Best Album Opening one-two punches
So the AV Club posed the question What is the best one-two punch to kick off an album?
There's some interesting choices and comments, but this one, made my geeky heart squee:
John Semley
A while ago, I took to Twitter to pose a pressing question. Which is the better Kyuss album: 1992’s Blues For The Red Sun, or 1994’s Welcome To Sky Valley? A rush of responses (read: two) flooded in, siding with the band’s later record. While it’s hard to deny that Sky Valley probably is, pound for pound, a better album, I have a hard time liking it more than Red Sun. Mostly this has to do with the album’s killer one-two opener of “Thumb” and “Green Machine.” The leisurely, twangy fade-in of “Thumb” sets the tone for the album with John Garcia’s snarling post-grunge vocals (“You don’t seem to understand the de-yeal! / I don’t give two shits on how you fee-yeeel!”), while the abrupt pivot into “Green Machine” (one of the better known Kyuss tunes) brings Josh Homme’s guitars and Nick Oliveri’s fuzzy bass playing front and center. Taken together, “Thumb” and “Green Machine” capture everything of the tighter, ostensibly more radio-friendly Kyuss, at least in the sense that both songs clock in under five minutes. As for the more expansive, desert-rock jams, there’s always Welcome To Sky Valley’s epic, side-long “movements.”
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I can't stop laughing. When you meet a fellow Kyuss fan, one of the first things you get down to is Blues For the Red Sun or Welcome to Sky Valley?
(Also, despite the fact that BFtRS has "Freedom Run", Sky Valley is pound for pound the better album and it's got"Demon Cleaner" on it.
There's some interesting choices and comments, but this one, made my geeky heart squee:
John Semley
A while ago, I took to Twitter to pose a pressing question. Which is the better Kyuss album: 1992’s Blues For The Red Sun, or 1994’s Welcome To Sky Valley? A rush of responses (read: two) flooded in, siding with the band’s later record. While it’s hard to deny that Sky Valley probably is, pound for pound, a better album, I have a hard time liking it more than Red Sun. Mostly this has to do with the album’s killer one-two opener of “Thumb” and “Green Machine.” The leisurely, twangy fade-in of “Thumb” sets the tone for the album with John Garcia’s snarling post-grunge vocals (“You don’t seem to understand the de-yeal! / I don’t give two shits on how you fee-yeeel!”), while the abrupt pivot into “Green Machine” (one of the better known Kyuss tunes) brings Josh Homme’s guitars and Nick Oliveri’s fuzzy bass playing front and center. Taken together, “Thumb” and “Green Machine” capture everything of the tighter, ostensibly more radio-friendly Kyuss, at least in the sense that both songs clock in under five minutes. As for the more expansive, desert-rock jams, there’s always Welcome To Sky Valley’s epic, side-long “movements.”
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I can't stop laughing. When you meet a fellow Kyuss fan, one of the first things you get down to is Blues For the Red Sun or Welcome to Sky Valley?
(Also, despite the fact that BFtRS has "Freedom Run", Sky Valley is pound for pound the better album and it's got"Demon Cleaner" on it.