Television, "See No Evil"
There have been bands as cool as Television was when they released Marquee Moon, but I'm not sure there have been any cooler.
SWANS, "In My Garden"
On Children of God, Jarboe's contributions to the band were placed much more at the center of things. The transition from the sound of nihilist, crushing despair over to spooky, creepy despair was thus complete. This era of the band is probably my least favorite, but that's mainly just due to how much I like some of their other periods. As always, SWANS are never less than interesting and frequently much more than that.
Yo La Tengo, "Beanbag Chair"
Didn't we just have a track from this album? I think we did. This album rules! Yo La Tengo: they're good!
They Might Be Giants, "Stuff is Way"
Speaking of a record that isn't a band at their best, Modern came out in 2020 and feels a little slapped together. TMBG always have tons and tons of songs lying around, and they are capable of hauling together some of them for a record with little notice. Which kind of sounds like exactly what they did with this thing. All that said, it's still charming, because they put together this record to raise money for their crew, because their tour got canceled by the pandemic, and they wanted to make up the income for those guys. All the proceeds went to their tour folks, so at least I feel like I did some good in picking up this album.
The Pietasters, "Stone Feeling"
The previous Pietasters album, Oolooloo, had an interesting take on ska by melding in a fair bit of soul, which resulted in an infectious record. Unfortunately, their followup (Willis) stumbled pretty hard. The soul elements felt forced, Stephen Jackson's voice kind of sounded shot, and the whole thing just didn't hang together.