October 21, 2024 • 53 mins
In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy get a little more modern with Foxing’s 2018 album Nearer My God. The second most-recent album the guys have explored, Nearer My God ranked atop Jake’s 2018 album rankings and near the top of his all-decade list. Find out more about Foxing’s growth across three albums, where there was drama around some bagpipes, and how the band so capably creates a space to sink into anxiety on this week’s podcast.
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While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie.If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerchOr reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com
If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
See you next week for another episode of CHP.
Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!Follow @ColumbiaHP on X!
While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie.If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerchOr reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com
If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
See you next week for another episode of CHP.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I can be romantic when I'm starving for sleep when
I try, but I can't seem to remember anything from
the latest episode of Columbia House Party. Jake, what's up man?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Not much? How you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm all right. It's very warm in my apartment right now,
which is.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's quite warm in mine as well? I should have.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's a weird post workout, so my temperature is all
over the place today. I don't know. Will Rue try
to get out the window?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
No? But like our only windows are like balcony doors.
But I feel like it'll just be noisy ruin our
great show.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That makes sense. Yeah, so instead of Rue ruining it
or the noise ruining it, why don't we ruin it?
Is Rue short for Ruiner, by the way, is that?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No, it's short for Rufus.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh that's even better. And not Rufeo either, damn.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But maybe maybe it's Rufeo now. But named after the band,
not the character from the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yes, of course, named after the former topic of a
Columbia House Party single, rest in Peace? Uh, Jake? I like?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I think I didn't. I'm not happy with the way
I did the intro today, but the I can be
romantic when I'm starving for Sleep is among my favorite
opening lyrics that we've used so far.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I was hoping that you would do it in the falsetto.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But no, I cannot. I cannot do that, and I
will not subject people that you know. You know how
iPhones have that like headphone safety option where if the
noise is too bad, it'll block it out or minimize
it for you. I feel like that's not be working.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
With That's fair. It is a tough false out of
a hit.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I would say, well, you could probably hit You're a
much more change on your singing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think I would. I was able to hit it
when I was younger, but I my voice has been
ruined by uh life, so my arrange is much lower
than it used to be.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's okay. I don't know if the musical theater opportunity
is coming through at any point.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I feel like I'm probably safe for at least a year.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you're okay for right now. Just drink some tea
and throw some tea on it. You'll be fine. Jake,
that opening lyric, I can be romantic when I'm starting
for sleep. First of all, great line, great snapshot of
my general vibe lately where I've been having a lot
of trouble sleeping and I've seen you know, I feel it,
and it's a good it's a good introduction to my
(02:46):
vibe with today's band where No, I can't do the
falsetto and maybe don't appreciate the falsetto quite as much
as some other fans of this band, but I do
love the songwriting here, Jake, what do you got for us?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So this week we're doing an album that is just
for me, even though I think a lot of people
like it and it is did quite well. So today
we're doing a Jake album. We'll get into this little
more in reception, but this was my favorite album of
twenty eighteen. And today we are talking about Foxing's nearer My.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
God, what's the.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Ay? Yes, it's a ba.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
This is uh not what I would have expected. I
expected we would do Foxing at some point. I was
a little curious which Foxing album you'd want to do
of the three of theirs, and I would not have
a expected at the outside of this podcast that when
we first dabbled with newer albums, Foxing would be the
second most recent that we've done so.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, actually that's a good point. I think to your
first point. Could have picked any of the three, I think,
but I think because they're a band that maybe aren't
as historically rich as some of the others we've talked about,
just because, as you said, they are a newer band,
doing the most recent makes the most sense just frankly,
(05:28):
it gives me more material to research. So that was.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Perfect for me. Well plus two, I mean, I think,
and obviously we'll get into this. I think there are
some interesting tweaks to their sound as they go along,
and like you know, they're very much one of those
bands that I feel like the first ten episodes of
this podcast, it came up in every episode where we
kind of like rolled our eyes at that emo tree
from the Emo subredit. Well, you trace Foxing across these
(05:55):
three albums, and you might hit six or seven different
branches on that tree, depending on your perspective on what
genre they are. So I don't have a lot of
connection here. Foxing is one of those bands that, you know,
you look at the other bands that I listened to,
and you look at the other people I share taste with,
and you would think that they'd be one of my
favorites just based on that, you know, recommend if I
(06:16):
like kind of analysis, and I do, like I said,
really like the songwriting, really like the lyricism, and I
wouldn't say that I dislike them, but it's more just
a passive appreciation than fandom. This is not you know
that it was your favorite album of twenty eighteen. I
think it was pretty low down on my list. Don't
think it cracked my decade list. But all three of
their albums are definitely albums that I listened to, and
(06:39):
you know, going back to it these last couple of days,
like Man, there are a lot of desolate winter Instagram
captions on this album, which you know, now I can
go a hotel year for the for the autumn, and
I can go to Foxing for the winter time. So
I'm I'm a big fan of the songwriting here, if
not necessarily a huge huge fan of the band in general.
(07:01):
Where I was going with that is the other thing
I'm interested to trace toward the end is, you know,
like I said, there are a lot of bands in
their sphere that I really like that we'll talk about,
and some bands that they've toured with when they were
coming up and it makes a lot of sense, and
for whatever reason, Foxing has haven't clicked for me quite
as much as as those bands. It's similar to I think,
(07:22):
not to get bogged down in just the names of bands,
but it's similar to Fleet Foxes, I think, where everyone
else who likes the music that I like really likes
Fleet Foxes, and I like the song writing, but I
just can't get there with the music anyway. I'm rambling
and spending two minutes at the top about how I
find this album to be good not great, which is
not the spirit of this podcast. I just am trying
(07:45):
to set up why Jake is going to carry so
much of this, because Jake cares very deeply about Near
my God.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, they're a band that snuck up on me. I
guess in a way I got into them around the
lease of their second A Dealer. I actually don't remember
how I got into it. I think it might have
been a Twitter band that like, as we've talked before,
like people whose music taste I like mentioned them and
I was like, I'll check that out. Upon first listen,
(08:14):
it didn't like, I liked it, but didn't really hit
for me like I think it was on my twenty
fifteen list, it was like an honorable mention, even like
it barely made the list, and then it just kind
of stuck with me and I kept going back to
it without Like whenever I was kind of like wandering
around going somewhere in Toronto, it was like where where
(08:36):
what do I want to listen to? It's like, Oh,
I guess I'll listen to that Foxing record again. Also
helped that at the time, I wasn't in my favorite
place personally, and Dealer is a great sad album to
sort of commiserate with, and yeah, I just they kind
of stuck with me, and then I got really into
them over the next couple of years, listening to the
(08:58):
first two records and kind of had this feeling to
myself that they were going to do something insane with
the next one. And then they put out Nearer My God,
and I was like, oh, Okay, that's kind of what
I was not what I was expecting, but kind of
what I was expecting. And then they've just slowly turned
into one of my like six or seven favorite bands
(09:19):
now and I've just become a huge, huge fan of theirs,
and I think and I'm just always into whatever they're
gonna do.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, it's fun to have favorite bands that you like
and get really excited for Shocker. This is the one
benefit of I think, getting to throw the odd recent
album into the mix.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Obviously we did Phoebe Bridger's Punisher, which Phoebe Bridgers is
one of my favorite artists, and that was my favorite
album of twenty twenty. You know, we did Lord Who's
twenty seventeen and uh, you know popped a huge number
for us because of Spotify's algorithm, which was nice. But
it's also it's just nice to I like when we
jump around timelines a little bit, both because I think
(09:59):
it gives a good you know, it helps kind of
paint the picture of I guess the three eras of
music we're dealing with, the like before we listen to
music groups that influence our bands, the bands we come
up on, and the bands we like now. And then
I do think that it's just, you know, it's a
different style of episode, and it's a different style of
preparation for the episode. It's a different style of fandom
when it's a current band who's three albums in and
(10:22):
there's more curiosity with a band like Foxing, who are
very much it feels like, on the edge of being,
you know, a more well known band. I think we
are going to talk about their formation. We're going to
talk about their evolution through Dealer, when Jay came on
board and into Near My God, the album we're talking
about today. All that and a bunch more after this.
(11:00):
All right, Jake, give us the background on Foxing. The
only thing that I am aware of, or sorry, I
shouldn't say that. I obviously prepped for this episode and
read through your notes, but if I'm playing the character
of guy you're explaining this to The only thing I
was really aware of pre Dealer with Foxing is that
Modern Baseball did a tour that they were on, and
(11:21):
that tour didn't come to Toronto, and at the time
I was upset that Modern Baseball were not coming to
Toronto as part of their tour. I don't believe I
had any concept of who Foxing were at that point.
I think this is twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen. Anyway,
hit us man, give us the fill us in on Foxing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So, Foxing formed in twenty eleven following the dissolution of
the group Hunter Gatherer, which was a post rock band
that featured Josh Cole, John Helwig, and Matthew Peeva. They
were joined by Connor Murphy of the band Family Mit
on vocals and Ben Hellman of Eagle Scout on guitar.
By a fall of twenty eleven, Ben Hellman had left
(11:59):
the group and Jim Fitzpatrick took his place. This was
a common theme for the early days of Foxing. They
briefly considered calling themselves she Hums in Swarms, but eventually
settled on Foxing, which I am very glad that they did,
because I definitely would not have listened to a band
called she Hums and Swarms. In January twenty twelve, they
recorded their first batch of songs called The Old Songs EP.
