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50 Cent

Curtis

Pop/R&B,Rap

Ryan Dombal

50 Cent is a noted disciple of self-help guru Robert Greene's Machiavellian handbook, The 48 Laws of Power. Not only has the muscle-bound hip-hop colossus modeled his career after the cutthroat guide, he's working with Greene on a street-flavored addendum called The 50th Law. So far, the four dozen over-the-top credos have worked swimmingly for 50: He's sold more than 20 million albums worldwide since 2003 while pulling in auxiliary profits with Vitamin Water and other less amusing side hustles. But these days, when it comes to music, 50 Cent looks vulnerable; most of the advance singles from Curtis underperformed, and the Queens rapper has a good chance of losing this week's transparent SoundScan battle to Kanye West (if not country bumpkin Kenny Chesney). What's a power-starved, protein-shaking egomaniac to do? Well, re-reading his personal Bible would be a good start … Law 46: Never Appear Too Perfect-- It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to appear more human and approachable. In this week's Rolling Stone feature on 50 Cent, the rapper claims, "I'm King Kong. Kanye is human. Humans run when they see King Kong, because they're scared." He's right. Hulking, inelegant, and hopelessly primitive, 50 Cent is hip-hop's doomed beast. On Curtis, he sets out to re-energize his base by reminding us of his strengths: He fucks and kills with ease, he needs five deposit envelopes every time he hits up an ATM, and he's a hit with the ladies. But, as Greene makes clear, there's no depth or dynamic to that kind of perfection-- it's like watching a big dildo machine make big dildos all day. While 50 never made a habit of flaunting his faults like Kanye (or Em or Big or 2Pac…), he could usually back up his tales with indelible beats, swaggering hooks, and a flow that slithered like original sin. But those once-bountiful gifts are all heavily downgraded-- or altogether absent-- on Curtis. 50 should be able to work with producers who could conjure his hit-making abilities, but instead the MC mostly sticks with tried-and-failed G-Unit stalwarts and Dre-aping up-and-comers that do him few favors. Nearly every instrumental-- from the cartoon menace of "My Gun Go Off" to the assembly-line funk of "Touch the Sky"-- plods with the same unending gangster greys that tanked recent albums from Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and Mobb Deep. On the surface, the tracks display a factory-sealed freshness, but that machine-made precision quickly becomes monotonous, begging for something more raw and excitable. Curtis nails this sweet-spot only once, on the stadium-status "I Get Money", an adrenaline rush so pure it manages to revive 50's weary id for three and a half booming minutes. Unfortunately, it's not nearly enough. Law 25: Re-Create Yourself-- Forge a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. With soul-flecked hits like "Hate It or Love It", "Window Shopper", and "Hustler's Ambition", there was some hope that 50 would divert from his hard-charging style toward something more shadowy and sampled-based for this new album. That switch would allow him to age gracefully and give him a sympathetic platform to air out the real Curtis instead of his exhausted superhero guise. But naturally, the laid-back style that characterized Massacre highlights like "Ski Mask Way" and "Ryder Music" is almost nowhere to be found on Curtis. The reflective poise that characterized his killer "Hate It or Love It" verse is constantly pushed aside for a repetitive nihilism best summed up by the self-explanatory "I'll Still Kill", one of the very few Akon-assisted tracks in existence that fails to stick. The album's only concession to modern pop trends-- the Timbaland-produced, Timberlake-hooked "Ayo Technology"-- flies off the rails as 50, ripped from his comfort zone, falls behind the gurgling, video-game-blipping beat. Though he tries to force the track into more familiar territory with a cyborg-stripper theme, Justin nabs the spotlight without even trying. The closest 50 comes to the silky maturity that once seemed so promising is on "Follow My Lead", a love ballad with everyone's second-favorite white-boy crooner, Robin Thicke, singing back-up. While the track's supper-club twinkle is a welcome oasis amidst Curtis's Michael Bay brutishness, 50 relies on played-out, faceless pick-up lines: "You could be my Beyonce, I could be your Jay." Thing is, even Jay famously reinvented himself on The Blueprint, shedding his icy exterior for something close to human emotion. Here, 50 misses an opportunity for reinvention, relying on the same useless 9mm Viagra formula. Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself-- Isolation is Dangerous: Isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from-- it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. 50 Cent currently lives in a 50,000 square foot house in Farmington, Connecticut. The former Mike Tyson abode has five Jacuzzis, 25 full baths, 18 bedrooms, an elevator, two billiard rooms, a movie theater, a locker room, and several stripper poles. Especially for a man known for his reclusive reputation, the house is a fortress of the highest order. It's also an apt symbol for his isolation and detachment from the modern rap landscape. In direct opposition to Kanye's fearless, risk-taking Graduation, 50's new album is a blatant rehash-- a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mindlessly panders to. Once again, from Rolling Stone: "'Kanye receives trophies because he's safe,' 50 Cent says, punctuating the word 'safe' with a lisp and a limp wrist." At this point, those grandstanding put-downs aren't just wildly off-the-mark, but genuinely sad; like Curtis, such remarks are too pathetic to be taken seriously and too stupid to be funny. In his insular quest to recapture the king-sized popularity of his massive debut, 50 is sacrificing the same thing that Kanye (and Jay and Nas...) has so tirelessly worked to cultivate: an engaging music career worth remembering.

