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Andrew Pekler

Cue

Electronic

Mark Richardson

Last year, Berlin-based producer Andrew Pekler toured with Jan Jelinek as part of the Kosmischer Pitch band. He's been making music under several names for almost a decade, first gaining notice in 2000 as Sad Rockets, releasing Transition on Matador when the label experimented frequently with electronic releases. Though he's not prolific by the standards of electronic music, Pekler's method reminds me a bit of Atom Heart or Burnt Friedmann: each record is meant to sound different, based on a considered set of aesthetic guidelines. Pekler's time hanging around Jelinek-- after having previously been his labelmate on ~scape-- seems particularly significant here on his latest record. For Cue, Pekler's M.O. was to assemble music using "library" records as inspiration. These are those weird LPs you now sometimes find in the "Misc." section of record stores, containing music for royalty-free "needle drop" use in commercial applications. Pekler took descriptions of the intended effect for various tracks ("slow, ominous piano motif drifting into swirling atmosphere"), and built new tracks, attempting to arrive at these moods from another angle. Knowledge of his process is unnecessary for enjoying Cue. Pekler's use of such sterile material certainly contributes to the record's unusually disjointed feel, but these tracks don't seem tied to any particular era and certainly aren't meant for background use. His fondness for dense, overlapping loops as the basic unit of composition does, however, resemble the direction Jelinek has taken on his last two records, Kosmischer Pitch and Tierbeobachtungen. Each of these tracks sounds build from five or six or ten samples that are cut into pieces, set in motion, and allowed to bump into each other. This approach, while necessarily limited in terms of dynamics, results in a handful of very interesting tracks. "Rockslide" even edges toward brilliant, with a droning tone up front that seems to skim along the surface of the beat like a stone across water, its pitch bent into chord-like shapes that, heard over steady floor toms, even manage to get a pretty funky. Indeed, the sound of drums throughout is striking and weird in a good way-- the extreme aridity of the beats opening "On" is the sort of thing Steve Albini hears in his dreams, and the exceptionally spacious "Pensive Boogie" sounds like a sack of assorted percussion tumbling down the stairs in slow motion, with some of the sounds moving backwards. "Vertical Gardens" is one of the places where the samples show their age, the cheap synth outlining the chords evoking early electronics nostalgia in a manner reminiscent of the bubbly, bright electro-pop of Schlammpeitziger, but with an additional layer of abstraction. "Mote", one of a few short interludes that take one idea and runs with it for a minute or two, gets a lot of mileage from some cut-up piano bits, sounding like a player piano with a shredded roll that has been left alone in a decaying ballroom. All in all, Cue is very subtle. Aside from "Rockslide", none of the tracks leaps out and demands to be regarded, despite the widely varying use of textures, tempos, and layering. But it's the sort of record that gets more interesting the deeper you get inside, as its old and strangely disembodied samples assemble into something new and occasionally even fleshy.

Artist: Andrew Pekler, Album: Cue, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Last year, Berlin-based producer Andrew Pekler toured with Jan Jelinek as part of the Kosmischer Pitch band. He's been making music under several names for almost a decade, first gaining notice in 2000 as Sad Rockets, releasing Transition on Matador when the label experimented frequently with electronic releases. Though he's not prolific by the standards of electronic music, Pekler's method reminds me a bit of Atom Heart or Burnt Friedmann: each record is meant to sound different, based on a considered set of aesthetic guidelines. Pekler's time hanging around Jelinek-- after having previously been his labelmate on ~scape-- seems particularly significant here on his latest record. For Cue, Pekler's M.O. was to assemble music using "library" records as inspiration. These are those weird LPs you now sometimes find in the "Misc." section of record stores, containing music for royalty-free "needle drop" use in commercial applications. Pekler took descriptions of the intended effect for various tracks ("slow, ominous piano motif drifting into swirling atmosphere"), and built new tracks, attempting to arrive at these moods from another angle. Knowledge of his process is unnecessary for enjoying Cue. Pekler's use of such sterile material certainly contributes to the record's unusually disjointed feel, but these tracks don't seem tied to any particular era and certainly aren't meant for background use. His fondness for dense, overlapping loops as the basic unit of composition does, however, resemble the direction Jelinek has taken on his last two records, Kosmischer Pitch and Tierbeobachtungen. Each of these tracks sounds build from five or six or ten samples that are cut into pieces, set in motion, and allowed to bump into each other. This approach, while necessarily limited in terms of dynamics, results in a handful of very interesting tracks. "Rockslide" even edges toward brilliant, with a droning tone up front that seems to skim along the surface of the beat like a stone across water, its pitch bent into chord-like shapes that, heard over steady floor toms, even manage to get a pretty funky. Indeed, the sound of drums throughout is striking and weird in a good way-- the extreme aridity of the beats opening "On" is the sort of thing Steve Albini hears in his dreams, and the exceptionally spacious "Pensive Boogie" sounds like a sack of assorted percussion tumbling down the stairs in slow motion, with some of the sounds moving backwards. "Vertical Gardens" is one of the places where the samples show their age, the cheap synth outlining the chords evoking early electronics nostalgia in a manner reminiscent of the bubbly, bright electro-pop of Schlammpeitziger, but with an additional layer of abstraction. "Mote", one of a few short interludes that take one idea and runs with it for a minute or two, gets a lot of mileage from some cut-up piano bits, sounding like a player piano with a shredded roll that has been left alone in a decaying ballroom. All in all, Cue is very subtle. Aside from "Rockslide", none of the tracks leaps out and demands to be regarded, despite the widely varying use of textures, tempos, and layering. But it's the sort of record that gets more interesting the deeper you get inside, as its old and strangely disembodied samples assemble into something new and occasionally even fleshy."

Lea Bertucci

Metal Aether

Experimental

Jenn Pelly

Lea Bertucci is a composer in conversation with the world around her. She regards physical spaces as though they were her collaborators. Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, she was awed by the defunct cement mines, where her saxophone made deep reverberations. More recently she has described playing the walls of a bunker like an organ. Bertucci is an electro-acoustic minimalist who works primarily with woodwind instruments, particularly the alto sax and low-voiced bass clarinet. But her most crucial instrument might be space itself: the surroundings and acoustics that naturally augment a sound, altering the way an instrument resonates. Last year, Bertucci co-edited The Tonebook, a collection of graphic scores by 17 contemporary avant-garde composers. Bertucci’s own contribution took the form of a highly contoured topographic map, which she called “an overhead view of the changes and textures within a piece of music,” underscoring her exploratory sensibility. Metal Aether, Bertucci’s latest full-length, was recorded at a former military base in France as well as the New York art venue ISSUE Project Room. It feels like her fullest statement. Her extended technique for alto sax is at once swarming and clarifying, like dissolving clouds. These droning meditations offer disquieting jolts along with microtones that are hypnotic and grounding. Bertucci incorporates prepared piano and vibraphone, processed with electronics and tape, along with field recordings made anywhere from Mayan pyramids to New York subways. Harmonics accumulate and stretch toward infinity. Bertucci’s noise feels untethered and limitless. With each repeated sax figure on “Patterns for Alto,” Bertucci mimics the motions of swimming or diving, growing more enveloping with each inquisitive note. “Accumulations,” with an ominous drone hovering in the background, is a reminder of Bertucci’s training in jazz, as sustained notes make way for alarming, high-pitched squalls. When “Accumulations” breaks into passages of noise, it feels like weather, like all the seasons at once. The more ambient “Sustain and Dissolve” tricks you into thinking it is a breath of air, but it pierces and drills as its tones subtly shift, making way for a deep gong sound and then flashes of brutal noise. It moves toward the sound of water crashing, evoking ocean voyages. “At Dawn,” the final piece, contains a peculiar fluttering. If this is birdsong, it is not peaceful. It sounds like birds attempting to reach beyond the sky. Bertucci has a way with texture that both evokes the room and renders it endless. Perhaps a deep consideration of space is inevitable for a New Yorker such as Bertucci, who inhabits a city where space for artists is increasingly endangered. Bertucci’s work as a booker and curator has also guided her practice: She has said that many artists come to New York and ask, “What can I get out of this place?” rather than, “What can I bring to this place?” Bertucci’s work is accordingly generative; it brings life and voice to her generation of New York avant-gardists in a way that feels personal and rare. In Bertucci’s expanding world, walls are not the ends of spaces, but rather sparks for new ones waiting to begin.

Artist: Lea Bertucci, Album: Metal Aether, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Lea Bertucci is a composer in conversation with the world around her. She regards physical spaces as though they were her collaborators. Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, she was awed by the defunct cement mines, where her saxophone made deep reverberations. More recently she has described playing the walls of a bunker like an organ. Bertucci is an electro-acoustic minimalist who works primarily with woodwind instruments, particularly the alto sax and low-voiced bass clarinet. But her most crucial instrument might be space itself: the surroundings and acoustics that naturally augment a sound, altering the way an instrument resonates. Last year, Bertucci co-edited The Tonebook, a collection of graphic scores by 17 contemporary avant-garde composers. Bertucci’s own contribution took the form of a highly contoured topographic map, which she called “an overhead view of the changes and textures within a piece of music,” underscoring her exploratory sensibility. Metal Aether, Bertucci’s latest full-length, was recorded at a former military base in France as well as the New York art venue ISSUE Project Room. It feels like her fullest statement. Her extended technique for alto sax is at once swarming and clarifying, like dissolving clouds. These droning meditations offer disquieting jolts along with microtones that are hypnotic and grounding. Bertucci incorporates prepared piano and vibraphone, processed with electronics and tape, along with field recordings made anywhere from Mayan pyramids to New York subways. Harmonics accumulate and stretch toward infinity. Bertucci’s noise feels untethered and limitless. With each repeated sax figure on “Patterns for Alto,” Bertucci mimics the motions of swimming or diving, growing more enveloping with each inquisitive note. “Accumulations,” with an ominous drone hovering in the background, is a reminder of Bertucci’s training in jazz, as sustained notes make way for alarming, high-pitched squalls. When “Accumulations” breaks into passages of noise, it feels like weather, like all the seasons at once. The more ambient “Sustain and Dissolve” tricks you into thinking it is a breath of air, but it pierces and drills as its tones subtly shift, making way for a deep gong sound and then flashes of brutal noise. It moves toward the sound of water crashing, evoking ocean voyages. “At Dawn,” the final piece, contains a peculiar fluttering. If this is birdsong, it is not peaceful. It sounds like birds attempting to reach beyond the sky. Bertucci has a way with texture that both evokes the room and renders it endless. Perhaps a deep consideration of space is inevitable for a New Yorker such as Bertucci, who inhabits a city where space for artists is increasingly endangered. Bertucci’s work as a booker and curator has also guided her practice: She has said that many artists come to New York and ask, “What can I get out of this place?” rather than, “What can I bring to this place?” Bertucci’s work is accordingly generative; it brings life and voice to her generation of New York avant-gardists in a way that feels personal and rare. In Bertucci’s expanding world, walls are not the ends of spaces, but rather sparks for new ones waiting to begin."

Emptyset

Borders

Electronic

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

By its own description, the Bristol-based electronic duo Emptyset makes music as a meta-study of the relationship between sound, surface, space, gear, and process. Given how freely Emptyset’s Paul Purgas and James Ginzburg expound on those relationships in academic terms, you might expect the pair's work to drip with intellectualism. Between them, Purgas and Ginzburg actually do have academic backgrounds—in art, design, and music. So it’s no surprise that they’ve turned to spaces such as London’s Ambika P3 testing bunker for commissioned installation projects, and that such spaces have served as one of Emptyset’s primary habitats over the project’s 12-year history. Taken on its own, however, Emptyset’s music can be surprisingly single-minded. Borders, the band’s fifth studio full-length (its first for Thrill Jockey following a string of releases for electronic labels like Subtext and Raster-Noton) can be boiled-down to three words: throbbing, bassy, sinister. More aggressive and pulse-driven than Emptyset’s last studio album, 2013’s Recur, Borders hits your senses with a brute force that belies Ginzburg and Purgas’ conceptual approach to making sounds. The album opens with a flickering, short-lived wash of static that gets swallowed by a low-end thrum, a sound that pretty much persists from that point onwards until the final track concludes. These repetitive bursts of bass-frequency shrapnel go through significant changes—the timbre, layering, tempos, and intervals all morph from track to track—but the central pattern and rhythmic attack remain constant as the pulses come one after another after another. And once the pattern shifts from album opener “Body” to a similar pattern on “Border,” Purgas and Ginzburg establish relentless repetition as one of the album’s primary features. It doesn’t take long before Borders induces a meditative effect not unlike when you stare at ocean waves for long periods. Likewise, the music on Borders suggests a comparable sense of catching finite slivers within a greater pool of endlessness. With a bandname derived from the mathematical term for “a set of elements containing nothing,” it’s no surprise that Emptyset aim to bring a sense of physicality to empty space—or, as Ginzburg once put it, to identify the “thingness” at the heart of an empty void. When it comes excavating brutality out of silence, Emptyset sit in a class by themselves. The album even comes close to tunefulness on “Dissolve,” where an unidentifiable sound source takes on the character of delicate guitar strumming.  And though you'd never mistake Emptyset for dance music, theirs is still body music, in a way. One can only imagine that listening to Borders with a heavy-duty subwoofer would be a punishing affair. Similarly, even without one iota of percussion—Borders contains nothing by way of a traditional “beat”—the groove is undeniable. And the new material, perhaps more than ever, harbors ample evidence for why Emptyset continue to identify as a techno act, albeit one whose style hews much closer to Berlin than Detroit. Given their Bristol background, it makes sense that Purgas and Ginzburg see their work as an extension of sound system/DJ culture. In truth, Emptyset haven’t evolved all that much since they began working in the full-length format in 2009. A microcosm of their overall progression, Borders essentially hovers in one mood, requires effort to recognize its contours, and ends on an anti-climactic note as the music simply ceases, without any sense of completion or finality. And whether it loses or gains flavor over multiple listens depends on the listener’s patience threshold for repetition. But by turning up the volume and menace this time, Emptyset manage to put new spins on dubstep and industrial—genres they don’t explicitly reference—as well. As such, Borders functions as a gateway between traditionalist dance forms and the artier end of the electronic-production universe. It also offers new ways of understanding both by reflecting each against the other.

Artist: Emptyset, Album: Borders, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "By its own description, the Bristol-based electronic duo Emptyset makes music as a meta-study of the relationship between sound, surface, space, gear, and process. Given how freely Emptyset’s Paul Purgas and James Ginzburg expound on those relationships in academic terms, you might expect the pair's work to drip with intellectualism. Between them, Purgas and Ginzburg actually do have academic backgrounds—in art, design, and music. So it’s no surprise that they’ve turned to spaces such as London’s Ambika P3 testing bunker for commissioned installation projects, and that such spaces have served as one of Emptyset’s primary habitats over the project’s 12-year history. Taken on its own, however, Emptyset’s music can be surprisingly single-minded. Borders, the band’s fifth studio full-length (its first for Thrill Jockey following a string of releases for electronic labels like Subtext and Raster-Noton) can be boiled-down to three words: throbbing, bassy, sinister. More aggressive and pulse-driven than Emptyset’s last studio album, 2013’s Recur, Borders hits your senses with a brute force that belies Ginzburg and Purgas’ conceptual approach to making sounds. The album opens with a flickering, short-lived wash of static that gets swallowed by a low-end thrum, a sound that pretty much persists from that point onwards until the final track concludes. These repetitive bursts of bass-frequency shrapnel go through significant changes—the timbre, layering, tempos, and intervals all morph from track to track—but the central pattern and rhythmic attack remain constant as the pulses come one after another after another. And once the pattern shifts from album opener “Body” to a similar pattern on “Border,” Purgas and Ginzburg establish relentless repetition as one of the album’s primary features. It doesn’t take long before Borders induces a meditative effect not unlike when you stare at ocean waves for long periods. Likewise, the music on Borders suggests a comparable sense of catching finite slivers within a greater pool of endlessness. With a bandname derived from the mathematical term for “a set of elements containing nothing,” it’s no surprise that Emptyset aim to bring a sense of physicality to empty space—or, as Ginzburg once put it, to identify the “thingness” at the heart of an empty void. When it comes excavating brutality out of silence, Emptyset sit in a class by themselves. The album even comes close to tunefulness on “Dissolve,” where an unidentifiable sound source takes on the character of delicate guitar strumming.  And though you'd never mistake Emptyset for dance music, theirs is still body music, in a way. One can only imagine that listening to Borders with a heavy-duty subwoofer would be a punishing affair. Similarly, even without one iota of percussion—Borders contains nothing by way of a traditional “beat”—the groove is undeniable. And the new material, perhaps more than ever, harbors ample evidence for why Emptyset continue to identify as a techno act, albeit one whose style hews much closer to Berlin than Detroit. Given their Bristol background, it makes sense that Purgas and Ginzburg see their work as an extension of sound system/DJ culture. In truth, Emptyset haven’t evolved all that much since they began working in the full-length format in 2009. A microcosm of their overall progression, Borders essentially hovers in one mood, requires effort to recognize its contours, and ends on an anti-climactic note as the music simply ceases, without any sense of completion or finality. And whether it loses or gains flavor over multiple listens depends on the listener’s patience threshold for repetition. But by turning up the volume and menace this time, Emptyset manage to put new spins on dubstep and industrial—genres they don’t explicitly reference—as well. As such, Borders functions as a gateway between traditionalist dance forms and the artier end of the electronic-production universe. It also offers new ways of understanding both by reflecting each against the other."

Billy Bragg

Mr. Love & Justice

Rock

Joshua Klein

Billy Bragg's been called many things-- bard, busker, bloke, Bolshevik-- but ever since his auspicious emergence into the British punk scene, a folkie wielding an electric guitar, he's remained remarkably true to his roots. Bragg's the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer, and anyone who's seen him perform in recent years knows he retains the power to move and inspire. He gives you hope, and it's a testament to his songs that while the context has shifted-- wither Reagan/Thatcher, welcome Bush/Blair (and later Brown)-- his music still makes you want to storm the gates. Obviously a lot has happened since Bragg's last album, 2002's England, Half-English-- not least the enduring Iraq war and the soul-crushingly sloppy prosecution of the so-called war on terror. But anyone expecting Bragg to rise to the occasion when he's arguably needed the most may be disappointed by Mr. Love & Justice. In 2008, as the world goes to shit, Bragg has countered the pervasive bad vibes with an album of love songs. Mostly. Not that Bragg has given up the fight. Hardly. He's spent much of the gap between records writing books ("The Progressive Patriot"), reissuing his back catalog, and founding Jail Guitar Doors, a musical education program for British inmates. In the meantime, he's kept gigging like a kid half his age, fueled with the same fervor and idealism that still propels Pete Seeger to pick up his banjo whenever he hears the call of a cause in need of his help and support. But on Mr. Love & Justice, he comes off rather staid, if never less than solid. Granted, songs like the soulful "I Keep Faith" (featuring fellow rabble rouser Robert Wyatt on backing vocals) and "You Make Me Brave" are as lovely as they come. The latter in particular, plus the dramatic "Something Happened" and the new Bragg classic "I Almost Killed You", seem tailor made, lyrics and all, for a hopeless romantic with better pipes than Bragg, someone like Morrissey. That's a compliment, as Bragg would likely be first to admit, and indeed much of his appeal still stems from his own modest abilities. Bragg's one of us, and sounds it, at least if you exclude his impressive songwriting abilities. Moments of Bragg's trademark indignation are there, of course: "Sing Their Souls Back Home" is gospel by way of Barking, a tribute to the downtrodden and trod-upon-- and that includes, of course, the troops abroad. ("Bring em home now," declares Bragg, as if anyone had any doubt where he stood.) The cheeky but also a little cheesy "The Johnny Carcinogentic Show" takes aim at the marketing of toxins (both literal and metaphoric) to kids. The simple "Farm Boy" is sung from the perspective of a soldier stuck in a snafu of the military's doing, while "O Freedom" is as earnest as they come, a tale of extraordinary rendition delivered with melancholy fatalism. It's understandable that Bragg may not want to be pigeonholed as a protest singer, but if it ever was the time to step up, it's now. Where's the outrage? Where's the anger? Mr. Love & Justice isn't exactly the musical equivalent of dropping flowers down the barrels of rifles, but there is a certain passivity to the disc, a characteristic magnified by the rootsy approach of Bragg's trusty band the Blokes, who channel the bucolic bent of the Band rather than the edge of the Clash. It's a disc born of love when what the world needs is actually a little more justice.

Artist: Billy Bragg, Album: Mr. Love & Justice, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Billy Bragg's been called many things-- bard, busker, bloke, Bolshevik-- but ever since his auspicious emergence into the British punk scene, a folkie wielding an electric guitar, he's remained remarkably true to his roots. Bragg's the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer, and anyone who's seen him perform in recent years knows he retains the power to move and inspire. He gives you hope, and it's a testament to his songs that while the context has shifted-- wither Reagan/Thatcher, welcome Bush/Blair (and later Brown)-- his music still makes you want to storm the gates. Obviously a lot has happened since Bragg's last album, 2002's England, Half-English-- not least the enduring Iraq war and the soul-crushingly sloppy prosecution of the so-called war on terror. But anyone expecting Bragg to rise to the occasion when he's arguably needed the most may be disappointed by Mr. Love & Justice. In 2008, as the world goes to shit, Bragg has countered the pervasive bad vibes with an album of love songs. Mostly. Not that Bragg has given up the fight. Hardly. He's spent much of the gap between records writing books ("The Progressive Patriot"), reissuing his back catalog, and founding Jail Guitar Doors, a musical education program for British inmates. In the meantime, he's kept gigging like a kid half his age, fueled with the same fervor and idealism that still propels Pete Seeger to pick up his banjo whenever he hears the call of a cause in need of his help and support. But on Mr. Love & Justice, he comes off rather staid, if never less than solid. Granted, songs like the soulful "I Keep Faith" (featuring fellow rabble rouser Robert Wyatt on backing vocals) and "You Make Me Brave" are as lovely as they come. The latter in particular, plus the dramatic "Something Happened" and the new Bragg classic "I Almost Killed You", seem tailor made, lyrics and all, for a hopeless romantic with better pipes than Bragg, someone like Morrissey. That's a compliment, as Bragg would likely be first to admit, and indeed much of his appeal still stems from his own modest abilities. Bragg's one of us, and sounds it, at least if you exclude his impressive songwriting abilities. Moments of Bragg's trademark indignation are there, of course: "Sing Their Souls Back Home" is gospel by way of Barking, a tribute to the downtrodden and trod-upon-- and that includes, of course, the troops abroad. ("Bring em home now," declares Bragg, as if anyone had any doubt where he stood.) The cheeky but also a little cheesy "The Johnny Carcinogentic Show" takes aim at the marketing of toxins (both literal and metaphoric) to kids. The simple "Farm Boy" is sung from the perspective of a soldier stuck in a snafu of the military's doing, while "O Freedom" is as earnest as they come, a tale of extraordinary rendition delivered with melancholy fatalism. It's understandable that Bragg may not want to be pigeonholed as a protest singer, but if it ever was the time to step up, it's now. Where's the outrage? Where's the anger? Mr. Love & Justice isn't exactly the musical equivalent of dropping flowers down the barrels of rifles, but there is a certain passivity to the disc, a characteristic magnified by the rootsy approach of Bragg's trusty band the Blokes, who channel the bucolic bent of the Band rather than the edge of the Clash. It's a disc born of love when what the world needs is actually a little more justice."

Death Cab for Cutie

The John Byrd EP

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

When Death Cab for Cutie announced their amicable separation from Seattle-based indie label Barsuk-- simultaneously publicizing their signing with Atlantic Records-- nobody was shocked or appalled: The band's major label bump-up seemed stupidly pre-destined (slept-on, almost), the next and only logical step for a group regularly and glibly name-checked by cast members of "The O.C." (In a wincingly obvious confirmation of taste, a live guest performance by the band has already been scheduled for later this month.) Regardless, the past year has been appropriately transitional for Death Cab, as the band settles into its emerging popularity (a groundswell augmented, no doubt, by frontman Ben Gibbard's half-million-selling side-project, the Postal Service), shifting from tiny clubs to decent-sized theaters, and becoming accustomed to the quirks of dealing directly with a colossal corporation. Sold only in independent record stores, the seven-song The John Byrd EP-- blushingly named after the band's dutiful sound man ("The guy in the beard and glasses," Gibbard banters)-- collects seven live tracks (culled from shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the Wiltern in Los Angeles, and the Showbox in the band's hometown of Seattle) has the cobbled-together, vaguely desperate feeling of an awkward apology-- an earnest thanks to the folks on their crew and their support staff Barsuk, a fraught promise to fans, an unbreakable testament to the band-before-the-breakthrough. Conceptually, it's preemptive and timid; in actuality, the EP is perfectly nice but underwhelming and bland, a non-essential gesture from an outfit in flux. "We Laugh Indoors", plucked from 2001's The Photo Album, is a comparably limp opener, with Gibbard's voice quiet, flitting in and out, lyrics unintelligible. Guitarist Chris Walla plucks out a meandering melody over a lazy haze of drums and guitar, sounding oddly detached and lifeless-- until two minutes in, when the band half-heartedly commits to some kind of energetic burst, Gibbard finally aiming for a microphone, his bandmates taking a woozy stab at redemption that works, sort of. The nine-minute "We Looked Like Giants" can be equally tiring-- all guitar wankery and live finesse that falls flat on record. "Photobooth" is excellent, sped-up, and animated, doing its best to engage a crowd that sounds (unsurprisingly) distant, all crossed-arms and cool stares. The EP closes with a solid cover of Sebadoh's "Brand New Love" (led into by "Blacking Out the Friction"). A few lyrics are switched, guitars wail, tempos trip up and down, and Gibbard's crowd chatter is charming enough, but the John Byrd EP is mostly just a pleasant boon for completists, more interesting for its timing than anything else. Death Cab for Cutie may, ostensibly, be teetering on the edge of newness-- but if this EP is any indication, they've already got their formula nailed down perfectly.

Artist: Death Cab for Cutie, Album: The John Byrd EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "When Death Cab for Cutie announced their amicable separation from Seattle-based indie label Barsuk-- simultaneously publicizing their signing with Atlantic Records-- nobody was shocked or appalled: The band's major label bump-up seemed stupidly pre-destined (slept-on, almost), the next and only logical step for a group regularly and glibly name-checked by cast members of "The O.C." (In a wincingly obvious confirmation of taste, a live guest performance by the band has already been scheduled for later this month.) Regardless, the past year has been appropriately transitional for Death Cab, as the band settles into its emerging popularity (a groundswell augmented, no doubt, by frontman Ben Gibbard's half-million-selling side-project, the Postal Service), shifting from tiny clubs to decent-sized theaters, and becoming accustomed to the quirks of dealing directly with a colossal corporation. Sold only in independent record stores, the seven-song The John Byrd EP-- blushingly named after the band's dutiful sound man ("The guy in the beard and glasses," Gibbard banters)-- collects seven live tracks (culled from shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the Wiltern in Los Angeles, and the Showbox in the band's hometown of Seattle) has the cobbled-together, vaguely desperate feeling of an awkward apology-- an earnest thanks to the folks on their crew and their support staff Barsuk, a fraught promise to fans, an unbreakable testament to the band-before-the-breakthrough. Conceptually, it's preemptive and timid; in actuality, the EP is perfectly nice but underwhelming and bland, a non-essential gesture from an outfit in flux. "We Laugh Indoors", plucked from 2001's The Photo Album, is a comparably limp opener, with Gibbard's voice quiet, flitting in and out, lyrics unintelligible. Guitarist Chris Walla plucks out a meandering melody over a lazy haze of drums and guitar, sounding oddly detached and lifeless-- until two minutes in, when the band half-heartedly commits to some kind of energetic burst, Gibbard finally aiming for a microphone, his bandmates taking a woozy stab at redemption that works, sort of. The nine-minute "We Looked Like Giants" can be equally tiring-- all guitar wankery and live finesse that falls flat on record. "Photobooth" is excellent, sped-up, and animated, doing its best to engage a crowd that sounds (unsurprisingly) distant, all crossed-arms and cool stares. The EP closes with a solid cover of Sebadoh's "Brand New Love" (led into by "Blacking Out the Friction"). A few lyrics are switched, guitars wail, tempos trip up and down, and Gibbard's crowd chatter is charming enough, but the John Byrd EP is mostly just a pleasant boon for completists, more interesting for its timing than anything else. Death Cab for Cutie may, ostensibly, be teetering on the edge of newness-- but if this EP is any indication, they've already got their formula nailed down perfectly."

Crypt Sermon

Out of the Garden

Metal

Andy O'Connor

If you’re a newer band playing a classic form of metal, you need to be concerned with songwriting. With such a strong history behind you, putting together songs worth playing twice is more important than preserving vibes. Philadelphia doom quintet Crypt Sermon prove they’ve got plenty of songwriting mettle on their debut album, Out of the Garden. On it, they pay fervent tribute to early Candlemass and Dio-era Black Sabbath, and already show more personality than many bands who’ve been trying to do this sound for a much longer time. Interestingly, the first three songs on Garden almost follow the trajectory of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Candlemass’ first album from 1986. "Temple Doors" is Garden’s "Solitude", a lumbering stomp with a slight thrash bent. "Doors"'s opening interlude isn’t as iconic as "please let me die in solituuuuuuuude," but it sets the song’s tone. "Heavy Riders" boasts similarities to "Demons Gate" in that they’re both the meaner, more confident second tracks. What sets "Riders" apart is its biker-like swagger, American toughness to contrast their European influences’ more Gothic sensibilities. After a moodier opening track, you need a ripper like "Riders" to get momentum going, and it succeeds, with guitarists Steve Jansson and James Lipczynski conjuring up Black Sabbath "Neon Knights" rhythms. "Byzantium" takes pages from Metallicus's "Crystal Ball", especially in the high-tension, high-drama opening leads. While they only last for the introduction, they color the rest of the song, with Jansson and Lipczynski’s trod carrying a more ominous weight. This shift is how subtlety best manifests itself in metal: not by deliberate understating, but by smart songwriting that keeps the album’s vibe intact while giving each song its own character. The rest of the album doesn’t bear a whole lot of similarities to Metallicus, but it’s a fun coincidence, and the rest of the songs are well worth your attention. While "Doors" explored the contrast of their slow burns and galloping infernos, it really comes into form in "Into the Holy of Holies", with everyone delivering more charged performances. It’s the longest song on the record, and not concidently, their most ambitious. "The Master’s Bouquet" features gorgeous lead work that closes out the song: triumphant, but alluding to a pyrrhic victory. Underlying synths further score the sadness that lays beneath, but with knowledge that the leads are the star. Vocalist Brooks Wilson doesn’t have the dramatic flair of a Dio or a Messiah Marcolin, and if there were a time we needed an ultra-charismatic metal frontman it’d be now, but he’s got impressive pipes nonetheless. (Wilson handled bass in addition to vocals on the band’s demo but ceded the role to Hivelords’ Will Mellor to fully concentrate on singing, which will hopefully become more of a positive development.) As far as contemporaries, Crypt Sermon’s closest relative would be Solitude Aeturnus, the Arlington, Texas band usually considered to be the American answer to Candlemass. (Vocalist Robert Lowe even sang for Candlemass for a few years.) They’ve never gotten their due, but also haven’t had a blazing trail to seize upon; one can only hope Crypt Sermon won’t face that curse. Garden is a debut most bands would light candles to Dio for, and with time, this band could be a true contender in doom.

Artist: Crypt Sermon, Album: Out of the Garden, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "If you’re a newer band playing a classic form of metal, you need to be concerned with songwriting. With such a strong history behind you, putting together songs worth playing twice is more important than preserving vibes. Philadelphia doom quintet Crypt Sermon prove they’ve got plenty of songwriting mettle on their debut album, Out of the Garden. On it, they pay fervent tribute to early Candlemass and Dio-era Black Sabbath, and already show more personality than many bands who’ve been trying to do this sound for a much longer time. Interestingly, the first three songs on Garden almost follow the trajectory of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Candlemass’ first album from 1986. "Temple Doors" is Garden’s "Solitude", a lumbering stomp with a slight thrash bent. "Doors"'s opening interlude isn’t as iconic as "please let me die in solituuuuuuuude," but it sets the song’s tone. "Heavy Riders" boasts similarities to "Demons Gate" in that they’re both the meaner, more confident second tracks. What sets "Riders" apart is its biker-like swagger, American toughness to contrast their European influences’ more Gothic sensibilities. After a moodier opening track, you need a ripper like "Riders" to get momentum going, and it succeeds, with guitarists Steve Jansson and James Lipczynski conjuring up Black Sabbath "Neon Knights" rhythms. "Byzantium" takes pages from Metallicus's "Crystal Ball", especially in the high-tension, high-drama opening leads. While they only last for the introduction, they color the rest of the song, with Jansson and Lipczynski’s trod carrying a more ominous weight. This shift is how subtlety best manifests itself in metal: not by deliberate understating, but by smart songwriting that keeps the album’s vibe intact while giving each song its own character. The rest of the album doesn’t bear a whole lot of similarities to Metallicus, but it’s a fun coincidence, and the rest of the songs are well worth your attention. While "Doors" explored the contrast of their slow burns and galloping infernos, it really comes into form in "Into the Holy of Holies", with everyone delivering more charged performances. It’s the longest song on the record, and not concidently, their most ambitious. "The Master’s Bouquet" features gorgeous lead work that closes out the song: triumphant, but alluding to a pyrrhic victory. Underlying synths further score the sadness that lays beneath, but with knowledge that the leads are the star. Vocalist Brooks Wilson doesn’t have the dramatic flair of a Dio or a Messiah Marcolin, and if there were a time we needed an ultra-charismatic metal frontman it’d be now, but he’s got impressive pipes nonetheless. (Wilson handled bass in addition to vocals on the band’s demo but ceded the role to Hivelords’ Will Mellor to fully concentrate on singing, which will hopefully become more of a positive development.) As far as contemporaries, Crypt Sermon’s closest relative would be Solitude Aeturnus, the Arlington, Texas band usually considered to be the American answer to Candlemass. (Vocalist Robert Lowe even sang for Candlemass for a few years.) They’ve never gotten their due, but also haven’t had a blazing trail to seize upon; one can only hope Crypt Sermon won’t face that curse. Garden is a debut most bands would light candles to Dio for, and with time, this band could be a true contender in doom."

M83

Don't Save Us From the Flames

Electronic,Rock

Brian Howe

M83 occupies a summer-sky-sized space between dance music, electro-pop, indie rock, and ambient, and this vastness is well suited to the long player format: Saturate and inundate, goosebumps ensue. If M83's goal was to choose infectious singles that also render the album proper in miniature, they nailed it with "Don't Save Us From the Flames" and "Teen Angst", each of which distills the album's delirious crescendos and evocative lulls into concise packets. Don't Save Us From the Flames comes with two remixes and "Until the Night Is Over", an acoustic version of "Night" from their self-titled debut. Right after the panoramic drums, driving guitar, ecstatic synth trills, propulsive piano, and rapturous harmonies of the title track, "Until the Night Is Over" treats us to six minutes of lambent piano and M83's most negligible component-- the vocals. It's innocuously pleasant, but squanders a track that could've been better served by another remix. Boom Bip does a decent job of recasting "Don't Save Us From the Flames" as instrumental indie-hop that would've fit right in on his own last album. He drizzles disassociated fragments of the source material into the back half, placing more emphasis on his tweaky mechanical drums, electronic squiggles, and tiny chimes, and his version seems more like a translation than a remix. It's Superpitcher's remix that extends this single's audience beyond diehard collectors. Grabbing it by each end and stretching it like electro-taffy for upwards of 10 minutes, Superpitcher isolates the individual parts of "Don't Save Us From the Flames", opening up the spaces between them so that each becomes a distinct rhythmic agent, and expertly deploys them in a tense arc. The song's lean two-note pulse and mammoth bass line ride a sultry house beat, and Anthony Gonzalez's voice shimmers in the air. The Interpol-ish bridge puts in a climactic appearance; ghost harmonies and guitar flourishes flit through the mix, and by keeping the track stark, spacious and incrementally shifting, Superpitcher creates an accurate exploded diagram with a sensual impact that belies its clinical tone. Teen Angst is rounded out by a non-album track and a remix by Montag (who should be intimately familiar with the source material, having composed most of M83's string arrangements). "Addicted to Self-Mutilation" is a generous seven minutes of ballroom electrofuzz, a gorgeous if somewhat tepid wash of buried falsettos and mid-tempo, morphing incandescence. This is the M83 of wafting, blissed-out sonics, not the sharp dynamic shifts of their singles, and it dovetails nicely with the Starsy neon pop of "Teen Angst". Montag ratchets the ping-ponging synths of the original down to a soupier growl, gives the vocals a little more breathing room, trims some overdrive off of the chorus, and drops some of his trademarked crystalline tones in the middle, but otherwise doesn't go very far in re-imagining the track or revealing something about it that had been hidden, the way Superpitcher seems to illuminate the viscera of "Don't Save Us from the Flames". These two singles are clearly divided by their strengths and weaknesses. Both sport solid title tracks. Teen Angst features the better of the two new tracks available, but Don't Save Us From the Flames has far and away the best remix. M83 fanatics will want to pick up both; casual fans are advised to pick up one or the other (depending on whether studio tracks or remixes are more your speed), and everyone with ears should drop 99 cents at iTunes for the Superpitcher remix.

Artist: M83, Album: Don't Save Us From the Flames, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "M83 occupies a summer-sky-sized space between dance music, electro-pop, indie rock, and ambient, and this vastness is well suited to the long player format: Saturate and inundate, goosebumps ensue. If M83's goal was to choose infectious singles that also render the album proper in miniature, they nailed it with "Don't Save Us From the Flames" and "Teen Angst", each of which distills the album's delirious crescendos and evocative lulls into concise packets. Don't Save Us From the Flames comes with two remixes and "Until the Night Is Over", an acoustic version of "Night" from their self-titled debut. Right after the panoramic drums, driving guitar, ecstatic synth trills, propulsive piano, and rapturous harmonies of the title track, "Until the Night Is Over" treats us to six minutes of lambent piano and M83's most negligible component-- the vocals. It's innocuously pleasant, but squanders a track that could've been better served by another remix. Boom Bip does a decent job of recasting "Don't Save Us From the Flames" as instrumental indie-hop that would've fit right in on his own last album. He drizzles disassociated fragments of the source material into the back half, placing more emphasis on his tweaky mechanical drums, electronic squiggles, and tiny chimes, and his version seems more like a translation than a remix. It's Superpitcher's remix that extends this single's audience beyond diehard collectors. Grabbing it by each end and stretching it like electro-taffy for upwards of 10 minutes, Superpitcher isolates the individual parts of "Don't Save Us From the Flames", opening up the spaces between them so that each becomes a distinct rhythmic agent, and expertly deploys them in a tense arc. The song's lean two-note pulse and mammoth bass line ride a sultry house beat, and Anthony Gonzalez's voice shimmers in the air. The Interpol-ish bridge puts in a climactic appearance; ghost harmonies and guitar flourishes flit through the mix, and by keeping the track stark, spacious and incrementally shifting, Superpitcher creates an accurate exploded diagram with a sensual impact that belies its clinical tone. Teen Angst is rounded out by a non-album track and a remix by Montag (who should be intimately familiar with the source material, having composed most of M83's string arrangements). "Addicted to Self-Mutilation" is a generous seven minutes of ballroom electrofuzz, a gorgeous if somewhat tepid wash of buried falsettos and mid-tempo, morphing incandescence. This is the M83 of wafting, blissed-out sonics, not the sharp dynamic shifts of their singles, and it dovetails nicely with the Starsy neon pop of "Teen Angst". Montag ratchets the ping-ponging synths of the original down to a soupier growl, gives the vocals a little more breathing room, trims some overdrive off of the chorus, and drops some of his trademarked crystalline tones in the middle, but otherwise doesn't go very far in re-imagining the track or revealing something about it that had been hidden, the way Superpitcher seems to illuminate the viscera of "Don't Save Us from the Flames". These two singles are clearly divided by their strengths and weaknesses. Both sport solid title tracks. Teen Angst features the better of the two new tracks available, but Don't Save Us From the Flames has far and away the best remix. M83 fanatics will want to pick up both; casual fans are advised to pick up one or the other (depending on whether studio tracks or remixes are more your speed), and everyone with ears should drop 99 cents at iTunes for the Superpitcher remix."

Simian Mobile Disco

FabricLive 41

Electronic

Nate Patrin

Indie culture's post-DFA embrace of dance music in all its forms-- acid, minimal, disco, and so on-- has been sneered at by some anxious veteran ravers for its apparent new-jack bandwagoneering, as if louver-shade kids are gonna go around smearing guitars all over everything with their Axe body spray-stained fingers. But the best ideas often come from people with an outsider's idea of-- and, better yet, a flippant disregard for-- scene and genre rules. And if these outsiders wind up connecting a few new dots-- even if by some naïve, happy accident-- well, that's how stasis gets disrupted, ain't it? Not that James Ford and Jas Shaw are clueless interlopers or anything. It's just that going back and listening to pre-Mobile Disco-era Simian albums like Chemistry Is What We Are and We Are Your Friends-- in dance terms, vaguely Madchester at best-- makes a mix like their installation in the FabricLive series, even in the wake of their acid-savvy Attack Decay Sustain Release, sound like the end result of one hell of a metamorphosis. But FabricLive 41 doesn't reveal much in the way of curriculum-- few tracks betray anything that might have informed Ford and Shaw in their transition into nu-rave vanguards, and it's mostly front-loaded with recent and soon-to-be favorites from the past year or two. Which makes it, at worst, a likeable contemporary dance mix with flashes of leftfield brilliance. Their tweak of Tomita's 1976 Stravinsky-gone-digital interpretation of the Firebird Suite selection "Infernal Dance of King Kastchei" is a sly intro, and slipping in Metro Area's 2001 classic deep electro-house "Miura" amidst a block of more recent material proves a nice bit of context without jolting listeners out of the block of current hotness they'd spent the previous twenty-plus minutes building up. For the most part, however, the mix stays firmly in 2007-08 turf, and as a symposium on modern house and techno it sounds remarkably cohesive in its diversity. It helps that it's mixed superbly and seamlessly, even as it jumps from the massive rave anthem Serge Santiago mix of Hercules & Love Affair's "Blind" into a glib, arcade-bound acid-house two-fer from Smith N Hack ("Space Warrior") and Discodeine ("Joystick") or fuses Moon Dog's minimalist marimba/glockenspiel composition "Suite Equestria" with Fine Cut Bodies' maximalist house track "Huncut Hacuka". While it passes the test of a versatile, well-assembled mix-- sounding smooth-flowing as a whole, but varied enough to sound weirdly choppy and jarring if you skip to each successive track after a minute-- FabricLive 41 also has the benefit of boasting two major peaks, one early, one late. The aforementioned "Blind" bleeds its way into the outro of new SMD cut "Simple" (a sharp bit of retro-pop-lock Detroitness), then burbles and crests over seven and a half minutes of epic slow build that firmly anchors down the mix's momentum four tracks in. It's bookended sharply by a manic segue between two mid-90s classics, Plastikman's military drumroll arm-flailer "Spastik" and the insistent panic-attack thump of Green Velvet's "Flash", and the ensuing rattling stampede makes it the ideal climax to a mix that largely builds itself on a indie-friendly revival of predecessors like these. This peak is then awkwardly followed up by the actual set-closer, the Walker Brothers' vaguely Roxy Music-esque 1978 disco bid "Nite Flights", which drags that jittery intensity out into the middle of the street and runs it over with a car (albeit a really sleek-looking Lotus Esprit)-- but that's the risk you take with the nu-rave vanguard, and FabricLive 41's reward-to-risk ratio is high enough to recommend it easily.

Artist: Simian Mobile Disco, Album: FabricLive 41, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Indie culture's post-DFA embrace of dance music in all its forms-- acid, minimal, disco, and so on-- has been sneered at by some anxious veteran ravers for its apparent new-jack bandwagoneering, as if louver-shade kids are gonna go around smearing guitars all over everything with their Axe body spray-stained fingers. But the best ideas often come from people with an outsider's idea of-- and, better yet, a flippant disregard for-- scene and genre rules. And if these outsiders wind up connecting a few new dots-- even if by some naïve, happy accident-- well, that's how stasis gets disrupted, ain't it? Not that James Ford and Jas Shaw are clueless interlopers or anything. It's just that going back and listening to pre-Mobile Disco-era Simian albums like Chemistry Is What We Are and We Are Your Friends-- in dance terms, vaguely Madchester at best-- makes a mix like their installation in the FabricLive series, even in the wake of their acid-savvy Attack Decay Sustain Release, sound like the end result of one hell of a metamorphosis. But FabricLive 41 doesn't reveal much in the way of curriculum-- few tracks betray anything that might have informed Ford and Shaw in their transition into nu-rave vanguards, and it's mostly front-loaded with recent and soon-to-be favorites from the past year or two. Which makes it, at worst, a likeable contemporary dance mix with flashes of leftfield brilliance. Their tweak of Tomita's 1976 Stravinsky-gone-digital interpretation of the Firebird Suite selection "Infernal Dance of King Kastchei" is a sly intro, and slipping in Metro Area's 2001 classic deep electro-house "Miura" amidst a block of more recent material proves a nice bit of context without jolting listeners out of the block of current hotness they'd spent the previous twenty-plus minutes building up. For the most part, however, the mix stays firmly in 2007-08 turf, and as a symposium on modern house and techno it sounds remarkably cohesive in its diversity. It helps that it's mixed superbly and seamlessly, even as it jumps from the massive rave anthem Serge Santiago mix of Hercules & Love Affair's "Blind" into a glib, arcade-bound acid-house two-fer from Smith N Hack ("Space Warrior") and Discodeine ("Joystick") or fuses Moon Dog's minimalist marimba/glockenspiel composition "Suite Equestria" with Fine Cut Bodies' maximalist house track "Huncut Hacuka". While it passes the test of a versatile, well-assembled mix-- sounding smooth-flowing as a whole, but varied enough to sound weirdly choppy and jarring if you skip to each successive track after a minute-- FabricLive 41 also has the benefit of boasting two major peaks, one early, one late. The aforementioned "Blind" bleeds its way into the outro of new SMD cut "Simple" (a sharp bit of retro-pop-lock Detroitness), then burbles and crests over seven and a half minutes of epic slow build that firmly anchors down the mix's momentum four tracks in. It's bookended sharply by a manic segue between two mid-90s classics, Plastikman's military drumroll arm-flailer "Spastik" and the insistent panic-attack thump of Green Velvet's "Flash", and the ensuing rattling stampede makes it the ideal climax to a mix that largely builds itself on a indie-friendly revival of predecessors like these. This peak is then awkwardly followed up by the actual set-closer, the Walker Brothers' vaguely Roxy Music-esque 1978 disco bid "Nite Flights", which drags that jittery intensity out into the middle of the street and runs it over with a car (albeit a really sleek-looking Lotus Esprit)-- but that's the risk you take with the nu-rave vanguard, and FabricLive 41's reward-to-risk ratio is high enough to recommend it easily."

Madlib

Time Out Presents: The Other Side Los Angeles

Rap

Sam Chennault

For more than a century, a motley collection of artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians have tried to get their collective heads around the nebulous, mercurial city of Los Angeles. Is the City of Angels the sunny fulfillment of the American dream as portrayed by any number of Hollywood films, or is it the through-the-looking-glass-darkly noir of Raymond Chandler and James Cain? Can the key to the decoding the vast intellectual sprawl be found in quasi-scientific sorcery of L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley, or in the compromised pop art of Edward Ruscha? Of course, L.A. is all of the above-- to paraphrase an old tourist slogan: L.A. is where it all comes together, for better or worse. And for the past decade it's also been the home to a burgeoning underground hip-hop/soul/electro scene. Acts such as Flying Lotus, Nobody, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Guns 'N' Bombs are carving out a niche that will hopefully some day rival the late-50s, early-60s glory years of West Coast free jazz, when musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins subverted traditional jazz structure and forever altered that genre's landscape. And whatever success the current scene has can be traced back, in part, to Stones Throw Records and it twin titans of hip-hop, Peanut Butter Wolf and Madlib. So, the prospect of an L.A. edition of Time Out hosted by that pair looks amazing on paper. Personally, I can't imagine a better person to chronicle the chaotic history of L.A. music better than the Beat Konductor, whose own ADD avant garde aesthetic mirrors the city's restless and on-going search for definition. And while no one is going to mistake Peanut Butter Wolf for a Duck Tours guide, the Stones Throw founder and DJ is affable and witty enough to fulfill his task as subterranean guide. Unfortunately, the package is underwhelming. Sure, PBW's DVD works well enough as a hipster tour guide: He hits all the right spots-- night spots the Social Trust, Cinespace, and Greenlight as well as cool fashion/ culture spots such as Barracuda, Blue Chips, and Suro-- and carries it off with an intimacy and wit that personalizes the entire experience. If you're a PBW groupie, or maybe if going to L.A. for the first time, it's probably required viewing. But honestly, we're not in the business of reviewing DVDs, particularly ones of the travel guide variety. Which leaves us with Madlib's mix CD. The tagline on here is that the disk is a reflection of Madlib's L.A., but at least half the artists here aren't even from Los Angeles. Dabrye, Jay Dee, Phat Kat, and Cybertron are all from Detroit; Sun Ra hails from Chicago; and the handful of Lee Perry collaborators (the great Prince Jazzbo, Burning Spear drummer Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace) are from Jamaica. Sure, there are some great tracks here. The quirky, windy Mark Murphy track, "Sly", produced by Herbie Hancock, is an odd pleasure, while the Outlaw Blues Band delivers an appealing slice of psychedelic blues with "Deep Gully". The sporadic insertion of his own tracks, including the exclusive (and mediocre) "Infinity", suggests that perhaps Madlib is attempting to trace his own music genealogy. In fact, many tracks hint at Madlib's reckless disregard of traditional song structure. But if self-illumination is the goal, then the CD fails to really highlight the breadth of Madlib's aesthetic. At best, the disk approximates the dadaist, ramshackle charm of his Blunted in the Bombshelter disk. Both mixes are full of unexplained pans and level tweaks, and stock dialogue makes its way into several songs. But the thing about the Blunted was that at least it had a central point: namely, mixing the Trojan catalog. In the end, the CD is enjoyable yet kinda pointless. It feels as if Madlib spent 30 seconds in between bong packs assembling a playlist. Sure, you could do worse, but Madlib could also do better.

Artist: Madlib, Album: Time Out Presents: The Other Side Los Angeles, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "For more than a century, a motley collection of artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians have tried to get their collective heads around the nebulous, mercurial city of Los Angeles. Is the City of Angels the sunny fulfillment of the American dream as portrayed by any number of Hollywood films, or is it the through-the-looking-glass-darkly noir of Raymond Chandler and James Cain? Can the key to the decoding the vast intellectual sprawl be found in quasi-scientific sorcery of L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley, or in the compromised pop art of Edward Ruscha? Of course, L.A. is all of the above-- to paraphrase an old tourist slogan: L.A. is where it all comes together, for better or worse. And for the past decade it's also been the home to a burgeoning underground hip-hop/soul/electro scene. Acts such as Flying Lotus, Nobody, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Guns 'N' Bombs are carving out a niche that will hopefully some day rival the late-50s, early-60s glory years of West Coast free jazz, when musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins subverted traditional jazz structure and forever altered that genre's landscape. And whatever success the current scene has can be traced back, in part, to Stones Throw Records and it twin titans of hip-hop, Peanut Butter Wolf and Madlib. So, the prospect of an L.A. edition of Time Out hosted by that pair looks amazing on paper. Personally, I can't imagine a better person to chronicle the chaotic history of L.A. music better than the Beat Konductor, whose own ADD avant garde aesthetic mirrors the city's restless and on-going search for definition. And while no one is going to mistake Peanut Butter Wolf for a Duck Tours guide, the Stones Throw founder and DJ is affable and witty enough to fulfill his task as subterranean guide. Unfortunately, the package is underwhelming. Sure, PBW's DVD works well enough as a hipster tour guide: He hits all the right spots-- night spots the Social Trust, Cinespace, and Greenlight as well as cool fashion/ culture spots such as Barracuda, Blue Chips, and Suro-- and carries it off with an intimacy and wit that personalizes the entire experience. If you're a PBW groupie, or maybe if going to L.A. for the first time, it's probably required viewing. But honestly, we're not in the business of reviewing DVDs, particularly ones of the travel guide variety. Which leaves us with Madlib's mix CD. The tagline on here is that the disk is a reflection of Madlib's L.A., but at least half the artists here aren't even from Los Angeles. Dabrye, Jay Dee, Phat Kat, and Cybertron are all from Detroit; Sun Ra hails from Chicago; and the handful of Lee Perry collaborators (the great Prince Jazzbo, Burning Spear drummer Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace) are from Jamaica. Sure, there are some great tracks here. The quirky, windy Mark Murphy track, "Sly", produced by Herbie Hancock, is an odd pleasure, while the Outlaw Blues Band delivers an appealing slice of psychedelic blues with "Deep Gully". The sporadic insertion of his own tracks, including the exclusive (and mediocre) "Infinity", suggests that perhaps Madlib is attempting to trace his own music genealogy. In fact, many tracks hint at Madlib's reckless disregard of traditional song structure. But if self-illumination is the goal, then the CD fails to really highlight the breadth of Madlib's aesthetic. At best, the disk approximates the dadaist, ramshackle charm of his Blunted in the Bombshelter disk. Both mixes are full of unexplained pans and level tweaks, and stock dialogue makes its way into several songs. But the thing about the Blunted was that at least it had a central point: namely, mixing the Trojan catalog. In the end, the CD is enjoyable yet kinda pointless. It feels as if Madlib spent 30 seconds in between bong packs assembling a playlist. Sure, you could do worse, but Madlib could also do better."

Prince

Art Official Age

Pop/R&B,Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Back in the mid-1990s, Prince and Warner Brothers did not split amicably. Not only did the superstar write the word SLAVE on his face, he also changed his name to an unpronounceable logo that was quickly translated into English as “The Artist Formerly Known As…” Unhappy with faltering sales in the new decade, he tried to release a quick slew of albums in order to get out of his contract, but Warner insisted on waiting the industry-standard two years between major releases. It must have felt like a demotion after Prince more or less owned the 1980s, a decade when even a flop like Under the Cherry Moon could spin off a hit album like Parade. Despite his complaints, however, Prince never regained his former popularity following his departure from Warner; as he struggled to go his own way and keep up with trends he was no longer setting, his independent output quickly grew prodigious and preeningly self-indulgent, ranging from the triple-disc Emancipation in 1996 to the soggy The Rainbow Children in 2001 to the one-two punch of MPLSound and LotusFlow3r in 2009. What’s most surprising about Prince re-signing (or resigning?) with Warner Brothers nearly twenty years later is just how much sense it makes for both parties. The label has welcomed one of its signature stars back to the fold, who brings his never-reissued/never-remastered back catalog with him. They’ve already teased a new edition of Purple Rain—the dream we all dream of—and Prince gets some major-label backing at a time when he seems creatively rejuvenated and newly focused. A string of startlingly solid singles led to Art Official Age, which despite its ludicrous title, is the most engaged Prince has sounded in a long while. In particular, “Breakfast Can Wait” is an AM lovemaking jam that schools R. Kelly with its old-school slink and Prince in supreme pillowtalk mode (“Come here baby, let me put you on my plate”). Musically, Art Official Age is all over the map—gloriously so, in fact—as though Prince is trying to cram a triple album into a single disc. Opener “Art Official Cage” cribs directly from Daft Punk’s more arena-ready moments, building a post-disco banger on some Nile Rodgers-style rhythm guitar. It sounds perhaps too familiar, but the song mimics its source with aplomb and what sounds like Princely arrogance. Cockiness has always looked better on Prince than assless chaps or satin frocks, and the song has a feisty energy that even a new jack swing rap can’t derail. Some of the best songs here are slow jams, like the wishful “This Could Be Us” and “Breakdown”, which sounds like one of the most personally revealing tunes Prince has ever recorded: “Waking up in places that you would never believe,” he sings with what sounds like deep regret. “Give me back the time, you can keep the memories.” As the strings lift the song out of the depths and laserbeams fire at the edges of the music, Prince launches into some vocal contortions that prove his voice has lost none of its wild mutability over the years. It’s the rare moment of true gravity on an album that sounds like Prince actually had a lot of fun making. There’s something reassuring about such good spirits coming from him, as it recalls a much younger Prince whose mischievous smile and eye rolls conveyed a self-possession and self-awareness. On the other hand, the few times he nods to an overarching funk/sci-fi mythology—something about being cryogenically frozen for 50 years and waking up in a society with no first-person pronouns—Prince comes across as a grouchy old guy. “Twenty-four karat hashtag, put your phone in your bag,” he raps on “The Gold Standard”, sounding too much like a man in his mid-50s. Art Official Age is not a return to form by any means, but a modestly exciting Prince album. That’s certainly more than we could expect in 2014, and it’s certainly more than we get out of PlectrumElectrum. Prince recorded the album with his all-female backing band 3rdEyeGirl, which includes drummer Hannah Ford Welton, guitarist Donna Grantis, and bassist Ida Nielsen. All have backgrounds and even degrees in rock and jazz, so it’s obvious they have immense chops. The rhythm section lock down the grooves on the punk-/surf-rock “Marz” and the strutting “Stopthistrain”, and Grantis (formerly a member of the New Power Generation) riffs and solos on “Anotherlove” with Princely abandon. What they don’t have is much of a personality. Recorded live in the studio using analog equipment, the album is nevertheless too proficient, too slick, and too professional to come across as much more than anonymous. They show little of the kinky inventiveness of the Revolution or the innate versatility of the New Power Generation; instead, Plectrum is crammed with predictable rap-rock riffs, vague alt-rock menance, and bloozy showboating. Especially blasting from Paisley Park, this is a perversely unimaginative and restrictive idea of rock‘n’roll, with none of the musical freedom that Prince has traditionally shown. One of the great pop synthesists, he has blended so many different styles and sounds so fluidly that his best music sounded positively utopian: a world without charts or genres, release schedules, or label contracts. Prince and 3rdEyeGirl have good intentions, of course, and at times the album sounds like a rebuttal to the pesky rock-is-dead palaver that so many of the form’s aging practitioners have memorized. “A girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another crazy band o’ boys,” Prince asserts on “Fixurlifeup”. But he’s decrying prefab pop groups while backed by a prefab pop group, preaching female empowerment while playing up the novelty of an all-female band. Both of these albums sound slightly out of time, but at least Art Official Age, despite its flaws, has the bravado to imagine how the pop music of the future might function. By contrast, Plectrum merely duplicates the sounds and politics of rock ‘n’ roll’s stodgy past.

Artist: Prince, Album: Art Official Age, Genre: Pop/R&B,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Back in the mid-1990s, Prince and Warner Brothers did not split amicably. Not only did the superstar write the word SLAVE on his face, he also changed his name to an unpronounceable logo that was quickly translated into English as “The Artist Formerly Known As…” Unhappy with faltering sales in the new decade, he tried to release a quick slew of albums in order to get out of his contract, but Warner insisted on waiting the industry-standard two years between major releases. It must have felt like a demotion after Prince more or less owned the 1980s, a decade when even a flop like Under the Cherry Moon could spin off a hit album like Parade. Despite his complaints, however, Prince never regained his former popularity following his departure from Warner; as he struggled to go his own way and keep up with trends he was no longer setting, his independent output quickly grew prodigious and preeningly self-indulgent, ranging from the triple-disc Emancipation in 1996 to the soggy The Rainbow Children in 2001 to the one-two punch of MPLSound and LotusFlow3r in 2009. What’s most surprising about Prince re-signing (or resigning?) with Warner Brothers nearly twenty years later is just how much sense it makes for both parties. The label has welcomed one of its signature stars back to the fold, who brings his never-reissued/never-remastered back catalog with him. They’ve already teased a new edition of Purple Rain—the dream we all dream of—and Prince gets some major-label backing at a time when he seems creatively rejuvenated and newly focused. A string of startlingly solid singles led to Art Official Age, which despite its ludicrous title, is the most engaged Prince has sounded in a long while. In particular, “Breakfast Can Wait” is an AM lovemaking jam that schools R. Kelly with its old-school slink and Prince in supreme pillowtalk mode (“Come here baby, let me put you on my plate”). Musically, Art Official Age is all over the map—gloriously so, in fact—as though Prince is trying to cram a triple album into a single disc. Opener “Art Official Cage” cribs directly from Daft Punk’s more arena-ready moments, building a post-disco banger on some Nile Rodgers-style rhythm guitar. It sounds perhaps too familiar, but the song mimics its source with aplomb and what sounds like Princely arrogance. Cockiness has always looked better on Prince than assless chaps or satin frocks, and the song has a feisty energy that even a new jack swing rap can’t derail. Some of the best songs here are slow jams, like the wishful “This Could Be Us” and “Breakdown”, which sounds like one of the most personally revealing tunes Prince has ever recorded: “Waking up in places that you would never believe,” he sings with what sounds like deep regret. “Give me back the time, you can keep the memories.” As the strings lift the song out of the depths and laserbeams fire at the edges of the music, Prince launches into some vocal contortions that prove his voice has lost none of its wild mutability over the years. It’s the rare moment of true gravity on an album that sounds like Prince actually had a lot of fun making. There’s something reassuring about such good spirits coming from him, as it recalls a much younger Prince whose mischievous smile and eye rolls conveyed a self-possession and self-awareness. On the other hand, the few times he nods to an overarching funk/sci-fi mythology—something about being cryogenically frozen for 50 years and waking up in a society with no first-person pronouns—Prince comes across as a grouchy old guy. “Twenty-four karat hashtag, put your phone in your bag,” he raps on “The Gold Standard”, sounding too much like a man in his mid-50s. Art Official Age is not a return to form by any means, but a modestly exciting Prince album. That’s certainly more than we could expect in 2014, and it’s certainly more than we get out of PlectrumElectrum. Prince recorded the album with his all-female backing band 3rdEyeGirl, which includes drummer Hannah Ford Welton, guitarist Donna Grantis, and bassist Ida Nielsen. All have backgrounds and even degrees in rock and jazz, so it’s obvious they have immense chops. The rhythm section lock down the grooves on the punk-/surf-rock “Marz” and the strutting “Stopthistrain”, and Grantis (formerly a member of the New Power Generation) riffs and solos on “Anotherlove” with Princely abandon. What they don’t have is much of a personality. Recorded live in the studio using analog equipment, the album is nevertheless too proficient, too slick, and too professional to come across as much more than anonymous. They show little of the kinky inventiveness of the Revolution or the innate versatility of the New Power Generation; instead, Plectrum is crammed with predictable rap-rock riffs, vague alt-rock menance, and bloozy showboating. Especially blasting from Paisley Park, this is a perversely unimaginative and restrictive idea of rock‘n’roll, with none of the musical freedom that Prince has traditionally shown. One of the great pop synthesists, he has blended so many different styles and sounds so fluidly that his best music sounded positively utopian: a world without charts or genres, release schedules, or label contracts. Prince and 3rdEyeGirl have good intentions, of course, and at times the album sounds like a rebuttal to the pesky rock-is-dead palaver that so many of the form’s aging practitioners have memorized. “A girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another crazy band o’ boys,” Prince asserts on “Fixurlifeup”. But he’s decrying prefab pop groups while backed by a prefab pop group, preaching female empowerment while playing up the novelty of an all-female band. Both of these albums sound slightly out of time, but at least Art Official Age, despite its flaws, has the bravado to imagine how the pop music of the future might function. By contrast, Plectrum merely duplicates the sounds and politics of rock ‘n’ roll’s stodgy past."

Doug Paisley

Starter Home

Folk/Country

Amanda Wicks

For a decade, Canadian singer/songwriter Doug Paisley has turned quiet, specific moments into inquiries on life’s larger struggles. On his 2010 breakthrough, Constant Companion, Paisley used the inevitability of endings to explore understanding oneself, the only possible “constant companion.” For 2014’s Strong Feelings, he mulled death and its uneasy relationship with life, or how their juxtaposition ripples into every wave of existence. And now, on his fourth album, Starter Home, Paisley details the chasm that separates what poet Seamus Heaney described as “getting started” and “getting started again.” These songs examine how the person you are never truly aligns with the person you want to be, especially when you stumble upon a sticking point that’s hard to move past. Paisley knows the subject well: As he told Exclaim, Starter Home required that he begin again (and again), ultimately recording at four different studios, including those of Cowboy Junkies’ Peter Moore and acclaimed folk musician Ken Whiteley. The results grace his earlier alt-country sound with softer folk touches, putting him in the realm of Kris Kristofferson or even Canadian predecessor Gordon Lightfoot. Paisley understands that personal lyrics don’t have to read like a diary excerpt—that specificity creates universality. At the start, for instance, he details a young couple’s starter home. “Bring your dreams and your family,” he sings like the real estate sign out front reads, signaling the potential of this simple, scrappy beginning. “Maybe in time we should’ve moved on,” he offers during the closing verse, his voice dimming with quiet reflection. Michael Eckert’s pedal steel adds a wistful glow to the moment’s frayed introspection. Paisley uses the language of physical space to communicate interior spaces. He stitches needlework scenes that sit uneasily in embroidery hoops—quaint on the surface, a shadow cast across the sides. Despite the jaunty country inflection of “Mister Wrong,” his voice darkens ever so slightly, his cadence quickening as he enumerates the ways he’s going to disappoint. “A home and family, vacation by the sea/On the Christmas tree, I’ll only let you down,” he sings, his voice gasping during “I’ll,” the confession giving him pause. Make enough promises, and more than a few will go broken. The sentiment arises, too, on “Waiting,” where Paisley resigns himself to a similar fate. Expectations can become chokeholds, so “This Loneliness” looks at them askance, as if the past were a mirror Paisley must confront reluctantly. Jennifer Castle adds stark backing harmonies here, her voice rounding out his. But there’s a note of hesitation in the way Paisley sings, an expression of his misgivings about what should have been. In the poem “I Hear the Traffic,” Leonard Cohen writes, “Another day/To rise and fall/Make a buck/Start and stall.” He lets the final word hang, something to be overcome. If there’s a sense that stalling is fatalistic, Paisley overcomes it. “I look out my window, there’s so many ways it can go/There’s no way to know,” he sings at one point, repeating that last bit again and again, turning it over until it becomes a mantra with its own rhythm. Ultimately, that’s what stalling reveals, Paisley suggests: There’s no rhythm, no living, without the pause.

Artist: Doug Paisley, Album: Starter Home, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "For a decade, Canadian singer/songwriter Doug Paisley has turned quiet, specific moments into inquiries on life’s larger struggles. On his 2010 breakthrough, Constant Companion, Paisley used the inevitability of endings to explore understanding oneself, the only possible “constant companion.” For 2014’s Strong Feelings, he mulled death and its uneasy relationship with life, or how their juxtaposition ripples into every wave of existence. And now, on his fourth album, Starter Home, Paisley details the chasm that separates what poet Seamus Heaney described as “getting started” and “getting started again.” These songs examine how the person you are never truly aligns with the person you want to be, especially when you stumble upon a sticking point that’s hard to move past. Paisley knows the subject well: As he told Exclaim, Starter Home required that he begin again (and again), ultimately recording at four different studios, including those of Cowboy Junkies’ Peter Moore and acclaimed folk musician Ken Whiteley. The results grace his earlier alt-country sound with softer folk touches, putting him in the realm of Kris Kristofferson or even Canadian predecessor Gordon Lightfoot. Paisley understands that personal lyrics don’t have to read like a diary excerpt—that specificity creates universality. At the start, for instance, he details a young couple’s starter home. “Bring your dreams and your family,” he sings like the real estate sign out front reads, signaling the potential of this simple, scrappy beginning. “Maybe in time we should’ve moved on,” he offers during the closing verse, his voice dimming with quiet reflection. Michael Eckert’s pedal steel adds a wistful glow to the moment’s frayed introspection. Paisley uses the language of physical space to communicate interior spaces. He stitches needlework scenes that sit uneasily in embroidery hoops—quaint on the surface, a shadow cast across the sides. Despite the jaunty country inflection of “Mister Wrong,” his voice darkens ever so slightly, his cadence quickening as he enumerates the ways he’s going to disappoint. “A home and family, vacation by the sea/On the Christmas tree, I’ll only let you down,” he sings, his voice gasping during “I’ll,” the confession giving him pause. Make enough promises, and more than a few will go broken. The sentiment arises, too, on “Waiting,” where Paisley resigns himself to a similar fate. Expectations can become chokeholds, so “This Loneliness” looks at them askance, as if the past were a mirror Paisley must confront reluctantly. Jennifer Castle adds stark backing harmonies here, her voice rounding out his. But there’s a note of hesitation in the way Paisley sings, an expression of his misgivings about what should have been. In the poem “I Hear the Traffic,” Leonard Cohen writes, “Another day/To rise and fall/Make a buck/Start and stall.” He lets the final word hang, something to be overcome. If there’s a sense that stalling is fatalistic, Paisley overcomes it. “I look out my window, there’s so many ways it can go/There’s no way to know,” he sings at one point, repeating that last bit again and again, turning it over until it becomes a mantra with its own rhythm. Ultimately, that’s what stalling reveals, Paisley suggests: There’s no rhythm, no living, without the pause."

Various Artists

From Dubplate to Download: The Best of Greensleeves Records

Jess Harvell

How easy it must be for Greensleeves Records at this point? Compiling a greatest hits collection must be something to squeeze in on a lazy Wednesday between lunch and a maybe a sweet post-lunch nap. An institution with vaults that comprise hundreds of records from the past 30 years, Greensleeves might not be as immediately beloved as Studio One or Trojan, or have the current cool kid cache Blood and Fire or Wackies, but its commercial dominance is continually assured thanks to its unerring A&R ear and three decades' worth of Jamaica's biggest stars and their valuable back catalogs. And as From Dubplate to Download proves, the label's artistic dominance is inextricably tied up with its commercial acumen, presenting 30 sterling hits stretching from the fading cries and laments of the last days of roots reggae to the deviousness of the latest dancehall tune from the yard. Even conceiving a one-stop introduction to Greensleeves would give anyone a migraine. Instead this is something even better: A greatest hits collection/label sampler without a single wack track and more than its share of entrants into the dancehall hall of fame. (Though there are at least a few problematic tunes, which we'll get to.) And if that seems improbable to you, or overstated, well, you'll just have to play it to be sure. The tracklist is a post-reggae marquee that's barely wide enough to hold all the lights: Beenie Man, Shabba Ranks, Gregory Issacs, Shaggy, Wayne Smith, Mr. Vegas, Yellowman. Listen start-to-finish and you find yourself inadvertently traversing many historical divides, from the bubbling analogue skank of the Wailing Souls' "War" to the bizarrely squished digital drum machine on Vybz Kartel's "Tekk", from Dr. Alimantado's quest for religious unity to Ward 21 and Bounty Killer's thrill-seeking lawlessness. But the history lesson is almost incidental, a happy didactic byproduct of the record's organizing principle. "Learning value" be damned, From Dubplate is at heart a pure pop pleasure product to be replayed in full again and again, by turns robust and dashed off, rootsically warm and computer chilled, violent and mournful, hilarious and dead serious, sexy and secular, religious and righteous. It's a string of contradictions laid chronologically end to end and designed to play off dancehall's schizo style by placing a sweetly crooned love song that practically predicts the kind of sugary singjay territory Akon has made his own (Wayne Wonder's "No Letting Go") right next to a song that advocates bloody retribution as if it was a new dance craze (Elephant Man's "Log On"). Tippa Irie sounds like he should be sporting a white top hat and tails on the ersatz Broadway shuffle of "Hello Darling", a cheeky courting song that comes just before J.C. Lodge's panting and sweating lover's rock ode to the joys of phone sex. And then Gregory Issacs pleads his innocence to the Kingston police over the exact same riddim on the very next track. Needless to say I'd need another 600 words just to catalog the various shifts in vocal pitch, timbre, grain, and groove, from blackhearted and gruff to eyelash kiss gentle. Despite the flip-flop between tempo and mood and all the contradictory talk of love of Jah and love of guns and sexual love and love of sweet smoke, the compilation works better as an end-to-end listening experience (and a great party mix for lazy selectors) than most other highly touted pop records I've heard this year. Points inevitably have to be deducted for including trash like "Log On", a call to anti-homosexual violence only made more indefensible by its great groove. (Just because homophobic tripe was a hit doesn't mean it needs to be enshrined.) But to overlook the collection as a whole because it contains occasionally offensive sentiments would be throwing the party out with the ignorant bathwater. This is one of the year's best unmixed corporate mixtapes, and those who claim the well-worn choices make the record a snore are being boorish. If you can deny the power of tunes like "Under Mi Sleng Teng", "Oh Carolina", and "Who Am I", even on the hundreth listen, I and I certainly won't be letting your non-irie ass DJ at my house any time soon.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: From Dubplate to Download: The Best of Greensleeves Records, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "How easy it must be for Greensleeves Records at this point? Compiling a greatest hits collection must be something to squeeze in on a lazy Wednesday between lunch and a maybe a sweet post-lunch nap. An institution with vaults that comprise hundreds of records from the past 30 years, Greensleeves might not be as immediately beloved as Studio One or Trojan, or have the current cool kid cache Blood and Fire or Wackies, but its commercial dominance is continually assured thanks to its unerring A&R ear and three decades' worth of Jamaica's biggest stars and their valuable back catalogs. And as From Dubplate to Download proves, the label's artistic dominance is inextricably tied up with its commercial acumen, presenting 30 sterling hits stretching from the fading cries and laments of the last days of roots reggae to the deviousness of the latest dancehall tune from the yard. Even conceiving a one-stop introduction to Greensleeves would give anyone a migraine. Instead this is something even better: A greatest hits collection/label sampler without a single wack track and more than its share of entrants into the dancehall hall of fame. (Though there are at least a few problematic tunes, which we'll get to.) And if that seems improbable to you, or overstated, well, you'll just have to play it to be sure. The tracklist is a post-reggae marquee that's barely wide enough to hold all the lights: Beenie Man, Shabba Ranks, Gregory Issacs, Shaggy, Wayne Smith, Mr. Vegas, Yellowman. Listen start-to-finish and you find yourself inadvertently traversing many historical divides, from the bubbling analogue skank of the Wailing Souls' "War" to the bizarrely squished digital drum machine on Vybz Kartel's "Tekk", from Dr. Alimantado's quest for religious unity to Ward 21 and Bounty Killer's thrill-seeking lawlessness. But the history lesson is almost incidental, a happy didactic byproduct of the record's organizing principle. "Learning value" be damned, From Dubplate is at heart a pure pop pleasure product to be replayed in full again and again, by turns robust and dashed off, rootsically warm and computer chilled, violent and mournful, hilarious and dead serious, sexy and secular, religious and righteous. It's a string of contradictions laid chronologically end to end and designed to play off dancehall's schizo style by placing a sweetly crooned love song that practically predicts the kind of sugary singjay territory Akon has made his own (Wayne Wonder's "No Letting Go") right next to a song that advocates bloody retribution as if it was a new dance craze (Elephant Man's "Log On"). Tippa Irie sounds like he should be sporting a white top hat and tails on the ersatz Broadway shuffle of "Hello Darling", a cheeky courting song that comes just before J.C. Lodge's panting and sweating lover's rock ode to the joys of phone sex. And then Gregory Issacs pleads his innocence to the Kingston police over the exact same riddim on the very next track. Needless to say I'd need another 600 words just to catalog the various shifts in vocal pitch, timbre, grain, and groove, from blackhearted and gruff to eyelash kiss gentle. Despite the flip-flop between tempo and mood and all the contradictory talk of love of Jah and love of guns and sexual love and love of sweet smoke, the compilation works better as an end-to-end listening experience (and a great party mix for lazy selectors) than most other highly touted pop records I've heard this year. Points inevitably have to be deducted for including trash like "Log On", a call to anti-homosexual violence only made more indefensible by its great groove. (Just because homophobic tripe was a hit doesn't mean it needs to be enshrined.) But to overlook the collection as a whole because it contains occasionally offensive sentiments would be throwing the party out with the ignorant bathwater. This is one of the year's best unmixed corporate mixtapes, and those who claim the well-worn choices make the record a snore are being boorish. If you can deny the power of tunes like "Under Mi Sleng Teng", "Oh Carolina", and "Who Am I", even on the hundreth listen, I and I certainly won't be letting your non-irie ass DJ at my house any time soon."

Boots

WinterSpringSummerFall

Pop/R&B

Kyle Kramer

If you're an artist making genre-bending R&B and mysteriously obscuring your identity on the Internet in 2014, you have to work hard to stand out from the crowd. But if you, say, had a hand in one of the best pop albums in years, by the biggest pop star in the world, that immediately set sales records after it arrived on iTunes as a surprise release, you just might have a shot—and that's where Beyoncé collaborator and producer/singer/rapper Boots finds himself with his debut release, WinterSpringSummerFall. As Boots, whose real name is Jordan Asher, showed on signature Beyoncé cuts like “Haunted” and “Blue”, he's adept at building tense, pretty atmospheres with his sweeping production. Most of WinterSpringSummerFall finds him working in the same realm, seamlessly moving through clattering, dance-oriented drum patterns, fuzzy synths, burbling bursts of electronic noise, and subdued piano ballads. While this scuzzy, genre-bending sonic palette doesn't deviate from what's come out of left-of-center R&B in the last couple years, Asher's take is just flat-out better than much of the comparable stuff out there, boasting more technical command and, particularly, a more thorough knowledge of electronic music. Throughout much of the album, particularly in places like the romantic, dreamy “EST” and the sad, delicate “Atom”, WinterSpringSummerFall is unequivocally pleasant and pretty, with enough of a searing edge and emotional point of view to avoid falling into generic anonymity. Asher's voice is capable, if not exactly distinctive. Jordan Asher has explained that the album is his chance to share his story with those who were aware of his involvement in Beyoncé and wanted to know more. It goes something like this: Asher bounced around between bands and states of homelessness in Miami before he eventually moved to New York and signed a deal with Roc Nation. Career backstory aside, Asher alludes to incidents on the record that have serious resonance: his best friend drowned, and he also watched Joshua Basin, a 20-year-old who was shoved onto Brooklyn's Bedford Avenue subway station tracks and hit by a train in 2012, die in his arms. Unfortunately, apart from these brief moments, the tales told on WinterSpringSummerFall are kind of boring, and as a result the album frequently works best where Boots is saying the least. Asher's songwriting often lacks inspiration, particularly when it leans on his wholly uncharismatic rapping. There's a common (and, in some cases, sexist) assumption that great pop music is mostly the work of the producers behind it, but, WinterSpringSummerFall suggests that, despite Asher's obvious talent and good instincts, he needs collaboration to bring out his best work  (as contributions from Kelela and Jeremih here show). As he mentioned in his interview with Pitchfork, Beyoncé's input strongly shaped and reshaped the way he produced certain songs on her album, and the lack of guidance is clearly felt on WinterSpringSummerFall's missteps. Asher has the tendency to hamstring his songs with clumsy raps; his delivery has the kind of slick patter and heavy-lidded, personality-bereft tone that's common for artists who are primarily singers. Since he doesn't provide much of his own personality to latch onto, it's hard to identify with his ranting about girls who only want to meet him so they can meet Jay Z, or meatheads in the Meatpacking District. Sometimes, he's sanctimonious (“That's 32 [bars] and I didn't even mention one motherfucking car”); elsewhere, his boasts sound hollow, especially since his good fortune is obviously not due to his talents as a rapper. The reasons for WinterSpringSummerFall's lack of substance go beyond Asher's rapping skills: “Ride Ride Ride” ride, ride, rides the same pattern for too long, an embrace of repetition that might work if a vocalist more dynamic than Asher were delivering it. (It doesn't help matters, either, that his contributions to Beyoncé linger over this project, beyond the titular singer's enjoyable, if minor, contribution to album closer “Dreams”.) That said, Asher isn't entirely adrift on his own. “My Heart Is A Stone Today (Unharmed)” coasts on a lovely falsetto and builds with a propulsive, insistent beat and scattered dance rhythms before breaking apart into a stunning piano ballad, and the simple house music nod “Fade Away” is the kind of whirlwind performance that could captivate an entire field of festival-goers. But most of WinterSpringSummerFall doesn't connect quite so obviously, and it ultimately feels like what it definitely is: a talented producer's unwieldy, overly long solo project.

Artist: Boots, Album: WinterSpringSummerFall, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "If you're an artist making genre-bending R&B and mysteriously obscuring your identity on the Internet in 2014, you have to work hard to stand out from the crowd. But if you, say, had a hand in one of the best pop albums in years, by the biggest pop star in the world, that immediately set sales records after it arrived on iTunes as a surprise release, you just might have a shot—and that's where Beyoncé collaborator and producer/singer/rapper Boots finds himself with his debut release, WinterSpringSummerFall. As Boots, whose real name is Jordan Asher, showed on signature Beyoncé cuts like “Haunted” and “Blue”, he's adept at building tense, pretty atmospheres with his sweeping production. Most of WinterSpringSummerFall finds him working in the same realm, seamlessly moving through clattering, dance-oriented drum patterns, fuzzy synths, burbling bursts of electronic noise, and subdued piano ballads. While this scuzzy, genre-bending sonic palette doesn't deviate from what's come out of left-of-center R&B in the last couple years, Asher's take is just flat-out better than much of the comparable stuff out there, boasting more technical command and, particularly, a more thorough knowledge of electronic music. Throughout much of the album, particularly in places like the romantic, dreamy “EST” and the sad, delicate “Atom”, WinterSpringSummerFall is unequivocally pleasant and pretty, with enough of a searing edge and emotional point of view to avoid falling into generic anonymity. Asher's voice is capable, if not exactly distinctive. Jordan Asher has explained that the album is his chance to share his story with those who were aware of his involvement in Beyoncé and wanted to know more. It goes something like this: Asher bounced around between bands and states of homelessness in Miami before he eventually moved to New York and signed a deal with Roc Nation. Career backstory aside, Asher alludes to incidents on the record that have serious resonance: his best friend drowned, and he also watched Joshua Basin, a 20-year-old who was shoved onto Brooklyn's Bedford Avenue subway station tracks and hit by a train in 2012, die in his arms. Unfortunately, apart from these brief moments, the tales told on WinterSpringSummerFall are kind of boring, and as a result the album frequently works best where Boots is saying the least. Asher's songwriting often lacks inspiration, particularly when it leans on his wholly uncharismatic rapping. There's a common (and, in some cases, sexist) assumption that great pop music is mostly the work of the producers behind it, but, WinterSpringSummerFall suggests that, despite Asher's obvious talent and good instincts, he needs collaboration to bring out his best work  (as contributions from Kelela and Jeremih here show). As he mentioned in his interview with Pitchfork, Beyoncé's input strongly shaped and reshaped the way he produced certain songs on her album, and the lack of guidance is clearly felt on WinterSpringSummerFall's missteps. Asher has the tendency to hamstring his songs with clumsy raps; his delivery has the kind of slick patter and heavy-lidded, personality-bereft tone that's common for artists who are primarily singers. Since he doesn't provide much of his own personality to latch onto, it's hard to identify with his ranting about girls who only want to meet him so they can meet Jay Z, or meatheads in the Meatpacking District. Sometimes, he's sanctimonious (“That's 32 [bars] and I didn't even mention one motherfucking car”); elsewhere, his boasts sound hollow, especially since his good fortune is obviously not due to his talents as a rapper. The reasons for WinterSpringSummerFall's lack of substance go beyond Asher's rapping skills: “Ride Ride Ride” ride, ride, rides the same pattern for too long, an embrace of repetition that might work if a vocalist more dynamic than Asher were delivering it. (It doesn't help matters, either, that his contributions to Beyoncé linger over this project, beyond the titular singer's enjoyable, if minor, contribution to album closer “Dreams”.) That said, Asher isn't entirely adrift on his own. “My Heart Is A Stone Today (Unharmed)” coasts on a lovely falsetto and builds with a propulsive, insistent beat and scattered dance rhythms before breaking apart into a stunning piano ballad, and the simple house music nod “Fade Away” is the kind of whirlwind performance that could captivate an entire field of festival-goers. But most of WinterSpringSummerFall doesn't connect quite so obviously, and it ultimately feels like what it definitely is: a talented producer's unwieldy, overly long solo project."