(12:22):
Following this, Piva and Fitzpatrick left the group and they
were replaced by Samuel Nauman and Ricky Sampson. Nowman would
leave shortly after this and was replaced by Thomas Peeney,
who was also in Family Might with Connor Murphy. The
Old Songs EP was released in August of twenty and twelve,
and following that in February of twenty thirteen, they released
(12:44):
split EPs with Send Away Stranger and Japanese Breakfast. Peeney
then left the group and was replaced by Eric Hudson,
also formerly of Family Mite. And In twenty thirteen, Foxing
embarked on their first tour of the Midwest, and on
the final night of that tour, they were signed to
Count Your Lucky Stars Records. After signing to the label,
(13:06):
they went into the studio to record their debut album,
The Albatross, which was released in November of twenty thirteen.
I don't know if you can call this song a
hit or if it's just a song that's very popular
in like the new emo world. For lack of a
better term, the song was on at least a third
(13:27):
track on The Albatross. Ian Cohen ranked this as the
sixty ninth greatest emo song of all time on a
Vulture list that maybe we'll talk about one day, and
that song is called Rory.
Speaker 8 (13:57):
Roger In a sudden we took to the scene before
you cut of froted, be treated a snow.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Capped water and they had no shucked him up while
land was still bead and the.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Glooming You and I swear that flat bird the Battle
of Belms.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
If you broo.
Speaker 8 (14:22):
Donny and out swearing a good man, swearing that gun man.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
So you love me back, sir? Do you love me back?
Speaker 7 (14:49):
S m.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
M.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
That's a good uh. Create the soundscape kind of intro
truly the opening credits of a thriller movie that takes
place in a rural town.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, that first record is really like soundtrackie.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, I think they're not just good. Hey, they're doing
the the backwards resonor the Yeah started starting with the
soundtrack stuff and then going into good albums instead of
the opposite. All right, post Rory, post the Albatross, the Albatross, Clearly,
these guys are just huge golf fans.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah boo. Ian Cohen wrote of Rory in that Vulture article,
he said, as with most young artists, Foxing's lofty, already
ambitions uncomfortably coexisted with the ugly teenage anngs that inspired
their earliest lyrics, and judging from the hallowed stature of
Rory in their catalog, it's clear what won out. In
the beginning, the narrator of Rory is poisonously entitled, envious
(16:28):
and self loathing, a dangerous mix in a genre where
fans often don't assume poetic license. These are also wholly
relatable and valid feelings that no amount of do better
discourse will strike from the human experience. Anyone who's felt
that way can look back in disgust. Foxing have admitted
they kind of hate rory, but there's no denying its
potency in the moment. They still use it to close
(16:50):
out nearly every show. So Following the release and semi
success in the scene, as the kids call it, of
The Albatross, it did not chart, but was released very
strong reviews, the band signed to Triple Crown Records in
twenty fourteen, who then released a remastered version of The
Albatross that may. They spent most of twenty fourteen on
(17:11):
the road supporting bands like Sea Haven and The Hotel Here,
as well as tours with brand New and Modern Baseball.
As Blake said earlier, in twenty fifteen, they toured in
support of Me Without You, and The Albatross was released
in the UK. Their second album, Dealer, which we were
kind of talking about earlier, was released that fall on
Triple Crown and reached number three on the Billboard Vinyl
(17:32):
Albums Chart. A thing we'll get into a little later
that I find really interesting is that Foxing's albums sell
really well physically on vinyl, Which.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Do you think that's an album art thing or just
like their demo is just the exact you know, kind
of the exact window of people who listen to vinyl, assume.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I assume it's the latter, But like Dealer hit three
and Near My God hit number two on the vinyl charts,
and I have no reasoning for that. I just find
it interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, you know, they got good placement. I rotate this too,
I would guarantee it.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, right on that front shelf. They spent much of
twenty sixteen also on the road, including an instant where
their van was stolen, and they also were involved in
a car accident with a semi truck I believe, And
in twenty seventeen, founding member Josh Cole left the band
to pursue a career in filmmaking, which I actually think
(18:30):
was kind of a cool move. If you've ever watched
their music video for the song Glass Coughs off of Dealer,
it's an eleven minute short film basically, and it's amazing,
and Josh Cole directed it, so I hope that he
does cool stuff with film in the future, so heading
into making Nearer My God, the band said that they
(18:50):
set out to make this record bigger and more bombastic
than anything they'd done before. And what better way to
make your album bigger than anything you've done before than
high ring Chris Walla to co produce him. Chris Walla
obviously has come up thirty times on this.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Show I Guess Columbia's Party Hall of Famer Chris Walla.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Connor Murphy told Stereo Gum. We tried to bite off
more than we could chew on everything. We knew that's
what we were doing, and we wanted this to be
bigger than we were capable of, especially when we knew
that Chris was going to be involved with it. Chris
Walla actually and the band's relationship began after their car accident.
Willa reached out to the band to offer his professional
(19:32):
or personal help afterwards, and these conversations eventually turned into
the band recording a cover of Dido's White Flag with
Chris Walla, with the intention of income being used to
repair the van. But right after the election of the
Shithead in the White House or I Guess No Longer
in the White House, the band donated all the extra
(19:53):
proceeds from that single to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
Over the next little bit, the band and Waala kept
in touch and started sending him their rough sketches of
the songs that would eventually become Nearer My God. Chris
Walla said that this was a massive sorting process through
the sketches provide to him, but also something so beautiful
(20:15):
and heartbreaking that I couldn't articulate it exactly. Eric Hudson
co produced the record with Chris Walla and told Sierro
Gum that the band loves each other but are always
at war in terms of differing opinion and tastes, and
Connor Murphy credits Wala for getting the band to a
place where one hard thing that we've gotten completely used
to only on this record is trusting each other and
(20:36):
respecting each other's opinions on things. One of the ways
that the band incorporated some of their wilder ideas that
were helped to be rained in by Chris Walla was
on the song Bastardizer with its bagpipes.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Dad phone man, cocktail, the girl she shot, disengage, she
stays on, and get up your tents because you're just
(21:21):
holding your secret texts, mothering names in your own phone
picture frase, and you think I must not remember.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
You.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
I think I must slot remember.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
But dude, it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Was not love a bagpipe.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I love a bag apparently so does Connor Murphy, and
the rest of the band not so much.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Oh, come on, you think a guy with the last
name Murphy is not gonna like some bagpipes? What are you?
You've never been to a funeral.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Before, phenetically predisposed to like it. This song was inspired
by a joke about a Vampire Weekend song that doesn't
feature bagpipes. Murphy also can't remember what the joke was,
but he insisted on there being bagpipes in this song,
so much so that when the band objected to the idea,
he offered to pay out of pocket if the song
(22:55):
didn't make the final cut of the record. They went
and found a great Highland bagpiper in St. Louis who
specialized in funerals, But then they found out that bagpipes
can only play in one key, and it was not
key that this song was in. Chris Wallace said of
this whole discussion, I don't think I threw anything, but
I definitely yelled. A couple of times. We traded more
(23:15):
text messages about how to best capture the bagpipes and
deliver them than any other element on the record, which
that's kind of the whole point of that. But I
think it's funny that bagpipes cause such a stir on
a very good song too.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, I mean, also it's bagpipes on one song like
let's It's not like he was like, let's make a
bagpipe core album.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
I mean, let's wait, who knows what the next one
will be.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, don't don't let him near Steve at all the
weird non music stuff those guys are be coming up with.
I guess not non music, but just the Hey, this
is what our band is. Let's play something completely it
doesn't sound like it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes, Steve's next album will be bagpipe heavy. Notice I
said Steve and not pop.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Anyway, So the tone of this record and the title
obviously come from the song Nearer My God to the
which is famously the song that the band on the
Titanic was playing as the ship went down. The album
was also inspired by an unearthed doomsday video recorded by
Ted Turner in the eighties, to be played on CNN
(24:19):
while the World was Ending. It's also scored to the
same song. At some point in the writing of the album,
Murphy found this video and used it as his muse
for writing the record, leaning into the apocalyptic feeling of
the song, the video, and just being alive in twenty
seventeen and twenty eighteen in general. He told diy Mag
(24:40):
I went to the band and told them we should
use this kind of imagery in the lyrics, song names,
or video or something. It's this insane, real life nightmare
that Ted Turner put together. It's one of the scariest
things I've ever seen. The band, although at first, didn't
actually notice that they were writing these songs with a
common theme until about halfway through recording when they started
(25:01):
seeing the songs take in shape and realized that that
was sort of the general feel of the record. And
Murphy also points out that it's hard to not write
things that have an apocalyptic feel when it feels like
we're at the end of the world all the time.
He also says the band felt the same way about
their career in the band as they did about The
Stay of the World throughout the recording process, saying we
(25:22):
felt many times during the making of this record that
we weren't going to be a band anymore, that this
was the end of our careers. It was us at
the end of making music in general. We gave up.
At different points of the record, some of us felt
like we gave up on our lives, like we couldn't
find that lust for life anymore, which like sounds really dark,
but also I do think is pretty consistent with the feel,
(25:46):
the overall feel of this record. And I think it's
kind of cool that they drew from so many different
apocalyptic places and personal places to make this record, because
I know one of the I don't know if criticism
is the right word, but one of the things I
know some people didn't like about this record was it
was much less personal feeling than some of their earlier work,
(26:07):
when in fact it's just sort of more obliquely personal.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because, like you know, you think, oh,
an emo band or this kind of songwriting in general,
and you I think a lot of people default to
like the love relationship aspect of angst and anxiety and
stuff like that, and I think that this is still
a very very anxious record. It's just you know more,
(26:33):
this is me gesturing broadly at the world around us
right now. This is an album for twenty twenty one,
that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, absolutely it is, and maybe not exactly in the
way they intended it to be, but it certainly applies
to today. Despite everything you just said, they didn't set
out to make this a particularly political record, so to speak, because,
as Murphy told DIY Mag, we're dummies. We're not politically
(27:02):
savvy people. We don't have any real solutions to offer.
