Our Most Anticipated Albums of 2026 with Shaad D’Souza, Plus An Interview with Real Lies’ Kevin Lee Kharas

Yasi kicks off 2026 with music and culture critic Shaad D’Souza to talk through their most anticipated albums of the year. Find out what’s coming, what they’re trying to wish into existence, and just how many truly great albums Madonna might have left. Next, Yasi is joined by Kevin Lee Kharas of Real Lies for a wide-ranging interview about his career, the music he’s listening to (or not listening to) and the impetus and inspirations behind Real Lies’ latest album (and Yasi’s no. 1 album of 2025), We Will Annihilate Our Enemies. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Shaad D’Souza @shaad, Kevin Lee Kharas @real_lies_Producer: 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:05Yasi Salek?

  You guys, I'm so excited to share that Vansplain is heading the road. We're joining Something in the Way Fest in Boston. And, babe, we'd love you to join us. Christopher Ryan and I will be joined by a very special guest at the Sinclair in Cambridge on Friday, January 30th at 8:00 p.m. Tickets go on sale next Tuesday, January 20th. And more information will be available at theringer.com/events very soon. And, guess what, babe? That's not all. There's more. That's what we mean when we say that's not all. We'll also be doing a late-night movie screening. Embarrassment of riches for Boston. At the Coolidge Corner Theater on Saturday, January 31st.

• 1:50Yasi Salek?

  So keep your eyes out for those details, which will also be at theringer.com/events. Again, Vansplain will be on the East Coast. Our live show is Friday, January 30th, the Sinclair in Cambridge. And the movie screening is Saturday, January 31st, at the Coolidge Corner Theater. Live show tickets will go on sale next Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. And details for both events are coming soon to theringer.com/events. So please join us.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  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 this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 3:00Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist, but today it is an episode where we talk about our most anticipated new albums of 2026. Also, after we talk about those albums, I have an interview with Realized Frontman Kevin Lee Karas, so make sure to stick around for that. My guest today is critic and reporter and editor of the gorgeous Shad magazine, Shad De Souza. Welcome to the program, Shad.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:31Yasi Salek?

  I absolutely made many errors of assumption when I was booking this because I've just heard so much about you and in my mind you were British. And I was like, I'm gonna be in London. I'll have Shad, famed British music critic, on. And then two things have transpired. Number one, you're not British, you're Australian. And number two, you're not in London, you're in Australia.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, look, you didn't assume incorrectly because I have been based in London for a good, like, nearly four years now. But I'm emphatically not British. I would not like to claim British in any way. So that's, I would like to strike that from the record. I am Australian.

• 4:13Yasi Salek?

  It's the Queens, what do they call it? The Queens?

• 4:16Speaker 04

  It's part of the Commonwealth.

• 4:17Yasi Salek?

  The Commonwealth? It's owned by the Queens.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  I'm sad to miss you in London, though. I hope you're enjoying, I really like the kind of like cold, clear London winter vibe a lot, so I'm quite jealous. I'm literally sweating, though, in my friend's apartment, so...

• 4:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because it's full summer there, as is the way the hemispheres work. I don't know if you guys are familiar with hemispheres.

• 4:42Yasi Salek?

  Well, famously, I've spoken negatively about Australian people and I apologize to you for that. And I hope we can start off on a fresh slate together.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Too late. We've started off on the wrong foot.

• 4:57Yasi Salek?

  You're like, I had never heard that, but now that you've told me, I hate you. Listen, many great bands out of Australia.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Many great bands. Also, you know what? Like, every, every American has said something bad about Australians at some point in their life. If I was to hold that against every American, you know, I'd be out of work.

• 5:15Yasi Salek?

  It's not like we're much better. Like, America is the Australia of the Americas. Do you know what I mean? If that makes any sense?

• 5:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, it makes sense on a lot of levels. I don't like to think about it too much, but yeah.

• 5:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we can't, we can't really go down that route. We'll both have too much cognitive dissonance and have to die. Before we get into the year ahead, I did want to ask you, since, you know, it's just January right now, when we're recording, early January, how did you feel about 2025 in terms of like, the world of music? I know, like, one of your specialties is pop music, but like, you know, just in general, what we got in 2025? What was exciting to you? What was like, maybe disappointing?

• 6:02Speaker 04

  I mean, it kind of felt like a transitional year in a lot of ways, I guess. Obviously, there was some really big, kind of like, breakouts. Like, obviously, the whole kind of like, Geese, Cameron Winter thing happened.

• 6:14Yasi Salek?

  Sure, never heard of those people, but yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  On the pop side, yeah, on the pop side, there was like, Audrey Hobart and people like that. But in general, like.

• 6:22Yasi Salek?

  Addison.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, Addison, of course, kind of like bridging the gap between those worlds in my mind. But yeah, I don't know, I feel like, maybe the year before, there were like, so many, like, big. Like indie records that I really loved or like, you know, there were a lot of big things happening in pop. And then twenty twenty five, maybe naturally felt like a bit of a cooldown period or something.

• 6:44Yasi Salek?

  Like a bit of a hangover.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. And like, almost like there's some kind of like retrenchment happening. Like, you know, one of my favorite records was this. Um, World Peace D M T and Rowan Please album, Velvet Underground and Rowan. And. Um, it, that to me, and like heaps of people I know really loved that record. And, and what was so funny about that record to me was that like. It sounds like lots of really early twenty teens indie. And I feel like there's a lot of that sentiment in the air of like. Please, can we have, please, can we have something nice back? I don't know.

• 7:15Yasi Salek?

  Please, sir, could we have a s- a scotch of guitar rock music back in my hands?

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. Also, I mean, I mean, I mean, men are back, like men are so.

• 7:24Yasi Salek?

  I've been saying this, babe.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Crazy way.

• 7:26Yasi Salek?

  Dude's rock.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:27Yasi Salek?

  I'm happy, I'm happy about it.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  I'm happy, I'm happy about it as well. But I think there's definitely this kind of like, uh, uh, indie labels, especially there's definitely this kind of like white boy of the month thing where they're like. Yes, like they're like four years where we, where we weren't allowed to um, kind of sign white guys. And now let's, let's just do it. Let's, let's just get in as many as we can.

• 7:47Yasi Salek?

  Straight, straight white guys, the door's open, babe. Flow back in.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  The door is open.

• 7:52Yasi Salek?

  It's open as long as you make some good guitar rock music. If not, sit your ass at home. We don't need you.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Even if you don't make good guitar rock music, uh, sometimes the, the door is open.

• 8:04Yasi Salek?

  Unfortunately, yeah. Um, I think that's, that's an interesting, yeah, I guess like. My bread and butter is obviously not contemporary music. So I have to like, sort of make a huge effort to seek it out. Um, which I do, cause I, I try to have my uh, forty three year old finger on the pulse, even though it's like real grandma. Let's get you to bed hours sometimes where I'm like, sometimes like a thing crosses my desk or it's like, and this is like. Like I can recognize because I've, because I'm, I'm good at my job and I've been a music journalist for years. I can recognize that it's very good, but I can also recognize that like. It is illegible to me as a forty three year old woman of my proclivities, like Jane Remover.

• 8:45Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, that is so cool. And I'm so happy for you guys. But unfortunately, that is none of my business, whatever goes on with that. Because I just, it's not my world. I saw that on your

• 8:56Speaker 04

  I just saw her two days ago, um, and it was really crazy and it felt like not my world as well.

• 9:04Yasi Salek?

  But you're young, right? You're like, how old are you? Do you know if you mind doxing yourself on the pod?

• 9:09Speaker 04

  Um, I'm, I'm 28.

• 9:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yeah, you're 28, babe. You're right there.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  But it also felt like I was seeing like inside of Discord or something. Um, and like I was smelling inside of Discord.

• 9:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  But the show, the show was like really, really awesome.

• 9:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Um, but I, I understand what you mean. There's like a lot of stuff last year that one day you look and you're like, this thing is massive. Like this person is selling like 10,000 tickets in like a Z market and I didn't even know, um, that they existed, which is like a fun thing to happen.

• 9:43Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And I think it's also good. Like I think you're supposed to let go of your like chokehold on what's popping as you age. Like it's not for you at a certain point and that's totally okay. You know, like I don't need to be at the Jane Remover show. They would Jane remover me out of the show and be like, you're old ma'am. Well, I don't know. There was a 56 year old woman here meme, you know, like get out of here. So I think it's fine. There are some, some.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  You know, then you look at like the crowds at like the, you know, Greg Freeman show, like the Cameron Winter show or the G show, whatever.

• 10:16Yasi Salek?

  Because that music is tailor made for Gen X and elder millennial people as well as hitting on Gen Z. It's like.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  It's very, it's very efficient in that way. Yeah. I mean, the audiences in terms of like demographic don't look that dissimilar. When you look at like who's in the front row, which is kind of funny. Um, I think there's been this like misconception for so long that like kids, kids, I'm using that word like loosely, kids like only want to listen to music that like totally fries your synapses or is that is like kind of incomprehensible or, or like has no kind of like linear logic to it. And it's just not true. Like I think maybe there was just no music. That was that good like that that they wanted to listen to. I don't know.

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  And like made by their contemporaries, right? Like, I think that's also really important. I think what what's really important about Geeson, Cameron Winter, and again, like, I know people are sick, which they shouldn't be. It's good. We should. We should get on our knees every day and thank God that we have something that's great to talk about. But I'm like, they're like 23 years old, right? Or 24 or whatever. Like, they are of the generation that is also connecting with them and are also able to connect. I mean, they they're like the logical conclusion of everything that's come before them in a really cool way. But you know what my my most old lady love is that I like shouldn't be loving is Two Hallows. I love Two Hallows.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Me too. Oh, my God. Lots of Two Hallows on the New Year's Eve playlist, like lots and lots. I was like loading that thing with Two Hallows.

• 11:48Yasi Salek?

  It goes so hard.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  That and that's just 303, you know, in many ways.

• 11:53Yasi Salek?

  I'm not gonna acknowledge or affirm that statement, but because we don't talk about 303 on this podcast, but I support you in whatever your beliefs are. You can crab walk right out of here. I'm just kidding. Okay, now that we've now that we've tackled a quick year before, I just wanted, at the top, just talk about a couple of albums that will have come out already when this episode is live and also like will be coming out the day after, because this this episode comes out on the 15th, I think. Are you checking for the new Zach Bryan?

• 12:28Yasi Salek?

  Recently wed as Zach Bryan?

• 12:32Speaker 04

  I will be listening to it. I I'll probably listen to it once. It's it's probably really long, right? I'll probably maybe listen to half of it once.

• 12:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  I like like him and respect him more than I want to be listening to his music. But I think he seems. I think he seems cool. I don't know.

• 12:46Yasi Salek?

  Like as a person. I feel kind of the opposite. I feel kind of the opposite. Like, I like the music, but as a person, I'm kind of like, whatever. Okay, I don't want to know about it.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I like how he just like says shit. I know there was some kind of drama in his personal life that I did not look into. So maybe he did something bad.

• 13:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you didn't watch 25 Brianna Chicken Fried TikTok videos like I did? Okay.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  I still don't know who that is.

• 13:13Yasi Salek?

  We approach journalism in different ways. Okay.

• 13:19Yasi Salek?

  Um, yeah, I'll, I'll be listening to. I do really like his music and I think um, he's quite talented. What about Dry Cleaning? This is in your.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  It's huge. I cannot, cannot wait. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've heard it. It's, it's amazing.

• 13:31Yasi Salek?

  You've heard it.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And yeah, this one produced by Caleb Bond, which is really exciting.

• 13:35Yasi Salek?

  Love Caleb Bond.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  And also kind of a band that I think is maybe like a little underappreciated, like they had a bit of hype around the debut, around New Long Leg, and then maybe, I don't know, they put out the next album, Bit Too Fast, or like, there was a bit of the kind of like, you know, Wet Leg kind of came in and ate their lunch a little bit.

• 13:52Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, a little bit. I feel, do you feel that that's kind of what happened? They, they both were in a category for me where I was like, not being snobby, because that's not really the right word, but I think I was just like, oh, I have Delta Five at home. Do you know what I mean? And when it came out, I was just like, I don't need to like, look into this. And then I finally did, and then I felt really stupid because I was like, fuck, this is so good. I'm a dumbass.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  It's funny because I think like Florence Shaw um is like such a funny, smart and intentional, like random source lyricist.

• 14:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Whereas on that first Wet Leg album, I thought they were doing that, but in kind of like a basic way. I think that's really changed on the second Wet Leg album.

• 14:35Yasi Salek?

  Second Wet Leg album is incredible.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  And I think, yeah, it's actually good that the bands have kind of diverged in a really good way. Like Dry Cleaning got way weirder. Wet Leg kind of got a little more like sensical, like much to their benefit.

• 14:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they've established their, like, they've crystallized into like very different personalities. So you can really like be like, oh, these are just like not, we're apples and oranges at this point.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Whereas I feel like the, the Wet Leg thing coming out and kind of like jacking their swag might have, might have hindered them a little because, because maybe they were like more reluctant to be as pop or as like, you know, one lineery as that. But yeah, this new one is so awesome. And it's like cool to see them getting in their kind of like freaky bag.

• 15:17Yasi Salek?

  I can't wait to hear it. I did not have time to go through my like nine thousand unread emails of which like probably seven thousand are PR emails that contain within them links to uh pre-listening albums.

• 15:33Yasi Salek?

  So.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  You shouldn't be, you shouldn't be forced to open promo drop box links on during the holidays. Like that's, you know, transcribed to abuse.

• 15:41Yasi Salek?

  I never have to ever because I talk about bands from 30 years ago. It's just like every once in a while I play a Russian roulette and I pick one and open it. And then sometimes I find amazing stuff in it. So it's more just fun for me.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  I wish it were fun for me and not like having to listen to some of the worst, some of the worst music I've ever heard. And having been subjected to the app that is promo drop box.

• 16:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  In order to do it.

• 16:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, you didn't, you also didn't have to listen to the entire Smashing Pumpkins discography over the course of six weeks. You know, so it's like, we all have our struggles.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 16:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Winged Wheel, Desert So Green. I'm not familiar with this artist. Are you familiar with this artist?

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 16:19Yasi Salek?

  No. Okay. Well, we'll check for it when it comes out. Jenny on Holiday, Quicksand Heart. That's also coming out on the ninth. Don't know. ASAP Rocky, 116, Don't Be Dumb. Are you ASAP Rocky guy?

• 16:30Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm of the, I'm of the right age to have really loved him. Uh, there's some weird, like, it's like, who knows what's going on, what has been going on with him? I guess it's been what, like, a lo- a long time. Could have been like six or seven years since his last album or something. I don't know. His last album, Testing, was kind of, it was him going like experimental, like, kind of like art rock mode.

• 16:58Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I didn't hear it.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Empathically did not work. Um, and there doesn't seem to me any real kind of like hype around this one.

• 17:07Yasi Salek?

  I didn't even know until I was doing the research for this that there was a new ASAP Rocky album coming out. I was like, what?

• 17:13Speaker 04

  So it's like, you know, like apparently it's like a love letter to New York.

• 17:18Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  And it's also creative directed by Tim Burton. So.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Who knows what will happen with that one?

• 17:26Yasi Salek?

  I mean, not no.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  I think it could be no, but.

• 17:31Yasi Salek?

  It could be. Um, this is my, this is my opportunity to drop a name. So hold your hand out. I mean, the name is ASAP Rocky, but this is one of my my favorite stories of my life where like, if I ever write a memoir, I will have to go in, which is that many years ago, um, my friend and I were at a party with ASAP Rocky. It was like, we had gone to a Jeremy Scott, something or other in LA. And then it was like a house party afterwards. And this is when I was like deeply into mushrooms, like deeply devoted to doing mushrooms at every junction. And like, there was always just like loose dried mushrooms in my pocket and stuff. And we gave Rocky mushrooms, chocolates. And he had never done psychedelics before.

• 18:12Yasi Salek?

  And he kept coming and he was like, I, give me more. And I was like, it takes a second. Like, I don't think you should more. And he was like, no, no, give me more. And I was like, okay. And then he had to leave. And we like, I don't know, the night goes on or whatever. And then he calls my friend that I was with and he was like, I'm so fucked up. What did you guys do?

• 18:35Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, and then he put out.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  And then he releases an album inspired by psychedelics.

• 18:39Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Which many says the beginning of the end of his career.

• 18:42Yasi Salek?

  And then he did. So it's my fault. I'm sorry. But then he gives it very funny. He did some interview about it. And he was like, two trippy celeb chicks gave me it. And I was like, okay, well, I'm not celeb, but maybe trippy. Um, he, he, he shined up the story to make us, to make us famous. But anyways, that's my, you know, allegedly, I don't want to get sued for anything, but just know that's my, I'm sorry if you guys don't like that album, but indirectly responsible.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  You're indirectly responsible for the album where he samples Rod Stewart. So.

• 19:11Yasi Salek?

  I like that album.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  I, I think a couple of the, I think the song with the Rod Stewart sample is like really good, but then the one that's just called LSD, I'm really I can't abide. So.

• 19:24Yasi Salek?