Sepalcure

Make You EP

Electronic

Larry Fitzmaurice

Dance producers have a reputation for taking themselves very seriously (case in point) but Sepalcure are different. When I interviewed Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma previous to the release of 2011's self-titled debut, the duo knocked back cocktails in the mid-afternoon while riffing on embarrassing screen names, potentially pornographic horror films, and, yes, the dance community's staunch seriousness. "You got to have fun up there, man," Sharma sighed after Stewart mentioned a negative review the pair received for "trying too hard" while opening for Jamie xx. Indeed, while their level of on-stage enthusiasm may not be at the level of, say, Girl Talk, Sepalcure's sense of self-presentation differs from many in the bass music scene they're associated with, as they mouth along energetically to their own songs and frequently address the crowd (which very few DJs, for better or worse, care to do). Just before this past New Year's Eve, they ditched their originals-heavy set at a Manhattan gig for a solid hour-plus of euphoric house music; a year previous, the energy (and potential for clumsiness) at a performance at Brooklyn's Cameo Gallery was at a level that, for a minute, their sound system shut down, prompting some sheepishly enthusiastic apologies from the duo before things whirred back to life. Sepalcure do very well with nightlife crowds of varying pretension, but their debut album's greatest selling point was how well it translated to the home-listening set. Sharma and Stewart inhaled a few different sub-genres of dance and expelled a romantic sound that approached pop (for bass music, anyway), fulfilling the promise of their early singles to create music that fused hard-hitting rhythms with pastoral touches and pink-cloud ambience. Their aesthetic had arrived confidently and fully realized, the work of two decade-plus veterans who, individually, finally found a distinctive sound by joining forces. Last year, Sepalcure released a single for album cut "Eternally Yrs" that featured a new song along with a smattering of remixes, but Stewart and Sharma have suggested that, since the duo is separated by an ocean (Sharma's New York-based, while the somewhat nomadic Stewart currently lives in Berlin), there's no guarantee of the project becoming a long-term fixation. New EP Make You, then, is a welcome treat in existence alone, suggesting that, despite Stewart's relatively high profile due to work with Harlem pop-rapper Azealia Banks as well as his recent signing to electronic mainstay Ninja Tune, Sepalcure are still very much alive. In addition to re-asserting their presence, Make You confirms that, at this point, Sepalcure aren't as concerned with growth as they are with refinement. The title track is a summation of what they do very well, as deep, belly-rumbling bass, a fragile percussive backbone, and evocative vocal samples coalesce perfectly before a fingerpicked acoustic guitar figure drifts into the mix. "The Water's Fine" elaborates on Sepalcure's slight fascination with juke's hypnotic stutter, as woozy synths and a pile of tangled vocal cries are washed in static and hung out to dry. "The Water's Fine" also stands as one of a few examples on Make You where Sharma and Stewart subtly expand their sound-- not in style, but in scope, as they allow plenty of space between the track's elements and make for one of their most emptily dense works yet. If "The Water's Fine" represents Sepalcure dialing back their soft-focus tendencies in favor of something more sparse and direct, then "He Said No" finds the duo reaching total sensory overload, with dreamy keyboards and a twinkling sense of optimism resembling a hi-fi, bass-friendly version of Balam Acab (whose "See Birds" stood as the odd man out on Sepalcure's otherwise club-ready XLR8R mix from 2010). "Rumours" is something else entirely, as a whiplashed vocal sample gets chopped up and buried by atmospheric pressure before bubbling up to the surface again. Then, things change halfway through the tune, as the structure takes on a beguiling new shape with dark, piping tones and a percolating rhythmic bed swathed in ambient hiss. By the time a few synths and manipulated vocal samples meander in, "Rumours" has completely changed, highlighting Sepalcure's undervalued ability to take listeners on a journey, regardless of whether they're on their feet. Similar to Sepalcure, Make You closes with contemplative ambience-- the fingerpicked guitar and dotted horns of "DMD"-- and although the EP's cohesive potency is can't match its predecessor's, the attempt to fashion a narrative underlines the duo's attention to detail. (One wishes that Stewart's Machinedrum, with its steady stream of ephemera, possessed this much quality control.) Sepalcure are still intent on having a good time, but as Make You's elegant expansiveness suggests, they're dead serious, too.

Artist: Sepalcure, Album: Make You EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Dance producers have a reputation for taking themselves very seriously (case in point) but Sepalcure are different. When I interviewed Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma previous to the release of 2011's self-titled debut, the duo knocked back cocktails in the mid-afternoon while riffing on embarrassing screen names, potentially pornographic horror films, and, yes, the dance community's staunch seriousness. "You got to have fun up there, man," Sharma sighed after Stewart mentioned a negative review the pair received for "trying too hard" while opening for Jamie xx. Indeed, while their level of on-stage enthusiasm may not be at the level of, say, Girl Talk, Sepalcure's sense of self-presentation differs from many in the bass music scene they're associated with, as they mouth along energetically to their own songs and frequently address the crowd (which very few DJs, for better or worse, care to do). Just before this past New Year's Eve, they ditched their originals-heavy set at a Manhattan gig for a solid hour-plus of euphoric house music; a year previous, the energy (and potential for clumsiness) at a performance at Brooklyn's Cameo Gallery was at a level that, for a minute, their sound system shut down, prompting some sheepishly enthusiastic apologies from the duo before things whirred back to life. Sepalcure do very well with nightlife crowds of varying pretension, but their debut album's greatest selling point was how well it translated to the home-listening set. Sharma and Stewart inhaled a few different sub-genres of dance and expelled a romantic sound that approached pop (for bass music, anyway), fulfilling the promise of their early singles to create music that fused hard-hitting rhythms with pastoral touches and pink-cloud ambience. Their aesthetic had arrived confidently and fully realized, the work of two decade-plus veterans who, individually, finally found a distinctive sound by joining forces. Last year, Sepalcure released a single for album cut "Eternally Yrs" that featured a new song along with a smattering of remixes, but Stewart and Sharma have suggested that, since the duo is separated by an ocean (Sharma's New York-based, while the somewhat nomadic Stewart currently lives in Berlin), there's no guarantee of the project becoming a long-term fixation. New EP Make You, then, is a welcome treat in existence alone, suggesting that, despite Stewart's relatively high profile due to work with Harlem pop-rapper Azealia Banks as well as his recent signing to electronic mainstay Ninja Tune, Sepalcure are still very much alive. In addition to re-asserting their presence, Make You confirms that, at this point, Sepalcure aren't as concerned with growth as they are with refinement. The title track is a summation of what they do very well, as deep, belly-rumbling bass, a fragile percussive backbone, and evocative vocal samples coalesce perfectly before a fingerpicked acoustic guitar figure drifts into the mix. "The Water's Fine" elaborates on Sepalcure's slight fascination with juke's hypnotic stutter, as woozy synths and a pile of tangled vocal cries are washed in static and hung out to dry. "The Water's Fine" also stands as one of a few examples on Make You where Sharma and Stewart subtly expand their sound-- not in style, but in scope, as they allow plenty of space between the track's elements and make for one of their most emptily dense works yet. If "The Water's Fine" represents Sepalcure dialing back their soft-focus tendencies in favor of something more sparse and direct, then "He Said No" finds the duo reaching total sensory overload, with dreamy keyboards and a twinkling sense of optimism resembling a hi-fi, bass-friendly version of Balam Acab (whose "See Birds" stood as the odd man out on Sepalcure's otherwise club-ready XLR8R mix from 2010). "Rumours" is something else entirely, as a whiplashed vocal sample gets chopped up and buried by atmospheric pressure before bubbling up to the surface again. Then, things change halfway through the tune, as the structure takes on a beguiling new shape with dark, piping tones and a percolating rhythmic bed swathed in ambient hiss. By the time a few synths and manipulated vocal samples meander in, "Rumours" has completely changed, highlighting Sepalcure's undervalued ability to take listeners on a journey, regardless of whether they're on their feet. Similar to Sepalcure, Make You closes with contemplative ambience-- the fingerpicked guitar and dotted horns of "DMD"-- and although the EP's cohesive potency is can't match its predecessor's, the attempt to fashion a narrative underlines the duo's attention to detail. (One wishes that Stewart's Machinedrum, with its steady stream of ephemera, possessed this much quality control.) Sepalcure are still intent on having a good time, but as Make You's elegant expansiveness suggests, they're dead serious, too."

Mitski

Bury Me at Makeout Creek

Rock

Ian Cohen

Yo La Tengo. Fall Out Boy. And, upon the release of her third album Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Mitski. These three are just about the only rock musicians to successfully reference “The Simpsons” (we’ll leave out metalcore bros Evergreen Terrace for a number of reasons)—a small group considering the show's incalculable influence on people who listen to indie rock. Here’s some context for this particular nod: the cosmic punching bag Milhouse undergoes a fake faith healing ritual that he believes has restored his vision. Caught up in a rapturous song and dance number, he is promised a rare romantic tryst at the apocryphal Makeout Creek. He then gets hit by a truck. With his last bit of breath, he says this album title. That more or less mirrors the narrative arc here. Opener "Texas Reznikoff" establishes contemporary comparisons—Mitski’s broad, tremulous vocals and sly humor recall Angel Olsen, while the equal split between unencumbered acoustic pining and pummeling, mid-fi indie rock respectively aligns her with labelmates Frankie Cosmos and LVL UP. And it lays out a compact scene of domestic bliss, littered with specificities—a lover who wears socks in bed, reads Objectivist poetry, and serves as the breeze in her Austin nights. The final acknowledgement of romantic contentment occurs less than three minutes into Bury Me at Makeout Creek and by its bitter end, the only thing that can bring Mitski comfort is the thought of dying with a clean apartment ("They'll think of me kindly/ When they come for my things"). The way an outsider might view her narrator is duly noted just by the loaded title of "Townie"—this is someone who’s stuck around far too long after the party ended and almost certainly has a distorted perspective as to whether it was any fun to begin with. “Townie” previews a horrible night out with all the protraction and morbid glee of a suicide pact. Her images are startlingly violent—she wants a love that falls like a body from the balcony, she’s holding her breath with a baseball bat. Guzzling a toxic Pinkerton cocktail of redlining distortion, white-hot self pity, and sing-along hooks, Mitski shouts, "I’m not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be...I'm gonna be what my body wants me to be," a call for freedom that's galvanizing from a teenage perspective, but increasingly sad as songs like "I Don't Smoke" and "Drunk Walk Home" lay out the terrible life plan the body of this self-described 25 year-old "tall child" has for her. Though not necessarily nostalgia, the sound of Bury Me at Makeout Creek is inventive and resourceful in a '90s-indie way. The choruses here soar like power pop, but are subdued by tempo and fidelity, while cheap drum machines are deployed as much for their tone as their rhythm. And even when Bury Me has full band arrangements, everything calls attention to the narrator's loneliness—awkwardly thumbed basslines, slapdash drumming, a mocking chorale on "Carry Me Out", organ drones that could pass for someone nodding off on the keys. But anything that gives you the sense of amateurism or self-defeat has intent and purpose. As tempting as it is to praise Bury Me at Makeout Creek by trying to quantify its intangibles—charm, relatability—the craft here is obvious, as is the accruing confidence of someone who’s developed a compelling voice in obscurity. Mitski can lay on the emo melodrama ("One word from you/ And I would jump off of this ledge I'm on, baby") just enough so things aren’t too real and mundane, and while these songs are first-person and personal, they're meant for an audience. It’s fitting to see a mutual respect between herself and Joyce Manor, whose Never Hungover Again is a similarly fantastic record of pop gems about choosing self-pity over feeling nothing at all and finding a kind of pleasurable agency in it. And as a result, Mitski Miyawaki is starting to gain a bit of separation from her band; Bury Me at Makeout Creek still sounds like a breakthrough even if nothing’s coming up Mitski in these songs.

Artist: Mitski, Album: Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Yo La Tengo. Fall Out Boy. And, upon the release of her third album Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Mitski. These three are just about the only rock musicians to successfully reference “The Simpsons” (we’ll leave out metalcore bros Evergreen Terrace for a number of reasons)—a small group considering the show's incalculable influence on people who listen to indie rock. Here’s some context for this particular nod: the cosmic punching bag Milhouse undergoes a fake faith healing ritual that he believes has restored his vision. Caught up in a rapturous song and dance number, he is promised a rare romantic tryst at the apocryphal Makeout Creek. He then gets hit by a truck. With his last bit of breath, he says this album title. That more or less mirrors the narrative arc here. Opener "Texas Reznikoff" establishes contemporary comparisons—Mitski’s broad, tremulous vocals and sly humor recall Angel Olsen, while the equal split between unencumbered acoustic pining and pummeling, mid-fi indie rock respectively aligns her with labelmates Frankie Cosmos and LVL UP. And it lays out a compact scene of domestic bliss, littered with specificities—a lover who wears socks in bed, reads Objectivist poetry, and serves as the breeze in her Austin nights. The final acknowledgement of romantic contentment occurs less than three minutes into Bury Me at Makeout Creek and by its bitter end, the only thing that can bring Mitski comfort is the thought of dying with a clean apartment ("They'll think of me kindly/ When they come for my things"). The way an outsider might view her narrator is duly noted just by the loaded title of "Townie"—this is someone who’s stuck around far too long after the party ended and almost certainly has a distorted perspective as to whether it was any fun to begin with. “Townie” previews a horrible night out with all the protraction and morbid glee of a suicide pact. Her images are startlingly violent—she wants a love that falls like a body from the balcony, she’s holding her breath with a baseball bat. Guzzling a toxic Pinkerton cocktail of redlining distortion, white-hot self pity, and sing-along hooks, Mitski shouts, "I’m not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be...I'm gonna be what my body wants me to be," a call for freedom that's galvanizing from a teenage perspective, but increasingly sad as songs like "I Don't Smoke" and "Drunk Walk Home" lay out the terrible life plan the body of this self-described 25 year-old "tall child" has for her. Though not necessarily nostalgia, the sound of Bury Me at Makeout Creek is inventive and resourceful in a '90s-indie way. The choruses here soar like power pop, but are subdued by tempo and fidelity, while cheap drum machines are deployed as much for their tone as their rhythm. And even when Bury Me has full band arrangements, everything calls attention to the narrator's loneliness—awkwardly thumbed basslines, slapdash drumming, a mocking chorale on "Carry Me Out", organ drones that could pass for someone nodding off on the keys. But anything that gives you the sense of amateurism or self-defeat has intent and purpose. As tempting as it is to praise Bury Me at Makeout Creek by trying to quantify its intangibles—charm, relatability—the craft here is obvious, as is the accruing confidence of someone who’s developed a compelling voice in obscurity. Mitski can lay on the emo melodrama ("One word from you/ And I would jump off of this ledge I'm on, baby") just enough so things aren’t too real and mundane, and while these songs are first-person and personal, they're meant for an audience. It’s fitting to see a mutual respect between herself and Joyce Manor, whose Never Hungover Again is a similarly fantastic record of pop gems about choosing self-pity over feeling nothing at all and finding a kind of pleasurable agency in it. And as a result, Mitski Miyawaki is starting to gain a bit of separation from her band; Bury Me at Makeout Creek still sounds like a breakthrough even if nothing’s coming up Mitski in these songs."

Steve Mason, Dennis Bovell

Ghosts Outside

Rock,Global

Andrew Gaerig

Steve Mason is always in a state of transition. The Beta Band, destined for both greatness and record sales, found label trouble and wrote a white-boy rap so terrible that people remember it. They were constantly about to peak until they were obviously releasing post-peak albums. When Mason's post-Beta King Biscuit Time work (and his album as Black Affair) failed to catch on, he disappeared and fans worried for his mental health. He was rumored to be in debt. His career, his life even, began to resemble his voice: wispy, elusive, sad. Last year's Boys Outside, Mason's first album under his own name, was the first Mason product to suggest stability. A blanched, graceful folk-rock album, it was placid like a heart trauma victim begged by his family to settle down for the good of his health. I mean this musically: Mason's track record on his most spastic work is spotty. He returns to this material on Ghosts Outside, working with UK-based dub veteran Dennis Bovell (whose previous production credits include Mason-friendly touchstones like the Pop Group and Orange Juice) to re-work Boys Outside's 10 tracks into classically echoing dub pop. Anyone waiting for a playful, Mason-esque twist can stop. Ghosts Outside is a sober, catholic dub remix album: one new mix for each track, re-branded with a "dub" title (e.g. "Hound on My Heel" is now "Dub on My Heel", "Am I Just a Man" now "Dub I Just a Man"). Mason was one of the late-90s pop chameleons, so he's no stranger to Reggae and dub music (a personal favorite), but Ghosts Outside represents the first time he has lain himself prostrate before a genre. Possibly in deference to Bovell, possibly because Ghosts Outside is an exercise as much as it is an album, Mason has no interest in coloring outside the lines. Still, there are gains to be had. Dub is the rare technique that feels both transgressive and cliché, and it fills both roles here. Bovell scatters Mason's vocals, which untether his songs in interesting ways. "The Letter", so deliberate in Mason's hands, stalks aimlessly under Bovell, its chorus suddenly ascendant. Bovell's treatments cause the song structures to dissipate but stratify the productions, providing layers through which Mason's voice filters (a crucial function of the best Beta Band compositions). The robust horn charts of "Lost and Dub" and especially "Yesterday Dub" swallow Mason whole and provide a rigid counterpoint to his gummy croon. While I wish Mason and Bovell had found a way to do this without resorting to the trope-iest of dub tropes-- chirpy guitar chords, reflective drums, pliable basslines-- the effect is, at times, enlightening. The Mason Fan Club (we meet Wednesdays at 7; dues are collected quarterly) will want this. It is novel, in its way: Mason, who once seemed capable of inventing a new genre with each track, reverently bowed before dub reggae, a staple fetish of Western European pop (see also: Serge Gainsbourg, the Clash, the Police). You're forgiven if you find the idea underwhelming, but it wasn't so long ago that the prospect of any new Mason material seemed doubtful. He's returned, calmer, still exploring, but doing so carefully.

Artist: Steve Mason, Dennis Bovell, Album: Ghosts Outside, Genre: Rock,Global, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Steve Mason is always in a state of transition. The Beta Band, destined for both greatness and record sales, found label trouble and wrote a white-boy rap so terrible that people remember it. They were constantly about to peak until they were obviously releasing post-peak albums. When Mason's post-Beta King Biscuit Time work (and his album as Black Affair) failed to catch on, he disappeared and fans worried for his mental health. He was rumored to be in debt. His career, his life even, began to resemble his voice: wispy, elusive, sad. Last year's Boys Outside, Mason's first album under his own name, was the first Mason product to suggest stability. A blanched, graceful folk-rock album, it was placid like a heart trauma victim begged by his family to settle down for the good of his health. I mean this musically: Mason's track record on his most spastic work is spotty. He returns to this material on Ghosts Outside, working with UK-based dub veteran Dennis Bovell (whose previous production credits include Mason-friendly touchstones like the Pop Group and Orange Juice) to re-work Boys Outside's 10 tracks into classically echoing dub pop. Anyone waiting for a playful, Mason-esque twist can stop. Ghosts Outside is a sober, catholic dub remix album: one new mix for each track, re-branded with a "dub" title (e.g. "Hound on My Heel" is now "Dub on My Heel", "Am I Just a Man" now "Dub I Just a Man"). Mason was one of the late-90s pop chameleons, so he's no stranger to Reggae and dub music (a personal favorite), but Ghosts Outside represents the first time he has lain himself prostrate before a genre. Possibly in deference to Bovell, possibly because Ghosts Outside is an exercise as much as it is an album, Mason has no interest in coloring outside the lines. Still, there are gains to be had. Dub is the rare technique that feels both transgressive and cliché, and it fills both roles here. Bovell scatters Mason's vocals, which untether his songs in interesting ways. "The Letter", so deliberate in Mason's hands, stalks aimlessly under Bovell, its chorus suddenly ascendant. Bovell's treatments cause the song structures to dissipate but stratify the productions, providing layers through which Mason's voice filters (a crucial function of the best Beta Band compositions). The robust horn charts of "Lost and Dub" and especially "Yesterday Dub" swallow Mason whole and provide a rigid counterpoint to his gummy croon. While I wish Mason and Bovell had found a way to do this without resorting to the trope-iest of dub tropes-- chirpy guitar chords, reflective drums, pliable basslines-- the effect is, at times, enlightening. The Mason Fan Club (we meet Wednesdays at 7; dues are collected quarterly) will want this. It is novel, in its way: Mason, who once seemed capable of inventing a new genre with each track, reverently bowed before dub reggae, a staple fetish of Western European pop (see also: Serge Gainsbourg, the Clash, the Police). You're forgiven if you find the idea underwhelming, but it wasn't so long ago that the prospect of any new Mason material seemed doubtful. He's returned, calmer, still exploring, but doing so carefully."

Popol Vuh

Revisited & Remixed (1970-1999)

Electronic

Nick Neyland

Boiling down the work of any group that spanned three decades is never going to be easy. For German avant gardists Popol Vuh, it's practically impossible. The band was founded by Florian Fricke in 1969 and largely remained his vision throughout, albeit with useful accomplices picked up along the way. Popol Vuh are often slotted into krautrock/kosmische musik categories, but their work also variously edged close to prog, new age, and ambient. They are perhaps best known for providing the soundtracks to many of Werner Herzog's feature films, and this year the SPV label put out a box set gathering some of those. "Florian was always able to create music I feel helps audiences visualize something hidden in the images onscreen, and in our own souls too," said the director in Herzog on Herzog. Here, SPV again pays tribute to Fricke on the 10th anniversary of his death, gathering strains of the band's original recordings and completing the package with a disc of remixes. This is the kind of release that will have longstanding Popol Vuh followers raising an eyebrow at what's not included-- the monolithic drone piece "Vuh" from In den Gärten Pharaos is missing, and there's nothing from the classic 1972 release Hosianna Mantra. It's heavy on the soundtrack work and sequenced in non-chronological order, beginning with the stirring "Aguirre I - Lacrima Di Rei" from Herzog's 1972 feature Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The synergy between Herzog and Fricke comes from a place where malevolence, beauty, and eminence are vying for equal space. "Aguirre I" features peals of artificial choir sound, played by Fricke on a mellotron-like device called a "choir organ" that triggered tiny loops of field recordings. It's a colossal sound that feels both daunting and alluring, something to fear and rejoice in at the same time, where the real and the unreal seem to seep into one another. Fricke's Aguirre soundtrack is among the best work he produced in his career, but there's such scope to the Popol Vuh sound that it scarcely matters that the bar is raised so high so early. The lengthy title track from the band's debut record Affenstunde (1970) documents Fricke's fascination with folksy percussion and the mantra-like possibilities that emerged from sustaining single notes on a Moog. That space between artifice and actuality is where Popol Vuh's music finds its muscle, adding to the feeling of something arching across ancient and contemporary worlds, with Fricke jostling between earthy textures and the inter-planetary visions of his krautrock contemporaries. "Affenstunde" is paired with the similarly epic "In den Gärten Pharaos" on Revisited & Remixed, which forms another placid divide between pulsing synth noise, primitive hand percussion, balmy Rhodes-like plinking, and sounds extracted from the natural world. It might have been better to follow "Affenstunde" with the much darker "Vuh" instead of "In den Gärten Pharaos", just to show off the great surge of energy they were capable of summoning. But there are so many sides to Popol Vuh that it's no surprise some are missing on this release. Instead, a couple of superior cuts from the soundtrack to Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre are among the highlights. Here Fricke again explores the dichotomy between the real and the unreal and the primitive and the present, through throaty voice manipulations, contemplative acoustic plucking, raga-like drones, and playful baroque arrangements. It's difficult to listen to Popol Vuh's career broken down in this way, dislocated from the strange trajectory they followed. Lurching from the ambient precursor "Ich Mache Einen Spiegel" to the sweeping drift of the Cobra Verde soundtrack feels messy and unfocused. Instead, this record is best seen as a jumping off point for the uninitiated, a way to point travelers in the right direction instead of a singular piece in its own right. The second disc is an uneven selection of prosaic remixes, with few highlights. Haswell & Hecker's reworking of "Aguirre I/II" taps into that extraordinary otherworldly quality of the original piece, building it into a towering wall of shifting noise then shattering it apart as though they've taken a hammer to glass. Elsewhere, too many of the artists sound like they're attempting to assimilate sounds into their own catalogs: Mouse on Mars' version of "Through Pain to Heaven" is an incongruously heavy handed club jam, while Stereolab's take on "Hosianna Mantra" papers over all the peculiar elements that make Popol Vuh such an alluring listen. Thomas Fehlmann's version of "Schnee" works better, with its piston-like rhythm veering closer to Fricke's world. Perversely, what the remixes lack-- risk, pomposity, refinement, transformative power-- is everything Popol Vuh's original recordings feed off to find their mettle.

Artist: Popol Vuh, Album: Revisited & Remixed (1970-1999), Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Boiling down the work of any group that spanned three decades is never going to be easy. For German avant gardists Popol Vuh, it's practically impossible. The band was founded by Florian Fricke in 1969 and largely remained his vision throughout, albeit with useful accomplices picked up along the way. Popol Vuh are often slotted into krautrock/kosmische musik categories, but their work also variously edged close to prog, new age, and ambient. They are perhaps best known for providing the soundtracks to many of Werner Herzog's feature films, and this year the SPV label put out a box set gathering some of those. "Florian was always able to create music I feel helps audiences visualize something hidden in the images onscreen, and in our own souls too," said the director in Herzog on Herzog. Here, SPV again pays tribute to Fricke on the 10th anniversary of his death, gathering strains of the band's original recordings and completing the package with a disc of remixes. This is the kind of release that will have longstanding Popol Vuh followers raising an eyebrow at what's not included-- the monolithic drone piece "Vuh" from In den Gärten Pharaos is missing, and there's nothing from the classic 1972 release Hosianna Mantra. It's heavy on the soundtrack work and sequenced in non-chronological order, beginning with the stirring "Aguirre I - Lacrima Di Rei" from Herzog's 1972 feature Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The synergy between Herzog and Fricke comes from a place where malevolence, beauty, and eminence are vying for equal space. "Aguirre I" features peals of artificial choir sound, played by Fricke on a mellotron-like device called a "choir organ" that triggered tiny loops of field recordings. It's a colossal sound that feels both daunting and alluring, something to fear and rejoice in at the same time, where the real and the unreal seem to seep into one another. Fricke's Aguirre soundtrack is among the best work he produced in his career, but there's such scope to the Popol Vuh sound that it scarcely matters that the bar is raised so high so early. The lengthy title track from the band's debut record Affenstunde (1970) documents Fricke's fascination with folksy percussion and the mantra-like possibilities that emerged from sustaining single notes on a Moog. That space between artifice and actuality is where Popol Vuh's music finds its muscle, adding to the feeling of something arching across ancient and contemporary worlds, with Fricke jostling between earthy textures and the inter-planetary visions of his krautrock contemporaries. "Affenstunde" is paired with the similarly epic "In den Gärten Pharaos" on Revisited & Remixed, which forms another placid divide between pulsing synth noise, primitive hand percussion, balmy Rhodes-like plinking, and sounds extracted from the natural world. It might have been better to follow "Affenstunde" with the much darker "Vuh" instead of "In den Gärten Pharaos", just to show off the great surge of energy they were capable of summoning. But there are so many sides to Popol Vuh that it's no surprise some are missing on this release. Instead, a couple of superior cuts from the soundtrack to Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre are among the highlights. Here Fricke again explores the dichotomy between the real and the unreal and the primitive and the present, through throaty voice manipulations, contemplative acoustic plucking, raga-like drones, and playful baroque arrangements. It's difficult to listen to Popol Vuh's career broken down in this way, dislocated from the strange trajectory they followed. Lurching from the ambient precursor "Ich Mache Einen Spiegel" to the sweeping drift of the Cobra Verde soundtrack feels messy and unfocused. Instead, this record is best seen as a jumping off point for the uninitiated, a way to point travelers in the right direction instead of a singular piece in its own right. The second disc is an uneven selection of prosaic remixes, with few highlights. Haswell & Hecker's reworking of "Aguirre I/II" taps into that extraordinary otherworldly quality of the original piece, building it into a towering wall of shifting noise then shattering it apart as though they've taken a hammer to glass. Elsewhere, too many of the artists sound like they're attempting to assimilate sounds into their own catalogs: Mouse on Mars' version of "Through Pain to Heaven" is an incongruously heavy handed club jam, while Stereolab's take on "Hosianna Mantra" papers over all the peculiar elements that make Popol Vuh such an alluring listen. Thomas Fehlmann's version of "Schnee" works better, with its piston-like rhythm veering closer to Fricke's world. Perversely, what the remixes lack-- risk, pomposity, refinement, transformative power-- is everything Popol Vuh's original recordings feed off to find their mettle."

White Rainbow

Prism of the Eternal Now

Electronic,Experimental,Rock

Zach Baron

Adam Forkner, 31 years old, of Portland, Ore., shares his hometown's penchant for multiple aliases and solo work: stints as a Dirty Projector and a Jackie-O Motherfucker, founder of Yume Bitsu and Surface of Eceyon and World, solo as [[VVRSSNN]] and Soft Dolphin and Adam Forkner and White Rainbow. Forkner has the individualistic streak that endures in the area, handed down from the pioneers who settled the Pacific Northwest and whose descendants are his peers. Today, they work side-by-side but almost always separately, and rarely under their own names, posing as the Blow, Panther, YACHT, E*Rock, Silentist, Strategy, etc. Not surprising, for someone who grew up so deeply in thrall to Portland's simultaneously DIY and new age ethos, is Forkner's near-obsession with cults: Dr. Bronner's Moral ABCs, Unarius' Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science, Scientology, Rastafarianism, Mormonism, and Father Yod's Source family and its belief in the Eternal Now, the last of which gave Forkner his album title. Forkner's confessed fascination with the cult surely had a hand in the "White Rainbow Full-Spectrum Vibrational Healing Center", an occasional museum piece and traveling installation involving video, lights, a canopy and several hours worth of live improv. Forker called it an opportunity to "be able to explore sound with people," and to join with them as they come and go. Forkner, by his own account, has always been a bit terrified of impinging any further on anyone else, and now explains his time in his other bands as a way of mediating his own subjectivity-- writing songs to achieve a degree of removal. White Rainbow, however, signals a change. As he told The Fader, "it was a mistake to think that people wouldn't want the straight tryyp." Prism of the Eternal Now, goes the idea, is all Forkner. The Portland laptop posse-- not just White Rainbow-- has long agonized over how to bring their goods to market, a sentiment expressed best by Panther's Charlie Salas-Humara when he told the Portland Mercury that "Panther is primarily about the performance. I'm proud of the music, most definitely, but it's a release for me." Figuring out how to translate their communal yet independent style on record has been a local burden, one that perhaps explains the fact that the city has yet to produce a really fantastic solo studio album (the Blow being the exception that proves the rule, more so since the band's most cherished output was the result of a collaboration between Khaela Maricich and YACHT's Jona Bechtolt). Prism of the Eternal Now is the fifth White Rainbow release since 2005, and the third this year-- a quickening pace audible in new songs like "Middle", which sound almost metronomic, ticking like a clock yet to be invented. Belying Forkner's tendency to pose for publicity photographs in Grateful Dead t-shirts and loose white yoga outfits and to muse at length about "The Now" are his songs themselves, which are neither baggy nor ungrounded. White Rainbow's debts are to Terry Riley, to whom he dedicates a song, "For Terry", and to Brian Eno, whose Oblique Strategy cards he consults, rather than to, say, Spiritualized. As someone who works at length with loops and other static elements, Forkner's too focused to scramble anybody's mind, including his own. Best are his sober psychedelics: the hissy jungle navigations of "Warm Clicked Fruit", the early Pink Floyd planetary spacing of "For Terry", and the Beaches and Canyons gurgling of "Big Drop". True to his own word, Forkner's attempts to jam-- to write songs-- stiffen up what's otherwise just the right degree of pliant. The rounding bongos on "Pulses" and "Mystic Prism" were better left at the fairground; the mechanical reproductions that circle through "Middle" could better haunt the hard-drive they were eventually taped off of. Forkner's best instincts as an artist are to do no harm-- to lay it out open-ended, to imply, even encourage a kind of all-encompassing unity without being too pushy about it. In this, his work faces the same cult dilemma with which he is obsessed, and about which he once wrote: "What fascinates me in all of this has always been the perpetual dialectic between enlightened spiritual purity and all-too-human melodrama."

Artist: White Rainbow, Album: Prism of the Eternal Now, Genre: Electronic,Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Adam Forkner, 31 years old, of Portland, Ore., shares his hometown's penchant for multiple aliases and solo work: stints as a Dirty Projector and a Jackie-O Motherfucker, founder of Yume Bitsu and Surface of Eceyon and World, solo as [[VVRSSNN]] and Soft Dolphin and Adam Forkner and White Rainbow. Forkner has the individualistic streak that endures in the area, handed down from the pioneers who settled the Pacific Northwest and whose descendants are his peers. Today, they work side-by-side but almost always separately, and rarely under their own names, posing as the Blow, Panther, YACHT, E*Rock, Silentist, Strategy, etc. Not surprising, for someone who grew up so deeply in thrall to Portland's simultaneously DIY and new age ethos, is Forkner's near-obsession with cults: Dr. Bronner's Moral ABCs, Unarius' Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science, Scientology, Rastafarianism, Mormonism, and Father Yod's Source family and its belief in the Eternal Now, the last of which gave Forkner his album title. Forkner's confessed fascination with the cult surely had a hand in the "White Rainbow Full-Spectrum Vibrational Healing Center", an occasional museum piece and traveling installation involving video, lights, a canopy and several hours worth of live improv. Forker called it an opportunity to "be able to explore sound with people," and to join with them as they come and go. Forkner, by his own account, has always been a bit terrified of impinging any further on anyone else, and now explains his time in his other bands as a way of mediating his own subjectivity-- writing songs to achieve a degree of removal. White Rainbow, however, signals a change. As he told The Fader, "it was a mistake to think that people wouldn't want the straight tryyp." Prism of the Eternal Now, goes the idea, is all Forkner. The Portland laptop posse-- not just White Rainbow-- has long agonized over how to bring their goods to market, a sentiment expressed best by Panther's Charlie Salas-Humara when he told the Portland Mercury that "Panther is primarily about the performance. I'm proud of the music, most definitely, but it's a release for me." Figuring out how to translate their communal yet independent style on record has been a local burden, one that perhaps explains the fact that the city has yet to produce a really fantastic solo studio album (the Blow being the exception that proves the rule, more so since the band's most cherished output was the result of a collaboration between Khaela Maricich and YACHT's Jona Bechtolt). Prism of the Eternal Now is the fifth White Rainbow release since 2005, and the third this year-- a quickening pace audible in new songs like "Middle", which sound almost metronomic, ticking like a clock yet to be invented. Belying Forkner's tendency to pose for publicity photographs in Grateful Dead t-shirts and loose white yoga outfits and to muse at length about "The Now" are his songs themselves, which are neither baggy nor ungrounded. White Rainbow's debts are to Terry Riley, to whom he dedicates a song, "For Terry", and to Brian Eno, whose Oblique Strategy cards he consults, rather than to, say, Spiritualized. As someone who works at length with loops and other static elements, Forkner's too focused to scramble anybody's mind, including his own. Best are his sober psychedelics: the hissy jungle navigations of "Warm Clicked Fruit", the early Pink Floyd planetary spacing of "For Terry", and the Beaches and Canyons gurgling of "Big Drop". True to his own word, Forkner's attempts to jam-- to write songs-- stiffen up what's otherwise just the right degree of pliant. The rounding bongos on "Pulses" and "Mystic Prism" were better left at the fairground; the mechanical reproductions that circle through "Middle" could better haunt the hard-drive they were eventually taped off of. Forkner's best instincts as an artist are to do no harm-- to lay it out open-ended, to imply, even encourage a kind of all-encompassing unity without being too pushy about it. In this, his work faces the same cult dilemma with which he is obsessed, and about which he once wrote: "What fascinates me in all of this has always been the perpetual dialectic between enlightened spiritual purity and all-too-human melodrama.""

Various Artists

Get Rich or Die Tryin' OST

Tom Breihan

It's difficult to remember now, but there was a moment in late 2002 when 50 Cent seemed like exactly what rap needed. Here was a guy who'd come out of nowhere with an endlessly hypnotic slurpy singsong flow spitting unbelievably hard, violent street shit and naming names. He'd put the entire rap world on blast in "How to Rob an Industry Nigga", he had impeccable mixtape credentials, and he already carried himself like a star. He received the backing of Dr. Dre and Eminem, and there was nothing to stop him from just destroying wack candy rappers like Ja Rule and running wild all over the industry. And then, of course, he became the biggest rap star on the planet. He endorsed video games and vitamin water and doo-rags. He started meaningless feuds for no good reason. Earlier this year, he released The Massacre, an album bloated with maddeningly half-assed asshole-rap that will probably end up being the biggest-selling record of 2005. And now he's made a movie. Get Rich or Die Tryin' is 50's attempt to make his own 8 Mile, right down to the legend-building loosely autobiographical story, respectably middlebrow director, and grainy verite cinematography. We'll know next week whether it's as boring as 8 Mile. But 50's done something surprising with the Get Rich soundtrack. If the movie is his respectability move, the soundtrack is a direct anti-pop move, a record full of hard, grim, liquid NYC street-rap-- woozy flanged guitars and swollen horns and nonchalant bloodlust. All the rappers here come from 50's G-Unit camp, and most of the beats come from no-name producers like K.O. and B-Money. And the oddly coesive result is the best G-Unit album since Young Buck's Straight Outta Ca$hville. There are sex-raps and party-raps here, but the R&B elements are played down to the point where they sound just like the gangsta tracks, all bleary windswept glistening soul samples, not a "Candy Shop" in sight. And sometimes, as with the monstrous foghorn tuba stomp on "I'll Whup Ya Head" and the magnetic descending Spanish guitar on "You Already Know", the tracks find an irresistibly hazy widescreen throb. Maybe the experience of playing his younger self onscreen has helped 50 recapture some of the hunger he had a couple of years ago. Throughout the album, 50 keeps all the confidence he had on The Massacre but little of the arrogance. His murder-talk threats have a real bite: "Let's ride around, find a nigga stuntin' on Front Street/ With the shines on, niggas be lookin' like lunchmeat." And his boasts have a nonchalant irreverence: "If I wore a suit everyday like Jay-Z/ Niggas would think I bumped my fuckin' head and went crazy." Occasionally he lapses into hegemonic self-parody ("I see something special when I look in ya eyes/ With ya legs way back, I say this pussy is mine"), but for once that's the exception. Nearly all of 50's backup guys play their roles to perfection. Lloyd Banks returns to his mini-50 tauntingly mannered mumble-flow. Young Buck steals a couple of tracks with his hard-as-fuck predatory drawl. M.O.P. makes a dependably bananas gutter-stomp appearance on "When Death Becomes You", nicely offset by 50's slinky hook and the song's lush, dramatic production. Mase, probably 50's biggest influence as a rapper, gives a tantalizing glimpse of what might've happened if he'd never abandoned street-rap. Even the crew's two worst rappers, Tony Yayo and Spider Loc, prove effective in small doses, their flaws camouflaged by excellent production and better rappers. Only the Mobb Deep guys, Havoc especially, get lost, their dead-eyed nihilism not making the transition to the album's cinematic hardness. Not everyone can do this movie-thug thing.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Get Rich or Die Tryin' OST, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "It's difficult to remember now, but there was a moment in late 2002 when 50 Cent seemed like exactly what rap needed. Here was a guy who'd come out of nowhere with an endlessly hypnotic slurpy singsong flow spitting unbelievably hard, violent street shit and naming names. He'd put the entire rap world on blast in "How to Rob an Industry Nigga", he had impeccable mixtape credentials, and he already carried himself like a star. He received the backing of Dr. Dre and Eminem, and there was nothing to stop him from just destroying wack candy rappers like Ja Rule and running wild all over the industry. And then, of course, he became the biggest rap star on the planet. He endorsed video games and vitamin water and doo-rags. He started meaningless feuds for no good reason. Earlier this year, he released The Massacre, an album bloated with maddeningly half-assed asshole-rap that will probably end up being the biggest-selling record of 2005. And now he's made a movie. Get Rich or Die Tryin' is 50's attempt to make his own 8 Mile, right down to the legend-building loosely autobiographical story, respectably middlebrow director, and grainy verite cinematography. We'll know next week whether it's as boring as 8 Mile. But 50's done something surprising with the Get Rich soundtrack. If the movie is his respectability move, the soundtrack is a direct anti-pop move, a record full of hard, grim, liquid NYC street-rap-- woozy flanged guitars and swollen horns and nonchalant bloodlust. All the rappers here come from 50's G-Unit camp, and most of the beats come from no-name producers like K.O. and B-Money. And the oddly coesive result is the best G-Unit album since Young Buck's Straight Outta Ca$hville. There are sex-raps and party-raps here, but the R&B elements are played down to the point where they sound just like the gangsta tracks, all bleary windswept glistening soul samples, not a "Candy Shop" in sight. And sometimes, as with the monstrous foghorn tuba stomp on "I'll Whup Ya Head" and the magnetic descending Spanish guitar on "You Already Know", the tracks find an irresistibly hazy widescreen throb. Maybe the experience of playing his younger self onscreen has helped 50 recapture some of the hunger he had a couple of years ago. Throughout the album, 50 keeps all the confidence he had on The Massacre but little of the arrogance. His murder-talk threats have a real bite: "Let's ride around, find a nigga stuntin' on Front Street/ With the shines on, niggas be lookin' like lunchmeat." And his boasts have a nonchalant irreverence: "If I wore a suit everyday like Jay-Z/ Niggas would think I bumped my fuckin' head and went crazy." Occasionally he lapses into hegemonic self-parody ("I see something special when I look in ya eyes/ With ya legs way back, I say this pussy is mine"), but for once that's the exception. Nearly all of 50's backup guys play their roles to perfection. Lloyd Banks returns to his mini-50 tauntingly mannered mumble-flow. Young Buck steals a couple of tracks with his hard-as-fuck predatory drawl. M.O.P. makes a dependably bananas gutter-stomp appearance on "When Death Becomes You", nicely offset by 50's slinky hook and the song's lush, dramatic production. Mase, probably 50's biggest influence as a rapper, gives a tantalizing glimpse of what might've happened if he'd never abandoned street-rap. Even the crew's two worst rappers, Tony Yayo and Spider Loc, prove effective in small doses, their flaws camouflaged by excellent production and better rappers. Only the Mobb Deep guys, Havoc especially, get lost, their dead-eyed nihilism not making the transition to the album's cinematic hardness. Not everyone can do this movie-thug thing. "

Mickey Newbury

An American Trilogy

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

The years preceding the American Bicentennial were especially good ones in Nashville. Not only did country music graduate from a rather large niche market to the mainstream, but the talent on the city's periphery began to insinuate itself into the center, as songwriters like Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, Donnie Fritts, and Willie Nelson attracted so much attention that the scene became known as the "New Nashville." In practice, this group of musicians raised hell all over town and wrote aching songs with unpretentiously poetic lyrics, passing their compositions up the ranks for royalties and notoriety. A few became stars in their own right: Nelson's Red Headed Stranger was a critical and commercial hit, and Kristofferson became the scene's sex symbol. But some of the most talented songwriters simply faded into the background, with albums that were invariably praised by critics but largely ignored by listeners. Despite a robust voice and a thoughtful way with medleys, Larry Jon Wilson retreated to Augusta, Georgia, but managed a comeback just prior to his death last year. Mickey Newbury, disgusted with industry politics in Nashville, absconded to the mountains of Oregon, releasing albums on his own label until his death in 2002 (his final record, A Long Road Home, was recorded between oxygen treatments for emphysema). Some of the scene's success can be attributed to Newbury, a Houston native who wrote hits for Tom Jones, Don Gibson, and Kenny Rogers (if you've heard "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", then you've heard Newbury). He also hung around with and influenced a younger generation of local songwriters, many of them similarly Lone Star expats; you can hear him in Kristofferson's sing/speak phrasing and in Nelson's complex narrative undertakings. Even today, he remains a songwriter's songwriter, lionized by a new generation of musicians including Will Oldham, Nick Cave, and the Black Swans' Jerry DeCicca (who says he got the job producing Wilson's 2009 comeback album based on his thorough knowledge of Newbury's catalog). Drag City's new bundle of reissues-- which includes three albums plus a set of rarities from the late 1960s and early 70s, released separately on vinyl and together in a 4xCD set titled An American Trilogy-- portrays Newbury as a man out of time and out of place, even among his friends in the New Nashville scene. With his gently grainy voice and folksy phrasing, he was country more by proximity than by sound, and he incorporated jazz, R&B, and folk elements into his forward-thinking music. These three LPs are all heady concept albums of a sort, sequenced to create and sustain a particular mood of grievous loss and precarious composure. Newbury conceived them specifically as a trilogy examining his own romantic past as well as the country's contentious history, and 40 years later, they sound just as imaginative, evocative, and emotional as ever. Looks Like Rain, from 1969, was actually Newbury's second album. Just a few years prior, RCA had paired him with a producer who lent his songs a too-slick sheen that Newbury detested. When he re-recorded them, he kept closer control on the music, casting the songs as spare, lonely ruminations on lost love and lost opportunities and barely masking his own depression. But there's always dignity in his despondency, and there's always something rumbling in the background of these albums: the crisp guitar and ghostly doo-wop vocals on "33rd of August/When the Baby in My Lady Gets the Blues", the otherworldly choir on "San Francisco Mable Joy", the mournful harmonica on "Looks Like Baby's Gone". There's real space on these albums, which are so lonesome and introverted that Newbury's flourishes of sound are less an accompaniment to his vocals than his fond memory of music half-remembered. Looks Like Rain is, quite literally, rainy-day music. The songs are interspersed with samples of a downpour, which reinforces the sense of back-porch reverie. It ought to be corny as hell, a tired gimmick meant to literalize certain aspects of the songwriting. The effect, however, not only allows the album to cohere into a listen-in-one-sitting experience, but reinforces the emotional alienation of these songs. Newbury liked the idea so much that he repeated it on subsequent albums-- a musical element as distinctive as an artist's signature on a canvas. Those interludes and other musical flourishes stitch these albums together as a whole effort, not inseparable but certainly more powerful in each other's proximity. Another of Newbury's signatures was his fascination with old American songs. Arguably his biggest hit was "An American Trilogy", a medley from 1971's 'Frisco Mabel Joy that interlaced "Dixie", "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "All My Trials". It was at that time a contentious piece of music: At the tail end of the civil rights movement, there were calls to ban "Dixie" for its slavery connotations and sympathies, although Elvis Presley's over-the-top Vegas cover helped dispel some of that controversy. Newbury's arrangement is conceptually fascinating, as it pairs a southern song written by a northerner with a slave spiritual imported from the Caribbean. Musically, however, it sounds overly serious and antiquated, almost quaint-- more an artifact from the period than a durable piece of music. And yet, "An American Trilogy" reveals Newbury's complex approach to songwriting and album sequencing: Every word or line or stanza or song complements the others and shades their meanings, contributing crucially to the whole. On all of these albums, his songs shift and melt into other songs, creating thoughtful medleys and often devastating juxtapositions-- such as the one-two punch of "How Many Times (Must the Piper Be Paid For His Song?)" and the gorgeous synth theme of "Interlude". That means songs like the relatively spry "T. Total Tommy" on Looks Like Rain and "Why You Been Gone So Long" on 1973's Heaven Help the Child stand out all the more strongly for being so self-contained. On the other hand, it means Better Days, a disc of demos, live recordings, and rarities, sounds particularly jarring in this set for not cohering into a more powerful whole. The songs themselves are strong, in particular a version of "Why You Been Gone So Long" that rivals Johnny Darrell's hit version, but they work primarily as songs, not as pieces of a larger whole. When he was living in Nashville and even after he headed as far west as he could go, Newbury strove to capture something larger and more powerful than a song or even an alb

Artist: Mickey Newbury, Album: An American Trilogy, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "The years preceding the American Bicentennial were especially good ones in Nashville. Not only did country music graduate from a rather large niche market to the mainstream, but the talent on the city's periphery began to insinuate itself into the center, as songwriters like Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, Donnie Fritts, and Willie Nelson attracted so much attention that the scene became known as the "New Nashville." In practice, this group of musicians raised hell all over town and wrote aching songs with unpretentiously poetic lyrics, passing their compositions up the ranks for royalties and notoriety. A few became stars in their own right: Nelson's Red Headed Stranger was a critical and commercial hit, and Kristofferson became the scene's sex symbol. But some of the most talented songwriters simply faded into the background, with albums that were invariably praised by critics but largely ignored by listeners. Despite a robust voice and a thoughtful way with medleys, Larry Jon Wilson retreated to Augusta, Georgia, but managed a comeback just prior to his death last year. Mickey Newbury, disgusted with industry politics in Nashville, absconded to the mountains of Oregon, releasing albums on his own label until his death in 2002 (his final record, A Long Road Home, was recorded between oxygen treatments for emphysema). Some of the scene's success can be attributed to Newbury, a Houston native who wrote hits for Tom Jones, Don Gibson, and Kenny Rogers (if you've heard "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", then you've heard Newbury). He also hung around with and influenced a younger generation of local songwriters, many of them similarly Lone Star expats; you can hear him in Kristofferson's sing/speak phrasing and in Nelson's complex narrative undertakings. Even today, he remains a songwriter's songwriter, lionized by a new generation of musicians including Will Oldham, Nick Cave, and the Black Swans' Jerry DeCicca (who says he got the job producing Wilson's 2009 comeback album based on his thorough knowledge of Newbury's catalog). Drag City's new bundle of reissues-- which includes three albums plus a set of rarities from the late 1960s and early 70s, released separately on vinyl and together in a 4xCD set titled An American Trilogy-- portrays Newbury as a man out of time and out of place, even among his friends in the New Nashville scene. With his gently grainy voice and folksy phrasing, he was country more by proximity than by sound, and he incorporated jazz, R&B, and folk elements into his forward-thinking music. These three LPs are all heady concept albums of a sort, sequenced to create and sustain a particular mood of grievous loss and precarious composure. Newbury conceived them specifically as a trilogy examining his own romantic past as well as the country's contentious history, and 40 years later, they sound just as imaginative, evocative, and emotional as ever. Looks Like Rain, from 1969, was actually Newbury's second album. Just a few years prior, RCA had paired him with a producer who lent his songs a too-slick sheen that Newbury detested. When he re-recorded them, he kept closer control on the music, casting the songs as spare, lonely ruminations on lost love and lost opportunities and barely masking his own depression. But there's always dignity in his despondency, and there's always something rumbling in the background of these albums: the crisp guitar and ghostly doo-wop vocals on "33rd of August/When the Baby in My Lady Gets the Blues", the otherworldly choir on "San Francisco Mable Joy", the mournful harmonica on "Looks Like Baby's Gone". There's real space on these albums, which are so lonesome and introverted that Newbury's flourishes of sound are less an accompaniment to his vocals than his fond memory of music half-remembered. Looks Like Rain is, quite literally, rainy-day music. The songs are interspersed with samples of a downpour, which reinforces the sense of back-porch reverie. It ought to be corny as hell, a tired gimmick meant to literalize certain aspects of the songwriting. The effect, however, not only allows the album to cohere into a listen-in-one-sitting experience, but reinforces the emotional alienation of these songs. Newbury liked the idea so much that he repeated it on subsequent albums-- a musical element as distinctive as an artist's signature on a canvas. Those interludes and other musical flourishes stitch these albums together as a whole effort, not inseparable but certainly more powerful in each other's proximity. Another of Newbury's signatures was his fascination with old American songs. Arguably his biggest hit was "An American Trilogy", a medley from 1971's 'Frisco Mabel Joy that interlaced "Dixie", "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "All My Trials". It was at that time a contentious piece of music: At the tail end of the civil rights movement, there were calls to ban "Dixie" for its slavery connotations and sympathies, although Elvis Presley's over-the-top Vegas cover helped dispel some of that controversy. Newbury's arrangement is conceptually fascinating, as it pairs a southern song written by a northerner with a slave spiritual imported from the Caribbean. Musically, however, it sounds overly serious and antiquated, almost quaint-- more an artifact from the period than a durable piece of music. And yet, "An American Trilogy" reveals Newbury's complex approach to songwriting and album sequencing: Every word or line or stanza or song complements the others and shades their meanings, contributing crucially to the whole. On all of these albums, his songs shift and melt into other songs, creating thoughtful medleys and often devastating juxtapositions-- such as the one-two punch of "How Many Times (Must the Piper Be Paid For His Song?)" and the gorgeous synth theme of "Interlude". That means songs like the relatively spry "T. Total Tommy" on Looks Like Rain and "Why You Been Gone So Long" on 1973's Heaven Help the Child stand out all the more strongly for being so self-contained. On the other hand, it means Better Days, a disc of demos, live recordings, and rarities, sounds particularly jarring in this set for not cohering into a more powerful whole. The songs themselves are strong, in particular a version of "Why You Been Gone So Long" that rivals Johnny Darrell's hit version, but they work primarily as songs, not as pieces of a larger whole. When he was living in Nashville and even after he headed as far west as he could go, Newbury strove to capture something larger and more powerful than a song or even an alb"

The Spirit of the Beehive

Pleasure Suck

Rock

Ian Cohen

If it were up to fellow indie rock musicians, *Pleasure Suck would be one of the most hyped albums of 2017. But the Spirit of the Beehive *exist to confound. Their new LP elevates purity of vision over clarity from a band whose desire to be easily understood is far down on their list of priorities. The Bandcamp genre tags on their self-titled 2014 debut said it best: “benzos,” “klonopin,” “poppers,” “weed,” “weird beer,” “whiskey,” and “xanax.” While the Spirit of the Beehive’s earliest work could pass for shoegaze, it was defined by an unusually squalorous ambience, fueled by cheap highs and bad vibes. This is one of the few things that has remained constant about the band. “I just ate three grams of magic mushrooms,” a voice mutters halfway through “Future Looks Bright (It’s Blinding),” the only time the Spirit of the Beehive are ever direct about anything on Pleasure Suck. The band simply tags itself as “alternative” this time out, a nebulous term that’s actually an accurate way to describe TSOTB’s counterintuitive lo-fi songcraft. Think Elephant 6 by way of Ween, whimsical and scatalogical, held together by Scotch tape and Scotchgard. “I start my walk, I step in shit,” Zack Schwartz sings on the album’s first lyric, setting in motion a kaleidoscope of only shades of yellow, orange, and brown. When the Spirit of the Beehive lose focus, they veer into ugliness for its own sake, and the effect is oddly alluring. But when they let some light in and it hits just right, Pleasure Suck emanates an autumnal, psych-folk warmth. The brilliant single “Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’)” fashions a memorable chorus (“You don't need an education...you don't need to go to college”) by linking two bands who once traded in similarly feral bursts of noise. At points, Pleasure Suck recalls the urban-paganism of Animal Collective before Sung Tongs, though it’s the misanthropy of later Pink Floyd that becomes an unexpected through line. “Future Looks Bright (It’s Blinding)” and “Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’)” are lovely songs about how ambition can make you look ugly: “Just tell us where to sign/Maybe the money will save us all,” Schwartz sings. Otherwise, it’s hard to identify the band’s primary concerns. “Pianos, Heavy Instrument” and “Snow on the Moon” are upfront about their inscrutability, though Schwartz does shrug at roadkill (“check the windshield/could be human/could be rodent”), police raids, “sports talk shows and a seasonal hellhole,” and a headspace that could double for the dingiest basement apartment in Kensington. “Pleasure sucks the life out of everyone,” goes the album’s opening track. It serves as TSOTB’s thesis statement, a cynicism that can certainly have its own narcotic effect. It’s also their songwriting principle, as every potential moment of instant gratification is defaced by pitch warping, reverb, and distortion. Spend enough time scraping away the caked-on resin, though, and the asymmetrical melodies that typified TSOTB’s earlier work emerge. And so we arrive at the familiar, pleasurable debate with zonked-out, lo-fi pop tinkerers: Are the Spirit of the Beehive self-saboteurs blessed and cursed with too many ideas or is this approach just a cop out for a *lack *of ideas? Either way, Pleasure Suck is an equally compelling and impenetrable album most bands are either too square, too scared, or too savvy to make themselves.

Artist: The Spirit of the Beehive, Album: Pleasure Suck, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "If it were up to fellow indie rock musicians, *Pleasure Suck would be one of the most hyped albums of 2017. But the Spirit of the Beehive *exist to confound. Their new LP elevates purity of vision over clarity from a band whose desire to be easily understood is far down on their list of priorities. The Bandcamp genre tags on their self-titled 2014 debut said it best: “benzos,” “klonopin,” “poppers,” “weed,” “weird beer,” “whiskey,” and “xanax.” While the Spirit of the Beehive’s earliest work could pass for shoegaze, it was defined by an unusually squalorous ambience, fueled by cheap highs and bad vibes. This is one of the few things that has remained constant about the band. “I just ate three grams of magic mushrooms,” a voice mutters halfway through “Future Looks Bright (It’s Blinding),” the only time the Spirit of the Beehive are ever direct about anything on Pleasure Suck. The band simply tags itself as “alternative” this time out, a nebulous term that’s actually an accurate way to describe TSOTB’s counterintuitive lo-fi songcraft. Think Elephant 6 by way of Ween, whimsical and scatalogical, held together by Scotch tape and Scotchgard. “I start my walk, I step in shit,” Zack Schwartz sings on the album’s first lyric, setting in motion a kaleidoscope of only shades of yellow, orange, and brown. When the Spirit of the Beehive lose focus, they veer into ugliness for its own sake, and the effect is oddly alluring. But when they let some light in and it hits just right, Pleasure Suck emanates an autumnal, psych-folk warmth. The brilliant single “Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’)” fashions a memorable chorus (“You don't need an education...you don't need to go to college”) by linking two bands who once traded in similarly feral bursts of noise. At points, Pleasure Suck recalls the urban-paganism of Animal Collective before Sung Tongs, though it’s the misanthropy of later Pink Floyd that becomes an unexpected through line. “Future Looks Bright (It’s Blinding)” and “Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’)” are lovely songs about how ambition can make you look ugly: “Just tell us where to sign/Maybe the money will save us all,” Schwartz sings. Otherwise, it’s hard to identify the band’s primary concerns. “Pianos, Heavy Instrument” and “Snow on the Moon” are upfront about their inscrutability, though Schwartz does shrug at roadkill (“check the windshield/could be human/could be rodent”), police raids, “sports talk shows and a seasonal hellhole,” and a headspace that could double for the dingiest basement apartment in Kensington. “Pleasure sucks the life out of everyone,” goes the album’s opening track. It serves as TSOTB’s thesis statement, a cynicism that can certainly have its own narcotic effect. It’s also their songwriting principle, as every potential moment of instant gratification is defaced by pitch warping, reverb, and distortion. Spend enough time scraping away the caked-on resin, though, and the asymmetrical melodies that typified TSOTB’s earlier work emerge. And so we arrive at the familiar, pleasurable debate with zonked-out, lo-fi pop tinkerers: Are the Spirit of the Beehive self-saboteurs blessed and cursed with too many ideas or is this approach just a cop out for a *lack *of ideas? Either way, Pleasure Suck is an equally compelling and impenetrable album most bands are either too square, too scared, or too savvy to make themselves."

Hot Hot Heat

Elevator

Electronic,Rock

Rob Mitchum

No, I don't regret it: When I endorsed Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown, I knew damn well I probably wasn't betting on a long-distance horse. After completing the review, I went on full media blackout from Hot Hot Heat, because what I knew about this band I did not like. Their pre-fame album, Scenes One Through Thirteen, was auspiciously crude; their live show, reportedly excruciating. But despite my qualms, I couldn't stop listening to Make Up the Breakdown. Though they drew from the same new wave well as a lot of this young century's other hot prospects, Hot Hot Heat seemed to have a lot more flair and energy...and not coincidentally, a lot more Dexy's. Chock full of sugar-high keyboards, English-major alliterations, and singer Steve Bays' chutes-and-ladders voice, Make Up had an exuberance that made even its self-mutilation single a dancefloor staple for people who aren't dancefloor staples. Ever since Make Up's release, however, Hot Hot Heat have apparently been trying their damnedest to bump Interpol off the cover of the Post-Fame Jinx Handbook. Make the hasty leap to a major label? Check. Lose a key member to creative differences during second album's recording? Check (guitarist Dante Decaro). Delay follow-up album until all or most of the buzz generated by the debut has dissipated? Check plus. The chorus cries "backlash," but to paraphrase the golden oldie, just because we're backlashing doesn't mean we're wrong. It's unfortunate that what leaves me cold about Elevator are complaints levied in knee-jerk style to indie bands promoted to the big leagues, but that doesn't make the album's failings any less true: Hot Hot Heat sound like they're playing scared and playing it safe, and in doing so fall through the cracks between their established fans and their imagined ones. A listener can pick up on this fear just from instrumentation alone, which-- given the departure of Decaro-- veers surprisingly away from Mays' spastic synthesizer and towards the safe confines of guitar-based rock. Elevator also muzzles what was a respectable rhythm section relative to the world of indie rock, one that believably swung through white-boy reggae ("Bandages"), white-boy Latin ("Talk to Me, Dance with Me"), and other white-boy takes on international flavors. Elevator sticks to largely straight-ahead pounding, "Shame On You" providing the sole remnant of these charmingly earnest attempts at flicking off 4/4 time. Also abandoned back at Sub Pop is the coy wordplay, with only the half-hearted "You Owe Me an IOU" reflecting the infectiously nerdy winking of Bays' past lyrics. Instead, Elevator (itself a title that seems destined for bargain-bin files) contains a slew of public-domain-bland song names that reflect the lack of imagination within: "Ladies and Gentleman" we are "Running Out of Time" in the "Middle of Nowhere". Fittingly, most of these tracks sound groomed for immediate slotting into television montages comedy end-credits-- especially "Pickin' It Up", which sounds not unlike the theme to "Friends". There are a few pleasant exceptions-- most notably "Island of the Honest Man". With a few abrupt tempo changes, some melodious bass and noisy guitar sheets, and a bridge that does a reasonable approximation of Brainiac, this song really is an island of Hot Hot Heat's previous promise, taking all their new-wave primary sources and just blazing through them in a caffeine furor. It's enough to remind me that I really, honestly, do not want a band like Hot Hot Heat to fail-- I know you're thinking, "hey look, it's the good old Pitchfork build 'em up and knock 'em down routine," and the thought hurts. Backlash continues to be the primary fuel source of indie scenery, and due to its omnipotence everything gets confusing and complicated when a band really does fall down the well of follow-up album expectations. Anyway, you'll just have to trust me when I say that Elevator isn't the victim of political bias, it's just disappointing, an effort that finds Hot Hot Heat in a piss-poor dead heat with late-coming doppelgangers the Bravery...the Crisp Rice to HHH's Rice Krispies. I may be skeptical of Hot Hot Heat's youth and style to the point of allergy, but things would've been much simpler-- and I would've been a much happier listener-- if they'd just lived up to their promise, rather than fulfilled my suspicions.

Artist: Hot Hot Heat, Album: Elevator, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.3 Album review: "No, I don't regret it: When I endorsed Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown, I knew damn well I probably wasn't betting on a long-distance horse. After completing the review, I went on full media blackout from Hot Hot Heat, because what I knew about this band I did not like. Their pre-fame album, Scenes One Through Thirteen, was auspiciously crude; their live show, reportedly excruciating. But despite my qualms, I couldn't stop listening to Make Up the Breakdown. Though they drew from the same new wave well as a lot of this young century's other hot prospects, Hot Hot Heat seemed to have a lot more flair and energy...and not coincidentally, a lot more Dexy's. Chock full of sugar-high keyboards, English-major alliterations, and singer Steve Bays' chutes-and-ladders voice, Make Up had an exuberance that made even its self-mutilation single a dancefloor staple for people who aren't dancefloor staples. Ever since Make Up's release, however, Hot Hot Heat have apparently been trying their damnedest to bump Interpol off the cover of the Post-Fame Jinx Handbook. Make the hasty leap to a major label? Check. Lose a key member to creative differences during second album's recording? Check (guitarist Dante Decaro). Delay follow-up album until all or most of the buzz generated by the debut has dissipated? Check plus. The chorus cries "backlash," but to paraphrase the golden oldie, just because we're backlashing doesn't mean we're wrong. It's unfortunate that what leaves me cold about Elevator are complaints levied in knee-jerk style to indie bands promoted to the big leagues, but that doesn't make the album's failings any less true: Hot Hot Heat sound like they're playing scared and playing it safe, and in doing so fall through the cracks between their established fans and their imagined ones. A listener can pick up on this fear just from instrumentation alone, which-- given the departure of Decaro-- veers surprisingly away from Mays' spastic synthesizer and towards the safe confines of guitar-based rock. Elevator also muzzles what was a respectable rhythm section relative to the world of indie rock, one that believably swung through white-boy reggae ("Bandages"), white-boy Latin ("Talk to Me, Dance with Me"), and other white-boy takes on international flavors. Elevator sticks to largely straight-ahead pounding, "Shame On You" providing the sole remnant of these charmingly earnest attempts at flicking off 4/4 time. Also abandoned back at Sub Pop is the coy wordplay, with only the half-hearted "You Owe Me an IOU" reflecting the infectiously nerdy winking of Bays' past lyrics. Instead, Elevator (itself a title that seems destined for bargain-bin files) contains a slew of public-domain-bland song names that reflect the lack of imagination within: "Ladies and Gentleman" we are "Running Out of Time" in the "Middle of Nowhere". Fittingly, most of these tracks sound groomed for immediate slotting into television montages comedy end-credits-- especially "Pickin' It Up", which sounds not unlike the theme to "Friends". There are a few pleasant exceptions-- most notably "Island of the Honest Man". With a few abrupt tempo changes, some melodious bass and noisy guitar sheets, and a bridge that does a reasonable approximation of Brainiac, this song really is an island of Hot Hot Heat's previous promise, taking all their new-wave primary sources and just blazing through them in a caffeine furor. It's enough to remind me that I really, honestly, do not want a band like Hot Hot Heat to fail-- I know you're thinking, "hey look, it's the good old Pitchfork build 'em up and knock 'em down routine," and the thought hurts. Backlash continues to be the primary fuel source of indie scenery, and due to its omnipotence everything gets confusing and complicated when a band really does fall down the well of follow-up album expectations. Anyway, you'll just have to trust me when I say that Elevator isn't the victim of political bias, it's just disappointing, an effort that finds Hot Hot Heat in a piss-poor dead heat with late-coming doppelgangers the Bravery...the Crisp Rice to HHH's Rice Krispies. I may be skeptical of Hot Hot Heat's youth and style to the point of allergy, but things would've been much simpler-- and I would've been a much happier listener-- if they'd just lived up to their promise, rather than fulfilled my suspicions."

GOAT

World Music

Experimental

Grayson Currin

As the series of interviews they've given in recent months suggests, the Swedish band Goat is hilarious: In September, before their performance at Britain's Supersonic, the Quietus published its second talk with the ever-vague group. When writer Joe Clay asked who might headline the festival of that unnamed member's dreams, they answered, "If Holger Czukay and Geezer Butler had a son, it would be him. Just him playing bass for a couple of days." The Goathead described the band's live performances as "the harvesting of souls," and its lifestyle as "invocations, prayers, and total rejoice!" Beneath that jester veneer, though, there's a much more serious idealism at work here. As key member Christian Johansson told The Quietus in an earlier interview, Goat stems from a loose and long-running collective of townspeople in Korpilombolo, a village with a population of a few hundred in the northwest hook of Sweden. Though people in the town have been playing under that name in various incarnations for several decades, the nine-song, steady-burning World Music is the unit's first proper release. That alleged tradition, it seems, is mostly an excuse for being a true band or collective rather than a collection of personalities, vying for the attention of micro-celebrity at a time when that's easy enough to find. To wit, they wear masks on stage and discuss the details of membership-- who has been in the band, who will be in the band, who is currently in the band-- in incredibly ambiguous terms. "In northern Sweden-- it is hard to explain in English-- it is about not drawing attention to yourself. The important thing is what you do, not who does it," explained Johansson. "This is why we never have tried to make ourselves heard before now." The songs matter more than the sources. That approach of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts largely defines World Music, a psychedelic rock record that strangely never seems hyperbolic. It's fun and often dizzying, employing a kaleidoscope of unexpected tones and far-flung influences. But it doesn't feel forced. Over insistent rhythms that suggest Spacemen 3 and, at least in spirit, the conjuring drones of Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young, Goat weave an ecumenical history of rock'n'roll. They intercept signals from Led Zeppelin and Funkadelic, Jefferson Starship and Fela Kuti, the Congos and the Rolling Stones, bending them into a resiliently consistent album. Sure, opener "Diarabi" finishes with a brief drum solo, but that span flows naturally from the song's steady ascent of tangled guitars and distant keyboards; it feels less like a solo than the end of the song. "Let it Bleed" is a mildly funky number with powerfully strutting (and anonymous) female vocals, suggesting ESG in its sass and sizzle. But even its syncopation seems somehow reserved, taking care not to come too hard or too heavy. With its fuzz-tone bass, wah-wah love, and chanted vocals, "Goatman" is the record's traditionally heaviest track, keying on a guitar solo that sounds as though played with barbed wire. Still, Goat seem to be holding back, tempering sizzle and drive with a proper modicum of listlessness. This might sound tepid to some; to me, at least, it's an invitation for immersion. Like their fellow Swedes in Dungen, Goat have succeeded in not only borrowing the sounds of yore but reinvigorating them, creating a record that doesn't mimic the past wholesale so much as re-contextualize its components. But for all of Dungen's musical bustle and urgency, Goat seems preternaturally at ease with this stuff, soaking insistent beats with lysergic tones and high-flying hooks. If their creation myth is dubious (and it seems to be), its ethos-- this music is an extension of traditions, so there's no need to rush it or demand that it make them famous-- might not be. The short and infinitely catchy "Run to Your Mama" could be a single, but it isn't polished or produced enough to be meant that way. "Goatlord" coasts over a tide of pump organ and casually strummed acoustic guitar, existing in a Velvets haze until an electric guitar solo-- nasty and snarling, like Comets on Fire falling back to earth-- finally intersects it. When the drift returns, the electric guitar sticks with it, following it toward the exit. It's a fitting illustration of the band's philosophical insistence that all of this is world music-- ancient and modern, accessible and mutable. I wonder if, in a matter of months, the world were to learn that the story of Goat was one of complete hokum, would it matter? That is, if their tales of Korpilombolo and voodoo and ancestors passing down a tradition of inclusive and now-electrified ritual music were false, does it matter? Probably: Despite the detail droves that the internet and itinerant social media allow, a sense of mystery still begets a sense of wonder. Perhaps you and your friends could begin your own Goat, live a myth of your own making? But at least at this moment, Goat afford listeners the opportunity to press pause on self-obsessed information cycles, to push past the noise of minutiae, check into their wonderfully vague story, and check out with a wonderful record. Indeed, if certain components of Goat's lore prove to be just that, they have, with World Music, created a vivid manifestation of the ideals they've espoused. "We've been taught since we were small to have an understanding of not only western bands, but of music from other parts of the world," Johansson told The Quietus, a sentiment echoed when the band told another interviewer that its influences include birdsongs and food. "The title World Music was chosen because we believe we play 'world music,' and that's what we think everyone plays." For all its psychedelic tendencies and marketing trappings, Goat's World Music feels as assured and unfussy as folk music.

Artist: GOAT, Album: World Music, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "As the series of interviews they've given in recent months suggests, the Swedish band Goat is hilarious: In September, before their performance at Britain's Supersonic, the Quietus published its second talk with the ever-vague group. When writer Joe Clay asked who might headline the festival of that unnamed member's dreams, they answered, "If Holger Czukay and Geezer Butler had a son, it would be him. Just him playing bass for a couple of days." The Goathead described the band's live performances as "the harvesting of souls," and its lifestyle as "invocations, prayers, and total rejoice!" Beneath that jester veneer, though, there's a much more serious idealism at work here. As key member Christian Johansson told The Quietus in an earlier interview, Goat stems from a loose and long-running collective of townspeople in Korpilombolo, a village with a population of a few hundred in the northwest hook of Sweden. Though people in the town have been playing under that name in various incarnations for several decades, the nine-song, steady-burning World Music is the unit's first proper release. That alleged tradition, it seems, is mostly an excuse for being a true band or collective rather than a collection of personalities, vying for the attention of micro-celebrity at a time when that's easy enough to find. To wit, they wear masks on stage and discuss the details of membership-- who has been in the band, who will be in the band, who is currently in the band-- in incredibly ambiguous terms. "In northern Sweden-- it is hard to explain in English-- it is about not drawing attention to yourself. The important thing is what you do, not who does it," explained Johansson. "This is why we never have tried to make ourselves heard before now." The songs matter more than the sources. That approach of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts largely defines World Music, a psychedelic rock record that strangely never seems hyperbolic. It's fun and often dizzying, employing a kaleidoscope of unexpected tones and far-flung influences. But it doesn't feel forced. Over insistent rhythms that suggest Spacemen 3 and, at least in spirit, the conjuring drones of Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young, Goat weave an ecumenical history of rock'n'roll. They intercept signals from Led Zeppelin and Funkadelic, Jefferson Starship and Fela Kuti, the Congos and the Rolling Stones, bending them into a resiliently consistent album. Sure, opener "Diarabi" finishes with a brief drum solo, but that span flows naturally from the song's steady ascent of tangled guitars and distant keyboards; it feels less like a solo than the end of the song. "Let it Bleed" is a mildly funky number with powerfully strutting (and anonymous) female vocals, suggesting ESG in its sass and sizzle. But even its syncopation seems somehow reserved, taking care not to come too hard or too heavy. With its fuzz-tone bass, wah-wah love, and chanted vocals, "Goatman" is the record's traditionally heaviest track, keying on a guitar solo that sounds as though played with barbed wire. Still, Goat seem to be holding back, tempering sizzle and drive with a proper modicum of listlessness. This might sound tepid to some; to me, at least, it's an invitation for immersion. Like their fellow Swedes in Dungen, Goat have succeeded in not only borrowing the sounds of yore but reinvigorating them, creating a record that doesn't mimic the past wholesale so much as re-contextualize its components. But for all of Dungen's musical bustle and urgency, Goat seems preternaturally at ease with this stuff, soaking insistent beats with lysergic tones and high-flying hooks. If their creation myth is dubious (and it seems to be), its ethos-- this music is an extension of traditions, so there's no need to rush it or demand that it make them famous-- might not be. The short and infinitely catchy "Run to Your Mama" could be a single, but it isn't polished or produced enough to be meant that way. "Goatlord" coasts over a tide of pump organ and casually strummed acoustic guitar, existing in a Velvets haze until an electric guitar solo-- nasty and snarling, like Comets on Fire falling back to earth-- finally intersects it. When the drift returns, the electric guitar sticks with it, following it toward the exit. It's a fitting illustration of the band's philosophical insistence that all of this is world music-- ancient and modern, accessible and mutable. I wonder if, in a matter of months, the world were to learn that the story of Goat was one of complete hokum, would it matter? That is, if their tales of Korpilombolo and voodoo and ancestors passing down a tradition of inclusive and now-electrified ritual music were false, does it matter? Probably: Despite the detail droves that the internet and itinerant social media allow, a sense of mystery still begets a sense of wonder. Perhaps you and your friends could begin your own Goat, live a myth of your own making? But at least at this moment, Goat afford listeners the opportunity to press pause on self-obsessed information cycles, to push past the noise of minutiae, check into their wonderfully vague story, and check out with a wonderful record. Indeed, if certain components of Goat's lore prove to be just that, they have, with World Music, created a vivid manifestation of the ideals they've espoused. "We've been taught since we were small to have an understanding of not only western bands, but of music from other parts of the world," Johansson told The Quietus, a sentiment echoed when the band told another interviewer that its influences include birdsongs and food. "The title World Music was chosen because we believe we play 'world music,' and that's what we think everyone plays." For all its psychedelic tendencies and marketing trappings, Goat's World Music feels as assured and unfussy as folk music."

The Body

Christs, Redeemers

Metal

Grayson Currin

The Body excel in inducing discomfort. You need not listen to a sole note by the Portland, Ore., noise-metal transgressors to know as much: The press photos for their 2010 breakthrough, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, depicted drummer Lee Buford and guitarist Chip King poised in a window, rifles and binoculars pointed outside in anticipation of incoming targets. The cover of a recent and masterful EP, Master, We Perish, featured a grimacing skeleton bent backwards atop a pile of stone, what’s left of his frame splitting at the midsection. On albums, they've covered songs about dead cops and Sinéad O’Connor’s Thatcher-indicting and race-baiting “Black Boys on Mopeds”; on the stage, King’s small army of amplifiers and Buford’s cannon-shaped drums become the instrumental equivalent of meat tenderizer. In a recent interview with Tiny Mix Tapes, Buford summarized the Body’s extra-musical antagonism with two swift sentences: “I don’t really like most people in the world, or trust them. The guns are less of a thug or violent thing and more of a separation between us and society.” *Christs, Redeemers—*the Body’s third record and first for the decidedly non-metal Thrill Jockey­—continues the duo’s tradition of exaggerated malevolence. As with All the Waters, the action opens with the all-female Assembly of Light Choir singing a hymn of solemn despair. This time, though, they’re sucked into a gyre of noise, slivers of static slowly accreting into a sea of volume. Indeed, on the whole, Christs, Redeemers is the most dense, belligerent and focused music that The Body has ever made. In less than three minutes, “Failure to Desire to Communicate” plows through a near-hardcore rumble before downshifting toward hypnotic, hazardous doom; “Shrouded” buries King’s cries in a blanket of static, at least until Buford’s drums overload the entire frame. Where no song on All the Waters lasted for less than four minutes, only half of these get to that point at all. These relatively brief numbers function as black holes, then, sucking up everything the Body has ever done—the horrific samples and suffocating noise, the guitar so low it sound like a bass and the drums so big they sound like artillery blasts, the lyrics about how “the pain of living holds no victory” and the curdling bleat that delivers them—into impenetrable, intimidating cores. Christs, Redeemers finds the Body at the apogee of their brutality. Yet the same focus and force that make Christs, Redeemers so heavy are the same attributes that make it less terrifying than its predecessors. In the past, The Body’s uneasiness has depended as much on unpredictability as it has on excessive volume or irate pleas. The Body have thrived on a certain sort of stylistic mania, sonic evidence that the guys holding the guns in those photos might actually be completely insane. During All the Waters, for instance, they played along with a sampled-and-fractured clip of a congregation speaking in tongues, with knee-deep noise and King’s howls battling back with believable animosity; during “Worship”, the closer of this year’s earlier EP, they applied their damaged aesthetic to a 10-minute post-rock mold, building the cacophony into a climax that gave way to a slow-motion comedown. But Christs, Redeemers feels comfortable and somewhat safe, with song structures that are practically standard and a few techniques repeated often enough to become predictable. The Assembly of Light Choir, for instance, starts to feel like a compositional crutch, with their hall-of-terror harmonies augmenting the despair on half of the record’s tracks in much the same way a coffee-shop guitarist might use a Hammond organ to add gravity to heartsickness. Much the same applies to the album’s ample string sections, their melodrama mostly filling space and time and plainly replicating a feeling that’s already established. All of these tendencies collide for “An Altar or a Grave”, a string-swept doom plod that slinks through a madrigal-choir midsection only to arrive at a coda where King and Buford simply turn up and check out. It’s an obvious string of choices for a band whose sort of audio terrorism has forever hinged on making listeners aghast with surprise—as Buford might put it, on separating their music from others’ society. The most successful statements on Christs, Redeemers balance momentum with instability. “Denial of the Species”, for instance, pushes the hangman guitar, haunting choir, and ghoulish strings beneath a beat that borders on techno. It’s a tease for an onslaught of distortion that never comes, a climax denial buried in a record that typically delivers the promised payload. Once again, it’s the image of the Body projected in sound. At the very least, this new-found concision and direction might prove useful for the Body in the short-term: This is their Thrill Jockey debut, after all, a chance for them to find freaks within a much broader audience. Why not focus, then, on the most familiar and surefooted side of the band—that hellish, disturbing blitz of doom, noise, and nastiness? Likewise, with the samples and choirs now tucked safely and violently into the kernels of these songs, perhaps they’ll speak more readily to metal audiences, by which they’ve often been overlooked or mislabeled. But the Body haven’t mattered only because they’ve been loud, distorted, and mean, the troika of qualities that Christs, Redeemers spotlights most capably. They’ve mattered because they were able to twist that mess of metallurgh into spaces where it didn’t necessarily belong, into studio experiments with electronics and dynamics and effects that underlined their wrath in unlikely ways. That’s not lost on Christs, Redeemers, but like the terror it once necessitated, it is certainly diminished.

