The Spinanes

Valentine’s Day! Let’s do a special!

The Twilight Singers, “Candy Cany Crawl”

No! That’s the wrong kind of candy! Stupid randomizer.

Snoop Dogg, “Candy (Drippin’ Like Water)”

That’s the wrong kind of candy also! Starting to think that “candy” is mostly used as a metaphor in songs for other things than, you know, candy.

The Spinanes, “Kid in Candy”

First, before we examine the candy content of the song, let’s just take a moment and just marvel at how much fun it is to listen to Scott Plouf go on the drums. And Rebecca Gates is always a marvel. What a pleasure.

Ghostface Killah, “The Champ”

This production from Just Blaze (you can tell it’s him because he announces it in the track, in his his trademark understated manner) needs to be played at maximum volume to be properly appreciated. Just trust me on that.

The Spinanes, “72-74”

Been a while since we’ve had The Spinanes, the duo of Rebecca Gates and Scott Plouf, who put out three albums in the 90s before disbanding. Defined by Gates’s lovely songs and a generally spare sensibility that ran contrary to the prevailaing approach in rock (especially for a Seattle band), this stuff holds up really well today. This is from the third and final Spinanes record, Arches and Aisles, which has the biggest arrangements on it, but is still pretty uncluttered.

I don’t have a ton to say today.

Game Theory, “Exactly What We Don’t Want To Hear”

You know, you should all thank me that I haven’t yet made a “it’s time for some game theory!” joke! Or “joke”, really. Uh, until now, I suppose.

The Spinanes, “Meridian”

There should be more rock duos, in my opinion. The Spinanes don’t suffer from the spare instrumentation at all. It gives more space to focus on the individual elements of the band, which is totally OK with me! I wonder what Rebecca Gates is up to these days? Probably shouldn’t look. Never learn anything, that’s my motto.

Well, we here at Five Songs Amalgamated managed to go two entire months without missing an entry! Not bad! Our ones of listener/readers must be pleased! Here’s today, and here’s to another complete month!

The Housemartins, “There Is Always Something There To Remind Me”

You know, the Housemartins should really be on my regular rotation of bands to listen to when I’ve got the kids around. I wish I wouldn’t forget this right after I finish this article.

Posting from the road! Are we going to get road trip music? Probably not.

DJ Krush, “Chie No Wa”

I should listen to more Japanese hip-hop. Anyway, DJ Krush is mostly instrumental, but here we have some rhyming. I’ve got a couple of his releases, and they’re pretty entertaining, if not quite the top of the pile for DJ records. Allmusic tells me this album is actually a mixtape of stuff he did with other artists?