  Well, when you got a time machine, instead of going back to kill Hitler, you can go back to this night of the Jeremy Scott party and stop me from ruining ASAP Rocky's musical output. Um.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  That's a really good idea.

• 19:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay, what else we got here? Juliana Barwick and Mary Lattimore, Tragic Magic. I love Mary Lattimore. I think this will be a cool album. I'm excited to hear it. Have you heard it? Is it in your PR jukebox or whatever?

• 19:46Speaker 04

  I haven't listened yet, but I'm really excited to listen to it. I'm sure it will be important to me at the right time in my life. Yeah, as both of those artists kind of are at various points, if that makes any sense.

• 19:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Okay, so there's also Pear, Doppelganger, and Sassy 009 Dreamer Plus. These are not things I've heard of because I'm 43 years old and busy researching Portishead. But I will check them out.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  I know Sassy, I know Sassy 009, but I don't, it's, I don't know whether it's, it's not what I was talking about.

• 20:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay, got it. Well, let's get into what is worth talking about, Shad. I basically asked you to come up with like five to seven things that you were like the most excited about. Um, let's start off strong as Brat Summer has only just recently, uh, come to an end, maybe, or maybe not. And we're starting Wuthering Heights Fall or whatever, Wuthering Heights Winter. Um, soundtrack for Wuthering Heights by Charli XCX, February 13th.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, this one's exciting. I mean, it's funny, so she's obviously doing a full-length soundtrack for Emerald Fennel's Wuthering Heights movie. I'm not sure whether you're excited about that. I'm not, I'm like a huge hater of the cinematic works of Emerald Fennel.

• 20:58Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Um, but I mean, I think that, I think they're like medically stupid.

• 21:04Yasi Salek?

  I don't think I've seen, she did the one where like the girl kills rapists or whatever, is that right? I didn't see it.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so she did Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.

• 21:13Yasi Salek?

  Didn't see Saltburn.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, this is great.

• 21:16Yasi Salek?

  I know, I'm very selective.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  Her movie's stupid.

• 21:18Yasi Salek?

  I'm absolutely not a cinephile and I do have a letterbox, but for no reason. And like, I, I do see films, but like, I'm certainly not keeping up. You know, like if, just because everyone's talking about it, I'm not going to fire up Saltburn. It's not happening. I don't care. Um, um, you know, I'm happy for your, I'm sorry that happened or whatever, but I'm not watching it. Um, I am, I am kind of excited for Wuthering Heights because I'm like a literary girlie. And these people are really hot and I'm like, okay, I'll go see it's probably so dumb, but sometimes like a dumb film like that is fun to watch, you know?

• 21:51Speaker 04

  I look, I think it'll be kind of like that. It looks like she's making it kind of like a, kind of like, you know, cheesy like romance novel.

• 21:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like a bodice ripper, you know, like.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Why? In the trailer, Margot Robbie wears a latex dress.

• 22:04Yasi Salek?

  Which of course they had in those times.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Um, yeah.

• 22:08Yasi Salek?

  She's basically like, fuck you, Emily Bronte. This is what I'm doing to your legacy. That is, that's fine.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but the soundtrack should be good. I mean, the first single had John Cale on it.

• 22:22Yasi Salek?

  So sick.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Obviously icon legend, like not like a song I want to listen to a lot. It's kind of like droney and has strings and like a John Cale poem. But then the second single Chains of Love is kind of like a throwback to the first Charlie album from like 2013.

• 22:38Yasi Salek?

  My favorite.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so good, but like this one's kind of like maybe a bit more refined, like a bit less like internet-y, really like epic and sweeping, um, which is really exciting.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  I hope that's indicative of the rest of, of the album because like I've gone on record, I interviewed Charlie like for that first record at South by Southwest. Like we were both, I mean, she was probably 21 and I was like 30 or whatever, but I loved that album and I've always been like, and I love Charlie. I've loved so like, I think I'm a, I'm a stan. I think she's incredibly talented. She's put out some of the best albums like, but I've just always been yearning for her to go back to that sort of goth romantic sound. And I'm hoping we're gonna get it more on this, on this soundtrack.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  I feel like it'll probably be more live band-y. Um, I think she's kind of been hinting at, at, um, yeah, I'm, I'm sorry.

• 23:33Yasi Salek?

  Dream killer over here.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  I think she's been hinting at doing kind of more live band stuff. Like she's talked so much about being really influenced by the world underground and Lou Reed and all that kind of stuff. It's kind of like a psychopath after you're kind of like big, like world conquering, like breakout album a decade into your career to be like, I'm gonna make like a a live band album inspired by.

• 23:54Yasi Salek?

  Not just a live band album, but like a super stripped down, like loaf, I mean, the velvet, I don't know, a lofi, like a lofi live band album. I mean, I'm here for it. I love to hear that. I want to hear what that sounds like.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I feel like the, maybe the soundtrack is just kind of like a side project. I feel like the brat, the real brat follow up will also be out this year at some point.

• 24:19Yasi Salek?

  I don't know how she gets so much done. I feel personally assaulted and ashamed, honestly.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I mean, yeah, we can only aspire to like half the output. Um, it's also kind of, you know, it's, it's like a bold thing to do. Like when you're a, you know, people get, people get tired of pop stars really quickly these days. And I kind of like that she's just like, you know, she's got her movie coming out this month. Then she's got an album in February, then another album later in the year. It's like, fuck it. Like, I'm just gonna stay around all the time.

• 24:54Yasi Salek?

  I think it's really cool. I think it's also like something I think about a lot where it's just like, you only have a limited time, you know? At some, like that you can, that you have all the opportunities at your fingertips and like just use them, you know? And I think people get tired of people if they're not self-aware about it. But I think of their self-aware about it, like Charli is, like, because she's in on it and she's talking about it, it does seem to like

• 25:22Yasi Salek?

  dampen the like feeling towards her that's like, ugh, enough, you know?

• 25:28Speaker 04

  It's also like she's been an underdog, like basically her whole career. Like, let, let her live. Also, my thing with this is like. Um, you can opt out, like, you know, the movie will be on streaming services. You can watch it whenever you want. You can listen to the albums whenever you want. Like, you don't have to engage with everything. And I think it's people, people kind of reject, like, I, I feel the same way about kind of like when anyone is talking about, you know, aside from like Taylor Swift, who like you really cannot avoid. It's like you can, you can basically opt out of, of any kind of like cultural moment if you so wish. It's just that people want to be.

• 26:02Yasi Salek?

  They want to be angry. They love being angry.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  And then we take, you know, when they have nothing to say about the art, the take is just that this person's been around too much, you know?

• 26:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're like, cool. Thanks, Sartre for your beautiful philosopher, you know, like, get, go away, go read.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Why don't you go away?

• 26:22Yasi Salek?

  Actually, I feel you've been on my timeline too much. I'm gonna go ahead and mute you. Um, okay, so we're super excited for Charlie. This, this I'm very excited about because I feel like you might have some insider info. A band I love, and I must say the singer is so hot. Um, that's not relevant to the music, but I just, it's worth mentioning, which is Total Control, an Australian band, right?

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Yes, super iconic Australian, kind of like underground band, but like here they're just like a famous band, I guess.

• 26:51Yasi Salek?

  They're so fucking good, you guys. If you haven't, I mean, God, when was the last album?

• 26:55Speaker 04

  It was nearly 10 years ago.

• 26:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's why I think people haven't really. I want to say like that, I saw them play then because they came to LA to do this festival called Berserk Town, may it rest in peace. That was so cool that my friend Graham did. And I brought my little chihuahua dog that I had at the time, and I had this great Polaroid of the singer of Total Control, like, holding Larry Mitchell. He was wearing his, like, little Fred Perry fit. It was so cool. Um, anyways, yeah, 10 years ago. And so like, I think they haven't really been in the conversation in our like hyper social media Spotify age, you know?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  I mean, even then, it's like, you know, they don't release on a big label. They don't do many interviews. They don't have. Social media for the band or even really that much personally, like it's a pretty kind of like anti-media operation.

• 27:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And I feel like even in Australia, like their status is kind of like this legendary band. It ki- kind of just like gr- grew really slowly.

• 27:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, they, apparently their new album is done. Um, but I, but I have no idea like when it might come out or whatever, I think. Um, and they all have other projects, obviously.

• 28:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Um, they're all in so many bands, you know, like.

• 28:07Yasi Salek?

  Eddie Current Suppression Ring.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Um, like, yeah, UV Race, Sleeping Snake, like all these amazing Australian bands. Um, Al Montford has this really great band, Chateau, that he started with. Al McFarlane from Twirps and like, you know, all, all these.

• 28:25Yasi Salek?

  I love Torps. What's Torps been up to? Wow, you're like my Australian music cons- uh, consultant over here.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, they broke up like a really, really long time ago.

• 28:36Yasi Salek?

  They did. I didn't know that. I love that band.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  Um, but actually Jules McFarlane from that band has a really good project called Jay McFarlane's Reality Guest that you should check out.

• 28:48Yasi Salek?

  I need to check that out.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 28:50Yasi Salek?

  You guys, if you haven't heard it, put on Torps' Percolia, I think is the name of the song. The number of times I listen to that song in an abject depression, uncountable.

• 29:08Yasi Salek?

  You've heard through the Australian grapevine that they're done with a new album and that it may or may not come out this year.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  The scuttlebutt is that it's done. Um, I don't know like when or how it'll come out, but that's, that is what I've heard.

• 29:25Yasi Salek?

  Please, God, I see what you've, I see what you've done.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I see what you've done for lesser bands.

• 29:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, please do. Please do for Total Control, they're so good. All right. Lana Del Rey, babe. Lana Del Rey, stove.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, who knows?

• 29:43Yasi Salek?

  Who knows?

• 29:44Speaker 04

  Ever come out?

• 29:45Yasi Salek?

  It feels like.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Five names.

• 29:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I know. But doesn't it feel like it's got it's like now it's got to come out now?

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Well, last year, obviously, so Lana did Stagecoach.

• 29:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  And played an entire set of new music. All of it was incredible. Then I saw her at Wembley on the Fourth of July, and it was basically all new music as well. Um, really kind of psycho move to like

• 30:08Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  Play.

• 30:09Yasi Salek?

  She's so cool.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Two stadium shows and and just only really doing new music, but um.

• 30:13Yasi Salek?

  She's like, fuck your summertime sadness.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Huh? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, these and then she ended with a cover of Country Roads Take Me Home, which was like really funny, but like really amazing. These new songs she's been playing for for like the the follow up to Ocean Boulevard, which is either called Lasso or Stove or The Right One Will Stay.

• 30:34Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Most recently, Stove. These new songs are like incredible. Like, I really implore everyone to watch her Stagecoach set. It's all on YouTube, but just these like beautiful, incredibly moving, like amazingly orchestrated country songs about kind of like her falling in love with this alligator tour guide.

• 30:54Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Which, yeah, what more can anyone ask for?

• 31:05Yasi Salek?

  The thing that I have always really appreciated about Lana, and especially in the last couple of years, is that like she's truly deeply weird.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:14Yasi Salek?

  You know, like as a as a human being, like she is not faking it. Like she's just a weird person, which is so cool to have in this sort of like package that is this like beautiful crooner pop star, but then like, like I always make a big deal out of like girl, young girls not having a Courtney Love. And I think kind of Lana might be their Courtney Love, you know, in the sense that she is not a normal pop star. She does things that are like messy, says things that are like on, you know, unpopular or like, I think it's fucking cool. I think it's important. I mean, obviously in a very different.

• 31:56Yasi Salek?

  Way than Courtney, but it is important for young girls to have a pop star that's not so perfect.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  She kind of like pushes against this like fame ideal, right? Like she's the most famous she's ever been and there's still paparazzi photos of her like literally like sitting at Starbucks or like just sitting smoking in her car or vaping in her car, sorry. And like, you know, she drives that disgusting old truck that kept that kept getting broken into and she lost her hard drive and she lost an album that way. Like, you know, she she lives seemingly this very normal life and kind of like basically has opted out of like being a normal famous person, you know, and one of the new songs she performed fifty seven point five is like kind of about this. She she's like, basically like, you know, I've got fifty seven point five million monthly listeners on Spotify and I did it by buying my dresses at the mall

• 32:46Speaker 04

  and, you know, doing what people told me I shouldn't do and just hanging out with my friends and like doing basically whatever kind of like artistic whim took me. And, you know, people ask, yeah, the lyrics like people ask my secrets to success, like go buy a Ross dress or whatever, you know, and it's and it's like, I think pop stars act like you you have to exist in this crazy famous world.

• 33:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Or whatever.

• 33:12Yasi Salek?

  And if you want to, and it's authentic, like I think a great example is Charlie, like that's so authentic, like she's, this is just who she is, you know. But then I'm like, I look at like a Taylor Swift who's like, you know, it's my firm belief that her style is tailored to her audience because she cannot alienate them by being too fat, you know, like too high fashion or too whatever. I don't know how she would dress otherwise and really, you know, but like, she's not wearing Ross dresses because she loves Ross dresses. What like, you know, like, it's not genuine, I don't think, you know. What do I know? Nothing comes off as genuine with Taylor. Maybe that's the most genuine part of her is that she isn't capable of being genuine. I don't know. But yeah, with Lana,

• 33:55Yasi Salek?

  it's just, I know, I like the title stove. I know many people, you're laughing. I know many people like made so much fun of it, but like, well, to me, there's so many things. It hearkens back to like a nineties type thing. It like sounds like a Lemonheads song title or something. I feel like there is a Lemonhead song called stove. But then also like, you know, she's so good with words. She really is a poet. And like, with the context within stove, there's like so much like you. You might immediately think of Sylvia Plath, which is obviously a muse of Lana. You think of domestic life, which is like, she's a wife now, she's married. I think low key, it's a cool, it's a cool title. You're laughing.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  Okay, you like stove.

• 34:38Yasi Salek?

  I do.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  You know.

• 34:39Yasi Salek?

  It's better than Lasso.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  Probably have, I'll probably have like a, like a stove tattoo, you know, right across my forehead or whatever. And you'll, you'll be the one laughing, but I like, oh, Lasso is interesting because it's like really obvious, kind of like cheesy country thing. Stove.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  To me. You know, you know, there's this like classic conundrum with pop stars. You know, like a lot of Madonna fans, like when she kind of like became a mother and like became all spiritual around like ray of light. They felt very kind of like betrayed by the fact that she had like given up on her kind of like rebellious life. And she was like going towards these like traditional things. When I hear stove, I think of like trad wife vibes.

• 35:26Yasi Salek?

  That's always been her thing, her aspiration, her thing has always been like trad wife core, you know? It might've been like messy or whatever, but she's always just been like, I want to watch you play video games. While I wear this like little dress, you know, since day one, that's been her vibe.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Oh my God, you just then explained Lorna to me. Oh my God. Um, yeah, you're right. I, I guess I just don't like the way it sounds like stove, like stove.

• 35:52Yasi Salek?

  I get it. All right. That's fair enough.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  But.

• 35:55Yasi Salek?

  Might change. You never know. What about?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  You never know.

• 35:58Yasi Salek?

  What about All About Ethel?

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Um, I mean, speaking of like her doing like crazy, like messy things.

• 36:06Yasi Salek?

  Obsessed. No one does this kind of stuff anymore.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  No, I know. It's really cool. Like, I love it. I'm like, yes, like. And it's, and it's funny because this really fits with, there's this really good Jack Antonoff interview where he basically says that what happens with Lana is he'll make a backing track. And then she goes up to the microphone, basically free associates, does one vocal take and will refuse to change anything or re-record anything ever.

• 36:31Yasi Salek?

  My queen.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, all about Ethel is her Ethel Kane diss track. Um, which references the really good, uh, Joe Coscarelli Ethel Kane profile, the most famous girl at the Waffle House.

• 36:45Yasi Salek?

  Well done.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Iconic moment, iconic moment.

• 36:47Yasi Salek?

  Friend of the pod, yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, true legend. Um, yeah, it's so funny. So the lyrics, so I follow a lot of like Lana fan accounts on Twitter. Um, and the lyrics to this song, um, leaked like a, a long time before Lana kind of leaked the song herself.

• 37:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  And everyone was like, no, it couldn't be like, but basically it seems to stem from the fact that Ethel dated Jack Donahue from Salem, who Lana also dated.

• 37:19Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Um, and then Lana's like, I'm the most famous girl at the Waffle House because Lana also likes Waffle House.

• 37:26Yasi Salek?

  She is the most famous girl at the Waffle House.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  She is, yeah. And also I think it stems from potentially this tweet Ethel did with a Lana lyric and a gif of Peter Griffin from Family Guy.

• 37:41Yasi Salek?

  I know. And then, and then I was like, and then I feel like she tried to backpedal and be like, no, no, this was a compliment. And you're like, okay.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  It's all, both of them, like both of them seem like they kind of just love drama.

• 37:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, messy bitches who live for drama. And I, great, we need it. The culture needs it.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  And like, you know, I hope Ethel fires back, you know, like, I think they're both amazing. I'm really happy for both of them.

• 38:08Yasi Salek?

