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Obits, “Spun Out”

Who is making music with this kind of reverbed out surf guitar these days? Honest question, I have no idea, and I like it a lot. Comment down below! Or don’t! I’m not the boss of you.

People Under The Stairs, “Montego Slay”

This song is actually assembled out of a bunch of micro samples of music from commercials for Jamaican tourism, which is pretty impressive given how coherent it all sounds. This sort of careful, detailed assembling is something that always impresses the hell out of me.

Modest Mouse, “Fire It Up”

I really need to go back and re-evaluate this record. Given how much I like the previous three albums from them (and the various EPs), it wasn’t really fair to kind of dismiss the record after only a couple listens. Sometimes it’s easy to just move on when a record doesn’t click right away, especially for a band that you love, because you expect to love it right away.

They Might Be Giants, “Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head”

While the first TMBG album certainly sounds primitive compared to where they’d end up, there are still plenty of their hallmarks present even with this early song. They were capable of writing catchy tunes from the beginning, they had the clever lyrics, and the charm was certianly present. The first album has too many incidents of wackiness, too many throwaways to be really great, but there are some fine tunes on it.

Bathory, “Song To Hall Up High”

Black metal pioneer Bathory (which was pretty much just Quorthon) pivoted away from the pure black metal of their earlier albums towards Viking metal, more or less establishing that genre too. Hammerheart is one of the key albums of that genre, and if you wanted more bombast in your black metal, Bathory can help you out.

Nine Inch Nails, “Gave Up”

After Pretty Hate Machine, there wasn’t any new music from NiN for several years, due to label disputes. When the dry spell lifted, it brought a six-song EP (not counting the two bonus tracks that weren’t really connected) of fury. Broken sounded to my ears like a totally new direction for the band, which was actually OK with me, as I had really moved away from industrial dance. It really was a preview of what The Downward Spiral was, and is just an excellent set of tunes.

Helmet, “Better”

Helmet’s debut album on Amphetamine Reptile Records was a savage and self-assured record, and they backed it up by touring heavily and blowing people away. Then, Nirvana blew up huge and the major labels started looking for heavy rock acts to sign to satisfy a market suddenly hungry for them. Every single one of them landed on Helmet, and a ferocious bidding war erupted. Interscope were the winners, signing Helmet to a million dollar deal and sending them into the studio. As a teaser, they released a CD single with three of the songs from the upcoming album (including this one) along with one live track, and I got to see what Helmet would sound like with serious dollars behind them. The answer? Helmet!

Son Volt, “Back Into Your World”

Can I talk about some of the strange artifacts that my music collection has accumulated over the years? Oh, that’s right, you can’t stop me! The process of ripping CDs (often with dodgy info databases), matching via iTunes and Amazon Music, storing and then re-downloading from Amazon Music, moving from computer to computer, and a bunch of other things have caused mutations in a lot of this stuff. It’s mostly harmless, but every now and again a tic is interesting or odd. This album has one of those mutations: the album name is recorded as Straightaways (Warner Bros) for some reason, suggesting that someone once input it that way into a database and these tracks picked it up. And you may think, well, did they release this album on multiple labels? Nope, every version in Discogs is from Warner Bros. Somebody apparently just annotated all their album names with labels for some goblin reason, and it got swept up into some aggregated database, and now it’s here perplexing me.

Built to Spill, “Conventional Wisdom”

Probably the best song on You In Reverse, it’s also one of the longest. But Built to Spill were often at their best when they take the time to really elaborate on a melody and play around with it. The first half of this song sounds like a good Dinosaur Jr. track, and then it mutates into a very Built to Spill thing during the second half, and both halves are very enjoyable.

BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah, “Stark’s Reality”

This tune is very like David Axelrod, especially in the engineering of the recording and the strings. I would have loved to hear Ghostface actually rhyme on top of it.

Oranssi Pazuzu, “Uraanisula”

Looks like the first time we’ve had Oranssi Pazuzu around here - they’re a Finnish black metal band that plays around a lot more with psychedelic stuff than a lot of other bands. They can sometimes feel pretty spacey as a consequence, which can be fun, or maybe a little proggy. I guess you can just listen to this! There are many variations of people howling over guitars out there, folks.

Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Hell of a Hat”

Let’s Face It is the album that broke through for the Bosstones, but I think their previous record (Question the Answers) is easily their best. The songwriting is both sharper and rougher, which suits them well. Take this song, for instance. The “sharpest motherfucker” stuff leading into the chorus is great, they aren’t afraid of some huge guitars during the chorus, they have a noisy breakdown to conclude things, and this song that could have just been a smirk is actually much more interesting than it initially seemed.

The Maytals, “Daddy”

The first Maytals album, 1965’s The Sensational Maytals, was later re-issued with a bunch of extras and alternate takes as Sensational Ska Explosion. The extra junk is unnecessary, but the album is a great view into the early career of one of ska and reggae’s great acts. As this was very early in the development of the style, there is a fair bit of R&B on the album, such as this track.