I mean, he's a pretty cool guy. It's hard to be like, yeah, like I'm not going to correct him if he doesn't.

I couldn't also tell if that, I mean, with all due respect to him, was, is that true? I guess so. But if the man's holding Grito's blaster, you could say the name Grito.

But it's also hard to imagine Tony Gilroy being like, let's stop everything on Endor and make sure we chart the sort of path of this blaster to Grito. Tony Gilroy does not know whose blaster it was. He's listening to our podcast being like,

that guy drank what? So do you think it's like a prop guy guy came up to Emmet Moss back rack and was like, yeah, this is Grito's blaster? He has used it well. Yeah. And he's like, really? I'm going to pretend not to know that guy's name.

Yeah. Andy, do you want to set up your Ben Gibbard interview at all? Yeah, just that it's always fun to talk to Ben, known each other for a long time. We recorded this last week, and so some context, Death Cab for Cutie's 10th album, Asphalt Meadows, is out now there. The band is on tour now.

The record is really good. I mean, Ben says he thinks it's their best record in a decade, and I'm not going to argue with Ben. It was worth noting that we were, we recorded last week a day or two before the playoffs began, but when Ben's team, the Seattle Mariners had finally come off the Schneid, as they say, and made the playoffs for the first time in like 21 years.

So that's really all he cared about and wanted to talk about. Since then, he has completely lost his mind because the Mariners won their first series. Right. So for the sake of Ben Gibbard and for the Philadelphia, Phillies, we will call the wild card round the playoffs. A significant playoffs. Yeah, I'm not saying wild card flags don't fly forever.

I'm not saying like that was really significant, but it was... I got the feeling that almost everybody who was celebrating, their wild card victories were like, and now the real work begins. You know, they weren't like, I'm going to drown in champagne tonight. I think they had a similar party on the set of House of the Dragon after the eighth fucking episode. Guess what? We could start the show now.

Right? You're such as little... You're right. You know I'm right. Anyway, yeah, a lot of baseball talk. I liked last night's episode. You wanted to debate this for the 15th time. I enjoyed myself last day.

Aymann and Damon are good TV. And really sound nice. when you say them together. Yeah. Can you name all the children played by different actors in three episodes? Well, they all have been given much easier to understand,

like remember, like Luke Joff, right? Then there's another kid. Reneer has three kids by quote unquote Lenor. Yeah. I think we're two.

I can't remember. And then she has, she's doing some Damon kids now. So she's got two of those, Vasaris and Aegon. And then, And Allison has three sons, two sons and a daughter. That's great.

Yeah. One is Riri. Right? One is Lieutenant Colonel William Rhodes. That's right. The other is the werewolf by night. Okay. Yeah, it all starts to make sense now.

All right. We'll get into this interview with Ben. We talk about music, careers, baseball. It's a good chat. Deepest apologies to Kai McMullen for producing today. just respect i don't know apology yeah sometimes i think we give her really like a lot to work with and then today i think we were kind of all over the shot but i enjoyed it i think i mean i don't want to speak for kaya here she could unmute herself at any moment but i do think that of all the podcast she works on

she does great work on all of them there are very few like just detours into lactose issues you know like just like dairy choices right i would does tea time ever venture into what kind of dairy do you like i guess take their tea with lemon hottest take does it does it a lot of dairy content. Yeah. Really? So, Kai is not listening. Guy is not listening. I'm team milk.

Yes. I'm team 2%. Yeah, you know, I just get offended around. I'm like, I'll have my milk added coffee drink with milk, please. And they're like, what kind of milk? I'm like, no. Nope. There's one kind of milk.

My problem is that coffee shops only ever offer whole milk. And I don't necessarily want a whole milk latte. That's a lot of milk. Well, it's the same amount of milk. You just don't want all that milk fat content. You prefer a lighter milk. They're not adding more. Let's put this part right now at the top of the podcast.

Just coming in cold with milk talk. Cold is the froth, if you will, on the well-pored flat white. We did it. We'll be back on Thursday with more watch content. I would venture a guest to say that we'll be talking about Andor and probably Atlanta and some other stuff. Kaya produced us today. Andy is my co-host and the Ben Gibbard interviewer.

and we'll talk to you on Thursday. That sounds good to me. Let's get into it. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for.

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Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. Okay, I'm so excited now to be joined by an old friend, someone of whom I'm a big fan, and someone who really is only going to want to talk about baseball today. Ben, Gabbard of Death Cab for Cudy.

Ben, welcome back to the show. Congratulations a little bit on your 10th album, Asphalt Meadows. But really congratulations on returning to the MLB playoffs. Thank you. Yeah, I believe we released eight records between the last time the Mariners were the playoffs and today. So, yeah, it feels like we won the World Series, and we're only probably going to be the third wild card. So whatever, man. It's all gravy from this point on.

That's beautiful. So really, it's just a blink of an eye, but also the majority of your career. So how best to think about that? Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, I don't think that people outside of Seattle really have an understanding of what a cathartic moment Friday afternoon was, or night, I should say, just because, you know, you kind of, you just get used to not being in the playoffs every year. And then to finally just realize that we're going to play some meaningful baseball in October, it feels like it's a lot more significant than it should be.

