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!
[Read More]My current favorite burn for doofy looking middle-aged dudes who look a certain way is to say that they look like they have strong opinions about the best Archers of Loaf EP. (This is mostly a self-burn.) Anyway, I’m now currently considering updating that to the best Polvo EP, but I’m not sure that that’s appropriately controversial enough (it’s this one). And I just continue to burn myself.
[Read More]Late period Stax single here, which you can hear in that much more 70s funk sound. And of course, the production at this point is much richer than some of the earlier stuff.
This comes from the 2007 album Boss Harmony Sessions, which is sort of a bit of an odd record from them. They have some originals, some arrangements of other people’s songs, and some songs written by other folks from the band than Vic Ruggiero. It’s tied together with an intro and outro by “Boss Harmony”, which I think is one of King Django’s (Skinnerbox) many aliases. At any rate, the Slackers are great, so this is a pleasant listen, but it’s not one of their top tier records.
[Read More]There’s that early Stax sound here. Dig those Memphis Horns!
Hell yeah! Stax/Volt forever, y’all!
Staying super cool today, I see. Ghost Funk Orchestra play around in that funk/soul space, with their spin being a fair bit of psychedelia and jazz folded into the mix. It’s not a totally unique formula, but they handle it well, and there are some real cinematic elements to their sound that is super appealing.
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