Best Albums of the Year With Chris Ryan

That’s (almost) a wrap on 2025, so you know what time it is. Yasi catches up with Chris Ryan to talk about the albums that defined their 2025. No rankings, no drafts, no winners or losers, just two people talking about the records they loved most this year. Come for the predictable Geese love, stay for the Shallowater you didn’t know you needed. Episode PlaylistListen to the best albums of the year playlist here. Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuest: Chris Ryan @chrisryan77Producer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love the song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever. I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where we explain a cult band or an iconic artist with an expert guest. But today's show is a little bit different. Today, we're gonna talk about the best albums of the year. My guest today is the bed-

• 1:02Speaker 02

  The bedbug?

• 1:03Yasi Salek?

  My guest today is the best podcaster of the year. Nine years running.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't know what happened in that 10th year, but you got beat out.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I think that was COVID.

• 1:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  She and Gillis took the crown from me.

• 1:14Yasi Salek?

  And she got one year. You gotta get back up on it. Chris Ryan, welcome to the show.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me back. I've been on Bandplain frequently this year, I feel like.

• 1:22Yasi Salek?

  Against your will, and that's fine for me.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  No, I think we're peaking right now. I think Jimmy World opened a lot of doors for us.

• 1:29Yasi Salek?

  I do think so, too. A lot of doors. Did you get your personalized message from Jimmy World in your wrapped?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  I didn't look at my wrapped yet, to be honest.

• 1:39Yasi Salek?

  They're gonna come right now and fire you. I got it. It made me feel better about doing my personalized message, which I felt really dumb doing, and I absolutely wrapped. Ended it by saying, "Happy wrapped!" Like, okay.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  No, I did a wrapped message as well. I'm saving it for Christmas Day.

• 1:59Yasi Salek?

  The gift.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like, I'll come down the stairs in my pajamas and find out that I'm actually 82.

• 2:05Yasi Salek?

  Me, you and Spiral Stairs really gave it our all in our rapped messages.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, you guys, we're gonna talk about the best albums of 2025. But when I'm saying best albums, I want to be clear that what it means is our favorites. Because I don't believe in.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Hierarchies.

• 2:23Yasi Salek?

  I just don't believe in objective best of lists.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Never have.

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  That's between Pitchfork and God and has nothing to do with me and Namaste. Like, if you want to do that and decide that you know what's the best album, cool. Yeah, that's not our thing.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, this was always an issue for me, even back when I was a professional music critic in the early 2000s, where we would get to this time of year, pass and job voting, et cetera. And, you know, be making year-end lists, which are a ton of fun to do. And I'm not going to pretend like I'm above them and don't spend most of my time making lists of some sort. But it was always difficult for me to be like, how have we all settled as like a hive mind on these 10 things? Are these five things being a tier above like a pretty good pop punk band from, you know, Modesto or something like that? And I think sometimes my rejection of that came at my own detriment.

• 3:17Yasi Salek?

  Like you were like, I'm not like other girls, I'm gonna squeeze in this.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then I found out like what happens to other girls, you know what I mean? They don't get asked to prom.

• 3:25Yasi Salek?

  They become the best podcaster of the year nine years running.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Well, I was lucky that technology met me halfway.

• 3:31Yasi Salek?

  Dying industry ejected you. Yeah, it's just, I like year-end lists because I like to celebrate things that I think are amazing. But I don't think it, for me, it's not like at the exclusion of other albums that like, if you think that XYZ is a top 10 album, then it is.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:54Yasi Salek?

  In your heart.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  This is just favorite records. I was curious whether or not you felt around this time especially, but over the course of the year, like, do you find yourself retreating into more teenage year, like, I like what I like genre wise? Or are you like, I'm sampling stuff from all over the place just because I feel like I want to be on top of what's happening?

• 4:15Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a secret third thing in which I have to spend 80% of my music listening life. Listening to whatever and researching for bands playing. So what's left over is kind of split between comfort food of like you're saying teenage years or in my case, um, and truly excessive amount of Cameron Winter heavy metal. But I do like to, you know, I'm, I'm still curious and I like to know what's going on out there and if it like crosses my desk or you tell me about it. Or like, sometimes I just follow these like K holes of like either like the related artists on Spotify or like just an Instagram. Like last night I was looking through like Realize's

• 5:00Yasi Salek?

  spoiler follow list and I like, I found a band that I was like, this is interesting. And I like really liked it and I like earmarked it for later.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Can I just tell you, I think that's awesome. I think that's the closest we can get to like sifting through the stacks.

• 5:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  And looking at seven inches and being like, this art is really good or I like this band name. I'm gonna spend $5 on this and see if it's good.

• 5:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  So I mean, like that, that at least is like, it's better than having like a curated playlist from somebody that you're just like burning through to be like, did I like it? No, did I like it? No. It's like, go find something. It's cool.

• 5:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Because like there is for every geese spoiler alert, that like the entire like internet comes together to like lift up into a big crowd surf and deservedly, there's a lot of incredible music that just doesn't catch that wave of like public determined coolness or whatever it is, you know? And it doesn't like, you're not going to find it in a dear endless. You're not going to find it, you know, but you might find it just poking around lurking.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 6:10Yasi Salek?

  Being a lurker.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I mean, there's, there's lots of different ways to do that. I did not ever think of follow lists of other bands Instagrams. I enjoy a lot, like looking to see if artists have artist playlists in their profiles on Spotify and like looking to see if they have like a current listening thing. I found a lot of good stuff from like, you know, your former guest, Ian Shelton.

• 6:30Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful taste.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  That's a good, good. Playlist where he's just like throwing on whatever he's like currently listening to. I found like tons of bands through that.

• 6:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and I try to do that in my way, like through Substack or like Instagram or just posting. Cause I'm like, okay, like if I can spread a little bit with my meager, my meager mid-range following.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  So yeah, I think that there's a critical consensus thing that happens towards the end of the year. I've been kind of surprised to see a lot of the last remaining online music publications having relatively similar lists.

• 7:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Is that unusual? Cause I imagine that would be normal.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  It's just, you know, I think one of the things that I always sort of admired about Paz and Jop was the, the combination of consensus and also like weird, random picks. And then also they had a great, this is Paz and Jop for people don't know is, was the Village Voice's long-running.

• 7:21Yasi Salek?

  Do you think that's like Chris Gao's legacy?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I think the grades are his legacy and the, and the, the short form reviews. But I think that, you know, his year end essays were always fascinating.

• 7:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  And his influence over other critics was significant.

• 7:35Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  But, you know, it was always fascinating to see these, these where you would send in your poll and they would get, they would have a ranking system of based on what, who you voted for. And, you know, often those lists would be similar to Rolling Stone or Spin or certain things, but there would be some wild variances. And then it was always cool to be able to click on one album and see who voted for it.

• 7:56Yasi Salek?

  Right. That is really cool.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I missed that part of this.

• 7:58Yasi Salek?

  You can't really see that right now, right? Well, before we dive in, I guess we're kind of talking around it, but like, are there some years that you're like, this was thin, this was a thin year?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's now, I think it's, it's, it's not the music, it's the listener.

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  So I think there are years where I'm not as engaged with new stuff or maybe I find fewer rabbit holes.

• 8:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  So to speak, this year I found very rewarding. I thought like it was a great music year. I found so many bands I had never heard before. Um, listened to different stuff all over the map and really enjoyed like my, my music listening journey this year. So like, I can't really evaluate it on like 25 was better than 23, or we finally recovered from COVID or whatever. Like there's stuff that I think is among like the sort of widely regarded as among the best music of the year that I'm like, I agree. You know, this is, this was really awesome. So I don't know if there was like a knock down, drag out masterpiece that we'll be listening to like 40 years from now, but like, will we even be here in 40 years? You know? Do you have to answer that? Did you think it was good?

• 9:06Yasi Salek?

  I was like, I'm doing math. I was like, I think hopefully we're, um, yes. I, I get, it's always like, not until I do the like, look back and, and take stock that I realize how much good stuff. Like we were texting all the time. I was like, oh, this is like harder than I thought it would be to narrow down. Cause we did at least try to keep ourselves contained, although I cheated and made it 11. Cause I'm not like other roles. Should we get started?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:33Yasi Salek?

  I think we need to start with honk, um, critical consensus. Got you.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  The guys just leaving droppings all over the lawn of, of culture.

• 9:44Yasi Salek?

  It's geese getting killed. When taxes dropped, I was like, it's fucking go.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Can't be wince. You did it again, bitch.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  I, I'm, I'm super happy to just be like, that's the best band right now.

• 9:59Yasi Salek?

  You put me on last year to Cameron Winter Heavy Metal, which came out late in the year, December 6th. We just happened to do our best of year end albums later than that. Yeah. So as far as I could tell, I was the only person living on the internet that was like a cultural critic in that sense that put that album on my year end list, but only because I did it so late. Everyone else is already done and filed by then. And that just speaks to also the power of that album. Like I think I had heard it like for four days before I was like, yep, it's getting, and if I had had more time, probably would have hit number one on my list, you know? But I was listening this morning to 3D Country, which again, was not on my radar at

• 10:41Yasi Salek?

  all until Heavy Metal. And I went back and I think we talked about it. Like I liked it. There was like some things I liked, but that, that album is real like honky tonk alt.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Yasi Salek?

  Alternative honky tonk, you know?

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Like more, uh, boogie rock, a little bit more classic rock stuff.

• 10:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And I like, it, do you get the sense, and I like, obviously, we're not in the room, but like, that the Cameron Winter album was so popular and so well received that it maybe moved the needle of Geese. Cause this, to me, a lot of Getting Killed sounds more similar to heavy metal than it does to 3D country.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, I would imagine, I haven't read like a ton of Geese profiles, but I would imagine that he is the driving creative force behind that band. It's like, I think that they obviously contribute a lot, and they make decisions collectively, but the melodies and obviously the lyrics and obviously his voice being the like, you know, fine thing across his solo records and Geese, like, it's hard not to hear him now.

• 11:43Yasi Salek?

  Right, but I don't hear it in 3D country.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I do.

• 11:45Yasi Salek?

  Do you? I mean, I hear him, obviously, but it's like, it's such a leap from 3D country to heavy metal, and then the heavy metal to Getting Killed is, to me, a much narrower.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's the most exciting thing about them is that it feels like a 70s band, like Elvis Costello and the Attractions or the Jam, where you're like, these guys, and, or The Clash.

• 12:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Where you're like, these guys are going so fast.

• 12:06Yasi Salek?

  In their like, artistic development.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and in the course of like, three and a half years, you go from kinda sounding a bit like Echo and the Bunny Men to this.

• 12:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  You can only imagine where they're going. And like, the last thing that I feel like, I know people talk, kind of, probably think, yeah, maybe the 1975 would be a good example of a band, although I don't find them like, radically different from when they started.

• 12:28Yasi Salek?

  They, they seem more chameleon-ic than evolving a sound.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  That's a good way of putting it.

• 12:33Yasi Salek?

