We just had The New Year on, uh, the New Year, so I won’t go over it again. Slowcore! It’s pleasant!
Marlowe is producer L’Orange and Solemn Brigham on the mic, here with a little instrumental track from their first, self-titled album. It’s a solid record, recommended particularly if you like L’Orange’s production. It turns out there’s a second album from them, I’m going to pick that up right now.
[Read More]Bitches Brew didn’t create the category of jazz fusion, but basically everything in the genre after it builds on it.
Uh, or so I’m told.
Brooklyn quartet The Men returned to their earlier sound and approach with Devil Music, producing a ripping set of ten songs that clocks in at a little over a half hour. We’re softies around here for this kind of garage punk, so of course this is a delight.
[Read More]Title track of the first of their essential albums, and just a quick little gem. I wonder if I could learn this bass line?
AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted is really a hybrid album, with the vintage Bomb Squad production married to Ice Cube’s flow. It’s a little bit of an awkward fit at times. Both artists are, of course, legends for a reason and some of the best ever at what they do. And it’s a great album, but I think Cube’s following couple albums bring things together a little bit better.
[Read More]Television’s Marquee Moon is a landmark album for good reason. It’s a key album in establishing post-punk, with its sophisticated winding guitars and complex songs. But anybody who describes Television always makes it sound so much more clinical and cerebral than it really is. The experience of listening to the record is really just so pleasant.
craft is a black metal band from Sweden that has been around for ages, putting out an album every five years or so. This is their most recent one, which I picked up for some reason, and it didn’t stick with me at all.
[Read More]There was a nine year break between 1992’s It’s Low Beat Time and 2001’s Because We Hate You, with Scott McCaughey spending time in the interim both touring with R.E.M. and spending time with his other band, the Minus 5. And when this album came out, it was actually a double album, with the other album from the Minus 5. So, all McCaughey, but with different people accompanying him.
[Read More]One of the highlights on the best Firewater album, Golden Hour. It’s an album that attempts to answer the question “what if we just made the whole album out of highlights”.
Hot damn, shuffle bringing the fire today! Garden Ruin was the follow-up to my favorite Calexico record, Feast of Wire. With this album, Calexico nudged slightly further away from the mariachi sounds being quite as dominant as prior records, with a little more country and folk creeping in to replace it. There are also no instrumentals on the album, another break with the past. That’s not to say there aren’t any southwestern sounds on the album, just that there is a little less influence. This song is a fine example, this is pretty much just pure country. But lovely!
[Read More]Bathory’s second album, The Return of the Darkness and Evil, was one of the touchstones in black metal’s first wave. Most of the traits of the genre were in place at this point, with the murky production, shrieked vocals, satanic themes, and punishing pace. The template would get refined on Bathory’s next record, but this is one of the establishing albums.
The Unsemble are an experimental outfit consisting of Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten), Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard, Firewater), and Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews). There’s nothing really rock about it, and it doesn’t sound much like any of these folks’ other bands, other than some of Neubauten’s quieter moments. It’s an interesting listen, though, and I recommend it.
[Read More]DJ Shadow’s third album, The Outsider, is kind of a mess. It was four years after The Private Press and ten after Endtroducing, and all that time apparently created a lot of ideas that all tried to burst out at the same time. That doesn’t let the whole thing hang together as an album, but it does have plenty of fun songs. It’s also an album that I have learned to appreciate more as time has gone on. It turns out that he didn’t need to make another Endtroducing!
[Read More]Murs found himself on Warner Bros for Murs For President, and he turned in a big album to celebrate. There are a lot of ideas, a lot of big beats, a lot of targets. It’s a good record, but it feels like it’s a little much.
I went a little bit into Mayhem’s history the last time they came up, so I won’t repeat that here. I’ll just reiterate: these were bad people, and even this later version of the band contains folks like Hellhammer who have said terrible things and never really recanted past links to repugnant beliefs. I bought this album unaware of the band’s history outside of Vikernes and Euronymous. Knowing what I now know, I would have avoided it.
[Read More]Majestic. I’m just going to fuck this up if I try and write something.
Last time we had a track from this album, I expressed mystification that the Chemical Brothers had a moment. But you know what? This song is a fuckin’ force of nature, of course it was huge. Listen to it!
We’re big fans of noisy duos here at Five Songs, so of course Indian Handcrafts is up our alley. They’re more towards the Melvins end of things, putting them in the vicinity of Big Business more than anybody. Big stoner vibes, and huge riffs. It’s impressive that this is just a guitar and drums.
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