Today Mac DeMarco releases an album of instrumentals called Five Easy Hot Dogs. How good is it? Well, it’s an instrumental album called Five Easy Hot Dogs — you do the math. At the very least, the record was a good excuse to talk about the career and legacy of one of modern indie’s most influential artists. I’m a fan though I consider myself more of a “liker” than a “lover” of his music. My co-host Ian Cohen, however, has been a vocal critic. What are Ian’s beefs? Was I able to talk him into re-considering Mac?
In our opening banter segment, we covered two of the biggest indie album announcements of the week — Boygenius’ The Record and The National’s First Two Pages of Frankenstein. First of all, we covered the most important aspects of these albums: Their covers! What’s up with that weird National album cover? Why is the Boygenius album cover already meme-able? Eventually, we get around to the music — I am higher on both acts than Ian, and I explain how digging into the bootleg tapes from The National’s 2022 tour helped set up for their very good single, “Tropic Morning News.”
In Recommendation Corner, Ian stumps for an actual book! It’s Status And Culture by W. David Marx, which explains how the titular subjects are shaped and formulated. As for me, I shouted out Mercy by octogenarian musical legend John Cale, which includes cameos by Weyes Blood, Animal Collective, and Sylvan Esso.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 122 here or below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at indiecastmailbag@gmail.com, and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.