Artist: The Body, Album: Christs, Redeemers, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "The Body excel in inducing discomfort. You need not listen to a sole note by the Portland, Ore., noise-metal transgressors to know as much: The press photos for their 2010 breakthrough, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, depicted drummer Lee Buford and guitarist Chip King poised in a window, rifles and binoculars pointed outside in anticipation of incoming targets. The cover of a recent and masterful EP, Master, We Perish, featured a grimacing skeleton bent backwards atop a pile of stone, what’s left of his frame splitting at the midsection. On albums, they've covered songs about dead cops and Sinéad O’Connor’s Thatcher-indicting and race-baiting “Black Boys on Mopeds”; on the stage, King’s small army of amplifiers and Buford’s cannon-shaped drums become the instrumental equivalent of meat tenderizer. In a recent interview with Tiny Mix Tapes, Buford summarized the Body’s extra-musical antagonism with two swift sentences: “I don’t really like most people in the world, or trust them. The guns are less of a thug or violent thing and more of a separation between us and society.” *Christs, Redeemers—*the Body’s third record and first for the decidedly non-metal Thrill Jockey­—continues the duo’s tradition of exaggerated malevolence. As with All the Waters, the action opens with the all-female Assembly of Light Choir singing a hymn of solemn despair. This time, though, they’re sucked into a gyre of noise, slivers of static slowly accreting into a sea of volume. Indeed, on the whole, Christs, Redeemers is the most dense, belligerent and focused music that The Body has ever made. In less than three minutes, “Failure to Desire to Communicate” plows through a near-hardcore rumble before downshifting toward hypnotic, hazardous doom; “Shrouded” buries King’s cries in a blanket of static, at least until Buford’s drums overload the entire frame. Where no song on All the Waters lasted for less than four minutes, only half of these get to that point at all. These relatively brief numbers function as black holes, then, sucking up everything the Body has ever done—the horrific samples and suffocating noise, the guitar so low it sound like a bass and the drums so big they sound like artillery blasts, the lyrics about how “the pain of living holds no victory” and the curdling bleat that delivers them—into impenetrable, intimidating cores. Christs, Redeemers finds the Body at the apogee of their brutality. Yet the same focus and force that make Christs, Redeemers so heavy are the same attributes that make it less terrifying than its predecessors. In the past, The Body’s uneasiness has depended as much on unpredictability as it has on excessive volume or irate pleas. The Body have thrived on a certain sort of stylistic mania, sonic evidence that the guys holding the guns in those photos might actually be completely insane. During All the Waters, for instance, they played along with a sampled-and-fractured clip of a congregation speaking in tongues, with knee-deep noise and King’s howls battling back with believable animosity; during “Worship”, the closer of this year’s earlier EP, they applied their damaged aesthetic to a 10-minute post-rock mold, building the cacophony into a climax that gave way to a slow-motion comedown. But Christs, Redeemers feels comfortable and somewhat safe, with song structures that are practically standard and a few techniques repeated often enough to become predictable. The Assembly of Light Choir, for instance, starts to feel like a compositional crutch, with their hall-of-terror harmonies augmenting the despair on half of the record’s tracks in much the same way a coffee-shop guitarist might use a Hammond organ to add gravity to heartsickness. Much the same applies to the album’s ample string sections, their melodrama mostly filling space and time and plainly replicating a feeling that’s already established. All of these tendencies collide for “An Altar or a Grave”, a string-swept doom plod that slinks through a madrigal-choir midsection only to arrive at a coda where King and Buford simply turn up and check out. It’s an obvious string of choices for a band whose sort of audio terrorism has forever hinged on making listeners aghast with surprise—as Buford might put it, on separating their music from others’ society. The most successful statements on Christs, Redeemers balance momentum with instability. “Denial of the Species”, for instance, pushes the hangman guitar, haunting choir, and ghoulish strings beneath a beat that borders on techno. It’s a tease for an onslaught of distortion that never comes, a climax denial buried in a record that typically delivers the promised payload. Once again, it’s the image of the Body projected in sound. At the very least, this new-found concision and direction might prove useful for the Body in the short-term: This is their Thrill Jockey debut, after all, a chance for them to find freaks within a much broader audience. Why not focus, then, on the most familiar and surefooted side of the band—that hellish, disturbing blitz of doom, noise, and nastiness? Likewise, with the samples and choirs now tucked safely and violently into the kernels of these songs, perhaps they’ll speak more readily to metal audiences, by which they’ve often been overlooked or mislabeled. But the Body haven’t mattered only because they’ve been loud, distorted, and mean, the troika of qualities that Christs, Redeemers spotlights most capably. They’ve mattered because they were able to twist that mess of metallurgh into spaces where it didn’t necessarily belong, into studio experiments with electronics and dynamics and effects that underlined their wrath in unlikely ways. That’s not lost on Christs, Redeemers, but like the terror it once necessitated, it is certainly diminished."

Beachwood Sparks

Once We Were Trees

Rock

Dominique Leone

The good, the bad, the ugly and the twee: psychedelic pop is back, and who could have foreseen it? Bands that might've been dabbling in electronics five years ago, or maybe taking a stab at incorporating a few choreographed dance moves into their act are now chucking their drum machines for four-track recorders and flange pedals. It's a movement, baby, and if you're hip enough, you can get in on the ground floor! And hey, truth be told, it's not like the stuff has a chance in hell of being popular, so you don't have to worry about someone stealing your scene, and... whoa, hold up. You mean this isn't the next big fad? That puts a damper on me. You see, the thing about the original psych-pop was that it wasn't designed for the long haul. Kids would form a band in high school, play some Them covers, and be happy that the prom gig wasn't booked yet. Then, the bass player would fall into some acid, communicate the disease to his friends, and the next thing we knew, Jerry Garcia's considered one of the best guitarists of all time. Well, maybe it wasn't exactly like that, but after hearing enough Electric Prunes records, I'm wondering if the psychedelic era may have been hiccup in time rather than an actual musical movement. Perhaps bands like Beachwood Sparks get around the rather stifling, sub-genre dead end by making sure their homages to old-schoolers like Gram Parsons and the Byrds are spot-on, and not devoid of actual songwriting. To be fair, the band isn't going straight for the paisley, instead opting for cosmically affected country-pop, deep down fairly straightforwardly. And to be even fairer, this is something they have in common with bands like the Byrds, so when in doubt, give them the benefit. Once We Were Trees is their second album. Let's listen in. After a short instrumental prologue ("Germination"), things begin in earnest with "Confusion is Nothing New." Running down the checklist, I hear an echo-treated mix (maybe a result of the production work of partner-in-crime, J. Mascis), drawn-out, lazily enunciated phrasing, slide guitar beamed in from Saturn, drone matching twang jab for jab-- yeah, it sounds like hippie music. But it's got a good hook and nice vocal harmonies, and you could do a lot worse trying to drum up sunny music for the picnic. I can't understand anything they're saying, except for someone telling me not to "give in to the things that take away from you," so maybe I should add inspirational freewill philosophies to the agenda. This leads to the down-home white funk of "Sun Surrounds Me," and more nasal soul than you could find on anyone to the right of John Sebastian. But again, it's got a hook that makes you shake things, and the harmonies are cool. In fact, the subtle details like the Hammond organ licks and unexpected freaky coda are so idiomatic I wonder if this stuff isn't more academic than innocuous. Bah, I won't bring up any critical bad vibes here. Of course, there's a Sade cover ("By Your Side"), though I think Beachwood Sparks have a better handle on sly retro-hipness than she does, and therefore shouldn't need to perform ironic cover songs to be cool. It does sound nice (one of their better modes, as far as I can tell), in a "Whiter Shade of Pale" kind of way, and it's possible that the band simply liked the song, and wanted to play it just because. Rock critics don't handle sincerity very well, so I'll leave you with my suspicion that they were only trying to make waves on indie playlists with this, and by doing so could inadvertently cement their gimmick-band status. Bah, the bad vibes again! Joking aside, I do think bands that know something about the history of their music are rare enough, and I admire Beachwood Sparks just on principal. Throughout the album, it's obvious just how many old records they must have listened to, and it does take a certain love of life to work this hard bringing those sounds into the 21st century. As the album ends, drenched in the fuzzback of fantastically hirsute trash-rock (featuring an even more fantastic noisy guitar solo), I can start to forgive the similarities the band has with its forefathers. When I take into account that 1) there are actual songs here, not just parodies, and 2) most of the tunes were fun to listen to, I remember that playing rock-- psychedelic, trashy or otherwise-- doesn't have to be an exercise in originality. Maybe, it just has to be a way to pass the time. Nothing more required on a good day for a light jam and a daydream.

Artist: Beachwood Sparks, Album: Once We Were Trees, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "The good, the bad, the ugly and the twee: psychedelic pop is back, and who could have foreseen it? Bands that might've been dabbling in electronics five years ago, or maybe taking a stab at incorporating a few choreographed dance moves into their act are now chucking their drum machines for four-track recorders and flange pedals. It's a movement, baby, and if you're hip enough, you can get in on the ground floor! And hey, truth be told, it's not like the stuff has a chance in hell of being popular, so you don't have to worry about someone stealing your scene, and... whoa, hold up. You mean this isn't the next big fad? That puts a damper on me. You see, the thing about the original psych-pop was that it wasn't designed for the long haul. Kids would form a band in high school, play some Them covers, and be happy that the prom gig wasn't booked yet. Then, the bass player would fall into some acid, communicate the disease to his friends, and the next thing we knew, Jerry Garcia's considered one of the best guitarists of all time. Well, maybe it wasn't exactly like that, but after hearing enough Electric Prunes records, I'm wondering if the psychedelic era may have been hiccup in time rather than an actual musical movement. Perhaps bands like Beachwood Sparks get around the rather stifling, sub-genre dead end by making sure their homages to old-schoolers like Gram Parsons and the Byrds are spot-on, and not devoid of actual songwriting. To be fair, the band isn't going straight for the paisley, instead opting for cosmically affected country-pop, deep down fairly straightforwardly. And to be even fairer, this is something they have in common with bands like the Byrds, so when in doubt, give them the benefit. Once We Were Trees is their second album. Let's listen in. After a short instrumental prologue ("Germination"), things begin in earnest with "Confusion is Nothing New." Running down the checklist, I hear an echo-treated mix (maybe a result of the production work of partner-in-crime, J. Mascis), drawn-out, lazily enunciated phrasing, slide guitar beamed in from Saturn, drone matching twang jab for jab-- yeah, it sounds like hippie music. But it's got a good hook and nice vocal harmonies, and you could do a lot worse trying to drum up sunny music for the picnic. I can't understand anything they're saying, except for someone telling me not to "give in to the things that take away from you," so maybe I should add inspirational freewill philosophies to the agenda. This leads to the down-home white funk of "Sun Surrounds Me," and more nasal soul than you could find on anyone to the right of John Sebastian. But again, it's got a hook that makes you shake things, and the harmonies are cool. In fact, the subtle details like the Hammond organ licks and unexpected freaky coda are so idiomatic I wonder if this stuff isn't more academic than innocuous. Bah, I won't bring up any critical bad vibes here. Of course, there's a Sade cover ("By Your Side"), though I think Beachwood Sparks have a better handle on sly retro-hipness than she does, and therefore shouldn't need to perform ironic cover songs to be cool. It does sound nice (one of their better modes, as far as I can tell), in a "Whiter Shade of Pale" kind of way, and it's possible that the band simply liked the song, and wanted to play it just because. Rock critics don't handle sincerity very well, so I'll leave you with my suspicion that they were only trying to make waves on indie playlists with this, and by doing so could inadvertently cement their gimmick-band status. Bah, the bad vibes again! Joking aside, I do think bands that know something about the history of their music are rare enough, and I admire Beachwood Sparks just on principal. Throughout the album, it's obvious just how many old records they must have listened to, and it does take a certain love of life to work this hard bringing those sounds into the 21st century. As the album ends, drenched in the fuzzback of fantastically hirsute trash-rock (featuring an even more fantastic noisy guitar solo), I can start to forgive the similarities the band has with its forefathers. When I take into account that 1) there are actual songs here, not just parodies, and 2) most of the tunes were fun to listen to, I remember that playing rock-- psychedelic, trashy or otherwise-- doesn't have to be an exercise in originality. Maybe, it just has to be a way to pass the time. Nothing more required on a good day for a light jam and a daydream."

Turtlenecked

Vulture

Rock

Ian Cohen

Minutes into his second album as Turtlenecked in as many years, Harrison Smith puts his audience on notice: “Reality TV!/I’m not here to make friends!” Do not misinterpret this as Smith saying that he doesn’t care what you think about him or his scrappy indie rock project. At 20 years old, Smith has come of age at a time where it’s completely normal to use every moment as an opportunity to publicly manipulate your personality. “I don’t need no goddamn life/When I’ve got 100 likes” isn’t an original sentiment, but like every lyric on Vulture, it’s striving for the validation of any response, whether it’s smashing that like, RT, or the mute button. While Smith is capable of penning witty, voice-of-a-generation quotables, he’s just as enamored with Tumblr snark. It’s as if Vulture was put on earth at this very moment for people who just can’t bring themselves to pick sides in the very particular Car Seat Headrest/Ricky Eat Acid beef. In fact, Smith’s entire M.O. is playing both sides—it’s unclear whether he’s mocking the actions of his peers, the Twitter and scene politics that dictate those actions, or just mocking those who do the mocking. That’s where Vulture’s problems start. In its very first lines, Smith shouts and shudders like Ian Curtis resurrected as a woke male feminist: “Someone tell these boys that I’m a feminist!/Someone tell these girls that I’m effeminate!” This is a song called “Boys Club,” and one would assume he’s presenting himself as an outspoken ally. But his heel turn happens less than two minutes into Vulture: The most genuine emotion of “Boys Club” is an all-consuming cynicism rather than indignation for the patriarchal power structure. Even if Smith calls his scene a “pale indie bro trash pile,” he then boasts that he’s going to be the king of that hill. Vulture does occasionally back up that bluster, particularly when it’s perfumed by the beery piss and vinegar of Archers of Loaf circa Vee Vee on “Pangloss.” Yet for the most part, even though Turtlenecked’s verbal dialect is very 2017, the sound is mostly 2006-style blog-rock. Divorced from its unfortunate historical baggage, there was something to that style, which bridged the gap between the early 2000s post-punk revival and the Urban Outfitters takeover of the late 2000s. And these tics—jittery vocals, fractured rhythms, oddly shaped song structures—lend themselves well to Smith’s antic mind. But when the choruses aren’t there, Vulture recalls those “Simpsons” Hullabalooza punks, who couldn’t even tell if they were being sarcastic anymore. “Human Veal” muddles the neurotic neediness of Xiu Xiu, Drake, and Taking Back Sunday into a toxic Long Island cocktail of emo self-awareness: “I’ve said LOL in every sentence/I want to show I meant it as a self-aware, half-ironic deprecating empty vessel for the remnants of my heart.” As someone who’s absorbed the near entirety of Saddle Creek’s output, I’ll admit this is the kind of thing that can feel revelatory and even empowering to hear within the context of a snappy indie rock song rather than an inner monologue. Other times, this kind of mental jousting is just as exhausting to hear as it is to experience. On “Meeting You in the Hospital,” Smith boasts that he wants a romance like one from a movie or a novel, not some “patriarchal white male bullshit” or “pixie dream to save my life.” The effect of this lyric is entirely predicated on listener projection. If you assume Smith realizes all four things are basically the same—and that’s a big assumption—then it’s a clever lyric. If not, it’s just as insufferable as anyone else trying their damnedest to sound virtuous. Vulture occasionally hints at what Smith could accomplish as a writer if his scope matched his ambition. But for now, it’s a lesson that if you keep your head up your ass long enough, of course the world looks like it’s full of shit.

Artist: Turtlenecked, Album: Vulture, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Minutes into his second album as Turtlenecked in as many years, Harrison Smith puts his audience on notice: “Reality TV!/I’m not here to make friends!” Do not misinterpret this as Smith saying that he doesn’t care what you think about him or his scrappy indie rock project. At 20 years old, Smith has come of age at a time where it’s completely normal to use every moment as an opportunity to publicly manipulate your personality. “I don’t need no goddamn life/When I’ve got 100 likes” isn’t an original sentiment, but like every lyric on Vulture, it’s striving for the validation of any response, whether it’s smashing that like, RT, or the mute button. While Smith is capable of penning witty, voice-of-a-generation quotables, he’s just as enamored with Tumblr snark. It’s as if Vulture was put on earth at this very moment for people who just can’t bring themselves to pick sides in the very particular Car Seat Headrest/Ricky Eat Acid beef. In fact, Smith’s entire M.O. is playing both sides—it’s unclear whether he’s mocking the actions of his peers, the Twitter and scene politics that dictate those actions, or just mocking those who do the mocking. That’s where Vulture’s problems start. In its very first lines, Smith shouts and shudders like Ian Curtis resurrected as a woke male feminist: “Someone tell these boys that I’m a feminist!/Someone tell these girls that I’m effeminate!” This is a song called “Boys Club,” and one would assume he’s presenting himself as an outspoken ally. But his heel turn happens less than two minutes into Vulture: The most genuine emotion of “Boys Club” is an all-consuming cynicism rather than indignation for the patriarchal power structure. Even if Smith calls his scene a “pale indie bro trash pile,” he then boasts that he’s going to be the king of that hill. Vulture does occasionally back up that bluster, particularly when it’s perfumed by the beery piss and vinegar of Archers of Loaf circa Vee Vee on “Pangloss.” Yet for the most part, even though Turtlenecked’s verbal dialect is very 2017, the sound is mostly 2006-style blog-rock. Divorced from its unfortunate historical baggage, there was something to that style, which bridged the gap between the early 2000s post-punk revival and the Urban Outfitters takeover of the late 2000s. And these tics—jittery vocals, fractured rhythms, oddly shaped song structures—lend themselves well to Smith’s antic mind. But when the choruses aren’t there, Vulture recalls those “Simpsons” Hullabalooza punks, who couldn’t even tell if they were being sarcastic anymore. “Human Veal” muddles the neurotic neediness of Xiu Xiu, Drake, and Taking Back Sunday into a toxic Long Island cocktail of emo self-awareness: “I’ve said LOL in every sentence/I want to show I meant it as a self-aware, half-ironic deprecating empty vessel for the remnants of my heart.” As someone who’s absorbed the near entirety of Saddle Creek’s output, I’ll admit this is the kind of thing that can feel revelatory and even empowering to hear within the context of a snappy indie rock song rather than an inner monologue. Other times, this kind of mental jousting is just as exhausting to hear as it is to experience. On “Meeting You in the Hospital,” Smith boasts that he wants a romance like one from a movie or a novel, not some “patriarchal white male bullshit” or “pixie dream to save my life.” The effect of this lyric is entirely predicated on listener projection. If you assume Smith realizes all four things are basically the same—and that’s a big assumption—then it’s a clever lyric. If not, it’s just as insufferable as anyone else trying their damnedest to sound virtuous. Vulture occasionally hints at what Smith could accomplish as a writer if his scope matched his ambition. But for now, it’s a lesson that if you keep your head up your ass long enough, of course the world looks like it’s full of shit."

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

Ballad of the Broken Seas

Folk/Country

Brian Howe

Isobel Campbell was the second-best singer-- and best cellist-- in Belle and Sebastian. Mark Lanegan fronted grunge almost-weres Screaming Trees, one of those odd bands that everyone knows but few listen to, and he did a stint in Queens of the Stone Age. Given Belle and Sebastian's penchant for lacy chamber pop and the Screaming Trees/QOTSA bias toward angrily trippy stoner jams, it only makes sense that Campbell's and Lanegan's collaboration produced a bunch of mildly acerbic sea shanties and maudlin dust-bowl folk ballads. "Deus Ibi Est" establishes Ballad of the Broken Seas's mise en scène-- a broad, desolate expanse of metronomic kickdrum and lilting acoustic guitar. Lanegan slips into a Grinchy beatnik drawl, doing Tom Waits doing Leonard Cohen, sharpishly channeling the voice of an itinerant soldier, while Campbell's airy Latin hook (the dead language kind, not the Ricky Martin kind) sounds as if all the Whos down in Whoville wandered into a seedy wharf bar. If you really wanna cut the roast beast, let's say it plain: While Campbell's contributions to the album are far from negligible, the thing reeks of Lanegan, aligning itself with the hard-bitten American roots music of his solo albums. Lanegan's boozy, melancholic growl and down-and-out imagery on "The Circus Is Leaving Town" would fit comfortably on a Crooked Fingers record, that pacesetter for all things indie-gone-Americana. He turns in an appropriately smoldering cover of Hank Williams's "Ramblin' Man", Campbell's whispered taunts and supplications skewing its narrative POV. Even openly sentimental songs like the hushed, piano-driven title track acquire a thin layer of grit: "We fucked up the sun to kingdom come/ You were under my blood and my skin." Campbell's presence seems unavoidably minimized on the duets, as her gusty chirp flutters through the holes in Lanegan's decaying clapboard shack of a voice, yet it's also indispensable, like the color commentary on a televised golf match. Some of the record's most penetrating moments arrive when either Lanegan or Campbell take center stage alone. Lanegan's "(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?", despite moments of implied, discomforting pederasty ("Little girl, have I told you how you light up my life?/ Come and lay down beside me, come and thrill me tonight"), features the inarguably vivid and arresting lyrical turn, "There's a crimson bird flying when I go down on you." Campbell takes the lead on "Black Mountain" and "Saturday's Gone", her voice cascading over quivering strings and swirling arpeggios on the former, and riding in on clip-clopping hooves on the latter. The thirty-odd years of musical experience Campbell and Lanegan collectively possess are worn like sun-creased skin on Ballad of the Broken Seas, which manages to be consistently engaging and sufficiently memorable without making too much fuss about it.

Artist: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Album: Ballad of the Broken Seas, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Isobel Campbell was the second-best singer-- and best cellist-- in Belle and Sebastian. Mark Lanegan fronted grunge almost-weres Screaming Trees, one of those odd bands that everyone knows but few listen to, and he did a stint in Queens of the Stone Age. Given Belle and Sebastian's penchant for lacy chamber pop and the Screaming Trees/QOTSA bias toward angrily trippy stoner jams, it only makes sense that Campbell's and Lanegan's collaboration produced a bunch of mildly acerbic sea shanties and maudlin dust-bowl folk ballads. "Deus Ibi Est" establishes Ballad of the Broken Seas's mise en scène-- a broad, desolate expanse of metronomic kickdrum and lilting acoustic guitar. Lanegan slips into a Grinchy beatnik drawl, doing Tom Waits doing Leonard Cohen, sharpishly channeling the voice of an itinerant soldier, while Campbell's airy Latin hook (the dead language kind, not the Ricky Martin kind) sounds as if all the Whos down in Whoville wandered into a seedy wharf bar. If you really wanna cut the roast beast, let's say it plain: While Campbell's contributions to the album are far from negligible, the thing reeks of Lanegan, aligning itself with the hard-bitten American roots music of his solo albums. Lanegan's boozy, melancholic growl and down-and-out imagery on "The Circus Is Leaving Town" would fit comfortably on a Crooked Fingers record, that pacesetter for all things indie-gone-Americana. He turns in an appropriately smoldering cover of Hank Williams's "Ramblin' Man", Campbell's whispered taunts and supplications skewing its narrative POV. Even openly sentimental songs like the hushed, piano-driven title track acquire a thin layer of grit: "We fucked up the sun to kingdom come/ You were under my blood and my skin." Campbell's presence seems unavoidably minimized on the duets, as her gusty chirp flutters through the holes in Lanegan's decaying clapboard shack of a voice, yet it's also indispensable, like the color commentary on a televised golf match. Some of the record's most penetrating moments arrive when either Lanegan or Campbell take center stage alone. Lanegan's "(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?", despite moments of implied, discomforting pederasty ("Little girl, have I told you how you light up my life?/ Come and lay down beside me, come and thrill me tonight"), features the inarguably vivid and arresting lyrical turn, "There's a crimson bird flying when I go down on you." Campbell takes the lead on "Black Mountain" and "Saturday's Gone", her voice cascading over quivering strings and swirling arpeggios on the former, and riding in on clip-clopping hooves on the latter. The thirty-odd years of musical experience Campbell and Lanegan collectively possess are worn like sun-creased skin on Ballad of the Broken Seas, which manages to be consistently engaging and sufficiently memorable without making too much fuss about it."

Kurt Vile

Smoke Ring For My Halo

Rock

David Bevan

"On tour, Lord of the Flies. Aw, hey, who cares? What's a guuuii-taaaaar?" So begins the sharply titled "On Tour", a spacious, diary-like explosion nestled just a few minutes into Smoke Ring for My Halo, Kurt Vile's fourth and finest full-length to date. Strings buzz, strummed patterns double back on themselves and from up above it all, the Philadelphia-native showers everything with cosmic, harp-like harmonics. It's a song that's both monastic and vast all at once, the kind of curiously rich work that seems like it was crafted by forty longhairs instead of just one. But Vile has gone great lengths in answering his own question in recent years, finding a way to distill thousands of hours spent with classic American guitar music into one very singular and sublime vision. Whether he's channeling the energies of John Fahey or Tom Petty or even Bob Seger, Smoke Ring makes clear that the end result is his alone. But to listen to Kurt Vile is to hear him in conversation with himself: That can be said of his ultra-wry lyrical observations just as much as the elliptical, brick-by-brick architecture of his songwriting. In the past, though, Vile's words have been written off as mumbled, unintelligible, and listless-- a criticism made all the more reasonable given the crude recording techniques he employed. But 2009's Childish Prodigy, his Matador debut, found Vile wiping off some of the grimy, decidedly "lo-fi" film that had fenced off much of his work up until that point. (Additionally, he brought his sometime touring band, the Violators, into the studio to help fill out those songs that required more brawn. They also appear here.) It was a jump to the relative big leagues that, despite its cleaner approach, offered more in the way of promise than focus. That's not at all the case here. As hinted at by last year's Square Shells EP, a "stepping stone" to where we are now, the sonics and vocals have been spit-polished to shimmer-- every sonorous detail can now be heard in full, and Vile's voice has taken on a new, mountainous presence in the center of each song. The conversation's grown far more engaging. What we learn is that Kurt Vile has a lot to say. He can be quick, as on the strong-jawed, electric groove of "Puppet to the Man", when he opens, "I bet by now you probably think I'm a puppet to the man. Well I'll tell you right now, you best believe that I am." And he can yank your heart out, as he does a number of times here, perhaps most memorably amid the celestial fingerpicking of "Baby's Arms", when he tries convincing himself that, he'll "never ever, ever be alone." But he's actually always alone here. Vile's lonesome brand of melancholia is still communicated both plainly and unassumingly enough to be missed, but its that sense that he seems to be talking only to himself that lends these songs such magnetic pull. Between the two seismic chords of "Ghost Town" this album's bulldozing climax, Vile wonders aloud, "think I'll never leave my couch again, because when I'm out, I'm away in my mind. Christ was born,  I was there. You know me, I'm around. I got friends, hey wait, where was I, well, I am trying." Although he stretches those last two or three notes, it doesn't feel like he's singing. We're eavesdropping on the most private of dialogs. Sonically and compositionally, Vile allows us the space to do that. He's still cycling between strummers and fingerpicked mazework, but the battery of pedal effects is mostly gone. Rather than stitch loop to loop to loop, Vile's given every marvelous, carefully placed layer all kinds of room to aerate. In the past, "Peeping Tomboy" may have sunk halfway through its bridge, while single "In My Time" probably would have lost its way mid-jam. But here, Vile has acknowledged limits in length for the sake of depth. It makes for a full-blown journey. Though there isn't an earworm like "Freeway"-- that endlessly replayable, interstate love song from Vile's 2008 Constant Hitmaker LP-- Smoke Rings isn't that kind of listen. This feels like a family of songs, one whose complexion and course changes as a whole with every spin. In the closing moments of "Ghost Town", Vile leaves us with, "Raindrops might fall on my head sometimes, but I don't pay 'em any mind. Then again, I guess it ain't always that way." He knows exactly what he's trying to say.

Artist: Kurt Vile, Album: Smoke Ring For My Halo, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: ""On tour, Lord of the Flies. Aw, hey, who cares? What's a guuuii-taaaaar?" So begins the sharply titled "On Tour", a spacious, diary-like explosion nestled just a few minutes into Smoke Ring for My Halo, Kurt Vile's fourth and finest full-length to date. Strings buzz, strummed patterns double back on themselves and from up above it all, the Philadelphia-native showers everything with cosmic, harp-like harmonics. It's a song that's both monastic and vast all at once, the kind of curiously rich work that seems like it was crafted by forty longhairs instead of just one. But Vile has gone great lengths in answering his own question in recent years, finding a way to distill thousands of hours spent with classic American guitar music into one very singular and sublime vision. Whether he's channeling the energies of John Fahey or Tom Petty or even Bob Seger, Smoke Ring makes clear that the end result is his alone. But to listen to Kurt Vile is to hear him in conversation with himself: That can be said of his ultra-wry lyrical observations just as much as the elliptical, brick-by-brick architecture of his songwriting. In the past, though, Vile's words have been written off as mumbled, unintelligible, and listless-- a criticism made all the more reasonable given the crude recording techniques he employed. But 2009's Childish Prodigy, his Matador debut, found Vile wiping off some of the grimy, decidedly "lo-fi" film that had fenced off much of his work up until that point. (Additionally, he brought his sometime touring band, the Violators, into the studio to help fill out those songs that required more brawn. They also appear here.) It was a jump to the relative big leagues that, despite its cleaner approach, offered more in the way of promise than focus. That's not at all the case here. As hinted at by last year's Square Shells EP, a "stepping stone" to where we are now, the sonics and vocals have been spit-polished to shimmer-- every sonorous detail can now be heard in full, and Vile's voice has taken on a new, mountainous presence in the center of each song. The conversation's grown far more engaging. What we learn is that Kurt Vile has a lot to say. He can be quick, as on the strong-jawed, electric groove of "Puppet to the Man", when he opens, "I bet by now you probably think I'm a puppet to the man. Well I'll tell you right now, you best believe that I am." And he can yank your heart out, as he does a number of times here, perhaps most memorably amid the celestial fingerpicking of "Baby's Arms", when he tries convincing himself that, he'll "never ever, ever be alone." But he's actually always alone here. Vile's lonesome brand of melancholia is still communicated both plainly and unassumingly enough to be missed, but its that sense that he seems to be talking only to himself that lends these songs such magnetic pull. Between the two seismic chords of "Ghost Town" this album's bulldozing climax, Vile wonders aloud, "think I'll never leave my couch again, because when I'm out, I'm away in my mind. Christ was born,  I was there. You know me, I'm around. I got friends, hey wait, where was I, well, I am trying." Although he stretches those last two or three notes, it doesn't feel like he's singing. We're eavesdropping on the most private of dialogs. Sonically and compositionally, Vile allows us the space to do that. He's still cycling between strummers and fingerpicked mazework, but the battery of pedal effects is mostly gone. Rather than stitch loop to loop to loop, Vile's given every marvelous, carefully placed layer all kinds of room to aerate. In the past, "Peeping Tomboy" may have sunk halfway through its bridge, while single "In My Time" probably would have lost its way mid-jam. But here, Vile has acknowledged limits in length for the sake of depth. It makes for a full-blown journey. Though there isn't an earworm like "Freeway"-- that endlessly replayable, interstate love song from Vile's 2008 Constant Hitmaker LP-- Smoke Rings isn't that kind of listen. This feels like a family of songs, one whose complexion and course changes as a whole with every spin. In the closing moments of "Ghost Town", Vile leaves us with, "Raindrops might fall on my head sometimes, but I don't pay 'em any mind. Then again, I guess it ain't always that way." He knows exactly what he's trying to say."

Pierre de Reeder

The Way That It Was

Rock

Rebecca Raber

Despite their crack rhythm section, the focus in Rilo Kiley has always been on Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, the former-child-actors-turned-indie-darlings. But if Lewis and Sennett are the group's Lennon and McCartney, does that make bassist Pierre de Reeder Rilo Kiley's George Harrison, a soft-spoken sideman who is panting for an outlet for his own songs? The Way That It Was, de Reeder's first solo outing, proves he's been hoarding material. As his band's songs have grown larger and glossier with each subsequent record, de Reeder has clearly saved his most intimate, organic impulses for his own work. The elegant, elegiac folk-pop contained here is so small in scope, so undeniably personal-- the third track, "Sophia's Song", was written for his young daughter-- that it would have sounded out of place amongst the synth-heavy odes to sin and sleaze that pervaded Under the Blacklight. But while Wonderwall, Harrison's first extra-Beatles release, announced an experimental spirit that the Fab Four couldn't contain, The Way That It Was actually proves the opposite about de Reeder. He is a traditionalist who is well-served playing in a band he's not leading. Neither album opener "Shame on Love"-- an easy shuffle featuring de Reeder's gentle acoustic strum and laconic, Elliott Smith-like delivery-- nor its successive track, the twangy mid-tempo strut "I'll Be Around", would have sounded out of place on early Rilo Kiley albums (which isn't surprising given that the only other person playing on the former track is Rilo drummer Jason Boesel). But the rest of the record is a love letter to 1960s soft rock and 1970s MOR radio, smudged with the fingerprints of Harry Nilsson, Eric Carmen, and Christopher Cross. Though "Not How I Believe" (the album's best, featuring a huge campfire choir) and "Where I'm Coming From" allow him to use mellow accessibility to indulge in charmingly unabashed earnestness, his throwback sensibilities don't always work to his benefit. Without his edgier guitar sound, "Sophia's Song" becomes a schmaltzy string-laden piano ballad and "Young and Old", with its cringe-worthy rhymes ("And would you throw all the best things in life away/ Just keeping all of your troubles at bay") and thinly sung, sweeping chorus, plays either as an update of "All By Myself" or a missing tune from the Fame soundtrack. It's admirable, however, that de Reeder has given himself over entirely to his newfound easy listening leanings. This collection is definitely cohesive because of it, and its themes of adulthood, responsibility, and the pains of growing up are well matched with melodies that would fit in between a Loggins and Messina superset and a long-distance dedication of Bread's "Baby I'm-A Want You". And generally speaking, his lyrics-- though unashamedly gushy-- are moving because they are so personal yet universally relatable. With poignant verses about the surprise of one day finding that you've matured ("I've grown up somehow/ Oh no, I never thought I'd change/ I know that's not possible/ But hey, hey, hey/ Just feel more comfortable that way") are insightful lines about the inevitability of the process. "If you're so damned scared of growing old, old, old/ That might come sooner than you know", he sings on "Never Thought". Good advice, not just to the legions of today's nipped and tucked Botox worshippers, but also the extended adolescents in the world of indie rock. After all, nothing is designed to make you look older than trying too hard to look young. And with this collection of dad rock Pierre de Reeder certainly avoids that trap, even though he sounds like he's having more fun at his day job.

Artist: Pierre de Reeder, Album: The Way That It Was, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "Despite their crack rhythm section, the focus in Rilo Kiley has always been on Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, the former-child-actors-turned-indie-darlings. But if Lewis and Sennett are the group's Lennon and McCartney, does that make bassist Pierre de Reeder Rilo Kiley's George Harrison, a soft-spoken sideman who is panting for an outlet for his own songs? The Way That It Was, de Reeder's first solo outing, proves he's been hoarding material. As his band's songs have grown larger and glossier with each subsequent record, de Reeder has clearly saved his most intimate, organic impulses for his own work. The elegant, elegiac folk-pop contained here is so small in scope, so undeniably personal-- the third track, "Sophia's Song", was written for his young daughter-- that it would have sounded out of place amongst the synth-heavy odes to sin and sleaze that pervaded Under the Blacklight. But while Wonderwall, Harrison's first extra-Beatles release, announced an experimental spirit that the Fab Four couldn't contain, The Way That It Was actually proves the opposite about de Reeder. He is a traditionalist who is well-served playing in a band he's not leading. Neither album opener "Shame on Love"-- an easy shuffle featuring de Reeder's gentle acoustic strum and laconic, Elliott Smith-like delivery-- nor its successive track, the twangy mid-tempo strut "I'll Be Around", would have sounded out of place on early Rilo Kiley albums (which isn't surprising given that the only other person playing on the former track is Rilo drummer Jason Boesel). But the rest of the record is a love letter to 1960s soft rock and 1970s MOR radio, smudged with the fingerprints of Harry Nilsson, Eric Carmen, and Christopher Cross. Though "Not How I Believe" (the album's best, featuring a huge campfire choir) and "Where I'm Coming From" allow him to use mellow accessibility to indulge in charmingly unabashed earnestness, his throwback sensibilities don't always work to his benefit. Without his edgier guitar sound, "Sophia's Song" becomes a schmaltzy string-laden piano ballad and "Young and Old", with its cringe-worthy rhymes ("And would you throw all the best things in life away/ Just keeping all of your troubles at bay") and thinly sung, sweeping chorus, plays either as an update of "All By Myself" or a missing tune from the Fame soundtrack. It's admirable, however, that de Reeder has given himself over entirely to his newfound easy listening leanings. This collection is definitely cohesive because of it, and its themes of adulthood, responsibility, and the pains of growing up are well matched with melodies that would fit in between a Loggins and Messina superset and a long-distance dedication of Bread's "Baby I'm-A Want You". And generally speaking, his lyrics-- though unashamedly gushy-- are moving because they are so personal yet universally relatable. With poignant verses about the surprise of one day finding that you've matured ("I've grown up somehow/ Oh no, I never thought I'd change/ I know that's not possible/ But hey, hey, hey/ Just feel more comfortable that way") are insightful lines about the inevitability of the process. "If you're so damned scared of growing old, old, old/ That might come sooner than you know", he sings on "Never Thought". Good advice, not just to the legions of today's nipped and tucked Botox worshippers, but also the extended adolescents in the world of indie rock. After all, nothing is designed to make you look older than trying too hard to look young. And with this collection of dad rock Pierre de Reeder certainly avoids that trap, even though he sounds like he's having more fun at his day job."

Trim

1-800 DINOSAUR Presents Trim

Rap

Kevin Lozano

Trim is Javan St. Prix, an East London native who has been active in the UK grime scene for the last decade and a half, most prominently as a member of Wiley’s Roll Deep Crew for a chunk of change in the mid-’00s. He left after a dispute with his compatriot Flowdan, and he’s charted a steady career of mixtape releases in the last ten years that have characterized him as the scene’s preeminent outsider. As opposed to, say, Skepta, his flow is a little more melodic, erring towards spoken word, and leans harder into patois. The producer’s he’s courted have a decidedly weirder vibe also (Mark Pritchard, or Mumdance for example). He met James Blake not long after peeling off from the Roll Deep Crew, when Blake remixed Trim’s 2007 song “Confidence Boost.” Blake invited Trim to the music video shoot for the the remix, and they’ve kept in touch since. Meanwhile, Blake started 1-800 Dinosaur sometime in 2013, after hosting a club night with his manager and fellow producer Dan Foat. They invited members of Blake’s band Airhead (Blake’s live guitarist, Rob McAndrews), Mr. Assister (Blake’s drummer Ben Assiter), and Klaus (Nick Sigsworth, Blake’s tour DJ) to round out the crew, and a year later they started an ad-hoc record label that mostly released one-off 12-inches. For their first full-length release, they’ve invited Trim to be the voice of a curated selection from the 1-800 crew and friends in the wider circle of left-field British electronic music. As such, Trim’s newest mixtape and 1-800’s first release is muddled in terms of accreditation. Just look at the title: *1-800 Dinosaur Presents Trim, *which announces immediately that this is a 1-800 Dinosaur project and Trim is merely the vessel. When you listen to the album, this attitude is uncomfortably palpable, as if Trim is a side attraction and the sound studies by 1-800 Dinosaur the main event. The album only ever feels truly collaborative when the beat feels like something chosen with his voice in mind. In the opener, the Airhead-produced “Stretch,” he rasps his way through lines that mimic poems like Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (“Got me thinking how dare I throw up signs/From such an eroding monument/While they whisper my accomplishments”) in an ear-catching cadence closer to spoken-word. The mix of unapologetic distaste for the state of UK rap and almost-neurotic self-aggrandizement in his lyrics borders on grating later in the album, but in “Stretch” it’s simply fascinating. In “Waco,” also produced by Airhead, the sound thoughtfully suits Trim’s lethargic pace, and counts for one of the most clever instrumentals I’ve heard all year. The percussion slithers around Trim’s voice, breaking out into a fragmented staccato when the song hits its peak. But other songs, like the James Blake-produced “RPG,” feel totally off-center, almost selfish in how they occupy the same space as Trim’s voice and crowd the frame. Blake’s rough chiptune synths and high-pitched vocal samples are almost unlistenable next to Trim’s baritone drawl, and there are times on this cluttered album where Trim seem so mismatched that I wished the entire set was just instrumentals. In the face of unsympathetic production, Trim’s lyrics seem blunter, less imagistic, and clunkier over time (“Fuck him this duckling’s ugly and I’ll pop off if you ask for the spinach” from “White Room”). At the same time, his obsession with his ostracization from the “scene” at large can be tiresome. He harps on his individuality in contrast to the rest of the sheeple (“Most man need a collective”), and showcases a kind of unintentionally hilarious unproven swagger as his defense (“My album cover is perfect..I haven’t brought an album out/But I’ve touched a nerve”). In a recent interview with Complex, Trim even threw some shade at this project, saying that the mixtape has nothing to do with his future work,  and that he felt like he had to dumb down for this project to work on what he called “a wider scale.” Elsewhere in this interview he disavows grime completely, saying he would rather be considered part of his own “genre.” Taking his comments in light of this muddled, occasionally fascinating album, it's easy to see that despite all the talent and vision involved, something about this collaboration just didn't work on a fundamental level.

Artist: Trim, Album: 1-800 DINOSAUR Presents Trim, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Trim is Javan St. Prix, an East London native who has been active in the UK grime scene for the last decade and a half, most prominently as a member of Wiley’s Roll Deep Crew for a chunk of change in the mid-’00s. He left after a dispute with his compatriot Flowdan, and he’s charted a steady career of mixtape releases in the last ten years that have characterized him as the scene’s preeminent outsider. As opposed to, say, Skepta, his flow is a little more melodic, erring towards spoken word, and leans harder into patois. The producer’s he’s courted have a decidedly weirder vibe also (Mark Pritchard, or Mumdance for example). He met James Blake not long after peeling off from the Roll Deep Crew, when Blake remixed Trim’s 2007 song “Confidence Boost.” Blake invited Trim to the music video shoot for the the remix, and they’ve kept in touch since. Meanwhile, Blake started 1-800 Dinosaur sometime in 2013, after hosting a club night with his manager and fellow producer Dan Foat. They invited members of Blake’s band Airhead (Blake’s live guitarist, Rob McAndrews), Mr. Assister (Blake’s drummer Ben Assiter), and Klaus (Nick Sigsworth, Blake’s tour DJ) to round out the crew, and a year later they started an ad-hoc record label that mostly released one-off 12-inches. For their first full-length release, they’ve invited Trim to be the voice of a curated selection from the 1-800 crew and friends in the wider circle of left-field British electronic music. As such, Trim’s newest mixtape and 1-800’s first release is muddled in terms of accreditation. Just look at the title: *1-800 Dinosaur Presents Trim, *which announces immediately that this is a 1-800 Dinosaur project and Trim is merely the vessel. When you listen to the album, this attitude is uncomfortably palpable, as if Trim is a side attraction and the sound studies by 1-800 Dinosaur the main event. The album only ever feels truly collaborative when the beat feels like something chosen with his voice in mind. In the opener, the Airhead-produced “Stretch,” he rasps his way through lines that mimic poems like Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (“Got me thinking how dare I throw up signs/From such an eroding monument/While they whisper my accomplishments”) in an ear-catching cadence closer to spoken-word. The mix of unapologetic distaste for the state of UK rap and almost-neurotic self-aggrandizement in his lyrics borders on grating later in the album, but in “Stretch” it’s simply fascinating. In “Waco,” also produced by Airhead, the sound thoughtfully suits Trim’s lethargic pace, and counts for one of the most clever instrumentals I’ve heard all year. The percussion slithers around Trim’s voice, breaking out into a fragmented staccato when the song hits its peak. But other songs, like the James Blake-produced “RPG,” feel totally off-center, almost selfish in how they occupy the same space as Trim’s voice and crowd the frame. Blake’s rough chiptune synths and high-pitched vocal samples are almost unlistenable next to Trim’s baritone drawl, and there are times on this cluttered album where Trim seem so mismatched that I wished the entire set was just instrumentals. In the face of unsympathetic production, Trim’s lyrics seem blunter, less imagistic, and clunkier over time (“Fuck him this duckling’s ugly and I’ll pop off if you ask for the spinach” from “White Room”). At the same time, his obsession with his ostracization from the “scene” at large can be tiresome. He harps on his individuality in contrast to the rest of the sheeple (“Most man need a collective”), and showcases a kind of unintentionally hilarious unproven swagger as his defense (“My album cover is perfect..I haven’t brought an album out/But I’ve touched a nerve”). In a recent interview with Complex, Trim even threw some shade at this project, saying that the mixtape has nothing to do with his future work,  and that he felt like he had to dumb down for this project to work on what he called “a wider scale.” Elsewhere in this interview he disavows grime completely, saying he would rather be considered part of his own “genre.” Taking his comments in light of this muddled, occasionally fascinating album, it's easy to see that despite all the talent and vision involved, something about this collaboration just didn't work on a fundamental level."

The Babies

The Babies

Rock

Paul Thompson

Maybe you've already got your mind made up about the Babies. This side project of two of Brooklyn lo-fi's marquee acts finds Woods bassist Kevin Morby trading songwriting duties and vocals with chief Vivian Girls songwriter Cassie Ramone, whose fast-and-loose way with pitch is a source of contention in the indie rock world. Morby's Woods are a bit of a litmus test themselves, their spindly, bedhead country-folk too mellow and unfinished-sounding for some. The Babies recorded their self-titled debut at Brooklyn's Rear House with Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, and the backroom vibe present on most of his productions turns up here as well. Point being, the temptation to put The Babies together in your mind before you've even heard it can overwhelm any reservation of judgment. The reality, it turns out, is often more interesting than the sum of its parts. Heard here, Morby's ramshackle country-folk sounds like Woods on a good night's sleep and a pot of strong coffee, running dirtier and kicking a whole lot harder. Morby's voice carries a slight twang and a frequently pronounced derangement, while Ramone-- when she's not left to sing these songs alone-- puts in a showing that might not change any minds, but does hint at where her strengths lie. At its best, The Babies conjures not the shrugged-off ease of either principal's better-known gigs, but the odd-couple white lightning of Johnny and June, Frank and Kim, or John and Exene, run through a K Records filter. Unusual as it is, Ramone knows how to make her voice work for her-- see "Tell the World" from Vivian Girls' debut-- and here, when she and Morby crash into one of their delirious top-heavy harmonic pile-ups, the result is dizzying. Take "Breakin' the Law", an outlaw's honeymoon trip with a hook so worn-in you'd think it was a cover. Ramone deadpans while Morby fills in the melody. "Meet Me in the City" taps the pure ripchord energy and guy-gal vocal multiplication of Wild Gift-era X, while closer "Caroline" ends with a shout-along only a bit less rousing than the similarly-named Neil Diamond tune. Their voices, each a bit spiky apart, line up together with an eerie beauty, like they’ve been singing together far longer than they have, and the tunes they attach to their back-and-forth tend to be the Babies' most infectious. It's when Morby and Ramone put a little space between them that The Babies falters. Morby's breezy, Ramone-less tunes tend to downshift somewhere between Pavement and the first couple of Frank Black and the Catholics LPs; he's got a nice and easy way with hooks and a smart aversion to overcomplication, but his punker "Personality" only has so much, and the jerky "Sunset" feels stale. Ramone solo doesn't fare quite as well. "All Things Come to Pass" bobs along on a pleasant enough melody, one that she seems to take as a mere suggestion; her voice draws curlicues around the verses, sounding like she'd rather be doing almost anything but singing them. Yet she manages to swing around on the choruses, not exactly evincing perfect pitch but suggesting another take might have done the whole song some good. Her husky bit on "Voice Like Thunder" is equally nonchalant, and the bridge she sings on opener "Run Me Over" almost destroys the good will created by its grinning lead-in until Morby swoops in. But the dirgey, yearning "Wild 1 is a lost cause, as Ramone's vocal veers quickly into the painful. What's ultimately frustrating about The Babies is how much potential is floating around in there, and how game they are to spike it. In throwing in his lot with Ramone, Morby's big songwriting debut is now tied up with all kinds of preconceived notions about his songwriting partner. And Ramone, who actually sounds as good or better here singing with Morby than she does with her breathy Vivian Girls compatriot Katy Goodman, does a number on the goodwill she builds up here with her maddeningly inconsistent performances. So they've made made a spotty but occasionally quite successful record, complicated considerably by Ramone's take-them-or-leave-them vocals, still the kind of thing only those with their minds already made up could truly love. You expected something else?

Artist: The Babies, Album: The Babies, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "Maybe you've already got your mind made up about the Babies. This side project of two of Brooklyn lo-fi's marquee acts finds Woods bassist Kevin Morby trading songwriting duties and vocals with chief Vivian Girls songwriter Cassie Ramone, whose fast-and-loose way with pitch is a source of contention in the indie rock world. Morby's Woods are a bit of a litmus test themselves, their spindly, bedhead country-folk too mellow and unfinished-sounding for some. The Babies recorded their self-titled debut at Brooklyn's Rear House with Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, and the backroom vibe present on most of his productions turns up here as well. Point being, the temptation to put The Babies together in your mind before you've even heard it can overwhelm any reservation of judgment. The reality, it turns out, is often more interesting than the sum of its parts. Heard here, Morby's ramshackle country-folk sounds like Woods on a good night's sleep and a pot of strong coffee, running dirtier and kicking a whole lot harder. Morby's voice carries a slight twang and a frequently pronounced derangement, while Ramone-- when she's not left to sing these songs alone-- puts in a showing that might not change any minds, but does hint at where her strengths lie. At its best, The Babies conjures not the shrugged-off ease of either principal's better-known gigs, but the odd-couple white lightning of Johnny and June, Frank and Kim, or John and Exene, run through a K Records filter. Unusual as it is, Ramone knows how to make her voice work for her-- see "Tell the World" from Vivian Girls' debut-- and here, when she and Morby crash into one of their delirious top-heavy harmonic pile-ups, the result is dizzying. Take "Breakin' the Law", an outlaw's honeymoon trip with a hook so worn-in you'd think it was a cover. Ramone deadpans while Morby fills in the melody. "Meet Me in the City" taps the pure ripchord energy and guy-gal vocal multiplication of Wild Gift-era X, while closer "Caroline" ends with a shout-along only a bit less rousing than the similarly-named Neil Diamond tune. Their voices, each a bit spiky apart, line up together with an eerie beauty, like they’ve been singing together far longer than they have, and the tunes they attach to their back-and-forth tend to be the Babies' most infectious. It's when Morby and Ramone put a little space between them that The Babies falters. Morby's breezy, Ramone-less tunes tend to downshift somewhere between Pavement and the first couple of Frank Black and the Catholics LPs; he's got a nice and easy way with hooks and a smart aversion to overcomplication, but his punker "Personality" only has so much, and the jerky "Sunset" feels stale. Ramone solo doesn't fare quite as well. "All Things Come to Pass" bobs along on a pleasant enough melody, one that she seems to take as a mere suggestion; her voice draws curlicues around the verses, sounding like she'd rather be doing almost anything but singing them. Yet she manages to swing around on the choruses, not exactly evincing perfect pitch but suggesting another take might have done the whole song some good. Her husky bit on "Voice Like Thunder" is equally nonchalant, and the bridge she sings on opener "Run Me Over" almost destroys the good will created by its grinning lead-in until Morby swoops in. But the dirgey, yearning "Wild 1 is a lost cause, as Ramone's vocal veers quickly into the painful. What's ultimately frustrating about The Babies is how much potential is floating around in there, and how game they are to spike it. In throwing in his lot with Ramone, Morby's big songwriting debut is now tied up with all kinds of preconceived notions about his songwriting partner. And Ramone, who actually sounds as good or better here singing with Morby than she does with her breathy Vivian Girls compatriot Katy Goodman, does a number on the goodwill she builds up here with her maddeningly inconsistent performances. So they've made made a spotty but occasionally quite successful record, complicated considerably by Ramone's take-them-or-leave-them vocals, still the kind of thing only those with their minds already made up could truly love. You expected something else?"

Fucked Up

Dose Your Dreams

Metal

Ian Cohen

Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham has made a career on a being a bit much: The Canadian punk recently produced an extreme wrestling documentary called Bloodlust and looks like he could get in the ring himself, particularly when the burly, bearded, and frequently shirtless frontman of Fucked Up smashes bottles over his head on stage. He always sings like he’s trying to exfoliate his larynx with loose pieces of his ribcage and they’re the most abrasive vocals anyone will encounter from a band putting out records on Merge. Glass Boys, from 2014, represented Abraham’s purist vision of Fucked Up, a punk rock teleology that traced DIY ethics back to the ancient Greeks and had more guitar overdubs than a Smashing Pumpkins album. Yet, compared to the band’s double-album rock operas and wooly Zodiac EPs, Glass Boys was a model of hardcore austerity, and its mild reception felt like a referendum on guitarist Mike Haliechuk ceding his artistic control. The line on Fucked Up is that they’ve been expanding the horizons of hardcore, even though it’s a genre they’ve bore little resemblance to, starting with their 2006 debut Hidden World. At this point, it’s clear that Fucked Up are part of the indie rock orthodoxy and everything that made Fucked Up a critical sensation—the saxophones, disco beats, not-all-hardcore genre experiments, and the adventures of David Eliade—are back with a vengeance on Dose Your Dreams. It begins by recasting the titular character from their 2011 opus, David Comes To Life. Once a budding revolutionary stuck in a lightbulb factory risking it all in the name of love, David inexplicably begins the ambitious Dose Your Dreams as a drugged-up white collar schlub who quits his job on the very first song (”None of Your Business Man”). Minutes later, he meets an elderly mystic named Joyce who guides him through a psychotropic vision quest that challenges his perceptions of reality and vaguely resembles The Matrix, I guess. The plot of Dose Your Dreams could be sussed out like a Magic Eye image if you glance at the titles for long enough (“Living in a Simulation,” “Joy Stops Time,” “How To Die Happy,” “I Don’t Wanna Live in This World”), but anyone who can retell it from memory is either in Fucked Up or read the press release. Though a thematic sequel to David Comes To Life, Dose Your Dreams demands forgetting everything you know about Fucked Up, and that includes seeing them as a traditionally structured band. Abraham even had to clarify on Instagram that he wasn’t quitting, just trying to accept a lesser role. Sharing the mic with Abraham, guitarist Ben Cook, and drummer Jonah Falco are a litany of guests from Polaris Prize Winner Lido Pimiento to singer Mary Margaret O’Hara to J Mascis. Abraham appears on only about 2/3rds of Dose Your Dreams, which is still about an hour’s worth of a guy who dominates every track he’s on. His voice is a hammer that sees everything as a nail when Haliechuk and Falco are working with stained glass. But Abraham’s unwavering commitment to brute force just as often works to the band’s advantage here, especially since Haliechuk is prone to lyrical flourishes that would send Colin Meloy to his fainting couch (“But who is this tramp sat in front of me/She smiled and said, ‘Jilly I be!’”). Despite Haliechuk and Falco’s bombastic concept, Dose Your Dreams functions similar to the recent hip-hop blockbusters that share its 82-minute length, best enjoyed in chunks or humming in the background between the singles. There’s plenty of the jet-roar symphonies that typified David Comes to Life, but also new looks at dream-pop, corporate cock-rock strutting, dubby disco, Supertramp, mini-marathons of krautrock, and pure ’90s alt-rock. Even if the creation of Dose Your Dreams was acknowledged by all parties as a contentious power struggle that permanently altered Fucked Up, it at least sounds like one hell of a party. This is particularly true on the title track and “Talking Pictures,” which sounds a bit like Abraham letting loose at a Madchester rave in 1991. These songs are what likely led composer Owen Pallett to describe this album as Fucked Up’s own Screamadelica, though much of Dose Your Dreams can be enjoyed as a home version of “Beat Shazam”: based on the three-song run of “How To Die Happy,” “Two I’s Closed,” and “The One I Want Will Come For Me,” this could’ve been called Fucked Up’s Loveless, Person Pitch, or You’re Living All Over Me as well. Even with all this dynamism and attention to detail, it feels exhausting to even consider returning to all 82 minutes of Dose Your Dreams. Fucked Up have gone all in on maximalism, but it never feels like they fully interrogated its implications—by the time the jackhammer industrial pulse of “Mechanical Bull” and “Accelerate” push the album in genuinely new directions, they bear the weight of an hour’s worth of extraneous choruses, multi-tracked guitar solos, and five-minute plot-movers. For the size of the ask, where’s the emotional buy-in? David’s storyline basically evaporates 10 minutes in, Abraham feels like a guest amid the cavalcade of other voices, and it’s less of a new path forward for Fucked Up than getting back on course as a generation’s most hardcore indie rock band. There’s a Gatsby-like void at the center of Dose Your Dreams—it’s a big party, but it’s unclear who or what exactly is being celebrated.

Artist: Fucked Up, Album: Dose Your Dreams, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham has made a career on a being a bit much: The Canadian punk recently produced an extreme wrestling documentary called Bloodlust and looks like he could get in the ring himself, particularly when the burly, bearded, and frequently shirtless frontman of Fucked Up smashes bottles over his head on stage. He always sings like he’s trying to exfoliate his larynx with loose pieces of his ribcage and they’re the most abrasive vocals anyone will encounter from a band putting out records on Merge. Glass Boys, from 2014, represented Abraham’s purist vision of Fucked Up, a punk rock teleology that traced DIY ethics back to the ancient Greeks and had more guitar overdubs than a Smashing Pumpkins album. Yet, compared to the band’s double-album rock operas and wooly Zodiac EPs, Glass Boys was a model of hardcore austerity, and its mild reception felt like a referendum on guitarist Mike Haliechuk ceding his artistic control. The line on Fucked Up is that they’ve been expanding the horizons of hardcore, even though it’s a genre they’ve bore little resemblance to, starting with their 2006 debut Hidden World. At this point, it’s clear that Fucked Up are part of the indie rock orthodoxy and everything that made Fucked Up a critical sensation—the saxophones, disco beats, not-all-hardcore genre experiments, and the adventures of David Eliade—are back with a vengeance on Dose Your Dreams. It begins by recasting the titular character from their 2011 opus, David Comes To Life. Once a budding revolutionary stuck in a lightbulb factory risking it all in the name of love, David inexplicably begins the ambitious Dose Your Dreams as a drugged-up white collar schlub who quits his job on the very first song (”None of Your Business Man”). Minutes later, he meets an elderly mystic named Joyce who guides him through a psychotropic vision quest that challenges his perceptions of reality and vaguely resembles The Matrix, I guess. The plot of Dose Your Dreams could be sussed out like a Magic Eye image if you glance at the titles for long enough (“Living in a Simulation,” “Joy Stops Time,” “How To Die Happy,” “I Don’t Wanna Live in This World”), but anyone who can retell it from memory is either in Fucked Up or read the press release. Though a thematic sequel to David Comes To Life, Dose Your Dreams demands forgetting everything you know about Fucked Up, and that includes seeing them as a traditionally structured band. Abraham even had to clarify on Instagram that he wasn’t quitting, just trying to accept a lesser role. Sharing the mic with Abraham, guitarist Ben Cook, and drummer Jonah Falco are a litany of guests from Polaris Prize Winner Lido Pimiento to singer Mary Margaret O’Hara to J Mascis. Abraham appears on only about 2/3rds of Dose Your Dreams, which is still about an hour’s worth of a guy who dominates every track he’s on. His voice is a hammer that sees everything as a nail when Haliechuk and Falco are working with stained glass. But Abraham’s unwavering commitment to brute force just as often works to the band’s advantage here, especially since Haliechuk is prone to lyrical flourishes that would send Colin Meloy to his fainting couch (“But who is this tramp sat in front of me/She smiled and said, ‘Jilly I be!’”). Despite Haliechuk and Falco’s bombastic concept, Dose Your Dreams functions similar to the recent hip-hop blockbusters that share its 82-minute length, best enjoyed in chunks or humming in the background between the singles. There’s plenty of the jet-roar symphonies that typified David Comes to Life, but also new looks at dream-pop, corporate cock-rock strutting, dubby disco, Supertramp, mini-marathons of krautrock, and pure ’90s alt-rock. Even if the creation of Dose Your Dreams was acknowledged by all parties as a contentious power struggle that permanently altered Fucked Up, it at least sounds like one hell of a party. This is particularly true on the title track and “Talking Pictures,” which sounds a bit like Abraham letting loose at a Madchester rave in 1991. These songs are what likely led composer Owen Pallett to describe this album as Fucked Up’s own Screamadelica, though much of Dose Your Dreams can be enjoyed as a home version of “Beat Shazam”: based on the three-song run of “How To Die Happy,” “Two I’s Closed,” and “The One I Want Will Come For Me,” this could’ve been called Fucked Up’s Loveless, Person Pitch, or You’re Living All Over Me as well. Even with all this dynamism and attention to detail, it feels exhausting to even consider returning to all 82 minutes of Dose Your Dreams. Fucked Up have gone all in on maximalism, but it never feels like they fully interrogated its implications—by the time the jackhammer industrial pulse of “Mechanical Bull” and “Accelerate” push the album in genuinely new directions, they bear the weight of an hour’s worth of extraneous choruses, multi-tracked guitar solos, and five-minute plot-movers. For the size of the ask, where’s the emotional buy-in? David’s storyline basically evaporates 10 minutes in, Abraham feels like a guest amid the cavalcade of other voices, and it’s less of a new path forward for Fucked Up than getting back on course as a generation’s most hardcore indie rock band. There’s a Gatsby-like void at the center of Dose Your Dreams—it’s a big party, but it’s unclear who or what exactly is being celebrated."

Illinois

What the Hell Do I Know? EP

Rock

Stuart Berman

With the release of each new Wilco album comes the niggling disappointment that it's not going to be another Summerteeth-- still the band's most successful attempt at casting their country-rock rusticity in a gilded, big-production glow. That it's Wilco's second lowest-selling record (after debut AM) may put me in the minority, but after spending a few lazy Sundays with the debut EP by Illinois, I'm pretty sure these guys can relate. They may hail from small-town Pennsylvania and have a banjo player as a frontman, but Illinois' stock trade is roots-rock uprooted: Dust Bowl balladry that's been yanked out of the soil and set free to float away. If Illinois don't add anything new to the indie rock conversation, they are clearly well-versed in the proper lingo: this seven-song EP hurtles skyward on a billowy bed of "ba da ba ba bas," those onomonopoetic endearments that softened up a million Pavement and Yo La Tengo songs. Illinois are decidedly less obtuse in their emotional expressions: That the chorus to opener "Alone Again" repeats the phrase "I'm alone again" pretty much sums it up. But even Illinois' most downcast songs possess a heady grandeur that serves to leaven their simplistic, sad-sack sentiments, particularly on splendorous piano-pop serenade "What Can I Do For You", whose dejected disposition ("So this is goodbye/ I miss that look in your eye") is remedied by a swooning chorus and a tasteful banjo break that's more affective than decorative in function. What's most impressive about Illinois at this early stage is their ability to indulge in lovelorn lyricism and cosmic-cowboy reveries while honoring pop music's premium on levity and brevity (the longest song here clocks in at 3:14). And besides, it's not all tears-in-beers here: "Screendoor" is 128 seconds of acoustic-strummed rolling rock and call-and-response "ooh ooh ooh" elation, and the uncharacteristic hayseed funk of "Nosebleed" offers a quaint reminder of that fleeting period in the mid-90s when anyone associated with Beck got an instant deal with DGC and the Flaming Lips hit the top 40. The latter song's quirks-- distorted megaphoned vocals, compressed drum beats-- reappear in much less satisfying form on the concluding spoken-word ramble "Bad Day", which feels more like a B-side toss off than a closing statement, and suggests Illinois will need more than just a few banjo plucks to establish their own singular personality. Still, amid the grand lineage of bands named after states, I'll take 'em over Texas or Kansas.

Artist: Illinois, Album: What the Hell Do I Know? EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "With the release of each new Wilco album comes the niggling disappointment that it's not going to be another Summerteeth-- still the band's most successful attempt at casting their country-rock rusticity in a gilded, big-production glow. That it's Wilco's second lowest-selling record (after debut AM) may put me in the minority, but after spending a few lazy Sundays with the debut EP by Illinois, I'm pretty sure these guys can relate. They may hail from small-town Pennsylvania and have a banjo player as a frontman, but Illinois' stock trade is roots-rock uprooted: Dust Bowl balladry that's been yanked out of the soil and set free to float away. If Illinois don't add anything new to the indie rock conversation, they are clearly well-versed in the proper lingo: this seven-song EP hurtles skyward on a billowy bed of "ba da ba ba bas," those onomonopoetic endearments that softened up a million Pavement and Yo La Tengo songs. Illinois are decidedly less obtuse in their emotional expressions: That the chorus to opener "Alone Again" repeats the phrase "I'm alone again" pretty much sums it up. But even Illinois' most downcast songs possess a heady grandeur that serves to leaven their simplistic, sad-sack sentiments, particularly on splendorous piano-pop serenade "What Can I Do For You", whose dejected disposition ("So this is goodbye/ I miss that look in your eye") is remedied by a swooning chorus and a tasteful banjo break that's more affective than decorative in function. What's most impressive about Illinois at this early stage is their ability to indulge in lovelorn lyricism and cosmic-cowboy reveries while honoring pop music's premium on levity and brevity (the longest song here clocks in at 3:14). And besides, it's not all tears-in-beers here: "Screendoor" is 128 seconds of acoustic-strummed rolling rock and call-and-response "ooh ooh ooh" elation, and the uncharacteristic hayseed funk of "Nosebleed" offers a quaint reminder of that fleeting period in the mid-90s when anyone associated with Beck got an instant deal with DGC and the Flaming Lips hit the top 40. The latter song's quirks-- distorted megaphoned vocals, compressed drum beats-- reappear in much less satisfying form on the concluding spoken-word ramble "Bad Day", which feels more like a B-side toss off than a closing statement, and suggests Illinois will need more than just a few banjo plucks to establish their own singular personality. Still, amid the grand lineage of bands named after states, I'll take 'em over Texas or Kansas."

WHY?

Sanddollars EP

Rap

Cameron Macdonald

I suspect this review will be full of misinterpretations, but trying to figure out what members of Oakland's Anticon Collective are rambling about is part of the fun. On one hand, it's refreshing to hear these eccentrics dressed like their tyke selves in the early 80s throw together hip-hop and folkie-pop like found-art objects strewn in dumpsters and attics. It was quite a sight watching an Anticon showcase at San Francisco's Amoeba Music back in 2001, where the "indie kids" in patch 'n' retro badge-clad hoodies bobbed their heads in the front, while many b-boys stood in the back with crossed arms or passed through the record bins as if listening to a PA'd CD. Audience polarization can be a sign of artistic strength, but what happens when an artist's idiosyncrasies and self-indulgences are accepted as qualities of predictable freaks? What more could be expected of him or her? When Yoni Wolf emerged as Why?, he was respected as a b-boy who never raps and is often with a beat-up, acoustic guitar in his hand. His nasal whine makes his scribblings in a public bus commute notebooks like "Or in the cramped, corpse-like blue of an airplane bathroom" in the Piano Man-fashioned ballad, "Sick 2 Think" somehow charming and digestible. His EP, Sanddollars, contains more weirdness-for-weirdness' sake ditties that narrate the lives of sad sacks or sing of existential angst tuneful enough to entertain elementary school assemblies. The vaguely Brian Wilson-esque harmonies manage to keep the listener grounded as the entertaining gobbledygook passes by. The strongest tracks begin and end the record; both raise half-drunk pints to hopeless dreamers and has-beens. Opener "Miss Ohio's Nameless" tells of a beauty contestant with the voice of an angel who gets some Internet buzz, but still doesn't go beyond open-mic night and the funeral home. As expected, this piano 'n' brushed snare ballad for any homecoming dance just had to be introduced by some Deadbeat-style digital rainfall and random TV chatter. Closer "Mutant John" is about (I humbly assess) an artist's one and only fan or mutantjohn@hotmail.com. Here Why? laments "And I've been living like a (what sounds like "bend") of ones since like my second and final Tupperware party" and "But then I've been giving a flying fuck about my melancholcity." Quite clever. And then he veers into Weezer-seque whimpering. It's difficult to know whether to laugh at or pity the bloke. The rest of Sanddollars is all very cute and well-orchestrated piano-pop; something to bring home for ma. Wolf describes the ATL that "smells like dead possums," where his friend found a dead butterfly and surprised him by placing it on his keyboard during sound check in the Beach Boys-fashioned hymn "Next Atlanta". Lines that mention buying 20 bucks of Cheerios and glow-in-the-dark Legos somehow figure in. "Pantone Cyan" and "500 Fingernails" both glide on a Neu-ish motorik beat with verses shoving choruses, while the title track is prances around the Maypole until the joyous irony wears off for most hepcats and we're left with Wolf dancing with himself for hours on end, no matter that everyone went home. Much too safe.

Artist: WHY?, Album: Sanddollars EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "I suspect this review will be full of misinterpretations, but trying to figure out what members of Oakland's Anticon Collective are rambling about is part of the fun. On one hand, it's refreshing to hear these eccentrics dressed like their tyke selves in the early 80s throw together hip-hop and folkie-pop like found-art objects strewn in dumpsters and attics. It was quite a sight watching an Anticon showcase at San Francisco's Amoeba Music back in 2001, where the "indie kids" in patch 'n' retro badge-clad hoodies bobbed their heads in the front, while many b-boys stood in the back with crossed arms or passed through the record bins as if listening to a PA'd CD. Audience polarization can be a sign of artistic strength, but what happens when an artist's idiosyncrasies and self-indulgences are accepted as qualities of predictable freaks? What more could be expected of him or her? When Yoni Wolf emerged as Why?, he was respected as a b-boy who never raps and is often with a beat-up, acoustic guitar in his hand. His nasal whine makes his scribblings in a public bus commute notebooks like "Or in the cramped, corpse-like blue of an airplane bathroom" in the Piano Man-fashioned ballad, "Sick 2 Think" somehow charming and digestible. His EP, Sanddollars, contains more weirdness-for-weirdness' sake ditties that narrate the lives of sad sacks or sing of existential angst tuneful enough to entertain elementary school assemblies. The vaguely Brian Wilson-esque harmonies manage to keep the listener grounded as the entertaining gobbledygook passes by. The strongest tracks begin and end the record; both raise half-drunk pints to hopeless dreamers and has-beens. Opener "Miss Ohio's Nameless" tells of a beauty contestant with the voice of an angel who gets some Internet buzz, but still doesn't go beyond open-mic night and the funeral home. As expected, this piano 'n' brushed snare ballad for any homecoming dance just had to be introduced by some Deadbeat-style digital rainfall and random TV chatter. Closer "Mutant John" is about (I humbly assess) an artist's one and only fan or mutantjohn@hotmail.com. Here Why? laments "And I've been living like a (what sounds like "bend") of ones since like my second and final Tupperware party" and "But then I've been giving a flying fuck about my melancholcity." Quite clever. And then he veers into Weezer-seque whimpering. It's difficult to know whether to laugh at or pity the bloke. The rest of Sanddollars is all very cute and well-orchestrated piano-pop; something to bring home for ma. Wolf describes the ATL that "smells like dead possums," where his friend found a dead butterfly and surprised him by placing it on his keyboard during sound check in the Beach Boys-fashioned hymn "Next Atlanta". Lines that mention buying 20 bucks of Cheerios and glow-in-the-dark Legos somehow figure in. "Pantone Cyan" and "500 Fingernails" both glide on a Neu-ish motorik beat with verses shoving choruses, while the title track is prances around the Maypole until the joyous irony wears off for most hepcats and we're left with Wolf dancing with himself for hours on end, no matter that everyone went home. Much too safe."

Weezer

Pacific Daydream

Rock

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Long ago, Rivers Cuomo basically split Weezer into two different bands. One of them puts out experimental albums (Pinkerton, Maladroit, The Red Album, etc.), and the other puts out commercially-minded records (The Green Album, Make Believe, etc). At times (The Blue Album, Everything Will Be Alright in the End), Weezer straddle the fence. There’s a bit of mad genius to this approach. Not only does Cuomo—something of a creative contrarian who’s been ultra-reactive to fan response in the past—get to buck expectations when he wants to, but he also gets to appease both sides of the aisle. If you like hooky Weezer, about half of the albums should appeal to you, while the same applies if you’re partial to the more out-there Weezer. Pacific Daydream is the band’s first offering to fall far short for both camps—not because it’s one of the most extreme examples of Cuomo going for a radio-friendly sound (though it is that), but because he betrays the band’s mission in the process. This is all the more disappointing when you consider that even when Cuomo churns out dance-pop fluff such as “Feels Like Summer,” it’s still abundantly clear that he hasn’t lost his gift for coming up with earworm hooks. “Weekend Woman” offers a clear example of just how these songs go wrong. Weezer have used glockenspiels for texture in the past (Pinkerton’s “Pink Triangle,” last year’s “California Kids,” etc.), but here they follow ’80s-era Cheap Trick into the void between powder-puff rock and adult contempo, and the percussion instrument is front and center. This could have turned out to be another example of Cuomo taking gutsy risks, but "Weekend Woman" sounds less "spacious" and more "empty." Other than the one eccentricity in the arrangement, there's little to distinguish this song from hundreds of pop songs you've forgotten about. In fact, the album is almost completely devoid of the chunking guitar riffs that sit at the core of Weezer’s soul. And on “QB Blitz,” they even manage to take the “power” out of “power ballad.” Lyrically, Cuomo’s continued fixation on nostalgia and dime-store rock mythology further chokes what little the music may have had to offer. He tries to pass himself off as the dreamy-eyed kid you invariably find shredding at Guitar Center by including references to Mexican-made Fender guitars and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but the observations are pat, delivered without detail or conviction. And while there are moments on Pacific Daydream when Weezer take half-hearted stabs at the harmony vocals that Brian Wilson so famously seared into our musical DNA, the strangely wan “Beach Boys” isn’t one of them. Had producer Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne, P!nk, Panic! at the Disco, and Weezer’s own 2009 album Raditude) nurtured the song’s quirks, “Beach Boys” could have actually explored its hinted fusion of Latin music and reggae. The airy lead hook in the chorus even contains suggests yacht rock, a style that could do worse than to have Cuomo give it a go. To be fair, Pacific Daydream does show us new sides of the band—splashes of Spanish guitar, clavinet—while Cuomo and fellow guitarist Brian Bell’s acoustic handiwork threads the music with a delicate touch we rarely get from Weezer. Nevertheless, toothless melodies coupled with an excess of production gloss suffocate any personality these songs could have had. When Cuomo and company do more than pay superficial lip service to the Beach Boys, it comes off as crass—even dishonest—coming from behind the music’s thick, gleaming surface. Looking back, it’s no surprise that Cuomo’s distinct combination of fuzzy guitar riffs, sunny hooks, unabashed awkwardness, and roiling internal conflict struck such a profound nerve. But for the second album in a row, Cuomo anchors the music more specifically to California. Sure, that’s worked for scores of artists in the past, but a crucial part of Weezer’s appeal was that you could believe they came out of any garage on any tree-lined cul-de-sac in any suburban zip code in the U.S. Pacific Daydream, in spite of its name, mostly just gives you a feeling of being nowhere.

Artist: Weezer, Album: Pacific Daydream, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.3 Album review: "Long ago, Rivers Cuomo basically split Weezer into two different bands. One of them puts out experimental albums (Pinkerton, Maladroit, The Red Album, etc.), and the other puts out commercially-minded records (The Green Album, Make Believe, etc). At times (The Blue Album, Everything Will Be Alright in the End), Weezer straddle the fence. There’s a bit of mad genius to this approach. Not only does Cuomo—something of a creative contrarian who’s been ultra-reactive to fan response in the past—get to buck expectations when he wants to, but he also gets to appease both sides of the aisle. If you like hooky Weezer, about half of the albums should appeal to you, while the same applies if you’re partial to the more out-there Weezer. Pacific Daydream is the band’s first offering to fall far short for both camps—not because it’s one of the most extreme examples of Cuomo going for a radio-friendly sound (though it is that), but because he betrays the band’s mission in the process. This is all the more disappointing when you consider that even when Cuomo churns out dance-pop fluff such as “Feels Like Summer,” it’s still abundantly clear that he hasn’t lost his gift for coming up with earworm hooks. “Weekend Woman” offers a clear example of just how these songs go wrong. Weezer have used glockenspiels for texture in the past (Pinkerton’s “Pink Triangle,” last year’s “California Kids,” etc.), but here they follow ’80s-era Cheap Trick into the void between powder-puff rock and adult contempo, and the percussion instrument is front and center. This could have turned out to be another example of Cuomo taking gutsy risks, but "Weekend Woman" sounds less "spacious" and more "empty." Other than the one eccentricity in the arrangement, there's little to distinguish this song from hundreds of pop songs you've forgotten about. In fact, the album is almost completely devoid of the chunking guitar riffs that sit at the core of Weezer’s soul. And on “QB Blitz,” they even manage to take the “power” out of “power ballad.” Lyrically, Cuomo’s continued fixation on nostalgia and dime-store rock mythology further chokes what little the music may have had to offer. He tries to pass himself off as the dreamy-eyed kid you invariably find shredding at Guitar Center by including references to Mexican-made Fender guitars and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but the observations are pat, delivered without detail or conviction. And while there are moments on Pacific Daydream when Weezer take half-hearted stabs at the harmony vocals that Brian Wilson so famously seared into our musical DNA, the strangely wan “Beach Boys” isn’t one of them. Had producer Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne, P!nk, Panic! at the Disco, and Weezer’s own 2009 album Raditude) nurtured the song’s quirks, “Beach Boys” could have actually explored its hinted fusion of Latin music and reggae. The airy lead hook in the chorus even contains suggests yacht rock, a style that could do worse than to have Cuomo give it a go. To be fair, Pacific Daydream does show us new sides of the band—splashes of Spanish guitar, clavinet—while Cuomo and fellow guitarist Brian Bell’s acoustic handiwork threads the music with a delicate touch we rarely get from Weezer. Nevertheless, toothless melodies coupled with an excess of production gloss suffocate any personality these songs could have had. When Cuomo and company do more than pay superficial lip service to the Beach Boys, it comes off as crass—even dishonest—coming from behind the music’s thick, gleaming surface. Looking back, it’s no surprise that Cuomo’s distinct combination of fuzzy guitar riffs, sunny hooks, unabashed awkwardness, and roiling internal conflict struck such a profound nerve. But for the second album in a row, Cuomo anchors the music more specifically to California. Sure, that’s worked for scores of artists in the past, but a crucial part of Weezer’s appeal was that you could believe they came out of any garage on any tree-lined cul-de-sac in any suburban zip code in the U.S. Pacific Daydream, in spite of its name, mostly just gives you a feeling of being nowhere."

These Are Powers

Taro Tarot EP

Experimental,Rock

Adam Moerder

After jetting from Liars pre-Drum's Not Dead, Pat Noecker isn't about to let his own career turn into a fool's errand. His bass teamed with ex-Liars drummer Ron Albertson, Noecker preserved Liars' rhythmic gusto with n0 Things, a band already DOA by the release of their intriguing debut. Making sure history doesn't repeat itself, Noecker's newest project These Are Powers follow up their late-2007 debut Terrific Seasons with an EP that should guarantee these self-described "ghost-punks" don't fade away quite so quickly. Laugh at the spectral label all you want, but Noecker's post-Liars projects, and TAP in particular, have established an MO of making very blunt, visceral rock/punk tropes feel like a vague out-of-body experience. Like the finest no wave and post-punk acts it so blatantly mined from, Terrific Seasons transmogrified stomping blues beats and tribal war dances into something that makes you wake up in a cold sweat instead of moving your feet. However, somewhere between that record and Taro Tarot, TAP's decided there's more in life than gross-out noise collages and unfeeling graveyard jams. While still a little too ungodly to capture our hearts, this EP contains "ghost-punks" of the Ghostbusters variety-- spooky at first but not without a mischievous charm. For all its moaning guitar parts and haunted house reverb, opener "All Night Services" sings the blues at its most traditional, replete with mentions of Mississippi and pulsating, if not sexy, drums. While hardly fit for a juke joint, the track recalls n0 Things's tendency to take standard song conventions and rip out their innards. "Chipping Ice" easily stands as TAP's most accessible song yet, downplaying the jungle drum arrangements in favor of a rapid-fire bass/snare/cymbal onslaught. Coupled with a shuffling bassline, Noecker's sassy shrieks suffer a similar fate as John Lydon's sepulchral take on disco, too catchy for nihilistic no wave, too grotesque to pass for a plausible dancefloor number. Unfortunately, after the stately harmonics fanfare of the Killing Joke-inspired "Cockles", the EP backslides into a more homogeneous gruel. Of course, for a seasoned noise fanatic this gruel goes down easy, but there's little distinguishing it from an Excepter or Black Dice B-side. As a trial balloon, though, Taro Tarot unequivocally succeeds. Merely a few months after their debut LP, TAP are sporting new tricks and establishing themselves as potential movers and shakers in their field rather than another footnote on Noecker's resume.

Artist: These Are Powers, Album: Taro Tarot EP, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "After jetting from Liars pre-Drum's Not Dead, Pat Noecker isn't about to let his own career turn into a fool's errand. His bass teamed with ex-Liars drummer Ron Albertson, Noecker preserved Liars' rhythmic gusto with n0 Things, a band already DOA by the release of their intriguing debut. Making sure history doesn't repeat itself, Noecker's newest project These Are Powers follow up their late-2007 debut Terrific Seasons with an EP that should guarantee these self-described "ghost-punks" don't fade away quite so quickly. Laugh at the spectral label all you want, but Noecker's post-Liars projects, and TAP in particular, have established an MO of making very blunt, visceral rock/punk tropes feel like a vague out-of-body experience. Like the finest no wave and post-punk acts it so blatantly mined from, Terrific Seasons transmogrified stomping blues beats and tribal war dances into something that makes you wake up in a cold sweat instead of moving your feet. However, somewhere between that record and Taro Tarot, TAP's decided there's more in life than gross-out noise collages and unfeeling graveyard jams. While still a little too ungodly to capture our hearts, this EP contains "ghost-punks" of the Ghostbusters variety-- spooky at first but not without a mischievous charm. For all its moaning guitar parts and haunted house reverb, opener "All Night Services" sings the blues at its most traditional, replete with mentions of Mississippi and pulsating, if not sexy, drums. While hardly fit for a juke joint, the track recalls n0 Things's tendency to take standard song conventions and rip out their innards. "Chipping Ice" easily stands as TAP's most accessible song yet, downplaying the jungle drum arrangements in favor of a rapid-fire bass/snare/cymbal onslaught. Coupled with a shuffling bassline, Noecker's sassy shrieks suffer a similar fate as John Lydon's sepulchral take on disco, too catchy for nihilistic no wave, too grotesque to pass for a plausible dancefloor number. Unfortunately, after the stately harmonics fanfare of the Killing Joke-inspired "Cockles", the EP backslides into a more homogeneous gruel. Of course, for a seasoned noise fanatic this gruel goes down easy, but there's little distinguishing it from an Excepter or Black Dice B-side. As a trial balloon, though, Taro Tarot unequivocally succeeds. Merely a few months after their debut LP, TAP are sporting new tricks and establishing themselves as potential movers and shakers in their field rather than another footnote on Noecker's resume."

