Among the many bits of shorthand that have traditionally served as the backbone of record reviews aiming to function more as “buyer’s guides” than thoughtful, long-form criticism is the RIYL—or Recommended if You Like—format.
My first real experience with it was writing little 175-word capsule reviews for CMJ and having to include 3-4 RIYLs for each, which would appear in a little sidebar next to the review itself. I just read a 2001 review I wrote of a record by a band called Aden, which I said was RIYL “Unrest, early Versus and the Byrds.” Crucially, it was not gonna be for you if you liked middle- or late-period Versus, I guess? And did I mention Unrest because the record was released by TeenBeat Records, which was owned by Unrest frontman Mark Robinson? I sure did. And the Byrds? Because vocal harmonies? Oh brother.
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It’s a helpful enough tool that is inherently always going to feel at least a little bit reductive—especially, for some reason, when it comes to writing about artists who happen to be women. Going back to my Aden review, for instance, if that band had been fronted by a woman, I probably would have said it was RIYL Velocity Girl. Or if it had been a harder-edged band fronted by a woman, I would have said it was RIYL Sleater Kinney. Or a more stripped-down acoustic project led by a woman? Duh, Mary Lou Lord.
Just a few minutes ago, to see if the internet could do any better, I googled “Angel Olsen RIYL,” and I received a list of “Core RIYL Recommendations” that included Weyes Blood (ok), Sharon Van Etten (sure), Mitski (maybe), Lana Del Rey (what) and Karen O (come on).
It all feels very much like, “If you like women, you will also like this woman.”
But this all begs the very obvious question, why do we feel like we can only compare female musicians to other female musicians? Is it because we’ve decided that, aesthetically, the gender of the person singing has the greatest overall impact on the sound of a piece of music? I suppose that’s a possibility. It’s like how you wouldn’t see a male artist who sings ragged, country-tinged Americana being compared to Lucinda Williams — not when you could so easily reach for names like Steve Earle or Tom Waits or Jason Isbell.
I think what feels so icky about it when you’re talking about women artists, though, is that the references always seem a lot less nuanced. Whether that’s because the person doing the recommending just doesn’t have a broad enough knowledge base of female performers, or because a century of systemic misogyny has made it so there simply aren’t enough examples of female references that would register with enough people…well, those two things are kinda the same, actually.
Anyway! I mention all of this because today’s Song of the Day is by Case Oats, a Chicago band that is fronted by a woman who is currently reminding me not of Kimya Dawson but of David Berman.
Case Oats is the songwriting project of Casey Gomez Walker, a Missouri-born Creative Writing grad who took to writing songs in the couple of years leading up to the pandemic. Spencer Tweedy plays drums, Max Subar plays guitar and pedal steel (and is a solo artist whose work is very much worth checking out), while Scott Daniel and Jason Ashworth contribute fiddle and bass respectively. Their debut album, Last Missouri Exit, was released by Merge Records last summer, and it’s a delight. Lots of twangy indie-folk that, thanks to Walker’s vocal delivery, does occasionally call to mind some of the twee-leaning indie-pop that’s been popular at various times over the past 40 years.
It’s for this reason that pretty much every review of Last Missouri Exit mentioned Kimya Dawson. And it certainly makes some sense. Walker’s vocal melodies and phrasing are hard to describe without sounding patronizing. They’re simple and sorta choppy, almost predictable. She’s not belting big vocal runs by any means—it’s largely a one-note-per-syllable affair. And the way each line is constructed, where the accents lie, is just jarring enough that you very quickly get the feeling the words came first. The result is a sound that could justifiably be described as childlike—and, voilà, there’s your Kimya Dawson comparison. (So there’s no confusion about my stance here: I think Kimya Dawson a goddamn genius and a national treasure.)
This brings us to today, and the release of a brand new Case Oats single called “Bottom of an Afternoon.” There’s less of the straightforward indie twang from the full-length present here, replaced by various keyboards and organs (and a trumpet!), but the focal point remains Walker’s vocals and, more specifically, her lyrics. “In the absence of your ghost, there are pages I still dog-ear” is a hell of an opening line to a song about a search for meaning where the narrator seems to be asking for help from a loved one who died.
As soon as I heard it, I was struck by how much certain parts of it reminded me of David Berman—in the vocal delivery, for sure, but also in the lyrics themselves. There are some turns of phrase that are just so evocative and strange that you can’t help but pay extra close attention to what comes next: the slightly cryptic “your funeral fit the season,” or the casual depiction of day-to-day life from the deceased friend, “such waltzing isn’t easy.” Or even the line the title comes from: “There’s gotta be an answer, sticking out the bottom of an afternoon.” It’s a strange and lovely little song that asks lots of big questions and has me very curious about what a second Case Oats full-length might sound like.
Give it a listen:
Case Oats kicks off a couple months of U.S. and European shows this week.