The English Beat

Wolves in the Throne Room, “Face In A Night Time Mirror - Part 1”

All four of the songs on the debut album from Wolves in the Throne Room go over 12 minutes. Although it’s very black metal, even from the beginning there were a lot of non-standard moves. The clean vocals on this track, for instance, not to mention the pastoral interlude. Metal has always played around with folk, and there have been other bands that have merged the sounds, but Wolves in the Throne room do a better job of that sort of thing than most.

Negativland, “I Am God”

It’s always kind of a difficult thing to categorize Negativland as music. Usually, they’re more performance art who happens to use audio as their medium. There are exceptions in their catalog, though. Escape From Noise has plenty of things on it that you can characterize as songs, fractured as most of them are. Free, their full album that followed up the whole U2 imbroglio, is maybe the most musical thing they’ve ever put together. Which isn’t to say it’s full of toe-tapping tunes. But hey, this song has a beat, and you can dance to it! Not bad for an album which is mostly a meditation on free will and freedom in general.

Today’s songs.

The English Beat, “I Confess”

We haven’t had very many second wave ska bands around here. That’s mainly because I was around with the third wave was a thing, so I know those bands well. And when I spend time learning about previous scenes, I mostly spend that time on the first wave of bands. The English Beat are one of the few second wave bands that I know reasonably well, with their poppy take on the genre standing in contrast to so many bands that mostly combine it with punk.