But I think that's just because of the 21 years with no playoffs. Yeah, I mean, as someone who has had 11 years, you know, with no playoffs until, until last night, I'm trying to connect with you, you know, on an empathetic level. But I guess, I guess the flags of 2008 fly forever, you know. So it's hard to, it's hard to really go into that. mind space. Yeah. I mean, and, and, you know, what's it like going to a World Series? I wouldn't know. That's true. That's true. Although, I think you do know about me that I actually once attended a World Series game, and it was the game the Phillies lost like 1715 to the Blue Jays, which was just like

the most dispiriting in most Philadelphia loss, maybe ever. So I do have that in my bloodstream, but I do recall, I do recall you telling me that during the 2008 World Series that you, you hid behind a potted plant because you were too anxious in your own home, if I'm recalling this correctly. And I have referenced that a number of times and said, look, if Andy was that anxious, I don't know how I'm going to react. If the Mariners were to make the world's here, that I would have to move out of my home. Well, here's the thing. Like, I am a devoted sports fan, but I am a terrible sports fan. And I have not gotten any better over the years. And so what you're describing is accurate. I'm both honored and appalled that you remembered. But during, it started, you know,

earlier in the playoffs, but by the World Series, any crucial moment, which was really all of them, especially like during Phillies at-bats, I would get up from the couch and walk behind a potted plant and also mute the television, because if I could hear it, it was too real. But with the silence and the plant, like, it was enough distance for me to emotionally, it wasn't healthy. It's not healthy. I don't know if I'm ready for that again. Well, I think. that I am also a fatalist sports fan in the sense that I am always kind of preparing for the worst outcome and while hoping for the best. So the Mariners went on a three and seven road trip against three of the worst teams in baseball not a week ago. And I was convinced at that point

that they were going to blow it because it just seemed like a very mariners thing to do. And, you know, if past behavior is an indication of future behavior, you know, it would be best in my mind to take the fatalist position than to be optimistic. And I would get into it with people on Mariners Reddit or whatever and they would be like, you just got to believe, man. I don't know why you can't believe. It's like, I can't believe because we've made five

clap appearances in the last 45 years. That's why. Yeah, what in your history has taught you it's okay to believe or to trust or love again? I mean, this is, that's insanity. We were in the same situation where a few days ago, the headline by the Phillies Beatwriter on the Atlantic, the athletic,

we're not highbrow enough to be covered. this team is not highbrow enough. This team of like giant jacked meatballs was like the Phillies are authoring their worst collapse since 1964. Can anything be done to stop it? That was the headline. So that's where we approach things. We should talk about your new record, but I do feel like since we're talking about baseball, since it is the season, I don't think we've ever talked about in a public forum our place in baseball history, have we?

I don't believe we have, but I think that now is the time to do it. I do too. I think this is also perfect for as one thing that connects us in our love of marginal, not very successful teams, is that we hate successful teams, right? I mean, we support fans and people like baseball, but Yankee fans we don't have a lot of empathy for or time for. And yet, I don't know if it's in Cooperstown. It's certainly on YouTube. If you watch the footage of Arod's 600th Homer, a historic, beautiful moment at the stadium, you will see. two deeply unimpressed pasty figures just behind home plate. I recently revisited this, and we are very visible. We went to that game together 12 years ago. And we were the only people in that area who did not stand up. Didn't care. When A-Rod, we did not care.

We were aggressively anti-the-moment. And if I recall correctly, through the Lonely Island guys, we were able to secure those seats because those seats are long. Michael's seats. And I brazenly kind of reached out to Akiva or Yorma. I was like, hey, is there any way we keep those seats behind home plate? And for whatever reason, we got them. And then we found ourselves back there, you know, surrounded by Yankees fans, you know, watching this moment that no one seems to want to replay for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why. But it does, it does, if I could interview you for a second, I'm curious what your thoughts are on,

this whole race to 62 that Aaron Judge is currently on. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it because I have my own as well. And I'm sure if we're on the same page here. My main thought is why haven't we been invited back to the stadium? We are there good luck talismans for major home run events. So that's my first thought is to make it entirely about me and by extension you. My second thought is, I mean, I don't like it when Yankees succeed. so I'm struggling with that.

So do you mean like the sort of the media, like the let's cut live to every Aaron Judge strikeout or intentional walk hoopla or the games focus on making this important so that they can then erase Barry Bonds' number in a way? That was what I was leading you to. It would be the second point. I'm finding it very obnoxious that this moment, albeit historic in its own way. And, you know, of course, Aaron Judge is an amazing player who's having an unbelievable offensive year. Some may argue one of the top 10 offensive years in baseball history. And what I'm having

a hard time with is people not being able to hold that and the other truth that Barry Bonds hit more home runs. Yes. And to be able to accept that there was an era of this game in which a lot of people were using performance enhancing drugs, both on the pitching side and the hitting side and not to mention the decades in which people were inhaling ianphetamines every day in the dugout. And I'm finding a little bit obnoxious. I think it's mostly because it is a Yankee. I think that this was happening to somebody on the diamond backs. We wouldn't be hearing about it to such an extent. And of course, there's a, oh, it was Roger Maris hitting 61. And now it's another Yankee and its judge and what a wonderful lineage of Yankee

greatness. And that would be. correct, but I'm just one of those guys who I just take the steroid era for what it was, and those are the records now, those are the numbers. And this, I'm finding it obnoxious that we're trying to kind of, we're seeing articles that are saying things like, is, will judge be the new home run king now? It's like, no, he won't. Barry Bonds is the home run king. You may not like it, but that's what, that is the reality of the situation.

