Anything On Your Mind?
I guess maybe people aren’t reading all of these (or any of them), but I’ve been looking at individual years in music. I started in 2011 with the hypothesis that it was probably the year I knew the least about music, but that probably turns out not to be right. After reaching the present, I’ve been moving backwards instead, again just kind of reviewing my life and a few records from each year. We’re in 2005 now, a year that I think was largely the same in my life as the surrounding years. Stable job that I liked in a great location (including proximity to Sonic Boom Records), pretty good set of hobbies (tabletop gaming, hiking and camping, some rock climbing, obsessive music collecting), pretty good time in my life. I think 2005 was the year that I got together a role-playing group that has mutated a lot but is also still going today, marking 21 years of continual weekly get-togethers with mostly the same folks. Not bad!
2006, I was pretty plugged into what was popular (relatively speaking), so I’m curious what 2005’s chart will show. I have ten of those in the collection, so again, pretty good showing by my standards.
What Do You Listen To From 2005, Josh?
A sampling of albums that I want to write about from 2005.
Beauty and the Beat, Edan
I think this record is a masterpiece, and I don’t know how well it’s known. Edan is doing everything on this record, and his production is absolutely incredible. Psychedelic samples come in and out, creating an atmosphere unlike basically any other hip-hop record out there. The drums all sound absolutely incredible, the tracks can rock when he wants them to, it’s top notch across the board. On the mic, Edan is clever, with a boasting personality that not only explicitly references the old masters but stylistically references them. The only real mar on the record is his casual use of the f-slur in one spot, which is unfortunately not uncommon among 2005-ish rap records. Aside from that one moment, it’s just impeccable. Unfortunately, Edan’s output after this record reduced significantly. 2009’s Echo Party is a lot of fun, but I don’t think anybody heard it, and it’s kind of a DJ mix. And then there’s his 2018 collaboration with Homeboy Sandman, which is fun, and some scattered individual tracks for various people. It’s a shame that he never really did a proper follow-up to this one, but at least we have it.
Bang Bang Rock & Roll, Art Brut
Eddie Argos and company made a record that is simultaneously baffling and as straightforward as possible. It is essentially always unknowable what level of irony the band is operating on. From Argos’s speak-singing to the lyrics constantly running over rock cliches, you think, oh this is a send-up. But then, the music is played pretty straight, and you’ll get a song like “Emily Kane” which seems too sweet and simple to be ironic. It’s confusing, but it turns out you can just kind of relax and let go. It’s a rock record, and it’s an anti-rock record. Stop worrying, Poindexter! It’s a reminder that some things resist analysis, and that’s OK.
Lost and Safe, The Books
The Books are a little hard to describe. They resist categorization in a lot of ways. I’d say that broadly, their music is probably more post-rock than it is anything else, with echoes of Chicago folks like Gastr Del Sol or maybe the more experimental side of Tortoise. That is to say, unconventional song structures, generally fairly peaceful aesthetics, a certain warmth and fuzziness to things but without ever settling into a conventional rock frame. But they also make heavy use of sampling, both instrumental and vocal samples, and so there’s another lens to view them through. An electronic frame can apply, one where I think about glitch folks like Jan Jelinek or even at times someone like a Negativland. And then you turn over another card, and it turns out the samples are largely of things like acoustic instruments, so that kind of steers you away from the electronics again and almost towards a folk framing. The sum is that they’re really their own thing.
This is their third record, the followup to the acclaimed 2003 record, Lemon of Pink. It continues in the same vein, showing that that record was no fluke, and I think it ends up a bit more accessible than the previous one. Both records are excellent, but I suspect this one to be a little easier to start with.
Let’s Talk More 2005 Records
I don’t know why I persist in keeping these headers! But I do! At some point I’ll stop with the time traveling, I guess.
The Budos Band, The Budos Band
in 2005, I was killing time before my table was ready at Mashiko, the fantastic West Seattle sushi joint, which is notable for its creative sushi using exclusively sustainable seafood as well as its proximity to the legendary Easy Street Records. I was kicking around in the record store, just kind of looking for nothing in particular, when the clerk put this record on. That bass intro into the drums hit me like a ton of bricks. I stopped what I was doing, listened to the rest of “Up From The South”, and then “T.I.B.W.F.” came on. Another banger. I went to the counter to figure out what it was, bought the record on the spot, and fell in love. It was my first encounter with Daptone Records but was far from my last. It was that chance encounter with this album that created for me a huge part of my musical diet today. I’ve always loved horns, as I’ve documented here, but much of what I listened to at the time with horns was ska or ska-punk. Opening up the door to soul, funk, Afrobeat, and other similar music was an revelation.
There are moments in my life where a chance encounter with a record really changed how I listen to music. First encountering Public Enemy during a debate trip, They Might Be Giants playing inside of Hastings Entertainment, Karl Hendricks recommending Tar to me in Paul’s Records in Pittsburgh and putting it on, these are times that I will always recognize as turning points for me. Vivid memories that I can still picture incredibly clearly in my brain. That trip into Easy Street was another of these indelible moments. The record still holds up, and if you haven’t heard it, maybe it will also change the direction of your taste as well.