  And that's not like a nega-, that's not a pejorative, like, I think it's very cool, and I love the 1975. Well, I particularly love that one last album they put out. I really weirdly got deeply into that album. Being Funny in a Foreign Language, it came out three years ago. That was my entry point into 1975, and I went back, and it was kinda, I was like, oh, this stuff is, the other albums that I like, was like, oh, this is so different than what I thought I would be getting, because, and I wonder if people who just learned about Geese, no shade, are going back and being like, oh, you know? But not in a bad way, or just like, I thought it would be more like Getting Killed, and it's not.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And it's not.

• 13:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Should we talk about the Kenny Beats of it all?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, the idea of bringing in somebody who's largely known as a hip hop producer to help them establish or deepen their grues.

• 13:20Yasi Salek?

  I didn't know a ton about Kenny Beats. I obviously know who he is because he's a pretty like also public guy who hangs out.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 13:27Yasi Salek?

  And, you know, like, he's a seen person as well. But, yeah, he seemed like a primarily hip hop producer. Someone explained him to me, this person will go unnamed, as your regular EDM bro turned hip hop producer turned rock producer, made an amazing album with an Atlanta rapper called Key exclamation point in 2017, which I did go listen to, and it is quite amazing. But he did do the Idles albums before this, who are also unpartisan.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:50Yasi Salek?

  Crawler and Tank, which I love with Nigel Godrich.

• 13:56Yasi Salek?

  They were like, okay, we got Nigel Godrich and Kenny Beats. We're just gonna make you guys a quick album. But Tank is amazing. So I assume that's maybe why he got pulled into Geese because of the Partisan Records connection to Idles.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I don't know what his

• 14:13Yasi Salek?

  footprint is, you know?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like the way I associate it with is just like how this record swings. And especially like you can just listen to Taxes and the way it builds out of like, like these kinds of overlapping drum and percussion parts. It's just so good.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I think this record for me, I've obviously very highly anticipated it. I think I burned it out the first week or so. Or also was just like, because there are fewer jams like than 3D, like there aren't as many like rave ups on Getting Killed. Like I maybe put it away for a little while and then recently have gotten super fully back into it.

• 14:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I feel like, to me, it is similar to heavy metal and that's spiritually taxing in a good way.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 15:03Yasi Salek?

  You know, like I like, my heart is tender and needs to be put into the blender, if you will, of this album. And sometimes I'm like, I don't, can't do that today.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. How has, um, this happens, right? Like a band gets big and then like the reaction to the band becomes almost louder than the music itself.

• 15:22Yasi Salek?

  I hate it in myself that it bothers me. Like, I hate, I want to like kill that part of myself because I'm like, who cares? Good for them.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:30Yasi Salek?

  You know, and like,

• 15:33Yasi Salek?

  When, I mean, I guess it's just the nineties, growing up in that time of like.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Just you're gatekeeping, so am I. Like, you're just like, I don't want this to be like.

• 15:42Yasi Salek?

  We grew up in scenes where it was like, if it's big, it can't be good. If it's big, it can't be cool. You know, even, even though we experienced Nirvana, you know, like, it's just, that's the like, that was, that's like the core programming of my like mind, you know? And I've never been able to shake it. Sometimes you just don't want to hear about something all the time because it dulls it for you, you know?

• 16:07Speaker 02

  I think it's also the way in which we're probably getting that now through our phones rather than like reading about it and being like, oh god, another Geese hot trend piece, you know? Like, it's more like someone putting a song on a story as they like sit down to another like shared plates, family style restaurant in Los Angeles.

• 16:25Yasi Salek?

  Well, as I said, the wackest bitches you know are fucking posting, you know, there's a bomb in my car.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  As they open up a Tesla.

• 16:33Yasi Salek?

  I think Geese show and I'm like, okay, okay.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Did you go see them?

• 16:39Yasi Salek?

  No, I actually, the, I was, I was gonna try, the tickets were like $900 on the secondary market and I didn't realize till like the next day that I had a connection to get in.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And it was also like, that, it's been a minute since like Bono's been at the show.

• 16:57Yasi Salek?

  Bono plus six is what I heard, which is hilarious, but also awesome, I guess.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:03Yasi Salek?

  Good for Bono, finger on the pulse.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, good for Geese. I would be fucking pumped if Bono came and saw me play at the Fonda.

• 17:09Yasi Salek?

  And then came backstage and really shook my hand and was like, good job. Um, Nick Cave.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:14Yasi Salek?

  Did you read the Nick Cave thing?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 17:16Yasi Salek?

  Nick Cave, um, wrote about them in his Red Hand Files and was like, here's what he said. "I put my earphones in and played Geese's new album, Getting Killed. The first song starts with Cameron Winter singing in his lovely plaintive way. I try, I try, I try so hard. And I feel those simple words down to my soul." Because we all try. We all try so hard. And when the band kicks into the chorus, I mean, my god, those drums. Kenneth beats. And Cameron Winter screams again and again, "There's a bomb in my car, there's a bomb in my car." All worry is laid to waste.

• 17:57Yasi Salek?

  Pretty fucking sick. And you know who else loves them? Patti Smith.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Really?

• 18:02Yasi Salek?

  She put on Instagram, "Geese were on the radio, 100 horses. Suddenly I felt optimistic."

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no shit.

• 18:07Yasi Salek?

  It's like, literally good for you guys. Like, I think it's amazing. It's, by the way, it's not just Cameron Winter. Guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic Degusu, I think it's Degisu. Is that why it's called Geese? And the drummer's name is Max Bassin. Also, I learned this, which I didn't know, because again, I didn't know about Geese until the end of last year, and I didn't really research too much. But they had a founding guitarist called Foster Hudson, who left in 2023.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  To start fostering the people.

• 18:36Yasi Salek?

  Yes, he got on a time machine and started, pumped up kicks, um, to pursue academia. But I wonder if that's part of the reason for the Sonic shift? Because if he was the guitarist on 3D country.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that would definitely make sense because the first record, honestly, the first two records are very guitar-heavy.

• 18:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's just so good. I mean, I, I, I thought maybe Taxes wouldn't be my favorite in the end, but it's, I think Taxes is still my favorite.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Taxes, um, Husbands.

• 19:03Yasi Salek?

  Husbands. I mean, I'll pay do cocaine.

• 19:07Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's just wonderful.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Do you think it's the record of the year, if you had to say something was?

• 19:12Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I think it's the record of the year in terms of, like, reach.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:16Yasi Salek?

  In terms of audience reach and impact. Like, maybe neck and neck with Rosalia, if you're like a pop person.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:25Yasi Salek?

  Geese might not, you know, matter to you.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  I think that's probably fair.

• 19:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Like, I think if, if you're, you're, you know, concerned with not guitar rock music, it probably didn't totally land, but...

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I think actually that's the thing that, like, you're kind of getting at with the Kenny Beats element. Is that, like, I think this is appealing to people who are kind of like over guitars and stuff like that.

• 19:47Yasi Salek?

  You didn't go to the show either.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I didn't. I wasn't in town.

• 19:50Yasi Salek?

  I'm actually really curious to just see the crowd, because I want to know how old they are.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I bet it's like 18 to Patti Smith. I think it's like a pretty

• 19:58Yasi Salek?

  It's really, yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  And I'm

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  Which is like such

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Anecdotally, when I like, it'll be like random people who, whether it's like a kid who gets most of their music through TikTok.

• 20:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Or like an older person who's like, I collect vinyl. They're like, everybody thinks they're righteous dudes.

• 20:14Yasi Salek?

  What an incredible hat trick, though. Like, that doesn't happen very often.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  That's why I'm kind of like, I can do nothing but sit back and marvel at what's going on.

• 20:22Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  And even if there are like annoying ripple effects or like side effects of their popularity.

• 20:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Or like parts of it where like the 18 year old in me rolls his eyes or whatever. Like, this is awesome. The band is awesome. And for them to be as big as they are is pretty incredible. It's weird to see them mentioned in like Bloomberg.

• 20:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  But that's what happens.

• 20:44Yasi Salek?

  We also just haven't seen a guitar rock band do this in a long time.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 20:48Yasi Salek?

  I can't remember the last time. I mean, maybe it was in 1975? I don't even think they hit this level.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  I, it just didn't.

• 20:55Yasi Salek?

  And there's huge

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Never seemed like they were as big here.

• 20:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Like, they had the like, coming from England, like, hurdle to get over.

• 21:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  And I know that they're really big and they played Madison Square Garden and stuff like that.

• 21:05Yasi Salek?

  I think they played the Forum.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  He dated Taylor Swift. They got pretty big.

• 21:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  But, like, it never felt like, um, maybe they connected with older audiences, the way

• 21:15Yasi Salek?

  Right, exactly. Like, the way Geese is like, you're saying, like, hitting the middle-aged Gen X.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see like Robert Plant being like, this is good, you know?

• 21:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Totally. Yeah, I love it. And also, you know, for me, like, the through line, which is carried through, I think, from heavy metal of like, like a spiritual text, is really, really fabulous to me. I love it. I love to hear the word God in popular music, you know? I think, I think Cameron Winter is a brilliant lyricist, and I think It's pretty fucking insane that he's 23 years old.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  This is the thing is he's kind of like, it's kind of prodigious, like I,

• 21:59Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  I don't know whether or not like in three years they'll have like settled into like, oh, another Geese record kind of feeling, but it, it, it feels like, it feels like one of those bands where you're just like, wow, like for the first time since, whatever. I, I wouldn't go as far to say Radiohead, but that feeling of like after OK Computer where you're just like, oh, I have no idea what's gonna happen. And then it goes in five different directions. And there's like this 12 year run where people are just pretty much like, this is all I think about.

• 22:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think it could totally happen. I'm thinking now sadly about how in the beginning of the year, they did these two great shows, the Celebrity Lounge for like first responders and fire victims. And Geese did one of them and I didn't go because I was living at my parents' house on the west side and I was just like,

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Don't feel like driving over.

• 22:45Yasi Salek?

  I can't.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  But we saw Cameron Winter together at Barnstall.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  And he's playing here soon.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  They're gonna tour again too.

• 22:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. If anyone wants to invite me and Chris Ryan to the Cameron Winter Show in Los Angeles, we'd be more than happy to attend. Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  I have not really read a convincing takedown of it.

• 23:05Yasi Salek?

  I haven't read any takedowns of it. What is the takedown? Too many people like this?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Well, no, I haven't read a convincing takedown of it that goes beyond a tweet or beyond like a snarky comment.

• 23:14Yasi Salek?

  I'm glad you said this because I'm, I'm really obsessed with this theory that I have that Geese put out that cover of the new Radicals, you get what you get.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  To get canceled.

• 23:26Yasi Salek?

  Like, well, to pump the brakes on the popularity. Because I saw a lot of people. Yeah, I saw a lot of people being like, this is my first introduction to this band and I don't know what y'all are on about because this shit sucks.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the end of culture.

• 23:37Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, oh, I think this is like four dimensional chess. Like, I think they're geniuses. I think they were like, it's, it's getting out of control. We need to like pump the brakes.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:46Yasi Salek?

  And if that's the case, all my hats are off to you because that is, that's, that's warfare. That's so genius. And I don't think it was like that bad, but like, yeah, you know, if that's your first introduction, you're not gonna be like, let me check out more of this.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, like, if you could record any song as a cover and you choose to do that, there's probably some like, and it's not even like,

• 24:07Yasi Salek?

