Record #1025: Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain (1960)

A lot has been said about Miles Davis’ influence on jazz. Across his career, he was on the bleeding edge of several seismic shifts in the genre. And while much has been said about his accomplishments in bebop, cool jazz, and fusion, his brief foray into Third Stream jazz often feels like a sort of inconsequential detour in his overall trajectory.

But there’s nothing insignificant about Sketches of Spain. It is one of the most brightly shining gems in Davis’ illustrious career. The album finds him fully embracing his lifelong love of classical music, fused with his impeccable sense of style and melody.

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Record #1024: Minus the Bear – Planet of Ice (2007)

It makes sense that I’m writing about this album when it’s 18º outside. What makes less sense is how it’s taken me so long to add it to my collection.

It’s not like I’m not a Minus the Bear fan. I saw them with mewithoutYou and Thursday a year before this record and they blew me away. Menos El Oso is one of my comfort records. David Knudson is one of my favorite guitarists, and many of my other favorite guitarists have been influenced by his two-handed tapping technique—and myself.

But as Minus the Bear’s career continued, I lost track of them. When I came back to them, it seemed like their later albums made less of a priority on technique and more on using effects to obscure the instrument entirely. As Menos el Oso had more effects work and less tapping than Highly Refined Pirates, casual listens brought me to the conclusion that the proportion between Menos and Planet of Ice was roughly the same.

Those most have been some casual listens, because I was dead wrong.

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Record #1023: Dustin Kensrue – Desert Dreaming (2024)

Honestly, we should have seen this turn coming from Dustin a long time ago. He’s never kept his love of country western music that hidden. His solo output has always leaned toward folk and country, but even before that, he was slipping bits of roots music into Thrice songs as early as Illusion of Safety.

But on Desert Dreaming, he’s fully committed to the bit—even in terms of his live show attire. And let’s be clear: if you announce a country record and start sauntering out in cowboy garb, you better be able to back it up. Lucky for everybody, Dustin’s up to the task.

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Record #1022: Lies – Lies (2023)

In emo-adjacent circles, few names carry as much weight as “Kinsella.” Mike, Tim, and Nate Kinsella have had a hand in about a half dozen seminal projects— among them, Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls, Owen, and American Football. Their output has spanned the gamut from chaotic noise rock to gentle indie balladry and almost everything in between.

But despite this variety, none of the Kinsellas’ projects have shown much interest in standard pop music. That is, until Lies, the new project from Mike and Nate. While there’s plenty of Mike Kinsella-ness here to keep fans of Owen and American Football happy, there’s also plenty of nods to new wave, synthpop, and Top 40 that makes for an oddly captivating listen.

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Record #1021: Jawbox – Jawbox (1996)

Speaking of the DC post-hardcore scene

One of the biggest death knells to a punk band is to be deemed a sell out. And in the 90s, when every record label in the world was signing every noisy band they could in hopes of finding the next Nirvana, the sharks came circling around Dischord Records. While Fugazi famously turned down a number of massive record deals, not everyone was as staunch in their business ethics.

When Jawbox entered into a deal with Atlantic Records, the punks were up in arms. But somehow, the two records released on Atlantic were unscathed by the corporitizing and sanitizing that came with selling out. Like For Your Own Special Sweetheart before it, their ’96 self-titled record is a cavalcade of jagged post-hardcore by one of the best to ever do it—major label or not.

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Record #1020: Embrace – Embrace (1987)

In conversations about Fugazi (and the evolution of hardcore and emo in general), most of the talk focuses on two bands: Minor Threat and Rites of Spring. And while the importance of those projects cannot be ignored, there is one project that is tragically overlooked.

That project is Embrace. While Ian MacKaye’s road from Minor Threat to Fugazi had a few detours along the way, none of them foreshadowed what was to come more clearly than Embrace.

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Record #1019 – The Go-Go’s – Beauty and the Beat (1981)

The mythos of rock and roll party culture is almost as significant to pop music history as the music itself. And while no one is caught off guard to hear about acts of depravity from Guns & Roses or Mötley Crüe, it comes as a surprise to most people that one of the most notoriously wild acts of the 1980s was none other than The Go-Go’s.

Their proclivity for backstage sex parties might seem to run counter to their new wave pop perfectionism and girl-next-door charm. But a closer listen to their debut reveals a rebellious streak that might get missed when you just scan the hits. Even the coy “Our Lips Our Sealed” hides a sort lasciviousness in its secrecy.

Beauty and the Beat might sound squeaky clean, but the Go-Gos offer more than enough winks and nudges to hang with the rest of their new wave and punk contemporaries.

Record #1018: Native – Wrestling Moves (2010)

Few things give me as much joy as shouty vocals, tappy guitar riffs, assymetrical drum riffs, the Northern Indiana DIY music scene, and pro wrestling. So obviously, Wrestling Moves, the debut LP from NWI post-hardcore group Native, hits me square across the chest.

Unfortunatley though, their tenure as a band coincided with a period where I was sort of divorced from the local-ish heavy music scene. I’ve only gotten into them in the last few years—and that was mostly through frontman Bobby Markos’ current band Cloakroom. While there’s not a ton of overlap between the doomgaze of Cloakroom and Native’s jagged, angular post-hardcore, this project has way more going for it than as a footnote for a more famous act.

Read more at ayearofvinyl.com

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Record #1017 – Majesty Crush – Butterflies Don’t Fly Away (2024)

No matter how closely I scour the various corners of pop music history, there’s always something I miss. There are countless bands that have fallen through the cracks of year-end lists from various journalists, retrospectives, and trends on the music charts. And many of those bands are actually worth several damns, despite how much or little notoriety they achieved in their time.

One of these bands is Majesty Crush, a Detroit-based alt rock outfit that played local support to international shoegaze bands like The Verve, Mazzy Star, Chapterhouse, Curve (oh hey), and the immortal My Bloody Valentine. And while they weren’t themselves members of the British community that spawned shoegaze, their sound could definitely grandfather them in as canonized members of the scene.

As part of their effort to uncover these sorts of hidden legends, Numero Group has released Butterflies Don’t Fly Away, a document of Majesty Crush’s brief career that compiles their sole full-length Love 15 from 1993 with various EPs and B-sides.

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