  I love a feud. I love a, and I love the feud being between like two girlies who make like forlorn, beautiful sad songs. Instead of like rap diss tracks. It's so good.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, Lana famously, Lana famously once tried to, tried to pull up at Azalea Bang's house and like fight her. Do you remember this?

• 38:31Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, she, I think she told, she told Azalea to pull up, maybe? She was like, you know where I live, pull up, I think was the tweet.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Oh, that's true.

• 38:39Yasi Salek?

  Live, I live. Oh babe, this is all right here in my mind. I love it. She's, she's a real one and on so many levels. How, what do you make of her marriage?

• 38:51Speaker 04

  Look, obviously, I think it's amazing and hilarious and like awesome. Oh, I'm really happy for her. She seems really

• 38:57Yasi Salek?

  She seems so happy.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  The songs are like so viscerally beautiful in their happiness. Like, um, there's this bit in the song Stars Fell in Alabama where she says, hi, twin. And I'm like, that's just not, it's like, I, I like that she's, you know, using

• 39:14Yasi Salek?

  Makes me wanna cry.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  I do think it's weird. He sits in on her interviews at her request. And me, as someone who's always wanted to interview Lana, I don't aspire to

• 39:24Yasi Salek?

  Be with Jeremy Dufrain.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Jeremy Dufrain, yeah.

• 39:28Yasi Salek?

  I think it'd be cool. I think you'd get like an interesting picture of like what's going on.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, the, the W Mac profile where he's just like sitting next to her and sometimes interjects is very weird. I mean, she asks for court approval anyway.

• 39:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  She doesn't do it into her unless she gets to choose how it looks at the end. So.

• 39:45Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, in the end.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Um. Uh.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  Can you tell I'm not a journalist?

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Gusty solid, yeah.

• 39:52Yasi Salek?

  Well, you know, Lana, listen, what you don't want.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  Lana's been, Lana's been mistreated in the press.

• 39:59Yasi Salek?

  And also what you don't want is for her to be mad about what you wrote about her.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  That's really true. That's really, really true.

• 40:07Yasi Salek?

  I think it's for your own protection in the end. I know, and I mean, it's true. I mean, I gave up on there being any sort of like real profile of any celebrity like eight years ago. So that's

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:18Yasi Salek?

  That's left the building. Um, although I am looking forward to the, which I didn't put on this list and I forgot to, but we're gonna talk about it because it's definitely one of my most anticipated. Actually, it's a good, might be a good segue from here since we just talked about her, which is Courtney Love.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 40:34Yasi Salek?

  I've heard some of the songs off the solo album.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  So it's real?

• 40:40Yasi Salek?

  It's definitely real. I don't know if it's done, but they're incre- like, I just got, I gave myself the chills, by the way, just remembering. They're phenomenal. Like, I really feel like this is like her, like Nick Cave third act, do you know what I mean? Or her, or like

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:59Yasi Salek?

  Tom Wa- you know, like that kind of like, it's very fucking cool. But the documentary being done and, and having a premiere day at Sundance. Knowing, knowing what I know about her management, some of the best in the game, crush management, like, they're not putting, they're not dumb. They're not gonna put that doc out without pegging the album to it, right? It's like, you have a press moment, we're gonna have a press moment. That's just my assumption, and as my dad always says, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. But I, for me, that feels right, and I fucking hope it is, because we need it.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  I'm really, really excited for like, good new Courtney music. I'm a big, I'm an extreme, I'm an extremely big Hole fan.

• 41:47Yasi Salek?

  The biggest fan. I'm right here with you.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  And.

• 41:50Yasi Salek?

  And Nobody's Daughter, Unfairly Maligned, actually a really good album. I'll die on this hill.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Better than, I think, better than people say, but definitely not unfairly maligned in the way that like, other Hole records were unfairly maligned, if that makes sense.

• 42:04Yasi Salek?

  Yes, of course, of course.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  It's kind of like a spectrum, but, um, yeah, and she was like, in the studio with Melissa?

• 42:12Yasi Salek?

  I think so, yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Is that right?

• 42:13Yasi Salek?

  I saw some, saw some footage, saw some, some, uh, content around that.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  I'm really excited for this. I, every, so, like, everything I, I don't know, I just want Courtney to be kind of like, in, in, kind of like, the center of culture again,

• 42:30Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  as well. Like, I often revisit that really crazy Vogue interview she did, maybe like, two or three years ago, where she talks about how she moved to England after watching all of Downton Abbey.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  And realized that the US would never be as literate as the UK.

• 42:43Yasi Salek?

  That's literally Yossi Core, by the way. This is like, literally, I'm like, mhm, she's absolutely right, and that's why I want to move to London too. Goodbye. We don't read books.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  That's why you're even in London, yeah. Cause you watched Downton Abbey, yeah.

• 42:55Yasi Salek?

  Um, but anyway, she's right, and she should say it, and I love her Anglophile life. I too am a lifelong Anglophile, and I would like to also live out my days in London in a beautiful flat, sort of haunting, haunting the Hampstead Heath or whatever. I think the world would heal.

• 43:13Yasi Salek?

  In a big way, if we could have Courtney Love back in the in the public eye, if we could have new Courtney Love music, if we could have her restored to the glory and glamour that she so richly and rightly deserves.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think actually it's like timing it with documentary is good because like I still encounter people like like idiots who are like kind of like turn their nose up at the at the mention of her name.

• 43:36Yasi Salek?

  Excuse me?

• 43:37Speaker 04

  And I feel like just, you know, having the documentary will hopefully help those idiots understand.

• 43:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's true. There's not a lot of good storytelling about her in the world, you know, like there's those couple of Kurt Cobain documentaries, which are horrible and sort of insinuate that she murdered him, um, which is insane. And but we don't, you know, there's like,

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  and until I do my, um, long awaited Hole Band's plane, there isn't like a good overarching cultural document about how I don't think especially, I mean, you do because it's part of your job and, you know, you're a wise person, but it's it's impossible to overstate how important Courtney and Hole were for the my generation, you know, for a generation of gays and women who like were saved by this person, you know?

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and and that like gets so overshadowed by obviously the kind of like media spectacle and like, I feel like a lot of, um, the stuff that uh, was like contemporaneous with the time or like, you know, people's memoirs about that time, like a really kind of like messy and weird and there hasn't been kind of like a long view look at at just like purely like the the kind of like cultural impact like, um, the Anwin Crawford thirty three and a third on Live Through This kind of does that. But again, it's like so focused on that album.

• 45:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  It's it's like really good. It like really looks at like fandom and like, you know, young women as fans as that and that kind of thing. Um, but like, you know, I want more kind of like of that around like celebrity skin, you know?

• 45:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. I'm super interested to see what the documentary is like because I think one thing that's really cool about Courtney and really inspiring to me is that she has been completely, um,

• 45:38Yasi Salek?

  Refusing to be put into one of those like Britney Spears like victim narratives that like our culture keeps doing where like every like 10 years we're like, oh my God, we're so sorry we did that to you. Um, now we're apologizing and we look, you know what I mean? Like,

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Well, and also like now those victim narratives are like so hackneyed. You have like people like, um, like Paris Hilton, who was just kind of like a rich racist, like, you know, using one of those or like Pamela Anderson, who kind of like made lots of money twice first by kind of like selling kind of like this like sex part image and then by being like, actually, I didn't want that.

• 46:16Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Like,

• 46:16Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  You know, like a lot of, a lot, I think there's a lot of people now who see that kind of like victim documentary as like an easy cash grab.

• 46:27Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Which makes it a lot more kind of like amazing that at no point has, has Courtney ever, and she really could, she could, she could really, I mean, obviously she's had like the kind of like various like beefs with like Billy Corgan and people like that.

• 46:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  But she, she could have like a long time ago, like pointed a lot of fingers at, at various people and has kind of, aside from the occasional kind of like messy moment, like has, has kind of resisted.

• 46:54Yasi Salek?

  She's only ever pointed fingers at people that like four years later have had a universal downfall like Harvey Weinstein and no one listened to her. Like, she's unfortunately 99% of the time absolutely correct. And whatever she says, even though she's always so ahead that people are like, oh, you're being crazy.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:12Yasi Salek?

  And then she's vindicated. I don't know. Yeah. Obviously I'm a, I'm a diet in the wool stan. I, I will support Courtney Love till the end. If there's only one Courtney Love fan in the world, it's, you know, whatever that saying goes. And there's also a really cool Tamara Davis. Do you know about this documentary coming out about, what was that 90s Australian tour? Uh,

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Big Day Out?

• 47:36Yasi Salek?

  Big Day Out. So there's an, she has all this footage.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  I didn't know about that.

• 47:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I, that's something I'll, I'm a huge Tamara Davis fan too. And obviously like, that's like my world of research is like Big Day Out. Like I have so many stories from that. So I really want to see it.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  One of my favorite whole live videos to watch is, uh, Boys on the Radio at Big Day Out Sydney.

• 47:54Yasi Salek?

  They're so good. Um, lightly about Jeff Buckley.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Really?

• 47:59Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Awesome.

• 48:01Yasi Salek?

  You're welcome for that.

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• 49:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay, next, Joanna Newsom. Now, once again, I must ask, what do you know that we don't know? Because there's no... There's a Reddit thread that mentions a potential new album. And then I guess she's been doing some new songs live. Is that what you believe to be? She's also on a Total Control schedule because Divers is 2015. I love Divers.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  Amazing record. Well, yeah, so I actually don't know anything. I press to her publicist about this sometimes. Apparently no one really knows anything. She really, really, really works on her own schedule. Like, had two kids, kind of like, um, in the, in the 10 years between albums. Only really got back into performing very recently. I went to one of those shows at the Hollywood Forever at the Masonic Lodge.

• 49:51Yasi Salek?

  So, one of the best places to see a show, the Masonic Lodge.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and she performed so many new songs, maybe like four or five. And they were just incredible. There's one where she sings the word canary over and over again, very quietly. That reminded me a lot of like, uh, Times a Symptom from Divers. Just like these incredible, like, long, rich, new songs. So, this is what I'm just really hopeful about. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't come out for another year. But it seems like she's reaching a point where there will be, you know, right before Divers, she was kind of like playing new songs like this as well.

• 50:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I like that half this list is just us like lighting candles and manifesting. It's just no, no confirmed release dates or anything and just us being like, please. And maybe, you know, we push it into the world. Did you know that she is the second cousin twice removed of Gavin Newsom, the governor of California?

• 50:51Speaker 04

  I did. I feel like she's commented on this once and kind of like said negative things about him. I can't remember, but I did know this. It's really quite funny.

• 51:00Yasi Salek?

  It's really funny. Okay. Aldous Harding. Again, what do you know that I don't know?

• 51:06Speaker 04

  I haven't heard this. I've heard that the album is done and that it's amazing that it's coming out this year. I'm, I'm sure it's fine for me to say that. But yeah, I mean, she just like, kind of doesn't miss for me.

• 51:18Yasi Salek?

  I love her. I love her. I mean, I'm a P, I'm a PJ Harvey girl. So any like, any children of PJ Harvey and any iteration, I'm like, come in, come into my house. I love you.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  It just like truly like a true kind of freak who's like so in the pocket, like always.

• 51:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Her last record, Warm Chris, I feel like maybe was like, wasn't kind of like as big of a moment as the one for that designer, which kind of like was a bit like more pop. Obviously in this context, that means nothing.

• 51:51Yasi Salek?

  That may right.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Long, quiet folk songs.

• 51:55Yasi Salek?

  She's such an incredible lyricist. Like that's, that's what really hooked me in originally. I was just like, oh, your lyrics like really resonate with me.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. And she's also, I love that she, in interviews, she's just like, um, you know, I, I don't have to explain what I'm saying. Like I, and you know, you shouldn't assume this is about me. Maybe it is, but I'm not going to tell you what these songs mean.

• 52:18Yasi Salek?

  PJ Harvey core, babe.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm really excited for that. From, from, by all accounts, it's, it's like pretty incredible.

• 52:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, I did also see, and I can't believe we didn't mention this at the top because I'm a big fan, the Sleepford Mods are putting out an album in January. Like it's going to come out the day after this. And she is a vocalist on it.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  I am not, I'm not a Sleepford Mods man myself, but.

• 52:42Yasi Salek?

  You're not an Anglophile.

• 52:45Yasi Salek?

  You're Australian.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  I'm kind of not, yeah. I'm Anglophile. No, I kind of am, I guess. I love the British people, but.

• 52:52Yasi Salek?

  I love the people. I love the people of Britain. Well, I'm excited to hear it also. I feel like the Sliford mods, much like a lot of British acts of that time, shaped my sexuality. Something about a hot British guy who seems slightly dangerous.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  You and me both, sister.

• 53:11Yasi Salek?

  Madonna. Wow, we're really, a lot of queens in our, it's total control and a bunch of queens. Madonna, confessions on a dance floor, part two.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Really interesting one, this.

• 53:24Yasi Salek?

  Is this confirmed?

• 53:25Speaker 04

  She has posted about it about 50 times.

• 53:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 53:29Speaker 04

  She posted a lot of studio photos where she's kind of like rolling on the ground. There's Stuart Price like doing something on the console in the background.

• 53:35Yasi Salek?

  God bless.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  And then a lot of kind of like sexy, like full flash photo shoots where she's like, confessions part two, it's coming like really soon, blah blah. I am of the belief that Madonna still has at least one good element in her. Like I just, she has to.

• 53:52Yasi Salek?

  I agree. I agree. I think because all she does, and you know, Madonna was my first true love. Like my mom, immigrant, Iranian, obsessed with Madonna. That's all I remember as the first music I heard as a child was Madonna. And I'm just like, I know she gets a lot of flack for like the way she's chosen to exist. As, as you know, it's illegal to be above the age of 50 when you're a woman and to be seen publicly.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Why didn't they shoot her?

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  Then why haven't they put her in prison or whatever? And especially to be a woman over 50 and the way she's doing it. And it makes everyone so fucking mad. And it's like, I think it's fucking cool. Like, why? Why do you have to do, why do you have to, like, you can, you can do whichever version you want, but like, why does she have to Joni Mitchell? Like, why can't she do exactly what she wants to do? And like, it's, it's her life, it's her body. Like, go off this. Like, I think it's cool.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Like, and there's still flashes of like, like, obviously, a lot of her output now, obviously, none of it really compares to, you know, her classic, kind of like, twenty five year run of perfect music.

• 55:07Yasi Salek?

  She had one of the longest imperial phases known to man. Let this woman live. She hasn't given you enough?

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, and was one of the best, kind of like, A and R years of, of her generation, you know, like, a new producer, every album, every single one went on to be.

• 55:22Yasi Salek?

  What about Maverick, babe? Alanis? Like, the signings to Maverick? And anyways, she's given us a lot.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, you know, like, I really like a couple of songs on Madame X. Um, I really like a couple of songs on Rebel Heart. Like, I think that there is something, and, you know, she's, she's done interviews where she's been like, kind of like, alluded to some sense of like, beefing with her label or beefing with management. Obviously, she still works with Guy O'Seary, um, but she is back with Warner.

• 55:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  For this album after, you know, so like, her last big hit, let's say, was like, four minutes from Hard Candy, like, say what you will about that album, that song, it's, you know, kind of like, unremarkable. But then, things, you know, the wheels really fell off in the, I guess, four albums after that, like, M D N A. What's the one after that? Rebel Heart and, and Madame X.

• 56:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  And I feel like, you know, maybe there's something there, like, she's gone back to Warner, good things gonna happen again. I don't know.

• 56:25Yasi Salek?

  It does seem like she, again, this is just like conjecture on my part, but like, it just, it does seem like she is really interested in cementing her legacy, you know, and like, I think, doing an album, like, what we're kind of talking about, which is like, maybe a light return to form, but also just like, her last big effort, I, you know, I think, I think, I think we'll be surprised. I think, I think it's gonna be good.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, um, I don't know whether you saw her big, like, retrospective, like, the, the celebration tour.

• 56:56Yasi Salek?

  I didn't get to go, I'm so sad.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  The, the way it was structured and like, um, the way she used certain songs and, and everything, it was really.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Poignant and reflective, obviously, but also just like really savvy.

• 57:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Um, and I think Stuart Price was the musical director for that.

• 57:16Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  And I don't know, I'm just, I'm just, I think, I think there's still, there's still life here. Like, there's still some kind of like drive to, towards something great.

• 57:28Yasi Salek?

  We're lighting, we're lighting another candle here, but yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, but that one she, she swears is coming out. Um, hopefully, yeah, hopefully it's really, really, really, really, really good.

• 57:38Yasi Salek?

  Speaking of lighting candles and swearing the album's coming out, the next artist in our list is Sky Ferrera.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  This was kind of a joke because I just wanted to know whether you thought this album would ever come out.

• 57:50Yasi Salek?

  I do think this album is gonna come out. Do I know if it's gonna come out this year? No, but I, I genuinely, there's some things that I happen to know that I will not disclose here because it's not my place, but I, I do think for sure an album is coming. Again, I don't know when, I don't know what level of work it's at, I don't know any of that, but I do think so. Um, I love Sky. Um, I think she's an incredible artist. I think in the way that Lana Del Rey is deeply weird, Sky is deeply weird in the coolest way. And I, I do feel the album is coming and I think it's, I think it's gonna hit really hard, given how long people have been waiting.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  See, I, she is like, like what maybe my like number one, like I love her, like Night Time My Time is one of my favorite albums ever. I've gotten to a point where I'm like, does there have to be another album?