Yeah, it's a bummer. I mean, I don't, my relationship with it in general is, I, I, I, baseball has such a weird relationship to its history, right, where it's just like picking and choosing what matters and celebrating only cherry picking what it wants to celebrate and pretending whole eras or whole personalities or people didn't happen. And yet at the same time, they're like,

well, how can we make this game faster and worse all the time? You know? So, like, while I'm excited, the Phillies are back in the playoffs, I'm the old guy, I'm like, how many wild cards are there? And why aren't the pitchers batting? Like, there's something about it that just seems every step of the way, whether it's this sort of like glossy nostalgia thing that they're trying to put on us with Judge.

And the rule changes, I don't feel like it's speaking to me. The communication is off, if that makes sense. I'm putting my arms around two different points, but... Yeah, I'm going to try to put my arms around the point you just made, which is that I, or just to counter your point, I think, the one you're trying to make is that you don't like the new rules that are coming in here. I don't like the new rules. Well, I don't like the new rules because,

as a, we were talking about as a Phillies fan from 2008, I just think about Ryan Howard, whose career was basically ended by people being like, they're four outfielders now. And now you won't be allowed to do that anymore. And he would have had a better, and he had a great career, but he would have had a longer career. Wait, I'm confused. So I am for banning the shift. Yes, four banning the shift. Okay.

And I am for a pitch clock. You're pro pitch clock. I'm pro pitch clock. And I'm also, well, I'm American League guy, but you can't tell me with it. You can't tell me the straight face that this last year of D.H baseball in Philadelphia has been less of an experience in watching some guy flail at a pitcher flail at a breaking ball. My team is entirely DHS. I have nine DHS. That is true. So I don't know what to feel about them at all. I like seeing people flail. That's, you know, it's what I like in music too sometimes. You know, I like people just reaching for things they can't quite hit, right? I'm trying to find a segue now. now. I see we're segueing away. Okay, I'll roll with you on this one. Let's let's move away from baseball, as far as we could talk about it for the next two hours. I, we could. This is dangerous

because this is, my only ask is like, I want to try to find some music questions that will get the same motivated tenor in your voice, you know, because I feel like, because I know this is a topic. You're more interested in this today, but I do have to ask about the record. That's why we're here, which is really good, by the way. And you're on tour right now. Now, where are we even speaking to you from? Somewhere on tour. Well, back to baseball, we are playing at a venue across the street from Truist Park, which is where the Atlanta Braves play. But we are not actually in Atlanta.

We are 20 miles out in the suburbs. I suppose the people who own the Braves, you know, they wanted to make a more suburban friendly, if we can call it. environment for their baseball team with the racist hand gestures. They were like, you know what? We need to get this to a safer area of town. And yeah, I walked around today.

It is like, it is truly one of the most prefabbed, like, towns. I think I've ever been in it. It's like this whole complex is like, it's like Epcot Center or something. It has no soul whatsoever. Certainly doesn't feel like Atlanta. And also, I hate the Braves. So let's get that out there. But the fans tonight will be great, I'm sure.

I'm sure they will. I'm not going to say any of this on stage, of course. I've learned my lesson talking about sports teams from the stage. It's something I shouldn't do. Unless you're in Seattle, perhaps. No, of course, yeah. Okay, so I want to run the clock back a little bit to you're still two years away from the Mariners making the playoffs.

So I just want you to ground yourself in that emotional reality. The moment the pandemic hit, great time for all of us. I'm really curious just knowing you for a long time and thinking about your creative process and also when we've had these conversations about like each new record, what got you into it, what you were thinking about, what was inspiring you. You know, one thing over the last decade plus certainly was about how you have found some balance in your life, whether it was through running or through other avenues. Aspects of your life had settled down, had gotten normal, if you will. you're in your normal life when the entire world goes totally fucking abnormal. And I'm wondering as not just as the person that I've known for a long time, but also as the artist, someone who was, you know, whether you were in the early stages of writing down songs or what have you,

how did that massive shift affect you creatively? I think that we collectively, but certainly in Seattle, I don't think that we realized how close to chaos we were living in America. And I think that the systems that have always held to a certain extent and that we have taken for granted and assumed they would always work, they would always function, began to stop functioning properly. And for me, I guess, a large part of my anxiety and kind of, I guess, by extension,

creative motivation was kind of leaning into that feeling of anxiety and the realization that so much of my city, of our country of the world for that matter, that we assumed just would continue functioning as it always had, was on the border of just descending into complete chaos. and, you know, so, you know, when there is like, you know, a four block anarchistic zone descending into chaos and people literally dying or being killed, you know, less than a half mile from my house, it's very difficult to kind of just not be affected by that and to not, you know, spend a lot of the day, you know, dreading what the next day will bring as far as a further

