Well, I’m still tinkering a little bit with how the pages interact with the RSS feed (which, in turn, is what powers the mailing list). I’m using Buttondown for the mailing list, which seems pretty good so far, and you can configure it to just pick up articles from the RSS feed and automatically send them along. That’s very cool, and they have a template that allows you to pull whatever you want from the feed for the email. It’s basically exactly what I was looking for. The first one that went out, though, the RSS feed didn’t have a content field in the item so it was a little goofed up. No biggie, there were also no subscribers yet (except me). I fixed that, but the second email that went out turned the entire first part of the email into a link. I’m not sure why that is, but this time around, I’m explicitly setting the summary field of the blog which might help. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, I couldn’t resist sending out an extra post on Sunday. I guess I’m going to try out twice a week? I don’t really want to make promises about frequency, I suppose, because the intention here is to both make this sustainable for me and also more interesting for you. Writing this daily meant I was running out of things to say.
I will, at some point, run out of inside baseball stuff for the blog, which will probably be a relief for you all. I guess we’ll see what the intros look like at that point.
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.
Era Vulgaris, Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age are probably well-known enough that there’s no real point in me recapping any kind of biography here. So instead, I’ll just say that this is my favorite of their records, by a fair ways. I think the chalk pick is Songs For The Deaf with some folks picking Rated R, but this is really the one that sticks with me the most. The riffs are a little noisier, the songs a little tighter, the variety is nice, it all just feels a little more concise and focused. The fundamental thing I’m looking for with QotSA is that I want catchy but not obvious rock. I want to make mouth noises along to the riffs and to pound the steering wheel along with the drums. A lot of the rock I listen to is pretty far out there, pretty gross, and if I want to reel it back some (but not all the way), this album really nails it.
I have some albums that are car albums. It’s not that I listen exclusively to car albums in the car, but it’s the natural habitat of a car album. Some of the more elaborate or frantic metal doesn’t always quite work in the noisier environment of the car. Some of the more subtle, quietier albums I listen to also don’t always work there. This isn’t exactly a straightforward record, but the joys and fun of it sort of are. So: car album.
Car album, kitchen album, headphones album, traveling album, evening album, party album, bad day album, work album - I guess one day I’ll try and create a taxonomy of these things.
STS x RJD2, STS & RJD2
I talked about Andrew Bird last time, and I mentioned that whistling along to him is fun. It’s true! Well, this album also starts with whistling, so I was in. It’s also fun to whistle along with this one. Of course, I’ve always liked RJD2, from his first record, but it’s delightful to hear him do a full record with an MC. His beats here are absolutely fat (I’m sorry, I can’t really use the term “phat”, I’m too old), especially with the horns, and STS is clearly having a lot of fun on the mic. It’s just a joyous record, and it’s one that I’ll sometimes run back right after listening to it, just to get the ebullient “Doin’ It Right” again. I sort of think of RJD2 as a different artist when he’s working like this as opposed to his solo work, and this is probably my favorite record from the MC side of things.
Animals, Pink Floyd
OK, look. You probably that entry above for QotSA and were thinking, geez, this shit has gotten really basic. Well, here you go: I can get so, so much more basic. Pink Floyd is one of the best selling artists of all time, perhaps in the top 10 depending on how you count things. You can view those ranking lists through a bunch of different lenses, but there’s no doubt that they’re one of the big ones. And yet, here we are, on my dumpy-ass little blog that talks about bands named things like Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard or Piss Vortex (8 times! same as Pink Floyd!). Do I have a screw loose?
Well, yes (again: Piss Vortex). But Pink Floyd is also a band that evokes where I grew up. In Spokane, WA, in the 80s, your choices for radio were pretty much pop, country, oldies, or classic rock. Depending on where you were, you might sometimes be able to get a college radio station, but certainly not always and not at the house I grew up in. Of that group of genres, only the last felt at all counter-cultural in any kind of way. It wasn’t, of course, rock music was hegemonic at the time. But nevertheless, it felt like the classic rock station had more of an edge than the others. You could at least convince yourself that the artists on there were there because of artistic merit. Again, sometimes famously not true, but you could convince yourself. Especially if you were a dumb kid.
Among the classic rock staples, Pink Floyd was an easy one to like, especially if you were looking for something different from the rest of the dial. The songs really felt like little stories! They felt arty in a way that stood in contrast to their Led-en compatriots on classic rock, in a way that again appealed to someone looking for something counter-cultural. Even more than the music, watching The Wall felt like a glimpse into a different world for a suburban kid living in a boring town. It just seemed different.
And yes, I did eventually start finding out about underground music from friends in high school. I gradually built awareness of music outside of the narrow constraints of commercial radio, driven by magazines (and zines), MTV’s 120 Minutes, college radio, and then following labels to find more good stuff.