Pink, Boris
I haven’t really written about Boris during this series, which is kind of a shame. They’ve been there the whole time, cranking out excellent album after album, along the way creating one of the essential discographies in heavy music. It’s also an incomprehensible one. For instance, they have three albums named Heavy Rocks (from 2002, 2011, and 2022), all of which are different records but supposedly form some kind of trilogy? They’ll release collaborations, live albums, four albums in the same year, Japan-only releases, just all over the place. It looks like I have 17 Boris albums in my collection and I’m positive that I’m not only missing records from them but probably critical records.
Given such a confusing discography, where do you start? Especially given that the band has ranged from stretched out doom to noise to punk to drone to psychedelic rock to more conventional metal to basically every kind of noise you can make with a guitar. So you can’t even really point to a record to start with and say that it gets at the essentials of the Boris experience. If you don’t like one record, that doesn’t mean you won’t find another one appealing. All that said, I usually either suggest 2003’s Akuma No Uta or this one to someone unfamiliar with Boris. Pink is maybe the most conventional Boris record, with a relatively accessible, heavy but sludgy sound to most of the songs. There is some similarity with bands like Torche here, where it almost sounds bright in spots. It rocks, in short, and I can cheerfully recommend it to most fans of heavy music and expect they’ll enjoy it. It’s not easily listening or anything, and there are some moments where they get kind of drone-y and feedback-y (like “Blackout”), but they also follow that song with a straight-forward ripper (“Electric”).
I don’t think this is Boris’ best work. I’m not sure what that is, honestly. It’s hard to say! It’s like they’re five different bands. But it is a good showcase of one side of the band, and an excellent record, and you should give it a spin. And if you end up loving it, there’s so much to explore.
Worlds Apart, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Source Tags & Codes, the 2002 release from annoyingly named …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is the record everybody talks about. It got a perfect 10 from Pitchfork (it is not a 10/10 record), tons of attention from the rest of the music press, and it’s the album everybody loves. If they’re known for anything else, it’s for not producing anything as good as that record. And I’m not here to run it down or anything, the band really took a leap forward from 1999’s Madonna, but I will say this: I think I like this album more than Source Tags & Codes. I know, I know. It’s a crazy opinion. I probably am the only person who thinks this, but I have to speak my truth.
Source Tags & Codes is mostly operating in one way, in that anthemic big-rock mode, with maybe only the exception of “How Near How Far”. And don’t get me wrong, that shit is good, and I would never knock a record for staying in one place (all those hardcore and garage albums are ample proof of that). But Trail of Dead have ambitions, and I think Worlds Apart really shows them exploring those ambitions. “Will You Smile Again?” is almost martial in its rhythms. “Worlds Apart” is a ringing, musically upbeat sing-along. “The Summer of ‘91” is a piano-driven brooder. And so it goes. As stylistically coherent as Source Tags was, Worlds Apart isn’t, aside from wearing its emotions on its sleeves. It’s such an earnest, heartfelt record from a band trying out a bunch of styles that I really root for it. The variety works for me, and I really think this quilt works for me better than the more coherent Source Tags. If you never tuned in after Source Tags or didn’t give this record a fair shake, give it another try. Just meet it on its own terms, of a band wanting to do big, dramatic stuff and you might find the charm that I do.
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.
“Hoosier Love”, MU330
Ska-punk stalwarts MU330 got started right here, with this, the lead track of their first album. Fast tempos, plenty of horns, and a lighthearted approach are what they carried through their career, which spanned six studio albums across just eight years. They’re not usually brought up as one of the key acts of the third-wave, but I think they should probably get more attention. Has their music held up? Well, I think it depends on if you like ska-punk at all. If you do? Yeah, I think so. I do still put on their records sometimes to this day.
“Nerve Damage”, Yambag
Hell yeah, Yambag! Fuck me up, but only for a minute, OK guys?
“Trade of Hearts”, Thee Sacred Souls
Hey, speaking of Daptone! This is pretty straightforward soul, not any kind of soul hybrid, and it’s nice to mix this kind of thing in now and again. It won’t ever be my primary listening among Daptone records, as I prefer the funk/soul stuff more, but really, how can you be upset with this?
“Korban Olah”, Ghost Funk Orchestra
Yeah, stuff like that!
“Grow Grow Grow”, PJ Harvey
We don’t get PJ Harvey here much, do we? I’ve got a bunch of her records in the collection, so that’s just luck of the draw, I suppose. This comes from her 2007 record White Chalk, an album of piano-driven haunted folk that would mark a departure for her except that all of her albums are departures. It’s maybe her spookiest record, if that’s what you’re into.
Josh, What Are You Doing Here?
I’m just writing about music. A structure like this blog helps me get my thoughts out, and it’s a way for me to explore my own music collection through various lenses. My sincere hope is that some folks out there find some new music they love. That’s all I’m up to. Sincere thanks to everybody who sends me feedback, with news that they’ve found a new favorite especially fun for me. There’s no monetization, no metrics, no ads, no promos, no nothing. Just some static web pages, some links, and my scribbling. If you want to support it, just shoot me a note! Thanks for reading.
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, See/Saw, Starkweather.