The Replacements

Jonwayne, “Afraid of Us”

A tasty drum loop here, and a nice lightweight structure up on top of it. Appropriate for a contemplative track like this one, this is just a solid song all around.

Delerium, “Sorrow”

A project from a couple of guys from Front Line Assembly, the industrial act out of Vancouver, Delerium goes in an ambient direction, as I suppose you can hear. This sort of thing doesn’t make my wheels squeak, so I only have this one EP from them. Maybe their other stuff is banging? Probably not.

Andrew Bird, “You Woke Me Up!”

A companion piece to Noble Beast, Useless Creatures is an all-instrumental exploration which allows Bird to indulge his more exploratory impulses. As always, everything Bird does is interesting, but this is not one of his more loveable records.

Victoria Monét, “Experience”

Victoria Monét is primarily known for her work with Ariana Grande, which means I know zip about most of her music. I’m very out of touch! But I picked up this album (Jaguar) after it showed up on a bunch of year-end lists, and it’s very pleasant. I also enjoy the kind of electro-funk sounds on this track, I’ll take those any day.

The Adjusters, “Armstrong”

The Adjusters were a ska/soul act out of Chicago, who managed a couple albums before the ska scene imploded, but hung around with a couple more albums with much more narrow distribution. They also wore their left politics on their sleeve, and brought a lot of genuine passion to things. This tune comes from their most effective album, Before The Revolution, where their eclectic influences came together well.

The Replacements, “Waitress In The Sky”

This is an inner-circle member of the “Songs That Randomly Pop In Josh’s Head” club. Which isn’t the catchiest name, I know. I’ll bring it up at the next meeting.

The Replacements, “I Will Dare”

Well, that’s a first. I ain’t mad!

I’ve said it before, but the Replacements have made the best album named Let It Be.

Negativland, “The Perfect Cut (Canned Music)”

In the wake of getting some minor success, Negativland planned to tour to support Escape From Noise. It quickly became apparent that the tour was going to be a financial disaster, so the band decided to cancel it. Being who they are, they made up a story about why they were canceling it, and fed nonsense to the media that it was a consequence of legal trouble as a result of a kid murdering his parents after listening to “Christianity Is Stupid”. This was at a time when the media was ready to believe all kinds of nonsense about music and games, with satanic panic everywhere, so they got a local news station in California to bite.

Three days, when will it stop? NOT TODAY! HIT IT, YOUTUBE!

The Microphones, “I Want To Be Cold”

There’s something almost shoegaze-y about this track from the Microphones, with the buried vocals and washes of noise. I love it when everything lays out about a minute in as well. It’s a short tune, but it packs a punch.

Kid Koala, “3 Bit Blues”

Kid Koala assembled the entirety of 12 Bit Blues out of layers and layers of samples of old blues, adding scratching over the top when everything was put together. It’s a fascinating experiment, as with just about everything he does, sounding ancient and dusty while simultaneously modern.

This is the first time I’ve written one of these entries not listening on headphones. Instead, I’m pumping out the jams from my laptop while sitting on the couch next to Megan. Nobody cares, Josh! Get to the music!

De La Soul, “Snoopies (featuring David Byrne)”

As I mentioned in the first entry on They Might Be Giants, De La Soul is probably the only band that I’ve been listening to longer than TMBG. I bought Three Feet High and Rising on the strength of being blown away by “Say No Go”, and I haven’t ever stopped listening to them. While they’ve had some ups and downs (the two Bionix albums being the major downs), every De La Soul record release has been an event for me. Their most recent record was an even bigger departure than usual: they crowdfunded it on Kickstarter, and decided to use a pretty novel method of making it. They brought a band into the studio, recorded them playing a wide variety of stuff, and then used that work as a basis for their sampling to make beats. Thus, they didn’t need to clear any samples: they were only sampling themselves. The results are interesting, and worth looking into.