VHS or Beta

Le Funk

Electronic,Rock

Mark Richard-San

A few indie bands make genre exploration their biggest priority. I'm thinking of groups like Emperor Penguin, Ladytron and Trans Am, bands that make selecting the style of music -- be it neo-electro, 80's rock or synth pop -- the first step in composition. It's weird that these bands never try their hand at straight disco. It's one of the most identifiable genres of music, with plenty of wink-wink potential if that's your angle-- and, well, it's fun. And, if they know what's good for them, genre bands should about fun. I'm happy to report that Louisville's VHS or Beta emerges now to fill the disco void. Yes, VHS or Beta are a four-piece indie band (two guitars, bass and drums) who play disco and nothing but. The graphic on the inside of the CD tells the story. It's a purple and magenta drawing of four young guys on stage, guitars in hand, performing under a neon "Le Funk" sign straight out of that opening shot in Boogie Nights. Confirming the indieness, one of the guys sports a decidedly post-grunge stocking cap and goatee. You might ask yourself why, when there are good house records being released every week, the world needs an instrumental band playing original disco tunes. Doesn't the DJ booth provide the club entertainment? Well, there are certain qualities to this debut EP made possible only by getting a band in a room. You see, VHS or Beta are also a jam band who happen to play disco, as Le Funk's closing live tracks make explicit. The first couple minutes of "Teenage Dancefloor" consists of nothing more than a bass drum thump and dueling wah-wah guitars. It's like Spacemen 3 getting funky on Shakedown Street-- groovy music from where the KC don't shine. The four studio tracks are much more slick and composed. VHS or Beta being an instrumental band, the reference point for these tracks is not the Bee Gees, but the faceless instrumental tracks that also graced the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Think David Shire, not Donna Summer. These tracks are solid feel-good music, but only the opening "Heaven" really leaps out of the speakers. It opens with a glossy update on the lead riff from Shaft, then glides into a boogie wonderland of glistening crescendos, rock-solid beats, and finally, a party chorus chanting something about getting down on a Saturday night. "Heaven" contains by far the most prominent vocal on Le Funk and points to a possible direction for the next record. With a few proper songs and an attenuation of irony VHS or Beta could eventually turn in something truly amazing.

Artist: VHS or Beta, Album: Le Funk, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "A few indie bands make genre exploration their biggest priority. I'm thinking of groups like Emperor Penguin, Ladytron and Trans Am, bands that make selecting the style of music -- be it neo-electro, 80's rock or synth pop -- the first step in composition. It's weird that these bands never try their hand at straight disco. It's one of the most identifiable genres of music, with plenty of wink-wink potential if that's your angle-- and, well, it's fun. And, if they know what's good for them, genre bands should about fun. I'm happy to report that Louisville's VHS or Beta emerges now to fill the disco void. Yes, VHS or Beta are a four-piece indie band (two guitars, bass and drums) who play disco and nothing but. The graphic on the inside of the CD tells the story. It's a purple and magenta drawing of four young guys on stage, guitars in hand, performing under a neon "Le Funk" sign straight out of that opening shot in Boogie Nights. Confirming the indieness, one of the guys sports a decidedly post-grunge stocking cap and goatee. You might ask yourself why, when there are good house records being released every week, the world needs an instrumental band playing original disco tunes. Doesn't the DJ booth provide the club entertainment? Well, there are certain qualities to this debut EP made possible only by getting a band in a room. You see, VHS or Beta are also a jam band who happen to play disco, as Le Funk's closing live tracks make explicit. The first couple minutes of "Teenage Dancefloor" consists of nothing more than a bass drum thump and dueling wah-wah guitars. It's like Spacemen 3 getting funky on Shakedown Street-- groovy music from where the KC don't shine. The four studio tracks are much more slick and composed. VHS or Beta being an instrumental band, the reference point for these tracks is not the Bee Gees, but the faceless instrumental tracks that also graced the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Think David Shire, not Donna Summer. These tracks are solid feel-good music, but only the opening "Heaven" really leaps out of the speakers. It opens with a glossy update on the lead riff from Shaft, then glides into a boogie wonderland of glistening crescendos, rock-solid beats, and finally, a party chorus chanting something about getting down on a Saturday night. "Heaven" contains by far the most prominent vocal on Le Funk and points to a possible direction for the next record. With a few proper songs and an attenuation of irony VHS or Beta could eventually turn in something truly amazing."

Malajube

La Caverne

Rock

Stuart Berman

From Super Furry Animals to Sigur Rós, it's inevitable that non-Anglo artists start singing in English as their international audience grows. But four albums in, proudly Francophone Montrealers Malajube are still happy to get lost in translation, even with two Polaris Music Prize nominations and several Stateside tours under their belts. That said, in Malajube's case, the language barrier is a porous one-- for one, their songs often come with remedial titles that provide easily discernible emotional cues (e.g.: "La Blizzard", "Ibuprofène"), and, much like the Super Furries before them, the band has exhibited a knack for fusing psychedelia, prog- and classic-rock, disco, and new wave into exuberant, easily grasped big-tent indie pop. Neither as manic as 2006 breakthrough Trompe L'Oeil nor as knotty as 2009's appropriately titled Labyrinthes, La Caverne sees Malajube settle into a lush, soft-rockin' groove that, true to their all-French songwriting policy, suggests the band is completely content playing in its comfort zone; tellingly, the album was recorded in a secluded, custom-built, geodesic-dome house located deep in the Laurentians. (In fact, Malajube sound so blissfully self-contained here, it's not unreasonable to think they're completely oblivious to how much the La Caverne's blue-vector cover graphics resemble those of Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack.) The relatively stress-free recording environment naturally manifests itself in the performances: whether it's smooth yacht-rockin' disco ("Synesthésie") or upbeat, glockenspieled pop ("Radiologie"), singer Julien Mineau's voice rarely wavers from a daydreamy sigh, indicating he has little desire to challenge fellow countrymen Win Butler or Kevin Drew in the crowd-rousing, master-of-ceremonies department. Clocking in at 10 tracks and a mere 32 minutes, La Caverne can breeze by without your realizing it, which is as much a comment on the songs' consistently pleasing, shimmering surfaces as their tendency to come and go without much incident; while nocturnally tinted songs like "Sangsues" and "Le Stridor" hint at a creeping tension, the album is decidedly lacking in a curtain-raising dramatic flourish like Labyrinthes' "Ursuline", or an emotional centerpiece à la Trompe's epic star-gazing ballad "Étienne D'août". Perhaps La Caverne's streamlined simplicity is an inevitable retreat from Labyrinthes' structural complexities, and with songs as immediately engaging as the power-pop rush of "Cro-Magnon" or the gorgeously tranquil "Mon Oeil", it's hard to fault that approach. But a big part of Malajube's initial appeal was how willing they were to upset their joyous melodies with shocks of screaming or bizarro electronic intrusions. Malajube's admirable dedication to singing in their native tongue already suggests a certain lack of compromise in making themselves more accessible to the masses; with La Caverne, you just wish that same sense of daring was reflected a little more in the music.

Artist: Malajube, Album: La Caverne, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "From Super Furry Animals to Sigur Rós, it's inevitable that non-Anglo artists start singing in English as their international audience grows. But four albums in, proudly Francophone Montrealers Malajube are still happy to get lost in translation, even with two Polaris Music Prize nominations and several Stateside tours under their belts. That said, in Malajube's case, the language barrier is a porous one-- for one, their songs often come with remedial titles that provide easily discernible emotional cues (e.g.: "La Blizzard", "Ibuprofène"), and, much like the Super Furries before them, the band has exhibited a knack for fusing psychedelia, prog- and classic-rock, disco, and new wave into exuberant, easily grasped big-tent indie pop. Neither as manic as 2006 breakthrough Trompe L'Oeil nor as knotty as 2009's appropriately titled Labyrinthes, La Caverne sees Malajube settle into a lush, soft-rockin' groove that, true to their all-French songwriting policy, suggests the band is completely content playing in its comfort zone; tellingly, the album was recorded in a secluded, custom-built, geodesic-dome house located deep in the Laurentians. (In fact, Malajube sound so blissfully self-contained here, it's not unreasonable to think they're completely oblivious to how much the La Caverne's blue-vector cover graphics resemble those of Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack.) The relatively stress-free recording environment naturally manifests itself in the performances: whether it's smooth yacht-rockin' disco ("Synesthésie") or upbeat, glockenspieled pop ("Radiologie"), singer Julien Mineau's voice rarely wavers from a daydreamy sigh, indicating he has little desire to challenge fellow countrymen Win Butler or Kevin Drew in the crowd-rousing, master-of-ceremonies department. Clocking in at 10 tracks and a mere 32 minutes, La Caverne can breeze by without your realizing it, which is as much a comment on the songs' consistently pleasing, shimmering surfaces as their tendency to come and go without much incident; while nocturnally tinted songs like "Sangsues" and "Le Stridor" hint at a creeping tension, the album is decidedly lacking in a curtain-raising dramatic flourish like Labyrinthes' "Ursuline", or an emotional centerpiece à la Trompe's epic star-gazing ballad "Étienne D'août". Perhaps La Caverne's streamlined simplicity is an inevitable retreat from Labyrinthes' structural complexities, and with songs as immediately engaging as the power-pop rush of "Cro-Magnon" or the gorgeously tranquil "Mon Oeil", it's hard to fault that approach. But a big part of Malajube's initial appeal was how willing they were to upset their joyous melodies with shocks of screaming or bizarro electronic intrusions. Malajube's admirable dedication to singing in their native tongue already suggests a certain lack of compromise in making themselves more accessible to the masses; with La Caverne, you just wish that same sense of daring was reflected a little more in the music."

Battles

EP C

Rock

Sam Ubl

As pliable and starkly gorgeous as Ian Williams' guitar playing was with Don Caballero, he was never the group's driving force. Despite serving as lead guitarist for a band that came to typify a genre, Williams always played a somewhat diminished role, relegated to ancillary status by drummer-cum-frontman Damon Che's beguiling polyrhythms. I always wondered how Don Cab would fare with a less audacious (if not just lesser) drummer, and Battles' EP C and Tras, Fantasy offer the answer: Buoyed-- never obscured-- by John Stanier's competent but unspectacular timekeeping, Williams flourishes, spearheading a set of hardened guitar harmonies that summon the likes of Philip Glass and Unwound. EP C and Tras, Fantasy are the first in a succession of three EPs scheduled for release this year by Battles (a third sees issue in September), a collaboration between Williams and emergent avant-jazz composer Tyondai Braxton. The guitarists' styles harmonize uncannily well, and EP C underscores their individual abilities while simultaneously siphoning them into an adherent combo. Somewhat protracted in the development of their central ideas, these consciously static songs, once unleashed, bottle enough tension to topple a house. Dreary, postmodern and monolithic throughout, EP C stays a rigid and weary course, unflinchingly dialed-in to Stanier's cagey ostinatos and Williams' confrontational anti-melodies. Stanier's utilitarian playing serves as sturdy accompaniment to Williams and Braxton's brittle fingering, but he knows how to pour it on-- in his minimalist way-- when it serves: "Tras 2" carries EP C out with an two-minute drum "solo," almost completely devoid of fills, during which Stanier verily delivers the disc's hardest groove. On opener "B + T", his drumming stays a rigid course, pounding a Spartan but insistent rhythm until a roaring triplet fill brings the song to an abrupt halt. Exceeding six minutes in length, it's an early potential breaking point, a sophisticated and confrontational slog that tries the listener's patience. And that's pretty much Battles in a nutshell. Williams & Co. aren't here to dick around; their shrill dynamics offer an immediate and unsettling clarion call. Chances are, if you're not feeling EP C from the get-go, you won't see it through to the next track, much less the fifth. Yet, in only 24 minutes, Battles turn in a holistic statement that fulfills its ambitions and leaves no end untied. If "B + T" is the heady statement of intent, "UW" is the cordial palette cleanser; for three expansive minutes, Battles' dense rhythmic onslaught is supplanted by an ambient synthscape. In contrast with the confrontational instrumentation of the opening track, "UW" is devoid of live acoustic performance, relying instead upon the noncommittal jabbering of synthesizers. Fortunately, the song neither wanders too far from the band's concise style, nor indulges too liberally in textural experimentation to be a detriment. From there, however, the poles posited on the opening two tracks coalesce into a more fully-formed representation of Battles' sound. "Hi/Lo" opens with a chiming, arrhythmic Rhodes riff before stiffening up to a sludgy bass-and-drums vamp. Understated synths are slyly interwoven throughout, fleshing out the staid textures produced by the band's acoustic core. Elsewhere, "Lpt-2" dabbles in trip-hop-style beat manipulation, while closer "Tras 2" further deconstructs the band's sound, featuring curt start/stops and counter-rhythms that channel Don Cab more directly than any other song here. As the disparate elements drop out, Stanier persists, carrying the groove for nearly two minutes before removing his syncopated snare cracks and leaving his kickdrum to erratically feel for the beat. The band wastes no time with intimations or foreshadowing on Tras, Fantasy, blending electronics into the acoustic mix from the outset. "Tras" conveniently encapsulates many of the themes sprinkled about on EP C, reining in Battles' penchant for odd-time syncopation, angular guitar harmonies, and electronic tinkering in a prompt 3\xBD minute package. Though its central riff isn't as compelling as any of those on EP C, the song nevertheless underscores the musicians' intricate communication while highlighting their individual talents. "Fantasy", the album's B-side, turtle-turns the directness of "Tras", eliminating all semblance of melody and replacing it with a hard-driving house beat that meanders for 8+ minutes over several subtle variations. Brazen and uncompromising, the "song" is a real backbreaker, cryptically reflective of Battles' jarring compositional style and opaque aesthetic. If these records are a testament to Ian Williams' skill as a frontman, they also shed new light on the talent of Damon Che. While Battles play an intentionally much grimmer style of music than Don Cab, Che had an astounding knack for evincing vibrant textures from his sonorous kit, and as a result, lent color to Williams' playing. Here, Williams is bleaker, clearer and firmer, making Battles a much different-- but no less muscular-- beast than his former band.

Artist: Battles, Album: EP C, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "As pliable and starkly gorgeous as Ian Williams' guitar playing was with Don Caballero, he was never the group's driving force. Despite serving as lead guitarist for a band that came to typify a genre, Williams always played a somewhat diminished role, relegated to ancillary status by drummer-cum-frontman Damon Che's beguiling polyrhythms. I always wondered how Don Cab would fare with a less audacious (if not just lesser) drummer, and Battles' EP C and Tras, Fantasy offer the answer: Buoyed-- never obscured-- by John Stanier's competent but unspectacular timekeeping, Williams flourishes, spearheading a set of hardened guitar harmonies that summon the likes of Philip Glass and Unwound. EP C and Tras, Fantasy are the first in a succession of three EPs scheduled for release this year by Battles (a third sees issue in September), a collaboration between Williams and emergent avant-jazz composer Tyondai Braxton. The guitarists' styles harmonize uncannily well, and EP C underscores their individual abilities while simultaneously siphoning them into an adherent combo. Somewhat protracted in the development of their central ideas, these consciously static songs, once unleashed, bottle enough tension to topple a house. Dreary, postmodern and monolithic throughout, EP C stays a rigid and weary course, unflinchingly dialed-in to Stanier's cagey ostinatos and Williams' confrontational anti-melodies. Stanier's utilitarian playing serves as sturdy accompaniment to Williams and Braxton's brittle fingering, but he knows how to pour it on-- in his minimalist way-- when it serves: "Tras 2" carries EP C out with an two-minute drum "solo," almost completely devoid of fills, during which Stanier verily delivers the disc's hardest groove. On opener "B + T", his drumming stays a rigid course, pounding a Spartan but insistent rhythm until a roaring triplet fill brings the song to an abrupt halt. Exceeding six minutes in length, it's an early potential breaking point, a sophisticated and confrontational slog that tries the listener's patience. And that's pretty much Battles in a nutshell. Williams & Co. aren't here to dick around; their shrill dynamics offer an immediate and unsettling clarion call. Chances are, if you're not feeling EP C from the get-go, you won't see it through to the next track, much less the fifth. Yet, in only 24 minutes, Battles turn in a holistic statement that fulfills its ambitions and leaves no end untied. If "B + T" is the heady statement of intent, "UW" is the cordial palette cleanser; for three expansive minutes, Battles' dense rhythmic onslaught is supplanted by an ambient synthscape. In contrast with the confrontational instrumentation of the opening track, "UW" is devoid of live acoustic performance, relying instead upon the noncommittal jabbering of synthesizers. Fortunately, the song neither wanders too far from the band's concise style, nor indulges too liberally in textural experimentation to be a detriment. From there, however, the poles posited on the opening two tracks coalesce into a more fully-formed representation of Battles' sound. "Hi/Lo" opens with a chiming, arrhythmic Rhodes riff before stiffening up to a sludgy bass-and-drums vamp. Understated synths are slyly interwoven throughout, fleshing out the staid textures produced by the band's acoustic core. Elsewhere, "Lpt-2" dabbles in trip-hop-style beat manipulation, while closer "Tras 2" further deconstructs the band's sound, featuring curt start/stops and counter-rhythms that channel Don Cab more directly than any other song here. As the disparate elements drop out, Stanier persists, carrying the groove for nearly two minutes before removing his syncopated snare cracks and leaving his kickdrum to erratically feel for the beat. The band wastes no time with intimations or foreshadowing on Tras, Fantasy, blending electronics into the acoustic mix from the outset. "Tras" conveniently encapsulates many of the themes sprinkled about on EP C, reining in Battles' penchant for odd-time syncopation, angular guitar harmonies, and electronic tinkering in a prompt 3\xBD minute package. Though its central riff isn't as compelling as any of those on EP C, the song nevertheless underscores the musicians' intricate communication while highlighting their individual talents. "Fantasy", the album's B-side, turtle-turns the directness of "Tras", eliminating all semblance of melody and replacing it with a hard-driving house beat that meanders for 8+ minutes over several subtle variations. Brazen and uncompromising, the "song" is a real backbreaker, cryptically reflective of Battles' jarring compositional style and opaque aesthetic. If these records are a testament to Ian Williams' skill as a frontman, they also shed new light on the talent of Damon Che. While Battles play an intentionally much grimmer style of music than Don Cab, Che had an astounding knack for evincing vibrant textures from his sonorous kit, and as a result, lent color to Williams' playing. Here, Williams is bleaker, clearer and firmer, making Battles a much different-- but no less muscular-- beast than his former band."

Various Artists

Christians Catch Hell: Gospel Roots 1976-79

J. Edward Keyes

Producer and label owner Henry Stone, who passed away last August at the age of 93, was the kind of mythic record label executive who turns up midway through music biopics, or as the "other guy" in countless photos of famous artists. He regularly shared cognac at his house with James Brown; he recorded a young Ray Charles; he singlehandedly put Miami on the map with his early '70s label TK Records; and made a star of a worker in his warehouse named Harry Wayne Casey, whose KC & the Sunshine band scored disco hits like "That's The Way (I Like It)" and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" for TK. Just as impressive as his business smarts was his restlessness: though TK was Stone's primary concern, he also oversaw a fleet of smaller independent labels, each of which had a different stylistic focus, but were all loosely linked to R&B. One of those labels was Gospel Roots, which Stone founded in 1976 with Timmy Thomas, who had himself scored a hit four years prior with "Why Can't We Live Together", a song that has had a particularly big 2015. Like all of Stone's ventures, Gospel Roots quickly amassed a sprawling discography, releasing 50 LPs in just three years. Part of this was owed to the label's canny structure—rather than shelling out for recording and production, Stone snapped up pre-existing gospel masters from regional artists and simply pressed and distributed them through Gospel Roots. According to the extensive notes included with Christians Catch Hell, Thomas rarely met—or even spoke to—the artists whose work he was commissioned to promote. The label expired just three years after it was founded, without scoring a single notable hit. That backstory makes Christians Catch Hell—a collection of 18 tracks from the Gospel Roots label—seem like yet another in a long line of barrel-scraping reissues of "lost classics," but the music it contains transcends record collector arcana, providing instead a snapshot of the underexplored intersection between disco, funk, and gospel. Despite its fiery title, the prevailing themes on Christians are joy, empathy and compassion; in nearly all of them, salvation and Divine love are contrasted with societal ills. On the loose, New Orleans-style R&B of the Fantastic Family Aires' "Tell Me", vocalist Rachion Conigan asks repeatedly, "What is this world coming to?" describing fractured families and global catastrophes as the band vamps balefully behind him. Later, in "The Color of God", they attack racism, describing God as being "a natural color," existing above toxic, man-made prejudice. Like "Tell Me", the music that accompanies it is a slow walk, full of teardrop guitar licks and heartbeat bass lines. By contrast, Pastor T.L. Barrett's swooping "After the Rain" comes on like Talking Book-era Stevie Wonder, with big, clanging piano ringing out behind Barrett's fervent reassurances of God's enduring love. And "On Jesus' Program", by the Original Sunset Travelers, is a kind of twilight doo-wop number that edges its way forward slowly, with an unidentified lead vocalist spilling his honeyed tenor over deep-set, creeping music. There are fragments of hundreds of styles on Christians: the wacka-wacka disco guitar on "For the Children", the twinkling cocktail lounge funk on the sweeping "Said It Long Time Ago", and late-night Quiet Storm vocals on the praise number "Spirit Free", which gracefully blurs the line between spiritual and romantic love. Christians subtly connects all of these genres, indicating passages from one to the other while also gesturing toward their common source in gospel music. More than being a simple celebration of obscure artists, Christians is instead a kind of roadmap, tracing the byways that lead from one style to another. At times, it could do with a bit more heat. With few of the tracks operating above mid-tempo, it begins to sag slightly as it goes on. Fortunately, it snaps back into focus with the late arrival of the title track, a smoky, agonized blues number powered by the impassioned vocals of Rev. Edna Isaac and the Greene Sisters. In the liners, Isaac describes crying while writing the lyrics, and every ounce of that pain turns up in her delivery. Unlike the rest of the record, which presents religion as a rescue, "Christians Catch Hell" focuses on the difficulty of having faith, and the oppression from friends and spiritual forces that accompanies belief. "People who are non-Christians/ Throw stumbling blocks in your way," she cautions, "Satan chooses his disciples/ Puts his seal on them to do his ways/…But I'd rather be a Christian/ And stay with the Lord every day." Like all of the songs on Christians, it didn't turn its singer into a star on par with, say KC & the Sunshine Band. But the conviction of the performance and the clarity of the lyrics suggests that perhaps earthly acclaim was beside the point.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Christians Catch Hell: Gospel Roots 1976-79, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Producer and label owner Henry Stone, who passed away last August at the age of 93, was the kind of mythic record label executive who turns up midway through music biopics, or as the "other guy" in countless photos of famous artists. He regularly shared cognac at his house with James Brown; he recorded a young Ray Charles; he singlehandedly put Miami on the map with his early '70s label TK Records; and made a star of a worker in his warehouse named Harry Wayne Casey, whose KC & the Sunshine band scored disco hits like "That's The Way (I Like It)" and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" for TK. Just as impressive as his business smarts was his restlessness: though TK was Stone's primary concern, he also oversaw a fleet of smaller independent labels, each of which had a different stylistic focus, but were all loosely linked to R&B. One of those labels was Gospel Roots, which Stone founded in 1976 with Timmy Thomas, who had himself scored a hit four years prior with "Why Can't We Live Together", a song that has had a particularly big 2015. Like all of Stone's ventures, Gospel Roots quickly amassed a sprawling discography, releasing 50 LPs in just three years. Part of this was owed to the label's canny structure—rather than shelling out for recording and production, Stone snapped up pre-existing gospel masters from regional artists and simply pressed and distributed them through Gospel Roots. According to the extensive notes included with Christians Catch Hell, Thomas rarely met—or even spoke to—the artists whose work he was commissioned to promote. The label expired just three years after it was founded, without scoring a single notable hit. That backstory makes Christians Catch Hell—a collection of 18 tracks from the Gospel Roots label—seem like yet another in a long line of barrel-scraping reissues of "lost classics," but the music it contains transcends record collector arcana, providing instead a snapshot of the underexplored intersection between disco, funk, and gospel. Despite its fiery title, the prevailing themes on Christians are joy, empathy and compassion; in nearly all of them, salvation and Divine love are contrasted with societal ills. On the loose, New Orleans-style R&B of the Fantastic Family Aires' "Tell Me", vocalist Rachion Conigan asks repeatedly, "What is this world coming to?" describing fractured families and global catastrophes as the band vamps balefully behind him. Later, in "The Color of God", they attack racism, describing God as being "a natural color," existing above toxic, man-made prejudice. Like "Tell Me", the music that accompanies it is a slow walk, full of teardrop guitar licks and heartbeat bass lines. By contrast, Pastor T.L. Barrett's swooping "After the Rain" comes on like Talking Book-era Stevie Wonder, with big, clanging piano ringing out behind Barrett's fervent reassurances of God's enduring love. And "On Jesus' Program", by the Original Sunset Travelers, is a kind of twilight doo-wop number that edges its way forward slowly, with an unidentified lead vocalist spilling his honeyed tenor over deep-set, creeping music. There are fragments of hundreds of styles on Christians: the wacka-wacka disco guitar on "For the Children", the twinkling cocktail lounge funk on the sweeping "Said It Long Time Ago", and late-night Quiet Storm vocals on the praise number "Spirit Free", which gracefully blurs the line between spiritual and romantic love. Christians subtly connects all of these genres, indicating passages from one to the other while also gesturing toward their common source in gospel music. More than being a simple celebration of obscure artists, Christians is instead a kind of roadmap, tracing the byways that lead from one style to another. At times, it could do with a bit more heat. With few of the tracks operating above mid-tempo, it begins to sag slightly as it goes on. Fortunately, it snaps back into focus with the late arrival of the title track, a smoky, agonized blues number powered by the impassioned vocals of Rev. Edna Isaac and the Greene Sisters. In the liners, Isaac describes crying while writing the lyrics, and every ounce of that pain turns up in her delivery. Unlike the rest of the record, which presents religion as a rescue, "Christians Catch Hell" focuses on the difficulty of having faith, and the oppression from friends and spiritual forces that accompanies belief. "People who are non-Christians/ Throw stumbling blocks in your way," she cautions, "Satan chooses his disciples/ Puts his seal on them to do his ways/…But I'd rather be a Christian/ And stay with the Lord every day." Like all of the songs on Christians, it didn't turn its singer into a star on par with, say KC & the Sunshine Band. But the conviction of the performance and the clarity of the lyrics suggests that perhaps earthly acclaim was beside the point."

Plaid

Scintilli

Electronic

Andrew Gaerig

Over the past several years, as European electronic music's moved from its all-minimal-everything phase into fuzzier areas, I've made a mental note of comparing no less than a dozen young producers to Plaid. I didn't listen to Plaid-- British production duo Andy Turner and Ed Handley-- very much, not even their 1999 mini-masterpiece Rest Proof Clockwork. Instead they remained faintly but firmly ensconced in my memory, the result of a burgeoning electronic music fan seeking a group Radiohead wasn't constantly namedropping (scratch Aphex Twin, Autechre), but that was still available at Sam Goody. I would never suggest that Plaid were a direct inspiration for a group like Mount Kimbie, though there are worse things than being a token in the revival of soft-focus, reasonably scaled beatmongering. Scintilli is Plaid's first non-soundtrack work since 2008 and their first proper studio album since 2003 (2006's Greedy Baby having been an audio/video collaboration). It doesn't count as a "new direction" for the duo because they've never really fucked with "direction" in the first place. At their best, Plaid nestled into the wide crevasses between hardline, dystopian techno, broken beat, and experimental composition. Their synthesis was recognizable but not unrepeatable; they stood out for their casual, unhurried sense of adventure. (In the late 1990s, they were called Intelligent Dance Music because their records had "Warp" on the back, and they didn't sound like Moby.) There's a danger in this lack of direction, though: sometimes you exist comfortably outside electronic-music narratives and sometimes you get lost. Scintilli isn't the first time Plaid have stumbled into the latter state; all things being equal, they operate in this mode better than most. Still, Scintilli underwhelms, lacking the ease with which Plaid used to stitch sound together. They're no longer inscrutable; like their previous work, Scintilli contains heavy doses of sounds that rile, pacify, and intrigue, but here they constantly tip their hand. The dolloping keyboards of "Craft Nine" calm; the walloping bass of "Sömnl" disrupts. Plaid's skillful incorporation of the female voice remains intact (Björk sometimes seems to aspire to "Lilith", her 1997 collaboration with the duo) on soft-footed opener "Missing" and closer "At Last". Their overall sound has remained eclectic even as their tracks grow compartmentalized. I still appreciate Plaid's baselessness-- how I can never quite place what I'm listening to. They're less diffuse than their late-90s Warp peers but far more so than, say, Mouse on Mars or Flying Lotus, artists with whom Plaid share sensibilities but little more. I find Scintilli-- and its ambitious alternating of composure and chaos-- admirable, but "admirable" sounds (and feels) like a backhanded complement. I would prefer to find it fizzy or confusing or aggressive. Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers.

Artist: Plaid, Album: Scintilli, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "Over the past several years, as European electronic music's moved from its all-minimal-everything phase into fuzzier areas, I've made a mental note of comparing no less than a dozen young producers to Plaid. I didn't listen to Plaid-- British production duo Andy Turner and Ed Handley-- very much, not even their 1999 mini-masterpiece Rest Proof Clockwork. Instead they remained faintly but firmly ensconced in my memory, the result of a burgeoning electronic music fan seeking a group Radiohead wasn't constantly namedropping (scratch Aphex Twin, Autechre), but that was still available at Sam Goody. I would never suggest that Plaid were a direct inspiration for a group like Mount Kimbie, though there are worse things than being a token in the revival of soft-focus, reasonably scaled beatmongering. Scintilli is Plaid's first non-soundtrack work since 2008 and their first proper studio album since 2003 (2006's Greedy Baby having been an audio/video collaboration). It doesn't count as a "new direction" for the duo because they've never really fucked with "direction" in the first place. At their best, Plaid nestled into the wide crevasses between hardline, dystopian techno, broken beat, and experimental composition. Their synthesis was recognizable but not unrepeatable; they stood out for their casual, unhurried sense of adventure. (In the late 1990s, they were called Intelligent Dance Music because their records had "Warp" on the back, and they didn't sound like Moby.) There's a danger in this lack of direction, though: sometimes you exist comfortably outside electronic-music narratives and sometimes you get lost. Scintilli isn't the first time Plaid have stumbled into the latter state; all things being equal, they operate in this mode better than most. Still, Scintilli underwhelms, lacking the ease with which Plaid used to stitch sound together. They're no longer inscrutable; like their previous work, Scintilli contains heavy doses of sounds that rile, pacify, and intrigue, but here they constantly tip their hand. The dolloping keyboards of "Craft Nine" calm; the walloping bass of "Sömnl" disrupts. Plaid's skillful incorporation of the female voice remains intact (Björk sometimes seems to aspire to "Lilith", her 1997 collaboration with the duo) on soft-footed opener "Missing" and closer "At Last". Their overall sound has remained eclectic even as their tracks grow compartmentalized. I still appreciate Plaid's baselessness-- how I can never quite place what I'm listening to. They're less diffuse than their late-90s Warp peers but far more so than, say, Mouse on Mars or Flying Lotus, artists with whom Plaid share sensibilities but little more. I find Scintilli-- and its ambitious alternating of composure and chaos-- admirable, but "admirable" sounds (and feels) like a backhanded complement. I would prefer to find it fizzy or confusing or aggressive. Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers."

Camera Obscura

Underachievers Please Try Harder

Rock

Scott Plagenhoef

Many of the most enchanting and popular indie pop records of the past few years have been filed under lap-pop/indietronica. By marrying The Field Mice's shimmering sonics with (where applicable) lovelorn lyrical impulses, those on the Morr and City Centre Offices rosters, Múm, The Postal Service, Freescha, Casino Versus Japan and Broadcast have been providing the warm hugs for the Darla set that used to be administered by post-C-86 jangle-pop. True, The Aislers Set, The Lucksmiths, and The Clientele have continued to proudly (and successfully) wave the flag for more classic melancholia, but in the first couple of years of this new millennium, too few other have bands managed to approach their charm. However, in the past year or so, there's been a shift back toward the more traditional indie pop thanks to the slight return of Belle & Sebastian and records by Saturday Looks Good to Me, PAS/CAL, Pipas, The Happy Couple, Ballboy and, most of all, Camera Obscura. The Scottish band's second album, Underachievers Please Try Harder, captures a portion of the wispy bedsit magic that used to mark some of The Field Mice's best work and boosts it with the lush, "Hazey Jane II"-like chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian's first flourishes of glory. (Admittedly, as a co-ed, Glaswegian sextet, B&S comparisons would have come fast and easy even if Camera Obscura hadn't once featured Richard Colburn on drums or got their foot in the door of public consciousness with a single produced by Stuart Murdoch, "Eighties Fan".) Underachievers was released in the UK last year on Spain's Elefant Records, and now Merge spreads the word in the U.S. and adds B-sides "I Don't Want to See You" and "Footloose and Fancyfree". Ignoring the infantilism of some of the more twee indie pop, Camera Obscura scold immature relationship decisions on "Teenager", offer tender advice on "A Sister's Social Agony", and go on the make on "Suspended from Class". Their honest, wide, and adult approach to heartbreak, romantic liaisons, and escapism is extended to the subtle range of influence-- most of which is shown off on the tracks sung by John Henderson. "Before You Cry" is a graceful nod to Nashville, "Your Picture" is a dead ringer for Leonard Cohen, and Motown stomper "Let Me Go Home" is the best of their soul boy all-nighters. Camera Obscura keep their cards closer to their indie pop chest when Tracyanne Campbell is alone on the mic, and, despite the success of the aforementioned tracks, are all the better for it. "A Sister's Social Agony" apes the gentle harmonies and chimes of sibling-led vocal groups Four Freshman and The Beach Boys-- an appropriate and sly arrangement for the subject matter. Best of all are the gentle, luminous "Suspended from Class" and "Books Written for Girls", each of which feature self-deprecating lyrics, tender arrangements, and a lifeline for heart-on-sleeve acoustic pop.

Artist: Camera Obscura, Album: Underachievers Please Try Harder, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Many of the most enchanting and popular indie pop records of the past few years have been filed under lap-pop/indietronica. By marrying The Field Mice's shimmering sonics with (where applicable) lovelorn lyrical impulses, those on the Morr and City Centre Offices rosters, Múm, The Postal Service, Freescha, Casino Versus Japan and Broadcast have been providing the warm hugs for the Darla set that used to be administered by post-C-86 jangle-pop. True, The Aislers Set, The Lucksmiths, and The Clientele have continued to proudly (and successfully) wave the flag for more classic melancholia, but in the first couple of years of this new millennium, too few other have bands managed to approach their charm. However, in the past year or so, there's been a shift back toward the more traditional indie pop thanks to the slight return of Belle & Sebastian and records by Saturday Looks Good to Me, PAS/CAL, Pipas, The Happy Couple, Ballboy and, most of all, Camera Obscura. The Scottish band's second album, Underachievers Please Try Harder, captures a portion of the wispy bedsit magic that used to mark some of The Field Mice's best work and boosts it with the lush, "Hazey Jane II"-like chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian's first flourishes of glory. (Admittedly, as a co-ed, Glaswegian sextet, B&S comparisons would have come fast and easy even if Camera Obscura hadn't once featured Richard Colburn on drums or got their foot in the door of public consciousness with a single produced by Stuart Murdoch, "Eighties Fan".) Underachievers was released in the UK last year on Spain's Elefant Records, and now Merge spreads the word in the U.S. and adds B-sides "I Don't Want to See You" and "Footloose and Fancyfree". Ignoring the infantilism of some of the more twee indie pop, Camera Obscura scold immature relationship decisions on "Teenager", offer tender advice on "A Sister's Social Agony", and go on the make on "Suspended from Class". Their honest, wide, and adult approach to heartbreak, romantic liaisons, and escapism is extended to the subtle range of influence-- most of which is shown off on the tracks sung by John Henderson. "Before You Cry" is a graceful nod to Nashville, "Your Picture" is a dead ringer for Leonard Cohen, and Motown stomper "Let Me Go Home" is the best of their soul boy all-nighters. Camera Obscura keep their cards closer to their indie pop chest when Tracyanne Campbell is alone on the mic, and, despite the success of the aforementioned tracks, are all the better for it. "A Sister's Social Agony" apes the gentle harmonies and chimes of sibling-led vocal groups Four Freshman and The Beach Boys-- an appropriate and sly arrangement for the subject matter. Best of all are the gentle, luminous "Suspended from Class" and "Books Written for Girls", each of which feature self-deprecating lyrics, tender arrangements, and a lifeline for heart-on-sleeve acoustic pop. "

Ash

Meltdown

Rock

Jason Crock

Ash are unique in that the older they get, the faster and harder their material becomes. But don't let that fire-bathed, tattoo-inspiring cover art fool you: Ash are still a power-pop band. Meltdown does rock harder, and with more snarl, than any of their previous albums, but they still can't help but reveal their melodic sweet tooth. Meltdown is closest to the slick production of their most recent LP, Free All Angels, though the band's Undertones-esque charm has been shelved to make room for sharpened, arena-ready choruses. Following the success of their recent singles compilation, Meltdown sets its crosshairs precisely at the continent across the pond-- it's their most American-sounding album so far. The irony is that this album has been languishing without a stateside release for the past nine months. Hopefully, no one picked up the import sight unseen and expected to get their face melted-- despite palm-muted guitars and rollicking drums, the approach is a little more Smashing Pumpkins than Judas Priest. Most songs intermittently use heavy riffs as dressing to sneak in their sing-a-long melodies, like lead single "Orpheus" and "Detonator". Only the springy chord-thrashing of "Clones" befits the album's artwork, though given the convincing production from Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, System Of A Down) it would fit snugly into an American modern rock playlist. Meltdown has a cohesive sound, but takes a few dips into cliché, like the power ballad "Starcrossed" or the Placebo-like lyrical baiting of "Vampire Love". Sadly missing here is Ash's sense of vulnerability, a key element to their charm. While it's an obvious grab for North American ears, if this is anyone's first exposure to Ash, they'd be better off hunting down the group's earlier albums to understand why the band has made it this far; Meltdown is an incomplete picture of what they're capable of.

Artist: Ash, Album: Meltdown, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Ash are unique in that the older they get, the faster and harder their material becomes. But don't let that fire-bathed, tattoo-inspiring cover art fool you: Ash are still a power-pop band. Meltdown does rock harder, and with more snarl, than any of their previous albums, but they still can't help but reveal their melodic sweet tooth. Meltdown is closest to the slick production of their most recent LP, Free All Angels, though the band's Undertones-esque charm has been shelved to make room for sharpened, arena-ready choruses. Following the success of their recent singles compilation, Meltdown sets its crosshairs precisely at the continent across the pond-- it's their most American-sounding album so far. The irony is that this album has been languishing without a stateside release for the past nine months. Hopefully, no one picked up the import sight unseen and expected to get their face melted-- despite palm-muted guitars and rollicking drums, the approach is a little more Smashing Pumpkins than Judas Priest. Most songs intermittently use heavy riffs as dressing to sneak in their sing-a-long melodies, like lead single "Orpheus" and "Detonator". Only the springy chord-thrashing of "Clones" befits the album's artwork, though given the convincing production from Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, System Of A Down) it would fit snugly into an American modern rock playlist. Meltdown has a cohesive sound, but takes a few dips into cliché, like the power ballad "Starcrossed" or the Placebo-like lyrical baiting of "Vampire Love". Sadly missing here is Ash's sense of vulnerability, a key element to their charm. While it's an obvious grab for North American ears, if this is anyone's first exposure to Ash, they'd be better off hunting down the group's earlier albums to understand why the band has made it this far; Meltdown is an incomplete picture of what they're capable of."

Interpol

Our Love to Admire

Rock

Ryan Dombal

Despite its title, Interpol's 2002 debut Turn on the Bright Lights was marked by its seductive shadowiness. The product of a bygone New York City filled with dank alleys and smoke-choked dives, Interpol fed on their own mystery while translating cool kid record collections into sexy downtown paranoia. They received a few positive notices, too. In the glowing Pitchfork review of the LP, Eric Carr wrote, "Although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights." And now-- after the tight, familiar turns of 2004's Antics and a major label deal-- their lofty aspirations are finally kicking in. Horns, extended outros, strings, an oboe, and album art featuring more than three colors-- welcome to the new world of Interpol. Our Love to Admire is the sound of a minted Madison Square Garden band seeking to freshen its damp atmospherics. It's not a terrible idea: On Antics, even Interpol seemed tired of Interpol, capping the disc's 10 tracks with a couple drawn-out duds. But, as anyone who's bought laundry detergent knows, "new and improved" does not always mean "new" or "improved." Admire's predictable adornments quickly prove fleeting and expose Interpol's nagging limitations rather than their potential. With cleaner production and an arsenal of instruments at their disposal, the group indulges, and the songs often suffer. Tracks like six-minute opener "Pioneer to the Falls" and the limp lowlight "Scale" grate due to overly repetitive song structures that rely too heavily on choppy breakdowns and pointless solos. And the band's previously economical songwriting, built on quick, bursting hooks and seamless transitions, is now grand, stately, and bloated-- more like a depressing U2 than a poppy Joy Division. While it would be easy (and probably accurate) to blame Admire's flaws on the group's heightened commercial ambitions, that's only part of the problem. With their first two LPs, Interpol vaulted over like-minded contemporaries thanks to their superior interplay between rhythm and melody. Instead of letting Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler dominate songs with their trebly timbres, bassist Carlos D. and drummer Sam Fogarino provided perfect complements, at times overshadowing their bandmates altogether. (Just listen to the loping low-end of "Untitled" or the stutter-step snares on "Evil" for proof.) But Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine. Gone are the death-disco grooves that made "Slow Hands" and "Obstacle 1" strangely danceable, and without those dynamic rhythmic counterpoints, the tempos slacken, songs drag, and the focus inevitably turns to Banks' increasingly frustrating word splatters. Banks has always been a between-the-lines lyricist-- his default is somewhere between opaque and lazy free association. With each new song, though, it becomes less certain that there was ever anything worth searching for between the lines in the first place. On Admire, he's slightly more overt, but this time his gripes with the opposite sex sometimes take on a surreal 80s rock star quality. "No I in Threesome", ostensibly about convincing a girlfriend to invite her friend into bed, is either a hilarious parody of an embarrassingly self-serious Paul Banks song-- or just an embarrassingly self-serious ménage a blah. (It's not both.) "The Heinrich Maneuver" rails against a cold-hearted, phony, manipulative actress (shocking!) and "Rest My Chemistry" has the singer grappling with an eternal query: Can you ever be too worn out on drugs to have sex with a young groupie? (A young groupie subject to head-smacking lines like, "You look so young like a daisy in my lazy eye," no less.) More than ever, Banks tries to add some sympathy to his reedy robot croon and nearly succeeds on the wistful "Wrecking Ball". Still, when he monotones, "I've got this soul, it's all fired up," he sounds as thrilled as a sleepy Stephen Hawking. On "Threesome", Banks suggests, "It's time we give something new a try." And his quest for a guilt-free three-way is as doomed as Interpol's dalliances with heavy-handed, big-budget gestures on Admire. Can they make an OK Computer or Closer? At this point, another Antics would suffice.

Artist: Interpol, Album: Our Love to Admire, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Despite its title, Interpol's 2002 debut Turn on the Bright Lights was marked by its seductive shadowiness. The product of a bygone New York City filled with dank alleys and smoke-choked dives, Interpol fed on their own mystery while translating cool kid record collections into sexy downtown paranoia. They received a few positive notices, too. In the glowing Pitchfork review of the LP, Eric Carr wrote, "Although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights." And now-- after the tight, familiar turns of 2004's Antics and a major label deal-- their lofty aspirations are finally kicking in. Horns, extended outros, strings, an oboe, and album art featuring more than three colors-- welcome to the new world of Interpol. Our Love to Admire is the sound of a minted Madison Square Garden band seeking to freshen its damp atmospherics. It's not a terrible idea: On Antics, even Interpol seemed tired of Interpol, capping the disc's 10 tracks with a couple drawn-out duds. But, as anyone who's bought laundry detergent knows, "new and improved" does not always mean "new" or "improved." Admire's predictable adornments quickly prove fleeting and expose Interpol's nagging limitations rather than their potential. With cleaner production and an arsenal of instruments at their disposal, the group indulges, and the songs often suffer. Tracks like six-minute opener "Pioneer to the Falls" and the limp lowlight "Scale" grate due to overly repetitive song structures that rely too heavily on choppy breakdowns and pointless solos. And the band's previously economical songwriting, built on quick, bursting hooks and seamless transitions, is now grand, stately, and bloated-- more like a depressing U2 than a poppy Joy Division. While it would be easy (and probably accurate) to blame Admire's flaws on the group's heightened commercial ambitions, that's only part of the problem. With their first two LPs, Interpol vaulted over like-minded contemporaries thanks to their superior interplay between rhythm and melody. Instead of letting Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler dominate songs with their trebly timbres, bassist Carlos D. and drummer Sam Fogarino provided perfect complements, at times overshadowing their bandmates altogether. (Just listen to the loping low-end of "Untitled" or the stutter-step snares on "Evil" for proof.) But Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine. Gone are the death-disco grooves that made "Slow Hands" and "Obstacle 1" strangely danceable, and without those dynamic rhythmic counterpoints, the tempos slacken, songs drag, and the focus inevitably turns to Banks' increasingly frustrating word splatters. Banks has always been a between-the-lines lyricist-- his default is somewhere between opaque and lazy free association. With each new song, though, it becomes less certain that there was ever anything worth searching for between the lines in the first place. On Admire, he's slightly more overt, but this time his gripes with the opposite sex sometimes take on a surreal 80s rock star quality. "No I in Threesome", ostensibly about convincing a girlfriend to invite her friend into bed, is either a hilarious parody of an embarrassingly self-serious Paul Banks song-- or just an embarrassingly self-serious ménage a blah. (It's not both.) "The Heinrich Maneuver" rails against a cold-hearted, phony, manipulative actress (shocking!) and "Rest My Chemistry" has the singer grappling with an eternal query: Can you ever be too worn out on drugs to have sex with a young groupie? (A young groupie subject to head-smacking lines like, "You look so young like a daisy in my lazy eye," no less.) More than ever, Banks tries to add some sympathy to his reedy robot croon and nearly succeeds on the wistful "Wrecking Ball". Still, when he monotones, "I've got this soul, it's all fired up," he sounds as thrilled as a sleepy Stephen Hawking. On "Threesome", Banks suggests, "It's time we give something new a try." And his quest for a guilt-free three-way is as doomed as Interpol's dalliances with heavy-handed, big-budget gestures on Admire. Can they make an OK Computer or Closer? At this point, another Antics would suffice."

Acid Casuals

Omni

Rock

Marc Hogan

Electronic side projects, like import-price-paying fanboys, suffer. Even the occasional breakout commercial successes-- Folk Implosion, the Postal Service-- never quite earn the critical props proffered to their progenitors. Maybe the neophilic indie kids cultivating a taste for electronic crossovers can't win friends with records linked to veteran guitar acts (nor, sadly, with salad). Acid Casuals may count Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciárán among their members, but Omni shouldn't be consigned to the synth-based novelty scrapheap alongside, say, the Album Leaf or 1997 Claptronica excursion TDF. While Omni could be seen as merely SFA's "lost" techno album, its ambient, melodic near-instrumentals deserve to succeed on their own merits. Each track's songy enough to leapfrog Isolée and layered enough for bobbins, analogue-bent entirety conjuring what Analord might've been. The languid Dennis Wilson pacing from Ciárán's Love Kraft contributions washes over the electronic weirdness found in Guerilla-era tracks like "Some Things Comes From Nothing". Gorgeous lead single "Bowl Me Over" is Omni's only conventional pop song, cooing doo-wop romance like a stoned sentimentalist's take on "Something 4 the Weekend"-- still SFA's most immediate tune. The album's other tracks rely mostly on nonsense vocals, such as the jazzy, Cornelius-kooky "Wa Da Da", harmony-drenched "Y Ferch Ar Y Cei Yn Rio", or waltzing "Kraken", which features an operatic female voice that explains Ciárán's choice of Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" for last year's Under the Influence compilation. Chiming, slightly dissonant opener "If I'm a Selt, You're a Sunt" tags near Caribou territory, while penultimate "Luciano" licks high-pitched synth tones from Mwng's "'Dacw Hi" before lounging in hot-Air orchestration. So call it one small blip for SFA, one enormously satisfying listen for 2006. Like Gruff Rhys on his 2005 solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth or, hopefully, Dafydd Ieuan's bilingual rock group the Peth, Ciárán and co-Casual Kev Tame (former bassist for Welsh-language pop group Big Leaves) have created a side project work that would stand as a career highlight for many of their peers. If you're one of those neophilic indie kids, just pretend they're German twentysomethings.

Artist: Acid Casuals, Album: Omni, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Electronic side projects, like import-price-paying fanboys, suffer. Even the occasional breakout commercial successes-- Folk Implosion, the Postal Service-- never quite earn the critical props proffered to their progenitors. Maybe the neophilic indie kids cultivating a taste for electronic crossovers can't win friends with records linked to veteran guitar acts (nor, sadly, with salad). Acid Casuals may count Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciárán among their members, but Omni shouldn't be consigned to the synth-based novelty scrapheap alongside, say, the Album Leaf or 1997 Claptronica excursion TDF. While Omni could be seen as merely SFA's "lost" techno album, its ambient, melodic near-instrumentals deserve to succeed on their own merits. Each track's songy enough to leapfrog Isolée and layered enough for bobbins, analogue-bent entirety conjuring what Analord might've been. The languid Dennis Wilson pacing from Ciárán's Love Kraft contributions washes over the electronic weirdness found in Guerilla-era tracks like "Some Things Comes From Nothing". Gorgeous lead single "Bowl Me Over" is Omni's only conventional pop song, cooing doo-wop romance like a stoned sentimentalist's take on "Something 4 the Weekend"-- still SFA's most immediate tune. The album's other tracks rely mostly on nonsense vocals, such as the jazzy, Cornelius-kooky "Wa Da Da", harmony-drenched "Y Ferch Ar Y Cei Yn Rio", or waltzing "Kraken", which features an operatic female voice that explains Ciárán's choice of Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" for last year's Under the Influence compilation. Chiming, slightly dissonant opener "If I'm a Selt, You're a Sunt" tags near Caribou territory, while penultimate "Luciano" licks high-pitched synth tones from Mwng's "'Dacw Hi" before lounging in hot-Air orchestration. So call it one small blip for SFA, one enormously satisfying listen for 2006. Like Gruff Rhys on his 2005 solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth or, hopefully, Dafydd Ieuan's bilingual rock group the Peth, Ciárán and co-Casual Kev Tame (former bassist for Welsh-language pop group Big Leaves) have created a side project work that would stand as a career highlight for many of their peers. If you're one of those neophilic indie kids, just pretend they're German twentysomethings."

Mark Eitzel

Don't Be a Stranger

Rock

Brian Howe

There's something fascinating about how singers' voices change as they come to terms with their innate gifts and limits, honing in on whatever is essential about themselves. Sometimes it happens by slow erosion, like Leonard Cohen's voice growing less beautiful and more wise, or the brass leaching off Richard Buckner's to reveal a deeper layer. Sometimes it happens through trauma, as when Levon Helm lost his voice to throat cancer and then miraculously got it back, intact but scarred, giving his old songs a second life. And sometimes, a vocalist who has been feigning something gathers the courage to be himself: Think of how Ghostface has relaxed into the high, limber whine of his natural register, divulging so much more character than the lower, stiffer tough-guy timbre he used to cultivate. All three of these learning processes bear fruit in Don't Be a Stranger, American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel's best record since 2001's The Invisible Man. American Music Club, the cultiest of on-again off-again alt-rock survivors, have been refining their studious brand of Americana-- which emphasizes old-fashioned strains of jazz, lounge music, popular song, and hard rock-- for 30 years, so Eitzel's voice has had plenty of time to weather. A heart attack in his recent past didn't change his voice the way Helm's cancer changed his, but one suspects that it catalyzed the third, most significant development here. Brushes with death have a way of clarifying people's self-images and drives-- basically, of cutting through the bullshit. On Don't Be a Stranger, Eitzel remains as moony and self-lacerating as ever. He still gets into an oracular mood when hanging around with barflies on Main Street USA. But he dials down the tin-megaphone bluster that, even at its best, could feel strained in American Music Club. Now he revels in the delicate inner elements of his voice rather than growling over them, and sounds more natural and inviting than ever. Eitzel is funny in that peculiarly Eitzel way when describing how this record came about. He took his "horrible demos" to "poor long-suffering" Merge Records, who replied, "Oh Mark. Really?" Merge relented after a friend of his manager who had won the lottery loaned the money to hire producer Sheldon Gomberg and make a studio recording of the songs. They were first conceived for an abandoned American Music Club album, whose long-term guitarist Vudi joins Eitzel here. The windfall paid for a tasteful, sometimes vivid backdrop that favors rich acoustic instruments. There are intimations of Spanish guitar throughout, most interestingly conceived on "Break the Champagne", where tremolos are implied with a Marxophone. The BooHoo Institutional Choir-- presumably, some people who happened to be around-- adds intriguingly dark-colored harmonies. Allowing his voice to latch more directly than usual to the mobile cadences of jazz and soul, with the soft honk that was always latent in his croon tenderly magnified, Eitzel channels a number of unsuspected singers across Don't Be a Stranger, like Billie Holliday on "I Love You but You're Dead" and Antony Hegarty on "Costume Characters Face Dangers in the Workplace". Standout track "Oh Mercy" could almost be a Bill Withers song, with a smoky vocal line cracking over a cyclic minor melody, and it lays out a perspective to which the album often returns: that of the ghost at the feast. As ever, Eitzel observes other people having fun while fretting about political iniquities and personal inadequacies. The difference is that his tone, formerly accusatory, has softened and turned inward. It's that of someone presiding at a dark corner table, bemused by his own views, rather than proselytizing on a plywood stage. The lyrics of Don't Be a Stranger are in the one-sided conversation form that Eitzel likes, with reams of subtly altered clichés abruptly slipping off-register into idiosyncrasy or hostility, as when he sneers out of nowhere on "Costume Characters", "I did not mean to scare your sad little brat." The delicate ardor and tenuous conviction that typify that album are most sentimentally expressed on the gently swaying piano ballad "All My Love" and most honestly on "We All Have to Find Our Own Way Out". There are moments of wry irony, as when Eitzel sings, "The guitar was pure evil like the engines on a jet," over gentle nylon strings on the strikingly written roadhouse fable "I Love You but You're Dead". But even when the lyrics edge on generic, as they sometimes do, Eitzel's singing draws me in. If Leonard Cohen's voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm's is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel's is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves. It's moving to hear him seem to arrive.

Artist: Mark Eitzel, Album: Don't Be a Stranger, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "There's something fascinating about how singers' voices change as they come to terms with their innate gifts and limits, honing in on whatever is essential about themselves. Sometimes it happens by slow erosion, like Leonard Cohen's voice growing less beautiful and more wise, or the brass leaching off Richard Buckner's to reveal a deeper layer. Sometimes it happens through trauma, as when Levon Helm lost his voice to throat cancer and then miraculously got it back, intact but scarred, giving his old songs a second life. And sometimes, a vocalist who has been feigning something gathers the courage to be himself: Think of how Ghostface has relaxed into the high, limber whine of his natural register, divulging so much more character than the lower, stiffer tough-guy timbre he used to cultivate. All three of these learning processes bear fruit in Don't Be a Stranger, American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel's best record since 2001's The Invisible Man. American Music Club, the cultiest of on-again off-again alt-rock survivors, have been refining their studious brand of Americana-- which emphasizes old-fashioned strains of jazz, lounge music, popular song, and hard rock-- for 30 years, so Eitzel's voice has had plenty of time to weather. A heart attack in his recent past didn't change his voice the way Helm's cancer changed his, but one suspects that it catalyzed the third, most significant development here. Brushes with death have a way of clarifying people's self-images and drives-- basically, of cutting through the bullshit. On Don't Be a Stranger, Eitzel remains as moony and self-lacerating as ever. He still gets into an oracular mood when hanging around with barflies on Main Street USA. But he dials down the tin-megaphone bluster that, even at its best, could feel strained in American Music Club. Now he revels in the delicate inner elements of his voice rather than growling over them, and sounds more natural and inviting than ever. Eitzel is funny in that peculiarly Eitzel way when describing how this record came about. He took his "horrible demos" to "poor long-suffering" Merge Records, who replied, "Oh Mark. Really?" Merge relented after a friend of his manager who had won the lottery loaned the money to hire producer Sheldon Gomberg and make a studio recording of the songs. They were first conceived for an abandoned American Music Club album, whose long-term guitarist Vudi joins Eitzel here. The windfall paid for a tasteful, sometimes vivid backdrop that favors rich acoustic instruments. There are intimations of Spanish guitar throughout, most interestingly conceived on "Break the Champagne", where tremolos are implied with a Marxophone. The BooHoo Institutional Choir-- presumably, some people who happened to be around-- adds intriguingly dark-colored harmonies. Allowing his voice to latch more directly than usual to the mobile cadences of jazz and soul, with the soft honk that was always latent in his croon tenderly magnified, Eitzel channels a number of unsuspected singers across Don't Be a Stranger, like Billie Holliday on "I Love You but You're Dead" and Antony Hegarty on "Costume Characters Face Dangers in the Workplace". Standout track "Oh Mercy" could almost be a Bill Withers song, with a smoky vocal line cracking over a cyclic minor melody, and it lays out a perspective to which the album often returns: that of the ghost at the feast. As ever, Eitzel observes other people having fun while fretting about political iniquities and personal inadequacies. The difference is that his tone, formerly accusatory, has softened and turned inward. It's that of someone presiding at a dark corner table, bemused by his own views, rather than proselytizing on a plywood stage. The lyrics of Don't Be a Stranger are in the one-sided conversation form that Eitzel likes, with reams of subtly altered clichés abruptly slipping off-register into idiosyncrasy or hostility, as when he sneers out of nowhere on "Costume Characters", "I did not mean to scare your sad little brat." The delicate ardor and tenuous conviction that typify that album are most sentimentally expressed on the gently swaying piano ballad "All My Love" and most honestly on "We All Have to Find Our Own Way Out". There are moments of wry irony, as when Eitzel sings, "The guitar was pure evil like the engines on a jet," over gentle nylon strings on the strikingly written roadhouse fable "I Love You but You're Dead". But even when the lyrics edge on generic, as they sometimes do, Eitzel's singing draws me in. If Leonard Cohen's voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm's is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel's is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves. It's moving to hear him seem to arrive."

The Apples in Stereo

Live in Chicago

Experimental,Rock

Spencer Owen

Here's my quandary with live albums: the prototypical one selects live favorites-- sometimes from one show, sometimes from multiple shows-- along with a couple of obscure numbers, and one or two covers in the middle to give it the appearance of having more diversity than your garden-variety singles collection. So what's a reviewer to do? He can't grade the songwriting; that's already been done. Basically, a reviewer judges your traditional live record based on gaps. For instance: what gaps are filled that might have been missing in the original recording? What gaps have been created by thrusting the song into a more primitive live setting? I mean, bands can easily be made to sound like competent musicians thanks to recording software, but it's harder to manipulate that stuff for live albums, which often reveals the gaps in a band's abilities. Of course, bands don't generally decide to pick one of their off nights to release as a live album. And yes, there's the gap between studio quality recordings and live recordings, whether it be crisp and vital, or muddy and dull. The Apples in Stereo are new to the live album game. Not like I'm surprised-- it's never seemed like a necessity for these studio-oriented kids. Available as an MP3-only release through eMusic, Live in Chicago is a prototypical live affair that feels somehow dissimilar from the rest. It sounds like an audience member's well-made DAT recording. It emanates authenticity and innocence, like a band proudly and generously offering a tape of their first good gig. "You can actually hear the vocals very well over the noise," says leadman and Elephant 6 deity Robert Schneider. "This is the first time one of our live recordings accomplished this." Rarely has an indie icon sounded so earnest. Still, it's time to judge the gaps. First off, on these eight Apples originals and one Beach Boys cover, Schneider and the band sound like they're having a blast, and the energy is instantly detectable. You can sense it in moments like when Schneider breaks into jubilant faux-Van Morrison shouting at the end of "Ruby", originally from 1999's Her Wallpaper Reverie. Or when the band crashes into the hyper-jam guitar solo instrumental bridge on "Go", off last year's The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone. It's hard to help imagining how much better it all would have sounded if you'd been there. But you take what you can get. As for what's missing in arrangements and/or production, the Apples usually compensate. On "Dots 1, 2, 3", the Apples' most driving and least characteristic track to date (culled from their 1995 landmark Fun Trick Noisemaker), the noisy electronic opener of the original is well interpreted with simple stuttering guitars. And in the case of "Go", they compensate by not compensating: the horn section and heavy drums on the studio version had always been the extra weight that pushed the song over the line from fun to annoying; with this live version, the band sounds nimble and spontaneous, unfettered by such distractions. And then there's their take on the Beach Boys's "Heroes and Villains". Unfortunately, the straightforward Apples treatment doesn't really translate effectively to tape, even if it would have been a pleasant surprise in person. Still, the gaps between Smile-era Beach Boys and Robert Schneider are large, to say the very least that could possibly be said. But they get points for covering an honest-to-god great song, and their effective segue from the lost Wilson-penned classic into one of their finest tracks, the melancholy "Get There Fine", off 1997's Tone Soul Evolution. Live in Chicago has the charm of a well-recorded audience bootleg sanctioned by the group on one of their best nights. It falls flat at times, but rarely; the energy of pretending to be in the audience watching Schneider and his bandmates jam through a few well-crafted pop tunes just can't be denied. Enough gaps are even filled to warrant a recommendation. And as the reviewer, I must say, as prototypical live albums go, it turned out to be relatively painless. So there.

Artist: The Apples in Stereo, Album: Live in Chicago, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Here's my quandary with live albums: the prototypical one selects live favorites-- sometimes from one show, sometimes from multiple shows-- along with a couple of obscure numbers, and one or two covers in the middle to give it the appearance of having more diversity than your garden-variety singles collection. So what's a reviewer to do? He can't grade the songwriting; that's already been done. Basically, a reviewer judges your traditional live record based on gaps. For instance: what gaps are filled that might have been missing in the original recording? What gaps have been created by thrusting the song into a more primitive live setting? I mean, bands can easily be made to sound like competent musicians thanks to recording software, but it's harder to manipulate that stuff for live albums, which often reveals the gaps in a band's abilities. Of course, bands don't generally decide to pick one of their off nights to release as a live album. And yes, there's the gap between studio quality recordings and live recordings, whether it be crisp and vital, or muddy and dull. The Apples in Stereo are new to the live album game. Not like I'm surprised-- it's never seemed like a necessity for these studio-oriented kids. Available as an MP3-only release through eMusic, Live in Chicago is a prototypical live affair that feels somehow dissimilar from the rest. It sounds like an audience member's well-made DAT recording. It emanates authenticity and innocence, like a band proudly and generously offering a tape of their first good gig. "You can actually hear the vocals very well over the noise," says leadman and Elephant 6 deity Robert Schneider. "This is the first time one of our live recordings accomplished this." Rarely has an indie icon sounded so earnest. Still, it's time to judge the gaps. First off, on these eight Apples originals and one Beach Boys cover, Schneider and the band sound like they're having a blast, and the energy is instantly detectable. You can sense it in moments like when Schneider breaks into jubilant faux-Van Morrison shouting at the end of "Ruby", originally from 1999's Her Wallpaper Reverie. Or when the band crashes into the hyper-jam guitar solo instrumental bridge on "Go", off last year's The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone. It's hard to help imagining how much better it all would have sounded if you'd been there. But you take what you can get. As for what's missing in arrangements and/or production, the Apples usually compensate. On "Dots 1, 2, 3", the Apples' most driving and least characteristic track to date (culled from their 1995 landmark Fun Trick Noisemaker), the noisy electronic opener of the original is well interpreted with simple stuttering guitars. And in the case of "Go", they compensate by not compensating: the horn section and heavy drums on the studio version had always been the extra weight that pushed the song over the line from fun to annoying; with this live version, the band sounds nimble and spontaneous, unfettered by such distractions. And then there's their take on the Beach Boys's "Heroes and Villains". Unfortunately, the straightforward Apples treatment doesn't really translate effectively to tape, even if it would have been a pleasant surprise in person. Still, the gaps between Smile-era Beach Boys and Robert Schneider are large, to say the very least that could possibly be said. But they get points for covering an honest-to-god great song, and their effective segue from the lost Wilson-penned classic into one of their finest tracks, the melancholy "Get There Fine", off 1997's Tone Soul Evolution. Live in Chicago has the charm of a well-recorded audience bootleg sanctioned by the group on one of their best nights. It falls flat at times, but rarely; the energy of pretending to be in the audience watching Schneider and his bandmates jam through a few well-crafted pop tunes just can't be denied. Enough gaps are even filled to warrant a recommendation. And as the reviewer, I must say, as prototypical live albums go, it turned out to be relatively painless. So there."

Kid Cudi

Indicud

Rap,Rock

Corban Goble

Kid Cudi's an undeniably popular rapper. Though his 2009 debut Man on the Moon and its slightly better sequel weren't exactly critical darlings, he’s been a reliable Soundscan dent-maker and the type of figure that easily inspires 379-page threads on message board and hype thermometer KanyeToThe. And even if Cudi rarely lines it all up, his ability's evident: The music's production, which is for the most part self-generated, is usually interesting, and his fuck-the-world posturing resonates with a certain angsty personality type. When he finds the right balance-- Man on the Moon II’s “Ghost!” is the best example-- it can add up to an effective cocktail of blurred anguish. Three years after the overstuffed Man on the Moon II and several outside dalliances-- the rock/rap sideproject WZRD, a small role in HBO’s cancelled "Entourage" spin-off "How to Make it in America"-- Cudi’s back with Indicud, which aims for a little bit of everything: It's an 18-song collection that features guests from the indie rock world (HAIM, Father John Misty) as well as new-school demigods Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky. And Michael Bolton. Factoring in all of that, Indicud has the sheen of a cinematic blockbuster. At 70 minutes, it certainly has cinematic length, too: "Guess I'm just a star of my movie," Cudi thinks aloud on "Mad Solar". Unfortunately, it also has no substance. From the first notes of the melodramatic opening instrumental "The Resurrection of Scott Mescudi", it's pretty easy to size up where Cudi's head is at these days, thanks to serrated, booming production underscored by a heartbeat-like drum lurch. It's ominous but hollow stuff. Ever prone to grandiose proclamations, Cudi wastes no time on Indicud; "You know I'm unfuckwittable!" he belts, his chest fully puffed. He's certainly putting his money where his mouth is, but to ill effect; though A$AP Rocky and Kendrick drop by, they do just enough to collect the paycheck and hit the door. Old heads RZA and Too $hort roll through and check in and out just as unremarkably. Nothing sticks. From the outset, he's more concerned with the soundscape shrapnel left over from WZRD than he is with synthesizers, a tool with which he's more effective. For someone who's attained such a following, Cudi is remarkably unlikeable. Confessions like "Just What I Am"'s  "In my spare time, punching walls, fucking up my hand/ I know that shit sound super cray, but if you had my life you’d understand" come off as humblebrags about just how tough it is to be famous. He seethes about being G.O.O.D. Music's "black sheep" and calls haters "pussies." Outside of the occasional nugget of calm-- the HAIM and Hit-Boy collab "Red Eye", maybe-- Indicud is one long, increasingly grating vent. And if rage isn't your thing, don't worry about sifting through Indicud's softer side, capped by the nine-minute slog "Afterwards (Bring Yo' Friends)". Fashioned as a late-night dance-party jam, it's built around sensationally off-putting come-hithers by soft rock titan Michael Bolton as well as Cudi's woozy synths kicking up dirt in the name of "atmosphere." Long gone are the days of the spongy "Pursuit of Happiness" as well as the Trojan Horse that initially brought Kid Cudi through our gates, "Day 'n' Nite". "I look for peace, but see, I don't attain," he chanted on that song. Now, he's officially off Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music imprint-- it's amicable, Cudi insists, and he'll carry on with his own label, Wicked Awesome. Still, he looks for war in Indicud; he can't find anyone to fight, but he rages anyway.

Artist: Kid Cudi, Album: Indicud, Genre: Rap,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.0 Album review: "Kid Cudi's an undeniably popular rapper. Though his 2009 debut Man on the Moon and its slightly better sequel weren't exactly critical darlings, he’s been a reliable Soundscan dent-maker and the type of figure that easily inspires 379-page threads on message board and hype thermometer KanyeToThe. And even if Cudi rarely lines it all up, his ability's evident: The music's production, which is for the most part self-generated, is usually interesting, and his fuck-the-world posturing resonates with a certain angsty personality type. When he finds the right balance-- Man on the Moon II’s “Ghost!” is the best example-- it can add up to an effective cocktail of blurred anguish. Three years after the overstuffed Man on the Moon II and several outside dalliances-- the rock/rap sideproject WZRD, a small role in HBO’s cancelled "Entourage" spin-off "How to Make it in America"-- Cudi’s back with Indicud, which aims for a little bit of everything: It's an 18-song collection that features guests from the indie rock world (HAIM, Father John Misty) as well as new-school demigods Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky. And Michael Bolton. Factoring in all of that, Indicud has the sheen of a cinematic blockbuster. At 70 minutes, it certainly has cinematic length, too: "Guess I'm just a star of my movie," Cudi thinks aloud on "Mad Solar". Unfortunately, it also has no substance. From the first notes of the melodramatic opening instrumental "The Resurrection of Scott Mescudi", it's pretty easy to size up where Cudi's head is at these days, thanks to serrated, booming production underscored by a heartbeat-like drum lurch. It's ominous but hollow stuff. Ever prone to grandiose proclamations, Cudi wastes no time on Indicud; "You know I'm unfuckwittable!" he belts, his chest fully puffed. He's certainly putting his money where his mouth is, but to ill effect; though A$AP Rocky and Kendrick drop by, they do just enough to collect the paycheck and hit the door. Old heads RZA and Too $hort roll through and check in and out just as unremarkably. Nothing sticks. From the outset, he's more concerned with the soundscape shrapnel left over from WZRD than he is with synthesizers, a tool with which he's more effective. For someone who's attained such a following, Cudi is remarkably unlikeable. Confessions like "Just What I Am"'s  "In my spare time, punching walls, fucking up my hand/ I know that shit sound super cray, but if you had my life you’d understand" come off as humblebrags about just how tough it is to be famous. He seethes about being G.O.O.D. Music's "black sheep" and calls haters "pussies." Outside of the occasional nugget of calm-- the HAIM and Hit-Boy collab "Red Eye", maybe-- Indicud is one long, increasingly grating vent. And if rage isn't your thing, don't worry about sifting through Indicud's softer side, capped by the nine-minute slog "Afterwards (Bring Yo' Friends)". Fashioned as a late-night dance-party jam, it's built around sensationally off-putting come-hithers by soft rock titan Michael Bolton as well as Cudi's woozy synths kicking up dirt in the name of "atmosphere." Long gone are the days of the spongy "Pursuit of Happiness" as well as the Trojan Horse that initially brought Kid Cudi through our gates, "Day 'n' Nite". "I look for peace, but see, I don't attain," he chanted on that song. Now, he's officially off Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music imprint-- it's amicable, Cudi insists, and he'll carry on with his own label, Wicked Awesome. Still, he looks for war in Indicud; he can't find anyone to fight, but he rages anyway."

Of Montreal

The Sunlandic Twins

Rock

Sam Ubl

One drawback of being a great songwriter is that consistency is often mistaken for monotony. Witness: Of Montreal lead man Kevin Barnes, who has made his name on mirthful choruses that often sound suspiciously similar. But Barnes is anything but short on ideas, as Satanic Panic in the Attic, the band's 2004 chef d'ouvre, attests. Cumulative yet innovative, the album douses classically saccharine and vaguely psychedelic indie pop in gratuitous amounts of syrup. The key: Of Montreal handle the powerful flavors with soufflé-like gentleness. By contrast, The Sunlandic Twins, the band's new album, is like a restaurant with multiple Michelin stars serving Sno-Cones. Missing Satanic Panic's multidimensionality, the album feels like the hollowed-out shell of something great. Barnes can sleepwalk through a book of staff paper and come away with a set of leakproof pop songs-- or, in this case, a "foray into 21st century A.D.D. electro cinematic avant-disco-- and that effortlessness lends Of Montreal's music a sort of indifference. The high-glucose diet that fueled the band's previous outings has landed them in a sugar coma. Blissfully adrift, The Sunlandic Twins lacks the essential reflexivity of Satanic Panic in the Attic's ethereally silly pop gems. The Sunlandic Twins isn't without its share of coruscating hooks and major-key shenanigans. "Requiem for O.M.M." is powered by a galloping bass line, which draws back to let the succinct two-line chorus take center stage. Barnes' kaleidoscopic artwork (somebody give this man a larger format) complements the music, especially "I Was Never Young": both seem plucked from the overripe fantasy realms of "Sonic the Hedgehog". The song features a laid-back, strutting rhythm, onto which the instrumentation gradually builds until a trumpet fanfare calls in a tempo change. Abetted by handclaps and a bopping guitar line, the section recalls Satanic Panic's snaking, poperatic song structures. Elsewhere, "Forecast Fascist Future" and "So Begins Our Alabee" are airy but satisfying, meeting their melody quota while managing to have some fun with synthesizers. But around its midway point, The Sunlandic Twins takes a strange turn. "So Begins Our Alabee" initiates the second act: a self-styled electro pop opera with a startling lack of, well, songs. This independent, self-contained experiment has no business intermingling with the respectable opening set. A few tracks outshine their surroundings by dint of simplicity. "Oslo in the Summertime" rescues a glistening chorus from the maw of wandering pianos, twittering drum machines, and synth glides sandwiching it. "October Is Eternal", meanwhile, is admirable only for its titular appositeness: The song milks a discordant piano dirge for nearly three minutes before fizzling out in an ululating vocal loop and cheap-o MIDI instruments. Of Montreal have always been silly, but The Sunlandic Twins is plain daffy. "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" and "The Party's Crashing Us" are condescendingly aloof, piling on excessive amounts of sound: On the latter, a traffic jam of synths produces the oversaturated colors of a mangled paint palette. Particularly annoying among the record's contrivances is its frivolous use of drum machines, which skip and stutter when the songs call for simple beats. Barnes is still an impeccable craftsman, but these songs won't make your brain spongy like Satanic Panic's "Lysergic Bliss". This time, it sounds like Barnes is the one whose brain is gummed up. Of Montreal have accomplished the rare feat of honing an unusually nuanced signature sound. But with such a skilled songwriter at the helm, they should be making great records, checking the conceptual dalliances at the door.

Artist: Of Montreal, Album: The Sunlandic Twins, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "One drawback of being a great songwriter is that consistency is often mistaken for monotony. Witness: Of Montreal lead man Kevin Barnes, who has made his name on mirthful choruses that often sound suspiciously similar. But Barnes is anything but short on ideas, as Satanic Panic in the Attic, the band's 2004 chef d'ouvre, attests. Cumulative yet innovative, the album douses classically saccharine and vaguely psychedelic indie pop in gratuitous amounts of syrup. The key: Of Montreal handle the powerful flavors with soufflé-like gentleness. By contrast, The Sunlandic Twins, the band's new album, is like a restaurant with multiple Michelin stars serving Sno-Cones. Missing Satanic Panic's multidimensionality, the album feels like the hollowed-out shell of something great. Barnes can sleepwalk through a book of staff paper and come away with a set of leakproof pop songs-- or, in this case, a "foray into 21st century A.D.D. electro cinematic avant-disco-- and that effortlessness lends Of Montreal's music a sort of indifference. The high-glucose diet that fueled the band's previous outings has landed them in a sugar coma. Blissfully adrift, The Sunlandic Twins lacks the essential reflexivity of Satanic Panic in the Attic's ethereally silly pop gems. The Sunlandic Twins isn't without its share of coruscating hooks and major-key shenanigans. "Requiem for O.M.M." is powered by a galloping bass line, which draws back to let the succinct two-line chorus take center stage. Barnes' kaleidoscopic artwork (somebody give this man a larger format) complements the music, especially "I Was Never Young": both seem plucked from the overripe fantasy realms of "Sonic the Hedgehog". The song features a laid-back, strutting rhythm, onto which the instrumentation gradually builds until a trumpet fanfare calls in a tempo change. Abetted by handclaps and a bopping guitar line, the section recalls Satanic Panic's snaking, poperatic song structures. Elsewhere, "Forecast Fascist Future" and "So Begins Our Alabee" are airy but satisfying, meeting their melody quota while managing to have some fun with synthesizers. But around its midway point, The Sunlandic Twins takes a strange turn. "So Begins Our Alabee" initiates the second act: a self-styled electro pop opera with a startling lack of, well, songs. This independent, self-contained experiment has no business intermingling with the respectable opening set. A few tracks outshine their surroundings by dint of simplicity. "Oslo in the Summertime" rescues a glistening chorus from the maw of wandering pianos, twittering drum machines, and synth glides sandwiching it. "October Is Eternal", meanwhile, is admirable only for its titular appositeness: The song milks a discordant piano dirge for nearly three minutes before fizzling out in an ululating vocal loop and cheap-o MIDI instruments. Of Montreal have always been silly, but The Sunlandic Twins is plain daffy. "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" and "The Party's Crashing Us" are condescendingly aloof, piling on excessive amounts of sound: On the latter, a traffic jam of synths produces the oversaturated colors of a mangled paint palette. Particularly annoying among the record's contrivances is its frivolous use of drum machines, which skip and stutter when the songs call for simple beats. Barnes is still an impeccable craftsman, but these songs won't make your brain spongy like Satanic Panic's "Lysergic Bliss". This time, it sounds like Barnes is the one whose brain is gummed up. Of Montreal have accomplished the rare feat of honing an unusually nuanced signature sound. But with such a skilled songwriter at the helm, they should be making great records, checking the conceptual dalliances at the door."

Don Zientara

Sixteen Songs

Folk/Country,Metal,Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Toward the end of "Sing a Song with You", from Don Zientara's debut solo album Sixteen Songs, a phone rings in the background, its insistent digital purr interrupting his acoustic guitar strumming and stage-whisper vocals. Seemingly unrehearsed, it more or less determines the song's finale, as Zientara quickly wraps it up and answers the phone: "Inner Ear." Yes, it's that Inner Ear, the studio Zientara founded in Washington, D.C. during the late 1970s, where he has produced acts like Fugazi, Q & Not U, Bad Religion, Rites of Spring, and Deceased. And yes, to record Sixteen Songs, Zientara forsook all the technological marvels of the modern recording studio and apparently set up his analog machine at the receptionist's desk. Whenever Zientara gets excited and the song builds to a climax, as on "Waiting for the Muse", the machine can barely capture all the sound, and the resultant muddiness implies real intimacy and vulnerability. The sub-demo quality of the album, like a field recording or some 60s troubadour's lost tapes, is purposeful, the underproduced and lo-fi-primitive sound intended to convey unprepossessing spontaneity: Zientara wants you to think he recorded these songs off-the-cuff, possibly during his coffee break. And most likely he did. He calls his approach "minimalism" in the short liner notes: "Most important is the fact that with a single voice there is a littleness... a feeling that the singer is no more important than the person listening, probably less so." As a veteran producer's manifesto, those words are a bit meandering and unedited, much like the music itself, but the album's basic cardboard packaging and matter-of-fact title would seem to bear out his message of "littleness." But Zientara is a producer first, a musician second. The intimacy on Sixteen Songs sounds practiced, which makes the album's murkiness seem a little calculated. He wants to remove himself from the music completely, to subjugate his ego to the songs themselves-- a noble effort, but an impossible feat. The more he tries to erase his own identity, the more obvious such machinations become, like the guy in the bar whose pick-up line is that he has no pick-up line. Sixteen Songs isn't a lie, though; it's just a casual feint. Lyrically, these songs try to be about real things, but ineluctably they circle back on themselves. As the song title "Sing a Song with You" implies, the album's evocations aren't emotional but musical, which Zientara seems to realize deep down. These aren't songs about life or love, pain or happiness, but about how cool Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens were, about recording at the office and taking your work home with you, about music being the single defining aspect of your life and the excitement of pure creation.

Artist: Don Zientara, Album: Sixteen Songs, Genre: Folk/Country,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Toward the end of "Sing a Song with You", from Don Zientara's debut solo album Sixteen Songs, a phone rings in the background, its insistent digital purr interrupting his acoustic guitar strumming and stage-whisper vocals. Seemingly unrehearsed, it more or less determines the song's finale, as Zientara quickly wraps it up and answers the phone: "Inner Ear." Yes, it's that Inner Ear, the studio Zientara founded in Washington, D.C. during the late 1970s, where he has produced acts like Fugazi, Q & Not U, Bad Religion, Rites of Spring, and Deceased. And yes, to record Sixteen Songs, Zientara forsook all the technological marvels of the modern recording studio and apparently set up his analog machine at the receptionist's desk. Whenever Zientara gets excited and the song builds to a climax, as on "Waiting for the Muse", the machine can barely capture all the sound, and the resultant muddiness implies real intimacy and vulnerability. The sub-demo quality of the album, like a field recording or some 60s troubadour's lost tapes, is purposeful, the underproduced and lo-fi-primitive sound intended to convey unprepossessing spontaneity: Zientara wants you to think he recorded these songs off-the-cuff, possibly during his coffee break. And most likely he did. He calls his approach "minimalism" in the short liner notes: "Most important is the fact that with a single voice there is a littleness... a feeling that the singer is no more important than the person listening, probably less so." As a veteran producer's manifesto, those words are a bit meandering and unedited, much like the music itself, but the album's basic cardboard packaging and matter-of-fact title would seem to bear out his message of "littleness." But Zientara is a producer first, a musician second. The intimacy on Sixteen Songs sounds practiced, which makes the album's murkiness seem a little calculated. He wants to remove himself from the music completely, to subjugate his ego to the songs themselves-- a noble effort, but an impossible feat. The more he tries to erase his own identity, the more obvious such machinations become, like the guy in the bar whose pick-up line is that he has no pick-up line. Sixteen Songs isn't a lie, though; it's just a casual feint. Lyrically, these songs try to be about real things, but ineluctably they circle back on themselves. As the song title "Sing a Song with You" implies, the album's evocations aren't emotional but musical, which Zientara seems to realize deep down. These aren't songs about life or love, pain or happiness, but about how cool Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens were, about recording at the office and taking your work home with you, about music being the single defining aspect of your life and the excitement of pure creation."

