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.
“Kicking Television” appeared on a tour EP for the A Ghost Is Born tour, and later lent its name to their live record. Here, the track is collected onto Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, and it’s nice to have a rocker like this be widely available again. Wilco was never really just an alt-country band, but it’s always fun to hear their style wander around a bit from their assumed baseline.
[Read More]I am, Judy and the Loadies!
I’ve poked fun at some artists for cloying strings, but somehow Lambchop’s syrupy approach to same never bothers me. I suppose the reliably languid pace of things probably makes it feel better, but I think they’re just good at making them seem organic to the song and not just bolted on.
The Meters taking it slow on their first album, albeit without any strings involved. As always, the Meters rule, you should listen to them.
[Read More]Why do we make songs longer than a minute? What’s the point?
OK, this track is from something called Blue / Green / Red, and I swear to you, I did not get this album from anywhere. I wouldn’t do that to myself. One hypothesis is that if you have a few Weezer albums stored together, they’ll begin reproducing. Left to their own devices, eventually a pile of Weezer records will produce self-titled records named after colors not even known to mankind.
[Read More]I dunno about this, man. I want some fury with my Mogwai, some big dynamics, something should howl. This is pretty cerebral and isn’t what I’m generally looking for from them.
A repeat of an all-time jam.
“Gratitude Walks” is the opener of this album, but this beautiful slice of melancholy in the second position was what got me sold on American Music Club. I bought this album and listened to it on the walk back to campus, and it was such a change of pace from what I was listening to at the time that it really stuck with me. It’s good to have some things in your music diet that aren’t just noise and wrath.
[Read More]Hot Snakes! Hot Snakes! Hot Snakes!
Compare this tune with the Cinerama song from yesterday. It’s a simpler arrangement, but fundamentally the same type of song. But this feels so much better because the focus is where it belongs, on Gedge’s voice and guitar. This comes from Hit Parade 2, which documented the second half of the Wedding Present’s 1992. They put out a single every month, collecting all the tunes on two records. While a bit uneven compared to the albums from that time (as you might expect), they still have a bunch of great material on them and are both worth your time.
[Read More]Were it not for the presence of “floats”, this would be the kind of title you might find on a really pretentious prog album. I guess “twee” and “pretentious” are just two sides of the same coin.
After a couple albums of mellowing out some, The Men kicked it back into aggressive garage rock mode with Devil Music. It’s my favorite mode from them, so I was very happy to hear them bring it back. The more mature sounding stuff was fine, but I generally am happier with mayhem in my rock.
[Read More]Tad Hutchinson is really going the extra mile on the drums here. He doesn’t have to, Scott McCaughey’s singing can carry this little tune. But Hutchinson was always the Fellows’ secret weapon, I love his work across the board.
Hot Space contains the magnificent “Under Pressure”. It also contains a bunch of other songs, about which the less said, the better.
[Read More]On The Pretty Toney Album, Ghostface really broke out from the shadow of the Wu-Tang Clan. Not that he transcended it or anything, but this record is really off on its own thing, it doesn’t really sound like a Wu-Tang record. Other than Ghostface’s presence, of course. But I think that’s a good thing, it’s enabled him to have a great career, with no real barriers to where he wanted to go. Because of that, it’s probably my second favorite Ghostface record.
[Read More]The second Baroness record, Blue Record, seems to my ears like it’s a more confident album than the first one. Alongside that confidence is a willingness to make things a little prettier. It’s a little more prone to doing stuff that soars just a bit more than the previous album.
Damn, that guitar squeal, so good. And Kendrick coming in on “you wanna see a dead body?” is absolutely incredible.
[Read More]You know, I never really gave this album a real shot. The previous album seemed so sour and included some really bad lyrics, so after buying this one due to inertia, I never really engaged with it. This is a decent tune, though. I wonder what I’d think if I went back and gave it a whirl at this point. It doesn’t make the lyrics go away, though.
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