Artist: 50 Cent, Album: Curtis, Genre: Pop/R&B,Rap, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "50 Cent is a noted disciple of self-help guru Robert Greene's Machiavellian handbook, The 48 Laws of Power. Not only has the muscle-bound hip-hop colossus modeled his career after the cutthroat guide, he's working with Greene on a street-flavored addendum called The 50th Law. So far, the four dozen over-the-top credos have worked swimmingly for 50: He's sold more than 20 million albums worldwide since 2003 while pulling in auxiliary profits with Vitamin Water and other less amusing side hustles. But these days, when it comes to music, 50 Cent looks vulnerable; most of the advance singles from Curtis underperformed, and the Queens rapper has a good chance of losing this week's transparent SoundScan battle to Kanye West (if not country bumpkin Kenny Chesney). What's a power-starved, protein-shaking egomaniac to do? Well, re-reading his personal Bible would be a good start … Law 46: Never Appear Too Perfect-- It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to appear more human and approachable. In this week's Rolling Stone feature on 50 Cent, the rapper claims, "I'm King Kong. Kanye is human. Humans run when they see King Kong, because they're scared." He's right. Hulking, inelegant, and hopelessly primitive, 50 Cent is hip-hop's doomed beast. On Curtis, he sets out to re-energize his base by reminding us of his strengths: He fucks and kills with ease, he needs five deposit envelopes every time he hits up an ATM, and he's a hit with the ladies. But, as Greene makes clear, there's no depth or dynamic to that kind of perfection-- it's like watching a big dildo machine make big dildos all day. While 50 never made a habit of flaunting his faults like Kanye (or Em or Big or 2Pac…), he could usually back up his tales with indelible beats, swaggering hooks, and a flow that slithered like original sin. But those once-bountiful gifts are all heavily downgraded-- or altogether absent-- on Curtis. 50 should be able to work with producers who could conjure his hit-making abilities, but instead the MC mostly sticks with tried-and-failed G-Unit stalwarts and Dre-aping up-and-comers that do him few favors. Nearly every instrumental-- from the cartoon menace of "My Gun Go Off" to the assembly-line funk of "Touch the Sky"-- plods with the same unending gangster greys that tanked recent albums from Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and Mobb Deep. On the surface, the tracks display a factory-sealed freshness, but that machine-made precision quickly becomes monotonous, begging for something more raw and excitable. Curtis nails this sweet-spot only once, on the stadium-status "I Get Money", an adrenaline rush so pure it manages to revive 50's weary id for three and a half booming minutes. Unfortunately, it's not nearly enough. Law 25: Re-Create Yourself-- Forge a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. With soul-flecked hits like "Hate It or Love It", "Window Shopper", and "Hustler's Ambition", there was some hope that 50 would divert from his hard-charging style toward something more shadowy and sampled-based for this new album. That switch would allow him to age gracefully and give him a sympathetic platform to air out the real Curtis instead of his exhausted superhero guise. But naturally, the laid-back style that characterized Massacre highlights like "Ski Mask Way" and "Ryder Music" is almost nowhere to be found on Curtis. The reflective poise that characterized his killer "Hate It or Love It" verse is constantly pushed aside for a repetitive nihilism best summed up by the self-explanatory "I'll Still Kill", one of the very few Akon-assisted tracks in existence that fails to stick. The album's only concession to modern pop trends-- the Timbaland-produced, Timberlake-hooked "Ayo Technology"-- flies off the rails as 50, ripped from his comfort zone, falls behind the gurgling, video-game-blipping beat. Though he tries to force the track into more familiar territory with a cyborg-stripper theme, Justin nabs the spotlight without even trying. The closest 50 comes to the silky maturity that once seemed so promising is on "Follow My Lead", a love ballad with everyone's second-favorite white-boy crooner, Robin Thicke, singing back-up. While the track's supper-club twinkle is a welcome oasis amidst Curtis's Michael Bay brutishness, 50 relies on played-out, faceless pick-up lines: "You could be my Beyonce, I could be your Jay." Thing is, even Jay famously reinvented himself on The Blueprint, shedding his icy exterior for something close to human emotion. Here, 50 misses an opportunity for reinvention, relying on the same useless 9mm Viagra formula. Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself-- Isolation is Dangerous: Isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from-- it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. 50 Cent currently lives in a 50,000 square foot house in Farmington, Connecticut. The former Mike Tyson abode has five Jacuzzis, 25 full baths, 18 bedrooms, an elevator, two billiard rooms, a movie theater, a locker room, and several stripper poles. Especially for a man known for his reclusive reputation, the house is a fortress of the highest order. It's also an apt symbol for his isolation and detachment from the modern rap landscape. In direct opposition to Kanye's fearless, risk-taking Graduation, 50's new album is a blatant rehash-- a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mindlessly panders to. Once again, from Rolling Stone: "'Kanye receives trophies because he's safe,' 50 Cent says, punctuating the word 'safe' with a lisp and a limp wrist." At this point, those grandstanding put-downs aren't just wildly off-the-mark, but genuinely sad; like Curtis, such remarks are too pathetic to be taken seriously and too stupid to be funny. In his insular quest to recapture the king-sized popularity of his massive debut, 50 is sacrificing the same thing that Kanye (and Jay and Nas...) has so tirelessly worked to cultivate: an engaging music career worth remembering."