Various Artists

Jamaica to Toronto: Soul Funk & Reggae 1967-1974

Joe Tangari

Reggae. Canada. If that doesn’t seem like a logical pairing to you, you’re hardly to be blamed, but since the mid-1960s musicians from Jamaica and other West Indian nations carved out a scene for themselves in Toronto-- Canada’s most populous city. The music they made wasn’t all reggae-- many of these musicians also helped create Canada’s funk and soul scenes-- but nearly all of these Jamaicans, Barbadans, St. Vincentians, and Trinidadians had a background in ska, rocksteady, or reggae. What developed in Toronto was not entirely unlike what happened in the West Indian communities in London (England, not Ontario)-- immigrants far from home creating something familiar. And the reggae names who showed up in Toronto-- either for extended stays or brief cameos-- weren’t exactly small potatoes. No less a figure than Jackie Mittoo-- the organist who helped define the very basis of reggae with the Skatalites, Soul Vendors, and Sound Dimension-- split time between Kingston and Toronto, operating an Ontario record store with Lord Tanamo and cutting records in both cities. Jackie Opel, Johnny More, Alton Ellis, Lloyd Delpratt, and Johnny (aka Johnnie) Osbourne are all here, but no one had a bigger role than guitarist Wayne McGhie, who wrote six of the 16 songs on this compilation and played on at least seven of them. The material compiler Kevin “Sipreano” Howes and Light in the Attic have unearthed runs the gamut from hard funk to deep soul, reggae, soul jazz, and rock, and most of it is excellent. Jo-Jo Bennett puts on a clinic in throat-shredding soul on Jo-Jo & the Fugitives’ “Fugitive Song”, but the group betters itself on the funky, McGhie-penned “Chips-Chicken-Banana Split”, a song that slides into a sweet pre-“Cold Sweat” James Brown groove stuffed with stabbing horns and rapid-fire backing harmonies. Bob and Wisdom check in with an amazing cover of Mac Davis’s “I Believe in Music” that really sells the idea of music as a salve for problems with sharp two-part harmonies, and McGhie’s short-lived band Ram mines the same funky rock ore as Sly Stone and Rare Earth on “Love Is the Answer”. Delpratt and Osbourne each contribute instrumentals-- the organ and horns of Delpratt’s “Together” flow gorgeously, while Osbourne’s “African Wake” is one of the deepest roots tracks in the set. Noel Ellis, son of the great Alton Ellis, also heads for the roots on his blessed-out “Memories”, a song from 1983 that falls outside the timeframe of the rest of the set but feels like it belongs in its spot late in the running order as an arrow forward. As great as all these songs are, there’s one particular track that stands out: The Cougars’ cover of “I Wish It Would Rain”, a Whitfield/Strong/Penzabene composition originally recorded by the Temptations. Though it has some rhythmic echoes of reggae in places, this song is so oddly arranged that it feels completely out of time or genre. The verses are minimally arranged, with Jay Douglas and Jackie Richardson trading leads over heartbeat drums and a lone, regular guitar chord. Smears of organ color the front and back of each verse, and there are two bridges of instrumental soul that rip right into the starkness of the verses with towering horns and thick bass. It’s an improbable interpretation, but it’s utterly haunting. Jamaica to Toronto is an interesting artifact for a few reasons. The quality of the music is obviously the most important of these, but there are some great storylines here as well. The free mixing of English-speaking West Indians in Toronto, the exodus from the poor environs of Jamaica (many of these musicians were from Montego Bay, across the island from Kingston, reggae’s ground zero) to Canada in search of a better life, and the creation of a northern micro-Jamaica where music was currency that bought you memories of home all have resonance as themes of their own. Jamaica to Toronto tells all of these stories through music, and they’re all worth hearing.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Jamaica to Toronto: Soul Funk & Reggae 1967-1974, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Reggae. Canada. If that doesn’t seem like a logical pairing to you, you’re hardly to be blamed, but since the mid-1960s musicians from Jamaica and other West Indian nations carved out a scene for themselves in Toronto-- Canada’s most populous city. The music they made wasn’t all reggae-- many of these musicians also helped create Canada’s funk and soul scenes-- but nearly all of these Jamaicans, Barbadans, St. Vincentians, and Trinidadians had a background in ska, rocksteady, or reggae. What developed in Toronto was not entirely unlike what happened in the West Indian communities in London (England, not Ontario)-- immigrants far from home creating something familiar. And the reggae names who showed up in Toronto-- either for extended stays or brief cameos-- weren’t exactly small potatoes. No less a figure than Jackie Mittoo-- the organist who helped define the very basis of reggae with the Skatalites, Soul Vendors, and Sound Dimension-- split time between Kingston and Toronto, operating an Ontario record store with Lord Tanamo and cutting records in both cities. Jackie Opel, Johnny More, Alton Ellis, Lloyd Delpratt, and Johnny (aka Johnnie) Osbourne are all here, but no one had a bigger role than guitarist Wayne McGhie, who wrote six of the 16 songs on this compilation and played on at least seven of them. The material compiler Kevin “Sipreano” Howes and Light in the Attic have unearthed runs the gamut from hard funk to deep soul, reggae, soul jazz, and rock, and most of it is excellent. Jo-Jo Bennett puts on a clinic in throat-shredding soul on Jo-Jo & the Fugitives’ “Fugitive Song”, but the group betters itself on the funky, McGhie-penned “Chips-Chicken-Banana Split”, a song that slides into a sweet pre-“Cold Sweat” James Brown groove stuffed with stabbing horns and rapid-fire backing harmonies. Bob and Wisdom check in with an amazing cover of Mac Davis’s “I Believe in Music” that really sells the idea of music as a salve for problems with sharp two-part harmonies, and McGhie’s short-lived band Ram mines the same funky rock ore as Sly Stone and Rare Earth on “Love Is the Answer”. Delpratt and Osbourne each contribute instrumentals-- the organ and horns of Delpratt’s “Together” flow gorgeously, while Osbourne’s “African Wake” is one of the deepest roots tracks in the set. Noel Ellis, son of the great Alton Ellis, also heads for the roots on his blessed-out “Memories”, a song from 1983 that falls outside the timeframe of the rest of the set but feels like it belongs in its spot late in the running order as an arrow forward. As great as all these songs are, there’s one particular track that stands out: The Cougars’ cover of “I Wish It Would Rain”, a Whitfield/Strong/Penzabene composition originally recorded by the Temptations. Though it has some rhythmic echoes of reggae in places, this song is so oddly arranged that it feels completely out of time or genre. The verses are minimally arranged, with Jay Douglas and Jackie Richardson trading leads over heartbeat drums and a lone, regular guitar chord. Smears of organ color the front and back of each verse, and there are two bridges of instrumental soul that rip right into the starkness of the verses with towering horns and thick bass. It’s an improbable interpretation, but it’s utterly haunting. Jamaica to Toronto is an interesting artifact for a few reasons. The quality of the music is obviously the most important of these, but there are some great storylines here as well. The free mixing of English-speaking West Indians in Toronto, the exodus from the poor environs of Jamaica (many of these musicians were from Montego Bay, across the island from Kingston, reggae’s ground zero) to Canada in search of a better life, and the creation of a northern micro-Jamaica where music was currency that bought you memories of home all have resonance as themes of their own. Jamaica to Toronto tells all of these stories through music, and they’re all worth hearing."

Medications

Completely Removed

Metal,Rock

Joe Tangari

It's been five years since we last heard from Washington, D.C.'s Medications. Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter formed the band from the ashes of Faraquet, and on the group's debut EP and first LP, there was a clear tension between the knotty, agile post-punk of their former group and a more pop-informed tendency. Five years later, drummer Andrew Becker has moved on, and that more melodic side of the band has won out. Perhaps having to cover the drums as well as the guitar and bass put the remaining duo in a more studio-oriented frame of mind, but whatever the reason, there's more layering here, and a much greater focus on tunes, resulting in the band's best album. One of the keys to the album's success is that Ocampo and Molter haven't abandoned the tricky meter changes, angular riffs, and sharp musicianship that have always been their trademark. They've merely subjugated those elements of their style to catchy songs that move the band further toward the indie rock mainstream. When a wild flurry of guitar lurches out from behind the vocals on "Home Is Where We Are", the tangle of notes is no longer an end in itself-- it's an exclamation point that punches home a key turn of phrase in the melody. "Seasons" rivals their last album opener "Surprise!" for the best thing the band's ever done, as Ocampo and Molter trade off vocals as the guitars slash and chime. In short, it's a rush, and the surprising "doot doot" backing harmonies are a welcome dash of sugar to complement the spice of the guitars. For an album recorded as dry and straight as this one, it can be oddly psychedelic. Instrumental "Kilometers and Smiles" gives the band a chance to scratch its prog itch, and the way the heavy fuzz guitar interacts with the wordless vocal harmonies creates a trippy atmosphere. Parts sound like Black Sabbath or King Crimson, parts sound like George Harrison or Roy Harper. In other places, dabs of sax and clarinet accomplish a similar effect, helping to bring the gentle, partly acoustic arrangement of the album's quiet centerpiece, "Brasil '07", to life. The song bears hallmarks of its namesake country, expanding the band's musical vocabulary a great deal. Between the expanded palette and the consistently punchy songs, Completely Removed is an impressive return for Medications. The band's sound has evolved into one that should appeal to those who never went for the tangle of Faraquet or the band's earlier tendency to split the difference between songcraft and instrumental fireworks.

Artist: Medications, Album: Completely Removed, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "It's been five years since we last heard from Washington, D.C.'s Medications. Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter formed the band from the ashes of Faraquet, and on the group's debut EP and first LP, there was a clear tension between the knotty, agile post-punk of their former group and a more pop-informed tendency. Five years later, drummer Andrew Becker has moved on, and that more melodic side of the band has won out. Perhaps having to cover the drums as well as the guitar and bass put the remaining duo in a more studio-oriented frame of mind, but whatever the reason, there's more layering here, and a much greater focus on tunes, resulting in the band's best album. One of the keys to the album's success is that Ocampo and Molter haven't abandoned the tricky meter changes, angular riffs, and sharp musicianship that have always been their trademark. They've merely subjugated those elements of their style to catchy songs that move the band further toward the indie rock mainstream. When a wild flurry of guitar lurches out from behind the vocals on "Home Is Where We Are", the tangle of notes is no longer an end in itself-- it's an exclamation point that punches home a key turn of phrase in the melody. "Seasons" rivals their last album opener "Surprise!" for the best thing the band's ever done, as Ocampo and Molter trade off vocals as the guitars slash and chime. In short, it's a rush, and the surprising "doot doot" backing harmonies are a welcome dash of sugar to complement the spice of the guitars. For an album recorded as dry and straight as this one, it can be oddly psychedelic. Instrumental "Kilometers and Smiles" gives the band a chance to scratch its prog itch, and the way the heavy fuzz guitar interacts with the wordless vocal harmonies creates a trippy atmosphere. Parts sound like Black Sabbath or King Crimson, parts sound like George Harrison or Roy Harper. In other places, dabs of sax and clarinet accomplish a similar effect, helping to bring the gentle, partly acoustic arrangement of the album's quiet centerpiece, "Brasil '07", to life. The song bears hallmarks of its namesake country, expanding the band's musical vocabulary a great deal. Between the expanded palette and the consistently punchy songs, Completely Removed is an impressive return for Medications. The band's sound has evolved into one that should appeal to those who never went for the tangle of Faraquet or the band's earlier tendency to split the difference between songcraft and instrumental fireworks."

Aïsha Devi

DNA Feelings

Electronic

Sasha Geffen

Most electronic music chases the motion of the body, but Aïsha Devi is more interested in the subtle noise that rises from the body in stillness. Since dropping her Kate Wax moniker and co-founding the label Danse Noire, the Swiss producer has intertwined her experimental computer compositions with her meditation practice. She doesn’t make dance music; she makes music that sounds like the body forgetting itself, losing feeling in the extremities as mind and breath conjoin. Devi’s 2015 album, Of Matter and Spirit, dissolved her classically trained voice in an unsteady sea of echoing electronics, testing the line between human and machine. Her second album under her given name, DNA Feelings, delves even deeper into the abstract. It’s a chilling listen, with few grooves or lyrics to grab ahold of, and its icy alien angles prove Devi’s patience and boldness. Few producers have this much restraint. Like contemporaries Holly Herndon, Arca, and Fatima Al Qadiri, Devi would rather denature established song forms than adhere to them. Her voice still suffuses DNA Feelings, typically in one of two modes: high, inscrutable cries serrated with vocal effects or confrontational spoken words. Neither performs the voice’s usual role as an entryway into an electronic piece. If anything, the vocal parts are more alienating than the restless, intermittent drum beats and the cascades of synthesizer notes. Devi’s voice resists contextualization. It does not tell a story so much as it embeds itself in each song’s architecture. A well-trained voice confers power; it reveals an investment in a hierarchy of skill and allows the singer to ascend that hierarchy. To warp a trained voice, then, is to interrogate power, a project Devi seems eager to undertake, however subliminally, on DNA Feelings. The advance single “Dislocation of the Alpha” centers Devi’s filtered speaking voice, which follows a rhythm but is not quite a rap, as she issues an oblique call to disidentify with the oppressors of the world—to starve out the “alpha” by denying him affinity. The method of listening this album demands disrupts the typical flow of identification from listener to musician. Left marooned in a field of sound, without many handholds, you start to question how and why you automatically identify with certain music. The best thing an album like DNA Feelings can do to you is make you feel lost, and it does, frequently. “Light Luxury” tears its vocals to ribbons, then chases its uneasy introduction with a seasick synth riff so high-pitched it borders on the range of microphone feedback. “Aetherave” marries a placid, aquatic arpeggio to a bassline quivering at twice its speed. “Inner State of Alchemy” perforates a club beat with gaping pauses, and lets its sky-high vocal refrain, laced with trance reverb, hang in empty space. The lack of a beat under the track’s most melodically gripping moment is like a trap door giving way beneath your feet, a collapse of context. The voice is beautiful and urgent and falling through a void. The album’s strangest and most striking moment arrives on “Time (Tool)” and continues into “Time Is the Illusion of Solidity.” “If you name me, you negate me,” says an echoing robotic voice. “You’ll unravel your ghostly matter, have visions of alchemy. You will smile when you die. You will not name me. I am the prophet and you are me.” These words come unaccompanied by music at first, then reappear in “Time Is the Illusion of Solidity” shrouded by ambient groans and synthetic church bells. They carry the weight of a sermon, and yet their meaning is impressionistic. Devi suggests another way of eluding power; by refusing a name, shedding markers of individuality, you also refuse surveillance and social control. You unstitch yourself and become more than a citizen of a technocratic hell-state. Real human power, DNA Feelings suggests, lies not in the individual but in the collective—in the confusing of “you” and “me,” in the blurry region outside language, structure, and time. By reconceptualizing electronic music as a mode of spiritual searching, Devi alchemizes confusion into healing. To be without context is to be given a chance to start anew.

Artist: Aïsha Devi, Album: DNA Feelings, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Most electronic music chases the motion of the body, but Aïsha Devi is more interested in the subtle noise that rises from the body in stillness. Since dropping her Kate Wax moniker and co-founding the label Danse Noire, the Swiss producer has intertwined her experimental computer compositions with her meditation practice. She doesn’t make dance music; she makes music that sounds like the body forgetting itself, losing feeling in the extremities as mind and breath conjoin. Devi’s 2015 album, Of Matter and Spirit, dissolved her classically trained voice in an unsteady sea of echoing electronics, testing the line between human and machine. Her second album under her given name, DNA Feelings, delves even deeper into the abstract. It’s a chilling listen, with few grooves or lyrics to grab ahold of, and its icy alien angles prove Devi’s patience and boldness. Few producers have this much restraint. Like contemporaries Holly Herndon, Arca, and Fatima Al Qadiri, Devi would rather denature established song forms than adhere to them. Her voice still suffuses DNA Feelings, typically in one of two modes: high, inscrutable cries serrated with vocal effects or confrontational spoken words. Neither performs the voice’s usual role as an entryway into an electronic piece. If anything, the vocal parts are more alienating than the restless, intermittent drum beats and the cascades of synthesizer notes. Devi’s voice resists contextualization. It does not tell a story so much as it embeds itself in each song’s architecture. A well-trained voice confers power; it reveals an investment in a hierarchy of skill and allows the singer to ascend that hierarchy. To warp a trained voice, then, is to interrogate power, a project Devi seems eager to undertake, however subliminally, on DNA Feelings. The advance single “Dislocation of the Alpha” centers Devi’s filtered speaking voice, which follows a rhythm but is not quite a rap, as she issues an oblique call to disidentify with the oppressors of the world—to starve out the “alpha” by denying him affinity. The method of listening this album demands disrupts the typical flow of identification from listener to musician. Left marooned in a field of sound, without many handholds, you start to question how and why you automatically identify with certain music. The best thing an album like DNA Feelings can do to you is make you feel lost, and it does, frequently. “Light Luxury” tears its vocals to ribbons, then chases its uneasy introduction with a seasick synth riff so high-pitched it borders on the range of microphone feedback. “Aetherave” marries a placid, aquatic arpeggio to a bassline quivering at twice its speed. “Inner State of Alchemy” perforates a club beat with gaping pauses, and lets its sky-high vocal refrain, laced with trance reverb, hang in empty space. The lack of a beat under the track’s most melodically gripping moment is like a trap door giving way beneath your feet, a collapse of context. The voice is beautiful and urgent and falling through a void. The album’s strangest and most striking moment arrives on “Time (Tool)” and continues into “Time Is the Illusion of Solidity.” “If you name me, you negate me,” says an echoing robotic voice. “You’ll unravel your ghostly matter, have visions of alchemy. You will smile when you die. You will not name me. I am the prophet and you are me.” These words come unaccompanied by music at first, then reappear in “Time Is the Illusion of Solidity” shrouded by ambient groans and synthetic church bells. They carry the weight of a sermon, and yet their meaning is impressionistic. Devi suggests another way of eluding power; by refusing a name, shedding markers of individuality, you also refuse surveillance and social control. You unstitch yourself and become more than a citizen of a technocratic hell-state. Real human power, DNA Feelings suggests, lies not in the individual but in the collective—in the confusing of “you” and “me,” in the blurry region outside language, structure, and time. By reconceptualizing electronic music as a mode of spiritual searching, Devi alchemizes confusion into healing. To be without context is to be given a chance to start anew."

N.E.R.D.

Nothing

Rap

Jayson Greene

Even among pop stars, a demographic made up entirely of magical thinkers, Pharrell Williams' all-encompassing belief in himself is remarkable. It's hard to imagine that he's ever had what he considered to be a bad idea. On the one hand, this sublime self-confidence is sort of awe-inspiring, and exactly the sort of attitude we demand from our pop stars. On the other hand, Pharrell has had an awful lot of wretched ideas. Ever since 2001, his rock-band side project N.E.R.D. has been a reliable repository for all of the worst ones. Back when he and Chad Hugo were still dominating hip-hop radio, N.E.R.D. albums served a useful purpose: they brought the super-producers, endearingly, to earth. For every indestructible "What Happened to That Boy" or "Superthug", there was an "Everyone Nose" or a "She Wants to Move"-- something goofy and dubiously conceived where their reach wildly exceeded their grasp. N.E.R.D. albums may never have made for essential listening, but they spoke to an important part of the Neptunes storyline, fleshing out Hugo and Williams' image as likable, overly enthusiastic dorks. So the fact that Nothing, their fourth album, is a parade of deliriously bad ideas-- terrible ones realized with fervent conviction, half-promising ones botched by disastrous execution-- shouldn't even really be held against it. That's sort of a N.E.R.D. album's reason for existing. The reason that listening to Nothing is so profoundly depressing, however, is because the first half of the above equation-- the part where the Neptunes are still cranking out lethal, indelible radio hits-- has more or less evaporated. Without that crucial ballast, both sides of the Neptunes story swing irretrievably into orbit. The worst moments on Nothing-- "Life as a Fish", for instance, which recycles the chord changes to In Search of...'s "Bobby James" and uses them to soundtrack Pharrell's preposterously dramatic retelling of God creating Earth; or the Jethro Tull smooth-jazz beat switchup of "I've Seen the Light / (Interlude) Inside of Clouds"-- are the sounds of an artistic compass spinning wildly. True to form, Pharrell never sounds in the least discouraged steering his way through this wreckage. Whether he's assaying a timid version of Jim Morrison on "Help Me" or pillow-talk whispering his way through the mortifyingly stupid, Daft Punk-produced "Hypnotize U", he remains utterly convinced of his capabilities as a frontman. The songs that do work-- the double-time clavinet-and-bongos funk workout of "Party People", or the tense, minimal thump of the Deluxe Edition's "Sacred Temple" and "Nothing on You"-- hark back to what Neptunes tracks sounded like in 2004, when Pharrell and Chad still had a firm grasp on the rewards of tension and empty space. There isn't a lot left on Nothing, apart from these faint reminders, to indicate that these two guys were the same pair who once revolutionized the sound of hip-hop.

Artist: N.E.R.D., Album: Nothing, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 4.1 Album review: "Even among pop stars, a demographic made up entirely of magical thinkers, Pharrell Williams' all-encompassing belief in himself is remarkable. It's hard to imagine that he's ever had what he considered to be a bad idea. On the one hand, this sublime self-confidence is sort of awe-inspiring, and exactly the sort of attitude we demand from our pop stars. On the other hand, Pharrell has had an awful lot of wretched ideas. Ever since 2001, his rock-band side project N.E.R.D. has been a reliable repository for all of the worst ones. Back when he and Chad Hugo were still dominating hip-hop radio, N.E.R.D. albums served a useful purpose: they brought the super-producers, endearingly, to earth. For every indestructible "What Happened to That Boy" or "Superthug", there was an "Everyone Nose" or a "She Wants to Move"-- something goofy and dubiously conceived where their reach wildly exceeded their grasp. N.E.R.D. albums may never have made for essential listening, but they spoke to an important part of the Neptunes storyline, fleshing out Hugo and Williams' image as likable, overly enthusiastic dorks. So the fact that Nothing, their fourth album, is a parade of deliriously bad ideas-- terrible ones realized with fervent conviction, half-promising ones botched by disastrous execution-- shouldn't even really be held against it. That's sort of a N.E.R.D. album's reason for existing. The reason that listening to Nothing is so profoundly depressing, however, is because the first half of the above equation-- the part where the Neptunes are still cranking out lethal, indelible radio hits-- has more or less evaporated. Without that crucial ballast, both sides of the Neptunes story swing irretrievably into orbit. The worst moments on Nothing-- "Life as a Fish", for instance, which recycles the chord changes to In Search of...'s "Bobby James" and uses them to soundtrack Pharrell's preposterously dramatic retelling of God creating Earth; or the Jethro Tull smooth-jazz beat switchup of "I've Seen the Light / (Interlude) Inside of Clouds"-- are the sounds of an artistic compass spinning wildly. True to form, Pharrell never sounds in the least discouraged steering his way through this wreckage. Whether he's assaying a timid version of Jim Morrison on "Help Me" or pillow-talk whispering his way through the mortifyingly stupid, Daft Punk-produced "Hypnotize U", he remains utterly convinced of his capabilities as a frontman. The songs that do work-- the double-time clavinet-and-bongos funk workout of "Party People", or the tense, minimal thump of the Deluxe Edition's "Sacred Temple" and "Nothing on You"-- hark back to what Neptunes tracks sounded like in 2004, when Pharrell and Chad still had a firm grasp on the rewards of tension and empty space. There isn't a lot left on Nothing, apart from these faint reminders, to indicate that these two guys were the same pair who once revolutionized the sound of hip-hop."

Dax Riggs

We Sing of Only Blood or Love

Metal,Rock

Aaron Leitko

If you long for the days when rock'n'roll frontmen had not only teeth but also fangs (i.e., the late 1980s), then Dax Riggs is probably your guy. Riggs is a goth-rock lead singer to rival pale-faced forbears like Peter Murphy and early Ian Astbury, but he also has some of the latter's later fondness for late-60s psychedelic rock. He's a guy who can lace up a pair of leather pants with a sense of purpose and probably bite the head off of whatever hapless bite-sized creature is within grasp. But for all the heat and hellfire he calls up on We Sing of Only Blood or Love, the album is undercooked, coming in light on ideas and heavy on the leaden death-blues hokum. As the singer for sludgy Southern metal band Acid Bath and more recently the swamp-rock outfit Deadboy & the Elephantmen, Riggs established a brooding sepulchral style that paired theatrically spooky imagery with soulful Bowie-esque crooning. Blood or Love is his first record under his given name and it largely sticks to this territory. Riggs can still take lyrics that would look better tattooed on the arm of an extra in Wild Angels-- lines like "living is suicide" or "Night is the notion/ We are the explosion"-- and make them stand up in their affectation-ridden graves. But nothing on Blood or Love can stay on its feet for very long. Most of the album's songs seem hurried, rising up into squalls of fury only to fizzle out and die around the two-minute mark. "Living Is Suicide" starts our dark and soulful with bluesy lamentations giving way to an expansive glam sing-along that runs out faster than a tube of Robert Smith's lipstick. A solid backing band composed of Superwolf and Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney (who also produced) along with Endless Boogie drummer Andy MacLeod and a few other Brooklyn-based heavies is generally wasted, as they slash through buzzing and chugging arrangements that end before they even begin with nary a breakdown or solo in sight. On the other hand, there's too much of Riggs vampyric subject matter and the lack of subtlety becomes slightly oppressive as Blood or Love winds on. Go ahead and let Riggs take you to the haunted house of his mind in "A Spinning Song", then let him take you to the haunted desert of "Forgot I Was Alive". But by the time he's bludgeoning you with the haunted circus on "Wall of Death" it's time to drop the black velvet curtains. Talented, individual, and somewhat freaky, Dax Riggs is like the smart kid in high school that wears all black all of the time. You totally could have been best friends with him had he only stopped breaking off your conversations to obsess over J. O'Barr lithographs and Samurai ethics. Only with Riggs it's Satan and images of unknowable suffering. All told, both might have been more palatable if accompanied by a few more guitar solos.

Artist: Dax Riggs, Album: We Sing of Only Blood or Love, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "If you long for the days when rock'n'roll frontmen had not only teeth but also fangs (i.e., the late 1980s), then Dax Riggs is probably your guy. Riggs is a goth-rock lead singer to rival pale-faced forbears like Peter Murphy and early Ian Astbury, but he also has some of the latter's later fondness for late-60s psychedelic rock. He's a guy who can lace up a pair of leather pants with a sense of purpose and probably bite the head off of whatever hapless bite-sized creature is within grasp. But for all the heat and hellfire he calls up on We Sing of Only Blood or Love, the album is undercooked, coming in light on ideas and heavy on the leaden death-blues hokum. As the singer for sludgy Southern metal band Acid Bath and more recently the swamp-rock outfit Deadboy & the Elephantmen, Riggs established a brooding sepulchral style that paired theatrically spooky imagery with soulful Bowie-esque crooning. Blood or Love is his first record under his given name and it largely sticks to this territory. Riggs can still take lyrics that would look better tattooed on the arm of an extra in Wild Angels-- lines like "living is suicide" or "Night is the notion/ We are the explosion"-- and make them stand up in their affectation-ridden graves. But nothing on Blood or Love can stay on its feet for very long. Most of the album's songs seem hurried, rising up into squalls of fury only to fizzle out and die around the two-minute mark. "Living Is Suicide" starts our dark and soulful with bluesy lamentations giving way to an expansive glam sing-along that runs out faster than a tube of Robert Smith's lipstick. A solid backing band composed of Superwolf and Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney (who also produced) along with Endless Boogie drummer Andy MacLeod and a few other Brooklyn-based heavies is generally wasted, as they slash through buzzing and chugging arrangements that end before they even begin with nary a breakdown or solo in sight. On the other hand, there's too much of Riggs vampyric subject matter and the lack of subtlety becomes slightly oppressive as Blood or Love winds on. Go ahead and let Riggs take you to the haunted house of his mind in "A Spinning Song", then let him take you to the haunted desert of "Forgot I Was Alive". But by the time he's bludgeoning you with the haunted circus on "Wall of Death" it's time to drop the black velvet curtains. Talented, individual, and somewhat freaky, Dax Riggs is like the smart kid in high school that wears all black all of the time. You totally could have been best friends with him had he only stopped breaking off your conversations to obsess over J. O'Barr lithographs and Samurai ethics. Only with Riggs it's Satan and images of unknowable suffering. All told, both might have been more palatable if accompanied by a few more guitar solos."

Sound Team

Movie Monster

Rock

Marc Hogan

Yes, summer 2006 is the summer of Snakes on a Plane. But it's also the season of the "art-house monster movie"-- at least in the words of The Wall Street Journal (I know!). Among the latest snob-spookers: South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's The Host, Thai duo Oxide and Danny Pang's Re-Cycle, and The Exorcist guy's fresh Harry Connick Jr./Ashley Judd creep-out, Bug. All picked up Cannes plaudits, though probably fewer than Al Gore. It's also "the summer of Sound Team"-- at least in the words of one media outlet. As blog memes go, praise for the Austin sextet isn't as ubiquitous as your aforementioned forthcoming herpetological thriller, but in Hype Machine circles it's not that far off. As with the new arty fright flicks, Sound Team's first proper full-length Movie Monster tries hard to straddle between blockbuster and cult classic, flashing a dizzying array of instant-cred reference points like so much major-label bling and piling on rube-dazzling special effects. Most popcorn-thriller misfires lack the plot and character to match their sound and fury; Movie Monster's adenoidal overemoting and Wall-of-the-Edge guitars can't hide a shortage of, like, actual decent songs. To be sure, Movie Monster has plenty to offer Next Big Thing-spotters. Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last year, Sound Team open things with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it song fragment, though their "Get Out" is more U2 anthem-- particularly "With or Without You"-- than CYHSY carny busk. Just as Tapes 'n Tapes endearingly name-checked Harvard Square on this year's The Loon, Sound Team drop in another real-life locale, Portland's Burnside Ave., amid the Wilco-esque Americana of organ-driven single "Back in Town". Then there's the hipster roll call of influences: Stereolab and Low-era Bowie (and thus Krautrock motorik) throughout, plus Loveless shimmer on "Afterglow Years", Gang of Rapturous Franz disco-punk on marble-mouthed "TV Torso", and singer/guitarist Matt Oliver's strangled Walkmen/Creed croak. Yes, they opened for Arcade Fire in Central Park. But Win was only returning a favor. Amid blurry soundscapes produced by Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), Sound Team hack together Yankee Kid A Foxtrot nonsense lyrics and the kind of vague melodies sure to leave you humming the video. "All of the bedrooms fold into the Perfect Chair", Oliver repeats between Police-tinged verses on "Born to Please". Meanwhile, "Your Eyes Are Liars" is pretty much garden-variety post-Elefant 1980s nostalgia, substituting hoarse bravado for Mozzy croon. Extra points for working both Kafka and Trinitrons into the big, desolate "No More Birthdays". Finally, the ringing drone of lofty closer "Handful of Billions" unveils the Bono-sized ambitions lurking beneath the album's more fashionable style-shifting. "Let the backlash begin," Oliver tries elsewhere, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's going to be a long summer. For all the cinematic sonic touches, Sound Team's eponymous "monster" is, like Sasquatch, pretty hard to follow. At last, on the sinister, electronics-laden title track, with ghostly harmonies out of a subpar TV on the Radio outtake, Oliver screamo-wails that "the movie monster was mechanical"-- and he could easily be describing his band's rote reiteration of snazzy influences. Sometimes you meet the monster, and it is you. And sometimes there are motha-fuckin' snakes on this motha-fuckin' plane.

Artist: Sound Team, Album: Movie Monster, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 3.7 Album review: "Yes, summer 2006 is the summer of Snakes on a Plane. But it's also the season of the "art-house monster movie"-- at least in the words of The Wall Street Journal (I know!). Among the latest snob-spookers: South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's The Host, Thai duo Oxide and Danny Pang's Re-Cycle, and The Exorcist guy's fresh Harry Connick Jr./Ashley Judd creep-out, Bug. All picked up Cannes plaudits, though probably fewer than Al Gore. It's also "the summer of Sound Team"-- at least in the words of one media outlet. As blog memes go, praise for the Austin sextet isn't as ubiquitous as your aforementioned forthcoming herpetological thriller, but in Hype Machine circles it's not that far off. As with the new arty fright flicks, Sound Team's first proper full-length Movie Monster tries hard to straddle between blockbuster and cult classic, flashing a dizzying array of instant-cred reference points like so much major-label bling and piling on rube-dazzling special effects. Most popcorn-thriller misfires lack the plot and character to match their sound and fury; Movie Monster's adenoidal overemoting and Wall-of-the-Edge guitars can't hide a shortage of, like, actual decent songs. To be sure, Movie Monster has plenty to offer Next Big Thing-spotters. Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last year, Sound Team open things with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it song fragment, though their "Get Out" is more U2 anthem-- particularly "With or Without You"-- than CYHSY carny busk. Just as Tapes 'n Tapes endearingly name-checked Harvard Square on this year's The Loon, Sound Team drop in another real-life locale, Portland's Burnside Ave., amid the Wilco-esque Americana of organ-driven single "Back in Town". Then there's the hipster roll call of influences: Stereolab and Low-era Bowie (and thus Krautrock motorik) throughout, plus Loveless shimmer on "Afterglow Years", Gang of Rapturous Franz disco-punk on marble-mouthed "TV Torso", and singer/guitarist Matt Oliver's strangled Walkmen/Creed croak. Yes, they opened for Arcade Fire in Central Park. But Win was only returning a favor. Amid blurry soundscapes produced by Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), Sound Team hack together Yankee Kid A Foxtrot nonsense lyrics and the kind of vague melodies sure to leave you humming the video. "All of the bedrooms fold into the Perfect Chair", Oliver repeats between Police-tinged verses on "Born to Please". Meanwhile, "Your Eyes Are Liars" is pretty much garden-variety post-Elefant 1980s nostalgia, substituting hoarse bravado for Mozzy croon. Extra points for working both Kafka and Trinitrons into the big, desolate "No More Birthdays". Finally, the ringing drone of lofty closer "Handful of Billions" unveils the Bono-sized ambitions lurking beneath the album's more fashionable style-shifting. "Let the backlash begin," Oliver tries elsewhere, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's going to be a long summer. For all the cinematic sonic touches, Sound Team's eponymous "monster" is, like Sasquatch, pretty hard to follow. At last, on the sinister, electronics-laden title track, with ghostly harmonies out of a subpar TV on the Radio outtake, Oliver screamo-wails that "the movie monster was mechanical"-- and he could easily be describing his band's rote reiteration of snazzy influences. Sometimes you meet the monster, and it is you. And sometimes there are motha-fuckin' snakes on this motha-fuckin' plane."

Chief Keef

Nobody 2

Rap

Winston Cook-Wilson

It’s inevitably saddening to watch rappers who once risked international crossover success become gradually regarded as more marginal, release by release. In 2012—Chief Keef’s breakout year—the particulars of the then-teenage, Chicago-reared rapper’s music was as much under scrutiny as his sudden, controversial rise. These days, only stories of career self-sabotage, and legal or financial missteps (most recently, his suspension from his record deal with hologram and online television entrepreneur Alki David’s multipurpose entertainment corporation FilmOn) make for major headlines. The unlikely regional and viral success of "Faneto"—a fiery, rhythmically deranged 2014 mixtape track—was comparatively little commented upon, despite around 60 million cumulative YouTube views, a lengthy paper trail of virality, a 10-minute remix featuring the biggest names in his hometown’s hip-hop scene, and even a Drake cover. Admittedly, there's a top-heavy static-to-signal ratio on Keef’s mixtapes of the past two years. His default ritual—long days and nights in the studio with his in-house production team—results in plenty of appealing, distinctively styled rap songs, but filling his increasingly frequent projects out to between 15 and 20 tracks necessarily makes for redundancy. The Keef devotee must be prepared to rifle through his tapes, scouting for the buried handful of standalone hits. It’s to be expected, really: The over-saturation business model is the profitable and logical choice for a modern street rapper with a diehard fan base. Releases like December’s Nobody 2 evidence the downside of this approach. The tape is both on the more unruly end of the musical spectrum for Keef, and his most poorly curated project since 2013’s Bang 2. That’s not to say it's uninteresting. It is, at least, full of inimitable and decidedly bonkers beats from notoriously prickly executive producer 12 Million (formerly 12Hunna), who also masterminded its predecessor—last December’s meditative, AutoTune-drenched Nobody—and is threatening a third installment this month. On songs like "Phone" and "Sex With Me," most elements of the drum loops lag queasily behind the tempo. "Andale," even more extremely, plays out like some untested gear-operated machine lurching into motion and chugging unsteadily along, obscuring twinkling synth constellations in the background. One of 12 Million's hallmarks is his invasive snare patterns, in which wildly backfiring trails of delay become more important that the actual on-the-beat hits themselves. Keef’s terse phrasing holds everything together, demarcating time stylishly, if sometimes to little additional effect. Keef songs like "Mirror" function like levels of early Nintendo games—not because of the actual bleep-bloop sonic likeness, but because of the mileage they get from the deceptively complex overlap of a handful of miniature, mechanistic moving parts. Keef’s vocal take sounds as assembled from tiny scraps as the beat itself, but packs in just enough in the way of conversational one-liners to lend the track cohesion ("I think you need a chair/ Waiting on me to fail/ You say you seen some money/ N*gga, tell me where/ Is it over there/ Or is it in here?") "Mirror" is enough to make one go cross-eyed after focusing in too hard on any of its particular irregular elements, but falls together perfectly after pulling back and zoning out a bit. But though 12 Million’s work on this tape is his most compelling to date, Keef, unfortunately, is less present than ever. On tracks like "Sex With Me," he murmurs nearly inaudibly in the background for the better part of the song—more a sound effect than anything else. On the appropriately titled, delay-riddled "In the Stu," it sounds like he’s set foot in the booth without even an embryonic idea or plan of attack. Sometimes, as on the distorted jeremiad of a pre-chorus on "Tony Hawk," he's nearly incomprehensible. Nobody 2 is a far cry from the more lyrically clever and emotionally charged Sorry 4 the Weight, and *Bang 3’*s diplomatic songwriting and sonic clarity. This is chilly, uninviting music, implicitly and explicitly about isolation. "I feel like I need to separate myself from hip-hop, don’t let nobody come around me, don’t let nobody learn from me," Keef intones menacingly on the album’s central skit. A few years into his still-influential career, nobody quite sounds like Chief Keef in rap music. But if he doesn’t let anyone push him to complicate his now-time-tested vision, his songs may never expand back into being something more than fringe experiments, and even the interest those hold may, after a healthy amount of reiteration, wane for good.

Artist: Chief Keef, Album: Nobody 2, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "It’s inevitably saddening to watch rappers who once risked international crossover success become gradually regarded as more marginal, release by release. In 2012—Chief Keef’s breakout year—the particulars of the then-teenage, Chicago-reared rapper’s music was as much under scrutiny as his sudden, controversial rise. These days, only stories of career self-sabotage, and legal or financial missteps (most recently, his suspension from his record deal with hologram and online television entrepreneur Alki David’s multipurpose entertainment corporation FilmOn) make for major headlines. The unlikely regional and viral success of "Faneto"—a fiery, rhythmically deranged 2014 mixtape track—was comparatively little commented upon, despite around 60 million cumulative YouTube views, a lengthy paper trail of virality, a 10-minute remix featuring the biggest names in his hometown’s hip-hop scene, and even a Drake cover. Admittedly, there's a top-heavy static-to-signal ratio on Keef’s mixtapes of the past two years. His default ritual—long days and nights in the studio with his in-house production team—results in plenty of appealing, distinctively styled rap songs, but filling his increasingly frequent projects out to between 15 and 20 tracks necessarily makes for redundancy. The Keef devotee must be prepared to rifle through his tapes, scouting for the buried handful of standalone hits. It’s to be expected, really: The over-saturation business model is the profitable and logical choice for a modern street rapper with a diehard fan base. Releases like December’s Nobody 2 evidence the downside of this approach. The tape is both on the more unruly end of the musical spectrum for Keef, and his most poorly curated project since 2013’s Bang 2. That’s not to say it's uninteresting. It is, at least, full of inimitable and decidedly bonkers beats from notoriously prickly executive producer 12 Million (formerly 12Hunna), who also masterminded its predecessor—last December’s meditative, AutoTune-drenched Nobody—and is threatening a third installment this month. On songs like "Phone" and "Sex With Me," most elements of the drum loops lag queasily behind the tempo. "Andale," even more extremely, plays out like some untested gear-operated machine lurching into motion and chugging unsteadily along, obscuring twinkling synth constellations in the background. One of 12 Million's hallmarks is his invasive snare patterns, in which wildly backfiring trails of delay become more important that the actual on-the-beat hits themselves. Keef’s terse phrasing holds everything together, demarcating time stylishly, if sometimes to little additional effect. Keef songs like "Mirror" function like levels of early Nintendo games—not because of the actual bleep-bloop sonic likeness, but because of the mileage they get from the deceptively complex overlap of a handful of miniature, mechanistic moving parts. Keef’s vocal take sounds as assembled from tiny scraps as the beat itself, but packs in just enough in the way of conversational one-liners to lend the track cohesion ("I think you need a chair/ Waiting on me to fail/ You say you seen some money/ N*gga, tell me where/ Is it over there/ Or is it in here?") "Mirror" is enough to make one go cross-eyed after focusing in too hard on any of its particular irregular elements, but falls together perfectly after pulling back and zoning out a bit. But though 12 Million’s work on this tape is his most compelling to date, Keef, unfortunately, is less present than ever. On tracks like "Sex With Me," he murmurs nearly inaudibly in the background for the better part of the song—more a sound effect than anything else. On the appropriately titled, delay-riddled "In the Stu," it sounds like he’s set foot in the booth without even an embryonic idea or plan of attack. Sometimes, as on the distorted jeremiad of a pre-chorus on "Tony Hawk," he's nearly incomprehensible. Nobody 2 is a far cry from the more lyrically clever and emotionally charged Sorry 4 the Weight, and *Bang 3’*s diplomatic songwriting and sonic clarity. This is chilly, uninviting music, implicitly and explicitly about isolation. "I feel like I need to separate myself from hip-hop, don’t let nobody come around me, don’t let nobody learn from me," Keef intones menacingly on the album’s central skit. A few years into his still-influential career, nobody quite sounds like Chief Keef in rap music. But if he doesn’t let anyone push him to complicate his now-time-tested vision, his songs may never expand back into being something more than fringe experiments, and even the interest those hold may, after a healthy amount of reiteration, wane for good."

Augie March

Strange Bird

Rock

Joe Tangari

How many times have you heard that intro? That thundering "Boom! Ch-chik! Boom!" that Phil Spector stopped time with on the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" back in 1963, that one that nobody seems to be able to trump 40 years later. It's in "Just Like Honey" and "Everything Must Go" and "The Bear" and "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve" and it sounds just as good every damn time. If a band is stealing this intro, it's probably because it has realized it wasn't going to write a better one. Augie March's sophomore album Strange Bird opens with just this intro, cleverly transferred from the snare and toms to the guitar and hi-hat, but still booming with immediacy. So now that they've got your attention, does this Aussie quintet have anything to say? Quite a lot, it turns out, with an 18-page lyric booklet to spell it out if you become lost in their heavy accents. Such charming accents, though, and more power to them for not trying to sound like they're from Southern California, even as much of their music dives deeply into Brian's sandbox and leans on Spector's Wall of Sound. Strange Bird is a Technicolor pop opus that's so stuffed with ideas and instruments that it's wont to rupture from time to time, as the band's ambition blows away the substance of the songs with organ overdubs and enough Zildjian crashing and bashing to overwhelm the treble. Indeed, if there's a complaint to be made about Strange Bird, it's that there is a surplus of sound. At the end of "Brundisium", they sound like three Wrecking Crews, and it distracts a bit from the exquisite melody that the jam overtakes. Likewise, Glenn Richards' rich, soft lead vox on closer "O Song" are backed by a wailing accompaniment uttering the same lines low in the mix, a la Pink Floyd's "Southampton Dock", and it's slightly too much-- the harmonium and horns had the backing down just fine, thanks. But we're complaining too much here, I'm afraid. There's much more good stuff to talk about than bad. Take opener "The Vineyard", for instance. After the Spector tribute, it becomes a languid, labyrinthine ballad stuffed with ghostly harmonies, lovely descending piano parts, wandering backwoods guitar leads and a generally warm, Fridmann/Lips glow that invites you into the band's florid poesy and symphonic arrangement sense. But it's a setup, because while you're adimiring their slow beauty, they blindside you on track two: "This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers" is a wailing rockabilly psych raver that chug-a-chugs through verses like "Onward and on to the ends of love/ Pricked vanity, habit and ruse/ Onward and on to a premature silence/ Where death finds too much use." Place those lyrics in the shadow of the death of the band's original keyboardist, still fairly fresh in 2002 when this album saw its original Australian release, and they take on other dimensions. Having covered their ground in just two tracks, Augie March set out to refine it and expand it in the 50 or so minutes that follow. "The Night Is a Blackbird" is a pretty thing moving at the pace of a Galapagos tortoise, melody upon melody upon melody. "Up the Hill and Down" is a horn reverie to introduce "There's Something at the Bottom of the Black Pool", which sounds like its title, and "Addle Brains"? Well, as if the title wasn't already enough, it's a loopy, almost Victorian swinger stuffed as usual with keyboards and character-sketching lines like "Addle Brains would drink for four days and no eats/ And sleep in the glens of botanical parks/ And on the humped bus shelter seats." The original Augie March was a character dreamed up by Saul Bellow, a man "in search of a worthwhile fate," and his namesake band, halfway around the world, has nicely found that fate on their second album. Frankly, it's amazing that it took two years for these songs to reach the states-- those folks down in Australia already own an entire continent, so no need to hog the greatest music they produce for themselves as well, right? At any rate, it finally made it here, and is waiting to be heard.

Artist: Augie March, Album: Strange Bird, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "How many times have you heard that intro? That thundering "Boom! Ch-chik! Boom!" that Phil Spector stopped time with on the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" back in 1963, that one that nobody seems to be able to trump 40 years later. It's in "Just Like Honey" and "Everything Must Go" and "The Bear" and "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve" and it sounds just as good every damn time. If a band is stealing this intro, it's probably because it has realized it wasn't going to write a better one. Augie March's sophomore album Strange Bird opens with just this intro, cleverly transferred from the snare and toms to the guitar and hi-hat, but still booming with immediacy. So now that they've got your attention, does this Aussie quintet have anything to say? Quite a lot, it turns out, with an 18-page lyric booklet to spell it out if you become lost in their heavy accents. Such charming accents, though, and more power to them for not trying to sound like they're from Southern California, even as much of their music dives deeply into Brian's sandbox and leans on Spector's Wall of Sound. Strange Bird is a Technicolor pop opus that's so stuffed with ideas and instruments that it's wont to rupture from time to time, as the band's ambition blows away the substance of the songs with organ overdubs and enough Zildjian crashing and bashing to overwhelm the treble. Indeed, if there's a complaint to be made about Strange Bird, it's that there is a surplus of sound. At the end of "Brundisium", they sound like three Wrecking Crews, and it distracts a bit from the exquisite melody that the jam overtakes. Likewise, Glenn Richards' rich, soft lead vox on closer "O Song" are backed by a wailing accompaniment uttering the same lines low in the mix, a la Pink Floyd's "Southampton Dock", and it's slightly too much-- the harmonium and horns had the backing down just fine, thanks. But we're complaining too much here, I'm afraid. There's much more good stuff to talk about than bad. Take opener "The Vineyard", for instance. After the Spector tribute, it becomes a languid, labyrinthine ballad stuffed with ghostly harmonies, lovely descending piano parts, wandering backwoods guitar leads and a generally warm, Fridmann/Lips glow that invites you into the band's florid poesy and symphonic arrangement sense. But it's a setup, because while you're adimiring their slow beauty, they blindside you on track two: "This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers" is a wailing rockabilly psych raver that chug-a-chugs through verses like "Onward and on to the ends of love/ Pricked vanity, habit and ruse/ Onward and on to a premature silence/ Where death finds too much use." Place those lyrics in the shadow of the death of the band's original keyboardist, still fairly fresh in 2002 when this album saw its original Australian release, and they take on other dimensions. Having covered their ground in just two tracks, Augie March set out to refine it and expand it in the 50 or so minutes that follow. "The Night Is a Blackbird" is a pretty thing moving at the pace of a Galapagos tortoise, melody upon melody upon melody. "Up the Hill and Down" is a horn reverie to introduce "There's Something at the Bottom of the Black Pool", which sounds like its title, and "Addle Brains"? Well, as if the title wasn't already enough, it's a loopy, almost Victorian swinger stuffed as usual with keyboards and character-sketching lines like "Addle Brains would drink for four days and no eats/ And sleep in the glens of botanical parks/ And on the humped bus shelter seats." The original Augie March was a character dreamed up by Saul Bellow, a man "in search of a worthwhile fate," and his namesake band, halfway around the world, has nicely found that fate on their second album. Frankly, it's amazing that it took two years for these songs to reach the states-- those folks down in Australia already own an entire continent, so no need to hog the greatest music they produce for themselves as well, right? At any rate, it finally made it here, and is waiting to be heard."

Curren$y

Pilot Talk III

Rap

Julian Kimble

Curren$y is such a niche artist that he can seemingly vanish into the air like the weed smoke he so lovingly describes even when he's still active. The New Orleans native tours regularly and continues to release quality projects like last year’s The Drive In Theater, 2013’s New Jet City, and 2011’s Alchemist joint-effort, Covert Coup, but hasn’t been able to duplicate the bite of his 2010 breakthroughs, Pilot Talk and Pilot Talk II. News of the third installation’s arrival sparked more interest than he'd enjoyed in awhile, as those outside of his core fanbase were curious to see if the next volume would do the series justice. Curren$y is a bit of a cinephile, and treats each individual work like a grand production; it’s evident in the titles of his projects (see his 2012 tribute, Priest Andretti), and Pilot Talk III begins with "Opening Credits", where he strolls over an authoritative soul sample like Max Julien in The Mack. For just over two minutes, he reflects on his career’s trajectory: "It was right around the time/ I thought I’d have to move back with my mom/ I had to sell my first low-rider/ Halfway to the top went to sleep, woke up at the bottom." The hopscotch path Curren$y has taken to success (from No Limit, to Cash Money, to independent juggernaut) is well-documented, but he rarely deviates from his cool-guy persona to reflect on his struggles. Curren$y remains as irreverent as always, but he sounds more focused on Pilot Talk III than he has in awhile. The ominous "Cargo Planes", produced by Joey Fatts, sounds like the opening of a cinematic crime saga, but in this case it's a typical Spitta infraction: the theft of someone else’s girlfriend. "Never displaying affection when we out in public/ 'Cause mufuckas lookin', and shit could get ugly/ So walk right past me homegirl, and don’t say nothin'" he advises a female acquaintance. On "Froze", eccentric jester RiFF RAFF appears like the ghastly clown from Spawn to exchange swank over Harry Fraud’s slow-burn production, and Curren$y keeps his cool. Although Spitta's range is limited, it’s never been a disadvantage; he’s a purveyor of lifestyle rap. His song titles, often named after random, inanimate objects or people (in the past we've gotten "Chandelier", "Breakfast", and "Scottie Pippen", and here we have "Pot Jar," "Briefcase", "Lemonade Mimosas") testify his ability to find something worthy of appreciation in the seemingly ordinary. On "Long as the Lord Say", he sketches familiar imagery: "Plottin’ like always/ Marble floor hallways/ Smoked out all day/ Tryin’ to get more paid." His lyrics are like an ad from a men’s magazine targeting the 18 to 25 age demographic in real time. Because Curren$y himself is a control variable, production typically influences the quality of his output. Ski Beatz, who produced the bulk of the original Pilot Talk and its sequel, has left his imprint on everything from Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt to Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night. Noticeably absent from Curren$y’s discography following Pilot Talk II, it’s Ski's presence that makes Pilot Talk III so strong. The shimmering crash of the cymbals and pop of the drums on "Alert" are vintage Ski and very welcome. Curren$y may not do "new," but he is very good at what he does: riffing on cars, money, women, weed, and obscure moments from television shows. It’s difficult for the third version of something to truly reign supreme, especially when there’s little variation differentiating them. "Audio Dope 5" is solid, but nowhere near as experimental as the intoxicated stumble of "Audio Dope II". Regardless, Curren$y’s sharp wit, the smooth chop of the Sylvers’ "How Love Hurts" heard on "All I Know", and the return of Ski make Pilot Talk III more than worth it. He's never bad company, even if you forget he's there from time to time.

Artist: Curren$y, Album: Pilot Talk III, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Curren$y is such a niche artist that he can seemingly vanish into the air like the weed smoke he so lovingly describes even when he's still active. The New Orleans native tours regularly and continues to release quality projects like last year’s The Drive In Theater, 2013’s New Jet City, and 2011’s Alchemist joint-effort, Covert Coup, but hasn’t been able to duplicate the bite of his 2010 breakthroughs, Pilot Talk and Pilot Talk II. News of the third installation’s arrival sparked more interest than he'd enjoyed in awhile, as those outside of his core fanbase were curious to see if the next volume would do the series justice. Curren$y is a bit of a cinephile, and treats each individual work like a grand production; it’s evident in the titles of his projects (see his 2012 tribute, Priest Andretti), and Pilot Talk III begins with "Opening Credits", where he strolls over an authoritative soul sample like Max Julien in The Mack. For just over two minutes, he reflects on his career’s trajectory: "It was right around the time/ I thought I’d have to move back with my mom/ I had to sell my first low-rider/ Halfway to the top went to sleep, woke up at the bottom." The hopscotch path Curren$y has taken to success (from No Limit, to Cash Money, to independent juggernaut) is well-documented, but he rarely deviates from his cool-guy persona to reflect on his struggles. Curren$y remains as irreverent as always, but he sounds more focused on Pilot Talk III than he has in awhile. The ominous "Cargo Planes", produced by Joey Fatts, sounds like the opening of a cinematic crime saga, but in this case it's a typical Spitta infraction: the theft of someone else’s girlfriend. "Never displaying affection when we out in public/ 'Cause mufuckas lookin', and shit could get ugly/ So walk right past me homegirl, and don’t say nothin'" he advises a female acquaintance. On "Froze", eccentric jester RiFF RAFF appears like the ghastly clown from Spawn to exchange swank over Harry Fraud’s slow-burn production, and Curren$y keeps his cool. Although Spitta's range is limited, it’s never been a disadvantage; he’s a purveyor of lifestyle rap. His song titles, often named after random, inanimate objects or people (in the past we've gotten "Chandelier", "Breakfast", and "Scottie Pippen", and here we have "Pot Jar," "Briefcase", "Lemonade Mimosas") testify his ability to find something worthy of appreciation in the seemingly ordinary. On "Long as the Lord Say", he sketches familiar imagery: "Plottin’ like always/ Marble floor hallways/ Smoked out all day/ Tryin’ to get more paid." His lyrics are like an ad from a men’s magazine targeting the 18 to 25 age demographic in real time. Because Curren$y himself is a control variable, production typically influences the quality of his output. Ski Beatz, who produced the bulk of the original Pilot Talk and its sequel, has left his imprint on everything from Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt to Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night. Noticeably absent from Curren$y’s discography following Pilot Talk II, it’s Ski's presence that makes Pilot Talk III so strong. The shimmering crash of the cymbals and pop of the drums on "Alert" are vintage Ski and very welcome. Curren$y may not do "new," but he is very good at what he does: riffing on cars, money, women, weed, and obscure moments from television shows. It’s difficult for the third version of something to truly reign supreme, especially when there’s little variation differentiating them. "Audio Dope 5" is solid, but nowhere near as experimental as the intoxicated stumble of "Audio Dope II". Regardless, Curren$y’s sharp wit, the smooth chop of the Sylvers’ "How Love Hurts" heard on "All I Know", and the return of Ski make Pilot Talk III more than worth it. He's never bad company, even if you forget he's there from time to time."

Frankie Cosmos

Vessel

Rock

Jenn Pelly

Towards the end of her third studio album, Vessel, Greta Kline articulates the philosophy of her current self in 13 words: “I wasn’t built for this world/I had sex once, now I’m dead.” Kline has always written with an inspiring economy of language—such as on the 2012 collection much ado about fucking and the many elegies for her deceased dog, JoJo—which seems to honor the Yeats maxim that “sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind.” But she bests herself here, on the deceptively sunny “Cafeteria.” And brutal as Kline’s epiphany may be, it contains the promise of accruing years and experience: knowing oneself. It’s a moment of pure self-possession among all the distressing frayed edges that make up your early 20s. The 24-year-old Kline has become known as no less than a savior of indie pop and the poet laureate of New York City DIY. With wry minimalism and a voice both cherubic and droll, Kline shows that we feel the depths of the city in a granular way—like in the small defeat of swiping an empty MetroCard, or the tiny victory of ascending a platform just as the train arrives. Since the turn of the decade, Kline has taken this idea and shaped it into hundreds of cleverly-arranged pop miniatures, strummed into Garageband and posted to Bandcamp like an infinite diary. She made the twee stylings of her K Records forebears feel like a folk form. And within this humble framework, she conveyed humor, anguish, desire, sensitivity, grace, and not a tinge of eccentricity. (“Be normal, Frankie/Be normal,” goes one of her greats.) Her self-reflexive web of recurring characters, like JoJo, made the world of Frankie Cosmos feel much bigger than any one album. Vessel edits the script a bit. If there was a reportorial flair to Frankie Cosmos songs before—a bus that splashes her with rain, a perfect day lingering on the books outside The Strand—then on Vessel, her discoveries are more insular. The album is less about the epic poem of New York than about how the brain and the heart are connected by nerves and blood—less about Kline’s place in the world, than her place within herself. Her New York optimism, in fact, feels despairingly absent; adding to the sense that things have changed is a macabre image of her beloved dog in a taxidermy museum. And while Frankie Cosmos has always been punk in spirit (here, there are 18 tracks in 33 minutes), Vessel’s unvarnished indie rock is a hair closer to punk in sound. A couple of songs do exceed three minutes—which is like “Desolation Row” by Kline’s wise standard of brevity. No matter the setting, it is hard to imagine Kline ever being starved for inspiration. You could picture her left at a beach penning witty odes to ex-lovers based on every seashell. Kline makes things as banal as a dying phone feel profound. Her language remains a singular mix of pure love and self-loathing, like a romantic e.e. cummings bot amid a stream of raw protected tweets. One moment, on the retro daydream “Duet,” Kline is “making a list of people to kiss/The list is a million Yous long.” Later, on the charmingly faltering piano ballad “Ur Up,” she is succumbing to a modern nagging concern (u up?), but adding her own vernacular and political twists: “I wonder if ur up/I’m America/Thinkin’ of you for no reason.” It’s funny and it shakes you all the same. As ever, Kline’s words are alive on the page as much as in song. “I want in on the other side/Of your eyelids where you hide”—from “Caramelize”—is one of the loveliest lines I’ve ever heard, or read, about connection among the painfully shy. Our inner lives are confusing, this all seems to say, but Kline’s melodies are like magnets that pull us through the maze. When Kline sings about heavy things—like the emptiness of the world, the meaninglessness of a crush, crying, death—she does so in a way that makes her subject feel bearable upon arrival. Her softness is like a coping mechanism in the face of harsh reality, which is never clearer than on the twee thrasher “Being Alive.” Each of Kline’s bandmates takes a turn singing the quintessentially Frankie chorus, as if it were too weighty to carry alone: “Being alive/Matters quite a bit/Even when you/Feel like shit/Being alive.” It all brilliantly conveys a kind of muted resignation to feeling transcendentally alive, but its sense of togetherness also testifies to the power of friendship as a way of getting there. There is often a hard-edged realism to Vessel that Kline hasn’t exhibited before. She shows the personal is political, with blunt appeals to “be less accommodating” of others before herself. But more than ever, her writing feels straight-up despondent, with a twinge of “Daria”-like jade—there are songs titled “Apathy” and “I’m Fried”—which makes Vessel recall one of Kline’s noted influences: the lost 1950s folk outsider Connie Converse, who also expertly tied her dejection to wit. Kline sees shallowness in others and the weaknesses in herself. She feels a general disconnect: “I won’t get married,” she sings, “Not at the party.” But through it, she sends a message that someone like Converse couldn’t in her time: That young women are allowed to be dour. Vessel is not the first album I would suggest to an uninitiated Frankie Cosmos fan. Still, as with any great book or television series, you want to continue following along, even if the best place to start is at the beginning. With her lengthy tracklists, Kline has found a way to evoke the endlessness of her unruly Bandcamp experience even as she puts out formal records—and if this lends Vessel a feeling of being slightly unformed, it’s fitting. Kline’s songs, after all, are so much about how humans are rarely fully-formed, and the universal process of growing up that also—spoiler—never quite ends.

Artist: Frankie Cosmos, Album: Vessel, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Towards the end of her third studio album, Vessel, Greta Kline articulates the philosophy of her current self in 13 words: “I wasn’t built for this world/I had sex once, now I’m dead.” Kline has always written with an inspiring economy of language—such as on the 2012 collection much ado about fucking and the many elegies for her deceased dog, JoJo—which seems to honor the Yeats maxim that “sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind.” But she bests herself here, on the deceptively sunny “Cafeteria.” And brutal as Kline’s epiphany may be, it contains the promise of accruing years and experience: knowing oneself. It’s a moment of pure self-possession among all the distressing frayed edges that make up your early 20s. The 24-year-old Kline has become known as no less than a savior of indie pop and the poet laureate of New York City DIY. With wry minimalism and a voice both cherubic and droll, Kline shows that we feel the depths of the city in a granular way—like in the small defeat of swiping an empty MetroCard, or the tiny victory of ascending a platform just as the train arrives. Since the turn of the decade, Kline has taken this idea and shaped it into hundreds of cleverly-arranged pop miniatures, strummed into Garageband and posted to Bandcamp like an infinite diary. She made the twee stylings of her K Records forebears feel like a folk form. And within this humble framework, she conveyed humor, anguish, desire, sensitivity, grace, and not a tinge of eccentricity. (“Be normal, Frankie/Be normal,” goes one of her greats.) Her self-reflexive web of recurring characters, like JoJo, made the world of Frankie Cosmos feel much bigger than any one album. Vessel edits the script a bit. If there was a reportorial flair to Frankie Cosmos songs before—a bus that splashes her with rain, a perfect day lingering on the books outside The Strand—then on Vessel, her discoveries are more insular. The album is less about the epic poem of New York than about how the brain and the heart are connected by nerves and blood—less about Kline’s place in the world, than her place within herself. Her New York optimism, in fact, feels despairingly absent; adding to the sense that things have changed is a macabre image of her beloved dog in a taxidermy museum. And while Frankie Cosmos has always been punk in spirit (here, there are 18 tracks in 33 minutes), Vessel’s unvarnished indie rock is a hair closer to punk in sound. A couple of songs do exceed three minutes—which is like “Desolation Row” by Kline’s wise standard of brevity. No matter the setting, it is hard to imagine Kline ever being starved for inspiration. You could picture her left at a beach penning witty odes to ex-lovers based on every seashell. Kline makes things as banal as a dying phone feel profound. Her language remains a singular mix of pure love and self-loathing, like a romantic e.e. cummings bot amid a stream of raw protected tweets. One moment, on the retro daydream “Duet,” Kline is “making a list of people to kiss/The list is a million Yous long.” Later, on the charmingly faltering piano ballad “Ur Up,” she is succumbing to a modern nagging concern (u up?), but adding her own vernacular and political twists: “I wonder if ur up/I’m America/Thinkin’ of you for no reason.” It’s funny and it shakes you all the same. As ever, Kline’s words are alive on the page as much as in song. “I want in on the other side/Of your eyelids where you hide”—from “Caramelize”—is one of the loveliest lines I’ve ever heard, or read, about connection among the painfully shy. Our inner lives are confusing, this all seems to say, but Kline’s melodies are like magnets that pull us through the maze. When Kline sings about heavy things—like the emptiness of the world, the meaninglessness of a crush, crying, death—she does so in a way that makes her subject feel bearable upon arrival. Her softness is like a coping mechanism in the face of harsh reality, which is never clearer than on the twee thrasher “Being Alive.” Each of Kline’s bandmates takes a turn singing the quintessentially Frankie chorus, as if it were too weighty to carry alone: “Being alive/Matters quite a bit/Even when you/Feel like shit/Being alive.” It all brilliantly conveys a kind of muted resignation to feeling transcendentally alive, but its sense of togetherness also testifies to the power of friendship as a way of getting there. There is often a hard-edged realism to Vessel that Kline hasn’t exhibited before. She shows the personal is political, with blunt appeals to “be less accommodating” of others before herself. But more than ever, her writing feels straight-up despondent, with a twinge of “Daria”-like jade—there are songs titled “Apathy” and “I’m Fried”—which makes Vessel recall one of Kline’s noted influences: the lost 1950s folk outsider Connie Converse, who also expertly tied her dejection to wit. Kline sees shallowness in others and the weaknesses in herself. She feels a general disconnect: “I won’t get married,” she sings, “Not at the party.” But through it, she sends a message that someone like Converse couldn’t in her time: That young women are allowed to be dour. Vessel is not the first album I would suggest to an uninitiated Frankie Cosmos fan. Still, as with any great book or television series, you want to continue following along, even if the best place to start is at the beginning. With her lengthy tracklists, Kline has found a way to evoke the endlessness of her unruly Bandcamp experience even as she puts out formal records—and if this lends Vessel a feeling of being slightly unformed, it’s fitting. Kline’s songs, after all, are so much about how humans are rarely fully-formed, and the universal process of growing up that also—spoiler—never quite ends."

Special Request

Belief System

Electronic

Patric Fallon

Four years ago, Paul Woolford painted himself into a corner. Under one of his many aliases, Special Request, the British producer released a striking debut album that captured the golden age of UK pirate radio and rave culture as though preserving it in amber. Soul Music pilfered the drum breaks, bass weight, and manic energy of jungle wholesale, folding each component into new yet strangely familiar shapes. As much an homage as a high-definition update, Soul Music helped revitalize that beloved music for contemporary dancefloors. And in doing so, it defined the sound of Special Request in no uncertain terms. The years after Soul Music saw its influence proliferate, but Woolford became more interested in poking at the walls of the box he had built around the project. On 2015’s Modern Warfare EP trilogy, outsized piano house began to color the music’s edges. Those tracks still centered on booming low end and half-remembered ecstasy peaks, but something about Soul Music’s single-mindedness had felt more genuine, purer. The dilution only continued. Earlier this year, the Stairfoot Lane Bunker EP shifted Special Request’s agenda, aligning it with classic electro and experimental ambient alongside the usual rave sounds. More recently, the Curtain Twitcher 12” saw Woolford’s encroaching acid tendencies steal the spotlight in lieu of jungle references. Belief System, Special Request’s second studio album, completes the process that began not long after the release of Soul Music. It’s a record crammed full of contrasting ideas and mish-mashed nostalgia; it’s also absurdly long, with 23 tracks clocking over 100 minutes. If Soul Music and Modern Warfare were quaint in the way they got straight to the point and then relentlessly hammered it home, Belief System’s prolonged, shapeshifting arc could be taken as another tweak to the project’s formula. But the the individual tracks often don’t measure up to the album’s inflated ambitions. Three distinct movements comprise Belief System, and if you blur your eyes a bit, they take on a conceptual slant. In its first third, the album digs into acid house, breakbeat, techno, and IDM, seamlessly interconnecting each style. The midsection is Special Request at its rudest, rowdiest best: a tear of jungle permutations on par with Soul Music’s strongest tunes. The final stretch, which takes up nearly half the album's length, is full of garish incidental music and beatless sound manipulation. Taking the album’s title into consideration, these three parts seem to represent a sort of holy trinity for the UK hardcore continuum—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Sure enough, the latter manifestation is the least substantial. “Carex Vesicaria” is undoubtedly an affecting elegy for the death of rave, as is the angelic euphoria of “Witness.” But tracks like “Transmission” and “Reckoning” are bombastic and painfully linear, better for a summer blockbuster trailer than any album of throwback dance music. In addition to their unflattering bloat, the last nine tracks are a symptom of a larger issue: pacing. The warning signs come early with “Chrysalis,” a needless, sentimental intro that foreshadows the lack of editing to come. Woolford stays in warm-up mode until the seventh track, when the Aphex-inspired “Curtain Twitcher” launches an excellent run of 130-plus BPM bangers. The bin-busting “Scrambled in LS1” stands among Belief System’s best, though it’s practically unrecognizable as Special Request, sounding more in line with the menacing electro of Gesloten Cirkel’s Submit X. When “Make It Real” kicks the rave into high gear with a cheeky backspin and some of Special Request’s signature MC chat, the record finally reveals its beating heart. The Vangelis-like emotional climax of “Light in the Darkest Hour” feels like the record’s natural end. That it takes over an hour to get to this point, and that it’s followed by 30 minutes of aimless (albeit well-crafted) sound design, is emblematic of Belief System’s shortcomings. In March, Woolford released his first commercial mix as Special Request. Fabriclive 91 was a skillful and stylistic tour de force spread across 30 tracks spanning from Drexciyan mainstay DJ Stingray and Richard D. James’ Polygon Window alias to drum ’n’ bass legend Dillinja and classic junglists the Rood Project. Six new Special Request tracks were peppered across the mix, linking the project’s expanding aims to the intertwined old-school threads. The approach made for a mix that felt equally cumulative and cohesive. Belief System attempts something similar with its slick blend of genres, seamless transitions, and gradual escalation, but it overshoots the mark. Part of what made Fabriclive 91 such an engrossing listen was its agility and streamlined energy. By drawing out the minutiae of Belief System’s rigid conceptual framework, Woolford loses the spontaneity and audacity that made this music so thrilling in the first place.

Artist: Special Request, Album: Belief System, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Four years ago, Paul Woolford painted himself into a corner. Under one of his many aliases, Special Request, the British producer released a striking debut album that captured the golden age of UK pirate radio and rave culture as though preserving it in amber. Soul Music pilfered the drum breaks, bass weight, and manic energy of jungle wholesale, folding each component into new yet strangely familiar shapes. As much an homage as a high-definition update, Soul Music helped revitalize that beloved music for contemporary dancefloors. And in doing so, it defined the sound of Special Request in no uncertain terms. The years after Soul Music saw its influence proliferate, but Woolford became more interested in poking at the walls of the box he had built around the project. On 2015’s Modern Warfare EP trilogy, outsized piano house began to color the music’s edges. Those tracks still centered on booming low end and half-remembered ecstasy peaks, but something about Soul Music’s single-mindedness had felt more genuine, purer. The dilution only continued. Earlier this year, the Stairfoot Lane Bunker EP shifted Special Request’s agenda, aligning it with classic electro and experimental ambient alongside the usual rave sounds. More recently, the Curtain Twitcher 12” saw Woolford’s encroaching acid tendencies steal the spotlight in lieu of jungle references. Belief System, Special Request’s second studio album, completes the process that began not long after the release of Soul Music. It’s a record crammed full of contrasting ideas and mish-mashed nostalgia; it’s also absurdly long, with 23 tracks clocking over 100 minutes. If Soul Music and Modern Warfare were quaint in the way they got straight to the point and then relentlessly hammered it home, Belief System’s prolonged, shapeshifting arc could be taken as another tweak to the project’s formula. But the the individual tracks often don’t measure up to the album’s inflated ambitions. Three distinct movements comprise Belief System, and if you blur your eyes a bit, they take on a conceptual slant. In its first third, the album digs into acid house, breakbeat, techno, and IDM, seamlessly interconnecting each style. The midsection is Special Request at its rudest, rowdiest best: a tear of jungle permutations on par with Soul Music’s strongest tunes. The final stretch, which takes up nearly half the album's length, is full of garish incidental music and beatless sound manipulation. Taking the album’s title into consideration, these three parts seem to represent a sort of holy trinity for the UK hardcore continuum—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Sure enough, the latter manifestation is the least substantial. “Carex Vesicaria” is undoubtedly an affecting elegy for the death of rave, as is the angelic euphoria of “Witness.” But tracks like “Transmission” and “Reckoning” are bombastic and painfully linear, better for a summer blockbuster trailer than any album of throwback dance music. In addition to their unflattering bloat, the last nine tracks are a symptom of a larger issue: pacing. The warning signs come early with “Chrysalis,” a needless, sentimental intro that foreshadows the lack of editing to come. Woolford stays in warm-up mode until the seventh track, when the Aphex-inspired “Curtain Twitcher” launches an excellent run of 130-plus BPM bangers. The bin-busting “Scrambled in LS1” stands among Belief System’s best, though it’s practically unrecognizable as Special Request, sounding more in line with the menacing electro of Gesloten Cirkel’s Submit X. When “Make It Real” kicks the rave into high gear with a cheeky backspin and some of Special Request’s signature MC chat, the record finally reveals its beating heart. The Vangelis-like emotional climax of “Light in the Darkest Hour” feels like the record’s natural end. That it takes over an hour to get to this point, and that it’s followed by 30 minutes of aimless (albeit well-crafted) sound design, is emblematic of Belief System’s shortcomings. In March, Woolford released his first commercial mix as Special Request. Fabriclive 91 was a skillful and stylistic tour de force spread across 30 tracks spanning from Drexciyan mainstay DJ Stingray and Richard D. James’ Polygon Window alias to drum ’n’ bass legend Dillinja and classic junglists the Rood Project. Six new Special Request tracks were peppered across the mix, linking the project’s expanding aims to the intertwined old-school threads. The approach made for a mix that felt equally cumulative and cohesive. Belief System attempts something similar with its slick blend of genres, seamless transitions, and gradual escalation, but it overshoots the mark. Part of what made Fabriclive 91 such an engrossing listen was its agility and streamlined energy. By drawing out the minutiae of Belief System’s rigid conceptual framework, Woolford loses the spontaneity and audacity that made this music so thrilling in the first place."

Keith Fullerton Whitman

Occlusions

Electronic,Rock

Nick Neyland

In 1994 Autechre released the Anti EP, the highlight of which was a track titled "Flutter" that was specifically programmed not to contain any repetitive beats. This form of non-dance dance music came as a response to an act of legislation named the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which the UK government issued in an attempt to shut down illegal raves. "Music" was defined in the bill as containing "a succession of repetitive beats," causing Autechre to come up with an inventive way around the issue via "Flutter". Whether intrepid DJs attempted to play the track to circumvent the government's plans is undocumented-- Autechre's music is hardly rave-friendly even when they're not trading in non-repetitive beats. Fast-forward to 2012 and Keith Fullerton Whitman has pulled on a strand started by "Flutter" with Occlusions. "Every effort has been made to avoid divisible rhythms (although mistakes are occasionally made)," he says, before describing it as "a 'kind' of dance music". This record is Whitman's second release for Editions Mego this year following the free-flowing Generators. Like that album, this one was recorded live, and begins with Whitman tooling away with some of the shrill electronics that emerged at the close of "High Zero Generator" from Generators. The crowd chatter that drifts across his work is another aspect that binds both Mego albums, adding a feeling of closeness that rarely surfaces in live electronic recordings. When "Occlusion (Rue de Bitche)" starts up it makes it easier to conjure up the scene in your head, with glasses clinking at the bar, conversations trailing to a close, attentions gradually flickering toward the stage. Both recordings here were made in February 2012, but at two separate locations at festivals in France and the Netherlands, with Whitman admitting he was "mildly inebriated" for the first and in a state of "arbitrarily triggered blind rage" for the second. Those altered states clearly separate this recording from Generators, making it sound like Whitman took that work and fed it through a cheese-grater for 36 minutes. The gentle oscillations of "Issue Generator (for Eliane Radigue)" are nowhere to be found, although some of the sounds and textures deployed do orbit the same universe. "Occlusion (Rue de Bitche)" is Whitman hacking away at his modular set-up in the most violent way imaginable, like he's entering into battle with the machinery. It's telling that the audience is deathly quiet when a moment of calm is chopped into the track around the seven-minute mark. That might have been an aesthetic choice, with Whitman deliberately fading out the chatter after the fact, or perhaps the audience was genuinely stunned into silence. It's more fun to imagine it's the latter, because this is the kind of confrontational performance that deserves to have mouths gaping open, awe-struck by the sight of a musician so thoroughly ripping apart his own world. "Occlusion (Weteringschans)" is a continuation of that theme, blending seamlessly with the preceding track despite the shift in time and space to a new location. Here, things disintegrate even further, with Whitman's entire palette sounding so fractured that it's hard to discern whether it's man or machine in control or where it's all heading. But the lack of any clear direction is the most fascinating aspect of Occlusions. When each track simmers into silence, it's impossible to determine what kind of color it's going to fracture into after the break, with Whitman instead setting off on an open-ended journey with shards of electronics exploding in his face. Most of his work isn't exactly easy listening, but this album is more challenging than most. There's always a nagging feeling that a truckload of piercing, sinewy noise is about to sear your synapses, even when "Occlusion (Weteringschans)" settles into the kind of solid groove Whitman claims to be working against. After that moment passes and Occlusions is over it feels like your whole body has gone through a much needed cleanse, leaving every atom slightly rearranged in the process.

Artist: Keith Fullerton Whitman, Album: Occlusions, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "In 1994 Autechre released the Anti EP, the highlight of which was a track titled "Flutter" that was specifically programmed not to contain any repetitive beats. This form of non-dance dance music came as a response to an act of legislation named the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which the UK government issued in an attempt to shut down illegal raves. "Music" was defined in the bill as containing "a succession of repetitive beats," causing Autechre to come up with an inventive way around the issue via "Flutter". Whether intrepid DJs attempted to play the track to circumvent the government's plans is undocumented-- Autechre's music is hardly rave-friendly even when they're not trading in non-repetitive beats. Fast-forward to 2012 and Keith Fullerton Whitman has pulled on a strand started by "Flutter" with Occlusions. "Every effort has been made to avoid divisible rhythms (although mistakes are occasionally made)," he says, before describing it as "a 'kind' of dance music". This record is Whitman's second release for Editions Mego this year following the free-flowing Generators. Like that album, this one was recorded live, and begins with Whitman tooling away with some of the shrill electronics that emerged at the close of "High Zero Generator" from Generators. The crowd chatter that drifts across his work is another aspect that binds both Mego albums, adding a feeling of closeness that rarely surfaces in live electronic recordings. When "Occlusion (Rue de Bitche)" starts up it makes it easier to conjure up the scene in your head, with glasses clinking at the bar, conversations trailing to a close, attentions gradually flickering toward the stage. Both recordings here were made in February 2012, but at two separate locations at festivals in France and the Netherlands, with Whitman admitting he was "mildly inebriated" for the first and in a state of "arbitrarily triggered blind rage" for the second. Those altered states clearly separate this recording from Generators, making it sound like Whitman took that work and fed it through a cheese-grater for 36 minutes. The gentle oscillations of "Issue Generator (for Eliane Radigue)" are nowhere to be found, although some of the sounds and textures deployed do orbit the same universe. "Occlusion (Rue de Bitche)" is Whitman hacking away at his modular set-up in the most violent way imaginable, like he's entering into battle with the machinery. It's telling that the audience is deathly quiet when a moment of calm is chopped into the track around the seven-minute mark. That might have been an aesthetic choice, with Whitman deliberately fading out the chatter after the fact, or perhaps the audience was genuinely stunned into silence. It's more fun to imagine it's the latter, because this is the kind of confrontational performance that deserves to have mouths gaping open, awe-struck by the sight of a musician so thoroughly ripping apart his own world. "Occlusion (Weteringschans)" is a continuation of that theme, blending seamlessly with the preceding track despite the shift in time and space to a new location. Here, things disintegrate even further, with Whitman's entire palette sounding so fractured that it's hard to discern whether it's man or machine in control or where it's all heading. But the lack of any clear direction is the most fascinating aspect of Occlusions. When each track simmers into silence, it's impossible to determine what kind of color it's going to fracture into after the break, with Whitman instead setting off on an open-ended journey with shards of electronics exploding in his face. Most of his work isn't exactly easy listening, but this album is more challenging than most. There's always a nagging feeling that a truckload of piercing, sinewy noise is about to sear your synapses, even when "Occlusion (Weteringschans)" settles into the kind of solid groove Whitman claims to be working against. After that moment passes and Occlusions is over it feels like your whole body has gone through a much needed cleanse, leaving every atom slightly rearranged in the process."

Chelsea Light Moving

Chelsea Light Moving

Aaron Leitko

If you've been following Thurston Moore's career over the last several years, you might have gotten the impression that the Sonic Youth singer/guitarist was beginning to mellow out. Two recent solo efforts-- Trees Outside the Academy and Demolished Thoughts-- were relatively low-wattage affairs that were anchored by acoustic guitars and strings, rather than half-stacks and bashed-up electric guitars. Since then, Sonic Youth-- which has, for some 30 years, been the central outlet for Moore's screeching rock'n'roll id-- has drifted into an unofficial, maybe-permanent hiatus spurred by the guitarist's break-up with his wife and bandmate, Kim Gordon. Rather than give his ears a rest, Moore, now 54, opted to start a louder, younger band. Chelsea Light Moving, named for a moving company founded by Phillip Glass that briefly employed his fellow composer, Steve Reich, is a quartet featuring guitarist Keith Wood, of Hush Arbors, and Sunburned Hand of the Man drummer John Moloney. Samara Lubelski, who's released some great, retro-leaning psych-pop solo records, plays bass. The band's self-titled debut record is the heaviest, most dissonant music that Moore has put together in recent memory, easily out-skronking Sonic Youth's 2009 LP, The Eternal. The album opener, "Heavenmetal", is easy-going, jangling, business-as-usual, with Moore drawling out the cool, neo-hippie refrain, "Be a warrior and love life." But after that, they crank up the volume. The songs, which often stretch up to six-minutes, make frequent nods to metal and hardcore punk, genres that deeply informed Sonic Youth’s earlier records, but that the band has mostly shied away from over the last decade or so. Moore is the principal songwriter here, but the record's best moments are its most inclusive-- the chugging meltdown that ends "Alighted" or the fuzzy free-for-all that closes "Empires of Time"-- where the guitarist becomes anonymous and melds into the din with his bandmates. The new cast of musicians also helps to inch Moore's compositions away from the sound of his old band. Sonic Youth's drummer, Steve Shelley, played tight, metronomic rhythms. Moloney's rhythms are looser and heavier, buoying some of Chelsea Light's multi-movement zone-out. When they’re hitting hard, they evoke UK blues-prog band Groundhogs plowing through the SST catalog. The record seems like a conscious attempt for Moore to get back to serious shredding, to move away from introspection and toward the immediate thrill of pummel and screech. Sometimes, Chelsea Light goes too far, stumbling past primal and towards boneheaded. On "Lip" and a cover of Germs' "Communist Eyes", Chelsea Light Moving pays homage to early 80s hardcore and punk. These were musical movements that were defined by freaked-out 18 year-olds and listening to a 54 year-old man echo the snotty tenor of their delivery induces a sort of music-nerd vertigo. Most of the time, though, he just seems like he's trying to get out of the way so that the band can plow back into atonal churn. Like a lot of Moore's work, the songs on Chelsea Light Moving's debut are a carefully curated mash-up of the singer’s favorite strains of American subculture-- Beat poetry (see "Burroughs"), New York poetry (see "Frank O'Hara Hit"), Texas psych-rock, no wave, hardcore, and so on. And listening to the record, you can get a feeling similar to that of leafing through a really great rock-zine. Sometimes you land on a page that clues you into the mystical, prophetic weirdos of yesteryear. Other times, you get the gross, puking cartoon.

