Quick Hits, Vol. 4 (Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Bee Caves, Wara from the NBHD, My Brightest Diamond, Death from Above 1979, Preatures)

Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime.  I would have been all over these dudes in high school if I had known about them.  I had a good, long love affair with Fugazi and Firehose (the latter of which was mentioned in a Chili Peppers song, so I bought several albums on that tiny recommendation alone).  Part of this band went on to become Firehose later on, and you can really hear it in the bass - funky and odd and awesome.  It is like some dudes wanted to be punk, but they had actual serious skills with their instruments, so this comes off as lo-fi and shouted/spoken like punk, with with really solid musicianship and fun eclectic takes on tunes (instead of the boring boom bap drumming and bass of normal punk).  The most listened to song on this album is Corona, but I think that is only because it was the intro music to the extra-dumb Jackass show.  I prefer Viet Nam, try it out:

Almost has an R.E.M. sound in there (although for all I know, R.E.M. cribbed their sound off these guys.  This album came out in 1984).  Don't worry, the song is only 1:29 long...

Meat Puppets - II.  Huh.  Sounds kind of like the Minutemen, and it appears that they were labelmates back in the 80's.  Promise I didn't load them up in my queue that way on purpose, but that American Championship Belt post brought both of these bands up.  This is pretty dang weird music. Kind of in the alt country/ punk country vein of early Old 97's or Sun Volt.  Has some Phish sounds as well (Aurora Borealis), maybe even some Dead through that country-ish sound.  The album also has multiple tunes that Nirvana used in their Unplugged album (Plateau, Lake of Fire, and Oh, Me).  

Pretty dang close to the way Kurt sang it on the Unplugged show.  Interesting.  I'm sure the true Nirvana fan-boys totally knew that these were Meat Puppets songs, but fun to hear the echos of the original in the covers.  Cool find.  I likely won't go back and listen to this album much again, but I've got more useless trivia in my head now!

Bee Caves - Animals with Religion.  Great music.  I feel like I've heard these songs before, although I know I never have.  Really nice relaxed rock and roll with good harmonies.

Wara from the NBHD - Kidnapped.  I have no freaking clue where I found this album or why I added it to my playlist to check out, but its actually pretty damn good.  No clue why his name is so weird, either.  But this is solid story-telling rap of nice sounding couplets and rhythm, with drug sales tales and very little dumb braggadocio or talk about his cars and shoes and artwork, over simple but well-made beats.  I wanted to add a link to Raw, but it apparently has no YouTube presence.  So check out Beige (which totally sounds like a Pharrell beat for Clipse):

My Brightest Diamond - This is my Hand.  She came to ACL Fest and I listened to her music when writing her up, but she has put out a new full length album that is really nice. Quirky and odd, I'll stick to my Bjork comparisons from my earlier review.  Great voice, although she doesn't just play it straight - she hits unexpected notes and sticks herself into weird arrangements.  This is good.

Death from Above 1979 - The Physical World.  Funny, I thought I had already listened to these dudes for the ACL previews, but it turns out that people are having a very difficult time coming up with original band names these days.  Death from Above 1979 didn't come to ACL, but Chain Gang of 1974 and Night Terrors of 1927 did.  Come on, folks.  Stop using the automatic band name generator already.  I know I should be talking about this album and all, but I just went to bandnamemaker and told it to make names involving 1976, and it made the absolute worst band names I think it possibly could have made.  Some examples:

• "1976 Rupture And The Twang Allison"  What?  Seriously, what did you just say?
• "1976 Of The Manual Mistress"  Did the 1980's Nintendo writers make this website?
• "Confidential 1976 And The Liberty"  Is my computer being hacked while I read this garbage?
• "1976 Of The Sink"  I wish I was making this up.
• And the winner, because it encapsulates this website so well, is "Sucky 1976"

ANYWAY, once you get over the band name, this is fun hard rock stuff.  Driving, relentless, rock and roll you should probably use to drive fast or dance hard.  Here is the most popular tune from the album, chug along and look at those buttons.

Preatures - Blue Planet Eyes.  Another band that came to ACL Fest, but previously they didn't have a full length album out.  They have one big hit song that plays on the radio quite a bit around Austin:

Which is a straight up jam.  I mean, try not to boogie while you listen to that stuff.  The full album includes that song as well as a bunch of similarly good tunes.  Reminds me of the pop/rock/80's references from Haim a year or two ago.  They've also got a chilled Sheryl Crow sound (Two Tone Melody) on here to bring you back down from your heavy grooving.