9353

Yautja, “The Spectacle”

Yautja are chameleons with different styles coming to the fore in their albums, but this song is also kind of a chameleon. There’s some heavy noise rock here, some grind-y bits, but with those sections kind of distinct here, shifting between them easily.

Elbow, “Leaders of the Free World”

A rock song like this really needs to justify six minutes.

9353, “Famous Last Words”

I do think it’s pretty funny when American punk bands have accents like this. It seems particularly odd when it’s this far removed from the original punk scene.

Leatherface, “Mush”

Well, we’re back at Leatherface, and I once again confront my opinion that this basically sounds just like late 80s/early 90s southern California punk, except for the vocals. And I’m not wild about the vocals. We need to get Dave Smalley involved here!

Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”

I think it’s easy to be cynical about overnight successes and huge pop hits, especially when your taste sort of runs towards the less popular end of the pool. If you’re not really that much of a fan of popular genres, the simplest take is to just assume that popular songs are all pandering garbage, made by bloodless producers milking the latest fad for all its worth. And sure, there’s plenty of pre-fab trash that gets popular, but that cynical take is really a dead end. Who cares? Where does that cynicism lead you? If you don’t like pop music, you can just ignore it, but that’s true of any genre. The popularity or otherwise of a song does nothing to change its artistic merits, and the only question worth evaluating is what a song does for you or those around you.

9353, “East of Sudan”

This is really pretty avant-garde for the punk scene of 1984. I mean, sure, there were plenty of post-punk bands working in kind of adjacent spaces, but this is still pretty far out there.

Imarhan, “Ehad Wa Dagh”

We’ve had Imarhan on here before, but as always, I feel kind of inadequate writing about bands from other cultures that I’m not familiar with. Sure, I can write about, say, punk bands from the US plenty, but I guess I’m not really up to the task of writing about a rock band from Algeria, esepcially as they’re clearly blending their own influences with those of rock. It’s very cool stuff, though.

Earth Wind & Fire, “Help Somebody”

There are several bands that I really only knew from later radio hits that were on when I was a kid. So, to me, they were just these bands that had some corny hits that I didn’t think much about. Kool & the Gang are absolutely in that cateogry, and Earth Wind & Fire is another. This is both an unfair evaluation of the hits that they had on the radio, but also fails to account for the long careers of these bands. Take EWF’s first album! It’s a fantastic blend of funk, R&B, jazz, and rock, and is incredibly impressive for a debut.