Man or Astro-Man?

HELLO FROM THE FUTURE

It’s time to get ahead on writing this blog. Gonna try and keep a strong update pace. There’s a virtue in steadiness and predictability, which will help me build an audience. Which I will absolutely fail to do because the blog is ofputting and strange, the music is unappealing, and I am blazingly inept at self-promotion.

HIT IT PLEXASAURUS REX!

Man or Astro-Man?, “U-235/PU-239”

A relative rarity here, with mostly instrumental surf/sci-fi rockers Man or Astro-Man? turning in some vocals. But it’s all reverbed out and the drums are echo-y, so it’s all good with me. I also just learned that they put out a record in 2013, time to go check that one out.

The Decemberists, “Mistral”

I wonder what’s next up for the Decemberists. The last three albums haven’t been very much like each other - The King is Dead is like R.E.M., What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World is like Hazards of Love but without a theme, and I’ll Be Your Girl is like a bad record. How will they mix it up next time?

Man or Astro-Man?, “DNI”

Man or Astro-Man? were insanely productive in the early to mid-90s, cranking out basically two albums a year before arriving on Touch and Go records, where the recording budgets got a little shinier but the sound remained the same. The productivity slowed a bit, they were only doing an album a year at this point, but these years are probably a little more reliable, so this record (the first of them) is probably a good starting point.

Cursive, “Big Bang”

Dang, friends, that’s a hell of a groove there. “Big Bang” indeed!

Bedouine, “Nice and Quiet”

This is not a groove. Too pretty.

De La Soul, “Drawn”

I wonder what the shortest Five Songs has been? I mean, five songs long, but in text.

Man or Astro-Man?, “The Sound Waves Reversing”

I’m absolutely not going to figure it out, mind you.

Union Carbide Productions, “Swing”

But I gotta figure this one is the “winner”. I’ll do better tomorrow!

Man Or Astro-Man?, “Organ Smash”

The debut record for Man Or Astro-Man? (Is It Man…Or Astro-Man?) set the template for the rest of their career. All reverbed out and surf-y, with a thick layer of retro science fiction. And they would cheerfully mine the same vein for their entire career, while still somehow basically managing to sound fresh. It’s a neat trick!

Melvins, “see how pretty, see how smart”

The Maggot was the first of a trio of albums that the Melvins recorded for Ipecac after getting bounced off their major label, following a brief tour with Amphetamine Reptile. All the albums were recorded at the same time, but with a different focus. The Maggot is the most Melvins-y of the three, being pretty much wall-to-wall sludge. It’s also tracked super annoyingly, with each song being divided in half (this, technically, is only the first half of this song).

Still on that train!

Merle Haggard, “Go Home”

Well, I certainly like to kick things off with a story about how a guy’s racist friends broke up his relationship. Just some real cheerful shit here!

The Coup, “Me And Jesus the Pimp In a ‘79 Grenada Last Night”

Oh, it’s gonna be like that? Let’s follow up that song with a kid whose relationships were totally warped by his mentorship from a pimp, who later beats his mother to death. Heartwarming!

We here at Five Songs often find ourselves apologizing for our content around here. With the random nature of what shuffle coughs up, sometimes it’s not great.

Uh, in other news, here’s today.

clipping., “Taking Off”

The lesson of clipping., beyond any other, is how much space there still remains for rap to continue to stretch out across other types of music and how much there remains to experiment with. We’ve seen noise marry with rap with tremendous success, and that should indicate that there still remains so many frontiers left to conquer.

Today’s list!

Baba Brooks & Tommy McCook, “River To The Bank”

The name A Tribute To The Ska-talites probably would get you (rightfully!) worried that it would just be a bunch of lame covers of the greatest ska band of all time. But no, instead, this is a bunch of artists from the actual first wave of ska doing Skatalites tunes. Including several, you know, actual Skatalites such as Tommy McCook here. So, what could have been a lame record instead turns out to be a super warm slab of the original stuff.

I don’t have a lot to say today.

Man Or Astro-Man?, “Lo Batt”

Man Or Astro-Man? made (mostly) instrumental rock, in sort of a surf rock vein, but with this kind of retro-future 50’s thing going on. Their records were pretty similar and uniformly good, so you can just start with one at random and it’ll work out fine. This is from Made From Technetium, for the record.

The Drapels, “Wondering (When My Love Is Coming Home)”

I think the bit where soul artists would name a song something short and pithy and then whack on some big ol’ parenthetical to the name is adorable. More bands should do that.