Cliff: Today we’re talking about Super Champan by Otoboke Beaver

Why? Why? Why?

Kyle: How do you even start a conversation about this any other way than insanely? I just like wanna rip my shirt off and run around in the yard. That’s the “Otoboke Beaver” episode, everyone. Have a great night. Thanks for stopping by.

Cliff: Brendan, throw in a blast beat here and album complete

Kyle: This record is a gift from the machine elves

Cliff: It’s also, if we’re looking for ways to start this conversation, we could just do the opposite of what we did in our last conversation where we said, “Hey, look, ‘Say Sheik’ might be the most accessible record to ever exist Today I bring you maybe the opposite in a great way. Not challenging on our scale of challenging music, kind of automatically in the enjoyable column there, but by most people’s rubric, a truly difficult record that’s gonna get a few people to go, “Oh, oh s**t, this is, this is my thing now.”

Kyle: I hope so. And honestly I don’t think you’re a real, I won’t even say music enjoyer, like experience appreciator in general in life, if you can’t hang in there for the literal 21-minute runtime of this whole thing. It’s gonna feel like a very long 21 minutes, to be clear. But, when you have a little time and space in your life, like I do living on a gravel road in the South, I noticed that I wasn’t even to the highway from my house before this record started over. And I was like, “Wow, I live far from things, but also this record is short. That’s tight.” so this is the opposite record of a lot of records in a lot of ways. This whole record is less than one side of the Fela record

Cliff: As one review put it, “The size of one modern Iron Maiden song.” Yes, I guess so.

Kyle: The lyrics are shorter than the transcription of one time Dave Mustaine complains about Metallica

Cliff: This activated the part of me that goes, I love being f**king weird on purpose and in people’s face, as long as it doesn’t hurt them, obviously. But, in a societally abrasive way of like y- th- yes, this is my Chat Pile shirt of Grimace smoking weed, and yes, if you ask me about it, I will eventually play this for you.

And you’ll look at me like, “Are you serious?” And I’ll look right back at you like, “More serious than I’ve ever been.” And we’ll have this whole conversation about 500 really weird bands, and this is one of them. I love it. It’s weirder than the music that came before it. I don’t know where it’s going from here.

It makes me want to drum better and faster. It makes me want to listen to boring music less. And it makes me wanna tell everybody about 1,000 other weird records that made me feel however this record made me feel when I forced myself to listen to it on repeat, which is something close to a mania

Kyle: I agree with everything you say on a musical level, but it’s even more reptile brain than that for me. This is like, do you like fireworks? Have you ever wanted to– not in the Katy Perry sense, in the literal explosions of chemicals sense. Have you ever wanted to feel like fireworks were going off in your body in a good way, in like an abstract way, not in a pain way?

do you like that sensation? Do you like skateboarding? Do you like rage rooms or primal scream therapy? do you like running around in a mall? If you’re old enough to have ever done that or remember that.

Cliff: Like running. Running, running.

Kyle: running, running, running in a mall. Yeah, yeah. Like they do in the movies before they get kicked out, by the mall cop.

Do you like Six Flags? Do you like just spending the whole day at Six Flags? Do you remember what was like? this is all that. do you wanna feel alive as f**k in your body? Brother Brother gender non-specific, do I have the band for you

Cliff: I have to admit, I’m already on a mental detour because I love going to theme parks as an adult, and I- part of why I love it now is ’cause you get to control your experience differently. And one of the things you get to do if you go by yourself is listen to music while you’re there. This is a perfect band to listen to literally at Six Flags.

That is a great call

Kyle: 1,000%. I mean, it evokes the feeling of being at Six Flags if you can’t be there. But yeah, if you’re gonna have AirPods in walking around Six Flags, this is like a pretty perfect companion. And it’s hard to know what would even pair well with that, but this most certainly would. This is like, “I’m gonna get out there and get it, dude.”

this is the one album, one band, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtrack experience

Cliff: this is the cool workout record you’re looking for, but unfortunately no one’s workout lasts 22 minutes

Kyle: No, this is, what is that s**t called? Uh, HIIT, interval training. This is that. The, the– this is that, the record. Can’t promise you’re gonna like it, but the shapes of them pair well, the graphs of them, so to speak, the ups and downs. Also, of all the things we love that have never spilled over into this main podcast, the 12-second song, the Napalm Death’s “You Suffer,” the joy of suffer, if you will.

I know we both love that on not only a musical but also a philosophical level, like that has to exist in the spectrum of all things that can exist in music. We certainly spend a lot of time stretching time out in the other direction with the music that we’ve talked about. But man, if you can express an idea completely and directly in 12 seconds, that’s rad

Cliff: Your point is even more well made because You Suffer is four seconds

Kyle: That’s right

Cliff: And there’s a lot of that energy here though, uh, which I enjoy. Yeah, it’s sort of like if you took out the little You Suffer and made it like a move that a band does and then just sprinkled it throughout. Like I… But we will, I’m sure, talk about a, a lot of different ways to view this prism or whatever.

But I am… You could probably trace it throughout the podcast episodes. I’m always low-key like a grind fan because you can bring it into things where it doesn’t belong and make a new thing, and it works so well here. There’s so many things that are just straight up aped from serious hardcore bands. and, and I mean, the first mistake you can make is to let appearances deceive you with this band and write anything off based on your American masculine perception of what you’re looking at to begin with.

And any 10 second snippet of pretty much any song that they play will disabuse you of any notions you had about whether this is good, fast, interesting, complicated, any of it. it ticks every box insultingly well, except for maybe the like, I don’t know, if you’re looking for complex jazz adjacent compositional type of music, you will not mostly find it here.

You’re gonna find a lot of different employment of other aspects of culture, which is not just a generic way to say Japanese. It’s a way to say this integrates… the timing is mostly from comedy, not from other music, which is why it feels funny to listen to. Which it, like just those two sentences is like you could get me on a band with that.

well, we’re just kind of f**king around with the thing that makes you laugh based on how humans perceive the timing of different interjections. Like, uh, yes, I’m subscribed.

Kyle: I would argue, I think maybe you take complexity for granted a bit because it is exactly how your mind works. but if you were to talk to a normie and be like, “Remember all these parts in order. It’s only 90 seconds. It’s no big deal. And remember exactly when every part stops and starts. Pick any instrument, whichever you feel most comfortable with.”

Motherfucker, 99 out of 100 people could not replicate an Otoboke Beaver song, could not cover it with a day’s practice. So is it Billy Cobham’s “Stratus”? Is it a big classical piece? Nah. Does that take away from the writing and the musicianship that’s happening here? F**k no. It’s unreal. It’s unreal. And I would argue that the fluidity is a jazz of its own.

there’s so much stuff that understays its we- virtually everything understays its welcome here. And they, like they never do a single thing as much as I want them to do it. And the rise and falls, the rises and falls feel really, really fluid. I think that’s why I keep thinking about skateboarding ’cause it’s like up and down and sort of leaning left and right and whatever.

It really feels like that, and I guess that’s like a rollercoaster, too. it’s got physics, you know? Like where a lot of music is linear and you can see the staffs of sheet music happening, there’s lines and angles and s**t. This is more waves for sure. it’s very physical. It’s very visceral. It’s, in the future meme sense, it’s sensational

Cliff: Physical is really important as a description here. I think not only to express how you will probably experience some form of this record when you listen to it, but also as an understanding of their live performance and the way that they seemingly draw influence and, to your point, compose and write music.

It… There is a specific physicality to a lot of it

Kyle: Yeah, I play bass barefoot ’cause that’s just what feels better to me. It helps me get in the flow better

Cliff: Yes. And 100 more seemingly like physical-esque things. I think It’s good to sort of mention the reference up front that we were alluding to. One, one thing that this band sort of comes out and says about itself, all, all kind of present and former members included there, is that their changes in rhythm and tempo, like their approach to how the rhythm works, is a translation of manzai comedy in Japan, which As soon as you hear and perceive the concept that I’m talking about, and like I, I’m fully ignorant of it prior to beginning to research this record and understand it.

But the m- the moment you see it, it clicks. y- that is what that is what they’re doing. in a very simplistic summary of what this is for people who are unfamiliar specifically, it is a duo comedy, and there’s this interplay between two people, and generally speaking, one person is sort of playing the role of like the idiot who’s sort of making jokes at a rapid pace, and the other person is sort of critiquing and correcting and being the sort of like the almost good cop, bad cop top– type dynamic of thing.

But it’s really fast. It’s interjectory it’s interruptive, and it works, I mean, honestly, I mean, frankly, it’s a little bit like a TuneDig to be straight with you, like where it’s one person is going really fast, the other person’s like, “You got 80% of it there, uh, 20% real fast. Let’s roll it back.”

And then the next person goes and But there’s a speed and a cadence to it when people embrace the comedy and embrace the methodology of how all of that stuff works and start to express timing through not only their body physically, right? But like the specific physical interaction between the two people who are physically standing there.

And like, so it– not only can you start to hear where the music can come from, it unlocks a bit of like the what am I looking at when you see a live video of them. ‘Cause there’s something different about it than just like, oh, that time at the drive-in was on TV and they scraped their face across the floor for fun and it all sounded like feedback.

It’s sort of different from that. And to, to me, like learning more again about that comedy as an, an influence in the music helped me to go back and start reappreciating over and over again, like what is happening here and why is it so strange to me in a cool way? But also how… it’s not music theory rhythm.

It like, it, it is, uh, there’s an, an embodiment of the way that we talk and interact as the rhythm, and that’s part of what makes it like d- delightful in the most positive sense I can possibly say. Like it, it delights me now that I understand more of that and makes, makes me laugh. Like music that makes me laugh immediately goes to the top of my list.

And not in a like this deathcore song is very bad type of funny, but in like a you just surprised me and caught me off guard so much that I, my body made a noise like that. That’s rad, dude. That’s the type of thing I’m looking for now

Kyle: Yeah. It’s not Lil Dicky trying to make me laugh with the content. It’s Riff Raff m- making me laugh with the structure. But like, it’s serious. It’s committed to what it is. It doesn’t exist to be comedic. It is inspired by the energy of comedy. And the thing that came to mind while you were sharing that, and that’s bang on, that’s a great root place to start, is, you know, we keep making that contrast between the myth of the lone genius and the power of the collective, and just knowing that this fundamentally starts with the assumption that a collective is required, right?

