HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, May 26, 2020

Old Man, Take a Listen to My Records
They're A Lot Like Yours Were

1. Spanish Love Songs, Brave Faces Everyone (2020, Pure Noise)
   I didn't know "We're not a Christian band, but we sound like a Christian band" was a sound for slow punk bands. But RIYL Mountain Goats / cool-pastor voice, drinking as a personality, shouting along. Recommended by the Strikewave newsletter.
2. NOBRO, Sick Hustle (2020, Dine Alone / Scary Monsters)
   I also didn't know "We like L7's guitar sounds" was a going concern, but based on the first song, it seems to be. Good stuff, and gets better as the record goes on! This one's from the Turntable Report by Tracy Wilson.
3. Hole, Celebrity Skin (1998, Geffen)
   Basically a perfect rock record. Ever since it's been out, I've heard a "criticism" that says "Well, Billy Corgan wrote all the songs," which (a) sounds like a depressingly common way to dismiss / diss / disappear Courtney Love, which is something dudes who like to talk about rock records are distressingly prone to do, and (b) is bizarre even if it were true, because what kind of backwards-ass nincompoop do you have to be to think "This combination of performer and songwriter works beautifully together and made a great record" is somehow a bad thing? One thing I love about the record is how confident in your work you have to be to title a poppy rock song "Heaven Tonight" after Cheap Trick wrote a basically perfect poppy rock song and called it "Heaven Tonight". Here, it works. Not sure I'd recommend the move for lesser artists.
4. Big Business, Mind the Drift (2009, Joyful Noise)
   When I first moved to Oakland, basically all I listened to was this record, in a weird track order that my busted-ass Coby .mp3 player imposed. Hearing it the "right" way is still a little disorienting.
5. Thin White Rope, Exploring the Axis (1985, Frontier)
   If Sonic Youth grew up listening to country and reading noir, they might have sounded a little like Thin White Rope.

It was a million degrees today, and I worked 11 or so hours. Not a lot of time for music, but I tried to listen to a couple new things, mostly without satisfaction, and then retreated to comforts. Those Hole, Big Business and Thin White Rope records all dominated whole years at one time or another, and it was nice to revisit them and step away from the same records I've been listening to all year long (Obsequiae's The Palms of Sorrowed Kings and El-P's Cancer for Cure, more or less). What are you trying to listen to to shake things up?