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Danielson Famile

A Prayer for Every Hour

Rock

William Bowers

If you're like most Americans your height, you probably fornicate more than you'd like to. Next time you need to ditch a spare mate, toss this afflicted opus into your 85-CD changer. Your partner will first perceive the swirling goulash creeping from your speakers as a vote of confidence: "Hey, all right-- some purposefully obscure sounds! This ain't no Yo La Tengo date! We're committing carnal sins to some rarities!" But as soon as Daniel Smith unleashes his voice-- an agitated palsetto that performs spastic cartwheels on the outer rim of aural bearability-- your guest will take the hint, get spooked and pack up, and your night will be stain-free. Ahhh, but now you're alone, and the Smith clan begins to work their way toward your brain like Christian-engineered versions of the parasites in The Wrath of Khan. You could keep your cool through the simple, sweeping rhythm of head-bobber "Nice of Me," which sounds like the pre-looping loopers Silver Apples if they played different instruments. You might even think you've got these guys figured out: it's mid-fi, psych-folk, faux-outsider music, like Johnny Dowd, or the Tinklers, or Jad Fair. Song two, "Feeling Tank," also goes down relatively easy, the closest this record's 71 minutes comes to a singalong. The rest of the album is a shambling, cacophonic, insane, and very original journey through several minty-fresh themes: avoiding physical pain, seeking comfort, suppressing loin-burn, abandoning self-ownership, and fleeing nothingness. Daniel Smith rides both sides of Kierkegaard's seesaw-- dreading the subjugation of your own will to an Other, while simultaneously being grateful for the offload. In one song, God demands ten pushups when Dan "screws up," so Dan offers to do a thousand. In another, someone's funeral is running a bit early, so God "gets the DJ" and there's a dance party. This is definitely not the low-frequency ponderance of moral dilemmas a la Pedro the Lion or Starflyer 59, but it ain't white-boy gospel either. Smith's bizarre voice, occasionally multitracked, so consciously pursues caricature that he somehow evades it, ably handling universal tensions with a bluntness that circumvents the ready-set-sincerity of someone like Elliott Smith. Daniel Smith comes across as embattled as the God-wrasslin' poet Gerard Manley Hopkins when he confronts fleshly desires (this album was-- groan-- his thesis at Rutgers). "God Bless" is about feeling soiled by "the everyday," and the refrain of "Burnin' Heart" is "I am afraid of sex" (or is that 'sects'?). On the great "Be Your Wildman," Smith sings with his sisters about where his brains and loins differ, and how he deserves to be "drop-kicked." Maybe the high voice is a homage to eunuchs, but I guarantee you've heard nothing like this song. In addition to the theodicy, these songs expand the band's scope. "Bless" eventually morphs into a rickety, pre-teen Slint impression; "Burnin'" busts into Sonic Youth Group Hayride thrash; and "Headz" uses every pedal in the DOD catalog to create a samplable kind of wiggy, avant-"Kumbayah" dub, complete with dissonant, rubbery Thinking Fellers-style breakdowns. Ultimately, though, this no doubt earnest art project seems like a documentary of an anthropological oddity, a connection made stronger by this re-release's CD-ROM of presentations, performances and videos. Seeing the Danielsons live, with Smith in a trippy, McDonaldland tree costume and his adopted 'siblings' in medical uniforms can fill you with a kind of rapturous spirit, even if the albums don't inspire you to repent. But I can't imagine that anyone will want to replay songs such as the tempoless "Like a Vacuum," which, for all its philosophical lyrical force, trails off, starts over, erupts into tambourine chaos and then into fake laughing (reminiscent of the cackling spirit-moved, truck-hungry, sleep-deprived Christian in the documentary Hands on a Hardbody). You can't drive to the beach to a documentary. You can't even drive to the liquor store pumping this disc. The record's only reward for those who patiently revisit it is an appreciation of Smith's uniqueness. But give the blonde redheads in this Garden State Social Club props for trumping the boredom of status quo American Christianity with their raw-nerve madness. Anybody could have thrown something tinny together, but as the rollicking drums and doom-carnival xylophones of "In the Malls, Not of Them" prove, this almost-listenable stuff is meticulously assembled. This family's tradition of having a spontaneous song hour should make anyone who suffered through a standard fundie childhood jealous of their relative culturelessness-- like when your Jewish neighbors went to gymnastics at their community center. Our rec center just gave us tater tots and put on "Mr. Belvedere." Though the Danielsons' atmosphere occasionally out-sophisticates their primitivity, this record is a few hinges short. You can tell a person about all the extratextual stuff, get 'em interested and then play the album, but no stereo can equalize it to give it even a toehold on your already-slippery reality. Few albums so aptly yelp, in form and content, "Up, up, and shirts on. Let's not have sex."

Artist: Danielson Famile, Album: A Prayer for Every Hour, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "If you're like most Americans your height, you probably fornicate more than you'd like to. Next time you need to ditch a spare mate, toss this afflicted opus into your 85-CD changer. Your partner will first perceive the swirling goulash creeping from your speakers as a vote of confidence: "Hey, all right-- some purposefully obscure sounds! This ain't no Yo La Tengo date! We're committing carnal sins to some rarities!" But as soon as Daniel Smith unleashes his voice-- an agitated palsetto that performs spastic cartwheels on the outer rim of aural bearability-- your guest will take the hint, get spooked and pack up, and your night will be stain-free. Ahhh, but now you're alone, and the Smith clan begins to work their way toward your brain like Christian-engineered versions of the parasites in The Wrath of Khan. You could keep your cool through the simple, sweeping rhythm of head-bobber "Nice of Me," which sounds like the pre-looping loopers Silver Apples if they played different instruments. You might even think you've got these guys figured out: it's mid-fi, psych-folk, faux-outsider music, like Johnny Dowd, or the Tinklers, or Jad Fair. Song two, "Feeling Tank," also goes down relatively easy, the closest this record's 71 minutes comes to a singalong. The rest of the album is a shambling, cacophonic, insane, and very original journey through several minty-fresh themes: avoiding physical pain, seeking comfort, suppressing loin-burn, abandoning self-ownership, and fleeing nothingness. Daniel Smith rides both sides of Kierkegaard's seesaw-- dreading the subjugation of your own will to an Other, while simultaneously being grateful for the offload. In one song, God demands ten pushups when Dan "screws up," so Dan offers to do a thousand. In another, someone's funeral is running a bit early, so God "gets the DJ" and there's a dance party. This is definitely not the low-frequency ponderance of moral dilemmas a la Pedro the Lion or Starflyer 59, but it ain't white-boy gospel either. Smith's bizarre voice, occasionally multitracked, so consciously pursues caricature that he somehow evades it, ably handling universal tensions with a bluntness that circumvents the ready-set-sincerity of someone like Elliott Smith. Daniel Smith comes across as embattled as the God-wrasslin' poet Gerard Manley Hopkins when he confronts fleshly desires (this album was-- groan-- his thesis at Rutgers). "God Bless" is about feeling soiled by "the everyday," and the refrain of "Burnin' Heart" is "I am afraid of sex" (or is that 'sects'?). On the great "Be Your Wildman," Smith sings with his sisters about where his brains and loins differ, and how he deserves to be "drop-kicked." Maybe the high voice is a homage to eunuchs, but I guarantee you've heard nothing like this song. In addition to the theodicy, these songs expand the band's scope. "Bless" eventually morphs into a rickety, pre-teen Slint impression; "Burnin'" busts into Sonic Youth Group Hayride thrash; and "Headz" uses every pedal in the DOD catalog to create a samplable kind of wiggy, avant-"Kumbayah" dub, complete with dissonant, rubbery Thinking Fellers-style breakdowns. Ultimately, though, this no doubt earnest art project seems like a documentary of an anthropological oddity, a connection made stronger by this re-release's CD-ROM of presentations, performances and videos. Seeing the Danielsons live, with Smith in a trippy, McDonaldland tree costume and his adopted 'siblings' in medical uniforms can fill you with a kind of rapturous spirit, even if the albums don't inspire you to repent. But I can't imagine that anyone will want to replay songs such as the tempoless "Like a Vacuum," which, for all its philosophical lyrical force, trails off, starts over, erupts into tambourine chaos and then into fake laughing (reminiscent of the cackling spirit-moved, truck-hungry, sleep-deprived Christian in the documentary Hands on a Hardbody). You can't drive to the beach to a documentary. You can't even drive to the liquor store pumping this disc. The record's only reward for those who patiently revisit it is an appreciation of Smith's uniqueness. But give the blonde redheads in this Garden State Social Club props for trumping the boredom of status quo American Christianity with their raw-nerve madness. Anybody could have thrown something tinny together, but as the rollicking drums and doom-carnival xylophones of "In the Malls, Not of Them" prove, this almost-listenable stuff is meticulously assembled. This family's tradition of having a spontaneous song hour should make anyone who suffered through a standard fundie childhood jealous of their relative culturelessness-- like when your Jewish neighbors went to gymnastics at their community center. Our rec center just gave us tater tots and put on "Mr. Belvedere." Though the Danielsons' atmosphere occasionally out-sophisticates their primitivity, this record is a few hinges short. You can tell a person about all the extratextual stuff, get 'em interested and then play the album, but no stereo can equalize it to give it even a toehold on your already-slippery reality. Few albums so aptly yelp, in form and content, "Up, up, and shirts on. Let's not have sex.""

Coldplay

Live 2003

Rock

Scott Plagenhoef

Coldplay are arguably the world's biggest rock band, so according to my indie rock guidebook, I should treat them with smugness and derision. In the past, Pitchfork has only given them compliments as if they were confessions-- and the site wasn't alone (or necessarily wrong), either. There was a time when writing about Coldplay meant unfavorable Travis comparisons (!), trying to sort out exactly what the hell "Yellow" was meant to be referring to (I still have no clue), and gleefully reporting that singer and lyricist Chris Martin admitted he was drained of ideas after the release of their debut album. But a funny thing happened to Coldplay on the way to their plot in the post-Bends cemetery next to Starsailor and Lowgold: they got wildly popular. What's more, the band sharpened their skills and that weariness Martin felt trying to write A Rush of Blood to the Head translated into a handful of affecting, populist tracks. Martin's exhaustion exposed his wounds and shrouded them in swirling, melodic arrangements, and while Coldplay may not have taken Radiohead's crown as the Thinking Man's Arena Rock Band, with "In My Place", "The Scientist", and especially "Clocks" they sort of became the Feeling Man's Arena Rock Band. It wasn't really a transformation, just an improvement, that made Coldplay one of a handful of artists who bestrode 2003 by slowly winning over their dissenters and the disbelievers-- and by the time the critical establishment rediscovered the band, they ironically had to cast aside their preconceptions in much the same way that they'd done eight years earlier with The Bends. It's fitting, then, that Coldplay's year ends with a live CD and DVD recorded in Sydney-- a documentation of them engaging with their public, those who were at their side from the start. The decision to package both of these releases together for the same price as either would command on its own helps make what could be seen as a cash-in more of a bargain thank-you. The disc omits five of the tracks from the DVD, including the fan favorite "Don't Panic", the singles "Trouble" and "The Scientist", and "Daylight", which would have been a welcome mood-changer for this often middle-of-the-road set. The band does little here to brush off their reputations as rock's nice, dull bunch, offering hopeful sentiments like, "We sincerely hope you have the best evening of your lives," and, "There's no excuse to be sat down during this song. If you stand up we promise to buy you all ice cream." The live performance seems more stirring than rousing-- the old softie onstage would rather you put your arms around your best girl or guy than your mates-- and if Martin's guy-next-door stuff isn't part of the band's appeal for you, it may bring on a wince. Another unfortunate downside to the set's prevailing mood is that, at around the halfway mark, Martin's recommendation that "this would be a great time for you to start singing with us" stretches a campfire singalong version of "Everything's Not Lost" to nearly nine minutes and my patience well past its breaking point. The hits and the better album tracks from A Rush of Blood (the driving "Politik" and "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face") shine brightest, but there's little here for the novice. Rarities include the acoustic-based "See You Soon" from The Blue Room EP and B-side "One I Love", a guitar-driven track which is one of the most Echo & The Bunnymen-like things Coldplay have ever done, with Martin's voice even taking on a touch of McCulloch's brooding baritone. New track "Moses", meanwhile, is gutsy and crisp, indicating that Martin may have restored his confidence-- something that might not play to the strengths of a band that's best with its heart on its sleeve. Chris Martin's humility and honesty-- as evidenced by his admissions about the state of his writer's block and/or prolificacy-- are often construed as either bravado or proof of the band's inadequacy. I side with bravado, contending that he likely respects his art enough not to go through the motions and finds strength in appealing to a large audience. After all, Coldplay sound better the bigger they are: Some artists just wouldn't work as a passed secret, and they're one of them. It was this ubiquity that won over unlikely fans such as Timbaland, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake, and elevated them past yer Stripes and Good Charlottes and Linkin Parks on the rock star ladder this year. The challenge now is in holding that spot, and that's what's going to determine whether this live record turns out to be their Rattle & Hum-- a document of the band at their commercial and, some might say, artistic peak-- or merely their Wide Awake in America, with something more improbably adventurous and potentially soul-enriching yet to come.

Artist: Coldplay, Album: Live 2003, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Coldplay are arguably the world's biggest rock band, so according to my indie rock guidebook, I should treat them with smugness and derision. In the past, Pitchfork has only given them compliments as if they were confessions-- and the site wasn't alone (or necessarily wrong), either. There was a time when writing about Coldplay meant unfavorable Travis comparisons (!), trying to sort out exactly what the hell "Yellow" was meant to be referring to (I still have no clue), and gleefully reporting that singer and lyricist Chris Martin admitted he was drained of ideas after the release of their debut album. But a funny thing happened to Coldplay on the way to their plot in the post-Bends cemetery next to Starsailor and Lowgold: they got wildly popular. What's more, the band sharpened their skills and that weariness Martin felt trying to write A Rush of Blood to the Head translated into a handful of affecting, populist tracks. Martin's exhaustion exposed his wounds and shrouded them in swirling, melodic arrangements, and while Coldplay may not have taken Radiohead's crown as the Thinking Man's Arena Rock Band, with "In My Place", "The Scientist", and especially "Clocks" they sort of became the Feeling Man's Arena Rock Band. It wasn't really a transformation, just an improvement, that made Coldplay one of a handful of artists who bestrode 2003 by slowly winning over their dissenters and the disbelievers-- and by the time the critical establishment rediscovered the band, they ironically had to cast aside their preconceptions in much the same way that they'd done eight years earlier with The Bends. It's fitting, then, that Coldplay's year ends with a live CD and DVD recorded in Sydney-- a documentation of them engaging with their public, those who were at their side from the start. The decision to package both of these releases together for the same price as either would command on its own helps make what could be seen as a cash-in more of a bargain thank-you. The disc omits five of the tracks from the DVD, including the fan favorite "Don't Panic", the singles "Trouble" and "The Scientist", and "Daylight", which would have been a welcome mood-changer for this often middle-of-the-road set. The band does little here to brush off their reputations as rock's nice, dull bunch, offering hopeful sentiments like, "We sincerely hope you have the best evening of your lives," and, "There's no excuse to be sat down during this song. If you stand up we promise to buy you all ice cream." The live performance seems more stirring than rousing-- the old softie onstage would rather you put your arms around your best girl or guy than your mates-- and if Martin's guy-next-door stuff isn't part of the band's appeal for you, it may bring on a wince. Another unfortunate downside to the set's prevailing mood is that, at around the halfway mark, Martin's recommendation that "this would be a great time for you to start singing with us" stretches a campfire singalong version of "Everything's Not Lost" to nearly nine minutes and my patience well past its breaking point. The hits and the better album tracks from A Rush of Blood (the driving "Politik" and "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face") shine brightest, but there's little here for the novice. Rarities include the acoustic-based "See You Soon" from The Blue Room EP and B-side "One I Love", a guitar-driven track which is one of the most Echo & The Bunnymen-like things Coldplay have ever done, with Martin's voice even taking on a touch of McCulloch's brooding baritone. New track "Moses", meanwhile, is gutsy and crisp, indicating that Martin may have restored his confidence-- something that might not play to the strengths of a band that's best with its heart on its sleeve. Chris Martin's humility and honesty-- as evidenced by his admissions about the state of his writer's block and/or prolificacy-- are often construed as either bravado or proof of the band's inadequacy. I side with bravado, contending that he likely respects his art enough not to go through the motions and finds strength in appealing to a large audience. After all, Coldplay sound better the bigger they are: Some artists just wouldn't work as a passed secret, and they're one of them. It was this ubiquity that won over unlikely fans such as Timbaland, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake, and elevated them past yer Stripes and Good Charlottes and Linkin Parks on the rock star ladder this year. The challenge now is in holding that spot, and that's what's going to determine whether this live record turns out to be their Rattle & Hum-- a document of the band at their commercial and, some might say, artistic peak-- or merely their Wide Awake in America, with something more improbably adventurous and potentially soul-enriching yet to come."

Ash

Free All Angels

Rock

Joe Tangari

I remember when summers actually meant something. It was time off from school and homework and structure, time to get all dirty and pretend you were something you weren't-- like a pirate or an astronaut or Optimus Prime or something. Those really were the days, I guess. These days, it's summer and I have to go spend eight hours of my day in a climate-controlled building, staring at a computer and making copies. Ah, but such is life. You need shelter overhead, after all. It's a fair bet to say that Ash probably have all the shelter they need by now-- they've been massively popular in the UK ever since they first rocketed out of Northern Ireland with Trailer, back before they were even out of high school. Maybe it's just the fact that they achieved fame so early in life, but Ash seem now like a band caught between youth and adulthood. They're full of introspection and nostalgia lately, but the impetuousness that made their early records so enjoyable still burbles to the top on a pretty regular basis. It's a dichotomy of ideals that makes their latest full-length-- their second as a quartet and fourth overall-- a compelling listen, if a seemingly contradictory one at times. Ash finally seem to have gotten around to growing up some, but the maturity of a song like "Walking Barefoot" actually suits them well, especially when it's countered with some solid looks over the shoulder at a time when the 'punk' was the louder half of the band's punk-pop equation. And frequently, the newfound polish that coats the record is actually advantageous-- for example, "Candy" is a stately tribute to a lover, riding on clouds of swirling strings sampled from the Walker Brothers' "Make It Easy on Yourself." The medium tempos of "Shining Light" and "There's a Star" would have seemed like big shoes for this band to fill just a few years ago, but now they fit perfectly-- the band's evolution seems entirely natural. "Someday, we'll leave this town/ It wears us down/ We'll leave somehow/ All its harm and all its charm/ Someday," Tim Wheeler sings on "Someday." I remember thinking this, too, when I was younger. Man, I couldn't wait to leave my hometown and experience something that I pretty much only knew as 'more.' Nowadays, I'm still eager to test out the possibilities of the world and see new places, but when I think of my hometown, I seem to place a lot more emphasis on the charm than the harm. I go back there now and see all the new developments that used to be farms and forests and it makes me pretty sick to see how the place where I grew up is being raped of its rural atmosphere. Wheeler seems to be caught in this same place on Free All Angels-- he wants to get out and see the world, but he also seems to understand that what he's leaving is a lot less complicated than what he's gravitating towards. On "Sometimes," he's pining for a lost love, but he's also resigned to the fact that most things aren't meant to last. One of the things that's so surprising about Free All Angels is that the good-natured rocker "World Domination," a song with all the brash bravado and tongue-in-cheek humor of their earliest material, isn't the only one like it. "Shark" is a slamming pile-up of riffs from Wheeler and second guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, while "Pacific Palisades" is basically Jan & Dean on a lot of ephedrine, replete with Beach Boys-esque name checks. And then there's the classic pop of "Cherry Bomb," a sweet little slice of Jello cut from the same wobbly mold as such classic Ash songs as "Girl from Mars." It's followed by what's perhaps the most curious song on the album, the hard-grooving, lascivious "Submission," which offers a bit more of the rock star posing that "World Domination" so enthusiastically spews. Wah pedals and-- I shit you not-- orchestral hits spice up an already hot rhythmic stew stirred up by drummer Rick McMurray and bassist Mark Hamilton. "Wait for the summer/ It'll come 'round again," Wheeler sings on "Pacific Palisades." Well that's hopeful, now, isn't it? And that's kind of what I get out of this album. Even though we may not be as free to take off and explore possibilities and our imaginations as we were when we were all younger, it doesn't mean that imagination is gone or those possibilities are faded-- we just need to find new ways to take advantage of them. Hell, I know that's not what Ash are really getting at conceptually, but it makes a lot of sense, and I think that on Free All Angels they've expressed it. Regardless of its conceptual significance, though, Free All Angels certainly works on another level. It's a damn good pop album, with a little muscle behind its melodies to boot. And no matter where you stand on the childhood-to-adulthood spectrum, that's something just about everybody can use now and then.

Artist: Ash, Album: Free All Angels, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "I remember when summers actually meant something. It was time off from school and homework and structure, time to get all dirty and pretend you were something you weren't-- like a pirate or an astronaut or Optimus Prime or something. Those really were the days, I guess. These days, it's summer and I have to go spend eight hours of my day in a climate-controlled building, staring at a computer and making copies. Ah, but such is life. You need shelter overhead, after all. It's a fair bet to say that Ash probably have all the shelter they need by now-- they've been massively popular in the UK ever since they first rocketed out of Northern Ireland with Trailer, back before they were even out of high school. Maybe it's just the fact that they achieved fame so early in life, but Ash seem now like a band caught between youth and adulthood. They're full of introspection and nostalgia lately, but the impetuousness that made their early records so enjoyable still burbles to the top on a pretty regular basis. It's a dichotomy of ideals that makes their latest full-length-- their second as a quartet and fourth overall-- a compelling listen, if a seemingly contradictory one at times. Ash finally seem to have gotten around to growing up some, but the maturity of a song like "Walking Barefoot" actually suits them well, especially when it's countered with some solid looks over the shoulder at a time when the 'punk' was the louder half of the band's punk-pop equation. And frequently, the newfound polish that coats the record is actually advantageous-- for example, "Candy" is a stately tribute to a lover, riding on clouds of swirling strings sampled from the Walker Brothers' "Make It Easy on Yourself." The medium tempos of "Shining Light" and "There's a Star" would have seemed like big shoes for this band to fill just a few years ago, but now they fit perfectly-- the band's evolution seems entirely natural. "Someday, we'll leave this town/ It wears us down/ We'll leave somehow/ All its harm and all its charm/ Someday," Tim Wheeler sings on "Someday." I remember thinking this, too, when I was younger. Man, I couldn't wait to leave my hometown and experience something that I pretty much only knew as 'more.' Nowadays, I'm still eager to test out the possibilities of the world and see new places, but when I think of my hometown, I seem to place a lot more emphasis on the charm than the harm. I go back there now and see all the new developments that used to be farms and forests and it makes me pretty sick to see how the place where I grew up is being raped of its rural atmosphere. Wheeler seems to be caught in this same place on Free All Angels-- he wants to get out and see the world, but he also seems to understand that what he's leaving is a lot less complicated than what he's gravitating towards. On "Sometimes," he's pining for a lost love, but he's also resigned to the fact that most things aren't meant to last. One of the things that's so surprising about Free All Angels is that the good-natured rocker "World Domination," a song with all the brash bravado and tongue-in-cheek humor of their earliest material, isn't the only one like it. "Shark" is a slamming pile-up of riffs from Wheeler and second guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, while "Pacific Palisades" is basically Jan & Dean on a lot of ephedrine, replete with Beach Boys-esque name checks. And then there's the classic pop of "Cherry Bomb," a sweet little slice of Jello cut from the same wobbly mold as such classic Ash songs as "Girl from Mars." It's followed by what's perhaps the most curious song on the album, the hard-grooving, lascivious "Submission," which offers a bit more of the rock star posing that "World Domination" so enthusiastically spews. Wah pedals and-- I shit you not-- orchestral hits spice up an already hot rhythmic stew stirred up by drummer Rick McMurray and bassist Mark Hamilton. "Wait for the summer/ It'll come 'round again," Wheeler sings on "Pacific Palisades." Well that's hopeful, now, isn't it? And that's kind of what I get out of this album. Even though we may not be as free to take off and explore possibilities and our imaginations as we were when we were all younger, it doesn't mean that imagination is gone or those possibilities are faded-- we just need to find new ways to take advantage of them. Hell, I know that's not what Ash are really getting at conceptually, but it makes a lot of sense, and I think that on Free All Angels they've expressed it. Regardless of its conceptual significance, though, Free All Angels certainly works on another level. It's a damn good pop album, with a little muscle behind its melodies to boot. And no matter where you stand on the childhood-to-adulthood spectrum, that's something just about everybody can use now and then."

Takagi Masakatsu

Pia

Electronic

Malcolm Seymour III

Capitalism's latest affront on human intelligence: oxygen bars. Just when we thought designer water had pushed consumerism to the limits of its frivolity, someone discovered they could sell air by putting it in a fancy package. I guess we should have seen it coming. For years, the same faux-connoisseurs have been thronging to Starbucks, throwing their money away on factory-made café-culture aesthetics, attractive branding and "gourmet" coffee. Marketing weasels can dress anything up in a clever wrapper and reap enormous profits from America's undiscriminating public. Hardly anybody knows what good coffee tastes like, much less good water or air-- people pay for the illusion of sophistication, and seldom for the product itself. The world of IDM is not immune to this phenomenon. The recent proliferation of laptop jockeys has left a lot less room in the genre for innovation, and the result has been an interminable output of insipid, uninspired rot. This is not to say that nothing good has come out of leftfield electronica in the last several years; just that it's been imitated ad nauseum, and some listeners don't know enough to draw the line between the originators and the pretense. Takagi Masakatsu's Pia, an innocuous atmospheric excursion in the vein of Pete Namlook's FAX label, is the sonic equivalent of canned air. There's really nothing of substance here, but the void is concealed by elegant production and the hallmark inaccessibility of electronic minimalism. This may suffice to satisfy simpler audiences, and I wouldn't be surprised if elsewhere this album met with critical acclaim. Minimalism is, after all, en vogue right now. But I can't get past this record's vapid predictability. This album operates on a conventional formula in ambient music, layering digitally processed light white noise over ethereal synth pads and played out samples. Masakatsu runs through the entire catalog of stock new-age sounds-- running water, a rooster crowing, chirping birds and talking children. Don't forget the talking children. Nothing suggests artistic enlightenment like talking children. Occasionally, Pia reaches beyond mediocrity. "Bienna," with its strangely inverted refrain and intricate stereo manipulation, recalls latter-day Fennesz. It's a far cry from original, but at least challenges the listener at a more thoughtful level than the rest of the album. "Guiter" introduces a stronger element of musical structure, spreading soft, coherent melodies over percussive jolts of static. But the rest of the album scrolls by like a nebulous grey mass of experimental cliches. Pianos, sounds from nature, self-indulgent moments of contemplation and profundity-- you name it, it's probably here. And I hope I haven't forgotten to mention the talking children, who crop up on a total of three songs ("Eau," "Videocamera" and "Caroc"). The package comes with an additional disc of "enhanced media," which features five audio/video pieces created by Masakatsu. The pieces are of a similar minimalist nature in many respects, and have apparently been presented in Japanese art galleries. But while these pieces are pleasing enough aesthetically, I can't picture myself sliding it into my CD-ROM drive very often. Pia, in all of its inoffensive tedium, would certainly be at home on the speakers of an oxygen bar. It works fine as wallpaper-- too understated to scare anyone off, too abstract to be readily transparent. But any judicious listener who subjects this record to sincere scrutiny will find that it comes up lamentably shallow.

Artist: Takagi Masakatsu, Album: Pia, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 4.0 Album review: "Capitalism's latest affront on human intelligence: oxygen bars. Just when we thought designer water had pushed consumerism to the limits of its frivolity, someone discovered they could sell air by putting it in a fancy package. I guess we should have seen it coming. For years, the same faux-connoisseurs have been thronging to Starbucks, throwing their money away on factory-made café-culture aesthetics, attractive branding and "gourmet" coffee. Marketing weasels can dress anything up in a clever wrapper and reap enormous profits from America's undiscriminating public. Hardly anybody knows what good coffee tastes like, much less good water or air-- people pay for the illusion of sophistication, and seldom for the product itself. The world of IDM is not immune to this phenomenon. The recent proliferation of laptop jockeys has left a lot less room in the genre for innovation, and the result has been an interminable output of insipid, uninspired rot. This is not to say that nothing good has come out of leftfield electronica in the last several years; just that it's been imitated ad nauseum, and some listeners don't know enough to draw the line between the originators and the pretense. Takagi Masakatsu's Pia, an innocuous atmospheric excursion in the vein of Pete Namlook's FAX label, is the sonic equivalent of canned air. There's really nothing of substance here, but the void is concealed by elegant production and the hallmark inaccessibility of electronic minimalism. This may suffice to satisfy simpler audiences, and I wouldn't be surprised if elsewhere this album met with critical acclaim. Minimalism is, after all, en vogue right now. But I can't get past this record's vapid predictability. This album operates on a conventional formula in ambient music, layering digitally processed light white noise over ethereal synth pads and played out samples. Masakatsu runs through the entire catalog of stock new-age sounds-- running water, a rooster crowing, chirping birds and talking children. Don't forget the talking children. Nothing suggests artistic enlightenment like talking children. Occasionally, Pia reaches beyond mediocrity. "Bienna," with its strangely inverted refrain and intricate stereo manipulation, recalls latter-day Fennesz. It's a far cry from original, but at least challenges the listener at a more thoughtful level than the rest of the album. "Guiter" introduces a stronger element of musical structure, spreading soft, coherent melodies over percussive jolts of static. But the rest of the album scrolls by like a nebulous grey mass of experimental cliches. Pianos, sounds from nature, self-indulgent moments of contemplation and profundity-- you name it, it's probably here. And I hope I haven't forgotten to mention the talking children, who crop up on a total of three songs ("Eau," "Videocamera" and "Caroc"). The package comes with an additional disc of "enhanced media," which features five audio/video pieces created by Masakatsu. The pieces are of a similar minimalist nature in many respects, and have apparently been presented in Japanese art galleries. But while these pieces are pleasing enough aesthetically, I can't picture myself sliding it into my CD-ROM drive very often. Pia, in all of its inoffensive tedium, would certainly be at home on the speakers of an oxygen bar. It works fine as wallpaper-- too understated to scare anyone off, too abstract to be readily transparent. But any judicious listener who subjects this record to sincere scrutiny will find that it comes up lamentably shallow."

Juno

This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes

Rock

Brent DiCrescenzo

Actually, they're staring at the stars, not gazing at their shoes. Go ahead. Look down. What do you see? Yep. Stars. Disorienting? Juno just managed to boost your sorry ass to space. There's something so picayune about one- guitar bands. And sure, two guitars is nice, but flaccid. They can play off each other, dance, jab, parry, rock in unison, etc. But is it really enough? Now, three guitars-- that's where it's at. While all those other meager two- guitar bands plink away in garages, Juno adds that wonderful extra digit, the third guitar-- the opposable thumb of rock and roll. Now all the other bands can do is watch from the ground and be eaten by lions while Juno swings and climbs through the branches, making fists, building tools to evolve, and occasionally throwing feces at all those who oppose them. With three guitars Juno has volume, and I don't mean in the decibel sense. Although just to rub it in, they have that, too. Let's see what other bands have three guitars these days, shall we? Radiohead. They're doing pretty well for themselves. Critics love to erroneously throw around the shallow moniker of "the American Radiohead"-- a title that holds less water than a Saharan Bedouin's bladder on a steady diet of potato chips. But with all sincerity, I'm here to tell you that Juno are the Radiohead of punk rock. This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes opens with a somnambulist's tired mumble over flumes of swirling guitar and typewriter percussion that brings to mind Rodan slo-mo crashing into My Bloody Valentine in bubbling, soft explosions. Things excellerate quickly on "Rodeo Programmers," a searing rocker that stabs hot guitars at your chest as Arlie Carstens sneers great lines like, "I've got a time- bomb lost inside my chest" as if he has two little Bob Moulds shoved up his nostrils. "Leave A Clean Camp and a Dead Fire" begins in a crescendoing Cure-ish swell before blowing the dam open. Similarly, "January Arms" floats on chiming, cherubic melodies before a jagged riff brings in the Saturn 5- sized rock. Dangerous and beautiful like Liz Hurley sitting on an A-Bomb during a La Jolla sunset, Juno swoop down on angel's wings before ripping them off and hurling them at your throat. As you can tell by the number of times I've used the words "guitar" in this review, this album will take off a layer of skin before caressing you in lotion. Guitar.

Artist: Juno, Album: This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "Actually, they're staring at the stars, not gazing at their shoes. Go ahead. Look down. What do you see? Yep. Stars. Disorienting? Juno just managed to boost your sorry ass to space. There's something so picayune about one- guitar bands. And sure, two guitars is nice, but flaccid. They can play off each other, dance, jab, parry, rock in unison, etc. But is it really enough? Now, three guitars-- that's where it's at. While all those other meager two- guitar bands plink away in garages, Juno adds that wonderful extra digit, the third guitar-- the opposable thumb of rock and roll. Now all the other bands can do is watch from the ground and be eaten by lions while Juno swings and climbs through the branches, making fists, building tools to evolve, and occasionally throwing feces at all those who oppose them. With three guitars Juno has volume, and I don't mean in the decibel sense. Although just to rub it in, they have that, too. Let's see what other bands have three guitars these days, shall we? Radiohead. They're doing pretty well for themselves. Critics love to erroneously throw around the shallow moniker of "the American Radiohead"-- a title that holds less water than a Saharan Bedouin's bladder on a steady diet of potato chips. But with all sincerity, I'm here to tell you that Juno are the Radiohead of punk rock. This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes opens with a somnambulist's tired mumble over flumes of swirling guitar and typewriter percussion that brings to mind Rodan slo-mo crashing into My Bloody Valentine in bubbling, soft explosions. Things excellerate quickly on "Rodeo Programmers," a searing rocker that stabs hot guitars at your chest as Arlie Carstens sneers great lines like, "I've got a time- bomb lost inside my chest" as if he has two little Bob Moulds shoved up his nostrils. "Leave A Clean Camp and a Dead Fire" begins in a crescendoing Cure-ish swell before blowing the dam open. Similarly, "January Arms" floats on chiming, cherubic melodies before a jagged riff brings in the Saturn 5- sized rock. Dangerous and beautiful like Liz Hurley sitting on an A-Bomb during a La Jolla sunset, Juno swoop down on angel's wings before ripping them off and hurling them at your throat. As you can tell by the number of times I've used the words "guitar" in this review, this album will take off a layer of skin before caressing you in lotion. Guitar."

Ed Harcourt

Lustre

Rock

Liz Colville

British singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt's latest release was 2007's Until Tomorrow Then (The Best of Ed Harcourt), and it was a little hard to believe he'd have such a comp given his modestly successful decade run. Following the best-of, Harcourt moved to the small New York label Dovecote in 2008 to re-release 2006's Beautiful Lie for his U.S. audience, and now he's back with a new studio album. Harcourt's best asset is his colorful voice. But his lyrics are either clichéd-- "I'm a recipe for disaster" or bad-poet dramatic-- "I'm wrapped in lachrymosity" (both from the chorus of "Lachrymosity"). And because his voice is the centerpiece of most songs, the lyrics are always in-your-face. When it isn't a high school poetry recital, Lustre often feels like a disappearing act-- an attempt to put on a few musical disguises to see if anyone likes them better than the musician beneath. On "When the Lost Don't Want to Be Found", a slowed-down, lugubrious Tears for Fears nod with faraway, tinkling piano, Harcourt deepens his voice so much that he sounds unrecognizable and exaggerates his enunciation. This style of song may be new for Harcourt, but it comes over as little more than dull new wave. The trouble with experimenting in different genres is that it can take a lot of study and practice before you're able to say something new. The stylistic choices Harcourt makes with his flexible voice-- from a feathery vibrato to a harder delivery-- can be effective at building emotion, as on "Haywired". But too often he lapses into tired ideas, like the backing "sha-la-la-la"s and "ooh-wee-ooh"s of "A Secret Society". That song is actually a rare instance of zest with a skipping melody that's more radio-friendly post-punk than folk, and he stays in the same vein for the cutesy "Do As I Say Not As I Do" and "Church of No Religion". But again, thin narratives drown both out, and the dingy, gray atmosphere of "Religion" could be early Bono without the inspiration or the Edge's guitar. So who is Ed Harcourt? He's been known to brandish a lot of instruments in his live performances, but on Lustre he's showing off with genre, moving from the old-timey, bouncy piano numbers of his previous work to soaring new wave and peppy, guitar-driven pop. I suspect that a little more mystery-- more of the introspective, expressive songs that pepper each of his albums-- could transform his recent work from occasionally interesting to truly moving.

Artist: Ed Harcourt, Album: Lustre, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.3 Album review: "British singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt's latest release was 2007's Until Tomorrow Then (The Best of Ed Harcourt), and it was a little hard to believe he'd have such a comp given his modestly successful decade run. Following the best-of, Harcourt moved to the small New York label Dovecote in 2008 to re-release 2006's Beautiful Lie for his U.S. audience, and now he's back with a new studio album. Harcourt's best asset is his colorful voice. But his lyrics are either clichéd-- "I'm a recipe for disaster" or bad-poet dramatic-- "I'm wrapped in lachrymosity" (both from the chorus of "Lachrymosity"). And because his voice is the centerpiece of most songs, the lyrics are always in-your-face. When it isn't a high school poetry recital, Lustre often feels like a disappearing act-- an attempt to put on a few musical disguises to see if anyone likes them better than the musician beneath. On "When the Lost Don't Want to Be Found", a slowed-down, lugubrious Tears for Fears nod with faraway, tinkling piano, Harcourt deepens his voice so much that he sounds unrecognizable and exaggerates his enunciation. This style of song may be new for Harcourt, but it comes over as little more than dull new wave. The trouble with experimenting in different genres is that it can take a lot of study and practice before you're able to say something new. The stylistic choices Harcourt makes with his flexible voice-- from a feathery vibrato to a harder delivery-- can be effective at building emotion, as on "Haywired". But too often he lapses into tired ideas, like the backing "sha-la-la-la"s and "ooh-wee-ooh"s of "A Secret Society". That song is actually a rare instance of zest with a skipping melody that's more radio-friendly post-punk than folk, and he stays in the same vein for the cutesy "Do As I Say Not As I Do" and "Church of No Religion". But again, thin narratives drown both out, and the dingy, gray atmosphere of "Religion" could be early Bono without the inspiration or the Edge's guitar. So who is Ed Harcourt? He's been known to brandish a lot of instruments in his live performances, but on Lustre he's showing off with genre, moving from the old-timey, bouncy piano numbers of his previous work to soaring new wave and peppy, guitar-driven pop. I suspect that a little more mystery-- more of the introspective, expressive songs that pepper each of his albums-- could transform his recent work from occasionally interesting to truly moving."

Various Artists

NON Worldwide Compilation Trilogy Volume 2: Part 1

Max Mertens

In their three prolific years as a label, NON Worldwide have been responsible for some of the most thought-provoking experimental club music out there, highlighting African and African-diasporic voices worldwide. In politically charged multimedia art and joint releases with other like-minded collectives, the label's members have built a community untethered by genre or geographic borders. Their ambitious three-part compilation series is framed as a “genome-wide association study” of the 42 participating artists (or “citizens” of NON’s transnational republic) that outlines their supposed genetic commonalities. Although co-founders Chino Amobi, ANGEL-HO, and Nkisi are absent from this first installment, Part 1 is a tightly curated collection of songs by both longtime NON associates and new citizens like Klein and Sporting Life. The compilation is front-loaded with its more melodic offerings, including Enterra’s hypnotic “Saskia e Chico” and Hyperdub associate Klein’s fractured R&B ballad “Brother.” After starring on NON and NAAFI’s collaborative 2016 mixtape, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Embaci further showcases her soaring vocals atop sparse percussion and gently fluttering wind chimes on “Hymnal Pine Heart.” Unsurprisingly, many of the record’s best moments confront complicated racial histories. On “Untitled,” Free at Last takes a slogan (“The world is a ghetto”) not unlike one that’s been emblazoned on NON merchandise or album covers and turns it into an ominous battle cry complete with whirring sirens and militant drums. The Swiss-Congolese producer Bonaventure’s “BLACKFACE” goes one step further, weaving together seemingly disparate samples including ballroom staple “The Ha Dance” and a “Daily Show” segment about blackface minstrel shows into a jarring collage. Similar to NON’s 2015 compilation—which featured early work from experimentalists including Gaika, Mhysa, and Yves Tumor—Volume 1 also serves as an introduction to a handful of new acts. You’re unlikely to hear DJ Lady Lane’s driving, industrial-edged “Bad Habits” on any streaming services’ electronic playlists, but it makes perfect sense here alongside former Ratking producer Sporting Life’s mournful instrumental “Bauhaus.” Same goes for John Glacier’s glitchy composition “Broken Macbook: Afflictions,” and Richard Kennedy’s layered, 10-minute epic “Men Are Weak,” which juxtaposes choral and mechanical voices and departs from the New York artist’s more song-oriented debut EP, Open Wound in a Pool of Sharks. If there’s one voice that comes closest to capturing the disruptive ethos laid out in manifestos and interviews with its co-founders, it’s Californian underground rapper Gita (who’s set to release a full-length sometime this year). She’s said that “Ban Men” was partially inspired by her experiences attending all-black schools in Oakland, and the take-no-prisoners anthem’s subject matter couldn’t be any more current. “Watch out for the ban men, the ban men,” she warns throughout, which feels all too timely given the fact that millions of American immigrants are currently under threat of deportation by government agencies like ICE. NON’s message might promote a borderless world, but it’s clear that there’s still work to be done.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: NON Worldwide Compilation Trilogy Volume 2: Part 1, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "In their three prolific years as a label, NON Worldwide have been responsible for some of the most thought-provoking experimental club music out there, highlighting African and African-diasporic voices worldwide. In politically charged multimedia art and joint releases with other like-minded collectives, the label's members have built a community untethered by genre or geographic borders. Their ambitious three-part compilation series is framed as a “genome-wide association study” of the 42 participating artists (or “citizens” of NON’s transnational republic) that outlines their supposed genetic commonalities. Although co-founders Chino Amobi, ANGEL-HO, and Nkisi are absent from this first installment, Part 1 is a tightly curated collection of songs by both longtime NON associates and new citizens like Klein and Sporting Life. The compilation is front-loaded with its more melodic offerings, including Enterra’s hypnotic “Saskia e Chico” and Hyperdub associate Klein’s fractured R&B ballad “Brother.” After starring on NON and NAAFI’s collaborative 2016 mixtape, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Embaci further showcases her soaring vocals atop sparse percussion and gently fluttering wind chimes on “Hymnal Pine Heart.” Unsurprisingly, many of the record’s best moments confront complicated racial histories. On “Untitled,” Free at Last takes a slogan (“The world is a ghetto”) not unlike one that’s been emblazoned on NON merchandise or album covers and turns it into an ominous battle cry complete with whirring sirens and militant drums. The Swiss-Congolese producer Bonaventure’s “BLACKFACE” goes one step further, weaving together seemingly disparate samples including ballroom staple “The Ha Dance” and a “Daily Show” segment about blackface minstrel shows into a jarring collage. Similar to NON’s 2015 compilation—which featured early work from experimentalists including Gaika, Mhysa, and Yves Tumor—Volume 1 also serves as an introduction to a handful of new acts. You’re unlikely to hear DJ Lady Lane’s driving, industrial-edged “Bad Habits” on any streaming services’ electronic playlists, but it makes perfect sense here alongside former Ratking producer Sporting Life’s mournful instrumental “Bauhaus.” Same goes for John Glacier’s glitchy composition “Broken Macbook: Afflictions,” and Richard Kennedy’s layered, 10-minute epic “Men Are Weak,” which juxtaposes choral and mechanical voices and departs from the New York artist’s more song-oriented debut EP, Open Wound in a Pool of Sharks. If there’s one voice that comes closest to capturing the disruptive ethos laid out in manifestos and interviews with its co-founders, it’s Californian underground rapper Gita (who’s set to release a full-length sometime this year). She’s said that “Ban Men” was partially inspired by her experiences attending all-black schools in Oakland, and the take-no-prisoners anthem’s subject matter couldn’t be any more current. “Watch out for the ban men, the ban men,” she warns throughout, which feels all too timely given the fact that millions of American immigrants are currently under threat of deportation by government agencies like ICE. NON’s message might promote a borderless world, but it’s clear that there’s still work to be done."

Boris

Noise

Metal,Rock

Zoe Camp

Shortly before the halfway point of “Angel”, the eighteen-minute centerpiece of Boris’ latest record, the band's guitarist Wata chases after God. The instrument of her noble pursuit is an extravagant, elegiac solo: her axe weeps and wails like a professional mourner, eventually tearing the surrounding space asunder to allow everything—the dark and the light, the leaden and the featherweight—to rush in. It's this sensation that's earned the Japanese trio a seat at the pantheon of heaviness: this alchemy by which the act of listening to loud rock music is transformed into an encounter with the sublime. A self-proclaimed “noise” band renowned for Melvins-style sludge and Merzbow collaborations, Boris excel at playing around with magnitudes. But they’re sneakier than they appear: their true calling card isn't brute force, but carefully calculated punishment. The patient approach that Boris took on 2000's Flood indicated that they’d rather have listeners climb the summit slowly, stopping to admire the pretty scenery up to the moment that they hit the precipice and tumble into a free-fall. With the release of their new LP Noise, all of the panoramas the band has crafted over the past two decades—stoner rock, shoegaze, ambient, pop—have coalesced into one massive, smoldering landscape*.* Eighteen-minute mammoths stride alongside sprightly two-minute cuts, thrash metal pops up out of nowhere to stick a shiv in post-rock’s back. Imposing, insane, and all-over-the-place: in other words, par for Boris' course. Noise boasts one of the most engaging openers on a Boris album to date: the haunting, and disarmingly catchy “Melody”. The persistent downward pull of the guitars creates a grungy line of tension that the band is all too willing to exploit. Ever wonder what it would sound like if Garbage went avant? Wonder no more: through smooth harmonies and even smoother production, Boris replicates the blueprint of slick alternative rock and then some, both on “Melody” and its craggier cousin “Vanilla”. On the other hand, the limp “wo-oah”s and recycled wasted-youth tropes of “Taiyo no Baka” present irrefutable proof that Boris aren't cut out for pop. Between the rabid hardcore of the nine-minute “Quicksilver” and the slow, steady suffocation of “Heavy Rain”, fans of Pink and Heavy Rocks will most likely find something to enjoy on Noise. That said, there’s a fine line between drone and fatigue, and at times, Boris get bogged down by the latter on many of the longer songs. Delicate as it may be, even the the final portion of “Angel” can’t help but feel like a slog when it features several minutes of insignificant repetition. To listeners who are intimidated by the prospect of leaping into the band’s extensive discography*,* Noise provides a better incentive: as both look back and a step forward, it serves as a possible gateway album, and more intriguingly, it hints at a new chapter in the band’s chameleonic career through which all their scattered points of reference might operate in beautiful, deadly unison.

Artist: Boris, Album: Noise, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Shortly before the halfway point of “Angel”, the eighteen-minute centerpiece of Boris’ latest record, the band's guitarist Wata chases after God. The instrument of her noble pursuit is an extravagant, elegiac solo: her axe weeps and wails like a professional mourner, eventually tearing the surrounding space asunder to allow everything—the dark and the light, the leaden and the featherweight—to rush in. It's this sensation that's earned the Japanese trio a seat at the pantheon of heaviness: this alchemy by which the act of listening to loud rock music is transformed into an encounter with the sublime. A self-proclaimed “noise” band renowned for Melvins-style sludge and Merzbow collaborations, Boris excel at playing around with magnitudes. But they’re sneakier than they appear: their true calling card isn't brute force, but carefully calculated punishment. The patient approach that Boris took on 2000's Flood indicated that they’d rather have listeners climb the summit slowly, stopping to admire the pretty scenery up to the moment that they hit the precipice and tumble into a free-fall. With the release of their new LP Noise, all of the panoramas the band has crafted over the past two decades—stoner rock, shoegaze, ambient, pop—have coalesced into one massive, smoldering landscape*.* Eighteen-minute mammoths stride alongside sprightly two-minute cuts, thrash metal pops up out of nowhere to stick a shiv in post-rock’s back. Imposing, insane, and all-over-the-place: in other words, par for Boris' course. Noise boasts one of the most engaging openers on a Boris album to date: the haunting, and disarmingly catchy “Melody”. The persistent downward pull of the guitars creates a grungy line of tension that the band is all too willing to exploit. Ever wonder what it would sound like if Garbage went avant? Wonder no more: through smooth harmonies and even smoother production, Boris replicates the blueprint of slick alternative rock and then some, both on “Melody” and its craggier cousin “Vanilla”. On the other hand, the limp “wo-oah”s and recycled wasted-youth tropes of “Taiyo no Baka” present irrefutable proof that Boris aren't cut out for pop. Between the rabid hardcore of the nine-minute “Quicksilver” and the slow, steady suffocation of “Heavy Rain”, fans of Pink and Heavy Rocks will most likely find something to enjoy on Noise. That said, there’s a fine line between drone and fatigue, and at times, Boris get bogged down by the latter on many of the longer songs. Delicate as it may be, even the the final portion of “Angel” can’t help but feel like a slog when it features several minutes of insignificant repetition. To listeners who are intimidated by the prospect of leaping into the band’s extensive discography*,* Noise provides a better incentive: as both look back and a step forward, it serves as a possible gateway album, and more intriguingly, it hints at a new chapter in the band’s chameleonic career through which all their scattered points of reference might operate in beautiful, deadly unison."

The Postal Service

We Will Become Silhouettes EP

Electronic,Rock

Rob Mitchum

I think I can say without exaggeration that the Postal Service is the most important band in music history. Okay, in the past five years. Three years. In the genre of indie rock. In the sub-genre of indie rock with laptops. In the sub-genre of indie rock with laptops featuring Ben Gibbard. On Sub Pop. Okay, maybe they're not so important in the grand scheme of things, but for a group of their size and funding, the Postal Service have been surprisingly ubiquitous. Thanks to that "Scrubs" guy, "Such Great Heights" has been added to Hollywood's palette of trailer music, perfectly expressing that "dramedy about quarter-life crisis" sensation. The friendly resolution to the band's mini-spat with the actual United States Postal Service earned them national coverage, and a choice gig at the influential Postmaster General National Executive Conference (which, as you may remember, launched the career of the Beatles). And the duo's brand of point-click indie-pop has begun to inspire their peers to follow suit: Rather than find his own tech support for his recent digital wanderings, Conor Oberst merely picked up his phone and growled (quaveringly) to his secretary, "Get me Tamborello!" All of which is good reason for Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello to celebrate with a few cold-brewed Coors Lights-- but not a reasonable justification to shake the last few shards of pocket change out of two-year-old Give Up. "We Will Become Silhouettes" is one of the flatter tracks from that album's saggy middle, an unsettlingly chipper song about living through the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Christmas carol backing vocals, accordion samples, and the climactic New Order keyboards can't distract from lyrics about fallout shelters and uncontrollable mitosis-induced body explosions. It's difficult to think of a movie looking for that lap-pop Hiroshimal sound... maybe it could be the love theme from 56 Days Later. The single's lone new track is "Be Still My Heart", which-- as its title might imply-- is typical Postal Service heart-meet-sleeve territory. Sadly, it seems only half-hearted: Built around dreary old guitars and live drums, it sounds more or less like a Death Cab demo with a few anxious clicking noises added to it. Clicking noises are also the weapon of choice on the single's two remixes, Morr Music producer Styrofoam's take on "Nothing Better", and Matthew Dear's reworking of the A-side. The Human League-biting medical terminology duet of "Nothing Better" is much more deserving of promotion to single status than "Silhouettes", but sometime-Notwist (and Gibbard) collaborator Styrofoam doesn't add much to the original, oddly choosing to make it more rockier while adding a rhythm track that sort of sounds like a guy making the O-face and flicking his cheeks. Ghostly International tech-house wunderkind Matthew Dear takes a few more liberties with "Silhouettes", giving it the old separate-the-elements treatment and spiking the track's drink with a handful of Ambien. The swirling ambient loops alter the music to fit the lyrical creepiness a little better, but it still doesn't quite nail the mood, perhaps due to Gibbard's incorruptibly saccharine delivery. Someone should've been a bit more willing to goth it up, or maybe just have given the song over to another band, a la the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" single. Anybody death metal would do (though I guess it'd be hard to find one with a Sub Pop contract). So in the end, We Will Become Silhouettes does little more than advertise for a revisitation of Give Up. One wonders if the protracted flogging of that album means that new product from the band is far off-- especially since Gibbard is busy riding Death Cab's prestige into the indie MOR growth market, and Tamborello is embracing his newfound role as the go-to guy for indie heartthrobs looking to modernize their sound. If so, that's a shame, as their snail-mail collaboration remains the most effective shuffling of the IDM and indie scenes in decades. Well, okay, in the past three years.

Artist: The Postal Service, Album: We Will Become Silhouettes EP, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.3 Album review: "I think I can say without exaggeration that the Postal Service is the most important band in music history. Okay, in the past five years. Three years. In the genre of indie rock. In the sub-genre of indie rock with laptops. In the sub-genre of indie rock with laptops featuring Ben Gibbard. On Sub Pop. Okay, maybe they're not so important in the grand scheme of things, but for a group of their size and funding, the Postal Service have been surprisingly ubiquitous. Thanks to that "Scrubs" guy, "Such Great Heights" has been added to Hollywood's palette of trailer music, perfectly expressing that "dramedy about quarter-life crisis" sensation. The friendly resolution to the band's mini-spat with the actual United States Postal Service earned them national coverage, and a choice gig at the influential Postmaster General National Executive Conference (which, as you may remember, launched the career of the Beatles). And the duo's brand of point-click indie-pop has begun to inspire their peers to follow suit: Rather than find his own tech support for his recent digital wanderings, Conor Oberst merely picked up his phone and growled (quaveringly) to his secretary, "Get me Tamborello!" All of which is good reason for Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello to celebrate with a few cold-brewed Coors Lights-- but not a reasonable justification to shake the last few shards of pocket change out of two-year-old Give Up. "We Will Become Silhouettes" is one of the flatter tracks from that album's saggy middle, an unsettlingly chipper song about living through the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Christmas carol backing vocals, accordion samples, and the climactic New Order keyboards can't distract from lyrics about fallout shelters and uncontrollable mitosis-induced body explosions. It's difficult to think of a movie looking for that lap-pop Hiroshimal sound... maybe it could be the love theme from 56 Days Later. The single's lone new track is "Be Still My Heart", which-- as its title might imply-- is typical Postal Service heart-meet-sleeve territory. Sadly, it seems only half-hearted: Built around dreary old guitars and live drums, it sounds more or less like a Death Cab demo with a few anxious clicking noises added to it. Clicking noises are also the weapon of choice on the single's two remixes, Morr Music producer Styrofoam's take on "Nothing Better", and Matthew Dear's reworking of the A-side. The Human League-biting medical terminology duet of "Nothing Better" is much more deserving of promotion to single status than "Silhouettes", but sometime-Notwist (and Gibbard) collaborator Styrofoam doesn't add much to the original, oddly choosing to make it more rockier while adding a rhythm track that sort of sounds like a guy making the O-face and flicking his cheeks. Ghostly International tech-house wunderkind Matthew Dear takes a few more liberties with "Silhouettes", giving it the old separate-the-elements treatment and spiking the track's drink with a handful of Ambien. The swirling ambient loops alter the music to fit the lyrical creepiness a little better, but it still doesn't quite nail the mood, perhaps due to Gibbard's incorruptibly saccharine delivery. Someone should've been a bit more willing to goth it up, or maybe just have given the song over to another band, a la the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" single. Anybody death metal would do (though I guess it'd be hard to find one with a Sub Pop contract). So in the end, We Will Become Silhouettes does little more than advertise for a revisitation of Give Up. One wonders if the protracted flogging of that album means that new product from the band is far off-- especially since Gibbard is busy riding Death Cab's prestige into the indie MOR growth market, and Tamborello is embracing his newfound role as the go-to guy for indie heartthrobs looking to modernize their sound. If so, that's a shame, as their snail-mail collaboration remains the most effective shuffling of the IDM and indie scenes in decades. Well, okay, in the past three years."

Pauline Anna Strom

Trans-Millenia Music

Electronic

Daniel Martin-McCormick

Although it claims an international audience, the genre loosely known as new age has a special home in San Francisco. Cloaked in fog that cascades majestically over palm-dotted hills, the city’s microclimates, rolling landscape, and edge-of-the-continent setting make it an aptly evocative home for fringe dreamers, schemers, and seekers. Even prior to 1967’s headline-grabbing Summer of Love, the Bay Area had become a magnet for some of the avant garde’s most utopian voices: Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros both taught at Mills College, while Morton Subotnick’s San Francisco Tape Music Center helped develop the groundbreaking Buchla synthesizer. Organizations like the Esalen Institute and Synanon set up shop along the coast and pioneered the pursuit of alternative lifestyles, while the city’s strong anti-war, free speech, women’s rights, and gay rights movements flourished. It was in this heady context that Pauline Anna Strom began making music. Blind since birth and a self-described “hell-raising flower child,” she arrived in San Francisco following her husband’s assignment at the Presidio military base with no plans of pursuing a career in the arts. But exposure to pioneering albums by Tangerine Dream, Kitaro, and other electronic artists from overseas soon led her to purchase a small complement of synthesizers and to set up a makeshift studio at home. Dubbing herself the Trans-Millenia Consort, Strom dove into her work, mapping an inner world of imagined pasts, possible futures, and alternate realities. Trans-Millenia Music is a survey of the most striking music she released throughout the 1980s. Variously ethereal, playful, and brooding, but always confident, the album captures the fervent experimentalism of Strom’s West Coast milieu and focuses attention on an artist who might otherwise have been relegated to history’s footnotes. Of Strom’s seven albums released between 1982 and 1988, six are represented on Trans-Millenia Music. Rather than working chronologically, the team at RVNG has chosen to jump around freely, sequencing for flow and drama while leaning heavily on Strom’s mature phase, nodding to a few early highlights but keeping its eyes on the prize. The album kicks off with “Freedom at the 45th Floor” and “Virgin Ice,” both taken from Spectre, her third album. Immediately engaging, the music’s mellow surface betrays a palpable urgency lurking beneath. There’s an audible connection to Cluster and Brian Eno’s 1977 collaboration, especially in Strom’s gentle vamping. Both exude a comforting coziness tinged with something more ambiguous. It’s hard to imagine it’s a coincidence: “Spatial Spectre,” taken from the same album, could pass for an outtake from Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land, released two years prior. As strong as anything from that record, “Spatial Spectre” answers Eno’s vaporous audio environments with a more muscular, overtly creepy workout that hovers and undulates while maintaining momentum. Other songs veer, both for better and for worse, into tone-poem romanticism. “Rain on Ancient Quays,” a lightly overdriven work for electric piano and effects, is one of the anthology’s most arresting tracks. Unabashedly moody and grim, it evokes the lurking danger of a chintzy TV movie in the best way; I was particularly reminded of V.C. Andrews’ gothic fever dream Flowers in the Attic. “Warriors of the Sun,” on the other hand, indulges in kitschy exoticism, with synthetic flutes playing a sort of general-purpose spiritual melody before moving into a quasi-Japanese pentatonic march. “Bonsai Terrace” covers some of the same ground, although it benefits from a lurching, unsettling arrangement. Two of her earliest pieces, “The Unveiling” and “Gossamer Silk,” are perfectly lovely but would fit too comfortably in a massage parlor to make a serious impression. Some of the very best tracks are from 1988’s Mach 3.04, a self-released cassette that Strom has yet to follow up: “In Flight Suspension” and “Cruising Altitude 36,000 Feet” glow with an exploratory power and depth that belie their modest initial release. There’s an uninhibited forcefulness to her arpeggios that takes these pieces beyond the confines of new age. In recent years, the genre has drifted back into style, though it is often viewed through the lens of semi-ironic detachment. That critical distance is understandable when approaching music that could be so grandiose in its proclamations. The liner notes to Strom’s debut album spoke in soaring terms of spiritual transcendence—bold claims, and possibly not what music actually does. But Trans-Millenia Music captures an artist expressing herself freely and without fear or hesitation, and it makes good on its title. Work like this may fade into obscurity, but it remains fresh to all who seek it out, still vibrant and pulsing with energy in any age—new or otherwise.

Artist: Pauline Anna Strom, Album: Trans-Millenia Music, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Although it claims an international audience, the genre loosely known as new age has a special home in San Francisco. Cloaked in fog that cascades majestically over palm-dotted hills, the city’s microclimates, rolling landscape, and edge-of-the-continent setting make it an aptly evocative home for fringe dreamers, schemers, and seekers. Even prior to 1967’s headline-grabbing Summer of Love, the Bay Area had become a magnet for some of the avant garde’s most utopian voices: Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros both taught at Mills College, while Morton Subotnick’s San Francisco Tape Music Center helped develop the groundbreaking Buchla synthesizer. Organizations like the Esalen Institute and Synanon set up shop along the coast and pioneered the pursuit of alternative lifestyles, while the city’s strong anti-war, free speech, women’s rights, and gay rights movements flourished. It was in this heady context that Pauline Anna Strom began making music. Blind since birth and a self-described “hell-raising flower child,” she arrived in San Francisco following her husband’s assignment at the Presidio military base with no plans of pursuing a career in the arts. But exposure to pioneering albums by Tangerine Dream, Kitaro, and other electronic artists from overseas soon led her to purchase a small complement of synthesizers and to set up a makeshift studio at home. Dubbing herself the Trans-Millenia Consort, Strom dove into her work, mapping an inner world of imagined pasts, possible futures, and alternate realities. Trans-Millenia Music is a survey of the most striking music she released throughout the 1980s. Variously ethereal, playful, and brooding, but always confident, the album captures the fervent experimentalism of Strom’s West Coast milieu and focuses attention on an artist who might otherwise have been relegated to history’s footnotes. Of Strom’s seven albums released between 1982 and 1988, six are represented on Trans-Millenia Music. Rather than working chronologically, the team at RVNG has chosen to jump around freely, sequencing for flow and drama while leaning heavily on Strom’s mature phase, nodding to a few early highlights but keeping its eyes on the prize. The album kicks off with “Freedom at the 45th Floor” and “Virgin Ice,” both taken from Spectre, her third album. Immediately engaging, the music’s mellow surface betrays a palpable urgency lurking beneath. There’s an audible connection to Cluster and Brian Eno’s 1977 collaboration, especially in Strom’s gentle vamping. Both exude a comforting coziness tinged with something more ambiguous. It’s hard to imagine it’s a coincidence: “Spatial Spectre,” taken from the same album, could pass for an outtake from Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land, released two years prior. As strong as anything from that record, “Spatial Spectre” answers Eno’s vaporous audio environments with a more muscular, overtly creepy workout that hovers and undulates while maintaining momentum. Other songs veer, both for better and for worse, into tone-poem romanticism. “Rain on Ancient Quays,” a lightly overdriven work for electric piano and effects, is one of the anthology’s most arresting tracks. Unabashedly moody and grim, it evokes the lurking danger of a chintzy TV movie in the best way; I was particularly reminded of V.C. Andrews’ gothic fever dream Flowers in the Attic. “Warriors of the Sun,” on the other hand, indulges in kitschy exoticism, with synthetic flutes playing a sort of general-purpose spiritual melody before moving into a quasi-Japanese pentatonic march. “Bonsai Terrace” covers some of the same ground, although it benefits from a lurching, unsettling arrangement. Two of her earliest pieces, “The Unveiling” and “Gossamer Silk,” are perfectly lovely but would fit too comfortably in a massage parlor to make a serious impression. Some of the very best tracks are from 1988’s Mach 3.04, a self-released cassette that Strom has yet to follow up: “In Flight Suspension” and “Cruising Altitude 36,000 Feet” glow with an exploratory power and depth that belie their modest initial release. There’s an uninhibited forcefulness to her arpeggios that takes these pieces beyond the confines of new age. In recent years, the genre has drifted back into style, though it is often viewed through the lens of semi-ironic detachment. That critical distance is understandable when approaching music that could be so grandiose in its proclamations. The liner notes to Strom’s debut album spoke in soaring terms of spiritual transcendence—bold claims, and possibly not what music actually does. But Trans-Millenia Music captures an artist expressing herself freely and without fear or hesitation, and it makes good on its title. Work like this may fade into obscurity, but it remains fresh to all who seek it out, still vibrant and pulsing with energy in any age—new or otherwise."

Summer at Shatter Creek

Summer at Shatter Creek

Rock

William Bowers

Well, my goodness, what a transcendent little album. First, the thing transcends its clunky name. Then it transcends its "for girls"-ness. Whuh-oh: By that I mean, well... you know what I mean. The way Yoshimi was "for girls." And Jeff Buckley. Still good and all, just "for girls." That's no diss of lassitude-- in fact, the gender-reference is unfortunate; I was taught (by a girl! whew) that the phrase denotes a semi-precious, self-conscious quality, what proclaimed tuff-girls mean when they announce that they are dressed "girly." Compare Leo DiCaprio's eyes when he was a serious young actor with the twinkle-googly eyes of Titanic and the rest, in which he is "for girls." Think of the way Conor Oberst poses for pictures, or performs, or does anything except Desaparecidos. And don't act like your scene lacks a contingent of people barely into music, who instead relish, as is their right in this freest of countries, a band's "hotness" or "cuteness." At some points on this debut, Summer at Shatter Creek is a Jeff Mangum "for girls," especially when songs bust into pageantry/fanfare with the piano-led lonesome cuddliness of march music deprived of its procession. And you know what "F.G." film director Summer at Shatter Creek sounds made tailor made for? Wes Anderson. Almost any song on Summer at Shatter Creek could slouch ethereally (however one does that) beside Elliott Smith and Emitt Rhodes on the soundtrack to the upcoming prequel Episode 1: Look Who's Tenenbauming. And dig the album cover's ornate frame of little-kid-type art: a perfect match for Anderson's fetishistic artifice-avalanches under which mature children and immature adults confound each other. Very "F.G." By the way, Summer at Shatter Creek is one guy: a Craig Michael Gurwich out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. And you know what else he transcends? That one-guy-band thing. But watch out, Gurwich, because you come very, very close to owing royalties to Dump, the solo project of Yo La Tengo's James McNew, whom you kind of sing like, but sometimes better, and produce like (when Dump is produced) and who also adorns his albums with homegrown "F.G." toddler-kitsch a notch beneath Hello Kitty. Another neverlander to whom Gurwich is similar, in terms of tempo, guitar tone, layered elf-vox, and fractured Beatlesiana is: Tobin Sprout. But Gurwich can't be stopped: He's on a rampage of transcendence! Because he also transcends that one-guy-band-that-sounds-like-a-huge-band thing. He's one of the best blends of lo-fi loner and Phil Spector aural huzzahdom I've ever heard. He's a bedroom Bacharach like Badly Drawn Boy, creating songs that trigger decades of pop reference points-- he's Edward Erahands. "The Essence of Time" asks what if Pet Sounds was a more psychedelic collaboration between Skip Spence and a Jan & Dean trapped in the phantom zone, burning incense blended with Elephant 6 ashes. "The Drive" is a drumless Zombies' "Time of the Season" if it were sung by cute zombies. In fact, much of the album suggests a otherworldly and eerie, but cute, Goodwill in which an otherworldly and eerie, but cute, oldies station is being played. Of course, some of the album's just prime indie rock, albeit on the mellow tip. The coed dreampop of "I Don't Even Miss You" conjures "for girls" classics by Slumberland bands Rocketship and Nord Express. And speaking of slumberland, the disc tellingly thumbs it nose at Wilco and Hayden and other such indulgers by boasting the obligatory lullaby ("Go to Sleep") as its fourth song. The juh-hamm of "Home for the Holidays" is a collision of squeaky-cleanery and Thom Yorke's morbid wail-- imagine a Disney sitcom called Radiohead Meets World. Still more transcendence! The album's best song ("My Neighbor's Having a Seizure") transcends both the ailment-song and concerned-neighbor-song subgenres, trotting on the victory lap alongside Suzanne Vega's "Luka", Dogbowl's "Growing Up in a Wheelchair", Joy Division's "She's Lost Control", and sometimes Metallica's "One". This track best capitalizes on the album's ethic of transmogrification; most of the tunes burp or blossom into expansive second acts, but when "My Neighbor's Having a Seizure" does it-- yeeeow. Gurwich goes from sounding like a detached artiste to belting out an ode to symbiotic suffering that reveals, via foil, the vulnerability of its speaker. Insipid lyrics (example: "When someone makes you feel like you are just shit/ They are not a friend") and too-long buildups keep the album from galloping into the promised pastures of Eight Point Five Plus, but Summer at Shatter Creek's elegant horses can practically smell that realm's hallowed poop. I predict a long shelflife for this record, but mang, there's so much other stuff on that shelf to choose from...

Artist: Summer at Shatter Creek, Album: Summer at Shatter Creek, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Well, my goodness, what a transcendent little album. First, the thing transcends its clunky name. Then it transcends its "for girls"-ness. Whuh-oh: By that I mean, well... you know what I mean. The way Yoshimi was "for girls." And Jeff Buckley. Still good and all, just "for girls." That's no diss of lassitude-- in fact, the gender-reference is unfortunate; I was taught (by a girl! whew) that the phrase denotes a semi-precious, self-conscious quality, what proclaimed tuff-girls mean when they announce that they are dressed "girly." Compare Leo DiCaprio's eyes when he was a serious young actor with the twinkle-googly eyes of Titanic and the rest, in which he is "for girls." Think of the way Conor Oberst poses for pictures, or performs, or does anything except Desaparecidos. And don't act like your scene lacks a contingent of people barely into music, who instead relish, as is their right in this freest of countries, a band's "hotness" or "cuteness." At some points on this debut, Summer at Shatter Creek is a Jeff Mangum "for girls," especially when songs bust into pageantry/fanfare with the piano-led lonesome cuddliness of march music deprived of its procession. And you know what "F.G." film director Summer at Shatter Creek sounds made tailor made for? Wes Anderson. Almost any song on Summer at Shatter Creek could slouch ethereally (however one does that) beside Elliott Smith and Emitt Rhodes on the soundtrack to the upcoming prequel Episode 1: Look Who's Tenenbauming. And dig the album cover's ornate frame of little-kid-type art: a perfect match for Anderson's fetishistic artifice-avalanches under which mature children and immature adults confound each other. Very "F.G." By the way, Summer at Shatter Creek is one guy: a Craig Michael Gurwich out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. And you know what else he transcends? That one-guy-band thing. But watch out, Gurwich, because you come very, very close to owing royalties to Dump, the solo project of Yo La Tengo's James McNew, whom you kind of sing like, but sometimes better, and produce like (when Dump is produced) and who also adorns his albums with homegrown "F.G." toddler-kitsch a notch beneath Hello Kitty. Another neverlander to whom Gurwich is similar, in terms of tempo, guitar tone, layered elf-vox, and fractured Beatlesiana is: Tobin Sprout. But Gurwich can't be stopped: He's on a rampage of transcendence! Because he also transcends that one-guy-band-that-sounds-like-a-huge-band thing. He's one of the best blends of lo-fi loner and Phil Spector aural huzzahdom I've ever heard. He's a bedroom Bacharach like Badly Drawn Boy, creating songs that trigger decades of pop reference points-- he's Edward Erahands. "The Essence of Time" asks what if Pet Sounds was a more psychedelic collaboration between Skip Spence and a Jan & Dean trapped in the phantom zone, burning incense blended with Elephant 6 ashes. "The Drive" is a drumless Zombies' "Time of the Season" if it were sung by cute zombies. In fact, much of the album suggests a otherworldly and eerie, but cute, Goodwill in which an otherworldly and eerie, but cute, oldies station is being played. Of course, some of the album's just prime indie rock, albeit on the mellow tip. The coed dreampop of "I Don't Even Miss You" conjures "for girls" classics by Slumberland bands Rocketship and Nord Express. And speaking of slumberland, the disc tellingly thumbs it nose at Wilco and Hayden and other such indulgers by boasting the obligatory lullaby ("Go to Sleep") as its fourth song. The juh-hamm of "Home for the Holidays" is a collision of squeaky-cleanery and Thom Yorke's morbid wail-- imagine a Disney sitcom called Radiohead Meets World. Still more transcendence! The album's best song ("My Neighbor's Having a Seizure") transcends both the ailment-song and concerned-neighbor-song subgenres, trotting on the victory lap alongside Suzanne Vega's "Luka", Dogbowl's "Growing Up in a Wheelchair", Joy Division's "She's Lost Control", and sometimes Metallica's "One". This track best capitalizes on the album's ethic of transmogrification; most of the tunes burp or blossom into expansive second acts, but when "My Neighbor's Having a Seizure" does it-- yeeeow. Gurwich goes from sounding like a detached artiste to belting out an ode to symbiotic suffering that reveals, via foil, the vulnerability of its speaker. Insipid lyrics (example: "When someone makes you feel like you are just shit/ They are not a friend") and too-long buildups keep the album from galloping into the promised pastures of Eight Point Five Plus, but Summer at Shatter Creek's elegant horses can practically smell that realm's hallowed poop. I predict a long shelflife for this record, but mang, there's so much other stuff on that shelf to choose from..."

Bill Hicks

Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1

Isaiah Violante

"I've been on what I call my flying saucer tour which means like flying saucers. I, too, have been appearing in small southern towns in front of handfuls of hillbillies lately, and uh... I've been doubting my own existence," lamented Bill Hicks in his unmistakably rueful Texas drawl. Speaking about the perils and inherent loneliness of life on the road as a nomadic stand-up comic, there wasn't a member of the audience capable of ignoring the arrant honesty of his words. Bill Hicks is our planet's most oft-revered, imitated, plagiarized and anonymous comedic talent. For as many people whose lives were impacted so indelibly by this man's genius, wit, and irreverence, he remains shrouded in mystery to the general public. When his life was tragically snatched away by pancreatic cancer at the age of 32, Hicks hovered precariously on the precipice of superstardom. Having attracted national attention as the first act banned from a CBS television program since Elvis Presley, and with a legion of obstreperous followers behind him, Bill Hicks' untimely passing served as his ultimate comedic closer. With a career built upon hostility, angst, scathing social commentary, and above all, compassion, Hicks' abrupt departure virtually sealed his fate as a contemporary cultural enigma. In the nine years since his passing, Bill Hicks has taken on neo-mythical status. Drawing plaudits from myriad pop culture icons, album dedications from the likes of Tool and Radiohead, and galvanizing the malevolence of cynics everywhere, his fame has soared exponentially. Unlike so many mediocre icons who find notoriety and mass-media acceptance in death, however, Bill Hicks was a man whose art transcended all time and spatial limits and thus established his legend long before his enormous heart stopped beating on February 26th, 1994. Bill Hicks was Noam Chomsky, David Sedaris, Lenny Bruce, and Carlos Castaneda rolled into one. Where other comedians like the late great Sam Kinison identified and ridiculed the problems of modern life for the purpose of shock and laughter, Hicks abhorred the passivity of the populace to such lengths that his rants rang closer to a guerilla revolutionary than a talking head with a microphone. No one has ever been more vocal about the evils of disposable pop culture. A society rendered mentally mute by the ills of marketing, advertising, and corporate dogma spelled the very death of this country and by extension, western civilization. Years before Chuck Palahnuik drafted a blueprint for eschewing convention by relinquishing all ties to commercialism in Fight Club, and thus making anti-commercialism more commercial, Hicks scripted a rousing fight song with the intent of impugning everything unholy and dangerous in the world of capitalism. Foremost on the list was the evil known as laziness. Not laziness in the casually procrastinating sense, but rather the much graver error of cultural indolence. Essentially, people who've grown weary of their power to discern submit to the demands of fictional authoritative figures (i.e. media) who dictate their tastes, interests, opinions, and beliefs. What results from this "dumbing down" is a culture of people who have forgotten how to judge correctly. A group of people-- some of whom are reading this review-- that find themselves on the wet end of a degenerate culture. A culture erected from the cancerous mutation of hype machines, spin, and an elitist social sect designed to capitalize on the acquiescence of its members. These same idle sheep find themselves flocking to inferior merchandise simply to nestle snuggly within an arbitrary hipness quotient, and because of the concomitant satisfaction in rallying behind mediocre products with strong PR. In collaboration with the Bill Hicks Estate, Ryko recently released two CDs worth of (mostly) previously unreleased material entitled Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1 and Love, Laughter and Truth. Recorded at a non-smoking venue June 20th, 1991 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city better suited for gun shows, tractor pulls, and Klan rallies than the musings of Hicks, Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1 gives us a keen view of Hicks at his most indecently acerbic. He starts off with one of his customary targets (non-smokers), informing the largely disinterested crowd that, despite their effort to remain healthy, smoke-free beings, their demise is as inevitable as his. The sheer frenzy of Hicks' nicotine addiction-- according to Hicks, "I go through two lighters a day"-- is matched only by his lust for disgusting the audience with references ranging from tracheotomies, premature birth, and lung cancer. Within a mere ten minutes it's become painfully apparent that Hicks has completely alienated the incoherent Pittsburgh crowd. When the sound of low grumbling is the only response to a rant on the cyclically relevant tensions in Iraq, Hicks dubs the crowd the worst he's ever faced. After several more unsuccessful attempts to rouse interest, Hicks focuses his vitriol solely on the audience. With his frustration nearly at critical level, Hicks taunts the slack-jawed audience with a promise of "dick jokes" mere seconds before (repeatedly) pleading that a nuclear holocaust befalls the mostly yuppie crowd. Although Hicks generally thrived on a perplexed audience, the uncanny bemusement of the Pittsburgh crowd on Saucer, Vol. 1 forced Hicks to cloak most of his societal observations in blatant shock. If there's one detriment to the disc, it's Hicks' tendency to push moral limits a bit too far for gasps and groans. For every schoolyard chord Hicks strikes, there's at least three absolute chasms of silent confusion, wherein the entirety of his commentary on the corruption of President Bush (the elder), the governmentally endorsed lies on narcotics, and the value of pornography in art is completely lost on the audience. Only when Hicks posits celebrities hawking commercial products on television as akin to fellating Satan's penis is there anything resembling a functional synapse present in the Pittsburgh comedy club. By contrast, Love, Laughter and Truth functions as a sort of greatest hits package, compiling recordings made in Denver, San Ramon, San Francisco, and West Palm Beach from 1990 to 1993. Most fascinating about Love, Laughter and Truth is the evolutionary window it provides us on the career of Bill Hicks. We witness his development from the lounge lizard rube to the denunciatory comedic sage. When Hicks unleashes a rampage on the commodification of "drugs" in the form of subversive Public Service Announcements and beer commer

Artist: Bill Hicks, Album: Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: ""I've been on what I call my flying saucer tour which means like flying saucers. I, too, have been appearing in small southern towns in front of handfuls of hillbillies lately, and uh... I've been doubting my own existence," lamented Bill Hicks in his unmistakably rueful Texas drawl. Speaking about the perils and inherent loneliness of life on the road as a nomadic stand-up comic, there wasn't a member of the audience capable of ignoring the arrant honesty of his words. Bill Hicks is our planet's most oft-revered, imitated, plagiarized and anonymous comedic talent. For as many people whose lives were impacted so indelibly by this man's genius, wit, and irreverence, he remains shrouded in mystery to the general public. When his life was tragically snatched away by pancreatic cancer at the age of 32, Hicks hovered precariously on the precipice of superstardom. Having attracted national attention as the first act banned from a CBS television program since Elvis Presley, and with a legion of obstreperous followers behind him, Bill Hicks' untimely passing served as his ultimate comedic closer. With a career built upon hostility, angst, scathing social commentary, and above all, compassion, Hicks' abrupt departure virtually sealed his fate as a contemporary cultural enigma. In the nine years since his passing, Bill Hicks has taken on neo-mythical status. Drawing plaudits from myriad pop culture icons, album dedications from the likes of Tool and Radiohead, and galvanizing the malevolence of cynics everywhere, his fame has soared exponentially. Unlike so many mediocre icons who find notoriety and mass-media acceptance in death, however, Bill Hicks was a man whose art transcended all time and spatial limits and thus established his legend long before his enormous heart stopped beating on February 26th, 1994. Bill Hicks was Noam Chomsky, David Sedaris, Lenny Bruce, and Carlos Castaneda rolled into one. Where other comedians like the late great Sam Kinison identified and ridiculed the problems of modern life for the purpose of shock and laughter, Hicks abhorred the passivity of the populace to such lengths that his rants rang closer to a guerilla revolutionary than a talking head with a microphone. No one has ever been more vocal about the evils of disposable pop culture. A society rendered mentally mute by the ills of marketing, advertising, and corporate dogma spelled the very death of this country and by extension, western civilization. Years before Chuck Palahnuik drafted a blueprint for eschewing convention by relinquishing all ties to commercialism in Fight Club, and thus making anti-commercialism more commercial, Hicks scripted a rousing fight song with the intent of impugning everything unholy and dangerous in the world of capitalism. Foremost on the list was the evil known as laziness. Not laziness in the casually procrastinating sense, but rather the much graver error of cultural indolence. Essentially, people who've grown weary of their power to discern submit to the demands of fictional authoritative figures (i.e. media) who dictate their tastes, interests, opinions, and beliefs. What results from this "dumbing down" is a culture of people who have forgotten how to judge correctly. A group of people-- some of whom are reading this review-- that find themselves on the wet end of a degenerate culture. A culture erected from the cancerous mutation of hype machines, spin, and an elitist social sect designed to capitalize on the acquiescence of its members. These same idle sheep find themselves flocking to inferior merchandise simply to nestle snuggly within an arbitrary hipness quotient, and because of the concomitant satisfaction in rallying behind mediocre products with strong PR. In collaboration with the Bill Hicks Estate, Ryko recently released two CDs worth of (mostly) previously unreleased material entitled Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1 and Love, Laughter and Truth. Recorded at a non-smoking venue June 20th, 1991 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city better suited for gun shows, tractor pulls, and Klan rallies than the musings of Hicks, Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1 gives us a keen view of Hicks at his most indecently acerbic. He starts off with one of his customary targets (non-smokers), informing the largely disinterested crowd that, despite their effort to remain healthy, smoke-free beings, their demise is as inevitable as his. The sheer frenzy of Hicks' nicotine addiction-- according to Hicks, "I go through two lighters a day"-- is matched only by his lust for disgusting the audience with references ranging from tracheotomies, premature birth, and lung cancer. Within a mere ten minutes it's become painfully apparent that Hicks has completely alienated the incoherent Pittsburgh crowd. When the sound of low grumbling is the only response to a rant on the cyclically relevant tensions in Iraq, Hicks dubs the crowd the worst he's ever faced. After several more unsuccessful attempts to rouse interest, Hicks focuses his vitriol solely on the audience. With his frustration nearly at critical level, Hicks taunts the slack-jawed audience with a promise of "dick jokes" mere seconds before (repeatedly) pleading that a nuclear holocaust befalls the mostly yuppie crowd. Although Hicks generally thrived on a perplexed audience, the uncanny bemusement of the Pittsburgh crowd on Saucer, Vol. 1 forced Hicks to cloak most of his societal observations in blatant shock. If there's one detriment to the disc, it's Hicks' tendency to push moral limits a bit too far for gasps and groans. For every schoolyard chord Hicks strikes, there's at least three absolute chasms of silent confusion, wherein the entirety of his commentary on the corruption of President Bush (the elder), the governmentally endorsed lies on narcotics, and the value of pornography in art is completely lost on the audience. Only when Hicks posits celebrities hawking commercial products on television as akin to fellating Satan's penis is there anything resembling a functional synapse present in the Pittsburgh comedy club. By contrast, Love, Laughter and Truth functions as a sort of greatest hits package, compiling recordings made in Denver, San Ramon, San Francisco, and West Palm Beach from 1990 to 1993. Most fascinating about Love, Laughter and Truth is the evolutionary window it provides us on the career of Bill Hicks. We witness his development from the lounge lizard rube to the denunciatory comedic sage. When Hicks unleashes a rampage on the commodification of "drugs" in the form of subversive Public Service Announcements and beer commer"

David Banner

Sex, Drugs & Video Games

Rap

Jordan Sargent

Almost a year before Kanye West would famously call himself "the first nigga with a Benz and a backpack," Mississippi rapper David Banner furiously and bravely worked out the messy contradictions of Southern rap on an album with a scope so wide he just called it Mississippi: The Album. Its first single was a strip club song called "Like a Pimp", and the single that followed it spoke directly to God about reconciling the desire to live "right" with wanting to also live like a rapper. On one song he would spit taunts about having fucked someone else's girl, and on another he would pointedly take George W. Bush to task for his record of executions as governor of Texas. Banner didn't necessarily come to many conclusions, but that was the beauty of his work: He was as confused and indignant and answerless about himself and his community as anyone, and as everyone has the right to be. Even in a Southern rap landscape that was more diverse than many people gave it credit for at the time, Banner was a rare bird. Now, he's something much more common: a rapper trying to recapture a spotlight that has long been shut off, and probably isn't coming back on. Killer Mike, who is about as similar an MC to Banner as there is, has shown this year that it's not impossible to make a great rap album that people care about, even if that audience is a fraction of what it once was. But with R.A.P. Music, Killer Mike more or less rejected the entire notion of regaining the fanbase he once had by making the music he once did. Banner, on the other hand, uses Sex, Drugs & Video Games, available as a free download, to cling to past glory, and the result is an album where the contradictions come off as cynical instead of honest. This isn't exactly a surprise, as Banner has with each successive album moved further away from the likable, inspiring man behind Mississippi in favor of chasing whatever trend is hot at the time. But it is still disappointing, as it wouldn't be unreasonable to hope that he would reverse course as mini-stardom gets smaller and smaller in his rearview. Where he used to be as hard on himself as he was on his peers, Banner now gives himself a pass when convenient. To wit: On "Swag" he chastises rap's obsession with that same omnipresent word. In the song, he directly mentions white girls calling rappers the n-word, which is of course a perfectly acceptable and necessary topic of discussion. Except "Swag" comes two songs after he calls in A$AP Rocky-- whose breakout song is called "Purple Swag", the video for which features a white girl mouthing the n-word-- for a verse. Banner also says that when he dies, he doesn't want to be remembered just for "Play", his absurdly raunchy rip-off of "Wait (The Whisper Song)". Fair enough, but hoping that people will remember more than just his most crassly commercial hit stands in stark contrast to the two songs here that feature Chris Brown, who starred on Banner's last Billboard hit in 2008. Those two songs ("Yao Ming" and "Amazing"), with their noxious mixture of trends old (hashtag punchlines) and new (Chris Brown) are so hopelessly formulaic that they're nadirs as much in theory as in execution. There are times where he tries to callback to the days of Mississippi, specifically with three interludes where he addresses himself through the voice of a female robot. He asks himself questions that are legitimate, but the placements are so bizarre that the interludes seem like they're from an entirely different album, if not an entirely different artist. On the first, the robot asks him why, if he would object to his mom or sister being called a bitch, he also uses the term. Fine enough question, if a bit entry-level, but not only does he not ever provide an answer, he sandwiches the interlude between the two songs where Chris Brown raps about pubes. Another asks him what song of his he would choose to perform in front of God, and that one is for some reason followed by a track where he trades tired bars about California with an epically bored-sounding Snoop Dogg (and Snoop will show up for anything and seem happy). Banner still has some of what made him compelling nearly a decade ago, but when those qualities pop up on Sex, Drugs & Video Games, they work only to illustrate how unmoving his music is today. It doesn't have to be this way, of course, as Killer Mike has shown, but until Banner drops the pretense of pop, his output will likely continue to be utterly unrewarding and sadly inessential.

