The Pietasters

Hüsker Dü, “Divide and Conquer”

A thing that is easy to forget about Hüsker Dü is how ridiculously productive they were in their salad days. Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, and Flip Your Wig all came out within a 14 month period, a rate of output that’s even more impressive when you remember that Zen Arcade was a double album. Adding to the awe here is that all three records are bangers, with New Day Rising being my favorite hardcore record (which I’ve definitely never said about any other album!). Flip Your Wig somehow is the weakest of the three, and it’s great! It’s a little lighter, a little poppier, but it’s still full of energy and is probably a bit easier to get into than the other two.

Television, “See No Evil”

There have been bands as cool as Television was when they released Marquee Moon, but I’m not sure there have been any cooler.

SWANS, “In My Garden”

On Children of God, Jarboe’s contributions to the band were placed much more at the center of things. The transition from the sound of nihilist, crushing despair over to spooky, creepy despair was thus complete. This era of the band is probably my least favorite, but that’s mainly just due to how much I like some of their other periods. As always, SWANS are never less than interesting and frequently much more than that.

Glorior Belli, “The Great Southern Darkness”

Glorior Belli are a black metal band out of France, but they fuse in a lot of other things to their sound. Like, for instance, the opening of this is really kind of a Soundgarden song. But, I’m not sure it all works. Like, when they pivot to the metal vocals here, it seems really forced. This album doesn’t really do it for me.

Fifteen, “Petroleum Distillation”

Fifteen is the successor band to Crimpshrine, who were one of the seminal bands of the entire Gilman/Lookout scene in California. Crimpshrine splintered, yielding Operation Ivy, the legendary Cometbus zine, and Fifteen. As you can hear, this is very much right in the middle of that Lookout sound, all melodic punk in the vein of Stiff Little Fingers. Quite enjoyable if you’re into this style.

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, “Good Cop Bad Cop”

The Shadowy Men would become famous as the band who provided the theme song and much of the music for the Kids in the Hall. But to me, they’ll always remind me of my friends Drew and Alex in college, and specifically Alex’s dorm where I first encountered them. They were really the first instrumental band I fell in love with, and one of the key ways I started broadening my taste. I’m glad that it still sounds great to me, and cherish the ability of this album to transport me back to that time.

The Pietasters, “Crying Over You”

I’m of the opinion that the Pietasters really fell off hard after Oolooloo, driven among other things by Stephen Jackson’s vocals getting much more gruff and the band really starting to emphasize rock more and more. That said, there are still some fun tunes on their later records, such as this one from Awesome Mix Tape #6.

Nine Inch Nails, “The Big Come Down”

The Downward Spiral was a leap forward in complexity for Nine Inch Nails, as Trent Reznor really made use of a much broader set of tools. But I don’t think it’s his best record. I think that goes to The Fragile, the eventual follow-up that emerged as a double record and again makes another leap ahead. If nothing else, there’s more of it, and when the quality is this high, that matters. He wouldn’t ever quite hit these heights again, although there are plenty of excellent albums in the future.

Eddie Holland, “Take A Chance On Me”

Alas, no, this isn’t a predecessor of the ABBA song, but now I want to hear Motown style covers of ABBA songs.

The Pietasters, “Without You”

Seems like we’ve had a lot more of the Pietasters live than we have from their studio work, which is kind of a shame. A rational person might ask, well, why don’t I just remove the live record from the collection? To which I say to you, Rational Person, why the hell are you even paying attention to this dumb blog? Shouldn’t you be doing some imaginary figment business or something?

Mudhoney, “Endless Yesterday”

Mudhoney is never really going to sound mature, not with Mark Arm sounding like he does. But as they went along (this is from their seventh album), they picked up a lot of moves that make them sound so much more put together. I mean, this is pretty damn melodic for a Mudhoney tune! There’s noise here that doesn’t come from a guitar!

The Pietasters, “Freak Show”

Hey, speaking of mature, the lyrics to this are really a model for how to handle sensitive subjects carefully.

The Pietasters, “Without You”

You know, for a dude who claims to not like live albums, I sure have a lot of live albums. The Pietasters only have one good studio album, Oolooloo, but it’s tremendous. I bought this album because it was the next thing they put out, and I wanted more. This live album captured them at about the same time as their studio masterpiece, and it finds the band in roughly the same form. As a result, it’s probalby their second best album, which doesn’t say a ton about the rest of their career.

Today’s music.

Algiers, “untitled”

The last track from their self-titled debut album from a few years ago, Algiers combined furious post-punk with a whole host of other influences, fusing into a wholly original album. It was one of the very best albums of 2015, and proof that there were still surprises left in rock (of course, I’ve always thought that). They followed it up with another great album a couple years later, and are one of the bands that I really hope keeps going for a while. Hopefully we’ll hear plenty from them around here as well.

Happy Pi Day! I do not celebrate Pi Day usually. I have occasionally done something for Pi Approximation Day, though. Let’s do a special!

The Pietasters, “Night Owl (Live)”

So, in case you haven’t guessed, our special word for today is “pie”. As with some previous specials, I searched my library for our magic word, and shuffled between those songs. There was a significant risk of a lot of Pietasters today. (UPDATE: indeed there was.) Anyway, the Pietasters were a third wave ska act who made one out-of-character tremendous album (Oolooloo) and an assortment of lesser albums. This is from a decent live album, Strapped Live!, where most of the best songs are from Oolooloo. So, you know, that album is really good!