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Sherwood & Pinch

Man Vs. Sofa

Electronic

Andy Beta

Thankfully, the past few years have brought the exhilarating and acerbic production work of Adrian Sherwood back into earshot. In the midst of early ’80s London, he helped a slew of punks—the Fall, Judy Nylon, and Maximum Joy—find their inner dub sound, and he gave rastas like Bim Sherman and Prince Far I a heavily psychedelic bass tone that made them stand apart from their dreadlocked brethren. A tireless work ethic and decades of production work make it near impossible to keep a handle on the man, but a spate of reissues in the past few years, especially Sherwood at the Controls, show just how his sound anticipated the wooly electronic experimentation that now runs through the likes of Arca, the Fade to Mind crew and dubstep itself. So having Sherwood team with dubstep pioneer Rob Ellis, aka Pinch, was surely inspired. But too often on their 2015 debut, Late Night Endless, felt cluttered and claustrophobic. And when they did take their foot off the gas, they wound up wallowing in a downtempo rut. The tempos remain quickened on their follow-up Man Vs. Sofa, but the two let the tracks breathe a bit more and there’s a sense of refinement throughout. A jittery thump opens “Roll Call,” and while there’s all manner of machine-gun handclaps, echoing hi-hats and arroyos of bass, there’s also flecks of Blaxploitation guitar and cinematic strings. It might read like a laundry list of elements, but Pinch and Sherwood move deftly between it all. “Itchy Face” bears quick electro bass pulses and snare rolls. So when they introduce a graceful piano line and just let it luxuriate, it's like a sonic speedball. The two are so nimble and compatible now that they easily swing into echo chambers and white noise while keeping the speed up. That piano crosses over to the dubstep/classic dub stylings of “Midnight Mindset,” though it’s not the same easy blend they displayed earlier. And the title track has piano and drums flicker in and out of darkness, but it doesn’t move so much as get swallowed up by static. And when the piano rises up again on the next track, the novelty of it in their mix wears thin. The best surprise comes when they bring Lee “Scratch” Perry in for a guest vocal turn on “Lies.” Despite decades of dub pedigree, Sherwood and Pinch forego it to instead put a tricky 2-step under him, a welcome shift in strategy. A furious lyric adds menace to the industrial haze of “Gun Law,” showing the duo moving into noisier terrain that brings to mind Sherwood’s gnarled mid-’80s output. Things get baffling when the duo throw in a cover of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s evocative ’80s classic, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.” The first time through, they pay their respects to Sakamoto’s sterling piano melody, one of the loveliest soundtrack themes of the era. But after establishing the motif, Sherwood and Pinch don’t seem to know quite where to take it. A downtempo beat gets thrown underneath it, before the two grind the track to a complete halt and instead add squalls of digital glitch and some electric guitar noodling. It then goes up into the stratosphere for a moment before they bring it back down with a needlessly busy IDM drum line. Respectable as it is for both men to avoid falling back into their bag of dub tricks, a few of Man Vs. Sofa’s attempts to expand their reach fall just a bit short.

Artist: Sherwood & Pinch, Album: Man Vs. Sofa, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Thankfully, the past few years have brought the exhilarating and acerbic production work of Adrian Sherwood back into earshot. In the midst of early ’80s London, he helped a slew of punks—the Fall, Judy Nylon, and Maximum Joy—find their inner dub sound, and he gave rastas like Bim Sherman and Prince Far I a heavily psychedelic bass tone that made them stand apart from their dreadlocked brethren. A tireless work ethic and decades of production work make it near impossible to keep a handle on the man, but a spate of reissues in the past few years, especially Sherwood at the Controls, show just how his sound anticipated the wooly electronic experimentation that now runs through the likes of Arca, the Fade to Mind crew and dubstep itself. So having Sherwood team with dubstep pioneer Rob Ellis, aka Pinch, was surely inspired. But too often on their 2015 debut, Late Night Endless, felt cluttered and claustrophobic. And when they did take their foot off the gas, they wound up wallowing in a downtempo rut. The tempos remain quickened on their follow-up Man Vs. Sofa, but the two let the tracks breathe a bit more and there’s a sense of refinement throughout. A jittery thump opens “Roll Call,” and while there’s all manner of machine-gun handclaps, echoing hi-hats and arroyos of bass, there’s also flecks of Blaxploitation guitar and cinematic strings. It might read like a laundry list of elements, but Pinch and Sherwood move deftly between it all. “Itchy Face” bears quick electro bass pulses and snare rolls. So when they introduce a graceful piano line and just let it luxuriate, it's like a sonic speedball. The two are so nimble and compatible now that they easily swing into echo chambers and white noise while keeping the speed up. That piano crosses over to the dubstep/classic dub stylings of “Midnight Mindset,” though it’s not the same easy blend they displayed earlier. And the title track has piano and drums flicker in and out of darkness, but it doesn’t move so much as get swallowed up by static. And when the piano rises up again on the next track, the novelty of it in their mix wears thin. The best surprise comes when they bring Lee “Scratch” Perry in for a guest vocal turn on “Lies.” Despite decades of dub pedigree, Sherwood and Pinch forego it to instead put a tricky 2-step under him, a welcome shift in strategy. A furious lyric adds menace to the industrial haze of “Gun Law,” showing the duo moving into noisier terrain that brings to mind Sherwood’s gnarled mid-’80s output. Things get baffling when the duo throw in a cover of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s evocative ’80s classic, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.” The first time through, they pay their respects to Sakamoto’s sterling piano melody, one of the loveliest soundtrack themes of the era. But after establishing the motif, Sherwood and Pinch don’t seem to know quite where to take it. A downtempo beat gets thrown underneath it, before the two grind the track to a complete halt and instead add squalls of digital glitch and some electric guitar noodling. It then goes up into the stratosphere for a moment before they bring it back down with a needlessly busy IDM drum line. Respectable as it is for both men to avoid falling back into their bag of dub tricks, a few of Man Vs. Sofa’s attempts to expand their reach fall just a bit short."

Various Artists

PC Music Volume 1

Jia Tolentino

PC Music Volume 1 is anti-physical music for an anti-physical time. Like everything that A. G. Cook’s London-based label’s released since 2013, these 10 songs are invocations of the hyperreal, created to meet the anxieties of an age where bodies are rarely written about as sites of joy or authenticity, and more frequently discussed as zones of inequity, violence, embarrassment and pain. The desire to exist as a well-tended garden of pixels fuels many of our culture’s dominant systems: the databases of altered thoughts, distorted images, the avatars that demonstrate reaction or stand in for action. Like all of these networks and products, PC Music answers our desire to escape the burden of physical presence—and in the process ends up sharpening and perpetuating the desire even further. Both a label and a self-contained genre, PC Music is constructed from deep abstractions of pop and experimental electronic music; its building blocks are the musical equivalent of emoji, symbols that replace words that replace voices. It’s an airbrushed articulation of digital life in all its silly, beautiful, desperate triviality; it has an avant-garde surface but is reactionary in its bones. Sonically, it’s a response to today’s alarmingly easy production glosses, the intense plurality of sub-subgenres that flourish online. If pop’s basic work is to grab you by the heart, PC Music flips and disses that aim completely. The label’s sound resembles what aliens would produce if they sunk a jukebox in acid and then tried, from the randomized wreckage, to communicate some version of love. Instead of affection, they’ll give you a heart-shaped simulacrum—and maybe, as suggests PC Music, that’s what you wanted after all. When physical presence is a source of so much complication, sometimes an abstraction is the only thing a person can bear. A test of the boundaries, possibilities and limitations of this ultra-focused aesthetic, PC Music Volume 1 compresses two years of work into a half-hour. Taken together, the rapturous, nightmarish cartoon corpus is maddeningly effective; it solidifies PC Music’s ability to only produce strong reactions, whether starry-eyed captivation or powerful revulsion or a nauseating juxtaposition of both poles. There’s a meaningful spectrum of approaches within the PC Music ethos—classical composer Danny L Harle’s "In My Dreams" has a heartbreakingly soft, sweet, harmonic gravity, while A. G. Cook’s alter ego Lipgloss Twins’ "Wannabe" is a chopped-up, anti-melodic spatter of brand names and robot garble—but there’s a relentless logical consistency to the sound. Every track feels almost auto-generated, scrambled, which makes the human precision in each arrangement even more eerie: PC Music sounds chaotic but is sneakily minimalist, deliberate to the last distorted note. The calculation behind this effect is a large part of what makes it monstrous: it’s the sound of whimsy without spontaneity, lightness without joy, longing without knowledge, aggression with no object. It’s a dollhouse universe, for female voices and female figures only. The male producers and artists are controllingly invisible in PC Music, and it’s hard to say whether that’s a real aesthetic constraint or a deliberate large-scale perpetuation of the idea of women as powerless, squeaky, sweet. The genre, anyway, has been slapped with labels of "gender appropriation," and the sound does feel awkwardly, distinctly male sometimes, in its "South Park"-ish warehouse artlessness. But, if anyone’s really in drag here, it’s humans pretending to be avatars—the total elision of soul. Like a Kardashian, PC Music cannot be insulted by the word "contrived." PC Music is deeply contrived; it’s fake as hell, that’s the point, that’s the entire energy. But this ethos, of course, has its limits. PC Music only works when its theoretical intention lines up with its physical effect: when you listen to it and become instantly depersonalized, blissfully and bubbly, more pixel than flesh. The best route to this end naturally centers on pleasure. In Volume 1, the pastel jelly-bean melodies and baby-girl anime coos of Hannah Diamond’s "Every Night" and A. G. Cook’s "Beautiful" reach this synthetic liftoff; the two pair up again for "Keri Baby", a maniacally playful track with a stormy bassline, a bubble noise vamping, a refrain of "Give it to the girl/ Give it to the girl/ Give it to the cutest girl." The closing track, easyFun’s "Laplander", is transcendent: all simulated mechanical longing, synth squeaks and stilted voices reaching for ecstasy. In tracks that are less joyful—GFOTY’s "Don’t Wanna / Let’s Do It", for example—the self-perpetuating darkness and denial that PC Music draws on gets a little too clear for comfort. PC Music is escapism whose primary effect is to remind us of what we’re trying to escape. We can’t trade body for avatar; we can’t displace longing forever. But for the space of an album—the sheer forcefulness of this intention smashed into a dizzy half-hour span—the sincerity within our most fundamentally artificial impulses comes calling. You wish you didn’t live in a world that produced PC Music, but you do—and because you do, thank the god in the machine for PC Music. It’ll come whispering and screaming in an absolute vacuum; it’s a party reconstituted long after anyone’s been there to laugh. It’s empty, and yet somehow the stakes are monumental. Can you chip your way to the real through this pixelated thicket? Well, you can, and worse, you have to.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: PC Music Volume 1, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "PC Music Volume 1 is anti-physical music for an anti-physical time. Like everything that A. G. Cook’s London-based label’s released since 2013, these 10 songs are invocations of the hyperreal, created to meet the anxieties of an age where bodies are rarely written about as sites of joy or authenticity, and more frequently discussed as zones of inequity, violence, embarrassment and pain. The desire to exist as a well-tended garden of pixels fuels many of our culture’s dominant systems: the databases of altered thoughts, distorted images, the avatars that demonstrate reaction or stand in for action. Like all of these networks and products, PC Music answers our desire to escape the burden of physical presence—and in the process ends up sharpening and perpetuating the desire even further. Both a label and a self-contained genre, PC Music is constructed from deep abstractions of pop and experimental electronic music; its building blocks are the musical equivalent of emoji, symbols that replace words that replace voices. It’s an airbrushed articulation of digital life in all its silly, beautiful, desperate triviality; it has an avant-garde surface but is reactionary in its bones. Sonically, it’s a response to today’s alarmingly easy production glosses, the intense plurality of sub-subgenres that flourish online. If pop’s basic work is to grab you by the heart, PC Music flips and disses that aim completely. The label’s sound resembles what aliens would produce if they sunk a jukebox in acid and then tried, from the randomized wreckage, to communicate some version of love. Instead of affection, they’ll give you a heart-shaped simulacrum—and maybe, as suggests PC Music, that’s what you wanted after all. When physical presence is a source of so much complication, sometimes an abstraction is the only thing a person can bear. A test of the boundaries, possibilities and limitations of this ultra-focused aesthetic, PC Music Volume 1 compresses two years of work into a half-hour. Taken together, the rapturous, nightmarish cartoon corpus is maddeningly effective; it solidifies PC Music’s ability to only produce strong reactions, whether starry-eyed captivation or powerful revulsion or a nauseating juxtaposition of both poles. There’s a meaningful spectrum of approaches within the PC Music ethos—classical composer Danny L Harle’s "In My Dreams" has a heartbreakingly soft, sweet, harmonic gravity, while A. G. Cook’s alter ego Lipgloss Twins’ "Wannabe" is a chopped-up, anti-melodic spatter of brand names and robot garble—but there’s a relentless logical consistency to the sound. Every track feels almost auto-generated, scrambled, which makes the human precision in each arrangement even more eerie: PC Music sounds chaotic but is sneakily minimalist, deliberate to the last distorted note. The calculation behind this effect is a large part of what makes it monstrous: it’s the sound of whimsy without spontaneity, lightness without joy, longing without knowledge, aggression with no object. It’s a dollhouse universe, for female voices and female figures only. The male producers and artists are controllingly invisible in PC Music, and it’s hard to say whether that’s a real aesthetic constraint or a deliberate large-scale perpetuation of the idea of women as powerless, squeaky, sweet. The genre, anyway, has been slapped with labels of "gender appropriation," and the sound does feel awkwardly, distinctly male sometimes, in its "South Park"-ish warehouse artlessness. But, if anyone’s really in drag here, it’s humans pretending to be avatars—the total elision of soul. Like a Kardashian, PC Music cannot be insulted by the word "contrived." PC Music is deeply contrived; it’s fake as hell, that’s the point, that’s the entire energy. But this ethos, of course, has its limits. PC Music only works when its theoretical intention lines up with its physical effect: when you listen to it and become instantly depersonalized, blissfully and bubbly, more pixel than flesh. The best route to this end naturally centers on pleasure. In Volume 1, the pastel jelly-bean melodies and baby-girl anime coos of Hannah Diamond’s "Every Night" and A. G. Cook’s "Beautiful" reach this synthetic liftoff; the two pair up again for "Keri Baby", a maniacally playful track with a stormy bassline, a bubble noise vamping, a refrain of "Give it to the girl/ Give it to the girl/ Give it to the cutest girl." The closing track, easyFun’s "Laplander", is transcendent: all simulated mechanical longing, synth squeaks and stilted voices reaching for ecstasy. In tracks that are less joyful—GFOTY’s "Don’t Wanna / Let’s Do It", for example—the self-perpetuating darkness and denial that PC Music draws on gets a little too clear for comfort. PC Music is escapism whose primary effect is to remind us of what we’re trying to escape. We can’t trade body for avatar; we can’t displace longing forever. But for the space of an album—the sheer forcefulness of this intention smashed into a dizzy half-hour span—the sincerity within our most fundamentally artificial impulses comes calling. You wish you didn’t live in a world that produced PC Music, but you do—and because you do, thank the god in the machine for PC Music. It’ll come whispering and screaming in an absolute vacuum; it’s a party reconstituted long after anyone’s been there to laugh. It’s empty, and yet somehow the stakes are monumental. Can you chip your way to the real through this pixelated thicket? Well, you can, and worse, you have to."

Windhand

Soma

Metal

Grayson Currin

Soma shows all the signs of an attempted slow metal classic: On their second album and first for Relapse, Richmond, Va., quintet Windhand coughs up three low-tempo burners, follows them with a foreboding acoustic creak, and aims to end with its longest and strongest-- a 14-minute rumbling insurgency called “Cassock” and the 31-minute astro fade “Boleskin”. The record spotlights every asset of the band, too. The dual guitars are enormous, with the tube-amp tones delivering the riffs in massive waves and presenting the solos less as interruptions and more as big, breaking-news events. The rhythm section is relentless; swollen bass pushes between every deep groove, underlined and emphasized by ubiquitous cymbal splatter. And the voice of Dorthia Cottrell-- Windhand’s lugubrious and bewitching frontwoman-- hangs above it all, her dark-minded tunes settling over the monolithic music like a dense, mountainous fog. Her haunting turn as a solo singer-songwriter serves as the record’s surprising centerpiece. It’s a quiet coup within an otherwise very loud and insistent marathon. While Windhand understand the sound and the structure of their liminal stoner rock and doom metal, the actual songs on Soma fall short of their forebears. Of these six tracks, only “Woodbine” offers a truly compelling hook, with Cottrell singing a loving if laughable ode to Satan-- “Come on, Satan, surround me”-- with the hidden verve of a pop singer. The band traces her motion perfectly, strengthening the thread of melody rather than swallowing it. Oftentimes, though, Windhand treat the songs like kids too excited to have a new coloring book, their heavy hands drawing so far outside the lines that the shapes themselves become obfuscated. During “Orchard”, for instance, Cottrell moves in interesting dynamic arches, howling her lines only to slink suddenly behind them. But Asechiah Bogdan and Garrett Morris crowd her out, filling so much of the space with a rote weedian riff that she’s barely there at all. The same applies to “Cassock”, where her two short verses seem almost like add-ons for a piece simply meant as a showcase for Windhand’s tempo range--mid-tempo to something slightly faster to something slightly slower to something a bit faster still to the silent end. If that sounds tedious, it can be. That’s another problem with Soma. Windhand consistently take their time to do very little, a flaw epitomized by the relatively punch-less one-two combination of “Cassock” and “Boleskin”. The latter builds from an acoustic intro into a riff that’s, once again, very plain. There’s one great, squealing solo and another good one, but Windhand mostly plod along, restating their case until the tune becomes more nuisance than mantra. Even on shorter numbers, that sense of fatigue reoccurs because Cottrell's effects-laden voice and hooks are pushed so far afield. The band’s self-titled 2011 debut didn’t feature an acoustic track from Cottrell because it didn’t need it. Well-paced and less burdened by its own seismic sounds, that five-song record felt urgent and varied, giving its guitar leads more to do than circle back and forth. “Heap Wolves” was a quick dose of Sabbath-baiting perfection, while the 11-minute “Summon the Moon” took care to anchor its length to an indelible chorus. But Soma feels impregnably monotonous. When Cottrell’s multi-tracked coo arrives without distraction at the start of “Evergreen”, the break feels more like a necessary respite than an interesting diversion. You might find yourself wishing she’d just keep singing. Earlier this month, a Spin interview with Morris opened with this proclamation: “I don’t want to get pigeonholed as a ‘doom’ band.” On Soma, Windhand actively fight against that identity but lose, the collection's songs turning into stylistic slogs even as the band ostensibly works to avoid that end. Following their two-year-old debut, their deal with Relapse, and their colossal split with fellow Richmond heavies Cough, Windhand were poised as one of the year’s potential metal breakthroughs. But Soma sits still, paralyzed by the weight of a sound that’s too big for this promising band to manage, at least for now.

Artist: Windhand, Album: Soma, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Soma shows all the signs of an attempted slow metal classic: On their second album and first for Relapse, Richmond, Va., quintet Windhand coughs up three low-tempo burners, follows them with a foreboding acoustic creak, and aims to end with its longest and strongest-- a 14-minute rumbling insurgency called “Cassock” and the 31-minute astro fade “Boleskin”. The record spotlights every asset of the band, too. The dual guitars are enormous, with the tube-amp tones delivering the riffs in massive waves and presenting the solos less as interruptions and more as big, breaking-news events. The rhythm section is relentless; swollen bass pushes between every deep groove, underlined and emphasized by ubiquitous cymbal splatter. And the voice of Dorthia Cottrell-- Windhand’s lugubrious and bewitching frontwoman-- hangs above it all, her dark-minded tunes settling over the monolithic music like a dense, mountainous fog. Her haunting turn as a solo singer-songwriter serves as the record’s surprising centerpiece. It’s a quiet coup within an otherwise very loud and insistent marathon. While Windhand understand the sound and the structure of their liminal stoner rock and doom metal, the actual songs on Soma fall short of their forebears. Of these six tracks, only “Woodbine” offers a truly compelling hook, with Cottrell singing a loving if laughable ode to Satan-- “Come on, Satan, surround me”-- with the hidden verve of a pop singer. The band traces her motion perfectly, strengthening the thread of melody rather than swallowing it. Oftentimes, though, Windhand treat the songs like kids too excited to have a new coloring book, their heavy hands drawing so far outside the lines that the shapes themselves become obfuscated. During “Orchard”, for instance, Cottrell moves in interesting dynamic arches, howling her lines only to slink suddenly behind them. But Asechiah Bogdan and Garrett Morris crowd her out, filling so much of the space with a rote weedian riff that she’s barely there at all. The same applies to “Cassock”, where her two short verses seem almost like add-ons for a piece simply meant as a showcase for Windhand’s tempo range--mid-tempo to something slightly faster to something slightly slower to something a bit faster still to the silent end. If that sounds tedious, it can be. That’s another problem with Soma. Windhand consistently take their time to do very little, a flaw epitomized by the relatively punch-less one-two combination of “Cassock” and “Boleskin”. The latter builds from an acoustic intro into a riff that’s, once again, very plain. There’s one great, squealing solo and another good one, but Windhand mostly plod along, restating their case until the tune becomes more nuisance than mantra. Even on shorter numbers, that sense of fatigue reoccurs because Cottrell's effects-laden voice and hooks are pushed so far afield. The band’s self-titled 2011 debut didn’t feature an acoustic track from Cottrell because it didn’t need it. Well-paced and less burdened by its own seismic sounds, that five-song record felt urgent and varied, giving its guitar leads more to do than circle back and forth. “Heap Wolves” was a quick dose of Sabbath-baiting perfection, while the 11-minute “Summon the Moon” took care to anchor its length to an indelible chorus. But Soma feels impregnably monotonous. When Cottrell’s multi-tracked coo arrives without distraction at the start of “Evergreen”, the break feels more like a necessary respite than an interesting diversion. You might find yourself wishing she’d just keep singing. Earlier this month, a Spin interview with Morris opened with this proclamation: “I don’t want to get pigeonholed as a ‘doom’ band.” On Soma, Windhand actively fight against that identity but lose, the collection's songs turning into stylistic slogs even as the band ostensibly works to avoid that end. Following their two-year-old debut, their deal with Relapse, and their colossal split with fellow Richmond heavies Cough, Windhand were poised as one of the year’s potential metal breakthroughs. But Soma sits still, paralyzed by the weight of a sound that’s too big for this promising band to manage, at least for now."

The Bats

The Guilty Office

Rock

Amy Granzin

Whether they know Christchurch from Cleveland or were alive in 1987 when Daddy's Highway made small but far-reaching ripples, indie rock fans have been absorbing strains of the Bats' and fellow "New Zealand sound" evangelists such the Clean and the Chills via osmosis for a couple of decades. The chugging, scrappy, Velvets-indebted aesthetic is so finely woven into "classic" indie rock's DNA (thanks largely to 90s uber-fans like Pavement and Superchunk), that it's easy to take a new album from one of the key Kiwi bands for granted-- even to write it off as quaint and anachronistic. So inevitably, nostalgia nags The Guilty Office, the Bats' first release since 2005's At the National Grid, their respectable but underwhelming return from a decade-long hiatus. Despite introducing a few upgrades over the years-- actual sound engineering, a greater vocal role for guitarist Kaye Woodard, and the occasional harp-- the band hasn't tinkered with its signature chiming guitars and surging straight-ahead rhythms. But why fix a formula that works? From melodic, bobbing lead "Countersign" to bucolic closer "The Orchard", Office is a comfortable, comforting listen, wonderful in its very familiarity. Even as the band sticks to the path of least resistance, it skirts the MOR sandtrap that sinks so many indie rock acts that manage to last a quarter century. The Bats' feet aren't as fleet as they used to be; nothing on Office hurtles with the reckless abandon of classics "United Airways" or "The Law of Things", and there's a higher ratio of slow-to-fast tempoed songs than there used to be. But a tune like "Crimson Enemy" locks into enthusiastic, even danceable grooves. And although lead Bat Robert Scott has always harbored a hint of despair in his almost-comic frog-throated croak, he's positively ebullient dueting with Woodard on "Steppin' Out". Even on less-sunny songs like the title track or "Broken Path", the dude sounds like he's smiling, like he's (get this!) happy to be there. The record's midsection is a tad soft and somewhat skippable. I'm a sucker for a good ending, though, and orchestra-enhanced "The Orchard" is a knock-out, as pretty and plush as a middle-period Belle and Sebastian track, with a unison-sung chorus that suggests the whole room, including the sound guys, are chiming in on "here we go a-wassailing around the apple trees again." Charmingly giddy as that is, you actually have to return to track one, "Countersign", for the album's essential lyric: "We want you back here/ You've been too long away." Agreed.

Artist: The Bats, Album: The Guilty Office, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Whether they know Christchurch from Cleveland or were alive in 1987 when Daddy's Highway made small but far-reaching ripples, indie rock fans have been absorbing strains of the Bats' and fellow "New Zealand sound" evangelists such the Clean and the Chills via osmosis for a couple of decades. The chugging, scrappy, Velvets-indebted aesthetic is so finely woven into "classic" indie rock's DNA (thanks largely to 90s uber-fans like Pavement and Superchunk), that it's easy to take a new album from one of the key Kiwi bands for granted-- even to write it off as quaint and anachronistic. So inevitably, nostalgia nags The Guilty Office, the Bats' first release since 2005's At the National Grid, their respectable but underwhelming return from a decade-long hiatus. Despite introducing a few upgrades over the years-- actual sound engineering, a greater vocal role for guitarist Kaye Woodard, and the occasional harp-- the band hasn't tinkered with its signature chiming guitars and surging straight-ahead rhythms. But why fix a formula that works? From melodic, bobbing lead "Countersign" to bucolic closer "The Orchard", Office is a comfortable, comforting listen, wonderful in its very familiarity. Even as the band sticks to the path of least resistance, it skirts the MOR sandtrap that sinks so many indie rock acts that manage to last a quarter century. The Bats' feet aren't as fleet as they used to be; nothing on Office hurtles with the reckless abandon of classics "United Airways" or "The Law of Things", and there's a higher ratio of slow-to-fast tempoed songs than there used to be. But a tune like "Crimson Enemy" locks into enthusiastic, even danceable grooves. And although lead Bat Robert Scott has always harbored a hint of despair in his almost-comic frog-throated croak, he's positively ebullient dueting with Woodard on "Steppin' Out". Even on less-sunny songs like the title track or "Broken Path", the dude sounds like he's smiling, like he's (get this!) happy to be there. The record's midsection is a tad soft and somewhat skippable. I'm a sucker for a good ending, though, and orchestra-enhanced "The Orchard" is a knock-out, as pretty and plush as a middle-period Belle and Sebastian track, with a unison-sung chorus that suggests the whole room, including the sound guys, are chiming in on "here we go a-wassailing around the apple trees again." Charmingly giddy as that is, you actually have to return to track one, "Countersign", for the album's essential lyric: "We want you back here/ You've been too long away." Agreed."

Morrissey

Low in High School

Rock

Sam Sodomsky

“I make this claim, now let me explain,” Morrissey sings after he first utters the title of “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage,” a standout track on his bizarre and ambitious new album Low in High School. Ironically, this is one of his recent statements that needs the least defending. Some zealous fans have suggested the song—which tells the story of a woman devoting herself to the theater after a bout of heartbreak—is an allegory for Britain leaving the E.U. (particularly after a live performance where he chanted “Brexit!” repeatedly at the end). But it plays more like a thinly veiled confession from Morrissey himself. “Jacky cracks when she isn’t on stage,” he admits in its final verse, as the audience flees the room. Morrissey has courted controversy and dared his fans to abandon him throughout his entire career, but Low in High School marks his second consecutive release that feels regrettably tethered to his increasingly alienating public persona. 2014’s muddled, exhausting World Peace Is None of Your Business was a career-low that’s now nearly impossible to hear. Shortly after its release, the album was removed from record distributors and streaming services due to a clash with his label: a move that feels as bluntly symbolic as, well, the conceit of a Morrissey song. If later solo highlights like 2004’s You Are the Quarry felt like catching up with an old friend, Morrissey’s music is now more like scrolling through their Twitter feed and remembering why you stopped hanging out in the first place. Since we first met him fronting the Smiths in the ’80s lamenting how pop music said nothing to him about his life, Morrissey has been adamant about imbuing his records with deeper political ambitions. But Low in High School returns him to his most utilitarian purpose: a spokesperson for youthful melancholy. This theme surfaces both in the album title and its cover art—Morrissey’s first in over two decades not to feature his own visage. The first single, “Spent the Day in Bed,” even plays like the 58-year-old’s spin on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a magical day spent shirking one’s obligations, delivered with a prescriptive, winking omniscience. “I’m not my type,” he sings in its funniest line, “But I love my bed.” Fortunately, that song, with its squelchy production and barely-there verses, feels like a pit-stop on the record more than a statement of purpose. For better or worse, Morrissey shows up to work. Like World Peace, Low in High School pairs him and his band with producer Joe Chiccarelli, who delights in exploring new sounds. While that impulse mostly served to gloss up underwritten material on World Peace, the adventurous atmosphere is more welcome this time. A dramatic army of horns elevates the swaggering opener “My Love, I’d Do Anything for You” to resemble superhero theme music, and the woozy keys in “I Wish You Lonely” make its glittery disco more infectious. The pomp and circumstance also inspires Morrissey to stretch his voice into long-abandoned territory, occasionally slipping into a breathy croon or the playful falsetto of his younger years. A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. “Give me an order and I’ll blow up your daughter,” he slurs angrily in the anti-troops polemic “I Bury the Living.” In a catalog filled with questionable manifestos disguised as anthems, this is his most unwieldy, tackling war, class, and suicide over seven interminable, mean-spirited minutes. Other epics about police brutality in Venezuela and Morrissey’s own sympathy for the people of Israel (“I can’t answer for what armies do/They are not you”) are more straightforward though they’re far from effective, let alone enjoyable. His lyrics expose the same insensitivity as his abhorrent comments blaming victims of sexual assault. He portrays the people of Venezuela as helpless and God-fearing, while opponents of Israel are merely jealous barbarians. As he ages, Morrissey’s worldview gets smaller and smaller, and his political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance. In a recent interview, Morrissey pinpointed Low in High School’s driving concern: “Can young people ever be carefree again?” The album’s most agreeable moments are when he posits romance—as opposed to bitter provocation—as the answer. In the breezy, stomp-clap swing of “All the Young People Must Fall in Love,” he vaguely takes aim at Trump and delivers the titular command as a beacon of hope for his devoted legion of loners. In a song called “When You Open Your Legs,” he sings proudly about getting kicked out of a club at 4 a.m. for public displays of affection, bellowing, “Everything I know deserts me now.” The sentiment is echoed in the stark piano ballad “In Your Lap,” which counters observations of apocalyptic chaos with dreams of oral sex. These are not his most delicate works of fantasy, but at least he’s practicing what he preaches. We all walk home alone, he’s reminded us time and time again, and if nothing else, Morrissey’s faith in love remains devout.

Artist: Morrissey, Album: Low in High School, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "“I make this claim, now let me explain,” Morrissey sings after he first utters the title of “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage,” a standout track on his bizarre and ambitious new album Low in High School. Ironically, this is one of his recent statements that needs the least defending. Some zealous fans have suggested the song—which tells the story of a woman devoting herself to the theater after a bout of heartbreak—is an allegory for Britain leaving the E.U. (particularly after a live performance where he chanted “Brexit!” repeatedly at the end). But it plays more like a thinly veiled confession from Morrissey himself. “Jacky cracks when she isn’t on stage,” he admits in its final verse, as the audience flees the room. Morrissey has courted controversy and dared his fans to abandon him throughout his entire career, but Low in High School marks his second consecutive release that feels regrettably tethered to his increasingly alienating public persona. 2014’s muddled, exhausting World Peace Is None of Your Business was a career-low that’s now nearly impossible to hear. Shortly after its release, the album was removed from record distributors and streaming services due to a clash with his label: a move that feels as bluntly symbolic as, well, the conceit of a Morrissey song. If later solo highlights like 2004’s You Are the Quarry felt like catching up with an old friend, Morrissey’s music is now more like scrolling through their Twitter feed and remembering why you stopped hanging out in the first place. Since we first met him fronting the Smiths in the ’80s lamenting how pop music said nothing to him about his life, Morrissey has been adamant about imbuing his records with deeper political ambitions. But Low in High School returns him to his most utilitarian purpose: a spokesperson for youthful melancholy. This theme surfaces both in the album title and its cover art—Morrissey’s first in over two decades not to feature his own visage. The first single, “Spent the Day in Bed,” even plays like the 58-year-old’s spin on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a magical day spent shirking one’s obligations, delivered with a prescriptive, winking omniscience. “I’m not my type,” he sings in its funniest line, “But I love my bed.” Fortunately, that song, with its squelchy production and barely-there verses, feels like a pit-stop on the record more than a statement of purpose. For better or worse, Morrissey shows up to work. Like World Peace, Low in High School pairs him and his band with producer Joe Chiccarelli, who delights in exploring new sounds. While that impulse mostly served to gloss up underwritten material on World Peace, the adventurous atmosphere is more welcome this time. A dramatic army of horns elevates the swaggering opener “My Love, I’d Do Anything for You” to resemble superhero theme music, and the woozy keys in “I Wish You Lonely” make its glittery disco more infectious. The pomp and circumstance also inspires Morrissey to stretch his voice into long-abandoned territory, occasionally slipping into a breathy croon or the playful falsetto of his younger years. A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. “Give me an order and I’ll blow up your daughter,” he slurs angrily in the anti-troops polemic “I Bury the Living.” In a catalog filled with questionable manifestos disguised as anthems, this is his most unwieldy, tackling war, class, and suicide over seven interminable, mean-spirited minutes. Other epics about police brutality in Venezuela and Morrissey’s own sympathy for the people of Israel (“I can’t answer for what armies do/They are not you”) are more straightforward though they’re far from effective, let alone enjoyable. His lyrics expose the same insensitivity as his abhorrent comments blaming victims of sexual assault. He portrays the people of Venezuela as helpless and God-fearing, while opponents of Israel are merely jealous barbarians. As he ages, Morrissey’s worldview gets smaller and smaller, and his political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance. In a recent interview, Morrissey pinpointed Low in High School’s driving concern: “Can young people ever be carefree again?” The album’s most agreeable moments are when he posits romance—as opposed to bitter provocation—as the answer. In the breezy, stomp-clap swing of “All the Young People Must Fall in Love,” he vaguely takes aim at Trump and delivers the titular command as a beacon of hope for his devoted legion of loners. In a song called “When You Open Your Legs,” he sings proudly about getting kicked out of a club at 4 a.m. for public displays of affection, bellowing, “Everything I know deserts me now.” The sentiment is echoed in the stark piano ballad “In Your Lap,” which counters observations of apocalyptic chaos with dreams of oral sex. These are not his most delicate works of fantasy, but at least he’s practicing what he preaches. We all walk home alone, he’s reminded us time and time again, and if nothing else, Morrissey’s faith in love remains devout."

Stevie Jackson

(I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson

Rock

Marc Hogan

Stevie Jackson joined Belle and Sebastian about 15 years ago, and he's been playing hard to get ever since. As guitarist-vocalist for Glasgow's preeminent indie pop outfit, Jackson typically contributes only a track or two per LP. While frontman Stuart Murdoch has been busy with new project God Help the Girl, and former bandmate Isobel Campbell has put out album after album with gravelly-voiced collaborator Mark Lanegan, Jackson has pretty much limited his extracurricular activities to covers, soundtrack work, and instrumental appearances. If Jackson's solo debut is overdue, though, it's also disappointingly undercooked. Sure, (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson sounds a lot like what Belle and Sebastian fans might expect, with tinges of 1970s singer-songwriter records, bucolic late-1960s British pop, and, yup, showtunes. Put together intermittently since 2006 with fellow B&S members and a few longtime friends, these 12 songs feel like whimsical larks, and Jackson's considerable charm should be able to put them over just fine in a live setting. But the record can also be too whimsical for its own good, and for most listeners, Jackson's Belle and Sebastian songs will be enough. Chalk it up, perhaps, to yet another case of a solo artist's gifts working better with a band. In the context of last year's Write About Love, Jackson's "I'm Not Living in the Real World" is as accomplished as it is crazy for key changes. Here, when Jackson channels Elton John while proclaiming that he's "Pure at Heart", tosses off literary puns over ambling "Mellow Yellow" psych-pop, and coos, "Along came a bigger bird/ More bigger than he," amid twee-pop orchestration-- all on the same album-- it's a little tougher to take. When he jauntily narrates the potential pitfalls if you "Press Send" on an email to an object of your affection, context isn't the problem. On a musty tape somewhere, there must be a forgotten Jens Lekman song that brings this stale theme to wittier, more vivid life. That said, Jackson has long since proved himself to be more than merely an adept sideman, and he flashes glimmers of those skills here. Jittery preview track "Try Me" skirts the album's occasionally narrow topical concerns (two songs loosely about directors, one about a redevelopment project) and dippy faux-innocence ("He was my best friend at school..."). Instead, Jackson homes in neatly on a rich, distinctive emotional state-- "I got pills and I'm looking for thrills/ At the same time I want to start a family"-- and an equally well-developed organ-rock sound that builds on predecessors like ? and the Mysterians, the Clean, and Love Is All. This one's definitely worth the attempt. The new album's other preview track, the string-splashed, many-voiced "Man of God", comes closest to the Jesus Christ Superstar theatricality of The Life Pursuit songs like "Act of the Apostle". Only appropriate, given the title. Here, though, Jackson dodges some of the new record's pitfalls with yet another droll piece of songwriting: The religious imagery turns out to be just an unlikely setting for a music fan's doomed attempt to seduce through the strength of his record collection. Thankfully, Jackson doesn't make that mistake on (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson. Still, there's a disconnect between this fair-to-middling solo record and the vital role its creator plays in one of the indie world's truly singular ensembles.

Artist: Stevie Jackson, Album: (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "Stevie Jackson joined Belle and Sebastian about 15 years ago, and he's been playing hard to get ever since. As guitarist-vocalist for Glasgow's preeminent indie pop outfit, Jackson typically contributes only a track or two per LP. While frontman Stuart Murdoch has been busy with new project God Help the Girl, and former bandmate Isobel Campbell has put out album after album with gravelly-voiced collaborator Mark Lanegan, Jackson has pretty much limited his extracurricular activities to covers, soundtrack work, and instrumental appearances. If Jackson's solo debut is overdue, though, it's also disappointingly undercooked. Sure, (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson sounds a lot like what Belle and Sebastian fans might expect, with tinges of 1970s singer-songwriter records, bucolic late-1960s British pop, and, yup, showtunes. Put together intermittently since 2006 with fellow B&S members and a few longtime friends, these 12 songs feel like whimsical larks, and Jackson's considerable charm should be able to put them over just fine in a live setting. But the record can also be too whimsical for its own good, and for most listeners, Jackson's Belle and Sebastian songs will be enough. Chalk it up, perhaps, to yet another case of a solo artist's gifts working better with a band. In the context of last year's Write About Love, Jackson's "I'm Not Living in the Real World" is as accomplished as it is crazy for key changes. Here, when Jackson channels Elton John while proclaiming that he's "Pure at Heart", tosses off literary puns over ambling "Mellow Yellow" psych-pop, and coos, "Along came a bigger bird/ More bigger than he," amid twee-pop orchestration-- all on the same album-- it's a little tougher to take. When he jauntily narrates the potential pitfalls if you "Press Send" on an email to an object of your affection, context isn't the problem. On a musty tape somewhere, there must be a forgotten Jens Lekman song that brings this stale theme to wittier, more vivid life. That said, Jackson has long since proved himself to be more than merely an adept sideman, and he flashes glimmers of those skills here. Jittery preview track "Try Me" skirts the album's occasionally narrow topical concerns (two songs loosely about directors, one about a redevelopment project) and dippy faux-innocence ("He was my best friend at school..."). Instead, Jackson homes in neatly on a rich, distinctive emotional state-- "I got pills and I'm looking for thrills/ At the same time I want to start a family"-- and an equally well-developed organ-rock sound that builds on predecessors like ? and the Mysterians, the Clean, and Love Is All. This one's definitely worth the attempt. The new album's other preview track, the string-splashed, many-voiced "Man of God", comes closest to the Jesus Christ Superstar theatricality of The Life Pursuit songs like "Act of the Apostle". Only appropriate, given the title. Here, though, Jackson dodges some of the new record's pitfalls with yet another droll piece of songwriting: The religious imagery turns out to be just an unlikely setting for a music fan's doomed attempt to seduce through the strength of his record collection. Thankfully, Jackson doesn't make that mistake on (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson. Still, there's a disconnect between this fair-to-middling solo record and the vital role its creator plays in one of the indie world's truly singular ensembles."

Shy Glizzy

Quiet Storm

Rap

Jay Balfour

All the way through 2017, Shy Glizzy’s voice has been at the center of an unexpected Washington, D.C. rap hit. GoldLink’s “Crew” snowballed into a smash as the months warmed, and it’s Glizzy’s verse that cuts the song in half, interrupting an otherwise sinewy and droning R&B jam with a jumpy giddiness. The eager opening of his verse—“Hey! Nice to meet/I’m Young Jefe, who you be?”—is the type you brace for all along, the obvious “this is my favorite part” of one of the year’s happiest surprises. Of course, it wasn’t an introduction so much as a mainstream moment of arrival. Glizzy has been at or near the center of D.C. hip-hop since at least 2014, and “Crew” felt more like lending a hand than climbing a social ladder. But where GoldLink burrowed into D.C. music tradition for a statement album that blipped his city back into the mainstream hip-hop consciousness, Glizzy channels the pervasive sounds of Atlanta trap for his own contemporary D.C. soundtrack. Glizzy’s latest mixtape, Quiet Storm, is an ambitious 18 songs, but he’s successfully designed it to glide by. Almost every beat is in a softly-synthed, languid trap style, and Glizzy is rarely as jumpy as he appears on “Crew.” Instead, he hosts the project as the center of attention, a pop artist with a full arsenal of graceful melody to match the tone. Go-to Atlanta producers like TM88, Goose, and Yung Lan dot the landscape with tracks that sound smooth but not slick, and often take shape out of minor key atmospherics. Glizzy uses the same sounds to channel opulent romance (“Blow a Bag”) and morbid existentialism (“Take Me Away”), sometimes on the same song. “Get Away” is a versatile escapist anthem: crime chase and sentimental runaway at once. Glizzy has also rekindled his surefire working relationship with the Atlanta producer Zaytoven, whose keyboard twinkles on “One Day” might echo some of his previous productions (see Future’s “Peacoat”), but remain vital enough to appear on both this album and the producer’s own recent solo outing. For all the Atlanta stars Zaytoven’s beats have canvassed, Glizzy might treat them the best. He slips into the first verse with droning couplets and jumps out of the second to yelp out his bona fides. For the chorus, he churns hope into a mantra, promising and reminding himself of the purpose of his grind: “All my niggas gon’ ball one day.” Besides the smartly streamlined curation of beats, Quiet Storm also folds in carefully doled out features: Trey Songz carries a swaggering hook on “Dope Boy Magic” and Dave East punches into “Get It Again” with a relentless string of brags. As the de facto leader and concentrated star power of the D.C. crew Glizzy Gang, Shy shares space with 3 Glizzy and 30 Glizzy on “Haters Anthem” for a track that greets envy with biting inspirationalism. But there’s a sour side here too. In September, 30 Glizzy was shot and killed in Baltimore, and his brief appearance on the Quiet Storm tracklist prefaces a heartfelt tribute at the end of the album. That closer, “Take Me Away,” is dangerously morose, edging into depressive suicidal thoughts as Glizzy caps off each chorus line with an open invitation for death. Glizzy sounds both like an open-wound and depressed shut-in here. “It’s a war started outside, don’t wanna talk about it,” he yelps. For all the giddiness Glizzy carries onto many of his songs, he’s never been more endearing than this, wallowing in justifiable street survivalism. More than ever, he sounds like the open heart of his city.

Artist: Shy Glizzy, Album: Quiet Storm, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "All the way through 2017, Shy Glizzy’s voice has been at the center of an unexpected Washington, D.C. rap hit. GoldLink’s “Crew” snowballed into a smash as the months warmed, and it’s Glizzy’s verse that cuts the song in half, interrupting an otherwise sinewy and droning R&B jam with a jumpy giddiness. The eager opening of his verse—“Hey! Nice to meet/I’m Young Jefe, who you be?”—is the type you brace for all along, the obvious “this is my favorite part” of one of the year’s happiest surprises. Of course, it wasn’t an introduction so much as a mainstream moment of arrival. Glizzy has been at or near the center of D.C. hip-hop since at least 2014, and “Crew” felt more like lending a hand than climbing a social ladder. But where GoldLink burrowed into D.C. music tradition for a statement album that blipped his city back into the mainstream hip-hop consciousness, Glizzy channels the pervasive sounds of Atlanta trap for his own contemporary D.C. soundtrack. Glizzy’s latest mixtape, Quiet Storm, is an ambitious 18 songs, but he’s successfully designed it to glide by. Almost every beat is in a softly-synthed, languid trap style, and Glizzy is rarely as jumpy as he appears on “Crew.” Instead, he hosts the project as the center of attention, a pop artist with a full arsenal of graceful melody to match the tone. Go-to Atlanta producers like TM88, Goose, and Yung Lan dot the landscape with tracks that sound smooth but not slick, and often take shape out of minor key atmospherics. Glizzy uses the same sounds to channel opulent romance (“Blow a Bag”) and morbid existentialism (“Take Me Away”), sometimes on the same song. “Get Away” is a versatile escapist anthem: crime chase and sentimental runaway at once. Glizzy has also rekindled his surefire working relationship with the Atlanta producer Zaytoven, whose keyboard twinkles on “One Day” might echo some of his previous productions (see Future’s “Peacoat”), but remain vital enough to appear on both this album and the producer’s own recent solo outing. For all the Atlanta stars Zaytoven’s beats have canvassed, Glizzy might treat them the best. He slips into the first verse with droning couplets and jumps out of the second to yelp out his bona fides. For the chorus, he churns hope into a mantra, promising and reminding himself of the purpose of his grind: “All my niggas gon’ ball one day.” Besides the smartly streamlined curation of beats, Quiet Storm also folds in carefully doled out features: Trey Songz carries a swaggering hook on “Dope Boy Magic” and Dave East punches into “Get It Again” with a relentless string of brags. As the de facto leader and concentrated star power of the D.C. crew Glizzy Gang, Shy shares space with 3 Glizzy and 30 Glizzy on “Haters Anthem” for a track that greets envy with biting inspirationalism. But there’s a sour side here too. In September, 30 Glizzy was shot and killed in Baltimore, and his brief appearance on the Quiet Storm tracklist prefaces a heartfelt tribute at the end of the album. That closer, “Take Me Away,” is dangerously morose, edging into depressive suicidal thoughts as Glizzy caps off each chorus line with an open invitation for death. Glizzy sounds both like an open-wound and depressed shut-in here. “It’s a war started outside, don’t wanna talk about it,” he yelps. For all the giddiness Glizzy carries onto many of his songs, he’s never been more endearing than this, wallowing in justifiable street survivalism. More than ever, he sounds like the open heart of his city."

Lil Silva

Mabel EP

Electronic,Rap

Larry Fitzmaurice

If you need proof of Lil Silva’s talent in 2014, look no further than Fabriclive 75, the fine mix CD from earlier this year compiled by grime DJs and Butterz founders Elijah & Skilliam. The 24-year-old London producer’s “Venture” appears in the mix’s propulsive opening third, coming off of the effervescent, slightly wistful clipped vocals and stuttered drums of Flava D’s “Hold On VIP 3”; as that tune closes out, “Venture” announces itself with Silva’s signature name-dropping tag (“Lil-Lil Silva-Silva”) as a dense bass hit drops into the foreview. The tune continues to twist and turn with squiggly low end, shrill hi-hats, and a skipping percussive gait, and although it only sticks around for a minute and change, its presence as a capable, impressively detailed instrumental grime tune is deeply felt. ”Venture” first appeared as a white label release back in 2013, fronted by the slower, slightly dub-inflected “The Split”, and both tunes are representative of the sound—hard-hitting, somewhat skeletal, pleasing while retaining a sense of intimidation—that Lil Silva’s developed over the past six years. Many of his grime-focused singles have seen release on Night Slugs, the UK dance hub responsible for some of the most forward-thinking club fare from this decade thus far. But Silva’s work as a grime technician, notable as it is, only provides a partial view of his burgeoning career. The rest of it began, in tandem, with the 2011 single “On Your Own”, a collaboration from currently in-demand UK vocalist Sampha that appeared on Silva’s sole release from that year, The Patience EP. The song’s rushing percussion and general sense of motion were unmistakably the work of Silva’s, but almost every other element suggested a turn towards pop, with moody atmospherics and a sense of song construction that smacked of Todd Terry’s classic remix of Everything But the Girl’s “Missing”. ”On Your Own” was, above all else, well-timed—it made the rounds just a few months after James Blake’s genre-upheaving self-titled debut LP was released, and its canny mix of pop structure and dancefloor motifs slotted in nicely alongside Blake’s own sonic recontextualizations. But “On Your Own” didn’t quite take off in the public consciousness, and 2012 saw Silva briefly returning to his knottier roots, including a release for Night Slugs’ strictly-for-functionality Club Constructions series. The following year, though, he returned to the increasingly crowded field of UK club-pop auteurs with the Distance EP; with Sampha again in tow, along with UK up-and-comer Rosie Lowe, the EP was another step towards the nocturnal sounds of post-Blake dance-pop, even as UK crossover dance fare was already in the throes of another, more explicitly retro upheaval. Distance carried some of Silva’s sonic traits from his stronger, more club-oriented fare—clapping percussion, squelchy bass, a fiery sense of menace—but the EP’s more straightforward cuts were forgettable, suggesting that Silva was willing to embrace a greater accessibility even if it meant sacrificing a sense of personality. Mabel, his latest EP, continues in that dismaying direction, even if its opening track suggests otherwise: “First Mark” is a serviceable mid-tempo bass cut riding a serpentine low end, as clattering kitchen-sink percussion pleasingly knocks about underneath the rude bassline. It doesn’t have the fire of Silva’s strongest productions, but it’s the sole track on Mabel that suggests the producer who was responsible for those past glories is still, if not totally present, occasionally rising to the surface for air. As for the rest of Mabel: if you’ve listened to a shred of fashionable post-Blake dance-pop or creeping, purple-on-gray alt-R&B in the last five years, you’ve already heard what this EP has to offer. Silva’s singing voice is present throughout, and the basic strength of his light, airy upper register is an impressive surprise. But it never establishes a forceful presence on these tunes. His aromatic vocal foil is in the form of Banks, the Los Angeles singer whose own trend-chasing alt-R&B has already beaten detractors to their own punchlines by soundtracking lingerie advertisements, and the two tracks she appears on—the wobbly “Don’t You Love” and the atmospheric crawl of “Right for You”, the latter of which bears uncomfortably close resemblance to Jai Paul’s “Jasmine”—are indistinct entries in the increasingly tired sub-genre, their moody sense of torpor approaching self-parody. ”First Mark” aside, things pick up a bit on the title track, a figurative update of “On Your Own” that swaps Sampha’s dusky vocals for Silva’s capable pipes and carries a brisk gait constantly on the brink of taking the shape of something more explosive. It doesn’t, though, and while it seems unfair to say that Lil Silva is holding back on Mabel—a hallmark of the strains of dance-pop represented here is restraint, and anything more than that is considered to upset the general mood—it’s frustrating nonetheless to hear a young, talented producer capable of truly exciting work setting his sights instead on trendy sounds so exhausted that they risk putting the listener to sleep.

Artist: Lil Silva, Album: Mabel EP, Genre: Electronic,Rap, Score (1-10): 5.1 Album review: "If you need proof of Lil Silva’s talent in 2014, look no further than Fabriclive 75, the fine mix CD from earlier this year compiled by grime DJs and Butterz founders Elijah & Skilliam. The 24-year-old London producer’s “Venture” appears in the mix’s propulsive opening third, coming off of the effervescent, slightly wistful clipped vocals and stuttered drums of Flava D’s “Hold On VIP 3”; as that tune closes out, “Venture” announces itself with Silva’s signature name-dropping tag (“Lil-Lil Silva-Silva”) as a dense bass hit drops into the foreview. The tune continues to twist and turn with squiggly low end, shrill hi-hats, and a skipping percussive gait, and although it only sticks around for a minute and change, its presence as a capable, impressively detailed instrumental grime tune is deeply felt. ”Venture” first appeared as a white label release back in 2013, fronted by the slower, slightly dub-inflected “The Split”, and both tunes are representative of the sound—hard-hitting, somewhat skeletal, pleasing while retaining a sense of intimidation—that Lil Silva’s developed over the past six years. Many of his grime-focused singles have seen release on Night Slugs, the UK dance hub responsible for some of the most forward-thinking club fare from this decade thus far. But Silva’s work as a grime technician, notable as it is, only provides a partial view of his burgeoning career. The rest of it began, in tandem, with the 2011 single “On Your Own”, a collaboration from currently in-demand UK vocalist Sampha that appeared on Silva’s sole release from that year, The Patience EP. The song’s rushing percussion and general sense of motion were unmistakably the work of Silva’s, but almost every other element suggested a turn towards pop, with moody atmospherics and a sense of song construction that smacked of Todd Terry’s classic remix of Everything But the Girl’s “Missing”. ”On Your Own” was, above all else, well-timed—it made the rounds just a few months after James Blake’s genre-upheaving self-titled debut LP was released, and its canny mix of pop structure and dancefloor motifs slotted in nicely alongside Blake’s own sonic recontextualizations. But “On Your Own” didn’t quite take off in the public consciousness, and 2012 saw Silva briefly returning to his knottier roots, including a release for Night Slugs’ strictly-for-functionality Club Constructions series. The following year, though, he returned to the increasingly crowded field of UK club-pop auteurs with the Distance EP; with Sampha again in tow, along with UK up-and-comer Rosie Lowe, the EP was another step towards the nocturnal sounds of post-Blake dance-pop, even as UK crossover dance fare was already in the throes of another, more explicitly retro upheaval. Distance carried some of Silva’s sonic traits from his stronger, more club-oriented fare—clapping percussion, squelchy bass, a fiery sense of menace—but the EP’s more straightforward cuts were forgettable, suggesting that Silva was willing to embrace a greater accessibility even if it meant sacrificing a sense of personality. Mabel, his latest EP, continues in that dismaying direction, even if its opening track suggests otherwise: “First Mark” is a serviceable mid-tempo bass cut riding a serpentine low end, as clattering kitchen-sink percussion pleasingly knocks about underneath the rude bassline. It doesn’t have the fire of Silva’s strongest productions, but it’s the sole track on Mabel that suggests the producer who was responsible for those past glories is still, if not totally present, occasionally rising to the surface for air. As for the rest of Mabel: if you’ve listened to a shred of fashionable post-Blake dance-pop or creeping, purple-on-gray alt-R&B in the last five years, you’ve already heard what this EP has to offer. Silva’s singing voice is present throughout, and the basic strength of his light, airy upper register is an impressive surprise. But it never establishes a forceful presence on these tunes. His aromatic vocal foil is in the form of Banks, the Los Angeles singer whose own trend-chasing alt-R&B has already beaten detractors to their own punchlines by soundtracking lingerie advertisements, and the two tracks she appears on—the wobbly “Don’t You Love” and the atmospheric crawl of “Right for You”, the latter of which bears uncomfortably close resemblance to Jai Paul’s “Jasmine”—are indistinct entries in the increasingly tired sub-genre, their moody sense of torpor approaching self-parody. ”First Mark” aside, things pick up a bit on the title track, a figurative update of “On Your Own” that swaps Sampha’s dusky vocals for Silva’s capable pipes and carries a brisk gait constantly on the brink of taking the shape of something more explosive. It doesn’t, though, and while it seems unfair to say that Lil Silva is holding back on Mabel—a hallmark of the strains of dance-pop represented here is restraint, and anything more than that is considered to upset the general mood—it’s frustrating nonetheless to hear a young, talented producer capable of truly exciting work setting his sights instead on trendy sounds so exhausted that they risk putting the listener to sleep."

Noah and the Whale

Heart of Nowhere

Rock

Dean Van Nguyen

Noah and the Whale’s debut album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down was chock full of charmless whimsy and derivative Wes Anderson-straddling imagery (their name was inspired by the Noah Baumbach-directed, Anderson-produced The Squid and the Whale) but it certainly arrived at the right time. In 2008, cutesy indie folk was the bomb-- thanks, Juno-- so the group’s use of the entire twee pop toolkit, banjo, ukulele, glockenspiel et al, gave them instant appeal. Five years and a couple of stylistic rebirths later, Noah and the Whale remain a big draw on the European festival circuit. But in a new era of blockbuster folk rock spearheaded by the likes of Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers, Noah's quaint leanings risk getting lost in the crush. Heart of Nowhere attempts to address this imbalance, building on the mild Tom Petty-isms of their previous effort, Last Night on Earth, and taking a couple of steps closer to stadium-ready territory. Heart of Nowhere is primarily a collection of coming-of-age tales peppered with sensible advice for tormented youths. (It's accompanied by an accompanying 30-minute film of the same name directed by frontman Charlie Fink.) Fink, who moped so candidly after the disintegration of his relationship with former band member Laura Marling on The First Days of Spring, has taken to counselling kids, offering trite support: “It’s okay to not always be sure exactly where you wanna go” (“Silver and Gold”); “If you can, try and get to know your parents well” (“Now is Exactly the Times”). On “Lifetime”, he hamfistedly pleads with a friend to consider the finality of marriage before taking the plunge. “Are you ready to make that call? It’s gonna be a lifetime,” he splutters, bluntly. The band shed the brittle electronic flourishes of their previous album for Springsteen-inspired drive-time with big choruses, chugging guitar lines, and thumping drums giving them more widescreen scope than ever before. But Fink is no Bruce. His foppish voice suited their sweet early recordings, but there’s real strain in his singing as he attempts to compete with the fuller orchestration. Slight redemption comes with “Still After All These Years”, whose 1980s sitcom theme-worthy cheese marks a return to the band’s goofier days. But the contrived feel of the whole thing renders the album stiff; their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars.

Artist: Noah and the Whale, Album: Heart of Nowhere, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.0 Album review: "Noah and the Whale’s debut album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down was chock full of charmless whimsy and derivative Wes Anderson-straddling imagery (their name was inspired by the Noah Baumbach-directed, Anderson-produced The Squid and the Whale) but it certainly arrived at the right time. In 2008, cutesy indie folk was the bomb-- thanks, Juno-- so the group’s use of the entire twee pop toolkit, banjo, ukulele, glockenspiel et al, gave them instant appeal. Five years and a couple of stylistic rebirths later, Noah and the Whale remain a big draw on the European festival circuit. But in a new era of blockbuster folk rock spearheaded by the likes of Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers, Noah's quaint leanings risk getting lost in the crush. Heart of Nowhere attempts to address this imbalance, building on the mild Tom Petty-isms of their previous effort, Last Night on Earth, and taking a couple of steps closer to stadium-ready territory. Heart of Nowhere is primarily a collection of coming-of-age tales peppered with sensible advice for tormented youths. (It's accompanied by an accompanying 30-minute film of the same name directed by frontman Charlie Fink.) Fink, who moped so candidly after the disintegration of his relationship with former band member Laura Marling on The First Days of Spring, has taken to counselling kids, offering trite support: “It’s okay to not always be sure exactly where you wanna go” (“Silver and Gold”); “If you can, try and get to know your parents well” (“Now is Exactly the Times”). On “Lifetime”, he hamfistedly pleads with a friend to consider the finality of marriage before taking the plunge. “Are you ready to make that call? It’s gonna be a lifetime,” he splutters, bluntly. The band shed the brittle electronic flourishes of their previous album for Springsteen-inspired drive-time with big choruses, chugging guitar lines, and thumping drums giving them more widescreen scope than ever before. But Fink is no Bruce. His foppish voice suited their sweet early recordings, but there’s real strain in his singing as he attempts to compete with the fuller orchestration. Slight redemption comes with “Still After All These Years”, whose 1980s sitcom theme-worthy cheese marks a return to the band’s goofier days. But the contrived feel of the whole thing renders the album stiff; their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars."

My Bloody Valentine

m b v

Experimental,Rock

Mark Richardson

"When can we hear some new material?," someone asked Kevin Shields in an AOL chat interview published by the San Francisco zine Cool Beans!. "Definitely sometime this year or I'm dead..." he answered, later driving the point home with, "I really am dead if I don't get my record out this year. Nobody's threatening me, BTW I just have to." That chat took place exactly 16 years ago tomorrow and Kevin Shields is still alive. And now, almost 22 years after My Bloody Valentine's last album, Loveless, we finally have that record. For those of us whose relationship to music and maybe even the act of hearing has been changed by Loveless, it's hard to believe. I'd grown comfortable with the idea that there would never be another My Bloody Valentine album. Even as recently as two months ago, I figured it would never happen. "But he said it was mastered," people said to me. The last time a master of an MBV album was completed it took four years for it to come out. And that was music that had already been released. An alleged master of a new release? Plenty of time to pull the plug. But no, it happened, by surprise, last Saturday night. And many 403 errors later, we finally have this thing on our hard drives. mbv. 2013. This Is Our Bloody Valentine. Like a few people I know, I was initially afraid to listen, but there was no need to be. My Bloody Valentine have taken the precise toolkit of Loveless-- layered Fender Jaguar guitars made woozy through pedals and tremolo, hushed androgynous vocals way down in the mix-- and made another album with it, one that is stranger and darker and even harder to pin down. Where Loveless felt effortless, mbv strains, pushing at its boundaries with a sense of pensive gloom. If the guy spending all those years in the studio felt trapped by the experience, like the walls might be closing in and that he was dead if he didn't finish, the music here reflects it. mbv is an album of density with very little air or light. But it doesn't forgo the human touches that have made this band so special. The nine-song mbv can be divided into thirds and the first three-song section, consisting of "She Found Now", "Only Tomorrow", and "Who Sees You", finds Shields exploring the untapped textural possibilities of the guitar. The last several years have been bad ones for the instrument. In independent music circles, the guitar has become synonymous with regression, a symbol used to evoke something from the past. And that might seem at first equally true here, since the tone of Shields' guitar is so clearly connected to the sounds he pioneered two decades ago. But no one believes more deeply than Kevin Shields in the expressive power of the processed guitar, and the music here turns out to be more about feeling than style. "She Found Now" is an opener of daring subtlety, a ballad in the vein of "Sometimes" that consists mostly of deep strumming and Shields' singing in a tone near a whisper. There's a bit of percussion, a few more layers of distortion, but no announcement of anything earth-shattering or even particularly different. It's My Bloody Valentine making the kind of noises they invented and perfected. As the chords cycle through in the following "Only Tomorrow", Shields sets up a situation where the repetition and familiarity lulls you into a kind of trance and small gestures hit with great force. On "Only Tomorrow" that spine-tingling moment is a dead simple screeching high-end refrain that repeats toward the end, while on the following "Who Sees You", it's a section halfway through where a rush of trebly chords coats the entire song in another layer of textured fuzz. When it comes to Shields and guitars, the small details do a tremendous amount of work. The second trio of songs feature the lead vocals of My Bloody Valentine singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher. The push and pull of her singing next to Shields' is, along with the wavy "glide guitar" effect, My Bloody Valentine's other defining characteristic. Their voices are the essence of the the band's strangely androgynous and non-specific sensuality. "Is This and Yes" is just Butcher's voice and an unusual organ pattern that hangs in space at the end of the progression and never resolves itself; "New You" is the only track on the record that sounds even remotely like a single, and it shows that Shields' melodic impulses have not left him. In another sense, "New You" points out how much has changed since MBV last released a full-length. In 1991, they were still a pop band, the kind that made videos and appeared on magazine covers and were on a fashionable record label. As such, there was at least some pressure for them to fit in, for their music to have context in the popular music landscape. So they released singles and probably hoped they'd become hits. Even if "Soon" had, as Brian Eno stated at the time, set a "new standard," that didn't change that fact that it was in fact still pop. But those days are gone. My Bloody Valentine fit in exactly nowhere and the commercial expectations of a release like mbv are minimal. Whatever the cause, mbv is the weirdest album My Bloody Valentine have made by some margin. Some of the record's otherworldly quality is up to frequency range. There's very little on this album in the treble range but there's endless detail in the bass and mid, which makes the record feel more closed in and insular. But some of it is in the arc of the record. Through the 1990s Kevin Shields often talked about jungle, what it meant to him, and how some of the ideas behind it were making their way into a new My Bloody Valentine album. He was not alone in this, but mixing drum'n'bass' whooshing walls of percussion with oceanic shoegaze seemed a natural pairing (it was so natural, in fact, that artists like Third Eye Foundation beat Shields to the punch). Whether or not the final three songs on mbv are related to Shields' experiments of that time, on mbv, where Shields presumably had time to make the drum parts he wanted, it's clear that he doesn't really hear percussion the way most of us do. Drums are mostly distant, often muddy, serving as an underpinning or textural contrast to the guitar instead of driving the rhythm on their own. In this sense they mirror the 8-bit snatches of sound caught by crude samplers in the 90s. But since Isn't Anything, drums have been down on the list of concerns for MBV, which is one way the final third is so surprising and ultimately powerful. "In Another Way", another Butcher lead, begins to tilt the balance between noise and melodic beauty as the tempo increases, and by the foll

Artist: My Bloody Valentine, Album: m b v, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 9.1 Album review: ""When can we hear some new material?," someone asked Kevin Shields in an AOL chat interview published by the San Francisco zine Cool Beans!. "Definitely sometime this year or I'm dead..." he answered, later driving the point home with, "I really am dead if I don't get my record out this year. Nobody's threatening me, BTW I just have to." That chat took place exactly 16 years ago tomorrow and Kevin Shields is still alive. And now, almost 22 years after My Bloody Valentine's last album, Loveless, we finally have that record. For those of us whose relationship to music and maybe even the act of hearing has been changed by Loveless, it's hard to believe. I'd grown comfortable with the idea that there would never be another My Bloody Valentine album. Even as recently as two months ago, I figured it would never happen. "But he said it was mastered," people said to me. The last time a master of an MBV album was completed it took four years for it to come out. And that was music that had already been released. An alleged master of a new release? Plenty of time to pull the plug. But no, it happened, by surprise, last Saturday night. And many 403 errors later, we finally have this thing on our hard drives. mbv. 2013. This Is Our Bloody Valentine. Like a few people I know, I was initially afraid to listen, but there was no need to be. My Bloody Valentine have taken the precise toolkit of Loveless-- layered Fender Jaguar guitars made woozy through pedals and tremolo, hushed androgynous vocals way down in the mix-- and made another album with it, one that is stranger and darker and even harder to pin down. Where Loveless felt effortless, mbv strains, pushing at its boundaries with a sense of pensive gloom. If the guy spending all those years in the studio felt trapped by the experience, like the walls might be closing in and that he was dead if he didn't finish, the music here reflects it. mbv is an album of density with very little air or light. But it doesn't forgo the human touches that have made this band so special. The nine-song mbv can be divided into thirds and the first three-song section, consisting of "She Found Now", "Only Tomorrow", and "Who Sees You", finds Shields exploring the untapped textural possibilities of the guitar. The last several years have been bad ones for the instrument. In independent music circles, the guitar has become synonymous with regression, a symbol used to evoke something from the past. And that might seem at first equally true here, since the tone of Shields' guitar is so clearly connected to the sounds he pioneered two decades ago. But no one believes more deeply than Kevin Shields in the expressive power of the processed guitar, and the music here turns out to be more about feeling than style. "She Found Now" is an opener of daring subtlety, a ballad in the vein of "Sometimes" that consists mostly of deep strumming and Shields' singing in a tone near a whisper. There's a bit of percussion, a few more layers of distortion, but no announcement of anything earth-shattering or even particularly different. It's My Bloody Valentine making the kind of noises they invented and perfected. As the chords cycle through in the following "Only Tomorrow", Shields sets up a situation where the repetition and familiarity lulls you into a kind of trance and small gestures hit with great force. On "Only Tomorrow" that spine-tingling moment is a dead simple screeching high-end refrain that repeats toward the end, while on the following "Who Sees You", it's a section halfway through where a rush of trebly chords coats the entire song in another layer of textured fuzz. When it comes to Shields and guitars, the small details do a tremendous amount of work. The second trio of songs feature the lead vocals of My Bloody Valentine singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher. The push and pull of her singing next to Shields' is, along with the wavy "glide guitar" effect, My Bloody Valentine's other defining characteristic. Their voices are the essence of the the band's strangely androgynous and non-specific sensuality. "Is This and Yes" is just Butcher's voice and an unusual organ pattern that hangs in space at the end of the progression and never resolves itself; "New You" is the only track on the record that sounds even remotely like a single, and it shows that Shields' melodic impulses have not left him. In another sense, "New You" points out how much has changed since MBV last released a full-length. In 1991, they were still a pop band, the kind that made videos and appeared on magazine covers and were on a fashionable record label. As such, there was at least some pressure for them to fit in, for their music to have context in the popular music landscape. So they released singles and probably hoped they'd become hits. Even if "Soon" had, as Brian Eno stated at the time, set a "new standard," that didn't change that fact that it was in fact still pop. But those days are gone. My Bloody Valentine fit in exactly nowhere and the commercial expectations of a release like mbv are minimal. Whatever the cause, mbv is the weirdest album My Bloody Valentine have made by some margin. Some of the record's otherworldly quality is up to frequency range. There's very little on this album in the treble range but there's endless detail in the bass and mid, which makes the record feel more closed in and insular. But some of it is in the arc of the record. Through the 1990s Kevin Shields often talked about jungle, what it meant to him, and how some of the ideas behind it were making their way into a new My Bloody Valentine album. He was not alone in this, but mixing drum'n'bass' whooshing walls of percussion with oceanic shoegaze seemed a natural pairing (it was so natural, in fact, that artists like Third Eye Foundation beat Shields to the punch). Whether or not the final three songs on mbv are related to Shields' experiments of that time, on mbv, where Shields presumably had time to make the drum parts he wanted, it's clear that he doesn't really hear percussion the way most of us do. Drums are mostly distant, often muddy, serving as an underpinning or textural contrast to the guitar instead of driving the rhythm on their own. In this sense they mirror the 8-bit snatches of sound caught by crude samplers in the 90s. But since Isn't Anything, drums have been down on the list of concerns for MBV, which is one way the final third is so surprising and ultimately powerful. "In Another Way", another Butcher lead, begins to tilt the balance between noise and melodic beauty as the tempo increases, and by the foll"

Geinoh Yamashirogumi

Akira (Symphonic Suite)

Experimental

Kevin Lozano

Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animated film Akira is, by and large, considered to be among the greatest animated films ever made. Set in the year 2019, in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo populated by marauding motorcycle gangs, shadowy paramilitary organizations, student protesters, and corpulent oligarchs, the film was immediately hailed as a narrative and visual masterwork. But before a single frame of the film was drawn, Katsuhiro Otomo wanted to make sure the music, or as he and the score’s composer Dr. Shoji Yamashiro called it, the “sonic architecture,” was in place. For Akira, the visual material was built around the sonic components, and not the other way around. The film as we know could not exist without the score. Now, after a new vinyl reissue by Milan Records, one of the most important suites of filmic music in Japanese cinema history is available for the first time in 29 years. Yamashiro was the leader of a Japanese music collective called Geinoh Yamashirogumi, and the group was comprised of a rotating crew of hundreds of amateur musicians, academics, college students, and other non-music professionals. Trained as a molecular biologist, Yamashiro considered Geinoh Yamashirogumi to be more of a think tank, and the score for Akira, specifically, was a testing ground for some of the collective’s most far-fetched and ludicrously ambitious ideas. For one thing, the score was most often referred to as a “Symphonic Suite,” and Yamashiro specifically cites symphonic choral works like Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's “Ode to Joy,” and Shostakovich’s “Song of the Forests” as close antecedents. Though, he also drew inspiration from Noh (a form of Japanese theatrical music), Indonesian folk traditions, prog rock, and more. The reissue also features remastered audio (taken from a DVD re-release of the film), which punches up the sonic frequency of the recorded material to 48khz as opposed to the original 22khz threshold, in order to create what Yamashiro called the “Hypersonic Effect.” In the 26-page liner notes, Yamashiro goes on at length describing the neurological studies he conducted to prove that sound at the 48khz level could elicit more vivid psychological and physiological responses in a listener. Indeed, the sound on the reissue is rich and at times terrifying. (Though, the science behind the Hypersonic Effect has since been contested.) Otomo only asked Yamashiro to follow very loose conceptual “pillars” for composing the score: one-half should correspond to the idea of “festival” to represent the bacchanalia and violence of the film’s opening acts, and the second-half should be a “requiem” that is the complete opposite of that chaos. This afforded Yamashiro an immense amount of freedom to dictate the film’s pace and feel. This is immediately clear in the first scenes of the film. The score begins in earnest, when one of the film’s protagonists, Kaneda, the leader of a teenage motorcycle gang, enters a song into the jukebox of an underground dive bar. He and his crew, the Capsules, are gathered right before they are set to meet a rival gang called the Clowns, to engage in a bloody street fight. Right as they rev up their motorcycle engines in a seedy alleyway, the needle of a record player hits a vinyl disc in the bar, and the first moments of music enter the film. This moment is boisterous, deafening, and unforgettable, courtesy of a melody of the Balinese Jegog, a percussion instrument formed from an array of bamboo trunks “aligned in a manner similar to a battery of bazookas.” The Jegog was one of the compositions’ consistent leitmotifs, and its power was brutal and immediate. This first song “Kaneda” makes clear the fastidiously designed aspects of the film’s score. The thunderclap from its opening seconds was lifted from a field recording taken at the Golden Triangle in Thailand, and the motorcycle rumble was sourced from a 1929 Harley-Davidson engine. A chorus of festival chanters that come towards the back-half of the song is frightening and celebratory all at once. As Kaneda and his gang speed through the streets of the decaying city, Otomo’s dystopian vision is given life by the highly precise, yet emotional compositions Geinoh Yamashirogumi provided. This feeling of pitched intensity and churning disorientation is something Geinoh Yamashirogumi achieves time and time again. In the following song, “Battle Against Clown” blasts of guttural chants and polyrhythms could likely cause vertigo if listened to loudly enough. The choral work is especially skillful, and the way the members of Geinoh Yamashirogumi manipulate and make magical and alien the human voice is a highlight of the score. On “Dolls’ Polyphony,” they create a sense of nightmarish weirdness using only a mix of childlike voices and baritone grunts. In the score’s grand finale, “Requiem” they perfectly create a sense of megachurch rapture with angelic hums and a pipe organ. As the product of an unlimited budget and six-months of composition and recording, the score for Akira was never meant to be utilitarian or incidental. It aspired to greater heights, to immerse the listener in the world of Neo-Tokyo and stir the emotions without once dropping you out of the film. But on its own, the craft, care, and technology that went into the 70 minutes of the soundtrack are intense enough to place you right beside Kaneda without ever opening your eyes.

Artist: Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Album: Akira (Symphonic Suite), Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animated film Akira is, by and large, considered to be among the greatest animated films ever made. Set in the year 2019, in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo populated by marauding motorcycle gangs, shadowy paramilitary organizations, student protesters, and corpulent oligarchs, the film was immediately hailed as a narrative and visual masterwork. But before a single frame of the film was drawn, Katsuhiro Otomo wanted to make sure the music, or as he and the score’s composer Dr. Shoji Yamashiro called it, the “sonic architecture,” was in place. For Akira, the visual material was built around the sonic components, and not the other way around. The film as we know could not exist without the score. Now, after a new vinyl reissue by Milan Records, one of the most important suites of filmic music in Japanese cinema history is available for the first time in 29 years. Yamashiro was the leader of a Japanese music collective called Geinoh Yamashirogumi, and the group was comprised of a rotating crew of hundreds of amateur musicians, academics, college students, and other non-music professionals. Trained as a molecular biologist, Yamashiro considered Geinoh Yamashirogumi to be more of a think tank, and the score for Akira, specifically, was a testing ground for some of the collective’s most far-fetched and ludicrously ambitious ideas. For one thing, the score was most often referred to as a “Symphonic Suite,” and Yamashiro specifically cites symphonic choral works like Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's “Ode to Joy,” and Shostakovich’s “Song of the Forests” as close antecedents. Though, he also drew inspiration from Noh (a form of Japanese theatrical music), Indonesian folk traditions, prog rock, and more. The reissue also features remastered audio (taken from a DVD re-release of the film), which punches up the sonic frequency of the recorded material to 48khz as opposed to the original 22khz threshold, in order to create what Yamashiro called the “Hypersonic Effect.” In the 26-page liner notes, Yamashiro goes on at length describing the neurological studies he conducted to prove that sound at the 48khz level could elicit more vivid psychological and physiological responses in a listener. Indeed, the sound on the reissue is rich and at times terrifying. (Though, the science behind the Hypersonic Effect has since been contested.) Otomo only asked Yamashiro to follow very loose conceptual “pillars” for composing the score: one-half should correspond to the idea of “festival” to represent the bacchanalia and violence of the film’s opening acts, and the second-half should be a “requiem” that is the complete opposite of that chaos. This afforded Yamashiro an immense amount of freedom to dictate the film’s pace and feel. This is immediately clear in the first scenes of the film. The score begins in earnest, when one of the film’s protagonists, Kaneda, the leader of a teenage motorcycle gang, enters a song into the jukebox of an underground dive bar. He and his crew, the Capsules, are gathered right before they are set to meet a rival gang called the Clowns, to engage in a bloody street fight. Right as they rev up their motorcycle engines in a seedy alleyway, the needle of a record player hits a vinyl disc in the bar, and the first moments of music enter the film. This moment is boisterous, deafening, and unforgettable, courtesy of a melody of the Balinese Jegog, a percussion instrument formed from an array of bamboo trunks “aligned in a manner similar to a battery of bazookas.” The Jegog was one of the compositions’ consistent leitmotifs, and its power was brutal and immediate. This first song “Kaneda” makes clear the fastidiously designed aspects of the film’s score. The thunderclap from its opening seconds was lifted from a field recording taken at the Golden Triangle in Thailand, and the motorcycle rumble was sourced from a 1929 Harley-Davidson engine. A chorus of festival chanters that come towards the back-half of the song is frightening and celebratory all at once. As Kaneda and his gang speed through the streets of the decaying city, Otomo’s dystopian vision is given life by the highly precise, yet emotional compositions Geinoh Yamashirogumi provided. This feeling of pitched intensity and churning disorientation is something Geinoh Yamashirogumi achieves time and time again. In the following song, “Battle Against Clown” blasts of guttural chants and polyrhythms could likely cause vertigo if listened to loudly enough. The choral work is especially skillful, and the way the members of Geinoh Yamashirogumi manipulate and make magical and alien the human voice is a highlight of the score. On “Dolls’ Polyphony,” they create a sense of nightmarish weirdness using only a mix of childlike voices and baritone grunts. In the score’s grand finale, “Requiem” they perfectly create a sense of megachurch rapture with angelic hums and a pipe organ. As the product of an unlimited budget and six-months of composition and recording, the score for Akira was never meant to be utilitarian or incidental. It aspired to greater heights, to immerse the listener in the world of Neo-Tokyo and stir the emotions without once dropping you out of the film. But on its own, the craft, care, and technology that went into the 70 minutes of the soundtrack are intense enough to place you right beside Kaneda without ever opening your eyes."

Snapcase

End Transmission

Metal,Rock

Brendan Reid

Snapcase are usually lumped in with more progressive hardcore acts, but it's not like they're Refused. Once in a while, they chooga rather than chugga, and that's somehow enough to make them "avant" for genre purists. The emo buff and metal shine they for the most part effectively apply also works wonders on non-scenesters, with Snapcase patches occupying the same backpack-space as decidedly cuddlier bands. For years, they've been inching closer toward commercial breakthrough. When Dennis Lyxzén of Refused made a similarly inexplicable leap toward convention by ditching hardcore completely for The (International) Noise Conspiracy's umlaut-laden garage, he at least took with him whatever respectability that band's nebulous roots provided, going from something genuinely new and different to something genuinely old and familiar (situationist ranting intact). The new Snapcase, however, is as unconvincing and plastic as a band of straightedge Furbies. Once in a while, I think I hear the old Snapcase peeking out from within the glossy shell of End Transmission, twisting like the groovy people-within-people paintings that once graced the band's album covers, now sadly-- but appropriately-- replaced by slick, blandly futuristic schematics. But before nostalgia can set in, the ravening demons of production swoop in, snatching Snapcase in their filthy jaws: Daryl Trabeski's reedy yowl is swallowed up in multi-tracking or effects, and guitars that threaten to rip are all but absorbed in a dense, featureless wall of sound. Not that the production ruins End Transmission; on the contrary, the gimmicks provide some of the most memorable moments-- the stereo-tremolo effect that kicks off "Believe, Revolt"-- on a album without solid enough songwriting to justify the time spent in the studio. Snapcase still brandishes an impressive portfolio of riffs for a hardcore band, but where they once shoved them in your face in turn, they now seem content to let one or two soak in over the course of a five-minute song, like vacation pictures at the guitarist's family slideshow. The band has also "matured", if maturity is measured in glum piano interludes; I might be all for a quieter, gentler Snapcase if each sparse, drifting tune didn't end up exploding in the exact same way. Even when unpredictable, End Transmission is off-putting: The shock of hearing Trabeski scream out the refrain from Modest Mouse's "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (on the coda of "New Kata") is quickly replaced by images of a throttled Isaac Brock, and a puzzled effort to remember the point at which rote repetition became an acceptable way around writer's block. None of this is to suggest Snapcase have "sold out"; they're still, as always, on Victory, and if anything, their message is even more blunt and extreme. Did I mention this is a concept album? It's a concept album: "The year is twenty seventy-one!/ One drum by law has just begun-- to beat!" While not a reprehensible or calculated stab at crossing over to MTV audiences, End Transmission plays as if Snapcase were at least seduced, if not by money or fame, by the security and increased utility of bland, clichéd music. You can't blame them; look how Filter made out on those Hummer ads.

Artist: Snapcase, Album: End Transmission, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.3 Album review: "Snapcase are usually lumped in with more progressive hardcore acts, but it's not like they're Refused. Once in a while, they chooga rather than chugga, and that's somehow enough to make them "avant" for genre purists. The emo buff and metal shine they for the most part effectively apply also works wonders on non-scenesters, with Snapcase patches occupying the same backpack-space as decidedly cuddlier bands. For years, they've been inching closer toward commercial breakthrough. When Dennis Lyxzén of Refused made a similarly inexplicable leap toward convention by ditching hardcore completely for The (International) Noise Conspiracy's umlaut-laden garage, he at least took with him whatever respectability that band's nebulous roots provided, going from something genuinely new and different to something genuinely old and familiar (situationist ranting intact). The new Snapcase, however, is as unconvincing and plastic as a band of straightedge Furbies. Once in a while, I think I hear the old Snapcase peeking out from within the glossy shell of End Transmission, twisting like the groovy people-within-people paintings that once graced the band's album covers, now sadly-- but appropriately-- replaced by slick, blandly futuristic schematics. But before nostalgia can set in, the ravening demons of production swoop in, snatching Snapcase in their filthy jaws: Daryl Trabeski's reedy yowl is swallowed up in multi-tracking or effects, and guitars that threaten to rip are all but absorbed in a dense, featureless wall of sound. Not that the production ruins End Transmission; on the contrary, the gimmicks provide some of the most memorable moments-- the stereo-tremolo effect that kicks off "Believe, Revolt"-- on a album without solid enough songwriting to justify the time spent in the studio. Snapcase still brandishes an impressive portfolio of riffs for a hardcore band, but where they once shoved them in your face in turn, they now seem content to let one or two soak in over the course of a five-minute song, like vacation pictures at the guitarist's family slideshow. The band has also "matured", if maturity is measured in glum piano interludes; I might be all for a quieter, gentler Snapcase if each sparse, drifting tune didn't end up exploding in the exact same way. Even when unpredictable, End Transmission is off-putting: The shock of hearing Trabeski scream out the refrain from Modest Mouse's "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (on the coda of "New Kata") is quickly replaced by images of a throttled Isaac Brock, and a puzzled effort to remember the point at which rote repetition became an acceptable way around writer's block. None of this is to suggest Snapcase have "sold out"; they're still, as always, on Victory, and if anything, their message is even more blunt and extreme. Did I mention this is a concept album? It's a concept album: "The year is twenty seventy-one!/ One drum by law has just begun-- to beat!" While not a reprehensible or calculated stab at crossing over to MTV audiences, End Transmission plays as if Snapcase were at least seduced, if not by money or fame, by the security and increased utility of bland, clichéd music. You can't blame them; look how Filter made out on those Hummer ads."

Ben Harper

Diamonds on the Inside

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

In Pleasure and Pain, Danny Clinch's documentary of Ben Harper's 2001 Burn to Shine tour, Harper is caught throwing a cute-if-cantankerous fit on camera, whining and snapping at a European journalist like a pot-smoking Thom Yorke. It's funny, but not especially surprising that when faced with a middling reporter, Harper found his knickers in a bit of a twist: he's been misunderstood by the mainstream music press for nearly a decade now, and bumbling critics are at least partially to blame for the sloppily cobbled together batch of tracks on his latest studio release, the scattered Diamonds on the Inside. Since his 1993 debut, Ben Harper has been getting all tangled up in his influences-- he's inadvertently hog-tied himself with big, fat superstar ropes, each woven from stringy bits of Hendrix, Redding, Marley, Plant, Page, and a few stray Dylan hairs. This is as much a product of a lazy press (who relentlessly-- aw, shit!-- point out and examine his many muses) as it is his own musical mishmash, but either way it's got Harper stuck and wiggling for release. Disparate inspiration isn't a problem on its own, but Harper's inability to stabilize and carve himself a personality sure is. Neo-blues-soul-metal-punk-reggae-gospel-rock-funk is far too cumbersome to be a proper qualifier, and Diamonds on the Inside's breathless Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock whirlwind is tiring, at best. Harper's now-trademark lack of focus-- which is especially disappointing because dude's got skills with that slide!-- is destined to forever supercede his considerable songwriting talent. Diamonds on the Inside opens with its first single, "With My Own Two Hands", an optimistic and aggressively reggae-inspired bit of dancehall wah-wah, complete with Hammond B3, clavinet, and high, lazy backing vocals. Harper swings effortlessly from a low, throaty growl to his excellent soul falsetto, and the rich, dynamic percussion (Oliver Francis Charles on drums) works remarkably well here. It's what happens next that gives pause: the sparse, southern gospel romp "When It's Good" stars a completely different breed of Harper, blues-driven and virtually unaccompanied (save a box of rocks, some background singers, and his acoustic slide). Meanwhile, the title track is a thick, sentimental Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar throwdown, featuring a singalong chorus and sweet, lilting pedal steel, electric piano, bass, and guitars; the aptly titled "Bring the Funk" is pure gimmick, all synthesizers and poorly channeled Parliament. "So High So Low" is heavy, Zeppelin-inspired metal thrashing, kick-started by some kind of otherworldly primal scream. And on and on: slices of this and chunks of that. Slow down, Harps, I'm getting freakin' confused! What kind of goulash you serving here, anyway? Despite Diamonds on the Inside's pointed identity crisis, there are still some standout songs. Ladysmith Black Mambazo pop up on the vocals-only "Picture of Jesus", which, despite its heavy-handed religious meditations, is a textured, vigorous, and engaging contemporary hymn. The brisk and solo-friendly "Touch from Your Lust" (seriously, what does that mean?) would have fit nicely on Burn to Shine, with its Lenny Kravitz bellbottom howls and heavy electric guitar noodling. Harper has never been a particularly keen lyricist, but the introductory line of "When She Believes" ("The good Lord is such a good Lord/ With such a good Mother, too") is especially ridiculous, and the "Behind all of your tears/ There's a smile/ Behind all of the rain/ There's a sunshine for miles and miles" of "Everything" seems equally uninspired. To the contrary, new-favorite-word "shuck" is employed superbly in "Bring the Funk" ("Some are jiving/ Some are shuck/ Some are just down on their luck"). To his immense credit, Ben Harper pulls off rock star posturing even though he sits in a chair while playing live (an achievement Jagger has not yet approached-- maybe this explains the incessant arena-touring?), and his performances are always charismatic affairs, especially if you're okay with little kids dancing shirtless outside. It's onstage that Harper excels, his humble grace and organic porch singing somehow capable of tugging sunburned college students away from the falafel tent and back to the main stage; live, his scattered influences are far less distracting and his playing takes on a more even and consistent edge. Other artists have played the don't-pigeonhole-me card with slightly more success-- Beck unapologetically flits between genres and styles, but has enough sense (or enough handlers) to centralize his records in a way that makes them thematically comprehensible. Even when artists self-consciously draw from a long, complicated lineage of diverse sounds and tactics, there still needs to be an organizing principle; ideally, individual tracks should contribute something substantial to the greater whole, like a chapter in a novel or a stanza in a poem, each cohesive, directed, and pushing towards a narrative payoff. All fourteen tracks here are autonomous, but as a record, Diamonds on the Inside feels pretty empty.