So rather than writing a record where we're speaking specifically
about what is happening in the world, we realize the
best way to channel all that is to speak about
what it feels like to live in a time like this.
And while this DIY mag article singles out the lead single, Slapstick,
as playing into these themes, specifically the frivolity of existence,
(27:24):
to me, the song that best exemplifies these feelings is
the first song I heard from this record and the
one that got me really excited for it, and that
is Game.
Speaker 10 (27:33):
Shark Swan Dove into the concas.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Can you hear in the first parts a test.
Speaker 9 (28:04):
But it doesn't gettin a gat.
Speaker 7 (28:06):
The Billy.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Wants to go a lot lamp. Then on the range
of the heat.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
Soft goods waving on the vulture come and give them.
Speaker 9 (28:35):
Me and served you to know that you're an entire
They don't try to.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Find it, said the test the long coat. I gets
my cows as all.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
But it doesn't get gay.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Did you have a question for you about Game Shark?
It is that song titled after like the actual Game Shark,
you would plug into your Sega Genesis to get the codes? Yes, amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
As I had said, I was kind of waiting for
like their new one because I was really excited for
what it could be. And then I heard this and
I was like, where are my sad boys? But then
I was like, wait, this song fucking rules into it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Also, let's just be clear that while I understand the
desire to use Game Shark, having like a thing you
could hook up to your game that auto inserted the
cheat codes feels like bullshit to me, like you gotta
hunt for up, up, down down, or at the very
(30:08):
least like once you got to PlayStation era, like you
gotta look that stuff up on the internet. I feel
like there was no Obviously, if you're using cheat codes,
you're cheating. But I feel like, at least if you
have to work for it by finding it somewhere and
not just having it automatically fired up anyway, it rubs
you wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You still have to put the codes in. I think
you just.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Like left it hooked up to your to your.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
To your point about cheating. That's actually why this song
is called game Shark, as it's a line of cheat cartridges.
The title is an allusion to cheating, Death and the Devil.
So at first I thought they just named it that
as like that was their working title because they're like nerds.
And then I found that out, yes, and I was like, oh,
that's funnier.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Cool, that's big Bill and Ted vibes. It's extremely outsmarting
the deth of finding games you can beat the Devil at.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So obviously this song is much more experimental than their
previous work, and that came up a lot in sort
of the pre release press for this album, especially in
an article written by Stephen Hyden for up Rocks where
he and Connor Murphy kind of try to compare and
align Foxing with another band we've talked about, which is
(31:22):
that band, radio Head. In this interview, Murphy compared The
Albatross to Pablo Honey, Dealer to the Bends, and Nearer
my God's Okay Computer, before clarifying this is no okay computer.
That thing is what like one of the top five
greatest records of all time. But for us, that's what
Nearer my God feels like. We're realizing what this band
(31:42):
actually could sound like, where we can jump off and
maybe make something like a kid A or maybe a
Hail to the Thief. And props to Kara Murphy for
recognizing that Hale the Thief kicks ass. Eric Hudson also
sort of doubled down on these claims about their potential
as a band, saying that they intentionally made this as
complicated as humanly possible. Hudson is sort of, as Heyden says,
(32:06):
Hudson is the Johnny Greenwood to Connor Murphy's tom Yorke
if we're sticking with the radio head analogy. Hudson writes
a lot of the music and co produced this record.
As I said with Chris Walla, he quit his job
to focus on writing this album full time, and the
writing process for Near My God consisted of Hudson going
(32:27):
to his basement every day to write down ideas, then
piece those ideas together into songs, and then he showed
those the rest of the band, and those ideas obviously
didn't always stay the same, like the title track, which
we heard off the top of the episode, which started
as basically a straightforward rock song before morphing into what
it sort of eventually became, which Stephen Heyden compared to
(32:50):
M eighty three and the nineteen seventy five which I
don't know but sure, sorry that was Ian Cohen compared that,
but still I don't know. Hudson said that it was
really a writing process demoing with some of these songs.
We haven't actually played them together live yet even now,
and that was set around the time of release of
the record. They were also motivated to write a record
(33:10):
that they might not be able to play live because,
as Stephen Hyden pointed out, the band was actually getting
tired of people coming up from them at shows and
telling them how much better they were live than on record. Yes,
so they decided to kind of fuck with that a
little bit. And this experimentation was met with support but
(33:30):
trepidation from the band's label. As Connor Murphy told weis
Fred Feldman who runs Triple Crown is somewhere in this target.
I guess he was being interviewed in a target. He's
not standing next to me right now or anything, but
the amount of support he gave us on this thing
was insane. We could tell all along the process that
there was a lot of it that he didn't really like.
When it came to what we were showing him with demos,
(33:52):
he would say things like, look, I know you're not
going to listen to me anyway, but I'm nervous about
the direction you're going here in terms of people who
like your band. That's a scary thing to hear. But
we just buckled down and said, we're going for it.
These are the songs we want to write if we're
trying to cater to anyone other than ourselves here. This
is going to be a half assed record, a record
full of half measures, and we wanted to go all
(34:15):
the way with this because we'd already put so much
time into it. And one of the songs that probably
exemplifies this the best in terms of being intentionally obtuse
or at least hard to replicate live, is the incredibly
layered song Heartbeats.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Never Taste of Fear, godved in the fun brand, the
Farm of Servetons set it up.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
Second Money, we can say a game, why are you
really want.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Training?
Speaker 11 (35:29):
You know.
Speaker 7 (35:37):
You are not.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Stop playing?
Speaker 1 (36:09):
And they really nail these soundtrack y track opens it.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, they're very cinematic.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Got to be honest, I thought you were. I thought
you were leading us into five cups with the way
you teed up that last part there.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
That was sort of I'm about to talk about five cups,
But that was the Those were the two Those were
the two songs that I do think are representative of, like,
let's make the most ridiculous stuff we can and the
most ub to some difficult songs we can produce. Murphy
said of Heartbeats that that song is actually made up
of way too many parts to actually capture live. That
(36:45):
being said, there's still an energy to that song that
can be even better live. The chorus is this cool
kind of floating thing on record, but live we realize, oh,
this can be a really powerful rock thing and kind
of different than what it sounds like on record. To
your point about five Cups up, one of the major
influences to this record that at first I thought was
surprising but then thinking about sort of late twenty ten's
(37:07):
Emo is maybe not that surprising was Frank Ocean's Blonde
Blonde came out in the summer of twenty sixteen, which
was right in the middle of Foxing's tour and when
they were starting to write this record and it was
played consistently in their van. Eric Hudson said that the
way he wrote songs, he didn't necessarily care about conventional
pop structure or four on the floor beats. It was
(37:29):
someone really pushing himself and really spilling his heart out
for everyone. So they tried to incorporate some of the
ideas that they heard in Frank Ocean's music, although not
always to a point that worked for them, although they
have said it did sort of open their minds about
where they could go. This is where I was going
with five Cups, which is a nine minute song that
I think kind of makes up the center of the record,
(37:51):
if that makes sense, because it's kind of in the
middle of it. Yeah, for sure, that song originally included
trap beats. Eric Hudson said, five Cups at one point
veered into hip hop trap beats and booming basslines. We
listened back to it and we were like this too much.
This doesn't make any sense. We'd be appropriating trap culture
and that's not only inappropriate musically, but also sonically. Sorry,
(38:11):
this is Connor Murphy, not Eric Hudson. He said, it's
a culture and a genre that's so far removed from us,
who sit in our basement and play D and D.
We truly have no business doing that. And then regarding
sort of what we were I was alluding to earlier
about the lyrics and the personal stuff, Murphy said that
we're very paranoid and fearful people. Rather than writing about
(38:33):
love and relationships on this record, we focused a lot
more on the anxiety and paranoia and control and fear
that the world's going to end. That's what we thought
about more than anything on this record, mostly because we
were reading the news every day. And I guess the
only truly, I don't know if that's right way to
phrase it, the deepest personal connection I guess that Murphy
(38:56):
drew from the lyrics on this record was his Catholic upbringing,
and he said to Wece regarding that I was raised
Catholic and then turned my back pretty fucking hard on it.
But being raised in Catholic school. That stuff never leaves you,
even if you don't believe in it. It really is
ingrained in you. Nothing feels as scary to me as
revelations or Biblical references because they were the horror stories
(39:18):
I was told as a child, where you know what
hell is like and what the end of the world
will be like, what sin is and where it gets you.
So when it comes to telling a scary story, I
think the biggest influence I have is that stuff the Bible,
because it's the scariest book in the world to me.
So the idea of heaven and all of that, it's
kind of a breath of fresh air every once in
a while, like, oh, at least then they throw you
(39:38):
this bone. If you do the right thing, it works out.
It's good. I mean, my personal belief is that heaven
and hell are states of mind. But being shot called
at the gates of it is kind of like seeing
happiness right in front of you and being stopped by something,
especially yourself. And the song that he is referring to
is the song responsible for the opening lyrics Today for Us,
(40:00):
and the first track on the record that is the
most directly referencing his Catholic upbringing, and that is also
the song that Mike Shinoda remixed for their remix ep
and that is Grand Paradise.
Speaker 7 (40:13):
I can be Roman.
