The best song this week is "The Woman on the Screen" by Boris

Nothing this week really jumped out at me until I was riding along the lakefront path after the Super Bowl and I was smacked in the teeth with a tripleshot of Boris / Torche / Lightning Bolt. My mind was wandering to the golf course I was riding by and BAM, drums and crazy fuzzed bass and DRUMS and ferocity! I don’t normally cotton to open hi-hats ringing throughout a song, but when the riffs are this fuzzy and deep, the tinny hi-hats provide a roomy, practice-space looseness; it sounds like a bunch of people just snagged some instruments, hit record and started kicking ass. The riff hits hard on off-beats but hammers the 1s and the 3s -- a syncopation trick that adds heaviness but keeps the downbeats head-boppingly catchy.

I don’t usually listen to a Boris record all the way through, but every time one of their songs comes up on shuffle, I’m reminded of how much power and ferocity they pack into every song--even the pretty ones (“Parting” comes to mind). Somehow “The Woman on the Screen” had never piqued my interest before, but this time it leapt from the earbuds straight into my brain and had me pedaling faster and hitting the back button on the iPod as soon as it was done. And I can't lie -- I wasn't even 100% sure it was Boris. 99% of me said Boris, 1% said "but maybe this is Part Chimp?" Both bands have similar production qualities and talents for seismic, crushing rockness.

“The Woman on the Screen” is the best song this week. And if you’re putting it in a playlist, follow it up with Torche and Lightning Bolt. You won’t feel the cold.

The best song this week is "The First Supper" by Daughters

Winter in a place that has long winters becomes repetitive and depressing. You can try to fight it with Vitamin D supplements and small-batch bourbon, but there’s something awesome about being able to go outside on a whim and toss a ball around that is lost in the frigid months. Going outside requires preparation, the steeling of oneself. Sometimes that involves a shot of bourbon before taking on the cold, but sometimes it’s as simple as choosing the right music.

I listen to angrier music in the wintertime, especially when I’m biking. Cars thinking “no one could be crazy enough to bike in this weather” forget to use simple things like turn signals to make everyone’s lives easier, and so biking becomes more stressful than it should be, not to mention how sneaky ice can be. There’s a reason good pop songs are often described as “breezy” -- it’s because they’re refreshing on a hot day. I don’t want to hear The Sea and Cake when it’s 15 degrees out.

So today, riding to work, I put on Daughters’ self-titled record. One would’ve thought that expanded track times and song structures would mean that they’d boiled their sound down from the extreme grind of “Hell Songs” and “Canada Songs,” but somehow they managed to become better songwriters and sound even more chaotic and unhinged. These songs are not machine-gun blasts; they are predators who have scored a kill wound but enjoy circling the prey and watching it bleed. The vocal delivery is a preacherman Danzig, drunk on the blood of an alcoholic, ranting at you while chaos churns below. And yet it’s engrossing and inspiring and awesome, and it calls you to go forth and create and give the finger to the dreariness of winter gloom.

The second track is called “The First Supper.” Shrieking guitars with infectious echoes manage simultaneous walls of noise and hookiness, while the singer gargles and belches croons about what happens “when a man sees another man as nothing more than meat.” It’s vicious and has a great false ending right around 2:45. It’s not surprising that this incarnation of Daughters fell apart right after making this record. I’d love to see them play a reunion show, but I can understand not wanting to tour behind these songs. They vibrate at an almost uncomfortably primal level, and “The First Supper” is the best song this week.