Peter Bjorn and John — "Young Folks"

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1:01Hello, friends. A quick note to say that 60 songs is now available on YouTube. We made it. Success. That was easy. You can now watch full episodes of this show on YouTube and you can also check out our new social media accounts. On Instagram and TikTok, all using the name 60 songs that explain the 90s, we have heard your cries of despair and confusion, and we have therefore embraced various popular online platforms. So watch us on YouTube, check us out on TikTok and Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter still under the name Harvilla H-A-R-V-I-L-L-A, but maybe stay out of it. I don't know. We'll put all the links for these in the episode description as well. Thanks for listening and are watching and we'll see you on the Internet. Hello, friends. A quick announcement.

2:01We are doing a mailbag episode in which we solicit listener questions, comments, and gripes. And then I answer those questions, comments, and gripes. Let's try and stick to questions as opposed to comments or certainly gripes. Please email your questions to 60SongsPod at spotify.com that is 60SongsPOD at spotify.com. Please submit your questions by Monday, September 21st, 2026. And please be nice. Thank you very much. This episode of 60 Songs that explain the 90s is presented to you by Nintendo. Some things stick around for a reason. A great song, a favorite movie, a game everyone wants another turn at. The Nintendo Switch 2 system fits right into that tradition. With two controllers included in games like Mario Kart World,

3:01Donkey Kong, Bonanza, and EA Sports FC 26, there's something for every age and every mood. Whether you're at home or on the go, it's easy to keep the good stuff in rotation. Learn more at nintendo.com slash Nintendo Switch 2. Games and systems sold separately, games rated E to E 10 plus. Okay, quick question for you. What is the single greatest moment in indie rock history? When exactly did indie rock peak as a musical style, as a cultural force, as an ethos? What is indie rocks Apex Mountain? Did indie rock peak on August 30th 2009? When Jay-Z and Beyonce watched a grizzly bear concert on the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn, and 800,000 people blogged about it. Did indie rock peak on February 13th? 2011, when the suburbs by arcade fire, quite unexpectedly, when the Grammy for album of the year,

4:05beating out Eminem, Lady Gaga, Lady Antebellum, and Katy Perry. Katy Perry probably should have won. Did indie rock peak way earlier? In the 2004 feature film Garden State, when Natalie Portman put her headphones on Zach Braff's head and told him that the shins would change his life, and then she fell in love with him. And he directed it. Those are all great guesses, but I'm sorry, those are all incorrect. No indie rock peaked on July 4th, 2010, during a live performance by the Brooklyn band Beach Fossils, when Beach Fossils bassist John Pena physically threw his bass guitar into the East River. Holy shit, if you're not watching this, don't worry, I'll walk you through it.

5:06Alright, here we have most likely iPhone video of the young Brooklyn indie rock band Beach Fossils, performing on water taxi beach in the Queen's neighborhood of Long Island City. All four dudes in Beach Fossils are wearing shorts. Basis John Pena is barefoot, and the drummer is playing while standing up, which conveys authenticity. We got no stage. We got a chain link fence behind the band with a pink banner for a cool local clothing company. And beyond that fence, we got the roiling, murky splendor of the East River, which is a lovely body of water so long as you don't ever go in there or look at it too hard. There are too many indie rock bands with beach in the name, but I'll allow it this time because Beach Fossils sound like a band called Beach Fossils. Pleasantly archaic, breezy, but with an alluring hint of decay, deceptively placid, and therefore prone to sudden tumultuous rages.

6:07For example, the band said at water taxi Beach here on the 4th of July 2010 will be ending semi-violently in roughly 30 seconds. Uh oh. We're getting rowdy. Beach Fossils frontman Dustin Paiser. He's the wailing gentleman there. Dustin has just now divested himself of his electric guitar. He unplugged his guitar. He knocks over his amp. He drags his guitar on the ground behind him as he sings. And impressively, none of this routing has appears to affect the music itself in the slightest. Meanwhile, another important element of this video is that the only real visible audience member is a child. I don't mean that ugly. I'm guessing there's plenty of people in the crowd here, but the person filming this is in the second row.

7:11Basically standing directly behind a little girl, seven or eight years old, maybe in the girl standing like six feet away from the band. And she's wearing giant hearing protection headphones, like the kind of headphones conscientious parents buy their children so they can safely enjoy medium-routing indie rock concerts. This kid keeps stealing worried glances at a mostly off camera adult standing next to her who might be her mother and might be a total stranger. But nonetheless, this girl is a little closer to the routiness than I personally am comfortable with. And she doesn't seem too psyched about it either. All right, fellas, time to make the donuts. Time to make indie rock history. Okay, what do we got happening here? Exactly. Let's see the lead singers really wailing now and he kicks over a mic stand and he kicks over the drums.

8:15And he's crashing into the bassist a little bit and oh, look, there's a second shirtless guitar player who's been playing guitar while staring at the ground this whole time and who's so far away from his bandmates, I hadn't even noticed him before. And the song ends in an abrupt, discordant burst of moderate societal dissatisfaction. That's all pretty normal conventional medium-routing rock and roll stuff. That's cool. And also, whoa, Nelly, that guy just chucked his bass into the East River holy crap. Beast Fossil's bassist, John Pena, unplugs his bass and he shrugs it off and he winds up and he goes, whoop, and he just launches it over the fence and into the fucking river. Let me say this clearly, spectacular throw. We got just a phenomenal bass toss here. Remember when Nirvana played lithium at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1992 and right at the end of the song, Nirvana bassist, Christ Nova Selich goes, whoop, and he threw his bass straight up.

9:24And then he tried to catch it and he clonked himself in the head and fell over. There's no reason not to play this for you. I suppose, what did I buy all this video shit for? If not to play this for you. I love that once again, none of this routing is appears to affect the music itself in the slightest.

10:27And then the VMAs and whatnot, but also it's the sheer awe inspiring verticality of the Nirvana bass toss itself a plus throw D minus catch. Okay, so the Beach Fossil's guy, this is the horizontal version of that bass toss. Beach Fossil's on the East River. This is a line drive. This is a frozen rope. We have caught some serious air. This thing's got a lengthy upward trajectory. This dude's bass is clear for takeoff. This thing is still in mid air now. You don't necessarily go to Indy Rock shows to see world historical feats of strength, but that is a silver medal javelin throw. Kudos. Let's watch it again or you can just listen now to the crowd react. The mixture of gasps whoops and nervous laughter. The little girl with the headphones she has no visible reaction to the bass toss, but the adult standing next to the kid possibly with possibly not the kids mother.

11:28This lady clamps both hands over her mouth in the universal posture of oh shit. Meanwhile, unlike my 600th time watching this video, I just noticed that after the bass toss a photographer with a non iPhone camera immediately walks over to the fence and looks down and tries to take a photo of the bass. Sinking into the river. Great instincts. All of these people are clearly aware that they've just witnessed rock and roll history. They've also kind of sort of probably witnessed a crime. I am not aware of any additional video footage of the great beach fossils East River bass toss. Other than in this video, you can also clearly see a mostly off screen second person filming all of this on their phone because by the late 2000s, we all spent much of our time at rock concerts shooting phone video of other people shooting phone videos.

