The Flaming Lips

I missed yesterday, which is going to happen. Unlike when I was trying to maintain a perfect streak of daily posts as long as I could, this go around, I’m going to write when I feel like it. Which should be most days, I think, but not every day. I’m doing this for fun!

Bedouine, “Nice and Quiet”

(track 1!) Nice and quiet, indeed. Bedouine is a Syrian folk singer who drew a ton of critical attention with this record, which is what led me to pick it up after appearing on a couple of year-end roundups. I don’t remember which ones exactly. It wasn’t Pitchfork or Stereogum. Nor The Quietus. Well, who knows. Anyway: this isn’t really in my wheelhouse, musically. But every now and again I do try and sample from well-regarded stuff from this end of the pool, because sometimes I’ll latch onto it. Did this one take? Ehh, not really. It’s fine, it’s pretty. I just don’t find myself seeking it out.

The Flaming Lips, “The Sparrow”

King’s Mouth: Music and Songs is a bit of a return to a previous style for the Lips, sonically sounding a lot more like The Soft Bulletin than The Terror. But it’s also a big concept album, and I think that gets in the way of the songs, and not only that, the songs themselves feel just a bit forced to me. It just all kind of seems like a bit of a blurry copy of their mid-career stuff.

Soundgarden, “Swallow My Pride”

A collision of early grunge elements here! This is from the second Soundgarden EP, Fopp, from 1988. It’s a time when Soundgarden was still figuring out who they were, and their sound was still mostly a melding of hard rock and garage rock and wasn’t yet what would be recognizable as grunge. But it goes further than that! This song is actually a cover of Green River, the proto-grunge band from the mid-80s that would spawn both Mudhoney (Mark Arm and Steve Turner) and Pearl Jam (Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament). The elements that would make up grunge were starting to come in to focus even in 1985, when Green River recorded this song, with Steve Turner’s filthy riffs in particular being a building block of the genre. The music made by these bands wasn’t quite yet divorced enough from hard rock, didn’t have quite enough of the grime or the muscular confidence that would allow them to break into something new. But it was coalescing.

The Sound Stylistics, “Get Ya Some”

From the Mocambo Funk Forty Fives, a comp collecting, uh, funk forty fives from Mocambo Records. The label is a reliable source for this kind of stuff, so this collection is a very fun time. Listen to this, the flute lead is delightful.

J Church, “Violent Motions Created”

This is a darker palette than J Church usually work with, both in the music and the vocal delivery. But, as always with them, their instincts for not letting a song drag on serve them well. Get it out there, get the point across, get on to the next thing. You want more? Listen to it again!

The Flaming Lips, “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine”

They should have kept that noise from the first few seconds going throughout. Just go full abrasive. It would make me happy, anyway.

Mudhoney, “Burn It Clean”

One of the delightful bits of early Mudhoney is how often you can just hear someone yelling, belching, or otherwise making noise at the beginning or ending of tracks. It’s an excellent choice to leave that stuff in. The “hey jackass!” at the start of this really sets the tone.

Well, this blog officially turns five today! There have been 1137 posts on this site, if my tagging is to be trusted, so a pace better than every other day. More than five thousand little capsules on songs and bands, and that’s a dang lot of vapid garbage. I’ve probably spent more time on this than any other creative project, and I’m really not entirely sure why. I guess in the end I’ll be a better writer, and it’s nice to do something consistently. I don’t have an endgame for this or anything. It’s just, you know, music is nice.

Lupe Fiasco, “The Emperor’s Soundtrack”

There’s something so grandiose about Lupe Fiasco’s stuff. The beats are so layered, and they’re structured in a way to feel really huge, and the production of the rest of the track reinforces that massive impression.

Sebadoh, “Junk Bonds”

A Jason Loewenstein song from Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock, which is a comp of tracks from a couple import EPs. Like a lot of material from them at this time, it’s a schizophrenic record, but that’s also part of the appeal of the band. Tracks like this threw the tender material into even sharper relief.

The Story So Far, “Line”

I don’t remember picking up this record, but I guess it’s not a huge surprise. Pure Noise Records might be how I found it? Anyway, pleasant enough.

But enough of that. Somehow Plex thinks that this album came out on something called “Ice Grill$”, and I really like an alternate universe where that was the only change, and thinking of baffled consumers on both sides encountering the album.

Amon Tobin, “Back From Space”

The album opener to Out From Out Where, this record had the enviable task of following up the magnificent Supermodified. To Tobin’s credit, he didn’t really try and make Superdupermodified or whatever, he just continued evolving on his own path. This record moves a little bit away from the frantic excess of the previous, a little more towards orchestration, and just ends up full of cool textures.

Run-D.M.C., “Raising Hell”

I’m sure I’ve told the story before, but Raising Hell was the first album I remember buying for myself. I heard “Peter Piper” on the radio while we were driving to Pullman, WA, and I was entranced. I didn’t know exactly what that was, but I memorized the name of the act, and later found the cassette tape and bought it for myself. There was a certain excitement in buying a record with a bad word in the title, as well as just the unknown of not really knowing what to expect from it. I loved it, of course, and I still listen to this album to this day. While I didn’t become a music hound right away, this was my first step down that path, and will always hold a special place for me.