Artist: David Banner, Album: Sex, Drugs & Video Games, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "Almost a year before Kanye West would famously call himself "the first nigga with a Benz and a backpack," Mississippi rapper David Banner furiously and bravely worked out the messy contradictions of Southern rap on an album with a scope so wide he just called it Mississippi: The Album. Its first single was a strip club song called "Like a Pimp", and the single that followed it spoke directly to God about reconciling the desire to live "right" with wanting to also live like a rapper. On one song he would spit taunts about having fucked someone else's girl, and on another he would pointedly take George W. Bush to task for his record of executions as governor of Texas. Banner didn't necessarily come to many conclusions, but that was the beauty of his work: He was as confused and indignant and answerless about himself and his community as anyone, and as everyone has the right to be. Even in a Southern rap landscape that was more diverse than many people gave it credit for at the time, Banner was a rare bird. Now, he's something much more common: a rapper trying to recapture a spotlight that has long been shut off, and probably isn't coming back on. Killer Mike, who is about as similar an MC to Banner as there is, has shown this year that it's not impossible to make a great rap album that people care about, even if that audience is a fraction of what it once was. But with R.A.P. Music, Killer Mike more or less rejected the entire notion of regaining the fanbase he once had by making the music he once did. Banner, on the other hand, uses Sex, Drugs & Video Games, available as a free download, to cling to past glory, and the result is an album where the contradictions come off as cynical instead of honest. This isn't exactly a surprise, as Banner has with each successive album moved further away from the likable, inspiring man behind Mississippi in favor of chasing whatever trend is hot at the time. But it is still disappointing, as it wouldn't be unreasonable to hope that he would reverse course as mini-stardom gets smaller and smaller in his rearview. Where he used to be as hard on himself as he was on his peers, Banner now gives himself a pass when convenient. To wit: On "Swag" he chastises rap's obsession with that same omnipresent word. In the song, he directly mentions white girls calling rappers the n-word, which is of course a perfectly acceptable and necessary topic of discussion. Except "Swag" comes two songs after he calls in A$AP Rocky-- whose breakout song is called "Purple Swag", the video for which features a white girl mouthing the n-word-- for a verse. Banner also says that when he dies, he doesn't want to be remembered just for "Play", his absurdly raunchy rip-off of "Wait (The Whisper Song)". Fair enough, but hoping that people will remember more than just his most crassly commercial hit stands in stark contrast to the two songs here that feature Chris Brown, who starred on Banner's last Billboard hit in 2008. Those two songs ("Yao Ming" and "Amazing"), with their noxious mixture of trends old (hashtag punchlines) and new (Chris Brown) are so hopelessly formulaic that they're nadirs as much in theory as in execution. There are times where he tries to callback to the days of Mississippi, specifically with three interludes where he addresses himself through the voice of a female robot. He asks himself questions that are legitimate, but the placements are so bizarre that the interludes seem like they're from an entirely different album, if not an entirely different artist. On the first, the robot asks him why, if he would object to his mom or sister being called a bitch, he also uses the term. Fine enough question, if a bit entry-level, but not only does he not ever provide an answer, he sandwiches the interlude between the two songs where Chris Brown raps about pubes. Another asks him what song of his he would choose to perform in front of God, and that one is for some reason followed by a track where he trades tired bars about California with an epically bored-sounding Snoop Dogg (and Snoop will show up for anything and seem happy). Banner still has some of what made him compelling nearly a decade ago, but when those qualities pop up on Sex, Drugs & Video Games, they work only to illustrate how unmoving his music is today. It doesn't have to be this way, of course, as Killer Mike has shown, but until Banner drops the pretense of pop, his output will likely continue to be utterly unrewarding and sadly inessential."

Phaseone

If I Tell U

Electronic

Jonah Bromwich

In 2009, pop mash-ups were so ubiquitous, and so often poorly executed (Super Mash Bros, anyone?) that anyone who showed a degree of subtlety was liable to win approval, or at least a favorable comparison to Girl Talk. The St. Louis producer Andrew Jernigan, better known as Phaseone, took advantage of the situation and dropped a head-turning mix called White Collar Crime, on which he ably mashed-up El-P and Bon Iver, and blended Animal Collective and Burial with equal aplomb. Meanwhile, an album of mostly original material released the same year, Thanks But No Thanks, showed that same range and subtlety in what can now be seen as a clear precursor to the electro-cloud style that’s since become so popular. Jernigan was an early prototype of artists as disparate as Clams Casino, Lapalux, and Teebs, who make hazy, amorphous music structured like instrumental hip-hop and sourced from multiple genres. Four years doesn’t sound like much, but there are now plenty of producers with the range and subtlety to execute the kind of music that Jernigan was making when he came out. And while the new Phaseone album is a tasteful example of the form, it’s still not quite enough to set Jernigan, who now lives in Brooklyn, apart from the pack in the way that those early records did. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to like on If I Tell U. Jernigan has moved away from samples, choosing instead to craft similar sounds for himself, and while his hip-hop bona fides are still obvious on an album filled with rap-nerd percussion, there’s not much here that’s particularly upbeat. Instead, we get soothing, zonked out synth-fests like “Hunter” and the flickering “Tangiers”, two of the best tracks on the album. “Hunter” has guest vocals and “Tangiers” has none, but both tracks function as miniature movements, in constant motion even as certain components of the song repeat throughout. While there’s something soothing about the loops that Jernigan selects, a minimalist repetition that evokes Daniel Lopatin’s more peaceful work, his tracks are too tightly structured and have too much body to function as ambient music. This is where a lack of samples really hurts--without that slice of recognizable melody, that earworm to latch on to, many of the most beautiful tracks here are doomed to first grab, then lose the listener’s attention. Take “Kings”: its lo-fi tonal repetition and breathy vocal are perfectly lovely at first, but the loop isn’t sharp enough to sustain attention through repetition alone, and the entire track ends up being forgettable. On an album where some compositions are lost to tedium, it might be alarming to see an eight-minute track approaching. But "Dialogue" not only validates its running time, but may also hint at a way forward for Jernigan’s music. It's split into four separate sections: a formal, almost classical entrance erupts into a synthetic reinterpretation of a lightshow. Then both vocals and synths are sent through a musical kaleidoscope, waxing and waning before a blurry coda brings things to a halt. Like so many of Jernigan’s pieces, the track is beautiful throughout, but it’s also interesting and unique, a song for listeners to return to and for other producers to take heed of. While much of If I Tell U indicates that the producer might be better off pursuing ambient music with complete conviction or otherwise returning to his polished sample game, a track like “Dialogue” suggests that Phaseone might have more solid musical frontiers to explore yet.

Artist: Phaseone, Album: If I Tell U, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "In 2009, pop mash-ups were so ubiquitous, and so often poorly executed (Super Mash Bros, anyone?) that anyone who showed a degree of subtlety was liable to win approval, or at least a favorable comparison to Girl Talk. The St. Louis producer Andrew Jernigan, better known as Phaseone, took advantage of the situation and dropped a head-turning mix called White Collar Crime, on which he ably mashed-up El-P and Bon Iver, and blended Animal Collective and Burial with equal aplomb. Meanwhile, an album of mostly original material released the same year, Thanks But No Thanks, showed that same range and subtlety in what can now be seen as a clear precursor to the electro-cloud style that’s since become so popular. Jernigan was an early prototype of artists as disparate as Clams Casino, Lapalux, and Teebs, who make hazy, amorphous music structured like instrumental hip-hop and sourced from multiple genres. Four years doesn’t sound like much, but there are now plenty of producers with the range and subtlety to execute the kind of music that Jernigan was making when he came out. And while the new Phaseone album is a tasteful example of the form, it’s still not quite enough to set Jernigan, who now lives in Brooklyn, apart from the pack in the way that those early records did. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to like on If I Tell U. Jernigan has moved away from samples, choosing instead to craft similar sounds for himself, and while his hip-hop bona fides are still obvious on an album filled with rap-nerd percussion, there’s not much here that’s particularly upbeat. Instead, we get soothing, zonked out synth-fests like “Hunter” and the flickering “Tangiers”, two of the best tracks on the album. “Hunter” has guest vocals and “Tangiers” has none, but both tracks function as miniature movements, in constant motion even as certain components of the song repeat throughout. While there’s something soothing about the loops that Jernigan selects, a minimalist repetition that evokes Daniel Lopatin’s more peaceful work, his tracks are too tightly structured and have too much body to function as ambient music. This is where a lack of samples really hurts--without that slice of recognizable melody, that earworm to latch on to, many of the most beautiful tracks here are doomed to first grab, then lose the listener’s attention. Take “Kings”: its lo-fi tonal repetition and breathy vocal are perfectly lovely at first, but the loop isn’t sharp enough to sustain attention through repetition alone, and the entire track ends up being forgettable. On an album where some compositions are lost to tedium, it might be alarming to see an eight-minute track approaching. But "Dialogue" not only validates its running time, but may also hint at a way forward for Jernigan’s music. It's split into four separate sections: a formal, almost classical entrance erupts into a synthetic reinterpretation of a lightshow. Then both vocals and synths are sent through a musical kaleidoscope, waxing and waning before a blurry coda brings things to a halt. Like so many of Jernigan’s pieces, the track is beautiful throughout, but it’s also interesting and unique, a song for listeners to return to and for other producers to take heed of. While much of If I Tell U indicates that the producer might be better off pursuing ambient music with complete conviction or otherwise returning to his polished sample game, a track like “Dialogue” suggests that Phaseone might have more solid musical frontiers to explore yet."

Glacial

On Jones Beach

Marc Masters

Somewhere between notes and noise, between chords and discord, lives Lee Ranaldo's guitar. Even in his most dense, abstract moments, there are melodies and rhythms bubbling below, and no matter how tuneful he gets, his sound burns at the edges and threatens to melt into chaos. At the times when he's doing his best work, he rides that divide like a skateboarder gliding on a rail, effortlessly shifting from side to side as though he's simply flipping a switch. The single, 42-minute track that constitutes Glacial's first full-length album, On Jones Beach, is one of those times. Teaming with David Watson and drummer Tony Buck-- both of whom also know how to blur boundaries-- Ranaldo extends his guitar attack into one of its most all-encompassing expressions ever. The group doesn't just morph melody and abstraction; at various points they sound like a drone symphony, a free-jazz experiment, an improvised-rock power trio, an ambient ensemble, and a confrontational noise outfit. Yet thinking of On Jones Beach as an assembly of stylistic parts would miss its core sonic unity. That unity comes from how smoothly the group merges modes and textures, but more so from the energy they inject throughout. I find myself focused less on what any given moment sounds like than how compelling that sound is. Often it's also oddly catchy; even the densest sections have a semblance of hook. The result is like an instrumental rock song blown up so that every build-up, crescendo, and denouement becomes its own universe. In that sense, On Jones Beach recalls the Dead C, who possess a similar gift for turning massive din into primal rock (Buck is particularly deft at simple, hypnotic beats). It's also tempting to hear parallels to Sonic Youth, since this was recorded in the band's Echo Canyon studios in 2005, the year in between Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped. But I don't detect any direct connections between where that group was at that point and what Glacial are up to here. The trio is distinctly its own beast, especially when Watson trades his guitar for bagpipes. It's stunning how he can make that decidedly non-rock instrument sound like a guitar, and just as stunning how unique it sounds when it takes center position in Glacial's evolving mix. The digital download that comes with the LP-only On Jones Beach offers a version of the title track that's five minutes longer, as well as three more pieces recorded prior to the Echo Canyon session. Two come from Buck's first live appearance with the group in 2003 (Ranaldo and Watson had previously used a rotating cast of drummers); a third is taken from a 2006 gig at the late NYC avant-garde mecca Tonic. The latter is particularly interesting, offering chiming Ranaldo tones and a closing sax-like burst of Watson's bagpipes. But as good as they are, none of these three additions matches the urgency and drive of "On Jones Beach". In fact, it's hard to think of much else in any of these three musicians' careers that compares to this epic piece. Perhaps those careers are so rich and accomplished that, in the calm light of reflection, words like "best" don't really apply. But when On Jones Beach is playing, I'm convinced this is one of the best records Ranaldo, Buck, and Watson have ever taken part in.

Artist: Glacial, Album: On Jones Beach, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Somewhere between notes and noise, between chords and discord, lives Lee Ranaldo's guitar. Even in his most dense, abstract moments, there are melodies and rhythms bubbling below, and no matter how tuneful he gets, his sound burns at the edges and threatens to melt into chaos. At the times when he's doing his best work, he rides that divide like a skateboarder gliding on a rail, effortlessly shifting from side to side as though he's simply flipping a switch. The single, 42-minute track that constitutes Glacial's first full-length album, On Jones Beach, is one of those times. Teaming with David Watson and drummer Tony Buck-- both of whom also know how to blur boundaries-- Ranaldo extends his guitar attack into one of its most all-encompassing expressions ever. The group doesn't just morph melody and abstraction; at various points they sound like a drone symphony, a free-jazz experiment, an improvised-rock power trio, an ambient ensemble, and a confrontational noise outfit. Yet thinking of On Jones Beach as an assembly of stylistic parts would miss its core sonic unity. That unity comes from how smoothly the group merges modes and textures, but more so from the energy they inject throughout. I find myself focused less on what any given moment sounds like than how compelling that sound is. Often it's also oddly catchy; even the densest sections have a semblance of hook. The result is like an instrumental rock song blown up so that every build-up, crescendo, and denouement becomes its own universe. In that sense, On Jones Beach recalls the Dead C, who possess a similar gift for turning massive din into primal rock (Buck is particularly deft at simple, hypnotic beats). It's also tempting to hear parallels to Sonic Youth, since this was recorded in the band's Echo Canyon studios in 2005, the year in between Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped. But I don't detect any direct connections between where that group was at that point and what Glacial are up to here. The trio is distinctly its own beast, especially when Watson trades his guitar for bagpipes. It's stunning how he can make that decidedly non-rock instrument sound like a guitar, and just as stunning how unique it sounds when it takes center position in Glacial's evolving mix. The digital download that comes with the LP-only On Jones Beach offers a version of the title track that's five minutes longer, as well as three more pieces recorded prior to the Echo Canyon session. Two come from Buck's first live appearance with the group in 2003 (Ranaldo and Watson had previously used a rotating cast of drummers); a third is taken from a 2006 gig at the late NYC avant-garde mecca Tonic. The latter is particularly interesting, offering chiming Ranaldo tones and a closing sax-like burst of Watson's bagpipes. But as good as they are, none of these three additions matches the urgency and drive of "On Jones Beach". In fact, it's hard to think of much else in any of these three musicians' careers that compares to this epic piece. Perhaps those careers are so rich and accomplished that, in the calm light of reflection, words like "best" don't really apply. But when On Jones Beach is playing, I'm convinced this is one of the best records Ranaldo, Buck, and Watson have ever taken part in."

Jimmy Edgar

XXX

Electronic

Andrew Gaerig

One of the great pleasures of discovering musical prodigies is the knowledge that anyone brilliant enough to create great art at a young age is usually also savvy enough to change over the course of an elongated career. Bob Dylan is the totem example, but everyone from Conor Oberst to Dizzee Rascal has made bold, stirring moves. Even the failures-- usually frequent-- are interesting and fun. Jimmy Edgar was discovered by Warp at 18 in 2001, and he's spent the last decade developing the kind of résumé you might expect from a Detroiter who was playing raves at 15. His work is dotted with hard electro, funk, hip-hop, and raunchy pop. Edgar's XXX, only his second full-length album and first for !K7, is not fun and, more importantly, it's not very interesting. XXX sounds like strip-club music made by someone who, well, really loves strip clubs. This is not a surprise from an artist whose most famous track is "I Wanna Be Your STD". To put it another way: XXX sounds like what Lords of Acid album covers look like. XXX has attraction, sex, fucking, some afterglow, but it's uncomfortably entitled and vain. "Hot, Raw, Sex" isn't about hot, raw sex, per se, it's about what Edgar considers such an experience to be. The song's mantra: "We had/ What I call/ Hot, raw sex." What are Edgar's standards for hot, raw sex? We don't know! Edgar has often bristled at those who refer to his music as electronic, and he might finally have a point: Though the source instruments remain analog keyboards and computers, XXX is a fairly straight pop-funk album. He's probably taking aim at Prince, and sometimes he gets there: the slow-winding groove of "Physical Motion", the pillow keys and spacey funk of "Midnite Fone Call". More often he finds Prince's weirdo offspring: David Banner's whisper-porn on "Push", the brainy thwump of Mu (minus the heavy psychosis) on "In My Color". In interviews, Edgar is confrontational, declarative, and tactless. Describing his favorite festival moment in an interview with Resident Advisor, Edgar said, "I've got video tape of black security guards booty dancing to my set at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival a few years ago. Then it pans to a one-armed break dancer, spinning on his nub." This kind of reckless confidence-- that of a person who was declared a musical force at such a young age-- bleeds into XXX. The album feels haughty and off-putting even when its influences (frequently) and execution (less so) are on-point. We expect roadbumps with prodigies, but Edgar should be encouraged to fail more charmingly next time.

Artist: Jimmy Edgar, Album: XXX, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 4.4 Album review: "One of the great pleasures of discovering musical prodigies is the knowledge that anyone brilliant enough to create great art at a young age is usually also savvy enough to change over the course of an elongated career. Bob Dylan is the totem example, but everyone from Conor Oberst to Dizzee Rascal has made bold, stirring moves. Even the failures-- usually frequent-- are interesting and fun. Jimmy Edgar was discovered by Warp at 18 in 2001, and he's spent the last decade developing the kind of résumé you might expect from a Detroiter who was playing raves at 15. His work is dotted with hard electro, funk, hip-hop, and raunchy pop. Edgar's XXX, only his second full-length album and first for !K7, is not fun and, more importantly, it's not very interesting. XXX sounds like strip-club music made by someone who, well, really loves strip clubs. This is not a surprise from an artist whose most famous track is "I Wanna Be Your STD". To put it another way: XXX sounds like what Lords of Acid album covers look like. XXX has attraction, sex, fucking, some afterglow, but it's uncomfortably entitled and vain. "Hot, Raw, Sex" isn't about hot, raw sex, per se, it's about what Edgar considers such an experience to be. The song's mantra: "We had/ What I call/ Hot, raw sex." What are Edgar's standards for hot, raw sex? We don't know! Edgar has often bristled at those who refer to his music as electronic, and he might finally have a point: Though the source instruments remain analog keyboards and computers, XXX is a fairly straight pop-funk album. He's probably taking aim at Prince, and sometimes he gets there: the slow-winding groove of "Physical Motion", the pillow keys and spacey funk of "Midnite Fone Call". More often he finds Prince's weirdo offspring: David Banner's whisper-porn on "Push", the brainy thwump of Mu (minus the heavy psychosis) on "In My Color". In interviews, Edgar is confrontational, declarative, and tactless. Describing his favorite festival moment in an interview with Resident Advisor, Edgar said, "I've got video tape of black security guards booty dancing to my set at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival a few years ago. Then it pans to a one-armed break dancer, spinning on his nub." This kind of reckless confidence-- that of a person who was declared a musical force at such a young age-- bleeds into XXX. The album feels haughty and off-putting even when its influences (frequently) and execution (less so) are on-point. We expect roadbumps with prodigies, but Edgar should be encouraged to fail more charmingly next time."

Teenage Jesus and Beirut Slump

Shut Up and Bleed

Marc Masters

The early work of Lydia Lunch often gets linked inextricably to no wave, the post-punk movement that burned through downtown New York in the late 1970's. That's accurate-- her nihilistic, audience-defying attitude helped define the movement (some claim she even coined the term). But it's also a bit unfair. Lunch's music would be bracingly unique anywhere, anytime, as would the path she took to get there. The basic plot would sound wild if it happened now, so imagine how gutsy it seemed back then: In 1976, at age 16, Lydia Koch runs away from her upstate New York home, crashes in a hippies' loft in Manhattan, befriends Suicide and the Dead Boys and foists her poetry on them, and eventually launches a band called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. "The driving vision behind Teenage Jesus was to castrate the tradition of melody and composition," she wrote in a memoir included in this disc, "and simply vent in the most primal way possible the horrible din of my own torture." That may sound over the top, but it's an understatement compared to how Teenage Jesus actually sounded. Over harsh, dogmatic beats, gravity-drenched bass, and exploding slide guitar, Lunch screamed out her obsessions with torture, imprisonment, and bodily harm. "Take a bullet to my eyes/ Blow them out and see if I die"; "Little orphans running through the bloody snow"; "The dishes are cracked, the forks are plastic/ The food is in cellophane, and I puke elastic." Lunch's short, spiked songs were the musical equivalent of avant-garde slasher movies. (No wonder no wave directors like Vivienne Dick and Beth and Scott B. often made Lydia the star of their films). All this blood and guts comes across vividly on Shut Up and Bleed, the most complete compilation to date of Teenage Jesus' work. (Atavistic previously released one called Everything, but it had less material, and it definitely didn't sound this good). Not that there was a lot to compile: the band released only two 7-inches and a 12-inch EP, along with an appearance on Brian Eno's compilation No New York. But Shut Up and Bleed adds the posthumous Pre-Teenage Jesus EP (recorded when future Contortion James Chance was in the band), some fiery live tracks from the earlier Lunch compilation Hysterie, and, most excitingly, two previously-unreleased live cuts. Those were recorded at the 1978 Arists' Space festival which inspired Eno to create No New York. "Eliminate by Night" is a 45-second stomp that fits perfectly into the band's lightning-bolt oeuvre. "Roll Your Thunder" is a minimalist march, with Bradly Field's lock-step snare slicing through Jim Sclavunos' monster bass and Lunch's drill-sergeant commands. According to the liner notes, the group played 16 songs at Artists' Space (including four versions of the screeching instrumental "Red Alert"); here's hoping Atavistic can eventually unleash them all. Teenage Jesus burned out in just a couple of years (Lunch's M.O. was to make her point and move on immediately), but even in that short window, she found time for another band. Lunch intended Beirut Slump to be "slow, torturous...a bloody drag," and she succeeded. Borrowing Sclavunos to play drums, she added filmmaker Dick on keyboards and siblings Liz and Bobby Swope on bass and vocals, respectively. The band's dominant elements are Dick's drones and Swope's B-movie moans. On shivery cuts like the lurching "Try Me" and the woozy "Staircase", Swope is like a musical Ed Wood, directing his group through foggy cemeteries and over-lit swamps. Beirut Slump was ultimately a footnote to Teenage Jesus (the band released one single and played just three shows), but a footnote worth reading. Shut Up and Bleed's only weakness is bizarre sequencing. It's as if someone threw the tracks into the air like a deck of cards and let the resulting random mess dictate order. Cuts by both bands are interspersed, and simple logic-- like maybe putting the two tracks from the same single next to each other-- is rarely heeded. Anyone listening with history in mind will have to craft a new playlist (and good luck reading the dark discographical symbols). But that confusion doesn't diminish the power of the music here-- music made by a singular legend at the peak of her adolescent powers.

Artist: Teenage Jesus and Beirut Slump, Album: Shut Up and Bleed, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "The early work of Lydia Lunch often gets linked inextricably to no wave, the post-punk movement that burned through downtown New York in the late 1970's. That's accurate-- her nihilistic, audience-defying attitude helped define the movement (some claim she even coined the term). But it's also a bit unfair. Lunch's music would be bracingly unique anywhere, anytime, as would the path she took to get there. The basic plot would sound wild if it happened now, so imagine how gutsy it seemed back then: In 1976, at age 16, Lydia Koch runs away from her upstate New York home, crashes in a hippies' loft in Manhattan, befriends Suicide and the Dead Boys and foists her poetry on them, and eventually launches a band called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. "The driving vision behind Teenage Jesus was to castrate the tradition of melody and composition," she wrote in a memoir included in this disc, "and simply vent in the most primal way possible the horrible din of my own torture." That may sound over the top, but it's an understatement compared to how Teenage Jesus actually sounded. Over harsh, dogmatic beats, gravity-drenched bass, and exploding slide guitar, Lunch screamed out her obsessions with torture, imprisonment, and bodily harm. "Take a bullet to my eyes/ Blow them out and see if I die"; "Little orphans running through the bloody snow"; "The dishes are cracked, the forks are plastic/ The food is in cellophane, and I puke elastic." Lunch's short, spiked songs were the musical equivalent of avant-garde slasher movies. (No wonder no wave directors like Vivienne Dick and Beth and Scott B. often made Lydia the star of their films). All this blood and guts comes across vividly on Shut Up and Bleed, the most complete compilation to date of Teenage Jesus' work. (Atavistic previously released one called Everything, but it had less material, and it definitely didn't sound this good). Not that there was a lot to compile: the band released only two 7-inches and a 12-inch EP, along with an appearance on Brian Eno's compilation No New York. But Shut Up and Bleed adds the posthumous Pre-Teenage Jesus EP (recorded when future Contortion James Chance was in the band), some fiery live tracks from the earlier Lunch compilation Hysterie, and, most excitingly, two previously-unreleased live cuts. Those were recorded at the 1978 Arists' Space festival which inspired Eno to create No New York. "Eliminate by Night" is a 45-second stomp that fits perfectly into the band's lightning-bolt oeuvre. "Roll Your Thunder" is a minimalist march, with Bradly Field's lock-step snare slicing through Jim Sclavunos' monster bass and Lunch's drill-sergeant commands. According to the liner notes, the group played 16 songs at Artists' Space (including four versions of the screeching instrumental "Red Alert"); here's hoping Atavistic can eventually unleash them all. Teenage Jesus burned out in just a couple of years (Lunch's M.O. was to make her point and move on immediately), but even in that short window, she found time for another band. Lunch intended Beirut Slump to be "slow, torturous...a bloody drag," and she succeeded. Borrowing Sclavunos to play drums, she added filmmaker Dick on keyboards and siblings Liz and Bobby Swope on bass and vocals, respectively. The band's dominant elements are Dick's drones and Swope's B-movie moans. On shivery cuts like the lurching "Try Me" and the woozy "Staircase", Swope is like a musical Ed Wood, directing his group through foggy cemeteries and over-lit swamps. Beirut Slump was ultimately a footnote to Teenage Jesus (the band released one single and played just three shows), but a footnote worth reading. Shut Up and Bleed's only weakness is bizarre sequencing. It's as if someone threw the tracks into the air like a deck of cards and let the resulting random mess dictate order. Cuts by both bands are interspersed, and simple logic-- like maybe putting the two tracks from the same single next to each other-- is rarely heeded. Anyone listening with history in mind will have to craft a new playlist (and good luck reading the dark discographical symbols). But that confusion doesn't diminish the power of the music here-- music made by a singular legend at the peak of her adolescent powers."

Golden Pelicans

Disciples of Blood

Rock

Evan Minsker

Orlando’s Golden Pelicans have a fake origin story—one about working as the house band for a local, now-defunct gang of weed dealers—but that narrative isn’t required to understand their scummy universe. Their early singles and first two LPs on drummer Rich Evans’ unstoppable Total Punk imprint—2014’s Golden Pelicans and 2015’s Oldest Ride, Longest Line—are the works of a band who paired classic hard rock’s beefy earworms with hardcore’s abrasive screams. One of their signature songs is about pissin’ in a puddle of puke, and in another one, they’re chained to a dumpster. Erik Grincewicz is their frontman—a bearded balding dude who doesn’t hesitate to soak a crowd in beer. He leads the charge with his abrasive, ultra-hoarse voice, which is both an unstable force and a riveting focal point. Guitarist Scott Barnes is the muscle, emboldening their overall attack with chugging heft and undeniable hooks. It’s Barnes’ sick guitar solos that push Golden Pelicans into that rare echelon of contemporary punk bands whose technical ability matches their guttural aggression. Disciples of Blood is Golden Pelicans’ first long-player on a non-Total Punk label; this time they handed the reins to Goner Records. Once again, the balance between Grincewicz’s rough vocals and Barnes’ massive guitar sound is keyed in perfectly. “Smell the Lightning” is a prime example—the introductory guitar has this polished, seemingly expensive sound pulled from hard rock hits from the tail end of the ’70s. Then, Grincewicz’s near-gargled scream shoots through Barnes’ hook with a line about getting fried on his own supply. They balance precision and blunt force, and the results are extremely satisfying. Narratively, it’s an album that oscillates between a violent present and a brutal mythological past. At one point, they’re frantically running from some compromising announcement by a Byzantine cleric, and Grincewicz sounds unhinged as he sings about “blood on the Bosphorus/Black sails on Aegean Sea.” When they’re not playing Russian roulette, they’re reflecting on what it’s like to get turned to stone by Medusa. Mythology in rock music is a tough needle to thread—most attempts come out bloated and corny. With a concise, heavy delivery, Golden Pelicans never run into that problem. Between the destruction-filled album covers Mac Blackout made for all three of their albums, Grincewicz’s unrivaled voice, and the guitar heroics, the band sells ancient war tactics as authoritatively as they sell contemporary vomit. One of the defining statements of the album the black comedy of “It Ain’t Psychedelic (Till You Kill Someone).” After one of their most upbeat intros on record, Grincewicz enters as the devil on your shoulder, insisting that any floaty, pleasant psychedelic experience isn’t going to cut it. Then there’s the title track, and while “Disciples of Blood” sounds like another lofty mythological reference, it’s really a story about slobs sticking up for themselves. Of course, the disciples in question chug beers and are baptized in piss, because that’s Golden Pelicans’ aesthetic. It’s an endlessly replayable album at 22 minutes, and it’s one that demands to be heard loud. They’re rock songs that revel in scum and violence—catchy, heavy music that makes you want to shove your friends and scream along. Sometimes, evil can be fun.

Artist: Golden Pelicans, Album: Disciples of Blood, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Orlando’s Golden Pelicans have a fake origin story—one about working as the house band for a local, now-defunct gang of weed dealers—but that narrative isn’t required to understand their scummy universe. Their early singles and first two LPs on drummer Rich Evans’ unstoppable Total Punk imprint—2014’s Golden Pelicans and 2015’s Oldest Ride, Longest Line—are the works of a band who paired classic hard rock’s beefy earworms with hardcore’s abrasive screams. One of their signature songs is about pissin’ in a puddle of puke, and in another one, they’re chained to a dumpster. Erik Grincewicz is their frontman—a bearded balding dude who doesn’t hesitate to soak a crowd in beer. He leads the charge with his abrasive, ultra-hoarse voice, which is both an unstable force and a riveting focal point. Guitarist Scott Barnes is the muscle, emboldening their overall attack with chugging heft and undeniable hooks. It’s Barnes’ sick guitar solos that push Golden Pelicans into that rare echelon of contemporary punk bands whose technical ability matches their guttural aggression. Disciples of Blood is Golden Pelicans’ first long-player on a non-Total Punk label; this time they handed the reins to Goner Records. Once again, the balance between Grincewicz’s rough vocals and Barnes’ massive guitar sound is keyed in perfectly. “Smell the Lightning” is a prime example—the introductory guitar has this polished, seemingly expensive sound pulled from hard rock hits from the tail end of the ’70s. Then, Grincewicz’s near-gargled scream shoots through Barnes’ hook with a line about getting fried on his own supply. They balance precision and blunt force, and the results are extremely satisfying. Narratively, it’s an album that oscillates between a violent present and a brutal mythological past. At one point, they’re frantically running from some compromising announcement by a Byzantine cleric, and Grincewicz sounds unhinged as he sings about “blood on the Bosphorus/Black sails on Aegean Sea.” When they’re not playing Russian roulette, they’re reflecting on what it’s like to get turned to stone by Medusa. Mythology in rock music is a tough needle to thread—most attempts come out bloated and corny. With a concise, heavy delivery, Golden Pelicans never run into that problem. Between the destruction-filled album covers Mac Blackout made for all three of their albums, Grincewicz’s unrivaled voice, and the guitar heroics, the band sells ancient war tactics as authoritatively as they sell contemporary vomit. One of the defining statements of the album the black comedy of “It Ain’t Psychedelic (Till You Kill Someone).” After one of their most upbeat intros on record, Grincewicz enters as the devil on your shoulder, insisting that any floaty, pleasant psychedelic experience isn’t going to cut it. Then there’s the title track, and while “Disciples of Blood” sounds like another lofty mythological reference, it’s really a story about slobs sticking up for themselves. Of course, the disciples in question chug beers and are baptized in piss, because that’s Golden Pelicans’ aesthetic. It’s an endlessly replayable album at 22 minutes, and it’s one that demands to be heard loud. They’re rock songs that revel in scum and violence—catchy, heavy music that makes you want to shove your friends and scream along. Sometimes, evil can be fun."

Teyana Taylor

K.T.S.E.

Pop/R&B

Claire Lobenfeld

For Teyana Taylor, music has been a waiting game. She started her career at Pharrell’s Star Trak label over a decade ago, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the singer released her first full-length studio album, VII. It was a smooth and adventurous pop record that only made a small splash due in part to the lax promotion behind it. Since then, her star has risen mainly for music-adjacent accolades, such as dancing sweat-slicked and ripped in the video for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo track “Fade” and the emergency birth of her daughter Junie, who she delivered straight into the hands of her husband, NBA champ Iman Shumpert, with whom she shares an eponymous reality show. It’s finally time for her enormous voice to retake the spotlight. Taylor’s latest, K.T.S.E. (short for Keep That Same Energy), is long overdue, but the album remains too small a platform for her tremendous vocal talent. It is the final of the five G.O.O.D. Music albums produced by Kanye in Wyoming, the least controversial—save for its delayed release—and, perhaps, the most in touch with the Old Kanye. Soul samples abound throughout, from the Delfonics to GQ to the Stylistics’ “Because I Love You, Girl” on the New York native’s personal empowerment anthem “Rose in Harlem.” The minimalist guitar noodling often found in the blues makes the flirty “Hurry” even more playful. These songs aren’t just Kanye catnip, but a marker of Taylor’s flexibility. She is deft at performing modernist soul with the genre’s forebears as her backdrop. Her singing sounds luxurious but effortless; even when she adopts a Migos-type flow on opener “No Manners,” it’s sticky and seductive. Album closer “WTP” is one of the most compelling songs on the album—but it is a lot to untangle. Taylor floats over a pseudo-vogue beat, singing only a sultry cabaret-style hook as rapper Mykki Blanco tries on the role of ballroom commentator. The song’s mantric backbone of “work this pussy” straddles the line between a hypnotic siren call and a runway maxim for feeling like you have the best tuck at the ball. The song is de rigueur fun at a time when Vanessa Hudgens can guest on “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” and passively say, “I’m really into voguing right now.” Ballroom continues to face mainstreaming beyond the short reaches of Paris Is Burning and vogue house’s canonical text Masters at Work’s “The Ha Dance” making its way into all types of global club music. It feels perfect for Taylor, but it’s also dishonest and off-putting as produced by MAGA-era Kanye who has no business pilfering from anyone’s liberation sound when he likes the way it sounds when Trump talks. Kanye’s fetid touch could sideline Taylor yet again, even though she belongs among a cadre of R&B singers, like Kehlani and SZA, whose hefty talents and distinct points of view are often relegated to supporting roles on albums and tours. This absence was probed last August by Mosi Reeves for NPR in a piece called, “Kehlani, and R&B’s Women of Color, Struggle to Be Heard in Pop Market” as Demi Lovato’s Kehlani-like “Sorry Not Sorry” went to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 while Kehlani has yet to score a Top 20 single. Even SZA—whose extraordinary, voice-of-a-generation album Ctrl earned her five Grammy nominations (she won none of them) and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200—spent 2018 as an opener on the TDE Championship Tour instead of taking a victory lap with top billing on her own stadium outing. K.T.S.E.’s length—22 minutes, even shorter than the pint-sized ye—makes it feel like a blip on the bloated timeline of Kanye West’s 2018 when it should really be Taylor’s turn at musical stardom. But within this brief album are all the small secrets of Teyana Taylor just waiting to be delivered on a massive stage.

Artist: Teyana Taylor, Album: K.T.S.E., Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "For Teyana Taylor, music has been a waiting game. She started her career at Pharrell’s Star Trak label over a decade ago, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the singer released her first full-length studio album, VII. It was a smooth and adventurous pop record that only made a small splash due in part to the lax promotion behind it. Since then, her star has risen mainly for music-adjacent accolades, such as dancing sweat-slicked and ripped in the video for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo track “Fade” and the emergency birth of her daughter Junie, who she delivered straight into the hands of her husband, NBA champ Iman Shumpert, with whom she shares an eponymous reality show. It’s finally time for her enormous voice to retake the spotlight. Taylor’s latest, K.T.S.E. (short for Keep That Same Energy), is long overdue, but the album remains too small a platform for her tremendous vocal talent. It is the final of the five G.O.O.D. Music albums produced by Kanye in Wyoming, the least controversial—save for its delayed release—and, perhaps, the most in touch with the Old Kanye. Soul samples abound throughout, from the Delfonics to GQ to the Stylistics’ “Because I Love You, Girl” on the New York native’s personal empowerment anthem “Rose in Harlem.” The minimalist guitar noodling often found in the blues makes the flirty “Hurry” even more playful. These songs aren’t just Kanye catnip, but a marker of Taylor’s flexibility. She is deft at performing modernist soul with the genre’s forebears as her backdrop. Her singing sounds luxurious but effortless; even when she adopts a Migos-type flow on opener “No Manners,” it’s sticky and seductive. Album closer “WTP” is one of the most compelling songs on the album—but it is a lot to untangle. Taylor floats over a pseudo-vogue beat, singing only a sultry cabaret-style hook as rapper Mykki Blanco tries on the role of ballroom commentator. The song’s mantric backbone of “work this pussy” straddles the line between a hypnotic siren call and a runway maxim for feeling like you have the best tuck at the ball. The song is de rigueur fun at a time when Vanessa Hudgens can guest on “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” and passively say, “I’m really into voguing right now.” Ballroom continues to face mainstreaming beyond the short reaches of Paris Is Burning and vogue house’s canonical text Masters at Work’s “The Ha Dance” making its way into all types of global club music. It feels perfect for Taylor, but it’s also dishonest and off-putting as produced by MAGA-era Kanye who has no business pilfering from anyone’s liberation sound when he likes the way it sounds when Trump talks. Kanye’s fetid touch could sideline Taylor yet again, even though she belongs among a cadre of R&B singers, like Kehlani and SZA, whose hefty talents and distinct points of view are often relegated to supporting roles on albums and tours. This absence was probed last August by Mosi Reeves for NPR in a piece called, “Kehlani, and R&B’s Women of Color, Struggle to Be Heard in Pop Market” as Demi Lovato’s Kehlani-like “Sorry Not Sorry” went to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 while Kehlani has yet to score a Top 20 single. Even SZA—whose extraordinary, voice-of-a-generation album Ctrl earned her five Grammy nominations (she won none of them) and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200—spent 2018 as an opener on the TDE Championship Tour instead of taking a victory lap with top billing on her own stadium outing. K.T.S.E.’s length—22 minutes, even shorter than the pint-sized ye—makes it feel like a blip on the bloated timeline of Kanye West’s 2018 when it should really be Taylor’s turn at musical stardom. But within this brief album are all the small secrets of Teyana Taylor just waiting to be delivered on a massive stage."

Hole

Live Through This

Rock

Sasha Geffen

Try to imagine a famous woman who screams for a living today. Not alternative, punk-magazine famous, but American monoculture famous, platinum-selling-album famous, so famous her drug mishaps make headlines in Mexican newspapers, so famous rumors and conspiracies about her celebrity marriage hound her for decades. This woman doesn’t let out sing-screams or tinny emo yelps, but raw, diaphragmatic bellows—or, as David Fricke put it in his Rolling Stone review of Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This, a “corrosive, lunatic wail.” He was wrong on the second point: There’s no lunacy on Hole’s records. But there is anger, female anger, which, to a man’s ear, historically scans as madness. Lead singer Courtney Love often told reporters that she named her band after a line in Euripides’ Medea. “There’s a hole that pierces right through me,” it supposedly goes, though you won’t find it in any common translation of the ancient play. It’s apocryphal, or misremembered, or Love made it up to complicate the name’s obvious double entendre—either way, it makes a great myth. A band foregrounding female rage takes its name from the angriest woman in the Western canon, a woman so angry at her husband’s betrayal she kills their children just so he will feel her pain in his bones. Like all female revenge fantasies written by men, Medea carries a grain of neurosis about how women might retaliate for their subjugation. It is easier, still, for men to express these anxieties by way of violent fantasy than it is for women to communicate their anger at all. In a 1996 New York Magazine cover story on women alternative singers entitled “Feminism Rocks,” Kim France, the founding editor of Lucky who also worked as New York’s deputy editor, paraphrased feminist journalist and author Susan Faludi: “While our culture admires the angry young man, who is perceived as heroic and sexy, it can’t find anything but scorn for the angry young woman, who is seen as emasculating and bitter.” This was true for Love, who watched grunge break through to the mainstream only to find that the freedom and rebellion it promised was reserved for her male counterparts. In grunge, men could be scruffy and rude and defy gender norms—they could be rawer than the men modeled in synth-pop music videos or hair metal concerts a few years prior. Women, for all the space afforded them in the subculture’s spotlight moment, might as well have been Lilith. Hole’s second album, Live Through This, famously came out four days after Love’s husband Kurt Cobain was found dead at their home in Seattle. The sudden tragedy threatened to swallow the music, to say nothing of the genre and social movement in which it was encased. Here was a dead rock god, and here was the woman who survived him. Even the album’s title alluded to Love’s endurance through a ground-shaking trauma, though of course she had written the title about surviving her fame, surviving her fraught association with the most beloved man in rock, surviving her pregnancy with their child, surviving the tabloid rumors that would—and still do—swarm her as a result. ”I sometimes feel that no one’s taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there’s a certain female point of view that’s never been given space,” Love told Sidelines in 1991, the same year Hole released their first album Pretty on the Inside. While there were plenty of rock songs written by men about hounding and abusing women, there were few about being hounded and abused. The rock canon, like all the others, fiercely guarded its male subjectivity, and Love wanted to break through its ranks. She did so with violent contradictions. Love projected a high femme presence, all red lipstick and messy blonde hair like a bedraggled Marilyn Monroe, while commandeering her post at the microphone with masculine bravado. She wore baby-doll dresses and screamed at the coarse bottom-edge of her range. She was the first to admit the look was a compromise, a Trojan horse for her rage. “When women get angry, they are regarded as shrill or hysterical...One way around that, for me, is bleaching my hair and looking good,” she told the New York Times in 1992. “It’s bad that I have to do that to get my anger accepted. But then I’m part of an evolutionary process. I’m not the fully evolved end.” If Pretty on the Inside delivered fury on the backs of abject impressionism, then Live Through This crystallized the same impulse into pop songs you could holler along to. Its lyrics juxtaposed visceral imagery—milk and piss and blood—with catchy, vituperative sloganeering. Hole walked the same high wire Nirvana did on Nevermind and In Utero, between bone-deep rage and syrupy hooks, only Hole’s job was harder: The band had to sell that unstable boundary through a female lens. They had to sell Love, too, who had already committed a host of cardinal sins in the public eye. She was a woman without a filter married to a pop idol, and she had carried his child without giving up her celebrity or her art, without retreating into the shadows to become an incubator. An infamous 1992 Vanity Fair profile probed the question of Love’s irreconcilable role of expectant mother and rock star. Such a simultaneity does not exist in the popular imagination. She was impossible, she could not be, and according to sources quoted in the story, she was using drugs while pregnant. The story prompted an investigation from the Department of Children and Family Services, and Love’s newborn daughter Frances Bean was temporarily taken from her parents. ”I want my baby/Who took my baby?” Love howls on “I Think That I Would Die,” and this time it’s not a metaphor; listeners could map that anguish onto events they’d seen unfold in real time. No one could accuse Love of lying, which didn’t stop rumors from bubbling up that her husband had written all the songs on Live Through This. Love carved an impossible space for herself in pop culture and was pilloried for it, and when she sang about the fallout, Nirvana fans cast her as a puppet for her husband’s genius just because the songs were good. It’s not like he could have written them, either; when Cobain wrote about rape, he wrote sardonically, and from the point of view of the rapist. The irony in his songs was apparently lost on some of his listeners. In that Vanity Fair profile, Love relayed a chilling anecdote she had heard about a girl who had been raped in Reno, whose rapists had been singing Nirvana’s song “Polly” while assaulting her. “These are the people who listen to him,” she said. Love wrote about sexual violence with a sn

Artist: Hole, Album: Live Through This, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 10.0 Album review: "Try to imagine a famous woman who screams for a living today. Not alternative, punk-magazine famous, but American monoculture famous, platinum-selling-album famous, so famous her drug mishaps make headlines in Mexican newspapers, so famous rumors and conspiracies about her celebrity marriage hound her for decades. This woman doesn’t let out sing-screams or tinny emo yelps, but raw, diaphragmatic bellows—or, as David Fricke put it in his Rolling Stone review of Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This, a “corrosive, lunatic wail.” He was wrong on the second point: There’s no lunacy on Hole’s records. But there is anger, female anger, which, to a man’s ear, historically scans as madness. Lead singer Courtney Love often told reporters that she named her band after a line in Euripides’ Medea. “There’s a hole that pierces right through me,” it supposedly goes, though you won’t find it in any common translation of the ancient play. It’s apocryphal, or misremembered, or Love made it up to complicate the name’s obvious double entendre—either way, it makes a great myth. A band foregrounding female rage takes its name from the angriest woman in the Western canon, a woman so angry at her husband’s betrayal she kills their children just so he will feel her pain in his bones. Like all female revenge fantasies written by men, Medea carries a grain of neurosis about how women might retaliate for their subjugation. It is easier, still, for men to express these anxieties by way of violent fantasy than it is for women to communicate their anger at all. In a 1996 New York Magazine cover story on women alternative singers entitled “Feminism Rocks,” Kim France, the founding editor of Lucky who also worked as New York’s deputy editor, paraphrased feminist journalist and author Susan Faludi: “While our culture admires the angry young man, who is perceived as heroic and sexy, it can’t find anything but scorn for the angry young woman, who is seen as emasculating and bitter.” This was true for Love, who watched grunge break through to the mainstream only to find that the freedom and rebellion it promised was reserved for her male counterparts. In grunge, men could be scruffy and rude and defy gender norms—they could be rawer than the men modeled in synth-pop music videos or hair metal concerts a few years prior. Women, for all the space afforded them in the subculture’s spotlight moment, might as well have been Lilith. Hole’s second album, Live Through This, famously came out four days after Love’s husband Kurt Cobain was found dead at their home in Seattle. The sudden tragedy threatened to swallow the music, to say nothing of the genre and social movement in which it was encased. Here was a dead rock god, and here was the woman who survived him. Even the album’s title alluded to Love’s endurance through a ground-shaking trauma, though of course she had written the title about surviving her fame, surviving her fraught association with the most beloved man in rock, surviving her pregnancy with their child, surviving the tabloid rumors that would—and still do—swarm her as a result. ”I sometimes feel that no one’s taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there’s a certain female point of view that’s never been given space,” Love told Sidelines in 1991, the same year Hole released their first album Pretty on the Inside. While there were plenty of rock songs written by men about hounding and abusing women, there were few about being hounded and abused. The rock canon, like all the others, fiercely guarded its male subjectivity, and Love wanted to break through its ranks. She did so with violent contradictions. Love projected a high femme presence, all red lipstick and messy blonde hair like a bedraggled Marilyn Monroe, while commandeering her post at the microphone with masculine bravado. She wore baby-doll dresses and screamed at the coarse bottom-edge of her range. She was the first to admit the look was a compromise, a Trojan horse for her rage. “When women get angry, they are regarded as shrill or hysterical...One way around that, for me, is bleaching my hair and looking good,” she told the New York Times in 1992. “It’s bad that I have to do that to get my anger accepted. But then I’m part of an evolutionary process. I’m not the fully evolved end.” If Pretty on the Inside delivered fury on the backs of abject impressionism, then Live Through This crystallized the same impulse into pop songs you could holler along to. Its lyrics juxtaposed visceral imagery—milk and piss and blood—with catchy, vituperative sloganeering. Hole walked the same high wire Nirvana did on Nevermind and In Utero, between bone-deep rage and syrupy hooks, only Hole’s job was harder: The band had to sell that unstable boundary through a female lens. They had to sell Love, too, who had already committed a host of cardinal sins in the public eye. She was a woman without a filter married to a pop idol, and she had carried his child without giving up her celebrity or her art, without retreating into the shadows to become an incubator. An infamous 1992 Vanity Fair profile probed the question of Love’s irreconcilable role of expectant mother and rock star. Such a simultaneity does not exist in the popular imagination. She was impossible, she could not be, and according to sources quoted in the story, she was using drugs while pregnant. The story prompted an investigation from the Department of Children and Family Services, and Love’s newborn daughter Frances Bean was temporarily taken from her parents. ”I want my baby/Who took my baby?” Love howls on “I Think That I Would Die,” and this time it’s not a metaphor; listeners could map that anguish onto events they’d seen unfold in real time. No one could accuse Love of lying, which didn’t stop rumors from bubbling up that her husband had written all the songs on Live Through This. Love carved an impossible space for herself in pop culture and was pilloried for it, and when she sang about the fallout, Nirvana fans cast her as a puppet for her husband’s genius just because the songs were good. It’s not like he could have written them, either; when Cobain wrote about rape, he wrote sardonically, and from the point of view of the rapist. The irony in his songs was apparently lost on some of his listeners. In that Vanity Fair profile, Love relayed a chilling anecdote she had heard about a girl who had been raped in Reno, whose rapists had been singing Nirvana’s song “Polly” while assaulting her. “These are the people who listen to him,” she said. Love wrote about sexual violence with a sn"

Ahnnu

Special Forces

Experimental

Philip Sherburne

That the Los Angeles producer Leland Jackson tends to get lumped in with the so-called beat-music scene is partly a question of proximity: When the Richmond, Va., native moved out to LA, early in the decade, he linked up with Knxwledge and Mndsgn, musicians deeply entrenched in the city’s sampling-centric experimental hip-hop community. But the music Jackson records as Ahnnu rarely features much in the way of actual beats; you’d be hard-pressed to find anything as clear-cut as a boom-bap backbone in Ahnnu’s gelatinous swirls of sound. On 2013’s World Music, incidental scraps of piano and percussion tumble like agates in the tide, and easy-listening vibraphones pool in pastel puddles. The 2013 LP Battered Sphinx and 2015’s Perception slink closer to ambient music’s vaporous atmospheres, suffusing beat music’s repetition in elliptical tonal loops and the fuzzy gait of the runout groove. His new album, Special Forces, is clearly related to its predecessors, but it also feels like a major step forward—in two opposing directions at once. On the one hand, rhythm and pulse are more deeply woven into the fabric of the music than we’re used to hearing from Ahnnu. Rather than a freeform sprawl, the music is ordered by a sense of deep structure, held together by properties that feel almost physical, like mass and gravity. At the same time, the album travels far from beat music’s percussive stomping ground. Jackson has said that one technique that informed the record was attempting to make percussive tracks with only melodic sounds. It’s not a new idea for him: Way back in 2013, Jackson discussed his interest in moving away from drums. Across the 13-track, 35-minute album, there are almost no audible drums at all, save some loose-wristed tom rolls and scattered ride-cymbal hits on “Laughing,” a woozy album highlight fueled by bursts of clarinet. For rhythmic bite, he turns to gurgling synths, muted balloon squeaks, and the occasional blast of white noise, and much of the time, the forward drive comes from soft sounds, not hard ones. In the opening “Passing Through a Horizontal Slit,” thick, gloopy loops of tone churn like two adjacent boat engines bobbing in the waves, their interplay an impossibly complex equation. In “Senseless,” electronic insect chirps mark time against a backdrop of radiophonic fizz. “Two Squares” is a curved metal maze lined with dripping icicles, and “Pluck-jump-freeze” sounds like a chorus of rubbed wineglass rims tuned to an alien scale and played back at a fraction of its original speed. Honing in on his twin obsessions—hypnotic repetition and subaquatic sound design—the slowly spinning “Bubble Horn” is part Steve Reich and part whale song. Adding to the music’s hypnotic qualities, ironically, is the fact that Jackson’s rhythms never unfold quite the way you might expect them to; that unpredictability has the way of pulling the listener even deeper into the music. Just listen to the slow shudders of “The Terrible One,” whose gravelly synths recall Actress, three or four discrete loops all spinning slowly out of sync. There’s no one master clock holding it all together, and the individual elements resist teasing out, collapsing into a wet, wooly tangle. The same could be said for the album as a whole: It flows together as one long piece of music, with longer, more composed pieces stitched together with 30- or 60-second sketches of abstract sound. There is no magnetic north once you’re inside its disorienting span. Wherever Jackson has sourced his sounds from, your guess is as good as mine. “Laughing” reveals scraps of free-jazz drumming and what might be a sample of Jon Hassell’s chorused horn; the unstable waveforms and quavering pitches that predominate across the album suggest that Jackson may be sitting on a treasure trove of early electronic recordings from pioneers like Luc Ferrari and Tod Dockstader. Ultimately, though, the pleasure of this music isn’t so much trying to figure out where it comes from as where it takes you. Understated and counterintuitive, Special Forces exerts a powerful grip on the senses. Like any alien world, its gravity and its atmosphere are different from those of the planet we call home.

Artist: Ahnnu, Album: Special Forces, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "That the Los Angeles producer Leland Jackson tends to get lumped in with the so-called beat-music scene is partly a question of proximity: When the Richmond, Va., native moved out to LA, early in the decade, he linked up with Knxwledge and Mndsgn, musicians deeply entrenched in the city’s sampling-centric experimental hip-hop community. But the music Jackson records as Ahnnu rarely features much in the way of actual beats; you’d be hard-pressed to find anything as clear-cut as a boom-bap backbone in Ahnnu’s gelatinous swirls of sound. On 2013’s World Music, incidental scraps of piano and percussion tumble like agates in the tide, and easy-listening vibraphones pool in pastel puddles. The 2013 LP Battered Sphinx and 2015’s Perception slink closer to ambient music’s vaporous atmospheres, suffusing beat music’s repetition in elliptical tonal loops and the fuzzy gait of the runout groove. His new album, Special Forces, is clearly related to its predecessors, but it also feels like a major step forward—in two opposing directions at once. On the one hand, rhythm and pulse are more deeply woven into the fabric of the music than we’re used to hearing from Ahnnu. Rather than a freeform sprawl, the music is ordered by a sense of deep structure, held together by properties that feel almost physical, like mass and gravity. At the same time, the album travels far from beat music’s percussive stomping ground. Jackson has said that one technique that informed the record was attempting to make percussive tracks with only melodic sounds. It’s not a new idea for him: Way back in 2013, Jackson discussed his interest in moving away from drums. Across the 13-track, 35-minute album, there are almost no audible drums at all, save some loose-wristed tom rolls and scattered ride-cymbal hits on “Laughing,” a woozy album highlight fueled by bursts of clarinet. For rhythmic bite, he turns to gurgling synths, muted balloon squeaks, and the occasional blast of white noise, and much of the time, the forward drive comes from soft sounds, not hard ones. In the opening “Passing Through a Horizontal Slit,” thick, gloopy loops of tone churn like two adjacent boat engines bobbing in the waves, their interplay an impossibly complex equation. In “Senseless,” electronic insect chirps mark time against a backdrop of radiophonic fizz. “Two Squares” is a curved metal maze lined with dripping icicles, and “Pluck-jump-freeze” sounds like a chorus of rubbed wineglass rims tuned to an alien scale and played back at a fraction of its original speed. Honing in on his twin obsessions—hypnotic repetition and subaquatic sound design—the slowly spinning “Bubble Horn” is part Steve Reich and part whale song. Adding to the music’s hypnotic qualities, ironically, is the fact that Jackson’s rhythms never unfold quite the way you might expect them to; that unpredictability has the way of pulling the listener even deeper into the music. Just listen to the slow shudders of “The Terrible One,” whose gravelly synths recall Actress, three or four discrete loops all spinning slowly out of sync. There’s no one master clock holding it all together, and the individual elements resist teasing out, collapsing into a wet, wooly tangle. The same could be said for the album as a whole: It flows together as one long piece of music, with longer, more composed pieces stitched together with 30- or 60-second sketches of abstract sound. There is no magnetic north once you’re inside its disorienting span. Wherever Jackson has sourced his sounds from, your guess is as good as mine. “Laughing” reveals scraps of free-jazz drumming and what might be a sample of Jon Hassell’s chorused horn; the unstable waveforms and quavering pitches that predominate across the album suggest that Jackson may be sitting on a treasure trove of early electronic recordings from pioneers like Luc Ferrari and Tod Dockstader. Ultimately, though, the pleasure of this music isn’t so much trying to figure out where it comes from as where it takes you. Understated and counterintuitive, Special Forces exerts a powerful grip on the senses. Like any alien world, its gravity and its atmosphere are different from those of the planet we call home."

I Break Horses

Chiaroscuro

Rock

Ian Cohen

I Break Horses’ 2011 debut Hearts was a bold record, even if the Swedish duo's electronic shoegaze was hardly groundbreaking.  There was an underlying brashness in their drive to make a striking first impression at the risk of having little to back it up, as Hearts was frontloaded with “Winter Beats” and the title track, the best songs on the record by an astounding margin and also total outliers from the more anodyne material that followed. All things told, it worked—after M83 dropped “Midnight City”, forever more the canonical electronic shoegaze song, they took I Break Horses on the road as an opening act, surely a sign that an upstart synth-rock band is doing something right. If I Break Horses are emboldened by their success, it manifests in how the duo are no longer concerning themselves with making a first impression; Chiaroscuro is a muted sophomore record that seeks to dole out its pleasures more subtly and slowly. Just witness the inversion that occurs between the introductory tracks on each record. Whereas Hearts’ “Winter Beats” evolved from Christmas-light arpeggios into a conflagration of digital distortion, the subzero atmosphere of “You Burn” is a constant, putting the emphasis on the first part of the title—someone’s ablaze, but it’s not Lindén, who maintains her typically unaffected, breathy tone. Going forward, I Break Horses continue to hew towards minimal, streamlined electronics that dispatch any tie they once had to shoegaze—if there’s any woozy, pitch-shifting effects, they’re placed on Lindén‘s vocals, more akin to something you’d hear in the hauntological productions of a Tri Angle record rather than Loveless. As a matter of fact, I Break Horses have pretty much dropped anything that could associate them with rock music. Not that guitars played a prominent role on Hearts, but they’re nowhere to be found here. And while the drums are cranked, Balck isn't trying to recreate booming arena-ready beats on minimalist beatboxes. To go even further, their influences over the past three years seem to be exclusively non-vocal electronic music—“Ascension” and “Berceuse” are indicative of how Chiaroscuro emphasizes the intricate, clattering snares you’d hear in trap, drag or footwork, rather than relying on Lindén to convey the message. Which is sensible, as Lindén’s lyrics don’t lend themselves to deep analysis, anyway. A typical line like “you burn/when words are burning/baby you burn/turn you turn/when the world is turning/baby you turn" fails to generate even a mock profundity through Lindén's portentous cadence. But through all this reduction, I Break Horses are left with little that they can call their own. Let’s note that “chiaroscuro” is a concept that has a lot of appeal to the amateur aesthete— after all, it’s a fancy word that encompasses light and shade, black and white. Problem is, I Break Horses are typical in failing to grasp how “chiaroscuro” entails a strong contrast between light and dark as a way of establishing dynamics and volume. “Medicine Brush” and closer “Heart to Know” are meant to be the record’s tentpoles, and instead underscore the album title as a misnomer, spreading billowing synth atmosphere, drizzly treble and murky grayscale over the span of seven minutes rather than the usual four and a half. Within the context of Chiaroscuro, certain gestures emerge as hooks—the cutting punctuations on Lindén‘s vocals during the chorus of “Denial”, a twisting neon synth line throughout “Faith." But they need to stay within the context of Chiaroscuro to remain memorable. While Chiaroscuro represents an admirable turn from what I Break Horses were doing on Hearts, the problem is that they’re moving in lockstep with their peers; even if Chiaroscuro doesn’t make the quick-strike, short-impact impression of Hearts, it lacks any means of impressing itself on the listener, something to distinguish I Break Horses from the countless electronic pop bands stuck in that vast netherworld between Chvrches’ diamond-cutting, laser-guided melodies and the pitch black abstractions of pure production acts such as the Haxan Cloak or Holy Other. None of this makes Chiaroscuro anything less than pleasant, just a record whose middling between arena aspirations and headphones listening feels less of a fusion and more of a compromise.

Artist: I Break Horses, Album: Chiaroscuro, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "I Break Horses’ 2011 debut Hearts was a bold record, even if the Swedish duo's electronic shoegaze was hardly groundbreaking.  There was an underlying brashness in their drive to make a striking first impression at the risk of having little to back it up, as Hearts was frontloaded with “Winter Beats” and the title track, the best songs on the record by an astounding margin and also total outliers from the more anodyne material that followed. All things told, it worked—after M83 dropped “Midnight City”, forever more the canonical electronic shoegaze song, they took I Break Horses on the road as an opening act, surely a sign that an upstart synth-rock band is doing something right. If I Break Horses are emboldened by their success, it manifests in how the duo are no longer concerning themselves with making a first impression; Chiaroscuro is a muted sophomore record that seeks to dole out its pleasures more subtly and slowly. Just witness the inversion that occurs between the introductory tracks on each record. Whereas Hearts’ “Winter Beats” evolved from Christmas-light arpeggios into a conflagration of digital distortion, the subzero atmosphere of “You Burn” is a constant, putting the emphasis on the first part of the title—someone’s ablaze, but it’s not Lindén, who maintains her typically unaffected, breathy tone. Going forward, I Break Horses continue to hew towards minimal, streamlined electronics that dispatch any tie they once had to shoegaze—if there’s any woozy, pitch-shifting effects, they’re placed on Lindén‘s vocals, more akin to something you’d hear in the hauntological productions of a Tri Angle record rather than Loveless. As a matter of fact, I Break Horses have pretty much dropped anything that could associate them with rock music. Not that guitars played a prominent role on Hearts, but they’re nowhere to be found here. And while the drums are cranked, Balck isn't trying to recreate booming arena-ready beats on minimalist beatboxes. To go even further, their influences over the past three years seem to be exclusively non-vocal electronic music—“Ascension” and “Berceuse” are indicative of how Chiaroscuro emphasizes the intricate, clattering snares you’d hear in trap, drag or footwork, rather than relying on Lindén to convey the message. Which is sensible, as Lindén’s lyrics don’t lend themselves to deep analysis, anyway. A typical line like “you burn/when words are burning/baby you burn/turn you turn/when the world is turning/baby you turn" fails to generate even a mock profundity through Lindén's portentous cadence. But through all this reduction, I Break Horses are left with little that they can call their own. Let’s note that “chiaroscuro” is a concept that has a lot of appeal to the amateur aesthete— after all, it’s a fancy word that encompasses light and shade, black and white. Problem is, I Break Horses are typical in failing to grasp how “chiaroscuro” entails a strong contrast between light and dark as a way of establishing dynamics and volume. “Medicine Brush” and closer “Heart to Know” are meant to be the record’s tentpoles, and instead underscore the album title as a misnomer, spreading billowing synth atmosphere, drizzly treble and murky grayscale over the span of seven minutes rather than the usual four and a half. Within the context of Chiaroscuro, certain gestures emerge as hooks—the cutting punctuations on Lindén‘s vocals during the chorus of “Denial”, a twisting neon synth line throughout “Faith." But they need to stay within the context of Chiaroscuro to remain memorable. While Chiaroscuro represents an admirable turn from what I Break Horses were doing on Hearts, the problem is that they’re moving in lockstep with their peers; even if Chiaroscuro doesn’t make the quick-strike, short-impact impression of Hearts, it lacks any means of impressing itself on the listener, something to distinguish I Break Horses from the countless electronic pop bands stuck in that vast netherworld between Chvrches’ diamond-cutting, laser-guided melodies and the pitch black abstractions of pure production acts such as the Haxan Cloak or Holy Other. None of this makes Chiaroscuro anything less than pleasant, just a record whose middling between arena aspirations and headphones listening feels less of a fusion and more of a compromise."

Wold

Freermasonry

Experimental,Metal

Grayson Currin

The catchall criticism for noise as a form of music is that, because it often seems so unordered and illogical, it must be simple and pedestrian. Play some for a cynic, and short of outright disapproval, you'll probably be greeted with a categorical response: "I could do that, too." There are a handful of mostly irrefutable ways to come back at that idea-- "Well, you didn't," for instance, or, "OK, tell me how." But don't be so snappy, not yet: Noise music, at least for me, should retain some element of mystery, some air of unknowing; after all, if it's an intentional obliteration of the structures and sounds you've known from the first time you heard "Electric Company" or "Sesame Street", it should force you to ask the most basic questions of what it is, how it is made, and why it is made. And in the quest for those illusory answers, the best noise, drone, and sound experimentation should either pull you in or blow you away, reaffirming that the thing itself is more provocative than the motions behind it. This is all to say that Freermasonry-- the obliterative sixth album from Wold, the Saskatchewan act led by the incredibly named Fortress Crookedjaw-- is ultimately enigmatic and entirely unknowable, an intersection of noise, metal, and electronics that doesn't yield to such plainclothes criticism. Mean, dense and multivalent, with a lyrical conceit based on Masonic symbolism and Biblical scripture, it's the rare loud music that begs to be louder still if you're to have any chance of understanding it. Freermasonry is a case study in controlling the illusion of chaos, an elegantly constructed nightmare of sound where hearing one layer of serrated screams, static bursts, and feedback flares means you've missed some mass of activity somewhere else. Weirdly seductive rhythms tumble beneath a laundromat of blown-out tones and crackling vocals, generally pulling your attention a dozen different ways. I've been listening to the album consistently for three months now, and somehow, I'm still surprised by what its 58 minutes sound like and accomplish. Paradoxically disorienting and direct, Freermasonry is a constant tumult of surprising activity, more unforgiving than most everything in the noise, metal, and drone scenes, places where Wold kind of fits. It's not an album you casually hear and dismiss by saying, "Oh, yeah, I could've made this." (Even defining the "this" is hard enough.) Remember how those backwards rock'n'hits sounded vaguely demonic? Imagine those sounding truly malevolent, but with solid structure, buried subtlety, and an ideology developed well past the point of boogeyman Satanism. Freermasonry isn't Wold's most damaging effort; the slyly named 2010 disc Working Together For Our Privacy turned three songs into a 35-minute suffocation, where an instantaneous deluge of distortion squashes everything beneath. About 2008's torturous Stratification, Wold member Obey once said, "We transmogrified the idea of our soundscape to fit the notion of an unrelenting winter storm." This time, Wold actually make some concessions to cohesive album flow, beginning with the two-minute garble "Opening" and always putting a relatively short track (be that three or six minutes) between 11- and 12-minute strangleholds. With its faulty click-clack rhythm and mix of lascivious and lugubrious lyrics, the strangely alluring "Dry Love" essentiallly sounds like Cold Cave with its Prurient component grossly amplified. With its disruptive subdural bass and five-verse structure about "bloody crescent moons," "Annex Axe" even suggests dubstep (think Coki) ground down by a blender. Similarly accessible moments dot Freermasonry, from the jumbled dance that starts the closing title track to the rock-like eruption that begins "SOL". But don't take those references as hints that Wold are somehow taking it easy; rather, these moments of relief or familiarity simply make everything else that much more punishing, so that, when the beat all but disappears on the title track after several minutes, you actually mourn it. This album always peaks at its most extreme, especially with a series of three long, harsh sermons of invective-- "Free Goat of Leviticus", "Dragon Owl Didactisism", and "Working Tools for Praxis". With quoted Scripture and a developed revisionist theology, these tracks harangue definitive Biblical heroes, positing that "Peter epitomizes the sadomasochistic spirit of the New Covenant" and, later, "Lucifer… is a better tomorrow and the bringer of a future." The sound matches the spirit perfectly, with three-dimensional folds of splintering static and garbled lines creating an anxiety strong enough to shake any beliefs.

Artist: Wold, Album: Freermasonry, Genre: Experimental,Metal, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "The catchall criticism for noise as a form of music is that, because it often seems so unordered and illogical, it must be simple and pedestrian. Play some for a cynic, and short of outright disapproval, you'll probably be greeted with a categorical response: "I could do that, too." There are a handful of mostly irrefutable ways to come back at that idea-- "Well, you didn't," for instance, or, "OK, tell me how." But don't be so snappy, not yet: Noise music, at least for me, should retain some element of mystery, some air of unknowing; after all, if it's an intentional obliteration of the structures and sounds you've known from the first time you heard "Electric Company" or "Sesame Street", it should force you to ask the most basic questions of what it is, how it is made, and why it is made. And in the quest for those illusory answers, the best noise, drone, and sound experimentation should either pull you in or blow you away, reaffirming that the thing itself is more provocative than the motions behind it. This is all to say that Freermasonry-- the obliterative sixth album from Wold, the Saskatchewan act led by the incredibly named Fortress Crookedjaw-- is ultimately enigmatic and entirely unknowable, an intersection of noise, metal, and electronics that doesn't yield to such plainclothes criticism. Mean, dense and multivalent, with a lyrical conceit based on Masonic symbolism and Biblical scripture, it's the rare loud music that begs to be louder still if you're to have any chance of understanding it. Freermasonry is a case study in controlling the illusion of chaos, an elegantly constructed nightmare of sound where hearing one layer of serrated screams, static bursts, and feedback flares means you've missed some mass of activity somewhere else. Weirdly seductive rhythms tumble beneath a laundromat of blown-out tones and crackling vocals, generally pulling your attention a dozen different ways. I've been listening to the album consistently for three months now, and somehow, I'm still surprised by what its 58 minutes sound like and accomplish. Paradoxically disorienting and direct, Freermasonry is a constant tumult of surprising activity, more unforgiving than most everything in the noise, metal, and drone scenes, places where Wold kind of fits. It's not an album you casually hear and dismiss by saying, "Oh, yeah, I could've made this." (Even defining the "this" is hard enough.) Remember how those backwards rock'n'hits sounded vaguely demonic? Imagine those sounding truly malevolent, but with solid structure, buried subtlety, and an ideology developed well past the point of boogeyman Satanism. Freermasonry isn't Wold's most damaging effort; the slyly named 2010 disc Working Together For Our Privacy turned three songs into a 35-minute suffocation, where an instantaneous deluge of distortion squashes everything beneath. About 2008's torturous Stratification, Wold member Obey once said, "We transmogrified the idea of our soundscape to fit the notion of an unrelenting winter storm." This time, Wold actually make some concessions to cohesive album flow, beginning with the two-minute garble "Opening" and always putting a relatively short track (be that three or six minutes) between 11- and 12-minute strangleholds. With its faulty click-clack rhythm and mix of lascivious and lugubrious lyrics, the strangely alluring "Dry Love" essentiallly sounds like Cold Cave with its Prurient component grossly amplified. With its disruptive subdural bass and five-verse structure about "bloody crescent moons," "Annex Axe" even suggests dubstep (think Coki) ground down by a blender. Similarly accessible moments dot Freermasonry, from the jumbled dance that starts the closing title track to the rock-like eruption that begins "SOL". But don't take those references as hints that Wold are somehow taking it easy; rather, these moments of relief or familiarity simply make everything else that much more punishing, so that, when the beat all but disappears on the title track after several minutes, you actually mourn it. This album always peaks at its most extreme, especially with a series of three long, harsh sermons of invective-- "Free Goat of Leviticus", "Dragon Owl Didactisism", and "Working Tools for Praxis". With quoted Scripture and a developed revisionist theology, these tracks harangue definitive Biblical heroes, positing that "Peter epitomizes the sadomasochistic spirit of the New Covenant" and, later, "Lucifer… is a better tomorrow and the bringer of a future." The sound matches the spirit perfectly, with three-dimensional folds of splintering static and garbled lines creating an anxiety strong enough to shake any beliefs."

Uncut

Those Who Were Hung Hang Here

Rock

Derek Miller

Uncut began as a two-piece electro-punk band, but in recent years have re-fashioned themselves as the latest contenders in the post-punk revival championships. When vocalist/guitarist Ian Worang lost his techno-savant partner Jake Fairley to Cologne, he assembled a trad four-piece using friends from the Canadian music scene. As a result, Worang moved away from the computer-base of the band's origins and embraced the jagged guitars and floating withdrawal of post-punk. This refashioned quartet more than makes up for its losses on its debut, Those Who Were Hung Hang Here. Combining dieseled guitar lines with Worang's gauze-covered vocals, the band's forceful sound and savoir-faire carve nuances into a genre that by now has little room for invention. The splintered guitar lines and sang-froid drums of "Understanding the New Violence"-- originally released as a club single in the Worang/Fairley days-- flirt with the innovation/revival dichotomy. An insurgent bassline is laid over Worang's whispered vocals, thickening the mix to murky, unfathomable depths before the song finally comes to terms with its unaligned angst and gives in to clamorous rebirth, searing itself into the album's icier moments. On "Buried with Friends", Worang spits sweet nothings with the detached declasse of the urban pedagogue. But this ain't your diag drunkard's diatribe: There's a quiet disgust to Worang's intellect-- he'd rather moan than shout. Against black-eyed guitars and hazy post-punk dimness, Worang's vocals encircle you as though they were piped in from an all-night cafe, and it's this Interpol-like sound that the naysayers will surely seize upon when writing them off. Unfortunately, the band's few missteps have nothing to do with their likeness to the atmospheric NYC rockers. Rather, most of the blame falls on the ideas left over from Fairley's days: Seven of this record's 11 tracks prominently display his influence, which doesn't mesh well with Uncut's revamped sound. "Copilot", for example, begins with wheezy synthesizers and a plodding beat, while "A Summer Day" sputters atop a techno twitch that could have come from a previous recording session. In these schizophrenic moments, Worang seems to be trying to both remain true to the origins of these songs and reconfigure them to work best within the dynamics of his now four-piece band. It doesn't always work, but when it does Those Who Were Hung Hang Here reminds us that it's still possible to create thrilling music on those old dog-eared vinyl copies of Closer.

Artist: Uncut, Album: Those Who Were Hung Hang Here, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Uncut began as a two-piece electro-punk band, but in recent years have re-fashioned themselves as the latest contenders in the post-punk revival championships. When vocalist/guitarist Ian Worang lost his techno-savant partner Jake Fairley to Cologne, he assembled a trad four-piece using friends from the Canadian music scene. As a result, Worang moved away from the computer-base of the band's origins and embraced the jagged guitars and floating withdrawal of post-punk. This refashioned quartet more than makes up for its losses on its debut, Those Who Were Hung Hang Here. Combining dieseled guitar lines with Worang's gauze-covered vocals, the band's forceful sound and savoir-faire carve nuances into a genre that by now has little room for invention. The splintered guitar lines and sang-froid drums of "Understanding the New Violence"-- originally released as a club single in the Worang/Fairley days-- flirt with the innovation/revival dichotomy. An insurgent bassline is laid over Worang's whispered vocals, thickening the mix to murky, unfathomable depths before the song finally comes to terms with its unaligned angst and gives in to clamorous rebirth, searing itself into the album's icier moments. On "Buried with Friends", Worang spits sweet nothings with the detached declasse of the urban pedagogue. But this ain't your diag drunkard's diatribe: There's a quiet disgust to Worang's intellect-- he'd rather moan than shout. Against black-eyed guitars and hazy post-punk dimness, Worang's vocals encircle you as though they were piped in from an all-night cafe, and it's this Interpol-like sound that the naysayers will surely seize upon when writing them off. Unfortunately, the band's few missteps have nothing to do with their likeness to the atmospheric NYC rockers. Rather, most of the blame falls on the ideas left over from Fairley's days: Seven of this record's 11 tracks prominently display his influence, which doesn't mesh well with Uncut's revamped sound. "Copilot", for example, begins with wheezy synthesizers and a plodding beat, while "A Summer Day" sputters atop a techno twitch that could have come from a previous recording session. In these schizophrenic moments, Worang seems to be trying to both remain true to the origins of these songs and reconfigure them to work best within the dynamics of his now four-piece band. It doesn't always work, but when it does Those Who Were Hung Hang Here reminds us that it's still possible to create thrilling music on those old dog-eared vinyl copies of Closer."

Au Revoir Simone

The Bird of Music

Electronic,Rock

Marc Hogan

This is the information age, so of course it's harder than ever to find out the stuff that's really worth knowing. Dozens of blogs posted recently about the new Au Revoir Simone album, and what was my favorite discovery? A goddamn B-side. As remixed by profane London/Paris dance-poppers the Teenagers, the Brooklyn trio's "Fallen Snow" brings out the hidden creepiness in its wispy vocals, but you won't find its future-haunted beats on The Bird of Music-- though these three women do come (HOMG!) David Lynch-approved. Au Revoir Simone's sophomore effort opts for the fluttering, Casio-tinted synth-pop of debut Verses of Comfort, Assurance & Salvation, but getting past its sleepy analog atmospheres still takes some persistence. Anyway, lo-fi casualness is kinda the point; Pitchfork's Brian Howe has even called the group's music "the anti-synth-pop to the Moldy Peaches' anti-folk". On The Bird of Music, Au Revoir Simone have little trouble keeping up their offhand aesthetic. The album transcends this stylized nonchalance only when the compositions show some extra care. Intrepid listeners can find the album's brightest moments on its second half, after the low-tempo thrum of "I Couldn't Sleep" (don't believe it) and the "Be My Baby"-beating organ swirl of "A Violent Yet Flammable World" (future Sufjan project?). Bright, no-apologies dance-pop songs like "Dark Halls" and "Night Majestic" at last find some tunes that stick, along with some less threadbare lyrical concerns-- like horse races! On "Lark", glistening keyboards finally eschew the emotional detachment of the record's earlier slow songs, beneath an even-toned admission: "Sometimes I want to be enough for you." The Bird of Music's first half is a milky slog, drawing on the sparse electronics of Pipas or Young Marble Giants without the eccentricities that made those acts worthwhile. Despite a great video and sunny organ sound, the original "Fallen Snow" is a disappointingly tepid tale of romantic frustrations, even as it tosses off a decent line about "women who are middle-aged with naked fingers." Loneliness usually feels more personal. Undeterred, "Sad Song" perks up for Postal Service cubicle-weeping about sad songs and wanting to cry. After opener "The Lucky One" gets wind chimes and somber electric piano about right, it builds up to choir-like nonsense that'd make the Polyphonic Spree lose faith: "Let the sunshine, let it come/ To show us that tomorrow is eventual." Well, it's only a day away.

