Murs

Murs, “Intro”

As usual, I don’t have a lot to say about intro tracks. This is just setting up the framing device for the album. I will say that if it’s going to come up, it’s fun as the first song in our playlist today.

The Sorcerers, “Cave of Brahma”

Hell yeah, Afro-beat. Nice choice to follow-up! This has a lovely kind of cinematic approach here that sounds sort of like it’s a soundtrack to something, which is a neat trick to pull off. Both Sorcerers records are a good time, I recommend them.

Eugenius, “Breakfast”

The Vaselines’ leader, Eugene Kelly, formed a new band (called Eugenius) that got plenty of attention due to Kurt Cobain’s cheerleading for the band. Well, for the Vaselines, anyway. At any rate, that’s how I ended up with this album (Oomalama). And, well, it’s fine. It’s power pop, and plenty tuneful, but hard to get too excited about.

Sloan, “Before I Do”

Meanwhile, if you’re going to listen to power pop, you might as well just listen to Sloan instead. You can’t wave your hands without hitting a “they should have been big!” profile of Sloan, so I’ll save the space here. I’m not Canadian, so I’m not legally allowed to write that story anyway. Twice Removed is fantastic, anyway.

Murs, “I’m Innocent”

Murs found himself on Warner Bros for Murs For President, and he turned in a big album to celebrate. There are a lot of ideas, a lot of big beats, a lot of targets. It’s a good record, but it feels like it’s a little much.

Mayhem, “A Wise Birthgiver”

I went a little bit into Mayhem’s history the last time they came up, so I won’t repeat that here. I’ll just reiterate: these were bad people, and even this later version of the band contains folks like Hellhammer who have said terrible things and never really recanted past links to repugnant beliefs. I bought this album unaware of the band’s history outside of Vikernes and Euronymous. Knowing what I now know, I would have avoided it.

Six songs today!

Murs, “3:16”

The beat that 9th Wonder put together on this track is smoking hot.

They Might Be Giants, “Can You Find It?”

This song makes more sense if you watch the accompanying video for it. But, uh, I’m not sure if I’d worry too much about it. Also, I think we’ve had this song before, but looking through all these entries to confirm that is a hassle. Uhhh, I’m going to say we did?

Nice set today!

James Brown, “The Payback”

Sometimes on this blog, I talk about things that are cool. It’s hard to put your finger on what cool is. It’s the kind of thing that you can’t really define, but can only find the outlines of by looking at examples. Look at enough cool things, and you will finally get a sense of what’s cool. It also helps to have something to center things, a north star of cool to find your bearings.

Just a quick entry today, but some fun songs.

Big Black, “Seth”

An early song from Big Black, this was on the EP Bulldozer, the first one that featured Santiago Durango and so is really the first real recording from them. This song was later found on The Hammer Party, which collected the first couple (or three, on CD) EPs. It’s an interesting document of a band that is kind of finding their sound, and there are some strong songs on the collection.

Fun batch of stuff today.

NoFX, “Louise”

Have we had a lot of NoFX lately? Feels like we have, even if the “previously"s tell me that we haven’t. Well, anyway, here’s some more.

Radiohead, “Backdrifts”

Well, there’s always NoFX’s opposite, Radiohead. I never got along that well with Hail To The Thief, although I suspect that’s at least partially because I haven’t really given it the sustained attention it probably needs. Anyway, I’m enjoying this song.