Maximum Balloon

Maximum Balloon

Electronic,Rock

Rebecca Raber

Maximum Balloon is TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek but, strictly speaking, it is not a Dave Sitek solo project. Sure, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Scarlett Johansson producer is pulling all the strings (as he seems to do on many albums he produces), but the debut from this project is less a chance for him to take centerstage as it is an opportunity to color outside the lines required by his day jobs. So, despite Sitek showing off his pipes on a cover of the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You" on last year's Dark Was the Night compilation, his own deep, dusky vocals are largely absent from these Maximum Balloon songs. Instead, he has called up old friends (like his TVOTR bandmates Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe) and new (singer Holly Miranda) to jam on tracks that are meant for the dancefloor, but will, most likely, never have to be played live. The songs are, therefore, liberated from the shackles of needing to be recreated in real time, so Sitek can spackle on as many layers of noisy synthesizers as he likes, and he can gather an enviable group of singers to act as his mouthpiece, regardless of the fact that, logistically, they could never all be corralled for one big tour. The result is a dense, sultry collection that revels in the dissonance between its thick, synthesized arrangements and its emotive, earthy vocal performances. Despite being the work of a star producer, the rotating vocalists make the album feel relaxed and loose, with each guest shading the record in subtle new ways. Soulful Brooklyn rapper Theophilus London brings sex appeal to his neon-disco opener. Swedish synth-poppers Little Dragon bring flirty fun, as Yukimi Nagano's coquettish coos and her bandmates' effervescent videogame synth figures sand over the hard edges of "If You Return". And Kyp Malone brings the serious, arty ambition; his "Shakedown" is a welcome weirdo slow jam, replete with falsetto howls. At its core, however, the album still belongs to Sitek. His fingerprints are all over each song-- in Nile Rogers-esque percussive guitars and hooks; harsh, aggressive synths; and shiny, maximumalist production flourishes. The Karen O-starring "Communion" picks up where It’s Blitz! left off, using one of her most restrained, lovely vocals (it could be the third part of a "Maps"/"Hysteric" trilogy). Sitek also indulges in his funky and arty muses (Chic, Prince, Talking Heads). A David Byrne collaboration, "Apartment Wrestling", which recalls David Bowie's "Fashion", is such a perfect imitation of the prickly, percussive funk of the Talking Heads (right down to the staccato horn bursts) that it transcends homage. Hearing this and Sitek's other aesthetic choices removed from a TVOTR record or an album he's producing for another artist reminds us that his work always does.

