From the first Big Black release, Lungs (later collected on The Hammer Party), this was all done entirely by Steve Albini. After this EP, Albini was able to put together an actual band, and the Big Black sound would come together. Despite that, you can still hear Albini’s approach developing on these songs, which read almost New Wave at times.
Hell yeah!
[Read More]Somehow, 23 years before their first record, Prince laid a pretty savage burn on LCD Soundsystem.
Jawbox put together a comp, My Scrapbook Of Fatal Accidents, which gathered together most of their non-album releases in one place. There’s some solid stuff on it, and I recommend it for Jawbox fans. What we have here is one of the real oddities, a cover of the Cure’s “Meathook”, which serves best as a companion piece to their cover of Tori Amos’s “Cornflake Girl”.
[Read More]Before Mary Timony formed the brilliant Helium (and Wild Flag and Ex Hex!), she was in Autoclave, who put out a couple of EPs for Dischord Records which were later collected on a single comp. It’s an interesting piece of history, and for Timony fans, I do think it’s worth picking up, but it’s not on the same level as her later work. It IS extremely early 90s Dischord, though.
[Read More]Imagine having the confidence to open an album this way. A distant, chilly vibe, acutal ocean noises, a complete change a minute in in both mood and sound, no vocals until the last five seconds. Just bonkers. It was a true declaration of intent, though, as the whole album basically fulfilled the promise of this opening track.
One of the fun things about The Ugly Organ, if “fun” is the right word, is that they made great use of the cello in order to really fill out the sounds on the record. Tim Kasher’s songs are very good, as always, and the album is one of my favorites of theirs.
[Read More]New year, same old flaky schedule! My apologies, we here at Five Songs were on the road intending on keeping the rock going, even lugging our laptop all over the place. But, alas, Plexasaurus Rex back home decided to die, and needed a reboot, and nobody was around to push the button. So, a bit of a break. We’re back! We’re ready to rumble! HIT IT, PLEXASAURUS REX!
I was playing Rock Band with the kids the other day, and a couple of Green Day tracks popped up. The kids declared that all Green Day songs sounded the same, and I’ll be honest, I thought I had a couple more years before they started roasting my taste in music. Disheartening! I grounded them for a decade.
[Read More]The Presidents were viewed as a novelty act, which is kind of inescapable when your hits are things like “Lump” and “Peaches”. And, yeah, there’s a lot of breezy nonesense in Ballew’s lyrics. But there’s some genuinely charming stuff in there, some real wit, and of course, some self-deprecation like in this tune. But, more importantly, the songs themselves were crisp, memorable, and catchy, and that means that their rock/pop/punk melange is just plain fun.
[Read More]I always enjoy the manic stuff when they really roll it out. A nice performance from Marty Beller on the drums here.
DJ Muggs was always the best part of Cypress Hill, and it’s nice to hear him working with Roc Marciano on Kaos, which is a solid pairing. Marciano does good work, and Muggs rolls out a bunch of his signature claustrophobic sounds on the album.
[Read More]The debut record for Man Or Astro-Man? (Is It Man…Or Astro-Man?) set the template for the rest of their career. All reverbed out and surf-y, with a thick layer of retro science fiction. And they would cheerfully mine the same vein for their entire career, while still somehow basically managing to sound fresh. It’s a neat trick!
The Maggot was the first of a trio of albums that the Melvins recorded for Ipecac after getting bounced off their major label, following a brief tour with Amphetamine Reptile. All the albums were recorded at the same time, but with a different focus. The Maggot is the most Melvins-y of the three, being pretty much wall-to-wall sludge. It’s also tracked super annoyingly, with each song being divided in half (this, technically, is only the first half of this song).
[Read More]The deluxe reissues of Costello’s albums are mostly not worth it. There are some highlights from the bonus material, but you’re just better off listening to the actual album again.
This entire album is just so charming. It’s really hard to think about how it might possibly be improved, this is just power pop perfection.
Now we’re talkin’! Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables is a singular achievement: deeply political, savagely sarcastic, fantastically well-written, and simultaneously both alien and incredibly familiar. It’s one of the albums that really kicked off hardcore, and judging by the kids walking around in Kennedys gear, it still resonates today.
[Read More]We’re in 1964 here, with a well-named song, as this really is quite a stomp. The organ is just fantastic.
I think that more than half of the times in my life that I’ve wound up in some stranger’s car, aimlessly wandering towards or away from a party, either this album or Paul’s Boutique was playing. It’s basically the soundtrack to unfocused teenage ennui to me.
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