Head of David

Thou, “Sifting”

Thou released a bunch of stuff in 2020. One of them was a compilation of Nirvana covers that they’d released in various other places, gathered together as Blessings of the Highest Order. This, of course, is the last song from Bleach, and it’s a real punisher here. The entire album is a good time.

Head of David, “Bugged”

Head of David is notable mostly for inspiring a bunch of other bands, not to mention being Justin Broadrick’s proving ground for the sound he would later refine as Godflesh. As for the band itself, a lot of their stuff sounds pretty leaden, but this track is pretty good.

Today? Fun!

Iron & Wine, “Lion’s Mane”

I think it can be easy to dismiss all these neo-folk types as posers, as just boring sensitive white guys with guitars. And yeah, but some of them are clearly playing something pretty inspired as well. Sam Beam, doing business as Iron & Wine, is one of those worth paying attention to. His debut album, The Creek Drank The Cradle, is pretty precious, but it’s just filled with really nice songs. It’s just Beam’s voice and guitar most of the time, with just the occasional touches of slide guitar or banjo, as you can hear on this song. And while obviously, we here at Five Songs go pretty far in to pretty grim and noisy stuff, sometimes you just really need a pretty song, and Iron & Wine delivers.

Today’s play list.

Head of David, “Wolf”

Oh god, this is a bad song. I’m so, so sorry, if anybody is listening to this. This is like something straight out of the cheesiest fever swamps of power metal, but with no ridiculous flaming guitar solo.

Burning Airlines, “A Song With No Words”

Much better! One of the slower songs from Burning Airlines, but still with that little keening guitar line to keep things interesting. And I love the way that they recorded the bass for their albums.

Without fanfare, I’ve been doing this more than a month now. I think I’ve missed two days. Not bad! I think I’ll keep going for now, I’m still having fun. Here’s today’s music!

The Couch of Eureka, “I Got The Boom”

This is a track from a Lookout Records sampler called Heide Says, released in 1996. Despite being on Lookout, this sounds more like a song from a Dischord band than the typical pop punk of Lookout. I actually like this track a fair bit, and don’t really remembering noticing it when I got this sampler.