Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights/Hounds of Love/The Big Sky

I would take out Kate Bush's garbage. I would sweep her floors. I would walk her Hounds of Love and tend to their droppings. In fact, I'm not quite sure why there aren't monuments erected in her honor spanning the four corners of the globe. She is a goddess in every sense of the word. She's an amazing singer, dancer (the Wuthering Heights dance is a bit out there, but check out the "Running up that Hill" video for some incredible dancing), performance artist, and of course she's head-explodingly beautiful. (I love being really annoying with useless adverbs on this blog. It's fun!)

It's impossible for me to choose a song to post here, so I put three that I think highlight some of her most appealing attributes. Some people get a little scared off by "Wuthering Heights." These people are deranged, for it is fabulous. She wrote the song when she was 18 (!), and it's just magical. My favorite part is the second verse when the strings come in in the background. Added to her vocals and the Bronte-inspired lyrics, it makes the song so melodramatic and perfect. This video also showcases her half-dancing, half-performance art skillz.

"Hounds of Love" shows how innovative her music was from a production standpoint. I love the off-kilter drums and the choppy violins. And of course her exquisite, melodramatic voice rising and falling with the "Doo doo doo doo doo!" vocals in the background. I'm sure Bjork was taking notes in her little pixie palace in Iceland.

"The Big Sky" is just a really fun song and video. Ms. Bush (I don't feel particularly worthy of referring to her as anything else) comes off a bit serious at times, but I get the feeling it's just due to the roles she's playing at the time. In this video she's just, ummm... taking the piss? I think that's what they refer to it as over there. It's also a great corny 80's video!



\

MF Doom - Red and Gold

This doesn't even sound like a rap song. It starts all smooth-like, and you expect Patti LaBelle or Gladys Knight to start singing. All of a sudden Doom starts rapping, but his delivery is so smooth that it doesn't even sound out of place.

My favorite part is when that "dee dee dee dee dee dee dun dun dun dun dun" comes in and the female vocals sing "And the lights went down and hey!" Then the beat slows back down, and yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.

MF Doom also has a great album as Madvillain, the creatively titled Madvillainy. Listen to "Curls" or "Money Folder" if you want a taste.

I wonder who Doom really is behind the mask. Maybe it's Eric Stoltz from that movie with Cher and Sam Elliott! Love that movie.

Kraftwerk - The Model

Note: Please disregard the Victoria's Secret fashion show in the beginning of this video (if it offends your sensibilities). This video has by far the best sound quality of the ones I found, so I had to use it. It also says "alternate version" because there's a version where the lyrics are in German.

If you've heard of this group, you know that they're pioneers of electro-pop, forefathers of electro-funk, trailblazers of electro-tweak, whatever. But what really matters are these freaking harmonies. Their music is just so beautiful, not many people have been able to replicate that side of the equation.

My Dad had their Tour de France album on cassette when I was a kid. I didn't hear it again from about the age of ten to twenty-two. When I first randomly heard it again, I almost fell over. The bullet beats that ended up in half the hip hop and techno songs out there were cool, but the synthesizer harmonies are what blew my mind.

"The Model" is just perfect. The beat is a little more basic than a lot of Kraftwerk songs, but the synths are just insane. There are a lot of vocalists and groups who can harmonize beautifully. The Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, etc. Kraftwerk is up there with all of them.

Note: Killing me with the Frankenstein scene at the end. People need to be a little less artsy with some of these Youtube videos.

The xx - Islands

The first thing I noticed about this band is that they're really really young. They look somewhere between sixteen and nineteen. I watched a video of one of their performances, and it's painfully evident that at this point they have the stage presence of oak trees. But who cares! I'M SURE IT'S JUST A PHASE.

This album is a really great debut. There's a lot of white space in their sound, like Spoon with an added female vocalist. The songs are short, catchy, and have yet to get old despite repeated listens. The lyrics are a bit corny at times, but that's understandable. Go back and read your high school diary. Cringe city, amirite?

Thanks Dave for pointing this band out. Finding fun new bands can be challenging, like sifting through brackish water for nuggets of gold 150 years after the Gold Rush ended. The bands are out there. We must never give up hope. *sniffle*

Godspeed you Black Emperor! - Storm

I teach high school, and we're considering moving to block schedule. This essentially means that instead of having 50 minutes with a class, I'd have around an hour and a half. Some people say "How can you possibly keep a high school kid's attention for an hour and a half?!" The same way that Godspeed you Black Emperor keeps my attention for a 22 minute long song: by switching it up!

