Well, that was fun. The RSS was goofed up (it wasn’t doing full text), which I fixed by updating the RSS template on the site. The email subscription was also goofed up, but that was the fault of the RSS feed being borked, because the email template is supposed pull the stuff from the “content” section of each post, and the RSS template lacked that section. I’ll only find out if those fixes worked after this publishes. Well, the RSS feed does work, I checked that. But the email, we’ll just have to find out.
Anyway, welcome back to Five Songs: Weekly Edition. In case this is your first time seeing this, I’m just going to write about the music in my life right now. The albums I’m spinning frequently, the new records I’m becoming attached to, and then I’ll close things out with five random songs from my collection, along with some thoughts about them. I will eventually stop writing random variation of this intro at some point, at least until my “audience” “builds” back up. But I won’t know when that happens, because the new site doesn’t have any analytics on it. Fuck analytics! That’s finance-brained bullshit. Kill the finance bro in your head! This is a hobby. I don’t need to know three people looked at it, I’m going to write it anyway.
At any rate, don’t you want to subscribe?
What Are You Listening To, Josh?
A sampling of albums that I’m playing regularly, whether older ones or newer ones. Just the things that I think are worth highlighting, and maybe you’d enjoy.
Stoner Witch, Melvins
If you look at the tags (go ahead, take a look!), you’ll see that after the two label tags that I use (for Motown and Stax/Volt), the Melvins are the fourth most frequent band on here. They Might Be Giants are of course way in front, but these guys are in a tight pack with J Church, Wilco, Negativland, Einstürzende Neubauten, and the Flaming Lips. Honestly, that’s a pretty good group that kind of sets up what we’re doing around here. Anyway, given that background, the news that I’m listening to the Melvins isn’t really that much of a revelation.
However, there are multiple eras of the Melvins, and I have what looks like 30 records from them in my collection. Not counting the two Jello Biafra collabs. That expansive discography and the variation within it makes them kind of like a half-dozen different bands:
- pre-Atlantic: Gluey Porch Treatments through Lysol
- the Atlantic years: Houdini through Stag
- post-Atlantic: Honky through Hostile Ambient Takeover
- the Double-Duo years (when they played with Big Business): (A) Senile Animal through The Bride Screamed Murder
- the Butthole Melvins (this is really an era when they had a bunch of veterans play with them, ranging from Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, Trevor Dunn of Fantômas and others, and most notably, JD Pinkus and Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers): Freak Puke through Pinkus Abortion Technician
- the new era (characterized by them just doing whatever they want - soundtracks, recording with the 1983 lineup without Dale Crover, whatever): Working With God through the present day
Is that a good taxonomy? Whatever, who cares. The point is, the Melvins change a lot over the years, and I go through stretches of listening to each of the variations. Of late, thanks to reading Everybody Loves Our Town (as mentioned last week), where Buzz Osbourne was one of the most frequent voices in the book, it got me listening to some of the records he talked about. In particular, he talks about the Atlantic years, putting out Prick during that time (it’s bad, don’t listen to it), surreptitiously recording the tracks that would become Honky while still on Atlantic so they could release a new album right after being dropped, and just lots of fun details.
Revisiting the Atlantic records has been fun. They’re probably the most straightforward records they’ve ever done, with maybe the first couple records being comparable. That doesn’t mean the records are simple and obvious, of course. Stoner Witch ends with fifteen minutes of assorted ambient exploration (punctuated by the raging “June Bug”). The brutal drag through Houdini culminates in “Spread Eagle Beagle”, ten minutes of miscellaneous echoing drums. Stag has…whatever “Goggles” is. So these are still Melvins records. But if you were looking for an onramp, I also think these are the records to go for. And this one, the middle one of the Atlantic trilogy, is probably the most approchable of the three, with the Melvins nonsense being the most legible of the bunch.
Majesty Shredding, Superchunk
Speaking of a band that’s been with me for a while! Superchunk haven’t gone through as much evolution as the Melvins have. Starting with On The Mouth, Jon Wurster joined the band, and the lineup of Mac McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jim Wilbur, and Jon Wurster was set for the next ten albums, spanning nearly 20 years. It’s only with the most recent record, 2025’s Songs in the Key of Yikes, that any change was made (with Laura King replacing Wurster on the drums). If you just consider McCaughan, Ballance, and Wilbur, they’ve been together for twelve albums (all but the first) and tons of singles.
And throughout that time, they’ve been incredibly consistent. McCaughan’s songs don’t wander too far afield, just track after track after track of tuneful punk (with the occasional ballad thrown in, and if you don’t want to call them punk, I’m fine with that). After the band’s eighth album, Here’s To Shutting Up, they decided to do that and called it quits. Only, it turned out to be a hiatus. Nine years later, “Digging For Something” appeared prior to the release of Majesty Shredding. My first thought was worry - would one of my favorite bands still have it after coming back? But as soon as I heard that song, I knew they were back. They sounded incredible.