Speaker 9 (40:19):
When don't starving fish.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
When travel, I can't seem.
Speaker 7 (40:27):
To live anything.
Speaker 9 (40:34):
Here from.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
It's me.
Speaker 9 (40:45):
Do you cost stumming?
Speaker 5 (40:47):
So shis love lovely.
Speaker 9 (40:55):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Some wrecked to once were sleeping in the kettle black again.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Never cold Bob the bab Sus stood up the shot
cart of the gates.
Speaker 11 (41:24):
Twenty five years and I've been shy shakes and decide
shot sits down and somewhat bread and.
Speaker 7 (41:35):
Down my neck same.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
I can't call s cat why gospa.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
In life and love time sadle take.
Speaker 7 (41:54):
Time time from.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
The side, so Jake. I have a lot of thoughts
on this song. The first is that a guy named
Murphy writing a song this good about his Catholic upbringing
with an opening lyric like that, it's just a chef's kiss.
(42:20):
Had you had talked about five cups a little bit?
And I kind of wish they kept the trap beats
on there because I feel like a nine minute epic
that also has a nine minute epic emo song that
also has trap beats is like a band's best attempt
to get both of us on board.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
That's true. Maybe you'd be a bigger fan of this
record if they had kept it on.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, I mean again, I'm not a not a fan
of the record, just not to the degree you are.
And you know, I just I just want a little
low peeps sprinkled in there.
Speaker 10 (42:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
My other thought is that I really like Shinoda's mix
of it.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, me too. I didn't really know what to expect
from it, because like I'm not a huge fort minor guy,
but yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay, So Jake, that is what do we get through?
We got through a bunch of songs that kind of
I think give people the idea of where they were
coming from, especially the interplay between Murphy and Hudson and
writing these songs and what went into a lot of
kind of setting this anxious but not relational anxiety tone
(43:20):
to this album. And I think you know you can.
Whereas maybe that makes the album a little tougher to
pull out individual songs than some other bands in this
genre or emo songs in general, I do feel like
it makes it so that you can really like sit
in this album if that makes sense, you can kind
of now that I'm saying fetishize the angst or soak
(43:42):
in it or anything, but I do really think you
can kind of turn this on and sync into it
a little bit, and if that makes sense in any way.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
All right, Jake. We're going to talk about how other
people receive this album, as well as the aftermath for foxing,
some of the bands in their sphere that we wanted
to mention, and all that other stuff that comes in
our last segment after this. All right, Jake, So you
(44:23):
were obviously that's the big note here is that Nearer
My God was what was it number one or number
two on Jake Goldsby's Best of twenty eighteen?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Number one maybe number one.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's you know, we're going to go into how this
album was received and how it did commercially, but that's
the big honor, the number one on Jake Goldsby's Year End.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And I think I can't remember now, but I think
I had it at number three on my decade list.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
I think that's uh. I mean, I guess I had
Phoebe just as high. Although we did a Phoebe album
that is not and it wasn't on that list obviously
because it didn't exist yet when we did that episode.
But that's good. It makes it certainly makes some sense
that when we did a best of the decade list
that we'd start checking off some of the albums on
(45:11):
that list on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
The thing is it's fun to talk about music you like.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, Jake, what did other people think of this album?
How was it received?
Speaker 4 (45:21):
So?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
According to Metacritic, Nearer My God was received with quote
universal acclaim. It has an eighty two rating on Metacritic.
It received an AS from The av Club, nine out
of ten from Drowned in Sound, seven out of ten
from Exclaim, eight out of ten from Line of Best Fit,
and an eight point zero from Pitchfork. Although the best
New Music title eluded it writ in four Pitchfork Ian Cohen,
(45:45):
in his review said the title track could go Moonshot
for Moonshot with M eighty three in the nineteen seventy five.
He also said Nearer My God is likewise a closed system,
bound with melodic and lyrical elite motifs, but designed more
like a multimedia extravaganza. It's an album of complicated, often
elusive views on the illusion of control and apocalypse that
(46:07):
always feels impending but never arrives. And for Exclaim, Beth
Boles said, well, Foxing haven't totally abandoned their previous post
punk roots. Nearer My God clings tight to experimental synth rock.
This album has the kind of confusion we associate with Radiohead.
Sometimes it's rock, sometimes it's punk, sometimes it's just noise.
(46:29):
And in terms of chart performance, as I said earlier,
it peaked at number two on the US Vinyl Chart,
number four on the Top Taste Maker's Album Chart, number
seven on the Independent Album's Chart, and number four on
the heat Seekers Albums Chart. All of those charts are
Billboard charts. And then post Near My God, the band
(46:51):
obviously went back on tour tour the album. I missed
them at their Lee's Palace show here, but did see
them at the Mod Club Rip I think in April
of two thousand and nineteen. I don't remember, but it's
a very good show, even though it's way too short.
And then this past September, Ricky Sampson left the band,
leaving Murphy Hudson and Hellwig as the only current official members.
(47:15):
They do have three touring members with them. In his
farewell post, Sampson said, Hey, this is Ricky. After nine years,
I'm finally ready to make some new life moves. With
the recent pandemic, it's shown some light on where my
current priorities lie. I love my bandmates, I love touring,
but it's time for me to move on and start
a new chapter of my life. I've been going to
(47:37):
school and finally accepting stability into my life. Big love
to my bandmates and their new album coming soon. Big
love to all the friends I've made throughout a lifetime
of touring. And finally, thank you to everyone who's supported
us through these years. See you all on the other side.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
So, Dick, what I'm curious about is, I guess I
have two questions to kind of wrap this up for
you before we get into the song ranking and picking
one for the mixt The first is that we joke
a lot about this, but what would you like if
you were trying to explain Fox into someone, What would
you classify them as? Because I feel like they're one
of the most difficult bands that we've done to put
(48:12):
into a genre. Yeah, like I would say emo, but
like I've said, I saw them in prepping for this,
I saw them get indie post rock mathrock. I don't
think mathrock applies, at least not to nearer my God.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I definitely wouldn't call the math rock. I feel like
the Albatross is definitely an EMO record, like a post
punk emo record.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I would call the first the first record, Okay, yeah,
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, even the second one a little bit. And I
don't know what I would call my God. To be honest,
I'm sure our emo has thoughts, but I just I
generally pigeonhole them into emo just because it's easiest. But
I really don't in the emo.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
I guess yeah, sure, experimentally, we don't need to give them.
I was just wondering if you had a good, good answer.
My other question, Jake, is do you have a good
sense of why maybe Foxing doesn't hit for me as
much as bands in their sphere, like the World's Beautiful
Place and the Hotel Year Because I can't really figure
(49:08):
it out, I wonder if.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Part of it and I'm only speaking for me because
I know there's many bands and that we've talked about
both on the show and just between the two of
us sort of in the new emo genre that hit
for you that don't hit for me, And oftentimes I
find it's because of the vocals, And I wonder if
that's it for you, just because I think Connormrivy is
(49:33):
an incredible vocalist, but he isn't what I would call
yours standard new emo vocalist. Yeah, that's fair sense, but
I don't know why they I don't know what. But
you're also not like a big radiohead guy either.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yeah, I mean again, they're like passive fandom, like yeah,
like I appreciate the music and I know it's good,
but it's not something I sit with.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Uh, exactly a whole lot. And I wonder if just
the because that like experimental side of them. It's not
that you don't like experimental music. But I wonder if
you call me.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
A musical prude jake.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
But I will say I am. I would have thought
that you would have been really into the Albatross. That
feels like a Blake record to me.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Now, maybe I'll go back to it and I'll listen
to it some more. Maybe the radiohead comparisons that they
need to show up on an episode of a show
and say where that band boxing in a fake British accent.
All right, Jake, it's now time to pick out our
favorite songs from this album with the purpose of selecting
one for our mixtape. I don't know. I mean we
(50:38):
got we got to a bunch of them in the episode.
I'm going to give you my top three. I have
a Grand Paradise, Bastardizer, Heartbeats as my three favorites, so
I was happy with your picks. I think i'd have
five Cups next, but yeah, where are you at?
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I don't know. I go back and forth on my
favorite song on this album a lot, as you tend
to do with your favorites. I think Game Show is
probably my favorite, even though it's not the one I
listened to the most, just because it is kind of
so out there and unexpected. I also really like heart Beats,
and Heartbeats is an amazing song. And I really like
a song we didn't talk about today called Won't Drown
(51:14):
because I think it's got a really cool sort of
R and B influence to it that maybe that's where
the Frank Ocean influenced. But yeah, I would say those
are my in some order. Those are probably my three,
but on any given day, you could also talk me
into Lambert or Grand Paradise or the title track as well.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
All right, well, what are we going to throw on
the old mixtape?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Then, Jake, I say, let's go Heartbeats. It was on
both pretty high for both of us. We both like it.
It's good song.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
You will have no arguments here the weekly me typing
into your headphones heart Beats, heads to the mixtape. All right,
at this point in the podcast, first we want to
thank producer Dyllan for all his great work. This is
maybe one of the cleaner episodes, so only a three
quarter thank you for you this week, Dylan. There's no nonsense,
(52:04):
No John Cullen derailing us, no Steve derailing us. Nothing.
Please give us the old rate or review and subscribe
if you're not already subscribed, and if you're not already subscribed,
either welcome or what are you doing only occasionally listening
and not subscribing and helping our numbers?
Speaker 5 (52:20):
You jerk?
Speaker 2 (52:22):
All right?