Since it's the day after Halloween, I figured I'd write about a scary song. Well, a song with a scary section. There are also some soft and luminous parts in this song. Godspeed you Black Emperor is an instrumental group from Montreal. The instruments consist of three guitars, two basses, French horn, violin, viola, cello, and percussion. Some of their songs have found-sound pieces inserted into them, including monologues by some very interesting characters. It all adds to the atmosphere of the music.

This whole song is great, but where it gets spine-tinglingly incredible is at 6:12 into the first youtube. It's after the first extended loud section, and everything gets very quiet and atmospheric. All of the instruments slowly come in, and the pulsing groundswell builds up to this insanely beautiful crescendo. Note: The youtube is sacrilegiously broken up in the middle of this crescendo, but just click on part two of the video, it's the top video that immediately shows up on the black screen.

THEN IT GETS FREAKY. 2:34 into the second video, the song suddenly gets trapped in this psychotic wind tunnel. It's like the part in the sci-fi movie where a hole gets blasted in the spaceship, everybody's getting sucked out, and the hero is desperately clinging to the edge of a wall. Inevitably some little kid presses a button to close the door and Connor Spacestrutter gets saved. But not in this song! At 4:22 Spacestrutter gets his comeuppance. Sounds to me like the stampede of a ghost army, but it's sounded like approximately twenty different things at various times I've listened to it. The rest of the song is basically the denouement, but it's interesting as well, with an intriguing found-sound recording and a plaintive piano outro.

What a song.

George Harrison "The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)

I listen to different music at different times for different reasons. When I'm driving to school at 6:30 in the morning and I want to wake up, instead of drinking coffee I'll blast Sonic Youth or Souls of Mischief (I would never subject anyone else to my early morning loud music, I'd be liable to get a tire iron to the side of the head). When I'm in a hyper, happy mood I'll blare the Slits or the Talking Heads and get exponentially more hyper, sometimes to the detriment of my driving record. Then there are times when I need music that calms me down, wraps its arms around me and makes me feel reassured in some way. This song does that for me.

It seems like George had it kinda rough in the Beatles. He had all these great songs, but couldn't get many of them on albums cause John and Paul were such songwriting machines. This double album shows just how many amazing ideas he had. It's such a warm, spiritual sounding album, it's does my soul good to listen to it every once in a while. Phil Spector went a little over the top with the production (and killing that blonde B-movie actress), but it works for most of the songs.

Liz Phair - Help Me Mary

Liz Phair is pretty bad right now. Has been for a while. She made a conscious decision to make more mainstream, top 40-sounding music, and some fans who considered her the "indie queen" freaked out. People need to get a life. I'm just happy to have this great album. Plenty of musicians (Stone Roses) only make one great album.

It's hard to pick a favorite track on here. 6" 1', Dance of the Seven Veils, Soap Star Joe, Explain it to Me, the Divorce Song, and Stratford-on-Guy are all solid. I probably listen to Help Me Mary the most. This song is about awful roommates, and the lyrics are pretty clever:

Help me, Mary, please
I've lost my home to your thieves
They bully the stereo and drink
They leave suspicious stains in the sink

They make rude remarks about me
They wonder just how wild I would be
As they egg me on and keep me mad
They play me like a pit bull in a basement, and for that...

Most of her other lyrics deal with relationships, and because she uses the "c word", and mentions hourly rental and sex, some reviewers say that guys listen to this album because they find these taboo topics exciting! Well, I can listen to Peaches if I want to hear someone spout off about sex. These lyrics are actually insightful and interesting. Even when they're clunkers, at least she seems to have some thought and genuine feeling behind them. Some favorite sections of mine are:

Johnny my love, get out of the business
It makes me want to rough you up so badly
Makes me want to roll you up in plastic
Toss you up and pump you full of lead.
-------------------------------
He's just a hero
In a long line of heroes
Looking for some lonely billboard to grace
They say he sprung from the skull of Athena
Think about your own head
And the headache he gave.
--------------------------------
But if I'd known how that would sound to you
I would have stayed in your bed
For the rest of my life just to prove I was right
That it's harder to be friends than lovers
And you shouldn't try to mix the two
Cause if you do it and you're still unhappy
Then you know that the problem is you.
---------------------------------

This is one of the albums I most consistently come back to through the years. It's very accessible, and while she doesn't have the greatest singing voice in the world, it totally works for this album. So go Liz! You keep making that sh*tty music!

