Jesus Jones

Hammerhead, “Evil Twin”

Hammerhead’s initial three-album run with Amphetamine Reptile is probably my favorite on the label, and it’s the second and third albums (Into The Vortex and Duh, The Big City) that are the real prizes. The first record is good, but the latter two are two of my favorite noise rock albums by anybody ever. But it wasn’t like Into the Vortex just thundered out of the sky out of nowhere. It was heralded by the 1993 EP Evil Twin, which showed how much of a step forward Hammerhead had taken. What stands out to me is how propulsive it sounds. Hammerhead is going places, and nothing is going to stop them, and they will just run you over if you’re in the way. That sense of groove moderates the aggression into something that is compulsively listenable to me.

Your Old Droog, “Gyros”

That punishing, thick blanket of bass, backed up by the little clicky drums, is such a tasty combination. I just want to roll around in this beat, or spread it on my sandwich.

Mr. Lif, “Status”

If you listen to the story on the album, this is supposed to be a cheap beat that Mr. Lif could afford, but Insight absolutely kills it. It’s so funky! Shuffle is ON it today.

Can-i-bus, “Get Retarded”

Hoo boy.

Steroid Maximus, “Quilombo”

Love that upright bass! We’ve had Steroid Maximus before, but this is one of J.G. Thirlwell’s (Foetus, Wiseblood, Manorexia, Clint Ruin, etc) many aliases. Steroid Maximus is all instrumental, tending towards jazz and cinematic stuff. It’s excellent, and this track gives a great sense for what you’d be in for.

The Slackers, “Don’t Forget The Streets”

From the excellent 2008 album Self Medication, this is as good a self-summary of the band as they’re likely to serve up. By the time they hit this album, it was clear that the Slackers were survivors. They started during the boom years of the third wave, and then endured the collapse of their first label, the implosion of the scene, and the derision of music fans. And through it all, they kept cranking out great tunes.

Leatherface, “Mush”

Well, we’re back at Leatherface, and I once again confront my opinion that this basically sounds just like late 80s/early 90s southern California punk, except for the vocals. And I’m not wild about the vocals. We need to get Dave Smalley involved here!

Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”

I think it’s easy to be cynical about overnight successes and huge pop hits, especially when your taste sort of runs towards the less popular end of the pool. If you’re not really that much of a fan of popular genres, the simplest take is to just assume that popular songs are all pandering garbage, made by bloodless producers milking the latest fad for all its worth. And sure, there’s plenty of pre-fab trash that gets popular, but that cynical take is really a dead end. Who cares? Where does that cynicism lead you? If you don’t like pop music, you can just ignore it, but that’s true of any genre. The popularity or otherwise of a song does nothing to change its artistic merits, and the only question worth evaluating is what a song does for you or those around you.

Jesus Jones, “The Devil You Know”

After the enormous success of “Right Here, Right Now” carried Doubt everywhere, Jesus Jones was faced with the prospect of following up a massive hit, a task which has broken many bands. The followup came a couple years later, and Perverse achieved nowhere the same level of success. Partly, those two years hurt. Partly, it was due to the pop music world having moved on to other shiny objects. It certainly didn’t help when one of the biggest bands associated with the scene, the Stone Roses, remained adamantly MIA. But for the last part, it was due to Perverse being not a terribly likable album. The shiny, crowd-pleasing stuff just wasn’t there. It’s very electronics focused, an emphasis on only one half of the Madchester formula, but it winds up feeling imbalanced. It’s really almost trending towards industrial dance, but kind of falls into an uncanny valley.

NoFX, “The Longest Line”

This is from a 1992 EP, also called The Longest Line, so from the White Trash, Two Heebs, and A Bean era. This is basically my favorite era of NoFX, probably due to how old I was at this time. There’s no real reason for anybody to really care about this EP though.

The Slackers, “Stereo On”

This is from an EP also, the 2013 release My Bed Is A Boat. Unlike the NoFX EP, though, I can heartily recommend this. It’s not so much that it’s notably better than any other Slackers, but that basically everything they’ve released is good.

Pretty angry set of songs today, mostly.

Ice Cube, “I Wanna Kill Sam”

Here, we have Ice Cube from one of his peak albums, in full-on fury at the state of America. I love the break in the middle of the song. At any rate, when Ice Cube was at the top of his form, there wasn’t anybody better.

Jesus Jones, “Your Crusade”

There was a brief boomlet in “Madchester” music, centered around the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, which combined alternative rock with dance music, giving an interesting hybrid. Technically, being from London instead of Manchester, Jesus Jones weren’t actually part of that scene, but spiritually, they were. Doubt, their second album, was a massive hit, thanks to “Right Here, Right Now”. Their followup record, Perverse, is impressive in one way: they could have basically made a carbon copy of their huge breakthrough album, but they chose instead to make some big changes to their style. In particular, they pushed the electronic stuff to the fore, rather than leaning more in the rock direction.