The Super Bowl is over, the confetti has been swept up, and you have nothing left to look forward to in this unforgiving winter. You might be considering drastic measures like reading to alleviate your boredom and depression. We’ll be the first to say it, reading is the lamest and least productive way to spend your time. Why stare at a book when you can do literally anything else?
What if we told you there was a form of media that offers the benefits of consuming the written word without the chore of using your imagination or eyes? No, it’s not magic. It’s music, and there is an endless supply of it on the internet. Here’s just a sampling of some of our new favorites to listen to while scrolling mindlessly on our phones and refusing to expand our vocabularies and brain strength.
IDLES “Hall & Oates”
IDLES finally released their highly anticipated fifth album ‘TANGK.’ Featuring production from Nigel Godrich, Kenney Beats, and the band’s guitarist Mark Bowen, the record expands even further on the sonic exploration that defined their previous effort ‘CRAWLER.’ There are some seriously somber and vibey moments throughout the entire record, making the band’s standard high-octane flair punch even harder when it rears its head. Hyper-speed garage rocker and album highlight ‘Hall & Oates,’ for example, sounds even more raucous than it already is when slotted right after lead single ‘Grace’ – which ICYMI now has a deep-faked Chris Martin lip-syncing to the lyrics in its new video. It’s these chaotic moments of sequencing that make the record a gut-wrenching rollercoaster that is sure to translate well in their already batshit live sets.
Dick Valentine “Island of Pigs”
When Electric Six’s fearless leader, Tyler Spencer, isn’t belting out the horniest dance-rock anthems you’ve ever heard, he’s working diligently on his ever-expanding solo discography under the name of Dick Valentine. His eleventh album, ‘Do You Notice?’ quietly dropped at the beginning of the month, and it is filled with the high caliber ear-worm gems you would expect at this point in his storied career. The thumping bass and bombastic riffage of his more notable projects has been replaced with jangly guitars and a bit more vulnerable lyricism, especially on album highlight ‘Island of Pigs,’ but the intensity has not diminished a single iota. While Spencer’s solo material might not make you want to put the kids to bed quite like an Electric Six joint, it will still get you moving, or at very least, bobbing your head just a bit.
Sheer Mag “Eat It and Beat It”
In case you missed it, Philadelphia’s garage-punk legends Sheer Mag inked a deal with Third Man Records last year and have steadily been teasing their upcoming third album ‘Playing Favorites.’ The fourth and presumably final lead single for the record, ‘Eat It and Beat It’ harkens to their seventies-inspired hard rock roots, with the band likening it to a call to arms for the next generation of aspiring rockers. This is easy to believe with the arrangement, packed wall to riffs and dirty as shit production. The straightforward and fun anthem only briefly meanders to drop into a brief ‘what the fuck was that?’ psych section before barreling right back into the hook. With Sheer Mag proclaiming this track to be the handbook for all future guitar heroes and fist pumpers, then the new legion of incoming degenerates will have quite the cohesive blueprint to follow.
Hot Water Music “Burn Forever” & “Menace”
Gainesville, Florida’s post-hardcore legends Hot Water Music are celebrating their 30th year of existence with the announcement of their tenth album ‘Vows.’ It is set to be a star-studded event featuring members of Turnstile, Thrice and the Interrupters just to name a few. In addition to the new record, the band will also be embarking on an anniversary tour with Quicksand, which has prompted several PTO requests from our staff. As if this wasn’t enough to give everyone a collective heart attack, two new singles, ‘Burn Forever’ and ‘Menace,’ have also been thrust upon the public. Both are absolute shit-kickers that will make you consider upping your blood pressure medication before copping tickets to your town’s show this spring.
