Anything On Your Mind?
Well, that’s more than a month of the reboot, 10 of these things, and it’s still feeling pretty good and sustainable. I even have a few subscribers on the email version. Not bad! The format seems pretty doable, and I dunno, it’s nice to be writing (“writing”) about music again. But I’ll throw it out there: anything you’d like me to change? I anticipate nobody responding to this, which is fine. There’s nowhere for you to tell me anything anyway!
Anyway, let’s have a look at 2016. I…have no real recollections of music in 2016 that distinguishes it from the surrounding years. We’re past the point where I was able to perceive trends in popular music. It had really become none of my business, frankly. I was now past 40, well beyond when I should care about trends in any kind of culture. This is the year that I suddenly started to have to wear glasses full-time in order to be able to see properly, and that’s quite a wake-up call that you’re old. While I’ve ruminated before that continuing to challenge yourself with new music is critical in order to avoid sinking into a morass of Muzak-adjacent, lowest common denominator Advanced Music Substitute, that doesn’t mean you have to stay in touch with whatever the kids are listening to. It would be unseemly to try. Why would I want to? Kids exist in a totally different cultural context than I do, even the ones living in this house, and I should expect that their musical tastes would be different from mine. ALSO WORSE.
Anyway, the path is to just keep trying to learn more about the stuff I am intrigued by. In 2016, I was really going pretty far into metal. There was plenty of new, interesting stuff to learn about with metal, there were blogs and newsletters I could follow, and it all seemed pretty satisfying and interesting. So that’s what I did. Those plus some judicious perusals of year-end lists to see what I might have missed out in other areas seemed to serve me well. And to help others, I put a list of newsletters I really like at the end of this. It’s not all I follow with regard to music, but I figure shouting out some folks might help somebody out there. And hey, one of those people down below reads this thing!
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.
2016! A land of mystery! Who knows what it contains! (Music that sounds like a leaf blower pointed at a pile of empty soda cans, at least in my collection.) Continuing the tradition, this is the Rate Your Music list from 2016. I have 10 of these in the collection, so a little up from the previous year. As for what’s actually in the library, let’s check some highlights, randomly: new Andrew Bird record, the Avalanches returned after a sixteen year hiatus, clipping. released an album that got nominated for a Nebula, De La Soul came back, so did the Descendents, Radiohead released a boring record, some other stuff happened. Here are three records I want to write about.
We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service, A Tribe Called Quest
I think that The Low End Theory is the best hip-hop record of all time. I haven’t always thought that way. For a long time I would have picked Public Enemy’s undeniable It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, which is of course also great. But The Low End Theory has continued to serve as a constant companion to me, the incredibly cool jazzy beats and easy camaraderie of Q-Tip and Phife serving as not only as an amazing artistic statement but also an incredible hang. Their followup was almost as good, and given the rest of their work, they staked out a claim as one of the best bands in hip-hop. Their discography felt like a complete career to me. They didn’t break up too early, but instead just downed their tools, their work together complete. The members did have other things they did in the intervening years, and even got together for some shows, and then it came to an end. Phife passed in early 2016, and it was a genuinely sad moment, a giant passing on. Even though he passed far too young, it didn’t seem like he had left behind any untied musical threads.
And then, somehow, in November of 2016, a miracle: a new Tribe record appeared. How was this possible? My first thought was simply that there’s no way it would be any good. They had had various false starts towards albums over the past, and knowing that Phife had passed before the project was complete led me to think that the end result would also feel unfinished. But no: using what they already had on tape, the rest of the band carried the ball over the finish line. And it’s not just merely “good, considering the circumstances” or “good”, but it’s great. It not only sits proudly with the rest of their discography, but probably is their third-best record, which is an astounding achievement. The joy at hearing them back together, with new, fun material, is really unlike basically anything else I’ve had in music. There have been some bands that have come back after a long hiatus like this, including some bands I love, and the results have been mixed. Some examples: the Pixies went 22 years between records, but Indie Candy doesn’t have Kim Deal (and isn’t great). Hum went 22 years and Inlet is excellent. Mission of Burma went 21 years and ONoffON is also excellent. Mclusky went 20 years and didn’t miss a step. SWANS disappeared for 13 years before coming back as good as they ever were. So there’s precedent. But none of those good examples hit me the same way.
