Took a little break over the holiday. Why not! Anyway, I’m back, let’s see what we get!
Not bad! Tenement play melodic punk, I suppose you’d call it, although it’s really stretching the work “punk” pretty far. I guess it’s just kind of “rock” at this point. If you were to guess where they’re from, you might guess the Midwest, given the long pedigree for this type of music in that area. And you’d be right! You’re so smart, person who doesn’t exist!
[Read More]Goddamn, listen to those strings! With Cloud Nine, the Temptations laid down some of the building blocks of funk, as they departed from the traditional Motown sound and pointed the way to the 70s.
Indie pop band The xx kind of exploded out the door and were critical darlings right away with their electronic take on the genre, especially with the dual vocalists. And it’s here where I admit that a) I can never keep straight who The xx are and b) I clearly bought this at some point and I’m not entirely sure I’ve listened to it before. But I know I’ve read about them at various times! I totally didn’t have to look up stuff about them!
[Read More]This song is so stripped down that there aren’t even any keyboards on it. Unless you count them putting “dumb” into a sampler and using that. It’s proof that the alchemy of a drum machine and rapping really didn’t require anything else.
Sludge metal in the vein of Mastodon or Baroness, Black Tusk do a nice job on their second album of keeping up the energy and making sure the tunes are appropriately propulsive. While maybe not as memorable as the heights of those bands, it’s still fun stuff.
[Read More]Old Stax track here, from the mid-point of their Atlantic years.
This is a bonus track from the deluxe version of Southsiders, which is probably my second favorite Atmosphere album (after Seven’s Travels). There are some missteps in Atmosphere’s discography, with the records between those two being pretty uneven, but those are excellent.
[Read More]Pretty happy with today’s set. La Gritona is exactly the kind of band I had hoped to highlight here.
Atmosphere with Doom and Kool Keith guesting? That sounds amazing. Does it live up to it? Well, Doom is great! Solid song, overall.
Been a few months since we’ve heard from melodic punk rockers Samiam. This song comes from their fifth album, You Are Freaking Me Out, the last of what I consider to be their peak albums (along with Billy and Clumsy). This stuff is just musical comfort food to me.
[Read More]Happy Valentine’s Day! We’re going with a Special this day, searching using “love” in the old collection and then randomizing among those songs. It returned 500 songs, which makes me think it’s only the first 500 results. But whatever. Let’s hear what we got!
I kind of feel like, in tribute to the Ramones’ consistency and committment to making the same album over and over, I should just make every Ramones entry the same.
[Read More]Prog rock is a bit of a weird category for me. There are times that I really want to listen to it, and then the reality is often disappointing. Songs far too often take a back seat to just demonstrating technical prowess. Still, sometimes you just want something over the top, and prog rock goofballs Coheed & Cambria aren’t a bad choice. They spent more than a decade and seven albums making some big ol’ conceptual rock opera thing that frankly never made any sense to me. This track is from their first album after all of that, The Color Before the Sun, which is honestly more of the same, but not weighed down by as many pretentious trappings. This song is actually a relatively straightforward rocker.
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