Cursive followed up my favorite album of theirs with Happy Hollow, which probably isn’t really a step back or anything, but I always think more highly of albums that are a breakout. Domestica is arresting, an unflinching look into divorce that can be downright haunting, but The Ugly Organ was a leap forward in the songs that causes it to really stick out in my head. At any rate, this is also a great record, I’m probably just an idiot.
[Read More]1962, baby!
I really enjoy the sax blowing while he’s rhyming, it really sets things off, and makes my ears kind of ping back and forth between what sounds like competing leads. That tension really provides a lot interest in the tune.
Chaos Rules: Live at the Trocadero is sort of a live career retrospective by the Dead Milkmen, but I gotta say, it’s hard to recommend it. The live renditions don’t add a ton, and the sound quality isn’t great. Uh, as you can hear.
[Read More]Has it been a while since we’ve had extreme metal on here? It seems like it has been. Sunless’s 2021 release, Ylem, is a fine example of the sort of dissonant death metal that I usually go for in the death metal space. While I’m not sure it’s super stuck with me like my favorites in the genre, it’s crunchy and plenty surprising, so I like it.
[Read More]Black Moon’s 1993 classic, Enta da Stage, could not have been released at a worse time to get attention. The synthesis of the jazz-inflected beats of Native Tongues and the street rhymes of New York City would have been massively influential had it not landed at roughly the same time as Midnight Mauraders (showing how far these kinds of beats could be taken) and Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (showing how far these kinds of rhymes could go). Nevertheless, the album is a serious banger.
[Read More]Electronic artist Filastine draws widely from musical traditions from across the globe, pulling in bits and pieces from many cultures to assemble his songs. What could sound eclectic doesn’t come off that way, it instead is more like a kaleidoscope - assembling a fractured image into an interesting whole.
Is this one of the rare live albums that elevates past just being a worse-sounding collection of their studio hits? One of those shining gems that comes across just often enough for me to keep buying live albums like a big fuckin’ chump? Reader, it is not. It is fine.
[Read More]Ben Weasel started letting some of the songs on Anthem For A New Tomorrow stretch out a little bit, and let the Ramones worship go just a tiny bit. The result is probably his best record - still very much punk, still very familiar, but tuneful and fun.
The second Selected Ambient Works album from Aphex Twin doesn’t quite hit the same way the first one did. It’s very long (two discs of 70 minutes each), and it doesn’t seem like it was edited down enough. The first one is the most important ambient electronic album ever, and this one is more of a curiosity. Add in that I’m not a huge ambient guy, and this album hasn’t really gotten much play since I got it.
[Read More]Without fanfare, I’ve been doing this more than a month now. I think I’ve missed two days. Not bad! I think I’ll keep going for now, I’m still having fun. Here’s today’s music!
This is a track from a Lookout Records sampler called Heide Says, released in 1996. Despite being on Lookout, this sounds more like a song from a Dischord band than the typical pop punk of Lookout. I actually like this track a fair bit, and don’t really remembering noticing it when I got this sampler.
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