Introduction
Five Songs, 12/16/2021
Five Songs

Five Songs, 12/16/2021

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Marlowe, "Spring Kick"

Marlowe, the collaboration between L'Orange and Solemn Brigham, put out their second album (entitled Marlowe 2) and continued in the same vein. It's all gnarly breakbeats, surprising samples, and rapid-fire rhymes. Lovely stuff.

Hybrid, "Doomed to Failure"

There are a lot of bands named Hybrid, if you go looking for them. This one is the extreme metal band from the US who put out a couple of albums and disappeared. It's more like tech death metal than anything, although they're clearly going for a blend of a lot of different things. This bit where other, non-metal genres are blended in can work, but it's tricky, and I'm not really sure they pull it off.

Mephiskapheles, "Snack Pack"

I know that I've mentioned it repeatedly, but it bears repeating: how unlikely is it that one of the most talented bands of the third wave of ska was named "Mephiskapheles"? By all rights, they should have been absolutely rancid (hah!), but this stuff is irresistable. To me.

They Might Be Giants, "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head"

The first TMBG album was primitive in a lot of ways, but even this early, you could still hear their tunefulness shining through. This is one of their earliest singles, and the melody here is really a very tasty one. There's some kind of throwaway stuff on this album, but some really nice tunes also. And the "memo to myself" bit goes through my head pretty often.

J Church, "If I Have To Dance Then I Don't Want Your Revolution"

This is from the final J Church album, The Horror of Life, which is excellent as all their albums are. By this point, Lance Hahn's health problems were interfering with the band's releases, and he would unfortunately pass away later in the year. As a finale, it's a fitting one: J Church cranked out workmanlike, wonderful tuneful punk until the very end. They never changed up their formula much during their time, but never needed to, because that formula was always great.

Joshua Buergel
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