• 58:46Yasi Salek?

  Right. You're like, can we, we'll just keep this as like the legacy.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  One can be enough. Like you look at Lauryn Hill, like one album is enough. Like, I think Night Time My Time is like a perfect record, basically.

• 58:59Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  It doesn't have, and then, you know, the Ghost EP has like five like fucking banger songs on it.

• 59:05Yasi Salek?

  I also still listen to the OG, like one single all the time.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, me too. It's so good.

• 59:14Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just, I, I'm, I don't think there has to be another album. I mean, like, I, what she's released like two songs um in the past ten years, both were like pretty good, like.

• 59:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and I like the song off Baby Girl.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought that was fine. I thought that was good.

• 59:34Yasi Salek?

  That was good.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  Um, the song with Ice Age was awesome.

• 59:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Um, but, you know, I don't think there has to be another album. I hope there is. I hope masochism exists. I hope it's still called masochism when it comes out.

• 59:46Yasi Salek?

  I don't know anything about that.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  I've heard over the years that she's like scrapped like lots and lots of material, um, which I don't know whether that's true or not, but like, yeah, I, I hope there's something, but at the same time, I'm kind of like, I don't think anyone, you know, if you release one amazing album, most people don't even get that, you know?

• 1:00:07Yasi Salek?

  So true, one perfect album. Well, for me, I'm just like, I mean, I know her, so I'm, I just, I'm like, if you want to, I think you should, you know, if like, cause she's like a true artist. So I'm like, if this is your purpose, like, I hope you get to do it more, you know, like, because you're really talented and it's always my contention through the years of band planning that like, yeah, would some artist's legacy be more perfect if they had stopped at a certain point? One thousand percent, yes. Many artists just set about systematically kind of undoing their beautiful legacy by releasing like increasingly like terrible albums, but I kind of support that. I think it's their right. If you're a real artist, that's what you're gonna wanna do, you know, and, and you should.

• 1:00:53Yasi Salek?

  So.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  You know, things, things have a way of kind of like coming, like sometimes it's about like, you know, getting out all this like terrible stuff and then suddenly it's like, you release another amazing album and you're back in like a new.

• 1:01:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like you have a second peak, um, like in the dirt where they talk about the Molly Crew record or the album book where they talk about cog theory, how it's like you're a cog on getting caught into this wheel and you get to the top and then you fall off, then you can always get caught again. So we'll see. I, I think Sky has an, at least one more amazing album left in her and I would love to hear it. So Candle.

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  Has what I.

• 1:01:31Yasi Salek?

  Candle is lit. Might not be this year, but I do think we're gonna get it. Um, cause Sky, she's still young, you know? She started out so young.

• 1:01:41Yasi Salek?

  All right. Here are some other ones that are more in the Yasi Salek bands playing guitar rock music wheelhouse. Rap Boys, are you familiar with this band?

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, but only, only vaguely, but I listened to the singles from this record and I enjoyed them.

• 1:01:57Yasi Salek?

  I'm so late on them because this is gonna be their sixth studio album.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  They've been around for 10 years.

• 1:02:05Yasi Salek?

  I did not, I'm so sorry. And I did not know that. And like, I love these singles. The What's Right is so good. And I wrote this in my Substack, but I listened to What's Right and I was like, I don't know why it's giving Death Cab. And then I just happened to like, do like a little cursory Google and it's produced by Chris Walla, who is the original, originally in Death Cab for Cutie. So it makes so much sense. Do you ever do that where sometimes you're like, okay, I do. I'm, I'm okay with my job in the head. I'm not just full imposter syndrome.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Literally no better feeling than like identifying a drummer or whatever. Like I feel like God in those moments.

• 1:02:43Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I'm like, oh, look at me. Anyways, I think they're really good. They're a Chicago indie band. You guys should check for them. But the album comes out February 6th and it's called Sing Into An Empty Chair. I like, I like the vocalist. I like her, the sound of her voice.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  Her lyrics are really, really compelling and like written in a really cool way, like the, that kind of like narrative, but also like a little abstract when you try and grab onto them or something. I found them very, very compelling.

• 1:03:15Yasi Salek?

  Her name is Julia Steiner and the guy, other guy's name is Dave Sagan. Okay. Phoebe Bridgers. I, you know, there's a couple of, well, obviously there was the former CEO of Ticketmaster, right? Who said on the podcast, every single album that it was confirmed that she was releasing in 2026. And then Phoebe Bridgers' mother posted an Instagram story, just I think this last, I think it was like two days ago. That was like an answer to like one of those question prompts that was like bold music predictions for 2026. And her answer was Phoebe Bridgers drops an album. And she tagged Rolling Stone and then put a song to it,

• 1:03:58Yasi Salek?

  which was Wishing And Hopin' by Dusty Springfield. So a little mixed messages, but like, it's giving new album to me. I think a new album is coming.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Thanksgiving new album. I feel like I kind of like asked someone like in the know whether it was whether it was coming this year and he was like, he, he also talks a lot of shit. So he kind of like implied that like,

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  you know, if there was it, it, it wasn't going to be like soon or anything, but

• 1:04:28Yasi Salek?

  Like soon within the year or just soon in the first, I think it might be latter half of the year.

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  I think it will be towards the end of the year.

• 1:04:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Um, but this is a person who like, um, I think would tell me a lot of bullshit.

• 1:04:41Yasi Salek?

  So it can't be tru- your source can't be trusted is what you're saying.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  My source can't be trusted. Um, but yeah, I'm interested to hear what she's been doing. Maybe working with Jack Antonoff or something. I'm not sure.

• 1:04:52Yasi Salek?

  Why would you say that?

• 1:04:56Yasi Salek?

  Why would you say that? Um, I think she's in a, gonna be in a film. Is that, did I make, yeah, she's in the, this insane film that I thought was fake. When I saw it on X dot com, um, but it's real. It's called primetime and it is

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:10Yasi Salek?

  About the Dateline NBC to catch a predator, Chris Hansen, and it stars Robert Pattinson, but she's also in it. So again,

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  I can't wait to see this movie.

• 1:05:19Yasi Salek?

  Me too. I, I was like, is this a hallucination? Um, directed by Lance Oppenheim. So I, again, much like the Courtney documentary thing, I'm like, PR is going to be PRing, marketing is going to be marketing. Like, you're going to be in a movie. It makes sense to put out an album.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  That's true, but like, does she seem like she's at a point where

• 1:05:39Yasi Salek?

  She's post-

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  She seems like she's at a point where she really doesn't want to be

• 1:05:43Yasi Salek?

  More famous.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  More famous.

• 1:05:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  Um, I think it'll be interesting to see whether this is kind of like the, and, and like, uh, kind of like a, I hate fame album.

• 1:05:53Yasi Salek?

  Right, right, right. Like you ruined my life. Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I like really hate when someone gets super famous and makes an album about how much they hate their life. Um, I find it to be one of contemporary pop's like worst tropes. But it wa- it will be interesting to see what she's writing about on the

• 1:06:10Yasi Salek?

  I love Phoebe Bridgers.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  A lot, a lot has happened as well for her personally.

• 1:06:15Yasi Salek?

  I'm, I'm a deep head of Phoebe Bridgers. I know maybe it's not giving for me, but it's true. Just as I got really, I thi- I think I got really into her in the pandemic, which is like, obviously anything you get into in the pandemic is like, It's like you were an open wound. So like it just infects your body and like it doesn't, it's not reality time. But I just, I love that first album. And I like, I like Punisher too, but the first album is really special to me. And I want to hear more.

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  I'm interested to hear what, what's been going on. It feels like, even though the Boy Genius thing was so recent, it seems like there's been like long silence.

• 1:06:48Yasi Salek?

  Boy Genius is none of my business. Okay, moving along.

• 1:06:54Yasi Salek?

  Cardinals. I love this band.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  Really cool band.

• 1:06:57Yasi Salek?

  Really cool band, Irish. Many times I've been dragged, rightfully so, because I keep getting, saying British and meaning Irish, and then I'm like going straight to hell. So just so you know.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  You really shouldn't do that.

• 1:07:12Yasi Salek?

  I'm learning and growing and changing.

• 1:07:17Yasi Salek?

  As people say, you're being racist. And I'm like, I'm simply being American. We don't even have geography courses in America. I just need you to understand that. We're just dumb.

• 1:07:26Yasi Salek?

  But great Irish band from Cork, Cardinals. Their album is called Masquerade and it's out on February 13th. It's on So Young Records, is that right? Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Yasi Salek?

  I love that label. I'm super into everything they're doing.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's such a good magazine.

• 1:07:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, great magazine.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  Sometimes, sometimes it's like too much of the kind of like London post-punk thing.

• 1:07:52Yasi Salek?

  I love it. Most things love them. Love it.

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Too much of, but I think what they do is so cool. I think it's awesome. They started a label. They do like tours and shows and stuff. Like it's kind of an amazing operation.

• 1:08:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And also, sorry, too much London post-punk. It's just like, that's, what do they call it? When a sentence doesn't, the words don't go together? Like, that's not working for me. That's, that's a false. No such thing. Did you listen to their, like, 2024 EP?

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I listened to a bit of that. I like the sound of the singles though, because it has that really like, kind of like high glass, like 2000s indie thing going on. But then also, one of the songs sounded so much like Pavement, like.

• 1:08:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there's, there's one that I was like, oh, this is like giving like Burger Records garage rock a little bit in like a very good way.

• 1:08:52Yasi Salek?

  It's like warm, catchy, beautiful indie guitar rock, which is like,

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Yasi Salek?

  Pump it in my veins, babe, you know?

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  And like a bit sexy, like not, not like, yeah, yeah. It's got that kind of like British.

• 1:09:05Yasi Salek?

  You did it. You just did it.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  I know. I was laughing. I've been, I'm talking about British indie.

• 1:09:11Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  But I guess I could say Brit has that kind of like enemy, kind of like swagger thing to it.

• 1:09:16Yasi Salek?

  Why couldn't it be Irish indie? They had an Irish indie band.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  The enemy, the enemy is British. Thank you very much.

• 1:09:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay, thank you. I did know that. I know a couple of things.

• 1:09:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love this. I love Cardinals. I loved their EP. I love that song 19. I love the singles off of this. They are one of Green Chatten. Is that how you say his name? From Fontaine's favorite bands. Which I also love Fontaine, so can't wait. And then two more for me are Fiddlehead. You fuck with Fiddlehead, Sean?

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  I do. I did not know much about Fiddlehead before.

• 1:09:51Yasi Salek?

  This might fall outside of your purview.

• 1:09:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did not know much about.

• 1:09:56Yasi Salek?

  Hardcore, hardcore and hardcore adjacent bands.

• 1:10:01Yasi Salek?

  I fucking love Fiddlehead. I've loved everything they've put out. They have a new EP. I know this for a fact because I've heard it. I believe it comes out in the summer and it's fantastic. And then there's a new Bill Callahan record coming out.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 1:10:17Yasi Salek?

  I know. Called My Days of 58 is what it's called. Comes out February 27th. The two singles that are out are so good. Lonely City and The Man I'm Supposed To Be. I'm just, I'm who I am. I'm a Gen X man and I love Smog and I love Bill Callahan. I can only be myself.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  These songs, also he's like, I feel like the past few albums, he's really just kind of like eased into this like, fuck it, like do whatever I want, like kind of like slightly more chill, like.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  Really like affable, warm music.

• 1:10:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like lightly loungy, like he, he called, he said, he has a quote on the Bandcamp page that says, with this record, I kept thinking of it as a living room record. I'm not talking about fidelity at all here. Living room attitude, living room vibe, not too loud, not otherworldly. I asked for the horns to be relaxed, like someone on the couch playing, not a blast from heaven or hell. Couch vibes, babe. I love couchcore? I'm so here for it.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  And he says that, but then the singles are very kind of like, they're just like sneaky, virtuosic, right? Like, I don't know, tho- those songs, those songs just feel so good.

• 1:11:26Yasi Salek?

  I love it. I can't wait. Okay. And then we'll just throw a bit of et cetera here and a few more unconfirmed. But, okay, I love Joyce Manor. Joyce Manor's from my hometown, Torrance Heroes. On the 30th, they put out, I Used to Go to This Bar. I've liked the singles so far. I think it's going to be great. You, this is what you added. Soft Pink Truth. Can such delightful times go on forever? I live and die for a sentence long album title, so I'm already interested, but tell me more about this, this band or this artist.

• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  This is like Drew Daniels from Matt Moss, his solo projects, just kind of like really such good feeling, like, kind of like house and disco, like really, really minimal, but like so warm. He's released a couple of great albums in the past few years and I think this one will be, well, yeah, I've listened to like half of it and it is really, really good.

• 1:12:24Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I can't wait. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Anglophile and also I fucking love Robbie Williams. And my guy's putting out a new album on February 6th called Britpop. Incredible.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  Have you, have you heard it? I don't know what it's gonna sound like. I'm excited for him.

• 1:12:38Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you haven't heard it?

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  No, I haven't. I haven't heard it. But I like the, I know his film flopped, but it was so good.

• 1:12:45Yasi Salek?

  That was one of my favorite films of that year. I was obsessed with it. I didn't understand why it flopped. I was like, this is genius. This is better than Uncut Gems, whatever you guys are on about. This is a good movie. Sorry, I don't know why I had to share this Afty Brothers and this random that I love. I love Better Man. He's an incredible artist. He's made some of the, some really great music in our lifetime. And I want to see what he's got up his sleeve.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  I think Better Man, like the, like the girls who got it, like really got it. And I think he's primed for like a big comeback, probably.

• 1:13:15Yasi Salek?

  I agree. At the very least, he'll have a big comeback in the UK. Who knows? He's historically not really been able to break America, but.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess he's never like really left in the UK. Like all of his albums have gone to number one.

• 1:13:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  Um, so actually, maybe that's, yeah, maybe kind of like a even bigger than comeback, whatever even bigger than comeback is.

• 1:13:37Yasi Salek?

  Okay. And then on the 20th of February, Peaches has a new album, No Lube, So Rude.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  I've listened so long, right? Like.

• 1:13:45Yasi Salek?

  I don't.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Surprisingly long time.

• 1:13:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't remember the last time Peaches put out an album.

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  I think it's like 15 years, but she's been touring pretty consistently. But I, I think I'm quite excited for this.

• 1:13:56Yasi Salek?

  Quite excited for this. We, we stand Peaches in this house. Um, and then on February 27th, there's a Crooked Fingers album. Crooked Fingers is Eric Bachman from Archers of Loaf's, uh, other band. I'm a huge Archers of Loaf fan. I'm a huge Eric Bachman fan. Um, it just makes my kind of fucking guitar rock music. So I feel like this for the, for the fellow Gen X men listening, I feel you'll like this too. Gorillaz? You fuck with the Gorillaz?

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  I respect that the Gorillaz are probably like the single most influential band among kind of like Gen Z pop stars.

• 1:14:31Yasi Salek?

  Is that true?

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  I mean, this is kind of anecdotal, but it's like, you know, Billie Eilish loves the Gorillaz and like, also like when I do like bios for like young indie bands or whatever. It's so often they're being like, yeah, we, you know, we just want to be like as big as the Gorillaz. I'm like that, like that.

• 1:14:46Yasi Salek?

  So interesting.

• 1:14:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's anecdotally, I feel like it's kind of a big thing, like they're the kind of classic rock band for, for Gen Z.

• 1:14:56Yasi Salek?

  Oh my God, it makes me feel 150 years old.

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  This one's interesting. I mean, kind of the final frontier of like ethnic music is like India, I guess. This is their like Indian album.

• 1:15:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  But, um, you know, I, every time I hear a Gorillaz song, I don't think I've ever listened to a full Gorillaz album. Every time you hear one of the songs, I'm like, this is pretty good.

• 1:15:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, again, I'm a hundred and fifty years old. So like I legit, like I have visceral memories of the first Gorillaz album. Like I saw them play at Coachella at the time I was like working, uh, two thousand two, two, it was eighty five dollars.

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  Damn, that's awesome.

• 1:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, old. Um, I was working at Oakland, uh, underground hip hop label called ABB Records. And I remember it being a big deal because Del the Funky Homo Sapien was featured on the first Gorillaz album, which was produced by Dan the Automator and also Dan the Automator, Big in My World. Love Dan the Automator. Um, and that album was incredible. Like, we were just like, and then the marketing about it, I mean, this was still, this was still label money time. So like, they burned the fire. I didn't bring my tiny violin here to show Shad, but just imagine I'm playing the tiny violin. But I still had like, they made like all these like sticker sheets of all the characters. And like, there was so much cool promo and marketing around the first, uh, album and it was massive.

• 1:16:24Yasi Salek?

  And then the second album was even more massive, the Danger Mouse produced one. Um, I don't think I listened to anything after that, though. Did they put out more albums?

