Just to clarify the stance of us here at Five Songs Amalgamated: if it's a single track, it counts as a song for the purposes of providing you with five of them. You'll see why that's relevant today.
Beck, "Round the Bend"
I'm not really sure I'm on board with sad Beck. I mean, Sea Change is clearly a good album, but I don't really enjoy listening to it very much. Give me prankster Beck any day of the week.
The Roots, "Why (What's Goin On?)"
The The Tipping Point is in a lot of ways the most conventional record the Roots made other than their earliest stuff. That doesn't make it bad by any stretch, but given their penchant for experimentation and stretching their sound, it kind of stands out a bit for not standing out.
This song is actually a set of songs closing out the record, and I'm not sure why they were tracked like this. Kind of annoying, to be honest.
Jessamine, "You May Have Forgotten"
Kranky, the label, put out a bunch of really drone-y records by a variety of artists, of which Jessamine was one. There's a distant, kind of cold feel to most of this stuff, and it's sometimes hard to get a handle on, what with its lack of tunes. But in the right mood, I love this kind of thing.
Camper Van Beethoven, "Tania"
Camper Van Beethoven were, and are, undeniably different. At a time when the rock underground still mostly meant punk rock, a band with a lead violin and unabashedly incorporating elements from the entire world of music was legitimately unique. Over the course of five albums, they provided a refreshing and smart-assed set of music that still kind of stands alone. Apparently there were some reunion records as well, but I've never heard them.
They Might Be Giants, "Rat Patrol"
Long Tall Weekend was released only on digital originally, a crazy concept in the long-ago world of 1999. It meant that it was actually kind of a pain in the ass to get a hold of, and I think to this day not that many people have heard it compared to most of their other albums. Various songs on it have popped up on other albums and compilations over the years, so people have heard parts of it, but the entire album is actually pretty solid as a whole.