Eat My Speakers XII

Melvins - Everybody Loves Sausages

When a covers album is released by a band, it is usually a sign of their decline and slide into oblivion. Rules get thrown out when dealing with the Melvins, though. When they do a covers album (and they have before, see 2000's release The Crybaby), it just seems more like a party. This is just them blowing off steam and having a great time with some favorite tunes and good friends. The Melvins are far from sliding into oblivion, having put out  their most solid material since their major label run in the nineties with the last few albums for Patton's Ipecac label. Buzzo is still a force to be reckoned with, and Crover is still the best rock drummer since Bonham.

The selection of songs is wide and varied. They do Queen, Venom, The Jam, The Kinks, The Fugs...even Divine. The guests are also a real treat. Mark Arm lends his vocals to their cover of The Scientists - Set it on Fire, and it feels more like classic Mudhoney than anything Mudhoney has done in the past decade. Trevor Dunn even shows off his voice on a cover of Pop-O-Pies - Timothy Leary Lives. Buzz even does a solo cover of Heathen, a Throbbing Gristle tune, to close the LP.

Two tracks stand above the rest, though. Jello Biafra joins for a cover of Roxy Music's - In Every Dream Home A Heartache; where Biafra seems to be channeling Vincent Price singing for Bauhaus.
The song that completely justifies this release though, and is worth far more than the price of admission, is Jim Fucking Foetus lending his presence to an oddly faithful and rollicking cover of Bowie's - Station to Station. I can only hope for an album w/ Thrilwell and the Melvins to show up sometime in the near future; oh what wonderful and apocalyptic noise that would be.


This is just a really fun and rocking album. Its a damn shame that the fantastic and utterly delightful McCartney cover - Let Me Roll it, from the Melvins Lite album - Freak Puke, wasn't saved for this. It would fit right in.

Shannon and the Clams - Dreams in the Rat House

This album can best be described as a dream-melding of the Misfits and Annete Funicello. It is beach music for the damned. At first listen, I thought to myself..."self, this is decent stuff. an interesting throwback to surf-rock". Then, after finding myself dancing around the house to it, without ant memory of queuing it up, I started paying attention. Listen to the tracks, "In The River" and "If I Could Count" at your own risk. this is highly addictive music.

Meat Beat Manifesto - Storm The Studio R.M.X.S.

Yeah, okay...this album came out a decade ago. I know.
I reserve the right to dredge up stuff from the past and shove it back into your slack-jawed visage, my funny droogs.

"In the beginning there was Jack, and Jack had a groove; and from this groove came the groove of all grooves..."
And thus begins one of the greatest tracks ever to hit a laserlit, drug-ridden dancefloor. That slapdrum-beat never gets old. Dangers is as important to the American electronic music scene as Detroit is.
Two people made Chicago's WaxTrax legendary, Jourgensen and Dangers. Always ahead of the curve, providing syncopation we haven't heard since the thirties...Dangers pulls us close to his breast and proceeds to blow our mind. This album lets some of the brightest lights in electronic tunes remix his tracks into a veritable cornicopia of post-rave decadence.
If you have to have a MBM hit, but don't have a new release to soothe that savage need (and I find myself in this position fairly often), dig up this oft-overlooked remix-album. Jack Dangers is always at least a decade ahead of the curve. That means that this album is just now relevant and deserves another listen.
Genuflect and enjoy.

Eat my speakers XI

High On Fire - Spitting Fire vol 2

I've always been one to proclaim a band "not heavy enough". While fostering an eclectic taste in music, when it comes to metal, I want face melting, glass shattering, sludgefury.

So few bands stack up.

High on Fire is like somebody gave Lemmy from Motorhead a bunch of meth and switchblades. Then he recruited a badger to play drums and an ex-melvins bassist.These guys pulverize. If you doubt it, just give a listen to Bloody Knuckles from the last LP.

Der Vermis Mysteriis was the most balls out album of 2012, and now we get a couple of 12" live sets from these guys. It's worth it if only for Rumors of War & Snake For The Divine

The Uncluded - Hokey Fright

Aesop Rock & Kimya Dawson spent some time together and this was what happened. 

