My 1993 Listening Log (Part 2)

This is part two of an exercise I started last September in the Rosy Overdrive Discord and published the first half of in October. In said exercise, I listened to one new-to-me album a day from 1993 every day for a month and wrote a paragraph about it, and I was so enthused about what I discovered that I decided to extend it to a second month. After slowing down and eventually taking a break due to year-end list season cranking up, I started up this project again over the holidays and have wrapped it up in one easy-to-read blog post here for you, the readers.

I actually went a bit overboard this time; my goal was a second set of thirty albums, and there are thirty-six here. These are always really fun to do; hopefully you find something enjoyable contained herein!

Bandcamp embeds are included when available.

October 1st: Tindersticks – Tindersticks (This Way Up)

I need a stamp that says something to the effect of “there’s no way I can reasonably figure out how I feel about this one after just one day”. For one, I didn’t realize this thing was 77 minutes long when I started listening to it, so I wasn’t prepared for that. Secondly, Tindersticks are clearly a very interesting and multi-talented band, and there’s definitely good songwriting going on here, but this also isn’t the most….personality-driven album. So what I’m saying is I can’t really tell the songs from one another at this point. Not necessarily a bad thing; turns the album into an “experience”. There’s some dark post-punky stuff that feels out of place in ‘93, some orchestral stuff that…well, that’s kind of out of place here also. Maybe the best album ever—probably not, but anything’s possible.

October 2nd: Edsel – The Everlasting Belt Co. (Grass/Stained)

DC post-hardcore band. Sohrab from SAVAK, who I have always liked, co-founded this one. One listen to The Everlasting Belt Co, seemingly their most popular album, reveals why this one doesn’t have the following of a Repeater or For Your Own Special Sweetheart or even, like, Smart Went Crazy’s Con Art. The songs are unfriendly—hardly angry post-hardcore punk anthems, there are few catchy choruses or slogans to grab onto here. You can just hear the band turning away from you and towards their equipment in these 18 songs. It’s almost like Bedhead tried to make a Dischord album or something. This is another too long one, it’s an hour, yet there’s something about this one, too.

If this record had a cult following or a vocal indie celebrity booster or a gaudy PR-driven reissue campaign, its lack of immediacy would be spun into part of its appeal. It’s a “grower”, not for casual indie rock fans, etc. But it doesn’t, so it’s just another indie rock record with some interesting moments to spend a moment on before continuing to flip through the digital filing cabinet.

A piece of self-advice I hold onto when listening to new-to-me music, especially “lost” older stuff, is to try to imagine someone in my ear telling me that it’s the greatest album of all-time. That it was the work of geniuses, that you can hear its influence all over today’s music, that it topped whatever critics’ poll. Bands like Unwound, Sonic Youth, Stereolab—even, like, Prince and Radiohead to an extent—they hardly did anything for me personally at first. But I kept trying those records because people and organizations I trusted told me they were good, that they were indirectly responsible for a bunch of music I knew was good, again and again until I got something out of them. If I’d just listened to New Plastic Ideas or Kid A once and never again, I wouldn’t have thought of them in years.

If you’re a person who fancies themselves as someone who “likes” music, who therefore is interested in it beyond what’s served up to us by the institutions at the top, why wouldn’t you at least strive to approach every album with this same sense of dogged persistence? If you’re somebody who is not hypnotized or obsessed with the idea of an objective “indie canon” (or rock, or music canon) and understands that the approximation of this is just an ephemeral cloud of opinions developed by humans with their own biases, contexts, and, above all, personal preferences, why wouldn’t I ascribe the contours of somebody’s basement/garage-recorded album to the same sort of casual brilliance bestowed upon Alex G or Guided by Voices? Why wouldn’t I approach The Everlasting Belt Co. like it’s been treated the same way that Crooked Rain Crooked Rain has been by the critical world? You start to view things differently, let yourself see things according to someone else’s view.