For a two-person comedy, interplay and interaction, you couldn’t write the stu- I mean, I guess theoretically you could write it on your own, but you miss some of the, like, organic stuff that comes out in the Manzai style and the speed. It– I just, I don’t know enough about Manzai to know if there are lone geniuses in the genre, but just as somebody who writes creatively all the time, I, I know for sure it’s at least very difficult to write in two voices at that speed with that level of interplay.

So if any one of them can do it on their own, hallelujah, praise be. But I also suspect part of the joy in developing the style is specifically getting to do it with other people and the bouncing and the collaboration type stuff. So that, that inherently, the social element of it lends to a level of fun and delightfulness immediately, ’cause it’s, it’s shared.

It’s a joke you’re both in on.

Cliff: To that point, one specific bit about this record that I think contextualizes it and makes it for me, like this band overall, everything I’ve heard, great. Including the, what was basically a compilation record and not an intentionally made album prior to this, uh, “Itikoma Hits,” which is also very cool. And I think we’ll talk some about a lot of the type of music that’s on there and some of how it persists into this record.

But Supertampon” was released in 2022. This is, a- as the band represents, like basically the first time they could do music full-time and make an album on purpose. Now, the lead-up to this being they changed drummers for this record and then actually they have now moved on past this drummer as well as of like literally when we’re recording this, early mid-2026.

uh, so the drummer on this record Kaho Kiss, is what– I mean, first of all, maybe one of the cooler drummers I’ve experienced, and I’ve seen a lot of drummers in my time. Like this, listen to the record right before this one, then listen to this one. it’s a lot faster and weirder and more complex, like noticeably so.

And we already called this like a physical record. I think for the most part, any record that we think of as being physical is going to have a percussion rhythm section of like severity, seriousness. Like there is an underlying, uh, heaviness to the rhythm that makes a thing physical.

And like- She is one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard and plays incredibly precise, fast music, and this would be an interesting record without her, it would not work correctly. Or, or not correctly. It

Kyle: At the level… Yeah, yeah. It elevates it

Cliff: Yeah. The,

Kyle: big time

Cliff: in, you know, we love a lot of heavy bands with big riffs, and so we could, you know, we don’t have to go through and name a bunch, but, like, I’m sure we can very quickly think of, like, some bands have huge riffs and they play a doom and a sludge beat on top of it, and it’s got its own weight to it and physicality, and it’s interesting and it’s slow.

And then all the way on the other side of things are the drummers who play at a speed that doesn’t seem right, but the band has figured out how to play that fast correctly. I saw Converge again for the 87th time or whatever pretty recently. It’s a pretty good example of a band who, like, they play really fast, but the reason that it works isn’t because they’re fast, it’s because they’re really good at playing fast, and they’ve done it that way for a long time.

And, like, the music and the guitar is shaped around how fast they’re playing. And to me, that was my first sort of big takeaway listening more and more to this record is here are four people absolutely committed to, “We’re gonna make an album full of extremely tight, complex, on-rhythm punk music that plays with, occasional pop, occasional hardcore, occasional grind, always kinda comes back to the center, and never stays the same long enough to become any actual genre at all.”

I even saw one review basically just say, like, doesn’t make sense just to call this a punk record, but calling it anything else doesn’t really make sense, so that’s what we’re gonna call it.” this is the energy of stuff that, like, lights me up when I get to listen to it. A c- committed approach to something specific in the punk region or territory that pushes things in a direction that, you know, a lot of other people don’t visit.

Kyle: there’s plenty on the record about how much we hate genre tags and over-labeling and the fallibility of words in talking about musical sensations. quite literally to your point, you feel compelled to find words for this, and there just aren’t any. Like, you have to call Otoboke Beaver a genre.

They have invented a sound. There is nothing. And I mean, I scoured for the last part of this where it’s like, okay, no, I’m gonna, I’m gonna find some stuff. But n- nothing, not only is not quite like this, nothing is in the neighborhood of this. So on that merit alone, if you like music at all and you’re here listening to this podcast, so you do, This is a must-stop, You gotta eat at this restaurant at least once and try out the flavors. And they– There are many, and they are, like, explosive. There’s tons of seasoning. this is Michelin star s**t, and maybe it would just be a regular good meal without the drummer, to your point. what was the record earlier this year where we were, like, surprised that the drummer was the MVP?

Oh, N.E.R.D. This is another give the drummer some episode where you’re just like, “Everything’s great, but it’s super great, and we’re talking about it because of the drummer.”

That’s the holy s**t thing. And, you know, so much of the time we’ve really settled into a groove where the first thing we talk about is a cold listen.

I do think this is one of the rare instances where I would make an exception to do a cold listen without seeing anything about this band. I think this is a great, unless you’re an asshole, this is a great time to judge a book by its cover, I just think it fires too many synapses in too many directions to just hear the sounds happening.

and it really helps speed the learning curve, and to your point, brings delight to your heart. You just cannot be unaffected when you see video of them. You are quite literally moved by their energy. The kids talk about people have an aura. You wanna talk about four people that have aura. The people in this band have massive aura, and you’re like, “I don’t know how long I can hang in there with this, but I f**king interested.”

And you, when we were texting back and forth about this, made the, I always wanna call him Angine the Poutine comparison of the, like, the virality. The visuals make it shticky I’m not taking away from the musical chops of that band. They are also quite good and unique and interesting. But I would put that– If you’ve experienced that viral sensation of the two polka dot clowns playing microtones, I would put this perpendicular to that, where it’s like seeing a movie in Technicolor on a big screen for the first time where you’re just like, “Whoa, dude.

I wanna see what’s going on there.” And I think for a lot of people it was either a Tiny Desk or a KEXP, um, so I’m quite thankful for those services that public radio have provided for us. Do you remember the first thing you saw from them?

Cliff: No, but One of those times would have been, there was a, there was a moment where Dave Grohl, uh, RIP culturally, made a really big deal about them. and they, they went on

tour with some really–

big bands

Kyle: The Foos are really eating s**t right now, aren’t they? Man, they, they really tanked it hard. He, he should’ve just quit while he was ahead That’s the one thing Kurt Cobain and us can probably agree on The Melvins are great, and Dave Grohl never should’ve kept going. Okay, so there’s two things

Cliff: But if I don’t do a cold listen, I don’t stumble upon Japanese lyrics such as, “I don’t believe in my maternal instinct. It’s none of my business. Child abuse,” as the very first thing that gets said on this record, with a, the chorus of, “I love dogs. I love dogs. I love dogs. I deliver a puppy, not a baby.” Um, which as a childfree individual deeply represents me and my emotional states, so I can understand. I do… I love famously having a hard time with lyrics, and especially ones that are not even thinly veiled with meaning. I have enjoyed this record quite a bit, in one part because, yes, it is in a language that my brain does not recognize, or at least part of it is in a language that my brain doesn’t recognize, and therefore I have this sort of different experience of it, right?

Than trying to actually discern what’s being said. But even when I read the, what the rough translation would be, the Cedric Bixler-Zavala adjacency of like, I am going to do a gibberish version of what I’m trying to say. there’s like just enough of it here to where just once again, I find it funny. Like just, it… No, it works. Like this is sort of what I would say if I were being a goober about some s**t around some friends talking about a topic like this.

I’d start doing a bit with other people, and we’d start making jokes like this. And like very, very quickly, just like would actually be the case with Cliff and Kyle, you’re always two songs away from a strong feminist stance anyway, so might as well talk about ridiculous s**t. and then you’ll get to the hard parts, and then you’ll come back into ridiculous s**t.

And just the lightheartedness matched with the meticulous intensity of the music is another delightful layer that just like… There are few analogs for it, honestly.

Kyle: Well, yes to all that. A couple of other things. Reading specifically that they’ve, doubled down on the stretching of the English and Japanese mixing and playing with grammar and plays on words, and there’s a real inventiveness with the language that they’ve doubled down on out of spite, which is super punk.

the song “Pardon” is literally about exactly that. Oh, like, “Oh, you can’t understand me? Oh. Oh.” Just like sort of mocking, doing the mocking SpongeBob meme about people not being able to understand them. Fantastic. They get knocked on about, vague love songs or whatever, so they, they write a quote-unquote love song to basically the Japanese equivalent of, of ASCAP, of the, like, recording rights, uh, institution.

and then there’s stuff like, a- again, to your point, like what’s a bit, what’s a sentence that we would just say we would– it would become a vocal stem for us? “Where did you buy such a nice watch you are wearing now?” it’s delightful. It just feels good. It just feels fun to say. And then to your point, it devolves into really specific vibes that we bring to the function. “You’re no hero. Shut up. F**k you, man whore.” That’s the title of a song on this record. A co- a couple of songs before a song called “Dirty Old Fart” is waiting for my reaction And then it ends with track 18, “Let’s Shopping After a Show,” 17 seconds long.

Amazing Have I sold you yet, listener? If not, I can keep going. I will keep going. But wait, there’s more

Cliff: it’s always just enough. I won’t dish out salads.” Like, the song starts with like, “Salad, salad.” Like, they’re just chanting f**king salad. but then you read a little bit more oh, okay, so in Japanese culture, serving salad is a, a female subordinate type of gesture.

So the whole thing of it is like, what– The, like, the lyrics are like, “What are you good at? Wow, great. You can dish out salad.” uh, okay. So if you take one more step, you get rewarded. And like, we talk about this all the time, right? Like the… Usually it’s the bands who are like overly serious. Speaking of this being a foil for chic, right?

Deep hidden meaning. None of that f**king s**t here, man. not a lick of a deep hidden meaning anywhere. It’s just like a, “Here’s what this song is about. If you care to do a little bit of reach into what it is that this is even referencing, you’ll probably get something interesting, and it’ll be just enough.”

it’s

Kyle: m- it’s me- it’s not DHM, it’s MIYF. It’s meaning in your face

Cliff: But it also, it’s– It reminds me that for a lot of hardcore and punk bands, I do wish they would just literally, in the old meaning of this phrase, say less. Just like say less. Make your point if you’ve got it. Yes, I know that you’re vegan. We should be too. so just make a song that’s like vegan, vegan, you know, and be done.

