Today's music. And, I recognize that people bitching about redesigns is the worst, but can I just say I hate the YouTube redesign? There, that's out of the ol' system.
The Sunshine Fix, "Everything is Waking"
The Olivia Tremor Control was a legendary indie pop band, producing Beatles-esque psychedelia that was beloved of basically every music critic. Will Hart retired from music to focus on art, and Bill Doss started The Sunshine Fix to continue in the same vein. And yeah, it's very, very Beatles-y.
Antipop Consortium, "Superunfrontable"
Another track from Fluorescent Black, and I love the title "Superunfrontable". I wish I were superunfrontable. Anyway, I wish we had more rhyming over new types of beats like this.
Uncle Tupelo, "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down"
One of the things that united Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar was an authentic love of American roots music in all its forms. One of the ways they expressed this was by including many covers and traditional songs on each of their albums. March 16-20, 1992, the acoustic record this comes from, was about half and half with other people's songs and songs by Farrar and Tweedy. This, of course, is one of those traditional songs.
The Beastie Boys, "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"
Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys' second album and true masterpiece, is so far beyond their debut License of Ill that it almost seems like the product of a different band. And in some ways, it is. Working with the Dust Brothers on production rather than Rick Rubin, with a new label and new home city, the Beasties put together a kaleidoscope of samples, a dense record that was startling after the party rap and rap-rock of the first record. This is a record that couldn't really be made today, as it was made in the years before the courts came down on sampling, and attempting something of this much ambition today for a major release would be cost prohibitive at a minimum. I'm certainly glad that the record got made, and it stands pretty alone both in the Beasties' discography but also even among other rap records. The Beasties would reinvent themselves again for the third record, but they'd never top this album.
SWANS, "Warm"
The last album from SWANS pre-hiatus, The Great Annihilator seems like it gets a little bit lost. It doesn't have the pounding nihilism of the early years, nor is it the marker of a major stylistic change, like White Light From the Mouth of Infinity. It's also not one of the massively powerful post-hiatus records. What is is, though, is a very strong record, and deserves its own place. This track is like something straight off a Godspeed You Black Emperor record, which is definitely a good thing.