After the anarchic fun of Cure For Sanity, which got some popular attention particularly on dance floors, their followup (The Looks or the Lifestyle) came out the next year trying to cash in on the popularity. But while there was a surface similarity, it all felt kind of pro-forma. Lots of chanting, repetitive lyrics gestured at being anthems, but nothing really lands on the record, and it should really be ignored.
[Read More]A lethally catchy song, I’ll be humming this for the next several days. I feel like The Else gets really kind of ignored in the TMBG catalog. By that point, they were really kind of becoming known as a kids’ band, and they just slipped in this really lushly produced thing right in the middle of three kids’ albums.
[looks at “kids’”] That looks wrong. I think it’s right? Ain’t gonna look it up!
[Read More]EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
When I die, and you cut my brain open (which I’m sure somebody will), you’ll hear a tiny echo of this song.
From their landmark Freedom of Choice, which is a hell of a rock album, the one where they added enough synth pop into their sound to break through. But ignore “Whip It”, subtract it from the album, and the album would still smoke.
[Read More]Probably the most out-there song on Icky Thump, this flamenco goof is not only stylistically funny, but also happens to be a cover, making it another outlier on the record. It’s pretty fun, though.
This is from Mightathon, a compilation of b-sides and non-album tracks from their early years, roughly around Lincoln. There’s some great stuff on this disc, many of which also appear on other comps, so it mostly can be skipped. I’m not sure it’s really very readily available these days anyway.
[Read More]Is it post-rock or jazz? Half of the band is from Tortoise, so that’s a big post-rock vote. But, they have multiple horns! So, jazz? But Godspeed You! Black Emperor have multiple horns, right? [checks] Hmm, only one listed. I’m going to say that more than one horn makes you into jazz. Gonna have to see if the horn rule holds up.
Noname is from Chicago, and first gained some fame working with Chance the Rapper. Her 2018 album, Room 25, is fantastic - jazzy, smooth, she has great delivery, it’s a real delight.
[Read More]Mostly, when we get a funk track on here, I just pull the textual equivalent of a stink face. “Goddamn,” I’ll say, or “holy shit” or some other incoherent blurt. It conveys nothing about the music other than my elemental appreciation for it. I’d like to apologize for my limitations as a writer here. I don’t really know what I’m doing, or even why I’m doing it. I just like being connected to my music a little bit more, and this blog is a way to do that. And, if I may add: godDAMN.
[Read More]This song is a great example of how John Linnell is capable of writing a bouncy, charming song that nevertheless has a melancholy core to it. He usually bangs out at least one of those on each record, and there’s always some turn of phrase in them that really sticks with me. “There’s a restaurant we should check out / where the other nightmare people like to go / I mean nice people / Baby wait / I didn’t mean to say nightmare” just runs through my head all the time. Lincoln is real good, y’all.
[Read More]This is the intro to Giants Jubilee, which is a comp album containing b-sides, EP tracks, and demos from the early years of the band. While there are some fun things on here, it’s really only for completists.
Uh, sorry about the song title here. I don’t really know what to do about this kind of thing, so I just leave it as is and trust my audience. Anyway, SPK were an industrial noise act led by Graeme Revell, who would go on to a long and successful career scoring films. Like a lot of early industrial acts, the ugliness was the point. There was little attempt to make this stuff appealing, it was all created as a way to get emotional reactions from people.
[Read More]Folks, the streak of metal is over!
I wonder what proportion of my music library is various genres. I think just plain “rock” probably dominates, but I’d love to know what percentage is metal, rap, soul, ska, or whatever else. I wish I could trust the genre metadata on things.
This b-side comes to us from the “The Question Is How Fast” single. Superchunk took singles seriously from the beginning, all the way down to releasing actual 7" singles at a time when not many bands were doing that. As a result, their b-sides were always pretty good. Happily, they’ve done a good job of collecting these things together (this one makes it to Incidental Music: 91-95).
[Read More]Frisk Frugt is the alias of Anders Lauge Meldgaard, who makes experimental pop music using modified toy instruments and various homemade instruments. He’s an artist I found through The Quietus, which can be a good source of music out of left field. It’s an interesting album, unlike anything else I really have, and there’s always room for stuff like that in my collection.
You know what else we always have room for around here? Ska. Always! Can’t wait for a fourth wave.
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