The rare Shadowy Men track with a voice on it! Very little, mind you, but judged on a curve, it’s a ton.
Great stuff so far today! I’ve sung the praises of Pond repeatedly in this space, but seriously: this album (The Practice Of Joy Before Death) totally rules. If you want to listen to more, you can hit up the tag, but just fire up the album.
[Read More]One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands. The bits where the band lays out and Vic Ruggiero comes in first, I love that move. Just a delightful song.
During industrial’s commerical heyday, Wax Trax was one of the biggest labels in the scene. One of the things that folks associated with the label did was remix the bands, not just the music. The Revolting Cocks were one of those recombinations, featuring the core Ministry folks and a bunch of other associated people. They were intentionally sillier than most of the other bands in the scene, with the whole thing kind of being a big joke. Occasionally they would produce good stuff, but mostly it ends up being a little bit tedious.
[Read More]Another track from the bootleg Maximum Rocknroll, which wasn’t authorized by the band and contains a bunch of pretty poor quality stuff. Not great!
This is such a good song, goddamn. Claw Hammer really nails it, too. Uh, not a lot else to say here, really.
I’ve meditated on pretension here before, so I’ll spare you all that guff again. But just for a moment, please admire the hubris involved in naming your album Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic. It’s a really good album, though, so whatever.
[Read More]I honestly think that Jan Jelinek might be the artist I can consistently identify the fastest in my collection. That glitch is just so recognizable. Also, love the grocer’s apostrophe’s here!
Been a while since we’ve had them here. (checks) We’ve never had them here! Crunt were a side project of Kat Bjelland (Babes in Toyland), Russell Simins (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), and Stuart Gray (Lubricated Goat). They produced one album, which rips, but that was it unfortunately. It’s basically totally forgotten at this point, but it’s a good time.
[Read More]Greatest hardcore band during the 80s has been a common argument through the years. A lot of the time, it comes down to a preference between the east coast (Minor Threat), the west coast (Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys), or the midwest (Hüsker Dü). I know I first encountered this argument on Usenet in 1991, and it hasn’t really stopped. But if you asked for the best hardcore album, there was often an extra one that people would mention. I Against I didn’t exactly fit the mold of those other bands, and given how many other genres get blended in here, I’m not sure it totally qualifies as a hardcore album. Kind of the same way I’m not sure that the Minutemen qualify. Nevertheless, it’s a hell of an album, and I can understand why people put it in the company of so many other classics from the 80s.
[Read More]Hell yeah, that’s the stuff.
This is from a remix EP called Mixed By Fear, containing remixes of songs from Tyranny For You. It’s every bit as forgettable as that sounds, and is incredibly inessential.
This is a repeat! It smokes, but we’ll do a sixth song today.
We just had a Mombu track the other day, so enjoy another track of their chaotic drum and bari sax styling!
[Read More]The Black Light is the album where Calexico became CALEXICO. The dusty desert aesthetic was in full flower on this album. The recording is soaked in reverb, there’s tons of space for the atmosphere, and it’s just a lovely experience. It’s not their best album, because they would marry this sound to better songwriting on later records, but this is still a fun album.
This comes to us from the bonus second disc from the This Year’s Model reissue. The bonus material on a lot of these types of reissues can be pretty dodgy, but Costello’s songwriting in this period was so strong that even the leftovers are pretty darn good. I mean, this is an excellent tune!
[Read More]I think we’ve had a couple tracks from The Horror by now, which is kind of a companion EP/remix project to go along with Deadringer. Unlike a lot of these kinds of revists/companion pieces, it’s very much a worthy release in its own right and not just riding the coattails of another album.
Why, it seems like just the other day that I got really fired up about Vaz and Hammerhead. And here they are, back for another tune. “Tune”? Blast. Whatever! Love this stuff.
[Read More]Here’s a little bit of an oddball. Valentine Six put out one album in 1997, full of this kind of lounge-y sort of thing. Clearly more than a little Tom Waits in the DNA here, maybe just a little bit of Nick Cave. It’s pretty good, and I haven’t thought about this band in ages.
Like lots of other people, I was curious to see what the various members of the Smiths would get up to after that band broke apart. I picked up a couple of Morrissey’s EPs, and honestly, didn’t really follow him from there. I mean, yeah, this is clearly a Morrissey song, but I guess I had enough of him from the Smiths’ albums?
[Read More]Jungle Fire, out of LA, play Afro beat and funk, clearly heavily inspired by the usual folks like Fela Kuti and James Brown. Nothing wrong with that! Anyway, this is from their 2017 album on Colemine records, and I really appreciate the drama of this. There’s a lot of Kool & the Gang that I hear, and that works for me.
Look, not every single Motown put out during their heyday was a slam dunk. But even the goofier ones are still short, at least.
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