The release of the album was one of the highlights of my music year in 2010. It was not just a new Superchunk record, it was a great Superchunk record. In the fullness of time, my appreciation of it has only deepened. Is it their best record? No, it isn’t, but in a discography that includes On The Mouth and No Pocky For Kitty, there’s no shame in that. But I think it’s somehwere around my fourth favorite record from them, which is incredible.
At this point, the post-hiatus Superchunk has now released five records, and they’re all good to great. They haven’t yet matched the output of the first eleven years of the band, when they not only banged out eight records but enough other stuff to fill three compilations of non-album tracks. But they’ve now been around for longer in their second phase, and it’s a miracle to see a band last this long and be this good. When you add in the fact that album four was a breakup album that McCaughan wrote about Ballance and they not only made it through that but continued as bandmates and business partners (in Merge Records), it’s kind of unbelievable.
At the end of the day, punk bands generally don’t last very long for maybe obvious reasons. And the ones that do hang around forever mostly get sort of toothless. Superchunk hasn’t had that happen (well, album eight is kind of toothless), they have kept going forever, and I think they’ve my favorite punk band. Assuming you agree with that categorization.
Long story short? If you haven’t listened to them, give this one a spin. And if you don’t like it, I don’t know what to tell you. But don’t tell me!
Noble Beast, Andrew Bird
At any given time, I’ve got at least one of Bird’s albums in rotation, often more than one. It shifts from revisiting old favorites to getting comfortable with newer releases. I don’t have any way of measuring how often I actually listen to albums, what with listening to things off my own Plex server, directly from Bandcamp, and through Qobuz, so I can’t be certain about any metrics. But I feel pretty confident in saying that Bird is my most listened to artist over the past five, maybe ten years. Some of that is because I have felt comfortable putting his records on around my kids, even when they were small. Some of it is just that it’s very nice to have some pretty stuff to listen to in-between the noisy crap I often spin. Some of it is that it’s fun to sing and whistle along to him. But mostly, it’s just a reflection of how great he’s been. You know, and how old I’m getting.
Anyway, the current record in the rotation is 2009’s Noble Beast. It’s an indie pop record, like a lot of his output, with things sounding more orchestrated than they actually are thanks to Bird’s gift for creating fascinating arrangements even when sometimes it’s just kind of him. This is the last record of this type that he made for a bit, shifting to a more live approach starting with Break It Yourself. So in some ways, this is the capstone of the four album sequence starting with Weather Systems and moving through The Mysterious Production of Eggs (hear me talking about it on a bonus episode of the Shelf Stable podcast!), and Armchair Apocrypha.
While this album features probably my second favorite Bird song (“Effigy”, after Eggs’ “Measuring Cups”), I don’t think I’d start with it if you’re not familiar with him. Eggs is the chalk choice, and I think it’s the correct one. But this album is also a banger, and my second favorite of this era of his.
One day in this blog I’ll post a ranking of his records. Today is not that day.
Let’s Talk New Releases
Records come out every week, and there’s no way to stay on top of them. This isn’t a comprehensive look at everything, just a few things that have caught my ears out of recent releases. Any impressions here are very early!
Scimitarium II, Scimitar
Look, first things first. If you name your band after a specific weapon that shows up in the 1st edition D&D Player’s Handbook, we here at Five Songs Incorporated are going to listen to it. That’s the rule. (I see you, Lucerne Hammer!) I don’t think this rule has steered me wrong yet.
Beyond that, Scimitar’s first record, from just last year, was a really interesting mix of heavy metal, some black metal flourishes, and just a touch of power metal here and there that was intriguing. It didn’t quite make my 2025 roundup but was close. And now we already have a follow-up. I’ve only had a chance to spin it a couple times so far. It strikes me that the tunes themselves hit harder, with less of the heavy metal side of the personality and more of the extreme metal side of things. It does seem at times that the band is playing a different song than the one that Shaam Larein is singing. But no matter, I enjoy some disorientation from time to time, and my first blush is that I might like this new one better. It’s still early, but what a fun one to drop on us so soon after the previous record.
Storytime, Khmeii
While I’m talking about things that automatically make me pay attention, starting off a rap track with “uh, uh” before coming in for your verse always gets me going. It’s just a programmed response for me. And this first track is a serious banger. A great soul intro, agile verses, a choral…uh, chorus, fantastic stuff. And so it goes. Khmeii’s flow is so much fun to listen to, I find it really easy to just relax back and nod along to these songs. She’s also comfortable singing on tracks, such as “Surrender Song”, which also features some fun guitar work. “Hello” soudns like a classic Tribe Called Quest track. There’s a fun…not really a cover, but a tribute to “Paper Planes”. It’s just fun across the board. I’m writing “fun” a lot. This is again an early listen for me, I just picked up this record a few days ago as of this writing, but I’m totally charmed by it.