METZ “99” and “Entwined (Street Light Buzz)”
It’s been four long years, but METZ is back, baby! Toronto’s experimental punk outfit just announced their fifth album ‘Up On Gravity’ hill with the release of two excellent and wide-ranging singles ‘99’ and ‘Entwined (Street Light Buzz).’ No strangers to covering large expanses of sonic ground, both tracks feature the band exploring far corners of punk terrain. ‘Entwined’ explores tight angular riffs while bordering on math and psych-rock, all the while cradling a lyrical theme of human connection. Conversely, ‘99,’ a song about late-stage capitalist greed builds on droning noise guitar before exploding into a glam-technicolor chorus. Remember those demos you recorded on your last acid trip? These tracks are what those would have sounded like if they were even a little listenable.
HANABIE. “O・TA・KUラブリー伝説”
Our Managing Editor has been on a pretty big Japanese metal-core kick lately. As a result, the writers’ room has been subjected to hours upon hours of the self-proclaimed “Harajuku-core” outfit HANABIE. Don’t get us wrong, it’s sick as fuck and their latest single ‘O・TA・KUラブリー伝説’ is a certified banger. It’s just that she insists on playing it at full ear-splitting volume on nearly every speaker in the building. It’s becoming a productivity issue, and every time we ask her to turn it down she starts cleaning a gun or sharpening one of the many blades in her office. This normally wouldn’t intimidate us, but she makes direct eye contact the entire time and refuses to blink until we turn away.
HEALTH “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)” (Deftones Cover)
LA industrial-rock trio HEALTH – who have in the past collaborated with Deftones’ Chico Moreno – just released a dreamy-as-fuck cover of the seminal ‘Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away).’ While the blissful shoegaze-meets-metal elements of the original remain largely intact, the walls of fuzz guitar are replaced with swirling synth pads and heavily processed electro-drums. While a bit of chugging guitar makes an appearance, it’s barely audible until about two-thirds of the way through the otherworldly rendition. One of our most stoned staffers has been jamming on this one pretty frequently after his afternoon ‘walks’ and we can’t say we blame him.
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists “The One Who Got Us Out”
Believe it or not, but Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ breakthrough and highly influential album, ‘Shake the Sheets,’ is turning twenty years old this year. It’s one of those records that you likely refer to as ‘timeless’ to further ignore the fact that you were much younger, hopeful, and agile in 2004. To mark the occasion, Ted Leo will be taking his Pharmacists – both figurative and hopefully literal – out for a few dates across the country where they will play the album in its entirety. This means you won’t need to ruin the show for everyone around you by constantly screaming ‘PLAY THE ONE WHO GOT US OUT.’ We doubt you won’t still do it, though. We all know how quickly your patience and attention span runs dry these days.
Because we know you’re too despondent to do it yourself, we’ve compiled these and several other questionable tunes into a playlist for you. It’s literally the least we could do. Click here to like, follow, and trick your friends into thinking you’re a tastemaker in the world of punk, indie, hardcore and metal.
Seal’s blockbuster song known as “Kiss from a Rose” is likely the most successful tune here, and as you know, the more popular a track is, the better it is. Naturally. Also, we have no idea who the music supervisor was on this Jim Carrey flick, but the fact that Sunny Day Real Estate has a song here is not lost on us and we are happy to find it every hour on the hour. Add in some The Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, The Offspring, and PJ Harvey and you have a sonically diverse mid-’90s soundtrack that somehow makes sense with a white tank top over baggy jeans with a random yet dated patch on one buttcheek. Hold us, thrill us, kiss us, but please, don’t kill us.
Unless you lived under a crow’s nest in BFE in 1994, you likely know about Brandon Lee’s disturbing fate on the set for this film, but possibly spent more hours enjoying the soundtrack to “The Crow” than the movie itself, which no one literate or illiterate would fault you for. “The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, an impressive feat for both standard LPs and soundtracks alike, and has sold over three million copies domestically. In addition, blockbuster acts like Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and The Cure have standout tracks on this CD (remember those?) and an li’l act that was about to blow up named Rage Against the Machine is also featured; Reel Big Fish is NOT. Cover songs are F-U-N!
