Lots of server maintenance this weekend - if anything seems off, let me know! (There's nobody reading this.) Anyway, I think things are working properly. Mostly, it shouldn't affect this blog, it's primarily my discord bots today, which I think are all operational again. So let's have some tunes!
Turnstile, "Glow On"
You know, a mystery I never got around to really solving is whether or not Plex's randomizer has a preference for track ones. It probably doesn't, I probably mostly just notice when it happens as opposed to some other random track. Especially because track ones have a stronger tendency to be intros/skits/other types of non-real songs. Plus, of course, every record on here has a track one, while they're not guaranteed to have any other tracks. That said? It sure seems like they come up more than they should. Which is just proof that I'm a big, dumb idiot.
Anyway, Turnstile: usually characterized as hardcore, with their third album especially they started sounding more and more like just kind of a rock band. That's not intended to be dismissive or anything, just that they're borrowing from a lot of places. A flowery synth arpeggio like this doesn't really scream "hardcore" to me, let's just say. This does remind me that I have thus far not listened to the latest record which came out this year. I should get it. [checks on Bandcamp] Oh yeah, it's not on Bandcamp, that's why I haven't gotten around to it.
Antipop Consortium, "Splinter"
I was about to type "been a while since we've had experimental hip-hop group Antipop Consortium" before remembering that it's been a while since we've had anything. It can be very easy to fall into the usual tics around here. I wonder how many rap songs have a discussion of one's own style. I'd love to see a word cloud of rap songs. I wonder if you could scrape a lyrics site and make that happen? I suspect they've invested a lot more in avoiding being scraped than I have interest in making this stupid tool, so yeah, not going to happen.
East of the Wall, "My Favorite Society Guy"
There's a period of time, right around this record release (late 2000s, early 2010s) where I have less recollection of the records I bought than other times. This was still when I was buying physical media, but had a couple of small kids in the house, often fell behind on ripping things, and rarely played the physical media directly. So things would get into the house and sit around, and I'd forget to listen to them. I did eventually make an effort to get everything ripped once I stopped buying physical media just to get caught up, but I was then in just bulk mode and wasn't stopping to listen to stuff.
So: East of the Wall. No recollection. Definitely sounds like something I would have been into back then! Kind of a post-hardcore-y sort of sound. But I'm not sure I've ever listened to this, so your guess is as good as mine. It's pretty good, I'll play this record when I'm done with this entry.
You know, if I remember.
[NB: This band has come up on Five Songs before, because there's a tag for them. So I've forgotten about them multiple times. Go me!]
Geordie Greep, "Holy, Holy"
See! Track one! Anyway, Geordie Greep was fronting Black Midi and struck out on his own. And the record is really all over the place. It's kind of pulling every kind of sound in and blending it all together with a heavy dose of theatricality. That makes it just prog as hell. There's more than a little of the sleaziness of Steely Dan for sure, with the same sort of storytelling, although the music is not as well-mannered as Dan was most of the time. That comparison is overdone, but I'm sorry, it's appropriate. This is only an occasional listen, I have to be in the right kind of theater kid mood, but if I am it's great.
The Toasters, "Weekend In L.A."
I know I've given some backstory on the Toasters before, and you can check the tags for some of that, I guess. But a thing that really strikes me here is that thinking of ska purely in waves really kind of misses out on some things. The Specials, by acclaim the most important band of the second wave, broke up in 1985, only a couple years before this album was released. And the Toasters would be one of the most important bands of the third wave, as the label they started (Moon Ska) would incubate a bunch of critical acts of that wave. The Toasters had actually released some singles and EPs while the Specials were still a band. Now, sure, ska wasn't exactly popular in the late 80s and early 90s, but that doesn't mean people weren't making it, and just thinking purely in terms of waves kind of does a disservice to some of the bands that were working in-between those peaks.