Artist: Au Revoir Simone, Album: The Bird of Music, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "This is the information age, so of course it's harder than ever to find out the stuff that's really worth knowing. Dozens of blogs posted recently about the new Au Revoir Simone album, and what was my favorite discovery? A goddamn B-side. As remixed by profane London/Paris dance-poppers the Teenagers, the Brooklyn trio's "Fallen Snow" brings out the hidden creepiness in its wispy vocals, but you won't find its future-haunted beats on The Bird of Music-- though these three women do come (HOMG!) David Lynch-approved. Au Revoir Simone's sophomore effort opts for the fluttering, Casio-tinted synth-pop of debut Verses of Comfort, Assurance & Salvation, but getting past its sleepy analog atmospheres still takes some persistence. Anyway, lo-fi casualness is kinda the point; Pitchfork's Brian Howe has even called the group's music "the anti-synth-pop to the Moldy Peaches' anti-folk". On The Bird of Music, Au Revoir Simone have little trouble keeping up their offhand aesthetic. The album transcends this stylized nonchalance only when the compositions show some extra care. Intrepid listeners can find the album's brightest moments on its second half, after the low-tempo thrum of "I Couldn't Sleep" (don't believe it) and the "Be My Baby"-beating organ swirl of "A Violent Yet Flammable World" (future Sufjan project?). Bright, no-apologies dance-pop songs like "Dark Halls" and "Night Majestic" at last find some tunes that stick, along with some less threadbare lyrical concerns-- like horse races! On "Lark", glistening keyboards finally eschew the emotional detachment of the record's earlier slow songs, beneath an even-toned admission: "Sometimes I want to be enough for you." The Bird of Music's first half is a milky slog, drawing on the sparse electronics of Pipas or Young Marble Giants without the eccentricities that made those acts worthwhile. Despite a great video and sunny organ sound, the original "Fallen Snow" is a disappointingly tepid tale of romantic frustrations, even as it tosses off a decent line about "women who are middle-aged with naked fingers." Loneliness usually feels more personal. Undeterred, "Sad Song" perks up for Postal Service cubicle-weeping about sad songs and wanting to cry. After opener "The Lucky One" gets wind chimes and somber electric piano about right, it builds up to choir-like nonsense that'd make the Polyphonic Spree lose faith: "Let the sunshine, let it come/ To show us that tomorrow is eventual." Well, it's only a day away."

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

Angles

Electronic

Ian Cohen

If you're an American reader familiar with the British hip-hop duo Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, I'm willing to bet one out of two things tipped you off: you saw that ridiculous name starting the Friday slate at Coachella and wisely chose to sleep in, or you got forwarded a YouTube for their signature track, "Thou Shalt Always Kill". From here on out, you can assume I'm speaking without hyperbole-- "Thou Shalt Always Kill" is the sort of song that makes me borrow something first said about "My Humps", namely that it transcends merely being horrible music and places itself into the realm of pure evil. A wanna-be novelty hit if there ever was one, it consists of Scroobius Pip (yeah, that's the rapper's name) rattling off a litany of "ooh...countercultural!" broadsides (examples: "thou shalt not buy Coca Cola products," "Bloc Party [they're] just a band") that assume absolutely no intelligence from the listener. It's a bizarre target audience this thing courts-- people "elitist" enough to sneer upon corporate brainwashing, yet simple-minded enough to surrender themselves to the ethos of Scroobius Pip. If it stopped there, maybe they could be brushed off as a minor annoyance, but then Pip sets the scene for the rest of Angles with this: "Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be." (Never mind that a minute earlier, he deifies Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix-- good luck finding no-good women and violence in their songs.) Now, it's bad enough when we hear KRS-One go off on tangents like this, but at least he made Criminal Minded, which included for-the-ladies chestnut "The P Is Free" and had the Teacher GRIPPING AN A-K ON THE FUCKING ALBUM COVER. Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, on the other hand, have Angles, one of the most musically bankrupt and altogether philosophically fucked albums you'd be wise enough to avoid this year or any. It's one of those rare occasions where you'd rather them just go with the whole "let's take it back to '88" shticks-- we could just shove them off to the sidestage at Rock the Bells and get on with our lives. But as "Fixed" boasts, "Dan Le Sac versus Scroobius Pip! Here to fix hip-hop, the best we can" (trust me, it's way funnier to hear than in print). How's that? Well, by jacking "Fix Up, Look Sharp", the lone celebratory track from one of the decade's most introspective and compelling rap records, and turning it into a demand that hip-hoppers stop trying to make pop hits and instead "be smart." And remember that it's "art." While there have been plenty of well-considered arguments that look inward at the genre and demand more of its practitioners, more often than not, it's from the perspective of an artist concerned about banking off the advancement of self-defeating racial stereotypes. Here, it just lays down an incredibly awkward subtext as to why the rest of "pop" (read: black) hip-hop owes it to these guys to straighten up and fly right. Did the era Sac and Pip constantly glorify not have just as much, if not more "dumb" party music? Just imagine some asshat telling the Fat Boys that "Wipe Out" was killing hip-hop. Mealy mouthed Pip apologizes, "We think there are some great artists out there, don't get me wrong," but judging from Angles, it's entirely unclear who the fuck they could be possibly be talking about. OK, rap needs to be smarter. But apparently it, uh, needs to sample "smart" bands such as Radiohead like these guys do. For those interested, "Letter From God to Man" shits out "Planet Telex" undigested, a completely artless grab that flaunts none of the nuance of the Roots and Kanye West when they bit from Thom Yorke. Mind you, these are two popular acts. Way to go, Pip. To be fair, Dan Le Sac tries to be game here, pulling glitch-hop from its staticky grave with cut-up acoustic riffs that sound like that one time I tried to sample Iron & Wine's "Woman King" over a breakbeat and it ended up like Kid Rock (don't ask). An instrumental Angles wouldn't be intolerable. But it's all ruined by Pip doing his Oliver Twista thing all over it-- because he's so smart, he's gonna enjamb as many words as possible into his verses despite the fact that his complete lack of breath control has him sounding like a pre-teen Victorian bootblack halfway through every line. "I'm not an alcoholic/ I just drink a lot/ I'm a genius/ Or maybe I just think a lot"-- this is how the second verse of "Development" begins before Dan Le Sac mercifully cuts Pip off, castigating him to get on some new shit before he can embarrass himself any further with this train of thought. But he soldiers on-- "I'm not trying to bore you/ I'm just tryin' to be a good role model for you." This comes immediately after an entire verse that quotes from the periodic table and right before he tells you who his role models were-- Chuck D, Rakim, and, of course, KRS, who should probably make it up to PM Dawn by having Prince Be bumrush the show during their next festival appearance. It's bad enough that these guys pretty much owe their career to Sage Francis (now there's a guy in touch with the roots of this shit) and try to present their version of music as hip-hop in its purest form, but as "Back From Hell" pounds your face like Eminem's worst productions at 245 bpm, Pip spits "when I get back from hell again/ I'm gonna be so elegant/ The relevance of my benevolence is evident." Yup, looks like Party Fun Action Committee didn't ether Paul Barman after all, and now he's back with Mike Skinner's accent and the entitlement of a New Yorker subscriber.

Artist: Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, Album: Angles, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 0.2 Album review: "If you're an American reader familiar with the British hip-hop duo Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, I'm willing to bet one out of two things tipped you off: you saw that ridiculous name starting the Friday slate at Coachella and wisely chose to sleep in, or you got forwarded a YouTube for their signature track, "Thou Shalt Always Kill". From here on out, you can assume I'm speaking without hyperbole-- "Thou Shalt Always Kill" is the sort of song that makes me borrow something first said about "My Humps", namely that it transcends merely being horrible music and places itself into the realm of pure evil. A wanna-be novelty hit if there ever was one, it consists of Scroobius Pip (yeah, that's the rapper's name) rattling off a litany of "ooh...countercultural!" broadsides (examples: "thou shalt not buy Coca Cola products," "Bloc Party [they're] just a band") that assume absolutely no intelligence from the listener. It's a bizarre target audience this thing courts-- people "elitist" enough to sneer upon corporate brainwashing, yet simple-minded enough to surrender themselves to the ethos of Scroobius Pip. If it stopped there, maybe they could be brushed off as a minor annoyance, but then Pip sets the scene for the rest of Angles with this: "Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be." (Never mind that a minute earlier, he deifies Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix-- good luck finding no-good women and violence in their songs.) Now, it's bad enough when we hear KRS-One go off on tangents like this, but at least he made Criminal Minded, which included for-the-ladies chestnut "The P Is Free" and had the Teacher GRIPPING AN A-K ON THE FUCKING ALBUM COVER. Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, on the other hand, have Angles, one of the most musically bankrupt and altogether philosophically fucked albums you'd be wise enough to avoid this year or any. It's one of those rare occasions where you'd rather them just go with the whole "let's take it back to '88" shticks-- we could just shove them off to the sidestage at Rock the Bells and get on with our lives. But as "Fixed" boasts, "Dan Le Sac versus Scroobius Pip! Here to fix hip-hop, the best we can" (trust me, it's way funnier to hear than in print). How's that? Well, by jacking "Fix Up, Look Sharp", the lone celebratory track from one of the decade's most introspective and compelling rap records, and turning it into a demand that hip-hoppers stop trying to make pop hits and instead "be smart." And remember that it's "art." While there have been plenty of well-considered arguments that look inward at the genre and demand more of its practitioners, more often than not, it's from the perspective of an artist concerned about banking off the advancement of self-defeating racial stereotypes. Here, it just lays down an incredibly awkward subtext as to why the rest of "pop" (read: black) hip-hop owes it to these guys to straighten up and fly right. Did the era Sac and Pip constantly glorify not have just as much, if not more "dumb" party music? Just imagine some asshat telling the Fat Boys that "Wipe Out" was killing hip-hop. Mealy mouthed Pip apologizes, "We think there are some great artists out there, don't get me wrong," but judging from Angles, it's entirely unclear who the fuck they could be possibly be talking about. OK, rap needs to be smarter. But apparently it, uh, needs to sample "smart" bands such as Radiohead like these guys do. For those interested, "Letter From God to Man" shits out "Planet Telex" undigested, a completely artless grab that flaunts none of the nuance of the Roots and Kanye West when they bit from Thom Yorke. Mind you, these are two popular acts. Way to go, Pip. To be fair, Dan Le Sac tries to be game here, pulling glitch-hop from its staticky grave with cut-up acoustic riffs that sound like that one time I tried to sample Iron & Wine's "Woman King" over a breakbeat and it ended up like Kid Rock (don't ask). An instrumental Angles wouldn't be intolerable. But it's all ruined by Pip doing his Oliver Twista thing all over it-- because he's so smart, he's gonna enjamb as many words as possible into his verses despite the fact that his complete lack of breath control has him sounding like a pre-teen Victorian bootblack halfway through every line. "I'm not an alcoholic/ I just drink a lot/ I'm a genius/ Or maybe I just think a lot"-- this is how the second verse of "Development" begins before Dan Le Sac mercifully cuts Pip off, castigating him to get on some new shit before he can embarrass himself any further with this train of thought. But he soldiers on-- "I'm not trying to bore you/ I'm just tryin' to be a good role model for you." This comes immediately after an entire verse that quotes from the periodic table and right before he tells you who his role models were-- Chuck D, Rakim, and, of course, KRS, who should probably make it up to PM Dawn by having Prince Be bumrush the show during their next festival appearance. It's bad enough that these guys pretty much owe their career to Sage Francis (now there's a guy in touch with the roots of this shit) and try to present their version of music as hip-hop in its purest form, but as "Back From Hell" pounds your face like Eminem's worst productions at 245 bpm, Pip spits "when I get back from hell again/ I'm gonna be so elegant/ The relevance of my benevolence is evident." Yup, looks like Party Fun Action Committee didn't ether Paul Barman after all, and now he's back with Mike Skinner's accent and the entitlement of a New Yorker subscriber."

Young Thug

Slime Season

Rap

David Drake

If you're new to Young Thug, don't start with Slime Season. An odds-and-ends compilation with no coherent vision, the tape finds Thug rapping at a high level, but performing less consistently as a songwriter. It's not clear he even wants to be a songwriter on all these records; one gets the impression the tape's been compiled ex post facto, a few fully-fleshed out classics mixed in with studio dross. Some feel more like workouts, perhaps cut quickly during marathon recording sessions. (Initially Slime Season was to be produced entirely by London on da Track. "Ask 300", the beatmaker tweeted—a reference to Thug's label—when questioned about the more diverse production lineup of the final tracklist.) The bulk of these songs are for Thug completists, or those convinced of his infallibility. Nevertheless, Thug remains one of hip-hop's most exciting stylists, consistent even amid inconsistency, and there are moments worth savoring. Part of the problem is that Thug's catalog has already been flooded with leaks and unofficial releases. Some of them—"Hey I" is a particular standout—are superior to many of the records here. Thug's biggest fans would be better off compiling their own greatest hits from the pile, and Thug neophytes will find this year's Barter 6 or last year's Rich Gang tape a much more consistent entryway. It's unclear why certain records made the cut and others didn't. The inclusion of Wayne feature "Take Kare" (which has been out since last year) may be yet another pointed dig at Thug's idol (the two have since had a falling out), but it was also an anticlimax. "Power", produced by London on da Track, seems like something left on the cutting room floor from the Barter sessions, and if it was, it's easy to hear why: where each Barter record made up a discrete facet of the album's sound, "Power" sounds a little bit like three of them at once—consummate filler. In the rush to fete Thug for his radical talents, it's important to draw distinctions between what records work, and which ones do not—or those which sort of work, if you look at them from the right angle. Part of the joy of his art is that you can draw together your own version of his canon from a scattered field, picking up on the pieces that most attract you. (This is not a quality limited to Thug; it's been this way since the Internet began to reward rappers, like Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane, who could flood the market without drowning in it.) The most evident gem here is "Best Friend". Its hook is inspired by a viral vine (Tokyo Vanity, the meme's creator, has released a "Best Friend" record of her own), and its surreal video is sly and artfully unpredictable. The Ricky Racks-produced record, which builds upon disorienting sound effects and hypnotic pizzicato strings, draws you in while bringing you no closer to figuring it all out, a contradiction at the heart of the Young Thug project. Thug's best songs are carefully structured, even if they appear effortlessly thrown together, and the most effective moments tend to be subtle, sidling up to the listener. Each of the song's parts—melodies, backgrounds, hooks, choruses, and flows—lock in to give the song a shape as particular as a fingerprint. Many songs on Slime Season don't chase this goal; at the album's opening, Thug's drawn to repetitive, headbanging patterns and the results are for hardcore fans only. The opening tracks, the Sonny Digital-produced trap banger "Quarterback" and the Southside-produced "Rarri", are interesting but lack replay value. A few of the harder-edged songs do work: "Freaky" might be its best experimental moment, with Wondagurl's unstructured, percussive beat bringing Thug's songcraft and improvisational rap style to the fore. But the album's true highlights don't arrive until its close, with the one-two punch of "Draw Down" and "Wood Would". On the former—which has been out for some time—Thug  strategically deploys different flows to shape the song, while his unpredictable figurative language keep the listener on their toes: "Pull up with that K out of the coupe! I like my bitch brown like a mu'fuckin' boot!" he says at one moment, or later: "Put that pussy on my head like a fuckin' Motrin!" Disguised in his squall of a delivery, they're not conveyed as jab-you-in-the-ribs punchlines; they're playful and impossible to anticipate, chasing novelty rather than cliche, lending the song an uncertain, volatile air. As for "Wood Would", it's the album's strongest, and stands among the best in his catalog. With its sample skipping like a stone as its drums slam in place, it's low-key and unassuming, evading direct translation and shifting in and out of lucidity. Yet Thug wears his heart on his sleeve through one of pop's oldest tools: an undeniable melody. It says everything he doesn't need to, as if everything you didn't know were clear as day.

Artist: Young Thug, Album: Slime Season, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "If you're new to Young Thug, don't start with Slime Season. An odds-and-ends compilation with no coherent vision, the tape finds Thug rapping at a high level, but performing less consistently as a songwriter. It's not clear he even wants to be a songwriter on all these records; one gets the impression the tape's been compiled ex post facto, a few fully-fleshed out classics mixed in with studio dross. Some feel more like workouts, perhaps cut quickly during marathon recording sessions. (Initially Slime Season was to be produced entirely by London on da Track. "Ask 300", the beatmaker tweeted—a reference to Thug's label—when questioned about the more diverse production lineup of the final tracklist.) The bulk of these songs are for Thug completists, or those convinced of his infallibility. Nevertheless, Thug remains one of hip-hop's most exciting stylists, consistent even amid inconsistency, and there are moments worth savoring. Part of the problem is that Thug's catalog has already been flooded with leaks and unofficial releases. Some of them—"Hey I" is a particular standout—are superior to many of the records here. Thug's biggest fans would be better off compiling their own greatest hits from the pile, and Thug neophytes will find this year's Barter 6 or last year's Rich Gang tape a much more consistent entryway. It's unclear why certain records made the cut and others didn't. The inclusion of Wayne feature "Take Kare" (which has been out since last year) may be yet another pointed dig at Thug's idol (the two have since had a falling out), but it was also an anticlimax. "Power", produced by London on da Track, seems like something left on the cutting room floor from the Barter sessions, and if it was, it's easy to hear why: where each Barter record made up a discrete facet of the album's sound, "Power" sounds a little bit like three of them at once—consummate filler. In the rush to fete Thug for his radical talents, it's important to draw distinctions between what records work, and which ones do not—or those which sort of work, if you look at them from the right angle. Part of the joy of his art is that you can draw together your own version of his canon from a scattered field, picking up on the pieces that most attract you. (This is not a quality limited to Thug; it's been this way since the Internet began to reward rappers, like Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane, who could flood the market without drowning in it.) The most evident gem here is "Best Friend". Its hook is inspired by a viral vine (Tokyo Vanity, the meme's creator, has released a "Best Friend" record of her own), and its surreal video is sly and artfully unpredictable. The Ricky Racks-produced record, which builds upon disorienting sound effects and hypnotic pizzicato strings, draws you in while bringing you no closer to figuring it all out, a contradiction at the heart of the Young Thug project. Thug's best songs are carefully structured, even if they appear effortlessly thrown together, and the most effective moments tend to be subtle, sidling up to the listener. Each of the song's parts—melodies, backgrounds, hooks, choruses, and flows—lock in to give the song a shape as particular as a fingerprint. Many songs on Slime Season don't chase this goal; at the album's opening, Thug's drawn to repetitive, headbanging patterns and the results are for hardcore fans only. The opening tracks, the Sonny Digital-produced trap banger "Quarterback" and the Southside-produced "Rarri", are interesting but lack replay value. A few of the harder-edged songs do work: "Freaky" might be its best experimental moment, with Wondagurl's unstructured, percussive beat bringing Thug's songcraft and improvisational rap style to the fore. But the album's true highlights don't arrive until its close, with the one-two punch of "Draw Down" and "Wood Would". On the former—which has been out for some time—Thug  strategically deploys different flows to shape the song, while his unpredictable figurative language keep the listener on their toes: "Pull up with that K out of the coupe! I like my bitch brown like a mu'fuckin' boot!" he says at one moment, or later: "Put that pussy on my head like a fuckin' Motrin!" Disguised in his squall of a delivery, they're not conveyed as jab-you-in-the-ribs punchlines; they're playful and impossible to anticipate, chasing novelty rather than cliche, lending the song an uncertain, volatile air. As for "Wood Would", it's the album's strongest, and stands among the best in his catalog. With its sample skipping like a stone as its drums slam in place, it's low-key and unassuming, evading direct translation and shifting in and out of lucidity. Yet Thug wears his heart on his sleeve through one of pop's oldest tools: an undeniable melody. It says everything he doesn't need to, as if everything you didn't know were clear as day."

We Are the Lilies

We Are the Lilies

Rock

Zach Kelly

File this one under "Dreams Really Can Come True". Like many of his peers, David Sztanke-- a Parisian musician and leader of the expansive 1970s pop revival outfit Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family-- always had a thing for Brazilian Tropicália trailblazers Os Mutantes. After a few happy networking accidents, Sztanke found himself in direct communication with Os Mutantes head honcho Sérgio Dias, who confessed to digging the Palmtree Family's stuff so much, he proposed they get together and make a record. The result is We Are the Lilies, a jubilant, cleanly presented appropriation of both musicians' styles that charms with skill and contagious energy. Backing Dias and Sztanke is the Palmtree Family (and a few very notable guests), a band so open and adaptable, their endless incorporation of different instruments and styles seems breezy and effortless. Tracks are jam-packed with horns, sitars, keys, and more percussive elements than you can list, but their ambition never trumps their professionalism. The songs themselves feel very much the property of Sztanke and lean heavily on his eclectic brand of power-pop. It's hard to tell just how much direct influence Dias had on these recordings: In a short album teaser video (which promises a forthcoming companion film), we see band members working diligently in the studio, intercut with shots of Dias only strumming and advising, looking comfortable in his role as celebrity advisee. In a larger sense, Dias' influence is undeniable, both in the fact that you can hear a great deal of Os Mutantes in Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family, and that everyone involved seems so genuinely jazzed to be working with him. That enthusiasm makes We Are the Lilies a spirited, earnest kind of record, but in a way that simply communicates the joy of collaboration and input. Even when songs come across as a little too eager or excited (they often do-- "Over My Head" suggests the Polyphonic Spree dabbling in sitcom theme songs), the engaging genre variations (60s French pop, Latin-tinged funk, Motown) help pad things a bit. Still, the choicest material here refrains from throwing everything into the mix all at once: "We're Gonna Live Forever" is essentially a doo-wop tune centered around Beatles-esque vocal harmonies, "Sarava" boasts a rockier edge but oozes pure soul, and the excellent closer "Oh Bahia" is the expectedly solid Os Mutantes big-up. But the two big moments on We Are the Lilies come courtesy of special guests Iggy Pop and Jane Birkin (the actress/ singer most famous for her recordings with ex-husband Serge Gainsbourg), and both are most unexpected. The Iggy-assisted "Why?" is great fun, but almost only because he seems be having most of it ("Why do the French smoke? Why do Americans fight? Why do Brazilians dance?" he yelps over a spotty appropriation of a little Motor City rumble). Birkin's "Marie" fares better with its stripped-down approach, channeling Blue-era Joni Mitchell with a bit of that perfectly flat-but-pretty French affectation. Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family have created a bright environment to play in, and they make the most of it for Dias, who must dig the unbridled enthusiasm of these young musicians sprouting in his honor. In this sense, We Are the Lilies comes off like well-executed dinner party, where both the guest and host seem to be enjoying themselves in equal measure.

Artist: We Are the Lilies, Album: We Are the Lilies, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "File this one under "Dreams Really Can Come True". Like many of his peers, David Sztanke-- a Parisian musician and leader of the expansive 1970s pop revival outfit Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family-- always had a thing for Brazilian Tropicália trailblazers Os Mutantes. After a few happy networking accidents, Sztanke found himself in direct communication with Os Mutantes head honcho Sérgio Dias, who confessed to digging the Palmtree Family's stuff so much, he proposed they get together and make a record. The result is We Are the Lilies, a jubilant, cleanly presented appropriation of both musicians' styles that charms with skill and contagious energy. Backing Dias and Sztanke is the Palmtree Family (and a few very notable guests), a band so open and adaptable, their endless incorporation of different instruments and styles seems breezy and effortless. Tracks are jam-packed with horns, sitars, keys, and more percussive elements than you can list, but their ambition never trumps their professionalism. The songs themselves feel very much the property of Sztanke and lean heavily on his eclectic brand of power-pop. It's hard to tell just how much direct influence Dias had on these recordings: In a short album teaser video (which promises a forthcoming companion film), we see band members working diligently in the studio, intercut with shots of Dias only strumming and advising, looking comfortable in his role as celebrity advisee. In a larger sense, Dias' influence is undeniable, both in the fact that you can hear a great deal of Os Mutantes in Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family, and that everyone involved seems so genuinely jazzed to be working with him. That enthusiasm makes We Are the Lilies a spirited, earnest kind of record, but in a way that simply communicates the joy of collaboration and input. Even when songs come across as a little too eager or excited (they often do-- "Over My Head" suggests the Polyphonic Spree dabbling in sitcom theme songs), the engaging genre variations (60s French pop, Latin-tinged funk, Motown) help pad things a bit. Still, the choicest material here refrains from throwing everything into the mix all at once: "We're Gonna Live Forever" is essentially a doo-wop tune centered around Beatles-esque vocal harmonies, "Sarava" boasts a rockier edge but oozes pure soul, and the excellent closer "Oh Bahia" is the expectedly solid Os Mutantes big-up. But the two big moments on We Are the Lilies come courtesy of special guests Iggy Pop and Jane Birkin (the actress/ singer most famous for her recordings with ex-husband Serge Gainsbourg), and both are most unexpected. The Iggy-assisted "Why?" is great fun, but almost only because he seems be having most of it ("Why do the French smoke? Why do Americans fight? Why do Brazilians dance?" he yelps over a spotty appropriation of a little Motor City rumble). Birkin's "Marie" fares better with its stripped-down approach, channeling Blue-era Joni Mitchell with a bit of that perfectly flat-but-pretty French affectation. Tahiti Boy and the Palmtree Family have created a bright environment to play in, and they make the most of it for Dias, who must dig the unbridled enthusiasm of these young musicians sprouting in his honor. In this sense, We Are the Lilies comes off like well-executed dinner party, where both the guest and host seem to be enjoying themselves in equal measure."

Women and Children

Paralyzed Dance, Tonight

Folk/Country

Joe Tangari

Women and Children make strange music-- it's ostensibly folk at its heart, drawing from both 1960s Greenwich Village and Celtic traditions, but it also traverses well-trod ground laid by the Velvet Underground and the Beatles. It manages to do all of it within an unstable and unpredictable production environment that values reverb above all else and sometimes goes too far to affect a ramshackle, amateur feel. This is the band's second album and first as a duo, and it's well-sequenced to lead you smoothly from one facet of their sound to another, opening with what in many ways is the most uncharacteristic track and closing with the one that best sums everything up. Listening to nothing but opener "Born TP" would be like reading the first chapter of a novel-- it only gives you a tiny slice of the story. That's one of just a few tracks with drums, for one thing, and the only on which percussion drives the song. The song also supports an insistent guitar figure and Kevin Lasting's deadpan tenor and is crowded with background noises-- muffled shouts and singing that don't really add anything other than clutter. The next three songs aren't a total departure, but they feel different, sparser, and more enigmatic. "Your Honour" is built on two acoustic guitar chords but edged with charred electric guitar, and "Feed a Fire"-- the first song built around Cheryl Serwa's vocals-- begins simply, gets sidetracked in a crowded, rhythmic section, and ends in a beautiful medieval haze of female harmony that sets the stage for the rest of the album. That is until "Rolly Fingers" (presumably a reference to the Hall of Fame closer, though it misspells his first name) closes the record with the most fully realized union of the band's tendencies, the album is mostly an offbeat folk record in the vein of Fresh Maggots or Comus at their most tame. The reverb is still huge, and the occasional schizoid tendency, such as the woman who calls to Lasting's vocal on the verses of "Ugly" still pops up, but it's mostly built on finger-picking, strumming, and stingingly cold piano piano parts. There are a few astounding moments where the texture of a song will rip open and roughly scraped violin comes pouring out. On "Polly Ann", it's a longing Celtic phrase come to offset the McCartneyesque sweetness of the chorus melody, and on "Virginia Creepers" it goes further, spinning a bit of sawing on the cello into a crazed string arrangement. Serwa takes "Sweet Spirit" a cappella, her voice lonely in the reverb, but she really shines on "Oranges", a baroque, piano-driven song whose sound improves as it goes, and she adds additional vocal parts, harmonizing with herself in twisting counterpoint that snaps in and out of unison for a disorienting effect.

Artist: Women and Children, Album: Paralyzed Dance, Tonight, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Women and Children make strange music-- it's ostensibly folk at its heart, drawing from both 1960s Greenwich Village and Celtic traditions, but it also traverses well-trod ground laid by the Velvet Underground and the Beatles. It manages to do all of it within an unstable and unpredictable production environment that values reverb above all else and sometimes goes too far to affect a ramshackle, amateur feel. This is the band's second album and first as a duo, and it's well-sequenced to lead you smoothly from one facet of their sound to another, opening with what in many ways is the most uncharacteristic track and closing with the one that best sums everything up. Listening to nothing but opener "Born TP" would be like reading the first chapter of a novel-- it only gives you a tiny slice of the story. That's one of just a few tracks with drums, for one thing, and the only on which percussion drives the song. The song also supports an insistent guitar figure and Kevin Lasting's deadpan tenor and is crowded with background noises-- muffled shouts and singing that don't really add anything other than clutter. The next three songs aren't a total departure, but they feel different, sparser, and more enigmatic. "Your Honour" is built on two acoustic guitar chords but edged with charred electric guitar, and "Feed a Fire"-- the first song built around Cheryl Serwa's vocals-- begins simply, gets sidetracked in a crowded, rhythmic section, and ends in a beautiful medieval haze of female harmony that sets the stage for the rest of the album. That is until "Rolly Fingers" (presumably a reference to the Hall of Fame closer, though it misspells his first name) closes the record with the most fully realized union of the band's tendencies, the album is mostly an offbeat folk record in the vein of Fresh Maggots or Comus at their most tame. The reverb is still huge, and the occasional schizoid tendency, such as the woman who calls to Lasting's vocal on the verses of "Ugly" still pops up, but it's mostly built on finger-picking, strumming, and stingingly cold piano piano parts. There are a few astounding moments where the texture of a song will rip open and roughly scraped violin comes pouring out. On "Polly Ann", it's a longing Celtic phrase come to offset the McCartneyesque sweetness of the chorus melody, and on "Virginia Creepers" it goes further, spinning a bit of sawing on the cello into a crazed string arrangement. Serwa takes "Sweet Spirit" a cappella, her voice lonely in the reverb, but she really shines on "Oranges", a baroque, piano-driven song whose sound improves as it goes, and she adds additional vocal parts, harmonizing with herself in twisting counterpoint that snaps in and out of unison for a disorienting effect."

Martina Topley-Bird

Quixotic

Electronic

Mark Pytlik

As the story goes, Tricky discovered Martina Topley-Bird as a teenager, when he spotted the truant schoolkid smoking cigarettes in front of his Bristol home. Their conversations quickly turned to collaboration, and within a few years time, Topley-Bird was not only the sweetly vocal foil to the blunted chaos of Tricky's still superb Maxinquaye, she was the mother of his daughter. As the pair's romantic relationship and creative synergy disintegrated over the ensuing years, the release of her own solo record seemed inevitable. And yet, even as Bristol's trip-hop gave way to Morcheeba's slip-slop, Topley-Bird remained out of the picture. So how odd that she would return in 2003, eight years removed from Maxinquaye, with a record that mostly sounds, well, four years too late. Quixotic is a lot of things, but, in engaging in exactly the kind of non-committal genre-hopping and saccharine candy-kissing that practically defined post-Bristol also-rans like Mono, Hooverphonic and Morcheeba, it's mostly just dated. Topley-Bird's eagerness to distance herself from the billowing dope smoke of those early Tricky benchmarks is evident within Quixotic's first two minutes. We're eased in via "Intro"-- a swinging a cappella track that's more O Brother than Pre-Millennium-- before Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan show up to draw some lumbering stoner guitar shapes on the diluted rock exercise "Need One". With its clumsy riffola and arrhythmic overproduction, "Need One" conjures up the precise strain of the Hollywood rock/electronica hybrid that was perfect for end credits in movies about things like cyberpunks and stolen identities, but nowhere else. The Morcheeba similarities rear their head again on "Anything", a supple acoustic ballad that gives way to a jumble of slide guitars, quivering synth bits and widescreen beats before collapsing in a hush of polite reverb. With its shadowy melody and lovely key change, "Anything" is by no stretch a terrible song, but it's difficult to listen to without feeling like you've heard it before. "Soul Food", with its warm Rhodes keyboards, library music string pieces and old soul accoutrements, is arguably even more derivative, yet thanks to its rolling arrangements and Topley-Bird's gloriously unhurried delivery, it's handily the album's standout track. Things get patchier from here on out. The bluesy, emaciated drone of "Lullaby", the awful space-rock whoosh of "I Still Feel", and the frankly inexplicable punk thrash of "I Wanna Be There" all seem to exist as afterthoughts. There are other highlights, mainly in the form of the shuddering drum workout of "Ragga" and the tousled Sunday morning sway of "Lying", but even those feel like small victories in the context of this disappointing aesthetic misfire. As ever, Topley-Bird's voice continues to be a strange and beautiful thing, but it's admittedly less strange and less beautiful when framed against this hopelessly warmed over setting. Although I can't quite figure out what she could've done to produce the distance and the renewal she so obviously requires, I remain fairly certain that making Even Bigger Calm is probably not the way out. Of Bristol, a typecasting quandary, or anywhere.

Artist: Martina Topley-Bird, Album: Quixotic, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "As the story goes, Tricky discovered Martina Topley-Bird as a teenager, when he spotted the truant schoolkid smoking cigarettes in front of his Bristol home. Their conversations quickly turned to collaboration, and within a few years time, Topley-Bird was not only the sweetly vocal foil to the blunted chaos of Tricky's still superb Maxinquaye, she was the mother of his daughter. As the pair's romantic relationship and creative synergy disintegrated over the ensuing years, the release of her own solo record seemed inevitable. And yet, even as Bristol's trip-hop gave way to Morcheeba's slip-slop, Topley-Bird remained out of the picture. So how odd that she would return in 2003, eight years removed from Maxinquaye, with a record that mostly sounds, well, four years too late. Quixotic is a lot of things, but, in engaging in exactly the kind of non-committal genre-hopping and saccharine candy-kissing that practically defined post-Bristol also-rans like Mono, Hooverphonic and Morcheeba, it's mostly just dated. Topley-Bird's eagerness to distance herself from the billowing dope smoke of those early Tricky benchmarks is evident within Quixotic's first two minutes. We're eased in via "Intro"-- a swinging a cappella track that's more O Brother than Pre-Millennium-- before Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan show up to draw some lumbering stoner guitar shapes on the diluted rock exercise "Need One". With its clumsy riffola and arrhythmic overproduction, "Need One" conjures up the precise strain of the Hollywood rock/electronica hybrid that was perfect for end credits in movies about things like cyberpunks and stolen identities, but nowhere else. The Morcheeba similarities rear their head again on "Anything", a supple acoustic ballad that gives way to a jumble of slide guitars, quivering synth bits and widescreen beats before collapsing in a hush of polite reverb. With its shadowy melody and lovely key change, "Anything" is by no stretch a terrible song, but it's difficult to listen to without feeling like you've heard it before. "Soul Food", with its warm Rhodes keyboards, library music string pieces and old soul accoutrements, is arguably even more derivative, yet thanks to its rolling arrangements and Topley-Bird's gloriously unhurried delivery, it's handily the album's standout track. Things get patchier from here on out. The bluesy, emaciated drone of "Lullaby", the awful space-rock whoosh of "I Still Feel", and the frankly inexplicable punk thrash of "I Wanna Be There" all seem to exist as afterthoughts. There are other highlights, mainly in the form of the shuddering drum workout of "Ragga" and the tousled Sunday morning sway of "Lying", but even those feel like small victories in the context of this disappointing aesthetic misfire. As ever, Topley-Bird's voice continues to be a strange and beautiful thing, but it's admittedly less strange and less beautiful when framed against this hopelessly warmed over setting. Although I can't quite figure out what she could've done to produce the distance and the renewal she so obviously requires, I remain fairly certain that making Even Bigger Calm is probably not the way out. Of Bristol, a typecasting quandary, or anywhere."

Beirut

No No No

Rock

Winston Cook-Wilson

In recent interviews, Beirut singer and songwriter Zach Condon has shed some light on the backstory behind the odd, skeletal sound of his band's new album. Condon had been embroiled in personal and creative despair for a few years, some of it the result of working on a new maximalist opus in the vein of his previous work. He abandoned this material to return to low-stakes jamming in a piano trio format; ultimately, No No No's songs developed out of this approach, and the album was recorded in just a couple of weeks. The resulting nine-song, 29-minute barely-LP, appropriately, sounds like a collection of exposed scaffoldings—a record of a rehabilitative process, more a story of survival rather than a shot at reinvention. It would be easy to assume that reinvention was foremost on Condon's mind. After all, his ethnomusicological interests and motley folk orchestras have next to nothing to do with today's musical landscape. Nine years ago, however, these elements seemed to fit in perfectly, distinguishing Condon from the expanding crooner rank-and-file (Jens Lekman, Andrew Bird, Patrick Wolf, Rufus Wainwright) and aligning him with a broader drift toward prewar—or, to use a once-popular keyword, "sepia tone"—nostalgia (see also: the shanties and strophic ballads of the Decemberists, the carny/gypsy fusions of Man Man and Gogol Bordello). But it was doubtless Condon's sense of how to make his compositions sound ornate and simple at the same time—through triumphant, sometimes wordless choruses—that truly gained him his fanbase. His 2006 and 2007 releases were full of mild-mannered anthems that stood on their own—mix-CD-ready cuts like "Postcards from Italy", "Elephant Gun", and "Nantes". Unlike this formative work, there's a sense of absence in the music of No No No; sometimes Condon's commitment to simplicity leads to undeveloped ideas. Condon has honed his innate skill as an arranger of chamber horn and string ensembles over the years: The first half of his 2009 double EP, March of the Zapotec, scored largely for 19-piece Mexican brass band, took his skill to its furthest level of complexity, while the follow up, The Rip Tide, found him making a more serious bid for pop/rock crossover success. For Condon to put his big-bandleader chops to the side—so crucial to all of his previous work—on his first album in four years seems like a tacit acknowledgment that the style of his earlier music is no longer in vogue, as well as a need to find a new, less obsessive process. When Condon does employ horns on the new album, they are effective precisely because they are so sparing: The  writing has a punchier, more functional quality that is worlds away from his former brass chorale leviathans. There are no vestiges of the approach that sometimes made it feel as if Condon had built his entire career in the shadow of Neutral Milk Hotel's "The Fool". These are horn licks in the tradition of '60s and '70s R&B, and all of the later pop music that bent it out of shape. But though this is all new for Beirut, the charm of the well-chiseled, simplistic grooves is modest, and Condon's strong melodic voice is not always there to create a through line. It floats on top of everything like a decorative descant, which can sometimes be taken or left. The two-minute "At Once" pairs an irresolute, maddeningly cyclical four-chord piano progression with a melody that is mostly just one note, and vocals are eschewed entirely on "As Needed" (which sounds like we are hearing only the backing track for a "Surfs Up"-like Smile outtake). It's sometimes easy to wonder what, exactly, Condon was going for when committing so fiercely to such lightly sketched ideas. The answer would seem to be mood, or simply his own pleasure; Condon's own comments articulated how fun the process of making the album was. The greatest joy, however, seems to have occurred when these ideas were germinating, not being formalized and committed to wax. On midtempo flotsam like "Pacheco", or even the slightly awkward title track, the passion seems to have already been wrung out of the song. The best tracks are the most uptempo and groove-locked: moments where Condon's initial excitement seems to have seeped into his melodies. The clearest examples are "Gibraltar" and "Perth", with their syncopated guitar rhythms. No No No may sound ineffectual after a cursory listen, but it reveals some subtle pleasures if you keep it in rotation. Even potentially soporific moments like closer "So Allowed", with its borderline West Side Story-quoting chorus, are ultimately pleasant, and even poignant. But it lacks the melodic heft out of which Beirut briefly built an empire, and doesn't demonstrate Condon searching for something else to fill that void. While it definitely unifies itself around and gains some affective power from sounding unfinished, it still sounds it.

Artist: Beirut, Album: No No No, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "In recent interviews, Beirut singer and songwriter Zach Condon has shed some light on the backstory behind the odd, skeletal sound of his band's new album. Condon had been embroiled in personal and creative despair for a few years, some of it the result of working on a new maximalist opus in the vein of his previous work. He abandoned this material to return to low-stakes jamming in a piano trio format; ultimately, No No No's songs developed out of this approach, and the album was recorded in just a couple of weeks. The resulting nine-song, 29-minute barely-LP, appropriately, sounds like a collection of exposed scaffoldings—a record of a rehabilitative process, more a story of survival rather than a shot at reinvention. It would be easy to assume that reinvention was foremost on Condon's mind. After all, his ethnomusicological interests and motley folk orchestras have next to nothing to do with today's musical landscape. Nine years ago, however, these elements seemed to fit in perfectly, distinguishing Condon from the expanding crooner rank-and-file (Jens Lekman, Andrew Bird, Patrick Wolf, Rufus Wainwright) and aligning him with a broader drift toward prewar—or, to use a once-popular keyword, "sepia tone"—nostalgia (see also: the shanties and strophic ballads of the Decemberists, the carny/gypsy fusions of Man Man and Gogol Bordello). But it was doubtless Condon's sense of how to make his compositions sound ornate and simple at the same time—through triumphant, sometimes wordless choruses—that truly gained him his fanbase. His 2006 and 2007 releases were full of mild-mannered anthems that stood on their own—mix-CD-ready cuts like "Postcards from Italy", "Elephant Gun", and "Nantes". Unlike this formative work, there's a sense of absence in the music of No No No; sometimes Condon's commitment to simplicity leads to undeveloped ideas. Condon has honed his innate skill as an arranger of chamber horn and string ensembles over the years: The first half of his 2009 double EP, March of the Zapotec, scored largely for 19-piece Mexican brass band, took his skill to its furthest level of complexity, while the follow up, The Rip Tide, found him making a more serious bid for pop/rock crossover success. For Condon to put his big-bandleader chops to the side—so crucial to all of his previous work—on his first album in four years seems like a tacit acknowledgment that the style of his earlier music is no longer in vogue, as well as a need to find a new, less obsessive process. When Condon does employ horns on the new album, they are effective precisely because they are so sparing: The  writing has a punchier, more functional quality that is worlds away from his former brass chorale leviathans. There are no vestiges of the approach that sometimes made it feel as if Condon had built his entire career in the shadow of Neutral Milk Hotel's "The Fool". These are horn licks in the tradition of '60s and '70s R&B, and all of the later pop music that bent it out of shape. But though this is all new for Beirut, the charm of the well-chiseled, simplistic grooves is modest, and Condon's strong melodic voice is not always there to create a through line. It floats on top of everything like a decorative descant, which can sometimes be taken or left. The two-minute "At Once" pairs an irresolute, maddeningly cyclical four-chord piano progression with a melody that is mostly just one note, and vocals are eschewed entirely on "As Needed" (which sounds like we are hearing only the backing track for a "Surfs Up"-like Smile outtake). It's sometimes easy to wonder what, exactly, Condon was going for when committing so fiercely to such lightly sketched ideas. The answer would seem to be mood, or simply his own pleasure; Condon's own comments articulated how fun the process of making the album was. The greatest joy, however, seems to have occurred when these ideas were germinating, not being formalized and committed to wax. On midtempo flotsam like "Pacheco", or even the slightly awkward title track, the passion seems to have already been wrung out of the song. The best tracks are the most uptempo and groove-locked: moments where Condon's initial excitement seems to have seeped into his melodies. The clearest examples are "Gibraltar" and "Perth", with their syncopated guitar rhythms. No No No may sound ineffectual after a cursory listen, but it reveals some subtle pleasures if you keep it in rotation. Even potentially soporific moments like closer "So Allowed", with its borderline West Side Story-quoting chorus, are ultimately pleasant, and even poignant. But it lacks the melodic heft out of which Beirut briefly built an empire, and doesn't demonstrate Condon searching for something else to fill that void. While it definitely unifies itself around and gains some affective power from sounding unfinished, it still sounds it."

Icarus Line

Penance Soiree

Sam Ubl

If rock 'n' roll had nothing to do with music and everything to do with attitude, the Icarus Line would be the greatest fucking band. Oh wait, rock 'n' roll does have everything to with attitude, and the Icarus Line are the greatest fucking band. Sure, there are thousands of bands who are wittier, louder, more sophisticated, and in general, more musically rewarding. But if you want obstinance, irreverence and depravity, I dare you to find a band that offers it in such gratuity. Too late: You see, after six years of infamous live shows and a scant yield of exactly one EP and one full-length, the Icarus Line have finally gotten serious, which means the derisive West Coast braggarts have sacrificed their reputation. This, of course, means they're no longer the greatest fucking band. They're better. Call it a fair trade off: By simply playing by the rock 'n' roll rulebook-- whose article 17, section 4 strictly dictates that ego, excess and publicity stunts are to take complete precedence over, you know, songs-- Penance Soiree is one of the better straight-up records you're bound to hear from the genre all year. Known for their manic behavior onstage and scuzzy surfeit off, the Icarus Line could win over scores of fans without even playing a note. But who cares that the band wear moddish black-and-red uniforms when they sound red and black? Unlike most groups who arch back to rock 'n roll's premillennial salad days, the Icarus Line are visceral enough in their music alone, and Penance Soiree proves it before even the chorus of its opening track. Of course, this isn't anything you haven't heard before. All the requisite pieces are in place: scalding guitars, amply flanged vocals, bombastic drums, and a bassline that sounds like nothing so much as running sewage. But while a track like "Up Against the Wall" may not be aching to raze any monuments, it forcefully achieves all that it sets out to accomplish: Dubiously recorded to be difficult to hear unless played at a high volume, the song leaves the listener itching for a bath. In fact, one would be wise to come prepared for this record with plenty of sweat rags and water bottles: Like a good workout, Penance Soiree pushes you until you're red-cheeked, wet-faced and utterly exhausted. Hearteningly, the album loses hardly a step in its finery. Joe Cardamone's vocals are properly wanton throughout this rabble-rousing tour de force, and while it's all too easy for lyrics about sex to succumb to sleaze, on "Party the Baby Off", it's all too tempting to oblige Cardamone's cries of "Take off all your clothes!" Carnal and prurient throughout, Penance Soiree is absorbing in its decadence and rarely alienating in its ferocity. Technically, the music is necessarily indestructible; sloppy performances would allow these reckless tunes to spiral out of control, but the compositions are unerringly tight, nailing unison figures and hopping meter with insane dexterity. But alas, the well of ideas from which the Icarus Line draw is limited, and while all their efforts are deftly executed, a handful of the tracks fall flat. While most records of its kind are precariously frontloaded, Penance Soiree lags only in its third quarter. Earlier on, the album's repetitive helps impede the galvanizing (if static) riffs, but later, the songs move from a torrid gallop to a haggard chug, as Cardamone's libidinous wails peter out into a bluesy drawl. "Big Sleep"'s title is particularly apt: The song is full of razoring kicks, but pitifully low on hooks. Elsewhere, "White Devil" and "Meatmaker" are mercifully fast-paced, but nevertheless somewhat cloying melodically. Thankfully, the two closing tracks redeem the missteps of the preceding numbers. "Seasick" provides Penance Soiree's most interesting textural moment in its icy two minute decline, an arrhythmic descent into a howling ocean of feedback. And then, just as the album has seemingly crashed from its meteoric highs, the band sign off with "Party the Baby Off", a bouncy rocker that may well inaugurate its own British-style Invasion from the snowy peaks of Sierra Nevada. They may not be the wittiest or most erudite band around, but the Icarus Line pummel with an intentness and honesty that trumps the best of their contemporaries.

Artist: Icarus Line, Album: Penance Soiree, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "If rock 'n' roll had nothing to do with music and everything to do with attitude, the Icarus Line would be the greatest fucking band. Oh wait, rock 'n' roll does have everything to with attitude, and the Icarus Line are the greatest fucking band. Sure, there are thousands of bands who are wittier, louder, more sophisticated, and in general, more musically rewarding. But if you want obstinance, irreverence and depravity, I dare you to find a band that offers it in such gratuity. Too late: You see, after six years of infamous live shows and a scant yield of exactly one EP and one full-length, the Icarus Line have finally gotten serious, which means the derisive West Coast braggarts have sacrificed their reputation. This, of course, means they're no longer the greatest fucking band. They're better. Call it a fair trade off: By simply playing by the rock 'n' roll rulebook-- whose article 17, section 4 strictly dictates that ego, excess and publicity stunts are to take complete precedence over, you know, songs-- Penance Soiree is one of the better straight-up records you're bound to hear from the genre all year. Known for their manic behavior onstage and scuzzy surfeit off, the Icarus Line could win over scores of fans without even playing a note. But who cares that the band wear moddish black-and-red uniforms when they sound red and black? Unlike most groups who arch back to rock 'n roll's premillennial salad days, the Icarus Line are visceral enough in their music alone, and Penance Soiree proves it before even the chorus of its opening track. Of course, this isn't anything you haven't heard before. All the requisite pieces are in place: scalding guitars, amply flanged vocals, bombastic drums, and a bassline that sounds like nothing so much as running sewage. But while a track like "Up Against the Wall" may not be aching to raze any monuments, it forcefully achieves all that it sets out to accomplish: Dubiously recorded to be difficult to hear unless played at a high volume, the song leaves the listener itching for a bath. In fact, one would be wise to come prepared for this record with plenty of sweat rags and water bottles: Like a good workout, Penance Soiree pushes you until you're red-cheeked, wet-faced and utterly exhausted. Hearteningly, the album loses hardly a step in its finery. Joe Cardamone's vocals are properly wanton throughout this rabble-rousing tour de force, and while it's all too easy for lyrics about sex to succumb to sleaze, on "Party the Baby Off", it's all too tempting to oblige Cardamone's cries of "Take off all your clothes!" Carnal and prurient throughout, Penance Soiree is absorbing in its decadence and rarely alienating in its ferocity. Technically, the music is necessarily indestructible; sloppy performances would allow these reckless tunes to spiral out of control, but the compositions are unerringly tight, nailing unison figures and hopping meter with insane dexterity. But alas, the well of ideas from which the Icarus Line draw is limited, and while all their efforts are deftly executed, a handful of the tracks fall flat. While most records of its kind are precariously frontloaded, Penance Soiree lags only in its third quarter. Earlier on, the album's repetitive helps impede the galvanizing (if static) riffs, but later, the songs move from a torrid gallop to a haggard chug, as Cardamone's libidinous wails peter out into a bluesy drawl. "Big Sleep"'s title is particularly apt: The song is full of razoring kicks, but pitifully low on hooks. Elsewhere, "White Devil" and "Meatmaker" are mercifully fast-paced, but nevertheless somewhat cloying melodically. Thankfully, the two closing tracks redeem the missteps of the preceding numbers. "Seasick" provides Penance Soiree's most interesting textural moment in its icy two minute decline, an arrhythmic descent into a howling ocean of feedback. And then, just as the album has seemingly crashed from its meteoric highs, the band sign off with "Party the Baby Off", a bouncy rocker that may well inaugurate its own British-style Invasion from the snowy peaks of Sierra Nevada. They may not be the wittiest or most erudite band around, but the Icarus Line pummel with an intentness and honesty that trumps the best of their contemporaries."

Fis

Preparations EP

Angus Finlayson

“If an artist is ever going to carve out a new territory their work needs to be different at the seed-level, different before the start.” This statement from New Zealand’s Olly Peryman touches on one of the most interesting aspects of his work: its provenance. From one perspective, Peryman’s music as Fis is an offshoot of the contemporary drum and bass scene, taking up a set of propositions set out by dBridge and Instra:mental’s Autonomic project at the turn of the decade and coming back with fascinatingly illogical conclusions. From another, Peryman is a singular figure whose avant-garde rhythmic constructs have converged only briefly with a wider movement. Peryman’s activities so far have lent weight to the former theory. Discovered after handing a CD to the boss of New Zealand’s bastion of innovative drum and bass, Samurai Records, the producer has since released music on Samurai’s experimental sublabel, Horo, and dBridge’s Exit Records. His work tends to occupy the 170bpm tempo range common to the style, and explores, however obscurely, the same highly poised interzone between frenetic doubletime and its halftime counterpart. Often, too, his claustrophobic grooves bear traces of the DnB’s well-worn signifiers: the clipped snarl of a Reese bass, submerged echoes of ragga rudeness. But the recent Homologous EP felt like Peryman was in the process of uncovering an altogether new rhythmic grammar. The producer has long ignored the quantizing function of his music software, preferring to work off-grid; lately, he says, his rhythms have been drawn from “what I hear and see from my body during meditation.” Appearing through Void Coms—a new label in which Peryman has a hand—and accompanied by an Yves Klein-derived manifesto about achieving a state that is “void of worldly influences,” the EP was still distinctively, inimitably FIS—but it was difficult to claim any link to drum and bass. The appearance of Peryman’s latest, the Preparations EP, through Brooklyn label Tri Angle, further complicates matters. Suddenly it’s tempting to hear parallels with the darker fringes of the label’s trans-genre roster: Vessel’s scorched techno perhaps, or Howse’s dreamy footwork abstractions. Certainly, there is a forlorn melodicism to some of Peryman’s music which may initially have caught label head Robin Carolan’s ear—although it’s only a fleeting presence on the Preparations EP. In fact, this EP hinges around a rather old FIS production, and one that finds him at his most conventional. "DMT Usher", which received a vinyl-only release through Samurai Horo in 2012, is Peryman’s equivalent of a crowd pleaser, centred around a single downsliding bass tone that sputters and wheezes like a damaged strimmer. As always with a FIS production, the thrill is in the small things: the uncanny weft of the sounds, the micro-rhythmic push and pull of the percussion. But, arranged according to fairly rote build-and-drop dynamics, the track isn’t his most thrilling work. Better is "Mildew Swoosh", which pushes that halftime-doubletime dichotomy to a breaking point: pulling one way is the scrabbling insectoid percussion and scintillating synth arp; against them, drifting, somnolent pads. But Peryman really thrives when he explores greater extremes of abstraction. "Magister Nunns" and "CE Visions" are ominous beasts, their grooves buried, protean, and beset by spumes of cavernous reverb. The former, in particular, seems to crumble as it hits the air, as if we’re hearing Disintegration Loops-style tape degradation in time lapse. It makes for an exhausting listen, but since when was starting from scratch easy?

Artist: Fis, Album: Preparations EP, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "“If an artist is ever going to carve out a new territory their work needs to be different at the seed-level, different before the start.” This statement from New Zealand’s Olly Peryman touches on one of the most interesting aspects of his work: its provenance. From one perspective, Peryman’s music as Fis is an offshoot of the contemporary drum and bass scene, taking up a set of propositions set out by dBridge and Instra:mental’s Autonomic project at the turn of the decade and coming back with fascinatingly illogical conclusions. From another, Peryman is a singular figure whose avant-garde rhythmic constructs have converged only briefly with a wider movement. Peryman’s activities so far have lent weight to the former theory. Discovered after handing a CD to the boss of New Zealand’s bastion of innovative drum and bass, Samurai Records, the producer has since released music on Samurai’s experimental sublabel, Horo, and dBridge’s Exit Records. His work tends to occupy the 170bpm tempo range common to the style, and explores, however obscurely, the same highly poised interzone between frenetic doubletime and its halftime counterpart. Often, too, his claustrophobic grooves bear traces of the DnB’s well-worn signifiers: the clipped snarl of a Reese bass, submerged echoes of ragga rudeness. But the recent Homologous EP felt like Peryman was in the process of uncovering an altogether new rhythmic grammar. The producer has long ignored the quantizing function of his music software, preferring to work off-grid; lately, he says, his rhythms have been drawn from “what I hear and see from my body during meditation.” Appearing through Void Coms—a new label in which Peryman has a hand—and accompanied by an Yves Klein-derived manifesto about achieving a state that is “void of worldly influences,” the EP was still distinctively, inimitably FIS—but it was difficult to claim any link to drum and bass. The appearance of Peryman’s latest, the Preparations EP, through Brooklyn label Tri Angle, further complicates matters. Suddenly it’s tempting to hear parallels with the darker fringes of the label’s trans-genre roster: Vessel’s scorched techno perhaps, or Howse’s dreamy footwork abstractions. Certainly, there is a forlorn melodicism to some of Peryman’s music which may initially have caught label head Robin Carolan’s ear—although it’s only a fleeting presence on the Preparations EP. In fact, this EP hinges around a rather old FIS production, and one that finds him at his most conventional. "DMT Usher", which received a vinyl-only release through Samurai Horo in 2012, is Peryman’s equivalent of a crowd pleaser, centred around a single downsliding bass tone that sputters and wheezes like a damaged strimmer. As always with a FIS production, the thrill is in the small things: the uncanny weft of the sounds, the micro-rhythmic push and pull of the percussion. But, arranged according to fairly rote build-and-drop dynamics, the track isn’t his most thrilling work. Better is "Mildew Swoosh", which pushes that halftime-doubletime dichotomy to a breaking point: pulling one way is the scrabbling insectoid percussion and scintillating synth arp; against them, drifting, somnolent pads. But Peryman really thrives when he explores greater extremes of abstraction. "Magister Nunns" and "CE Visions" are ominous beasts, their grooves buried, protean, and beset by spumes of cavernous reverb. The former, in particular, seems to crumble as it hits the air, as if we’re hearing Disintegration Loops-style tape degradation in time lapse. It makes for an exhausting listen, but since when was starting from scratch easy?"

Lewis Parker

It's All Happening Now

Electronic,Rap

Jascha Hoffman

This is a bad week for Tony Blair. With his continuing commitment to a war only a third of his citizens support, Blair's political future, and even his job, has been called into question. Whether he started out as a UN-minded liberal or a militant interventionist, his credibility from here is in serious disrepair. As poodle in the lap of a unilateral and pre-emptive Texan, he must have some doubts about which side of "with us or against us" he really wanted to be on. And if they're pumping music into the doghouse, you can bet he's rocking himself to sleep to the freeform aural assaults of Lewis Parker. It seems like hip-hop is not yet as thoroughly market-driven and overexposed in Britain as it has been in the U.S. for quite some time, so there aren't many alternatives to doing it for the love over there. Lewis Parker is no exception. In 1998 he earned a lasting place in the Brit-hop pantheon with his dark, autumnal Masquerades and Silhouettes album, but then dropped off the face of the island-- silent but for a few compilation appearances and collaborations. Friendlier than a Braintax, but far more serious than The Aspects, Lewis Parker can battle with a neutral mask, but seems to draw on an undercurrent of well-considered rage. In contrast to Massive Attack, whose Melankolic label has released this new album, Parker seems to be comfortable taking the time to exact genius from himself. As one British reviewer put it, "Although heads have run out of saliva waiting for it, there is more than enough [material] here to get them moist again." If It's All Happening Now is any indication, Lewis has, these past five years, been chilling in his bedroom with the sequencer going and freestyling about his day. His blunt, precise sense of rhythm and natural rhymes glue together what might seem like somewhat loose themes on the lips of a less confident rapper. The minimal song structures, with just enough hook to pull themselves out of the frame for another impulsive verse, make for a sequence of tight three-minute tracks that can seem almost endless. With drop-ins by a dizzying array of pouting UK emcees, it feels like one marathon South London basement session. Guests include Apollo, Jhest and Supa T, who with Parker make up the Cloudsteppers Federation, formerly Champions of Nature. Says member Dolo: "The story behind the Champions of Nature is that we were all in a freakshow... but we escaped after realizing that music was the only way to go forward." Someone has since offered them jobs as knife-throwers' assistants. As relentless as the lyrics are, this album would be nothing without the straight-laced beats that drive every single track deep into its own future, like the best early Atmosphere did. Although the lack of production credits makes me nervous about leaving someone out, it's safe to say that Lewis Parker delivers the whole beats-and-rhymes package all of a piece-- there's only one sensibility at work here. On "Mum's the Word", Parker's homage to crate-digging, guitar octaves bloom in the grainy middle distance, like oily pastels on delivery paper. On a few tracks, unnatural brass and string crescendos push and pull at the waist of whoever's got the mike at the moment. Shit, even the thirty-second interludes leave me panting. The kicks are always electrically present, acting more like a catalyst than a foundation for the rhythmic superstructure. And then there are the snares: vine-ripened in Sicily, drugged and bludgeoned in Manchester, marinated in Marseilles, and served raw in a pool of their own expansion in the comfort of your very own head. In the words of that same wise British reviewer, "They are lovely and crusty, there is nothing wrong with that." After my first few listens to It's All Happening Now, I found myself ignoring the lyrics and wanting to live inside the beats. But I'm not pining for the instrumental version. Lewis Parker's lyrics are like a sandblast giving a smooth polish to the sweet jaggedness below. Or just noise on the surface of a single vivid walking meditation.

Artist: Lewis Parker, Album: It's All Happening Now, Genre: Electronic,Rap, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "This is a bad week for Tony Blair. With his continuing commitment to a war only a third of his citizens support, Blair's political future, and even his job, has been called into question. Whether he started out as a UN-minded liberal or a militant interventionist, his credibility from here is in serious disrepair. As poodle in the lap of a unilateral and pre-emptive Texan, he must have some doubts about which side of "with us or against us" he really wanted to be on. And if they're pumping music into the doghouse, you can bet he's rocking himself to sleep to the freeform aural assaults of Lewis Parker. It seems like hip-hop is not yet as thoroughly market-driven and overexposed in Britain as it has been in the U.S. for quite some time, so there aren't many alternatives to doing it for the love over there. Lewis Parker is no exception. In 1998 he earned a lasting place in the Brit-hop pantheon with his dark, autumnal Masquerades and Silhouettes album, but then dropped off the face of the island-- silent but for a few compilation appearances and collaborations. Friendlier than a Braintax, but far more serious than The Aspects, Lewis Parker can battle with a neutral mask, but seems to draw on an undercurrent of well-considered rage. In contrast to Massive Attack, whose Melankolic label has released this new album, Parker seems to be comfortable taking the time to exact genius from himself. As one British reviewer put it, "Although heads have run out of saliva waiting for it, there is more than enough [material] here to get them moist again." If It's All Happening Now is any indication, Lewis has, these past five years, been chilling in his bedroom with the sequencer going and freestyling about his day. His blunt, precise sense of rhythm and natural rhymes glue together what might seem like somewhat loose themes on the lips of a less confident rapper. The minimal song structures, with just enough hook to pull themselves out of the frame for another impulsive verse, make for a sequence of tight three-minute tracks that can seem almost endless. With drop-ins by a dizzying array of pouting UK emcees, it feels like one marathon South London basement session. Guests include Apollo, Jhest and Supa T, who with Parker make up the Cloudsteppers Federation, formerly Champions of Nature. Says member Dolo: "The story behind the Champions of Nature is that we were all in a freakshow... but we escaped after realizing that music was the only way to go forward." Someone has since offered them jobs as knife-throwers' assistants. As relentless as the lyrics are, this album would be nothing without the straight-laced beats that drive every single track deep into its own future, like the best early Atmosphere did. Although the lack of production credits makes me nervous about leaving someone out, it's safe to say that Lewis Parker delivers the whole beats-and-rhymes package all of a piece-- there's only one sensibility at work here. On "Mum's the Word", Parker's homage to crate-digging, guitar octaves bloom in the grainy middle distance, like oily pastels on delivery paper. On a few tracks, unnatural brass and string crescendos push and pull at the waist of whoever's got the mike at the moment. Shit, even the thirty-second interludes leave me panting. The kicks are always electrically present, acting more like a catalyst than a foundation for the rhythmic superstructure. And then there are the snares: vine-ripened in Sicily, drugged and bludgeoned in Manchester, marinated in Marseilles, and served raw in a pool of their own expansion in the comfort of your very own head. In the words of that same wise British reviewer, "They are lovely and crusty, there is nothing wrong with that." After my first few listens to It's All Happening Now, I found myself ignoring the lyrics and wanting to live inside the beats. But I'm not pining for the instrumental version. Lewis Parker's lyrics are like a sandblast giving a smooth polish to the sweet jaggedness below. Or just noise on the surface of a single vivid walking meditation."

Robag Wruhme

Thora Vukk

Electronic

Andrew Gaerig

A veteran of Germany's electronic music scene, Robag Wruhme released one of minimal techno's more idiosyncratic albums, Wuzzelbud "KK", in 2004. Since then he has quietly issued a handful of singles. In January, Wruhme-- né Gabor Schablitzki-- put together a sly, melodic mix for Cologne's Kompakt, followed in April by Thora Vukk. Released on DJ Koze's increasingly impressive Pampa imprint, Wruhme's second LP is an elegant, eminently listenable blend of chirpy beats, homespun voices, and sighing keyboards. Wruhme's music has taken a path similar to that of one of his contemporaries, Isolée; tracks that once feasted on funny noises and unexpected pops have been smoothed over, like practical jokers settling into masters of the quip. Thora Vukk also has something in common with Nicolas Jaar's Space Is Only Noise; both are albums of modest treated-keys beauty, though Wruhme's music is deeply rooted in house traditions and tempos that Jaar's plays fast and loose with (or, more accurately, slow and loose). Thora Vukk is a sunrise album, one that sits lightly. Its tracks don't build and peak so much as arrive and taper. "Brucke Eins", already a placid interlude featuring dollops of organ, ends with someone calmly pecking at a keyboard. Wruhme uses voices sparingly but memorably; "Pnom Gobal" features a back-and-forth between casual scatting and a string section. The closest Thora Vukk comes to cresting is a breakdown during "Tulpa Ovi", in which a skittering break comes to a stop for joyful call and response between a performer and a child audience. It's telling that Thora Vukk's most memorable moment occurs when the music all but drops out, but it's also misleading. Wruhme's sound design is careful and deep; the album's homespun feel is in tone only (it would be lazy to compare it to the sweet, sepia-toned photograph on the album's cover, but, well, yeah). He leaves plenty of space between the muted chirps of his drums and those lovely velvet keys, and there's lots to be gained by playing the record loudly on a good system. Wruhme's career path and stature make Thora Vukk the type of album that never escapes the clutches of house connoisseurs, but fans of Jaar and even Four Tet will find a lot to like in its pacing and beauty.

Artist: Robag Wruhme, Album: Thora Vukk, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "A veteran of Germany's electronic music scene, Robag Wruhme released one of minimal techno's more idiosyncratic albums, Wuzzelbud "KK", in 2004. Since then he has quietly issued a handful of singles. In January, Wruhme-- né Gabor Schablitzki-- put together a sly, melodic mix for Cologne's Kompakt, followed in April by Thora Vukk. Released on DJ Koze's increasingly impressive Pampa imprint, Wruhme's second LP is an elegant, eminently listenable blend of chirpy beats, homespun voices, and sighing keyboards. Wruhme's music has taken a path similar to that of one of his contemporaries, Isolée; tracks that once feasted on funny noises and unexpected pops have been smoothed over, like practical jokers settling into masters of the quip. Thora Vukk also has something in common with Nicolas Jaar's Space Is Only Noise; both are albums of modest treated-keys beauty, though Wruhme's music is deeply rooted in house traditions and tempos that Jaar's plays fast and loose with (or, more accurately, slow and loose). Thora Vukk is a sunrise album, one that sits lightly. Its tracks don't build and peak so much as arrive and taper. "Brucke Eins", already a placid interlude featuring dollops of organ, ends with someone calmly pecking at a keyboard. Wruhme uses voices sparingly but memorably; "Pnom Gobal" features a back-and-forth between casual scatting and a string section. The closest Thora Vukk comes to cresting is a breakdown during "Tulpa Ovi", in which a skittering break comes to a stop for joyful call and response between a performer and a child audience. It's telling that Thora Vukk's most memorable moment occurs when the music all but drops out, but it's also misleading. Wruhme's sound design is careful and deep; the album's homespun feel is in tone only (it would be lazy to compare it to the sweet, sepia-toned photograph on the album's cover, but, well, yeah). He leaves plenty of space between the muted chirps of his drums and those lovely velvet keys, and there's lots to be gained by playing the record loudly on a good system. Wruhme's career path and stature make Thora Vukk the type of album that never escapes the clutches of house connoisseurs, but fans of Jaar and even Four Tet will find a lot to like in its pacing and beauty."

Hawkwind

Space Ritual: Collector's Edition

Experimental,Rock

Nate Patrin

It's been said that the span between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars was science fiction's downer period, with the grim silliness of TV shows like Space: 1999 and dystopian unhappy-ending movies like Soylent Green and The Omega Man dampening the optimism of NASA's space exploration with constant warnings of a gloomy future and post-apocalyptic isolation. But it was a golden age for sci-fi in pop music: Between the unbridled creativity of Sun Ra's Philadelphia years, the development of Parliament's intergalactic mythos, and David Bowie being David Bowie, there were plenty of artists who saw something promising outside the bounds of Earth. And aside from Sun Ra, few artists captured that sense of mind-warping, my-God-it's-full-of-stars astronomical mysticism in their music like Hawkwind. With their tendency towards extended jams full of disorienting electronic drones and drummer Simon King's motorik rhythms, they had a certain creative kinship with their Krautrock contemporaries. But their racket could also be as unrelentingly punchy and violent as anything from the Stooges' Fun House, especially considering guitarist Dave Brock's Ron Asheton-esque affinity for blistering, wah-wah-drenched riffs and Nik Turner's freeform sax outbursts, which were more Steve MacKay than John Gilmore. It was all put to good use by their lyrics and their philosophy, much of which was inspired by the writing of sci-fi author and sometime collaborator Michael Moorcock, and typically themed around interstellar travel, metaphysics and Pythagoras' theory of celestial-mathematical "music of the spheres." If this all seems a bit dense and weird and impenetrable, rest assured that Hawkwind's arcanum isn't too difficult to get caught up in, especially via their circa-1972 lineup-- which delivered plenty of straightforward rock riffage amidst all the special effects and featured, amongst the aforementioned personnel, a former rhythm guitarist turned bassist named Lemmy Kilmister. Space Ritual, recorded over two separate concert dates in London and Liverpool in December 1972, is a solid effort at capturing what made Hawkwind a cult favorite, and the Collector's Edition pads it out just enough to keep things from being too overwhelming. The set has been expanded from its original "88 minutes of brain damage" (as a 1973 print ad hilariously put it) to just over two hours, with most of the added material devoted to a few alternate takes and the restoration of a few minutes here and there that had to be cut for the original United Artists double LP. (A bonus DVD includes the whole shebang in Dolby, and despite it being in PAL format, North American viewers should be able to hear it on their PCs or DVD players.) The flow of the concert typically alternates between spoken-word passages about time, space and the future, delivered with ominous camp by resident poet Robert Calvert, and extended, high-velocity performances of material from their '72 album Doremi Fasol Latido, with a handful of non-album tracks thrown in for good measure. Everything you need to glean from this album can be heard in the first 20 minutes: The Electric Ladyland-esque hue and cry of the distortion-heavy opening cut "Earth Calling", the 10-minute "T.V. Eye"-gone-starfighting assault of "Born to Go", the rumbling vortex of bass in "Down Through the Night" and the Calvert space-voyage poem "The Awakening" ("Landing itself was nothing/We touched upon a shelf of rock/selected by the automind/And left a galaxy of dreams behind..."). But stopping after there would be a waste, and while it takes a certain dedication to see this album through in its entirety-- if no drugs are immediately available, Space Ritual also works as background music while you read Jack Kirby comics-- its singleminded, ceaseless momentum is too powerful to become tedious. Lemmy and King provide a lot of that force: Kilmister was a recent convert to bass about a year previous to the album's recording, and his tendency to play it like a blunt instrument suits the material well, especially when he sets about on one of his trademark idling-dragster solos. (His sparring with Turner's sax on "Lord of Light" is especially impressive, and serves as an early sign of things to come with Motörhead a few years down the line.) King has one real nifty trick on the drums-- a machine-gun roll that he hammers out at least a dozen times in every song-- and even though it starts to stick out as a bit of a crutch, the fact that it sounds exhilarating every single time attests to his sense of knowing just where to drop that crescendo, and it helps the nearly ten minutes of "Brainstorm" fly by quickly. Brock's guitar, meanwhile, holds the odd position of transforming over the course of a song into a sort of ambient noise, since its riffs are typically doubled up and sometimes overwhelmed by Lemmy's bass; the moments where it sounds like his wah-wah's congealing into Dik Mik's whirring, searing electronic effects are some of the most captivatingly strange sounds on the record. There's a couple detours from their full-speed-ahead acid-punk-- the catchy Wilhelm Reich tribute/Canned Heat knockoff "Orgone Accumulator", the cro-mag vertigo doom-blues of "Upside Down", the slow, zero-G boil of "Space Is Deep"-- but none of it seems like digression for its own sake. Even Calvert's poems, which skew a little portentous sometimes ("Welcome to the oceans in a labeled can/ Welcome to the dehydrated lands/ Welcome to the south police parade/ Welcome to the neo-golden age"), add a bit of linguistic substance to an album more memorable for its riffs than its simple, usually flatly-sung lyrics. Space Ritual isn't a prog-rock showcase-- most of its best moments come from intensity rather than chops-- but it's one of rock's greatest attempts to connect with the rest of the universe. Steppenwolf sang about how it would feel to "fire all of your guns at once and explode into space"; this album actually gives a good idea of what that would truly sound like.

Artist: Hawkwind, Album: Space Ritual: Collector's Edition, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "It's been said that the span between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars was science fiction's downer period, with the grim silliness of TV shows like Space: 1999 and dystopian unhappy-ending movies like Soylent Green and The Omega Man dampening the optimism of NASA's space exploration with constant warnings of a gloomy future and post-apocalyptic isolation. But it was a golden age for sci-fi in pop music: Between the unbridled creativity of Sun Ra's Philadelphia years, the development of Parliament's intergalactic mythos, and David Bowie being David Bowie, there were plenty of artists who saw something promising outside the bounds of Earth. And aside from Sun Ra, few artists captured that sense of mind-warping, my-God-it's-full-of-stars astronomical mysticism in their music like Hawkwind. With their tendency towards extended jams full of disorienting electronic drones and drummer Simon King's motorik rhythms, they had a certain creative kinship with their Krautrock contemporaries. But their racket could also be as unrelentingly punchy and violent as anything from the Stooges' Fun House, especially considering guitarist Dave Brock's Ron Asheton-esque affinity for blistering, wah-wah-drenched riffs and Nik Turner's freeform sax outbursts, which were more Steve MacKay than John Gilmore. It was all put to good use by their lyrics and their philosophy, much of which was inspired by the writing of sci-fi author and sometime collaborator Michael Moorcock, and typically themed around interstellar travel, metaphysics and Pythagoras' theory of celestial-mathematical "music of the spheres." If this all seems a bit dense and weird and impenetrable, rest assured that Hawkwind's arcanum isn't too difficult to get caught up in, especially via their circa-1972 lineup-- which delivered plenty of straightforward rock riffage amidst all the special effects and featured, amongst the aforementioned personnel, a former rhythm guitarist turned bassist named Lemmy Kilmister. Space Ritual, recorded over two separate concert dates in London and Liverpool in December 1972, is a solid effort at capturing what made Hawkwind a cult favorite, and the Collector's Edition pads it out just enough to keep things from being too overwhelming. The set has been expanded from its original "88 minutes of brain damage" (as a 1973 print ad hilariously put it) to just over two hours, with most of the added material devoted to a few alternate takes and the restoration of a few minutes here and there that had to be cut for the original United Artists double LP. (A bonus DVD includes the whole shebang in Dolby, and despite it being in PAL format, North American viewers should be able to hear it on their PCs or DVD players.) The flow of the concert typically alternates between spoken-word passages about time, space and the future, delivered with ominous camp by resident poet Robert Calvert, and extended, high-velocity performances of material from their '72 album Doremi Fasol Latido, with a handful of non-album tracks thrown in for good measure. Everything you need to glean from this album can be heard in the first 20 minutes: The Electric Ladyland-esque hue and cry of the distortion-heavy opening cut "Earth Calling", the 10-minute "T.V. Eye"-gone-starfighting assault of "Born to Go", the rumbling vortex of bass in "Down Through the Night" and the Calvert space-voyage poem "The Awakening" ("Landing itself was nothing/We touched upon a shelf of rock/selected by the automind/And left a galaxy of dreams behind..."). But stopping after there would be a waste, and while it takes a certain dedication to see this album through in its entirety-- if no drugs are immediately available, Space Ritual also works as background music while you read Jack Kirby comics-- its singleminded, ceaseless momentum is too powerful to become tedious. Lemmy and King provide a lot of that force: Kilmister was a recent convert to bass about a year previous to the album's recording, and his tendency to play it like a blunt instrument suits the material well, especially when he sets about on one of his trademark idling-dragster solos. (His sparring with Turner's sax on "Lord of Light" is especially impressive, and serves as an early sign of things to come with Motörhead a few years down the line.) King has one real nifty trick on the drums-- a machine-gun roll that he hammers out at least a dozen times in every song-- and even though it starts to stick out as a bit of a crutch, the fact that it sounds exhilarating every single time attests to his sense of knowing just where to drop that crescendo, and it helps the nearly ten minutes of "Brainstorm" fly by quickly. Brock's guitar, meanwhile, holds the odd position of transforming over the course of a song into a sort of ambient noise, since its riffs are typically doubled up and sometimes overwhelmed by Lemmy's bass; the moments where it sounds like his wah-wah's congealing into Dik Mik's whirring, searing electronic effects are some of the most captivatingly strange sounds on the record. There's a couple detours from their full-speed-ahead acid-punk-- the catchy Wilhelm Reich tribute/Canned Heat knockoff "Orgone Accumulator", the cro-mag vertigo doom-blues of "Upside Down", the slow, zero-G boil of "Space Is Deep"-- but none of it seems like digression for its own sake. Even Calvert's poems, which skew a little portentous sometimes ("Welcome to the oceans in a labeled can/ Welcome to the dehydrated lands/ Welcome to the south police parade/ Welcome to the neo-golden age"), add a bit of linguistic substance to an album more memorable for its riffs than its simple, usually flatly-sung lyrics. Space Ritual isn't a prog-rock showcase-- most of its best moments come from intensity rather than chops-- but it's one of rock's greatest attempts to connect with the rest of the universe. Steppenwolf sang about how it would feel to "fire all of your guns at once and explode into space"; this album actually gives a good idea of what that would truly sound like."

Piano Magic

Disaffected

Electronic,Rock

Mark Richardson

Early this year Piano magic released Opencast Heart, a nice four-song EP that found leader Glen Johnson setting his songs in front of a completely electronic backdrop. Following that fruitful experiment Piano Magic return with Disaffected, an overwhelmingly song-oriented record built mostly around typical rock band instrumentation. And it's a good one-- perhaps Piano Magic's strongest full length since Low Birth Weight. Glen Johnson's always-meticulous attention to sonic detail this time focuses on the emotional possibilities of guitar tone. The snarling leads in "You Can Hear the Room" allude to that point when the gauzy beauty of shoegaze meets the drop-D heft of grunge, and though the lyrics talk about "the whisper of the pipes" this is one of the loudest songs Piano Magic has recorded. Another massive guitar swell closes "Love & Music", reflecting the song's simple theme ("love and music 'til I die") with a sexy wall of trebly chords. Much is made of the influence of the 4AD and Factory labels on Piano Magic, and it's hard to hear the evocative echo-chamber tone of "Night of the Hunter" as anything but channeled Duritti Column. On the simple ballad "I Must Leave London" Johnson's acoustic is wet and lush as Hyde Park grass in a November drizzle. Disaffected can fairly be called a rock album, but two of the most interesting songs depart from the template. The title track is the only song with female vox, sung this time by Angèle David-Gillou, and through its main section it weds acoustic guitars to a simple drum machine beat. The four-minute coda, however, allows the electronic percussion to take the lead, as beats grow progressively syncopated and the rest of the music drops out save an occasional vocal sample. Even dancier is "Deleted Scenes", which appears halfway through and is then reprised as the record's final track in an extended remix. Possibly Disaffected's best song, "Deleted Scenes" is icy new wave with a classicist's reverence for the feel and clarity of the early 80s originals, from Johnson's Bernard Sumner croon to the primitive synths and cheesy (but effective) vocodered chorus refrain. The extended mix is the one to listen for, with a funky electronic drum jam dominating the final three minutes that playfully shuffles the sort of quasi-industrial percussion hits Depeche Mode used in "People are People". Interesting thing about Piano Magic is that while the band's overall aesthetic-- music, lyrics and visual presentation-- is so well defined and consistent, the actual records are all over the place. We know we're going to get sad introspection, that the songs will take place in winter, that the production will somehow bring to mind the word "ethereal," and the packaging will look good. The details, however, are always up in the air, which possibly explains the band's inconsistency. This time out the pieces land in a satisfying place.

Artist: Piano Magic, Album: Disaffected, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Early this year Piano magic released Opencast Heart, a nice four-song EP that found leader Glen Johnson setting his songs in front of a completely electronic backdrop. Following that fruitful experiment Piano Magic return with Disaffected, an overwhelmingly song-oriented record built mostly around typical rock band instrumentation. And it's a good one-- perhaps Piano Magic's strongest full length since Low Birth Weight. Glen Johnson's always-meticulous attention to sonic detail this time focuses on the emotional possibilities of guitar tone. The snarling leads in "You Can Hear the Room" allude to that point when the gauzy beauty of shoegaze meets the drop-D heft of grunge, and though the lyrics talk about "the whisper of the pipes" this is one of the loudest songs Piano Magic has recorded. Another massive guitar swell closes "Love & Music", reflecting the song's simple theme ("love and music 'til I die") with a sexy wall of trebly chords. Much is made of the influence of the 4AD and Factory labels on Piano Magic, and it's hard to hear the evocative echo-chamber tone of "Night of the Hunter" as anything but channeled Duritti Column. On the simple ballad "I Must Leave London" Johnson's acoustic is wet and lush as Hyde Park grass in a November drizzle. Disaffected can fairly be called a rock album, but two of the most interesting songs depart from the template. The title track is the only song with female vox, sung this time by Angèle David-Gillou, and through its main section it weds acoustic guitars to a simple drum machine beat. The four-minute coda, however, allows the electronic percussion to take the lead, as beats grow progressively syncopated and the rest of the music drops out save an occasional vocal sample. Even dancier is "Deleted Scenes", which appears halfway through and is then reprised as the record's final track in an extended remix. Possibly Disaffected's best song, "Deleted Scenes" is icy new wave with a classicist's reverence for the feel and clarity of the early 80s originals, from Johnson's Bernard Sumner croon to the primitive synths and cheesy (but effective) vocodered chorus refrain. The extended mix is the one to listen for, with a funky electronic drum jam dominating the final three minutes that playfully shuffles the sort of quasi-industrial percussion hits Depeche Mode used in "People are People". Interesting thing about Piano Magic is that while the band's overall aesthetic-- music, lyrics and visual presentation-- is so well defined and consistent, the actual records are all over the place. We know we're going to get sad introspection, that the songs will take place in winter, that the production will somehow bring to mind the word "ethereal," and the packaging will look good. The details, however, are always up in the air, which possibly explains the band's inconsistency. This time out the pieces land in a satisfying place."