Artist: Maximum Balloon, Album: Maximum Balloon, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Maximum Balloon is TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek but, strictly speaking, it is not a Dave Sitek solo project. Sure, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Scarlett Johansson producer is pulling all the strings (as he seems to do on many albums he produces), but the debut from this project is less a chance for him to take centerstage as it is an opportunity to color outside the lines required by his day jobs. So, despite Sitek showing off his pipes on a cover of the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You" on last year's Dark Was the Night compilation, his own deep, dusky vocals are largely absent from these Maximum Balloon songs. Instead, he has called up old friends (like his TVOTR bandmates Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe) and new (singer Holly Miranda) to jam on tracks that are meant for the dancefloor, but will, most likely, never have to be played live. The songs are, therefore, liberated from the shackles of needing to be recreated in real time, so Sitek can spackle on as many layers of noisy synthesizers as he likes, and he can gather an enviable group of singers to act as his mouthpiece, regardless of the fact that, logistically, they could never all be corralled for one big tour. The result is a dense, sultry collection that revels in the dissonance between its thick, synthesized arrangements and its emotive, earthy vocal performances. Despite being the work of a star producer, the rotating vocalists make the album feel relaxed and loose, with each guest shading the record in subtle new ways. Soulful Brooklyn rapper Theophilus London brings sex appeal to his neon-disco opener. Swedish synth-poppers Little Dragon bring flirty fun, as Yukimi Nagano's coquettish coos and her bandmates' effervescent videogame synth figures sand over the hard edges of "If You Return". And Kyp Malone brings the serious, arty ambition; his "Shakedown" is a welcome weirdo slow jam, replete with falsetto howls. At its core, however, the album still belongs to Sitek. His fingerprints are all over each song-- in Nile Rogers-esque percussive guitars and hooks; harsh, aggressive synths; and shiny, maximumalist production flourishes. The Karen O-starring "Communion" picks up where It’s Blitz! left off, using one of her most restrained, lovely vocals (it could be the third part of a "Maps"/"Hysteric" trilogy). Sitek also indulges in his funky and arty muses (Chic, Prince, Talking Heads). A David Byrne collaboration, "Apartment Wrestling", which recalls David Bowie's "Fashion", is such a perfect imitation of the prickly, percussive funk of the Talking Heads (right down to the staccato horn bursts) that it transcends homage. Hearing this and Sitek's other aesthetic choices removed from a TVOTR record or an album he's producing for another artist reminds us that his work always does."

Royal Trux

Hand of Glory

Rock

Mike Bernstein

Royal Trux's 1990 four-song album Twin Infinitives holds an odd position in the canon of drug music. Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema have said that although the album itself wasn't composed while under the influence (a dubious statement to say the least), it was "quality-tested" while high on such colorful narcotic selections as marijuana, LSD, speed, heroin, and more. Alternately sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now, Twin Infinitives' greatest achievement may be its dissimilarity to any other recorded material ever. Now that Royal Trux's new joint, Hand of Glory-- really a "lost album" from the late 80s-- has hit the shelves, our chance to sit down and seriously inhale some fresh slowness is upon us. Though it's of the same era as Twin Infinitives, the two records are stylistically nothing alike-- Twin Infinitives was more an electronic music composition than it was a rock album; Hand of Glory is half-rock, half-musique concrete. Of course, it takes people interested enough in discovering and divulging the secrets of the postmortem subconscious, like Neil and Jennifer, to stretch these classifications to their very boundaries, but Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless. The album is cut in half by sides-- two long tracks, one segmented, one not. The first side, "Domo des Burros (Two Sticks)", seems a meditation on the drum machine-heavy track "(Edge of the) Ape Oven" from Twin Infinitives. Layering a Suicide-esque drum machine over palindromic guitars and the battling voices of Hagerty and Herrema, it initially sounds like token Trux behavior, but a closer listen reveals that it falls entirely outside of that spectrum. It speeds up and slows down, waxes lysergic, and then breeds with a harmonica, all toward very confusing ends. There's staccato piano, more staccato harmonica, and even more staccato drum machine beats-- all with confusingly dubby overtones. Trux's article from 1989 stands as a testament to the flexibility of the track. The duo repeats words, rhyme, sing, scream, and overdub overdub overdub while never succumbing to self-indulgence or straying outlandishly from what most people might call a "rock composition". The instrumentation listing in the liners probably says more of its sound than any journalistic approximation-- it reads: "voice, percussion, drum machines, mechanical monkey with cymbals, Moog, guitars, violin, bottles, pump organ, radio, record player, piano, harmonica, and tape machines." Hand of Glory's side two, titled "The Boxing Story", is a composition for tapes featuring recorded materials on cassettes being reversed, cut up, collaged, layered, and drenched in effects. The track has a tendency toward narrative bursts which possess subtle qualities akin to fluid movement. There are recognizable words, guitar solos, drum beats, whistles, screeches, skulls, wings, rats, blood and metal. There is literally abstraction here to the point of no return, but the abstraction has been taken to such a fine point that it can only be perceived as unified. Twenty-something minutes of internalized extrusion is capitalized and completely shredded. Hand of Glory is an example of two fine exercises of military strength and rigor. The ambling song structure synthesizes with the collage as a whole to create relations previously unconsidered in the Trux canon. It's not quite clear if this is because of their striking quality or their mere proximity, but either way, it represents an essence of artful quality, an achievement which stands to be quite rare.