descent into chaos. I mean, it's like whether it's like people just abandon, you know, it seemed like during the pandemic, we had people just like literally or figuratively just abandoning their posts. So, you know, my life at home in my house was fairly similar to my life before the pandemic. My wife and I don't have children. We're both artists. We both work at home. But, you know, obviously, once you walk out the front door, you are face to face with the

scary possibility of life never returning to something that we we deemed normal before. So that was that was a very motivating and kind of my writing. It's interesting to think about your observations of your home and your neighborhood from lead off single to lead off single to going from Gold Rush in the observation of how Seattle has changed to Roman Candles and seeing, you know, a very, very different vision of both the city and the world. I mean, that's, it's hard to think of a more striking contrast than just to go between those two songs, introducing the two different albums from two different, genuinely two different eras of American existence.

Sure. I mean, you know, when I was writing, thank you for today. I mean, one of the things I was ruminating a lot on was the changing landscape of the city that I lived in. And not so much that I wanted to be like the good old days, but just as corporate and Internet and, you know, Amazon influence started to kind of eat away at Seattle, just how the flavors of the city began to change rather quickly. And where once was an old dive bar you drank at is now, you know, an Amazon Go or whatever. And that that was a fairly, at the time,

a fairly disturbing transition. And at the time, seeing this slow death of the city that I knew, was very concerning to me. But obviously when the pandemic hit, or what should be obvious, the pandemic hit, those concerns seem ridiculous in comparison to the seemingly daily threat of the breakdown of society. So, yeah, they're very stark,

there are very stark differences between those two songs. but I think in a way they both are representative of how much I love my city and how and how much how much I care for. And not so much that I don't want it to change, but I want it to, even though I literally say, don't change, say the same in Gold Rush.

It's more that at the end of the day, I want the spirit of my city to continue to thrive and to remain intact. And throughout, you know, with a tech boom in Seattle, the spirit of the city started to kind of flicker a bit. And, of course, during the pandemic, it's been even worse. But it feels as things are starting to open up, people are starting to go out again. You know, I think things are starting to kind of get back to a place of not so much normalcy,

but a new normal that I can personally accept, if that's even something I'm allowed to say or do. One thing that I really appreciated about both Roman Candles and the record as a whole, once I finally heard it, and I think I expressed this to you directly once the single drop was, I really appreciated the way some of the chaos that you're talking about, even if it was purely atmospheric, if you remained fortunate and not directly affected by it within your home and within your life, some of that chaos has come into the music. I love that you came back with a noisier song.

I love that the first song on the record, which is really a phenomenal track, is actively addressing. to me, the emotional experience of living through the last two years, which is I would like to lay some framework of understanding and control over this, but I cannot. And there's some acceptance in that that I find really moving when I listen to the record. Yeah, well, thank you. I write linearly. So I've never, you know, written a chorus first and then tried to write verses that fit the chorus. I mean, it's probably something I should try at some point just as a writing exercise. But I've always

written linearly, starting with the first verse into a chorus, into a second verse, into a bridge or whatever. So, you know, when I was writing Roman Candles, the first verse is just this kind of, you know, vomitous kind of rant about just how difficult it's been to kind of get through the days in the middle of the pandemic. And, and I find myself kind of cratering as the verse is finishing as we get to the end of the first verse. But because I write linearly, I'll look at what I've just written and say, like, do I want to, how far do I want to go with this? You know, and I find myself, it almost feels like a conversation with myself where I get to having to write the chorus. And I'm like, well, I really got to lift it up here. I can't just take people down with me.

And I also want, I want to give, I wanted to be something in this song that is, that drags me out of this pit that I've dug myself into in the first verse. So, coming back with, you know, but I'm learning to let go of all the things. And I tried to hold too long because they all explode like Roman candles. Like, you know, trying to, I just, it's, to me, it's, yeah, sometimes the way I write it, it feels like a conversation I'm having myself where if I am kind of starting to descend into the depths of despair, I'm, I'm, I'm literally trying to pull myself out of it in the chorus. And then that allows me to go back down again in the second verse that I feel like, because I know I'm going to get back to that chorus and pull myself up. So, yeah, it feels like that's probably one of the reasons that these glimmers of hope cut through in some of the songs because I'm having a conversation myself as I'm writing

the song. I like the idea of the conversation with yourself because I was going to ask more specifically about what felt like a wonderful conversation that you had during the early part of the pandemic when you were doing songs from home and you were doing concerts from your house, connecting with people very actively, you know, in a way that I think was very significant and meaningful to a lot of fans. And, you know, during the darkest few weeks, certainly at the beginning of everything,

how much of that experience? I mean, first of all, is that correct to even frame that as a conversation? Did you feel it as a two-way street between people making requests, commenting, feeding back to you? And then did any of that spirit of connection or conversation carry into the eventual writing and recording of this record, you know, however many months later? Yeah, I mean, I didn't set out with the live from homes to have them be such an interactive experience.