Roberto Fonseca

Zamazu

Jazz

Joe Tangari

Roberto Fonseca will not be coming to a city near you any time soon, at least if you're an American. In recent years, it's become very difficult for Cuban musicians-- even ones who've been to the U.S. before-- to promote their music here through touring. But while Fonseca himself can't make it into the country, the pianist and producer's fifth solo album has, and it's a startlingly fresh take on Afro-Cuban jazz that draws in elements from around the world and across many styles. At times, it sounds close to Quincy Jones' late 1960s work, classic soul-jazz, and even vintage German television soundtracks. At the center off all the experimentation and genre-bending lies Fonseca's piano. His playing is impressive and versatile, ranging from aggressive tone clusters and driving left-hand grooves to lyrical, explorative soloing. The piano is richly recorded, with an emphasis on the lower octaves that feeds into the album's dark, dreamlike vibe. It's a feel rooted as much in pre-war recordings as it is in post-modern jazz-- there's just a slight patina of grit on the disc that makes it all the more arresting. Wordless voices are a major part of the album's texture, and the way it's produced, they sometimes blend with Javier Zalba's clarinet to make a single, unique timbre. Some of the material was recorded in Brazil, and you can hear a bit of that country's influence-- the wordless vocals occasionally recall Sergio Mendes and some of the nation's great vocal groups, and some of the percussion has a Brazilian flavor. Like "Clandestino", which is equal parts McCoy Tyner, Quincy Jones, Peter Thomas, and Sergio Mendes, riding a dramatic left-hand piano theme as hand percussion snaps and sizzles in the background. Other songs draw from even further afield. "Congo Árabe" has a light-speed rock beat and coalesces around a diving Middle Eastern sax theme that sounds closer to 70s European prog than Cuban jazz. And that's all before the flamenco guitar comes in. The title track rides a slow soul-jazz groove and some mind-blowing in-and-out-of-pocket drumming by Ramsés Rodriguez that complements the rock-solid piano ostinato at the song's heart. Then there's "Ishmael", which sounds like a spy movie theme, with its string section and funky Afro-Cuban rhythm, but takes a salsa-jazz detour in the middle with some brutal lower-octave pounding as Fonseca lays into his keyboard with open palms and fists. Omara Portuondo's duet with Fonseca's wandering piano on "Mil Congojas" sounds about a hundred years old and drips with sadness, but it's the next track that most embodies the album's dichotomy between rhythmic movement and contemplation. "Triste Alegría" ("Sad Happiness") morphs from a dour, rainy-day tango into a screaming, sun-poisoned mambo with fluid ease. If there's a criticism for Zamazu, it's that a few tracks are a bit nebulous, and on an hour-long album, a few of those go a long way toward disrupting momentum. But on the whole, Zamazu is an excellent and varied work of modern jazz that deserves to be heard.

Artist: Roberto Fonseca, Album: Zamazu, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Roberto Fonseca will not be coming to a city near you any time soon, at least if you're an American. In recent years, it's become very difficult for Cuban musicians-- even ones who've been to the U.S. before-- to promote their music here through touring. But while Fonseca himself can't make it into the country, the pianist and producer's fifth solo album has, and it's a startlingly fresh take on Afro-Cuban jazz that draws in elements from around the world and across many styles. At times, it sounds close to Quincy Jones' late 1960s work, classic soul-jazz, and even vintage German television soundtracks. At the center off all the experimentation and genre-bending lies Fonseca's piano. His playing is impressive and versatile, ranging from aggressive tone clusters and driving left-hand grooves to lyrical, explorative soloing. The piano is richly recorded, with an emphasis on the lower octaves that feeds into the album's dark, dreamlike vibe. It's a feel rooted as much in pre-war recordings as it is in post-modern jazz-- there's just a slight patina of grit on the disc that makes it all the more arresting. Wordless voices are a major part of the album's texture, and the way it's produced, they sometimes blend with Javier Zalba's clarinet to make a single, unique timbre. Some of the material was recorded in Brazil, and you can hear a bit of that country's influence-- the wordless vocals occasionally recall Sergio Mendes and some of the nation's great vocal groups, and some of the percussion has a Brazilian flavor. Like "Clandestino", which is equal parts McCoy Tyner, Quincy Jones, Peter Thomas, and Sergio Mendes, riding a dramatic left-hand piano theme as hand percussion snaps and sizzles in the background. Other songs draw from even further afield. "Congo Árabe" has a light-speed rock beat and coalesces around a diving Middle Eastern sax theme that sounds closer to 70s European prog than Cuban jazz. And that's all before the flamenco guitar comes in. The title track rides a slow soul-jazz groove and some mind-blowing in-and-out-of-pocket drumming by Ramsés Rodriguez that complements the rock-solid piano ostinato at the song's heart. Then there's "Ishmael", which sounds like a spy movie theme, with its string section and funky Afro-Cuban rhythm, but takes a salsa-jazz detour in the middle with some brutal lower-octave pounding as Fonseca lays into his keyboard with open palms and fists. Omara Portuondo's duet with Fonseca's wandering piano on "Mil Congojas" sounds about a hundred years old and drips with sadness, but it's the next track that most embodies the album's dichotomy between rhythmic movement and contemplation. "Triste Alegría" ("Sad Happiness") morphs from a dour, rainy-day tango into a screaming, sun-poisoned mambo with fluid ease. If there's a criticism for Zamazu, it's that a few tracks are a bit nebulous, and on an hour-long album, a few of those go a long way toward disrupting momentum. But on the whole, Zamazu is an excellent and varied work of modern jazz that deserves to be heard."

Bosse-de-Nage

III

Kim Kelly

In a musical climate that sees every rehearsal recording immediately pressed to vinyl and nationwide tours announced three days after a band's first Starbucks meeting, it's rare for a group to arrive on the scene without the gratuitous fanfare of messageboard masturbation or social media onslaughts. But Bosse-De-Nage did just that. Last year, on the backs of two willfully obscure 2006 demos and a 2010 LP that gathered recordings from 2007, they came seemingly out of nowhere to deliver one of the most intriguing, aristocratically depraved black metal recordings of 2011. That album, II, was released by San Francisco's Flenser Records, and the follow-up, III, comes courtesy of Profound Lore, a fitting home for the forward-thinking, shadowy quartet. With their last record, they peered into the mouth of madness. With its successor, they embrace it. Bosse-De-Nage's idea of black metal is quite different from what the genre's granddaddies had in mind; we're not talking Bathory here, or even Horna. The messengers have changed, but the power remains. The band's take on the genre is closer to what Ash Borer or even Drudkh have done, in that their incorporation of outside elements comes across as organic and unassuming, and downright powerful at its peak. In BDN's case, many of the core values of black metal (nihilism, irreligion, anti-humanism) live on within their lyrics, the arching storylines and unnerving chronicles of the evil that men do. Existential anguish reigns, and nothing is okay. Their affinity for shoegaze, post-hardcore, screamo, and even indie rock courses through each composition, weaving their influence around each blackened chord and tremolo clawing like silver threads spiking iron ore. Gentle, contemplative passages recall the French predilection towards summertime blues and verdant atmospheres, offering temporary flashes of respite on a difficult album. The album's centerpiece, "The God Ennui", is comparatively speaking, the most straightforward track on III, and the first three minutes of the song's nearly 11-minute running time are the most beautiful thing that the band has ever recorded. They seize Alcest mastermind Neige's formula, delving deeply into the sprightly, wistful "post-black" meanderings that the Gallic legions have kept such a stranglehold upon as of late, and allow it to fester ever so slightly. If the philosophers of Deathspell Omega covered one of Alcest's gossamer pseudo-black fairytales, the results might not lie too far from what Bosse-De-Nage are doing. That's not to say that Bosse-De-Nage subscribe fully to the kinder, gentler side of what passes for black metal in 2012. There are plenty of moments of outright aggression, bleak, harrowing passages of unrelenting blasts, narrated by a chaotic, urgent voice that veers between angry wails and sparse, Slint-like sotto voce intonations depending on the lyrical bent. It's an intense listen, and a wholly cathartic one as well. The album's last track, "An Ideal Ledge", informs us that "there's a ledge somewhere set against a deadly precipice, which Spring's nostalgic winds never reach," then proceeds to take us out to the very edge and force us to look down into the yawning void between Scylla and Charybdis. If you know what's good for you, you'll dig your fingernails into the side of that mountain, and then let go.

Artist: Bosse-de-Nage, Album: III, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "In a musical climate that sees every rehearsal recording immediately pressed to vinyl and nationwide tours announced three days after a band's first Starbucks meeting, it's rare for a group to arrive on the scene without the gratuitous fanfare of messageboard masturbation or social media onslaughts. But Bosse-De-Nage did just that. Last year, on the backs of two willfully obscure 2006 demos and a 2010 LP that gathered recordings from 2007, they came seemingly out of nowhere to deliver one of the most intriguing, aristocratically depraved black metal recordings of 2011. That album, II, was released by San Francisco's Flenser Records, and the follow-up, III, comes courtesy of Profound Lore, a fitting home for the forward-thinking, shadowy quartet. With their last record, they peered into the mouth of madness. With its successor, they embrace it. Bosse-De-Nage's idea of black metal is quite different from what the genre's granddaddies had in mind; we're not talking Bathory here, or even Horna. The messengers have changed, but the power remains. The band's take on the genre is closer to what Ash Borer or even Drudkh have done, in that their incorporation of outside elements comes across as organic and unassuming, and downright powerful at its peak. In BDN's case, many of the core values of black metal (nihilism, irreligion, anti-humanism) live on within their lyrics, the arching storylines and unnerving chronicles of the evil that men do. Existential anguish reigns, and nothing is okay. Their affinity for shoegaze, post-hardcore, screamo, and even indie rock courses through each composition, weaving their influence around each blackened chord and tremolo clawing like silver threads spiking iron ore. Gentle, contemplative passages recall the French predilection towards summertime blues and verdant atmospheres, offering temporary flashes of respite on a difficult album. The album's centerpiece, "The God Ennui", is comparatively speaking, the most straightforward track on III, and the first three minutes of the song's nearly 11-minute running time are the most beautiful thing that the band has ever recorded. They seize Alcest mastermind Neige's formula, delving deeply into the sprightly, wistful "post-black" meanderings that the Gallic legions have kept such a stranglehold upon as of late, and allow it to fester ever so slightly. If the philosophers of Deathspell Omega covered one of Alcest's gossamer pseudo-black fairytales, the results might not lie too far from what Bosse-De-Nage are doing. That's not to say that Bosse-De-Nage subscribe fully to the kinder, gentler side of what passes for black metal in 2012. There are plenty of moments of outright aggression, bleak, harrowing passages of unrelenting blasts, narrated by a chaotic, urgent voice that veers between angry wails and sparse, Slint-like sotto voce intonations depending on the lyrical bent. It's an intense listen, and a wholly cathartic one as well. The album's last track, "An Ideal Ledge", informs us that "there's a ledge somewhere set against a deadly precipice, which Spring's nostalgic winds never reach," then proceeds to take us out to the very edge and force us to look down into the yawning void between Scylla and Charybdis. If you know what's good for you, you'll dig your fingernails into the side of that mountain, and then let go."

DJ /rupture

Special Gunpowder

Electronic

Scott Plagenhoef

A reporter from CNN telephoned the Pitchfork office a couple of weeks ago to ask questions about politics and music. After explaining why I thought pop and politics almost never mix well, she wondered if there were any recent pol-pop releases that I considered successful. The best I could come up with was Dr. Ring-Ding's "Bombs Over Baghdad", and then I did my best to offer the reporter a Jamaican dancehall primer. I later wished I'd mentioned dj/Rupture-- although that would've taken even more explanation. The probable reason that Rupture had slipped my mind is also why his politically tinged tracks are successful-- because with rare exceptions they aren't overtly political. And unlike most music with a conscience, they aren't ephemeral, sanctimonious, or dry, either. In most cases, even though Rupture's multicultural "ghetto-to-ghetto" approach is infused with a love for and curiosity of a wide range of musical and cultural traditions, it's not necessary to catch the geopolitical undertones. Rupture first came to relative prominence in 2002 with a pair of dense, glove-straddling mixes-- the previously download-only Gold Teeth Thief, and Minesweeper Suite-- and delivered a third, the split release (with Mutamassik) Shotgun Wedding Vol. 1: The Bidoun Sessions earlier this year. Those three mixes were audacious, eye- and ear-opening melanges of hip-hop, drum-n-bass, dancehall, North African and Arabic folk music, and splatter beats. Rupture connected the sounds of struggle and a yearning for respect on multiple continents, unifying folk traditions even when he was breaking apart sound. On Special Gunpowder, dj/Rupture retains the spirit of his mixes but tosses out the process. Instead of mixing and assembling the sonics himself, Rupture's LP features Western and Arabic musicians, as well as tracks sung in English, French, and Spanish, and guest spots by artists ranging from producers Kit Clayton and Kid606 to dancehall veterans Sister Nancy and Junior Cat to Arnaud Michniak of French band Programme. Depending on where the needle hits the groove, Rupture's music also features a poet, a member of avant-metal group Oxbow, a violin and oud player, and a banjoist who sings an adaptation of the traditional American folk song "Mole in the Ground". Trying to replicate the scope and power of those mixes with the limitations of live musicians was always going to be a tricky and potentially messy proposition, but Rupture has gone some distance towards pulling it off because he knows when to pull his punches. Sonically, Special Gunpowder is a surprisingly light affair. After trudging through the opening track, a performance of an Elizabeth Alexander poem, the next sound is a dead ringer for the Fiesta riddim. With Clayton and Kid606 helping to orchestrate a loping palette for Sister Nancy and a melodica to paint, the track harkens back to light, newly synthesized dancehall of the 1980s, a tone shared with some of the album's more Old World sounds, but not all of the other dancehall tracks. Both "Flop We" featuring Junior Cat and "No Heathen" with Wicked Act are nocturnal and steely, but no worse off for it. Either of those tracks could have slid onto Minesweeper Suite, but for the most part, where Rupture used to obscure or bury a central melody or a groove-- and make you dig through sonic sludge to get at it-- Gunpowder's session players do the heavy lifting for you, creating a more accessible if slightly less engaging atmosphere. A Wayne Lonesome collabo "Dem Nu Know" comes courtesy of Shockout Records and the spirit of King Jammy; Lily's dusky exotica-folk vocals redresses Cocoa Tea's "Lonesome Side" in the Peanie Peanie riddim. Excursions into glitch-infused French hip-hop and a club remix of the Latin-tinged, Spanish-sung "Musquito" are also highlights. Special Gunpowder may disappoint a lot of Rupture's fans, those hoping for something from the producer's first artist album that matches the tone, tenor, and pace of his mixes, but it's an unfair criticism. The methods are different, and even though the madness is now replaced by an increase in melody, and the pieces no longer fit into a cogent whole, there are still plenty of reasons to embrace the LP. If anything-- considering the variety on the record-- there could be too many for some listeners. As Jace Clayton's nom de producer suggests, he deconstructs music, but rather than leave his toys scattered and in pieces, Rupture re-assembles them in frequently thrilling ways.

Artist: DJ /rupture, Album: Special Gunpowder, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "A reporter from CNN telephoned the Pitchfork office a couple of weeks ago to ask questions about politics and music. After explaining why I thought pop and politics almost never mix well, she wondered if there were any recent pol-pop releases that I considered successful. The best I could come up with was Dr. Ring-Ding's "Bombs Over Baghdad", and then I did my best to offer the reporter a Jamaican dancehall primer. I later wished I'd mentioned dj/Rupture-- although that would've taken even more explanation. The probable reason that Rupture had slipped my mind is also why his politically tinged tracks are successful-- because with rare exceptions they aren't overtly political. And unlike most music with a conscience, they aren't ephemeral, sanctimonious, or dry, either. In most cases, even though Rupture's multicultural "ghetto-to-ghetto" approach is infused with a love for and curiosity of a wide range of musical and cultural traditions, it's not necessary to catch the geopolitical undertones. Rupture first came to relative prominence in 2002 with a pair of dense, glove-straddling mixes-- the previously download-only Gold Teeth Thief, and Minesweeper Suite-- and delivered a third, the split release (with Mutamassik) Shotgun Wedding Vol. 1: The Bidoun Sessions earlier this year. Those three mixes were audacious, eye- and ear-opening melanges of hip-hop, drum-n-bass, dancehall, North African and Arabic folk music, and splatter beats. Rupture connected the sounds of struggle and a yearning for respect on multiple continents, unifying folk traditions even when he was breaking apart sound. On Special Gunpowder, dj/Rupture retains the spirit of his mixes but tosses out the process. Instead of mixing and assembling the sonics himself, Rupture's LP features Western and Arabic musicians, as well as tracks sung in English, French, and Spanish, and guest spots by artists ranging from producers Kit Clayton and Kid606 to dancehall veterans Sister Nancy and Junior Cat to Arnaud Michniak of French band Programme. Depending on where the needle hits the groove, Rupture's music also features a poet, a member of avant-metal group Oxbow, a violin and oud player, and a banjoist who sings an adaptation of the traditional American folk song "Mole in the Ground". Trying to replicate the scope and power of those mixes with the limitations of live musicians was always going to be a tricky and potentially messy proposition, but Rupture has gone some distance towards pulling it off because he knows when to pull his punches. Sonically, Special Gunpowder is a surprisingly light affair. After trudging through the opening track, a performance of an Elizabeth Alexander poem, the next sound is a dead ringer for the Fiesta riddim. With Clayton and Kid606 helping to orchestrate a loping palette for Sister Nancy and a melodica to paint, the track harkens back to light, newly synthesized dancehall of the 1980s, a tone shared with some of the album's more Old World sounds, but not all of the other dancehall tracks. Both "Flop We" featuring Junior Cat and "No Heathen" with Wicked Act are nocturnal and steely, but no worse off for it. Either of those tracks could have slid onto Minesweeper Suite, but for the most part, where Rupture used to obscure or bury a central melody or a groove-- and make you dig through sonic sludge to get at it-- Gunpowder's session players do the heavy lifting for you, creating a more accessible if slightly less engaging atmosphere. A Wayne Lonesome collabo "Dem Nu Know" comes courtesy of Shockout Records and the spirit of King Jammy; Lily's dusky exotica-folk vocals redresses Cocoa Tea's "Lonesome Side" in the Peanie Peanie riddim. Excursions into glitch-infused French hip-hop and a club remix of the Latin-tinged, Spanish-sung "Musquito" are also highlights. Special Gunpowder may disappoint a lot of Rupture's fans, those hoping for something from the producer's first artist album that matches the tone, tenor, and pace of his mixes, but it's an unfair criticism. The methods are different, and even though the madness is now replaced by an increase in melody, and the pieces no longer fit into a cogent whole, there are still plenty of reasons to embrace the LP. If anything-- considering the variety on the record-- there could be too many for some listeners. As Jace Clayton's nom de producer suggests, he deconstructs music, but rather than leave his toys scattered and in pieces, Rupture re-assembles them in frequently thrilling ways."

Greg Ashley

Painted Garden

Folk/Country

Marc Masters

Greg Ashley's 2003 solo debut Medicine Fuck Dream is a bit of an overlooked gem. It's by no means a great record, but its best songs are uniquely hypnotic, like slo-mo takes on the eerie bedroom folk of Roky Erikson and Skip Spence. Ashley has a knack for creating spine-tingling moments out of drowsy melodies and haunting singing. After crafting two solid psych-rock records with his Bay Area band the Gris Gris, he returns to the solo realm with Painted Garden, an album that widens and sharpens the sound of Medicine Fuck Dream, but doesn't completely perfect it. That's not for lack of trying. The 10 songs here are more ambitious than those on Ashley's debut, applying his reverb-drenched vocals and sleepy timing to a range of musical styles. When this works, Ashley's mix of recognizable influences and uniquely-skewed sonics is compelling. Opener "Song From Limestone County" is the strongest gambit: Starting with outdoor ambience, muffled samples, and strange acoustic plucks, it morphs into an aching ditty made more beautiful by Ashley's refusal to rush. As he marches stoically through the song's frozen steps, the track somehow gains intensity from tantalizing restraint. Painted Garden's next two songs are similarly striking. "Won't Be Long" gathers acoustic slide and twangy plucks into a mess of catchy folk. An un-credited female singer steps in on "Sailing With Bobby", injecting a dreamy innocence into Ashley's baroque, bell-ringing tune. Her irresistible vocals recall Heather Lewis from Beat Happening, if she were recorded through a rainbow-lit waterfall. From there, the album sags, as Ashley's songs become more generic and predictable. The loungey, piano-tinkling "Fisher King" and the swaying 1950s waltz "Pretty Belladonna" both swing nicely, but they lack the odd personality of the previous tracks, with fewer weird touches and off-road turns. In addition, Ashley's vague, disjointed lyrics, a subtle strength when buried inside better songs, seem overexposed when grafted to less-inspired melodies. Ashley's idiosyncratic take on psych-folk reemerges on the album's final two tracks (not counting the tacked-on, kazoo-driven ender "Corporation Station Agent", oddly lifted from a Gris Gris 7"). The echo-soaked séance of "Caroline and the Orange Tree" is undeniably mesmerizing, and the heartbreaking ballad "Medication #5" concludes with a wistful keyboard line that evokes immediate spine-chills. The album doesn't have enough of those moments to make it a consistent winner, but Ashley will hit a home run someday, and for now Painted Garden is a solid step toward that imminent triumph.

Artist: Greg Ashley, Album: Painted Garden, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Greg Ashley's 2003 solo debut Medicine Fuck Dream is a bit of an overlooked gem. It's by no means a great record, but its best songs are uniquely hypnotic, like slo-mo takes on the eerie bedroom folk of Roky Erikson and Skip Spence. Ashley has a knack for creating spine-tingling moments out of drowsy melodies and haunting singing. After crafting two solid psych-rock records with his Bay Area band the Gris Gris, he returns to the solo realm with Painted Garden, an album that widens and sharpens the sound of Medicine Fuck Dream, but doesn't completely perfect it. That's not for lack of trying. The 10 songs here are more ambitious than those on Ashley's debut, applying his reverb-drenched vocals and sleepy timing to a range of musical styles. When this works, Ashley's mix of recognizable influences and uniquely-skewed sonics is compelling. Opener "Song From Limestone County" is the strongest gambit: Starting with outdoor ambience, muffled samples, and strange acoustic plucks, it morphs into an aching ditty made more beautiful by Ashley's refusal to rush. As he marches stoically through the song's frozen steps, the track somehow gains intensity from tantalizing restraint. Painted Garden's next two songs are similarly striking. "Won't Be Long" gathers acoustic slide and twangy plucks into a mess of catchy folk. An un-credited female singer steps in on "Sailing With Bobby", injecting a dreamy innocence into Ashley's baroque, bell-ringing tune. Her irresistible vocals recall Heather Lewis from Beat Happening, if she were recorded through a rainbow-lit waterfall. From there, the album sags, as Ashley's songs become more generic and predictable. The loungey, piano-tinkling "Fisher King" and the swaying 1950s waltz "Pretty Belladonna" both swing nicely, but they lack the odd personality of the previous tracks, with fewer weird touches and off-road turns. In addition, Ashley's vague, disjointed lyrics, a subtle strength when buried inside better songs, seem overexposed when grafted to less-inspired melodies. Ashley's idiosyncratic take on psych-folk reemerges on the album's final two tracks (not counting the tacked-on, kazoo-driven ender "Corporation Station Agent", oddly lifted from a Gris Gris 7"). The echo-soaked séance of "Caroline and the Orange Tree" is undeniably mesmerizing, and the heartbreaking ballad "Medication #5" concludes with a wistful keyboard line that evokes immediate spine-chills. The album doesn't have enough of those moments to make it a consistent winner, but Ashley will hit a home run someday, and for now Painted Garden is a solid step toward that imminent triumph."

Susanna and the Magical Orchestra

Melody Mountain

Electronic

Brandon Stosuy

In the bringing-it-down-a-notch tradition of Cat Power's The Covers Record, melancholic Norwegian duo Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have followed its ice-veined 2004 debut with a collection of cover tunes. Speaking with the band members in August, they told me Melody Mountain was originally supposed to be an EP. They decided to record some of the covers they'd been doing live and the idea spiraled into a larger project. However they arrived at this 10-song collection, it plays to the band's strengths: Two years after the release of List of Lights and Buoys, their spare, unforgettable take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" remains the band's calling card. Instead of coasting along with expected, aesthetically linked updates, Melody Mountain's oddball set list includes imaginative revisions: AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top", backed by, among other things, cembalo, a baroque keyboard instrument; a simplified, back-porch incision of Prince's "Condition of the Heart"; a Cat Powered ramble through Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". To the band's credit, every choice, no matter how strange at first, ends up sounding real. They own each unironic, personalized revision; this isn't some indulgent Gus Van Sant meta game. The honest sound could be a result of the pared-down, two-person lineup, coupled with the crystalline Deathprod production. Rather than lugging along some weepy string section, the "orchestra" is just one guy, ex-Jaga Jazzist and Shining member Morten Qvenild. His instrumental expertise and good taste lends intricately lush, deftly subtle keyboard/piano/church organ-based backdrops. More striking than the band's minimalism are the pristine, unpolluted vocals of Susanna Karolina Wallumrød. A true talent in the vein of Chan Marshall and Mira Billotte, she sings like a Norwegian mountain stream, never over-enunciating or throwing in unnecessary trills. Melody Mountain's interpretations vary in shades and gradations. Kiss' "Crazy, Crazy Nights" becomes a shivery, damp-highway anthem for the dispossessed; Scott Walker's "It's Raining Today", a spooky, pedal-steeled, echo-chambered finale to a one-woman musical. Live, it was "Hallelujah" that made the people cry. Most versions of Leonard Cohen's transcendent ballad can send tear ducts into overtime, but it's a song Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have been performing for a while and Wallumrod's pacing and phrasing were masterful-- like she snuck herself into each note and lived an entire life inside it before moving onto the next. Here, as the hushed, funereal opener, it's pretty tough to top. The song earning the most attention is a taffy-stretched "Love Will Tear Us Apart", wherein Ian Curtis's most famous libretto is laid bare and slowed to half speed. The original's nervously bottled dance is replaced by a languid, nearly a capella drift. To go the pop culture route, if this version soundtracked Donnie Darko, that make-out scene would become more tenderly melancholic, less heady and nerve-wracked. In a great year for mountain albums (think Blood Mountain and Return to Cookie Mountain, among others), Susanna & the Magical Orchestra contribute the most enigmatic collection to the pile. Of course, there's reason to be restrained in the praise: They do a nice job, but these are only covers, and it'll be interesting to hear their own songwriting developments on future records. In the meantime, Melody Mountain is an example of expansive restraint that, surprisingly enough, makes for good driving music. Maybe it's the ghosts of particular songs' rocker pasts propelling the molasses flow? Hypothermia's phantom aches?

Artist: Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, Album: Melody Mountain, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "In the bringing-it-down-a-notch tradition of Cat Power's The Covers Record, melancholic Norwegian duo Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have followed its ice-veined 2004 debut with a collection of cover tunes. Speaking with the band members in August, they told me Melody Mountain was originally supposed to be an EP. They decided to record some of the covers they'd been doing live and the idea spiraled into a larger project. However they arrived at this 10-song collection, it plays to the band's strengths: Two years after the release of List of Lights and Buoys, their spare, unforgettable take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" remains the band's calling card. Instead of coasting along with expected, aesthetically linked updates, Melody Mountain's oddball set list includes imaginative revisions: AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top", backed by, among other things, cembalo, a baroque keyboard instrument; a simplified, back-porch incision of Prince's "Condition of the Heart"; a Cat Powered ramble through Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". To the band's credit, every choice, no matter how strange at first, ends up sounding real. They own each unironic, personalized revision; this isn't some indulgent Gus Van Sant meta game. The honest sound could be a result of the pared-down, two-person lineup, coupled with the crystalline Deathprod production. Rather than lugging along some weepy string section, the "orchestra" is just one guy, ex-Jaga Jazzist and Shining member Morten Qvenild. His instrumental expertise and good taste lends intricately lush, deftly subtle keyboard/piano/church organ-based backdrops. More striking than the band's minimalism are the pristine, unpolluted vocals of Susanna Karolina Wallumrød. A true talent in the vein of Chan Marshall and Mira Billotte, she sings like a Norwegian mountain stream, never over-enunciating or throwing in unnecessary trills. Melody Mountain's interpretations vary in shades and gradations. Kiss' "Crazy, Crazy Nights" becomes a shivery, damp-highway anthem for the dispossessed; Scott Walker's "It's Raining Today", a spooky, pedal-steeled, echo-chambered finale to a one-woman musical. Live, it was "Hallelujah" that made the people cry. Most versions of Leonard Cohen's transcendent ballad can send tear ducts into overtime, but it's a song Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have been performing for a while and Wallumrod's pacing and phrasing were masterful-- like she snuck herself into each note and lived an entire life inside it before moving onto the next. Here, as the hushed, funereal opener, it's pretty tough to top. The song earning the most attention is a taffy-stretched "Love Will Tear Us Apart", wherein Ian Curtis's most famous libretto is laid bare and slowed to half speed. The original's nervously bottled dance is replaced by a languid, nearly a capella drift. To go the pop culture route, if this version soundtracked Donnie Darko, that make-out scene would become more tenderly melancholic, less heady and nerve-wracked. In a great year for mountain albums (think Blood Mountain and Return to Cookie Mountain, among others), Susanna & the Magical Orchestra contribute the most enigmatic collection to the pile. Of course, there's reason to be restrained in the praise: They do a nice job, but these are only covers, and it'll be interesting to hear their own songwriting developments on future records. In the meantime, Melody Mountain is an example of expansive restraint that, surprisingly enough, makes for good driving music. Maybe it's the ghosts of particular songs' rocker pasts propelling the molasses flow? Hypothermia's phantom aches?"

Les Discrets

Ariettes Oubliées...

Metal,Rock

Kim Kelly

Going on the evidence of the past couple decades' worth of enlightened blasphemy, the French approach to black metal is as indulgent as their storied appreciation for wine, women, and song. Their collective tastes run rich and decadent, and unwittingly encourage the inherent hedonistic tendencies couched within the black leather and dried blood of metal's more extreme varieties. Not content to wallow in the swollen streams of mediocrity that course throughout the global metal consciousness, the Gauls prefer to vacillate between extremes. On one end, there lies darkness; chaos reigns and metallic dogma is crucified before bloodied altars. Lines blur, eardrums bleed. This is where the raw, ugly scrapings of Les Legiones Noire, and the twisted, charred remains of what was once called black metal is scavenged and molded by feral scum and madmen, where Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Antaeus, Hell Militia, Glorior Belli, and their violently innovative ilk make their home. On the other, there is light. Here, black metal goes soft, embraces the shimmering sounds of Explosions in the Sky and Loveless, and abandons its roots entirely, save for the odd scrap of tremolo or flurried drum fill. Alcest's summertime blues, Amesoeurs' velvety odes to urban decay, and the sullen grandeur of Les Discrets provide the yin to their countrymen's yang. While France's black legions intimidate, their post-black dreamers captivate, and it's the latter that have been gaining a great deal of traction and recognition amongst seasoned metal fans and genre tourists alike. "French shoegaze metal" is apparently a thing (no matter how clumsy the nomenclature) and the handful of visionaries moving within its Grey Circle are to blame. Alcest's Neige is one of them. Fursy Teyssier is another, a fact his latest creation only serves to emphasize. It's inevitable Les Discrets will be hauled out and strung up alongside their brothers in Alcest for inspection, but of the two, Teyssier's crew are the more somber, venturing beyond Neige's fairylands and blue-bathed nostalgia trips and into more earthy territory. If Alcest float gently on the springtime breeze, Les Discrets perpetually dwell within the last days of autumn, watching for the coming of winter. Separate, yet equal, they operate within the same sphere, serving as reluctant ringleaders of a "movement" that reflects black metal's ever-changing attitudes. Teyssier joins forces in with vocalist Audrey Hadorn and drummer Winterhalter (Amesoeurs, Alcest) in the studio and onstage, but Les Discrets is his baby. He's best known as a prolific (and talented) artist, animator, and director, celebrated for his work with Alcest, Drudkh, Secrets of the Moon, Lantlos, and others, but his pièce de résistance was 2010's Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées. Regarded as a cornerstone of the post-black metal movement, Teyssier's initial foray into composition was a wondrous achievement, and scrawled a mighty high water mark towards which his newest opus strains. In a nutshell, Ariettes oubliées... makes a fine attempt, but lacks the lively memorability of its predecessor. That's not to say it's a bad album. It may be a tad uneven (perhaps due to the staggered timing in the songwriting) and bleeds together after a few spins, but is a more than worthy addition to any fan of wistful not-quite-metal's collection (especially when its dose of Teyssier's gorgeous artwork is taken into consideration). At its core, Ariettes oubliées... recalls shades of Katatonia's melancholy rock and gossamer interpretation's of Weakling’s dark, hypnotic melodies, infusing each composition with an ethereal amalgamation of post-rock, dusky goth-pop, and the faintest shadow of black metal. The interplay between the guitars works beautifully, as the warmth of the acoustic and cold steel strings of the electric mesh seamlessly and highlight one another in turn. Melancholia abounds. The aim is to awe, rather than to shock (though anyone who picks up this record expecting a Vlad Tepes clone is in for a big one). Atmosphere is everything. Delicacy and restraint are essentials tools. Les Discrets' masterful command of the kinder, gentler side of doom and gloom is made more than apparent, from the plaintive opening chords of "Linceul d'hiver" and on. "La Traversée" takes the long road home, wending its way through a wintery landscape, spurred onwards by a jangly pop melody and jaunty tambourine before the tempo changes, slows, and slips into echoing, near acoustic quiet, and ending on one of the album’s few metallic notes. "Apres l'Ombre" is all glinting post-rock, overlain with high, crooning vocals, while "Aux Creux de l'hiver" is as cold as its namesake ("At the Heart of Winter", roughly), and is one of the most dynamic of the tracks on offer, kicking off with an almost folky feel before bleeding into an expansive, textured melodic line that wouldn't feel out of place on one of the more potent Drudkh records. The vocals remain within that whispery, timorous range, sparse and understated. Teyssier tackles the lion's share, while Audrey Halborn's breathy tone adds color and grace; from time to time, she truly shines, and her poetic lyrics add an elegant note to the proceedings. Ariettes oubliées... feels like a will-o'-the-whisp, a ghostly light leading travelers through the night and fog onto more hallowed ground. Les Discrets seek to illuminate, and with this latest effort, they have at the very least lit a spark.

Artist: Les Discrets, Album: Ariettes Oubliées..., Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Going on the evidence of the past couple decades' worth of enlightened blasphemy, the French approach to black metal is as indulgent as their storied appreciation for wine, women, and song. Their collective tastes run rich and decadent, and unwittingly encourage the inherent hedonistic tendencies couched within the black leather and dried blood of metal's more extreme varieties. Not content to wallow in the swollen streams of mediocrity that course throughout the global metal consciousness, the Gauls prefer to vacillate between extremes. On one end, there lies darkness; chaos reigns and metallic dogma is crucified before bloodied altars. Lines blur, eardrums bleed. This is where the raw, ugly scrapings of Les Legiones Noire, and the twisted, charred remains of what was once called black metal is scavenged and molded by feral scum and madmen, where Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Antaeus, Hell Militia, Glorior Belli, and their violently innovative ilk make their home. On the other, there is light. Here, black metal goes soft, embraces the shimmering sounds of Explosions in the Sky and Loveless, and abandons its roots entirely, save for the odd scrap of tremolo or flurried drum fill. Alcest's summertime blues, Amesoeurs' velvety odes to urban decay, and the sullen grandeur of Les Discrets provide the yin to their countrymen's yang. While France's black legions intimidate, their post-black dreamers captivate, and it's the latter that have been gaining a great deal of traction and recognition amongst seasoned metal fans and genre tourists alike. "French shoegaze metal" is apparently a thing (no matter how clumsy the nomenclature) and the handful of visionaries moving within its Grey Circle are to blame. Alcest's Neige is one of them. Fursy Teyssier is another, a fact his latest creation only serves to emphasize. It's inevitable Les Discrets will be hauled out and strung up alongside their brothers in Alcest for inspection, but of the two, Teyssier's crew are the more somber, venturing beyond Neige's fairylands and blue-bathed nostalgia trips and into more earthy territory. If Alcest float gently on the springtime breeze, Les Discrets perpetually dwell within the last days of autumn, watching for the coming of winter. Separate, yet equal, they operate within the same sphere, serving as reluctant ringleaders of a "movement" that reflects black metal's ever-changing attitudes. Teyssier joins forces in with vocalist Audrey Hadorn and drummer Winterhalter (Amesoeurs, Alcest) in the studio and onstage, but Les Discrets is his baby. He's best known as a prolific (and talented) artist, animator, and director, celebrated for his work with Alcest, Drudkh, Secrets of the Moon, Lantlos, and others, but his pièce de résistance was 2010's Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées. Regarded as a cornerstone of the post-black metal movement, Teyssier's initial foray into composition was a wondrous achievement, and scrawled a mighty high water mark towards which his newest opus strains. In a nutshell, Ariettes oubliées... makes a fine attempt, but lacks the lively memorability of its predecessor. That's not to say it's a bad album. It may be a tad uneven (perhaps due to the staggered timing in the songwriting) and bleeds together after a few spins, but is a more than worthy addition to any fan of wistful not-quite-metal's collection (especially when its dose of Teyssier's gorgeous artwork is taken into consideration). At its core, Ariettes oubliées... recalls shades of Katatonia's melancholy rock and gossamer interpretation's of Weakling’s dark, hypnotic melodies, infusing each composition with an ethereal amalgamation of post-rock, dusky goth-pop, and the faintest shadow of black metal. The interplay between the guitars works beautifully, as the warmth of the acoustic and cold steel strings of the electric mesh seamlessly and highlight one another in turn. Melancholia abounds. The aim is to awe, rather than to shock (though anyone who picks up this record expecting a Vlad Tepes clone is in for a big one). Atmosphere is everything. Delicacy and restraint are essentials tools. Les Discrets' masterful command of the kinder, gentler side of doom and gloom is made more than apparent, from the plaintive opening chords of "Linceul d'hiver" and on. "La Traversée" takes the long road home, wending its way through a wintery landscape, spurred onwards by a jangly pop melody and jaunty tambourine before the tempo changes, slows, and slips into echoing, near acoustic quiet, and ending on one of the album’s few metallic notes. "Apres l'Ombre" is all glinting post-rock, overlain with high, crooning vocals, while "Aux Creux de l'hiver" is as cold as its namesake ("At the Heart of Winter", roughly), and is one of the most dynamic of the tracks on offer, kicking off with an almost folky feel before bleeding into an expansive, textured melodic line that wouldn't feel out of place on one of the more potent Drudkh records. The vocals remain within that whispery, timorous range, sparse and understated. Teyssier tackles the lion's share, while Audrey Halborn's breathy tone adds color and grace; from time to time, she truly shines, and her poetic lyrics add an elegant note to the proceedings. Ariettes oubliées... feels like a will-o'-the-whisp, a ghostly light leading travelers through the night and fog onto more hallowed ground. Les Discrets seek to illuminate, and with this latest effort, they have at the very least lit a spark."

Palehound

Dry Food

Rock

Laura Snapes

On 2013's Bent Nail EP, Palehound's Ellen Kempner sang about taking a carrot for a pet in order to stave off late-teen loneliness. She makes similarly childlike gestures on her debut album. "You made beauty a monster to me, so I'm kissing all the ugly things I see," she seethes at an ex in a so there voice on Dry Food's title track. It's the most deliciously futile form of revenge and reclamation: doing the opposite. Dry Food is partially a product of the 21-year-old Boston-dwelling songwriter's first big breakup—the deeper kind of solitude of having known and lost someone. Its sound captures the Herculean efforts required to survive the ensuing slump: "All I need's a little sleep and I'll be good to clean and eat," she sings in a medicated sigh on "Easy", her acoustic guitar rising and dipping with the methodical pace of someone trying to make a new routine stick. But like her former camp counselor and roommate, Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis, Kempner never lets a sad jam wallow: she kicks the end of the song into shape with a zippy electric guitar motif and some awkward, itchy squall. It's followed by "Cinnamon", which takes the opposite tack, hooked around the kind of amiable, waterlogged psych burble that Mac DeMarco noodles in his sleep. Kempner sings dreamily about her worst self-defeating impulses, but is stirred from her reverie by a divine revelation that her life is becoming "a pretty lie". Frantic drums force the song somewhere agitated and ascendant, but instead of bursting into some bright new phrase, the furor falls away like a captivating slo-mo bellyflop. Kempner has a knack for these odd little about-turns that elevate Dry Food above the usual plainspoken acoustic indie fare. And like her old roommate, she often obscures her intentions between appealingly twisty language. "Mouth ajar watching cuties hit the half pipe/ I only feel half ripe/ Around healthier folk," she sings on "Healthier Folk". She distils her disgust at her own post-breakup malaise with perfectly understated images: "The hair that's in my shower drain/ Has been clogging up my home," she sings on "Dixie". "And I try to scoop it up, but I wretch until I'm stuck." It's maybe the most straightforward song here, just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, but she messes at it like a cat dragging a mouse into a dark nook. Saddest of all is closer "Seakonk", where Kempner protests that she's not alone, actually; she's home watching TV with her parents, sister and their dogs. There's a blithe fairground pirate ship sway to the song, which she closes with a jaunty "doo doo doo" that could have come from the credits of one of the cartoons she's watching—only she lets the final note deflate with a groan. It's at this point that Dry Food confronts the point it's been evading: kidding yourself is no way to recover, and comfort offers little impetus to move on. Palehound's discomfiting, unflinching debut suggests she knew it all along.

Artist: Palehound, Album: Dry Food, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "On 2013's Bent Nail EP, Palehound's Ellen Kempner sang about taking a carrot for a pet in order to stave off late-teen loneliness. She makes similarly childlike gestures on her debut album. "You made beauty a monster to me, so I'm kissing all the ugly things I see," she seethes at an ex in a so there voice on Dry Food's title track. It's the most deliciously futile form of revenge and reclamation: doing the opposite. Dry Food is partially a product of the 21-year-old Boston-dwelling songwriter's first big breakup—the deeper kind of solitude of having known and lost someone. Its sound captures the Herculean efforts required to survive the ensuing slump: "All I need's a little sleep and I'll be good to clean and eat," she sings in a medicated sigh on "Easy", her acoustic guitar rising and dipping with the methodical pace of someone trying to make a new routine stick. But like her former camp counselor and roommate, Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis, Kempner never lets a sad jam wallow: she kicks the end of the song into shape with a zippy electric guitar motif and some awkward, itchy squall. It's followed by "Cinnamon", which takes the opposite tack, hooked around the kind of amiable, waterlogged psych burble that Mac DeMarco noodles in his sleep. Kempner sings dreamily about her worst self-defeating impulses, but is stirred from her reverie by a divine revelation that her life is becoming "a pretty lie". Frantic drums force the song somewhere agitated and ascendant, but instead of bursting into some bright new phrase, the furor falls away like a captivating slo-mo bellyflop. Kempner has a knack for these odd little about-turns that elevate Dry Food above the usual plainspoken acoustic indie fare. And like her old roommate, she often obscures her intentions between appealingly twisty language. "Mouth ajar watching cuties hit the half pipe/ I only feel half ripe/ Around healthier folk," she sings on "Healthier Folk". She distils her disgust at her own post-breakup malaise with perfectly understated images: "The hair that's in my shower drain/ Has been clogging up my home," she sings on "Dixie". "And I try to scoop it up, but I wretch until I'm stuck." It's maybe the most straightforward song here, just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, but she messes at it like a cat dragging a mouse into a dark nook. Saddest of all is closer "Seakonk", where Kempner protests that she's not alone, actually; she's home watching TV with her parents, sister and their dogs. There's a blithe fairground pirate ship sway to the song, which she closes with a jaunty "doo doo doo" that could have come from the credits of one of the cartoons she's watching—only she lets the final note deflate with a groan. It's at this point that Dry Food confronts the point it's been evading: kidding yourself is no way to recover, and comfort offers little impetus to move on. Palehound's discomfiting, unflinching debut suggests she knew it all along."

J-Live

Always Will Be EP

Rap

Hartley Goldstein

Precocious, hyper-intellectual emcee J-Live is perhaps best-known for the infamous label woes which kept his mythically bootlegged, classic debut, The Best Part, from hitting record store shelves years after its inception. Thankfully, the fiasco of music business politics didn't put J-Live off from recording, and subsequently, he came back fresher than ever with 2002's matured sophomore triumph, All of the Above. The album, which was largely an effective mix of J-Live's own cerebral word games, inspired flow, and candid introspection, not only served as a well-earned sign of endurance in the face of the hip-hop community and music industry at large, but also marked a colossal evolution in J-Live's own sound. In this light, J-Live's new EP, Always Will Be (a companion piece to his Always Has Been EP, featuring fresh material) comes as something of a disappointment. The album has a surprisingly lighthearted and indifferent quality to it; it serves as neither a substantial aesthetic devolution nor a marked progression either. While J-Live has always worn his old-school influences on his sleeve, never before have they eclipsed his artistic growth as much as they do here. Part of the reason for this is the fact that J-Live chose to self-produce all of the EP's eight tracks; and while J-Live makes for a wondrously impassioned and well-spoken emcee, his production skills rarely match his verbal cunning. DJ Spinna and Usef Dinero's esoteric, soulful instrumentals are resoundingly missing. Tracks like the Sugar-Hill Gang homage "Add-a-Cipher" and the tediously ironic "Get Live" bounce by on monotonously minimal drum programming, bland keyboard sounds, and lackluster horn samples. While this kind of stripped production does leave more room for J-Live's intricate wordplay and rousing delivery to reap the spotlight, it also unfortunately makes him sound inexpressively derivative; instead of innovating the past, J-Live now sounds trapped in it. This realization is particularly frustrating since many of the tracks off Always Will Be are conceptually inspired, and feature remarkable performances from J-Live on the mic. J-Live, who himself is an ex-schoolteacher, has always demonstrated an overt passion for language; his unrelenting flow weaves an intricate web of verbiage, spinning words into every possible rhythmic and thematic context before moving on to the next line. On the older-school "Add-a-Cipher", J-Live boasts, "There is no simile that's similar enough to capture the imagery of my syllabic symmetry." It's a mouthful, but one would never know it hearing J-Live deliver the line in such an unfussy manner. On the closing track "Skip Proof", which addresses that while he's a fixture in "underground" hip-hop he has yet to go gold, he muses, "the only plaques I got is on top my bathroom sink in a bottle I use to fight plaque." While on the concept-driven track, "Car Trouble", J-Live schools Wordsworth (of Lyricist Lounge infamy) on the pitfalls and perils of getting a record contract, using shopping for a new automobile as an extended metaphor for the whole ordeal; J-Live wittily queries, "Are you a soloist or down with a band, 'cause six in a two-seater's not a good plan." Still, despite showcasing J-Live's abundant talent, Always Will Be will likely just leave most fans hoping he'll turn back to outside producers. Towards the record's end, on the undulating track "9000 Miles", J-Live asserts his aesthetic manifesto: "I can't spit that old rhetoric, I gotta spit ten steps ahead of it." And he's right: his wordplay's hovering off into the future; but next time his instrumentals will need to catch up with him.

Artist: J-Live, Album: Always Will Be EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Precocious, hyper-intellectual emcee J-Live is perhaps best-known for the infamous label woes which kept his mythically bootlegged, classic debut, The Best Part, from hitting record store shelves years after its inception. Thankfully, the fiasco of music business politics didn't put J-Live off from recording, and subsequently, he came back fresher than ever with 2002's matured sophomore triumph, All of the Above. The album, which was largely an effective mix of J-Live's own cerebral word games, inspired flow, and candid introspection, not only served as a well-earned sign of endurance in the face of the hip-hop community and music industry at large, but also marked a colossal evolution in J-Live's own sound. In this light, J-Live's new EP, Always Will Be (a companion piece to his Always Has Been EP, featuring fresh material) comes as something of a disappointment. The album has a surprisingly lighthearted and indifferent quality to it; it serves as neither a substantial aesthetic devolution nor a marked progression either. While J-Live has always worn his old-school influences on his sleeve, never before have they eclipsed his artistic growth as much as they do here. Part of the reason for this is the fact that J-Live chose to self-produce all of the EP's eight tracks; and while J-Live makes for a wondrously impassioned and well-spoken emcee, his production skills rarely match his verbal cunning. DJ Spinna and Usef Dinero's esoteric, soulful instrumentals are resoundingly missing. Tracks like the Sugar-Hill Gang homage "Add-a-Cipher" and the tediously ironic "Get Live" bounce by on monotonously minimal drum programming, bland keyboard sounds, and lackluster horn samples. While this kind of stripped production does leave more room for J-Live's intricate wordplay and rousing delivery to reap the spotlight, it also unfortunately makes him sound inexpressively derivative; instead of innovating the past, J-Live now sounds trapped in it. This realization is particularly frustrating since many of the tracks off Always Will Be are conceptually inspired, and feature remarkable performances from J-Live on the mic. J-Live, who himself is an ex-schoolteacher, has always demonstrated an overt passion for language; his unrelenting flow weaves an intricate web of verbiage, spinning words into every possible rhythmic and thematic context before moving on to the next line. On the older-school "Add-a-Cipher", J-Live boasts, "There is no simile that's similar enough to capture the imagery of my syllabic symmetry." It's a mouthful, but one would never know it hearing J-Live deliver the line in such an unfussy manner. On the closing track "Skip Proof", which addresses that while he's a fixture in "underground" hip-hop he has yet to go gold, he muses, "the only plaques I got is on top my bathroom sink in a bottle I use to fight plaque." While on the concept-driven track, "Car Trouble", J-Live schools Wordsworth (of Lyricist Lounge infamy) on the pitfalls and perils of getting a record contract, using shopping for a new automobile as an extended metaphor for the whole ordeal; J-Live wittily queries, "Are you a soloist or down with a band, 'cause six in a two-seater's not a good plan." Still, despite showcasing J-Live's abundant talent, Always Will Be will likely just leave most fans hoping he'll turn back to outside producers. Towards the record's end, on the undulating track "9000 Miles", J-Live asserts his aesthetic manifesto: "I can't spit that old rhetoric, I gotta spit ten steps ahead of it." And he's right: his wordplay's hovering off into the future; but next time his instrumentals will need to catch up with him."

Jason Isbell

Something More Than Free

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Jason Isbell's fifth studio album opens with a familiar face. The narrator of the cheery "If It Takes a Lifetime" is a man settling down after years on the road, adjusting to an empty house and a dead-end job while acclimating to the lowered expectations of a lonely life. The song's chief conflict is summed up by the line, "I keep my spirits high, find happiness by and by." There's more than a little bit of Isbell the touring musician and recovering alcoholic in that narrator, not only in the lines about the road ("I thought the highway loved me but she beat me like a drum") but also in the references to not drinking ("I don't keep liquor here, never cared for wine or beer"). "If It Takes a Lifetime" sounds like Isbell playing a game of What If: What if his solo career hadn't taken off after he departed the Drive-By Truckers eight years ago? What if he hadn't emerged as one of the most popular voices in the thriving Americana movement? What if he had just settled down in one of the small towns he depicts so vividly in his lyrics? It's a fine song, sporting a spare, defiantly upbeat arrangement and a melody that celebrates rather than laments the narrator's situation. With an eye for telling details that accrue into specific settings and characters, Isbell is one of few songwriters today who can turn a line like, "Working for the county keeps me pissin' clear" into a solid earworm. And yet, I can't quite shake the feeling that I've heard "If It Takes a Lifetime" before, in some iteration or another, at some point in Isbell's catalog. Five albums plus two live releases into a solo career, any songwriter will find his themes solidifying, his sound coalescing into something recognizable and, if he's lucky, something completely distinctive. "If It Takes a Lifetime", however, introduces an album that contains too few surprises. These are, as usual, not story-songs so much as they are character sketches: Very little happens beyond a character reflecting on past mistakes and present circumstances, which means the narrative arc—the big decisions, the major conflicts; in short, the action—has been consigned to the distant past. As a result, Isbell's narrators tend to be surprisingly passive, observing the world without doing very much. "I don't think on why I'm here or where it hurts," notes the main character on the title track, who lives in his own memory more than in the present world. "Children of Children", which serves as the album's centerpiece, wrestles with some tangled issues in a family with "five full generations living," but Isbell seems more interested in the romance of sepia-tone photographs than in the reality of a great-great-grandparent. It's an odd hull of a song, whose weirdest element is the way it borrows the female hardship of childbirth only to bolster male drama: "All the years I took from her just by being born," the narrator says of his teenage mother, even though he's really talking about the burden of his own guilt. The arrangement is spare and languorous, with Derry DeBorja's Mellotron adding a windswept quality to the music. Isbell and producer Dave Cobb put that instrument to fine use on Southeastern, where it played like a jerry-rigged orchestra and conveyed an immense sense of isolation. On "Children", however, the ersatz strings generate only ersatz drama. In general, the music does little to distinguish these characters or enliven the lyrics. Cobb is one of the most adventurous producers in Nashville, and together they have made Isbell's sparest record yet, with an austere palette dominated by acoustic guitar. The results are noncommittal: not quite folk, not quite country, definitely not rock. Even Amanda Shires' fiddle sounds stripped of the eccentricities she typically brings. It's a shame, as Isbell's home state boasts a lively and surprisingly diverse music scene, with bands like Alabama Shakes, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, and Wray slyly subverting and therefore rejuvenating Southern conventions. Isbell is obviously familiar with the music of the region, yet Something More Than Free sounds nondescript and—worse—placeless. In 2015, Southern identity occupies the center of a number of heated debates, and few artists are better poised to comment on its complexities than Isbell. But race has never been a compelling issue for him, and while class underlies every one of his songs, he long ago stopped writing about it with much acuity. His approach has become internalized, rooted in a self-consciously literary first-person perspective. And while he's created strong work within these parameters, I still lament the lack of urgency to engage with anything too far beyond the reach of his customary stand-ins. Isbell once again shows the world through familiar eyes, but here it just feels like we've seen it all before.

Artist: Jason Isbell, Album: Something More Than Free, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "Jason Isbell's fifth studio album opens with a familiar face. The narrator of the cheery "If It Takes a Lifetime" is a man settling down after years on the road, adjusting to an empty house and a dead-end job while acclimating to the lowered expectations of a lonely life. The song's chief conflict is summed up by the line, "I keep my spirits high, find happiness by and by." There's more than a little bit of Isbell the touring musician and recovering alcoholic in that narrator, not only in the lines about the road ("I thought the highway loved me but she beat me like a drum") but also in the references to not drinking ("I don't keep liquor here, never cared for wine or beer"). "If It Takes a Lifetime" sounds like Isbell playing a game of What If: What if his solo career hadn't taken off after he departed the Drive-By Truckers eight years ago? What if he hadn't emerged as one of the most popular voices in the thriving Americana movement? What if he had just settled down in one of the small towns he depicts so vividly in his lyrics? It's a fine song, sporting a spare, defiantly upbeat arrangement and a melody that celebrates rather than laments the narrator's situation. With an eye for telling details that accrue into specific settings and characters, Isbell is one of few songwriters today who can turn a line like, "Working for the county keeps me pissin' clear" into a solid earworm. And yet, I can't quite shake the feeling that I've heard "If It Takes a Lifetime" before, in some iteration or another, at some point in Isbell's catalog. Five albums plus two live releases into a solo career, any songwriter will find his themes solidifying, his sound coalescing into something recognizable and, if he's lucky, something completely distinctive. "If It Takes a Lifetime", however, introduces an album that contains too few surprises. These are, as usual, not story-songs so much as they are character sketches: Very little happens beyond a character reflecting on past mistakes and present circumstances, which means the narrative arc—the big decisions, the major conflicts; in short, the action—has been consigned to the distant past. As a result, Isbell's narrators tend to be surprisingly passive, observing the world without doing very much. "I don't think on why I'm here or where it hurts," notes the main character on the title track, who lives in his own memory more than in the present world. "Children of Children", which serves as the album's centerpiece, wrestles with some tangled issues in a family with "five full generations living," but Isbell seems more interested in the romance of sepia-tone photographs than in the reality of a great-great-grandparent. It's an odd hull of a song, whose weirdest element is the way it borrows the female hardship of childbirth only to bolster male drama: "All the years I took from her just by being born," the narrator says of his teenage mother, even though he's really talking about the burden of his own guilt. The arrangement is spare and languorous, with Derry DeBorja's Mellotron adding a windswept quality to the music. Isbell and producer Dave Cobb put that instrument to fine use on Southeastern, where it played like a jerry-rigged orchestra and conveyed an immense sense of isolation. On "Children", however, the ersatz strings generate only ersatz drama. In general, the music does little to distinguish these characters or enliven the lyrics. Cobb is one of the most adventurous producers in Nashville, and together they have made Isbell's sparest record yet, with an austere palette dominated by acoustic guitar. The results are noncommittal: not quite folk, not quite country, definitely not rock. Even Amanda Shires' fiddle sounds stripped of the eccentricities she typically brings. It's a shame, as Isbell's home state boasts a lively and surprisingly diverse music scene, with bands like Alabama Shakes, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, and Wray slyly subverting and therefore rejuvenating Southern conventions. Isbell is obviously familiar with the music of the region, yet Something More Than Free sounds nondescript and—worse—placeless. In 2015, Southern identity occupies the center of a number of heated debates, and few artists are better poised to comment on its complexities than Isbell. But race has never been a compelling issue for him, and while class underlies every one of his songs, he long ago stopped writing about it with much acuity. His approach has become internalized, rooted in a self-consciously literary first-person perspective. And while he's created strong work within these parameters, I still lament the lack of urgency to engage with anything too far beyond the reach of his customary stand-ins. Isbell once again shows the world through familiar eyes, but here it just feels like we've seen it all before."

Dogs Die in Hot Cars

Please Describe Yourself

Rock

Marc Hogan

The indie rock hype machine should be forgiven for lumping idiotically named Dogs Die in Hot Cars with the new wave revival. The truth is, Craig Macintosh's jittery vocals do work overtime to invoke XTC's Andy Partridge, the pop hooks are sugary enough for Orange Juice, and Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley's production is as florescent as their work for Dexys Midnight Runners or Madness. But even if it comes cloaked in the trendy trappings of 2004's VH1 Classic/1980s obsession, Please Describe Yourself is really an exercise in 90s nostalgia. As star-crazy as Joan Rivers and as lackadaisical as Phil Daniels' "Parklife" narration, Dogs Die in Hot Cars' full-length debut has more in common with contemporary Britpop revivalists like Athlete or Ordinary Boys than 80s fetishists like Hot Hot Heat, stellastarr* or The Fever. The telling moment is "Lounger", which nearly quotes the aforementioned Blur tune ("I get up when I like") amid squeaky-clean guitars and Jarvis Cocker-like wit (so what if the melody recalls New Order's "Temptation"). A snippet of awkward German even harks back to "Parklife"'s "Vorsprung durch Technik." In that light, opener (and second single) "Godhopping" sounds less like Men at Work and more like Menswe@r-- its "all the way to Bombay" lyric is thematically, if not geographically, reminiscent of Athlete's chipper "El Salvador". "Celebrity Sanctum"-- on which Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, and Lucy Liu all make silly/cute lyrical cameos-- shows the charming naivete of a band stuck in an era before reality TV muddied stardom's waters. That song also includes the decidedly unsurprising revelation that these guys really "just want someone that will come home." Presumably, she'll like Craig for Craig, not because he hangs with Leonardo. Standout track "Paul Newman's Eyes" continues our US Weekly celebfest. Its chorus ("I wish I had Paul Newman's eyes") grows less funny with each listen, but recovers on the strength of enormous hooks that should have you listening well after the joke has worn thin. Elsewhere, first single "I Love You 'Cause I Have To" bobs and skanks like umpteenth-wave ska. That's right: S-K-A. Sure, they had that in the 80s, too, but if Reel Big Fish were to mount a mainstream comeback, this song would be their ticket to MTV2; cut the buoyant horns from their "Take on Me" cover, and you're halfway there. Even "Come on Eileen" saw a slight return in the 90s, thanks to (guess who!) Save Ferris. Goddamn right, Dogs Die in Hot Cars are living in the past-- the all-too-recent past. Finally, I hate mentioning the self-important racket of Franz Ferdinand, but you should know that Dogs Die in Hot Cars are sort of the wimpy younger siblings of their fellow Glaswegians-- the asexual catwalk of "Pastimes & Lifestyles" could dream of one day growing up to be "Matinee". Whoever labeled Franz Ferdinand "Scotpop" for their post-Britpop proclivities was probably just talking out of his ass, but it's much better suited to Macintosh & Co. than the abused-beyond-meaning appellative "new wave."

Artist: Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Album: Please Describe Yourself, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "The indie rock hype machine should be forgiven for lumping idiotically named Dogs Die in Hot Cars with the new wave revival. The truth is, Craig Macintosh's jittery vocals do work overtime to invoke XTC's Andy Partridge, the pop hooks are sugary enough for Orange Juice, and Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley's production is as florescent as their work for Dexys Midnight Runners or Madness. But even if it comes cloaked in the trendy trappings of 2004's VH1 Classic/1980s obsession, Please Describe Yourself is really an exercise in 90s nostalgia. As star-crazy as Joan Rivers and as lackadaisical as Phil Daniels' "Parklife" narration, Dogs Die in Hot Cars' full-length debut has more in common with contemporary Britpop revivalists like Athlete or Ordinary Boys than 80s fetishists like Hot Hot Heat, stellastarr* or The Fever. The telling moment is "Lounger", which nearly quotes the aforementioned Blur tune ("I get up when I like") amid squeaky-clean guitars and Jarvis Cocker-like wit (so what if the melody recalls New Order's "Temptation"). A snippet of awkward German even harks back to "Parklife"'s "Vorsprung durch Technik." In that light, opener (and second single) "Godhopping" sounds less like Men at Work and more like Menswe@r-- its "all the way to Bombay" lyric is thematically, if not geographically, reminiscent of Athlete's chipper "El Salvador". "Celebrity Sanctum"-- on which Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, and Lucy Liu all make silly/cute lyrical cameos-- shows the charming naivete of a band stuck in an era before reality TV muddied stardom's waters. That song also includes the decidedly unsurprising revelation that these guys really "just want someone that will come home." Presumably, she'll like Craig for Craig, not because he hangs with Leonardo. Standout track "Paul Newman's Eyes" continues our US Weekly celebfest. Its chorus ("I wish I had Paul Newman's eyes") grows less funny with each listen, but recovers on the strength of enormous hooks that should have you listening well after the joke has worn thin. Elsewhere, first single "I Love You 'Cause I Have To" bobs and skanks like umpteenth-wave ska. That's right: S-K-A. Sure, they had that in the 80s, too, but if Reel Big Fish were to mount a mainstream comeback, this song would be their ticket to MTV2; cut the buoyant horns from their "Take on Me" cover, and you're halfway there. Even "Come on Eileen" saw a slight return in the 90s, thanks to (guess who!) Save Ferris. Goddamn right, Dogs Die in Hot Cars are living in the past-- the all-too-recent past. Finally, I hate mentioning the self-important racket of Franz Ferdinand, but you should know that Dogs Die in Hot Cars are sort of the wimpy younger siblings of their fellow Glaswegians-- the asexual catwalk of "Pastimes & Lifestyles" could dream of one day growing up to be "Matinee". Whoever labeled Franz Ferdinand "Scotpop" for their post-Britpop proclivities was probably just talking out of his ass, but it's much better suited to Macintosh & Co. than the abused-beyond-meaning appellative "new wave.""

Constantines

Kensington Heights

Rock

Jason Crock

Every Constantines release from their 2001 self-titled debut to a pair of EPs to 2003's Shine a Light, was the stuff of thumbtacked liner notes on bedroom doors, worn and threadbare t-shirts, frayed patches sewn on backpacks and jackets-- nay, tattoos. They stole brazenly from heroes of dinosaur rock while dressing down their idol culture in their lyrics and demeanor, and reconstructed their music to a desperate beat. It was enough to make you believe rock and roll was a dead horse worth flogging. Yet the band's third album, Tournament of Hearts, found the band tugged in a few different directions, one of which was unexpected ballad "Soon Enough". That track was an ode to finding fulfillment by merely living up to the responsibilities of adulthood; after all their former bluster, the introspection and maturity felt fully inhabited and earned. Now, however: Are you ready for nearly an entire album of that? Well, almost a whole album: Opener "Hard Feelings" is as muscular and flailing as anything in the Constantines' catalog, but given the rest of the record, it seems like a capitulation to their old selves. The chorus of "Million Star Hotel" is slow and blustery, as if the band's jagged edges have been sanded off. "Trans Canada" starts with a keyboard pulse that's half train whistle, half trance anthem but its insistent chug leads to a full-band climax and the record's heaviest moment. Singer Bryan Webb has said "Trans Canada" was torn apart and rebuilt from scratch, and it reflects that, standing a few yards astride of the Kensington Heights' uniform tone while hitting the album's emotional peak. And while "Our Age" also nails a note of yearning, thanks to its stately melody and Webb's growth as a vocalist, the rest of the album seems weary and resigned. Even at their fiercest, Constantines sounded liked bruised and battered romantics, so a slower, more world-weary album is a natural-- but maybe too comfortable-- choice. Though there's still some traces of pride and defiance to be found here, like on the weeping guitar bends of the simmering "Time Can Be Overcome", the second side of the record is especially troubling. "Credit River" is a jump (and face-plant) into topical waters where Webb sounds nearly too bored to finish the chorus and keyboardist Will Kidman, who added so much to earlier songs, smothers the track in gaudy, dated effects. Just as jarring is the album's closer, which marries manufactured catharsis with shrugging bathroom-wall slogans. Webb's glass-gargling voice can make him sound like the mouthpiece of the disenfranchised, but on "Do What You Can Do" he can't muster up anything insightful. Maybe Constantines aren't just tired, but mortally afraid-- the specter of death that lingers over the city doctor of "Million Star Hotel" spreads to hospital rooms in the rootsier "Brother Run Them Down"-- but without any of "Hotel"'s tension. In the face of that mortality, Webb offers a cold shoulder to banner-waving and perpetual youth: "You are not your generation." No doubt that the best halves of this and Tournament of Hearts would equal a breakthrough album for the group, but taken as a whole, Kensington Heights sounds like a decisive break in the band's stride. What lingers after it's done, if not the songs, is how comfortably the group has slid into this lower gear.

Artist: Constantines, Album: Kensington Heights, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Every Constantines release from their 2001 self-titled debut to a pair of EPs to 2003's Shine a Light, was the stuff of thumbtacked liner notes on bedroom doors, worn and threadbare t-shirts, frayed patches sewn on backpacks and jackets-- nay, tattoos. They stole brazenly from heroes of dinosaur rock while dressing down their idol culture in their lyrics and demeanor, and reconstructed their music to a desperate beat. It was enough to make you believe rock and roll was a dead horse worth flogging. Yet the band's third album, Tournament of Hearts, found the band tugged in a few different directions, one of which was unexpected ballad "Soon Enough". That track was an ode to finding fulfillment by merely living up to the responsibilities of adulthood; after all their former bluster, the introspection and maturity felt fully inhabited and earned. Now, however: Are you ready for nearly an entire album of that? Well, almost a whole album: Opener "Hard Feelings" is as muscular and flailing as anything in the Constantines' catalog, but given the rest of the record, it seems like a capitulation to their old selves. The chorus of "Million Star Hotel" is slow and blustery, as if the band's jagged edges have been sanded off. "Trans Canada" starts with a keyboard pulse that's half train whistle, half trance anthem but its insistent chug leads to a full-band climax and the record's heaviest moment. Singer Bryan Webb has said "Trans Canada" was torn apart and rebuilt from scratch, and it reflects that, standing a few yards astride of the Kensington Heights' uniform tone while hitting the album's emotional peak. And while "Our Age" also nails a note of yearning, thanks to its stately melody and Webb's growth as a vocalist, the rest of the album seems weary and resigned. Even at their fiercest, Constantines sounded liked bruised and battered romantics, so a slower, more world-weary album is a natural-- but maybe too comfortable-- choice. Though there's still some traces of pride and defiance to be found here, like on the weeping guitar bends of the simmering "Time Can Be Overcome", the second side of the record is especially troubling. "Credit River" is a jump (and face-plant) into topical waters where Webb sounds nearly too bored to finish the chorus and keyboardist Will Kidman, who added so much to earlier songs, smothers the track in gaudy, dated effects. Just as jarring is the album's closer, which marries manufactured catharsis with shrugging bathroom-wall slogans. Webb's glass-gargling voice can make him sound like the mouthpiece of the disenfranchised, but on "Do What You Can Do" he can't muster up anything insightful. Maybe Constantines aren't just tired, but mortally afraid-- the specter of death that lingers over the city doctor of "Million Star Hotel" spreads to hospital rooms in the rootsier "Brother Run Them Down"-- but without any of "Hotel"'s tension. In the face of that mortality, Webb offers a cold shoulder to banner-waving and perpetual youth: "You are not your generation." No doubt that the best halves of this and Tournament of Hearts would equal a breakthrough album for the group, but taken as a whole, Kensington Heights sounds like a decisive break in the band's stride. What lingers after it's done, if not the songs, is how comfortably the group has slid into this lower gear."

Richard Thompson

13 Rivers

Folk/Country

Stephen M. Deusner

Richard Thompson penned “Rattle Within” for the new 13 Rivers, but the song’s worries suggest it could just as easily have been written during the Black Plague as in our own plagued time. Over the racket of rattletrap percussion, Thompson excoriates the quackery of religious leaders, contemplates a dark self that’s “living right there inside your skin,” and poses this nervous question: “Who’s going to save you from the rattle within?” He then launches into a jagged and ominous solo, serrated as though he were unspooling barbed wire. Thompson’s playing retains a stomping folk-dance quality reminiscent of his innovations in Fairport Convention fifty years ago. By the end, though, he collapses into a din that has more in common with the punk rock he was already too old for by the late ’70s. Talking about a guitar player’s chops feels odd and even old-fashioned in 2018, especially when that guitar player is an old white guy whose career predates Woodstock. But Thompson was a folk descendant, not a blues rocker, a lineage that sometimes excluded him from being cited as a guitar god or celebrated with the same reverence as his note-bending peers. But here he is, a half-century after debuting with Fairport, still making records of incisive originals while developing as a guitarist, undistracted by reunion rumors and holiday baubles. Now in his late sixties, he remains a distinctive singer with a low burr, as capable of a sly joke as a sincere prayer. He is a songwriter of remarkable insight who can burrow into a metaphor and renew a familiar sentiment. And he remains a deft and inventive instrumentalist who, even after nearly twenty solo records (not including his sterling decade with Linda), finds new ways to play the same notes. If 13 Rivers is Thompson’s best album of the 2010s and perhaps his best of the 21st century, it’s not because he emphasizes those three elements equally. Rather, it’s because he puts those aspects into a strange, spirited conversation. For 13 Rivers, he assembled a tight, versatile rock combo—the rhythm section of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome, along with guitarist Bobby Eichorn, who makes the most of a very redundant job. Pondering life and death, happiness and despair, movement and stagnation, Thompson writes as someone who knows he has more years behind him than ahead, though he sings with an arched eyebrow and an appreciation for the irony in trading youth for wisdom. On “O Cinderella,” he sounds as surprised as anybody else that he might want to settle down and don an apron: “I’m not very house-trained, it’s true/But I want to make cupcakes with you.” There’s something lusty and chagrined in the way he exclaims “cupcakes,” allowing the line to double as a good joke and sincere wish. And then there is Thompson’s guitar, which rambles or cavorts through every song, underscoring some sentiments and undercutting others, jostling against the melodies like a gremlin in the mix. Thompson has been in acoustic mode for most of the 2010s, with two collections of new acoustic versions of old electric songs surrounding a mostly unplugged, Jeff Tweedy-helmed album. Thompson is an amazing acoustic player, but he’s even better when plugged in, where he toggles gracefully between rhythm and lead, texture and melody. “Bones of Gilead” opens with a mathematical staccato riff, as though mimicking the countdown clock to Armageddon; by the time he rolls into a rambling solo, there’s no dread, just a kind of gee-whiz excitement. During closer “Shaking the Gates,” he plays like he’s scoring a film, careful to stay out of the way while weaving notes around the melody. “I’m shaking, I’m shaking,” he sings, as though genuflecting before some deity. Then he amends the statement: “Im shaking the gates.” Thompson’s getting along in years, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to sound old.

Artist: Richard Thompson, Album: 13 Rivers, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Richard Thompson penned “Rattle Within” for the new 13 Rivers, but the song’s worries suggest it could just as easily have been written during the Black Plague as in our own plagued time. Over the racket of rattletrap percussion, Thompson excoriates the quackery of religious leaders, contemplates a dark self that’s “living right there inside your skin,” and poses this nervous question: “Who’s going to save you from the rattle within?” He then launches into a jagged and ominous solo, serrated as though he were unspooling barbed wire. Thompson’s playing retains a stomping folk-dance quality reminiscent of his innovations in Fairport Convention fifty years ago. By the end, though, he collapses into a din that has more in common with the punk rock he was already too old for by the late ’70s. Talking about a guitar player’s chops feels odd and even old-fashioned in 2018, especially when that guitar player is an old white guy whose career predates Woodstock. But Thompson was a folk descendant, not a blues rocker, a lineage that sometimes excluded him from being cited as a guitar god or celebrated with the same reverence as his note-bending peers. But here he is, a half-century after debuting with Fairport, still making records of incisive originals while developing as a guitarist, undistracted by reunion rumors and holiday baubles. Now in his late sixties, he remains a distinctive singer with a low burr, as capable of a sly joke as a sincere prayer. He is a songwriter of remarkable insight who can burrow into a metaphor and renew a familiar sentiment. And he remains a deft and inventive instrumentalist who, even after nearly twenty solo records (not including his sterling decade with Linda), finds new ways to play the same notes. If 13 Rivers is Thompson’s best album of the 2010s and perhaps his best of the 21st century, it’s not because he emphasizes those three elements equally. Rather, it’s because he puts those aspects into a strange, spirited conversation. For 13 Rivers, he assembled a tight, versatile rock combo—the rhythm section of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome, along with guitarist Bobby Eichorn, who makes the most of a very redundant job. Pondering life and death, happiness and despair, movement and stagnation, Thompson writes as someone who knows he has more years behind him than ahead, though he sings with an arched eyebrow and an appreciation for the irony in trading youth for wisdom. On “O Cinderella,” he sounds as surprised as anybody else that he might want to settle down and don an apron: “I’m not very house-trained, it’s true/But I want to make cupcakes with you.” There’s something lusty and chagrined in the way he exclaims “cupcakes,” allowing the line to double as a good joke and sincere wish. And then there is Thompson’s guitar, which rambles or cavorts through every song, underscoring some sentiments and undercutting others, jostling against the melodies like a gremlin in the mix. Thompson has been in acoustic mode for most of the 2010s, with two collections of new acoustic versions of old electric songs surrounding a mostly unplugged, Jeff Tweedy-helmed album. Thompson is an amazing acoustic player, but he’s even better when plugged in, where he toggles gracefully between rhythm and lead, texture and melody. “Bones of Gilead” opens with a mathematical staccato riff, as though mimicking the countdown clock to Armageddon; by the time he rolls into a rambling solo, there’s no dread, just a kind of gee-whiz excitement. During closer “Shaking the Gates,” he plays like he’s scoring a film, careful to stay out of the way while weaving notes around the melody. “I’m shaking, I’m shaking,” he sings, as though genuflecting before some deity. Then he amends the statement: “Im shaking the gates.” Thompson’s getting along in years, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to sound old."

Snow Patrol

Up to Now

Rock

Tom Breihan

Here's a depressing exercise: Sit down and try to figure out how many of the bigger alt-rock bands that emerged this past decade will one day crank out a half-decent greatest-hits album. It's a short list. The White Stripes will release a great one. So will Coldplay, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Killers. Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party have a chance, and Tegan and Sara could get there, too. And... that's pretty much it. Many of the great alt-rock artists of this decade were also the great alt-rock artists of the decade before-- Radiohead, Beck, Björk, the Flaming Lips, etc. With radio going directly into the shitter, most good rock bands haven't had a chance to make anything that could, even charitably, be regarded as a hit. Sorry, Animal Collective. The whole function of a greatest-hits album-- to rescue transcendent pop singles from shitty or just-OK albums-- doesn't even make sense when transcendent, monocultural pop is something that barely even exists anymore. Given a few more OK albums, widescreen MOR archdukes Snow Patrol might've snuck their way into the above paragraph. Snow Patrol have always come across like a more workmanlike Coldplay. Same celestial choruses, same overwhelming sense of longing, same epic U2-derived comfort-food melodies. But with Snow Patrol, you never get the idea that they're out to save the world or get their faces plastered up 80 feet high in Times Square. Even their biggest, most heartstring-yanking tunes ("Chasing Cars", "Run") concern simple and relatable experiences: falling in love and shutting the whole world out, or falling out of love and feeling your whole world crumble. They're good at what they do, and they've quietly built up a deeply solid and satisfying run of singles. It shouldn't be a problem for these guys to slap together 12 of their biggest and call it a day. That's not what they do on Up to Now. Instead, the band has to throw every goddamn thing at the wall: singles, sure, but also B-sides and unreleased tracks and covers and side-project joints and live tracks. If you just want to hear the hits, you're not going to need a set of random tracks from the Reindeer Section, the Scottish indie supergroup that Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody also leads in his spare time. And if you're such a die-hard Snow Patrol completist that you need all their shitty B-sides, you're... well, I don't know what the hell your deal is, but you probably don't need to own "Chasing Cars" again. The result: two deeply overstuffed CDs with a few great moments but just as many songs that nobody will ever need to hear a second time. The worst excess on the whole set is the band's half-joking "Crazy in Love" cover, which-- unlike, say, Antony's version-- does not excise the Jay-Z verse. Instead, someone from the band has to fuck around with one of those awful joke-rap voices. Jay-Z's cultural references must not have quite the same currency in Britain, since whoever takes the verse gets a few things blatantly, hilariously wrong; "Handle like Van Exel" becomes "candle like benex soup" or something. But even without the verse, it's the limpest, most unfunny MOR Brit-rock joke-cover since Travis did "Baby One More Time". Nearly as bad is the "Run" B-side "Post-Punk Progression", on which Lightbody flattens his voice into an imitation Ian Curtis mutter and repeats the same line again and again over a fake Joy Division crawl: "You won't be around forever, girl; you gotta grab life with both hands." Is the song a joke? I have no idea. I just know it has no place on what could've been a pretty great greatest-hits album. The biggest problem, though, isn't the outright clunkers; it's the sheer length of the thing. Snow Patrol's basic sweep isn't the type of thing that holds up over two hours, and after the 20th straight-faced lovelorn hymn, you'll start climbing the walls. A crisp, chronologically sequenced set could've been a whole lot of fun-- we could've heard them evolve from the light Stereolab and Imperial Teen influences of their early days on Jeepster to the blandly expert arena jams they'd learn to crank out. But Up to Now just piles everything together and dares you to delete the extraneous stuff from your iTunes.

Artist: Snow Patrol, Album: Up to Now, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.1 Album review: "Here's a depressing exercise: Sit down and try to figure out how many of the bigger alt-rock bands that emerged this past decade will one day crank out a half-decent greatest-hits album. It's a short list. The White Stripes will release a great one. So will Coldplay, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Killers. Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party have a chance, and Tegan and Sara could get there, too. And... that's pretty much it. Many of the great alt-rock artists of this decade were also the great alt-rock artists of the decade before-- Radiohead, Beck, Björk, the Flaming Lips, etc. With radio going directly into the shitter, most good rock bands haven't had a chance to make anything that could, even charitably, be regarded as a hit. Sorry, Animal Collective. The whole function of a greatest-hits album-- to rescue transcendent pop singles from shitty or just-OK albums-- doesn't even make sense when transcendent, monocultural pop is something that barely even exists anymore. Given a few more OK albums, widescreen MOR archdukes Snow Patrol might've snuck their way into the above paragraph. Snow Patrol have always come across like a more workmanlike Coldplay. Same celestial choruses, same overwhelming sense of longing, same epic U2-derived comfort-food melodies. But with Snow Patrol, you never get the idea that they're out to save the world or get their faces plastered up 80 feet high in Times Square. Even their biggest, most heartstring-yanking tunes ("Chasing Cars", "Run") concern simple and relatable experiences: falling in love and shutting the whole world out, or falling out of love and feeling your whole world crumble. They're good at what they do, and they've quietly built up a deeply solid and satisfying run of singles. It shouldn't be a problem for these guys to slap together 12 of their biggest and call it a day. That's not what they do on Up to Now. Instead, the band has to throw every goddamn thing at the wall: singles, sure, but also B-sides and unreleased tracks and covers and side-project joints and live tracks. If you just want to hear the hits, you're not going to need a set of random tracks from the Reindeer Section, the Scottish indie supergroup that Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody also leads in his spare time. And if you're such a die-hard Snow Patrol completist that you need all their shitty B-sides, you're... well, I don't know what the hell your deal is, but you probably don't need to own "Chasing Cars" again. The result: two deeply overstuffed CDs with a few great moments but just as many songs that nobody will ever need to hear a second time. The worst excess on the whole set is the band's half-joking "Crazy in Love" cover, which-- unlike, say, Antony's version-- does not excise the Jay-Z verse. Instead, someone from the band has to fuck around with one of those awful joke-rap voices. Jay-Z's cultural references must not have quite the same currency in Britain, since whoever takes the verse gets a few things blatantly, hilariously wrong; "Handle like Van Exel" becomes "candle like benex soup" or something. But even without the verse, it's the limpest, most unfunny MOR Brit-rock joke-cover since Travis did "Baby One More Time". Nearly as bad is the "Run" B-side "Post-Punk Progression", on which Lightbody flattens his voice into an imitation Ian Curtis mutter and repeats the same line again and again over a fake Joy Division crawl: "You won't be around forever, girl; you gotta grab life with both hands." Is the song a joke? I have no idea. I just know it has no place on what could've been a pretty great greatest-hits album. The biggest problem, though, isn't the outright clunkers; it's the sheer length of the thing. Snow Patrol's basic sweep isn't the type of thing that holds up over two hours, and after the 20th straight-faced lovelorn hymn, you'll start climbing the walls. A crisp, chronologically sequenced set could've been a whole lot of fun-- we could've heard them evolve from the light Stereolab and Imperial Teen influences of their early days on Jeepster to the blandly expert arena jams they'd learn to crank out. But Up to Now just piles everything together and dares you to delete the extraneous stuff from your iTunes."