But even after that awakening, which especially exploded when I went off to college, I retained affection for Pink Floyd. I even bought a fancy re-mastering of The Wall that claimed that there was gold foil in the CDs which somehow made it sound better. Truly dumb stuff. Mostly, that affection centered on three of the four albums from the Roger Water peak years. The fourth album, Animals, just wasn’t one I ever tried out. There wasn’t much room for it. I had the nostalgic affection for Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, and I didn’t need to really expand on that. Who needs new nostalgia?
Recently, there was a Radiohead discussion in a Discord I’m in which came from some pretty funny ragebait, and I sat thinking about the sequence of “biggest rock band” over the years. Which is a normal thing to do. I’m normal! I’m not going to try and define things too precisely, but you can certainly imagine some mix of Zeppelin, the Stones, and Pink Floyd eventually moving to artists like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, U2, and Guns N Roses. THat cohort gave way explosively to Nirvana and then maybe Pearl Jam after that. Whatever, the precise names don’t matter that much. Want to fit Metallica in there? Sure, why not. Again: biggest rock band. Not best. That’s a whole different list.
At some point, Radiohead probably qualified as the biggest rock band in the world for several years. And I’ll say this: among the bands that have worn that title, the ones that don’t really fit that much with the others are Pink Floyd and Radiohead. They’re both pretty avant-garde compared to the rest of these folks, making Radiohead the Pink Floyd of the 90s and 2000s, and that’s all the connection I needed to think, huh, I should maybe listen to some Floyd. And what the hell, why not play that one record I didn’t really know from their peak sequence. (Don’t tell me that some other sequence of records from Floyd is crucial, I am not listening. Yes, I have heard most of the others at some point, but again: I don’t need more nostalgia!)
Anyway: Animals. Yeah, this is a very strange record to have sold millions of copies. Outside of the intro and outro tracks, it’s three songs, all more than ten minutes, with a theme loosely based around Orwell’s Animal Farm. This kind of high-concept shit could fly in the 70s, I suppose, but it’s kind of jarring to contemplate that this was a mainstream release. As for the music, it’s discursive and wandering, a self-indulgent slab of wankery that would be hard to recommend without a solid backstop of residual affection from decades of familiarity. In other words, I enjoyed it. I can have some curdled pretension sometimes, as a treat.
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!
Trio Asesino, Adrian Quesada
Well, nothing like talking about a record that’s almost 50 years old to get you hankering for some new shit! This is Adrian Quesada playing with a stripped down trio (hence the name), with Joshy Soul on keys and Jay Mumford (aka J-Zone) on the drums. The latter’s pivot to playing soul with the Du-Rites is something I’ve written about a bunch, so I won’t belabor it for now. But in addition to playing with his own band, Mumford has found work with others, including Ben Pirani, the Means of Production (which was Pirani’s backing band), and Adrian Quesada. While touring with the latter, this trio emerged as their own thing, honed on the road, and the debut album is out now.
I was going to type something like my sweet spot for this kind of funk/soul is a trio, but that’s not really true. Like, yeah, I love a great trio (and we just covered Parlor Greens the other day), but I’m really in the tank for all kinds of arrangements. Lots of horns? Hell yeah, sign me up. Stripped back to the basics? Let’s do it. All it really needs is to have that spark in it that gets me nodding along and I’m ready to go.
So, about the music: there’s some real southwestern flavor, especially in the guitar work, which comes from Quesada and I suppose is kind of reminiscent of Khruangbin. But the thing that I really love is Mumford’s drumming. I always have, and his long study of the funk masters and his work re-creating classic breakbeats comes across here where his work is front and center. There’s a classic feel to the way that the drums sound that kind of makes it seem like they were lifted out of a 70s context and planted here. Anyway, this record is a delight.
Heathen Axe, Heathen Axe
Note: “heathen axe” isn’t a weapon from the 1st edition Player’s Handbook, but those are both D&D words, so my attention was still caught. But, in contemplating this record, you have to ask yourself: how blown out do you like your music? Your reaction to that question will probably determine if you will like this record or not. Like, if you say “not really blown out at all, I like hearing things” you should skip it. If your answer is “well, it depends, but if it suits the record, pretty blown out” then you probably won’t like it, but maybe listen to a little bit. “Blown the fuck out,” well, I have good news for you. “WHAT, YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP, MY HEARING AIN’T SO HOT” my friend, I worry about you, but you’re gonna dig this.
The liner notes say “RECORDED ON VESTAX MR44 CASSETTE FOUR TRACK TURNED ALL THE WAY UP” and yeah, it sure was. Anyway, besides being turned all the way up (not to 11, because the markings on the dials were all probably worn off long ago), this is at base a big ol’ slab of psychedelic rock, and it’s a real head cleaner.
