The night before Long Neck filmed this Daytrotter session I had the absolute pleasure of playing a show with them in Cedar Rapids at a small DIY venue. The turnout was small but it was all the better for the people who were there because they got to experience this group in a uniquely intimate way. Now all of you get that pleasure as well. 

One of the first things you might have noticed about this group is their personality, which explodes off the screen and is even more infectious in person. Coordinated dance moves and comradery between the band members add so many levels of enjoyment to their shows that many stoic, I’m-too-cool-to-smile rock bands miss out on. You don’t have to be ultra-serious to be taken seriously. They’re also one of the only bands I’ve ever seen that can pull off good banter between songs-it’s kinda their thing, and it’s great. 

Long Neck are riding the top of the guitar-centric indie rock wave. The size of that wave, though, is in flux. In a time when bands like Tame Impala are playing out the windows of every college dorm and Fall Out Boy haven’t strummed a six-string in what seems like decades, Long Neck refuses to put straight up rock music on the shelf and let it age all alone, out of the spotlight. This is the type of rock music that kicks you in the gut but you love the pain. It doesn’t pull any punches and can still be a load of fun.

There are a ton of badass “f*** you” moments in their music, as in the lyric “I need you like a horse needs a break in its leg,” but they’re followed up with steady-handed and tender contemplations on romantic relationships and friendships. The group uses metaphor and stark realism to their extreme benefit. 

In the small venue in Cedar Rapids that night, it was difficult to hear Lily’s vocals lucidly above all the instrument sounds bouncing off the walls. Here in this session it’s clear as day and adds the perfect texture to their tone of rock. They’re a band who brings their recorded album experience to the live stage, and they thrive on consistency. 

After the show, we were all talking genres together when the group bemoaned the fact that they’re constantly being labelled as “bedroom pop,” or some similar phrase. Men label them in this way because of their female singer, the band said, which is obviously sexist and also a wildly inaccurate label. Bedroom pop is often lo-fi and subdued. Long Neck is undoubtedly a rock band in one of its purest iterations. 

In short, this is a band whose overall effect transcends the music.

At the end of the night I begged them to tell me their secret on good stage banter. It’s something I’ve tried in many different bands but only rarely succeed in. They all laughed and looked at each other.

Okey Dokey is a phoenix that has risen from the ashes. Born from the remnants of a selection of bands-no-more, this duo (here expanded into a full band) is a match made in Nashville. This band takes everything we like about soul and southern rock and wraps it up in everything we love about indie pop. 

The backbone of the songs is the soulful grooves and vocal harmonies that lay out the structural ground work which the rest of the band toys with. The two guitars gives space for the instrument to be purely rhythmic in some moments and a lead in others. It makes me think about this question coming around concerning the guitar’s place in modern rock bands. It seems that some people out there are just now coming around to the idea of a guitar acting as a textural instrument rather than just an intricate lead instrument. It goes to show how we can understand more about the guitar’s place in rock when two of them are allowed to be in conversation in a song (alongside an array of keyboards).  

Songs in this session range from glowing to gritty but are always colorful. They have an undeniable charm to them: they’re danceable and nuanced. The best ones are constantly shifting tempos around and are dotted with little musical surprises and references to old songs. 

Okey Dokey crafts their aesthetic not just from sounds but from words and images as well. The pink and blue of their album cover and bandcamp are a perfect fit for the guitar tones in the music (if you’re tuned in to that sort of thing). I also found a lot of joy in their song lyrics, and even just the song titles. Songs like “Coffee Boi”, “Wavy Gravy”, and “Low Rent – Blue Skies” all have a similar air to them, a youthful joy that reaches back into boyhood but still confronts all the growing pains that come with leaving it. The lyrics fit it right along with them, the vocal performance being the final piece of the puzzle. They’re holding on to the halcyon moments while bringing that optimism to the present moment.

Folk and Country fall a little bit short in describing Jacob Thomas Jr.’s music. It might be better described with one of his song titles, “Whiskey Rollercoaster.” These songs have an attitude and grit to them (his upcoming album is titled Electric Sex) but they can also turn tender within the course of a verse. It’s an uninhibited (and definitely inebriated) trip through one man’s whiskey-addled mind, replete with acutely observant thoughts and grand, emotional statements. It sounds, almost literally, like a Whiskey Rollercoaster. 

I do believe that the word “cool” can be used legitimately in describing music. I don’t mean “cool” in the of corny, overt try-hard kind of way that most people think of when you use that word today. I mean cool as a mood, as a method of delivery. Think of the steam rising from a huge chunk of ice, and the way the wind might blow it in calm circles around the air. Then put sunglasses on it. That’s what I mean. And Jacob Thomas is cool in that way, or his music is. The calm intensity of his cadence allows him to sing songs about our greatest vices (lust, drinking, recreational drug use) and still come back around to sing a heartfelt song about love and its confusing fine print. Sometimes being too cool can make your songwriting less believable, but with Jacob Thomas Jr. the opposite is true: all of this comes together to be quite believable, and often comforting. 

In this session, Jacob plays an exclusive song that isn’t recorded anywhere else. “Strangers in Love” contains the same duality that piqued my interest in “Whiskey Rollercoaster.” My English minor might be showing a bit here but stick with me and observe just the title alone. It’s probably a phrase you’ve heard before, but don’t let that make you think there isn’t something to it. This could be two strangers who are in fact in love. That’s sweet. Or it could be less sweet: that love is a place, and these people are strangers to it. By the end of the song, we still don’t know. But we did go on some sort of a ride, at least.