The Menzingers

After the Party

Rock

Ian Cohen

The Menzingers are classic rock bards with expired Warped Tour laminates, as rooted in Social Distortion and ska as they are Springsteen and Kerouac. This is their thing, and five albums in, they have it so down that it threatens to leave nothing to the imagination. Their fiercely beloved and unabashedly nostalgic dirtbag opus *On the Impossible Past challenged Celebration Rock *for 2012’s most accurately titled album. Its follow-up led off with “I Don’t Wanna Be an Asshole Anymore,” which emphatically slam-dunked its premise and left the rest of the dispirited *Rented World *to pick up the shattered backboard. And if there’s any doubt about what *After the Party *is getting at, the very first chorus rants “Where we gonna go now that our 20s are over?” “Post-30 punk” feels like a subgenre of a subgenre at this point: age isn’t a number for Beach Slang, it’s a nullity, whereas Japandroids embraced maturity with the same legendary fire as their younger selves. *After the Party *works with more typical talking points: the buzz is shorter and the hangovers are longer. Can I hide these tattoos at my day job? Is playing Minor Threat on laptop speakers keeping it real or just lame? Am I too old to be sleeping on floors? Am I too old to be too broke to afford a hotel? On first glance, single “Lookers” plays too much to stereotype, name-dropping Dean and Sal, “Julie from the Wonder Bar” and a hook of “Jersey girls are always total heartbreakers!” (also, lookers). Maybe it’s the “sha la la la!” in the chorus, but “Lookers” has a self-aware, sarcastic edge, an added pain of looking back on a seemingly rebellious youth and seeing just another kind of conformity. The Menzingers earn the benefit of the doubt when “Thick as Thieves” opens with a sly skewering of the songwriting process (“I held up a liquor store/ Demanding topshelf metaphors”) and “Tellin’ Lies” hits on a point where the difference between 29 and 31 really does feel like an entire decade: “When buying marijuana makes you feel like a criminal / When your new friends take a joke too literal.” But this is a Menzingers album, so the laughs are momentary and ultimately futile deflections of fear. The narrators in these songs are people racing through their 20s who find themselves trapped in tour vans or, most of the time, relationships they can't convince themselves they deserve. “Midwestern States” provides a gutting account of a codependent and deeply-in-love couple couch-surfing across the country, unsure of when things will ever be different as their options and prospects dwindle with each passing year. The Menzingers’ way with an anthem never fails them, even when the tough talkin’ boyfriends on “Charlie’s Army” and “Bad Catholics” lack definition beyond their bluster (“To everyone you’re such a sweet church girl/but I know your secret”), or the record’s best melody searches for the rest of a proper song (“House on Fire”). *After the Party *might actually be *too *well-designed for jukeboxes, as the relentless, face-to-the-glass production results in the sad cowpoke shuffle of “Black Mass” and the Meatloaf-inspired “The Bars” clocking in at about the same volume as everything else, denying a dynamic range that’s needed on a record that lives up to its title by sticking around one or two songs longer than it probably should. At least it seems that way until “Livin’ Ain’t Easy.” The preceding title track could’ve easily been an exit ramp for Menzingers, a wizened, hard-earned moment of contentment where a couple looks back on their drunken nights and wake-n-bakes to a new morning, confiding, “after the party, it’s me and you.” But on the very next song, singer Greg Barnett remembers the foreclosure sign in the yard and the empty bank account, and hits I-80 to another show that will surely be the start of someone else’s debauchery. *After the Party, *though? It’s the hotel lobby and, “they’re always out of coffee.”

Artist: The Menzingers, Album: After the Party, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "The Menzingers are classic rock bards with expired Warped Tour laminates, as rooted in Social Distortion and ska as they are Springsteen and Kerouac. This is their thing, and five albums in, they have it so down that it threatens to leave nothing to the imagination. Their fiercely beloved and unabashedly nostalgic dirtbag opus *On the Impossible Past challenged Celebration Rock *for 2012’s most accurately titled album. Its follow-up led off with “I Don’t Wanna Be an Asshole Anymore,” which emphatically slam-dunked its premise and left the rest of the dispirited *Rented World *to pick up the shattered backboard. And if there’s any doubt about what *After the Party *is getting at, the very first chorus rants “Where we gonna go now that our 20s are over?” “Post-30 punk” feels like a subgenre of a subgenre at this point: age isn’t a number for Beach Slang, it’s a nullity, whereas Japandroids embraced maturity with the same legendary fire as their younger selves. *After the Party *works with more typical talking points: the buzz is shorter and the hangovers are longer. Can I hide these tattoos at my day job? Is playing Minor Threat on laptop speakers keeping it real or just lame? Am I too old to be sleeping on floors? Am I too old to be too broke to afford a hotel? On first glance, single “Lookers” plays too much to stereotype, name-dropping Dean and Sal, “Julie from the Wonder Bar” and a hook of “Jersey girls are always total heartbreakers!” (also, lookers). Maybe it’s the “sha la la la!” in the chorus, but “Lookers” has a self-aware, sarcastic edge, an added pain of looking back on a seemingly rebellious youth and seeing just another kind of conformity. The Menzingers earn the benefit of the doubt when “Thick as Thieves” opens with a sly skewering of the songwriting process (“I held up a liquor store/ Demanding topshelf metaphors”) and “Tellin’ Lies” hits on a point where the difference between 29 and 31 really does feel like an entire decade: “When buying marijuana makes you feel like a criminal / When your new friends take a joke too literal.” But this is a Menzingers album, so the laughs are momentary and ultimately futile deflections of fear. The narrators in these songs are people racing through their 20s who find themselves trapped in tour vans or, most of the time, relationships they can't convince themselves they deserve. “Midwestern States” provides a gutting account of a codependent and deeply-in-love couple couch-surfing across the country, unsure of when things will ever be different as their options and prospects dwindle with each passing year. The Menzingers’ way with an anthem never fails them, even when the tough talkin’ boyfriends on “Charlie’s Army” and “Bad Catholics” lack definition beyond their bluster (“To everyone you’re such a sweet church girl/but I know your secret”), or the record’s best melody searches for the rest of a proper song (“House on Fire”). *After the Party *might actually be *too *well-designed for jukeboxes, as the relentless, face-to-the-glass production results in the sad cowpoke shuffle of “Black Mass” and the Meatloaf-inspired “The Bars” clocking in at about the same volume as everything else, denying a dynamic range that’s needed on a record that lives up to its title by sticking around one or two songs longer than it probably should. At least it seems that way until “Livin’ Ain’t Easy.” The preceding title track could’ve easily been an exit ramp for Menzingers, a wizened, hard-earned moment of contentment where a couple looks back on their drunken nights and wake-n-bakes to a new morning, confiding, “after the party, it’s me and you.” But on the very next song, singer Greg Barnett remembers the foreclosure sign in the yard and the empty bank account, and hits I-80 to another show that will surely be the start of someone else’s debauchery. *After the Party, *though? It’s the hotel lobby and, “they’re always out of coffee.”"

Plaid

Reachy Prints

Electronic

Miles Raymer

Plaid have been reliable fixtures in “intelligent dance music” since the genre first rose to prominence in the 1990s. Ever since their career-launching debut, 1997's Not for Threes, Andy Turner and Ed Handley have released carefully composed recordings full of warm tones, friendly melodies, and interesting technical sleights of hand; they've often found themselves situated between the genre's mercurial virtuosos (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher) and a legion of hacky glitch engineers. Their latest, Reachy Prints, is full of new sounds. Handley and Turner are dedicated tech geeks who embody the genre’s commitment to exploring off-label uses of different gear in order to see if it makes any interesting noises. “Nafovanny” possesses an intriguingly detuned lead, while “Tether” generates an edgy atmosphere from a fascinatingly ugly, dissonant synth patch. The arrangements are familiar, though, and the album fits in comfortably with the rest of Plaid's discography, defined by a relaxed-but-peppy energy and well-mannered songs that evolve smoothly with as few shocks as possible. (The exceptions to this rule appeared on 2011's Scintilli, which featured some uncharacteristically aggressive and bumpy tracks and was all the more intriguing for it.) IDM has always been devoted to challenging approaches to experimentation, so consistency isn’t necessarily a virtue in the genre; while Plaid's latest batch of material should satisfy those who have kept track of the duo's output thus far, it doesn’t push many boundaries. Interestingly, though, the type of electronic music that Plaid makes—melodic enough to be accessible while retaining glitchy qualities—has, over the last twenty years, moved from the very fringes of the pop landscape to a little closer to pop's center. Specifically, Aphex Twin's become a touchstone of sorts for rap producers, and his influence has trickled up to the point where it’s not unusual for chart-placing songs to feature the stuttering rhythms, tweaked-out synthesizers, simulated vinyl brakes, and other various controlled malfunctions that Aphex and, by extension IDM’s known for. So as the pop world has tilted in a way that’s moved Handley and Turner’s music in a closer vicinity to the mainstream, which suits them better. The qualities that previously constrained their music—specifically, their melodic affability, especially compared to the compellingly malicious vibe their contemporaries give off—now work in their favor, but that also means that as an experimental electronic album, Reachy Prints comes off as milquetoast. As a pop album, though, it sparkles: the oscillating beat, flickering melodies, and cooly dark atmosphere of opening track “OH” could have fit in nicely on Saint Heron, last year’s Solange-curated compilation of alternative R&B. The pair have worked with vocalists regularly in the past, and “Lilith,” their collaboration with Bjork on Not For Threes, is not only one of the best songs of their early career but one of hers too. If Turner and Handley embraced their poppier tendencies, they could conceivably reach a new level of success—stranger things have happened.

Artist: Plaid, Album: Reachy Prints, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Plaid have been reliable fixtures in “intelligent dance music” since the genre first rose to prominence in the 1990s. Ever since their career-launching debut, 1997's Not for Threes, Andy Turner and Ed Handley have released carefully composed recordings full of warm tones, friendly melodies, and interesting technical sleights of hand; they've often found themselves situated between the genre's mercurial virtuosos (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher) and a legion of hacky glitch engineers. Their latest, Reachy Prints, is full of new sounds. Handley and Turner are dedicated tech geeks who embody the genre’s commitment to exploring off-label uses of different gear in order to see if it makes any interesting noises. “Nafovanny” possesses an intriguingly detuned lead, while “Tether” generates an edgy atmosphere from a fascinatingly ugly, dissonant synth patch. The arrangements are familiar, though, and the album fits in comfortably with the rest of Plaid's discography, defined by a relaxed-but-peppy energy and well-mannered songs that evolve smoothly with as few shocks as possible. (The exceptions to this rule appeared on 2011's Scintilli, which featured some uncharacteristically aggressive and bumpy tracks and was all the more intriguing for it.) IDM has always been devoted to challenging approaches to experimentation, so consistency isn’t necessarily a virtue in the genre; while Plaid's latest batch of material should satisfy those who have kept track of the duo's output thus far, it doesn’t push many boundaries. Interestingly, though, the type of electronic music that Plaid makes—melodic enough to be accessible while retaining glitchy qualities—has, over the last twenty years, moved from the very fringes of the pop landscape to a little closer to pop's center. Specifically, Aphex Twin's become a touchstone of sorts for rap producers, and his influence has trickled up to the point where it’s not unusual for chart-placing songs to feature the stuttering rhythms, tweaked-out synthesizers, simulated vinyl brakes, and other various controlled malfunctions that Aphex and, by extension IDM’s known for. So as the pop world has tilted in a way that’s moved Handley and Turner’s music in a closer vicinity to the mainstream, which suits them better. The qualities that previously constrained their music—specifically, their melodic affability, especially compared to the compellingly malicious vibe their contemporaries give off—now work in their favor, but that also means that as an experimental electronic album, Reachy Prints comes off as milquetoast. As a pop album, though, it sparkles: the oscillating beat, flickering melodies, and cooly dark atmosphere of opening track “OH” could have fit in nicely on Saint Heron, last year’s Solange-curated compilation of alternative R&B. The pair have worked with vocalists regularly in the past, and “Lilith,” their collaboration with Bjork on Not For Threes, is not only one of the best songs of their early career but one of hers too. If Turner and Handley embraced their poppier tendencies, they could conceivably reach a new level of success—stranger things have happened."

Ryan Hemsworth

Alone for the First Time

Electronic

Jonah Bromwich

Ryan Hemsworth has mastered the social web. You can see it in his tweets, which knowingly combine the sad teenager aesthetic with that of the semi-ironic, in-crowd broducer. You can see it in his Secret Songs record club, through which he's cultivated a community of bedroom producers in his likeness and given them access to a large audience. And you can see it on the guest list for his new album, Alone for the First Time, which, despite its name, features contributions from popular Soundcloud artists and Secret Songs amateurs alike. But even if it’s not literal, the title does justice to the major artistic step that this album represents. For better and for worse, this is the Halifax producer’s boldest aesthetic statement to date, and taking that kind of risk must feel something like striking out on your own for the first time. Hemsworth started his career playing two distinct roles. He produced songs for minor, buzzing Southern rappers riding the cloud-rap wave and remixed the pop songs of the moment, tricking them out with candy-colored synths and creaky drum machines. He was already about as collaborative as it’s possible to be: most of his work either featured someone else rapping or was a rework of a song that had been created by someone else entirely. But even his original tracks felt like the work of a producer who wasn’t yet sure what kind of music he wanted to make, someone who was following cues from other artists. The Last Words EP from 2012 was catchy but scattered, and last year’s Guilt Trips, as refined as it was, showed a reluctance to commit to any one style. (The exception to these projects was last year’s Still Awake EP, the most direct precursor to Alone for the First Time.) Hemsworth was one of the early, post-Girl Talk producers who reveled in the dissolution of genre, and he dabbled in bedroom electronic, candied R&B and Southern hip-hop without pledging allegiance to any of them. It was only when he fully embraced a fourth influence, the 8-bit soundtracks to handheld video games of the '80s and '90s, that he began to focus on refining a specific sound, one that combined his pop instincts with the miniaturized melodies of that format. He’s been drilling down towards the essence of that sound for more than a year now. And the core he’s reached on the new album reveals a singer-songwriter bedroom pop by way of Final Fantasy. It’s unmistakably a winter album, and would be recognizable as such even were its first single not titled "Snow in Newark"; the album fairly bleeds nostalgia and comfort—listening to it feels like being swaddled with blankets and pillows. And for the first time, it features Hemsworth working largely with original, lyrical songs, a jarring development for fans who originally came to him for his remixes or production. Hemsworth has made sport out of feeling vulnerable—his twitter is replete with references to him needing to snuggle—and his lyrics are generally in that mold. When they’re simple, as on "Walk Me Home", they can feel tender and lovely. The song’s refrain of "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, there’s no room for me left in your heart," is genuinely heartbreaking, syncing nicely with an upswing of strings and what sounds like a live version of the drum machines he favors. But occasionally, his songs can feel like transmissions of his twitter feed that have been scrubbed of all humor or irony. "Snow in Newark" is the best example of this phenomenon: the first verse is one of the album's wordiest, but Hemsworth doesn’t use it to communicate details and the song ends up sounding both vague and precious, reminiscent of a lesser Jack Johnson track. Songs like these will garner Hemsworth new fans, but it’s jarring to hear someone with such a refined sense of structure still struggling with songwriting. It can be a relief then to reach a track on which a truly talented vocalist makes up for Hemsworth's lyrical shortcomings. "Surrounded", which features the voice of the wonderful Angelino songstress Kotomi, is one of the most powerful tracks on the album, and it feels like a natural extension of the R&B remixes that Hemsworth came up on. The singer’s voice breathes life into the lyrics like a good actor into a bad role—the preciousness of the words is swallowed by the power of her emotion and the frantic production that surrounds her voice echoes the track’s message. Tracks like "Surrounded" hint that the problem with Hemsworth’s songs is not necessarily the lyrics but rather his lack of confidence when it comes to doing those simple words justice. But the contrast between the amateurism of his songs is all the more jarring because he’s become such a sure-handed producer. Instrumental tracks like "Blemish" and "Hurt Me" are quintessential Hemsworth productions, springy, bubbly tracks that sound like they were produced for a Pallet Town after party. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy to each that’s balanced nicely by the chirpy synths and springy drums that have long been the producer’s forte. You have to hand it to Hemsworth for refusing to make the same song over and over again. He’s learning from the artists he’s meeting online, going farther afield than ever before (the album features artists from all over the globe), and growing more comfortable in his role as someone who can create pop, not merely tweak existing songs. Alone for the First Time is the furthest he's pushed himself, and the growing pains on the album can be chalked up to the strain of trying new things, a kind of adolescent awkwardness that shows signs of maturing into something sophisticated and unique.

Artist: Ryan Hemsworth, Album: Alone for the First Time, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Ryan Hemsworth has mastered the social web. You can see it in his tweets, which knowingly combine the sad teenager aesthetic with that of the semi-ironic, in-crowd broducer. You can see it in his Secret Songs record club, through which he's cultivated a community of bedroom producers in his likeness and given them access to a large audience. And you can see it on the guest list for his new album, Alone for the First Time, which, despite its name, features contributions from popular Soundcloud artists and Secret Songs amateurs alike. But even if it’s not literal, the title does justice to the major artistic step that this album represents. For better and for worse, this is the Halifax producer’s boldest aesthetic statement to date, and taking that kind of risk must feel something like striking out on your own for the first time. Hemsworth started his career playing two distinct roles. He produced songs for minor, buzzing Southern rappers riding the cloud-rap wave and remixed the pop songs of the moment, tricking them out with candy-colored synths and creaky drum machines. He was already about as collaborative as it’s possible to be: most of his work either featured someone else rapping or was a rework of a song that had been created by someone else entirely. But even his original tracks felt like the work of a producer who wasn’t yet sure what kind of music he wanted to make, someone who was following cues from other artists. The Last Words EP from 2012 was catchy but scattered, and last year’s Guilt Trips, as refined as it was, showed a reluctance to commit to any one style. (The exception to these projects was last year’s Still Awake EP, the most direct precursor to Alone for the First Time.) Hemsworth was one of the early, post-Girl Talk producers who reveled in the dissolution of genre, and he dabbled in bedroom electronic, candied R&B and Southern hip-hop without pledging allegiance to any of them. It was only when he fully embraced a fourth influence, the 8-bit soundtracks to handheld video games of the '80s and '90s, that he began to focus on refining a specific sound, one that combined his pop instincts with the miniaturized melodies of that format. He’s been drilling down towards the essence of that sound for more than a year now. And the core he’s reached on the new album reveals a singer-songwriter bedroom pop by way of Final Fantasy. It’s unmistakably a winter album, and would be recognizable as such even were its first single not titled "Snow in Newark"; the album fairly bleeds nostalgia and comfort—listening to it feels like being swaddled with blankets and pillows. And for the first time, it features Hemsworth working largely with original, lyrical songs, a jarring development for fans who originally came to him for his remixes or production. Hemsworth has made sport out of feeling vulnerable—his twitter is replete with references to him needing to snuggle—and his lyrics are generally in that mold. When they’re simple, as on "Walk Me Home", they can feel tender and lovely. The song’s refrain of "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, there’s no room for me left in your heart," is genuinely heartbreaking, syncing nicely with an upswing of strings and what sounds like a live version of the drum machines he favors. But occasionally, his songs can feel like transmissions of his twitter feed that have been scrubbed of all humor or irony. "Snow in Newark" is the best example of this phenomenon: the first verse is one of the album's wordiest, but Hemsworth doesn’t use it to communicate details and the song ends up sounding both vague and precious, reminiscent of a lesser Jack Johnson track. Songs like these will garner Hemsworth new fans, but it’s jarring to hear someone with such a refined sense of structure still struggling with songwriting. It can be a relief then to reach a track on which a truly talented vocalist makes up for Hemsworth's lyrical shortcomings. "Surrounded", which features the voice of the wonderful Angelino songstress Kotomi, is one of the most powerful tracks on the album, and it feels like a natural extension of the R&B remixes that Hemsworth came up on. The singer’s voice breathes life into the lyrics like a good actor into a bad role—the preciousness of the words is swallowed by the power of her emotion and the frantic production that surrounds her voice echoes the track’s message. Tracks like "Surrounded" hint that the problem with Hemsworth’s songs is not necessarily the lyrics but rather his lack of confidence when it comes to doing those simple words justice. But the contrast between the amateurism of his songs is all the more jarring because he’s become such a sure-handed producer. Instrumental tracks like "Blemish" and "Hurt Me" are quintessential Hemsworth productions, springy, bubbly tracks that sound like they were produced for a Pallet Town after party. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy to each that’s balanced nicely by the chirpy synths and springy drums that have long been the producer’s forte. You have to hand it to Hemsworth for refusing to make the same song over and over again. He’s learning from the artists he’s meeting online, going farther afield than ever before (the album features artists from all over the globe), and growing more comfortable in his role as someone who can create pop, not merely tweak existing songs. Alone for the First Time is the furthest he's pushed himself, and the growing pains on the album can be chalked up to the strain of trying new things, a kind of adolescent awkwardness that shows signs of maturing into something sophisticated and unique."

The Real Tuesday Weld

I, Lucifer

Electronic,Folk/Country,Pop/R&B

Jonathan Zwickel

Steven Coates must spend a lot of time swimming through the currents of his unconscious. A few years ago, Coates awoke from a dream certain he had been 1930s jazz dandy Al Bowlly and 60s cult actress Tuesday Weld in the nocturnal presence; that day he adopted a new name, sidetracked a career in the visual arts, and began to make modern music that drew inspiration from classic European cabaret and throwback romanticism. With I, Lucifer, Coates, under nom-de-chanson (The Real) Tuesday Weld, draws the listener deep into a scratchy, sepia-toned fantasy that first suggests the gap between boozy, swinging ragtime, sophisticated lounge poetics, and innovative beat technique, then bridges it in one swooning swoop. Besides its musical dexterity and pastiche of divergent styles, I, Lucifer is interesting for the fact that it's the soundtrack to English author Glenn Duncan's novel of the same name. The story is the devil's first-person account of his attempt at redemption by spending a month in the all-too-human body of down-and-out author Declan Gunn (hello, anagram?) without committing grievous sin. Though clearly the CD and the book don't match up song by page, they both evoke the same wry British humor and sense of inevitable, tragic love, making for a unique intellectual experience that gets through to the heart via the head. It's a pretty grandiose prospect that surprisingly never settles into self-conscious preciousness or pseudo-scholarly pomp, revealing instead a consistently alluring narrative vision. Writing and producing I, Lucifer's self-styled "antique beat" variety act, Coates also enlists some interesting secondary players, such as veteran British musical comedian Earl Okin on "Bathtime in Clerkenwell". "Bathtime", the album's most sweeping, memorable number-- something like a breakbeat "Belleville Rendezvous"-- layers Okin's rustic, gonzo scat over a manic rimshot and cymbal rhythm, and slips bright, swelling brass under Aphex Twin effects in an era-twisting Gramophones-to-headphones mashup. This song gives Coates' introduction to the surreal, intriguing dream world of (The Real) Tuesday Weld, and it's an improbable stunner. Coates' vocal delivery is of the subdued, Gainsbourgian variety-- he hardly sings, instead relying on his whispery, melodic cadence and a natural, naked delivery on songs like "(Still) Terminally Ambivalent Over You" and "The Ugly and the Beautiful", which exemplifies I, Lucifer's lyrical sensibility: "The drugs just ain't enough/ Though I like the way they made us crazy/ But love's the only drug/ That turns the ugly into the beautiful." Bolstering the vocal element, the Tiger Lilies' Martyn Jacques lends his crisp, quivering croon to the bittersweet "Someday (Never)" and French singer/guitarist David Guez fills the Gallic quotient with the tender acoustic ballad "La Bete Et La Belle". With the help of Scottish alt-jazz chanteuse Pinkie McClure, Coates moves from ethereal anxiety on the Badalamenti-esque "One More Chance" to his own slick, RZA-darkened Brit-hop rap on "The Life and Times of the Clerkenwell Kid". "The Eternal Seduction of Eve", meanwhile, falls somewhere between a buoyant hip-hop bump and Air's vast spaces, with Coates lamenting like a lovelorn Joe Frank, "From the Brooklyn Bridge to St. Petersburg/ And every boardroom or boudoir across the world/ From the fall of Rome to the Renaissance/ Through reformation, Cold War, Vietnam/ I'm waiting for you to notice me." Like any superior story, the variety of moods and settings I, Lucifer spans is inspiring. Coates not only has the grand imagination and facile wit necessary to build an evocative fictional world, but he's got the musical prowess to keep the plot moving forward without leaving the listener behind. An album worth reading.

Artist: The Real Tuesday Weld, Album: I, Lucifer, Genre: Electronic,Folk/Country,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Steven Coates must spend a lot of time swimming through the currents of his unconscious. A few years ago, Coates awoke from a dream certain he had been 1930s jazz dandy Al Bowlly and 60s cult actress Tuesday Weld in the nocturnal presence; that day he adopted a new name, sidetracked a career in the visual arts, and began to make modern music that drew inspiration from classic European cabaret and throwback romanticism. With I, Lucifer, Coates, under nom-de-chanson (The Real) Tuesday Weld, draws the listener deep into a scratchy, sepia-toned fantasy that first suggests the gap between boozy, swinging ragtime, sophisticated lounge poetics, and innovative beat technique, then bridges it in one swooning swoop. Besides its musical dexterity and pastiche of divergent styles, I, Lucifer is interesting for the fact that it's the soundtrack to English author Glenn Duncan's novel of the same name. The story is the devil's first-person account of his attempt at redemption by spending a month in the all-too-human body of down-and-out author Declan Gunn (hello, anagram?) without committing grievous sin. Though clearly the CD and the book don't match up song by page, they both evoke the same wry British humor and sense of inevitable, tragic love, making for a unique intellectual experience that gets through to the heart via the head. It's a pretty grandiose prospect that surprisingly never settles into self-conscious preciousness or pseudo-scholarly pomp, revealing instead a consistently alluring narrative vision. Writing and producing I, Lucifer's self-styled "antique beat" variety act, Coates also enlists some interesting secondary players, such as veteran British musical comedian Earl Okin on "Bathtime in Clerkenwell". "Bathtime", the album's most sweeping, memorable number-- something like a breakbeat "Belleville Rendezvous"-- layers Okin's rustic, gonzo scat over a manic rimshot and cymbal rhythm, and slips bright, swelling brass under Aphex Twin effects in an era-twisting Gramophones-to-headphones mashup. This song gives Coates' introduction to the surreal, intriguing dream world of (The Real) Tuesday Weld, and it's an improbable stunner. Coates' vocal delivery is of the subdued, Gainsbourgian variety-- he hardly sings, instead relying on his whispery, melodic cadence and a natural, naked delivery on songs like "(Still) Terminally Ambivalent Over You" and "The Ugly and the Beautiful", which exemplifies I, Lucifer's lyrical sensibility: "The drugs just ain't enough/ Though I like the way they made us crazy/ But love's the only drug/ That turns the ugly into the beautiful." Bolstering the vocal element, the Tiger Lilies' Martyn Jacques lends his crisp, quivering croon to the bittersweet "Someday (Never)" and French singer/guitarist David Guez fills the Gallic quotient with the tender acoustic ballad "La Bete Et La Belle". With the help of Scottish alt-jazz chanteuse Pinkie McClure, Coates moves from ethereal anxiety on the Badalamenti-esque "One More Chance" to his own slick, RZA-darkened Brit-hop rap on "The Life and Times of the Clerkenwell Kid". "The Eternal Seduction of Eve", meanwhile, falls somewhere between a buoyant hip-hop bump and Air's vast spaces, with Coates lamenting like a lovelorn Joe Frank, "From the Brooklyn Bridge to St. Petersburg/ And every boardroom or boudoir across the world/ From the fall of Rome to the Renaissance/ Through reformation, Cold War, Vietnam/ I'm waiting for you to notice me." Like any superior story, the variety of moods and settings I, Lucifer spans is inspiring. Coates not only has the grand imagination and facile wit necessary to build an evocative fictional world, but he's got the musical prowess to keep the plot moving forward without leaving the listener behind. An album worth reading."

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Higher Than the Stars EP

Rock

Joe Colly

In his review of the title track from this album, Tom Breihan did us all a great service by disallowing the use of the term "lo-fi" with regard to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. From the start, folks threw around that phrase when discussing the group mostly because their early material put a light wash of textural guitars on their otherwise melancholy indie pop, but, really, it was a garnish and not the main course. At their core, Pains aren't about scuzz or even shoegaze, they're a classic bookish indie pop band-- twee, you might even say-- and Higher Than the Stars, an EP of four new songs and one excellent remix, drives that point home very clearly. In addition to helping clear up misconceptions about the group's M.O., Higher Than the Stars also marks a small but important aesthetic shift for Pains. On their self-titled debut from earlier this year, the band worked within a pretty specific strain of indie-pop from the mid-80s and drew heavily from the hazy guitar pop of early My Bloody Valentine and C86 acts like Shop Assistants. But this EP demonstrates a tweaking of that sound that falls more in line with the cleaner approach of late-80s Sarah Records bands, most notably the Field Mice. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it helps to show Pains not as period fetishists, but instead a group of indie-pop aesthetes who seem to be able to operate comfortably within several different subdivisions of the genre. The song that most exemplifies this altered formula is the EP's title cut, "Higher Than the Stars", which is noteworthy not only for its gloss but the assurance with which it bounces along-- its twinkling synths, crisp guitar strums, and longing vocals all hitting at the right moments. I'd put it right up there with "Come Saturday" and "Young Adult Friction" as one of the best tracks in Pains' catalogue so far. Though perhaps not quite as dazzling, "Falling Over" is equally crisp, and also puts a greater emphasis on rhythm and synths (keyboardist Peggy Wang-East's playing is confident throughout) and works as a sappy ballad about the uncertainty of a potential new love. Frontman Kip Berman's sad-sack tenderness could be irritating here if it didn't sound so great, as he shields himself from hurt, singing, "Don't you, don't you touch me... I'd fall over for you," in his most convincing faux-British accent to date. The two tracks that stand out as different from the pack here are "103" and the Saint Etienne remix of "Higher Than the Stars", the former a holdover from the time of the self-titled LP's recording and more in line with that style. (It's pleasant enough but probably the slightest of the batch.) The Saint Etienne remix, though, is fantastic, stretching the original's four minutes to nearly seven of the kind of tropical dance-pop the group is famous for. It also makes for an interesting complete circle here, since Saint Etienne associate Ian Catt also produced the Field Mice (whose influence, again, is clear on this EP) in the 80s, and SE covered the Field Mice's "Let's Kiss and Make Up". Saint Etienne's co-sign on the would-be torchbearers for this style is high praise indeed. It also further emphasizes the argument this EP makes, which is that Pains could be the most promising indie pop group around.

Artist: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Album: Higher Than the Stars EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "In his review of the title track from this album, Tom Breihan did us all a great service by disallowing the use of the term "lo-fi" with regard to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. From the start, folks threw around that phrase when discussing the group mostly because their early material put a light wash of textural guitars on their otherwise melancholy indie pop, but, really, it was a garnish and not the main course. At their core, Pains aren't about scuzz or even shoegaze, they're a classic bookish indie pop band-- twee, you might even say-- and Higher Than the Stars, an EP of four new songs and one excellent remix, drives that point home very clearly. In addition to helping clear up misconceptions about the group's M.O., Higher Than the Stars also marks a small but important aesthetic shift for Pains. On their self-titled debut from earlier this year, the band worked within a pretty specific strain of indie-pop from the mid-80s and drew heavily from the hazy guitar pop of early My Bloody Valentine and C86 acts like Shop Assistants. But this EP demonstrates a tweaking of that sound that falls more in line with the cleaner approach of late-80s Sarah Records bands, most notably the Field Mice. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it helps to show Pains not as period fetishists, but instead a group of indie-pop aesthetes who seem to be able to operate comfortably within several different subdivisions of the genre. The song that most exemplifies this altered formula is the EP's title cut, "Higher Than the Stars", which is noteworthy not only for its gloss but the assurance with which it bounces along-- its twinkling synths, crisp guitar strums, and longing vocals all hitting at the right moments. I'd put it right up there with "Come Saturday" and "Young Adult Friction" as one of the best tracks in Pains' catalogue so far. Though perhaps not quite as dazzling, "Falling Over" is equally crisp, and also puts a greater emphasis on rhythm and synths (keyboardist Peggy Wang-East's playing is confident throughout) and works as a sappy ballad about the uncertainty of a potential new love. Frontman Kip Berman's sad-sack tenderness could be irritating here if it didn't sound so great, as he shields himself from hurt, singing, "Don't you, don't you touch me... I'd fall over for you," in his most convincing faux-British accent to date. The two tracks that stand out as different from the pack here are "103" and the Saint Etienne remix of "Higher Than the Stars", the former a holdover from the time of the self-titled LP's recording and more in line with that style. (It's pleasant enough but probably the slightest of the batch.) The Saint Etienne remix, though, is fantastic, stretching the original's four minutes to nearly seven of the kind of tropical dance-pop the group is famous for. It also makes for an interesting complete circle here, since Saint Etienne associate Ian Catt also produced the Field Mice (whose influence, again, is clear on this EP) in the 80s, and SE covered the Field Mice's "Let's Kiss and Make Up". Saint Etienne's co-sign on the would-be torchbearers for this style is high praise indeed. It also further emphasizes the argument this EP makes, which is that Pains could be the most promising indie pop group around."

Nite-Funk

Nite-Funk

Electronic

Kathy Iandoli

When combined, Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk can arguably be considered a supergroup, as both artists have forged their own solid paths in the underbelly of the electronic music scene. It was only a matter of time before the pair joined forces on a real project: They've been teasing that union for close to a decade now through one decent collaboration and several loose associations. On their long-awaited collaborative release Nite-Funk, we get a glimpse of what these two can do when their creative forces unite on an EP, and it’s lightning in a bottle. In September of 2015, Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk dropped off what was presumed to be their Nite-Funk lead single “Can U Read Me?” The track was woozy and arguably less aggressive than their previous 2009 collaboration “Am I Gonna Make It,” which was more upbeat but underproduced. While “Can U Read Me?” didn’t make the EP (though it definitely should have), the song signified the direction the duo would be taking on Nite-Funk. At four tight tracks, Nite-Funk is merely an appetizer for a dinner we’ve been craving for years. Both Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk bring their best selves to the project, channeling vibes of more recent duo successes like AlunaGeorge, only less syrupy and blippy and more soulful and funky. The breezy opener “Don’t Play Games” delivers melodic hums from Nite Jewel with Dâm-Funk adding playful keys and delicate synths. “Let Me Be Me” follows, carrying a darker, Hall and Oates-esque vibe, with Nite Jewel singing crisply and chanting “I’ve gotta get out and be free.”  The slower-simering “Love x2” sounds eerily like a Janet Jackson deep cut, and Nite Jewel travels along that same vein on the mid-tempo “U Can Make Me.” If there is one critique to offer (outside of the exclusion of “Can U Read Me?”) it’s that Nite-Funk could easily be regarded as a Nite Jewel project featuring Dâm-Funk. While his presence is certainly felt through the intoxicating production, it still leans in Nite Jewel’s favor, especially when her ethereal vocals are inserted into the beat. This could have easily been tacked onto her latest solo album Liquid Cool. But even judged on those terms—a Nite Jewel solo EP that happens to feature Dâm-Funk—it sounds like a success. " *Nite-Funk *was more than likely the result of a seven-year conversation between Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk playing the “should we or shouldn’t we?” game. Four tracks is only so much to go on, but if this short-but-sweet project was their litmus test, then they should race back to the studio and cut a full-length project. More, please.

Artist: Nite-Funk, Album: Nite-Funk, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "When combined, Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk can arguably be considered a supergroup, as both artists have forged their own solid paths in the underbelly of the electronic music scene. It was only a matter of time before the pair joined forces on a real project: They've been teasing that union for close to a decade now through one decent collaboration and several loose associations. On their long-awaited collaborative release Nite-Funk, we get a glimpse of what these two can do when their creative forces unite on an EP, and it’s lightning in a bottle. In September of 2015, Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk dropped off what was presumed to be their Nite-Funk lead single “Can U Read Me?” The track was woozy and arguably less aggressive than their previous 2009 collaboration “Am I Gonna Make It,” which was more upbeat but underproduced. While “Can U Read Me?” didn’t make the EP (though it definitely should have), the song signified the direction the duo would be taking on Nite-Funk. At four tight tracks, Nite-Funk is merely an appetizer for a dinner we’ve been craving for years. Both Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk bring their best selves to the project, channeling vibes of more recent duo successes like AlunaGeorge, only less syrupy and blippy and more soulful and funky. The breezy opener “Don’t Play Games” delivers melodic hums from Nite Jewel with Dâm-Funk adding playful keys and delicate synths. “Let Me Be Me” follows, carrying a darker, Hall and Oates-esque vibe, with Nite Jewel singing crisply and chanting “I’ve gotta get out and be free.”  The slower-simering “Love x2” sounds eerily like a Janet Jackson deep cut, and Nite Jewel travels along that same vein on the mid-tempo “U Can Make Me.” If there is one critique to offer (outside of the exclusion of “Can U Read Me?”) it’s that Nite-Funk could easily be regarded as a Nite Jewel project featuring Dâm-Funk. While his presence is certainly felt through the intoxicating production, it still leans in Nite Jewel’s favor, especially when her ethereal vocals are inserted into the beat. This could have easily been tacked onto her latest solo album Liquid Cool. But even judged on those terms—a Nite Jewel solo EP that happens to feature Dâm-Funk—it sounds like a success. " *Nite-Funk *was more than likely the result of a seven-year conversation between Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk playing the “should we or shouldn’t we?” game. Four tracks is only so much to go on, but if this short-but-sweet project was their litmus test, then they should race back to the studio and cut a full-length project. More, please."

Triola

Im Funftonraum

Mark Richardson

The use of software to build sound from scratch has resulted in music where timbre is the greatest field for expression. We know electronic producers by their signature sounds, the way we know singers by their voices or songwriters by their changes. While this has sometimes led to a concern with slight variation in search of novelty or what some describe as "fussiness," artists like Triola's Jörg Burger work in a completely electronic realm yet focus on typically musical concerns such as rhythm, melody, and development rather than the latest processing tweaks. Burger has been at the center of the fertile Cologne music scene since the early 90s, recording under aliases such as The Modernist and Bionaut in addition to a number of collaborations. While Burger released a lot of interesting tracks in a decade that saw electronic music go in a million different directions, he returns consistently to his straightforward and affecting sound-- the bright synth pads, gentle rhythms, and dubby production flourishes of early ambient house. Im Funftonraum is Burger's first album as Triola, after releasing a number of tracks under the name on Kompakt's revered Pop Ambient compilations. While those one-offs were excursions in beatless ambient, the tracks on Im Funftonraum have a relaxed-but-steady pulse of electronic percussion, suggesting chilled-out pop instrumentals. Anyone who knows Burger/Ink's Las Vegas, his collaboration with Wolfgang Voigt, will recognize the sound and construction on display here. The return to those sounds-- Las Vegas was recorded 10 years ago-- hints at Burger's disinterest in fashion. "Leuchtturm" opens the album on a note of gauzy bliss, serving perhaps as a lead-in from the fuzzy dronescapes of Pop Ambient. The next track, "Neuland", lays out the ground rules for Im Funftonraum, with a cheery whistle of synth, a bouncy keyboard line, and plenty of space for the light to shine through. "Unland" adds just a hint of menace, with an echoing sample of buzzing guitar string laid atop the sort of nourish bassline Jan Hammer liked to work into the background of "Miami Vice". "Traumsch\x9An" is a bit tougher than the rest, with a punchy electro bass and another couple dozen extra bpms to contend with, but the bulk of Im Funftonraum is placid, tuneful, and understated. With 10 tracks motoring by in under 50 minutes, everything about the album seems controlled and precise. Burger has no need for reinvention or paradigm shifts; to him, creating excellent music is all that matters.

Artist: Triola, Album: Im Funftonraum, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "The use of software to build sound from scratch has resulted in music where timbre is the greatest field for expression. We know electronic producers by their signature sounds, the way we know singers by their voices or songwriters by their changes. While this has sometimes led to a concern with slight variation in search of novelty or what some describe as "fussiness," artists like Triola's Jörg Burger work in a completely electronic realm yet focus on typically musical concerns such as rhythm, melody, and development rather than the latest processing tweaks. Burger has been at the center of the fertile Cologne music scene since the early 90s, recording under aliases such as The Modernist and Bionaut in addition to a number of collaborations. While Burger released a lot of interesting tracks in a decade that saw electronic music go in a million different directions, he returns consistently to his straightforward and affecting sound-- the bright synth pads, gentle rhythms, and dubby production flourishes of early ambient house. Im Funftonraum is Burger's first album as Triola, after releasing a number of tracks under the name on Kompakt's revered Pop Ambient compilations. While those one-offs were excursions in beatless ambient, the tracks on Im Funftonraum have a relaxed-but-steady pulse of electronic percussion, suggesting chilled-out pop instrumentals. Anyone who knows Burger/Ink's Las Vegas, his collaboration with Wolfgang Voigt, will recognize the sound and construction on display here. The return to those sounds-- Las Vegas was recorded 10 years ago-- hints at Burger's disinterest in fashion. "Leuchtturm" opens the album on a note of gauzy bliss, serving perhaps as a lead-in from the fuzzy dronescapes of Pop Ambient. The next track, "Neuland", lays out the ground rules for Im Funftonraum, with a cheery whistle of synth, a bouncy keyboard line, and plenty of space for the light to shine through. "Unland" adds just a hint of menace, with an echoing sample of buzzing guitar string laid atop the sort of nourish bassline Jan Hammer liked to work into the background of "Miami Vice". "Traumsch\x9An" is a bit tougher than the rest, with a punchy electro bass and another couple dozen extra bpms to contend with, but the bulk of Im Funftonraum is placid, tuneful, and understated. With 10 tracks motoring by in under 50 minutes, everything about the album seems controlled and precise. Burger has no need for reinvention or paradigm shifts; to him, creating excellent music is all that matters."

Black Sunday

Tronic Blanc

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

It's tempting and intriguing, but ultimately reductive, to hear Black Sunday's Tronic Blanc as a reaction to the collapse last year of Memphis up-and-comers the Lost Sounds. First, there's the name Black Sunday: Whether it refers to Thomas Harris (who wrote a novel of that name about a blimp crash) or to the Great Depression (a tremendous dust storm obliterated millions of acres on Sunday, April 14, 1935), the phrase evokes immense disaster, widespread destruction, and an aftermath of funereal grief. Then there's the fact the Black Sunday is essentially Alicja Trout, who previously sang and played keyboards and guitars for the Lost Sounds and has recorded with various one-off lineups and incarnations, including the Clears, the River City Tan Lines, the Fitts, and, most recently, Mouse Rocket. Aside from a few guest musicians (including former Lost Sound Jay Lindsay, who plays drums on two songs), Trout plays all the instruments and wrote all but one of the songs, so Tronic Blanc (which she recorded in her Memphis studio, called Tronic Graveyard) sounds like her most solo album-- and, in some ways, the best realization of her unique aesthetic. As such, Tronic Blanc's technofear and paranoia-- not to mention its jaded resentment-- can be attributed solely to Trout. "First, I cut my arms for you/ Then I cut my scars for you," she sings on "Torture Torture", with an immediacy that's chilling. Most of this personal angst surfaces in clone imagery-- not genetic regenerations, but mechanical substitutes. Songs like "Torture Torture", "This Heart Is Now Aluminum", and "Modulated Simulated" voice a very specific fear: That some enormous upheaval, like a bad break-up, will so overwhelm her that she might lose her emotional faculties and become a cold, metal-hearted machine. This panic is reflected in the music on Tronic Blanc, which pits live instrumentation against synthetic noises. On "What I Think Is Wrong", live drums compete with meowing keyboards, while on "You're Gonna See Me", real guitars counter canned beats. But Trout complicates that tension by making the drums sound preternaturally rigid and the guitars electronically sculpted, while her keyboard runs-- which have been a trademark at least since her days with the Clears (their one album is well worth seeking out and prefigures the current New Wave revival by almost a decade)-- often give the songs their heartbeat pulse. The line between the actual and the artificial constantly blurs, mirroring her confusion over real and false emotions. In a sense, Trout is Dr. Frankenstein and Tronic Blanc is the monster she's created in her studio lab. But complicating that literary comparison is the simple and overwhelming fact that despite the pain and fear the songs convey, Trout's music is exuberant, inventive, and full-to-bursting with ideas. As with previous projects, Trout's preferred m.o. is the restless, reckless conflation of genres: songs like "This Heart Is Now Aluminum", "Modulated Simulated", and "Little Bird" beat with garage-rock swagger and taut new wave grooves, while "Destroy Everything in Your Path" and "Next Girl Detour", with its shout-out chorus, swing with surf guitar momentum. Elsewhere, the DIY aesthetic lends "Little Bird" and "On the Way Downtown"-- about the dangers of the Mississippi River-- their rough immediacy, as if Trout recorded them as soon as the ideas popped into her head. All these elements belie the grim undertones of Tronic Blanc, suggesting that simple expression can be not only catharsis, but a powerful defense against the dehumanizing disappointments of other people.

Artist: Black Sunday, Album: Tronic Blanc, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "It's tempting and intriguing, but ultimately reductive, to hear Black Sunday's Tronic Blanc as a reaction to the collapse last year of Memphis up-and-comers the Lost Sounds. First, there's the name Black Sunday: Whether it refers to Thomas Harris (who wrote a novel of that name about a blimp crash) or to the Great Depression (a tremendous dust storm obliterated millions of acres on Sunday, April 14, 1935), the phrase evokes immense disaster, widespread destruction, and an aftermath of funereal grief. Then there's the fact the Black Sunday is essentially Alicja Trout, who previously sang and played keyboards and guitars for the Lost Sounds and has recorded with various one-off lineups and incarnations, including the Clears, the River City Tan Lines, the Fitts, and, most recently, Mouse Rocket. Aside from a few guest musicians (including former Lost Sound Jay Lindsay, who plays drums on two songs), Trout plays all the instruments and wrote all but one of the songs, so Tronic Blanc (which she recorded in her Memphis studio, called Tronic Graveyard) sounds like her most solo album-- and, in some ways, the best realization of her unique aesthetic. As such, Tronic Blanc's technofear and paranoia-- not to mention its jaded resentment-- can be attributed solely to Trout. "First, I cut my arms for you/ Then I cut my scars for you," she sings on "Torture Torture", with an immediacy that's chilling. Most of this personal angst surfaces in clone imagery-- not genetic regenerations, but mechanical substitutes. Songs like "Torture Torture", "This Heart Is Now Aluminum", and "Modulated Simulated" voice a very specific fear: That some enormous upheaval, like a bad break-up, will so overwhelm her that she might lose her emotional faculties and become a cold, metal-hearted machine. This panic is reflected in the music on Tronic Blanc, which pits live instrumentation against synthetic noises. On "What I Think Is Wrong", live drums compete with meowing keyboards, while on "You're Gonna See Me", real guitars counter canned beats. But Trout complicates that tension by making the drums sound preternaturally rigid and the guitars electronically sculpted, while her keyboard runs-- which have been a trademark at least since her days with the Clears (their one album is well worth seeking out and prefigures the current New Wave revival by almost a decade)-- often give the songs their heartbeat pulse. The line between the actual and the artificial constantly blurs, mirroring her confusion over real and false emotions. In a sense, Trout is Dr. Frankenstein and Tronic Blanc is the monster she's created in her studio lab. But complicating that literary comparison is the simple and overwhelming fact that despite the pain and fear the songs convey, Trout's music is exuberant, inventive, and full-to-bursting with ideas. As with previous projects, Trout's preferred m.o. is the restless, reckless conflation of genres: songs like "This Heart Is Now Aluminum", "Modulated Simulated", and "Little Bird" beat with garage-rock swagger and taut new wave grooves, while "Destroy Everything in Your Path" and "Next Girl Detour", with its shout-out chorus, swing with surf guitar momentum. Elsewhere, the DIY aesthetic lends "Little Bird" and "On the Way Downtown"-- about the dangers of the Mississippi River-- their rough immediacy, as if Trout recorded them as soon as the ideas popped into her head. All these elements belie the grim undertones of Tronic Blanc, suggesting that simple expression can be not only catharsis, but a powerful defense against the dehumanizing disappointments of other people. "

Sonny Smith

100 Records Volume II: I Miss the Jams

Rock

Paul Thompson

"When you're young... to say screw it all and chase your dreams is seen as courageous and brave," Sonny Smith reminds us in his song-poem "Broke Artist at the Turn of the Century". "People salute you. As you grow older, they no longer think of you as heroic. They see you as something else: selfish, foolish, or lost." Yeah, he's singing in character-- Hank Champion, descendent of Texan miners--  but surely that line in the sand between youthful ideologue to struggling something-or-other has occurred to Smith. Especially lately: The San Fran renaissance man-- artist, author, and bandleader-- recently completed work on his most elaborate project yet, a handbuilt jukebox jammed with 100 songs written by Sonny and recorded with help from a coterie of the Bay Area's garage-pop movers and shakers. Each tune is assigned a fake band name, each record its own custom sleeve with several groups even earning their own elaborate backstories; the mind reels at the scope of the project, the mastery of mixed media such an undertaking would require, the drive it'd take not to just say screw it and move onto something else. Here's this relatively unsung singer-songwriter crafting possibly the most complicated box set of all time, in an edition of one; brave, to be sure, but at least on paper, not too many degrees removed from foolish either. But Smith, as he did with his Sunsets' still-great Tomorrow Is Alright LP, makes it all seem too easy, and his affably eclectic jukebox-era songcraft and the formidable crew he's assembled for backup make I Miss the Jams-- the second, 10-song set culled from the original 100-- seem anything but foolhardy. With all the project's extra-musical elements, Smith and company could've almost been forgiven for half-assing the songs themselves; standing in a room with that jukebox, punching buttons for Earth Girl Helen Brown or Loud Fast Fools, the occasional noise splatter or big dumb lark would seem almost inevitable. But the 10 tracks on I Miss the Jams would suggest that Smith put the tunes at least on par with all the trappings, offering up a genial set of retro-minded rave-ups recorded in warm, punchy mid-fi. Smith's sly wit and remarkably natural way with songcraft are very much in evidence here as they were on the Sunsets' LP, but the songs here are simpler and, accordingly, more direct; the bawdy "I Wanna Do It", featuring a brassy vocal from the Sandwitches' Heidi Alexander doesn't mince words, while "Teen Age Thugs"-- its verses in Spanish, its chorus bored into your skull in English-- makes its point despite the potential language barrier. "Broke Artist" tells its tale of a skid row artist, his similarly hard-luck benefactor, and a run in on the wrong side of the tracks; Smith's best lyrics have a short-story quality about them anyway, and it's nice to see him finding yet another way to marry his many passions on wax. Perhaps understandably, the tunes do occasionally feel a tad like genre exercises-- "Ain't No Turnin Back" skiffles, "Back in the Day (I Can't Stand It)" is straight British invasion R&B-- but Smith's such an unflappably cool songwriter than even borrowed clothes fit him like a glove. Like Tomorrow Is Alright, I Miss the Jams is a remarkably blithe, laid-back work, the subtle charms of Smith's gently funny, sneakily subversive songs occasionally taking a listen or two to sort themselves out. But there's a durability there that belies the fairly easy reference-grabbing and the slightly shrugged-off attitude on display; Smith's fairly unshowy, trend-averse style may never win him the fanbase of some of his peppier, more hook-forward left coasters, but their clean lines and easy feel lends them a feeling of timelessness that seems like it ought to endure. For all the romantic notions of creative solitude in "Broke Artist", Smith couldn't have made his big box happen without a good showing from the smoldering San Francisco indie rock scene, who come out in droves here. Ty Segall takes it down a notch or four on the surfy "One Way Doomsday Trip to Nowhere", Smith and the Fresh & Onlys' Tim Cohen attempt to out-deadpan each other on the otherwise rollicking "Time to Split", and Kelley Stoltz fulfills his unspoken obligation to be on every San Fran record ever by appearing throughout. The spirit of community amongst this ragtag crew hasn't gone unremarked upon, but it's definitely in full force here; although it's certainly Smith's record at the core, it plays like a nice little overview of the San Francisco scene as it stands, their unusually fresh and forward-looking take on shuffly mod-pop. Through it all, Smith and company remain calm, totally uncowed by the task at hand. With friends like those willing to help flesh out songs like these, Smith's wild-eyed devotion to this absurdly laborious project makes all the sense in the world.

Artist: Sonny Smith, Album: 100 Records Volume II: I Miss the Jams, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: ""When you're young... to say screw it all and chase your dreams is seen as courageous and brave," Sonny Smith reminds us in his song-poem "Broke Artist at the Turn of the Century". "People salute you. As you grow older, they no longer think of you as heroic. They see you as something else: selfish, foolish, or lost." Yeah, he's singing in character-- Hank Champion, descendent of Texan miners--  but surely that line in the sand between youthful ideologue to struggling something-or-other has occurred to Smith. Especially lately: The San Fran renaissance man-- artist, author, and bandleader-- recently completed work on his most elaborate project yet, a handbuilt jukebox jammed with 100 songs written by Sonny and recorded with help from a coterie of the Bay Area's garage-pop movers and shakers. Each tune is assigned a fake band name, each record its own custom sleeve with several groups even earning their own elaborate backstories; the mind reels at the scope of the project, the mastery of mixed media such an undertaking would require, the drive it'd take not to just say screw it and move onto something else. Here's this relatively unsung singer-songwriter crafting possibly the most complicated box set of all time, in an edition of one; brave, to be sure, but at least on paper, not too many degrees removed from foolish either. But Smith, as he did with his Sunsets' still-great Tomorrow Is Alright LP, makes it all seem too easy, and his affably eclectic jukebox-era songcraft and the formidable crew he's assembled for backup make I Miss the Jams-- the second, 10-song set culled from the original 100-- seem anything but foolhardy. With all the project's extra-musical elements, Smith and company could've almost been forgiven for half-assing the songs themselves; standing in a room with that jukebox, punching buttons for Earth Girl Helen Brown or Loud Fast Fools, the occasional noise splatter or big dumb lark would seem almost inevitable. But the 10 tracks on I Miss the Jams would suggest that Smith put the tunes at least on par with all the trappings, offering up a genial set of retro-minded rave-ups recorded in warm, punchy mid-fi. Smith's sly wit and remarkably natural way with songcraft are very much in evidence here as they were on the Sunsets' LP, but the songs here are simpler and, accordingly, more direct; the bawdy "I Wanna Do It", featuring a brassy vocal from the Sandwitches' Heidi Alexander doesn't mince words, while "Teen Age Thugs"-- its verses in Spanish, its chorus bored into your skull in English-- makes its point despite the potential language barrier. "Broke Artist" tells its tale of a skid row artist, his similarly hard-luck benefactor, and a run in on the wrong side of the tracks; Smith's best lyrics have a short-story quality about them anyway, and it's nice to see him finding yet another way to marry his many passions on wax. Perhaps understandably, the tunes do occasionally feel a tad like genre exercises-- "Ain't No Turnin Back" skiffles, "Back in the Day (I Can't Stand It)" is straight British invasion R&B-- but Smith's such an unflappably cool songwriter than even borrowed clothes fit him like a glove. Like Tomorrow Is Alright, I Miss the Jams is a remarkably blithe, laid-back work, the subtle charms of Smith's gently funny, sneakily subversive songs occasionally taking a listen or two to sort themselves out. But there's a durability there that belies the fairly easy reference-grabbing and the slightly shrugged-off attitude on display; Smith's fairly unshowy, trend-averse style may never win him the fanbase of some of his peppier, more hook-forward left coasters, but their clean lines and easy feel lends them a feeling of timelessness that seems like it ought to endure. For all the romantic notions of creative solitude in "Broke Artist", Smith couldn't have made his big box happen without a good showing from the smoldering San Francisco indie rock scene, who come out in droves here. Ty Segall takes it down a notch or four on the surfy "One Way Doomsday Trip to Nowhere", Smith and the Fresh & Onlys' Tim Cohen attempt to out-deadpan each other on the otherwise rollicking "Time to Split", and Kelley Stoltz fulfills his unspoken obligation to be on every San Fran record ever by appearing throughout. The spirit of community amongst this ragtag crew hasn't gone unremarked upon, but it's definitely in full force here; although it's certainly Smith's record at the core, it plays like a nice little overview of the San Francisco scene as it stands, their unusually fresh and forward-looking take on shuffly mod-pop. Through it all, Smith and company remain calm, totally uncowed by the task at hand. With friends like those willing to help flesh out songs like these, Smith's wild-eyed devotion to this absurdly laborious project makes all the sense in the world."

Ursula Bogner

Recordings 1969-1988

Electronic

Marc Masters

According to German electronic musician Jan Jelinek, the homemade recordings of the late Ursula Bogner might never have been heard outside her immediate family had Jelinek not discovered them through a random encounter with Bogner's son. I say "according to" because rumors that Bogner's story is a hoax-- a cover for music Jelinek made himself-- have already circulated. Some cite the recordings' rather clean fidelity, odd for music purported to be this old and inexpensively produced; others claim to hear Jelenik's minimal style in Bogner's simple compositions. Then there's the fact that Recordings 1969-1988 is the first release on Jelinek's label, Faitiche-- a name the label's own website claims is a French/German hybrid meaning "factish," or "a combination of facts and fetishes [that] makes it obvious that the two have a common element of fabrication." Barring any denials or confirmations from Jelinek, that's probably all we'll ever know. His entertaining liner notes make Bogner's story seem plausible. Born in Germany in 1946, she became a pharmacist, wife, and mother by her early twenties, but still found spare time to study painting, printing, and electronic music. The latter interest led her to record her own synthesizer-based compositions on reel-to-reel tapes in a studio she built herself. Some songs survived intact, while others had to be assembled by Jelinek from individual, unmixed tracks. The truth of this tale is ultimately a minor concern, because as intriguing as the story is, the songs on Recordings 1969-1988 are much more interesting. Bogner's work fits squarely in the world of early electronic music-- the period from the late 1950s to the early 70s, when synthesizers were so new that using them to craft melodic songs and create abstract sound were both considered "experimental" pursuits. The king of this era was Raymond Scott, whose whimsical jazz was adopted for cartoon soundtracks, and whose electronic inventions resulted in radio commercials, Jim Henson film scores, and unique curios like Soothing Sounds for Baby, a series intended to help parents pacify their infants. Bogner's music bears much of Scott's playful spirit, finding common ground between nursery-rhyme simplicity and the absurd humor of abstract art. Some of these songs are practically direct Scott rip-offs, but you can also hear echoes of Scott contemporaries and descendants: the radio concoctions of Daphne Oram, the comic pop of Perry and Kingsley, the conceptual art of the Residents, even the post-rock repetition of Black Dice. Most of Recordings 1969-1988 sounds simultaneously like pop and art. Bogner's M.O. is to take a few simple loops-- rumbling bass, water-y plops, chirping squalls, laser-like blasts-- and overlap them, producing songs so sweet they'll make you laugh (the elephant-march opener "Begleitung für Tuba"), so repetitive they'll hypnotize you (the swinging "Inversion"), and so inventive they sound alien (the robotic "2 Ton"). At best, like on the jazzy "Punkte" and the cresting "Expansion", she crafts pulsing, organic melodies that burrow into memory like tree roots gripping the ground. I've often wondered why the music of Raymond Scott, as catchy as it could be, is frequently relegated to the status of odd curiosity or gear-geek niche. The same will certainly happen with Bogner, whoever she "really" was/is. And sure, the songs on Recordings 1969-1988 (as well as the included shot of her with big glasses and floppy bowl cut) have a tech-y, art-nerd sheen. But give these tunes time, and you may find yourself humming them randomly, much the way a 60s housewife might have unwittingly memorized Scott tunes via the background noise of his sneaky radio jingles.

Artist: Ursula Bogner, Album: Recordings 1969-1988, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "According to German electronic musician Jan Jelinek, the homemade recordings of the late Ursula Bogner might never have been heard outside her immediate family had Jelinek not discovered them through a random encounter with Bogner's son. I say "according to" because rumors that Bogner's story is a hoax-- a cover for music Jelinek made himself-- have already circulated. Some cite the recordings' rather clean fidelity, odd for music purported to be this old and inexpensively produced; others claim to hear Jelenik's minimal style in Bogner's simple compositions. Then there's the fact that Recordings 1969-1988 is the first release on Jelinek's label, Faitiche-- a name the label's own website claims is a French/German hybrid meaning "factish," or "a combination of facts and fetishes [that] makes it obvious that the two have a common element of fabrication." Barring any denials or confirmations from Jelinek, that's probably all we'll ever know. His entertaining liner notes make Bogner's story seem plausible. Born in Germany in 1946, she became a pharmacist, wife, and mother by her early twenties, but still found spare time to study painting, printing, and electronic music. The latter interest led her to record her own synthesizer-based compositions on reel-to-reel tapes in a studio she built herself. Some songs survived intact, while others had to be assembled by Jelinek from individual, unmixed tracks. The truth of this tale is ultimately a minor concern, because as intriguing as the story is, the songs on Recordings 1969-1988 are much more interesting. Bogner's work fits squarely in the world of early electronic music-- the period from the late 1950s to the early 70s, when synthesizers were so new that using them to craft melodic songs and create abstract sound were both considered "experimental" pursuits. The king of this era was Raymond Scott, whose whimsical jazz was adopted for cartoon soundtracks, and whose electronic inventions resulted in radio commercials, Jim Henson film scores, and unique curios like Soothing Sounds for Baby, a series intended to help parents pacify their infants. Bogner's music bears much of Scott's playful spirit, finding common ground between nursery-rhyme simplicity and the absurd humor of abstract art. Some of these songs are practically direct Scott rip-offs, but you can also hear echoes of Scott contemporaries and descendants: the radio concoctions of Daphne Oram, the comic pop of Perry and Kingsley, the conceptual art of the Residents, even the post-rock repetition of Black Dice. Most of Recordings 1969-1988 sounds simultaneously like pop and art. Bogner's M.O. is to take a few simple loops-- rumbling bass, water-y plops, chirping squalls, laser-like blasts-- and overlap them, producing songs so sweet they'll make you laugh (the elephant-march opener "Begleitung für Tuba"), so repetitive they'll hypnotize you (the swinging "Inversion"), and so inventive they sound alien (the robotic "2 Ton"). At best, like on the jazzy "Punkte" and the cresting "Expansion", she crafts pulsing, organic melodies that burrow into memory like tree roots gripping the ground. I've often wondered why the music of Raymond Scott, as catchy as it could be, is frequently relegated to the status of odd curiosity or gear-geek niche. The same will certainly happen with Bogner, whoever she "really" was/is. And sure, the songs on Recordings 1969-1988 (as well as the included shot of her with big glasses and floppy bowl cut) have a tech-y, art-nerd sheen. But give these tunes time, and you may find yourself humming them randomly, much the way a 60s housewife might have unwittingly memorized Scott tunes via the background noise of his sneaky radio jingles."

Hospital Ships

Lonely Twin

Pop/R&B

Stephen M. Deusner

On his MySpace page, Jordan Geiger gently razzes the indie press bio form, noting, "I only record in REMOTE CABINS in the WINTER in BROOKLYN with a CANADIAN COLLECTIVE as my backing band. I have overcome MANY TRAGEDIES! My PARENTS are FAMOUS!" Tongue-in-cheek and perhaps a little too 2008, that blurb suggests the perspective of a guy who considers himself an outsider: a Lawrence, Kansas, native who's so far removed from any popular scene, whether it's Brooklyn or San Francisco or Montreal, that he can only look on with chagrin and perhaps a bit of scorn. Lonely Twin, Geiger's second album as Hospital Ships, seems preoccupied with centers and margins, inclusions and exclusions: "Open up the door and let me in," he sings at the beginning of opener "Love or Death". "Open up the door, time's getting thin." Geiger is not really an outsider, though, at least not in the way that, say, Jandek is an outsider. Lawrence has always had a pretty good scene, and before launching Hospital Ships, Geiger did time in Shearwater, the Appleseed Cast, and the Minus Story. Members of those groups comprise his backing band on Lonely Twin, a big step from his 2008 LP, Oh Ramona, which was essentially Geiger solo. A multi-instrumentalist who favors keyboard and embellishments, he pulls out all the stops on these new songs, arranging and sometimes over-arranging them for maximum impact. The album is bursting with ideas, most of which work pretty well. On "Little Dead Leaf", he slams the drums up against the accordion in a skewed near-waltz, as though determined to keep the song afloat for a few more measures. The keyboards, however, sound like they're emanating from a ship that's just sunk beneath the waves, suggesting a sense of seasick unease. Because Geiger hails form the Midwest and sings in a high, androgynous voice that recalls late-90s indie rock, Hospital Ships bear repeated comparisons to the Flaming Lips (who inspired Geiger's stage name). Unlike that band, however, he doesn't excel as a maximalist, as the bombastic "Reprise" proves. Repeating its refrain to the point of tedium, the song strains for impact but never quite achieves it. Perhaps a more apt comparison is to the Woodstock Americana of Mercury Rev, who likewise specialize in immersive arrangements and nuanced falsetto. Geiger's songs are densely arranged, yet strikingly, almost uncomfortably intimate, especially the disquieting hush of "Phantom Limb" and the fatalistic march of "Carry On" before it erupts into a Biblical din. There's a dark undercurrent of dispossession coursing through these songs, which sound measured and conflicted even as they grasp for meaning and import. That generosity of spirit suggests Geiger knows that everyone, even Canadian collectives and celebrity kids, is an outsider looking in.

Artist: Hospital Ships, Album: Lonely Twin, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "On his MySpace page, Jordan Geiger gently razzes the indie press bio form, noting, "I only record in REMOTE CABINS in the WINTER in BROOKLYN with a CANADIAN COLLECTIVE as my backing band. I have overcome MANY TRAGEDIES! My PARENTS are FAMOUS!" Tongue-in-cheek and perhaps a little too 2008, that blurb suggests the perspective of a guy who considers himself an outsider: a Lawrence, Kansas, native who's so far removed from any popular scene, whether it's Brooklyn or San Francisco or Montreal, that he can only look on with chagrin and perhaps a bit of scorn. Lonely Twin, Geiger's second album as Hospital Ships, seems preoccupied with centers and margins, inclusions and exclusions: "Open up the door and let me in," he sings at the beginning of opener "Love or Death". "Open up the door, time's getting thin." Geiger is not really an outsider, though, at least not in the way that, say, Jandek is an outsider. Lawrence has always had a pretty good scene, and before launching Hospital Ships, Geiger did time in Shearwater, the Appleseed Cast, and the Minus Story. Members of those groups comprise his backing band on Lonely Twin, a big step from his 2008 LP, Oh Ramona, which was essentially Geiger solo. A multi-instrumentalist who favors keyboard and embellishments, he pulls out all the stops on these new songs, arranging and sometimes over-arranging them for maximum impact. The album is bursting with ideas, most of which work pretty well. On "Little Dead Leaf", he slams the drums up against the accordion in a skewed near-waltz, as though determined to keep the song afloat for a few more measures. The keyboards, however, sound like they're emanating from a ship that's just sunk beneath the waves, suggesting a sense of seasick unease. Because Geiger hails form the Midwest and sings in a high, androgynous voice that recalls late-90s indie rock, Hospital Ships bear repeated comparisons to the Flaming Lips (who inspired Geiger's stage name). Unlike that band, however, he doesn't excel as a maximalist, as the bombastic "Reprise" proves. Repeating its refrain to the point of tedium, the song strains for impact but never quite achieves it. Perhaps a more apt comparison is to the Woodstock Americana of Mercury Rev, who likewise specialize in immersive arrangements and nuanced falsetto. Geiger's songs are densely arranged, yet strikingly, almost uncomfortably intimate, especially the disquieting hush of "Phantom Limb" and the fatalistic march of "Carry On" before it erupts into a Biblical din. There's a dark undercurrent of dispossession coursing through these songs, which sound measured and conflicted even as they grasp for meaning and import. That generosity of spirit suggests Geiger knows that everyone, even Canadian collectives and celebrity kids, is an outsider looking in."

The Howling Hex

XI

Rock

Adam Moerder

Neil Michael Hagerty's long, tortuous career has laid waste to a lot of opening paragraphs, practically lobotomizing the reviewer before he/she can begin tackling his equally brain-melting music. I would even go so far as to suspect this Renaissance dude of fattening up his résumé intentionally, as a misdirect masking his ambitious yet sloppy music. Considering his two biggest inspirational sources-- classic and noise rock-- this equivocation makes sense: On the surface, Hagerty and his most recent band Howling Hex qualify as your standard meat'n'potatoes rock outfit, yet the group takes great pains in shrouding their potentially accessible sound with disjointed songwriting, arcane lyrics, and other artistic fuckery. And oh yeah, he was in Pussy Galore, Royal Trux, and has written two books as well as an obsessive Howling Hex blog, among other pursuits. 2006's Nightclub Version of the Eternal marked an unprecedented level of button-pushing for the Hex, as a string of seven minute-plus masturbatory jams frustrated even the staunchest defenders of the band's idiosyncrasies. Thankfully, XI's slicked-back tracks sound like reparations, Hagerty hedging his postmodern tics in favor of three-minute, riff-based rawk that reminds us this is the same rock zealot who convinced Pussy Galore to re-record Exile on Main St. back in the day. Hell, at some points, you might confuse this for a Spoon record. The meaty guitar/sax/horn trifecta on straightforward, swaggering pop rockers like "Ambulance Across the Street" and "Everybody's Doing It" avoids any protracted jams, the lyrics cogent enough to generate both pathos and a storyline in the latter: "Broken heart, broken home/ Now you're lyin' there all alone,/ In an ambulance across the street." Unfortunately, Hagerty can't go completely cold turkey from the jam band stuff. Even with shorter songs, the ideas still remain fairly loose and unfocused, not to mention the spoken word diarrhea of "Let Fridays Decide", a pretentious intermission that undermines much of the album's unexpected edibility. Considering the punch of dirtier, nastier garage rock nuggets like "Live Wire" and "Theme", I wish Hagerty sought and destroyed more Stooge-isms on this record. Still, the consistent Fogerty shuffles here make XI the most worthwhile Hex release since 2005's All-Night Fox, and a nice little twilight-of-career album-- assuming the sun will ever set on Hagerty's rampaging career.

Artist: The Howling Hex, Album: XI, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Neil Michael Hagerty's long, tortuous career has laid waste to a lot of opening paragraphs, practically lobotomizing the reviewer before he/she can begin tackling his equally brain-melting music. I would even go so far as to suspect this Renaissance dude of fattening up his résumé intentionally, as a misdirect masking his ambitious yet sloppy music. Considering his two biggest inspirational sources-- classic and noise rock-- this equivocation makes sense: On the surface, Hagerty and his most recent band Howling Hex qualify as your standard meat'n'potatoes rock outfit, yet the group takes great pains in shrouding their potentially accessible sound with disjointed songwriting, arcane lyrics, and other artistic fuckery. And oh yeah, he was in Pussy Galore, Royal Trux, and has written two books as well as an obsessive Howling Hex blog, among other pursuits. 2006's Nightclub Version of the Eternal marked an unprecedented level of button-pushing for the Hex, as a string of seven minute-plus masturbatory jams frustrated even the staunchest defenders of the band's idiosyncrasies. Thankfully, XI's slicked-back tracks sound like reparations, Hagerty hedging his postmodern tics in favor of three-minute, riff-based rawk that reminds us this is the same rock zealot who convinced Pussy Galore to re-record Exile on Main St. back in the day. Hell, at some points, you might confuse this for a Spoon record. The meaty guitar/sax/horn trifecta on straightforward, swaggering pop rockers like "Ambulance Across the Street" and "Everybody's Doing It" avoids any protracted jams, the lyrics cogent enough to generate both pathos and a storyline in the latter: "Broken heart, broken home/ Now you're lyin' there all alone,/ In an ambulance across the street." Unfortunately, Hagerty can't go completely cold turkey from the jam band stuff. Even with shorter songs, the ideas still remain fairly loose and unfocused, not to mention the spoken word diarrhea of "Let Fridays Decide", a pretentious intermission that undermines much of the album's unexpected edibility. Considering the punch of dirtier, nastier garage rock nuggets like "Live Wire" and "Theme", I wish Hagerty sought and destroyed more Stooge-isms on this record. Still, the consistent Fogerty shuffles here make XI the most worthwhile Hex release since 2005's All-Night Fox, and a nice little twilight-of-career album-- assuming the sun will ever set on Hagerty's rampaging career."

Metric

Fantasies

Rock

Rebecca Raber

It's been close to four years since Emily Haines' Metric released a new album-- their 2007 effort was actually just the long-delayed release of their shelved 2001 debut. In the meantime, Broken Social Scenester Haines, the baby-voiced heart and soul of the band, recorded and released an intimate solo album and its companion EP. Those solemn, torch song-like collections stripped her of Metric's new wave gloss, exposing raw nerves and more seasoned vocals. Guitarist James Shaw toured with BSS, allowing him to stretch his riffs beyond Metric's rudimentary pop chug. (He also expanded his sonic palette by producing the Lovely Feathers' debut.) And Metric's rhythm section became Bang Lime, a dance-y post-punk duo that picked up where Metric left off on Live It Out, leaving behind keyboards to mine rock riffage from candy-coated confections. So when the foursome finally reunited last year, they had grown beyond the charming borders of their pop sound, and their fourth album is all the better for it. Though Shaw's more nuanced guitars have supplanted synthesizers as the focal instrument, the change in aesthetic still seems credited to Haines. The newfound vulnerability and gravitas she explored on her solo work has found its way onto Fantasies, though instead of dark, death-obsessed sentiments, there is a dreamy quality here that eschews the vague, easy rhymes and lyrical polemics of past Metric records in favor of romance and sex. Metric are often compared to fellow BSS satellite Stars, but while that band's Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell get soggy on their slower moments, Haines embraces more personal sentiments on ballads "Blindness" and "Collect Call", whose stripped-down, twinkly arrangements keep Metric's glam side intact yet cut the inessential sugar and bombast. Further embracing their moody, minimal instincts on "Twilight Galaxy" created one of Fantasies' standouts. In the end however, Fantasies' other crowd-pleasers are, unsurprisingly, songs with big hooks, bursting choruses, and slick synths-- "Help I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse". The story here though is the album's simmering, intimate moments-- and despite the fanbase-building qualities of their new-wave past, the more the group embraces an inky, ambient future, the better it  could get.

Artist: Metric, Album: Fantasies, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "It's been close to four years since Emily Haines' Metric released a new album-- their 2007 effort was actually just the long-delayed release of their shelved 2001 debut. In the meantime, Broken Social Scenester Haines, the baby-voiced heart and soul of the band, recorded and released an intimate solo album and its companion EP. Those solemn, torch song-like collections stripped her of Metric's new wave gloss, exposing raw nerves and more seasoned vocals. Guitarist James Shaw toured with BSS, allowing him to stretch his riffs beyond Metric's rudimentary pop chug. (He also expanded his sonic palette by producing the Lovely Feathers' debut.) And Metric's rhythm section became Bang Lime, a dance-y post-punk duo that picked up where Metric left off on Live It Out, leaving behind keyboards to mine rock riffage from candy-coated confections. So when the foursome finally reunited last year, they had grown beyond the charming borders of their pop sound, and their fourth album is all the better for it. Though Shaw's more nuanced guitars have supplanted synthesizers as the focal instrument, the change in aesthetic still seems credited to Haines. The newfound vulnerability and gravitas she explored on her solo work has found its way onto Fantasies, though instead of dark, death-obsessed sentiments, there is a dreamy quality here that eschews the vague, easy rhymes and lyrical polemics of past Metric records in favor of romance and sex. Metric are often compared to fellow BSS satellite Stars, but while that band's Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell get soggy on their slower moments, Haines embraces more personal sentiments on ballads "Blindness" and "Collect Call", whose stripped-down, twinkly arrangements keep Metric's glam side intact yet cut the inessential sugar and bombast. Further embracing their moody, minimal instincts on "Twilight Galaxy" created one of Fantasies' standouts. In the end however, Fantasies' other crowd-pleasers are, unsurprisingly, songs with big hooks, bursting choruses, and slick synths-- "Help I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse". The story here though is the album's simmering, intimate moments-- and despite the fanbase-building qualities of their new-wave past, the more the group embraces an inky, ambient future, the better it  could get."

Clark

Totems Flare

Electronic

Brian Howe

Think about the basic properties of beat-oriented electronic music. It emphasizes dynamic action, feelings of speed, impressions of light-- extremes and intricacies of sensation. It tweaks your senses with creative deformations of time and space, with strictly engineered frameworks lurking beneath sleek or gaudy facades. And as Simon Reynolds credibly argued in Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy, it strives to create experiences instead of describing them. Doesn't it sound a lot like the state fair, and make it seem crazy that tinny speakers still blast mostly rock, rap, and country hits across the rides? Imagine Lindstrøm's slopes and plunges on your roller coaster; the Field's nested spins on the Tilt-A-Whirl. In an obscure corner of the midway, Chris Clark mans the funhouse. He lays out certain conditions-- dark twisty passageways, treacherous stairs, and moving platforms-- but doesn't suggest that you experience them in any particular way. His songs are divided into bizarre chambers of clashing design. He's the rare case where a heavy-handedly metaphorical approach like this seems defensible. In interviews, Clark holds forth at length on process and ideas while neatly sidestepping taxonomical points. He has his go-to tricks: His specialty is the cataclysmic anthem, cobbled together from homemade break beats, glitchy jags of Euro- and acid-house, pockets of concussive noise, honeycombed synth lines, and contoured masses of distortion, all piled up in lunging heaps of coarse texture. He really doesn't seem to make any type of music, which means that there's no background proposition or guideline, and metaphor might be the only way to talk about it. As in the funhouse, you have to make your own way through. We enter an unspoken contract with the funhouse: To be tripped, mocked, and have our skirts looked up in a spirit of good-natured mischief. It's the same with Clark, and at his best, he honors it. His greatest record, 2006's exquisitely convulsed Body Riddle, was full of spaces as deeply habitable as they were impossible. It was an alchemist's album-- violent where it naturally should have been tranquil (and vice-versa); corporeal where it should have been cerebral (ditto). The acid squelches of "Herzog" were weirdly serene and grounding, their ambient atmosphere charged with live-wire menace. It was, unquestionably, his most humane album. But the same body Clark celebrated in 2006 was trampled under the war-tank treads of last year's Turning Dragon, a fascinating but dyspeptic album that it's difficult to imagine anyone wanting to listen to very often. As on Turning Dragon, Clark's tricks are all in place on Totems Flare, but the abstracts that made Body Riddle great are spottily present. It lacks a certain tenderness or reticence, and there's no implication of a compact with the listener, an assurance that this inhospitable space is ultimately for their pleasure. Put it this way: You would probably decline to ride a roller coaster designed by the Clark of this album, not trusting that its promise of danger wouldn't be taken to its logical conclusion, the car separating from the tracks. Totems Flare regains a measure of hospitality from its predecessor, but it brings only one new idea to the table-- Clark's singing, which is only partially effective. It works pretty well when he pitches his deep, roughshod voice toward dilapidated grandeur: "Growls Garden" imagines Matthew Dear's Asa Breed as interpreted by Thomas Brinkmann. But his cyber-Teutonic turn on "Rainbow Voodoo" is a bit silly. Clark's voice works best when he uses it like just another sound source; say, as a stuttering, FX-laden pulse in "Look Into the Heart Now". Your attention is drawn to details like this because the compositions often feel under-imagined as songs. The aforementioned tracks make the first half of the album feel jumbled and cluttered. The fizzy syncopation of opener "Outside Plume" is enticing, but its lumbering synths and beat-dropping tangents thwart its momentum. Things do start coming together after the utilitarian vamp "Luxman Furs": "Totem Crackerjack" uses gusts of noise to enhance, not derail, its cadence, and has a confidently measured stride that carries it intelligibly from breakneck drums to delicate arpeggios. The home stretch has a satisfying continuity-- the revved-up but beatific "Future Daniel" runs into the rewinding ambiance of "Primary Balloon Landing"; the dark drive of "Talis" and "Suns of Temper" dissolves into the gentle guitar whorls of closer "Absence". That's how funhouses are supposed to work-- we know the chaos is an illusion, designed for our enjoyment by an orderly hand. Otherwise, they're just confusing and enervating.

Artist: Clark, Album: Totems Flare, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "Think about the basic properties of beat-oriented electronic music. It emphasizes dynamic action, feelings of speed, impressions of light-- extremes and intricacies of sensation. It tweaks your senses with creative deformations of time and space, with strictly engineered frameworks lurking beneath sleek or gaudy facades. And as Simon Reynolds credibly argued in Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy, it strives to create experiences instead of describing them. Doesn't it sound a lot like the state fair, and make it seem crazy that tinny speakers still blast mostly rock, rap, and country hits across the rides? Imagine Lindstrøm's slopes and plunges on your roller coaster; the Field's nested spins on the Tilt-A-Whirl. In an obscure corner of the midway, Chris Clark mans the funhouse. He lays out certain conditions-- dark twisty passageways, treacherous stairs, and moving platforms-- but doesn't suggest that you experience them in any particular way. His songs are divided into bizarre chambers of clashing design. He's the rare case where a heavy-handedly metaphorical approach like this seems defensible. In interviews, Clark holds forth at length on process and ideas while neatly sidestepping taxonomical points. He has his go-to tricks: His specialty is the cataclysmic anthem, cobbled together from homemade break beats, glitchy jags of Euro- and acid-house, pockets of concussive noise, honeycombed synth lines, and contoured masses of distortion, all piled up in lunging heaps of coarse texture. He really doesn't seem to make any type of music, which means that there's no background proposition or guideline, and metaphor might be the only way to talk about it. As in the funhouse, you have to make your own way through. We enter an unspoken contract with the funhouse: To be tripped, mocked, and have our skirts looked up in a spirit of good-natured mischief. It's the same with Clark, and at his best, he honors it. His greatest record, 2006's exquisitely convulsed Body Riddle, was full of spaces as deeply habitable as they were impossible. It was an alchemist's album-- violent where it naturally should have been tranquil (and vice-versa); corporeal where it should have been cerebral (ditto). The acid squelches of "Herzog" were weirdly serene and grounding, their ambient atmosphere charged with live-wire menace. It was, unquestionably, his most humane album. But the same body Clark celebrated in 2006 was trampled under the war-tank treads of last year's Turning Dragon, a fascinating but dyspeptic album that it's difficult to imagine anyone wanting to listen to very often. As on Turning Dragon, Clark's tricks are all in place on Totems Flare, but the abstracts that made Body Riddle great are spottily present. It lacks a certain tenderness or reticence, and there's no implication of a compact with the listener, an assurance that this inhospitable space is ultimately for their pleasure. Put it this way: You would probably decline to ride a roller coaster designed by the Clark of this album, not trusting that its promise of danger wouldn't be taken to its logical conclusion, the car separating from the tracks. Totems Flare regains a measure of hospitality from its predecessor, but it brings only one new idea to the table-- Clark's singing, which is only partially effective. It works pretty well when he pitches his deep, roughshod voice toward dilapidated grandeur: "Growls Garden" imagines Matthew Dear's Asa Breed as interpreted by Thomas Brinkmann. But his cyber-Teutonic turn on "Rainbow Voodoo" is a bit silly. Clark's voice works best when he uses it like just another sound source; say, as a stuttering, FX-laden pulse in "Look Into the Heart Now". Your attention is drawn to details like this because the compositions often feel under-imagined as songs. The aforementioned tracks make the first half of the album feel jumbled and cluttered. The fizzy syncopation of opener "Outside Plume" is enticing, but its lumbering synths and beat-dropping tangents thwart its momentum. Things do start coming together after the utilitarian vamp "Luxman Furs": "Totem Crackerjack" uses gusts of noise to enhance, not derail, its cadence, and has a confidently measured stride that carries it intelligibly from breakneck drums to delicate arpeggios. The home stretch has a satisfying continuity-- the revved-up but beatific "Future Daniel" runs into the rewinding ambiance of "Primary Balloon Landing"; the dark drive of "Talis" and "Suns of Temper" dissolves into the gentle guitar whorls of closer "Absence". That's how funhouses are supposed to work-- we know the chaos is an illusion, designed for our enjoyment by an orderly hand. Otherwise, they're just confusing and enervating."

