You know, if you’re going to do a skit, this is the way to do it.
A cut from the final J Church album, The Horror of Life. By this point, Lance Hahn was already battling the kidney problems that would claim his life the same year the record was released, but the record doesn’t really show any signs of decline. A genius to the end.
[Read More]As always: not the Australian band, but the grunge-adjacent band from Portland. And also, as always, I’ll recommend all three Pond records as being some of the finest from the grunge scene, peripheral as they were. This tune is off their worst album, but it’s still a solid slab of rock.
There’s a referential thing going on in most P.D.Q. Bach albums, where he’ll call back to figures and bits from prior in the album, and listening to single tracks kind of blunts what he’s up to. So I’ll just recommend sitting down with an album (this one, 1712 Overture & Other Musical Atrocities is a fine choice) and sitting with it.
[Read More]You know, I think the zone is actually bathypelagic, not bathyalpelagic. Come on The Ocean, get your shit together!
Jon Wahl really has one of the unique voices in rock, and certainly in underground rock. He sounds like he was transported out of a cartoon or something to front a blues-flecked rock band. Very strange! This was Claw Hammer’s third album, but the immediate prior one was a full-album cover of Devo’s debut record, and nobody heard the first one. Well, I certainly haven’t, and I’ve listened to a lot of this band. At any rate, coming off that cover record, this showed that they could really light it up with originals.
[Read More]Thoroughly enjoyable instrumental from Our Bodies Our Selves, one of the stronger mid-career MTX albums.
This song is a serious jam, even when it’s a very straightforward cover of the song. I’ve decided that I really like having Claw Hammer’s album length cover of Devo’s first album in the library just to increase my chances of hearing the tunes.
[Read More]Another track from the bootleg Maximum Rocknroll, which wasn’t authorized by the band and contains a bunch of pretty poor quality stuff. Not great!
This is such a good song, goddamn. Claw Hammer really nails it, too. Uh, not a lot else to say here, really.
I’ve meditated on pretension here before, so I’ll spare you all that guff again. But just for a moment, please admire the hubris involved in naming your album Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic. It’s a really good album, though, so whatever.
[Read More]One of the things that we rail against around here are pointless covers. Especially in an age when so many of the originals are easily accessible, a cover really needs to add something. This is doubly true when it’s something truly beloved or original. However, it is possible to wrap around on the pointlessness scale of things and loop back around to cool. Claw Hammer turn that neat trick by covering the entirety of Devo’s landmark Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, playing it pretty straight. Jon Wahl’s oddball strangled wail is the primary distinguishing factor, but otherwise, it’s Devo’s record. Just listen to Devo! And yet…there’s a strange attraction. It’s pretty bizarre alchemy.
[Read More]The disconnected guitar skronk at the front of this song is weirdly something that kind of sticks with me. I think because it kind of lays bare what noise rock kind of sounds like when its stripped of all the layers. And, of course, when the rest of the band joins in, it’s thunderous magic.
I guess we’re going to open all the songs today with a lil’ guitar wank. OK by me!
[Read More]Have we had Claw Hammer before? I think we have. The tags say we have. Whatever. Anyway, Claw Hammer sort of had a blues-y take at punk, like if you took Mudhoney and dialed up the blues end by a bunch. And, of course, they had Jon Wahl’s idiosyncratic vocal style powering things. This tune comes from their final album, their second for a major label of all damn things. That Interscope thought something as offputting as this was worth signing is one of the clearest signs that the mid-90s saw some very stupid behavior from the labels.
[Read More]Two songs that I had to upload today! That’s when you know you’re getting the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean “probably forgotten underground rock or C-list third-wave ska.”
Paid In Full, one of the foundational albums of rap, was later reissued in a deluxe edition called the Platinum Edition. It featured a second disc of various rarities, including this tune. And all that is fine, but what made it awesome is that they went and photoshopped the gold jewelry on the original cover to be platnium. It’s that attention to detail that can really make a reissue. Anyway, the bonus junk is totally inessential.
[Read More]Au De La, the album by BIG|BRAVE that we’re listening to, is an odd beast. Mostly drone, kind of post-rock, sort of metal-y, it’s atmospheric and pounding and pretty different from most stuff out there. It’s not the kind of thing I always want to listen to, but it’s good stuff at times.
We’re discussed how Claw Hammer made their first album a full-length cover of Devo’s first album. Well, this is the first track on that album, before they launched into the thing. It kind of describes the idea. Oh, and they called it Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are NOT Devo!.
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