They Might Be Giants

The Budos Band, “Ghost Walk”

The Budos Band are brilliant, always worth listening to, but they don’t always do cool. This song, though, is so smooth and cool, a standout from their brilliant first album.

Squarepusher, “Nux Vomica”

Burningn’n Tree is a collection of Squarepusher’s earliest EPs (one not even credited as Squarepusher), along with a few new tracks for the album. As a result of being a collection, as well as being from when Tom Jenkinson was still kind of sorting out what he wanted to sound like, it’s uneven. So it’s interesting stuff if you’re a Squarepusher sicko, but you have a lot of records to get through before you should get to this.

Noisem, “Birthing the Bestial”

A lot of what I like about thrash are when you’ve got really chunky, memorable riffs and some pyrotechnic squalling solos. So I ought to love this, right? But I dunno, it’s fine. I don’t really reach for it. I think I have a hard time falling in love with new thrash. Although this isn’t new any more, so maybe I’m just a bozo.

The Joykiller, “What It’s Worth”

This apparently is an LA supergroup, but I didn’t know that at the time. I ended up grabbing it because it was on Epitaph, the cover art was strange, and it was in the new release rack at Easy Street. By and large, I never regretted just buying random records, sometimes I found some great stuff. And sometimes, you end up with this record. Can’t win ’em all!

Bim Skala Bim, “Sunshine of Your Love”

Bim Skala Bim enjoyed covering classic rock warhorses over their career, songs which are really kind of ideal targets for this kind of thing. Any dork who will get upset about a cheeky cover of Cream of Pink Floyd is really showing their ass. Anyway, this is fun, sure, why not?

Upon proofreading, I’m leaving the “Cream of Pink Floyd” typo in there, because it’s delightful. Yes, I proofread these, dammit.

The NY Citizens, “Brooklyn’s On Fire”

That is some Saturday Night Live-ass horn work on this tune.

Oh, this is the first time we’ve had them, huh? The NY Citizens were a pretty early band in the third wave of ska, so this was all before some of the genre boundaries had settled down. As a result, they were much more English Beat than anything else, which wasn’t a popular referent for most of the other bands in the third wave.

They Might Be Giants, “Can’t Keep Jonny Down”

John Linnell is probably my favorite songwriter ever, and so it means a lot when I say that “Some dude / Hitting golf balls on the moon / Bathroom in his pants / And he thinks he’s better than me” might be my favorite lyric he’s ever written.

johnboy, “Chair”

I miss the heyday of noise rock. There were so many bands doing cool shit in the early 90s, and you could just find new stuff all the time. I suppose it might still be happening somewhere still, and I’m just not plugged in enough to find out about it. Is anybody doing a noise rock blog?

Stereolab, “Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Mellow)”

I only have three Stereolab albums, and that’s dumb, because I like them quite a bit. I caught onto them pretty early, but didn’t really keep up with them. I think because maybe in the early 90s, I was really focusing on loud and angry stuff, and depite recognizing deep inside that this was cool stuff, I just fell off. I should really loop back and pick some more of their stuff.

The Roots, “We Got You”

Just a brief thing from the Roots’ live album, I won’t spend more time on this than it lasts.

Wu-Tang Clan, “A Better Tomorrow”

The way the drums start up on this track, that’s such a RZA move. The distant piano loop also is a signature. These days, if I came into a beat blind, I couldn’t be sure if it’s a RZA track or not, because his style has been adopted by a lot of folks. But in 1997? Yeah, I could easily pick his stuff out.

Stugots, “Ooh Poo Pah Doo”

This is from an EP called Soupy Sales, a slab of fun, guttural noise rock. This tune, the closer to that EP, is different, as it’s a cover, was recorded live, and is just kind of a straightforward rock song. You can’t really tell that much about the band from this.

Skinnerbox, “I’ve Got To Know”

This is from the final Skinnerbox record, released after Moon Records imploded. It continues King Django’s approach of mostly playing it pretty traditional, although there are some punk elements here and there, some dub, some rocksteady, just lots of bits to keep things fresh.

Bitch Magnet, “Navajo Ace”

I wanted them to keep going with that stuttering thing they had in the first thirty seconds, but the rest of the song is plenty fun as well.

They Might Be Giants, “You Probably Get That A Lot”

I think I’ve made this point before, but that was probably a long time ago. There’s a lot of Five Songs, and nobody is really paying much attention to it. That includes the staff of Five Songs. Anyway, just think of it like how when you know a friend long enough, you’re going to hear the same stories a lot and even start to take comfort in them.

They Might Be Giants, “Ana Ng (Live)”

I adore this song, but damn, I have a lot of TMBG live material. But, I suppose I have 49 distinct releases from TMBG in the library (and two CDs upstairs that need to be ripped), so I just have a lot of stuff from them in general.

Inter Arma, “Bumgardner”

The opener to their magnificent Sulphur English, this song sounds like it’s gasping for breath. It’s struggling to stay above the water, gulping air, before a wave comes in to send it down to the bottom for good.