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.
You know, this might be the first time I’ve had a song come up on Five Songs after I had listened to it by choice earlier that day. This is not an interesting fact.
Anyway, Summerteeth is fantastic. Tweedy made a basically clean break entirely from the alt-country that had been present on all of his albums up to this point, and made just a straight up pop record. And it’s so good! Lush and orchestral at times, slow and contemplative at others, it’s a tour de force.
[Read More]A collaboration between Coldcut (who we haven’t had yet) and a couple other guys, DJ Food sits between electronic music and abstract hip-hop. They’ve put out a bunch of records, and as befits the guys behind Coldcut, the ones I’ve listened to are good quality. I think I prefer the main act, but they’re still worth a go.
Kinda feel like this song name has aged oddly.
[Read More]Bought tickets to see Shellac today. Nice! Today’s music.
More old stuff from the Cows. This was originally on Daddy Has A Tail, when the Cows were still very much still figuring out what the hell they were doing. I’m not suggesting they ever figured it out, exactly, but they became more confident in their nonsense.
I hope that, one day, there will be some rapper or something who makes a song called something like “The Frozen Sword of Midnight” (it will probably be one associated with the Wu-Tang Clan). In the meantime, you’ll have to rely on metal bands to get your “somehow this sounds like a doodle on a Trapper Keeper” vibe. Does this song start with weather noises? You know it! Are there candelabras on the album cover? Fuck and yes there are! Is the track longer than nine minutes? GODDAMN RIGHT IT IS!
[Read More]More of this California punk band, I’m not sure there’s a lot to say about it.
Yeah, now we’re talkin’! Compare these two tracks. There’s just more energy, more interesting guitar work, just…more with this song. Gaunt could sure write a punk song.
Another live track from another deluxe reissue of a different Devo record. By virtue of having “Whip It” on it, Freedom Of Choice is the Devo album most people will have heard of. But the album is great even outside of that, with a full-on synth pop sound running through the whole thing. Devo’s control of their aesthetics are impressive across the board.
[Read More]Fundamentally, I just like hearing Jeff Tweedy sing. I think it kind of comes down to that. This isn’t a revolutionary song or anything, but it’s a pleasant, the arrangement is nice, and Tweedy is great. That’s just the bottom line for me.
Like a Wilco song, if half of the players were located in a different room from the mic and the singer was in a different house.
[Read More]We finish on a couple of great notes here.
It’s a bumper that was included with a Dial-a-Song download package. Not much else to say.
And this song from the Descendents isn’t a whole lot longer than that bumper! The Descendents were fueled by coffee, including what they called the “bonus cup”, described by Bill Stevenson: “We took ⅓ of a cup of instant coffee grounds, added some hot water, threw in about 5 spoonfuls of sugar, and proceeded to play 10 second songs. The Bonus Cup became a part of everyday Descendents life”.
[Read More]Scott McCaughey managed to play a show a couple of weeks ago, which is just a delightful piece of news. I hope he has many more in him, and I hope I get to see one! In the meantime, enjoy this vintage song from him, off the entertaining and off-kilter It’s Low Beat Time.
Beulah is a band that always managed to sound like other bands, and a pretty wide variety of other bands to boot. Honestly, this song has more than a little Young Fresh Fellows in it. I’m OK with that!
[Read More]This is another track from an Over The Edge compilation, this time Volume 8: Sex Dirt. Still nonsense, of course.
Pinkerton really is their best album, y’all. I still don’t know why I have four of their albums.
Another good song from Broken Social Scene. I guess I have to pay more attention to them, huh? We’re all learning around here! I’m learning I like bands I already own music to, and you’re all learning that Five Songs is run by a dumbass!
[Read More]Meanwhile, happy birthday to me! I’m going to see what shuffle got me.
From Take It! Take It! TAKE IT!, this is a great horn line in this song. I’m OK with my present so far, shuffle!
We’ve had a couple of Lawsuit songs recently, and now KC Bowman will make more sense. You can really hear the similarity in the songs (Bowman was one of the songwriters of Lawsuit). I do miss the rest of the band, but I’m happy that Bowman made another album.
[Read More]It’s our birthday! I posted the first Five Songs one year ago! In that time, assuming I’ve gotten my tagging right, I’ve posted 313 of these things, meaning you all have gotten a minimum of 1,565 different songs (plus a few bonuses along the way). NOT BAD. I’m still thinking about what to do for the second year of Five Songs. I might retire this thing, because it is a fair bit of work for something that is usually looked at by a number of people I can count on one hand. But, at the same time, it’s still fun, usually.
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