My new year's resolution for 2025 was to explore music a lot more. I felt like I hadn't gotten into anything new in quite a while. So, I set up this system where, at the start of every month, I would pick out a new genre and listen to what the internet called the "essential" albums from that genre. And, for fun, I document it!
Listens:
Exuma (1970) by Exuma, the Obeah Man
Sung Tongs (2004) by Animal Collective
The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004) by Joanna Newsom
First Utterance (1971) by Comus
All of these albums were really quirky and individualistic, but they were all that way in the same sort of direction, so I get why they’re lumped into the same genre. It more or less is like each of these bands took the general principles of folk music and then all ran far, far away in different directions. I would say Exuma is in a league of its own though, for not being so decidedly western. Sung Tongs sounds like two of the nerdiest whiny white hipsters I’ve ever seen (please watch their performance of the entire album acoustically at Pitchfork’s 21st anniversary. Two guys bird twittering and shouting “ay” and “op” back and forth off-key). That’s painfully rude and I really don’t feel that strongly but that is just the message I’m communicating. Listen, they really came into their own later on with Merriweather Post Pavilion and it came off as much more thoughtful and sophisticated, but this album sounds like it was made by two of your coworkers at Buzzfeed who got through The Bell Jar only by the motivation that it would get them laid.
The Joanna Newsom album was pretty great. Awesome how it sewed together the intricacies of the more solemn albums but brought up their spirits to be jangly, catchy, folk pieces. I’ve heard of her before, and I don’t really know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. That’s not a bad thing though. Oh, but the voice can get pretty abrasive. I don’t know if it’s that way on her later work, because I know this was her debut, and may be sort of shunned, because it isn’t even on spotify. If you listen with intent and slip into the sort of narrative the music and the way it sounds is pushing, it’s not so bad. If you’re in a really, really good mood, the vocals are silly and joyous.
I feel like the best albums of this genre are ones that aim somewhere crazy and off the map, and end up here because there’s no other way to describe it. I think if someone set out to make the “latest eccentric psychedelic-folk album” it would end up pretty disingenuous and unremarkable.
Listens:
Laughing Stock (1991) by Talk Talk
Spiderland (1991) by Slint
Tweez (1989) by Slint
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000) by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
F# A# Infinity (1997) by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
To Be Kind (2014) by Swans
He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms (2000) by A Silver Mt. Zion
Oh Post-Rock, my nerd guilty pleasure. I’ve heard most of these albums before, but quite a while ago, just around the time when I was an avid user of the /mu/ forums. Post-rock is similar to the psychedelic folk of last month in the sense that all of these artists and albums are incredibly unique and individualistic, but in ways that resemble each other. Swans and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion all switch between sweeping orchestral arrangements and sound collages of varying levels of disturbing-ness. Also, long complicated song/album/band names and songs that are 10+ minutes in length are staples within this genre.
When these albums do have any focus on lyrics or vocal passages, they’re usually telling a story. I think every song on Spiderland does this, as well as the opening passage of F# A# Infinity. That’s probably the biggest thing that lends to the notion of post-rock very much having a storytelling aspect, even just in music. I would say that the first song from Lift Your Skinny Fists is great storytelling, just from that gradual crescendo.
All of these albums are special and monumental in their entirety, a real experience, they’re meant to be consumed that way. Listen to the entire album start to finish, no shuffle, et cetera. I wouldn’t listen to anything from these albums while, say, showering or taking a short drive. Depending on how you look at it, that might add to the overall quality of the album- too monumental to be accessible, you might say.
Listens:
Tocsin (1984) by Xmal Deutschland
Fetisch (1983) by Xmal Deutschland
Pornography (1982) by The Cure
In the Flat Field (1980) by Bauhaus
Mask (1981) by Bauhaus
Azoic (1997) by Specimen
Bloody Kisses (1994) by Type O Negative
Unknown Pleasures (1979) by Joy Division
BRING BACK GOTH BASS!!! Early 80’s goth has some of the best bass guitar lines and tones I’ve ever heard. I honestly wish I had listened to more goth this month, and I’ll probably follow up with that soon. Bands I wish I had explored more would mainly be the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division (though I know JD pretty well already). Peter Hook was a great bassist, too.
The thing about goth music is it sort of requires a certain type of day and situation to get into. Well, maybe that’s different for people who mainly listen to goth music, but I couldn’t really see myself walking through the forest to class while listening to Bauhaus. Bauhaus is still great, though. I think if I was sitting down to study or something, I could put it on. Unless I was sitting across from a window overlooking a beautiful day.
The only thing about goth music that could tend to get on my nerves is it being meandering. Thinking about Bauhaus again, there are a few songs where it really leans into that sort of soundscape thing. Again, perfectly good for an album that’s meant to be experienced deeply and with focus in one go, but not really for adding it to playlists. If I made a playlist of my favorite goth songs from this month, they would all be ones that I could more or less see myself dancing to. Goth-dancing that is. Goth dancing is FANTASTIC. Just swaying around. We need to do that again.
I appreciate goth a lot for the elements it lended to later new-wave music. Using drum machines, crazy reverb on drums, certain ways they use synths, things like that.
Listens:
Symbolic (1995) by Death
Left Hand Path (1990) by Entombed
Tomb of the Mutilated (1992) by Cannibal Corpse
Mantando Gueros (1993) by Brujeria
None So Vile (1996) by Cryptopsy
Seven Churches (1985) by Possessed
Dahmer (2000) by Macabre
Altars of Madnes (1989) by Morbid Angel
Human Waste (1991) by Suffocation
When I talked almost exclusively to friends I had made online in 2020, we added the Possessed Instagram account to our group chat as a joke but the singer (Jeff Becerra) actually used that account and would chat with us every once in a while. He didn’t say a lot but he was always nice. He also kept being frontman from a wheelchair even after he became a paraplegic, so I have a lot of respect for him for that one.
I feel like there needs to be a widely acknowledged difference between metal with growling vocals and metal with vocals where you can more or less tell what they’re saying. I think there’s a pretty significant difference between, say, Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse. I think you sorta turn your head off more for death metal where you can’t understand what they’re saying. Those bands also tend to have instrumentation that goes along the same lines- blast beats on the drums, really flair-y but nonsensical guitar lines, that stuff. Death metal that came before that point, so mostly that of the 80’s, also tended to have more thought out guitar solos.
For me, death metal is a great thing to turn on while I’m studying and want noise in my ears without being too distracting. That being said, I really can’t see myself listening to it while taking the bus downtown or something.
The market for death metal has become saturated as people kept taking steps to make the music heavier and heavier. The subtleties you saw in early bands like Death like high-flying riffs have sort of been lost. We went from death metal to grindcore, which, in my opinion, fucking sucks, and is only enjoyed by people who try to make it their entire personality. In this day and age, playing classic death metal is about as hip and cool as playing thrash metal (which is to say, not very much at all).
Listens:
Slipknot (1999) by Slipknot
System of a Down (1998) by System of a Down
Toxicity (2001) by System of a Down
Get Some (1997) by Snot
Adrenaline (1995) by Deftones
Around the Fur (1997) by Deftones
Significant Other (1999) by Limp Bizkit
Fallen (2003) by Evanescence
Hybrid Theory (2000) by Linkin Park
L.D. 50 (2000) by Mudvayne
Korn (1994) by Korn
Follow The Leader (1998) by Korn