Artist: Chelsea Light Moving, Album: Chelsea Light Moving, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "If you've been following Thurston Moore's career over the last several years, you might have gotten the impression that the Sonic Youth singer/guitarist was beginning to mellow out. Two recent solo efforts-- Trees Outside the Academy and Demolished Thoughts-- were relatively low-wattage affairs that were anchored by acoustic guitars and strings, rather than half-stacks and bashed-up electric guitars. Since then, Sonic Youth-- which has, for some 30 years, been the central outlet for Moore's screeching rock'n'roll id-- has drifted into an unofficial, maybe-permanent hiatus spurred by the guitarist's break-up with his wife and bandmate, Kim Gordon. Rather than give his ears a rest, Moore, now 54, opted to start a louder, younger band. Chelsea Light Moving, named for a moving company founded by Phillip Glass that briefly employed his fellow composer, Steve Reich, is a quartet featuring guitarist Keith Wood, of Hush Arbors, and Sunburned Hand of the Man drummer John Moloney. Samara Lubelski, who's released some great, retro-leaning psych-pop solo records, plays bass. The band's self-titled debut record is the heaviest, most dissonant music that Moore has put together in recent memory, easily out-skronking Sonic Youth's 2009 LP, The Eternal. The album opener, "Heavenmetal", is easy-going, jangling, business-as-usual, with Moore drawling out the cool, neo-hippie refrain, "Be a warrior and love life." But after that, they crank up the volume. The songs, which often stretch up to six-minutes, make frequent nods to metal and hardcore punk, genres that deeply informed Sonic Youth’s earlier records, but that the band has mostly shied away from over the last decade or so. Moore is the principal songwriter here, but the record's best moments are its most inclusive-- the chugging meltdown that ends "Alighted" or the fuzzy free-for-all that closes "Empires of Time"-- where the guitarist becomes anonymous and melds into the din with his bandmates. The new cast of musicians also helps to inch Moore's compositions away from the sound of his old band. Sonic Youth's drummer, Steve Shelley, played tight, metronomic rhythms. Moloney's rhythms are looser and heavier, buoying some of Chelsea Light's multi-movement zone-out. When they’re hitting hard, they evoke UK blues-prog band Groundhogs plowing through the SST catalog. The record seems like a conscious attempt for Moore to get back to serious shredding, to move away from introspection and toward the immediate thrill of pummel and screech. Sometimes, Chelsea Light goes too far, stumbling past primal and towards boneheaded. On "Lip" and a cover of Germs' "Communist Eyes", Chelsea Light Moving pays homage to early 80s hardcore and punk. These were musical movements that were defined by freaked-out 18 year-olds and listening to a 54 year-old man echo the snotty tenor of their delivery induces a sort of music-nerd vertigo. Most of the time, though, he just seems like he's trying to get out of the way so that the band can plow back into atonal churn. Like a lot of Moore's work, the songs on Chelsea Light Moving's debut are a carefully curated mash-up of the singer’s favorite strains of American subculture-- Beat poetry (see "Burroughs"), New York poetry (see "Frank O'Hara Hit"), Texas psych-rock, no wave, hardcore, and so on. And listening to the record, you can get a feeling similar to that of leafing through a really great rock-zine. Sometimes you land on a page that clues you into the mystical, prophetic weirdos of yesteryear. Other times, you get the gross, puking cartoon."

Jeremih

The Chocolate Box EP

Pop/R&B

Claire Lobenfeld

Jeremih has spent nearly a decade working hard to exceed his own limitations. After breaking out in 2009 with the catchy but formulaic hit “Birthday Sex,” the Chicago R&B singer followed a fairly typical release schedule for a few years. Then, in 2012, he dropped Late Nights with Jeremih—a lush, filthy gamble whose best moments, like the smooth, Mike WiLL-produced “733-Love” and the spectral Skype sex song “Fuck U All the Time,” proved that he was more than an above-average pop-R&B singer, raising expectations that he’s still trying to live up to. He’s since chased the success of that self-released mixtape to varying results. His 2014 collaborative EP with Shlohmo, his Late Nights studio album from the following year, and his 2016 holiday tape with Chance the Rapper are the bright lights in Jeremih’s career. On those releases, he’s shown an open mind and an adventurous spirit in a time when many of his peers would rather tether themselves to trends. But there are also entries in Jeremih’s discography that are a little sloppy, like Late Nights: Europe, a mixtape with scattershot studio mixing, inconsistent sound quality, and a tedious Lothario tone that hasn’t aged well in the past two years. The Chocolate Box, a four-track EP he’s released in anticipation of a new full-length, is another one that could have stayed in the vault. The songs here are just fine, mostly. Opener “Cards Right” is slick and sweet, and “Forever I’m Ready” is a de rigueur rap-singing cut, à la Tory Lanez or Travis Scott, with inoffensive but eye-rolly lyrics about how his paramour is a “bad girl like RiRi.” “Nympho” offers a reprisal of the ghostly textures of Late Nights with Jeremih, but not enough of a future-facing evolution of the sound to make it exciting. All of these failings, though, are minor compared to the EP’s true blemish, an ode to midnight blow jobs called “SMTS.” This is an acronym for “suck me to sleep,” which you will know well by the end of the song, because the entire falsetto hook is Jeremih repeating the line over and over again: “She must’ve sucked me to sleep/Bad bitch suck me to sleep/Savage, suck me to sleep… Had to make a song how she suck me to sleep.” Did he? His boorish and almost bored delivery suggests that “SMTS” would have been better left as a studio in-joke. There is a lot of room in modern pop for explicitly pervy music that doesn’t alienate its audience. Ty Dolla $ign, for instance, can make a lyric like “I used to love these hoes, but now I love this money” sound tender because of his husky, romantic delivery. But if you’re going to turn “locker room talk” into balladry, your technique needs to involve something more appealing than desperate falsetto chirping. With a little gruffness, or even a more Migos-informed style of delivery, “SMTS” could have been a salacious, blush-worthy party cut. Instead, it’s just awkward—and there’s far too much competition for the king of Filthy Sex Jam Mountain these days for Jeremih to get over with something like this. When his projects are well-considered, or made with hyper-focused collaborators, he can be the most enchanting man in the room, which is reason to look forward to MihTy, his upcoming duet tape with Ty Dolla $ign. With The Chocolate Box, Jeremih just underscores the fact that some ideas are better kept to yourself.

Artist: Jeremih, Album: The Chocolate Box EP, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Jeremih has spent nearly a decade working hard to exceed his own limitations. After breaking out in 2009 with the catchy but formulaic hit “Birthday Sex,” the Chicago R&B singer followed a fairly typical release schedule for a few years. Then, in 2012, he dropped Late Nights with Jeremih—a lush, filthy gamble whose best moments, like the smooth, Mike WiLL-produced “733-Love” and the spectral Skype sex song “Fuck U All the Time,” proved that he was more than an above-average pop-R&B singer, raising expectations that he’s still trying to live up to. He’s since chased the success of that self-released mixtape to varying results. His 2014 collaborative EP with Shlohmo, his Late Nights studio album from the following year, and his 2016 holiday tape with Chance the Rapper are the bright lights in Jeremih’s career. On those releases, he’s shown an open mind and an adventurous spirit in a time when many of his peers would rather tether themselves to trends. But there are also entries in Jeremih’s discography that are a little sloppy, like Late Nights: Europe, a mixtape with scattershot studio mixing, inconsistent sound quality, and a tedious Lothario tone that hasn’t aged well in the past two years. The Chocolate Box, a four-track EP he’s released in anticipation of a new full-length, is another one that could have stayed in the vault. The songs here are just fine, mostly. Opener “Cards Right” is slick and sweet, and “Forever I’m Ready” is a de rigueur rap-singing cut, à la Tory Lanez or Travis Scott, with inoffensive but eye-rolly lyrics about how his paramour is a “bad girl like RiRi.” “Nympho” offers a reprisal of the ghostly textures of Late Nights with Jeremih, but not enough of a future-facing evolution of the sound to make it exciting. All of these failings, though, are minor compared to the EP’s true blemish, an ode to midnight blow jobs called “SMTS.” This is an acronym for “suck me to sleep,” which you will know well by the end of the song, because the entire falsetto hook is Jeremih repeating the line over and over again: “She must’ve sucked me to sleep/Bad bitch suck me to sleep/Savage, suck me to sleep… Had to make a song how she suck me to sleep.” Did he? His boorish and almost bored delivery suggests that “SMTS” would have been better left as a studio in-joke. There is a lot of room in modern pop for explicitly pervy music that doesn’t alienate its audience. Ty Dolla $ign, for instance, can make a lyric like “I used to love these hoes, but now I love this money” sound tender because of his husky, romantic delivery. But if you’re going to turn “locker room talk” into balladry, your technique needs to involve something more appealing than desperate falsetto chirping. With a little gruffness, or even a more Migos-informed style of delivery, “SMTS” could have been a salacious, blush-worthy party cut. Instead, it’s just awkward—and there’s far too much competition for the king of Filthy Sex Jam Mountain these days for Jeremih to get over with something like this. When his projects are well-considered, or made with hyper-focused collaborators, he can be the most enchanting man in the room, which is reason to look forward to MihTy, his upcoming duet tape with Ty Dolla $ign. With The Chocolate Box, Jeremih just underscores the fact that some ideas are better kept to yourself."

Jel

Soft Money

Rap

Brian Howe

Anticon is usually addressed as an experimental hip-hop label, but this is misleading. The experiment has been completed for some time, and now the various members of the collective announce its findings over and over. This isn't necessarily a censure; it simply means that the label has developed an aesthetic-- a blend of hip-hop, post-rock, sound collage, and electro-pop-- that cuts across nearly all of its recent releases. This is a natural outcome of the Anticon's intricately collaborative nature-- any given release by Sole, Doseone, Pedestrian, Odd Nosdam, Alias, or Why? will probably feature cameos from all the rest. The imprint has traded the element of surprise for familiarity, which is bad news for listeners who place a high premium on novelty, good for those who enjoy the established Anticon idiom. Like everyone in Anticon, Jel has been involved in many in-house collaborations (most notably Themselves, Subtle, and 13 & God), and his debut LP-- a murky palimpsest of disembodied samples and dirty beats, incantatory rhymes and live instrumentation, leftist rhetoric and absurdist non sequiturs, breathy female vocals and ephemeral melodies-- features the usual array of cameos from Anticon and like-minded artists. In other words, it's another archetypal Anticon record. Why? plays a twinkling piano and eerily whistling synth to Jel's intricately sculpted martial percussion and string instrument accents on "All Day Breakfast". The sluggish, grimy funk of "Soft Money, Dry Bones" finds Jel running a Pedestrian-penned digest of leftist surrealism ("Dry bones recruited outside of a mall for 'Real World: Kabul'") through his serviceable yet anonymous backpacker flow. Stefanie Bohm of Ms. John Soda adds her abstracted coo to this and to the blippy static of "All Around", and Odd Nosdam laces colorful drones through the coruscating twitter of "Know You Don't". The first Themselves record, Them, remains the pinnacle of the more rap-oriented side of Anticon's catalog, in no small part because of how perfectly Jel's minimalist beatscape complemented Doseone's maximalist flow. Unfortunately, Soft Money doesn't compare favorably to that visionary work-- its pleasures are more obvious and middle-of-the-road. Having abandoned razor-sharp minimalism for a murkier, fuller tone, Jel's music here doesn't focus your attention to a laser-point the way Them did, but neither is it big enough to saturate it-- it lurks comfortably in the middle distance. Its politics, too, are overstated yet affectless: Instead of showing, Jel tells, with undie-rap's typically preachy bent. The anti-auto-industry screed "To Buy a Car" cuts up commercials over a slinky buzz and echoing pings, and the message is far from subtle: "Don't buy this product; you don't need it." The same might be said of Soft Money-- as it doesn't deviate from the standard palette, those of you with a lot of mostly-instrumental hip-hop in your collection don't in fact need it. But it's a solid example of the form, and so you might want it-- not a good enough justification for buying an environment-raping Hummer, maybe, but good enough for a record.

Artist: Jel, Album: Soft Money, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Anticon is usually addressed as an experimental hip-hop label, but this is misleading. The experiment has been completed for some time, and now the various members of the collective announce its findings over and over. This isn't necessarily a censure; it simply means that the label has developed an aesthetic-- a blend of hip-hop, post-rock, sound collage, and electro-pop-- that cuts across nearly all of its recent releases. This is a natural outcome of the Anticon's intricately collaborative nature-- any given release by Sole, Doseone, Pedestrian, Odd Nosdam, Alias, or Why? will probably feature cameos from all the rest. The imprint has traded the element of surprise for familiarity, which is bad news for listeners who place a high premium on novelty, good for those who enjoy the established Anticon idiom. Like everyone in Anticon, Jel has been involved in many in-house collaborations (most notably Themselves, Subtle, and 13 & God), and his debut LP-- a murky palimpsest of disembodied samples and dirty beats, incantatory rhymes and live instrumentation, leftist rhetoric and absurdist non sequiturs, breathy female vocals and ephemeral melodies-- features the usual array of cameos from Anticon and like-minded artists. In other words, it's another archetypal Anticon record. Why? plays a twinkling piano and eerily whistling synth to Jel's intricately sculpted martial percussion and string instrument accents on "All Day Breakfast". The sluggish, grimy funk of "Soft Money, Dry Bones" finds Jel running a Pedestrian-penned digest of leftist surrealism ("Dry bones recruited outside of a mall for 'Real World: Kabul'") through his serviceable yet anonymous backpacker flow. Stefanie Bohm of Ms. John Soda adds her abstracted coo to this and to the blippy static of "All Around", and Odd Nosdam laces colorful drones through the coruscating twitter of "Know You Don't". The first Themselves record, Them, remains the pinnacle of the more rap-oriented side of Anticon's catalog, in no small part because of how perfectly Jel's minimalist beatscape complemented Doseone's maximalist flow. Unfortunately, Soft Money doesn't compare favorably to that visionary work-- its pleasures are more obvious and middle-of-the-road. Having abandoned razor-sharp minimalism for a murkier, fuller tone, Jel's music here doesn't focus your attention to a laser-point the way Them did, but neither is it big enough to saturate it-- it lurks comfortably in the middle distance. Its politics, too, are overstated yet affectless: Instead of showing, Jel tells, with undie-rap's typically preachy bent. The anti-auto-industry screed "To Buy a Car" cuts up commercials over a slinky buzz and echoing pings, and the message is far from subtle: "Don't buy this product; you don't need it." The same might be said of Soft Money-- as it doesn't deviate from the standard palette, those of you with a lot of mostly-instrumental hip-hop in your collection don't in fact need it. But it's a solid example of the form, and so you might want it-- not a good enough justification for buying an environment-raping Hummer, maybe, but good enough for a record. "

Sleepy Sun

Embrace

Rock

Stuart Berman

Eddie Van Halen once remarked that the most amazing thing about Led Zeppelin was that, for a band often cited as the godfathers of heavy metal, so much of their repertoire was acoustic. Theirs was a reputation built not on being the loudest band all the time, but rather at just the right time. It's a lesson that San Francisco-via-Santa Cruz sextet Sleepy Sun have taken to heart-- their debut album, Embrace, dispenses its earth-quaking riffage in such carefully measured, perfectly spaced-out rations, it tricks you into thinking the band is much heavier than it actually is. Their long hair, nature-kid press photos and onstage face paint seemingly align Sleepy Sun with San Fran's tie-dyed tradition, but the band's palette is actually smeared with a whole lotta Blacks: Sabbath, Mountain (whose producer, Colin Stewart, works the boards here), Angels and-- when singer Bret Constantino busts out a boogie-summoning wail on "Snow Goddess"-- even the Crowes. But if the opening "New Age" establishes Sleepy Sun as archetypal stoner-rockers-- with Constantino's vaporous vocals floating atop a subterranean fuzz bassline, molten guitar leads, and drum fills that roll right off of Bill Ward's tom-tom rack-- the song's follow-up, the surprisingly affecting piano-based spiritual "Lord", shows the group has designs on writing songs that still move you after the drugs wear off, and that Constantino can be the sort of emotionally assertive vocalist who doesn't always have to hide behind the haze. The rest of Embrace plays up that oppositional tension-- namely, the question of whether Sleepy Sun will follow unruly acid-rock trailblazers like Comets on Fire down the volcano (as suggested by the sudden fuzz-punk eruption of "Red/Black"), or clean up their act and join fellow reverb junkies My Morning Jacket in the Dark Was the Night-tier indie ivory tower (see: the paisley-hued pastorale "Golden Artifact", wherein the band's former standing as a Fleet Foxes opening act makes most sense). To their credit, Sleepy Sun never let on as to which way they're going to lean, and seemingly build their centerpiece track "White Dove" as a monument to their own contradictory mystique. Clocking in at over nine minutes, it's the song that all the others here are in service to, capturing the band at their most sludgy and sinister before eventually fading into a blissed-out psych-folk denouement. And in the middle of it all: a drum solo. But then that's just the sort of 1970s-reverent gesture you'd expect from a group of hippies who, as of last year, were generously giving this album away for free over the Internet, but probably agreed to issue it on a proper label just so they could hear it on vinyl.

Artist: Sleepy Sun, Album: Embrace, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Eddie Van Halen once remarked that the most amazing thing about Led Zeppelin was that, for a band often cited as the godfathers of heavy metal, so much of their repertoire was acoustic. Theirs was a reputation built not on being the loudest band all the time, but rather at just the right time. It's a lesson that San Francisco-via-Santa Cruz sextet Sleepy Sun have taken to heart-- their debut album, Embrace, dispenses its earth-quaking riffage in such carefully measured, perfectly spaced-out rations, it tricks you into thinking the band is much heavier than it actually is. Their long hair, nature-kid press photos and onstage face paint seemingly align Sleepy Sun with San Fran's tie-dyed tradition, but the band's palette is actually smeared with a whole lotta Blacks: Sabbath, Mountain (whose producer, Colin Stewart, works the boards here), Angels and-- when singer Bret Constantino busts out a boogie-summoning wail on "Snow Goddess"-- even the Crowes. But if the opening "New Age" establishes Sleepy Sun as archetypal stoner-rockers-- with Constantino's vaporous vocals floating atop a subterranean fuzz bassline, molten guitar leads, and drum fills that roll right off of Bill Ward's tom-tom rack-- the song's follow-up, the surprisingly affecting piano-based spiritual "Lord", shows the group has designs on writing songs that still move you after the drugs wear off, and that Constantino can be the sort of emotionally assertive vocalist who doesn't always have to hide behind the haze. The rest of Embrace plays up that oppositional tension-- namely, the question of whether Sleepy Sun will follow unruly acid-rock trailblazers like Comets on Fire down the volcano (as suggested by the sudden fuzz-punk eruption of "Red/Black"), or clean up their act and join fellow reverb junkies My Morning Jacket in the Dark Was the Night-tier indie ivory tower (see: the paisley-hued pastorale "Golden Artifact", wherein the band's former standing as a Fleet Foxes opening act makes most sense). To their credit, Sleepy Sun never let on as to which way they're going to lean, and seemingly build their centerpiece track "White Dove" as a monument to their own contradictory mystique. Clocking in at over nine minutes, it's the song that all the others here are in service to, capturing the band at their most sludgy and sinister before eventually fading into a blissed-out psych-folk denouement. And in the middle of it all: a drum solo. But then that's just the sort of 1970s-reverent gesture you'd expect from a group of hippies who, as of last year, were generously giving this album away for free over the Internet, but probably agreed to issue it on a proper label just so they could hear it on vinyl."

Jane's Addiction

Up from the Catacombs: The Best of Jane's Addiction

Rock

Mark Richardson

A few months ago a friend lent me some old Spin magazines. December 1991, the annual "Year in Music" roundup, is a particularly edifying issue. Tucked away in the record review section is a 170-word quickie about a new album by Nirvana. Lauren Spencer gives Nevermind the green light (the only ratings then were green, yellow, and red) and says, "I swear you'll be humming these songs for the rest of your life." A couple pages later is a lukewarm (yellow) review of a new My Bloody Valentine album called Loveless. Jim Greer is bummed that it doesn't sound more like Blood, Sweat & Tears. Oh well. In a "Ten Best Albums of the Year You Didn't Hear" sidebar, Spin extols the virtues of Pavement's Perfect Sound Forever EP and Royal Trux' Twin Infinitives. The "Artist of the Year" on the cover? Perry Farrell. One narrative for the decade, then, was pretty well laid out by December 1991. And Jane's Addiction were central to that story, even though, as Farrell discusses in the accompanying interview, they had just broken up. After that summer's Lollapalooza tour, the first, Jane's were no more. But it didn't matter then that they were supposedly finished, since they'd already set the tone for the next several years of youth culture. Greil Marcus argued that Bob Dylan invented the 1960s with "Like a Rolling Stone"; by similar logic, you could say that Jane's Addiction invented the 90s in the time between Nothing's Shocking and that first Lollapalooza. Jane's were proud to be alternative music icons, and Farrell had the dreadlocks to prove it. Though they were arty and just a little dangerous, Jane's were oddly accessible, which helped push the underground up into the sunlight. They sang about things like heroin and serial killers but seemed relatable somehow; whitebread Midwesterners could "get" them, no problem. Authenticity was never an issue with Perry Farrell. You knew he grew up a middle-class Jewish kid, that his father was a jeweler, and that, in the great tradition of rock music, he was able to reinvent himself completely as a chronicler of L.A.'s bohemian underbelly. He said "motherfucker" a lot, like he was some street dude, even though he was a child of privilege. His background didn't matter; what counted was who he wanted to be. Because of his influence, we had a nation of college kids with more beer money than sense serenading next-door neighbors with impromptu acoustic renditions of "Jane Says". (I wasn't the only one, was I?) And then there was the music, which brought several strands of 80s underground culture under a single tent. There was the scratchy wah-wah funk, the gothic undercurrent of Eric A's bass-- lines for the ages, truly, and there will never be a Jane's without him-- and Dave Navarro's guitar, which was both "heavy" in the metal sense but always ready to lose the weight and drift off into a psychedelic space. Something for everybody who liked the music chronicled in Our Band Could Be Your Life, really; a canny musical blend from a very canny band. Jane's weren't finished in 1991, of course, and even then people probably suspected as much. The pull to see if something more can be salvaged-- and to make more money-- is strong, and Jane's reunited live periodically and returned with Strays in 2003. By then, the sound they helped create at the dawn of the 90s had become rock's standard expression, and they seemed content to blend in with the nu-metal multitudes. It's not a particularly good record. And so when I remember Jane's Addiction, I like to remember the one that broke up at the height of their powers in 1991, with two amazing studio albums and that initial live document to their names. Their brief initial run presents an immediate problem as far as compiling a best-of: why whittle two discs, which together add up to 96 minutes of music, to one? Filler on both Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual is almost non-existent, so if you're looking for an introduction to Jane's Addiction, why not just start with one of those? The answer provided by this track selection-- so that you can also get "Superhero" and "Just Because" from Strays, "Whores" from the live debut, and a "Jane Says" recorded on the first Lollapalooza tour and released previously on the vault-clearing Kettle Whistle-- doesn't wash. This best-of exists because important bands are supposed to have best-ofs. But still: "Stop", "Ocean Size", "I Would for You", "Been Caught Stealing", "Summertime Rolls", "Mountain Song", etc. Even "Superhero"-- or, as I like to call it, "Rag Doll 2003"-- isn't so bad, for a knockoff of late-period Aerosmith. But hearing "Three Days" and not having it followed by "Then She Did", well, it hurts a little. And as for the live "Jane Says", maybe everyone tired of the Nothing's Shocking version, I don't know. I never did. Matter of fact, I'm looking at that guitar in the corner that hasn't been tuned in five years and I remember how it goes-- just G and A, isn't it? But OK, the live version is decent, and it's a nice reminder that Jane's came so close to the best band breakup since the Beatles. No band since has been as far in front as they were in December 1991, and though this comp is unnecessary, it explains why.

Artist: Jane's Addiction, Album: Up from the Catacombs: The Best of Jane's Addiction, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "A few months ago a friend lent me some old Spin magazines. December 1991, the annual "Year in Music" roundup, is a particularly edifying issue. Tucked away in the record review section is a 170-word quickie about a new album by Nirvana. Lauren Spencer gives Nevermind the green light (the only ratings then were green, yellow, and red) and says, "I swear you'll be humming these songs for the rest of your life." A couple pages later is a lukewarm (yellow) review of a new My Bloody Valentine album called Loveless. Jim Greer is bummed that it doesn't sound more like Blood, Sweat & Tears. Oh well. In a "Ten Best Albums of the Year You Didn't Hear" sidebar, Spin extols the virtues of Pavement's Perfect Sound Forever EP and Royal Trux' Twin Infinitives. The "Artist of the Year" on the cover? Perry Farrell. One narrative for the decade, then, was pretty well laid out by December 1991. And Jane's Addiction were central to that story, even though, as Farrell discusses in the accompanying interview, they had just broken up. After that summer's Lollapalooza tour, the first, Jane's were no more. But it didn't matter then that they were supposedly finished, since they'd already set the tone for the next several years of youth culture. Greil Marcus argued that Bob Dylan invented the 1960s with "Like a Rolling Stone"; by similar logic, you could say that Jane's Addiction invented the 90s in the time between Nothing's Shocking and that first Lollapalooza. Jane's were proud to be alternative music icons, and Farrell had the dreadlocks to prove it. Though they were arty and just a little dangerous, Jane's were oddly accessible, which helped push the underground up into the sunlight. They sang about things like heroin and serial killers but seemed relatable somehow; whitebread Midwesterners could "get" them, no problem. Authenticity was never an issue with Perry Farrell. You knew he grew up a middle-class Jewish kid, that his father was a jeweler, and that, in the great tradition of rock music, he was able to reinvent himself completely as a chronicler of L.A.'s bohemian underbelly. He said "motherfucker" a lot, like he was some street dude, even though he was a child of privilege. His background didn't matter; what counted was who he wanted to be. Because of his influence, we had a nation of college kids with more beer money than sense serenading next-door neighbors with impromptu acoustic renditions of "Jane Says". (I wasn't the only one, was I?) And then there was the music, which brought several strands of 80s underground culture under a single tent. There was the scratchy wah-wah funk, the gothic undercurrent of Eric A's bass-- lines for the ages, truly, and there will never be a Jane's without him-- and Dave Navarro's guitar, which was both "heavy" in the metal sense but always ready to lose the weight and drift off into a psychedelic space. Something for everybody who liked the music chronicled in Our Band Could Be Your Life, really; a canny musical blend from a very canny band. Jane's weren't finished in 1991, of course, and even then people probably suspected as much. The pull to see if something more can be salvaged-- and to make more money-- is strong, and Jane's reunited live periodically and returned with Strays in 2003. By then, the sound they helped create at the dawn of the 90s had become rock's standard expression, and they seemed content to blend in with the nu-metal multitudes. It's not a particularly good record. And so when I remember Jane's Addiction, I like to remember the one that broke up at the height of their powers in 1991, with two amazing studio albums and that initial live document to their names. Their brief initial run presents an immediate problem as far as compiling a best-of: why whittle two discs, which together add up to 96 minutes of music, to one? Filler on both Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual is almost non-existent, so if you're looking for an introduction to Jane's Addiction, why not just start with one of those? The answer provided by this track selection-- so that you can also get "Superhero" and "Just Because" from Strays, "Whores" from the live debut, and a "Jane Says" recorded on the first Lollapalooza tour and released previously on the vault-clearing Kettle Whistle-- doesn't wash. This best-of exists because important bands are supposed to have best-ofs. But still: "Stop", "Ocean Size", "I Would for You", "Been Caught Stealing", "Summertime Rolls", "Mountain Song", etc. Even "Superhero"-- or, as I like to call it, "Rag Doll 2003"-- isn't so bad, for a knockoff of late-period Aerosmith. But hearing "Three Days" and not having it followed by "Then She Did", well, it hurts a little. And as for the live "Jane Says", maybe everyone tired of the Nothing's Shocking version, I don't know. I never did. Matter of fact, I'm looking at that guitar in the corner that hasn't been tuned in five years and I remember how it goes-- just G and A, isn't it? But OK, the live version is decent, and it's a nice reminder that Jane's came so close to the best band breakup since the Beatles. No band since has been as far in front as they were in December 1991, and though this comp is unnecessary, it explains why."

Crooked Fingers

Red Devil Dawn

Rock

William Bowers

I heard planet Venus described on the radio this week as "hellish" and thought how weird it was that hell, a mythical place, had a kind of literal import, and that we earthwads imposed that myth's accepted meaning on other planets. Which, of course, led to thinking about the incredible odds of you and me and that horse and that spider over there being living matter, as insanely outnumbered as we are in this mostly dead universe. Which, of course, led to holing up with a hatchet and the Joy Division box set. Which, of course, led to reading Paul Morley's liner note about "hell" coming from a "root meaning 'concealed'" and having "less to do with punishment than simple bleak survival in a vague netherworld." Which, of course, led to thinking about the strange vagabondish career of Eric Bachmann, a onetime guitar hellion whose songs of late host speakers shocked into zombification. His new album begins with a tale of a town "where nobody works and nobody plays," from which "even the vultures have moved on." The inhabitants are waiting for a messiah, not to save them, but to put them out of their misery; it's the apocalypse as euthanasia, or euthanasia as salvation. Bachmann's been a man adrift-- and redeemed-- since he euthanized the Archers of Loaf years ago, though his reputation beats him to every town he visits, no matter what name he gives the locals. A venue printed tickets to a recent Crooked Fingers show that read, "Crooked Fingers. Featuring Eric Bachmann. Of Archers Of Loaf." (Though to be fair, the curdling title track of the Archers' farewell White Trash Heroes could easily be considered the first Crooked Fingers song.) Bachmann's also left crumbs as Barry Black, and even under his own name-- though, curiously, that release was a film score that lacked his distinctive voice. Don't be fooled into thinking that there are Fingers the way there are Strokes; Bachmann's supporting cast is ever-changing. His third full-length, Red Devil Dawn (named after an excellent single not included here), bears closest resemblance to "the band"'s self-titled debut in that its songs comprise an "album" the way certain quilts are made of disparate cloth-scraps. Both records feature all manner of tempos, arrangements, and topics, whereas Bring on the Snakes was, in form and content, a coherent atmospheric thinkpiece that, via percussive plucking and aquatic keys, staged romantic futility on an abstract plane. The vox on this outing sound as if they're consciously trying to avoid the words "Neil" and "Diamond," words often tossed at the mellow Hyde into which Bachmann's rambunctious Jekyll morphed. Bachmann's Carolinian twang is allowed to linger longer, and intermittently he'll growl, risking a comic-villain put-on but reminding listeners of his olden guttural inflection (seeing him pull this off live is amazing: his mouth is Nicholson's Joker, his stance Woody Guthrie, and his height Vlade Divacs). Sonic departures include the amped (which for Crooked Fingers means "not funereal") "You Threw a Spark" and "Sweet Marie". These tracks are driven by horn parts that, rather than add Belle & Sebastian stateliness, contribute a vibe of, um... Mexican fiesta? No kidding, this pulsing Mariachi-core will tap into your Anglo-Luddite fears and have you dreaming of sombrerobots taking over the world. "Sweet Marie" even seems designed to bitchslap Jimmy Buffett-- Bachmann sings about "sniffing glue" over a total cruise-ship or resort-lounge bounce (that even cops some bits of "I Got You, Babe"). I realize that mixing dark lyrics with bright music is the Toyota Camry of songwriting, but you've got to hear Bachmann aggravate the tourists by sneering about wanting "soft abuse" and promising to set his competitor ("that pussy bastard") straight. Also new among Bachmann's standard batch of songs in which gods and the cosmos are implicated in failing love (as if quasars were fueled by sexual frustration) are songs that display his skill as a fabulist. Aside from the town-waiting-for-a-hero song, the album features the tale of "Boy with (100) Hands" and the awesome "Bad Man Coming", about the approach of an ultimate dark figure at the end of a long line of dark figures. These grim tunes are lullabies that will induce insomnia, fairy tales in which the fairy godmothers wet themselves and faint. I predict that this soundtrack- and fantasy-happy artist will team up with Tim Burton on a claymation goth-musical any day now. (Eric Bachmann Superstar, anyone?) Okay, so the album's not a step forward so much as a squirm in quicksand. And yes, Red Devil Dawn is somehow sparer than its predecessors and more interested in a staring contest than a high-five. Its characters are Icaruses flying just under the radar, with wings culled from the shores of a sea that burps black Styrofoam. But we need this emphysemic, exponentially aging paperboy to rattle us every morning by announcing, "The news! Is not! Good!" Bachmann has even shown a willingness to come to terms with his past: After a preview of Reservoir Songs 2 ("Long Black Veil", "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "[What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace Love and Understanding") at a recent show-- to which he brought no merch and a band that admitted to not knowing some of the songs-- Bachmann yielded to the brats who kept screaming for Archers, playing "Greatest of All Time" and "Harnessed in Slums", making those brats' netherworld a little less bleak. You should have seem them, all guileless, pogo-ing and clapping, still a few years from feeling the pinch of Bachmann's more mature and desolate work. Songs such as this album's "You Can Never Leave" are going to hit them like cinderblocks.

Artist: Crooked Fingers, Album: Red Devil Dawn, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "I heard planet Venus described on the radio this week as "hellish" and thought how weird it was that hell, a mythical place, had a kind of literal import, and that we earthwads imposed that myth's accepted meaning on other planets. Which, of course, led to thinking about the incredible odds of you and me and that horse and that spider over there being living matter, as insanely outnumbered as we are in this mostly dead universe. Which, of course, led to holing up with a hatchet and the Joy Division box set. Which, of course, led to reading Paul Morley's liner note about "hell" coming from a "root meaning 'concealed'" and having "less to do with punishment than simple bleak survival in a vague netherworld." Which, of course, led to thinking about the strange vagabondish career of Eric Bachmann, a onetime guitar hellion whose songs of late host speakers shocked into zombification. His new album begins with a tale of a town "where nobody works and nobody plays," from which "even the vultures have moved on." The inhabitants are waiting for a messiah, not to save them, but to put them out of their misery; it's the apocalypse as euthanasia, or euthanasia as salvation. Bachmann's been a man adrift-- and redeemed-- since he euthanized the Archers of Loaf years ago, though his reputation beats him to every town he visits, no matter what name he gives the locals. A venue printed tickets to a recent Crooked Fingers show that read, "Crooked Fingers. Featuring Eric Bachmann. Of Archers Of Loaf." (Though to be fair, the curdling title track of the Archers' farewell White Trash Heroes could easily be considered the first Crooked Fingers song.) Bachmann's also left crumbs as Barry Black, and even under his own name-- though, curiously, that release was a film score that lacked his distinctive voice. Don't be fooled into thinking that there are Fingers the way there are Strokes; Bachmann's supporting cast is ever-changing. His third full-length, Red Devil Dawn (named after an excellent single not included here), bears closest resemblance to "the band"'s self-titled debut in that its songs comprise an "album" the way certain quilts are made of disparate cloth-scraps. Both records feature all manner of tempos, arrangements, and topics, whereas Bring on the Snakes was, in form and content, a coherent atmospheric thinkpiece that, via percussive plucking and aquatic keys, staged romantic futility on an abstract plane. The vox on this outing sound as if they're consciously trying to avoid the words "Neil" and "Diamond," words often tossed at the mellow Hyde into which Bachmann's rambunctious Jekyll morphed. Bachmann's Carolinian twang is allowed to linger longer, and intermittently he'll growl, risking a comic-villain put-on but reminding listeners of his olden guttural inflection (seeing him pull this off live is amazing: his mouth is Nicholson's Joker, his stance Woody Guthrie, and his height Vlade Divacs). Sonic departures include the amped (which for Crooked Fingers means "not funereal") "You Threw a Spark" and "Sweet Marie". These tracks are driven by horn parts that, rather than add Belle & Sebastian stateliness, contribute a vibe of, um... Mexican fiesta? No kidding, this pulsing Mariachi-core will tap into your Anglo-Luddite fears and have you dreaming of sombrerobots taking over the world. "Sweet Marie" even seems designed to bitchslap Jimmy Buffett-- Bachmann sings about "sniffing glue" over a total cruise-ship or resort-lounge bounce (that even cops some bits of "I Got You, Babe"). I realize that mixing dark lyrics with bright music is the Toyota Camry of songwriting, but you've got to hear Bachmann aggravate the tourists by sneering about wanting "soft abuse" and promising to set his competitor ("that pussy bastard") straight. Also new among Bachmann's standard batch of songs in which gods and the cosmos are implicated in failing love (as if quasars were fueled by sexual frustration) are songs that display his skill as a fabulist. Aside from the town-waiting-for-a-hero song, the album features the tale of "Boy with (100) Hands" and the awesome "Bad Man Coming", about the approach of an ultimate dark figure at the end of a long line of dark figures. These grim tunes are lullabies that will induce insomnia, fairy tales in which the fairy godmothers wet themselves and faint. I predict that this soundtrack- and fantasy-happy artist will team up with Tim Burton on a claymation goth-musical any day now. (Eric Bachmann Superstar, anyone?) Okay, so the album's not a step forward so much as a squirm in quicksand. And yes, Red Devil Dawn is somehow sparer than its predecessors and more interested in a staring contest than a high-five. Its characters are Icaruses flying just under the radar, with wings culled from the shores of a sea that burps black Styrofoam. But we need this emphysemic, exponentially aging paperboy to rattle us every morning by announcing, "The news! Is not! Good!" Bachmann has even shown a willingness to come to terms with his past: After a preview of Reservoir Songs 2 ("Long Black Veil", "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "[What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace Love and Understanding") at a recent show-- to which he brought no merch and a band that admitted to not knowing some of the songs-- Bachmann yielded to the brats who kept screaming for Archers, playing "Greatest of All Time" and "Harnessed in Slums", making those brats' netherworld a little less bleak. You should have seem them, all guileless, pogo-ing and clapping, still a few years from feeling the pinch of Bachmann's more mature and desolate work. Songs such as this album's "You Can Never Leave" are going to hit them like cinderblocks."

Cornelius

Point

Electronic

Nitsuh Abebe

My initial thought was that, with Point, Cornelius had made an album not of songs but of machines: twittering little trinkets and gewgaws, clockwork formalist tricks, hooks, and grooves, tiny snazzy robots covered with push-buttons and blinking lights. I was mostly wrong about this. But back when I didn't know that, I was all set to talk about Cornelius's Other Half-- Takako Minekawa-- and, more importantly, her collaborators in Dymaxion, who are, by my estimation, past masters of the sonic trinketry, the clever formalist motorik grooves, and the whole concept of "songs" as basically Rube Goldberg devices-- these things where you watch Tab A snap ingeniously and unexpectedly into Slot B, and then watch the whole machine teeter back and forth. The trick is that while everyone was trying to meld rock genres and dance genres by throwing blippy textures and drum loops under crunchy guitars, some people decided to use the tools of rock but organize them using the structures of dance or IDM. Point isn't really as like that as I thought, but let's pretend-- just for a second-- that it is: you couldn't possibly ask for anyone to do that stuff better than Cornelius does. Like him or not, he's pretty much the master of this sort of thing-- evidence is littered from his late-period albums with Flipper's Guitar to solo records like 96/69 to tracks like "Mic Check" and "Magoo Opening" from Fantasma, his more "proper song"-oriented U.S. breakthrough. Evidence is abundant on Point, as well: one need look no further than the moment where "Bird Watching at Inner Forest," a sweet, jaunty samba, suddenly and masterfully disintegrates into "I Hate Hate," a whirlwind of sliced-and-diced cartoon prog that sounds like Aphex Twin making mincemeat of a track by the Fucking Champs. If you're going to talk about someone who can produce-- someone who can slap together shimmery organic instruments with the same agility as the world's best glitchmeisters and laptop guys-- Cornelius really should be mentioned. And he's gotten a lot better at this than he was on Fantasma, a record that, in retrospect, sounds a little too eager to please-- all the tinny, busy layering and the near-constant bells and whistles now look a little like a hyperactive fourth-grader given free reign at the school talent show. Point backs off. It's more efficient, and thus more minimal: Cornelius has learned where a couple instruments and a couple tricks can do the work of ten of each. It's also a lot smoother and more languid-- the bulk of it actually qualifies to be called "subdued." The cleverness, technical mastery and ping-pong stereo effects are all there in spades, but this time they're all much more mellow than you'd think. Listen right and you'll hardly notice them, because you'll be wrapped up by the thing I initially completely missed-- some of these tracks are just plain lovely as songs. That's right: you could very satisfyingly listen to Point while casting Cornelius as some kind of modern-day Esquivel, a master of arrangement and studio technologically and virtually everything that makes you cup your hands over your headphones and be just plain wowed by the stuff that's coming out of them. But the thing is that Point, like the IDM records it shares some of its formalist leanings with, gradually reveals itself to contain some song forms that are, without qualification, quite beautiful and expressive, and in completely non-trinkety ways. It sounds as if he's been listening to more bossa nova-- subtle acoustic guitar rhythms are all over this record. It sounds as if he's made a conscious effort to turn his vocal harmonies from chirpy amazements to swooning, dreamy soft-touches. It sounds as if he's basically loosened up, and figured out where subtly funky flows and immersive, bubbly drifts are way more agreeable than hyperactive flashes and non-stop banging. He has, in many senses, mellowed out. And there's what's good about Point. Cornelius comes across as some sort of über-hipster from the glossy fashion mags, a cultural curator, a buzzy Japanese pastiche guy making music that feels like Bandai pocket games-- I've no doubt that a lot of you will hear Point somewhere and be turned off by precisely this quality, and I'll admit that before throwing Point on I sort of feared that it might be just another totally mid-90s reiteration of that heavily explored model. But Point isn't all about playing with trinkets and baubles. "Point of View Point" develops from an airy bounce into some delicious, dynamic, sweeping chord changes. "Drop" teases you by offering and then withholding a beautiful groove that sounds like Antonio Carlos Jobim taking a stab at writing funk, and then "Another View Point" finishes the job. "Tone Twilight Zone" is the equivalent of a Boards of Canada pastoral played live. "Brazil" applies singing-Macintosh software to a gorgeous laid-back ode with an oddly country-and-western chorus breakdown, and "Fly" is a flat-out prog single, in the best possible way. Cornelius has done well, and he's done it subtly and unassumingly. If you've spent the last six months feeling inclined to listen solely to alt-country records, this may be Officially Not Your Bag. But it's a handsome little bag, and undoubtedly, some people will take great, great pride in wearing it out.

Artist: Cornelius, Album: Point, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "My initial thought was that, with Point, Cornelius had made an album not of songs but of machines: twittering little trinkets and gewgaws, clockwork formalist tricks, hooks, and grooves, tiny snazzy robots covered with push-buttons and blinking lights. I was mostly wrong about this. But back when I didn't know that, I was all set to talk about Cornelius's Other Half-- Takako Minekawa-- and, more importantly, her collaborators in Dymaxion, who are, by my estimation, past masters of the sonic trinketry, the clever formalist motorik grooves, and the whole concept of "songs" as basically Rube Goldberg devices-- these things where you watch Tab A snap ingeniously and unexpectedly into Slot B, and then watch the whole machine teeter back and forth. The trick is that while everyone was trying to meld rock genres and dance genres by throwing blippy textures and drum loops under crunchy guitars, some people decided to use the tools of rock but organize them using the structures of dance or IDM. Point isn't really as like that as I thought, but let's pretend-- just for a second-- that it is: you couldn't possibly ask for anyone to do that stuff better than Cornelius does. Like him or not, he's pretty much the master of this sort of thing-- evidence is littered from his late-period albums with Flipper's Guitar to solo records like 96/69 to tracks like "Mic Check" and "Magoo Opening" from Fantasma, his more "proper song"-oriented U.S. breakthrough. Evidence is abundant on Point, as well: one need look no further than the moment where "Bird Watching at Inner Forest," a sweet, jaunty samba, suddenly and masterfully disintegrates into "I Hate Hate," a whirlwind of sliced-and-diced cartoon prog that sounds like Aphex Twin making mincemeat of a track by the Fucking Champs. If you're going to talk about someone who can produce-- someone who can slap together shimmery organic instruments with the same agility as the world's best glitchmeisters and laptop guys-- Cornelius really should be mentioned. And he's gotten a lot better at this than he was on Fantasma, a record that, in retrospect, sounds a little too eager to please-- all the tinny, busy layering and the near-constant bells and whistles now look a little like a hyperactive fourth-grader given free reign at the school talent show. Point backs off. It's more efficient, and thus more minimal: Cornelius has learned where a couple instruments and a couple tricks can do the work of ten of each. It's also a lot smoother and more languid-- the bulk of it actually qualifies to be called "subdued." The cleverness, technical mastery and ping-pong stereo effects are all there in spades, but this time they're all much more mellow than you'd think. Listen right and you'll hardly notice them, because you'll be wrapped up by the thing I initially completely missed-- some of these tracks are just plain lovely as songs. That's right: you could very satisfyingly listen to Point while casting Cornelius as some kind of modern-day Esquivel, a master of arrangement and studio technologically and virtually everything that makes you cup your hands over your headphones and be just plain wowed by the stuff that's coming out of them. But the thing is that Point, like the IDM records it shares some of its formalist leanings with, gradually reveals itself to contain some song forms that are, without qualification, quite beautiful and expressive, and in completely non-trinkety ways. It sounds as if he's been listening to more bossa nova-- subtle acoustic guitar rhythms are all over this record. It sounds as if he's made a conscious effort to turn his vocal harmonies from chirpy amazements to swooning, dreamy soft-touches. It sounds as if he's basically loosened up, and figured out where subtly funky flows and immersive, bubbly drifts are way more agreeable than hyperactive flashes and non-stop banging. He has, in many senses, mellowed out. And there's what's good about Point. Cornelius comes across as some sort of über-hipster from the glossy fashion mags, a cultural curator, a buzzy Japanese pastiche guy making music that feels like Bandai pocket games-- I've no doubt that a lot of you will hear Point somewhere and be turned off by precisely this quality, and I'll admit that before throwing Point on I sort of feared that it might be just another totally mid-90s reiteration of that heavily explored model. But Point isn't all about playing with trinkets and baubles. "Point of View Point" develops from an airy bounce into some delicious, dynamic, sweeping chord changes. "Drop" teases you by offering and then withholding a beautiful groove that sounds like Antonio Carlos Jobim taking a stab at writing funk, and then "Another View Point" finishes the job. "Tone Twilight Zone" is the equivalent of a Boards of Canada pastoral played live. "Brazil" applies singing-Macintosh software to a gorgeous laid-back ode with an oddly country-and-western chorus breakdown, and "Fly" is a flat-out prog single, in the best possible way. Cornelius has done well, and he's done it subtly and unassumingly. If you've spent the last six months feeling inclined to listen solely to alt-country records, this may be Officially Not Your Bag. But it's a handsome little bag, and undoubtedly, some people will take great, great pride in wearing it out."

The Jet Age of Tomorrow

The Jellyfish Mentality

Jonah Bromwich

The various artists that make up Odd Future, can, in some ways, be thought of as child stars. They found success and relative fame early, with ferocious records that jump-started the conversation about rap and reignited much of the controversy that lent the genre its vitality. And, thus far, like many who succeed early, they haven't been able to recapture the energy of that first terrific surge. But there are plenty of ways to distinguish OF from the stereotype of the child star, obvious in the posse’s DIY aesthetic, their self-reliance, and their instinctive drive towards musical exploration. You could see those qualities in Tyler's summer mixes as DJ Stank Daddy, in the interesting failure of the Internet’s Purple Naked Ladies, and in the psychedelic leanings of Domo Genesis’ No Idols, and Hodgy Beats’ Untitled EP. And you can see those qualities at their best on the collective’s newest effort, The Jellyfish Mentality. The album is officially the work of the Jet Age of Tomorrow, the production duo that consists of Matt Martians and Hal Williams. Martians is also one half of the Internet, and the main producer behind Kilo Kish. His consistent interest in exploring the worlds of funk and acid jazz keeps the collective expanding their borders. The real reason that Odd Future’s music-- rather than rhetoric-- still deserves attention lies in the way that they consistently stoke their melting pot with the next logical set of musical influences. The Jellyfish Mentality expands on the Soular Groove template that Martians has worked with in the past, adding a hard psychedelic edge to his standard combination of claphappy beats and acid-jazz synth fills. The initial run of tracks here is mesmerizing, extending from the opener “Warping Walls” to the chorus and beat of the transfixing “Juney Jones”. Unfortunately, it’s then that the rappers show up. The downside of the DIY aesthetic is that it can mean a lack of discipline; a fixation on getting things done often means getting them done quickly. That’s clear on the album’s verses. Mike G does his lackadaisical, post-lyrical thing; Casey Veggies and Earl, two of the most talented rappers here, restrain themselves with one-take verses (Casey bests Earl, which should tell you that something’s off). Mac Miller shows up to piss off the critics. Other than a few hard-charging late verses from Williams on “Squares” and Domo Genesis and Vince Staples on “Wonderful World”, no one sounds like they’re trying too much harder than the jejune Kish. In contrast, the choruses throughout the record are plenty catchy, a testament to the pocket that Martians and Williams have created in each and every beat. The hook on the aforementioned “Juney Jones” is an earworm, likewise those of “Not So Scary” and the barely-there mutter on “Superfine”, where a simple twist of pronunciation keeps the phrase “you are superfine” in your head for hours after listening. In fact, there’s only one bum hook in the bunch, courtesy of Jesse Boykins III. There’s a sense of anything-goes exploration that keeps Jellyfish interesting, even as it stretches out over 21 tracks (and 25 if you count the bonus songs that were already released). Not many young producers have this kind of imagination or panache, and the tape abounds with daring, idiosyncratic choices, creating a psychedelic alternative to the alt-world pop that N.E.R.D. introduced with In Search Of... The downside of succeeding early is the risk of burning out. But the curiosity and work ethic that the Jet Age of Tomorrow show here proves continually impressive.

Artist: The Jet Age of Tomorrow, Album: The Jellyfish Mentality, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "The various artists that make up Odd Future, can, in some ways, be thought of as child stars. They found success and relative fame early, with ferocious records that jump-started the conversation about rap and reignited much of the controversy that lent the genre its vitality. And, thus far, like many who succeed early, they haven't been able to recapture the energy of that first terrific surge. But there are plenty of ways to distinguish OF from the stereotype of the child star, obvious in the posse’s DIY aesthetic, their self-reliance, and their instinctive drive towards musical exploration. You could see those qualities in Tyler's summer mixes as DJ Stank Daddy, in the interesting failure of the Internet’s Purple Naked Ladies, and in the psychedelic leanings of Domo Genesis’ No Idols, and Hodgy Beats’ Untitled EP. And you can see those qualities at their best on the collective’s newest effort, The Jellyfish Mentality. The album is officially the work of the Jet Age of Tomorrow, the production duo that consists of Matt Martians and Hal Williams. Martians is also one half of the Internet, and the main producer behind Kilo Kish. His consistent interest in exploring the worlds of funk and acid jazz keeps the collective expanding their borders. The real reason that Odd Future’s music-- rather than rhetoric-- still deserves attention lies in the way that they consistently stoke their melting pot with the next logical set of musical influences. The Jellyfish Mentality expands on the Soular Groove template that Martians has worked with in the past, adding a hard psychedelic edge to his standard combination of claphappy beats and acid-jazz synth fills. The initial run of tracks here is mesmerizing, extending from the opener “Warping Walls” to the chorus and beat of the transfixing “Juney Jones”. Unfortunately, it’s then that the rappers show up. The downside of the DIY aesthetic is that it can mean a lack of discipline; a fixation on getting things done often means getting them done quickly. That’s clear on the album’s verses. Mike G does his lackadaisical, post-lyrical thing; Casey Veggies and Earl, two of the most talented rappers here, restrain themselves with one-take verses (Casey bests Earl, which should tell you that something’s off). Mac Miller shows up to piss off the critics. Other than a few hard-charging late verses from Williams on “Squares” and Domo Genesis and Vince Staples on “Wonderful World”, no one sounds like they’re trying too much harder than the jejune Kish. In contrast, the choruses throughout the record are plenty catchy, a testament to the pocket that Martians and Williams have created in each and every beat. The hook on the aforementioned “Juney Jones” is an earworm, likewise those of “Not So Scary” and the barely-there mutter on “Superfine”, where a simple twist of pronunciation keeps the phrase “you are superfine” in your head for hours after listening. In fact, there’s only one bum hook in the bunch, courtesy of Jesse Boykins III. There’s a sense of anything-goes exploration that keeps Jellyfish interesting, even as it stretches out over 21 tracks (and 25 if you count the bonus songs that were already released). Not many young producers have this kind of imagination or panache, and the tape abounds with daring, idiosyncratic choices, creating a psychedelic alternative to the alt-world pop that N.E.R.D. introduced with In Search Of... The downside of succeeding early is the risk of burning out. But the curiosity and work ethic that the Jet Age of Tomorrow show here proves continually impressive."

Underworld

Anthology: 1992 to 2012

Electronic

Jess Harvell

Even when Underworld weren't big, they always aimed at being huge. I don't just mean the widescreen progressive house they made, two decades of which are collected on the 25 tracks of the new Anthology, but their brand of not-quite-trance/not-quite-techno floor-fillers were indeed self-consciously epic and transportive. Following the late-1980s acid-house revelation that turned so many UK synth-pop also-rans into DJ kings, Underworld came to specialize in the kind of dance music that felt constrained in a tiny club space, records with enough space and depth to lose yourself in the swirl and flow, whether you were standing in a festival field surrounded by thousands of other bodies or strapped into a pair of headphones on your lonesome. Underworld had a live rock band's feel for pacing and drama, but were born-again house music evangelists, through and through. "Dark and Long (Dark Train)" was the structuring principle for music of their peak music, as well as the title of one of their deepest, moodiest cuts. Despite Karl Hyde's nagging half-spoken and half-sung mantras, Underworld never really flirted with "songwriting." Though his fragmentary, pre-millennium tension babble could be equally silly, Hyde wasn't the grimacing focal point of Underworld, as the two MCs were in the Prodigy. Even when they were stars, taking to festival stages rather than DJ booths, Underworld never tried to be personalities, letting DJ culture continue to dictate the shape and force and presentation of their music. Unlike unrepentant hookmeister Norman Cook, Underworld also didn't go for big-stoopid-chorus and earworm-loop immediacy, even when forced to shave their singles down to broadcast length. They simply attempted to recreate the peaks-and-valleys of a club cut in miniature. "Born Slippy .NUXX" may be more head-wrecking at its proper length, but the video version was like a hyper-condensed advert for the same effect, angelic intro giving way to massive hard house drums that are the song's real hook. This dance essentialism disguised as crossover friendliness may have limited their appeal to pop fans once the "electronica" boom went pfft and many fair-weather compilation buyers realized they really didn't care for 12-minute instrumentals after all. But it makes Underworld ripe for rediscovery by a generation of new college kids who've dedicated themselves to recreating the 1990s house music they were barely alive for. After all, if you've got to go retro, go big. It's no surprise that Anthology collects these tracks at their full 12"-mix lengths, rather than their highlight reel-style radio edits. All the more for you to swim around in. And those peaks certainly take you higher when the builds have been teased out to the limit. Plenty of DJs and producers have made "huge" dance records that nonetheless feel rather small as pop artifacts because they're aimed at insular subcultures. Several of Underworld's biggest records, in the musical sense of the word, were recorded and released when they were indeed club-circuit draw on the rise and a music press rumor to the wider world, especially in America. 1993's "Rez", which builds with the controlled grandeur of pre-cheesy continental trance but uses much of Detroit techno's sonic signature, would have been no one's idea of a chart smash. Its melodic hook is too abstract. Its repetitive structure is still aimed at all-night dancing rather than earworm immediacy. But the track's whole vibe is also too big to ignore, as if it's straining to some DJ's crates for a suburban pop-techno radio utopia that didn't yet exist. If so many of these singles still sound like world-flattening anthems today, more than a decade after Underworld's commercial peak, it's partially due to the overwhelming ambition the music still projects, the idea that through luck and timing and canny cross-media promotion and a kind of benign will-to-power, they could bring (mostly) instrumental electronic music to a mass audience. They got their wish, though only many years into their career and after several failed attempts that have more or less been airbrushed from their official history. This most recent best-of collection is subtitled "1992 to 2012" because 20 years makes a respectable round number for official retrospection. But you'd be hard-pressed to claim their earliest albums, where the best you can say is that they pulled a half-decent sartorial imitation of Depeche Mode on the sleeve art, as part of the band's real legacy. Acid house's sweeping the UK in 1988 both freed them from silly pop preening and pointed out that their real strength was in stringing together adrenaline-pumping climaxes along spacious beatscapes. They had a good run, about as long as any of their peers, and the idyllic ambient house and blown-out filter disco sieved from 2002's A Hundred Days Off for Anthology promised good things for how Underworld would weather the rapid trend-shifts of new millennium dance. Then the great house contraction occurred, and suddenly Underworld (like so many of their peers) seemed massively out-of-step with the gaunt form dance hipness took with minimal. Almost a decade later, huge is back, in many forms, but what you hear now, with Underworld's particular brand of hugeness no longer the face of dance populism, is how it's the subtlety that keeps these anthems repeat-listenable, as much as the hands-aloft moments. Damned as dance music afflicted with gigantism when techno started starving itself of hooks, Underworld were masters of restraint, nuance, and pace compared to today's prole-friendly producers, such as Skrillex and Deadmau5. There's all the attention to detail of your average deep house bore, along with a lot of pleasing bombast and (it must be said) some pretty damn dodgy lyrics. Don't play them for any neon-clad goobers craving only the biggest bass drops, but if you're looking for a long and dark journey that eventually arrives at euphoria, you could still do a lot worse.

Artist: Underworld, Album: Anthology: 1992 to 2012, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Even when Underworld weren't big, they always aimed at being huge. I don't just mean the widescreen progressive house they made, two decades of which are collected on the 25 tracks of the new Anthology, but their brand of not-quite-trance/not-quite-techno floor-fillers were indeed self-consciously epic and transportive. Following the late-1980s acid-house revelation that turned so many UK synth-pop also-rans into DJ kings, Underworld came to specialize in the kind of dance music that felt constrained in a tiny club space, records with enough space and depth to lose yourself in the swirl and flow, whether you were standing in a festival field surrounded by thousands of other bodies or strapped into a pair of headphones on your lonesome. Underworld had a live rock band's feel for pacing and drama, but were born-again house music evangelists, through and through. "Dark and Long (Dark Train)" was the structuring principle for music of their peak music, as well as the title of one of their deepest, moodiest cuts. Despite Karl Hyde's nagging half-spoken and half-sung mantras, Underworld never really flirted with "songwriting." Though his fragmentary, pre-millennium tension babble could be equally silly, Hyde wasn't the grimacing focal point of Underworld, as the two MCs were in the Prodigy. Even when they were stars, taking to festival stages rather than DJ booths, Underworld never tried to be personalities, letting DJ culture continue to dictate the shape and force and presentation of their music. Unlike unrepentant hookmeister Norman Cook, Underworld also didn't go for big-stoopid-chorus and earworm-loop immediacy, even when forced to shave their singles down to broadcast length. They simply attempted to recreate the peaks-and-valleys of a club cut in miniature. "Born Slippy .NUXX" may be more head-wrecking at its proper length, but the video version was like a hyper-condensed advert for the same effect, angelic intro giving way to massive hard house drums that are the song's real hook. This dance essentialism disguised as crossover friendliness may have limited their appeal to pop fans once the "electronica" boom went pfft and many fair-weather compilation buyers realized they really didn't care for 12-minute instrumentals after all. But it makes Underworld ripe for rediscovery by a generation of new college kids who've dedicated themselves to recreating the 1990s house music they were barely alive for. After all, if you've got to go retro, go big. It's no surprise that Anthology collects these tracks at their full 12"-mix lengths, rather than their highlight reel-style radio edits. All the more for you to swim around in. And those peaks certainly take you higher when the builds have been teased out to the limit. Plenty of DJs and producers have made "huge" dance records that nonetheless feel rather small as pop artifacts because they're aimed at insular subcultures. Several of Underworld's biggest records, in the musical sense of the word, were recorded and released when they were indeed club-circuit draw on the rise and a music press rumor to the wider world, especially in America. 1993's "Rez", which builds with the controlled grandeur of pre-cheesy continental trance but uses much of Detroit techno's sonic signature, would have been no one's idea of a chart smash. Its melodic hook is too abstract. Its repetitive structure is still aimed at all-night dancing rather than earworm immediacy. But the track's whole vibe is also too big to ignore, as if it's straining to some DJ's crates for a suburban pop-techno radio utopia that didn't yet exist. If so many of these singles still sound like world-flattening anthems today, more than a decade after Underworld's commercial peak, it's partially due to the overwhelming ambition the music still projects, the idea that through luck and timing and canny cross-media promotion and a kind of benign will-to-power, they could bring (mostly) instrumental electronic music to a mass audience. They got their wish, though only many years into their career and after several failed attempts that have more or less been airbrushed from their official history. This most recent best-of collection is subtitled "1992 to 2012" because 20 years makes a respectable round number for official retrospection. But you'd be hard-pressed to claim their earliest albums, where the best you can say is that they pulled a half-decent sartorial imitation of Depeche Mode on the sleeve art, as part of the band's real legacy. Acid house's sweeping the UK in 1988 both freed them from silly pop preening and pointed out that their real strength was in stringing together adrenaline-pumping climaxes along spacious beatscapes. They had a good run, about as long as any of their peers, and the idyllic ambient house and blown-out filter disco sieved from 2002's A Hundred Days Off for Anthology promised good things for how Underworld would weather the rapid trend-shifts of new millennium dance. Then the great house contraction occurred, and suddenly Underworld (like so many of their peers) seemed massively out-of-step with the gaunt form dance hipness took with minimal. Almost a decade later, huge is back, in many forms, but what you hear now, with Underworld's particular brand of hugeness no longer the face of dance populism, is how it's the subtlety that keeps these anthems repeat-listenable, as much as the hands-aloft moments. Damned as dance music afflicted with gigantism when techno started starving itself of hooks, Underworld were masters of restraint, nuance, and pace compared to today's prole-friendly producers, such as Skrillex and Deadmau5. There's all the attention to detail of your average deep house bore, along with a lot of pleasing bombast and (it must be said) some pretty damn dodgy lyrics. Don't play them for any neon-clad goobers craving only the biggest bass drops, but if you're looking for a long and dark journey that eventually arrives at euphoria, you could still do a lot worse."

Mura Masa

Mura Masa

Electronic

Eve Barlow

Oscar Wilde once said, “The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.” No wonder: A fast-paced haven for people of all nationalities, races, and faiths, the city itself is a kind of conversation between the four corners of the earth. Newly arriving to the metropolis can be a welcome assault to the senses, one that’s both confusing and exhilarating. For a young producer like Mura Masa (aka Alex Crossan), sponging up London’s global flavors and subcultures is part and parcel of the creative process. “It’s a big, confusing, beautiful thing,” he says of London, “and that’s the motivation behind my album too.” It’s an ambitious undertaking for a 21-year-old white kid to appoint himself the voice of multicultural Britain, but in an era in which terrorist attacks and nationalist populism have tested the UK’s inclusive ideals, drawing inspiration from the city’s diversity is a worthy—if admittedly somewhat precocious—way of expressing its resilient, future-forward spirit. On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist. His interest in the city’s cartography is literal: “Messy Love” opens the album with the sounds of a city bus and deposits us at the stop for New Park Road, near Brixton. From there, Crossan traverses the various ends of his adopted home while also cruising through the genres that have filled its inhabitants’ headphones for the past few years, from big-beat hip-hop (“Nuggets”) to airhorn-assisted calypso (“Love$ick”) and harp-infused UK garage (“What If I Go?”). Some of his musical tourism is more tongue-in-cheek: He ventures as far as the South Pacific on “1 Night,” which adds a steel-drum melody to a sample from “Tahiti,” a kitschy piece of 1960s exotica by the Italian soundtrack composer Piero Piccioni, and sends Charli XCX bouncing about like a drunken reveler in a tiki bar. With so many high-profile guests along for the ride—including A$AP Rocky, Desiigner, Christine and the Queens, and Damon Albarn—there’s a risk that the album could become a top-heavy exercise in A&R. But Crossan never leans too hard on his hired talent as he pieces together house and hip-hop beats with sounds like marimba, steel pans, and kalimba. Born an outlier himself, he spent most of his youth making music in a remote bedroom on the very white, insular island of Guernsey (population: 60,000), where the main local industries were finance and tourism and his nearest venue was five hours away by boat. The internet was his way out: He built his reputation on SoundCloud, and low-profile releases like 2014’s Soundtrack to a Death collection and 2015’s Someday Somewhere EP led to a production credit on Stormzy’s Gang Signs & Prayer. Like Disclosure’s Lawrence brothers, who began making music before they even reached clubbing age, Crossan is proof that going to raves isn’t a prerequisite for aspiring to start one. Being cut off only piqued his curiosity for all things electronic. The first record he ever bought, Gorillaz’ Demon Days, was itself a genreless, guest-heavy hodgepodge, and Crossan’s millennial internet upbringing has similarly inspired him to seek connections across far-flung places. Mura Masa’s best moments arrive when he finds rejuvenating takes on old grooves. Take “NOTHING ELSE!,” a song written the day Prince died: Led by Tennessee transplant Jamie Lidell, it manages to channel both the Black Keys and Hercules and Love Affair. “Firefly” balances a finger-snap house beat with the feather-lite vocals of the East London R&B singer Nao. “helpline” pushes double-time drumming, with the faintest hint of classic punk, into sparkling future-garage territory. And on “Second 2 None,” Christine & the Queens' Héloïse Letissier is her exquisite ice-queen self, yet now over skittering drum ‘n’ bass beats. Coherent in spite of its range, Mura Masa never lets its jam-packed contents overshadow a vision that refuses to be boxed in. It’s Damon Albarn’s willingness to let Crossan guide him, however, that makes for the most significant track on the record. Having his hero share vocals with him on the slow-paced, lovelorn “Blu” feels like a symbolic passing of the baton in the journey to a music without borders. The song embodies a melancholy that runs throughout Mura Masa—reflecting, perhaps, a sense of exhaustion from the challenges of being young and overwhelmed by the city. It’s a love song, but it’s also about the desire for communication and the need to be understood. Toward its close, a few bars of a cappella singing trail off into silence before the jumbled voices of the city rise in the distance. It sounds a lot like Crossan’s vision of home.

Artist: Mura Masa, Album: Mura Masa, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Oscar Wilde once said, “The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.” No wonder: A fast-paced haven for people of all nationalities, races, and faiths, the city itself is a kind of conversation between the four corners of the earth. Newly arriving to the metropolis can be a welcome assault to the senses, one that’s both confusing and exhilarating. For a young producer like Mura Masa (aka Alex Crossan), sponging up London’s global flavors and subcultures is part and parcel of the creative process. “It’s a big, confusing, beautiful thing,” he says of London, “and that’s the motivation behind my album too.” It’s an ambitious undertaking for a 21-year-old white kid to appoint himself the voice of multicultural Britain, but in an era in which terrorist attacks and nationalist populism have tested the UK’s inclusive ideals, drawing inspiration from the city’s diversity is a worthy—if admittedly somewhat precocious—way of expressing its resilient, future-forward spirit. On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist. His interest in the city’s cartography is literal: “Messy Love” opens the album with the sounds of a city bus and deposits us at the stop for New Park Road, near Brixton. From there, Crossan traverses the various ends of his adopted home while also cruising through the genres that have filled its inhabitants’ headphones for the past few years, from big-beat hip-hop (“Nuggets”) to airhorn-assisted calypso (“Love$ick”) and harp-infused UK garage (“What If I Go?”). Some of his musical tourism is more tongue-in-cheek: He ventures as far as the South Pacific on “1 Night,” which adds a steel-drum melody to a sample from “Tahiti,” a kitschy piece of 1960s exotica by the Italian soundtrack composer Piero Piccioni, and sends Charli XCX bouncing about like a drunken reveler in a tiki bar. With so many high-profile guests along for the ride—including A$AP Rocky, Desiigner, Christine and the Queens, and Damon Albarn—there’s a risk that the album could become a top-heavy exercise in A&R. But Crossan never leans too hard on his hired talent as he pieces together house and hip-hop beats with sounds like marimba, steel pans, and kalimba. Born an outlier himself, he spent most of his youth making music in a remote bedroom on the very white, insular island of Guernsey (population: 60,000), where the main local industries were finance and tourism and his nearest venue was five hours away by boat. The internet was his way out: He built his reputation on SoundCloud, and low-profile releases like 2014’s Soundtrack to a Death collection and 2015’s Someday Somewhere EP led to a production credit on Stormzy’s Gang Signs & Prayer. Like Disclosure’s Lawrence brothers, who began making music before they even reached clubbing age, Crossan is proof that going to raves isn’t a prerequisite for aspiring to start one. Being cut off only piqued his curiosity for all things electronic. The first record he ever bought, Gorillaz’ Demon Days, was itself a genreless, guest-heavy hodgepodge, and Crossan’s millennial internet upbringing has similarly inspired him to seek connections across far-flung places. Mura Masa’s best moments arrive when he finds rejuvenating takes on old grooves. Take “NOTHING ELSE!,” a song written the day Prince died: Led by Tennessee transplant Jamie Lidell, it manages to channel both the Black Keys and Hercules and Love Affair. “Firefly” balances a finger-snap house beat with the feather-lite vocals of the East London R&B singer Nao. “helpline” pushes double-time drumming, with the faintest hint of classic punk, into sparkling future-garage territory. And on “Second 2 None,” Christine & the Queens' Héloïse Letissier is her exquisite ice-queen self, yet now over skittering drum ‘n’ bass beats. Coherent in spite of its range, Mura Masa never lets its jam-packed contents overshadow a vision that refuses to be boxed in. It’s Damon Albarn’s willingness to let Crossan guide him, however, that makes for the most significant track on the record. Having his hero share vocals with him on the slow-paced, lovelorn “Blu” feels like a symbolic passing of the baton in the journey to a music without borders. The song embodies a melancholy that runs throughout Mura Masa—reflecting, perhaps, a sense of exhaustion from the challenges of being young and overwhelmed by the city. It’s a love song, but it’s also about the desire for communication and the need to be understood. Toward its close, a few bars of a cappella singing trail off into silence before the jumbled voices of the city rise in the distance. It sounds a lot like Crossan’s vision of home."

Louis Cole

Time

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

The mark of a great chord progression is a peculiar mixture of surprise and inevitability. On first listen, you find yourself confused by the way that one chord follows another, refusing to follow the well-trodden path: jumping when they should step and bounding when they should glide. Eventually, once the song has burned itself into your brain—once its course has remapped your own neural pathways—you’ll have trouble imagining a world where these curious patterns didn’t exist. But even then, even after no matter how many plays, that harmonic dodge-and-feint will still produce the tiniest frisson of wrongness. It’s among the sweetest dopamine hits that music is capable of producing. Louis Cole’s instrument of choice is the drums, but he definitely knows his way around a killer set of changes. Time, his third album, is brimming with strange, counterintuitive progressions—chords that seem to slip sideways, tumbling into one another, jostling and pivoting just when you don’t expect. An unusual mixture of hard funk and soft pop, like Zapp and Burt Bacharach stuck in an elevator together, Cole's is a sly, jubilant sound; it makes good use of the way funk also thrives upon a sense of wrongness, a screw-faced delight at things gone awry. Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label turns out to be a good home for Cole’s music. A falsetto singer and secret sentimentalist, he doesn’t often sound much like his labelmates, even if he has played with Thundercat, who returns the favor here on “Tunnels in the Air”; Dennis Hamm, Thundercat’s live keyboardist, also turns up, laying down a ripping piano solo on “Trying Not to Die.” But Cole’s gently twisted perspective fits FlyLo’s mischievous M.O. He’s got a squirrelly sense of humor and a barely veiled obsession with death. This is a guy who, seven years ago, in his early days of uploading DIY videos to YouTube, paired a lovely, sentimental instrumental called “Clouds” with stock footage of nuclear bombs going off. At times, he’s come dangerously close to looking like a novelty artist: His biggest viral hit to date is a lo-fi video—both the graphics and his getup could easily be mistaken for a cable-access leftover from the mid-1980s—called “Bank Account” in which he films himself in split screen, playing keys and drums, and singing, in his frictionless coo, “I don’t want to check my bank account.” On Time, his off-kilter demeanor takes many forms. Album opener “Weird Part of the Night” is a charging squelch-fest sung in celebration of the workaholic night owl. The uptempo “Freaky Times” tackles a tried-and-tested trope, the sex jam loaded with double entendres, while indulging in both the silly (“Fantasies in my pantasies,” goes the refrain) and the bizarre (“Softer than a corpse whisper,” goes one of his come-ons). “When You’re Ugly,” the album’s crisp funky second song, contains the immortal advice: “When you’re ugly/No one wants to talk to you/When you’re ugly, there is something you can do, called/Fuck the world and be real cool.” Some of his gags are strictly musical: “After the Load Is Blown,” a bruised, end-of-the-relationship slow jam, just goes ahead and quotes Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over.” But many of the album’s most powerful moments come when the grin slips. You can hear it in the feather-light touches of “A Little Bit More Time,” a deathbed plea set to a 1960s easy-listening pastiche; you can hear it in “Real Life,” in which Coles’ bruising drum work squares off against a lightning-like solo from jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, all of it soothed by one of the album’s downiest choruses. And you can especially hear it in the record’s many ballads, like “Everytime,” a middle-school slow-dance number par excellence, or “Phone,” a gorgeous love song featuring some of the album’s most delightful chord changes, or the closing “Night,” another mortality-obsessed song in which he imagines remembering, in his last moments alive, a nighttime drive with his lover. For a guy who loves him some rascally grooves, there’s something almost shockingly unguarded about these witching-hour ruminations. Just as he doesn’t fake the funk, he doesn’t fake his feelings, either. As his sidelong chord changes suggest, he’s led primarily by his own weird muse.

Artist: Louis Cole, Album: Time, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "The mark of a great chord progression is a peculiar mixture of surprise and inevitability. On first listen, you find yourself confused by the way that one chord follows another, refusing to follow the well-trodden path: jumping when they should step and bounding when they should glide. Eventually, once the song has burned itself into your brain—once its course has remapped your own neural pathways—you’ll have trouble imagining a world where these curious patterns didn’t exist. But even then, even after no matter how many plays, that harmonic dodge-and-feint will still produce the tiniest frisson of wrongness. It’s among the sweetest dopamine hits that music is capable of producing. Louis Cole’s instrument of choice is the drums, but he definitely knows his way around a killer set of changes. Time, his third album, is brimming with strange, counterintuitive progressions—chords that seem to slip sideways, tumbling into one another, jostling and pivoting just when you don’t expect. An unusual mixture of hard funk and soft pop, like Zapp and Burt Bacharach stuck in an elevator together, Cole's is a sly, jubilant sound; it makes good use of the way funk also thrives upon a sense of wrongness, a screw-faced delight at things gone awry. Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label turns out to be a good home for Cole’s music. A falsetto singer and secret sentimentalist, he doesn’t often sound much like his labelmates, even if he has played with Thundercat, who returns the favor here on “Tunnels in the Air”; Dennis Hamm, Thundercat’s live keyboardist, also turns up, laying down a ripping piano solo on “Trying Not to Die.” But Cole’s gently twisted perspective fits FlyLo’s mischievous M.O. He’s got a squirrelly sense of humor and a barely veiled obsession with death. This is a guy who, seven years ago, in his early days of uploading DIY videos to YouTube, paired a lovely, sentimental instrumental called “Clouds” with stock footage of nuclear bombs going off. At times, he’s come dangerously close to looking like a novelty artist: His biggest viral hit to date is a lo-fi video—both the graphics and his getup could easily be mistaken for a cable-access leftover from the mid-1980s—called “Bank Account” in which he films himself in split screen, playing keys and drums, and singing, in his frictionless coo, “I don’t want to check my bank account.” On Time, his off-kilter demeanor takes many forms. Album opener “Weird Part of the Night” is a charging squelch-fest sung in celebration of the workaholic night owl. The uptempo “Freaky Times” tackles a tried-and-tested trope, the sex jam loaded with double entendres, while indulging in both the silly (“Fantasies in my pantasies,” goes the refrain) and the bizarre (“Softer than a corpse whisper,” goes one of his come-ons). “When You’re Ugly,” the album’s crisp funky second song, contains the immortal advice: “When you’re ugly/No one wants to talk to you/When you’re ugly, there is something you can do, called/Fuck the world and be real cool.” Some of his gags are strictly musical: “After the Load Is Blown,” a bruised, end-of-the-relationship slow jam, just goes ahead and quotes Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over.” But many of the album’s most powerful moments come when the grin slips. You can hear it in the feather-light touches of “A Little Bit More Time,” a deathbed plea set to a 1960s easy-listening pastiche; you can hear it in “Real Life,” in which Coles’ bruising drum work squares off against a lightning-like solo from jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, all of it soothed by one of the album’s downiest choruses. And you can especially hear it in the record’s many ballads, like “Everytime,” a middle-school slow-dance number par excellence, or “Phone,” a gorgeous love song featuring some of the album’s most delightful chord changes, or the closing “Night,” another mortality-obsessed song in which he imagines remembering, in his last moments alive, a nighttime drive with his lover. For a guy who loves him some rascally grooves, there’s something almost shockingly unguarded about these witching-hour ruminations. Just as he doesn’t fake the funk, he doesn’t fake his feelings, either. As his sidelong chord changes suggest, he’s led primarily by his own weird muse."

Liz Durrett

The Mezzanine

Folk/Country

Ryan Dombal

The songs on Liz Durrett's second album live trapped, eyelet existences. Marked by stark sensations seemingly told in refracted flashback, the claustrophobic, eerie tales offer slight slivers of menace. Listening is akin to being shackled and bound, watching someone (or something) doing something nasty to someone else. Each affair is vague and stealth and frightening. Tied together by the Georgian's voice-- a too-calm whisper that sounds like Chan Marshall after 36 sleepless hours-- and ominous background interference from producer/uncle Vic Chesnutt, The Mezzanine has all the proper elements of a Southern séance. Given all that, the album should be quite captivating. Instead, much of it ends up being mystery for mystery's sake-- a cabin-fever thriller with little more than a litter of loose ends. Considered the 28-year-old's first "adult" album (last year's Husk featured songs Durrett wrote in her teens), The Mezzanine still suffers from the same lack of musical variation that plagued her debut. Though she has honed her particularly unsettling songwriting style, the unrelenting slowcore pacing does her few favors. Chesnutt attempts to add flair to with flickering backgrounds made up of omnichords, xylophones, and distorted guitar, but such embellishments are often too low in the mix to sustain any type of impact. Durrett's voice and purposeful acoustic strums are projected strongly throughout, but her phrasings, progressions, and unidentified pronouns often run together, creating a sense of wandering tedium. Unsurprisingly, one of the only tracks with an identifiable pulse, "Cup on the Counter", is also one of the most engaging. Random observations (a cup stain, tiremarks, "ashes on cinders") arrive at a typically ominous hook: "Why try to lie to me/ I'm not a child, I know what I see." Of course, there's no real inkling of what "what" actually is, but the tone of a childhood gone awry (the track is book-ended by a contextually creepy conversation between a young Durrett and her grandfather) is rendered with enough unadulterated mood to satisfy. Yet by the second half of the album, the singer-songwriter's techniques become thin and songs begin to crawl along, drearily drunk on their own enigmatic presence. The Mezzanine doesn't fail as much as it disappoints. Durrett's voice is both preternaturally warm and haunting-- a rare combo. And it's sad to hear it languish. On the record's last track, "In the Throes", Durrett finally breaks free from her endless, quiet croon and works her vocal chords a bit. In an otherworldy way, the soulful waltz even slightly recalls the Aretha fave "Runnin' Out of Fools". Such minor emotional openings are enticing but they're exasperatingly underrepresented on this album of fractional storytelling and aimless dread.

Artist: Liz Durrett, Album: The Mezzanine, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "The songs on Liz Durrett's second album live trapped, eyelet existences. Marked by stark sensations seemingly told in refracted flashback, the claustrophobic, eerie tales offer slight slivers of menace. Listening is akin to being shackled and bound, watching someone (or something) doing something nasty to someone else. Each affair is vague and stealth and frightening. Tied together by the Georgian's voice-- a too-calm whisper that sounds like Chan Marshall after 36 sleepless hours-- and ominous background interference from producer/uncle Vic Chesnutt, The Mezzanine has all the proper elements of a Southern séance. Given all that, the album should be quite captivating. Instead, much of it ends up being mystery for mystery's sake-- a cabin-fever thriller with little more than a litter of loose ends. Considered the 28-year-old's first "adult" album (last year's Husk featured songs Durrett wrote in her teens), The Mezzanine still suffers from the same lack of musical variation that plagued her debut. Though she has honed her particularly unsettling songwriting style, the unrelenting slowcore pacing does her few favors. Chesnutt attempts to add flair to with flickering backgrounds made up of omnichords, xylophones, and distorted guitar, but such embellishments are often too low in the mix to sustain any type of impact. Durrett's voice and purposeful acoustic strums are projected strongly throughout, but her phrasings, progressions, and unidentified pronouns often run together, creating a sense of wandering tedium. Unsurprisingly, one of the only tracks with an identifiable pulse, "Cup on the Counter", is also one of the most engaging. Random observations (a cup stain, tiremarks, "ashes on cinders") arrive at a typically ominous hook: "Why try to lie to me/ I'm not a child, I know what I see." Of course, there's no real inkling of what "what" actually is, but the tone of a childhood gone awry (the track is book-ended by a contextually creepy conversation between a young Durrett and her grandfather) is rendered with enough unadulterated mood to satisfy. Yet by the second half of the album, the singer-songwriter's techniques become thin and songs begin to crawl along, drearily drunk on their own enigmatic presence. The Mezzanine doesn't fail as much as it disappoints. Durrett's voice is both preternaturally warm and haunting-- a rare combo. And it's sad to hear it languish. On the record's last track, "In the Throes", Durrett finally breaks free from her endless, quiet croon and works her vocal chords a bit. In an otherworldy way, the soulful waltz even slightly recalls the Aretha fave "Runnin' Out of Fools". Such minor emotional openings are enticing but they're exasperatingly underrepresented on this album of fractional storytelling and aimless dread. "

Skeletonwitch

Devouring Radiant Light

Metal

Zoe Camp

The past five years have seen major changes for the Ohio metal band Skeletonwitch. During the New England leg of their October 2014 tour, firebrand frontman Chance Garnette suddenly left the band. Several days later, Massachusetts authorities charged him with assault and battery of a family/household member. Reflecting on the situation months later, Garnette cited his drinking problem as the primary reason for his exit—a framing one of the band’s guitarists, Scott Hedrick, refuted in an interview, telling Vancouver Weekly, “A bunch of beers didn’t make this change happen.” In time, “this change” would entail not only a new frontman, but a sobering reorientation of Skeletonwitch’s entire sound. 2016’s inaugural release with vocalist Adam Clemans (also of the blackened-sludge outfit Wolvhammer, and a former member of the metalcore group Veil of Maya), an EP titled The Apothic Gloom, found the band members exercising extreme self-discipline, scaling back the turnt-up thrash of their past in favor of nuanced black metal. It was a smart pivot, for several reasons: It mitigated any tonal discrepancy between Clemans’ militant vocals and the giddy thrash of his predecessor; it provided Hedrick and his axeman-in-arms Nate Garnette with a platform for showing off top-notch fretwork that had long been overshadowed by their ex-vocalist’s Tasmanian-Devil charisma; and—most vitally—it allowed Skeletonwitch to venture outside their comfort zone while retaining the feral energy that propelled them to infamy. The band’s latest album, Devouring Radiant Light, doubles down on this stark approach, effectively recasting the Midwestern party animals as cold-hearted Vikings who deploy their instruments of war strategically as well as sadistically. Here, they strive for dynamic evolution and stylistic growth, as opposed to sinister, Dionysian excess. That the first minute of opening track “Fen of Shadows” comprises a unaccompanied, chiming guitar lead, rather than the chug-athons that kick-started past albums, is telling of the record as a whole. For the first time in their decade-plus career, nuance is just as important as nastiness, and it pays off in spades. Devouring Radiant Light doesn’t abandon Skeletonwitch’s uncouth thrash antics altogether, of course. The skittering riffs and cascading hooks that populate rippers like “When Paradise Fades” and “Carnarium Eternal” evoke the genre’s ’80s heyday, as do the haggard, Megadeth-esque verses driving “The Luminous Sky.” The distinguishing factor here is a matter of overarching construction. Whereas the band’s past full-lengths accented Big Four worship with black-metal flourishes (weeping riffs, tempestuous backbeats), Devouring Radiant Light inverts that ratio with an extended blast of subzero Nordic fury informed by, but by no means indebted to, thrash metal. Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record—and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre.