Artist: Royal Trux, Album: Hand of Glory, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Royal Trux's 1990 four-song album Twin Infinitives holds an odd position in the canon of drug music. Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema have said that although the album itself wasn't composed while under the influence (a dubious statement to say the least), it was "quality-tested" while high on such colorful narcotic selections as marijuana, LSD, speed, heroin, and more. Alternately sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now, Twin Infinitives' greatest achievement may be its dissimilarity to any other recorded material ever. Now that Royal Trux's new joint, Hand of Glory-- really a "lost album" from the late 80s-- has hit the shelves, our chance to sit down and seriously inhale some fresh slowness is upon us. Though it's of the same era as Twin Infinitives, the two records are stylistically nothing alike-- Twin Infinitives was more an electronic music composition than it was a rock album; Hand of Glory is half-rock, half-musique concrete. Of course, it takes people interested enough in discovering and divulging the secrets of the postmortem subconscious, like Neil and Jennifer, to stretch these classifications to their very boundaries, but Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless. The album is cut in half by sides-- two long tracks, one segmented, one not. The first side, "Domo des Burros (Two Sticks)", seems a meditation on the drum machine-heavy track "(Edge of the) Ape Oven" from Twin Infinitives. Layering a Suicide-esque drum machine over palindromic guitars and the battling voices of Hagerty and Herrema, it initially sounds like token Trux behavior, but a closer listen reveals that it falls entirely outside of that spectrum. It speeds up and slows down, waxes lysergic, and then breeds with a harmonica, all toward very confusing ends. There's staccato piano, more staccato harmonica, and even more staccato drum machine beats-- all with confusingly dubby overtones. Trux's article from 1989 stands as a testament to the flexibility of the track. The duo repeats words, rhyme, sing, scream, and overdub overdub overdub while never succumbing to self-indulgence or straying outlandishly from what most people might call a "rock composition". The instrumentation listing in the liners probably says more of its sound than any journalistic approximation-- it reads: "voice, percussion, drum machines, mechanical monkey with cymbals, Moog, guitars, violin, bottles, pump organ, radio, record player, piano, harmonica, and tape machines." Hand of Glory's side two, titled "The Boxing Story", is a composition for tapes featuring recorded materials on cassettes being reversed, cut up, collaged, layered, and drenched in effects. The track has a tendency toward narrative bursts which possess subtle qualities akin to fluid movement. There are recognizable words, guitar solos, drum beats, whistles, screeches, skulls, wings, rats, blood and metal. There is literally abstraction here to the point of no return, but the abstraction has been taken to such a fine point that it can only be perceived as unified. Twenty-something minutes of internalized extrusion is capitalized and completely shredded. Hand of Glory is an example of two fine exercises of military strength and rigor. The ambling song structure synthesizes with the collage as a whole to create relations previously unconsidered in the Trux canon. It's not quite clear if this is because of their striking quality or their mere proximity, but either way, it represents an essence of artful quality, an achievement which stands to be quite rare."

Kevin Drumm

Gauntlet

Electronic,Experimental,Rock

Marc Masters

Over their combined 20-plus years of making abstract music, Chicago's Kevin Drumm and Portland's Daniel Menche have probably heard every noise imaginable. So it's hard to fault their first-ever collaboration for rehashing sounds. Given the high level of Drumm's bracing guitar-scapes and Menche's dense aural sculptures, both have earned the right to explore well-worn techniques. That said, the one-track, 28-minute Gauntlet still stuffers from a rather deadening predictability. Drumm and Menche's main tools here-- fuzzed-out distortion, insect-like drone, and chopping pulse-- rank among noise's oldest clichés. On the one hand, it's admirable that these two would even try to find any remaining drops of pigment in those faded colors. And to their credit, Drumm and Menche get pretty far-- there's much more interesting stuff happening here than almost anyone else could muster with this material. But taken on its own, Gauntlet never quite crosses the line that divides deep drone from staid noise. That's not for lack of trying. With Drumm generating sandy textures with "guitar and noise," and Menche adding low end through "organ and noise," Gauntlet is busy and never boring. At times the pair reach some nice peaks: around six minutes in, their humming noise sounds like a march of cartoon bumblebees, and later they hit on a dense cacophony akin to a cicada symphony. But more often than not, the pair's sounds level off instead of escalating, and the incessant helicopter-like rhythms are always hackneyed, sometimes even grating. One of the most interesting things about powerful noise and drone pieces is the deceptive way they slowly and organically progress. Listen to a great work by Phil Niblock or Tony Conrad in real time and it barely seems to change, but skip around and the actual sonic variety can be shocking. Gauntlet reverses that effect: it often sounds like it's headed somewhere, moving forward at an industrious clip. But jump to random sections and it's clear how narrow the piece is. Drumm and Menche put a lot of effort into their journey, and to say they tread water would be unfair. But wherever it is that they end up, you can still see the starting line pretty clearly.