  It's not even the song is bad. It's the, also, the cover is like egregious.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the cover is not like, you guys, your heart is not in this. I think for as much geese as geese is like a massive breakthrough band this year, the likes of which, I think, I'd be curious to know data wise, like how it measures with Turnstile a couple of years ago.

• 24:26Yasi Salek?

  If only we worked at a company that had massive amounts of data.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  It's hard because it's like, I feel like Turnstile was like building for a while and came out of a very specific scene that had this baseline, not only of support, but of like, show behavior, so that when newcomers came to Turnstile, they were like, what the fuck happens at these hardcore shows is amazing?

• 24:46Yasi Salek?

  I think you've made a really salient point, which is that Turnstile came out of a scene.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:50Yasi Salek?

  And Geese, as far as I know, didn't come out of a scene, right?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  I'm sure there are bands that they're feeling like peers and contemporaries with. I just don't really know anything like what the New York scene is.

• 25:00Yasi Salek?

  New York in today's day and age, doesn't, in today's economy, doesn't seem to foster music scenes. And I'm probably gonna get some anger emails about this.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 25:09Yasi Salek?

  But like, it's after Meet Me in the Bathroom time was kind of the last time where there was like these like real scenes that, like, I mean, how do you even fucking, how do you even pay for a practice space in New York at this point, you know?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  That's a really good point. Maybe Mom Donnie can help out with that.

• 25:26Yasi Salek?

  Mom Donnie, babe. I bet you he loves geese. Mom Don's?

• 25:29Speaker 02

  I bet you he's heard them, for sure.

• 25:32Yasi Salek?

  He's definitely heard them. He was at the show in New York for sure.

• 25:36Yasi Salek?

  Signing, signing things.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  I was, actually, it would be great if the mayor at the geese show was Eric Adams, and he was just like, make your haters your waiters at the geese show.

• 25:48Yasi Salek?

  I could see it. Actually, I could see what's his name, Solwa.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:52Yasi Salek?

  I bet you he really likes geese.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:56Yasi Salek?

  Mom Donnie's more like-

• 25:56Speaker 02

  As he breeds feral cats.

• 25:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Mom Donnie's at the Clips show. He's busy.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  So for as much as Geese was like this big breakthrough group, I think that our shared passion point would be useful to talk about here. And this is a group that I only discovered, like basically, I'd never heard of them until midway through this year. I am not routinely checking for electronic music coming out of London and certainly did not know that I would have such like an emotional connection to this band, but it's this duo called Realise, who put out a record this year. It's their, I think, third LP, maybe fourth, called We Will Annihilate Our Enemies. And it gives me the feeling of being 18 and listening to the Trainspotting soundtrack on drugs.

• 26:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, 17, 18.

• 26:44Yasi Salek?

  It's funny that you said that because my big note just says, this band makes me feel like I'm on drugs best way possible. Like, as an elderly person who can no longer do drugs, not because I'm sober, but because I'm tired.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:58Yasi Salek?

  Like, my physical capacity to do so has waned.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Yasi Salek?

  If I'm like-

• 27:02Speaker 02

  You don't want us driving on the 101 after a night out of Realise.

• 27:05Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Fucked up. But yeah, it really, it brings that, all the best feelings of being on, like, for me anyways, like ecstasy or psychedelics or whatever. And it's like, this album in particular is so optimistic and like romantic.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, my favorite kinds of dance music are, like, whether it's like underworld, let's just say underworld, just for the sake, because I think I see some similarities.

• 27:35Yasi Salek?

  It's a great call.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Especially like, if you listen to the underworld song Dirty Epic, I think it's like very much like a formative Realise song. I don't know that for sure, but it feels like it. Is the feeling of, you can simultaneously experience getting ready to go out, going out, and coming down and going home in the same song, like sometimes in the same verse.

• 27:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  And that's what they do. They have like this agony and the ecstasy thing. They have like the, taking the Uber to go out and then taking the night bus to come home at the same time.

• 28:08Yasi Salek?

  I know. It's almost like the primal scream loaded arc, but within each song. And I think that's what is so great about it because, like you're saying, it has the baked Melancholy of like, when you do drugs, you always know it's gonna end.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:22Yasi Salek?

  It's always in the back of your mind.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  But you can keep doing drugs.

• 28:25Yasi Salek?

  But you can keep doing drugs, but it's a long diminishing returns. You know, like, one of the saddest things ever. This duo is made up of Kevin Lee Karis, I believe, and who does the vocals and lyrics as the poet, and Pat King, who does the production. I had a really blissful experience with Real Eyes ever since you showed them to me, in which I just did not do any of my normal fuck shit, which is like, research.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Until you got into their follow list and...

• 28:54Yasi Salek?

  That was last night, yeah. No, I didn't, because I was like, I was like, I just wanna like, have a pure experience where like, I don't know anything about this band, it's just a magical thing. And the last night, I was like, doing a little exploration, and I was like, "Okay, Kevin Lee Karis is the editor of Vice Magazine."

• 29:10Speaker 02

  UK?

• 29:11Yasi Salek?

  I don't know.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:12Yasi Salek?

  I don't, I'm so confused by Vice Magazine, like, and this is with love in my heart for Vice Magazine, that bitch raised me. I just did not know it was still, I just did not know it was still extant.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  You were straight up carrying piles of that to different record stores and leaving them at the front.

• 29:29Yasi Salek?

  Not know.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:31Yasi Salek?

  Like, my lifelong dream to be in Hot or Not or whatever, you know, like, but I just thought that was, I thought that was kinda cool. I was like, oh, well, if this guy is the editor of Vice Magazine, then Vice Magazine's fucking doing good, and I need to go check, because there's gonna be some cool shit in there.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:44Yasi Salek?

  Right. Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Uh, these dudes are really about it. Like, when you read the interviews with them, like, they're so vulnerable and interesting to hear about. Like, I, there's specifically an interview in Interview Magazine that I found to be like, quite, it deepened my appreciation for the music, just to hear them talk about it. And, yeah, like, I made the Trainspotting reference, but like, there's a song on, on this LP that specifically references...

• 30:12Yasi Salek?

  Renton and Diane.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Renton and Diane, and like, this idea of kind of, um, being seventeen forever, and...

• 30:18Yasi Salek?

  I was like, "You saw right into my heart and soul, and that is me."

• 30:23Speaker 02

  And it's like, it's just, it's time machine music, I don't know.

• 30:26Yasi Salek?

  The day I woke up seventeen, I knew instantly I would always be seventeen. That's me.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:31Yasi Salek?

  That's it, it's you and me forever, kid.

• 30:40Yasi Salek?

  I started listing out all the references they do. White Pony tattoo. There's like quite a few Deftones references. And then I, and then in my research, the Last Vice issue was Deftones themed.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Was it really?

• 30:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like a cover with Deftones.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Shifty Easter eggs.

• 30:56Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, oh, like, this man is, again, about that life. Like, he's not fucking around.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Did you, did you go through, are you in a Deftones space?

• 31:03Yasi Salek?

  I love the Deftones.

• 31:07Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  I love the Deftones too, but it is definitely like.

• 31:09Yasi Salek?

  Sexual hardcore.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  The passion with which anybody from the East Coast can love the Deftones is always dwarfed by somebody from the West Coast.

• 31:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, when we did the episode about it.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Shout out to this man in Islington who's like, fucking White Pony tattoo.

• 31:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, I think that's the broad range. Yeah, because they're, they're really a California man. I mean, they're multicultural in a specifically California way. And my favorite fun fact about Deftones, which I'm still lobbying to get on the watch to talk about any Bosch franchise.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:40Yasi Salek?

  Is that the actor who plays Harry Bosch has a white.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Titus Oliver?

• 31:43Yasi Salek?

  Titus Oliver has a white pony tattoo.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Titus Oliver has a white pony tattoo?

• 31:47Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  And is it about the Deftones? Like, it's in reference to?

• 31:50Yasi Salek?

  There is an incredible, I screenshotted it. There's a scene in one of the, one of the episodes of one of the seasons of Bosch where Harry Bosch is just sitting at his table, you know, ruminating like with his glass of Scotch, white pony tattoo popping, and Be Quiet and Drive Far Away is playing. And if you have the subtitles on, it says, be quiet.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Incredible song, too.

• 32:12Yasi Salek?

  I was like.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Not a quite a ruminating song, I would say. I wouldn't do that if I was trying to solve crimes. I don't think I would.

• 32:18Yasi Salek?

  No, no, I think he's ruminating on like, what have I done? Or like, you know, how did my life become this or something like that? He's, he's a dark soul, but that's my favorite. To me, that's my favorite Deftones fan.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:29Yasi Salek?

  Is Titus Oliver, who shoehorned in Deftones into a season of Bosch.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  We mentioned briefly, like going and finding artist playlists in their profiles on Spotify.

• 32:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  No free ads, but I guess it is a free ad. These guys real, realize have incredible playlists. And they're like kind of themed, like broadly themed, where it's like Saturday night, Sunday morning. You, you feel like when you are listening to them, that you're stepping in it like into like a 3D, fully imagined creative reality.

• 32:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally. They've created a world.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  I think like a bunch of the bands that, that I really responded to this year did that.

• 33:04Yasi Salek?

  I, I just, I love how you mentioned that it's nostalgic. You didn't say the word nostalgic, but it like kind of brings you back, right?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm 40, 48. So like it inevitably is going to like draw me back to my youth when I was more capable of like having a good time.

• 33:18Yasi Salek?

  Seeing the sunrise. I see the sunrise now, but in the other way, I'm like, here I am, 6 a.m.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Juice, dude.

• 33:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Time to hit the fucking gym, get my protein. There's a great Strava reference. Did you catch that?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  I didn't, but that's very on brand.

• 33:31Yasi Salek?

  Don't you love what Sunday's Guild does to your Strava sat? So they're also very modern. Like I just, I fucking, Down and Out were e-girls dare.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  I also like the fact that like from my, my like relatively superficial, but maybe deeper than some relationship to British, contemporary British culture.

• 33:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  A lot of the, even the dudes and people, I mean dudes, like the royal dudes of England, they saved their bullets, man. And they're like, you know what? I am going to go out. I may be pushing 50, but I am, I am going to go out and go hard tonight. Yeah.

• 34:02Yasi Salek?

  Because that's a country of alcoholism. It's part of their culture. It's, it's on the flag.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:08Yasi Salek?

  They're like, oh, it's 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. The pub is packed, bitch.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:14Yasi Salek?

  I always walk, that's why they have to close that shit at 11 p.m.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Right. Cause they've been there for 13 hours.

• 34:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They gotta fucking wrap that shit up. I love it. Actually, it's kind of perfect for me. Cause I'm like, I can't stay out past 11 p.m. anyways.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:24Yasi Salek?

  Then you go to the afters or whatever. I wonder if there's some sort of like biohacking I can do. This, this is my, always my joke about, not even my joke. This is very serious. When people are like, oh, you still smoke cigs? Like you're so healthy. And I'm like, you're not understanding my goals. I do all this health fuck shit so that I can smoke cigarettes and have drinks. Like I'm trying to like balance my shit out. Like I want to be able to do that.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  You're like a guy who takes Lipitor in order to eat KFC.

• 34:55Yasi Salek?

