If you’re going to have something stuck in your head, make it a good something. Earlier in life, Bowie was always a complete mystery to me; I love his music, but high school Bill had no entry into what he was singing about or what any of it meant; all I knew was that 70’s Bowie was scary and there was still something strange and mysterious about Let’s Dance-era Bowie. A good song is still a good song, and this one is a banger. Fun fact: Luther Vandross is one of the backing vocalists.
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. Oasis are reuniting for a tour after splitting up and throwing chainsaws at each other for fifteen years. I think I’ve always been Team Noel but I haven’t followed all of the drama that closely. This would be a great show to see live, I think; I just can’t rationalize $200 in Ticketmaster surcharges and battling for a 5% chance to actually be able to buy a ticket.
To my incredulous surprise, I read this morning in the Madrid airport that Soul Coughing, the excellent 90’s era band who wrote a song this website is named after, has reunited after 25 years of acrimonious bickering. They are planning a US tour and I’ve signed up for the ticket sale even though I’ll be in Portugal and have zero chance of winning one.
(previously)
Somehow this one popped up in my brain today and hasn’t left: Eurotrash Girl, by Cracker. A good band who never really followed up with another record as good as Kerosene Hat, unfortunately; this album was on solid rotation the year I graduated college, and Low was the soundtrack to a summer painting houses. I’ve always loved the mixture of rock and country stirred together in this band—just enough twang to make things work.
This is an old one but still a good one. Blonde Redhead, Spring and By Summer Fall. I picked this album up years ago at the library and had it on solid repeat for weeks, and it never gets old. For some reason it crept back into my head the other day and hasn’t left.
On heavy rotation this week in my brain: Atlas, by Battles. Formed from the ashes of several other like-minded bands, Battles is an experimental math-rock group who has released albums sporadically over the last 20 years. Atlas is a single from their first album in 2007, and it defies description. I originally fell down this rabbit hole when YouTube suggested a video of early math-hardcore band Helmet playing live in 1994; their second album Meantime was on heavy rotation in college, and their original drummer went on to co-found this band. This song and the video are amazing.
Shit. This was a bit of a gut punch this morning. I was never a huge fan of Albini’s music but his stamp on the music I’ve enjoyed over the last 40 years is undeniable. His list of engineering credits (he eschewed the title of producer as well as a producer’s customary percentages, most notably on Nirvana’s In Utero, which would have made him a millionaire) is long and legendary, and his writing on the music industry is just as impactful. He was due to release a new album next month with Shellac, his current band.
This is mostly for music nerds of a certain pre-Spotify age, but I found it fascinating: the oral history of Pitchfork from Slate magazine.
Greene: It was always, and only ever, a bunch of nerds writing essays about records. It was that before it became famous. And it was that after it became famous. It was only ever that, and those are the people who still come to Pitchfork, but I guess it wasn’t enough.
Somehow I missed this when it first came around. Stereogum interviewed the band Air and went through each track on the 1998 album Moon Safari to explain their influences and background.
ill peach, BLOOM. Dumb name for a band, but a good track. I like the beat, and the bridge at 2:01 is a lovely transition. Gives me some strong Metric vibes, minus the guitar. The rest of the album is hit or miss, but they have a couple of other good tracks from earlier EPs available.
The runner-up from last week:
Acopia, This Conversation is Getting Boring. Much more downtempo, but another good groove. I wish the bass was better quality; the sound is flat and sounds just a hair late on the rhythm and not in a good way. Other than that, excellent.