Caroline - Total Euphoria

I don't know much about this band Caroline, except that they are from Great Britain. They seem to have a lot of people in the band, like 6 or 7 or 8 people of both sexes. They all sort of do stuff. To me, they seem to evoke the vibe of my beloved and long-gone band, the Books, a band about whom I have much to say but have not said a single word on this blog. Truly loved them. In any case, Caroline is sort of indie rockish, sort of glitchtronic, sort of fucked up, sort of shambolic (the drums literally never match up with the beat) but also about joy. Yeah, JOY. They are not a band of sad sacks. I love that. Anyway, this is one of my favorite tracks of the year, a broken, stilted, fucked up track of beauty. Oh, and if you want to read more about Caroline, see here and here.

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Primal Scream - Kill All Hippies

I was a whipper-snapper graduate student in Pittsburgh when I first heard this, sometime in the year 2000. The album came out in May of that year (in the U.S.) and it soundtracked that summer for me. An abrasive turn from Primal Scream, XTRMNTR appealed to me first and foremost because the opening track was called "Kill All Hippies," the idea of which seemed cool to me at the time. Not sure if "kill all hippies" means anything remotely interesting in 2025 but it sure meant something in 2000. I also liked that Primal Scream abandoned (well, paused) their sex-and-drugs-and-party thing to pay attention to the real world for a bit:

"You got the money / I got the soul."

Also, special treat, Kevin Shields showed up out of the blue, reminding us exactly why he was the loudest guitar player in the world, even though we had not heard a peep out of him for years. Shields played guitar on "Shoot Speed / Kill Light" (and also produced it), surely the most thunderous metronome-beat song with a wall-of-electric guitars to pummel you into submission in the year 2000.

Also, did you know lead singer Bobby Gillespie played drums on Psychocandy?

Colourbox - Hot Doggie

My favorite Colourbox song (and probably most people's) is this, "Hot Doggie," the opening track on the compilation (remember those?) album Lonely Is An Eyesore, released by the 4AD label in 1987. An early adopter of using samples to construct songs (instead of using samples to just embellish songs), Colourbox alas, lasted for a very short period of time, from 1982 to 1987.

I guess most people would be familiar with Colourbox, not from one of their own tracks but as part of the collaboration known as M|A|R|R|S, a brief coming together between Colourbox and the great British duo, A. R. Kane, that produced "Pump Up The Volume" in 1987.

They had a whole bunch of (non-album) singles but only one proper album, self-titled, released in 1985.

Still, nothing beats "Hot Doggie": fantastic placement of samples, the build-up to release, the various call-backs during the song to stuff that happened previously, and relentless bass drum-and-snare four-on-the-floor synthetic beat.

"Let's hear some music!" 

 

The Everly Brothers - Cathy's Clown

Released in April 1960. Apparently written solely by Don Everly. Also, the drums, played by Buddy Harman, were apparently looped (!) and double-tracked, although the song was recorded completely live in one take. So not sure how that was possible. Harman played on a boat-load of Elvis tracks too. Also, Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison. But most incredibly, he played on Ween's 12 Golden Country Greats (1996), although it's not clear on which song.

 

John Lennon - Jealous Guy (Elements Mix)

I stumbled on to this guided by some lines of code on the internet -- it's quite mesmerizing. Of course, the piano playing by Nicky Hopkins is pretty, but really it's the chords sequence too -- shifting from plateau to plateau in the verses until the choruses drop you into the valley. Gorgeous stuff.

 

Lennon's original 1968 solo demo (when it was titled 'Child of Nature') here.

Hole - "Asking For It" (sometime in 1993...)

This is amazing footage of a rehearsal of the best song off of Hole's Live Through This. To see the band, especially the late Kristen Pfaff, in such an intimate setting is wild.