Renting? Music 5 - Mustache! & Three Minute Hero
Part 1 - Overview and First Bands
Part 2 - The Pixies and Chvrches
Part 3 - Parliament and Metallica
Part 4 - The Shins and Muse
Part 5 - Mustache! and 3 Minute Hero
Alright, i'm cheating with this one. I haven't gone to the library in awhile, so instead I'm dipping into my library to do a full listen to some music from my college radio days. At the station, we had a rack of CDs labelled "local music" for Minnesota based bands. There was stuff like Bob Dylan and Cloud Cult in there, but I ended up being drawn to these two bands.
Mustache!, the exclamation point is very important, is a sort of like... what if a Minnesota band made two person southern rock. We're going to see if the album Babes Say the Hottest Things holds up.
Mustache! - Babes Say the Hottest Things
We open up with something pretty right in your face with I Got A (Mustache) which sets a decent tone. A breezy 90 seconds. There is something charming about this album a few tracks in. It has a very Tenacious D vibe at times, so if you don't like that musical styling, this might not hit, but there's something about a very simple electric guitar and drum setup with two varying vocal styles that just is Working right now. Tracks 2 and 3 (You Gotta Take It To (The Limit) and If You Don't Start A Drinkin' (I'm A Gonna Leave)) do feature some of those like... Hair Metal crossed with AC/DC-like Falsettos. After a fairly forgettable track 4 we end up with a song I remember playing a bunch over the air, Snakes!!! which tells the story of the subject's one fear in the world, snakes. It has this really like moody reverb during the verses on the guitar with a very subdued drum, while the chorus riff and sound reminds me of something like Black Sabbath.
Look, comparisons are all I got here.
I'm Drivin' (This Train) is one of those tracks that as soon as it started playing, I started bouncing in my chair. This hits me right in my classic-rock-upbringing heart and the chorus fuckin' rules as a thing to sing. Everything comes together in just a simple line that I want to just belt out. The next notable track is a cover of Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker, which, while not as good as the original, is still serviceable. Their next track is a ballad style that kind of sucks. Very Springsteen. They really are hitting all the classic rock sounds here.
The penultimate track, (The Message) is to Rock starts slow as it builds from a ballad into a more driving song. Given the lyrics and the form it takes, it reminds me of a like... So you know how LeCroix are like the most phantom versions of a fruit in the sparkling water? This is that same phenomenon but with Rush, such as a track like Red Barchetta. We wrap the album with Won't Stop Rockin'! (No Way) which is a song about how cool rock music is.
All in all, the album was fun, but had fewer tracks that I really enjoyed than I thought.
3 Minute Hero - Operation Brown Star
Minnesota Ska Band with bad album names (It was either this or Everyday Ninjas and I wanted to listen to some of the tracks on here more). Several of the tracks on here are live performances of previous songs, but are still pretty fun. Surprisingly, they released a new album in the 2010s, after not releasing one since like, 2000, and their music is on Bandcamp now.
We kick off the album with Robot Factory which starts with this deep, muffled sax as the lead instrument mirrored by a kinda funky muted guitar. A song that is very vocally interesting to me, especially the chorus, which bounces up and down the scale over a single held word. A song being fun to sing is a good way to earn marks for me, its why some Red Hot Chilli Pepper stuff ranks so high in my library. Post second chorus leads into a tapping solo that has this really cool effect that makes it sound really sci-fi/Atari-y. Sure, it's the first type of tapping solo you'd see posted to every beginner's guitar player's Youtube, but hey, it works. Spies follows and continues in this same lower register, keeping a kind of undercover agent vibe with it, and the keyboard in the chorus almost sounds like it's tapping out a code, with how it's just so lightly and quickly played.
One thing these first two tracks do that I really like is how they layer the bass vocals on top of the baritone/tenor vocal. You get this really deep and bendy "Spies" in the chorus when the line is sang, and it just adds this really nice texture to the track.
The bridge sounds like it belongs in a B-tier Bond knock off (complimentary).
The next two tracks, Too Much Wine and Rubber Room bounce us up tonally into more happy sounding songs. Not that the others weren't that, it's just the beat and tones in this sound a bit brighter, even if the lyrical content is still not all happy fun times. The chorus of Rubber Room has vibes of a classic love song in terms of the vocal harmonies, before going into an even classicer spoken verse for the bridge with a very steady and simple guitar plays. It's like if you were at a school dance in the 1960s.
Spider Monkey Part 2 (part 1 is like a sound check type thing so it's not important) is the start of the Live portion of the album, so counting this, the next 7 tracks are live ones.
Trombone in this one starts out a little strong, drowning everything out. Not much to say about this one, mainly a kind of Vibes song. Valentine's Day (the studio version is on Everyday Ninjas, along with Julie Loves a Blender, Jelly Donut, and Wish I Was Single) is next, an energetic track about how much Valentine's Day. Julie Loves a Blender is a really bouncy track about a woman who loved mixed drinks, so they need to buy a blender to whip up some cocktails to impress her. Really like the trombone, I think? in this one. Girls continues to talk about the bad luck with women, with women all around them but none of them want to talk to them, blaming their busted up car, their trombone, and their lame ska suit.
I have a hard time talking about this because I want to use the word "bouncy" a lot, but that's just Ska, isn't it. Girls has this fun call and response with both the instrumentation and the lyrics, I'm So Happy just has this fullness of the brass early that's really cool. I think I know a comparison I want to make for the vocalist that helps explain why it's really fun for me. It feels like if Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes had a recurring used car salesman type character. They channel this slick affect for some lines, and especially when delivering rapid staccato lines just has a fun ring to it.
Now... the chorus of I'm So Happy goes "We're so happy we're gonna pee your pants". So. Take that for what it is. Blame 1998 or just guys being dumb and stupid, but that's what it is.
The live version here of Wish I Was Single opens up with the band kind of showing off, especially the keyboardist, bassist, and drummer, before the horns come in and the song lines back up with the studio version. It's a fun change of pace. I like how it has this big build up before most instruments dropping out to this crooner-ass verse. The second verse sort of evolves that into later stage sort of serenade, with more instrumentation but still way less punchy than the chorus.
Wrapping up we have Jelly Donut, where the live version and the studio version have slightly different lyrics (Girls did this too, replacing generic stores and different car types from the studio version in verse 2 with different bars/venues in the Twin Cities). This version has a very cool vibe to it. A very Spanish dance style tune. I think I like the intensity of the live version better than the more restrained studio version. It feels really big and full which fits the vibe really well. Special mention to the bridge of this one, where after a big horn part, it drops down to the guitar, drums, and piano with a very speak-songy couple lines that ends with a rising tone. The cadence and pitch of that part is right in a good vocal range for me, so the way the words march on, almosst swaying back and forth, until til the end is really fun to sing.
- Cassette Beasts OST - Joel Baylis (0)
- Bleed Out - The Mountain Goats (+1)
- ELO Greatest Hits - ELO (-1)
- Every Open Eye - Chvrches (0)
- Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers (0)
- Signals - Rush (0)
- Will of the People - Muse (+1)
- Chocolate City - Parliament (-1)
- Fragile - Yes (+1)
- Superunknown - Soundgarden (-1)
- Operation Brown Star - 3 Minute Hero
- Master of Puppets - Metallica (-1)
- Best of Big Bands - Various Artists (-1)
- Babes Say the Hottest Things - Mustache!
- Bossanova - The Pixies (-2)
- Combat Rock - The Clash (-2)
- Aurora Borealis - Cloud Cult (-1)
- Chutes Too Narrow - The Shins (-3)
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