Foetus

Calexico, “Heart of Downtown”

This comes from Calexico’s Christmas album, Seasonal Shift. The major concession here is that the guitar line is a little more filled out, and there’s a little bit fuller chorus. It’s a Calexico song otherwise, which is a perfectly good thing.

Mastodon, “Divinations”

Crack the Skye is Mastodon at its most Mastodon-y, with their prog-metal thing reaching a logical endpoint. They’d back off a bit from this sound later, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. I want a band to just keep getting more and more elaborate and decorated. I want them to get ten albums in and have the whole damn thing be totally unparseable by normal humans. Have it sound like it fell to Earth from outer space.

Skinny Puppy, “Riverz End”

At this point, I find it charming when I find an edgy-z spelling. This was cutting edge stuff at one point. You saw a “z” instead of an “s”, and you knew you were in for some attitude.

Foetus, “Sick Minutes”

Limb is a compilation of un-released material from Foetus pulling from the very early years of the band. It’s an interesting historical document, showing where J.G. Thirlwell came from, but it’s largely going to only be interesting to fellow Foetus sickos.

The Magnetic Fields, “Meaningless”

Pretty sure this is a repeat!

The National, “Afraid of Everyone”

This is also a repeat!

(That’s a lie, I just don’t want to figure out anything to say about the National. Don’t want to make people mad!)

La Gritona, “Jack Passion”

La Gritona were a noise rock band out of Boston, active in the second half of the 90s, who put out one album and some EPs before ending things. And they smoke, all heavy skronk and yelling, exactly the kind of stuff that’s up my alley. But I had no idea they existed, because by the time their album came out in 1997, I was out of college and slowly losing touch with music. Luckily, their entire catalog was compiled together into a re-release in 2010, where a postiive review brought it to my attention. And maybe this will bring them to someone else’s attention, because this stuff rules.

The Beautiful South, “Liars’ Bar”

Yeah, not the best choice here for a band where the delightful vocal performances are such an important part of their sound.

Madvillain, “Operation Lifesaver aka Mint Test”

A thing about Madvillain which is always impressive is that a lot of these tracks are pretty short, often under two minutes, but they feel fully realized and don’t at all feel skimpy. They’re just so packed with ideas that even a brief track is satisfying.

Foetus, “Clothes Hoist”

Foetus released live albums pretty often, which were usually pretty good. The live show was often more direct and noisier, driven by having a live band making a racket. So it’s not just a re-hash of the album tracks, making them good listens if you like Foetus. This is from Boil, and the track is originally from Hole.

Antipop Consortium, “Splinter”

I got totally lost in the rhymes in the first verse.

Foetus, “Ramrod”

This track was originally the A-side of a single, and it was later pulled onto the compilation Sink. It’s a fantastic example of the mid to late 80s stuff that Foetus was up to, this kind of noir-inflected, orchestrated industrial noise stuff. There’s something familiar about this song, with gestures towards obsolete but recognizable types of music. But it’s all arranged in disquieting ways, like a musical Frankenstein’s monster, all bolts and dead flesh arranged in a groteque parody of life.

P.D.Q. Bach, “Six Contrary Dances, S. 39: VI. Moving right alongo”

P.D.Q. Bach, the parody composer, makes truly dumb music that can largely only be appreciated by smart people. Or, maybe more accurately, culturally educated people. The truth is, I sort of catch only a subset of the gags in it, because I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough in Western classical music to get all of it. But even if you don’t catch all the jokes, the music itself is pretty fun even without them.

Pardoner, “Silly String”

There’s something extremely early 90s about Pardoner’s sound on this track. It sounds like a lost track from a C/Z Records band, or maybe like some old Dinosaur Jr. track from the vault. That, of course, means I’m totally delighted by it.

Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”

A single from 1963, with some jaunty piano really driving things here. A real charmer!

Gold Class, “Life As a Gun”

EXTREMELY post-punk stuff here out of Australia. There’s sort of a Discord feel to the guitars, and almost a Joy Division feel to the singing, which is a pretty potent combination. This is from their first album, It’s You, which is a pretty solid record.

Five months in a row of a daily updates every single day. I can’t keep this up forever, but I’m hoping the consistency is nice for folks out there. (looks at analytics) Well, a few of you, anyway.

Gauche, “Pay Day”

Gauche is a supergroup featuring members of Priests and Downtown Boys, playing new wave music in what sounds like nothing so much as an updated B-52s. I’m not really a huge new wave guy, but it’s hard not to have fun listening to rhythms this infectious.

Foetus, “Red and Black and Gray and White”

Soak is the most recent Foetus album, from 2013. I sort of don’t believe it’s going to be the last Foetus album, but maybe I’m wrong. At any rate, it carries on in his late career form, a howling whirlwind of orchestration, noise, and barely constrained chaos. It’s like a big band possessed by a demon.

Shabazz Palaces, “When Cats Claw”

Shabazz Palaces went to record a few bonus tracks for their 2017 album Quazarz vs. the Jealous Machines, but the sessions ended up going so well that they turned it into an entire companion album, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star. Given that both albums were recorded roughly at the same time, it’s hard to pick between them, so I’d recommend just listening to both.