Be done with the whole thing. ‘Cause like it works if you just put that back into the music like it does here. But All the places that this record sent me reminded me though that, well, sort of a version of what you were already reminding me of earlier in this episode. I am the 1% in the weirdest way sometimes.

I like this record very specifically, and I like it r- because of how difficult and weird and hard to remember that it is. And therefore, I like some of their other music less, and some of the bands that I know inspired them directly or are inspired by them, I don’t care. Like, it’s cool. I appreciate it.

We can draw through lines, all that stuff, right? But this isn’t quite the same like, oh, I found, to your point, a genre that people have gathered around. No, this is too esoteric for that. There’s like an energy that I see and feel in other bands, and we can tie some of the music together, but the more I listened to this and let it take me places, the more it was just I s- I perceive this energy in 100 other bands, and I love to draw out what’s happening in every one of these songs.

Kyle: Totally agree. Uh, uh, I am loathe to try to put a fence around the Japan of it all or, or to make a monolith of Japanese culture.

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: in small part because one of the interesting things about this that I learned was about Kansai, like Western Japan culture, Osaka and Kyoto, you know, which e-even has its subcultural things.

But somebody compared it to like an East Coast/West Coast thing with Kansai culture vers- versus Tokyo culture and how there’s been rivalries in sports and music and food and fashion and all sorts of things, which is really, really interesting b-because, you know, as Westerners, I’ll only speak for myself, you, you tend to Africa-ize whole parts of the world, however small they may be.

And y-you know, just like the Ravi episode being a great reminder, like the Indian subcontinent has one f**king million subcultures, geographic regions, languages, food origins, weather patterns, whatever. Japan’s a big place. Tokyo alone is like the largest, one of the most populous cities on Earth, the densest city in, in many ways close to it.

and any other part of Japan is very separate from that. And if you’ve never been there, it’s very easy to not think about it not being a monolithic experience. But, if you live in the South, you sure don’t want New York speaking for you. if you live anywhere that’s not Florida, you don’t want Florida speaking for you.

I don’t think any of these places are the Japan, the Florida of Japan. That would be…

Cliff: Jesus

Kyle: I- is Sh- is Australia the Florida of Japan maybe? I don’t know. Somebody weigh in on this, like an, uh, Eastern Hemisphere culture

Cliff: Silently to yourself and don’t tell us about it. Yeah.

Kyle: No, no, no. I, I wanna know, and I want you to put it in writing so I can incriminate you with it earlier. I want you to

do

Cliff: cool, man. Everyone thinks we’re Texans With our cowboy hats

Kyle: Ah. You getting a cowboy hat would be like Jeff Garlin’s character in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” getting a cowboy hat. you would never do it because it’s f**king ridiculous for your character, but if your wife said she was into it, boy, it’d make– you’d make a whole arc out of it. You would make a meal out of it.

And

Cliff: yee-haw, buddy.

Kyle: v- and then very quickly you’d be like, “She’s killing me. She’s draining me of my life force. I can’t, I can’t do the hat anymore. I’m literally dying. This has to stop.”

Cliff: I’ve negotiated down to only wearing cowboy boots

Kyle: Help. Please help me. Please help me. I’m trapped in a, I’m trapped in a 10-gallon prison. Ah.

Cliff: As is true for my life, there’s a “Seinfeld” episode for everything, including the one where Jerry ends up having to wear cowboy boots because Kramer took all of his other shoes to be cleaned, and then the shoe store shut down forever, and Jerry lost all of his shoes, and the only shoes he had left were cowboy boots.

And he comes out wearing these things, and they’re like: “Where do you– Why do you even have cowboy boots?” And he was like: “Somebody couldn’t pay me one time, so they gave me cowboy boots, so that’s what I have.” And just everything winding down to, uh, an of course-ness is par for the course.

Kyle: So much ado about cowboy boots to say that I can say one monolithic thing about music from Japan in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that they get their freak on. Japan, Japanese musical artists do weird very well, very compellingly, and in a gazillion different flavors. They make being weird so fun I didn’t make this comparison ahead of time, but as we’re getting into this, like one of our favorite bands in the world, and probably one of the bands that we’ve seen the most together over the past 20 years is Japan’s Boris, who is the most fun band to go see.

Cliff: I knew this would

Kyle: Another band with a sick-ass drummer who wears a headset mic and goes, “Woo!” the whole time

Cliff: A physical band

Kyle: A very physical band, a loud band, a funny band, but also,

Cliff: A funny band. Yes!

Holy s**t, yes

Kyle: deeply, musically gifted band. Wildly original, even surpassing their inspirations in many ways of the Melvins and Earth. Boris being named for an early Melvins track from “Bullhead.”

they’ve become peers and inspirations to the Melvins and Sun, and a number of other artists. I, I would go so far as to say we worship Bor- we worship The Amplifier Worshipers. I think they are one of the best bands on planet Earth. Uh, they’re certainly one of the most creatively inspiring because they never run out of ideas, and they’re so vast and versatile. Really, really just a beautiful musical idea done well all the time. Sick as f**k. and there’s like 20 bands like that, that I could easily name that are like capital I important. I never know how to pronounce it, but like Les Rallizes Dénudés or whatever the, the French name. or like Flower Traveling Band, the band that sort of like took off in the direction from Sabbath and did crazy psychedelic stuff.

High Rise. I remember the first time I heard High Rise and thought my speakers were busted, but that’s just the way that it sounds. None of those bands, by the way, sound anything like Otoboke Beaver

Cliff: Not even close

Kyle: But they’re all connected by the spiritual oneness of Japanese uniqueness. they all have the delightful, full of life and je ne sais quoi flavor it just feels different. You, you joke about Texas, like you know right away when something’s from Texas. You can tell when a band is weird and they’re Japanese, ’cause there’s a fun to it most of the time.

Even if it’s a dead serious ass metal band, it’s fun. it’s ener- it’s energetic. It’s like animated.

Cliff: Seriousness becomes pretty suspicious too.

Kyle: Yeah.

Cliff: Yeah.

Kyle: Yeah, yeah. Like Church of Misery would be an example in, in that vein. It’s like dead serious music about serial killers, and they’re playing clips of news reports talking about the Badlands couple or Charles Starkweather or, you know, Jack the Ripper. And then they rip into like wah pedal bass and you’re like, “Hell yeah.” And then you see them in person and the guy’s bass is touching the f**king ground. He is, he’s inducing scoliosis in himself to get down as low as the vibrations, and you’re like, “This makes no sense. I, I wanna watch three hours of this every day for the rest of my life.

I only wanna see this band forever.”

Cliff: This is so great. You’re just checking the boxes of the bands where I was like, “Here are the things me and Kyle will talk about organically on this.” So, but

I thought,

Kyle: it’s just me, a white guy being a Japan appreciator, you

know?

Cliff: But even specifically though,

Kyle: Remember that time our friend Colin went to Japan for two weeks and it became his whole personality for a year? Hi, Colin

Cliff: I borrowed it

Kyle: live long en- you d- you either die a person making fun of your friend Colin, or you live long enough to see yourself become your friend Colin. You know what I mean?

Cliff: Jeez Woof. the point being though, like definitely we are probably at least mild aficionados of specifically loud Japanese bands. Boris, yes. Church of Misery, yes. Also though, Mono is another band that’s on a totally different genre wavelength, but is one of the loudest bands I’ve ever seen

Kyle: Who Steve Albini loved

and produced for. Yeah, Mono’s so good.

Where was it you saw them? Where was that first Mono show you saw? Was it the Drunken

Cliff: Unicorn?

with Pelican

Kyle: Oh my God. And for, you know, for the folks not, not hip to with Atlanta music venues, that’s like 100 cap, 200 cap. Very

Cliff: Really small. room.

Kyle: That feels about the size of the room that I’m sitting in, and a lot sweatier.

No

Cliff: Yeah, I was gonna say your room smells better. Yes

But even just those four bands, all of whom are playing with aspects of heavy hardcore punk music, they’re taking a thing out of it. Loudness, speed. Boris’ whole thing is just, is sort of going wild, uh, and feeling energetically free and just like they, they pull different parts of it and they do that thing so well.

but they’re such a good analog for the physicality that we’re talking about. Like, those bands are unusually physical versus, you know, a lot of the bands that, especially in the West, we would associate with like heavy or technical or complex music in this way. Like there, there is a different approach to physicality and musicianship that finds a way not to take itself too seriously, which is always our downfall, man.

the harder you try to make a song, uh, and the more serious you are about it, the cl- the closer you are to just, creating a thing that we’re gonna laugh about in the bad way when it gets done. Like there’s, there’s this kind of wall you have to balance off of. Uh, and all those bands we mentioned do it so well while actively being in their own way really confounding and almost goofy in a sense.

and like Mono’s example of that, like they’re not a goofy band, but like don’t ever talk. There’s no… Like they don’t do vocals. Their whole thing is like, “We are a quiet band who gets so loud that it offends you,” and then back to quiet again. And like that, connection to people and artists who wanna push on something that takes you through to the other side of an experience, especially live.

All of those bands interesting specifically live and being able to capture that feeling of, of doing a thing in person, like far beyond, you know, 99% of the bands we see live, even the good ones. Like it’s not just a good show. there’s an important aspect of the presence that’s, you know, involved in that sort of music and those bands especially.

Kyle: yeah, they had that movement. visual kei, visual kei. That’s like theater rock or the idea of theatricality in bands that I think sort of infuses its way into lots of different aspects of presentation. These bands do presentation really well and never… Like, they, they all consider it, which is not a thing that you can say about a ton of American bands, especially like post-grunge.

There’s the attempt at anti-presentation, which, you know, of course is a, we all wear a mask. It’s a presentation in and of itself. But, you know, another genre, another scene that Japan has done really well is, that we love is crust punk. Bands like Gauze and Gloom. Like, I love a D beat, and there’s so many bands that are so crusty and gnarly.

and like, in some ways, Otoboke Beaver is like if you washed all the mud off a crust punk band and got them nice and shiny and presentable for the daytime. but it’s still got the, the energy and kind of the menace of it.

