Wilco

Nice list today.

Floor, “Kallisti”

This sounds like it could have been from an early 90s band in the Squirrel Bait family. Like, some long-lost Bitch Magnet track or something. There’s nothing wrong with that, for the record!

(NB: this is a different take than the version shuffle pulled up.)

Dr. Dre, “Housewife”

As is often true with songs from 2001, you’re best off just concentrating on the beat here.

Here are today’s tunes.

Richie Hawtin, “Call of the Wild”

Last time this album came up, in one of the cutting bits of analysis that Five Songs is known for, I mostly bitched about the ID3 tags on this album. TRENCHANT! Anyway, I managed to say nothing about the album or the artist last time. I see no reason to change that today.

Wilco, “Ashes of American Flags”

In the first entry on Wilco, I ranked their albums, which remains the INDUSPUTABLE and DEFINITIVE rankings of their records. I am here to point out that despite the definitive nature of those rankings, the first three albums are very, very close. If you argued for a re-ordering of those three, you’d be wrong, but only barely. You’d also agree with various versions of Josh. That three album peak, from Being There to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is just an incredible stretch of songs. If Being There established that Wilco was going to be far more than an alt-country band, and Summerteeth established that the band was going to be a tremendous pop act, YHF showed that their palette would even expand to include some sonic experimentation around said pop songs.

Another year end roundup, this one from Allmusic. More will be coming! Today’s music.

Camper Van Beethoven, “Turquoise Jewelry”

You know, up until listening to this now, after listening to some Firewater earlier today, I’d never really made the connection between the bands. But I think there’s some similarity between them, especially with the last couple Firewater albums.

Wilco, “The Jolly Banker”

Back to Alpha Mike Foxtrot for a delightful little tune that basically sounds like an Uncle Tupelo number. That’s, of course, a good thing.

I have a new sweatshirt! I’m sort of really excited for it. Also, I come bearing music.

Fishbone, “End The Reign”

Fishbone played a mix of funk, punk, and metal, coming out of the same Los Angeles scene that birthed the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And for a while, until the Chili Peppers became one of the biggest bands on the planet, you really couldn’t mention one band without mentioning the other. I was never really that big into either of them, truthfully, although I gave them both a try. Anyway, this comes from Give A Monkey A Brain And He’ll Swear He’s The Center Of The Universe, an album that skews more towards the metal end of Fishbone’s sound (as you can hear).

I think it’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned it, so just in case: there’s an index of all these entries if you want to check it out. And here’s today’s music.

Wilco, “Let’s Not Get Carried Away”

And we’re back to Alpha Mike Foxtrot, that Wilco rarities collection. Seems like we’re hitting it a lot. So I checked: just a tiny bit under 40% of all the Wilco songs in my collection are from that rarities collection. This has been One Useless Fact to go with your Five Songs. Anyway, this song was originally on Sky Blue Sky in a different form.

Here’s today’s music.

The Four Tops, “If You Don’t Want My Love”

We’re visiting 1967 with this song from the legendary Four Tops, one of the breakout stars of Motown’s roster, becoming staples of radio. I’m not a Four Tops expert or anything though, so we’ll just enjoy this song.

Le Grand Miercoles, “Commin’ Home Baby”

A Bandcamp find via a gaming friend, Le Grand Miercoles play some kind of weirdo combination of surf, ska, and, like Ennio Morricone. So, of course, I love it to death. I know nothing else about the band.

Four day weekend? You know what that means around here at Five Songs? IT MEANS…HANG ON…TWENTY SONGS! HERE’S FIVE OF THEM! ROCK ‘N’ ROLL!!!

Chevelle, “Peer”

I was sure that shuffle was going to pull up something distinctly un-rock. Well, I bought this album (Point #1) based entirely on Steve Albini recording it. I thought it was fine, and didn’t really go any further. Imagine my surprise when reading a bit about this band to discover that they lasted forever and apparently became huge sellers. Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed.

I shared the blog at work. I fully expect my readership to…well, probably stay where it is. Welcome, purely hypothetical extra readers! The music is over here!

Wilco, “The Jolly Banker”

It’s another track from Alpha Mike Foxtrot, the rarities collection that they put out. Here, we have Wilco basically operating in Uncle Tupelo mode, which is totally OK with me. It occurs to me that when I put up my INDISPUTABLE RANKING of their albums last time, I actually omitted this album. That’s because I usually skip compilations in those sorts of rankings, but I’d put it somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I’ll often leave shuffle running for a little while after doing one of these things, and sometimes I get these fantastic runs of songs and artists that would make for some great writeups. I have a lot to say about Operation Ivy! But, alas, that would be cheating. The way I’m doing things is that I decide I’m going to write about songs, and then start up the shuffle machine to see what I get from that moment forward. No retroactive choosing of shuffle runs for me! Luckily, there’s almost always something worth talking about. Listen along with me, won’t you?