• 1:16:31Speaker 04

  I think they've released like six or seven.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Absolute love and respect to Damon Albarn. I apologize, I was busy.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  I think it's cool. I think, you know, I think it's kind of a cool, I think it's cool that people like it. I think it's cool what they're doing.

• 1:16:47Yasi Salek?

  I like how yours is absolutely so, this is milquetoast to me and I don't care, but I'm happy for you, Billie Eilish. Um, and that's okay. You don't have to like everything.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  I'm like, I kind of feel like what I'm trying to allude to is like, I think I could probably, if I tried hard, I could probably get really into Gorillaz. It would probably be really annoying for like everyone around me, but I just haven't tried.

• 1:17:05Yasi Salek?

  Right. Okay. Well, we'll see what this new album brings into your life, until the spirit moves you. Okay. And then you added this to February twenty seventh. Exec? Is that how you say that?

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  Exact.

• 1:17:15Yasi Salek?

  Exact.

• 1:17:15Speaker 04

  Exact.

• 1:17:16Yasi Salek?

  Uh, prove the mountains move. Yeah.

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. So they're from Australia, they're from Melbourne or like, kind of like, not exactly from Melbourne, but yeah, uh, kind of incredible band, releasing a lot of really good uh, records over the past few years. Um, and who have just like toured heaps and I feel like kind of gotten just a good reputation. It's kind of like psyche. Um, I guess like, yeah, I pop leaning psych rock, kind of like post punk thing. Um, this is their first album for DFA, which is kind of interesting. Um, but yeah, it's really cool. Um, yeah, definitely well worth listening to. They're like incredible bands.

• 1:17:55Yasi Salek?

  I like who you're literally like the UN representative of Australian music.

• 1:18:00Yasi Salek?

  Like, I'm here to inform the world that we still have a gorgeous music culture and I'm going to tell you about all these bands and I like that. We need more of that.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  Thank you. Yeah.

• 1:18:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Massive Attack. This is like kind of confirmed, right? Cause they said they're putting out an album.

• 1:18:14Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I kind of just assumed they, I mean, they, they played a lot last year.

• 1:18:19Yasi Salek?

  I mean, they've been doing tons of stuff and then you saw that they played, I want to say it was in South America and um, Elizabeth Fraser came and sang with them.

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Incredible.

• 1:18:31Yasi Salek?

  I would pass away if I got to see that, I think. That would be my final moments on earth and it would be worth it. Um, yeah, it says, we do have some new music which we've been sitting on for four years, dispute at the label. This is Robert Del Naga. That's a different article altogether. Hopefully we're going to be able to release it next year. So it's a hopefully, it's a candlelit, but um.

• 1:18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, if we can take any time off from being Banksy, so they say.

• 1:18:57Yasi Salek?

  We've debunked that. If you listen to the Massive Attack episode of Bands Plane, you can see the debunking in real time. Um, do you want to hear?

• 1:19:05Speaker 04

  Banksy would, that's what Banksy would want you to think.

• 1:19:09Yasi Salek?

  Can I tell you something so funny? When I did the Massive Attack episode, I had like a renewed respect for Banksy. Like, I, you, we really forget that it was like actually really interesting and cool the first time around. It's just become such a joke, you know? And like unfortunately has spawned like a million Adrian Brody type artists in the world, like.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  Hey, put some respect on Mr. Brody's name as an artist, please.

• 1:19:36Yasi Salek?

  Have you seen his art, babe?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 1:19:37Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely horrifying. Night, night, the stuff, the nightmares. Yeah. But look, I mean, what Banksy was doing in the beginning was so cool and like politically driven and like message motivated. And I mean, it's, it's a sidebar. Um, also another sidebar, but.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  He's like the gorillas of visual art.

• 1:19:55Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  What he was doing was cool and important, then everyone ripped it off.

• 1:19:59Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, exactly. So I'm researching the Portishead episode right now, speaking of Bristolian bands. And, um, and I'm sorry, this will be a rerun for anyone who listens to the Portishead episode. But I was going, my dad randomly wanted to go to Bristol.

• 1:20:17Yasi Salek?

  Cause we were in the Cotswolds and I had booked us into, cause I don't know anything about anything. I had booked us into an absolute like airport Marriott ass type inn that had like exclusively people above the age of 80. Like wheelchairs staying there. And so my dad was like, okay, well for Boxing Day, we're going to go to Bristol. I saw on the map that it's close and I posted on my Instagram. I was like, do I know anyone who lives in Bristol? And my friend Stuart from Magway messaged and he was like, what do you need? And he's Scottish. So I was like, I don't, I just need to know like what to do with my family. And he goes, all right, bet. And he puts me on a group chat with Jeff Barrow from Portishead. My friend Yasi is going to Bristol. Can you tell, I'm like, you want Jeff Barrow from Portishead to tour guide me through Bristol with my family? I wanted to die. I was so ashamed.

• 1:21:00Yasi Salek?

  But he was quite nice.

• 1:21:01Speaker 04

  And did he?

• 1:21:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he was very nice, supplied some.

• 1:21:03Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 1:21:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was Boxing Day.

• 1:21:05Speaker 04

  Any bad recs? Any kind of like bunk recommendations from Jeff?

• 1:21:09Yasi Salek?

  No, they were all like, pretty like, good, standard tourist type attractions that were all closed because it was Boxing Day. Um, which you guys celebrate pretty, um, intensely. Well, not you guys, I don't know, but Australians do also celebrate Boxing Day intensely.

• 1:21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, unless you wanna like hit the sales, you know?

• 1:21:27Yasi Salek?

  I know, that's what I should have done. I really wish I'd stayed in town and hit salvages, babe. I missed out on all the good stuff. Okay, that's neither here nor there. Unrelated, or not unrelated, unconfirmed. The Flea record, I think, is confirmed, it's just there's not a date. Flea solo album called Onora, um, I believe it's pretty jazzy. Why are you laughing at the title?

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  It's just like, oh, he's made a concept album about the film Onora.

• 1:21:54Yasi Salek?

  Imagine. He's like, I was so inspired. Sean, what about the 1975? What do you know? You know stuff. You're in the know. You're in, you're in the cool mix here in London. Is there an album coming?

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  So I've had, so I've had, um, uh, yeah, I think, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:22:10Yasi Salek?

  It's been a while.

• 1:22:12Speaker 04

  Last one was 2022.

• 1:22:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Being Funny in a Foreign Language with all, which I'll be honest with you guys, all that was the first 1975 album I ever heard, um, because.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 1:22:21Yasi Salek?

  Really?

• 1:22:22Speaker 04

  And I loved it.

• 1:22:23Yasi Salek?

  I loved it.

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  It made me like a super fan.

• 1:22:25Yasi Salek?

  Oh my, I was obsessed.

• 1:22:28Speaker 04

  Did you see that tour?

• 1:22:29Yasi Salek?

  No, I didn't get to go. I'm so bummed with the meat eating and stuff.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the best shows I've ever seen, just like, just like, you're, you're like, damn, this is like a band, like, this is a great band, just like playing. It was so incredible.

• 1:22:44Yasi Salek?

  I need to go. I really need, I loved that album. Although I will say like, and this is like a credit to their. Breadth and scope of the type of music they've made. When I tried to go backwards and be like, oh, I love this album. Let me go listen to other 1975. Every album is completely different. So like, I didn't quite like love some of the other albums as much. Although I did find more stuff that I love that wasn't exactly in step with Being Funny. But I was just a very surprised. I know they're a massive band. It's just like, as I always say, like, things that came out like past 2005 is like, I just don't know about it. It's like a huge blind spot for me because I was like a little too old to be like constantly checking for. I was like listening to the Smiths every day and doing drugs.

• 1:23:29Yasi Salek?

  So, you know, we had to end Dipset, so we had to like run it back for things like the 1975. But I love that album. And apparently I think I saw a few things that Matty Hilli said it's called Dogs, all capital letters.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  I'm really, really excited. I think if they keep going down this, like further into this zone, which is just kind of like them getting in a studio and like, kind of making like a really like beautiful lush, kind of like rock record. Like, I think that is so.

• 1:23:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like modern day Tears for Fears or something, you know? It's got this like, it's like really emotionally gripping, but like, just it's, it's awesome.

• 1:24:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's like not self-serious, but it's like so kind of like sensitive and emotionally resonant.

• 1:24:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Speaker 04

  Um, and like has such like intense empathy, which, which I think is like really rare sometimes. And I, and I think that's something that kind of like gets really lost when people talk about him.

• 1:24:29Yasi Salek?

  Because, yeah, because of the public persona and stuff.

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but to me, I, I think, you know, I've, I've thought a lot about this. I think it makes a lot of sense that you would kind of like adopt this persona in response to like what he's expressing in the songs, which is just this like intense kind of like desire for, for the, the world to get to like a better place.

• 1:24:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and for connection, it's very vulnerable and the lyrics are really beautiful. Yeah, and I think you would have to like, kind of like, like temper that with like a more protective persona or else you're just going to be like a giant open wound of a person in the world and the world will drag you down.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:25:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, there's also some rumors there's a new Nine Inch Nails. Because Trent Reznor has been talking about prioritizing working on Nine Inch Nails music over taking on like more film stuff, so.

• 1:25:15Speaker 04

  So you don't consider the Tron soundtrack true Nine Inch Nails?

• 1:25:18Yasi Salek?

  Didn't even listen to it. I'm so sorry. And I didn't see the film.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  No, did I?

• 1:25:22Yasi Salek?

  You know, I'm such a lyric person that like, I very rarely listen to instrumental music.

• 1:25:29Speaker 04

  I listen to a lot of like dance music, but.

• 1:25:33Yasi Salek?

  But I like dance, I like real life. Like I like dance music that's like heavily lyric. Like that's what I like, you know?

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I kind of, I kind of know what you mean.

• 1:25:42Yasi Salek?

  I'm a writer in the end of the day. I mean, even though I don't, I'm borderline illiterate now and I'm, I talk for a living, but in my, in my soul, there's a Emily Bronte right here.

• 1:25:51Speaker 04

  That's what most writers are now, anyway.

• 1:25:54Yasi Salek?

  We're all just talkers and bloggers.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Yasi Salek?

  When people are like, do you want to write a book? I'm like, I probably couldn't, honestly. I'm too, too addled. My brain is too addled.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  And no one buys books anyway. Like, that's a trap. Like, you know what I mean?

• 1:26:07Yasi Salek?

  They buy that ladies books that they keep making movies out of at the, you know, the, like the airport movies, like.

• 1:26:13Speaker 04

  Colleen Hoover.

• 1:26:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. And they buy the Irish ladies.

• 1:26:18Speaker 04

  People still buying the Bible.

• 1:26:20Yasi Salek?

  The Bible is a bestseller.

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  Always.

• 1:26:24Yasi Salek?

  As it should be. The, the original, uh. Why can't I remember the lady, the Irish Sally Rooney? People still buy her, still, still buy her books, I think. Is that not right?

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  Were you gonna say the Bible is the original Sally Rooney?

• 1:26:39Yasi Salek?

  I was kind of gonna say the Bible is the original Sally Rooney. And I hope that the monk that listens to Ban's Blaine is not offended by that. That, that was a high honor. And last but not least, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have expressed on their Sirius XM, uh, show, whole lot of red hot. Uh, Anthony and mentioned that him and John Frashanti have been writing new songs, but I don't know if that means an album's coming out this year, but at some point.

• 1:27:07Speaker 04

  They're in a quite prolific phase, right? Like, they had

• 1:27:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  Two albums quite recently.

• 1:27:11Yasi Salek?

  I liked those albums a lot, actually, way more than I thought I was going to. Because, you know, famously, late-career rock band music is not hitting usually. But I really like them, but they didn't. They happened to come out at a good time where they were just being culturally, I think, celebrated again. Um, for their contributions to the world. As a, as a person that has a Red Hot Chili Peppers logo tattoo.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  Oh, really? That's cool.

• 1:27:40Yasi Salek?

  I'm from Calif- I'm from California. This, this is our, this is my birthright, you know? This is our, our thing.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  Nate from Water From Your Eyes, um, wants to get a Mount Rushmore tattoo.

• 1:27:52Yasi Salek?

  With-

• 1:27:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this is Lorelei with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 1:27:55Yasi Salek?

  Which lineup?

• 1:27:56Speaker 04

  But he can't, exactly. That's why he can't, that's why he can't get it, because he's not sure.

• 1:28:01Yasi Salek?

  Damn, like, he's actually considering Navarro.

• 1:28:04Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm, look, I'm not sure how much of a bit this is. I don't, I don't really-

• 1:28:09Yasi Salek?

  I want him to do it. I want him to do it.

• 1:28:11Speaker 04

  I think he should do it as well, because I think it would be funny.

• 1:28:13Yasi Salek?

  Wow, okay, Nate, you're ahead. Nate, come on the pod. I really love Water From Your Eyes, and I really love This Is Lorelei. I really want him to come on the pod. Can you tell him to come on the pod?

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  Water From Your Eyes, Water From Your Eyes are like the biggest Red Hot Chili Pe- Red Hot Chili Peppers heads in the entire world.

• 1:28:27Yasi Salek?

  We have so much to talk about. We have a lot to discuss, because same, I feel like they are spiritually resonant for me, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I went through an entire, I went through an entire thing. Do I have stuffed animal pants that I had made so that I could wear them in a video about the Red Hot Chili Peppers in homage to Fleet? I do. Did they survive the fire? Thank you for asking. They did, somehow. Because they were in the garage, along with all the other things that, um, you put in the garage, because you don't care about, like, your ex-boyfriend's band's t-shirts and stuff. So that's what I, those are my earthly possessions, stuffed animal pants and my ex-boyfriend's band's t-shirts.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 1:29:08Yasi Salek?

  I know. God works in, God works in mysterious ways, Sean. Well, Sean, this has been such a joy and a delight. I am sad that we didn't get to hang out in person, but I am very happy that, uh, you made the time at what must be midnight down under, um, to sit and talk with me about new music. But you're a young man, and you can handle it, so.

• 1:29:27Speaker 04

  Thank you for saying that. Um, thank you so much for saying that. I didn't feel like the young man at the Jane Remover Show. So this is felt really-

• 1:29:33Yasi Salek?

  Nobody, nobody is young at the Jane Remover Show. Everybody feels a little old.

• 1:29:38Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:29:39Yasi Salek?

  Of course. I'd come on again. Um, I'd love to have you do a full length or one day when we're in the same city.

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  Hmm, absolutely.

• 1:29:47Yasi Salek?

  Shad, thank you so much for your time. Thank you guys for listening to this portion of the episode. And now I'm going to kick it to my interview with Realize frontman Kevin Lee Karas.

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• 1:31:33Yasi Salek?

  Kevin Lee Karas, welcome to the program of my new favorite band, Realize. People are probably really sick of hearing me talk about Realize, but sorry, I'm gonna keep talking about Realize. How are you? Thanks for coming on to talk with me.

• 1:31:44Speaker 07

  Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm great.

• 1:31:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah?

• 1:31:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's good. Good at the moment.

• 1:31:49Yasi Salek?

  You're selling it. You're selling being great with that deadpan. I'm great.

• 1:31:54Speaker 07

  Trying to convince people that I have any kind of emotional range with such a lack of vocal range is kind of the whole challenge of my life.

• 1:32:02Yasi Salek?

  You're like the opposite of vocal fry.

• 1:32:04Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:32:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's take it from the top. I mean, you guys already know about Realize. I've talked about it. Fifteen years you've been a band? Fourteen years?

• 1:32:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, it kind of gives me vertigo when I think about that stuff, but it is, yeah, fifteen years ago, which is crazy.

• 1:32:21Yasi Salek?

  That's a long time.

• 1:32:22Speaker 07

  It is a long time.

• 1:32:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and three albums in, or the third album came out last year. Tell me about your teenage punk band. That's right, we're starting from there. What was it called? I need, well, I need to paint a picture.

• 1:32:36Speaker 07

  We were called The Accidents, which we thought was like a...

• 1:32:39Yasi Salek?

  There wasn't already a band called The Accidents?

• 1:32:41Speaker 07

  There must have been, but when, this was, this was before MySpace.

• 1:32:45Yasi Salek?

  Okay, sure you couldn't.

• 1:32:47Speaker 07

  As long as there wasn't. I think there was one other Accidents on Pure Volume.

• 1:32:50Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:32:51Speaker 07

  Do you remember that site?

• 1:32:51Yasi Salek?

  Of course.

• 1:32:52Speaker 07

  And it was, but they were in Poland and there was nothing they could really do about it.

• 1:32:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 07

  So they couldn't stop us, for example, you know, running off twenty copies of our first CD and sending it to our friends at school. It'd be quite funny to be met with a kind of a...

• 1:33:05Yasi Salek?

  Seasoned dissis from Poland.

• 1:33:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Yasi Salek?

  In your hometown of Maidenhead? What's Maidenhead like? You've talked about it disparagingly in the press, but I'm curious.

• 1:33:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I guess you kind of have this kind of love-hate relationship with places from the suburbs when you leave them. Like, for me, it was kind of... Like the noisiest thing about it was like the motorway running right through the middle of it.

