this cat is a landmine

I'm not really sure what "Post-Rock" means as a musical genre. According to Wikipedia as of tonight, it's:

a music genre characterized by the use of musical instruments commonly associated with rock music (typically a line-up of two electric guitars, an electric bass guitar and a drum set), but utilizing rhythms, harmonies, melodies and chord progressions that are unorthodox in rock and roll.

65daysofstatic evidently fits into this genre, but labels like this always seem a little silly. Really, compared with other Post-Rock bands I've listened to they seem to be almost a part of their own genre. I've also heard them described as "Math Rock" which is even more bizarre, and seems to be a clever term for "uses atypical musical time signatures."

When I first happened upon this band almost completely by accident, I was thrown off by the first noisy track of their first album The Fall of Math, but I left it playing based on really strong word of mouth from my favorite music forum, and from the second track on I was completely hooked.

I don't listen to a whole lot of instrumental stuff, and before Kid A I really never listened to anything that was driven significantly by electronic music other than the occasional Prodigy song and the token soundtrack to The Matrix, both mostly when I was in high school. It may be because they're conveniently located alphabetically speaking on my playlist, or because it's great music to put on and get a lot of work done, but I listen to a significant amount of this band and get a surprising emotional pull out of it for instrumental music.

The off beat electronic drums have diminished slightly since their first album, but they're still there and used to fantastic effect along with a lot of spooky / awesome atmospheric sounds. I've just now gotten around to listening to their new album that was released this year and it's a fitting addition to the collection.

Despite the great music, probably my favorite thing about this band is the collection of wonderfully bizarre song titles that show up on their albums, like the one I used for the title of this blog, or "I swallowed hard, like I understood" (check it out on the linked myspace page), "drove through ghosts to get here", and "the conspiracy of seeds".

This is a lot of words basically saying "Hey, check this band out!" I'll even help, here's an unofficial video for "radio protector" off their second album:

Melonhead

Blind Melon has a new singer and is releasing a new album and I'm not really sure how to feel about it.

The lead singer of my favorite band died when I was 13, well before I was aware of them in any capacity beyond the band with the catchy bee girl video, which is probably how most people continue to remember them now. It wasn't until I got to college that I rediscovered the band and really listened to the first album and got completely hooked, and then discovered their other two albums, with Soup probably making my top 5 favorite albums of all time.

I can only imagine how good Nico could have been had Shannon not pushed his drug use too far, but then again his apparent excess in just about all areas of his life may have been what drove his songwriting and lyrics. The other musicians in the band are very talented guys, and a lot of what attracted me to the music was the guitar work inspired by a lot of classic rock bands that I was very into at the time- but it was also very unique, and a pretty stark contrast to the grunge and then 'alternative' sound popular at the time their albums were being released. But, having tried to find music from the other band members after the breakup, it was always missing the element that Shannon brought.

Now, the band has gotten back together with the addition of Travis Warren, a guy with a similar vocal vibe to Shannon, and the guy is pretty good, from sampling tunes they've been posting on their myspace page, I get a vibe very similar to the first album, which is good, but living up to the second two is a really tall order.

I'm not sure whether they decided to revive the name for easier promotion, or because the music has the same vibe or what, but I feel like it's even more egregious than say, Alice in Chains reuniting without Layne Staley. If they can put out an album that is on par with the old releases then I'll be happy to accept it. In the meantime the purist in me is feeling a little uneasy.