Initially, I have to admit, I was pretty nervous about doing the first one because I just, you know, being 46 now, you know, I didn't, we didn't grow up online. We didn't, we didn't grow up sharing our every experience with the world and interacting with fans from the moment we put out our first single or whatever. It's been a very, you know, the overwhelming majority of my life has been lived without social media. So I'm not very good at it, nor do I feel comfortable using it the same way that somebody who's 20 probably does. So in those early shows, I would see that there was a comment kind of bored over on the right. And I'd be like, oh, no, there's probably going to be people in there just saying terrible things or like trolling me or whatever, because that's, I don't know how I got that idea. would you tune in and watch some guy play guitar and, you know, singing songs that you like and just use that opportunity to make fun of him? But that was where my insecurities lay because

there also wasn't a lot going on, you know, so theoretically some people might be. Yeah, but, but, but, but, but, but, you know, the overwhelming majority of people were fans, of course. I mean, now that it seems, that seems like a, you know, obvious now, but at the time I just, I wasn't sure how they were going to go. And, and what I started to notice over the course of the days and weeks that I was doing the shows is that this little community was starting to form around the shows. And I would open up the, before I'd go live, I would open up the window and I'd see people in the chat and they were, you know, saying things like, oh, I lost my job today. And somebody else was like, oh, I'm so sorry, Steve. You know, hopefully you'll get back on your

feet. People were, it was very clear that this was becoming a little small microcosm for people to kind of, that every day this was going to be the thing that at least a lot of them were going to do. this was something to kind of you know center at least a portion of their day around and it was the same for me I mean I you know it wasn't an entirely

altruistic gesture because I found that I really needed it myself at that time where you know those early days of the pandemic when we didn't know what the fuck was going on and you know we thought we'd just be in our homes for a couple weeks while the virus just passed on by and then we get back to doing everything we did and then as that turned out to not be the case

that's where, at least for me, a lot of my anxiety settled in, and I started to get really, my mental health started crater, and doing these shows was incredibly helpful for that, because it gave me something every day that I had to do. And, okay, what am I going to do? Okay, today is all Beatles of Congress. I have to spend the day learning Beatles songs or whatever it might be. And, you know, I won't say that, you know,

that sense of community necessarily made its way into the record, but what it did make me want to do was kind of mix up the way that we had been making, that we had been writing and working on music to that point, which had pretty much from the beginning of the band, then I sit in a room writing songs, I send songs to band, band become familiar with songs, then we go in the studio and we just figure them out. So about maybe like a month in the pandemic, I kind of came up with this experiment where,

you know, there's five of us in the band, and there's five days in a traditional work week, and we would create an out-of-order order where maybe Zach might go first and do, write a piece of music on the keyboard. He would upload it to a drop box the next day, maybe Jason pulls it down, put some drums on it, and then the next day I pull it down on Wednesday, and I add, I write lyrics in a melody or add guitar, whatever I'm going to do, and so on and so forth. And by Friday, everybody's contributed to this piece of music. that may or may not turn out to be a song. And the rules that I set were you have only 24 hours to work on it,

and whoever has the piece of music in their possession has complete editorial control over what they're doing. So if you don't like that, keyboard part, you can throw it out. If you want to make a song faster, you can time stretch it. If you want to change a key, you can do that. And so we started doing this alongside the songs that I was writing at home, And it somewhat like the Live from Home shows, it gave a sense of schedule and purpose to the week

that otherwise never exists for me as a musician when I'm at home because when I'm at home, I'm just kind of making my own schedule, writing when I feel like writing, doing other stuff, moving off. And it centered at least one day of the week entirely on the band for each of the five of us, which I wasn't sure that it was going to work,

but I felt that worst-case scenario we might get some bits and bobs that I could pull from in my own writing. But by the time the record was reported, I think a little less than half, or around half of the record ended up being songs that started with that writing methodology.

So, you know, of course, like anybody, I think we would probably give back whatever we, whatever pluses we got during the pandemic, not have a pandemic. But if there had to be a pandemic and we had to be stuck in our homes, at least we were able to kind of open up some new creative avenues for ourselves.

For sure, I mean, you think about a track like Fox Love through the clear cut, which I don't know if it came from that process that you're describing, but it's unlike anything you've done before, you know, and it's kind of exciting, you know, both musically and thinking about you and your career and the band as a whole, that on record number 10, there's more here. You know, there's a different path to go down, a different door to open and see what's behind it. Well, that's an interesting track for a lot of reasons, but primarily because that was a song that before the pandemic,

I'd come across a big box of four-track tapes. And for those are not familiar, a four-track is slash was a piece of recording, equipment, a home recording device that would take a regular cassette and take the four tracks, you know, there's stereo right and left on the side A and side B, and run them in the same direction so you can multitrack on them. And before garage band and Pro Tools and Logic and stuff, this is how people like me made demos. And I used a four track for all of my demos between 96 and 2001.