So You’re watching videos, you’re like, “OMG, I’m in.” You got this record going. It probably goes by all the way through twice before you catch up with the fact that you’ve played the whole record once all the way through and then some. What are the moments That started getting their hooks in for you And maybe it doesn’t have to be, you know, you may- maybe don’t have to get as specific as timestamp moments in the music, but like what sorts of thing… You talked about the drumming. Wa- was it just that and that and that? Or

Cliff: I get into specific timestamps, huh?

Kyle: Listen, I’m, I’m always welcoming it ’cause I, I know there’s probably gonna be like one or two where we’re both like, “Dude,” and then there’s probably gonna be a couple that I didn’t even catch

Cliff: I love Kyle being respectful and trying not to put the pressure on too much while we record a podcast episode. “You don’t have to be too specific. No worries.” And I’m like, “Y- mm, uh, I have the notes though. I’m good,” because this is what happens.

Kyle: I was just ha- I was ju- my dad and I were talking about baseball at the beach and umpiring, ’cause that’s a job that the three of us all shared. And the thing that people need to know about you as a details, details or completionist person is that in high school, not only were you reading the rule book cover to cover of like baseball rules, MLB rules, but also the Little League rules of the league we were umpiring.

And then, and then, ladies and gentlemen, as a teenager, in addition to learning guitar and working on your car and getting good at all these other things, you were going on forums with adult umpires and discussing rule interpretations, and you’d show up on a Saturday and talk about the fact that you had done that on a, on the weeknight And like just dropped it that like that was a normal thing that we, we were children, we were legally children at the time, that that was just like a regular thing people thought to do. It crossed our minds to do. long wind up to say I never don’t think you have details in mind.

Cliff: Yeah. Imagine having to work with me.

Kyle: It’s great. It made me, it made me lots better. It made me marginally less full of s**t, and that’s my core trait as a human being

Cliff: Those, yes, those are some of the positives I can offer. We don’t need to discuss the negatives. We can just move on. Thank you. Yes

Kyle: When all else fails, just give you a big bag of sunflower seeds, and

Cliff: Oh, that’s true.

That

will– Yes, that will viscerally take me to a time and space. Honestly, that is pretty much what purgatory seems like to me. It’s just like you kinda wake up in a field and some dude who kinda looks like God, like, strolls up to you real slowly and hands you a bucket and is like, ” Have a seat.

We’ll be with you in a bit.” And then just walks away and you’re just, like, in this infinite bag of sunflower seeds just, like, spitting all around you. And then after a while it starts to really pile up and you wonder how long you’ve been there. Anyway, baseball’s rules are beautiful. in sort of like a meta sense and then a specific sense, the main thing that started happening, especially in repeated listens, is I felt that I understood a technique that I didn’t notice originally, which was our songs are very short.

Uh, they do not repeat. So if I’m going to hook, it must come immediately at the beginning. So then starting to notice the, intros to so many songs, uh, uh, whether it’s, uh, “I Won’t Dish Out Salad” or, uh, I mean, “Yakitori” definitely. immediately start with the hook, then kinda come back to it a little bit later, but get the earworm in and then leave it.

And then similarly, like, “Pardon,” get the, get in the earworm, leave it entirely, go do a bunch of weird s**t, come back to it later one time, then leave it. th- these are the moves that I love from, like, prog metal bands, and they’re doing it intentionally here and playing with their own hooks and palettes and stuff, uh, in ways that are super cool.

Uh, and then applying that specifically, I Tracked Your Cellphone” is probably one of my favorite songs now. And like

Kyle: Oh, j- like in general,

you

mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I can totally see that

Cliff: I mean, it’s just whatever little mental charts I have for myself, it is just squirreling its way all the way up.

Kyle: I just know you as a person who asks why, uh, sort of on a regular basis. It’s now going to be replaced with, “Oh, why? Oh, why? Oh, why?”

Cliff: What’s,

Kyle: With, w- with it, with rising aggressiveness. Yeah.

Cliff: But I also though, from time to time now, hear the vocals, in the voice of, um, Chad Pyle doing their version of “Why.” And then I was like, now

actually, as a side note, these bands should tour together as soon as humanly possible.

Kyle: F**k yes

Cliff: I mean this. If anyone close to any of these bands are listening to me and someone has not thought of this already, please. you will hit a nerve in a good way for– don’t know how to express how fantastic that would be.

Kyle: The Bummer Summer Tour

Cliff: Oh. I ma- I made Kyle’s mouth actually agape for a second, and then I

Kyle: I was literally speechless.

Cliff: It was incredible.

Kyle: I would travel for that. I would travel a long way for just those two bands. And that bar has gotten higher in the, in the– I mean, I know I had to just fly for, what was that thing in Denver? Decibel? But that was like 10 bands, 12 bands. Like, I would go halfway across the country to see those two bands in a

Cliff: Yes

Yes

Kyle: sight unseen.

full full freight flight price

Cliff: yes. So consider us pre-booked. Not that we could ever buy tickets for anything ever ’cause we’re never fast enough anyway, but if we could, we would. But I think– So, okay. Using that song as a hook into, ” Oh, here’s how I started caring a lot more about this band and this record after this.” Okay.

it’s not just a, “Oh, look, we discovered this cool band who has a cool kind of punky record. It’s interesting. Check it out.” Great. Okay. Yes. But “I Checked Your Cell Phone” had a video, a live video of it that went viral itself primarily because the drummer is playing the song. And then you see them playing the song, and it literally hits different.

all the comments on this video are j- are basically, “Oh, s**t. Look at the drummer.” Like, and it’s YouTube, dude. Like, there’s all kinds of drummers. There’s all kinds of ways to impress people with music now. And so, the fact that this energetically took off the way that it did and the way that people talk about it and the fact that at the end of the day, that all boils all the way back down to this drummer real f**king good.

that rips. I love music because of that. every cool moment comes down to, like, if I think about this and care about it for a minute, I’m gonna whittle it down and figure out, like, who specifically did this cool thing that built up this big moment. And it’s just awesome to see stuff like that, and on top of it, from a band that’s intentionally throwing you off the scent visually, not looking like somebody who’s about to be extremely on tempo at 250 BPM, and yet there she is right there live in my video.

Before I had to worry about everything being AI, I can see it, and then I can also see every other member of this band, and I can see the physicality of it, and I can there’s also something about how Honestly, that video itself feels like a movie about how a band took off. even the, the personal POV of it being a sort of cell phone video that’s right there in the front and the way that it captures everything energetically is not only compelling, like, musically and from an interesting perspective of, like, I, I love that more people will listen to cool music because of this, but it also expresses the feeling that I know we both try to convey to people a number of times where it’s like y- you must go see this band though.

in order to understand what is being done, it won’t make sense if you only listen to it over whatever, streaming service, through your headphones, whatever. And in that sense, they really started reminding me of The Chariot

Kyle: Yeah

Cliff: from– But we mentioned earlier that there’s, like, a commitment to, like, a tightness in this music, and The Chariot despises tightness of any sort.

but in both cases, the energy of what’s being done, like, you can appreciate it through a, a recording of it, it does– Like, literally the band The Chariot would not make sense to you unless you have perceived it in person at least once and felt what it was like to be like, “What? Dude, why is everybody running around like this?

it’s like f**king recess at a preschool. What’s happening?” And like, what is compelling everybody to act this way? And it like, those moments of, like, contagious energy displayed through the band, through the music, back into people, reflected back into the band who’s seeing everybody, like, those are incredible moments.

And so to know then that this is one of those bands that I need to see and I haven’t yet, and to be able to appreciate that at least in some form, some of the videos out there express that thing that I know will be true when I see them eventually, is awesome. That rarely happens. As cool as this is, you can’t just get an audio tree recording of a hardcore band and go like, “This is it.”

Kyle: I

Cliff: this is the… Yeah. no, that’s a representation of it, but it’s not gonna quite work. You gotta go feel it

Kyle: Yeah. I think what it is, is, for so much music, it starts with the unit of the song. That’s the expression of the idea, but that gives you an incomplete picture. Or, or like the, the purpose is to produce those units, so to speak. That’s how the artist thinking of it. But The Chariot is a really good comparative example because you go see The Chariot live, or I suspect you go see Ode to Bouquet Beaver live, and you see the artistic intent.

Th- there is a single artistic intent, an idea of how to transmit energy that’s guiding the whole project, and it’s really more about that. What’s a specific way that we wanna deliver a force of energy to people? The music, not that it’s not important, we care about the, the sounds of the music that we make, but it all has to be in service of this energy and the, the shape in which it comes at people.

And like when I watched The Chariot, I was always thinking, “This is the closest a centrifuge can get before the center no longer holds.” They wanna pull the center as far apart as they can, before it no longer is in the shape of a circle, you know, before it no longer resembles human music. And that was like, ” Wait, you can do that?”

Oh, they’ve already thought of this and they’re doing it and they’re presenting it to me to show me that it’s possible.” It had never occurred to me that you could be, like, that deliberate with what a band was trying to get people to think. And I, you know, I don’t even know how much I would ascribe that to a conscious decision, like Josh Scogin wrote it on a piece of notebook paper somewhere one time.

You know, it’s a, it’s a centrifuge. It’s falling apart at all times. I don’t know that it’s that. It’s probably great specifically because it wasn’t that. This is the opposite. This is like- the laser through the Cyclops glasses. we are hitting you with the direct beam of it, and it’s gotta feel like bright colors and flowers, and these types of noises shouldn’t always feel like black and puke color and, repulsion and antagonism and whatever.

This is actually quite fun and energetic and alive. And like, again, you can take it back to this is one of the most delightful album covers to look at of all the albums that we’ve covered. there’s so much personality in their faces. There’s so– Just at a, at a human, at like a childlike wonder level, the four-year-old in me is so excited by this album cover and wants to figure out what’s going on in the music because they’re, like, they’re just doing a lot.

There’s so much information transmitted visually and kinetically with this band that audio alone w- will do it once you get it, but it’s, it’s very hard for audio to do it all by itself. I would also say I know the vi- the viral video that you’re referencing is like a cellphone video from a show, but my first exposure was also “I Checked Your Cellphone,” but from the KEXP performance Which also locks in on the drummer to begin with

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: and has a lot of “holy s**t, the drummer” comments.

