Soundgarden

Soundgarden, “Swallow My Pride”

A collision of early grunge elements here! This is from the second Soundgarden EP, Fopp, from 1988. It’s a time when Soundgarden was still figuring out who they were, and their sound was still mostly a melding of hard rock and garage rock and wasn’t yet what would be recognizable as grunge. But it goes further than that! This song is actually a cover of Green River, the proto-grunge band from the mid-80s that would spawn both Mudhoney (Mark Arm and Steve Turner) and Pearl Jam (Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament). The elements that would make up grunge were starting to come in to focus even in 1985, when Green River recorded this song, with Steve Turner’s filthy riffs in particular being a building block of the genre. The music made by these bands wasn’t quite yet divorced enough from hard rock, didn’t have quite enough of the grime or the muscular confidence that would allow them to break into something new. But it was coalescing.

Valentine Six, “Always Is My Name”

Here’s a little bit of an oddball. Valentine Six put out one album in 1997, full of this kind of lounge-y sort of thing. Clearly more than a little Tom Waits in the DNA here, maybe just a little bit of Nick Cave. It’s pretty good, and I haven’t thought about this band in ages.

Morrissey, “He Knows I’d Love To See Him”

Like lots of other people, I was curious to see what the various members of the Smiths would get up to after that band broke apart. I picked up a couple of Morrissey’s EPs, and honestly, didn’t really follow him from there. I mean, yeah, this is clearly a Morrissey song, but I guess I had enough of him from the Smiths’ albums?

Built to Spill, “Conventional Wisdom”

Probably the best song on You In Reverse, it’s also one of the longest. But Built to Spill were often at their best when they take the time to really elaborate on a melody and play around with it. The first half of this song sounds like a good Dinosaur Jr. track, and then it mutates into a very Built to Spill thing during the second half, and both halves are very enjoyable.

Naked City, “Bonehead”

I can often write these little blurbs while each song is playing, as most songs give me enough time to bang out a little bit of garbage for you all to read. Naked City, though? Forget it. Should change their name to Pause City!

Girls Against Boys, “Super-Fire”

This is the opening of House of GVSB, the last album from Girls Against Boys for Touch and Go, not to mention their last good album. Their brand of driving, almost danceable post-hardcore was in fine form here, which makes it a shame that they fell off so hard.

Soundgarden, “Outshined”

Badmotorfinger was the big leap forward for Soundgarden, where they married the murky hard rock homage of their early stuff to clean enough productions and songs to really appeal to a broader audience. And, carried forward by the contemporaneous releases of Nevermind and Ten, that broader audience found them. Soundgarden had always had potential to be a big band, as the core of that Sabbath/Zeppelin sound had a built-in appeal to a bunch of folks, and they would be one of the breakout acts of the grunge scene.

Another day of all bands we’ve had before. I think that’s fun! Here are your repeat offenders!

Napalm Death, “Moral Crusade”

Even though it sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a murky pond, you can still hear what stunned people about Napalm Death’s debut. It sounds so extreme, so otherworldly, that it’s pretty hard to comprehend at first. Mick Harris’s drums, in particular, sound almost incomprehensibly fast.

Farside, “I Hope You’re Unhappy”

Farside here are operating in sort of a mid-tempo alternative rock mode, but I still find it enjoyable despite that. I also enjoy it when bands break the fourth wall like this.

Time to check in on analytics. It says here I’m consistently above 10 people a day. Not bad! If you’re one of those 10 people, feel free to let me know down below. Or not, it’s cool, I love talking about music to myself. Speaking of music…

Built to Spill, “The Weather”

The closer for Ancient Melodies of the Future, this almost sounds more like a Belle and Sebastian song at times instead of a Built to Spill song. Compared to monumental closers like “Broken Chairs” or “Untrustable Pt. 2”, this song comes off as limp. In fact, the lack of epics like those two songs are one of the reasons Ancient Melodies is not as great as the preceding albums.