The McRackins

The Magnetic Fields, “The Way You Say Good-Night”

You know, the only Magnetic Fields record I’ve ever heard is this one. There are a lot more, and I have no idea if this record is an outlier in their sound or not. When they started making records, I wasn’t into this sort of music, and I just never looped back to check it out. I guess I’ll just keep the mystery alive. They could sound like Meshuggah or whatever on their other records, and I’ll never know.

Claude Fontaine, “Pretending He Was You”

Claude Fontaine’s self-titled 2019 album is a mix of reggae and a few other musical styles, such as the bossa nova of this track. It’s a charming record, helped considerably by her hiring Jamaican musicians who are deeply familiar with the music as her backing band. It’s an album that could easily have come off as inauthentic, but ends up working quite well.

Czarface & Ghostface Killah, “Powers and Stuff”

Czarface is Inspectah Deck (from the Wu-Tang Clan) and Esoteric, here teaming up for an album-length collaboration with Ghostface. As with most of Wu-related records, it’s very listenable, because the formula is so strong. Ghostface is great, of course, and the Czarface MCs are solid, so this ends up being a fun album.

You know, now that I’m not linking out to YouTube, I suppose I don’t have to do these intros, do I? I mean, I don’t have to do any of this, I suppose.

Oneohtrix Point Never, “Same”

Our first go-around with Oneohtrix Point Never, with a track off his best album since Replica. Rather than diving deep on a time period and exploring all the sounds from there, Age Of draws widely from whatever noises Daniel Lopatin wants to use. The result is unpredictable, but always interesting, and not a bad spot to start listening to OPN.

The Management would like to apologize for yesterday’s entry. Those responsible have been sacked. Let’s try this again today.

Less Than Jake, “Just Like Frank”

We’re not rid of the ska, apparently! Actually, Less Than Jake really are barely ska at all. They have the occasional ska song, but they’re really a punk band. And a good one! Have I made that point before? I probably have. Whatever. Here at Five Songs, Quality is Job Six or Seven On A Good Day.

I don’t have a lot to say about today’s songs. Sorry about that.

NoFX, “Total Bummer”

Yup, that’s a NoFX song. Damn, I have a lot of NoFX albums. I really did enjoy them a lot at one time.

Mr. Lif, “World Renown”

Yeah, that’s more like it. Always happy to hear Del the Funky Homosapien show up on something. This is from Lif’s comeback album, Don’t Look Down, a welcome record to show up. I’ll always have room for a guy rhyming “Charybdis”.

Prompted by it coming up during an off-blog shuffle, at some point The Beatles are going to come up here. I have all their albums, after all. Can you even find them on YouTube? I don’t know, I guess I’ll find out. Today is not that day, though.

Agalloch, “…And The Great Cold Death of the Earth”

At some point, black metal experiments with enough other instrumentation and flirts with folk enough that it really stops being metal, doesn’t it? Agalloch sort of sets out to answer that question, with this track being a good example. There’s really not a whole lot that ties it to black metal, but the band is still considered to be at least adjacent to that community. Part of it is the themes that Agalloch writes about, which are similar to some of the things explored by black metal bands. But if you played this for just somebody random who is knowledgable about music, it would be a while before they came up with black metal as a descriptor.