Naked City, “Bonehead”

I can often write these little blurbs while each song is playing, as most songs give me enough time to bang out a little bit of garbage for you all to read. Naked City, though? Forget it. Should change their name to Pause City!

Girls Against Boys, “Super-Fire”

This is the opening of House of GVSB, the last album from Girls Against Boys for Touch and Go, not to mention their last good album. Their brand of driving, almost danceable post-hardcore was in fine form here, which makes it a shame that they fell off so hard.

Screeching Weasel, “Leather Jacket”

Ben Weasel started letting some of the songs on Anthem For A New Tomorrow stretch out a little bit, and let the Ramones worship go just a tiny bit. The result is probably his best record - still very much punk, still very familiar, but tuneful and fun.

Aphex Twin, “Radiator”

The second Selected Ambient Works album from Aphex Twin doesn’t quite hit the same way the first one did. It’s very long (two discs of 70 minutes each), and it doesn’t seem like it was edited down enough. The first one is the most important ambient electronic album ever, and this one is more of a curiosity. Add in that I’m not a huge ambient guy, and this album hasn’t really gotten much play since I got it.

Priests, “Youtube Sartre”

This is a fantastic song name, and I’m afraid to search to see if there is anybody who refers to themselves as this. I hope not!

Canibus, “Get Retarded”

Canibus mostly made battle rap, and this track kind of gives you more or less the full range of his subject matter on this album (called Can-I-Bus). He never really evolved from here, and I didn’t follow him after this album.

Operation Re-Information, “Autonomous Auto”

This 100% sounds like something I would have picked up at some point, and I have zero recollection of it. It looks like it’s from 1999, and at that time, I don’t really remember picking this up. Well, whatever, it’s pretty fun. Sometimes we both listen to something new around here!

My Bloody Valentine, “When You Sleep”

It’s hard to describe exactly how horny the rock underground and the music press was for My Bloody Valentine when this album came out. Expectations were already high given the previous album, the band spent a couple years (which was an eternity at the time) prepping this album, and then everybody went nuts when it came out. It seemed like overnight that there were a billion soundalike shoegaze bands, each one more mumbly than the last.

Flamingosis, “Those Eyes”

Discogs describes Flamingosis as “chillwave” and “disco”, and, sure, whatever. There’s some synth pop here, some electro-funk, some straight up pop - the sort of thing that sounds nostalgic without actually really evoking anything specific. In this song, there are actually some Soul II Soul vibes going on here. Which, in turn, brings me to two memories of Soul II Soul. The first is that they were weirdly one of the contemporary (at the time) bands that my dad and I both really liked. He bought his own copy of a couple of their albums, we used to listen to them in the car, it was great.

Rocket From The Crypt, “I’m Not Invisible”

As a result of Five Songs, I’ve actually been on a Rocket From The Crypt kick lately. It’s been great! I don’t ever see them get mentioned any more, but they kicked ass across seven albums (not even counting the excellent compilations!) and people should listen to them. This is how their final studio album kicked off, and it smokes.

Autoclave, “I’ll Take You Down”

Autoclave was not around long, putting out a couple EPs on Discord before disappearing. But the members wouldn’t disappear - Slant 6 arose from their ashes, but more significantly, this was Mary Timony’s (Helium, Wild Flag, Ex Hex) first band. Imagine doing this in high school! Incredible.

The Jam, “Private Hell”

The middle album of the Jam’s peak trio, Setting Sons, is probably the slickest and most commercial sounding of the three. While the songs are of course fantastic, the overall approach makes it my least favorite of those three records. But just to be clear, it’s still a fantastic record, I just liste to the other two albums a little more often.

Powerrun, “In A Dream”

Powerrun is a *wave band, maybe a synthwave band? I can keep decent track of metal microgenres, but I get out of my depth pretty fast with electronic stuff, even though I listen to a fair bit of it. ANyway, this is just a little trifle, but it’s a fun record.

The Toasters, “East Side Beat”

Your first instinct might be to think that Rob “Bucket” Hingley’s accent here is a terrible put-on. But no, Rob was born in England, so he earned this. At any rate, this is from the first Toasters album, and it captures a band still developing their sound.

Foetus, “Mandelay”

One of the centerpieces of Flow, an album where J.G. Thirlwell ramped up the cinematic nature of his music to another level, while making sure that the perversion of that sound was also present. The noise, the disturbing sounds, the strange interludes - it all combines to a disorienting song that really takes you on a journey. To somewhere. This is one of his very best albums.

Squarepusher, “Come On My Selector”

Early Squarepusher is very much drum ’n’ bass, albeit pretty frantic even for a genre known for punishing tempos. Squarepusher is still primarily cutting up the Amen break for the drums, for instance. You can hear his bass playing front and center here, of course, and it’s great despite being firmly in a genre. This EP, Big Loada, would kind of mark the last of the pure drum ’n’ bass, as the next album found him heading in a much more marked fusion direciton.

New Bomb Turks, “Double Marlon”

Garage punks out of Columbus, OH, the New Bomb Turks exploded (heh!) onto the scene with their brand of aggressive rock, and they kept it rockin’ for a while. However, they did eventually fell off, and this EP (Beruhren Meiner Affe, “Touching My Monkey”) is kind of where the dividing line is. It’s a perfectly good five songs of their Stooges-esque stuff, but after this, it seemed like the were just kind of tired.