Phoenix, “Long Distance Call”

The alchemy on this song of the durms and that slow bleat on the keyboard is kind of magical. This entire album is chock full of fun pop rock.

Ruder Than You, “Misskaculation”

Does it get cornier than this? It does, once I tell you that this album is called Horny For Ska.

Little Otis, “Baby I Need You”

Early Motown here, from 1962. Pretty by-the-numbers, but pleasant enough. This was actually the B-side, so it makes sense that it’s not totally a barn burner.

Mudhoney, “Endless Yesterday”

Mudhoney is never really going to sound mature, not with Mark Arm sounding like he does. But as they went along (this is from their seventh album), they picked up a lot of moves that make them sound so much more put together. I mean, this is pretty damn melodic for a Mudhoney tune! There’s noise here that doesn’t come from a guitar!

The Pietasters, “Freak Show”

Hey, speaking of mature, the lyrics to this are really a model for how to handle sensitive subjects carefully.

Future Of The Left, “Chin Music”

The bass tone for Future of the Left always sounds like a million bucks. And they wisely make sure that it stays up front plenty so we can all enjoy the hell out of it.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, “Bells of Creation”

This album, The Century of Self, marked the point where I kind of lost track of Trail of Dead. Not because I stopped liking the music - they’re still their normal bombastic selves here, making huge, emotional tunes - but just because sometimes we just fall off of bands. I think that maybe I wasn’t hearing a lot of evolution in the band, and I kind of had heard what they had to say. That’s maybe unfair, but there’s not a lot separating this from the previous three records.

Poster Children, “0 For 1”

There was a decent sized indie rock scene in Champaign-Urbana in the late 80s/early 90s, with Hum, the excellent and forgotten Steakdaddy Six, Honcho Overload, and the Poster Children all emerging to varying levels of success. Of that group, the Poster Children had the most success at the time, signing to Sire and producing a string of well-received albums. Hum is probably the one with the best enduring reputation (especially given a comeback), but the Poster Children still hold up today as well-executed indie rock.

Arab Strap, “The Clearing”

Arab Strap was a band from the same music scene that produced Mogwai and Belle & Sebastian, but unlike those two bands, they’ve never done that much for me. This comes from their first album, and it’s kind of unfocused, and there’s nothing that I find really memorable on it.

The Rolling Stones, “Love In Vain”

Huh, never heard of this band.

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, “Unificado”

Psychedelic rock out of Mexico, this is from the 2019 album De Facto which showed up on some best-of lists that year. I think this is good, but as with a lot of psychedelic rock, it doesn’t tend to stick with me. I’m kind of the same way with Tame Impala - I can tell it’s good and all, and can even see what people hear in it, but it just doesn’t hang with me. I guess it’s Not Memorable To Josh day?

Amon Tobin, “One Shy Morning”

Amon Tobin put out two albums in 2019, with this one (Long Stories) being the more ambient, quieter one of the pair. It’s well done, and it’s a good record, but honestly, I prefer Tobin when he’s more out there than this.

Fela Kuti, “Igbe”

The inventor of Afro-beat, Fela Kuti is one of the key musical figures of the 20th century. I’m not a Kuti scholar, truthfully, owning only a handful of albums, and if I roll out a bunch of biographical info here, I’d largely be cribbing from some other site. But just listen to this, and then try and imagine any of the Daptone bands sounding the same. Even beyond the influence, though, this just flat cooks. This is from Gentlemen, which seems to be considered his best album - that’s why I picked it up in the first place.

The Reindeer Section, “If Everything Fell Quiet”

The Reindeer Section is a Scottish supergroup, featuring members of Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Arab Strap, Mogwai, and others. The resulting album actually sounds a lot more coherent than what you normally expect from a supergroup, primarily because the songs were all written by Gary Lightbody (of Snow Patrol). The rest of the folks here fill out the roster, and they do it quite ably.

Michael Kiwanuka, “Black Man In A White World”

Kiwanuka’s second album, Love & Hate, is an ambitious album that roams all over the R&B and soul maps, unafraid to stretch out the songs, play with lush arrangements, and challenge listeners. It’s an album that I really prefer to listen to as a full album, because I think it builds on itself well.

DJ Shadow, “Good News”

DJ Shadow followed up his excellent 2016 album The Mountain Will Fall with an EP the next year, called The Mountain Has Fallen. It features a couple of nice collaborations with Nas and Danny Brown, and then it has this. The spastic pace, blurting synths, and swaths of noise seem deliberately hostile paired up with some of his most accessible stuff. Overall, though, it’s a solid EP.

Primitive Man, “Loathe”

Primitive Man is very aptly named, a knuckle-dragging sludge/doom act from Denver, putting out punishing, bleak records that are unsubtle in the extreme. This little ditty comes from Home Is Where The Hatred Is, an EP from 2015 that is just basically sunless and crushing like this.

Thou, “Feral Faun”

Thou is actually one of the bands I think of as being closest to Primitive Man, so nice pull, shuffle. I suppose there’s more nuance to Thou than Primitive Man at times, as you can hear in the intro to this song. But, overall, it’s the same kind of bleak approach to things. There’s more melody here, I suppose, if you squint hard enough.

The Pietasters, “Without You”

You know, for a dude who claims to not like live albums, I sure have a lot of live albums. The Pietasters only have one good studio album, Oolooloo, but it’s tremendous. I bought this album because it was the next thing they put out, and I wanted more. This live album captured them at about the same time as their studio masterpiece, and it finds the band in roughly the same form. As a result, it’s probalby their second best album, which doesn’t say a ton about the rest of their career.