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.
OK, let’s see if we can do better than that low energy thing yesterday. Whatcha got, shuffle?
Pure heavy metal revivalism, Dawnbringer has decided to see if they can just play this stuff totally straight and manage to not sound totally cheesy. Do they pull it off? Well…I don’t know. It’s reasonably well done, I guess, but by and large I’d pretty much rather just listen to Sabbath. Decent for an occasional change of pace.
[Read More]Another fine song from old Pittsburgh band Hurl. There’s an expansiveness, a warmth here that’s really pleasant to listen to.
Yeah, I’m kind of mad at some of the choices that Past Josh made. This is, of all damn things, a live album of a recreation of a radio show.
And, look, I couldn’t get this “song” uploaded. My conversion things keep crashing. So, screw it, we’re going to do an extra today.
[Read More]I was just listening to Wrong today, and was reminded of how awesome it was. Folks, check it out! In the meantime, here’s NoMeansNo kicking off the In The Fishtank project, which was a project where an independant label invited bands to record an album in just two days in the studio. Occasionally a couple bands at the same time! NoMeansNo are pros, so of course it sounds great.
[Read More]It probably says something about me that I own a lot more Screeching Weasel than I do the Ramones. Specifically, it says how old I am.
One of Jay-Z’s strengths is how he has a bunch of different flows that he uses on different songs. Unlike some rappers, including plenty of famous ones, he always seems to change things up to really play along with the beat. And Pharrell Williams put together a great one here.
[Read More]This is how Stoner Witch opens. I put this on when it came out, and just thought “holy shit, this is going to crush my head”. And it did. My head remains crushed to this day.
And then my head became uncrushed. Thanks, Motown!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Deathspell Omega turn out to be Nazi shitheads, and you should not in any way patronize them. I’m leaving the original text here, but fuck these guys.
[Read More]The beat that 9th Wonder put together on this track is smoking hot.
This song makes more sense if you watch the accompanying video for it. But, uh, I’m not sure if I’d worry too much about it. Also, I think we’ve had this song before, but looking through all these entries to confirm that is a hassle. Uhhh, I’m going to say we did?
[Read More]This comes from Man Plans God Laughs, which is deep into the long run of somehwat undifferentiated albums that Public Enemy has been making for years and years now. They’ve lasted long enough and produced enough records that they have way more non-peak albums than they do peak albums. Which is kind of a bummer. It’s also hard for me to fairly evaluate most of these these records. They’re competing with such indelible memories.
[Read More]From a later EP from the band, No One’s First, And You’re Next, these are songs that were largely left off of Good News For People Who Love Bad News and We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. If you’re looking for more songs that would have fit into those albums, this EP is worth looking into.
Another good song from Sleater-Kinney which I will undoubtedly totally forget the tune for after the song has finished.
[Read More]From their first, most primitive record, the White Stripes nevertheless still sounded like themselves right from the beginning. Some of that is Jack White’s distinctive yelp, some of that is the spare blues, some of it is the plodding drums. But they’re instantly recognizable.
It takes somebody pretty sharp to write something this aggressively dumb.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m crediting everything to Bob Marley even when it’s credited to him and the Wailers. I’m erasing the Wailers just to make my categorization easier. That makes me shitty. Always nice to listen to Marley, Wailers or no.
[Read More]Sorry we’ve missed a couple days around here. I’m gonna lie and say it’s not going to happen again. All good now! Here’s today.
We’ve heard from Portishead and Massive Attack, and now it’s time to hear from the other giant of trip-hop, Tricky. Tricky’s debut, Maxinquaye, ranks up there with Dummy and Blue Lines as one of the masterpieces of electronic music from the early to mid 90s. Alas, this does not come from Maxinquaye, but from the much later Angels With Dirty Faces, which is only so-so.
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