Apparently The Kids have found a couple of classic rock songs to replace the guitar freakout in Free Bird to accompany their Insta reels: I’ve heard Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls repeatedly to describe Gen-X related topics they have no firsthand experience with. Now it’s stuck in my head. I didn’t like this band when they were big, and I was sick of this song when it was popular. Goddamn it. [Cues up a Spotify playlist to wash the dirt out of my ears]
This week’s brainpan echo: Fu Manchu, Mongoose. I have a deep love for stoner rock: bluesy, distorted, repeating riffs with nonsense lyrics and a driving beat. Fu Manchu has been around for decades and brings the thunder on this track; their killer-to-filler ratio is much less than a QOTSA or Clutch, but when it works, it works.
She Drives Me Crazy, by the Fine Young Cannibals. This song has taken up residence in my brain after I listened to a podcast about the quick life and death of this band, who made two albums and split up in the late 80’s. I wasn’t a huge fan back in the day but now I have more respect for the production and craft, and it’s catchy as hell. Bonus trivia: the guitarist and bassist were both from The English Beat, another favorite band of mine from the early 80’s.
I’ve had Falling Hard by the Crystal Method going through my head for the past couple of days. This was released 17 years ago, in a time period where a lot of electronic acts were teaming up with vocalists. I just love the groove of this song. Apparently one half of TCM retired a number of years ago and it’s just one guy now. I haven’t really dug into their stuff lately, but what I have heard is OK, I guess. I miss the Big Beat artists of that time period, and the first two TCM albums are desert island discs for me.
This week’s earworm: another oldie, this time from an electroclash group called Ladytron, called Destroy Everything You Touch. I found this on an MP3blog back in the day and loved it; for some reason it snuck into my brain and has been on repeat ever since. I don’t know if Ladytron ever had another hit after this, but they’re still around.
With the music going in so many directions—real instruments that seem like samples, samples that seem like real instruments, word-drunk poetry, near-rap, cavernous breaks—Steinberg was the glue that held everything together.
Pitchfork takes a look back at Ruby Vroom, the first album from Soul Coughing, released 31 years ago. I had to do the math on that twice. This album still bumps.
I’ve mentioned here ad nauseum over the years how much the Smashing Pumpkins and Living Colour both had an effect on my musical growth and appreciation, so I was pleased to learn Billy Corgan hosted a podcast with Vernon Reid where they talk about the genesis of Living Colour out of the jazz/art/club scene in New York City in the middle 80’s, their shared understanding of the music business, the profits and pitfalls of success, and where they are today.
Mr. Corgan is still a divisive personality (he does own up to saying many, many dumb things over the years) but Vernon Reid just sounds like such a down-to-earth, wise, and personable guy. I could sit and listen to these guys talk for hours.
On recommendation from Pitchfork, I tried out this album by a band called Quannic, which is a young guy making shoe gaze-adjacent guitar music on his own. I’m really enjoying most of this album, alhtough it gets a little weak towards the end. Apprently he toured with Slowdive, which sounds like it would be a great fit.
I was a big RHCP fan back in the late 80’s, when they still had the original lineup, moving into their first album after the death of Hillel Slovak. At Lollapalooza in 1990, I bought an overpriced RHCP hat that never fit my head correctly, and which I later sold—an expensive lesson I took to heart. My taste for the band tailed off pretty quickly after that, to the point of indifference and outright distaste. They’ve had some highlights in the intervening years, however, and this song was one of my favorites when it was released almost a decade ago. It’s gotten stuck in my head this week, and it makes a good companion for gray fall days: it’s propulsive, but (to my ears) melancholy, almost sad, especially if you ignore the lyrics. When this band hits on all cylinders, they are still amazing.
Massive Attack just announced the release of new music in 2026, available digitally. Their last full album release was 2010.