Posts

It’s a big day here on Five Songs. Exactly two years ago, I started updating this thing every day. Through vacations, work getting busy, moving twice, dealing with the fallout of a pandemic, I kept hitting my updates. I’m not sure why exactly I decided to do so. More than anything, it was to convince myself that I could commit to a grind like this and keep on top of it. Could I be a daily blogger? Could I keep a creative project going even when it got tough?

The Staple Singers, “I’ll Take You There”

This is such a majestic tune, absolutely irresistable.

De La Soul, “Thru Ya City”

I mostly think of the two AOI albums (this is from Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump) as kind of lost albums for De La, but that’s not really a fair characterization. They’re uneven to be sure, soft spots in their catalog, but even a soft spot for them is going to have plenty of pleasures. This is a fun track, with the rubbery bass synth and bouncy rhyming from the boys.

They Might Be Giants, “Can’t Keep Jonny Down”

John Linnell is probably my favorite songwriter ever, and so it means a lot when I say that “Some dude / Hitting golf balls on the moon / Bathroom in his pants / And he thinks he’s better than me” might be my favorite lyric he’s ever written.

johnboy, “Chair”

I miss the heyday of noise rock. There were so many bands doing cool shit in the early 90s, and you could just find new stuff all the time. I suppose it might still be happening somewhere still, and I’m just not plugged in enough to find out about it. Is anybody doing a noise rock blog?

Kraftwerk, “Franz Schubert”

So hypnotic and pleasant.

Jamire Williams, “Wash Me Over Pollock’s Pulse”

Goddamn, this rules. I need to find more experimental drummers. I’m sure there are others. Listen to all that brushing! So exciting!

Maggot Heart, “Sex Breath”

One, “Sex Breath” is an incredible song name. Two, a band named Maggot Heart should really be a lot more discordant. It should be filthy, squalid, with the kind of skronks from a guitar that I can’t really describe.

Screeching Weasel, “My Brain Hurts”

I poke fun at Screeching Weasel pretty often when they come up here, mostly because their formula most didn’t change over the course of a zillion albums. But their early albums are still a lot of fun - just cheerful, energetic punk. There’s nothing at all wrong with this formula when it’s hitting.

Mission of Burma, “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”

This song is one of the pillars of post-punk, a template for so many following bands. That’s the reason this still sounds fresh more than 40 years later, because it was groundbreaking at the time, and bands still try and sound like this.

Frisk Frugt, “Solhyldest 1. del”

No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Constantines, “Shine a Light”

A thing that’s cool about this song is how restless it is. They’ve gone through multiple ideas in the first minute of the tune, which is nice to see. This is a very fun album.

Atmosphere, “The Future is Disgusting”

Kind of a throwback here, off of 2020’s The Day Before Halloween. Those sawtooth synths there are very primitive but nice.

Stereolab, “Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Mellow)”

I only have three Stereolab albums, and that’s dumb, because I like them quite a bit. I caught onto them pretty early, but didn’t really keep up with them. I think because maybe in the early 90s, I was really focusing on loud and angry stuff, and depite recognizing deep inside that this was cool stuff, I just fell off. I should really loop back and pick some more of their stuff.

Pink Floyd, “Eclipse”

I know that Pink Floyd is probably regarded as hopelessly stodgy and dad-ish by people today, avatars of the leaden excesses of 70s rock that sparked punk. And, yeah, this is some ornate shit and all. But dammit, I love it, I sincerely do, whether because it was largely inescapable growing up in Spokane or just because I am also stodgy and dad-ish.

Logh, “The Smoke Will Lead You Home”

I got this as part of a Hydra Head album grab bag, and it’s awfully different from the usual Hydra Head fare. This is really more on the emo side of the fence than anything else. It’s pleasant enough, I suppose.

U.S. Maple, “Rice Ain’t Afraid of Nothing”

U.S. Maple more or less perfected devolved rock, where the songs are recognizable as being rock songs, but the form of them is perverted to the straining point. Any more mutated, and it probably ceases to be something you could credibly describe as being in the same genre as, I dunno, the Dave Matthews Band (to choose a band that was popular when U.S. Maple made this record). We need these sort of tricksters, as they set the boundaries of what is acceptable by pushing them further out.

Tiny Moving Parts, “Warm Hand Splash”

This is good! I bought this on Bandcamp, and I don’t remember listening to it. I still can’t decide if that’s sad of me or not. It probably is.

Yo La Tengo, “Barnaby, Hardly Working”

The first Yo La Tengo song I ever heard! I read about them and eventually picked up a combo CD of President Yo La Tengo/New Wave Hot Dogs, and from the moment I heard Ira Kaplan’s calm, peaceful vocals married to that little repetitive figure of guitar squall, I was hooked. That push-and-pull, between noise and peace, is at the heart of Yo La Tengo, and it’s kind of all here in capsule form.