Artist: Ben Harper, Album: Diamonds on the Inside, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "In Pleasure and Pain, Danny Clinch's documentary of Ben Harper's 2001 Burn to Shine tour, Harper is caught throwing a cute-if-cantankerous fit on camera, whining and snapping at a European journalist like a pot-smoking Thom Yorke. It's funny, but not especially surprising that when faced with a middling reporter, Harper found his knickers in a bit of a twist: he's been misunderstood by the mainstream music press for nearly a decade now, and bumbling critics are at least partially to blame for the sloppily cobbled together batch of tracks on his latest studio release, the scattered Diamonds on the Inside. Since his 1993 debut, Ben Harper has been getting all tangled up in his influences-- he's inadvertently hog-tied himself with big, fat superstar ropes, each woven from stringy bits of Hendrix, Redding, Marley, Plant, Page, and a few stray Dylan hairs. This is as much a product of a lazy press (who relentlessly-- aw, shit!-- point out and examine his many muses) as it is his own musical mishmash, but either way it's got Harper stuck and wiggling for release. Disparate inspiration isn't a problem on its own, but Harper's inability to stabilize and carve himself a personality sure is. Neo-blues-soul-metal-punk-reggae-gospel-rock-funk is far too cumbersome to be a proper qualifier, and Diamonds on the Inside's breathless Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock whirlwind is tiring, at best. Harper's now-trademark lack of focus-- which is especially disappointing because dude's got skills with that slide!-- is destined to forever supercede his considerable songwriting talent. Diamonds on the Inside opens with its first single, "With My Own Two Hands", an optimistic and aggressively reggae-inspired bit of dancehall wah-wah, complete with Hammond B3, clavinet, and high, lazy backing vocals. Harper swings effortlessly from a low, throaty growl to his excellent soul falsetto, and the rich, dynamic percussion (Oliver Francis Charles on drums) works remarkably well here. It's what happens next that gives pause: the sparse, southern gospel romp "When It's Good" stars a completely different breed of Harper, blues-driven and virtually unaccompanied (save a box of rocks, some background singers, and his acoustic slide). Meanwhile, the title track is a thick, sentimental Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar throwdown, featuring a singalong chorus and sweet, lilting pedal steel, electric piano, bass, and guitars; the aptly titled "Bring the Funk" is pure gimmick, all synthesizers and poorly channeled Parliament. "So High So Low" is heavy, Zeppelin-inspired metal thrashing, kick-started by some kind of otherworldly primal scream. And on and on: slices of this and chunks of that. Slow down, Harps, I'm getting freakin' confused! What kind of goulash you serving here, anyway? Despite Diamonds on the Inside's pointed identity crisis, there are still some standout songs. Ladysmith Black Mambazo pop up on the vocals-only "Picture of Jesus", which, despite its heavy-handed religious meditations, is a textured, vigorous, and engaging contemporary hymn. The brisk and solo-friendly "Touch from Your Lust" (seriously, what does that mean?) would have fit nicely on Burn to Shine, with its Lenny Kravitz bellbottom howls and heavy electric guitar noodling. Harper has never been a particularly keen lyricist, but the introductory line of "When She Believes" ("The good Lord is such a good Lord/ With such a good Mother, too") is especially ridiculous, and the "Behind all of your tears/ There's a smile/ Behind all of the rain/ There's a sunshine for miles and miles" of "Everything" seems equally uninspired. To the contrary, new-favorite-word "shuck" is employed superbly in "Bring the Funk" ("Some are jiving/ Some are shuck/ Some are just down on their luck"). To his immense credit, Ben Harper pulls off rock star posturing even though he sits in a chair while playing live (an achievement Jagger has not yet approached-- maybe this explains the incessant arena-touring?), and his performances are always charismatic affairs, especially if you're okay with little kids dancing shirtless outside. It's onstage that Harper excels, his humble grace and organic porch singing somehow capable of tugging sunburned college students away from the falafel tent and back to the main stage; live, his scattered influences are far less distracting and his playing takes on a more even and consistent edge. Other artists have played the don't-pigeonhole-me card with slightly more success-- Beck unapologetically flits between genres and styles, but has enough sense (or enough handlers) to centralize his records in a way that makes them thematically comprehensible. Even when artists self-consciously draw from a long, complicated lineage of diverse sounds and tactics, there still needs to be an organizing principle; ideally, individual tracks should contribute something substantial to the greater whole, like a chapter in a novel or a stanza in a poem, each cohesive, directed, and pushing towards a narrative payoff. All fourteen tracks here are autonomous, but as a record, Diamonds on the Inside feels pretty empty."

Kwes

Songs for Midi EP

Experimental

Philip Sherburne

Kwes’ music banks heavily on atmosphere. His debut EP, 2010’s No Need to Run, wrapped sketch-like beats in layers of synth swaddling and dub delay, and in 2012, his Meantime EP, the British musician’s breakthrough as a singer, arrived like a small, semi-precious object bundled between pillows of air. His debut album, ilp, presented an even blurrier kind of cherry-colored funk. But the emphasis there remained on his songwriting and his voice, which snaked through all that digital processing like a serpent in wavy grass. Songs for Midi, on the other hand, is all instrumental, and its six tracks account for the most ethereal music the London producer has made yet. It sounds at once like a logical extension of his previous methods and a radical departure from them, as though he had leapfrogged whatever the natural next step after ilp might have been and leapt boldly into the unknown. The record is meant as a tribute to his 2-year-old niece, Midori (the title’s a reference not to MIDI cables but to her nickname, Midi), and it feels appropriately childlike—full of playful melodies, music-box pings, and even sounds sampled from the toys of Kwes’ little cousin Connor. Those are presumably the playthings rattling about in the closing “Blox/Connor,” an unpredictable excursion through stuttering chord samples and skittering trap beats that begins whimsically enough but, like many a play date, finishes up in full-on meltdown mode. Anyone who has ever spent much time with a toddler may recognize something of their psychology in these mercurial tracks, which don’t develop at all in the way you might expect. There’s something of SOPHIE’s balloon-squeak sonics in the EP’s hesitant plunks and zaps, but these songs bear little resemblance to the PC Music school of pop subversion. “Trike” begins with a lyrical plucked string fantasia reminiscent of Arthur Russell before pivoting to a buzzing synth melody that vibrates like a screen door; from there it just keeps moving outward, through squalls of pitch-bent synths, the feeble clicks of a dying wind-up toy, and finally, a climax of dub delay run amok. In the back of your mind, you keep expecting it to return to something resembling an A/B structure, and the song’s refusal to do so leaves you feeling slightly off balance. The other shoe never drops; instead, it morphs into a CGI butterfly and flutters away. The whole EP is held together by the relatively consonant sounds of the opening “Midori,” in which softly pinwheeling arpeggios fuel a gently meandering path through woodwind-like synths, sparkling chimes, and the wow-and-flutter warble of disintegrating magnetic tape. It’s here, balancing the lyrical impulses of his previous records with the mind-bending sonics of his current interests, that Kwes’ adventurous vision shines brightest.

Artist: Kwes, Album: Songs for Midi EP, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Kwes’ music banks heavily on atmosphere. His debut EP, 2010’s No Need to Run, wrapped sketch-like beats in layers of synth swaddling and dub delay, and in 2012, his Meantime EP, the British musician’s breakthrough as a singer, arrived like a small, semi-precious object bundled between pillows of air. His debut album, ilp, presented an even blurrier kind of cherry-colored funk. But the emphasis there remained on his songwriting and his voice, which snaked through all that digital processing like a serpent in wavy grass. Songs for Midi, on the other hand, is all instrumental, and its six tracks account for the most ethereal music the London producer has made yet. It sounds at once like a logical extension of his previous methods and a radical departure from them, as though he had leapfrogged whatever the natural next step after ilp might have been and leapt boldly into the unknown. The record is meant as a tribute to his 2-year-old niece, Midori (the title’s a reference not to MIDI cables but to her nickname, Midi), and it feels appropriately childlike—full of playful melodies, music-box pings, and even sounds sampled from the toys of Kwes’ little cousin Connor. Those are presumably the playthings rattling about in the closing “Blox/Connor,” an unpredictable excursion through stuttering chord samples and skittering trap beats that begins whimsically enough but, like many a play date, finishes up in full-on meltdown mode. Anyone who has ever spent much time with a toddler may recognize something of their psychology in these mercurial tracks, which don’t develop at all in the way you might expect. There’s something of SOPHIE’s balloon-squeak sonics in the EP’s hesitant plunks and zaps, but these songs bear little resemblance to the PC Music school of pop subversion. “Trike” begins with a lyrical plucked string fantasia reminiscent of Arthur Russell before pivoting to a buzzing synth melody that vibrates like a screen door; from there it just keeps moving outward, through squalls of pitch-bent synths, the feeble clicks of a dying wind-up toy, and finally, a climax of dub delay run amok. In the back of your mind, you keep expecting it to return to something resembling an A/B structure, and the song’s refusal to do so leaves you feeling slightly off balance. The other shoe never drops; instead, it morphs into a CGI butterfly and flutters away. The whole EP is held together by the relatively consonant sounds of the opening “Midori,” in which softly pinwheeling arpeggios fuel a gently meandering path through woodwind-like synths, sparkling chimes, and the wow-and-flutter warble of disintegrating magnetic tape. It’s here, balancing the lyrical impulses of his previous records with the mind-bending sonics of his current interests, that Kwes’ adventurous vision shines brightest."

Tourist

Patterns EP

Electronic

Harley Brown

London-based electronic artist and self-taught pianist Tourist, whose real name is William Phillips, first surfaced on Myspace in 2010 as Little Loud. He had a baby-faced selfie profile picture and a few tracks to his name: an 80s-tinged Balearic remix of Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round”, an Acéphale-commissioned rework of Memory Tapes’ “Bicycle”, and another version of HEALTH’s “Nice Girls” as part of a companion remix album to their Disco2. His remixes were pretty standard—add a 4/4 beat and chopped-up vocals to any song, sit back, and watch it go to number one on Hype Machine—but an artistic sensibility, however indefinable, began to emerge. In 2012, Phillips released his first EP under the new moniker Tourist: Placid Acid, four songs of sun-dazed beats and melodies that shifted and sparkled like the equatorial sun on a calm sea. It was a pleasant debut, if not very distinctive from other blissed-out jams with cutesy names, like Slow Magic’s “Corvette Cassette”, which made similar Soundcloud rounds the year before. Six months later, Phillips changed approaches with a remix of Sharon Van Etten’s chronicle of a panic attack, “We Are Fine”. He replaced Van Etten’s ukulele with throbbing, haunted synths and skittering percussion, hinting at a developing emotional and musical complexity that in turn foreshadowed Tourist’s 2013 Tonight EP. “You know a Venn diagram," Phillips told Billboard earlier this year. "My left circle would be electronic music and the right circle would be emotions, atmosphere, honesty.” It’s not the most unique thought—you’d be hard-pressed to find an artist, electronic or otherwise, claiming not to care about those things—but the idea gets at something he started doing very well in the beginning of last year. There’s a newfound sense of longing and urgency in the minor chords and driving pulse of an elegant banger like “Never Stop”, which undoubtedly helped get him signed to Disclosure’s Method label last summer. Tourist then released a string of higher-profile indie remixes (Haim, Chvrches, Sam Smith) in the lead-up to his Patterns EP, which was steadily pushed back from a December release date to give Tourist more time to reinvent himself on the tour circuit as well. The most immediately noticeable difference between the Disclosure-affiliated Tourist and the Tourist formerly known as Little Loud is guest vocalists. Album closer “I Can’t Keep Up” features singer and occasional saxophonist Will Heard, who most notably appeared on Klangkarussell’s soulful UK hit “Sonnentanz”. With Tourist at the helm, Heard takes a darker turn, asking, “Won’t somebody give a fuck?” as the producer ramps up tension with a quickening pulse that rockets to 130 BPM before just as suddenly slowing down again. “I refuse to fall,” Heard sings, the last word echoing as if he’s already tumbling into the abyss. The title track, which opens with scattershot ping-pong synths straight out of SBTRKT’s playbook, is led by Lianne La Havas. Phillips doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with her here, supplementing her buttery voice with a background chorus that’s ultimately more distracting than anthemic. “Trust in You” eases into Patterns with cascading vocal samples and judicious xylophones, its clickety-split backing track setting the EP’s overall urgent tone that finds full expression in “Together”, Tourist’s most ambitious effort to date. His first release after signing to Method (and Patterns’ lead single) is something of a coming-out party, Phillips busting through any preconceived notions of him as an artist with a hi-NRG gallop riding the irresistibly universal refrain “We should be together.” It’s masterfully crafted, from the restrained fade-in and exhausted fade-out to the arpeggiated synths that take it to the bridge, quietly bow out, and then resurface for the final sprint to the finish line. For the first time, it sounds like Tourist has something to lose: in that same interview with Billboard, he said, “There’s something dangerous about getting big because you make your success on certain defining records.” With “Together”—and Patterns in general, which sets a promising tone for Tourist's continued artistic development—he may have found that record.

Artist: Tourist, Album: Patterns EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "London-based electronic artist and self-taught pianist Tourist, whose real name is William Phillips, first surfaced on Myspace in 2010 as Little Loud. He had a baby-faced selfie profile picture and a few tracks to his name: an 80s-tinged Balearic remix of Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round”, an Acéphale-commissioned rework of Memory Tapes’ “Bicycle”, and another version of HEALTH’s “Nice Girls” as part of a companion remix album to their Disco2. His remixes were pretty standard—add a 4/4 beat and chopped-up vocals to any song, sit back, and watch it go to number one on Hype Machine—but an artistic sensibility, however indefinable, began to emerge. In 2012, Phillips released his first EP under the new moniker Tourist: Placid Acid, four songs of sun-dazed beats and melodies that shifted and sparkled like the equatorial sun on a calm sea. It was a pleasant debut, if not very distinctive from other blissed-out jams with cutesy names, like Slow Magic’s “Corvette Cassette”, which made similar Soundcloud rounds the year before. Six months later, Phillips changed approaches with a remix of Sharon Van Etten’s chronicle of a panic attack, “We Are Fine”. He replaced Van Etten’s ukulele with throbbing, haunted synths and skittering percussion, hinting at a developing emotional and musical complexity that in turn foreshadowed Tourist’s 2013 Tonight EP. “You know a Venn diagram," Phillips told Billboard earlier this year. "My left circle would be electronic music and the right circle would be emotions, atmosphere, honesty.” It’s not the most unique thought—you’d be hard-pressed to find an artist, electronic or otherwise, claiming not to care about those things—but the idea gets at something he started doing very well in the beginning of last year. There’s a newfound sense of longing and urgency in the minor chords and driving pulse of an elegant banger like “Never Stop”, which undoubtedly helped get him signed to Disclosure’s Method label last summer. Tourist then released a string of higher-profile indie remixes (Haim, Chvrches, Sam Smith) in the lead-up to his Patterns EP, which was steadily pushed back from a December release date to give Tourist more time to reinvent himself on the tour circuit as well. The most immediately noticeable difference between the Disclosure-affiliated Tourist and the Tourist formerly known as Little Loud is guest vocalists. Album closer “I Can’t Keep Up” features singer and occasional saxophonist Will Heard, who most notably appeared on Klangkarussell’s soulful UK hit “Sonnentanz”. With Tourist at the helm, Heard takes a darker turn, asking, “Won’t somebody give a fuck?” as the producer ramps up tension with a quickening pulse that rockets to 130 BPM before just as suddenly slowing down again. “I refuse to fall,” Heard sings, the last word echoing as if he’s already tumbling into the abyss. The title track, which opens with scattershot ping-pong synths straight out of SBTRKT’s playbook, is led by Lianne La Havas. Phillips doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with her here, supplementing her buttery voice with a background chorus that’s ultimately more distracting than anthemic. “Trust in You” eases into Patterns with cascading vocal samples and judicious xylophones, its clickety-split backing track setting the EP’s overall urgent tone that finds full expression in “Together”, Tourist’s most ambitious effort to date. His first release after signing to Method (and Patterns’ lead single) is something of a coming-out party, Phillips busting through any preconceived notions of him as an artist with a hi-NRG gallop riding the irresistibly universal refrain “We should be together.” It’s masterfully crafted, from the restrained fade-in and exhausted fade-out to the arpeggiated synths that take it to the bridge, quietly bow out, and then resurface for the final sprint to the finish line. For the first time, it sounds like Tourist has something to lose: in that same interview with Billboard, he said, “There’s something dangerous about getting big because you make your success on certain defining records.” With “Together”—and Patterns in general, which sets a promising tone for Tourist's continued artistic development—he may have found that record."

Landing

Brocade

Rock

Matthew Murphy

After six albums of sedate post-shoegaze pop, Connecticut-based quartet Landing have gradually seen their work overtaken by the dread shadow of familiarity. So on Brocade-- their return to Strange Attractors after albums on Ba Da Bing! and K-- the group has sensibly taken a hard step away from dreamcore to a slight return to the gauzy space-rock of earlier records like 2002's Fade In/Fade Out, an exchange that includes its own distinct set of pitfalls. On Brocade, however, Landing makes enough strategic use of Kraut-inspired rhythms and shimmering, repetitive minimalism to help sidestep the New Age perils of their ambient celestial navigations. The quartet is still based around the husband-and-wife duo Aaron and Adrienne Snow, but since the release of their 2004 album Sphere founding member Dick Baldwin has moved on, and was replaced by keyboardist Peter Baumann. Seizing upon this subtle change in dynamic, Landing essentially recorded Brocade live in the studio, allowing the album's five tracks to naturally expand and contract with a graceful, unforced dexterity. And unlike much of their recent material, the group spares little attention to either pop songcraft or discernable lyrics, as vocals are kept offstage for nearly the entire length of the album. Bursting forth with an uncharacteristically dissonant thrum of feedback, the opening "Loft" soon settles into an agile, motorik lumber, working some of the same rich, patterned fields as Caribou's The Milk of Human Kindness. Throughout the track, competing swells of keyboard lap softly at the rhythm's sturdy shoreline, but this seawall soon crumbles on the percussion-less likes of "Yon" or "Spiral Arms". On these lengthy pieces, Landing's combinations of tranquil strings and synth drones can at times achieve the spirited delicacy of Brian Eno's collaborations with Cluster. That said, it's often only the group's melodic economy and the occasional loosened analog buzz that distinguishes these tracks from the tepid watercolors that typically soundtrack the Dead Man's Pose at yoga class. It comes as a pleasant shock, then, to have your slumber disrupted by the hard-driving "How to Be Clear", Landing's grungiest track to date. The song also features the album's lone vocal, albeit one buried beneath distortion. The track's invigorating effect is magnified when contrasted with the mesmerizing set closer, "Music For Three Synthesizers", a hazily-unfolding epic that takes a sheet or two from Keith Fullerton Whitman's music stand. True to its title, this piece features three unaccompanied synths captured in effortlessly transfixing dialogue, as Landing sagely permit themselves to be lifted off course, carried skyward by their music's patient, weightless ascension.

Artist: Landing, Album: Brocade, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "After six albums of sedate post-shoegaze pop, Connecticut-based quartet Landing have gradually seen their work overtaken by the dread shadow of familiarity. So on Brocade-- their return to Strange Attractors after albums on Ba Da Bing! and K-- the group has sensibly taken a hard step away from dreamcore to a slight return to the gauzy space-rock of earlier records like 2002's Fade In/Fade Out, an exchange that includes its own distinct set of pitfalls. On Brocade, however, Landing makes enough strategic use of Kraut-inspired rhythms and shimmering, repetitive minimalism to help sidestep the New Age perils of their ambient celestial navigations. The quartet is still based around the husband-and-wife duo Aaron and Adrienne Snow, but since the release of their 2004 album Sphere founding member Dick Baldwin has moved on, and was replaced by keyboardist Peter Baumann. Seizing upon this subtle change in dynamic, Landing essentially recorded Brocade live in the studio, allowing the album's five tracks to naturally expand and contract with a graceful, unforced dexterity. And unlike much of their recent material, the group spares little attention to either pop songcraft or discernable lyrics, as vocals are kept offstage for nearly the entire length of the album. Bursting forth with an uncharacteristically dissonant thrum of feedback, the opening "Loft" soon settles into an agile, motorik lumber, working some of the same rich, patterned fields as Caribou's The Milk of Human Kindness. Throughout the track, competing swells of keyboard lap softly at the rhythm's sturdy shoreline, but this seawall soon crumbles on the percussion-less likes of "Yon" or "Spiral Arms". On these lengthy pieces, Landing's combinations of tranquil strings and synth drones can at times achieve the spirited delicacy of Brian Eno's collaborations with Cluster. That said, it's often only the group's melodic economy and the occasional loosened analog buzz that distinguishes these tracks from the tepid watercolors that typically soundtrack the Dead Man's Pose at yoga class. It comes as a pleasant shock, then, to have your slumber disrupted by the hard-driving "How to Be Clear", Landing's grungiest track to date. The song also features the album's lone vocal, albeit one buried beneath distortion. The track's invigorating effect is magnified when contrasted with the mesmerizing set closer, "Music For Three Synthesizers", a hazily-unfolding epic that takes a sheet or two from Keith Fullerton Whitman's music stand. True to its title, this piece features three unaccompanied synths captured in effortlessly transfixing dialogue, as Landing sagely permit themselves to be lifted off course, carried skyward by their music's patient, weightless ascension."

Bob Dylan

Modern Times

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

As an artist and a conundrum, Bob Dylan is well-versed in semi-hysterical critical hyperbole. With each new record since 1997's stellar Time Out of Mind, music writers and editors have been tripping all over themselves trying to sputter out the best, most dramatic encapsulation of Dylan's rebirth (which, given the relative late-career flops of his peers and his own 1980s shitstorm, still seems strange and thrilling). Now, 45 years into a perfectly studied, over-anthologized, well-chronicled career, even talking about the cult-of-Dylan seems clichéd: Analysis of Dylan-love, Dylan-backlash, Dylan-histrionics, and Dylanology is moot. Books have been published, academic treatises have been defended, documentaries have been ordered and directed, cover stories have been savored and parsed-- but every time Bob Dylan cranks out a new record, we still try, again, to figure out what it all adds up to. Modern Times is Bob Dylan's 31st studio LP, and an obvious companion piece to 2001's Love and Theft, offering new tracks of jazz-inspired, rockabilly-scamming, ragtime-aping rock'n'roll, more heavily indebted to blues and honky-tonk than Woody Guthrie and Folkways. The record does little to persuade disbelievers, will continue to infuriate those who cheered when Pete Seeger jerked the plug at Newport, and isn't entirely unfamiliar: Anyone who's seen Dylan play in the past five years will recognize the silhouette here, hunched over a keyboard, all crags and angles, brambles of hair puffing out from under a big black hat, pencil mustache combed into place, pounding keys, infinitely more compelled by his fellow players than his sycophantic audience. Unsurprisingly, Modern Times is musically intricate, thick, and expertly played, more the product of a well-rehearsed-- but still gorgeously mellow-- band than an auteur. It also contains some of the softest, funniest, and most charming songs of Dylan's late career, as he snickers to himself, cooing about love, God, and doing it ("I got the pork chops/ She got the pie"). Dylan recently spat a series of (now-notoriously) curmudgeonly comments to Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone, pining that nothing sounds like shellac-- and while his complaints seemed depressingly stodgy, they were also promptly misconstrued and yanked out of context; as it were, Dylan was deriding contemporary production/studio techniques and not the whole of modern music, which becomes instantly and weirdly obvious to anyone who listens to the lyrics to raucous opener "Thunder on the Mountain" ("I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn't help from crying/ When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line/ I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be/ I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee"), or considers the fact that Dylan produced this record himself (under favored stage-name Jack Frost). Still, it's obvious that Dylan's most beloved songs are old ones, and he borrows gleefully from Nina Simone, Memphis Minnie, Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters, and, in the grand tradition of AP Carter and John Lomax, plenty of unnamed songwriters whose work long ago slipped into public domain. "Rollin' and Tumblin'" (Muddy Waters famously recorded the song in 1950, but its origins date back to at least 1929) is given a new workup, infused with Dylan's signature clatter and wheeze and punched up with peppery guitar and even spicier lyrics ("I got trouble so hard, I just can't stand this dream/ Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains"). Meanwhile, "Nettie Moore" (a well-worn 19th century ballad) is staggering, a spare blend of vocals and light, airy instrumentation, Dylan's decaying pipes tut-tutting sweet proclamations of love: "When you're around me/ All my grief gives way/ A lifetime with you is like some heavenly day/ Everything I've ever known to be right has been proven wrong." "Workingman's Blues 2" is similarly gentle and lapping, and "The Levee's Gonna Break", with its familiar Zeppelin-via-Memphis-Minnie refrain ("If it keeps on raining/ The levee's gonna break"), seems almost self-referential ("I paid my time/ And now I'm as good as new…Some of these people are gonna strip you of all they can take"). The biggest disappointment here is that Modern Times is probably Dylan's least-surprising release in decades-- it's the logical continuation of its predecessor, created with the same band he's been touring with for years, fed from familiar influences, and sprinkled with all the droll, anachronistic bits now long-expected. Dylan's voice, sinking further into grit, is all wheeze and mew, rolled in salt but still instantly recognizable. And now that he's eyebrows-deep in the rock'n'roll canon, maybe the heart-stopping appeal of Bob Dylan has less to do with his output-- which, tangentially, remains outstanding-- and more to do with his cowboy boot-saunter. Maybe we all want a little bit of Dylan's superhuman restraint, and whether it's real or brutally calculated doesn't actually matter: The fuck-off detachment, the unconcerned genius, the squinty-eyed disdain, the arid, gut-punching humor, the total (if feigned) disinterest in his growing superhero status. He's the boy who doesn't love us back, the one everyone yearns for, the Holy Grail, the last American hero.

Artist: Bob Dylan, Album: Modern Times, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "As an artist and a conundrum, Bob Dylan is well-versed in semi-hysterical critical hyperbole. With each new record since 1997's stellar Time Out of Mind, music writers and editors have been tripping all over themselves trying to sputter out the best, most dramatic encapsulation of Dylan's rebirth (which, given the relative late-career flops of his peers and his own 1980s shitstorm, still seems strange and thrilling). Now, 45 years into a perfectly studied, over-anthologized, well-chronicled career, even talking about the cult-of-Dylan seems clichéd: Analysis of Dylan-love, Dylan-backlash, Dylan-histrionics, and Dylanology is moot. Books have been published, academic treatises have been defended, documentaries have been ordered and directed, cover stories have been savored and parsed-- but every time Bob Dylan cranks out a new record, we still try, again, to figure out what it all adds up to. Modern Times is Bob Dylan's 31st studio LP, and an obvious companion piece to 2001's Love and Theft, offering new tracks of jazz-inspired, rockabilly-scamming, ragtime-aping rock'n'roll, more heavily indebted to blues and honky-tonk than Woody Guthrie and Folkways. The record does little to persuade disbelievers, will continue to infuriate those who cheered when Pete Seeger jerked the plug at Newport, and isn't entirely unfamiliar: Anyone who's seen Dylan play in the past five years will recognize the silhouette here, hunched over a keyboard, all crags and angles, brambles of hair puffing out from under a big black hat, pencil mustache combed into place, pounding keys, infinitely more compelled by his fellow players than his sycophantic audience. Unsurprisingly, Modern Times is musically intricate, thick, and expertly played, more the product of a well-rehearsed-- but still gorgeously mellow-- band than an auteur. It also contains some of the softest, funniest, and most charming songs of Dylan's late career, as he snickers to himself, cooing about love, God, and doing it ("I got the pork chops/ She got the pie"). Dylan recently spat a series of (now-notoriously) curmudgeonly comments to Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone, pining that nothing sounds like shellac-- and while his complaints seemed depressingly stodgy, they were also promptly misconstrued and yanked out of context; as it were, Dylan was deriding contemporary production/studio techniques and not the whole of modern music, which becomes instantly and weirdly obvious to anyone who listens to the lyrics to raucous opener "Thunder on the Mountain" ("I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn't help from crying/ When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line/ I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be/ I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee"), or considers the fact that Dylan produced this record himself (under favored stage-name Jack Frost). Still, it's obvious that Dylan's most beloved songs are old ones, and he borrows gleefully from Nina Simone, Memphis Minnie, Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters, and, in the grand tradition of AP Carter and John Lomax, plenty of unnamed songwriters whose work long ago slipped into public domain. "Rollin' and Tumblin'" (Muddy Waters famously recorded the song in 1950, but its origins date back to at least 1929) is given a new workup, infused with Dylan's signature clatter and wheeze and punched up with peppery guitar and even spicier lyrics ("I got trouble so hard, I just can't stand this dream/ Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains"). Meanwhile, "Nettie Moore" (a well-worn 19th century ballad) is staggering, a spare blend of vocals and light, airy instrumentation, Dylan's decaying pipes tut-tutting sweet proclamations of love: "When you're around me/ All my grief gives way/ A lifetime with you is like some heavenly day/ Everything I've ever known to be right has been proven wrong." "Workingman's Blues 2" is similarly gentle and lapping, and "The Levee's Gonna Break", with its familiar Zeppelin-via-Memphis-Minnie refrain ("If it keeps on raining/ The levee's gonna break"), seems almost self-referential ("I paid my time/ And now I'm as good as new…Some of these people are gonna strip you of all they can take"). The biggest disappointment here is that Modern Times is probably Dylan's least-surprising release in decades-- it's the logical continuation of its predecessor, created with the same band he's been touring with for years, fed from familiar influences, and sprinkled with all the droll, anachronistic bits now long-expected. Dylan's voice, sinking further into grit, is all wheeze and mew, rolled in salt but still instantly recognizable. And now that he's eyebrows-deep in the rock'n'roll canon, maybe the heart-stopping appeal of Bob Dylan has less to do with his output-- which, tangentially, remains outstanding-- and more to do with his cowboy boot-saunter. Maybe we all want a little bit of Dylan's superhuman restraint, and whether it's real or brutally calculated doesn't actually matter: The fuck-off detachment, the unconcerned genius, the squinty-eyed disdain, the arid, gut-punching humor, the total (if feigned) disinterest in his growing superhero status. He's the boy who doesn't love us back, the one everyone yearns for, the Holy Grail, the last American hero."

Wolf Eyes

Human Animal

Experimental

Marc Masters

The cycle of tension and release is a well-worn musical ploy, but Michigan's Wolf Eyes have somehow managed to find new ideas in that technique's cracked façade. The band's best shows are an orgiastic symphony of hypnotic build-up and cathartic discharge. Every Wolf Eyes fan knows what to expect from the latter-- distorted, decaying beats, slashing noise from John Olson and Mike Connelly, and lung-killing rants from Nate Young-- and when to pump fists and jerk heads accordingly. The more abstract sections in between are trickier. Sometimes the trio's gnarled drift stops too abruptly, other times it out-meanders its welcome. But when these scientists hit on the right formula of slow-burning anticipation, the bombast that follows has the profundity of a drug-induced epiphany. Previous Wolf Eyes records have struck that magic balance during individual songs or sides, but none have stretched it over an album's length like Human Animal. Here the group's pre-climactic swells seem coated with extra allure, such that the first three tracks can spend 15 minutes gradually gathering density without losing momentum. It's partially due to a patient restraint that makes the clanging "A Million Years" oddly quiet, similar to Sightings' shadowy retreat on Arrived in Gold; partially due to Olson's snake-charming sax (something he's perfected with his dirt-jazz trio Graveyards) on the war-torn "Rationed Rot"; and very much due to the way even a purely textural piece like "Lake of Roaches" throbs with insistent pulse, mimicking time's relentless march. Whatever the reason, this dark, transfixing three-part suite makes the subsequent peak of the title track pretty staggering. "Rusted Mange" extends the climax with rhythms that overlap like competing fireworks. Mixed with more Young vocal screech and Olson sax whine, the piece splits the difference between didactic pound and inscrutable cacophony, delivering the promise of the preceding simmer. The trio's tension-release loop gets lathered, rinsed, and repeated on Human Animal's final three tracks, this time in a quicker, sharper rotation. The six-minute "Leper War" detonates windy bombs over a smoldering static terrain, fading into the rippling march of "The Driller", whose deadened pound sprouts into a hummable lurch. As Young's moans rhyme with the surrounding din, the track actually becomes more like music than noise. Which makes "Noise Not Music" a logical closer. Here instead of noise made from pure abstraction, we get music beaten until it shatters into noise, with what sounds like 100 simultaneous punk songs piled into endless climax. The song's chanted title may be a brutal manifesto, and Wolf Eyes' metronomic swing can sometimes be fascistically either/or. But Human Animal is far from black and white; it's more like its melted-face cover painting, a dripping swirl of different shades of gray.

Artist: Wolf Eyes, Album: Human Animal, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "The cycle of tension and release is a well-worn musical ploy, but Michigan's Wolf Eyes have somehow managed to find new ideas in that technique's cracked façade. The band's best shows are an orgiastic symphony of hypnotic build-up and cathartic discharge. Every Wolf Eyes fan knows what to expect from the latter-- distorted, decaying beats, slashing noise from John Olson and Mike Connelly, and lung-killing rants from Nate Young-- and when to pump fists and jerk heads accordingly. The more abstract sections in between are trickier. Sometimes the trio's gnarled drift stops too abruptly, other times it out-meanders its welcome. But when these scientists hit on the right formula of slow-burning anticipation, the bombast that follows has the profundity of a drug-induced epiphany. Previous Wolf Eyes records have struck that magic balance during individual songs or sides, but none have stretched it over an album's length like Human Animal. Here the group's pre-climactic swells seem coated with extra allure, such that the first three tracks can spend 15 minutes gradually gathering density without losing momentum. It's partially due to a patient restraint that makes the clanging "A Million Years" oddly quiet, similar to Sightings' shadowy retreat on Arrived in Gold; partially due to Olson's snake-charming sax (something he's perfected with his dirt-jazz trio Graveyards) on the war-torn "Rationed Rot"; and very much due to the way even a purely textural piece like "Lake of Roaches" throbs with insistent pulse, mimicking time's relentless march. Whatever the reason, this dark, transfixing three-part suite makes the subsequent peak of the title track pretty staggering. "Rusted Mange" extends the climax with rhythms that overlap like competing fireworks. Mixed with more Young vocal screech and Olson sax whine, the piece splits the difference between didactic pound and inscrutable cacophony, delivering the promise of the preceding simmer. The trio's tension-release loop gets lathered, rinsed, and repeated on Human Animal's final three tracks, this time in a quicker, sharper rotation. The six-minute "Leper War" detonates windy bombs over a smoldering static terrain, fading into the rippling march of "The Driller", whose deadened pound sprouts into a hummable lurch. As Young's moans rhyme with the surrounding din, the track actually becomes more like music than noise. Which makes "Noise Not Music" a logical closer. Here instead of noise made from pure abstraction, we get music beaten until it shatters into noise, with what sounds like 100 simultaneous punk songs piled into endless climax. The song's chanted title may be a brutal manifesto, and Wolf Eyes' metronomic swing can sometimes be fascistically either/or. But Human Animal is far from black and white; it's more like its melted-face cover painting, a dripping swirl of different shades of gray."

Nadja

Radiance of Shadows

Electronic,Metal,Rock

Grayson Currin

When Toronto electro-metal duo Nadja are at the height of their powers, the entire world feels as if it could collapse beneath the pressure of a manipulated guitar, a drum machine, a bass, and two bent voices. Radiance of Shadows, the fourth full-length album the band has released this year, pushes to and pulls from such apocalyptic promise for 80 minutes, saturating their cathedral volume with sounds both thick and rich. Though Nadja plays torpid, doomy metal that replaces the usual toolkit with keyboards, the music's effect recalls black metal: Huge and impenetrable, the sound loudly grates, collapses, then instantly slams back at full tilt. Radiance of Shadows, Nadja's best album to date, is a series of warm-ups, cool-downs, and sprints that turn those sounds into a dramatic marathon through steep hills. A vortex of instability, Radiance's three tracks are exhausting. The album's only fault (a term that borders on hyperbole here) is its conceptual foundation. Touched, the second LP Nadja released this year and its second ever for Alien8, funneled song-like sentiments into the band's devastating sounds. The lyrics (about a lover responsible for an arachnid metamorphosis) fit the music (tangled, beckoning, forceful), and the narrative and sculpted noise reinforced one another. But Radiance shoehorns its concept-- lovers branded to one another by the sun-- into sounds that speak more vividly than their words ever could: "I am turned to dust by the heat of your breath," ends the second track. "Reduced to subatomic particles/ Leeching through your skin/ Each time a cell splits off/ We become a new flesh," the closing third picks up in total treacle regalia. Whatever: These tracks maul with an intensity that betrays plenty of feeling and passion, and their rapturous sense of motion and crushing sense of sound imply the love affair just fine. Guilted by the Sun, the Nadja album between Touched and Radiance, doesn't light the same response: More concise and more dynamic, it's only a teaser for the band's full fury. Compared to Radiance's long-distance sprint, these four tracks over 28 minutes feel like watching two B-list ball teams stranding runners for 53 scoreless outs, only to have a pinch hitter benched for personal reasons smack the shit out of a sweet-spot fastball in the ninth to win it. Like a member of the clean-up crew, you're left watching the crowd thin out, disappointed in its Saturday night entertainment. Guilted slams in, crushing placid guitars with drum machine jolts and Baker's lacerated roar. After four minutes, it falls apart and rebuilds, stalling once more to let quick beats disrupt a bed of noise. The album's best moment comes as all of Nadja's devices-- rumbling bassline, drums, synthesizers-- short out one by one, a reminder that this cretaceous size is electronically driven. "By" wraps turmoil in heavy fuzz, and drum machines slip phantom beats inside of a militant, direct stomp. It plateaus, corrodes and slopes into "The", which growls, then lurks. "Sun" does much the same, just over eight minutes instead of four. You'll call its overly logical, pedal-predictable fade-out in the air. Taken together, Guilted by the Sun and Radiance of Shadows elucidate the problems and payoffs of what's been a frantic, fantastic year for Nadja. After four full-lengths, two collaborations, two solo discs of somnambulant electronics, and a post-rock record from Baker in less than 12 months (with three discs slated for release early next year), Nadja's capabilities and compassions seem mostly without bounds right now. The duo's pacing may be laborious, and its hyper-dynamics can be exhausting. Still, the sounds between those poles and along those protractions are as impressive as anything anyone is currently doing near metal.

Artist: Nadja, Album: Radiance of Shadows, Genre: Electronic,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "When Toronto electro-metal duo Nadja are at the height of their powers, the entire world feels as if it could collapse beneath the pressure of a manipulated guitar, a drum machine, a bass, and two bent voices. Radiance of Shadows, the fourth full-length album the band has released this year, pushes to and pulls from such apocalyptic promise for 80 minutes, saturating their cathedral volume with sounds both thick and rich. Though Nadja plays torpid, doomy metal that replaces the usual toolkit with keyboards, the music's effect recalls black metal: Huge and impenetrable, the sound loudly grates, collapses, then instantly slams back at full tilt. Radiance of Shadows, Nadja's best album to date, is a series of warm-ups, cool-downs, and sprints that turn those sounds into a dramatic marathon through steep hills. A vortex of instability, Radiance's three tracks are exhausting. The album's only fault (a term that borders on hyperbole here) is its conceptual foundation. Touched, the second LP Nadja released this year and its second ever for Alien8, funneled song-like sentiments into the band's devastating sounds. The lyrics (about a lover responsible for an arachnid metamorphosis) fit the music (tangled, beckoning, forceful), and the narrative and sculpted noise reinforced one another. But Radiance shoehorns its concept-- lovers branded to one another by the sun-- into sounds that speak more vividly than their words ever could: "I am turned to dust by the heat of your breath," ends the second track. "Reduced to subatomic particles/ Leeching through your skin/ Each time a cell splits off/ We become a new flesh," the closing third picks up in total treacle regalia. Whatever: These tracks maul with an intensity that betrays plenty of feeling and passion, and their rapturous sense of motion and crushing sense of sound imply the love affair just fine. Guilted by the Sun, the Nadja album between Touched and Radiance, doesn't light the same response: More concise and more dynamic, it's only a teaser for the band's full fury. Compared to Radiance's long-distance sprint, these four tracks over 28 minutes feel like watching two B-list ball teams stranding runners for 53 scoreless outs, only to have a pinch hitter benched for personal reasons smack the shit out of a sweet-spot fastball in the ninth to win it. Like a member of the clean-up crew, you're left watching the crowd thin out, disappointed in its Saturday night entertainment. Guilted slams in, crushing placid guitars with drum machine jolts and Baker's lacerated roar. After four minutes, it falls apart and rebuilds, stalling once more to let quick beats disrupt a bed of noise. The album's best moment comes as all of Nadja's devices-- rumbling bassline, drums, synthesizers-- short out one by one, a reminder that this cretaceous size is electronically driven. "By" wraps turmoil in heavy fuzz, and drum machines slip phantom beats inside of a militant, direct stomp. It plateaus, corrodes and slopes into "The", which growls, then lurks. "Sun" does much the same, just over eight minutes instead of four. You'll call its overly logical, pedal-predictable fade-out in the air. Taken together, Guilted by the Sun and Radiance of Shadows elucidate the problems and payoffs of what's been a frantic, fantastic year for Nadja. After four full-lengths, two collaborations, two solo discs of somnambulant electronics, and a post-rock record from Baker in less than 12 months (with three discs slated for release early next year), Nadja's capabilities and compassions seem mostly without bounds right now. The duo's pacing may be laborious, and its hyper-dynamics can be exhausting. Still, the sounds between those poles and along those protractions are as impressive as anything anyone is currently doing near metal."

Steve Reich and Kronos Quartet

WTC 9/11

Jayson Greene

The first performance of WTC 9/11, Steve Reich's memorial to September 11, took place at Duke University-- 500 miles south of Ground Zero. From there, it traveled to L.A.-- nearly 3,000 miles west of the attacks it commemorated-- before touching down in Carnegie Hall a month later. It was an oddly circuitous cross-country tiptoe for a work by a native New Yorker about the collapse of the towers he lived four blocks from, but it spoke to the fearsome difficulty in addressing 9/11 headlong. There is still, 10 years later, an instinctive flinch mechanism built into our communal central nervous system surrounding the day, and it presents a forbidding hurdle for artists attempting to speak to it. Reich, as unofficial American composer laureate and a quintessentially New York City figure, would seem more outwardly qualified than most, which only makes his failure all the more disheartening. WTC 9/11 takes the same form as Reich's Different Trains, another piece that treated an atrocity-- in that instance, the trains transporting Jews to concentration camps-- with a sorrowful Zen gaze. Like Trains, WTC pairs the Kronos Quartet with manipulated recorded voices, the strings accompanying the recordings to draw out the anxious unheard music in their intonation and rhythm. It's a spectacular compositional technique, bridging the invisible gap where words become music. Within minutes, however, WTC 9/11 rams up against an unavoidable problem: These raw materials are, well, simply too raw. The voices Reich highlights in his music are a mix emergency dispatches from 9/11 and interviews conducted in 2010 with his close friends. Much of what they say is nearly unbearable to hear, even a decade on. If there is a way to subsume a 9/11 survivor saying, "Three thousand people were murdered. What's gonna happen here next?" into a larger musical work, Reich didn't find it. The words burn through the music's fabric like tissue paper, leaving you jarred but neither enlightened nor transformed. The smaller moments in the piece, painting the texture of daily life on the morning of the attacks, ring true with tension and foreboding. The conversational, lilting swing of "I was sitting in class. Four blocks north of Ground Zero", for instance. A sobbing cello catches the falling note of plaint in the phrase "Nobody knew what to do." At the intonation of "We all thought it was an accident" (spoken by Reich’s friend and colleague, Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang), the strings allow a brief glint of a major key to peak in, a moment of fugitive hope. Unfortunately, the moments that freeze you in place -- lines like "debris engulfed everybody that was there," or a desperate shout of "I'm trapped in the rubble"-- owe nothing at all to Reich's music; indeed, they all but erase your awareness of the music around them. The Nonesuch recording of WTC 9/11 is rounded out by other recent-vintage Reich pieces, and to spend time in their company after the heightened, jagged WTC is a relief. His 2009 Mallet Quartet is a delicate and ringing interlocking of marimbas that feels as cleansing as spring rain, while Dance Patterns, for a battery of vibraphones, xylophones, and pianos, plays like a glistening, fond medley of Reichisms. The framework of Reich's pieces feels well-worn by now-- his "fast-slow-fast" structure now has a "loud-quiet-loud," "verse-chorus-verse" inevitability to it. The shifts in key midway through movements feel less like the blooming of an unexpected thought now than slides in a ViewMaster clicking duly into place. You smile and nod knowingly, but the goosebumps are gone. These low-key joys are reminiscent of latter-day Neil Young or Sonic Youth albums-- a master operating comfortably within his groove. They are modest, but they feel honest in their serene confidence. WTC 9/11, on the other hand, feels marred by miscalculation and overcompensation. This uneasiness found public expression when Nonesuch revealed the album's original cover art: a photo of the smoldering Towers, with the second plane zeroing in. The stark image was surrounded by a woefully cheap-looking graphical treatment, and prompted an immediate outcry. Nonesuch swiftly replaced the image, but the episode made its impression. Unfortunately, it could stand in as a diagnosis for the piece itself, a project conceived in noble intentions but hobbled by confused, muddled execution.

Artist: Steve Reich and Kronos Quartet, Album: WTC 9/11, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "The first performance of WTC 9/11, Steve Reich's memorial to September 11, took place at Duke University-- 500 miles south of Ground Zero. From there, it traveled to L.A.-- nearly 3,000 miles west of the attacks it commemorated-- before touching down in Carnegie Hall a month later. It was an oddly circuitous cross-country tiptoe for a work by a native New Yorker about the collapse of the towers he lived four blocks from, but it spoke to the fearsome difficulty in addressing 9/11 headlong. There is still, 10 years later, an instinctive flinch mechanism built into our communal central nervous system surrounding the day, and it presents a forbidding hurdle for artists attempting to speak to it. Reich, as unofficial American composer laureate and a quintessentially New York City figure, would seem more outwardly qualified than most, which only makes his failure all the more disheartening. WTC 9/11 takes the same form as Reich's Different Trains, another piece that treated an atrocity-- in that instance, the trains transporting Jews to concentration camps-- with a sorrowful Zen gaze. Like Trains, WTC pairs the Kronos Quartet with manipulated recorded voices, the strings accompanying the recordings to draw out the anxious unheard music in their intonation and rhythm. It's a spectacular compositional technique, bridging the invisible gap where words become music. Within minutes, however, WTC 9/11 rams up against an unavoidable problem: These raw materials are, well, simply too raw. The voices Reich highlights in his music are a mix emergency dispatches from 9/11 and interviews conducted in 2010 with his close friends. Much of what they say is nearly unbearable to hear, even a decade on. If there is a way to subsume a 9/11 survivor saying, "Three thousand people were murdered. What's gonna happen here next?" into a larger musical work, Reich didn't find it. The words burn through the music's fabric like tissue paper, leaving you jarred but neither enlightened nor transformed. The smaller moments in the piece, painting the texture of daily life on the morning of the attacks, ring true with tension and foreboding. The conversational, lilting swing of "I was sitting in class. Four blocks north of Ground Zero", for instance. A sobbing cello catches the falling note of plaint in the phrase "Nobody knew what to do." At the intonation of "We all thought it was an accident" (spoken by Reich’s friend and colleague, Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang), the strings allow a brief glint of a major key to peak in, a moment of fugitive hope. Unfortunately, the moments that freeze you in place -- lines like "debris engulfed everybody that was there," or a desperate shout of "I'm trapped in the rubble"-- owe nothing at all to Reich's music; indeed, they all but erase your awareness of the music around them. The Nonesuch recording of WTC 9/11 is rounded out by other recent-vintage Reich pieces, and to spend time in their company after the heightened, jagged WTC is a relief. His 2009 Mallet Quartet is a delicate and ringing interlocking of marimbas that feels as cleansing as spring rain, while Dance Patterns, for a battery of vibraphones, xylophones, and pianos, plays like a glistening, fond medley of Reichisms. The framework of Reich's pieces feels well-worn by now-- his "fast-slow-fast" structure now has a "loud-quiet-loud," "verse-chorus-verse" inevitability to it. The shifts in key midway through movements feel less like the blooming of an unexpected thought now than slides in a ViewMaster clicking duly into place. You smile and nod knowingly, but the goosebumps are gone. These low-key joys are reminiscent of latter-day Neil Young or Sonic Youth albums-- a master operating comfortably within his groove. They are modest, but they feel honest in their serene confidence. WTC 9/11, on the other hand, feels marred by miscalculation and overcompensation. This uneasiness found public expression when Nonesuch revealed the album's original cover art: a photo of the smoldering Towers, with the second plane zeroing in. The stark image was surrounded by a woefully cheap-looking graphical treatment, and prompted an immediate outcry. Nonesuch swiftly replaced the image, but the episode made its impression. Unfortunately, it could stand in as a diagnosis for the piece itself, a project conceived in noble intentions but hobbled by confused, muddled execution."

Tropic of Cancer

Stop Suffering EP

Rock

Jes Skolnik

Grief is a watery emotion, prone to slopping over the side of any container it occupies—and so it takes a project like Camella Lobo’s L.A.-based Tropic of Cancer, music that moves fluidly, to truly capture it. Stop Suffering, which Lobo recorded and self-produced with mixing and mastering from Joshua Eustis (ex-Telefon Tel Aviv), is her first major work since 2013’s glimmering Restless Idylls LP, and though it only comprises three tracks, the tracks are so finely crafted that it's a work worth returning to, playing again and again, and exploring within. It is a work about grief, yes, but a work wholly without self-pity, a work that urges slowly forward. It is a work about how grief ebbs eventually, with attention and time. Lobo is an expert in how nearly microscopic musical changes can have an enormous emotional effect, and the opening title track is a master class on this phenomenon. It's built on gauzy layers of synth-wash just a step or a half-step away from one another, and as Lobo introduces a layer or pulls one back the subtle movement causes the whole track to shiver, like a spider’s web trembling below the movement of tiny feet. Her timing has to be impeccable to achieve this, and it is. Her vocal melody also stays within a relatively small range for most of the song, functioning more as an additional instrumental/ambient layer—pushed back in the mix, hovering suspended in delay—than a traditional vocal line winding around and through the instrumentation. It is a dense song with a dark heart that only truly shows itself near the end of the track, but it never feels murky. "I Woke Up and the Storm Was Over" is more glacial in pace than the title track, but with a minimal heartbeat ticking at its core. It stretches luxuriously, like a cat's yawn, all choral synth and tidal sweep and percussive shoegaze bass, the sort that sounds like a big piano. On this one, Lobo’s vocals sit more atop the mix, more the focal point, more the driver. There is something in it that feels immensely, strangely hopeful. If the title track is slowly running water and "I Woke Up and the Storm Was Over" is the glacier formed as that water starts to freeze, the closing track, "When the Dog Bites", is its iced-over final form. Droning and sparse in comparison to the highly textural tracks before it, "When the Dog Bites" throws Lobo’s voice into final heavy relief. When the bass drum hits, it feels like a communication across a vast expanse. The entire record feels composed in the way a classical piece does: a tale of grief in three movements, a tale of the sick motion of heartbreak eventually becoming still and distant, if not forgotten, as one's own sense of self becomes more pronounced. It is a delicate and painful journey, and one worth taking at Lobo’s side.

Artist: Tropic of Cancer, Album: Stop Suffering EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Grief is a watery emotion, prone to slopping over the side of any container it occupies—and so it takes a project like Camella Lobo’s L.A.-based Tropic of Cancer, music that moves fluidly, to truly capture it. Stop Suffering, which Lobo recorded and self-produced with mixing and mastering from Joshua Eustis (ex-Telefon Tel Aviv), is her first major work since 2013’s glimmering Restless Idylls LP, and though it only comprises three tracks, the tracks are so finely crafted that it's a work worth returning to, playing again and again, and exploring within. It is a work about grief, yes, but a work wholly without self-pity, a work that urges slowly forward. It is a work about how grief ebbs eventually, with attention and time. Lobo is an expert in how nearly microscopic musical changes can have an enormous emotional effect, and the opening title track is a master class on this phenomenon. It's built on gauzy layers of synth-wash just a step or a half-step away from one another, and as Lobo introduces a layer or pulls one back the subtle movement causes the whole track to shiver, like a spider’s web trembling below the movement of tiny feet. Her timing has to be impeccable to achieve this, and it is. Her vocal melody also stays within a relatively small range for most of the song, functioning more as an additional instrumental/ambient layer—pushed back in the mix, hovering suspended in delay—than a traditional vocal line winding around and through the instrumentation. It is a dense song with a dark heart that only truly shows itself near the end of the track, but it never feels murky. "I Woke Up and the Storm Was Over" is more glacial in pace than the title track, but with a minimal heartbeat ticking at its core. It stretches luxuriously, like a cat's yawn, all choral synth and tidal sweep and percussive shoegaze bass, the sort that sounds like a big piano. On this one, Lobo’s vocals sit more atop the mix, more the focal point, more the driver. There is something in it that feels immensely, strangely hopeful. If the title track is slowly running water and "I Woke Up and the Storm Was Over" is the glacier formed as that water starts to freeze, the closing track, "When the Dog Bites", is its iced-over final form. Droning and sparse in comparison to the highly textural tracks before it, "When the Dog Bites" throws Lobo’s voice into final heavy relief. When the bass drum hits, it feels like a communication across a vast expanse. The entire record feels composed in the way a classical piece does: a tale of grief in three movements, a tale of the sick motion of heartbreak eventually becoming still and distant, if not forgotten, as one's own sense of self becomes more pronounced. It is a delicate and painful journey, and one worth taking at Lobo’s side."

Blur

Think Tank

Rock

Brent DiCrescenzo

Thirty five years ago, while Mick and Keef injected the final doses of Jack and junk into Beggars Banquet out in Los Angeles, Brian Jones sucked a deep hit of kif and hopped a cab down the coast from Tangier to Larache with engineer George Chkiantz and girlfriend Suki in tow. From Larache the group hiked halfway up a mountain to the village of Jajouka, where for ages masses of drummers pounded under a chorus of reed ripping rhaita players as part of the Bou Jeloud ritual dance. Jones dreamed of expanding the Stones' sound beyond their American roots influence. Easily bored, he'd already exhausted sitar, vibraphone, dulcimer, and "the bloody marimbas" (as Keith called them) two years earlier on Aftermath. As Jones' health famously sagged along with the bags under his eyes, The Rolling Stones found less and less use for his experiments. "Moroccan drums" pop up on "Midnight Rambler", but the band would never hike that mountain for the elusive Jajouka fusion. That is, not until they mattered little, in the late 80s, for "Continental Drift", a cut hidden deep in the career nadir of Steel Wheels. By then, looking to Africa for a muse had become AOR cliche, thanks to Paul Simon and Sting. Even the derided Paul McCartney overcame bubblegum balladry for Band on the Run, recorded in Lagos amidst studio shortcomings and legendary knife-point muggings. Which brings us to Blur and their long-developed Think Tank, recorded in Morocco without founding guitar icon Graham Coxon. Rock 'n' roll precedent begs certain questions. Will the loss of Coxon equate to the loss of Brian Jones (or Mick Taylor) or a hypothetical loss of Keith Richards? Will Think Tank be another Cut the Crap, The Final Cut, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, Carl and the Passions (So Tough), Good Stuff, And Then There Were Three, Wake of the Flood, Mag Earwig, Stranded, One Hot Minute, Face Dances, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Other Voices, Squeeze, Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, Ultra, Drama, Slow Buildings, Road Hawks, Now and Them, or Chinese Democracy? Or more along the lines of Sticky Fingers, Back in Black, XTRMNTR, Adore, Up, In the Studio, Movement, Everything Must Go, Soft Bulletin, Power, Corruption & Lies, First Step, Damaged, Green Mind, This Is Hardcore, Coming Up, Full House, and ...And Justice for All? With the exception of a year back in 1995, Blur have never rested on their laurels. Unlike their peers, they've delivered each album dipped in a drastic new element while keeping a consistent melodic heart. Albarn has always taken his shots, and thirteen years on seems to savor the challenge. Take, for instance, 2002's Mali Music, his rich, ethereal solo equivalent to Brian Jones' The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka: not content to simply document the musical heritage of the locals, Albarn stepped in alongside Afel Bocoum, protegé to Ali Farka Toure, humming his melodica during Niger-side jams and later reassembling the results in London as a montage of British-pop sensibilities with post-production special effects and punches of guitar, bass, and keyboard. The ambience and dust of the Malian excursion settles heavily over Think Tank, and notably, Albarn seems to have picked up more guitar skills from Bocoum than Coxon. The majestic, snaking "Out of Time" relies less on the lugubrious, Gibraltar-docked solo than the vast, four-dimensional environment surrounding it. One gets the sense that even if Graham Coxon had caught the flight to Marrakesh, Think Tank wouldn't have turned out much different. Of course, all this focus on Damon and Graham discredits Alex James and Dave Rowntree, who really push Think Tank through the sand. The two both preempted the critics by perfectly describing the new music in interviews. James claimed Think Tank "has hips," while Rowntree simply said it's most similar to Parklife. James goes the furthest in giving Blur hips, beyond often posing with his protruding-- with the focus off Coxon, his brilliant bass playing will finally be seen as the vital element in Blur. It gave "Girls and Boys", "Parklife", "Coffee and TV", and "Song 2" their major hooks, while Graham hammered away on minimal riffs. If you're air-playing anything along to those tracks, it's the air-bass you're wriggling your index and middle fingers to. Likewise, Think Tank is laden with creative bass leads. "Brothers and Sisters" pounds along like contemporary Primal Scream revisiting Screamadelica. While Damon twists away like the Konda Bongo Man on guitar and hammers "Rockit" Hancock keyboard blurts, James freaks out like a Funkadelic foray into post-punk on "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club". Rowntree, meanwhile, switches between locking the beats into motorik molds or loosens them up into Bou Jeloud punk. But Think Tank is by no means "Blur gone dance" (ironically, the two Fatboy Slim songs, "Crazy Beat" and "Gene by Gene", are, if anything, Clash-inspired)-- what was "Girls and Boys" but a disco rock track seven years before it was fashionable? Even "Battle", "People in Europe", "Death of a Party", "I'm Just a Killer for Your Love", "Entertain Me", "On Your Own", and "London Loves" used loops or drum machines. Incidentally, despite my earlier, tenuous attempts to link Blur to the Stones in some sort of sacred, afro-spiritual rock history, Blur worship more at the altar of Bowie. The Bowie element has, of course, always been there, from "Bugman" to "M.O.R."-- the latter emulated Lodger's "Boys Keep Swinging" to such an extent that Bowie was given songwriting credit. Here it seems that Albarn must idolize Lodger, in particular, as Think Tank follows the overlooked album closely in spirit. In "Fantastic Voyage", "African Night Flight", and "Yassassin", Bowie found a fractured, minimal sound affected by Middle Eastern and African music without blindly throwing a robe and bongo on while inviting Ladysmith Black Mambazo to sing. In contrast "DJ" and "Boys Keep Swinging" offered jittery, pre-new wave dance-rock. Combat Rock, too, stands as an obvious parallel. "Car Jamming", "Straight to Hell", and "Overpowered by Funk" inspire the most daring Think Tank tracks-- "Me, White Noise" (with Phil Daniels standing in for Ginsberg), "Jets", and "Ambulance". But, ah, remember Dave Rowntree saying this was like Parklife. In basic sound, as you may have gathered, no. Parklife was the defining BRITISH album of the 90s, ushering in an unintentional wave of newly patriotic blokes who failed to see it as satire, like "Born in the U.S.A." blaring at Reagan rallies. Likewise, Think Tank sounds like Britain today-- a Britain where Panjabi MC's "Mundi

Artist: Blur, Album: Think Tank, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "Thirty five years ago, while Mick and Keef injected the final doses of Jack and junk into Beggars Banquet out in Los Angeles, Brian Jones sucked a deep hit of kif and hopped a cab down the coast from Tangier to Larache with engineer George Chkiantz and girlfriend Suki in tow. From Larache the group hiked halfway up a mountain to the village of Jajouka, where for ages masses of drummers pounded under a chorus of reed ripping rhaita players as part of the Bou Jeloud ritual dance. Jones dreamed of expanding the Stones' sound beyond their American roots influence. Easily bored, he'd already exhausted sitar, vibraphone, dulcimer, and "the bloody marimbas" (as Keith called them) two years earlier on Aftermath. As Jones' health famously sagged along with the bags under his eyes, The Rolling Stones found less and less use for his experiments. "Moroccan drums" pop up on "Midnight Rambler", but the band would never hike that mountain for the elusive Jajouka fusion. That is, not until they mattered little, in the late 80s, for "Continental Drift", a cut hidden deep in the career nadir of Steel Wheels. By then, looking to Africa for a muse had become AOR cliche, thanks to Paul Simon and Sting. Even the derided Paul McCartney overcame bubblegum balladry for Band on the Run, recorded in Lagos amidst studio shortcomings and legendary knife-point muggings. Which brings us to Blur and their long-developed Think Tank, recorded in Morocco without founding guitar icon Graham Coxon. Rock 'n' roll precedent begs certain questions. Will the loss of Coxon equate to the loss of Brian Jones (or Mick Taylor) or a hypothetical loss of Keith Richards? Will Think Tank be another Cut the Crap, The Final Cut, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, Carl and the Passions (So Tough), Good Stuff, And Then There Were Three, Wake of the Flood, Mag Earwig, Stranded, One Hot Minute, Face Dances, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Other Voices, Squeeze, Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, Ultra, Drama, Slow Buildings, Road Hawks, Now and Them, or Chinese Democracy? Or more along the lines of Sticky Fingers, Back in Black, XTRMNTR, Adore, Up, In the Studio, Movement, Everything Must Go, Soft Bulletin, Power, Corruption & Lies, First Step, Damaged, Green Mind, This Is Hardcore, Coming Up, Full House, and ...And Justice for All? With the exception of a year back in 1995, Blur have never rested on their laurels. Unlike their peers, they've delivered each album dipped in a drastic new element while keeping a consistent melodic heart. Albarn has always taken his shots, and thirteen years on seems to savor the challenge. Take, for instance, 2002's Mali Music, his rich, ethereal solo equivalent to Brian Jones' The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka: not content to simply document the musical heritage of the locals, Albarn stepped in alongside Afel Bocoum, protegé to Ali Farka Toure, humming his melodica during Niger-side jams and later reassembling the results in London as a montage of British-pop sensibilities with post-production special effects and punches of guitar, bass, and keyboard. The ambience and dust of the Malian excursion settles heavily over Think Tank, and notably, Albarn seems to have picked up more guitar skills from Bocoum than Coxon. The majestic, snaking "Out of Time" relies less on the lugubrious, Gibraltar-docked solo than the vast, four-dimensional environment surrounding it. One gets the sense that even if Graham Coxon had caught the flight to Marrakesh, Think Tank wouldn't have turned out much different. Of course, all this focus on Damon and Graham discredits Alex James and Dave Rowntree, who really push Think Tank through the sand. The two both preempted the critics by perfectly describing the new music in interviews. James claimed Think Tank "has hips," while Rowntree simply said it's most similar to Parklife. James goes the furthest in giving Blur hips, beyond often posing with his protruding-- with the focus off Coxon, his brilliant bass playing will finally be seen as the vital element in Blur. It gave "Girls and Boys", "Parklife", "Coffee and TV", and "Song 2" their major hooks, while Graham hammered away on minimal riffs. If you're air-playing anything along to those tracks, it's the air-bass you're wriggling your index and middle fingers to. Likewise, Think Tank is laden with creative bass leads. "Brothers and Sisters" pounds along like contemporary Primal Scream revisiting Screamadelica. While Damon twists away like the Konda Bongo Man on guitar and hammers "Rockit" Hancock keyboard blurts, James freaks out like a Funkadelic foray into post-punk on "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club". Rowntree, meanwhile, switches between locking the beats into motorik molds or loosens them up into Bou Jeloud punk. But Think Tank is by no means "Blur gone dance" (ironically, the two Fatboy Slim songs, "Crazy Beat" and "Gene by Gene", are, if anything, Clash-inspired)-- what was "Girls and Boys" but a disco rock track seven years before it was fashionable? Even "Battle", "People in Europe", "Death of a Party", "I'm Just a Killer for Your Love", "Entertain Me", "On Your Own", and "London Loves" used loops or drum machines. Incidentally, despite my earlier, tenuous attempts to link Blur to the Stones in some sort of sacred, afro-spiritual rock history, Blur worship more at the altar of Bowie. The Bowie element has, of course, always been there, from "Bugman" to "M.O.R."-- the latter emulated Lodger's "Boys Keep Swinging" to such an extent that Bowie was given songwriting credit. Here it seems that Albarn must idolize Lodger, in particular, as Think Tank follows the overlooked album closely in spirit. In "Fantastic Voyage", "African Night Flight", and "Yassassin", Bowie found a fractured, minimal sound affected by Middle Eastern and African music without blindly throwing a robe and bongo on while inviting Ladysmith Black Mambazo to sing. In contrast "DJ" and "Boys Keep Swinging" offered jittery, pre-new wave dance-rock. Combat Rock, too, stands as an obvious parallel. "Car Jamming", "Straight to Hell", and "Overpowered by Funk" inspire the most daring Think Tank tracks-- "Me, White Noise" (with Phil Daniels standing in for Ginsberg), "Jets", and "Ambulance". But, ah, remember Dave Rowntree saying this was like Parklife. In basic sound, as you may have gathered, no. Parklife was the defining BRITISH album of the 90s, ushering in an unintentional wave of newly patriotic blokes who failed to see it as satire, like "Born in the U.S.A." blaring at Reagan rallies. Likewise, Think Tank sounds like Britain today-- a Britain where Panjabi MC's "Mundi"

Goldfrapp

Felt Mountain

Pop/R&B

Matt LeMay

If you'd told me a few weeks back that I'd be lusting after some chick named Goldfrapp, I'd have told you to pack your bags for an all-expenses-paid trip to my fist. But writing this review, all I can think of is Goldfrapp. Sweet, sweet Goldfrapp. Mmm... Goldfrapp. Before I get accused of any level of chauvinism here, I feel I should defend myself. I am, after all, only a male variant of the human species. And what sane, sexually functional guy could resist a woman who whispers in a throaty voice, "No time to fuck/ But you like the rush?" Not me! What's more, she's English! English from England! And she hangs out with Orbital! C'mon, now! Taking cues from apparent influences ranging from Marlena Dietrich to Siouxsie Sioux to Björk, Alison Goldfrapp has constructed an album that's simultaneously smarmy and seductive, yet elegant and graceful. Describing the sound of Felt Mountain comes easy not because it's a simple album, but because the devices used throughout are so ingrained in our musical vernacular. If Austin Powers had been a film noir flick, its soundtrack would probably sound something like Felt Mountain. The hushed vocals, the crying analog synthesizers, and the sustained seven chords all evoke amazingly strong images of things past. Still, the album manages not to sound dated, kept fresh by occasional journeys into more experimental electronics and Goldfrapp's always-engaging vocals. Felt Mountain opens with "Lovely Head," a track that juxtaposes a shuffling drum beat and whistling that sounds like it could be 50 years old with futuristic analog beeps. Goldfrapp's voice, with all its warmth and expressiveness, sounds instantly familiar. And it retains this familiarity over the course of the album, excepting a throaty, Siouxsie-esque yelp or two in "Human," and a bizarre passage at the end of "Deer Stop," in which her voice is made to sound eerily childlike. Creepy, especially considering the sexual undertones present. All this taken into account, Felt Mountain's greatest strength lies in its overall elegance as a record. While certainly not "poppy," it never has a truly weak moment. And while the songs aren't all that different from one another, the flow from track to track makes perfect sense. To summarize, Felt Mountain is a really swell record, and I am madly in love with Alison Goldfrapp. I'd have her name tattooed on my arm, but... you know. There just isn't room in this world for a man with "Goldfrapp" inscribed in his flesh. Luckily, there's always room in the world for a damned fine record.

Artist: Goldfrapp, Album: Felt Mountain, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "If you'd told me a few weeks back that I'd be lusting after some chick named Goldfrapp, I'd have told you to pack your bags for an all-expenses-paid trip to my fist. But writing this review, all I can think of is Goldfrapp. Sweet, sweet Goldfrapp. Mmm... Goldfrapp. Before I get accused of any level of chauvinism here, I feel I should defend myself. I am, after all, only a male variant of the human species. And what sane, sexually functional guy could resist a woman who whispers in a throaty voice, "No time to fuck/ But you like the rush?" Not me! What's more, she's English! English from England! And she hangs out with Orbital! C'mon, now! Taking cues from apparent influences ranging from Marlena Dietrich to Siouxsie Sioux to Björk, Alison Goldfrapp has constructed an album that's simultaneously smarmy and seductive, yet elegant and graceful. Describing the sound of Felt Mountain comes easy not because it's a simple album, but because the devices used throughout are so ingrained in our musical vernacular. If Austin Powers had been a film noir flick, its soundtrack would probably sound something like Felt Mountain. The hushed vocals, the crying analog synthesizers, and the sustained seven chords all evoke amazingly strong images of things past. Still, the album manages not to sound dated, kept fresh by occasional journeys into more experimental electronics and Goldfrapp's always-engaging vocals. Felt Mountain opens with "Lovely Head," a track that juxtaposes a shuffling drum beat and whistling that sounds like it could be 50 years old with futuristic analog beeps. Goldfrapp's voice, with all its warmth and expressiveness, sounds instantly familiar. And it retains this familiarity over the course of the album, excepting a throaty, Siouxsie-esque yelp or two in "Human," and a bizarre passage at the end of "Deer Stop," in which her voice is made to sound eerily childlike. Creepy, especially considering the sexual undertones present. All this taken into account, Felt Mountain's greatest strength lies in its overall elegance as a record. While certainly not "poppy," it never has a truly weak moment. And while the songs aren't all that different from one another, the flow from track to track makes perfect sense. To summarize, Felt Mountain is a really swell record, and I am madly in love with Alison Goldfrapp. I'd have her name tattooed on my arm, but... you know. There just isn't room in this world for a man with "Goldfrapp" inscribed in his flesh. Luckily, there's always room in the world for a damned fine record."

Craig Finn

Faith in the Future

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Through his work first with Lifter Puller, then with the Hold Steady, and later as a solo artist, Craig Finn has created a universe as big as America, a stage that stretches from Minneapolis to Ybor City, from the bars of Chicago to behind bars in Memphis. It’s a world populated by hoodrats and club kids, by dealers and party girls, by guys who look like André Cymone and women named Robbie Robertson ("but people call me Robo"), by the financially desperate and the spiritually confused. Each new song and each new album expands that universe significantly, implicitly or explicitly adding new chapters to ongoing stories as Finn hangs out off to the side, narrating from the periphery of the scene. It can be forbidding to pick up these narrative strands at this late date, but at his best Finn’s songs swallow you up in that word entirely. His lyrics continually provoke a spark of recognition, as he invites you to connect the dots between a new song and an old one. Listening to "Sarah, Calling from a Hotel", from his new solo album, is a bit like eavesdropping on a friend who has landed on rough times. "Hadn’t seen her since the races at the ending of last summer," Finn sings over a sparse coffeehouse strum. "We watched the horses run up on each other/ She looked pretty." Is this the unnamed subject of "Chips Ahoy!", from the Hold Steady’s 2006 breakthrough Boys and Girls in America, the clairvoyant who "can tell which horse is gonna finish in first"? If so, the tone of chapter is much darker and more dire than migraines and emotional detachment. Faith in the Future is a character-driven record, even if it doesn’t restore Finn to the heights of his mid-2000s heyday. It’s full of prominent proper names: Sarah and Maggie, Christine and Sandra. St. Peter even shows up, because this is a Craig Finn album. The names are mundane, not exotic. You probably don’t know anyone named Charlemagne, but you’re likely Facebook friends with a Christine. There’s not a single hoodrat on Faith, but there are plenty of people caught between the youthful indiscretions of the past and the adult consequences of the present. That pretty much describes Finn these days. Even during the disastrous Bennigan’s gig in "Roman Guitars", he comes across as more grown up, imbuing his narrators/stand-ins with a maturity that pushes them even further into the margins—the fate of all thirty- and fortysomethings. He’s no longer talking to the kids, and he’s not coming up the stairs or coming from the streets. Instead, he has entered what you might call the Peter Wolf phase of his career, when the old band has sputtered out and the frontman tries to re-establish himself as a serious songwriter. And if you don’t know who Peter Wolf is, well, then you’ll realize there is a certain unglamorous anonymity that comes with respectability. The catch, of course, is that the Hold Steady and the J. Geils Band were great groups—exciting and clever and bold and even fun as they wallowed in rock’s less reputable urges. Downplaying riffs in favor of texture, Faith in the Future plays it much safer, which means there’s more emphasis on the words than on Finn’s delivery of them. Finn’s solo debut, 2012’s Clear Heart Full Eyes, attempted to match his songs to amiably twangy arrangements, which in retrospect was an intriguing experiment, but there’s no comparable strategy in place for enlivening these songs. There’s a lot of bland acoustic strumming, as though the austerity of the arrangement were meant to reinforce the slice-of-life songwriting, but anyone who has ever skipped "Citrus" or bristled over Live at Fingerprints knows that acoustic isn’t Finn’s best setting. He doesn’t always have to have a rousing bar band behind him, but he does need something that will lend his lyrics more immediacy and higher stakes. The best songs succeed despite the music, not because of it. "St. Peter Upside Down" may be the most compelling song of his solo career, a sharp juxtaposition between romantic regret and religious sacrifice that somehow grows more burdened, more beat down with every iteration of its chorus. Finn has, of course, plumbed similar territory in the past, but instead of redundant, it plays like the culmination of his obsession with Catholicism, as though he’s adding an epilogue to his previous spiritual inquiries. As it proceeds, Faith in the Future becomes more and more a benediction for the scene, a goodbye to all that. The perfectly titled "I Was Doing Fine (Then a Few People Died)" sounds impossibly world-weary, as Finn gets drunk with an old friend (possibly, hopefully even Sarah herself). "She said some nights I wonder if anything means anything," and the only consolation he can offer is, "I never said I was Jesus."

Artist: Craig Finn, Album: Faith in the Future, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Through his work first with Lifter Puller, then with the Hold Steady, and later as a solo artist, Craig Finn has created a universe as big as America, a stage that stretches from Minneapolis to Ybor City, from the bars of Chicago to behind bars in Memphis. It’s a world populated by hoodrats and club kids, by dealers and party girls, by guys who look like André Cymone and women named Robbie Robertson ("but people call me Robo"), by the financially desperate and the spiritually confused. Each new song and each new album expands that universe significantly, implicitly or explicitly adding new chapters to ongoing stories as Finn hangs out off to the side, narrating from the periphery of the scene. It can be forbidding to pick up these narrative strands at this late date, but at his best Finn’s songs swallow you up in that word entirely. His lyrics continually provoke a spark of recognition, as he invites you to connect the dots between a new song and an old one. Listening to "Sarah, Calling from a Hotel", from his new solo album, is a bit like eavesdropping on a friend who has landed on rough times. "Hadn’t seen her since the races at the ending of last summer," Finn sings over a sparse coffeehouse strum. "We watched the horses run up on each other/ She looked pretty." Is this the unnamed subject of "Chips Ahoy!", from the Hold Steady’s 2006 breakthrough Boys and Girls in America, the clairvoyant who "can tell which horse is gonna finish in first"? If so, the tone of chapter is much darker and more dire than migraines and emotional detachment. Faith in the Future is a character-driven record, even if it doesn’t restore Finn to the heights of his mid-2000s heyday. It’s full of prominent proper names: Sarah and Maggie, Christine and Sandra. St. Peter even shows up, because this is a Craig Finn album. The names are mundane, not exotic. You probably don’t know anyone named Charlemagne, but you’re likely Facebook friends with a Christine. There’s not a single hoodrat on Faith, but there are plenty of people caught between the youthful indiscretions of the past and the adult consequences of the present. That pretty much describes Finn these days. Even during the disastrous Bennigan’s gig in "Roman Guitars", he comes across as more grown up, imbuing his narrators/stand-ins with a maturity that pushes them even further into the margins—the fate of all thirty- and fortysomethings. He’s no longer talking to the kids, and he’s not coming up the stairs or coming from the streets. Instead, he has entered what you might call the Peter Wolf phase of his career, when the old band has sputtered out and the frontman tries to re-establish himself as a serious songwriter. And if you don’t know who Peter Wolf is, well, then you’ll realize there is a certain unglamorous anonymity that comes with respectability. The catch, of course, is that the Hold Steady and the J. Geils Band were great groups—exciting and clever and bold and even fun as they wallowed in rock’s less reputable urges. Downplaying riffs in favor of texture, Faith in the Future plays it much safer, which means there’s more emphasis on the words than on Finn’s delivery of them. Finn’s solo debut, 2012’s Clear Heart Full Eyes, attempted to match his songs to amiably twangy arrangements, which in retrospect was an intriguing experiment, but there’s no comparable strategy in place for enlivening these songs. There’s a lot of bland acoustic strumming, as though the austerity of the arrangement were meant to reinforce the slice-of-life songwriting, but anyone who has ever skipped "Citrus" or bristled over Live at Fingerprints knows that acoustic isn’t Finn’s best setting. He doesn’t always have to have a rousing bar band behind him, but he does need something that will lend his lyrics more immediacy and higher stakes. The best songs succeed despite the music, not because of it. "St. Peter Upside Down" may be the most compelling song of his solo career, a sharp juxtaposition between romantic regret and religious sacrifice that somehow grows more burdened, more beat down with every iteration of its chorus. Finn has, of course, plumbed similar territory in the past, but instead of redundant, it plays like the culmination of his obsession with Catholicism, as though he’s adding an epilogue to his previous spiritual inquiries. As it proceeds, Faith in the Future becomes more and more a benediction for the scene, a goodbye to all that. The perfectly titled "I Was Doing Fine (Then a Few People Died)" sounds impossibly world-weary, as Finn gets drunk with an old friend (possibly, hopefully even Sarah herself). "She said some nights I wonder if anything means anything," and the only consolation he can offer is, "I never said I was Jesus.""

Luísa Maita

Fio da Memória

Global

Andy Beta

In 2010, São Paulo’s Luísa Maita released her debut album Lero-Lero and entered into the family business. Her mother, Myriam Taubkin, was a concert producer while her father, Amado Maita, released what’s now considered a holy grail album back in 1972. Lero-Lero continued in her father’s tradition with an album full of hushed acoustic sambas, which she later opened up to DJ reinterpretation from Fatboy Slim-approved producer Tejo to DJ/rupture. A follow-up was not soon forthcoming, not that Maita vanished from the spotlight completely. She covered Caetano Veloso and Elis Regina for a few tributes, lent vocals to fellow “samba sujo” singer Rodrigo Campos’s debut album, and two of her songs from *Lero-Lero *were featured on the soundtrack to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Her voice could also be heard both during the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics and on promos for the recent Rio Olympics. Coming six years after Maita’s debut, Fio da Memória proves that the wait wasn’t in vain. Rather than delve deeper into samba and bossa nova classicism and let others update it with remixes, Maita and cohorts modernize the deep history of the music themselves. The result is a striking album full of spare but heavily percussive downtempo tracks that foreground the smokiness, subtlety, and empowerment in her voice. Maita’s Portuguese barely rises about a purr on opener “Na Asa,” but its message is clear. “If you want to be reborn/Your power is in your wings,” she sings against a backdrop of a martial snare, finger snaps, and a deep, spacey bass drum. For the most part, the drum programming, track-filtering, and sampler duties fall to producers Tejo and Zé Nigro. But while electronics propel most of the tracks, both are tasteful to never let it overwhelm the band itself, providing another rhythmic tick to the uptempo rumble of “Porão” and adding psychedelic trickles to the title track. Tejo gives a ’90s trip-hop thump to “Volta,” while a distant samba drum line gets tweaked and teased by Nigro into many layers for “Folia.” But Maita and her band are more than capable of conjuring a smoldering atmosphere on their own with live instrumentation, too. “Olé” seethes with stitches of guitar, bass, and cowbell, then flares to full fire as Maita whispers about finding liberation from an old love and freedom to love again: “I will stand up for myself…and I will find what is mine.” Maita’s freedom from both her love of the past and the samba tradition is delectable. The underlying drum pattern on “Fio da Memória” is a samba, but Maita and her collaborators blur it in digital delay, synth fuzz, and processed drum hits, transforming that telltale pulse into something unfamiliar. “I wanted to revisit the Brazilian rhythms and other sounds that I have heard growing up from a contemporary, electronic and urban perspective,” she said in the lead-up to the album. Her mesmerizing voice playfully toys with such sentimentality: “Your story was stolen/By someone who loved you too deeply and also wept.” Rather than be heartbroken, she sounds gleeful to break from tradition.

Artist: Luísa Maita, Album: Fio da Memória, Genre: Global, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "In 2010, São Paulo’s Luísa Maita released her debut album Lero-Lero and entered into the family business. Her mother, Myriam Taubkin, was a concert producer while her father, Amado Maita, released what’s now considered a holy grail album back in 1972. Lero-Lero continued in her father’s tradition with an album full of hushed acoustic sambas, which she later opened up to DJ reinterpretation from Fatboy Slim-approved producer Tejo to DJ/rupture. A follow-up was not soon forthcoming, not that Maita vanished from the spotlight completely. She covered Caetano Veloso and Elis Regina for a few tributes, lent vocals to fellow “samba sujo” singer Rodrigo Campos’s debut album, and two of her songs from *Lero-Lero *were featured on the soundtrack to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Her voice could also be heard both during the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics and on promos for the recent Rio Olympics. Coming six years after Maita’s debut, Fio da Memória proves that the wait wasn’t in vain. Rather than delve deeper into samba and bossa nova classicism and let others update it with remixes, Maita and cohorts modernize the deep history of the music themselves. The result is a striking album full of spare but heavily percussive downtempo tracks that foreground the smokiness, subtlety, and empowerment in her voice. Maita’s Portuguese barely rises about a purr on opener “Na Asa,” but its message is clear. “If you want to be reborn/Your power is in your wings,” she sings against a backdrop of a martial snare, finger snaps, and a deep, spacey bass drum. For the most part, the drum programming, track-filtering, and sampler duties fall to producers Tejo and Zé Nigro. But while electronics propel most of the tracks, both are tasteful to never let it overwhelm the band itself, providing another rhythmic tick to the uptempo rumble of “Porão” and adding psychedelic trickles to the title track. Tejo gives a ’90s trip-hop thump to “Volta,” while a distant samba drum line gets tweaked and teased by Nigro into many layers for “Folia.” But Maita and her band are more than capable of conjuring a smoldering atmosphere on their own with live instrumentation, too. “Olé” seethes with stitches of guitar, bass, and cowbell, then flares to full fire as Maita whispers about finding liberation from an old love and freedom to love again: “I will stand up for myself…and I will find what is mine.” Maita’s freedom from both her love of the past and the samba tradition is delectable. The underlying drum pattern on “Fio da Memória” is a samba, but Maita and her collaborators blur it in digital delay, synth fuzz, and processed drum hits, transforming that telltale pulse into something unfamiliar. “I wanted to revisit the Brazilian rhythms and other sounds that I have heard growing up from a contemporary, electronic and urban perspective,” she said in the lead-up to the album. Her mesmerizing voice playfully toys with such sentimentality: “Your story was stolen/By someone who loved you too deeply and also wept.” Rather than be heartbroken, she sounds gleeful to break from tradition."

Moon King

Hamtramck ’16

Pop/R&B

Sasha Geffen

Shoegaze tends to take place in wide open spaces, but on his first album as Moon King, 2015’s Secret Life, Daniel Benjamin imagined what it might sound like in miniature. Songs like “Apocalypse” offered up the same skyward yearning heard among Slowdive and Ride, but toned down the eruptions of bass and reverb. Moon King’s latest genre exercise also takes place in a narrow channel, only this time Benjamin fixes his sights on classic disco. Inspired by a recent move to Detroit, Hamtramck ’16 is an EP-length collection of experiments hewn close to the shadow of Giorgio Moroder—so close that the bassline of opener “Come Around” is taken directly from Moroder’s 1977 hit with Donna Summer, “I Feel Love.” Rather than use that riff as a springboard for a similar exploration of space and texture, Benjamin lets it loop flatly in the foreground. The vibe isn’t dance floor transcendence; with Benjamin’s nasal voice and flanged-out guitars, it’s more indie brooding hour, like Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Multi-Love dialed down a notch or two. Like generations of disco before it, Hamtramck ’16 situates boundless, unrequited desire against a rock-solid four on the floor backbeat. The way Benjamin vocalizes that desire, though, tends to feel a little rote. “Darlin’, I’ve been thinkin about you for a while/But I’m dreaming alone,” he sings on “Jasmine,” a combination of words you can imagine sitting among the scraps of many lyric books before it. Other lines, like those on the record’s most fun and flexible track “In & Out,” can be hard to make out through the reverb wash applied to his voice, forcing a disconnect between singer and listener. That ambiguity can work fine in genres like shoegaze or for bands like Radiohead, where the focus is not by any means the lyrics, but it leaves a vacancy here in disco, which, like most dance genres, demands a certain intimacy, or at least an acknowledgement that the dancer is being spoken to. Instead, it often feels like Benjamin is murmuring to himself. Hamtramck ’16 rings too flat and tinny to sound like it could survive on a dance floor with other people on it. The treble’s oddly overpowered in the mix, and the drum machines tend to loom and clatter over everything else. On closer “Ordinary Lover,” a loud piano riff enters about 15 seconds in and doesn’t leave or change until the song ends. That’s four solid minutes of the same three piano chords at the same level, no breaks, no variance. It’s exhausting enough that I don’t even have the gusto to complain about how the chorus of the song goes, “I don’t want no ordinary lover/I don’t want no ordinary love.” Disco never died, and even LCD Soundsystem came back from the grave. But it needs more than a rippling analog bassline and a few pairs of boots and cats to really thrive. Throughout Hamtramck ’16, I'm hungry for a couplet as delightfully strange and biting as Anohni’s on Hercules and Love Affair’s “Time Will”: “I cannot hold a half a life/I cannot be a half a wife.” I want figures to recede into the distance and come back twice as strong. I want anything close to the way Donna Summer whispers “ooh, it’s so good” like a sacred incantation. At its best and fullest, disco moves and breathes and dances like a whole body. Hamtramck ’16 walks more like an aspirational skeleton.