A plethora of films have soundtracks, but not that many have sequels to such, and there’s just ONE “Dazed and Confused”! Not only did Richard Linklater’s throwback classic have a cast that few films could rival in any way, shape, or form, but its first soundtrack featuring Alice Cooper, The Runaways, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, and so many more rock and roll for your party and your soul icons, is for your deadbeat dad who made just one child support payment, perpetually stoned regardless of the time of day second cousin Albie, and your nascent yet nostalgic AM radio loving hearts. Rumor has it that approximately ten percent of the film’s budget was previously set aside for music rights, showcasing that the creators wanted authenticity. That’s what we love about soundtracks, man, we keep getting older but they stay the same age.
Speaking of classic rock and music, we don’t understand why “Forrest Gump: The Soundtrack” doesn’t get mentioned with the same gold medal reverence as critical and social darlings “Saturday Night Fever” or “The Big Chill,” but it may be because stupid is as stupid does, Jenny. Regardless of which social global blunder caused this cataclysmic omission, this soundtrack is so good it was on not one, but TWO freaking compact discs, and told a chronological story in music form that was just as good, if not better than, the actual movie. From Elvis Presley to Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Mamas & the Papas to The 5th Dimension, the audio listener grew as Forrest lived his incredible and unbelievable life. What’s even more wild and mind-numbing about this whole shebang is that the movie is now THIRTY years old, making it a classic form of art as well; we’re old.
If you were cognizant in 1993, you likely missed this flick, as even many in its cast did, but the cool kids DEFINITELY heard its genre blending soundtrack, and could NOT avoid reading about it in inferior publications trying so damn hard to be uber edgy and super cool. Trust us, bro, the marketing on this one was pristine, perfect, persuasive, and another POSITIVE adjective starting with the letter “P”! Anyway, Immortal/Epic Soundtrax were certainly ahead of their time with this one as the eleven songs on “Judgment Night” were all fun collabs between modern acts in the rock world and established rappers in the hip-hop lexicon: Notable songs come courtesy delivered from Helmet/House of Pain, Biohazard/Onyx, Slayer/Ice-T, and Britney Spears/NWA. The soundtrack eventually went Gold which stood out as the movie got globally panned and was not profitable… JUST ANOTHER VICTIM!
Before reading the pulp section of this piece, you may desire to scold us for this LP seemingly being incorrectly alphabetized, but you’re wrong, as we are sticklers for both smugness and accuracy, so just sit in your mis ir lou and jungle boogie the hell home if you’ve got one. Likely your favorite soundtrack here, and certainly from our second or most favorite movie mentioned, “Music from the Motion Picture Pulp Fiction” was a welcomed retro and cinematic surfy throwback for audiences of all ages in 1994 even if the movie was inappropriate for those under legal smoking age. Audiences across the globe ate both this film, and soundtrack up, proving that Quentin Tarantino sure knows how to write/direct a fantastic film, and most certainly how to curate a badass soundtrack, that’s for damn sure!
If you thought that “Pulp Fiction” was a little dark, let’s go to an even more messed up place, fam, and dive into “Natural Born Killers.” Released on Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails’ Nothing Records, which was a subsidiary of Interscope Records, it not only had a narcissistic album title, but it was a seventy-five-plus minute journey that left the listener soaked in blood and sweat, much like its motion picture. Acts not named Nine Inch Nails on this soundtrack include Cowboy Junkies, Patti Smith, L7, and Tha Dogg Pound, and normally you’d assume that we are joking about the last inclusion, as we are sneaky little devils, but we are not here, we swear! It’s still quite hard to believe that Juliette Lewis was only twenty-one years old when this movie hit theaters and she licked.
As grunge slouched in seemingly effortless style and took over the world of rock music in the early-’90s, it found a way to infect the cinemas then as well with the movie “Singles,” and its objectively and subjectively perfect soundtrack, the appropriately titled “Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.” Much like “Judgment Night” above, which came out just one year later, the suited folks at Epic Soundtrax were on quite a roll around this time, and they showcased their gumption over the course of this soundtrack’s hour plus duration in thirteen tracks: Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins and even The Jimi Hendrix Experience were just some of the highlighted artists here. You can nostalgically smell the flannel as soon as you drop the needle down on your player, and the ghosts of Chris Cornell and Andrew Wood will sing to you till you can’t handle their greatness anymore.