Speaker 1 (52:22):
I just want to say, Jake, j great job. This
is a fun episode and I thought you did a
wonderful job in the a chair leading us through it.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Thanks man, I'm tired now.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah, Well, the next recording you can just sit back.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
You know, it's true.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
This is the benefit of doing two at a time
is one I don't have to talk. One you don't
have to talk. It's great, it's kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Crash On, please try to fish
I can be romantic when I'm starving for sleep when
I try, but I can't seem to remember anything from
the latest episode of Columbia House Party. Jake, what's up man?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Not much? How you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm all right. It's very warm in my apartment right now,
which is.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's quite warm in mine as well? I should have.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's a weird post workout, so my temperature is all
over the place today. I don't know. Will Rue try
to get out the window?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
No? But like our only windows are like balcony doors.
But I feel like it'll just be noisy ruin our
great show.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That makes sense. Yeah, so instead of Rue ruining it
or the noise ruining it, why don't we ruin it?
Is Rue short for Ruiner, by the way, is that?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No, it's short for Rufus.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh that's even better. And not Rufeo either, damn.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But maybe maybe it's Rufeo now. But named after the band,
not the character from the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yes, of course, named after the former topic of a
Columbia House Party single, rest in Peace? Uh, Jake? I like?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I think I didn't. I'm not happy with the way
I did the intro today, but the I can be
romantic when I'm starving for Sleep is among my favorite
opening lyrics that we've used so far.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I was hoping that you would do it in the falsetto.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But no, I cannot. I cannot do that, and I
will not subject people that you know. You know how
iPhones have that like headphone safety option where if the
noise is too bad, it'll block it out or minimize
it for you. I feel like that's not be working.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
With That's fair. It is a tough false out of
a hit.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I would say, well, you could probably hit You're a
much more change on your singing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think I would. I was able to hit it
when I was younger, but I my voice has been
ruined by uh life, so my arrange is much lower
than it used to be.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's okay. I don't know if the musical theater opportunity
is coming through at any point.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I feel like I'm probably safe for at least a year.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you're okay for right now. Just drink some tea
and throw some tea on it. You'll be fine. Jake,
that opening lyric, I can be romantic when I'm starting
for sleep. First of all, great line, great snapshot of
my general vibe lately where I've been having a lot
of trouble sleeping and I've seen you know, I feel it,
and it's a good it's a good introduction to my
(02:46):
vibe with today's band where No, I can't do the
falsetto and maybe don't appreciate the falsetto quite as much
as some other fans of this band, but I do
love the songwriting here, Jake, what do you got for us?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So this week we're doing an album that is just
for me, even though I think a lot of people
like it and it is did quite well. So today
we're doing a Jake album. We'll get into this little
more in reception, but this was my favorite album of
twenty eighteen. And today we are talking about Foxing's nearer My.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
God, what's the.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Ay? Yes, it's a ba.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
This is uh not what I would have expected. I
expected we would do Foxing at some point. I was
a little curious which Foxing album you'd want to do
of the three of theirs, and I would not have
a expected at the outside of this podcast that when
we first dabbled with newer albums, Foxing would be the
second most recent that we've done so.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, actually that's a good point. I think to your
first point. Could have picked any of the three, I think,
but I think because they're a band that maybe aren't
as historically rich as some of the others we've talked about,
just because, as you said, they are a newer band,
doing the most recent makes the most sense just frankly,
(05:28):
it gives me more material to research. So that was.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Perfect for me. Well plus two, I mean, I think,
and obviously we'll get into this. I think there are
some interesting tweaks to their sound as they go along,
and like you know, they're very much one of those
bands that I feel like the first ten episodes of
this podcast, it came up in every episode where we
kind of like rolled our eyes at that emo tree
from the Emo subredit. Well, you trace Foxing across these
(05:55):
three albums, and you might hit six or seven different
branches on that tree, depending on your perspective on what
genre they are. So I don't have a lot of
connection here. Foxing is one of those bands that, you know,
you look at the other bands that I listened to,
and you look at the other people I share taste with,
and you would think that they'd be one of my
favorites just based on that, you know, recommend if I
(06:16):
like kind of analysis, and I do, like I said,
really like the songwriting, really like the lyricism, and I
wouldn't say that I dislike them, but it's more just
a passive appreciation than fandom. This is not you know
that it was your favorite album of twenty eighteen. I
think it was pretty low down on my list. Don't
think it cracked my decade list. But all three of
their albums are definitely albums that I listened to, and
(06:39):
you know, going back to it these last couple of days,
like Man, there are a lot of desolate winter Instagram
captions on this album, which you know, now I can
go a hotel year for the for the autumn, and
I can go to Foxing for the winter time. So
I'm I'm a big fan of the songwriting here, if
not necessarily a huge huge fan of the band in general.
(07:01):
Where I was going with that is the other thing
I'm interested to trace toward the end is, you know,
like I said, there are a lot of bands in
their sphere that I really like that we'll talk about,
and some bands that they've toured with when they were
coming up and it makes a lot of sense, and
for whatever reason, Foxing has haven't clicked for me quite
as much as as those bands. It's similar to I think,
(07:22):
not to get bogged down in just the names of bands,
but it's similar to Fleet Foxes, I think, where everyone
else who likes the music that I like really likes
Fleet Foxes, and I like the song writing, but I
just can't get there with the music anyway. I'm rambling
and spending two minutes at the top about how I
find this album to be good not great, which is
not the spirit of this podcast. I just am trying
(07:45):
to set up why Jake is going to carry so
much of this, because Jake cares very deeply about Near
my God.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, they're a band that snuck up on me. I
guess in a way I got into them around the
lease of their second A Dealer. I actually don't remember
how I got into it. I think it might have
been a Twitter band that like, as we've talked before,
like people whose music taste I like mentioned them and
I was like, I'll check that out. Upon first listen,
(08:14):
it didn't like, I liked it, but didn't really hit
for me like I think it was on my twenty
fifteen list, it was like an honorable mention, even like
it barely made the list, and then it just kind
of stuck with me and I kept going back to
it without Like whenever I was kind of like wandering
around going somewhere in Toronto, it was like where where
(08:36):
what do I want to listen to? It's like, Oh,
I guess I'll listen to that Foxing record again. Also
helped that at the time, I wasn't in my favorite
place personally, and Dealer is a great sad album to
sort of commiserate with, and yeah, I just they kind
of stuck with me, and then I got really into
them over the next couple of years, listening to the
(08:58):
first two records and kind of had this feeling to
myself that they were going to do something insane with
the next one. And then they put out Nearer My God,
and I was like, oh, Okay, that's kind of what
I was not what I was expecting, but kind of
what I was expecting. And then they've just slowly turned
into one of my like six or seven favorite bands
(09:19):
now and I've just become a huge, huge fan of theirs,
and I think and I'm just always into whatever they're
gonna do.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, it's fun to have favorite bands that you like
and get really excited for Shocker. This is the one
benefit of I think, getting to throw the odd recent
album into the mix.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Obviously we did Phoebe Bridger's Punisher, which Phoebe Bridgers is
one of my favorite artists, and that was my favorite
album of twenty twenty. You know, we did Lord Who's
twenty seventeen and uh, you know popped a huge number
for us because of Spotify's algorithm, which was nice. But
it's also it's just nice to I like when we
jump around timelines a little bit, both because I think
(09:59):
it gives a good you know, it helps kind of
paint the picture of I guess the three eras of
music we're dealing with, the like before we listen to
music groups that influence our bands, the bands we come
up on, and the bands we like now. And then
I do think that it's just, you know, it's a
different style of episode, and it's a different style of
preparation for the episode. It's a different style of fandom
when it's a current band who's three albums in and
(10:22):
there's more curiosity with a band like Foxing, who are
very much it feels like, on the edge of being,
you know, a more well known band. I think we
are going to talk about their formation. We're going to
talk about their evolution through Dealer, when Jay came on
board and into Near My God, the album we're talking
about today. All that and a bunch more after this.
(11:00):
All right, Jake, give us the background on Foxing. The
only thing that I am aware of, or sorry, I
shouldn't say that. I obviously prepped for this episode and
read through your notes, but if I'm playing the character
of guy you're explaining this to The only thing I
was really aware of pre Dealer with Foxing is that
Modern Baseball did a tour that they were on, and
(11:21):
that tour didn't come to Toronto, and at the time
I was upset that Modern Baseball were not coming to
Toronto as part of their tour. I don't believe I
had any concept of who Foxing were at that point.
I think this is twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen. Anyway,
hit us man, give us the fill us in on Foxing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So, Foxing formed in twenty eleven following the dissolution of
the group Hunter Gatherer, which was a post rock band
that featured Josh Cole, John Helwig, and Matthew Peeva. They
were joined by Connor Murphy of the band Family Mit
on vocals and Ben Hellman of Eagle Scout on guitar.
By a fall of twenty eleven, Ben Hellman had left
(11:59):
the group and Jim Fitzpatrick took his place. This was
a common theme for the early days of Foxing. They
briefly considered calling themselves she Hums in Swarms, but eventually
settled on Foxing, which I am very glad that they did,
because I definitely would not have listened to a band
called she Hums and Swarms. In January twenty twelve, they
recorded their first batch of songs called The Old Songs EP.
(12:22):
Following this, Piva and Fitzpatrick left the group and they
were replaced by Samuel Nauman and Ricky Sampson. Nowman would
leave shortly after this and was replaced by Thomas Peeney,
who was also in Family Might with Connor Murphy. The
Old Songs EP was released in August of twenty and twelve,
and following that in February of twenty thirteen, they released
(12:44):
split EPs with Send Away Stranger and Japanese Breakfast. Peeney
then left the group and was replaced by Eric Hudson,
also formerly of Family Mite. And In twenty thirteen, Foxing
embarked on their first tour of the Midwest, and on
the final night of that tour, they were signed to
Count Your Lucky Stars Records. After signing to the label,
(13:06):
they went into the studio to record their debut album,
The Albatross, which was released in November of twenty thirteen.
