I love EPs! I miss rooting around in record stores and coming across them, because they were often a surprise. It doesn’t happen very much any more, or at least, I don’t come across them very often. Probably just means I’m out of touch. I’m very old!
Anyway, this is from the Kernel EP, but this song is just an alternate take of a song from Headsparks, so this EP is pretty inessential. Buuut, I do miss EPs.
[Read More]There was probably a time in my life when I would have regarded clipping. askance. I’ve long been OK with noise in my music, having picked up an affection for industrial as a teenager that continued forward with noise rock, various gnarly forms of punk, etc. And, of course, hip hop has been a staple of my listening for even longer. But for a long time, I thought I didn’t like pretension in music. It led me to avoiding things like prog rock, various forms of art rock, all kind of ambitious music for a long time. Or, at least, things that were ambitious in particular ways that set me off.
[Read More]I picked up Tool’s first album when it came out, because they kind of ran parallel to bands like Helmet, who I loved. But they never really did it for me, and I fell off them after this album. I think it’s just too clinical for me. Yeah, you can hear some similarities to bands I like, but it needs to be grittier. At any rate, after not falling in love right away, the door was permanently closed by one of the most annoying fan bases in music at the time.
[Read More]Thundercat is very hard to describe. Jazzy, yeah, but with some R&B, some fusion, some soft rock, some soft jazz? This is from his first album, and he doesn’t get any easier to categorize down the road.
Upsilon Acrux is very hard to describe too. Math rock, prog, little bit of krautrock here and there, maybe even the occasional jazzy excursion? In the end, I’ve got to be in a mood to listen to this sort of thing, but in the right frame of mind, nothing else will do.
[Read More]One of the things that we rail against around here are pointless covers. Especially in an age when so many of the originals are easily accessible, a cover really needs to add something. This is doubly true when it’s something truly beloved or original. However, it is possible to wrap around on the pointlessness scale of things and loop back around to cool. Claw Hammer turn that neat trick by covering the entirety of Devo’s landmark Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, playing it pretty straight. Jon Wahl’s oddball strangled wail is the primary distinguishing factor, but otherwise, it’s Devo’s record. Just listen to Devo! And yet…there’s a strange attraction. It’s pretty bizarre alchemy.
[Read More]Far Out Recordings released a comp of demos from Azymuth from 1973-5 in 2019, capturing this Brazilian jazz/funk group’s sound at the height of their powers. I don’t know jack shit about them other than this, but this record seriously smokes.
You know what? Sometimes it’s ok to just enjoy a pop song. This is pleasant. It’s nice! It doesn’t matter that it’s extremely unchallenging.
[Read More]I think I’ve used this space before to kind of lament how Grandaddy hasn’t really connected with me. I can see the quality, but it’s just never really clicked. This is a fine tune, though.
American Music Club were still kind of finding their way with their second album, Engine. Musically, they would eventually open up some of the arrangements which would help give some more space to Mark Eitzel’s lyrics. But as you can hear on this song, the often harrowing storytelling was definitely there.
[Read More]Valentine’s Day! Let’s do something special! How about a giant pile of Melvins, along with a survey of all their records? Breaks the formula, but who gives a shit! The Melvins are for lovers!
Not everything they released in this period was on Boner Records, but it’s a convenient way to label things. Buzz Osborne formed the band in 1983 with Matt Lukin (who would later go on to help found Mudhoney) and Mike Dillard (who actually rejoined the band for an album thirty years later). Dale Crover pretty quickly replaced Dillard and that lineup stuck around for at least a little while. The Melvins are kind of legendary in the Northwest music scene for how much of the ball they got rolling. Not only did Lukin help form Mudhoney, one of the pillars of grunge, but Crover was Nirvana’s original drummer (on Bleach). Not only THAT, but Buzz is the guy who introduced Dave Grohl to Cobain. It’s not like things wouldn’t have gotten going up here otherwise, but the Melvins family tree is pretty extensive.
[Read More]Ice Cube ended the explosive Death Certificate with a savage diss track on N.W.A, one that N.W.A wasn’t able to remotely respond to. They kind of didn’t really even try. While the homophobia in the song makes it jarring to listen to these days, I still can’t help but admire how hard Cube went at his former bandmates.
I was pretty bummed out by the dissolution of Cop Shoot Cop, another band that seemingly was destroyed by a major label contract. The marriage of the punishing rhythms and samples of industrial dance with Tod Ashley’s emotional lyrics and delivery was something pretty special. Luckily, Ashley didn’t wait too long to start up a new project which would quickly surpass Cop Shoot Cop. The first Firewater album, Get Off The Cross, We Need The Wood For The Fire, set the template for the rest of the band’s career. Borrowing bits and pieces from all sorts of music traditions, but centered around Ashley’s cynical world view, he described the band as a “wedding band gone wrong”. This is the first song on the first album, and what a way to kick things off.
[Read More]Victoria, BC’s Hot Hot Heat had a real moment in the 2000s, although I’ll confess, I don’t really remember how far they got penetrating the mainstream. I just remember that they were doing well there for a little while. That’s the kind of information you can’t get just anywhere! At any rate, this is from the beginning of their debut EP, so this is how they kicked it off. Not bad!
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