So yeah. The Everlasting Belt Co. by Edsel. Decent album. It’s better than Loveless and OK Computer but not Mezcal Head by Swervedriver or Bunny Gets Paid by Red Red Meat. 6/10

October 3rd: Lois – Strumpet (K)

If Cub is the sunny end of Pacific Northwest indie pop, Lois hews towards the rainier side. A little less aggressive in their pop hooks, a little more melancholy—they’re somewhere on a spectrum between The Softies (for their quieter songs) and The Spinanes (for their louder ones). After back-to-back hourlong albums, Strumpet being under 30 is both a relief and also leaving me feeling a little slighted. It didn’t blow me away to be sure, although what’s here is pretty solid and I can see the appeal more after starting a second listen. A respectable entry into a subgenre of music that I like a lot.

October 4th: Bailter Space – Robot World (Flying Nun/Matador)

I really like Bailter Space’s next album, Wammo, but I’d never heard this one which seems to be the closest thing they have to a “consensus” album. Unsurprisingly it’s solid stuff from the New Zealanders—it’s got some of the prettier shoegaze sound that marked Wammo but still dealing in the noisier sound that marked their earlier work/pre-Bailter Space band the Gordons. My first impression is that it doesn’t match Wammo but it’s also more interesting than your typical shoegaze album; recommended if any of this sounds relevant to you.

October 5th: PJ Harvey – 4-Track Demos (Island)

I’m no Elvis Costello. Rid of Me is my favorite PJ Harvey album, and how it sounds is, to me, a big part of that. I’ve never felt the need to hear those sounds in a different context. That being said, 4-Track Demos is quite strong in its own right. Harvey is of course more than capable of making a great-sounding and great-feeling rock record on her own. I didn’t realize that almost half of this album is songs that never got released, which helps it be more of its own thing and less of a curiosity (even if the Rid of Me songs are on average quite superior, the exclusive tracks don’t sound out of place, and a few of them, like “M-Bike” and “Reeling”, rise to the occasion). Maybe not “essential” but if you know Harvey’s more renowned work you’ll enjoy this.

October 6th: Strawberry Story – Clamming for It (Vinyl Japan)

British indie pop band, a little twee but with a lo-fi punk-pop streak to them also. Discogs calls this a compilation but what that exactly means is unclear to me. I was kinda feeling burnt out on this kind of music until I got to “Caroline” about halfway through which shook me from this stupor hard. “Finally I’ve got a weakness that doesn’t take a toll on my smile,” what a beautiful chorus. Music is magic. Anyway, the rest of the album sounded great after that, so either it’s backloaded or I just needed an indie pop sleeper cell within me to be activated this morning to enjoy it. Most likely the latter.

October 9th: Seaweed – Four (Sub Pop)

Alright, we’re fully into the world of 90s punk right now. It’s kind of surprising to me that, with all the 90s revivalism/fetishism and the continuing popularity of these genres, that these 90s emo-punk-y bands don’t seem to get much present day love. Like, people know Jawbreaker, but outside of small circles Samiam, Knapsack, and Seaweed don’t get much shine (even accounting for the fact that I’d guess today’s emopoppunk and Seaweed’s emopoppunk are more a case of parallel thinking than direct influence). Anyway this is some perfectly fine post-Husker Du punk rock; the first song rules, there’s some other ones that stick out (“Oversight”, “Kid Candy”) but it all does kinda blend together for me.

October 10th: The Mad Scene – A Trip Thru Monsterland (Flying Nun)

Some of you might complain that I’m covering too many New Zealand albums in this exercise, and to this guy I just made up, I’ll say: Actually, The Mad Scene was the band that The Clean’s Hamish Kilgour played in with his then-wife Lisa Siegel while they lived in New York. That being said, it’s still a Flying Nun album and certainly sounds like one-Kilgour is exploring the more low-key side of The Clean’s hazy indie rock here, and when Siegel takes the lead, her vocal melodies feel more like the straightforward indie pop that the Dunedin bands were adjacent to but never quite a part of. There’s some overlap, sure, and also a pretty psychedelic mid-section. If it’s a minor Kilgour/Clean-related release, it’s also one that does everything you want from a Flying Nun album.