Automated Response, Hot Face
Well, hell, let’s stick with the garage-y stuff. This was probably the first album from 2026 that went into heavy rotation for me. Like Heathen Axe, it’s got a lot of spontenaiety with it. The former was recorded semi-improvised on just the second ever take. This record was pieced together from three takes straight to tape, with the last one being a live show. That approach for both records serves them well, with the energy coming through and helping drive the garage-y nature forward. I don’t think garage rock needs to be recorded live or anything. But I do think it’s a genre that benefits enormously from a sense of place in the recording. If it sounds like it could have been recorded anywhere, you risk ending up with something antiseptic and having a severe loss of personality. It’s right there in the genre: garage rock. It has to sound like it might have actually come from a garage.
So, this album is already starting from a great spot, just from the method. The music itself is clearer than Heathen Axe, but that’s not really telling you much of anything. It’s more towards the punk end of the ledger instead of the psych side of things, but that’s fine. It’s pretty tuneful in spots, and…look, it rocks, ok? It rocks. Do you want rock? Yeah you do, buddy.
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.
“Greasy Kid Stuff”, They Might Be Giants
Yeah, look, there’s always going to be some whiplash with these things, and a TMBG trifle like this after all that garage shit is a real shift in gears. This song is from Cast Your Pod to the Wind, which was a bonus disc with The Else (later released on its own). It’s a compilation of various tracks that had appeared on their podcast which, in a massive upset, I never actually listened to. Anyway, like a lot of ephemera, this one is pretty far from essential - fun to listen to once if you’re a huge TMBG dork like yours truly, but otherwise forgettable.
“Fractures in Adults”, KEN Mode
Winnipeg noise-rock giants KEN Mode showed up in 2018 with Loved, a record that carried forward with the slightly slower approach of the previous record, Success. But that slowness shouldn’t be taken for reducing the impact. For me, this hews more towards the noise rock of the late 80s and early 90s underground and that sound is amazing. There’s a menace to this, one where the space lets you appreciate the pummeling. It gives you some time to notice all the elements in the sound. It’s not in a hurry. You’re locked in there with it, and it’s not going anywhere.
The other thing they did with this record was add a saxophone to some tracks, which is a genius move. It’s not a gimmick, it’s just another way to add some more texture and a different type of noise to things. Anyway, this is a great record, well-worth checking out if you’re a noise rock sicko.
“Winterspring”, Bricks
16 views on this one on Youtube when I pulled it up! I wrote up a paean to Superchunk the other day, so read that if you haven’t already. Or not, I’m not your professor. A Microphone And A Box Of Dirt is an early set of recordings by Mac McCaughan, along with Andrew Webster (Tsunami). It’s pretty raw stuff, low-fi songs that are really just rough demos. You can hear elements of what McCaughan would later bring to Superchunk, and you could see him taking these demos and turning them to great songs later. But here they are in their elemental form, and they’re very much of interest only to people who want to explore the roots of Superchunk.
“Hold Me Tight”, the Skalars
There’s a periodic project here, to rehabilitate the third wave of ska, and to highlight the great music that came out at that time. The culture briefly embraced ska and then immediately turned around and started treating it as a joke. I’m not going to relitigate that whole thing, because who cares? But in that collapse of viability and the rush to treat the music as a punch line, lots of great stuff got tagged as just lame trend hopping. And sure, there was definitely a trend, lots of bands took part, but plenty of them were inspired by the movement and went out and made great records and didn’t just churn out some stuff to take a swing at MTV coverage.
The album with this tune, Change Up, is one of those lost treasures. The Skalars (credited as Isaac Green & the Skalars on their first album) released two records on Moon Ska in the late 90s, who were the epicenter of the third wave. Unfortunately, this record came out about a year before Moon Ska imploded in bankruptcy, so I doubt anybody much heard it. It was also well past ska’s brief commercial peak. It’s a shame, because it’s a cheerful record that smartly centers Jessica Butler’s vocals more than their first one. The willingness to stretch out a bit into more of a rocksteady approach also serves the songs well. Anyway, listen to this and then go ahead and contemplate all those jokes you’ve cracked about the Bosstones’ dancer.
“Surfin’ Cow”, The Dead Milkmen
It is a curse of funny bands that people over rotate on that sense of humor. It’s apparently hard for people to hold two ideas in their heads at the same time, that a band can be funny and also good. (This also applies to TMBG to a certain degree.) They start thinking the band is only good for wackiness, and don’t actually pay attention to them. And sure, the Dead Milkmen were very, very funny. But they were also very, very good! Like, sure, “Bitchin’ Camero” and “Stuart” are genuinely hilarious, but if you’re just looking for the next pile of gags, you might miss that the band is just killing it on their records.