The closest in emotional impact is probably my beloved Jesus Lizard, which went 26 years between Blue and Rack (which is a very good time), and while I adore the Jesus Lizard and would assert that around the time of Goat and Liar, they were the best band on the planet, it still didn’t quite spark the emotions that Tribe did. I cannot say enough nice things about this album showing up and far exceeding my expectations. What a treasure.
WORRY., Jeff Rosenstock
I can’t prove it, but this is probably the album I’ve listened to the most from 2016. Jeff Rosenstock’s third album released under his own name is his best work, although I have extreme fondness for Ska Dream as well. WORRY. is a sentimental record. Songs like “We Begged 2 Explode”, “Staring Out the Window At Your Old Apartment”, or “To Be a Ghost…” are unabashedly emotional tunes, and it’s a stronger record for the inclusion of tunes like them among the more uptempo punk numbers. There’s even some very Bomb The Music Industry! (Jeff’s previous band) coded stuff, like “Rainbow”. I can’t really describe it as eclectic exactly, because it’s all enthusiastic punk or punk-adjacent stuff. But Jeff works in a lot of modes and tempos on here, and it does feel varied as a result. It’s a gem, and a fantastic entry point for one of the most consistent and longest-running voices in punk.
Whatever Forever, Oozing Wound
I’m a sucker for times when labels play against type. You know, like Matador releasing records from the Arsonists. I know that Thrill Jockey Records has had a wide list of artists, and it’s unfair to pigeonhole them or anything. But also, come on, they’re “the post-rock label”. Tortoise, Trans Am, the Sea and Cake, Isotope 217, hard for me to look past that. And that’s even knowing that they released stuff like Gaunt’s (great!) records! They’re still a post-rock label. Or at any rate, maybe a “post-stuff” label. Brainy, in short.
So it delights me that they release Oozing Wound’s albums, including this one, a bruising, sludge-inflected thrash record that is one of the metal releases I keep coming back to from this year. I don’t think it breaks any new ground or anything. It doesn’t. It’s a comfortable listen, and it riffs my brain into a comfortable place. There were lots of really fascinating metal releases from this year - Plebian Grandstand had a great album (later eclipsed by their audacious 2021 release which we’ll talk about when we get there), Inter Arma release a great album, Wormed released…a Wormed record, Gorguts had another great one, Hammer of Misfortune put out a fun record. But this is the one I probably listen to the most from that year.
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!
J.C. Thomaz and the Missing Slippers, J.C. Thomaz and the Missing Slippers
Thanks goes to the latest Wolf’s Week for this grimy slab of garage rock. I was sold once I hit track two, “My Cocaine”, where the guitars go in and out of phase with each other. Like all great garage rock, there’s plenty of imperfection to remind you that this was made by people playing together, and not carefully assembled from pristine parts. But, like, the right kind of imperfection. I desperately try and avoid just referring to “vibes” around here, because “vibes” has become an all-purpose explanation for why things are good or bad that fails to explain anything. That’s not great! But, you know…sometimes things are just vibes based.
Inna Soul Steady Situation, Joey Quiñones
Any Colemine Records release is always worth checking out, with an extremely long list of excellent records. I got up this morning and decided to go through some open tabs with music I wanted to check out. I got to this album, hit play on the first track, and was putting it in my Bandcamp cart within seconds. It’s not just that I’m a sucker for rocksteady, although I very much am. It’s also how much it sounds like something that could have come from Studio One. There’s a huge amount of warmth to everything, the way all the instruments sound, the way they play off against each other. The way the drums are tuned and recorded, the separation between the bass and guitar, it’s all just an aesthetic package that wants to give you a big hug. It’s not all rocksteady, there’s also some languid soul in here, but that’s OK, it’s all still music designed to make you happy.
