One of the singles off of Costello’s debut album, this song is probably one of the more famous tunes simply because Linda Ronstadt covered it, a cover that really bares the soft-rock heart of the ballad. Anyway, it’s a great tune, one of the standouts in his catalog. I’m old enough to admit that soft rock is fine.
Hm, “Getting Friendly With Music” isn’t a bad name for a blog.
[Read More]I’ve just got this one record from the Atlas Moth, Coma Noir, their most recent. And I guess I like it just fine - this track is kind of fun, with the slippery movement between genres, sounding like noise rock at times, like sludge at times, a bit of post-metal or maybe metalcore here and there. The blend doesn’t quite hold up for the whole record, though, and it ends up being the sort of thing where you want a bit more evolution or edge or something. It wasn’t quite enough for me to hunt down their previous records.
[Read More]Costello was in the middle of his 10/10 run of albums (ignoring the covers record), with Get Happy!! being maybe the most distinctive of the lot. It’s not my favorite (that’s probably This Year’s Model followed by Imperial Bedroom), but the soul focus of the record means that it stands out a bit more from the rest of the group. Although Imperial Bedroom is also pretty distinctive, with the lush, orchestrated songs. I’m really not strengthening my point here. Anyway, good record.
[Read More]It’s a big day here on Five Songs. Exactly two years ago, I started updating this thing every day. Through vacations, work getting busy, moving twice, dealing with the fallout of a pandemic, I kept hitting my updates. I’m not sure why exactly I decided to do so. More than anything, it was to convince myself that I could commit to a grind like this and keep on top of it. Could I be a daily blogger? Could I keep a creative project going even when it got tough?
[Read More]After a sixteen year hiatus, the Afghan Whigs got back together, meaning Greg Dulli decided to start recording music under that moniker. I think there are some shared folks with 1965 besides him, hard to tell from Discogs. Anyway, the music post-hiatus seems like it continues on a straight line from where they left off, but as if they kept making albums in the meantime. If that makes sense? That is, if there were four albums missing in-between and they kept evolving in the same direction, you’d end up where they are now.
[Read More]I have largely ignored Costello’s work past his salad days. Imperial Bedroom is more or less the last of his records I regularly listen to. No real reason for it, honestly, I just kind of feel like I have enough Costello. I broke that rule of thumb with Momofuku, his 2008 release, after I heard it was banged out in a matter of a few weeks. I thought the urgency might be fun to listen to. And, it’s fine? It’s a Costello record, there’s nothing wrong with it. But I still just go back to his earlier records.
[Read More]Hmm. I guess maybe Radiohead used Conlon Nancarrow?
A friend used to do a bit where he’d refer to song titles or whatever with synonyms or just slightly wrong words, and it always killed me. Two of his titles from This Year’s Model always stuck with me. “Inflate It” and this one, “Chelsea (Fuck It)”.
Yup, that’s J Robbins in yet another one of his bands that put out a couple albums before calling it good. It’s a good one, but that’s kind of redundant. Where does it rank in the list of bands? Probably below Burning Airlines and Jawbox, but probably above Office of Future Plans and Channels.
[Read More]Now, see, if you remember that Iskra track from yesterday, you might say that this sounds like the same shit. But if you listen to enough of this garbage, you’ll hear differences: the vocals sound like they are yelled through a bullhorn instead of strangled, and this is just relentless blasts. So, grindcore, not something else. If it’s just focused on speed and aggression, you’ve got yourself some grindcore.
[Read More]Lard, the collaboration between Jello Biafra (as you can clearly hear) and Ministry, usually sounded just like what you might expect that collab to sound like. But Ministry were having fun with it, and were just in full-on raging hardcore mode, and Jello was in fine form, so this album winds up being probably my favorite post-Kennedys Jello record.
People Under the Stairs hit their fifth album, and at this point, had really reached maturity as artists. They were now confident enough to not just crank out their old-school loop-based beats, but to add in some more compositions like this one. And to be able to write rhymes that can work together with this new style. It’s a nice addition to their toolbox, and as a result, this is probably my second-favorite album from them.
[Read More]This song is actually a demo that Costello recorded, and then included directly on the record instead of re-recording it. The result is one of the more distinctive songs on the album, a minimal arrangement that ends up letting the clarity of the melody shine through.
It’s always a little strange to hear one of the Girl Talk songs out of the context of the albums. It shouldn’t be, because they’re such chameleons, but the progression of songs is burned into my brain so it throws me off. In other news, I love the bit from The Band on this track.
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