Artist: Moon King, Album: Hamtramck ’16, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "Shoegaze tends to take place in wide open spaces, but on his first album as Moon King, 2015’s Secret Life, Daniel Benjamin imagined what it might sound like in miniature. Songs like “Apocalypse” offered up the same skyward yearning heard among Slowdive and Ride, but toned down the eruptions of bass and reverb. Moon King’s latest genre exercise also takes place in a narrow channel, only this time Benjamin fixes his sights on classic disco. Inspired by a recent move to Detroit, Hamtramck ’16 is an EP-length collection of experiments hewn close to the shadow of Giorgio Moroder—so close that the bassline of opener “Come Around” is taken directly from Moroder’s 1977 hit with Donna Summer, “I Feel Love.” Rather than use that riff as a springboard for a similar exploration of space and texture, Benjamin lets it loop flatly in the foreground. The vibe isn’t dance floor transcendence; with Benjamin’s nasal voice and flanged-out guitars, it’s more indie brooding hour, like Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Multi-Love dialed down a notch or two. Like generations of disco before it, Hamtramck ’16 situates boundless, unrequited desire against a rock-solid four on the floor backbeat. The way Benjamin vocalizes that desire, though, tends to feel a little rote. “Darlin’, I’ve been thinkin about you for a while/But I’m dreaming alone,” he sings on “Jasmine,” a combination of words you can imagine sitting among the scraps of many lyric books before it. Other lines, like those on the record’s most fun and flexible track “In & Out,” can be hard to make out through the reverb wash applied to his voice, forcing a disconnect between singer and listener. That ambiguity can work fine in genres like shoegaze or for bands like Radiohead, where the focus is not by any means the lyrics, but it leaves a vacancy here in disco, which, like most dance genres, demands a certain intimacy, or at least an acknowledgement that the dancer is being spoken to. Instead, it often feels like Benjamin is murmuring to himself. Hamtramck ’16 rings too flat and tinny to sound like it could survive on a dance floor with other people on it. The treble’s oddly overpowered in the mix, and the drum machines tend to loom and clatter over everything else. On closer “Ordinary Lover,” a loud piano riff enters about 15 seconds in and doesn’t leave or change until the song ends. That’s four solid minutes of the same three piano chords at the same level, no breaks, no variance. It’s exhausting enough that I don’t even have the gusto to complain about how the chorus of the song goes, “I don’t want no ordinary lover/I don’t want no ordinary love.” Disco never died, and even LCD Soundsystem came back from the grave. But it needs more than a rippling analog bassline and a few pairs of boots and cats to really thrive. Throughout Hamtramck ’16, I'm hungry for a couplet as delightfully strange and biting as Anohni’s on Hercules and Love Affair’s “Time Will”: “I cannot hold a half a life/I cannot be a half a wife.” I want figures to recede into the distance and come back twice as strong. I want anything close to the way Donna Summer whispers “ooh, it’s so good” like a sacred incantation. At its best and fullest, disco moves and breathes and dances like a whole body. Hamtramck ’16 walks more like an aspirational skeleton."

Jason Lytle

Dept. of Disappearance

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Jason Lytle's second solo album begins much like his first solo album, with a veiled statement about the state of his career. On the title track of 2009's Yours Truly, the Commuter, he claims he was left for dead: "I could give two shits about what they said/ I may be limping, but I'm coming home." At the time it sounded like he was still bristling over the breakup of Grandaddy, the Modesto-based band that soundtracked Lytle's weird tales of space miners and lovelorn robots. The lines were vague enough, however, that you could appreciate the renewed sense of mission without getting caught up in any potential intraband politics. On "Department of Disappearance", which likewise opens and sets the tone for an album of the same name, Lytle explains, "I'll crawl into the mountains, I'll fall into obscurity/ A phantom on the landscape, a memory of what used to be." Is this an ultimatum of some sort? And is the titular institution really a secret society of veteran musicians from the 1990s, still tooling around years after their breakthrough albums and playing to dwindling audiences of aging fans? If Yours Truly announced Lytle's return, Department of Disappearance sounds like a musician embracing obscurity as perhaps the natural outcome of a career whose chief subject has been emotional, mechanical, and ecological entropy. There's nothing worse than an artist waxing bitter about his career, and to his credit Lytle doesn't sound self-pitying or entitled to more than his current lot. But Department of Disappearance does sound strangely complacent and monochromatic, offering no twists on the technorganic aesthetic he's been plying since Grandaddy were still a bedroom act. The album toggles between the mountains of Europe and the badlands of the American West, as Lytle indulges a bit of emotional mountaineering on "Last Problem of the Alps" and "Matterhorn". Geographically, this is new terrain for him, but musically Lytle is walking in his own footprints. He's climbed similar hills before, both with Grandaddy and as a solo artist. Once again he fashions widescreen panoramas out of instruments seemingly ill suited for the job: chintzy synths evoking Bierstadt landscapes, grotty guitars tracing the country's inexorable westward progress, saccharine strings coloring in complex feelings. This is, of course, Lytle's thing. And it's a good thing. He's done what few artists possess the vision or the tools to accomplish: He has devised a new combination of styles and instruments into a sound that is immediately recognizable as Lytleputian, and perhaps more impressively he has fashioned a unique perspective from which to write about himself and the world-- specifically America in all its mythic strangeness. Last year's reissue of Grandaddy's second album, The Sophtware Slump, reminded us how vibrant and weird that voice could be, and Department of Disappearance has the distinct disadvantage of following up that release, which provides an unflattering point of comparison for familiar, almost boilerplate songs like "Somewhere There's a Someone" and "Hangtown". If once he imagined a new world defined by millennial fears and technological detritus, on "Willow Wand Willow Wand" and "Get Up and Go" the naivety sounds forced, the sense of whimsy merely workmanlike. For every valley, however, there is a peak. "Young Saints" sets an uneasy tone with its creeping vocal melody, disembodied drums, and dark intimations of mortality: "Your ex-girlfriends, lost pets, and dead friends," he sings in his trademark deadpan. "No, they won't be hanging out with you again. You are gone!" It's intense and disquieting, yet it's the one song where Lytle sounds most present, with no character, robotic or otherwise, to absorb or soften those fears of absence. Similarly bleak, "Your Final Setting Sun"-- which was, according to Lytle, inspired by Cormac McCarthy-- recounts a killer's final taunts to a dying man: "I know you loved your life, but say goodbye, this is your final setting sun." Has Lytle ever sounded so cold-blooded? So musically malevolent or so emotionally hardened? As the drums barely keep pace with the frantic keyboard themes, his vocals take on a menacing quality that we've never heard from him before and that quite frankly I didn't dream he could muster: It's a bracing moment and completely unexpected, both the album's biggest risk and its biggest reward. Then Department veers into the valedictory closer "Gimme Click Gimme Grid", and we're back on sadly familiar ground. This is exactly the type of mock-epic album closer that Lytle does almost too well. Think "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky" off Sophtware Slump or "The Final Push to the Sum" off Sumday. But it sounds absolutely anticlimactic sequenced after "Your Final Setting Sun", which suggests a much more inventive and exciting artist than we get throughout most of the album. That song says more about Lytle's career than any veiled lyric could: If he can't push himself in new directions, he'll be stuck at his desk job, pushing paper for the Department of Disappearance forever.

Artist: Jason Lytle, Album: Dept. of Disappearance, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "Jason Lytle's second solo album begins much like his first solo album, with a veiled statement about the state of his career. On the title track of 2009's Yours Truly, the Commuter, he claims he was left for dead: "I could give two shits about what they said/ I may be limping, but I'm coming home." At the time it sounded like he was still bristling over the breakup of Grandaddy, the Modesto-based band that soundtracked Lytle's weird tales of space miners and lovelorn robots. The lines were vague enough, however, that you could appreciate the renewed sense of mission without getting caught up in any potential intraband politics. On "Department of Disappearance", which likewise opens and sets the tone for an album of the same name, Lytle explains, "I'll crawl into the mountains, I'll fall into obscurity/ A phantom on the landscape, a memory of what used to be." Is this an ultimatum of some sort? And is the titular institution really a secret society of veteran musicians from the 1990s, still tooling around years after their breakthrough albums and playing to dwindling audiences of aging fans? If Yours Truly announced Lytle's return, Department of Disappearance sounds like a musician embracing obscurity as perhaps the natural outcome of a career whose chief subject has been emotional, mechanical, and ecological entropy. There's nothing worse than an artist waxing bitter about his career, and to his credit Lytle doesn't sound self-pitying or entitled to more than his current lot. But Department of Disappearance does sound strangely complacent and monochromatic, offering no twists on the technorganic aesthetic he's been plying since Grandaddy were still a bedroom act. The album toggles between the mountains of Europe and the badlands of the American West, as Lytle indulges a bit of emotional mountaineering on "Last Problem of the Alps" and "Matterhorn". Geographically, this is new terrain for him, but musically Lytle is walking in his own footprints. He's climbed similar hills before, both with Grandaddy and as a solo artist. Once again he fashions widescreen panoramas out of instruments seemingly ill suited for the job: chintzy synths evoking Bierstadt landscapes, grotty guitars tracing the country's inexorable westward progress, saccharine strings coloring in complex feelings. This is, of course, Lytle's thing. And it's a good thing. He's done what few artists possess the vision or the tools to accomplish: He has devised a new combination of styles and instruments into a sound that is immediately recognizable as Lytleputian, and perhaps more impressively he has fashioned a unique perspective from which to write about himself and the world-- specifically America in all its mythic strangeness. Last year's reissue of Grandaddy's second album, The Sophtware Slump, reminded us how vibrant and weird that voice could be, and Department of Disappearance has the distinct disadvantage of following up that release, which provides an unflattering point of comparison for familiar, almost boilerplate songs like "Somewhere There's a Someone" and "Hangtown". If once he imagined a new world defined by millennial fears and technological detritus, on "Willow Wand Willow Wand" and "Get Up and Go" the naivety sounds forced, the sense of whimsy merely workmanlike. For every valley, however, there is a peak. "Young Saints" sets an uneasy tone with its creeping vocal melody, disembodied drums, and dark intimations of mortality: "Your ex-girlfriends, lost pets, and dead friends," he sings in his trademark deadpan. "No, they won't be hanging out with you again. You are gone!" It's intense and disquieting, yet it's the one song where Lytle sounds most present, with no character, robotic or otherwise, to absorb or soften those fears of absence. Similarly bleak, "Your Final Setting Sun"-- which was, according to Lytle, inspired by Cormac McCarthy-- recounts a killer's final taunts to a dying man: "I know you loved your life, but say goodbye, this is your final setting sun." Has Lytle ever sounded so cold-blooded? So musically malevolent or so emotionally hardened? As the drums barely keep pace with the frantic keyboard themes, his vocals take on a menacing quality that we've never heard from him before and that quite frankly I didn't dream he could muster: It's a bracing moment and completely unexpected, both the album's biggest risk and its biggest reward. Then Department veers into the valedictory closer "Gimme Click Gimme Grid", and we're back on sadly familiar ground. This is exactly the type of mock-epic album closer that Lytle does almost too well. Think "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky" off Sophtware Slump or "The Final Push to the Sum" off Sumday. But it sounds absolutely anticlimactic sequenced after "Your Final Setting Sun", which suggests a much more inventive and exciting artist than we get throughout most of the album. That song says more about Lytle's career than any veiled lyric could: If he can't push himself in new directions, he'll be stuck at his desk job, pushing paper for the Department of Disappearance forever."

High on Fire

Luminiferous

Metal

Grayson Haver Currin

Matt Pike has become a punchline again. In the weeks leading up to the release of High on Fire’s masterful seventh album, Luminiferous, listeners began to notice that the singer’s long-latent suspicions and esoteric interests had morphed at last into legitimate conspiracy theories. During "The Black Plot", the album’s exuberant opener and first tease, Pike grunts about the need to hide your mind because of nearby aliens and relents to the damage an evil global scheme has already caused. During subsequent browbeater "The Sunless Years", Pike growls about dropping acid, spotting satellites, and huffing chemtrails. "Someone please tell them," he shouts mid-verse, "this is our fucking lives." When Rolling Stone asked Pike about those ideas, he reinforced them rather than recant: a book by noted snake oil salesman David Icke had opened his eyes. 9/11 was an inside job. And the aliens built both the ziggurats and pyramids. “Dude, I say a lot of fucked-up shit!” Pike admitted. As it does, the metal Internet laughed online. But if that’s the stuff that drives Pike and his increasingly volatile and complex rhythm section to play with the gumption and zeal of Luminiferous, so be it. These nine tracks are among the most enthusiastic and bracing of High on Fire’s career, with mammoth riffs and hooks spurred on by a momentous band. Luminiferous feels like a classic compendium of High on Fire’s successes. There are mid-tempo marches, like the arching wallop of "The Falconist", and breathless moments that push the accelerator on doom metal until the pedal seems to stick, like the clawing "The Dark Side of the Compass" and the irrepressible "The Black Plot". The parts themselves have never sounded better. Pike, who supplies a solo for every song, is an audacious, unapologetic leader. Drummer Des Kensel has become an exceptional drummer, able to shoehorn blast beats inside weighted sludge riffs and actually swing through the most straightforward moments. Bassist Jeff Matz is an expert at interlocking with both sides, sharing the load of the riffs and the rhythms until they’re all too big to resist. Now approaching their second decade as a consistent trio, High on Fire’s interplay has become a marvel. To wit, Pike’s set of brief solos during "The Falconist"—and the way Kensel and Matz subtract and add time around it—warrants jazz-level scholarship. Still, Luminiferous is at its best when High on Fire seem to be preaching about these zany ideas, as if Pike has some great revelation that must be shared with his disciples. "Slave the Hive", for instance, ricochets between hardcore built by a doom metal toolkit and shout-out-loud classic rock played by madmen on speed. "They got us wired to the reptile brain," the band howls during the hook. "Your life is not the same. This world is insane." It’s the kind of silly, serious rallying cry that’s meant to be yelled back at the band onstage, even if you don’t buy it. That infectious feeling applies to the relentless title track, too, a pick-sliding monster that reaches back to the days of punk-and-metal crossover to lecture on theories of Hertz-based mind control and the deeds of white-wigged barristers. Pike unleashes soul-scraping yells between the verses and over the coda. It is a quasi-religious paroxysm; he’s hollering about despising government overlords the way a gospel shouter might scream about loving the Lord. Every number on Luminiferous—and for the most part, in High on Fire’s entire collection—begins with some jolt, be it a heavy drum roll from Kensel or a big swipe at the guitar from Pike. But late into this album, High on Fire take one of their most unlikely detours ever, opening "The Cave" with a pensive bass solo and colorful clouds of textural abstraction. Acoustic guitar trots along to a steady beat, and Pike legitimately croons lines about putting life, the road, and even conspiracy theories on hold long enough to fall in love. They seesaw between distorted, supercharged choruses and muted verses, arriving somewhere between a power ballad and a post-grunge acoustic anthem. It suggests broader possibilities for High on Fire than the established strum-churn-and-solo modus operandi and provides a welcome break to this parade of heavy hitters. What’s more, "The Cave" indicates that Pike’s time in the reunited Sleep has served him well, causing him to slow down and be more than some shirtless 43-year-old dude with tough-guy lyrics. Al Cisneros, "The Cave" suggests, is not Sleep’s only surviving master of mood. Speaking of Sleep, two decades ago, the hard-living Pike couldn’t help keep that band together long enough to release its third album, an epic poem about a mecca made of marijuana. Few might have predicted that, countless narcotic trips later, the now-sober Pike would be one of metal’s most trustworthy bandleaders, fronting a trio so consistent that Luminiferous feels only like the next point in a long line of remarkable records. Yes, High on Fire add a few new tricks here, especially through an enhanced ability to push and pull tempos at will. But for the most part, they remain a powerful trio with perfect chemistry, capable of embedding great hooks and marvels of rhythm section athleticism within riff-worshipping hits. "Before, I’d be all like, ‘How do we top the last one?’" Pike told Rolling Stone of Luminiferous in the same interview that turned him back into a minor metal meme. "It’s not better—it’s just a different version of myself that I’ve been trying to express all along." That’s not crazy talk. That’s fact.

Artist: High on Fire, Album: Luminiferous, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Matt Pike has become a punchline again. In the weeks leading up to the release of High on Fire’s masterful seventh album, Luminiferous, listeners began to notice that the singer’s long-latent suspicions and esoteric interests had morphed at last into legitimate conspiracy theories. During "The Black Plot", the album’s exuberant opener and first tease, Pike grunts about the need to hide your mind because of nearby aliens and relents to the damage an evil global scheme has already caused. During subsequent browbeater "The Sunless Years", Pike growls about dropping acid, spotting satellites, and huffing chemtrails. "Someone please tell them," he shouts mid-verse, "this is our fucking lives." When Rolling Stone asked Pike about those ideas, he reinforced them rather than recant: a book by noted snake oil salesman David Icke had opened his eyes. 9/11 was an inside job. And the aliens built both the ziggurats and pyramids. “Dude, I say a lot of fucked-up shit!” Pike admitted. As it does, the metal Internet laughed online. But if that’s the stuff that drives Pike and his increasingly volatile and complex rhythm section to play with the gumption and zeal of Luminiferous, so be it. These nine tracks are among the most enthusiastic and bracing of High on Fire’s career, with mammoth riffs and hooks spurred on by a momentous band. Luminiferous feels like a classic compendium of High on Fire’s successes. There are mid-tempo marches, like the arching wallop of "The Falconist", and breathless moments that push the accelerator on doom metal until the pedal seems to stick, like the clawing "The Dark Side of the Compass" and the irrepressible "The Black Plot". The parts themselves have never sounded better. Pike, who supplies a solo for every song, is an audacious, unapologetic leader. Drummer Des Kensel has become an exceptional drummer, able to shoehorn blast beats inside weighted sludge riffs and actually swing through the most straightforward moments. Bassist Jeff Matz is an expert at interlocking with both sides, sharing the load of the riffs and the rhythms until they’re all too big to resist. Now approaching their second decade as a consistent trio, High on Fire’s interplay has become a marvel. To wit, Pike’s set of brief solos during "The Falconist"—and the way Kensel and Matz subtract and add time around it—warrants jazz-level scholarship. Still, Luminiferous is at its best when High on Fire seem to be preaching about these zany ideas, as if Pike has some great revelation that must be shared with his disciples. "Slave the Hive", for instance, ricochets between hardcore built by a doom metal toolkit and shout-out-loud classic rock played by madmen on speed. "They got us wired to the reptile brain," the band howls during the hook. "Your life is not the same. This world is insane." It’s the kind of silly, serious rallying cry that’s meant to be yelled back at the band onstage, even if you don’t buy it. That infectious feeling applies to the relentless title track, too, a pick-sliding monster that reaches back to the days of punk-and-metal crossover to lecture on theories of Hertz-based mind control and the deeds of white-wigged barristers. Pike unleashes soul-scraping yells between the verses and over the coda. It is a quasi-religious paroxysm; he’s hollering about despising government overlords the way a gospel shouter might scream about loving the Lord. Every number on Luminiferous—and for the most part, in High on Fire’s entire collection—begins with some jolt, be it a heavy drum roll from Kensel or a big swipe at the guitar from Pike. But late into this album, High on Fire take one of their most unlikely detours ever, opening "The Cave" with a pensive bass solo and colorful clouds of textural abstraction. Acoustic guitar trots along to a steady beat, and Pike legitimately croons lines about putting life, the road, and even conspiracy theories on hold long enough to fall in love. They seesaw between distorted, supercharged choruses and muted verses, arriving somewhere between a power ballad and a post-grunge acoustic anthem. It suggests broader possibilities for High on Fire than the established strum-churn-and-solo modus operandi and provides a welcome break to this parade of heavy hitters. What’s more, "The Cave" indicates that Pike’s time in the reunited Sleep has served him well, causing him to slow down and be more than some shirtless 43-year-old dude with tough-guy lyrics. Al Cisneros, "The Cave" suggests, is not Sleep’s only surviving master of mood. Speaking of Sleep, two decades ago, the hard-living Pike couldn’t help keep that band together long enough to release its third album, an epic poem about a mecca made of marijuana. Few might have predicted that, countless narcotic trips later, the now-sober Pike would be one of metal’s most trustworthy bandleaders, fronting a trio so consistent that Luminiferous feels only like the next point in a long line of remarkable records. Yes, High on Fire add a few new tricks here, especially through an enhanced ability to push and pull tempos at will. But for the most part, they remain a powerful trio with perfect chemistry, capable of embedding great hooks and marvels of rhythm section athleticism within riff-worshipping hits. "Before, I’d be all like, ‘How do we top the last one?’" Pike told Rolling Stone of Luminiferous in the same interview that turned him back into a minor metal meme. "It’s not better—it’s just a different version of myself that I’ve been trying to express all along." That’s not crazy talk. That’s fact."

All We Are

All We Are

Rock

Ian Cohen

All We Are’s debut album is, above all else, smooth. The kind of "smooth" that you pronounce in a way that becomes a tongue massage—smoooooooooth. But not "smooth" in the way people can be, synonymous with "oily" or "slick," denoting a kind of facile charm that can make you like someone you otherwise find objectionable. In fact, it’s very difficult to ascribe any sort of personality trait to All We Are based on the available evidence. Should that matter if they’re dedicating their time to your makeout music? Seems a bit ungrateful. So All We Are is smooth in the manner of an accessory to seduction; it’s the feel of cool lotion on your back. It’s a roll around on high-thread count sheets. If you were to call All We Are "edgeless," they’d likely take it as a compliment, as they pride themselves on pristine blends; their members originate from Norway, Ireland, and Brazil but met at college in Liverpool and maintain a distinct, buttoned-up Britishness. And their music serves as a kind of mixtape caulk, each song a viable transition between the distinguished names in a type of nominal "indie rock" which consists of bands with a rock setup playing some variation of what most would consider R&B. The pinging guitars on "Intro"—as well as the existence of a track called "Intro", itself—instantly brings the xx to mind, as do the group’s cooed, co-ed vocals which equate standoffishness with sex appeal. But musically, All We Are most often hew towards the fleshier, aloe-infused bath and body works of Rhye or Wild Beasts' simmering art-funk. You might be able to spot Dan Carey’s production work on All We Are based on sound alone—the guitars are all silvered, textured like liquid mercury or glitter paint, the drums are crisp and exact. It’s the sound of live musicians meant to be sampled for club remixes. It’s all-too-common to say that music of this sort was intended for high-end boutiques (even if it was written in a Norwegian cabin), though by comparing a lover to clothing on "I Wear You", All We Are aren’t ducking those shots. It’s timely, though none of it sounds trendy—the instrumental chops are there, and All We Are play with earnestness. Every variation of runway indie is within their grasp: they can do a soul bump-and-grind ("Utmost Good") and hyperventilating funk-pop ("Honey"). But All We Are haven’t found their voice yet, in either a figurative and literal sense. As musicians, All We Are can accessorize, but they also treat lyrics like socks, nonchalantly grabbing the first matching pair out of a drawer of regulars: "There’s something about you," "I need you, baby, to keep me alive," "I want you, can’t get you out of my head/ I just want to do it again," "Honey, you got to feel it with somebody." It’s difficult to extract any exact feeling anyone experienced at any point; all three members contribute vocals and none generate the force that could nudge All We Are out of its indistinct mood of either vague amorousness or manageable heartbreak. All We Are makes a stylish first impression, showing up so impeccably tailored that you wonder if it secretly fears all of that fumbling human contact that could mess things up. The most compelling moments on the record occur when the trio drop that pose and function like an actual rock band. The best hooks are mostly sibilation, a couple of hooted "oohs" on "I Wear You", rapturous sighs on "Stone". Meanwhile, the back half of All We Are is filled with slow jams that barely stir from a post-coital heap. The album peaks twice, the exact same way—on "Stone" and "Keep Me Alive", All We Are slowly build on glistening guitars for five minutes before Guro Gikling just lets it rip, similar to Carey’s previous charges Caroline Polachek or Natasha Khan. These moments add welcome contrast, but also expose a smooth record that all too rarely recognizes its need for friction.

Artist: All We Are, Album: All We Are, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "All We Are’s debut album is, above all else, smooth. The kind of "smooth" that you pronounce in a way that becomes a tongue massage—smoooooooooth. But not "smooth" in the way people can be, synonymous with "oily" or "slick," denoting a kind of facile charm that can make you like someone you otherwise find objectionable. In fact, it’s very difficult to ascribe any sort of personality trait to All We Are based on the available evidence. Should that matter if they’re dedicating their time to your makeout music? Seems a bit ungrateful. So All We Are is smooth in the manner of an accessory to seduction; it’s the feel of cool lotion on your back. It’s a roll around on high-thread count sheets. If you were to call All We Are "edgeless," they’d likely take it as a compliment, as they pride themselves on pristine blends; their members originate from Norway, Ireland, and Brazil but met at college in Liverpool and maintain a distinct, buttoned-up Britishness. And their music serves as a kind of mixtape caulk, each song a viable transition between the distinguished names in a type of nominal "indie rock" which consists of bands with a rock setup playing some variation of what most would consider R&B. The pinging guitars on "Intro"—as well as the existence of a track called "Intro", itself—instantly brings the xx to mind, as do the group’s cooed, co-ed vocals which equate standoffishness with sex appeal. But musically, All We Are most often hew towards the fleshier, aloe-infused bath and body works of Rhye or Wild Beasts' simmering art-funk. You might be able to spot Dan Carey’s production work on All We Are based on sound alone—the guitars are all silvered, textured like liquid mercury or glitter paint, the drums are crisp and exact. It’s the sound of live musicians meant to be sampled for club remixes. It’s all-too-common to say that music of this sort was intended for high-end boutiques (even if it was written in a Norwegian cabin), though by comparing a lover to clothing on "I Wear You", All We Are aren’t ducking those shots. It’s timely, though none of it sounds trendy—the instrumental chops are there, and All We Are play with earnestness. Every variation of runway indie is within their grasp: they can do a soul bump-and-grind ("Utmost Good") and hyperventilating funk-pop ("Honey"). But All We Are haven’t found their voice yet, in either a figurative and literal sense. As musicians, All We Are can accessorize, but they also treat lyrics like socks, nonchalantly grabbing the first matching pair out of a drawer of regulars: "There’s something about you," "I need you, baby, to keep me alive," "I want you, can’t get you out of my head/ I just want to do it again," "Honey, you got to feel it with somebody." It’s difficult to extract any exact feeling anyone experienced at any point; all three members contribute vocals and none generate the force that could nudge All We Are out of its indistinct mood of either vague amorousness or manageable heartbreak. All We Are makes a stylish first impression, showing up so impeccably tailored that you wonder if it secretly fears all of that fumbling human contact that could mess things up. The most compelling moments on the record occur when the trio drop that pose and function like an actual rock band. The best hooks are mostly sibilation, a couple of hooted "oohs" on "I Wear You", rapturous sighs on "Stone". Meanwhile, the back half of All We Are is filled with slow jams that barely stir from a post-coital heap. The album peaks twice, the exact same way—on "Stone" and "Keep Me Alive", All We Are slowly build on glistening guitars for five minutes before Guro Gikling just lets it rip, similar to Carey’s previous charges Caroline Polachek or Natasha Khan. These moments add welcome contrast, but also expose a smooth record that all too rarely recognizes its need for friction."

The Electronic Anthology Project

The Electronic Anthology Project of Dinosaur Jr.

Jenn Pelly

If you happened to have been a fan of both ear-bleeding indie rockers Dinosaur Jr. and the classic synth-pop group Human League in the 1980s, you may agree that their respective frontmen J Mascis and Philip Oakey had little in common aside from ridiculous hairstyles. Mascis sported what ex-Homestead and current Matador exec Gerard Cosloy called "huge fuckin'... stick-your-finger-in-the-socket-type hair." Oakey, meanwhile, claimed a jet-black half-mane that was nothing short of proto-Skrillex. Both did execute vocal styles that were at once melodic and patently bored, and Mascis and Oakey each served as centers of gravity for a certain kind of freak: Mascis attracted noiseniks and ex-hardcore kids, Oakey the shut-in New Romantics. But a hypothetical Venn Diagram would still find few intersecting characteristics of substance. The Electronic Anthology Project of Dinosaur Jr. is a creation of Mascis and Built to Spill bassist Brett Nelson that attempts to diminish the gap, with a collection of nine Dino Jr. synth-pop covers, culled mostly from the band's 1987 SST classic, You're Living All Over Me. Within 20 seconds it's evident that Mascis is kidding, as though he'd showed up to the party in an unlikely Halloween costume, and no one but his close friends and followers can truly understand the magnitude of its comedic value. Much of the joke behind Electronic Anthology Project can be found in the tangible, philosophical clash that has always fallen between technical guitar rock and electronic pop. While Dinosaur used extended guitar heroics for melodic hybrids that mined 1970s classic rock sounds-- Stones, Sabbath, Creedence, Neil Young, Crazy Horse-- the early-1980s new wave groups like Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were attempting to ward off that tradition's egotism with glittering synthesizers. These groups saw electronic instruments as democratic, punk tools for everyman, playing down the conventional guitar-bass-drum format and the necessity of technique. All the while, Mascis was busy jamming complex guitar work and engaging with hardcore as a listener and participant, performing with Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou Barlow in the band Deep Wound until 1984. Considering Electronic Anthology Project doesn't make use of a single guitar, it immediately drops much of what made Dinosaur a visionary alt-rock group to begin with. The band's defining characteristic has always been its excruciatingly loud execution, for which they were met early on with flying beer bottles and banned from clubs throughout their native Northampton, Mass. It's hard to imagine the clichéd mechanical drums and goofy, plastic synths on EAP building any kind of energy or fury. In 2001 Michael Azerrad wrote that the murk and mystique at play on You're Living All Over Me was "like a pond one could never see the bottom of" and so it never got old. But EAP is so surface-oriented it's good only for a few plays, albeit ones that are entirely essential for devoted Dinosaur fans. The massive swath of noise that introduces the original "Sludgefest" here becomes a barrage of cosmic, anxious synths, glitching and whirling from all angles, like a game of laser tag. "Got to connect with you, girl, before I forget how," Mascis pleads; stripped of distortion and rocketfire punk riffage it sounds like a Drake lyric. Indeed, these slick remakes do a fine job of highlighting the devastating emotion in Mascis' mumbled poetry, which now moves each track with newfound resonance. "Raisans" is lacking without its molten guitar eruptions or any attempt to compensate for their absence, but it's still a real heartbreaker: "I'll be hanging where eventually you'll have to be/ I'll just stare and hope you'll care/ It's only everything standing in front of me." A number of the tracks on Electronic Anthology Project come from the loud/quiet back-and-forth convention that helped Dinosaur draw the map for 1990s alt rock: calm, percolating verses that offer a foil for soaring, melodic choruses. "Pond Song" off 1988's Bug reinterprets that dynamic for one of the collection's most entertaining tracks, as Mascis sings, with sunny, wide-eyed optimism, "Pain is a wave, come on let's ride it." Less extraordinary are "The Lung" and "Kracked", whose reimagined wah-wah noise just feels like generic video-game filler. Despite the comic relief, the instrumentals feel static. Adding to the comedy here is that the record's three most successful tracks are simply tacked to the end: "Tarpit", "Little Fury Things", and "Feel the Pain". The most tasteful synth-pop keeps subtlety and restraint in mind, and those guiding principles help make "Tarpit" an enjoyable EAP creation, along with "Feel the Pain" from 1994's Without a Sound. "Pain" is the only track pulled from Dinosaur's major-label, post-Barlow days, and its subdued melancholy ("I feel the pain of everyone/ Then I feel nothing") suggests that quieter approach could have made the whole of EAP more listenable. Keep this one for your mixtape repertoire. Mascis is a guy with a strange, biting sense of humor that has always quietly shone through the cracks; you may recall that earlier this year he allowed his likeness to become J Mascis: the Bobblehead Doll. Like The Electronic Anthology Project of Built to Spill before it, this record surely could have been improved with a bit more pragmatism, like a colder or more nuanced approach, because Mascis' drawl does suit synthetic sounds quite well. But Electronic Anthology Project is novelty that is more than earned, and if you're a Mascis devotee who can see the world in his warped way, you'll find a place for it.

Artist: The Electronic Anthology Project, Album: The Electronic Anthology Project of Dinosaur Jr., Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "If you happened to have been a fan of both ear-bleeding indie rockers Dinosaur Jr. and the classic synth-pop group Human League in the 1980s, you may agree that their respective frontmen J Mascis and Philip Oakey had little in common aside from ridiculous hairstyles. Mascis sported what ex-Homestead and current Matador exec Gerard Cosloy called "huge fuckin'... stick-your-finger-in-the-socket-type hair." Oakey, meanwhile, claimed a jet-black half-mane that was nothing short of proto-Skrillex. Both did execute vocal styles that were at once melodic and patently bored, and Mascis and Oakey each served as centers of gravity for a certain kind of freak: Mascis attracted noiseniks and ex-hardcore kids, Oakey the shut-in New Romantics. But a hypothetical Venn Diagram would still find few intersecting characteristics of substance. The Electronic Anthology Project of Dinosaur Jr. is a creation of Mascis and Built to Spill bassist Brett Nelson that attempts to diminish the gap, with a collection of nine Dino Jr. synth-pop covers, culled mostly from the band's 1987 SST classic, You're Living All Over Me. Within 20 seconds it's evident that Mascis is kidding, as though he'd showed up to the party in an unlikely Halloween costume, and no one but his close friends and followers can truly understand the magnitude of its comedic value. Much of the joke behind Electronic Anthology Project can be found in the tangible, philosophical clash that has always fallen between technical guitar rock and electronic pop. While Dinosaur used extended guitar heroics for melodic hybrids that mined 1970s classic rock sounds-- Stones, Sabbath, Creedence, Neil Young, Crazy Horse-- the early-1980s new wave groups like Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were attempting to ward off that tradition's egotism with glittering synthesizers. These groups saw electronic instruments as democratic, punk tools for everyman, playing down the conventional guitar-bass-drum format and the necessity of technique. All the while, Mascis was busy jamming complex guitar work and engaging with hardcore as a listener and participant, performing with Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou Barlow in the band Deep Wound until 1984. Considering Electronic Anthology Project doesn't make use of a single guitar, it immediately drops much of what made Dinosaur a visionary alt-rock group to begin with. The band's defining characteristic has always been its excruciatingly loud execution, for which they were met early on with flying beer bottles and banned from clubs throughout their native Northampton, Mass. It's hard to imagine the clichéd mechanical drums and goofy, plastic synths on EAP building any kind of energy or fury. In 2001 Michael Azerrad wrote that the murk and mystique at play on You're Living All Over Me was "like a pond one could never see the bottom of" and so it never got old. But EAP is so surface-oriented it's good only for a few plays, albeit ones that are entirely essential for devoted Dinosaur fans. The massive swath of noise that introduces the original "Sludgefest" here becomes a barrage of cosmic, anxious synths, glitching and whirling from all angles, like a game of laser tag. "Got to connect with you, girl, before I forget how," Mascis pleads; stripped of distortion and rocketfire punk riffage it sounds like a Drake lyric. Indeed, these slick remakes do a fine job of highlighting the devastating emotion in Mascis' mumbled poetry, which now moves each track with newfound resonance. "Raisans" is lacking without its molten guitar eruptions or any attempt to compensate for their absence, but it's still a real heartbreaker: "I'll be hanging where eventually you'll have to be/ I'll just stare and hope you'll care/ It's only everything standing in front of me." A number of the tracks on Electronic Anthology Project come from the loud/quiet back-and-forth convention that helped Dinosaur draw the map for 1990s alt rock: calm, percolating verses that offer a foil for soaring, melodic choruses. "Pond Song" off 1988's Bug reinterprets that dynamic for one of the collection's most entertaining tracks, as Mascis sings, with sunny, wide-eyed optimism, "Pain is a wave, come on let's ride it." Less extraordinary are "The Lung" and "Kracked", whose reimagined wah-wah noise just feels like generic video-game filler. Despite the comic relief, the instrumentals feel static. Adding to the comedy here is that the record's three most successful tracks are simply tacked to the end: "Tarpit", "Little Fury Things", and "Feel the Pain". The most tasteful synth-pop keeps subtlety and restraint in mind, and those guiding principles help make "Tarpit" an enjoyable EAP creation, along with "Feel the Pain" from 1994's Without a Sound. "Pain" is the only track pulled from Dinosaur's major-label, post-Barlow days, and its subdued melancholy ("I feel the pain of everyone/ Then I feel nothing") suggests that quieter approach could have made the whole of EAP more listenable. Keep this one for your mixtape repertoire. Mascis is a guy with a strange, biting sense of humor that has always quietly shone through the cracks; you may recall that earlier this year he allowed his likeness to become J Mascis: the Bobblehead Doll. Like The Electronic Anthology Project of Built to Spill before it, this record surely could have been improved with a bit more pragmatism, like a colder or more nuanced approach, because Mascis' drawl does suit synthetic sounds quite well. But Electronic Anthology Project is novelty that is more than earned, and if you're a Mascis devotee who can see the world in his warped way, you'll find a place for it."

Suede

A New Morning

Rock

Joe Tangari

Oh, if the sun would only set on Suede again. The band came into the world over a decade ago as a purely nocturnal entity, seething with the dark tension of a savage hatred between the two main songwriters, and their music reflected this harrowing, if turgid melodrama. Brett Anderson seemed to be living the sleazy rock lifestyle he sang about without ever glamorizing it: Suede's first two albums brim with violence, paranoia, sexuality and sinister energy. Then guitarist and co-songwriter Bernard Butler left the band, a couple of kids joined up to fill his shoes, and everything changed. That it took two people to replace Butler is indication of what a force he was in the band; after his departure, Suede began to sound decidedly less dangerous, and almost overbearingly glib. Suddenly, Anderson's lyrics struck not so much like those of a man living the seedy clubbing lifestyle as a man who'd read about it in Vogue. And Suede have never since returned to the shadows whence they came. I've accepted this reality. As much as I love those first two Suede records, I'm not one to begrudge a band the right to change. Besides, the band's most recent material can be infectious, if not particularly meaningful-- I've even thought lightweight singles like "The Beautiful Ones" and "Electricity" oddly pleasing at times, and found the band's last attempt at sonic broadening, 1999's Head Music, fairly promising. So you can imagine my disappointment to find that A New Morning backs away from even that. Thankfully, producer John Leckie has kept the low end from that prior album intact, avoiding a return to the tinny sound of Coming Up, which now strikes as seriously dated. The bass throb rears itself most effectively on the more charged songs, like leadoff single "Obsessions" and the chunky rocker "Streetlife". "Obsessions", with its harmonica refrain courtesy of new keyboardist Alex Lee, sounds curiously similar to The The circa 1993. Not that you'd ever mistake Brett Anderson for Matt Johnson. And speaking of Anderson, his voice has suffered the ravages of an entire Connecticut Valley tobacco field worth of cigarettes over the past ten years, and it's begun to show here and there. He's not exactly croaking as per Tom Waits-- not yet, anyway-- but his smooth croon of old is certainly beginning to sound more lived-in. He's still an impressive and distinctive vocalist, though, and aside from the sandpaper wear-and-tear, he's in good form for most of A New Morning. Unfortunately, he's also still a distinctive lyricist, as well, and by that I mean distinctively awful. Since Coming Up, he's struggled to widen his vocabulary beyond "concrete," "gasoline," and "It's the way you ________," and he continues to tread water here. On "Lonely Girls", he skirts substantive examination of his subjects, instead opting to rattle off a series of brief anecdotes about each one's condition (sample: "Maxine mixes alcohol with polythene and paint"). And in fact, he's actually written this song before, except then it was about men, and it was called "The Bentswood Boys." (This being a family website, we won't even discuss the horrors of "Astral Girl.") It's difficult to overcome consistently lame, often meaningless lyrics-- especially with Suede's classic rock focus on singer and melody-- but they cope. Bassist Matt Osman is always good for a snappy hook and a tight countermelody, while guitarist Richard Oakes-- but a wee teen when he joined Suede eight years ago-- continues to improve, absorbing everything from 70s glam-rock to George Harrison and spinning it back with aplomb. He's also pulling out the acoustic more often these days, which helps the band to overcome the sometimes overly synthetic quality of their last two albums. Where you stand on A New Morning hinges largely on where you already stand on Suede's other recent releases. If you're strictly old-school, waiting for them to produce another Dog Man Star, don't bother, and while you're at it, stop waiting-- this band is obviously not interested in revisiting their past. If, however, you loved the bounce of Coming Up, you'll likely be pleased with this offering, and particularly if you thought Head Music was a letdown. As for me, I'm getting a bit bored with Suede's perpetual morning. Is a little darkness too much to ask?

Artist: Suede, Album: A New Morning, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Oh, if the sun would only set on Suede again. The band came into the world over a decade ago as a purely nocturnal entity, seething with the dark tension of a savage hatred between the two main songwriters, and their music reflected this harrowing, if turgid melodrama. Brett Anderson seemed to be living the sleazy rock lifestyle he sang about without ever glamorizing it: Suede's first two albums brim with violence, paranoia, sexuality and sinister energy. Then guitarist and co-songwriter Bernard Butler left the band, a couple of kids joined up to fill his shoes, and everything changed. That it took two people to replace Butler is indication of what a force he was in the band; after his departure, Suede began to sound decidedly less dangerous, and almost overbearingly glib. Suddenly, Anderson's lyrics struck not so much like those of a man living the seedy clubbing lifestyle as a man who'd read about it in Vogue. And Suede have never since returned to the shadows whence they came. I've accepted this reality. As much as I love those first two Suede records, I'm not one to begrudge a band the right to change. Besides, the band's most recent material can be infectious, if not particularly meaningful-- I've even thought lightweight singles like "The Beautiful Ones" and "Electricity" oddly pleasing at times, and found the band's last attempt at sonic broadening, 1999's Head Music, fairly promising. So you can imagine my disappointment to find that A New Morning backs away from even that. Thankfully, producer John Leckie has kept the low end from that prior album intact, avoiding a return to the tinny sound of Coming Up, which now strikes as seriously dated. The bass throb rears itself most effectively on the more charged songs, like leadoff single "Obsessions" and the chunky rocker "Streetlife". "Obsessions", with its harmonica refrain courtesy of new keyboardist Alex Lee, sounds curiously similar to The The circa 1993. Not that you'd ever mistake Brett Anderson for Matt Johnson. And speaking of Anderson, his voice has suffered the ravages of an entire Connecticut Valley tobacco field worth of cigarettes over the past ten years, and it's begun to show here and there. He's not exactly croaking as per Tom Waits-- not yet, anyway-- but his smooth croon of old is certainly beginning to sound more lived-in. He's still an impressive and distinctive vocalist, though, and aside from the sandpaper wear-and-tear, he's in good form for most of A New Morning. Unfortunately, he's also still a distinctive lyricist, as well, and by that I mean distinctively awful. Since Coming Up, he's struggled to widen his vocabulary beyond "concrete," "gasoline," and "It's the way you ________," and he continues to tread water here. On "Lonely Girls", he skirts substantive examination of his subjects, instead opting to rattle off a series of brief anecdotes about each one's condition (sample: "Maxine mixes alcohol with polythene and paint"). And in fact, he's actually written this song before, except then it was about men, and it was called "The Bentswood Boys." (This being a family website, we won't even discuss the horrors of "Astral Girl.") It's difficult to overcome consistently lame, often meaningless lyrics-- especially with Suede's classic rock focus on singer and melody-- but they cope. Bassist Matt Osman is always good for a snappy hook and a tight countermelody, while guitarist Richard Oakes-- but a wee teen when he joined Suede eight years ago-- continues to improve, absorbing everything from 70s glam-rock to George Harrison and spinning it back with aplomb. He's also pulling out the acoustic more often these days, which helps the band to overcome the sometimes overly synthetic quality of their last two albums. Where you stand on A New Morning hinges largely on where you already stand on Suede's other recent releases. If you're strictly old-school, waiting for them to produce another Dog Man Star, don't bother, and while you're at it, stop waiting-- this band is obviously not interested in revisiting their past. If, however, you loved the bounce of Coming Up, you'll likely be pleased with this offering, and particularly if you thought Head Music was a letdown. As for me, I'm getting a bit bored with Suede's perpetual morning. Is a little darkness too much to ask?"

Gatekeeper

Exo

Electronic,Rock

Nick Neyland

It's around 18 months since the New York-based duo Matthew Arkell and Aaron David Ross released the Giza EP under their Gatekeeper alias, positioning themselves as another act to ride one of the plentiful waves of 1980s nostalgia. That release was fixed as a dystopian electronic fantasia, which Pitchfork's Jess Harvell correctly placed somewhere between Cabaret Voltaire, Detroit techno, and Vangelis' bled-dry soundtrack to Blade Runner. Here on Exo, the duo's debut album for Hippos in Tanks, the fundamental Gatekeeper template has been stretched and tweaked, putting one tentative foot forward into the future while the other remains firmly rooted in the past. It's muscular and brutish, often gaining mettle from a Lords of Acid-style mesh of post-industrial density and Shoom-era acid house sounds. But there are other elements at work, including an adherence to playfulness, humor, and a rich seam of pomposity, all of which prevent it from becoming a straight-down-the-line exercise in po-faced replication. There's an unashamed ambition that takes hold of Exo from its first few seconds and doesn’t let up until the last strains of the wonderfully over-the-top closer "Encarta" fade to black. Occasionally there's a sonic similarity to big beat in its prime, particularly when the twists of acidic synth bleed firmly into the red. But there's also a shared sense that all this work was deliberately mapped out in a gigantic space, where every last synth line and beat is designed to sound as "big" as possible-- a notion Gatekeeper share with acts like the Chemical Brothers in their prime. There isn't much room for subtlety and nor should there be-- "Exolift" and "Hydrus" find their weight from being gloriously dumb, driven by sledgehammer riffs that only increase in intensity as each track progresses. Even tracks that take more subtle turns ("Bog", "Pre-Gen") are propped up by an overwhelming feeling of grandiosity, lending a magisterial quality to the entire enterprise. The media campaign for Exo matches the sense of aspiration that percolates throughout the LP, with special fonts released to decipher hidden messages, plus an as-yet unseen first-person gaming environment designed by Tabor Robak to help explore "various worlds inspired by the tracks on the album." Such ideas mirror the prog leanings the album sometimes buffers up against, although Exo is mercifully untethered from that world by its brief, 35-minute runtime. Gatekeeper never fully reach down into that environment in the same way Justice did on Audio, Video, Disco, instead choosing to take their rock cues from even more unlikely sources. "Encarta" is the kind of ludicrously grand musical gesture that would have Meat Loaf producer Jim Steinman beaming with pride, with its bombastic vocal chants leading the march toward a bedlam-fueled conclusion that bears more of a resemblance to a battering ram than it does to anything musical. Ending Exo in such a supercilious way is a marvelous act of insolence, hopefully hinting at freshly brazen territories Gatekeeper can move into on further releases. It would certainly be better than the tendency this duo has for dipping a little too hard into the acid vaults. On "Encarta" they can overcome that by the sheer vigor of the other musical ideas, and occasionally that tendency does hit odd moments of inspiration-- the opening "Imax" pines for an era that's yet to pass, attempting to accelerate the nostalgia cycle by retro-frying the present-- but elsewhere their leap into the future is stunted by the past bearing down too hard on their coattails.

Artist: Gatekeeper, Album: Exo, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "It's around 18 months since the New York-based duo Matthew Arkell and Aaron David Ross released the Giza EP under their Gatekeeper alias, positioning themselves as another act to ride one of the plentiful waves of 1980s nostalgia. That release was fixed as a dystopian electronic fantasia, which Pitchfork's Jess Harvell correctly placed somewhere between Cabaret Voltaire, Detroit techno, and Vangelis' bled-dry soundtrack to Blade Runner. Here on Exo, the duo's debut album for Hippos in Tanks, the fundamental Gatekeeper template has been stretched and tweaked, putting one tentative foot forward into the future while the other remains firmly rooted in the past. It's muscular and brutish, often gaining mettle from a Lords of Acid-style mesh of post-industrial density and Shoom-era acid house sounds. But there are other elements at work, including an adherence to playfulness, humor, and a rich seam of pomposity, all of which prevent it from becoming a straight-down-the-line exercise in po-faced replication. There's an unashamed ambition that takes hold of Exo from its first few seconds and doesn’t let up until the last strains of the wonderfully over-the-top closer "Encarta" fade to black. Occasionally there's a sonic similarity to big beat in its prime, particularly when the twists of acidic synth bleed firmly into the red. But there's also a shared sense that all this work was deliberately mapped out in a gigantic space, where every last synth line and beat is designed to sound as "big" as possible-- a notion Gatekeeper share with acts like the Chemical Brothers in their prime. There isn't much room for subtlety and nor should there be-- "Exolift" and "Hydrus" find their weight from being gloriously dumb, driven by sledgehammer riffs that only increase in intensity as each track progresses. Even tracks that take more subtle turns ("Bog", "Pre-Gen") are propped up by an overwhelming feeling of grandiosity, lending a magisterial quality to the entire enterprise. The media campaign for Exo matches the sense of aspiration that percolates throughout the LP, with special fonts released to decipher hidden messages, plus an as-yet unseen first-person gaming environment designed by Tabor Robak to help explore "various worlds inspired by the tracks on the album." Such ideas mirror the prog leanings the album sometimes buffers up against, although Exo is mercifully untethered from that world by its brief, 35-minute runtime. Gatekeeper never fully reach down into that environment in the same way Justice did on Audio, Video, Disco, instead choosing to take their rock cues from even more unlikely sources. "Encarta" is the kind of ludicrously grand musical gesture that would have Meat Loaf producer Jim Steinman beaming with pride, with its bombastic vocal chants leading the march toward a bedlam-fueled conclusion that bears more of a resemblance to a battering ram than it does to anything musical. Ending Exo in such a supercilious way is a marvelous act of insolence, hopefully hinting at freshly brazen territories Gatekeeper can move into on further releases. It would certainly be better than the tendency this duo has for dipping a little too hard into the acid vaults. On "Encarta" they can overcome that by the sheer vigor of the other musical ideas, and occasionally that tendency does hit odd moments of inspiration-- the opening "Imax" pines for an era that's yet to pass, attempting to accelerate the nostalgia cycle by retro-frying the present-- but elsewhere their leap into the future is stunted by the past bearing down too hard on their coattails."

Low

Double Negative

Rock

Rich Juzwiak

It is a flabbergasting coincidence that Low’s 12th album ended up sharing its name with one of the most absurd moments of Donald Trump’s summer. In July, about a month after the band announced their album, Trump publicly backpedaled from a comment he’d made which seemed to indicate to Russian President Vladimir Putin that, unlike the CIA and FBI and the remainder of the intelligence agencies, he didn’t believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,’” went Trump’s revision. “Sort of a double negative.” This might not even be worth mentioning if the Midwest’s premier slowcore ensemble hadn’t crafted their astounding new album, Double Negative, as a scowling and shellshocked response to Trump’s America. In a recent Wire cover story, guitarist and vocalist Alan Sparhawk said Trump’s administration prompted him to question “humanity, logic, modern society” and he’s quoted as referring to Trump as “that prick” onstage. And now, the album’s title is imbued with further meaning, a reiteration of the worst president at his worst. The serendipity adds to, but is hardly the extent of, the considerable wonder of an album in which a career indie band manages to warp their sound profoundly while retaining the soul of their art. Double Negative defies expectations yet makes perfect sense. This record would knock listeners on their asses coming from any band at any time, but it is extraordinary that Low is doing such challenging, relevant work 25 years into their career. Long gone are the days when the group could dumbfound with just a handful of sounds: the splat of a snare; guitar, and bass that sounded suspended in codeine; Sparhawk’s perma-mourn; the heavenly Mimi Parker on halo. The prevailing slowcore sound of their first half-dozen albums cast Low’s musical identity in metal, to borrow an image from 2001’s landmark Things We Lost in the Fire, so much so that one could have easily overlooked the slow expansion of their sound over the last decade and a half. The work on Double Negative, while often sounding completely radical in its own right, isn’t uncharacteristic, per se. It taps into the band’s wanderlust, its generous melodic sensibility, its considerable aptitude in creating atmosphere, not just in the abstract but in the realm of drone. The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold. No 11-song statement has functioned quite like this, though you’re likely to be reminded of snatches and scraps of other artists in the band’s pivot and ensuing textures—William Basinski’s tactile nature and exercises in disintegration, Throbbing Gristle’s thicker, full-bodied moments, My Bloody Valentine’s degradation celebration, the organized chaos of Björk’s Homogenic. This is a leap forward from its vaguely predictive source, a la Radiohead’s Kid A. The band recorded Double Negative over the past two years with producer BJ Burton at Justin Vernon’s April Base studio in Wisconsin. Burton, who wrote and played on Bon Iver’s own makeover record, 2016’s 22, A Million, has made clear that he has a knack for helping steer a band into the logical unknown. Their previous collaboration with Burton, 2015’s glitchy-around-the-edges Ones and Sixes, only hinted at what was to come. Double Negative is nothing but edges. It is an album with noise coming out of its wounds. It conjures the exact inverse of the sort beautifying restoration work done on the soundtracks of vintage films to remove thumps, hums, and crackles. Here thumps, hums, and crackles are piled on and the results are rarely short of stunning. On the surface, Double Negative may appear to be a collection of songs that were composed and then dismantled, a sort of electronic-indie answer to prefab distressed jeans. This seems particularly so on tracks like opener “Quorum,” which feels like it’s being run over by square tires with snow chains, and “Tempest,” which is filtered to the point of sounding as if it’s playing from a needle on a turntable that’s collecting toxic sludge. But apparently, the process was much more integrated than merely building up to break down—the band would show up with rough sketches of songs and then hammer them out with Burton. In the process, the line between performer and producer was scribbled out in static. Collectively, Low and Burton take an egalitarian approach. Creation and decay intertwine and texture is as crucial as melody. At times, Low’s already oblique lyrics are obscured by distortion; at others, vocals are sampled and contorted into alien sound transmissions, courtesy of keyboardist/bassist/synth-manipulator Steve Garrington. The composition is dynamic and riveting—“Always Trying to Work It Out” is gentle, classic Low, smoldering under reverb until it splits in half and pours out even more static—midway through, the song sounds like it’s frying. And then boom: a muffled bass drum rumbles and it all pulls together just as it had before it fell apart. Additionally, many of the songs here extend way beyond their verses and choruses to ambient codas that are every bit as assured as the more conventional structures that lead to them. “The Son, the Sun,” is only ambience. Haunted by what sounds like moderate wind passing over a mic, while a distant synth echoes and coalesces with wordless, reverberating vocals, it’s a three-and-a-half minute shiver. For something so consistently thrilling, Double Negative is deathly grim. Noise slurps and laps away at melodies with a diseased tongue. What sounds like a monster trapped in a box provides rhythm on “Poor Sucker.” On “Dancing and Fire,” Sparhawk moans, “It’s not the end, it’s just the end of hope,” a seeming rebuke to the title of Low’s 1994 debut album, I Could Live in Hope. “Dancing and Fire” is one of the few songs with completely intelligible vocals on a record filled with voices under siege, obscured and buried as if to render in a way beyond words the current administration’s attack on speech. There’s a sort of strobe effect on “Dancing and Blood,” as though Parker’s vocal is playing off a cassette that warped after being left on a car’s dashboard in the summertime. Anxiety—from getting lost in all the noise, of not being heard, of even perhaps adding to that noise—runs rampant on Double Negative, which works just as well as music as it does conceptual art: Here is an album-long exploration of the song as an imperfect conduit of feeling. On such shaky ground, three songs

Artist: Low, Album: Double Negative, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "It is a flabbergasting coincidence that Low’s 12th album ended up sharing its name with one of the most absurd moments of Donald Trump’s summer. In July, about a month after the band announced their album, Trump publicly backpedaled from a comment he’d made which seemed to indicate to Russian President Vladimir Putin that, unlike the CIA and FBI and the remainder of the intelligence agencies, he didn’t believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,’” went Trump’s revision. “Sort of a double negative.” This might not even be worth mentioning if the Midwest’s premier slowcore ensemble hadn’t crafted their astounding new album, Double Negative, as a scowling and shellshocked response to Trump’s America. In a recent Wire cover story, guitarist and vocalist Alan Sparhawk said Trump’s administration prompted him to question “humanity, logic, modern society” and he’s quoted as referring to Trump as “that prick” onstage. And now, the album’s title is imbued with further meaning, a reiteration of the worst president at his worst. The serendipity adds to, but is hardly the extent of, the considerable wonder of an album in which a career indie band manages to warp their sound profoundly while retaining the soul of their art. Double Negative defies expectations yet makes perfect sense. This record would knock listeners on their asses coming from any band at any time, but it is extraordinary that Low is doing such challenging, relevant work 25 years into their career. Long gone are the days when the group could dumbfound with just a handful of sounds: the splat of a snare; guitar, and bass that sounded suspended in codeine; Sparhawk’s perma-mourn; the heavenly Mimi Parker on halo. The prevailing slowcore sound of their first half-dozen albums cast Low’s musical identity in metal, to borrow an image from 2001’s landmark Things We Lost in the Fire, so much so that one could have easily overlooked the slow expansion of their sound over the last decade and a half. The work on Double Negative, while often sounding completely radical in its own right, isn’t uncharacteristic, per se. It taps into the band’s wanderlust, its generous melodic sensibility, its considerable aptitude in creating atmosphere, not just in the abstract but in the realm of drone. The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold. No 11-song statement has functioned quite like this, though you’re likely to be reminded of snatches and scraps of other artists in the band’s pivot and ensuing textures—William Basinski’s tactile nature and exercises in disintegration, Throbbing Gristle’s thicker, full-bodied moments, My Bloody Valentine’s degradation celebration, the organized chaos of Björk’s Homogenic. This is a leap forward from its vaguely predictive source, a la Radiohead’s Kid A. The band recorded Double Negative over the past two years with producer BJ Burton at Justin Vernon’s April Base studio in Wisconsin. Burton, who wrote and played on Bon Iver’s own makeover record, 2016’s 22, A Million, has made clear that he has a knack for helping steer a band into the logical unknown. Their previous collaboration with Burton, 2015’s glitchy-around-the-edges Ones and Sixes, only hinted at what was to come. Double Negative is nothing but edges. It is an album with noise coming out of its wounds. It conjures the exact inverse of the sort beautifying restoration work done on the soundtracks of vintage films to remove thumps, hums, and crackles. Here thumps, hums, and crackles are piled on and the results are rarely short of stunning. On the surface, Double Negative may appear to be a collection of songs that were composed and then dismantled, a sort of electronic-indie answer to prefab distressed jeans. This seems particularly so on tracks like opener “Quorum,” which feels like it’s being run over by square tires with snow chains, and “Tempest,” which is filtered to the point of sounding as if it’s playing from a needle on a turntable that’s collecting toxic sludge. But apparently, the process was much more integrated than merely building up to break down—the band would show up with rough sketches of songs and then hammer them out with Burton. In the process, the line between performer and producer was scribbled out in static. Collectively, Low and Burton take an egalitarian approach. Creation and decay intertwine and texture is as crucial as melody. At times, Low’s already oblique lyrics are obscured by distortion; at others, vocals are sampled and contorted into alien sound transmissions, courtesy of keyboardist/bassist/synth-manipulator Steve Garrington. The composition is dynamic and riveting—“Always Trying to Work It Out” is gentle, classic Low, smoldering under reverb until it splits in half and pours out even more static—midway through, the song sounds like it’s frying. And then boom: a muffled bass drum rumbles and it all pulls together just as it had before it fell apart. Additionally, many of the songs here extend way beyond their verses and choruses to ambient codas that are every bit as assured as the more conventional structures that lead to them. “The Son, the Sun,” is only ambience. Haunted by what sounds like moderate wind passing over a mic, while a distant synth echoes and coalesces with wordless, reverberating vocals, it’s a three-and-a-half minute shiver. For something so consistently thrilling, Double Negative is deathly grim. Noise slurps and laps away at melodies with a diseased tongue. What sounds like a monster trapped in a box provides rhythm on “Poor Sucker.” On “Dancing and Fire,” Sparhawk moans, “It’s not the end, it’s just the end of hope,” a seeming rebuke to the title of Low’s 1994 debut album, I Could Live in Hope. “Dancing and Fire” is one of the few songs with completely intelligible vocals on a record filled with voices under siege, obscured and buried as if to render in a way beyond words the current administration’s attack on speech. There’s a sort of strobe effect on “Dancing and Blood,” as though Parker’s vocal is playing off a cassette that warped after being left on a car’s dashboard in the summertime. Anxiety—from getting lost in all the noise, of not being heard, of even perhaps adding to that noise—runs rampant on Double Negative, which works just as well as music as it does conceptual art: Here is an album-long exploration of the song as an imperfect conduit of feeling. On such shaky ground, three songs"

Lou Reed

NYC Man: The Collection

Rock

Eric Carr

To one man, everything Lou Reed has ever released is absolutely perfect. And if his interviews are any indication, that one man is Reed himself. His vaunted intellectualism has always afforded him a final, unbreachable line of defense when one of his albums is subjected to criticism-- I mean, who are we to detract from Lou Reed's epic vision? We, the insipid, the shortsighted, could never truly grasp the depth of artistry that goes into even the most seemingly hackneyed tracks from Ecstasy (particularly that of "Like a Possum"), to say nothing of the deep harmonic layering in Metal Machine Music. "If you had a small mind, you'd miss it." You said it, Lou. "I've been rewriting the same song for a long time. Except my bullshit is worth other people's diamonds. And diamonds are a girl's best friend." See, only Lou Reed can criticize Lou Reed; fortunately, he has only the kindest things to say about himself. He's been maligned for not understanding what he does best, and inadvertently playing directly into his weaknesses as a result, but I'm more inclined to think that he just doesn't care what other people believe his perceived strengths to be. It almost makes me wonder why he bothered at all to hand-select and remaster the 31 tunes included on NYC Man, especially when such effort has been made to include material from even (to my "small mind") the worst of his later work. Here, studio versions of numerous mega-classics are replaced with live renditions, often denying listeners even that small pleasure of listening to these tracks with some small degree of studio clarity rather than stripped-down, emotionally dead reprises. About the only unpleasantry he's spared us is sixteen minutes (and one second) of grating feedback-- er, I mean, deeply embedded classical melodies-- to represent Metal Machine Music. Still, like any of the greatest Roman emperors and European monarchs knew, the wrath of the mob is something to be avoided, and so the King of NYC condescends to include basically all the songs that will send still send him to the front of the line when rock's judgment day arrives-- most of which appear as live versions. "Sweet Jane"'s gloriously faded core progression is one of the single most ripped-off blasts in rock and roll; the harrowing epic "Street Hassle" still sets a standard in orchestral rock augmentation that few bands can even dream of approaching. The transcendent helplessness of "Caroline Says", the sultry decadence of "Walk on the Wild Side", the sweet fuck-all of "White Light/White Heat"-- all the songs that have been included on every other Lou Reed compilation are here, too. In some sense, the decision to include live takes of many of these songs would be preferable to offering yet another studio copy of "Heroin", if only Reed's lackluster, "I'd rather be anywhere else" live performances didn't so consistently wither in comparison. To give the man some deserved credit, though, it's hard to produce a "bad" version of a song as genuinely perfect as "I'll Be Your Mirror"; it may be diminished here, but fundamentally, it remains one of the brightest jewels in rock's crown. And so it is for all of Reed's most brilliant moments. The bad news is, there's more here than just his most memorable work. Now, to state that many of Lou's later albums are awful is certainly subjective on some level, but I sincerely doubt there's a person alive (well, aside from Lou) who'd be pleased with any collection that attempted to sum up his career by including any songs at all-- even just one, as this compilation does-- from rock-bottom tragedies like Mistrial, Ecstasy, and The Raven. Unfortunately, after the necessary inclusions, that's about all he can do. So, rather than excise "Rock Minuet", the studio-alternate of "Who Am I", or any of the other relatively uninspired works of his later albums, and focus instead on his equally incredible, but more commonly overlooked 80s work-- or shit, just limited this thing to one disc-- he wildly over-reaches. All possible opportunities for cohesion have been denied here at the expense of the implicit notion that all Reed's work is created equal. It ain't. But you know what? Lou really was a genius (maybe still is). Even if his decisions make much of NYC Man a baffling ordeal, as albums go, the canonical rock and roll might contained in some of his greatest triumphs, even in second-rate form, save this album from the guillotine. Such is the scope of his songwriting skill. This is Lou's career, all of it-- from The Velvets to The Raven-- as it could only make sense to him, 3\xBD decades crammed into less than 3\xBD hours. Take away any sort of chronology and then attempt to find representation from every release he ever crapped out, and all that's left is a strung-out, confusing mess that could have turned out a hell of a lot better than it did. A hell of a lot like Lou, actually.

Artist: Lou Reed, Album: NYC Man: The Collection, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "To one man, everything Lou Reed has ever released is absolutely perfect. And if his interviews are any indication, that one man is Reed himself. His vaunted intellectualism has always afforded him a final, unbreachable line of defense when one of his albums is subjected to criticism-- I mean, who are we to detract from Lou Reed's epic vision? We, the insipid, the shortsighted, could never truly grasp the depth of artistry that goes into even the most seemingly hackneyed tracks from Ecstasy (particularly that of "Like a Possum"), to say nothing of the deep harmonic layering in Metal Machine Music. "If you had a small mind, you'd miss it." You said it, Lou. "I've been rewriting the same song for a long time. Except my bullshit is worth other people's diamonds. And diamonds are a girl's best friend." See, only Lou Reed can criticize Lou Reed; fortunately, he has only the kindest things to say about himself. He's been maligned for not understanding what he does best, and inadvertently playing directly into his weaknesses as a result, but I'm more inclined to think that he just doesn't care what other people believe his perceived strengths to be. It almost makes me wonder why he bothered at all to hand-select and remaster the 31 tunes included on NYC Man, especially when such effort has been made to include material from even (to my "small mind") the worst of his later work. Here, studio versions of numerous mega-classics are replaced with live renditions, often denying listeners even that small pleasure of listening to these tracks with some small degree of studio clarity rather than stripped-down, emotionally dead reprises. About the only unpleasantry he's spared us is sixteen minutes (and one second) of grating feedback-- er, I mean, deeply embedded classical melodies-- to represent Metal Machine Music. Still, like any of the greatest Roman emperors and European monarchs knew, the wrath of the mob is something to be avoided, and so the King of NYC condescends to include basically all the songs that will send still send him to the front of the line when rock's judgment day arrives-- most of which appear as live versions. "Sweet Jane"'s gloriously faded core progression is one of the single most ripped-off blasts in rock and roll; the harrowing epic "Street Hassle" still sets a standard in orchestral rock augmentation that few bands can even dream of approaching. The transcendent helplessness of "Caroline Says", the sultry decadence of "Walk on the Wild Side", the sweet fuck-all of "White Light/White Heat"-- all the songs that have been included on every other Lou Reed compilation are here, too. In some sense, the decision to include live takes of many of these songs would be preferable to offering yet another studio copy of "Heroin", if only Reed's lackluster, "I'd rather be anywhere else" live performances didn't so consistently wither in comparison. To give the man some deserved credit, though, it's hard to produce a "bad" version of a song as genuinely perfect as "I'll Be Your Mirror"; it may be diminished here, but fundamentally, it remains one of the brightest jewels in rock's crown. And so it is for all of Reed's most brilliant moments. The bad news is, there's more here than just his most memorable work. Now, to state that many of Lou's later albums are awful is certainly subjective on some level, but I sincerely doubt there's a person alive (well, aside from Lou) who'd be pleased with any collection that attempted to sum up his career by including any songs at all-- even just one, as this compilation does-- from rock-bottom tragedies like Mistrial, Ecstasy, and The Raven. Unfortunately, after the necessary inclusions, that's about all he can do. So, rather than excise "Rock Minuet", the studio-alternate of "Who Am I", or any of the other relatively uninspired works of his later albums, and focus instead on his equally incredible, but more commonly overlooked 80s work-- or shit, just limited this thing to one disc-- he wildly over-reaches. All possible opportunities for cohesion have been denied here at the expense of the implicit notion that all Reed's work is created equal. It ain't. But you know what? Lou really was a genius (maybe still is). Even if his decisions make much of NYC Man a baffling ordeal, as albums go, the canonical rock and roll might contained in some of his greatest triumphs, even in second-rate form, save this album from the guillotine. Such is the scope of his songwriting skill. This is Lou's career, all of it-- from The Velvets to The Raven-- as it could only make sense to him, 3\xBD decades crammed into less than 3\xBD hours. Take away any sort of chronology and then attempt to find representation from every release he ever crapped out, and all that's left is a strung-out, confusing mess that could have turned out a hell of a lot better than it did. A hell of a lot like Lou, actually."

Ab-Soul

Do What Thou Wilt.

Rap

Sheldon Pearce

Occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley once said “I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” Parsing this opaque statement reveals it was just Crowley’s cryptic, verbose way of devaluing faith and championing skepticism; a fake-deep principle demeaning the moralist position, the “Gotta Hear Both Sides” of a pseudo-cerebral ideology. It also reads like an Ab-Soul bar these days. It’s fitting that Crowley, once dubbed the Wickedest Man in the World and written off as a Satanist for his musings about the supernatural, has been a source of inspiration for TDE’s syllable-twisting, in-house conspiracy theorist, who is becoming so information-obsessed that he seems to be losing sight of actual meaning—perhaps a bit woozy from inhaling around all the tomes and scrolls and manuscripts he’s been dusting off. His songs have become so abstract that very little happens in them anymore; they’re all empty puzzles, mazes made of loosely parsed Greek myths, astrological information, and the unfinished script pages for National Treasure 3, meant to be mind-fucking but revealed to be mush when even gently interrogated. His new album, Do What Thou Wilt., named for the defining law of Crowley’s Thelemic philosophy, is the ultimate act of performative wokeness. It wasn’t always this way: Ab-Soul has been a thoughtful writer in the past, making sense of fringe sciences and unorthodox philosophies with elastic rhyme schemes, gently massaging them to suit grand proclamations about society’s shortcomings or personal explorations for spirituality. His breakout, Control System, remains among the best Top Dawg releases, boasting one of the most heart-wrenching and personal rap songs of the past several years (“The Book of Soul”). But the rapper has strayed from the confessional and introspective brand of stargazing that once made him one of rap’s most interesting voices. In recent outings, Soul has emerged as rap’s preeminent quasi-intellectual, besting peers like Lupe Fiasco and Jay Electronica (who he disses on Kendrick’s behalf here) with dramatic logical leaps, upping the ante with nonsense bars. Ab-Soul spends so much time mixing pagan and Christian texts on Do What Thou Wilt. that it’s unclear what exactly he believes, or worse, what he’s trying to persuade us to believe. These songs are mostly self-serving or pointless, and they all contain plenty of bad phonetic reaches and try-hard wordplay. There’s a song called “Huey Knew THEN.” (Get it?!) It interpolates the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme and he raps “I’m hornier than the brass section of the band, you understand?” This is what would happen if you gave Shia LaBeouf some DMT, a 12th Planet documentary, and a World Religions textbook. The production comes courtesy of longtime collaborators like Sounwave, Tae Beast, Willie B, and Skhye Hutch, names familiar to TDE canon like Rahki and the Antydote, and notable outside producers like WondaGurl and A$AP P on the Boards. It’s mostly dark and ominous, with sloping traditionalist breaks that slink just behind the downbeat. When it’s good, dense, or atmospheric like on “Braille” on “Now You Know,” it can settle Soul into a comfortable rhythm or obscure some of his worse lines; but when it’s bland (“Womanogamy”) or overwrought (“God’s a Girl?”), things become twice as grating, and often unlistenable. Do What Thou Wilt. has been billed both as a love story and a “woman-appreciation album.” It’s also supposedly an exploration of Crowley’s wicked objectives and Soul’s goal of being the most righteous man, among other stray themes. These many mismatching, criss-crossing threads create an incredibly convoluted 77-minute slog that is as tough to listen to as it is to digest. The overly-busy “God’s a Girl?” boasts the lines “You got me crying with a hard dick (amen)” and “come have sex with Jesus” in the first 35 seconds. “Wifey vs. WiFi / / /  P.M.S.” can’t decided if it’s a song about how digital communication interferes with intimacy or an extended prison metaphor. “Womanogamy” is a half-baked manifesto about liking girls that like girls that are in love with him; “RAW (backwards)” is a construction of lazy word games (“Man, I got so many flows them shits come with ceilings”); “YMF” or Young Mind Fuck, is lined with the most boring paradox of all-time: if Ab-Soul calls himself a liar, does that make him a liar, or is a liar calling himself a liar a lie? A better question: Who cares? Among the worst songs is “Threatening Nature,” a single that proved to be a microcosm of the entire project. It’s an undercooked concept with even flimsier raps that would get laughed out of a smoke circle of college freshmen: “With all disrespect, I think the American flag was designed by fags,” he says, a line that would probably be repugnantly offensive if it weren't so ridiculous. On “Evil Genius” Soul raps, “I studied theology, ancient philosophy, astronomy, astrology/The current state of the economy/Washington D.C., fossils and dinosaurs/The origin of our species.” Perhaps he should’ve spent a bit more time studying music.

Artist: Ab-Soul, Album: Do What Thou Wilt., Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 4.4 Album review: "Occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley once said “I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” Parsing this opaque statement reveals it was just Crowley’s cryptic, verbose way of devaluing faith and championing skepticism; a fake-deep principle demeaning the moralist position, the “Gotta Hear Both Sides” of a pseudo-cerebral ideology. It also reads like an Ab-Soul bar these days. It’s fitting that Crowley, once dubbed the Wickedest Man in the World and written off as a Satanist for his musings about the supernatural, has been a source of inspiration for TDE’s syllable-twisting, in-house conspiracy theorist, who is becoming so information-obsessed that he seems to be losing sight of actual meaning—perhaps a bit woozy from inhaling around all the tomes and scrolls and manuscripts he’s been dusting off. His songs have become so abstract that very little happens in them anymore; they’re all empty puzzles, mazes made of loosely parsed Greek myths, astrological information, and the unfinished script pages for National Treasure 3, meant to be mind-fucking but revealed to be mush when even gently interrogated. His new album, Do What Thou Wilt., named for the defining law of Crowley’s Thelemic philosophy, is the ultimate act of performative wokeness. It wasn’t always this way: Ab-Soul has been a thoughtful writer in the past, making sense of fringe sciences and unorthodox philosophies with elastic rhyme schemes, gently massaging them to suit grand proclamations about society’s shortcomings or personal explorations for spirituality. His breakout, Control System, remains among the best Top Dawg releases, boasting one of the most heart-wrenching and personal rap songs of the past several years (“The Book of Soul”). But the rapper has strayed from the confessional and introspective brand of stargazing that once made him one of rap’s most interesting voices. In recent outings, Soul has emerged as rap’s preeminent quasi-intellectual, besting peers like Lupe Fiasco and Jay Electronica (who he disses on Kendrick’s behalf here) with dramatic logical leaps, upping the ante with nonsense bars. Ab-Soul spends so much time mixing pagan and Christian texts on Do What Thou Wilt. that it’s unclear what exactly he believes, or worse, what he’s trying to persuade us to believe. These songs are mostly self-serving or pointless, and they all contain plenty of bad phonetic reaches and try-hard wordplay. There’s a song called “Huey Knew THEN.” (Get it?!) It interpolates the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme and he raps “I’m hornier than the brass section of the band, you understand?” This is what would happen if you gave Shia LaBeouf some DMT, a 12th Planet documentary, and a World Religions textbook. The production comes courtesy of longtime collaborators like Sounwave, Tae Beast, Willie B, and Skhye Hutch, names familiar to TDE canon like Rahki and the Antydote, and notable outside producers like WondaGurl and A$AP P on the Boards. It’s mostly dark and ominous, with sloping traditionalist breaks that slink just behind the downbeat. When it’s good, dense, or atmospheric like on “Braille” on “Now You Know,” it can settle Soul into a comfortable rhythm or obscure some of his worse lines; but when it’s bland (“Womanogamy”) or overwrought (“God’s a Girl?”), things become twice as grating, and often unlistenable. Do What Thou Wilt. has been billed both as a love story and a “woman-appreciation album.” It’s also supposedly an exploration of Crowley’s wicked objectives and Soul’s goal of being the most righteous man, among other stray themes. These many mismatching, criss-crossing threads create an incredibly convoluted 77-minute slog that is as tough to listen to as it is to digest. The overly-busy “God’s a Girl?” boasts the lines “You got me crying with a hard dick (amen)” and “come have sex with Jesus” in the first 35 seconds. “Wifey vs. WiFi / / /  P.M.S.” can’t decided if it’s a song about how digital communication interferes with intimacy or an extended prison metaphor. “Womanogamy” is a half-baked manifesto about liking girls that like girls that are in love with him; “RAW (backwards)” is a construction of lazy word games (“Man, I got so many flows them shits come with ceilings”); “YMF” or Young Mind Fuck, is lined with the most boring paradox of all-time: if Ab-Soul calls himself a liar, does that make him a liar, or is a liar calling himself a liar a lie? A better question: Who cares? Among the worst songs is “Threatening Nature,” a single that proved to be a microcosm of the entire project. It’s an undercooked concept with even flimsier raps that would get laughed out of a smoke circle of college freshmen: “With all disrespect, I think the American flag was designed by fags,” he says, a line that would probably be repugnantly offensive if it weren't so ridiculous. On “Evil Genius” Soul raps, “I studied theology, ancient philosophy, astronomy, astrology/The current state of the economy/Washington D.C., fossils and dinosaurs/The origin of our species.” Perhaps he should’ve spent a bit more time studying music."

Pale Blue

The Past We Leave Behind

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Mike Simonetti has never sat still. Troubleman Unlimited, the label he founded in 1993, started from a foundation of noisy hardcore—bands like Rorschach, Unwound, and Rye Coalition—and expanded to include a staggering range of music, from danceable post-punk (Erase Errata, Tussle) to noise and power electronics (Hair Police, John Wiese) to new-school goth (Zola Jesus, Pocahaunted). When the rock world could no longer contain his ambitions, the obsessive record collector and one-time club promoter—at 17, he had flyered for New York’s Mars nightclub, where Vin Diesel worked the door and Bobby Konders spun house and dancehall—teamed up with the Chromatics and Glass Candy producer Johnny Jewel to create Italians Do It Better. The label became a platform for disco and synth-pop, as well as more esoteric beatmakers like Professor Genius and Invisible Conga People. Pale Blue is Simonetti’s latest project. A new alias on a new label (2MR, or Two Mikes Records, a collaboration with Captured Tracks’ Mike Sniper), it is nominally a solo affair, though a singer named Elizabeth Wight, of the San Francisco duo Silver Hands, plays a key role, and Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter shows up on one of the key cuts. The title tells you something about its emotional register—wistful, elegiac, bittersweet— and the Field and M83 both offer clear antecedents for Pale Blue’s billowing synthesizers and yearning vocals. But for all the grandeur Simonetti wants to summon, Pale Blue’s sound is also modest, making the most of Wight's voice, layering and looping her to create an airy background wash that casts a rosy sunset glow over everything. Simonetti’s approach to structure, meanwhile, resembles a zoned-out road worker painting stripes on a lonely stretch of desert highway: Not a lot changes, but then, it’s not supposed to. The intensity rises and falls with the rolling hills, but the vistas remain the same, and the horizon never gets any closer. Despite the uniformity, there are clear highlights. The title track is a big, bold, feel-good bummer of a tune that finds Wight testing the lower limits of her register, sounding a little like Siouxsie amidst a gleaming array of contrapuntal synths. "Dusk in Parts", the other obvious single, makes the most of Jana Hunter’s desolate wail, while the monotone bassline offers a sullen deadweight counterpoint to sentimental Rhodes melodies and chimes that glint like tear-stained cheeks. "The Math" could actually be mistaken for a Kompakt release—if the recent "Blurred Lines" verdict actually counted as legal precedent, Heiko Voss and DJ Koze might conceivably take Simonetti to court for so skillfully replicating the vibe of Voss’ Kompakt Pop classic "I Think About You (DJ Koze Mix)", and I say that in the most complimentary way possible. From the strings to the horn stabs to the buoyant background vocals, it’s a triumphant example of Simonetti at his extroverted best. The Bruce Springsteen cover "Tougher", on the other hand, represents the other end of the spectrum: it plays its cards close to the vest, with a trim arpeggio opening up only as much as necessary while Wight mutters come-ons. Her spoken-word vocals never quite synch with the beat, either, and as a result, it yanks us out of the production’s hypnotic swirl. Some of the album’s more middling tracks—"Distance to the Waves", "Myself", "The Eye"—feel only halfway there. Simonetti has no issue letting a track that consists only of a single wavering chord and some ethereal background vocals drag on for seven-and-a-half minutes ("The Rain"). But if this 67-minute album is not without filler, even those airy expanses are perfectly pleasant. This unwillingness to edit himself was also an issue on Simonetti’s solo EP Capricorn Rising, in which one song appeared in three different versions, comprising nearly half of the record’s running time. This tendency is ironic, because it moves in the opposite of Simonetti’s approach as a label head. It speaks, perhaps, to the perfectionist’s desire to come up with the best possible version of a particular sketch—unable to pick a favorite, he simply presents all its iterations, at unabridged lengths. But maybe that has to do with a desire to wring the most out of a given idea—the most pleasure, the most yearning, the most eyes-closed, lost-in-a-dream intensity beneath a slowly twirling disco ball.

Artist: Pale Blue, Album: The Past We Leave Behind, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Mike Simonetti has never sat still. Troubleman Unlimited, the label he founded in 1993, started from a foundation of noisy hardcore—bands like Rorschach, Unwound, and Rye Coalition—and expanded to include a staggering range of music, from danceable post-punk (Erase Errata, Tussle) to noise and power electronics (Hair Police, John Wiese) to new-school goth (Zola Jesus, Pocahaunted). When the rock world could no longer contain his ambitions, the obsessive record collector and one-time club promoter—at 17, he had flyered for New York’s Mars nightclub, where Vin Diesel worked the door and Bobby Konders spun house and dancehall—teamed up with the Chromatics and Glass Candy producer Johnny Jewel to create Italians Do It Better. The label became a platform for disco and synth-pop, as well as more esoteric beatmakers like Professor Genius and Invisible Conga People. Pale Blue is Simonetti’s latest project. A new alias on a new label (2MR, or Two Mikes Records, a collaboration with Captured Tracks’ Mike Sniper), it is nominally a solo affair, though a singer named Elizabeth Wight, of the San Francisco duo Silver Hands, plays a key role, and Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter shows up on one of the key cuts. The title tells you something about its emotional register—wistful, elegiac, bittersweet— and the Field and M83 both offer clear antecedents for Pale Blue’s billowing synthesizers and yearning vocals. But for all the grandeur Simonetti wants to summon, Pale Blue’s sound is also modest, making the most of Wight's voice, layering and looping her to create an airy background wash that casts a rosy sunset glow over everything. Simonetti’s approach to structure, meanwhile, resembles a zoned-out road worker painting stripes on a lonely stretch of desert highway: Not a lot changes, but then, it’s not supposed to. The intensity rises and falls with the rolling hills, but the vistas remain the same, and the horizon never gets any closer. Despite the uniformity, there are clear highlights. The title track is a big, bold, feel-good bummer of a tune that finds Wight testing the lower limits of her register, sounding a little like Siouxsie amidst a gleaming array of contrapuntal synths. "Dusk in Parts", the other obvious single, makes the most of Jana Hunter’s desolate wail, while the monotone bassline offers a sullen deadweight counterpoint to sentimental Rhodes melodies and chimes that glint like tear-stained cheeks. "The Math" could actually be mistaken for a Kompakt release—if the recent "Blurred Lines" verdict actually counted as legal precedent, Heiko Voss and DJ Koze might conceivably take Simonetti to court for so skillfully replicating the vibe of Voss’ Kompakt Pop classic "I Think About You (DJ Koze Mix)", and I say that in the most complimentary way possible. From the strings to the horn stabs to the buoyant background vocals, it’s a triumphant example of Simonetti at his extroverted best. The Bruce Springsteen cover "Tougher", on the other hand, represents the other end of the spectrum: it plays its cards close to the vest, with a trim arpeggio opening up only as much as necessary while Wight mutters come-ons. Her spoken-word vocals never quite synch with the beat, either, and as a result, it yanks us out of the production’s hypnotic swirl. Some of the album’s more middling tracks—"Distance to the Waves", "Myself", "The Eye"—feel only halfway there. Simonetti has no issue letting a track that consists only of a single wavering chord and some ethereal background vocals drag on for seven-and-a-half minutes ("The Rain"). But if this 67-minute album is not without filler, even those airy expanses are perfectly pleasant. This unwillingness to edit himself was also an issue on Simonetti’s solo EP Capricorn Rising, in which one song appeared in three different versions, comprising nearly half of the record’s running time. This tendency is ironic, because it moves in the opposite of Simonetti’s approach as a label head. It speaks, perhaps, to the perfectionist’s desire to come up with the best possible version of a particular sketch—unable to pick a favorite, he simply presents all its iterations, at unabridged lengths. But maybe that has to do with a desire to wring the most out of a given idea—the most pleasure, the most yearning, the most eyes-closed, lost-in-a-dream intensity beneath a slowly twirling disco ball."

Mi Ami

Dolphins

Experimental,Rock

David Bevan

When bassist Jacob Long left Mi Ami early this year, the San Francisco/NYC trio decided against seeking a replacement. It was a change that affected more than just their roster. On Dolphins, their first release since Long's departure, remaining members Daniel Martin-McCormick and Damon Palermo have abandoned guitars and drums and with them the dubby post-punk alchemy of earlier efforts. In their place are a series of aqueous electronic discoscapes that are are every bit as confrontational. And what this release lacks in hooks or noisy cross-pollinating, it makes up for in continuity. Whether it's the mania of Martin-McCormick's vocals or commitment to head-hitting, rhythmic expanse, it's still obvious that you're listening to Mi Ami. It's not only made clear by Martin-McCormick's distinct, flailing vocal work. At four songs in just over 30 minutes, Mi Ami are still as economical as they were when wielding guitars-- as many ideas are at play, you never get the sense that anything has been shoehorned into any given portion of a song. In fact, by virtue of their sonics, this is a far sparer and roomier affair than anything else they've crafted until now. What's most problematic about that, though, is that it leaves Martin-McCormick's vocals out in the open. With just a sampler and a keyboard to compete with in the mix, Martin-McCormick doesn't have much else to slam into here, an issue that's at its most jarring in the early seconds of standout closer "Echo" or the EP's brooding title track. The quilled texture of his voice simply doesn't match up well with the smooth, temperate tones this band is playing with as a duo, despite their typically violent, overwhelming interplay. That said, whether working with this palette is a one-off experiment or the beginning of a lengthier adventure isn't easy to hear. Dolphins is both hypnotic and staggering at times, but it lacks the extraordinary stamina that those earlier Mi Ami long-players kept from end to end. Take for instance the neon groove of "Hard Up", a song whose pulse can only be matched in murmurs by the blank wandering of "Sunrise". That they're able to so accurately translate their singular energy from one setup to the next is a feat. Should they decide to stick with it, finding a way to spread all of that out would be another.

