There’s a ruthless, efficient logic at the heart of 400 Blows. The find their groove, riff, or idea and just hammer away at it. It’s not that they’re robotic or simplistic or anything, but they recognize that repetition has a power of its own, and are unafraid to make use of it. It’s the sort of music you can disassemble an engine to.
[Read More]The world is divided into two groups: those who think Mothership Connection is P-Funk’s finest moment, and those who think One Nation Under A Groove is. (I’m ignoring Maggot Brain perverts.) My opinion largely rests on whichever one I’ve listened to most recently.
No, but seriously, it’s Mothership Connection.
Official Version is the first good Front 242 album, the one where the menacing synths and icy vocals really came together. And I have to say, this stuff has largely aged better than a lot of their peers. There are elements of it that kind of presage the *wave bands of today.
[Read More]We’ve talked before about how “Block Rockin’ Beats” was (deservedly) a galactic scale hit. I have to wonder how people who bought the record thought about the rest of the album, which is excellent, but which gleefully throws genre after genre into the blender and is pretty all over the map. I’d like to think that people put it on and thought “fuck yeah”.
[Read More]Guess how many people are in this band? Correct, two! That places them square in one of the major interests of Five Songs: Loud Rock Duos. They’re not as outre as someone like Lightning Bolt, they’re more towards the Big Business end of things. Only the one record from them, though.
You ever wonder how often you’ve listened to albums you love? Slanted & Enchanted was released in April of 1992, and I bought it the day it came out. I think I probably listened to it a couple times a week for the first year or so, and then maybe once a week on average for the rest of my time in college, and then maybe every other week for the next decade. And then down to maybe…once a month? For the next fifteen years? Let’s add that up - have I listened to this album 400 times? Jesus.
[Read More]Majestic. I’m just going to fuck this up if I try and write something.
Last time we had a track from this album, I expressed mystification that the Chemical Brothers had a moment. But you know what? This song is a fuckin’ force of nature, of course it was huge. Listen to it!
We’re big fans of noisy duos here at Five Songs, so of course Indian Handcrafts is up our alley. They’re more towards the Melvins end of things, putting them in the vicinity of Big Business more than anybody. Big stoner vibes, and huge riffs. It’s impressive that this is just a guitar and drums.
[Read More]I’ve written before about how I don’t love Write About Love, so I won’t rehash that here. It’s fine, but it’s just a little too slick and it just doesn’t resonate with me. I think this song is probably a good example of what I think. All the moves are there for this to be an excellent song, some horns, some handclaps, sweet backing vocals - but it just doesn’t quite land. Stuart just doesn’t sound like he’s really throwing himself into it, there’s a little too much repetition in the lyrics, and it just doesn’t seem too inspired.
[Read More]When we had My Bloody Valentine the other day, I confessed that I didn’t really love Loveless. In turn, that means that I’m not really much on shoegaze, which is true. What I do often like is when bands take shoegaze-style wall of guitar and bring it in to other places. Like, Torche’s muscular riff-y rock has those washes of sound, and it’s great.
We’ve had “Mr. Big Stuff” on here, but it’s such an all-time jam, I’m not mad. But let’s do six today!
[Read More]I think I mention this every time Manorexia pops up, but that’s infrequent enough that I think it’s OK: Manorexia is one of J.G. Thirlwell’s (Foetus, Wiseblood, Steroid Maximus, Clint Ruin, etc) aliases. Like Steroid Maximus, Manorexia is dedicated to cinematic instrumental music, and it’s not at all clear what differentiates the two aliases. At any rate, this is an interesting album.
You can tell within seconds that this is a Stax record. This is obviously from relatively late in the Stax run, when the soul sound of the label had evolved in this lush direction. I’ve always preferred the rawer style of the earlier records, but this is still a lovely sound.
[Read More]This is ostensibly a cover of the Green Day song. This was a gift to us, I think, a while back. And I suppose you can see the intended joke here - it’s lulliby music! But also Green Day! Har! But overall, this is so far from anything resembling the original that you’d probably have to explain it to anybody to attempt to convey the levity. Please try to slip it in-between the giggle-snorts.
[Read More]Kiwanuka’s second album, Love & Hate, is an ambitious album that roams all over the R&B and soul maps, unafraid to stretch out the songs, play with lush arrangements, and challenge listeners. It’s an album that I really prefer to listen to as a full album, because I think it builds on itself well.
DJ Shadow followed up his excellent 2016 album The Mountain Will Fall with an EP the next year, called The Mountain Has Fallen. It features a couple of nice collaborations with Nas and Danny Brown, and then it has this. The spastic pace, blurting synths, and swaths of noise seem deliberately hostile paired up with some of his most accessible stuff. Overall, though, it’s a solid EP.
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