But I don’t want to do a disservice to the other band members because once you stay for 10 seconds of blast beats, then you see them breaking the fourth wall and doing the vocal performance looking right at you, the audience member, and like, “Are you here? Are you with us? Are you having fun?” Which is so like, that’s a command level entertainer performance that’s a bit comedy, a bit like flexing their chops musically to be able to walk and chew gum and do that, To be like, “Hey, look at me. Look at me. We’re doing this.” but then it also doesn’t really need… Like I know this would work in a bar with two people in it, like the bartender and one other person watching, and it would work in a sold-out, sweaty 2,000-cap venue and you’d get the exact same thing from them because you can tell how much they’re loving it.

So it works really well with audience participation in like a Gang of Four sense. It’s aware of audience, but it also doesn’t need an audience because it’s, it’s just a fusion reaction regardless. and like they play the s**t out of these instruments. There’s some kind of wild guitar work, but I’m, I would say I’m especially a fan of the bassist of this band playing the Thunderbird bass barefoot, and really cooking.

There’s some like real bass workouts on this record. Some big physical like meaty bass lines. So they’re, you know, come for the drumming, stay for the everything else.

Cliff: Yep. To that end then, some specific instances of coming for the drumming and staying for other things. Like literal, literal moments that stood out for me with aforementioned time stamps. On that “I Am Not Maternal” opening track, around 57 seconds, up until that moment in the first time you’re really listening to this, it’s where is this gonna go, kinda.

And then they just hit… Normally when you hear the standard punk beat, it’s expected. When they break into it and you did not know that that’s how most of this music is gonna go, it’s like a delightful surprise, and it works perfectly. And to the points that we’ve said, like they don’t stick with anything too long.

So the, like the ability to go in and out of really traditional sort of almost filler type of punk and sort of metal and hardcore grooves, they work because they don’t do them for 16 measures at a time. They do them for four and then they don’t do it again, or they do it three songs later or whatever. So I think that’s the kind of like the first time it drops back in and you can start to sense that formula. ” Yakitori” not only is catchy and hilarious because the lyrics are about stuffing your mailbox full of yakitori

Kyle: Destroy

Cliff: But also, like, the ending of that song, completely unnecessary and awesome. Like, there are little moments like that sprinkled throughout where it’s like, dude, you guys had to have worked on the last three seconds of this song for like four days.

Kyle: Right? Right.

Cliff: and w- like why? Like, it’s awesome, and also I have no idea why you chose to do it that way.

But sprinkling in that sort of seasoning so many times over and over again, is really endearing to me. That like, that just, it smells like the types of records that we talk about where it’s like they kept cooking on this until they all sat back in their chair and went, “It’s done. We’re good. Like, we’ve added everything we can add here.”

w- we’ve already mentioned a couple of other ones. Going back to “Pardon,” so at 55 seconds, they, I don’t, invert the rhythm together. they reintroduce something they had done earlier, but on a different beat than they had done it previously in a direct intersection with what they were doing right before that, all while maintaining throughout that song a whole bunch of, well, like you said, kinda SpongeBob mocking meme generator type stuff of just like, “Oh, do you not understand me now?

Oh, you don’t understand me?” Over and over again in a bunch of different ways at different rhythms. And then on top of it, they’re like, they’re being antagonistic with it itself in a way that we wouldn’t know how to indicate because they’re intentionally using, uh, katakana English, which is apparently like a type of English that is offensive for certain people to use, by, according to certain people in Japanese culture or whatever.

Um, not offensive like in the American way of like you shouldn’t, but offensive in like the that’s beneath you type of deal. so they’re like intentionally deploying that and using English and changing the rhythm around and doing it a bunch of different times to where you can’t follow them. And so that’s…

Okay, so one, that’s a complete f**king thought to begin with. But then I mean, this really clinched it for me. Buried in this song is a like four second reference To “Uber Alles California” by The Dead Kennedys.

Kyle: Hell yeah

Cliff: again, a totally unnecessary departure from what they are doing, but it’s so intentional.

And then, I had one of those moments, Kyle, where I was like, honestly, I wish we were sitting in the same room together as we like w- kind of walked down this little music discovery path, because it was like, okay, I saw that reference and I was like, “Uh, okay. I, okay, I kinda know that song.

Let me… Okay, I’m gonna go back and listen to it.” Then before long, I’m listening over and over again to “Uber Alles California” back to back with “Pardon!” over and over again going, “Okay, no, okay, I got it that time. Okay, I got it. Okay, it’s really just that little bit, huh? Okay.” And then I’m walking all the way through that, I’m like, “Okay, man,” like I, I don’t know.

I’d go toe-to-toe with a lot of people, honestly, with like Punk hardcore metal knowledge in the general sense. I’m pretty experienced. I’ve been to a lot of shows, listened to a lot of bands. I, I know a lot. I know about the Dead Kennedys. I understand. I understand why they matter. I don’t give that much of a s**t.

I don’t have this song memorized. okay, now you got my attention. It was so important to you that we needed to inject it intentionally into the middle of this song. Okay, let’s go figure out why. Okay, so this is the first single from Dead Kennedys in 1979. It was so new to that band that it was basically written, uh, by, you know, Jello Biafra for the band before this. He deploys it for Dead Kennedys. The lyrics of this song, first of all, now appeal to me greatly because I mean, I’m all the way down the rabbit hole already, right? But it’s like, okay, so this reference in the D- in Dead Kennedys’ song, what is this song even about? I don’t think I’ve thought about this for a long time.

The lyrics to this song are basically like, “F**k you, Jerry Brown,” which is awesome then because speaking of things that are maybe close to

Kyle: Look, genteel Jerry Brown, you’re a

Cliff: y- s- so like coming hot off of easy ways to critique far-right politicians, here’s Dead Kennedys critiquing an otherwise ostensibly leftist politician, which even at the time created its own cycle of like, “Hold on, I thought you were over on this side,” and him going, “That’s not how that f**king works.”

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Cliff: Right? okay, so now we’re all the way down this rabbit hole and I’m finding myself like, okay, I f**king appreciate Dead Kennedys again, i- in maybe a new way ’cause here, here’s this 1979 song I haven’t thought about in who knows how long. It reminds me that there are maybe more people like me than I want to feel sometimes.

and, and there are people who think about things in similar ways, and then I read a little bit more about that song ’cause now I’m interested in that. And then we go all the way down to Jello Biafra saying, “Well, actually, that song isn’t so inspired by punk music so much as it is Japanese kabuki music.”

okay, so we’ve made a giant f**king loop and I feel awesome. w- we’re deep in this thing now, right? Like he’s over here being inspired by Japanese music. They’re pointing all the way down here 50 years in the past at this thing on purpose, and it turns out there’s kind of like a mirror reference back to the culture that it’s reflecting from.

that s**t is what it’s all about, man. And honestly, if you’re like, “What’s the big f**king deal, dude?” Then fine, turn off this podcast. I don’t know what to say to you. Like, that was such a delightful moment to me, I had to sit and catch my breath. Like, this s**t is so cool, man. everything feels so wrong sometimes, and then there’s this center of gravity in music that everyone’s, like, standing around and pointing back into, and the people who really care about it will just, like, send you down a rabbit hole on purpose.

if I had a psychedelically influenced mind in that moment, I would’ve felt like I had a wormhole tunnel directly to Otoboke Beaver going, “Hey, y’all, I appreciate what you did here. you. Someone thought about this and did it on purpose, and yeah, I ended up following that trail.

Thank you.” And that’s sick, dude

Kyle: That’s what the wise men of the Red Hot Chili Peppers were talking about with the sh- the vaguely racist “All Around the World” song. “She be deby dooby California.” You know? That’s what it’s all about

Cliff: I would also though add, not, so not every song goes that hard or that deep, but some of them do, and that’s great. What I would also then mention is by the time I get down to “Don’t Call Me Mojo,” about 39 seconds in, there is a moment that reminded me very, very specifically of a record that I think I may have mentioned offhand at some point, but it’s so detached that I could not possibly remember what it must have referenced at the time.

Maybe Gang of Four. but at 39 seconds, there is a piece of the music that sounds exactly album “Art Damage” by Fear Before the March of Flames, which was a kind of mind-bending record to me when it came out because of how aggressively strange it is in terms of, like, its composition. That was sort of like peak screamo moment, and you could sort of just print money playing power chords on a Telecaster and doing the screamo thing.

And they made a really esoteric, screamo noir type thing that sounds so strange and has so many sort of, you know, weird sounds and starts and, weird compositional ideas. but that’s exactly what it started making me think of again. And I had several moments then throughout this record of, “Oh, this makes me think of this other really strange moment that I remember having with music.”

Or, “This reminds me of this other band where it’s like, oh, I remember feeling like this is weird and I love it, and I honestly don’t know who I can tell because of how strange it is.” I, I feel like a lot of those moments in my life have been, like, important, like canon events for me. And so this just starts to point back at all of them.

And, uh, “Mojo” does it for “Art Damage” as a record. “Dirty Old Fart Is Waiting For My Reaction” did it for Boris, ’cause to me that sounds like a Boris song through and through. It’s the closest thing to them overlapping sonically. and then even down to, like, the last three tracks on the record just being an aggressively strange way to end a record.

the songs actually s- they’re already short, and then the last three are, like, 20 seconds. Like,

Kyle: all sub

Cliff: down in a… Yeah, and it winds down in a very, very strange way, and the topic of it is sort of, like, a bit strange and misdirectional. Like, “Do you want me to send a DM to your girlfriend who knows nothing?”

And it’s like, “Uh, okay. What, wait, what is this about?” And then it’s over. the strangeness of doing all of those things, it just, it has such a like Jim is staring into the camera in The Office type of feel to it that I love. I

love it

Kyle: Do you remember us seeing Fear Before together

live

with, uh, Norma Jean and BTBAM?

Cliff: An evergreen terrace, yeah?

Kyle: Yeah.

Cliff: Yeah.

Kyle: Was that all the same bill?

Cliff: I think so.

Kyle: There were a couple of shows that was like the same week in 2005 or ’06. One was Throwdown and Maylene. Maylene was the very first band and like none of our friends had ever seen Maylene, so there were like a, a whole bunch of us there. And then there were like three bands and then Throwdown headlined.

And I thought Evergreen Terrace was on that bill, but maybe

it was, maybe it was with Fear Before.

