Wasted Shirt, “Double the Dream”

Wasted Shirt is Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) and Ty Segall, playing the sort of demented noise duo rock that Chippendale in particular is known for. There’s only one album of it, called Fungus II, but it’s well-worth picking up if you’re a Lightning Bolt fan.

Prefuse 73, “See More Than Just Stars”

From Prefuse 73’s 2015 album, Rivington Não Rio, an album that strikes me as more tuneful and a little tamer than his earlier work. Still pretty good, though, although I generally prefer the more chaotic stuff.

Eggs, “The Government Administrator”

Eggs was one of the Teenbeat bands, making indie pop at a time when that was pretty uncommon, running straight against the current of grunge and heavy rock that was dominating taste at the time. A lot of these bands also valued being very clever in their tunes, sometimes a bit too much. At any rate, this comes from the singles comp, ‘How Do You Like Lobster?’ A Collection of Crustaceans and Flotsam, the title of which kind of makes the point. For all that, they could really write some solid tunes, and I actually like this comp the most out of their records.

Gas Huffer, “Nisqually”

The first song from the first Gas Huffer full-length, it sets the tone for what they’re trying to do: straight-ahead garage rock with zero pretension. Although they were contemporaneous with grunge and from Seattle, they were doing something more parallel to that stuff, as there’s not really any metal at all in this sound.

Sweet Baby, “Year after Year”

More garage rock! This is from Hello Again, a comp that includes an album from Sweet Baby and an album from the successor band, Brent’s TV. It’s pretty good, but one of the virtues of this kind of music is that it gets to the point and gets out of the way. And, well, 40 tracks of it is not getting out of the way.

Pinback, “How We Breathe”

Well, that’s very pretty.

Here Lies Man, “Collector of Vanities”

A side project of Antibalas folks, Here Lies Man plays a meld of Afrobeat and psychedelic rock, often to pretty solid effect. This is from their latest, Ritual Divination, which pushes a little more towards the rock end of things, so depending on your preferences it’s either the place to start or the place to end up.

Black Moon, “Enta da Stage”

Black Moon’s 1993 classic, Enta da Stage, could not have been released at a worse time to get attention. The synthesis of the jazz-inflected beats of Native Tongues and the street rhymes of New York City would have been massively influential had it not landed at roughly the same time as Midnight Mauraders (showing how far these kinds of beats could be taken) and Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (showing how far these kinds of rhymes could go). Nevertheless, the album is a serious banger.

Chaos A.D., “Generation Shit”

Chaos A.D. is an Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher), releasing a miscellaneous pile of tracks from his early years. It doesn’t show the same kind of sophistication of his later recordings, and honestly, it’s an easy skip. This is probalby the worst track on the album, though, so don’t totally judge on this song.

The Beatles, “Dear Prudence”

One of my simultaneously dumbest and proudest moments in Rock Band was five starring this song on the drums and vocals and the same time…except I whistled the entirety of the vocal track. Not bad!

Spanish Love Songs, “Routine Pain”

I missed the first couple Spanish Love Songs albums when they came out, because I’m an out of touch loser. So this is the first song I ever heard from the band, and it’s simultaneously a seriously impressive tune, totally affecting, and frankly kind of hard to listen to. I think this record is amazing and also I just can’t handle listening to it very often.

The Mr. T Experience, “Bridge to Taribithia”

Thoroughly enjoyable instrumental from Our Bodies Our Selves, one of the stronger mid-career MTX albums.

Claw Hammer, “Uncontrollable Urge”

This song is a serious jam, even when it’s a very straightforward cover of the song. I’ve decided that I really like having Claw Hammer’s album length cover of Devo’s first album in the library just to increase my chances of hearing the tunes.

The Streets, “Who Got The Funk?”

Is…is it the Streets?

The Grifters, “Covered With Flies”

I periodically see “forgotten bands of the grunge era” and similar articles, because I’m old and I read old person things. Those articles invariably dig up one or two interesting bands (Love Battery, say), four different Pearl Jam predecessor bands, and then a couple bands that always sucked but the writer saw in a club early and thus has an irrational fixation on them. And you know who nobody ever mentions? That’s right, the Grifters. Who ruled and are now forgotten.

ALL, “Honey Peeps”

By the time they hit 1997’s Mass Nerder, ALL was on their third singer across seven albums, but the band still basically sounded the same. This was finally the album where I realized that I was very much done with them. The previous record (Pummel) had some awful lyrics, and I really wasn’t sure why I picked this one up. Kind of force of habit, really. At any rate, with the Descendents also having been resurrected by this point, ALL really served no purpose.