12:41And that's too bad. I would love a dedicated home run camera that just follows the glorious arc of the base itself in its breathtaking romantic path upward toward the sky and then downward toward the sea, the river toward the river, the East River, not the most romantic river. No offense. So the bass toss video gets posted on Brooklyn vegan and goes semi viral. Brooklyn vegan, the great long standing super respected Indy Rock blog with show listings and rad photography and disconcertingly bitchy commenters and whatnot. And here in 2010, I am working for the village voice at the time that even longer standing increasingly disrespected New York City alt weekly and I make the very 2010 Indy Rock media decision to blog about their blog by simply listing my favorite Brooklyn vegan comments about the beach fossils base toss.

13:43This is how music journalism worked at the time. And so look out top six Brooklyn vegan comments about the beach fossils base toss. Here we go. Number six, five years from now, mutant fish release chill wave album. Number five, whoa, bra hard core nice shorts, LOL. I told you about the shorts. Number four, most interesting thing they've done. That's not very nice. Number three, nice hooks in appealing harmonic interplay. That's nicer. Number two, I am also frustrated with the sound of this band. That's not nice, but that's pretty good. Super dry sarcasm is the reliable default mode of most Indy Rock blog discourse. And finally, number one, the best Brooklyn vegan comment about the beach fossils base toss. How can you afford your rock and roll lifestyle?

14:55Come on, tell me that's the winner. Any cake reference automatically wins any competition as far as I'm concerned. Excess a rebellion. You're drinking what they're selling. You self destruction doesn't hurt. From their 1994 debut album motorcade of generosity. That was the all time great Sacramento rock band cake with their modest alternative radio hit rock and roll lifestyle. I weirdly vividly recall hearing this song for the very first time late at night on the radio as like a dimwit 16 year old. This song was my introduction to cake one of my favorite bands and also my introduction to the idea that relentless shameless solace capitalist consumption is poisoning classic rock or alternative rock or Indy rock or whatever. Excess a rebellion. Even as a dimwit 16 year old, I knew enough to know that I may be ought to remember and fully internalize the idea that excess a rebellion.

16:07I really want to do something right now, but I'm not positive that we're legally allowed to do it. I'd like to introduce a new game I just invented called can we do that. This is a game where I ask our friendly hardworking warriors and editors. I ask them offensively frivolous hypothetical questions, even though the vast majority of my co-workers have much better things to do. Today's question is can we show slow motion footage of the beach fossils base toss set to the Olympics music. Can we do that. No. The answer is no. They were polite about it. The lawyers, but nonetheless, we may be ought to avoid the Olympics music in general and opt for Olympics type music instead. That's disappointing.

17:10That's too bad. I'll get over it. But yeah, not all the Brooklyn vegan commenters are psyched about the East River base toss, which is okay. Technically, it's literally littering. Yeah, he threw a large object into the East River and he left it there. That's true. It's a question of scale though, right. If you're standing next to a guy and he throws a McDonald's wrapper into the East River, you'd be like, well, that guy's an asshole. If you're standing there and this dude throws his base into the East River, you'd be like, well, that's the coolest guy I've ever seen in my life, such as the transformative power of rock and roll. I'll tell you what really pissed me off though. I missed it. I did not personally witness the East River base toss. I had to watch it on the internet later, like everyone else, like a chump. No, I went and saw a beach fossils live three days earlier on July 1st, 2010. I was there. I saw this band at a tiny long gone Brooklyn club called Brewar Falls, which was indoors and had a Pac-Man arcade machine and was not within throwing distance of any famous bodies of water.

18:26To answer your question, yes, I blogged about it. And beach fossils basis John Pena played barefoot at this show as well, despite it taking place indoors. And at some point a heck of a yelled, put on some shoes, dude, or you're going to get trickin' no-sists. Someone actually yelled that at a rock concert, not me. Someone else. That's not even heckling. That's just good advice. I put beach fossils sound like in a more formal non-base toss context, by the way. From their self-titled 2010 debut album, that's Beach Fossils, with a song called Daydream. And not a day goes by or an hour without times I can't remember what I'm thinking about, because my heads caught up and tangled in those dreams. Yeah, that sounds relatable to me. As a guy podcasting about 16-year-old Indy Rock blog posts. So during that Beach Fossils show at Brewar Falls, the non-base toss show, the band's last song ends with an abrupt, discordant burst of moderate societal dissatisfaction.

19:43Beach Fossils basses John Pania jumps into the drums and knocks them all over, just like Kurt Cobain used to do. And in my dumb little blog I write, quote, the wavagley cathartic and rock and roll moment, the drummer does not look particularly pleased, understandably, three adverbs in one sentence, and then I say, I'm glad I don't have to ride in the van back home with these guys. End quote, I might have seen the base toss coming. Also, I'm ashamed to tell you that my blog about this show ends with a single, meanest sentence I have ever written. In my 26 year rock journalism career, I can't believe this. This was a three band bill at Brewar Falls, first a band from Queens called the Beats, BEETS, like the vegetable, then woven bones, lots of bones back then in Indy Rock as well. And then Beach Fossils played last. And so I write a bunch of stuff, a bunch of adverbs about Beach Fossils and woven bones, and then here is the last sentence of this blog. I gave this sentence its own paragraph, quote, I tried to spend the Beats entire set playing Pac-Man, but I ran out of guys. End quote, that's fucking rude. Yo, that's unprofessional. What kind of way is that to behave? Apologize to the Beats Rob, play a song by the Beats.

21:10Don't be afraid you will not die. And if you die, whatever. That's the Beats, BEETS, with a song from 2011 called Doing Like I Do. Don't be afraid you will not die. And if you die, whatever. That's also good advice. In the video for that song, they're at the Beach in a wave knocks over the giant colorful cutout letters of the word, whatever. Do you think that when the Beats named themselves the Beats that they were aware there was already a band called the Beats, BEETS, from that old animated kids TV show Doug, the 90s Nickelodeon, Tween Anxiety, Cartoon, Doug, because I got to say the Doug Beats have really screwed up the SEO for the Queen's Beats.

22:21That's the Doug Beats with a song called Killer Tofu, which I've had stuck in my head for 30 minutes. I have personally gone to hundreds of concerts involving real life indie rock bands that look like the Doug Beats. The sunglasses on stage, the child's drawing hairstyles, the clashing outfits. And I'm standing in the crowd like, are these guys huge weirdos? Or are they just English? Yeah, a lot of shared DNA between the Doug Beats and the Queen's Beats. I got to say a real simpatico vibe there, even visually primary colors, childish, whimsy with a vague hint of melancholy, a clear preoccupation with death, etc. They should tour together or something somehow. Anyway, I apologize to the Beats, the non-cartoon Beats. But so yeah, I personally missed it, but after his East River bass toss goes semi-viral, beach fossils bassist John Pania is treated to a light online roasting.

