All Natural

New Bomb Turks, “Girl Can’t Help It”

Pissing Out The Poison is a compilation of the early 90s singles and miscellaneous appearances by the New Bomb Turks. As that’s their garage-iest period, this is my second favorite release by them. As you would expect from a comp, it’s pretty uneven, but they’re always bashing away, so it’s never boring.

Floor Baba, “Neon Sands”

There’s kind of a Prefuse 73 feel to this track, with the way that the bass line sounds kind of inverted in parts of it, and the initial spastic rhythms. As the track evolves, it kind of loses that feeling, but it’s kind of a fun connection to make at first.

Army of Juan, “Late Night Dining”

I wonder how many ska-punk bands put out one record in 1997 and were never heard from again? I’m sure there have been comparable fads in music, but it’s hard for me to think of something quite comparable in my lifetime, where a style peaked so hard and petered out so quickly. Grunge wasn’t the same - the peak lasted longer, and a number of the grunge bands continued being popular even post-peak (like Pearl Jam), not to mention important bands still being revered today (such as Nirvana).

They Might Be Giants, “The Mesopotamians”

A lethally catchy song, I’ll be humming this for the next several days. I feel like The Else gets really kind of ignored in the TMBG catalog. By that point, they were really kind of becoming known as a kids’ band, and they just slipped in this really lushly produced thing right in the middle of three kids’ albums.

[looks at “kids’”] That looks wrong. I think it’s right? Ain’t gonna look it up!

Pyrrhon, “The Invisible Hand Holds A Whip”

Every three years, discordant death metal masters Pyrrhon fire off a new album, and every three years, it whips. I first encountered them with their second record, The Mother of Virtues, and have eagerly followed them since then. While they were dropped by Relapse records after that masterwork, they haven’t slowed down. I recognize totally that this stuff is repellant and bizarre, but it’s compelling in ways I don’t totally understand.