  Literally. You know who's the number one example of this? He was.

• 34:59Yasi Salek?

  Maybe killed in prison, the McAfee, John McAfee.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, what was the quote, air quotes there?

• 35:05Yasi Salek?

  Was he?

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, but is it because you don't believe it or is it because you haven't read the articles fully?

• 35:10Yasi Salek?

  I'm just, I'm like a little conspiracy theorist on that one. I'm like, I don't know. My, my man, John McAfee.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  So you think he's just hiding out in Honduras somewhere or something?

• 35:18Yasi Salek?

  I hope so, but he, he was a big biohacker and he was the one, he literally, there was an amazing tweet that he had that a friend sent me that was like, here's what I do so that I can continue to smoke a pack of Reds a day.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:28Yasi Salek?

  And drink a bottle of whiskey every day.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That guy who's trying to live forever, the Brian dude.

• 35:32Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. He did it at 4pm.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  But I would, I would do that. That would be fun to do and then be like, and then I'm going to get fully addicted to coke.

• 35:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and then I'm getting an eight ball. Well, this is also, I'm, see, we're, Chris, we're so aligned. This has been my plan since day one. Once I hit 80.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  It's heroin time.

• 35:48Yasi Salek?

  It's heroin time. It's exactly what I've always said. Cause like, who cares? We do not condone heroin use on this program unless you're 80, 80 plus. And then it's like, go nuts, bitch. Who fucking cares? And I hope to be wealthy enough to have like a staff.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 36:02Yasi Salek?

  So that I can just like nod out or like, I mean, I guess I would really probably be more into psychedelics. I just, I would just do ecstasy, like old ecstasy. Like I would just do 90s ecstasy every day until the serotonin was at zero.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  You would go like hunting for good vintage E.

• 36:19Yasi Salek?

  Literally, like Mitsubishi's and I would fucking put on Alice DJ by myself with my rickety old hips and fucking count it down until it's over. And now you get what real life is about. This is what it inspires in your heart. Um, yeah, I fucking love this bit. I just don't understand why they're not huge.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  I will say that one of the things.

• 36:39Yasi Salek?

  They should be massive. They should be geese.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  This is that some of my favorite experiences, like the ones we're describing here are often not where I, like my soul becomes part of a communal nightclub. And we're listening to like Left Field that I start crying and then the girl across the dance club starts crying and we get married. It's like, I'm in a weird living room, lying on a rug, listening to fucking postal service remixes.

• 37:02Yasi Salek?

  One million percent. We've, have we talked about this? How like my whole experience with ecstasy, which is long and storied. Um, sorry dad, put your head, put your earmuffs on.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Over your headphones.

• 37:12Yasi Salek?

  Over your headphones. Put your earmuffs on over your headphones. Wasn't raving. Like I went to a handful of raves. That's not, we would stay home. In our pajamas, get a gallon of orange juice, Vicks paper rub, and I was in charge of the mix CDs.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:27Yasi Salek?

  And it would be shit like that. It would be like Dave Matthews Band into Postal, like whatever. And we would just like, ah, it's just feelings, you know? That's my fucking shit. That is my fucking...

• 37:41Yasi Salek?

  Take me back. Just one weekend, just time machine.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  You'd have to eat so many chia seeds to make up for it.

• 37:47Yasi Salek?

  Just one of chia seeds in God's good earth. And the last thing I'll say about Real Eyes is that all the best songs do sound like longing.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:53Yasi Salek?

  God tier lyric.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:55Yasi Salek?

  God tier approach to life.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  So those are our two passion projects of the year.

• 38:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we don't have more?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Uh, we have others that we've shared, but I think that if we were doing tiers, which we don't here.

• 38:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  We would probably put these two in a tier of their own.

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  That's right. Yeah. These are the two I think we've been most interested, obsessed with, and discussed the most. Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  I have never felt more catered to.

• 38:25Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  With new music, and yet something is slightly off. Like I am, I feel like I'm living in a simulation because somehow a lot of the music that I was listening to from, I don't know, like basically like 95 to 2002, has like fully come back around to being the most dominant, seemingly popular forms in underground music, for lack of a better term. And so I can spend a year, like I just did, psychically trying to resurrect David Berman and Jason Molina through new bands.

• 39:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Who are like clearly drawing from Silver Jews and Songs of Ohio. And like I, I, this was like a microgenre that I really liked and kept listening to. But I was also like...

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Everybody else is hearing this, right? Like that this sounds like this. And I think that's really cool, but there's something sort of funny about. I feel like I've hit a wall where like there's a certain kind of contemporary, like whether it's hyperpop or whatever, that I truly can't access on like, uh, on a brain chemistry level.

• 39:31Yasi Salek?

  It's like the opposite of a dog whistle.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  And it's like, I know it's me. It's like, I can hear it and think it's like really cool, but there's something about like future music that I can't quite grip onto.

• 39:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  But then there's something that feels funny or weird about listening to a band that sounds like Seem.

• 39:48Yasi Salek?

  I get exactly what you're saying. I feel usually really good when there's a band I can't access. Cause I'm like, finally.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:53Yasi Salek?

  How?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Good for you guys.

• 39:54Yasi Salek?

  How much longer get grandma to bed? Like I take me out. Like I don't want to have my finger on the pulse anymore. Like I like to remove my. Exactly. Like listening to Real Eyes and or like Archers of Loaf for the like the 98th time. But yeah, it's, it's a little uncanny valley. Is that the word you used?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I, I didn't, but it is. Like I said, I was like living in a simulation where I'm like, wait, you guys, this sounds like Cody and like, what do we?

• 40:19Yasi Salek?

  I always wonder if it's.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Didn't have that many listeners.

• 40:21Yasi Salek?

  Is it the democratization that happened with the internet?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  I think that's exactly right.

• 40:27Yasi Salek?

  So broad.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  I also think it's the flattening of chronology where something that came out in 1993 is on the exact same level as something that came out in 2025, when it comes to being merchandised to people.

• 40:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  And also.

• 40:40Yasi Salek?

  My greatest theory is that time stopped once the internet came. It just stopped. And now we're just sort of recycling time.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I specifically think it was time stopped when the, uh, rock announced that Bin Laden had been assassinated.

• 40:52Yasi Salek?

  That's the exact.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's cause that's when Twitter changed.

• 40:55Yasi Salek?

  When you make your film, that's gonna be, that's gonna be the point of.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Star in the rock.

• 41:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Star in the rock as himself. Um. This is the rock as Bin Laden.

• 41:12Yasi Salek?

  Is this your way to segue into like Tag Abao?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:15Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  That's, that's a really, I like touche though.

• 41:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Because I can understand why you would listen to Tag Abao or They're Getting a Body of Water and think that. And there are certainly elements of that band that I'm like, this feels incredibly nostalgic to me.

• 41:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  But it's weird. The nostalgia is for like a life I didn't live. Like there are things that he does, Doug, who's the sort of main person. They're getting a lot of water, runs Julia's War Records and their record Lotto is my personal favorite record, like most listened to album of the year.

• 41:46Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  I think it's been documented or he talked about like finding out about my bloody Valentine from the Kids in America skate video, which would have been like oh, three, oh, five. And even then, like maybe he just saw it on YouTube. I have no idea, but like that kind of like once or twice removed from my experience of stuff makes it feel fresh and new.

• 42:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  It's referencing things.

• 42:10Yasi Salek?

  But I think he does that on, it's almost like he, he puts it through the wash or something, you know, like he like takes the references, but like.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  There's just too much other stuff.

• 42:22Yasi Salek?

  Tie dye batiks them or something before they come out the other side. Whereas like a lot of what we're talking about is just the reference. And it's not a copy or anything. It's just a cleaner reference so that you're like, oh, this is, we have that at home a little bit, but not in a bad way. I love that.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  There will be like a little tweak, right?

• 42:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  So.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  But this is, this is almost like chopped and screwed or something for lack of a better.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Also like made by a guy who is conversant in electronic music and is conversant in real new rap music, not like, I listened to West Side Gun and so like, that's just where I'm going to stay for the rest of my life.

• 42:56Yasi Salek?

  And the LOX as he charmingly put it.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  You'll be in the middle of a song and it'll do something completely different because he's pulling from rave culture or from rap, but not ever sounding rap rocky or anything like that. Yeah.

• 43:20Yasi Salek?

  It's a really incredible album. That was a tough one for me to not, to not get on my list, but it was, it was the, the, the killed darling.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's like, I, the stuff that he makes me think about, which is like Har- Harvey Karim movies and Jim Jarmusch movies, but also skateboarding and also opioids and also Philly is, that's like kind of a Venn diagram I'm very comfortable living in.

• 43:45Yasi Salek?

  You basically like four out of five described my dating life. Every ex-boyfriend I've ever had. Um, none from Philly though.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  That's too bad.

• 43:54Yasi Salek?

  That's too bad. Maybe that's where I went wrong. Um, yeah, it's an, I mean, I feel like I've been following their Gotten A Body Of Water for a little while now and just like, never misses for me, you know?

• 44:08Speaker 02

  They just, their whole fucking thing is I'm into it. And I was talking, I think about like Realize and how they present like a fully realized like creative view of the world. Like By Water does that too.

• 44:20Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Um, yeah, there's ways to use the internet for good and for evil.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. But specifically the bands that I was talking about where I feel like very, very like, very well serviced, but like slightly confused about how this, like, there's a band from uh, Texas this year called Shallow Water. Uh, and they put out a record called God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars. And they describe themselves as West Texas Dirt Gaze.

• 44:48Yasi Salek?

  I miss it.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  And it's essentially like a countrified, lightly countrified, slow core, shoegazy type, but you'll listen to it and you'll be like, oh, I hear a little bit of Codeine or I hear a little bit of Minus The Bear or I hear a little bit of Bedhead or a little bit of karate or whatever. And then there's like enough country in it that you're just like, this is so unique and interesting, the way you guys are applying this to, to that. But when I hear something and I'm like, oh, that guitar line reminds me of, of a guitar line on a Seam record or on a Codeine record. I'm like, But I thought only like 90 people were listening to that.

• 45:22Yasi Salek?

  Do you think that they've heard that? Or it's just like?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  This stuff gets just passed down in the water supply? I don't know.

• 45:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't know either. I mean, it's easy to hear anything now. So like, maybe they have heard it, you know?

• 45:33Speaker 02

  We'll find out when Codyans play in the sphere in a couple of years.

• 45:37Yasi Salek?

  I hope so. Um, we also were texting about Jane Remover, who is a band, I think is, or an artist, one person. I have no idea, old. I think is very, so cool, but also like inaccessible to me. Where I'm like, this is grandma, get you to bed. And I know it's good. It's just not, it's like, I'm not the, I'm not the person that is supposed to understand it.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  But did you have any bands this year that you were super into that you felt like had like that kind of hype, like hyper, like ad targeted to your interests kind of appeal?

• 46:07Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Wednesday is for me, kind of like that. You know, like, I'm like, oh, everything I like is here, you know, like.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  What if Patterson Hood was in My Bloody Valentine?

• 46:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, or what if the breeders, but also, you know, Superchunk? You know, like, like, it's just, it's so, and then, but also like really uniquely Carly Hartman.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, they're on my list as well.

