One of the pleasures of having Spotify is that I can make a playlist of random songs from artists that I either have heard of or are totally new to me. I went to James Iha’s channel and then picked one of his songs and then selections from similar artists. The following are my opinions on those particular songs I picked. Some of the artists I’ve heard of and some I have not but my judgments are only going to be on the specific songs.
1) James Iha “Waves”: Another slow sleepy-time ballad that picks up later. Sort of catchy as long as I don’t need to hear a whole album of this type of stuff. C+
2) The Lemonheads “Uhhh”: Emo Ramones? Not really my thing but the raspy annoying vocals at least give the song humor. D+
3) Tinted Windows “Take Me Back”: I like the instrumentation but the music is too Gossip Girl style for me. C-
4) The Smashing Pumpkins “Daydream”: This has a sufficient amount of strangeness to intrigue me. B
5) Teenage Fanclub “Metal Baby”: Nothing particularly good or bad about this. Pretty faceless. C-
6) Matthew Sweet “The Alcohol Talking”: At least he knows how to play well, but he needs to hire another singer and another songwriter. C
7) Sunny Day Service “Ben Watt Wo Kiiteta”: This is kind of interesting as a change of pace of what I usually hear. It’s actually pretty good. B+
8) Cornelius “Nowhere”: A very good idea but not done perfectly for my taste. I’m glad I heard it but I’m not going to rush desperately to hear it again. C+
9) Dinosaur Jr. “Does It Float”: Just messy and not very well performed and then it gets worse. D-
10) The Posies “Under Easy”: Compent but faceless. C-
11) D.A.N. “Pool”: I don’t like the vocals at all but I love the music. I have to judge it by everything together. Because of the vocals it goes from being A- to C-.
12) Superdrag “Really Thru”: This is at least strange. But, ultimately, it has more minuses them pluses. D+
13) Thurston Moore “Hang Out”: After a totally pointless introduction, it became a really cool and great grungy song. The best thing on here so far. A
14) Velvet Crush “Speedway”: I never thought I’d call noisy garage grunge music faceless but it applies here. Nothing great. D
15) Juliana Hatfield “No Outlet”: This is an equal mix of pretty good and very annoying. C-
16) The Rentals “Naive”: More faceless noise. D
17) My Bloody Valentine “All I Need”: This is so different but it’s a sort of gorgeous noise. I actually like it. B
18) J Mascis “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”: I’d like him better if he sobered up. C-
19) Darcy “I Gave Up”: Wow! This is cool, like Billy Swan. A
20) The Frogs “Richard Dick Richards”: This is a humorous song and a cool parody of sixties psychedelic pop. It’s okay. I can dig it. B
So, my overall consensus is that one never knows whether or not an artist or a song will be very good or merely okay or just plain downright awful. However, I have discovered a few really good songs and that makes the discovery all the more worthwhile.
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