Indiecast

Steven and Ian start today's episode with an in-depth critical analysis of one of the hottest songs in pop right now, Ice Spice's  "Think U The Shit (Fart)."  Probably too in-depth, really. But the song is truly a rich text. From there they do the inevitable Sportscast on this weekend's Super Bowl game. Anyone who gets their sports news from indie rock podcasts will want to hear Steven a...

Steven and Ian begin this week's episode by discussing the recent story about Talking Heads  being offered $80 million to reunite  for some festival gigs... and turning it down. Do they really hate each other that much? Or do they accept that you can't perform  Stop Making Sense- style magic in your 70s? (2:34) The guys also apologize to the city of San Francisco for some recent spo...

Today's episode begins with a quick Sportscast in which Steven mourns the defeat of his surprisingly good Green Bay Packers and pays tribute to the lovable Detroit Lions (3:49). He and Ian also compare Detroit and San Francisco as music cities — it's Bob Seger vs. Huey Lewis time! Then they do a quick update of the winter Fantasy Albums Draft, as it is a big day for Steven's team with new releases...

Steven and Ian recorded this week's episode a day earlier than normal, which means that the guys just missed the big (and bad) news about  Pitchfork  suffering massive layoffs  and being folded into  GQ . So they got together later and recorded an emergency 30-minute segment about what this all means for the fragile music media ecosystem and put it before the proper episode. In...

Before Steven and Ian get into this week's episode, they had to hash out a longer-than-usual Sportscast about their respective football teams (the Packers and the Eagles) making the playoffs and the absolutely insane and hateful video Stephen A. Smith dropped about Jason Whitlock this week. Sports media in general is melting down this year, and the guys can't get enough. After that, they revisit t...

Steven and Ian have not recorded an episode in three weeks. Can you believe it? So there was a lot to talk about in the latest installment of Indiecast, starting with what the guys did over the holiday break. Ian won a ton of money playing fantasy football and Steven watched Paul Giamatti go full-Giamatti in  The Holdovers (5:13) .  Once they were caught up with holiday talk, the guys pa...

Last week, Steven and Ian kicked off part one of their most sacred annual tradition, the Indiecasties. This week, they bring home part two. (This is a banked episode so if any major indie-rock news occurred this week, the guys won't be talking about it.) Part one had many incredible categories. But Steven and Ian saved the really good stuff for this week. Categories include Biggest Disappointment...

As we near the end of 2023, the time has come for Steven and Ian to revive their most sacred annual tradition: The Indiecasties! Like the Oscars, the Indiecasties goes long every year, so we actually are splitting it up into two episodes. (Part two drops next week.) Before that, however, the guys do a quick Sportscast about a wild week in Wisconsin-based athletics, including a Packers loss to Tomm...

It's that time of the year again when critics try to think of every record they heard in the previous 11 months and determine their favorites. Steven and Ian are up to the challenge in this week's episode. But first they talk about the stock albums that seem to populate these lists — the "arty" and "obscure" hip-hop record with an unpronounceable name, the near-unlistenable "acclaimed" death-metal...

It's the calm before the storm on the show this week — Steven and Ian are working on their year-end albums lists ahead of the big reveal in early December (1:57), so in the meantime they decided to answer to some listener questions. But before that, Ian shared the shocking news that he watched  The Last Waltz  for the first time over the Thanksgiving break. What did Ian think of this fou...

Fair warning: Steven and Ian assumed they would be in a turkey coma this week, so they banked an episode ahead of time in order to fully enjoy their Thanksgiving celebrations. Hopefully, they did not miss any world-changing music news. If they did, just assume that the guys were killed in some music-industry related mishap. Keep their memory in your hearts! The upside of this is that Steven and Ia...

Steven and Ian took a victory lap at the start of today's episode upon the news that Air is reuniting for a  Moon Safari  tour next year, right after they talked up the album in last week's Best Of 1998 episode. Can they take credit for actualizing this? Probably not. But they did anyway. From there, they talk about one of the weirdest album release days of 2023. First, you have the new&...

Steven and Ian are hopping in the time machine this week. They're heading back one quarter-century to 1998, a fascinating year when artists were imagining the sound of the future and combining rock with jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music like never before. For Steven and Ian, it was a time of attending college and getting high while playing video games. You could be amazed by simple pleasures lik...

