Amyl and The Sniffers rage on stage as if the 21st century never happened. The Melbourne, Australia, band look to the halcyon ’70s for cues on how to not give a f*ck, as they spit and sprint through fast, furious, and female-empowered punk shout-alongs on their 2019 self-titled debut album. They call it “pub punk,” frontwoman Amy Taylor told NME, “because we spend a lot of time in the pub.” Inviting us further into their rough-and-tumble world—or, rather, pub—the band put together a mix for us, full of high-strung punk, greasy garage rock, and apocalyptic post-punk—many of it coming straight out of their native Australia. The members also shared a few quick thoughts on three of their song choices:
Bryce on Cosmic Psychos’ “Go the Hack”: “I love this song because half of it is a solo.”
Dec on Skyhooks’ “Horror Movie”: “It’s almost Halloween. True stories are the hardest to believe.”
Amy on Sleaford Mods’ “Bang Someone Out”: “Sometimes I just wanna bang someone out, too.”
As evidenced by the diverse vibes of her spectacular first three albums, Angel Olsen has excellent taste. Her sense of sound and space is preternatural. This “Sounds of the Summer” playlist for Jagjaguwar offers a unique window into her thinking, collecting a mix of breezy tracks that have inspired her. “Starlight” by Pure X is a hazy beach jam featuring shiny, tremolo-soaked guitars, while the Rolling Stones’ classic “Moonlight Mile” gives a sense of the composed pensiveness that lazy vacation days necessitate. The playlist takes a romantic, serious turn with Donny Hathaway’s “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” pointing toward the sentimental reflection that has always haunted Olsen’s music.
Time to set aside popular jams like Merriweather Post Pavilion and Tomboy and instead wander into the outer limits of the Animal Collective galaxy. It’s there that you’ll find some of the foursome’s most innovative solo stabs, side projects, and remixes. A personal fave is Jane, Noah Lennox’s short-lived band with Scott Mou. The duo’s Berserker album, from 2005, is nothing less than a pot of slowly bubbling brain juice. Nearly as absorbing are the string of records Dave Portner and Black Dice’s Eric Copeland released under their Terrestrial Tones moniker. Not surprisingly, this playlist contains lengthy stretches of psychedelic drift-n-moan, though don’t be surprised by the occasional mutant dance groove or blast of static. Unpredictability has always been the name of the game for Panda Bear, Avey Tare, Deakin, and Geologist.
“Needing to be fired up and comforted at the same time brought this playlist around. Its short but potent to me. It has some modern art and inspiration from legends like Kendrick and Atoms for Peace, while mixed with some good memories too.S. Marleys ""Hey Baby"" could play forever and ""Set Me Free"" by The Kinks just fn rocks while giving you a bearhug.” - Robert Wayne Davis (frontman; vocals and guitar)
For over three decades, Anthrax have been at the forefront of the thrash revolution, a campaign that continues on their most recent album, For All Kings. Here, guitarists Scott Ian and Jonathan Donais, and drummer Charlie Benante share their all-time favorite hard-rock and metal jams—plus the odd curveball—in these playlists created exclusively for The Dowsers.SCOTT IAN (GUITAR)Listen to his playlist above.CHARLIE BENANTE (DRUMS)
JONATHAN DONAIS (GUITAR)
This feature is part of our Thrash 101 online course that was produced in partnership with the good rocking folks at GimmeRadio, a free 24/7 metal radio station hosted by heavy-music experts like Megadeths Dave Mustaine and Lamb of Gods Randy Blythe. Check them out here and sign up for the Thrash 101 course here.