23:31People on the internet make fun of his band or his shorts or they accuse him of having a trust fund to support his bass tossing rock and roll lifestyle. And so my friend and colleague at the Village Voice, the great writer and editor and author Zach Barron, Zach takes the next logical step for a circa 2010 Indy Rock blogger, Zach interviews the guy. Hell yeah, headline, the beach fossils bassist responds, colon, why John Pania threw his bass into the East River, solid headline. Great SEO. Zach does a quick email interview with this guy and he asks, how John's bandmates feel when he trashes or deep sixes the band's gear on stage. And John says, quote, I don't think they are too worried about it as long as I replace anything that gets broken. Sometimes it's a bummer to see the money from a show go toward fixing equipment instead of rent, food and girls. It's not something we spend a lot or any time discussing, really.

24:37End quote John also says, quote, I really loved that base, but it was on its way out literally end quote and finally, Zach asks any response for the haters. And John says, quote, ha, that would be pointless. John also says, it'll all blow over soon enough, just going to focus on my friends, family, my band and this beer America and quote America and all caps with an exclamation point end of conversation. I think any interview with anyone talking about anything in any medium should include the question any response for the haters. I don't care who you're talking to or why you will never get a dissatisfying answer to that question. Everyone's got a response for the haters. Each fossils are still at it. They've got some delightful mellow jams they've put out four albums so far, including their last album called Bunny in 2023. And they've got a few tour dates this month in September 2026 in Mexico City in South America. Maybe look out for flying base guitars. If you're floating in an inner tube down the Rio Magdalena.

25:54That's a river in Mexico. See, it's a joke. That's stupid. I'm sorry. I should note that former Beach Fossils basis John Pania is long gone. He left the band in 2011. The year after the base toss that personal dynamic maybe wasn't working for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. I'm really getting into this early Beach Fossil song daydream by the way. Yeah, what's happening here? Lyrically they're lying in the grass in the early morning sunlight. Lyrically this on daydream is simple enough, but it's the profound physical musical spiritual distance between the daydream and the daydreamer. Right. The guy's voice is muffled and echoey and very, very, very, very far away. Look, we all love to jump online and fire off our cute little jokes about this sort of mellow vaguely wistful, reluctantly, hooky, excessively beach oriented, instant nostalgia, sort of indie rock.

27:02I personally love to jump online and joke about it, but I do think this on daydream captures something important about this mid to late 2000's era and one of the most dominant indie pop sounds of that era. Or this song captures our collective dorky feeble inevitably failed attempts to capture something to capture some essential essence of our childhood and or young adulthood perhaps our rocky passage from the dug beats to the Queens beats perhaps our passage from being sad and young to being not so young and sad that we are no longer so young. And all we can do now is sing mellow wistful, hooky, gorgeous, melancholy songs about our fading youth. And if you can't sing, then maybe just whistle. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 50th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s Cole and the 2000s in this week we are discussing young folks by the Swedish indie pop trio Peter Bjorn and John from their 2006 album Writers Block.

28:17I don't know that I'd ever watched the young folks video, which is animated with cartoon bubble dialogue and everyone's bobbing their heads back and forth in a whimsical and childlike and slightly off putting manner. There's a Tweet uncanny valley time warp quality here the subtle and sublimely unsettling blending of the dug beats and the Queens beats continues. We're all going to die, but whatever add break. All right, real quick. I wanted to shout out Brooklyn vegan, the great long standing super respected indie rock blog Brooklyn vegan, which got hit with mass layoffs recently alongside other great music publications, including revolver gold mine and my beloved alternative press magazine specifically Brooklyn vegan and those other places got hit with mass layoffs orchestrated. By their parents company something called Veebs.

29:17Veebs is owned by live nation and Veebs was co founded initially as some sort of ticketing platform by Joel and Benji Madden of the noted pop punk band. Good Charlotte I got nothing against that bands personally or musically, but nonetheless with apologies to all you good Charlotte fans out there the hypothetical good Charlotte episode of this show. Is hereby canceled until those guys knock it off let me just observe. Plyly that the 2002 good Charlotte single lifestyles of the rich and famous a top 20 pop hit in a medium catchy anthem of working class solidarity and perhaps even outright class warfare. The song sure hits different now that these bombs are using their live nation affiliated ticketing and media company to layoff humble hard working rock critics listen we all have to get old and die, but we don't all have to become the man before we do it.

30:24I'm not going to play it. I'm reading all these interviews with the Swedish indie pop trio Peter Bjorn and John and I really like these dudes a whole lot I dig their vibe tremendously talking to the Guardian in 2018 Bjorn Yitling bassist and producer Bjorn Yitling he talks about how Peter Bjorn and John had already been a band for five years before young folks blew up they'd made two full length albums already they jumped around label wise and they had enjoyed only modest success in Sweden. Whereas young folks was a quite destabilizingly massive global success Bjorn says quote going platinum in multiple countries and fucking our shit up for a decade that was not on our radar. End quote the phrase fucking up our shit for a decade interests me the implied positive and negative connotations of getting your shit fucked up for a decade that interests me Bjorn also says talking about young folks quote we don't even know how many copies it sold on my space it was played over a hundred million times we haven't got rich off it but it's been good for business it kick started my production career in road.

31:50In Rolling Stone recently there was a list of the best songs of the century so far and it's Beyonce at number one and then like 80 other songs and then young folks you can be proud of that for sure and quote I'm into these guys. In absolute sincerity these guys seem like a great hang warm and sincere but also cool and gently sarcastic a proudly self deprecating and refreshingly thirst quenching dry humor so yeah first thing to know Peter Bjorn and John not an overnight success the drum kit you hear on young folks the band apparently pulled those drums out of a dumpster near the makeshift homemade studio where young folks was recorded. Or they got the drums off Craigslist depending on which interview you read this is not a cool internationally famous rock band you were previously unaware of no offense. Okay so here we have a song called Matchmaker from Peter Bjorn and John's debut EP released in 2001 and called Forbidden Chords.

33:12I dig that this band's faster songs sound gently pleasantly frantic almost like they're cramming in as many lyrics and hooks as possible as quickly as possible these dudes sound like they're trying to play this whole nearly three minute song in just 20 seconds so they can run to catch a bus. Peter Bjorn and John we got Peter Moran on guitar and vocals most of the time Bjorn Yitling on bass and occasional vocals Bjorn notably is also your primary producer for the first two albums at least and John Erickson on drums and occasional vocals Peter and Bjorn meet his teenagers and Vesteros in central Sweden talking to the great podcast life of the record in 2025 Peter says they met at a music high school sort of thing. And they started out as two dudes with guitars and a drum machine they bond over to guitar bands like the stone roses and slightly older wordier more punk and power pop oriented stuff like the bus cocks and the jam and Elvis Costello plus Lofi 90s American indie rock pavement and Yola Tango and Elliott Smith and Sebado all of that totally makes sense but Elvis Costello makes extra sense maximum song craft.

