Godspeed You Black Emperor

Claw Hammer, “The Day It Rained Pigeon Shit”

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.

Let’s hope we do better today!

The Clash, “Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad”

This is a repeat from, geez, a year and a half ago.

Bruce Cockburn, “If A Tree Falls”

Well, it’s been a good, long time, but we’ve got a completely unknown song here popping up. There were a handful of songs pre-loaded on some device of mine in the misty, distant past, and some automated scan swept them up into my library. I didn’t catch them, and now they’re sprinkled in among the songs I actually want to keep, and I haven’t been able to root them out. And now you have to deal with them too!

We’ve got several folks here who are reaching high for art here.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside Of Light!’”

Pretension is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. If you have the bombast and chops to pull it off, pretension really just turns into ambition. And Godspeed You! Black Emperor really do have the chops to make it work. Yes, their song and album titles are nonsense, but who cares when you get to listen to something like this. The brigaded violins, the sweep of guitars, the stately waltz of the whole thing, it’s just gorgeous. Also, this song is close to being as long as the entire playlist yesterday.

Today’s tunes.

Death Cab For Cutie, “No Joy In Mudville”

This song comes to us from We Have The Plans And We’re Voting Yes, which I think is the first album I picked up from Death Cab. And…hang on, I stopped paying attention there for a bit. Hey, it’s the next song!

Nine Inch Nails, “The Warning”

Year Zero represented a return to form for Nine Inch Nails. The Fragile had restless experimentation, but the quality was uneven. With Teeth was better constructed, but also felt kind of paint-by-numbers at times. The artist that had made The Downward Spiral seemed to be gone, but Year Zero proved that that was emphatically not true. There are even times that I think it’s Trent Reznor’s best record. Paranoid and angry, the whole thing hangs together extremely well.

I hope people are listening to all of the songs that I’m posting here, including the ones that I’m suggesting are not for me. They might be for you! They might suck! Only one way to find out. Speaking of, here’s today’s playlist. Listen to it all! Or don’t. I’m not your boss.

Richard Lloyd, “Connection”

Richard Lloyd was part of Television, who made one of the all-time great punk albums, Marquee Moon, but I haven’t really paid any attention to any of his solo career. This song comes from an outstanding compilation, Ork Records: New York, New York, which Numero Group recently reissued. It’s a document of the very early New York punk scene, and I cannot recommend it highly enough if you have an interest in that whole era.