Eddie Holland, "Take A Chance On Me"
Alas, no, this isn't a predecessor of the ABBA song, but now I want to hear Motown style covers of ABBA songs.
The Pietasters, "Without You"
Seems like we've had a lot more of the Pietasters live than we have from their studio work, which is kind of a shame. A rational person might ask, well, why don't I just remove the live record from the collection? To which I say to you, Rational Person, why the hell are you even paying attention to this dumb blog? Shouldn't you be doing some imaginary figment business or something?
Front 242, "Melt"
I know I've mentioned the name of this album before, but I have to reiterate: when 06:21:03:11 UP EVIL came out, I was very proud to figure out the "code" there and divine the real name of the album. At any rate, the album was a continuation of the path they'd been forging for a while, chock full of the usual industrial dance songs. It's pretty by the numbers (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) by this point. Their follow-up/remix record, released the same year, is actually more interesting, with a darker approach to the material.
Mastodon, "Stargasm"
With Crack The Skye, Mastodon had sort of reached the end of the tether for their brand of progressive sludge, and took things somewhat more back to basics with The Hunter. It ends up being a bit of a tweener record - it doesn't have the elaborate songwriting, but it's not really catchy enough to compensate. It's certainly a good record, but it's far from their best.
(NB: this is the "clean" version of this song. For some reason, my library contains both the clean and non-clean versions of this album. The mysteries of Five Songs will never end.)
They Might Be Giants, "Why Did You Grow A Beard?"
Cast Your Pod To The Wind is another one of the many compilations TMBG have released over the years. This one collects miscellaneous material from their podcast (obviously) as well as other assorted ephemera they had from the period around The Else. As with most of their comps, it's uneven - TMBG are always capable of casually tossing of gems, but there's a reason that most of this didn't wind up on a proper album.