HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to This Week or So, As of July 17, 2020

June 30, 2020

1. Wand, Golem
   Shredder. Right up there with Plum!
2. A Winged Victory for the Sullen, A Winged Victory for the Sullen
   Was I awake during this? Was the band?
3. Explosions in the Sky, The World Is Not a Cold Dead Place
   ...if you say so.
4. Helium, Ends with And
5. Trans Am, Trans Am
6. Windhand, Windhand
7. Bongripper, Glaciers
8. Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young
9. Starcastle, Citadel

July 12, 2020

1. David Bowie, Outside
2. Guns & Roses, Chinese Democracy
3. Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry
4. Madvillain, Madvillainy
5. Quasimoto, The Unseen
6. Deltron 3030, The Instrumentals
7. Red Sparowes, Every Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun
   Quick note on this band: I do not think they every recorded a bad note, and I love them. This has been: a quick note on Red Sparowes.
8. Steve Morse, High Tension Wires
9. The Nocturnes, A Year of Spring

I came late to Bowie—or, more accurately, I started late to come to Bowie—there's so much of it, and finding this late-career excellence reminded me that some great figures don't stop being great after people stop paying attention. It's not perfect, track for track, but there are some amazing songs here, and I look forward to learning more.

June 13, 2020

1. Black Sabbath, Live Evil
2. The Palace Brothers, There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You
3. Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race
4. King Geedorah, Take Me to Your Leader
5. fIREHOSE, "fromohio"
6. Screaming Trees (no, not that one), Beaten with the Ugly Stick (EP)
7. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, My Aim Is True
8. Blue Őyster Cult, On Your Feet or on Your Knees
9. Pelican, City of Echoes
10. Monster Magnet, 25....Tab

July 15, 2020

1. Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music
   Could it be that the only essential Galaxie 500 record is Copenhagen?
2. MF Doom, Born Like This
   This has one of my favorite tracks on one of my favorite CDs Noodles ever made, but I probably won't listen to the album again, b/c I don't need to hear or support "Batty Boyz" again.
3. Sebadoh, Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock
   Man, "Mind Meld" sure holds the fuck up. So good.
4. Spoons, Static in Transmission
   Right around here this week I started to lose my mind and pursue depths of Can(adian)Con(tent) that I am not sure are good for me, exactly.
5. Wolfmother, Wolfmother
   This is bad, and I like it. I don't know what to make of anything anymore.

July 16, 2020

1. Swervedriver, Mezcal head
   "Last Train to Satansville" is a great song title. Shoegaze is just prog with pop vocals, but you aren't ready to have that conversation.
2. Spoons, The Best
   "Nova Heart" rules extremely hard.
3. Kim Mitchell, Akimbo Alogo
   I think I wanted to be in the car, driving fast, again. This record gives a good vibe of that.
4. Max Webster, Universal Juveniles
   I told you the CanCon was getting pretty real around here.
5. Finger Eleven, Finger Eleven
   "Finger eleven" is a fucking sentence.
6. John Carpenter, Anthology: Movie Themes
7. Mike Watt, "Ring Spiel" Tour '95
8. Kiss, Music from "The Elder"
9. Dramarama, Hi-Fi Sci-Fi

July 17, 2020

1. Jesu, Never
2. MF Doom, Vaudeville Villain
3. Hawkwind, Quark, Strangeness and Charm
4. Baroness, The Red Album
5. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
6. Spoons, Stick Figure Neighborhood
   I like this! Sort of the Joy Division guitar album to the later Spoons' New Order keyboard albums.
7. Lana del Rey, Born to Die
8. Blue Őyster Cult, Blue Őyster Cult
9. Deltron 3030, Event 2

Fat's HEAVY TUNES of the Year 2016

Introductionalizing Maunderings

Just in time for the year to be more than half over, it's the latest installment of of my yearly roundup of HEAVY TUNES. (Sorry so late: right when I would normally have typed this up, I broke my hand. As my hand was healing, I changed jobs. Enough excuses.)

If I'm honest, the song of the year was a toss-up between Roundabout and Starship Trooper. I spent a lot of time this year defaulting to Pandora and that meant I spent a lot of time this year defaulting to the "Classic Prog Radio" station I thought was a joke at first. Anyway, I spent the bulk of my year humming to myself IN AND AROUND THE LAKE (bawmp bawnp bawmp baaawmp) MOUNTAINS COME OUT OF THE SKY -- AND THEY STAND THERE! (I spent roughly an equal amount of time doing grooving chair-dances to the "Wurm" section of Starship Trooper. It's a very groovy section.)

Also worth noting is that I listen to a LOT of podcasts. More accurately, I listen a lot to a couple podcasts, meaning that I have heard the theme songs to The Flop House and The Best Show more times the last few years than I've heard probably any other songs over that time.

Also powerful that I would otherwise have forgotten: Dio. Also also: Diamonds and Rust. Also also also: Patti Smith doing Bob Dylan (and then writing about it.)

That's what was clear from looking back at the year from here in the middle of December (when I drafted this). Also clear: I listened to very, very, very little new music in 2016.

The Awards

Newer-music highlight was absolutely the four-song set Andrew Cashen and Sabrina Ellis played on The Best Show, introducing me to the undisputed Song of the Summer 2016: "Too Much Makeup". I mentioned this amazing set once before, and hinted at their songs' power elsewhere and I recommend you check it out.

The Album of the Year was, of course, Emma Ruth Rundle's excellent Marked for Death.

The Song of the Year 2016 came from previous HEAVY TUNES of the Year provider B.D.s, who you may remember as the Bad Daddies. Their demo was brilliant: Camille's vocals were more scathing than ever, also prettier; Matt's guitar was noisier and racketyier than ever, also also prettier. And nothing they did on their demo was better than "How Do You Like Your Coffee"—great melodies, huge fuzz, tumbling anarchs of pure noise.

The Year

Crucially, 2016 began with and was saturated by a great deal of David Bowie. I never really got to Blackstar; The Next Day, somehow, made incredible sense all year long, though it was often too intense for me to turn to often. Yet another reason to think Spotify sucks: The Next Day ain't on there.

Other than Bowie, most of my year was older stuff I've talked about before: Windhand, Okkervil River, Future of the Left. Records I really enjoyed this year that I hadn't really before included Richard / Linda Thompson's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Anthrax, Spreading the Disease, and Vince Staples, particularly Summertime '06 and Prima Donna.

Nobody gave me anything free this year.