34:30Maximum Verbiage maximum nerdy area dite swagger maximum velocity here comes the chorus hurry. That's bring to the halftime kind of just to hear out the plan is the matchmaker the grandfaker matchmaker we do matchmaker the grandfaker matchmaker we do. So Peter and Bjorn moved to Stockholm where all the action is in Sweden indie rock wise and maybe otherwise and they audition a bunch of other insufficient drummers before they find John Erickson a guy with a lot of jazz and metal and percussion ensemble experience but no previous indie rock band experience Peter Bjorn and John is a sneaky great band name. It is straightforward and you know literal but Peter Bjorn and John also rolls delightfully off the tongue it's modest their band name is just their names but also quietly proud and mythical in scope these dudes are too cool to bother with a clever band name it also implies is to premium level of confidence that nobody will ever leave this band.

35:44I'm into it the trios first album also called Peter Bjorn and John comes out in 2002 this song is called I don't know what I want us to do I'm pretty sure he knows what he wants. Take it a picture you. Yeah he knows let's do ourselves a favor and not get super bogged down today in an attempt to precisely define indie rock as a musical style or cultural force or ethos. Feel free to consult the great critic and friend of the show Chris devils wonderful 2025 book such great heights the complete cultural history of the indie rock explosion if you desire a thoughtful and thorough history and taxonomy of the initially undergroundish rock bands and myriad baffling sub genres that defined the 2000s for those of us with pitch fork and stereo gum and flux blog and Brooklyn vegan bookmarked.

36:48We'll be talking to Chris later it will suffice for our purposes today to say that a song by three scruffy Swedish pop dudes that begins with the lines decadent picture of you in the nude sits on my shoulder whispers in my ear makes me feel prude is very indie rock aesthetically the prudeness I mean the hesitance the ostensible uncertainty of the song title I don't know what I want us to do. That's not how van Halen or lip biscuit would have handled this topic. You know, chorus great high note here you'll figure it out. But what indie rock really means here from the very beginning of Peter Bjorn and John is that this band is a quite humble and homegrown and therefore thoroughly Swedish enterprise.

37:53This band's first two records are recorded in Stockholm studios and released on Swedish record labels this self titled album is put out by beat that records beat that exclamation point not every song in this first record sounds like the band is sprinting downhill the whole time but my favorite songs here do sound like that this one's called education circle and it concludes with Peter frantically expressing yet more hesitance and uncertainty before he sings the line. But as this angry persona I have no doubt and then he stretches out the word doubt for 10 seconds dig the gas when his breath finally gives out modest athleticism. Yeah, that's about as close as these fellows are going to get to wild and crazy base toss energy the second Peter Bjorn and John record comes out in 2004 it is called falling out these guys aren't old by any stretch at this point they've barely exited their 20s at worst but I am struck here by a palpable heaviness a weariness a faded day dream milling call you.

39:21This song is called Taylor made and it features Peter singing I found out I'm grown up in a very quiet feeble devastated voice before he launches into a loud boisterous chorus that ends with him singing bring me back my youth. The B my baby drum beat there. That drum beat is a nice touch if we're talking about 2004 pop songs chasing the eternal majesty of 1963 pop songs and if we're talking about classic pop songs is a fountain of fading youth you have every right to be suspicious and perhaps even annoyed when objectively young dude start gassing on about how old they feel already but this unpleasant paradoxical sensation.

40:34Feeling ancient and washed even when you're objectively still young and vibrant that's a huge part of the indie rock ethos as well youth isn't even wasted on the young. In the indie rock your youth is something you'll never get back even while you still have it the second Peter Bjorn and John record falling out also features a cover of a song from another young Swedish indie rock band here's the original from 1999 this song is called. Yeah it's called teen love. Here we have a fellow young Swedish pop band called the concrete featuring on lead vocals one Victoria Bergsmann Victoria is in her 20s but Victoria also sings with a super appealing and distinctly adult sort of bone weariness it is harder than it sounds to sing a deceptively dainty song called teen love while evoking both teen love and an older person's rapidly decaying daydreaming memory.

41:48Of teen love try it sometime anyway Peter Bjorn and John speed up teen love and rock it out a little bit. Yeah Peter Bjorn and John speed up this song teen love a little bit and I dig the off all in love with you backing vocals very much they add a semi frantic sort of immediacy but it's the shaker they're going. The whole time that makes this version of teen love seem way way faster the shaker makes it feel like time is passing like once youth is passing by even faster anyway Victoria Bergsmann's voice and also the shaker will be appearing again together real soon matter of fact let's just do this now.

42:54The third Peter Bjorn and John record is released in 2006 and is called writer's block and features a song called young folks that blows up on my space and makes a ton of lists of best songs of the year and or century and fucks this band shit up for a decade that opening to the drum beat there is apparently a cheeky humble tribute to daft punk. To the French blockbuster electronic music duo daft punk on that great podcast the life of the record Peter Bjorn and John drummer John Erickson says quote the opening fill of young folks it's kind of an homage in a cartoonish childish version of the intro for robot rock by daft punk because that drum intro is extremely cool we thought we tried to recreate that or I tried to do something similar but at the same time dorky and stupid end quote for your reference robot rock by daft punk came out in 2005 and begins like this.

44:00That is extremely cool actually robot rock that's the daft punk song that goes burr winner no no no that one so young folks begins with a version of that or according to John the drummer something similar but at the same time dorky and stupid there's a fun. There's a fundamental humility a self deprecation a distinctly non rock star type sheepishness a vibrant and quite relatable aura of imminent defeat radiating off young folks and writers block as a whole you get that oh we're just being dorky and stupid vibe a lot in indie rock and maybe you love that vibe and maybe it annoys you yes or such doors we can never do anything is cool is do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do it that's so sort of rock and roll swagger but in apologetic scare quotes in this musical universe you get used to that aw shucks sort of vibe or you learn to avoid it's like the plague but Peter Bjorn and John at the precise moment they're making young folks these dudes are coming by their humility and self deprecation an imminent defeat honestly the band records this song and this whole album in a little apartment Bjorns got set up because they can't afford studio.

45:29They may be found the drum kit in a Swedish dumpster talking to the guardian in 2018 bassist and producer Bjorn yitling says quote writers block was our third album we've been doing the rounds for about five years trying to get a good slot at some weird festival and stock home building the stage on our own playing Chinese restaurants and as the opening act on tours for different bands we probably would have quit if young folks hadn't become a great artist. And you can hear the ease the resigned casualness the other lack of outside pressure that only comes when a rock band assumes basically nobody is listening and this is the end of the line.

