Bob Marley

Panopticon, “Bodies Under The Falls”

This is one of the three epic (10+ minute) songs on Kentucky, where Panopticon really lets the black metal blast out. But even among the fury, he takes the time to have that interlude in the middle. It’s just a super interesting fusion. Listen to the…flutes? pipes?…on the outro. Just good stuff.

Ezra Furman, “Love You So Bad”

I knew exactly zip about Ezra Furman when his 2018 album Transangelic Exodus showed up on some end of year lists. I know slightly more than zip now, with the thing I’ve learned: this album rips. Listen to this, this is basically a Cars song but with cello, which is bitchin'.

The Baseball Project, “Don’t Call Them Twinkies”

There’s a Venn diagram you can draw, with “Baseball Nerd” as one circle and “Seattle Music Nerd” in the other. In that fantastic overlap sits The Baseball Project and your faithful Five Songs correspondant. Where else can you go for a lovely rock song that name checks Zoilo Versalles? Just the best.

Uniform, “Habit”

And from that piece of charm, we move to the menacing Uniform, sounding like Thaw-era Foetus here. All growling noise and lyrics spit through gritted teeth. The sort of song with a relentless pursuit of “ugly” as an aesthetic.

Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Midnight Ravers”

By and large, I tend to prefer the early material from Marley, where there’s some more ska rhythms as opposed to reggae. Of course, that doesn’t mean that his later material isn’t brilliant. At any rate, Catch a Fire is pretty early, his first album for Island Records, and it’s the one that really put him on the map for most folks. It’s a tremendous record, and probably where I’d recommend folks start with to move beyond Legend.

Six songs!

Lostbone, “Destroy What Destroys You”

uhhhuhuhuhhuhuh…lostbone

Pretty sure I ended up with this as a result of a grab bag of some variety or another. Among all the ways of discovering music, grab bags are certainly one of them. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually discovered a band I love from one of them. I suppose I should try a bunch more just in case.

Also, this appears to be a repeat. Onward!

Today!

The White Stripes, “Suzy Lee”

From their first, most primitive record, the White Stripes nevertheless still sounded like themselves right from the beginning. Some of that is Jack White’s distinctive yelp, some of that is the spare blues, some of it is the plodding drums. But they’re instantly recognizable.

Crudbump, “England (Last Year)”

It takes somebody pretty sharp to write something this aggressively dumb.

Bob Marley, “Gonna Get You”

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m crediting everything to Bob Marley even when it’s credited to him and the Wailers. I’m erasing the Wailers just to make my categorization easier. That makes me shitty. Always nice to listen to Marley, Wailers or no.

Good stuff today!

Devo, “Uncontrollable Urge”

The first track from the first album, here’s how Devo first planted their flag. And listen to how sharp they sounded right out of the gate! My god, this is such a tight song. For people of my age, who really only knew Devo as the weirdos who did “Whip It”, discovering that they had such great songs in their past was a real shock.

Today!

Bob Marley, “Fussing and Fighting”

I find myself listening to early Bob Marley more than his later, better produced stuff. Something about the raw nature of these recordings really appeals to me.

Buzzkill, “Me”

Are Buzzkill sending up Slint here? I think they might be sending up Slint. We haven’t had Slint yet. I used to sit around in the dark in my dorm room in college and listen to Slint’s Spiderland and just feel so goddamn sorry for myself. It’s really good, y’all!

Music!

Bob Marley, “Exodus”

From the album of the same name, Exodus was recorded in London after Marley lived there for a couple years after surviving a murder attempt. It’s a strong album, featuring some of his most famous songs, and should be on the list for anybody interested in reggae.

Chevelle, “Prove To You”

This is a pretty convincing Helmet impression.

Ice Cube, “Until We Rich”

This is from War & Peace, Vol. 2 (The Peace Disc), a very late career album, about which the less said, the better. It’s amazing how much less dangerous Cube sounds here than in his prime.

I do love it when something random to even me pops up. Listen along, won’t you?

Bob Marley & The Wailers, “Feel Alright”

This song is part of those “Complete Wailers” compilations, this coming from the period from 1967-1972. That makes it an early track, possibly pre-dating any of their full albums. As always with many Jamaican artists, their discography can be very confusing to try and get on top of after the fact.

Prompted by it coming up during an off-blog shuffle, at some point The Beatles are going to come up here. I have all their albums, after all. Can you even find them on YouTube? I don’t know, I guess I’ll find out. Today is not that day, though.

Agalloch, “…And The Great Cold Death of the Earth”

At some point, black metal experiments with enough other instrumentation and flirts with folk enough that it really stops being metal, doesn’t it? Agalloch sort of sets out to answer that question, with this track being a good example. There’s really not a whole lot that ties it to black metal, but the band is still considered to be at least adjacent to that community. Part of it is the themes that Agalloch writes about, which are similar to some of the things explored by black metal bands. But if you played this for just somebody random who is knowledgable about music, it would be a while before they came up with black metal as a descriptor.