Grandaddy

Touché Amoré, “Just Exist”

I sometimes find screamo to be a little bit tiring. Musically, it’s my jam, but the vocals wear me out sometimes. This seems like a stupid thing for someone who listens to as much metal with vocals that sounds like someone caught something important in a home appliance. But I am very stupid, so here we are.

Luscious Jackson, “LP Retreat”

You know, if Luscious Jackson had made this record another fifteen years later, I’ll bet they would have found a much bigger audience. It sounds pretty ahead of its time, and I’m not sure people in 1994 really knew what to make of it.

The Pietasters, “Crying Over You”

I’m of the opinion that the Pietasters really fell off hard after Oolooloo, driven among other things by Stephen Jackson’s vocals getting much more gruff and the band really starting to emphasize rock more and more. That said, there are still some fun tunes on their later records, such as this one from Awesome Mix Tape #6.

Nine Inch Nails, “The Big Come Down”

The Downward Spiral was a leap forward in complexity for Nine Inch Nails, as Trent Reznor really made use of a much broader set of tools. But I don’t think it’s his best record. I think that goes to The Fragile, the eventual follow-up that emerged as a double record and again makes another leap ahead. If nothing else, there’s more of it, and when the quality is this high, that matters. He wouldn’t ever quite hit these heights again, although there are plenty of excellent albums in the future.

Grandaddy, “Now It’s On”

I think I’ve used this space before to kind of lament how Grandaddy hasn’t really connected with me. I can see the quality, but it’s just never really clicked. This is a fine tune, though.

American Music Club, “Outside This Bar”

American Music Club were still kind of finding their way with their second album, Engine. Musically, they would eventually open up some of the arrangements which would help give some more space to Mark Eitzel’s lyrics. But as you can hear on this song, the often harrowing storytelling was definitely there.

Led Zeppelin, “D’yer Mak’er”

Little known band out of the UK, Zeppelin presaged…uh, sorry, I can’t do this.

Grandaddy, “Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)”

I really only have a couple things to say about most bands, and I’m legitimately terrified of just repeating them. Individual bands mostly don’t come up often enough for me to really remember what I’ve said before, and goodness knows I don’t go back and read previous entries before writing something. I’m not going anywhere here with this. I’m mostly just positing that I’m just a bag of random associations doing a stimulus/response over here, and I’m constantly concerned that I’m going to be revealed to be the worthless hack that I am at any moment.

Keeping that streak alive.

Grandaddy, “The Warming Sun”

I sometimes wonder why some bands don’t connect with me. Grandaddy, for instance. Highly regarded by lots of people, so they’re a good band by most measures. They are mining a similar vein as Wilco, who I love. They obviously know what they’re doing. And yet? Nothing. It’s not clear why that is, how the aesthetics of Grandaddy just don’t turn my crank. But there we are.

Six songs today! Repeats are your best value here at Five Songs Incorporated!

Nitzer Ebb, “Higher (Barry Adamson Mix)”

This is from an obscure EP called As Is, a little four song thing with a grab bag of tracks on it. It was put out to precede Ebbhead, which was to be their major label debut, and was supposed to get people hyped up. It’s not a bad little EP, you know, if you’re into Nitzer Ebb.

After I kept shuffle on yesterday, I got Silkworm, Mono Puff, The Roots - lots of bands I wanted to talk about. It can be agonizing letting stuff like that go away, but rules are rules. Without rules, this whole thing just becomes “Josh writes about music however he wants” and then I’ll probably stop doing it. And then ones of people will be deprived of this scintillating work!

Up in the sky! It’s a playlist!