Bob Marley

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.

OutKast, “Chonkyfire”

The conclusion to the classic Aquemini, the record where OutKast fulfilled their promise and delivered one of the greatest hip-hop records ever. That assertion is not diminished at all by the observation that it’s not entirely clear if it’s their best album. The number of artists who can make a legitimate claim to having made two all-time albums in their genre is a tiny number indeed.

James Brown, “The Payback”

I see what you’re doing shuffle, trying to slyly put forward a titan in a particular genre to imply that maybe there are lots of artists in the “two all-time albums” category. But here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s true of Brown. Obviously an incredible artist, and his work is foundational to funk and all. But his albums were a real mixed bag, with filler frequently padding things out. His live albums were generally his best work, because they tended to be greatest hits records. Or a comp like Star Time. But I don’t think it’s fair to include that in a greatest album discussion, so Brown kind of misses that criteria.

Cobalt, “Gin”

Gin, that’s a very good idea.

Television, “Friction”

Forever the song before “Marquee Moon”.

The Beatles, “I Me Mine”

We’re skewing old today, which is fine, because I am old. So old.

Fine, I’ll say something more: Let It Be has some memorable songs, but there’s a lot of wankery on it and it’s kind of a shame that their discography ends with this instead of Abbey Road.

Miles Davis, “Bitches Brew”

Woo, I am seriously unequipped to comment on this. Kinda feel like I should call it a day.

Butthole Surfers, “Human Cannonball”

We’re with Locust Abortion Technician here, part of the great Surfers run prior to ending up on Capitol Records, somehow. It’s a record that just wanders wherever the band chooses with no particular regard to genre boundaries or anything else, something that can be very difficult to pull off but I wish more bands did.

Calexico, “Voices in the Field”

For a split second, at the beginning of this track, there’s a burly menace to the sound that the seasoned Five Songs reader/listener would suspect is going to descend into some nightmare basement howling and guitarpocalypse. But no, it’s just Calexico being a little dramatic at the start of this tune.

Calexico has always taken inspiration from their surroundings, and they’ve taken on the habit of recording their albums in different places in order to change up that inspiration. As a result, they’ve moved away some from the habitual desert sounds some on their latest records.

The Nation of Ulysses, “Cool Senior High School (Fight Song)”

Back in the day, there were troglodytes on Usenet that hated the Nation of Ulysses for being too arty, too pretentious, just too much. How stupid is that? This shit rocks, people are dumb.

Death Cab For Cutie, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”

OK, you’ve all heard this song a billion times, on radio stations, as various crappy covers, and as the background music to a weepy scene on a middlebrow TV drama. So, whatever. What I want to talk about is this bit from the Wikipedia entry on the song, which I went to go look at to see how high this thing charted (which I no longer care about).

Dance Hall Crashers, “All Mine”

Oops! All harmonies!

Holy Fuck, “The Pulse”

Holy Fuck play a sort of instrumental rock that, in its use of primitive electronics and hypnotic grooves, has more than a little in common with krautrock. It’s really delightful stuff, a recognition that some blips and a bitchin’ beat will take you a long ways.

Idles, “Mother”

I think the last couple times Idles has come up, I’ve mostly waxed on about how punk this record is. And, you know - it really is. There’s an immediacy and urgency to this that really calls back to the spirit of punk. This is one of those albums that just gets better the more you listen to it.

Gorilla Biscuits, “High Hopes”

Gorilla Biscuits were one of the most influential hardcore bands, and their self-titled record set the stage for Start Today, which inspired tons of followers. This song, from that self-titled record, is a good example of how they were still pretty raw, but you could really hear the potential. Because this is still pretty straight-forward, it’s aged pretty well.

Prefuse 73, “Expressing Views is Obviously Illegal”

The third Prefuse 73 record, Surrounded by Silence, found Scott Herren starting to really branch out from the micro-samples and glitchy stuff that really made his name. He had a bunch of guest rappers on the record and generally tried to broaden his sonic palette. That said, there were still plenty of tracks that sounded like his classic sound, like this one.

Bob Marley, “Keep On Moving”

This comes from the second collection of Bob Marley’s singles collection, The Complete Bob Marley & The Wailers. The second collection is called Soul Revolution, and I think I generally prefer the previous volume on the whole. Of course, it’s all great, and it’s a shame these collections aren’t still in print, they’re excellent.

Explosions In The Sky, “The Birth And Death Of The Day”

I have to say, while I think that Godspeed You! Black Emperor is probably the platonic ideal of post-rock bands, this band/track name combo here is really incredible form. If you give these names to an informed music listener, they’re going to guess post-rock pretty much every time. It sounds exactly like you’d expect.

Negativland, “I Am God”

It’s always kind of a difficult thing to categorize Negativland as music. Usually, they’re more performance art who happens to use audio as their medium. There are exceptions in their catalog, though. Escape From Noise has plenty of things on it that you can characterize as songs, fractured as most of them are. Free, their full album that followed up the whole U2 imbroglio, is maybe the most musical thing they’ve ever put together. Which isn’t to say it’s full of toe-tapping tunes. But hey, this song has a beat, and you can dance to it! Not bad for an album which is mostly a meditation on free will and freedom in general.