46:29And so a line like would you go along with someone like me could be an aspiring rock and roll singer talking to a historically indifferent listener or it could be part of a slightly more intimate conversation young folks is a conversation in a bar between a young man and a young lady or crucially a not quite as young anymore man and a not quite as young anymore lady they're both a little older a little weirier. A little weirier of possible new romantic connections having been burned and disappointed heartbroken so many times before these two wounded tentative lovebirds are surrounded by brighter cheerier more naive and hopeful younger folks but who cares about them right I am torn I can't decide between widening the musical scope here and aggressively narrowing the musical scope of course you could take young folks as a pride. I'm example perhaps young folks is the prime example of mid 2000s bouncy folksy Tweet Indy pop that mixes youthful frivolity with washed adult melancholia and mixes handcrafted anti commercial whimsy with increasingly big Wampon hyper capitalist business if you know flux blog the great long standing super respected Indy rock MP3 blog run by critic and journalist Matthew perpetua Matthew

47:57does these great huge deep playlists now and he did a six plus hour 124 song playlist called The Young folks Colin Tweet Indy 2004 2009 and one thing I genuinely appreciate about this musical and cultural vibe is you have to be in the mood for it. for it. Listening to all these songs, the decemberists, the go team, the Juno extended universe, listening to this playlist most of the time I was like, what are refreshing buoyant, appealingly childlike approach to classic pop forms. But some of the time, it just sounded to me like 35 year olds playing hopscotch. And I was like, you need to get a job. I will widen the scope just enough for three excellent songs off this playlist that both feed into and expand upon young folks. And it just so happens that the first song is called Lloyd, I'm ready to be hard broken. It's the baseline here, primarily. Hey,

48:57oh, it's beyond broken. From their 2006 album, let's get out of this country featuring string arrangements by Peter Björn and John's very own Björn Yetling. That's the phenomenal Scottish indie pop band camera obscura with Lloyd comma, I'm ready to be hard broken. There's a deft orchestral fullness to this song, a hugeness that somehow arises out of the daintyness. But yeah, mostly it's the bass going, that really does it for me. And all time air bass song, Lloyd, I'm ready to be hard broken. I can't whistle. And it makes me really mad. I'm absolutely serious, never been able to whistle than trying all my life.

49:57I just feel strongly that I've got the kind of personality where I should whistle a lot, but I can't. It pisses me off. Don't ever mention this to me if you meet me, the no whistling thing. I mean it. Anyway, obviously we need a whistling song. So Quit showing off, dude, from his 2005 album Andrew Bird in the mysterious production of eggs. That singer, songwriter, Illinois legend and jerky show off Whistler Andrew Bird with a song called a nervous tick motion of the head to the left. Not all of these Tweet indie pop songs have long elaborate song titles, but many of them do. Andrew Bird, he's got more of an epic wide screen, ostentatious,

51:00lone spotlights, spaghetti western sort of whistling style. Whereas with Peter Björn and John, with young folks, the young folks whistling melody, you know, it's more like that's obviously a way more casual offhand. This is easy and I do it all the time sort of whistling. God damn it. The young folks whistle was initially just a placeholder for the melody. The guys figured they'd replace that melody with a synthesizer or something, but then they realized the whistle was better. I'm so mad. I don't want to talk about whistling anymore. Bird flying when I go down on you. And finally, hey, remember when Isabel Campbell, formerly of Tweet, Scottish, indie pop, giants, bell and Sebastian, and Mark Lannigan, he

52:02of righteous, broish, American, alt rock, God screaming trees, not to mention Queens of the Stone Age. Remember when Isabel Campbell and Mark Lannigan made three full-length duet albums together and they fucking ruled, even though you would not necessarily assume that combination would fucking rule. I know what they just said lyrically, by the way, never mind that now. From their first great duet album, released in 2006, and called Ballad of the Broken Seas, that song was called, Do You Want to Come Walk With Me? Perenthesis, Do You Want to Close Perenthesis? Come Walk With Me. Question Mark, all these songs have long titles. Young folks is the shortest song title in this whole genre. Isabel Campbell's high frail, wilting voice and Mark Lannigan's deep, rad, terrifying bass-ass voice. Their voices work wonderfully together. Even if together, they sound like one of those heartwarming nature photographs of like a canary befriending a warthog.

53:04Like, you know, a photo of a submerged hippopotamus barely visible peering out of a swamp with a little bird on top of its head. That's the dynamic here. Rest in peace, Mark Lannigan. I love him and I fear him so much. So yeah, young folks is also a fraught somewhat unlikely duet. I'll be at a less flagrantly odd couple type duet. The little guitar amp squeak or whatever between her part and his part right here is my favorite part of the whole song. Yeah, no, it's the price we earn less you do. I can tell there's something going on. Our suits have disappeared. Everyone is sleeping. I'm still with you. I dig that little squeak right in between there. I think that's a little bleep of electric guitar going

54:06right after she stops singing and right before he starts singing. I don't know why that wing is so important to me, but it exemplifies to me the total awkwardness and the genuine connection between them. Hey, it's our old friend Victoria Bergzmann. She has Swedish indie pot band The Concrete. That's Victoria of Teen Love fame joining Peter Moran on young folks. The creakiness, the whimsome imperfections of both their voices, the palpable attainable go ahead and try this at home achiness of both their vowels. I'm into it. And that creaky achy imperfection is lyrically thematically apt. Yes, Peter Moran talking to the guardian in 2018, Peter says, quote, we weren't young folks at the time. We were all hitting 30 or 31 rather than 18 or 19. The song is about people feeling a bit burned out on relationships. And then you meet someone new in a bar say and think, maybe this could be something. End quote. Remember when 31 was old?

55:11I don't sing the chorus. You old fogies. The bongos are a vital element of young folks as well. The shakers, the bongos, the electric guitar. I think it's electric guitar going, in the background, one sort of wobbly chord at a time, all vital elements. I'm paying attention to this young folks video for the first time ever. All the twee hand drawn look in the youngish folks bobbing their heads back and forth. Like they're singing a song from a Sesame Street episode. And I'm wondering if this video fits the vibe of young folks a little too well. Yes, it's pretty easy to overdo childlike as an aesthetic. I overuse that word childlike in my rock criticism. And usually I mean childlike

56:17as like a qualified compliment. I guess like it's a little cloying and I know I should know better than to really unguardedly like it, but I don't know better actually because I like it. But I do think young folks and the writer's block album as a whole, they really nail all the positive connotations of childlike while definitely avoiding any negative connotations. John Erickson, the drummer, talking to that podcast, Life of the Record. John mentions that while making this record, the band was super into the Langley School's music project. Are you up on this? So in the mid 70s, a bunch of elementary schools in British Columbia, that's in Canada, they got together and formed a sort of children's choir that covered big shot rock and pop songs. And then the songs came out on CD in 2001, a CD called Innocence and Despair. And it became a called outsider music hit. Let's set aside for now the thorny implications of the term outsider music. Sometimes it's okay to just

57:20listen to 70s Canadian school children sing the Beach Boys God Only Nose. You know? So John Erickson, talking about the Langley School's music project, John says, quote, the sound of that album is so fantastic. I mean, you can hear the kids giving all their hearts and also maybe a bit filled with shame or something. You know, in Sweden, we have this music school thing. So I think we felt really close to that vibe. You know, you play as a kid something that's a bit uncomfortable, but you do it and you're maybe not the best musician because your music teacher just tells you to do this and do that. And that sound was something we wanted to recreate on writer's block. This kind of naive, almost playful, not knowing what you're doing style of playing.

