Certain Songs

Certain Songs #2562: Superchunk – “Garlic”

February 28, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)
Year: 1990

. . .

As someone who learned early on that the stinking rose makes just about every type of meat that much more tasty — and once or twice ate the stuff raw (after several drinks, of course) — I absolutely couldn’t resist one of the other highlights of Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91), the gloriously noisy “Garlic.”

Certain Songs #2561: Superchunk – “Slack Motherfucker”

February 27, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)
Year: 1990

. . .

OK, so a couple of things here: I’m using a couple of technicalities to start off the Superchunk posts with “Slack Motherfucker.” First, while it was the first single to be credited to “Superchunk,” it wasn’t the first single they released, as they had released a single in 1989 — which has their great version of “Train From Kansas City,” — credited to “Chunk,” an inside joke based on the name of their drummer, Chuck Garrison, being misspelled in the phone book.

Secondly, while “Slack Motherfucker” also showed up on their 1991 self-titled debut, the album to hear it is their early singles compilation, 1992’s Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91), which I think rivals the Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady or Squeeze’s Singles 45s and Under in terms of perfectly capturing a band that left it all out there on the 7″ single.

Certain Songs #2560: Super 5 Thor – “Gazelle”

February 24, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gazelle
Year: 1997

. . .

Unlike the first Super 5 Thor album, Ford, which had started as a bunch of guitar and vocal tracks recorded by Scott Oliver and Manny Diez with the bass & drums overdubbed later on, the second album, 1997’s Gazelle was a little bui more thought through. A little bit, as this time everybody played the basic tracks in the same studio, with Scott & Manny joined by Ron Woods on bass, and the mysterious Alisa on the drums.

Certain Songs #2559: Super 5 Thor – “Breath”

February 23, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ford
Year: 1996

. . .

After the Miss Alans wrote and recorded the batch of songs that eventually became Ledger, the final album of their initial run, Scott Oliver had a bunch of song ideas that he didn’t think were quite right for The Miss Alans, being a bit too simple. Meanwhile, Manny Diez also had some ideas that were maybe too avant-garde for the Miss Alans. So, like chocolate and peanut butter, they decided to combine, Manny and Scott working together just to get their ideas out of their heads.

Certain Songs #2558: Sunny Sweeney – “Pills”

February 22, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Trophy
Year: 2017

. . .

Sunny Sweeney had been kicking around Nashville for over a decade before we discovered her fourth album, 2017’s Trophy. I don’t know how it came across my radar — 2017 being approximately 57 years ago or so — but I definitely liked her big full voice belting it out over loose, sparse arrangements.

Certain Songs #2557: Sunflower Bean – “Space Exploration Disaster”

February 21, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Human Ceremony
Year: 2016

. . .

As y’all know by now, one of my favorite subcategories of Certain Songs is songs about Space. SPACE! And while those songs basically peaked around the time when we stopped going to the Moon, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love when youngish bands write songs in that tradition. Because I do!

Certain Songs #2556: Suicidal Tendencies – “Institutionalized”

February 17, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Suicidal Tendencies
Year: 1983

. . .

“KFSR!”

“Hi, can you play ‘Institutionalized’ by Suicidal Tendencies?”

“Um, I think I’ve heard it like three times already today.”

“Yeah, but none of those were my requests.”

Certain Songs #2555: The Sugarcubes – “Delicious Demon”

February 16, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Life’s Too Good
Year: 1988

. . .

While “Birthday” seemed like it was created by aliens using AI, other songs on Life’s Too Good could be traced back to things that other humans previously created, like, for example, “Delicious Demon,” which somehow slapped early Gang of Four with early B-52’s and still came out with something completely new under the sun.

Certain Songs #2554: The Sugarcubes – “Birthday”

February 15, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Life’s Too Good
Year: 1988

. . .

35 years down the pike, it’s hard to express just how weird The Sugarcubes sounded when we first heard them in 1988. Back then, they sounded like aliens who had been what popular music sounded like without actually playing those aliens any popular music as a reference.

And given that they were from Iceland, that might have been the case, but my real guess was that being from Iceland meant that they really didn’t give a fuck about the rules, and so their debut, Life’s Too Good featured fractured fairy tales of songs like the utterly stunning “Birthday,” which announced to the world that lead singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir was a sui generis talent.

Certain Songs #2553: Sugar – “Explode and Make Up”

February 14, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: File Under Easy Listening
Year: 1994

. . .

My favorite song on File Under: Easy Listening was the final song on the album, and in fact, I’m sure one of the reasons I kept playing it was to get to that final track, the utterly sublime “Explode and Make Up,” which started off with a slow beat — a “Neil Young Beat” in my headcanon — with an acoustic guitar combined with an electric guitar. And Mould’s sad sad voice singing his sad sad words.