Thank you for checking out the 13th installment of our Thrash 101 program, produced in conjunction with GimmeRadio, your free 24/7 radio station hosted by heavy-music experts and artists such as The Dillinger Escape Plans Ben Weinman and Death Angels Will Carroll. Listen for free here.For over three decades, Anthrax have been at the forefront of the thrash revolution, a campaign that continues on their most recent album, For All Kings. Here, guitarists Scott Ian and Jonathan Donais, and drummer Charlie Benante share their all-time favorite hard-rock and metal jams—plus the odd curveball—in these playlists created exclusively for The Dowsers.SCOTT IAN (GUITAR)Listen to his playlist above.CHARLIE BENANTE (DRUMS)
JONATHAN DONAIS (GUITAR)
There’s a reason why Reddit users frantically threw together a playlist of the tracks that Aphex Twin spun during London’s Field Day just hours after the set ended. The U.K. producer named Richard James remains one of electronic music’s most cherished and mysterious figures. Part of this is due to his elusive persona, but there’s something inherently uncanny about the music he makes, whether the primeval futurism of 1992’s groundbreaking Selected Ambient Works 85-92, or the (relatively) more tuneful IDM classics such as “Windowlicker.” It’s easy enough to pick out precedents — a little bit of post-electronic jazz there, a touch of Eno’s ambient experiments here — but the final product remains opaque and uniquely his own. This singularity of sound and vision is one of the reasons that he’s developed the sort of fervent fan base that tracks his every movement.This playlist of songs is essential listening for those fans. The austere corporal march of Kamxilo’s “Splxcity” approximates a type of musical brutalism, and transitions nicely into the deconstructed synth stabs of “WARSZAMA” from Chino Amobi, the Virginia noise artist and co-founder of NON Records. The jarring, introductory portion of the set reaches an apex (of sorts) with the grinding gears of Shapednoise’s “Witness of a Heart Attack Death” before settling into a stretch of slightly disjointed electro funk that mirrors James’ own aesthetic. The set ends with a 90’s nostalgia trip: Underground Resistance’s “Nannytown”; a choice track from Squarepusher’s excellent ‘99 album, Selection Sixteen; and Alec Empire’s screeching Suicide-homage, “Everything Starts with a Fuck.”Still, listening to a playlist comprising tracks exclusively from the DJ set is an odd experience. As an unmixed, dangling historical artifact, experienced within the confines of headphones or home speakers, it’s not how or where James wanted the music to be heard. Conscious of this, your mind fills in some of the blanks: the 3D mapped light instillation; the entrances and exits of the segways; the sweat and flesh of the festival crowd. It’s an incomplete experience, but it’s also interactive, and feels less like you’re staring through a tiny peephole at a much larger world, and more like you’re parsing an ancient, oblique text. And you come away with that reading having heard, and discovered, some amazing music.
Arthur Russell was an extraordinarily gifted musician whose talent flowed unobstructed into myriad areas of musical culture. Born in Iowa in 1951, Russell rose to prominence in the ‘70s and ‘80s through New York’s downtown music scene, where he engaged with avant-garde, disco, experimental, classical, and more, working with artists such as Philip Glass, David Byrne, and Allen Ginsburg. His disco orchestrations were both profoundly complex and thoroughly hip, employing cello and horns in a radically vanguard way. He is perhaps most famous, though, for his use of amplified cello, the reverberated timbres of which provided an impeccably lush counterpoint to his angelic voice and candid words. His intimate solo recordings remain the nucleus of his genius, the extent of which may never even be fully known, as a tremendous amount of unreleased tapes and demos continue to be discovered since his untimely death in 1992.
Few regional rap stars have been as consistently compelling as New Orleans street legend Lil Boosie. Theres a certain tension and menace in his hard-as-nails street narratives and wiry, astringent voice that is only amplified in his stretched out NoLa syllables. Hes got at least one street classic (lets assume that "street" persists as a qualifier for everything Boosie touches) and his 2015 album Touch Down 2 Cause Blood - his first since being released from prison on a murder rap - has harrowing confessional narratives mixed in with the usual braggadocio. Mosi provides a good overview of the mans career.
Few television shows in recent memory have managed to blend poignant social commentary with a delicate treatment of everyday lived experiences quite like Master of None, the brilliant Netflix comedy-drama created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang. For their second season, the creators have developed another 10 episodes that easily stand alone as individual vignettes. But in each instalment, music always takes center stage. Ansari and music supervisor Zach Cowies 69-song compendium mirrors this seasons emotional arc and sharp sense of humor, looking beyond the expected indie soundtrack choices for an eclectic array that includes John Fahey, Dorothy Ashby, and even the Vengaboys.Even if you havent watched this season, you can sense the extreme contrasts between episodes through this playlist—the neo-classical film scores of Ennio Morricone (which accompany the season’s black-and-white premiere) give way to the pristine Italo-disco of Ken Laszlo and Mr. Flagio that accompanies the technicolor vibrancy of the second episode. However, the playlists most sublime selections benefit from onscreen recontextualization. When Dev (Ansari) and Navid (Harris Gani) skip Ramadan prayer to attend a pork-filled barbecue to the tune of Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time,” the track instantly morphs into their personal elegy for religious obedience. Strangely enough, it’s a very smart choice. Master of None has done much to rewrite the narrative surrounding the onscreen representation of people of colour, and Ansari and Cowie have discovered that mission extends to musical choices as well—regardless of how cringe-worthy they may seem. Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