October 11th: Arcwelder – Pull (Touch & Go)

Known about Arcwelder for a long time as “one of those Touch & Go” bands; this is my first time really checking them out. My impression of their “thing” after hearing Pull is “too obscure to be remembered by the Pavement-worshippers, too poppy to have a cult following from the insufferables”. We’re in a sweet spot here that’s very much my thing. The Husker Du comps that this fellow Minneapolis band has gotten aren’t wrong, but they’re the noise rock/90s indie rock version of it to the Huskers’ hardcore punk. No amount of pounding rhythm section can turn “It’s a Wonderful Lie” into anything but power pop; the messy “Criminal” comes close to reinventing grunge. “You” kicks ass to close things. Not sure if it’s a front to back classic or anything but I’m pro-Arcwelder after this.

October 12th: Kowtow Popof – Songs from the Pointless Forest (Wampus)

Hey, wait, we’re still in 1993, right? We’re taking a break from basement indie rock and shoegaze textures today to instead hear the folk rock of one Kowtow Popof. Mr. Popof has put out a bunch of albums since his ‘93 debut, which sounds like a folkier Elvis Costello and also like a lot of the more laid-back side of 80s college rock. This is another one where it didn’t exactly blow me away but I would recommend checking it out if this sounds like your area. Maybe start with the second half, though; this one is weirdly backloaded and my six favorite songs are quite possibly the last six.

October 13th: Suede – s/t (Nude)

Alright, we’re in the Britpop now, folks. Here’s where I stand for those who don’t remember—Oasis are monkeys bashing out garbage on the typewriter who did make a couple of okay songs, Blur are consistently interesting and just as consistently tedious, I’m sympathetic to the “actually Pulp is the best of them” big-brain take but I end up feeling the same way I do about Blur about them. The race is wide open for Suede to take the lead here, and while I’m not sure the self-titled Suede album does that immediately, there are certainly a good deal of hits on here. The first couple of songs, “The Drowners”, “Metal Mickey”, “Animal Lover”—just great pop music, no baggage on them at all for me. Is the other half of the album chaff? Maybe not, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

October 16th: The Verlaines – Way Out Where (Slash/Liberation)

If I had to choose a single Flying Nun record as “the one”, The Verlaines’ Juvenilia comp would be on the shortlist, if not the actual choice. Despite this, I haven’t heard most of their proper albums (probably due to a combination of not being moved by their most recent album and their presence on streaming services being rather spotty). That being said, Way Out Where is sounding pretty good via first impression, even as The Verlaines, especially after their earliest material, are not exactly a “first impressions” band (at least as much as a pop band can’t be). It takes a couple songs for this one to get going but the midsection (starting with “Cathedrals Under the Sea”) is fantastic; they do this subtle but noticeable thing where they’re both chaotic-sounding and refined at the same time. This one’s rising up the rankings as we speak.

October 17th: Seefeel – Quique (Too Pure/Astralwerks)

We’re listening to some electronic ambient music this morning. I’m on a Seefeel diet—I see music, I feel it! Hahaha. Anyway—we’re way, way out of what I normally listen to with this, but I thought I’d give this a try because Seefeel makes this kind of music while also loosely coming at it from a rock band perspective. Maybe this could be the entry point for me. The verdict? Not really. Ambient electronic stuff will elude me yet another day. I do find some moments on this album interesting, to be sure, but, well—I get tired of them significantly before Seefeel do.