Sturgill Simpson

A Sailor's Guide to Earth

Folk/Country

Corban Goble

Sturgill Simpson's 2014 sophomore release, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, dragged "outlaw country" into modern times with acid-tongued clarity and a world-weary sense of humor. Its perspective was so refreshing that other like-minded albums came to be: Chris Stapleton enlisted Metamodern producer Dave Cobb to craft his own revivalist release Traveller, which won the 2016 Grammy for Best Country Album. While Metamodern Sounds of Country Music is certainly a record that invited imitation, it's darker and deeper than Stapleton's award winner or even Jason Isbell's most lauded recent solo albums (also produced by Cobb), a sometimes-nihilistic opus that proclaims things like “Ain't no point of getting out of bed if you ain't livin' the dream" and declares hallucinogens like DMT as lenses with which to see the truths of existence. The combination of the vintage music and the album's contemporary subject matter made for one of the most memorable releases of the last five years. While Simpson could have easily milked a few records out of that glum sound and guaranteed industry adulations for decades, A Sailor's Guide to Earth represents a startling change in tone and presents a wealth of rewards for every creative risk. Instead of counting turtles and finding a voice in classic country—Simpson himself smirks at the notion that he is a modern Waylon Jennings, because he doesn't listen to Waylon Jennings' music, though the connection is by no means inaccurate—Simpson is doing something far more difficult. Embarking on song cycle that draw upon sounds and songwriting styles that aren't found on his first two records at all, Simpson draws from his time in the Navy, where he was stationed in Japan, and the record is framed as a sailor's letter home to his wife and newborn son. (It's loosely based on a letter his grandfather wrote his grandmother).  It's a deeply personal album that, while establishing Simpson as the defining songwriter of his class, displays an artistic growth that defies any sort of easy label. The premise—a concept album addressed to his own son and wife—might sound corny, but the result is a beautiful and earnest record that flips the defeatist subtext of Metamodern on its head. The moods on A Sailor's Guide to Earth are brighter than on Metamodern, and the instrumentation on songs like “Keep It Between the Lines"—much of it provided by Sharon Jones' backing band, the Dap-Kings—is denser, bolder, and more rhythmic than anything Simpson has steered previously. (Simpson produced the record himself, deciding to spend his Atlantic Records budget chasing his instincts to their logical extreme). At the climax of side A, Simpson tosses in a countrypolitan Nirvana cover; one of the LP's more jarring moments occurs when Simpson sings “Sell the kids for food" on an album addressed to his son. To watch Simpson stretch (and succeed) is thrilling. The back half of the album is less audacious, making room for more contemplative moments like the tender ballad "Oh Sarah." Simpson holds onto the sneaky cleverness that distinguished Metamodern—"Get high, play a little GoldenEye/ That old 64!" Simpson shouts on "Sea Stories," like he's fondly remembering an old Cadillac—while taking a completely different journey.  If Metamodern was Waylon Jennings eating tabs of acid on a Tennessee back porch, A Sailor’s Guide is something like the musical combination of Moby Dick and Elvis. A Sailor's Guide to Earth plants Simpson at the forefront of the current crop of artists living beneath the always-contentious "alt-country"  banner. But what's most striking is how it completely redefines Simpson's own career, and sets him on his own unique path. Metamodern became the subject of trendpieces, where critics and fans alike willingly read into the drugs-and-darkness subtext that Simpson has himself been reluctant to endorse. But A Sailor's Guide to Earth is such a rearrangement of Simpson's sonic universe that any previous categorization now seems out of date. His earlier records communicate a weariness, dedicated to the journey to whatever's at the end of that long white line, even if it's sorrow. A Sailor's Guide to Earth takes a trip somewhere entirely different and life-affirming.

Artist: Sturgill Simpson, Album: A Sailor's Guide to Earth, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Sturgill Simpson's 2014 sophomore release, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, dragged "outlaw country" into modern times with acid-tongued clarity and a world-weary sense of humor. Its perspective was so refreshing that other like-minded albums came to be: Chris Stapleton enlisted Metamodern producer Dave Cobb to craft his own revivalist release Traveller, which won the 2016 Grammy for Best Country Album. While Metamodern Sounds of Country Music is certainly a record that invited imitation, it's darker and deeper than Stapleton's award winner or even Jason Isbell's most lauded recent solo albums (also produced by Cobb), a sometimes-nihilistic opus that proclaims things like “Ain't no point of getting out of bed if you ain't livin' the dream" and declares hallucinogens like DMT as lenses with which to see the truths of existence. The combination of the vintage music and the album's contemporary subject matter made for one of the most memorable releases of the last five years. While Simpson could have easily milked a few records out of that glum sound and guaranteed industry adulations for decades, A Sailor's Guide to Earth represents a startling change in tone and presents a wealth of rewards for every creative risk. Instead of counting turtles and finding a voice in classic country—Simpson himself smirks at the notion that he is a modern Waylon Jennings, because he doesn't listen to Waylon Jennings' music, though the connection is by no means inaccurate—Simpson is doing something far more difficult. Embarking on song cycle that draw upon sounds and songwriting styles that aren't found on his first two records at all, Simpson draws from his time in the Navy, where he was stationed in Japan, and the record is framed as a sailor's letter home to his wife and newborn son. (It's loosely based on a letter his grandfather wrote his grandmother).  It's a deeply personal album that, while establishing Simpson as the defining songwriter of his class, displays an artistic growth that defies any sort of easy label. The premise—a concept album addressed to his own son and wife—might sound corny, but the result is a beautiful and earnest record that flips the defeatist subtext of Metamodern on its head. The moods on A Sailor's Guide to Earth are brighter than on Metamodern, and the instrumentation on songs like “Keep It Between the Lines"—much of it provided by Sharon Jones' backing band, the Dap-Kings—is denser, bolder, and more rhythmic than anything Simpson has steered previously. (Simpson produced the record himself, deciding to spend his Atlantic Records budget chasing his instincts to their logical extreme). At the climax of side A, Simpson tosses in a countrypolitan Nirvana cover; one of the LP's more jarring moments occurs when Simpson sings “Sell the kids for food" on an album addressed to his son. To watch Simpson stretch (and succeed) is thrilling. The back half of the album is less audacious, making room for more contemplative moments like the tender ballad "Oh Sarah." Simpson holds onto the sneaky cleverness that distinguished Metamodern—"Get high, play a little GoldenEye/ That old 64!" Simpson shouts on "Sea Stories," like he's fondly remembering an old Cadillac—while taking a completely different journey.  If Metamodern was Waylon Jennings eating tabs of acid on a Tennessee back porch, A Sailor’s Guide is something like the musical combination of Moby Dick and Elvis. A Sailor's Guide to Earth plants Simpson at the forefront of the current crop of artists living beneath the always-contentious "alt-country"  banner. But what's most striking is how it completely redefines Simpson's own career, and sets him on his own unique path. Metamodern became the subject of trendpieces, where critics and fans alike willingly read into the drugs-and-darkness subtext that Simpson has himself been reluctant to endorse. But A Sailor's Guide to Earth is such a rearrangement of Simpson's sonic universe that any previous categorization now seems out of date. His earlier records communicate a weariness, dedicated to the journey to whatever's at the end of that long white line, even if it's sorrow. A Sailor's Guide to Earth takes a trip somewhere entirely different and life-affirming."

Syd

Fin

Pop/R&B

Alex Frank

For being such a breezy new voice, Syd—the charismatic songwriter and performer at the center of R&B group the Internet—is unleashing her debut solo album with a curiously resolute title: Fin. The artist, born Sydney Bennett in Los Angeles, is just 24, part of a loose kinship of musicians, like Frank Ocean and her brother Taco, who rode into public consciousness with Odd Future and Tyler, the Creator (much of Odd Future’s early work was produced in Syd’s home studio, at her parent’s house). Though she and the Internet have released three albums together, it was the 2015 Ego Death that provided a breakthrough, gaining them a Grammy nomination and a certified smash in the Kaytranada-produced single “Girl.” Now she’s trying it out on her own, with an album of twelve slick hits that are the best proof yet of what she is capable of as an artist. Aren’t things just beginning? Fin is, indeed, a fresh start. Stepping away momentarily from the Internet finds her as comfortable and focused as she’s ever sounded. “This is my descent into the depth I want the band to get to,” she told the FADER last year. “For me, this is like an in-between thing—maybe get a song on the radio, maybe make some money, have some new shit to perform.” Working with a variety of superstar producers, like MeLo-X and Hit-Boy, she leans on her different influences—boastful hip-hop, hippie neo-soul, sensual R&B—without ever losing the thread that ties them together: her inventive songwriting and magnetic personality, which leaps from the speakers every time she opens her mouth. Syd has perfected a pose, a slouching shrug and studied distance that makes her appealing, if a little remote. On Fin, it’s better defined than it ever has been. She uses this bemused vantage point to reinvigorate some R&B archetypes, inhabiting them and winking slightly at the same time. The opening number, “Shake Em Off,” is all dirt-off-your-shoulders bravado: “Young star in the making/Swear they sleeping on me” she sings casually. Track two is called “Know,” and it is an Aaliyah bop, with Syd singing—in the airiest part of her vocal register and over a sputtering beat—about keeping a hook-up hidden away from the public. “Got Her Own” is a playful gay flip on the theme of loving a girl for her independence and ambition. On a quick sensual interlude called “Drown in It,” Syd sounds as proudly nasty as Ty Dolla $ign when she promises to “Swim in it/Dive in it/Drown in it/Hide in it, babe.” And there is “Body,” a minimalist moment that’s sole aim seems to be uncomplicated sensuality; as she told Zane Lowe in a recent interview, she just wanted it to be the “baby-making anthem of 2017.” This is a demonstrably cool album, but it’s hot when it needs to be, and gay listeners (like myself) will be psyched to have songs that are romantic and sexy but do not belabor the fact that they are sung from one woman to another, manifested by an artist who sounds entirely comfortable with her persona and talent. On the final track, the revealingly titled “Insecurities,” she shows that there is, in fact, another side to her beneath the relaxed exterior: a woman who may sound self-assured, but who gets stuck in the same toxic bullshit that so many of us do, in this case a girl she loves with all her heart who can’t return the favor. Here, she sounds a little beleaguered and hesitant, singing, at first, about packed suitcases but an inability to leave. “You can thank my insecurities,” she sings. “They’re the reason I was down so long.” It’s a welcome omen that there’s deeper psychological anxieties for her to explore on the next album, and I’d love to hear more about that more vulnerable Syd. But by the end of the track, we’re back to where we started, and the song ends with a stiff upper lip and a casual middle finger, melting into a pool of psychedelia. On Fin, what Syd seems to want to portray most of all is an admirable, inspirational confidence, a young woman singing and rapping while totally at ease with the beats that please her most.

Artist: Syd, Album: Fin, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "For being such a breezy new voice, Syd—the charismatic songwriter and performer at the center of R&B group the Internet—is unleashing her debut solo album with a curiously resolute title: Fin. The artist, born Sydney Bennett in Los Angeles, is just 24, part of a loose kinship of musicians, like Frank Ocean and her brother Taco, who rode into public consciousness with Odd Future and Tyler, the Creator (much of Odd Future’s early work was produced in Syd’s home studio, at her parent’s house). Though she and the Internet have released three albums together, it was the 2015 Ego Death that provided a breakthrough, gaining them a Grammy nomination and a certified smash in the Kaytranada-produced single “Girl.” Now she’s trying it out on her own, with an album of twelve slick hits that are the best proof yet of what she is capable of as an artist. Aren’t things just beginning? Fin is, indeed, a fresh start. Stepping away momentarily from the Internet finds her as comfortable and focused as she’s ever sounded. “This is my descent into the depth I want the band to get to,” she told the FADER last year. “For me, this is like an in-between thing—maybe get a song on the radio, maybe make some money, have some new shit to perform.” Working with a variety of superstar producers, like MeLo-X and Hit-Boy, she leans on her different influences—boastful hip-hop, hippie neo-soul, sensual R&B—without ever losing the thread that ties them together: her inventive songwriting and magnetic personality, which leaps from the speakers every time she opens her mouth. Syd has perfected a pose, a slouching shrug and studied distance that makes her appealing, if a little remote. On Fin, it’s better defined than it ever has been. She uses this bemused vantage point to reinvigorate some R&B archetypes, inhabiting them and winking slightly at the same time. The opening number, “Shake Em Off,” is all dirt-off-your-shoulders bravado: “Young star in the making/Swear they sleeping on me” she sings casually. Track two is called “Know,” and it is an Aaliyah bop, with Syd singing—in the airiest part of her vocal register and over a sputtering beat—about keeping a hook-up hidden away from the public. “Got Her Own” is a playful gay flip on the theme of loving a girl for her independence and ambition. On a quick sensual interlude called “Drown in It,” Syd sounds as proudly nasty as Ty Dolla $ign when she promises to “Swim in it/Dive in it/Drown in it/Hide in it, babe.” And there is “Body,” a minimalist moment that’s sole aim seems to be uncomplicated sensuality; as she told Zane Lowe in a recent interview, she just wanted it to be the “baby-making anthem of 2017.” This is a demonstrably cool album, but it’s hot when it needs to be, and gay listeners (like myself) will be psyched to have songs that are romantic and sexy but do not belabor the fact that they are sung from one woman to another, manifested by an artist who sounds entirely comfortable with her persona and talent. On the final track, the revealingly titled “Insecurities,” she shows that there is, in fact, another side to her beneath the relaxed exterior: a woman who may sound self-assured, but who gets stuck in the same toxic bullshit that so many of us do, in this case a girl she loves with all her heart who can’t return the favor. Here, she sounds a little beleaguered and hesitant, singing, at first, about packed suitcases but an inability to leave. “You can thank my insecurities,” she sings. “They’re the reason I was down so long.” It’s a welcome omen that there’s deeper psychological anxieties for her to explore on the next album, and I’d love to hear more about that more vulnerable Syd. But by the end of the track, we’re back to where we started, and the song ends with a stiff upper lip and a casual middle finger, melting into a pool of psychedelia. On Fin, what Syd seems to want to portray most of all is an admirable, inspirational confidence, a young woman singing and rapping while totally at ease with the beats that please her most."

Javelin

Jamz n Jemz

Electronic,Rock

Zach Kelly

It takes some guts to structure your album around the J Dilla template, where you ask people to chase after a couple dozen downloads for a single LP. Though each cut hovers around the two-minute mark on records like this, they all make a lot more sense in the context of the whole. As we trek deeper into the jungles of "Long Tail" music consumption, this kind of structure feels almost brash. We're almost a decade into the "return of the single" era, but those who craft and consume albums as front-to-back endeavors-- even those built from fragments-- wear it as a badge of honor, resuscitating that nerdy elitism of eras that championed the impossibility of track-skipping. Javelin, comprised of New York City crate-rats George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, certainly do their share of jumping around, never letting their listener get too close to an idea or a groove for very long. Jamz n Jemz, a CD-R they've been distributing at gigs, is flecked with brilliant little vignettes-- almost every one a gem, many of them certifiable jams-- that argue for the notion of a million little pieces coming together to make something much larger. Whether or not Jamz n Jemz achieves this in the way Javelin intended is somewhat moot; from a distance, the 17 ideas presented here aren't terribly cohesive and they certainly don't flow. But a larger statement looms: At a time when most people are DJs, it can be rewarding to simply hit "Play" and let the professionals handle it. David Byrne certainly gets it. His Luaka Bop imprint recently signed Javelin, immediately giving the guys control of the label's podcast to debut their Andean Ocean Tape, a curiously sly concoction of found sounds and nautically dizzying loops and breaks that reference everything from beach-psych to diet-dub, all outfitted with delightfully strange ticks, grumbles, and seagull squawks. Jamz n Jemz has the good sense to dig deeper, exploring sounds even more elemental and dance-ready. Javelin come over as hardcore cratediggers in the vein of artists like Quiet Village. The knob-twiddling is scarce and utterly unrecognizable amongst the patchwork of dime-store samples (their official band URL is dollarbinsofthefuture.com). It might be dubious to try and pinpoint exactly where and how much work is being put into these cut and paste jobs, but Javelin seem more like puzzle-solvers than puzzle-makers. The mystery only benefits the artistry of stutter-step weirdo hip-hop cuts like "Susie Cues" and "Digits" (an indictment of poor cellphone etiquette in movie theaters-- Javelin just earned a special place in my heart), whereas more complete and meticulously "worked" cuts like "Oh Centra" (a terrifically playful bit of 8-bit disco-hop) and the terribly titled "Lindsay Brohan" show signs of real musical prowess beyond having way too much fun with an MPC. Even at its most irreverent (check out the melting Elvis impersonator on "Like Wood Would" or the 1970s car chase flick nodding "The Merkin Jerk (Take Three)"), Jamz n Jemz becomes less and less of an "idea" record than a simple celebration of reference, as magnetic opposites marry in the most familiar of ways. At a time when it seems like everyone's roommate is cooking up bargain-bin symphonies, Javelin stand out like two heady chefs, turning canned food classics into tiny little pieces of inspired, inverted gourmet reimaginings.

Artist: Javelin, Album: Jamz n Jemz, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "It takes some guts to structure your album around the J Dilla template, where you ask people to chase after a couple dozen downloads for a single LP. Though each cut hovers around the two-minute mark on records like this, they all make a lot more sense in the context of the whole. As we trek deeper into the jungles of "Long Tail" music consumption, this kind of structure feels almost brash. We're almost a decade into the "return of the single" era, but those who craft and consume albums as front-to-back endeavors-- even those built from fragments-- wear it as a badge of honor, resuscitating that nerdy elitism of eras that championed the impossibility of track-skipping. Javelin, comprised of New York City crate-rats George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, certainly do their share of jumping around, never letting their listener get too close to an idea or a groove for very long. Jamz n Jemz, a CD-R they've been distributing at gigs, is flecked with brilliant little vignettes-- almost every one a gem, many of them certifiable jams-- that argue for the notion of a million little pieces coming together to make something much larger. Whether or not Jamz n Jemz achieves this in the way Javelin intended is somewhat moot; from a distance, the 17 ideas presented here aren't terribly cohesive and they certainly don't flow. But a larger statement looms: At a time when most people are DJs, it can be rewarding to simply hit "Play" and let the professionals handle it. David Byrne certainly gets it. His Luaka Bop imprint recently signed Javelin, immediately giving the guys control of the label's podcast to debut their Andean Ocean Tape, a curiously sly concoction of found sounds and nautically dizzying loops and breaks that reference everything from beach-psych to diet-dub, all outfitted with delightfully strange ticks, grumbles, and seagull squawks. Jamz n Jemz has the good sense to dig deeper, exploring sounds even more elemental and dance-ready. Javelin come over as hardcore cratediggers in the vein of artists like Quiet Village. The knob-twiddling is scarce and utterly unrecognizable amongst the patchwork of dime-store samples (their official band URL is dollarbinsofthefuture.com). It might be dubious to try and pinpoint exactly where and how much work is being put into these cut and paste jobs, but Javelin seem more like puzzle-solvers than puzzle-makers. The mystery only benefits the artistry of stutter-step weirdo hip-hop cuts like "Susie Cues" and "Digits" (an indictment of poor cellphone etiquette in movie theaters-- Javelin just earned a special place in my heart), whereas more complete and meticulously "worked" cuts like "Oh Centra" (a terrifically playful bit of 8-bit disco-hop) and the terribly titled "Lindsay Brohan" show signs of real musical prowess beyond having way too much fun with an MPC. Even at its most irreverent (check out the melting Elvis impersonator on "Like Wood Would" or the 1970s car chase flick nodding "The Merkin Jerk (Take Three)"), Jamz n Jemz becomes less and less of an "idea" record than a simple celebration of reference, as magnetic opposites marry in the most familiar of ways. At a time when it seems like everyone's roommate is cooking up bargain-bin symphonies, Javelin stand out like two heady chefs, turning canned food classics into tiny little pieces of inspired, inverted gourmet reimaginings."

Pentangle

The Time Has Come: 1967-73

Rock

Matthew Murphy

Along with the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention, Pentangle was one of the major pioneering forces to first put British folk-rock on the map in the 1960s, and their distinctive hybrid of folk, blues, and jazz has-- for better and sometimes worse-- subsequently inspired countless musicians to follow their progressive trail. Despite their legion of disciples, however, their true influence has always been tempered by the fact that few groups could hope to duplicate Pentangle's unique chemistry or sheer instrumental prowess, attributes which are in lavish display on the mammoth 4xCD retrospective The Time Has Come: 1967-73. Pentangle's music has been frequently anthologized over the years, including-- confusingly enough-- on two separate compilations entitled Light Flight. And while it can't be said to be entirely comprehensive, The Time Has Come does provide a balanced portrait of the freewheeling group's six-year career. Extensively illustrated and annotated, the collection features excerpts from each of their studio albums, re-mastered singles and B-sides, as well as the requisite passel of previously unreleased live tracks and rarities. Containing nearly five hours of music and packed with a variety of astonishing curios, the set ultimately manages to feel rather definitive, and does well to capture Pentangle in all their brilliance, self-indulgent excess, and period splendor. By the time Pentangle formed in 1967, guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were already well-established talents on the English folk scene. The two had previously issued an album together as a duo, utilizing what became known as a "folk baroque" fingerpicking style that drew heavily upon the influence of innovative British folk guitarist Davy Graham. Joining them to round out Pentangle was vocalist Jacqui McShee, who was also an experienced performer on the folk circuit, and the veteran jazz rhythm section of double bass player Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox. Once so assembled, Pentangle's core quintet were capable of an extraordinary versatility, and quickly proved themselves equally adept at covering 17th century English folk ballads, Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", or the Jaynetts girl-group classic "Sally Go Round the Roses". Moreover, Pentangle's ability to transverse musical boundaries soon became so seamless and organic as to be almost invisible, as when Renbourn delicately weaves an exotic sitar line through the group's version of the traditional English ballad "Cruel Sister". And though many of their bold stylistic moves have since been rendered into coffeehouse cliché by lesser talents, there are still many moments of dazzling invention and surprise to be discovered all across The Time Has Come. The collection's first two discs are assembled chronologically, interspersing album tracks with various outtakes, BBC sessions, and non-album rarities. This arrangement surely caused the set's curators to make some tough calls and quirky decisions, such as leaving off the studio versions of many of Pentangle's better known songs ("Let No Man Steal Your Thyme", "Sally Free and Easy") and drastically editing down their 1970 side-long epic "Jack Orion." Nevertheless these two discs do an admirable job illustrating the gradual evolution of Pentangle's remarkable chemistry. On early tracks "Waltz" and "Travelling Song"-- both recorded at the time of Pentangle's 1968 debut album-- the group sound tentative, feeling its way around incorporating its diverse sonic elements. By the time of such 1969's Basket of Light and 1970's Cruel Sister, however, Pentangle were operating as an incomparable whole, with McShee's frequently sublime vocals perfectly complemented by Jansch and Renbourn's atmospheric guitar work. The group's easy compatibility is particularly evident on the set's live material, such as on a version of Basket of Light's "Hunting Song" which was recorded at BBC for John Peel's Top Gear. Longtime Pentangle fans will likely have something of a mixed reaction to The Time Has Come's third disc, which consists of a live concert recorded at Royal Festival Hall in June, 1968. Twelve of the concert's songs were originally released on 1968's Sweet Child double album, and seven others were included on a 2001 re-master of the album. Here the tracks have been re-sequenced and cleaned up, with much of the between-song banter and applause removed. Though this remains a solid performance, this set might feel a tad redundant to anyone already familiar with Sweet Child, and more impatient listeners might find themselves wishing the producers had also seen fit to edit out a bass solo or two. The Time Has Come reserves its real treasure trove for last, as the final disc is entirely filled with previously unreleased material, most of which is of an uncommonly high caliber. Several of these unearthed tracks were recorded live for various TV broadcasts between 1970-72, and find the group at their most dynamic and expansive. In fact, on some of these performances, Pentangle begin to almost resemble an British response to the Grateful Dead, an impression that is further amplified by their live version of the longtime Dead staple "Cold Rain and Snow". This comparison is likely most valid on the live, 19-minute interpretation of the group's signature "Pentangling", whose electric figures and wayfaring improvisations can sound much more in line with the Avalon Ballroom than the English countryside. Most curious of all is the set's inclusion of not one but two title works from film soundtracks, "Tam Lin" and "Christian the Lion", that were digitally pieced together from individual verses used as in the films as a narrative device. Needless to say, the practice of using ethereal folk songs as a cinematic framing device is one that has sadly gone out of fashion, and the presence of these offbeat tracks reinforces the impression of Pentangle as a group who were wholly and intrinsically of their time. And though echoes of the group's artistic legacy still resonate in Jansch's current solo work, and in the music of such younger artists as Espers, Devendra Banhart, and Vetiver, The Time Has Come should stand as further evidence that we'll not soon see Pentangle's like again.

Artist: Pentangle, Album: The Time Has Come: 1967-73, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "Along with the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention, Pentangle was one of the major pioneering forces to first put British folk-rock on the map in the 1960s, and their distinctive hybrid of folk, blues, and jazz has-- for better and sometimes worse-- subsequently inspired countless musicians to follow their progressive trail. Despite their legion of disciples, however, their true influence has always been tempered by the fact that few groups could hope to duplicate Pentangle's unique chemistry or sheer instrumental prowess, attributes which are in lavish display on the mammoth 4xCD retrospective The Time Has Come: 1967-73. Pentangle's music has been frequently anthologized over the years, including-- confusingly enough-- on two separate compilations entitled Light Flight. And while it can't be said to be entirely comprehensive, The Time Has Come does provide a balanced portrait of the freewheeling group's six-year career. Extensively illustrated and annotated, the collection features excerpts from each of their studio albums, re-mastered singles and B-sides, as well as the requisite passel of previously unreleased live tracks and rarities. Containing nearly five hours of music and packed with a variety of astonishing curios, the set ultimately manages to feel rather definitive, and does well to capture Pentangle in all their brilliance, self-indulgent excess, and period splendor. By the time Pentangle formed in 1967, guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were already well-established talents on the English folk scene. The two had previously issued an album together as a duo, utilizing what became known as a "folk baroque" fingerpicking style that drew heavily upon the influence of innovative British folk guitarist Davy Graham. Joining them to round out Pentangle was vocalist Jacqui McShee, who was also an experienced performer on the folk circuit, and the veteran jazz rhythm section of double bass player Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox. Once so assembled, Pentangle's core quintet were capable of an extraordinary versatility, and quickly proved themselves equally adept at covering 17th century English folk ballads, Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", or the Jaynetts girl-group classic "Sally Go Round the Roses". Moreover, Pentangle's ability to transverse musical boundaries soon became so seamless and organic as to be almost invisible, as when Renbourn delicately weaves an exotic sitar line through the group's version of the traditional English ballad "Cruel Sister". And though many of their bold stylistic moves have since been rendered into coffeehouse cliché by lesser talents, there are still many moments of dazzling invention and surprise to be discovered all across The Time Has Come. The collection's first two discs are assembled chronologically, interspersing album tracks with various outtakes, BBC sessions, and non-album rarities. This arrangement surely caused the set's curators to make some tough calls and quirky decisions, such as leaving off the studio versions of many of Pentangle's better known songs ("Let No Man Steal Your Thyme", "Sally Free and Easy") and drastically editing down their 1970 side-long epic "Jack Orion." Nevertheless these two discs do an admirable job illustrating the gradual evolution of Pentangle's remarkable chemistry. On early tracks "Waltz" and "Travelling Song"-- both recorded at the time of Pentangle's 1968 debut album-- the group sound tentative, feeling its way around incorporating its diverse sonic elements. By the time of such 1969's Basket of Light and 1970's Cruel Sister, however, Pentangle were operating as an incomparable whole, with McShee's frequently sublime vocals perfectly complemented by Jansch and Renbourn's atmospheric guitar work. The group's easy compatibility is particularly evident on the set's live material, such as on a version of Basket of Light's "Hunting Song" which was recorded at BBC for John Peel's Top Gear. Longtime Pentangle fans will likely have something of a mixed reaction to The Time Has Come's third disc, which consists of a live concert recorded at Royal Festival Hall in June, 1968. Twelve of the concert's songs were originally released on 1968's Sweet Child double album, and seven others were included on a 2001 re-master of the album. Here the tracks have been re-sequenced and cleaned up, with much of the between-song banter and applause removed. Though this remains a solid performance, this set might feel a tad redundant to anyone already familiar with Sweet Child, and more impatient listeners might find themselves wishing the producers had also seen fit to edit out a bass solo or two. The Time Has Come reserves its real treasure trove for last, as the final disc is entirely filled with previously unreleased material, most of which is of an uncommonly high caliber. Several of these unearthed tracks were recorded live for various TV broadcasts between 1970-72, and find the group at their most dynamic and expansive. In fact, on some of these performances, Pentangle begin to almost resemble an British response to the Grateful Dead, an impression that is further amplified by their live version of the longtime Dead staple "Cold Rain and Snow". This comparison is likely most valid on the live, 19-minute interpretation of the group's signature "Pentangling", whose electric figures and wayfaring improvisations can sound much more in line with the Avalon Ballroom than the English countryside. Most curious of all is the set's inclusion of not one but two title works from film soundtracks, "Tam Lin" and "Christian the Lion", that were digitally pieced together from individual verses used as in the films as a narrative device. Needless to say, the practice of using ethereal folk songs as a cinematic framing device is one that has sadly gone out of fashion, and the presence of these offbeat tracks reinforces the impression of Pentangle as a group who were wholly and intrinsically of their time. And though echoes of the group's artistic legacy still resonate in Jansch's current solo work, and in the music of such younger artists as Espers, Devendra Banhart, and Vetiver, The Time Has Come should stand as further evidence that we'll not soon see Pentangle's like again."

Bohren & Der Club of Gore

Dolores

Jazz

Mike Powell

Four drunk Germans formed Bohren & der Club of Gore one night in 1992 with a single goal: "The audience," Morten Gass told the metal zine Maelstrom in 2003, "must have the feeling of being in a grave." Naming the band inspired debate. "Bohren" means "drill," like what people do to other people in horror movies; "gore" means "gore," like what seeps out of people when they're drilled, and like a Dutch instrumental band they all quite liked; and "and der club of" made them think of jazz. Jazz, they agreed, was cool. It was urban and dangerous-- they liked the idea of it. Stated influences were Black Sabbath and Sade. "As I said," Gass confessed, "we were drunk." Cheers to auspicious beginnings. The music Bohren makes is slow, quiet, and pretty. It's too structured to be jazz and too vivid to be ambient, but it taps into the ideals of both. They play their instruments like they're worried of waking babies asleep at their feet. Christoph Clöser's saxophone parts leak from the bell of his horn. You can almost see Morten Gass wince as his fingers sink into his keyboard. Drummer Thorsten Benning lives with the task of supressing every teenage dream of beating the shit out his drumkit like the wild animal I suspect he sometimes wants to be. But in near-stasis, there's drama-- each beat becomes a cliffhanger for the next. Bohren don't play dead, they play mortally wounded. They're the gentlest black metal band on earth. They're anti-social cocktail music. They're exotica, but only if we agree that vacant alleys are exotic places and lying face down in one of them would constitute a vacation. The restraint in their music creates as much tension as it does calm. At best-- 2004's Black Earth-- Bohren sound like they're passing through darkness, palms out and eyes open, in search of a lightswitch. It's the same eerie, bloodless quality of ersatz jazz that David Lynch depended on for club scenes in Mullholland Drive or Audrey Horne's twirling in "Twin Peaks", where the mellow becomes queasy and relaxation sours into uncertainty – when what's supposed to relax you starts to actively upset you. Creeps? First-rate. But they're strangely affectionate, too, a quality brought to the fore on Dolores, their sixth and latest full-length. Absorb the title and cover art-- a woman's name, glowing; moths pouring from the neck of some sexless, celestial being. It's cozy, leaden music. Songs have shortened to three or four minutes. Some of the melodies aren't just memorable, but actually hummable. Call this their "standards" album-- More Near-Static Ballads of Death's Sweet Embrace. Bohren aren't fabulous enough to be goths. They keep it austere. The grave might be a lonely place, but the dead always downplay its warmth.

Artist: Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Album: Dolores, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Four drunk Germans formed Bohren & der Club of Gore one night in 1992 with a single goal: "The audience," Morten Gass told the metal zine Maelstrom in 2003, "must have the feeling of being in a grave." Naming the band inspired debate. "Bohren" means "drill," like what people do to other people in horror movies; "gore" means "gore," like what seeps out of people when they're drilled, and like a Dutch instrumental band they all quite liked; and "and der club of" made them think of jazz. Jazz, they agreed, was cool. It was urban and dangerous-- they liked the idea of it. Stated influences were Black Sabbath and Sade. "As I said," Gass confessed, "we were drunk." Cheers to auspicious beginnings. The music Bohren makes is slow, quiet, and pretty. It's too structured to be jazz and too vivid to be ambient, but it taps into the ideals of both. They play their instruments like they're worried of waking babies asleep at their feet. Christoph Clöser's saxophone parts leak from the bell of his horn. You can almost see Morten Gass wince as his fingers sink into his keyboard. Drummer Thorsten Benning lives with the task of supressing every teenage dream of beating the shit out his drumkit like the wild animal I suspect he sometimes wants to be. But in near-stasis, there's drama-- each beat becomes a cliffhanger for the next. Bohren don't play dead, they play mortally wounded. They're the gentlest black metal band on earth. They're anti-social cocktail music. They're exotica, but only if we agree that vacant alleys are exotic places and lying face down in one of them would constitute a vacation. The restraint in their music creates as much tension as it does calm. At best-- 2004's Black Earth-- Bohren sound like they're passing through darkness, palms out and eyes open, in search of a lightswitch. It's the same eerie, bloodless quality of ersatz jazz that David Lynch depended on for club scenes in Mullholland Drive or Audrey Horne's twirling in "Twin Peaks", where the mellow becomes queasy and relaxation sours into uncertainty – when what's supposed to relax you starts to actively upset you. Creeps? First-rate. But they're strangely affectionate, too, a quality brought to the fore on Dolores, their sixth and latest full-length. Absorb the title and cover art-- a woman's name, glowing; moths pouring from the neck of some sexless, celestial being. It's cozy, leaden music. Songs have shortened to three or four minutes. Some of the melodies aren't just memorable, but actually hummable. Call this their "standards" album-- More Near-Static Ballads of Death's Sweet Embrace. Bohren aren't fabulous enough to be goths. They keep it austere. The grave might be a lonely place, but the dead always downplay its warmth."

Quix*o*tic

Mortal Mirror

Electronic,Pop/R&B,Rock

Eric Carr

O, Canada, we need to sit down for some face time, just you and me. How's everything? How are all the trees? Good? Glad to hear it. How's the old national self-esteem doing? Only reason I ask is that I've been seeing all these "Made in Canada" stickers on things lately. This little plea for attention just seems kinda... desperate, you dig? Don't worry, man; we haven't forgotten about you. Do you feel like we've been neglecting you down here? Why, suddenly, is there this need to be all like, "Hey! Remember Canada? We make things!" It just worries me, that's all. You're like a washed up actor desperate for work, attaching your name to anything that crosses the border. Have you heard some of these CDs you've given your precious Canadian blessings to? Well, it happens that I've got one of the steaming piles that you've so lovingly manufactured right here. It's Mortal Mirror by Quixotic, and if it isn't a reason to reconsider pimping out your national pride on just anything, I don't know what is. I was kind of worried from the get-go-- I don't need to tell you that the all-girls-plus-testosterone-infused-drummer thing is rapidly flirting with becoming another indie-rock cliché. But at least Mick Barr plays bass instead of drums, and Christina and Mira Billotte are sisters, so it's kind of a wash. The album art, a photo by Barbara Billotte, immediately made me wonder just when it was that Kill Rock Stars began signing Goth acts, but, ever conscientious and objective, I simply recalled that no matter how famous Richard Meltzer might be, you can't judge an album solely by its cover art. O, Canada, if only my fears had been dispelled. I was hoping my concerns were unfounded, but it was downhill from the moment I spun the disc. You should have nipped this in the bud, Canada-- I didn't know what I was in for. "Ice Cream Sundae" plodded lifelessly at me, nothing but irritatingly repetitive bass and off-key, apathetic vocals. It was stark, minimal, and frightfully unpleasant, and even though it was punctuated with a playful guitar solo motif, that wasn't enough to salvage such an ugly skeleton of a tune. Was she actually singing, "Walking through a circus of/ Bloody ghouls and perfect fools/ Stupid little people who/ Think that they make all the rules"? I persevered against all better judgment, although by the third track, it was becoming alarmingly clear that this was little more than some copped blues riffs and traditional arrangements laced with misplaced folk-goth atmospherics and vaguely surfy guitars. It tasted like the recipe for musical Ipecac; things looked grim. How many times could they recycle weird, bass-heavy variations of "The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out" with a funeral march arrangement ("Open Up the Walls") and a surf instrumental arrangement ("Mortal Mirror")? At times, they did manage to sound a little like some of the sparsest, most low-key offering from art-rockers Blonde Redhead (a compliment. Also, both bands were produced by the estimable Guy from Fugazi. Coincidence, or phenomenon?), but without any of the flare or vitality (not a compliment). The dismal trudge through the aural mud of Mortal Mirror wouldn't be easy, but duty called. Then, a shock! Track six... what was it? "Sitting in the Park" arrested with a pop bassline straight out of a slow crooner from the 50s, and vocals to match. The one thing I can say about Quixotic is that the vocal performances of the Billottes (they trade back and forth) were often quite beautiful, showing a great deal of range while maintaining enough ethereality to pass without a trace (if only the lyrics weren't so terrible). Christina's work on "Sitting in the Park" was astounding, and for once, the musical backdrop for her voice was up to the task. I wasn't surprised to discover, then, that it wasn't theirs. No, it was originally by Billy Stewart, and along with "Tell It Like It Is" by Aaron Neville and "Lord of This World" by Sabbath (Black Metal 4-Eva!), it was in a class by itself from the rest of Mortal Mirror. Bad band, good covers, imagine that shock. O, Canada, you know I love you and I'm only trying to look out for you. Why did you do it? Why export Quixotic and then stamp your good name all over it? Sure the covers are uniformly excellent, but that has a little something to do with the fact that they were written by other people. At the very least, it seems to me that if you listened to even one of the originals off this album, you'd want to keep your involvement as much of a secret as possible. It's not like you don't have plenty of fantastic national treasures to be proud of. It's misleading, anyway! Quixotic are from Washington, D.C.!

Artist: Quix*o*tic, Album: Mortal Mirror, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B,Rock, Score (1-10): 3.6 Album review: "O, Canada, we need to sit down for some face time, just you and me. How's everything? How are all the trees? Good? Glad to hear it. How's the old national self-esteem doing? Only reason I ask is that I've been seeing all these "Made in Canada" stickers on things lately. This little plea for attention just seems kinda... desperate, you dig? Don't worry, man; we haven't forgotten about you. Do you feel like we've been neglecting you down here? Why, suddenly, is there this need to be all like, "Hey! Remember Canada? We make things!" It just worries me, that's all. You're like a washed up actor desperate for work, attaching your name to anything that crosses the border. Have you heard some of these CDs you've given your precious Canadian blessings to? Well, it happens that I've got one of the steaming piles that you've so lovingly manufactured right here. It's Mortal Mirror by Quixotic, and if it isn't a reason to reconsider pimping out your national pride on just anything, I don't know what is. I was kind of worried from the get-go-- I don't need to tell you that the all-girls-plus-testosterone-infused-drummer thing is rapidly flirting with becoming another indie-rock cliché. But at least Mick Barr plays bass instead of drums, and Christina and Mira Billotte are sisters, so it's kind of a wash. The album art, a photo by Barbara Billotte, immediately made me wonder just when it was that Kill Rock Stars began signing Goth acts, but, ever conscientious and objective, I simply recalled that no matter how famous Richard Meltzer might be, you can't judge an album solely by its cover art. O, Canada, if only my fears had been dispelled. I was hoping my concerns were unfounded, but it was downhill from the moment I spun the disc. You should have nipped this in the bud, Canada-- I didn't know what I was in for. "Ice Cream Sundae" plodded lifelessly at me, nothing but irritatingly repetitive bass and off-key, apathetic vocals. It was stark, minimal, and frightfully unpleasant, and even though it was punctuated with a playful guitar solo motif, that wasn't enough to salvage such an ugly skeleton of a tune. Was she actually singing, "Walking through a circus of/ Bloody ghouls and perfect fools/ Stupid little people who/ Think that they make all the rules"? I persevered against all better judgment, although by the third track, it was becoming alarmingly clear that this was little more than some copped blues riffs and traditional arrangements laced with misplaced folk-goth atmospherics and vaguely surfy guitars. It tasted like the recipe for musical Ipecac; things looked grim. How many times could they recycle weird, bass-heavy variations of "The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out" with a funeral march arrangement ("Open Up the Walls") and a surf instrumental arrangement ("Mortal Mirror")? At times, they did manage to sound a little like some of the sparsest, most low-key offering from art-rockers Blonde Redhead (a compliment. Also, both bands were produced by the estimable Guy from Fugazi. Coincidence, or phenomenon?), but without any of the flare or vitality (not a compliment). The dismal trudge through the aural mud of Mortal Mirror wouldn't be easy, but duty called. Then, a shock! Track six... what was it? "Sitting in the Park" arrested with a pop bassline straight out of a slow crooner from the 50s, and vocals to match. The one thing I can say about Quixotic is that the vocal performances of the Billottes (they trade back and forth) were often quite beautiful, showing a great deal of range while maintaining enough ethereality to pass without a trace (if only the lyrics weren't so terrible). Christina's work on "Sitting in the Park" was astounding, and for once, the musical backdrop for her voice was up to the task. I wasn't surprised to discover, then, that it wasn't theirs. No, it was originally by Billy Stewart, and along with "Tell It Like It Is" by Aaron Neville and "Lord of This World" by Sabbath (Black Metal 4-Eva!), it was in a class by itself from the rest of Mortal Mirror. Bad band, good covers, imagine that shock. O, Canada, you know I love you and I'm only trying to look out for you. Why did you do it? Why export Quixotic and then stamp your good name all over it? Sure the covers are uniformly excellent, but that has a little something to do with the fact that they were written by other people. At the very least, it seems to me that if you listened to even one of the originals off this album, you'd want to keep your involvement as much of a secret as possible. It's not like you don't have plenty of fantastic national treasures to be proud of. It's misleading, anyway! Quixotic are from Washington, D.C.!"

Autechre

Move of Ten

Electronic

Mark Richardson

It's not unusual for Autechre to go a couple of years between full-lengths. So two in the span of a couple of months-- Sean Booth and Rob Brown have never released two Autechre albums in a single year-- is a pretty big deal. Why the quick follow-up to Oversteps? From the sound of these two records, it seems possible that Booth and Brown generated a large batch of material in the two years since Quaristice and decided to split it into complementary records, each with a different focus. While Oversteps had a number of drifting, ambient pieces mixed in with rhythm-oriented tracks that at times nodded toward dubstep, Move of Ten puts its emphasis on sharp beats that mostly stay within conventional meters. With these two records following on the more variable Quaristice, an album of shorter tracks that seemed to touch on almost every sound they've ever tried, that makes three pretty different albums in a row for Autechre, which is encouraging. I say "pretty different" because we're not talking about records that sound like they could have come from completely different artists. Even if the title of opening track "Etchogon-S" didn't clue you in to who we're dealing with, the skittering half-broken beat and sharp synth stabs that verge on sounding random would do the trick. The track almost seems designed to inspire a "Yep, sounds like Autechre" sigh from its first few seconds, which isn't going to bring back anyone who tuned out somewhere around the time of 2001's Confield. Autechre have fiercely loyal fans who look forward to whatever they do next, but my sense is that they used to attract a lot more of the merely curious than they do now. And for those who followed along for a record or two a decade ago before finding more pleasure in something like, say, Four Tet, there's little here to bring them back in the fold. Autechre still specialize in dense, complicated, and texturally rich sounds that upend ideas of what music might be. Word that they are continuing these experiments while bringing 4/4 beats into the mix won't be enough for most. But for those who want to give them another try, this is the most forceful Autechre record in a while. Their beats are stripped down and hit a little harder, and their skewed takes on dance music-- techno and especially electro-- are convincing. Autechre's love of electro and the production of old school hip-hop producer Kurtis Mantronik in particular has been a steady source of inspiration since their inception. When you listen to Mantronik's productions for Mantronix or rapper Just-Ice, you get a sense of just what Autechre heard in his music: The sharp crack of the era's drum machines and the wild stabs of synth both sound very 80s and also like another era's interpretation of the future. They also sound like brilliant examples of urban culture using discarded bits of its past in a new way. Certain tracks here, like "pce freeze 2.8i" with its booming low-end snapped tightly into a computer grid or "rew(1)" with its slippery alien bassline and hissy electronic handclaps, sound like they could be the instrumental realization of the new century being imagined 25 years ago. This stuff is strange and eerie and off-kilter but still in its own way funky, and it's the kind of thing Booth and Brown have always done better than just about anyone else. "M62" with its steady kickdrums and jittery but warm synths is a warm and inviting bit of Detroit-style electro in the vein of Drexciya, where the following "ylm0" is the album's "pretty" track, sounding a bit like a Boards of Canada interlude playback powered by double the suggested voltage. At 10 songs and 47 minutes, Move of Ten is relatively lean and digestible. There's none of the formal innovation that Autechre were doing around the turn of the millennium, but for my money that's a good thing. They claimed their new ground long ago, and since then they've been growing new music on it. Some of it has been excellent, some a shadow of past glories. With the addition of this solid LP, the 2010 harvest suggests that the soil has a few seasons in it yet.

Artist: Autechre, Album: Move of Ten, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "It's not unusual for Autechre to go a couple of years between full-lengths. So two in the span of a couple of months-- Sean Booth and Rob Brown have never released two Autechre albums in a single year-- is a pretty big deal. Why the quick follow-up to Oversteps? From the sound of these two records, it seems possible that Booth and Brown generated a large batch of material in the two years since Quaristice and decided to split it into complementary records, each with a different focus. While Oversteps had a number of drifting, ambient pieces mixed in with rhythm-oriented tracks that at times nodded toward dubstep, Move of Ten puts its emphasis on sharp beats that mostly stay within conventional meters. With these two records following on the more variable Quaristice, an album of shorter tracks that seemed to touch on almost every sound they've ever tried, that makes three pretty different albums in a row for Autechre, which is encouraging. I say "pretty different" because we're not talking about records that sound like they could have come from completely different artists. Even if the title of opening track "Etchogon-S" didn't clue you in to who we're dealing with, the skittering half-broken beat and sharp synth stabs that verge on sounding random would do the trick. The track almost seems designed to inspire a "Yep, sounds like Autechre" sigh from its first few seconds, which isn't going to bring back anyone who tuned out somewhere around the time of 2001's Confield. Autechre have fiercely loyal fans who look forward to whatever they do next, but my sense is that they used to attract a lot more of the merely curious than they do now. And for those who followed along for a record or two a decade ago before finding more pleasure in something like, say, Four Tet, there's little here to bring them back in the fold. Autechre still specialize in dense, complicated, and texturally rich sounds that upend ideas of what music might be. Word that they are continuing these experiments while bringing 4/4 beats into the mix won't be enough for most. But for those who want to give them another try, this is the most forceful Autechre record in a while. Their beats are stripped down and hit a little harder, and their skewed takes on dance music-- techno and especially electro-- are convincing. Autechre's love of electro and the production of old school hip-hop producer Kurtis Mantronik in particular has been a steady source of inspiration since their inception. When you listen to Mantronik's productions for Mantronix or rapper Just-Ice, you get a sense of just what Autechre heard in his music: The sharp crack of the era's drum machines and the wild stabs of synth both sound very 80s and also like another era's interpretation of the future. They also sound like brilliant examples of urban culture using discarded bits of its past in a new way. Certain tracks here, like "pce freeze 2.8i" with its booming low-end snapped tightly into a computer grid or "rew(1)" with its slippery alien bassline and hissy electronic handclaps, sound like they could be the instrumental realization of the new century being imagined 25 years ago. This stuff is strange and eerie and off-kilter but still in its own way funky, and it's the kind of thing Booth and Brown have always done better than just about anyone else. "M62" with its steady kickdrums and jittery but warm synths is a warm and inviting bit of Detroit-style electro in the vein of Drexciya, where the following "ylm0" is the album's "pretty" track, sounding a bit like a Boards of Canada interlude playback powered by double the suggested voltage. At 10 songs and 47 minutes, Move of Ten is relatively lean and digestible. There's none of the formal innovation that Autechre were doing around the turn of the millennium, but for my money that's a good thing. They claimed their new ground long ago, and since then they've been growing new music on it. Some of it has been excellent, some a shadow of past glories. With the addition of this solid LP, the 2010 harvest suggests that the soil has a few seasons in it yet."

Lissie

Catching a Tiger

Pop/R&B

Liz Colville

When Elisabeth Maurus aka Lissie released her debut EP, Why You Runnin', in fall 2009, it seemed a new voice was emerging in indie folk. After years of playing around Los Angeles and performing guest vocalist duties for house artist Morgan Page, Lissie was gaining ground as a recording artist, introducing herself online with acoustic video performances of understated folk songs, including a cover of Hank Williams' "Wedding Bells". Her voice stood out more than the actual songs: at times raspy and at others full and precise, like Grace Slick or Neko Case. After the EP's release, Maurus switched to the electric guitar and gathered a backing band. Catching a Tiger, her debut LP, is dominated by an odd mix of producer-writers including Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Modest Mouse), Band of Horses bassist Billy Reynolds, and British session guitarist and producer Julian Emery. There are numerous other composers involved in the album, including singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt (for the leaden piano ballad "Oh Mississippi"), but Maurus wrote or co-wrote every track. Her collaborators seem to have led Maurus down the garden path, transforming some promising unreleased tracks into bland songs sapped of atmosphere and personality. The narratives follow suit: The clear singles feature jilted-teenager juvenilia and cheesy tales of rebellion, while the tracks with Lissie's stamp firmly on them feature mature, creative lyrical twists on familiar ideas, deeply rooted in folk. In other words, the standouts on Tiger were either written entirely by Maurus or co-written with more synergistic contributors like Craig Dodds (Sugababes, Amy Winehouse) and Angelo Petraglia (the so-called fifth member of Kings of Leon). These songs capture a physical environment as well as an emotional one; geography and psychology feel inseparable. "Record Collector", co-written by Dodds, uses unobvious words ("hue" instead of "color"); wry, poetic narration grounded in nature ("Everywhere I went/ There I was/ With a choir of bees/ They were all abuzz/ Oh my, how amusing"); and rhyming that isn't forced or bland. In the process, Lissie whoops and darts all over the scale, showing off considerable vocal range and expressiveness. But Lissie's conversion to the electric guitar starts to seem calculated once you hear King and Emery's contributions. A couple of them-- "Cuckoo", "Loosen the Knot"-- are fun enough, and the stories feel authentically Lissie's, but they pale in comparison to her own compositions. Wanting to avoid the woman-and-acoustic-guitar cliché is understandable, but the work has veered too far in the other direction, best exemplified on "When I'm Alone". When it debuted as a live performance video earlier this year, it seemed like Lissie's strongest song to date. On the album, it's thin and unmemorable. The guitars, previously bold and howling, are now pushed down into the mix as part of the rhythm section. Lissie's voice is haunting as always, but the band doesn't match this tone, and as a result it no longer sounds like Lissie's song. Hopefully these missteps aren't enough to put people off, because Lissie is still a significant new voice. Let's hope she listens to it more in the future.

Artist: Lissie, Album: Catching a Tiger, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "When Elisabeth Maurus aka Lissie released her debut EP, Why You Runnin', in fall 2009, it seemed a new voice was emerging in indie folk. After years of playing around Los Angeles and performing guest vocalist duties for house artist Morgan Page, Lissie was gaining ground as a recording artist, introducing herself online with acoustic video performances of understated folk songs, including a cover of Hank Williams' "Wedding Bells". Her voice stood out more than the actual songs: at times raspy and at others full and precise, like Grace Slick or Neko Case. After the EP's release, Maurus switched to the electric guitar and gathered a backing band. Catching a Tiger, her debut LP, is dominated by an odd mix of producer-writers including Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Modest Mouse), Band of Horses bassist Billy Reynolds, and British session guitarist and producer Julian Emery. There are numerous other composers involved in the album, including singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt (for the leaden piano ballad "Oh Mississippi"), but Maurus wrote or co-wrote every track. Her collaborators seem to have led Maurus down the garden path, transforming some promising unreleased tracks into bland songs sapped of atmosphere and personality. The narratives follow suit: The clear singles feature jilted-teenager juvenilia and cheesy tales of rebellion, while the tracks with Lissie's stamp firmly on them feature mature, creative lyrical twists on familiar ideas, deeply rooted in folk. In other words, the standouts on Tiger were either written entirely by Maurus or co-written with more synergistic contributors like Craig Dodds (Sugababes, Amy Winehouse) and Angelo Petraglia (the so-called fifth member of Kings of Leon). These songs capture a physical environment as well as an emotional one; geography and psychology feel inseparable. "Record Collector", co-written by Dodds, uses unobvious words ("hue" instead of "color"); wry, poetic narration grounded in nature ("Everywhere I went/ There I was/ With a choir of bees/ They were all abuzz/ Oh my, how amusing"); and rhyming that isn't forced or bland. In the process, Lissie whoops and darts all over the scale, showing off considerable vocal range and expressiveness. But Lissie's conversion to the electric guitar starts to seem calculated once you hear King and Emery's contributions. A couple of them-- "Cuckoo", "Loosen the Knot"-- are fun enough, and the stories feel authentically Lissie's, but they pale in comparison to her own compositions. Wanting to avoid the woman-and-acoustic-guitar cliché is understandable, but the work has veered too far in the other direction, best exemplified on "When I'm Alone". When it debuted as a live performance video earlier this year, it seemed like Lissie's strongest song to date. On the album, it's thin and unmemorable. The guitars, previously bold and howling, are now pushed down into the mix as part of the rhythm section. Lissie's voice is haunting as always, but the band doesn't match this tone, and as a result it no longer sounds like Lissie's song. Hopefully these missteps aren't enough to put people off, because Lissie is still a significant new voice. Let's hope she listens to it more in the future."

The Spinto Band

Moonwink

Rock

Marc Hogan

Big, splashy numbers don't always add up. Early reviews of the Spinto Band's latest album, Moonwink, have noted with some surprise that it's technically the eighth (or, depending whose count you believe, ninth) full-length from the youthful Delaware sextet. All prior releases, though, appeared on the band's own Spintonic-- at least until their aptly titled 2005 Bar/None debut, Nice and Nicely Done, later reissued overseas by Virgin UK. That makes Moonwink a classic sophomore slump, bursting with melody but overorchestrated and overthought. Neurotic, hook-packed songs like "Trust vs. Mistrust" and "Crack the Whip" made Nice and Nicely Done sound like the Spinto Band could become the Weezer of the new wave revival, splitting the difference between Pavement's Brighten the Corners and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The ringing guitars and Arcade Fire-sized arrangement of Nice and Nicely Done highlight "Oh Mandy" find a quirkier successor in solid Moonwink single "Summer Grof", a handclapping, punning ditty the band describes as "a vague tribute to the great comedienne Janeane Garofalo." We don't know who Spinto Band's Mandy was, either, but this song's willful obscurity is typical of an album that's often too clever by half. As if to compensate for weaker songs, Moonwink lets the Spinto Band indulge their instinct toward lavishness. "The Carnival" has the (dizzying) merry-go-round melodies its title implies, and it's one of the more restrained examples of the album's flightly falsetto harmonies, whoa-oh melismas, and careening strings and horns. Castanet-clicking opener "Later On" and synth-led "Vivian, Don't" have some whimsical charm, but by the time Spinto Band slow down for "They All Laughed", it's as if Humpty Dumpty fell off the Wall of Sound. Singer/guitarist Nick Krill's high, anxious voice starts to grate between the la-las and nice guitar rave-up of "The Cat's Pajamas", but it's his quieter colleague, singer/bassist Thomas Hughes, who sounds like he's auditioning to be the model of a modern major general on "Needlepoint", one of a few highly theatrical songs here relating to attire. Moonwink wouldn't be so disappointing if Nice and Nicely Done hadn't been unusually promising. The Spinto Band even have a stirring live show. Their latest record has more instruments and lyrical or melodic turns than hooks to hold onto, but its problem is more like an excess of ideas than a lack of them. "If I don't get your letter then I'll know you're in jail," Krill assures on glockenspiel-chimer "The Black Flag"; it's as overflowing as its neighbors but-- with its "Revolution"-esque guitar bursts and a chorus that hammers its way into your head-- a hopeful finale. Don't know much about algebra, but I hear the third time's the charm.

Artist: The Spinto Band, Album: Moonwink, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "Big, splashy numbers don't always add up. Early reviews of the Spinto Band's latest album, Moonwink, have noted with some surprise that it's technically the eighth (or, depending whose count you believe, ninth) full-length from the youthful Delaware sextet. All prior releases, though, appeared on the band's own Spintonic-- at least until their aptly titled 2005 Bar/None debut, Nice and Nicely Done, later reissued overseas by Virgin UK. That makes Moonwink a classic sophomore slump, bursting with melody but overorchestrated and overthought. Neurotic, hook-packed songs like "Trust vs. Mistrust" and "Crack the Whip" made Nice and Nicely Done sound like the Spinto Band could become the Weezer of the new wave revival, splitting the difference between Pavement's Brighten the Corners and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The ringing guitars and Arcade Fire-sized arrangement of Nice and Nicely Done highlight "Oh Mandy" find a quirkier successor in solid Moonwink single "Summer Grof", a handclapping, punning ditty the band describes as "a vague tribute to the great comedienne Janeane Garofalo." We don't know who Spinto Band's Mandy was, either, but this song's willful obscurity is typical of an album that's often too clever by half. As if to compensate for weaker songs, Moonwink lets the Spinto Band indulge their instinct toward lavishness. "The Carnival" has the (dizzying) merry-go-round melodies its title implies, and it's one of the more restrained examples of the album's flightly falsetto harmonies, whoa-oh melismas, and careening strings and horns. Castanet-clicking opener "Later On" and synth-led "Vivian, Don't" have some whimsical charm, but by the time Spinto Band slow down for "They All Laughed", it's as if Humpty Dumpty fell off the Wall of Sound. Singer/guitarist Nick Krill's high, anxious voice starts to grate between the la-las and nice guitar rave-up of "The Cat's Pajamas", but it's his quieter colleague, singer/bassist Thomas Hughes, who sounds like he's auditioning to be the model of a modern major general on "Needlepoint", one of a few highly theatrical songs here relating to attire. Moonwink wouldn't be so disappointing if Nice and Nicely Done hadn't been unusually promising. The Spinto Band even have a stirring live show. Their latest record has more instruments and lyrical or melodic turns than hooks to hold onto, but its problem is more like an excess of ideas than a lack of them. "If I don't get your letter then I'll know you're in jail," Krill assures on glockenspiel-chimer "The Black Flag"; it's as overflowing as its neighbors but-- with its "Revolution"-esque guitar bursts and a chorus that hammers its way into your head-- a hopeful finale. Don't know much about algebra, but I hear the third time's the charm."

DJ Koze

Reincarnations Pt. 2

Electronic

Mike Powell

If you’re someone who still secretly or not-so-secretly thinks remixes are just accessories to the originals, I encourage you to listen to any of the raw material for DJ Koze’s Reincarnations Pt. 2. Koze doesn’t just move around what’s already there, but takes some small portion or impulse within a song and creates an entirely new context for it. Usually, the new context brings out a quality or shade in the music only hinted at by the original, hence the word "reincarnation": The body is new but the soul is still the same. A Koze remix of a meatball might be a hamburger; his remix of a horse might be a car. Koze is playful, which is nice because most of the artists he works with are not. Witness Ada’s "Faith", a modest ballad sung by a choir of androids too tired to care anymore. In Koze’s hands, it becomes a starlit torch song in some Palm Springs lounge; the androids still melancholy but now played for their sex appeal, too. Or Herbert’s "You Saw It All", which appears here as a Motown-style love letter that breaks into a clarinet solo played by someone who may not have ever played a clarinet before. (My favorite Koze remix is still of Matthew Dear’s "Elementary Lover", which places a stern Germanic orator in the middle of what sounds like Club Med.) These are gestures that understand and dignify the source material but don’t let it restrict them. Often, Koze seems like a boy pirouetting through the museum, ornamenting treasures of antiquity with handlebar mustaches and tiny yellow birds. Even when his music isn’t outright funny, there is something about it that feels casual and loose, allowing stray beauty at the margins of the track—a breath, a syllable—to blossom into a central hook. I still don’t know whether to pronounce his name DJ Cot-zuh or DJ Cozy, and my guess is that the ambiguity is intentional. Reincarnations Pt. 2 collects his last six years; the first volume collected 2001–2009. Both are strong, though the highlights on the first edition—"Elementary Lover" or Battles’ "Atlas"—are a little brighter. Like Todd Terje, Koze is a Northern European prankster who built his reputation on remixes but whose own music gets better every time he decides to make it. Last year, he put out Amygdala, an album that had more to do with the history of psychedelic pop than with techno in the same way Terje’s It’s Album Time had more to do with film music and exotica than disco. If you have never heard Koze, start there. His is a low-key beautiful world, governed by bright colors, round shapes, and a gentleness that can seem meek but more often just seems like the byproduct of wonder. "It is fairly easy to rock the house," he told an interviewer in 2008, "but so hard to look out of the window."

Artist: DJ Koze, Album: Reincarnations Pt. 2, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "If you’re someone who still secretly or not-so-secretly thinks remixes are just accessories to the originals, I encourage you to listen to any of the raw material for DJ Koze’s Reincarnations Pt. 2. Koze doesn’t just move around what’s already there, but takes some small portion or impulse within a song and creates an entirely new context for it. Usually, the new context brings out a quality or shade in the music only hinted at by the original, hence the word "reincarnation": The body is new but the soul is still the same. A Koze remix of a meatball might be a hamburger; his remix of a horse might be a car. Koze is playful, which is nice because most of the artists he works with are not. Witness Ada’s "Faith", a modest ballad sung by a choir of androids too tired to care anymore. In Koze’s hands, it becomes a starlit torch song in some Palm Springs lounge; the androids still melancholy but now played for their sex appeal, too. Or Herbert’s "You Saw It All", which appears here as a Motown-style love letter that breaks into a clarinet solo played by someone who may not have ever played a clarinet before. (My favorite Koze remix is still of Matthew Dear’s "Elementary Lover", which places a stern Germanic orator in the middle of what sounds like Club Med.) These are gestures that understand and dignify the source material but don’t let it restrict them. Often, Koze seems like a boy pirouetting through the museum, ornamenting treasures of antiquity with handlebar mustaches and tiny yellow birds. Even when his music isn’t outright funny, there is something about it that feels casual and loose, allowing stray beauty at the margins of the track—a breath, a syllable—to blossom into a central hook. I still don’t know whether to pronounce his name DJ Cot-zuh or DJ Cozy, and my guess is that the ambiguity is intentional. Reincarnations Pt. 2 collects his last six years; the first volume collected 2001–2009. Both are strong, though the highlights on the first edition—"Elementary Lover" or Battles’ "Atlas"—are a little brighter. Like Todd Terje, Koze is a Northern European prankster who built his reputation on remixes but whose own music gets better every time he decides to make it. Last year, he put out Amygdala, an album that had more to do with the history of psychedelic pop than with techno in the same way Terje’s It’s Album Time had more to do with film music and exotica than disco. If you have never heard Koze, start there. His is a low-key beautiful world, governed by bright colors, round shapes, and a gentleness that can seem meek but more often just seems like the byproduct of wonder. "It is fairly easy to rock the house," he told an interviewer in 2008, "but so hard to look out of the window.""

Ministry

Rantology

Electronic,Metal,Rock

Cory D. Byrom

In 1993, I tracked down a copy of the "Burning Inside" single from Ministry's masterpiece, 1989's The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste. The single boasted the 12" remixes for both the title track and "Thieves", as well as a fantastic cover of Skinny Puppy's "Smothered Hope". I listened to the remixes over and over, trying to figure out how they were different than the originals. Beyond "Thieves" being slightly longer, I never found any significant difference between the remixes and the original album cuts. Rantology, Ministry's 25th anniversary collection, is a hodgepodge release that, besides being an album-length diatribe against the Bush administration, features one new song, three live Ministry classics, three recent album tracks, and eight remixes, and sadly it indicates that at this point in his career, Al Jourgensen still hasn't gotten a handle on the remix. At some point in their career, possibly when Paul Barker left, Ministry stopped being an industrial band and started being a boring thrash band. Album opener, "No W (Redux)", proves this within the first few guitar notes. The song, a rehash of "N.W.O." from 1992's Psalm 69, is essentially the same as the version that originally appeared on Fat Wreck Chords' Rock Against Bush comp. The President opens with the campaign standard, "I'm George W. Bush, and I approve of this message," before the track launches into a cinematic clash of keyboard-strings, operatic vocals, and weak programmed drums. Eventually, Bush quotes some scripture and the song tears into run-of-the-mill open-E riffing accented by the occasional programmed horn and string burst, all of which here sound cheap and generic. "No W (Redux)" sets the tone for the remixes on this collection, which barely sound different than the originals. "N.W.O. (Update mix)" features new samples of the current Bush replacing many of the GHWB's quotes from the original, but nothing else appears different. "Stigmata (Update mix)" has been polished off to have a slicker, more artificial guitar tone that fits well with the band's apparent devotion to fake instruments, and the slightly altered vocal rhythm in the verses only brings the song down further. We also get "updated" or alternate mixes of four other tracks, including "Jesus Built My Hotrod", all of which sound more or less the same as the originals. "Unsung" is the only track here that seems to have actually benefited from its alternate mix. Originally on 2003's barely listenable Animositisomina, this version has been beefed up with bagpipes and other added noise, and it actually features a melody in the verses instead of Jourgensen's incessant barking. The one new track here is "The Great Satan", which further spews venom towards the President with uninspired speed-metal riffing, flat, robotic drumming, and distorted vocals. "Bloodlines", which originally appeared on the soundtrack to the video game "Vampires: The Bloodlines", changes things up dramatically. The verses are built on a foundation of dub-like drums, a hypnotic bass, and low-mixed guitar squealing. Then the chorus rolls around, the guitar bursts in, and Jorgensen's deeper, clean vocals turn to a screech. Sound familiar? That's because it's a complete rehash of "So What?" from The Minds Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, minus Chris Connelly's seething vocals. If a band besides Ministry had recorded this song, they'd be getting sued for copyright infringement. The remainder of Rantology are older tracks either directly from the last two Ministry albums or in live form. For live tracks we get "Thieves", "Psalm 69", and "The Fall", all from 2002's Sphinctour. Rantology doesn't work as a greatest hits package, as it leaves out most of the band's best, not to mention most recognizable, tracks. Furthermore, it doesn't work as a remix album because the remixes are uninspired. Jourgensen helped introduce many people to industrial back in the early 90s, but on Rantology, the dark, unnerving tone of his earlier work has long since been traded in for the uninspired rantings of a cranky musician trying too hard regain his prominence.

Artist: Ministry, Album: Rantology, Genre: Electronic,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 2.0 Album review: "In 1993, I tracked down a copy of the "Burning Inside" single from Ministry's masterpiece, 1989's The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste. The single boasted the 12" remixes for both the title track and "Thieves", as well as a fantastic cover of Skinny Puppy's "Smothered Hope". I listened to the remixes over and over, trying to figure out how they were different than the originals. Beyond "Thieves" being slightly longer, I never found any significant difference between the remixes and the original album cuts. Rantology, Ministry's 25th anniversary collection, is a hodgepodge release that, besides being an album-length diatribe against the Bush administration, features one new song, three live Ministry classics, three recent album tracks, and eight remixes, and sadly it indicates that at this point in his career, Al Jourgensen still hasn't gotten a handle on the remix. At some point in their career, possibly when Paul Barker left, Ministry stopped being an industrial band and started being a boring thrash band. Album opener, "No W (Redux)", proves this within the first few guitar notes. The song, a rehash of "N.W.O." from 1992's Psalm 69, is essentially the same as the version that originally appeared on Fat Wreck Chords' Rock Against Bush comp. The President opens with the campaign standard, "I'm George W. Bush, and I approve of this message," before the track launches into a cinematic clash of keyboard-strings, operatic vocals, and weak programmed drums. Eventually, Bush quotes some scripture and the song tears into run-of-the-mill open-E riffing accented by the occasional programmed horn and string burst, all of which here sound cheap and generic. "No W (Redux)" sets the tone for the remixes on this collection, which barely sound different than the originals. "N.W.O. (Update mix)" features new samples of the current Bush replacing many of the GHWB's quotes from the original, but nothing else appears different. "Stigmata (Update mix)" has been polished off to have a slicker, more artificial guitar tone that fits well with the band's apparent devotion to fake instruments, and the slightly altered vocal rhythm in the verses only brings the song down further. We also get "updated" or alternate mixes of four other tracks, including "Jesus Built My Hotrod", all of which sound more or less the same as the originals. "Unsung" is the only track here that seems to have actually benefited from its alternate mix. Originally on 2003's barely listenable Animositisomina, this version has been beefed up with bagpipes and other added noise, and it actually features a melody in the verses instead of Jourgensen's incessant barking. The one new track here is "The Great Satan", which further spews venom towards the President with uninspired speed-metal riffing, flat, robotic drumming, and distorted vocals. "Bloodlines", which originally appeared on the soundtrack to the video game "Vampires: The Bloodlines", changes things up dramatically. The verses are built on a foundation of dub-like drums, a hypnotic bass, and low-mixed guitar squealing. Then the chorus rolls around, the guitar bursts in, and Jorgensen's deeper, clean vocals turn to a screech. Sound familiar? That's because it's a complete rehash of "So What?" from The Minds Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, minus Chris Connelly's seething vocals. If a band besides Ministry had recorded this song, they'd be getting sued for copyright infringement. The remainder of Rantology are older tracks either directly from the last two Ministry albums or in live form. For live tracks we get "Thieves", "Psalm 69", and "The Fall", all from 2002's Sphinctour. Rantology doesn't work as a greatest hits package, as it leaves out most of the band's best, not to mention most recognizable, tracks. Furthermore, it doesn't work as a remix album because the remixes are uninspired. Jourgensen helped introduce many people to industrial back in the early 90s, but on Rantology, the dark, unnerving tone of his earlier work has long since been traded in for the uninspired rantings of a cranky musician trying too hard regain his prominence."

Spider Bags

Shake My Head

Rock

Grayson Currin

People tend to obsess over North Carolina's Spider Bags, a nominally identified garage rock band that sputters into broken-down country and spirals into high-flying psychedelics from a firm base of petulant, propulsive, and fun three-minute rock tunes. To wit, Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles used to perpetually call them the greatest band in the world. Some years ago, when a DJ friend who'd moved several states away returned to the Carolinas for a weekend, she learned that the Bags were performing at a nearby haunt and canceled all of her impending plans. In her mind, at least, the best local band ever-- the one with the shout-out-loud anthem called "Waking Up Drunk" and the frontman, Dan McGee, who sang about his demons with a conviction that made them the crowd's demons, too-- were playing, and she simply had to be there. And as colleague Marc Masters recently quipped online about the band's compulsive tunes, "And now to listen to Spider Bags & Apache Dropout constantly, even when I'm not listening to them." As their name implies, when Spider Bags hook into you, it's hard to shake the hold. The first two Spider Bags full-lengths depended on diversity. 2007's A Celebration of Hunger creeped through country turns that had more to do with Townes Van Zandt than whatever Little Steven plays on his show ("Lonely Man" is the band's secret stunner) and occasionally climbed into the alt-country molds of Drive-By Truckers. The blistering rock'n'roll tracks were only part of the picture. They were more prominent on 2009's Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World, but there was still much more to be heard than fuzzy, frenzied barnstormers-- banjo songs, Crazy Horse-sized epics, sad-eyed duets and baby-please pleas. Shake My Head, the band's third album and their first for North Carolina imprint Odessa Records, is their most stylistically cohesive to date. Rolling through 10 tracks in less than 35 minutes, it delivers would-be rock hit after hit, shifting away from that template only for the record's closing third. That's not to say that Shake My Head is stylistically stripped at all; rather, those variations are woven into the charging songs rather than separated from them. "Shawn Cripps Boogie", for instance, is a xylophone-dotted instrumental played by a half-dozen guitarists, but its almost post-rock surge and otherwise playful countenance make it feel less like a departure or deviation than a great if wordless Spider Bags tune. With McGee's mix of don't-leave-me protestations and fuck-you-then imprecations, "I'll Go Crazy" is nothing if not a country song reworked for a rock band drunk on the idea of soul harmonies. "Friday Night" is surf music for the town's slouch, too wasted to go to the beach with his friends and too sad to go home with his memories. Spider Bags have finally fit all their interests and eccentricities into one tight, identifiable set. Shake My Head might not be their most surprising or inventive album to date, but it's certainly their most irrepressible, a record that seems suited and able to land its charms with a lot more people. That's fitting, since Shake My Head is the product of a band at a curious crossroads in its own history: After two frustrating experiences with full-length release schedules and press cycles, McGee vowed to focus more on singles than albums. Spider Bags stuck to that, too, releasing a slew of unimpeachable 7"s but ultimately slowing the pace as an on-the-road, in-the-studio work force. Co-founder and bassist Gregg Levy headed back to New Jersey, committing to rejoin the band for tours while they recruited another bassist, Steve Oliva, to assume the role locally. When they headed west to Memphis to finally record Shake My Head, Levy flew down to split bass duties with Oliva. Perhaps in recognition of that strange lineup situation, Spider Bags used the Memphis sessions of Shake My Head-- and the long, guest-heavy overdub process that followed-- as an excuse to invite a horde of friends over to the studio and capture a party as they made a record. The jangling if jilted "Simona La Ramona" pairs fuzz bass from Memphis legend Jack Oblivian with the distant Theremin peal of Chapel Hill songwriter Billy Sugarfix, while opening blast "Keys to the City" hinges not only on multiple charging guitars but also backing vocals from, as the liner notes put it, "The City of Memphis." As you might expect, the space around these songs is often filled with laughter and false starts and chatter not necessarily intended for the microphone-- friends, hanging out, sharing the spirit of these songs and probably spirits, too. It's a sad-eyed celebration record. That atmosphere fits McGee's songs. He is a writer, after all, who is best when extending empathy for the dispossessed, when he-- a married father at the helm of a great rock band-- writes about and for those who don't have it so good. Sure, there's nonsense written into these lyrics, too, but McGee's perfectly able to express misery in an economical phrase or two. "I'm a dog, baby, without an owner," he sings on "Simona La Ramona", bouncing into the rhyme with hope for the future. "I can't keep a phone/ And I can barely pay rent/ And the car I own/ I only really own the dents," he offers during the brilliant "Shape I Was In", a breezy, organ-backed tune that seems to treat despair like a necessity of life, not a reason for exasperation. Above sizzling guitar lines, boogie-woogie keys, and flickering tambourine, "Standing on a Curb" opens with what might seem to be a dismissive image of McGee "waiting on some girl." But as the song unfolds, we learn that the person he's waiting on doesn't matter as much as the general feeling of being specifically sad about loving someone who could care less what curb you're standing on, or if you're able to stand at all. The anxiety overruns any ambition he's ever had. "I don't have anything else to do," McGee admits. "I'm looking at a picture of you." And then, of course, he beats the shit out of the photo. Hell, what else could he have done? And what else could you do, besides commiserate with and sing along to a record that turns problems into a party you'll wish you had attended.

Artist: Spider Bags, Album: Shake My Head, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "People tend to obsess over North Carolina's Spider Bags, a nominally identified garage rock band that sputters into broken-down country and spirals into high-flying psychedelics from a firm base of petulant, propulsive, and fun three-minute rock tunes. To wit, Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles used to perpetually call them the greatest band in the world. Some years ago, when a DJ friend who'd moved several states away returned to the Carolinas for a weekend, she learned that the Bags were performing at a nearby haunt and canceled all of her impending plans. In her mind, at least, the best local band ever-- the one with the shout-out-loud anthem called "Waking Up Drunk" and the frontman, Dan McGee, who sang about his demons with a conviction that made them the crowd's demons, too-- were playing, and she simply had to be there. And as colleague Marc Masters recently quipped online about the band's compulsive tunes, "And now to listen to Spider Bags & Apache Dropout constantly, even when I'm not listening to them." As their name implies, when Spider Bags hook into you, it's hard to shake the hold. The first two Spider Bags full-lengths depended on diversity. 2007's A Celebration of Hunger creeped through country turns that had more to do with Townes Van Zandt than whatever Little Steven plays on his show ("Lonely Man" is the band's secret stunner) and occasionally climbed into the alt-country molds of Drive-By Truckers. The blistering rock'n'roll tracks were only part of the picture. They were more prominent on 2009's Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World, but there was still much more to be heard than fuzzy, frenzied barnstormers-- banjo songs, Crazy Horse-sized epics, sad-eyed duets and baby-please pleas. Shake My Head, the band's third album and their first for North Carolina imprint Odessa Records, is their most stylistically cohesive to date. Rolling through 10 tracks in less than 35 minutes, it delivers would-be rock hit after hit, shifting away from that template only for the record's closing third. That's not to say that Shake My Head is stylistically stripped at all; rather, those variations are woven into the charging songs rather than separated from them. "Shawn Cripps Boogie", for instance, is a xylophone-dotted instrumental played by a half-dozen guitarists, but its almost post-rock surge and otherwise playful countenance make it feel less like a departure or deviation than a great if wordless Spider Bags tune. With McGee's mix of don't-leave-me protestations and fuck-you-then imprecations, "I'll Go Crazy" is nothing if not a country song reworked for a rock band drunk on the idea of soul harmonies. "Friday Night" is surf music for the town's slouch, too wasted to go to the beach with his friends and too sad to go home with his memories. Spider Bags have finally fit all their interests and eccentricities into one tight, identifiable set. Shake My Head might not be their most surprising or inventive album to date, but it's certainly their most irrepressible, a record that seems suited and able to land its charms with a lot more people. That's fitting, since Shake My Head is the product of a band at a curious crossroads in its own history: After two frustrating experiences with full-length release schedules and press cycles, McGee vowed to focus more on singles than albums. Spider Bags stuck to that, too, releasing a slew of unimpeachable 7"s but ultimately slowing the pace as an on-the-road, in-the-studio work force. Co-founder and bassist Gregg Levy headed back to New Jersey, committing to rejoin the band for tours while they recruited another bassist, Steve Oliva, to assume the role locally. When they headed west to Memphis to finally record Shake My Head, Levy flew down to split bass duties with Oliva. Perhaps in recognition of that strange lineup situation, Spider Bags used the Memphis sessions of Shake My Head-- and the long, guest-heavy overdub process that followed-- as an excuse to invite a horde of friends over to the studio and capture a party as they made a record. The jangling if jilted "Simona La Ramona" pairs fuzz bass from Memphis legend Jack Oblivian with the distant Theremin peal of Chapel Hill songwriter Billy Sugarfix, while opening blast "Keys to the City" hinges not only on multiple charging guitars but also backing vocals from, as the liner notes put it, "The City of Memphis." As you might expect, the space around these songs is often filled with laughter and false starts and chatter not necessarily intended for the microphone-- friends, hanging out, sharing the spirit of these songs and probably spirits, too. It's a sad-eyed celebration record. That atmosphere fits McGee's songs. He is a writer, after all, who is best when extending empathy for the dispossessed, when he-- a married father at the helm of a great rock band-- writes about and for those who don't have it so good. Sure, there's nonsense written into these lyrics, too, but McGee's perfectly able to express misery in an economical phrase or two. "I'm a dog, baby, without an owner," he sings on "Simona La Ramona", bouncing into the rhyme with hope for the future. "I can't keep a phone/ And I can barely pay rent/ And the car I own/ I only really own the dents," he offers during the brilliant "Shape I Was In", a breezy, organ-backed tune that seems to treat despair like a necessity of life, not a reason for exasperation. Above sizzling guitar lines, boogie-woogie keys, and flickering tambourine, "Standing on a Curb" opens with what might seem to be a dismissive image of McGee "waiting on some girl." But as the song unfolds, we learn that the person he's waiting on doesn't matter as much as the general feeling of being specifically sad about loving someone who could care less what curb you're standing on, or if you're able to stand at all. The anxiety overruns any ambition he's ever had. "I don't have anything else to do," McGee admits. "I'm looking at a picture of you." And then, of course, he beats the shit out of the photo. Hell, what else could he have done? And what else could you do, besides commiserate with and sing along to a record that turns problems into a party you'll wish you had attended."

Gnarls Barkley

St. Elsewhere

Rap,Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

After the sound of a film projector whirring to life and a little hip-hop fanfare, this album starts with "Go Go Gadget Gospel" glee: soul horns kicking, hand-clapping breakbeats with the speed and stutter of jungle, and Cee-Lo Green shouting, "I'm free" like he's up in church. It's the most exciting thing I've heard this year. At the tail end of the disc, there's "The Last Time", where the beat splits the difference between disco-era funk and roller-skating jam, and Cee-Lo sings like he borrowed some time-traveling platform shoes from the Delfonics' closet and wound up on mid-1970s Soul Train. You shouldn't fixate on those details-- I may be exaggerating-- but the main thing about those two tracks are that they sound awfully fresh. Play this when people are over and they'll almost certainly ask the question: "So who is this, anyway?" I don't mean to spin any big theories on you-- this isn't that kind of record-- but let's stop for a second and notice the context. Now that hip-hop has nearly three decades under its belt, every major genre of American pop music is more or less "mature." You know how rock geeks, after nine or 10 years immersed in the genre, start looking elsewhere for surprises-- hip-hop, dance, bluegrass, anything they haven't already figured out? Well, these days we can read Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee telling Tape Op that rap is all repetitive big business now, and claiming that alternative rock is where the innovation is-- in other words, sounding not unlike an old rock guy wondering why bands still sound like the Velvet Underground. This kind of uneasiness isn't new, of course, but it's interesting: It seems like there's a big itch out there right now, everyone looking for ways to make the music feel as new and free as it did when they first came across it. Two guys interested in scratching that itch, hip-hop-wise, are both associates in Atlanta's Dungeon Family. Andre 3000, of Outkast: It might seem like he's just trying to be weird, but the guy has spent the last decade visibly searching for some new way to be-- not just new music, but a whole new model of identity for the black male musician. (Avenues he's tried include futurism, mysticism, Baduism, sincerity, dandified couture, genre-less chart hits, and close study of Aphex Twin.) The same goes for Cee-Lo, one half of the Gnarls Barkley duo-- a Goodie Mob rapper turned funk freak and soul-shouting faux preacherman. Who does Gnarls Barkley pair him with, the two of them dressed up like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange droogs, or Wayne and Garth? DJ Danger Mouse, a guy known by undie-rap geeks for his own beats but read-about-in-Entertainment Weekly for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles. The two of them: They're trying something new here, you know. Even the lyrical themes of this album-- madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, being yourself-- seem like conscious attempts to be arty. And that's before you get to the tossed-off Violent Femmes cover. Which is only track four. Don't get me wrong: This is not some grand genre-busting mission statement. For the most part, it sounds like two guys playing around and having fun, sometimes more fun than the listener. DM's production aesthetic-- "if it's enjoyable for more than 2 minutes and 10 seconds, then that's the song to me"-- means the beats come out like candies in a box, a line of little treats and mini-ideas. (Pick some samples, make them bump a little, move on.) Cee-Lo sounds like he's writing in the vocal booth, just hopping in and singing his takes until something good develops. But as scattershot and weirdly limp as parts of this are-- two guys just knocking things together, seeing what happens-- well, it feels better to hear someone trying. And the treats are real treats. The single, "Crazy", has been found atop UK charts (and on U.S. television dramas), for all the same reasons that Outkast's "Hey Ya" hit big-- it's a big, brash pop song that sounds retro and modern at the same time. "Transformer" is a tweaked-out jumble with the pace and clatter of English grime, plus flutes. There's traditional r&b; bump, "cinematic" darkness for the monster stories, DM's dusty-sample boom-bap. "Just a Thought" has Cee-Lo experiencing crisis over classical guitar and bursts of overdriven drums: "I've tried/ Everything but suicide/ And it's crossed my mind/ But I'm fine." Imagine: Two guys fooling around with whatever sticks, musically, and yet here's Cee-Lo, sounding as convincing as possible in his best reverend soul-voice, writing serious and sincere about life. It's a joy, and in this context, where unselfconscious freshness can feel strangely hard to come by, it'll charm the hell out of a whole lot of people-- whether or not it'll really stand up to more than a season's listening.

