Five Songs, 7/28/2022

The Dramatics, “In the Rain”

A repeat, but happy to listen to it again.

Dirty Three, “Last Horse on the Sand”

Dirty Three are an instrumental post-rock band out of Australia, distinguished primarily by being led by a violinist. I’m actually more into this sort of sound than I was in the late 90s when this album came out, so maybe it’s worth sitting with the band some more. They certainly have a lot of records out there.

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Five Songs, 4/22/2022

Mule, “I’m Hell”

Hi Hell, I’m Dad.

Cannibal Ox, “Iron Galaxy”

It’s difficult to overstate how much this album sounded like the future when it came out. And while it sort of does represent a path not taken in hip-hop, at least by the mainstream, I suppose it did eventually find full flower with El-P’s work with Run the Jewels.

Atmosphere, “Stopwatch”

Mi Vida Local, Atmosphere’s 2018 record, continues their pattern of staying in the realm of the personal. Slug continues to mostly contemplate and explore his life in his lyrics. Supporting that, Ant’s production relies more and more on live instrumentation, giving again a more organic feel to things. It’s a decent album, but I’m not sure it stands out from their other 2010s work.

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Five Songs, 11/17/2021

Mule, “Lucky”

Every now and again, bands will fuse redneck aesthetics with various rock genres, to greater or lesser effect. In this case, Mule bolts that stuff onto noise rock, bolstered by the usual good engineering job by Steve Albini. I don’t think that it’s really inventive enough to make the three-piece lineup shine, and I’m not super attracted to the hillbilly stuff, so, uh, I guess this isn’t great.

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Five Songs, 10/15/2017

Super late night tunes for y’all!

They Might Be Giants, “Alienation’s For The Rich”

From TMBG’s first album, when they sort of put on different musical styles more like outfits than playing them with any real conviction. The album has some real gems on it, but there are also tracks that come across as just pure goofs. The goofs wouldn’t really go away, but got more sophisticated.

MC Frontalot, “Very Poorly Concealed Secret Track”

The standard bearer of “nerdcore”, MC Frontalot will give you a good idea of if the idea of people rapping about nerd shit is something you love. I think I own one nerdcore album, this one, which probably tells you what I think.

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Five Songs, 10/5/2017

Here’s today’s music.

Bola Johnson & His Easy Life Top Beats, “Ezuku Buzo”

This song comes to us courtesy of the compilation Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump, an exploration into the funk and afrobeat coming out of Nigeria. I don’t really know that much about the scene, but this compilation is excellent.

Mule, “Mississippi Breaks”

Midwestern band Mule were veterans of several previous bands, and came together to play something that sounds something like Midwest punk combined with Southern rock. I like most of the music on this album, but never really got along that well with the vocals, so I never really listened to it all that much. Oh, and looking at this record, the second song is called “What Every White Nigger Knows”, so, yeah. Didn’t remember that.

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