P.D.Q. Bach, the parody composer, makes truly dumb music that can largely only be appreciated by smart people. Or, maybe more accurately, culturally educated people. The truth is, I sort of catch only a subset of the gags in it, because I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough in Western classical music to get all of it. But even if you don’t catch all the jokes, the music itself is pretty fun even without them.
[Read More]The third Hot Snakes album certainly announces itself with authority. “Braintrust” opens up my favorite record from them, with a song that would absolutely sit right at home on one of the legendary Drive Like Jehu records. Which is a high complement!
As with most industrial dance acts, there were a bunch of singles released with Nine Inch Nails’ early work, usually featuring a bunch of remixes and the occasional half-assed b-side. This is one of those half-assed b-sides, in this case from the “Sin” single (which included three pointless remixes of that tune). But, you know, high school Josh was nonetheless kinda intrigued by it.
[Read More]I’ve talked a little about the Four Album theory, which is that some great metal bands (Metallica, Krallice, Mastodon) will push things as far as they can with their sound over four albums, before taking off in a different direction. It’s half-baked, yes, but it’s a theory anyway.
But in thinking about it, these aren’t the only Four Album bands. The Decemberists, for instance, pushed their increasingly elaborate folk-rock storytelling thing further and further over the course of their first four albums, culminating in The Crane Wife, which is really kind of a concept record that stands as the final record of that approach. While The Hazards of Love is maybe more ambitious, it kind of seeks a more prog direction without as much of the folk stuff, so to my ears, represents the same kind of stylistic break as those metal bands.
[Read More]There’s something extremely early 90s about Pardoner’s sound on this track. It sounds like a lost track from a C/Z Records band, or maybe like some old Dinosaur Jr. track from the vault. That, of course, means I’m totally delighted by it.
A single from 1963, with some jaunty piano really driving things here. A real charmer!
EXTREMELY post-punk stuff here out of Australia. There’s sort of a Discord feel to the guitars, and almost a Joy Division feel to the singing, which is a pretty potent combination. This is from their first album, It’s You, which is a pretty solid record.
[Read More]Yet another perfect month in the books! The magic date is 10/29, which is the last time I missed a daily update. It would be pretty cool to go a full calendar year without missing one, honestly.
The repeated opinion of the Five Songs cognoscenti is the Lungfish is kinda boring. Like, this song is pretty good…for the first couple minutes. But it doesn’t really evolve, and the groove isn’t so interesting that it can support six minutes.
[Read More]Probably the most Beastie Boys song on Check Your Head, this is the kind of thing that anybody who parodies the band is kind of gesturing towards. Given that it was deliberately constructed to be kind of an update of the sound from their first album, it does make sense.
Have I expressed the opinion that I think Anthem For A New Tomorrow is the best Screeching Weasel record? They had a couple albums to refine the pop-punk/Ramones-knockoff sound they were going for, and there are moments that almost sound sincere on this album that work pretty well. Past this point, they kind of got snottier and snottier and it wasn’t pleasant, and before this, the sloppiness can sometimes get in the way.
[Read More]A lethally catchy song, I’ll be humming this for the next several days. I feel like The Else gets really kind of ignored in the TMBG catalog. By that point, they were really kind of becoming known as a kids’ band, and they just slipped in this really lushly produced thing right in the middle of three kids’ albums.
[looks at “kids’”] That looks wrong. I think it’s right? Ain’t gonna look it up!
[Read More]A big part of the ska scene in the late 80s and early 90s was an active trade in compilations. It allowed bands to get their music out and prime the audiences for touring, which is where bands built up a following. One series of comps was the Mashin’ Up The Nation series, which this was part of volume 2 of. It’s an unusually raw track for Bim Skala Bim, but a lot of the songs on these comps tended towards the raw, because many of them were low budget or live.
[Read More]It’s sometimes a little hard to reconcile the early Marvin Gaye with what he would eventually become. This is from 1963, and yeah, sure, it’s an excellent tune. But it’s just so far away from where he would end up. Popular music evolved so fast in this decade, it’s still hard to wrap my mind around it.
The first Fellows record, The Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest, was kind of tied together with these little spoken word travelogue snippets, as a theme. The Fellows are light hearted enough that the gimmick comes off as charming, and the music is all just kind of loose, happy rock. While there’s plenty to like, they also didn’t really totally have control of their songwriting yet, so the record is kind of just for fans.
[Read More]Repeat!
I really need to get to the point where my kid can have visitors again, because I really want to try and mortify them by singing along to the Smiths really loud.
It’s tracks like this one that really demonstrate that Belle and Sebastian were still very much learning how things worked with their first album, Tigermilk, which was literally a university project. Luckily, they didn’t convince themselves that this sort of thing was their future.
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