Radiohead - Exit Music/Let Down

Warning: this song might seem boring for a while, but the end is so epic that it completely warrants sitting through the beginning (which is fine, in my humble opinion).

I went through a huge, pathetic Radiohead obsession phase. Seriously bad. Like reading books about the band, keeping up with their every move, joining message boards, etc. It's kinda good, though, cause Radiohead is the marijuana of bands. They're a gateway band. I got into tons of interesting music by becoming obsessed with them. Almost all the bands they've worshipped and emulated have been amazing, so that's gotten me into a lot of other great music. Pixies, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Can, etc.

If you're ever maniacally obsessed with a song or band, never play them for a friend and expect the same reaction. It never works out well. I used to drive around and listen to this song, just waiting for the 3:00 mark when that fuzz bass kicks in and absolutely EATS the entire song. If there was ever a menacing portion of a song, this is it. It was written for the new version of Romeo & Juliet, and these lyrics reference the suffocating pressure the Ms and Cs put on R & J, driving them to suicide. (it's good that this video uses clips from the Zeffirelli version, cause let's be real, it's better. Basel Expedition plays Tybalt, for one thing.)

You can laugh
A spineless laugh
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one (Backing vocals!!!!!!!!!!)
In everlasting peace

We hope that you choke.. that you choke
We hope that you choke.. that you choke
We hope that you choke.. that you choke

I played this for my friend, and he told me it sounded like Phil Collins. OH MY GOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW AMAZING THIS SONG IS HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING?!?!?!?!?!? Very traumatic experience for me. Then my cousin told me that Joanna Newsom sang like she was deaf. WHAT?!?! IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WHO UNDERSTANDS?!?!?!

I've grown a bit the last ten years or so, I've got a job and all now, so I don't get quite so worked up. I still love Radiohead, but they don't quite have the vise grip on me they used to. Some of their new stuff is actually slightly boring. But this album, Ok Computer, is still one of the best ever. The transition between this song and the next is so sublime. So I'm posting both Youtubes! If you want slightly less "mopey" (blargh) songs, try Lucky, (2nd verse, omg) Airbag (the guitar sounds and drum loops are amazing) There There, (the end of that freaking song, oh boy) or Just (it rocks). I need to slow down on the parentheses, huh?

David Bowie - Always Crashing in the Same Car

David Bowie is the best thing ever. And of his seemingly endless supply of amazing songs, this might be my favorite. Might, dammit. Five Years, Queen Bitch, V-2 Schnieder, Station to Station, Heroes, they just never end. What a champ.

So I've been reading all sorts of unintended meanings into this song for years now. My favorite interpretation was that he kept making the same mistake twice, or kept making the same types of mistakes. Turns out he wasn't speaking in metaphors, he was just totally hopped up on drugs, had just gone through a bad break-up, and was trying to off himself by racing his car round and round a parking garage. Like McNulty in that Wire episode (I've been waiting for so long to work a Wire reference in!).

The songs on Low and Heroes sound so super-charged, like the musicians' instruments are being electrocuted while they play them. And his enunciation in the second verse is so great! Especially when he sings, "Must have been touching close to 94". So amazing.

Boards of Canada - Roygbiv

It's hard for me to write this post without mentioning Kraftwerk. So I will mention Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk! Anyways, Boards of Canada is one of the one best electronic acts out there today. But Boards of Canada is actually the name of a Scottish show. Tricky! That''s the name of another electronic artist. Autechre! Uggh... that doesn't work.

Whenever I hear this song I think of Darth Vader's family on a summer vacation. Mechanical and angular, but beautiful and joyful at the same time. You can just see little Darth Junior splashing in the waves!

This is one of the bands that directly influenced Radiohead when they moved into their "electronic" phase. I love Radiohead, but if it wasn't for Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and the like, Johnny Greenwood wouldn't be twisting near as many knobs.