I don't know if you can call this song a
hit or if it's just a song that's very popular
in like the new emo world. For lack of a
better term, the song was on at least a third
(13:27):
track on The Albatross. Ian Cohen ranked this as the
sixty ninth greatest emo song of all time on a
Vulture list that maybe we'll talk about one day, and
that song is called Rory.
Speaker 8 (13:57):
Roger In a sudden we took to the scene before
you cut of froted, be treated a snow.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Capped water and they had no shucked him up while
land was still bead and the.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Glooming You and I swear that flat bird the Battle
of Belms.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
If you broo.
Speaker 8 (14:22):
Donny and out swearing a good man, swearing that gun man.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
So you love me back, sir? Do you love me back?
Speaker 7 (14:49):
S m.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
M.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
That's a good uh. Create the soundscape kind of intro
truly the opening credits of a thriller movie that takes
place in a rural town.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, that first record is really like soundtrackie.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, I think they're not just good. Hey, they're doing
the the backwards resonor the Yeah started starting with the
soundtrack stuff and then going into good albums instead of
the opposite. All right, post Rory, post the Albatross, the Albatross, Clearly,
these guys are just huge golf fans.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah boo. Ian Cohen wrote of Rory in that Vulture article,
he said, as with most young artists, Foxing's lofty, already
ambitions uncomfortably coexisted with the ugly teenage anngs that inspired
their earliest lyrics, and judging from the hallowed stature of
Rory in their catalog, it's clear what won out. In
the beginning, the narrator of Rory is poisonously entitled, envious
(16:28):
and self loathing, a dangerous mix in a genre where
fans often don't assume poetic license. These are also wholly
relatable and valid feelings that no amount of do better
discourse will strike from the human experience. Anyone who's felt
that way can look back in disgust. Foxing have admitted
they kind of hate rory, but there's no denying its
potency in the moment. They still use it to close
(16:50):
out nearly every show. So Following the release and semi
success in the scene, as the kids call it, of
The Albatross, it did not chart, but was released very
strong reviews, the band signed to Triple Crown Records in
twenty fourteen, who then released a remastered version of The
Albatross that may. They spent most of twenty fourteen on
(17:11):
the road supporting bands like Sea Haven and The Hotel Here,
as well as tours with brand New and Modern Baseball.
As Blake said earlier, in twenty fifteen, they toured in
support of Me Without You, and The Albatross was released
in the UK. Their second album, Dealer, which we were
kind of talking about earlier, was released that fall on
Triple Crown and reached number three on the Billboard Vinyl
(17:32):
Albums Chart. A thing we'll get into a little later
that I find really interesting is that Foxing's albums sell
really well physically on vinyl, Which.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Do you think that's an album art thing or just
like their demo is just the exact you know, kind
of the exact window of people who listen to vinyl, assume.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I assume it's the latter, But like Dealer hit three
and Near My God hit number two on the vinyl charts,
and I have no reasoning for that. I just find
it interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, you know, they got good placement. I rotate this too,
I would guarantee it.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, right on that front shelf. They spent much of
twenty sixteen also on the road, including an instant where
their van was stolen, and they also were involved in
a car accident with a semi truck I believe, And
in twenty seventeen, founding member Josh Cole left the band
to pursue a career in filmmaking, which I actually think
(18:30):
was kind of a cool move. If you've ever watched
their music video for the song Glass Coughs off of Dealer,
it's an eleven minute short film basically, and it's amazing,
and Josh Cole directed it, so I hope that he
does cool stuff with film in the future, so heading
into making Nearer My God, the band said that they
(18:50):
set out to make this record bigger and more bombastic
than anything they'd done before. And what better way to
make your album bigger than anything you've done before than
high ring Chris Walla to co produce him. Chris Walla
obviously has come up thirty times on this.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Show I Guess Columbia's Party Hall of Famer Chris Walla.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Connor Murphy told Stereo Gum. We tried to bite off
more than we could chew on everything. We knew that's
what we were doing, and we wanted this to be
bigger than we were capable of, especially when we knew
that Chris was going to be involved with it. Chris
Walla actually and the band's relationship began after their car accident.
Willa reached out to the band to offer his professional
(19:32):
or personal help afterwards, and these conversations eventually turned into
the band recording a cover of Dido's White Flag with
Chris Walla, with the intention of income being used to
repair the van. But right after the election of the
Shithead in the White House or I Guess No Longer
in the White House, the band donated all the extra
(19:53):
proceeds from that single to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
Over the next little bit, the band and Waala kept
in touch and started sending him their rough sketches of
the songs that would eventually become Nearer My God. Chris
Walla said that this was a massive sorting process through
the sketches provide to him, but also something so beautiful
(20:15):
and heartbreaking that I couldn't articulate it exactly. Eric Hudson
co produced the record with Chris Walla and told Sierro
Gum that the band loves each other but are always
at war in terms of differing opinion and tastes, and
Connor Murphy credits Wala for getting the band to a
place where one hard thing that we've gotten completely used
to only on this record is trusting each other and
(20:36):
respecting each other's opinions on things. One of the ways
that the band incorporated some of their wilder ideas that
were helped to be rained in by Chris Walla was
on the song Bastardizer with its bagpipes.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Dad phone man, cocktail, the girl she shot, disengage, she
stays on, and get up your tents because you're just
(21:21):
holding your secret texts, mothering names in your own phone
picture frase, and you think I must not remember.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
You.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
I think I must slot remember.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
But dude, it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Was not love a bagpipe.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I love a bag apparently so does Connor Murphy, and
the rest of the band not so much.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Oh, come on, you think a guy with the last
name Murphy is not gonna like some bagpipes? What are you?
You've never been to a funeral.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Before, phenetically predisposed to like it. This song was inspired
by a joke about a Vampire Weekend song that doesn't
feature bagpipes. Murphy also can't remember what the joke was,
but he insisted on there being bagpipes in this song,
so much so that when the band objected to the idea,
he offered to pay out of pocket if the song
(22:55):
didn't make the final cut of the record. They went
and found a great Highland bagpiper in St. Louis who
specialized in funerals, But then they found out that bagpipes
can only play in one key, and it was not
key that this song was in. Chris Wallace said of
this whole discussion, I don't think I threw anything, but
I definitely yelled. A couple of times. We traded more
(23:15):
text messages about how to best capture the bagpipes and
deliver them than any other element on the record, which
that's kind of the whole point of that. But I
think it's funny that bagpipes cause such a stir on
a very good song too.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, I mean, also it's bagpipes on one song like
let's It's not like he was like, let's make a
bagpipe core album.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
I mean, let's wait, who knows what the next one
will be.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, don't don't let him near Steve at all the
weird non music stuff those guys are be coming up with.
I guess not non music, but just the Hey, this
is what our band is. Let's play something completely it
doesn't sound like it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes, Steve's next album will be bagpipe heavy. Notice I
said Steve and not pop.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Anyway, So the tone of this record and the title
obviously come from the song Nearer My God to the
which is famously the song that the band on the
Titanic was playing as the ship went down. The album
was also inspired by an unearthed doomsday video recorded by
Ted Turner in the eighties, to be played on CNN
(24:19):
while the World was Ending. It's also scored to the
same song. At some point in the writing of the album,
Murphy found this video and used it as his muse
for writing the record, leaning into the apocalyptic feeling of
the song, the video, and just being alive in twenty
seventeen and twenty eighteen in general. He told diy Mag
(24:40):
I went to the band and told them we should
use this kind of imagery in the lyrics, song names,
or video or something. It's this insane, real life nightmare
that Ted Turner put together. It's one of the scariest
things I've ever seen. The band, although at first, didn't
actually notice that they were writing these songs with a
common theme until about halfway through recording when they started
(25:01):
seeing the songs take in shape and realized that that
was sort of the general feel of the record. And
Murphy also points out that it's hard to not write
things that have an apocalyptic feel when it feels like
we're at the end of the world all the time.
He also says the band felt the same way about
their career in the band as they did about The
Stay of the World throughout the recording process, saying we
(25:22):
felt many times during the making of this record that
we weren't going to be a band anymore, that this
was the end of our careers. It was us at
the end of making music in general. We gave up.
At different points of the record, some of us felt
like we gave up on our lives, like we couldn't
find that lust for life anymore, which like sounds really dark,
but also I do think is pretty consistent with the feel,
(25:46):
the overall feel of this record. And I think it's
kind of cool that they drew from so many different
apocalyptic places and personal places to make this record, because
I know one of the I don't know if criticism
is the right word, but one of the things I
know some people didn't like about this record was it
was much less personal feeling than some of their earlier work,
(26:07):
when in fact it's just sort of more obliquely personal.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because, like you know, you think, oh,
an emo band or this kind of songwriting in general,
and you I think a lot of people default to
like the love relationship aspect of angst and anxiety and
stuff like that, and I think that this is still
a very very anxious record. It's just you know more,
(26:33):
this is me gesturing broadly at the world around us
right now. This is an album for twenty twenty one,
that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, absolutely it is, and maybe not exactly in the
way they intended it to be, but it certainly applies
to today. Despite everything you just said, they didn't set
out to make this a particularly political record, so to speak, because,
as Murphy told DIY Mag, we're dummies. We're not politically
(27:02):
savvy people. We don't have any real solutions to offer.