Cliff: They were playing a lot of shows back then, so it very well could’ve been both

Kyle: They also played with that band that I like and you love earlier in that year. I just looked up, they played with Circle Takes the Square before that Radio Rebellion tour. Um,

Cliff: checkbox.

Kyle: yeah

Cliff: Thank you

Kyle: There’s just so much… When we start stacking up all these names of, like, little bands that are deliberately, aggressively weird, just like people really rubbing frictiously against normie existence Over all these years, all these hundreds and maybe even thousands of bands, groups of fellow humans that we’ve seen get in small rooms and against all logic just f**king throw their whole body into the wood chipper just ’cause like, you know, what else would you do with your time, your brief time on Earth? that’s why I don’t give up on the human experiment, ’cause none of this makes any sense, and yet I observe you and it’s the only thing that’s right. It’s the only thing. Like, why would you do anything else but this with your brief time on Earth? Why the f**k are you worried about your taxes and, like, drinking Michelob Ultras with people talking about their jobs on your free time that you haven’t traded away to somebody?

Like, why, why would you not be the most f**king alive you could possibly be in this moment? Physical, visceral, sweating, bleeding, like knowing it’s all real. what the f**k else is there but this? I feel so lucky sitting here, us talking and reflecting that, like, we just sort of accidentally kept making this our lives.

Just like wherever we’ve gone there it’s been for so long. And that’s when “Ode to Okeefe Beaver” made me emotional Which is not the first time. there’s a song that is a wedding gift to their label bosses on this. It’s funny and cheeky. It’s like, “Don’t fight, don’t get diabetes, w- w- don’t, don’t ignore each other.” It’s wacky, but like so delightful. If somebody gave me a song like that for my nuptials, I would cherish it for my whole life.

I would put the handwritten lyrics in a frame, an altar in my home, and I would praise it

Cliff: S- so you’re gonna walk down the aisle to this really fast, okay? You’re gonna need to jog maybe

Kyle: Listen, as two people who notoriously despise weddings and neither of whom enjoyed their own If somebody was like, “If I got a save the date followed up by a text, I’m going to dead sprint down the aisle to a 37-second Otaboke Beaver song,” okay, I’m there.

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: What’s the most expensive thing on your registry? I will get it.

Cliff: Do you want me to time you while you practice? Yeah. This is sick. I’ll just be down there with a stopwatch like, “2.3 more seconds, baby. You got this.”

Kyle: Can I officiate? By the way, for anyone listening, I’ve done six weddings, I believe. I would like the seventh to be the Oak- “Ota Boke Beaver” special

Cliff: Finally, this podcast can make some money. Hire Kyle for your nuptials. He will do anyone. Uh, he has no constraints in terms of who he approves of, unless you’re a jerk.

yeah

okay, yeah. Well, I was about to make the turn into like, unless you’re in this very large category of people, and then he’ll ruin your day.

literally he’ll ruin it. It’ll be great. That is a service we provide is the Kyle Priest lottery

Kyle: Yeah.

I’m well practiced in my haterdom You would love to

what? That’s right. That’s right

Cliff: I would love to mention more bands that this stuff made me think of. I mean, unless you like vehemently disagree, this is feeling like a very hip-hoppy type record in the sense of like this sent me into the kaleidoscope of a million things and now I would like to sort of spray everybody with a range of things that might catch their attention in hopes that one or two of them do

Kyle: Yeah. Perhaps as a segue into that, a lot of the musical moments that I honed in on were like, “Oh, this spiritually feels like another band.” So maybe, maybe I’ll do my Letterman top of like little hone in moments.

Cliff: Will it float? I love it

Kyle: Y- right. man, the, the clip just came up on my feed of Dolly Parton doing the top 10, where, where the number one is nobody talks about I’ve also got a great ass. God, Dolly, why are you so great? How are you so great? How are you always so great? Amazing. you made the comparison when we were trying to triangulate bands that are good funny or bad funny, on purpose funny or, you know, just funny by nature. and System of a Down came up, and like once I started listening with System of a Down in mind, it’s like, wow, these are spiritual cousins.

Like wow, wow, this record is a lot like “Toxicity,” which is another record that even with the benefit of time and tons of listens, I’m still like, “How did this come out of human brains?” Like what, what were they going for? System of a Down is the world’s funniest and most serious band. Prison Song” is inexplicable and impossible in anyone else’s hands, or a song like “Sugar” or like, like to have prison– a song like “Prison Song” and a song like “Bounce” where you just say pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo over and over.

It’s like there’s not a lot of bands that you’re gonna keep rocking with after they do something like that.

Cliff: Uh-huh.

Kyle: Probably also largely a credit to the drummer in that case where you’re just like, “This guy is undeniable.” but you notice the System of a Down vibe, or I did right away in “Maternal.”

Specifically, she does like kind of a disco-y high hat open and close

Cliff: Dance, dance, dance, dance. Yeah.

Kyle: which, you know, we do get a little chic in that sense.

Cliff: absolutely. Yeah

Kyle: So that’s the first thing where you’re like, “Oh, some finesse. It’s not just power, it’s finesse. Okay. All right. Let’s see w- what else you got.” and then they hit a w- I don’t know that I would quite call it a vocal harmony, but their v- vocals bash up against each other in a cool way, in a harmonic-ish way.

The first time they do it is in “Maternal” and, you know, then there’s other, like “I Don’t Want to Die Alone” has a great– The harmony builds, they do that move. So you’re like, “Okay, that’s sort of a signature Otoboke Beaver thing.” Yakatori” reminded me more spiritually than musically, but a l- a little bit structurally musically of Torch, who’s another band that are huge fans of, and I, I have been a huge, huge fan of, like from the very first moment I heard them, and you have been like sort of a slow-growing fan of them.

I think pretty recently you texted me like, “Oh my God, I think this has become one of my favorite bands,” and they, they ended at their very best. but “Yakatori,” the toms beat, they do corn- kind of like a Mickey thing

Cliff: Yeah. Yeah

Kyle: And then there’s, then they do the destroy part with the blast beats, and it’s, they do it like for half a part the first time, and then they return to it and it’s twice as long but still very short, and then they return to it a third time, and then they do that crazy s**t at the end.

But it, it expanding just slightly reminded me of like Torch moves where, it was like what’s the weirdest The Beatles could possibly be is what I always felt like the best Torch moments were doing, was like how freaked out and fuzzy could pop– Like what if, what if The Beatles were inside a volcano?

What if they were, what if they were made of magma? And there’s a bit of that on “Jacatory.” Pardon” has the double a lot of people, if they play double kick, do it all the time. They overdo it. But here’s a like, “Eh, I can do it. All right, see you later.” Big gulps, huh? then you do “Leave Me Alone,” which if you’re looking for a bass song, that’s the bass song.

Cliff: Yeah, sure

Kyle: Um, starts high and notey. And then the ” Cellphone” and ” Put My Love” back to back, also feels very toxicity, like specifically that combo. I checked your cellphone and I put my love to you in a song. and then ” I Put My Love To You” has one of those like micro parts that I just like cannot get out of my head.

It’s 20– Just after 20 seconds, the, where it’s like

It, it– Wait, is that the Dead Kennedys thing you were talking about? No. That’s a different thing, different song. It was one of those that I’d listen to the record for a bit and then put it down, and then I would get a, like a lightning flash illuminating the inside of my brain, and I’m like, “Wait, wait, what is that from?

What is it?” And I would go through 100 punk songs, and then it was like, “Oh my God, it’s 42 milliseconds of an Ode to Bouquet Beaver song.” It, it tests… I’m very– Listen, I’m not great at much stuff in this world, but I’m the baddest motherf**ker of all time at Name That Tune. it’s,

I

Cliff: you’re a riff hunter in a, in a strange way.

Kyle: I can hear it muffled from the bathroom of the bar for a bar and a half and be like, “Oh yeah, that’s, uh, that’s this from the seventh Black Sabbath record.” And actually that feels like somebody covering it. Maybe that’s the Thou cover of, uh, “Children of the Grave” from 2019, and everyone’s like, “Ha! Your brain is spicy.” you mentioned “Mojo” was the song with the fear before part,

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: right? R- right about in the middle. Immediately before that is an ascending riff that reminded me of “Smooth Sailing,” the end of “Smooth Sailing” by Queens of the Stone Age. And I remember one time Jordan Buckley from Every Time I Die, Better Lovers, tweeting a video of them performing it, and he’s like, “Fun fact, the tab for the song is just, One, two, one, two, three, two, three, four, four, three, five. You know, just like climbing the staircase.

Cliff: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: And there was something about that that just stuck with me, not a guitar player, of like I could envision the shape of the staircase climbing. And I see it, I visually see the staircase thing every time I watch a live video of that song, which is a non-zero amount of my life.

Um, but Mojo’s got that part immediately leading into the “Art Damage” part. and then the my favorite song title on the record, “Where Did You Buy Such a Nice Watch You Are Wearing Now?” The Monzai comedy, I think is like if you’re going to start one place to understand that Monzai inspiration, I think it’s “Where Did You Buy?”

Um, and then to boot, there’s a guitar freak out on that, I think you would probably think is like an type thing

Cliff: I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yep.

Kyle: But made me think of the Butthole Surfers, which is another, like, they’re so weird and so serious type band. this could maybe be a gateway drug to, Locust Abort- Abortion Technician, which is just one of the harder records to get into and to need to get into, frankly. And then ” I Don’t Want to Die Alone,” I mentioned the, the build in the vocal harmony.

so everything’s micro on this record. So I think just, picking little… I just keep envisioning flowers and fireworks and bursts of color and whatever. I– It is really like walking around picking flowers from a technicolor like “Wizard of Oz” garden. You just pick up little micro moments and they keep adding up, and then you’re like, “I have a bouquet.

I wonder if these flowers will get me high.” like all the best mind expanders, they are also time expanders. It’s the 21 minutes that feels like 21 years.

Cliff: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: What’s the game in “Rick and Morty” at the Dave & Buster’s place? I f- I feel like we’ve mentioned it like a handful of times over the life of this podcast, but 21 minutes of “Ode to Okeh Beaver” is 21 years in the time-space continuum

Cliff: Always associate it with the, the Beachhead game ’cause that’s what it reminds me of. That’s how it looked or whatever. But yeah, what was it? A, a life well lived?

Kyle: Yeah

Cliff: Yeah. Okay.

