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From “Dots and Loops” which is an all timer for me.
A song about trompe l’oeil artwork (“trick the eye”) that maybe isn’t about that at all - at face value, it seems more likely to be about seeking simultaneously to deceive while being open and honest about the fact you are deceiving… an “it’s complicated” relationship song?
If you dig Stereolab, try to dig up some McCarthy tunes, Tim Gane’s first band (featured on the old C86 cassette which is also worth tracking down although you can hear it in full on the YouTubes). The left wing politics are similar and on tracks like these you hear them breaking away from the Smiths-jangle sound of the moment toward what they would become: https://open.spotify.com/track/5M4UHn0I5O9xvgIaiEhzFY?si=dHKv5WcHTES1gdVAvCdxSw&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A5PptRExr0j579qu7OrCxqt
Mar 9, 2025
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(sorry i’m gonna do 2)
this entire album is incredibly bonkers and sort of like being high on stimulants while being dragged around town by someone else who is even higher on stimulants…
but THIS song in particular has this feeling of a bombastic live show in hell being MC’d by a sports announcer from the 1920s
May 5, 2024
they made this for when you want that Lou Reed “Street Hassle” vibe but you don’t want to accidentally slip into a deep depression
Oct 25, 2024
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Particularly, the Peel Session version. I listen to this most days before work, Mark E. Smith was always able to create this bleak atmosphere, pulling all the annoying things from the mundane. All punk seems like a charade in comparison to this, this is the only song that matters sometimes, all that anger.
Dec 29, 2024
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Hey tyler hopefully this doesn’t violate some PI.FYI golden rule
But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here:
https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/
The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s.
Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha).
For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I can’t wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! ❤️
Mar 27, 2024
“Songs Of a Lost World” coming to a goth listening station near you Nov 1 🖤
The fr FW Me Friday the 13th the world was looking for
Sep 14, 2024
I will fail to explain just how much this band meant to me in the 90s.
So I will borrow from AV Club who did a fine job of distilling it:
“Unwound is the best band of the ’90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space between some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk, post-rock, indie rock, post-hardcore, slow-core, and experimental noise. That jumble of subgenres doesn’t say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasn’t stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the ’90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration.”
R.I.P. Vern Rumsey.
This is their finest song, from their finest album.
I really can’t say enough about the sheer bloody minded genius of this group. 🖤
Mar 23, 2024