Artist: Gnarls Barkley, Album: St. Elsewhere, Genre: Rap,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "After the sound of a film projector whirring to life and a little hip-hop fanfare, this album starts with "Go Go Gadget Gospel" glee: soul horns kicking, hand-clapping breakbeats with the speed and stutter of jungle, and Cee-Lo Green shouting, "I'm free" like he's up in church. It's the most exciting thing I've heard this year. At the tail end of the disc, there's "The Last Time", where the beat splits the difference between disco-era funk and roller-skating jam, and Cee-Lo sings like he borrowed some time-traveling platform shoes from the Delfonics' closet and wound up on mid-1970s Soul Train. You shouldn't fixate on those details-- I may be exaggerating-- but the main thing about those two tracks are that they sound awfully fresh. Play this when people are over and they'll almost certainly ask the question: "So who is this, anyway?" I don't mean to spin any big theories on you-- this isn't that kind of record-- but let's stop for a second and notice the context. Now that hip-hop has nearly three decades under its belt, every major genre of American pop music is more or less "mature." You know how rock geeks, after nine or 10 years immersed in the genre, start looking elsewhere for surprises-- hip-hop, dance, bluegrass, anything they haven't already figured out? Well, these days we can read Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee telling Tape Op that rap is all repetitive big business now, and claiming that alternative rock is where the innovation is-- in other words, sounding not unlike an old rock guy wondering why bands still sound like the Velvet Underground. This kind of uneasiness isn't new, of course, but it's interesting: It seems like there's a big itch out there right now, everyone looking for ways to make the music feel as new and free as it did when they first came across it. Two guys interested in scratching that itch, hip-hop-wise, are both associates in Atlanta's Dungeon Family. Andre 3000, of Outkast: It might seem like he's just trying to be weird, but the guy has spent the last decade visibly searching for some new way to be-- not just new music, but a whole new model of identity for the black male musician. (Avenues he's tried include futurism, mysticism, Baduism, sincerity, dandified couture, genre-less chart hits, and close study of Aphex Twin.) The same goes for Cee-Lo, one half of the Gnarls Barkley duo-- a Goodie Mob rapper turned funk freak and soul-shouting faux preacherman. Who does Gnarls Barkley pair him with, the two of them dressed up like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange droogs, or Wayne and Garth? DJ Danger Mouse, a guy known by undie-rap geeks for his own beats but read-about-in-Entertainment Weekly for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles. The two of them: They're trying something new here, you know. Even the lyrical themes of this album-- madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, being yourself-- seem like conscious attempts to be arty. And that's before you get to the tossed-off Violent Femmes cover. Which is only track four. Don't get me wrong: This is not some grand genre-busting mission statement. For the most part, it sounds like two guys playing around and having fun, sometimes more fun than the listener. DM's production aesthetic-- "if it's enjoyable for more than 2 minutes and 10 seconds, then that's the song to me"-- means the beats come out like candies in a box, a line of little treats and mini-ideas. (Pick some samples, make them bump a little, move on.) Cee-Lo sounds like he's writing in the vocal booth, just hopping in and singing his takes until something good develops. But as scattershot and weirdly limp as parts of this are-- two guys just knocking things together, seeing what happens-- well, it feels better to hear someone trying. And the treats are real treats. The single, "Crazy", has been found atop UK charts (and on U.S. television dramas), for all the same reasons that Outkast's "Hey Ya" hit big-- it's a big, brash pop song that sounds retro and modern at the same time. "Transformer" is a tweaked-out jumble with the pace and clatter of English grime, plus flutes. There's traditional r&b; bump, "cinematic" darkness for the monster stories, DM's dusty-sample boom-bap. "Just a Thought" has Cee-Lo experiencing crisis over classical guitar and bursts of overdriven drums: "I've tried/ Everything but suicide/ And it's crossed my mind/ But I'm fine." Imagine: Two guys fooling around with whatever sticks, musically, and yet here's Cee-Lo, sounding as convincing as possible in his best reverend soul-voice, writing serious and sincere about life. It's a joy, and in this context, where unselfconscious freshness can feel strangely hard to come by, it'll charm the hell out of a whole lot of people-- whether or not it'll really stand up to more than a season's listening."

Nice as Fuck

Nice As Fuck

Rock

Evan Rytlewski

For being one of indie-rock’s most clearly defined personalities, Jenny Lewis does her best not to be pinned down. In the decade or so since she lost interest in Rilo Kiley, Lewis has bounded from one project to the next, chasing whims, collecting collaborators, and generally trying on new hats with no fucks given about whether they fit or not. And although she’s always given the impression of being an open book, writing with apparent candor about her desires, convictions, and complete and utter inability to escape her own head, she’s made it increasingly clear that no single album offers a complete self-portrait. As she puts it on the self-titled debut from her latest side project Nice As Fuck, “If you want to know who I am, ask any one of my friends.” Her new band teams her with Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Forster and the Like’s Tennessee Thomas (whose father Pete Thomas drums for Lewis’s pal Elvis Costello and played on Acid Tongue), and their debut is the most low-stakes album she has ever been a part of—which is saying something, considering she made a Jenny & Johnny record. Everything about the album seems designed to lower expectations, from its surprise release to its no-frills cover art. The group doesn’t have a publicist, which is virtually unheard of for a working band with a new album to promote in 2016, and the closest they’ve come to doing press is sharing a facetious band bio from Father John Misty that was more about satirizing the form than talking up the group. Really, the only way the band could have set expectations any lower for the record is if they offered $5 Subway gift cards in exchange for downloading it. They were wise not to oversell it. This is a decidedly minor work, just nine songs in 26 minutes, and they all stick to the same skeletal template: Lewis sings over some vaguely dubby post-punk rhythms in the Pylon/Delta 5 mold. And that’s it. There’s not a lick of guitar on the whole thing, and keyboards are rationed nearly as strictly. A few notes of warbly synthesizer are smuggled into “Cookie Lips,” and although they’re not much, they sound like a Brian Eno production compared to the rest of the record. Warpaint played with some overlapping influences on their last album, which demonstrated the many ways that dub can be morphed and modernized, but Nice As Fuck have little interest in filling the considerable empty space they create. They play their post-punk homages completely straight. It works in part because of the surprise factor (who knew Lewis had this kind of record in her?) but mostly because Lewis does what she always does: She sells the material. It’s a kick hearing her go full riot grrl on tracks like “Runaway” and “Door,” and lead Le Tigre-esque chants on “Homerun” and the album’s closing band theme (“We’re nice/as fuck.”) She’s also adjusted her songwriting to match her economical accompaniments, paring her usual wordy couplets down to concise slogans. Every line on the protest song “Guns” feels like a first draft it must have taken great restraint not to refine. “Crisis is not ISIS,” she sings. “Spilling our own blood/I don’t wanna be afraid/put your guns away.” It’s hard not to see the album as a reaction to Lewis’s previous effort, the highly polished, achingly personal The Voyager. By most accounts that record took years to complete, while Nice As Fuck—at the risk of going out on a limb—probably didn’t. If history is any indication, the project will likely be just a pit stop for a Lewis, a way for her to stretch out a bit before throwing herself into something a little more demanding, and that’s fine—not every effort needs to represent five years of toiling and soul searching. Nice As Fuck may set its sights low, but it hits its mark.

Artist: Nice as Fuck, Album: Nice As Fuck, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "For being one of indie-rock’s most clearly defined personalities, Jenny Lewis does her best not to be pinned down. In the decade or so since she lost interest in Rilo Kiley, Lewis has bounded from one project to the next, chasing whims, collecting collaborators, and generally trying on new hats with no fucks given about whether they fit or not. And although she’s always given the impression of being an open book, writing with apparent candor about her desires, convictions, and complete and utter inability to escape her own head, she’s made it increasingly clear that no single album offers a complete self-portrait. As she puts it on the self-titled debut from her latest side project Nice As Fuck, “If you want to know who I am, ask any one of my friends.” Her new band teams her with Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Forster and the Like’s Tennessee Thomas (whose father Pete Thomas drums for Lewis’s pal Elvis Costello and played on Acid Tongue), and their debut is the most low-stakes album she has ever been a part of—which is saying something, considering she made a Jenny & Johnny record. Everything about the album seems designed to lower expectations, from its surprise release to its no-frills cover art. The group doesn’t have a publicist, which is virtually unheard of for a working band with a new album to promote in 2016, and the closest they’ve come to doing press is sharing a facetious band bio from Father John Misty that was more about satirizing the form than talking up the group. Really, the only way the band could have set expectations any lower for the record is if they offered $5 Subway gift cards in exchange for downloading it. They were wise not to oversell it. This is a decidedly minor work, just nine songs in 26 minutes, and they all stick to the same skeletal template: Lewis sings over some vaguely dubby post-punk rhythms in the Pylon/Delta 5 mold. And that’s it. There’s not a lick of guitar on the whole thing, and keyboards are rationed nearly as strictly. A few notes of warbly synthesizer are smuggled into “Cookie Lips,” and although they’re not much, they sound like a Brian Eno production compared to the rest of the record. Warpaint played with some overlapping influences on their last album, which demonstrated the many ways that dub can be morphed and modernized, but Nice As Fuck have little interest in filling the considerable empty space they create. They play their post-punk homages completely straight. It works in part because of the surprise factor (who knew Lewis had this kind of record in her?) but mostly because Lewis does what she always does: She sells the material. It’s a kick hearing her go full riot grrl on tracks like “Runaway” and “Door,” and lead Le Tigre-esque chants on “Homerun” and the album’s closing band theme (“We’re nice/as fuck.”) She’s also adjusted her songwriting to match her economical accompaniments, paring her usual wordy couplets down to concise slogans. Every line on the protest song “Guns” feels like a first draft it must have taken great restraint not to refine. “Crisis is not ISIS,” she sings. “Spilling our own blood/I don’t wanna be afraid/put your guns away.” It’s hard not to see the album as a reaction to Lewis’s previous effort, the highly polished, achingly personal The Voyager. By most accounts that record took years to complete, while Nice As Fuck—at the risk of going out on a limb—probably didn’t. If history is any indication, the project will likely be just a pit stop for a Lewis, a way for her to stretch out a bit before throwing herself into something a little more demanding, and that’s fine—not every effort needs to represent five years of toiling and soul searching. Nice As Fuck may set its sights low, but it hits its mark."

µ-Ziq

Chewed Corners

Electronic

Angus Finlayson

Mike Paradinas has never reached the dizzying heights of acclaim afforded to IDM contemporaries like Aphex Twin. But, listening to his early Rephlex-released LPs under the µ-Ziq alias, his importance in shaping the style is indisputable. From there his career path has been far from straightforward: by the late 90s he'd made a lateral move, setting up his own label and arguably proving himself a better A&R than he was a producer. Planet Mu presided over several major developments in global electronic music, from millennial breakcore to mid-noughties dubstep and, more recently, footwork. Paradinas’ own production, meanwhile, seemed to falter during the 2000s. 2003’s Bilious Paths was an enjoyable exploration of the sound-and-fury of drill and bass and breakcore, if a little beholden to label successes like Venetian Snares. 2007’s Duntisbourne Abbots Soulmate Devastation Technique, meanwhile, followed the break-up of a long-term relationship, and its suffocatingly maudlin spin on Paradinas’ usual melodic style proved rather difficult to love. Since then we’ve heard little from Paradinas the producer, but 2013 has marked a surprising return to form. First there was Heterotic’s Love & Devotion, an album of euphoric, romantic synth-pop produced in collaboration with Paradinas’ new wife, Lara Rix-Martin. Following that was a µ-Ziq EP, XTEP, which showcased a newly airy sound, contiguous with his past work but also displaying the influence of chillwave, italo disco, piano house, and plenty else besides. As with both of these records, Chewed Corners, the first µ-Ziq LP in six years, has a certain giddiness to it-- a giddiness, it’s tempting to conclude, born of new love and fresh optimism. Of course, that optimism could be less to do with Paradinas’ personal life than with the state of music: much of this record displays the influence of recent Planet Mu signings, or of broader trends in contemporary electronic music. "Taikon" and "Twangle Melkas" draw on Kuedo’s Vangelis-via-Southern-hip-hop schtick; "Tickly Flanks" owes a debt to the sugar-rush hardcore-footwork hybrids of Machinedrum, though it’s a little torpid in comparison to its forebear. "Wipe"'s syncopated rhythms nod to UK funky, while "Houzz 10" could be a symptom of the recent house revival-- except Paradinas’ take on the form is particularly dreamy, rolling along on a single blissy break-of-dawn plateau for its duration. Fortunately, Paradinas just as often succeeds in massaging his inspirations into an idiom entirely his own. There are plenty of highlights here-- heat-warped synth interlude "Monyth", the heavy-lidded "Hug", "Mountain Island Boner", whose portentous piano chords would almost be laughable were they not rather affecting. All of them sound fresh, but are also recognisably µ-Ziq-- unlike the occasional borderline-pastiche footwork remix Paradinas has turned out in recent years. Granted, the weaknesses of past µ-Ziq work live on along with its strengths, and Paradinas’ penchant for overwhelmingly dense arrangements occasionally gets the better of him-- particularly in closer "Weakling Paradinas", which aims for euphoric texture-overload but overshoots, resulting in a fatiguing mess. But in Chewed Corners Paradinas has put together an LP brimming with fresh ideas-- which, for an artist entering the third decade of his career, is no mean feat.

Artist: µ-Ziq, Album: Chewed Corners, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Mike Paradinas has never reached the dizzying heights of acclaim afforded to IDM contemporaries like Aphex Twin. But, listening to his early Rephlex-released LPs under the µ-Ziq alias, his importance in shaping the style is indisputable. From there his career path has been far from straightforward: by the late 90s he'd made a lateral move, setting up his own label and arguably proving himself a better A&R than he was a producer. Planet Mu presided over several major developments in global electronic music, from millennial breakcore to mid-noughties dubstep and, more recently, footwork. Paradinas’ own production, meanwhile, seemed to falter during the 2000s. 2003’s Bilious Paths was an enjoyable exploration of the sound-and-fury of drill and bass and breakcore, if a little beholden to label successes like Venetian Snares. 2007’s Duntisbourne Abbots Soulmate Devastation Technique, meanwhile, followed the break-up of a long-term relationship, and its suffocatingly maudlin spin on Paradinas’ usual melodic style proved rather difficult to love. Since then we’ve heard little from Paradinas the producer, but 2013 has marked a surprising return to form. First there was Heterotic’s Love & Devotion, an album of euphoric, romantic synth-pop produced in collaboration with Paradinas’ new wife, Lara Rix-Martin. Following that was a µ-Ziq EP, XTEP, which showcased a newly airy sound, contiguous with his past work but also displaying the influence of chillwave, italo disco, piano house, and plenty else besides. As with both of these records, Chewed Corners, the first µ-Ziq LP in six years, has a certain giddiness to it-- a giddiness, it’s tempting to conclude, born of new love and fresh optimism. Of course, that optimism could be less to do with Paradinas’ personal life than with the state of music: much of this record displays the influence of recent Planet Mu signings, or of broader trends in contemporary electronic music. "Taikon" and "Twangle Melkas" draw on Kuedo’s Vangelis-via-Southern-hip-hop schtick; "Tickly Flanks" owes a debt to the sugar-rush hardcore-footwork hybrids of Machinedrum, though it’s a little torpid in comparison to its forebear. "Wipe"'s syncopated rhythms nod to UK funky, while "Houzz 10" could be a symptom of the recent house revival-- except Paradinas’ take on the form is particularly dreamy, rolling along on a single blissy break-of-dawn plateau for its duration. Fortunately, Paradinas just as often succeeds in massaging his inspirations into an idiom entirely his own. There are plenty of highlights here-- heat-warped synth interlude "Monyth", the heavy-lidded "Hug", "Mountain Island Boner", whose portentous piano chords would almost be laughable were they not rather affecting. All of them sound fresh, but are also recognisably µ-Ziq-- unlike the occasional borderline-pastiche footwork remix Paradinas has turned out in recent years. Granted, the weaknesses of past µ-Ziq work live on along with its strengths, and Paradinas’ penchant for overwhelmingly dense arrangements occasionally gets the better of him-- particularly in closer "Weakling Paradinas", which aims for euphoric texture-overload but overshoots, resulting in a fatiguing mess. But in Chewed Corners Paradinas has put together an LP brimming with fresh ideas-- which, for an artist entering the third decade of his career, is no mean feat."

Papa M

Whatever, Mortal

Rock

Matt LeMay

Contrary to popular wisdom, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The real problem arises when the old dog becomes so wrapped up in his new tricks that he forgets all the old ones. The miserable thing winds up spending so much time showing off its incredible new talent that it forgets to do the simple things-- like eat out of a bowl and not shit on the rug. Hopeless and frustrated, you find yourself with no choice but to take a rusty kitchen knife to Fido, ending both his misery and yours. After hearing Papa M's Sings EP earlier this year, I couldn't shake the fear that I would at some point find myself cleaning David Pajo's diced innards off of my living room floor. After spending years with sonic adventurers like Slint and Tortoise, and working with such unique voices as Will Oldham, Pajo happened upon the miraculous discovery that he can play dusty old folk music. Unfortunately, those old blues and country records seemed to have wiped clean all that Pajo had learned in his travels, leaving him sounding painfully amateurish for a guy who wanted to sound like a weathered wanderer. He was an old dog trying to learn an older trick, and I for one feared that it would be his last. Thankfully, it appears that I won't be gutting David Pajo with a crowbar any time soon. Whatever, Mortal is a wonderful synthesis of Pajo's old and new tricks, and one of those rare albums that manages to be seriously steeped in tradition without being trite and boring. In some ways, Whatever, Mortal picks up where Sings left off: with Pajo trying his hand at some roots music, and putting his uncertain baritone to good use. But whereas Sings seemed little more than a genre exercise, Whatever, Mortal sees Pajo beginning to develop his own distinctive sound-- a kind of slapped-together orchestral feel that lends the album a beautifully downcast grandiosity. With Pajo, Tara Jane O'Neil, and Will Oldham covering a variety of instruments, ranging from guitars and melodicas to wood floors and dog tags, Whatever, Mortal is a magnificently rich-sounding album. Whereas lesser artists might get carried away with such vast instrumentation, Pajo keeps this album beautifully thin and airy. Take, for example, the album's opener, "Over Jordan," in which Pajo's voice is often accompanied by little more than guitar and banjo. The cold, dark tone of the song's verse is contrasted by its gorgeous "I'm going hoooooome" chorus, in which Pajo's multitracked voice seems to melt into something beautifully malleable. What could have been the album's most sparse, revealing moment comes with "Sorrow Reigns," a brief song in which Pajo is accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. But one of Whatever, Mortal's strengths is that, while parts of it are deeply affecting, the album never takes itself seriously. And on "Sorrow Reigns," Pajo makes this abundantly clear, letting loose the Oldham-esque lyric, "There was something like a wall between us/ That stopped your going down on my penis." There's a serious tradeoff here-- the break in the album's somewhat-serious façade (which is already cracked by the album's title) is welcome, but the lyric sounds painfully out-of-place, and frankly, kind of dumb. A better executed bit of goofing off comes with the album's next track, "Krusty," a lovely instrumental set over the backdrop of an episode of "The Simpsons" (Episode #9F13, "I Love Lisa," for those of you who still find the phrase "worst episode ever" amusing.) Here, Pajo shows that, while he may be pursuing a folkier side, he still has some great guitar-based instrumental music in him. "Krusty" is immediately followed up by Whatever, Mortal's strongest track, "The Lass of Roch Royal," in which Pajo manages to bring great sonic ingenuity to musical and lyrical themes that have been around for centuries. Using some wonderfully placed ethereal background vocals, a sample of rain, and what could either be keys or the aforementioned dog tags, Pajo constructs a sonic approximation of spooky sorrow that seems infinitely more substantial than just an acoustic guitar and voice. So it seems that David Pajo hasn't lost his way after all. Quite the contrary, in fact; he's managed to produce his best album yet. By not strictly adhering to the various molds of old-time folk, blues, and country, Pajo has captured the essence of the music he once shallowly emulated. What's more, he's managed to turn it into something that's unquestionably his own. Good Pajo.

Artist: Papa M, Album: Whatever, Mortal, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "Contrary to popular wisdom, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The real problem arises when the old dog becomes so wrapped up in his new tricks that he forgets all the old ones. The miserable thing winds up spending so much time showing off its incredible new talent that it forgets to do the simple things-- like eat out of a bowl and not shit on the rug. Hopeless and frustrated, you find yourself with no choice but to take a rusty kitchen knife to Fido, ending both his misery and yours. After hearing Papa M's Sings EP earlier this year, I couldn't shake the fear that I would at some point find myself cleaning David Pajo's diced innards off of my living room floor. After spending years with sonic adventurers like Slint and Tortoise, and working with such unique voices as Will Oldham, Pajo happened upon the miraculous discovery that he can play dusty old folk music. Unfortunately, those old blues and country records seemed to have wiped clean all that Pajo had learned in his travels, leaving him sounding painfully amateurish for a guy who wanted to sound like a weathered wanderer. He was an old dog trying to learn an older trick, and I for one feared that it would be his last. Thankfully, it appears that I won't be gutting David Pajo with a crowbar any time soon. Whatever, Mortal is a wonderful synthesis of Pajo's old and new tricks, and one of those rare albums that manages to be seriously steeped in tradition without being trite and boring. In some ways, Whatever, Mortal picks up where Sings left off: with Pajo trying his hand at some roots music, and putting his uncertain baritone to good use. But whereas Sings seemed little more than a genre exercise, Whatever, Mortal sees Pajo beginning to develop his own distinctive sound-- a kind of slapped-together orchestral feel that lends the album a beautifully downcast grandiosity. With Pajo, Tara Jane O'Neil, and Will Oldham covering a variety of instruments, ranging from guitars and melodicas to wood floors and dog tags, Whatever, Mortal is a magnificently rich-sounding album. Whereas lesser artists might get carried away with such vast instrumentation, Pajo keeps this album beautifully thin and airy. Take, for example, the album's opener, "Over Jordan," in which Pajo's voice is often accompanied by little more than guitar and banjo. The cold, dark tone of the song's verse is contrasted by its gorgeous "I'm going hoooooome" chorus, in which Pajo's multitracked voice seems to melt into something beautifully malleable. What could have been the album's most sparse, revealing moment comes with "Sorrow Reigns," a brief song in which Pajo is accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. But one of Whatever, Mortal's strengths is that, while parts of it are deeply affecting, the album never takes itself seriously. And on "Sorrow Reigns," Pajo makes this abundantly clear, letting loose the Oldham-esque lyric, "There was something like a wall between us/ That stopped your going down on my penis." There's a serious tradeoff here-- the break in the album's somewhat-serious façade (which is already cracked by the album's title) is welcome, but the lyric sounds painfully out-of-place, and frankly, kind of dumb. A better executed bit of goofing off comes with the album's next track, "Krusty," a lovely instrumental set over the backdrop of an episode of "The Simpsons" (Episode #9F13, "I Love Lisa," for those of you who still find the phrase "worst episode ever" amusing.) Here, Pajo shows that, while he may be pursuing a folkier side, he still has some great guitar-based instrumental music in him. "Krusty" is immediately followed up by Whatever, Mortal's strongest track, "The Lass of Roch Royal," in which Pajo manages to bring great sonic ingenuity to musical and lyrical themes that have been around for centuries. Using some wonderfully placed ethereal background vocals, a sample of rain, and what could either be keys or the aforementioned dog tags, Pajo constructs a sonic approximation of spooky sorrow that seems infinitely more substantial than just an acoustic guitar and voice. So it seems that David Pajo hasn't lost his way after all. Quite the contrary, in fact; he's managed to produce his best album yet. By not strictly adhering to the various molds of old-time folk, blues, and country, Pajo has captured the essence of the music he once shallowly emulated. What's more, he's managed to turn it into something that's unquestionably his own. Good Pajo."

Matisyahu

Youth

Global

Sean Fennessey

Matisyahu (née Matthew Miller) is a guy from White Plains, N.Y. who smoked weed and followed Phish and played in those drum circles everyone hates. One spiritual breakthrough later, he realized he loved dancehall reggae and Judaism (order unclear) and started making music. He performs wearing traditional Hasidic garb, and he beatboxes and stagedives. That's the whole story. Stop reading those magazine articles. His music, however, isn't all that special. Mixing high school retreat Rasta spitting, Yiddish verse, and occasionally legit patois over a synthesized version of trad reggae, he's on that old search for enlightenment and devotion but his struggle reeks of bored rich kid. Foolish to question his faith, but in the face of Bob Marley's homeland righteousness and complicated politics or Sizzla's maniacal, militant Rastafarianism, Matisyahu's roots reggae is flimsy stuff. Not necessary novelty. Just not that novel. Matisyahu's third album is his first studio release since last year's rep-making SXSW performance and comes on the heels of a live album, Live at Stubb's, that currently resides in the Billboard top 50. The LP is overrun with standard religious tropes. Youth was produced by Material linchpin Bill Laswell, who issued Trojan's Dub Massive Chapters One & Two last year and has helped produce avant-garde music for the likes of John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, and Herbie Hancock (he played bass on "Rockit"). His contributions are obvious on "Indestructible" and "Late Night in Zion", tracks that glide away from traditional Jamrock stomp and dabble in bouncy ethereal movements and wanky soloing. Lyrically, Godspeak is unassailable stuff (ask Sufjan) but Matisyahu is not immune to clunky turns of phrase like, "What I'm fighting for is more than silver and gold" or "I'm all shook up like I been in the blender," and is often downed by them. "Unique in My Dove" is admirable stuff, pleading and pledging fidelity to his woman, and extrapolated to his faith. But it's treacle jammy stuff; with all those natty drum fills, MOR progressions, and lockstep dub grooves the good will goes to shit. Authenticity and showmanship appear to be the stumbling blocks and great emancipators for Matisyahu. Inexplicably, he attracts jam-rock blaggards and disoriented hipsters with nowhere else to turn with his wacky ability to make beat noises out of his mouth. It was annoying when Justin Timberlake did it and it's annoying now. Still, as large venues continue to sell out, Baby Boomers remember they luuuhve Marley and hey, this guy, at least, kinda sounds like him if you can't remember the 70s that well. Plus he's worth an extra 20 minutes of convos at the steak house before the show. "Wait, he's Jewish? You're kidding!?!" It's sad that relatively innocuous musicians are indicted on the strength of their audience, but sometimes the demographics don't lie. In his 2005 end-of-the-year comments, Pitchfork's boss hog Ryan Schreiber dissed Matis simply by quoting the Bravery's Sam Enidcott's ill-considered declaration that "This is the future of music." Others have also hopped on this dubious idea. I'm not entirely sure anyone knows what Endicott's statement means. I suspect the next Hasidic dude rocking the mic is gonna get shouted down for being a poseur. Perhaps Endicott meant that artists who step out of their cultural realm and embrace an unlikely sound to deliver their message are the future. There might be something to that.

Artist: Matisyahu, Album: Youth, Genre: Global, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "Matisyahu (née Matthew Miller) is a guy from White Plains, N.Y. who smoked weed and followed Phish and played in those drum circles everyone hates. One spiritual breakthrough later, he realized he loved dancehall reggae and Judaism (order unclear) and started making music. He performs wearing traditional Hasidic garb, and he beatboxes and stagedives. That's the whole story. Stop reading those magazine articles. His music, however, isn't all that special. Mixing high school retreat Rasta spitting, Yiddish verse, and occasionally legit patois over a synthesized version of trad reggae, he's on that old search for enlightenment and devotion but his struggle reeks of bored rich kid. Foolish to question his faith, but in the face of Bob Marley's homeland righteousness and complicated politics or Sizzla's maniacal, militant Rastafarianism, Matisyahu's roots reggae is flimsy stuff. Not necessary novelty. Just not that novel. Matisyahu's third album is his first studio release since last year's rep-making SXSW performance and comes on the heels of a live album, Live at Stubb's, that currently resides in the Billboard top 50. The LP is overrun with standard religious tropes. Youth was produced by Material linchpin Bill Laswell, who issued Trojan's Dub Massive Chapters One & Two last year and has helped produce avant-garde music for the likes of John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, and Herbie Hancock (he played bass on "Rockit"). His contributions are obvious on "Indestructible" and "Late Night in Zion", tracks that glide away from traditional Jamrock stomp and dabble in bouncy ethereal movements and wanky soloing. Lyrically, Godspeak is unassailable stuff (ask Sufjan) but Matisyahu is not immune to clunky turns of phrase like, "What I'm fighting for is more than silver and gold" or "I'm all shook up like I been in the blender," and is often downed by them. "Unique in My Dove" is admirable stuff, pleading and pledging fidelity to his woman, and extrapolated to his faith. But it's treacle jammy stuff; with all those natty drum fills, MOR progressions, and lockstep dub grooves the good will goes to shit. Authenticity and showmanship appear to be the stumbling blocks and great emancipators for Matisyahu. Inexplicably, he attracts jam-rock blaggards and disoriented hipsters with nowhere else to turn with his wacky ability to make beat noises out of his mouth. It was annoying when Justin Timberlake did it and it's annoying now. Still, as large venues continue to sell out, Baby Boomers remember they luuuhve Marley and hey, this guy, at least, kinda sounds like him if you can't remember the 70s that well. Plus he's worth an extra 20 minutes of convos at the steak house before the show. "Wait, he's Jewish? You're kidding!?!" It's sad that relatively innocuous musicians are indicted on the strength of their audience, but sometimes the demographics don't lie. In his 2005 end-of-the-year comments, Pitchfork's boss hog Ryan Schreiber dissed Matis simply by quoting the Bravery's Sam Enidcott's ill-considered declaration that "This is the future of music." Others have also hopped on this dubious idea. I'm not entirely sure anyone knows what Endicott's statement means. I suspect the next Hasidic dude rocking the mic is gonna get shouted down for being a poseur. Perhaps Endicott meant that artists who step out of their cultural realm and embrace an unlikely sound to deliver their message are the future. There might be something to that."

Patti Smith

Trampin'

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Patti Smith kicks off her ninth album, Trampin', with what sounds like a call to arms: "Come on, girl/ Come on, boy/ Be a jubilee." That word, "jubilee," hangs heavy with meaning. Commonly connoting a commemorative celebration, this Biblical term also refers to a period of emancipation for Hebrew slaves. It was adopted by the abolition movement in the 1800s and by the civil rights movement a century later. And it says a lot more about the album and Smith's intentions than the title Trampin' does: Mixing the personal and the political, she examines her own and the country's past while inciting activism in the present-- a jubilee as both remembrance and protest. If any musician can expose the lies of the age and urge her listeners to action, it's Smith: She started as a visual and dramatic artist in the late 1960s, when activism was swelling at college campuses across the country; in the early 1970s, when the previous decade's revolutionaries went underground, she put her poetry to Lenny Kaye's guitar and created a highly idiosyncratic form of punk that bore surprising longevity. Her early albums still sound fiery and fidgety, resisting the genre gentrification that has desanguinated her contemporaries, but on Trampin', she is so preoccupied with the past that she fails to adequately capture the present. As for the past, Trampin' finds particular inspiration in the civil rights movement: The album's title comes from a spiritual made famous by Marian Anderson, which Smith lovingly covers at album's end. The nine-minute "Gandhi" re-creates a childhood illness as the mahatma's defining experience and namechecks Martin Luther King Jr., but ends with a more timely imperative: "Awake from your slumber/ And get 'em with the numbers." Trampin' is Smith at her most deferential: She looks to figures like Gandhi, King, Anderson, and even Bob Dylan on "Stride of the Mind" for spiritual guidance. While this approach may be valid and even occasionally compelling, for the most part it robs the album of most of its urgency and dulls its outrage. In a sense, Smith hides behind these historical leaders, letting their names and legacies stand in place of her own anger and reasoning. In comparison to these tracks, the 12-minute epic "Radio Baghdad" sounds much braver and riskier, trading concision for dramatic vitality. Less an anti-war poem than a noisy self-exorcism by an American ashamed of her country's actions, the song expounds on Baghdad's history, culture and ruin, and conjures the kind of righteous fire missing from "Gandhi". Smith yelps "shock and awe shock and awe" with such mighty defiance and disdain that the words sound hardly human-- it's the fiercest moment on the album. However, Smith, intending each line to be a targeted missile, occasionally lapses into bumper-sticker lyrics like, "We invented the zero/ But we mean nothing to you," and, "Robbing the cradle of civilization," whose catchy cleverness threatens to undermine the song's message. It's perhaps a testament to her explosive performance that the song ends with a genuine and meaningful catharsis, which Smith manages to sustain through the short, elegant title track that follows. Given the complications of the album's political messages, it should be no surprise that the most heartfelt and memorable songs on Trampin' are Smith's personal commemorations, like "Mother Rose" and "Trespasses", which are shorter and more traditionally structured. Smith's late husband, former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, still haunts her music, as it has on every album since 1996's Gone Again, but here, that sadness is leavened by the reassuring presence of her children, both of whom play on the album. In fact, Smith wrote "Cartwheels" for her daughter Jesse Paris Smith, who accompanies her mother on piano for the title track. These people feel more immediate and more connected to Smith than any of the historical figures she tries to summon, so the gravity of her personal life ultimately outweighs the confusion of American political life. They offer the reassurance of security and certainty, of questions with clear-cut answers, something she finds in the era of civil rights but not so much in our present-day predicaments. What keeps Trampin' from being a failure of imagination is her dogged insistence on searching for something solid and sure to bring to the discussion; what she finds may not offer many solutions, but it does gravely illustrate the burden of giving a shit in the first place.

Artist: Patti Smith, Album: Trampin', Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Patti Smith kicks off her ninth album, Trampin', with what sounds like a call to arms: "Come on, girl/ Come on, boy/ Be a jubilee." That word, "jubilee," hangs heavy with meaning. Commonly connoting a commemorative celebration, this Biblical term also refers to a period of emancipation for Hebrew slaves. It was adopted by the abolition movement in the 1800s and by the civil rights movement a century later. And it says a lot more about the album and Smith's intentions than the title Trampin' does: Mixing the personal and the political, she examines her own and the country's past while inciting activism in the present-- a jubilee as both remembrance and protest. If any musician can expose the lies of the age and urge her listeners to action, it's Smith: She started as a visual and dramatic artist in the late 1960s, when activism was swelling at college campuses across the country; in the early 1970s, when the previous decade's revolutionaries went underground, she put her poetry to Lenny Kaye's guitar and created a highly idiosyncratic form of punk that bore surprising longevity. Her early albums still sound fiery and fidgety, resisting the genre gentrification that has desanguinated her contemporaries, but on Trampin', she is so preoccupied with the past that she fails to adequately capture the present. As for the past, Trampin' finds particular inspiration in the civil rights movement: The album's title comes from a spiritual made famous by Marian Anderson, which Smith lovingly covers at album's end. The nine-minute "Gandhi" re-creates a childhood illness as the mahatma's defining experience and namechecks Martin Luther King Jr., but ends with a more timely imperative: "Awake from your slumber/ And get 'em with the numbers." Trampin' is Smith at her most deferential: She looks to figures like Gandhi, King, Anderson, and even Bob Dylan on "Stride of the Mind" for spiritual guidance. While this approach may be valid and even occasionally compelling, for the most part it robs the album of most of its urgency and dulls its outrage. In a sense, Smith hides behind these historical leaders, letting their names and legacies stand in place of her own anger and reasoning. In comparison to these tracks, the 12-minute epic "Radio Baghdad" sounds much braver and riskier, trading concision for dramatic vitality. Less an anti-war poem than a noisy self-exorcism by an American ashamed of her country's actions, the song expounds on Baghdad's history, culture and ruin, and conjures the kind of righteous fire missing from "Gandhi". Smith yelps "shock and awe shock and awe" with such mighty defiance and disdain that the words sound hardly human-- it's the fiercest moment on the album. However, Smith, intending each line to be a targeted missile, occasionally lapses into bumper-sticker lyrics like, "We invented the zero/ But we mean nothing to you," and, "Robbing the cradle of civilization," whose catchy cleverness threatens to undermine the song's message. It's perhaps a testament to her explosive performance that the song ends with a genuine and meaningful catharsis, which Smith manages to sustain through the short, elegant title track that follows. Given the complications of the album's political messages, it should be no surprise that the most heartfelt and memorable songs on Trampin' are Smith's personal commemorations, like "Mother Rose" and "Trespasses", which are shorter and more traditionally structured. Smith's late husband, former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, still haunts her music, as it has on every album since 1996's Gone Again, but here, that sadness is leavened by the reassuring presence of her children, both of whom play on the album. In fact, Smith wrote "Cartwheels" for her daughter Jesse Paris Smith, who accompanies her mother on piano for the title track. These people feel more immediate and more connected to Smith than any of the historical figures she tries to summon, so the gravity of her personal life ultimately outweighs the confusion of American political life. They offer the reassurance of security and certainty, of questions with clear-cut answers, something she finds in the era of civil rights but not so much in our present-day predicaments. What keeps Trampin' from being a failure of imagination is her dogged insistence on searching for something solid and sure to bring to the discussion; what she finds may not offer many solutions, but it does gravely illustrate the burden of giving a shit in the first place."

Sing-Sing

The Joy of Sing-Sing

Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

If you're anything like me, you're charming and remarkably virile and have fond memories of a time when American record stores still carried British weeklies like the NME. There was a time back then, in this imported Brit-indie world, when Alan McGee seemed incredibly important. He ran Creation Records back when people still wanted rock labels to be legendary: he signed My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain. He also signed Oasis, who bankrolled his massive drug habit for quite a while; after that he got really into soccer, palled around with Prime Minister Tony Blair, sold Creation, and went off to start a new label called Poptones. Lush were important, too: they gave hilarious interviews to the weeklies, lent guitars to Kevin Shields, and hung out with the Cocteau Twins. They started off making shimmery shoegazer records and then gradually turned to making shimmery Britpop records, and just when something commercial started happening, their drummer killed himself. The others, understandably, went off for a while as well, and now one of them-- guitar player Emma Anderson-- is back, on Alan McGee's new label. No surprise: they were part of the same changing game. As were a lot of the folks on The Joy of Sing-Sing, which is like a collision of Anderson's and singer Lisa O'Neill's friends. Emma borrows former members from shoegazers Moonshake and Slowdive spin-off Mojave 3; O'Neill, of slightly more recent pedigrees, escorts members of the Departure Lounge and the more ambient Locust. Sing-Sing's first single was even released by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie's Bella Union imprint. What this supergroup of the vaguely dated are assembled to do is the same pretty ambitious thing you get from high-gloss, tech-savvy acts from Goldfrapp to Garbage, and the same thing you get from shoegazers-gone-pop like The Verve or Mercury Rev or that disappointing last Lush album: Sing-Sing are using the whole run of studio technology to make a tight, interesting, and great-sounding pop record. What's surprising, in this instance, is that this down-the-center approach to ambitiously arranged pop gives the group a ton of room to pack in a refreshingly wide variety of ideas. The obvious bases get covered: the fizzy swagger of Curve, or the slick trip-hop loops of however million Monos and Hooverphonics swarmed across the late 90s. But then the band's off elsewhere: swinging rhythms and hyper-sunny harmonies on the Stereolabby "Far Away from Love", shiny futuristic Motown on "Feels Like Summer", late-period Lush ambience on "Underage". Anderson even goes full-scale on her long-standing pull toward saccharine 80s pop, turning "Panda Eyes"-- a Lush song if I've ever heard one-- into the sort of dreamily pulsing, synth-heavy number you might imagine coming either from a Corey Haim movie or the Darling Buds. The spirit of 4AD-- Lush's label, the label that turned the word "ethereal" into a critical staple-- makes a number of visits: O'Neill, who both sings and writes melodies disturbingly like Shelleyan Orphan's Caroline Crawley, invites the comparison directly on a few arty crooners. * All of which could easily have been the dullest, nicely produced thing in the world, if not for the fact that the songs are remarkably good. This, actually, was the whole glory of Americans listening to British rock bands as "indie" in our sense of the word: as opposed to the raw, grotty rockers slouching around the U.S., the Brits were honestly trying to write fabulous perfect pop singles that would get them on the cover of Melody Maker or on "Top of the Pops". Which is what The Joy of Sing-Sing delivers, more or less-- the pair's melodic turns are all pop, consistently sharp, and oddly fresh-sounding, and the structures of the arrangements are clever and sophisticated enough to spend a decent amount of time picking through. Making a great big shiny pop/rock record: sometimes it seems like everyone is trying to do it, and sometimes it seems like everyone is too much of a wimp to try. Right now seems a little like the latter-- so the fact that this album occasionally sounds like it's competing with 1995 Britpop flashes like Echobelly and Sleeper seems more like adorable charm than grounds for dismissal. If Starsailor and Coldplay are what popular British indie bands have come to, a little nostalgia isn't out of order, and Sing-Sing, Black Box Recorder, and the still-brilliant Pulp can be forgiven a whole lot. Granted, if you're one for history, you could find it a useless little anachronism. But even if it turns out to be an incredibly useless thing, it would be churlish to pretend that it's not the best little useless thing it can possibly be. Sing-Sing have made a sharp, simple record that will change absolutely nothing.

Artist: Sing-Sing, Album: The Joy of Sing-Sing, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "If you're anything like me, you're charming and remarkably virile and have fond memories of a time when American record stores still carried British weeklies like the NME. There was a time back then, in this imported Brit-indie world, when Alan McGee seemed incredibly important. He ran Creation Records back when people still wanted rock labels to be legendary: he signed My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain. He also signed Oasis, who bankrolled his massive drug habit for quite a while; after that he got really into soccer, palled around with Prime Minister Tony Blair, sold Creation, and went off to start a new label called Poptones. Lush were important, too: they gave hilarious interviews to the weeklies, lent guitars to Kevin Shields, and hung out with the Cocteau Twins. They started off making shimmery shoegazer records and then gradually turned to making shimmery Britpop records, and just when something commercial started happening, their drummer killed himself. The others, understandably, went off for a while as well, and now one of them-- guitar player Emma Anderson-- is back, on Alan McGee's new label. No surprise: they were part of the same changing game. As were a lot of the folks on The Joy of Sing-Sing, which is like a collision of Anderson's and singer Lisa O'Neill's friends. Emma borrows former members from shoegazers Moonshake and Slowdive spin-off Mojave 3; O'Neill, of slightly more recent pedigrees, escorts members of the Departure Lounge and the more ambient Locust. Sing-Sing's first single was even released by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie's Bella Union imprint. What this supergroup of the vaguely dated are assembled to do is the same pretty ambitious thing you get from high-gloss, tech-savvy acts from Goldfrapp to Garbage, and the same thing you get from shoegazers-gone-pop like The Verve or Mercury Rev or that disappointing last Lush album: Sing-Sing are using the whole run of studio technology to make a tight, interesting, and great-sounding pop record. What's surprising, in this instance, is that this down-the-center approach to ambitiously arranged pop gives the group a ton of room to pack in a refreshingly wide variety of ideas. The obvious bases get covered: the fizzy swagger of Curve, or the slick trip-hop loops of however million Monos and Hooverphonics swarmed across the late 90s. But then the band's off elsewhere: swinging rhythms and hyper-sunny harmonies on the Stereolabby "Far Away from Love", shiny futuristic Motown on "Feels Like Summer", late-period Lush ambience on "Underage". Anderson even goes full-scale on her long-standing pull toward saccharine 80s pop, turning "Panda Eyes"-- a Lush song if I've ever heard one-- into the sort of dreamily pulsing, synth-heavy number you might imagine coming either from a Corey Haim movie or the Darling Buds. The spirit of 4AD-- Lush's label, the label that turned the word "ethereal" into a critical staple-- makes a number of visits: O'Neill, who both sings and writes melodies disturbingly like Shelleyan Orphan's Caroline Crawley, invites the comparison directly on a few arty crooners. * All of which could easily have been the dullest, nicely produced thing in the world, if not for the fact that the songs are remarkably good. This, actually, was the whole glory of Americans listening to British rock bands as "indie" in our sense of the word: as opposed to the raw, grotty rockers slouching around the U.S., the Brits were honestly trying to write fabulous perfect pop singles that would get them on the cover of Melody Maker or on "Top of the Pops". Which is what The Joy of Sing-Sing delivers, more or less-- the pair's melodic turns are all pop, consistently sharp, and oddly fresh-sounding, and the structures of the arrangements are clever and sophisticated enough to spend a decent amount of time picking through. Making a great big shiny pop/rock record: sometimes it seems like everyone is trying to do it, and sometimes it seems like everyone is too much of a wimp to try. Right now seems a little like the latter-- so the fact that this album occasionally sounds like it's competing with 1995 Britpop flashes like Echobelly and Sleeper seems more like adorable charm than grounds for dismissal. If Starsailor and Coldplay are what popular British indie bands have come to, a little nostalgia isn't out of order, and Sing-Sing, Black Box Recorder, and the still-brilliant Pulp can be forgiven a whole lot. Granted, if you're one for history, you could find it a useless little anachronism. But even if it turns out to be an incredibly useless thing, it would be churlish to pretend that it's not the best little useless thing it can possibly be. Sing-Sing have made a sharp, simple record that will change absolutely nothing."

Oxes

Oxxxes

Experimental,Metal,Rock

Eric Carr

Put your hands down, I'll get to all the questions about the Oxes' new album in just a second. Before this little farce goes any further, you've all heard about the "storm" of "controversy" surrounding the Oxes' original album art for Oxxxes. Oh, you haven't? Well, it was a joke, perpetrated by the band and record label in a well-planned bid for publicity. The real joke is that it worked. Put out some fliers and postcards exposing some genuine Ox dick and a hot scenester chick, next thing you know you've got the sexually frustrated indie geeks worked up in a frenzy of sweat and masturbation. Kind of brilliant. Also, kind of embarrassing. I find it a little hard to believe that Baltimore, the hometown of John Waters, was up in arms over the various sexual exploits taking place on the original cover (still available on 'collectable' vinyl!). About the only good things to come out of this manufactured controversy were some entertaining signs from the 'protest photos' on the CD cover reading SARCASM DOES NOT EQUAL IRONY and OXES SUCK COXES. I bring this up because this sort of despicably lame publicity stunt should immediately worry any sort of media savvy consumer (which, of course, you've all proven yourselves to be by coming 'round this hairy old website of ours). This ranks right up there with stunts like Bono going on a "fact finding" mission to Africa with the Secretary of the Freakin' Treasury, or Elvis "dying." And it's not like the Oxes even need this kind of help. Every single review of Oxxxes spends at least a paragraph on this (I win by wasting two), which just means less time spent discussing their patented brand of full-throttle metallic math rock. But maybe that's just to avoid the task of trying to funnel this sort of wordless aural acupuncture into text-- it just doesn't translate. Describing the Oxes' compositions for two guitars and some industrial strength drums as "instrumental" trivializes them. Regular rock bands break the pace of an album with an instrumental for a lark; the Oxes, in the grand tradition of the luminaries of Don Cab, make a valiant effort at instrumental communication. Simply calling it "math rock" isn't much good, either. In the immortal words of Mr. Waits, the content of Oxxxes is harder than Chinese algebra, and in every possible way. They know when to let the passive intellectualism of math (or, in the case of the Natalio Fowler and Marc Miller's smoldering guitar interlacing, calculus) give way to playful Metal God flourishes, lest things become too academic. Like a cathedral constructed entirely out of a monolithic slab of poured concrete, Oxxxes is simultaneously complex, stylized structure and dense, dense, dense. So instead of talking about the album, the live show talk gets trotted out. Everything nice that's ever been said about the Oxes' live histrionics is truer than true; they do take full advantage of their wireless kits and put on a fantastic show. The biggest problem with Oxxxes, aside from being just not quite as fun as their self-titled debut, is that even when played at organ-rupturing volumes, it doesn't give the listener anything to latch on to like a guy barreling through the audience with the intent to cause bodily harm does. "Boss Kitty" kicks it out Helmet-style in the opening moments for some good old-fashioned, tongue-in-cheek fun; the exultant rhythmic shifts and tricks of "Half Half & Half" spark precision riff frenzy hot enough to burn the song down to its foundation. But they certainly don't build the kind of fire that made Don Cab such an institution, and god help me, I can't even sing along! That's not to say I can't enjoy lots of instrumental music; I just expect more from it than lyricless rock. Put it this way: Oxes are not the Autechre of rock and roll. This is an album you can throw on for shits and giggles, if that's your thing. The blistering guitar work on Oxxxes doesn't quite live up to the standards they've set for themselves, but it's sick hott and sharp enough to split the atom, not to mention a hell of a lot more fun than atomic fission. But without vocal help, the visuals of a live performance, or anything beyond mutating time signatures, this album loses a little something that it can't quite replace.

Artist: Oxes, Album: Oxxxes, Genre: Experimental,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Put your hands down, I'll get to all the questions about the Oxes' new album in just a second. Before this little farce goes any further, you've all heard about the "storm" of "controversy" surrounding the Oxes' original album art for Oxxxes. Oh, you haven't? Well, it was a joke, perpetrated by the band and record label in a well-planned bid for publicity. The real joke is that it worked. Put out some fliers and postcards exposing some genuine Ox dick and a hot scenester chick, next thing you know you've got the sexually frustrated indie geeks worked up in a frenzy of sweat and masturbation. Kind of brilliant. Also, kind of embarrassing. I find it a little hard to believe that Baltimore, the hometown of John Waters, was up in arms over the various sexual exploits taking place on the original cover (still available on 'collectable' vinyl!). About the only good things to come out of this manufactured controversy were some entertaining signs from the 'protest photos' on the CD cover reading SARCASM DOES NOT EQUAL IRONY and OXES SUCK COXES. I bring this up because this sort of despicably lame publicity stunt should immediately worry any sort of media savvy consumer (which, of course, you've all proven yourselves to be by coming 'round this hairy old website of ours). This ranks right up there with stunts like Bono going on a "fact finding" mission to Africa with the Secretary of the Freakin' Treasury, or Elvis "dying." And it's not like the Oxes even need this kind of help. Every single review of Oxxxes spends at least a paragraph on this (I win by wasting two), which just means less time spent discussing their patented brand of full-throttle metallic math rock. But maybe that's just to avoid the task of trying to funnel this sort of wordless aural acupuncture into text-- it just doesn't translate. Describing the Oxes' compositions for two guitars and some industrial strength drums as "instrumental" trivializes them. Regular rock bands break the pace of an album with an instrumental for a lark; the Oxes, in the grand tradition of the luminaries of Don Cab, make a valiant effort at instrumental communication. Simply calling it "math rock" isn't much good, either. In the immortal words of Mr. Waits, the content of Oxxxes is harder than Chinese algebra, and in every possible way. They know when to let the passive intellectualism of math (or, in the case of the Natalio Fowler and Marc Miller's smoldering guitar interlacing, calculus) give way to playful Metal God flourishes, lest things become too academic. Like a cathedral constructed entirely out of a monolithic slab of poured concrete, Oxxxes is simultaneously complex, stylized structure and dense, dense, dense. So instead of talking about the album, the live show talk gets trotted out. Everything nice that's ever been said about the Oxes' live histrionics is truer than true; they do take full advantage of their wireless kits and put on a fantastic show. The biggest problem with Oxxxes, aside from being just not quite as fun as their self-titled debut, is that even when played at organ-rupturing volumes, it doesn't give the listener anything to latch on to like a guy barreling through the audience with the intent to cause bodily harm does. "Boss Kitty" kicks it out Helmet-style in the opening moments for some good old-fashioned, tongue-in-cheek fun; the exultant rhythmic shifts and tricks of "Half Half & Half" spark precision riff frenzy hot enough to burn the song down to its foundation. But they certainly don't build the kind of fire that made Don Cab such an institution, and god help me, I can't even sing along! That's not to say I can't enjoy lots of instrumental music; I just expect more from it than lyricless rock. Put it this way: Oxes are not the Autechre of rock and roll. This is an album you can throw on for shits and giggles, if that's your thing. The blistering guitar work on Oxxxes doesn't quite live up to the standards they've set for themselves, but it's sick hott and sharp enough to split the atom, not to mention a hell of a lot more fun than atomic fission. But without vocal help, the visuals of a live performance, or anything beyond mutating time signatures, this album loses a little something that it can't quite replace."

Volcano the Bear

Golden Rhythm/Ink Music

Experimental,Rock

Marc Masters

Over a distinctive 17-year career, English quartet Volcano the Bear have traversed a wide range of odd sounds and skewed songs. Their knack for marrying the absurd to the sublime places them in the eccentric lineage of art-rock bands such as the Residents, Henry Cow, This Heat, and Nurse With Wound. As with those spiritual comrades, Volcano the Bear have amassed a discography that's easy to get lost in, and most of which is now available for free from WFMU's excellent Free Music Archive. What's kept me from getting as lost in Volcano the Bear as I have in the other acts above is their tendency to sound mannered. At times they are so in control that sterility creeps in, and it feels like you're listening to a diagram instead of a song. My favorite moments come when they get woollier and looser, letting the sound guide them rather than the other way around. And when they strike a balance between chaos and order, as they did on 2006's epic Classic Erasmus Fusion, their work becomes profound. Golden Rhythm/Ink Music, Volcano the Bear's first studio album in five years, tips more toward the controlling side. As a result it sits in the middle of their oeuvre in terms of how compelling it is, and lower on the scale of surprise. Crafted by a duo version of the group (with multi-instrumentalists Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden), its more predictable moments lean too heavily on blunt rhythms, mannered vocals, and a tonally flat trumpet. When those three elements occur simultaneously, the album feels somewhat stilted. Almost as often, though, Golden Rhythm/Ink Music finds sonic angles that are less expected. Usually this is the product of Moore and Padden giving percussion prominence over singing and trumpet-playing. Their beats acquire a junk-shop/kitchen-sink quality that evokes rattling Tom Waits grooves. Take "Baby Photos", whose off-kilter rhythm makes the duo's vocals richer and more responsive. Even better are tunes that dart between disparate moods, be it the schizophrenic "Spurius Ruga" or sound-poems like the staccato "Quiet Salad" and the cathartic "Golden Ink". Volcano the Bear close Golden Rhythm/Ink Music with a 10-minute cut called "Fireman Show". As the record's longest piece, it feels like a summation, containing both unexpected tonal shifts and run-of-the-mill passages of nondescript trumpet and vocals. But the track is more intriguing than ineffective, especially when heard after what's come before. Perhaps it's best to think of the album that way too-- not as isolated statement, but another chapter in an saga still being penned.

Artist: Volcano the Bear, Album: Golden Rhythm/Ink Music, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Over a distinctive 17-year career, English quartet Volcano the Bear have traversed a wide range of odd sounds and skewed songs. Their knack for marrying the absurd to the sublime places them in the eccentric lineage of art-rock bands such as the Residents, Henry Cow, This Heat, and Nurse With Wound. As with those spiritual comrades, Volcano the Bear have amassed a discography that's easy to get lost in, and most of which is now available for free from WFMU's excellent Free Music Archive. What's kept me from getting as lost in Volcano the Bear as I have in the other acts above is their tendency to sound mannered. At times they are so in control that sterility creeps in, and it feels like you're listening to a diagram instead of a song. My favorite moments come when they get woollier and looser, letting the sound guide them rather than the other way around. And when they strike a balance between chaos and order, as they did on 2006's epic Classic Erasmus Fusion, their work becomes profound. Golden Rhythm/Ink Music, Volcano the Bear's first studio album in five years, tips more toward the controlling side. As a result it sits in the middle of their oeuvre in terms of how compelling it is, and lower on the scale of surprise. Crafted by a duo version of the group (with multi-instrumentalists Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden), its more predictable moments lean too heavily on blunt rhythms, mannered vocals, and a tonally flat trumpet. When those three elements occur simultaneously, the album feels somewhat stilted. Almost as often, though, Golden Rhythm/Ink Music finds sonic angles that are less expected. Usually this is the product of Moore and Padden giving percussion prominence over singing and trumpet-playing. Their beats acquire a junk-shop/kitchen-sink quality that evokes rattling Tom Waits grooves. Take "Baby Photos", whose off-kilter rhythm makes the duo's vocals richer and more responsive. Even better are tunes that dart between disparate moods, be it the schizophrenic "Spurius Ruga" or sound-poems like the staccato "Quiet Salad" and the cathartic "Golden Ink". Volcano the Bear close Golden Rhythm/Ink Music with a 10-minute cut called "Fireman Show". As the record's longest piece, it feels like a summation, containing both unexpected tonal shifts and run-of-the-mill passages of nondescript trumpet and vocals. But the track is more intriguing than ineffective, especially when heard after what's come before. Perhaps it's best to think of the album that way too-- not as isolated statement, but another chapter in an saga still being penned."

World Standard, Wechsel Garland

The Isle

Electronic

Andy Beta

Long-distance relationships virtually never work. The art of letter-writing gets lost in the mail, phone calls from three time-zones over come at the most inconvenient times, sweet words distort in signal static or get dropped in the middle of "I love...", victims to a conspiracy of star-crossed satellites. Though the two producers here-- Japanese composer Sohichiro Suzuki (who has recorded under the name World Standard since 1985) and German producer Jorg Follert (responsible for an album recorded as Wunder on the Karaoke Kalk label, and one as Wechsel Garland for Morr Music)-- met just twice in Japan to play and record music together, and then filled in the spaces from their respective, distant locales, the result feels like they never left each other's company. Suzuki's picking of nylon strings on "Dande Lion Wine" could be mistaken for lonesomeness. He gently swathes it the instrument in lines of piano, chimes, harp, violins, and marimba, each additional timbre embracing and furthering the melody, while never quite shaking that pensive feeling. It's not until the second track, when that lone guitar figure starts to flicker by the hand of Follert, that the long-distance relationship manifests itself. Each producer, instead of simply recording and splitting each side of a record, passed their ideas back and forth between Japan and Germany, correlating their themes and expounding on them in their own miniatures (seven by each-- their only shared credit is the title track). What makes the relationship work is that each partner is comfortable creating his own self-contained sounds while being aware of what came before and what will follow: Wechsel Garland's songs tend to be more upbeat, brightening the proceedings with patches of sunlight and electronics. He tends to go for percolating pulses and babbling streams of digital nuances, making the first half of the album more buoyant. When his initial guitar themes comes around again, he either chops them into a samba shape ("Octant") or else gives them a brisk Hawaiian air ("A Found Chart"), each time new and refreshed. Suzuki, meanwhile, is the more wistful half of the partnership, not so much melancholic as hopelessly romantic, and prone to spells of sweet exotica breezes. He pens dreamier airs like "Atoll", with a reserved piano touch that fleshes out every melodic contour. As the album winds its way down, his role comes to the fore, the gentleness setting the lullabies and chanteys in a peaceful sea for "Canopy of Heaven" and "A Fire Under the Stars". Whether acoustic or electronic, no sound addition ever stifles the primary lonely-island feeling with unnecessary melodrama or overproduction. Perhaps that's why it opened up DJ Koze's eclectic mix on Kompakt, and that it could embrace both the Langley School's innocence-loss as well as the click-knowledge of Jan Jelinek. By the disc's sumptuous, twinkling end, Suzuki and Follert show the best way for such musical relationships to work out, by being sympathetic to their partner and remembering that succinct advice: Keep it sweet and simple.

Artist: World Standard, Wechsel Garland, Album: The Isle, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Long-distance relationships virtually never work. The art of letter-writing gets lost in the mail, phone calls from three time-zones over come at the most inconvenient times, sweet words distort in signal static or get dropped in the middle of "I love...", victims to a conspiracy of star-crossed satellites. Though the two producers here-- Japanese composer Sohichiro Suzuki (who has recorded under the name World Standard since 1985) and German producer Jorg Follert (responsible for an album recorded as Wunder on the Karaoke Kalk label, and one as Wechsel Garland for Morr Music)-- met just twice in Japan to play and record music together, and then filled in the spaces from their respective, distant locales, the result feels like they never left each other's company. Suzuki's picking of nylon strings on "Dande Lion Wine" could be mistaken for lonesomeness. He gently swathes it the instrument in lines of piano, chimes, harp, violins, and marimba, each additional timbre embracing and furthering the melody, while never quite shaking that pensive feeling. It's not until the second track, when that lone guitar figure starts to flicker by the hand of Follert, that the long-distance relationship manifests itself. Each producer, instead of simply recording and splitting each side of a record, passed their ideas back and forth between Japan and Germany, correlating their themes and expounding on them in their own miniatures (seven by each-- their only shared credit is the title track). What makes the relationship work is that each partner is comfortable creating his own self-contained sounds while being aware of what came before and what will follow: Wechsel Garland's songs tend to be more upbeat, brightening the proceedings with patches of sunlight and electronics. He tends to go for percolating pulses and babbling streams of digital nuances, making the first half of the album more buoyant. When his initial guitar themes comes around again, he either chops them into a samba shape ("Octant") or else gives them a brisk Hawaiian air ("A Found Chart"), each time new and refreshed. Suzuki, meanwhile, is the more wistful half of the partnership, not so much melancholic as hopelessly romantic, and prone to spells of sweet exotica breezes. He pens dreamier airs like "Atoll", with a reserved piano touch that fleshes out every melodic contour. As the album winds its way down, his role comes to the fore, the gentleness setting the lullabies and chanteys in a peaceful sea for "Canopy of Heaven" and "A Fire Under the Stars". Whether acoustic or electronic, no sound addition ever stifles the primary lonely-island feeling with unnecessary melodrama or overproduction. Perhaps that's why it opened up DJ Koze's eclectic mix on Kompakt, and that it could embrace both the Langley School's innocence-loss as well as the click-knowledge of Jan Jelinek. By the disc's sumptuous, twinkling end, Suzuki and Follert show the best way for such musical relationships to work out, by being sympathetic to their partner and remembering that succinct advice: Keep it sweet and simple."

The Fiery Furnaces

Bitter Tea

Rock

Mark Richardson

Seven months after the story-songs of Rehearsing My Choir comes the companion album, recorded around the same time with just the grandkids on the mic. The earlier record's "difficulty" is debatable; Rehearsing My Choir failed for many (including me), but not because it was too opaque or complicated. Taken as a whole, the lyrics were probably the most accessible the band has written so far. But the lead voice and format, both of which were chosen with a reasonable expectation of the intended effect, were never going to work for everybody. It was a specialty item. Bitter Tea is a very different record: no Olga Sarantos; no overriding narrative; not as much in the way of recurring musical themes. But it's cut from the same cloth, and its "meaning," or the meaning of individual songs, is surely even harder to grasp. This is not by any stretch a turn toward the accessible, though there are a few great pop moments. We'll get to those in a sec. What comes to mind during early listens is how odd this record sounds, and how often the production on Fiery Furnaces' records is overlooked. Some of the distinctiveness is up to Eleanor Friedberger's voice, with her English major's diction and her ability to make the dozen or so notes in her natural range do all kinds of work. Her brother understands her strengths, writing for her crisp lines that draw attention to the grammatical construction. "To see: could there one for me be?" from this record's "Waiting to Know You", for example. But Bitter Tea as a sonic experience, in terms of the instruments used and the effects used on them, is even more exceptional. For starters, this makes two albums in a row where a tinny upright piano dragged from a the lounge of a depression-era bordello functions as the signature instrument, stitching together the patchwork songs with Matt Friedberger's speedy little trills. Before it seemed to reference a radio play; here it serves as a reminder that we inhabit the world of one band and one band only. Other interesting choices abound: squelchy Moog that references neither the instrument's classic era nor its 90s update; distorted percussion meant to be disorienting instead of forceful; a disco beat that gyrates in place with quotation marks standing in for the mirror ball. Then there's the regular stream of backward vocals, the record's most pressing recurring motif. On tracks like "In My Little Thatched Hut", "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry", and "Nevers", the words move backward but the melody still fits the chords. The technique may allude to a wrinkle in time or some sort of aphasia, but it also points up how little comprehension of the actual lyrics matters to the enjoyment of Fiery Furnaces' music. I consider myself a curious person but I couldn't care less what's actually being said on the backward bits. Puzzling over meanings and allusions seems a worthwhile project, though, and I've no doubt that on some level the words can bear such scrutiny. Some amount of detective word might transform some of the less musically engaging tracks into something enjoyable. I can't find much in "I'm In No Mood", "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry", or "Whistle Rhapsody" to draw me back again; to my ears they serve mostly as reminders of Bitter Tea's gassy bloat (72 minutes, though two tracks repeat at the end in different mixes). The album seems to drag in its final third, but really the lesser tracks are spread evenly throughout. It's more a cumulative weariness than any sort of front-loading. Which is unfortunate since Bitter Tea contains some of Fiery Furnaces' best songs. "Teach Me Sweetheart" is unfailingly gorgeous, a perfect melding of experimental production ideas that match perfectly the mood and the sweet, undeniable melody. "Waiting to Know You" is almost as good with its prom night slow dance chord progression, and bizarre mix; there's no logical reason why this song needs an absurdly fat Moog bass, but hey, turns out it does. "Police Sweater Blood Vow" seems like a quirky leftfield pop hit; in another time it might have been this band's "Birdhouse in Your Soul", And "Benton Harbor Blues", particular in its second mix, which omits a meandering two-minute intro, shows how effortlessly Matt Friedberger can come up with a simple, breezy, and likeable pop tune when so inclined. If Fiery Furnaces wanted a shortcut to a larger audience, this track points the way. But such a path probably doesn't interest these two. Fiery Furnaces have other things in mind, and so far the project seems in part to be about finding a way to challenge themselves and stay interested when writing good, catchy songs comes so easy. Fiery Furnaces is the work of thought and calculation rather than instinct. This imparts a chilly remove to the records but I don't think that's a criticism. There's no shortage of direct and heartfelt indie rock that talks about the passion, but nothing else going sounds like the Fiery Furnaces' carefully considered babble.

Artist: The Fiery Furnaces, Album: Bitter Tea, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Seven months after the story-songs of Rehearsing My Choir comes the companion album, recorded around the same time with just the grandkids on the mic. The earlier record's "difficulty" is debatable; Rehearsing My Choir failed for many (including me), but not because it was too opaque or complicated. Taken as a whole, the lyrics were probably the most accessible the band has written so far. But the lead voice and format, both of which were chosen with a reasonable expectation of the intended effect, were never going to work for everybody. It was a specialty item. Bitter Tea is a very different record: no Olga Sarantos; no overriding narrative; not as much in the way of recurring musical themes. But it's cut from the same cloth, and its "meaning," or the meaning of individual songs, is surely even harder to grasp. This is not by any stretch a turn toward the accessible, though there are a few great pop moments. We'll get to those in a sec. What comes to mind during early listens is how odd this record sounds, and how often the production on Fiery Furnaces' records is overlooked. Some of the distinctiveness is up to Eleanor Friedberger's voice, with her English major's diction and her ability to make the dozen or so notes in her natural range do all kinds of work. Her brother understands her strengths, writing for her crisp lines that draw attention to the grammatical construction. "To see: could there one for me be?" from this record's "Waiting to Know You", for example. But Bitter Tea as a sonic experience, in terms of the instruments used and the effects used on them, is even more exceptional. For starters, this makes two albums in a row where a tinny upright piano dragged from a the lounge of a depression-era bordello functions as the signature instrument, stitching together the patchwork songs with Matt Friedberger's speedy little trills. Before it seemed to reference a radio play; here it serves as a reminder that we inhabit the world of one band and one band only. Other interesting choices abound: squelchy Moog that references neither the instrument's classic era nor its 90s update; distorted percussion meant to be disorienting instead of forceful; a disco beat that gyrates in place with quotation marks standing in for the mirror ball. Then there's the regular stream of backward vocals, the record's most pressing recurring motif. On tracks like "In My Little Thatched Hut", "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry", and "Nevers", the words move backward but the melody still fits the chords. The technique may allude to a wrinkle in time or some sort of aphasia, but it also points up how little comprehension of the actual lyrics matters to the enjoyment of Fiery Furnaces' music. I consider myself a curious person but I couldn't care less what's actually being said on the backward bits. Puzzling over meanings and allusions seems a worthwhile project, though, and I've no doubt that on some level the words can bear such scrutiny. Some amount of detective word might transform some of the less musically engaging tracks into something enjoyable. I can't find much in "I'm In No Mood", "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry", or "Whistle Rhapsody" to draw me back again; to my ears they serve mostly as reminders of Bitter Tea's gassy bloat (72 minutes, though two tracks repeat at the end in different mixes). The album seems to drag in its final third, but really the lesser tracks are spread evenly throughout. It's more a cumulative weariness than any sort of front-loading. Which is unfortunate since Bitter Tea contains some of Fiery Furnaces' best songs. "Teach Me Sweetheart" is unfailingly gorgeous, a perfect melding of experimental production ideas that match perfectly the mood and the sweet, undeniable melody. "Waiting to Know You" is almost as good with its prom night slow dance chord progression, and bizarre mix; there's no logical reason why this song needs an absurdly fat Moog bass, but hey, turns out it does. "Police Sweater Blood Vow" seems like a quirky leftfield pop hit; in another time it might have been this band's "Birdhouse in Your Soul", And "Benton Harbor Blues", particular in its second mix, which omits a meandering two-minute intro, shows how effortlessly Matt Friedberger can come up with a simple, breezy, and likeable pop tune when so inclined. If Fiery Furnaces wanted a shortcut to a larger audience, this track points the way. But such a path probably doesn't interest these two. Fiery Furnaces have other things in mind, and so far the project seems in part to be about finding a way to challenge themselves and stay interested when writing good, catchy songs comes so easy. Fiery Furnaces is the work of thought and calculation rather than instinct. This imparts a chilly remove to the records but I don't think that's a criticism. There's no shortage of direct and heartfelt indie rock that talks about the passion, but nothing else going sounds like the Fiery Furnaces' carefully considered babble. "

Matthew Dear

DJ-Kicks

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Multiple identities are common in dance music, but Matthew Dear has taken his ego-altering further than most. In the early years, his aliases—False, Jabberjaw, and Audion, along with his real name—served as proving grounds for subtle tweaks on a single, overarching vision of techno in which texture, groove, and hook all held equal weight. But the gulf between the different aspects of his personality has steadily widened, particularly as he has settled on two main projects situated at opposite poles. As Audion, he makes cavernous, big-room techno that trades in weaponized euphoria and supersized sensation. Under his own name, he has become a singer/songwriter of knotty, nuanced electronic pop—the possessor of a sultry, Bowie-indebted baritone and a bandleader with the swaggering stance to match. His DJ-Kicks mix is credited simply to Matthew Dear, but it actually represents a third aspect of his musical persona: the DJ. It is not his first commercial mix CD. As Audion, he recorded Fabric 27 in 2006, and as Dear, he delivered the seventh installment in Get Physical’s Body Language series in 2008. Like those mixes, DJ-Kicks focuses heavily on the present moment: Nothing is more than two years old, with the exception of a 1980 synth-pop rarity that turns up in a newly edited form. Given the ways that dance music has changed in the past decade, there’s a temptation to read the new mix as survey of its moment, much in the same way that Fabric 27 represented the minimal scene at its mid-’00s peak and *Body Language Volume 7 *captured a snapshot of the EasyJet-set—the tech-house axis of London, Berlin, and Ibiza—at the end of the decade. But Dear’s DJ-Kicks feels less like a cross-section of a scene or a snapshot of a moment in time than a core sample of his own idiosyncratic sensibility. There’s more character in this mix than in the previous two; it’s weirder and more engaging. The others could sometimes get tripped up by their own linearity, but this one is more charged, more unhinged, and riskier; it’s also more intricately and intuitively mixed. It’s a vision of house and techno that’s sleazy, druggy, and disorienting—also sneaky, whip-smart, and fun. Dear’s specialty is the controlled urgency of the peak time, and that’s precisely where the bulk of the set dwells: deep in the chugging, roiling murk, with blunt machine grooves stirring up melodies the color of bruise blood. He opens on a more contemplative note, though, with an elegiac solo-piano piece from Nils Frahm that launches us into a new, previously unreleased song of his own: “Wrong With Us,” a bittersweet, Koze-like vocal number that neatly captures the weariness of a relationship going off the rails. It’s the only time we’re treated to Dear’s singing voice in the mix, but voices actually constitute a crucial through-line. Across the set he has scattered snippets of dialogue with his friends and family—off-the-cuff fragments, slowed to a narcotic (and largely incomprehensible) crawl, that serve as sinewy connective tissue from track to track. They lend the impression of moving through a crowded dancefloor where scraps of truncated conversations whip around your head as you move—a kind of Nightclub of Babel. While few songs here foreground sung melodies, nearly every track uses vocals as a textural or rhythmic element: the cut-up, head-turning double entendres of Markus Enochson’s “Hot Juice Box”; the choppy, panned, and filtered gurgles of Kreon’s “Silo Sol”; the booming, crowd-stoking commandments of Italojohnson’s “ITJ10B1.” As a singer, Dear has always been as interested in the heft of the voice as he is in lyrical meaning, so it makes sense that he’d gravitate toward club cuts that work in the same way. And for listeners, his varied selections—juggling high voices and low, rough and smooth, garbled and clean—carve out an unusual space in between vocal and instrumental dance music. These aren’t voices we sing along with, necessarily; they aren’t the garish “toplines” garnishing commercial EDM. But they add nuance and mystery, drawing you in past the stern, occasionally forbidding contours of the rhythms Dear favors—snapping, mechanical vortexes full of sharp edges and jutting angles. Dear’s mixing is a treat. Unless you know the tracks inside and out, it’s virtually impossible to tell where they begin and end; he favors long, careful blends, and rarely leaves a given track to play out by itself for long. His selections benefit from the hands-on style. Pay attention to the way energy pulses between two cuts running in parallel, and you imagine the motion of a pinball as it ricochets off bouncers and flippers: wildly kinetic and keenly controlled. The smartly paced set switchbacks between minimalist drum tracks and deeper, more atmospheric house, and it climaxes with two previously unreleased Audion cuts and an interlude. Following the “Flat Eric”-like bassline of Soulphiction’s “Sky So High,” “Live Breakdown” wipes the slate clean with an extended stretch of granular vocal processing drawn out into a gravelly fit of pique. “Starfucker” rebuilds momentum with a rolling groove and a sharply syncopated hook, and it all comes to a head with the unhinged “Brines,” an improvised modular-synth workout playing rapid-fire snare rolls off dial-tone squeal. The set’s real highpoint, though, comes a few tracks earlier, when Dear mixes Simian Mobile Disco’s “Staring at All This Handle” into Pearson Sound’s “XLB,” one of 2016’s biggest techno tracks. As Resident Advisor’s No. 2 track of the year, it’s by far the highest-profile selection in the mix, but its notoriety isn’t the operating factor here; it’s the way Dear plays the two tracks’ hooks off each other. Each one is considerably powerful on its own. Simian Mobile Disco’s sounds like a Foley artist’s thunder sheet being suddenly liquefied, as if by some arcane chemical process; Pearson Sound’s is a barrage of neon tracers cutting through darkness. Together, they evoke an image like something out of a John Woo film—a hail of bullets in an actual hailstorm. It’s such an intuitive pairing that you wonder why all DJs don’t always play these two tunes together. But it goes deeper than that. With the two descending sequences snapped into a kind of double helix formation, we’re presented with a schema of what Dear listens for when he’s putting together a mix: an X-ray of the structural underpinnings of his DJ sets. DJing is often characterized as an active, even athletic undertaking, whether that means rapid cross-cutting or vulgar fist-pumping. But in Dear’s hands, it can also be a more co

Artist: Matthew Dear, Album: DJ-Kicks, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Multiple identities are common in dance music, but Matthew Dear has taken his ego-altering further than most. In the early years, his aliases—False, Jabberjaw, and Audion, along with his real name—served as proving grounds for subtle tweaks on a single, overarching vision of techno in which texture, groove, and hook all held equal weight. But the gulf between the different aspects of his personality has steadily widened, particularly as he has settled on two main projects situated at opposite poles. As Audion, he makes cavernous, big-room techno that trades in weaponized euphoria and supersized sensation. Under his own name, he has become a singer/songwriter of knotty, nuanced electronic pop—the possessor of a sultry, Bowie-indebted baritone and a bandleader with the swaggering stance to match. His DJ-Kicks mix is credited simply to Matthew Dear, but it actually represents a third aspect of his musical persona: the DJ. It is not his first commercial mix CD. As Audion, he recorded Fabric 27 in 2006, and as Dear, he delivered the seventh installment in Get Physical’s Body Language series in 2008. Like those mixes, DJ-Kicks focuses heavily on the present moment: Nothing is more than two years old, with the exception of a 1980 synth-pop rarity that turns up in a newly edited form. Given the ways that dance music has changed in the past decade, there’s a temptation to read the new mix as survey of its moment, much in the same way that Fabric 27 represented the minimal scene at its mid-’00s peak and *Body Language Volume 7 *captured a snapshot of the EasyJet-set—the tech-house axis of London, Berlin, and Ibiza—at the end of the decade. But Dear’s DJ-Kicks feels less like a cross-section of a scene or a snapshot of a moment in time than a core sample of his own idiosyncratic sensibility. There’s more character in this mix than in the previous two; it’s weirder and more engaging. The others could sometimes get tripped up by their own linearity, but this one is more charged, more unhinged, and riskier; it’s also more intricately and intuitively mixed. It’s a vision of house and techno that’s sleazy, druggy, and disorienting—also sneaky, whip-smart, and fun. Dear’s specialty is the controlled urgency of the peak time, and that’s precisely where the bulk of the set dwells: deep in the chugging, roiling murk, with blunt machine grooves stirring up melodies the color of bruise blood. He opens on a more contemplative note, though, with an elegiac solo-piano piece from Nils Frahm that launches us into a new, previously unreleased song of his own: “Wrong With Us,” a bittersweet, Koze-like vocal number that neatly captures the weariness of a relationship going off the rails. It’s the only time we’re treated to Dear’s singing voice in the mix, but voices actually constitute a crucial through-line. Across the set he has scattered snippets of dialogue with his friends and family—off-the-cuff fragments, slowed to a narcotic (and largely incomprehensible) crawl, that serve as sinewy connective tissue from track to track. They lend the impression of moving through a crowded dancefloor where scraps of truncated conversations whip around your head as you move—a kind of Nightclub of Babel. While few songs here foreground sung melodies, nearly every track uses vocals as a textural or rhythmic element: the cut-up, head-turning double entendres of Markus Enochson’s “Hot Juice Box”; the choppy, panned, and filtered gurgles of Kreon’s “Silo Sol”; the booming, crowd-stoking commandments of Italojohnson’s “ITJ10B1.” As a singer, Dear has always been as interested in the heft of the voice as he is in lyrical meaning, so it makes sense that he’d gravitate toward club cuts that work in the same way. And for listeners, his varied selections—juggling high voices and low, rough and smooth, garbled and clean—carve out an unusual space in between vocal and instrumental dance music. These aren’t voices we sing along with, necessarily; they aren’t the garish “toplines” garnishing commercial EDM. But they add nuance and mystery, drawing you in past the stern, occasionally forbidding contours of the rhythms Dear favors—snapping, mechanical vortexes full of sharp edges and jutting angles. Dear’s mixing is a treat. Unless you know the tracks inside and out, it’s virtually impossible to tell where they begin and end; he favors long, careful blends, and rarely leaves a given track to play out by itself for long. His selections benefit from the hands-on style. Pay attention to the way energy pulses between two cuts running in parallel, and you imagine the motion of a pinball as it ricochets off bouncers and flippers: wildly kinetic and keenly controlled. The smartly paced set switchbacks between minimalist drum tracks and deeper, more atmospheric house, and it climaxes with two previously unreleased Audion cuts and an interlude. Following the “Flat Eric”-like bassline of Soulphiction’s “Sky So High,” “Live Breakdown” wipes the slate clean with an extended stretch of granular vocal processing drawn out into a gravelly fit of pique. “Starfucker” rebuilds momentum with a rolling groove and a sharply syncopated hook, and it all comes to a head with the unhinged “Brines,” an improvised modular-synth workout playing rapid-fire snare rolls off dial-tone squeal. The set’s real highpoint, though, comes a few tracks earlier, when Dear mixes Simian Mobile Disco’s “Staring at All This Handle” into Pearson Sound’s “XLB,” one of 2016’s biggest techno tracks. As Resident Advisor’s No. 2 track of the year, it’s by far the highest-profile selection in the mix, but its notoriety isn’t the operating factor here; it’s the way Dear plays the two tracks’ hooks off each other. Each one is considerably powerful on its own. Simian Mobile Disco’s sounds like a Foley artist’s thunder sheet being suddenly liquefied, as if by some arcane chemical process; Pearson Sound’s is a barrage of neon tracers cutting through darkness. Together, they evoke an image like something out of a John Woo film—a hail of bullets in an actual hailstorm. It’s such an intuitive pairing that you wonder why all DJs don’t always play these two tunes together. But it goes deeper than that. With the two descending sequences snapped into a kind of double helix formation, we’re presented with a schema of what Dear listens for when he’s putting together a mix: an X-ray of the structural underpinnings of his DJ sets. DJing is often characterized as an active, even athletic undertaking, whether that means rapid cross-cutting or vulgar fist-pumping. But in Dear’s hands, it can also be a more co"

Van Morrison

Moondance

Rock

Ryan H. Walsh

“Will you shut the fuck up and listen?” Van Morrison asked the crowd of chatty teenyboppers gathered at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles in February 1969. The kids answered his question with more talking. The unceremonious Astral Weeks promotional tour was unfolding with the kind of dues-paying, shit-eating milestones that the Belfast singer had sadly become accustomed to in the previous few years. Sure, some signs of positive change were afoot: Warner Bros. had successfully purchased his Bang Records contract from mobbed-up charlatans on the edge of the music industry, and his surprising acoustic rebirth in Astral Weeks had been breathlessly noticed by some critics, even if you could barely find a copy in a record store. But nine-minute, three-chord jams backed by jazz players don’t often become radio hits, and Morrison knew that what he now needed was to generate material that would be played over the airwaves. As his piano player at the time Jef Labes noted, “I think Warners had pretty much told him, ‘You have one more chance.’” Outside of these industry demands, Morrison was also about to become a father, his wife Janet Planet was then pregnant with their first and only child. Under distinct pressures and backed into a corner, Morrison did what he did best: deliver the goods while remaining his unmistakably eccentric self. The new songs would, of course, be informed by dreams and visions; a casual fan of the record might be surprised if you told them that the tracks on Morrison’s 1970 LP Moondance contained instances of young boys experiencing religious ecstasy merely by sipping water or a recounted dream in which singer Ray Charles is gunned down in public, only to get up and declare he’s A-OK. Somehow, in defiance of conventional wisdom, it all works. The album would solidify Van Morrison as an FM radio mainstay, act as a midwife for the burgeoning genre of “soft rock,” and help usher in the ’70s in America, where the beautiful hippie couples of the late ’60s would soundtrack their developing newfound domestic comfort with the sweet sounds of Morrison’s mystical love-anthems. But before any of that could happen, Morrison would need to fire everyone who had helped him create his 1968 masterpiece, Astral Weeks. Van the Man was tired of floating in space; it was time to dance. “Van fully intended to become [Bob] Dylan’s best friend,” Janet Planet recalled of the couple’s move to Woodstock, New York in the lead up to Moondance. “Every time we’d drive past Dylan’s house… Van would just stare wistfully out the window at the gravel road leading to Dylan’s place. He thought Dylan was the only contemporary worthy of his attention.” Even if Morrison had dared to wander down that hallowed driveway, it was a moot daydream: Dylan had recently moved out of town. What was left in his wake was a house for Van and Janet on top of a mountain with no running water and Dylan’s former backing backing band—the Band—who treated the Irish singer like a drunken court-jester with some peculiar musical ideas. When Morrison would travel down to Manhattan, he’d sit in Warner Bros’s George Lee’s office and try to express his frustrations without much success. “[He would] just sit and not talk,” Lee recalled, “he wanted to say things, but he didn’t say them.” The only place anyone could count on a fully lucid, expressive, communicative Van Morrison was inside one his own songs. On Astral Weeks, it was producer Lewis Merenstein who did most of the communicating for the singer when tape wasn’t rolling. Merenstein had chosen which of Morrison’s songs would appear on Astral Weeks, the players who would back Morrison up, and even the final album sequence. Morrison’s revisionist history in regards to this artistic collaboration would reach its apex in 2009 when he glibly told radio host Don Imus that all Merenstein did during Astral Weeks was fetch the musicians sandwiches, but in 1969, Morrison’s rejection of his producer would be protracted and painful. Sessions for Moondance began at Century Sound studio with most of the musicians from Astral Weeks and engineer Brooks Arthur back on the boards as well. In one outtake from these first sessions, you hear Morrison beg Arthur to let him out of the isolation booth: “I feel separated in here. Can’t I go out there and do it?” “I hate to sound like a bad guy,” Arthur tells him, “but it’s not gonna work.” Arthur couldn’t have known it, but his assessment would soon extend far beyond Van’s geographical placement in the studio. By summer 1969, Morrison had excised the Weeks players from the process and began to pull away from Merenstein, too. Suddenly, the painfully shy man who could barely look at or talk to his musicians on his prior record had started firing players, selecting new ones, and doing something that was almost unheard of at the time: producing his own record. “Van certainly had much more sense of himself,” Merenstein recalled. “He had more confidence.” Merenstein was heartbroken, Morrison was emboldened. Out went the jazzers, in came the horn section and the big choruses. The only finished song on the record that would bare Merenstein’s fingerprints at all was the title track. Now so ubiquitous that one has to consciously focus to experience it as anything more than the audio equivalent of wallpaper, “Moondance” was belabored over in the studio, attempted dozens of times in different tempos and styles before finding its sweet spot. “It’s so strong you almost can’t mess with it,” said musician Jef Labes of the track that has become the official anthem of your cousin dancing with his new bride at their wedding. Morrison was especially proud of this new “sophisticated” composition, noting that even Frank Sinatra could perform it. Morrison had more bold moves up his sleeve. For album opener “And It Stoned Me” the singer invokes the universal term for being high on drugs and then proceeds to paint vignettes that had nothing to do whatsoever with chemical intake. “I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water,” Morrison recalled about the real childhood encounter that inspired the song. “He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension.’ That’s what the song is about.” It’s worth noting that Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Moondance both open with a track repeatedly referencing the “stoned” term, but while Dylan’s usa

Artist: Van Morrison, Album: Moondance, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "“Will you shut the fuck up and listen?” Van Morrison asked the crowd of chatty teenyboppers gathered at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles in February 1969. The kids answered his question with more talking. The unceremonious Astral Weeks promotional tour was unfolding with the kind of dues-paying, shit-eating milestones that the Belfast singer had sadly become accustomed to in the previous few years. Sure, some signs of positive change were afoot: Warner Bros. had successfully purchased his Bang Records contract from mobbed-up charlatans on the edge of the music industry, and his surprising acoustic rebirth in Astral Weeks had been breathlessly noticed by some critics, even if you could barely find a copy in a record store. But nine-minute, three-chord jams backed by jazz players don’t often become radio hits, and Morrison knew that what he now needed was to generate material that would be played over the airwaves. As his piano player at the time Jef Labes noted, “I think Warners had pretty much told him, ‘You have one more chance.’” Outside of these industry demands, Morrison was also about to become a father, his wife Janet Planet was then pregnant with their first and only child. Under distinct pressures and backed into a corner, Morrison did what he did best: deliver the goods while remaining his unmistakably eccentric self. The new songs would, of course, be informed by dreams and visions; a casual fan of the record might be surprised if you told them that the tracks on Morrison’s 1970 LP Moondance contained instances of young boys experiencing religious ecstasy merely by sipping water or a recounted dream in which singer Ray Charles is gunned down in public, only to get up and declare he’s A-OK. Somehow, in defiance of conventional wisdom, it all works. The album would solidify Van Morrison as an FM radio mainstay, act as a midwife for the burgeoning genre of “soft rock,” and help usher in the ’70s in America, where the beautiful hippie couples of the late ’60s would soundtrack their developing newfound domestic comfort with the sweet sounds of Morrison’s mystical love-anthems. But before any of that could happen, Morrison would need to fire everyone who had helped him create his 1968 masterpiece, Astral Weeks. Van the Man was tired of floating in space; it was time to dance. “Van fully intended to become [Bob] Dylan’s best friend,” Janet Planet recalled of the couple’s move to Woodstock, New York in the lead up to Moondance. “Every time we’d drive past Dylan’s house… Van would just stare wistfully out the window at the gravel road leading to Dylan’s place. He thought Dylan was the only contemporary worthy of his attention.” Even if Morrison had dared to wander down that hallowed driveway, it was a moot daydream: Dylan had recently moved out of town. What was left in his wake was a house for Van and Janet on top of a mountain with no running water and Dylan’s former backing backing band—the Band—who treated the Irish singer like a drunken court-jester with some peculiar musical ideas. When Morrison would travel down to Manhattan, he’d sit in Warner Bros’s George Lee’s office and try to express his frustrations without much success. “[He would] just sit and not talk,” Lee recalled, “he wanted to say things, but he didn’t say them.” The only place anyone could count on a fully lucid, expressive, communicative Van Morrison was inside one his own songs. On Astral Weeks, it was producer Lewis Merenstein who did most of the communicating for the singer when tape wasn’t rolling. Merenstein had chosen which of Morrison’s songs would appear on Astral Weeks, the players who would back Morrison up, and even the final album sequence. Morrison’s revisionist history in regards to this artistic collaboration would reach its apex in 2009 when he glibly told radio host Don Imus that all Merenstein did during Astral Weeks was fetch the musicians sandwiches, but in 1969, Morrison’s rejection of his producer would be protracted and painful. Sessions for Moondance began at Century Sound studio with most of the musicians from Astral Weeks and engineer Brooks Arthur back on the boards as well. In one outtake from these first sessions, you hear Morrison beg Arthur to let him out of the isolation booth: “I feel separated in here. Can’t I go out there and do it?” “I hate to sound like a bad guy,” Arthur tells him, “but it’s not gonna work.” Arthur couldn’t have known it, but his assessment would soon extend far beyond Van’s geographical placement in the studio. By summer 1969, Morrison had excised the Weeks players from the process and began to pull away from Merenstein, too. Suddenly, the painfully shy man who could barely look at or talk to his musicians on his prior record had started firing players, selecting new ones, and doing something that was almost unheard of at the time: producing his own record. “Van certainly had much more sense of himself,” Merenstein recalled. “He had more confidence.” Merenstein was heartbroken, Morrison was emboldened. Out went the jazzers, in came the horn section and the big choruses. The only finished song on the record that would bare Merenstein’s fingerprints at all was the title track. Now so ubiquitous that one has to consciously focus to experience it as anything more than the audio equivalent of wallpaper, “Moondance” was belabored over in the studio, attempted dozens of times in different tempos and styles before finding its sweet spot. “It’s so strong you almost can’t mess with it,” said musician Jef Labes of the track that has become the official anthem of your cousin dancing with his new bride at their wedding. Morrison was especially proud of this new “sophisticated” composition, noting that even Frank Sinatra could perform it. Morrison had more bold moves up his sleeve. For album opener “And It Stoned Me” the singer invokes the universal term for being high on drugs and then proceeds to paint vignettes that had nothing to do whatsoever with chemical intake. “I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water,” Morrison recalled about the real childhood encounter that inspired the song. “He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension.’ That’s what the song is about.” It’s worth noting that Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Moondance both open with a track repeatedly referencing the “stoned” term, but while Dylan’s usa"

Glen Hall, Lee Ranaldo, William Hooker

Oasis of Whispers

Jazz,Experimental,Rock

Zach Baron

Sometimes it's hard to drag yourself out of bed for records like these. Another muttering, banging, squealing five-year-old live jazz album from Buffalo, NY, played by the pros, Oasis of Whispers is a September 2001 performance that finds Canadian multi-instrumentalist Glen Hall blowing through an assortment of saxes, flutes, and clarinets in collaboration with "loft scene" free-jazz OG William Hooker, and Lee Ranaldo, founding member of Sonic Youth and former guitar-tuner for Glenn Branca. The hook, if it's there: A single moment, probably spontaneous, but fully formed. And if not, then something so wild it briefly lunges out of the clattering background. From the jazz end, Sonny Rollins' "Blue Seven" bop gets sauced up on loose Hooker drums, and flexes with Ranaldo guitar skronk, but hey, Rollins did it for 10 minutes at least, and these guys only make it for five-plus. Tradition is unquestionably the back door of this stuff, so besides flashing cred, the results are best when the players slide off to the side: Check out the marathon "Conference Call", which weaves answering machine messages, Pauline Oliveros-like vocalizing, and beat poetry into a schizophrenic, saxophone-led charge into the subconscious. The trio earns its keep here, wrestling drama from some truly mundane shit. ("I'm checking the schedule"... "we just pulled into Seattle"... "a man lies on the beach.") But the flipside applies, too. Free jazz, as it's played on "The Mechanism", is three guys going to war with each other-- "my sax," "my fucking drum fill," "fuck it, I'm shouting"-- and it flattens every dimension. This was a live set: "Mechanism" was the warm up. No way to feel the ghost but to try, but the id doesn't arrive until "Eyemote", expressed as insect sounds and mouthpiece muttering: "It's not my fault I'm Catholic. I was born this way." Now there's an idea. Oasis of Whispers might be all fighting in the trenches if not for its monster title track. The sex jam on an otherwise boy's club afternoon, "Oasis of Whispers" withholds, prolongs, and growls. Hall purrs; a kazoo sounds; Ranaldo does sub-audible mood electronics and delay; Hooker hits and backs off; they simultaneously give space and get right up in the face of the thing. Restraint compels, and this track owns because they own every second. Longing for the hard core is what haunts the rest of the record. Getting worked up is hot for the players and hot for the played to, but rarely at the same time: When Hall/Ranaldo/Hooker hit the gas pedal, the backseat nods off; only when they get quiet do the kids wake up and notice.