Joy Division - Wilderness

There's so much mythology attached to Joy Division, and absolutely none of it matters. It's a cliche, but the only thing that matters is this music. Every instrument in this song absolutely blasts its way into the track. The bass enters like a monster poking its head around my closet door at three in the morning. The drums land like steel-gloved jabs, jarring at first, then keeping the nervous energy up throughout the song. The guitar comes in like a buzzsaw, scalping the song like a Nazi in Inglorious Basterds. Finally, Ian Curtis' voice booms down more malevolent and assured than ever before: "I travelled far and wide through many different times, What did you see there?"

It always seems like the focus with this band is on Ian Curtis' suicide, or the Manchester mythology, or poring over some hidden meaning in the dark lyrics. All of this is just window dressing for a band that needs none. Their playing on the entire album is so ridiculously tight, and that's what really stands out. You don't need to be sitting huddled in a darkened room, having an adolescent existential crisis and cursing the heavens, to worship this record. Nestle it in between your copy of Abba's Greatest Hits and Madonna's Immaculate Collection.

Dirty Projectors - Useful Chamber

Contrary to complaints from countless musical curmudgeons, there are many bands attempting to make interesting music nowadays. Some of them fall under the category of "indie bands that sound like extremely precocious twelve year olds putting on a school play." Think Rushmore on mp3. One example that springs to mind is Sufjan Stevens. I once fell in love with his song "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders." It was so jubilant! So different sounding! Yay Sufjan! Then I listened to it in my car two weeks later and it sounded like really over the top circus music. I couldn't even relate to the person who had once blared this song in his car, rising and falling with every bassoon flare and kazoo splort. (I don't know if those instruments are in the song or if splort is a word, but I'm sticking with it. I decree that splort is now a word!)

Fortunately, I don't think I'll ever hate myself for loving this song, or this album. Sure the lead singer's voice is a bit out there, but it's GOOD, and the trills and quivers fit perfectly with the music. The female backing vocals are really great, especially when they come in at 3:10 after he yells "Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte!" (these lyrics toe the line of willful indie obtuseness, but he's forgiven because he picked the words cause he liked how they sound [how Eno-ish], and they actually kinda sound great).

This band is so interesting musically! I love how each instrument (including voices) comes in separately, each element adding something new and beautiful to the song. The soft-loud alternations make the loud guitar parts sound more badass, and the vocals and soft acoustic sound prettier. Love this song, love this album, can't wait to explore more music by this band!

Missy Elliott feat 702 & Magoo - Beep Me 911

Missy and Timbaland are definitely the greatest thing to happen to hip hop since the Wu Tang Clan. Timbaland's beats are ridiculous. Off-kilter, urgent-sounding, totally creative and unique. 99% of all other producers must be embarrassed at themselves when a Timbaland song comes out.

Missy's songs have gotten even more complex and crazy since this album, but I still hold a special place in my heart for "Supa Dupa Fly". My friends and I always loved making strange noises and speaking nonsensically, so when Missy busted out with the "I'll hit you with the BRRRRRRRRRRRRR!", and the "vroooooooooooooom," and the "reeeeeeeeer," I connected with it on a very deep level.

The beats in this song stutter, sputter, and slide like a madman, with that awesome little whinny whinny whinny whinny whistle sound in the background. Missy can rap, sing, write great songs (she was a songwriter before she was a solo artist), and she has more charisma and personality than basically anyone. And then there's the videos! Totally twisted and visually arresting. I love how glossy, exaggerated, and tweeked out they all look. Like Alice in Wonderland with two 10s in the back.

On a completely unrelated note, I hope she's losing all this weight for the right reasons. She's the perfect example of TALENT trumping music industry superficiality and BS. Who cares what she looks like. She owns the industry.

Ween - Flutes of Chi & Outside Lands Concert Review

My thoughts on the Friday and Sunday Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco:

Ween: AMAZING. I've liked them for a while now, but this was the first time I truly realized how great they are. Every time I'd say, "It'd be great if they played _______________," they immediately played "__________________"! They even played the So-So Def Jermaine Dupris "_________________" remix! Their set included Bananas and Blow, Mutilated Lips, Exactly Where I'm At, Johnny on the Spot, Take Me Away, and my favorite song of theirs, Flutes of Chi. They had great energy and musicianship, and the humor on their records translated perfectly onto the stage. The horrendous mistake we made was leaving their set early because we were intrigued to see the next artist...