October 18th: Karl Hendricks Trio – Sings About Misery and Women (Fiasco/Peas Kor/Fire)

Surprisingly, I’m pretty certain I’ve never heard this one. I’ve heard a few Karl Hendricks albums (I think I only really discovered him after his death in 2017), but this one which seems like it might be his most popular one slipped by me. I think Hendricks’ work would conjure a “what’s the big deal?” for people who don’t really look at it the right way (the boilerplate indie-punk music, Hendricks’, ah, “unprofessional”-sounding vocals) but the man could write a song like few others when you really zero in on them. Needed a second listen to actually do this, but I can already put this one up with the ones I already liked (For a While It Was Funny, Declare Your Weapons). I’m half asleep but maybe Hendricks and Car Seat Headrest have similar appeals. Just gonna throw that out there.

October 19th: Harry Pussy – s/t (Siltbreeze)

There are a lot of bands in the world, but there’s only one named Harry Pussy. Siltbreeze experimental noise rock with emphasis on the noise. This was guitarist Bill Orcutt’s band before he reinvented himself as a solo artist. This one makes me regret doing these early in the morning, because I probably needed to play this one complaint-level loud to really “get” it. Anyway, this makes Royal Trux and Trumans Water sound like the Beach Boys. A lot of it was just straight-up unlistenable to me, frankly. Sometimes the cloud takes a more enjoyable shape to me of crazy but still, like, discernible noise rock.

October 23rd: Pond – s/t (Sub Pop)

This is the 90s Sub Pop Portland Oregon Pond, not the 2010s Aussie Tame Impala understudies Pond (no shade to them, they’re fine). No mainstream success + lack of narrative hook (unless you count 2/3 of the band being from Alaska) = a band mostly remembered by the Gen Xers who were there in real-time. Is this a lost grunge classic? You could call it that, sure, although its ragged, psych-strained sound is closer to, like Screaming Trees and Love Battery than any of the A-listers (although there’s also some Jimmy Chamberlain-level drumming going on here). As for the “classic” part—well, it’s growing on me, although there do seem to be a few filler tracks (ironically, the album closer, actually called “Filler”, is pretty good).

October 24th: The Auteurs – New Wave (Hut/Virgin/Caroline)

Hey, I actually really enjoyed this one! I swear, it’s always the British records I least expect that actually hold up to some semblance of hype. In a time of excess (even more so than usual) The Auteurs succeed by just sounding…normal. Or, rather, the dressing is straightforward enough to see just how weird the center is. “Show Girl” and “Bailed Out” are transfixing openers, really really interesting and attention-grabbing. Not everything on New Wave is quite that stark but there’s still plenty of enjoyable headscratchers here from “Starstruck” to “Housebreaker” to “Valet Parking”.

October 25th: Cypress Hill – Black Sunday (Columbia/Ruffhouse)

Okay, alright. Black Sunday is not as…uh….timeless-sounding as the Digable Planets album, to be sure. This is a Big Mainstream 90s rap album, and with it come more of the things that prevent me from fully getting into it. That said, this feels like a more me-friendly version of that kind of thing, from the distinct rapping of both of the emcees to the weird psych/bass-heavy instrumentals (is this the Latin rap influence? Not versed enough to say for sure). Also, bless them for keeping it under 45 minutes. 

October 26th: Two Pound Planet – Songs from the Hydrogen Jukebox (Alternative)

I wish I remembered where I initially heard of this one; this is a pretty cool under-the-radar find. Two Pound Planet is a power pop/college rock group from North Carolina, this is their Mitch Easter-produced debut. A bunch of slightly jangly pop rock hits here, FFO the Strum & Thrum compilation and, like, Guadalcanal Diary. I’m not ready to declare it a Windbreakers’ Terminal-level lost southern rock masterpiece at this point, but…this should probably be more well-known than it is. Significant overlap between regular blog readers and people who’d dig this, I think.