58:26So I tried to play drums like it was the first time. Like my music teacher had just taught me this cool funky jazz rock beat. And we played guitar and piano with one finger at a time, just trying to be kids naive, not knowing what we're doing. End quote, writers block that title, by the way, does not refer to writer's block, the affliction where you're struggling to write. No, at the time, Peter, Björn and John were living and working in a neighborhood, a block with lots of writers, musicians, and creative types. They lived on a writer's block. And I do think this album in its entirety masterfully conveys a lack of total mastery. These songs are diamonds formed by a total lack of pressure. These songs can get quite loud and huge and end themic and maximalist, but it's the sort of maximalism that sounds like giant, careful, thoughtful stacks of naive minimalism. This is a career making album by a band convinced their career was over. There's tremendous ambition

59:32here, but no expectation of success, no pompousness, no excess, because as we've established, excess ain't rebellion. My favorite song on writers block is called Up Against the Wall. It's three short verses and still somehow seven minutes long. It keeps building, it keeps mutating. It keeps surviving. The super busy drum machine, melding with, but never quite overpowering, the very simple more human sounding drumbeat. That's what really does it for me. Very few conventional drum kit symbols on writers block the album, partly as an aesthetic choice, partly because the band

1:00:34only had a couple microphones to record with, and symbols generally make too much noise. That's a semi-technical reason I love this song Up Against the Wall. A sentimental reason I love this song is that it builds and mutates and deepens and brightens and darkens and seems like it'll legitimately never end, just like youth. This is another song I love on writers block, the first real song, it's called The Objects of My Affection. The lyrics here are very effectively ever so lightly clunky, to the point where I'd never quite grasped them. And the question is, was I more alive than than I am now? These are early 30 somethings, waxing nostalgic about what? Their early 20s, their waxing nostalgic for like 30 seconds

1:01:39ago. It ought to be annoying, but unerned, shame-based way too early in nostalgia can be the most powerful kind. But you gotta sing the last line too, right? Don't ever forget the last line. And the question is, was I more alive than than I am now? I happily have to disagree. I am more alive. I love that part. Again, I had not 100% grasped that that part goes, I laugh more often now, I cry more often now, I am more me. But I love that part even more now. And I may even believe it. I really love this whole record, but young folks unavoidably overshadows the rest of this record. And really the rest of Peter Bjorn and John's now quite extensive uvra. This band has made

1:02:45nine full-length albums to date, most recently Endless Dream in 2020. But when these fellas are touring the 20th anniversary of writer's block this fall, the crowd will perk up when they play young folks. And there's no getting around it. This is this sort of unexpected hit song that both permanently makes your career and fucks your shit up. Talking to DIY magazine in 2011, Peter Moran says, quote, I'm eternally grateful for that song. Is it changed our career for the better forever? Now we just have to deal with its legacy. Of course, there are nights when I don't feel like singing it, especially as it doesn't really fit in with some of the other stuff. But you just do your acting bits and put on the autopilot. It will always be a great song. End quote, trust me, though, young folks will still sound divine, regardless, even if the bands on autopilot, you cannot whistle through gritted teeth. Not that I would know.

1:03:54Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyers remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com. Order or visit a Panda Express near you.

1:04:55This episode is brought to you by Paramount Plus. Let Chaos reign. Mobland, the hit crime series of the Android, a guy richy is now streaming on Paramount Plus. The arrogance are on the brink of uncivil war. As power plays, fractured loyalties and reckless decisions collide. Their fixer Harry is left to clean up the fallout. Don't miss Mobland starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Bros and Helen Mirren. Now streaming on Paramount Plus. We are thrilled to be joined once again by Chris Deville, author of the Fantastic 2025 book Such Great Heights, colon of the complete cultural history of the Indy Rock explosion. He is also StereoGums managing editor and a hall of fame, Ohioan in my opinion. Chris, it's awesome to talk to you again. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me back. Of course. Chris, you recently wrote a great StereoGum piece about the 20th anniversary of Peter Bjorn and John's Writer's Block album. You called it a tipping point in the gentrification of Indy Rock.

1:05:55What do you mean by that? Because that sounds bad. Yeah, I know how it sounds. It's not good, but it's not necessarily their fault either. It's like they made this just about perfect pop rock album and it happened to be exactly what companies who wanted to get a hip Indy sound in their ads were looking for. I wrote in my retrospective article, you just talked about every time the whistling hook from young folks would breeze down a block, a city block, a micro brewery and a whole foods we just spring up. Yeah. It just sounded like this very commercial friendly version of Indy. That's what the book such great heights was kind of about. It was the gentrification of Indy or how Indy Rock went pop.

1:06:58It's like you have to think about this album is arriving into the context of iPod ads and coming off of the OC in Garden State and Grey's Anatomy. This was a time when Pitchfork was watching its music festival and starting to get a lot more mainstream attention. And like blogs were, they had been kind of the hot thing for a couple years. And so there was all this kind of mainstream interest in this idea of Indy Rock. And I feel like it was a different flavor of underground rock kind of bubbling up than we had maybe 15 years earlier with Nirvana. It's like maybe a little bit cuter and cleaner and more commercial friendly. And so like to me writers blocked really embodied that shift and it sounds like a step

1:08:00further down a path to me. And so like I listened back to it and I love it. Like I was actually stunned when I revisited for the article. I was like wow this holds up. But I also just can't shake that sort of context that it's like I'm hearing this genre morphing before my ears. Right. At the timeline, it's done exactly match up. But hearing it sounds like vampire weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Like when I think about the moment when like the commercial side of the music business really got a hold of Indy Rock, that was when vampire weekend was in every ad. That's the way it seemed to me. Like they went on Stephen Colbert with the Black Keys and like made jokes about it, you know, how commercial, how ad friendly this music had inadvertently became. Right. And this is like the precursor to vampire weekend in terms of like so many songs from this album were in advertisements. And it wasn't just young folks. Like I feel like it was like four,

1:09:00five, six songs were all featured in. I may be misremembering it, but I just feel like it wasn't just that young folks sort of took over the world. It's like so many songs from the album were kind of creeping in everywhere. Yeah. I love this album too. In its entirety, I totally agree with you. In your piece, you said that it politely bangs, which is very enticing phrasing me. How does one bang politely? It's just very Swedish. It's like, yes. It's got this kind of fake, cutesy, mild, manored element to it that I associate with like Jen's Leckman and some of the other sort of Indie Pop artists from, but at the same time, Sweden is Robin and Abba and Max Martin. And a lot of this album has that studio precise quality to it too. Even though like they're still rock band on the album and some of the songs like really rock and there's they know when to let

