I shared the blog at work. I fully expect my readership to...well, probably stay where it is. Welcome, purely hypothetical extra readers! The music is over here!
Wilco, "The Jolly Banker"
It's another track from Alpha Mike Foxtrot, the rarities collection that they put out. Here, we have Wilco basically operating in Uncle Tupelo mode, which is totally OK with me. It occurs to me that when I put up my INDISPUTABLE RANKING of their albums last time, I actually omitted this album. That's because I usually skip compilations in those sorts of rankings, but I'd put it somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Young Hunter, "In My Armor"
A random Bandcamp discovery, Young Hunter plays music that sits somewhere around heavy psychedelia. They put together some material while living in Arizona, and then moved to Portland and reformed the band. That sort of dusty desert aesthetic still informs their music. They funded their most recent album on Kickstarter, and I'm happy to see artists make use of platforms like that to enable them to create more. This song is from the earlier days, the most recent album is a little more polished.
(NB: per my policy, I'm both putting it into the YouTube playlist and linking out to Bandcamp here.)
SNFU, "Limping Away"
SNFU back with another track off their pop-punk album. Hopefully some early material from them will pop up at some point.
Khlyst, "VII"
This album showed up in a best-of roundup in The Stranger, and I stuck it on my list. It was a while before I found it, and I'd forgotten what it was supposed to sound like, but when I actually found it I gave it a whirl. I'm not sure what I expected, but this wasn't really it. Unfocused instrumental noodling and the sounds of Gollum giving birth, more or less. While I listen to some extreme music, I usually look for a bit more structure than this.
The Game, "Dreams"
You know you're in for some tight rhymes when you get "2001" rhymed with, um, "2001". The Game was always pretty stiff on the mic, with most of the interest in his music coming from the production side. And he had some great production on his debut, making it a worthy release, even though The Game himself is really only OK.