Artist: Mi Ami, Album: Dolphins, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "When bassist Jacob Long left Mi Ami early this year, the San Francisco/NYC trio decided against seeking a replacement. It was a change that affected more than just their roster. On Dolphins, their first release since Long's departure, remaining members Daniel Martin-McCormick and Damon Palermo have abandoned guitars and drums and with them the dubby post-punk alchemy of earlier efforts. In their place are a series of aqueous electronic discoscapes that are are every bit as confrontational. And what this release lacks in hooks or noisy cross-pollinating, it makes up for in continuity. Whether it's the mania of Martin-McCormick's vocals or commitment to head-hitting, rhythmic expanse, it's still obvious that you're listening to Mi Ami. It's not only made clear by Martin-McCormick's distinct, flailing vocal work. At four songs in just over 30 minutes, Mi Ami are still as economical as they were when wielding guitars-- as many ideas are at play, you never get the sense that anything has been shoehorned into any given portion of a song. In fact, by virtue of their sonics, this is a far sparer and roomier affair than anything else they've crafted until now. What's most problematic about that, though, is that it leaves Martin-McCormick's vocals out in the open. With just a sampler and a keyboard to compete with in the mix, Martin-McCormick doesn't have much else to slam into here, an issue that's at its most jarring in the early seconds of standout closer "Echo" or the EP's brooding title track. The quilled texture of his voice simply doesn't match up well with the smooth, temperate tones this band is playing with as a duo, despite their typically violent, overwhelming interplay. That said, whether working with this palette is a one-off experiment or the beginning of a lengthier adventure isn't easy to hear. Dolphins is both hypnotic and staggering at times, but it lacks the extraordinary stamina that those earlier Mi Ami long-players kept from end to end. Take for instance the neon groove of "Hard Up", a song whose pulse can only be matched in murmurs by the blank wandering of "Sunrise". That they're able to so accurately translate their singular energy from one setup to the next is a feat. Should they decide to stick with it, finding a way to spread all of that out would be another."

Metallica

Death Magnetic

Metal

Cosmo Lee

Metallica became the world's biggest metal band by doing everything right. Then they went and did everything wrong. Their first four records were classic permutations of 1980s thrash: The ferociously raw Kill 'Em All, the increasingly epic Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, and the toweringly technical ...And Justice for All. Until the latter, Metallica refused to make an MTV video. Self-dubbed "Alcoholica", the band cultivated a blue-collar image. However, on 1991's eponymous album (aka "The Black Album"), they went mainstream with radio-friendly ballads, losing old fans but gaining millions of new ones.   Since then, Metallica have been a comedy of errors. Load and ReLoad wallowed in hard rock dreck. The front of Garage Inc., a covers collection, found Metallica awkwardly costumed as auto mechanics to appear as the everymen they once were. S&M was an overwrought collaboration with a symphony. The band sued Napster, earning the scorn of fans. 2003's St. Anger was laughably bad. The documentary film Some Kind of Monster luridly aired the band's dirty laundry. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo were recently photographed shopping at Armani. Such antics have kept Metallica in the headlines, and not necessarily to their benefit. The anticipation for Death Magnetic has split along two lines: hope for a return to form, and schadenfreude.   The album fulfills neither expectation. It tries mightily to recapture Metallica's former glory, but only does so partially. Producer Rick Rubin told the band to write the unwritten half of Master of Puppets, a ludicrous proposition. But his intent was well-meaning: get rich, fortysomething rockers to recall themselves as hungry, twentysomething metallers. In the real world, this is called a midlife crisis. One can emulate one's younger self, but one can't unlearn one's years.   So it is with Death Magnetic. Self-plagiarization abounds. "That Was Just Your Life" and "Cyanide" harken back to "Blackened" from ...And Justice for All. "The Day That Never Comes" has the clean tones of "Fade to Black" and the machine gun riff from "One". In the 1980s, Metallica wrote hundreds of riffs without repeating themselves. To hear them so bereft of new ideas is disheartening. So is the fact that Load, ReLoad, and St. Anger are indelibly part of their bloodstream. "The End of the Line" and "The Judas Kiss" have bland hard rock riffs à la Load and ReLoad. Like most sequels, the turgid "The Unforgiven III" need not have been made. "Cyanide" tapes a Stone Temple Pilots riff to a disastrous stop-start section straight out of St. Anger. Metallica aren't good at being bluesy or unpredictable. They're best at heavy metal thunder, and they've forgotten that.   Rubin's bone-dry production negates this thunder, but it evokes Metallica's garage band days. These are their most energetic performances in ages. Guitarist Kirk Hammett hasn't ever sounded this vital. While he languished solo-less in St. Anger, he's all over Death Magnetic with fiery leads. They often reprise his old ones, but their wah-fueled intensity is a welcome antidote to their underlying riffs. Hetfield has mostly dropped his bluesy yowl in favor of singing in tune. Trujillo adds solid, supportive low end. Drummer Lars Ulrich is the one weak link. He often resorts to simple oompah beats when complementary or counter-rhythms are necessary. But despite his lack of creativity, he plays the hell out of his drums, aided by a harsh, crunchy sound that renders his cymbals incredibly sibilant.   All the energy in the world can't save these songs, however. They're each about two minutes too long. Most top seven minutes in length; the instrumental "Suicide & Redemption" lasts 10 minutes but feels interminable. Prime Metallica had long songs, but they ebbed and flowed, skillfully playing with layers. These songs, in contrast, merely string together riffs. Clean tones invade "The End of the Line" without warning; many songs have intros that are apropos of nothing. Death Magnetic is essentially St. Anger with better riffs.   The band may be more mentally stable now, but it's irreparably damaged. Years of simplistic hard rock have destroyed its sense of speed. Even the thrashy "My Apocalypse" feels clunky. Hetfield's lyrics are toilet-grade; his younger self, while brash, would never have written tripe like "Mangled flesh, snapping spines/ Dripping bloody valentine/ Shattered face, spitting glass." Ever since The Black Album, his lyrics have been embarrassingly personal. Once Metallica became vulnerable, they never recovered. Death Magnetic is a meditation on death-- but so is every other Metallica record. The best ones spit in the face of death; this album instead finds aging men trying to reclaim their youth.

Artist: Metallica, Album: Death Magnetic, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "Metallica became the world's biggest metal band by doing everything right. Then they went and did everything wrong. Their first four records were classic permutations of 1980s thrash: The ferociously raw Kill 'Em All, the increasingly epic Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, and the toweringly technical ...And Justice for All. Until the latter, Metallica refused to make an MTV video. Self-dubbed "Alcoholica", the band cultivated a blue-collar image. However, on 1991's eponymous album (aka "The Black Album"), they went mainstream with radio-friendly ballads, losing old fans but gaining millions of new ones.   Since then, Metallica have been a comedy of errors. Load and ReLoad wallowed in hard rock dreck. The front of Garage Inc., a covers collection, found Metallica awkwardly costumed as auto mechanics to appear as the everymen they once were. S&M was an overwrought collaboration with a symphony. The band sued Napster, earning the scorn of fans. 2003's St. Anger was laughably bad. The documentary film Some Kind of Monster luridly aired the band's dirty laundry. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo were recently photographed shopping at Armani. Such antics have kept Metallica in the headlines, and not necessarily to their benefit. The anticipation for Death Magnetic has split along two lines: hope for a return to form, and schadenfreude.   The album fulfills neither expectation. It tries mightily to recapture Metallica's former glory, but only does so partially. Producer Rick Rubin told the band to write the unwritten half of Master of Puppets, a ludicrous proposition. But his intent was well-meaning: get rich, fortysomething rockers to recall themselves as hungry, twentysomething metallers. In the real world, this is called a midlife crisis. One can emulate one's younger self, but one can't unlearn one's years.   So it is with Death Magnetic. Self-plagiarization abounds. "That Was Just Your Life" and "Cyanide" harken back to "Blackened" from ...And Justice for All. "The Day That Never Comes" has the clean tones of "Fade to Black" and the machine gun riff from "One". In the 1980s, Metallica wrote hundreds of riffs without repeating themselves. To hear them so bereft of new ideas is disheartening. So is the fact that Load, ReLoad, and St. Anger are indelibly part of their bloodstream. "The End of the Line" and "The Judas Kiss" have bland hard rock riffs à la Load and ReLoad. Like most sequels, the turgid "The Unforgiven III" need not have been made. "Cyanide" tapes a Stone Temple Pilots riff to a disastrous stop-start section straight out of St. Anger. Metallica aren't good at being bluesy or unpredictable. They're best at heavy metal thunder, and they've forgotten that.   Rubin's bone-dry production negates this thunder, but it evokes Metallica's garage band days. These are their most energetic performances in ages. Guitarist Kirk Hammett hasn't ever sounded this vital. While he languished solo-less in St. Anger, he's all over Death Magnetic with fiery leads. They often reprise his old ones, but their wah-fueled intensity is a welcome antidote to their underlying riffs. Hetfield has mostly dropped his bluesy yowl in favor of singing in tune. Trujillo adds solid, supportive low end. Drummer Lars Ulrich is the one weak link. He often resorts to simple oompah beats when complementary or counter-rhythms are necessary. But despite his lack of creativity, he plays the hell out of his drums, aided by a harsh, crunchy sound that renders his cymbals incredibly sibilant.   All the energy in the world can't save these songs, however. They're each about two minutes too long. Most top seven minutes in length; the instrumental "Suicide & Redemption" lasts 10 minutes but feels interminable. Prime Metallica had long songs, but they ebbed and flowed, skillfully playing with layers. These songs, in contrast, merely string together riffs. Clean tones invade "The End of the Line" without warning; many songs have intros that are apropos of nothing. Death Magnetic is essentially St. Anger with better riffs.   The band may be more mentally stable now, but it's irreparably damaged. Years of simplistic hard rock have destroyed its sense of speed. Even the thrashy "My Apocalypse" feels clunky. Hetfield's lyrics are toilet-grade; his younger self, while brash, would never have written tripe like "Mangled flesh, snapping spines/ Dripping bloody valentine/ Shattered face, spitting glass." Ever since The Black Album, his lyrics have been embarrassingly personal. Once Metallica became vulnerable, they never recovered. Death Magnetic is a meditation on death-- but so is every other Metallica record. The best ones spit in the face of death; this album instead finds aging men trying to reclaim their youth."

Cloakroom

Time Well

Rock

Andy O'Connor

Northwest Indiana trio Cloakroom take a muscular approach to shoegaze by adding a wallop of fundamental metal crunch, and while that’s a well-worn fusion at this point, they don’t quite sound like other bands who attempt this. They draw on conventional ’90s rock, and especially its affinity for chunky riffs. Despite moving to the metal-oriented label Relapse for their second album Time Well, they cut back on overt heaviness and lean more on bittersweet dream-rock. In doing so, they strike a better balance of the two and reveal themselves to be slyer than they appear at first glance. Their debut Further Out was defined by a dour air, and even though it’s longer and mellower, Time is riddled with the anxiety that comes from feeling more open-ended. It doesn’t come roaring out of the gate with hard rock nostalgia like Further Out did with “Paperweight,” as “Gone But Not Entirely” is more simmering doom. A good deal of the album’s second half—“Sickle Moon Blues” and “The Sun Won’t Let Us Go” in particular—are driven by ambient currents carrying somber guitars. Guitarist and vocalist Doyle Martin sings in a slightly lower register on Time, removing the stereotypical “emo” whine and delivering in a more full-throated Justin Broadrick fashion, elongating his drawl to fit the spaciness of the music. It’s a contrast to the mid-’00s Midwestern emo yell of bassist Bobby Markos’ previous band, Native, where he was the vocalist despite never being entirely comfortable with the role. Such an approach wouldn’t work here, and his comfort in holding back shows. Softening their approach works in their favor in other ways: “Concrete Gallery” takes a noise-rock jangle that’s been beaten to death and washes it in cleans that strip the menace out and feels approachable. It slouches in instead of snarls forth, leaving the energy to where it’s needed. When Cloakroom do rip into big riffs, it’s more than satisfying. “Seedless Star” takes the “Paperweight” role as the most charging song of the record. They understand the appeal of the riff and how a simple driving line can go a long way. “Seedless Star” would work as an up-tempo doom song without the shoegaze elements, and with them, the sorrow neck-and-neck with the righteous guitar is amplified. While it appeals to a more base sense, it’s also a smarter take than loudness for the sake of loudness. Time replicates a half-awake state: it’s not so dreamy that it gets unmoored in endless seas of effects, and yet the heavy guitars, appealing as they are, aren’t exactly a dominating gravitational force. “52hz Whale’s” drone is as light as any of the less heavy moments here, and “Gone” and “Big World” both recall the trudge of Earth’s Pentastar: In the Style of Demons. Martin’s voice also plays into this vibe; it’s soothing but cryptic, not exactly a lullaby. (He’s a professed black metal fan, so it makes sense that his voice isn’t always forthcoming.) These dynamics reveal a tenderness that’s often lost by going on either extreme. Time will make as much sense in a loud rock club as it will alone in a room lit only by faint lights. Cloakroom inhabit the space of artists who take the appealing parts of a masculine pose without being wholly trapped by them. There’s a power that comes from not having to choose between being tough and being vulnerable.

Artist: Cloakroom, Album: Time Well, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Northwest Indiana trio Cloakroom take a muscular approach to shoegaze by adding a wallop of fundamental metal crunch, and while that’s a well-worn fusion at this point, they don’t quite sound like other bands who attempt this. They draw on conventional ’90s rock, and especially its affinity for chunky riffs. Despite moving to the metal-oriented label Relapse for their second album Time Well, they cut back on overt heaviness and lean more on bittersweet dream-rock. In doing so, they strike a better balance of the two and reveal themselves to be slyer than they appear at first glance. Their debut Further Out was defined by a dour air, and even though it’s longer and mellower, Time is riddled with the anxiety that comes from feeling more open-ended. It doesn’t come roaring out of the gate with hard rock nostalgia like Further Out did with “Paperweight,” as “Gone But Not Entirely” is more simmering doom. A good deal of the album’s second half—“Sickle Moon Blues” and “The Sun Won’t Let Us Go” in particular—are driven by ambient currents carrying somber guitars. Guitarist and vocalist Doyle Martin sings in a slightly lower register on Time, removing the stereotypical “emo” whine and delivering in a more full-throated Justin Broadrick fashion, elongating his drawl to fit the spaciness of the music. It’s a contrast to the mid-’00s Midwestern emo yell of bassist Bobby Markos’ previous band, Native, where he was the vocalist despite never being entirely comfortable with the role. Such an approach wouldn’t work here, and his comfort in holding back shows. Softening their approach works in their favor in other ways: “Concrete Gallery” takes a noise-rock jangle that’s been beaten to death and washes it in cleans that strip the menace out and feels approachable. It slouches in instead of snarls forth, leaving the energy to where it’s needed. When Cloakroom do rip into big riffs, it’s more than satisfying. “Seedless Star” takes the “Paperweight” role as the most charging song of the record. They understand the appeal of the riff and how a simple driving line can go a long way. “Seedless Star” would work as an up-tempo doom song without the shoegaze elements, and with them, the sorrow neck-and-neck with the righteous guitar is amplified. While it appeals to a more base sense, it’s also a smarter take than loudness for the sake of loudness. Time replicates a half-awake state: it’s not so dreamy that it gets unmoored in endless seas of effects, and yet the heavy guitars, appealing as they are, aren’t exactly a dominating gravitational force. “52hz Whale’s” drone is as light as any of the less heavy moments here, and “Gone” and “Big World” both recall the trudge of Earth’s Pentastar: In the Style of Demons. Martin’s voice also plays into this vibe; it’s soothing but cryptic, not exactly a lullaby. (He’s a professed black metal fan, so it makes sense that his voice isn’t always forthcoming.) These dynamics reveal a tenderness that’s often lost by going on either extreme. Time will make as much sense in a loud rock club as it will alone in a room lit only by faint lights. Cloakroom inhabit the space of artists who take the appealing parts of a masculine pose without being wholly trapped by them. There’s a power that comes from not having to choose between being tough and being vulnerable."

Mobius Band

Three EP

Rock

Joe Tangari

Opening bands have one of the hardest jobs in the world. Often mismatched on the bill, these poor souls know you're not there to see them, and that most of the audience will spend their set impatiently clicking their Indiglos to gauge how much longer until the main attraction takes the stage. And then there's the pressure of realizing they've got just this one chance to reach everyone in the venue-- if their set doesn't go well, they've likely lost potential audience members for good, and even if it does, it's a crap-shoot as to whether or not any new fans will jump on board. Every once in a while, though, the opening act just nails it: the audience matches up, the performance kills, and just enough confidence gets projected from the stage to distract from the passage of time and win a few mailing list signees. I caught the Mobius Band opening for Hood and Surface of Eceon about nine months ago, and this is pretty much exactly what happened. I came in wondering who they were, and walked out with a copy of their second numerically titled EP, the hand-packaged Two. And it mostly lived up to their show, with a few pleasantly surprising twists and turns thrown in. The band's kitchen sink blend of everything from fusion-era Miles to prime Kraut groove to glitch to straight-up rock was pursued from a fresh angle, and their exploratory, amateurish approach was charming. With the release of Three, their third EP in two years, the Massachusetts trio make the jump into the world of labels and grow fully into their sound, eradicating nearly every inconsistency found on their past releases. The speed of the band's progress is stunning. I won't even venture to imagine where they'll be in another year. Opener "Frozen Lake in Unison" is a fairly basic instrumental-- choppy drums, loosely wielded guitars, some background glockenspiel tinkling and a vaguely jazzy feel, but the recording renders it much deeper, utilizing the ambience of the room it was recorded in (and the freeway, if I'm hearing things correctly) and samples of indecipherable conversation to open the composition up. "Burnoff" surges forth in its wake, swathed in sheets of buzzing analogue synth, underlined by a cutting, tonally limited bassline. There's a deceptively infectious pop song hiding in all the buzz, though, and that's what really makes it work. The Mobius vocal chops are up of late, and they've crafted their most immediate melody for the occasion here. The upward quality arc continues with the gorgeous acoustic guitar and crunchy beats of "Arrows". Uneasy string samples flutter in and out of the background, haunting the laid-back vocal melody and ultimately taking over the song as the drum kit rises over the programming to bring everything to an unsettled conclusion. "Well-Thumbed Page" simultaneously offers a nod to the American Analog Set and a wink to Autechre, while the impassioned strumming of "Snow on Snow" puts you in the austere beauty and calm of a winter landscape without turning your fingers blue. The EP closes with "Plastic Pillar", a creeping thing that opens with harmonics, slippery beats and barely audible ambient voices, and ultimately morphs into a pulverizing assault led by overdriven drums and topped-out VU meters. With Three, the Mobius Band have definitively disproved their own punny moniker, proving that they do, in fact, have more than one side. As they continue to focus their sound and hone their craft, I have no doubt they'll emerge as a force to be reckoned with. For now, they're certainly one worth listening to.

Artist: Mobius Band, Album: Three EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Opening bands have one of the hardest jobs in the world. Often mismatched on the bill, these poor souls know you're not there to see them, and that most of the audience will spend their set impatiently clicking their Indiglos to gauge how much longer until the main attraction takes the stage. And then there's the pressure of realizing they've got just this one chance to reach everyone in the venue-- if their set doesn't go well, they've likely lost potential audience members for good, and even if it does, it's a crap-shoot as to whether or not any new fans will jump on board. Every once in a while, though, the opening act just nails it: the audience matches up, the performance kills, and just enough confidence gets projected from the stage to distract from the passage of time and win a few mailing list signees. I caught the Mobius Band opening for Hood and Surface of Eceon about nine months ago, and this is pretty much exactly what happened. I came in wondering who they were, and walked out with a copy of their second numerically titled EP, the hand-packaged Two. And it mostly lived up to their show, with a few pleasantly surprising twists and turns thrown in. The band's kitchen sink blend of everything from fusion-era Miles to prime Kraut groove to glitch to straight-up rock was pursued from a fresh angle, and their exploratory, amateurish approach was charming. With the release of Three, their third EP in two years, the Massachusetts trio make the jump into the world of labels and grow fully into their sound, eradicating nearly every inconsistency found on their past releases. The speed of the band's progress is stunning. I won't even venture to imagine where they'll be in another year. Opener "Frozen Lake in Unison" is a fairly basic instrumental-- choppy drums, loosely wielded guitars, some background glockenspiel tinkling and a vaguely jazzy feel, but the recording renders it much deeper, utilizing the ambience of the room it was recorded in (and the freeway, if I'm hearing things correctly) and samples of indecipherable conversation to open the composition up. "Burnoff" surges forth in its wake, swathed in sheets of buzzing analogue synth, underlined by a cutting, tonally limited bassline. There's a deceptively infectious pop song hiding in all the buzz, though, and that's what really makes it work. The Mobius vocal chops are up of late, and they've crafted their most immediate melody for the occasion here. The upward quality arc continues with the gorgeous acoustic guitar and crunchy beats of "Arrows". Uneasy string samples flutter in and out of the background, haunting the laid-back vocal melody and ultimately taking over the song as the drum kit rises over the programming to bring everything to an unsettled conclusion. "Well-Thumbed Page" simultaneously offers a nod to the American Analog Set and a wink to Autechre, while the impassioned strumming of "Snow on Snow" puts you in the austere beauty and calm of a winter landscape without turning your fingers blue. The EP closes with "Plastic Pillar", a creeping thing that opens with harmonics, slippery beats and barely audible ambient voices, and ultimately morphs into a pulverizing assault led by overdriven drums and topped-out VU meters. With Three, the Mobius Band have definitively disproved their own punny moniker, proving that they do, in fact, have more than one side. As they continue to focus their sound and hone their craft, I have no doubt they'll emerge as a force to be reckoned with. For now, they're certainly one worth listening to."

+/-

You Are Here

Sam Ubl

Weaving inoffensive melodies into odd time signatures and jagged rhythms is not an effortless task. Few bands even attempt it, and those who do are mostly found in hardcore and prog-rock, which is all but predicated on senseless scale masturbation. One of the very few bands in the past decade who built a successful discography on this formula is The Dismemberment Plan, who had a lot more going for them than just their rhythmic chicanery. +/- are indie's current masters of meter, and may one day inherit the Plan's crown as champions of the pop periphery, if only they sandpaper their edges and stick to their guns. On 2002's Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut, +/- employed glitchy samples, then common only in IDM, and electro-pop. They were, in fact, progenitors of the sound that would, for better or worse, come to be termed "lap-pop." James Baluyut's lullaby vocals and an array of dreamy synth pads helped smooth the stuttering a bit, but the sound was unquestionably loop-driven. At times, their compositions were so choppy and repetitive that they sounded as if they were woven together by a Garage Band maestro, yet always retained human character. The band also understood that, in some situations, the pale, robotic sound of a drum machine better accompanies a song than a less exacting, more colorful human performance. Chris Deaner gladly took a backseat throughout most of Self-Titled, only to emerge at the most opportune moments. You Are Here is a much more ambitious effort than its precursor. It's evident that +/- are attempting to branch out stylistically while simultaneously condensing their sound. The results, however, aren't always fruitful, as the band's incessant genre-hopping frequently sounds stilted. Only on "She's Got Your Eyes", a tasteful odd-time samba, do they master a niche experiment. Deaner's agile drumming offers a nice counterpoint to the one-bar guitar loop upon which the song is structured, while Baluyut delivers the line, "I've got ways to make you pay," more benevolently than would seem appropriate for a song about a man abandoning his pregnant girlfriend. When the band relaxes into a wider, 4/4 time channel, they often succumb to prosaism. "Summer Dress 1" is a blithely strummed ditty that sounds as if it was torn straight from Chris Carraba's How to Be a Sissy Bitch Handbook, while "Trapped Under Ice Floes (Redux)" dangles not far from emo mediocrity. But fortunately, a more mature set of influences shines through on You Are Here's best numbers. On the sinuous opening track "Ventriloquist", Baluyut evokes Michael Stipe's nasal crooning when he sings, "I'm riding in a car/ Please don't take this exit/ And please don't drop me just yet." Other songs recall Joy Division and Depeche Mode, as Baluyut's brittle voice tiptoes to center stage with only a spare backing of guitars and drum loops. "Surprise", another standout, is a nocturnal rumination that would feel right at home among The The's standard fare. If anything holds You Are Here back from realizing the promise hinted at on +/-'s debut, it's the band's relentless modesty. While I can think of a hundred bands for whom it would be a welcome attribute, +/- are often frustratingly retiring, suppressing their prodigious rhythmic and melodic talents in favor of something more straightforward. Many of the songs here aspire to almost radio-friendly levels of accessibility and shamelessly exhaust easy pop cliches. Still, a few tracks manage to recapture the pop bliss the band achieved by doing it their way on Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut. If only for the endless promise of that record is You Are Here somewhat of a letdown, like untold albums from bands who choose to loiter on the cusp of something bigger and can't quite make that breakthrough step to greatness.

Artist: +/-, Album: You Are Here, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Weaving inoffensive melodies into odd time signatures and jagged rhythms is not an effortless task. Few bands even attempt it, and those who do are mostly found in hardcore and prog-rock, which is all but predicated on senseless scale masturbation. One of the very few bands in the past decade who built a successful discography on this formula is The Dismemberment Plan, who had a lot more going for them than just their rhythmic chicanery. +/- are indie's current masters of meter, and may one day inherit the Plan's crown as champions of the pop periphery, if only they sandpaper their edges and stick to their guns. On 2002's Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut, +/- employed glitchy samples, then common only in IDM, and electro-pop. They were, in fact, progenitors of the sound that would, for better or worse, come to be termed "lap-pop." James Baluyut's lullaby vocals and an array of dreamy synth pads helped smooth the stuttering a bit, but the sound was unquestionably loop-driven. At times, their compositions were so choppy and repetitive that they sounded as if they were woven together by a Garage Band maestro, yet always retained human character. The band also understood that, in some situations, the pale, robotic sound of a drum machine better accompanies a song than a less exacting, more colorful human performance. Chris Deaner gladly took a backseat throughout most of Self-Titled, only to emerge at the most opportune moments. You Are Here is a much more ambitious effort than its precursor. It's evident that +/- are attempting to branch out stylistically while simultaneously condensing their sound. The results, however, aren't always fruitful, as the band's incessant genre-hopping frequently sounds stilted. Only on "She's Got Your Eyes", a tasteful odd-time samba, do they master a niche experiment. Deaner's agile drumming offers a nice counterpoint to the one-bar guitar loop upon which the song is structured, while Baluyut delivers the line, "I've got ways to make you pay," more benevolently than would seem appropriate for a song about a man abandoning his pregnant girlfriend. When the band relaxes into a wider, 4/4 time channel, they often succumb to prosaism. "Summer Dress 1" is a blithely strummed ditty that sounds as if it was torn straight from Chris Carraba's How to Be a Sissy Bitch Handbook, while "Trapped Under Ice Floes (Redux)" dangles not far from emo mediocrity. But fortunately, a more mature set of influences shines through on You Are Here's best numbers. On the sinuous opening track "Ventriloquist", Baluyut evokes Michael Stipe's nasal crooning when he sings, "I'm riding in a car/ Please don't take this exit/ And please don't drop me just yet." Other songs recall Joy Division and Depeche Mode, as Baluyut's brittle voice tiptoes to center stage with only a spare backing of guitars and drum loops. "Surprise", another standout, is a nocturnal rumination that would feel right at home among The The's standard fare. If anything holds You Are Here back from realizing the promise hinted at on +/-'s debut, it's the band's relentless modesty. While I can think of a hundred bands for whom it would be a welcome attribute, +/- are often frustratingly retiring, suppressing their prodigious rhythmic and melodic talents in favor of something more straightforward. Many of the songs here aspire to almost radio-friendly levels of accessibility and shamelessly exhaust easy pop cliches. Still, a few tracks manage to recapture the pop bliss the band achieved by doing it their way on Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut. If only for the endless promise of that record is You Are Here somewhat of a letdown, like untold albums from bands who choose to loiter on the cusp of something bigger and can't quite make that breakthrough step to greatness."

Eternal Summers

Correct Behavior

Rock

Lindsay Zoladz

Someone once told me that you are always 17 in your hometown; this also seems to be true in Eternal Summers' songs. Since their 2010 self-titled EP, the Roanoke, Virginia, duo (which recently became a trio) has been writing melodic, minimalist tunes about rules, rebellion, and first loves that conjure the bratty sweetness of the Pastels or the lilting noise-pop of Henry's Dress. They called their songs things like "Prisoner", "Cog", and "Disciplinarian". That last one kicked off their spirited but spotty 2010 album Silver: a fiery, one-and-a-half minute pop temper tantrum throughout which Nicole Yun flaunted the titular polysyllable like a 10-dollar word she'd overheard at the grown-ups' table. "I think it's high time I had a disciplinarian," she sneered. "The kind who tells me why I should follow the rules again." The taut, post-punk jerk of the verse locked her lyrics into a staccato rhythm, but when the chorus came it was like summer vacation: She threw her head back and wailed. As its title implies, their new record, Correct Behavior, is also animated by that familiar but innocent strain of anarchy-- a distain for dumb rules and a desire to escape the mundane. "Who could understand you?" Yun hollers on "Wonder", a wickedly angsty, brooding-in-the-bedroom anthem. "Mom and Dad, please/ You can never enter/ Shut the back door." Miraculously, although the band members are all now around 30, their commitment to exploring these conflicts never feels awkward, stale, or even particularly juvenile: Their emotional immediacy and depth of feeling grows with each album. With its lush, pearly guitar tones and violin accompaniment, the lead-off track, "Millions", is the fullest-sounding thing they've ever done, but its refrain is classic Eternal Summers: "I've got to shake this shell and break it into millions." Correct Behavior feels like the band's breakout album, and not just because it showcases a bigger sound-- but for the much more literal reason that a lot of these songs are about breaking out. Rebelling against mom and dad is one thing, but breaking free of the limits you've imposed on your own identity is trickier. Up until now, the most widely reported part of the Eternal Summers story has been their involvement with something called the Magic Twig Community, a group of musicians living in the mountains of Roanoke who all play in each others' bands, record each others' albums with vintage gear, and exist far outside the steady churn of the hype machine. In a way, Correct Behavior is the band's first attempt to break out of this sphere, too-- though with a bit of hesitation. They recorded the tracks (analog) in Roanoke, and then they sent the tapes north to New York to be mixed by Ravonettes frontman Sune Rose Wagner and producer Alonzo Vargas (the pair also worked their reverby magic on the Dum Dum Girls' Only in Dreams). Having kept it lo-fi for so long, Yun and Daniel Cundiff both confessed that the move made them nervous, like they were giving up control. The result could have been too large a leap, but Wagner and Vargas' production strikes a comfortable balance between the warmth and intimacy of the band's earlier work and a more expanded sound. The slow songs on Silver often lagged, but here they're some of the best: The dreamy crooners "Good as You" and "It's Easy" have enough atmosphere to get lost in. Cundiff's hyperactive drumming is rocket fuel for the more post-punk influenced songs like "You Kill" and "Girls in the City" (a moody, modish track on which he sings lead), and the addition of Jonathan Woods on bass frees Yun up to become a much more engaging guitarist-- check her meteorite riffage on "You Kill". The trio sounds huge, and that feeling of liberation they've always sung about is, finally, something you feel viscerally in their music. Not every moment of Correct Behavior is as exhilarating as its opening four-song run. "Disappear" and "Heaven and Hell" weigh down the second half not so much because they're bad songs, but because they don't take the record any place it hasn't already been. And, though "Girls in the City" is a high point, Cundiff's deadpan vocals are such a departure from Yun's that the song feels tacked on, as if they haven't found a way to incorporate Cundiff's songs into their overall aesthetic. Still, these are spaces for improvement for a band obviously interested, as Correct Behavior proves, in upping its game. It's a step towards maturity, but in this case growing up just means growing louder-- busting through the bedroom ceiling and sounding that much closer to the sky.

Artist: Eternal Summers, Album: Correct Behavior, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Someone once told me that you are always 17 in your hometown; this also seems to be true in Eternal Summers' songs. Since their 2010 self-titled EP, the Roanoke, Virginia, duo (which recently became a trio) has been writing melodic, minimalist tunes about rules, rebellion, and first loves that conjure the bratty sweetness of the Pastels or the lilting noise-pop of Henry's Dress. They called their songs things like "Prisoner", "Cog", and "Disciplinarian". That last one kicked off their spirited but spotty 2010 album Silver: a fiery, one-and-a-half minute pop temper tantrum throughout which Nicole Yun flaunted the titular polysyllable like a 10-dollar word she'd overheard at the grown-ups' table. "I think it's high time I had a disciplinarian," she sneered. "The kind who tells me why I should follow the rules again." The taut, post-punk jerk of the verse locked her lyrics into a staccato rhythm, but when the chorus came it was like summer vacation: She threw her head back and wailed. As its title implies, their new record, Correct Behavior, is also animated by that familiar but innocent strain of anarchy-- a distain for dumb rules and a desire to escape the mundane. "Who could understand you?" Yun hollers on "Wonder", a wickedly angsty, brooding-in-the-bedroom anthem. "Mom and Dad, please/ You can never enter/ Shut the back door." Miraculously, although the band members are all now around 30, their commitment to exploring these conflicts never feels awkward, stale, or even particularly juvenile: Their emotional immediacy and depth of feeling grows with each album. With its lush, pearly guitar tones and violin accompaniment, the lead-off track, "Millions", is the fullest-sounding thing they've ever done, but its refrain is classic Eternal Summers: "I've got to shake this shell and break it into millions." Correct Behavior feels like the band's breakout album, and not just because it showcases a bigger sound-- but for the much more literal reason that a lot of these songs are about breaking out. Rebelling against mom and dad is one thing, but breaking free of the limits you've imposed on your own identity is trickier. Up until now, the most widely reported part of the Eternal Summers story has been their involvement with something called the Magic Twig Community, a group of musicians living in the mountains of Roanoke who all play in each others' bands, record each others' albums with vintage gear, and exist far outside the steady churn of the hype machine. In a way, Correct Behavior is the band's first attempt to break out of this sphere, too-- though with a bit of hesitation. They recorded the tracks (analog) in Roanoke, and then they sent the tapes north to New York to be mixed by Ravonettes frontman Sune Rose Wagner and producer Alonzo Vargas (the pair also worked their reverby magic on the Dum Dum Girls' Only in Dreams). Having kept it lo-fi for so long, Yun and Daniel Cundiff both confessed that the move made them nervous, like they were giving up control. The result could have been too large a leap, but Wagner and Vargas' production strikes a comfortable balance between the warmth and intimacy of the band's earlier work and a more expanded sound. The slow songs on Silver often lagged, but here they're some of the best: The dreamy crooners "Good as You" and "It's Easy" have enough atmosphere to get lost in. Cundiff's hyperactive drumming is rocket fuel for the more post-punk influenced songs like "You Kill" and "Girls in the City" (a moody, modish track on which he sings lead), and the addition of Jonathan Woods on bass frees Yun up to become a much more engaging guitarist-- check her meteorite riffage on "You Kill". The trio sounds huge, and that feeling of liberation they've always sung about is, finally, something you feel viscerally in their music. Not every moment of Correct Behavior is as exhilarating as its opening four-song run. "Disappear" and "Heaven and Hell" weigh down the second half not so much because they're bad songs, but because they don't take the record any place it hasn't already been. And, though "Girls in the City" is a high point, Cundiff's deadpan vocals are such a departure from Yun's that the song feels tacked on, as if they haven't found a way to incorporate Cundiff's songs into their overall aesthetic. Still, these are spaces for improvement for a band obviously interested, as Correct Behavior proves, in upping its game. It's a step towards maturity, but in this case growing up just means growing louder-- busting through the bedroom ceiling and sounding that much closer to the sky."

Halifax Pier

Put Your Gloves On and Wave

Rock

Christopher F. Schiel

Last year's self-titled record from Halifax Pier delivered melancholy to all who would listen, with a violinist and a cellist added to the standard rock quartet of two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. Rather than only serving ornamental duties, the classical string counterparts of Halifax Pier play integral roles in the musical conversations of the music. While Halifax Pier hasn't completely rid themselves of their despair, they seem to be more optimistic these days. Half of the six tracks on their sophomore full-length, Put Your Gloves On and Wave, are instrumentals, and the songs with lyrics seem to see a brighter light at the end of the tunnel in contrast to the downtrodden verses of love and loss that permeated their 1999 self-titled debut. "Lightly Noise" is the most lighthearted track, with a thumping bass-snare beat in two, finger-snapping, and a pretty finger-picked guitar line. The lyrics are self-referential as they tell of the pervasiveness of music with lines like, "The rhythm in our steps and the thumping in our breasts." The track closes with an all-together-now sing-along taken from a Chris Williamson song, "Song of the Soul." It's fairly uplifting stuff. "Passing," while not so overtly joyful, is lovely. Opening with the sound of a distant train, wind noise accompanies two winding acoustic guitar lines-- one for each ear. The march-tempo drums and the melodic bass stylings of Greg Burns are eventually accompanied by interlocking phrases of violin and cello. At one point, the violin even breaks into a frenetic string-crossing arpeggio straight from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Then comes the downright gorgeous last verse, in which frontman Charles Sommer's vocals are echoed by guest Colleen Doyle: "Let my empty spirit rise tonight." "That Old Grizzly Thing," the instrumental that opens the record, fades in with a meandering conversation between the cello and violin. The drum and light electric guitar enter to reveal a dark waltz. The euphonious harmonic ornaments of the acoustic guitar and rooted bassline actually sound more lovely than grizzly. Then there's "Sew Your Gloves On," which features sections in seven. The track is slightly reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor in their more coherent moments, when they're not so damned consumed with the collapse of modern society. And finally, the album closes with "Our Pape," a meandering track that feels closer to something from the Windham Hill collection than anything remotely indie rock. So, yeah. Halifax Pier makes pretty music. While it's rarely emotionally consuming, and overall isn't anything notably new or groundbreaking, it does make for a calming listen. What more do you want? It's nice.

Artist: Halifax Pier, Album: Put Your Gloves On and Wave, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Last year's self-titled record from Halifax Pier delivered melancholy to all who would listen, with a violinist and a cellist added to the standard rock quartet of two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. Rather than only serving ornamental duties, the classical string counterparts of Halifax Pier play integral roles in the musical conversations of the music. While Halifax Pier hasn't completely rid themselves of their despair, they seem to be more optimistic these days. Half of the six tracks on their sophomore full-length, Put Your Gloves On and Wave, are instrumentals, and the songs with lyrics seem to see a brighter light at the end of the tunnel in contrast to the downtrodden verses of love and loss that permeated their 1999 self-titled debut. "Lightly Noise" is the most lighthearted track, with a thumping bass-snare beat in two, finger-snapping, and a pretty finger-picked guitar line. The lyrics are self-referential as they tell of the pervasiveness of music with lines like, "The rhythm in our steps and the thumping in our breasts." The track closes with an all-together-now sing-along taken from a Chris Williamson song, "Song of the Soul." It's fairly uplifting stuff. "Passing," while not so overtly joyful, is lovely. Opening with the sound of a distant train, wind noise accompanies two winding acoustic guitar lines-- one for each ear. The march-tempo drums and the melodic bass stylings of Greg Burns are eventually accompanied by interlocking phrases of violin and cello. At one point, the violin even breaks into a frenetic string-crossing arpeggio straight from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Then comes the downright gorgeous last verse, in which frontman Charles Sommer's vocals are echoed by guest Colleen Doyle: "Let my empty spirit rise tonight." "That Old Grizzly Thing," the instrumental that opens the record, fades in with a meandering conversation between the cello and violin. The drum and light electric guitar enter to reveal a dark waltz. The euphonious harmonic ornaments of the acoustic guitar and rooted bassline actually sound more lovely than grizzly. Then there's "Sew Your Gloves On," which features sections in seven. The track is slightly reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor in their more coherent moments, when they're not so damned consumed with the collapse of modern society. And finally, the album closes with "Our Pape," a meandering track that feels closer to something from the Windham Hill collection than anything remotely indie rock. So, yeah. Halifax Pier makes pretty music. While it's rarely emotionally consuming, and overall isn't anything notably new or groundbreaking, it does make for a calming listen. What more do you want? It's nice."

theMIND

Summer Camp

Rap

Matthew Ramirez

TheMIND (real name Zarif Wilder) bides his time floating between two Chicago worlds: He has backing vocals on Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book and appeared on SaveMoney Crew affiliate’s projects like Joey Purp’s excellent iiiDrops and Noname’s Telefone, and Chance-compatriots Donnie Trumpet and Knox Fortune make appearances on his debut project Summer Camp, which snuck out into the world last June. But he made a name for himself before that, as a member of production collective THEMpeople, producing songs for Mick Jenkins and guesting on his albums (along with other auxiliary members of this scene, Sean Deaux and Saba). It’s an easy-but-accurate comparison to place theMIND in this world: maybe it’s the tone of his voice more than his lyrical content, but he’s this scene’s Frank Ocean. Summer Camp isn’t Nostalgia, Ultra, though, even though I think it aspires to be, with its vaguely conceptual narrative (songs that play in a car as a couple vacillate between talking and arguing) and snippets of tracks that filter in and out of focus like a dream (or a channel surfer). But its biggest strengths lie elsewhere—theMIND is a gifted producer, and the way he’s constructed this record is less like some alt-R&B throwaway mixtape and more like a cavernous, meandering album. A whistling tea kettle sets things off on opener “Summer Camp” before the song finds the album’s cushiest groove. A headphone-friendly nocturnal mood, consuming the album like embers around a campfire, is established: “Run through the woods if the rain comes/cover your head ’til the pain numbs/lose it all in the earth, leave your tears in the dirt/fall in love ’til it hurts/we young,” works the same wistful, doomed-young-romance lane Ocean has trafficked in since 2011 (if not recently). It’s not the most subtle stuff, but the pleasures of Summer Camp reside in Wilder’s ability to conjure a mood with his production, then sell the emotion with the most direct line of songwriting. “Pale Rose” is the single, and it’s less effective, a propulsive, “I Would Die 4 U”-type beat that suffers from a generic, overwrought bridge: “Hey you/right over there/who even loves/who even cares?” It’s the growing pains of a songwriter still trying to reach his final form. On the brisk “In Peace,” an introspective, neo-soul-esque production that would slot nicely onto Jamila Woods’ HEAVN, Wilder hits his deepest nerve: “My granny told me read my Bible/as I start to daydream/I see it all in HD/we’re bigger than they told us we were.” On the Noname-assisted “Only the Beginning,” he adopts a husky, sing-song Isaiah Rashad flow: “I often sweat when haunted nightly by regret like/why I didn’t kill that nigga when my sister told me what he did to her?” He rambles a bit more about his sister, but never hits the detail of what happened to her—he’s yet to develop a songwriter’s storytelling instinct, but he’s attempting to tap into that vein. Wilder’s gift is to summon some of the magic of guys like Ocean, Rashad, and Chance, but it’s also a curse, because you can more easily chart out how much more maturing he has to do before he can hang with them. All said, Summer Camp is one of the summer’s few surprises, a low-stakes album available for free, the late night stoner’s LP we didn’t know we needed. If you like Mick Jenkins but wished his songs were a little lighter, or if you want to hear an earnest young Chicago artist find his voice without literally sounding like Chance, theMIND’s Summer Camp is a pleasant place to stop in. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified theMIND as a member of Chance the Rapper’s SaveMoney Crew. It has been amended.

Artist: theMIND, Album: Summer Camp, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "TheMIND (real name Zarif Wilder) bides his time floating between two Chicago worlds: He has backing vocals on Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book and appeared on SaveMoney Crew affiliate’s projects like Joey Purp’s excellent iiiDrops and Noname’s Telefone, and Chance-compatriots Donnie Trumpet and Knox Fortune make appearances on his debut project Summer Camp, which snuck out into the world last June. But he made a name for himself before that, as a member of production collective THEMpeople, producing songs for Mick Jenkins and guesting on his albums (along with other auxiliary members of this scene, Sean Deaux and Saba). It’s an easy-but-accurate comparison to place theMIND in this world: maybe it’s the tone of his voice more than his lyrical content, but he’s this scene’s Frank Ocean. Summer Camp isn’t Nostalgia, Ultra, though, even though I think it aspires to be, with its vaguely conceptual narrative (songs that play in a car as a couple vacillate between talking and arguing) and snippets of tracks that filter in and out of focus like a dream (or a channel surfer). But its biggest strengths lie elsewhere—theMIND is a gifted producer, and the way he’s constructed this record is less like some alt-R&B throwaway mixtape and more like a cavernous, meandering album. A whistling tea kettle sets things off on opener “Summer Camp” before the song finds the album’s cushiest groove. A headphone-friendly nocturnal mood, consuming the album like embers around a campfire, is established: “Run through the woods if the rain comes/cover your head ’til the pain numbs/lose it all in the earth, leave your tears in the dirt/fall in love ’til it hurts/we young,” works the same wistful, doomed-young-romance lane Ocean has trafficked in since 2011 (if not recently). It’s not the most subtle stuff, but the pleasures of Summer Camp reside in Wilder’s ability to conjure a mood with his production, then sell the emotion with the most direct line of songwriting. “Pale Rose” is the single, and it’s less effective, a propulsive, “I Would Die 4 U”-type beat that suffers from a generic, overwrought bridge: “Hey you/right over there/who even loves/who even cares?” It’s the growing pains of a songwriter still trying to reach his final form. On the brisk “In Peace,” an introspective, neo-soul-esque production that would slot nicely onto Jamila Woods’ HEAVN, Wilder hits his deepest nerve: “My granny told me read my Bible/as I start to daydream/I see it all in HD/we’re bigger than they told us we were.” On the Noname-assisted “Only the Beginning,” he adopts a husky, sing-song Isaiah Rashad flow: “I often sweat when haunted nightly by regret like/why I didn’t kill that nigga when my sister told me what he did to her?” He rambles a bit more about his sister, but never hits the detail of what happened to her—he’s yet to develop a songwriter’s storytelling instinct, but he’s attempting to tap into that vein. Wilder’s gift is to summon some of the magic of guys like Ocean, Rashad, and Chance, but it’s also a curse, because you can more easily chart out how much more maturing he has to do before he can hang with them. All said, Summer Camp is one of the summer’s few surprises, a low-stakes album available for free, the late night stoner’s LP we didn’t know we needed. If you like Mick Jenkins but wished his songs were a little lighter, or if you want to hear an earnest young Chicago artist find his voice without literally sounding like Chance, theMIND’s Summer Camp is a pleasant place to stop in. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified theMIND as a member of Chance the Rapper’s SaveMoney Crew. It has been amended."

My Brightest Diamond

Bring Me the Workhorse

Rock

John Motley

On "Disappear", My Brightest Diamond, aka Shara Worden, sings, "I don't think we're meant to stay here very long." Given her penchant for high drama and brooding atmospheres, it could be read as a bout of fatalism. But, on her debut, Worden is practically obsessed with the ephemeral, acquiescing that love, life, and beauty are as fleeting as songs. Like many card-carrying aesthetes, she focuses on isolated moments in which innocent fascination and something much darker collide. And like a collector preserving her specimens, she runs a pin through these memories to anchor them, whether observing a dragonfly struggle in a spider web in "Dragonfly", discovering a dead robin in the backyard in "The Robin's Jar", or lying in the crook of a lover's arm in "Golden Star". Musically, Bring Me the Workhorse blends the artsy end of indie rock with classical touches. On the one hand, My Brightest Diamond sounds like an indie band, with its tasteful but precise rhythm section and Worden's tough, distinct guitar playing. But, throughout, strings take a central role in the composition of the songs; they're woven into the songs' fabric, rather than added as decorative post-production flourishes. Coupled with Worden's operatic voice-- which ranges from a sinister growl to a glassy delicacy-- the accomplished, graceful music places her closer to the avant-pop of Antony and the Johnsons than a typical Asthmatic Kitty pop-kid troupe. The songs themselves can be subject to the moments of unsettling beauty that occur in the lyrics. And, typically, it's Worden's voice that delivers them: the subtle mimicking of a ringing telephone in "Something of an End"; the piercing vocal that soars during the chorus of "Golden Star"; the husky torch-singing of "The Good & the Bad Guy". At the album's center, "We Were Sparkling" marries these two halves to best effect. With a cool and breathless delivery, Worden recounts meeting someone (a lover? a childhood friend?) at the edge of a river to tie "pretty things" to a thread that dangles from a tree. Over fragile strums and harmonics, she weaves a succession of images together like the pretty things on the thread: "Lipstick and feathers, pieces of glass/ Chandelier baubles and empty bottles of wine." After exhuming these memories, she whispers, "I'm afraid to forget you," and the music soon swells with a chorus of angelic voices, an eerily tinkling music box and a distant skitter of feedback. All of this may sound a little over-the-top-- and it is. There are definitely times when the songs would benefit from subtler handling. But Worden takes herself seriously, and such unapologetically dramatic material will make her a tough sell to indie fans who still hold irony and emotional detachment dear. It is, though, impossible to miss her confidence as a performer and it allows her to tread territory that would make others look clumsy, to string together multiple moments of beauty.

Artist: My Brightest Diamond, Album: Bring Me the Workhorse, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "On "Disappear", My Brightest Diamond, aka Shara Worden, sings, "I don't think we're meant to stay here very long." Given her penchant for high drama and brooding atmospheres, it could be read as a bout of fatalism. But, on her debut, Worden is practically obsessed with the ephemeral, acquiescing that love, life, and beauty are as fleeting as songs. Like many card-carrying aesthetes, she focuses on isolated moments in which innocent fascination and something much darker collide. And like a collector preserving her specimens, she runs a pin through these memories to anchor them, whether observing a dragonfly struggle in a spider web in "Dragonfly", discovering a dead robin in the backyard in "The Robin's Jar", or lying in the crook of a lover's arm in "Golden Star". Musically, Bring Me the Workhorse blends the artsy end of indie rock with classical touches. On the one hand, My Brightest Diamond sounds like an indie band, with its tasteful but precise rhythm section and Worden's tough, distinct guitar playing. But, throughout, strings take a central role in the composition of the songs; they're woven into the songs' fabric, rather than added as decorative post-production flourishes. Coupled with Worden's operatic voice-- which ranges from a sinister growl to a glassy delicacy-- the accomplished, graceful music places her closer to the avant-pop of Antony and the Johnsons than a typical Asthmatic Kitty pop-kid troupe. The songs themselves can be subject to the moments of unsettling beauty that occur in the lyrics. And, typically, it's Worden's voice that delivers them: the subtle mimicking of a ringing telephone in "Something of an End"; the piercing vocal that soars during the chorus of "Golden Star"; the husky torch-singing of "The Good & the Bad Guy". At the album's center, "We Were Sparkling" marries these two halves to best effect. With a cool and breathless delivery, Worden recounts meeting someone (a lover? a childhood friend?) at the edge of a river to tie "pretty things" to a thread that dangles from a tree. Over fragile strums and harmonics, she weaves a succession of images together like the pretty things on the thread: "Lipstick and feathers, pieces of glass/ Chandelier baubles and empty bottles of wine." After exhuming these memories, she whispers, "I'm afraid to forget you," and the music soon swells with a chorus of angelic voices, an eerily tinkling music box and a distant skitter of feedback. All of this may sound a little over-the-top-- and it is. There are definitely times when the songs would benefit from subtler handling. But Worden takes herself seriously, and such unapologetically dramatic material will make her a tough sell to indie fans who still hold irony and emotional detachment dear. It is, though, impossible to miss her confidence as a performer and it allows her to tread territory that would make others look clumsy, to string together multiple moments of beauty."

Valgeir Sigurðsson

Dissonance

Experimental

Seth Colter Walls

Thanks to his part in establishing the Bedroom Community label, Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson also doubles as a classical impresario. He has long worked closely with label co-founder Nico Muhly, collaborating on the occasional short opera and helping to produce a series of drone EPs. On his own albums for the imprint, Valgeir has put his stamp on contemporary electro-acoustic trends, with the chamber music programs Architecture of Loss and Draumalandið. Already in 2017, Valgeir has contributed a pair of compelling pieces to an album by the group Nordic Affect. That pair of compositions gives a sense of his range. The propulsive electronic opus “Antigravity” would fit nicely on many of his prior solo sets, while on “Raindamage,” he foregrounds acoustic instruments while incorporating digital effects. For his own label, Valgeir now offers an ambitious program of long-form works that touch on the computer-edited acoustic approach of “Raindamage,” two of which come loaded with weighty concepts that reach back into classical music’s past. The expansive title track makes a direct reference to Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19, commonly called the “Dissonance” quartet (thanks to the overlapping, chromatic lines that are present during its opening). Valgeir’s intention was to stretch Mozart’s initial gambit into a much longer piece: “I took the bars and stretched the 40 seconds out to 23 minutes. The movement is the same as Mozart envisioned, only much slower.” As an experiment, this seems promising, but this particular adaptation robs Mozart’s progression of too much drama. In the String Quartet No. 19, part of the wonderment is caused by the fact that the initial music is packed with so many clashing elements. Even as the music swoons slowly, this density quickly outstrips your ability to keep track of the overall direction, which gives the writing a dizzying power. During Valgeir’s “Dissonance,” which was multi-tracked in the studio and later modified digitally, a listener can become too well accustomed to each portion of the music, and the crucial sense of surprise is gone. Other extended works on the album have more purchase on ingenuity. The title of “No Nights Dark Enough” references the lyrics to English Renaissance composer John Dowland’s iconic “Flow, My Tears.” Valgeir does honor to the source material; this Dowland-influenced music is still suffused with sorrow. But the sudden, downward-sliding tones in the first movement (“flow”) have a savagery that feels beholden to no past. The second movement (“infamy sings”) sets some fast-repeating piano lines against drawn-out brass and string exclamations, and the contrast feels like some elegantly shouted objection in the face of trauma. The glitchier third section (“fear and grief and pain”) treads on some production grounds Trent Reznor might recognize. This emerging sense of a bummed-out lineage—from Dowland to The Fragile to Valgeir—makes a strange, perfect form of sense. The album’s final piece is the three-movement “1875.” Pitched as a reflection on an historic Icelandic settlement in Canada, it’s foremost an acoustic piece. And the composer’s ability to craft a journeying instrumental narrative is never in doubt. After a jarring beginning, it explores moods of unease—eventually closing in a hushed, chilling fashion. Valgeir surely has more electronic beats and drones to create, but purely symphonic writing remains well within his grasp.

Artist: Valgeir Sigurðsson, Album: Dissonance, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Thanks to his part in establishing the Bedroom Community label, Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson also doubles as a classical impresario. He has long worked closely with label co-founder Nico Muhly, collaborating on the occasional short opera and helping to produce a series of drone EPs. On his own albums for the imprint, Valgeir has put his stamp on contemporary electro-acoustic trends, with the chamber music programs Architecture of Loss and Draumalandið. Already in 2017, Valgeir has contributed a pair of compelling pieces to an album by the group Nordic Affect. That pair of compositions gives a sense of his range. The propulsive electronic opus “Antigravity” would fit nicely on many of his prior solo sets, while on “Raindamage,” he foregrounds acoustic instruments while incorporating digital effects. For his own label, Valgeir now offers an ambitious program of long-form works that touch on the computer-edited acoustic approach of “Raindamage,” two of which come loaded with weighty concepts that reach back into classical music’s past. The expansive title track makes a direct reference to Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19, commonly called the “Dissonance” quartet (thanks to the overlapping, chromatic lines that are present during its opening). Valgeir’s intention was to stretch Mozart’s initial gambit into a much longer piece: “I took the bars and stretched the 40 seconds out to 23 minutes. The movement is the same as Mozart envisioned, only much slower.” As an experiment, this seems promising, but this particular adaptation robs Mozart’s progression of too much drama. In the String Quartet No. 19, part of the wonderment is caused by the fact that the initial music is packed with so many clashing elements. Even as the music swoons slowly, this density quickly outstrips your ability to keep track of the overall direction, which gives the writing a dizzying power. During Valgeir’s “Dissonance,” which was multi-tracked in the studio and later modified digitally, a listener can become too well accustomed to each portion of the music, and the crucial sense of surprise is gone. Other extended works on the album have more purchase on ingenuity. The title of “No Nights Dark Enough” references the lyrics to English Renaissance composer John Dowland’s iconic “Flow, My Tears.” Valgeir does honor to the source material; this Dowland-influenced music is still suffused with sorrow. But the sudden, downward-sliding tones in the first movement (“flow”) have a savagery that feels beholden to no past. The second movement (“infamy sings”) sets some fast-repeating piano lines against drawn-out brass and string exclamations, and the contrast feels like some elegantly shouted objection in the face of trauma. The glitchier third section (“fear and grief and pain”) treads on some production grounds Trent Reznor might recognize. This emerging sense of a bummed-out lineage—from Dowland to The Fragile to Valgeir—makes a strange, perfect form of sense. The album’s final piece is the three-movement “1875.” Pitched as a reflection on an historic Icelandic settlement in Canada, it’s foremost an acoustic piece. And the composer’s ability to craft a journeying instrumental narrative is never in doubt. After a jarring beginning, it explores moods of unease—eventually closing in a hushed, chilling fashion. Valgeir surely has more electronic beats and drones to create, but purely symphonic writing remains well within his grasp."

Amazing Baby

Rewild

Rock

Nate Patrin

Coming straight out of Wesleyan to score a ton of SXSW buzz, bro-ing down with MGMT, getting breathless future-of-the-scene press from Interview and Rolling Stone and The Guardian, strutting around in 1971 cosplay while rolling their eyes at journalists who try to connect their hippie chic with actual usage of psychotropic substances-- there are plenty of reasons for skeptics to violently reject Amazing Baby. Granted, they're not particularly useful reasons, what with them having more to do with scenester anxiety and cred wars than anything, but they're floating around right now and muddling up the discourse. Fortunately, they have an album out now, which means that extrapolating judgments from little more than a 7", an EP, and the dreaded Williamsburg address is no longer necessary. And here's a shock: Rewild isn't brought down by irony or posing or whatever it is about trust funds and/or beards that's supposed to make music shitty-- it's just a really scattershot debut, albeit a frequently entertaining one. Amazing Baby seem to be at the point in their young career where they're a short distance away from transitioning out of the traditional "riffing off bands we like" phase, and while there's a healthy eclecticism to their nebulous classic rock affectations, they do a better job at creating interesting variations of known quantities than transcending them. Opener "Bayonets" features a more muscular take on ELO's baroque, string-driven prog-pop, "Invisible Palace" towers like Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" reproduced in neon and buffed to a metal-flake shine, "The Narwhal" is an amped-up, bongo-driven echo of Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore", and "Dead Light" and "Headdress" are perforated with glimmering shards of T. Rex. Still, it's a sign of hope that their stuff's hooky enough to transcend their semi-obvious source material, and combining early-70s rock histrionics with glossy post-electro party-rock wildness is a promising formula. But to get past the decent-pastiche stage, they still need a little work in the identity department. Frontman Will Roan has a voice that can't stick to a single memorable template, so he shades towards Marc Bolan astral swagger one moment and Donovan pastoralism the next. The single most consistent thing about his voice is how dazed and mumbly it sounds, which is either an asset or a detriment depending on how far towards dope-haze swooning any given song skews; he sounds effortlessly majestic in the gauzy slog of "Pump Yr Brakes" but smothered and lagging beneath the energetic uptempo charge of "Kankra". Simon O'Connor, guitarist and the other half of the band's core founding duo, has a broader problem: he drowns his instrument in so much arena-sized production glop it can be hard to tell what he's got going on stylistically beneath it all, though when he breaks out-- like he does in the squalling solos during "Smoke Bros" or "Pump Yr Brakes"-- it's a pretty good jolt. (And since he played in Stylofone, who put out the great Thin Lizzy-toned riff-fest single "Nighttime" two and a half years ago, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.) This wall-of-gunk approach extends across the rest of the band, to the point where there's not a lot of breathing space; compare their Daytrotter sessions or the version of "Headdress" from their Infinite Fucking Cross EP to the overproduced re-recordings here and you'll hear what a subtler mix could do for these guys. That lack of breathing space, combined with Roan's mumbly-Joe tendencies, does obscure the hell out of the lyrics, which is a mixed blessing; Roan admitted to Rolling Stone that "our lyrics are totally ridiculous sometimes," and it is at least to his credit he recognizes this. I'm not sure if that makes it more or less difficult to forgive "Bayonets" for using the phrase "the kids are all right" as part of its chorus, or "Smoke Bros" for its baffling refrain, "We are starving cannibals/ She protects her animals." I suppose when your closest lyrical analogue on the album's most memorable sing-along/chant-along line is Total Coelo, you risk alienating some people. But that's the kind of turf that can come with the feeling-out process, and there's enough lyrics that aren't goofy, uninspiring, or just plain illegible to make up for the ones that are. Unfortunately, the post-Web 2.0 hype cycle doesn't have time for growing pains; their reactionary approach tends to be enthusiastic first, then disappointed. Speaking as someone who would prefer to see the opposite happen-- letting bands dick around and get mediocrity out of their system before hitting on the inspiration that makes them worth following-- Rewild is how an average debut album should pan out. It might outstrip its ambition and wear its influences too blatantly, but Amazing Baby could be something special once it all clicks.

Artist: Amazing Baby, Album: Rewild, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "Coming straight out of Wesleyan to score a ton of SXSW buzz, bro-ing down with MGMT, getting breathless future-of-the-scene press from Interview and Rolling Stone and The Guardian, strutting around in 1971 cosplay while rolling their eyes at journalists who try to connect their hippie chic with actual usage of psychotropic substances-- there are plenty of reasons for skeptics to violently reject Amazing Baby. Granted, they're not particularly useful reasons, what with them having more to do with scenester anxiety and cred wars than anything, but they're floating around right now and muddling up the discourse. Fortunately, they have an album out now, which means that extrapolating judgments from little more than a 7", an EP, and the dreaded Williamsburg address is no longer necessary. And here's a shock: Rewild isn't brought down by irony or posing or whatever it is about trust funds and/or beards that's supposed to make music shitty-- it's just a really scattershot debut, albeit a frequently entertaining one. Amazing Baby seem to be at the point in their young career where they're a short distance away from transitioning out of the traditional "riffing off bands we like" phase, and while there's a healthy eclecticism to their nebulous classic rock affectations, they do a better job at creating interesting variations of known quantities than transcending them. Opener "Bayonets" features a more muscular take on ELO's baroque, string-driven prog-pop, "Invisible Palace" towers like Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" reproduced in neon and buffed to a metal-flake shine, "The Narwhal" is an amped-up, bongo-driven echo of Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore", and "Dead Light" and "Headdress" are perforated with glimmering shards of T. Rex. Still, it's a sign of hope that their stuff's hooky enough to transcend their semi-obvious source material, and combining early-70s rock histrionics with glossy post-electro party-rock wildness is a promising formula. But to get past the decent-pastiche stage, they still need a little work in the identity department. Frontman Will Roan has a voice that can't stick to a single memorable template, so he shades towards Marc Bolan astral swagger one moment and Donovan pastoralism the next. The single most consistent thing about his voice is how dazed and mumbly it sounds, which is either an asset or a detriment depending on how far towards dope-haze swooning any given song skews; he sounds effortlessly majestic in the gauzy slog of "Pump Yr Brakes" but smothered and lagging beneath the energetic uptempo charge of "Kankra". Simon O'Connor, guitarist and the other half of the band's core founding duo, has a broader problem: he drowns his instrument in so much arena-sized production glop it can be hard to tell what he's got going on stylistically beneath it all, though when he breaks out-- like he does in the squalling solos during "Smoke Bros" or "Pump Yr Brakes"-- it's a pretty good jolt. (And since he played in Stylofone, who put out the great Thin Lizzy-toned riff-fest single "Nighttime" two and a half years ago, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.) This wall-of-gunk approach extends across the rest of the band, to the point where there's not a lot of breathing space; compare their Daytrotter sessions or the version of "Headdress" from their Infinite Fucking Cross EP to the overproduced re-recordings here and you'll hear what a subtler mix could do for these guys. That lack of breathing space, combined with Roan's mumbly-Joe tendencies, does obscure the hell out of the lyrics, which is a mixed blessing; Roan admitted to Rolling Stone that "our lyrics are totally ridiculous sometimes," and it is at least to his credit he recognizes this. I'm not sure if that makes it more or less difficult to forgive "Bayonets" for using the phrase "the kids are all right" as part of its chorus, or "Smoke Bros" for its baffling refrain, "We are starving cannibals/ She protects her animals." I suppose when your closest lyrical analogue on the album's most memorable sing-along/chant-along line is Total Coelo, you risk alienating some people. But that's the kind of turf that can come with the feeling-out process, and there's enough lyrics that aren't goofy, uninspiring, or just plain illegible to make up for the ones that are. Unfortunately, the post-Web 2.0 hype cycle doesn't have time for growing pains; their reactionary approach tends to be enthusiastic first, then disappointed. Speaking as someone who would prefer to see the opposite happen-- letting bands dick around and get mediocrity out of their system before hitting on the inspiration that makes them worth following-- Rewild is how an average debut album should pan out. It might outstrip its ambition and wear its influences too blatantly, but Amazing Baby could be something special once it all clicks."

Rich the Kid

Keep Flexin

Rap

Mehan Jayasuriya

The afternoon before releasing Keep Flexin, Rich the Kid posted a video of himself dancing to the opening track, “I Don’t Care,” while puffing on a cigar and counting a stack of crisp hundred dollar bills. The video ends abruptly when a fire alarm goes off in the room—Rich freezes and drops his jaw with cartoonish flair before blurting, “Oh shit!” Staged or not, the video more or less sums up Rich the Kid’s playful charm: Here’s a guy who seems perpetually bemused by his own success even as he performs it. Rich the Kid has been a prolific presence in Atlanta rap for a few years now; Keep Flexin marks his seventh solo mixtape since 2013 and that’s not counting his numerous collaborative tapes with Migos, Makonnen, and his Rich Forever label signees. His sound is fairly straightforward by contemporary standards, especially when compared to that of his more distinctive peers like Lil Yachty or Lil Uzi Vert. Still, he’s mastered the fundamentals of Atlanta rap: an ear for melody, a hook better than most, and triplets like he’s the fourth Migo. In keeping with its title, Keep Flexin largely concerns itself with the trappings of wealth and stardom. Aesthetically speaking, Rich’s music can be called street rap, even if these songs feel far removed from the streets. These are light, bubbly anthems, befitting their shallow subject matter. “You hear that? That’s ice,” Rich explains at the outset of “Doors Up,” as he fidgets with his chains over a glimmering synth arpeggio. Airless lead single “Don’t Want Her” is nominally about the dispensability with which Rich views women (see the caustic refrain, “I throw out that bitch ‘cause she garbage”) but even here, he can’t help but boast, “Flexin’ I’m making them vomit/The rollie is water, it came out the faucet.” On “Liar Liar,” he jumps on the increasingly crowded bandwagon of Future impersonators, though as always, his outlook remains sunny (“I took a trip to the jeweler/I drop my wrist the in cooler”), in contrast to the song’s darker hue. Keep Flexin boasts an impressive roster of guests and for the most part, Rich puts them to good use. Jeremih smooths out the jerky “Greedy” with his gooey hook while matching his host’s braggadocio (“I count paper, don’t read it/Call me Mister Big Shot”). “Dat Way” finds Migos in prime form (“Pick up the phone and call Kanye,” Quavo instructs, alluding to Migos’ recent management deal with G.O.O.D. Music) over a twitchy, string-heavy beat. “Going” is essentially just one big Desiigner hook—your mileage here will vary depending on your personal tolerance for unintelligible gurgling and “Brrrrrah!” ad-libs. Disappointingly, Young Thug sounds pretty unengaged on “Ran It Up,” coloring inside the melodic lines that Rich establishes. Still, Thug manages to offer a brief window into his life (“Recording on the back of the bus and I’m po’d up”), evoking a devastating image of his idol from the documentary film The Carter: drugged-out, working feverishly, very much alone. This sort of tension is sorely missing from most of Keep Flexin, a record that’s happy to catalog the perks of being an ascendant rapper while turning a blind eye to the costs. While previous Rich the Kid releases like Trap Talk contrasted the street life that Rich had known with his current plush lifestyle, Keep Flexin offers few such juxtapositions. He does briefly acknowledge previous struggles on “Doors Up,” (“I was just hustling, I wanted a chance”) and on “Blessings,” he stops to take stock of how far he’s come: “I had to learn a lesson/Lose it all in a second/I made it here that’s a blessing/Get the money not stressing/You better count your blessings.” Rich the Kid certainly seems to live by that mantra, though he’ll need to dig deeper if he wants others to relate to his journey.

Artist: Rich the Kid, Album: Keep Flexin, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "The afternoon before releasing Keep Flexin, Rich the Kid posted a video of himself dancing to the opening track, “I Don’t Care,” while puffing on a cigar and counting a stack of crisp hundred dollar bills. The video ends abruptly when a fire alarm goes off in the room—Rich freezes and drops his jaw with cartoonish flair before blurting, “Oh shit!” Staged or not, the video more or less sums up Rich the Kid’s playful charm: Here’s a guy who seems perpetually bemused by his own success even as he performs it. Rich the Kid has been a prolific presence in Atlanta rap for a few years now; Keep Flexin marks his seventh solo mixtape since 2013 and that’s not counting his numerous collaborative tapes with Migos, Makonnen, and his Rich Forever label signees. His sound is fairly straightforward by contemporary standards, especially when compared to that of his more distinctive peers like Lil Yachty or Lil Uzi Vert. Still, he’s mastered the fundamentals of Atlanta rap: an ear for melody, a hook better than most, and triplets like he’s the fourth Migo. In keeping with its title, Keep Flexin largely concerns itself with the trappings of wealth and stardom. Aesthetically speaking, Rich’s music can be called street rap, even if these songs feel far removed from the streets. These are light, bubbly anthems, befitting their shallow subject matter. “You hear that? That’s ice,” Rich explains at the outset of “Doors Up,” as he fidgets with his chains over a glimmering synth arpeggio. Airless lead single “Don’t Want Her” is nominally about the dispensability with which Rich views women (see the caustic refrain, “I throw out that bitch ‘cause she garbage”) but even here, he can’t help but boast, “Flexin’ I’m making them vomit/The rollie is water, it came out the faucet.” On “Liar Liar,” he jumps on the increasingly crowded bandwagon of Future impersonators, though as always, his outlook remains sunny (“I took a trip to the jeweler/I drop my wrist the in cooler”), in contrast to the song’s darker hue. Keep Flexin boasts an impressive roster of guests and for the most part, Rich puts them to good use. Jeremih smooths out the jerky “Greedy” with his gooey hook while matching his host’s braggadocio (“I count paper, don’t read it/Call me Mister Big Shot”). “Dat Way” finds Migos in prime form (“Pick up the phone and call Kanye,” Quavo instructs, alluding to Migos’ recent management deal with G.O.O.D. Music) over a twitchy, string-heavy beat. “Going” is essentially just one big Desiigner hook—your mileage here will vary depending on your personal tolerance for unintelligible gurgling and “Brrrrrah!” ad-libs. Disappointingly, Young Thug sounds pretty unengaged on “Ran It Up,” coloring inside the melodic lines that Rich establishes. Still, Thug manages to offer a brief window into his life (“Recording on the back of the bus and I’m po’d up”), evoking a devastating image of his idol from the documentary film The Carter: drugged-out, working feverishly, very much alone. This sort of tension is sorely missing from most of Keep Flexin, a record that’s happy to catalog the perks of being an ascendant rapper while turning a blind eye to the costs. While previous Rich the Kid releases like Trap Talk contrasted the street life that Rich had known with his current plush lifestyle, Keep Flexin offers few such juxtapositions. He does briefly acknowledge previous struggles on “Doors Up,” (“I was just hustling, I wanted a chance”) and on “Blessings,” he stops to take stock of how far he’s come: “I had to learn a lesson/Lose it all in a second/I made it here that’s a blessing/Get the money not stressing/You better count your blessings.” Rich the Kid certainly seems to live by that mantra, though he’ll need to dig deeper if he wants others to relate to his journey."

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

Cardinology

Joshua Love

People have been feeling disappointed by Ryan Adams for almost as long as they've been liking him. When his band Whiskeytown leaped to the fore of the then-burgeoning alt-country movement with its classic 1995 debut, Faithless Street, Adams seemed like nothing less than a savior, a recklessly prodigal kid equally informed by punk rock and archetypal C&W.  However, it soon seemed Adams' legendary petulance wasn't some enfant terrible act, but the manifestation of a self-absorbed temperament that has marked his output to this day. It's hard to say whether this penchant for navel-gazing was always lurking inside Adams, or if the combined influences of New York City and minor celebrity produced it. Either way, over the past several years he's recognized his true calling as a quintessential singer-songwriter and subsequently shown himself to be solipsistic in the truest sense of the word. Adams really doesn't seem capable of imagining a world outside of himself anymore, and it's his greatest artistic downfall. His music rarely strives to connect or communicate with other people, and even at its best is exactly only as compelling as Adams himself is compelling. Throughout his career, Adams has always seemed to be more successful the more closely he's hewn to his country roots, whether it be on his acclaimed 2000 solo debut Heartbreaker or 2005's unexpectedly strong Jacksonville City Nights. My guess as to why is that country's narrative and musical strictures keep Adams honest, toeing the line rather than wallowing in the moony murk that has characterized so much of what this too-prolific man has released in the past decade, including his newest effort with his band the Cardinals, Cardinology. Cardinology, like Easy Tiger or Cold Roses or Love Is Hell or you get the idea, is melodically sound, remarkably insular and largely unaffecting. It's all soft edges, and its punches feel like pillow fights. "Born Into a Light" is an admittedly solid opener, featuring some nice fingerpicking and evoking a rare sense of community, a generosity likewise echoed in "Let Us Down Easy". Unsurprisingly, these are the two songs most noticeably tinged by southern rural musical traditions, in this case an appealingly finessed mix of country and gospel. Early offerings "Go Easy" and "Fix It" aren't half-bad either, well-sung and fuller musically than much of Adams' other recent material, though it's hard to shake the recognition that even his most sonically vibrant moments are often forced to contend with his whininess. Following those pleasantly modest, Paste-worthy beginnings, however, Adams draws the blinds entirely and Cardinology starts sliding into self-indulgent banality of a sort so pinched and uninviting it makes Conor Oberst seem like Will Rogers (and I'm not even counting the butt-rock red herring "Magick," which makes you wonder what Adams actually hears when he listens to the Rolling Stones or New York Dolls). The dreary "Cobwebs" is emblematic of the myopic stuff Adams has been doing ever since he hitched his star to the likes of Winona Ryder and Parker Posey, outfitted with an oh-so-typical reference to 5th Avenue and actually including the line "if I fall will you pity me?" The likes of "Crossed Out Name" and "Natural Ghost" do attest to Adams' reliably solid melodic sense but still come off wrapped up and wearying, while "Sink Ships" burns a good line about remembering "you laughing/ Coming up the rickety stairs" with a ridiculous central metaphor likening the search for love with filling out a job application. It's just one more reason why Adams shouldn't be putting Cardinology on his résumé.

Artist: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Album: Cardinology, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 4.7 Album review: "People have been feeling disappointed by Ryan Adams for almost as long as they've been liking him. When his band Whiskeytown leaped to the fore of the then-burgeoning alt-country movement with its classic 1995 debut, Faithless Street, Adams seemed like nothing less than a savior, a recklessly prodigal kid equally informed by punk rock and archetypal C&W.  However, it soon seemed Adams' legendary petulance wasn't some enfant terrible act, but the manifestation of a self-absorbed temperament that has marked his output to this day. It's hard to say whether this penchant for navel-gazing was always lurking inside Adams, or if the combined influences of New York City and minor celebrity produced it. Either way, over the past several years he's recognized his true calling as a quintessential singer-songwriter and subsequently shown himself to be solipsistic in the truest sense of the word. Adams really doesn't seem capable of imagining a world outside of himself anymore, and it's his greatest artistic downfall. His music rarely strives to connect or communicate with other people, and even at its best is exactly only as compelling as Adams himself is compelling. Throughout his career, Adams has always seemed to be more successful the more closely he's hewn to his country roots, whether it be on his acclaimed 2000 solo debut Heartbreaker or 2005's unexpectedly strong Jacksonville City Nights. My guess as to why is that country's narrative and musical strictures keep Adams honest, toeing the line rather than wallowing in the moony murk that has characterized so much of what this too-prolific man has released in the past decade, including his newest effort with his band the Cardinals, Cardinology. Cardinology, like Easy Tiger or Cold Roses or Love Is Hell or you get the idea, is melodically sound, remarkably insular and largely unaffecting. It's all soft edges, and its punches feel like pillow fights. "Born Into a Light" is an admittedly solid opener, featuring some nice fingerpicking and evoking a rare sense of community, a generosity likewise echoed in "Let Us Down Easy". Unsurprisingly, these are the two songs most noticeably tinged by southern rural musical traditions, in this case an appealingly finessed mix of country and gospel. Early offerings "Go Easy" and "Fix It" aren't half-bad either, well-sung and fuller musically than much of Adams' other recent material, though it's hard to shake the recognition that even his most sonically vibrant moments are often forced to contend with his whininess. Following those pleasantly modest, Paste-worthy beginnings, however, Adams draws the blinds entirely and Cardinology starts sliding into self-indulgent banality of a sort so pinched and uninviting it makes Conor Oberst seem like Will Rogers (and I'm not even counting the butt-rock red herring "Magick," which makes you wonder what Adams actually hears when he listens to the Rolling Stones or New York Dolls). The dreary "Cobwebs" is emblematic of the myopic stuff Adams has been doing ever since he hitched his star to the likes of Winona Ryder and Parker Posey, outfitted with an oh-so-typical reference to 5th Avenue and actually including the line "if I fall will you pity me?" The likes of "Crossed Out Name" and "Natural Ghost" do attest to Adams' reliably solid melodic sense but still come off wrapped up and wearying, while "Sink Ships" burns a good line about remembering "you laughing/ Coming up the rickety stairs" with a ridiculous central metaphor likening the search for love with filling out a job application. It's just one more reason why Adams shouldn't be putting Cardinology on his résumé."

Phil Ochs

The Best of Phil Ochs: 20th Century Masters

Folk/Country

Chris Dahlen

"You're not a folk singer," Bob Dylan accused Phil Ochs, "you're a journalist." He echoed the most consistent criticism of the late Phil Ochs, who made his name with topical folk songs. Ochs churned out political lyrics, taking ideas from the news and from first-hand experience with the turmoil of the 1960s: a coal miners' strike in Kentucky, the fight for civil rights in Mississippi, and anti-war rallies, some of which he helped organize. His sharp lyrics and refusal to compromise combined with an easy humor and winning personality to make him one of the great protest singers. But Ochs was also ambitious. He'd watched his peers cross over to stardom: Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and his friend from Greenwich Village, Dylan. By the mid-sixties, Ochs was afraid he'd be left behind. This new "best of" collection gathers twelve songs from Ochs' last four studio albums. He'd switched labels, from Elektra to A&M;, and began to write complicated pop songs that moved away from the news. But he still didn't hit it big, and as he stagnated professionally, Nixon's election and the continuing Vietnam War wore him down. The frustration and depression that permeate these songs make this a grim record of the end of his career. The Best of Phil Ochs: 20th Century Masters begins with over half of the songs from Ochs' 1967 masterpiece, Pleasures of the Harbor. Ochs had been listening to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's, and was aiming for something just as big. Ditching strict topical songs, he explored the state of the nation in lyrics about cocktail parties, elderly flower ladies, and sailors back from sea. He left his guitar behind and brought in one of Liza Minnelli's arrangers, Ian Freebairn-Smith, to write orchestration. Pleasures of the Harbor actually sounds conservative for its time. Ochs still wrote lyrics like a journalist: his florid descriptions still took in detailed scenes and translated them to song. The music borrowed old-fashioned styles-- for example, the swelling strings on "Pleasures of the Harbor," the neoclassical "Flower Lady," and the ragtime piano on "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." But Pleasures of the Harbor was a masterful pop album. Ochs' voice is limited-- with his narrow range and slight twang, he was no Tony Bennett-- but it's stark against the baroque arrangements, and the sincerity makes songs like "Flower Lady" honestly beautiful. "Cross My Heart" starts as a dainty pop song, but Ochs' words make it compelling-- the despair and hopelessness of the verses, and the conviction with which he turns it around in the chorus. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," a satire of liberal apathy and laziness set to a ragtime tune, surpasses even "Draft Dodger Rag" as Ochs' most scathingly humorous song. On the other hand, "The Crucifixion" was inspired by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it asks what drives society to kill its best and youngest leaders. It's the pinnacle of Ochs' songwriting, though its music is a bit awkward: Ochs hired experimental musician Joseph Byrd to arrange it with disturbing strings and bizarre electronic sounds, with mixed results. Many people-- eventually including Ochs himself-- regretted the weird mess that Byrd made of the arrangement, but it's strangely appropriate to the theme: when I first listened to this years ago, it was the scariest thing I'd ever heard. Pleasures of the Harbor proved the breadth of Ochs' talent, but it didn't help him commercially. It outsold his earlier albums but only reached #168 on the Billboard charts. Unfortunately, this was Ochs' creative and commercial peak. On his next three albums, he adjusted the formula by stripping down the instrumentation and bringing back explicit political lyrics. He never found a combination that worked commercially, and his frustration with everything from his career to the political scene creeps into the rest of these songs. The lyrics of "Tape from California" mix political statements and surreal imagery, and the song features a contemporary band with electric piano and drums. Ochs wrote "The War Is Over" for a rally that he helped organize; its marching band backdrop is interesting, but the song isn't as strong without its context. "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed," on the other hand, hauntingly reflects Ochs' experience at the '68 Chicago convention. It appeared, along with the mournful "Rehearsals for Retirement," on an album whose cover bore a fictional tombstone: "Phil Ochs ... Died Chicago, Illinois 1968." "Chords of Fame" and "No More Songs" come from Ochs' last studio record, the humorously titled Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits, produced by Van Dyke Parks. The songs tried a country/western sound as a last ditch plea for popularity. This collection ends with an upbeat live version of his signature tune, "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore"-- but in reality, Ochs' career was over. Writer's block, heavy drinking, and mental illness ended his songwriting and drove him to take his own life in 1976, at age 35. In his biography of Ochs, Michael Schumaker recounts how he worried that his songs would be forgotten. He has yet to be seriously "rediscovered," and this generically titled collection probably won't change that (though it is a good and affordable starting point for new fans). As Andy Whitaker said of him, "His persona was the work of art." No matter how well the music stands on its own, it works better with an understanding of the time and of the man-- which can be said of our other great journalists, activists, and folk singers. Like them, Phil Ochs gives us our history.

Artist: Phil Ochs, Album: The Best of Phil Ochs: 20th Century Masters, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: ""You're not a folk singer," Bob Dylan accused Phil Ochs, "you're a journalist." He echoed the most consistent criticism of the late Phil Ochs, who made his name with topical folk songs. Ochs churned out political lyrics, taking ideas from the news and from first-hand experience with the turmoil of the 1960s: a coal miners' strike in Kentucky, the fight for civil rights in Mississippi, and anti-war rallies, some of which he helped organize. His sharp lyrics and refusal to compromise combined with an easy humor and winning personality to make him one of the great protest singers. But Ochs was also ambitious. He'd watched his peers cross over to stardom: Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and his friend from Greenwich Village, Dylan. By the mid-sixties, Ochs was afraid he'd be left behind. This new "best of" collection gathers twelve songs from Ochs' last four studio albums. He'd switched labels, from Elektra to A&M;, and began to write complicated pop songs that moved away from the news. But he still didn't hit it big, and as he stagnated professionally, Nixon's election and the continuing Vietnam War wore him down. The frustration and depression that permeate these songs make this a grim record of the end of his career. The Best of Phil Ochs: 20th Century Masters begins with over half of the songs from Ochs' 1967 masterpiece, Pleasures of the Harbor. Ochs had been listening to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's, and was aiming for something just as big. Ditching strict topical songs, he explored the state of the nation in lyrics about cocktail parties, elderly flower ladies, and sailors back from sea. He left his guitar behind and brought in one of Liza Minnelli's arrangers, Ian Freebairn-Smith, to write orchestration. Pleasures of the Harbor actually sounds conservative for its time. Ochs still wrote lyrics like a journalist: his florid descriptions still took in detailed scenes and translated them to song. The music borrowed old-fashioned styles-- for example, the swelling strings on "Pleasures of the Harbor," the neoclassical "Flower Lady," and the ragtime piano on "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." But Pleasures of the Harbor was a masterful pop album. Ochs' voice is limited-- with his narrow range and slight twang, he was no Tony Bennett-- but it's stark against the baroque arrangements, and the sincerity makes songs like "Flower Lady" honestly beautiful. "Cross My Heart" starts as a dainty pop song, but Ochs' words make it compelling-- the despair and hopelessness of the verses, and the conviction with which he turns it around in the chorus. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," a satire of liberal apathy and laziness set to a ragtime tune, surpasses even "Draft Dodger Rag" as Ochs' most scathingly humorous song. On the other hand, "The Crucifixion" was inspired by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it asks what drives society to kill its best and youngest leaders. It's the pinnacle of Ochs' songwriting, though its music is a bit awkward: Ochs hired experimental musician Joseph Byrd to arrange it with disturbing strings and bizarre electronic sounds, with mixed results. Many people-- eventually including Ochs himself-- regretted the weird mess that Byrd made of the arrangement, but it's strangely appropriate to the theme: when I first listened to this years ago, it was the scariest thing I'd ever heard. Pleasures of the Harbor proved the breadth of Ochs' talent, but it didn't help him commercially. It outsold his earlier albums but only reached #168 on the Billboard charts. Unfortunately, this was Ochs' creative and commercial peak. On his next three albums, he adjusted the formula by stripping down the instrumentation and bringing back explicit political lyrics. He never found a combination that worked commercially, and his frustration with everything from his career to the political scene creeps into the rest of these songs. The lyrics of "Tape from California" mix political statements and surreal imagery, and the song features a contemporary band with electric piano and drums. Ochs wrote "The War Is Over" for a rally that he helped organize; its marching band backdrop is interesting, but the song isn't as strong without its context. "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed," on the other hand, hauntingly reflects Ochs' experience at the '68 Chicago convention. It appeared, along with the mournful "Rehearsals for Retirement," on an album whose cover bore a fictional tombstone: "Phil Ochs ... Died Chicago, Illinois 1968." "Chords of Fame" and "No More Songs" come from Ochs' last studio record, the humorously titled Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits, produced by Van Dyke Parks. The songs tried a country/western sound as a last ditch plea for popularity. This collection ends with an upbeat live version of his signature tune, "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore"-- but in reality, Ochs' career was over. Writer's block, heavy drinking, and mental illness ended his songwriting and drove him to take his own life in 1976, at age 35. In his biography of Ochs, Michael Schumaker recounts how he worried that his songs would be forgotten. He has yet to be seriously "rediscovered," and this generically titled collection probably won't change that (though it is a good and affordable starting point for new fans). As Andy Whitaker said of him, "His persona was the work of art." No matter how well the music stands on its own, it works better with an understanding of the time and of the man-- which can be said of our other great journalists, activists, and folk singers. Like them, Phil Ochs gives us our history."