1:10:04a little bit of noise and chaos come into it. But yeah, so it's kind of like it's caught in the balance between the more sort of primitive, cutesy side of Swedish music and the very like professionalized side of it. Yeah, it's hard to talk about this band without using words like politely or quirky or Tweet. I think a dorkable shows up in your article and maybe that's the word best left to history. Like these words, selling points, or they can be insults depending on who's using them. Like where are you personally on Tweet as like a musical descriptor or a lifestyle? I feel like I'm definitely not anti Tweet, but Tweet to me is that it's best when it's kind of raw and unkempt and low-fi. When I think about like beat happening or like

1:11:07Sarah Records or some of the more like underground type Tweet stuff, the cleaner and more professionalized, it gets the more clueling it tends to become. And so the ability to pull off something that's kind of Tweet, but at the same time is good and is like professionally good, but it's just like enjoyable. Like the ability to do something that's Tweet, but is slick and yeah, it's just like to me, that's part of what is the charm of this album is that they're able to be Tweet and take it in that kind of more clueling direction, but it never strikes me as clueling, like it's never overbearing. Yeah, this was a case where reading about how they made the album really enhanced the album for me, like just to understand it, they had put out two albums that hadn't really

1:12:09done anything. They figured they were going to break up if this one didn't work. They're in like an apartment, you know, they're getting drums out of the trash or off Craigslist or whatever, like the dichotomy between like just thinking this is the end and making an album for them, but it turns out to be an album, as you say, that is exactly what's, you know, every advertiser, you know, and every commercial interest was looking for at that point. Like it's very cool that they sort of accidentally stumbled into doing the exact thing, you know, that the Indy Rock world needed to hear at that moment. Yeah, it's kind of a surprise. Like I, I haven't dug deep into the making of the album, like it sounds like maybe you do in the first half of this episode, but like it is interesting that like it was kind of their last ditch effort and it really worked out. I, young folks comes up briefly in your book, you know, you mentioned, young folks was apparently

1:13:12the opening song in the pilot of Gossip Girl. Yeah. Which does not actually make any, I thought they were much meaner people. I never imagined those people listening to Peter Björn and John, I guess I should watch the show, but where does young folks fit into the larger history of Indy Rock for you? Are we closer to the end at this point than the beginning of the arc you're tracing in this book? In the book? Okay, so the book is very like focused on the 21st century. I mean, it's certainly nowhere near the beginning of the arc of Indy Rock in general. Like I mean, some people would probably say Indy Rock peaked in the 80s and 90s and by the time I got to it, when I was a high school or Y2K, it's like, oh, it was already over. We missed it. Yes, totally. Yeah, so the blog era or whatever, I don't know, as someone who writes about Indy Rock every day, it's Dario Gum. I prefer to think that it's still like alive and well in some capacity. It's like

1:14:18any genre kind of waxes and wanes and you go through cycles of moving in and out of the mainstream. But like, it definitely feels like right in the middle of the arc that I'm tracing in the book, where it's kind of going from sort of morphing into this form of pop music. And I feel like we've cycled back out of that to some extent. Like, I feel like you do, it's become a more underground phenomenon again. And not that's like every single Indy band is underground because like, obviously you had this huge geese thing last year and like, the street breeder. Yeah, right. And Phoebe Bridgers is back and bigger than ever. And like, it's like not everything from the world of Indy is like separate from the world of pop or anything like that. But I don't know. It just feels like sort of a lot of the infrastructure around

1:15:22Indy is not what it used to be. And so it kind of almost by default has had to become more of an underground thing again. And now whether that surges back up again or whether it becomes something like jazz where it's like, you know, jazz never died, man. But it's like, okay, well, it's not really exactly part of the mainstream menu either. Like, it's very much a niche thing. So whether it stays niche or whether it, you know, kind of has another cycle of mainstream adoption remains to be seen. But it's also like nobody even really knows what Indy even means anymore because it's like got somber who is very obviously a pop star coming out and saying like, yeah, I make music. Yeah, that guy, that guy is not that's that's the least Indy looking guy I have ever seen in my entire life. I just, I just will not accept that. I don't want to be a gatekeeper, but that's absurd. Honestly, I wanted to talk to you about up against the wall, which is definitely

1:16:23my favorite song of theirs on writer's block. Like you talk about the momentum, the emotion, the euphoria of this song. This is a song. It's like seven minutes long and I wish it were 45 minutes long. Like what clicks for this band as a whole on this album and on this song in particular? Yeah. That is maybe my favorite as well. All right. Good. It is, I mean, like there's a lot of contenders for favorite on this album, to be honest. I think that song, what's so awesome about it is the song has this really like profound emotional core to it on one hand. It's like, there's a lot of, you can hear the passion in it, but it's also this kind of fine-tuned machine. Also, it's like you got ingredients coming in and out like different guitar parts. You have one guitar part and it disappears and then a different guitar part and then eventually they're both in

1:17:24there and it almost is like a like an LCD sound system song or something with all the moving parts coming in and out. And so yeah, I don't know. It's this sort of technical marvel, but the technical side of it doesn't obscure the sort of emotional core of it. And so just the way that they're able to build that up so masterfully over the course of while like seven minutes, it's just incredibly well done and it shows how much range they have because it is nothing like young folks. Like it's so far from kind of the lighthearted whimsy of young folks. Yeah. The objects of my affection, like the first real song is another one that I really love, which I was curious how you feel about this record and its relationship into nostalgia. Like I never really looked at the lyrics to the objects of my affection really closely. But like in the question is am I more alive than than I am now, you know, but then they decide

1:18:29that they're happier and they're freer and they're more themselves now is like 30 somethings and then they were as 20 somethings. Like just listening to this album now make you look primarily like backward or forward. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it has to be backward, right? Like it just, it feels so so much like a relic of its era. Like it feels so locked to its time. But revisiting that song, you know, 20 years after first hearing it, it definitely is caused for for contemplation, you know, like you hear those lyrics and inevitably you start thinking about same question for yourself. Like am I more alive now? Here are my 40s than I was in my 20s. It's like 40s is different. 30s versus 20s, there's an argument. I don't feel more alive now, Chris. I'm just going to level with you. I feel alive, but just in a different way. Yeah.

