Built to Spill -

Five Songs Special, 10/16/2017

Posted on October 16, 2017 | Joshua Buergel

Happy Birthday, Megan! Today’s just about giving her songs that will make her happy. It’s super difficult to just limit this to five songs, for the record.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, “Orange”

From one of the albums that we played the most after we first met, it’s difficult to pick just one song from the record. It’s really best enjoyed as an entire album, but I went with the title track mostly because I love the breakdown in the middle of the song so much. This marks the first appearance of the JSBX in this thing, but I’ll talk more about them during a non-special blog. Also, the version of this song I picked is not great quality, but fuck it, it’s still plenty filthy.

Five Songs, 6/7/2017

Posted on June 7, 2017 | Joshua Buergel

Time to check in on analytics. It says here I’m consistently above 10 people a day. Not bad! If you’re one of those 10 people, feel free to let me know down below. Or not, it’s cool, I love talking about music to myself. Speaking of music…

Built to Spill, “The Weather”

The closer for Ancient Melodies of the Future, this almost sounds more like a Belle and Sebastian song at times instead of a Built to Spill song. Compared to monumental closers like “Broken Chairs” or “Untrustable Pt. 2”, this song comes off as limp. In fact, the lack of epics like those two songs are one of the reasons Ancient Melodies is not as great as the preceding albums.

Five Songs, 6/2/2017

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Joshua Buergel

I think there’s something goofy about the shuffle algorithm they’re using at Amazon. I’ve seen it pick the same song from the same band multiple times, and for now, I’m treating that as a glitch and reloading things. I don’t consider that cheating. I have to bring you all novel stuff!

Forest Swords, “Panic”

Hey, something pretty new! This was released less than a month ago. Forest Swords makes atmospheric music that invariably sounds like a soundtrack pretty much at all times. I haven’t had that much time to delve too deeply into this new album yet, but I like what I hear so far. The horn at the end of this song in particular sounds great.

Five Songs, 4/14/2017

Posted on April 15, 2017 | Joshua Buergel

Let’s get started! I assume everybody has read the intro, because I posted it right below, but briefly: I’m going to listen to the five random songs from my collection, link them as best I can, and write about whatever comes to mind while I’m listening. You can listen to a playlist of the songs on YouTube.

Kid Koala, “Page 165: The Date”

Aaaand we’re off to an inauspicious start. This is a little atmospheric piece, which is an accompaniment to a graphic novel, Nufonia Must Die. He’s a turntablist and electronic artist, mostly, and towards the playful end of the spectrum. There’s not much to talk about with this song withouth the graphics, so instead, I’ll just talk about how Kid Koala is one of these infuriating people who is a talented artist in multiple media. In lieu of linking to this song, which doesn’t make any sense, I’ll instead just bring your attention to another of his songs, “Nerdball”, from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: