My current favorite burn for doofy looking middle-aged dudes who look a certain way is to say that they look like they have strong opinions about the best Archers of Loaf EP. (This is mostly a self-burn.) Anyway, I’m now currently considering updating that to the best Polvo EP, but I’m not sure that that’s appropriately controversial enough (it’s this one). And I just continue to burn myself.
[Read More]After the success of the They Might Be Giants kids albums, which included a few songs written by bassist Danny Weinkauf, he set out on his own and recorded a couple records in a similar vein. They’re pleasant enough, but by the time they were out, I didn’t really play them for the kids and so they’re just kind of in my collection.
[Read More]If my search is to be trusted, there are about 102 blog posts on this site indicating that I don’t know shit about jazz. Sad that I’m so ignorant, given that I actually listen to a fair bit of it.
My favorite Calexico record. If this song doesn’t grab you, I’m afraid to inform you that you’re hopeless.
Therapy? was a band that kind of got tagged with an alternative metal label during the early 90s. It kind of makes sense - this isn’t as gritty as grunge, and it’s not robotic enough for industrial metal, but it also doesn’t really have any markers of any of the genres of metal going at the time. This is from Nurse, a record that got them signed to a major label. It’s a decent record, although I’ll confess I haven’t thought about this band in ages.
[Read More]I think I still like Her Majesty, the Decemberists the best of their records. At least some of that is the halo effect of it being the first album of theirs that I picked up. I had skipped Castaways and Cutouts when it came out, but I was wandering in Sonic Boom records in Fremont (RIP) and was sufficiently charmed by the cover art to give this one a whirl. And from the moment I first heard that ship creaking, I was hooked. I think that probably Picaresque or The Crane Wife might be better, but whatever! This is my favorite!
[Read More]Might get back into industrial dance again. I mean, sure, this shit is dumb as hell, but maybe that’s what the times demand. Get some Belgians yelling at me about vague Dystopian futures.
In case you were wondering what “Spine II” was a follow-up to.
Less Than Jake would regularly re-record songs for later albums, polishing up the previous version. It was an interesting habit because it clearly wasn’t for a lack of material - their albums were always a healthy length, and during their prime, they put things out regularly. So I think it was just a matter of them wanting to get things right. This song originally appeared on Pezcore, and they revived it for Losing Streak (this version) a year and a half later. I wonder why?
[Read More]Folks, the streak of metal is over!
I wonder what proportion of my music library is various genres. I think just plain “rock” probably dominates, but I’d love to know what percentage is metal, rap, soul, ska, or whatever else. I wish I could trust the genre metadata on things.
This b-side comes to us from the “The Question Is How Fast” single. Superchunk took singles seriously from the beginning, all the way down to releasing actual 7" singles at a time when not many bands were doing that. As a result, their b-sides were always pretty good. Happily, they’ve done a good job of collecting these things together (this one makes it to Incidental Music: 91-95).
[Read More]The second Wire album, Chairs Missing, was a little less frenetic than the debut record. Many of the songs are given more room to develop, with a little bit more of a drone-y feeling to some of the songs. It’s still great, but it’s a different sort of record. This is how the record opens, setting the stage for how things would go.
Hee hee, Piss Vortex. Sorry folks, couldn’t resist this band! A little grindcore never hurt anybody! (This is not true, lots of people have probably been hurt at grindcore shows.)
[Read More]I know that it is, literally, Boomer-ass music, but Bridge Over Troubled Water is really very good. Can I call this song a jam? I think it might be a jam.
Speaking of jams! Also, it’s time for Petty Grievances With Josh: there was no way I was going to figure out how to type that, but stupid Plex won’t let me copy and paste song titles from it directly. I had to inspect the element in Chrome and copy it out of there! What kind of hell is this!
[Read More]Touché Amoré is a bit of a genre Rorschach test: emo? Hardcore? Post-hardcore? All of them, I guess, and maybe folks will identify in whatever way that fits them into their tastes. Not me! I’ll identify them as whatever genre fits best with whatever through line I’m desperately trying to spot on any given day.
Like…uh…maybe I could talk about the distinction between the speed of hardcore versus that of extreme metal, and how to my ears one of the distinctions is that the drumming often becomes almost unmoored from the guitars in extreme metal for long stretches, while hardcore is usually more locked in. Which is all kinda bullshit, but this blog is all just bullshit anyway. Moving on!
[Read More]HELL YEAH MAN TIME TO GO BREAK STUFF FUCKIN’ LET’S GO GET DRUNK FUCK SHIT UP
Tha Alkaholiks stood out from out other rap groups in the mid-90s in California by being mostly playful, in contrast to the dominant G-funk aesthetic at the time. E-Swift’s production also presented a different approach than the dense, deep funk jams of the time. This is from their second record, 1995’s Coast II Coast, which featured a whole bunch of fun guests (Madlib, Q-Tip, Xzibit, others), and is just a solid album.
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