October 30th: The Walkabouts – New West Motel (Sub Pop)

Discovered this band two years ago with 1996’s Devil’s Road, an album I thought was okay but whose opening track “The Light Will Stay On” won me over. Gothic, string-heavy alt-country stuff. It was enough for me to give one of their two different 1993 albums a shot. New West Motel isn’t any more consistent than the last Walkabouts album I tried—there are maybe more songs I enjoyed on this one, but there’s also definitely several that did nothing for me which, on an hour-plus record, really didn’t need to remain on the final version of this album. Will probably be skipping their other ‘93 record, the also-hourlong Satisfied Mind.

October 31st: Royal Trux – Cats and Dogs (Drag City)

Royal Trux albums I’d heard before: Accelerator, a grotesque funhouse mirror version of glam rock and Twin Infinitives, which is purely alien music. Cats and Dogs is the most “normal” one by default—Accelerator might be more catchy on average but this is the one that at the very least feels like it’s speaking the same language as bands like The Grifters, Polvo, Smog, and Pavement. That is to say it’s the most “Drag City”-sounding album I’ve heard from them. That’s a good place to be—that label has more than earned its distinguished status. Obviously I’m not that familiar with Royal Trux but of what I’ve heard from them I think it’s the best one.

[November and most of December: Extended break to make all the blog’s year-end lists and such]

December 25th: The Hang-Ups – He’s After Me (Clean)

Debut from Minneapolis college rockers. Associated with Soul Asylum, later recorded an album with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter—and does indeed sound like it. Jangle pop with an alt-rock backbone to it. The first song on here is a great single, they were probably just a little too late for it to get its proper due. What follows is a kinda weird album; the production’s a bit excessive throughout but these are good songs, if a bit meandering. A few more upbeat songs in the first half also might’ve helped their case but if you stick with it it’s pretty consistent with maybe a stronger back half overall.

December 26th: Mercy Rule – God Protects Fools (Caulfield)

Some indie rock that actually rocks from [checks notes] Lincoln, Nebraska. A bit post-grunge, a bit punk, a bit glam—this kind of reminds me of a scrappier version of fellow Great Plains rockers Chainsaw Kittens. Add to all that a compelling, attention-grabbing frontperson in Heidi Ore and one begins to wonder why this stuff didn’t take off at least across the underground circuit. If there’s a knock on it it’s that it’s a bit one-note, for me at least—taking this whole thing in at once is a lot—but it’s an admittedly pretty strong note. Bet they killed live.

December 27th: The Bevis Frond – It Just Is (Woronzow)

Time to check in on an old, reliable standby for Rosy Overdrive’s bread-and-butter music—Nick Salomon’s The Bevis Frond. There was always (at least) one Bevis Frond album a year during this time period, and It Just Is doesn’t seem to be one of the more beloved ones, but there’s plenty of good stuff on here. Salomon’s albums are long odysseys, but on this one he cuts down on the lengthy prog-psych and offers up eighteen tracks, only one of which crosses the six-minute mark. Plenty of blistering guitar solos and gritty rockers, but beautiful guitar pop all around (“Everyday Sunshine”, “Not for Now”, “Time – Share Heart”, and “Day One” would be candidates to pull for a “best of” playlist/compilation).

December 28th: Dirt Fishermen – Vena Cava (C/Z)

We’ve really been hopping all over the US with these last few—here we have Boise’s Dirt Fishermen, who were signed to C/Z and are proof there was more than just Built to Spill and Treepeople going on in Idaho indie rock at the time. Like the Mercy Rule album this is some punky 90s indie rock stuff, although this one isn’t quite as heavy—adept bass playing, some splattered melodic guitar lines, while the vocals sound more indebted to 80s post-punk/college rock. Not exactly Earth-shattering but solid stuff nonetheless and worth checking out if any of this sounds relevant to you; it got reissued back in 2020.

