Introduction
Five Songs, 12/6/2019

Five Songs, 12/6/2019

Soundgarden, "Outshined"

Badmotorfinger was the big leap forward for Soundgarden, where they married the murky hard rock homage of their early stuff to clean enough productions and songs to really appeal to a broader audience. And, carried forward by the contemporaneous releases of Nevermind and Ten, that broader audience found them. Soundgarden had always had potential to be a big band, as the core of that Sabbath/Zeppelin sound had a built-in appeal to a bunch of folks, and they would be one of the breakout acts of the grunge scene.

Wayne Rogers, "Bonus Track"

Wayne Rogers is the main guy behind Crystalized Movements, and his solo work really follows in the same vein. It's just all psychedelic noise and guitar wankery. Uh, as you can tell.

Stevie Wonder, "If It's Magic"

What's most impressive about Songs In The Key Of Life isn't just the ambition inherent in the two-album set, or how much ground it covers, it's that it all works incredibly well. Given how much Wonder wanted to accomplish, he could be forgiven if some of it was clunky, but he just nailed every part of it.

Panopticon, "The Labyrinth"

Starting with 2012's Kentucky, Panopticon (the nom de métal of Austin Lunn) started incorporating folk music and instrumentation into his music, particularly Appalachian music. That's continued to this day, such as this track from his 2019 EP The Crescendo of Dusk.

They Might Be Giants, "Music Jail, Pt 1 & 2"

This song comes from the 2015 resurrection of Dial-a-Song, and later appeared on Glean, which was assembled from the best parts of that run. There's a tendency for the Dial-a-Song songs to lean on "wacky" a little bit too much, but they can be fun. This one, due to arrangement, is one of the better ones.

Joshua Buergel
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