Kyle: I think about it all the time. Every time I wake up from an immersive or realistic enough dream, I’m like, “Oh no, I played the game again.”

Cliff: In one sense, this over and over again made me think viscerally about seeing the coat hangers at Star Bar at 1:00 AM

Kyle: Oh, the coat hangers

Cliff: And I

Kyle: Definitely spiritual cousins of this band.

Cliff: I’m honestly, I’m, I meant to just mention them earlier, even had an alternate, uh, intro to this podcast that was basically just like, It feels like life branched and went in a very strange direction ever since the last time it was that I was just at the Star Bar seeing Cohanger with my friends, watching them drink as many PBRs as they possibly could inside of a tiny moment, and watching, like, chaotic feminist energy scare me a little while we loved it, and it was late, and it was like we were delirious and tired and like, but everything was right about it, and of course it wasn’t time to go home yet, and of course I have energy now.

everything about that moment feels so much like what this record can kind of point me back to in terms of in-person, live y- like youthful energy almost. I hate that term in the sense that like I don’t feel less use- youthful than I used to, but in the sense that that was a period of my life that feels like the pre I turned on my adult brain and decided to think about my tax bracket once a year type

thing. but it

Kyle: It was all gimme danger all the time back then.

Cliff: Yeah.

But it made me miss, literally, specifically, Cohangers, uh, and sent me back listening to a ton of that stuff and remembering that

Kyle: Did you, did you know, did you remember that Jason Kreutzky recorded their first or one of their first demos?

Cliff: You told me that and it has blown me away. It stuck with me for a long time.

Kyle: I remember him to this day, giving me that CDR and me, and me putting it on in my truck and being like, “What the f**k is this?”

Cliff: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: Bit like Bernie Mac voice, like, “What in the f**k?” Son of a bitch

Cliff: Kyle, we’re becoming too similar. That exact reference came to mind to me yesterday listening to “Ode to Bouquet Beaver.” What in the f**k, Kanye? I told you play something for the kids.

Kyle: Oh, the god. Rest in power to the god,

Cliff: ugh, for sure. Oh, man.

Kyle: I like this episode so much for the archives, you know, for the grand scheme of this podcast because it is, it has been almost hallucinatory, a f- a funhouse of touch points that have literally nothing to do with this band, but they, they clearly are super powered at lighting our synapses up and making us feel like the most alive version of ourselves.

And, you know, if you’re still here listening, once again, that’s the That’s the sales pitch

Cliff: Yes.

Kyle: You, you wanna li- limitless drug your own brain

Cliff: And we’re about to make it worse for the rest of this episode. I’m about to go in every direction.

Kyle: That’s how, that’s how every TuneDig episode should just start. Hold on, it

Cliff: Yep. The wheels are coming off here too, baby. Before I leave the Cohangers though, even they are a kind of cool analog if you like aspects of what Odoboke Beaver is doing, especially if you like other things that this band does outside of this album. Cohangers had– So I would say the closest relation to this record was “Suck My Shirt” era Cohangers, like weird kind of spastic punky garage punk type stuff, which was my personal favorite.

But on kind of other sides of that record, so “Larceny and Old Lace” and “Nosebleed Weekend” too, before, you know, they stopped being active. Both of those step further into what I heard from earlier Odoboke Beaver, albums and

songs,

Kyle: yeah.

Cliff: cool.

Kyle: Yeah, yeah

Cliff: So there’s a lot of cool crossover there. and then starting to like really fan out in terms of close proximity in terms of weirdness and then spiritual cousins, I feel like.

it would be a sort of musical crime if we did not just say Melt-Banana at some point in this episode.

Kyle: Top of my list too

Cliff: yep, and like they do super cool, weird, almost like shoegazy borrowing stuff, that’s a bit different from what Odoboke Beaver does, but there is a lot of energetic overlap and compositional overlap there.

Um, and we don’t have to be done talking about Melt-Banana, but like I also try to think of, all right, ex-excluding like Japanese and Japanese adjacent music, what’s the closest version of this that I feel like exists even though they are themselves a contemporary and modern band? And it’s The Armed

Kyle: Dude, yes. I had the same thought, and specifically because of that time we saw them in Brooklyn with Chat Pile, where it was like, whoa, th- this is life-affirming. This is, this is the light, light show. This is the firework show inside my being. I had no idea how positive and electrifying this was. Like, the way Andrew W.K.

tried to be like a pump-up artist, it is– it’s the show don’t tell version of that. I don’t l- I still don’t listen to The Armed,

their recordings a ton. Although I will say the new record is… it has songs that I, I have listened to quite a bunch, but I don’t sit down and listen to them start to finish.

Just like I don’t know that I’ll listen to a ton of Superchamp on start to finish all the way through. They’re gonna be in playlists all over the place for the rest of my life now. but yeah, The Armed is very similar in that it’s like I’m so glad this exists. My friend Kelsey and I, Kelsey actually just got married in Sayulita, Mexico, and I went down and it was like an Armed show, an O- Oduboke Beaver show.

It was like two people that didn’t wanna have a wedding had a wedding, and it was beautiful and life-affirming, and like there were al pastor tacos, and it was a great day at the beach.

Cliff: I’m sold. Yeah.

Kyle: Yeah. and she reminded me that I had sent her the screenshot from an interview with Josh Homme where he was like– he had like a moment of clarity.

He like snapped into awareness during a set at a big festival where like the moon was hanging out over the crowd, and he said to himself “In that moment, I had the thought out loud in my brain, ‘F**k, I wanna live so bad.'” And will text each other things back and forth that’s like, “Oh, that’s a f**k I wanna live so bad moment.”

And that’s what The Armed is, and that’s what Oduboke Beaver is. Like, I wanna live so bad. I wanna be alive so much. I wanna be so alive. God, I love The Armed. They’re so sick. Ultra pop actually may be a good word to describe ” Otaboke Beaver,” separate entirely from hyperpop. Ultra pop.

Cliff: For

Kyle: Maximum human expression

Cliff: So that’s the sort of maximal, complex, start-stop on a dime type stuff that feels energetically aligned. The other things that this made me think of were all the bands who have ever made me feel like I’m f**king weird for listening to this and I love it.

Kyle: Hell yeah

Cliff: there’s a moment that hits you, and to me still it stems mu- a lot of this, th- there’s a reason that that “Fear Before the March of Flames” album was important to me.

The… I have literally told you this before, Kyle, but like I remember where I was when I heard, there’s a breakdown on it that’s just like, “You can’t buy love. You can’t buy feeling. We were meant to eat each other.” I was like, “This is the weirdest f**king thing I’ve ever heard, and I love it. It’s wh- what is happening?”

th- those sorts of moments where it’s not just a weird thing, it’s a weird thing sitting inside of a cool record is my s**t. So in that sense, just like exercises off the top of where that touched for me. So first of all, you already mentioned Circle Takes the Square. So, the As Roots Undo era of that band was them Bringing a tightness

Kyle: Oh, wow. They were on your list to bring up,

and I just brought them up from a totally different reason. So sick. Oh

Cliff: Absolutely. Absolutely. well, and it delights me ’cause that’s, that’s a little genre adjacent in a way where I wouldn’t have known for sure if, that connection would’ve made sense to you, and it pleases me deeply that it did.

Uh, I mean, honestly, that Circle Takes the Square is pretty capital I important if you care about that genre anyway. So a cool band to listen to. but other ones that quickly pop to mind that are similarly related where I had what the f**k moments. So Soul Glo, first of all. Yep. Okay. We’re just

Kyle: I can’t believe we’re arriving at so many of the same conclusions when I thought these are weird. These are, these are not, these are not quite right, but they make sense to me.

Cliff: the through

Kyle: been married too long

Cliff: Yeah. W- the through line of everything I’m about to mention too, though, is, and again, w- I super agree everyone in Odoboke Beaver is cool and great. I’m saying specifically for me, I like, yes, the drumming, but also specifically the drumming and then what they do with vocals, which we’ve discussed a ton throughout.

Like, everything is interesting and unexpected in that sense. And so the relationship between those two things pops up for me for a lot of bands, Soul Glo being one of them, because once again, the, the dude who’s doing vocals for that is just like, he is literally doing something I haven’t heard people do before with vocals.

I’m gonna skip a couple that I know that you’re going to mention and bring up a couple others that you might not. another similar band of just, “Surprise, we’re gonna be f**king way weird for you,” Missouri Executive Order 44. A, a band, a band of people playing weird grind start-stop heavy hardcore stuff who are wearing anonymous bodysuits and bicycle helmets.

Like, yes. So yes, right? Sign me up for this.

Kyle: devo of her murderers

Cliff: A band that I’ll give an immediate caveat on, but it’s unfair to light this whole band on fire for one person. Daughters is a band that had a really s**tty person in it, but they did some cool music, even if that dude was just basically copying Jesus Lizard the whole time. Um, there’s still some cool music there that I think is worth appreciating.

And similarly, a far less problematic band in every way that I find a way to talk about every possible time I can, The f**king Locust. Sorry, The Locust, not The f**king Locust, but The Locust. more just like weird grind, complex short songs, blast stuff, and we’re done. It’s weird. There’s a gimmick.

There’s an on-ramp to you to go, “That’s weird. What’s going on there?” And then they play good music, and that’s always the like… That’s the one-two of the thing

Kyle: I wonder if Justin Pearson has heard “Out of Okay Beaver.” I bet he would be really into it. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t. I think everybody in every band you’ve mentioned would be like, “This band is so sick.”

Cliff: Yes. And

Kyle: believe I haven’t seen this type of thing happening before, but I’m so glad it exists now.

Cliff: Two more deeper cuts that had their own weird moments for me that may or may not connect with anybody and are oddly specific. But, uh, there was a band a long time ago, uh, around this, well, around the popular times of we’re gonna be weird screamo adjacent type stuff. The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower put out a really cool kind of proto-punk record that reminds me a lot of this, and I remember liking it specifically because it was weird.

And then finally, a moment that Kyle will remember, but I have no way to judge how much this permeated the culture or not. But on the Spitfire record that, uh, Scotty Henry played guitar on, and the first or second song, the, like, the last breakdown is just, “I ran into my brother at the store. He tasted good.” It was like, I– Once again, that was f**king weird. I think I like this band a lot. That’s a band that ended up not really existing in that form anymore. But just, like, little touch points of moments where, like, a band freaked me out in a really good way. they, those stick with me so much and still do

Kyle: 2006 and ’07. Would that have been self-help?

