Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

There comes a time in every man's life when you have to ask yourself "is Meat Puppets really that good?"  Not the band in its entirety, but their self-titled debut. Women can ask it too, but it's not compulsory. Yes. It sounds like it was written and performed by puppets made of meat. I'm coincidentally reading Jason Pargin's John Dies At The End, and this is exactly what the opening scene with the meat monster in the basement freezer sounds like in my brain. Saying they can't play their instruments is not at all true. Maybe you're not "supposed" to play them that way, but it's definitely on purpose and well rehearsed. And yet, Meat Puppets makes Butthole Surfers sound cold and calculated and constructed by committee after several rounds of test screenings. Meat Puppets sounds like everyone in the studio was too scared to politely ask them to leave. It's true, I like Meat Puppets II better, but I don't think i can argue that's...

Cracker is as good an example of a one-hit-wonder as i can think of. All anybody vaguely remembers is the lead off single from their second album. I urge you to not be some junkie cosmonaut, and check out their humble alt-country rock self-titled debut.  The world needs a new folk singer/Frank Sinatra like he needs a hole in his head. Then La Bamba, but as a sarcastic "happy birthday to me."  The concept is pretty fantastic. This is Cracker brand sardines and fried eggs, a product of the U.S.A., packed for Virgin Records America, Inc., in Beverly Hills. Yes, the Richard Branson label, but like his franchise period, not the full UMG sellout. You can compare them to Gin Blossoms because it's 1992, and this is what everybody else's answer to Geffen's Nevermind was going to be in 4 years.  Nirvana, Guns 'n Roses, Metallica were 1991, "alternative rock" was what was going to be the next big thing. Cracker was right there, but they didn’t quite connect bec...

Do you wish you could transfer to the space-time continuum where Midwest-Mathcore WAS Pop-Punk? I've got some great news, Snackd Out is a band. The bad news is that you have to spell pretzel wrong to find them, because @pretzlerecords is a new label in Champaign you can't tag with an at sign until later in your post after you follow them. Polyvinyl's address is actually a Safelight AutoGlass shop and the owner says "NOT A RECORD STORE" on the Google business page. College towns are fun (I've lived in or near 5 of 'em). https://www.facebook.com/share/1F4BuroP9L/ Juli and Doug of Snackd Out formed the label, and since I also live near Champaign because my significant other got a job at UIUC, and there's a saxophone on their 2023 album Obstacle Illusion, I totally paid for this record separate from the other 200+ dollars I spent at Record Swap yesterday. I am not at all disappointed. Hi, Pretzle Records i'm actually Bottle's Music, a transplant ba...

I legitimately forgot how good Tragic Kingdom is. I didn't forget it's awesome, I forgot how awesome. Come for the bass lines, stay for the overt feminism, be surprised by the Sitar on Hey You, and the Bluesy Circus outro to side A, The Climb. I'll allow not caring about No Doubt after this 3rd album, or Gwen Steffani's solo career, but Tragic Kingdom is a masterpiece of Ska-Punk-Blues-Funk-Disco. You know the singles, but the deep cuts are all the more fantastic for not being pop-radio friendly.  We've gotta find another way to make the world go 'round. 30 years later and that lyric rings deafening loud, doesn't it? I demand a transfer to the dimension where we followed this album instead of this one, because whether you like Gwen Steffani or not, this Tragic Kingdom we're living in right now is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

There's a chicken Surfing in the sky, He'd like to come and meet us, But he's still a little shy... I will always eventually shamelessly plug my friend Steven Stark, and his latest melodic-electronic project is Fuchsia Chicken's debut album A Surfin' Bird. It lies somewhere on the spectrum between Yacht Rock and dentist office adjacent Vaporwave, and I couldn't be happier.  For one thing, I'd rather follow an intergalactic surfing chicken than some of the leaders we have down here on terra firma. For another, it's nice to hear something not very serious for a change. I know, I know, it's still musically serious, the chord changes and orchestration will twist your brain into a deliciously salty pretzel, and the concept reminds me of a cross between Ziggy Stardust and Bluebird from Nektar's Remember The Future, but it's easy on the central processing unit without being over the top ridiculous like The Electric Cow Goes Moooooog!  Give it a try,...

How come Everclear's 6th album, Slow Motion Daydream, gets no love? As far as my ears can tell it's only because it was released in 2003, and we just assumed Art swam out past the breakers and watched the world die already. I mean, sure, you can hear some of the songs as cringe, and not everybody likes strings and accordions in their Alternative Rock like I do, but it's unmistakably Everclear, and not every song is supposed to be on the radio.  The album is a daydream, I thought that was pretty obvious, but people have this bizarre habit of forgetting how irony and sarcasm worked back then. You aren't required to agree with every thought presented to you, or even every thought your own brain invents, but you are required to make some reasonable attempt to understand it. The two songs in question here are Volvo Driving Soccer Mom and New York Times. Everything else, whether it suits your taste or not, is just a passing scene in the meandering daydream. Those two songs, h...

 "Rudimentary mathcore from the state ranked 49th in education." Don't let the self deprecating humor fool you, OKC's Thross will absolutely turn your brains to scrambled eggs, and direct you to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline in the process. I can't do Gross Human Index, their 4-track debut EP, justice with my sloppy copy writing, you'll just have to go get screamed at for yourself over at https://thross.bandcamp.com/album/gross-human-index-ep I've got two copies here at the shop ( https://bottlesmusic.com/shop/records/metal/thross-gross-human-index-ep-cassette/ ), but do us all a favor and buy the other 98 copies of this limited run cassette straight from the band first.