• 1:33:28Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:33:28Speaker 07

  And that kinda, when I was growing up, that I always remember that was, that would run, the motorway was running basically behind my kinda childhood bedroom that I grew up in. And so I'd go to sleep at night with like this big view of the sunset over the motorway. And I'd be lis-, I'd have this like, radio next to my bed and I'd be listening to just on the medium wave, which was kinda infinitely more interesting than the, like the, um, this won't make sense to any Americans, so I'll stop there. But basically the medium wave was like talk radio and like pirate radio.

• 1:33:59Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:34:00Speaker 07

  So you'd have like, on talk radio, it would be like cabbies calling in and they were like irate about.

• 1:34:05Yasi Salek?

  It's like AM radio, that's what I think we have and it's just like weirder shit is on there.

• 1:34:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like the middle, it's the middle of the night, so it's like just fucking lunatics.

• 1:34:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13Speaker 07

  Um, calling up and just complaining about things or like debating politics stuff. But it was always, you know, they were London talk radio stations, so I'd have that and then I'd, I'd kinda get bored of that and I'd, my dial, my finger would hit the dial and it would, I'd find like these, this like drum and bass or bong were coming through, like the static fuzz. And I'm, I just, I would fall to sle-, I fall asleep to that every night with the sound of the motorway and all these cars kinda rushing.

• 1:34:38Yasi Salek?

  Like a really mythical backstory.

• 1:34:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know, it's, I guess it's like my relationship to the, to Maidenhead is kinda defined by my relationship to London, really. It felt like a place that I was always gonna leave at some point.

• 1:34:49Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:34:50Speaker 07

  But I still have a, there's a fondness for it, for sure. I've still got, I've still got a lot of friends back there and stuff, but it's kinda.

• 1:34:56Yasi Salek?

  Is it far?

• 1:34:57Speaker 07

  It's like twenty five miles due west of where we are right now, like Charing Cross.

• 1:35:01Yasi Salek?

  That's not far.

• 1:35:02Speaker 07

  Not far, no. You could walk it in a day if you left early.

• 1:35:06Yasi Salek?

  I'm also from a suburb, but I have like, I have such like rose colored glasses about it, like I, there's something about it that's so authentic, you know, and like real, whereas like some, I mean, in fairness, my city is LA. So it's like the fakest city in the world. So maybe that's why, but I just, I really romanticize my upbringing in Torrance, California. Cause it was just like, it's also like, I think an American thing because like so many of our great punk bands come from the suburbs from like ennui and like boredom and just like, you know, like let's make our own fucking noise, you know? So I guess that's why, but I could also see like if you were only twenty five miles from London, I mean like. See ya bitch, I'm out.

• 1:35:47Speaker 07

  For sure, there's this, there's this amazing book actually called, um, England is Mine.

• 1:35:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 07

  Have you read it?

• 1:35:52Yasi Salek?

  I haven't read it, but I know about it.

• 1:35:53Speaker 07

  It's really good.

• 1:35:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:54Speaker 07

  I read it after moving to London when I was a teenager and it kind of crystallized the whole experience for me where you got this kind of the suburbs are described as these kind of incubators of like, um, kind of perpetually kind of like thwarted ambition and people that just wanna.

• 1:36:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Speaker 07

  People that are so desperate to leave and I, I think there's, you know, a big thing with our music is that it has this kind of sense of longing or yearning to it.

• 1:36:14Yasi Salek?

  Uh, which is. Best songs sound like longing.

• 1:36:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:36:17Yasi Salek?

  One of the most, the greatest statements you've ever made. I'm sorry, that's, I don't know what you're gonna do past that, but yeah, I don't think you'll ever top that.

• 1:36:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Yasi Salek?

  In my humblest way.

• 1:36:25Speaker 07

  I think if you grow up in the suburbs, that's just like a, that longing is built into you.

• 1:36:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:36:30Speaker 07

  Cause you, you're always kind of aware that there's something else bigger going on.

• 1:36:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:35Speaker 07

  Somewhere else, you know?

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  Like the party's happening and I'm not at it. Totally. I know exactly the feeling. But you know what's crazy? I mean, maybe you found it, but like, I still feel that way. I don't remember what fucking city I end up in. I'm always like, oh, parties. Now I'm like, the party's in London. I gotta move to London. You know, like, so maybe it's just like a temperamental thing. Perhaps I'm dispositionally outside of the party all the time.

• 1:36:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think that it's, there's this kind of, um, I'm kind of similar. I'm quite insatiable with stuff like that. I don't, I always, I always think there's something better going on somewhere else and I, yeah, it's difficult to really ever feel like, uh, like I feel, I always felt like, um, like I most feel like myself when I'm on the move somewhere.

• 1:37:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 07

  When I'm in between places.

• 1:37:17Yasi Salek?

  Liminal, sort of.

• 1:37:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, kind of. Like I, when I was a teenager.

• 1:37:22Yasi Salek?

  On the way to one, from one to the next.

• 1:37:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:37:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, and anticipating something.

• 1:37:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, isn't that like, protect me from what I want core, you know, it's like, or like, I'm, I'm gonna sound like a fucking idiot, but it, desire is the thing, right? Risk, getting the thing isn't the thing. It's not, it's, you were animated by desire. We're not animated by acquisition or like arriving.

• 1:37:47Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Yasi Salek?

  So I guess it, you know, it's very, life is a journey. Uh.

• 1:37:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure. It's, I, I realized a while ago, I kind of, my, my psychology kind of caused me quite a lot of problems.

• 1:37:58Yasi Salek?

  You don't say.

• 1:37:58Speaker 07

  My twenties, but then I kind of got to grips with it. And when I could kind of understand myself, it's like, I didn't really want the thing I wanted.

• 1:38:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Speaker 07

  I wanted to want the thing.

• 1:38:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:38:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I also, I mean, I think that there's some parallel, which like, I'm forty three now and I'm too tired. Unfortunately, me and Chris Ryan talked about this, where it's like, I don't not do a lot of drugs now because I'm like morally opposed or whatever. I'm just like literally too tired, like my body gave out. But that was for me, always like doing psychedelics and stuff anyways. It was like, you don't ever arrive at a place. It's a trip.

• 1:38:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:38:31Yasi Salek?

  And I think that's like, it's, I'm always chasing sort of that feeling, you know? Okay. So you left Maidenhead, your teenage punk band, The Accidents, did not take off. Um, how did you meet Patrick King, your, uh, your musical life partner?

• 1:38:45Speaker 07

  So there, there used to be three of us.

• 1:38:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes, I read that. I was gonna ask you what, what happened to the third guy?

• 1:38:49Speaker 07

  When you've been together for fifteen years, it's kind of like every story is a long story.

• 1:38:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 07

  So I don't know where to mark the origins of, but we met at the end of Brighton Pier. We were at like some kind of music festival and actually met, I used to write about, when I first moved to London, I kind of had this dream that I'd make music, but I quickly met this very intimidating man named Joe Banks, who was so much better than me at every aspect of making music that I just, I kind of bottled it and just, I was like, I'll just be a music writer instead.

• 1:39:18Yasi Salek?

  Interesting. What happened to Joe Banks?

• 1:39:20Speaker 07

  He now writes for me at Vice, which.

• 1:39:24Yasi Salek?

  Life is so interesting.

• 1:39:26Speaker 07

  Circles, yeah.

• 1:39:27Yasi Salek?

  You were like eighteen when you moved to London?

• 1:39:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was eighteen.

• 1:39:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:39:30Speaker 07

  But I, I didn't meet Pat. And actually, why I mention that is because I was writing about bands and there was, there's this guy that kept annoying me by writing about the bands I wanted to write about. And that was Pat's twin brother, Tom.

• 1:39:41Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 1:39:42Speaker 07

  And so we all, I arranged to meet Tom at the end of Brighton Pier at this music festival. And then he had Pat with him and we had like a mad weekend together. And then I met, through them, I met Tom Watson and we became kind of best friends. And we all lived, we all, Watson and I, and we moved into this house that came to be known as the Lake House, which primarily because it was by a gigantic reservoir in North London.

• 1:40:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:40:07Speaker 07

  Behind all this kind of like barbed wire. It was just at the point where they were knocking down all the surrounding buildings to like gentrify it.

• 1:40:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:16Speaker 07

  So we didn't have any neighbors around us at all. And we could have these parties that would kind of stretch on for days at a time. And it became like the kind of the place where everyone would go. It's kind of like just close enough to Dulston. That it was it was walkable and that everyone would come back to us afterwards.

• 1:40:34Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 1:40:34Speaker 07

  We could just carry on till.

• 1:40:36Yasi Salek?

  Right, because like the whole thing of London nightlife culture is like pubs close at eleven.

• 1:40:42Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:40:42Yasi Salek?

  And then what's the options otherwise, like illegal raves or go to someone's flat, right?

• 1:40:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, and legal raves, there weren't, there's never really that many of them going on.

• 1:40:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so that's why there's such a culture of like, we listen to music up in the house for, you know, through the early morning hours.

• 1:41:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, absolutely. And you kind of sit around with probably ten to twelve people, probably twenty five percent of them are strangers you've just met.

• 1:41:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:09Speaker 07

  And you kind of.

• 1:41:10Yasi Salek?

  I can smell that house right now, so like pungently in my nose, like the beer spilling and the cigarette ash everywhere.

• 1:41:18Speaker 07

  I can hear the sound of the curtains being drawn.

• 1:41:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. Um, so then, like, when did you step out from under the shadow of Joe Banks and his greatness to start making music?

• 1:41:31Speaker 07

  Uh, so Tom Watson was making music already, and I wrote about the band that he was in, or it was just him really, it was called Deep Shit.

• 1:41:39Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm. Great name.

• 1:41:40Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah, very good. But we shared a bedroom wall, so I would, being kind of, having a much higher, a very high opinion of myself.

• 1:41:49Speaker 07

  I would offer feedback as the sound came through.

• 1:41:52Yasi Salek?

  He didn't ask, he was like, shut up. And you're like, I think you should, um.

• 1:41:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Yasi Salek?

  Amazing.

• 1:41:57Speaker 07

  Well, just, uh, mainly it was just like, that's, you know, that bit's really good or whatever. But then we would, we would go on these kind of, we had these like summers where, or this one summer where we were just. Walk the streets talking about the music scene as it was at that time and what we felt, what we hated about it. And we would kind of. We didn't realize it at the time really, but we were kind of drawing up the coordinates of what we felt like the ideal band would be.

• 1:42:20Yasi Salek?

  Right, everything that's left over outside of what you hate.

• 1:42:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, what's it called, like a process of elimination or whatever. But at that time, it felt like everyone was trying to ape this kind of, it was just like kind of lo-fi imported Americana stuff where everyone was wearing like flannel shirts and. And pretending that they'd grown up watching that Alex Mack program and there was a lot of like but dinosaurs surfing on pizza through space.

• 1:42:45Yasi Salek?

  Is this the, is this the early nineties?

• 1:42:47Speaker 07

  No, no, no. This is like, um, two thousand and ten.

• 1:42:51Yasi Salek?

  Hmm. Interesting. I did, I missed this.

• 1:42:54Speaker 07

  It's kind of around that, like, you know, when No Age, like from LA.

• 1:42:56Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sure, of course.

• 1:42:57Speaker 07

  It was around then and it was like the UK response to that.

• 1:42:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:43:00Speaker 07

  Was to kind of try to recreate that like smell.

• 1:43:01Yasi Salek?

  The UK response to the smell. Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah.

• 1:43:05Speaker 07

  So we were like, we'd know, we would, we would go the opposite way.

• 1:43:07Yasi Salek?

  You're right. The fashion of that was very Alex Mack. You're so fucking right. I'm like thinking now about the outfits that I was wearing and we were all wearing in two thousand and ten and it was so, cause it was like eighties referential.

• 1:43:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure. But, you know, I was really into No Age and.

• 1:43:21Yasi Salek?

  Mika Mika.

• 1:43:22Speaker 07

  From that six months. Yeah, Eva Groda.

• 1:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Shout out Juan. Juan listens to this program.

• 1:43:26Speaker 07

  Does he?

• 1:43:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's a friend.

• 1:43:27Speaker 07

  He's amazing, that guy, yeah.

• 1:43:28Yasi Salek?

  He's wonderful.

• 1:43:29Speaker 07

  I interviewed him fifteen years ago, so.

• 1:43:30Yasi Salek?

  Juan Velazquez, he's, he's now a music journalist.

• 1:43:32Speaker 07

  Impression on him. Is he really?

• 1:43:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:43:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's great. Okay, so you're bothering Tom. You're, you and Tom are being elite haters. Um, and Pat?

• 1:43:43Speaker 07

  Pat was sort of like, Pat was coming to the house during these parties.

• 1:43:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:43:48Speaker 07

  And DJing.

• 1:43:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:43:49Speaker 07

  Cause we had a huge, like a proper deck set up and everything. So there, we were having these kind of long late nights, talking about the music. We were listening to, we were all kind of communally getting into like obscure deep house and.

• 1:44:03Yasi Salek?

  Like older deep house or like contemporary?

• 1:44:06Speaker 07

  Older.

• 1:44:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:44:07Speaker 07

  Stuff. A mixture of like noise records and kind of floaty, really beautiful deep house.

• 1:44:12Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:13Speaker 07

  Old rave stuff, UK Garage.

• 1:44:15Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Garage.

• 1:44:16Speaker 07

  And then like, we were listening, I'd started listening to like OPN and stuff like that as well. So there was a bit of ambient kind of creeping in. But we'd also listen to the, in the more kind of uproarious, sofa damaging moments, we'd be listening to like Oasis and Happy Mondays and New Order and stuff like that.

• 1:44:31Yasi Salek?

  You're Bri-, I mean, you're British, babe. It's in your bloodline. It's in your heritage. You, you must. Yeah. You must.

• 1:44:37Speaker 07

  It creates a tidal surge in my blood.

• 1:44:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 07

  So that, all of those kind of things were kind of happening at the same time. And from that came, yeah, real lies, I guess.

• 1:44:48Yasi Salek?

  And then came two thousand fifteen's real life.

• 1:44:51Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:51Yasi Salek?

  It is quite a different sound from Ladash, though.

• 1:44:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's like a six and a half year gap.

• 1:44:57Yasi Salek?

  Right, and you lost a member.

• 1:44:59Speaker 07

  We did.

• 1:44:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Speaker 07

  Um, lost a lot of things during that time, but um, yeah, it's very different. We it's. I think the first album was the sound of like a. Band trying to figure out what they wanna be.

• 1:45:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:12Speaker 07

  They are. It's very stylish stylistically, it's kind of all over the place.

• 1:45:16Yasi Salek?

  Um, I mean, it's quite good. Don't get me wrong, but it is just like a different. Who is this child on the cover?

• 1:45:21Speaker 07

  There's this magazine called Law in in London and our friends. It sounds really dodgy, actually. They were waiting outside of school trying to trying to like street cast.

• 1:45:30Yasi Salek?

  It does sound dodgy.

• 1:45:31Speaker 07

  It does sound dodgy, doesn't it?

• 1:45:32Yasi Salek?

  Epstein Epstein airplane manifest, but okay, go on.

• 1:45:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:45:36Yasi Salek?

  I'm just.

• 1:45:36Speaker 07

  Ultimately, it all resolved itself because we um, we tracked down the children and we paid their parents money.

• 1:45:42Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:45:42Speaker 07

  And got them to sign a contract.

• 1:45:44Yasi Salek?

  It's it's a really fucking cool cover. That's why I ask, because it's like it's really compelling, especially the blonde kid like he's just like, you can't stop looking at him. You're just like, wow. This is what it what it reminds me of like the boy I would have had a crush on when I was twelve in middle school, you know?

• 1:45:59Speaker 07

  Maybe there's some protection going on there.

• 1:46:00Yasi Salek?

  You think I'm Epstein Island? Is that what you're saying?

• 1:46:05Yasi Salek?

  How dare. It seems like you are a film guy. Sorry to not not pejorative. You're a cinephile. But are you are you influenced by film in general?

• 1:46:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, I I mean, I tend to every song that I write, I tend to want to write a story.

• 1:46:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:22Speaker 07

  But I think that comes more from growing up in that kind of classic British storytelling. Tradition of like bands like The Clash and The Jam and Squeeze where. Every song was a story.

• 1:46:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:46:34Speaker 07

  You know, either it was like in the case of Squeeze, it would be stolen from a script or. You know, the jam, it was like, it was this very filmic atmospheric quality. And there was like storytelling.

• 1:46:43Yasi Salek?

  I mean, there's a huge dismiss with the kitchen sink dramas. Yeah, no, I read you say that in an interview. I was like, oh, then it like all clicks to place. I was like, oh, that's totally, that makes so much sense. Because that is like such a British lineage of like, and also like finding the magic in the mundane, you know, that's like a very of those bands. We don't have to talk about the Safdie Brothers films because I don't want to. Um, and I love that for you and I'm happy for you. I'm sorry that happened or whatever, but I did also read that you love Hal Hartley movies and now I'm back.

• 1:47:12Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:47:12Yasi Salek?

  Because I love.

• 1:47:13Speaker 07

  You're not into the Safdie Brothers? Or is it just like, is it kind of overdone?

• 1:47:17Yasi Salek?

