The Dirty Nil is one of those bands where I can’t really decide how much I like them. I usually enjoy them when I’m listening to it, with a kind of fun mix of hard rock and punk. It sounds pretty great! But then when I stop, I’m not sure I have a strong desire to listen to them. Then again, on the third hand, I have bought their last three albums, so I dunno, maybe that’s telling me something. (That something is that I’m a big dummy.)
[Read More]After a very good and well-received second album (Cardinal), Pinegrove ran into some serious problems that derailed the band after accusations surfaced about Evan Hall. It was a messy situation that Hall and the band tried to handle head-on, eventually going through mediation with the accuser and leaving their label willingly when another band objected to their presence. Overall, they seemed sincere in their attempts to handle things, and it seems like the accuser was satisfied by their steps. Anyway, all of this delayed the release of their third album by a couple years, and it eventually came out self-released. For all that, Skylight is actually a good album, and it came accompanied with an acoustic interpretation (called Skylight II). That’s where this track came from, and it’s a nice little listen.
[Read More]The final Let’s Go Bowling album, Stay Tuned, feels a little like they were finally letting the commercial winds blow them along towards rock. While their previous records had been pretty traditional, this one definitely feels more of a piece with the other ska bands who were hitting it big. But, of course, by 2000 the commercial appetite for ska was collapsing, so if it was a bid for fame, it didn’t really work out. My least favorite of the four records I have from them (there’s apparently a debut out there that I’ve never heard).
[Read More]I’m never really sure how to credit this record. It’s Richie Hawtin putting together a mix record, so do I credit him? Or the artist that did the original track? I choose the former on purely utilitarian grounds, which is that if anybody listening to this wants to hear more, they’re going to do better looking up Hawtin than they will the original artist (Thor, in this case. Not the Norse god.)
[Read More]Maxinquaye is one of the three pillars of trip-hop, along with Blue Lines and Dummy. What’s striking about all three records, besides them all being great, is kind of how dissimilar they all end up feeling. There’s a murky darkness at the core of them all, but they take different paths to get there. Tricky is probably the most hip-hop of the three, although the swirling noise is still pretty distinctly foreign to the hip-hop of the time.
[Read More]As the majors decided that ska, and especially ska-punk, was Really Hot, a bunch of bands signed contracts even though it probably didn’t make a ton of sense. But, honestly, Less Than Jake wasn’t a bad bet by the labels. There’s enough catchiness in their songs that you could see Green Day’s audience becoming interested, and ska was also pretty trendy. It made some sense, and given that there were some pretty huge hits from similar bands, there’s no reason one of those couldn’t have been LTJ. But, it didn’t quite work out, so only two records came out on Capitol Records before they moved back to smaller labels. Good record, though.
[Read More]This was a companion piece for Anthem, one of the best Less Than Jake records. They took a bunch of unused material from that record, polished it up, and released it as an extra album. And, honestly, there’s not really that much drop off between the two albums. As another set of tunes from their strongest period, it’s a welcome addition to the library.
[Read More]Might get back into industrial dance again. I mean, sure, this shit is dumb as hell, but maybe that’s what the times demand. Get some Belgians yelling at me about vague Dystopian futures.
In case you were wondering what “Spine II” was a follow-up to.
Less Than Jake would regularly re-record songs for later albums, polishing up the previous version. It was an interesting habit because it clearly wasn’t for a lack of material - their albums were always a healthy length, and during their prime, they put things out regularly. So I think it was just a matter of them wanting to get things right. This song originally appeared on Pezcore, and they revived it for Losing Streak (this version) a year and a half later. I wonder why?
[Read More]That’s month four of hitting every day! Woooo!
Too late, Mr. T Experience! Valentine’s Day was two weeks ago! What are you even doing!
Singles Breaking Up is, indeed, a singles comp. Pittburgh’s instrumental maestros put everything into their singles, so the comp is a solid album, if maybe not quite as coherent as their records due to not being recorded at once. You can do a lot worse than this record!
[Read More]Most of the tracks on the Amon Tobin side project feature Sway rapping on them, but this is one of the two songs that does not. As a result, this just sounds like an Amon Tobin song. Contemplative for him, sure, but still a Tobin song. Not that that is a bad thing.
British Sea Power play pretty nuts-and-bolts indie rock. This is from their second album, which doesn’t show a ton of evolution from the first record. It’s good, but I’m not sure it’s super memorable.
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