Fun fact: “Wayne’s World,” and particularly its off-the-wall now classic car scene wherein various characters “sing” and rock out to Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” successfully made a 1975 hit even bigger seventeen years later, so thanks, Wayne, Garth, and the Mirthmobile. Much respect, y’all. Queen wasn’t the only legacy act that got a boost because of this soundtrack as well, as Alice Cooper, who also appeared via a short and sweet moment in the film, was exposed to a younger audience as well; we’re not worthy indeed. To this day, “Wayne’s World” has quite a legacy in that it is the highest grossing Saturday Night Live film to be based on a sketch, and likely will be forever, AND it had countless poor imitators, none of which we will highlight here because we don’t want to further contribute to a problem.
Let’s end this piece with the most recent movie film referenced, which is actually based on text from several centuries earlier: “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet,” complete with a plus sign. We hope that you love us, love us, and say that you love us because we didn’t omit the one containing the dude from “Growing Pains” and one of the gals from “How to Make an American Quilt,” and if you don’t, maybe box office superstar M. Emmet Walsh will inspire a happy and fulfilled belly. Anyway, this film featured The Bard in extremely cinematically ambitious and avant garde form, and its soundtrack showcased the underrated act that we alluded to known as The Cardigans, along with tracks by Garbage, Des’ree, the brilliantly named The Butthole Surfers, and the awfully monikered The Pee Pee Hole Skateboarders. Young hearts run free, and even out of touch old heads dug this soundtrack!
Martin Scorcese and asshole film school snobs love this influential silent horror film, and we can think of no better way to take the absolute piss out of them by rebooting it as an MCU knockoff where Doc trains zombie ninja assassins in post WW1 German. And if we can get Sony to produce it, there’s a 100% chance they’ll fuck it up.
Those vultures at Disney built their empire on public domain fairy tales, so once we get our hands on it we’re going to hold this little Halloween staple hostage and desecrate it until they pay us to get it back. We’re talking truly vile stuff like skeleton blood orgies, diatribes about how Hitler did nothing wrong, and replacing the music with Imagine Dragons. Bob Iger has 24 hours to pay or we’re coming for ALL the Silly Symphony cartoons.
We’re straight shitting on the legacies of two iconic authors for the price of one. Faulkner and Hemmingway hated each other in real life, so what better way to sully their rivalry than to reinvent their (arguably) best works and mash them together as a road trip buddy comedy through Italy about an ambulance driver and an idiot from Mississippi. Also, we’re going to drop that stream-of-consciousness crap and add a talking cat, Mister Meowsulini.
If we’re being real there’s nothing about Little Nemo that we’d change, and it has nothing to do with its groundbreaking dream logic narrative and art style. Frankly it’s already tarnished by the character of Impie, arguably one of the most wildly racist caricatures ever conceived. If this kid dreams in bigotry, we don’t even want to know what his waking hours are like.
$3,000 for a fucking chair? Hell naw. And screw Barcelona, this will now be forever known as the Hard Times chair. We’ll charge $25, make it green, and add a shit ton of studs and zippers that stab the hell out of your ass, thighs, and back. Each one will be assembled in a poorly ventilated punk house basement by a squatter named Patches. Suck on that, you rich jackwads.
There’s actually a precedent for fucking up Hitchcock movies thanks to the completely unnecessary remake of Psycho that came out in 1998. We can go lower though, with another copy + paste job but with a cast of today’s most grating TikTok celebrities. Nothing like the words “starring Charlie D’Amelio” to shit on Hitchcock’s grave.
Hot damn are we going to exploit this one. Nothing says feminism like ruining her life’s work by plastering it all over shirts, stickers, coasters, and Stanley mugs. And why stop there when we can run “The Two Fridas” through an AI generator and add a third Frida, or better yet merge her paintings together and market them as new. Hang it in the Louvre!