  No, it's just like, and I, I think they're incred, you know how you can like recognize that something is good, but it's also not for you, you know, like. I think they're incredible filmmakers in which I don't care. Like, I don't enjoy those films. Like. You had an interesting quote about the anxiety being like elevated and to. Did you call it the sublime? I don't think that's what you said. You said.

• 1:47:38Speaker 07

  Something like that.

• 1:47:39Yasi Salek?

  Something like that, which I, it doesn't happen for me. And there's just pummeling anxiety.

• 1:47:44Speaker 07

  But Paddington, the anthropomorphic bear.

• 1:47:46Yasi Salek?

  Paddington is a universal symbol of love and brotherhood.

• 1:47:52Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:47:53Yasi Salek?

  And listen, you can say whatever you want, but Paddington achieves what it's setting out to do.

• 1:47:58Speaker 07

  It does. Yeah. It pushes the right buttons.

• 1:48:00Yasi Salek?

  And I, I'm so glad people like that, but like, I just, for me, I'm like frustration. And anxiety as a mechanism for drama is not my thing. Like, I kind of need stakes. Or like, I need to be invested in the plight of the character and I just don't find myself invested because I don't like. Not because they're unlikable. It's okay to be unlikable, but there's just not one other note besides annoying and unlikable. And I just needed to see a glimmer. Of like virtue.

• 1:48:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:33Yasi Salek?

  What did you like about the Hal Hartley films? Because that's what I was actually curious about. Because they are not mechanisms for anxiety. Like, that's not his tone at all.

• 1:48:41Speaker 07

  No, not at all. But I like that it's kind of. All his films kind of contain his characters and they're all kind of too smart for their own good and they just kind of, he wheels them from scene to scene, like props and then he just gets them in place and they just deliver these kind of perfect monologues.

• 1:48:55Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:48:56Speaker 07

  And it's like.

• 1:48:57Yasi Salek?

  Pump it in my, it's like a play. They're like plays.

• 1:48:59Speaker 07

  They are like plays, but they're kind of, it is more just like someone reading a book out loud.

• 1:49:03Yasi Salek?

  Totally, which I love.

• 1:49:04Speaker 07

  And there's not like, you know, most, most directors, they kind of make these concessions that they want stuff to be like, feel as real as possible.

• 1:49:10Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like you have to get them and like, why did they go to the next thing and they took a cab or like, well, this is like not.

• 1:49:16Speaker 07

  He tried, they, everyone tries to create like natural dialogue.

• 1:49:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Speaker 07

  And he's the opposite of that. It's like, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna write these perfect, like soliloquies and that each character can say them at each other.

• 1:49:26Yasi Salek?

  Which I love because then I watched that and I feel, I feel enhanced. I feel smarter. It's kind of like when people were hating on materialists. Did you see that?

• 1:49:34Speaker 07

  No, I didn't see that one.

• 1:49:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Honestly, low key, a little Hal Hartley, that's the same criticism they were lobbying against materialists where they were like, no one talks like this. I'm like, if I wanted to hear of how fucking idiots talk all day, I'll just stay on X dot com. I won't go to the movie. I don't need, I know how people talk all day. It sucks.

• 1:49:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:49:51Yasi Salek?

  Like, I'm happy to see something more elevated. This is art, you know? And do you think people talked the way they did in Oedipus during the time of Oedipus? I doubt it. That's all, that's all I have to say about that.

• 1:50:03Speaker 07

  Yeah. I think X is an interesting point though. I find myself on, on there a lot.

• 1:50:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I want to talk about that with you. I want your view of social media and the internet is really fascinating to me. Kevin Lee Karas, Realize Frontman, quote, "I spend so much time on my phone, but once I accepted that I should try to come at the world from a different angle, try to embrace everything I see," and I'm presuming you mean everything that you see in the phone, "it became a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be." So you're like, no, fuck the brick. I'm not, I'm not trying, my new year's resolution is not less screen time. It is more screen time. It is to fully surrender to the phone.

• 1:50:43Speaker 07

  I think that's something.

• 1:50:46Speaker 07

  In that surrender that can feel quite exhilarating.

• 1:50:50Yasi Salek?

  Okay, go on.

• 1:50:51Speaker 07

  There's this, first of all, like I've always wanted to, you know, make music that kind of romanticizes the world and that. So I thought when I was, when we were writing the, the most recent album up, you know, I was like, well, everyone's so down on the world. Everyone kind of has this like laundry list of complaints.

• 1:51:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:51:06Speaker 07

  You know, it's the climate, it's like the recession, it's war, it's the politics. It's the A I or whatever. And I was like, wouldn't it be much more interesting to try to learn, not find the good in that? Cause you know, trying to find the good in war is very difficult, but like, rather than just like kind of follow the crowd. It would be much, a much more kind of, in some ways, like a more noble or admirable feat to, to find the romance.

• 1:51:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:51:28Speaker 07

  In all of that stuff.

• 1:51:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the beauty in the mundane.

• 1:51:31Speaker 07

  Stuff, yeah. Cause the mundane isn't like what it used to be, you know, the mundane isn't kind of like, it's very easy to find the beauty in the mundane. If it's taking a pretty girl to the pictures and then going for like fish and chips afterwards.

• 1:51:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we don't, that's not the thing anymore.

• 1:51:45Speaker 07

  No, so that's, but that's not the mundane anymore.

• 1:51:47Yasi Salek?

  The mundane for you is, is the extreme alt right people on X dot com talking about raw milk.

• 1:51:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, talking about raw milk and skull shapes and sizes and like reposting like pornography all the time.

• 1:52:00Yasi Salek?

  That happens on my feed all the time be- because I'm, I'm such a, like, I'm a health person and I'm really into biohacking. But it's such a crossover with like extreme alt right that everyone, I'll just be scrolling and I'll be like, yeah, okay, raw milk, totally. But repeat, yes, Hitler wasn't so bad. What? Hold on. I'm really thrown off. I have to be like, get out of here.

• 1:52:19Speaker 07

  But I think, yeah, so it's like kind of all of that stuff, if, you know, find, find the beauty in that mundane.

• 1:52:25Yasi Salek?

  You don't get like sick. I get like, I get like phone sick.

• 1:52:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, I get like this, I get what I think of as like a phone over.

• 1:52:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's I.

• 1:52:33Speaker 07

  Like a hangover from my phone.

• 1:52:34Yasi Salek?

  Genuinely ill, like if I doom scroll for too long.

• 1:52:38Speaker 07

  But also I feel like I kind of sometimes I reach these points where it's like, I feel like I'm communing with some kind of like a cult force. Like, I feel like a jet fighter pilot, like the kind of the receding edge of this, of the horizon. And sometimes when I'm fully locked into it and I'm doom scrolling and I'm like, I've got this information just pouring through me, blasting through me like a kind of a, ripping through me like a nuke. And it's like, I know what is doing to my brain and my soul is terrible.

• 1:53:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:05Speaker 07

  But it's also, I'm grinding my teeth for a reason. There is like an exhilaration there that. I found as like in my late teens as a, you know, through through pills and things of that nature and it's there's it's pressing some of the same buttons and that to me trying to trying to kind of unpack all that as well as kind of just mindlessly enjoying it is kind of that feels way more interesting to me than like just just fucking moaning about everything.

• 1:53:32Yasi Salek?

  Well, sure, yeah.

• 1:53:33Speaker 07

  Just throwing yourself into it.

• 1:53:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like it is a little bit like, okay, we'll get off it or like, don't, you know, like, you know, I'm talking about all the time.

• 1:53:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's bad because I don't really get anything done.

• 1:53:42Yasi Salek?

  How can you?

• 1:53:43Speaker 07

  I my my.

• 1:53:44Yasi Salek?

  Your screen time is sixteen hours.

• 1:53:46Speaker 07

  My attention span is so bad, yeah.

• 1:53:47Yasi Salek?

  My attention span is non-existent.

• 1:53:51Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:53:52Yasi Salek?

  It's I have to do something about it, like it's time I must I'm stupid and I have no attention span and I'm like, this is not gonna work for the ongoing project of my life and my work. Um, but you have you have enough attention span to write an album.

• 1:54:08Speaker 07

  I do, but then I was thinking about that on the way in and I sort of because I anticipated you might ask a question about how the songs get written or something like that, even though it's kind of extremely boring, but.

• 1:54:19Yasi Salek?

  It's never interesting how songs are written.

• 1:54:20Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:54:21Yasi Salek?

  I don't know why people think that's interesting. It's not interesting.

• 1:54:23Speaker 07

  It's not interesting.

• 1:54:24Yasi Salek?

  I've lived I've dated musicians, I've lived with them, I've seen how songs are written, nobody wants to know about that.

• 1:54:28Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:54:29Yasi Salek?

  It'll actually kill your it'll actually kill your soul, you can't then you can't romanticize the music anymore.

• 1:54:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, just it's better just to imagine it comes up like a out of a out of a black box.

• 1:54:37Yasi Salek?

  The way it does in music biopics where like, you know, they're like, ah, and then they just sit with a notebook and like a beautiful thing comes out and they're like, look at that, I was inspired.

• 1:54:45Speaker 07

  For sure. I think one thing it I can say that might be interesting about it is that my receptors have all been so damaged by the internet that I'm only I'm only really interested in an idea like the first time.

• 1:54:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:54:57Speaker 07

  So there's that kind of Arthur Russell thing of like first thought, best thought, but it feels like the internet's kind of really pushed that to become the dominant mode of songwriting, I think, because every like I I'm only really interested in the idea when I'm having it and then once it's written and it's done. It kind of becomes this like abstract moment that I can no longer really reach or

• 1:55:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:18Speaker 07

  To. It doesn't feel like, I'm still, I love the song, but I don't, I don't feel like, I don't walk around feeling pride in anything that I've written.

• 1:55:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, can I tell you my interpretation?

• 1:55:28Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:55:28Yasi Salek?

  You know, I think that all music and all art comes from God. So that first thought is just God.

• 1:55:34Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:55:34Yasi Salek?

  And you, you can't redo, you can't redo the first thought that came from God, you know? So it makes total sense to me. You just can't. It's impossible. You know, you're, you're a vessel. You don't get to choose. You can't like redo the, when you're the vessel, you're just the vessel the one time.

• 1:55:50Speaker 07

  Why would God choose me to write maudlin rave songs about?

• 1:55:56Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel that you and I with our brain damage, first of all, let alone the fact that we're mere humans are supposed to understand God?

• 1:56:03Speaker 07

  We should try.

• 1:56:05Yasi Salek?

  Should we? Do you think, do you think, I mean, you don't seem like a spiritual person in that sense. Although I think the way you're talking about communing with the internet is sort of spiritual. I don't think, me personally, I don't think the point of spirituality is to understand. It's to just live. It's to be connected and to, it's to have faith, which is the, is different than rational understanding.

• 1:56:25Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:56:26Yasi Salek?

  It's simply my opinion, my two cents.

• 1:56:29Speaker 07

  I guess, yeah.

• 1:56:30Yasi Salek?

  You know, what is the, that famous Brian Wilson quote? He says that when you, I'm going to butcher a little bit, but stick with me. It's the same sentiment, which is that when you respond to a song, when a song moves you, that's, that's God. Like that's, that you're, he didn't, he didn't say God. He said, that's spiritual. Like you're having a spiritual experience and I really, and I feel that with your music for sure. Like I'm having a spiritual experience when I listen to your music, whether or not you know, that I came from God, that's fine.

• 1:56:57Speaker 07

  Yeah. Okay. There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, thank you very much for saying that.

• 1:57:03Yasi Salek?

  You're welcome.

• 1:57:04Speaker 07

  Nice to say. Yeah. I think I'm getting into waters that are too deep for me. I'm not sure if I can.

• 1:57:09Yasi Salek?

  I don't think they're too deep for me. I, I've, I've listened to your lyrics.

• 1:57:12Speaker 07

  I don't know if I can say anything profound or interesting about God.

• 1:57:15Yasi Salek?

  That's okay. You don't have to.

• 1:57:16Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:57:17Yasi Salek?

  Just even the idea of like, okay, I knew when I turned seventeen, I would be seventeen forever. Like to me, like that, like, ugh, like that gets me.

• 1:57:26Speaker 08

  But the day I woke up seventeen, I knew instantly I always would be seventeen.

• 1:57:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay, here's another, here's another way I can put it that I think you'll understand, which is gonna be maybe, again, if the monk that listens to Van Sliam is listening, I don't mean this in any, you know, I'm never trying to be sacrilegious, you know, being really high is a similar feeling to spirituality, right? It's like, I think that's a lot of the reason people do drugs, obviously, you know, is to connect with the sublime, you know?

• 1:57:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure. I guess I would think of it as more of a ritualistic thing than a spiritualistic thing, but that sense of, I think there's something extremely romantic-

• 1:58:06Yasi Salek?

  Where does ritual come from?

• 1:58:07Speaker 07

  Well, there's something really romantic to me about the idea of loads of people changing their body chemistry to be more like each other's body chemistry.

• 1:58:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:22Speaker 07

  In terms of, like, whether it's through alcohol or drugs or whatever.

• 1:58:25Yasi Salek?

  Sex.

• 1:58:26Speaker 07

  Sex. But that kind of act of, like, devotion to do that all, it's, there's something really beautiful about that. And I guess there's probably like a, there probably is a deep spiritual aspect to that.

• 1:58:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so. I think so. Well, because I think, like, you could even, like, kind of, like, distill it down, right? It's like, you do drugs to kind of mimic the feeling of being in love, right? It's so similar, like, that, like, exhilaration, but like, a little bit of fear, like, a little, it has everything, right? It's kind of like your anxiety lifted up into being sublime, like, that's a feel, that's kind of how being in love feels, right? And, like, Jung says that we, when we fall in love, what we're doing is we're projecting the image of the divine onto the other, like, we're trying to connect with God through the other, you know? And it's like, this is, I don't even know what kind of point I'm trying to make at

• 1:59:19Yasi Salek?

  this point, but I just, I feel and hear all that, especially in We Will and I, our enemies, just me, toot toot, beep beep, on a lime bike, headphones in, blasting this album all through London, and I'm like, this is how this should be experienced, besides maybe, like, in a large room full of other people, like, sweating at four in the morning, which I go to sleep at 10:30, so I won't make it to that.

• 1:59:39Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:59:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:41Speaker 07

  I think, yeah, I've kind of fallen in love with lime bikes recently as well.

• 1:59:46Yasi Salek?

  Sponsor me LimeBike.

• 1:59:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's so good. You just like sense of total freedom that you can get.

• 1:59:51Yasi Salek?

  A sense of total freedom and then.

• 1:59:53Speaker 07

  Also separation from other people. I can't get public transport anymore. It's just there's so many idiots on there.

• 1:59:58Yasi Salek?

  I think I saw you say something about this too in an interview. It wasn't particularly, it wasn't specifically about public transportation, but it was about how zombified public space is in general because there's so many people, but they're absolutely not interacting with each other because of social media and phones and headphones. So it is a bizarre thing to be in. It's very, it feels so lonely and, and cold.

• 2:00:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's, there's the public space now. It feels like there's just kinda like a tube carriage feels like a hundred people all kind of communing with some, some far off distant place.

• 2:00:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Speaker 07

  On a basic level, I just kind of, my patience for other people is like wearing out.

• 2:00:36Yasi Salek?

  You know.

• 2:00:37Speaker 07

  And it's nice to like.

• 2:00:38Yasi Salek?

  Open hearted.

• 2:00:38Speaker 07

  Just get a LimeBike and just buzz around by myself.

• 2:00:41Yasi Salek?

  I feel so, it feels so free. You can see, you, you're forced, you can't be on your phone.

• 2:00:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. It's like two hours of screen time. We get back every day.

• 2:00:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it's like, and you, you're like taking in the city. And also, I mean, sorry to be like when people in LA talk about which freeway to take, but like now that I'm starting to like, understand the geography of London, which by the way, also it takes an hour to get everywhere, just like LA, but not on a bike. Like everything will be like, oh, you want to take the public transport? Forty eight minutes. You want to take a car? Thirty five minutes. You want to bike? Fifteen minutes.

• 2:01:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, why wouldn't I bike?

• 2:01:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:13Yasi Salek?

  I'll always bike.

• 2:01:14Speaker 07

  Especially if there's a motor on the bike.

• 2:01:15Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. And you're just like, oh, it feels so good. But anyways, that's how I listened to the album. I wanted to ask you a question about nostalgia. Cause as much as I feel like this is like a hyper modern type of music, it does feel like there's a ton of nostalgia baked into your lyrics, like oral history of my first kiss, looking back, being seventeen forever, just kind of a celebration of teenage life or freer time. What is your relationship with nostalgia in general? Cause I know it gets a bad rap.

• 2:01:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, it does. It's, it's changed a lot over time. I think it goes back to that, what I was kind of saying about longing earlier, where you, you can have this kind of unspecified longing for a different place or a different time. Whether that is the same as nostalgia, I don't know. Cause like you said, like we talked about earlier, like I think. That is just my default setting. I just kind of just go through life longing.

• 2:02:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:15Speaker 07

  So it's not, it's not that I want to be in the past. It's just that that's just kind of my default.

