Pitchblende, “Flax”

Now, that’s a tune! Kinda wish they had left the vocals off, they’re pretty unnecessary here.

Pardoner, “My Sorry Ass”

A end-of-year list discovery from 2017, I didn’t know anything about this band before getting this record. But listen to that Pitchblende song (from 1993) and then this, and there’s just a straight line connecting them. This album rocks, in case it wasn’t clear.

Wick-it The Instigator, “Everlasting Shine Blockaz”

Here’s a fun one! Wick-it took Big Boi’s magnificent Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty and combined it the the Black Keys’ Brothers, resulting in a very fun mash-up. Listen to this track and then you can immediately decide if it’s your thing or not.

X (Australia), “Suck Suck”

This is a punk band named X, but not THAT one. This one is from Australia, which is why Amphetamine Reptile credited them this way after re-issuing the record. This album came out in 1979, actually pre-dating the first album by the Los Angeles X, although the latter had already formed. Parallel evolution! Anyway, as you can hear, this is pretty aggressive stuff for the time, and is a solid early punk record. This is one of those records that was more inspirational than it was popular but is worth hunting down to listen to.

Polvo, “Every Holy Shround”

My current favorite burn for doofy looking middle-aged dudes who look a certain way is to say that they look like they have strong opinions about the best Archers of Loaf EP. (This is mostly a self-burn.) Anyway, I’m now currently considering updating that to the best Polvo EP, but I’m not sure that that’s appropriately controversial enough (it’s this one). And I just continue to burn myself.

Danny Weinkauf, “Champion of the Spelling Bee”

After the success of the They Might Be Giants kids albums, which included a few songs written by bassist Danny Weinkauf, he set out on his own and recorded a couple records in a similar vein. They’re pleasant enough, but by the time they were out, I didn’t really play them for the kids and so they’re just kind of in my collection.

Medeski, Martin and Wood, “Hey-Hee-Hi-Ho”

If my search is to be trusted, there are about 102 blog posts on this site indicating that I don’t know shit about jazz. Sad that I’m so ignorant, given that I actually listen to a fair bit of it.

Calexico, “Black Heart”

My favorite Calexico record. If this song doesn’t grab you, I’m afraid to inform you that you’re hopeless.

Therapy?, “Nausea”

Therapy? was a band that kind of got tagged with an alternative metal label during the early 90s. It kind of makes sense - this isn’t as gritty as grunge, and it’s not robotic enough for industrial metal, but it also doesn’t really have any markers of any of the genres of metal going at the time. This is from Nurse, a record that got them signed to a major label. It’s a decent record, although I’ll confess I haven’t thought about this band in ages.

The Decemberists, “Billy Liar”

I think I still like Her Majesty, the Decemberists the best of their records. At least some of that is the halo effect of it being the first album of theirs that I picked up. I had skipped Castaways and Cutouts when it came out, but I was wandering in Sonic Boom records in Fremont (RIP) and was sufficiently charmed by the cover art to give this one a whirl. And from the moment I first heard that ship creaking, I was hooked. I think that probably Picaresque or The Crane Wife might be better, but whatever! This is my favorite!

Nitzer Ebb, “Shame”

Might get back into industrial dance again. I mean, sure, this shit is dumb as hell, but maybe that’s what the times demand. Get some Belgians yelling at me about vague Dystopian futures.

Cavity, “Spine I”

In case you were wondering what “Spine II” was a follow-up to.

Less Than Jake, “Johnny Quest (Thinks We’re Sellouts)”

Less Than Jake would regularly re-record songs for later albums, polishing up the previous version. It was an interesting habit because it clearly wasn’t for a lack of material - their albums were always a healthy length, and during their prime, they put things out regularly. So I think it was just a matter of them wanting to get things right. This song originally appeared on Pezcore, and they revived it for Losing Streak (this version) a year and a half later. I wonder why?

Arab Strap, “Flirt”

Folks, the streak of metal is over!

I wonder what proportion of my music library is various genres. I think just plain “rock” probably dominates, but I’d love to know what percentage is metal, rap, soul, ska, or whatever else. I wish I could trust the genre metadata on things.

Superchunk, “100,000 Fireflies”

This b-side comes to us from the “The Question Is How Fast” single. Superchunk took singles seriously from the beginning, all the way down to releasing actual 7" singles at a time when not many bands were doing that. As a result, their b-sides were always pretty good. Happily, they’ve done a good job of collecting these things together (this one makes it to Incidental Music: 91-95).

Wire, “Practice Makes Perfect”

The second Wire album, Chairs Missing, was a little less frenetic than the debut record. Many of the songs are given more room to develop, with a little bit more of a drone-y feeling to some of the songs. It’s still great, but it’s a different sort of record. This is how the record opens, setting the stage for how things would go.

Piss Vortex, “Abyss”

Hee hee, Piss Vortex. Sorry folks, couldn’t resist this band! A little grindcore never hurt anybody! (This is not true, lots of people have probably been hurt at grindcore shows.)

Simon & Garfunkel, “Cecilia”

I know that it is, literally, Boomer-ass music, but Bridge Over Troubled Water is really very good. Can I call this song a jam? I think it might be a jam.

The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr, “Forssa Saeeda فرصة سعيدة”

Speaking of jams! Also, it’s time for Petty Grievances With Josh: there was no way I was going to figure out how to type that, but stupid Plex won’t let me copy and paste song titles from it directly. I had to inspect the element in Chrome and copy it out of there! What kind of hell is this!