The Flaming Lips, “The Sparrow”

King’s Mouth: Music and Songs is a bit of a return to a previous style for the Lips, sonically sounding a lot more like The Soft Bulletin than The Terror. But it’s also a big concept album, and I think that gets in the way of the songs, and not only that, the songs themselves feel just a bit forced to me. It just all kind of seems like a bit of a blurry copy of their mid-career stuff.

Mort Garson, “Baroque No. 2”

Mort Garson is a synthesizer pioneer, one of the first people to record music with a Moog. Sacred Bones has been reissuing his work, both his records and various rarities from his estate’s archive. This is one of the latter, Music From Patch Cord Productions, and it’s just lovely stuff.

Basement Jaxx, “Cish Cash”

Talk about missing the boat. Basement Jaxx is best known for their debut album, Remedy, which was huge. I did not get it, nor their follow-up. But they put Siouxsie Sioux on this record (on this song, in fact), so sure, let’s give it a try. Sure, let’s not get the big record. Anyway, it’s fine. Not really my jam. Hard to really say anything bad about something this cheerful and energetic, though.

Noisem, “Birthing the Bestial”

A lot of what I like about thrash are when you’ve got really chunky, memorable riffs and some pyrotechnic squalling solos. So I ought to love this, right? But I dunno, it’s fine. I don’t really reach for it. I think I have a hard time falling in love with new thrash. Although this isn’t new any more, so maybe I’m just a bozo.

The Joykiller, “What It’s Worth”

This apparently is an LA supergroup, but I didn’t know that at the time. I ended up grabbing it because it was on Epitaph, the cover art was strange, and it was in the new release rack at Easy Street. By and large, I never regretted just buying random records, sometimes I found some great stuff. And sometimes, you end up with this record. Can’t win ’em all!

LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”

This is my favorite LCD Soundsystem song, by a fair ways, as the melancholy mood and nostalgic lens here is just kind of irresistable. And that piano, this is just such a damn jam. Please enjoy.

Trans Am, “Diabolical Cracker”

Is this, like, a sulferic Wheat Thin? Or just, you know, a cop?

The Streets, “Never Give In”

The Streets should be, maybe even are, the corniest act ever. But they’re saved by a core of sincerity at the heart of things which let them bypass all the corniness. It’s a high-wire act in the extreme, to be sure, and the vast majority of people who tried this sort of thing would sound awful. But he sticks the landing.

Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”

Ladies and gentlement, the pilot has illuminated the “JOSH IS NOT QUALIFIED TO TALK ABOUT JAZZ” light, please return to your social media app of choice and return your seats to the upright and locked position.

Boris, “Hama”

Amplifier Worship is the first studio album from Boris if you ask them, because they consider Absolute Go a single. It’s a 60-minute single, mind you, but it’s still a single as far as they’re concerned, so this is the first album. And it’s a banger, the first in a very long string of fantastic albums. I’m not sure Boris really redfined anything, or set a template for other bands to follow or anything. They’re just consistently great across decades. That’s all.

Lollipop, “7 and 7 Is”

There’s a real danger in over-intellectualizing a lot of rock. Something like this, pure garage punk, run on attitude, energy, and racket. That’s not to suggest it’s poorly constructed, or that Lollipop didn’t know what they were doing, or anything like that. They knew what kind of music they wanted to make, and they were very good at it. It’s just that deconstructing this further is a waste of time. Can you feel the energy? Does it get you amped up? Does it make you want to throw a chair through a window? Mission accomplished!

Bim Skala Bim, “Sunshine of Your Love”

Bim Skala Bim enjoyed covering classic rock warhorses over their career, songs which are really kind of ideal targets for this kind of thing. Any dork who will get upset about a cheeky cover of Cream of Pink Floyd is really showing their ass. Anyway, this is fun, sure, why not?

Upon proofreading, I’m leaving the “Cream of Pink Floyd” typo in there, because it’s delightful. Yes, I proofread these, dammit.

竹村延和 (Takemura Nobukazu), “Meteor”

This is from his 2000 release, Sign, and is the outro piece after the 35-minute “Souvenir in Chicago”. A thing I really like about this is the texture of the sounds, a lot of them are stretched, torn, distorted, and otherwise manipulated in surprising little ways. A track that rewards a close listen.

Slayer, “War Ensemble”

After slowing down a bit from Reign in Blood to South of Heaven, Slayer came back roaring with Seasons in the Abyss. This is yet another classic thrash record, the final Slayer record featuring Dave Lombardo during the initial run, so it was kind of the capstone for that era of the band. While I think I still like Reign in Blood a bit more, this record is a very close second from them, and is absolutely one of the critical texts of thrash and all of metal.

Pinegrove, “Darkness (acoustic)”

After a very good and well-received second album (Cardinal), Pinegrove ran into some serious problems that derailed the band after accusations surfaced about Evan Hall. It was a messy situation that Hall and the band tried to handle head-on, eventually going through mediation with the accuser and leaving their label willingly when another band objected to their presence. Overall, they seemed sincere in their attempts to handle things, and it seems like the accuser was satisfied by their steps. Anyway, all of this delayed the release of their third album by a couple years, and it eventually came out self-released. For all that, Skylight is actually a good album, and it came accompanied with an acoustic interpretation (called Skylight II). That’s where this track came from, and it’s a nice little listen.

Prince Paul, “A Prince Among Thieves”

Hearing this song out of context, the climax/punchline of Prince Paul’s briliant album A Prince Among Thieves, really is kind of jarring. It makes so much sense in the original context but is a strange one outside of it. It just kind of sounds like what it is parodying, a maudlin tribute song from the 90s.

Chokebore, “Line Crush”

This is from the comp Clusterfuck ‘94, a collection of singles, album tracks, and unreleased stuff from three bands (Chokebore, Today Is The Day, and Guzzard) that was intended to fund a tour. It’s really pretty unnecessary, especially when you have most of the material on here with other records. But, you know: in ‘94, I didn’t have the ability to look stuff up easily, so I bought it. I bought basically everything Amphetamine Reptile released, just as a policy. Anyway, Chokebore is the least interesting of these three bands, but this track is OK.