HELLO FROM THE FUTURE

It's time to get ahead on writing this blog. Gonna try and keep a strong update pace. There's a virtue in steadiness and predictability, which will help me build an audience. Which I will absolutely fail to do because the blog is ofputting and strange, the music is unappealing, and I am blazingly inept at self-promotion.

HIT IT PLEXASAURUS REX!

Man or Astro-Man?, "U-235/PU-239"

A relative rarity here, with mostly instrumental surf/sci-fi rockers Man or Astro-Man? turning in some vocals. But it's all reverbed out and the drums are echo-y, so it's all good with me. I also just learned that they put out a record in 2013, time to go check that one out.

The Beatles, "Something"

NOT NOW "THE BEATLES", WHOEVER YOU ARE, I'M LOOKING FOR AN OBSCURE RELEASE FROM A FORGOTTEN UNDERGROUND SURF ROCK BAND

Baroness, "Embers"

(track 1!) The intro to Stone, the sixth record record from Baroness and the first not named after a color. I guess? Maybe "stone" is a color? I never really considered that. Probably not. Anyway, I think Baroness has mostly had diminishing returns over the last few albums, and I confess I didn't listen to this record that closely. For the most part, as they got more prog-y and streteched out, my attention started wandering. This intro track doesn't really push me one way or another.

J Church, "At the Cannery"

(track 1!) This is the opening of J Church's 1995 EP, Analysis, Yes, Very Nice, part of the absolutely insane tear of productivity that the band had in the mid-90s. From 1993-1996, they not only put our four LPs, but (by my counting) 5 EPs and 23 singles in those same years. You might think a deluge of songs like that would result in some quality control problems, but the LPs are all good to great and any random smaller release is going to contain some good stuff. The level of productivity is really pretty amazing, few bands have ever reached that level.

"Why?", Andrew Bird

This song comes from The Swimming Hour, which I think is the first great album from Andrew Bird (and the final album by the Bowl of Fire before he just released songs under his own name). There's something of a break of continuity with the previous two records, which featured other Squirrel Nut Zippers and had some of the same heavy retro, hot jazz feel. This record is much more pop oriented, although obviously still pulling in lots of musical styles, and presaged the masterful Mysterious Production of Eggs. But the leap was with this album, not with Eggs, and he truly showed what he could do with it. I strongly recommend the album for anybody, especially if you're mostly familiar with his later stuff.

(NB: this track was actually on Bird Songs, a compilation of tunes from the Bowl of Fire albums, but whatever, I'm going to talk about the source album. However! I will note that...it's track 1 on Bird Songs. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN! I posted a question on the Plex forums about this. I predict somebody will condescend to me about how "shuffle isn't really random".)