Artist: Glen Hall, Lee Ranaldo, William Hooker, Album: Oasis of Whispers, Genre: Jazz,Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Sometimes it's hard to drag yourself out of bed for records like these. Another muttering, banging, squealing five-year-old live jazz album from Buffalo, NY, played by the pros, Oasis of Whispers is a September 2001 performance that finds Canadian multi-instrumentalist Glen Hall blowing through an assortment of saxes, flutes, and clarinets in collaboration with "loft scene" free-jazz OG William Hooker, and Lee Ranaldo, founding member of Sonic Youth and former guitar-tuner for Glenn Branca. The hook, if it's there: A single moment, probably spontaneous, but fully formed. And if not, then something so wild it briefly lunges out of the clattering background. From the jazz end, Sonny Rollins' "Blue Seven" bop gets sauced up on loose Hooker drums, and flexes with Ranaldo guitar skronk, but hey, Rollins did it for 10 minutes at least, and these guys only make it for five-plus. Tradition is unquestionably the back door of this stuff, so besides flashing cred, the results are best when the players slide off to the side: Check out the marathon "Conference Call", which weaves answering machine messages, Pauline Oliveros-like vocalizing, and beat poetry into a schizophrenic, saxophone-led charge into the subconscious. The trio earns its keep here, wrestling drama from some truly mundane shit. ("I'm checking the schedule"... "we just pulled into Seattle"... "a man lies on the beach.") But the flipside applies, too. Free jazz, as it's played on "The Mechanism", is three guys going to war with each other-- "my sax," "my fucking drum fill," "fuck it, I'm shouting"-- and it flattens every dimension. This was a live set: "Mechanism" was the warm up. No way to feel the ghost but to try, but the id doesn't arrive until "Eyemote", expressed as insect sounds and mouthpiece muttering: "It's not my fault I'm Catholic. I was born this way." Now there's an idea. Oasis of Whispers might be all fighting in the trenches if not for its monster title track. The sex jam on an otherwise boy's club afternoon, "Oasis of Whispers" withholds, prolongs, and growls. Hall purrs; a kazoo sounds; Ranaldo does sub-audible mood electronics and delay; Hooker hits and backs off; they simultaneously give space and get right up in the face of the thing. Restraint compels, and this track owns because they own every second. Longing for the hard core is what haunts the rest of the record. Getting worked up is hot for the players and hot for the played to, but rarely at the same time: When Hall/Ranaldo/Hooker hit the gas pedal, the backseat nods off; only when they get quiet do the kids wake up and notice."

Various Artists

Matador at 21

Scott Plagenhoef

For more than 20 years, Matador has been at the forefront of a thorny, heavy, heady crop of American indie rock. And throughout that time, the label has never forgotten the "rock" part. That's on the face of it an obvious statement, but much of what reaches indie fans these days isn't or doesn't rock: It's bedroom electronics, it's folk, it's born out of underground disco, or indie pop, or synth-pop, or it's what once would have been called new wave or classic rock. No disrespect to other labels, but I couldn't imagine Matador releasing records by, say, Iron & Wine. Instead, they're the large indie who signed Jay Reatard, Fucked Up, and Times New Viking; the label who welcomed old-school rockers Ted Leo and Sonic Youth back into its fold; the label whose rising folkie star is an emotionally raw and brave performer like Perfume Genius, who is never going to get a song in a Previa ad. Sure, they acquired an imprint, True Panther, that gathers some of the best of the bloggier end of indie-- Balearic synthpoppers Delorean, or California indie pop band Girls. But Matador proper still keeps one foot planted in noisy rock. Considering the way indie has grown up in the past few decades, it made a weird kind of sense that Matador celebrated its 21st birthday with a series of once-in-a-lifetimes shows in Vegas. They're also giving back to fans, as well as a handful of charities, with this affordable, limited-edition 6xCD box set: five discs of the best of Matador and a sixth disc of live performances, mostly of Pavement (they also throw in some poker chips.) The set is arranged chronologically, and its compilers make no qualms about where the label was at each stage of the box, naming each disc after the relative fortunes of Matador at the time. In short, the first disc is how the label started; the second is the codification of indie rock itself; the third finds it branching out to a wider range of sounds; the fourth is a retreat back to its wheelhouse, in time for the Internet to help push indie rock toward its peak commercial potential; and the fifth is where Matador is today. Interestingly, it's the middle period that stands out immediately: It was a relatively dark time for Matador, if only because they were for once pointing toward the future rather than setting the agenda for the present. The disc starts with Boards of Canada, a group so above its like-minded peers it made them almost irrelevant. It goes on to forays into hip-hop (Arsonists, Large Professor), as well as other spheres of eventually quite trendy electronic music: the proto-microhouse of Burger/Ink, Pole's dubby minimalism, Matmos' conceptual experimentalism. In the end this stuff never became Matador's defining sound-- and it wasn't anywhere as close to a part of the indie conversation then as it is now-- but you can't fault the label's instincts. Even the guitar artists here, for the most part, were ahead of or helped set prevailing trends: Belle and Sebastian, certainly-- their songsmithery, collectivism, and classicism were oddly out of step at the time but have become a defining strain of 21st century independent music. Spoon as well, with their tight rhythms and love of post-punk already lockstep in place. Even Yo La Tengo and Pavement sound here more like 2000s indie than stuff from the 90s. On either side of those supposedly lost years, Matador built from the ground up the defining sounds of first the 1990s and then the 2000s in credible guitar rock. The first go around, the label came to the fore as an alternative to the self-parody of mid-90s alt-rock. Much of Disc One here is a continuation of the more distorted, punk-rooted sounds of SST or Homestead or Touch & Go-- landmark noise-pop songs like Teenage Fanclub's "Everything Flows" and Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker" alongside more abrasive, tangled work from Unrest, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, or Dustdevils. Appropriately it ends with the group whose ramshackle songs would do more to codify the loose smirk of 90s indie rock than any other, Pavement. By Disc Two, though they'd likely be loathe to admit it, Matador were sort of drafting off alternative rock, with most of their biggest artists-- Pavement, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pizzicato Five, Helium-- working the margins of the major-label crossover. These bands played Lollapaloozas, though mostly on side stages, and made appearances on MTV, though primarily on "120 Minutes". When curious kids became tired of alt rock and what it quickly devolved into, it didn't take a lot of digging for them to find Matador bands next-- particularly since through some of these years, Capitol Records briefly owned a 49% share of the label. It helped naturally that this group of artists would encompass a deceptively wide range of styles and viewpoints under the banner of independent rock. None of them were part of a trend or subgenre per se, unless "lo-fi" actually counts. None were espousing a particular ethos, or particular idea. They were quite simply talented, singular artists given the creative freedom to express themselves by a label that associated ambition with artistry rather than commercialism. In that way, Matador defined the big-tent ethos of 2000s indie by not having an ethos at all: Unlike most big indie labels of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Matador was never tied to a specific movement or sound of geographical location. In the early 2000s, the label underwent a second revolution. Part of it coincided with a shift in indie sensibilities: After a few years in which less-rock-rooted influences became popular and chic (krautrock, Tropicália, dub, exotica, and jazz among them), independent music returned to the guitar, this time embracing a more populist set of bands now easily located via the Internet, for good or bad. Matador responded with Interpol, the New Pornographers, and eventually Shearwater and Brightblack Morning Light. Nineties holdovers B&S, Mogwai, and Cat Power became bigger stars, a new crop of frontline Matador artists following the various fates of Pavement, Liz Phair, and Guided by Voices. Disc Five outlines the now of the label-- the aforementioned place where TNV settles next to Delorean and Perfume Genius. Tellingly, the Matador at 21 set has no designs on being a collection of the label's best songs; instead, it's more like an oral history-- messy and haphazard, with imperfectly remembered details. Matador would likely tell the story a little bit differently each time it attempted, and in that way it feels as good a document of the past 2

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Matador at 21, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 9.5 Album review: "For more than 20 years, Matador has been at the forefront of a thorny, heavy, heady crop of American indie rock. And throughout that time, the label has never forgotten the "rock" part. That's on the face of it an obvious statement, but much of what reaches indie fans these days isn't or doesn't rock: It's bedroom electronics, it's folk, it's born out of underground disco, or indie pop, or synth-pop, or it's what once would have been called new wave or classic rock. No disrespect to other labels, but I couldn't imagine Matador releasing records by, say, Iron & Wine. Instead, they're the large indie who signed Jay Reatard, Fucked Up, and Times New Viking; the label who welcomed old-school rockers Ted Leo and Sonic Youth back into its fold; the label whose rising folkie star is an emotionally raw and brave performer like Perfume Genius, who is never going to get a song in a Previa ad. Sure, they acquired an imprint, True Panther, that gathers some of the best of the bloggier end of indie-- Balearic synthpoppers Delorean, or California indie pop band Girls. But Matador proper still keeps one foot planted in noisy rock. Considering the way indie has grown up in the past few decades, it made a weird kind of sense that Matador celebrated its 21st birthday with a series of once-in-a-lifetimes shows in Vegas. They're also giving back to fans, as well as a handful of charities, with this affordable, limited-edition 6xCD box set: five discs of the best of Matador and a sixth disc of live performances, mostly of Pavement (they also throw in some poker chips.) The set is arranged chronologically, and its compilers make no qualms about where the label was at each stage of the box, naming each disc after the relative fortunes of Matador at the time. In short, the first disc is how the label started; the second is the codification of indie rock itself; the third finds it branching out to a wider range of sounds; the fourth is a retreat back to its wheelhouse, in time for the Internet to help push indie rock toward its peak commercial potential; and the fifth is where Matador is today. Interestingly, it's the middle period that stands out immediately: It was a relatively dark time for Matador, if only because they were for once pointing toward the future rather than setting the agenda for the present. The disc starts with Boards of Canada, a group so above its like-minded peers it made them almost irrelevant. It goes on to forays into hip-hop (Arsonists, Large Professor), as well as other spheres of eventually quite trendy electronic music: the proto-microhouse of Burger/Ink, Pole's dubby minimalism, Matmos' conceptual experimentalism. In the end this stuff never became Matador's defining sound-- and it wasn't anywhere as close to a part of the indie conversation then as it is now-- but you can't fault the label's instincts. Even the guitar artists here, for the most part, were ahead of or helped set prevailing trends: Belle and Sebastian, certainly-- their songsmithery, collectivism, and classicism were oddly out of step at the time but have become a defining strain of 21st century independent music. Spoon as well, with their tight rhythms and love of post-punk already lockstep in place. Even Yo La Tengo and Pavement sound here more like 2000s indie than stuff from the 90s. On either side of those supposedly lost years, Matador built from the ground up the defining sounds of first the 1990s and then the 2000s in credible guitar rock. The first go around, the label came to the fore as an alternative to the self-parody of mid-90s alt-rock. Much of Disc One here is a continuation of the more distorted, punk-rooted sounds of SST or Homestead or Touch & Go-- landmark noise-pop songs like Teenage Fanclub's "Everything Flows" and Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker" alongside more abrasive, tangled work from Unrest, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, or Dustdevils. Appropriately it ends with the group whose ramshackle songs would do more to codify the loose smirk of 90s indie rock than any other, Pavement. By Disc Two, though they'd likely be loathe to admit it, Matador were sort of drafting off alternative rock, with most of their biggest artists-- Pavement, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pizzicato Five, Helium-- working the margins of the major-label crossover. These bands played Lollapaloozas, though mostly on side stages, and made appearances on MTV, though primarily on "120 Minutes". When curious kids became tired of alt rock and what it quickly devolved into, it didn't take a lot of digging for them to find Matador bands next-- particularly since through some of these years, Capitol Records briefly owned a 49% share of the label. It helped naturally that this group of artists would encompass a deceptively wide range of styles and viewpoints under the banner of independent rock. None of them were part of a trend or subgenre per se, unless "lo-fi" actually counts. None were espousing a particular ethos, or particular idea. They were quite simply talented, singular artists given the creative freedom to express themselves by a label that associated ambition with artistry rather than commercialism. In that way, Matador defined the big-tent ethos of 2000s indie by not having an ethos at all: Unlike most big indie labels of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Matador was never tied to a specific movement or sound of geographical location. In the early 2000s, the label underwent a second revolution. Part of it coincided with a shift in indie sensibilities: After a few years in which less-rock-rooted influences became popular and chic (krautrock, Tropicália, dub, exotica, and jazz among them), independent music returned to the guitar, this time embracing a more populist set of bands now easily located via the Internet, for good or bad. Matador responded with Interpol, the New Pornographers, and eventually Shearwater and Brightblack Morning Light. Nineties holdovers B&S, Mogwai, and Cat Power became bigger stars, a new crop of frontline Matador artists following the various fates of Pavement, Liz Phair, and Guided by Voices. Disc Five outlines the now of the label-- the aforementioned place where TNV settles next to Delorean and Perfume Genius. Tellingly, the Matador at 21 set has no designs on being a collection of the label's best songs; instead, it's more like an oral history-- messy and haphazard, with imperfectly remembered details. Matador would likely tell the story a little bit differently each time it attempted, and in that way it feels as good a document of the past 2"

DJ Nate

Da Trak Genious

Electronic

Larry Fitzmaurice

Juke has been bubbling up in the Chicago area for the better part of the past decade, but its roots are deeper in the past. The combination of repetitious pop and hip-hop samples, jackhammering polyrhythmic beats, and faster-than-fast BPMs owes something to Miami bass and ghetto house, which emerged in Chicago and Detroit in the early 1990s. The accompanying dance is derived from jit, which itself owes debts to both traditional African dancing and the jitterbug. The legacy is obscure, but it's there. Juke is starting to establish roots in the present, too. Salem frequently feature thudding footwork figures in their tracks, as does London's label-of-the-moment Night Slugs, who just released Girl Unit's footwork-indebted single "Wut". UK dubstep artist Addison Groove offered a sparser, cleaner take on the sound with his "Footcrab" single-- and, hell, even the relentless slam of Kanye West's "All of the Lights" carries a trace of footwork's genetics. The growing fascination with footwork's compositional tics has also brought an equal interest in its raw materials, which is where UK electronic label Planet Mu comes in. In the past few months, they've put out a scene-spanning footwork compilation, Bangs and Works, as well as full-lengths from 20-year-old rising talent DJ Nate and comparative veteran DJ Roc, Da Trak Genious and The Crack Capone, respectively. Despite their difference in age, Nate and Roc's full-lengths share a few similarities: Both excel when working in juke's sonic braggadocio (Nate's "Footwurk Homicide", Roc's "They Can't Fuck Wit Me") and downtempo mood-setters (Roc's mesmerizing rework of Robin Thicke's "Lost Without U"). Both records are of a slightly patience-testing length (Da Trak Genious is a psychosis-inducing 70 minutes long). And, in a quality that applies to the scene as a whole, the tracks succeed in proportion to the quality of their samples. Roc's The Crack Capone is the more enjoyable full-length. Roc favors cohesive musicality above all else, [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| an attribute that ties into his background in the more colorful Chicago juke sound. The "Crack" in the album title refers not to the drug but to Roc's production style, which favors tightly edited rhythms and snapping track structures. That sense of tightness makes The Crack Capone a frequently invigorating, accessible listen, whether taking on percolating forms of UK bass (album closer "Break it Down") or vibrant blasts of melody (the one-two punch of the Willie Hutch-sampling "Get Buck Jones" and "Gun Smoke"). If Roc is fixated primarily on melody, then Nate's focus is more texture-based. Da Trak Genious is a tough front-to-back listen, and not just because it's so damn long; many of the tracks turn their pop-fixated samples into abstractions, repeating figures endlessly until they become hypnotically broken mantras. The result can be almost psychedelic at times; when he lets the source material breathe a little, as on the Dreamgirls-biting "You're Gonna Luv Me" or the Lil Wayne-sampling "Let Da Beat Build", the results are more immediate but ultimately less interesting. Still, it's heartening that Nate, Roc, and other artists working in the genre don't seem overly invested in any one template, and it'll be interesting to see where the scene's talents take their sound next.

Artist: DJ Nate, Album: Da Trak Genious, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Juke has been bubbling up in the Chicago area for the better part of the past decade, but its roots are deeper in the past. The combination of repetitious pop and hip-hop samples, jackhammering polyrhythmic beats, and faster-than-fast BPMs owes something to Miami bass and ghetto house, which emerged in Chicago and Detroit in the early 1990s. The accompanying dance is derived from jit, which itself owes debts to both traditional African dancing and the jitterbug. The legacy is obscure, but it's there. Juke is starting to establish roots in the present, too. Salem frequently feature thudding footwork figures in their tracks, as does London's label-of-the-moment Night Slugs, who just released Girl Unit's footwork-indebted single "Wut". UK dubstep artist Addison Groove offered a sparser, cleaner take on the sound with his "Footcrab" single-- and, hell, even the relentless slam of Kanye West's "All of the Lights" carries a trace of footwork's genetics. The growing fascination with footwork's compositional tics has also brought an equal interest in its raw materials, which is where UK electronic label Planet Mu comes in. In the past few months, they've put out a scene-spanning footwork compilation, Bangs and Works, as well as full-lengths from 20-year-old rising talent DJ Nate and comparative veteran DJ Roc, Da Trak Genious and The Crack Capone, respectively. Despite their difference in age, Nate and Roc's full-lengths share a few similarities: Both excel when working in juke's sonic braggadocio (Nate's "Footwurk Homicide", Roc's "They Can't Fuck Wit Me") and downtempo mood-setters (Roc's mesmerizing rework of Robin Thicke's "Lost Without U"). Both records are of a slightly patience-testing length (Da Trak Genious is a psychosis-inducing 70 minutes long). And, in a quality that applies to the scene as a whole, the tracks succeed in proportion to the quality of their samples. Roc's The Crack Capone is the more enjoyable full-length. Roc favors cohesive musicality above all else, [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| an attribute that ties into his background in the more colorful Chicago juke sound. The "Crack" in the album title refers not to the drug but to Roc's production style, which favors tightly edited rhythms and snapping track structures. That sense of tightness makes The Crack Capone a frequently invigorating, accessible listen, whether taking on percolating forms of UK bass (album closer "Break it Down") or vibrant blasts of melody (the one-two punch of the Willie Hutch-sampling "Get Buck Jones" and "Gun Smoke"). If Roc is fixated primarily on melody, then Nate's focus is more texture-based. Da Trak Genious is a tough front-to-back listen, and not just because it's so damn long; many of the tracks turn their pop-fixated samples into abstractions, repeating figures endlessly until they become hypnotically broken mantras. The result can be almost psychedelic at times; when he lets the source material breathe a little, as on the Dreamgirls-biting "You're Gonna Luv Me" or the Lil Wayne-sampling "Let Da Beat Build", the results are more immediate but ultimately less interesting. Still, it's heartening that Nate, Roc, and other artists working in the genre don't seem overly invested in any one template, and it'll be interesting to see where the scene's talents take their sound next."

The Rosebuds

Sand + Silence

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

These days, the Rosebuds sound like a band out of time. They made their debut in 2003, long before their (former) label Merge Records began celebrating anniversaries and even longer before North Carolina was lousy with amazing bands rethinking local and regional musical traditions. During their first decade, they seemed more like one of those boy-girl indie-pop bands, like Mates of State or Georgie James, who were more upbeat than catchy. The Rosebuds were founded on the romantic relationship between Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, who formed the group when they started dating, married at the height of their success, and kept it going even when they divorced. 2011’s Loud Planes Fly Low was a breakup album as reassertion of creative partnership, although their official-ish follow-up to that album was a full-length cover of Sade’s Love Deluxe that barely featured Crisp at all. Since then, Crisp enrolled at Columbia and moved to New York, while Howard stayed in North Carolina and released a solo-ish single featuring the Spacebomb Studio band (better known as Matthew E. White’s collective/back-up orchestra). Recently, the duo reconvened at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to record tracks for their sixth (or seventh, depending on how you count) studio album, Sand + Silence. Even if this isn’t their first album together as exes, it still sounds like they’re figuring out what the band is now and how it operates. And it sounds pretty much like a Howard solo project, with Crisp hanging back. She adds some piano to a few tracks, some backing vocals, and “handclaps”, but the give and take between them, the sense of friction that bolstered Make Out and Birds Make Good Neighbors, is largely absent on Sand + Silence. Howard indulges genre exercises throughout the album, and his mastery of rock history is impressive, at least for a few songs. Openers and album highlights “In My Teeth” and “Sand + Silence” hinge on intricate earworm choruses and some intriguing rhythmic underpinnings, convincingly updating the ‘70s singer-songwriter mood to the 2010s. It’s part Kenny Loggins, part Steely Dan. If those don’t seem like the usual touchstones, that may be the point. Much like their superfan/benefactor Vernon, whose Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby big-ups churned up some hubbub a few years ago, the Rosebuds seem intent on mining historical territory that is largely untouched by most of todays’ indie musicians. Perhaps it’s generational—two veterans drawing inspiration from the music of their own youth—but whatever their motivation, it works well enough and points to a new and arguably more ambitious chapter in the Rosebuds’ career. But Sand + Silence is built on a sandy, not solid foundation. As the album progresses, the Rosebuds try out all sorts of new ideas but lose all sense of momentum and, ironically, adventure. “Mine Mine Mine” sounds like George Harrison by way of the Love Language, with a chorus that grows more grating with each repetition. “Looking For” is sickly-sweet doo-wop that mistakes cutesy for twee, and “Esse Quam Videri” is clumsy prog-based pop that uses the North Carolina state motto as its title (translated from Latin, the phrase means, “To be, rather than to seem (to be)”). It’s not that these experiments don’t quite work or even that they don’t really cohere into much of a statement. The main problem is that the music is so self-conscious, as most of these songs sound like a band still trying to feel its way forward. The quest is noble and even necessary; the results, much less so.

Artist: The Rosebuds, Album: Sand + Silence, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.1 Album review: "These days, the Rosebuds sound like a band out of time. They made their debut in 2003, long before their (former) label Merge Records began celebrating anniversaries and even longer before North Carolina was lousy with amazing bands rethinking local and regional musical traditions. During their first decade, they seemed more like one of those boy-girl indie-pop bands, like Mates of State or Georgie James, who were more upbeat than catchy. The Rosebuds were founded on the romantic relationship between Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, who formed the group when they started dating, married at the height of their success, and kept it going even when they divorced. 2011’s Loud Planes Fly Low was a breakup album as reassertion of creative partnership, although their official-ish follow-up to that album was a full-length cover of Sade’s Love Deluxe that barely featured Crisp at all. Since then, Crisp enrolled at Columbia and moved to New York, while Howard stayed in North Carolina and released a solo-ish single featuring the Spacebomb Studio band (better known as Matthew E. White’s collective/back-up orchestra). Recently, the duo reconvened at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to record tracks for their sixth (or seventh, depending on how you count) studio album, Sand + Silence. Even if this isn’t their first album together as exes, it still sounds like they’re figuring out what the band is now and how it operates. And it sounds pretty much like a Howard solo project, with Crisp hanging back. She adds some piano to a few tracks, some backing vocals, and “handclaps”, but the give and take between them, the sense of friction that bolstered Make Out and Birds Make Good Neighbors, is largely absent on Sand + Silence. Howard indulges genre exercises throughout the album, and his mastery of rock history is impressive, at least for a few songs. Openers and album highlights “In My Teeth” and “Sand + Silence” hinge on intricate earworm choruses and some intriguing rhythmic underpinnings, convincingly updating the ‘70s singer-songwriter mood to the 2010s. It’s part Kenny Loggins, part Steely Dan. If those don’t seem like the usual touchstones, that may be the point. Much like their superfan/benefactor Vernon, whose Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby big-ups churned up some hubbub a few years ago, the Rosebuds seem intent on mining historical territory that is largely untouched by most of todays’ indie musicians. Perhaps it’s generational—two veterans drawing inspiration from the music of their own youth—but whatever their motivation, it works well enough and points to a new and arguably more ambitious chapter in the Rosebuds’ career. But Sand + Silence is built on a sandy, not solid foundation. As the album progresses, the Rosebuds try out all sorts of new ideas but lose all sense of momentum and, ironically, adventure. “Mine Mine Mine” sounds like George Harrison by way of the Love Language, with a chorus that grows more grating with each repetition. “Looking For” is sickly-sweet doo-wop that mistakes cutesy for twee, and “Esse Quam Videri” is clumsy prog-based pop that uses the North Carolina state motto as its title (translated from Latin, the phrase means, “To be, rather than to seem (to be)”). It’s not that these experiments don’t quite work or even that they don’t really cohere into much of a statement. The main problem is that the music is so self-conscious, as most of these songs sound like a band still trying to feel its way forward. The quest is noble and even necessary; the results, much less so."

Thou

Magus

Metal

Dale W Eisinger

In more than a decade as a band, Baton Rouge sludge-metal quintet Thou have released music at a stunning rate. Collaborations with other outré metal acts, like the Body; splits with and covers of extreme brethren of all stripes; LPs and EPs and singles—they just never stop. Their immense catalog could be summed up as, say, post-metal stoner-doom with post-rock and ambient flourishes, but the sheer volume of their output seems more essential to their identity. And throughout all that material, even well before the “Great Awokening” made it trendy, they were pushing, and practicing, progressive politics. Magus, the band’s fifth proper full-length, heralds the latest tsunami in the endless storm of defeaning sound, political fury, and overwhelming prolificness that is Thou. The album surges and undulates with the dread that it’s only a matter of time before the waves—another outrage, another onslaught, another record—crash in again. Despite the pace at which they work, Thou have always been a precision crew. Across Magus’ 11 tracks, they fold odd meters and splashy drum fills into their thick neon sludge. But they also leave room for plenty of surprises. From the sneak-attack intro of opener “Inward” to vocalist Emily McWilliams’ entrance on “Divine Will,” there’s something around every corner—but you can’t really say that something is lurking. Lurking may, in fact, be the posture Thou assume least often. Their stance is far more conspicuous. There are countless explosive moments and precise edges here, all wrapped in squalls of fuzz. Less volatile tracks, like closer “Supremacy,” with its portentous crash and drone, recall the early noise-rock output of the band’s new Sacred Bones labelmates the Men. The riffs on “Transcending Dualities” sizzle like the fuse on a cartoon bomb, a toothsome wah-wah effect scratching its way down the frequency spectrum. Some of the compositions are so dynamic, encompassing so many beautiful, epic, emotional moments, I had to check the tracklist to believe Thou had packed them all into the same lengthy song. The end of “Sovereign Self” harnesses the energy of a groove without feeling outright groovy and unleashes a ferocity free of any alienating, acerbic edge. Guitarists Andy Gibbs and Matthew Thudium do much of the heavy lifting on the album, riding catchy rhythms while avoiding the blues clichés to which sludge-metal bands so often default. The lyrics (if not the recordings themselves, whose roaring vocals are mostly incomprehensible) reveal a sprawling metaphysical parable: Vocalist Bryan Funck journeys to the battered core of the human condition, examining the nature of hate by looking within himself. While the material is not exactly new for Thou, it’s certainly more refined here than it has ever been before. Thou don’t need to recalibrate their point of view with each release, because each release is still bringing them closer to the white-hot core of their Thou-ness. Their moves are geological in timescale; the slightest shift in attitude rings through the eons that follow. By that measure alone, Magus is an essential record in the vast Thou canon. The earth-shaking revelation here is Funck’s ferocious pronouncement, on “Elimination Rhetoric,” that, “Yes, we have hatred: A searing hatred for prevailing design, a searing hatred for limiting belief, a callous disregard for ignorance.” It’s an exhilarating conclusion, if also one that short-circuits logic: When directed against the structural institutions that allow worse kinds of hate to foster, hate can be not only good, but also productive. Pair these radical epiphanies with the serpentine imagery of pestilence, offal, and rot common to the interior landscapes Funck conjures, and you’re listening to a fire sermon that is equal parts Bashō, Virgil, and Antifa. What’s transcendent about both the music and the lyrics of Magus is the way it lives in the build-up to a war that is only just beginning. Miles away from the battlefield, Thou have already got the enemy in the crosshairs of their righteous hatred. Funck and his band are perceptive enough to know what is at stake here—what the future could be: a boot stamping on a human face forever. That’s the real fight, and Thou are ready for it.

Artist: Thou, Album: Magus, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In more than a decade as a band, Baton Rouge sludge-metal quintet Thou have released music at a stunning rate. Collaborations with other outré metal acts, like the Body; splits with and covers of extreme brethren of all stripes; LPs and EPs and singles—they just never stop. Their immense catalog could be summed up as, say, post-metal stoner-doom with post-rock and ambient flourishes, but the sheer volume of their output seems more essential to their identity. And throughout all that material, even well before the “Great Awokening” made it trendy, they were pushing, and practicing, progressive politics. Magus, the band’s fifth proper full-length, heralds the latest tsunami in the endless storm of defeaning sound, political fury, and overwhelming prolificness that is Thou. The album surges and undulates with the dread that it’s only a matter of time before the waves—another outrage, another onslaught, another record—crash in again. Despite the pace at which they work, Thou have always been a precision crew. Across Magus’ 11 tracks, they fold odd meters and splashy drum fills into their thick neon sludge. But they also leave room for plenty of surprises. From the sneak-attack intro of opener “Inward” to vocalist Emily McWilliams’ entrance on “Divine Will,” there’s something around every corner—but you can’t really say that something is lurking. Lurking may, in fact, be the posture Thou assume least often. Their stance is far more conspicuous. There are countless explosive moments and precise edges here, all wrapped in squalls of fuzz. Less volatile tracks, like closer “Supremacy,” with its portentous crash and drone, recall the early noise-rock output of the band’s new Sacred Bones labelmates the Men. The riffs on “Transcending Dualities” sizzle like the fuse on a cartoon bomb, a toothsome wah-wah effect scratching its way down the frequency spectrum. Some of the compositions are so dynamic, encompassing so many beautiful, epic, emotional moments, I had to check the tracklist to believe Thou had packed them all into the same lengthy song. The end of “Sovereign Self” harnesses the energy of a groove without feeling outright groovy and unleashes a ferocity free of any alienating, acerbic edge. Guitarists Andy Gibbs and Matthew Thudium do much of the heavy lifting on the album, riding catchy rhythms while avoiding the blues clichés to which sludge-metal bands so often default. The lyrics (if not the recordings themselves, whose roaring vocals are mostly incomprehensible) reveal a sprawling metaphysical parable: Vocalist Bryan Funck journeys to the battered core of the human condition, examining the nature of hate by looking within himself. While the material is not exactly new for Thou, it’s certainly more refined here than it has ever been before. Thou don’t need to recalibrate their point of view with each release, because each release is still bringing them closer to the white-hot core of their Thou-ness. Their moves are geological in timescale; the slightest shift in attitude rings through the eons that follow. By that measure alone, Magus is an essential record in the vast Thou canon. The earth-shaking revelation here is Funck’s ferocious pronouncement, on “Elimination Rhetoric,” that, “Yes, we have hatred: A searing hatred for prevailing design, a searing hatred for limiting belief, a callous disregard for ignorance.” It’s an exhilarating conclusion, if also one that short-circuits logic: When directed against the structural institutions that allow worse kinds of hate to foster, hate can be not only good, but also productive. Pair these radical epiphanies with the serpentine imagery of pestilence, offal, and rot common to the interior landscapes Funck conjures, and you’re listening to a fire sermon that is equal parts Bashō, Virgil, and Antifa. What’s transcendent about both the music and the lyrics of Magus is the way it lives in the build-up to a war that is only just beginning. Miles away from the battlefield, Thou have already got the enemy in the crosshairs of their righteous hatred. Funck and his band are perceptive enough to know what is at stake here—what the future could be: a boot stamping on a human face forever. That’s the real fight, and Thou are ready for it."

Syclops

I've Got My Eye on You

Electronic

Brian Howe

Syclops is a trio featuring Sven Kortehisto, Hanna Sarkari, and Jukka Kantonen, with Maurice Fulton behind the boards, but you could put scare quotes around everything there except Fulton's name. This new DFA "group" (see how that works?) doesn't submit to interviews, perform live, manifest any Google results unrelated to Syclops, show up on film, have fingerprints or dental records, etc. Fulton's penchant for relative anonymity explains why a guy who's done remixes and production for Annie, Hot Chip, and Kathy Diamond, and whom is half of Mu, can keep such a low profile. Put it this way: Syclops features the Tin Man on keyboards, the Cowardly Lion on bass, and the Scarecrow on drums, with Maurice Fulton as the Wizard of Sheffield. Pay particular attention to the man behind the curtain. And anyway, who cares about biographical shenanigans when we finally get what's ostensibly a proper solo album from Fulton? If he needs to be left alone to make music this good, we should let him be. I've Got My Eye on You (rim-shot optional) is DFA's second direct-hit entrance this year, a contemplative counterpoint to Hercules and Love Affair's flamboyant debut. The clinically exact robo-funk of early single "Where's Jason's K" was almost too polished for its own good, but luckily, the acidy B-side "Monkey Puss" (which isn't featured here) turns out to be a better representation of the album proper: It's visceral and lyrical, thumping as jaggedly as a distressed cardio patient's EKG. We might not get "Monkey Puss" on I've Got My Eye on You, but we do get "The Fly", which features the same kind of strident, Morse code melody, artfully stuttering and ghosting out, interpolated by overdriven bass. It's a bit like French producer Vitalic's jaw-clenching vigor, but where the latter tends to plow down the center, Syclops utilizes every minute degree of stereo channel space. Opening track "NR17" traces a labyrinth of pitched percussion and barely audible sub-tones through your headphones, as flying saucers circle ominously; one imagines that Fulton's studio comes equipped with a protractor, compass, and tinfoil hat. These extreme but seamless contrasts-- of physical and synthetic sound sources, hectic and placid moods, tricky and candid patterns-- typify the album. The loping "5 Out" splashes sprightly lounge piano over clipped vocal samples and sawtooth synth waves. On "The E Ticket", shaggy jazz drums launch a bass workout flecked with crystalline arpeggios and periodic synth washes. "Mom, the Video Broke" is sort of a mirror image of "The E Ticket"-- the latter starts off tight and gradually widens like a cone; the former turns its jazzy percussion into jackhammering mechanical drums as the elongated synth-bass riffs move through fiddly variations. The title track's reverb-brushed percussion verges on musique concrète, at stark odds with the celestial fluff drifting around it, and "Naoka's F", with chords radiating through a vast array of torqued pings, chirrs, and blips, feels like the view from an airport's moving walkway-- a respite from harried striding, as busy scenery rolls tranquilly by. Overall, I've Got My Eye on You is the sound of preternatural studio expertise being pressed into the service of the listener's delight. The delicate melodic structures and decorative rhythmic patterns seem to want to please us, rather than just impress us. This befits someone who goes to such lengths to isolate his name and ego from his music, and results in a lot of terrific moments, like when the hushed ambiance of "A Lovely Sunday" suddenly lights up with surprising but weirdly apt G-funk whistles. Fulton's bio remains shrouded, but this album tells us that he's a generous and kind of crazily brilliant producer, which is all we really need to know.

Artist: Syclops, Album: I've Got My Eye on You, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Syclops is a trio featuring Sven Kortehisto, Hanna Sarkari, and Jukka Kantonen, with Maurice Fulton behind the boards, but you could put scare quotes around everything there except Fulton's name. This new DFA "group" (see how that works?) doesn't submit to interviews, perform live, manifest any Google results unrelated to Syclops, show up on film, have fingerprints or dental records, etc. Fulton's penchant for relative anonymity explains why a guy who's done remixes and production for Annie, Hot Chip, and Kathy Diamond, and whom is half of Mu, can keep such a low profile. Put it this way: Syclops features the Tin Man on keyboards, the Cowardly Lion on bass, and the Scarecrow on drums, with Maurice Fulton as the Wizard of Sheffield. Pay particular attention to the man behind the curtain. And anyway, who cares about biographical shenanigans when we finally get what's ostensibly a proper solo album from Fulton? If he needs to be left alone to make music this good, we should let him be. I've Got My Eye on You (rim-shot optional) is DFA's second direct-hit entrance this year, a contemplative counterpoint to Hercules and Love Affair's flamboyant debut. The clinically exact robo-funk of early single "Where's Jason's K" was almost too polished for its own good, but luckily, the acidy B-side "Monkey Puss" (which isn't featured here) turns out to be a better representation of the album proper: It's visceral and lyrical, thumping as jaggedly as a distressed cardio patient's EKG. We might not get "Monkey Puss" on I've Got My Eye on You, but we do get "The Fly", which features the same kind of strident, Morse code melody, artfully stuttering and ghosting out, interpolated by overdriven bass. It's a bit like French producer Vitalic's jaw-clenching vigor, but where the latter tends to plow down the center, Syclops utilizes every minute degree of stereo channel space. Opening track "NR17" traces a labyrinth of pitched percussion and barely audible sub-tones through your headphones, as flying saucers circle ominously; one imagines that Fulton's studio comes equipped with a protractor, compass, and tinfoil hat. These extreme but seamless contrasts-- of physical and synthetic sound sources, hectic and placid moods, tricky and candid patterns-- typify the album. The loping "5 Out" splashes sprightly lounge piano over clipped vocal samples and sawtooth synth waves. On "The E Ticket", shaggy jazz drums launch a bass workout flecked with crystalline arpeggios and periodic synth washes. "Mom, the Video Broke" is sort of a mirror image of "The E Ticket"-- the latter starts off tight and gradually widens like a cone; the former turns its jazzy percussion into jackhammering mechanical drums as the elongated synth-bass riffs move through fiddly variations. The title track's reverb-brushed percussion verges on musique concrète, at stark odds with the celestial fluff drifting around it, and "Naoka's F", with chords radiating through a vast array of torqued pings, chirrs, and blips, feels like the view from an airport's moving walkway-- a respite from harried striding, as busy scenery rolls tranquilly by. Overall, I've Got My Eye on You is the sound of preternatural studio expertise being pressed into the service of the listener's delight. The delicate melodic structures and decorative rhythmic patterns seem to want to please us, rather than just impress us. This befits someone who goes to such lengths to isolate his name and ego from his music, and results in a lot of terrific moments, like when the hushed ambiance of "A Lovely Sunday" suddenly lights up with surprising but weirdly apt G-funk whistles. Fulton's bio remains shrouded, but this album tells us that he's a generous and kind of crazily brilliant producer, which is all we really need to know."

Will Saul

DJ-Kicks

Larry Fitzmaurice

Will Saul’s been around for more than a decade now, but in recent years the Glastonbury producer/DJ’s profile reached new levels of visibility. He started the Simple imprint in 2003 and three years later launched Aus with help from Cornwall musician Fin Greenall. Both labels continue to release material, but Aus in particular has developed into one of the UK’s most notable house/techno imprints. At its best, Aus has served as a breeding ground for promising talent, and even its lesser releases over the last few years have lent the label a reputation for consistency. Aus and Simple have released their share of floor-driven bangers but both tip towards subtlety, and that extends to Saul’s own work as a producer and DJ. In the former guise, he’s worked infrequently and under his own name; last year, he released a solo album as Close, Getting Closer, that mixed conventional melodic form with slow-burn pacing while yielding two club jams, “Beam Me Up” and “OSCAR”. The approach extends to his DJ work. Although sections of his 3xCD Balance mix in 2009 showed his skill with uptempo pyrotechnics, elsewhere he’s favored a more patient structure. This was none more apparent than on his contribution to BBC radio’s Essential Mix series last year, which found him leaning on key players from his labels’ rosters to create a mix that relied more on mood than immediacy. His latest mix, for !K7’s esteemed DJ-Kicks series, continues in that vein, with Saul tapping frequent Aus and Simple contributors for unreleased cuts and showing off some of the label’s more notable recent releases over the course of its 80-minute runtime. His feel for composition hasn't diminished; the mix’s first 12 minutes move by at a slow climb, setting a gradually evolving mood. Things finally pick up during the back half of head-in-the-clouds Berlin techno producer Youandewan’s “Ego”, which develops from a wet pound into a spinning array of soft-focus tones. "Ego" has the feel of a track that transforms the mix into something greater, but instead it transitions into Jabru and Joel Culpepper’s ”Church”, a sultry, shuffling vocal tune that sounds nice enough but would’ve fit better alongside Getting Closer’s avant-pop stylings. Last year, Spanish deep-house producer John Talabot’s own entry in the DJ-Kicks series proved it was possible to create a forceful document that unraveled with a slow, psychedelic feel; so the relative stasis of Saul’s entry is, on one level, a letdown. While its stilted, dreamy sense of pacing is easy enough to get lost in, it’s even easier to tune out entirely. Still, engaging stretches abound: Swedish house producer and co-head of the playful Studio Barnhus imprint Axel Boman impresses with the wobbly, crisp-light “Dubbel (Dub)”, while the mix’s final third locks into a satisfactorily consistent groove cemented by Saul’s ruddy gear workout “Pedal Power” and Dutch weirdo Legowelt’s watery, aptly named “Ethereal Techno Music Will Never Die”. Of the three roles Saul plays, his talents as curator are most evident, and so the best moments of his DJ-Kicks installment are from artists who’ve made their name, partially or entirely, through releases on his labels. Irish duo Bicep, who have achieved a startling level of consistency over the last few years, return with the skipping, high-octane “Nova”, while George FitzGerald, one of house music’s rising talents, comes through with a big-room sheen and computerized vocals on “Wanting Needing”. Depending on where you looked, FitzGerald’s tunes were all anyone could talk about in 2013; this year, that title belongs to Leon Vynehall, whose Music for the Uninvited showcased an appealing, tasty approach to house. His contribution to Saul’s DJ-Kicks, “Time”, is out of step with his usual jacking fare and all the better for it, a wistful slice of body music that wields subtlety with a steady hand. The lovely, subdued “Time” is a prime example of the type of refined dance music Saul’s expertly curated over the last decade or so; his DJ-Kicks mix could use more moments like it, but the highlights compiled here nonetheless speak to Saul’s excellent taste, as well as a reminder of why Aus and Simple have been worth following.

Artist: Will Saul, Album: DJ-Kicks, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "Will Saul’s been around for more than a decade now, but in recent years the Glastonbury producer/DJ’s profile reached new levels of visibility. He started the Simple imprint in 2003 and three years later launched Aus with help from Cornwall musician Fin Greenall. Both labels continue to release material, but Aus in particular has developed into one of the UK’s most notable house/techno imprints. At its best, Aus has served as a breeding ground for promising talent, and even its lesser releases over the last few years have lent the label a reputation for consistency. Aus and Simple have released their share of floor-driven bangers but both tip towards subtlety, and that extends to Saul’s own work as a producer and DJ. In the former guise, he’s worked infrequently and under his own name; last year, he released a solo album as Close, Getting Closer, that mixed conventional melodic form with slow-burn pacing while yielding two club jams, “Beam Me Up” and “OSCAR”. The approach extends to his DJ work. Although sections of his 3xCD Balance mix in 2009 showed his skill with uptempo pyrotechnics, elsewhere he’s favored a more patient structure. This was none more apparent than on his contribution to BBC radio’s Essential Mix series last year, which found him leaning on key players from his labels’ rosters to create a mix that relied more on mood than immediacy. His latest mix, for !K7’s esteemed DJ-Kicks series, continues in that vein, with Saul tapping frequent Aus and Simple contributors for unreleased cuts and showing off some of the label’s more notable recent releases over the course of its 80-minute runtime. His feel for composition hasn't diminished; the mix’s first 12 minutes move by at a slow climb, setting a gradually evolving mood. Things finally pick up during the back half of head-in-the-clouds Berlin techno producer Youandewan’s “Ego”, which develops from a wet pound into a spinning array of soft-focus tones. "Ego" has the feel of a track that transforms the mix into something greater, but instead it transitions into Jabru and Joel Culpepper’s ”Church”, a sultry, shuffling vocal tune that sounds nice enough but would’ve fit better alongside Getting Closer’s avant-pop stylings. Last year, Spanish deep-house producer John Talabot’s own entry in the DJ-Kicks series proved it was possible to create a forceful document that unraveled with a slow, psychedelic feel; so the relative stasis of Saul’s entry is, on one level, a letdown. While its stilted, dreamy sense of pacing is easy enough to get lost in, it’s even easier to tune out entirely. Still, engaging stretches abound: Swedish house producer and co-head of the playful Studio Barnhus imprint Axel Boman impresses with the wobbly, crisp-light “Dubbel (Dub)”, while the mix’s final third locks into a satisfactorily consistent groove cemented by Saul’s ruddy gear workout “Pedal Power” and Dutch weirdo Legowelt’s watery, aptly named “Ethereal Techno Music Will Never Die”. Of the three roles Saul plays, his talents as curator are most evident, and so the best moments of his DJ-Kicks installment are from artists who’ve made their name, partially or entirely, through releases on his labels. Irish duo Bicep, who have achieved a startling level of consistency over the last few years, return with the skipping, high-octane “Nova”, while George FitzGerald, one of house music’s rising talents, comes through with a big-room sheen and computerized vocals on “Wanting Needing”. Depending on where you looked, FitzGerald’s tunes were all anyone could talk about in 2013; this year, that title belongs to Leon Vynehall, whose Music for the Uninvited showcased an appealing, tasty approach to house. His contribution to Saul’s DJ-Kicks, “Time”, is out of step with his usual jacking fare and all the better for it, a wistful slice of body music that wields subtlety with a steady hand. The lovely, subdued “Time” is a prime example of the type of refined dance music Saul’s expertly curated over the last decade or so; his DJ-Kicks mix could use more moments like it, but the highlights compiled here nonetheless speak to Saul’s excellent taste, as well as a reminder of why Aus and Simple have been worth following."

ADULT.

Gimme Trouble

Electronic

Nitsuh Abebe

A funny thing happened the last time I saw Adult. Someone in the crowd requested their 2001 electro favorite "Hand to Phone", which wasn't so strange. Nicola Kuperus said she was sick to death of singing that song, which wasn't so unusual either. But then-- then she did start singing it, in an eye-rolling parody of her old robot monotone: hand to phone, hand to phone, blah blah blah. I can't think of much better shorthand for the group's career arc-- abandoning those pitch-perfect light-speed electronics and diving off into a world of potentially embarrassing basement trainwrecks. Kuperus traded icy drone for the kind of witchy yelping not much heard since Bauhaus's prime. Adam Lee Miller traded clean-line synth flash for nasty bass-guitar buzz. They added a guitar player; they spazzed out. And as much as each new release came out like a total mess, there was something in each of them that's totally fascinating, as if each of those risky sounds-- from cyborg post-punk to cheerleader pogo goth-- was one wobbly, perilous step in the direction of something much greater. The only question: when-- or whether-- they'd ever break past the wobbles and come out with whatever that great thing was. Is that thing Gimme Trouble? Not quite-- but this is a whole lot closer than anything we've heard so far. For one thing, there's the sound, which has perked up beautifully. Drum machine pump, bass blurt, synth clatter, guitar screech-- they all mesh clean and shiny here, and on some tracks they take on a slanty, minimalist bounce that practically breaks a smile. "Bad Idea" kicks off sounding like early Devo, something from an era where weirdoid punk and synthesizers got along naturally. The go-go drum machine and one-note guitar on "Still Waiting" leave the whole thing feeling vaguely like an early B-52's rave-up. Half the rest sounds like X-Ray Spex or Siouxsie and the Banshees-- there is vintage new wave rawness and goth-inflected bounce all over this thing, and it manages to leave this band in fresh-sounding territory that's somehow miles away from most everything today's "new wave revivalists" and/or "electro-punks" have even thought about trying. Best of all: no mess. No little time-trials, or side-notes, or half-formed clatters-- just 12 songs that, while somewhat lacking in super-blazing stand-outs, present a giant step up in coherence. That's good news: It doesn't feel so "confrontational" anymore, does it? With their last full-length, Anxiety Always, it sounded like they were challenging us, deliberately nag-nag-nagging us with the shriekiest, most paranoid rumble they could muster. That was fun, in its way, and it's certainly not as if they've dropped that agenda. But the Adult. on this record can be "fun" in a much more pleasant, straightforward way-- the same jump-around-and-screech-along way their early electro singles could be. The only thing that still worries me is the memory of them on stage, with Kuperus posing and sneering and genuinely trying to act out the cretinous-vampire schtick the band's been working its way through. Are we going to have to get Devo and Fred Schneider to come wave the landing lights and guide them to the sweet spot? This isn't scary tough-guy muscle, guys-- it's spazzed-out pogo geek-punk, and it's almost nearly there. Cover "Rock Lobster" if you have to.

Artist: ADULT., Album: Gimme Trouble, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "A funny thing happened the last time I saw Adult. Someone in the crowd requested their 2001 electro favorite "Hand to Phone", which wasn't so strange. Nicola Kuperus said she was sick to death of singing that song, which wasn't so unusual either. But then-- then she did start singing it, in an eye-rolling parody of her old robot monotone: hand to phone, hand to phone, blah blah blah. I can't think of much better shorthand for the group's career arc-- abandoning those pitch-perfect light-speed electronics and diving off into a world of potentially embarrassing basement trainwrecks. Kuperus traded icy drone for the kind of witchy yelping not much heard since Bauhaus's prime. Adam Lee Miller traded clean-line synth flash for nasty bass-guitar buzz. They added a guitar player; they spazzed out. And as much as each new release came out like a total mess, there was something in each of them that's totally fascinating, as if each of those risky sounds-- from cyborg post-punk to cheerleader pogo goth-- was one wobbly, perilous step in the direction of something much greater. The only question: when-- or whether-- they'd ever break past the wobbles and come out with whatever that great thing was. Is that thing Gimme Trouble? Not quite-- but this is a whole lot closer than anything we've heard so far. For one thing, there's the sound, which has perked up beautifully. Drum machine pump, bass blurt, synth clatter, guitar screech-- they all mesh clean and shiny here, and on some tracks they take on a slanty, minimalist bounce that practically breaks a smile. "Bad Idea" kicks off sounding like early Devo, something from an era where weirdoid punk and synthesizers got along naturally. The go-go drum machine and one-note guitar on "Still Waiting" leave the whole thing feeling vaguely like an early B-52's rave-up. Half the rest sounds like X-Ray Spex or Siouxsie and the Banshees-- there is vintage new wave rawness and goth-inflected bounce all over this thing, and it manages to leave this band in fresh-sounding territory that's somehow miles away from most everything today's "new wave revivalists" and/or "electro-punks" have even thought about trying. Best of all: no mess. No little time-trials, or side-notes, or half-formed clatters-- just 12 songs that, while somewhat lacking in super-blazing stand-outs, present a giant step up in coherence. That's good news: It doesn't feel so "confrontational" anymore, does it? With their last full-length, Anxiety Always, it sounded like they were challenging us, deliberately nag-nag-nagging us with the shriekiest, most paranoid rumble they could muster. That was fun, in its way, and it's certainly not as if they've dropped that agenda. But the Adult. on this record can be "fun" in a much more pleasant, straightforward way-- the same jump-around-and-screech-along way their early electro singles could be. The only thing that still worries me is the memory of them on stage, with Kuperus posing and sneering and genuinely trying to act out the cretinous-vampire schtick the band's been working its way through. Are we going to have to get Devo and Fred Schneider to come wave the landing lights and guide them to the sweet spot? This isn't scary tough-guy muscle, guys-- it's spazzed-out pogo geek-punk, and it's almost nearly there. Cover "Rock Lobster" if you have to."

Disclosure

Caracal

Electronic

Meaghan Garvey

Looking back, the intro to Disclosure’s Settle almost reads like a warning to their future selves: "As much as you like to control your environment, the reality is, everything changes." Sure enough, Guy and Howard Lawrence’s sophomore full-length Caracal arrives just two years later but in a markedly different pop landscape—thanks in no small part to the brothers' own influence. Their pristine syntheses of UK garage, Midwestern vocal house, and hook-happy pop structures re-oriented the British pop charts and trickled into the American ones, opening the doors for pop-adjacent neo-house acts like Duke Dumont, Years & Years, and Rudimental (not to mention for Sam Smith). Disclosure have never really been the types to throw curveballs: they do what they do, and they do it impeccably. But it’s understandable they’d start feeling restless, especially as the scope of their influence rendered their own tunes increasingly indistinct. "That sound is everywhere now," Guy, now 24, admitted in an L.A. Times profile this summer. "The same old bass lines, the same old samples. We’re a bit bored by it." Scrubbed of much of its predecessor's overt 2-step and house homage, Caracal suggests the duo's also grown bored of the conversation that's surrounded them from the start: how dance and pop music can and "should" relate. On one hand, here were two young men making wide-reaching dance tracks that weren’t reliant on drops, builds, or any of festival EDM’s creatine-crazed trappings. These guys scanned as "tasteful," for better or worse. But on the flip side were classicists and underground dance fans who pegged the duo as milquetoast gentrifiers of scenes they were too young to fully appreciate, repackaging history with the context and kinks ironed out. There is some sting in the charge, but it's not entirely fair: Disclosure’s work has always made the most sense within the framework of pop, in terms of both form and demographic. In that sense, calling Disclosure contrived or formulaic misunderstands how pop works. Their music may be one-size-fits-all, but it’s also immaculately crafted and catchy as fuck, smudging the divide between the universal and the personal to the point where "Latch" somehow seemed to grow more poignant the more ubiquitous it became. Those dance classicists will likely be less territorial with Caracal: the brothers have dialed down the BPMs significantly and turned toward slow-burning, R&B-inspired grooves. But as they’ve edged away from giddy neo-nostalgia toward a sound with less identifiable anchor points, they’ve begun to blend into the background. On "Omen", the brothers reunite with Sam Smith for a single presumably meant to reprise the massive success of "Latch". And it’s fine—plodding along at a stately downtempo strut with a hint of a 2-step hitch, Smith’s voice a bit mired in that familiar elastic bassline. But it’s nowhere near as immediate, or as gripping; here, when Smith sings of missed opportunities for emotional connection, "Latch"’s obsessive I-will-never-leave-your-side-god-dammit conviction feels like a distant memory. Much of Caracal is vaguely pleasant music you can put on in the background while you’re working—but is that really what we look to Disclosure for? Meanwhile, where Settle set the tone for years of pop hits to come, Caracal seems content to fall back amidst the pack. Opening track "Nocturnal" is a showcase for R&B’s man-of-the-moment the Weeknd, and it wouldn’t sound out of place on Beauty Behind the Madness. Its synth arpeggios seem to aim for Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principles’ "Your Love", but the vibe is closer to late-'00s Hype Machine dance tracks (halfway through, the track practically breaks into its own Classixx remix). This makes sense, in a way: much of the Billboard pop and R&B charts over the last year have embraced this sound, from Nick Jonas’ "Jealous" to Jason Derulo to the current bumper crop of vaguely Balearic "tropical house" singles and remixes. But for Disclosure, the move feels like a step backward, an aim at broader relevance that’s only watered down what once made them feel thrilling. There are bright spots: lead single "Holding On" retains their signature bounce and features stunning vocals from jazz songwriter Gregory Porter, and "Good Intentions", with its understated Miguel appearance, is the best example of their smoothed-out new direction, keeping a brisk pace but leaving more open space. Still, it’s getting harder to shake the sense that these redemptive guest spots have become a crutch for a lack of ideas. Both of the album’s two featureless tracks feel instantly forgettable—particularly "Jaded", a beige wash of cheeseball lyrics that chastise a dishonest companion with all the depth of the "Why You Lyin" Vine. When Disclosure’s hype was at its peak circa Settle, they were often compared to turn-of-the-century acts like Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk—acts who successfully recontextualized older house and disco influences into something reverent and contemporary. But a significant part of both groups’ appeal—and, crucially, part of the outright critical revulsion at the time, too—was their lack of self-seriousness, their willingness to get a little cheesy. Those guys’ nostalgia embraced the kitsch along with the classicism; they had fun. The Lawrence brothers have good taste, sharp instincts, and pristine craftsmanship: playfulness, not so much. Even the album’s most unbuttoned track falls flat: "Bang That", a (relatively) raunchy promotional single now relegated to the bonus tracks with a gratuitous sample of 313 Bass Mechanics’ "Pass Out", feels a bit cringey, like Kidz Bop does ghetto house. Ultimately, Caracal just doesn’t feel much fun, and even its highs are nowhere near Settle’s polished bliss. Once trendsetters, here the Lawrence brothers too often fade noncommittally into white noise.

Artist: Disclosure, Album: Caracal, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Looking back, the intro to Disclosure’s Settle almost reads like a warning to their future selves: "As much as you like to control your environment, the reality is, everything changes." Sure enough, Guy and Howard Lawrence’s sophomore full-length Caracal arrives just two years later but in a markedly different pop landscape—thanks in no small part to the brothers' own influence. Their pristine syntheses of UK garage, Midwestern vocal house, and hook-happy pop structures re-oriented the British pop charts and trickled into the American ones, opening the doors for pop-adjacent neo-house acts like Duke Dumont, Years & Years, and Rudimental (not to mention for Sam Smith). Disclosure have never really been the types to throw curveballs: they do what they do, and they do it impeccably. But it’s understandable they’d start feeling restless, especially as the scope of their influence rendered their own tunes increasingly indistinct. "That sound is everywhere now," Guy, now 24, admitted in an L.A. Times profile this summer. "The same old bass lines, the same old samples. We’re a bit bored by it." Scrubbed of much of its predecessor's overt 2-step and house homage, Caracal suggests the duo's also grown bored of the conversation that's surrounded them from the start: how dance and pop music can and "should" relate. On one hand, here were two young men making wide-reaching dance tracks that weren’t reliant on drops, builds, or any of festival EDM’s creatine-crazed trappings. These guys scanned as "tasteful," for better or worse. But on the flip side were classicists and underground dance fans who pegged the duo as milquetoast gentrifiers of scenes they were too young to fully appreciate, repackaging history with the context and kinks ironed out. There is some sting in the charge, but it's not entirely fair: Disclosure’s work has always made the most sense within the framework of pop, in terms of both form and demographic. In that sense, calling Disclosure contrived or formulaic misunderstands how pop works. Their music may be one-size-fits-all, but it’s also immaculately crafted and catchy as fuck, smudging the divide between the universal and the personal to the point where "Latch" somehow seemed to grow more poignant the more ubiquitous it became. Those dance classicists will likely be less territorial with Caracal: the brothers have dialed down the BPMs significantly and turned toward slow-burning, R&B-inspired grooves. But as they’ve edged away from giddy neo-nostalgia toward a sound with less identifiable anchor points, they’ve begun to blend into the background. On "Omen", the brothers reunite with Sam Smith for a single presumably meant to reprise the massive success of "Latch". And it’s fine—plodding along at a stately downtempo strut with a hint of a 2-step hitch, Smith’s voice a bit mired in that familiar elastic bassline. But it’s nowhere near as immediate, or as gripping; here, when Smith sings of missed opportunities for emotional connection, "Latch"’s obsessive I-will-never-leave-your-side-god-dammit conviction feels like a distant memory. Much of Caracal is vaguely pleasant music you can put on in the background while you’re working—but is that really what we look to Disclosure for? Meanwhile, where Settle set the tone for years of pop hits to come, Caracal seems content to fall back amidst the pack. Opening track "Nocturnal" is a showcase for R&B’s man-of-the-moment the Weeknd, and it wouldn’t sound out of place on Beauty Behind the Madness. Its synth arpeggios seem to aim for Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principles’ "Your Love", but the vibe is closer to late-'00s Hype Machine dance tracks (halfway through, the track practically breaks into its own Classixx remix). This makes sense, in a way: much of the Billboard pop and R&B charts over the last year have embraced this sound, from Nick Jonas’ "Jealous" to Jason Derulo to the current bumper crop of vaguely Balearic "tropical house" singles and remixes. But for Disclosure, the move feels like a step backward, an aim at broader relevance that’s only watered down what once made them feel thrilling. There are bright spots: lead single "Holding On" retains their signature bounce and features stunning vocals from jazz songwriter Gregory Porter, and "Good Intentions", with its understated Miguel appearance, is the best example of their smoothed-out new direction, keeping a brisk pace but leaving more open space. Still, it’s getting harder to shake the sense that these redemptive guest spots have become a crutch for a lack of ideas. Both of the album’s two featureless tracks feel instantly forgettable—particularly "Jaded", a beige wash of cheeseball lyrics that chastise a dishonest companion with all the depth of the "Why You Lyin" Vine. When Disclosure’s hype was at its peak circa Settle, they were often compared to turn-of-the-century acts like Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk—acts who successfully recontextualized older house and disco influences into something reverent and contemporary. But a significant part of both groups’ appeal—and, crucially, part of the outright critical revulsion at the time, too—was their lack of self-seriousness, their willingness to get a little cheesy. Those guys’ nostalgia embraced the kitsch along with the classicism; they had fun. The Lawrence brothers have good taste, sharp instincts, and pristine craftsmanship: playfulness, not so much. Even the album’s most unbuttoned track falls flat: "Bang That", a (relatively) raunchy promotional single now relegated to the bonus tracks with a gratuitous sample of 313 Bass Mechanics’ "Pass Out", feels a bit cringey, like Kidz Bop does ghetto house. Ultimately, Caracal just doesn’t feel much fun, and even its highs are nowhere near Settle’s polished bliss. Once trendsetters, here the Lawrence brothers too often fade noncommittally into white noise."

Do Make Say Think

Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead

Rock

S. Murray

I always appreciated the pedigree of Canadian music, but was never able to convince myself that the country was truly respectable until Godspeed You Black Emperor eradicated any thoughts of Alanis or Sloan, and slapped a hefty amount of cred on the Yukon. Godspeed labelmates Do Make Say Think further the velvet Canuck revolution with their own brand of maddeningly affecting slow burn compositions, but they mine common ground to very different effect. Do Make Say Think's extended developments of melodic themes are driven principally by guitar, but soon explode into grand crescendos that run the gamut from free jazz ("When Day Chokes the Night") to pensive lock-grooves ("Minmin"). Their work is definitely a certain kind of "post-rock," but thankfully, they steer clear of generic Tortoisisms. Two drummers duel subliminally for the rhythmic steering wheel while warm keyboards and effects do their part in articulating the distinctive texture. However, it's the sound of the guitar that lends this album its cohesive sound. The six strings creep around corners with repeated melodic refrains, a rough sound played with a delicacy that belies the stamping of the distortion pedal that will strike as surely as the apocalypse. Each song has its particular crest, and while Do Make Say Think follow the formula religiously, the tension they build with each release cancels any lethargy. Fittingly, the final track, "Goodbye Enemy Airship," erupts as if the previous tracks were mere tremors. It's this band's "Mogwai Fear Satan," an effects-laden cloud enveloping a determined bass pulse. The six-strong line-up recorded this album in a barn, and a moving sense of dramatic isolation is felt as the song-cycle of Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead unfolds. It's like walking down a beaten country road littered with inclines and declines at night and not daring to deviate from the path or look back. Each chord is a step forward, each outburst a cathartic cry to the domineering starry sky. Do Make Say Think have imbued their second album with such a strong sense of purpose and an indefatigable belief in their characteristic sound that comparisons become largely irrelevant. That they succeed so well on their own terms without weighing their music down with tired post-rock clichés makes their work that much more compelling.

Artist: Do Make Say Think, Album: Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "I always appreciated the pedigree of Canadian music, but was never able to convince myself that the country was truly respectable until Godspeed You Black Emperor eradicated any thoughts of Alanis or Sloan, and slapped a hefty amount of cred on the Yukon. Godspeed labelmates Do Make Say Think further the velvet Canuck revolution with their own brand of maddeningly affecting slow burn compositions, but they mine common ground to very different effect. Do Make Say Think's extended developments of melodic themes are driven principally by guitar, but soon explode into grand crescendos that run the gamut from free jazz ("When Day Chokes the Night") to pensive lock-grooves ("Minmin"). Their work is definitely a certain kind of "post-rock," but thankfully, they steer clear of generic Tortoisisms. Two drummers duel subliminally for the rhythmic steering wheel while warm keyboards and effects do their part in articulating the distinctive texture. However, it's the sound of the guitar that lends this album its cohesive sound. The six strings creep around corners with repeated melodic refrains, a rough sound played with a delicacy that belies the stamping of the distortion pedal that will strike as surely as the apocalypse. Each song has its particular crest, and while Do Make Say Think follow the formula religiously, the tension they build with each release cancels any lethargy. Fittingly, the final track, "Goodbye Enemy Airship," erupts as if the previous tracks were mere tremors. It's this band's "Mogwai Fear Satan," an effects-laden cloud enveloping a determined bass pulse. The six-strong line-up recorded this album in a barn, and a moving sense of dramatic isolation is felt as the song-cycle of Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead unfolds. It's like walking down a beaten country road littered with inclines and declines at night and not daring to deviate from the path or look back. Each chord is a step forward, each outburst a cathartic cry to the domineering starry sky. Do Make Say Think have imbued their second album with such a strong sense of purpose and an indefatigable belief in their characteristic sound that comparisons become largely irrelevant. That they succeed so well on their own terms without weighing their music down with tired post-rock clichés makes their work that much more compelling."

Gang of Four

Hard

Rock

Joe Tangari

The logic of this release escapes me completely. For those unfamiliar with Gang of Four's discography, let me first explain: This reissue compiles the band's second and fourth albums onto one disc, in reverse chronological order. I wish I could say its failings were predominantly linear, but the cruelty of this juxtaposition runs much, much deeper. Gang of Four's initial artistic trajectory (pre-reunions) can best be defined as tragic. They announced themselves to the world in 1979 with Entertainment!, one of the best debut albums ever released, and a powerful statement, encapsulating radical politics in a supreme assembly of accessible, Spartan punk-funk; it almost single-handedly gave birth to the post-punk aesthetic still widely mined today. The original lineup went on to record Solid Gold and the Another Day/Another Dollar EP, which both count as towering releases in their own right. Unfortunately, the band's material suffered as their lineup shifted; the departure of bassist Dave Allen, who went on to form Shriekback with former XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews, fundamentally changed Gang of Four's dynamic on their third LP, Songs of the Free. That album still has some classic moments, but it's far less incisive than either of their first two albums, and the rhythmic intensity that drove the band early on was all but lost. No disrespect to ace bassist Sara Lee, but she was no replacement for Allen, whose style was far more direct. Next to go was drummer Hugo Burnham, which left only Jon King and Andy Gill to create the band's final studio album in their first wave of work, Hard, which relied heavily on drum programming. In light of where the band started out, Hard wasn't just a letdown, it was an outright travesty. The would-be ironic title wound up a joke King and Gill played on themselves; in execution and content, the album is anything but its namesake. The female backing vocalists who open the album chanting, "Is it love?" are so overproduced, they sound practically synthesized, and the drum programming is straight-up Oingo Boingo. But the really sad thing about Hard is that it seems a blatant attempt to sell out. Hard does offer one or two decent moments, mostly hip-swinging grooves and Gill's guitar parts; Andy Gill was such a unique guitarist to begin with, it's no surprise his contributions are still fresh, even as he backed away from the slashing, confrontational style he made his name on. King doesn't fare nearly as well: He comes off sounding utterly disinterested at almost every turn, the urgency of his old, oft-imitated declamatory style completely lost, as he allows himself to become a conventional singer. About the only thing I can say for the folks at Wounded Bird is they at least distinctly separated the two albums, making it easy to skip straight to Solid Gold. Listening to the whole disc straight through, the transition between these records couldn't be more jarring, as the ultraslick pop of "Independence" is wiped clear aside by "Paralyzed", with its sputtering slow-motion funk and eerie spoken vocals. The intense grind of "What We All Want", the sheer propulsive force of "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time", and the wry, anti-consumerist humor of "Cheeseburger" paint a vastly different picture of the band that went on to record Hard. Ultimately, it's extremely difficult to recommend a disc like this, but I can't give it a full thumbs down: Solid Gold is a canonical record, and for anyone with even a passing interest in the post-punk era, it's a must-own. Unfortunately, the comprehensive Infinite Zero reissue from 1995-- which appended the classic (and concurrent) Another Day/Another Dollar EP-- is out of print and uncommon in used bins (I won't be selling my copy anytime soon). Why that disc couldn't have been reissued intact is beyond me. Regardless, there's no real reason a disaster like Hard needs to be on the market while the band's definining moment, Entertainment!, remains out of print; presumedly, Wounded Bird couldn't afford the rights to issue that record, or chose to stretch the return on Hard by affixing it to one worth buying. It would have made more sense to pair Hard with Songs of the Free-- they're more stylistically similar, and the latter is also out of print-- but obviously that would hurt sales. If this is your only means of owning Solid Gold, you have to buy it, but exhaust other possibilities first, as Hard is nothing more than a grotesque exhibition of a once-great band on its last legs.

Artist: Gang of Four, Album: Hard, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 3.8 Album review: "The logic of this release escapes me completely. For those unfamiliar with Gang of Four's discography, let me first explain: This reissue compiles the band's second and fourth albums onto one disc, in reverse chronological order. I wish I could say its failings were predominantly linear, but the cruelty of this juxtaposition runs much, much deeper. Gang of Four's initial artistic trajectory (pre-reunions) can best be defined as tragic. They announced themselves to the world in 1979 with Entertainment!, one of the best debut albums ever released, and a powerful statement, encapsulating radical politics in a supreme assembly of accessible, Spartan punk-funk; it almost single-handedly gave birth to the post-punk aesthetic still widely mined today. The original lineup went on to record Solid Gold and the Another Day/Another Dollar EP, which both count as towering releases in their own right. Unfortunately, the band's material suffered as their lineup shifted; the departure of bassist Dave Allen, who went on to form Shriekback with former XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews, fundamentally changed Gang of Four's dynamic on their third LP, Songs of the Free. That album still has some classic moments, but it's far less incisive than either of their first two albums, and the rhythmic intensity that drove the band early on was all but lost. No disrespect to ace bassist Sara Lee, but she was no replacement for Allen, whose style was far more direct. Next to go was drummer Hugo Burnham, which left only Jon King and Andy Gill to create the band's final studio album in their first wave of work, Hard, which relied heavily on drum programming. In light of where the band started out, Hard wasn't just a letdown, it was an outright travesty. The would-be ironic title wound up a joke King and Gill played on themselves; in execution and content, the album is anything but its namesake. The female backing vocalists who open the album chanting, "Is it love?" are so overproduced, they sound practically synthesized, and the drum programming is straight-up Oingo Boingo. But the really sad thing about Hard is that it seems a blatant attempt to sell out. Hard does offer one or two decent moments, mostly hip-swinging grooves and Gill's guitar parts; Andy Gill was such a unique guitarist to begin with, it's no surprise his contributions are still fresh, even as he backed away from the slashing, confrontational style he made his name on. King doesn't fare nearly as well: He comes off sounding utterly disinterested at almost every turn, the urgency of his old, oft-imitated declamatory style completely lost, as he allows himself to become a conventional singer. About the only thing I can say for the folks at Wounded Bird is they at least distinctly separated the two albums, making it easy to skip straight to Solid Gold. Listening to the whole disc straight through, the transition between these records couldn't be more jarring, as the ultraslick pop of "Independence" is wiped clear aside by "Paralyzed", with its sputtering slow-motion funk and eerie spoken vocals. The intense grind of "What We All Want", the sheer propulsive force of "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time", and the wry, anti-consumerist humor of "Cheeseburger" paint a vastly different picture of the band that went on to record Hard. Ultimately, it's extremely difficult to recommend a disc like this, but I can't give it a full thumbs down: Solid Gold is a canonical record, and for anyone with even a passing interest in the post-punk era, it's a must-own. Unfortunately, the comprehensive Infinite Zero reissue from 1995-- which appended the classic (and concurrent) Another Day/Another Dollar EP-- is out of print and uncommon in used bins (I won't be selling my copy anytime soon). Why that disc couldn't have been reissued intact is beyond me. Regardless, there's no real reason a disaster like Hard needs to be on the market while the band's definining moment, Entertainment!, remains out of print; presumedly, Wounded Bird couldn't afford the rights to issue that record, or chose to stretch the return on Hard by affixing it to one worth buying. It would have made more sense to pair Hard with Songs of the Free-- they're more stylistically similar, and the latter is also out of print-- but obviously that would hurt sales. If this is your only means of owning Solid Gold, you have to buy it, but exhaust other possibilities first, as Hard is nothing more than a grotesque exhibition of a once-great band on its last legs."