Hit the City - Mark Lanegan and PJ Harvey.
Screaming Trees was never a thing for me. “I Nearly Lost You” was mostly associated with ‘Singles’ for me so they were a non-starter by default. But I listened to Mark Lanegan read his “memoir” on Youtube and the algorithm started returning tracks so I listened to a couple and this is the best so far. It’s total turn of the millenium-era PJ Harvey where the world is tipping over and two lovers have to decide who lives on the headboard and who sinks to the Deep. If these are Mark Lanegan lyrics, he’s very good.
Withered Hand - Oh Sees
“Pluck your eyes out with the master’s withered hand while the planets walk around without a plan.”
Whatever, dude. It melts my face off.
Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic
I’ve never gotten into Parliament/ Funkadelic aside from “Super Stupid” but this one showed up on YouTube or Amazon or whichever brain is making my music choices and it’s good. I like that “I can hear my mother call” business. It’s a crazy looking video from the year of my birth. George Clinton on acid or sherm, everybody buzzing out in full regalia around Manhattan.
Here Come the Warm Jets, Sea Breezes - Brian Eno, Roxy Music
I’m reading “Some Faraway Beach” an Eno biography so I’m revisiting the old classics. Roxy is almost too English for me. I like the fact that Here Come the Warm Jets and “Cosmic Slop” are from the year of my birth. I’m also seven days older than the Dark Side of the Moon.
Love My Way - Psychedlic Furs
The classic. One of those special songs that connected with me so hard that I felt I had discovered it only for myself even though I found it on MTV. Mark Lanegan mentioned them kindly in the above-referenced memoir which means he’s got good taste. I must have listened to it 50 times this week.
Runner-up: Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Stereolab.
Grooves like an opiate. Technicolor hypno-lock. Futuremusic for beatniks. It popped up on Amazon Music while I was painting posts and I let the whole album play. Still great. Still as cool as when I used to listen to it delivering for Domino’s. 1996 had some stone-cold, pizza delivery driver classics like this, Beck’s Odelay, and the Flaming Lips’ Clouds Taste Metallic (which came out in ‘95 but hit me the following summer when I deep-dove the Lips). Honestly, I probably hold these albums in such a special place because they are the soundtrack to my life just before heroin entered my scene. They are artifacts of the last of my innocence. I salute them.