Indiecast

2021 is finally winding down, and on the final episode of the year, Steve and Ian are celebrating with the return of Indiecasties, the semi-annual Indiecast awards show. Who will take home this year’s Indiecasties, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in indie rock? Tune in to this week’s episode to find out! Included in this installment of the Indiecasties are awards for:

“Why Isn’t This On Your List” Award: Consensus Album That is Truly Overrated

Nominees: The Weather Station, Olivia Rodrigo, Cassandra Jenkins, Japanese Breakfast, Snail Mail, and more

The “Hey, I Actually Like The Album!” Award For Artist You Came To Like This Year

Nominees: old LPs from Sonic Youth and the new efforts from Tyler, The Creator and Dry Cleaning

Most Annoying Music Story

Nominees: Phoebe Bridgers smashes her guitar on Saturday Night Live, Lana Del Rey defends the Capitol rioters, St. Vincent’s entire Daddy’s Home album cycle, the “can adults like Olivia Rodrigo?” debate, and Foxing’s fateful Pitchfork review.

Most Memory-Holed Album Of 2021

Nominees: Lana Del Rey’s Blue Bannisters, Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed, Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, Iceage’s Seek Shelter, Lorde’s Solar Power, and more.

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It feels like we just celebrated the new year yesterday, but somehow, 2021 is already coming to an end. Steve and Ian already named their favorite albums of the year, and what better way to further reflect on an eventful year for indie rock with another mailbag episode?

This week, Steve and Ian take questions from listeners all over the map about everything from their Mount Rushmore of music books, to bands they would watch an eight-hour docuseries about, and which band is better: TV On The Radio or Wolf Parade?

With so many questions to get through, they once again are skipping this week’s Recommendation Corner and encouraging listeners to revisit last week’s episode to discover some new albums from 2021 that they might not have heard yet.

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It feels like just yesterday that we were looking ahead to what we could expect in 2021, and now we're here in December. Before breaking for the holidays, Steve and Ian wanted to come together to list thier favorite albums of the year. Some albums, like Wild Pink's A Billion Little Lights and Low's Hey What, made both of their lists. For his list, Ian paid tribute to the latest works from The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Home Is Where, and Dltzk. Steve, on the other hand, has I Don't Live Here Anymore by The War On Drugs topping his list, followed closely by Tonstartssbandht and Rosali.

Breaking from tradition, Steve and Ian decided not to do a Recommendation Corner this week, instead recommending that listeners check out any of the albums discussed that they haven't yet heard.

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In this week’s special Thanksgiving episode, Steve and Ian return to the Indiecast Hall Of Fame. In case you don’t recall, the honor was designed to honor albums in the indie rock and alternative rock realm that were influential and beloved at the time of their release, but have since been lost to the test of time and sadly — some might say shamefully — left out of the widely accepted canon of the genre. After paying tribute in past episodes to albums by Counting Crows, The Promise Ring, Saves The Day, Secret Machines, and many more, Steve and Ian are now turning their attention to albums from Jane’s Addiction, Robbie Robertson, The Stills, and The Jealous Sound.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is vibing with Frailty, the new album from dltzk that is the first digicore album he’s ever really liked. Steve is enjoying Highway Butterfly’s The Songs Of Neal Casal.

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It won’t be long now before the year-end lists start rolling out, which means it’s time to look ahead to what we can expect in 2022. This week, Steve and Ian give their takes and predictions for albums coming out next year, including Mitski, Beach House, Big Thief, and many more. They each give their confidence ratings between 1 and 10, and discuss the indie rock landscape that these albums will be released upon. Some of their opinions are informed by early listens of the records, while others are pure theorizing.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is spreading the good word about Buds, the hotly anticipated new record from Connecticut outfit Ovlov. Meanwhile, Steve is enjoying the debut album from Irish quartet Pillow Queens, which actually came out last year and sounds like The Cranberries with a slightly punkier vibe.