• 2:02:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:21Speaker 07

  And so I think that comes through in the music. But then there is definitely a sense as well of like, like I found it very, very hard to listen to music for the last year.

• 2:02:32Yasi Salek?

  All music?

• 2:02:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:02:33Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:02:34Speaker 07

  I find it, um.

• 2:02:35Yasi Salek?

  You're not bumping keys, is that what you're saying?

• 2:02:37Speaker 07

  Well, I did actually, I listened to that Cameron Winter record on your recommendation.

• 2:02:42Yasi Salek?

  Did you not?

• 2:02:42Speaker 07

  I wanted to see what, um.

• 2:02:43Yasi Salek?

  What everyone was on about?

• 2:02:45Speaker 07

  Keeping at the top of your list.

• 2:02:47Yasi Salek?

  I, listen, I'm sorry. I find, I love it. I find it extremely spiritual and beautiful and moving to me.

• 2:02:52Speaker 07

  It is, it is, um, I only gave it a couple of spins, but I can totally see why people are in love with it.

• 2:02:58Yasi Salek?

  Inside me, there are two wolves, Realise and Cameron Winter.

• 2:03:03Speaker 07

  Um, but as two of us, maybe we'd win in a fight, but um, I think, yeah, I, with music, I, I'm sort of at a point in my life where I've got a lot of stuff to do and it's like, I find that listening to music, just it, it pulls so many memories out of the box in my, in the pit of my stomach.

• 2:03:26Yasi Salek?

  No, I know. It's emotionally fraught for sure. It's dangerous.

• 2:03:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's dangerous. It's like, it just breaks my heart and the memories that kind of, that it dredges up kind of break my heart.

• 2:03:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:03:37Speaker 07

  And it's like, if I'm gonna function in this kind of increasingly cutthroat world, I don't know. That's pretty sad though, isn't it? To think that I can't listen to music anymore.

• 2:03:46Yasi Salek?

  I was gonna say, Kevin Lee Harris from Realise says, doom scroll until you're sick and do not listen to any more music.

• 2:03:54Speaker 07

  This has been Band's Play.

• 2:03:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this has been Band's Play, like your guide to life from Kevin Lee Harris.

• 2:03:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:03:58Yasi Salek?

  I think increasingly the world is more and more inhosp- I don't want to be one of the complainers, but I think it's worth noticing that it's just inhospitable to space to feel and space to process and space to like.

• 2:04:14Yasi Salek?

  Just be, you know, like, we don't get, the phone steals that time to be, the life steals that time to be productivity optimization, you know, Radiohead, Better, Fitter, Stronger, whatever, like, insert clip here, you know, and it's all, when I complain, or when I have nostalgia, it's not even nostalgia, it's just, it's a longing for a higher quality of existence, and that I associate with the past, but is really just like these missing elements of like looseness of time, room to be, you know, like, not being perceived

• 2:04:56Yasi Salek?

  all the time, which again is self inflicted, you don't have to be perceived, you don't have to have an Instagram, you don't have to be a podcaster on video, but here we are. You don't have to be an internationally renowned musician.

• 2:05:08Speaker 07

  That's a very flattering description, but I think, yeah, there's, I guess, we're similar age, so I kind of grew up on that, on the cusp of like, I was sentient, and I remember what life was like before the internet, and I remember boredom.

• 2:05:22Yasi Salek?

  I think you're younger than me, I was more than sentient before the internet.

• 2:05:25Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 2:05:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Speaker 07

  I was.

• 2:05:27Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I remember like, learning dial up in middle school, and going squawk, the squawk is.

• 2:05:33Speaker 07

  Learning the sound, the song that it sang.

• 2:05:35Yasi Salek?

  Like, we like, did it, like, we were like, they were like, oh, there's a thing called the internet.

• 2:05:39Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 2:05:39Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna, we're gonna connect.

• 2:05:41Speaker 07

  I thought you meant like, learning the noises that it made.

• 2:05:43Yasi Salek?

  It did make a noise, it would go.

• 2:05:46Yasi Salek?

  It's like that, and it would be like, now you're connected, oh my god, I sound one million years old, but that's what it was, and like, being like, what, and then going on like, chat rooms, once there was like, internet in the family, you know, office, in the office room where the PC lived, or whatever.

• 2:06:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Speaker 07

  But I remember, like, growing up bored, because boredom had a sound, and it was this like, ringing in your ears.

• 2:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:06:08Speaker 07

  And it's like, that sort of sound, and it's, but you don't get it in the studio, because it's all cushions, but, there's definitely a part of me that misses that. I don't know if I'd say I'm nostalgic for that, it's definitely something that happened in the past, and because. My default mode is just to be long in all the time. I guess whatever I'm talking about is gonna be infused with that.

• 2:06:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Speaker 07

  Do you know what I mean? Just because it happened in the past, don't necessarily wanna go back there, but.

• 2:06:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. My dad used to say that only boring people get bored. When I was a kid and I would say I was bored.

• 2:06:42Yasi Salek?

  Little did I know that I would never be bored again, that it would never be possible to be bored ever again in my life.

• 2:06:48Speaker 07

  The last generation get to be bored.

• 2:06:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:51Speaker 07

  It's kind of a cop out for your dad to say that, though. It gets him off the hook of having to like stimulate you in any way, provide any kind of entertainment.

• 2:06:57Yasi Salek?

  But maybe, maybe he was so ahead of his time, he knew that I would have to use my imagination.

• 2:07:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, treasure these moments.

• 2:07:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It did take seven years to make the second album. A few things happened.

• 2:07:12Yasi Salek?

  Do you wanna talk about?

• 2:07:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, I used to not talk about it as that much, I guess, because like I still had this kind of careerist element, or not careerist. I still had like a fear of saying the wrong thing.

• 2:07:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:07:25Speaker 07

  And but.

• 2:07:26Yasi Salek?

  And it biting you in the arse.

• 2:07:27Speaker 07

  I don't really have that anymore. I'm just like, whatever happens, happens. So, yeah, essentially, we had like the first album came out and people seemed to like it.

• 2:07:37Yasi Salek?

  Was there like a good like buzz? There was like, oh, this is like a hot new band, yeah.

• 2:07:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, there were definitely aspects of it that weren't like where they needed to be. Like the live show now is so much better. They were like more talented people involved in it back then, but we were playing as a band with like two guitars, one of which was me and I just wasn't very good at it. Bass player, like a live drummer.

• 2:07:59Yasi Salek?

  So you guys were, were playing as a full band in the beginning?

• 2:08:01Speaker 07

  Full band, yeah.

• 2:08:02Yasi Salek?

  With like a DJ or like some.

• 2:08:04Speaker 07

  So Pat was like the DJ producer.

• 2:08:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:08:06Speaker 07

  Me and Watson would do vocals and guitar. We had um an amazing live drummer called Vic, who's drummed with like Jamie T and Miles Kane and people like that.

• 2:08:16Yasi Salek?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:08:17Speaker 07

  And then a guy called, a couple of different people on bass, Johnny White and Richard Phillips. And um, you know Celeste?

• 2:08:23Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:08:24Speaker 07

  She's the, she knows, sings the songs, big voice kinda.

• 2:08:29Speaker 07

  Singer.

• 2:08:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:08:30Speaker 07

  She was our backing singer anyway, but she's now gone on to sing at like, like Madison Square Garden.

• 2:08:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay, it's a great, to great success.

• 2:08:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, but the, the live show as it works now, it was, it's, music's always been made on, on computers.

• 2:08:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:44Speaker 07

  To translate it into like a band setup just didn't really work. It just works, functions so much better now.

• 2:08:50Yasi Salek?

  So you don't play guitar live anymore?

• 2:08:52Speaker 07

  No.

• 2:08:52Yasi Salek?

  You just?

• 2:08:53Speaker 07

  Just do vocals, yeah. It's very clean division of labour and Pat just does all the music. Um, anyway, so we came out that first album period and, um, our manager at the time, I can look back and laugh now, but it was quite demoralising at the time that, he basically said, you've got these two, you've got a huge record deal on the table and a huge publishing deal on the table. And, uh, you can quit your jobs. Don't worry, it's in the bag. Six months later.

• 2:09:23Yasi Salek?

  Reader, reader, it was not in the bag.

• 2:09:26Speaker 07

  It was not in the bag.

• 2:09:27Yasi Salek?

  Oh no, and you quit your jobs and everything?

• 2:09:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, all three of us did. And, you know, that's, that's, that's not to like, kind of dodge any kind of personal responsibility, like, that was all on me, you know, I made that decision myself.

• 2:09:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:40Speaker 07

  And, um, as I say, like, I can look back and laugh on it now, this isn't like, it would be, it would be completely fucking insane of me 10 years later to then start pointing the finger.

• 2:09:48Yasi Salek?

  No, no, of course. No, but I think, I just think it is interesting because like, you know, it's, that's a great disappointment.

• 2:09:57Speaker 07

  It is. And yeah, like, you know, you asked about the gap and it's like, it's nice to be able to provide that context. It is like really important context because if that hadn't happened, then it wouldn't have been so long.

• 2:10:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're that demoralised and you're just like, well, I don't really feel like getting back on the horse. I want to get in the studio right away.

• 2:10:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I, I kind of, there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life at the time as well, which I've thankfully now kind of overcome a little bit. Well, yeah, massively moved on from.

• 2:10:24Speaker 07

  But it all kind of conspired to, to, you know, create that huge gap between albums. I just felt a lot, I just completely lost. It was like, it kind of paralyzed me. I couldn't write anymore.

• 2:10:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:37Speaker 07

  I couldn't really figure out how I was able to write in the first place. Became so alienated from the whole process of writing and being inspired by anything. It just, um, created, yeah, created this huge lag.

• 2:10:49Yasi Salek?

  But do you also think that maybe it had something to do with your, like, development artistically?

• 2:10:58Speaker 07

  I think it definitely helped me. Cause I, you know, I had to, it took me a very long time to dig myself out of that hole.

• 2:11:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06Speaker 07

  Way longer than it should have. But, you know, I gradually figured out what I need to do.

• 2:11:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:11Speaker 07

  And now that, yeah, that has basically all that stuff, all those lessons that I learned then about how to kind of write yourself out of a hole, kind of, there were still things, a lot of things in that that I use to this day. That there are even lyrics that I wrote in that seven year gap that I'm still repurposing.

• 2:11:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:28Speaker 07

  There were, there were, some of those are on the most recent album.

• 2:11:31Yasi Salek?

  I just like, I look at it and I'm like, I know I'm a bit of a Pollyanna and I'm sorry, it's a, it's an affliction, but can't help it. Like, who knows what would have, you know, like, what if you did get the big deal and like, did not artistically grow from disappointment and suffering and then put out some like mediocre second album? You know what I mean? Like, it could have gone that way. And I'm not saying you would have because you guys are talented, but like, it's a sort of impossible to know what was behind that door. Because there was no that door. That never existed. You know, like, there's only one version of the story and it's this one.

• 2:12:05Speaker 07

  Yeah. One of the great comforts of life is that, um, you never have to encounter a worse version of it. Or a version of it which is worse than what you actually experienced.

• 2:12:14Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:12:15Speaker 07

  Which is, I stole that from a friend of mine called Michael, but, um, yeah, for sure.

• 2:12:20Yasi Salek?

  Good job, Michael.

• 2:12:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, good job. Yeah, who knows how things would have turned out, but.

• 2:12:25Yasi Salek?

  Did it, did it affect your ambition?

• 2:12:29Speaker 07

  No, my ambition was, if it killed my ambition, that would be the worst, that would be easier.

• 2:12:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:12:33Speaker 07

  It didn't. It just made it worse. It, it sharpened, it made the ambition more, but the ability to execute in a way that would allow me to kind of reach those ambitions was way worse.

• 2:12:44Yasi Salek?

  What is the ambition?

• 2:12:46Speaker 07

  When we started Real Eyes, we we made it with the typically ladish idea in mind that we would be.

• 2:12:53Yasi Salek?

  You're gonna be Oasis, right? We're the biggest band in the world.

• 2:12:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, biggest band in the world. Because, well, yeah, the personality's involved in the band, that is, formation would never aim for anything less than that.

• 2:13:05Speaker 07

  Over time, my, that bravado has kind of been warped by, warped into a kind of a more realistic appraisal of the situation.

• 2:13:19Speaker 07

  But yeah, at the time, but that's what kind of made it exciting, you know, it was like, it was, it felt like it was us against the world and we were riding the crest of a wave and I think you can hear that in the music. But it's when that wave breaks that, I think the, I think Lad Ash is the sound of a wave breaking and and trying to make peace with what you do have left after, in the aftermath of that.

• 2:13:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then would you say We Will Annihilate Our Enemies is sort of like the Phoenix from the ashes, like the the rebirth?

• 2:13:45Speaker 07

  That was definitely the most fun album to make.

• 2:13:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it sounds, but it sounds like, it sounds, well, first of all, I love, not enough people keeping on going enemies list like yourselves. Do you guys post one? That's really good.

• 2:13:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:13:57Yasi Salek?

  I don't, I don't believe in, you know, having ill will towards others, but it's okay to be motivated a little bit by spite, you know?

• 2:14:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure. I think it's, I think it's really important, actually.

• 2:14:09Yasi Salek?

  Sure. You got it. You, you have to have some enemy to motivate you, even if it's like completely in your own mind and they don't know that you exist.

• 2:14:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 2:14:20Yasi Salek?

  It's one of my theories.

• 2:14:21Speaker 07

  So when we were writing that album, it was like, okay, we've done that, we've done La Lash, which is kind of this maudlin. You know, picking up the pieces album and it was just like, okay, we're gonna write an album. We did it and we wrote the whole album in less than a year. As well as Malice, which is hugely important.

• 2:14:39Speaker 07

  The title comes from like looking at the world around me and just being like,

• 2:14:44Speaker 07

  we need to, if we come back with an album title, which is the most provocative, obnoxious title I can possibly think of. And then I fill that album, I put on the cover the most, almost parodically beautiful image I can think of, which is two teenagers kissing in front of a blaric sunset. And then I fill the album with

• 2:15:04Yasi Salek?

  With more beauty.

• 2:15:05Speaker 07

  With beautiful, ambiguous songs about longing. The title makes it all make sense.

• 2:15:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:11Speaker 07

  It makes it three dimensional.

• 2:15:14Speaker 07

  And then I felt that, you know, I would like, if there was anything in the world that I would like to go to war for, it would be longing and beauty and emotional ambiguity. And kind of impossible, parodical teenage memories. So that's, uh, it all kind of fell into place pretty quickly.

• 2:15:33Yasi Salek?

  That's so perfect. That's so perfect. I don't, I don't want to be like a full infographic ass, you know, head right now, but it's like, it really is the joy is an act of defiance, you know? And actually you said it, uh, this term, which I'm obsessed with, you should go, I should make a T-shirt, romantic defiance.

• 2:15:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:15:50Yasi Salek?

  I love that. It's perfect because it is defiant to, sorry, go back to how this world sucks, but in this world to luxuriate in a song like for seven minutes and to celebrate longing and to celebrate romance and beauty is defiant, you know?

• 2:16:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I think the world is, it's become such an adversarial kind of

• 2:16:16Speaker 07

  tribally entrenched place that you do have to kind of, there is an extent to which you have to pick a side, but I feel like I don't want to be on anyone else's side. I just want to be on, in my own, on my own team.

• 2:16:26Yasi Salek?

  I just want to be on the line bike with my headphones in, you know?

• 2:16:30Speaker 07

  And so for me, that was like, how do I turn this like music that I've been making? How do I turn that into a culture war weapon? And, and, and tether it to, they kind of lived kind of ins and outs of daily, daily life in, in, you know, the mid twenties, twenty twenties. And that's how I did it.

• 2:16:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, we'll find heroes and what is the lyric? We'll find heroes in ourselves because there's no heroes left. I want to live like the twenty.

• 2:16:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's close enough. I'm loathe to quote myself on it.

• 2:17:01Yasi Salek?

  You don't have to, but that's the, that's the gist. Kevin Lee Karas, this has been above and beyond my expectations. You're erudite and eloquent and have wonderful ideas. Uh, and I'm proud to know you and I'm so happy that you made this music that I love so much.

• 2:17:18Speaker 07

  Uh, thank you so much for having me on. My, um, my fiance is kind of obsessed with the podcast and has been for a while, so.

• 2:17:23Yasi Salek?

  Oh, great. Oh, a hot woman with exquisite taste. We love to see it.

• 2:17:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's fantastic to be honest. And, um, next time she's kind of blaring it in the next room while I'm trying to work, it'll be my voice blaring back at me. It should be a very strange experience.

• 2:17:36Yasi Salek?

  Dystopian, but cool.

• 2:17:39Yasi Salek?

  All right, Kevin. We'll come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 2:17:50Yasi Salek?

  This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jared Harris and Bex Donnelly in London. And video animation and graphics are by John Richter. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalback and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon, and graciously recorded by Carlos Villagorda in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and Wispa Bars. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:18:34Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, because I want to stare at myself. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers. I don't know how to say that. Cheers.

• 2:18:43Speaker 06

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