• 46:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Bleeds is just a phenomenal album. It's, she's like a punk Flannery O'Connor. Her lyrics are so cool and so interesting and so like slice of light.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Good lyrics here.

• 46:42Yasi Salek?

  Good lyrics here. And I, I'm a big, big lyrics girl.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I am too. When people are like, I don't listen to the words. I'm like, it must be nice.

• 46:49Yasi Salek?

  My cousin's husband, shout out, I love him. He was like posting a reel or something and he was like.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  And was he like, there's a bomb in my car?

• 46:56Yasi Salek?

  No, nobody does love these. But he was like, I'm gonna put, um, Walking in L.A. by X. And I was, we were at Thanksgiving and I was like, that song has the N word in it. And he goes, it does? And he was like, I'm not a lyrics guy. And I was like, and they looked at him and was like, oh, oh. And he took it off. And I was like, sometimes you gotta, you gotta check the lyrics, babe.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  You do.

• 47:16Yasi Salek?

  You gotta, you know, I'm, I, I don't. Just gotta be, you gotta be aware. Um, but yeah, she's just-

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Was it like gonna be walking in LA over like a picture of the Thanksgiving spread?

• 47:27Yasi Salek?

  It was actually a cooking video.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I don't think the N word would have had a good place in that cooking video. Or anywhere. I'm firmly against. Not like heroin for 80 plus year olds. Firmly pro. That's the platform.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Or men who take opioids and watch Harvey Korean movies.

• 47:44Yasi Salek?

  We've moved on from that era of our lives. Yeah, that's why we're aggressively single. There's no one left.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  It's just guys watching gumbo.

• 47:54Yasi Salek?

  It's just guys getting high and watching gumbo forever and ever. That's like, that's like my like Dante's Inferno.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  You just keep going to these different levels.

• 48:03Yasi Salek?

  It's just like a different skateboarder's house that has like a mattress on the floor and one towel.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  And then you meet the one guy who's taking DMT and watching like the new like video game first person shooter that Harmony made and you're like, oh, my husband.

• 48:15Yasi Salek?

  The final boss. I've met the final boss of Dante's Inferno and we're now married. Yeah, I just like this album. I feel like has so much texture and like it goes so many different places. Like Elderberry Wine, like singled out is just like a perfect-

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:31Yasi Salek?

  Pop country song. This could be on like a, a commercial country radio station. If she was a commercial country radio singer and fit in fine, you know? It's a wonderful song, but then she's got other songs where she pick up that knife, where she's just screaming, they'll meet you outside. You know, and it's so, she's just, I think she's just so fucking cool. It's just great.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  It's been awesome. Also she like Wednesday has gotten on a bunch of lists and I think that's like a band where I will fly, fly the flag forever.

• 49:17Yasi Salek?

  I think Pitchfork put them number one on their rock albums list.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we should distinguish, I mean, for the most part, we'd realize, except that most of what we're picking here is rock. Because no, I don't think anybody really wants to hear me talk about Keylock.

• 49:29Yasi Salek?

  I'm just, I'm so sorry. I don't even know what that is.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  He's a rapper.

• 49:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I know. The, the, the only thing on my list besides Realize that isn't guitar rock adjacent or guitar rock is Rosalia.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 49:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we, we stay on Wednesday. I think it's amazing. I can't wait to see what this band does next. I was thinking about how like the first time they came on my radar was as the band who was like lambasted for simply asking for a human level living conditions on tour.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Who did that?

• 50:00Yasi Salek?

  Wednesday. Do you remember this? They like kind of went viral. It was several years ago, but for making some statement about how fucked tour is and guarantees and how it's like not sustainable.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:13Yasi Salek?

  To live and tour as a band.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Especially now with like, yes.

• 50:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And like, they were like dragged to hell on the internet. And I was like,

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Really?

• 50:20Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Do you just not, you just, you don't want bands to make a living? You want them to suffer? Like, what is, and now, now I listen to them all the time.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  We can like lightly refresh people with what we've talked about so far. So we've done Geese and Real Lies.

• 50:33Yasi Salek?

  See this? Nine, nine years running. Best podcast in the game.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  They are gutting a body of water, uh, shallow water. So we got some water in there. Wednesday. And now I will shout out a late breaking one for me, um, which is Snowcaps. Cause I went and saw them last night and this is Allison and Katie Crutchfield's band with MJ Lenderman playing drums. I, I guess it's almost like a kind of reunion of sorts to when the Crutchfield sisters were in, uh, P S Elliott, which is a band I loved a lot.

• 51:02Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Um, and I went and saw them last night and they played some Waxahatchee songs. They played some swearing songs. They played most of the Snowcaps record, if not all of it. And then they played some P S Elliott songs. And I was like, these, these two are just the best. Their voices intertwined are like one of my favorite sounds.

• 51:21Yasi Salek?

  There's a name for it, but I'm like, I can never remember and I'm obsessed with it. When siblings sing together.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Twins sing together, yeah.

• 51:27Yasi Salek?

  With twins. Yeah. Well, the Breeders and, and, uh, the Crutchfield sisters are the perfect examples, but like even not twin siblings, they have a special harmony that they're able to do. And it's just, it's magic. It's like heaven sent.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  I mean, maybe, maybe this comes up in Waxahatchee sets. I don't know. But like, or swearing sets, but they played the song Tennessee, uh, by P S Elliott. And I was like, this is great.

• 51:47Yasi Salek?

  I still love your body.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  I was like, I didn't think I'd ever get to see this one. This is incredible, but it's an awesome record.

• 51:52Yasi Salek?

  It's so great. I, I got to when Waxahatchee put out Out in the Storm, which I think was 2017.

• 51:59Yasi Salek?

  Allison, shout out Allison, love, love you. She toured with Waxahachie and they were singing together and it was like a religious experience for me. I was like, this is incredible. It's a perfect thing to bring up, obviously not just because of the Jake Londonman Wednesday being in the band connection, but also like when I was listening to the Wednesday album, there was like certain points where I was like, oh, this reminds me of when I first found Cereal and Salt Waxahachie, which I was obsessed with. And it has like, there's some parts of Bleeds that feel that way.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  That's awesome too, because it just, I think that one of the things that was cool was watching Londonman just playing drums in this band, he played guitar at the end of the set. And just being like, this dude just likes playing in bands.

• 52:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  And I like, I like the idea of like, it's a sketchbook, not a painting and we're gonna like just make records. And when I first heard Snowcaps, I was like, this is almost like a little casual, like it feels like they were like, not rushed at all, but like, I was like, oh, I wonder. And the more I listened to it and the more you kind of like lyrics, you know, very good. And like, you know, you just hit those parts of the songs where when they, the two of them are singing together, there's like no better sound.

• 53:15Yasi Salek?

  It's really amazing. It was also on my list, but not, it's in my not top 11, even though I.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  We're kind of breaking this a little bit.

• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  Any of these could really be.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Isn't this just like, we're recommending music to people at the end of the year?

• 53:29Yasi Salek?

  Who cares? Yeah. What we like to do at BandSlane is who cares? Want to talk about sketching? We're sketching, man. There's no rules here. Yeah, that album is just, it's amazing. And cool.

• 53:46Yasi Salek?

  Do you engage a lot with pop music?

• 53:49Speaker 02

  No. I mean, I'm broadly aware of it, but I don't, I don't like sit, I haven't like sat down and listened to like, Addison Rae or Sabrina Carpenter, like.

• 53:58Yasi Salek?

  Addison Rae album is incredible.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  It's stuff that I'm like superficially aware of and will hear on, but like not spend a ton of time doing it. And that's just, it's, it's just not what I, what I spend my time doing.

• 54:11Yasi Salek?

  This will give me an end to talk about Addison Rae, because I want to talk about that album, because I think it's worth talking about.

• 54:17Yasi Salek?

  Kind of makes sense in conversation with Rosalia in a way where these are like out of the box pop albums. Definitely Rosalia. Did you listen to it at all?

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

• 54:29Yasi Salek?

  Sung in 13 languages, arranged in four movements. To contrast what you just said about like just doing stuff in sketches, which I think is so cool. And obviously we come rooted from that in punk where it's like, who cares if you're good at it? Just do it. Like, I also think there's something to be said, especially in pop music for like scope and scale and ambition.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Can do what I can do.

• 54:50Yasi Salek?

  Very people can do what I can do. Very people will try to do what I can do.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:54Yasi Salek?

  Very few people at my stage in my career would make an album like this. That's like honestly largely inaccessible to a lot of people. It's like a Volniky, is that how you say that? That Bjork album?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  And Bjork's on.

• 55:06Yasi Salek?

  Bjork's on the album. Hounds of Love is, I think, a good comp. Where it's like, like she's reaching for something, you know? And, and her voice is incredible. I mean, that's like, she's like the kind of singer that you know is like classically trained.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think anytime somebody with the world at their feet does something like this, where they're like, I'm going to challenge my audience and I'm going to challenge myself.

• 55:26Yasi Salek?

  I'm going to use my.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Nothing but respect.

• 55:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm going to use my substantial means to hire orchestras and like, it's just, it's such a fucking cool album. And it's not that it's not catchy or like, there's definitely like real like dancey parts and it's just, it's really fucking cool. Every time I listen to it, I discover something else. To hearken back to what you were asking in the very beginning, like what, how do you spend your time listening to music? Like, I do like to be challenged sometimes, you know, like, I think it's good for the brain, you know? And listening to this Rosalie album challenges me. And also, that's my bitch. What's she talking about? God.

• 56:08Yasi Salek?

  I, you know, I've really had this theory for a long time that I think that we've been such an aggressively secular society for so long that it's gonna slingshot back. Like, it's not working.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  We need a third.

• 56:22Yasi Salek?

  Log on to x.com and you can see what happens when we're this godless, or as I said before, Swifties are what happens when you don't have God, you know, like idolatry is what happens, you know?

• 56:34Speaker 02

  I think that's probably right. Stan culture is probably a good example of like,

• 56:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  I need something to believe in beyond myself.

• 56:40Yasi Salek?

  And I'm sure people will argue like, oh, a bunch of these stans are, have a religion. I'm like, that's not what I'm talking about. Having a religion, having a relationship with God, sorry, people hate it when I use that word, insert whatever you want there.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Gummo.

• 56:54Yasi Salek?

  Gummo, yeah. Higher power is, it's something profound and I love seeing a huge pop star unashamedly talking about trying to find a relationship with her spirituality and with God and like researching female saints. Like, I think it's so fucking cool.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think like the stuff I've seen of her, like the visual language of the record and the videos that she's done. I'm like, this is, this is what we should be spending our money on, guys. Come on.

• 57:24Yasi Salek?

  I also just want to shout out, she did this, she did this interview. Um, do you ever listen to the podcast Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  I don't, but I know who Bella Freud is.

• 57:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I actually really like it. Um, it's like real, like brain massage for me because it's like such dulcet hushed tones and, and I love fashion.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  I can tell.

• 57:44Yasi Salek?

  This is my vicarage shirt. I wore my vicarage shirt today. I want you guys to know I have many layers and it's not just rock chick.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:52Yasi Salek?

  Anyway.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  I thought you meant like multiple layers.

• 57:54Yasi Salek?

