Today’s Listening

Stolen Babies: There Be Squabbles Ahead – Take one part Mars Volta and mix with one part Mr. Bungle. The resulting concoction will be Stolen Babies and it will be awesome. Tragically, their single is for the song that totally rips off “Kashmir” – “Push Button”

Pharoah Sanders: Thembi – Wildly individual jazz with an impressive variety of instrumentation, like vibraphone, cornet, xylophone, flute, and on and on. From smooth to freely roving madness.

Espers: The Weed Tree – Dark, pastoral, doomy folk music, and then near the end they just go all crazy and do an epic ten-minute cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Flaming Telepaths” complete with the over-the-top keyboard and guitar solos. I respect that.

Bruce Hornsby & The Range: The Way It Is – Yeah. That song, the one that everybody on Youtube has a cover version of, I’ll spare us a link to any of them. “Mandolin Rain” is on here too. I think Hornsby was looking to become the Canadian Bruce Springsteen. I’d rather just listen to Springsteen, thanks.

Heavenly: The Decline and Fall of Heavenly – For music so cutesy-sounding, they sure are angry. The dark side of twee.

Medeski, Martin & Wood: Shack-Man – Pretty much the only interesting fusion band around these days. Not their best, but still good.

Underworld: Second Toughest in the Infants – Not quite to the dark or anthemic level of their breakthrough stuff, but a very solid late nineties techno release.

the I Shot Andy Warhol soundtrack – A stable of hip 90s independent rock bands doing covers of classic sixties pop songs. Even Jewel pulls off a great cover of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”.

PS: If you didn’t notice it buried in the REM review, check out the video for Stephen Malkmus’ “Jo-Jo’s Jacket” because it is awesome.

~ by jshopa on April 24, 2008.