what's in a name?
similar to the recent Hum post, today's offering comes from a similar nameless genre of mid-90's alterna-rock. Billy Corgan ghost writing aside, Hum, this band, and several others share some common elements in their music; love songs with lyrics all about outer space and stars and shiny metal satellites, huge, grinding waves of guitar noise and soft, melodic lyrics. nerdy boys from outer space with hopeless crushes on the popular girls in their math classes. so, here's:
this track is taken from the 1996 LP Fantastic Planet [buy it], which had a single that got some radio and MTV play, called Stuck on You (the video had this 007-esque female siloutte thing going on). the band unfortunately seemed to live up to their name as far as sales and success went, but after I picked up the CD at a record fair in 1997 in the Lewiston Armory, I shelved it until 2001. once I found it again, I kept it in my car for a week straight. it's that good. their other albums, not so much, but Fantastic Planet is 17 tracks that play almost as fluidly as Yoshimi or Bowie's Outside concept album. the themes are consistent, musical movements get revisted and further developed later on, and the sound goes from that warming, haunting echoey sound to driving, grinding rock and back again. plus you can usually find it for 6 or 8 bucks. c'mon, be a good sport. if you liked the Hum post or if you liked that sound in the 90's and want something sweeter than anything else you remember from the genre, give it a go.
as for what happened to Failure, while they put out a few so-so albums after this one, a few members of the band have joined with a few guys from Tool to form a band called the Replicants, who do only covers:
Replicants - Cinnamon Girl / Destination Unknown
these are Niel Young and Missing Persons tracks, done on the spooky rock tip [buy the album]. the saga continues when people from the Replicants and Maynard James Keenan (the singer from Tool) formed A Perfect Circle, and ended up covering a Failure song, The Nurse Who Loved Me on their second LP. the Failure version is much better.
a happy holiday weekend to all. I'll be back on the hip/trip-hop tip next week.