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This week’s episode of is dedicated to two of the greatest indie rock success stories over the last decade. First up is Idles, whose new album Crawler follows up 2020’s Ultra Mono and continues down a musical path toward what Steven Hyden recently called “the mix of political righteousness and musical bluntness that once caused people to call The Clash ‘the only band that matters.'” Does Idles actually pull of the tightrope walk on Crawler?

Next on the review list is Courtney Barnett, whose new album Things Take Time, Take Time is her first in a little more than three years. While Barnett isn’t necessarily as consistently discussed on music publications and music writer Twitter as a band like Idles, her albums are always well-received and her touring business is consistently growing and lucrative, making for an ideal situation for indie rock stardom. Things Take Time, Take Time is surely to continue Barnett’s trajectory and build her fervent fan base.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging the latest release from SeeYouSpaceCowboy, and Steve is enjoying A Way Forward, the second album in two years from Brooklyn trio Nation Of Language.

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After her 2018 debut Lush catapulted Lindsey Jordan into the spotlight, she was suddenly working harder — and more regularly — at the age of 18 than most people work in their lives. The tours, interviews, and TV appearances kept coming, and with them a growing cult of personality surrounding Jordan. All of this and more is explored on Valentine, the new album from Snail Mail. Where 2021 found many artists scaling back their productions into its more bare bones (see: Clairo and Lorde), Jordan used the opportunity to flesh out the Snail Mail sound substantially. Valentine is full of piano, synths, strings, and even boasts jazzy bass lines and tinges of R&B.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging Sup, the latest LP from Super American, and while Steve is promoting the latest effort from Neal Francis, In Plain Sight.

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The first new album from The War On Drugs in four years has finally arrived. Steve considers The War On Drugs his favorite band of the last decade, while Ian considers them in a similar lane as Tame Impala or Beach house, where the music is enjoyable but does little more for him than establish “vibe.” Musically, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a refinement of the craft the band explored on 2017’s A Deeper Understanding, which itself was a refinement of 2014’s Lost In The Dream. Will this finally be the record that wins Ian over?

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging the new book Sellout, as well as Another Kill For The Highlight Reel, the new record from New Jersey band Save Face, which sounds like a lot of the bands covered in the book Sellout. Steve, on the other hand, wants to spread the good word about Myriam Gendron’s new album Ma Délire that was released earlier this month, a collection of reimagined folk standards that gives the songs new life.

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After Ian took the week off to recuperate from his wedding, he’s back online with Steve to do what they do best: talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and hash out trends. This week, the dynamic duo is digging into new albums from Parquet Courts and My Morning Jacket.

My Morning Jacket is back with their ninth studio album, following last year’s surprise sequel to The Waterfall. In a recent interview with Steve, Jim James revealed that he hadn’t been actively engaged with My Morning Jacket for much of the 2010’s, but he felt more locked in on the band’s new self-titled album. It’s undoubtedly the jammiest record the band has ever made, and also more interesting than anything they’ve done in years.

Parquet Courts are in a similar point of their career with the release of their seventh album Sympathy For Life. Once considered the next great New York City band after The Strokes, the recent projects have proven them to be closer to a band like Spoon — really consistent and solid without ever quite knocking it out of the park. Will Sympathy For Life help to reinvigorate the band for years to come?

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian is plugging That’s OK, the new album from Swimming, whom he names the greatest Newfoundland band (emo or otherwise) of all time. Steve, on the other hand, has two albums you should check out: the new efforts from Trace Mountains and Mo Troper.

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Twenty years helps to put a lot of things in perspective in life, especially music. This week on Indiecast, Steve and Ian are reflecting on the musical landscape of 2001 and how it has evolved in the two decades since. The discussion revolves around four specific categories: albums they loved in 2001 that they longer care about, albums they didn’t care about in 2001 that are now important to them, the overall most important albums of 2001, and their personal favorite albums of 2001. From Daft Punk’s Discovery and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory to Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American and Guided By Voices’ Isolation Drills, this episode is an exercise in nostalgia and reevaluation for the music that helped to shape the 2000’s.

In lieu of this week's Recommendation Corner, we're taking a moment to congratulate Ian on his wedding and wish him a wonderful honeymoon! We'll be back with more recommendations next week.

You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news.

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