So I was going back to these tapes and I was dumping them all into Pro Tools so that I could do something in them later just to archive them. And I came across this instrumental piece of music that I'd recorded in 1998, I think, January, 2008. And I was like, wow, that's really great. I love that bass line, the drum parts called. cool and that guitar part's kind of cool. So I took those three elements and I looped eight bars of it and I wrote Foxglove on that. So that piece of music is this weird bridge. That song is a bridge between literally the stuff I was writing on the first record and what we're doing is a band

now. And it, you know, of course we stripped out a lot of the, we're not using any of the original tracks from the old four track cassette, but you know, Zach replays himself on keyboards. Everybody added their own elements to it. But I think that one reason maybe that song has been resonating with fans of the band, or certainly fans who've been around for a long time, is because its DNA is in the very first kind of version of the band. It's so interesting. And I was totally wrong. I'm saying it's new. And in fact, it's all the way back to the beginning. One thing that I found interesting is that because this is record number 10 and because your career almost stretches the length of the Mariners playoff drought, sorry, had to say it. It's fine. It's fine. You get, you're getting asked

more and more to like rank and revisit. And you're unsurprisingly very, very good at this because you're a very thoughtful person but also you are a fan of careers and albums and things like this. And if people haven't read it, like I thought your conversation with stereo gum was just great. Do you think looking back on things, do you generally feel like your fans are quote unquote

right? Like is the marketplace of your fan right about things that they embrace or things that they maybe not reject, but things that they are more lukewarm on now that you look back on the 10 records behind you? Oh, 100%. They're always right. They're always right.

I mean, you know, I won't name any names, of course, but, you know, there are bands that I love that had careers as long or longer than ours. And I have done my best to kind of avoid the pitfalls that some of those bands have fallen into. I think the most obvious pitfall is the tempos slow down, the acoustic guitars come out, the string arrangements get bigger and more ridiculous, and there becomes a distance from, the writing seems to be being done from a distance. And I really believe that when a band that I love was working on their 10th or 11th record, I'm sure they thought that they were making a really great record

because they were working with the material in front of them that they all were enjoying. And that's probably as, I'm complete total conjecture. They were probably believing that this material stacked up with the best stuff that they'd ever done. But what I question is if they went back, and listen to some of that stuff and then listen to the new stuff

that they're working on and ask themselves the question, does this material continue the legacy of the older material that we might, that was our heyday, you know, or our high watermark, critically, commercially, whatever.

And, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say that that's something that I'm doing with every record, but what I'm, I feel, I feel like as a fan primarily, what I want from a band or an artist that has been around as long as we have or longer, what I want in a new record is the reminder of why I love that band. And I want a new record.

You know, of course you want to, you know, I think it's very difficult for an artist or a band to make a record 25, 30 years in that will be culturally, seen on par with their zeitgeist moment record. You know, so much of how we view an artist's work is in the time and place in which it's made the culture around that record. These are things that cannot be, they cannot be replicated. So, you know, if fill in the blank band

who had made an amazing record in 1992 makes an equally great record in 2022, it won't have the same cultural kind of cachet because of the time period in which the first record came out and the connection with which people have to that first record. So for me, what I want to do with this band is I only want to put out records when I feel we truly have something to say. I'm very cognizant of not drowning our fans and material. I feel that there is this trend that starts to happen

later in some artist's career where they decide that what their fans want is more music. And as a fan myself, I don't necessarily want five records for my favorite band in a calendar year. I want one record every five years that can be an event and something that can remind me why I love this band and make you go back and listen to the old records

connect the new material with the records that I loved when I was a teenager or in my 20s, whatever. So I feel like I'm rambling a bit But I The short answer is Yeah the fans are always right I mean if I feel as I feel if I'm able to turn the guns on on my own band in the last 10 years

I think that we have I think we have made a lot of great songs But we had not made a great record And you know I'm I'm very pleased to see that the general response to Asphalt Meadows is that it is our best record in over 10 years to do something I would completely agree with. Even pitchfork. Crazy, right? I know.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, though. I mean, it's as a fan myself, acclimating to the new record and remembering what it feels like to have songs that speak to each other as much as they speak to me is really nice, you know,

and used to be the defining factor of my relationship with records, but as things have shifted, I think I've shifted with them, and I agree with you about this record. Not to harp on it, But I am curious because, as you just said, you turn the guns on yourself as well as anyone. And sometimes that results in good songs.

But going through some of these things, like the Stereogum thing, like you, in my opinion, you are unduly harsh on codes and keys, a record that I will still defend. And we can do a separate podcast because I really, really love a lot of the songs on that record. My question isn't about what you don't like. My question is, if you do revisit and you're considering your body of work in anticipation of new work, what do you take from things? things that maybe didn't connect as much? Like, what do, if people, because fans can say, I don't like that, so I don't listen to it. But you are going back and you are listening.

What do they not understand about what you gained from that or learned from that that that pays forward towards the new work? Well, I think the longer that you do this, it becomes more and more difficult to remain connected to the aesthetic and sometimes the spirit of the work that people first fell in love with. while also trying to branch out and do some new things. And that becomes increasingly more difficult the longer you do this. That's a problem I'm more than willing to take on.