MIA: AWFUL. Ugggh. I've read the articles where everyone gives Diplo and her other producers all the credit for her success, and she freaks out and screams about sexism, racism, supply-side economics, and the poor quality of the new Happy Meal. I was on her side before I was actually subjected to her live show. Of course the beats were good, they have computers for that. But her vocals were so bad. At first I didn't understand why she was passing out all these silly plastic horns to people in the audience. Then as the show went on I realized she was probably hoping that they would make enough noise to drown out her alley-cat-being-strangled vocals.

Tom Jones: Somehow inertia kept us at this stage when he performed. To me he sounds like a drunken child molester. He totally freaks me out. I needed a cold shower after this. Very traumatic.

Built to Spill: I love this band, but they kinda seemed to be going through the motions. I heard that their lead singer Doug Martsch said they were basically a nostalgia act at this point, and that lack of excitement and expectations came through. Worth seeing, but not inspired.

Band of Horses: Not spectacular, but really good! Unfortunately the lead singer kept yelling, "Woooooo!" between songs. Sounded like a frat boy after a particularly exhilarating keg stand.

The National: See above. Nothing mind-bending, but good songs and a solid performance. Thumbs up.

Modest Mouse: Used to really like this band, saw them live once before, was kinda bored. But the fact that I hadn't listened to them in so long made this a fun performance to watch. Dramamine sounded really great.

Pearl Jam: We meant to go see Thievery Corporation, but once again inertia won out. This was a more exaggerated instance of not having listened to a band's music in eons, and having fun reminiscing with some pretty good songs. One song I still love is Corduroy. Unfortunately, old Eddie's voice is shot to hell. I mean it kinda was to begin with, that's his shtick, but there's gravelly voice, and then there's no voice. He's closer to the latter.

We missed Dead Weather, Jack White's new band. I can't keep up with this dude's side projects. He's an amazing guitar player, but apparently he's developing serious commitment issues. Poor Meg is probably all by her lonesome now, still taking drum lessons from Bamm-Bamm. Anyway, I heard from a bunch of people that Dead Weather was great.

About Flutes of Chi: it isn't really indicative of Ween's sound. Most of their other songs are stranger and less polished-sounding (but equally great). To me this song just shows that this band can do absolutely anything they want to. They can play country, hard rock, prog, calypso, Irish folk songs, easy listening, and in this case they can do a Beatles song just about as good as the Beatles could.

Shangri-Las - Out In The Streets

A couple of years ago I got turned on to this amazing box set called "One Kiss Leads to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found." It's four discs of girl group songs from the 60s. It doesn't have the obvious songs that most people have heard on the radio, instead it has countless seldom heard gems. The Shangri-Las had a lot of huge hits, including "The Leader of the Pack" and "(Remember) Walking in the Sand." But this song is the killer. I love when it goes into the chorus at 1:23, with the impassioned vocals and swirling orchestration, and how at 1:45 it straightens back out with the firm percussion and extra strings starting the second verse. The little extra "knock!" that comes in at 1:50 is so perfect. Absolutely destroys me.

This song is so soul-crushingly sad, it reminds me of "Caroline, No" by the Beach Boys. These groups could wring so much emotion out of a teenage relationship, making it symbolize every magical thing that can never be recaptured. WHAT A SONG!

Burial - Raver

A lot of people say that electronic music has no soul. Well, let me kindly direct you to Burial. This whole album is amazing, and this is my favorite song. The mood of the whole album is dark, but there are glimmers of light shot throughout it. It's not even worth throwing out a bunch of flowery adjectives, because none of them really live up to the music. This is the best song I've heard in a long, long time.

Exposé - Let Me Be The One

This song's the jam. And I love that 2 of them are kinda fugly. Go fugly pop stars! There aren't enough of them around anymore. 2:12 is where it really blows up. The song has a great hook, and here the video changes to a scene where they are wearing truly amazing outfits. Aqua Net hair, awkward leggings, that tiger mauling scar skirt, the red leather jacket, it somehow all works.

I love how they keep all the session musicians out of the spotlight. They just hop around in the dark. I think one of the most fascinating specimens in music is the 80s session guitarist playing on a dance track. You know they grew up down in their basements playing along to Led Zeppelin, not dreaming of shredding in a song by Expose. So they reluctantly spray their hairspray and don their Members Only jackets. And they get about a 15 second abbreviated solo that is extremely awkwardly placed in the middle of a dance track.

