Coil is one of the most interesting bands to emerge from the original industrial scene, where they quickly went off in their own direction. By the time we get to their third proper album, Love’s Secret Domain, there wasn’t really anything industrial left. Instead, we’re left with creepy, gothic, atmospheric stuff that filters electronic music through a cracked mirror. It’s one of their essential records, and there’s nothing else really like it.
[Read More]For how often I mention Torche, it’s nice to actually get the band in here. Always loud, always delightful.
Just going full-on big rock today. With luck, everything we get will soar, and it’ll be a rare feel-good Five Songs list. But, knowing my library, we’ll probably get Einstürzende Neubauten mic-ing up a construction site and hammering on it with a ladle instead.
Well, it doesn’t exactly soar, but it’s still a summery thing, so I’ll count it. The spare guitar in the opening, the gentle unison of the sax and the trombone, all leading to Vic Ruggiero’s plaintive question is one of my favorite moments by the Slackers. They’re willing to just let this languid bouncer cook, resisting the temptation to layer on too much, and it’s such a great tune as a result. The hottest it gets is Hillyard’s solo, but even there, the extra ornamentation is really just limited to some “oooooohhhs” in the background. And bonus points for Ruggiero’s tremendous delivery of the word “sober”. Great tune.
[Read More]I ran out of interesting (?) things to say about matt pond PA a couple tracks ago. So, as per the standard Five Songs Style Guide, that gives me license to just blather here.
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Turns out I don’t have anything interesting to say that’s not about matt pond PA either. Oh! The new Belle and Sebastian is pretty good! That’s almost relevant to this band.
[Read More]By the time they hit 1997’s Mass Nerder, ALL was on their third singer across seven albums, but the band still basically sounded the same. This was finally the album where I realized that I was very much done with them. The previous record (Pummel) had some awful lyrics, and I really wasn’t sure why I picked this one up. Kind of force of habit, really. At any rate, with the Descendents also having been resurrected by this point, ALL really served no purpose.
[Read More]When we had My Bloody Valentine the other day, I confessed that I didn’t really love Loveless. In turn, that means that I’m not really much on shoegaze, which is true. What I do often like is when bands take shoegaze-style wall of guitar and bring it in to other places. Like, Torche’s muscular riff-y rock has those washes of sound, and it’s great.
We’ve had “Mr. Big Stuff” on here, but it’s such an all-time jam, I’m not mad. But let’s do six today!
[Read More]One of the big trends of rap beats was taking old soul music and speeding it up so that it sounds like the Chipmunks. Here, Amon Tobin sounds like he’s doing kind of the same thing, only with cartoon sound effects. Why not?
Beautiful drum loop on this song.
Negativland hosted a show called Over The Edge on Berkley’s KPFA, providing an outlet for surreal radio strangeness. I actually caught the show once while going to camp in Berkeley, and it was a mess but also entertaining. They also put out a set of (lightly) edited shows on CD, and I have a bunch of those. This is from Volume 6, the Wilsaphone Stupid Show, which was pieced together out of old found audio and family recordings from David “The Weatherman” Wills. What you hear on this, um, song is pretty representative of Over the Edge in general.
[Read More]Ex-Helmet drummer John Stanier joined with Ian Williams of Don Caballero to form Battles. Given the pedigree, it’s no surprise that the focus was on complex, prog-y songs. Somewhat surprising, given the muscular nature of those two bands and the tough-sounding name, is the fact that Battles actually ends up playing pretty playful stuff. It’s not just wall-to-wall power, but ends up instead focusing on finesse.
[Read More]Happy birthday to my oldest! 10 years! Mind blowing. Let’s see what shuffle pulls up to celebrate!
One of the things to like about the Arsonists is the way MCs are coming into and out of this song, weaving their verses. I love that kind of thing.
A soul/ska act out of Chicago, the Adjusters were lumped in with the rest of the third-wave, which was a little bit of a mischaracterization. They were probably more reggae than ska, for starters. For second, the soul side of the band was substantial, and probably more of their songs would be soul songs than ska or reggae. When they were on, they were amazing, particularly when Joan Axthelm and Jessica Basta were doing the lead vocals. They also stood out for having an explicit political view for their music, as avowed socialists. This song comes from their third album, Otis Redding Will Save America, but I think their second album (Before the Revolution) is their best.
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