  I also literally have multiple layers of shirts on. But she was on Rosalie and she's just like so charming and like, you can't help but like her, but. Bella Freud asked her a question that was like, how do you define risk? And she said, risk is surrender. I have like the chills. I wrote it down like in like thick marker and like put it above my desk because it was like to me such a profound way to look at life. Like it's like, yes, ultimately, ultimately, everything can be surrender because that is what faith is, right?

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:27Yasi Salek?

  Faith is surrender. And it just, wow, I was so moved by the sentiment and I just, for me, it really informed the album on like a deeper level. I love this album.

• 58:43Yasi Salek?

  And then just to like briefly mention the Addison Rae album, I love it. I mean, it's, it's not at all what you would think a TikTok dancer turned celebrity turned singer would make.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:56Yasi Salek?

  It's real, it's pretty unconventional. It sounds more like shades of like Madonna ray of light and like, you know, it's not, it's not the kind of pop music you think you would hear.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:06Yasi Salek?

  As like just a like a figure, she has this like joie de vivre that's so cool to see where she's just like fun and bubbly.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:14Yasi Salek?

  It's like if Britney Spears was a bit avant garde.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:17Yasi Salek?

  Or if like Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey had a baby, you know? And it's, it's just, it's a cool record. It has a bizarre.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  What's the Addison record called?

• 59:26Yasi Salek?

  Addison.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Addison.

• 59:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's called Addison. It's great. I really love it. I've loved all the like visuals, like the video for um, put your headphones on where she has the pink wig and she's in like Iceland or something riding horses. It's like so cool. I'm really into it.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  You know, this is probably a little bit more middle aged of me, but uh, the Sharon Van Etten record from this year, Sharon Van Etten, Attraction Theory and Attraction Theory. It's like, I think very rooted in like a early Cure, early New Order

• 1:00:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  sound.

• 1:00:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  And then she has like. There's very few artists I listen to because I usually don't go for like performative vocals. But there's very few people that I listen to where I'm like, this person's voice, they're in complete control of the instrument. And they can like manipulate my feelings and manipulate my heart rate based on like just how they do things with their vocals or like their harmonizing that they were doing.

• 1:00:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Crushville Sisters are an example. Cameron Winter is a really good example and Sharon Van Edden is one of my favorite singers and I thought this record was awesome this year.

• 1:00:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's really good. She's just steadily been incredible for so long.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's another thing that I kind of like for as much as we're like this brand new thing that's exploded and like where will they go? It's like to see somebody who's just kind of getting better as they get older is pretty awesome.

• 1:00:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Yasi Salek?

  I realize that I tend to in these scenarios err towards newer things, probably because part of my aim is to like

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Introduce new shit.

• 1:01:09Yasi Salek?

  Introduce new shit to people.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Because you spend most of the year being like

• 1:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Do you remember Jeff Buckley? Ever heard of Jeff Buckley?

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:15Yasi Salek?

  He was pretty good. But Sharon Van Edden, amazing. That Maddy Diaz album is really good too. I don't know if you listened to that.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  I had a

• 1:01:23Yasi Salek?

  Optimist. It's really good. Just sort of in that same vein. She's a really incredible artist and I love. There's just so much good music this year.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  I'll talk about another album that I think you liked too, that is also probably a little bit more for my, my 40 and over. And I wouldn't even say that. It's, it's just like the, the sound is like timeless and it's The Berries, the self-titled album from The Berries. And this is this guy Matt Berry who is in Big Bite and Happy Diving. And The Berries was kind of like, is kind of like, I think this is like purely pop rock project.

• 1:01:59Yasi Salek?

  It's like power pop.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this record, I think because of the color scheme of the album.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  When you look at it, the first thing I think of is Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty.

• 1:02:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  And it has this kind of like spiritually Tom Petty feel to the record itself. And a lot of these songs are like kind of mid tempo, wistful, perfect, like not a note out of place. Like you get to the bridge and there's just like an amazing 15 second guitar solo.

• 1:02:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  That is like the perfect, that is all I wanted from this guitar solo is this like aching six notes. You know? And then he's got this very, very cool voice. I would recommend it to people who are fans of Spoon.

• 1:02:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  I feel like he has like a real rhythm and swing to like the way that he like assembles his songs that feel very like, for lack of a better term, grooving or groovy or like, they just have like a little bit of like swagger to them that I think a lot of like power pop maybe lacks, you know, where a lot of power pop is like maybe a little bit more nasally. And it's like, you said that you would never leave, you know? And like, he's, he's the fucking cool guy standing by the window, smoking out the window, you know, like.

• 1:03:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love this Barry's record. I think it's like a perfect road trip record.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:27Yasi Salek?

  Which I know is like kind of a lame thing to say about, but it just really is like, it has a smooth consistency from start to finish that like really lends itself to like, you're just driving on the open road for, you know?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  You are so right.

• 1:03:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  I did, I had a, a Sunday a couple of months ago where I drove to, it was like a Sunday night and I drove to Apple Pan for a burger and then went and saw a screening at the Fox lot, which is like all the way down Pico. But I drove from like the east side to the west side. And just listen to The Berries the entire time. And I was like, this, nobody's fucking driving.

• 1:04:03Yasi Salek?

  It's perfect.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  So you get, get across town in like 20 minutes.

• 1:04:05Yasi Salek?

  Thanksgiving weekend, just ideal. Yeah, it's a great, also, have you listened to any of Cora Puckett's solo stuff?

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:13Yasi Salek?

  Cora Puckett plays in The Berries.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:15Yasi Salek?

  I don't know what he's done recently, but maybe a year or two ago, he put out a couple of solo tracks.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  I did, and it's good.

• 1:04:21Yasi Salek?

  It's so fucking good. Yeah. There's this like group of, this is a scene. It's like group of, I think they're from Seattle originally, I believe. Or the scene is from Seattle, but I think they live here now. They're just like, everything they do is very good. And they have all these multiple projects that they all kind of play with each other in. And like, it's like, they don't play with each other in them, but you know what I'm saying? And maybe they do. I don't know. I don't know what they do in their free time. But all very good. Let's talk about my guy. So my guy Ian Shelton and his band Military Gun and the new album, God Save the Gun.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Yasi Salek?

  I'm biased, obviously. And how can we remove our bias? We can't. There's no such thing as an unbiased person or an unbiased critic. So I don't care. I love this album. I love Ian. I think each Military Gun record, I don't even want to say it's gotten better because I don't think that's accurate. They've, they're all pretty good. It's just they've surprised and delighted me in different ways, you know? And on this one, there's just like some really cool stuff going on, like putting a killing joke sample in Kick. It's my fucking shit.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  My thing about this record is the details. And that's what probably if you track Military Gun over the, like, from their earliest singles to now is like, he's obviously somebody who's obsessed with good songwriting.

• 1:05:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's ahead also.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  And is like, the difference between good and great is on the finest of margins. And it's like, the way a backing vocal enters like a bar early or a bar late, and maybe you run it backwards or like whatever it is that he does to the like various songs on this. Like you can tell he's somebody who's like obsessively listened to like stuff as disparate as like, as casual as Guided by Voices, which is like fake casual. Cause it's actually like, you know, pet sounds inside of those songs to Blur or whatever.

• 1:06:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  And he's like studied the masters and is, and is like taking fairly.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Recognizable songs and especially song structures, but is like tweaking them so much that they sound new.

• 1:06:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to put it. And also just like the sort of conceits of these songs being so vulnerable and like his willingness to like work his shit out within lyrics, like whether it be like his family stuff or like sobriety, like I think it's really cool.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  And always in like this kind of like sparkling couple minute package.

• 1:06:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  Kind of, if you want to call Military Gunner all hardcore adjacent, I will call this somewhat hardcore adjacent too. So, uh, Anxious, this band from Connecticut, uh, put out a record this year called Bambi. Um, and if you like Lifetime, if you like melodic hardcore, all this is like that done. It's like basically like, what if you played transatlanticism like you were a hardcore band? Um, and it's awesome. There's a couple of songs, especially Head and Spine, um, that are mind-blowingly well put together. And they do some really, really, really cool shit, but they also like play breakneck kind of melodic hardcore while doing it.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Was there any other like, uh, harder stuff that you liked this year? Death Heaven?

• 1:07:54Yasi Salek?

  I love Death Heaven album. Um, I loved it.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Lonely People With Power.

• 1:07:59Yasi Salek?

  Lonely People With Power is, yeah. We went into the show and had a great time.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  We stood for three hours before Death Heaven played, somewhat dampened my ability to circle pit, but yeah.

• 1:08:10Yasi Salek?

  We were not gonna circle pit. We leave that to the youth. We sipped our drinks in the balcony. Um, but yeah, I think that, I think the album's really great. I love, I think I might've said this at the time, but in this house, we love when George screams. So I was very happy for George screaming, Carrie playing guitar.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Yasi Salek?

  Chiv, my guys. Love it. Dan. Absolutely not hardcore adjacent until I'm making an full left turn.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  It's your show.

• 1:08:34Yasi Salek?

  I like the Hayley Williams album so much. Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. It's her third studio album. Um, were you a Paramore guy?

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love Paramore, but I really loved. Both her other solo albums, particularly Pedals for Armor, it came out, I want to say like the fir- like five minutes after COVID started, it feels like that to me, and I listened to it so much. This one, Ego Death, was, had such an unusual rollout. I don't know if you remember, it was like seventeen-

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  For free, or that it was-

• 1:09:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, seventeen of the songs were like uploaded to a website, but you needed a code from the hair dye company that she has, Good Die Young.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Yasi Salek?

  And it like, the website was really cool and kind of like nineties looking, and then pulled off, and then released as standalone tracks on streaming on August 1st, and then she sort of like let people take those standalone tracks and make their own tracklists out of it.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  I was gonna ask you something.

• 1:09:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Which I don't think I've ever talked to you about. This is a tangent, but it's related.

• 1:09:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  How do you listen to music?

• 1:09:37Yasi Salek?

  Straight through.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Albums?

• 1:09:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Still like, as if it were on a turntable?

• 1:09:41Yasi Salek?

  Uh, well, it depends on, on the, uh, scenario.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, mostly albums all the way through. Sometimes if I'm like walking through cities, which is one of my favorite places to listen to music, I'll put on playlists that I've made.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:56Yasi Salek?

  Because I want every song to hit in a specific emotional way, because I'm like, I'm main character-ing right now, you know what I mean? Yeah, I listen to them all the way through. What about you?

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Uh, this year I tried making a, like, rolling 2025 playlist, where like, if I heard a song that was released this year, I'd throw it in there-

• 1:10:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  So that I would remind myself it existed and then go back to whatever full-length it was, and then probably fell off making as many like themed vibe playlists as I usually like to do, because I was like really listening to more albums. And I was trying to evaluate things more as like a full-length versus whether do you actually like two songs of this, but-

• 1:10:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I try to honor, you know-

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  But I thought what she did was really interesting, where she was like, this is like a batch of songs, how you want to kind of consume them can change.

• 1:10:43Yasi Salek?

  Right. But they are a body of work, right? So I thought it was interesting that she sort of let the fans, in, in some sense, influence the ultimate tracklisting, which is always kind of a very cool thing to do. Also, Dad, this is her first album after the Atlantic deal is over, and it was released on her imprint that is called Post-Atlantic.