So rather than writing a record where we're speaking specifically
about what is happening in the world, we realize the
best way to channel all that is to speak about
what it feels like to live in a time like this.
And while this DIY mag article singles out the lead single, Slapstick,
as playing into these themes, specifically the frivolity of existence,
(27:24):
to me, the song that best exemplifies these feelings is
the first song I heard from this record and the
one that got me really excited for it, and that
is Game.
Speaker 10 (27:33):
Shark Swan Dove into the concas.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Can you hear in the first parts a test.
Speaker 9 (28:04):
But it doesn't gettin a gat.
Speaker 7 (28:06):
The Billy.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Wants to go a lot lamp. Then on the range
of the heat.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
Soft goods waving on the vulture come and give them.
Speaker 9 (28:35):
Me and served you to know that you're an entire
They don't try to.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Find it, said the test the long coat. I gets
my cows as all.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
But it doesn't get gay.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Did you have a question for you about Game Shark?
It is that song titled after like the actual Game Shark,
you would plug into your Sega Genesis to get the codes? Yes, amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
As I had said, I was kind of waiting for
like their new one because I was really excited for
what it could be. And then I heard this and
I was like, where are my sad boys? But then
I was like, wait, this song fucking rules into it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Also, let's just be clear that while I understand the
desire to use Game Shark, having like a thing you
could hook up to your game that auto inserted the
cheat codes feels like bullshit to me, like you gotta
hunt for up, up, down down, or at the very
(30:08):
least like once you got to PlayStation era, like you
gotta look that stuff up on the internet. I feel
like there was no Obviously, if you're using cheat codes,
you're cheating. But I feel like, at least if you
have to work for it by finding it somewhere and
not just having it automatically fired up anyway, it rubs
you wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You still have to put the codes in. I think
you just.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Like left it hooked up to your to your.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
To your point about cheating. That's actually why this song
is called game Shark, as it's a line of cheat cartridges.
The title is an allusion to cheating, Death and the Devil.
So at first I thought they just named it that
as like that was their working title because they're like nerds.
And then I found that out, yes, and I was like, oh,
that's funnier.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Cool, that's big Bill and Ted vibes. It's extremely outsmarting
the deth of finding games you can beat the Devil at.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So obviously this song is much more experimental than their
previous work, and that came up a lot in sort
of the pre release press for this album, especially in
an article written by Stephen Hyden for up Rocks where
he and Connor Murphy kind of try to compare and
align Foxing with another band we've talked about, which is
(31:22):
that band, radio Head. In this interview, Murphy compared The
Albatross to Pablo Honey, Dealer to the Bends, and Nearer
my God's Okay Computer, before clarifying this is no okay computer.
That thing is what like one of the top five
greatest records of all time. But for us, that's what
Nearer my God feels like. We're realizing what this band
(31:42):
actually could sound like, where we can jump off and
maybe make something like a kid A or maybe a
Hail to the Thief. And props to Kara Murphy for
recognizing that Hale the Thief kicks ass. Eric Hudson also
sort of doubled down on these claims about their potential
as a band, saying that they intentionally made this as
complicated as humanly possible. Hudson is sort of, as Heyden says,
(32:06):
Hudson is the Johnny Greenwood to Connor Murphy's tom Yorke
if we're sticking with the radio head analogy. Hudson writes
a lot of the music and co produced this record.
As I said with Chris Walla, he quit his job
to focus on writing this album full time, and the
writing process for Near My God consisted of Hudson going
(32:27):
to his basement every day to write down ideas, then
piece those ideas together into songs, and then he showed
those the rest of the band, and those ideas obviously
didn't always stay the same, like the title track, which
we heard off the top of the episode, which started
as basically a straightforward rock song before morphing into what
it sort of eventually became, which Stephen Heyden compared to
(32:50):
M eighty three and the nineteen seventy five which I
don't know but sure, sorry that was Ian Cohen compared that,
but still I don't know. Hudson said that it was
really a writing process demoing with some of these songs.
We haven't actually played them together live yet even now,
and that was set around the time of release of
the record. They were also motivated to write a record
(33:10):
that they might not be able to play live because,
as Stephen Hyden pointed out, the band was actually getting
tired of people coming up from them at shows and
telling them how much better they were live than on record. Yes,
so they decided to kind of fuck with that a
little bit. And this experimentation was met with support but
(33:30):
trepidation from the band's label. As Connor Murphy told weis
Fred Feldman who runs Triple Crown is somewhere in this target.
I guess he was being interviewed in a target. He's
not standing next to me right now or anything, but
the amount of support he gave us on this thing
was insane. We could tell all along the process that
there was a lot of it that he didn't really like.
When it came to what we were showing him with demos,
(33:52):
he would say things like, look, I know you're not
going to listen to me anyway, but I'm nervous about
the direction you're going here in terms of people who
like your band. That's a scary thing to hear. But
we just buckled down and said, we're going for it.
These are the songs we want to write if we're
trying to cater to anyone other than ourselves here. This
is going to be a half assed record, a record
full of half measures, and we wanted to go all
(34:15):
the way with this because we'd already put so much
time into it. And one of the songs that probably
exemplifies this the best in terms of being intentionally obtuse
or at least hard to replicate live, is the incredibly
layered song Heartbeats.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Never Taste of Fear, godved in the fun brand, the
Farm of Servetons set it up.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
Second Money, we can say a game, why are you
really want.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Training?
Speaker 11 (35:29):
You know.
Speaker 7 (35:37):
You are not.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Stop playing?
Speaker 1 (36:09):
And they really nail these soundtrack y track opens it.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, they're very cinematic.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Got to be honest, I thought you were. I thought
you were leading us into five cups with the way
you teed up that last part there.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
That was sort of I'm about to talk about five cups,
But that was the Those were the two Those were
the two songs that I do think are representative of, like,
let's make the most ridiculous stuff we can and the
most ub to some difficult songs we can produce. Murphy
said of Heartbeats that that song is actually made up
of way too many parts to actually capture live. That
(36:45):
being said, there's still an energy to that song that
can be even better live. The chorus is this cool
kind of floating thing on record, but live we realize, oh,
this can be a really powerful rock thing and kind
of different than what it sounds like on record. To
your point about five Cups up, one of the major
influences to this record that at first I thought was
surprising but then thinking about sort of late twenty ten's
(37:07):
Emo is maybe not that surprising was Frank Ocean's Blonde
Blonde came out in the summer of twenty sixteen, which
was right in the middle of Foxing's tour and when
they were starting to write this record and it was
played consistently in their van. Eric Hudson said that the
way he wrote songs, he didn't necessarily care about conventional
pop structure or four on the floor beats. It was
(37:29):
someone really pushing himself and really spilling his heart out
for everyone. So they tried to incorporate some of the
ideas that they heard in Frank Ocean's music, although not
always to a point that worked for them, although they
have said it did sort of open their minds about
where they could go. This is where I was going
with five Cups, which is a nine minute song that
I think kind of makes up the center of the record,
(37:51):
if that makes sense, because it's kind of in the
middle of it. Yeah, for sure, that song originally included
trap beats. Eric Hudson said, five Cups at one point
veered into hip hop trap beats and booming basslines. We
listened back to it and we were like this too much.
This doesn't make any sense. We'd be appropriating trap culture
and that's not only inappropriate musically, but also sonically. Sorry,
(38:11):
this is Connor Murphy, not Eric Hudson. He said, it's
a culture and a genre that's so far removed from us,
who sit in our basement and play D and D.
We truly have no business doing that. And then regarding
sort of what we were I was alluding to earlier
about the lyrics and the personal stuff, Murphy said that
we're very paranoid and fearful people. Rather than writing about
(38:33):
love and relationships on this record, we focused a lot
more on the anxiety and paranoia and control and fear
that the world's going to end. That's what we thought
about more than anything on this record, mostly because we
were reading the news every day. And I guess the
only truly, I don't know if that's right way to
phrase it, the deepest personal connection I guess that Murphy
(38:56):
drew from the lyrics on this record was his Catholic upbringing,
and he said to Wece regarding that I was raised
Catholic and then turned my back pretty fucking hard on it.
But being raised in Catholic school. That stuff never leaves you,
even if you don't believe in it. It really is
ingrained in you. Nothing feels as scary to me as
revelations or Biblical references because they were the horror stories
(39:18):
I was told as a child, where you know what
hell is like and what the end of the world
will be like, what sin is and where it gets you.
So when it comes to telling a scary story, I
think the biggest influence I have is that stuff the Bible,
because it's the scariest book in the world to me.
So the idea of heaven and all of that, it's
kind of a breath of fresh air every once in
a while, like, oh, at least then they throw you
(39:38):
this bone. If you do the right thing, it works out.
It's good. I mean, my personal belief is that heaven
and hell are states of mind. But being shot called
at the gates of it is kind of like seeing
happiness right in front of you and being stopped by something,
especially yourself. And the song that he is referring to
is the song responsible for the opening lyrics Today for Us,
(40:00):
and the first track on the record that is the
most directly referencing his Catholic upbringing, and that is also
the song that Mike Shinoda remixed for their remix ep
and that is Grand Paradise.
Speaker 7 (40:13):
I can be Roman.
Speaker 9 (40:19):
When don't starving fish.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
When travel, I can't seem.
Speaker 7 (40:27):
To live anything.
Speaker 9 (40:34):
Here from.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
It's me.
Speaker 9 (40:45):
Do you cost stumming?
Speaker 5 (40:47):
So shis love lovely.