December 29th: The Shadow Ring – City Lights (Dry Leaf)

Veering hard into left field today with The Shadow Ring, a side project from The Dead C’s Graham Lambkin. Just by virtue of being “minimalist” and having (for the most part) rather traditional 2-4 minute song lengths, this album is more “accessible” than Lambkin’s main band, although we’re grading on a very steep curve here. It lands somewhere between Beefhearty deconstructed indie rock like US Maple and the more experimental side of post-punk—the majority of songs here have vocals, almost entirely of the gruff, spoken-word variety. I don’t always gel with this sort of thing but I found this one compelling overall—even the ten-minute racket of “Faithful Calls” (which sounds like if Tall Dwarfs didn’t know what pop music was for most of its length) I don’t find too tedious.

December 30th: Angel’in Heavy Syrup – II (Alchemy)

Well, well, well. If it isn’t our old friend, Japanese psychedelic rock. A lot of the psych music from Japan from around this time is of the incredibly noisy, wall-of sound assault variety; I chose this one in part because it seems a little bit on the “chiller” side. Compared to High Rise and the Boredoms, it is, although there are plenty of fiery electric guitar moments on II (it’s heavier than, like, Fishmans). The bulk of the album is the first three songs, which are a combined 26 minutes—an admittedly quite impressive journey (although it took me a second listen to get sucked in). After all that, their inexplicable decision to cover “I Got You Babe” fairly faithfully feels pretty inessential but at least it’s only three minutes of my time.

December 31st: Freakwater – Feels Like the Third Time (City Slang/Thrill Jockey)

Been circling around Freakwater for a while—obviously I love Janet Bean’s work in Eleventh Dream Day, and enjoyed the Freakons album (with, naturally, the Mekons) from 2022. I’m pretty sure this is the first album of theirs I’ve heard in full, and it’s…alright. It’s definitely a successful re-creation of traditional, bluegrass-y folk-country—honestly, at times, it feels a bit too devoted to authenticity and not enough towards fleshing out the songs beyond that. I like quite a bit of it, though— “Crazy Man” is a great song, “You Make Me” is a really interesting low-key track, and the duo sound great even on the songs that don’t really stick with me.

January 1st: Wimp Factor 14 – Ankle Deep (Harriet/Little Teddy)

I swear to God, this band only exists for me to confuse with Milky Wimpshake. A lot of wimpy music going on in the 90s. Anyway: I actually really enjoyed this one! It’s some classic 90s underground indie rock (Pittsburgh band, with connections to Tullycraft, Karl Hendricks Trio, and Vehicle Flips), “lo-fi” more by loose attitude and barebones band structure more than “sounding like shit” or anything like that. Hendricks’ earnest brand of indie rock is a good starting point for this, but it’s not as loud and more twee-indebted (although it’s not really straight-up indie pop). This stuff would decidedly Not have been called any variety of “emo” at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, the line feels fairly thin in places here.

January 2nd: The Bear Quartet – Cosy Den (A West Side Fabrication)

We all know that 1993 was a great time for American indie rock, with the underground ballooning and expanding all over the country. Here’s some evidence that it wasn’t confined to just the States, in the form of Sweden’s The Bear Quartet. They were a fairly prolific group (apparently this isn’t even the only full-length they put out in ‘93) I only just heard about, but Cosy Den is some excellent melodic rock music that’s right up my alley—if you like the more “polished” sides of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., this is a 16-song, 50-minute treat (note that “polished” Pavement didn’t really exist as of this time, suggesting that THAT band probably get too much credit for a sound that was all over the zeitgeist at the time, but that’s a different discussion). This might feel too smooth/sweet for some but I’m a power pop fan, I’ll eat dessert for breakfast.

January 3rd: Prisonshake – Roaring Third (Scat/1 + 2/Shake the Record Label)

A lot of the indie rock from this era has a defined sound and aesthetic apart from the rock music that came before it—this on the other hand is “indie rock” by necessity and nothing else. This is sleazy Midwest garage punk—not of the blistering Detroit variety; Prisonshake are pulling from hard rock, power pop, the Ramones etc here. I do feel the need to take a shower after some of these lines—questions of intent arise, but they’re deep into kayfabe here regardless. Lines like “You know I hate the skinny girls with their pretty little feet / I let my dog have the bones, but a man likes meat” walk a very fine line; others obliterate it entirely (though “Irene” and “Quits” try to make it seem like a two-way street). Robert Griffin is fond of absurd, cataclysmic, empire-level metaphors (see “Carthage Burns”!) for his exploits. “Every word I say is true /This time it’s quits for me and you” Griffin sings in “Quits”—he’s lying, he knows he’s lying, and he expects you to know it, too.