Eisenmund, Schimmel über Berlin
Big ups to the homie Wolf Rambatz for this one. Post-punk as a genre can just kind of collapse in chilly reverb and icy vocals. It’s a genre that can feel so unwelcoming that it can be difficult to listen to. And yeah, I know, I listen to stuff that sounds like someone dumped a thousand forks into a cement mixer, so I recognize that this complaint is stupid. Stupider than usual, even. But whatever, to my mind, there’s kind of a difference between stuff that is trying to be off-putting vs. stuff that isn’t necessarily trying to be but nevertheless is. And so, that’s the trap that post-punk has to avoid with me. I generally like the aesthetics of it, but I’d say about 4 out of 5 records just bounce off for me. This one, though, despite having a lot of the hallmarks of the genre (distant, reverb-y vocals, piercing guitar lines, all that good stuff), it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to drive me away. Maybe it’s because I can’t understand the vocals.
Five Random Songs
Yes, it’s the “classic” five random songs format. It’s been told before on this blog many times, but basically, on an old forum, people would post the last five songs their shuffle pulled up. I liked it, so I made it into a blog. And now, here we are.
“Pink Frosty”, Fugazi
Technically, the version that shuffle pulled up was a live version from a show in Pittsburgh that I was in the audience for, but that version isn’t on YouTube, so this is the studio version from End Hits. First, people should know that Fugazi has made available hundreds of live shows, recorded at the sound board, so you can check out a show you were at pretty easily. Alas, the quality of that Pittsburgh show isn’t great.
Second of all, I think End Hits gets a little overlooked in Fugazi’s discography. If you like the more abstract version of Fugazi, I feel like people kind of gravitate towards The Argument or maybe Steady Diet of Nothing. And if you prefer the more raging side of the band, you’ll prefer other records as well. And while I certainly cannot deny the genius of The Argument (my second favorite of their records), I think most days I’d put this one third in my preferences. And “third-best Fugazi record” is, like, an all-timer. Is it the record I would recommend for a Fugazi neophyte? Well…no. But dammit, it’s a great record.
“Then”, Negativland
In 1991, Negativland was kind of teetering as a band and project, not for the first time, and their prankster instincts kicked in. Before, when their tour for Escape From Noise pretty clearly was going to be a disaster, they canceled the tour but released a press release claiming it was because “Christianity Is Stupid” was implicated during an axe murder. That resulted in some credulous news coverage and produced enough material for them to make Helter Stupid.
This time, they decided that they should go ahead and release some foul-mouthed recordings of Casey Kasem that one of his engineers had slipped to them, putting them into a track. But, hell, why not do it as part of a cover of a U2 song, who were the biggest band at the time. So, the U2 single slouched out into the world, an absurd thing that got them and their label extremely sued. I was lucky enough to read about the single and get a copy during the brief window it was available, and gleefully made copies for all my friends.
During the ensuing debacle, with Negativland and SST pointing fingers at each other while Island Records (on behalf of U2) and Kasem’s camp tried to sue them into dust, Negativland released the Guns single in an attempt to raise some money for legal bills. It’s an examination of gun culture in America, with the two sides of the single labeled “Then” and “Now”. It’s sort of the typical Negativland social satire stuff, with the music being texture behind a lot of found sounds and vocal samples. It’s a little toothless, overall. Their best work around this sort of thing is more subtle than this, with surprising samples that kind of make you think. This one feels a little thrown together, which it probably was, given the circumstances. The band did eventually survive, left SST Records behind (along with chopping up SST’s “Corporate Rock Still Sucks” bumper sticks into “Corporate SST Still Sucks Rock” stickers), put out one of their best records in 1993 (Free) and just kept on trucking for decades.
“Happy Go Lucky Local”, Duke Ellington
Say it with me, folks: Josh doesn’t know shit about jazz! Now we’re back.
“Whatever Happened To Soy Bomb”, Eels
The other day, I went and saw the Wedding Present on their tour for the 35th anniversary for Seamonsters, which was an amazing show. That’s one of my favorite albums, period, and they were in incredible form. I loved it so much. Opening for them was Mark Robinson, who played a bizarre medly of 51 songs from Unrest. He was alone, and he didn’t really do a lot with the arrangements, so it was just kind of him playing 45 seconds of his part of one song, then another, then another. I guess if you were an Unrest super fan, it would have been exciting, but I’m not and so it wasn’t. I like Imperial f.f.r.r. as much as the next guy, but this show was a lot.
Anyway, as he was playing and my mind was wandering, I just kept thinking about how I kind of wanted to be listening to Eels. There’s no real connection between them, musically, stylistically, label connections, nothing. It’s just what came to mind for me, and I spent most of the set kind of contemplating that idea. And here it is. Eels. Yeah, rules.
“Mr. Sandman”, Marvin Gaye
Early Marvin Gaye is really funny to me, because he was just kind of a Motown system artist at this point, but you can just hear little flashes of what he was to become later.