Rose Elinor Dougall

Without Why

Pop/R&B,Rock

Matthew Perpetua

If we categorized albums in the same way as movies and books, Rose Elinor Dougall's debut, Without Why, would be filed under "romance." All of the songs are focused on love and relationships; the arrangements are wistful, melodramatic, and lovelorn. Her voice, elegant and disarming in its directness, conveys a gentle heartbreak even when she's singing about being in love. The sound is sweeping and slick, but also springy and sharp, a contrast similar to early-90s recordings by Morrissey and the Sundays. Even the darkest moments of the album sound like a girly fantasy. Dougall has come a long way since her tenure as a singer in what can now be considered the classic line-up of the Pipettes. She had a few songwriting credits while in that band-- most notably the singles "Judy" and "Dirty Mind"-- but here she's developed into a mature talent with a knack for melancholy balladry. Though she has entirely abandoned the girl-group conceit of her previous group, there's a thematic and stylistic continuity between those old songs and the music with her new backing band, the Distractions, on Without Why. Basically, it sounds like she's grown up a bit. Dougall has moved away from the playful, sassy tone of the Pipettes, and embraced a deeper, more earnest approach to thinking about relationships, appropriate for someone entering her mid-twenties. Whereas she previously sang songs mainly about infatuation and the politics of casual dating, she's dealing with stronger, more complicated feelings now. Even the most assured songs, like the joyful "Fallen Over", grapple with some degree of ambivalence and insecurity. In "Find Me Out", she's desperately afraid that her partner will discover she's not good enough; "Another Version of Pop Song" has her warning a suitor, "Please don't say that it's forever, or that we belong together/ It's all I really know for now." As much as the songs evoke the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of cinematic romance, there's a stubborn insistence on dealing with love as realistically as possible. It's like young adult fiction with the anxious soul of droll British comedy. Aside from the gorgeous finale "May Holiday", the best tracks on Without Why have already been released as singles over the past two years. "Stop Start Synchro" opens the record with sparkling glamor; "Another Version of Pop Song" is a dizzying, effervescent swirl of keyboards and strings. "Fallen Over" is propelled by an assertive beat and bold guitars, while "Find Me Out" goes to the opposite extreme with its serene sadness. There are some fine album tracks here-- "Carry On" and "Come Away With Me" are especially good and single-worthy-- but as much as the record is consistent in quality and tone, it's hard to avoid concentrating on its obvious peaks. Her slowest songs are her weakest, though they add a necessary dynamic to the album's sequencing. "Watching" and "Third Attempt" start off with an appealing stillness, but they grow stagnant and static before reaching their conclusion. It's not that those songs are bad-- they both have fine melodies and good ideas-- but that they drag on a bit too long. It's a minor problem, though. As a whole, Without Why is an unusually confident and expertly crafted debut.

Artist: Rose Elinor Dougall, Album: Without Why, Genre: Pop/R&B,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "If we categorized albums in the same way as movies and books, Rose Elinor Dougall's debut, Without Why, would be filed under "romance." All of the songs are focused on love and relationships; the arrangements are wistful, melodramatic, and lovelorn. Her voice, elegant and disarming in its directness, conveys a gentle heartbreak even when she's singing about being in love. The sound is sweeping and slick, but also springy and sharp, a contrast similar to early-90s recordings by Morrissey and the Sundays. Even the darkest moments of the album sound like a girly fantasy. Dougall has come a long way since her tenure as a singer in what can now be considered the classic line-up of the Pipettes. She had a few songwriting credits while in that band-- most notably the singles "Judy" and "Dirty Mind"-- but here she's developed into a mature talent with a knack for melancholy balladry. Though she has entirely abandoned the girl-group conceit of her previous group, there's a thematic and stylistic continuity between those old songs and the music with her new backing band, the Distractions, on Without Why. Basically, it sounds like she's grown up a bit. Dougall has moved away from the playful, sassy tone of the Pipettes, and embraced a deeper, more earnest approach to thinking about relationships, appropriate for someone entering her mid-twenties. Whereas she previously sang songs mainly about infatuation and the politics of casual dating, she's dealing with stronger, more complicated feelings now. Even the most assured songs, like the joyful "Fallen Over", grapple with some degree of ambivalence and insecurity. In "Find Me Out", she's desperately afraid that her partner will discover she's not good enough; "Another Version of Pop Song" has her warning a suitor, "Please don't say that it's forever, or that we belong together/ It's all I really know for now." As much as the songs evoke the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of cinematic romance, there's a stubborn insistence on dealing with love as realistically as possible. It's like young adult fiction with the anxious soul of droll British comedy. Aside from the gorgeous finale "May Holiday", the best tracks on Without Why have already been released as singles over the past two years. "Stop Start Synchro" opens the record with sparkling glamor; "Another Version of Pop Song" is a dizzying, effervescent swirl of keyboards and strings. "Fallen Over" is propelled by an assertive beat and bold guitars, while "Find Me Out" goes to the opposite extreme with its serene sadness. There are some fine album tracks here-- "Carry On" and "Come Away With Me" are especially good and single-worthy-- but as much as the record is consistent in quality and tone, it's hard to avoid concentrating on its obvious peaks. Her slowest songs are her weakest, though they add a necessary dynamic to the album's sequencing. "Watching" and "Third Attempt" start off with an appealing stillness, but they grow stagnant and static before reaching their conclusion. It's not that those songs are bad-- they both have fine melodies and good ideas-- but that they drag on a bit too long. It's a minor problem, though. As a whole, Without Why is an unusually confident and expertly crafted debut."

Raspberry Bulbs

Privacy

Jason Heller

The success of HBO's True Detective—and the plagiarism charges that dogged the show’s first season—sent thousands of viewers scrambling for books by authors that most of them had never heard of before. Those authors included the contemporary horror writer Thomas Ligotti (the alleged victim of True Detective’s plagiarism) and Robert W. Chambers, whose 1895 book The King in Yellow is referenced often throughout the show. Naturally, H. P. Lovecraft—whom Chambers influenced and, in turn, who influenced Ligotti—also casts a shadow. Like a squirming colony of worms underneath an overturned rock, that niche literary continuum found itself suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Privacy, the third album by Brooklyn blackened-punk outfit Raspberry Bulbs, also draws from that continuum, according to frontman Marco del Rio, who began the project as a solo affair following the demise of his black metal duo Bone Awl. There’s nothing novel in that connection; counting the number of rock bands that have cited Lovecraft alone would take ages. But what Privacy does so well, regardless of the listener’s familiarity with del Rio’s cult inspirations, is transpose the intangible dread of Ligotti, Chambers, and Lovecraft into a salvo of cold, sharp jolts to the psyche. Raspberry Bulb’s last album, 2013’s  Deformed Worship, was a strong step in this direction, but it also marked the project’s transition into a full band. The no-fi spew of Bone Awl had morphed into a murky howl, and that distance slightly blunted the record’s impact. On Privacy, though, del Rio and company—including Rorschach’s Nicke Forté and Les Savy Fav’s Andrew Reuland, both on guitar (and reunited two decades after their joint band Radio to Saturn)—don’t leave an inch of space in which to flinch. “Lionhead” staggers intrepidly into new dimensions of punk ugliness, set at a tempo too fast to be sluggishly grungy and too slow to comfortably mosh to. Forté and Reuland, old partners at guitar interplay, splinter their riffs into each other, leaving a nasty mess everywhere. The fully-rocking instrumental “Nail Biting” doesn’t justify its lack of vocals, but it’s a nerve-jangling exhibition of lacerated harmonics makes del Rio’s absence a little less glaring. But when “Finger Bones,” prickly and abject, gives del Rio room to chew out his own tongue while the band marches over the top of him, his pinpoint application of chaos congeals into a sickening, misanthropic logic. Del Rio has denied any hint of black-metal allegiance when it comes to Raspberry Bulbs, but there’s no mistaking his blood-gurgling, Quorthon-circa-Under the Sign of the Black Mark grunt-screech, particularly on “Behind the Glass” and “Hopelessly Alive" which embody an awestruck disgust in the face of grotesque eternity. It’s almost religious, if such a thing as Raspberry Bulbs could be considered a creature of faith. There’s a perverse piety at play on “How the Strings Are Pulled", a Venom-meets-Negative Approach hymn to debasement and moral powerlessness. When the woah-woah-woahs in the chorus come deliriously close to comprising a pop hook, it seems for a second as if Privacy might pierce its own veil and reveal its squishy humanity. But every time the album builds up a lick of sympathetic momentum, it’s cruelly defused by one of the brief, ambient interludes that break up the proper tracks—six numbered asides constructed of treated noise, distorted spoken-word, strangled strings, and eerie keys that help elevate Privacy’s fractured, labyrinthine torment above Deformed Worship’s more straightforward assault In The King in Yellow, Chambers writes of “the blackness that surrounds me”—a trite phrase to 21st-century readers, but one that carried far more existential weight in the author’s own time. Is Privacy’s “Light Surrounds Me” some kind of response to Chambers? The song itself certainly sounds as if it could be: del Rio slurs its title in spasms of loathing, as if light were twice as horrifying as the alternative. Yet Privacy as a whole is vivid andwide-eyed, with del Rio sounding more swaggeringly confident than ever about his utter lack of confidence. Doubt and fear as cleansing ecstasy: That cognitive dissonance is part of what makes del Rio’s literary antiheroes so cryptically enduring, and it’s what makes Privacy so hideously hypnotic. “Big Grin", a skeletal, garage-goth dirge that drags its carcass across five unforgiving minutes, feels like del Rio’s ultimate exorcism—only instead of a release, it’s a spiritual implosion. Unlike most bands that seek to probe the notion of a malevolent cosmos, Raspberry Bulbs aren’t trying to cheaply translate cosmic awe into a stomping, grandiose melodrama. Privacy is small, pitiful, tinny, messy, and emaciated, and it dares to demand that mankind doesn’t have the right to feel any differently. When punk stares into the abyss, this is what stares back.

Artist: Raspberry Bulbs, Album: Privacy, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "The success of HBO's True Detective—and the plagiarism charges that dogged the show’s first season—sent thousands of viewers scrambling for books by authors that most of them had never heard of before. Those authors included the contemporary horror writer Thomas Ligotti (the alleged victim of True Detective’s plagiarism) and Robert W. Chambers, whose 1895 book The King in Yellow is referenced often throughout the show. Naturally, H. P. Lovecraft—whom Chambers influenced and, in turn, who influenced Ligotti—also casts a shadow. Like a squirming colony of worms underneath an overturned rock, that niche literary continuum found itself suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Privacy, the third album by Brooklyn blackened-punk outfit Raspberry Bulbs, also draws from that continuum, according to frontman Marco del Rio, who began the project as a solo affair following the demise of his black metal duo Bone Awl. There’s nothing novel in that connection; counting the number of rock bands that have cited Lovecraft alone would take ages. But what Privacy does so well, regardless of the listener’s familiarity with del Rio’s cult inspirations, is transpose the intangible dread of Ligotti, Chambers, and Lovecraft into a salvo of cold, sharp jolts to the psyche. Raspberry Bulb’s last album, 2013’s  Deformed Worship, was a strong step in this direction, but it also marked the project’s transition into a full band. The no-fi spew of Bone Awl had morphed into a murky howl, and that distance slightly blunted the record’s impact. On Privacy, though, del Rio and company—including Rorschach’s Nicke Forté and Les Savy Fav’s Andrew Reuland, both on guitar (and reunited two decades after their joint band Radio to Saturn)—don’t leave an inch of space in which to flinch. “Lionhead” staggers intrepidly into new dimensions of punk ugliness, set at a tempo too fast to be sluggishly grungy and too slow to comfortably mosh to. Forté and Reuland, old partners at guitar interplay, splinter their riffs into each other, leaving a nasty mess everywhere. The fully-rocking instrumental “Nail Biting” doesn’t justify its lack of vocals, but it’s a nerve-jangling exhibition of lacerated harmonics makes del Rio’s absence a little less glaring. But when “Finger Bones,” prickly and abject, gives del Rio room to chew out his own tongue while the band marches over the top of him, his pinpoint application of chaos congeals into a sickening, misanthropic logic. Del Rio has denied any hint of black-metal allegiance when it comes to Raspberry Bulbs, but there’s no mistaking his blood-gurgling, Quorthon-circa-Under the Sign of the Black Mark grunt-screech, particularly on “Behind the Glass” and “Hopelessly Alive" which embody an awestruck disgust in the face of grotesque eternity. It’s almost religious, if such a thing as Raspberry Bulbs could be considered a creature of faith. There’s a perverse piety at play on “How the Strings Are Pulled", a Venom-meets-Negative Approach hymn to debasement and moral powerlessness. When the woah-woah-woahs in the chorus come deliriously close to comprising a pop hook, it seems for a second as if Privacy might pierce its own veil and reveal its squishy humanity. But every time the album builds up a lick of sympathetic momentum, it’s cruelly defused by one of the brief, ambient interludes that break up the proper tracks—six numbered asides constructed of treated noise, distorted spoken-word, strangled strings, and eerie keys that help elevate Privacy’s fractured, labyrinthine torment above Deformed Worship’s more straightforward assault In The King in Yellow, Chambers writes of “the blackness that surrounds me”—a trite phrase to 21st-century readers, but one that carried far more existential weight in the author’s own time. Is Privacy’s “Light Surrounds Me” some kind of response to Chambers? The song itself certainly sounds as if it could be: del Rio slurs its title in spasms of loathing, as if light were twice as horrifying as the alternative. Yet Privacy as a whole is vivid andwide-eyed, with del Rio sounding more swaggeringly confident than ever about his utter lack of confidence. Doubt and fear as cleansing ecstasy: That cognitive dissonance is part of what makes del Rio’s literary antiheroes so cryptically enduring, and it’s what makes Privacy so hideously hypnotic. “Big Grin", a skeletal, garage-goth dirge that drags its carcass across five unforgiving minutes, feels like del Rio’s ultimate exorcism—only instead of a release, it’s a spiritual implosion. Unlike most bands that seek to probe the notion of a malevolent cosmos, Raspberry Bulbs aren’t trying to cheaply translate cosmic awe into a stomping, grandiose melodrama. Privacy is small, pitiful, tinny, messy, and emaciated, and it dares to demand that mankind doesn’t have the right to feel any differently. When punk stares into the abyss, this is what stares back."

Sioux Falls

Rot Forever

Rock

Brad Nelson

In its more expansive moments, Rot Forever, the debut double album from Portland band Sioux Falls, seems to test its own capacity for decay. The songs often stretch until they start to dislocate, swelling from indie rock into six- or seven-minute epics. In this way Sioux Falls can resemble early Built to Spill or Modest Mouse, though their songwriting is less tangential than either; Sioux Falls songs tend to cycle through at most two or three related ideas, just at different volumes. At its best, this effect can be hypnotic and stirring. At its worst it can be exhausting. The songs build geologically, morphing from pebbles into mountains and then crumbling back into their constituent parts. "Chain of Lakes," "San Francisco Earthquake," "Dinosaur Dying"—the song titles and their uncoiling inner structures seem to imply something about geology and archeology, destruction and creation. To their credit, Sioux Falls have the energy and gravity to support this kind of cinematic ambition; the band plays as if they are trying very hard to pull something up through the earth. For all of its attempts at colossal scale, Rot Forever also feels very intimate. The album’s length—72 minutes—contributes to this relaxed, almost yawning aura; it occasionally feels like listening to one lone, faintly edited practice session. It can feel arbitrary, but its arbitrariness is part of the charm; songs like "Your Name’s Not Ned" take their shape through an application of instinct and aggression that seems more rooted in mood than method. Unfortunately, the album is simply too long, and it digresses through similar ideas more than it advances. Eiger seems to faint through his vocal melodies; he sings at the kind of aggressively bored frequency at which vowels tend to morph into yawns. At a certain point the album's dynamics become routine, all of the energies produced by the band hit the ear neutrally, and Rot Forever begins to rot itself, softly melting into a background, not of its own accord but by something built into its nature.

Artist: Sioux Falls, Album: Rot Forever, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "In its more expansive moments, Rot Forever, the debut double album from Portland band Sioux Falls, seems to test its own capacity for decay. The songs often stretch until they start to dislocate, swelling from indie rock into six- or seven-minute epics. In this way Sioux Falls can resemble early Built to Spill or Modest Mouse, though their songwriting is less tangential than either; Sioux Falls songs tend to cycle through at most two or three related ideas, just at different volumes. At its best, this effect can be hypnotic and stirring. At its worst it can be exhausting. The songs build geologically, morphing from pebbles into mountains and then crumbling back into their constituent parts. "Chain of Lakes," "San Francisco Earthquake," "Dinosaur Dying"—the song titles and their uncoiling inner structures seem to imply something about geology and archeology, destruction and creation. To their credit, Sioux Falls have the energy and gravity to support this kind of cinematic ambition; the band plays as if they are trying very hard to pull something up through the earth. For all of its attempts at colossal scale, Rot Forever also feels very intimate. The album’s length—72 minutes—contributes to this relaxed, almost yawning aura; it occasionally feels like listening to one lone, faintly edited practice session. It can feel arbitrary, but its arbitrariness is part of the charm; songs like "Your Name’s Not Ned" take their shape through an application of instinct and aggression that seems more rooted in mood than method. Unfortunately, the album is simply too long, and it digresses through similar ideas more than it advances. Eiger seems to faint through his vocal melodies; he sings at the kind of aggressively bored frequency at which vowels tend to morph into yawns. At a certain point the album's dynamics become routine, all of the energies produced by the band hit the ear neutrally, and Rot Forever begins to rot itself, softly melting into a background, not of its own accord but by something built into its nature."

Girls Against Boys

The Ghost List

Experimental,Metal,Rock

Stuart Berman

Of all the 90s-era indie-rock bands to have reunited in recent years, Girls Against Boys could be the most out of place in 2013, what with the noticeable lack of sex-obsessed dystopian art-punk bands with two bassists. But even in their heyday, Girls Against Boys were used to being the odd men out. Though they had roots in the D.C. Dischord scene and enjoyed a three-album run on Chicago’s Touch & Go Records, this uncommonly handsome band always projected a cool suavity-- like the Rat Pack taking up residency at the 9:30 Club-- that distinguished them from more outrageous post-hardcore peers like the Jesus Lizard and Brainiac, while lead mouthpiece Scott McCloud favored a sleazily suggestive crypto-speak at odds with the more earnest invectives of contemporaries like Fugazi and Jawbox. And they were putting their own singular spin on then-dormant ’80s post-punk influences-- namely, the pint-glass-smashing rumble of the Fall and the icy pulse of Joy Division-- long before you could score an Unknown Pleasures t-shirt at Urban Outfitters. But Girls Against Boys’ unconventional ethos yielded an all-too-predictable outcome: a momentum-stalling, instantly dated major-label debut (1998’s regrettably titled FreakOnIca), followed by an unceremonious return to indie-dom (2002’s You Can’t Fight What You Can’t See). Since then, the band’s individual members have ventured as far away from the House of GVSB as possible: McCloud and drummer Alexis Fleisig launched the acoustic-oriented, National-esque Paramount Styles, and bassist Johnny Temple turned his sideline indie-book imprint Akashic into a mini-publishing empire, while fellow four-stringer Eli Janney padded out his Nation of Ulysses and Jawbox production credits with the likes of Jet and James Blunt. So, in light of these highly divergent pursuits, it’s pretty remarkable that, on their first release in 11 years, Girls Against Boys manage to sound exactly like Girls Against Boys. If anything’s changed here, it’s their perspective. On GVSB’s signature mid-90s releases, there was a considerable ironic distance between the band’s urbane, predatory sound and McCloud’s knowingly antiquated banter, which invested hoary show-biz phraseology (“One more time with feeling!” “Sock it to me!” “You’re in like Flynn!”) with lecherous menace. On The Ghost List, he’s still very much the cocktail-swilling cretin occupying the same corner stool, but his barfly philosophy has become more rueful with age: When he observes, “It’s a diamond life” (on the swaggering lead track of the same name), the luxe-lifestyle fantasies of old have hardened into post-recession desperation, and his repeated insistence that “you gotta get into it/ get into it” applies the sort of aspirational pressure that inspires one to max out their credit cards. And for a guy whose lyrics could read like a news-ticker of pick-up lines, the atypically confessional tone and melodic drive of “Let’s Get Killed” (“the past is all we live in and the future’s always slipping away”) suggests that McCloud’s looking for a connection that lasts longer than last call to breakfast. (Accordingly, during GVSB’s hiatus, he relocated to Vienna to live with his Austrian girlfriend.) Consistent with the more sobering outlook, The Ghost List doesn’t quite push GVSB to peak white-hot intensity-- none of these five songs are as liable to incite a brawl like “Kill the Sexplayer” or soundtrack a drive-by like “Bulletproof Cupid". And though GVSB were one of the few indie-rock bands in the 90s to take notes from concurrent developments in dance music, there’s no attempt here to contemporize the band’s sound. (As McCloud recently told the Washington Post, this sense of arrested development was a totally intentional brass-tacks move.) But from the robo-cow-punk charge of “Fade Out” to the synth-buzzed pummel of “60 Is Greater Than 15” to the industrialized meltdown of “Kick", The Ghost List EP is a successful reboot for a mothballed machine whose core components-- brawn, dissonance, and groove-- are shown to be still in fine working order. Sure, we’ve seen this movie before, but Girls Against Boys haven’t forgotten the good parts.

Artist: Girls Against Boys, Album: The Ghost List, Genre: Experimental,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Of all the 90s-era indie-rock bands to have reunited in recent years, Girls Against Boys could be the most out of place in 2013, what with the noticeable lack of sex-obsessed dystopian art-punk bands with two bassists. But even in their heyday, Girls Against Boys were used to being the odd men out. Though they had roots in the D.C. Dischord scene and enjoyed a three-album run on Chicago’s Touch & Go Records, this uncommonly handsome band always projected a cool suavity-- like the Rat Pack taking up residency at the 9:30 Club-- that distinguished them from more outrageous post-hardcore peers like the Jesus Lizard and Brainiac, while lead mouthpiece Scott McCloud favored a sleazily suggestive crypto-speak at odds with the more earnest invectives of contemporaries like Fugazi and Jawbox. And they were putting their own singular spin on then-dormant ’80s post-punk influences-- namely, the pint-glass-smashing rumble of the Fall and the icy pulse of Joy Division-- long before you could score an Unknown Pleasures t-shirt at Urban Outfitters. But Girls Against Boys’ unconventional ethos yielded an all-too-predictable outcome: a momentum-stalling, instantly dated major-label debut (1998’s regrettably titled FreakOnIca), followed by an unceremonious return to indie-dom (2002’s You Can’t Fight What You Can’t See). Since then, the band’s individual members have ventured as far away from the House of GVSB as possible: McCloud and drummer Alexis Fleisig launched the acoustic-oriented, National-esque Paramount Styles, and bassist Johnny Temple turned his sideline indie-book imprint Akashic into a mini-publishing empire, while fellow four-stringer Eli Janney padded out his Nation of Ulysses and Jawbox production credits with the likes of Jet and James Blunt. So, in light of these highly divergent pursuits, it’s pretty remarkable that, on their first release in 11 years, Girls Against Boys manage to sound exactly like Girls Against Boys. If anything’s changed here, it’s their perspective. On GVSB’s signature mid-90s releases, there was a considerable ironic distance between the band’s urbane, predatory sound and McCloud’s knowingly antiquated banter, which invested hoary show-biz phraseology (“One more time with feeling!” “Sock it to me!” “You’re in like Flynn!”) with lecherous menace. On The Ghost List, he’s still very much the cocktail-swilling cretin occupying the same corner stool, but his barfly philosophy has become more rueful with age: When he observes, “It’s a diamond life” (on the swaggering lead track of the same name), the luxe-lifestyle fantasies of old have hardened into post-recession desperation, and his repeated insistence that “you gotta get into it/ get into it” applies the sort of aspirational pressure that inspires one to max out their credit cards. And for a guy whose lyrics could read like a news-ticker of pick-up lines, the atypically confessional tone and melodic drive of “Let’s Get Killed” (“the past is all we live in and the future’s always slipping away”) suggests that McCloud’s looking for a connection that lasts longer than last call to breakfast. (Accordingly, during GVSB’s hiatus, he relocated to Vienna to live with his Austrian girlfriend.) Consistent with the more sobering outlook, The Ghost List doesn’t quite push GVSB to peak white-hot intensity-- none of these five songs are as liable to incite a brawl like “Kill the Sexplayer” or soundtrack a drive-by like “Bulletproof Cupid". And though GVSB were one of the few indie-rock bands in the 90s to take notes from concurrent developments in dance music, there’s no attempt here to contemporize the band’s sound. (As McCloud recently told the Washington Post, this sense of arrested development was a totally intentional brass-tacks move.) But from the robo-cow-punk charge of “Fade Out” to the synth-buzzed pummel of “60 Is Greater Than 15” to the industrialized meltdown of “Kick", The Ghost List EP is a successful reboot for a mothballed machine whose core components-- brawn, dissonance, and groove-- are shown to be still in fine working order. Sure, we’ve seen this movie before, but Girls Against Boys haven’t forgotten the good parts."

Terius Nash

1977

Pop/R&B,Rap

Jordan Sargent

1977 is-- to quote Terius Nash himself-- an "Internet album." Nash (aka The-Dream) released it for free on his website on August 31, with the begrudged blessing of his bosses at Def Jam. It's his fourth solo album, but his first released in this manner, and it raises the question of whether or not we are supposed to alter our expectations. Is this a tossed-off re-packaging of demos? Is he merely trying to satiate a fanbase waiting for an album that he promised to drop this past June? We don't know the answers to those questions (although my guesses would be "no" and "maybe"), but it would seem foolish to hold 1977 to a lower standard. It's no longer unusual-- especially in the world of rap, and to a lesser extent R&B-- to put a full album on the Internet for free. If Nash had included a way for fans to pay what they wanted for the album, he would've been adopting a strategy utilized in previous years by Radiohead and Girl Talk. And yet, Nash is asking us to adjust our expectations. Crucially though, he's not asking that we alter our notions of what we expect of him, just what we expect from him. 1977 represents not a conscious change in quality, but a conscious change in style and sound, at least for the time being. A few days before he released the album, he tweeted, "When I'm 40 ill write Myself a Pop Smash just so I can Perform on National TV. Not that hard to do. But that's not who I am right now." True to his word, 1977 often strays far from Nash's few solo pop smashes. Instead, it is a deeply personal and presumably therapeutic album. It's one that he fought with his label to release, that he's putting out under his birth name and titled for his birth year, and for which he has put the lyrics of every song up on his website. Though he was predictably coy about the subject, the specter of his divorce from singer Christina Milian looms over it. In its sparseness and unrelenting directness, the album's most recent precedent is Kanye West's break up opus 808s & Heartbreak, and much like that record, it's already proven to be a divisive if misunderstood album. It showcases a bitter and angry Nash, and though he has previously dabbled in acidic and unflinching break-up songs, 1977 is his first album to largely focus on something other than his sexual prowess. Like West, his vitriol is mostly spewed outward, with seemingly little regard for the feelings or reputation of whoever is on the other side. There is Spanish guitar, as if Nash imagines himself readying for a duel. There is acoustic guitar, as if to accentuate his confessionals. And there is guitar feedback, as if his heart were screaming out. As a portrayal of a broken relationship, 1977 at its best is as vivid as it is one-sided. "Wake Me When It's Over", which effectively utilizes the glacial R&B of Drake and his producer Noah "40" Shebib, opens the album with a wrenching portrait of a romance falling apart in plain view of friends and the public. As Nash coos the chorus we find him frozen in amber, unable to shake a break up for which he claims he would've taken bullets. Even tracks like "Rolex" and "Wish You Were Mine", which don't hew as close to the theme as others, have a spitefulness that hint at an intense desire to throw your recovery in your ex's face. But of course, writing songs from this point of view presents some problems. Mainly, one has to be able to stomach the one-sided bile and Nash's likely half-truths. To that end, 1977, like West's 808s, functions best as a look inside the mind of a man wrecked by a trying relationship and a worse break up. His failings should not be excused, but the feelings exist, and have likely existed inside most of us at some point (regardless of gender), and to that end, they're understandable even if they're not completely acceptable. There are also essential moments on the album where Nash perhaps unwittingly reveals the more aggressively resentful songs to be a sort of Pyrrhic victory. One is on "Form of Flattery", where he addresses the ex he hates and seethes, "I'm not better than that." Another is "Wedding Crasher", the absolute standout here, wherein Nash shows up at his ex's wedding and admits, once and for all, that his attempts to replace her have been futile. Sonically, it recalls the buoyant lightness of Love King's "Florida University", though it's less cloying, and this time he's basically saying, "fuck you" back at himself. All that said, Nash still misses a huge opportunity. One of the legitimate criticisms of 808s was that West's ex had no forum to respond to the album. While it's obviously impossible to expect Nash to cede space on 1977 to Milian (or whomever), there is a critical difference between himself and West. Nash is a songwriter by trade who made his name writing from the perspective of people (mostly women) other than himself, including what may be the biggest female empowerment single of the past decade. When Nash does give the floor completely to a female voice, it's for the relatively unknown Casha to sing a cover of Deniece Williams' 1981 hit "Silly". As a tune, the song itself is fine, but framed by Nash's wrath it sadly comes off as pleading and passive. How great would it have been for Nash to use that spot on the album to turn the pen on himself, if only for one song? Still, 1977 itself is a success, even if it doesn't stand up completely to his three previous releases. As a standalone depiction of a deteriorating relationship and miserable break up, it's engrossing and, even to a fault, extremely honest. As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that. It's more like a shot (or three) of whisky. Sometimes that feels like exactly what you need.

Artist: Terius Nash, Album: 1977, Genre: Pop/R&B,Rap, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "1977 is-- to quote Terius Nash himself-- an "Internet album." Nash (aka The-Dream) released it for free on his website on August 31, with the begrudged blessing of his bosses at Def Jam. It's his fourth solo album, but his first released in this manner, and it raises the question of whether or not we are supposed to alter our expectations. Is this a tossed-off re-packaging of demos? Is he merely trying to satiate a fanbase waiting for an album that he promised to drop this past June? We don't know the answers to those questions (although my guesses would be "no" and "maybe"), but it would seem foolish to hold 1977 to a lower standard. It's no longer unusual-- especially in the world of rap, and to a lesser extent R&B-- to put a full album on the Internet for free. If Nash had included a way for fans to pay what they wanted for the album, he would've been adopting a strategy utilized in previous years by Radiohead and Girl Talk. And yet, Nash is asking us to adjust our expectations. Crucially though, he's not asking that we alter our notions of what we expect of him, just what we expect from him. 1977 represents not a conscious change in quality, but a conscious change in style and sound, at least for the time being. A few days before he released the album, he tweeted, "When I'm 40 ill write Myself a Pop Smash just so I can Perform on National TV. Not that hard to do. But that's not who I am right now." True to his word, 1977 often strays far from Nash's few solo pop smashes. Instead, it is a deeply personal and presumably therapeutic album. It's one that he fought with his label to release, that he's putting out under his birth name and titled for his birth year, and for which he has put the lyrics of every song up on his website. Though he was predictably coy about the subject, the specter of his divorce from singer Christina Milian looms over it. In its sparseness and unrelenting directness, the album's most recent precedent is Kanye West's break up opus 808s & Heartbreak, and much like that record, it's already proven to be a divisive if misunderstood album. It showcases a bitter and angry Nash, and though he has previously dabbled in acidic and unflinching break-up songs, 1977 is his first album to largely focus on something other than his sexual prowess. Like West, his vitriol is mostly spewed outward, with seemingly little regard for the feelings or reputation of whoever is on the other side. There is Spanish guitar, as if Nash imagines himself readying for a duel. There is acoustic guitar, as if to accentuate his confessionals. And there is guitar feedback, as if his heart were screaming out. As a portrayal of a broken relationship, 1977 at its best is as vivid as it is one-sided. "Wake Me When It's Over", which effectively utilizes the glacial R&B of Drake and his producer Noah "40" Shebib, opens the album with a wrenching portrait of a romance falling apart in plain view of friends and the public. As Nash coos the chorus we find him frozen in amber, unable to shake a break up for which he claims he would've taken bullets. Even tracks like "Rolex" and "Wish You Were Mine", which don't hew as close to the theme as others, have a spitefulness that hint at an intense desire to throw your recovery in your ex's face. But of course, writing songs from this point of view presents some problems. Mainly, one has to be able to stomach the one-sided bile and Nash's likely half-truths. To that end, 1977, like West's 808s, functions best as a look inside the mind of a man wrecked by a trying relationship and a worse break up. His failings should not be excused, but the feelings exist, and have likely existed inside most of us at some point (regardless of gender), and to that end, they're understandable even if they're not completely acceptable. There are also essential moments on the album where Nash perhaps unwittingly reveals the more aggressively resentful songs to be a sort of Pyrrhic victory. One is on "Form of Flattery", where he addresses the ex he hates and seethes, "I'm not better than that." Another is "Wedding Crasher", the absolute standout here, wherein Nash shows up at his ex's wedding and admits, once and for all, that his attempts to replace her have been futile. Sonically, it recalls the buoyant lightness of Love King's "Florida University", though it's less cloying, and this time he's basically saying, "fuck you" back at himself. All that said, Nash still misses a huge opportunity. One of the legitimate criticisms of 808s was that West's ex had no forum to respond to the album. While it's obviously impossible to expect Nash to cede space on 1977 to Milian (or whomever), there is a critical difference between himself and West. Nash is a songwriter by trade who made his name writing from the perspective of people (mostly women) other than himself, including what may be the biggest female empowerment single of the past decade. When Nash does give the floor completely to a female voice, it's for the relatively unknown Casha to sing a cover of Deniece Williams' 1981 hit "Silly". As a tune, the song itself is fine, but framed by Nash's wrath it sadly comes off as pleading and passive. How great would it have been for Nash to use that spot on the album to turn the pen on himself, if only for one song? Still, 1977 itself is a success, even if it doesn't stand up completely to his three previous releases. As a standalone depiction of a deteriorating relationship and miserable break up, it's engrossing and, even to a fault, extremely honest. As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that. It's more like a shot (or three) of whisky. Sometimes that feels like exactly what you need."

King Khan

What Is?!

Rock

Jason Crock

If there's any doubt in your mind that King Khan's got a smirk on his face throughout the entirety of What Is?!, take a listen to the lyrics of its final track, "The Ballad of Lady Godiva": "The sex was so simple/ I swear I saw God/ On the top of white mountains/ On the top of my rod." Even then, with a breath of relief that sounds more like early hiss-soaked Sebadoh than the gods of rock and soul Khan exhaustively pays tribute to throughout the record, it retains its musty vintage charm and spiky sense of humor. There's a reason Atlanta upstarts Black Lips cited Montreal's King Khan's other band, the BBQ Show, as recent favorites, and it's not just their shared affinity for Nuggets box sets and Eric Burdon. Both bands are more than just revivalists, but pranksters too, from their tongue-in-cheek lyrics, unpredictable live shows, impenetrable self-mythologizing press, and "live" albums (yeah, ok, you got me). Buying into the act isn't just a question of suspending disbelief and taking their hand for a magic carpet ride; it's being willing to smile after the shock of the hand buzzer. Thing is, the gritty production of this latest Shrines record might beat Black Lips in the painstaking reproduction department, and underneath that analog hiss is a clever pastiche that hits those nostalgia buttons while sneaking in moments of cacophony and synthesis. "69 Faces of Love" adds strings and brass to cool "Love Potion No. 9"-style rock before a layered and bewildering bridge that's like a middle-school marching band taking on Steve Reich. Elsewhere, Khan plays a bizarro-world James Brown who demands only bum notes from his band on the breakdown of "Land of the Freak", and "In Your Grave", with its bubbling wah-wah over a simmering rhythm section, is another sly nod to the future (or at least the early 1970s). No need to underline those moments, though, when you've got pitch-perfect 60s pop like "Welfare Bread" and "I See Lights" and horn-laden hard-rock like "(How Can I Keep You) Outta Harms Way". Innovation's just as important here as finding the right second to shout "guitar!" before the solo (check "No Regrets"). The retro shtick almost becomes a spoonful of sugar to make their cross-pollination go down, with the only explicitly adventurous moments being the Eastern-nodding psychedelic globe-boner of "Cosmic Serenade" and the French-sung "Le Fils de Jacques Dutronc", their tribute to a similarly scornful garage rocker and maybe the only hint that this band is Canadian. Rather than making the audience the butt of their prank, What Is?! becomes a joke that anyone can enjoy without necessarily being in on. There's no reason you should take this record more seriously than the King himself, and no reason you can't embrace it: What Is?! is goofy, affecting, nostalgic, and cathartic all at once, at every moment.

Artist: King Khan, Album: What Is?!, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "If there's any doubt in your mind that King Khan's got a smirk on his face throughout the entirety of What Is?!, take a listen to the lyrics of its final track, "The Ballad of Lady Godiva": "The sex was so simple/ I swear I saw God/ On the top of white mountains/ On the top of my rod." Even then, with a breath of relief that sounds more like early hiss-soaked Sebadoh than the gods of rock and soul Khan exhaustively pays tribute to throughout the record, it retains its musty vintage charm and spiky sense of humor. There's a reason Atlanta upstarts Black Lips cited Montreal's King Khan's other band, the BBQ Show, as recent favorites, and it's not just their shared affinity for Nuggets box sets and Eric Burdon. Both bands are more than just revivalists, but pranksters too, from their tongue-in-cheek lyrics, unpredictable live shows, impenetrable self-mythologizing press, and "live" albums (yeah, ok, you got me). Buying into the act isn't just a question of suspending disbelief and taking their hand for a magic carpet ride; it's being willing to smile after the shock of the hand buzzer. Thing is, the gritty production of this latest Shrines record might beat Black Lips in the painstaking reproduction department, and underneath that analog hiss is a clever pastiche that hits those nostalgia buttons while sneaking in moments of cacophony and synthesis. "69 Faces of Love" adds strings and brass to cool "Love Potion No. 9"-style rock before a layered and bewildering bridge that's like a middle-school marching band taking on Steve Reich. Elsewhere, Khan plays a bizarro-world James Brown who demands only bum notes from his band on the breakdown of "Land of the Freak", and "In Your Grave", with its bubbling wah-wah over a simmering rhythm section, is another sly nod to the future (or at least the early 1970s). No need to underline those moments, though, when you've got pitch-perfect 60s pop like "Welfare Bread" and "I See Lights" and horn-laden hard-rock like "(How Can I Keep You) Outta Harms Way". Innovation's just as important here as finding the right second to shout "guitar!" before the solo (check "No Regrets"). The retro shtick almost becomes a spoonful of sugar to make their cross-pollination go down, with the only explicitly adventurous moments being the Eastern-nodding psychedelic globe-boner of "Cosmic Serenade" and the French-sung "Le Fils de Jacques Dutronc", their tribute to a similarly scornful garage rocker and maybe the only hint that this band is Canadian. Rather than making the audience the butt of their prank, What Is?! becomes a joke that anyone can enjoy without necessarily being in on. There's no reason you should take this record more seriously than the King himself, and no reason you can't embrace it: What Is?! is goofy, affecting, nostalgic, and cathartic all at once, at every moment."

Posthuman

The Uncertainty of the Monkey

Electronic

Christopher Dare

You'll just have to imagine the typical introduction, illustrating evolution as a shaping factor in our lives, addressing its musical manifestation as suggested by this group's Darwinian name and album title. The outline would take shape through the idea of natural selection, with different genres like glitch and jungle occupying developmental niches in the survival of the fittest, and the eventual epochal shift when one lifeform incorporates all those traits. Let's cut to the chase: Posthuman have recorded an awesome album, one of the best IDM-oriented releases of 2001. All the more impressive that The Uncertainty of the Monkey is their debut, and the first record for their label Seed. Little is known about the duo, but the music speaks for itself. "Jacson of Israel_Beautiful Beast" begins unsettlingly with demonic Blair-Witch-warbling while minimal synth winds stir the air and disturbingly artificial snares create tension by panning between the channels, regular and yet erratic. Then the hunt begins, a disorienting rush of metallic crashes and whooming bass that descends into increasingly complex Confields. Posthuman display more sonic range than Autechre, though, evidenced as the frantic animal cooings are caught up in an austere keyboard melody. A second, more subdued section of the song begins, and the elements slowly subtract themselves from the mix until the 10-minute opener concludes in orchestral ambience. "15 Seconds to Get to Spain_Hogan" changes it up with mechanic hip-hop beats, funky as fuck, met by a searing synth stab harder than anything El-P cooked up on the Can Ox album last year. Posthuman have an uncanny knack for hiding mini-melodies amongst all the wobbly bass, and you can hear them on this track as a keyboard accent that lurked in the background gets looped over and over until it all ends in cycling claustrophobia. They play with a very raw sound palette, and so the digital sounds are far abstracted from any instrumental referents. Parts of their music imitate the jittering flow of Download, but without the emphasis on smacked-up house rhythms. When the instruments do reveal their origins, as on "Quetzacotl_Grathard Debacle," it comes startlingly as a harsh acoustic guitar strum appears over the clicking mandible chatter and floating keyboards. So this isn't just a mélange of sounds thrown out at once-- each song has a highly narrative structure, like hunting for signs of organic life in Future Sound of London's Dead Cities. A hint of the human touch appears with the live version of this song on the last track. You can hear a generic trance groove faintly in the background, along with the duo fumbling at their decks and muttering back and forth. Then the actual song kicks in, another beat-driven symphony of squelch. Thanks be to Posthuman, also, for putting the "dance" back in Intelligent Dance Music. "Plethora_Fagans Never Never" brings the funk with a litany of minimalist-techno breaks. Meanwhile, "Wednesday" stalks about the underbrush of booming bass and insectile glitch chirps, then catches the scent of a presumably Aphexian species. It pivots and transforms into a stomping electro number, acrid avid jam shredding in discombobulated fury. And "Wrongfuleyes" lures with prelude-to-the-afternoon-of-a-fawn calmness before morphing into a near-industrial anthem complete with dramatic keyboard vamps. The Uncertainty of the Monkey is anything but hesitant. Posthuman's songs are overly confident, and their dark, spacious sound rises up from deep bass in the background, a resonant synthesizer midrange and crisp beatscapes in the fore. As a debut, this album sets an aggressive mood, but the cold atmosphere doesn't alienate-- instead, there's the draw of a certain predatorial sexuality. And in the deft combination of narrative structure, dense sonic texture and progressive rhythm, the duo have secured a place for themselves in IDM history. I wish there was more reconnaissance on them-- rumors abound about their affiliation with Skam Records and the bashes they host in London's Aldwych disused underground station. But if you follow the "secret" link on their homepage, you'll discover photos of the band and their mates, living it up in various flats and generally looking like they haven't a care in the world. It's a refreshing bit of humanity amongst all the cybernetic atmosphere, and the glimpse of a poster of Orbital's In Sides on a back wall reveals another trace of familial history.

Artist: Posthuman, Album: The Uncertainty of the Monkey, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "You'll just have to imagine the typical introduction, illustrating evolution as a shaping factor in our lives, addressing its musical manifestation as suggested by this group's Darwinian name and album title. The outline would take shape through the idea of natural selection, with different genres like glitch and jungle occupying developmental niches in the survival of the fittest, and the eventual epochal shift when one lifeform incorporates all those traits. Let's cut to the chase: Posthuman have recorded an awesome album, one of the best IDM-oriented releases of 2001. All the more impressive that The Uncertainty of the Monkey is their debut, and the first record for their label Seed. Little is known about the duo, but the music speaks for itself. "Jacson of Israel_Beautiful Beast" begins unsettlingly with demonic Blair-Witch-warbling while minimal synth winds stir the air and disturbingly artificial snares create tension by panning between the channels, regular and yet erratic. Then the hunt begins, a disorienting rush of metallic crashes and whooming bass that descends into increasingly complex Confields. Posthuman display more sonic range than Autechre, though, evidenced as the frantic animal cooings are caught up in an austere keyboard melody. A second, more subdued section of the song begins, and the elements slowly subtract themselves from the mix until the 10-minute opener concludes in orchestral ambience. "15 Seconds to Get to Spain_Hogan" changes it up with mechanic hip-hop beats, funky as fuck, met by a searing synth stab harder than anything El-P cooked up on the Can Ox album last year. Posthuman have an uncanny knack for hiding mini-melodies amongst all the wobbly bass, and you can hear them on this track as a keyboard accent that lurked in the background gets looped over and over until it all ends in cycling claustrophobia. They play with a very raw sound palette, and so the digital sounds are far abstracted from any instrumental referents. Parts of their music imitate the jittering flow of Download, but without the emphasis on smacked-up house rhythms. When the instruments do reveal their origins, as on "Quetzacotl_Grathard Debacle," it comes startlingly as a harsh acoustic guitar strum appears over the clicking mandible chatter and floating keyboards. So this isn't just a mélange of sounds thrown out at once-- each song has a highly narrative structure, like hunting for signs of organic life in Future Sound of London's Dead Cities. A hint of the human touch appears with the live version of this song on the last track. You can hear a generic trance groove faintly in the background, along with the duo fumbling at their decks and muttering back and forth. Then the actual song kicks in, another beat-driven symphony of squelch. Thanks be to Posthuman, also, for putting the "dance" back in Intelligent Dance Music. "Plethora_Fagans Never Never" brings the funk with a litany of minimalist-techno breaks. Meanwhile, "Wednesday" stalks about the underbrush of booming bass and insectile glitch chirps, then catches the scent of a presumably Aphexian species. It pivots and transforms into a stomping electro number, acrid avid jam shredding in discombobulated fury. And "Wrongfuleyes" lures with prelude-to-the-afternoon-of-a-fawn calmness before morphing into a near-industrial anthem complete with dramatic keyboard vamps. The Uncertainty of the Monkey is anything but hesitant. Posthuman's songs are overly confident, and their dark, spacious sound rises up from deep bass in the background, a resonant synthesizer midrange and crisp beatscapes in the fore. As a debut, this album sets an aggressive mood, but the cold atmosphere doesn't alienate-- instead, there's the draw of a certain predatorial sexuality. And in the deft combination of narrative structure, dense sonic texture and progressive rhythm, the duo have secured a place for themselves in IDM history. I wish there was more reconnaissance on them-- rumors abound about their affiliation with Skam Records and the bashes they host in London's Aldwych disused underground station. But if you follow the "secret" link on their homepage, you'll discover photos of the band and their mates, living it up in various flats and generally looking like they haven't a care in the world. It's a refreshing bit of humanity amongst all the cybernetic atmosphere, and the glimpse of a poster of Orbital's In Sides on a back wall reveals another trace of familial history."

Tony Conrad, Faust

Outside the Dream Syndicate

Experimental,Rock

Brent S. Sirota

An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and Deadheads, the New Age-- but surely, I imagine, of wise and noble provenance somewhere back. A flag flapping in the gale sparks an argument between two monks on the nature of things. The first declares that the flag is surely moving. The flag is still, counters the other, it is the wind that is moving. Sure enough, where an insoluble paradox appears, the wandering master is not far behind. Which is it, ask the monks, is the flag moving or is the wind moving? Neither, replies the master; mind is moving. Fair enough. Take it, like any wisdom, with a grain of salt, but it springs to mind. Not because Tony Conrad sees still air and a flapping flag, or because Faust occupy a world of volatile weather, but just because, for a moment in Outside the Dream Syndicate, one forgets what exactly is moving and what is standing still. Here's what we know: in October 1972, at a hippie commune in Wümme in southwestern Hamburg, a German art-rock collective bred on the stringent drone and skag-pop of the Velvet Underground hooked up with the young composer who gave that band its name-- or rather, who handed Lou Reed the sadomasochism exposé whence the band derived its name. Tony Conrad and the members of Faust collaborated for three days on an album that would be released the following year in England and would tank immediately thereafter. The musicians did not communicate or collaborate throughout the following two decades. Minimalism is unquestionably the wrong word; I prefer asceticism. Anyone familiar with the Zappa-like hysteria of Faust's first album or the searing kosmische of IV must imagine the sheer force of self-denial at work in implementing Conrad's vision: to have a deep base note tuned to the tonic on Conrad's violin and to have the drummer "tuned" to a rhythm that corresponded to the vibrations. Minimal in design, I suppose, but catastrophically huge in execution. "From the Side of Man and Womankind" opens in dead motorik, the usually nimble percussive battery of bass guitarist Jean-Hervé Peron and drummer "Zappi" Diermaier, stalled out to a hollow thud-- like the heartbeat of a machine. Conrad's violin bleats mournfully, endlessly; rising, breathing, sighing, screaming, but without ceasing: relentless. Faust resisted. Peron's second bass note, inserted against Conrad's wishes, adds a spring and thrust to the proceedings. Zappi's odd cymbal crash shatters like punctuation in a prayer. Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck dulled the serrated violence of Conrad's violin, somehow rendering slow murder into long caresses. "The Side of Man and Womankind" runs like a conveyor belt through fog: going without moving, advancing, standing still. "From the Side of the Machine" is oddly less mechanical than its counterpart. A half-hour in length, like "Man and Womankind", the "Machine" side ruminates with muted psychedelia: serpentine bass, ceremonial percussion, the purr and roar of Rudolf Sosna's humming synthesizer, Conrad's violin passing high above like an electrical storm in the upper air. There is a predatory quality to the "Side of the Machine": an encircling peril, a certain restlessness above and behind. Mind moves, as if hunted. The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Outside the Dream Syndicate adds a second disc of material. Two brief tracks-- both named with the young death of former Dream Syndicate comrade Angus Maclise in mind-- offer the remaining fragments of those three days at the abandoned schoolhouse studio at Wümme. Both the slow burning "The Pyre of Angus was in Kathmandu" and the tremulous "The Death of the Composer Was in 1962" reveal a looser agenda in the sessions. In the latter piece, Conrad abandons the impassive drone of the first disc for an almost celebratory psych-rock. The second disc is rounded out by an alternate production of "From the Side of Man and Womankind", lacking the overdubbed violin lines of the album version. So perhaps a little Zen, perhaps a little cataclysm. After all, as Lou Reed said, "It's the beginning of the New Age." And a few decades before that, a poet ended his long flirtation with Buddhism by joining the Church of England. In his conversion poem, however, he continued to pray with eastern paradoxes. "Teach us to care and not to care," T.S. Eliot intoned, "teach us to sit still." And this album finally begins to show us how.

Artist: Tony Conrad, Faust, Album: Outside the Dream Syndicate, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and Deadheads, the New Age-- but surely, I imagine, of wise and noble provenance somewhere back. A flag flapping in the gale sparks an argument between two monks on the nature of things. The first declares that the flag is surely moving. The flag is still, counters the other, it is the wind that is moving. Sure enough, where an insoluble paradox appears, the wandering master is not far behind. Which is it, ask the monks, is the flag moving or is the wind moving? Neither, replies the master; mind is moving. Fair enough. Take it, like any wisdom, with a grain of salt, but it springs to mind. Not because Tony Conrad sees still air and a flapping flag, or because Faust occupy a world of volatile weather, but just because, for a moment in Outside the Dream Syndicate, one forgets what exactly is moving and what is standing still. Here's what we know: in October 1972, at a hippie commune in Wümme in southwestern Hamburg, a German art-rock collective bred on the stringent drone and skag-pop of the Velvet Underground hooked up with the young composer who gave that band its name-- or rather, who handed Lou Reed the sadomasochism exposé whence the band derived its name. Tony Conrad and the members of Faust collaborated for three days on an album that would be released the following year in England and would tank immediately thereafter. The musicians did not communicate or collaborate throughout the following two decades. Minimalism is unquestionably the wrong word; I prefer asceticism. Anyone familiar with the Zappa-like hysteria of Faust's first album or the searing kosmische of IV must imagine the sheer force of self-denial at work in implementing Conrad's vision: to have a deep base note tuned to the tonic on Conrad's violin and to have the drummer "tuned" to a rhythm that corresponded to the vibrations. Minimal in design, I suppose, but catastrophically huge in execution. "From the Side of Man and Womankind" opens in dead motorik, the usually nimble percussive battery of bass guitarist Jean-Hervé Peron and drummer "Zappi" Diermaier, stalled out to a hollow thud-- like the heartbeat of a machine. Conrad's violin bleats mournfully, endlessly; rising, breathing, sighing, screaming, but without ceasing: relentless. Faust resisted. Peron's second bass note, inserted against Conrad's wishes, adds a spring and thrust to the proceedings. Zappi's odd cymbal crash shatters like punctuation in a prayer. Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck dulled the serrated violence of Conrad's violin, somehow rendering slow murder into long caresses. "The Side of Man and Womankind" runs like a conveyor belt through fog: going without moving, advancing, standing still. "From the Side of the Machine" is oddly less mechanical than its counterpart. A half-hour in length, like "Man and Womankind", the "Machine" side ruminates with muted psychedelia: serpentine bass, ceremonial percussion, the purr and roar of Rudolf Sosna's humming synthesizer, Conrad's violin passing high above like an electrical storm in the upper air. There is a predatory quality to the "Side of the Machine": an encircling peril, a certain restlessness above and behind. Mind moves, as if hunted. The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Outside the Dream Syndicate adds a second disc of material. Two brief tracks-- both named with the young death of former Dream Syndicate comrade Angus Maclise in mind-- offer the remaining fragments of those three days at the abandoned schoolhouse studio at Wümme. Both the slow burning "The Pyre of Angus was in Kathmandu" and the tremulous "The Death of the Composer Was in 1962" reveal a looser agenda in the sessions. In the latter piece, Conrad abandons the impassive drone of the first disc for an almost celebratory psych-rock. The second disc is rounded out by an alternate production of "From the Side of Man and Womankind", lacking the overdubbed violin lines of the album version. So perhaps a little Zen, perhaps a little cataclysm. After all, as Lou Reed said, "It's the beginning of the New Age." And a few decades before that, a poet ended his long flirtation with Buddhism by joining the Church of England. In his conversion poem, however, he continued to pray with eastern paradoxes. "Teach us to care and not to care," T.S. Eliot intoned, "teach us to sit still." And this album finally begins to show us how."

The Parallax Corporation

Cocadisco

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Nitsuh Abebe

If you're all caught up on the Nas vs. Jay-Z beef, perhaps you'd be amused to hear about one in the lovely and dying new-electro scene? I mean, obviously nothing can quite rival the erratic rants and intensities of Nas, but this is a fun one, I swear. Ready? It involves a guy called I/F, or Interr-Ference. We're going to give him a break on the name, half because he's Dutch, and half because that extra R seems trivial in contrast to the name of his partner in The Parallax Corporation, who's called, umm, Intergalactic Gary. I/F is sort of the nominal godfather of the new-electro scene, for two reasons. The first reason is his terrific late-90s cut "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass", which spiked pretty utilitarian techno with the big, dark early-electro and Italo-disco sound that wound up sweeping the nation (assuming that nation is the Netherlands and a big chunk of Germany). The second reason is his great and equally significant Mixed Up in the Hague disc, a set of seminal first-wave electro pieces including the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk. He is, by any estimation, a major source of the Dutch electro scene's current agenda, which is Big, Dark, Epic, and Pounding: the deep noir-disco of fellow traveler Legowelt, for instance, sometimes seems like it might unexpectedly cross over into hard trance. The weird beef starts in because I/F is pretty vocal in his disdain for, from what I can tell, pretty much everything, from the Dutch public to all of the electro he's credited for having spawned. In fact, the press-ready hook for Cocadisco is a big sneering swipe of a track called "Your Image", which goes on and on about "electrocash." (Sample lyrics: "Exploiting music for the sake of your fame! Your fashion vision completely misses the point! No respect for music at all!") It's easy to assume this swipe is directed as much at people like DJ Hell and the International DJ Gigolos-- who've injected star personas and cocaine/limousine antics into the whole electro project-- as it is at technical "electroclash" term-coiner Larry Tee, whose Brooklyn scene one Vice reader recently described as having turned into "a homosexual Star Search." (The problem with this criticism is that a homosexual Star Search sounds fantastic to me, whereas the bulk of Brooklyn electro does not.) So what exactly, one might ask, is I/F's alternative proposal? In the case of The Parallax Corporation, it's to keep electro strictly pounding and strictly aimed at the dancefloor massive: Cocadisco, as the name sort of implies, is a big utilitarian techno set that stomps along with great dedication to traditional club tropes. Within that milieu it's mostly quite effective: it starts off with the obligatory "taking you on a journey"-type dialog sample, then kicks immediately into the pretty daunting "Lift Off", whose revolving bass grind is like a rollercoaster that keeps climbing until you're a little scared of the upcoming drop-- FC/Kahuna's "Glitterball" suddenly seems a bit weak to me now. No deep-dark synth-building here, just upfront, enjoy-the-ride banging. And plenty of the tracks on Cocadisco continue to deliver on that front, though nothing really strives for the energy level of "Lift Off"-- "Crocodiles in the Sky", with vocals from usual I/F collaborator Nancy Fortune, immediately drops the tone back to the types of gridlike grooves Felix da Housecat might drop toward the beginning of a set. Vocalists appear on a lot of tracks, actually: Fortune, Kaori Kuwabara, Helga la Blaque, and, on the hard-disco pop detour, "Fear", Guy Tavares. In the end, I/F wanders the slightest bit into more classic-electro territory: "Slowflight Runner" verges into Legowelt's realm, its smooth electro stride underpinning a number of synth workouts, and the organic percussion breaks on the closing "Theme from Pack (Remix)" are actually half of why it wouldn't sound so out-of-place among the vintage selections on the next Mixed Up in the Hague volume. But forgive me: The whole "electrocash" rant raises the standards on this sort of thing. Would I rather dance to the tracks on Cocadisco than I would to half of the electroclash coming out of the U.S.? Without question. Would I rather dance to them than the stuff coming from International DJ Gigolos? Sometimes, though I don't think the gulf between the two is quite as wide as I/F would like to think it is. Nevertheless, there's something deeply offputting about I/F's sort of prudish traditionalism here: he's delivered a very solid collection of utilitarian, floor-oriented techno-electro-disco, but holding that up as some sort of "about the music" victory seems as pointless as rock fans getting upset about pop stars and drum machines. So, decent work, I/F-- only next time, mouth shut!

Artist: The Parallax Corporation, Album: Cocadisco, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "If you're all caught up on the Nas vs. Jay-Z beef, perhaps you'd be amused to hear about one in the lovely and dying new-electro scene? I mean, obviously nothing can quite rival the erratic rants and intensities of Nas, but this is a fun one, I swear. Ready? It involves a guy called I/F, or Interr-Ference. We're going to give him a break on the name, half because he's Dutch, and half because that extra R seems trivial in contrast to the name of his partner in The Parallax Corporation, who's called, umm, Intergalactic Gary. I/F is sort of the nominal godfather of the new-electro scene, for two reasons. The first reason is his terrific late-90s cut "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass", which spiked pretty utilitarian techno with the big, dark early-electro and Italo-disco sound that wound up sweeping the nation (assuming that nation is the Netherlands and a big chunk of Germany). The second reason is his great and equally significant Mixed Up in the Hague disc, a set of seminal first-wave electro pieces including the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk. He is, by any estimation, a major source of the Dutch electro scene's current agenda, which is Big, Dark, Epic, and Pounding: the deep noir-disco of fellow traveler Legowelt, for instance, sometimes seems like it might unexpectedly cross over into hard trance. The weird beef starts in because I/F is pretty vocal in his disdain for, from what I can tell, pretty much everything, from the Dutch public to all of the electro he's credited for having spawned. In fact, the press-ready hook for Cocadisco is a big sneering swipe of a track called "Your Image", which goes on and on about "electrocash." (Sample lyrics: "Exploiting music for the sake of your fame! Your fashion vision completely misses the point! No respect for music at all!") It's easy to assume this swipe is directed as much at people like DJ Hell and the International DJ Gigolos-- who've injected star personas and cocaine/limousine antics into the whole electro project-- as it is at technical "electroclash" term-coiner Larry Tee, whose Brooklyn scene one Vice reader recently described as having turned into "a homosexual Star Search." (The problem with this criticism is that a homosexual Star Search sounds fantastic to me, whereas the bulk of Brooklyn electro does not.) So what exactly, one might ask, is I/F's alternative proposal? In the case of The Parallax Corporation, it's to keep electro strictly pounding and strictly aimed at the dancefloor massive: Cocadisco, as the name sort of implies, is a big utilitarian techno set that stomps along with great dedication to traditional club tropes. Within that milieu it's mostly quite effective: it starts off with the obligatory "taking you on a journey"-type dialog sample, then kicks immediately into the pretty daunting "Lift Off", whose revolving bass grind is like a rollercoaster that keeps climbing until you're a little scared of the upcoming drop-- FC/Kahuna's "Glitterball" suddenly seems a bit weak to me now. No deep-dark synth-building here, just upfront, enjoy-the-ride banging. And plenty of the tracks on Cocadisco continue to deliver on that front, though nothing really strives for the energy level of "Lift Off"-- "Crocodiles in the Sky", with vocals from usual I/F collaborator Nancy Fortune, immediately drops the tone back to the types of gridlike grooves Felix da Housecat might drop toward the beginning of a set. Vocalists appear on a lot of tracks, actually: Fortune, Kaori Kuwabara, Helga la Blaque, and, on the hard-disco pop detour, "Fear", Guy Tavares. In the end, I/F wanders the slightest bit into more classic-electro territory: "Slowflight Runner" verges into Legowelt's realm, its smooth electro stride underpinning a number of synth workouts, and the organic percussion breaks on the closing "Theme from Pack (Remix)" are actually half of why it wouldn't sound so out-of-place among the vintage selections on the next Mixed Up in the Hague volume. But forgive me: The whole "electrocash" rant raises the standards on this sort of thing. Would I rather dance to the tracks on Cocadisco than I would to half of the electroclash coming out of the U.S.? Without question. Would I rather dance to them than the stuff coming from International DJ Gigolos? Sometimes, though I don't think the gulf between the two is quite as wide as I/F would like to think it is. Nevertheless, there's something deeply offputting about I/F's sort of prudish traditionalism here: he's delivered a very solid collection of utilitarian, floor-oriented techno-electro-disco, but holding that up as some sort of "about the music" victory seems as pointless as rock fans getting upset about pop stars and drum machines. So, decent work, I/F-- only next time, mouth shut!"

Mother Mother

Touch Up

Rock

Adam Moerder

Effortlessness has long been one of the most endearing aspects of indie rock. While many major label giants produce albums forged over several back-breaking months, a lot of indie's greatest opuses, from Slanted and Enchanted to The Moon and Antarctica, sound like the one-off recordings of a band that just happened to stumble into a studio. Mother Mother's debut is by no means such a watershed effort, but Touch Up comes packed with acute, snappy pop songs with no discernible signs of the elbow grease it took to craft them. However, the Vancouver five-piece lives and dies by their lax nature, which, while intriguing initially, lacks consistency over an entire album. The band's quirky songwriting, combined with its affinity for acoustic-only arrangements, sounds like a throwback to goofy staples such as the Violent Femmes or the Meat Puppets. The vocal carousel of Debra-Jean Creelman and Ryan and Jean Guldemond keeps the punk-folk nuanced enough to avoid mere imitation, bending their acoustic pop from the Breeders to Devendra Banhart. Opener "Dirty Town" showcases the vocal triumvirate's singing and charisma at full force as they take turns fantasizing about buying a farm. The bumpkin lyrics and delivery work surprisingly well, thanks mostly to the band's mercilessly schizo shifts from one song section to the next. At its best, the band doesn't even need to rely on novelty. "Oh Ana" is pretty straightforward acoustic pop, rallying around jittery supernatural lyrics and a lush sound crafted by Tegan and Sara producer Howard Redekopp. The plodding title track, with its lugubrious intro guitar riff and stop-start verse, shows that the band's capable of more than just ironic hick ditties. Even the standout song's lyrics wise up, with all three singers commenting on unhealthy body image ("I need a touch up!") over the album's most dramatic builds. On the flip side, when Mother Mother overstep their eccentric bounds and get downright kitschy, the results are pretty disastrous. The acoustic arpeggios of "Verbatim" sound like a loose cover of-- get ready-- TLC's "No Scrubs", and Ryan Guldemond's crooning about wearing women's underwear smacks of dorky-white-guy-imitating-black-guy comedy. "Love and Truth", while not as egregious, veers uncomfortably close to tackier female artists like Jewel or Sarah McLachlan, relying more on whimsy than artistry. These missteps aside though, the free-spirited Touch Up feels refreshing as an album isolated from a lot of today's worn-out trends and aesthetic mimicry. That two of the album's strongest songs ("Touch Up" and "Polynesia") are relatively earnest is probably coincidental, though Mother Mother's laid-back vibe could use some prodding here or there, at least until their songwriting matures.

Artist: Mother Mother, Album: Touch Up, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Effortlessness has long been one of the most endearing aspects of indie rock. While many major label giants produce albums forged over several back-breaking months, a lot of indie's greatest opuses, from Slanted and Enchanted to The Moon and Antarctica, sound like the one-off recordings of a band that just happened to stumble into a studio. Mother Mother's debut is by no means such a watershed effort, but Touch Up comes packed with acute, snappy pop songs with no discernible signs of the elbow grease it took to craft them. However, the Vancouver five-piece lives and dies by their lax nature, which, while intriguing initially, lacks consistency over an entire album. The band's quirky songwriting, combined with its affinity for acoustic-only arrangements, sounds like a throwback to goofy staples such as the Violent Femmes or the Meat Puppets. The vocal carousel of Debra-Jean Creelman and Ryan and Jean Guldemond keeps the punk-folk nuanced enough to avoid mere imitation, bending their acoustic pop from the Breeders to Devendra Banhart. Opener "Dirty Town" showcases the vocal triumvirate's singing and charisma at full force as they take turns fantasizing about buying a farm. The bumpkin lyrics and delivery work surprisingly well, thanks mostly to the band's mercilessly schizo shifts from one song section to the next. At its best, the band doesn't even need to rely on novelty. "Oh Ana" is pretty straightforward acoustic pop, rallying around jittery supernatural lyrics and a lush sound crafted by Tegan and Sara producer Howard Redekopp. The plodding title track, with its lugubrious intro guitar riff and stop-start verse, shows that the band's capable of more than just ironic hick ditties. Even the standout song's lyrics wise up, with all three singers commenting on unhealthy body image ("I need a touch up!") over the album's most dramatic builds. On the flip side, when Mother Mother overstep their eccentric bounds and get downright kitschy, the results are pretty disastrous. The acoustic arpeggios of "Verbatim" sound like a loose cover of-- get ready-- TLC's "No Scrubs", and Ryan Guldemond's crooning about wearing women's underwear smacks of dorky-white-guy-imitating-black-guy comedy. "Love and Truth", while not as egregious, veers uncomfortably close to tackier female artists like Jewel or Sarah McLachlan, relying more on whimsy than artistry. These missteps aside though, the free-spirited Touch Up feels refreshing as an album isolated from a lot of today's worn-out trends and aesthetic mimicry. That two of the album's strongest songs ("Touch Up" and "Polynesia") are relatively earnest is probably coincidental, though Mother Mother's laid-back vibe could use some prodding here or there, at least until their songwriting matures."

Slim Twig

Thank You for Stickin' With Twig

Rock

Laura Snapes

Over the course of five albums and many peripheral releases, Toronto-born Max Turnbull has fashioned himself an outsider narrative as Slim Twig. It’s true that 2009’s slimy sample-heavy Contempt! wasn't about to find a mainstream audience, though the crux of his self-styled myth hangs on Paper Bag rejecting 2012’s A Hound at the Hem for being too far out, which feels off when you consider the rest of their roster. Compared to his previous records, Hound was Slim’s most accessible release: A concept album loosely themed around Lolita and L’Histoire de Melody Nelson that conjured L.A.’s chamber pop weirdos Van Dyke Parks, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman in a dank, oily guise. Owen Pallett provided string arrangements. Slim eventually issued the record on Calico Corp, the label he runs with his wife, U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy, and DFA Records saw fit to re-release it last year. They offered Slim a deal for new work, and encouraged him to "keep the music as weird as possible." In the meantime, he had released the milder Sof Sike to appease Paper Bag, a compromise he says he didn’t mind. For all Slim’s off-kilter aims, Thank You for Stickin’ With Twig fits right into any number of very timely pop cultural concerns. His desire to emulate and kill his idols—audibly Zappa, Beefheart, the Zombies—paired with an abiding love of classic melodies and psychedelic murk aligns him with self-conscious, costumed rock’n’roll stylists like Father John Misty and Ariel Pink. Both FJM and Pink use bad taste and misogyny in an attempt to radicalize the traditional realms in which they work, and are credited as complex artists for it, though, as NPR’s Ann Powers highlighted in a recent essay on Josh Tillman, it’s a marketing ploy as much as any potentially genuine creative impulse: "Maybe for that reason, outrageousness now doesn’t seek to change much beyond itself. It’s provocative, but not necessarily oppositional or even that unconventional at its core." With Thank You, Slim rejects FJM and Pink’s rejection of good taste, positioning himself as an ally on gender and wage equality, a woman’s pleasure, and an advocate for "dragging an appropriation of rock’n’roll kicking and screaming into a place free of cliché, sexism, and trod on association." It’s a big claim. And yet, Slim appointing himself as a corrective sits almost as uncomfortably as Pink’s "maced by a feminist" story and FJM's cultivated chauvinism. Pitchfork contributor Jes Skolnik wrote recently about "[recoiling] from men who are extremely keen to tell me exactly how Feminist they are." She continued, "[trust is] not something that comes with hardcore lyrics about the Right Topics." Given that Slim has talked about admiring "a lot of artists who would be considered assholes or even criminals like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Phil Spector," it’s hard not to raise a skeptical brow at his foregrounded activism on behalf of the disenfranchised. Thank You comes at a time when we greet any art that basically musters the Bechdel test with the enthusiasm of serfs receiving crumbs from the master’s table. Type "Magic Mike female pleasure" into your favorite search engine and there’s a whole page of essays from high-profile outlets praising the film’s portrayal of women’s satisfaction. This is where Thank You starts, with "Slippin’ Slidin’", a desperate, sleazy devotional where Slim puts himself at the mercy of his sexual partner, his distorted voice matching the guitar’s gravelly thrust. That it sounds like Queens of the Stone Age covering T. Rex is surely meant to make some audacious point about a cock-rocking song concerning female pleasure, a level of extra-textural interest that Thank You assumes of its listeners. (Cop the extensive explanations that accompany its page in the DFA web store.) Better is the subsequent "A Woman’s Touch (It’s No Coincidence)"—co-written with Remy—which confronts Yoko haters and attributes the Beatles’ wives with significant responsibility for their husbands’ success. This feels like a well-judged feminist statement coming from a male artist messing with rock’n’roll signifiers. It also sounds like a dub remix of the "Roobarb and Custard" theme tune that’s as irritating as it is fun. Also strong is "Fog of Sex (N.S.I.S.)"—if it were less corroded, its sharp lyrics might forge an anthem for gender fluidity: "Gender please/ Standardized questionnaire fee/ Simply mark which one you are/ Yet no option applies to me," Slim sings with Remy. "A Woman’s Touch" and "Fog of Sex" are the opening book-end to a bog of courtly baroque interludes ("She Stickin’ With Twig"), twisted junkyard carousel songs ("Stone Rollin’ (Musical Emotion)"), doomy stutter ("Trip Thru Bells"), and drawling electric guitar that magically captures the gleeful menace of Captain Beefheart’s voice ("Textiles on Mainstreet"; see also). Everything is doused in unkempt psych sleaze; the middle section is in desperate need of a corset. Amidst it is "Roll Red Roll (Song for Steubenville)". It starts as a murky waltz that veers again into that louche guitar tone, heralding inaudible lyrics that evoke the grim situation of the Steubenville high school football team rape case—all uneasy come-ons that don’t contain the option to say no: "You ever been a mule hon?/ You ever make it past the line?/ Even in a school zone/ I see you look just fine." Perhaps Slim has very personal reasons for wanting to inhabit this horrendous incident, but at the same time, the lyrics don’t convey a complex handle on its gravity. The only nod to Steubenville is in the title, which feels like another pat on his own back; outrageousness—masquerading as tribute—not seeking to change much beyond itself, again. The empty Big Ideas continue: "You Got Me Goin..." features a slurped sample of the Chi-Lites’ "Stoned Out of My Mind", which is rekindled again later on "Out of My Mind", with added woodwind. Following the genuinely clever and brilliant Hound, the mess is wildly frustrating. "The trouble is once having killed one’s idols, there’s a tendency to also do away with melody, structure, clever lyrics, and a more ambitious approach to production," Slim told one interviewer of his attempts to avoid doing that. He wasn't particularly successful. It’s no surprise that he named the supreme self-sabotage that was Julian Casablancas and the Voidz’ Tyranny as one of his albums of 2014. Perversely, the song where Slim confronts the tension between himself and his dearly held inspirations is both the least original and best of Thank You. The jaunty, confident guitar hook of "Live In, Live On, Your Era

Artist: Slim Twig, Album: Thank You for Stickin' With Twig, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "Over the course of five albums and many peripheral releases, Toronto-born Max Turnbull has fashioned himself an outsider narrative as Slim Twig. It’s true that 2009’s slimy sample-heavy Contempt! wasn't about to find a mainstream audience, though the crux of his self-styled myth hangs on Paper Bag rejecting 2012’s A Hound at the Hem for being too far out, which feels off when you consider the rest of their roster. Compared to his previous records, Hound was Slim’s most accessible release: A concept album loosely themed around Lolita and L’Histoire de Melody Nelson that conjured L.A.’s chamber pop weirdos Van Dyke Parks, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman in a dank, oily guise. Owen Pallett provided string arrangements. Slim eventually issued the record on Calico Corp, the label he runs with his wife, U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy, and DFA Records saw fit to re-release it last year. They offered Slim a deal for new work, and encouraged him to "keep the music as weird as possible." In the meantime, he had released the milder Sof Sike to appease Paper Bag, a compromise he says he didn’t mind. For all Slim’s off-kilter aims, Thank You for Stickin’ With Twig fits right into any number of very timely pop cultural concerns. His desire to emulate and kill his idols—audibly Zappa, Beefheart, the Zombies—paired with an abiding love of classic melodies and psychedelic murk aligns him with self-conscious, costumed rock’n’roll stylists like Father John Misty and Ariel Pink. Both FJM and Pink use bad taste and misogyny in an attempt to radicalize the traditional realms in which they work, and are credited as complex artists for it, though, as NPR’s Ann Powers highlighted in a recent essay on Josh Tillman, it’s a marketing ploy as much as any potentially genuine creative impulse: "Maybe for that reason, outrageousness now doesn’t seek to change much beyond itself. It’s provocative, but not necessarily oppositional or even that unconventional at its core." With Thank You, Slim rejects FJM and Pink’s rejection of good taste, positioning himself as an ally on gender and wage equality, a woman’s pleasure, and an advocate for "dragging an appropriation of rock’n’roll kicking and screaming into a place free of cliché, sexism, and trod on association." It’s a big claim. And yet, Slim appointing himself as a corrective sits almost as uncomfortably as Pink’s "maced by a feminist" story and FJM's cultivated chauvinism. Pitchfork contributor Jes Skolnik wrote recently about "[recoiling] from men who are extremely keen to tell me exactly how Feminist they are." She continued, "[trust is] not something that comes with hardcore lyrics about the Right Topics." Given that Slim has talked about admiring "a lot of artists who would be considered assholes or even criminals like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Phil Spector," it’s hard not to raise a skeptical brow at his foregrounded activism on behalf of the disenfranchised. Thank You comes at a time when we greet any art that basically musters the Bechdel test with the enthusiasm of serfs receiving crumbs from the master’s table. Type "Magic Mike female pleasure" into your favorite search engine and there’s a whole page of essays from high-profile outlets praising the film’s portrayal of women’s satisfaction. This is where Thank You starts, with "Slippin’ Slidin’", a desperate, sleazy devotional where Slim puts himself at the mercy of his sexual partner, his distorted voice matching the guitar’s gravelly thrust. That it sounds like Queens of the Stone Age covering T. Rex is surely meant to make some audacious point about a cock-rocking song concerning female pleasure, a level of extra-textural interest that Thank You assumes of its listeners. (Cop the extensive explanations that accompany its page in the DFA web store.) Better is the subsequent "A Woman’s Touch (It’s No Coincidence)"—co-written with Remy—which confronts Yoko haters and attributes the Beatles’ wives with significant responsibility for their husbands’ success. This feels like a well-judged feminist statement coming from a male artist messing with rock’n’roll signifiers. It also sounds like a dub remix of the "Roobarb and Custard" theme tune that’s as irritating as it is fun. Also strong is "Fog of Sex (N.S.I.S.)"—if it were less corroded, its sharp lyrics might forge an anthem for gender fluidity: "Gender please/ Standardized questionnaire fee/ Simply mark which one you are/ Yet no option applies to me," Slim sings with Remy. "A Woman’s Touch" and "Fog of Sex" are the opening book-end to a bog of courtly baroque interludes ("She Stickin’ With Twig"), twisted junkyard carousel songs ("Stone Rollin’ (Musical Emotion)"), doomy stutter ("Trip Thru Bells"), and drawling electric guitar that magically captures the gleeful menace of Captain Beefheart’s voice ("Textiles on Mainstreet"; see also). Everything is doused in unkempt psych sleaze; the middle section is in desperate need of a corset. Amidst it is "Roll Red Roll (Song for Steubenville)". It starts as a murky waltz that veers again into that louche guitar tone, heralding inaudible lyrics that evoke the grim situation of the Steubenville high school football team rape case—all uneasy come-ons that don’t contain the option to say no: "You ever been a mule hon?/ You ever make it past the line?/ Even in a school zone/ I see you look just fine." Perhaps Slim has very personal reasons for wanting to inhabit this horrendous incident, but at the same time, the lyrics don’t convey a complex handle on its gravity. The only nod to Steubenville is in the title, which feels like another pat on his own back; outrageousness—masquerading as tribute—not seeking to change much beyond itself, again. The empty Big Ideas continue: "You Got Me Goin..." features a slurped sample of the Chi-Lites’ "Stoned Out of My Mind", which is rekindled again later on "Out of My Mind", with added woodwind. Following the genuinely clever and brilliant Hound, the mess is wildly frustrating. "The trouble is once having killed one’s idols, there’s a tendency to also do away with melody, structure, clever lyrics, and a more ambitious approach to production," Slim told one interviewer of his attempts to avoid doing that. He wasn't particularly successful. It’s no surprise that he named the supreme self-sabotage that was Julian Casablancas and the Voidz’ Tyranny as one of his albums of 2014. Perversely, the song where Slim confronts the tension between himself and his dearly held inspirations is both the least original and best of Thank You. The jaunty, confident guitar hook of "Live In, Live On, Your Era"

Various Artists

Fat Beats Compilation Vol. 2

Sam Chennault

Although hip-hop culture spans decades, it wasn't until the mid-90s that what we now consider to be underground hip-hop defined itself as a movement. A loose artistic aesthetic was established, the independence-as-freedom stance was cemented, and the key elements (breaking, emceeing, DJing, and graffiti) were revived for a new generation of b-boys and girls. Although one cannot downplay the power of the Internet to spread the message to those in non-urban locations, Fat Beats Records acted as a physical epicenter for the renaissance of roots hip-hop. The staff was comprised of noted DJs that transcended their roles as sales clerks and acted as educators for their patrons and as a distribution lifeline for independent artists who were otherwise ignored. The love and devotion that Fat Beats displayed was infectious, and as hip-hop purism and vinyl culture spread, the company branched out from its original NYC location and opened stores in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. They were also able to launch a label that has released the latest J-Zone and Atmosphere albums, among others. If any record store/label has earned the right to release a self-aggrandizing compilation album, it's Fat Beats. The first compilation, released last year, was an unmitigated jewel, featuring everyone from the RZA to Blastmaster KRS-One to (comparative) new jacks Kazi and Non Phixion. DJ Eclipse kicks the second volume off with a short intro that cuts and splices the words "Fat Beats" from various hip-hop tracks. Next up is "Make Them Clap" featuring Lootpack's Wildchild and produced by none other than Madlib the Bad Kid. After the long delay between the Lootpack LP, which was released almost four years ago, and Wildchild's solo CD, which is scheduled to be released later this year, there were doubts about whether or not the man still had it in him. "Make them Clap," with its infectiously funky beat and classic "ready on the right" samples, should erase any doubts about Wildchild's stature as one of the left coast's preeminent rhyme technicians. Wildchild sounds as hungry as ever as he spits battle rhymes in his trademark rapid-fire delivery. "Ironically," Wildchild raps, "[I've] been paying more dues than physically paying rent." While it may not be anything revolutionary, emcees like Wildchild personify the old school, on-the-corner mentality and the inclusion of this unreleased track almost single-handedly justifies the purchase of this compilation. Fellow Lootpacker Madlib also pops up later in the guise of his bugged-out alter ego Quasimoto on his classic "Come On Feet." The track's production, which is a fusion of "Come on Feet Move for Me" (from the blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song) and the theme song for the French avant animation classic Fantastic Planet (produced by Serge Gainsbourg arranger Alain Goraguer), captures a soulful paranoia that sounds straight outta the intergalactic hood. Another highlight is the Saukrates and Common collaboration "Play Dis." The beat, supplied by Saukrates, has an aired-out funk vibe that's more than a little reminiscent of Jay Dee. In other words, it's a perfect track for Common to spit his positive and vaguely political rhymes. Leading off the second verse, Common smoothly rhymes, "Stimulated by a tree of drama/ I advance on the branch of respect and honor/ A patient of the ill state, centered in trauma." If nothing else, the track whets our collective appetite for Common's upcoming LP, Electric Circus, and establishes Canada's Saukrates as one of the few emcees who can hold his own when faced with Common's complex metaphors and wordplay. With the unreleased song "My Song," Minnesota-based Atmosphere also comes with a lite and funky production that is reminiscent of Jurassic 5's "Concrete Schoolyard" or 4th Avenue Jones' "Back in the Day." Vocalist Slug initially picks up on the childhood reminiscence vibe the track begs for, rapping, "Sitting on the steps with Ant... flipping pig Russian, discussing politics and contraband." However, as the track progresses, Slug's imagery grows darker and more aggressive until the song becomes a taunt to his critics who are "sleeping on life and writing the same scriptures" and act "like they don't know the words to my songs." While the whole I'm-fucking-your-wife diss that the song dissolves into is a bit played (at best), Ant's sweet and slow production keeps the song afloat and contrasts nicely with Slug's dark and personal lyrics. Other highlights include the Alchemist number with Twin of the Infamous Mobb (aka Mobb Deep). The song features a back-and-forth lyrical duel between Alchemist and Twin, contrasting Alchemist's privileged upbringing with the inner city horror of Twin's childhood. "We used to play with guns," Twin raps, shortly followed by Alchemist declaring, "We used to play ball." The lyrics follow the Alchemist (who rarely rhymes) and Twin through their respective lives until they're ultimately brought together by a love of hip-hop. It's an interesting look at the two different spheres of the genre, and reveals how hip-hop has the potential to break down racial and financial barriers that would have otherwise been insurmountable. While almost every track on this disc is a certified banger, I did question some of the source material. Mass Influence's "All Out," J-Zone's "Live at Pimp Palace," the Arsonist's "The Session," and "Come on Feet" are all certified classics, but they've also been circulated on so many mixtapes, compilations, and LPs that their inclusion here seems a bit redundant. I'm sure that the peeps at Fat Beats have a small vault of incredible b-sides and unreleased jewels that would make even the most seasoned digger jealous. Why not give us a little more underground love? I also wondered why Fat Beats, which is the Mecca of DJ culture, didn't release a mixed version of this album. With the advent of filesharing and CD burners, most of the compilation's songs are easily attainable without having to drop a penny. And when you have DJ like J-Rocc or Shortkut providing their own interpretation of the songs, it gives the consumer a greater incentive to plop down their $14. Still, these are minor, peripheral complaints and should in no way discourage anyone from checking out this great compilation. This is a worthy reflection of the kingdom that Fat Beats helped create, and I can't wait for a volume three.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Fat Beats Compilation Vol. 2, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Although hip-hop culture spans decades, it wasn't until the mid-90s that what we now consider to be underground hip-hop defined itself as a movement. A loose artistic aesthetic was established, the independence-as-freedom stance was cemented, and the key elements (breaking, emceeing, DJing, and graffiti) were revived for a new generation of b-boys and girls. Although one cannot downplay the power of the Internet to spread the message to those in non-urban locations, Fat Beats Records acted as a physical epicenter for the renaissance of roots hip-hop. The staff was comprised of noted DJs that transcended their roles as sales clerks and acted as educators for their patrons and as a distribution lifeline for independent artists who were otherwise ignored. The love and devotion that Fat Beats displayed was infectious, and as hip-hop purism and vinyl culture spread, the company branched out from its original NYC location and opened stores in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. They were also able to launch a label that has released the latest J-Zone and Atmosphere albums, among others. If any record store/label has earned the right to release a self-aggrandizing compilation album, it's Fat Beats. The first compilation, released last year, was an unmitigated jewel, featuring everyone from the RZA to Blastmaster KRS-One to (comparative) new jacks Kazi and Non Phixion. DJ Eclipse kicks the second volume off with a short intro that cuts and splices the words "Fat Beats" from various hip-hop tracks. Next up is "Make Them Clap" featuring Lootpack's Wildchild and produced by none other than Madlib the Bad Kid. After the long delay between the Lootpack LP, which was released almost four years ago, and Wildchild's solo CD, which is scheduled to be released later this year, there were doubts about whether or not the man still had it in him. "Make them Clap," with its infectiously funky beat and classic "ready on the right" samples, should erase any doubts about Wildchild's stature as one of the left coast's preeminent rhyme technicians. Wildchild sounds as hungry as ever as he spits battle rhymes in his trademark rapid-fire delivery. "Ironically," Wildchild raps, "[I've] been paying more dues than physically paying rent." While it may not be anything revolutionary, emcees like Wildchild personify the old school, on-the-corner mentality and the inclusion of this unreleased track almost single-handedly justifies the purchase of this compilation. Fellow Lootpacker Madlib also pops up later in the guise of his bugged-out alter ego Quasimoto on his classic "Come On Feet." The track's production, which is a fusion of "Come on Feet Move for Me" (from the blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song) and the theme song for the French avant animation classic Fantastic Planet (produced by Serge Gainsbourg arranger Alain Goraguer), captures a soulful paranoia that sounds straight outta the intergalactic hood. Another highlight is the Saukrates and Common collaboration "Play Dis." The beat, supplied by Saukrates, has an aired-out funk vibe that's more than a little reminiscent of Jay Dee. In other words, it's a perfect track for Common to spit his positive and vaguely political rhymes. Leading off the second verse, Common smoothly rhymes, "Stimulated by a tree of drama/ I advance on the branch of respect and honor/ A patient of the ill state, centered in trauma." If nothing else, the track whets our collective appetite for Common's upcoming LP, Electric Circus, and establishes Canada's Saukrates as one of the few emcees who can hold his own when faced with Common's complex metaphors and wordplay. With the unreleased song "My Song," Minnesota-based Atmosphere also comes with a lite and funky production that is reminiscent of Jurassic 5's "Concrete Schoolyard" or 4th Avenue Jones' "Back in the Day." Vocalist Slug initially picks up on the childhood reminiscence vibe the track begs for, rapping, "Sitting on the steps with Ant... flipping pig Russian, discussing politics and contraband." However, as the track progresses, Slug's imagery grows darker and more aggressive until the song becomes a taunt to his critics who are "sleeping on life and writing the same scriptures" and act "like they don't know the words to my songs." While the whole I'm-fucking-your-wife diss that the song dissolves into is a bit played (at best), Ant's sweet and slow production keeps the song afloat and contrasts nicely with Slug's dark and personal lyrics. Other highlights include the Alchemist number with Twin of the Infamous Mobb (aka Mobb Deep). The song features a back-and-forth lyrical duel between Alchemist and Twin, contrasting Alchemist's privileged upbringing with the inner city horror of Twin's childhood. "We used to play with guns," Twin raps, shortly followed by Alchemist declaring, "We used to play ball." The lyrics follow the Alchemist (who rarely rhymes) and Twin through their respective lives until they're ultimately brought together by a love of hip-hop. It's an interesting look at the two different spheres of the genre, and reveals how hip-hop has the potential to break down racial and financial barriers that would have otherwise been insurmountable. While almost every track on this disc is a certified banger, I did question some of the source material. Mass Influence's "All Out," J-Zone's "Live at Pimp Palace," the Arsonist's "The Session," and "Come on Feet" are all certified classics, but they've also been circulated on so many mixtapes, compilations, and LPs that their inclusion here seems a bit redundant. I'm sure that the peeps at Fat Beats have a small vault of incredible b-sides and unreleased jewels that would make even the most seasoned digger jealous. Why not give us a little more underground love? I also wondered why Fat Beats, which is the Mecca of DJ culture, didn't release a mixed version of this album. With the advent of filesharing and CD burners, most of the compilation's songs are easily attainable without having to drop a penny. And when you have DJ like J-Rocc or Shortkut providing their own interpretation of the songs, it gives the consumer a greater incentive to plop down their $14. Still, these are minor, peripheral complaints and should in no way discourage anyone from checking out this great compilation. This is a worthy reflection of the kingdom that Fat Beats helped create, and I can't wait for a volume three."