It's not every day that a new song by the popular indie-rock band The Beatles drops . But that's what happened right as Steven and Ian were scheduled to record this week's episode. So they started late, and listened to "Now And Then," and then decided... that it sounds like a '90s power pop band attempting to sound like The Beatles. Not necessarily a bad thing? But is it really necessary to take a...

After a short Sportscast segment in which Steven and Ian mourn the sorry states of their respective teams at the moment (Packers and Phillies), they get down to some inside-baseball chat about reckonings at major music publications.  Rolling Stone  published several articles this week that addressed  Jann Wenner's recent comments  about female and POC musicians, and Bandcamp wa...

The Fall Albums Fantasy Draft is heating up between Steven and Ian. After Steven jumped out to an early lead, Ian has been slowly creeping up and it's looking like he might seriously contend for the top spot (7:21). After spending way too long hashing that out, the guys move on to a conversation about the recent layoffs at  Bandcamp  and what this might mean for the future of the beloved...

For the past several weeks, Steven and Ian have planned to do a mailbag segment on the show. But they always end up yapping for too long, and the segment inevitably ends up getting bumped. This week, the guys finally rectified the situation by addressing some emails from their loyal listeners. What do  Indiecast  listeners want to know about? Our first letter concerns the matter of seate...

Loyal listeners are aware that Steven is currently wiping the floor with Ian in their Fantasy Fall Albums draft (3:24). But Ian has a shot this week to make up some ground with the release of  Javelin,  the new critically acclaimed album by  Sufjan Stevens (9:58). While Steven respects Sufjan's talent and stature in the indie world, he's never quite warmed up to the singer-songwrite...

Steven and Ian begin today's episode by reflecting on the news that John Darnielle and Lin-Manuel Miranda are apparently friends and consult each other on songwriting. They also tiptoe around their mixed feelings on both artists, while pointing out that they might be more alike than people want to admit. As if this wasn't enough to alienate part of the  Indiecast  audience, Steven and Ia...

It's been a week since former  Rolling Stone  publisher  Jann Wenner gave a disastrous interview  to the  New York Times  to promote his upcoming book of classic rocker interviews,  The Masters.  Thankfully, it lingered just long enough in the news for Steven and Ian to talk about it on the pod. The guys reflect on Wenner's legacy, why he chose to say out lo...

Those following the Fall Albums Fantasy Draft are probably aware that Steven is off to a big lead, as  Olivia Rodrigo's  Guts  (his no. 1 pick) is already one of the year's best reviewed albums. But how do Steven and Ian feel about it? After a mini "Sportscast" episode featuring a surprisingly contentious debate about NFL vs. college football (7:19), the guys get into the album (19:...

The NFL season is upon us, and Steven and Ian are marking the occasion by launching their first ever Fall Albums Fantasy Draft. Here's how it works — they each pick five albums that are coming out this fall with the object of accumulating the highest overall Metacritic score. In this scenario, Olivia Rodrigo is like Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift is like Justin Jefferson. Does that make sense? N...

This week's  Indiecast  was recorded a few days earlier than usual, so if there was some major indie news that is not discussed, that is why. Why did the guys record early? Well, Steven shipped off to Dayton, Ohio to see the 40th anniversary shows for  Guided By Voices . Before he left, he previewed the weekend — which he dubbed "45-Year-Old Indie Fan Woodstock" — with Ian (1:45). A...

This week it was reported that Ed Droste of the fine art-rock band  Grizzly Bear  is now working as a therapist (:25). That this was news at all speaks to the weird navieté that we as indie-rock fans have about the financial realities of the musicians we love. Steven and Ian begin the episode by talking about the "Joe jobs" of indie-rock lifers, and the potential "indie star to therapist...

Steven was on vacation for part of the week, so he was checked out of the discourse. When he returned, he kept seeing the same face in his social media feed — the "Ginger Mumford" himself, Oliver Anthony. The folk-country artist went mega-viral this week with his right-wing, anti-welfare song "Rich Men North Of Richmond." Steven asked Ian if he's heard the song, and about the recent upswing in rea...