Artist: Kevin Drumm, Album: Gauntlet, Genre: Electronic,Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "Over their combined 20-plus years of making abstract music, Chicago's Kevin Drumm and Portland's Daniel Menche have probably heard every noise imaginable. So it's hard to fault their first-ever collaboration for rehashing sounds. Given the high level of Drumm's bracing guitar-scapes and Menche's dense aural sculptures, both have earned the right to explore well-worn techniques. That said, the one-track, 28-minute Gauntlet still stuffers from a rather deadening predictability. Drumm and Menche's main tools here-- fuzzed-out distortion, insect-like drone, and chopping pulse-- rank among noise's oldest clichés. On the one hand, it's admirable that these two would even try to find any remaining drops of pigment in those faded colors. And to their credit, Drumm and Menche get pretty far-- there's much more interesting stuff happening here than almost anyone else could muster with this material. But taken on its own, Gauntlet never quite crosses the line that divides deep drone from staid noise. That's not for lack of trying. With Drumm generating sandy textures with "guitar and noise," and Menche adding low end through "organ and noise," Gauntlet is busy and never boring. At times the pair reach some nice peaks: around six minutes in, their humming noise sounds like a march of cartoon bumblebees, and later they hit on a dense cacophony akin to a cicada symphony. But more often than not, the pair's sounds level off instead of escalating, and the incessant helicopter-like rhythms are always hackneyed, sometimes even grating. One of the most interesting things about powerful noise and drone pieces is the deceptive way they slowly and organically progress. Listen to a great work by Phil Niblock or Tony Conrad in real time and it barely seems to change, but skip around and the actual sonic variety can be shocking. Gauntlet reverses that effect: it often sounds like it's headed somewhere, moving forward at an industrious clip. But jump to random sections and it's clear how narrow the piece is. Drumm and Menche put a lot of effort into their journey, and to say they tread water would be unfair. But wherever it is that they end up, you can still see the starting line pretty clearly."

Marmoset

Florist Fired

Rock

Eric Harvey

Marmoset's previous full-length, 2001's 13-song, 33-minute exercise in Anglophilic indie Record in Red, quietly ranks among the best albums released by Secretly Canadian. The Indianapolis natives, one of the label's first discoveries in 1997, have been fairly compared to fellow corn-belters Guided by Voices, yet the core songwriting duo of Jorma Whittaker and Dave Jablonski err more toward Syd Barrett than the Who. The subsequent release of just one EP, 2002's Mishawaka, has resulted in Marmoset's public persona-- or more appropriately, its complete lack thereof-- adopting the withdrawn disposition of its music. Florist Fired, 16 songs from sessions dating back to late 2003, is the result of that quiet patience. The record locates a middle ground between Red and its predecessor, the more experimental Today It's You, with the duo still traversing the spectrum of sub-three minute lo-fi indie rock. There aren't quite the bonafide indie-rock earworms here like "Forever We Ignite" or "Lost Days for Ways", but there is plenty that could still only come from this particular band, a claim few groups of their ilk can make. Marmoset still sounds like a lot of other bands (Beat Happening, Swell Maps, Sebadoh, Velvet Underground are usually cited) but their twisted amalgam of psychedelia, sexuality, and off-kilter melodicism remains undeniably unique. As indicated in the refrain of Florist's furiously fuzzed title track, "Please go away/ There's nothing I can say," the band's most recognizable attribute here is Whittaker and Jablonski's shared interest in the frequent weirdness of human contact. With the type of curious deadpan shared by Donovan and Lou Reed, Whittaker's voice can suggest ambivalence, but his intentions are often anything but. For two Florist songs the mordant, avant-sinister persona of Red's "Art-Maker" (chorus: "Art maker/ Strangulator") reappears, stressing the sexual and ghoulish attributes of his whisper. The creepy come-on "Eat Me Out" is asking exactly what you think it is, in a baleful dialect akin to "Gouge Away". Later, "Butterknife" veers into gothic/camp territory of a different culinary stripe, querying "I want you to cut my food/ To make it safe to chew". Jablonski's contributions here veer toward detail-driven meditations on antisociality as well, apparently inspired by a soured partnership. The atonal, heavily-echoed "I Saw Your Shadow" is a chilly stream-of-consciousness that could have come from Jandek-- after knocking, he sees a shadow appear under the door, then disappear. Instead of knocking again, he chooses the path of intense rumination. The dour, elegant "Dropping Dimes" is wearily attuned to the exhaustion of a expiring romance, affirmed by the sapped realization that "there's no future in making a fuss about coffee in the morning". Florist's best moments come when the duo lighten up a bit; for Jablonski, it's the hopeful acoustic cadence of "Missing Man" ("you could be free, or become a missing person, a missing man"). Whittaker's playful side is the real recommendation, though-- it's only a short slip from his earlier grim propositions into dotty Skip Spence territory. "Apples", co-written with Casey Tennis of fellow Indianapolites Margot & the Nuclear So & So's, once more indulges Whittaker's inner epicure, and closer "Personality Candyspots" seems to be a tenderly transmitted skin affliction. The langorous "Pass it Along" is Florist's highlight, however: circulating confusion seldom sounds as enticing as when Whittaker rhymes that recommendation with the line "everybody's wrong when they're singing this song." It's more than a little devious, yet strangely soothing at the same time; resistance isn't quite futile, but you know you want to give in for a few.