Blood Red Shoes

Fire Like This

Electronic,Rock

Aaron Leitko

Blood Red Shoes have been hiding in plain sight. Since 2005, the Brighton-based duo of drummer Steve Ansell and guitarist Laura-Mary Carter have released a handful of singles and one album, 2008's Box of Secrets, on major label V2. They've toured extensively at home, throughout the EU, and been billed at festivals from ATP to Pukkelpop. They mostly forgot about the United States, though. While their post-punk peers and countrymen-- Foals, Arctic Monkeys-- have made frequent sojourns to American shores, Ansell and Carter have, for whatever reason, kept primarily in Europe. The band's first wide stateside exposure has come only recently, via the soundtrack to the Michael Cera flick Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which includes their song "It's Getting Boring By the Sea". It's too bad it took so long. Blood Red Shoes are an excellent riffs-and-rhythm rock band-- they make classic bash-and-scrape music with a debt to 1990s-era heroes Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, and Nirvana. Now word is starting to get around a little more. This fall Blood Red Shoes completed one blink-and-you'll-miss-it U.S. tour, and the band's sophomore effort, Fire Like This, has gotten a worldwide release, though it's iTunes-only in North America. It's as good an introduction to the band as any-- Blood Red Shoes haven't altered their sound too much over the years. But Ansell and Carter are clever enough shuffle the familiar elements around. Album opener "Don't Ask" hands over the chorus immediately, then falls back to a stop-start verse. They use the same trick on "Keeping It Close"-- seizing attention with the hookiest, highest volume riff. Ansell and Carter are relatively young-- 24 and 22 respectively-- but they've been around long enough to know how to avoid clichés. Ansell in particular is an old hand. He was a founding member of post-punk outfit Projections and emotional noisemakers Cat on Form, who released a few records on Southern. Both sing here, but Ansell gets most of the good lines. He has a bratty but melodic delivery that keeps the stripped-down verses chugging. Carter isn't bad, either, but she's too often stuck on ballad duty. The best moments come when they play off of one another-- trading off lines and alternating back-up duties, like the interplay on "One More Empty Chair". On Box of Secrets, the pair limited their arrangements to herky-jerky blasts of distortion and drums. On Fire Like This, Blood Red Shoes favor slow builds-- stretching out repetitions for big, noisy crescendos. Those hands-in-the-air moments are not always within their grasp, however. Carter's "When We Wake" gets tedious during the three-minute climb toward its inevitable fuzz-box stomp. But "Colours Fade" unfolds into head-banging abandon. In its best moments, Fire Like This strikes a balance between heartfelt and heavy. Blood Red Shoes may be squat-hall sized, but they are arena-equipped.

Artist: Blood Red Shoes, Album: Fire Like This, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Blood Red Shoes have been hiding in plain sight. Since 2005, the Brighton-based duo of drummer Steve Ansell and guitarist Laura-Mary Carter have released a handful of singles and one album, 2008's Box of Secrets, on major label V2. They've toured extensively at home, throughout the EU, and been billed at festivals from ATP to Pukkelpop. They mostly forgot about the United States, though. While their post-punk peers and countrymen-- Foals, Arctic Monkeys-- have made frequent sojourns to American shores, Ansell and Carter have, for whatever reason, kept primarily in Europe. The band's first wide stateside exposure has come only recently, via the soundtrack to the Michael Cera flick Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which includes their song "It's Getting Boring By the Sea". It's too bad it took so long. Blood Red Shoes are an excellent riffs-and-rhythm rock band-- they make classic bash-and-scrape music with a debt to 1990s-era heroes Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, and Nirvana. Now word is starting to get around a little more. This fall Blood Red Shoes completed one blink-and-you'll-miss-it U.S. tour, and the band's sophomore effort, Fire Like This, has gotten a worldwide release, though it's iTunes-only in North America. It's as good an introduction to the band as any-- Blood Red Shoes haven't altered their sound too much over the years. But Ansell and Carter are clever enough shuffle the familiar elements around. Album opener "Don't Ask" hands over the chorus immediately, then falls back to a stop-start verse. They use the same trick on "Keeping It Close"-- seizing attention with the hookiest, highest volume riff. Ansell and Carter are relatively young-- 24 and 22 respectively-- but they've been around long enough to know how to avoid clichés. Ansell in particular is an old hand. He was a founding member of post-punk outfit Projections and emotional noisemakers Cat on Form, who released a few records on Southern. Both sing here, but Ansell gets most of the good lines. He has a bratty but melodic delivery that keeps the stripped-down verses chugging. Carter isn't bad, either, but she's too often stuck on ballad duty. The best moments come when they play off of one another-- trading off lines and alternating back-up duties, like the interplay on "One More Empty Chair". On Box of Secrets, the pair limited their arrangements to herky-jerky blasts of distortion and drums. On Fire Like This, Blood Red Shoes favor slow builds-- stretching out repetitions for big, noisy crescendos. Those hands-in-the-air moments are not always within their grasp, however. Carter's "When We Wake" gets tedious during the three-minute climb toward its inevitable fuzz-box stomp. But "Colours Fade" unfolds into head-banging abandon. In its best moments, Fire Like This strikes a balance between heartfelt and heavy. Blood Red Shoes may be squat-hall sized, but they are arena-equipped."

Moderat

II

Electronic

Miles Raymer

Berlin has a well-deserved reputation for producing aggressively tasteful minimal techno but it also has a warmer, more human side that doesn’t often attract the same level of attention. At the forefront of that scene are Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) and Modeselektor (the duo of Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary), and their 2009 album as Moderat was a massive, supergroup-level event for a very, very particular kind of electronic music fan. After several productive years apart, the trio has reconvened for a second full-length. Four years is a long time in the fast-moving dance music world (more than enough time for whole genres to bloom, wither, and die), but Ring, Bronsert, and Szary have picked up pretty much exactly where they left off. The major differences between II and their self-titled debut is that their sonic sensibilities have grown more refined and compelling, and that the world has just about caught up to them. Luckily the album’s weakest moment comes early on, and is therefore quickly dealt with. “Bad Kingdom”, II’s first song after a brief intro, has a wicked instrumental bed with a sparse breakbeat drum part and growling sawtooth synths-- if it had been released a few months earlier, Kanye might have sampled it on Yeezus somewhere. But it’s topped by a vocal that’s afflicted with the kind of generic Euro-soul inflection that American ears have a hard time dealing with, and the juxtaposition between the aggressive synths and airy pop vocals weakens the former rather than creating an interesting contrast. Things pick up after that. The trio seem intent on exploring (and blurring) the line some electronic music fans draw between “dancefloor listening” and “headphone listening.” They favor unhurried tempos, and tend to emphasize texture over melody, but it’s not simply chill-out music either. “Let in the Light” runs at considerably lower BPM than the average peak-hour banger, but the echo-laden-yet-punchy drums, swelling synth chords, and a far stronger vocal melody than the one on “Bad Kingdom” make it easy to imagine how it could provide an amped-up crowd going off to it if the right DJ was daring enough to drop it in a mix. The album peaks right around its midpoint with the track “Milk”, which over 10 minutes evolves from the barest rhythmic sketch embellished with a few ambient sounds into an swarm of pulsing synths drifting in clouds of white noise, the whole time repeating one brief melodic line that somehow gets more compelling the more it repeats. It lacks the hard edges and aggressive drive that most big-room rave anthems are built from, but it’s still precisely engineered to produce the same kind of world-shaking late night epiphany. Moderat was a peculiar sounding album at the time. Outside of dubstep and a burgeoning drum & bass revival, breakbeats weren’t really in fashion, and some of the songs were structured like pop songs and boasted pop vocal parts but were still sonically rooted in the sounds of the electronic fringe. Since then a two-step renaissance has bubbled up out of the remnants of the underground dubstep scene and spread throughout dance music, and as pop radio moves increasingly EDM-ward listeners have made weird synthesized sounds de rigueur in the mainstream. So II is just about perfectly synchronized with the zeitgeist, and if it’s not a flawlessly executed record, it still seems capable of making the most out of its moment.

Artist: Moderat, Album: II, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Berlin has a well-deserved reputation for producing aggressively tasteful minimal techno but it also has a warmer, more human side that doesn’t often attract the same level of attention. At the forefront of that scene are Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) and Modeselektor (the duo of Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary), and their 2009 album as Moderat was a massive, supergroup-level event for a very, very particular kind of electronic music fan. After several productive years apart, the trio has reconvened for a second full-length. Four years is a long time in the fast-moving dance music world (more than enough time for whole genres to bloom, wither, and die), but Ring, Bronsert, and Szary have picked up pretty much exactly where they left off. The major differences between II and their self-titled debut is that their sonic sensibilities have grown more refined and compelling, and that the world has just about caught up to them. Luckily the album’s weakest moment comes early on, and is therefore quickly dealt with. “Bad Kingdom”, II’s first song after a brief intro, has a wicked instrumental bed with a sparse breakbeat drum part and growling sawtooth synths-- if it had been released a few months earlier, Kanye might have sampled it on Yeezus somewhere. But it’s topped by a vocal that’s afflicted with the kind of generic Euro-soul inflection that American ears have a hard time dealing with, and the juxtaposition between the aggressive synths and airy pop vocals weakens the former rather than creating an interesting contrast. Things pick up after that. The trio seem intent on exploring (and blurring) the line some electronic music fans draw between “dancefloor listening” and “headphone listening.” They favor unhurried tempos, and tend to emphasize texture over melody, but it’s not simply chill-out music either. “Let in the Light” runs at considerably lower BPM than the average peak-hour banger, but the echo-laden-yet-punchy drums, swelling synth chords, and a far stronger vocal melody than the one on “Bad Kingdom” make it easy to imagine how it could provide an amped-up crowd going off to it if the right DJ was daring enough to drop it in a mix. The album peaks right around its midpoint with the track “Milk”, which over 10 minutes evolves from the barest rhythmic sketch embellished with a few ambient sounds into an swarm of pulsing synths drifting in clouds of white noise, the whole time repeating one brief melodic line that somehow gets more compelling the more it repeats. It lacks the hard edges and aggressive drive that most big-room rave anthems are built from, but it’s still precisely engineered to produce the same kind of world-shaking late night epiphany. Moderat was a peculiar sounding album at the time. Outside of dubstep and a burgeoning drum & bass revival, breakbeats weren’t really in fashion, and some of the songs were structured like pop songs and boasted pop vocal parts but were still sonically rooted in the sounds of the electronic fringe. Since then a two-step renaissance has bubbled up out of the remnants of the underground dubstep scene and spread throughout dance music, and as pop radio moves increasingly EDM-ward listeners have made weird synthesized sounds de rigueur in the mainstream. So II is just about perfectly synchronized with the zeitgeist, and if it’s not a flawlessly executed record, it still seems capable of making the most out of its moment."

Double Leopards

A Hole Is True

Experimental,Rock

Matthew Murphy

There's always been something primitive and pre-rational within the garbled drones of Brooklyn-based quartet Double Leopards. If more metallic drone sculptors like Earth or Sunn O))) can approximate the sound of a continent's tectonic plates shifting into position, Double Leopards instead channel a later epoch when the earliest creatures first began to extend their curious feelers out of the primordial ooze. And as the Leopards have accelerated their prolific output, it has grown progressively more difficult to identify the constituent parts of their mercurial noise. Since the release of their landmark 2003 2xLP Halve Maen, Double Leopards have seemingly foresworn the epic statement, choosing instead to salt their music away on numerous smaller releases. The best of their recent crop might be Out of One, Through One and to One, a vinyl-only album released earlier this year on Eclipse. But measuring the group's many recordings against each other is ultimately fruitless. Each variant is similar but displays subtly distinct gradations of modulated, indecipherable noise, and when considered together as a body of work they join to create an interconnected terrain of daunting post-industrial badlands. Recorded, appropriately enough, at the Tar Pit in Brooklyn, A Hole Is True is likely to be the group's easiest-to-find release to date, and is perhaps the most succinct distillation of their shadowy, merciless arts. The title seems a slight misdirection, as there's no sign of holes anywhere on the album's three impossibly dense squalls. Whatever its substance, the opening "Inmost Light" enters with a dizzying electric whirr that repeatedly threatens to congeal into a riff, before getting blown to pieces by a cyclone of unmoored spectral wails. "Chemical Wedding" is even simpler, just a razor-thin current of pulsing overtones, while the 21-minute "White Cadillacs" uses voices nearly recognizable as human to deliver shifty messages directly to the reptilian core of your brainstem. Intense as A Hole Is True can be, even more abusive is Savage Summer Sun, which captures two live performances recorded during the group's 2005 tour. The first of these, recorded at Il Coral in Los Angeles, is a 36-minute torrent of malformed rhythms and hypnotic sheets of distended feedback; the second is an equally lengthy sequence of blistering, slow-motion amp mulch and decaying radio waves. Although not quite on the grand scale of Halve Maen, these tracks are purely wide-screen experiences, and sitting through them both back-to-back can be an utterly devastating procedure. As with all of Double Leopard's most potent rituals, these two albums can each induce a cognitive return to those familiar black waters, allowing the listener to settle back into the murk and patiently await the further cooling of the Earth's crust.

Artist: Double Leopards, Album: A Hole Is True, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "There's always been something primitive and pre-rational within the garbled drones of Brooklyn-based quartet Double Leopards. If more metallic drone sculptors like Earth or Sunn O))) can approximate the sound of a continent's tectonic plates shifting into position, Double Leopards instead channel a later epoch when the earliest creatures first began to extend their curious feelers out of the primordial ooze. And as the Leopards have accelerated their prolific output, it has grown progressively more difficult to identify the constituent parts of their mercurial noise. Since the release of their landmark 2003 2xLP Halve Maen, Double Leopards have seemingly foresworn the epic statement, choosing instead to salt their music away on numerous smaller releases. The best of their recent crop might be Out of One, Through One and to One, a vinyl-only album released earlier this year on Eclipse. But measuring the group's many recordings against each other is ultimately fruitless. Each variant is similar but displays subtly distinct gradations of modulated, indecipherable noise, and when considered together as a body of work they join to create an interconnected terrain of daunting post-industrial badlands. Recorded, appropriately enough, at the Tar Pit in Brooklyn, A Hole Is True is likely to be the group's easiest-to-find release to date, and is perhaps the most succinct distillation of their shadowy, merciless arts. The title seems a slight misdirection, as there's no sign of holes anywhere on the album's three impossibly dense squalls. Whatever its substance, the opening "Inmost Light" enters with a dizzying electric whirr that repeatedly threatens to congeal into a riff, before getting blown to pieces by a cyclone of unmoored spectral wails. "Chemical Wedding" is even simpler, just a razor-thin current of pulsing overtones, while the 21-minute "White Cadillacs" uses voices nearly recognizable as human to deliver shifty messages directly to the reptilian core of your brainstem. Intense as A Hole Is True can be, even more abusive is Savage Summer Sun, which captures two live performances recorded during the group's 2005 tour. The first of these, recorded at Il Coral in Los Angeles, is a 36-minute torrent of malformed rhythms and hypnotic sheets of distended feedback; the second is an equally lengthy sequence of blistering, slow-motion amp mulch and decaying radio waves. Although not quite on the grand scale of Halve Maen, these tracks are purely wide-screen experiences, and sitting through them both back-to-back can be an utterly devastating procedure. As with all of Double Leopard's most potent rituals, these two albums can each induce a cognitive return to those familiar black waters, allowing the listener to settle back into the murk and patiently await the further cooling of the Earth's crust."

The Beach Boys

Pet Sounds: 40th Anniversary

Rock

Dominique Leone

Oh come on, it's just Pet Sounds. Despite the fact that two or three generations of music fans will secretly believe you have no soul if you don't announce your allegiance to it, despite that you probably already own it (in some cases, two or three times over-- if I could only remember where I put my 24-carat gold CD version), or that you may even have written an article for Pitchfork years ago making fun of anyone who dared criticize it, well, that's no reason to feel any pressure to make sure it's displayed prominently for guests, or worry that you haven't met your monthly "God Only Knows" listening quota. Despite (or because of) the "pressure" to adopt pro-Pet Sounds stances in today's high-powered world of hanging out with your friends or staying home and getting high whilst listening to "Let's Go Away for Awhile", I'd wager most people are only too happy not to discuss the merits of the oft-oft-reported Beach Boys masterpiece. Certainly, regardless of what I write here, the impact and "influence" of the record will have been in turn hardly influenced at all. I can't even get my dad to talk about Pet Sounds anymore. This isn't so bad. Beyond my personal preference for the records immediately following Pet Sounds (1967's Smiley Smile to 1971's Surf's Up in particular), I'd argue the actual sound of much modern music purportedly influenced by the Beach Boys is closer in execution to what the band did in the wake of Pet Sounds (and for that matter, Smile). "Influence" is a loaded concept here, because there's no foolproof way to measure how someone might channel inspiration from a single record, Pet Sounds or otherwise; however, much more certain is the feeling that very few musicians are making active decisions to "try to top Pet Sounds." In this light, just as with other perennially lauded pop/rock records, Pet Sounds is as much tautology as musical document. (Interestingly, this also seems to have been Brian Wilson's attitude beginning in mid-1967.) Forty years after release, then, while the album's initially disappointing (at least to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys) chart showing has been vindicated by a perpetual reservoir of new fans and adoring critics - not to mention still being commercially viable enough to support recent live productions and similarly perpetual ways of reissuing the music-- talking about the music, or how the music makes you feel isn't much easier than it was in 1966. Very famous people waste no time in offering testimonials to Pet Sounds' greatness, but (probably wisely) stick to short statements about how important the record was to them as artists and musicians, or just how beautiful its music is. Pet Sounds was made during the period in 1965-66 when Brian stopped touring with his band, preferring to stay home and work on tracks. His decision to work with lyricist Tony Asher for most of the songs freed him further to focus on music. This not only translated to backing tracks of considerably more nuance and subtlety than even Brian's recent apexes "California Girls" and the Beach Boys Today! LP, both from 1965, but similarly well-crafted chord progressions and choral arrangements. Almost predictably, as the deserved praise for the vocal arrangements may never wane, I've heard more fine things said about the instrumental tracks recently than any other aspect of the record. In any case, the technical achievements of the record (only given further support by the stereo issue of the record in the late 90s) have tended to overshadow the emotional and spiritual ones, at least in my lifetime. This anniversary issue of Pet Sounds, including both the mono and stereo version of the record, and a bonus DVD with several documentary features, surround sound mixes and promo clips, will be of immediate interest to longtime fans for obvious reasons (of which "collecting" isn't necessarily the least important). In particular, the "Pet Stories" feature, with recent interviews with Brian, Asher, session drummer and Beach Boy pal Hal Blaine, and even an illuminating cameo from Elvis Costello, sheds light not only on the original sessions and song origins, but on all concerned parties' attitudes about the music now. Also very cool is the footage of Brian and famed Beatles producer George Martin listening to the original tracks; at one point, Martin twists a few knobs and Brian is convinced he’s finally perfected Pet Sounds! Also included in the set, of course, is the album; mono and stereo mixes of Pet Sounds, recapping the tracklist from the 1999 CD issue. The most famous songs-- "God Only Knows", "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B", "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)", "Caroline No"-- are no less gorgeous than they have always been. The hymnal aspect of many of these songs seems no less pronounced, and the general air of deeply heartfelt love, graciousness and the uncertainty that any of it will be returned are still affecting to the point of distraction. Currently, there is a minor surge in support for the record's two instrumentals "Let's Go Away for Awhile" and the title track, though later efforts like "Diamond Head" and the quasi-instrumental "Fall Breaks Into Winter" (not to mention its parent track, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" from the Smile sessions) seem both more idiosyncratic and intrinsically interesting to me. As it happens, Brian's instrumental arrangements for the album, while again justly praised (especially by other musicians), were related to concurrent productions by Juan Garcia Esquivel, Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and a host of other exotica producers, in both the kinds of instruments used, and the stylistic appropriation of, say, percussion and string instruments from other countries. In fact, Brian was the only one of these people not producing music in stereo at the time, which might explain why it took so long for bands (and not just the Stereolab kind) to borrow as much from his instrumental tracks as from his vocal ones, which cut through mono mixes much more effortlessly than the backing tracks. So, the unfair question is: Do you love Pet Sounds enough to buy it again? Before you answer, here's a fairer one: How often do you need help recalling the emotions Pet Sounds provokes inside you? If you haven't lived with the record day in and day out, chances are, it's still a pretty fresh experience, and I'd recommend this set with absolutely no reservations. However, if the music is practically family to you already, I'd say check out the DVD stuff when you can, keep your current version, and watch the album's effects wind and rewind their way t

Artist: The Beach Boys, Album: Pet Sounds: 40th Anniversary, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.4 Album review: "Oh come on, it's just Pet Sounds. Despite the fact that two or three generations of music fans will secretly believe you have no soul if you don't announce your allegiance to it, despite that you probably already own it (in some cases, two or three times over-- if I could only remember where I put my 24-carat gold CD version), or that you may even have written an article for Pitchfork years ago making fun of anyone who dared criticize it, well, that's no reason to feel any pressure to make sure it's displayed prominently for guests, or worry that you haven't met your monthly "God Only Knows" listening quota. Despite (or because of) the "pressure" to adopt pro-Pet Sounds stances in today's high-powered world of hanging out with your friends or staying home and getting high whilst listening to "Let's Go Away for Awhile", I'd wager most people are only too happy not to discuss the merits of the oft-oft-reported Beach Boys masterpiece. Certainly, regardless of what I write here, the impact and "influence" of the record will have been in turn hardly influenced at all. I can't even get my dad to talk about Pet Sounds anymore. This isn't so bad. Beyond my personal preference for the records immediately following Pet Sounds (1967's Smiley Smile to 1971's Surf's Up in particular), I'd argue the actual sound of much modern music purportedly influenced by the Beach Boys is closer in execution to what the band did in the wake of Pet Sounds (and for that matter, Smile). "Influence" is a loaded concept here, because there's no foolproof way to measure how someone might channel inspiration from a single record, Pet Sounds or otherwise; however, much more certain is the feeling that very few musicians are making active decisions to "try to top Pet Sounds." In this light, just as with other perennially lauded pop/rock records, Pet Sounds is as much tautology as musical document. (Interestingly, this also seems to have been Brian Wilson's attitude beginning in mid-1967.) Forty years after release, then, while the album's initially disappointing (at least to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys) chart showing has been vindicated by a perpetual reservoir of new fans and adoring critics - not to mention still being commercially viable enough to support recent live productions and similarly perpetual ways of reissuing the music-- talking about the music, or how the music makes you feel isn't much easier than it was in 1966. Very famous people waste no time in offering testimonials to Pet Sounds' greatness, but (probably wisely) stick to short statements about how important the record was to them as artists and musicians, or just how beautiful its music is. Pet Sounds was made during the period in 1965-66 when Brian stopped touring with his band, preferring to stay home and work on tracks. His decision to work with lyricist Tony Asher for most of the songs freed him further to focus on music. This not only translated to backing tracks of considerably more nuance and subtlety than even Brian's recent apexes "California Girls" and the Beach Boys Today! LP, both from 1965, but similarly well-crafted chord progressions and choral arrangements. Almost predictably, as the deserved praise for the vocal arrangements may never wane, I've heard more fine things said about the instrumental tracks recently than any other aspect of the record. In any case, the technical achievements of the record (only given further support by the stereo issue of the record in the late 90s) have tended to overshadow the emotional and spiritual ones, at least in my lifetime. This anniversary issue of Pet Sounds, including both the mono and stereo version of the record, and a bonus DVD with several documentary features, surround sound mixes and promo clips, will be of immediate interest to longtime fans for obvious reasons (of which "collecting" isn't necessarily the least important). In particular, the "Pet Stories" feature, with recent interviews with Brian, Asher, session drummer and Beach Boy pal Hal Blaine, and even an illuminating cameo from Elvis Costello, sheds light not only on the original sessions and song origins, but on all concerned parties' attitudes about the music now. Also very cool is the footage of Brian and famed Beatles producer George Martin listening to the original tracks; at one point, Martin twists a few knobs and Brian is convinced he’s finally perfected Pet Sounds! Also included in the set, of course, is the album; mono and stereo mixes of Pet Sounds, recapping the tracklist from the 1999 CD issue. The most famous songs-- "God Only Knows", "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B", "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)", "Caroline No"-- are no less gorgeous than they have always been. The hymnal aspect of many of these songs seems no less pronounced, and the general air of deeply heartfelt love, graciousness and the uncertainty that any of it will be returned are still affecting to the point of distraction. Currently, there is a minor surge in support for the record's two instrumentals "Let's Go Away for Awhile" and the title track, though later efforts like "Diamond Head" and the quasi-instrumental "Fall Breaks Into Winter" (not to mention its parent track, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" from the Smile sessions) seem both more idiosyncratic and intrinsically interesting to me. As it happens, Brian's instrumental arrangements for the album, while again justly praised (especially by other musicians), were related to concurrent productions by Juan Garcia Esquivel, Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and a host of other exotica producers, in both the kinds of instruments used, and the stylistic appropriation of, say, percussion and string instruments from other countries. In fact, Brian was the only one of these people not producing music in stereo at the time, which might explain why it took so long for bands (and not just the Stereolab kind) to borrow as much from his instrumental tracks as from his vocal ones, which cut through mono mixes much more effortlessly than the backing tracks. So, the unfair question is: Do you love Pet Sounds enough to buy it again? Before you answer, here's a fairer one: How often do you need help recalling the emotions Pet Sounds provokes inside you? If you haven't lived with the record day in and day out, chances are, it's still a pretty fresh experience, and I'd recommend this set with absolutely no reservations. However, if the music is practically family to you already, I'd say check out the DVD stuff when you can, keep your current version, and watch the album's effects wind and rewind their way t"

Spider Bags

Someday Everything Will Be Fine

Rock

Max Savage Levenson

Dan McGee’s obsession with the tragicomic predates his decade-long tenure as the frontman of the North Carolina trio Spider Bags. In the early 2000s, he launched a raucous punk band “with the most obnoxious name we could find”: DC Snipers. The band’s songs, like “All Humans Are Garbage” were accordingly provocative, but their knack for making self-loathing sound like a joyride carried over to Spider Bags as well, delivered in the form of grungy, countrified rock songs whose fervor amplified their absurdist messaging. But the title of Spider Bags’ fifth full-length, Someday Everything Will Be Fine, signals a change. Throughout the album, McGee keeps himself partly rooted in angst and apathy, while, for the first time, also directly expounds on the healing powers of love. We witness a more holistic and honest McGee, but it often comes at the expense of his gallows humor and it renders his narratives a bit tepid. A handful of moments yearn for his trademark snarkiness: For all the morose talk of pills that can’t make a man care and children sleeping in hearses, the mid-tempo rocker “Burning Sand” takes the rancid air out of the album with its overly earnest mode. When McGee vows to “Crawl across the burning sand/If I could only be your man,” it lands as emotionally dull. Fortunately, the group —which also includes drummer Rock Forbes, bassist Steve Oliva, and contributions from a cast of friends including Titus Andronicus’ Patrick Stickles—compensates for the occasional frictionless lyric with some of their most impassioned roadhouse punk yet. Recorded to tape with a vintage Tascam 388 8-track, Someday drips with a loving sloppiness and a grimy sheen that was largely absent from their last album, 2014’s Frozen Letter. The blankets of distortion and rusted squawks of guitar convey the giddy familial air of a band that might still relish sleeping together on the studio floor during recording sessions. The sub-minute rush of “Cop Dream / Black Eye (True Story)” recalls DC Snipers’ elemental punk, complete with a sinewy guitar line straight out of the Pixies, and the band balances sentimentality with irreverence on “Reckless,” a hodgepodge of unused songs that begins as a crushing mass of atonal slop and goopy effects before pulling itself out if its own muck. “I wasn’t born...to give a fuck,” McGee yelps at the song’s apex before playing his full hand: his partner is the only balm that can soothe his own worst tendencies. The album’s centerpiece is a glowing and revved-up cover of Charlie Rich’s 1977 country hit “Rollin With the Flow,” an ode to staying weird even as middle-age begs you to take the straight and narrow. It’s an intriguing statement from McGee, once a beer-drenched Peter Pan, who is now married with kids in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While he longs to keep one foot planted in Rich’s hedonism, he has instead landed on a lukewarm contentment that speaks to the album’s title. Love has saved Dan McGee, but as he and Spider Bags effectively remind us, it hasn’t killed his demons.

Artist: Spider Bags, Album: Someday Everything Will Be Fine, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Dan McGee’s obsession with the tragicomic predates his decade-long tenure as the frontman of the North Carolina trio Spider Bags. In the early 2000s, he launched a raucous punk band “with the most obnoxious name we could find”: DC Snipers. The band’s songs, like “All Humans Are Garbage” were accordingly provocative, but their knack for making self-loathing sound like a joyride carried over to Spider Bags as well, delivered in the form of grungy, countrified rock songs whose fervor amplified their absurdist messaging. But the title of Spider Bags’ fifth full-length, Someday Everything Will Be Fine, signals a change. Throughout the album, McGee keeps himself partly rooted in angst and apathy, while, for the first time, also directly expounds on the healing powers of love. We witness a more holistic and honest McGee, but it often comes at the expense of his gallows humor and it renders his narratives a bit tepid. A handful of moments yearn for his trademark snarkiness: For all the morose talk of pills that can’t make a man care and children sleeping in hearses, the mid-tempo rocker “Burning Sand” takes the rancid air out of the album with its overly earnest mode. When McGee vows to “Crawl across the burning sand/If I could only be your man,” it lands as emotionally dull. Fortunately, the group —which also includes drummer Rock Forbes, bassist Steve Oliva, and contributions from a cast of friends including Titus Andronicus’ Patrick Stickles—compensates for the occasional frictionless lyric with some of their most impassioned roadhouse punk yet. Recorded to tape with a vintage Tascam 388 8-track, Someday drips with a loving sloppiness and a grimy sheen that was largely absent from their last album, 2014’s Frozen Letter. The blankets of distortion and rusted squawks of guitar convey the giddy familial air of a band that might still relish sleeping together on the studio floor during recording sessions. The sub-minute rush of “Cop Dream / Black Eye (True Story)” recalls DC Snipers’ elemental punk, complete with a sinewy guitar line straight out of the Pixies, and the band balances sentimentality with irreverence on “Reckless,” a hodgepodge of unused songs that begins as a crushing mass of atonal slop and goopy effects before pulling itself out if its own muck. “I wasn’t born...to give a fuck,” McGee yelps at the song’s apex before playing his full hand: his partner is the only balm that can soothe his own worst tendencies. The album’s centerpiece is a glowing and revved-up cover of Charlie Rich’s 1977 country hit “Rollin With the Flow,” an ode to staying weird even as middle-age begs you to take the straight and narrow. It’s an intriguing statement from McGee, once a beer-drenched Peter Pan, who is now married with kids in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While he longs to keep one foot planted in Rich’s hedonism, he has instead landed on a lukewarm contentment that speaks to the album’s title. Love has saved Dan McGee, but as he and Spider Bags effectively remind us, it hasn’t killed his demons."

Orenda Fink

Invisible Ones

Rock

Adam Moerder

With Maria Taylor's 11:11 serving as de facto Azure Ray, anything Orenda Fink churns out could only be bonus, right? Considering the consistency of the group's canon, it seems at worst you're getting double the fix. Fortunately, the duo's split follows the Lennon-McCartney model, though with microcosmic stakes. While Taylor sticks to easy-to-swallow dream pop, Fink embraces spirituality and mysticism along with more challenging songwriting. The intrepid Invisible Ones exposes Azure Ray as less than the sum of its parts, though Fink's Björk-sized ambitions constantly grapple with her colorless adult-alt tendencies. Harpsichord-laden opener "Leave It All" proves Fink capable of orchestration beyond guitars and processed strings. The song's languorous pace doesn't guarantee the packaged happy ending so familiar in Saddle Creek circles, not to mention Fink's spiritual gravitas: "The god to whom I prayed/ Played a trick on me good/ Now I see his face, it's just as well/ I leave it all." Fink parlays similar moral and spiritual conflict into several gripping ballads, tapping Flannery O'Connor Cliff's Notes and Haitian traditional music she encountered on a recent trip there. A Haitian choir accompanies Fink on the haunting "Les Invisibles", delivering the necessary ooh's and harmonizing for the Stygian chorus: "We raise our hands and pray/ Les Invisibles/ We hold our heads in shame." The song's musical twin, closing track "Animal", features tribal rhythms and call-and-response vocals between Fink and the choir, though she overshoots the poignancy of the trite, repeated line "Who are you?" Unlike these ornate compositions, Fink's sparser ballads offer a starker and more realized perspective of the album's heavy leitmotif. Fink prudently lays down playful yet somber piano melodies, hedging her own apocalyptic countenance in the process. Glum narrative "Invisible Ones Guard the Gate", for example, gets away with lines like "Prophets, pimps, angels, whores/ There ain't no devil, there ain't no lord" because of its strangely jaunty piano line and blasé relationship with the dejected accompanying instruments. Sadly, subtle tidbits like this are about the closest Fink comes to liveliness. "Bloodline" is a one-and-done rocker that's too dolled up and self-aware as a single to really grab anyone. The gauche string arrangement on "Blind Asylum" hints at a sense of humor, but can only do so much in two minutes to counteract an album's worth of doom. However, Fink's sepulchral fixation isn't inherently damning. Sufjan Stevens, for one, has proved a topic like original sin can actually propel one's music to unprecedented levels. Unlike Stevens, though, Fink hints at optimism solely through her lyrics, with little redemption musically. If you're striving to restore faith in a world of "prophets, pimps, angels" and "whores," you gotta do better than Sarah McLachlan melodies and a rented Haitian choir.

Artist: Orenda Fink, Album: Invisible Ones, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "With Maria Taylor's 11:11 serving as de facto Azure Ray, anything Orenda Fink churns out could only be bonus, right? Considering the consistency of the group's canon, it seems at worst you're getting double the fix. Fortunately, the duo's split follows the Lennon-McCartney model, though with microcosmic stakes. While Taylor sticks to easy-to-swallow dream pop, Fink embraces spirituality and mysticism along with more challenging songwriting. The intrepid Invisible Ones exposes Azure Ray as less than the sum of its parts, though Fink's Björk-sized ambitions constantly grapple with her colorless adult-alt tendencies. Harpsichord-laden opener "Leave It All" proves Fink capable of orchestration beyond guitars and processed strings. The song's languorous pace doesn't guarantee the packaged happy ending so familiar in Saddle Creek circles, not to mention Fink's spiritual gravitas: "The god to whom I prayed/ Played a trick on me good/ Now I see his face, it's just as well/ I leave it all." Fink parlays similar moral and spiritual conflict into several gripping ballads, tapping Flannery O'Connor Cliff's Notes and Haitian traditional music she encountered on a recent trip there. A Haitian choir accompanies Fink on the haunting "Les Invisibles", delivering the necessary ooh's and harmonizing for the Stygian chorus: "We raise our hands and pray/ Les Invisibles/ We hold our heads in shame." The song's musical twin, closing track "Animal", features tribal rhythms and call-and-response vocals between Fink and the choir, though she overshoots the poignancy of the trite, repeated line "Who are you?" Unlike these ornate compositions, Fink's sparser ballads offer a starker and more realized perspective of the album's heavy leitmotif. Fink prudently lays down playful yet somber piano melodies, hedging her own apocalyptic countenance in the process. Glum narrative "Invisible Ones Guard the Gate", for example, gets away with lines like "Prophets, pimps, angels, whores/ There ain't no devil, there ain't no lord" because of its strangely jaunty piano line and blasé relationship with the dejected accompanying instruments. Sadly, subtle tidbits like this are about the closest Fink comes to liveliness. "Bloodline" is a one-and-done rocker that's too dolled up and self-aware as a single to really grab anyone. The gauche string arrangement on "Blind Asylum" hints at a sense of humor, but can only do so much in two minutes to counteract an album's worth of doom. However, Fink's sepulchral fixation isn't inherently damning. Sufjan Stevens, for one, has proved a topic like original sin can actually propel one's music to unprecedented levels. Unlike Stevens, though, Fink hints at optimism solely through her lyrics, with little redemption musically. If you're striving to restore faith in a world of "prophets, pimps, angels" and "whores," you gotta do better than Sarah McLachlan melodies and a rented Haitian choir."

Various Artists

Light: On the South Side

Joe Tangari

A camera is a window through which a photographer interacts with the world, and it's up to the operator to decide whether his camera will be a barrier or a mirror between he and his subjects. In the 1970s, Michael Abramson chose the latter path when he brought his camera to Pepper's Hideout on Chicago's South Side. Following in the footsteps of his acknowledged influence Gyula Halász, a Hungarian photographer better known as Brassaï who became the pre-eminent chronicler of the Paris nightlife he loved so much, Abramson insinuated himself into the nightlife of Chicago's predominantly black neighborhoods. He was very much a part of the scene he documented on film, drinking, laughing, and dancing with his subjects into small hours and becoming as much a part of the atmosphere as the locals who frequented the same nightspots he did. Numero Group has done a fair amount of work to preserve and document the South Chicago music scene of the 60s and 70s, releasing Eccentric Soul volumes on the Twinight and Bandit labels, reissuing Boscoe's phenomenal self-titled LP, and now giving us this set, which pairs a huge book of Abramson's striking photographs from Pepper's Hideout and its more risque counterpart, Perv's House, with a disc of music that mirrors the photos' sexuality and good humor. Abramson contributes a very short explanatory essay, but his black-and-whites are presented on their own, without captions, which is the best way to present them in this context. The intent of the project isn't journalistic after all. The whole package is built to include you in a party you likely never got to go to. In addition to Abramson's photos, there are scanned flyers for blues and soul shows, the front and back of Abramson's own Player's Playground Card-- which granted him admission to Perv's House-- and an assortment of business cards from the old regulars. The picture here is of a lively, vibrant scene where people came to have fun and forget about daily problems. They clown, preen, and pose for the camera at times, but for the most part they just do their thing while Abramson snaps away, capturing them in half-lidded, off-balance, smiling, yawning, ecstatic, and joyful moments. In a Facebook era, this might not seem unusual, but it's not often you see a cameraphone grab that preserves a moment with such honest artistry as the images included here. There's a reason Abramson's work is owned by museums. The accompanying disc of music is aptly subtitled Pepper's Jukebox, and though it lacks the archival and informational thoroughness that's become Numero's hallmark, it does provide a perfect soundtrack for the images. These are the songs they danced and laughed to, and the emphasis is one gritty, funky blues tunes. There's plenty of wailing harmonica and scratchy guitar, a hefty dose of double entendre and lots of plain great songs. Bobby Rush's classic "Bowlegged Women, Knock-Kneed Man" is a roaring and not really veiled tribute to the joys of doing it, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Arelean Brown's "I Am a Streaker" works in similar territory, and she's not afraid to talk up her attributes: I'm built like an outhouse/ With not a brick out of place.../ Chest like headlights on a pimp's car..." There are cool oddities, like the instrumental version of Syl Johnson's epochal soul cut "Is It Because I'm Black", and a bit of social commentary on Lucille Spann's gravel-voiced "Women's Lib", but the best songs get right to the heart of the blues. Willie Davis' "I Learned My Lesson" is flat-out powerful, with deep, dark verses and a ragged, finger-blistering guitar solo; it's a masterclass of smoky Chicago blues. On "You Made Me Suffer", Andrew Brown brings his blues noir into the funky 70s, mixing his lead guitar with heavy soul vocals and a popping drumbeat. Taken together, the photo book and the disc offer a taste of what it might have been like inside Pepper's Hideout on a good night, and it seems like most nights at Pepper's were good nights. That scene is long gone today, so the opportunity to get an outsider's peek in is appreciated. It's also a rarity in the mp3 era to make such a complete experience out of music and packaging, and the package here is outstanding. Come for the sights, stay for the sounds. And don't be afraid to have a good time.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Light: On the South Side, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "A camera is a window through which a photographer interacts with the world, and it's up to the operator to decide whether his camera will be a barrier or a mirror between he and his subjects. In the 1970s, Michael Abramson chose the latter path when he brought his camera to Pepper's Hideout on Chicago's South Side. Following in the footsteps of his acknowledged influence Gyula Halász, a Hungarian photographer better known as Brassaï who became the pre-eminent chronicler of the Paris nightlife he loved so much, Abramson insinuated himself into the nightlife of Chicago's predominantly black neighborhoods. He was very much a part of the scene he documented on film, drinking, laughing, and dancing with his subjects into small hours and becoming as much a part of the atmosphere as the locals who frequented the same nightspots he did. Numero Group has done a fair amount of work to preserve and document the South Chicago music scene of the 60s and 70s, releasing Eccentric Soul volumes on the Twinight and Bandit labels, reissuing Boscoe's phenomenal self-titled LP, and now giving us this set, which pairs a huge book of Abramson's striking photographs from Pepper's Hideout and its more risque counterpart, Perv's House, with a disc of music that mirrors the photos' sexuality and good humor. Abramson contributes a very short explanatory essay, but his black-and-whites are presented on their own, without captions, which is the best way to present them in this context. The intent of the project isn't journalistic after all. The whole package is built to include you in a party you likely never got to go to. In addition to Abramson's photos, there are scanned flyers for blues and soul shows, the front and back of Abramson's own Player's Playground Card-- which granted him admission to Perv's House-- and an assortment of business cards from the old regulars. The picture here is of a lively, vibrant scene where people came to have fun and forget about daily problems. They clown, preen, and pose for the camera at times, but for the most part they just do their thing while Abramson snaps away, capturing them in half-lidded, off-balance, smiling, yawning, ecstatic, and joyful moments. In a Facebook era, this might not seem unusual, but it's not often you see a cameraphone grab that preserves a moment with such honest artistry as the images included here. There's a reason Abramson's work is owned by museums. The accompanying disc of music is aptly subtitled Pepper's Jukebox, and though it lacks the archival and informational thoroughness that's become Numero's hallmark, it does provide a perfect soundtrack for the images. These are the songs they danced and laughed to, and the emphasis is one gritty, funky blues tunes. There's plenty of wailing harmonica and scratchy guitar, a hefty dose of double entendre and lots of plain great songs. Bobby Rush's classic "Bowlegged Women, Knock-Kneed Man" is a roaring and not really veiled tribute to the joys of doing it, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Arelean Brown's "I Am a Streaker" works in similar territory, and she's not afraid to talk up her attributes: I'm built like an outhouse/ With not a brick out of place.../ Chest like headlights on a pimp's car..." There are cool oddities, like the instrumental version of Syl Johnson's epochal soul cut "Is It Because I'm Black", and a bit of social commentary on Lucille Spann's gravel-voiced "Women's Lib", but the best songs get right to the heart of the blues. Willie Davis' "I Learned My Lesson" is flat-out powerful, with deep, dark verses and a ragged, finger-blistering guitar solo; it's a masterclass of smoky Chicago blues. On "You Made Me Suffer", Andrew Brown brings his blues noir into the funky 70s, mixing his lead guitar with heavy soul vocals and a popping drumbeat. Taken together, the photo book and the disc offer a taste of what it might have been like inside Pepper's Hideout on a good night, and it seems like most nights at Pepper's were good nights. That scene is long gone today, so the opportunity to get an outsider's peek in is appreciated. It's also a rarity in the mp3 era to make such a complete experience out of music and packaging, and the package here is outstanding. Come for the sights, stay for the sounds. And don't be afraid to have a good time."

Ibeyi

Ibeyi

Global

Minna Zhou

"Ibeyi" is the Yoruba term for the divine spirit that exists between twins. It is also the name of 20-year-old French-Cuban duo Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz. Currently based in Paris, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi grew up on both sides of the Atlantic. Their father was Cuban conguero and master percussionist Miguel "Angá" Díaz of Irakere and Buena Vista Social Club. Díaz passed away when Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi were only 11, and their older sister Yanira followed him seven years later. But the sisters have taken up their legacies via their own music and their family's shared beliefs in Regla de Ocha. Regla de Ocha, also known as Santería, is a widely practiced Afro-Cuban religion based on the worship of orishas, which have roots in West African Yoruba culture. Musically, Ibeyi ground themselves firmly within these traditions, but they weave them together with jazz, soul, hip-hop, and downtempo/electronica. The result is their deeply evocative self-titled debut. In many ways, Ibeyi is an extended ritual—a consecration of life and love, both past and present. Fittingly, the album opens with a Yoruba prayer to Eleggua, the gatekeeper of crossroads and pathways, whose blessing alone allows ceremonies to proceed. The presence of Eleggua and other orishas saturates the album, thematically and musically. In "River", for example, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi pray to Oshun, the orisha of rivers and fertility. As the song begins, a bass-heavy drum beat churns through a slow-moving current of looped "ah"s, and Lisa-Kaindé intones, "Carry away my dead leaves/ Let me baptize my soul with the help of your waters/ Sink my pains and complaints/ Let the river take them—" she chokes up, "—river, drown them!" The track feels monumental; this is, after all, a call for rebirth. Yet, upon stripping away the vocals and reverb, it becomes apparent that the only other instruments involved are a MIDI controller (or two) and the occasional smattering of piano. And that's exactly what makes Ibeyi so remarkable. Instrumentally, their music is sparse. But it always feels full, with emotion and the kind of spirituality that is as deep as the people and circumstances that created it. And so it makes sense that Ibeyi is teeming with ghosts. Most prominent among them, of course, is their father's. On "Think of You", the sisters sample Angá's drumming, which fades in and out, specter-like, during the refrains when his daughters list the things that remind them of him (laughter, walking on rhythm, etc.). On "Mama Says", he resurfaces in the frustrations Lisa-Kaindé expresses as she sees her mother struggle to find meaning in life after his death. And during the chant break, she and Naomi pray to Eleggua, who was their father's orisha. Vocally, Lisa at times channels Nina Simone, and in her higher register, she can even recall Kate Bush circa "Wuthering Heights". Her ability to imbue deep emotion and otherworldliness into simple lyrics, meanwhile, is Björk-like. Naomi, in turn, explores the ways that Yoruba tradition and contemporary rhythms can meet. It's not quite what her father did on his last project, in which he fused Afro-Cuban music with jazz and hip-hop, but they both move from the same impulse. Naomi will sometimes play hip-hop beats on cajón, or add electronic booms and claps that thunder through a track like "Oya", in reference to the song's namesake—Oyá, the orisha of storms and cemeteries. The texts and subtexts in Ibeyi keep unfolding, but it feels immediate and direct regardless of how much of that text the listener is familiar with. Part of that is the nature of the language: Ibeyi do not just sing about their father, or Yanira, or once-lovers, or the orishas; they sing to them. By and large, they sing in terms of "me," "you," and "we," and at times, the lines between those entities are blurred. Which means that we are automatically implicated, living with them, or at least standing very nearby. If there is a critique to make, it's that the production can at times feel too smoothed over. Some of the rougher edges and raw(er) emotion that got the twins noticed in the first place get ironed out a bit. And one side effect is that a few of the album's final tracks sound somewhat similar in tonality, tempo, and their vibe. But Ibeyi still find subtle ways to create shape, as in the single piano key that pulses like a heart monitor in "Yanira", their song to their late sister, or the chilling dissonance in the twins' harmonies throughout. By the end of the album, Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé come full circle to face themselves, ending as they began: with a prayer. This time, it is to their namesake, Ibeyi. It is a joyful moment. And it is also, as every debut album attempts to but doesn't always succeed in being, a declaration of self.

Artist: Ibeyi, Album: Ibeyi, Genre: Global, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: ""Ibeyi" is the Yoruba term for the divine spirit that exists between twins. It is also the name of 20-year-old French-Cuban duo Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz. Currently based in Paris, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi grew up on both sides of the Atlantic. Their father was Cuban conguero and master percussionist Miguel "Angá" Díaz of Irakere and Buena Vista Social Club. Díaz passed away when Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi were only 11, and their older sister Yanira followed him seven years later. But the sisters have taken up their legacies via their own music and their family's shared beliefs in Regla de Ocha. Regla de Ocha, also known as Santería, is a widely practiced Afro-Cuban religion based on the worship of orishas, which have roots in West African Yoruba culture. Musically, Ibeyi ground themselves firmly within these traditions, but they weave them together with jazz, soul, hip-hop, and downtempo/electronica. The result is their deeply evocative self-titled debut. In many ways, Ibeyi is an extended ritual—a consecration of life and love, both past and present. Fittingly, the album opens with a Yoruba prayer to Eleggua, the gatekeeper of crossroads and pathways, whose blessing alone allows ceremonies to proceed. The presence of Eleggua and other orishas saturates the album, thematically and musically. In "River", for example, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi pray to Oshun, the orisha of rivers and fertility. As the song begins, a bass-heavy drum beat churns through a slow-moving current of looped "ah"s, and Lisa-Kaindé intones, "Carry away my dead leaves/ Let me baptize my soul with the help of your waters/ Sink my pains and complaints/ Let the river take them—" she chokes up, "—river, drown them!" The track feels monumental; this is, after all, a call for rebirth. Yet, upon stripping away the vocals and reverb, it becomes apparent that the only other instruments involved are a MIDI controller (or two) and the occasional smattering of piano. And that's exactly what makes Ibeyi so remarkable. Instrumentally, their music is sparse. But it always feels full, with emotion and the kind of spirituality that is as deep as the people and circumstances that created it. And so it makes sense that Ibeyi is teeming with ghosts. Most prominent among them, of course, is their father's. On "Think of You", the sisters sample Angá's drumming, which fades in and out, specter-like, during the refrains when his daughters list the things that remind them of him (laughter, walking on rhythm, etc.). On "Mama Says", he resurfaces in the frustrations Lisa-Kaindé expresses as she sees her mother struggle to find meaning in life after his death. And during the chant break, she and Naomi pray to Eleggua, who was their father's orisha. Vocally, Lisa at times channels Nina Simone, and in her higher register, she can even recall Kate Bush circa "Wuthering Heights". Her ability to imbue deep emotion and otherworldliness into simple lyrics, meanwhile, is Björk-like. Naomi, in turn, explores the ways that Yoruba tradition and contemporary rhythms can meet. It's not quite what her father did on his last project, in which he fused Afro-Cuban music with jazz and hip-hop, but they both move from the same impulse. Naomi will sometimes play hip-hop beats on cajón, or add electronic booms and claps that thunder through a track like "Oya", in reference to the song's namesake—Oyá, the orisha of storms and cemeteries. The texts and subtexts in Ibeyi keep unfolding, but it feels immediate and direct regardless of how much of that text the listener is familiar with. Part of that is the nature of the language: Ibeyi do not just sing about their father, or Yanira, or once-lovers, or the orishas; they sing to them. By and large, they sing in terms of "me," "you," and "we," and at times, the lines between those entities are blurred. Which means that we are automatically implicated, living with them, or at least standing very nearby. If there is a critique to make, it's that the production can at times feel too smoothed over. Some of the rougher edges and raw(er) emotion that got the twins noticed in the first place get ironed out a bit. And one side effect is that a few of the album's final tracks sound somewhat similar in tonality, tempo, and their vibe. But Ibeyi still find subtle ways to create shape, as in the single piano key that pulses like a heart monitor in "Yanira", their song to their late sister, or the chilling dissonance in the twins' harmonies throughout. By the end of the album, Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé come full circle to face themselves, ending as they began: with a prayer. This time, it is to their namesake, Ibeyi. It is a joyful moment. And it is also, as every debut album attempts to but doesn't always succeed in being, a declaration of self."

Lansing-Dreiden

The Dividing Island

Rock

Brian Howe

When considering any one facet of Lansing-Dreiden's ongoing multimedia project, it's easy to slide toward reviewing the whole conceptual apparatus that surrounds it. The New York-based collective works in music, visual art, installation, and print, all from behind a smokescreen of anonymity. The art is often formidable, but the theoretical apparatus that surrounds it fluctuates between vague and incoherent. Their nebulous manifestoes are often devoid of actual content, and their anonymity seems to mask an essential lack of things to say. What's the difference between building a cult of personality around an abstraction and an individual? And is media manipulation a valid artistic pursuit, or is it simply art's acquiescence to commerce? These questions would be worth considering if they had anything to do with The Dividing Island. Given the group's anonymity and the album's museum-quality-- it has the air of an artifact carefully constructed and hermetically sealed under glass-- The Dividing Island seems to float in a void. Thematically, it's blurry, less exploring the nature of division than warily poking at it, careful not to say too much. But the record's hermetic quality founders against one piece of Lansing-Dreiden groupthink, which is surprisingly useful in parsing this album: "Lansing-Dreiden is a company that sees no distinction between art and commerce" (from the group's official website). Sound familiar? It's a clue, albeit an unintentional one, toward the nature of The Dividing Island. As Jess Harvell rightly noted in his Pitchfork article "Now That's What I Call New Pop!", in the early 1980s some members of the British post-punk scene combined their adventurous DIY spirit with a newfound commercial ambition. It was glamorous and progressive, synth-heavy and wildly eclectic, integrating diverse non-rock strands into sumptuously produced electro-orchestral pop. It's this cultural moment-- the moment of ABC and the Human League, of cavernously echoing drums and cerebral keys-- that Lansing-Dreiden inhabit here. "A Line You Can Cross" dips into nighttime neon new-wave, replete with spitting drums, Caucasoid-funk breakdowns, vocodered refrains, and minutely orchestrated electro-kitsch. "Part of the Promise" tries on at least four different guitar effects within its first 10 seconds before collapsing into a sleek, rumbling locomotive covered in diverse graffiti-- "Bombs Over Baghdad" meets Depeche Mode. The smoky, liquored "One for All" channels mellow soul in its abstracted way, quiet thunder sounds and all. But the band is at its best on ephemeral tracks like "Two Extremes"-- a heartbeat and a watery drone, a helix of chiming synths, with restful, floating vocals. You can see the theme of division play out over the song titles, but the only operative division this record explores, tacitly, is between the band's theory and their praxis. This disconnect is troubling, but The Dividing Island is sealed off enough from it-- from everything except the idiom it reconstructs-- that it doesn't effect the album's success on musical terms.

Artist: Lansing-Dreiden, Album: The Dividing Island, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "When considering any one facet of Lansing-Dreiden's ongoing multimedia project, it's easy to slide toward reviewing the whole conceptual apparatus that surrounds it. The New York-based collective works in music, visual art, installation, and print, all from behind a smokescreen of anonymity. The art is often formidable, but the theoretical apparatus that surrounds it fluctuates between vague and incoherent. Their nebulous manifestoes are often devoid of actual content, and their anonymity seems to mask an essential lack of things to say. What's the difference between building a cult of personality around an abstraction and an individual? And is media manipulation a valid artistic pursuit, or is it simply art's acquiescence to commerce? These questions would be worth considering if they had anything to do with The Dividing Island. Given the group's anonymity and the album's museum-quality-- it has the air of an artifact carefully constructed and hermetically sealed under glass-- The Dividing Island seems to float in a void. Thematically, it's blurry, less exploring the nature of division than warily poking at it, careful not to say too much. But the record's hermetic quality founders against one piece of Lansing-Dreiden groupthink, which is surprisingly useful in parsing this album: "Lansing-Dreiden is a company that sees no distinction between art and commerce" (from the group's official website). Sound familiar? It's a clue, albeit an unintentional one, toward the nature of The Dividing Island. As Jess Harvell rightly noted in his Pitchfork article "Now That's What I Call New Pop!", in the early 1980s some members of the British post-punk scene combined their adventurous DIY spirit with a newfound commercial ambition. It was glamorous and progressive, synth-heavy and wildly eclectic, integrating diverse non-rock strands into sumptuously produced electro-orchestral pop. It's this cultural moment-- the moment of ABC and the Human League, of cavernously echoing drums and cerebral keys-- that Lansing-Dreiden inhabit here. "A Line You Can Cross" dips into nighttime neon new-wave, replete with spitting drums, Caucasoid-funk breakdowns, vocodered refrains, and minutely orchestrated electro-kitsch. "Part of the Promise" tries on at least four different guitar effects within its first 10 seconds before collapsing into a sleek, rumbling locomotive covered in diverse graffiti-- "Bombs Over Baghdad" meets Depeche Mode. The smoky, liquored "One for All" channels mellow soul in its abstracted way, quiet thunder sounds and all. But the band is at its best on ephemeral tracks like "Two Extremes"-- a heartbeat and a watery drone, a helix of chiming synths, with restful, floating vocals. You can see the theme of division play out over the song titles, but the only operative division this record explores, tacitly, is between the band's theory and their praxis. This disconnect is troubling, but The Dividing Island is sealed off enough from it-- from everything except the idiom it reconstructs-- that it doesn't effect the album's success on musical terms."

Taylor Swift

Reputation

Pop/R&B

Jamieson Cox

For a decade, almost everyone agreed on Taylor Swift. She wrote exquisite love songs and scorching, funny takedowns at an age when most people struggle to put together a cogent email. She scattered breadcrumbs and winking clues through her lyrics and liner notes, inviting diehard fans and pop rubberneckers alike to agonize over what was fact and what was fiction. She won so many awards she was ridiculed for the shocked face she made every time her name was called. She was observant and savvy, and if those qualities were spun into a kind of Machiavellian cunning by her critics, it seemed like a good problem to have. How things have changed. The Swift that stands before us in 2017 is beleaguered and defensive, a figure fighting back from public relations problems she largely could’ve avoided. She stepped into back-and-forths with Nicki Minaj and her eternal nemesis Kanye West, when silence would have seemed optimal. She induced the Streisand effect by taking legal action over a barely-read blog post that drew connections between her work and neo-Nazism, a decision that shone a new spotlight on her steadfast apoliticism in an overheated political climate. And to top it all off, she released “Look What You Made Me Do,” a petty snarl of a lead single that jumped to No. 1 thanks largely to sheer anticipation. Chart watchers rejoiced when an ascendant Cardi B bumped her from the top slot; Taylor sent flowers. It turns out “Look What You Made Me Do” was closer to a red herring than a sign of things to come, a relief given how it neglected most of Swift’s generational gifts. Reputation, her sixth album, isn’t a tuneless vengeance tour—it’s an aggressive, lascivious display of craftsmanship, one that makes 1989 sound like a pit stop on the way to Swift’s full embrace of modern pop. (This is a trip that began the second the bass dropped on her 2012 song “I Knew You Were Trouble.”) She’s largely abandoned effervescence, wonderment, and narrative. Say goodbye to maple lattes and hello to whiskey on ice, to wine spilling in the bathtub, to Old Fashioneds mixed with a heavy hand. Her vision of pop, one she realizes with the help of Max Martin and Shellback, and man-of-the-moment Jack Antonoff, is surprisingly maximal: hair-raising bass drops, vacuum-cleaner synths right out of a Flume single, stuttering trap percussion, cyborg backing choirs. Songs like opener “...Ready for It?” and “Don’t Blame Me” are glittering monsters held together by Swift’s presence at their center. Her interest in hip-hop and R&B is most apparent in her voice, an instrument that’s been stripped of its signature expressiveness. Her best performances throughout Reputation are defined by cadence and rhythm, not melody: she’s cool, conversational, detached. These particular skills may have been hiding in plain sight—listen to the decade-old “Our Song” and focus on the way she places syllables while rattling off “Our song is a slammin’ screen door!”—but they’ve never been highlighted the way they are here. “Delicate” is built around a muted pulse and a murmured question: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? ’Cause I know that it’s delicate.” She stretches out the titular compliment on “Gorgeous,” making it a fluttering prayer and letting the rest of the line tumble out in its wake. She even manages to hang with Future on the bizarre, compelling “End Game,” leaving poor Ed Sheeran in the dust: “I don’t wanna hurt you, I just wanna be/Drinking on the beach with you all over me.” The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now—she’s posted up at a Cozumel cabana with her out-of-office reply: “I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ’em.” Her writing has never been less diaristic or more dependent on dramatic performance. For Swift, plunging head-first into pop has meant leaving behind the short stories on 2008’s Fearless or 2010’s Speak Now and relying more on snippets of vivid imagery and detail. (“Getaway Car,” a sparkling Antonoff production that sounds like an “Out of the Woods” retread, is a dramatic and enjoyable outlier.) She leans on characters, some old and some new: the unrepentant brat, the swooning dreamer, and the determined, seductive adult. The “Look What You Made Me Do” video was prescient in at least one respect: Reputation collects a half-dozen different aspects of Swift and lines them up in a row. You leave the album with a new appreciation for her versatility, for the way the tough-talking schemer of “I Did Something Bad” and the infatuated android of “King of My Heart” can share the same tracklist. The woman who built a career on family-friendly romances like “Love Story” and “Mine” now turns her gaze to the darker side of passion: obsession, jealousy, lust, the loss of control. A lover turns her bed “into a sacred oasis” on the featherlight “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” and she begs her partner to carve their name into her bedpost on “Dress,” a panting, shuddering highlight. Swift hasn’t played the romantic naïf since Red, and she delivers all of these lines with palpable confidence and ease. Even lesser material benefits: “So It Goes...” is replacement-level trap-pop, but it’s hard to shake the thought of her smeared lipstick, of fingernails dug into someone’s back. In any case, these songs are more successful than the tracks that invite the listener to revisit Swift’s public spats. “Look What You Made Me Do” is the album’s nadir, and “I Did Something Bad” violates what you could call Katy’s Law: the mention of “receipts” in your quasi-diss track renders it an embarrassment. Things somehow get less subtle: “Here’s a toast to my reeeeeal friends,” she sneers on “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” just before faking a weepy apology and breaking into cackling laughter. She’s shooting for over-the-top, campy villainy, but it scans as stubborn petulance. Every listener is over this. Reputation isn’t the failure that seemed possible a month or two ago; it’s full of bulletproof hooks and sticky turns of phrase. But in committing to a more conventional form of superstardom, Swift has deemphasized the skill at the core of her genius. The album ends with “New Year’s Day,” a spare, acoustic epilogue for an album made using a lot of synths and computers. It’s equal parts Lisa Loeb and Dashboard Confessional, and she conjures rich scenes with just a handful of lines: a hotel lobby strewn with party detritus, the silent back seat of a cab. She lands the album’s first true knockout punch in the bridge: “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywher

Artist: Taylor Swift, Album: Reputation, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "For a decade, almost everyone agreed on Taylor Swift. She wrote exquisite love songs and scorching, funny takedowns at an age when most people struggle to put together a cogent email. She scattered breadcrumbs and winking clues through her lyrics and liner notes, inviting diehard fans and pop rubberneckers alike to agonize over what was fact and what was fiction. She won so many awards she was ridiculed for the shocked face she made every time her name was called. She was observant and savvy, and if those qualities were spun into a kind of Machiavellian cunning by her critics, it seemed like a good problem to have. How things have changed. The Swift that stands before us in 2017 is beleaguered and defensive, a figure fighting back from public relations problems she largely could’ve avoided. She stepped into back-and-forths with Nicki Minaj and her eternal nemesis Kanye West, when silence would have seemed optimal. She induced the Streisand effect by taking legal action over a barely-read blog post that drew connections between her work and neo-Nazism, a decision that shone a new spotlight on her steadfast apoliticism in an overheated political climate. And to top it all off, she released “Look What You Made Me Do,” a petty snarl of a lead single that jumped to No. 1 thanks largely to sheer anticipation. Chart watchers rejoiced when an ascendant Cardi B bumped her from the top slot; Taylor sent flowers. It turns out “Look What You Made Me Do” was closer to a red herring than a sign of things to come, a relief given how it neglected most of Swift’s generational gifts. Reputation, her sixth album, isn’t a tuneless vengeance tour—it’s an aggressive, lascivious display of craftsmanship, one that makes 1989 sound like a pit stop on the way to Swift’s full embrace of modern pop. (This is a trip that began the second the bass dropped on her 2012 song “I Knew You Were Trouble.”) She’s largely abandoned effervescence, wonderment, and narrative. Say goodbye to maple lattes and hello to whiskey on ice, to wine spilling in the bathtub, to Old Fashioneds mixed with a heavy hand. Her vision of pop, one she realizes with the help of Max Martin and Shellback, and man-of-the-moment Jack Antonoff, is surprisingly maximal: hair-raising bass drops, vacuum-cleaner synths right out of a Flume single, stuttering trap percussion, cyborg backing choirs. Songs like opener “...Ready for It?” and “Don’t Blame Me” are glittering monsters held together by Swift’s presence at their center. Her interest in hip-hop and R&B is most apparent in her voice, an instrument that’s been stripped of its signature expressiveness. Her best performances throughout Reputation are defined by cadence and rhythm, not melody: she’s cool, conversational, detached. These particular skills may have been hiding in plain sight—listen to the decade-old “Our Song” and focus on the way she places syllables while rattling off “Our song is a slammin’ screen door!”—but they’ve never been highlighted the way they are here. “Delicate” is built around a muted pulse and a murmured question: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? ’Cause I know that it’s delicate.” She stretches out the titular compliment on “Gorgeous,” making it a fluttering prayer and letting the rest of the line tumble out in its wake. She even manages to hang with Future on the bizarre, compelling “End Game,” leaving poor Ed Sheeran in the dust: “I don’t wanna hurt you, I just wanna be/Drinking on the beach with you all over me.” The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now—she’s posted up at a Cozumel cabana with her out-of-office reply: “I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ’em.” Her writing has never been less diaristic or more dependent on dramatic performance. For Swift, plunging head-first into pop has meant leaving behind the short stories on 2008’s Fearless or 2010’s Speak Now and relying more on snippets of vivid imagery and detail. (“Getaway Car,” a sparkling Antonoff production that sounds like an “Out of the Woods” retread, is a dramatic and enjoyable outlier.) She leans on characters, some old and some new: the unrepentant brat, the swooning dreamer, and the determined, seductive adult. The “Look What You Made Me Do” video was prescient in at least one respect: Reputation collects a half-dozen different aspects of Swift and lines them up in a row. You leave the album with a new appreciation for her versatility, for the way the tough-talking schemer of “I Did Something Bad” and the infatuated android of “King of My Heart” can share the same tracklist. The woman who built a career on family-friendly romances like “Love Story” and “Mine” now turns her gaze to the darker side of passion: obsession, jealousy, lust, the loss of control. A lover turns her bed “into a sacred oasis” on the featherlight “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” and she begs her partner to carve their name into her bedpost on “Dress,” a panting, shuddering highlight. Swift hasn’t played the romantic naïf since Red, and she delivers all of these lines with palpable confidence and ease. Even lesser material benefits: “So It Goes...” is replacement-level trap-pop, but it’s hard to shake the thought of her smeared lipstick, of fingernails dug into someone’s back. In any case, these songs are more successful than the tracks that invite the listener to revisit Swift’s public spats. “Look What You Made Me Do” is the album’s nadir, and “I Did Something Bad” violates what you could call Katy’s Law: the mention of “receipts” in your quasi-diss track renders it an embarrassment. Things somehow get less subtle: “Here’s a toast to my reeeeeal friends,” she sneers on “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” just before faking a weepy apology and breaking into cackling laughter. She’s shooting for over-the-top, campy villainy, but it scans as stubborn petulance. Every listener is over this. Reputation isn’t the failure that seemed possible a month or two ago; it’s full of bulletproof hooks and sticky turns of phrase. But in committing to a more conventional form of superstardom, Swift has deemphasized the skill at the core of her genius. The album ends with “New Year’s Day,” a spare, acoustic epilogue for an album made using a lot of synths and computers. It’s equal parts Lisa Loeb and Dashboard Confessional, and she conjures rich scenes with just a handful of lines: a hotel lobby strewn with party detritus, the silent back seat of a cab. She lands the album’s first true knockout punch in the bridge: “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywher"

Castanets

Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts

Rock

Joe Tangari

Raymond Raposa's reedy voice would sound at home in either a Village coffee shop or a roadhouse, but the pitch-dark music ranges far and wide through organic and electronic textures, often combing the two. The resulting overall sound is cool-- it has a lot of potential for surprises, which Raposa rarely wastes. "No Trouble" is among the finest examples on his sixth album of all of this at work. His filtered, distant vocal is balanced by thumping drums pushed way up in your face, the occasional squeal of a synthesizer or strummed surf chord and a couple of massive guitar outbursts that erupt like bubbling lava from the song's slow-footed shamble. "You be my getaway car and I'll steal everything you need," Raposa sings just before the final eruption, ramming home the sense of unease and danger the music naturally conjures. The extremes of Castanets' sound are exemplified by "Rose" and "Lucky Old Moon". The former opens the record with a bare and dry acoustic guitar part and completely unvarnished vocal, and brings in a bit of string bass, drums, and steel guitar-- there is a tiny bit of keyboard, but it mostly sounds like the last song of the night in some godforsaken roadhouse. "Lucky Old Moon" opens with spaced-out keys and a drum machine and never comes back to earth, preferring to shoot Raposa through an icy void. It's a neat look for him and one of the most explicitly electronic/ambient songs on any of his albums. It's also one of many tracks on the album that operates primarily as a mood piece. Raposa's lyrics are frequently great, but in spite of that, feeling trumps songwriting for the most part on Texas Rose. He does save the best for last, though, as closer "Dance, Dance" shows him in complete control of his sound for over six spellbinding minutes. The song is rhythmically spare and has a harmonic structure that welcomes ebb and flow in the arrangement, and Raposa brings in small details to accent lines like, "We stayed in, dodged our friends/ Did some drugs and our best to disappear." It ends the album on a note of dejected but oddly graceful beauty, which is perfect territory for a guy of Raposa's talents. Overall, Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts is a good mood record, a midnight opus that sounds great while it's playing but doesn't much travel with the listener beyond its runtime.

Artist: Castanets, Album: Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Raymond Raposa's reedy voice would sound at home in either a Village coffee shop or a roadhouse, but the pitch-dark music ranges far and wide through organic and electronic textures, often combing the two. The resulting overall sound is cool-- it has a lot of potential for surprises, which Raposa rarely wastes. "No Trouble" is among the finest examples on his sixth album of all of this at work. His filtered, distant vocal is balanced by thumping drums pushed way up in your face, the occasional squeal of a synthesizer or strummed surf chord and a couple of massive guitar outbursts that erupt like bubbling lava from the song's slow-footed shamble. "You be my getaway car and I'll steal everything you need," Raposa sings just before the final eruption, ramming home the sense of unease and danger the music naturally conjures. The extremes of Castanets' sound are exemplified by "Rose" and "Lucky Old Moon". The former opens the record with a bare and dry acoustic guitar part and completely unvarnished vocal, and brings in a bit of string bass, drums, and steel guitar-- there is a tiny bit of keyboard, but it mostly sounds like the last song of the night in some godforsaken roadhouse. "Lucky Old Moon" opens with spaced-out keys and a drum machine and never comes back to earth, preferring to shoot Raposa through an icy void. It's a neat look for him and one of the most explicitly electronic/ambient songs on any of his albums. It's also one of many tracks on the album that operates primarily as a mood piece. Raposa's lyrics are frequently great, but in spite of that, feeling trumps songwriting for the most part on Texas Rose. He does save the best for last, though, as closer "Dance, Dance" shows him in complete control of his sound for over six spellbinding minutes. The song is rhythmically spare and has a harmonic structure that welcomes ebb and flow in the arrangement, and Raposa brings in small details to accent lines like, "We stayed in, dodged our friends/ Did some drugs and our best to disappear." It ends the album on a note of dejected but oddly graceful beauty, which is perfect territory for a guy of Raposa's talents. Overall, Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts is a good mood record, a midnight opus that sounds great while it's playing but doesn't much travel with the listener beyond its runtime."

Fat Worm of Error

Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies

Experimental,Rock

Zach Baron

I've seen the tired "you gotta see em' live" bit thrown some at the Fat Worm, but I think their scattershot post-Magik Markers bang-on-can spectacular bullshit is-what-it-is-- free, man-- whether on stage or on CD. Imagine deconstructed Essential Logic aerosol burns (stuff that barely hung together in the first place!) with kazoo instead of horns or Beefheart played by Nautical Almanac. Mid-set with the aforementioned Nautical Almanac in 2005, a friend leaned over and said: "Too free for me, man." Live at No Fun, I had the same thought for Fat Worm: no forward momentum, not much to grab. Only when I turned and started doing something else (drinking? talking?) could I start to follow. Same with the record-- in the background, Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies sounds its addled best, like on "Cicadas", light on the pointless snare work and heavy on feedback insect calls and crunchy leaves under foot. Front and center, odds are your roommates will start yelling at you: "Dude, what the fuck is that?" or "Yeah, I actually lived with one of those guys. Stuff is terrible." Pregnant Babies spends most of its time in between songs, but when they deign to appear they're sticky third-eye narrative thrillers: "Red Melting Plastic Box", for instance, is a story about a picnic gone wrong, honey and ants everywhere; they take over a lunch box and live there. That transitions into "Laissez-Faire Is for the Birds", in which pigeons come in, ruin the party, kill the ants, eat all the bread, and ride nature's chaos (gurgles, bird chirps, chords and choruses, the odd harmony) into triumph over mankind. "Brown" and "Hand of God" make some sense, too: The former basically is a class rant ("she's so sophisticated, get it?"), and the latter's your standard anti-Christ or whoever ("the skin of God is dry and flaking") song, set to pick and string drags. Fat Worm of Error have a couple people who used to play in Deerhoof, and they've developed their own version of that band's unpredictability and kiddie-moan, except here set in Western Massachusetts and devoid of the presumption of an audience. Like kids, their alternate universe is addictive when you're in it. But mostly you're out of it, it's three-rows-back noise on a plane, and you can't sleep.

Artist: Fat Worm of Error, Album: Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "I've seen the tired "you gotta see em' live" bit thrown some at the Fat Worm, but I think their scattershot post-Magik Markers bang-on-can spectacular bullshit is-what-it-is-- free, man-- whether on stage or on CD. Imagine deconstructed Essential Logic aerosol burns (stuff that barely hung together in the first place!) with kazoo instead of horns or Beefheart played by Nautical Almanac. Mid-set with the aforementioned Nautical Almanac in 2005, a friend leaned over and said: "Too free for me, man." Live at No Fun, I had the same thought for Fat Worm: no forward momentum, not much to grab. Only when I turned and started doing something else (drinking? talking?) could I start to follow. Same with the record-- in the background, Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies sounds its addled best, like on "Cicadas", light on the pointless snare work and heavy on feedback insect calls and crunchy leaves under foot. Front and center, odds are your roommates will start yelling at you: "Dude, what the fuck is that?" or "Yeah, I actually lived with one of those guys. Stuff is terrible." Pregnant Babies spends most of its time in between songs, but when they deign to appear they're sticky third-eye narrative thrillers: "Red Melting Plastic Box", for instance, is a story about a picnic gone wrong, honey and ants everywhere; they take over a lunch box and live there. That transitions into "Laissez-Faire Is for the Birds", in which pigeons come in, ruin the party, kill the ants, eat all the bread, and ride nature's chaos (gurgles, bird chirps, chords and choruses, the odd harmony) into triumph over mankind. "Brown" and "Hand of God" make some sense, too: The former basically is a class rant ("she's so sophisticated, get it?"), and the latter's your standard anti-Christ or whoever ("the skin of God is dry and flaking") song, set to pick and string drags. Fat Worm of Error have a couple people who used to play in Deerhoof, and they've developed their own version of that band's unpredictability and kiddie-moan, except here set in Western Massachusetts and devoid of the presumption of an audience. Like kids, their alternate universe is addictive when you're in it. But mostly you're out of it, it's three-rows-back noise on a plane, and you can't sleep."

Icarus

Six Soviet Misfits

Electronic

Andrew Bryant

Ollie Brown and Sam Britton (aka Icarus) slowly began to make their way out of the Minotaur suit; one pulling the heavy mask of snout and horns off his brow, the other shrugged his overburdened shoulders beneath the weight of his companion. Upon hearing the horrific cry ripped from the throat of Daedalus, they knew the game had gone too far. When the last of the padded leather costume was shed they quickly squinted toward the horizon to see, falling from the sky, the body of the young boy they had come to pay homage to, his graceless and pinioned form careening inevitably into the distant Aegean Sea. Initially, it seemed like a good idea coaxing the old inventor through his complex and intimidating technological exercise. After all, the strategy seemed to work on their latest release, Six Soviet Misfits, a two-disc collection of the group's previously released UL-6 EP, Soviet Igloo 12", and Misfits LP. The idea was to utilize a series of black boxes functioning as micro-labyrinths-- through which only chance bits of data are allowed to pass-- that would inevitably reconfigure information via wires and circuitry boards as something unexpectedly musical. The group's hope was that by donning the guise of the Cretan half-man/half-bull and pushing Daedalus and his son through the real labyrinth, the mythological duo would happen upon something equally interesting and novel. Unfortunately, Brown, Britton and ultimately Icarus pay the price for this tinkering, as the formulaic approach builds expectations that are seldom satisfied. Of course, there could be no opportunity for a fall if anticipation weren't raised to a heightened level. "Benevolent Incubator" begins with a jazzy swarm of percussion instruments-- including the ever-present skittering snare-- that gives way to a beautiful melody anchored by a handful of extended tones and the warm hum of various computer generated noises that finally usher it to conclusion. Organic and cohesive, the composition sets the bar high for the remainder of the album, which never fully meets the mark again. While compositions like "Borichean Pintak" and "Nine Fresian" contain moments of uncluttered beauty that parallel "Incubator"-- utilizing minimal drum-programs and sighing electronic manipulations that give both tracks a haunting element-- they eventually devolve into the lowest common denominator: predictable, uninteresting dance music. "Xot Zoiks", "Despair" and "UL-6" attempt to circumvent this potentially crippling fault by supplementing the musical ideas of various other electronic luminaries like Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Plaid, but unfortunately, instead of fleshing out the music, the tonal clusters, distorted beats, and jazz-inflected bass serve only to illuminate the duo's shortcomings in light of their inspirations. This leads to the aural equivalent of counterfeit inspection-- leaving it up to the listener to hold each piece of sound up to the light in order to search for the watermark of originality, a task both tedious and annoying. As Icarus and Daedalus discovered, context is potentially more harmful to the creative process than imitation-- specifically, the available tools and employed methods of the artist. It's at the hand of their own limited musical palette that Brown and Britton fail in their misadventure, as similar to the old man quickly throwing together precarious materials in a bid to exit the cold confines of the labyrinth, the group produces an album that feels rushed, weak, and too eager to flee its roots in drum 'n bass and jungle. Like Icarus approaching the white heat of his demise, the musical counterpart can only bear witness to the consequence of a half-realized album that, though it never quite kisses the earth with gossamer wings, is as equally unfastened by the warm radiant glow of its aspirations.

Artist: Icarus, Album: Six Soviet Misfits, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "Ollie Brown and Sam Britton (aka Icarus) slowly began to make their way out of the Minotaur suit; one pulling the heavy mask of snout and horns off his brow, the other shrugged his overburdened shoulders beneath the weight of his companion. Upon hearing the horrific cry ripped from the throat of Daedalus, they knew the game had gone too far. When the last of the padded leather costume was shed they quickly squinted toward the horizon to see, falling from the sky, the body of the young boy they had come to pay homage to, his graceless and pinioned form careening inevitably into the distant Aegean Sea. Initially, it seemed like a good idea coaxing the old inventor through his complex and intimidating technological exercise. After all, the strategy seemed to work on their latest release, Six Soviet Misfits, a two-disc collection of the group's previously released UL-6 EP, Soviet Igloo 12", and Misfits LP. The idea was to utilize a series of black boxes functioning as micro-labyrinths-- through which only chance bits of data are allowed to pass-- that would inevitably reconfigure information via wires and circuitry boards as something unexpectedly musical. The group's hope was that by donning the guise of the Cretan half-man/half-bull and pushing Daedalus and his son through the real labyrinth, the mythological duo would happen upon something equally interesting and novel. Unfortunately, Brown, Britton and ultimately Icarus pay the price for this tinkering, as the formulaic approach builds expectations that are seldom satisfied. Of course, there could be no opportunity for a fall if anticipation weren't raised to a heightened level. "Benevolent Incubator" begins with a jazzy swarm of percussion instruments-- including the ever-present skittering snare-- that gives way to a beautiful melody anchored by a handful of extended tones and the warm hum of various computer generated noises that finally usher it to conclusion. Organic and cohesive, the composition sets the bar high for the remainder of the album, which never fully meets the mark again. While compositions like "Borichean Pintak" and "Nine Fresian" contain moments of uncluttered beauty that parallel "Incubator"-- utilizing minimal drum-programs and sighing electronic manipulations that give both tracks a haunting element-- they eventually devolve into the lowest common denominator: predictable, uninteresting dance music. "Xot Zoiks", "Despair" and "UL-6" attempt to circumvent this potentially crippling fault by supplementing the musical ideas of various other electronic luminaries like Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Plaid, but unfortunately, instead of fleshing out the music, the tonal clusters, distorted beats, and jazz-inflected bass serve only to illuminate the duo's shortcomings in light of their inspirations. This leads to the aural equivalent of counterfeit inspection-- leaving it up to the listener to hold each piece of sound up to the light in order to search for the watermark of originality, a task both tedious and annoying. As Icarus and Daedalus discovered, context is potentially more harmful to the creative process than imitation-- specifically, the available tools and employed methods of the artist. It's at the hand of their own limited musical palette that Brown and Britton fail in their misadventure, as similar to the old man quickly throwing together precarious materials in a bid to exit the cold confines of the labyrinth, the group produces an album that feels rushed, weak, and too eager to flee its roots in drum 'n bass and jungle. Like Icarus approaching the white heat of his demise, the musical counterpart can only bear witness to the consequence of a half-realized album that, though it never quite kisses the earth with gossamer wings, is as equally unfastened by the warm radiant glow of its aspirations."

UNKLE

End Titles...Stories for Film

Electronic,Jazz

Ian Cohen

On this year's Mixtape About Nothing, Wale boasted that "hype gets you Rick Mirer'd every single time," but he might want to go back to the drawing board with that one (and maybe go with Ron Powlus for the joke)-- the former Golden Dome golden boy still managed to parlay his pedigree into an uninspiring, but lengthy eight-year NFL career as a serviceable backup on generally god-awful Seahawks, Lions, and Bears teams. This sort of explains James Lavelle-- it's hard to imagine any real-life situation where Psyence Fiction somehow justified every expectation that preceded it, but thanks in part to the very memory of those expectations, UNKLE has still managed an improbable decade-plus of survival. It's a pretty sad day when the self-promoter extraordinaire Lavelle starts soft-pedaling his projects, and the gist of End Titles...Stories for Film is that we shouldn't confuse it as being "the new UNKLE album," but rather as a clearinghouse of collaborative songs coming from various projects-- among them BMW commercials ("Trouble in Paradise"), Alex Grazioli's indie film Odyssey In Rome, as well as the cut-out bin from previous UNKLE recording sessions. To put it another way, it's formatted almost the exact same way the previous UNKLE LPs were, and no one's going to give a shit because DJ Shadow, Thom Yorke, Kool G Rap, and Jason Newsted have absolutely nothing to do with it. At the very least, End Titles is far more cohesive than its birthing process would imply. Yeah, the sheer statistics are daunting (22 tracks, 75 minutes), but it flows in that Sufjan way where interstitial noodling makes the longer, more trad formats fit in a mesmeric manner-- End Titles rewards just about any amount of listening investment equally, and it completely lacks sharp edges. It has acoustic guitars shaved of brassy treble, electrics coasting on reverb, and vocals blunted with foggy echo blanketing slowly modulating melodic lines. Perhaps befitting its nature as a presumptive soundtrack, it's a long listen, but not necessarily a difficult one. Of course, the reason for this cohesion is a problem that spawned perhaps out of inevitably during the sessions for War Stories; somewhere along the line, maybe intimidated by the genre-mashing present he envisioned on Psyence Fiction, Lavelle just sort of gave up, dropped any pretense of hip-hop influence and became an overseer of a downtempo and overcast Brit-rock, bland and grey as a London sky or a London steak. Needless to say, the lead singer from South feels right at home here. There's actually a sort of Curious Case of Benjamin Button shit going on here-- Psyence Fiction anticipated omnivorous fanhood in 2008 more than the actual pop music, and now Lavelle's project has backslid into 2001, when he cosigned on his first project with South's From Here On In, an album with a remarkably similar makeup of asleep-at-the-wheel instrumentals and hookless, murky songs that each run about a minute too long. Befitting his background, most of the tracks here have a percussive depth, drum tracks more breakbeat-ish than four-on-the-floor and the bass riffs usually more memorable than the ones on guitar. But the problem isn't so much about having relative unknowns as vocalists, but rather how nearly all of them (Lavelle included) play to the foggy material herein. Friend-til-the-end Josh Homme and Black Mountain make relatively notable appearances, but both of them are far more suited to the desert than the tundra of Lavelle productions. The Homme vehicle "Chemical" is bled cold and clammy and while "Blade in the Black" is perhaps the most striking cut, with a nearly soulful performance from soppy folk artist Gavin Clark and some intriguing horn stabs, but the song itself needs grease, not a coating of plexiglass. Letting Ferrara sing on obvious album exit point "Open Your Eyes" may be a quid pro quo, but if there was ever a time to rekindle your love with AutoTune, it's hearing him warble like Eddie Murphy's Dylan-via-Buckwheat skit over charmless coffee-house strumming. You would figure that the bite-sized instrumental portions represent a chance for them to experiment, not being beholden to song structure, but instead there's the old tautology of strings=cinematic, so thus for cinema, cue the strings. But in the end, the reason that UNKLE is likely seeking soundtrack work is the reason End Titles fails to engage as a singular experience: they've always been more about the Rolodex than the Roland and now, they're asking for an additional disconnect of "I guess you had to see the movie." Psyence Fiction may have been a blockbuster, overhyped or not, but at this point, UNKLE's franchise is strictly straight-to-video.

