Monobody, “Curry Courier Career”

Is there such a thing as a math jam band? I think there might be.

Trigger Cut, “Fireworks”

This is just pure throwback to mid-90s Amphetamine Reptile stuff. It makes the Pavement band name a little off, though, they should have called themselves “Shitbeard” instead. Anyway, you know I’m a sucker for this stuff.

Vampire Weekend, “Horchata”

This is actually the song that kind of clangs the most from the second Vampire Weekend record. It just feels far too clever, like it’s trying too hard, and ends up ringing false to me. It seems more like the result of a computation than something genuine. I don’t know exactly why that is, but that’s what I get from it, and largely from the entire album. Like Ezra Koenig decided to build the song around that horchata/balaclava rhyme, just to get it out there.

Green Day, “Hitchin’ a Ride”

Nimrod is an uneven record, but I really like the high points of it, and this is one of them, I think. It’s nice to hear them expirimenting with their formula some, as Insomniac really did not at all.

The Budos Band, “Arcane Rambler”

Burnt Offering found the Budos Band referencing hard rock pretty explicitly in their music, and it was a really nice breath of fresh air. The following album returned to their numbering system, and V represents kind of the midpoint between III and Burnt Offering. There are still some of those same hard rock riffs here and there, but the Afrobeat is clearly back in the driver’s seat. It’s a great album from a band that have really taken it up a notch in their last few albums.

Chuck D, “Mistachuck”

Chuck D put out one solo album, Autobiography of Mistachuck, which really very much fits in alongside the mid-90s Public Enemy stuff, neither notably better or worse than the main band’s stuff from that time. It has the same issue as those records, which is that it’s kind of let down by not enough editing, but there’s plenty of hard hitting stuff on here, such as this track.

Cypress Hill, “Hand on the Pump”

It’s kind of incredible that a song as weird as this one made as much of an impact on popular culture as it did. Not that it doesn’t smoke, it does, but everything from the odd vocal loop, to B-Real’s nasal vocal, to the squeaky noises all over, to the sing-song chorus is off-kilter. It’s fantastic stuff! Just odd.

Common, “Black America Again”

The title track from Common’s 2016 album, he used a lot of guest artists on the record, with the biggest one on this track. Stevie Wonder sounds great, as always, and Common in general turns in a fine performance across the whole album. I think it’s his best record since Be.

Intermix, “Voices”

We encountered Delerium the other day, and now we have another side project from the same folks. While their main act, Front Line Assembly, was squarely in the industrial dance category, Leeb and Fulber used different monikers to explore different kinds of electronic music. Intermix was more focused on a more techno oriented approach. Like Delerium, it’s not really my bag, so I just have the first album from them.

Tilt, “Dental Wreck”

There are certainly things that can be bad about punk. But there’s a floor on how bad it gets - if you keep things energetic and the songs short, it’s always going to hit at least reasonably well.

They Might Be Giants, “Lost My Mind”

Nanobots had a decent number of these kind of big, dramatic songs from TMBG. It’s a bit of a theatrical album, and a solid one from them.

Mac DeMarco, “The Way You’d Love Her”

Like a lot of people, I first encountered DeMarco with Salad Days, which is a charming, reverb-soaked album full of ringing guitar tone and low-key songs. It’s really enjoyable in the right mood, but I have to say that for me, the rewards declined pretty quickly. It’s not that Another One is bad or anything, all the charms of the other album are present. It’s just that I don’t really listen to it much, it’s sort of redundant for me.

Valentine’s Day! Let’s do a special!

The Twilight Singers, “Candy Cany Crawl”

No! That’s the wrong kind of candy! Stupid randomizer.

Snoop Dogg, “Candy (Drippin’ Like Water)”

That’s the wrong kind of candy also! Starting to think that “candy” is mostly used as a metaphor in songs for other things than, you know, candy.

The Spinanes, “Kid in Candy”

First, before we examine the candy content of the song, let’s just take a moment and just marvel at how much fun it is to listen to Scott Plouf go on the drums. And Rebecca Gates is always a marvel. What a pleasure.

Lard, “Forkboy”

Lard, the collaboration between Jello Biafra (as you can clearly hear) and Ministry, usually sounded just like what you might expect that collab to sound like. But Ministry were having fun with it, and were just in full-on raging hardcore mode, and Jello was in fine form, so this album winds up being probably my favorite post-Kennedys Jello record.

People Under the Stairs, “Reflections”

People Under the Stairs hit their fifth album, and at this point, had really reached maturity as artists. They were now confident enough to not just crank out their old-school loop-based beats, but to add in some more compositions like this one. And to be able to write rhymes that can work together with this new style. It’s a nice addition to their toolbox, and as a result, this is probably my second-favorite album from them.

Powerrun, “Pulse of the Night”

As someone who actually lived through the 80s, I have a real mixed opinion of stuff like this. Yes, there’s a nostalgia that tugs at me, and some of these sounds are genuinely fun. At the same time, it also evokes a lot of boring, dreary stuff from that period. I suppose that nobody is really trying to recreate the lame stuff, but a whiff of that stink still clings to it in my memory. Well, anyway, I do enjoy listening to stuff like this sometimes.