But what it means is that you're not going to hit every time. It's like, you know, I mean, I think talking about Neil Young's career is fair game at this point. You know, I mean, it's like there was a period for his records for me for the 80s. into the early 90s that didn't really do much for me, but then he comes out with Harvest Moon. And Harvest Moon, for me at least, is a perfect distillation of the things that I love about Neil Young, while also being written and sung from the perspective of Neil Young at that age. And so in a career as long as Neil Young's or a career that is continuing as long as mine and hours, there might be some longer periods between the last record that you truly loved

and the Harvest Moon. But the Harvest Moon is coming. And I think the longer career, the more missteps that you are going to have in the eyes of the fans. And that's just something that one has to accept. And you have to understand that fans feel that way because they care, because they love your band, because they love music. That's, you know, if my favorite band makes a record that I don't like, it's like, it's almost

personally offensive to me. But that's because I love that band so much. And I want, I want everything they do to be great. And the reality is that that's simply not possible. But as a fan of you and your songwriting, but also a fan of the length and breadth of careers, which is maybe another way of saying, I'm also old now. I really love, I love when a, there's, more to be found. You keep digging the same furrow

and there's more there. And so I think about a song like title and registration, which is now almost 20 years old and a song like Weed Like Waves, which is just a few weeks old in terms of our consciousness. And both are centered around emotional experiences around automobiles. Only one features prefab sprout, which I had to mention on the podcast.

That meant a lot to me. I don't know if that was just a, I don't know how many of us received that transmission, but I did. But the emotion of the new song feels incredibly relevant to you and your life and your experience now and your perspective. There's no reason to compare those songs necessarily other than I'm reaching for an auto metaphor

and you wrote both of them. But it does feel like a furrow is continuing to be worked and there's more there. And there's a different perspective on it now. And I think that's sort of the beauty of a longer career and following it. Yeah, I feel that way. And I appreciate you saying that

because that's a song on the record that I'm incredibly proud of. And I had written an earlier version of it you know, the first couple lines I was really fond of, like waves, you know, the Canadian planes were ocean wide flowing to the sky. I had this whole thing and this image

in my mind that I originally was thinking about my friend Tork and I had written this. The rest of the song was kind of a a love song about, you know, I love Tork but not specifically about Tork.

And I found I This is Tork from stars, right? I don't know many other torques. We lost Peter Tork a few years ago, so I know this is... Right, yeah. No, this is this is that, this is that Torquil camel. And, you know, we had, you know,

a handful of years ago, we had kind of had been this, you know, driving around in Canada, and I was, and it's just like, you know, we were literally listening to Prefab Sprout, and I ended up kind of backtracking on that song and thinking, like, I really need to write a song about

a male friendship that has been that we have been friends for over 20 years, Torqunine. And I felt that that was a more relevant thing to write about at 45 than to write another lost love song, which I've got plenty of those and probably will have a lot moving forward

as is my way. But I just, I felt this very strong urge to kind of backtrack and write a song about where I was in my life with a friend of mine. and talking about, you know, and, you know, the kind of person that we could have easily been doing this similar road trip in our 20s and now we're in our 40s. And so, you know, putting the song in the world, I was like, I don't know who this is going to resonate with other than Andy Greenwald. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. But it felt like a much more honest thing to write about and a much more honest voice to use than to kind of try to continue in a lineage of brokenhearted love songs, which I had.

have been, you know, known for over the years. And it's a song that I'm incredibly proud of because I feel like my instincts were correct to begin with and that I should be writing about who I am now and the experience them having versus trying to maintain a specific narrative lineage that I've kind of written a number of times already. But also finding the vein of the same rich of emotional vein. I mean, this song communicated to emotions very clearly as clearly as songs you'd written about, as songs you hadn't written specifically for me, let's just say that, you know.

As the person in his mid-40s who likes prefab sprout, stars, and Death Cat for Cutie, like, I appreciate the personal shout-out, but the emotions are still present, and it seems like they are relevant to you today, you know, in a different way, which I think is part of the power of it. Very much so. And I think my best songs are the ones that while I'm writing them, I can visualize every detail in the room where whatever series of events I'm writing about are occurring.

They just seem very vivid, and I'm not reaching for them. And, you know, there are certainly songs on our catalog that I felt I was reaching for that turned out to be songs that resonate deeply with people. But I think with this record in particular, there's not a single song on this record that isn't incredibly vibrant in my mind. Or that in writing the song, I wasn't reaching for anything. Everything was just right at, you know, right at my goal. grasp and I could see every song as if I'm watching a movie.

That's thrilling and it comes across. And I, I, I, you've been very generous with your time as always. I'm thrilled about the album. The band is on tour now and will continue to be on tour for the next few weeks and months, maybe even to the next year. But I do have to bring it back to baseball briefly before I let you go. So yeah, we're at the cusp of the playoffs. The J-Rod experience is in full effect, potentially for the next 12 years, which congratulations on that. That is great. But I have to ask you, okay, So this is a quick game of Would You Rather? Now, I have a feeling the answer is going to be clear for all of them so we can buzz through it pretty quickly, but maybe I'm wrong.

So, for example, would you rather have a Mariners World Series championship or Death Cab play Saturday Night Live again? Oh, Mariners World Championships. It's not even a 9-close. Okay, we started with that. Okay. Would you rather have a Mariners World Championship or a number one record on the Billboard charts? Mariners World Championship. We already have a number one record.

I loved it. See, got to give you a little room to flex. Would you rather have a Mariners World Championship or a number one song? Hot 100. That I don't think you've done. Mariners' World Championship. You haven't given me anything yet that I'd want more yet. Okay.

