During the early 90s, parallel to grunge, there was a growing movement of indie pop bands that didn’t make a lot of headway, but were a recognizable subculture. As the 90s went on, a billion of these pillowy soft indie bands popped up. The pressure from all these bands ensured that, eventually, one or more of them would break through (it was Death Cab for Cutie, mostly).
[Read More]Back in the swing of things, the ol’ muscles are starting to come back! And I 100% mail it in on a couple of these songs. It happens!
I got nuthin’. Kind of a post-rock/math rock sort of thing going on here. I like it! Sometimes Past Josh makes good decisions!
I find Common to be a little uneven, with Finding Forever being one of the spotty records. There are high points to it, like the fat synths behind the verses on this song, for instance. But when you compare it to its immediate predecessor, Be, it just feels like it’s a half a step behind.
[Read More]Well, that was fun! Nothing like coming back after a big hiatus. I mean, the music was still the same routine, and I’m just typing the same nonsense, so…uh, why do I do this again?
There are times when I end up with a record, and can’t figure out where it came from or why I have it. This record, I can’t figure out where it came from, but can at least can figure out why I have it. I’m sure I read a good review of it, and I’m just a sucker for instrumental funk, so here we are. Good tune! I should listen to the rest of this, and I would, except I’m going to listen to five random songs. Well, four more.
[Read More]WE’RE BACK AT IT! HIT IT, PLEXASAURUS REX!
This is how the first Baroness album opens up. While they’re usually grouped with metal, and in particular often brought up in the same breath as Mastodon, they’re not really the same thing. Yeah, there is some serious riffage in here, but the separation between this and, say, some of noise rock or post-punk isn’t exactly clear. Music categorizing is a sloppy thing, y’all. Anyway, this album is good! Listen to it!
[Read More]So, back in May, I stopped posting to Five Songs because YouTube were being incredible bastards (they still are), and I didn’t really want to contribute to them in even the puny, pathetic way that I was. I needed to find a new solution to stream music, with my criteria being:
The first of these is pretty easy, but means I can’t just Frankenstein something together with a bunch of services. Uploading cuts out pretty much all of the big streaming services like Spotify. SoundCloud has copyright controls, so that’s out. And that leaves YouTube, which, uh, fails the last of these tests. As a result, I gave up for a while.
[Read More]Power metal, as a genre, usually features lethal amounts of cheese. By and large, I don’t mind some cheese with my music every now and again, but it has to be a rare treat, and I usually don’t myself craving it. But beyond the inherent corniness of the genre, the songs usually don’t appeal to me that much, being kind of heavy on wailing (both from the singer and lead guitarist). As a result, I mostly tend to avoid power metal. So, I’m not sure how I ended up with this. I must have read a good review somewhere? Or sometimes, I like to sample records from genres that I don’t love just to see if maybe my tastes have changed.
[Read More]Every so often, rock “comes back”, brought back into cultural relevance by some release that critics declare revinvents the genre. Meanwhile, of course, rock never goes anywhere between these “breakthrough” albums, mainly because old boring people never shut up about it.
(cough)
Anyway, most of the time, these albums are often pretty darn good. Is This It, for instance, is a pretty tasty album! It doesn’t break any ground, not really, but it’s energetic and plenty fun.
[Read More]We open and close today pretty funky! And, you know, track four is built on the Amen break, so I’ll count that too!
Parliament’s first album was in 1970, and Medicaid Fraud Dogg came out in 2018. When I think about the idea that I might do the same job for 48 years, I can’t really wrap my head around it. And I got an early start in my career! Sure, this isn’t George Clinton’s best work. But nevertheless, it’s still impressive.
[Read More]It’s been a while since we’ve had Common Market, so a little re-introduction: this is a Seattle duo, featuring Sabzi (more famously known as half of the Blue Scholars) and RA Scion. Given that it’s Sabzi on the beats, it’s going to share a certain feel with the Blue Scholars, but Scion is different enough from Geologic that they don’t sound totally the same.
[Read More]Here’s today, but check out the bonus song I link down below.
The second Goats album seemed like it was chasing the trends of early 90s rap, with plenty of stabs towards rock, jazz, and other types of hybrid styles. It doesn’t hang together particularly well, and it’s mostly forgettable. There are some fun moments on the album, but overall, it’s a miss.
The opener to the second side of Flood, the album that really put the group on the map. And while it has some truly great tunes on that first half, my HOT TAKE here is that the second half is only so-so. It’s that second half that puts this album nowhere near the top of my favorite albums from TMBG.
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