Artist: Marmoset, Album: Florist Fired, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Marmoset's previous full-length, 2001's 13-song, 33-minute exercise in Anglophilic indie Record in Red, quietly ranks among the best albums released by Secretly Canadian. The Indianapolis natives, one of the label's first discoveries in 1997, have been fairly compared to fellow corn-belters Guided by Voices, yet the core songwriting duo of Jorma Whittaker and Dave Jablonski err more toward Syd Barrett than the Who. The subsequent release of just one EP, 2002's Mishawaka, has resulted in Marmoset's public persona-- or more appropriately, its complete lack thereof-- adopting the withdrawn disposition of its music. Florist Fired, 16 songs from sessions dating back to late 2003, is the result of that quiet patience. The record locates a middle ground between Red and its predecessor, the more experimental Today It's You, with the duo still traversing the spectrum of sub-three minute lo-fi indie rock. There aren't quite the bonafide indie-rock earworms here like "Forever We Ignite" or "Lost Days for Ways", but there is plenty that could still only come from this particular band, a claim few groups of their ilk can make. Marmoset still sounds like a lot of other bands (Beat Happening, Swell Maps, Sebadoh, Velvet Underground are usually cited) but their twisted amalgam of psychedelia, sexuality, and off-kilter melodicism remains undeniably unique. As indicated in the refrain of Florist's furiously fuzzed title track, "Please go away/ There's nothing I can say," the band's most recognizable attribute here is Whittaker and Jablonski's shared interest in the frequent weirdness of human contact. With the type of curious deadpan shared by Donovan and Lou Reed, Whittaker's voice can suggest ambivalence, but his intentions are often anything but. For two Florist songs the mordant, avant-sinister persona of Red's "Art-Maker" (chorus: "Art maker/ Strangulator") reappears, stressing the sexual and ghoulish attributes of his whisper. The creepy come-on "Eat Me Out" is asking exactly what you think it is, in a baleful dialect akin to "Gouge Away". Later, "Butterknife" veers into gothic/camp territory of a different culinary stripe, querying "I want you to cut my food/ To make it safe to chew". Jablonski's contributions here veer toward detail-driven meditations on antisociality as well, apparently inspired by a soured partnership. The atonal, heavily-echoed "I Saw Your Shadow" is a chilly stream-of-consciousness that could have come from Jandek-- after knocking, he sees a shadow appear under the door, then disappear. Instead of knocking again, he chooses the path of intense rumination. The dour, elegant "Dropping Dimes" is wearily attuned to the exhaustion of a expiring romance, affirmed by the sapped realization that "there's no future in making a fuss about coffee in the morning". Florist's best moments come when the duo lighten up a bit; for Jablonski, it's the hopeful acoustic cadence of "Missing Man" ("you could be free, or become a missing person, a missing man"). Whittaker's playful side is the real recommendation, though-- it's only a short slip from his earlier grim propositions into dotty Skip Spence territory. "Apples", co-written with Casey Tennis of fellow Indianapolites Margot & the Nuclear So & So's, once more indulges Whittaker's inner epicure, and closer "Personality Candyspots" seems to be a tenderly transmitted skin affliction. The langorous "Pass it Along" is Florist's highlight, however: circulating confusion seldom sounds as enticing as when Whittaker rhymes that recommendation with the line "everybody's wrong when they're singing this song." It's more than a little devious, yet strangely soothing at the same time; resistance isn't quite futile, but you know you want to give in for a few."

