In this weekly series, we’ll cover someone’s favorite Album of the Week.
Exploring new music and discovering new bands is always fun. Without music we couldn’t even listen to all of great gear. Music is what unites us and as such we are reviving a very old series, in which we each week talk about one specific album. In short: “The Album of the Week”!
I started this album of the week series with a record I have been listening to for 32 years but this 5th edition of the AOTW is something completely differnet. The 5th album of the week is from Primus, and the album is “Green Naugahyde”
Primus is an American rock band formed in El Sobrante, California in 1984. The band is currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde, and drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander. Primus is characterized by its irreverent, quirky approach to music distinguished by Claypool’s bass-first song writing style and eccentric lyrical themes. Primus’ music is wilfully weird and experimental, but it’s not alienating; the band was able to turn its goofy weirdness into pop stardom. At first, Primus were strictly an underground phenomenon, but in the years between their third and fourth albums, their cult snowballed. Primus’ music is often written for bass first, and it’s very unique. A lot of our older readers might remember the 1990 hit “Too many puppies” song from their earlier days. Man, have I pogoed to that song in my young days.
The Primus album we’re looking at today is a bit “younger”. In 2011, Primus released their seventh album, Green Naugahyde. With that rare combination of virtuosity and humor, Primus have always been able to push the envelope creatively without ever falling victim to the kind of navel-gazing that can plague more prog-oriented bands, making them turn inward until there’s nothing left but theory. On its seventh studio album, Green Naugahyde, the band continues this tradition with a collection of songs that are both technically dazzling and perfectly irreverent.
My favorite song from the Green Naugahyde album is called “Eternal Consumption Engine”. According to Popmatters.com, it is a virtual remake of Punchbowl track “Space Farm”. The original song was a brief, 105-second lark that featured bouncy bass, syncopated guitar, laser beam sounds, and pig noises. The new track has the same syncopated guitar and bouncy bass, but is now a fully fleshed-out song that ends with Claypool lamenting that “Everything’s made in China!”
And that’s it for the fifth entry. If you haven’t given the album or track a chance, try it, and you might enjoy it as much as I do. Let us know in the comments if you agree with our song selection or let us know what song from this album you prefer.
You can check out the track on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkiqaGsSSYw
Full album link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVCezKBmoyo or on Tidal here: https://tidal.com/browse/album/66415458
We feel and hope that this new series can be a way to recommend new music to our fellow headphone enthusiasts and so we’ll be posting a new recommendation each week on Saturday. If you want to see your favorite album being featured here, head over to our contact page, or hit us up on Twitter or Instagram. (hashtag #albumoftheweek or #AOTW). If we like it then you will be featured in this series.
See you next week!
