After the Deluge

Jordan Kleeman started Crasshole Records as a teenager and put out several early Against Me! EPs including this legendary self-titled 12” record. We talk about the first version of “Walking is Still Honest,” why this beautiful record sounds like shit, a decade of touring with Against Me!, and holding down that synth-key note on “8 Hours of Full Sleep.” Just a wonderful person and a perfect boomerang back to the beginning of this ba...

Casey Plett is an author from Canada. We talk about coming out in a Rolling Stone article, dissecting The Ocean, seeing Against Me! In Winnipeg on the Transgender Dysphoria Blues tour, low-key gesturing back to Reinventing Axl Rose w/ those first snare hits, the novel “Nevada” by Imogen Binnie, “Rough surf on the coast, I wish I could have spent the whole day alone,” misinterpreting the message of Fight Club, which of these songs a...

Steak Mtn (Christopher Norris) did the art for several Against Me! records including this one. We talk about the album White Crosses, the revolution being a lie, collaborating on art with Laura, Christopher's not a fan of anarcho-bucket music, getting that Warner Bros. money, this album has sheen but it also has teeth, the iconic Transgender Dysphoria Blues meat-cube album cover, scanning porn magazines and melting them in Phot...

Ben Lee is a musician from Australia now in LA. We talk about New Wave, having his mind blown on a flight to Australia, trusting Tegan and Sara’s taste, a punk-rock duet, why Ben covered this record, the music industry changes so why resist it, would you take the Hyundai sponsorship, would you open for Maroon 5?, New Wave is a historical document, clunky sentences as catchy choruses, “Be my Baby,” Trent Reznor, Butch Vig, Nic Johns...

Keegan Bradford (⁠@franziamom⁠) plays in Camp Trash and writes about music online. We talk about Against Me!’s Searching for a Former Clarity, folk-punk being out of fashion, Algernon Cadwallader as a fictional band, hostile fanbases, Florida geography and scene dynamics, the best record ever about arguing on the internet, AM!’s miserable ascent, Laura breaks out the band's financials, Former Clarity is bloated but we struggle ...

This week we go to the movies. I'm joined by Dan Bassini and Andrew Valentine of the Run into the Ground podcast to talk about the 2004 Against Me! tour documentary We're Never Going Home, which sees the band getting courted by major labels and fucking with their fellow touring bands. Plus Asbury Park, depressing East Coast beaches, and iconic venue carpets. It's a fun one. [WATCH VIDEO OF THIS EPISODE]

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Ryan Page plays in the band Bad Dads. We talk about being a message-board kid, bands as bumper stickers, lying to Fat Mike, “whoas,” major labels swooping in, Ardent Studios, not getting sick of the Eternal Cowboy songs, y’all overpraised the Tim remaster, spinning this CD thrice in a row, we revisit the Axl snare sound, I say “chuckles” a half-dozen times, “when I got the music, I got a place to go,” The Disco Before the Breakdown...

Austin Lucas is a musician whose latest album is called Reinventing Against Me! We talk about being crust-adjacent, Austin’s path from hardcore to country, The Go-Gos, the Axl cover, live-streaming through the early pandemic, "Oh Donna," knocking out a record in two days, John Mellencamp’s background singer, that snare drum tone, St. Anger, Fall Out Boy’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” arguing online, Jason Isbell on Twitter...

Crime as Forgiven By Against Me! was released in 2001 and followed that same year by the band's self-titled acoustic EP.

Frank Turner is a musician from England. He joined us from his studio while working on his next album. We talk about knocking out records, Alternative Press, diagonal haircuts, gatekeeping subgenres of emo, Frank was a few high school grades behind Against Me!, the Crime EP was slipped to him like drugs, he ...

Season 3 of After the Deluge will go album by album through the Against Me! discography with a new guest each week, starting with their early days in Gainesville followed by records released on No Idea and Fat Wreck Chords before signing to a major label deal. And all of that comes well before the release of Transgender Dysphoria Blues--a significant chapter unto itself.

Ep. 1 guest is Frank Turner Subscribe and tell a friend!

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I talked to Dan Ozzi, author of the book Sellout, about his recent Fader piece about The Armed—a band/collective/cult from Detroit. We jump from there into early 2010s music writing, hearing new music as you get old, editing Noisey in the early 2010s, getting nostalgic about Chumped, media now vs. media then, when the label or publisher asks you to do corny stuff, selling out, "lying Lydia Tár" ...and then we close out by...

Tim Kasher returns for a special episode about The Good Life’s Album of the Year. We talk about Zooming with Conor Oberst on bad wifi, his upcoming tour, his high school band March Hares opening for 311, Tim’s Red Hot Chili Peppers horoscope theory, Inmates, early 2000s Saddle Creek albums about substances, Cursive, debauchery and heartache, Tim loves musicals, I get a little emo about the seasons, Vanessa Carlton, Ryan Fox's s...

I talk to Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes about Jackson Browne, emo, being a child among the Saddle Creek teens, showing ambition in a slacker scene, Pitchfork reviews, a wild story behind “Soul Singer in a Session Band," his songs making sense to him but maybe not to you, Conor’s media diet, listening to audiobooks about feathers, do people pay too much attention to politics now?, AI and Chat GPT, The Faint being ahead of their t...

On this special episode we talk about non-Bright Eyes Conor Oberst projects over the last 25 years. I’m joined by Maddy, Michael, Rina, Greg, Justin and Per (Patreon supporters of this show ☺️) for a sprawling conversation about Oberst's solo records and side projects. There are many!

 For PART 2 (+ VIDEO)  hit up patreon.com/afterthedeluge 

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Here’s the list of records I mention in the intro:

CONOR OBERST

Water (1993)

Here’s ...

Marc Hogan is a senior staff writer at Pitchfork and he wrote the review of the Bright Eyes record Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was.

In this episode we talk about a difficult decade for Conor Oberst, Audiogalaxy, patience with late-career albums, 2013’s false rape allegations, being Conor’s same age, Red Hot Chili Peppers, dropping a record in Covid, Ruminations, his brother’s death, divorce, catastrophizing his 40th bir...

Ben Dolnick is the author of four novels including The Ghost Notebooks, You Know Who You Are, and At the Bottom of Everything. He wrote this 2011 Bright Eyes essay in The Awl: https://www.theawl.com/2011/01/taste-has-never-met-shame-i-love-you-conor-oberst/

This episode features an excellent audio essay from Dominic Ronzani about why The People's Key is his favorite Bright Eyes record. It's a great supplement to the Pitchfork 5.0 P...

Today we have two Bright Eyes scholars (and Patreon supporters 🥰) who truly know their shit. Pardon the slightly click-bait headline... but Per Davidson and Justin Corwin take us on a tour of some great non-album Bright Eyes tracks from splits, EPs and YouTube rarities. All six of these songs are great upon first listen, but they go up several notches after you let these two unpack them.

I didn’t initially intend to explore these ...

HEAR THIS FULL EPISODE: PATREON.COM/AFTERTHEDELUGE⁠

Brian Howe is a music, arts and culture critic for Pitchfork and many other outlets. Evan Bailey sings and plays guitar in the band Oh, Lonesome Ana. We talk about the Bright Eyes record Cassadaga, experimental album art, mysticism, fiddles, Brian discovering Fevers & Mirrors, meaning outside of religion, reassessing this record, high fidelity audio, Brian’s 6.0 Pitchfork revi...