Anything On Your Mind?
In addition to my slow walk through the 2010s, I have a Music League going right now that is going through the 90s. I hadn’t really connected the two things together particularly, which seems like a goofy thing to not realize, but it’s actually kind of the same process. A thing that struck me is how much more able I am to place when I bought a record and when it came out when I’m thinking about the 90s. I’ve realized that it’s the physicality of the purchasing process. Maybe that’s obvious, but for every record I bought in the 90s, I purchased a physical object. Most of them were bought at a record store, where I had to take a trip, look through bins, and decide to make the purchase. Yes, some of them were purchased online (miss you, CDNow!), but that was towards the end of the decade. My very first purchase on Amazon was an import of Hard Normal Daddy and Big Loada in 1998. So for most of the decade, there was much more effort and ritual involved in buying music. And as a consequence, I can remember those purchases much more.
While I was still mostly buying CDs in 2010, it was mostly online purchases, and by 2013 I had transitioned to entirely buying digitally. So for that decade, purchasing music was a matter of pushing a button on a web page. Where was I? Either at work or at home, pretty much always. There was no digging through bins, no looking at cover art to try and figure out what a thing was, no looking through the suggestions from the people working at the store. Just a click.
Looking at that timeline, and specifically when I did transition to digital purchases, I’m kind of realizing that maybe I wasn’t especially out of touch with music or anything like that in 2013. I was just alienated from the whole process. I should really hang out in record stores more.
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.
I’m going to take a break from the 2010s to take a short detour through some 1995 records, because that’s what I was looking at earlier for Music League, and I had a couple albums I wanted to talk about.
The Practice of Joy Before Death, Pond
First of all, this is the Pond from Portland in the 90s, not the Pond associated with Tame Impala from the 2010s and 20s. I do not acknowledge the Fake Pond here. Note that many music sites you might look at get confused by the two bands. For example, Allmusic correctly separates Australian Pond but the Amazon Music widget on there is all songs from Portland Pond.
Anyway, Pond formed in Portland, signed to Sub Pop, put out a couple excellent records for them, got a major label contract from Sony despite not being big (it was the mid 90s), put out another great record for Sony, and that was that. I don’t know much in the way of biographical details beyond that, just what the music was. Unlike some of the grunge peers at the time, there was a freshness to their stuff, a willingness to not be dour all the time that stood out for me. This one, their middle record from 1995, is a fantastic listen, with songs that sound pretty varied from each other, and sound to me more like post-punk than the punk/metal/garage hybrid that was more of the grunge stock in trade. The headliner here is “Glass Sparkles In Their Hair”, a song that I first encountered thanks to a copy of the single at WRCT, and it’s genuinely hair-raising. The repetitive chord kicking things off, the way the drums come in, it’s just tension right from the jump and doesn’t let up. Genuinely a contender for the best song of the grunge era.
Not that anybody heard it. I don’t know that the Sub Pop records made much of an impact (I really liked ’em!), and Sony put a really half-assed push behind Rock Collection, but it didn’t take. It’s a shame, because the band did excellent work, but we never got more from them. Give this record a listen, and use it as a reminder that the grunge scene was actually quite varied in practice, and not just choleric grunting and combat frowning.
Clouds Taste Metallic, The Flaming Lips
Because apparently the way I think about bands is in terms of eras, let’s talk about the Flaming Lips. They have been around for ages (their first album came out forty years ago!), and so there have evolved a lot. As always, this is crude and stupid, but then again, so is this blog. The first three records (Hear It Is, Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips, Telepathic Surgery) are The Early Years, where the band was a mess. They’re all over the map, their influences all get kind of dragged out and waved around, and everything is just kind of strung out. The next stage is the Actual Band Years, when the band actually got their shit together and started making records with a point. This is the four record stretch from In A Priest Driven Ambulence, Hit To Death in the Future Head, Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, up to today’s album, Clouds Taste Metallic. Somehow, Warner Bros signed them during this time (the last three of these were all on major labels), and somehow it even worked as “She Don’t Use Jelly” was an unexpected hit. This sounds impossible, but the song was on an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210.
