Quick Hits Vol. 105 (Sunny Day Real Estate, Third Root, Run the Jewels, Sara Watkins)

I got poison oak on Christmas Eve, and I can unequivocally say that it is some bullshit.  What useful function, at all, could this evolutionary defense mechanism have for the plant?  Any intelligent life form will kill it with extreme prejudice and malice and hatred.  Twice.  With fire.  Any unintelligent life form will eat it and not realize that anything was bad about the meal until three days later, when its insides begin to bubble up with rashes.  This is dumb and useless and it should all die.  At least when a mosquito bites you it is doing it to live, or a thorny plant is poking you to protect itself and you know right then to back off.  Die, evil weed.

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary.  This album is apparently from 1994, and this band is from Seattle and released on Sub Pop.  How had these guys not already been on my radar long before now? Definite Nirvana influence, in the same way that Silverchair had some heavy Nirvana leanings. Weird thing how I found this one, I was actually in a crowded restaurant last week and could barely hear a super riff-tastic chug coming from the speakers that I felt like I needed to have.  I had identified it as maybe being Soundgarden.  Broke out the phone, but Shazam couldn't compete with all the other ambient noise at the table, so I walked outside to the sidewalk where another speaker was playing the same music, and scored the song.  I have no clue what the song title means, but check out "The Blankets Were the Stairs."

Can't believe I never heard of this before now!  The chugging, weaving, thud of this is very Nirvana and Soundgarden from their prime days of tunes.  The band itself has broken up and re-joined repeatedly, but appears to be done now.  The bassist formed and is still a part of Foo Fighters, when they formed after the death of Cobain.  Interesting, the weaving of the different strings between bands.  I like these tunes, good nostalgia factor here.

Third Root - Revolutionary Theme Music.  Hell yes.  These dudes are from Austin, and are apparently entirely unknown, as only one song on Spotify has more than 2,000 plays, but this is my kind of rap.  Well crafted, sample-heavy beats.  Thoughtful rhymes.  I heard one of their songs on KUTX the other day and figured I'd go look this up - dope stuff.  Here is that most popular track, called "Unified."

Going old school with the funky drummer sample, but then adding over that some Latin influence that works to make this into a different flavor of beat.  This profile on KUTX shows that they have a new album out now, but it isn't available on Spotify, so I haven't tried it out yet.  But this album is good.

Run the Jewels - RTJ3.  My little brother challenged me the other day to write a discussion of the ways that traditional rap and new school rap differ in their distribution networks and how that has modified the nature of the genre.  I had recently read an article we were discussing, about how the streaming world encourages artists to include all of their songs instead of limiting themselves to the most choice cuts.  Back in the day, a tape would have been limited to 60 minutes (or maybe 70 later in life) and a CD was limited to 80 minutes, so bands had to really pick and choose.  And, it made no difference to the band the number of tracks on there, as they just wanted you to buy it the one time. Well, now if Drake wants to put out a bloated mess of an album with 28 tracks (10 of which are actually good), and then rack up millions of extra streaming numbers as people let it play through the bad ones as well as the good one, then he continues to get paid even more.  I wonder if Spotify pays the same for a 10 second spoken interlude as they do for a 3 minute song?  Anyway, I bring this up here because Run the Jewels were my example of a band that isn't even trying to make money off of the traditional album sales model, they just release their shit for free and go on tour.

All of that aside, this album is bad ass.  More of the same sound as past albums, with those meaty, muscular, pounding beats and clearly parsed (but dense as hell) lyrics from Killer Mike and El-P.  Politically, socially interesting lyrics (and some brags as necessary) but not simple garbage.  This is stuff you need to listen to.  AND these are the kinds of beats that make me want to pick up a truck and throw it through the side of a bank vault and run away with all the cash shoved into my waistband. I mean, check the beat in "Hey Kids (Bumaye)"

Roll down your windows, turn it up to 11, and start ridin', baby.  Same with "Stay Gold," or the top song on Spotify right now, "Legend Has It."  I don't see that any new videos have been posted up to YouTube yet by the band, but their old videos were pretty solid, so I'd expect something good to be coming soon.  This album dropped as a surprise right around Christmas, and I've been blaring it anytime I was away from the kids over the holiday break.  Now that I'm back in the office, I can fully immerse myself in there and am loving it.

Sara Watkins - Young in All the Wrong Ways.  You may know this, but Nickel Creek is one of my musical touchstone bands.  Some of the best, most intricate instrumentation and clever, insightful lyrics.  That band is excellent.  So this is one third of the band, which keeps breaking up and then re-joining and then wandering off to do other things again, so I don't know if they exist now or not. Sara was mentioned in something I read the other day about Sarah Jarosz, saying that they are now part of the house band for Prairie Home Companion, which is kind of dope in a kitschy, Buddy-Holly-glasses-hipster-ironic sort of way.  The most popular track on here so far is "Without a Word."

Sounds like an old Norah Jones tune.  This track, like the rest of the album, is pretty comfortable. Rarely do you get any fire like the classic Nickel Creek stuff, except for "One Last Time," where you get a touch of it, or maybe "The Truth Won't Set Us Free," but it is kind of nice to just relax in this thing.  I like this album well enough, but I doubt I'll keep it around.