Every three years, discordant death metal masters Pyrrhon fire off a new album, and every three years, it whips. I first encountered them with their second record, The Mother of Virtues, and have eagerly followed them since then. While they were dropped by Relapse records after that masterwork, they haven’t slowed down. I recognize totally that this stuff is repellant and bizarre, but it’s compelling in ways I don’t totally understand.
[Read More]I know they became clownish and bad, and that continuing to like them is evidence of creeping Boomerism, but I don’t care, this album rules and this song rules.
I had my annual tour through the year end album lists a month or so ago, and this Yves Tumor album was one of the big winners. It’s very good! I’m not sure what I was expecting from a band named Yves Tumor, but I don’t think it was this. Among other things, Yves Tumor isn’t a band, it’s a person. Anyway, excellent album.
[Read More]There was probably a time in my life when I would have regarded clipping. askance. I’ve long been OK with noise in my music, having picked up an affection for industrial as a teenager that continued forward with noise rock, various gnarly forms of punk, etc. And, of course, hip hop has been a staple of my listening for even longer. But for a long time, I thought I didn’t like pretension in music. It led me to avoiding things like prog rock, various forms of art rock, all kind of ambitious music for a long time. Or, at least, things that were ambitious in particular ways that set me off.
[Read More]Alas, no, this isn’t a predecessor of the ABBA song, but now I want to hear Motown style covers of ABBA songs.
Seems like we’ve had a lot more of the Pietasters live than we have from their studio work, which is kind of a shame. A rational person might ask, well, why don’t I just remove the live record from the collection? To which I say to you, Rational Person, why the hell are you even paying attention to this dumb blog? Shouldn’t you be doing some imaginary figment business or something?
[Read More]By the time the Grifters arrived at this record, album number five, they were recording for a mid-major (Sub Pop), in a real studio, and they were sounding like a real full-on band instead of the ramshackle act they used to sound like. There are some bands that get exposed as boring when you shine them up, but happily the Grifters are not one of them. This is their slickest album by a lot, but their country/blues/rock songs sound great, and it’s a shame that their ride ended here.
[Read More]When we had My Bloody Valentine the other day, I confessed that I didn’t really love Loveless. In turn, that means that I’m not really much on shoegaze, which is true. What I do often like is when bands take shoegaze-style wall of guitar and bring it in to other places. Like, Torche’s muscular riff-y rock has those washes of sound, and it’s great.
We’ve had “Mr. Big Stuff” on here, but it’s such an all-time jam, I’m not mad. But let’s do six today!
[Read More]The alchemy on this song of the durms and that slow bleat on the keyboard is kind of magical. This entire album is chock full of fun pop rock.
Does it get cornier than this? It does, once I tell you that this album is called Horny For Ska.
Early Motown here, from 1962. Pretty by-the-numbers, but pleasant enough. This was actually the B-side, so it makes sense that it’s not totally a barn burner.
[Read More]See! Two days in a row! Nice job team, let’s take the rest of the month off.
Shuffle in a Motown mood! We’re in 1965, and you can really hear how much Motown has upped their game. This song isn’t that far from the previous one in terms of composition, but the arrangement and especially the production are so much more sophisticated. Of course, by 1965, Hitsville U.S.A. was really rolling, so it’s not really a surprise. It’s still fun to hear these back-to-back and hear the leap forward.
[Read More]Sorry about that, I kind of got out of the rhythm of doing this daily. I’ll get there!
I’ve been listening to a lot of noise rock recently. It’s a genre that really opened my ears up to a lot of possibilities, what with encountering Big Black pretty early, and then being huge into the Midwest scene in college. Weirdly, it’s kind of comforting to me to go back and lean kind of heavily on this genre again.
[Read More]Huh, there are two Lily Allen albums that I’ve never heard. I should fix that.
Always really enjoyed the chorus on this song.
I guess I’m full of insight today!
The guitar loop immediately makes this recognizable as an Ugly Duckling song. I’m not sure I really needed a 6:24 DJ track from them, though.
OK, now I’m really not going to say much. Wouldn’t be right with this.
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