This week, yours truly has contracted the plague from her travels. By plague I mean the common cold and by travels I mean errands, probably. I don’t fall ill often, so when I do, it throws me for quite the proverbial loop and inevitably frustrates me. There’s definitely something very defeating about not having the mental and physical fortitude to do the things that make you happiest. As a result, the theme of this week’s list is, by default, chill vibes. That is, music you can veg out and “get better” to.
Doomcakes’ Most Listened: October 29th
The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the third studio album from The Smashing Pumpkins, celebrated its 28th release date anniversary this month, reminding me how much I love and appreciate this album. Love him or hate him, if you’re anywhere near my age, Billy Corgan likely sang the soundtrack to your adolescence/early adulthood. Seriously, if I had a dollar for each time I sat in my room as a teen and lamented, “Oh my God, Billy Corgan is singing about my life!” I’d be a wealthy woman.
I always felt like Mellon Collie, with its 2 CDs worth of material, was more of a concept album in a way, meant to be enjoyed in its entirety. It’s a bit mind blowing to me that the album produced only 5 singles, including the well-known Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero, and Tonight, Tonight. Please, if you haven’t done so, go back and listen to Muzzle (my personal favorite that had a major impact on my life), X.Y.U., Where Boys Fear to Tread, and We Only Come Out At Night. You’ll have a whole new respect for the album, I promise.
Favorite Track: Muzzle
The Heavy Minds – Beyond Gloom
The Heavy Minds have produced a unique and undeniably lovely contribution to the new releases this month with their album, Beyond Gloom. Prior to this release, I’d never heard of the band before so I went into it with no expectations or comparisons whatsoever (arguably the ideal way to listen to something). I was beyond impressed with the genre-bending sound that could most accurately be classified as garage rock. The Heavy Minds remind me a lot of 90s alternative rock bands such as Blur and Oasis, albeit far more refined and more serious. Stream of consciousness lyrics and music that is primarily bright and airy give the album the feel of a daydream, yet it’s still “gloomy” and heavy enough to ensure that you keep one foot planted in grim reality.
Favorite track: Nothing
Daily Thompson – God of Spinoza
Daily Thompson is a band that’s known for masterfully blending our favorite aspects of 90s rock (grunge, garage, and indie) with the things we like to listen to now as bitter big kids (stoner, desert, and blues rock). Their album God of Spinoza, in particular, sounds like it came from 30 years ago in a time machine from Seattle. I often talk about how many desert and stoner rock bands do a great job at capturing that grunge and alternative rock sound, but Daily Thompson takes the cake.
Favorite Track: NImbus
Sonic Moon – Return Without Any Memory
Sonic Moon is a band from Denmark who credits some of the biggest names in stoner, desert, and psychedelic rock for inspiration: Electric Wizard, Kyuss, Corrosion of Conformity, and Monolord. Sonic Moon themselves, however, are not so easy to categorize. I could best describe their music as melodic grunge/desert rock style vocals over crawling basslines, and bright yet fuzzy guitars with plenty of distortion. Interestingly, the pace at which the music moves and the general feel it creates reminds me much more of doom than stoner or desert rock, but at the same time, it’s not what I’d call doom either. As a fan of all the aforementioned generes, when a band puts them all together in their own unique way, of course I’m going to love it. The members of Sonic Moon came together with different influences, some of them quite different from each other in sound, and made something completely their own. Who said a doom band has to be a carbon copy of Black Sabbath or a desert rock band has to be a total Kyuss doppelganger? I’m always most impressed when bands carve out their own way and find their own signature sound, and Sonic Moon has done that from the get-go.
Favorite Track: The Waters