• 1:11:07Yasi Salek?

  A lot of dumb motherfuckers I made rich is a lyric from this. She's free, babe. She's out of the cage. I just, I think it's a, it's a really cool album. It has a ton of different things going on, on here, like different influences, different types of music. There's like, you know, Hayley Williams loves hardcore music.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Yasi Salek?

  You can heal, hear that here. There's a song that I feel like is a Taylor Swift song that's better than the, any Taylor Swift song that was on Life of a Showgirl.

• 1:11:41Yasi Salek?

  But it's just great. And sometimes I feel like, I think Hayley Williams has so much goodwill and deservedly so. I mean, that voice is generational, you know? But I don't feel like people let her live, like outside of Paramore. Like they don't, there's like, put some respect on her solo work.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. I feel like, this is actually, I actually do have a good segue to the next artist I wanted to talk to you about. But I feel like she's, I feel like she's like really, I mean, I'm sure people are like, play, that's what you get. That's what I want to hear. You know, like I'm sure there's a huge cohort of people who want Paramore classics. But um, I feel like she's like really come into her own and has like her own following and stuff now.

• 1:12:25Yasi Salek?

  I think the fanbase would live and die for her. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm not seeing the like as much in like, I'm talking like music, just like other places that I feel like could be like, no, this is, this is great.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  She's important.

• 1:12:37Yasi Salek?

  Stuff. She's important. Like what she's doing is important. And I'm just here to say what she's doing is important. And I think this album's great.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  The segue I was gonna make was between Hayley Williams and Elias Ronanfeld.

• 1:12:46Yasi Salek?

  Great. Striking off on their own.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Also a person who fronts a very, very, very awesome band.

• 1:12:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we love Ice Age.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  But has in the last couple of years had like this incredibly prolific solo career.

• 1:13:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  Even though Ice Age is arguably, like I personally love like hardcore Ice Age from the early days, but the most recent Ice Age record, which was essentially like a. What was it Sonic Boom for years?

• 1:13:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  And it feels a lot like Primal Scream and Spiritualized and Spacemen. Classic rock, kind of like vibey, religious, swampy, awesome rock record.

• 1:13:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  And then he goes off and makes, he's made two solo records under his own name and then one with Dean Blunt that I think we're gonna talk about.

• 1:13:31Yasi Salek?

  That's one, another one of our shared, uh, shared passions. I wanted to ask you about an artist that I feel like you would really like that is, it was in the same Copenhagen scene as Ice Age, is Lust for Youth.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:13:44Yasi Salek?

  Did you ever hear that band?

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 1:13:45Yasi Salek?

  I feel like you would love them.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  I'm gonna check them out as soon as we get out of here.

• 1:13:47Yasi Salek?

  Really great. There was a time in my life where somehow I was like, it's probably 12 years ago that I got to see both bands and sort of like hang out with them. And I was like blown away on one end by Ice Age. And then in a totally different way by Lust for Youth, like they're so cool and they were all doing this like, that's when I was like, is Scandinavia sick? I've since revised, but I do think Copenhagen is cool.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, Copenhagen is cool.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I should say that other, the solo Elias album that came out this year, Speak Daggers, also really good.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Yasi Salek?

  But this shit, Luccro, here's, why is it so good? I don't, I was, it's like a, it's kind of a-

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  This is another one of the records where I was like, did somebody make this in a lab to cater to my interests?

• 1:14:32Yasi Salek?

  For me, but also-

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  It was like sped up post punk Massive Attack songs, like-

• 1:14:37Yasi Salek?

  The, the way the, the vocals are put in the mix, it's like, the-

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Yasi Salek?

  Kind of like Massive Attack, what I said about, I was like, this man is following you and talking to you over your shoulder.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Yasi Salek?

  Which like is really cool. It's a bit of a grower, was a bit of a grower for me, except for, so I was like, oh, okay.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  Track titles only have numbers, so it's hard to like be like, oh, I love four, you know?

• 1:14:57Yasi Salek?

  I do love four, the four, five and six. It's just like boom, boom, boom. I just wrote a thousand percent yes for six.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  It's a, it's an awesome record.

• 1:15:13Yasi Salek?

  Were you a Dean Blunt guy? Like, have you been a long time Dean Blunt guy?

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  I'm not. This was more, sadly, this is my introduction.

• 1:15:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, I'd heard a couple of tracks and like, been like, oh, this is really cool. And like, there was like, one album, not, not the first one, but maybe the second one. He's put out a lot of stuff that I remember listening to a bunch and being really into. But yeah, fully put that on the back burner, like, didn't think about it. And then this came about, because I, you know, I'd be checking for Elias, and I was struck down. Also, we need to mention, there's a third person that participated in the making of this album, which is a producer called Vegan, with a Y.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:15:50Yasi Salek?

  Whose father is Phil Thornali, who produced The Cure's pornography and then played bass for them. More importantly to my interests, co-wrote the song "Torn."

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  By Natalie Imbruglia?

• 1:16:01Yasi Salek?

  Well, actually by Edna Swapp, but yes.

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:16:03Yasi Salek?

  Made famous by Natalie Imbruglia.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  That guy probably does okay on his taxes.

• 1:16:08Yasi Salek?

  That guy's slay, bitch. That guy, pornography, and then you co-wrote "Torn"? Hang it up. You're done. You've, you've contributed more to culture than most people will in 10 lifetimes.

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, so we've done a couple of things that we've shared, a couple of things that we have personal passion for.

• 1:16:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Would you like to run through some honorable mentions?

• 1:16:27Yasi Salek?

  No, I'm not done with my, my passions.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Oh, go ahead.

• 1:16:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, one is my beloved Crushed.

• 1:16:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:32Yasi Salek?

  In the same vein as Military Gun. I am biased because I love.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Can I just say that was an excellent episode of Bands Play?

• 1:16:39Yasi Salek?

  Brimarrell.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  She was awesome.

• 1:16:40Yasi Salek?

  She's that bitch, okay? She is so fucking talented. Voice of an angel. Made a cover of Black Milk by Massive Attack using only Silent Hill samples.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:16:52Yasi Salek?

  That's incredible. She's amazing.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  It's like, one of the videos that made me believe in the internet again. Why, like, being like, this is what we used to do?

• 1:17:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Is like, I'm just gonna do this for my amusement and entertainment, and then everybody's like, this is the new, the new sound of the future.

• 1:17:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, no, I think she's so brilliant. I actually really can't wait to see what she does on her own, because I think this was like, kind of a start of like, maybe some solo stuff, and like, I'm ready, bitch.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Disney tickets.

• 1:17:18Yasi Salek?

  I'll follow her to the ends of the earth. But I love Crushed. I love the fucking, the EP from last year, Extra Life. No Scope is the one that came out this year. I just think it's tailored to my interests. It's like not shoegaze and it's not trip hop, but again, a secret third thing. It's just like this beautiful, lush, melodic, atmospheric pop that was kind of like, what if the cowboy junkies had breakbeats? You know, like it's just, it's, it's good. It's just really good and it's ambitious because it's, it's not just trying to be like bedroom.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like you're like the seventh gen shoegaze band.

• 1:17:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's pop, you know, and like, I think, I think it's phenomenal. It was put out on Ghostly on the same day as Geese. So I was like, motherfucker.

• 1:18:15Yasi Salek?

  Not dissimilar, but dissimilar in a lot of ways, actually, is Water From Your Eyes. A band that I'm really late to, by the way, and I will own it, like.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  The Water From Your Eyes, This Is Lorelei, like kind of industrial complex is, is, is a, it's, you gotta really get ready to go spelunking when you go digging.

• 1:18:33Yasi Salek?

  This is Lorelei I became aware of more recently because that is really tailored in a lab. For you, like that shit, it's like, like, let's fucking go. But yeah, This Is Lorelei is Nate Amos and his partner in Water From Your Eyes is Rachel Brown.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Yasi Salek?

  Um, who sings and this album is like, you just never know where it's going to go next, which I found so, it was, it's like lightly challenging, but also like has the, what you were talking about, where there's so much that I'm like, oh yes, the sonic youth part.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Yasi Salek?

  You know, or this thing, you know, there's a song called Knights in Armor that I think was originally written for This Is Lorelei, but then tweaked to become a Water From Your Eyes song. It's like so good because it has that sort of catchiness of a This Is Lorelei thing, but then it's a weirdness of a Water From Your Eyes.

• 1:19:33Yasi Salek?

  And then they have like a full on like club banger, like playing classics that sounds like a club song.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  The way you're talking about Water From Your Eyes is kind of like how I felt about Body of Water. Where it's like, there's a lot of things in here that are catering directly to my interests, but I also never know what you're gonna do 20 seconds later.

• 1:19:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and I'm not expecting any of it. Like, other than all of a sudden, it's like Sarah Records Core, you know? I'm just like, I really loved it. I listened to it a bunch of times. Only 29 minutes, 10 songs. We need more of that in our lives. I think it's great. Um, and then the last one is Wet Leg. You a Wet Leg guy?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  I am a Wet Leg guy.

• 1:20:10Yasi Salek?

  I didn't, like, again, I guess maybe those two last ones are joined in the fact that I'm like embarrassingly late.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:19Yasi Salek?

  Wet Leg felt like none of my business for some reason. I can't explain why. I don't know. I was just like, that's wonderful, but, and then I'm like, who are you fucking idiot? Because they're so good and they're so up my alley. Like, especially this album that's like, so like, you know, like, I love, I love post-punk, like, female-fronted post-punk, like Delta Five and stuff like that. And like, this is very in the lineage of that, but then also like a bit more complicated. It's so fun to listen to. They're so fucking cool.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Yasi Salek?

  Like, I love it. I listen to this album a lot. It's like, this is an, this is an upper album. Like, you put on, you're like, yeah, let's go out.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Down, up.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  I don't know if you've gotten a chance to spend any time with this, but this probably would have been better slotted next to Dean Blunt, The Young Fathers, the soundtrack for 28 Years Later.

• 1:21:13Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:21:14Speaker 02

  This is like, actually low-key, like, an incredible accomplishment because they did like, all this music for the movie, which is gorgeous, and then did like an album worth of songs that are played, you know, in the background of a lot of the scenes, but it's like, you kind of get like a score and a soundtrack and the same thing, and they, the Scottish band, and it's really cool that Danny Boyle was like, "Young Fathers are doing the music for my zombie movie blockbuster that I'm bringing out." Um, this, this was awesome.

• 1:21:39Yasi Salek?

  From what I understand, they're quite big in the UK.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:42Yasi Salek?

  Like, Mercury Prize-winning, like, really.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Very well respected.

• 1:21:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I've listened to a lot of them, but not the 28 Years Later soundtrack, which I haven't even seen the film. I mean, to.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  It's my favorite movie of the year.

• 1:21:52Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I'll get, I'll get to it.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  I don't know if it might not be your vibe. It's a little scary. Yeah.

• 1:21:57Yasi Salek?

  It's true. I'm, I'm a little baby when it comes to scary.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  So yeah, I was just gonna mention Lifeguard. So some people are big Sharpens fans, Kai, Kai Slayers other band.