I assume the answer for the other ones on this list. Platinum plaque, Grammy, forget about it. You want the World Championship. Yeah. You know, Andy, my entire career after 1998 has been complete gravy. So, and I often talk about the Seattle Mariners at friends. And I say things like, look, I have lived a charmed life. I have a wonderful, I had a wonderful upbringing with a wonderful family.

I have wonderful friends. I'm living the rare existence where I said at 13, I want. wanted to play music for a living and I'm doing it at 46. And throughout my entire life, at least from the time I was six on, I have watched a pretty terrible baseball team. And I've said to people that, you know, I live a charmed life. And the Seattle Mariners are my cross to bear. They are, you know, at the end, and as it is with sports,

they mean absolutely nothing and everything at the same time. You know, you and I as what I would consider fairly intelligent, intellectual, you probably better educated than I, but still educated middle-aged men. We are the exact type of people who should be able to look at sports and say that they're stupid and that no one should care about them because they really don't, they don't, they, there are so many other things in the world going on there are more important. And people who spend all of their time caring about a baseball team are mentally ill. But I've spent a lot of my life caring about a baseball team. Yeah.

The more than I care about things that I, I bet have much more of an effect on more. I think that's beautifully said. I completely agree. We should be able to watch this stuff clear-eyed, not through a plant. Um, I didn't get, I, I, I didn't get to pitch you my last one, which involved some, and I don't wish this into the world like the secret, but envisioning some future mining disaster, which causes celebrities to take to TikTok to do a acopella version of I will follow you into the dark to support the trap miners. Like if that would be a viral moment that you would be into more than a world championship. My guess is now. Kind of like an imagine moment, kind of like, if you will. Yeah.

Is leading the charge on that? I keep picturing her, yeah. Yeah, I don't know why you would. Yeah, you know, that's a pretty, that's a pretty close, that's a pretty close one. But, yeah, I, you know, I, as, as, as, as, whether it's you hiding behind the potted plant or, uh, whatever my experience will be, if and when the Mariners ever make it to a world series, uh, I guess that, that'll TBD. But I, I do think, I have, I, I am more inclined to think that,

you know, in the year, you know, 2070 or something like that, you know, my, my now middle-aged nephews will be, or, you know, will be being interviewed. They'll be the ones being interviewed on, you know, after the Mariners win a World Series talking about their Uncle Gibbs and how he would have loved to have seen this, you know, his whole life he was waiting for this and we were just really thinking about him now wherever he might be. You know, he would have to have seen this. Too bad what that would happen to him in that mining accident. Yeah, that's... You know, that walk-off home run by Julio Rodriguez, the third, you know,

was just an incredible iconic moment, you know. You know, and he would have loved to have seen that. If Tom Brady can play to 45 now, Julio Rodriguez could be playing in 2070 and leading the team to multiple championships, right? Like, this is all possible with genetics and science. He will be 69 years old. He seems very fit, so we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, you never know. We don't know what kind of, we don't know what kind of advancements are coming in athletic, medical technology. Plus, when they get rid of the shift, people's careers will immediately be extended. And, yeah, absolutely. I hear Ryan Howard's coming back in here. Too soon. Still hurts.

Still hurts. Well, I wish you nothing but the best, as always, with this tour, with this record, and with the playoffs, up to the moment when you face the Phillies at some point, in which case, friendship is over. But up to that moment, I support you wholeheartedly. Thank you. I actually was texting with Torque just yesterday because it looks like, at least as of the taping of this podcast, that the Mariners will be playing the Blue Jays. Torquill Campbell is, of course, Canadian. Well, he's American, actually, but he has dual citizenship.

So now I guess he's Canadian. And we have made a pact that we will not speak from the moment of the first pitch until 24 hours after the last game. So our friendship is on pause. That's beautiful. For this because, you know, I don't think either of us could handle the shit talking because we don't know how to do it and we don't know how to react to it. You know, it's like you feel nervous. Yeah. Yeah.

If you had a friend, if you were Yankees fan, your friend was a Red Sox fan, you've probably been going back and forth for years because there's been high stakes. I'm like, ah, whatever, we'll get them next time. This seems like a once in a lifetime thing for both of us. So we're not going to risk our friendship over. some shit talking over like a Glad or Julio home run. The worst and most confusing thing of what was otherwise an amazing experience, which was when the Eagles beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, is we didn't know what to do and we had nothing to say even to the Boston fans.

Because the Boston fans were like, well, we have many more. And we just didn't know how to contain. You guys knew what to do. What to do was to eat horseshit, you know, in Philadelphia, if I recall correctly. And, you know, that was something that your people did, I believe. But that was just Tuesday. That had nothing to do with the results of the football contest. All right, what a pleasure to talk to you again.

You're always welcome on this podcast. And at some point, we have to do a running podcast. We've already narrowed the field by talking about baseball. And so then next time we could just talk about middle-aged men running and end this podcast. That's the two things I love the most. Yeah. I know. I'll love it.

That's all I want to talk about. So, you know, I guess if we have to talk about music, if I have to put a record out or something, whatever, I'll figure something out. It's starting to feel like maybe that's just a phone call, but I look forward to it regardless. All right, awesome. Good to see you, buddy. Take care. Good to see you, too.