1:19:32Yeah. Well, I mean, that's that's hopefully the next book honestly is talking about being a washed dad in the context of Indy Rock. Yeah, totally. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's if anything that lyric makes you start to think about like, okay, well, like what, you know, where do I stand now? And like, you know, where are my head is? So there is a forward thinking aspect to it. So that I think that's a very thoughtful question for you. But definitely, at least on immediate impact, it's like, oh, damn, like I'm spiraling into the past right now. Right. I'm back at the Williamsburg waterfront or wherever you didn't have to be there. It's fine. It's you could have just read about it. It's the same thing. Yeah, I feel like I was there from all of them. Like, you know, so much so many histories of the Williamsburg waterfront. But we tried to make it a thing. We tried to get FOMO going for the rest of the country. It was just it was a

1:20:35sia up just like geese, the will you know, waterfront pool parties were a sia up in a way. I very famously both Kanye West and Drake jumped on a Peter Björn and John song like an a remix or a sample like and this is around 2006. Like this is these guys are a little different than Drake and Kanye than they are. But like what made this band's music so attractive, you know, to some of the biggest, you know, coolest rappers at the time. Are they just jumping on whatever seems cool with Indie or is there some quality to this music that like makes Drake, you know, just have to get involved. I don't think that oh, Drake is an interesting one because like he had leaky Lee on that's right. On his mix state too. And so it's like he's kind of double dipping on the Swedish. He knows thing. But like to me Kanye, I mean, so it kind of comes back to Kanye is this sort of

1:21:38ultimate hipster character and like, you know, like some of the avatars of hipsterdom from the 2000s, like, you know, vice guy who's proud boys guy now or whatever, like he's obviously gone on a journey. But at the time, it's like hip hop, I feel like was kind of remade in Kanye's image. You had the famous sort of Kanye versus 50 cent sales battle and all that. It was like the passing of the torch or something. And so you had a lot of rappers like blog rappers that were coming up kind of in Kanye's image and Drake was one of them certainly. But you got like kid cutie, you got childish Gambino, you got all these rappers that are getting popular on the blogs, like the rap blogs who are jumping on indie songs. Because I think there's a lot of spillover between the indie blogs and the rap blogs in terms of readership. And so, but I think it, you

1:22:45know, it traces back to Kanye like he's he was always trying to have like the cool avat guard thing. Not that I don't think anybody would call Peter Bjorn a John Avon guard, but like sort of like whatever you've read exactly like the the buzzy new thing, you know, he's he's putting death punk in his songs and all that stuff. So yeah, I think I think it had to do with like it wasn't necessarily specific to Peter Bjorn and John. It happened that they ended up on both of those guys albums. But you have like people sampling grizzly bear, people sampling in GMT. And it's like that was kind of the wave there for a minute. And so I guess kind of Peter Bjorn and John were caught up in that wave. But they actually performed on stage with Kanye, right? They did. They did. I think in Europe somewhere like Kanye made fun of them for not being

1:23:49able to whistle. I think there was a whistling issue. I think they really I think that Peter Bjorn and John really had to work to whistle live, you know, to do young folks justice. And Kanye was clowning their inability to whistle on stage. So they they had a rapport of sorts live, I guess. Yeah. Okay, cool. I've never seen the footage. I need to to load it up. Yeah, you can you can go find that on gorilla versus bear or something. Maybe that's presumably. I mean, even after everything we've said, like, why did young folks specifically blow up this huge, right? Like I it's just so far ahead of anything else that Peter Bjorn and John have done, you know, there was a lot of music that sounded like this in 2006. But like this one song, as you say, sort of broke out in terms of being everywhere you looked in terms of standing in, you know, for this this era of indie, like what is it about this? Is it just the whistling or what makes this song the one everyone gravitated toward?

1:24:54I really think it is the whistling like now I'm not saying I think that the song is like being propped up by the whistling or something like I think it's an excellent song. I think every part of the song works. It's like, you know, the the interplay between the guy and the girl vocals and like even the you know, certainly drumbeat is like, you know, it's really guyskipping it step. The the bongos that they bring in like it's like so much there there are so many cool things happening on the song and it's got this kind of dreamy romantic quality to it. And it really even though it says we don't care about the young folks, we don't care about the old folks, it's like it there is a youthfulness to it, but I think that the whistling that's like that's what sets the song apart, that's what draws you in. That's part of what makes it seem

1:25:57probably more tweey than it would otherwise also. So yeah, I think without the whistling it's like what even is the song without the whistling, even though I think I just made the argument that it has all these great ingredients going into a unified whole, but it's like you take away the whistling and I think it's a far lesser song and it certainly doesn't grab people's attention like it did. Yeah, and the other thing that was interesting to me is in interviews Peter Björn and Jada made clear like I said that like they were they were going to break up if this album wasn't a success like this song, this one song is like a career making song they have like nine albums now that like they tour all the time, but they don't necessarily love playing young folks live and it sort of bums them out, you know, when they get the sense that like a crowd just wants to hear young folks, right? Like do you believe in the idea of a fluky kind of hit song is like an albatross or at least a mild annoyance to a band and does young folks sort of qualify as that kind of song for Peter Björn and

1:27:03Jada? Well, I mean like I'm a radio head fanboy so like I'm very experienced with like the idea of a band that that distains their their breakthrough hit. I mean they're kind of they're a certainly different case where they ended up far more claimed and nobody really gets too mad that they don't play creep anymore. But yeah, I mean I think I think I understand it from a band's perspective where it's like we wrote all these other great songs and like why doesn't anybody care about that? Like I think that that I can see why it would bother them, but at the same time like I feel like I've read some band interviews with people who have like the one-off hit and they're just like I'm just grateful. Like I'm grateful that people are excited to hear something that I did.

1:28:07So I think that like if you have a level of humility about it like it can be fun instead of being an albatross, but you know I guess I think they were happy that I said in the article that the rest of the album was good too. Like they they're on Instagram they were jumping in my comments being like thank you. It was kind of it was kind of weird because it's I felt like I'm also saying that your album is like the sound of indie gentrification. So like it was kind of surprised. I didn't say that right yeah. I was surprised that they were so like uniformly like positive in their response to the piece because it was like it didn't feel like I felt like I was kind of heaping praise on them while also being like but there's this kind of like context that I can't escape that like constantly listen to it. So yeah I don't know I think that they were happy just that

1:29:09somebody was acknowledging that the rest of the album is really good because like 10 we did this 10 years ago like when it turned 10 and I wrote an article that was just about youngful specifically because because of my thought at the time was like I don't know if anybody remembers this album but they remember the song undoubtedly and so another 10 years went by and I was like man this album is too good for me till not write something about it. Yeah I really love the idea that your bro's now with Peter Bjorn and I really do I do really do think that you guys would get a lot I think you made clear that the indie gentrification was not their faults that it was sort of an inadvertent byproducts but like they made a great record and they can't help it. I said you guys should hang out you guys should totally hang out I think you would you know if they want to find me to sweeten I'm down there we go. Yes I've never been to Scandinavia so let's me happen. Let's hope they're listening. I thank you so much for this Chris is wonderful. Thanks for having me on Rob.

1:30:13Thanks very much you're our guest this week Chris Deville thanks to our producers Chris Sutton Justin Sales Julianna Rest that Olivia Creary animations and graphics by Chris Calaton special thanks to Cole Kuchna and thanks to you for listening and now let's all go listen to young folks by Peter Bjorn and John we'll see you next week. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market now this is a player in the food space that is championed winning food standards and quality since 1980 that means no added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat and no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in their delimits hot dogs or sausages plus all their seafood is responsibly farmed or wild caught they've even banned some ingredient store-wide to make sure there's nothing to mess with the flavors you want shop Whole Foods

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