I could do a whole blog on 80s top 40 dance/electro. Lisa Lisa, Expose, Olivia Newton John, Sheila E., Jody Watley, etc. All great stuff. Fun and innocent. Sure they sold sex in these videos, but it was just a tad less blatant and skeezy than it seems to be these days. And all of them are of age! And they could sing, or at least it appears that they could. Unfortunately, one of them got throat cancer! Very sad. Seasons do indeed change. :(

I can't embed the real video, but here's the url. It's worth checking out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6S1VwZi984

The Pixies - No. 13 Baby

This song is No. 1 on my list of best chuggalicious outros. No. 2 is "Found A Job" by the Talking Heads, and No. 3 is "What Goes On" by the Velvet Underground. But first things first! Joey Santiago's guitar just DRENCHES the song at 0:15, with those Fred-Flinstone-driving-drums in the background. I really love the interplay between Kim Deal's simple-but-awesome bass line and Frank Black's acoustic strumming when he's singing, "I'm in a state" at 0:43.

Frank Black's lyrics are always bizarrely awesome ("black tear falling on my lazy queen, gotta tattooed tit say number 13") , and his delivery is just the best. Sometimes screaming, sometimes singing, sometimes halfway in between, but always tweaking out one way or another. SO FUN to sing along to.

So back to the chuggalicious outros. Say you're driving on the highway. It gets to 2:00 in this song. You start bopping your head. You turn your radio up as loud as it goes. Speakers are blowing left and right, but you don't even notice. You're too swept up in the chug. I could drive on a highway for eternity, listening to the last two minutes of this song. So perfect. Thank heaven for the Pixies.

M-Five featuring Brad Raker - Sanctuary (Electroliners Remix)

For about a 2 year period from 1995-1996, I was a raver. There, I said it. Not a glow stick twirling, angel wings wearing, pacifier sucking, Vicks Vapo-rub masking raver, but a raver in the sense that I went to raves and listened to "rave music." In the 13 years that have passed since then I have moved on, and before today I only had about seven breakbeat songs on my iPod. I'd tried to listen to more of them, but I'm kinda hard up for cassette decks and turntables these days.

In the last year or two I'd gotten the itch to hear these old songs again, so I kept bugging a couple of friends to get me a mix of old Florida breaks records. Well today one of them hooked me up with about 25 records on mp3. It happened to be a Friday night, but I immediately cancelled my plans so I could drive around and listen to them on full blast in my car. My impatience to hear them was half from excitement to hear these great old songs, and half from excitement to bug out to all the old memories that would instantly be conjured up by listening to this music.

The songs didn't disappoint, as I recognized almost every one. One of my favorites is the one posted below. The beat is massive, the samples are bizarre, it's got it all. The Electroliners are solid. The Bassbin Twins remix of their Loose Caboose record is also great.

Can - Oh Yeah

This song is long, but for the love of God, please listen to the whole thing. This band is so ridiculously talented, it's almost unfair. This incarnation of Can is made up of four classically trained German musicians and a Japanese guy they pretty much grabbed off the street, who turned out to be absolutely perfect for their sound. This song starts out creepy and intense, with a backwards vocal track, intense drumming, and crazy synthesizer sounds swirling in the background. Then at 3:13 the mood completely changes, the vocals switch back around, and everything gets funky as hell.

This album is split into two parts. The first half consists of brilliant experimental rock songs highlighted by the most insane drumming I've ever heard in my life. Seriously, Jaki Liebezeit makes Keith Moon sound like Meg White. Ok, that was an exaggeration. Keith Moon is awesome. And I like Meg White's Fisher Price drumming on some songs. But this guy seriously sounds like he has eight arms. The drum beat from Mushroom sounds like it should be backing a rapper, except it's in a 1971 rock song. The drumming in Halleluwah is so relentlessly funky and tight, it never gets remotely boring over the course of 20 minutes. The second half of the album is PSYCHOTIC. Seriously, enter at your own risk. :D

Listen to Can!

Note: Unfortunately, this is a low quality Youtube. There is now a remastered version of this album, and it is massive. Do yourself a favor and listen to this great album the way it was meant to be heard.