Artist: Skeletonwitch, Album: Devouring Radiant Light, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "The past five years have seen major changes for the Ohio metal band Skeletonwitch. During the New England leg of their October 2014 tour, firebrand frontman Chance Garnette suddenly left the band. Several days later, Massachusetts authorities charged him with assault and battery of a family/household member. Reflecting on the situation months later, Garnette cited his drinking problem as the primary reason for his exit—a framing one of the band’s guitarists, Scott Hedrick, refuted in an interview, telling Vancouver Weekly, “A bunch of beers didn’t make this change happen.” In time, “this change” would entail not only a new frontman, but a sobering reorientation of Skeletonwitch’s entire sound. 2016’s inaugural release with vocalist Adam Clemans (also of the blackened-sludge outfit Wolvhammer, and a former member of the metalcore group Veil of Maya), an EP titled The Apothic Gloom, found the band members exercising extreme self-discipline, scaling back the turnt-up thrash of their past in favor of nuanced black metal. It was a smart pivot, for several reasons: It mitigated any tonal discrepancy between Clemans’ militant vocals and the giddy thrash of his predecessor; it provided Hedrick and his axeman-in-arms Nate Garnette with a platform for showing off top-notch fretwork that had long been overshadowed by their ex-vocalist’s Tasmanian-Devil charisma; and—most vitally—it allowed Skeletonwitch to venture outside their comfort zone while retaining the feral energy that propelled them to infamy. The band’s latest album, Devouring Radiant Light, doubles down on this stark approach, effectively recasting the Midwestern party animals as cold-hearted Vikings who deploy their instruments of war strategically as well as sadistically. Here, they strive for dynamic evolution and stylistic growth, as opposed to sinister, Dionysian excess. That the first minute of opening track “Fen of Shadows” comprises a unaccompanied, chiming guitar lead, rather than the chug-athons that kick-started past albums, is telling of the record as a whole. For the first time in their decade-plus career, nuance is just as important as nastiness, and it pays off in spades. Devouring Radiant Light doesn’t abandon Skeletonwitch’s uncouth thrash antics altogether, of course. The skittering riffs and cascading hooks that populate rippers like “When Paradise Fades” and “Carnarium Eternal” evoke the genre’s ’80s heyday, as do the haggard, Megadeth-esque verses driving “The Luminous Sky.” The distinguishing factor here is a matter of overarching construction. Whereas the band’s past full-lengths accented Big Four worship with black-metal flourishes (weeping riffs, tempestuous backbeats), Devouring Radiant Light inverts that ratio with an extended blast of subzero Nordic fury informed by, but by no means indebted to, thrash metal. Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record—and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre."

Keep Shelly in Athens

Campus Martius

Electronic,Rock

Andrew Ryce

You'd be forgiven for thinking Planet Mu is all about twitchy, high-tempo music these days, given prominent albums from Machinedrum and Kuedo, not to mention their ongoing documentation of the Chicago footwork sound that influences those artists. But over the past two years, the English label has placed just as much stock into warmed-over and vaguely nostalgic sounds, riffing off of chillwave and hypnagogic pop but dressing it all up in beat-oriented structures compatible with the UK bass dialogue that Planet Mu otherwise engages with. Artists like Boxcutter, Solar Bears, Oriol, Tropics, and even FaltyDL have all swum down this lukewarm stream of lazy watercolor, and the label ends one of its best years ever with its first release by Greek duo Keep Shelly in Athens. Making their first appearance on Mu with a remix of fellow dream-popper Tropics, the lead track off of their first solo EP is also a remix. If this move seems a little disingenuous at first-- is their own material just not up to snuff?-- it's easy to understand why once you actually play the thing. Solar Bears' original "Cub" was one of their album's more wandering pieces, three minutes of spidery guitar and mellotron, vaguely medieval in its execution. But in Keep Shelly in Athens' hands, it's an achingly poignant quiet-stormer. Unravelling and pitch-bending that guitar riff to queasy extremes, the duo pushes a staggered beat underneath it, along with its usual assortment of wafting vocal samples. Once the drop hits, it pushes forward with a surprising momentum: Spiraling down a vortex of intense color, "Cub" is a misty rush of twinkling synths and adult-contemporary vocals molded into wordless but heart-tugging shapes. It's a hell of an introduction, and it sets up the band for high expectations on their original material. They deliver as well as anyone could expect such a young band to: "The Chains" throws a foundation of rolling basslines and taut percussive loops underneath frontwoman Sarah P's soft vocals, and suddenly bursts into a clangorous, banging echo chamber where drums ominously beat in a pseudo-dubstep pattern. It's a tantalizing 20 seconds that never gets less startling or less powerful, and the duo throws those lurching beats all over "Struggle With Yourself", where Sarah P's vocals merge with the humid and cloudy backdrop, and the drums glitch, catch, and screech rudely underneath. The surprisingly nasty underbelly keeps the otherwise lightweight songs from floating away completely, and offers a tangible undercurrent separating them from a legion of anodyne dream-pop acts all singing the same pleasantly slurred tune. The EP's only uncertain moment comes with its title track, which pairs an awfully saccharine piano motif over erratically sliced percussion, a tension between the beautiful and the berserk that recalls Kuedo's majestic Severant only without the careful balance of melodrama and grit. But even here, vocals gently ride the beat with a supple propulsion that, just like on their remix of "Cub", proves addictive and persuasive without predictability. They're still dealing with the unassembled spare parts of what sounds like could be a tight, confident outfit, but the configurations they try on here are promising and at the least intriguing. They might not have answered the question of what exactly separates them from the bleary-eyed masses, but considering the caliber of the artists they're now mingling with on Planet Mu, the possibility for nurturing artistic growth seems high. One's thing for sure: They do one hell of a remix.

Artist: Keep Shelly in Athens, Album: Campus Martius, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "You'd be forgiven for thinking Planet Mu is all about twitchy, high-tempo music these days, given prominent albums from Machinedrum and Kuedo, not to mention their ongoing documentation of the Chicago footwork sound that influences those artists. But over the past two years, the English label has placed just as much stock into warmed-over and vaguely nostalgic sounds, riffing off of chillwave and hypnagogic pop but dressing it all up in beat-oriented structures compatible with the UK bass dialogue that Planet Mu otherwise engages with. Artists like Boxcutter, Solar Bears, Oriol, Tropics, and even FaltyDL have all swum down this lukewarm stream of lazy watercolor, and the label ends one of its best years ever with its first release by Greek duo Keep Shelly in Athens. Making their first appearance on Mu with a remix of fellow dream-popper Tropics, the lead track off of their first solo EP is also a remix. If this move seems a little disingenuous at first-- is their own material just not up to snuff?-- it's easy to understand why once you actually play the thing. Solar Bears' original "Cub" was one of their album's more wandering pieces, three minutes of spidery guitar and mellotron, vaguely medieval in its execution. But in Keep Shelly in Athens' hands, it's an achingly poignant quiet-stormer. Unravelling and pitch-bending that guitar riff to queasy extremes, the duo pushes a staggered beat underneath it, along with its usual assortment of wafting vocal samples. Once the drop hits, it pushes forward with a surprising momentum: Spiraling down a vortex of intense color, "Cub" is a misty rush of twinkling synths and adult-contemporary vocals molded into wordless but heart-tugging shapes. It's a hell of an introduction, and it sets up the band for high expectations on their original material. They deliver as well as anyone could expect such a young band to: "The Chains" throws a foundation of rolling basslines and taut percussive loops underneath frontwoman Sarah P's soft vocals, and suddenly bursts into a clangorous, banging echo chamber where drums ominously beat in a pseudo-dubstep pattern. It's a tantalizing 20 seconds that never gets less startling or less powerful, and the duo throws those lurching beats all over "Struggle With Yourself", where Sarah P's vocals merge with the humid and cloudy backdrop, and the drums glitch, catch, and screech rudely underneath. The surprisingly nasty underbelly keeps the otherwise lightweight songs from floating away completely, and offers a tangible undercurrent separating them from a legion of anodyne dream-pop acts all singing the same pleasantly slurred tune. The EP's only uncertain moment comes with its title track, which pairs an awfully saccharine piano motif over erratically sliced percussion, a tension between the beautiful and the berserk that recalls Kuedo's majestic Severant only without the careful balance of melodrama and grit. But even here, vocals gently ride the beat with a supple propulsion that, just like on their remix of "Cub", proves addictive and persuasive without predictability. They're still dealing with the unassembled spare parts of what sounds like could be a tight, confident outfit, but the configurations they try on here are promising and at the least intriguing. They might not have answered the question of what exactly separates them from the bleary-eyed masses, but considering the caliber of the artists they're now mingling with on Planet Mu, the possibility for nurturing artistic growth seems high. One's thing for sure: They do one hell of a remix."

MouseRocket

Pretty Loud

Stephen M. Deusner

In some ways, Memphis has never gotten over garage rock. Largely left to their own devices by an industry that had little use for the city after the 1970s, generations of local musicians have been rethinking, reformulating, and in some cases re-creating that 60s sound and attitude. Following the Grifters, Simple Ones, and Oblivians in the early 1990s, the members of MouseRocket have mined these influences for more than a decade in numerous outfits: Alicja Trout in Lost Sounds (with Jay Reatard), the River City Tan Lines, and Black Sunday; Robby Grant in Big Ass Truck and Vending Machine; and cellist Jonathan Kirkscey in, um, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, with rhythm section Hermant Gupta and Robert Barnett, they released a self-titled debut full of dirty guitars, distorted vocals, raunchy organs, and covers of Love and the Nightcrawlers. Gloriously dark and weird, MouseRocket sounds like a one-off, but it wasn't. Four years later, the band has launched its follow-up, Pretty Loud, which they recorded locally over two years and are releasing exclusively on vinyl (the LP includes an afterthought CD, but it sounds significantly better on a turntable). It's a swifter- and cleaner-sounding record, less distracted by all the noisy interludes, spoken-word samples, and studio shenanigans that gave the debut its oddball flair. In a word, Pretty Loud sounds professional: a concerted effort by a real live band rather than just a bunch of friends screwing around in the studio. Both approaches have their merits, of course, and opener "All Been Broken" immediately lays out the virtues of this new attack. Beginning with Grant's low vocals over Kirkscey's elegant cello, the song crescendos into a heavy riff that sounds like the fossilized skeleton of a Dinosaur Jr song. MouseRocket have carefully arranged the song for maximum impact, ratcheting up the soft-loud dynamics until everything falls into place on the last chorus, which smacks you squarely in the jaw. MouseRocket reshuffle the garage rock deck effectively, adding classic-rock guitars, punk vocals, new wave keys, prog drums, and Kirkscey's dexterous cello, which reinforces Grant and Trout's brazen riffs, bolsters Gupta's booming bass, and generally adds a distinctive texture to these songs. A curiously calm, nearly Byrdsian guitar theme opens "Never Stand a Chance", which builds over three minutes to an ear-splitting freak-out finale. Trout and Grant trade off vocals, each proving a commanding frontperson: He gives "All Been Broken" and "44 Times" a world weariness that contrasts nicely with the songs' frantic energy, and she alternates between sing-songy vocals on the country-pop "Set on You" and shouted attacks of the glam-metal "Shadows", whose abrupt, punchy chorus is one of the album's best moments. The album flags toward the end. Following a buzzy cover of Steven Calhoun's "Fall Down South", "Steal" deconstructs itself aimlessly, barely holding together, and the start-stop momentum of "Aphrodite" is more stop than start. They're followed by an "electro" version of the MouseRocket closer "Missing Teeth", whose paranoid lyrics about fluoridated water are illustrated with muted beeps and clicks that cannot improve on the original. Sequenced together, they close a strong album weakly, which is especially a shame considering that most of Pretty Loud manages to put a distinctive stamp on familiar styles. Most bands never get around to doing that, but MouseRocket have done it twice already.

Artist: MouseRocket, Album: Pretty Loud, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "In some ways, Memphis has never gotten over garage rock. Largely left to their own devices by an industry that had little use for the city after the 1970s, generations of local musicians have been rethinking, reformulating, and in some cases re-creating that 60s sound and attitude. Following the Grifters, Simple Ones, and Oblivians in the early 1990s, the members of MouseRocket have mined these influences for more than a decade in numerous outfits: Alicja Trout in Lost Sounds (with Jay Reatard), the River City Tan Lines, and Black Sunday; Robby Grant in Big Ass Truck and Vending Machine; and cellist Jonathan Kirkscey in, um, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, with rhythm section Hermant Gupta and Robert Barnett, they released a self-titled debut full of dirty guitars, distorted vocals, raunchy organs, and covers of Love and the Nightcrawlers. Gloriously dark and weird, MouseRocket sounds like a one-off, but it wasn't. Four years later, the band has launched its follow-up, Pretty Loud, which they recorded locally over two years and are releasing exclusively on vinyl (the LP includes an afterthought CD, but it sounds significantly better on a turntable). It's a swifter- and cleaner-sounding record, less distracted by all the noisy interludes, spoken-word samples, and studio shenanigans that gave the debut its oddball flair. In a word, Pretty Loud sounds professional: a concerted effort by a real live band rather than just a bunch of friends screwing around in the studio. Both approaches have their merits, of course, and opener "All Been Broken" immediately lays out the virtues of this new attack. Beginning with Grant's low vocals over Kirkscey's elegant cello, the song crescendos into a heavy riff that sounds like the fossilized skeleton of a Dinosaur Jr song. MouseRocket have carefully arranged the song for maximum impact, ratcheting up the soft-loud dynamics until everything falls into place on the last chorus, which smacks you squarely in the jaw. MouseRocket reshuffle the garage rock deck effectively, adding classic-rock guitars, punk vocals, new wave keys, prog drums, and Kirkscey's dexterous cello, which reinforces Grant and Trout's brazen riffs, bolsters Gupta's booming bass, and generally adds a distinctive texture to these songs. A curiously calm, nearly Byrdsian guitar theme opens "Never Stand a Chance", which builds over three minutes to an ear-splitting freak-out finale. Trout and Grant trade off vocals, each proving a commanding frontperson: He gives "All Been Broken" and "44 Times" a world weariness that contrasts nicely with the songs' frantic energy, and she alternates between sing-songy vocals on the country-pop "Set on You" and shouted attacks of the glam-metal "Shadows", whose abrupt, punchy chorus is one of the album's best moments. The album flags toward the end. Following a buzzy cover of Steven Calhoun's "Fall Down South", "Steal" deconstructs itself aimlessly, barely holding together, and the start-stop momentum of "Aphrodite" is more stop than start. They're followed by an "electro" version of the MouseRocket closer "Missing Teeth", whose paranoid lyrics about fluoridated water are illustrated with muted beeps and clicks that cannot improve on the original. Sequenced together, they close a strong album weakly, which is especially a shame considering that most of Pretty Loud manages to put a distinctive stamp on familiar styles. Most bands never get around to doing that, but MouseRocket have done it twice already."

Klein

cc EP

Experimental

Ben Cardew

The South London electronic musician Klein is clearly comfortable playing roles. Her 2016 EP Lagata was written from the perspective of “a Nigerian ruler from a fictional film,” while in February she wrote, directed, and scored a “fantasy musical” at London’s ICA. cc, Klein’s third EP, sees her step away from this role-playing in favor of something more personal: Klein calls cc a “come-of-age record, with the classic teenage spirals,” that was “written about myself to myself.” What emerges is a hugely poignant work that explores the emotional depths of life, death, and growing up. Whereas last year’s Tommy EP for Hyperdub was thick with bewildering abstraction, cc often feels like one of the saddest records you will hear, refracting the raw sound of sorrow through digital production. The harrowing “apologise” samples Heather Donahue’s snot-flecked apology monologue from The Blair Witch Project, her jerky, tear-laden breath forming a scratchy rhythmic loop that sits under torturous repetitions of Donahue’s mea culpa and builds to a howling climax of gasps and machine rhythms. Like the iconic scene from which the sample is taken, the effect is devastating, an overspill of unadulterated emotion that transcends its origins as a piece of consumable culture. This anguish is prolonged by “last chance,” which follows. Like many of the songs on Tommy, “last chance” is based on a brilliant vocal riff, the kind of catchy melodic motif you could imagine adorning a mainstream pop hit. But here Klein focuses in on the desperation with laser intensity, as the riff’s refrain of “I can’t take it” is chopped, degraded, and pitched-shifted into a ghoulish chorus that bobs up and down in the mix like an abandoned boat at sea. The production here is similar to Tommy, but where that record was thick as tar, cc ’s individual sounds are largely distinguishable, even within the music’s soupy swirl. Sad as those these two songs might be, cc is nothing so straightforward as a record of misery. Moments of emotional ambiguity are scattered throughout the EP’s seven tracks, many of them linked to the idea of childhood. Opener “collect” features the American artist/poet Diamond Stingily relating memories from her family over eerie synth chords and harp trills. This creates a pungently bittersweet atmosphere, as tales of her brother at three years old give way to reflections on growing pains and death. “stop” even skirts the edge of happiness, marrying what sounds like children cheering to wonky drum rhythms that nod to house and rock music, a rare appearance for conventional percussion sounds on this EP. Meanwhile, “explay” is not so much downhearted as furiously despondent. In what might be cc’s most unusual moment, the song combines a fairly conventional rap cadence, with lyrics that explore rage and despair (“All the bitches want to talk to me yeah...Fuck this guy, I don't give a damn, I just want my mum”) delivered over a musical backing that resembles a demented fairground carousel. The two elements operate in largely unrelated musical worlds, bound together by Klein’s brilliant musical obstinacy. This combination may sound abstruse and unwelcoming on paper, but Klein delivers the last line with a laugh that sums up the record's endearing emotional complexity. cc is a brilliant work of labyrinthine twists and turns—of production trickery, degraded melody, and abstraction. But it is one where emotion always trumps musical craft. There is sadness here, but it is woven into complex parcels of emotions, where melancholy gives way to anger, which gives way to humor and joy. That makes cc not just personal, but also overwhelmingly human.

Artist: Klein, Album: cc EP, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "The South London electronic musician Klein is clearly comfortable playing roles. Her 2016 EP Lagata was written from the perspective of “a Nigerian ruler from a fictional film,” while in February she wrote, directed, and scored a “fantasy musical” at London’s ICA. cc, Klein’s third EP, sees her step away from this role-playing in favor of something more personal: Klein calls cc a “come-of-age record, with the classic teenage spirals,” that was “written about myself to myself.” What emerges is a hugely poignant work that explores the emotional depths of life, death, and growing up. Whereas last year’s Tommy EP for Hyperdub was thick with bewildering abstraction, cc often feels like one of the saddest records you will hear, refracting the raw sound of sorrow through digital production. The harrowing “apologise” samples Heather Donahue’s snot-flecked apology monologue from The Blair Witch Project, her jerky, tear-laden breath forming a scratchy rhythmic loop that sits under torturous repetitions of Donahue’s mea culpa and builds to a howling climax of gasps and machine rhythms. Like the iconic scene from which the sample is taken, the effect is devastating, an overspill of unadulterated emotion that transcends its origins as a piece of consumable culture. This anguish is prolonged by “last chance,” which follows. Like many of the songs on Tommy, “last chance” is based on a brilliant vocal riff, the kind of catchy melodic motif you could imagine adorning a mainstream pop hit. But here Klein focuses in on the desperation with laser intensity, as the riff’s refrain of “I can’t take it” is chopped, degraded, and pitched-shifted into a ghoulish chorus that bobs up and down in the mix like an abandoned boat at sea. The production here is similar to Tommy, but where that record was thick as tar, cc ’s individual sounds are largely distinguishable, even within the music’s soupy swirl. Sad as those these two songs might be, cc is nothing so straightforward as a record of misery. Moments of emotional ambiguity are scattered throughout the EP’s seven tracks, many of them linked to the idea of childhood. Opener “collect” features the American artist/poet Diamond Stingily relating memories from her family over eerie synth chords and harp trills. This creates a pungently bittersweet atmosphere, as tales of her brother at three years old give way to reflections on growing pains and death. “stop” even skirts the edge of happiness, marrying what sounds like children cheering to wonky drum rhythms that nod to house and rock music, a rare appearance for conventional percussion sounds on this EP. Meanwhile, “explay” is not so much downhearted as furiously despondent. In what might be cc’s most unusual moment, the song combines a fairly conventional rap cadence, with lyrics that explore rage and despair (“All the bitches want to talk to me yeah...Fuck this guy, I don't give a damn, I just want my mum”) delivered over a musical backing that resembles a demented fairground carousel. The two elements operate in largely unrelated musical worlds, bound together by Klein’s brilliant musical obstinacy. This combination may sound abstruse and unwelcoming on paper, but Klein delivers the last line with a laugh that sums up the record's endearing emotional complexity. cc is a brilliant work of labyrinthine twists and turns—of production trickery, degraded melody, and abstraction. But it is one where emotion always trumps musical craft. There is sadness here, but it is woven into complex parcels of emotions, where melancholy gives way to anger, which gives way to humor and joy. That makes cc not just personal, but also overwhelmingly human."

The Fall

Fall Heads Roll

Rock

Joe Tangari

For a band with such a devoted cult following, the Fall are rarely covered by other groups. It's hardly surprising, of course, given the group's general disdain for standard song structures and Mark E. Smith's general-uh disdain-uh for everything, including conventional singing. For the same reasons, it's always jarring to hear the Fall doing someone else's song. When I first heard their version of the Kinks' "Victoria", I could scarcely believe it was real, and I still don't like it. Perhaps I'm too attached to the stunning original to bother with the exponentially higher level of sarcasm Smith brings to the table. I'm not quite as attached to the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's among my favorite nuggets from the UK's late-60s psychedelic explosion, a brilliantly arranged song that married trippy lyrics and harmonies to a brawling mod rave-up. Smith and his latest lineup naturally strip away all of those elements when they tackle the song in the middle of Fall Heads Roll, their 80th or 90th album. By the time they're done with it, the poor song is lying in a little broken heap, laid out by Smith's singing-not-singing and the band's frantic evisceration of the original's complex, multi-part arrangement. It's not an improvement, but it's different, and the Fall have undeniably made it their own. I don't know if Smith intends sarcasm on "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's hard not to hear it. The guy fairly drips with it-- it's like an appendage of his body at this point, and it gets him plenty of sneering mileage on Fall Heads Roll, a grab-bag of a Fall album with brilliant highs and scattered lows. In other words, it's exactly what Fall followers are hoping for, and it continues the band's recent run of strong work, even reviving a few promising songs from the dead zone of last year's unforgivably sloppy Interim compilation. "Blindness", for example, comes back in its third incarnation. With each subsequent revision, the song has grown longer and nastier, and here, the incessant bass crunch and hovering guitar parts drip with fury. Other highlights include the buzzing synth romp "Pacifying Joint", a New Romantics-on-skid-row joint crowned with a vintage MES tantrum, delivered in a slurred anti-pop drawl. "Bo D" blazes on a mind-fuck Bo Diddley beat, but Smith seems to be ranting about Bo Derek as much as the man who gave rock'n'roll its swagger. For once, Smith's utter inscrutability comes off as more charming than threatening, and he sounds like he's having a grand old time getting cheesed off at the world throughout the record. Check his "you're always a work in progress" taunt on "Ya Wanner", which sounds almost playfully directed at himself. If the Fall make any mistakes on Fall Heads Roll, it's simply carrying on for too long. The end of the record feels disposable, with the partly acoustic "Early Days of Channel Fuhrer" providing variety but not much else, while "Breaking the Rules" bites the melody of "Walk Like a Man" for its synth part and essentially serves the same function as "Pacifying Joint", to lesser effect. Smith doesn't even seem to appear on closer "Trust in Me" (either that or he's pretending to be a bargain basement Thurston Moore), and as a result, the finale is anticlimactic. Still, overall the Fall remain, ever shockingly, in excellent form.

Artist: The Fall, Album: Fall Heads Roll, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "For a band with such a devoted cult following, the Fall are rarely covered by other groups. It's hardly surprising, of course, given the group's general disdain for standard song structures and Mark E. Smith's general-uh disdain-uh for everything, including conventional singing. For the same reasons, it's always jarring to hear the Fall doing someone else's song. When I first heard their version of the Kinks' "Victoria", I could scarcely believe it was real, and I still don't like it. Perhaps I'm too attached to the stunning original to bother with the exponentially higher level of sarcasm Smith brings to the table. I'm not quite as attached to the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's among my favorite nuggets from the UK's late-60s psychedelic explosion, a brilliantly arranged song that married trippy lyrics and harmonies to a brawling mod rave-up. Smith and his latest lineup naturally strip away all of those elements when they tackle the song in the middle of Fall Heads Roll, their 80th or 90th album. By the time they're done with it, the poor song is lying in a little broken heap, laid out by Smith's singing-not-singing and the band's frantic evisceration of the original's complex, multi-part arrangement. It's not an improvement, but it's different, and the Fall have undeniably made it their own. I don't know if Smith intends sarcasm on "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's hard not to hear it. The guy fairly drips with it-- it's like an appendage of his body at this point, and it gets him plenty of sneering mileage on Fall Heads Roll, a grab-bag of a Fall album with brilliant highs and scattered lows. In other words, it's exactly what Fall followers are hoping for, and it continues the band's recent run of strong work, even reviving a few promising songs from the dead zone of last year's unforgivably sloppy Interim compilation. "Blindness", for example, comes back in its third incarnation. With each subsequent revision, the song has grown longer and nastier, and here, the incessant bass crunch and hovering guitar parts drip with fury. Other highlights include the buzzing synth romp "Pacifying Joint", a New Romantics-on-skid-row joint crowned with a vintage MES tantrum, delivered in a slurred anti-pop drawl. "Bo D" blazes on a mind-fuck Bo Diddley beat, but Smith seems to be ranting about Bo Derek as much as the man who gave rock'n'roll its swagger. For once, Smith's utter inscrutability comes off as more charming than threatening, and he sounds like he's having a grand old time getting cheesed off at the world throughout the record. Check his "you're always a work in progress" taunt on "Ya Wanner", which sounds almost playfully directed at himself. If the Fall make any mistakes on Fall Heads Roll, it's simply carrying on for too long. The end of the record feels disposable, with the partly acoustic "Early Days of Channel Fuhrer" providing variety but not much else, while "Breaking the Rules" bites the melody of "Walk Like a Man" for its synth part and essentially serves the same function as "Pacifying Joint", to lesser effect. Smith doesn't even seem to appear on closer "Trust in Me" (either that or he's pretending to be a bargain basement Thurston Moore), and as a result, the finale is anticlimactic. Still, overall the Fall remain, ever shockingly, in excellent form."

People Get Ready

People Get Ready

Jayson Greene

Before Steven Reker and Luke Fasano met, they were making warmly inclusive, communally weird music in different groups. Reker was a dancer and a guitarist in David Byrne's touring band; Fasano was drumming for globalist art-pop giants Yeasayer. They must have sensed similar yearnings in each other, because they soon split off to form People Get Ready, an "interdisciplinary" band that accompanies their music with choreographed live dance performance. Watching this clip gives a sense of the purposefully quirky performance-art vibe they're striving for. If it veers a little too closely to the interpretive dance sequence in The Big Lebowski, it is at least unique and striking, something that might stop you in your tracks if you passed it on the street. But People Get Ready, as we have it here, is an album, one with no visual aids except whatever browser tabs you might have open. Left to vie for your attention the way all albums have to, it succeeds only fitfully. People Get Ready play jagged, melodic, technically accomplished indie rock, a kind that encourages exactly the kind of all-limbs-no-hips movement you can find at, say, about 2:01 of the above clip. The songs' itchy emotional temperament and Reker's quavering tenor call to mind Dirty Projectors, and you can also hear both of Reker and Fasano's previous projects floating through the album's 37 minutes. What you can't hear, at least not yet, is the forging of a compelling, unique voice. The album is most striking when the band members steer their brightly colored bounce into unguarded explosions. On brainy, visceral polyrhythmic workouts like "Orange Grove", where they're pummeling every hard surface you can imagine, any tension implied erupts into a dazzling electric storm. People Get Ready are masterful arrangers, filling the songs with small corners in which to get lost: I noticed the palm-muted guitar murmuring away behind the church organ and synthesizers of "Orange Grove" and couldn't stop tracking it. Produced by the composer and arranger Jherek Bischoff, People Get Ready sounds fantastic, and the members have a way with small riffs and details that act like hooks by themselves. "Middle Name" is a ballad with a pensive heart and caffeinated pulse you can hear in the nervously chittering maracas. The guitar line on "Mr. Shoulders" feels like a surf-rock riff that has been twisted around itself like a wire. People Get Ready is packed with these sorts of details, but Reker's catholic tastes and facility let the album glide around a little too smoothly without an anchor. Maybe as a dance piece, Reker and Fasano's gawky, sheepishly enthusiastic aesthetic shines through more clearly, but too much of their debut album streams by without registering as more than "pleasant." You can hear the glints of their vision in the album's smaller moments, though, and on the closing ballad "A Squandering", Reker invites us behind the looking glass, reminding us that this album is really just an excuse, and an invitation, to stand up and move: "We walked in, and they were playing/ That new record a'squandering/ We couldn't help... you know... dancing."

Artist: People Get Ready, Album: People Get Ready, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Before Steven Reker and Luke Fasano met, they were making warmly inclusive, communally weird music in different groups. Reker was a dancer and a guitarist in David Byrne's touring band; Fasano was drumming for globalist art-pop giants Yeasayer. They must have sensed similar yearnings in each other, because they soon split off to form People Get Ready, an "interdisciplinary" band that accompanies their music with choreographed live dance performance. Watching this clip gives a sense of the purposefully quirky performance-art vibe they're striving for. If it veers a little too closely to the interpretive dance sequence in The Big Lebowski, it is at least unique and striking, something that might stop you in your tracks if you passed it on the street. But People Get Ready, as we have it here, is an album, one with no visual aids except whatever browser tabs you might have open. Left to vie for your attention the way all albums have to, it succeeds only fitfully. People Get Ready play jagged, melodic, technically accomplished indie rock, a kind that encourages exactly the kind of all-limbs-no-hips movement you can find at, say, about 2:01 of the above clip. The songs' itchy emotional temperament and Reker's quavering tenor call to mind Dirty Projectors, and you can also hear both of Reker and Fasano's previous projects floating through the album's 37 minutes. What you can't hear, at least not yet, is the forging of a compelling, unique voice. The album is most striking when the band members steer their brightly colored bounce into unguarded explosions. On brainy, visceral polyrhythmic workouts like "Orange Grove", where they're pummeling every hard surface you can imagine, any tension implied erupts into a dazzling electric storm. People Get Ready are masterful arrangers, filling the songs with small corners in which to get lost: I noticed the palm-muted guitar murmuring away behind the church organ and synthesizers of "Orange Grove" and couldn't stop tracking it. Produced by the composer and arranger Jherek Bischoff, People Get Ready sounds fantastic, and the members have a way with small riffs and details that act like hooks by themselves. "Middle Name" is a ballad with a pensive heart and caffeinated pulse you can hear in the nervously chittering maracas. The guitar line on "Mr. Shoulders" feels like a surf-rock riff that has been twisted around itself like a wire. People Get Ready is packed with these sorts of details, but Reker's catholic tastes and facility let the album glide around a little too smoothly without an anchor. Maybe as a dance piece, Reker and Fasano's gawky, sheepishly enthusiastic aesthetic shines through more clearly, but too much of their debut album streams by without registering as more than "pleasant." You can hear the glints of their vision in the album's smaller moments, though, and on the closing ballad "A Squandering", Reker invites us behind the looking glass, reminding us that this album is really just an excuse, and an invitation, to stand up and move: "We walked in, and they were playing/ That new record a'squandering/ We couldn't help... you know... dancing.""

Teebs

Collections 01

Electronic

Andrew Ryce

L.A.-based artist Mtendere Mandowa has always stood out from the Brainfeeder pack of weirdo hip-hop producers: his beats are shrouded in dewy mist and subtropical condensation rather than the crunchy boom-bap of producers like Flying Lotus or Samiyam. The way he uses filters and closely clipped loops has the effect of a pleasantly smudged watercolor painting (much like those he designs himself), vague hints of otherwise implacable sounds rotating and repeating in a whimsical way. It's eminently accessible music, full of tiny "eureka" moments of subtle bliss, deft touches, and minuscule finishes so that even a two-minute sketch could feel like a whole world waiting to be dissected. Alas, it's probably that part of his sound that most works against Teebs: His debut album, Ardour, was probably one of the most pleasant things released from this particular sector last year, but it was easy for track after track of dense nature-scapes to blur together and to lose sight of Teebs' own fascinating personality in the grand scheme of faceless beauty. Part of the reason for that was Ardour's length-- at 18 tracks long, it was a hard album to digest without fatigue or boredom setting in, a record that could easily start to feel like style over substance. Whether it's a wise lesson learned or merely serendipity, Mandowa's quick successor is a 10-track, 30-minute affair and all the stronger for it. Collections 01, if you want to be nerdy about it, sits somewhere between an EP and a "mini-album," but a surprisingly cohesive statement like this exists outside the need for nit-picky classification. Teebs himself describes Collections 01 as "a side project or group of mine that just so happened to make the same exact music as I'm making now," and as bizarre a description as that is, given that the record features Rebekah Raff's harp and Brainfeeder-associated composer Austin Peralta, maybe it's justified. While the music on Collections is very identifiably Teebs, it's not merely 10 more tracks of Ardour. Whether it's the presence of collaborators with discrete roles, maturity, or merely a different headspace, the tracks here feel grounded and focused, with more to hold onto even at their most weightless.  The colorful, soft-focus smear is partly replaced with discrete space and  Take "LSP", with Peralta, a track that incorporates the same kind of meandering chimes and aquatic nature sounds as so many tracks on Ardour, but now it feels like every element has newfound purpose. On this record, dulcet keyboards paint silky melodies like brushstrokes, the drearily rustling beats are sewn into the fabric rather than tacked on, and tracks have real beginnings and endings rather than just floating by. Texturally, it's some of Mandowa's most gripping material yet, like the simultaneously slamming yet impossibly airy "Pretty Polly" or the queasily determined sub-basslines on closing duo "Red Curbs Loop" and "Yellow More New". It says something for the fleeting nature of Teebs' music that what, for most artists, would be a stop-gap release turns out to be an arresting career highlight. It might be a slight little package, but somehow it makes even more of an impact than its considerably larger sibling. Attractively structured, confident, and executed without the stoned daydreaming that defined Ardour, Collections marks a new high-water mark for a producer that was already eminently accessible. Even for those who aren't fans of the kind of rambling and tangential ADD music usually proffered by Brainfeeder, the little readjustment on Collections might be just enough to rope in former skeptics. Either way, his new record is another collection of effortlessly gorgeous ruminations on hip-hop expressed through thermal updrafts, babbling brooks, and cracking twigs: This time it just sounds like he knows his way around the forest a little better.

Artist: Teebs, Album: Collections 01, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "L.A.-based artist Mtendere Mandowa has always stood out from the Brainfeeder pack of weirdo hip-hop producers: his beats are shrouded in dewy mist and subtropical condensation rather than the crunchy boom-bap of producers like Flying Lotus or Samiyam. The way he uses filters and closely clipped loops has the effect of a pleasantly smudged watercolor painting (much like those he designs himself), vague hints of otherwise implacable sounds rotating and repeating in a whimsical way. It's eminently accessible music, full of tiny "eureka" moments of subtle bliss, deft touches, and minuscule finishes so that even a two-minute sketch could feel like a whole world waiting to be dissected. Alas, it's probably that part of his sound that most works against Teebs: His debut album, Ardour, was probably one of the most pleasant things released from this particular sector last year, but it was easy for track after track of dense nature-scapes to blur together and to lose sight of Teebs' own fascinating personality in the grand scheme of faceless beauty. Part of the reason for that was Ardour's length-- at 18 tracks long, it was a hard album to digest without fatigue or boredom setting in, a record that could easily start to feel like style over substance. Whether it's a wise lesson learned or merely serendipity, Mandowa's quick successor is a 10-track, 30-minute affair and all the stronger for it. Collections 01, if you want to be nerdy about it, sits somewhere between an EP and a "mini-album," but a surprisingly cohesive statement like this exists outside the need for nit-picky classification. Teebs himself describes Collections 01 as "a side project or group of mine that just so happened to make the same exact music as I'm making now," and as bizarre a description as that is, given that the record features Rebekah Raff's harp and Brainfeeder-associated composer Austin Peralta, maybe it's justified. While the music on Collections is very identifiably Teebs, it's not merely 10 more tracks of Ardour. Whether it's the presence of collaborators with discrete roles, maturity, or merely a different headspace, the tracks here feel grounded and focused, with more to hold onto even at their most weightless.  The colorful, soft-focus smear is partly replaced with discrete space and  Take "LSP", with Peralta, a track that incorporates the same kind of meandering chimes and aquatic nature sounds as so many tracks on Ardour, but now it feels like every element has newfound purpose. On this record, dulcet keyboards paint silky melodies like brushstrokes, the drearily rustling beats are sewn into the fabric rather than tacked on, and tracks have real beginnings and endings rather than just floating by. Texturally, it's some of Mandowa's most gripping material yet, like the simultaneously slamming yet impossibly airy "Pretty Polly" or the queasily determined sub-basslines on closing duo "Red Curbs Loop" and "Yellow More New". It says something for the fleeting nature of Teebs' music that what, for most artists, would be a stop-gap release turns out to be an arresting career highlight. It might be a slight little package, but somehow it makes even more of an impact than its considerably larger sibling. Attractively structured, confident, and executed without the stoned daydreaming that defined Ardour, Collections marks a new high-water mark for a producer that was already eminently accessible. Even for those who aren't fans of the kind of rambling and tangential ADD music usually proffered by Brainfeeder, the little readjustment on Collections might be just enough to rope in former skeptics. Either way, his new record is another collection of effortlessly gorgeous ruminations on hip-hop expressed through thermal updrafts, babbling brooks, and cracking twigs: This time it just sounds like he knows his way around the forest a little better."

Christmas Decorations

Model 91

Electronic,Rock

Chris Dahlen

People who don't like experimental albums tend to point up similar "flaws": there are no "songs", it's too minimal, the musicians don't play their instruments well, or don't do enough with them...but whether complainers come around or not, one expectation everyone should have is for that record to push your boundaries or buttons in some way. It should show you a new tactic, or a personal voice-- something to set it apart from everything you've heard before. Even with such limited criterion, there are albums that just have nothing going on. The biggest problem with Christmas Decorations' debut Model 91 isn't that it's simple or limited, but that within their constricted style, they aren't doing anything new or illuminating. Steve Silverstein (aka Madam Estrella) and Nick Forte (of Rorschach and Beautiful Skin) play what could be described as primitive pop-electronica, made with low-tech gear and chincy-sounding digital sequencers. You could as easily tag them as indie rock: they play guitar and bass, though they don't do much with their instruments. Whatever you call it, the album fails on a basic level: it never engages the listener. Christmas Decorations stick within a rigid sound world. Most of the thirteen tracks are short instrumentals-- about three minutes apiece-- built on thin effects and beats; they layer ambient waves over the music in a disinterested, "look what this effect does!" fashion. Each piece is basic and barebones, aiming for mood: some pieces loom like haunted dreams, but most are tainted by canned "spooky" guitar effects. There's no hint as to what we're supposed to be haunted by, however, or what's so haunting about this music. Without dynamics, there's no chance we'll find a particular passage any more or less affecting than another. Vocal tracks fare better, presenting skittish avant pop with goofy arrangements and nonsense lyrics. The best song, "A Random Hill", pits a British-accented lead and catchy harmonies over a melodica and samples; others, like "Lowlands" and "Hen's Teeth" suffer for their tedious attempts to wax sinister. Between the amateur vocals and skewed, deconstructed songs, you can almost trace a line to Brian Eno's 70s "pop" records, but that's just another reminder: this was done far better decades ago, when people first started taking pop apart. That those folks pushed the boundaries much farther and wrote better songs is further damnation for these young turks. The biggest disappointment isn't that the record's so primitive, derivative or simple, just that it doesn't tell us anything about the artists or their goals. We can hear the influences and the gear that they're playing around with, but we don't find out what sets Christmas Decorations apart from any other bedroom pop group. These two guys are far from novices, but there are hundreds of demos out there with far more to say, and better.

Artist: Christmas Decorations, Album: Model 91, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 2.3 Album review: "People who don't like experimental albums tend to point up similar "flaws": there are no "songs", it's too minimal, the musicians don't play their instruments well, or don't do enough with them...but whether complainers come around or not, one expectation everyone should have is for that record to push your boundaries or buttons in some way. It should show you a new tactic, or a personal voice-- something to set it apart from everything you've heard before. Even with such limited criterion, there are albums that just have nothing going on. The biggest problem with Christmas Decorations' debut Model 91 isn't that it's simple or limited, but that within their constricted style, they aren't doing anything new or illuminating. Steve Silverstein (aka Madam Estrella) and Nick Forte (of Rorschach and Beautiful Skin) play what could be described as primitive pop-electronica, made with low-tech gear and chincy-sounding digital sequencers. You could as easily tag them as indie rock: they play guitar and bass, though they don't do much with their instruments. Whatever you call it, the album fails on a basic level: it never engages the listener. Christmas Decorations stick within a rigid sound world. Most of the thirteen tracks are short instrumentals-- about three minutes apiece-- built on thin effects and beats; they layer ambient waves over the music in a disinterested, "look what this effect does!" fashion. Each piece is basic and barebones, aiming for mood: some pieces loom like haunted dreams, but most are tainted by canned "spooky" guitar effects. There's no hint as to what we're supposed to be haunted by, however, or what's so haunting about this music. Without dynamics, there's no chance we'll find a particular passage any more or less affecting than another. Vocal tracks fare better, presenting skittish avant pop with goofy arrangements and nonsense lyrics. The best song, "A Random Hill", pits a British-accented lead and catchy harmonies over a melodica and samples; others, like "Lowlands" and "Hen's Teeth" suffer for their tedious attempts to wax sinister. Between the amateur vocals and skewed, deconstructed songs, you can almost trace a line to Brian Eno's 70s "pop" records, but that's just another reminder: this was done far better decades ago, when people first started taking pop apart. That those folks pushed the boundaries much farther and wrote better songs is further damnation for these young turks. The biggest disappointment isn't that the record's so primitive, derivative or simple, just that it doesn't tell us anything about the artists or their goals. We can hear the influences and the gear that they're playing around with, but we don't find out what sets Christmas Decorations apart from any other bedroom pop group. These two guys are far from novices, but there are hundreds of demos out there with far more to say, and better."

Brendan Benson

Lapalco

Rock

Kevin Adickes

Lou Pearlman is in a world of shit. After a series of highly publicized in-court battles with the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync resulted in the legal annulment of his managerial duties, he's been forced to subsist on a disrespectfully small severance package (only one-sixth of the respective groups' entire earnings?) and a diet of "exclusive" tell-alls. But the question plaguing every pre-pubescent music lover and-- let's face it-- the whole world is: what will this self-professed 'pop guru' do next? Though his name is nowhere to be found amongst the album's succinct liner notes, it's pretty hard to ignore the argument that Brendan Benson's Lapalco could very well mark Pearlman's return to the world of image consultation and pre-packaged musical commodity. Nevermind that there's no actual evidence of any official contact between Benson and Lou (or "Big Poppa," as he's come to be known in the most elite circles of Tigerbeat fandom). All the tell-tale signs of Pearlman's influence are here, if you look hard enough. Lapalco's cover art, for instance, finds Benson dressed in prototypical thrift store attire and eating from a single-serving box of breakfast cereal; an ingenious marketing ploy that immediately establishes the album's target demographic! It almost makes one feel guilty for enjoying the disc so thoroughly. With 1996's One Mississippi, Brendan Benson crafted an impressively catchy collection of songs whose instant accessibility belied the complex arrangements that resided just beneath the obvious hooks. Pieces such as "Sittin' Pretty" and "Tea" invoked the ghosts of early R.E.M. and the Beatles while managing to elude the nauseating sense of pastiche induced by many like-minded acts who populated mid-90s alternative radio. Unfortunately, Virgin's mishandling of the album squandered whatever commercial success Benson was poised to achieve and precipitated a number of label disputes, delaying the recording of a proper follow-up for years on end. Die-hard fans-- and there actually were a handful-- wept. Luckily, their wait was not in vain, as Benson has fashioned yet another sterling pop record replete with his standard jangle-pop songs and anthemic rockers, and a smattering of pastoral psychedelia. Aside from guest production by Jason Falkner and his occasional vocal accompaniment, Brendan performs, sings, and produces every note of Lapalco, lending even the most aggressive tracks an indefinable sort of intimacy. Nowhere is this more evident than "Metarie," which features a surprisingly effective lyrical meditation on lost love while skirting an obvious structural similarity to Elton John's "Rocket Man" (of all things!). Occasionally, though, the very elements that make Benson's music endearing can, in excess, be counterproductive. "You're Quiet" which boasts the refrain, "I've been a little down on my luck/ I think you know where I'm coming from/ I need a pick-up and I don't mean truck," typifying the record's lyrical pandering and goofiness. Elsewhere, "What" strives to use the word "girl" as many times as humanly possible within a 3\xBD-minute window, which not only proves that Brendan ascribes to the musical school of thought which prizes quantity over quality, but also hints at his presumed employment by Big Poppa. But regardless of its spotty lyricism, Lapalco's intelligent and understated melodies indicate that we have a true talent on our hands-- especially on "Tiny Spark," which launches the album with an infectious Moog riff that soon blossoms into one of the most driving tracks in the man's canon. His unadulterated giddiness is certainly contagious and, when channeled correctly, makes for some surprisingly potent music. Though it's futile to predict whether or not he's capable of transcending his influences, it's comforting to know that, with rave reviews in Esquire and an endorsement from Jack White of the White Stripes, Lou Pearlman will sleep soundly tonight.

Artist: Brendan Benson, Album: Lapalco, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Lou Pearlman is in a world of shit. After a series of highly publicized in-court battles with the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync resulted in the legal annulment of his managerial duties, he's been forced to subsist on a disrespectfully small severance package (only one-sixth of the respective groups' entire earnings?) and a diet of "exclusive" tell-alls. But the question plaguing every pre-pubescent music lover and-- let's face it-- the whole world is: what will this self-professed 'pop guru' do next? Though his name is nowhere to be found amongst the album's succinct liner notes, it's pretty hard to ignore the argument that Brendan Benson's Lapalco could very well mark Pearlman's return to the world of image consultation and pre-packaged musical commodity. Nevermind that there's no actual evidence of any official contact between Benson and Lou (or "Big Poppa," as he's come to be known in the most elite circles of Tigerbeat fandom). All the tell-tale signs of Pearlman's influence are here, if you look hard enough. Lapalco's cover art, for instance, finds Benson dressed in prototypical thrift store attire and eating from a single-serving box of breakfast cereal; an ingenious marketing ploy that immediately establishes the album's target demographic! It almost makes one feel guilty for enjoying the disc so thoroughly. With 1996's One Mississippi, Brendan Benson crafted an impressively catchy collection of songs whose instant accessibility belied the complex arrangements that resided just beneath the obvious hooks. Pieces such as "Sittin' Pretty" and "Tea" invoked the ghosts of early R.E.M. and the Beatles while managing to elude the nauseating sense of pastiche induced by many like-minded acts who populated mid-90s alternative radio. Unfortunately, Virgin's mishandling of the album squandered whatever commercial success Benson was poised to achieve and precipitated a number of label disputes, delaying the recording of a proper follow-up for years on end. Die-hard fans-- and there actually were a handful-- wept. Luckily, their wait was not in vain, as Benson has fashioned yet another sterling pop record replete with his standard jangle-pop songs and anthemic rockers, and a smattering of pastoral psychedelia. Aside from guest production by Jason Falkner and his occasional vocal accompaniment, Brendan performs, sings, and produces every note of Lapalco, lending even the most aggressive tracks an indefinable sort of intimacy. Nowhere is this more evident than "Metarie," which features a surprisingly effective lyrical meditation on lost love while skirting an obvious structural similarity to Elton John's "Rocket Man" (of all things!). Occasionally, though, the very elements that make Benson's music endearing can, in excess, be counterproductive. "You're Quiet" which boasts the refrain, "I've been a little down on my luck/ I think you know where I'm coming from/ I need a pick-up and I don't mean truck," typifying the record's lyrical pandering and goofiness. Elsewhere, "What" strives to use the word "girl" as many times as humanly possible within a 3\xBD-minute window, which not only proves that Brendan ascribes to the musical school of thought which prizes quantity over quality, but also hints at his presumed employment by Big Poppa. But regardless of its spotty lyricism, Lapalco's intelligent and understated melodies indicate that we have a true talent on our hands-- especially on "Tiny Spark," which launches the album with an infectious Moog riff that soon blossoms into one of the most driving tracks in the man's canon. His unadulterated giddiness is certainly contagious and, when channeled correctly, makes for some surprisingly potent music. Though it's futile to predict whether or not he's capable of transcending his influences, it's comforting to know that, with rave reviews in Esquire and an endorsement from Jack White of the White Stripes, Lou Pearlman will sleep soundly tonight."

Superchunk

Majesty Shredding

Rock

Tom Breihan

The last time Superchunk released an album, you could've conceivably called them an emo band, or at least a proto-emo band, without starting a fight. Here's to Shutting Up came out in 2001, when bands like the Promise Ring and the Get Up Kids were indie fixtures. Those bands stole plenty of winking heartfelt whoa-oh-ohs and ragged sugar-rush tempos from Superchunk's playbook. Since then, emo has gone through at least five or six sea changes; it now sounds absolutely nothing like Superchunk. The world has changed. Superchunk haven't. Majesty Shredding isn't a reunion album, though bands break up and reunite in way less time than Superchunk took between albums. And it's not an album that Superchunk needed to make to keep their collective name out there. After all, Superchunk's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance founded Merge Records; these days, they're making that Arcade Fire and Spoon money. So for at least a few years, Superchunk have operated something like a fun hobby; the band accepts whatever shows it feels like playing, and it has no pressure to crank out another album every few years. Even though Majesty Shredding has been a long time coming, it's not some grand statement. It's not some stylistic leap forward, either; the band still sounds very much like the one who released Here's to Shutting Up in 2001, which in turn sounded very much like the band who released its self-titled debut in 1990. Instead, it sounds like McCaughan had another 11 Superchunk-sounding songs sitting around, and the band finally found time to record them. Pretty incredibly, this band has cranked out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems for two decades now, without any dip in energy level or quality control. They've made a few tweaks and improvements over the years, but they've all been in service of these scrappy, frantic singalongs. The only real new wrinkle on Majesty Shredding is McCaughan's newfound upper register; his yelp verges on Ted Leo status a few times here. But the real joy on the album lies in the little details, tiny and brilliant songwriting choices that bespeak all Superchunk's years in the game. The gorgeously liquid jangle-riff that kicks in just at the very end of "Winter Games", the whooping "yeah! yeah!"s that close out "Crossed Wires", the viola that heroically fights upstream on the excellent ballad "Fractures in Plaster"-- younger bands might be able to come up with stuff like this, but they rarely execute these tricks with this level of confidence. There's not a whole lot at stake on Majesty Shredding, but there never has been for Superchunk; their biggest anthem, after all, is a matter-of-fact rail against an annoying co-worker. Much of Majesty Shredding seems to concern the importance and difficulties inherent in maintaining a fantasy life as you get older, but it's not a morose or self-involved album. Instead, they've made a total wheelhouse record, and a very good one. The same qualities that make Majesty Shredding sound perfectly at home in Superchunk's discography also make it stand out in today's climate, where nobody really does straight-ahead wide-eyed power-punk well anymore, give or take a Surfer Blood or Japandroids. When lead Mountain Goats barker John Darnielle sings backup on one song and you don't even notice him, you're dealing with a band whose members know exactly who they are. So: A fine entry in a fine catalog. They aren't wasting that Arcade Fire money.

Artist: Superchunk, Album: Majesty Shredding, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "The last time Superchunk released an album, you could've conceivably called them an emo band, or at least a proto-emo band, without starting a fight. Here's to Shutting Up came out in 2001, when bands like the Promise Ring and the Get Up Kids were indie fixtures. Those bands stole plenty of winking heartfelt whoa-oh-ohs and ragged sugar-rush tempos from Superchunk's playbook. Since then, emo has gone through at least five or six sea changes; it now sounds absolutely nothing like Superchunk. The world has changed. Superchunk haven't. Majesty Shredding isn't a reunion album, though bands break up and reunite in way less time than Superchunk took between albums. And it's not an album that Superchunk needed to make to keep their collective name out there. After all, Superchunk's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance founded Merge Records; these days, they're making that Arcade Fire and Spoon money. So for at least a few years, Superchunk have operated something like a fun hobby; the band accepts whatever shows it feels like playing, and it has no pressure to crank out another album every few years. Even though Majesty Shredding has been a long time coming, it's not some grand statement. It's not some stylistic leap forward, either; the band still sounds very much like the one who released Here's to Shutting Up in 2001, which in turn sounded very much like the band who released its self-titled debut in 1990. Instead, it sounds like McCaughan had another 11 Superchunk-sounding songs sitting around, and the band finally found time to record them. Pretty incredibly, this band has cranked out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems for two decades now, without any dip in energy level or quality control. They've made a few tweaks and improvements over the years, but they've all been in service of these scrappy, frantic singalongs. The only real new wrinkle on Majesty Shredding is McCaughan's newfound upper register; his yelp verges on Ted Leo status a few times here. But the real joy on the album lies in the little details, tiny and brilliant songwriting choices that bespeak all Superchunk's years in the game. The gorgeously liquid jangle-riff that kicks in just at the very end of "Winter Games", the whooping "yeah! yeah!"s that close out "Crossed Wires", the viola that heroically fights upstream on the excellent ballad "Fractures in Plaster"-- younger bands might be able to come up with stuff like this, but they rarely execute these tricks with this level of confidence. There's not a whole lot at stake on Majesty Shredding, but there never has been for Superchunk; their biggest anthem, after all, is a matter-of-fact rail against an annoying co-worker. Much of Majesty Shredding seems to concern the importance and difficulties inherent in maintaining a fantasy life as you get older, but it's not a morose or self-involved album. Instead, they've made a total wheelhouse record, and a very good one. The same qualities that make Majesty Shredding sound perfectly at home in Superchunk's discography also make it stand out in today's climate, where nobody really does straight-ahead wide-eyed power-punk well anymore, give or take a Surfer Blood or Japandroids. When lead Mountain Goats barker John Darnielle sings backup on one song and you don't even notice him, you're dealing with a band whose members know exactly who they are. So: A fine entry in a fine catalog. They aren't wasting that Arcade Fire money."

Alog

Miniatures

Electronic,Jazz,Rock

Mark Richardson

At this late hour, when the clichés of music software have been completely internalized and we're satisfied with marginally fresh reconfigurations of the past, it's an accomplishment to make a record and have your audience wonder exactly what's happening and how it was put together. Norwegians Dag-Are Haugan and Espen Sommer Eide, who record together as Alog, create abstract but accessible instrumental music that neatly stitches sounds birthed inside a computer with live instruments and field recordings. Alog doesn't sound like a band, exactly, but it also feels some ways removed from the bedroom laptop. They seem to be thriving on the spaces that exist between. On 2001's Duck Rabbit, Alog folded in more beats and experimented with the repetition of techno, but on Miniatures-- their third record on Rune Grammofon-- the duo back once again explores the emotional implications of pure sound. We hear guitars, cut-up synths, indeterminate drones, drum machines, and voices probably captured in a marketplace in their native Tromsø (home of Biosphere, Röyksopp, etc.), but the tracks resist dissection, existing instead as complex interdependent fabric. Opener "Severe Punishment and Lasting Bliss", which also led off Runeology 2, one of Rune Grammofon's label compilations, now stands in my mind as a stone drone classic. The structure of the track is highly dramatic; it slowly morphs from tinny guitar distortion into the towering wall of sound of Fennesz' dreams before finishing in a lengthy swirl of dissonant strings. Highly original and utterly transfixing from the first listen, "Severe Punishment and Lasting Bliss" is a bold statement of intent that the rest of Miniatures lives up to. Quieter tracks such as "Steady Jogging of the Heart" draw power from small details, judiciously applying the techniques of laptop glitch to a carefully assembled library of sounds. The timbre of the organ chords of "Steady Jogging of the Heart" conveys easy warmth, while the unsteady pulse imparted by choppy editing suggest an undercurrent of anxiety. "Leyden Jar" digs inside the dirty cracks of music production to find the buried noises, smearing beeps, clicks and percussive scrapes between the speakers in an unpredictable pattern. When more conventional instrumentation is pushed to the fore, we get tracks like "St. Paul Sessions II", which combines the machine-steady pulse of a single acoustic guitar chord with clouds of vibraphone. Here Alog take the best ideas of Tortoise-style post-rock, strip away the layer of cerebral remove and the focus on instrumental virtuosity, and let the music drift in more emotional (even sentimental) direction. Which seems precisely what's needed. It's exciting to know that the same duo created both "St. Paul Sessions II" and "The Youth of Mysterious Conversations", which sounds like a highly abstracted cover of Derrick May's "To Be or Not to Be". Each Alog track is its own small world with its own internal logic, and Miniatures collects nine good ones without a single dud. An excellent record.

Artist: Alog, Album: Miniatures, Genre: Electronic,Jazz,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "At this late hour, when the clichés of music software have been completely internalized and we're satisfied with marginally fresh reconfigurations of the past, it's an accomplishment to make a record and have your audience wonder exactly what's happening and how it was put together. Norwegians Dag-Are Haugan and Espen Sommer Eide, who record together as Alog, create abstract but accessible instrumental music that neatly stitches sounds birthed inside a computer with live instruments and field recordings. Alog doesn't sound like a band, exactly, but it also feels some ways removed from the bedroom laptop. They seem to be thriving on the spaces that exist between. On 2001's Duck Rabbit, Alog folded in more beats and experimented with the repetition of techno, but on Miniatures-- their third record on Rune Grammofon-- the duo back once again explores the emotional implications of pure sound. We hear guitars, cut-up synths, indeterminate drones, drum machines, and voices probably captured in a marketplace in their native Tromsø (home of Biosphere, Röyksopp, etc.), but the tracks resist dissection, existing instead as complex interdependent fabric. Opener "Severe Punishment and Lasting Bliss", which also led off Runeology 2, one of Rune Grammofon's label compilations, now stands in my mind as a stone drone classic. The structure of the track is highly dramatic; it slowly morphs from tinny guitar distortion into the towering wall of sound of Fennesz' dreams before finishing in a lengthy swirl of dissonant strings. Highly original and utterly transfixing from the first listen, "Severe Punishment and Lasting Bliss" is a bold statement of intent that the rest of Miniatures lives up to. Quieter tracks such as "Steady Jogging of the Heart" draw power from small details, judiciously applying the techniques of laptop glitch to a carefully assembled library of sounds. The timbre of the organ chords of "Steady Jogging of the Heart" conveys easy warmth, while the unsteady pulse imparted by choppy editing suggest an undercurrent of anxiety. "Leyden Jar" digs inside the dirty cracks of music production to find the buried noises, smearing beeps, clicks and percussive scrapes between the speakers in an unpredictable pattern. When more conventional instrumentation is pushed to the fore, we get tracks like "St. Paul Sessions II", which combines the machine-steady pulse of a single acoustic guitar chord with clouds of vibraphone. Here Alog take the best ideas of Tortoise-style post-rock, strip away the layer of cerebral remove and the focus on instrumental virtuosity, and let the music drift in more emotional (even sentimental) direction. Which seems precisely what's needed. It's exciting to know that the same duo created both "St. Paul Sessions II" and "The Youth of Mysterious Conversations", which sounds like a highly abstracted cover of Derrick May's "To Be or Not to Be". Each Alog track is its own small world with its own internal logic, and Miniatures collects nine good ones without a single dud. An excellent record."

G.O.O.D. Music

Cruel Summer

Rap

Jayson Greene

Cruel Summer is not Kanye West's record; listening to it, I found a certain peace in reminding myself of this. Cruel Summer is a crew album, a chance for all of the rappers he's signed to his G.O.O.D. imprint during the past few years to momentarily feel like they own the place. They range from former greats like Pusha-T to half-decent punchline rappers like Big Sean to entourage bottom-feeders like CyHi the Prince, and spending a long time in their presence can feel like being trapped in a reality-TV house. Kanye drops by occasionally, but he mostly feels a million miles away. Kanye's career has been built on maniacal quality control, but Cruel Summer feels uncharacteristically disposable. Even the title is botched. The album arrives on September 18, with school in session and the season's cruelest days far behind us. This day late/dollar short feeling persists throughout. The production is often cluttered with unnecessary effects, like the vocal "whoa-oh-oh" synth pads West threw on his remix of Chief Keef's "I Don't Like" when he couldn't figure out how to improve it. Songs take ill-advised turns. After verses from Raekwon, Common, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, and CyHi the Prince are hurled at you like a handful of action figures on "The Morning", the song inexplicably changes key so that Nigerian singer D'Banj can warble in Auto-Tune. "Sin City" starts out with a generic dubstep low-end before transitioning into a mortifying slam-poetry performance by Malik Yusef. And then when that's over, who should come along next but... CyHi the Prince. Again. If Kanye had resisted the temptation to stuff Cruel Summer with his LucasArts production magic, it might have worked as a pure bid for rap radio's dead center. With "Niggas in Paris", West got closer to that center than he'd been in a while; My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, for all its accolades, struggled to find its foothold on the pop charts. There are a handful of hits here, and they range from the pretty good to the fantastic. You've probably heard them all by now, and they will outlive this comp; they are are the reason the record deserves to exist. Cruel Summer's secret MVP is Hit-Boy, the producer who brought Kanye the "Paris" beat; he shows up on with "Cold" (formerly known as "Theraflu"), a sleekly coursing West solo track in which he hashes out the increasingly silly details of his life -- his jealousy towards Kim Kardashian's 72-day husband Kris Humphries; his adventures go-karting with Polish models -- with his trademark aggrieved sense of urgency. Hit-Boy also offers up "Clique", a transfixing, Timbaland-like collection of hiccups and synth strobes. "Clique" is haughty, spotless, and coldly perfect; it sounds like bottle service. West takes the opportunity to sneer at former CIA director George Tenet's car. Apart from Hit-Boy's contributions, there are three tracks from Hudson Mohawke, the rising Glasgow producer whose compellingly fractured beats have caught the ear of hip-hop figures like Just Blaze. His contributions -- "To the World", "The One", and "Bliss", which makes use of 2009's "Ice Viper"-- don't sound like anything off of his riotous Satin Panthers EP, but they are welcome signs that Mohawke is moving into high-profile hip-hop territory. "To the World", a track featuring R. Kelly that's built off a slightly stiff drumline beat and swarms of string plucks, benefits from an animated turn from Kanye, who mangles Francis Ford Coppola's name hilariously and taunts Mitt Romney in a nagging singsong for failing to disclose his taxes. But once the early run of singles are out of the way, things start to go south. By the time you get to Kid CuDi's dribbly alt-rock solo turn "Creepers" (actual lyric: "If I had one wish, it'd be to have more wishes/ Duh... Fuck trying to make it rhyme") it seems like even the artists involved have left the room. Pusha-T huffs and snorts a lot, but drops lines like "wherever we go, we do it pronto." You'd never guess from his performance here that he was once a member of Clipse. Big Sean, who's shown flickering signs of wanting to actually rap lately, sits back and offers terrible puns on the word "ass." R&B singer Teyana Taylor comes nowhere near her work on Twisted Fantasy. It's the sense of Event, which has become as much of an art for Kanye as his music over the years, that is most blatantly missing here. The only people who seem to recognize what's at stake are the old-timers. Ma$e, of all people, shows up out of nowhere on "Higher" to lick shots at his former Bad Boy rival Loon: No one cares, but he still sounds slick. And then there's Ghostface, who roars to life at the end of "New God Flow", a track based off his own "Mighty Healthy" from 2000's classic Supreme Clientele. Ghost's appearance is an obvious prestige-casting move, but still a perfect one, and he makes the most of it, reliving his Pretty Toney days one more time. A handful of guests aside, though, none of G.O.O.D. Music's personalities do much to justify their newfound prominence. If Cruel Summer is meant to be an argument for the label's other talent, it makes a weak case.

Artist: G.O.O.D. Music, Album: Cruel Summer, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Cruel Summer is not Kanye West's record; listening to it, I found a certain peace in reminding myself of this. Cruel Summer is a crew album, a chance for all of the rappers he's signed to his G.O.O.D. imprint during the past few years to momentarily feel like they own the place. They range from former greats like Pusha-T to half-decent punchline rappers like Big Sean to entourage bottom-feeders like CyHi the Prince, and spending a long time in their presence can feel like being trapped in a reality-TV house. Kanye drops by occasionally, but he mostly feels a million miles away. Kanye's career has been built on maniacal quality control, but Cruel Summer feels uncharacteristically disposable. Even the title is botched. The album arrives on September 18, with school in session and the season's cruelest days far behind us. This day late/dollar short feeling persists throughout. The production is often cluttered with unnecessary effects, like the vocal "whoa-oh-oh" synth pads West threw on his remix of Chief Keef's "I Don't Like" when he couldn't figure out how to improve it. Songs take ill-advised turns. After verses from Raekwon, Common, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, and CyHi the Prince are hurled at you like a handful of action figures on "The Morning", the song inexplicably changes key so that Nigerian singer D'Banj can warble in Auto-Tune. "Sin City" starts out with a generic dubstep low-end before transitioning into a mortifying slam-poetry performance by Malik Yusef. And then when that's over, who should come along next but... CyHi the Prince. Again. If Kanye had resisted the temptation to stuff Cruel Summer with his LucasArts production magic, it might have worked as a pure bid for rap radio's dead center. With "Niggas in Paris", West got closer to that center than he'd been in a while; My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, for all its accolades, struggled to find its foothold on the pop charts. There are a handful of hits here, and they range from the pretty good to the fantastic. You've probably heard them all by now, and they will outlive this comp; they are are the reason the record deserves to exist. Cruel Summer's secret MVP is Hit-Boy, the producer who brought Kanye the "Paris" beat; he shows up on with "Cold" (formerly known as "Theraflu"), a sleekly coursing West solo track in which he hashes out the increasingly silly details of his life -- his jealousy towards Kim Kardashian's 72-day husband Kris Humphries; his adventures go-karting with Polish models -- with his trademark aggrieved sense of urgency. Hit-Boy also offers up "Clique", a transfixing, Timbaland-like collection of hiccups and synth strobes. "Clique" is haughty, spotless, and coldly perfect; it sounds like bottle service. West takes the opportunity to sneer at former CIA director George Tenet's car. Apart from Hit-Boy's contributions, there are three tracks from Hudson Mohawke, the rising Glasgow producer whose compellingly fractured beats have caught the ear of hip-hop figures like Just Blaze. His contributions -- "To the World", "The One", and "Bliss", which makes use of 2009's "Ice Viper"-- don't sound like anything off of his riotous Satin Panthers EP, but they are welcome signs that Mohawke is moving into high-profile hip-hop territory. "To the World", a track featuring R. Kelly that's built off a slightly stiff drumline beat and swarms of string plucks, benefits from an animated turn from Kanye, who mangles Francis Ford Coppola's name hilariously and taunts Mitt Romney in a nagging singsong for failing to disclose his taxes. But once the early run of singles are out of the way, things start to go south. By the time you get to Kid CuDi's dribbly alt-rock solo turn "Creepers" (actual lyric: "If I had one wish, it'd be to have more wishes/ Duh... Fuck trying to make it rhyme") it seems like even the artists involved have left the room. Pusha-T huffs and snorts a lot, but drops lines like "wherever we go, we do it pronto." You'd never guess from his performance here that he was once a member of Clipse. Big Sean, who's shown flickering signs of wanting to actually rap lately, sits back and offers terrible puns on the word "ass." R&B singer Teyana Taylor comes nowhere near her work on Twisted Fantasy. It's the sense of Event, which has become as much of an art for Kanye as his music over the years, that is most blatantly missing here. The only people who seem to recognize what's at stake are the old-timers. Ma$e, of all people, shows up out of nowhere on "Higher" to lick shots at his former Bad Boy rival Loon: No one cares, but he still sounds slick. And then there's Ghostface, who roars to life at the end of "New God Flow", a track based off his own "Mighty Healthy" from 2000's classic Supreme Clientele. Ghost's appearance is an obvious prestige-casting move, but still a perfect one, and he makes the most of it, reliving his Pretty Toney days one more time. A handful of guests aside, though, none of G.O.O.D. Music's personalities do much to justify their newfound prominence. If Cruel Summer is meant to be an argument for the label's other talent, it makes a weak case."

Eluvium

Nightmare Ending

Electronic

Brian Howe

Ambient music has plenty of stargazers, but not many stars. There are so many people working in subtly different but broadly similar styles, and so much of their music is less keen to develop the individual persona than to dissolve it in a universalist hum. One exception is Matthew Cooper, who has spent the past decade becoming a touchstone for contemporary indie ambient music. As Eluvium, Cooper has staked out an ambient brand that blends piano-playing in the styles of classical minimalism and French Impressionism with dreamy electronics and guitar drones derived from IDM and shoegaze. It should not diminish his talent as an arranger to hazard that his centralizing influence probably rests on his impulse for accessibility above intricacy. Cooper's music can be light or dark, vehement or mild, romantic or hopeless, but it is always shaped into emotionally lucid, easily habitable spaces. Still, Cooper's stature is surprising when you consider that he hasn't released a great record since 2007. Copia was the highlight because it combined modes that were isolated on his prior releases-- from the Satie-like piano jingles of An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death to the grainy, radiant drones of Talk Amongst the Trees-- with expanded acoustic instrumentation, resulting in a majestic statement that sounded like the work of an artistic thinker rather than a fine technician of incidental sound. Copia at last meets its match in Nightmare Ending, Eluvium’s commanding new double LP. That it was supposed to be Copia's immediate successor might make you slap your forehead over Cooper's five years of mixed successes: the low-impact ambient techno of his Martin Eden alias, the tepid vocal-centric pop of Similes, and the dark, noisy Static Nocturne (the best of the bunch). But perhaps Cooper couldn't finish Nightmare Ending until he repeated the process that produced Copia, gathering new fuel for this bonfire of an album. The bided time pays off in what feels like a career-spanning best-of that happens to contain all new music. Alternately delicate and deluging, the 80-plus minutes of music that compose Nightmare Ending are wrought together with a heft and thrust that banish the aftertaste of Cooper's most recent EPs, which collected leftover dregs from Similes. This tremendous collection holds electronics-encased piano themes (e.g. the breathtaking dawn of "Don’t Get Any Closer" and the Harold Budd-like "Covered in Writing"), rich orchestral fogs that recall Copia ("Warm"and "Unknown Variation"), and rhythmically roiling dark clouds resembling Static Nocturne ("By the Rails", "Envenom Mettle"). Elegant little solo piano compositions, insistent with nostalgic repetitions, periodically surface through the heavy drapings of texture and harmony, proving refreshing for it. Cooper even redeems the ambient pop that derailed him on Similes by roping in a ringer, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, to sing on the tender closer "Happiness". Cooper reportedly first conceived of Nightmare Ending as "a way of helping loosen his self-imposed ideals of perfection," which provides a clue as to why the record makes such an impact. Cooper has never made anything terrible, but the greatest danger to which his music succumbs is to be too perfect, too placid and undisturbed, too perfunctorily lovely and sad. Nightmare Ending, on the other hand, is always bursting out through its own imperfections and impulsive gestures, with a wide emotional spectrum pumped full of fresh life from when Cooper returned to finish it years later. It's a long glorious exhalation of energies not actually dissipated, as it seemed for a while, but only multiplying in force under suppression.

Artist: Eluvium, Album: Nightmare Ending, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Ambient music has plenty of stargazers, but not many stars. There are so many people working in subtly different but broadly similar styles, and so much of their music is less keen to develop the individual persona than to dissolve it in a universalist hum. One exception is Matthew Cooper, who has spent the past decade becoming a touchstone for contemporary indie ambient music. As Eluvium, Cooper has staked out an ambient brand that blends piano-playing in the styles of classical minimalism and French Impressionism with dreamy electronics and guitar drones derived from IDM and shoegaze. It should not diminish his talent as an arranger to hazard that his centralizing influence probably rests on his impulse for accessibility above intricacy. Cooper's music can be light or dark, vehement or mild, romantic or hopeless, but it is always shaped into emotionally lucid, easily habitable spaces. Still, Cooper's stature is surprising when you consider that he hasn't released a great record since 2007. Copia was the highlight because it combined modes that were isolated on his prior releases-- from the Satie-like piano jingles of An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death to the grainy, radiant drones of Talk Amongst the Trees-- with expanded acoustic instrumentation, resulting in a majestic statement that sounded like the work of an artistic thinker rather than a fine technician of incidental sound. Copia at last meets its match in Nightmare Ending, Eluvium’s commanding new double LP. That it was supposed to be Copia's immediate successor might make you slap your forehead over Cooper's five years of mixed successes: the low-impact ambient techno of his Martin Eden alias, the tepid vocal-centric pop of Similes, and the dark, noisy Static Nocturne (the best of the bunch). But perhaps Cooper couldn't finish Nightmare Ending until he repeated the process that produced Copia, gathering new fuel for this bonfire of an album. The bided time pays off in what feels like a career-spanning best-of that happens to contain all new music. Alternately delicate and deluging, the 80-plus minutes of music that compose Nightmare Ending are wrought together with a heft and thrust that banish the aftertaste of Cooper's most recent EPs, which collected leftover dregs from Similes. This tremendous collection holds electronics-encased piano themes (e.g. the breathtaking dawn of "Don’t Get Any Closer" and the Harold Budd-like "Covered in Writing"), rich orchestral fogs that recall Copia ("Warm"and "Unknown Variation"), and rhythmically roiling dark clouds resembling Static Nocturne ("By the Rails", "Envenom Mettle"). Elegant little solo piano compositions, insistent with nostalgic repetitions, periodically surface through the heavy drapings of texture and harmony, proving refreshing for it. Cooper even redeems the ambient pop that derailed him on Similes by roping in a ringer, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, to sing on the tender closer "Happiness". Cooper reportedly first conceived of Nightmare Ending as "a way of helping loosen his self-imposed ideals of perfection," which provides a clue as to why the record makes such an impact. Cooper has never made anything terrible, but the greatest danger to which his music succumbs is to be too perfect, too placid and undisturbed, too perfunctorily lovely and sad. Nightmare Ending, on the other hand, is always bursting out through its own imperfections and impulsive gestures, with a wide emotional spectrum pumped full of fresh life from when Cooper returned to finish it years later. It's a long glorious exhalation of energies not actually dissipated, as it seemed for a while, but only multiplying in force under suppression."

King L

Showtime

Rap

David Drake

He's only in his mid-20s and is just now emerging on the national stage, thanks in part to a groundswell of Chicago-based street-oriented hip hop. But relative to other stars in what's become known as the drill scene, King Louie could be described as a vet. The recent Sony/Epic signee has recorded a series of mixtapes since his 2008 mixtape debut, Boss Shit. At the end of last year, he dropped two compilations intended to get new listeners up to speed; each was entitled Man Up Band Up, a phrase that Louie claims he invented. As it's been since the days of Rakim, flipping a rarely heard phrase into viral lingo is a key part of the job description for the regionally successful rapper, and in those terms, King L remains one of the best. His latest mixtape, Showtime, could use some tighter quality control and suffers from a few production missteps, but its diversity of musical approaches, when combined with Louie's sui generis rap style, give a sense of real possibility. Much like mixtape-era Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane, Louie is the rare rapper whose flood-the-market distribution method encourages and rewards binge listening. And much like Gucci, Louie's lines are funnier than they might initially be given credit for, all densely packed jokes and knowing ironies hidden by a straight-faced ruthlessness that effortlessly conveys street edge without the appearance of effort. He's referred to the rapping on his debut as the "old flow." His new approach, which he's been working on over the course of the last two years, will base an entire song upon a particular cadence, with each line building into a hypnotic repeated pattern. It's a composition strategy that gives each verse its own cyclical logic. One of the reasons "Bars", from this year's The Motion Picture mixtape, has become such a fan favorite (at shows in Chicago you can watch friendly crowds recite this chorus-free song line-for-line) is that it not only epitomizes, but foregrounds Louie's unique, pattern-based rap style. The best example on Showtime is "On Da Road", which does include a chorus, albeit one that builds upon the same rhyme structure as the verses. "On Da Road" also highlights Louie's sardonic lyrical style, as the rapper-- no stranger to gun talk or profanity-- wraps up one verse: "Irene, plus syrup/ New p's, mustard/ I'm a bad muther-cuss word." If this discussion about patterns and cadences sounds disenchanting for fans of street rap putting a premium on so-called ignorance, it misses the key tension that makes rappers like Louie so interesting: In an era where flooding the market is your main strategy, how do you keep the music novel without burning all your creative energy? Louie's verses aren't interesting because of their intricacy, but because these kinds of rhythmic and lyrical games serve a function: the possibility of endless variety, running the gamut between predictable and unpredictable, and seeing how far he can push the boundaries of what makes rap interesting without losing his audience. Of course, these kinds of cerebral exercises are worthwhile only when the songs are there too. Unlike Motion Picture's less consistent selection (that tape was a compilation of guest verses and collaborations, primarily, along with two excellent singles), Showtime is a diverse tape with a core of very strong tracks. C-Sick, one of the most promising producers working behind Louie and the composer of his current street single "Val Venis", contributes a title track, which has a screaming stratospheric sample in an AraabMuzik style. The Million $ Mano-produced "Full of Dat Weed" samples Young Bleed's signature anthem to great effect. "Numbers" finds Fredo Santana serving as the perfect gritty hook man while the production's twisting synthesizers give the track a unusually rugged cinematic ambiance. Future has already proven that the emotional potential of autotune is far from D.O.A., but there's something about the rugged survivalist anthem "Hitta Shit", a collaboration with Shorty K, that has a particular resonance, effortlessly capturing a the feel of reckless, damaged fatalism in song. While its high points are some of the most exciting rap currently being made, the tape overall could use some quality control; "MUBU Gang" has an odd dissonance that doesn't quite cohere, and the chainsaw production on "It's Like That" is sonically exciting the first time you hear it, and less so as the novelty wears off. Even on these tracks, Louie remains a consistent lyricist, new Chicago's deadpan class clown: "Shoot the gun sideways like Dub C on Friday/ I know I really hit him cuz his funeral on Friday." In a city with a high murder rate, this might feel like a callous trivialization, but in Louie's music, it almost seems to operate as a therapeutic form of gallows humor (or in his life, for that matter-- one of his close friends was killed earlier this year). Showtime isn't the home run some of his fans may have been waiting for, but its genuine diversity and ambition has a something-for-everyone feel that feels like a major step forward after spending most of late 2011 and early 2012 without much music in circulation.

Artist: King L, Album: Showtime, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "He's only in his mid-20s and is just now emerging on the national stage, thanks in part to a groundswell of Chicago-based street-oriented hip hop. But relative to other stars in what's become known as the drill scene, King Louie could be described as a vet. The recent Sony/Epic signee has recorded a series of mixtapes since his 2008 mixtape debut, Boss Shit. At the end of last year, he dropped two compilations intended to get new listeners up to speed; each was entitled Man Up Band Up, a phrase that Louie claims he invented. As it's been since the days of Rakim, flipping a rarely heard phrase into viral lingo is a key part of the job description for the regionally successful rapper, and in those terms, King L remains one of the best. His latest mixtape, Showtime, could use some tighter quality control and suffers from a few production missteps, but its diversity of musical approaches, when combined with Louie's sui generis rap style, give a sense of real possibility. Much like mixtape-era Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane, Louie is the rare rapper whose flood-the-market distribution method encourages and rewards binge listening. And much like Gucci, Louie's lines are funnier than they might initially be given credit for, all densely packed jokes and knowing ironies hidden by a straight-faced ruthlessness that effortlessly conveys street edge without the appearance of effort. He's referred to the rapping on his debut as the "old flow." His new approach, which he's been working on over the course of the last two years, will base an entire song upon a particular cadence, with each line building into a hypnotic repeated pattern. It's a composition strategy that gives each verse its own cyclical logic. One of the reasons "Bars", from this year's The Motion Picture mixtape, has become such a fan favorite (at shows in Chicago you can watch friendly crowds recite this chorus-free song line-for-line) is that it not only epitomizes, but foregrounds Louie's unique, pattern-based rap style. The best example on Showtime is "On Da Road", which does include a chorus, albeit one that builds upon the same rhyme structure as the verses. "On Da Road" also highlights Louie's sardonic lyrical style, as the rapper-- no stranger to gun talk or profanity-- wraps up one verse: "Irene, plus syrup/ New p's, mustard/ I'm a bad muther-cuss word." If this discussion about patterns and cadences sounds disenchanting for fans of street rap putting a premium on so-called ignorance, it misses the key tension that makes rappers like Louie so interesting: In an era where flooding the market is your main strategy, how do you keep the music novel without burning all your creative energy? Louie's verses aren't interesting because of their intricacy, but because these kinds of rhythmic and lyrical games serve a function: the possibility of endless variety, running the gamut between predictable and unpredictable, and seeing how far he can push the boundaries of what makes rap interesting without losing his audience. Of course, these kinds of cerebral exercises are worthwhile only when the songs are there too. Unlike Motion Picture's less consistent selection (that tape was a compilation of guest verses and collaborations, primarily, along with two excellent singles), Showtime is a diverse tape with a core of very strong tracks. C-Sick, one of the most promising producers working behind Louie and the composer of his current street single "Val Venis", contributes a title track, which has a screaming stratospheric sample in an AraabMuzik style. The Million $ Mano-produced "Full of Dat Weed" samples Young Bleed's signature anthem to great effect. "Numbers" finds Fredo Santana serving as the perfect gritty hook man while the production's twisting synthesizers give the track a unusually rugged cinematic ambiance. Future has already proven that the emotional potential of autotune is far from D.O.A., but there's something about the rugged survivalist anthem "Hitta Shit", a collaboration with Shorty K, that has a particular resonance, effortlessly capturing a the feel of reckless, damaged fatalism in song. While its high points are some of the most exciting rap currently being made, the tape overall could use some quality control; "MUBU Gang" has an odd dissonance that doesn't quite cohere, and the chainsaw production on "It's Like That" is sonically exciting the first time you hear it, and less so as the novelty wears off. Even on these tracks, Louie remains a consistent lyricist, new Chicago's deadpan class clown: "Shoot the gun sideways like Dub C on Friday/ I know I really hit him cuz his funeral on Friday." In a city with a high murder rate, this might feel like a callous trivialization, but in Louie's music, it almost seems to operate as a therapeutic form of gallows humor (or in his life, for that matter-- one of his close friends was killed earlier this year). Showtime isn't the home run some of his fans may have been waiting for, but its genuine diversity and ambition has a something-for-everyone feel that feels like a major step forward after spending most of late 2011 and early 2012 without much music in circulation."