Artist: UNKLE, Album: End Titles...Stories for Film, Genre: Electronic,Jazz, Score (1-10): 4.3 Album review: "On this year's Mixtape About Nothing, Wale boasted that "hype gets you Rick Mirer'd every single time," but he might want to go back to the drawing board with that one (and maybe go with Ron Powlus for the joke)-- the former Golden Dome golden boy still managed to parlay his pedigree into an uninspiring, but lengthy eight-year NFL career as a serviceable backup on generally god-awful Seahawks, Lions, and Bears teams. This sort of explains James Lavelle-- it's hard to imagine any real-life situation where Psyence Fiction somehow justified every expectation that preceded it, but thanks in part to the very memory of those expectations, UNKLE has still managed an improbable decade-plus of survival. It's a pretty sad day when the self-promoter extraordinaire Lavelle starts soft-pedaling his projects, and the gist of End Titles...Stories for Film is that we shouldn't confuse it as being "the new UNKLE album," but rather as a clearinghouse of collaborative songs coming from various projects-- among them BMW commercials ("Trouble in Paradise"), Alex Grazioli's indie film Odyssey In Rome, as well as the cut-out bin from previous UNKLE recording sessions. To put it another way, it's formatted almost the exact same way the previous UNKLE LPs were, and no one's going to give a shit because DJ Shadow, Thom Yorke, Kool G Rap, and Jason Newsted have absolutely nothing to do with it. At the very least, End Titles is far more cohesive than its birthing process would imply. Yeah, the sheer statistics are daunting (22 tracks, 75 minutes), but it flows in that Sufjan way where interstitial noodling makes the longer, more trad formats fit in a mesmeric manner-- End Titles rewards just about any amount of listening investment equally, and it completely lacks sharp edges. It has acoustic guitars shaved of brassy treble, electrics coasting on reverb, and vocals blunted with foggy echo blanketing slowly modulating melodic lines. Perhaps befitting its nature as a presumptive soundtrack, it's a long listen, but not necessarily a difficult one. Of course, the reason for this cohesion is a problem that spawned perhaps out of inevitably during the sessions for War Stories; somewhere along the line, maybe intimidated by the genre-mashing present he envisioned on Psyence Fiction, Lavelle just sort of gave up, dropped any pretense of hip-hop influence and became an overseer of a downtempo and overcast Brit-rock, bland and grey as a London sky or a London steak. Needless to say, the lead singer from South feels right at home here. There's actually a sort of Curious Case of Benjamin Button shit going on here-- Psyence Fiction anticipated omnivorous fanhood in 2008 more than the actual pop music, and now Lavelle's project has backslid into 2001, when he cosigned on his first project with South's From Here On In, an album with a remarkably similar makeup of asleep-at-the-wheel instrumentals and hookless, murky songs that each run about a minute too long. Befitting his background, most of the tracks here have a percussive depth, drum tracks more breakbeat-ish than four-on-the-floor and the bass riffs usually more memorable than the ones on guitar. But the problem isn't so much about having relative unknowns as vocalists, but rather how nearly all of them (Lavelle included) play to the foggy material herein. Friend-til-the-end Josh Homme and Black Mountain make relatively notable appearances, but both of them are far more suited to the desert than the tundra of Lavelle productions. The Homme vehicle "Chemical" is bled cold and clammy and while "Blade in the Black" is perhaps the most striking cut, with a nearly soulful performance from soppy folk artist Gavin Clark and some intriguing horn stabs, but the song itself needs grease, not a coating of plexiglass. Letting Ferrara sing on obvious album exit point "Open Your Eyes" may be a quid pro quo, but if there was ever a time to rekindle your love with AutoTune, it's hearing him warble like Eddie Murphy's Dylan-via-Buckwheat skit over charmless coffee-house strumming. You would figure that the bite-sized instrumental portions represent a chance for them to experiment, not being beholden to song structure, but instead there's the old tautology of strings=cinematic, so thus for cinema, cue the strings. But in the end, the reason that UNKLE is likely seeking soundtrack work is the reason End Titles fails to engage as a singular experience: they've always been more about the Rolodex than the Roland and now, they're asking for an additional disconnect of "I guess you had to see the movie." Psyence Fiction may have been a blockbuster, overhyped or not, but at this point, UNKLE's franchise is strictly straight-to-video."

Superpitcher

Kilimanjaro

Electronic

Andy Battaglia

Of the formative sounds most associated with the epochal electronic-music label Kompakt, none has had as long a shelf-life as the zoned-out house of Superpitcher. Worthy competitors have crept up and either faded away (shuffling "schaffel" techno) or been assimilated so fully as to become part of the general dance-music weather (Wolfgang Voigt's minimalism, Michael Mayer's precision trance). But Superpitcher-- nobody does what he does quite as well. Nobody even really tries. What he does has also proven very prescient, especially as we hear more and more slow, bleary, moody, spooky sounds from the haunted and/or wasted outer edges of genres like chillwave and witch-house. Such is the style that Superpitcher has worked within since breaking out in 2001 with a single called "Heroin". And such is the style of his fine return to form, Kilimanjaro. It's been a few years since Superpitcher churned out his last essential material, having chosen instead to mess around in the studio and explore ideas of "singing" and playing "instruments" on a string of admirable but ultimately disappointing projects, most notably his Michael Mayer-collaboration album Supermayer Save the World. None of his work was ever exactly bad, but none of the energy or joy evident in the making of it found a corollary in the energy or joy receptors of those of us who endeavored to listen to it. Worthy lesson for all aspiring music-makers: Just because you can play a slide whistle doesn't mean you necessarily should. But there's a slide whistle early on Kilimanjaro, and it sounds great-- and not only great but integral, as if time spent playing slide whistle and sounding a little lame in the past paid off in the form of a sound now worth exploring even more down the line. Not to overstate the slide whistle, though. It's just one tool among many used in "Voodoo", a track that opens Kilimanjaro on a notably dubby note, with all kinds of sounds-- sensuous singing, falsetto yelps, ominous chimes, rattling trash-can taps-- spread across an incredibly deep sound-field and arranged in time with a sort of lilting quasi-reggae beat. There's a lot going on, but one of Superpitcher's strengths as a producer is the way he employs everything he does, big and small, in service of a consistently melancholy and often menacing mood. His drum tracks, like the ones in "Country Boy", are great examples of how subtle changes of timing and inflection can affect machine music as much as strings or piano. And the rhythms have a way of accentuating the weariness at the heart of Superpitcher's sound by falling invariably behind the beat, always a little slower and gloomier than they should-- like a slump-shouldered teenager clomping a few steps behind his mom at the mall while humming Cure songs in his head. The mood comes across explicitly in lyrics that center on loneliness and disconnection with a breathy simplicity. But the mood proves even more unmistakable in the music, whether loping at an almost Portishead-like speed or amped up in the sultry, suggestive funk of "Black Magic" and the anthemic rave-piano torch song "Joanna". It's hard to imagine anyone not being moved in some divergent but certain way by those last two tracks in succession. And it's even harder to imagine Superpitcher being gone again for as long as he was.

Artist: Superpitcher, Album: Kilimanjaro, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Of the formative sounds most associated with the epochal electronic-music label Kompakt, none has had as long a shelf-life as the zoned-out house of Superpitcher. Worthy competitors have crept up and either faded away (shuffling "schaffel" techno) or been assimilated so fully as to become part of the general dance-music weather (Wolfgang Voigt's minimalism, Michael Mayer's precision trance). But Superpitcher-- nobody does what he does quite as well. Nobody even really tries. What he does has also proven very prescient, especially as we hear more and more slow, bleary, moody, spooky sounds from the haunted and/or wasted outer edges of genres like chillwave and witch-house. Such is the style that Superpitcher has worked within since breaking out in 2001 with a single called "Heroin". And such is the style of his fine return to form, Kilimanjaro. It's been a few years since Superpitcher churned out his last essential material, having chosen instead to mess around in the studio and explore ideas of "singing" and playing "instruments" on a string of admirable but ultimately disappointing projects, most notably his Michael Mayer-collaboration album Supermayer Save the World. None of his work was ever exactly bad, but none of the energy or joy evident in the making of it found a corollary in the energy or joy receptors of those of us who endeavored to listen to it. Worthy lesson for all aspiring music-makers: Just because you can play a slide whistle doesn't mean you necessarily should. But there's a slide whistle early on Kilimanjaro, and it sounds great-- and not only great but integral, as if time spent playing slide whistle and sounding a little lame in the past paid off in the form of a sound now worth exploring even more down the line. Not to overstate the slide whistle, though. It's just one tool among many used in "Voodoo", a track that opens Kilimanjaro on a notably dubby note, with all kinds of sounds-- sensuous singing, falsetto yelps, ominous chimes, rattling trash-can taps-- spread across an incredibly deep sound-field and arranged in time with a sort of lilting quasi-reggae beat. There's a lot going on, but one of Superpitcher's strengths as a producer is the way he employs everything he does, big and small, in service of a consistently melancholy and often menacing mood. His drum tracks, like the ones in "Country Boy", are great examples of how subtle changes of timing and inflection can affect machine music as much as strings or piano. And the rhythms have a way of accentuating the weariness at the heart of Superpitcher's sound by falling invariably behind the beat, always a little slower and gloomier than they should-- like a slump-shouldered teenager clomping a few steps behind his mom at the mall while humming Cure songs in his head. The mood comes across explicitly in lyrics that center on loneliness and disconnection with a breathy simplicity. But the mood proves even more unmistakable in the music, whether loping at an almost Portishead-like speed or amped up in the sultry, suggestive funk of "Black Magic" and the anthemic rave-piano torch song "Joanna". It's hard to imagine anyone not being moved in some divergent but certain way by those last two tracks in succession. And it's even harder to imagine Superpitcher being gone again for as long as he was."

Oneida

Rated O

Rock

Jason Crock

Even three decades beyond the punk era, there's still a lingering urge to scoff at the supposed bloat and indulgence of the double album. Concision is often held as a virtue for many modern indie bands, and, let's face it, there are scant few double albums in rock that really have the ideas and vision to sustain their runtime. Save for prolific geniuses like Frank Zappa or Prince, the even-rarer triple album is more common for weighty anthologies, or documenting the live shows of acts with drooling fan bases, from the Grateful Dead to Pearl Jam. Sure, the Clash brought us a rare triple triple album of original material at the peak of their critical capital, but even that was reviled in certain circles. So... why on earth would any band release a triple album now? Maybe you've never met Oneida. When so inclined, they'll fill a whole side of vinyl with one long track, one whole CD's running time with two or three-- and if you haven't seen them on the festival circuit lately, it's because they went ahead and started their own. The reason they can do this (aside from keeping their dayjobs) is that their fans-- being open-minded enough to absorb the many permutations of repetitive, inexhaustible rhythms, and stinging vintage organ and guitar over 10 years-- eat it right up. Those fans won't be surprised by the behemoth Rated O-- some have been waiting for it ever since it was planned and then scrapped before 2006's Happy New Year. Before putting the idea of a 3xCD set aside, Drummer Kid Millions told an interviewer the project was "the stone tablets of Onieda." Given how hard it is to nail the band down to one sound, figuring out what those tablets could be remained a mystery. The good news: Between beat-heavy studio workouts, some of their loosest instrumental jams, and their most liberal use of "O"-related puns in song titles, Oneida were considerate enough to build it all around lean, no-frills rock on par with the best of their earlier work. Rated O contains the band's wildest experiments while still covering most of their previous sonic tentpoles. The first disc introduces the band as beat-hungry, dub-obsessed studio scientists, where at least 10 minutes go by before any sound resembling a guitar is discernible. While opener "Brownout in Lagos" is ostensibly inspired by dancehall, its rubbery and distorted beat sounds only remotely like that genre or any of Oneida's previous work. It features bona-fide toasting from Dad-Ali Ziai, but the guest is another texture in a very strange soup of radar blips, tin cans, and faraway explosions. "What's Up, Jackal?" begins with echoing drums and a hiccupping Eastern tone, before leading into muffled screaming and a dizzy studio collage that sounds like the aural equivalent of a strobe light, with that hiccup being the only constant. The first minute of 10 on "10:30 at the Oasis" has a similar fakeout before emerging into a more delirious and layered version of the sleek jams that Trans Am were later known for (which makes sense, as Trans Am's Phil Manley/Double Rainbow contributes here, alongside former Onieda axeman Papa Crazee). This first disc is new for band, fans, and unacquainted listeners alike, and there aren't a whole lot of hooks to guide anyone. As with much of Oneida's work, it starts and ends on the beat, leading listeners through percussive whirlwinds of psychedelic sound. The middle disc is closer to the band's live sound with few overdubs, and is an exemplary document of the hell the band can raise as an honest-to-god rock outfit. "The River" starts from Oneida's familiar monotone patter before uniting on a simple but massive-sounding theme, showing more melodic certainty and fearless classic-rock worship than they have in a while. Proto-metal riffs power spacey but insistent workouts like "I Will Haunt You" and "Ghost in the Room", while more exotic rhythms push "The Life You Preferred"; these tracks sprint and shimmy and drone without ever losing momentum. As the sluggish chant of "Luxury Travel" slows to a halt, the most stretched-out part of the three-disc set begins with disc C: "O" is an anchorless sitar-laden haze until minute five, when the rhythm builds and the guitars coagulate around brief, hypnotic tones. "End of Time" is a formless, nervous drone (smoke break!) that leads into the 20-minute "Folk Wisdom". Make no mistake: The band is jamming. But Oneida's version of jamming tends to be a more pulsing, atmospheric, moody affair than the scale-fingering aimlessness the word probably calls to mind, and the tracks on the third disc are no exception. They don't have the same layers or utilize the studio in quite the same way as last year's instrumental Preteen Weaponry did, but marathon sessions like "Folk Wisdom" maintain their anxious, yearning edge while revealing the intuition and chemistry of the band through its many subtle shifts and turns. The last section of Rated O may feel like work to some, but at this point in the record (and their careers), it also feels earned. While it's not quite three discs of all killer and no filler-- the plodding anguish of "The Human Factor" is difficult enough the first time through-- Rated O could stand easily as three discrete records, with each of them meriting their own release. Putting them all together is what makes it a statement: In an era when easy availability of music makes attention spans dwindle, it's an audacious listen the first time around, not to mention the repeated listens that Oneida records often reward. And as music gets increasingly reduced to a "niche interest" (shudder) and focuses more on the novelty of the physical package, the triple-gatefold Rated O is undoubtedly a beautiful package. More than anything, Rated O is part and parcel of the band's long-standing and always-increasing ambition--don't forget this massive slab is part of a triptych of albums, with the third installment yet to come. Few bands push themselves this far from their comfort zone, fewer still this late in their career-- and that slice of the pie chart gets even smaller when considering what little attention the band has received, even in indie circles, while they've continued to innovate and sweat. Maybe you've got some other Brooklyn band pegged as your creative north star-- and that's cool, this year has some contenders-- but Oneida are the only band running that I could tell a listener with a straight face, yes, it's worth three discs, and it's worth your time.

Artist: Oneida, Album: Rated O, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Even three decades beyond the punk era, there's still a lingering urge to scoff at the supposed bloat and indulgence of the double album. Concision is often held as a virtue for many modern indie bands, and, let's face it, there are scant few double albums in rock that really have the ideas and vision to sustain their runtime. Save for prolific geniuses like Frank Zappa or Prince, the even-rarer triple album is more common for weighty anthologies, or documenting the live shows of acts with drooling fan bases, from the Grateful Dead to Pearl Jam. Sure, the Clash brought us a rare triple triple album of original material at the peak of their critical capital, but even that was reviled in certain circles. So... why on earth would any band release a triple album now? Maybe you've never met Oneida. When so inclined, they'll fill a whole side of vinyl with one long track, one whole CD's running time with two or three-- and if you haven't seen them on the festival circuit lately, it's because they went ahead and started their own. The reason they can do this (aside from keeping their dayjobs) is that their fans-- being open-minded enough to absorb the many permutations of repetitive, inexhaustible rhythms, and stinging vintage organ and guitar over 10 years-- eat it right up. Those fans won't be surprised by the behemoth Rated O-- some have been waiting for it ever since it was planned and then scrapped before 2006's Happy New Year. Before putting the idea of a 3xCD set aside, Drummer Kid Millions told an interviewer the project was "the stone tablets of Onieda." Given how hard it is to nail the band down to one sound, figuring out what those tablets could be remained a mystery. The good news: Between beat-heavy studio workouts, some of their loosest instrumental jams, and their most liberal use of "O"-related puns in song titles, Oneida were considerate enough to build it all around lean, no-frills rock on par with the best of their earlier work. Rated O contains the band's wildest experiments while still covering most of their previous sonic tentpoles. The first disc introduces the band as beat-hungry, dub-obsessed studio scientists, where at least 10 minutes go by before any sound resembling a guitar is discernible. While opener "Brownout in Lagos" is ostensibly inspired by dancehall, its rubbery and distorted beat sounds only remotely like that genre or any of Oneida's previous work. It features bona-fide toasting from Dad-Ali Ziai, but the guest is another texture in a very strange soup of radar blips, tin cans, and faraway explosions. "What's Up, Jackal?" begins with echoing drums and a hiccupping Eastern tone, before leading into muffled screaming and a dizzy studio collage that sounds like the aural equivalent of a strobe light, with that hiccup being the only constant. The first minute of 10 on "10:30 at the Oasis" has a similar fakeout before emerging into a more delirious and layered version of the sleek jams that Trans Am were later known for (which makes sense, as Trans Am's Phil Manley/Double Rainbow contributes here, alongside former Onieda axeman Papa Crazee). This first disc is new for band, fans, and unacquainted listeners alike, and there aren't a whole lot of hooks to guide anyone. As with much of Oneida's work, it starts and ends on the beat, leading listeners through percussive whirlwinds of psychedelic sound. The middle disc is closer to the band's live sound with few overdubs, and is an exemplary document of the hell the band can raise as an honest-to-god rock outfit. "The River" starts from Oneida's familiar monotone patter before uniting on a simple but massive-sounding theme, showing more melodic certainty and fearless classic-rock worship than they have in a while. Proto-metal riffs power spacey but insistent workouts like "I Will Haunt You" and "Ghost in the Room", while more exotic rhythms push "The Life You Preferred"; these tracks sprint and shimmy and drone without ever losing momentum. As the sluggish chant of "Luxury Travel" slows to a halt, the most stretched-out part of the three-disc set begins with disc C: "O" is an anchorless sitar-laden haze until minute five, when the rhythm builds and the guitars coagulate around brief, hypnotic tones. "End of Time" is a formless, nervous drone (smoke break!) that leads into the 20-minute "Folk Wisdom". Make no mistake: The band is jamming. But Oneida's version of jamming tends to be a more pulsing, atmospheric, moody affair than the scale-fingering aimlessness the word probably calls to mind, and the tracks on the third disc are no exception. They don't have the same layers or utilize the studio in quite the same way as last year's instrumental Preteen Weaponry did, but marathon sessions like "Folk Wisdom" maintain their anxious, yearning edge while revealing the intuition and chemistry of the band through its many subtle shifts and turns. The last section of Rated O may feel like work to some, but at this point in the record (and their careers), it also feels earned. While it's not quite three discs of all killer and no filler-- the plodding anguish of "The Human Factor" is difficult enough the first time through-- Rated O could stand easily as three discrete records, with each of them meriting their own release. Putting them all together is what makes it a statement: In an era when easy availability of music makes attention spans dwindle, it's an audacious listen the first time around, not to mention the repeated listens that Oneida records often reward. And as music gets increasingly reduced to a "niche interest" (shudder) and focuses more on the novelty of the physical package, the triple-gatefold Rated O is undoubtedly a beautiful package. More than anything, Rated O is part and parcel of the band's long-standing and always-increasing ambition--don't forget this massive slab is part of a triptych of albums, with the third installment yet to come. Few bands push themselves this far from their comfort zone, fewer still this late in their career-- and that slice of the pie chart gets even smaller when considering what little attention the band has received, even in indie circles, while they've continued to innovate and sweat. Maybe you've got some other Brooklyn band pegged as your creative north star-- and that's cool, this year has some contenders-- but Oneida are the only band running that I could tell a listener with a straight face, yes, it's worth three discs, and it's worth your time."

The 1900s

Return of the Century

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

By the band's own explanation, the 1900s' second full-length was inspired by Christina "Licorice" McKechnie, a member of the Incredible String Band and a spiritual seeker who disappeared in 1990. But casual listeners probably won't find this story very obvious or especially compelling: On its surface, Return of the Century plays less like a biographical concept album and more like a series of tough-minded break-up songs that paint their vocalists as emotionally and sexually candid, if not occasionally even callous. "If life was lonely then I'd be blessed," sings Jeanine O'Toole on "Lay a Ghost", "if that was all I missed." These aren't life-changing relationships they're singing about. In fact, they're barely worth the time, save the songs that came out of them. In that regard, the 1900s recall another musician who many say has been missing for years: Liz Phair, whose Exile in Guyville was full of similar postcoital postmortems set in Chicago. She was, of course, much more explicit than the 1900s, whose lyrics are veiled and often playfully obscure, with songwriter Edward Anderson constructing knots of words for the listener to untie. Trading off vocals with O'Toole, he smartly leaves these songs coyly open-ended, so they could pertain to McKechnie's biography or to some Fleetwood Mac-style romantic pyrotechnics. But they have too much wit and too many layers of insight to be anonymous. Standout "Tucson" recalls a road trip through the Southwest and its fallout: "I'm not so sorry that I took you along, you only saw me naked once," O'Toole sings, her voice steeled yet wistful. There's a lot to unpack in those lines, which sound like both a consolation and a kiss-off. If the sentiments are tough, the music itself is tender, borrowing from Belle & Sebastian and Brill Building pop to create a sound that is both pastoral and urbane, straightforward yet sophisticated. Anderson's hooks arise from unexpected turns of melodic phrase, and verses give way to rousing instrumental passages like the bridge of "Lion's Fur" and the galloping disco-breakdown on "Babies". Return of the Century is enticingly spare compared to the band's 2007 full-length debut, Cold & Kind (whose title still applies), as if the sextet were still learning how to deploy their extensive roster. Andra Kulans' strings slice through "Jean Demon", alternately underscoring and undercutting O'Toole's pleas, and on "Bmore" they all click into a tight showtune groove anchored by Charlie Ransford's bass. "Overreactin'" opens with heavy breathing and chintzy boudoir beats, which ought to be either too hokey or too obvious but actually provide an apt introduction to a song about sexual compulsion. Whatever their inspiration may have been, the 1900s have turned their romantic misgivings into confident, catchy, and deceptively cheery pop.

Artist: The 1900s, Album: Return of the Century, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "By the band's own explanation, the 1900s' second full-length was inspired by Christina "Licorice" McKechnie, a member of the Incredible String Band and a spiritual seeker who disappeared in 1990. But casual listeners probably won't find this story very obvious or especially compelling: On its surface, Return of the Century plays less like a biographical concept album and more like a series of tough-minded break-up songs that paint their vocalists as emotionally and sexually candid, if not occasionally even callous. "If life was lonely then I'd be blessed," sings Jeanine O'Toole on "Lay a Ghost", "if that was all I missed." These aren't life-changing relationships they're singing about. In fact, they're barely worth the time, save the songs that came out of them. In that regard, the 1900s recall another musician who many say has been missing for years: Liz Phair, whose Exile in Guyville was full of similar postcoital postmortems set in Chicago. She was, of course, much more explicit than the 1900s, whose lyrics are veiled and often playfully obscure, with songwriter Edward Anderson constructing knots of words for the listener to untie. Trading off vocals with O'Toole, he smartly leaves these songs coyly open-ended, so they could pertain to McKechnie's biography or to some Fleetwood Mac-style romantic pyrotechnics. But they have too much wit and too many layers of insight to be anonymous. Standout "Tucson" recalls a road trip through the Southwest and its fallout: "I'm not so sorry that I took you along, you only saw me naked once," O'Toole sings, her voice steeled yet wistful. There's a lot to unpack in those lines, which sound like both a consolation and a kiss-off. If the sentiments are tough, the music itself is tender, borrowing from Belle & Sebastian and Brill Building pop to create a sound that is both pastoral and urbane, straightforward yet sophisticated. Anderson's hooks arise from unexpected turns of melodic phrase, and verses give way to rousing instrumental passages like the bridge of "Lion's Fur" and the galloping disco-breakdown on "Babies". Return of the Century is enticingly spare compared to the band's 2007 full-length debut, Cold & Kind (whose title still applies), as if the sextet were still learning how to deploy their extensive roster. Andra Kulans' strings slice through "Jean Demon", alternately underscoring and undercutting O'Toole's pleas, and on "Bmore" they all click into a tight showtune groove anchored by Charlie Ransford's bass. "Overreactin'" opens with heavy breathing and chintzy boudoir beats, which ought to be either too hokey or too obvious but actually provide an apt introduction to a song about sexual compulsion. Whatever their inspiration may have been, the 1900s have turned their romantic misgivings into confident, catchy, and deceptively cheery pop."

Various Artists

Love Goes On: A Tribute to Grant McLennan

Stuart Berman

In Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, the Go-Betweens boasted perhaps the most fruitful singer/songwriting partnership in 1980s indie, but even with their distinct characters and canons, they never asked you to pick sides. As foils they were as complementary as they were contradictory, Forster's arch, assertive delivery often serving as a front for a bruised sensitivity; McLennan's more genteel voice and agreeable melodicism often acting as decoys to his matter-of-fact observations and disarming punchlines. But even if McLennan wrote the kind of love songs that could become tough and unsentimental at the turn of a couplet, it was never for pure shock or subversive effect-- rather, it felt like sage advice for old-fashioned romantics in a world that has no time for them. News of McLennan's sudden passing in 2006 came with all the sucker-punch surprise as one of his lyrical twists, and it was particularly tragic in light of the fact that, since a 1999 reunion with Forster, the Go-Betweens were once again a going concern. But there was some consolation in the fact that McLennan's death-- brought on by heart failure during an afternoon nap-- reflected the same quiet dignity he carried himself with in life and song. And it's this very spirit that Love Goes On seeks to honor. It says a lot about the intensity of admiration McLennan inspired that an obscure Long Beach-based micro-indie-- headed by superfan David Buckner-- could round up various indie luminaries (Stars, Portastatic, the Clientele) and long-time associates (the Bats, former Saints founder Ed Kuepper, Black Box Recorder's Luke Haines) to donate self-financed covers to the album. (Though the project's modest means are unfortunately betrayed by Jack Rabid's liner-note essay, which would've benefited from another round of proofreading-- to wit, "Cattle and Cain" [sic].) * Love Goes On* smartly frontloads some of McLennan's lesser-known work before delving into his signature material, with the Clientele turning in a seductively swirling version of "Orpheus Beach" (from 2000's Go-Betweens reunion album The Friends of Rachel Worth), and Ed Kuepper recasting "Finding You" (from 2005's Oceans Apart) as a solitary blues that's almost murder-ballad-like in its desolate air of despair. Kuepper's contribution is especially notable in that he's the only singer here operating well outside of McLennan's gentle, relaxed vocal register, adopting a deep, throaty tenor closer to fellow Aussie Nick Cave. The artists entrusted with McLennan's more revered songs tweak the material in much more subtle fashion. Stars pull the long straw by claiming arguably McLennan's greatest and most poignant song, "Cattle and Cane", and their take is actually more revelatory as a Stars track than a McLennan cover, with an uncharacteristically stripped-down acoustic arrangement and dry, unaffected vocal from Torquil Campbell that makes the original's themes of faded memory and lost innocence feel all the more present-- however, the closing, climactic charge to the finish line feels at odds with the original's muted melancholy. McLennan's other masterstroke of ordinary-people portraiture, "Streets of Your Town", is likewise reduced by Ivy to a metronome-click and piano figure, with Dominique Durand's coo lending it a newfound space-age bachelor-pad allure. The ageless integrity of McLennan's songwriting naturally encourages a simple approach-- one heard on everything from Portastatic's folk-circle adaptation of "Bye Bye Pride" to Haines' spectral, Elliott Smith-like treatment of "You Won't Find It Again" to Future Pilot AKA's dreamy piano-lilted zone-out on "Dusty In Here". The net effect both emphasizes McLennan's lyrical charms, and liberates some of the Go-Betweens' material from its occasionally dated 80s production (most notably, "Bachelor Kisses", whose soft-focus surface is given a mild scuffing by UK songwriter Paul Handyside). The bittersweet inspiration and homespun origins of these covers means that Love Goes On is not really a forum for lofty reinterpretation, and in some cases the overly tasteful handling of the material (see: "Haunted House" by Brookville, aka Ivy's Andy Chase), can nudge the tracks toward Starbucks-scented AC. Love Goes On feels most rewarding when approached as an intimate, quietly celebratory wake among friends-- and if the readings of their favorite McLennan songs are too faithful to warrant much revisiting in lieu of the originals, as the man himself once famously sang, "faithful is not a bad word."

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Love Goes On: A Tribute to Grant McLennan, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "In Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, the Go-Betweens boasted perhaps the most fruitful singer/songwriting partnership in 1980s indie, but even with their distinct characters and canons, they never asked you to pick sides. As foils they were as complementary as they were contradictory, Forster's arch, assertive delivery often serving as a front for a bruised sensitivity; McLennan's more genteel voice and agreeable melodicism often acting as decoys to his matter-of-fact observations and disarming punchlines. But even if McLennan wrote the kind of love songs that could become tough and unsentimental at the turn of a couplet, it was never for pure shock or subversive effect-- rather, it felt like sage advice for old-fashioned romantics in a world that has no time for them. News of McLennan's sudden passing in 2006 came with all the sucker-punch surprise as one of his lyrical twists, and it was particularly tragic in light of the fact that, since a 1999 reunion with Forster, the Go-Betweens were once again a going concern. But there was some consolation in the fact that McLennan's death-- brought on by heart failure during an afternoon nap-- reflected the same quiet dignity he carried himself with in life and song. And it's this very spirit that Love Goes On seeks to honor. It says a lot about the intensity of admiration McLennan inspired that an obscure Long Beach-based micro-indie-- headed by superfan David Buckner-- could round up various indie luminaries (Stars, Portastatic, the Clientele) and long-time associates (the Bats, former Saints founder Ed Kuepper, Black Box Recorder's Luke Haines) to donate self-financed covers to the album. (Though the project's modest means are unfortunately betrayed by Jack Rabid's liner-note essay, which would've benefited from another round of proofreading-- to wit, "Cattle and Cain" [sic].) * Love Goes On* smartly frontloads some of McLennan's lesser-known work before delving into his signature material, with the Clientele turning in a seductively swirling version of "Orpheus Beach" (from 2000's Go-Betweens reunion album The Friends of Rachel Worth), and Ed Kuepper recasting "Finding You" (from 2005's Oceans Apart) as a solitary blues that's almost murder-ballad-like in its desolate air of despair. Kuepper's contribution is especially notable in that he's the only singer here operating well outside of McLennan's gentle, relaxed vocal register, adopting a deep, throaty tenor closer to fellow Aussie Nick Cave. The artists entrusted with McLennan's more revered songs tweak the material in much more subtle fashion. Stars pull the long straw by claiming arguably McLennan's greatest and most poignant song, "Cattle and Cane", and their take is actually more revelatory as a Stars track than a McLennan cover, with an uncharacteristically stripped-down acoustic arrangement and dry, unaffected vocal from Torquil Campbell that makes the original's themes of faded memory and lost innocence feel all the more present-- however, the closing, climactic charge to the finish line feels at odds with the original's muted melancholy. McLennan's other masterstroke of ordinary-people portraiture, "Streets of Your Town", is likewise reduced by Ivy to a metronome-click and piano figure, with Dominique Durand's coo lending it a newfound space-age bachelor-pad allure. The ageless integrity of McLennan's songwriting naturally encourages a simple approach-- one heard on everything from Portastatic's folk-circle adaptation of "Bye Bye Pride" to Haines' spectral, Elliott Smith-like treatment of "You Won't Find It Again" to Future Pilot AKA's dreamy piano-lilted zone-out on "Dusty In Here". The net effect both emphasizes McLennan's lyrical charms, and liberates some of the Go-Betweens' material from its occasionally dated 80s production (most notably, "Bachelor Kisses", whose soft-focus surface is given a mild scuffing by UK songwriter Paul Handyside). The bittersweet inspiration and homespun origins of these covers means that Love Goes On is not really a forum for lofty reinterpretation, and in some cases the overly tasteful handling of the material (see: "Haunted House" by Brookville, aka Ivy's Andy Chase), can nudge the tracks toward Starbucks-scented AC. Love Goes On feels most rewarding when approached as an intimate, quietly celebratory wake among friends-- and if the readings of their favorite McLennan songs are too faithful to warrant much revisiting in lieu of the originals, as the man himself once famously sang, "faithful is not a bad word.""

The Ex

Turn

Experimental,Metal,Rock

Joe Tangari

There is an intangible quality that defines truly vital music, something that spans genres and trends and makes itself felt as the sound passes through you. It could be a perfect confluence of notes and timbres or a brilliantly conveyed sentiment, but it could also really be anything. It's not one of those things you can put into effective words-- you just know it when you hear it. And to me, The Ex make vital music. For 25 years, the Dutch band have nipped at the fringe of post-punk, steering stridently clear of corporate-owned record labels and lighting up the left side of the political spectrum with more than a dozen albums proudly splattered with anarcho-syndicalist and anti-consumerist sentiment. But they're not just shouting about trade unionism, materialist greed, and the inherent contradictions of modern free-market societies; they can bring the noise, too, and their polemics come wrapped in a blistering package of smoldering art-punk informed by free jazz and global folk. On their latest album, Turn, they elevate their craft to near perfection over the course of two wild, unpredictable, and unforgettable discs. The bulk of the songs that comprise Turn hew to The Ex's peculiar brand of crushing, dense post-punk, but the music can veer on a dime into spoken satire, Eritrean freedom songs, and savage improvisation. Steve Albini returns to the boards for them on this album, and nobody captures The Ex better than he does-- the sound is dry and caustic, allergic to reverb, as heavy as Shellac, and relentlessly intense. The band's setup is extremely basic-- guitar, standup bass, and drums-- but they wring a lot out of it, particularly the bass. The instrument is amplified and then scraped, beaten, sawed, and distorted, alternately used to create an annihilating low-end and to emulate electronic effects or panicked voices. The drums are mixed high for maximum damage and principle vocalist GW Sok-- who doesn't sing so much as rant-- winds up somewhere near the middle of it all, a voice caught in a hellstorm of overdriven guitar, unable to control his surroundings but forced to comment on them through a sense of duty. Sok runs himself breathless on the brilliant opener "Listen to the Painters", clipping syllables in the mantra "We need poets, we need painters/ We need poets, we need painters/ We need poetry and paintings," and his sense of English wordplay is better than that of a lot of native speakers: "Sheep with crazy leaders/ Heading for disaster/ Courting jesters who take themselves for masters/ The shrub who took himself for a park/ The squeak who took himself for a bark." The churning guitars and daisy cutter bass tears a hole in the crust of the earth from which Sok's frenetic second verse can pour. He takes his wordplay to incredible satirical heights on "The Pie", which opens with a genuinely demented reading of a recipe for sweet potato pie that, as it turns out, is being baked for the purpose of smashing it in the face of authority. Sok piles puns on top of vitriol with the lines "In a world full of poor and an environment to protect/ An alternative flan of action flies in the face of promises not kept/ It shows that the responsible irresponsibles have faces and names which can be addressed/ Therefore bake and aim and put a smile back on the faces of the oppressed" as the band rages beneath him; there is darkness at the heart of this humor. The band uses the two-disc format to offer the listener a break-- 90 straight minutes of caustic, melody-averse art punk is a lot to take in-- and they intentionally place the album's most violent, punishing, exhilarating track, "Theme from Konono", at the beginning of disc two, right next to "Huriye", which is both a cover of an Eritrean protest song from their fight for independence from Ethiopia and the most beautifully melodic song on the record. "Theme from Konono" is basically a summary of everything the Ex do best, building over the course of several minutes from scratchy guitar interplay into a full-on juggernaut of barreling rhythm. The song piles tension upon tension, building and tightening until it's almost unbearable, finally blowing open with a pounding beat and lockstep guitar riffs and then slowly re-upping the ante. Based on an assault like this, you'd never guess any of these people are over 40. About the only bands from punk's original era that are still as bracing and original as The Ex are Wire and The Fall. What's truly amazing about Turn is how colossal, how ingenious, how vital it sounds. Just about any of the current post-punk crop sound downright milquetoast when put up against The Ex's vibrant assault and well-considered commentary. On "Listen to the Painters", The Ex remind us of the need for poets and painters and builders and dancers and writers-- by the end of the album, it's clear we need The Ex, too.

Artist: The Ex, Album: Turn, Genre: Experimental,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.8 Album review: "There is an intangible quality that defines truly vital music, something that spans genres and trends and makes itself felt as the sound passes through you. It could be a perfect confluence of notes and timbres or a brilliantly conveyed sentiment, but it could also really be anything. It's not one of those things you can put into effective words-- you just know it when you hear it. And to me, The Ex make vital music. For 25 years, the Dutch band have nipped at the fringe of post-punk, steering stridently clear of corporate-owned record labels and lighting up the left side of the political spectrum with more than a dozen albums proudly splattered with anarcho-syndicalist and anti-consumerist sentiment. But they're not just shouting about trade unionism, materialist greed, and the inherent contradictions of modern free-market societies; they can bring the noise, too, and their polemics come wrapped in a blistering package of smoldering art-punk informed by free jazz and global folk. On their latest album, Turn, they elevate their craft to near perfection over the course of two wild, unpredictable, and unforgettable discs. The bulk of the songs that comprise Turn hew to The Ex's peculiar brand of crushing, dense post-punk, but the music can veer on a dime into spoken satire, Eritrean freedom songs, and savage improvisation. Steve Albini returns to the boards for them on this album, and nobody captures The Ex better than he does-- the sound is dry and caustic, allergic to reverb, as heavy as Shellac, and relentlessly intense. The band's setup is extremely basic-- guitar, standup bass, and drums-- but they wring a lot out of it, particularly the bass. The instrument is amplified and then scraped, beaten, sawed, and distorted, alternately used to create an annihilating low-end and to emulate electronic effects or panicked voices. The drums are mixed high for maximum damage and principle vocalist GW Sok-- who doesn't sing so much as rant-- winds up somewhere near the middle of it all, a voice caught in a hellstorm of overdriven guitar, unable to control his surroundings but forced to comment on them through a sense of duty. Sok runs himself breathless on the brilliant opener "Listen to the Painters", clipping syllables in the mantra "We need poets, we need painters/ We need poets, we need painters/ We need poetry and paintings," and his sense of English wordplay is better than that of a lot of native speakers: "Sheep with crazy leaders/ Heading for disaster/ Courting jesters who take themselves for masters/ The shrub who took himself for a park/ The squeak who took himself for a bark." The churning guitars and daisy cutter bass tears a hole in the crust of the earth from which Sok's frenetic second verse can pour. He takes his wordplay to incredible satirical heights on "The Pie", which opens with a genuinely demented reading of a recipe for sweet potato pie that, as it turns out, is being baked for the purpose of smashing it in the face of authority. Sok piles puns on top of vitriol with the lines "In a world full of poor and an environment to protect/ An alternative flan of action flies in the face of promises not kept/ It shows that the responsible irresponsibles have faces and names which can be addressed/ Therefore bake and aim and put a smile back on the faces of the oppressed" as the band rages beneath him; there is darkness at the heart of this humor. The band uses the two-disc format to offer the listener a break-- 90 straight minutes of caustic, melody-averse art punk is a lot to take in-- and they intentionally place the album's most violent, punishing, exhilarating track, "Theme from Konono", at the beginning of disc two, right next to "Huriye", which is both a cover of an Eritrean protest song from their fight for independence from Ethiopia and the most beautifully melodic song on the record. "Theme from Konono" is basically a summary of everything the Ex do best, building over the course of several minutes from scratchy guitar interplay into a full-on juggernaut of barreling rhythm. The song piles tension upon tension, building and tightening until it's almost unbearable, finally blowing open with a pounding beat and lockstep guitar riffs and then slowly re-upping the ante. Based on an assault like this, you'd never guess any of these people are over 40. About the only bands from punk's original era that are still as bracing and original as The Ex are Wire and The Fall. What's truly amazing about Turn is how colossal, how ingenious, how vital it sounds. Just about any of the current post-punk crop sound downright milquetoast when put up against The Ex's vibrant assault and well-considered commentary. On "Listen to the Painters", The Ex remind us of the need for poets and painters and builders and dancers and writers-- by the end of the album, it's clear we need The Ex, too."

John Carpenter

Lost Themes Remixed

Experimental

Miles Raymer

As John Carpenter began to lose interest in making films, he entered into an unexpected renaissance as one of the most influential icons of the synthesizer age. Carpenter himself will tell you how accidental that status is: He only began composing and recording the scores to his films—starting with his first one, 1974’s Dark Star—in order to avoid having to pay someone else to do it. His use of electronic instruments, even his signature minimalist style—all of it sprang from budgetary concerns. But Carpenter’s scores—specifically the ones for Halloween and *The Fog—*developed a cult following among synth geeks, and this burgeoning fan base has inspired him to try his hand at making music without a movie to compose it for. Encouraged by his musician son and his discovery of modern digital recording software, he released his first solo album, Lost Themes, earlier this year. Although the tracks are smoothed out by bland Logic plugins, it was a pretty decent evocation of his soundtrack work. If Lost Themes provided an opportunity to reflect on Carpenter’s influence on several generations of electronic musicians, the selection of remixes by other artists tacked on as bonus tracks makes that influence explicit. Now, Sacred Bones has fleshed out the set out with a couple more tracks and Lost Themes Remixed stands as a companion volume to the original record. Remix albums are tricky things, and the ones that fail (and most of them do) do so for the same few reasons: too many stylistically disparate remixers, too much reverence for the the source material, remixers who are clearly in it for the easy paycheck. Lost Themes Remixed avoids all three. Carpenter’s status seems to have inspired the nine remixers to bring their A game, and Sacred Bones selected committed experimentalists like Prurient, Zola Jesus, and Blanck Mass (aka Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power) who wouldn’t play too nice with Carpenter’s recordings. Stylistically, pretty much any artist who’s going to want to remix John Carpenter is going to have a few things in common, including a pervasive gloominess and an affection for throbbing, single-note bass lines played on analog synthesizers. As a result, LTR manages to hold together as a unified stylistic statement in a way that isn’t common for remix collections. Despite the project’s singular focus, LTR doesn’t just reflect Carpenter’s influence on contemporary musicians, but the range of artists that he’s inspired. Prurient transforms Carpenter’s New Age-leaning "Purgatory" into a harsh, icy soundscape. The Blanck Mass reworking of "Fallen" sounds like slasher-movie music from some grimy, glitched-up cyberpunk future. Zola Jesus and Dean Hurley reconfigure Lost Themes’ most classically Carpenteresque track "Night" into vocal house for vampires. Interestingly, some of the remixers seem to be correcting Lost Themes’ deviations from Carpenter’s signature formula. In its original form, "Abyss" highlights both Carpenter’s knack for building complex arrangements out of deceptively simple parts and his weakness for really corny synth patches. Foetus mastermind J.G. Thirlwell swaps them out for the kind of assaultive analog sounds that set the tense mood of Carpenter’s early films (and which themselves were considered corny at the time). One one hand there’s something offensive about the idea of somebody trying to fix an artist’s new work by making it sound more like his old stuff. On the other hand, I have to admit I like the remix more.

Artist: John Carpenter, Album: Lost Themes Remixed, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "As John Carpenter began to lose interest in making films, he entered into an unexpected renaissance as one of the most influential icons of the synthesizer age. Carpenter himself will tell you how accidental that status is: He only began composing and recording the scores to his films—starting with his first one, 1974’s Dark Star—in order to avoid having to pay someone else to do it. His use of electronic instruments, even his signature minimalist style—all of it sprang from budgetary concerns. But Carpenter’s scores—specifically the ones for Halloween and *The Fog—*developed a cult following among synth geeks, and this burgeoning fan base has inspired him to try his hand at making music without a movie to compose it for. Encouraged by his musician son and his discovery of modern digital recording software, he released his first solo album, Lost Themes, earlier this year. Although the tracks are smoothed out by bland Logic plugins, it was a pretty decent evocation of his soundtrack work. If Lost Themes provided an opportunity to reflect on Carpenter’s influence on several generations of electronic musicians, the selection of remixes by other artists tacked on as bonus tracks makes that influence explicit. Now, Sacred Bones has fleshed out the set out with a couple more tracks and Lost Themes Remixed stands as a companion volume to the original record. Remix albums are tricky things, and the ones that fail (and most of them do) do so for the same few reasons: too many stylistically disparate remixers, too much reverence for the the source material, remixers who are clearly in it for the easy paycheck. Lost Themes Remixed avoids all three. Carpenter’s status seems to have inspired the nine remixers to bring their A game, and Sacred Bones selected committed experimentalists like Prurient, Zola Jesus, and Blanck Mass (aka Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power) who wouldn’t play too nice with Carpenter’s recordings. Stylistically, pretty much any artist who’s going to want to remix John Carpenter is going to have a few things in common, including a pervasive gloominess and an affection for throbbing, single-note bass lines played on analog synthesizers. As a result, LTR manages to hold together as a unified stylistic statement in a way that isn’t common for remix collections. Despite the project’s singular focus, LTR doesn’t just reflect Carpenter’s influence on contemporary musicians, but the range of artists that he’s inspired. Prurient transforms Carpenter’s New Age-leaning "Purgatory" into a harsh, icy soundscape. The Blanck Mass reworking of "Fallen" sounds like slasher-movie music from some grimy, glitched-up cyberpunk future. Zola Jesus and Dean Hurley reconfigure Lost Themes’ most classically Carpenteresque track "Night" into vocal house for vampires. Interestingly, some of the remixers seem to be correcting Lost Themes’ deviations from Carpenter’s signature formula. In its original form, "Abyss" highlights both Carpenter’s knack for building complex arrangements out of deceptively simple parts and his weakness for really corny synth patches. Foetus mastermind J.G. Thirlwell swaps them out for the kind of assaultive analog sounds that set the tense mood of Carpenter’s early films (and which themselves were considered corny at the time). One one hand there’s something offensive about the idea of somebody trying to fix an artist’s new work by making it sound more like his old stuff. On the other hand, I have to admit I like the remix more."

David Borden

Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments

Experimental

Aaron Leitko

While working at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. during the late '60s, composer David Borden met Robert Moog, who was then refining his first commercial voltage-controlled synthesizer, what we would now refer to simply as a Moog. Freshly returned from a stint as a Fulbright student in West Berlin, Borden had an open mind toward new ideas in music but knew very little about synthesizers, which were then fairly bulky and esoteric. According to the composer, this made him an ideal test subject for Moog, who allowed Borden to experiment with his prototypes as a way to proof the designs for regular consumers. Not long after, Borden would found Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, a keyboard trio that performed works by then-emerging composers like Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, and Steve Reich. Very quickly, the trio evolved into an all-synthesizer ensemble, performing original work using a number instruments provided by Moog. Inspired by composers like Riley, Borden wrote music that edged away from the abstract atonal sounds that dominated electronic music at the time, instead relying on the gestures that would become central to minimalism—simple harmonies, complex rhythmic figures, and repetition. Mother Mallard released two LPs—self-titled and Like a Duck to Water, both on Borden’s Earthquack label—before the group dissolved entirely during the late '70s (though it has since been reactivated). Originally released in 1981 on Red Records, Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments collects four of Borden’s post-Mallard compositions. Stylistically speaking, they are a direct continuation of that group's work. Indeed, they even involve the same instruments—the MiniMoog, Moog Modular, and RMI electronic piano—which Borden retained after the band split up. Now remastered and reissued by Spectrum Spools, the record still stands as an excellent work of minimalist composition and also an important piece of American electronic music. A number of early Moog oriented records involved shoehorning the instrument into existing repertoire (think "Switched on Bach" or "Switched on Country") or using it as a spacey aside within the context of prog or psychedelic rock. Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments is different, and arguably more interesting, in that it involves new work composed specifically for that synthesizer. At first listen, it’s easy to overlook the role of the Moog in Borden’s compositions. The gestures that often define synthesizer music—filter sweeps, squelchy modulations—are mostly absent from Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments. In comparison to the work of German synth gurus like Tangerine Dream, the tweak-ability factor is fairly subtle. This was mostly due to Borden's frustrations with performing synthesizer music live. "After dealing with the many difficulties and variables that occur in live performance situations, especially with early model synthesizers, I developed a style and language of polyphonic music that can be played with simple, easy to set up wave forms," wrote Borden in the liner notes to the record's original pressing. However, many of the compositions are heavily shaped by the capabilities of the synthesizer. The Moog is a monophonic instrument, meaning that only one key can sound at a time, which makes it mechanically impossible to play chords. As a result, much of Borden's work on Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments relies on interlocking melodies that are performed by three keyboard players, each using two keyboards simultaneously. Together these figures add up to simple but frequently shifting harmonies. And there are convenient workarounds, too. On one piece, for instance, Borden tunes one instrument to a perfect fifth, so that when a single key is pressed, the keyboard produces two simultaneous pitches. The results, particularly on the pieces drawn from Borden's larger work, "The Complete Story of Counterpoint", are gorgeous and meditative. While Borden has not become quite as well recognized as some of his minimalist contemporaries, like Reich or Philip Glass, you can hear his influence deeply embedded in the music of recent synthesizer-oriented electronic outfits, like Emeralds (whose former member, John Elliot, runs Spectrum Spools) or Daniel Lopatin, Laurel Halo, and James Ferraro, all of whom collaborated with the composer in the seventh installment of RVNG's collaborative series, FRKWYS. Most of these are musicians who perform electronic works in concert. It's important to recognize that the pieces on Amplified Keyboard Instruments were recorded live. Arpeggiated melodies and chords are central to synthesizer music, whether applied in a Krautrock-style zone-out or club-friendly dance tune. However, those figures are often automated using a sequencer. Borden's compositions on this record and also in Mother Mallard were performed in real time by individuals, and while that made the music challenging to represent accurately, it also allowed for deeper and more intricate harmonic movement, which would have been time-consuming to program into an old-school hardware sequencer. And more than that, it allows for a bit of sloppiness—an un-gridded feel and inherent emotionality that's tough for a computer to crack, even now.

Artist: David Borden, Album: Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "While working at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. during the late '60s, composer David Borden met Robert Moog, who was then refining his first commercial voltage-controlled synthesizer, what we would now refer to simply as a Moog. Freshly returned from a stint as a Fulbright student in West Berlin, Borden had an open mind toward new ideas in music but knew very little about synthesizers, which were then fairly bulky and esoteric. According to the composer, this made him an ideal test subject for Moog, who allowed Borden to experiment with his prototypes as a way to proof the designs for regular consumers. Not long after, Borden would found Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, a keyboard trio that performed works by then-emerging composers like Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, and Steve Reich. Very quickly, the trio evolved into an all-synthesizer ensemble, performing original work using a number instruments provided by Moog. Inspired by composers like Riley, Borden wrote music that edged away from the abstract atonal sounds that dominated electronic music at the time, instead relying on the gestures that would become central to minimalism—simple harmonies, complex rhythmic figures, and repetition. Mother Mallard released two LPs—self-titled and Like a Duck to Water, both on Borden’s Earthquack label—before the group dissolved entirely during the late '70s (though it has since been reactivated). Originally released in 1981 on Red Records, Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments collects four of Borden’s post-Mallard compositions. Stylistically speaking, they are a direct continuation of that group's work. Indeed, they even involve the same instruments—the MiniMoog, Moog Modular, and RMI electronic piano—which Borden retained after the band split up. Now remastered and reissued by Spectrum Spools, the record still stands as an excellent work of minimalist composition and also an important piece of American electronic music. A number of early Moog oriented records involved shoehorning the instrument into existing repertoire (think "Switched on Bach" or "Switched on Country") or using it as a spacey aside within the context of prog or psychedelic rock. Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments is different, and arguably more interesting, in that it involves new work composed specifically for that synthesizer. At first listen, it’s easy to overlook the role of the Moog in Borden’s compositions. The gestures that often define synthesizer music—filter sweeps, squelchy modulations—are mostly absent from Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments. In comparison to the work of German synth gurus like Tangerine Dream, the tweak-ability factor is fairly subtle. This was mostly due to Borden's frustrations with performing synthesizer music live. "After dealing with the many difficulties and variables that occur in live performance situations, especially with early model synthesizers, I developed a style and language of polyphonic music that can be played with simple, easy to set up wave forms," wrote Borden in the liner notes to the record's original pressing. However, many of the compositions are heavily shaped by the capabilities of the synthesizer. The Moog is a monophonic instrument, meaning that only one key can sound at a time, which makes it mechanically impossible to play chords. As a result, much of Borden's work on Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments relies on interlocking melodies that are performed by three keyboard players, each using two keyboards simultaneously. Together these figures add up to simple but frequently shifting harmonies. And there are convenient workarounds, too. On one piece, for instance, Borden tunes one instrument to a perfect fifth, so that when a single key is pressed, the keyboard produces two simultaneous pitches. The results, particularly on the pieces drawn from Borden's larger work, "The Complete Story of Counterpoint", are gorgeous and meditative. While Borden has not become quite as well recognized as some of his minimalist contemporaries, like Reich or Philip Glass, you can hear his influence deeply embedded in the music of recent synthesizer-oriented electronic outfits, like Emeralds (whose former member, John Elliot, runs Spectrum Spools) or Daniel Lopatin, Laurel Halo, and James Ferraro, all of whom collaborated with the composer in the seventh installment of RVNG's collaborative series, FRKWYS. Most of these are musicians who perform electronic works in concert. It's important to recognize that the pieces on Amplified Keyboard Instruments were recorded live. Arpeggiated melodies and chords are central to synthesizer music, whether applied in a Krautrock-style zone-out or club-friendly dance tune. However, those figures are often automated using a sequencer. Borden's compositions on this record and also in Mother Mallard were performed in real time by individuals, and while that made the music challenging to represent accurately, it also allowed for deeper and more intricate harmonic movement, which would have been time-consuming to program into an old-school hardware sequencer. And more than that, it allows for a bit of sloppiness—an un-gridded feel and inherent emotionality that's tough for a computer to crack, even now."

Le Tigre

Feminist Sweepstakes

Electronic,Rock

Alison Fields

Early in my freshman year of college, I was severely reprimanded and summarily cold-shouldered by the newly formed Womyn's Collective for the following suggestion: "I think maybe riot grrls have it pretty easy, comparatively speaking." Silence. I squirmed a bit in my seat, and felt stares of my classmates so hot with accusation that I swore I could feel the skin burning off my face. The girl in charge (who would never admit to being in charge-- after all, this was a radical feminist organization and hierarchy is a patriarchal construct) cleared her throat ominously: "Would you mind clarifying your comment, Alison?" I swallowed, stymied. How the hell do I get out of this one? I mean, this is an all-women's college, and I've just cleared the path to take the sacred cow to the slaughtering block. So I followed through. "Well, clearly I'm not going to make friends no matter what I say, so I might as well finish what I started. "It's like this: I think riot grrls are allowed, even encouraged, to play music of a significantly lesser quality than their male counterparts. I know it's punk rock to sound all raw and simplified, but it seems like riot grrls are allowed to be as bad as they want because they're largely cute and spunky and, well, girls. I mean, rock and roll has been a boy's club for years, and that should change, but our collective inability to put riot grrl bands under the same scrutiny we put any other band... I mean, isn't that kind of patronizing?" The surrounding faces went near purple with rage. And yeah, I was only eighteen, but I knew how to take a hint. I left. Approximately seven years to the day of my Womyn's Collective debacle, I find myself reviewing Le Tigre's second album, Feminist Sweepstakes, with some degree of trepidation. Seven years clears a lot of air. Of course, I'm less of a contrarian these days, and to be fair, some of those ex-riot grrls have made some really extraordinary music outside the confines of the movement they created. Kathleen Hanna among them. Since the demise of Bikini Kill, Hanna has carved out some fairly innovative sounds, both with Le Tigre and alone as Julie Ruin. Using samples, drum loops, fuzzy guitars and synthesizers, Le Tigre has created an infectious mode for delivery of heavy-handed polemic, as evidenced by their self-titled debut. It was-- to quote Feminist Sweepstakes' "F.Y.R."-- "one cool record in the year of rock rap." And one of the best records I'd heard in a long time. Feminist Sweepstakes doesn't deviate much from the first album's sound, despite the change in line-up; shortly after the release of Le Tigre's 1999 self-titled debut, JD Samson of the underground dance troupe Dykes Can Dance replaced video artist Sadie Benning. The model is basically the same: hip-hop and disco-informed dance tunes undercut with punk rock adrenaline levels and post-feminist diatribes. Only time out, it's more of a dance party. The opener, "LT Tour Theme," uses a spare 60s throwback dance sound and heavy metal guitar solo samples, over which Le Tigre sing, "For the ladies and the fags, yeah/ We're the band with the roller skate jams, yeah." And songs like "Fake French" and "Well Well Well" marry hip-hop and new wave, coming off something like more sophisticated takes on Blondie's "Rapture." Though it would be premature to accuse Le Tigre of mellowing with age-- especially with the shouted tirade on "F.Y.R" indicating the contrary-- there are moments when the ranting subsides. "TGIF" closes with the refrain, "We got friends in sight/ Tomorrow we fight/ Let's have fun tonight." Likewise, the album's closer, "Keep On Livin'," turns empowerment catchphrases into anthemic, garage punk fun. And there, with the vengeful faces of the Womyn's Collective burned into my brain, is where I levy my single complaint. Feminist Sweepstakes wants to be a terrifically fun album, yet with no deviation from the ceaseless politics and endless drum machine beats, things go stale. There are a growing number of female bands out there with the same basic premise as Le Tigre (most notably Chicks on Speed), making idiosyncratic dance pop for politically minded scenesters. Still, good as these things may seem, they rely too heavily on fad and can at times look a bit like novelty.

Artist: Le Tigre, Album: Feminist Sweepstakes, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Early in my freshman year of college, I was severely reprimanded and summarily cold-shouldered by the newly formed Womyn's Collective for the following suggestion: "I think maybe riot grrls have it pretty easy, comparatively speaking." Silence. I squirmed a bit in my seat, and felt stares of my classmates so hot with accusation that I swore I could feel the skin burning off my face. The girl in charge (who would never admit to being in charge-- after all, this was a radical feminist organization and hierarchy is a patriarchal construct) cleared her throat ominously: "Would you mind clarifying your comment, Alison?" I swallowed, stymied. How the hell do I get out of this one? I mean, this is an all-women's college, and I've just cleared the path to take the sacred cow to the slaughtering block. So I followed through. "Well, clearly I'm not going to make friends no matter what I say, so I might as well finish what I started. "It's like this: I think riot grrls are allowed, even encouraged, to play music of a significantly lesser quality than their male counterparts. I know it's punk rock to sound all raw and simplified, but it seems like riot grrls are allowed to be as bad as they want because they're largely cute and spunky and, well, girls. I mean, rock and roll has been a boy's club for years, and that should change, but our collective inability to put riot grrl bands under the same scrutiny we put any other band... I mean, isn't that kind of patronizing?" The surrounding faces went near purple with rage. And yeah, I was only eighteen, but I knew how to take a hint. I left. Approximately seven years to the day of my Womyn's Collective debacle, I find myself reviewing Le Tigre's second album, Feminist Sweepstakes, with some degree of trepidation. Seven years clears a lot of air. Of course, I'm less of a contrarian these days, and to be fair, some of those ex-riot grrls have made some really extraordinary music outside the confines of the movement they created. Kathleen Hanna among them. Since the demise of Bikini Kill, Hanna has carved out some fairly innovative sounds, both with Le Tigre and alone as Julie Ruin. Using samples, drum loops, fuzzy guitars and synthesizers, Le Tigre has created an infectious mode for delivery of heavy-handed polemic, as evidenced by their self-titled debut. It was-- to quote Feminist Sweepstakes' "F.Y.R."-- "one cool record in the year of rock rap." And one of the best records I'd heard in a long time. Feminist Sweepstakes doesn't deviate much from the first album's sound, despite the change in line-up; shortly after the release of Le Tigre's 1999 self-titled debut, JD Samson of the underground dance troupe Dykes Can Dance replaced video artist Sadie Benning. The model is basically the same: hip-hop and disco-informed dance tunes undercut with punk rock adrenaline levels and post-feminist diatribes. Only time out, it's more of a dance party. The opener, "LT Tour Theme," uses a spare 60s throwback dance sound and heavy metal guitar solo samples, over which Le Tigre sing, "For the ladies and the fags, yeah/ We're the band with the roller skate jams, yeah." And songs like "Fake French" and "Well Well Well" marry hip-hop and new wave, coming off something like more sophisticated takes on Blondie's "Rapture." Though it would be premature to accuse Le Tigre of mellowing with age-- especially with the shouted tirade on "F.Y.R" indicating the contrary-- there are moments when the ranting subsides. "TGIF" closes with the refrain, "We got friends in sight/ Tomorrow we fight/ Let's have fun tonight." Likewise, the album's closer, "Keep On Livin'," turns empowerment catchphrases into anthemic, garage punk fun. And there, with the vengeful faces of the Womyn's Collective burned into my brain, is where I levy my single complaint. Feminist Sweepstakes wants to be a terrifically fun album, yet with no deviation from the ceaseless politics and endless drum machine beats, things go stale. There are a growing number of female bands out there with the same basic premise as Le Tigre (most notably Chicks on Speed), making idiosyncratic dance pop for politically minded scenesters. Still, good as these things may seem, they rely too heavily on fad and can at times look a bit like novelty."

Bleeding Rainbow

Yeah Right

Steven Hyden

Over the course of three full-length albums, Reading Rainbow has been three distinctly different bands. On 2009's Mystical Participation, founding members (and spouses) Rob Garcia and Sarah Everton ran bubblegum melodies through a grime-filled trench of hiss and reverb; it hardly seemed like a band at all at this point, but rather an extended flirtation conducted over a lo-fi recording deck. On 2010's Prism Eyes, Reading Rainbow suddenly embraced clarity and rock 'n roll assertiveness, pushing against their limitations as a two-piece to make the loudest, poppiest noise possible. On their new record, Yeah Right, Reading Rainbow has made its biggest change-up yet. For starters, they're now known as Bleeding Rainbow. (Apparently the name change was prompted by a disparaging remark from Carrie Brownstein, though that could be embellishment.) More importantly, Bleeding Rainbow has expanded to a quartet, with Everton surrendering the drums to Greg Frantz, and Al Creedon joining Garcia on guitar. These changes, presumably, were intended to remake Bleeding Rainbow on Yeah Right like Dylan Baldi transformed Cloud Nothings into a hard-hitting post-punk outfit on last year's Attack on Memory, or how the Pains of Being Pure at Heart morphed into a widescreen '90s alt-rock group on 2011's Belong. Like those groups, Reading Rainbow was frequently described as "twee" or "cutesy"-- an image Everton has expressed reservations about in interviews. Based on Yeah Right, Garcia and Everton would rather Bleeding Rainbow be seen as a dark, dreamy shoegaze-infused pop band. You know, cool. Unfortunately, Garcia and Everton aren't very good at being cool, and were better off when they weren't trying to be. The most disappointing aspect of Yeah Right is how doubling the band's size hasn't made Bleeding Rainbow sound any fuller or more powerful. Frantz's drumming isn't noticeably better than Everton's rudimentary time-keeping, and aside from the occasional would-be psychedelic interlude, Creedon's leads don't add much to the equation. What this line-up has accomplished is giving Bleeding Rainbow a more professional sound, though the dubious likes of the paint-by-numbers MBV homage "Shades of Eternal Night" and the corny boy-girl duet "Inside My Head" hardly make this seem like a plus. Prism Eyes' fantastic lead-off track "Wasting Time" is more anthemic than anything on Yeah Right, and its guileless enthusiasm is sadly missing amid this album's calculated trend-grabs. The handmade quality that made Bleeding Rainbow's first two records so likeable and indelible is absent on Yeah Right; in its place is the serviceable but somewhat generic late 80s/early 90s fuzz pop that's become a default setting for aspirant indie bands. Strangely, about half of Yeah Right sounds like leftovers from Bleeding Rainbow's former incarnations. These also happen to be the record's best songs. The gutted-out "Fall Into Your Eyes" is simultaneously mysterious and innocent, running its hymn-like melody through a buzzsaw of mechanical scrapes and squawks. "Waking Dream" is at the opposite end of the sonic spectrum-- its sunny melody and 60s pop bounce conjures the magic of Prism Eyes with a deep, nostalgic pang. "Pink Ruff" is another keeper, zipping along on a snappy rhythm guitar riff that approaches the fresh-faced rock this band once specialized in. Yeah Right has its charms, but they're echoes of a band Bleeding Rainbow used to be under a slightly different name.

Artist: Bleeding Rainbow, Album: Yeah Right, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Over the course of three full-length albums, Reading Rainbow has been three distinctly different bands. On 2009's Mystical Participation, founding members (and spouses) Rob Garcia and Sarah Everton ran bubblegum melodies through a grime-filled trench of hiss and reverb; it hardly seemed like a band at all at this point, but rather an extended flirtation conducted over a lo-fi recording deck. On 2010's Prism Eyes, Reading Rainbow suddenly embraced clarity and rock 'n roll assertiveness, pushing against their limitations as a two-piece to make the loudest, poppiest noise possible. On their new record, Yeah Right, Reading Rainbow has made its biggest change-up yet. For starters, they're now known as Bleeding Rainbow. (Apparently the name change was prompted by a disparaging remark from Carrie Brownstein, though that could be embellishment.) More importantly, Bleeding Rainbow has expanded to a quartet, with Everton surrendering the drums to Greg Frantz, and Al Creedon joining Garcia on guitar. These changes, presumably, were intended to remake Bleeding Rainbow on Yeah Right like Dylan Baldi transformed Cloud Nothings into a hard-hitting post-punk outfit on last year's Attack on Memory, or how the Pains of Being Pure at Heart morphed into a widescreen '90s alt-rock group on 2011's Belong. Like those groups, Reading Rainbow was frequently described as "twee" or "cutesy"-- an image Everton has expressed reservations about in interviews. Based on Yeah Right, Garcia and Everton would rather Bleeding Rainbow be seen as a dark, dreamy shoegaze-infused pop band. You know, cool. Unfortunately, Garcia and Everton aren't very good at being cool, and were better off when they weren't trying to be. The most disappointing aspect of Yeah Right is how doubling the band's size hasn't made Bleeding Rainbow sound any fuller or more powerful. Frantz's drumming isn't noticeably better than Everton's rudimentary time-keeping, and aside from the occasional would-be psychedelic interlude, Creedon's leads don't add much to the equation. What this line-up has accomplished is giving Bleeding Rainbow a more professional sound, though the dubious likes of the paint-by-numbers MBV homage "Shades of Eternal Night" and the corny boy-girl duet "Inside My Head" hardly make this seem like a plus. Prism Eyes' fantastic lead-off track "Wasting Time" is more anthemic than anything on Yeah Right, and its guileless enthusiasm is sadly missing amid this album's calculated trend-grabs. The handmade quality that made Bleeding Rainbow's first two records so likeable and indelible is absent on Yeah Right; in its place is the serviceable but somewhat generic late 80s/early 90s fuzz pop that's become a default setting for aspirant indie bands. Strangely, about half of Yeah Right sounds like leftovers from Bleeding Rainbow's former incarnations. These also happen to be the record's best songs. The gutted-out "Fall Into Your Eyes" is simultaneously mysterious and innocent, running its hymn-like melody through a buzzsaw of mechanical scrapes and squawks. "Waking Dream" is at the opposite end of the sonic spectrum-- its sunny melody and 60s pop bounce conjures the magic of Prism Eyes with a deep, nostalgic pang. "Pink Ruff" is another keeper, zipping along on a snappy rhythm guitar riff that approaches the fresh-faced rock this band once specialized in. Yeah Right has its charms, but they're echoes of a band Bleeding Rainbow used to be under a slightly different name."

Cloud Cult

Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

Experimental,Rock

Ian Cohen

"It was so f'in precious." So went a lyric from Cloud Cult's last studio LP, 2007's The Meaning Of 8, and it could've been the understatement of the year. Nearly everything about the group is so admirable (their studio runs on geothermal power) or adorable (live painter onstage?!?!), that you could feel comfortable nominating them for public office or writing about them only in LOLCAT speak. But while 8 wasn't exactly an epic fail, it was curiously underwhelming; pre-leak hype suggested that it would push these industrious Minnesotans to the upper echelon of blog hosannas and year-end top tens that they seemed perfectly constructed for, but it just sort of deflated upon touchdown. But Cloud Cult have developed a self-sufficiency that allows them to exist almost totally outside indie's name-making machinery; simply put, they don't need the help, seeing as how whatever happens, they'll just keep doing what they do, free of the temptation to compromise their lofty ambitions. So, as expected, Cloud Cult keep it moving with their eighth album in as many years, but Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is a pretty marked departure from their previous records. Considering that they've got their aesthetic down pat (a sort of post-Beck kitchen sink alt-rock matched with the 21st-century quasi-religious collectives), it's got nothing to do with sonics, however. Their last two LP's combined to clock in at more than 120 minutes over the span of 44 tracks, but this time, they've damn near put out an EP-- 39 over 13. This would initially seem like a smart move, but sprawl is every bit as essential to what they do as capo Craig Minowa's warble; paddling through all the extraneous dross was part (or most) of the fun. Unfortunately, their batting average is far lower here, magnifying all the nagging problems they've compiled to date. The title rings true, as the contents of Feel Good Ghosts are effusive, but invertebrate. Essentially, this is where the insularity finally catches up. At the very least, "No One Said it Would Be Easy" begins Feel Good Ghosts with beautifully panned piano, expressing the type of sentiments that are uncut Cloud Cult at their most empathetic-- "You're a pretty human being...living, it ain't easy"-- but overzealous studio treatment has Minowa sounding like Jeremy Enigk drowning in a jar of Smuckers. And then there's "Love You All", which ends Feel Good Ghosts with the scent of an acid-washed power ballad, expressing the type of sentiments that are uncut Cloud Cult at their most cloying. Minowa offers "I love you"'s to his mother and father but does so through a fucking talkbox, which either undermines the emotion or completely cancels it out. In between, Feel Good Ghosts too often comes off like hamburger phone transmissions from the Juno-verse, force-feeding knotty or naughty feelings through a filter of whimsy. "Story of the Grandson of Jesus", in addition to mining the same territory as 8's "Alien Christ", relates the story of a false prophet with a "penchant for the pinchies," offering "cola and Twinkies." Meanwhile, "Journey of the Featherless" gives you an idea of what an unplugged Her Space Holiday might sound like, impotently namechecking cellphones and eBay as if they're pillars of modern evil after Minowa dispenses a K.I.T. senior yearbook koan-- "It's worth dreaming just for the dream of it." The group's always had a predilection for the boomin' system in their drum machines, but "The Tornado Lessons" is finally where Minowa tries his hand at the rap game. I'll let you guess how that turns out. I really wanted to see "May Your Hearts Stay Strong" succeed more than it does, as it features one of Feel Good Ghost's most arresting arrangements of machinery clanks and dramatic keyboards, and suggests that Cloud Cult might be willing to strip away their shiny happy defense mechanisms. But nothing about the shadowy love affair described therein feels real-- a nightclub owner who "got his first stitches when he bit an ice cream bowl" falls for a girl who "wore her grandma's prom dress and slippers on her feet." Instead of letting the characters just be, they have to be characters instead, and lyrically, Minowa just sounds out of his element, similar to when he laments "all the poop that brings me down" over the oontz-oontzing fake disco of "Hurricane And Fire Survival Guide". I'll admit, it's hard not to root for these guys, considering that they mean so well. Minowa will likely always have Cloud Cult as a means to therapeutically address the death of his infant son, and then there's this from the band's website: "We also plant ten trees for every 1,000 albums sold just to be sure any other pollutants are absorbed. We have turned away major record label interests so we can be sure we can maintain control of providing Cloud Cult music in the most environmentally friendly manner possible." How can I tell you not to spend the ten bucks? But you don't need a Mclusky primer to tell you that good intentions can only go so far and Feel Good Ghosts repeatedly fails to meet the listener halfway; Minowa hasn't run out of things to say, but he's having trouble coming up with new ways to say them, and Feel Good Ghosts unfortunately feels like another byproduct of Cloud Cult's recycling process.

Artist: Cloud Cult, Album: Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.2 Album review: ""It was so f'in precious." So went a lyric from Cloud Cult's last studio LP, 2007's The Meaning Of 8, and it could've been the understatement of the year. Nearly everything about the group is so admirable (their studio runs on geothermal power) or adorable (live painter onstage?!?!), that you could feel comfortable nominating them for public office or writing about them only in LOLCAT speak. But while 8 wasn't exactly an epic fail, it was curiously underwhelming; pre-leak hype suggested that it would push these industrious Minnesotans to the upper echelon of blog hosannas and year-end top tens that they seemed perfectly constructed for, but it just sort of deflated upon touchdown. But Cloud Cult have developed a self-sufficiency that allows them to exist almost totally outside indie's name-making machinery; simply put, they don't need the help, seeing as how whatever happens, they'll just keep doing what they do, free of the temptation to compromise their lofty ambitions. So, as expected, Cloud Cult keep it moving with their eighth album in as many years, but Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is a pretty marked departure from their previous records. Considering that they've got their aesthetic down pat (a sort of post-Beck kitchen sink alt-rock matched with the 21st-century quasi-religious collectives), it's got nothing to do with sonics, however. Their last two LP's combined to clock in at more than 120 minutes over the span of 44 tracks, but this time, they've damn near put out an EP-- 39 over 13. This would initially seem like a smart move, but sprawl is every bit as essential to what they do as capo Craig Minowa's warble; paddling through all the extraneous dross was part (or most) of the fun. Unfortunately, their batting average is far lower here, magnifying all the nagging problems they've compiled to date. The title rings true, as the contents of Feel Good Ghosts are effusive, but invertebrate. Essentially, this is where the insularity finally catches up. At the very least, "No One Said it Would Be Easy" begins Feel Good Ghosts with beautifully panned piano, expressing the type of sentiments that are uncut Cloud Cult at their most empathetic-- "You're a pretty human being...living, it ain't easy"-- but overzealous studio treatment has Minowa sounding like Jeremy Enigk drowning in a jar of Smuckers. And then there's "Love You All", which ends Feel Good Ghosts with the scent of an acid-washed power ballad, expressing the type of sentiments that are uncut Cloud Cult at their most cloying. Minowa offers "I love you"'s to his mother and father but does so through a fucking talkbox, which either undermines the emotion or completely cancels it out. In between, Feel Good Ghosts too often comes off like hamburger phone transmissions from the Juno-verse, force-feeding knotty or naughty feelings through a filter of whimsy. "Story of the Grandson of Jesus", in addition to mining the same territory as 8's "Alien Christ", relates the story of a false prophet with a "penchant for the pinchies," offering "cola and Twinkies." Meanwhile, "Journey of the Featherless" gives you an idea of what an unplugged Her Space Holiday might sound like, impotently namechecking cellphones and eBay as if they're pillars of modern evil after Minowa dispenses a K.I.T. senior yearbook koan-- "It's worth dreaming just for the dream of it." The group's always had a predilection for the boomin' system in their drum machines, but "The Tornado Lessons" is finally where Minowa tries his hand at the rap game. I'll let you guess how that turns out. I really wanted to see "May Your Hearts Stay Strong" succeed more than it does, as it features one of Feel Good Ghost's most arresting arrangements of machinery clanks and dramatic keyboards, and suggests that Cloud Cult might be willing to strip away their shiny happy defense mechanisms. But nothing about the shadowy love affair described therein feels real-- a nightclub owner who "got his first stitches when he bit an ice cream bowl" falls for a girl who "wore her grandma's prom dress and slippers on her feet." Instead of letting the characters just be, they have to be characters instead, and lyrically, Minowa just sounds out of his element, similar to when he laments "all the poop that brings me down" over the oontz-oontzing fake disco of "Hurricane And Fire Survival Guide". I'll admit, it's hard not to root for these guys, considering that they mean so well. Minowa will likely always have Cloud Cult as a means to therapeutically address the death of his infant son, and then there's this from the band's website: "We also plant ten trees for every 1,000 albums sold just to be sure any other pollutants are absorbed. We have turned away major record label interests so we can be sure we can maintain control of providing Cloud Cult music in the most environmentally friendly manner possible." How can I tell you not to spend the ten bucks? But you don't need a Mclusky primer to tell you that good intentions can only go so far and Feel Good Ghosts repeatedly fails to meet the listener halfway; Minowa hasn't run out of things to say, but he's having trouble coming up with new ways to say them, and Feel Good Ghosts unfortunately feels like another byproduct of Cloud Cult's recycling process."

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Pin EP

Rock

Eric Carr

For all the faults and imperfections that continue to show up in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' body of work (repetitive arrangements in Nick Zinner's less-inspired moments, Karen's play-acting testing the limits of endurance), the results are staggering when they bring the full weight of their collective abilities to bear. Between Zinner's cutting drones, Chase's lurking rhythms, and Karen's (like it or not) ability to grab a listener's, uh, attention, the YYY's at their best sound less like a sleazy three-piece and more like a relentless troop battling from trenches. "Rich", "Y Control", and most of all the flawless mixture of vitriol and vulnerability in "Maps" are their crowning achievements, and they can release singles until the wheel of fashion finally turns and strands them at the Salvation Army, but if they don't single out any of these songs, they're missing the point. We should all be thankful for small favors, though, as "Pin" at least manages to convey a fraction of the overwhelming force they have at their disposal. What it lacks in the drag-strip dynamics and pacing of "Date with the Night" it compensates for with a brooding ebb and flow; stilted treble chords give way to a thunderous crash distortion, but that tidal rush is back to sea before the next verse, only to repeat the cycle one more time. The lyrics imply gritty urbanity, but only in shadowy terms: "Things are feeling thin," sings Karen over the tense, skeletal accompaniment, giving "Pin" an appropriately half-hearted, world-weary sound. It's not a frequent pose, but it's every bit as attractive as the bedroom antics Karen typically adopts, and more impressive for its relative rarity. "I like to sleep with them/ I know, I know." Yeah, Karen, so do we. Even if "Pin" doesn't quite encapsulate the sheer power the band has at their disposal, there's also a video for it, so that's something, right? Who wouldn't want to see that? I sure as shit wouldn't not want to, but my computer choked to death on what's allegedly a "creepy", "Quay Brothers-inspired" piece of rock action, and despite all my protestations to the contrary, this pile of circuits (that's charitably one step removed from an Etch-a-Sketch) just wasn't having it. All I got were occasional still-frames as Karen O "goes back in" to a door, turns into an action figure of some sort, gets pins stuck in her (clever); the slide-show presentation I got made it into the worst stop-motion video ever, though, so I can't comment. It's just a video, it shouldn't take much firepower to dazzle my senses with Karen's trip through the looking glass, should it? Maybe if this machine was actually a multi-million dollar supercomputer that was just pretending to be obsolete, it would've run properly... Wiat what? Was that a dig at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Just a little, but hell, my temporary case of techno-envy makes me want to tear up my trucker's cap in bitter defeat. What can I say? So no in-depth symbolism analysis, no talk of Christ-analogs or phallic portrayals, folks; I'm as disappointed as you are, but just remember that whatever I say here about the music (the meat of any album), the disc also includes a video (the gristle). I hear it's good. It'd better be, too, because when you come right down to it, the meat of this thing is only fair. "Pin"'s qualified strengths aside, the unmistakable failing of this EP remains that the YYY's seemingly have yet to realize where their strengths lie as a band-- and for a group with so much potential, it's infuriating to witness yet another wrong turn. Yet, somehow, the YYY's continue to surprise me; they steer into the skid and end up in totally foreign territory. The last time they tried to navigate the sticky terrain of "experimental" mixes (with a fuzzy, indistinct rendering of "Pin", no less) on the disastrous Machine EP, they seemed hopelessly lost; it's a wonder they made it back in time to record their album. If the B-sides of this single shows anything, though, it's that they learned from their mistakes. The "Pandaworksforthecops" remix of "Rich" crosses the haunting harmonic backing of the original with "Jingle Bells" and a drummers convention; while Nick and Karen overdose on valium, Brian pulls out all the percussive stops-- bells that are singularly disconcerting in their monotony, an overpowering drum loop, and ghostly stick clattering in the background-- running roughshod over mumbled lyrics and faintly plucked strings. Only hypnotic whole tones reminiscent of the original keep it recognizable as anything other than a totally new composition, but its brilliant bleakness only serves to clear the set for baffling, if weirdly impressive, finale: a cover of Liars' "Mr. You're on Fire, Mr." I'll concede this: in simple, broad strokes, the YYY's have managed to cover Liars in a way that band would surely be proud of; everything outside of the most explicit defining characteristics of the original, the rawest of the raw essentials, is hollowed out and discarded. Zinner's guitar is distorted to lifeless tones, Chase provides nothing beyond a lone snare hit in terrifying rhythm to pace the track, and the lyrics are beyond indecipherable, Karen's voice barely more than a distorted, lazy shriek through the course of the song. It's utterly pulseless: a draining, yawning void in place of Liars' tightly wound dance-punk mania, and in some ways, it's incredibly smart. Nothing could be closer in spirit to the Liars' ever-present desire to stay one step ahead of expectations, even if it's not an easy thing to take in and of itself. Just when it seemed like the YYY's could still be nothing but a talented one-trick pony (and luckily for all involved), they demonstrate some unexpected depth beyond even the beauty of "Maps". The B-sides of this single carry the day, actually building on the off-kilter rock of "Pin", turning the jittery, brittle nerves to some good use after all. Now the real is question is not whether they can learn from past errors, but current successes, and that remains to be seen; after all, even a one trick pony can get lucky.

Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Album: Pin EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "For all the faults and imperfections that continue to show up in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' body of work (repetitive arrangements in Nick Zinner's less-inspired moments, Karen's play-acting testing the limits of endurance), the results are staggering when they bring the full weight of their collective abilities to bear. Between Zinner's cutting drones, Chase's lurking rhythms, and Karen's (like it or not) ability to grab a listener's, uh, attention, the YYY's at their best sound less like a sleazy three-piece and more like a relentless troop battling from trenches. "Rich", "Y Control", and most of all the flawless mixture of vitriol and vulnerability in "Maps" are their crowning achievements, and they can release singles until the wheel of fashion finally turns and strands them at the Salvation Army, but if they don't single out any of these songs, they're missing the point. We should all be thankful for small favors, though, as "Pin" at least manages to convey a fraction of the overwhelming force they have at their disposal. What it lacks in the drag-strip dynamics and pacing of "Date with the Night" it compensates for with a brooding ebb and flow; stilted treble chords give way to a thunderous crash distortion, but that tidal rush is back to sea before the next verse, only to repeat the cycle one more time. The lyrics imply gritty urbanity, but only in shadowy terms: "Things are feeling thin," sings Karen over the tense, skeletal accompaniment, giving "Pin" an appropriately half-hearted, world-weary sound. It's not a frequent pose, but it's every bit as attractive as the bedroom antics Karen typically adopts, and more impressive for its relative rarity. "I like to sleep with them/ I know, I know." Yeah, Karen, so do we. Even if "Pin" doesn't quite encapsulate the sheer power the band has at their disposal, there's also a video for it, so that's something, right? Who wouldn't want to see that? I sure as shit wouldn't not want to, but my computer choked to death on what's allegedly a "creepy", "Quay Brothers-inspired" piece of rock action, and despite all my protestations to the contrary, this pile of circuits (that's charitably one step removed from an Etch-a-Sketch) just wasn't having it. All I got were occasional still-frames as Karen O "goes back in" to a door, turns into an action figure of some sort, gets pins stuck in her (clever); the slide-show presentation I got made it into the worst stop-motion video ever, though, so I can't comment. It's just a video, it shouldn't take much firepower to dazzle my senses with Karen's trip through the looking glass, should it? Maybe if this machine was actually a multi-million dollar supercomputer that was just pretending to be obsolete, it would've run properly... Wiat what? Was that a dig at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Just a little, but hell, my temporary case of techno-envy makes me want to tear up my trucker's cap in bitter defeat. What can I say? So no in-depth symbolism analysis, no talk of Christ-analogs or phallic portrayals, folks; I'm as disappointed as you are, but just remember that whatever I say here about the music (the meat of any album), the disc also includes a video (the gristle). I hear it's good. It'd better be, too, because when you come right down to it, the meat of this thing is only fair. "Pin"'s qualified strengths aside, the unmistakable failing of this EP remains that the YYY's seemingly have yet to realize where their strengths lie as a band-- and for a group with so much potential, it's infuriating to witness yet another wrong turn. Yet, somehow, the YYY's continue to surprise me; they steer into the skid and end up in totally foreign territory. The last time they tried to navigate the sticky terrain of "experimental" mixes (with a fuzzy, indistinct rendering of "Pin", no less) on the disastrous Machine EP, they seemed hopelessly lost; it's a wonder they made it back in time to record their album. If the B-sides of this single shows anything, though, it's that they learned from their mistakes. The "Pandaworksforthecops" remix of "Rich" crosses the haunting harmonic backing of the original with "Jingle Bells" and a drummers convention; while Nick and Karen overdose on valium, Brian pulls out all the percussive stops-- bells that are singularly disconcerting in their monotony, an overpowering drum loop, and ghostly stick clattering in the background-- running roughshod over mumbled lyrics and faintly plucked strings. Only hypnotic whole tones reminiscent of the original keep it recognizable as anything other than a totally new composition, but its brilliant bleakness only serves to clear the set for baffling, if weirdly impressive, finale: a cover of Liars' "Mr. You're on Fire, Mr." I'll concede this: in simple, broad strokes, the YYY's have managed to cover Liars in a way that band would surely be proud of; everything outside of the most explicit defining characteristics of the original, the rawest of the raw essentials, is hollowed out and discarded. Zinner's guitar is distorted to lifeless tones, Chase provides nothing beyond a lone snare hit in terrifying rhythm to pace the track, and the lyrics are beyond indecipherable, Karen's voice barely more than a distorted, lazy shriek through the course of the song. It's utterly pulseless: a draining, yawning void in place of Liars' tightly wound dance-punk mania, and in some ways, it's incredibly smart. Nothing could be closer in spirit to the Liars' ever-present desire to stay one step ahead of expectations, even if it's not an easy thing to take in and of itself. Just when it seemed like the YYY's could still be nothing but a talented one-trick pony (and luckily for all involved), they demonstrate some unexpected depth beyond even the beauty of "Maps". The B-sides of this single carry the day, actually building on the off-kilter rock of "Pin", turning the jittery, brittle nerves to some good use after all. Now the real is question is not whether they can learn from past errors, but current successes, and that remains to be seen; after all, even a one trick pony can get lucky."

