Big Black

Frank Black and the Catholics, “I Gotta Move”

A thing I admire about Frank Black is that his songs always sound so distinctly like him. Whether with the Pixies, as a solo act, with the Catholics or whatever, he always sounds like Frank Black. It’s not just the voice, either, it’s his guitar, how he constructs songs, everything. His records might vary in quality and inspiration, but they always sound like they came from him.

Mule, “Lucky”

Every now and again, bands will fuse redneck aesthetics with various rock genres, to greater or lesser effect. In this case, Mule bolts that stuff onto noise rock, bolstered by the usual good engineering job by Steve Albini. I don’t think that it’s really inventive enough to make the three-piece lineup shine, and I’m not super attracted to the hillbilly stuff, so, uh, I guess this isn’t great.

Kings Destroy, “W2”

You know, there just aren’t that many metal songs about tax forms, so let’s enjoy this one.

The Beatles, “Here Comes The Sun”

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s been a while: it’s really disorienting listening to the Beatles with only one headphone in. I recommend it!

Big Black, “Dead Billy”

This song comes from the first Big Black release, Lungs (later collected with a couple other EPs on The Hammer Party). While it shows off Steve Albini’s dark sense of humor, the rest of his sound is still extremely embryonic here. This was a solo effort by him, and the lack of other contributors also helped produce the spare tunes.

Foetus, “Red and Black and Gray and White”

Soak is the most recent Foetus album, from 2013. I sort of don’t believe it’s going to be the last Foetus album, but maybe I’m wrong. At any rate, it carries on in his late career form, a howling whirlwind of orchestration, noise, and barely constrained chaos. It’s like a big band possessed by a demon.

Shabazz Palaces, “When Cats Claw”

Shabazz Palaces went to record a few bonus tracks for their 2017 album Quazarz vs. the Jealous Machines, but the sessions ended up going so well that they turned it into an entire companion album, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star. Given that both albums were recorded roughly at the same time, it’s hard to pick between them, so I’d recommend just listening to both.

Big Black, “I Can Be Killed”

From the first Big Black release, Lungs (later collected on The Hammer Party), this was all done entirely by Steve Albini. After this EP, Albini was able to put together an actual band, and the Big Black sound would come together. Despite that, you can still hear Albini’s approach developing on these songs, which read almost New Wave at times.

The Supremes, “A Breathtaking Guy”

Hell yeah!

IT STOPPED AT THREE DAYS, WHO COULD HAVE GUESSED? Eh, whatever, it’s not like I said I’m going to do these every day or anything. At least, not after I edit this place. NEW STREAK HERE!

Negativland, “Keep Rollin”

Negativland’s No Business is a meditation on copyright, art, and the nature of culture in general. Or, more succinctly, it’s a Negativland album. On the spectrum of experimental noise to something that could be described as music, it falls closer to the musical end, making it one of the easier Negativland albums to absorb. Which isn’t to say it’s easy listening. By the time they made this record, they had decades of experience in assembling these kinds of oddball things, so they had gotten very good at the sound manipulation required.

Here is today’s music. Some real ugliness, in the cover art of the first album and the lyrics of the last one.

Unsane, “Organ Donor”

I could have sworn we had hit Unsane before, but the theoretically infallible Five Songs Index says otherwise, so here we are. Unsane were a noise rock trio from New York, part of the same general underground as bands like Helmet, Cop Shoot Cop, and others. I was huge into that entire scene, and really liked Unsane a lot. That, however, wasn’t really what they were known for with most people. No, what they were known for was the cover art on their debut album, depicting a decapitated person on subway tracks. They would continue with the violent album covers, covers which set the mood for the dark music within. And that dark tone affected the band as well, with their original drummer dying of a heroin overdose.

Just a quick entry today, but some fun songs.

Big Black, “Seth”

An early song from Big Black, this was on the EP Bulldozer, the first one that featured Santiago Durango and so is really the first real recording from them. This song was later found on The Hammer Party, which collected the first couple (or three, on CD) EPs. It’s an interesting document of a band that is kind of finding their sound, and there are some strong songs on the collection.

Music!

The Microphones, “You’ll Be In The Air”

There are going to be a fair number of artists where I exhaust what I know about them or have to say about them fairly quickly. The Microphones are one of them. You can check out the previouslys down below for my previous tepid takes!

Overall, this is one of my concerns of this project - will I just run out of things to say about everything? Will it just devolve into random junk? Probably. I could critique the exact song in question, I suppose, but I’m not sure I really have the musical vocabulary to make that work consistently.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve listened to “!!!!!!” by The Roots, which is the song I get if I go to all my songs and hit play without turning on shuffle. I’ll probably get really confused if and when I ever hit it legitimately. Here’s today’s tunes.

Johnnie Taylor, “I Ain’t Particular”

I kind of wish I was a better historian of these old soul records. I’m mostly familiar with the big names, but I can’t tell you anything much about a lot of these folks. It’s a shame, as I’m sure there’s some great stories for many of them. Well, at any rate, this is from the first Stax/Volt collection, coming at the very end of the Atlantic run (this is actually the last track from that set).