Today's music. Sometimes, while I'm assembling the play list, the next song that pops up is something I desperately want to add. And yet I resist. Why do I do that? The rules on this thing are dumb.
Cretin, "Mister Frye, The Janitor Guy"
I don't feel like I acknowledge great band names enough when they come up here, so for the record: Cretin is a great band name. Playing something between death metal and grindcore, Cretin are either going to get you banging your head and wrecking stuff at your desk, or are going to seriously try your patience for the next couple minutes.
Temprees, "Mr. Cool Ain't That Cool"
Part of me is kind of sad that the only way anybody would refer to me as "Mr. Cool" is in an obviously sarcastic manner. At any rate, we have some soul from very late in the Stax run, coming from the penultimate disc of the third Stax compilation, which covers the early 70s.
The Skeletones, "Delirium"
The "live, in studio" sound is one that more musicians should be employing, particularly from any style of music that can gain from the warmth you get from such a method. One of my favorite third wave bands, Unsteady, announced that their third album would be recorded that way, and I couldn't have been more excited. Alas, it never materialized.
At any rate, I'm mostly avoiding talking about the band in front of us. "Delirium" is a fantastic song, an instrumental that sounds like it was ripped straight out of the first wave. It's the outlier on this album, though. The rest of it lives up to the punny band name. Far too much rock and far too arch, the rest of the album isn't something I could recommend to anybody.
Talib Kweli, "Eternalists"
We mentioned Talib Kweli briefly in talking about Mos Def, as Kweli was one of the men who made Black Star. I mentioned that Mos Def put out another all-time classic after Black Star, but what happened with Kweli? Well, he continued working with DJ Hi-Tek and they put out Reflection Eternal, an album that is maybe a half step behind the other two, but still a great album. The level of talent displayed by the Black Star folks was astounding. Kweli has had a better career in rap following up his first great solo record than Mos Def did, although he did slow down as well. But this album and Quality are both fantastic.
Fifteen, "The End of the Summer"
Part of the Bay Area punk scene centered around Gilman Street and Lookout Records, Fifteen was a successor band to Crimpshrine, one of the early and influential bands from that scene. At any rate, it's pretty straight forward pop-punk, and thoroughly enjoyable if you like that kind of thing.