Day 0706 - Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub "Bandwagonesque"

The third album by the Scottish band, and an album that managed to beat out Nirvana's "Nevermind" as Spin Magazine's "album of the year". 

The album starts off promisingly enough, "The Concept" runs through noisy pop into some divine Beach Boys-esque harmonies and then a pleasant instrumental outro.   That song is followed by the noisy dervish of "Satan" which opens with a frenzy of noise that segues into a bit of rock.

From there on though, it falls into a pretty samey sound across the rest of the album.  It's not a bad sound (think the Byrds, or early-era Beatles pop songs and vocal harmonies but with washy distorted guitar), but after the variety of the first couple of tracks the rest of the album felt like a bit of a cool off.

Day 0658 - Repeater

Fugazi "Repeater" (1989)

 
After the dissolution of Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye had played in a few other bands but was a bit burnt out from it.  He decided to focus less on 'being in a band' and more in just finding people he could play with.   He also wanted to combine his punk background with a reggae sound.  Both of these goals eventually led to the formation of Fugazi, though I'll be damned if I can hear a lot of reggae in it.

There's some crystal clear bass and drums, with the repetitive hypnotic approach to basslines being something that Joe Lally would go on to revisit in John Frusciante's band Ataxia.   The guitar is occasionally tight and concise, and at other times is a diffuse wall of noise.   MacKaye and guitarist/vocalist Guy Picciotto provide punky vocals that at times find points of harmony... almost pointing to the catchy pop-punk popularised in the 90s to early 00s (though you couldn't really call Fugazi 'pop').