Freeway

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.

We’re a couple of weeks away from the first birthday of Five Songs. I’m thinking about changing up the format a little. Anybody have any thoughts? Here’s today’s music.

Freeway, “Hear The Song”

While I think Freeway usually has great beats, this is not one them. This song just feels kind of disjointed.

The Dead Kennedys, “I Am The Owl”

This comes from the second Kennedys full-length, Plastic Surgery Disasters, which is probably the album in their discography that I hear the least about. It’s not the debut, which was the most purely hardcore of their albums, and it doesn’t have as much of the baroque strangeness of their later releases. But, like all their albums, it’s still very good, and worthy of listening to.

Today’s music.

Coil, “Who By Fire”

Peter Christopherson is one of the true innovators of underground music, performing as a member of industrial/noise pioneers Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle. He then went on to become part of Coil, a band dedicated to electronic music in all its forms. Coil worked with an impressive list of collaborators over the years, and their career is hard to describe. While usually lumped in with industrial acts, usually due to the company they kept, Coil was much more organic and human than most of industrial music. It usually made them all the more unsettling as a consequence. Coil tended to explore the underbelly of human existence, and their lyrics were usually pretty unflinching and often pretty out there.

Back from the holiday weekend, let’s see what kicks off the work week for me!

Minor Threat, “It Follows”

Our first Ian MacKaye track! I don’t think it’s any big secret that Fugazi is my favorite band (says the guy who has a daughter with the middle name “MacKaye”), but Minor Threat is obviously great as well. Originators of the entire straight edge scene (“don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck”), and hardcore punk pioneers, Minor Threat inspired so many earnest young people to start bands and make a racket. For that alone, they should be commended. They only put out one album and an assortment of singles, and they’re all collected on Complete Discography, which is an essential release if you’re into punk at all. I kind of want to stop here and just listen to this whole album. But I won’t, because I’m a pro.