These four records had Wayne Coyne in full cracked bloom, had all kinds of psychedelic wandering, but they were still largely using a rock frame, and they were legible as a rock band. Ronald Jones and Steven Drozd joining for the last two albums in particular took the band up to another level. Clouds Taste Metallic is very much the culmination of a long arc encompassing both of these eras. They went about as far as they could go in this incarnation, and this album is a masterpiece. If you’re mostly familiar with the later phases of the band (for the record: The Orchestrated Years covering The Soft Bulletin through At War With the Mystics and the Exploration Years after that), this is the record to start with.
I don’t know if the turn away from rock drove Ronald Jones away, or if his departure caused the band to move in that direction, but either way, there’s a major point of demarcation to the point that it’s basically two different bands. To explore the years that are more rock, listen to this record and move backwards until you get tired of the bullshit.
Tin Toy, Crackerbash
When I think about Pond, I invariably think about Crackerbash. They’re even less well-known, but they were active at the same time, with this EP coming out the same year as Pond’s first record. Crackerbash didn’t last as long, with only one full-length release, a handful of singles, and then this EP. They never signed to a major label, never really got much attention, they just released these tunes and then were gone. But, this EP doesn’t deserve to be forgotten, it’s such a ripper. Scott Fox’s bass is the star here, along with Kurt Bloch’s excellent production centering it. The songs all sound urgent and frantic, setting you on edge from the very moment that “A Song For Lon Mabon” barrels in. It doesn’t really let up from there, but “Bandages” deserves mention as another highlight, a song that starts out with almost a Slint vibe before turning up the heat.
Music is littered with stuff like this, where people came together to make a basically perfect record that gets lost to the years. The best I can do is hold the ones I know of up to the light.
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!
Santa Plaga, Screaming Fist
Convulse Records continues the hot streak of hardcore EPs. I talked about Yambag’s EP in the first rebooted Five Songs post and then Urban Sprawl a little while ago. And now here’s another one. Eight minutes, five songs, shreds. What am I going to say?
Bleak Days Ahead, Pure Wrath
Bleak days ahead indeed! This is black metal, pretty purely, out of Indonesia, about the destruction wrought by capitalism. Fun times! As usual for black metal, I can wear out pretty fast without some variation, but they have that for sure. Those breaks from the pummeling gives you something to hang on to as you internalize the rest of it. I don’t listen to a ton of black metal these days, but this is a winner, I think.
Heaven Was Wild, Hey Colossus
Hey Colossus has changed an awful lot over the decades. I haven’t really followed them that whole time, and in fact, in the library, I have this record and their first record, Project: Death from 2007. They sound like totally different bands! Which, I suppose, makes some sense. From being a clear noise rock band to more of a post-punk, post-hardcore kind of thing today, it’s kind of fun to listen to the records back-to-back. I might try and fill in the gaps.
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.
“Purge”, Frameworks
I’m sure I heard somewhere that this was something like “melodic hardcore” which probably sounded like a good idea to me, but I dunno, man. Allmusic uses that description, and poking around at a few other reviews of this record, lots of “hardcore” in those descriptions. This doesn’t at all scan as hardcore to me, it’s not fast enough. Post-hardcore? Yeah, sure. What are we calling Touché Amoré these days? This is that. Genres are stupid.
Anyway, this is fine.
“Rain”, The Beatles
These Beatles lads might go somewhere one day!
“Ataksija”, Vlasta Popić
Hell yeah, now we are cookin’. Some delicious noise rock out of Croatia, I know basically nothing about this other than what’s on the Bandcamp page, but this smokes. I guess I did know some shit in 2015!
“Zasypia”, Gorycz
And now we’re ten years later and in Poland. Once again, I know what’s on the Bandcamp page (which is basically nothing), and I don’t remember where I found out about this. This is more towards the metal end of things, with maybe a “post-” prefix on something (genres are stupid!), but the vocals scan much more metal than Vlasta Popić. But it doesn’t slot very neatly into any metal genre, so let’s just enjoy.
“Reinventing The Wheel to Run Myself Over”, Fall Out Boy
See, now, that’s what something you call “melodic hardcore” should sound like, at least the first part. I am not a crackpot! Anyway, Fall Out Boy is plenty known, so what am I going to tell you here? I do like this album a fair bit, it’s exuberant and kind of guileless and runs at a solid gallop. I only have this album and the next one and then I got off the train.