Iron Foot, Poise
Yeah, it’s another hardcore EP. I think it’s healthy mixing these things in with the other records, and they’re short enough that you can get that blast of adrenaline and move on. Anyway, I like the little solos in this one, it’s fun.
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.
“Smokin’”, Nas
This album was hard to listen to critically at the time given the whole saga with Nas and Jay-Z that overshadowed everything else. In fact, even today, decades on, this is still “the album with ‘Ether’ on it”. So, if you try and set aside that context and just take the album on its merits, ignoring as best we can “Ether” and its place in rap history, how is it? Well, it’s good but not great. It’s very much a cliche to say something like “it’s not Illmatic”, but, you know, that album casts a long shadow. The truth is that I don’t really like style of beats from hip-hop around this time, and the beats on this album are undistinguished among that lot at best. Nas is very good on the mic, though, and it can be a pleasure to just kind of listen to him doing his thing. I haven’t listened to all his albums so I can’t make a very strong recommendation for what you should listen to, but he did have an album with DJ Premier last year that I liked. If you are mostly in this to hear someone be a masterful MC, I think you can have a good time with any of Nas’s records.
“Somebody More Like You”, Nickel Creek
By the time they arrived at their third album, describing Nickel Creek as a bluegrass group feels wrong. While they could still obviously play bluegrass when they wanted, such as with “Scotch & Chocolate” or “Stumptown”, the album scans to me more in the realm of indie rock than bluegrass. But given the skill with which they approach things, especially the singing, it’s kind of a singular indie rock record. And that’s without even mentioning the instrumentation. If you’re a fan of, say, Andrew Bird’s more rock-ish moments, you should definitely try this album. Even that comparison doesn’t quite capture things, though. It’s a lovely, special record and I very highly recommend it.
“Please Spare The Jokes”, MU330
This is little quickie from the final MU330 album, Ultra Panic. It feels a little goofy to write too much of a bio for such a short track, but MU330 (named after the class where the members met) were ska-punk stalwarts of the third wave, with six studio records (one of them a Christmas record!) and a live album across the 90s. Generally, the later you get, the better with them, and they turned in mostly solid work. If you’re a big ska-punk fan, you should dig into them.
“Drippy”, No Age
I’ve called out the bankruptcy of the rhetorical trick of “underrated”, so let’s identify another one: the “nobody talks about” assertion. This is related to calling a band underrated, as it again sets the tastes of the writer (virtuous, knowledgeable, nuanced) against everybody else (base, ignorant, shallow). And it is just as hollow. Just talk about the band! There are a zillion bands out there, they can’t all be topics of discussion, so just open it up! “Nobody is talking about” is just a substitute for “I forgot about” in the end.
Anyhoo, I had forgotten about No Age! Noise pop out of Los Angeles, they were incredibly consistent across their albums, with six studio records and a compilation across fifteen years of activity. This is right from the middle of their output, the fourth studio album, and even though there was a bit of a time gap between this and the prior An Object, it didn’t miss a step. It’s just really solid stuff, and if you’re looking for something really fuzzy and a bit noisy but outside of the grimier noise rock frame, this is a great choice.
“Dark Center of the Universe”, Modest Mouse
Huh, Lamniformes Cuneiform just covered this album, but this part of the blog is random, so I take what I get. I swear, I’m not ripping him off! Anyway, I’m fundamentally a The Lonesome Crowded West guy, although I do like all four of the first Modest Mouse records for different reasons. I know multiple people that consider this their finest record, with the extra sheen from the major label production helping things be a little easier to digest. Anyway, Modest Mouse: you know what they sound like. Also, apparently there are a couple albums from them I was unaware of.
Some Better Places To Learn About Music
Check these folks out, you’ll learn more for sure. In no particular order: To The Teeth, Wolf’s Week/Plague Rages, The Devil’s Mouth, Burning Ambulance, Lamniformes Cuneiform, Hex Records.