Regina

Puutarhatrilogia

Rock

Brian Howe

Quick, name some Finnish music that isn't metal. I'm tapped out after Sibelius and Vladislav Delay. I know more about Architecture in Helsinki than architecture in Helsinki, and the most modern Finnish book I've read is the Kalevala. So it was exciting to discover Regina's excellent U.S. debut, Puutarhatrilogia*,* a high-concept suite about the gardens of the human psyche that sounds to un-Finnish ears like a batch of really swell love songs, charted ambitiously for guitars, miscellaneous synths, piano, percussion, and smooth yet sultry vocals. Regina's dance-pop is larded with musical traditions from many different times and nations. On occasion the band might evoke Sally Shapiro, Stereolab, or Lykke Li, but it seems mostly circumstantial: They keep the song square in their sights as they shift freely from mode to mode. Their sound is cosmopolitan, multifarious, and given to sly pastiche-- in other words, thoroughly global. It benefits from expert and erudite playing without making a big deal about it. Singer Iisa Pykäri's Finnish-language vocals are all light and mist, but never drift aimlessly. She pushes syllables deep into the nooks and crannies of the thumping grooves. Her voice is as adaptable as the band backing her up, which makes dime-tight turns through music history. The blurting synthesizers and breezy harmonies of "Vapaus" convey the droll impression of French yé-yé; "Tango Merellä" is a dreamily unwinding take on tango; "Sinun Tässä Salissa" has the plucks and serpentine bends of Chinese folk music. But all of this diversity unfolds subtly on a backdrop of muted disco, in crisp yet marvelously fluid pivots. Suturing together sections of lobby-jazz, gospel, and light funk with chromatic piano scales is not something one would think advisable or even possible, until hearing "Tapaa Minut Aamulla". Regina stash all kinds of oblique references to techno in organic, jazzy bass-and-keys odysseys. There are synth arpeggios mimicking flutes mimicking synth arpeggios, and detuned rock licks leaning against modernist piano patterns, and vocal loops pittering out urgent rhythms. All these neat tricks give you stuff to geek out over on headphones, but they never get in the way of the songs' emotional connections or melodic pep. It suggests a band a band that has deeply absorbed the tenets of modern dance, ancient folk, and high-art styles alike, affording them all the same creative and emotional weight.

Artist: Regina, Album: Puutarhatrilogia, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Quick, name some Finnish music that isn't metal. I'm tapped out after Sibelius and Vladislav Delay. I know more about Architecture in Helsinki than architecture in Helsinki, and the most modern Finnish book I've read is the Kalevala. So it was exciting to discover Regina's excellent U.S. debut, Puutarhatrilogia*,* a high-concept suite about the gardens of the human psyche that sounds to un-Finnish ears like a batch of really swell love songs, charted ambitiously for guitars, miscellaneous synths, piano, percussion, and smooth yet sultry vocals. Regina's dance-pop is larded with musical traditions from many different times and nations. On occasion the band might evoke Sally Shapiro, Stereolab, or Lykke Li, but it seems mostly circumstantial: They keep the song square in their sights as they shift freely from mode to mode. Their sound is cosmopolitan, multifarious, and given to sly pastiche-- in other words, thoroughly global. It benefits from expert and erudite playing without making a big deal about it. Singer Iisa Pykäri's Finnish-language vocals are all light and mist, but never drift aimlessly. She pushes syllables deep into the nooks and crannies of the thumping grooves. Her voice is as adaptable as the band backing her up, which makes dime-tight turns through music history. The blurting synthesizers and breezy harmonies of "Vapaus" convey the droll impression of French yé-yé; "Tango Merellä" is a dreamily unwinding take on tango; "Sinun Tässä Salissa" has the plucks and serpentine bends of Chinese folk music. But all of this diversity unfolds subtly on a backdrop of muted disco, in crisp yet marvelously fluid pivots. Suturing together sections of lobby-jazz, gospel, and light funk with chromatic piano scales is not something one would think advisable or even possible, until hearing "Tapaa Minut Aamulla". Regina stash all kinds of oblique references to techno in organic, jazzy bass-and-keys odysseys. There are synth arpeggios mimicking flutes mimicking synth arpeggios, and detuned rock licks leaning against modernist piano patterns, and vocal loops pittering out urgent rhythms. All these neat tricks give you stuff to geek out over on headphones, but they never get in the way of the songs' emotional connections or melodic pep. It suggests a band a band that has deeply absorbed the tenets of modern dance, ancient folk, and high-art styles alike, affording them all the same creative and emotional weight."

The Anomoanon

Joji

Folk/Country

Amanda Petrusich

Imagine clawing through an overgrown vegetable garden by moonlight, mud pushing up under your fingernails, dandelions displaced, soil shooting everywhere, a haphazard mound of earthworms, pebbles, and bits of grass rising high into the night, while tiny streams of sweat snake down the back of your dirt-flaked neck. It's here that the Anomoanon's Joji seems destined to be found, burrowed out from the wet earth, caked in clay, beloved by ants. There's something unsettlingly familiar about Joji, the Anomoanon's seventh full-length-- it might be because the six-piece resuscitates and revises a variety of classic rock gestures, or because their sound is so oddly, eerily organic, or because vocalist/guitarist Ned Oldham's high, throaty, Kentucky-born warble can sound disconcertingly similar to younger brother Will's. But mostly, it's how Joji sounds like above-ground pools and paper cups full of lemonade, like fireflies in mayonnaise jars and rusty sprinklers, country cottages and snap peas: it's Americana without the pre-packaged kitsch-- all ground and sky and precious American ritual. Joji sounds like a record made by mountains. For the most part, Joji eschews the light, snappy melodies and traditional lyrics of its predecessor, The Derby Ram, in favor of woodsy, instantly addictive country-folk dirges. Given Oldham and guitarist Aram Stith's fondness for scrappy electric solos, it's not particularly surprising that the Anomoanon are routinely compared to On the Beach-era Neil Young and/or the Grateful Dead circa American Beauty-- but keyboardist Dave Heumann's psych-infused squiggles lend Joji a dark, celestial swagger that's more Floydian than anything else (see, especially, mesmerizing opener "Down and Brown"). Joji has its share of folkier moments, too-- the instrumental "After Than Before" features 12-string noodling, puttering bass, and minimal percussion, while the plucky, Stith-penned "Green Sea" is singalong-ready, anchored around a honky guitar melody, six-man harmonizing, and Oldham's shrugging vocals ("Your socks and shoes are filled with sand/ Your heart is beating for another man"). Joji confidently follows its own ebbs and flows, and, consequently, can occasionally feel a bit jammy-- but before you conjure drum circles, handmade pants, and Birkenstock clogs, know that the Anomoanon are always, always purposeful about their wankery, and some of the extended instrumentation included here (see the excellent "Wedding Song", which flits, over the course of its 10 staggering minutes, from waltz to 4/4 and back to waltz) is genuinely impressive. Joji may periodically flirt with gothic undertones, but it ultimately plays like a warm, comforting slice of deep American rock-- recognizable and exciting all at once.

Artist: The Anomoanon, Album: Joji, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Imagine clawing through an overgrown vegetable garden by moonlight, mud pushing up under your fingernails, dandelions displaced, soil shooting everywhere, a haphazard mound of earthworms, pebbles, and bits of grass rising high into the night, while tiny streams of sweat snake down the back of your dirt-flaked neck. It's here that the Anomoanon's Joji seems destined to be found, burrowed out from the wet earth, caked in clay, beloved by ants. There's something unsettlingly familiar about Joji, the Anomoanon's seventh full-length-- it might be because the six-piece resuscitates and revises a variety of classic rock gestures, or because their sound is so oddly, eerily organic, or because vocalist/guitarist Ned Oldham's high, throaty, Kentucky-born warble can sound disconcertingly similar to younger brother Will's. But mostly, it's how Joji sounds like above-ground pools and paper cups full of lemonade, like fireflies in mayonnaise jars and rusty sprinklers, country cottages and snap peas: it's Americana without the pre-packaged kitsch-- all ground and sky and precious American ritual. Joji sounds like a record made by mountains. For the most part, Joji eschews the light, snappy melodies and traditional lyrics of its predecessor, The Derby Ram, in favor of woodsy, instantly addictive country-folk dirges. Given Oldham and guitarist Aram Stith's fondness for scrappy electric solos, it's not particularly surprising that the Anomoanon are routinely compared to On the Beach-era Neil Young and/or the Grateful Dead circa American Beauty-- but keyboardist Dave Heumann's psych-infused squiggles lend Joji a dark, celestial swagger that's more Floydian than anything else (see, especially, mesmerizing opener "Down and Brown"). Joji has its share of folkier moments, too-- the instrumental "After Than Before" features 12-string noodling, puttering bass, and minimal percussion, while the plucky, Stith-penned "Green Sea" is singalong-ready, anchored around a honky guitar melody, six-man harmonizing, and Oldham's shrugging vocals ("Your socks and shoes are filled with sand/ Your heart is beating for another man"). Joji confidently follows its own ebbs and flows, and, consequently, can occasionally feel a bit jammy-- but before you conjure drum circles, handmade pants, and Birkenstock clogs, know that the Anomoanon are always, always purposeful about their wankery, and some of the extended instrumentation included here (see the excellent "Wedding Song", which flits, over the course of its 10 staggering minutes, from waltz to 4/4 and back to waltz) is genuinely impressive. Joji may periodically flirt with gothic undertones, but it ultimately plays like a warm, comforting slice of deep American rock-- recognizable and exciting all at once."

The Thermals

Personal Life

Rock

Jess Harvell

Honestly (and legitimately) distressed by the direction his country has taken in the 21st-century, Hutch Harris of the Thermals can be an angry songwriter. "Pray for a new state/ Pray for assassination," he sang on "God and Country" in 2004, the year of the most soul-deadening American election of my lifetime. They're probably the two most infamous lines in the band's catalog, but they're not even the most crucial lines in "God and Country". Those come near the beginning: "I can hope, see/ Even if I don't believe." Hope when all evidence suggests you should despair, honest confusion offered in place of stock rhetoric, music that sounds like it's fueled as much by joy as rage: The Thermals' moral indignation is never a bummer. Harris is no demagogue, just another guy looking for answers, just like me and you, and the band typically sounds like they're having a blast. Even at their angriest, the Thermals have turned out some of the giddiest, most super-charged punk of the decade. This was one of punk's better life lessons, of course: We're regular folks, we've got our eyes open to the bullshit going down, but we're not going to let it grind us into apathy. We're going to use it. The Thermals understand that anger without energy (to gloss John Lydon) leads to cynicism, resentment, diffidence. If you're going to be angry, your music better not be a drag. And melodrama, however well-intentioned, is not the Thermals' bag. You sure as hell can't imagine them writing a grand concept album kvetching about suburban sprawl. It's coincidental that they titled their new album Personal Life in a year of Big Indie Statements, but it does underline what makes them special. The Thermals were never a "political" band per se. On Personal Life, as on all of the Thermals albums, you get the sense that you're listening to an individual think out loud, puzzle through some shit, register the aforementioned hopes, confusion, and occasional joy. Sometimes that individual just happens to be thinking about the federal government, organized religion, and other ulcer-inducing topics. Despite some obvious exceptions like "Power Lies", whose title says it all even if the lyrics are fairly vague, Personal Life is mostly relationship songs as far as I can read them. That hasn't dulled the passion of Harris' delivery; he gets just as worked up about love as he does about god and the president. I find that invigorating when compared to 2010's sea of lo-fi mumblers, but presumably his cracked-note intensity will still be off-putting to those who prefer singers with cooler heads and more controlled pipes. What has changed is the music: This might be the least frantic record the Thermals have yet recorded. Bassist Kathy Foster is driving the songs more than ever; without her, "Not Like Any Other Feeling", with its almost negligible guitar hook, would collapse completely. Sure, there are a few interesting curveballs to make up for the energy deficit. "Never Listen to Me" is probably the closest the Thermals will ever get to dance-rock, which is to say not very close but still closer than you would have expected. But the songs that truly stick, as usual, are the rave-ups like "I Don't Believe You", with its perfect bubblegummy "oh-oh-a-oh" hook. I have to admit that I do miss the messy, noisy, get-it-done-in-under-two-minutes Thermals. They were just so good at the ramshackle thing, the feeling that they were racing toward the finish line before one or all of their amps exploded. Personal Life is hardly a failure; much of it is excellent. But it's also missing that anger-meets-energy urgency that made the Thermals' early albums so undeniable. It's not quite clear that they've found a new approach to match it, at least just yet.

Artist: The Thermals, Album: Personal Life, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Honestly (and legitimately) distressed by the direction his country has taken in the 21st-century, Hutch Harris of the Thermals can be an angry songwriter. "Pray for a new state/ Pray for assassination," he sang on "God and Country" in 2004, the year of the most soul-deadening American election of my lifetime. They're probably the two most infamous lines in the band's catalog, but they're not even the most crucial lines in "God and Country". Those come near the beginning: "I can hope, see/ Even if I don't believe." Hope when all evidence suggests you should despair, honest confusion offered in place of stock rhetoric, music that sounds like it's fueled as much by joy as rage: The Thermals' moral indignation is never a bummer. Harris is no demagogue, just another guy looking for answers, just like me and you, and the band typically sounds like they're having a blast. Even at their angriest, the Thermals have turned out some of the giddiest, most super-charged punk of the decade. This was one of punk's better life lessons, of course: We're regular folks, we've got our eyes open to the bullshit going down, but we're not going to let it grind us into apathy. We're going to use it. The Thermals understand that anger without energy (to gloss John Lydon) leads to cynicism, resentment, diffidence. If you're going to be angry, your music better not be a drag. And melodrama, however well-intentioned, is not the Thermals' bag. You sure as hell can't imagine them writing a grand concept album kvetching about suburban sprawl. It's coincidental that they titled their new album Personal Life in a year of Big Indie Statements, but it does underline what makes them special. The Thermals were never a "political" band per se. On Personal Life, as on all of the Thermals albums, you get the sense that you're listening to an individual think out loud, puzzle through some shit, register the aforementioned hopes, confusion, and occasional joy. Sometimes that individual just happens to be thinking about the federal government, organized religion, and other ulcer-inducing topics. Despite some obvious exceptions like "Power Lies", whose title says it all even if the lyrics are fairly vague, Personal Life is mostly relationship songs as far as I can read them. That hasn't dulled the passion of Harris' delivery; he gets just as worked up about love as he does about god and the president. I find that invigorating when compared to 2010's sea of lo-fi mumblers, but presumably his cracked-note intensity will still be off-putting to those who prefer singers with cooler heads and more controlled pipes. What has changed is the music: This might be the least frantic record the Thermals have yet recorded. Bassist Kathy Foster is driving the songs more than ever; without her, "Not Like Any Other Feeling", with its almost negligible guitar hook, would collapse completely. Sure, there are a few interesting curveballs to make up for the energy deficit. "Never Listen to Me" is probably the closest the Thermals will ever get to dance-rock, which is to say not very close but still closer than you would have expected. But the songs that truly stick, as usual, are the rave-ups like "I Don't Believe You", with its perfect bubblegummy "oh-oh-a-oh" hook. I have to admit that I do miss the messy, noisy, get-it-done-in-under-two-minutes Thermals. They were just so good at the ramshackle thing, the feeling that they were racing toward the finish line before one or all of their amps exploded. Personal Life is hardly a failure; much of it is excellent. But it's also missing that anger-meets-energy urgency that made the Thermals' early albums so undeniable. It's not quite clear that they've found a new approach to match it, at least just yet."

Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper

A Star is Born Soundtrack

Pop/R&B,Folk/Country

Larry Fitzmaurice

A Star Is Born has no right to be as good as it is. Directed by Bradley Cooper, the third remake of David O. Selznick's 1937 film has been in development for most of the decade and at one point counted Clint Eastwood as its director with, impossibly, Beyoncé in the lead role that Lady Gaga now occupies. The immersive and romantic narrative of singer-songwriter Ally (Gaga) and her relationship with veteran rocker Jackson Maine (Cooper) as the latter watches the former rocket to pop stardom is imbued with the sort of rockism that typically triggers derision in the current cultural climate. But alongside powerful turns from Cooper and Sam Elliott, Gaga shines brightest with an empathetic performance that presents a summation-in-reverse of the last several years of her career. Since the aggressive blare of 2013's ARTPOP, Gaga has moved further away with every career turn from the brand of pop that put her on the map circa her 2008 debut The Fame; she took up crooning alongside Tony Bennett for 2014's Cheek to Cheek and hopped in the studio with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Father John Misty for 2016's Joanne. When the curtain rises on A Star Is Born, she's covering Edith Piaf with fake eyebrows taped on her face; two hours later, she's a full-blown pop star, complete with backup dancers and split-second costume changes. With a wholly organic and real-feeling performance, Gaga again engages in the blur between person and persona that she's toyed with for much of her iconographic career thus far. Even though Gaga’s performance caps a decade-long run of shapeshifting pop stardom, there’s nothing in the apparently modern-day A Star Is Born that really reflects the actual 2010s pop landscape. For starters, it's a bit difficult to imagine Maine's dyed-in-the-wool country-rock playing to such a huge audience at Coachella, as it does in the film's opening scene; elsewhere, some modern relevance is achieved through a Halsey cameo and a pivotal scene centered around the type of all-star Grammys tribute that typically turns social media into a unanimous airing of grievances. This disconnect from our reality is totally fine: A Star Is Born reaches for and ultimately achieves a timeless vibe that doesn’t require current pop-cultural relevance. The film’s official soundtrack is similarly old-fashioned in its approach, even as its credits include a host of modern songwriters from the pop, country, and rock spheres. Along with Gaga and Cooper, there’s contributions from Jason Isbell, Willie Nelson’s son Lukas, Mark Ronson, Miike Snow frontman Andrew Wyatt, behind-the-scenes pop wizards Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, the list goes on. The songs fall into a few distinct silos—blaring blues-rockers, tender acoustic ballads, anthemic torch songs, and robotic electro-pop—and save for a digital flourish or two on the pop songs that make up much of the film’s back half, there’s very little here that would’ve sounded out of place on blockbuster film soundtracks of decades past. At its peaks, the album delivers on the promise of its star-wattage with some of the most affecting and emotionally overwhelming pop songs of the year. If you’ve spent half a day on the internet over the past several weeks, you’ve likely encountered the explosive Gaga-Cooper duet “Shallow,” and deservedly so; it’s a stormy ballad so instantly iconic that its place in Oscar montages for decades to come is practically guaranteed. At the risk of heresy, though, it might not even count as the strongest song on the album—at the least, it reaches a three-way tie with the swaying, unabashedly sentimental “Always Remember Us This Way” and the film’s stunning, heart-wrenching closer, “I’ll Never Love Again.” Those three standouts heavily feature Gaga—the latter two as solo performances—which speaks to the somewhat uneven nature of the Cooper-led cuts. The simple, sincere, Isbell-penned “Maybe It’s Time” possesses a quiet radiance, but otherwise Cooper’s songs as Maine take on a somewhat anonymous blues-rock shape alongside the soundtrack’s more dynamic moments. Despite the strength of Gaga’s performances captured on this soundtrack—all live takes recorded during filming, an approach that she insisted on—she isn’t totally off the hook when it comes to the lowlights either; the more explicitly pop songs that make up Ally’s ascent as a solo artist range from forgettable (“Heal Me”) to ridiculous (“Why Did You Do That?”). The mere act of engaging with A Star Is Born's songs in a home-listening setting presents a very modern issue: dialogue or no dialogue? Streaming services currently offer both dialogue-free and dialogue-heavy versions of the soundtrack, the latter functioning as a somewhat spoiler-y but surprisingly immersive experience of the film itself. Choosing which version to stream is a peculiar conundrum to face (imagine, for instance, buying two separate copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack), but even though “I’ll Never Love Again” is plenty effective on its own, the dialogue-included version of the song dramatically cuts out in its final seconds the same way the film does: jumping back in time from Gaga’s time-stopping performance to a pivotal and heartbreaking scene that only enhances the song's emotional quotient. The switch-up is a nice trick as a listening experience, but it also unintentionally highlights the incidental flaw of A Star Is Born’s soundtrack: It just can’t pack the emotional punch of watching the songs performed within the film. The live recording of “Always Remember Us This Way” doesn’t capture Gaga’s impassioned physical delivery behind the piano, her face emblazoned on a JumboTron behind her as Cooper goes moony-eyed at her blown-up visage. And as powerful as “Shallow” is, nothing matches the look of genuine surprise on Gaga’s face as Ally, when she hits her higher register for the first time and effectively launches the song into the emotional cosmos and beyond. These moments speak to her obvious strengths as a performer, as well as how impressively the music works in congress with the film’s imagery; you can recreate them in your head while listening, or go for your best Gaga while belting these songs out in the shower, but it’s just not as effective as the real thing.

Artist: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Album: A Star is Born Soundtrack, Genre: Pop/R&B,Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "A Star Is Born has no right to be as good as it is. Directed by Bradley Cooper, the third remake of David O. Selznick's 1937 film has been in development for most of the decade and at one point counted Clint Eastwood as its director with, impossibly, Beyoncé in the lead role that Lady Gaga now occupies. The immersive and romantic narrative of singer-songwriter Ally (Gaga) and her relationship with veteran rocker Jackson Maine (Cooper) as the latter watches the former rocket to pop stardom is imbued with the sort of rockism that typically triggers derision in the current cultural climate. But alongside powerful turns from Cooper and Sam Elliott, Gaga shines brightest with an empathetic performance that presents a summation-in-reverse of the last several years of her career. Since the aggressive blare of 2013's ARTPOP, Gaga has moved further away with every career turn from the brand of pop that put her on the map circa her 2008 debut The Fame; she took up crooning alongside Tony Bennett for 2014's Cheek to Cheek and hopped in the studio with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Father John Misty for 2016's Joanne. When the curtain rises on A Star Is Born, she's covering Edith Piaf with fake eyebrows taped on her face; two hours later, she's a full-blown pop star, complete with backup dancers and split-second costume changes. With a wholly organic and real-feeling performance, Gaga again engages in the blur between person and persona that she's toyed with for much of her iconographic career thus far. Even though Gaga’s performance caps a decade-long run of shapeshifting pop stardom, there’s nothing in the apparently modern-day A Star Is Born that really reflects the actual 2010s pop landscape. For starters, it's a bit difficult to imagine Maine's dyed-in-the-wool country-rock playing to such a huge audience at Coachella, as it does in the film's opening scene; elsewhere, some modern relevance is achieved through a Halsey cameo and a pivotal scene centered around the type of all-star Grammys tribute that typically turns social media into a unanimous airing of grievances. This disconnect from our reality is totally fine: A Star Is Born reaches for and ultimately achieves a timeless vibe that doesn’t require current pop-cultural relevance. The film’s official soundtrack is similarly old-fashioned in its approach, even as its credits include a host of modern songwriters from the pop, country, and rock spheres. Along with Gaga and Cooper, there’s contributions from Jason Isbell, Willie Nelson’s son Lukas, Mark Ronson, Miike Snow frontman Andrew Wyatt, behind-the-scenes pop wizards Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, the list goes on. The songs fall into a few distinct silos—blaring blues-rockers, tender acoustic ballads, anthemic torch songs, and robotic electro-pop—and save for a digital flourish or two on the pop songs that make up much of the film’s back half, there’s very little here that would’ve sounded out of place on blockbuster film soundtracks of decades past. At its peaks, the album delivers on the promise of its star-wattage with some of the most affecting and emotionally overwhelming pop songs of the year. If you’ve spent half a day on the internet over the past several weeks, you’ve likely encountered the explosive Gaga-Cooper duet “Shallow,” and deservedly so; it’s a stormy ballad so instantly iconic that its place in Oscar montages for decades to come is practically guaranteed. At the risk of heresy, though, it might not even count as the strongest song on the album—at the least, it reaches a three-way tie with the swaying, unabashedly sentimental “Always Remember Us This Way” and the film’s stunning, heart-wrenching closer, “I’ll Never Love Again.” Those three standouts heavily feature Gaga—the latter two as solo performances—which speaks to the somewhat uneven nature of the Cooper-led cuts. The simple, sincere, Isbell-penned “Maybe It’s Time” possesses a quiet radiance, but otherwise Cooper’s songs as Maine take on a somewhat anonymous blues-rock shape alongside the soundtrack’s more dynamic moments. Despite the strength of Gaga’s performances captured on this soundtrack—all live takes recorded during filming, an approach that she insisted on—she isn’t totally off the hook when it comes to the lowlights either; the more explicitly pop songs that make up Ally’s ascent as a solo artist range from forgettable (“Heal Me”) to ridiculous (“Why Did You Do That?”). The mere act of engaging with A Star Is Born's songs in a home-listening setting presents a very modern issue: dialogue or no dialogue? Streaming services currently offer both dialogue-free and dialogue-heavy versions of the soundtrack, the latter functioning as a somewhat spoiler-y but surprisingly immersive experience of the film itself. Choosing which version to stream is a peculiar conundrum to face (imagine, for instance, buying two separate copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack), but even though “I’ll Never Love Again” is plenty effective on its own, the dialogue-included version of the song dramatically cuts out in its final seconds the same way the film does: jumping back in time from Gaga’s time-stopping performance to a pivotal and heartbreaking scene that only enhances the song's emotional quotient. The switch-up is a nice trick as a listening experience, but it also unintentionally highlights the incidental flaw of A Star Is Born’s soundtrack: It just can’t pack the emotional punch of watching the songs performed within the film. The live recording of “Always Remember Us This Way” doesn’t capture Gaga’s impassioned physical delivery behind the piano, her face emblazoned on a JumboTron behind her as Cooper goes moony-eyed at her blown-up visage. And as powerful as “Shallow” is, nothing matches the look of genuine surprise on Gaga’s face as Ally, when she hits her higher register for the first time and effectively launches the song into the emotional cosmos and beyond. These moments speak to her obvious strengths as a performer, as well as how impressively the music works in congress with the film’s imagery; you can recreate them in your head while listening, or go for your best Gaga while belting these songs out in the shower, but it’s just not as effective as the real thing."

Saturday Looks Good to Me

Fill Up the Room

Rock

Liz Colville

Fresh off the Polyvinyl boat, Saturday Looks Good to Me release Fill Up the Room, their seventh full-length album and first on K Records. Finally the array of comparisons critics have made regarding this band is to be found in its entirety on the same release. The moody crescendos and meanderings of Fred Thomas' voice cut slices of Stephin Merritt; the shimmying guitars on "Money in the Afterlife" suggest the dance-rock quirks and pop romances of Vampire Weekend, BOAT, and the Brunettes. These great discrepancies of mood and genre slant are welcome as standalone pieces and contributions to the band's already hodgepodge oeuvre. So as a collection, the album is fitful and pleasantly disconcerting, a far cry even from July's Cold Colors EP, which was a wintry aperitif to this full-length's sweet, sultry, and dimly sentimental refreshments. Gone is the muddled production of SLGTM's accomplished singles collection Sound on Sound: here are close-set guitars, warm and furry vocals, and best of all, fully intelligible, wise and realistically poignant lyrics. "When I Lose My Eyes", with an accomplished melody of flits of speedy, echoic guitar, warm washes of sustains, and rhythmic twists, paints an actual scenario-- grounded, concrete, and heavy-- after a long instrumental intro. Thomas sings wistfully, "Me and my best friend/ Sleep without any clothes/ With books on the bedspread/ In languages no one knows/ All the windows are open/ All of the low lights glow/ And we flood all the rooms of our homes/ 'til we float/ And wash out to the street down below." The heady mix of plugging guitars in the left channel and powerful drums in the right soon gives way to a lighter two-step rhythm, string quartet, and more than a little hint of SLGTM's sometime collaborator Ted Leo, whose sheer single-handed guitar power is aptly appropriated here. The vocal-free exit, rife with thumping drum rushes and strummed monotony, pulls the song to a weighty vocal climax of soaring whines-- so the song is worth a whole paragraph. The rest of the album owes a lot to opener "Apple", which borrows more from the band's earliest influences, particularly the carefree narratives and expressive vocals of 1960s rock, which are here turned into a boldly romantic vocal swoon: "I could fill up the room/ With these things/ I've been thinking about you." It forces optimism about the rest of the album and recalls the sensitive, enveloping atmosphere of Menomena's latest, which took us on a retreat where rock songs could be bold and heartfelt missives. Later, indebtedness to Stuart Murdoch may nauseate some listeners on "Peg", but when paired with any other track on the album, Thomas' voice is easily understood as more expressive than one track allows-- each song gives a glimmer of the inflections he will give it elsewhere, as with the whiny, brassy yelps of the simple guitar-pop song "Money in the Afterlife". Some of the songs stutter and stumble, though they're actually the opposite, rhythmically speaking: The clap-happy "Edison Girls" is precise and danceable, but it drawls too heavily in Southern reflections by the electric guitar and Thomas' rhyming adorability is overdone. Betty Marie Barnes' one vocal contribution to this album is the disappointing "Hands in the Snow", a light, fluffy, precisely metered B&S tribute. Enveloping the handful of dull middle songs on the album is aching opener "Apple" and exit track "Whitey Hands", which experiments with a kind of homemade dulcimer, more organic hand claps, and Thomas' voice, which swoops and soars around a beautifully understated rhythm. It's yet more confirmation of this band's overstuffed toolbox-- confused, perhaps, but ultimately rewarding.

Artist: Saturday Looks Good to Me, Album: Fill Up the Room, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Fresh off the Polyvinyl boat, Saturday Looks Good to Me release Fill Up the Room, their seventh full-length album and first on K Records. Finally the array of comparisons critics have made regarding this band is to be found in its entirety on the same release. The moody crescendos and meanderings of Fred Thomas' voice cut slices of Stephin Merritt; the shimmying guitars on "Money in the Afterlife" suggest the dance-rock quirks and pop romances of Vampire Weekend, BOAT, and the Brunettes. These great discrepancies of mood and genre slant are welcome as standalone pieces and contributions to the band's already hodgepodge oeuvre. So as a collection, the album is fitful and pleasantly disconcerting, a far cry even from July's Cold Colors EP, which was a wintry aperitif to this full-length's sweet, sultry, and dimly sentimental refreshments. Gone is the muddled production of SLGTM's accomplished singles collection Sound on Sound: here are close-set guitars, warm and furry vocals, and best of all, fully intelligible, wise and realistically poignant lyrics. "When I Lose My Eyes", with an accomplished melody of flits of speedy, echoic guitar, warm washes of sustains, and rhythmic twists, paints an actual scenario-- grounded, concrete, and heavy-- after a long instrumental intro. Thomas sings wistfully, "Me and my best friend/ Sleep without any clothes/ With books on the bedspread/ In languages no one knows/ All the windows are open/ All of the low lights glow/ And we flood all the rooms of our homes/ 'til we float/ And wash out to the street down below." The heady mix of plugging guitars in the left channel and powerful drums in the right soon gives way to a lighter two-step rhythm, string quartet, and more than a little hint of SLGTM's sometime collaborator Ted Leo, whose sheer single-handed guitar power is aptly appropriated here. The vocal-free exit, rife with thumping drum rushes and strummed monotony, pulls the song to a weighty vocal climax of soaring whines-- so the song is worth a whole paragraph. The rest of the album owes a lot to opener "Apple", which borrows more from the band's earliest influences, particularly the carefree narratives and expressive vocals of 1960s rock, which are here turned into a boldly romantic vocal swoon: "I could fill up the room/ With these things/ I've been thinking about you." It forces optimism about the rest of the album and recalls the sensitive, enveloping atmosphere of Menomena's latest, which took us on a retreat where rock songs could be bold and heartfelt missives. Later, indebtedness to Stuart Murdoch may nauseate some listeners on "Peg", but when paired with any other track on the album, Thomas' voice is easily understood as more expressive than one track allows-- each song gives a glimmer of the inflections he will give it elsewhere, as with the whiny, brassy yelps of the simple guitar-pop song "Money in the Afterlife". Some of the songs stutter and stumble, though they're actually the opposite, rhythmically speaking: The clap-happy "Edison Girls" is precise and danceable, but it drawls too heavily in Southern reflections by the electric guitar and Thomas' rhyming adorability is overdone. Betty Marie Barnes' one vocal contribution to this album is the disappointing "Hands in the Snow", a light, fluffy, precisely metered B&S tribute. Enveloping the handful of dull middle songs on the album is aching opener "Apple" and exit track "Whitey Hands", which experiments with a kind of homemade dulcimer, more organic hand claps, and Thomas' voice, which swoops and soars around a beautifully understated rhythm. It's yet more confirmation of this band's overstuffed toolbox-- confused, perhaps, but ultimately rewarding."

Shannon Lay

Living Water

Folk/Country

Philip Sherburne

A plainspoken mysticism rules heaven and earth on Shannon Lay’s remarkable Living Water, a quiet, mostly acoustic album that is bigger and stranger than its hushed dynamics and finger-picked sparkle might suggest. Crack open the Los Angeles singer-songwriter’s unassuming lyrics and you’ll find pearls of unconventional folk wisdom scattered throughout. “All it is,” she sings on “Orange Tree,” an early highlight, “is simple small and true/You and all connected at the root.” In “Caterpillar,” she contemplates the oceanic dimensions of a life force that “either creates destroys or delivers.” She has a tendency, when grappling with the Big Questions, to follow her train of thought to a place where sung or spoken meter can’t quite keep up (“Life is like the sea/Ever changing in itself and in all of its surroundings”), but what might look chaotic on the page flows as naturally as water when she sings. The sweetness of her voice, with its faint vibrato, along with a trace of placeless accent the Redondo Beach native might have picked up from listening to folk singers from across the Atlantic, smooths her words as they tumble out. She’s best when she goes straight to the small, bright truth of things: “We ask the sky when the answers are right below our feet”; “Life is confusing and we are asleep.” Lay’s sound is not a novel proposition. You can hear affinities with a number of acoustically tinged projects of recent years—Julie Byrne, Big Thief, the Angel Olsen of Half Way Home, as well as a wide range of canonical singer-songwriters: Elliott Smith, Karen Dalton, Nico, Nick Drake. Lay also plays in a garage-punk band, Feels, but there are no echoes of their fuzzy ferocity here. Solo, she sings soft, often melancholy songs accompanied by her own acoustic guitar; a few songs on Living Water feature violin and cello, and there are hints of standup bass in the mix. But her captivating music is distinctive in ways that are hard to put your finger on. The album was recorded by the Cairo Gang’s Emmett Kelly, who also worked on Half Way Home. And instead of the watery reverb of Lay’s debut, All this life goin down, or the close confines of her demo collection, Holy Heartache, he has opted for stark, wide-open atmospheres aching with empty space. (Though Lay’s official debut came out earlier this year, this feels like her de facto introduction to the world, thanks in part to the efforts of Kevin Morby, who is releasing the album on his new Mare imprint, a sub-label of Woodsist.) With few bells or whistles and little studio trickery, the recording puts a primacy on her unusual songwriting and her quietly commanding voice. The haunting opener “Home” offers a good glimpse of what makes Lay’s music special. A thin stripe of violin sets the scene; chiming open fifths move in parallel against a steady, finger-picked ostinato. That repetition, combined with unexpected shifts between minor and major, has a way of bedeviling the usual verse/chorus structures. (She has a knack for forms that leave you feeling slightly off balance without quite knowing why: Another song, “Orange Tree,” is in 6/8 time but is structured in 10-bar phrases.) “Home” is about feeling lost and trapped, yet her chord progressions move as unfettered as weather. She’s not a powerfully melodic singer; she tends to mull over the same notes, alternating high, clear tones with careful melisma. But she is expressive in her dynamics, sliding from forceful to hesitant within the space of a few lines, and the zip of her fingers against the strings accentuates the faintly breathy edge of her voice. It’s a strong choice for an opening statement. It’s unsettling; it leaves you slightly on edge. She has more dulcet modes. “Always Room” could almost be a children’s lullaby, though its whimsical opening refrain—”There’s always room for a little more/And there’s always reason for a little less”—might puzzle even adult ears; I hear it as a kind of bargain struck between frivolity and frugality, pleasure and sense. “The Moons Detriment” is bright-eyed and hopeful, a song about a love that surges “Like an eager new river channel”; “The Search for Gold,” another near-lullaby, promises rebirth “in the grass of a warm summer night.” The image is so sweet, it’s easy to miss the way the next line (“Good and evil through and through”) falls like a shadow over her moonlit reverie. Those shadows are never far from even her most tranquil songs. The nostalgic “Asa” cradles the hope that our best days are not behind us; the dirge-like “Coast” is as turbulent as the conflicted emotions that shape its churning drums and electric feedback. When she wants to, she can be straight-up heartbreaking. On “Recording 15,” she addresses a loved one who is far away—estranged, abroad, maybe dead. “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” she pleads, and then she strikes a nerve so raw, it chills: “I have lived without your touch/For so long that it fades from my memory/I’m so hungry for your touch.” An unflinching portrait of loneliness and desire, it is the most direct of all Living Water’s songs, and also the album’s most unsparing emotional gut-punch. It’s a testament to her restraint that even here, bittersweet never turns maudlin or morose. And maybe it’s a testament to her spirit, too: Living Water is shot through with a kind of ragged hope—not optimism, exactly, but a determined belief in the power of that life force to pull us all toward something like transcendence. It’s there in “Orange Tree,” in the image of the singer finding answers right beneath her feet; it’s there in the title track, an almost animistic snapshot of the Southwestern landscape, where “living water” brings both destruction and salvation. And it’s there in the staggeringly beautiful country blues of “Come Together”: “There’s so much pain dwelling within us all/Don’t go spreading yours around/Oh lord knows/We all have enough,” she sings, in what is one of the record’s truest and most resonant lines. Then a startling thing happens. An electric counterpoint explodes into the frame and her voice fractures into joyous multi-part harmony: “Come on, shake your broken shoulders/Come on, move your broken shoes.” A life-affirming celebration of the wounds we all wear, it perfectly exemplifies Living Water’s seductively deceptive form. Like a late-summer sky the color of robin’s eggs, the album’s outward simplicity masks the vastness of what lies behind.

Artist: Shannon Lay , Album: Living Water, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "A plainspoken mysticism rules heaven and earth on Shannon Lay’s remarkable Living Water, a quiet, mostly acoustic album that is bigger and stranger than its hushed dynamics and finger-picked sparkle might suggest. Crack open the Los Angeles singer-songwriter’s unassuming lyrics and you’ll find pearls of unconventional folk wisdom scattered throughout. “All it is,” she sings on “Orange Tree,” an early highlight, “is simple small and true/You and all connected at the root.” In “Caterpillar,” she contemplates the oceanic dimensions of a life force that “either creates destroys or delivers.” She has a tendency, when grappling with the Big Questions, to follow her train of thought to a place where sung or spoken meter can’t quite keep up (“Life is like the sea/Ever changing in itself and in all of its surroundings”), but what might look chaotic on the page flows as naturally as water when she sings. The sweetness of her voice, with its faint vibrato, along with a trace of placeless accent the Redondo Beach native might have picked up from listening to folk singers from across the Atlantic, smooths her words as they tumble out. She’s best when she goes straight to the small, bright truth of things: “We ask the sky when the answers are right below our feet”; “Life is confusing and we are asleep.” Lay’s sound is not a novel proposition. You can hear affinities with a number of acoustically tinged projects of recent years—Julie Byrne, Big Thief, the Angel Olsen of Half Way Home, as well as a wide range of canonical singer-songwriters: Elliott Smith, Karen Dalton, Nico, Nick Drake. Lay also plays in a garage-punk band, Feels, but there are no echoes of their fuzzy ferocity here. Solo, she sings soft, often melancholy songs accompanied by her own acoustic guitar; a few songs on Living Water feature violin and cello, and there are hints of standup bass in the mix. But her captivating music is distinctive in ways that are hard to put your finger on. The album was recorded by the Cairo Gang’s Emmett Kelly, who also worked on Half Way Home. And instead of the watery reverb of Lay’s debut, All this life goin down, or the close confines of her demo collection, Holy Heartache, he has opted for stark, wide-open atmospheres aching with empty space. (Though Lay’s official debut came out earlier this year, this feels like her de facto introduction to the world, thanks in part to the efforts of Kevin Morby, who is releasing the album on his new Mare imprint, a sub-label of Woodsist.) With few bells or whistles and little studio trickery, the recording puts a primacy on her unusual songwriting and her quietly commanding voice. The haunting opener “Home” offers a good glimpse of what makes Lay’s music special. A thin stripe of violin sets the scene; chiming open fifths move in parallel against a steady, finger-picked ostinato. That repetition, combined with unexpected shifts between minor and major, has a way of bedeviling the usual verse/chorus structures. (She has a knack for forms that leave you feeling slightly off balance without quite knowing why: Another song, “Orange Tree,” is in 6/8 time but is structured in 10-bar phrases.) “Home” is about feeling lost and trapped, yet her chord progressions move as unfettered as weather. She’s not a powerfully melodic singer; she tends to mull over the same notes, alternating high, clear tones with careful melisma. But she is expressive in her dynamics, sliding from forceful to hesitant within the space of a few lines, and the zip of her fingers against the strings accentuates the faintly breathy edge of her voice. It’s a strong choice for an opening statement. It’s unsettling; it leaves you slightly on edge. She has more dulcet modes. “Always Room” could almost be a children’s lullaby, though its whimsical opening refrain—”There’s always room for a little more/And there’s always reason for a little less”—might puzzle even adult ears; I hear it as a kind of bargain struck between frivolity and frugality, pleasure and sense. “The Moons Detriment” is bright-eyed and hopeful, a song about a love that surges “Like an eager new river channel”; “The Search for Gold,” another near-lullaby, promises rebirth “in the grass of a warm summer night.” The image is so sweet, it’s easy to miss the way the next line (“Good and evil through and through”) falls like a shadow over her moonlit reverie. Those shadows are never far from even her most tranquil songs. The nostalgic “Asa” cradles the hope that our best days are not behind us; the dirge-like “Coast” is as turbulent as the conflicted emotions that shape its churning drums and electric feedback. When she wants to, she can be straight-up heartbreaking. On “Recording 15,” she addresses a loved one who is far away—estranged, abroad, maybe dead. “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” she pleads, and then she strikes a nerve so raw, it chills: “I have lived without your touch/For so long that it fades from my memory/I’m so hungry for your touch.” An unflinching portrait of loneliness and desire, it is the most direct of all Living Water’s songs, and also the album’s most unsparing emotional gut-punch. It’s a testament to her restraint that even here, bittersweet never turns maudlin or morose. And maybe it’s a testament to her spirit, too: Living Water is shot through with a kind of ragged hope—not optimism, exactly, but a determined belief in the power of that life force to pull us all toward something like transcendence. It’s there in “Orange Tree,” in the image of the singer finding answers right beneath her feet; it’s there in the title track, an almost animistic snapshot of the Southwestern landscape, where “living water” brings both destruction and salvation. And it’s there in the staggeringly beautiful country blues of “Come Together”: “There’s so much pain dwelling within us all/Don’t go spreading yours around/Oh lord knows/We all have enough,” she sings, in what is one of the record’s truest and most resonant lines. Then a startling thing happens. An electric counterpoint explodes into the frame and her voice fractures into joyous multi-part harmony: “Come on, shake your broken shoulders/Come on, move your broken shoes.” A life-affirming celebration of the wounds we all wear, it perfectly exemplifies Living Water’s seductively deceptive form. Like a late-summer sky the color of robin’s eggs, the album’s outward simplicity masks the vastness of what lies behind."

Cloud Nothings

Last Building Burning

Rock

Evan Rytlewski

On their last album, 2017’s Life Without Sound, Cloud Nothings dialed back the rage and softened their bite. It’s not as if they went full R.E.M. circa Around the Sun or anything; it still delivered the riffs, and frontman Dylan Baldi’s songwriting was typically sharp, but the performances were strangely flat compared to its feverish predecessors. Where the guitars previously would have erupted, they merely preened and sparkled. It was Cloud Nothings’ one album since becoming a bona fide band that never quite achieved liftoff. Life Without Sound fundamentally misunderstood what makes Cloud Nothings such a rare commodity: that tremendous full-throated release their loudest, fastest songs provide. Without that catharsis, they’re just another solid guitar-rock band. That said, Cloud Nothings have always been one of the most adaptive bands in their scene, and on their pressure cooker of a fifth album, Last Building Burning, they rebound with a magnificent course correction. Volume and fury? Sure, they can do that. Still, they meet the demand with almost passive-aggressive relish. In spirit, Last Building Burning marks a return to the self-immolating intensity of their 2012 breakthrough Attack on Memory, yet it’s even more jaded than that record was. On Life Without Sound, Baldi dared to offer something constructive, an earnest commentary on our divided world and the value of looking beyond our self-imposed bubbles, but it didn’t resonate. So here, he takes a more nihilistic approach, retreating back into his head and indulging his ugliest thoughts. On “So Right So Clean,” he cuts down a partner’s ambition with a brusque “I wish I could believe in your dream,” singing as if choking up tufts of barbed wire. “Nothing’s gonna change!” he barks on “Offer an End,” another track fogged by thick coats of murk. As always, Baldi is one of indie rock’s great sloganeers, a lyricist with a gift for mantras that read like they’ve been inked across two fists. “They won’t remember my name/I’ll be alone in my shame!” he repeats on “In Shame,” hammering the hook until his failure sounds like a triumph. And while the album interrupts its fleet pacing for one 11-minute goliath, “Dissolution,” the real showstopper is quickie “Leave Him Now,” where Baldi bluntly implores a friend to leave an abusive relationship before things get worse. “You gotta go right now/Or never at all,” he pleas. If ever a voice were equipped to sell the stakes, it’s his. The track is Cloud Nothings at their best: direct, visceral, vulnerable. It hits in the gut and rings in the head, striking that golden ratio of ferocity and tunefulness that this band does best. It would be a waste for them to mellow out when they still have music like this in them.

Artist: Cloud Nothings, Album: Last Building Burning, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "On their last album, 2017’s Life Without Sound, Cloud Nothings dialed back the rage and softened their bite. It’s not as if they went full R.E.M. circa Around the Sun or anything; it still delivered the riffs, and frontman Dylan Baldi’s songwriting was typically sharp, but the performances were strangely flat compared to its feverish predecessors. Where the guitars previously would have erupted, they merely preened and sparkled. It was Cloud Nothings’ one album since becoming a bona fide band that never quite achieved liftoff. Life Without Sound fundamentally misunderstood what makes Cloud Nothings such a rare commodity: that tremendous full-throated release their loudest, fastest songs provide. Without that catharsis, they’re just another solid guitar-rock band. That said, Cloud Nothings have always been one of the most adaptive bands in their scene, and on their pressure cooker of a fifth album, Last Building Burning, they rebound with a magnificent course correction. Volume and fury? Sure, they can do that. Still, they meet the demand with almost passive-aggressive relish. In spirit, Last Building Burning marks a return to the self-immolating intensity of their 2012 breakthrough Attack on Memory, yet it’s even more jaded than that record was. On Life Without Sound, Baldi dared to offer something constructive, an earnest commentary on our divided world and the value of looking beyond our self-imposed bubbles, but it didn’t resonate. So here, he takes a more nihilistic approach, retreating back into his head and indulging his ugliest thoughts. On “So Right So Clean,” he cuts down a partner’s ambition with a brusque “I wish I could believe in your dream,” singing as if choking up tufts of barbed wire. “Nothing’s gonna change!” he barks on “Offer an End,” another track fogged by thick coats of murk. As always, Baldi is one of indie rock’s great sloganeers, a lyricist with a gift for mantras that read like they’ve been inked across two fists. “They won’t remember my name/I’ll be alone in my shame!” he repeats on “In Shame,” hammering the hook until his failure sounds like a triumph. And while the album interrupts its fleet pacing for one 11-minute goliath, “Dissolution,” the real showstopper is quickie “Leave Him Now,” where Baldi bluntly implores a friend to leave an abusive relationship before things get worse. “You gotta go right now/Or never at all,” he pleas. If ever a voice were equipped to sell the stakes, it’s his. The track is Cloud Nothings at their best: direct, visceral, vulnerable. It hits in the gut and rings in the head, striking that golden ratio of ferocity and tunefulness that this band does best. It would be a waste for them to mellow out when they still have music like this in them."

Dan Bodan

Soft

Jamieson Cox

Dan Bodan’s music is driven by the conflict between his gorgeous, traditionally pleasant voice—a voice he likes to use to bring himself uncomfortably close to his audience—and the production he sings over, modern electronic tapestries that can veer from sentimental to corrosive at a moment’s notice. A Berlin resident who grew up in the Canadian heartland and was forged as an artist in the crucible of the Montreal music scene, Bodan has a set of pipes more suited to adult contemporary radio than a spot on venerable NYC label DFA; with his rich, resonant tone and particular phrasing, he's a little reminiscent of Marc Anthony. But given the sphere in which Bodan is working, more apt comparisons are the work Tom Krell's doing as How to Dress Well, or perhaps the unvarnished and raw indie-pop of Sean Nicholas Savage. Like these artists, Bodan is unafraid to enter sentimental terrain in the pursuit of something radiant and real, and he does so again and again on his debut full-length, Soft. There’s an impressive diversity to the sound of the album. Covers of jazz standards butt up against drum and bass tracks. Bodan will summon the chintzy spirit of Destroyer’s Your Blues with a track like dewy opener "A Soft Opening", only to pivot into amorphous, cracked soul on highlight "Anonymous". All of these detours are linked by that powerful voice, which he pushes to the edge of its capability in several different ways throughout the record. On "Soft as Rain", he tests its range and agility over warm, rounded synth tones; one song later, on "For Heaven’s Sake (Let’s Fall in Love) <3", he takes a song famously rendered by Billie Holiday and performs it with a palpable, unnerving desperation. In his hands, love is a life raft, a dangerous narcotic, a portrait of a partner fractured and faded; by the end of the song, he’s pushing himself in and out of tune and dancing around the beat, as if he’s on the edge of our world. It’s an entrancing, indelible performance, the best of what Bodan has to offer. Bodan’s approach to vocals—the way he searches out boundaries and then pushes at them—is mirrored in his lyrics, an important part of his cultivation of intimacy on Soft. The album is awash in sensuality, from fraught love stories in miniature like "Romeo" and "Rusty" to the set of songs revolving around the titular concept of "softness." Bodan is fond of imagery that takes physical acts and tempers them, granting them a sort of gentleness—a good example can be found on "Soft as Rain", where close contact is reduced to "You fall on me/ Soft as rain"—and numbers, whether it's seven wasted years ("Soft as Rain", again) or $50 worth of cheap cologne ("Anonymous"). This dual focus works to give Soft both personality and specificity; it makes the album feel like a true document of Bodan's life and love in recent years. All that said, when the ways Bodan tries to eliminate distance come together—the voice, the lyrics, the rawness of the emotion on display—the final product can induce claustrophobia. The effect is undeniably powerful, but there's a fine line between powerful and overwhelming, and his work should grow more potent as he manages to find a balance between the two.

Artist: Dan Bodan, Album: Soft, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "Dan Bodan’s music is driven by the conflict between his gorgeous, traditionally pleasant voice—a voice he likes to use to bring himself uncomfortably close to his audience—and the production he sings over, modern electronic tapestries that can veer from sentimental to corrosive at a moment’s notice. A Berlin resident who grew up in the Canadian heartland and was forged as an artist in the crucible of the Montreal music scene, Bodan has a set of pipes more suited to adult contemporary radio than a spot on venerable NYC label DFA; with his rich, resonant tone and particular phrasing, he's a little reminiscent of Marc Anthony. But given the sphere in which Bodan is working, more apt comparisons are the work Tom Krell's doing as How to Dress Well, or perhaps the unvarnished and raw indie-pop of Sean Nicholas Savage. Like these artists, Bodan is unafraid to enter sentimental terrain in the pursuit of something radiant and real, and he does so again and again on his debut full-length, Soft. There’s an impressive diversity to the sound of the album. Covers of jazz standards butt up against drum and bass tracks. Bodan will summon the chintzy spirit of Destroyer’s Your Blues with a track like dewy opener "A Soft Opening", only to pivot into amorphous, cracked soul on highlight "Anonymous". All of these detours are linked by that powerful voice, which he pushes to the edge of its capability in several different ways throughout the record. On "Soft as Rain", he tests its range and agility over warm, rounded synth tones; one song later, on "For Heaven’s Sake (Let’s Fall in Love) <3", he takes a song famously rendered by Billie Holiday and performs it with a palpable, unnerving desperation. In his hands, love is a life raft, a dangerous narcotic, a portrait of a partner fractured and faded; by the end of the song, he’s pushing himself in and out of tune and dancing around the beat, as if he’s on the edge of our world. It’s an entrancing, indelible performance, the best of what Bodan has to offer. Bodan’s approach to vocals—the way he searches out boundaries and then pushes at them—is mirrored in his lyrics, an important part of his cultivation of intimacy on Soft. The album is awash in sensuality, from fraught love stories in miniature like "Romeo" and "Rusty" to the set of songs revolving around the titular concept of "softness." Bodan is fond of imagery that takes physical acts and tempers them, granting them a sort of gentleness—a good example can be found on "Soft as Rain", where close contact is reduced to "You fall on me/ Soft as rain"—and numbers, whether it's seven wasted years ("Soft as Rain", again) or $50 worth of cheap cologne ("Anonymous"). This dual focus works to give Soft both personality and specificity; it makes the album feel like a true document of Bodan's life and love in recent years. All that said, when the ways Bodan tries to eliminate distance come together—the voice, the lyrics, the rawness of the emotion on display—the final product can induce claustrophobia. The effect is undeniably powerful, but there's a fine line between powerful and overwhelming, and his work should grow more potent as he manages to find a balance between the two."

Pharaoh Overlord

II

Rock

Dominique Leone

The vast, blurry landscape of a trip: when you're flying, details are sometimes hard to make out, other times they're enhanced. Sometimes, letting go is the easiest way to get your grip, and as any traveler will tell you, getting there is almost all of the fun. Get it? Unless you're completely wasted, probably not-- this is the crux of stoner wisdom, wherein often you're the only one who knows that you're right. Maybe that's why music made under these circumstances is usually so out there. It probably made sense at the time for Tim Leary and Manuel Gottsching to make all those strange sounds, but to the indifferent observer they are something else altogether. This isn't to say chemically enhanced music only makes sense to the tuned in and turned on, but I'd argue it's probably much easier to find common ground when you're high. Enter Finland's Pharaoh Overlord, a project led by guitarist Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle, themselves good for a lengthy excursion or three into outer space. The flavor on their second release is decidedly passive where Circle are prone to brute force. Rather than concoct trance via mere repetition, Pharaoh Overlord realize that the quickest way to a sedated heart is to ease in gradually, massaging all the rough edges away and keeping the traveler effortlessly afloat. Fuck, more herb nonsense-- anyway, you probably get the idea. If not, may I suggest that these guys come off like an intensely comfortable version of Acid Mothers Temple, minus all that guitar squealing nonsense. For the straight-edgers in the audience, just consider it the next best thing to warm milk before bed. "Komaron Runner" wastes little time establishing the mildly disorientating quease-trance that Pharaoh Overlord specialize in. A gauze of distant, howling breeze covers the minimal guitar-bass-drums vamp like a layer of heavy white smoke. The sound approaches lo-fi even as the layers of soft noise build, giving the tune an ominous, hazy depth. The band play everything pretty slow, and prefer extremely minor variations on the same basic riff played continuously, rather than muck up the mix with extraneous "psychedelic" effects (Cotton Casino, I'm looking in your direction). Likewise, "Dark Temper" wrings plenty of mileage out of its snaky, pseudo-blues thang using little more than that same smoggy veneer and surprisingly subtle guitar figures. The end result is like a younger cousin to Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" crossed with Funkadelic's "Music for Your Mother", but with no vocals, you're free to follow your own narrative. Slightly less engaging is "Skyline", if only because it tends to follow the more obvious path to bliss via mind-numbing repetition. There's a good chance you'll have the main riff from this tune permanently ingrained after hearing it a few times-- whether or not that translates to ever wanting to play it again depends on your affinity for pre-school blues riffery (and general level of patience). "August" and "Love Unfiltered" opt for acoustic textures, though not at the expense of the already well-stated preference for sludgy garage rock grooves. The former tune is almost folky, with a dual finger picked guitar attack, good for back porch revelations on a dead-hot summer evening. The latter is more overtly spacey, though in truth, the differences between these two songs (and much of the album) might well come down to how willing you are to be hypnotized: waiting for "something" to happen is probably beside the point. II won't change the face of rock, or even psyche-rock. There are literally hundreds of albums from the late 60s and early 70s out there that will do a similar trick, though I suppose if you aren't willing to scour eBay like greasy collector scum, Pharaoh Overlord can provide a valuable service at a fraction of the price. Like any decent trip, this music will serve you best when you've cleared your mind, sat back and accepted that you aren't going anywhere beyond the bizarre corridors of your mind. Motherfucker, I just lapsed into that shit again! Anyway...you know what I'm talkin' about, man.

Artist: Pharaoh Overlord, Album: II, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "The vast, blurry landscape of a trip: when you're flying, details are sometimes hard to make out, other times they're enhanced. Sometimes, letting go is the easiest way to get your grip, and as any traveler will tell you, getting there is almost all of the fun. Get it? Unless you're completely wasted, probably not-- this is the crux of stoner wisdom, wherein often you're the only one who knows that you're right. Maybe that's why music made under these circumstances is usually so out there. It probably made sense at the time for Tim Leary and Manuel Gottsching to make all those strange sounds, but to the indifferent observer they are something else altogether. This isn't to say chemically enhanced music only makes sense to the tuned in and turned on, but I'd argue it's probably much easier to find common ground when you're high. Enter Finland's Pharaoh Overlord, a project led by guitarist Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle, themselves good for a lengthy excursion or three into outer space. The flavor on their second release is decidedly passive where Circle are prone to brute force. Rather than concoct trance via mere repetition, Pharaoh Overlord realize that the quickest way to a sedated heart is to ease in gradually, massaging all the rough edges away and keeping the traveler effortlessly afloat. Fuck, more herb nonsense-- anyway, you probably get the idea. If not, may I suggest that these guys come off like an intensely comfortable version of Acid Mothers Temple, minus all that guitar squealing nonsense. For the straight-edgers in the audience, just consider it the next best thing to warm milk before bed. "Komaron Runner" wastes little time establishing the mildly disorientating quease-trance that Pharaoh Overlord specialize in. A gauze of distant, howling breeze covers the minimal guitar-bass-drums vamp like a layer of heavy white smoke. The sound approaches lo-fi even as the layers of soft noise build, giving the tune an ominous, hazy depth. The band play everything pretty slow, and prefer extremely minor variations on the same basic riff played continuously, rather than muck up the mix with extraneous "psychedelic" effects (Cotton Casino, I'm looking in your direction). Likewise, "Dark Temper" wrings plenty of mileage out of its snaky, pseudo-blues thang using little more than that same smoggy veneer and surprisingly subtle guitar figures. The end result is like a younger cousin to Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" crossed with Funkadelic's "Music for Your Mother", but with no vocals, you're free to follow your own narrative. Slightly less engaging is "Skyline", if only because it tends to follow the more obvious path to bliss via mind-numbing repetition. There's a good chance you'll have the main riff from this tune permanently ingrained after hearing it a few times-- whether or not that translates to ever wanting to play it again depends on your affinity for pre-school blues riffery (and general level of patience). "August" and "Love Unfiltered" opt for acoustic textures, though not at the expense of the already well-stated preference for sludgy garage rock grooves. The former tune is almost folky, with a dual finger picked guitar attack, good for back porch revelations on a dead-hot summer evening. The latter is more overtly spacey, though in truth, the differences between these two songs (and much of the album) might well come down to how willing you are to be hypnotized: waiting for "something" to happen is probably beside the point. II won't change the face of rock, or even psyche-rock. There are literally hundreds of albums from the late 60s and early 70s out there that will do a similar trick, though I suppose if you aren't willing to scour eBay like greasy collector scum, Pharaoh Overlord can provide a valuable service at a fraction of the price. Like any decent trip, this music will serve you best when you've cleared your mind, sat back and accepted that you aren't going anywhere beyond the bizarre corridors of your mind. Motherfucker, I just lapsed into that shit again! Anyway...you know what I'm talkin' about, man."

Lilacs & Champagne

Danish & Blue

Rock

Nick Neyland

The second album from Lilacs & Champagne takes the provocation of yesteryear and softens it at the corners, offering a form of easy-on-the-ear radicalism. It's not an overtly political work, although it is one that illustrates how just about anything can retreat into the margins and become a form of background noise. Lilacs & Champagne are the sample-happy duo of Alex Hall and Emil Amos, who craft this stuff away from their main focus in the instrumental rock act Grails. This is a continuation of the work started on their eponymous 2012 debut, with porn and B-movie dialogue mixed up with studied guitar soloing and a blitz of lounge oriented samples. The title is presumably a reference to Danish Blue, a documentary from 1968 that advocated for the legalization of pornography in Denmark. But nothing here seeks to agitate, instead taking outsider art and attempting to expose its soft underbelly. The references Hall and Amos flip through in their work are an amalgam of the overt and the obscure. "Alone Again And..." offers a reduction of the hippy protest dream that makes a titular reference to Arthur Lee's work in Love, while the following "Police Story" works through familiar emblems from TV cop show themes. But the cut-and-paste nature of their work means it doesn't just hark back to the original source material-- it does it by way of similarly minded 90s artists such as Tipsy and Sukia, who both had a fondness for piecing tracks together around lounge/exotica samples. The difference here is that this album is a much more passive listening experience, not really inviting the listener to get involved, apparently content to let everything sink into the sidelines. Even an intentional piece of button-pushing dialogue on the title track is barely pushed to the fore. You almost expect someone to leap out and apologise for it being there. That coy sense of playfulness is a big part of the appeal when Hall and Amos get it right. The expertly disjointed "Sour/Sweet" finds beauty in twining peace with chaos, where a scattered drum sample drunkenly lurches into cut-ups of a fresh soul singer. It doesn't belabor the point, getting out in just over two-minutes, offering the perfect distillation of what this band could potentially be. The longer material often gets ponderous, attempting to find a resting ground between psychedelic guitar stokes and something approaching easy listening, but failing to really tap into the power of either. When Stereolab were sourcing artists like Esquivel and Martin Denny, they primarily recognized the striking sounds they were using, culled from strange percussion tools, odd deviations in dynamics, or a great sway of vocal harmonies. Danish & Blue doesn’t get to that spot, instead settling into being that thing you hum while doing other, more important things. Hall has stated that this record is intended to be a "direct tribute to the musical outsiders of the past," which makes a strange fit for the reticence and casual air of the album. In a sense it's a logical next step for the dilution of works that could once have been read as insurrectionary, a further blunting of the knife for anyone who might still be incensed that music by the Clash was used in a jeans ad. Taking that fire and pushing it further into the background, turning it into an approximation of what Erik Satie wonderfully dubbed "furniture music," feels like an endpoint of sorts, if not a particularly interesting one. But Danish & Blue doesn't come close to either making a statement or reaching into the daze that made their debut so pleasingly disorienting. This is the early-hours sound you nod off to, not the one that has you second guessing what you heard.

Artist: Lilacs & Champagne, Album: Danish & Blue, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "The second album from Lilacs & Champagne takes the provocation of yesteryear and softens it at the corners, offering a form of easy-on-the-ear radicalism. It's not an overtly political work, although it is one that illustrates how just about anything can retreat into the margins and become a form of background noise. Lilacs & Champagne are the sample-happy duo of Alex Hall and Emil Amos, who craft this stuff away from their main focus in the instrumental rock act Grails. This is a continuation of the work started on their eponymous 2012 debut, with porn and B-movie dialogue mixed up with studied guitar soloing and a blitz of lounge oriented samples. The title is presumably a reference to Danish Blue, a documentary from 1968 that advocated for the legalization of pornography in Denmark. But nothing here seeks to agitate, instead taking outsider art and attempting to expose its soft underbelly. The references Hall and Amos flip through in their work are an amalgam of the overt and the obscure. "Alone Again And..." offers a reduction of the hippy protest dream that makes a titular reference to Arthur Lee's work in Love, while the following "Police Story" works through familiar emblems from TV cop show themes. But the cut-and-paste nature of their work means it doesn't just hark back to the original source material-- it does it by way of similarly minded 90s artists such as Tipsy and Sukia, who both had a fondness for piecing tracks together around lounge/exotica samples. The difference here is that this album is a much more passive listening experience, not really inviting the listener to get involved, apparently content to let everything sink into the sidelines. Even an intentional piece of button-pushing dialogue on the title track is barely pushed to the fore. You almost expect someone to leap out and apologise for it being there. That coy sense of playfulness is a big part of the appeal when Hall and Amos get it right. The expertly disjointed "Sour/Sweet" finds beauty in twining peace with chaos, where a scattered drum sample drunkenly lurches into cut-ups of a fresh soul singer. It doesn't belabor the point, getting out in just over two-minutes, offering the perfect distillation of what this band could potentially be. The longer material often gets ponderous, attempting to find a resting ground between psychedelic guitar stokes and something approaching easy listening, but failing to really tap into the power of either. When Stereolab were sourcing artists like Esquivel and Martin Denny, they primarily recognized the striking sounds they were using, culled from strange percussion tools, odd deviations in dynamics, or a great sway of vocal harmonies. Danish & Blue doesn’t get to that spot, instead settling into being that thing you hum while doing other, more important things. Hall has stated that this record is intended to be a "direct tribute to the musical outsiders of the past," which makes a strange fit for the reticence and casual air of the album. In a sense it's a logical next step for the dilution of works that could once have been read as insurrectionary, a further blunting of the knife for anyone who might still be incensed that music by the Clash was used in a jeans ad. Taking that fire and pushing it further into the background, turning it into an approximation of what Erik Satie wonderfully dubbed "furniture music," feels like an endpoint of sorts, if not a particularly interesting one. But Danish & Blue doesn't come close to either making a statement or reaching into the daze that made their debut so pleasingly disorienting. This is the early-hours sound you nod off to, not the one that has you second guessing what you heard."

Chris Knox

Beat

Rock

Michael Sandlin

You may remember Chris Knox from his old band, the Tall Dwarfs, as they were spawned from the same New Zealand indie label, Flying Nun, as the Verlaines, the Chills, and the Clean. If you're unfamiliar with these bands, call up Steve Malkmus, Lou Barlow, Ira Kaplan and countless others who've learned plenty from Knox and his Flying Nun mates. Along with other hugely influential but semi-obscure lo-fi innovators such as Young Marble Giants, Knox has done more with merely a voice, synthesizer, simple guitar, and drum machines than most could do with an orchestra. Knox, however, is no longer notorious for onstage self-laceration (he used to carve himself up with whatever jagged objects happened to be lying around); at 47, he rarely puts himself under the knife anymore. These days, Knox often tours in support of the bands he and the Tall Dwarfs helped to inspire, like Yo La Tengo, for instance. In concert, he dresses like your average beach bum. He wears that executive secretary/Madonna-esque headgear with the portable microphone. This way he can float freely, sometimes crooning dementedly to individual audience members. Knox will even persuade fans to come up and play his simple songs while he dashes off for a quick piss. These healthy bits of forced egalitarianism make the Chris Knox live experience a shared one, whether you like it or not. And that's a good thing. Iggy would be proud. Upon hearing Knox's latest, Beat, it seems he's still most happy when exploring the shadowy nooks and crannies of the human psyche. Knox revels in the dark psychological spaces that most songwriters, even those considered "confessional," conveniently avoid. But there's an element of humor underpinning all this too, sick as it may sometimes be. As expected, the music itself is just about as minimal as straight tonal composition will allow. Knox uses his limited technical abilities to great advantage, banging out a few chords on the electric piano or guitar. The beat is usually supplied by a drum machine, or sometimes nothing at all. Knox loves getting across simple pop melodies, too, which serve as a great foil for his pessimistic lyrics. Occasionally, he'll interject some stabbing fuzz guitar into the mix, or hang a nice, thick feedback curtain over a verse or two. What more do you really need? The subject matter Knox tackles is, on the surface, what you might expect of a mad genius pushing 50: twisted love songs, ruminations on aging, human nature, mortality. Sometimes the lyrics conform to the overall minimalist ethic, as Knox may simply repeat a couple of lines, as on "It's Love." ("I need you/ I need you every single day.") Often, though, he juxtaposes the complex, extended lyric with conventional pop changes, like on "What Do We Do with Love," a cute little song about the myriad ways people exploit and abuse this strange and often dangerous phenomenon known as "love." "Everyone's Cool" examines the human animal's self-deluding assumption that we're all so damn special and unique. Knox suggests that we're basically all just a slightly different version of the same self-obsessed, egotistical, over-emotional wanker. But the most affecting song has to be "Becoming Something Other," about a man coming to terms with his father being a wheelchair-bound vegetable: the old man is paralyzed, unable to speak coherently, and trying to express to his son that he's dying. Knox spares none of the ugly details of this encounter, and it's damn disturbing to say the least. There's nothing more than an eerie keyboard drone in the background, and the chords shift in achingly slow increments-- aptly representative of the father's slow but steady mental and physical deterioration. As you can see, Knox can be just as cynical, bitchy and depressing as he is charming. But, hey, that's why we love him. So don't count on Knox becoming the new guest host on Live with Regis anytime soon. Free of the debilitating, art-killing curse of mainstream success, Knox proves he's still a vital voice reverberating from rock's fertile underground-- much like he was twenty years ago. What's next? Hard to say. Maybe someday he'll learn to play an instrument. But let's hope not.

Artist: Chris Knox, Album: Beat, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "You may remember Chris Knox from his old band, the Tall Dwarfs, as they were spawned from the same New Zealand indie label, Flying Nun, as the Verlaines, the Chills, and the Clean. If you're unfamiliar with these bands, call up Steve Malkmus, Lou Barlow, Ira Kaplan and countless others who've learned plenty from Knox and his Flying Nun mates. Along with other hugely influential but semi-obscure lo-fi innovators such as Young Marble Giants, Knox has done more with merely a voice, synthesizer, simple guitar, and drum machines than most could do with an orchestra. Knox, however, is no longer notorious for onstage self-laceration (he used to carve himself up with whatever jagged objects happened to be lying around); at 47, he rarely puts himself under the knife anymore. These days, Knox often tours in support of the bands he and the Tall Dwarfs helped to inspire, like Yo La Tengo, for instance. In concert, he dresses like your average beach bum. He wears that executive secretary/Madonna-esque headgear with the portable microphone. This way he can float freely, sometimes crooning dementedly to individual audience members. Knox will even persuade fans to come up and play his simple songs while he dashes off for a quick piss. These healthy bits of forced egalitarianism make the Chris Knox live experience a shared one, whether you like it or not. And that's a good thing. Iggy would be proud. Upon hearing Knox's latest, Beat, it seems he's still most happy when exploring the shadowy nooks and crannies of the human psyche. Knox revels in the dark psychological spaces that most songwriters, even those considered "confessional," conveniently avoid. But there's an element of humor underpinning all this too, sick as it may sometimes be. As expected, the music itself is just about as minimal as straight tonal composition will allow. Knox uses his limited technical abilities to great advantage, banging out a few chords on the electric piano or guitar. The beat is usually supplied by a drum machine, or sometimes nothing at all. Knox loves getting across simple pop melodies, too, which serve as a great foil for his pessimistic lyrics. Occasionally, he'll interject some stabbing fuzz guitar into the mix, or hang a nice, thick feedback curtain over a verse or two. What more do you really need? The subject matter Knox tackles is, on the surface, what you might expect of a mad genius pushing 50: twisted love songs, ruminations on aging, human nature, mortality. Sometimes the lyrics conform to the overall minimalist ethic, as Knox may simply repeat a couple of lines, as on "It's Love." ("I need you/ I need you every single day.") Often, though, he juxtaposes the complex, extended lyric with conventional pop changes, like on "What Do We Do with Love," a cute little song about the myriad ways people exploit and abuse this strange and often dangerous phenomenon known as "love." "Everyone's Cool" examines the human animal's self-deluding assumption that we're all so damn special and unique. Knox suggests that we're basically all just a slightly different version of the same self-obsessed, egotistical, over-emotional wanker. But the most affecting song has to be "Becoming Something Other," about a man coming to terms with his father being a wheelchair-bound vegetable: the old man is paralyzed, unable to speak coherently, and trying to express to his son that he's dying. Knox spares none of the ugly details of this encounter, and it's damn disturbing to say the least. There's nothing more than an eerie keyboard drone in the background, and the chords shift in achingly slow increments-- aptly representative of the father's slow but steady mental and physical deterioration. As you can see, Knox can be just as cynical, bitchy and depressing as he is charming. But, hey, that's why we love him. So don't count on Knox becoming the new guest host on Live with Regis anytime soon. Free of the debilitating, art-killing curse of mainstream success, Knox proves he's still a vital voice reverberating from rock's fertile underground-- much like he was twenty years ago. What's next? Hard to say. Maybe someday he'll learn to play an instrument. But let's hope not."

Beat Happening

Music to Climb the Apple Tree By

Rock

Brandon Stosuy

A decade ago, I loudly expounded upon Beat Happening's Spartan beauty to a pack of rabid, cynical post-hardcore friends of mine who, try as they might, could only see childish amateurism in Bret Lunsford, Calvin Johnson, and Heather Lewis's rustic childhood sing-alongs. I was a teenage devotee. When naysayers complained that Dreamy was hollow, I explained that Beat Happening didn't need a bassist because Calvin's voice was deep enough to supply endless roots. When Mel Bay graduates groaned about the primitive rock drumming and simple guitar strums, I wrote essays in the school paper about why the trio's minimalism eloquently flew in the face of cheesy rock star excess; and besides, the Olympians perfected a dark, perverse sweetness I only ever really saw in my favorite books. In the sparest of tunes about hot chocolate boys, holding hands after sex, or eating wild cherries and french toast at cemeteries, Beat Happening's songs were dumpster-diving romantic. Live, Calvin's oddball dances and wide-eyed charisma created a dose of creepy punk-confrontation-cum-childhood-trauma and was more unnerving than the faceless dudes next door wallowing in a generic sea of uninspired tough-guy Sam Ash tropes. Subsequently, these darker, headier aspects of Beat Happening's poetry were lost to twee-pop groups like Cub, Bunnygrunt, and dozens of pixie-stix-sucking copycat dorks who misinterpreted the trio's outer-id lyricism as a call for lunchbox-toting kindergarten cuddlecore. Though I'm no fan of Bret, Calvin, or Heather's later work, as Beat Happening they epitomized a Blake-as-teenage-punk philosophy. Their aesthetic was so pared down that it barely allowed room for a misfire from their formative bare-bones autism in the early 80s to 1992's fleshed-out grand finale, You Turn Me On. Second maybe only to Fugazi in my formative musical worldview, and ripe for a reconsideration by youngsters who perhaps only know the autumnal anthem "Indian Summer" through Luna's soporific cover, the band's entire output was collected on last year's Crashing Through-- titled after a track from 1988's Jamboree-- a retrospective seven-disc box set complete with an extensive 96-page booklet authored by fellow salad-day traveller Lois Maffeo. Music to Climb the Apple Tree By, which was included with that box set, compiles fifteen songs recorded between 1984 and 2000, including the original version of "Nancy Sin" and the four dense, acrobatic tracks that comprised the band's 1988's split EP with Screaming Trees. Other highlights include Beat Happening's newest, but equally spare compositions: "Angel Gone" and "Zombie Limbo Time" from 2000's Angel Gone seven-inch, and the still-great "Foggy Eyes", which was first included on their self-titled 1985 debut and later covered on the 1991 Beat Happening tribute Fortune Cookie Prize by Seaweed in a version predictably raucous enough for even the most macho of naysayers. Fifteen tracks, of course, is but a tiny blip in a lengthy oeuvre, and despite my high opinion of Beat Happening, Music to Climb the Apple Tree By, like most hodgepodge singles collections, not only ends in a preposition, but lacks narrative cohesion as though waiting for the rest of the sentence to show up and complete the thought. I'm a stalwart fan of original album sequences, especially the way songs play off one another after years of close proximity; the new placement of these tracks doesn't feel correct somehow-- it's more like the ahistorical, catch-all desktop of an MP3 fanatic than those fully realized rainy-day adventure stories for which I enjoyed Beat Happening the most. Most kindly put, Music to Climb the Apple Tree By works as a reminder of a particularly great band, and it had me cycling obsessively through the lost corners of my record collection for my copy of Dreamy. If this is your first listen, use these tiny pop moments as the impetus for a more complete investigation of a band you should already know by heart.

Artist: Beat Happening, Album: Music to Climb the Apple Tree By, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "A decade ago, I loudly expounded upon Beat Happening's Spartan beauty to a pack of rabid, cynical post-hardcore friends of mine who, try as they might, could only see childish amateurism in Bret Lunsford, Calvin Johnson, and Heather Lewis's rustic childhood sing-alongs. I was a teenage devotee. When naysayers complained that Dreamy was hollow, I explained that Beat Happening didn't need a bassist because Calvin's voice was deep enough to supply endless roots. When Mel Bay graduates groaned about the primitive rock drumming and simple guitar strums, I wrote essays in the school paper about why the trio's minimalism eloquently flew in the face of cheesy rock star excess; and besides, the Olympians perfected a dark, perverse sweetness I only ever really saw in my favorite books. In the sparest of tunes about hot chocolate boys, holding hands after sex, or eating wild cherries and french toast at cemeteries, Beat Happening's songs were dumpster-diving romantic. Live, Calvin's oddball dances and wide-eyed charisma created a dose of creepy punk-confrontation-cum-childhood-trauma and was more unnerving than the faceless dudes next door wallowing in a generic sea of uninspired tough-guy Sam Ash tropes. Subsequently, these darker, headier aspects of Beat Happening's poetry were lost to twee-pop groups like Cub, Bunnygrunt, and dozens of pixie-stix-sucking copycat dorks who misinterpreted the trio's outer-id lyricism as a call for lunchbox-toting kindergarten cuddlecore. Though I'm no fan of Bret, Calvin, or Heather's later work, as Beat Happening they epitomized a Blake-as-teenage-punk philosophy. Their aesthetic was so pared down that it barely allowed room for a misfire from their formative bare-bones autism in the early 80s to 1992's fleshed-out grand finale, You Turn Me On. Second maybe only to Fugazi in my formative musical worldview, and ripe for a reconsideration by youngsters who perhaps only know the autumnal anthem "Indian Summer" through Luna's soporific cover, the band's entire output was collected on last year's Crashing Through-- titled after a track from 1988's Jamboree-- a retrospective seven-disc box set complete with an extensive 96-page booklet authored by fellow salad-day traveller Lois Maffeo. Music to Climb the Apple Tree By, which was included with that box set, compiles fifteen songs recorded between 1984 and 2000, including the original version of "Nancy Sin" and the four dense, acrobatic tracks that comprised the band's 1988's split EP with Screaming Trees. Other highlights include Beat Happening's newest, but equally spare compositions: "Angel Gone" and "Zombie Limbo Time" from 2000's Angel Gone seven-inch, and the still-great "Foggy Eyes", which was first included on their self-titled 1985 debut and later covered on the 1991 Beat Happening tribute Fortune Cookie Prize by Seaweed in a version predictably raucous enough for even the most macho of naysayers. Fifteen tracks, of course, is but a tiny blip in a lengthy oeuvre, and despite my high opinion of Beat Happening, Music to Climb the Apple Tree By, like most hodgepodge singles collections, not only ends in a preposition, but lacks narrative cohesion as though waiting for the rest of the sentence to show up and complete the thought. I'm a stalwart fan of original album sequences, especially the way songs play off one another after years of close proximity; the new placement of these tracks doesn't feel correct somehow-- it's more like the ahistorical, catch-all desktop of an MP3 fanatic than those fully realized rainy-day adventure stories for which I enjoyed Beat Happening the most. Most kindly put, Music to Climb the Apple Tree By works as a reminder of a particularly great band, and it had me cycling obsessively through the lost corners of my record collection for my copy of Dreamy. If this is your first listen, use these tiny pop moments as the impetus for a more complete investigation of a band you should already know by heart."

Ricky Eat Acid

Three Love Songs

Electronic

Marc Hogan

Music that's "as ignorable as it is interesting," to use Brian Eno's famous phrase about the ambient genre, can pack an emotional wallop, too—what if the wallpaper reminds you of an ex? Or of a long-gone grandmother? The techno whizzes over at Germany's Kompakt label recently released their 14th annual Pop Ambient compilation, but lower-case "pop ambient" still seems like a useful phrase to describe records that mix unobtrusive electronic drifts with the basic but intense #feels you might expect from more linear types of songwriting. The ghost of Drake hovers over the tune on Ricky Eat Acid's Three Love Songs that would be most likely to fit on one of those Pop Ambient comps. "In my dreams we're almost touching" flips the "my only wish is I die real" bit of the rapper's 2011 Take Care title track (via a cover version) and lofts it over percolating thumps and whirring synths. At once hypnotic, triumphant, and bittersweet, it's something like Kompakt star the Field gone piano-house, with dance-diva vocals reaching heavenward and then disintegrating as if you were listening to it on a tape player with a battery that's giving up the ghost. Nothing else on the album is quite like this, and certainly nothing is as immediate. The rest of Three Love Songs is pop-ambient in more of a lower-case sense, and that works, too. Ricky Eat Acid is Sam Ray, a Maryland-based musician who has his hand in a few other projects and was booked to open a late-February New York City show by R&B aesthetes Rhye; wonderfully (and tellingly), a recent mix Ray made for The Fader consists mostly of scruffy, heart-on-sleeve indie guitar pop from bands like Go Sailor, Joanna Gruesome, and Rocketship. Though it takes this album until the eighth of 12 songs to reach its dying-real pinnacle—the LP title is a slight misnomer—how it gets there is a patient journey across nuanced, digital-meets-organic soundscapes, fraught with gnawing heartache and wistful reminiscence. Three Love Songs is Ricky Eat Acid's first album available on vinyl, and the first vinyl release from Brooklyn's Orchid Tapes. Part of why it's so affecting comes down to an inspired and strategic use of the format. Side one is almost entirely drum-less, but each flickering vignette, heavy with found sounds, is different enough from the last that by the time a preacher starts spewing fire and brimstone on the fifth (and first substantial) track, the seven-minute "In rural virginia; watching glowing lights crawl from the dark corners of the room", it's, well—not quite a come-to-Jesus moment, but pretty close. The slightly uncanny piano loops of fuzz-caked mid-album track "Inside your house; it will swallow us too" are in their own way almost as catchy as "In my dreams we're almost touching"; piano carries over to Clams Casino-like side-A closer "It will draw me over to it like it always does", which finally adds percussion and a sung vocal sample. Not a moment too soon, or too late. One predecessor for this type of unguardedly emotional, magpie downtempo might be late, great Swedish duo Air France's 2008 No Way Down EP. The sonic similarity is clearest on the second of Three Love Songs' two (one for each side) seven-minute opuses, the instrumental "Outside your house; the lights went out & there was nothing", with its sumptuous viola next to IDM-bustling beats and opulent keys. But there's a bigger spiritual affinity: The choir-like vocals and shrill hum of Yo La Tengo-referencing hymn "I can hear the heart breaking as one" would be out of character from the Swedes, but the "sort of like a dream, no better" quality, that heart-in-throat sense of of being suspended between planes of existence. Finale "Starting over", meanwhile, ripples like Deerhunter man Bradford Cox's more esoteric blog-only Atlas Sound tracks. The ultimate forebear for Three Love Songs would have to be the KLF's 1990 ambient-house landmark Chill Out, with its strong sense of place, its free-flowing evocativeness, and its samples ranging from Elvis to an evangelist's sermon—the gleefully trolling UK duo had a fever, and the only prescription was more Tuvan throat singing! A Pitchfork writer once quoted another describing that album as "the sound of music having dreams about music"; again, for what it's worth, "In my dreams we're almost touching" samples a cover of a Drake (and Rihanna) song that samples a Jamie xx remix of a Gil Scott-Heron song (that was actually a cover of a pop standard). Three Love Songs might be the sound of music having a dream within a dream about music. And in those dreams, it's almost touching.

Artist: Ricky Eat Acid, Album: Three Love Songs, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Music that's "as ignorable as it is interesting," to use Brian Eno's famous phrase about the ambient genre, can pack an emotional wallop, too—what if the wallpaper reminds you of an ex? Or of a long-gone grandmother? The techno whizzes over at Germany's Kompakt label recently released their 14th annual Pop Ambient compilation, but lower-case "pop ambient" still seems like a useful phrase to describe records that mix unobtrusive electronic drifts with the basic but intense #feels you might expect from more linear types of songwriting. The ghost of Drake hovers over the tune on Ricky Eat Acid's Three Love Songs that would be most likely to fit on one of those Pop Ambient comps. "In my dreams we're almost touching" flips the "my only wish is I die real" bit of the rapper's 2011 Take Care title track (via a cover version) and lofts it over percolating thumps and whirring synths. At once hypnotic, triumphant, and bittersweet, it's something like Kompakt star the Field gone piano-house, with dance-diva vocals reaching heavenward and then disintegrating as if you were listening to it on a tape player with a battery that's giving up the ghost. Nothing else on the album is quite like this, and certainly nothing is as immediate. The rest of Three Love Songs is pop-ambient in more of a lower-case sense, and that works, too. Ricky Eat Acid is Sam Ray, a Maryland-based musician who has his hand in a few other projects and was booked to open a late-February New York City show by R&B aesthetes Rhye; wonderfully (and tellingly), a recent mix Ray made for The Fader consists mostly of scruffy, heart-on-sleeve indie guitar pop from bands like Go Sailor, Joanna Gruesome, and Rocketship. Though it takes this album until the eighth of 12 songs to reach its dying-real pinnacle—the LP title is a slight misnomer—how it gets there is a patient journey across nuanced, digital-meets-organic soundscapes, fraught with gnawing heartache and wistful reminiscence. Three Love Songs is Ricky Eat Acid's first album available on vinyl, and the first vinyl release from Brooklyn's Orchid Tapes. Part of why it's so affecting comes down to an inspired and strategic use of the format. Side one is almost entirely drum-less, but each flickering vignette, heavy with found sounds, is different enough from the last that by the time a preacher starts spewing fire and brimstone on the fifth (and first substantial) track, the seven-minute "In rural virginia; watching glowing lights crawl from the dark corners of the room", it's, well—not quite a come-to-Jesus moment, but pretty close. The slightly uncanny piano loops of fuzz-caked mid-album track "Inside your house; it will swallow us too" are in their own way almost as catchy as "In my dreams we're almost touching"; piano carries over to Clams Casino-like side-A closer "It will draw me over to it like it always does", which finally adds percussion and a sung vocal sample. Not a moment too soon, or too late. One predecessor for this type of unguardedly emotional, magpie downtempo might be late, great Swedish duo Air France's 2008 No Way Down EP. The sonic similarity is clearest on the second of Three Love Songs' two (one for each side) seven-minute opuses, the instrumental "Outside your house; the lights went out & there was nothing", with its sumptuous viola next to IDM-bustling beats and opulent keys. But there's a bigger spiritual affinity: The choir-like vocals and shrill hum of Yo La Tengo-referencing hymn "I can hear the heart breaking as one" would be out of character from the Swedes, but the "sort of like a dream, no better" quality, that heart-in-throat sense of of being suspended between planes of existence. Finale "Starting over", meanwhile, ripples like Deerhunter man Bradford Cox's more esoteric blog-only Atlas Sound tracks. The ultimate forebear for Three Love Songs would have to be the KLF's 1990 ambient-house landmark Chill Out, with its strong sense of place, its free-flowing evocativeness, and its samples ranging from Elvis to an evangelist's sermon—the gleefully trolling UK duo had a fever, and the only prescription was more Tuvan throat singing! A Pitchfork writer once quoted another describing that album as "the sound of music having dreams about music"; again, for what it's worth, "In my dreams we're almost touching" samples a cover of a Drake (and Rihanna) song that samples a Jamie xx remix of a Gil Scott-Heron song (that was actually a cover of a pop standard). Three Love Songs might be the sound of music having a dream within a dream about music. And in those dreams, it's almost touching."