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!

Touché Amoré, “To Write Content”

Touché Amoré is a bit of a genre Rorschach test: emo? Hardcore? Post-hardcore? All of them, I guess, and maybe folks will identify in whatever way that fits them into their tastes. Not me! I’ll identify them as whatever genre fits best with whatever through line I’m desperately trying to spot on any given day.

Krallice, “Wastes of Ocean”

Like…uh…maybe I could talk about the distinction between the speed of hardcore versus that of extreme metal, and how to my ears one of the distinctions is that the drumming often becomes almost unmoored from the guitars in extreme metal for long stretches, while hardcore is usually more locked in. Which is all kinda bullshit, but this blog is all just bullshit anyway. Moving on!

The Jesus Lizard, “Gladiator”

HELL YEAH MAN TIME TO GO BREAK STUFF FUCKIN’ LET’S GO GET DRUNK FUCK SHIT UP

Tha Alkaholiks, “Let It Out”

Tha Alkaholiks stood out from out other rap groups in the mid-90s in California by being mostly playful, in contrast to the dominant G-funk aesthetic at the time. E-Swift’s production also presented a different approach than the dense, deep funk jams of the time. This is from their second record, 1995’s Coast II Coast, which featured a whole bunch of fun guests (Madlib, Q-Tip, Xzibit, others), and is just a solid album.

Wolves in the Throne Room, “Permanent Changes in Consciousness”

This is what counts for an interstitial track for Wolves in the Throne Room. Only 1:54!

Gino Parks, “Don’t Say Bye Bye”

Meanwhile, Gino Parks cranks out an entire song with an actual structure in a tidy 1:51. It’s actually kind of funny to think about how far music has gone from 1960, and to think that you can actually draw a lineage between these two songs without much backtracking on the family tree.

Bark Psychosis, “A Street Scene”

Bark Psychosis’s first run consisted of this album, Hex, after which they broke up. They did reunite ten years later for another record, but I haven’t listened to it. This album is hard to characterize. It’s kind of dream pop and kind of post-rock, and it’s unabashedly ambitious which is always nice. The compositions are big and the arrangements even bigger. This blurring of genre boundaries and fearlessness about incorporating technology is something that was unusual in pop or rock at the time.

Another month in the books here! NOT BAD.

Boss Hog, “Winn Coma”

Straight-ahead rock from the most straight-ahead record Boss Hog made.

Krallice, “Inhume”

The third Krallice album, Diotima, was the last they did with Profound Lore before striking out on their own. It contains the usual elaborate black metal craziness, and while it’s good, it’s maybe the Krallice album that sticks with me the least.

Ulthar, “Undying Spear”

Shuffle is in a metal mood these last couple days. This is from the 2020 album Providence, and if you were wondering what black metal vs. death metal was like, these two tracks might help. The pounding riffs here are very death metal, as opposed to the tremelo picking madness of the Krallice song. The vocals here are kind of black metal, though.

Bob Marley, “Keep On Moving”

This comes from the second collection of Bob Marley’s singles collection, The Complete Bob Marley & The Wailers. The second collection is called Soul Revolution, and I think I generally prefer the previous volume on the whole. Of course, it’s all great, and it’s a shame these collections aren’t still in print, they’re excellent.

Explosions In The Sky, “The Birth And Death Of The Day”

I have to say, while I think that Godspeed You! Black Emperor is probably the platonic ideal of post-rock bands, this band/track name combo here is really incredible form. If you give these names to an informed music listener, they’re going to guess post-rock pretty much every time. It sounds exactly like you’d expect.

Phono-Comb, “Grip ’n’ Grin”

Phono-Comb is a successor band to the great Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, which you probably guessed if you’re familiar with that band’s work. Two-thirds of the band (Don Pyle on drums and Reid Diamond on bass) played in the band, and their lone LP (1996’s Fresh Gasoline) is great. If you’re not familiar with the Shadowy Men, I just found out that Yep Roc has brought their three outstanding records back into print, and you need to go check them out now.

Pete Rock & CL Smooth, “For Pete’s Sake”

From the stone-cold classic Mecca And The Soul Brother, this song is typically excellent. Every song on this record hits hard, it’s incredible.

PJ Harvey, “Ascending”

squinting Yeah, I suppose that this IS an ascending track, isn’t it?

Thantifaxath, “The Bright White Nothing at the End of the Tunnel”

Sometimes, you just want black metal, unadulterated by other genres. We don’t always have to mix it up with everything else! Thantifaxath does that well, and this hits the spot.