Cliff: Yes

Kyle: Man. Yeah, that’s the one with the song, the breakdown is just, “It’s a brave new world”

Cliff: Yeah. Yes, exactly that record.

Kyle: That was like one of my favorite songs. “Go Ape” was the name of that song. God, Spitfire was sick for a minute.

Cliff: Yep.

Kyle: It, and also in the like Norma Jean cinematic universe was The Handshake Murders,

you

Cliff: yeah.

Kyle: of all the bands that they had one and a half records and the absolute scariest frontman of all f**king time, and they were so much better. I mean, you know, they got derided as a Meshuggah and Coalesce knockoffs, but there was something else like very dark and weird and cool there. But there were, there were some Norma Jean adjacent folks in that band for a while.

Yeah. It was a weird, I think the like theme of this episode for me is, is like micro is good, niche is good. you can go big by going super, super small. I keep thinking of like nuclear imagery and fusion, because they’re, they’re putting limitless energy into the tightest, densest possible spaces.

So they’re like harnessing the in a sense. So in that way, I do love that stuff like Spitfire comes up for you, ’cause that’s specific to like 1,000 people ever,

Cliff: Yeah. Yep, this band has like 1,600 monthly listeners, okay? Like I, I know what we’re saying. Yeah.

Kyle: And to the point about like you can’t help where you’re from, our lens on everything being s**t like Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers and then the Southern Christian metal scene But like that scene also gave us Hayley Williams. So if you’re enjoying the Hayley Williams show tour this summer, thank of “The Chariot.” Which at the first Atlanta show, she brought out Josh.

Cliff: I was gonna say, they’ve been on songs together. That like we’re n- we’re, yeah,

Kyle: pretty

Cliff: we’re not drawing that line between two dots. Those dots are connected. That’s

Kyle: Yeah man, you touched on so many good ones. I wanna make sure that if I don’t mention the ones you skipped over, that you mention them. definitely Melt Banana. I think, I think I would categorize it as like three things. Uh, s- stuff that feels the closest we can get you to the next train over at the same station, cause there’s no same train with different cars with this band, like we mentioned.

And then I think some version of, because it’s our bias, you know, we wanna go even heavier, so less bubblegummy versions of the same stuff. I’ve mentioned a lot of the Japanese connections already, so I’m not gonna belabor that. And then I think there’s a couple-

Nothing about this record… Like, you don’t need to talk about this record because it’s four women making it. This is a great record. The songs are great. The artistic intent is interesting. But if you’re also into band, other bands that are interesting and they all also happen to be women, I got a couple for that as well.

So you mentioned Melt Banana. I also really like Tricot. I think they’re weird and cool. there’s a band called Saysumi that has popped up on playlists and stuff that I haven’t gotten super into, but everything that I’ve heard I’ve liked. And they’ve either toured with Otoboke or they’ve kind of been inspired by, they’re kind of in the orbit of each other.

There’s an artist I’ve seen at The Earl or 529 in a cool little space, Guitar Wolf, who’s like a Japanese luxe interior Poison Ivy all-in-one combo, garbage man rock. the drummer has mentioned Deerhoof, specifically the drumming on Deerhoof records. Um, not to be confused with Deerhunter of Atlanta, Georgia.

Deerhoof is a, a sick and weird one to get into.

Cliff: And a stated influence on the drummer.

Kyle: A stated influence. Yeah, like a number one drumming influence. Deerhoof’s stuff is not on streaming, at least not on Spotify. Good for you. so you’ll have to find it elsewhere. But they’re an artist worth owning some physical media of and getting weird with. on the heavier end, I mentioned Torch, like somebody else doing freaked out, acidy, bubblegum pop.

You mentioned The Armed. I mentioned The Melvins and the Butthole Surfers. You mentioned Soul Glo. there’s a lot about this project that reminds me… I thought Death Grips initially, like Death Grips’ poppiest moments, “The Money Store.” Otoboke Beaver and Death Grips would’ve been a sick tour in 2012, you know, before like full implosion and return.

At the height of the Death Grips mystique, Otoboke Beaver would’ve been a very cool opener. But more specifically Hella, like Zach Hill’s drumming. Yeah. Hella in the era when they were opening for The Mars Volta and the Chili Peppers specifically

Cliff: Yeah, just like especially the where Hella was being intentionally difficult with rhythm

Kyle: Yeah.

Cliff: for interesting

Kyle: Yeah, the, the Zach Hillest Zach Hill.

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: and then a handful of none of these bands have anything to do with each other, nor would you maybe see them on a bill together. The OCs are like the records are cool, but live’s where it’s at type. Oh, I get it now. Just a furious full-on attack. They’re way more linear and Can-like than Otoboke.

maybe it was just Maternal, but there were moments that were like, ” Is this ska? Is this prog? What is this trying to be?” There was something about the up and downness and the nodiness of the guitar that reminded me of The Fall of Troy, who we saw at Furnace Fest a couple of years back and was like, “Oh my God, this band is so good.

I forgot how good this band is.” And that guy, Eric, what’s his face? The guitarist. and then I also thought about Trash Talk, there was only one of this band, extremely confrontational. For my money, there’s no harder band on planet Earth than Trash Talk live. if you wanna get hit directly by a trash truck at full speed, that’s a Trash Talk show.

they are it. But like Otoboke Beaver and Trash Talk in Japan, where there’s now a Babylon store in Tokyo, like I would maybe pay the money to schlep for a Tokyo small venue Trash Talk and Otoboke Beaver show. I would probably lose a tooth out of my skull, and it, it would be glorious. I’d wear that tooth on a necklace and be like, “Remember that time I went to Japan?”

I’d make it my personality. couple of other bands that get mentioned sort of tangentially. You know, you can’t talk about O- Otoboke Beaver without talking about… I don’t think that’s necessarily true. but a couple of bands I saw brought up over and over were Shonen Knife and Boredoms.

Shonen Knife is cool. Boredoms are very cool. those are choose your own adventure ones. There are a couple of, all-female contemporaries not at all in the realm of Otoboke Beaver that I have just been so taken with. Die Spits, who I recently saw at a sold-out show in Atlanta. They’re heavy and badass and, they’re a sick band and I can’t wait to see them get bigger and bigger. Um, and Lambre- Lambrini Girls, who are pointedly, aggressively not only feminist but misandrist. Uh, Lambrini Girls are tight. Otoboke Beaver also, in a way, made me miss Gel. Although, like, the toxicity of the way that all fell apart is very much not in the spirit of what’s happening here. I think there are things covered on Super Champan that are directed at the kind of people that made Gel fall apart.

but Gel, when they were cooking, would’ve been very cool on a bill with Otoboke Beaver But again, I, I love that you pointed it out early. All of this is very live. Ev- every single band we’ve mentioned, make me wanna leave my house on a weeknight and go, and go see a show and be like, “You know what?

This is all there is,” and that’s great

Cliff: The only one I cannot leave out of the conversation, and I just simply forgot to mention them earlier, there’s a lot of overlap with “The Blood Brothers” here.

A lot, uh, in a really fun way. But similarly, like…

Kyle: They’re both sassy

Cliff: Yes, and, uh, you know, as I get older, I can’t believe I’m ending up a white belt defender in many cases, but that genre was

Kyle: That better be the only white thing you’re defending

Cliff: That genre was cool and got a bad rap, just like the whole genre of false grind is a cool label for a lot of bands that are actually kinda cool and everybody just has a bad attitude about it. But Blood Brothers similarly, like they, I mean, they took a very different approach in general, but similarly physical.

their whole stupid thing at the time that I saw them back in the day was like, “Oh, uh, sometimes they throw up while they’re playing. It’s cool.” Like, yeah, all right.

Kyle: Wasn’t it amazing, like in that era, immediately pre-social media, how one album spawned whole scenes? So like “Crimes” made– It was “Crimes” and then all that stuff popped up.

Cliff: Yeah

Kyle: Similarly, when “Hot Damn!” came out, there were a ton of butt rock, southern metal, like idiot “Dukes of Hazzard” cosplay bands, and I’m sure there’s tons that I’m forgetting, but it feels like there were 10 or 15.

I mean, Jane Doe being the prime example, the, the record that launched 10,000 bands, none of whom got anywhere close to the real thing. but you know what? On a totally, totally opposite note, I hope, I hope beyond hope that there are groups of people who hear Superchamp on and they’re like, “I don’t know what this is, but I love it and I wanna try to make our version of it.”

Like if there are 10,000 imitators of this band, I’ll I’ll go see some of them, you know, if I can’t go see Eduboca

Cliff: Yeah, speaking of printing money, you will get some from us

Kyle: Yeah

Cliff: Part of me wants to do it myself, so maybe I’ll be inspired too

Kyle: I’m trying to think of what we would call that band Okie dokie seal

Cliff: Well, maybe

Kyle: I’m always texting you trying to get you to do music projects since you’re the only one that plays music, and I have no shortage of ideas. I’m still waiting for your HM2 album Cliff’s Woo- Wolverine Blues

Cliff: it’s sitting in my noggin. No worries. Considering Otoboke Beaver was named after a love motel in Japan, I guess if I made this band, it would be Pink Pony South or something. I don’t know. Um, maybe The Cheetah, RIP. Either way, the energy of this record, even more so than a lot of the ones that we talk about, there are a lot of reasons to be inspired, interested, whatever, do things as a result of listening to music.

For this one, it should be a pretty quick on and off switch for most people. If you’re not gonna like this, you’re probably gonna figure that out pretty quickly. If you can hang in there, to Kyle’s point, please do. And then sort of like we have done here, expositorially for two hours, is talk about all the moments that made us feel weird and then that we went, “That’s okay that I feel that way.

That might be good. I should chase it.” You should chase your weird s**t. Weird s**t that doesn’t hurt other people is the lifeblood of what makes interesting people interesting. You should go do s**t that makes you feel cool for being weird and chase it. I’m a big fan of that personally. I find people to be more interesting these days if they do it.

The other end of that is just becoming AI slop. Go do something that a computer can’t do, such as make this record