Failure & Hayley Williams

Failure's new album "Location Lost" is out today.  The vinyl is already sold out, but you can download the album from the band here.  In the meanwhile, listen to "The Rising Skyline" featuring Paramore's Hayley Williams below.

Daily Jam - C'mon Collapse

Here's a track from a post-Failure/pre-reunion side project of Ken Andrews for your Friday.  Listen to "C'mon Collapse" by ON below, our Daily Jam.

Failure

We truly do live in an awful timeline, but one thing that it does have going for it is that '90s alt-rock band Failure are back together and releasing new music on the regular.  And today we get the word that new album "Location Lost" will be hitting our ears in April.  Check out new track "The Air's on Fire" below and pre-order the download here from the band or the vinyl here from Hello Merch.

Daily Jam - The Nurse Who Loved Me

Doing my normal Saturday thing where we clean the shit out of the house while watching college football.  And listening to, what in my personal opinion, is one of the greatest albums of all time, Failure's "Fantastic Planet."  Listen to "The Nurse Who Loved Me" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Right Kind of Girl

Here's a track from one of my college era favorite albums from Canadian band Blinker the Star which featured Failure's Kelli Scott on drums.  Listen to "Right Kind of Girl" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Heliotropic

I watched a documentary last month about legendary alt-rock band Failure which sent me down nostalgia lane listening to the band's original output as well as their post-reunion stuff.  So good.  Anyway, here's the penultimate track from the band's 1996 masterpiece "Fantastic Planet."  Listen to "Heliotropic" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Allergic

30 years on, and Failure is still one of my favorite bands of all time, and yet despite his numerous other projects, lead singer Ken Andrews has only released one solo album under his own name with 2006's "Secrets of the Lost Satellite."  That album just got its first vinyl reissue late last year.  Hoping we'll see some other Andrews associated acts (thinking of Replicants or On in particular) follow suit soon.  In the meanwhile, here the artist is with the spacey and melancholy "Allergic," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Stuck on You

I don’t know if anyone else out there does this, but sometimes I’ll get an album to listen to, usually a CD to be played in the car during my commute to and from work, and basically pretend it’s me performing it whilst singing along in the driver’s seat. I’ve done this for forever, but it has to be a good CD…a great CD…one of those CDs that’s an essential listen from start to finish. Throughout the years I’ve accrued a handful of albums that I keep coming back to over and over again specifically for this purpose, this driving daydream of musicianship, artistry, and mock rock stardom. And I’d posit that Failure’s 1996 space rock opus and masterpiece Fantastic Planet is my go-to album probably more than 50% of the time.

My introduction to the band came by way of the band Replicants, a project that produced one album of covers featuring Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards of Failure, members of the band Lusk, and Maynard James Keenan from Tool. A big fan of that record, I eventually sought out the musicians’ other output, coming across Fantastic Planet and the wonderful single “Stuck on You.” From the opening, high-pitched guitar riff (though it may actually be a synthesizer for all I know), harmonic tones ringing in my ears and the heavens above, I fell hard for that song. The slow and pounding beat propels ever forward with crunching, spacey guitar layered on top, Ken Andrews’ nasal and almost monotone vocal delivery sounding alien and worldly at the same time. There’s a bubblegum pop aesthetic at work too, a sweet and hooky melody that could play in my brain ad infinitum if I were so inclined. Lyrically, “Stuck on You” is about being unable to escape a pop song, radio detritus coursing through our veins forever, or maybe it’s a lament about love, or maybe it’s about drugs, or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Is it all of these things?

Either way, I’ll love it forever, and I’ll go on pretending it’s me who made it, singing it in my car on the stadium stage of my daydreams.

“Stuck on you til the end of time.”

