Posts

Eddie Floyd, “Don’t Tell Your Mama (Where You’ve Been)”

We Love Song Titles (With Parentheticals)!

The Books, “Smells Like Content”

Can I engage in some old-fart bloviating? Of course I can, nobody else has the password to this site so nobody can stop me! The labeling of all videos as just “content” is really unfortunate. It signals a commodification of creative work that only serves the massive aggregators that control what we see, and yet people have willingly adopted the nomenclature. And lumping together criticism, reviews, buying guides, how-tos, and everything else together as just a homogonized slurry doesn’t even help viewers find what they want. I hate it!

Negativland, “I Am God”

It’s always kind of a difficult thing to categorize Negativland as music. Usually, they’re more performance art who happens to use audio as their medium. There are exceptions in their catalog, though. Escape From Noise has plenty of things on it that you can characterize as songs, fractured as most of them are. Free, their full album that followed up the whole U2 imbroglio, is maybe the most musical thing they’ve ever put together. Which isn’t to say it’s full of toe-tapping tunes. But hey, this song has a beat, and you can dance to it! Not bad for an album which is mostly a meditation on free will and freedom in general.

Mudhoney, “In My Finest Suit”

Ever the self-sabotaging band, Mudhoney found themselves on a major label during the grunge gold rush and released Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, one of the least grunge-y records they ever released. Sales were not great, and by 1995, Kurt Cobain was dead and the grunge bubble was collapsing. So, of course, they headed back and released one of their MOST grunge-y records, My Brother The Cow. This song, for instance, would have sat comfortably on their self-titled record without anybody really noticing stylistic problems.

At The Drive-In, “Pattern Against User”

At The Drive-In is probably best known for one of their successor bands, the Mars Volta, but they also totally ruled. They were less prog-y than the Mars Volta, with more post-hardcore and straight up punk going on. But despite being more conventional, that doesn’t at all mean that the songs were uninteresting. This is from my favorite album by them, Relationship of Command, their final album (before the 2017 reunion).

Mastodon, “Black Tongue”

I spent a bunch of time with The Hunter last year, seeing if I could really get to the point of appreciating the record. It was a really big break with their previous two albums, and my initial reaction when it came out was that I didn’t care for new path. After that time spent, I can say that I still prefer the big prog-y compositions, but there’s a lot to like in this leaner album. It’s probably the right on-ramp to begin listening to Mastodon, truthfully.

James Plotkin, “Caught In Your Orbit”

Well, I don’t remember getting this one. It’s from 2002, old enough that I don’t think it was from a grab bag or anything. It does sound like the kind of thing that might have caught my attention, some kind of strange combination of grindcore and drum’n’bass. At any rate, this is pretty interesting, might put on the rest of this album after I’m done with this entry.

Conjurer, “Blood and Thunder”

Conjurer followed up their excellent 2018 album Mire by doing a couple of collaborative records in 2019. They put out Curse These Metal Hands (which is great!) with Pijn, and then the record with today’s track, Conjurer x Palm Reader. It’s, uh, a split with Palm Reader. It’s just a four-song EP, with Conjurer contributing this cover of Mastodon’s song along with a cover of Slipknot’s “Vermillion”. It’s certainly an inessential record, but fun enough.

Happy birthday to me! I’m…more than 4 years old.

Labradford, “S”

There’s a lot I like about Labradford, and Mi Media Naranja in particular. And then it kicks of with “S”, that beautiful reverbed out guitar…and then you get that high pitched tone. And it drives me crazy. I wish it weren’t there! It’s unpleasant!

clown core, “flat earth”

I came across clown core through their absolutely insane videos (here’s the one for “flat earth”). But honestly, this kind of thing is really right up my alley. Sure, it’s avant-garde as hell, but it’s also goofy, the drumming is extreme, it’s noisy. Good stuff!

Happy birthday, Five Songs! Four years ago, I kicked this thing off. If I’m counting properly, this is entry 776. At least. It’s possible I missed a tag or two somewhere. That’s 3,880 songs! Approximately! Because I’m sure I’ve missed duplicates somewhere. But I did do 26 songs from the Melvins, which helps make up for it.

Anyway! It’s come and gone a bit, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep up the updating every day pace. But I thank everybody who has tuned in to one of these, who has commented here or on Twitter, and just generally said kind words. It’s very appreciated when it’s acknowledged that somebody besides me is paying any attention. So thank you! And on to the tunes!

Rancid, “Ruby Soho”

As an unabashed Operation Ivy guy, I was always a little disappointed with Rancid. They always just seemed a little more dour, a little less tuneful, and a little less fun. That said, the album of Rancid’s that I like enough to listen to pretty often is …And Out Come The Wolves. Just listened to it earlier today, actually!

Clem Snide, “I Got High”

This song is from The Meat Of Life, which I think is the better of the two albums from the second incarnation of Clem Snide (the other being Hungry Bird). It’s a warm, comfortable album, with the usual sweet (and subtly dark) songs from Eef Barzelay. It’s not the album to start with, but it’s a solid record.