I am a fan of both and love that they are working together. However, this album feels more like a series of vignettes of what could be. Some of the very best stuff here are just pieces of songs. Honestly, Kimya shows her chops here better than she ever did w/ the Moldy Peaches. Aesop is and always will be a linguistic anomaly, able to spin rhymes with acuity unseen outside of a Dose-One LP.  However, as you will see if you give this album a chance, Kimya actually outshines Aesop a few times. The album is fantastic, nothing you will find elsewhere....but I feel that it could be so much more. Give it a listen for yourself and let me know what you think. I will be wearing this out, regardless. It is a really cool release. I find myself going back and listening to Skelethon (Aesop's 2012 release) with a closer ear afterward. It is apparent that he was producing these. It is also apparent that he is coming into his own. Blockhead's student might have snatched the pebble from the teacher's hand. He is far more subtle than I gave him credit for when his album dropped last year.

Eat My Speakers

Father John Misty - Fear Fun

I'm pretty late to this album. Like, a year. That's fine. I have time. I was there when he was drumming for the Fleet Foxes, even if I wasn't there for this release.
However, it is a release that makes me sad that I missed a year of enjoying.  I find myself playing it in loops  while I do other stuff and singing or whistling along. The tunes are basic Americana groove, but Tillman's voice adds layers to the melody that makes everything work. His voice is reminiscent of Grant-Lee Philips at times, but with grander range and a different scope.
If you ran this album into the ground six months ago, ignore my praise, you already understand. If you haven't, I suggest you start running this album right into the ground.

Tee Pees 1-12

Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

I had been waiting for this release for about a year. I've listened to it countless times, listened to the back catalouge and compared, came back and listened some more. What can I say? Homme's stuff gets better and better. What I love about QOTSA is that they don't mind screwing with your expectations for a tune, but Homme seems to have some intrinsic idea of the perfect pop song guiding his bombing-of-Dresden chops. Grohl pounding away on the drums through five of the tracks helps too. There was a ton of, "oh, guess who is guest starring on the album" articles (reznor, Elton John, etc etc) I couldn't tell you where they show up. It just sounds like a solid QOTSA record, which is the best thing it could be. Hell, it's the best thing they've done since Lullabies.
I like Homme's vocal stretches here. He will never be Mark Lanegan, but he doesn't have to be. I never felt that there could be a better vocal from somebody else. These all feel like songs he has been writing for six years. He should be singing them.
Was it worth the wait?

Is a sunrise?

QOTSA - If I Had A Tail

Purson - The Circle and the Blue Door

I have such a weakness for great female vocals. This album is so much better than folk suggest. Think if Concrete Blonde did carnival calliope music with the surviving members of Jethro Tull. Seriously, if you dug Mexican Moon or Thick as a Brick, give this a chance. I really want to hear Matt Berry do a few songs with them. It would be epic.[at least let them cover Opium]

Purson - The Contract

Sam Amidon - Bright Sunny South

Sam Amidon has a new album out. What the hell are you doing? Go listen to it!

Sam Amidon - My Old Friend

It’s a wonder that those guns Don’t point at you...

I am ever on the edge of musical snobbery. Left to my own devices, I delve deeper and deeper into a sonic scenery filled mostly with artistic gibberish and noise. Honestly, I enjoy it. Music from the very edges of human endurance massages a part of my brain that nothing else can quite reach (well, nothing short of Burroughs, Lynch and young Cronenberg). If left alone for more than a few days, you might walk in and find me dancing to Merzbow's greatest hits, the aural equivalent of white noise and flatulence; and I will be wearing a shit eating grin; and I will do my best to convince you that it is beautiful, if you just listen.

Luckily, I am rarely left alone for more than a few days at a time.

I can be counted on to diatribe at length about the shit you find on the radio, about how sad the state of top 40 is, about the race to the lowest common denominator. If given a wide enough soapbox, I will explain how the only real music today is to be found hiding at the fringes, a snipe only the boldest are willing to hunt.

I'm a bit of an idiot.

Pop music is, and will ever be, a collection of mostly crap. However, there is always some gold amongst the shit, if you are willing to get your hands dirty looking for it. I don't know if the gold gets radio play. I haven't turned on the radio to listen to music in years. For all I know, it might be playing such shining, pure genius that the heavens open in rapture as soon as I tune in (although, I doubt it). I'm scared to look. Last time I was exposed to popular radio, I found out who Nikki Minaj was. It will take me some time to recover from that.

However, the Queens of the Stone Age just topped Billboard. Maybe I should look more often.