Russian Circles usually gets tagged with the post-rock label, which doesn’t really hang together to me. There’s nothing really post- about most of their stuff. To me, this is really just straight up instrumental metal, and it’s faaaantastic at that. They’ve been cranking out fantastic albums for years now, and it seems like it would get tired, but it absolutely does not. This is from the magnificent Guidance, which is as good a place to start as any.
[Read More]Third month in a row without missing a day! 94 day streak going here. NOT BAD AT ALL.
Well, here’s a ridiculous album from 2001. While obsession with sex has a long and storied history in music, it’s seldom quite so forward as with this record, and the focus on porn in particular is relatively unusual. But it’s not unheard of in hip-hop either, not with Too $hort around, so this isn’t even really breaking new ground. At any rate, outside of the outlandish lyrics, the record itself is a bit of a time capsule of that time in rap.
[Read More]The Reindeer Section is a Scottish supergroup, featuring members of Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Arab Strap, Mogwai, and others. The resulting album actually sounds a lot more coherent than what you normally expect from a supergroup, primarily because the songs were all written by Gary Lightbody (of Snow Patrol). The rest of the folks here fill out the roster, and they do it quite ably.
[Read More]Five Songs is back from the holidays! I’m going to try and keep to a more regular posting schedule around here, rather than the very erratic one from the last several months. It would be nice to get three or four a week at a minimum, anyway. Let’s hear what we get for the first one of 2019!
I’m sure I’ve posted this sentiment multiple times, but I’ll suggest it again: this might be the biggest hit we’ve had on here (a mere 2.7 billion views on YouTube!). I trust I don’t need to really introduce this song. But this is what an infectious pop song should sound like, and it’s delightful.
[Read More]Because they hung around so long and turned into basically Rolling Stones Inc., a licensing corporation with a neglected music production arm that would occasionally squeeze out a desultory album, it’s easy for folks of my generation (old, but not super old) to lose track of the fact that for for a while there in the late 60s and early 70s, the Rolling Stones were pretty amazing. The run from Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street is one of the foundations of modern rock, and still sounds pretty great today.
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