Baroness

One thing about Five Songs that I always appreciate is that it always makes me stay in the habit of putting music on when I can. There’s just something about always thinking “oh, I could write a post” that sometimes decays into “oh, I could put on some tunes” that I appreciate.

Lungfish, “Descender”

I know what the Five Songs party line is on Lungfish (kinda boring), so I’m going to skip that and just kind of focus on a sense memory. Specifically, I can remember wandering around my college campus not long after getting this album. I was trying to develop a taste for it, so I wasn’t doing much other than listening to it and walking around. But it was a beautiful fall day, and I kept walking past groups of kids having a great time outdoors. Three different frisbee games were going on. A hacky sack circle. A volleyball game had broken out. The breeze was blowing, the sun was shining, I was bumping tunes, and I was just kind of watching people having a great time. So even though I am not wild about the album, an association with a perfect fall day from one of the happiest periods of my life still clings to it. This album sounds like youthful innocence and hope. And is also kinda boring.

HELLO FROM THE FUTURE

It’s time to get ahead on writing this blog. Gonna try and keep a strong update pace. There’s a virtue in steadiness and predictability, which will help me build an audience. Which I will absolutely fail to do because the blog is ofputting and strange, the music is unappealing, and I am blazingly inept at self-promotion.

HIT IT PLEXASAURUS REX!

Man or Astro-Man?, “U-235/PU-239”

A relative rarity here, with mostly instrumental surf/sci-fi rockers Man or Astro-Man? turning in some vocals. But it’s all reverbed out and the drums are echo-y, so it’s all good with me. I also just learned that they put out a record in 2013, time to go check that one out.

Hammerhead, “Evil Twin”

Hammerhead’s initial three-album run with Amphetamine Reptile is probably my favorite on the label, and it’s the second and third albums (Into The Vortex and Duh, The Big City) that are the real prizes. The first record is good, but the latter two are two of my favorite noise rock albums by anybody ever. But it wasn’t like Into the Vortex just thundered out of the sky out of nowhere. It was heralded by the 1993 EP Evil Twin, which showed how much of a step forward Hammerhead had taken. What stands out to me is how propulsive it sounds. Hammerhead is going places, and nothing is going to stop them, and they will just run you over if you’re in the way. That sense of groove moderates the aggression into something that is compulsively listenable to me.

U.S. Maple, “Rice Ain’t Afraid of Nothing”

U.S. Maple more or less perfected devolved rock, where the songs are recognizable as being rock songs, but the form of them is perverted to the straining point. Any more mutated, and it probably ceases to be something you could credibly describe as being in the same genre as, I dunno, the Dave Matthews Band (to choose a band that was popular when U.S. Maple made this record). We need these sort of tricksters, as they set the boundaries of what is acceptable by pushing them further out.

Baroness, “Jake Leg”

The second Baroness record, Blue Record, seems to my ears like it’s a more confident album than the first one. Alongside that confidence is a willingness to make things a little prettier. It’s a little more prone to doing stuff that soars just a bit more than the previous album.

Pusha T, “Nosetalgia”

Damn, that guitar squeal, so good. And Kendrick coming in on “you wanna see a dead body?” is absolutely incredible.

The Sound Stylistics, “Get Ya Some”

From the Mocambo Funk Forty Fives, a comp collecting, uh, funk forty fives from Mocambo Records. The label is a reliable source for this kind of stuff, so this collection is a very fun time. Listen to this, the flute lead is delightful.

J Church, “Violent Motions Created”

This is a darker palette than J Church usually work with, both in the music and the vocal delivery. But, as always with them, their instincts for not letting a song drag on serve them well. Get it out there, get the point across, get on to the next thing. You want more? Listen to it again!

Green Day, “Hitchin’ a Ride”

Nimrod is an uneven record, but I really like the high points of it, and this is one of them, I think. It’s nice to hear them expirimenting with their formula some, as Insomniac really did not at all.

The Budos Band, “Arcane Rambler”

Burnt Offering found the Budos Band referencing hard rock pretty explicitly in their music, and it was a really nice breath of fresh air. The following album returned to their numbering system, and V represents kind of the midpoint between III and Burnt Offering. There are still some of those same hard rock riffs here and there, but the Afrobeat is clearly back in the driver’s seat. It’s a great album from a band that have really taken it up a notch in their last few albums.

Crackerbash, “Bad Karma”

I know we’ve had Crackerbash on here before, but by way of reminder, they’re a forgotten punk/power pop band out of Portland who were active for just a little while in the early 90s, producing a very good album and outstanding EP, along with a few singles. Then, right as the music scene in the Pacific Northwest blew up, they disappeared. Like fellow Portland band Pond, their stuff stands out by having more of a melodic sense than some of the more dour bands of that time and place.

WE’RE BACK AT IT! HIT IT, PLEXASAURUS REX!

Baroness, “Rays on Pinion”

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!

I was at Shut Up & Sit Down Expo over the weekend, and it was fun, although I think that that was mostly because it was a getaway weekend for Megan and I. But, it was a good pretext to get out of town! Also, somebody asked me for my autograph. Super cool!

Today’s tunes.

Ministry, “I Prefer”

We’ve now gone back in Ministry’s catalog far enough to reach their first good album. The flaccid synth-pop of With Sympathy and stilted semi-aggro synths of Twitch had finally metastasized into the aggressive Land of Rape and Honey. This, arguably, is the most industrial of their albums, with less of the metallic riffing of their later stuff but all of the mechanical pounding you might want. I haven’t listend to this in ages, I should give it a spin.