January 4th: Pram – The Stars Are So Big the Earth Is So Small…Stay As You Are (Too Pure)

Pram is another band I’ve been meaning to listen to for a long time, and I’m glad I got around to it because I enjoyed this one a good deal. The closest reference point for this that’d make sense is Stereolab although that doesn’t really capture this—Pram are looser, less drone-y, less committed to analog synth worship. It sounds more human and less alien/robotic. Maybe the way they sound most like Stereolab is that they both sound like bands in spite of themselves. It’s kind of inverted post-rock; instead of using rock instruments to make non-rock music, it’s pop rock made with kitchen-sink instrumentals. Oh, and also there’s a random sixteen-minute song in here too, which, maybe it didn’t need to be doing all that but it doesn’t derail things either.

January 5th: The Lucksmiths – s/t (AKA First Tape) (Banana)

Now this is indie pop. This is twee. This is…a pretty solid debut release. There’s a lot to like here, definitely— “Weatherboard” is genuinely stunning, there’s plenty of very fun pop songs and lines that make me go “ah, that was a good one, The Lucksmiths” (sample line: “I’d like to throw the switch on the nuclear family” from “Remote Control”). It’s quite short (twenty-some minutes) and tempered with a couple of “joke” songs where we’re just waiting around to get to the punchline (which is a different thing than being clever or even funny—some songs, like “English Murder Mystery”, thread the needle better than others). I’m weak for this kind of music and it’s a pretty enjoyable take on it; should probably check out some of their later albums.

January 6th: Hammerbox – Numb (A&M)

We’re headed back to Seattle! Thanks to their city of origin, Hammerbox has been given the “grunge” tag which, based on Numb, feels fairly inaccurate. They at times share a “Pixies gone punk” attitude with Nirvana, otherwise I don’t see any similarities (actually, their love of blunt, one-word titles is also pretty era-reminiscent). This big, loud, catchy alt-rock—poppy and punky, not really “pop punk”. Combined with the full, commanding lead vocals I get a real Screaming Females vibe here, never a bad thing. Shockingly catchy and fresh-sounding; just about every song on this one could’ve been a single. Would recommend.

January 7th: Stick – Heavy Bag (Arista)

Some more Great Plains rock music, but this time we are in straight-up grunge territory. Lawrence, KS’s Stick are heavy and have got catchy riffs; they’re sort of doing an early Soundgarden thing with the punky, sludgy, meaty, smoky-guitar alt-rock. Before this sound got all mealy-mouthed and interchangeable big burly crying man. The members used to be in a band called Kill Whitey (judging by their Spotify photo they were at least a mixed-race group); not that I’ve conducted a deep analysis on Stick’s lyrics but I do hear a couple lines that might’ve been in the same vein of their old band’s sentiment. Really fun, great sounding rock music for the most part regardless, if a bit top-heavy.

January 8th: Th Faith Healers – Imaginary Friend (Too Pure)

This is an intriguing one to close with. Recognized the band name (it’s a memorable one, “Th” and all) but didn’t know a thing about them—English indie rock here. They covered CAN on their other album and their drummer played with Stereolab, which explains their drone-y kraut-y side but unlike those bands, Th Faith Healers do it in the guise of barebones 90s indie rock. It’s ramshackle electric guitars propelling these songs to their six and seven minute conclusions over the rhythm section, and vocals that are closer to indie punk than any kind of retro pop. Seems like a band that in the right context could and should get some attention in present times.