This is the newly rebuilt Five Random Songs: chock full of posts, each featuring five random songs from my collection of music. Along with some other junk. Everything is tagged by artist. Poke around some, it’s been here since 2017. Starting in 2026, I shifted to twice-weekly posts with a little longer format. If you want to keep up, you can use RSS, sign up for email, or follow me on Bluesky.
Folks, they can’t all be winners.
Can we just admire the naming going on here? Scissorfight? “Victory Over Horseshit”? That’s good stuff. I mean, the album isn’t that great or anything, but whatever.
Yeah, there’s no way this is going to be on YouTube, is it?
(looks)
Hooray! I’m very lazy, so that’s great news.
OK, Plexasaurus Rex, let’s get some meat on the bone here, not much to talk about so far.
[Read More]I was at Shut Up & Sit Down Expo over the weekend, and it was fun, although I think that that was mostly because it was a getaway weekend for Megan and I. But, it was a good pretext to get out of town! Also, somebody asked me for my autograph. Super cool!
We’ve now gone back in Ministry’s catalog far enough to reach their first good album. The flaccid synth-pop of With Sympathy and stilted semi-aggro synths of Twitch had finally metastasized into the aggressive Land of Rape and Honey. This, arguably, is the most industrial of their albums, with less of the metallic riffing of their later stuff but all of the mechanical pounding you might want. I haven’t listend to this in ages, I should give it a spin.
[Read More]New verison of Ghost! So far, I don’t like it. Whatever. Still basically works. I have music for you!
I have a very distinct memory of listening to this album while wandering around Wean Hall at my college, and paying a lot of attention to it, and deciding that I just didn’t really like it very much. I’m not sure what set me off about it, but I very much decided that Lungfish weren’t for me. This is from their debut album, and apparently they lasted for a long time, and I stuck to my guns. I haven’t heard anything else from them. Maybe they were good! I don’t know!
[Read More]Hey, y’all! I’m going to be in Vancouver this weekend for SHUX! If you happen to be going, say hi!
Criminal Minded is at the root of so much of New York rap. It’s really one of the foundational documents of the East Coast scene. There are so many echoes of this album in so many other records that it’s almost hard to even pick them out. At this point, the original sounds like a cliche, which is unfair, as this record is where all that stuff comes from.
[Read More]More old shit from J-Zone! I mentioned his persona last time, but here you can really hear the cheapass side of things. Also, dig that circus beat! And the shots at internet losers. All good stuff!
Pond’s third and final record, Rock Collection, came out on a major label, which probably did it no favors. While Sub Pop would know what to do with a band like this, when Pond didn’t hit it big quickly with this record, Sony basically just forgot that it existed. It’s a shame, because it’s a an excellent album full of rock gems like this, all of them at least a little off-kilter. There’s also some really touching songs on here as well. Overall, a lost gem.
[Read More]One of the things that set Cop Shoot Cop apart from the other acts they were usually lumped with, often other industrial bands, was that Tod Ashley was never afraid to deploy some genuine emotion in his songs. It wasn’t all just pummelling, fury, noise, and aggression. Songs like this would presage the work that Ashley would later turn in with Firewater.
[Read More]Look, I don’t think I’m a great writer, or even a good one, when it comes to music. Hell, I probably don’t really rise to “adequate”. My failing is that a lot of these entries are pretty shallow. I’m also unable to really evoke what it’s like to listen to these folks. Also, my comparisons are not great. And…
…hang on, let’s try this again. I’m saying that these mostly suck, but whatever, listen to this fucking song. Goddammit, this is some great shit.
[Read More]Good news! No Japanese noise today!
Listen to this track, and think about the other stuff featured on Five Songs in the past. What do you think this band normally sounds like? Some kind of soundtrack-y kind of thing? Something closer to post-rock? Foetus tribute act?
If you look into your heart, you know the correct answer. Something like this? Yeah, it’s metal.
Lambchop chose to release two albums on the same day in 2004, Aw C’mon and No, You C’mon. It’s not entirely clear why they chose to release them as separate records, instead of a double album. There’s not really any distinction between the types of songs on the two albums, and it’s not like one is all b-sides or anything. They just decided to release two records, a bit of an odd decision from a band that has always been a bit odd themselves. At any rate, the world is a better place for more Lambchop songs, so may they release fifty albums on the same day.
[Read More]Kind of wiplashing around today.
This might be the platonic ideal of the Art Brut song, a song where you legitimately can’t tell if they’re putting you on or not. I think they’re doing both, it’s dead serious as well as an arch joke. Like, it’s many layers of put on that just wraps around itself. Putonception.
You know, I never actually saw Inception.
[Read More]Some bonus tunes today!
We’ve had several trip-hop acts around here in the past, and here’s one of the lesser known bands from that scene. Morcheeba, like all of the trip-hop bands that hung around for a while, pretty quickly expanded beyond just straight trip-hop. For example, beyond the drums and a little bit of scratching, this is more jazz than trip-hop. At any rate, this album (Big Calm) is very good.
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