• 1:22:08Yasi Salek?

  The Sharpens album's good.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  And the Sharpens album is really good. That's way more like psychedelic pop.

• 1:22:13Yasi Salek?

  Balloon, balloon.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, Lifeguard is more like this heat unwound.

• 1:22:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe like noisiest part of Yuletango, kind of like.

• 1:22:23Yasi Salek?

  Also, is he not 18?

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is another like geese thing where I'm like.

• 1:22:26Yasi Salek?

  Get the fuck out of here with this shit.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Uh, this record sounds incredible. Uh, also makes me think about Wire a lot. Um, and just the, his guitar tone and I thought, I know that sounds like Circus Mag's shit, but like I love listening to the guitar parts on this record. So.

• 1:22:43Yasi Salek?

  Do you think when Wire made their album, Pink, was it Pink Flag? They were like, wow, people will be referencing this for the next 70 years.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  But I also think like, uh, when you watch them on like TV performances from that era, you're like, this might be the best band of all time.

• 1:23:00Yasi Salek?

  Literally. Well, I have a few more honorable mentions and then we can recap. One that was a big album for me this year that I really do want to mention because it was a discovery was this band called Boyish. And their album is called Gun. It's another one where like a bit tailor made in the lab for me with the like references, but it's so well executed and does sort of jump around in the album from like, it's 2012 to like, it's 1995 in like, a really interesting way. I, I really, really liked the album.

• 1:23:35Yasi Salek?

  I think they're a really cool band and I, I'm interested to see what they're gonna do next. I think it's, it's a, a duo. Um, the Blanche album. I also love Blanche. If you ask for a picture, I thought it was really fucking good. She's an incredible songwriter and her lyrics just keep getting better and better. She's a little sassy queen and. It was a great album. And Glitterer. Did you like that album?

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  I fucking love the Glitterer.

• 1:23:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Like, it's so good. It's called Ur.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Yasi Salek?

  Really, like Nate Russen?

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  If you liked Title Fight, I think you will hear things in this that you like, but it is like a completely different presentation of those, of those kinds of songs.

• 1:24:12Yasi Salek?

  Controversially, I low key think it's a little better than Title Fight, but I know people will come to my house and murder me for that.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  I think they're coming for a variety of different reasons. Number one, you sang Swifties are godless, but I think.

• 1:24:22Yasi Salek?

  You don't have to remind. You don't have to add more of that into this podcast. Okay, I think we've, oh, I have one more. I don't know if I recommend this because it's so difficult to listen to, but I was so

• 1:24:36Yasi Salek?

  happy that it exists because it's so interesting and cool, which is, did you listen to this album, Hext, by the artist Aya?

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:24:44Yasi Salek?

  It's like a horror movie of an album, if that makes any sense. It's like, it's like an anxiety attack for like, but it's, it's really fucking cool and interesting. And she's just like this, I actually don't know if it's a she. Aya is an incredible producer and does all this, like, really cool sonic stuff, but it is like,

• 1:25:05Yasi Salek?

  it's like the part of the trip where the sun came up and you're not feeling good about that. And it's like your mom called and then all the things, the car alarm is outside. The, the cover is like her.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  Oh, is this one where like her mouth and she's got like a front, but then there's like worms in her mouth?

• 1:25:20Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Yasi Salek?

  And it sounds like that. Yeah. But it's really fucking cool.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Check it out. So we started, we talked about geese getting killed.

• 1:25:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  And realize we will annihilate our enemies. I spoke about The Berries, self titled.

• 1:25:35Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Vulture Feather, Liminal Fields. We both talked about Dean Blunt and Elias Ronafelt, Lucra.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  I liked Anxious, their album Bambi and Lifeguard, Ripped and Torn. We talked about Snowcaps, their self titled record, the Crutchfield sisters and Wednesday, Bluffs.

• 1:25:55Yasi Salek?

  Bleeds.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  I talked to Bleeds. I don't, where am I going? Like, what happened?

• 1:25:59Yasi Salek?

  We're all doing our best.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  I got like full blown dyslexia last night. I talked about Challowater, God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars, West Texas Dirt Gaze, Young Fathers 28 Years Later soundtrack, and then I'll draw a line there. We'll stop talking about good music and you can talk about what music you do your list.

• 1:26:15Yasi Salek?

  What I said, okay. So besides the ones that you already mentioned that we shared, I talked about Rosalia's Luxe. I talked about Hayley Williams' Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party, Crushed No Scope, Military Gun, God Save The Gun, Wet Leg Moisturizer, and Water From Your Eyes.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Yasi Salek?

  The name of the album is It's A Beautiful Place.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  Is there anything else you just want to throw out without discussion or with brief discussion?

• 1:26:41Yasi Salek?

  I feel like I kinda named all.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I said Death Heaven.

• 1:26:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, we said, yeah, we both said Death Heaven. Yeah, yeah. Lonely People Without are the Death Heaven album. I mean, there's obviously a lot more things in this beautiful world.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll just mention really quick.

• 1:26:56Yasi Salek?

  I have one more.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:26:57Yasi Salek?

  I'll mention, it's an EP out of, from a London duo called Most Things that I like happened upon, I don't know how I happened upon it, one of those, maybe one of those internet random searches, but then I saw them play, they just happened to be playing while I was in London. And I actually them play and they have a really cool, it's just bass and drums and, and sort of like a talk singing thing. It's got a really cool, post punky sparse thing that's like a little Minutemen-y, you know?

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Yasi Salek?

  But, but like more cool.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  What are they called again?

• 1:27:25Yasi Salek?

  Most Things.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  Most Things.

• 1:27:27Yasi Salek?

  I really, cause they have a song called Shops that like really fucking goes.

• 1:27:32Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's one I want to talk about. And then there's a band called Cardinals, I think is on the same label. It's like a really cool label in London called So Young, I think it's called. And I liked that Cardinals album a lot, too.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:27:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  I'll just shout out some of my, my Troubadour bros. Really loved the Dan Spencer record, We've Your Web, Lyreman, which is a guy I discovered through Ian Shelton's curation. And he is an incredible country folk songwriter. I also really liked the Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band.

• 1:27:59Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  Made me think of Silver Jews. But yeah, uh, Greg Freeman, Burn Over, thought it was really cool. Knife Play, Live in Seattle, very Neil Young meets Sturgis stuff. It's awesome.

• 1:28:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  And then I would just mention Homefront and Skinhead.

• 1:28:16Yasi Salek?

  I was gonna say, we should, we should talk about Homefront, because that's another one we, you put me on to, then we discussed, and I did really like it. And I do feel.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  It's an Oi Band covering Joy Division is the easiest way to describe it.

• 1:28:27Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. Ian Curtis is reincarnated in Oi Band, and it's just how you would think that would sound, which is awesome.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  And Skinhead is incredible. If you like, like Leatherface and a couple, like a more melodic, but like still gruff hardcore.

• 1:28:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I can keep going. Millspec put out like a perfect melodic hardcore EP this year.

• 1:28:46Yasi Salek?

  I didn't listen to that one.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Yasi Salek?

  I heard.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Bruce Springsteen, Electric Nebraska and Tracks 2.

• 1:28:52Yasi Salek?

  Not familiar with him. Is it good? Oh, Issy Wood put out an EP that I really, really liked, uh, called

• 1:29:00Yasi Salek?

  The Blame Part Six. Um, and it's, it's amazing. She has a song called Punctuality, but it's like P dot U dot all the way through.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Like comma exclamation point or?

• 1:29:11Yasi Salek?

  She just like, she has this incredible juxtaposition of like, she has this like really like cool sexy voice and the music is very like kind of sexy vibey. I don't even know how to describe it. It's, it's electronically produced, but like piano and also. But then the lyrics are really like, like she has a song called I Hate Sex. And it's this like sexy vibey delivery we're talking about, like, I don't want, I hate sex.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  That's you shooting junk at eighty-three.

• 1:29:38Yasi Salek?

  Putting it on vibing. Um, so that's one I definitely wanted to shout out. Chelsea Hodson put out a cool album. I think it was called Sleepwalker. It's real like, if you like cat power vibes, uh, that's really good. Um, the Spiritual Cramp album, I actually liked quite a bit. Had a lot of clash kind of energy.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  Radioactivity was really good.

• 1:30:00Yasi Salek?

  I love radioactivity. One of my best.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  Time Won't Bring Me Down is the name of the album.

• 1:30:05Yasi Salek?

  One of my best memories, concert memories is radioactivity, which is like losing my mind.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  You know, we put out a really good record this year. We can just keep doing this for four hours. Mogwai's album is really good.

• 1:30:16Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. Shout out Stuart.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  The Bad Fire.

• 1:30:18Yasi Salek?

  Friend of the pod, guest of the pod. The J-Som album, I loved the J-Som album. In particular, the song with Jim Adkins.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:30:26Yasi Salek?

  Flo, remember, I think I sent it to you. It was so fucking good. Okay, how about two old heads?

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Suede.

• 1:30:31Yasi Salek?

  The Suede album and the Pulp album.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Yasi Salek?

  Were both like file under surprisingly good for late era albums. And I don't mean to be rude, but when I say that, but like, I think everyone knows what I'm talking about, but they were actually really good albums.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Yasi Salek?

  There's a band called Joyer that I got into. Yeah, this year. I like that. This band is really fucking cool.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  Dude, you had a lot of mine.

• 1:30:54Yasi Salek?

  We have a big Venn diagram. Oh, Lambreni Girls. Have you heard that?

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Is your favorite song of the year the, the This is Lorelei song that Lenderman does?

• 1:31:04Yasi Salek?

  Actually, no, but I do love that. I do love that song.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  It's not your favorite song. Do you have a favorite song of the year?

• 1:31:08Yasi Salek?

  Damn, am I gonna be so basic? Like, it came out this year.

• 1:31:14Yasi Salek?

  Does it have to be Taxes?

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 1:31:16Yasi Salek?

  I, I think it might be Taxes.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  That's a good call.

• 1:31:20Yasi Salek?

  No, I take it back. It's a wild sign to choose you.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:31:25Yasi Salek?

  That song is just fucking perfect.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  By, by Real Eyes.

• 1:31:29Yasi Salek?

  By Real Eyes, yeah. What about you? What's your favorite song?

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Sour Diesel.

• 1:31:32Yasi Salek?

  Sour Diesel by, they're getting a lot of water, yeah. Okay, well, I feel like we did a really amazing job.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Well, we listed a bunch of really good music. We did not gamify this, draft anything, take anything from each other, compete with each other. Nobody can vote on who had a better list.

• 1:31:46Yasi Salek?

  And that's how I like it. Thank you, Chris Ryan, for.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Very nice job. I learned a lot about new music I gotta go check out for you.

• 1:31:52Yasi Salek?

  Same. I wrote it down. And thanks for listening to Bands Plane. Come back next week.

• 1:32:00Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bands Plane. Our guest today was Christopher Ryan. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production is by John Jones and video animation and graphics are by John Richter. Executive producers for Bands Plane, Regina Delvec and me, Yasi Selig. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer. And graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy, Sam Hunt, and the Apple Television show Pluribus.

• 1:32:41Yasi Salek?

  I love the guitar tone. Right.