Speaker 9 (40:55):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Some wrecked to once were sleeping in the kettle black again.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Never cold Bob the bab Sus stood up the shot
cart of the gates.
Speaker 11 (41:24):
Twenty five years and I've been shy shakes and decide
shot sits down and somewhat bread and.
Speaker 7 (41:35):
Down my neck same.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
I can't call s cat why gospa.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
In life and love time sadle take.
Speaker 7 (41:54):
Time time from.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
The side, so Jake. I have a lot of thoughts
on this song. The first is that a guy named
Murphy writing a song this good about his Catholic upbringing
with an opening lyric like that, it's just a chef's kiss.
(42:20):
Had you had talked about five cups a little bit?
And I kind of wish they kept the trap beats
on there because I feel like a nine minute epic
that also has a nine minute epic emo song that
also has trap beats is like a band's best attempt
to get both of us on board.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
That's true. Maybe you'd be a bigger fan of this
record if they had kept it on.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, I mean again, I'm not a not a fan
of the record, just not to the degree you are.
And you know, I just I just want a little
low peeps sprinkled in there.
Speaker 10 (42:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
My other thought is that I really like Shinoda's mix
of it.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, me too. I didn't really know what to expect
from it, because like I'm not a huge fort minor guy,
but yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay, So Jake, that is what do we get through?
We got through a bunch of songs that kind of
I think give people the idea of where they were
coming from, especially the interplay between Murphy and Hudson and
writing these songs and what went into a lot of
kind of setting this anxious but not relational anxiety tone
(43:20):
to this album. And I think you know you can.
Whereas maybe that makes the album a little tougher to
pull out individual songs than some other bands in this
genre or emo songs in general, I do feel like
it makes it so that you can really like sit
in this album if that makes sense, you can kind
of now that I'm saying fetishize the angst or soak
(43:42):
in it or anything, but I do really think you
can kind of turn this on and sync into it
a little bit, and if that makes sense in any way.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
All right, Jake. We're going to talk about how other
people receive this album, as well as the aftermath for foxing,
some of the bands in their sphere that we wanted
to mention, and all that other stuff that comes in
our last segment after this. All right, Jake, So you
(44:23):
were obviously that's the big note here is that Nearer
My God was what was it number one or number
two on Jake Goldsby's Best of twenty eighteen?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Number one maybe number one.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's you know, we're going to go into how this
album was received and how it did commercially, but that's
the big honor, the number one on Jake Goldsby's Year End.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And I think I can't remember now, but I think
I had it at number three on my decade list.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
I think that's uh. I mean, I guess I had
Phoebe just as high. Although we did a Phoebe album
that is not and it wasn't on that list obviously
because it didn't exist yet when we did that episode.
But that's good. It makes it certainly makes some sense
that when we did a best of the decade list
that we'd start checking off some of the albums on
(45:11):
that list on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
The thing is it's fun to talk about music you like.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, Jake, what did other people think of this album?
How was it received?
Speaker 4 (45:21):
So?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
According to Metacritic, Nearer My God was received with quote
universal acclaim. It has an eighty two rating on Metacritic.
It received an AS from The av Club, nine out
of ten from Drowned in Sound, seven out of ten
from Exclaim, eight out of ten from Line of Best Fit,
and an eight point zero from Pitchfork. Although the best
New Music title eluded it writ in four Pitchfork Ian Cohen,
(45:45):
in his review said the title track could go Moonshot
for Moonshot with M eighty three in the nineteen seventy five.
He also said Nearer My God is likewise a closed system,
bound with melodic and lyrical elite motifs, but designed more
like a multimedia extravaganza. It's an album of complicated, often
elusive views on the illusion of control and apocalypse that
(46:07):
always feels impending but never arrives. And for Exclaim, Beth
Boles said, well, Foxing haven't totally abandoned their previous post
punk roots. Nearer My God clings tight to experimental synth rock.
This album has the kind of confusion we associate with Radiohead.
Sometimes it's rock, sometimes it's punk, sometimes it's just noise.
(46:29):
And in terms of chart performance, as I said earlier,
it peaked at number two on the US Vinyl Chart,
number four on the Top Taste Maker's Album Chart, number
seven on the Independent Album's Chart, and number four on
the heat Seekers Albums Chart. All of those charts are
Billboard charts. And then post Near My God, the band
(46:51):
obviously went back on tour tour the album. I missed
them at their Lee's Palace show here, but did see
them at the Mod Club Rip I think in April
of two thousand and nineteen. I don't remember, but it's
a very good show, even though it's way too short.
And then this past September, Ricky Sampson left the band,
leaving Murphy Hudson and Hellwig as the only current official members.
(47:15):
They do have three touring members with them. In his
farewell post, Sampson said, Hey, this is Ricky. After nine years,
I'm finally ready to make some new life moves. With
the recent pandemic, it's shown some light on where my
current priorities lie. I love my bandmates, I love touring,
but it's time for me to move on and start
a new chapter of my life. I've been going to
(47:37):
school and finally accepting stability into my life. Big love
to my bandmates and their new album coming soon. Big
love to all the friends I've made throughout a lifetime
of touring. And finally, thank you to everyone who's supported
us through these years. See you all on the other side.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
So, Dick, what I'm curious about is, I guess I
have two questions to kind of wrap this up for
you before we get into the song ranking and picking
one for the mixt The first is that we joke
a lot about this, but what would you like if
you were trying to explain Fox into someone, What would
you classify them as? Because I feel like they're one
of the most difficult bands that we've done to put
(48:12):
into a genre. Yeah, like I would say emo, but
like I've said, I saw them in prepping for this,
I saw them get indie post rock mathrock. I don't
think mathrock applies, at least not to nearer my God.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I definitely wouldn't call the math rock. I feel like
the Albatross is definitely an EMO record, like a post
punk emo record.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I would call the first the first record, Okay, yeah,
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, even the second one a little bit. And I
don't know what I would call my God. To be honest,
I'm sure our emo has thoughts, but I just I
generally pigeonhole them into emo just because it's easiest. But
I really don't in the emo.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
I guess yeah, sure, experimentally, we don't need to give them.
I was just wondering if you had a good, good answer.
My other question, Jake, is do you have a good
sense of why maybe Foxing doesn't hit for me as
much as bands in their sphere, like the World's Beautiful
Place and the Hotel Year Because I can't really figure
(49:08):
it out, I wonder if.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Part of it and I'm only speaking for me because
I know there's many bands and that we've talked about
both on the show and just between the two of
us sort of in the new emo genre that hit
for you that don't hit for me, And oftentimes I
find it's because of the vocals, And I wonder if
that's it for you, just because I think Connormrivy is
(49:33):
an incredible vocalist, but he isn't what I would call
yours standard new emo vocalist. Yeah, that's fair sense, but
I don't know why they I don't know what. But
you're also not like a big radiohead guy either.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yeah, I mean again, they're like passive fandom, like yeah,
like I appreciate the music and I know it's good,
but it's not something I sit with.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Uh, exactly a whole lot. And I wonder if just
the because that like experimental side of them. It's not
that you don't like experimental music. But I wonder if
you call me.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
A musical prude jake.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
But I will say I am. I would have thought
that you would have been really into the Albatross. That
feels like a Blake record to me.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Now, maybe I'll go back to it and I'll listen
to it some more. Maybe the radiohead comparisons that they
need to show up on an episode of a show
and say where that band boxing in a fake British accent.
All right, Jake, it's now time to pick out our
favorite songs from this album with the purpose of selecting
one for our mixtape. I don't know. I mean we
(50:38):
got we got to a bunch of them in the episode.
I'm going to give you my top three. I have
a Grand Paradise, Bastardizer, Heartbeats as my three favorites, so
I was happy with your picks. I think i'd have
five Cups next, but yeah, where are you at?
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I don't know. I go back and forth on my
favorite song on this album a lot, as you tend
to do with your favorites. I think Game Show is
probably my favorite, even though it's not the one I
listened to the most, just because it is kind of
so out there and unexpected. I also really like heart Beats,
and Heartbeats is an amazing song. And I really like
a song we didn't talk about today called Won't Drown
(51:14):
because I think it's got a really cool sort of
R and B influence to it that maybe that's where
the Frank Ocean influenced. But yeah, I would say those
are my in some order. Those are probably my three,
but on any given day, you could also talk me
into Lambert or Grand Paradise or the title track as well.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
All right, well, what are we going to throw on
the old mixtape?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Then, Jake, I say, let's go Heartbeats. It was on
both pretty high for both of us. We both like it.
It's good song.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
You will have no arguments here the weekly me typing
into your headphones heart Beats, heads to the mixtape. All right,
at this point in the podcast, first we want to
thank producer Dyllan for all his great work. This is
maybe one of the cleaner episodes, so only a three
quarter thank you for you this week, Dylan. There's no nonsense,
(52:04):
No John Cullen derailing us, no Steve derailing us. Nothing.
Please give us the old rate or review and subscribe
if you're not already subscribed, and if you're not already subscribed,
either welcome or what are you doing only occasionally listening
and not subscribing and helping our numbers?
Speaker 5 (52:20):
You jerk?
Speaker 2 (52:22):
All right?
Speaker 1 (52:22):
I just want to say, Jake, j great job. This
is a fun episode and I thought you did a
wonderful job in the a chair leading us through it.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Thanks man, I'm tired now.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah, Well, the next recording you can just sit back.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
You know, it's true.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
This is the benefit of doing two at a time
is one I don't have to talk. One you don't
have to talk. It's great, it's kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Crash On, please try to fish
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