Pop punk is one of those genres that never really changes or evolves, and just relies on sappy emotion and snappy songs. You really need to nail the catchy songs and the energy or it’s going to come across as limp or manufactured. When done right, though, it’s delightful. That said, the first couple Fall Out Boy records totally nail it, so happy for this to come up.
[Read More]An early hardcore band in Austin, the Big Boys inspired a bunch of bands that followed them, including folks like the Butthole Surfers. It’s also where Rey Washam (Scratch Acid, Rapeman) and Tim Kerr (Poison 13, The Monkeywrench) got their start. All of the Big Boys’ catalog was helpfully compiled into two discs, with The Skinny Elvis comprising the first half of their career and The Fat Elvis (which gave us today’s track) the second half. Among other things that made them great, they were totally unafraid to just straight up play some funk, which is delightful.
[Read More]By the time they reached 2000’s Pump Up The Valuum, it was clear that NoFX were dedicated to never evolving for any reason. Which just makes them writing a song about the impending destruction of the music industry for, uh, not evolving just that much funnier. At any rate, this is where I got off the train with NoFX, I figured I had more than enough music from them.
[Read More]White Blood Cells still strikes me as such an unusual breakout album. The White Stripes didn’t particularly soften their approach or anything, it’s still the same kind of garage rock they’d been making to this point, and yet it really got huge. I’m not sure why them and not some other act.
Tune in to this space tomorrow when I will be baffled by other commonplace things.
[Read More]The closest that noise rock ever really got to any kind of mass popularity was in the late 90s, when the grunge tide lifted up the boats of related acts like Helmet and some folks got major label contracts. But this stuff is intentionally abrasive, and none of it every broke through for good reason. While some grunge acts and followers became huge, noise rock went right back into the underground. But, happily, there’s still bands like METZ keeping the flame alive, and this is even from 2017! Recent! Although, again: I listen to the same shit, even if some of it was made not long ago.
[Read More]Unlike with OutKast, I have a lot of trouble picking my favorite Superchunk album. No Pocky For Kitty was the first album I bought, and it’s top notch, and it’s a sentimental pick. Here’s Where The String Come In has Superchunk at their best blend of their energy and more mature songwriting, and it’s a fantastic record. And then there’s On The Mouth, today’s album, which is just rock solid back-to-front. I think it’s probably my most frequent pick, but I really do swap around quite a bit.
[Read More]We’ve had a lot of Madlib around here, in a bunch of different projects. In 2014, he got together with Freddie Gibbs, the upcoming gangsta rapper who also was comfortable as an underground MC. That collaboration, Piñata, was one of my favorite Madlib records ever (which is really saying something). The pairing felt natural, with Madlib’s gritty, fractured beats complementing Gibbs’s flows perfectly. This track is from the followup, Bandana, which is just as good, although because it was the second it doesn’t have the factor of surprise working for it. Both albums are very highly recommended.
[Read More]A Motown track from 1965, the heavy horns here really sound a little more like Stax than like Motown, especially from 1965.
Yeah, see, those horns!
DJ Vadim’s second album, U.S.S.R. Life From The Other Side, found the abstract hip-hop producer working with MCs on most of the tracks, which largely was an improvement. I think abstract hip-hop can sometimes get a little lazy, and having to make sure things will work with someone actually rapping makes sure that he tightens things up.
[Read More]It was wobbly a few times there, but another month in the books. As always, thanks for sticking with me here!
If you were just given the data above, the name of this song and the name of this band, I wonder how close you’d get to guessing that it sounds like this kind of abrasive drone? I think I’d guess something pretty outré, at any rate, so I might get pretty close to “early Swans, I guess?” But that’s easy for me to say, I already knew what this sounded like.
[Read More]2011 was an insanely productive year for Boris, with four albums showing up that year, all of them being unusual in some way from their standard. To the extent that Boris has a standard. Anyway, this is from New Album, which continues in the grand tradition of Boris albums being named things that are a pain in the ass (one of the other 2011 albums was called Heavy Rocks, which is the second time they’ve named an album that). At any rate, New Album is sort of a remix, with much of the material here being reworked songs from Heavy Rocks (2011) and Attention Please (another of the 2011 releases). If this is all confusing, welcome to the Boris discography!
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