Daily Jam - Destination Unknown

For those not in the know, Replicants was a one-and-done covers project from members of Failure, Lusk, and Tool, a veritable super group of sorts. The band’s self-titled 1995 release featured spacey, alt-rock takes on songs by The Cars, T. Rex, Neil Young, David Bowie, a couple of Beatles, and a whole lot more. Tool’s Maynard James Keenan even pops in, providing vocals on a cover of “Silly Love Songs” of all things. As the record was my initial exposure to Ken Andrews and Failure (one of my all-time favorites), it’s pretty near and dear to my heart, a collection of classic rock jams and a couple of synth wonders spun into '90s jelly. It’s one of those albums I adore from start to finish, but for me, the real raison dêtre is the record’s centerpiece, the propulsive and intoxicating electro-crawl version of Missing Persons’ “Destination Unknown.”

I can’t even begin to recall how many 11th grade events and evenings “Destination Unknown” soundtracked. It feels like it was everywhere, an undercurrent of murky sound that followed me everywhere I went. The song’s mid-'90s, this-is-what-the-future-will-sound-like, pre-millennial aesthetic was like a harbinger of the digital age to come…or at the very least a cool tune to listen to outside while I washed my car in my parents’ driveway, anxiously wondering where the beer was coming from later that night. And while it may sound a little dated now (or just in time for a modern revival), I just can’t help but let it take me back.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Just What I Needed

Still one of my favorite albums from high school, the self-titled lone album from Replicants.  Featuring members of Failure, Lusk, and Tool, the band plays covers of everyone from David Bowie to Missing Persons to Steely Dan.  Here's their version of The Cars' "Just What I Needed," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Solaris 2014

When Failure came roaring back to life in 2014, they re-recorded a track from their 1996 masterpiece "Fantastic Planet," a slowed down, extended version of "Solaris."  The new version sounds like being lost in space.  Check it out below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Bernie

And now for a track from one of my most favorite bands ever, Failure.  Here's a cut from their 1994 sophomore album "Magnified."  Listen to "Bernie" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Great Days for the Passenger Element

In the aftermath of Failure in the late '90s, and well before the band's reunion in the '10s, Ken Andrews fronted a half dozen different projects while Greg Edwards landed with the spacey alt-rock band Autolux.  Consequently, that band spawned quite the following too.  Check out "Great Days for the Passenger Element" below, our Daily Jam.

Failure

I wasn't expecting to hear a new song from Failure this morning, but here we are.  Evidently the band has a new album heading our way in just a few weeks.  Hooray!  Check out the dense space rock of "Headstand" below and pre-order the upcoming "Wild Type Droid" here.

Daily Jam - Daylight

It's time to put this miserable year to rest.  And remember, things can always get worse.  Here's "Daylight" by Failure, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Below the Sliding Doors

Here's a little late '90s, space rock indebted alt-rock from Blinker the Star featuring an assist from Failure's Ken Andrews on backing vocals.  Check out "Below the Sliding Doors" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam (Covers Week 2) - The Bewlay Brothers

Failure is one of my all time favorite bands, and i discovered them via a covers project called Replicants featuring the members of Failure, Lusk, and a Tool or two.  The 1995 album features covers of everyone from The Cars to T. Rex to Steely Dan, as well as a trippy and spaced out version of David Bowie's "The Bewlay Brothers," a track that was already pretty trippy and spaced out in its own right.  Check the cover tune out below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Moth

Failure have been one of my favorite bands since first hearing them in the '90s, from their peak with "Fantastic Planet," through their long hiatus, to their reunion and subsequent new material.  Here's a crunchy space rock track from their 1994 album "Magnified."  Check out "Moth," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Hunted

In the post break-up/pre-reunion era of Failure, Ken Andrews released various music projects to varying degrees of success.  One of those, and the one that was most aesthetically in line with Failure, was the band Year of the Rabbit, releasing an EP and a full-length of guitar centered space rock.  Today's jam is a song from that project that i think ranks up there with anything Failure ever did.  Listen to "Hunted" below.

Failure - Dark Speed

We got new Failure yesterday!  I had heard a rumor that there were some possible EPs in the works for 2018, and the first (of four) is out now.  Watch the video for "Dark Speed" below.  The song's got a real motorik krautrock kind of thing going for it, and it works.  The "In the Future" EP is available for download from the band here, where you can also pre-order the other EPs as well as an LP that will compile the music later in the year.  Hooray!