I was going to make a “ooh, another Lost 90’s Gem” joke here, as if anybody has ever forgotten the Pixies. And then I remembered, no, this album came out in 1989. Time is an illusion.
This is so good. It reminds me of nothing so much as Einstürzende Neubauten, in the way it approaches rhythm and the use of open space in the song. I should really look up more work from Williams.
[Read More]It’s not always clear ahead of time if an album or band will click or not. Reviews and comparisons can take you only so far, and until you sit down with a record and really try it out, you’ll just never know. On paper, Idlewild should have been up my alley. And this is fine, but there’s no spark for me. I suppose it’s good that surprises still happen in this process, otherwise it would be mechanical and dull, and those exciting times when something is perfect for you are worth seeking out. I mean, if our tastes were predictable, we could build ourselves big recommendaiton engines, and people would just sit around and listen to whatever the machines suggest. Thank god that’s not going to happen!
[Read More]Bedhead is the musical equivalent of a weighted blanket.
Lambchop is, uh, a velvet smoking jacket, a faded photo of your grandparents, a mostly empty bottle of rye, and a ticket stub for a concert that you can’t actually tell who it was for but you know it was an excellent concert.
PIG, meanwhile, is what you get when it’s J.G. Thirlwell who was trapped in amber and they weren’t preoccupied enough with whether they should.
[Read More]Now, see, if you remember that Iskra track from yesterday, you might say that this sounds like the same shit. But if you listen to enough of this garbage, you’ll hear differences: the vocals sound like they are yelled through a bullhorn instead of strangled, and this is just relentless blasts. So, grindcore, not something else. If it’s just focused on speed and aggression, you’ve got yourself some grindcore.
[Read More]Frank Black went through a couple phases between v1 of the Pixies and v2 of the Pixies. After recording under just his own name, he apparently decided that his band rated a mention, and began recording as Frank Black and the Catholics. To my ears, this was the best phase of his post-Pixies career, and this record might be my favorite of the lot. There’s definitely plenty of the Frank Black madness here.
[Read More]This is how Thou’s album Algiers ends, which is a collection of assorted EPs and singles. There’s something so elemental about the way that Thou sounds. Something about the entire sound of the band is downright contemptuous. Lots of bands manage to sound ugly, or grim, or noisy, or just generally awful. Thou somehow manages to sound spiteful, which is a neat trick. Well, I dunno about neat. Anyway, this collection isn’t a bad place to start with Thou. Or Heathen, which is a great metal album name.
[Read More]Shuffle’s kind of been killing it lately.
Marvin Gaye, here on a single from 1967. It’s impressive to listen to the difference between this and what he’d make a mere four years later with What’s Going On.
I went to go compare the hi-hat intro here to the bit in “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” (at 8:01), and then realized the bit I was thinking of wasn’t just on the hi-hat, and then I got caught up listening to that song. And then I kind of got lost for a bit.
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