Spraynard

Mable

Rock

Zoe Camp

Pop punk exists to voice a narrow set of emotions, and per the Descendents, it's never supposed to "grow up." Still, you can move the furniture around a little, make some tweaks here and there. Spraynard's third album Mable does away with the sophomoric song titles ("Internet May Mays", "Are You Ladies Familiar with the Work of Zach and Cody"), paper-thin mixing, and pitchy vocals of past releases for a buttoned-up (but nonetheless boisterous) sound. With Mike Bardzik —a musician/producer known for his work with the Casualties and Everyone Everywhere —manning the boards, Spraynard’s punkish project has graduated from bedrooms and basements to a bigger stage. Lead singer Pat Graham is much more confident in his ability to hold a tune this time around: His nasally tenor is more grounded and melodically consistent, even on shoutier tracks like "Bench". As with peers such as Modern Baseball and Algernon Cadwallader, Spraynard cater to the awkward ones, the losers; as the album’s opening line puts it, boldly and matter-of-factly: "I am every person that you’ve ever ignored/ I am the flaming bag of dog shit on your porch." Embedded as nostalgic groupthink and suburban malaise may be within the modern pop-punk blueprint, Spraynard's sonic and lyrical concerns are less successful when they toe the tropes. "Lost Boys" is the perfunctory nihilistic ditty about "fuck[ing] up just for the hell of it," "Pond" the romanticized portrait of a hometown haunt. As with Modern Baseball’s You’re Gonna Miss It All and Man Overboard's Real Talk, (ostensibly) female subjects are recurrently portrayed as thorny, shallow subjects oblivious to the pain they inflict. "I asked you to hang/ You just looked away," Graham whines on "Out of Body", "I’ve got nothing to say/ I think I want to die." Heartbreak and social rejection are two of pop punk's lyrical cornerstones, sure, but lyrics like the aforementioned couplet—or "Medicine"'s awkward likening of a lover to sleeping pills—tread dangerously close to self-pitying excess. Graham ultimately spends more time looking inward than outward on Mable*,* and it’s these reflections that constitute its crux, as well as its biggest source of interest. On cuts like "Buried", the warm guitars, "woah oh" choruses, and peppy rhythms obfuscate suffocating feelings of agoraphobia and anxiety. "Pond" takes a Sisyphean glance into the mirror—"I hate my own body, but I am fucking lazy/ I sit here wanting change but just keep doing the damn thing"—only to shrug it off with a silver-lined retort: "What’s the use in trying to survive if we don’t do what makes us feel alive?" There are a few melodramatic stumbling blocks, and some painfully awkward moments, but melodrama and awkwardness sort of come with the anthemic-pop-punk territory. Spraynard serve up endearing honesty within the crucible of FM-friendly pop punk, and their music is better suited for long summer drives than late-night mope sessions; it’s introspective, but also accessible. Mable might not be a knock out of the park—"Bench" sounds like lukewarm Weezer, and the five-minute "Out of Body" seems out of place—but it might be one the catchiest sets of pessimist punk songs since Fireworks’ Oh, Common Life.

Artist: Spraynard, Album: Mable, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Pop punk exists to voice a narrow set of emotions, and per the Descendents, it's never supposed to "grow up." Still, you can move the furniture around a little, make some tweaks here and there. Spraynard's third album Mable does away with the sophomoric song titles ("Internet May Mays", "Are You Ladies Familiar with the Work of Zach and Cody"), paper-thin mixing, and pitchy vocals of past releases for a buttoned-up (but nonetheless boisterous) sound. With Mike Bardzik —a musician/producer known for his work with the Casualties and Everyone Everywhere —manning the boards, Spraynard’s punkish project has graduated from bedrooms and basements to a bigger stage. Lead singer Pat Graham is much more confident in his ability to hold a tune this time around: His nasally tenor is more grounded and melodically consistent, even on shoutier tracks like "Bench". As with peers such as Modern Baseball and Algernon Cadwallader, Spraynard cater to the awkward ones, the losers; as the album’s opening line puts it, boldly and matter-of-factly: "I am every person that you’ve ever ignored/ I am the flaming bag of dog shit on your porch." Embedded as nostalgic groupthink and suburban malaise may be within the modern pop-punk blueprint, Spraynard's sonic and lyrical concerns are less successful when they toe the tropes. "Lost Boys" is the perfunctory nihilistic ditty about "fuck[ing] up just for the hell of it," "Pond" the romanticized portrait of a hometown haunt. As with Modern Baseball’s You’re Gonna Miss It All and Man Overboard's Real Talk, (ostensibly) female subjects are recurrently portrayed as thorny, shallow subjects oblivious to the pain they inflict. "I asked you to hang/ You just looked away," Graham whines on "Out of Body", "I’ve got nothing to say/ I think I want to die." Heartbreak and social rejection are two of pop punk's lyrical cornerstones, sure, but lyrics like the aforementioned couplet—or "Medicine"'s awkward likening of a lover to sleeping pills—tread dangerously close to self-pitying excess. Graham ultimately spends more time looking inward than outward on Mable*,* and it’s these reflections that constitute its crux, as well as its biggest source of interest. On cuts like "Buried", the warm guitars, "woah oh" choruses, and peppy rhythms obfuscate suffocating feelings of agoraphobia and anxiety. "Pond" takes a Sisyphean glance into the mirror—"I hate my own body, but I am fucking lazy/ I sit here wanting change but just keep doing the damn thing"—only to shrug it off with a silver-lined retort: "What’s the use in trying to survive if we don’t do what makes us feel alive?" There are a few melodramatic stumbling blocks, and some painfully awkward moments, but melodrama and awkwardness sort of come with the anthemic-pop-punk territory. Spraynard serve up endearing honesty within the crucible of FM-friendly pop punk, and their music is better suited for long summer drives than late-night mope sessions; it’s introspective, but also accessible. Mable might not be a knock out of the park—"Bench" sounds like lukewarm Weezer, and the five-minute "Out of Body" seems out of place—but it might be one the catchiest sets of pessimist punk songs since Fireworks’ Oh, Common Life."

Chris Watson

Locations, Processed

Daniel Martin-McCormick

The ache of memory throbs at the core of Chris Watson’s immaculate field recordings. The former Cabaret Voltaire member has become one of the world’s most revered audio documentarians. He has taken listeners into the depths of an Icelandic glacier, up close with the cavernous purr of a leopard in the wild, and across Mexico on a now-defunct railroad. Technically exacting though it may be, Watson’s work is never merely about capturing a sound for posterity’s sake. Watson tries to draw out something more ephemeral: “Events could haunt spaces,” he said in an interview last year. “I became convinced that some of the places I was going to embodied a spirit from another time. I was interested to know if you could soak up, absorb, that sonic environment through sound recordings.” This is no simple task, and Watson’s approach is, for the most part, to get out of the way and let the spaces do the talking. On Locations, Processed, his new LP for Moog Recordings Library, he set up shop in New York City. The results were reassembled at Moog Sound Lab UK, the modular studio built around the 2014 reissue of the synthesizer manufacturer’s legendary behemoth, the System 55. For a generation or three, the Moog name will instantly conjure up proggy squiggles and Switched on Bach, but there’s not a single synth tone to be found here. The short LP is instead an immersive journey through reverberant halls and clanging streets, punctuated by snatches of quotidian conversation and startling intrusions. Watson hasn’t always been shy about tweaking and layering his source recordings to dramatic effect, but Locations, Processed feels comparatively raw. It’s a record that requires a new kind of listening; you can’t take this material head on. Face the sounds directly and they can appear blunt, even boring. But sit back and relax your ears, and they assume an eerie, subliminal quality. “Room 343” compresses air into a molasses-thick ooze topped with a haunting whistle. The sound of passing traffic merges with ambient white noise to simulate deep breathing, while voices and an errant car horn slip into the mix with an elegance that feels planned. “Grand Central Terminal” could be recorded from inside a conch shell, so intense is its roar. The entire A-side drifts through similarly heavy, hissing spaces, closing on the ominous “Central Park.” In its second half, Locations, Processed goes outside. “Times Square” breaks the ice with a brief conversation about apartment hunting before becoming engulfed by atomized bits of dialogue, laughter, and industrial sounds. Undulating low tones, perhaps from air traffic overhead, give the piece an unsettled mood. When sub-bass from a passing car and piercing sirens arrives, two and a half minutes in, the moment has all the power of a dance-music drop. “Broad Channel” clangs and stutters as the sounds of slamming doors and departing trains thud with combative ferocity. It’s barely a minute long and acts like an invigorating shot of espresso during a long, dreamy Tarkovsky film. There are antecedents to Watson’s work. Brian Eno used frog and insect samples on Ambient 4: On Land, an exploration of England’s haunting landscapes that prefigured Watson’s mystical interrogations. Irv Teibel’s Environments series presented carefully edited recreations of natural phenomena. But Watson seems to exist in his own lane. His pieces hover in a tantalizing region between composition and chance. He cannot control who walks by his microphone, but he is interested in drawing our attention to something that goes beyond mere happenstance. New York is often described in kinetic or grandiose terms: bustling, overwhelming, larger than life. Watson hears something else, something deafening yet distant, filled with people yet weirdly vacant. Locations, Processed manages the impossible: Amid a deluge of energy, Watson records the empty space that surrounds the people who fill it.

Artist: Chris Watson, Album: Locations, Processed, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "The ache of memory throbs at the core of Chris Watson’s immaculate field recordings. The former Cabaret Voltaire member has become one of the world’s most revered audio documentarians. He has taken listeners into the depths of an Icelandic glacier, up close with the cavernous purr of a leopard in the wild, and across Mexico on a now-defunct railroad. Technically exacting though it may be, Watson’s work is never merely about capturing a sound for posterity’s sake. Watson tries to draw out something more ephemeral: “Events could haunt spaces,” he said in an interview last year. “I became convinced that some of the places I was going to embodied a spirit from another time. I was interested to know if you could soak up, absorb, that sonic environment through sound recordings.” This is no simple task, and Watson’s approach is, for the most part, to get out of the way and let the spaces do the talking. On Locations, Processed, his new LP for Moog Recordings Library, he set up shop in New York City. The results were reassembled at Moog Sound Lab UK, the modular studio built around the 2014 reissue of the synthesizer manufacturer’s legendary behemoth, the System 55. For a generation or three, the Moog name will instantly conjure up proggy squiggles and Switched on Bach, but there’s not a single synth tone to be found here. The short LP is instead an immersive journey through reverberant halls and clanging streets, punctuated by snatches of quotidian conversation and startling intrusions. Watson hasn’t always been shy about tweaking and layering his source recordings to dramatic effect, but Locations, Processed feels comparatively raw. It’s a record that requires a new kind of listening; you can’t take this material head on. Face the sounds directly and they can appear blunt, even boring. But sit back and relax your ears, and they assume an eerie, subliminal quality. “Room 343” compresses air into a molasses-thick ooze topped with a haunting whistle. The sound of passing traffic merges with ambient white noise to simulate deep breathing, while voices and an errant car horn slip into the mix with an elegance that feels planned. “Grand Central Terminal” could be recorded from inside a conch shell, so intense is its roar. The entire A-side drifts through similarly heavy, hissing spaces, closing on the ominous “Central Park.” In its second half, Locations, Processed goes outside. “Times Square” breaks the ice with a brief conversation about apartment hunting before becoming engulfed by atomized bits of dialogue, laughter, and industrial sounds. Undulating low tones, perhaps from air traffic overhead, give the piece an unsettled mood. When sub-bass from a passing car and piercing sirens arrives, two and a half minutes in, the moment has all the power of a dance-music drop. “Broad Channel” clangs and stutters as the sounds of slamming doors and departing trains thud with combative ferocity. It’s barely a minute long and acts like an invigorating shot of espresso during a long, dreamy Tarkovsky film. There are antecedents to Watson’s work. Brian Eno used frog and insect samples on Ambient 4: On Land, an exploration of England’s haunting landscapes that prefigured Watson’s mystical interrogations. Irv Teibel’s Environments series presented carefully edited recreations of natural phenomena. But Watson seems to exist in his own lane. His pieces hover in a tantalizing region between composition and chance. He cannot control who walks by his microphone, but he is interested in drawing our attention to something that goes beyond mere happenstance. New York is often described in kinetic or grandiose terms: bustling, overwhelming, larger than life. Watson hears something else, something deafening yet distant, filled with people yet weirdly vacant. Locations, Processed manages the impossible: Amid a deluge of energy, Watson records the empty space that surrounds the people who fill it."

Marianne Faithfull

Negative Capability

Rock

Erin Osmon

Near the start of Marianne Faithfull’s 21st studio album, Negative Capability, the legendary singer beckons the audience toward her. “Gather ’round closely/Take in my words,” she seems to say above gentle acoustic guitar and sumptuous piano. Applying classic literature to song with her poet’s pen, this 11-track record illuminates her most personal fears and desires with an intimacy she’s never before offered. From teenage British pop star to half of a rock’n’roll power couple, from junkie tragedy to elder stateswoman, Faithfull reopens old wounds and offers poignant meditations on loneliness, love, death, and regret here. “Everything passes/Everything changes/There’s no way to stay the same,” she concedes on “No Moon in Paris.” There’s been little sense to this life of Faithfull’s, but it’s been one hell of a ride, as documented on these unapologetically vulnerable, contemplative songs. In centralizing universal trauma, Faithfull illuminates our interconnectedness. Musicians all too familiar with these themes animate her stirring confessions. Nick Cave co-wrote “The Gypsy Faerie Queen,” and his piano strokes, rhythmic phrasing, and sonorous backing vocals anchor Faithfull’s cragged singing. Through the character Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Faithfull describes a life lived in pursuit of a mystical faerie queen. Once a wandering force who healed the earth and its creatures, she’s now a wise and creaky figure who walks with a staff, an image that echoes Faithfull’s cover portrait here. Faithfull subverts the endless youth cliché, though, examining how silence and invisibility cloak even the most sovereign in their agedness, and how the muse endures even in a feeble form. “I only listen to her sing/But I never hear her talking anymore/Though once she did,” she sings of this spirit and, by extension, herself. Veteran PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis and Bad Seed Warren Ellis produced Negative Capability, shaping the living-room quality of these performances with help from a sterling crew of British songwriters and instrumentalists. Their acoustic guitar, organ, strings, and percussion feel so close, you’ll want to reach out and touch them. In the Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis adds a meditative water energy to Cave’s fire; that relationship extends here in the subtle tenderness he adds to Faithfull’s wishes and laments. On “Born to Live,” a tribute to her late friend, the actress Anita Pallenberg, his alto flute is a gorgeous bridge between despair and hope, mirroring the path of mourning. His signature viola ebbs and flows beneath “No Moon in Paris,” and it’s the graceful kite on which this re-imagining of her 1964 hit, “As Tears Go By,” flies. That interpretation is one of three such covers here, and it’s a poignant full-circle reflection. There’s palpable truth in the 71-year-old Faithfull memorializing a lonely moment in a woman’s life, sitting alone watching children play, knowing those carefree days are numbered. It rang false when she was 17, at the edge of adulthood. She likewise tempers the ragged guitar and caterwauling tone of Bob Dylan during “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” with glacial chanting and symphonic accoutrements. Meanwhile, this version of “Witches’ Song,” recast from her 1979 comeback, Broken English, softens the original’s edges with warm viola and twinkling Rhodes. It becomes a familial standard, sung around a fire with loved ones. “Remember, death is far away, and life is sweet” feels less like an aspiration now, more a matter of course. Where much of the album is cloaked in these hushed tones, Faithfull’s anger is unmistakable for the blazing “They Come at Night,” an indictment of the international turmoil that produces terrorism. “Their sins come home to haunt us/From the wrong side of the gun,” she snarls. Examining your life without fear of judgement by those less gnarled by wrong turns, self-doubt, and loneliness is a colossal task; doing so through the physical pains of advanced age, broken bones, botched surgeries, and nagging arthritis is rare. Faithfull channels her body and mind’s ache into an album that’s her best and most honest work since Broken English. With Negative Capability, she reinforces our links by exposing her own broken places.

Artist: Marianne Faithfull, Album: Negative Capability, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Near the start of Marianne Faithfull’s 21st studio album, Negative Capability, the legendary singer beckons the audience toward her. “Gather ’round closely/Take in my words,” she seems to say above gentle acoustic guitar and sumptuous piano. Applying classic literature to song with her poet’s pen, this 11-track record illuminates her most personal fears and desires with an intimacy she’s never before offered. From teenage British pop star to half of a rock’n’roll power couple, from junkie tragedy to elder stateswoman, Faithfull reopens old wounds and offers poignant meditations on loneliness, love, death, and regret here. “Everything passes/Everything changes/There’s no way to stay the same,” she concedes on “No Moon in Paris.” There’s been little sense to this life of Faithfull’s, but it’s been one hell of a ride, as documented on these unapologetically vulnerable, contemplative songs. In centralizing universal trauma, Faithfull illuminates our interconnectedness. Musicians all too familiar with these themes animate her stirring confessions. Nick Cave co-wrote “The Gypsy Faerie Queen,” and his piano strokes, rhythmic phrasing, and sonorous backing vocals anchor Faithfull’s cragged singing. Through the character Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Faithfull describes a life lived in pursuit of a mystical faerie queen. Once a wandering force who healed the earth and its creatures, she’s now a wise and creaky figure who walks with a staff, an image that echoes Faithfull’s cover portrait here. Faithfull subverts the endless youth cliché, though, examining how silence and invisibility cloak even the most sovereign in their agedness, and how the muse endures even in a feeble form. “I only listen to her sing/But I never hear her talking anymore/Though once she did,” she sings of this spirit and, by extension, herself. Veteran PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis and Bad Seed Warren Ellis produced Negative Capability, shaping the living-room quality of these performances with help from a sterling crew of British songwriters and instrumentalists. Their acoustic guitar, organ, strings, and percussion feel so close, you’ll want to reach out and touch them. In the Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis adds a meditative water energy to Cave’s fire; that relationship extends here in the subtle tenderness he adds to Faithfull’s wishes and laments. On “Born to Live,” a tribute to her late friend, the actress Anita Pallenberg, his alto flute is a gorgeous bridge between despair and hope, mirroring the path of mourning. His signature viola ebbs and flows beneath “No Moon in Paris,” and it’s the graceful kite on which this re-imagining of her 1964 hit, “As Tears Go By,” flies. That interpretation is one of three such covers here, and it’s a poignant full-circle reflection. There’s palpable truth in the 71-year-old Faithfull memorializing a lonely moment in a woman’s life, sitting alone watching children play, knowing those carefree days are numbered. It rang false when she was 17, at the edge of adulthood. She likewise tempers the ragged guitar and caterwauling tone of Bob Dylan during “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” with glacial chanting and symphonic accoutrements. Meanwhile, this version of “Witches’ Song,” recast from her 1979 comeback, Broken English, softens the original’s edges with warm viola and twinkling Rhodes. It becomes a familial standard, sung around a fire with loved ones. “Remember, death is far away, and life is sweet” feels less like an aspiration now, more a matter of course. Where much of the album is cloaked in these hushed tones, Faithfull’s anger is unmistakable for the blazing “They Come at Night,” an indictment of the international turmoil that produces terrorism. “Their sins come home to haunt us/From the wrong side of the gun,” she snarls. Examining your life without fear of judgement by those less gnarled by wrong turns, self-doubt, and loneliness is a colossal task; doing so through the physical pains of advanced age, broken bones, botched surgeries, and nagging arthritis is rare. Faithfull channels her body and mind’s ache into an album that’s her best and most honest work since Broken English. With Negative Capability, she reinforces our links by exposing her own broken places."

Various Artists

Diplo Presents: Free Gucci (Best of The Cold War Mixtapes)

Marc Hogan

"Who need be afraid of the merge?" When Walt "Leaves of Grass" Whitman wrote that, in the 1855 debut edition of the poem that would become "Song of Myself", his subject certainly wasn't Wesley Pentz. But the Philadelphia DJ/producer known as Diplo-- alongside such fellow global travelers as DJ /rupture-- has been among the 21st century's most dauntless joiners of disparate musical cultures. Whether Baltimore club (parties starting in 2003 at Philly's Ukrainian Club), baile funk (2004/2005 Favela mixtapes), Alabama hip-hop (2008's Paper Route Gangstaz mixtape), or Jamaican dancehall (last year's Major Lazer album), Diplo has a musically unimpeachable track record of taking the world's streets' worthiest sounds out of the neighborhoods and into your earbuds. With Free Gucci (Best of the Cold War Mixtapes), a freely downloadable mixtape of remixes for Atlanta gangsta rapper Gucci Mane, all that jet lag may have finally caught up with him. Never mind the usual point-missing accusations of cultural tourism-- "Having white kids talk about race on the internet is the dumbest thing in the world," Diplo told Pitchfork's own Tom Breihan in a 2007 Village Voice interview. When it comes to the MC born Radric Davis, "the merge" already happened. After a prolific series of high-profile guest appearances (Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas, Big Boi) and mixtapes (his Cold War trilogy flooded the blogs one day last November) all but guaranteed Lil Wayne comparisons, Gucci Mane's Warner-sponsored The State vs. Radric Davis debuted in December at #10 on the Billboard albums chart. The New York Times hailed the rapper as "one of the most vigorous and exciting in recent memory". I mean, sure-- baile funk, Alabama rap, and Jamaican dancehall each existed for years before Diplo got them in his crates. But he introduced them to listeners who probably wouldn't have been exposed to them otherwise. Gucci Mane needs no introduction. Compared with Diplo's past projects, then, Free Gucci has little reason to exist. In fact, despite the title, most of the tracks here weren't on the Cold War mixtapes at all-- the bulk come from last year's superior The Burrprint: The Movie 3-D. Anyway, all that stuff would be just as academic as arguments about cultural appropriation if the music itself banged. And that's the problem. Yeah, Gucci's slurry, word-drunk absurdism is a huge part of his appeal. And Diplo's remixers have picked some of the rapper's signature tracks. But Atlanta producers such as Drumma Boy and Zaytoven, with their pin-prick synths and sweaty lurch, are also crucial to Gucci's sound, as even Warner must've recognized by sticking to them and other Southern producers on the new studio album. The indie-friendly mergers Diplo brokers in their place have their moments, but by and large they're no more accessible-- and definitely less complementary-- than their originals. The most significant connection Diplo makes here isn't between Gucci and casual hip-hop fans. It's between today's various underground styles of woozy, stoner-friendly electronic music. There's glo-fi/chillwave/whatever: Memory Tapes gives Burrprint's gloriously shameless jewelry boast "Excuse Me" some icy, extraterrestrial counterpoint (space abhors a bare neck). There's post-dubstep blippiness from Zomby, who adds a different kind of trunk-shuddering low-end to Guccimerica threat "Boi". There's also Warp-signed hip-hop instrumentalist Flying Lotus, fogging up 2008's "Photo Shoot" with siren wobble and extra mush-mouth. Unfortunately, gloomy lo-fi duo Salem have done much better Gucci remixes than this rotely ominous rework of another Burrprint highlight, "My Shadow". Overall, though, Free Diplo shows that some of the most notable home electronic producers right now have more in common than their fan factions might like to admit. The link between Gucci's intoxicated flow and Diplo's chosen remixers should be obvious, but bringing them together isn't always so seamless. French producer Douster puts post-"A Milli" bass mumbles beneath Burrprint's (relatively) introspective "Frowney Face". OK-- but why did Philly's Emynd think his uptempo version of the same track needed irritating percolator bubbles? DJ Teenwolf, of Brooklyn's Ninjasonik, bur(r)ies Great BRRitain's "I'm Expecting" ("What you expect? I expect another check, man") in constantly hammering kick drums and skidding sound effects. The same mixtape's "I Be Everywhere" gets an Asian motif and pitch-shifting from English producer Mumdance on one fairly solid remix, then burbling dubstep clichés from San Francisco's DZ on another. Austin's Bird Peterson replaces the mock-gothic sweep of one more Burrprint cut, "Dope Boys", with expansively conceived bass-synth grandeur that should please fans of Memory Tapes; still, it's an odd fit for such a playful song ("I'm paraplegic/ Where's my paralegal?"). Anyone reading this review can get a better sense of Gucci's weird charms by going straight to the source. Which you can download almost as easily. As for Diplo himself, the Mad Decent boss can take credit for a few of the mixtape's better tracks-- especially a stomping, synth-slithering "Excuse Me" ("He do all that lame stuff/ I just keep it gangsta") that wouldn't be too far out of place on one of Gucci's own albums. Snares bustle and synths bend on Diplo's "Break Yourself", a much fuller production than the Burr Russia original. His Mariah Carey-sampling remix of Guccimerica's outlaw manifesto "Dangers Not a Stranger", with its satin-y keys, might be too precious for some, but it-- like DJ Benzi and Willy Joy's Daniel Bedingfield-sampling trance-rap take on 2008's "I'm the Shit"-- uncovers enjoyably unexpected similarities between otherwise vastly different tracks. So Free Gucci isn't great. But even a mixtape without any duds would arrive at a time when Diplo's target audience no longer needs someone like Diplo to help them meet rap halfway. Washed Out, whose gauzy synth-pop isn't included here but shares the same spirit, came to his current sound after working on instrumental hip-hop tracks. Salem have been informed by chopped'n'screwed music since the beginning, and their remix of Jeezy diss "Round One" beats anything here, easy. Newest Warp signee Babe Rainbow, aka Vancouver-based producer Cameron Reed, calls his style "surf-step": lo-fi beach-punk goes dubstep? Reed is also a huge hip-hop fan. Diplo need not be afraid of the merge, but Free Gucci is too little, too late.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Diplo Presents: Free Gucci (Best of The Cold War Mixtapes), Genre: None, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: ""Who need be afraid of the merge?" When Walt "Leaves of Grass" Whitman wrote that, in the 1855 debut edition of the poem that would become "Song of Myself", his subject certainly wasn't Wesley Pentz. But the Philadelphia DJ/producer known as Diplo-- alongside such fellow global travelers as DJ /rupture-- has been among the 21st century's most dauntless joiners of disparate musical cultures. Whether Baltimore club (parties starting in 2003 at Philly's Ukrainian Club), baile funk (2004/2005 Favela mixtapes), Alabama hip-hop (2008's Paper Route Gangstaz mixtape), or Jamaican dancehall (last year's Major Lazer album), Diplo has a musically unimpeachable track record of taking the world's streets' worthiest sounds out of the neighborhoods and into your earbuds. With Free Gucci (Best of the Cold War Mixtapes), a freely downloadable mixtape of remixes for Atlanta gangsta rapper Gucci Mane, all that jet lag may have finally caught up with him. Never mind the usual point-missing accusations of cultural tourism-- "Having white kids talk about race on the internet is the dumbest thing in the world," Diplo told Pitchfork's own Tom Breihan in a 2007 Village Voice interview. When it comes to the MC born Radric Davis, "the merge" already happened. After a prolific series of high-profile guest appearances (Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas, Big Boi) and mixtapes (his Cold War trilogy flooded the blogs one day last November) all but guaranteed Lil Wayne comparisons, Gucci Mane's Warner-sponsored The State vs. Radric Davis debuted in December at #10 on the Billboard albums chart. The New York Times hailed the rapper as "one of the most vigorous and exciting in recent memory". I mean, sure-- baile funk, Alabama rap, and Jamaican dancehall each existed for years before Diplo got them in his crates. But he introduced them to listeners who probably wouldn't have been exposed to them otherwise. Gucci Mane needs no introduction. Compared with Diplo's past projects, then, Free Gucci has little reason to exist. In fact, despite the title, most of the tracks here weren't on the Cold War mixtapes at all-- the bulk come from last year's superior The Burrprint: The Movie 3-D. Anyway, all that stuff would be just as academic as arguments about cultural appropriation if the music itself banged. And that's the problem. Yeah, Gucci's slurry, word-drunk absurdism is a huge part of his appeal. And Diplo's remixers have picked some of the rapper's signature tracks. But Atlanta producers such as Drumma Boy and Zaytoven, with their pin-prick synths and sweaty lurch, are also crucial to Gucci's sound, as even Warner must've recognized by sticking to them and other Southern producers on the new studio album. The indie-friendly mergers Diplo brokers in their place have their moments, but by and large they're no more accessible-- and definitely less complementary-- than their originals. The most significant connection Diplo makes here isn't between Gucci and casual hip-hop fans. It's between today's various underground styles of woozy, stoner-friendly electronic music. There's glo-fi/chillwave/whatever: Memory Tapes gives Burrprint's gloriously shameless jewelry boast "Excuse Me" some icy, extraterrestrial counterpoint (space abhors a bare neck). There's post-dubstep blippiness from Zomby, who adds a different kind of trunk-shuddering low-end to Guccimerica threat "Boi". There's also Warp-signed hip-hop instrumentalist Flying Lotus, fogging up 2008's "Photo Shoot" with siren wobble and extra mush-mouth. Unfortunately, gloomy lo-fi duo Salem have done much better Gucci remixes than this rotely ominous rework of another Burrprint highlight, "My Shadow". Overall, though, Free Diplo shows that some of the most notable home electronic producers right now have more in common than their fan factions might like to admit. The link between Gucci's intoxicated flow and Diplo's chosen remixers should be obvious, but bringing them together isn't always so seamless. French producer Douster puts post-"A Milli" bass mumbles beneath Burrprint's (relatively) introspective "Frowney Face". OK-- but why did Philly's Emynd think his uptempo version of the same track needed irritating percolator bubbles? DJ Teenwolf, of Brooklyn's Ninjasonik, bur(r)ies Great BRRitain's "I'm Expecting" ("What you expect? I expect another check, man") in constantly hammering kick drums and skidding sound effects. The same mixtape's "I Be Everywhere" gets an Asian motif and pitch-shifting from English producer Mumdance on one fairly solid remix, then burbling dubstep clichés from San Francisco's DZ on another. Austin's Bird Peterson replaces the mock-gothic sweep of one more Burrprint cut, "Dope Boys", with expansively conceived bass-synth grandeur that should please fans of Memory Tapes; still, it's an odd fit for such a playful song ("I'm paraplegic/ Where's my paralegal?"). Anyone reading this review can get a better sense of Gucci's weird charms by going straight to the source. Which you can download almost as easily. As for Diplo himself, the Mad Decent boss can take credit for a few of the mixtape's better tracks-- especially a stomping, synth-slithering "Excuse Me" ("He do all that lame stuff/ I just keep it gangsta") that wouldn't be too far out of place on one of Gucci's own albums. Snares bustle and synths bend on Diplo's "Break Yourself", a much fuller production than the Burr Russia original. His Mariah Carey-sampling remix of Guccimerica's outlaw manifesto "Dangers Not a Stranger", with its satin-y keys, might be too precious for some, but it-- like DJ Benzi and Willy Joy's Daniel Bedingfield-sampling trance-rap take on 2008's "I'm the Shit"-- uncovers enjoyably unexpected similarities between otherwise vastly different tracks. So Free Gucci isn't great. But even a mixtape without any duds would arrive at a time when Diplo's target audience no longer needs someone like Diplo to help them meet rap halfway. Washed Out, whose gauzy synth-pop isn't included here but shares the same spirit, came to his current sound after working on instrumental hip-hop tracks. Salem have been informed by chopped'n'screwed music since the beginning, and their remix of Jeezy diss "Round One" beats anything here, easy. Newest Warp signee Babe Rainbow, aka Vancouver-based producer Cameron Reed, calls his style "surf-step": lo-fi beach-punk goes dubstep? Reed is also a huge hip-hop fan. Diplo need not be afraid of the merge, but Free Gucci is too little, too late."

Ilya Monosov

Seven Lucky Plays, or How to Fix Songs for a Broken Heart

Folk/Country

Roque Strew

Is it possible to take Ilya Monosov as seriously as he takes himself? Even before you scan the tracklist, let along ilsten to his new album, you are beset with that flamboyant title, Seven Lucky Plays, or How to Fix Songs for a Broken Heart, and a cover photograph that, minding the laws of MySpace self-portraiture, aches to lay bare this man's whole spirit. It truly is that unmediated. Call it brute-force sincerity. "Tricycle" lays out the plan, with a softly tickled guitar that immediately recalls the Espers-- no surprise, given that Espers' Greg Weeks not only runs Language of Stone, the forest-dwelling label putting out Seven Lucky Plays, but also recorded and played on this release. If only he picked up a pen. "When I am in you/ I am reminded/ Of my tricycle," floats out as Monosov's nonsensical refrain, but it is the line "I was busy chasing all the butterflies that captured all the color that I knew" that nudges lethally close to Hallmark poetry. It's tough to pardon the sins perpetrated here as artifacts of bad translation: this would slight the mother language. Anyone can hear the rustic beauty in the arrangements, which pay respect to the Takoma fingerpicking masters among other earthy traditions, and Weeks is likely the man to thank. (At its moodier moments, the crossing of guitar and strings surprisingly bring to mind A Silver Mt. Zion, too.) But the aura is routinely punctured by Monosov's songwriting. A number of sleazily obvious lines ("I tried to taste your beauty") could easily pop up in the banter of a late-night Cinemax feature. And Monosov's voice, a murmuring, flatter echo of Leonard Cohen's, only amplifies the unpoetic creepiness of the material. In past releases for Eclipse and Elevator Bath (2005's Architectures on Air and Other Works) Monosov styled himself a "sound artist" more at home among the white-walled galleries, with his highbrow play and brainy experiments, than the dustier trails of American folk. Seven Lucky Plays barely hints at this intellectually spunkier, if emotionally drier, past work. The press materials try. They boast that the songs here are based on 11 years of creative writing, saying that "early exposure to Russian dissident culture greatly affected his life and art." If the end product didn't resemble a page from a hipster rake's Moleskine, mumbled into a tavern's open mike, that boast wouldn't seem so grotesque to historians of Russian dissident culture. The upside to all this is that there's a new restraint in Monosov's music that listeners will welcome. It is tempting to credit Weeks for this welcome change of emphasis: a compositional shift toward subtlety. But if Monosov is going to keep singing, he should extend this sense of understatement to his own words, pencilling out, say, bodily tastes and erotically charged tricycles, and replacing them with bolder images and better metaphors. We all hope the maturity that marked his earlier work will eventually spill into his writing tablet. Otherwise, Monosov should revisit and revive his wordless sound-artist era.

Artist: Ilya Monosov, Album: Seven Lucky Plays, or How to Fix Songs for a Broken Heart, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 4.8 Album review: "Is it possible to take Ilya Monosov as seriously as he takes himself? Even before you scan the tracklist, let along ilsten to his new album, you are beset with that flamboyant title, Seven Lucky Plays, or How to Fix Songs for a Broken Heart, and a cover photograph that, minding the laws of MySpace self-portraiture, aches to lay bare this man's whole spirit. It truly is that unmediated. Call it brute-force sincerity. "Tricycle" lays out the plan, with a softly tickled guitar that immediately recalls the Espers-- no surprise, given that Espers' Greg Weeks not only runs Language of Stone, the forest-dwelling label putting out Seven Lucky Plays, but also recorded and played on this release. If only he picked up a pen. "When I am in you/ I am reminded/ Of my tricycle," floats out as Monosov's nonsensical refrain, but it is the line "I was busy chasing all the butterflies that captured all the color that I knew" that nudges lethally close to Hallmark poetry. It's tough to pardon the sins perpetrated here as artifacts of bad translation: this would slight the mother language. Anyone can hear the rustic beauty in the arrangements, which pay respect to the Takoma fingerpicking masters among other earthy traditions, and Weeks is likely the man to thank. (At its moodier moments, the crossing of guitar and strings surprisingly bring to mind A Silver Mt. Zion, too.) But the aura is routinely punctured by Monosov's songwriting. A number of sleazily obvious lines ("I tried to taste your beauty") could easily pop up in the banter of a late-night Cinemax feature. And Monosov's voice, a murmuring, flatter echo of Leonard Cohen's, only amplifies the unpoetic creepiness of the material. In past releases for Eclipse and Elevator Bath (2005's Architectures on Air and Other Works) Monosov styled himself a "sound artist" more at home among the white-walled galleries, with his highbrow play and brainy experiments, than the dustier trails of American folk. Seven Lucky Plays barely hints at this intellectually spunkier, if emotionally drier, past work. The press materials try. They boast that the songs here are based on 11 years of creative writing, saying that "early exposure to Russian dissident culture greatly affected his life and art." If the end product didn't resemble a page from a hipster rake's Moleskine, mumbled into a tavern's open mike, that boast wouldn't seem so grotesque to historians of Russian dissident culture. The upside to all this is that there's a new restraint in Monosov's music that listeners will welcome. It is tempting to credit Weeks for this welcome change of emphasis: a compositional shift toward subtlety. But if Monosov is going to keep singing, he should extend this sense of understatement to his own words, pencilling out, say, bodily tastes and erotically charged tricycles, and replacing them with bolder images and better metaphors. We all hope the maturity that marked his earlier work will eventually spill into his writing tablet. Otherwise, Monosov should revisit and revive his wordless sound-artist era."

Florian Kupfer

Unfinished

Electronic

Kevin Lozano

Florian Kupfer was once a choir boy. He was a soprano. For over six years, he practiced Gregorian chorals everyday and was surrounded by the aroma of frankincense. These rituals—mixed with an early introduction to ’90s techno from his mother—formed Kupfer’s anachronistic foundation. His brand of thoroughly low-fidelity techno evolved after meeting Ron Morelli of the label L.I.E.S., also known for his own very murky sounds. Since the release of his 2013 debut, Lifetrax, Kupfer has developed a style that flits between rhythmic industrial soundscapes (not unlike his onetime labelmate, Eric Copeland) and romantic ambient techno with a handmade feel. In his sixth release, Unfinished, he creates music as airy and pleasantly rudimentary as a papier-mâché sculpture. *Unfinished *runs barely over 25 minutes. Composed of four tracks, it can feel much longer. Sonically speaking, Unfinished is a compromise between two of Kupfer’s best-known songs: the melancholic, R&B-inflected house hit of 2013’s “Feelin” (itself reminiscent of Galcher Lustwerk or DJ Richard) and his sublime 2015 flip of Sade’s “Couldn't Love You More.” In *Unfinished, *he’s more atmospheric than the industrial menace of 2015’s Explora, with its sharply exposed edges. *Unfinished *is, if anything, defined by a meandering and cleverly unfocused pace, allowing Kupfer to explore all the odd angles of a sound. In the album’s opener, “Elle,” Kupfer showcases this album as strangely and pleasantly nostalgic. The song’s six minutes seem sourced from arcade-era video games, with computer approximations of guitar jangle and uneven drum machines. This continues into “Erika,” like a Huerco S track with its slithering but open progression. It’s the album’s longest track (over eight minutes) and it slinks slowly towards any kind of change, slathering on hissing and unravelling tape loop distortions for almost four minutes. It’s more ambient than anything else, even when it arrives at its modest crescendo—a chopped and screwed vocal sample of Monifah’s “Fairytales.” He adds bursts of bated and sometimes goofy percussion along with synth loops, but somehow these parts act independently of each other. The song is like a conglomerate of rough drafts, or a découpé of misshapen parts artfully put together. What unites many of the song’s in *Unfinished *is the quality of something still being constructed, or figuring itself out. A sense of cohesion arises from the songs’ handmade and purposefully asymmetrical minimalism. Listening to some of the songs on *Unfinished *made me think of certain Clyfford Still paintings, with their organization of angles and colors that are off-kilter, distorted, but arranged with a sense of overwhelming texture rather than compositional logic. This is most present in “Being Me,” allowing its twinkling synth arpeggios and aggressive kick drums to float in space and crash into each other. *Unfinished *finds Kupfer gathering all the materials from his last three years of music-making to land on electronic music that is mercurial and flexible. Moving from ambient to house to techno to pure noise on a dime, Kupfer’s aesthetic is perfectly imperfect.

Artist: Florian Kupfer, Album: Unfinished, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Florian Kupfer was once a choir boy. He was a soprano. For over six years, he practiced Gregorian chorals everyday and was surrounded by the aroma of frankincense. These rituals—mixed with an early introduction to ’90s techno from his mother—formed Kupfer’s anachronistic foundation. His brand of thoroughly low-fidelity techno evolved after meeting Ron Morelli of the label L.I.E.S., also known for his own very murky sounds. Since the release of his 2013 debut, Lifetrax, Kupfer has developed a style that flits between rhythmic industrial soundscapes (not unlike his onetime labelmate, Eric Copeland) and romantic ambient techno with a handmade feel. In his sixth release, Unfinished, he creates music as airy and pleasantly rudimentary as a papier-mâché sculpture. *Unfinished *runs barely over 25 minutes. Composed of four tracks, it can feel much longer. Sonically speaking, Unfinished is a compromise between two of Kupfer’s best-known songs: the melancholic, R&B-inflected house hit of 2013’s “Feelin” (itself reminiscent of Galcher Lustwerk or DJ Richard) and his sublime 2015 flip of Sade’s “Couldn't Love You More.” In *Unfinished, *he’s more atmospheric than the industrial menace of 2015’s Explora, with its sharply exposed edges. *Unfinished *is, if anything, defined by a meandering and cleverly unfocused pace, allowing Kupfer to explore all the odd angles of a sound. In the album’s opener, “Elle,” Kupfer showcases this album as strangely and pleasantly nostalgic. The song’s six minutes seem sourced from arcade-era video games, with computer approximations of guitar jangle and uneven drum machines. This continues into “Erika,” like a Huerco S track with its slithering but open progression. It’s the album’s longest track (over eight minutes) and it slinks slowly towards any kind of change, slathering on hissing and unravelling tape loop distortions for almost four minutes. It’s more ambient than anything else, even when it arrives at its modest crescendo—a chopped and screwed vocal sample of Monifah’s “Fairytales.” He adds bursts of bated and sometimes goofy percussion along with synth loops, but somehow these parts act independently of each other. The song is like a conglomerate of rough drafts, or a découpé of misshapen parts artfully put together. What unites many of the song’s in *Unfinished *is the quality of something still being constructed, or figuring itself out. A sense of cohesion arises from the songs’ handmade and purposefully asymmetrical minimalism. Listening to some of the songs on *Unfinished *made me think of certain Clyfford Still paintings, with their organization of angles and colors that are off-kilter, distorted, but arranged with a sense of overwhelming texture rather than compositional logic. This is most present in “Being Me,” allowing its twinkling synth arpeggios and aggressive kick drums to float in space and crash into each other. *Unfinished *finds Kupfer gathering all the materials from his last three years of music-making to land on electronic music that is mercurial and flexible. Moving from ambient to house to techno to pure noise on a dime, Kupfer’s aesthetic is perfectly imperfect."

Unsane

Wreck

Rock

Hank Shteamer

As anyone who's hung out there in the past decade could tell you, New York's Lower East Side is no longer a scary place. It's the kind of hood where you can chow on designer meatballs, drink Pabst in a neo-dive bar, and catch an artfully rustic indie folk band. Sure, some gritty pockets remain, but it wouldn't even come close to ranking on a list of contemporary NYC's bogeyman areas. You wouldn't know any of this from listening to Unsane. In the mind of guitarist-frontman Chris Spencer, who moved to the LES along with his bandmates in the late 1980s, the place remains feral, a cesspool of violence (emotional as well as physical), addiction, and alienation that's straight out of Travis Bickle's dystopia. When Unsane got going, they might have mirrored their environment-- their first drummer, Charlie Ondras, died of an overdose in 1992-- but in 2012, the band's output is a PTSD freeze frame, a protracted rant re: the idea that things simply don't get better. Likewise, Unsane's sound is anti-evolutionary, almost masochistically so. For the past 20-odd years, both in their gruesome album covers (a severed head on the subway tracks, an automobile grille smeared with blood) and their often monosyllabically titled songs, they've explored only shades of grey, with spatterings of red. Which is all a way of saying that Unsane tell us nothing we don't already know on Wreck, their seventh LP (first in five years and a debut on Alternative Tentacles). If you've heard anything the band has issued since 1995's Scattered, Smothered & Covered-- the record where the current lineup solidified, and arguably the definitive Unsane statement-- you know what you're getting into: ugly yet starkly coherent noise rock, built from just a few elements-- the rumble/thud of bassist Dave Curran and drummer Vincent Signorelli, and Spencer's sneering postindustrial blues riffs and trademark distorted yelp. Just in case you were in doubt about who was responsible, there's a dripping, crimson-stained hand on the cover, not to mention a typewriter font that'll whisk you back to the early 90s, Proust-style. Calling Wreck predictable isn't a value judgment, though. There's still plenty of kick left in Unsane's simple recipe, and if the style doesn't surprise, the sustained conviction does. To my ears, Unsane have never released a lackluster album, Wreck included. The band's early-90s NYC cronies like Cop Shoot Cop and Helmet matured rapidly but flamed out by the end of the decade. Unsane, on the other hand, have played the tortoise. They flirted with major-label-dom (Atlantic co-issued 1993's Total Destruction) and landed a few clips on MTV, but mostly, they've just gone about their grisly business, never trying to outsmart or out-extreme anyone. Like fellow survivors Melvins (who, in contrast, have evolved with nearly every album), their tourmates on an upcoming U.S. jaunt, they now seem like a scene of one. Wreck isn't Unsane's most intense album-- 2005's Blood Run hit a harrowing peak that's unlikely to be topped-- nor is it as immediate as Scattered or as huge-sounding as 2007's Visqueen. But much of what's here stands with the band's best work. The biggest takeaway is the monomaniacal genius of Chris Spencer, the way his presence elevates the band from merely aggro to downright poetic. He's at his most effective on "Decay", a failed-relationship waltz with a rue-steeped vocal and mournful leads that sound more English folk ballad than cacophonous rock song. The key is that, both as a howler and a player, Spencer sounds as sad as he does pissed. (Compare the Curran-sung "Don't", on which the band registers simply as a swaggery power-rock trio, not the ear-splitting accompanists to some epic tragedy.) Even on less distinctive tracks, such as "Pigeon" and "Ghost", Spencer's eerie guitar melodies-- brittle textures that float over the band's bottom-end wallop-- add a strong emotional jolt. You know he could write these parts while checking his e-mail, but that doesn't make them any less impressive. The same goes for "No Chance", which shows off the rhythm section's brute finesse. The song is a transparent recycling of elements from exemplary Scattered single "Alleged"-- a wailing harmonica, an armor-plated riff that's pure post-hardcore Sabbath-- but it's so exquisitely badass that you're happy to grab for the cheese and feel the familiar sting of the Unsane mouse trap. Other tracks ("Metropolis", "Roach") furnish intensity without real spark, revealing the deceptively narrow gap between a great Unsane song and a passable one. But the band throws two smart late-album curveballs that offset the unevenness: the dirgey drug lament "Stuck", in which Spencer alternates his trusty scream with a strangely composed murmur, and a brilliantly sardonic cover of Flipper's "Ha Ha Ha", a song that finds demented comedy in Unsane's beloved "this city sucks" sentiment. Mini departures aside, Wreck is simply another strong Unsane album and another wrench thrown in the idea that an enduring band needs an arc. Noise rock has long since outpaced Spencer and co. in terms of black-hole nihilism (the now-defunct Drunkdriver set a more current benchmark for the subgenre), but Unsane aren't part of that race; like any devoted minimalists, they find strength in limited parameters and take pride in workmanlike production. That's why, even though you already know its moves by heart, Wreck still musters real gravitas. The LES may have been scrubbed clean, but no one's sanitizing Unsane's hermetic urban nightmare anytime soon.

Artist: Unsane, Album: Wreck, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "As anyone who's hung out there in the past decade could tell you, New York's Lower East Side is no longer a scary place. It's the kind of hood where you can chow on designer meatballs, drink Pabst in a neo-dive bar, and catch an artfully rustic indie folk band. Sure, some gritty pockets remain, but it wouldn't even come close to ranking on a list of contemporary NYC's bogeyman areas. You wouldn't know any of this from listening to Unsane. In the mind of guitarist-frontman Chris Spencer, who moved to the LES along with his bandmates in the late 1980s, the place remains feral, a cesspool of violence (emotional as well as physical), addiction, and alienation that's straight out of Travis Bickle's dystopia. When Unsane got going, they might have mirrored their environment-- their first drummer, Charlie Ondras, died of an overdose in 1992-- but in 2012, the band's output is a PTSD freeze frame, a protracted rant re: the idea that things simply don't get better. Likewise, Unsane's sound is anti-evolutionary, almost masochistically so. For the past 20-odd years, both in their gruesome album covers (a severed head on the subway tracks, an automobile grille smeared with blood) and their often monosyllabically titled songs, they've explored only shades of grey, with spatterings of red. Which is all a way of saying that Unsane tell us nothing we don't already know on Wreck, their seventh LP (first in five years and a debut on Alternative Tentacles). If you've heard anything the band has issued since 1995's Scattered, Smothered & Covered-- the record where the current lineup solidified, and arguably the definitive Unsane statement-- you know what you're getting into: ugly yet starkly coherent noise rock, built from just a few elements-- the rumble/thud of bassist Dave Curran and drummer Vincent Signorelli, and Spencer's sneering postindustrial blues riffs and trademark distorted yelp. Just in case you were in doubt about who was responsible, there's a dripping, crimson-stained hand on the cover, not to mention a typewriter font that'll whisk you back to the early 90s, Proust-style. Calling Wreck predictable isn't a value judgment, though. There's still plenty of kick left in Unsane's simple recipe, and if the style doesn't surprise, the sustained conviction does. To my ears, Unsane have never released a lackluster album, Wreck included. The band's early-90s NYC cronies like Cop Shoot Cop and Helmet matured rapidly but flamed out by the end of the decade. Unsane, on the other hand, have played the tortoise. They flirted with major-label-dom (Atlantic co-issued 1993's Total Destruction) and landed a few clips on MTV, but mostly, they've just gone about their grisly business, never trying to outsmart or out-extreme anyone. Like fellow survivors Melvins (who, in contrast, have evolved with nearly every album), their tourmates on an upcoming U.S. jaunt, they now seem like a scene of one. Wreck isn't Unsane's most intense album-- 2005's Blood Run hit a harrowing peak that's unlikely to be topped-- nor is it as immediate as Scattered or as huge-sounding as 2007's Visqueen. But much of what's here stands with the band's best work. The biggest takeaway is the monomaniacal genius of Chris Spencer, the way his presence elevates the band from merely aggro to downright poetic. He's at his most effective on "Decay", a failed-relationship waltz with a rue-steeped vocal and mournful leads that sound more English folk ballad than cacophonous rock song. The key is that, both as a howler and a player, Spencer sounds as sad as he does pissed. (Compare the Curran-sung "Don't", on which the band registers simply as a swaggery power-rock trio, not the ear-splitting accompanists to some epic tragedy.) Even on less distinctive tracks, such as "Pigeon" and "Ghost", Spencer's eerie guitar melodies-- brittle textures that float over the band's bottom-end wallop-- add a strong emotional jolt. You know he could write these parts while checking his e-mail, but that doesn't make them any less impressive. The same goes for "No Chance", which shows off the rhythm section's brute finesse. The song is a transparent recycling of elements from exemplary Scattered single "Alleged"-- a wailing harmonica, an armor-plated riff that's pure post-hardcore Sabbath-- but it's so exquisitely badass that you're happy to grab for the cheese and feel the familiar sting of the Unsane mouse trap. Other tracks ("Metropolis", "Roach") furnish intensity without real spark, revealing the deceptively narrow gap between a great Unsane song and a passable one. But the band throws two smart late-album curveballs that offset the unevenness: the dirgey drug lament "Stuck", in which Spencer alternates his trusty scream with a strangely composed murmur, and a brilliantly sardonic cover of Flipper's "Ha Ha Ha", a song that finds demented comedy in Unsane's beloved "this city sucks" sentiment. Mini departures aside, Wreck is simply another strong Unsane album and another wrench thrown in the idea that an enduring band needs an arc. Noise rock has long since outpaced Spencer and co. in terms of black-hole nihilism (the now-defunct Drunkdriver set a more current benchmark for the subgenre), but Unsane aren't part of that race; like any devoted minimalists, they find strength in limited parameters and take pride in workmanlike production. That's why, even though you already know its moves by heart, Wreck still musters real gravitas. The LES may have been scrubbed clean, but no one's sanitizing Unsane's hermetic urban nightmare anytime soon."

Bobby and Blumm

A Little Big

Brian Howe

The Berlin-based musician F.S. Blumm has a very particular style. He uses live instrumentation to create understated tunes-- some jazzy, others austere-- that suggest folktronica without any glitch-tracks or other electronics. He seems to prize his independence, and cordons it off with ampersands in his frequent collaborations: Sack & Blumm, with Harald "Sack" Ziegler, and Rebresch & Blumm, with Rininat Rebresch. By implication, he disavows the notion that collaboration produces a collective entity. Working together is all good, but the kid stays in the picture. So naturally, Blumm is instantly recognizable on A Little Big, the second LP of English-language music to issue from his project with the singer Ellinor Blixt. His knack for rococo, effortless-feeling melodies is in his playful guitar work, which, along with light percussion and duet vocals, dominates the album. His flickering arpeggios suit Blixt's airy voice perfectly. The overall effect is more attuned to the indie pop of Blixt's native Sweden, and the careful, coy arrangements are citizens only of Blummland. If you're familiar with his solo work, this is exactly how you'd expect his songwriting project to sound: Dreamy and lackadaisical, like a European version of Luna. Bobby and Blumm join a long line of sweet dual-gendered crooners-- Sonny & Cher, the Captain & Tennille, Stars, the xx-- who rely on an echo chamber effect to enhance their music's intimacy. Solo devotional songs float off into abstraction; their targets could be anyone or no one. With duets, we can pretend the singers are addressing each other, even if they're not, and the poignancy of the emotion becomes focused and present. Blumm's wonderful line on "Some Sweets", "In your arms, I push repeat," would be generally appealing in any case, but trailed with Blixt's whispers, it becomes specific-- not any old arms, not some symbolic arms, but your arms. It feels like stumbling into the middle of a private embrace. The album's consistency is a potential limitation, though-- little distinguishes one song from the next. Extremely muted horns, keyboards, and chimes color various songs but each time, you're getting essentially the same thing: chiming guitar melodies, mid-tempo vocals, and a feeling of breezy exactitude. As a result, A Little Big isn't the sort of album you swoon hard for and listen to often. Instead, it clings to the back of your mind, slipping into rotation less frequently. Some listeners may find the patient, low-key vibe monotonous. But those who can still make time for a modest, charming little record stuffed with arresting details will be amply rewarded.

Artist: Bobby and Blumm, Album: A Little Big, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "The Berlin-based musician F.S. Blumm has a very particular style. He uses live instrumentation to create understated tunes-- some jazzy, others austere-- that suggest folktronica without any glitch-tracks or other electronics. He seems to prize his independence, and cordons it off with ampersands in his frequent collaborations: Sack & Blumm, with Harald "Sack" Ziegler, and Rebresch & Blumm, with Rininat Rebresch. By implication, he disavows the notion that collaboration produces a collective entity. Working together is all good, but the kid stays in the picture. So naturally, Blumm is instantly recognizable on A Little Big, the second LP of English-language music to issue from his project with the singer Ellinor Blixt. His knack for rococo, effortless-feeling melodies is in his playful guitar work, which, along with light percussion and duet vocals, dominates the album. His flickering arpeggios suit Blixt's airy voice perfectly. The overall effect is more attuned to the indie pop of Blixt's native Sweden, and the careful, coy arrangements are citizens only of Blummland. If you're familiar with his solo work, this is exactly how you'd expect his songwriting project to sound: Dreamy and lackadaisical, like a European version of Luna. Bobby and Blumm join a long line of sweet dual-gendered crooners-- Sonny & Cher, the Captain & Tennille, Stars, the xx-- who rely on an echo chamber effect to enhance their music's intimacy. Solo devotional songs float off into abstraction; their targets could be anyone or no one. With duets, we can pretend the singers are addressing each other, even if they're not, and the poignancy of the emotion becomes focused and present. Blumm's wonderful line on "Some Sweets", "In your arms, I push repeat," would be generally appealing in any case, but trailed with Blixt's whispers, it becomes specific-- not any old arms, not some symbolic arms, but your arms. It feels like stumbling into the middle of a private embrace. The album's consistency is a potential limitation, though-- little distinguishes one song from the next. Extremely muted horns, keyboards, and chimes color various songs but each time, you're getting essentially the same thing: chiming guitar melodies, mid-tempo vocals, and a feeling of breezy exactitude. As a result, A Little Big isn't the sort of album you swoon hard for and listen to often. Instead, it clings to the back of your mind, slipping into rotation less frequently. Some listeners may find the patient, low-key vibe monotonous. But those who can still make time for a modest, charming little record stuffed with arresting details will be amply rewarded."

June Panic

Hope You Fail Better

Rock

William Morris

As North Dakota's most prolific son has faithfully exhibited for over a decade, with a near Hollywood-scripted fearlessness: A man alone can charter a dangerous commodity. Adulteration is always a concern for a talent whose work is crosshatched with such distinctly rendered spiritual and philosophical allegiances, but when he drew up plans for Hope You Fail Better-- an album that would further explore the same intimate themes of frustrated devotion and mortality that haunted 2002's dauntless Baby's Breadth-- he chose, for the first time, to enlist a steady cast of players to tour and record the album. Thankfully, this decision hasn't diluted the unsettling potency of his vision, which unfolds as feverishly as ever; rather, it breathes new life into his usual message. Crafting a lonely funereal strain for the opening stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music", Panic's opener instantly digs into his earthworn philosophy. Millay, typically known for her precocious sexuality and malcontent's bohemian sensibilities, here offers no resignation to death's inevitable calling, and Panic delivers her words acutely and mournfully. His conversional bent sobers the text's underlining message, and plays excellently as an introduction to Panic's dusty temperance. The brisk fever of "Let My Lungs Coin Words" is the first indication that his decision to expand was not ill-forged. Panic sounds renewed and even transcendent as, with the help of producer Daniel Smith of The Danielson Famile, Panic's elfin, Dylanesque warble rises just enough above the jangling sway to project itself fitfully. "Breach Birth Control", "The World Is Not a Place", and "Paint Legs on the Snake" rollick, too, while Panic even utilizes handclaps, though the mood never truly lightens. Fettered both by fears of dying and of not truly living, Panic teetertotter's his way through the recording. The album's true voice might be heard through "Both Sides of the Paper" and "On 'H's' They", where you can hear gusts of wind pass portentously through weathered windvanes as Panic reports, with Jason Molina-esque conviction, "Every new day is further from where you can go to be with those that died." He sweeps death under the rug with the closing four tracks, the strongest batch on the album. Each hems in a line Panic has sewn into his intensely personal brand of distorted alt-country for all of Hope: "Getting Over Joy"'s slick slide guitar line, the inflated grandeur of "Expensive Attic", and the ponderous call to death of "Leaving Me My Eyes" all anchor the mood that almost ballooned away in the middle of the album-- though in no way due to any relenting philosophical exploration. He simply sounds more alive than ever. The gentle, clean swabs of acoustic guitar and saloon-slapped piano on "That's the Moon, Son" end the album with his most traditional structure and message. It feels like an answer, or at least a call to a drifter's end, a solidification of thought. You may not be swaying like paper in the winds of change, or ruminating daily on the distance you've marked for death, but for the duration of Hope You Fail Better, you'll swear you are.

Artist: June Panic, Album: Hope You Fail Better, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "As North Dakota's most prolific son has faithfully exhibited for over a decade, with a near Hollywood-scripted fearlessness: A man alone can charter a dangerous commodity. Adulteration is always a concern for a talent whose work is crosshatched with such distinctly rendered spiritual and philosophical allegiances, but when he drew up plans for Hope You Fail Better-- an album that would further explore the same intimate themes of frustrated devotion and mortality that haunted 2002's dauntless Baby's Breadth-- he chose, for the first time, to enlist a steady cast of players to tour and record the album. Thankfully, this decision hasn't diluted the unsettling potency of his vision, which unfolds as feverishly as ever; rather, it breathes new life into his usual message. Crafting a lonely funereal strain for the opening stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music", Panic's opener instantly digs into his earthworn philosophy. Millay, typically known for her precocious sexuality and malcontent's bohemian sensibilities, here offers no resignation to death's inevitable calling, and Panic delivers her words acutely and mournfully. His conversional bent sobers the text's underlining message, and plays excellently as an introduction to Panic's dusty temperance. The brisk fever of "Let My Lungs Coin Words" is the first indication that his decision to expand was not ill-forged. Panic sounds renewed and even transcendent as, with the help of producer Daniel Smith of The Danielson Famile, Panic's elfin, Dylanesque warble rises just enough above the jangling sway to project itself fitfully. "Breach Birth Control", "The World Is Not a Place", and "Paint Legs on the Snake" rollick, too, while Panic even utilizes handclaps, though the mood never truly lightens. Fettered both by fears of dying and of not truly living, Panic teetertotter's his way through the recording. The album's true voice might be heard through "Both Sides of the Paper" and "On 'H's' They", where you can hear gusts of wind pass portentously through weathered windvanes as Panic reports, with Jason Molina-esque conviction, "Every new day is further from where you can go to be with those that died." He sweeps death under the rug with the closing four tracks, the strongest batch on the album. Each hems in a line Panic has sewn into his intensely personal brand of distorted alt-country for all of Hope: "Getting Over Joy"'s slick slide guitar line, the inflated grandeur of "Expensive Attic", and the ponderous call to death of "Leaving Me My Eyes" all anchor the mood that almost ballooned away in the middle of the album-- though in no way due to any relenting philosophical exploration. He simply sounds more alive than ever. The gentle, clean swabs of acoustic guitar and saloon-slapped piano on "That's the Moon, Son" end the album with his most traditional structure and message. It feels like an answer, or at least a call to a drifter's end, a solidification of thought. You may not be swaying like paper in the winds of change, or ruminating daily on the distance you've marked for death, but for the duration of Hope You Fail Better, you'll swear you are."

The Lucksmiths

Naturaliste

Rock

Scott Plagenhoef

The lead track on Melbourne indie pop trio The Lucksmiths' 2001 album Why Doesn't That Surprise Me is named "Music to Hold Hands To". The title is a perfect description of the band's aims: to write sweet yet polite songs about crushes that are reciprocated, comfortable shoulders on which to lean, and valuing understated, tender moments. The lyric, however-- "I could never understand you/ Hating music to hold hands to/ Sometimes something you can dance to is the last thing that you need"-- hint at a different reality, one of heartache, disappointment, and poor timing. In The Lucksmiths' world, the results never seem to match expectations-- and it's often for a lack of trying. These charming young chaps have made a career relishing unemployment, idle conversations at the pub, and lazy, sunny days. On their sixth album, Naturaliste, many of the band's hallmarks-- clever turns of phrases, a gift for sweet melodies, an odd obsession with the weather-- are present, but their once mostly jaunty, jangly pop is now often swapped for wistful, plaintive melodies. The band seems to be grappling with the perils of advancing age (all three of vocalist/drummer Tali White, guitarist Marty Donald, and bassist Mark Monnone write songs). Where they once sung about awkward first meetings and nervous beginnings, they're now lamenting lost loves and uncomfortable endings. Some of the record's best tracks have tinges of regret or painful self-awareness: the vanity of opener "Camera-Shy", the pensive, long-distance love of "The Sandringham Line", and the misplaced familiarity of lover's spats in "The Perfect Crime". Former single "Midweek Midmorning", a punchy, irresistible ode to savoring the moment while it lasts, is another highlight. Best of all perhaps is "Stayaway Stars", which features melancholy tongue-twisters such as: "What sorry sights we sometimes are/ These sameshit nights under stayaway stars/ These sameshit nights in the saddest bars/ The city lights and the stayaway stars." So here are The Lucksmiths: Drifting away from lovers, cocooned by loneliness, a bit paralyzed by both the encroachment of age and having to put juvenilia in the rearview. And they blame no one but themselves. "I'm trying hard not to be so antisocial/ Truth be told, I'm not entirely hopeful," White sings on "The Boy That Goes Out". "Look back on brighter days/ A microscope on how the simple things are done/ But don't look too long to the sun/ 'Cause you'll see faults/ As there are faults in everyone," he warns on "Sleep Well". This is the sound of the loneliness of the aging indie pop star. The Lucksmiths still possess an eye for detail, ornate harmonies, bewitching melodies, and sharp wit, but each is in less supply these days. Those who have grown old with the band will find comfort in Naturaliste's autumnal tones; if there's still a fair bit of spring in your step, it's probably best to keep a Happy Secret.

Artist: The Lucksmiths, Album: Naturaliste, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "The lead track on Melbourne indie pop trio The Lucksmiths' 2001 album Why Doesn't That Surprise Me is named "Music to Hold Hands To". The title is a perfect description of the band's aims: to write sweet yet polite songs about crushes that are reciprocated, comfortable shoulders on which to lean, and valuing understated, tender moments. The lyric, however-- "I could never understand you/ Hating music to hold hands to/ Sometimes something you can dance to is the last thing that you need"-- hint at a different reality, one of heartache, disappointment, and poor timing. In The Lucksmiths' world, the results never seem to match expectations-- and it's often for a lack of trying. These charming young chaps have made a career relishing unemployment, idle conversations at the pub, and lazy, sunny days. On their sixth album, Naturaliste, many of the band's hallmarks-- clever turns of phrases, a gift for sweet melodies, an odd obsession with the weather-- are present, but their once mostly jaunty, jangly pop is now often swapped for wistful, plaintive melodies. The band seems to be grappling with the perils of advancing age (all three of vocalist/drummer Tali White, guitarist Marty Donald, and bassist Mark Monnone write songs). Where they once sung about awkward first meetings and nervous beginnings, they're now lamenting lost loves and uncomfortable endings. Some of the record's best tracks have tinges of regret or painful self-awareness: the vanity of opener "Camera-Shy", the pensive, long-distance love of "The Sandringham Line", and the misplaced familiarity of lover's spats in "The Perfect Crime". Former single "Midweek Midmorning", a punchy, irresistible ode to savoring the moment while it lasts, is another highlight. Best of all perhaps is "Stayaway Stars", which features melancholy tongue-twisters such as: "What sorry sights we sometimes are/ These sameshit nights under stayaway stars/ These sameshit nights in the saddest bars/ The city lights and the stayaway stars." So here are The Lucksmiths: Drifting away from lovers, cocooned by loneliness, a bit paralyzed by both the encroachment of age and having to put juvenilia in the rearview. And they blame no one but themselves. "I'm trying hard not to be so antisocial/ Truth be told, I'm not entirely hopeful," White sings on "The Boy That Goes Out". "Look back on brighter days/ A microscope on how the simple things are done/ But don't look too long to the sun/ 'Cause you'll see faults/ As there are faults in everyone," he warns on "Sleep Well". This is the sound of the loneliness of the aging indie pop star. The Lucksmiths still possess an eye for detail, ornate harmonies, bewitching melodies, and sharp wit, but each is in less supply these days. Those who have grown old with the band will find comfort in Naturaliste's autumnal tones; if there's still a fair bit of spring in your step, it's probably best to keep a Happy Secret."

Various Artists

This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies and the Kinks

Rob Mitchum

On the record store social ladder, tribute albums are firmly entrenched in the untouchable class, somewhere between interview picture discs and free record label samplers. In the days before file-sharing made cherry-picking your favorite band's every comp contribution wallet-free, tribute albums were certified quick buy-and-sell-back items (Sweet Relief, anyone?). But while the durability of such cover collections is questionable, tribute albums have a certain reference tool value, allowing listeners to suss out connections on rock 'n' roll's gigantic influence web. In the case of the Kinks, this research is especially interesting, given that the Davies Bros. & cast have one of rock history's highest influence-to-sales ratios (in the colonies, at least). Were it not for MTV oddity "Come Dancing," the Kinks would rank as the most important sixties band my parents have never heard of, and Joe Middle America would probably think the masterpiece whine of "You Really Got Me" was by the same band that did "Wooly Bully." But as Britpop dance nights, Wes Anderson soundtracks and prep school blazer sales figures show, the Kinks legacy still maintains a subcutaneous legacy in the global music economy. Add to that list of evidence This Is Where I Belong, which, with bands like Lambchop, Yo La Tengo, Jonathan Richman, and Josh Rouse all kissing the papal ring, has a hipster quotient through the roof. The collection also scores high on the stylistic variety scale, with bossa nova heiress Bebel Gilberto, soul-patch endorsers Queens of the Stone Age, and traditional bluegrass picker Tim O'Brien making their first and last unified appearance. All comers are subjected to the highly mathematical tribute album formula, as explained by guest commentator John Nash: "How much their chosen cover (C) resembles the original (O) is directly proportional to the percentage of influence (I) the band-of-honor exerts over the artist. C/O=%I" Thanks, John. Unsurprisingly, the people who score the highest on this formula (and, thus, are certified as the most notorious Kinks imitators), are America's power-pop elite: Fountains of Wayne, Matthew Sweet, The Minus 5, Fastball. All turn in barely altered takes on Kinks catalog items, adding little more than guitar volume to the original. It's pleasant to hear, as songs like "Big Sky" (Sweet) and "Better Things" (Fountains of Wayne) are like batting practice pitches to their cover artist, but the lack of tweakage makes for a rather inessential product. On the other hand, hearing Queens of the Stone Age turn in a note-perfect (down to the piano pounding) take on "Who'll Be the Next in Line" is more rewarding, given that it's completely unexpected from the stoner rock revivalists. Even better are the more risky reimaginations of Klassik Kinks by bands whose admiration for Davies is kept separate from any significant sonic influence upon their own aesthetic. Lambchop's choice of the creepy 80s pedophile tale "Art Lover" falls right in place with Wagner's trademark lyrical oddness, but it's given the sleepy quasi-lounge lushness of the band's pre-Is a Woman work. Also choosing atmosphere over skinny-tie attitude are Yo La Tengo (longtime Davies' worshipers) who craft a psychedelic haze around early artifact "Fancy," and Josh Rouse, whose "Well Respected Man" is nicely lacquered with the Chicago sound. Then you've got the gimmicky stuff, like the endorsements of Kinks genre explorations by authentic practitioners (Gilberto's "No Return," O'Brien's "Muswell Hillbilly") and the big finale appearance of the honoree himself, alongside Kinks Fan Club President Damon Albarn. All told, it's a stout compilation-- the only real stinker of the group is Cracker horribly mauling "Victoria" with their American accents-- but with the general handicap of all tribute albums (the scale only goes up to 7 for 'em), it's still nowhere near essential. Worst of all, given recent RIAA action, Lambchop and Fastball archivists might just have to buy the darn thing. The horror... the horror!

Artist: Various Artists, Album: This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies and the Kinks, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "On the record store social ladder, tribute albums are firmly entrenched in the untouchable class, somewhere between interview picture discs and free record label samplers. In the days before file-sharing made cherry-picking your favorite band's every comp contribution wallet-free, tribute albums were certified quick buy-and-sell-back items (Sweet Relief, anyone?). But while the durability of such cover collections is questionable, tribute albums have a certain reference tool value, allowing listeners to suss out connections on rock 'n' roll's gigantic influence web. In the case of the Kinks, this research is especially interesting, given that the Davies Bros. & cast have one of rock history's highest influence-to-sales ratios (in the colonies, at least). Were it not for MTV oddity "Come Dancing," the Kinks would rank as the most important sixties band my parents have never heard of, and Joe Middle America would probably think the masterpiece whine of "You Really Got Me" was by the same band that did "Wooly Bully." But as Britpop dance nights, Wes Anderson soundtracks and prep school blazer sales figures show, the Kinks legacy still maintains a subcutaneous legacy in the global music economy. Add to that list of evidence This Is Where I Belong, which, with bands like Lambchop, Yo La Tengo, Jonathan Richman, and Josh Rouse all kissing the papal ring, has a hipster quotient through the roof. The collection also scores high on the stylistic variety scale, with bossa nova heiress Bebel Gilberto, soul-patch endorsers Queens of the Stone Age, and traditional bluegrass picker Tim O'Brien making their first and last unified appearance. All comers are subjected to the highly mathematical tribute album formula, as explained by guest commentator John Nash: "How much their chosen cover (C) resembles the original (O) is directly proportional to the percentage of influence (I) the band-of-honor exerts over the artist. C/O=%I" Thanks, John. Unsurprisingly, the people who score the highest on this formula (and, thus, are certified as the most notorious Kinks imitators), are America's power-pop elite: Fountains of Wayne, Matthew Sweet, The Minus 5, Fastball. All turn in barely altered takes on Kinks catalog items, adding little more than guitar volume to the original. It's pleasant to hear, as songs like "Big Sky" (Sweet) and "Better Things" (Fountains of Wayne) are like batting practice pitches to their cover artist, but the lack of tweakage makes for a rather inessential product. On the other hand, hearing Queens of the Stone Age turn in a note-perfect (down to the piano pounding) take on "Who'll Be the Next in Line" is more rewarding, given that it's completely unexpected from the stoner rock revivalists. Even better are the more risky reimaginations of Klassik Kinks by bands whose admiration for Davies is kept separate from any significant sonic influence upon their own aesthetic. Lambchop's choice of the creepy 80s pedophile tale "Art Lover" falls right in place with Wagner's trademark lyrical oddness, but it's given the sleepy quasi-lounge lushness of the band's pre-Is a Woman work. Also choosing atmosphere over skinny-tie attitude are Yo La Tengo (longtime Davies' worshipers) who craft a psychedelic haze around early artifact "Fancy," and Josh Rouse, whose "Well Respected Man" is nicely lacquered with the Chicago sound. Then you've got the gimmicky stuff, like the endorsements of Kinks genre explorations by authentic practitioners (Gilberto's "No Return," O'Brien's "Muswell Hillbilly") and the big finale appearance of the honoree himself, alongside Kinks Fan Club President Damon Albarn. All told, it's a stout compilation-- the only real stinker of the group is Cracker horribly mauling "Victoria" with their American accents-- but with the general handicap of all tribute albums (the scale only goes up to 7 for 'em), it's still nowhere near essential. Worst of all, given recent RIAA action, Lambchop and Fastball archivists might just have to buy the darn thing. The horror... the horror!"

Bad Religion

The Empire Strikes First

Metal,Rock

J.H. Tompkins

I walked outside before dawn one day last fall in Redlands, CA to find a firestorm racing across the nearby hills, leaving a ghostly crimson light flickering in and out of picture windows and windshields, and lending an eerie glow to the early morning fog. The inferno seemed a horribly apt fit for the historical moment-- a kind of purification by fire delivered to a nation choking on official lies, war and joblessness. Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, the twenty-something year-old L.A. punk band, were paying attention; a few weeks later, they went into the studio to record the searing "Los Angeles Is Burning", a grim celebration of environmental rape and the subsequent payback. That's just one great moment from Bad Religion's The Empire Strikes First, 14 songs that are fresh, focused, and absolutely alive in the way that great rock 'n' roll energizes everything it touches. It's been a long road from their early-80s beginnings, but these days, the primary concerns of Graffin and Gurewitz are not the band's intricate (and subtle) years-long evolution; they're first and foremost topical songwriters focused on domestic chaos and its global manifestation. Bad Religion is, after all, the outfit that, during the first Gulf War in 1991, shared a Maximum Rock 'n' Roll split seven-inch with radical MIT professor Noam Chomsky, who, like them, is locked into the tense present and dedicated to exposing the forces who lie and disguise to deepen and enforce human misery. The truth is that after 20+ years, Bad Religion meet the present day not only unfettered by nostalgia, but hardwired into the moment. Fans take the band's growth and standards for granted. It's tempting to say-- though impossible to prove-- that the The Empire Strikes First is a such a terrific album because vocalist Graffin and guitarist Gurewitz, the band's most important creative forces, are responding to the death, desolation, and destruction of war, and to the concurrent attacks on the Bill of Rights; it seems more than just a happy accident that the band has just delivered one of its most charged and inspired records in years. Bad Religion's most important elements are intact here: Graffin's voice and politically informed lyrics, and Gurewitz's imaginative guitar work and background vocals. They wouldn't likely contest the suggestion that the use of simple elements equates to a formula, but the genius of Graffin and Gurewitz is how they take these simple elements and twist them-- unexpected chord changes, short breakdowns, quick drum fills, and increasingly sophisticated, sweet-sounding vocal arrangements so rich you could trade them for military arms. "Sinister Rouge" is a study in contrasts; a wall of cinematic harmonies comes at you like choir practice in a cave, while Gurewitz's guitar is so close it could touch you (whether you'd like it to or not). "Los Angeles Is Burning" lifts a lesson from the band's own backyard, but "Let Them Eat War" is a classic Bad Religion anthem. Graffin spits out a variation on the theme of old-school punk politics locking arms with the American worker in order to explain how fighting a war serves the interests of the capitalists who keep them down. You'd think (or I would anyway) that any song with the lyric, "You never stole from the rich to give to the poor/ All he ever gave to them was a war/ And a foreign enemy to deplore," should be stopped before it kills again. But don't pull the switch-- the band rocks along at high speed beneath Graffin (and his vocal uses the whole scale), while Gurewitz delivers aggressively graceful, ultra-melodic fills, and sugary harmonies to glue the chorus together. The irony of it all is that the band's call-and-response vocal arrangements are straight out of a Baptist church house, as are the rich harmonies and the reliance on one man-- in this case, Graffin-- to testify to (and for) the congregation. Bad Religion's magic doesn't stem as much from their political lyrics as from the airtight arrangements and thick, sweet harmonies that bring the lyrics to you, and interestingly, are also the antithesis of the social rebellion the band advocates. A case could be made (and sometimes I make it) that the band resorts to the very things it deplores in order to get across a message, and that in the process, they demand a kind of allegiance that a cynic might call unhealthy. But if Graffin and Gurewitz are willing to return to the well to help the innocent climb out, the end certainly justifies the means.

Artist: Bad Religion, Album: The Empire Strikes First, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "I walked outside before dawn one day last fall in Redlands, CA to find a firestorm racing across the nearby hills, leaving a ghostly crimson light flickering in and out of picture windows and windshields, and lending an eerie glow to the early morning fog. The inferno seemed a horribly apt fit for the historical moment-- a kind of purification by fire delivered to a nation choking on official lies, war and joblessness. Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, the twenty-something year-old L.A. punk band, were paying attention; a few weeks later, they went into the studio to record the searing "Los Angeles Is Burning", a grim celebration of environmental rape and the subsequent payback. That's just one great moment from Bad Religion's The Empire Strikes First, 14 songs that are fresh, focused, and absolutely alive in the way that great rock 'n' roll energizes everything it touches. It's been a long road from their early-80s beginnings, but these days, the primary concerns of Graffin and Gurewitz are not the band's intricate (and subtle) years-long evolution; they're first and foremost topical songwriters focused on domestic chaos and its global manifestation. Bad Religion is, after all, the outfit that, during the first Gulf War in 1991, shared a Maximum Rock 'n' Roll split seven-inch with radical MIT professor Noam Chomsky, who, like them, is locked into the tense present and dedicated to exposing the forces who lie and disguise to deepen and enforce human misery. The truth is that after 20+ years, Bad Religion meet the present day not only unfettered by nostalgia, but hardwired into the moment. Fans take the band's growth and standards for granted. It's tempting to say-- though impossible to prove-- that the The Empire Strikes First is a such a terrific album because vocalist Graffin and guitarist Gurewitz, the band's most important creative forces, are responding to the death, desolation, and destruction of war, and to the concurrent attacks on the Bill of Rights; it seems more than just a happy accident that the band has just delivered one of its most charged and inspired records in years. Bad Religion's most important elements are intact here: Graffin's voice and politically informed lyrics, and Gurewitz's imaginative guitar work and background vocals. They wouldn't likely contest the suggestion that the use of simple elements equates to a formula, but the genius of Graffin and Gurewitz is how they take these simple elements and twist them-- unexpected chord changes, short breakdowns, quick drum fills, and increasingly sophisticated, sweet-sounding vocal arrangements so rich you could trade them for military arms. "Sinister Rouge" is a study in contrasts; a wall of cinematic harmonies comes at you like choir practice in a cave, while Gurewitz's guitar is so close it could touch you (whether you'd like it to or not). "Los Angeles Is Burning" lifts a lesson from the band's own backyard, but "Let Them Eat War" is a classic Bad Religion anthem. Graffin spits out a variation on the theme of old-school punk politics locking arms with the American worker in order to explain how fighting a war serves the interests of the capitalists who keep them down. You'd think (or I would anyway) that any song with the lyric, "You never stole from the rich to give to the poor/ All he ever gave to them was a war/ And a foreign enemy to deplore," should be stopped before it kills again. But don't pull the switch-- the band rocks along at high speed beneath Graffin (and his vocal uses the whole scale), while Gurewitz delivers aggressively graceful, ultra-melodic fills, and sugary harmonies to glue the chorus together. The irony of it all is that the band's call-and-response vocal arrangements are straight out of a Baptist church house, as are the rich harmonies and the reliance on one man-- in this case, Graffin-- to testify to (and for) the congregation. Bad Religion's magic doesn't stem as much from their political lyrics as from the airtight arrangements and thick, sweet harmonies that bring the lyrics to you, and interestingly, are also the antithesis of the social rebellion the band advocates. A case could be made (and sometimes I make it) that the band resorts to the very things it deplores in order to get across a message, and that in the process, they demand a kind of allegiance that a cynic might call unhealthy. But if Graffin and Gurewitz are willing to return to the well to help the innocent climb out, the end certainly justifies the means."