Sleepyhead

Pigs, “Wrap It Up”

Just bottle that opening guitar sound and sell it by the case, I’ll buy it and pour it directly into my nostrils.

Dodecahedron, “Finale”

Ooh, backwards vocals. So evil! I’m cowering!

Boris, “Riot Sugar”

I’ll never get tired of mentioning this when it comes up: this is from Heavy Rocks. No, not the one from 2002. No, not the one from 2022. The one from 2011, the same year they released three other albums. Nobody has had the career that Boris has had, and very few bands have been harder to keep up with. At any rate, this Heavy Rocks is excellent mid-career Boris, crunchy and pretty diverse, a relatively accessible record but undeniably heavy. And yes, it rocks.

Green Day, “Basket Case”

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.

Yves Tumor, “Romanticist”

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.

Claw Hammer, “Gut Feeling”

One of the things that we rail against around here are pointless covers. Especially in an age when so many of the originals are easily accessible, a cover really needs to add something. This is doubly true when it’s something truly beloved or original. However, it is possible to wrap around on the pointlessness scale of things and loop back around to cool. Claw Hammer turn that neat trick by covering the entirety of Devo’s landmark Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, playing it pretty straight. Jon Wahl’s oddball strangled wail is the primary distinguishing factor, but otherwise, it’s Devo’s record. Just listen to Devo! And yet…there’s a strange attraction. It’s pretty bizarre alchemy.

The Jam, “That’s Entertainment”

I wasn’t following music during the Jam’s heyday, what with being too young, but they were pretty big shit. Specifically, according to Wikipedia, “That’s Enterainment” is still the best-selling single in the UK ever. Pretty impressive! Lovely song, too.

The Mr. T Experience, “More Than Toast”

Here’s MTX doing what they do best, laying down a catchy pop-punk tune for three minutes and then getting out of here. I will honor them by doing the same.

Six songs!

Lostbone, “Destroy What Destroys You”

uhhhuhuhuhhuhuh…lostbone

Pretty sure I ended up with this as a result of a grab bag of some variety or another. Among all the ways of discovering music, grab bags are certainly one of them. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually discovered a band I love from one of them. I suppose I should try a bunch more just in case.

Also, this appears to be a repeat. Onward!

Some good stuff today.

Crackerbash, “Trinkets”

Sub Pop rock artists out of Portland, Crackerbash were part of the very prolific Pacific Northwest scene in the early nineties that still flew below the radar. While they only made one self-titled album and one amazing EP (Tin Toy), they were excellent for their short run, and don’t deserve to be totally forgotten. There were several bands out of Portland from that time frame that deserved to be bigger - these guys, Pond, the Spinanes.

This is the first time I’ve written one of these entries not listening on headphones. Instead, I’m pumping out the jams from my laptop while sitting on the couch next to Megan. Nobody cares, Josh! Get to the music!

De La Soul, “Snoopies (featuring David Byrne)”

As I mentioned in the first entry on They Might Be Giants, De La Soul is probably the only band that I’ve been listening to longer than TMBG. I bought Three Feet High and Rising on the strength of being blown away by “Say No Go”, and I haven’t ever stopped listening to them. While they’ve had some ups and downs (the two Bionix albums being the major downs), every De La Soul record release has been an event for me. Their most recent record was an even bigger departure than usual: they crowdfunded it on Kickstarter, and decided to use a pretty novel method of making it. They brought a band into the studio, recorded them playing a wide variety of stuff, and then used that work as a basis for their sampling to make beats. Thus, they didn’t need to clear any samples: they were only sampling themselves. The results are interesting, and worth looking into.