Arve Henriksen

Chiaroscuro

Global,Jazz

Chris Dahlen

Earlier this month, I flew across the country to see Norway's Supersilent play their first North American concert, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Maybe I made the trip to remind myself that there are still bands worth making big, expensive trips for; maybe I was just excited for the experience of watching the band in person. The quartet plays completely improvised music that's wrestled into shape by four distinct musicians; on record, it's difficult to tell how the players interact. At the show, I felt like a car-illiterate driver popping his hood just to stare at the engine: I wanted to watch the pieces working together, even if I wouldn't know what was going on inside of them. If Supersilent has a frontman, it's Arve Henriksen, who sat on stage between keyboardists and noise generators Ståle Storløkken and Helge Sten. In addition to playing trumpet into one of two mics (one had more distortion than the other), Henriksen also sings wordlessly, high and close to how I'd imagine an adult castrati would sound. Unlike a chamber singer, he sounds untrained, airy, and wholly naked: a broken plea stops your breath. Henriksen has rarely used his voice on recordings with Supersilent, but it becomes a crucial instrument on his new solo disc, Chiaroscuro. After working in monk-like solitude on his first album, Sakuteiki ("a treatise on garden making"), he collaborates on Chiaroscuro with two notable Norwegian musicians, percussionist Audun Kleive and sound artist Jan Bang. The thick but passive atmosphere they create warmly blankets Henriksen's trumpet and vocals. The album's most striking moment is its first track, "Opening Image". After a trumpet performance on which he struggles for breath-- making the brass instrument sound almost like a reed or a bamboo flute-- Henriksen emits a pure cry. It's such a personal revelation that you'd think professional training would ruin him-- not because it would strip away his beauty but because you'd know what to expect from note to note, and that would ruin the importance of his telling it to you. Chiaroscuro could have been a late '70s ECM date-- from Kleive's ambiguously world influences to the enveloping moods to the sameness of the songwriting. It's so obviously beautiful that you don't feel challenged but right when you drift off, it creeps up on you: Kleive plays an inventive pattern-- for example, the hand drums on "Parallel Action"-- or a melody starts to sink in. If the album had more variety or used these fragile-sounding elements less cautiously, this would be an exceptional session. At the concert, Henriksen also revealed a rougher side, first singing garbled scat vocals into his trumpet, and then using actual words, which was unexpected from an act as abstract as Supersilent. During a skronky noise piece, Henriksen screamed at us about the recent election: "OHIO! OHIO! WHY?! MOTHERFUCKER!" It may have grounded the musical flights but in blue state-housed Frisco, everyone loved it. On the other hand, Ståle Storløkken almost disappointed me. On the Supersilent albums, it's hard to separate Storløkken's contributions from Sten's. He usually reveals himself by playing melodic synth lines while Sten sticks to brutally neutralizing tones that can raze any assertion down to an ambiguous grey. Storløkken is more colorful, so in this context he risks being banal by trumping the band's subtle compromises: His loudest riffs on 6-- the solos on "6.1" and the dominating statement that ends "6.4"-- suit the pieces, but just barely. In concert, Storløkken locked in brilliantly with Sten when they played loudly but in the slow sections, he almost started to noodle-- to play lines that were merely pretty. But maybe I had an eye on him because I had just heard Humcrush, his new duet with drummer Thomas Strønen (Food). Humcrush gallops like a circus-- the first track is called "Acrobat"-- and it doesn't mind easy gestures: For example, the track called "Japan" sounds stereotypically Japanese. Both men use electronics to generate layers of beats, with Strønen adding rhythms that sound like playing cards on a window fan, but the live (in the studio) recording keeps even the densest textures frantic. I love Storløkken's signature analog synth, even though every time I hear it I picture a little plastic spaceship being pulled across a movie screen on a wire; when Storløkken deploys it, he smears fusion-like lines across the top, while at others times-- like "Sport'n Spice"-- he uses a quick, digital jabbing sound to grapple head-on with Strønen. While different moods emerge, Humcrush is one of the least reflective discs in the Rune Grammofon catalog: It breezes by instead of lingering, which is not a bad thing when you're listening to such proficient musicians dance each other in knots. Henriksen, Storløkken, and Helge Sten (as Deathprod) all released solo or duet records this year, and while each one has its strengths, Supersilent remains greater than the sum of their parts. The unique tension between their players creates something unique and frequently awesome. The humanistic, almost New Age-y Henriksen and the grimly neutral Sten especially become stronger when their different approaches are at odds with one another. But together or by themselves, live or on record, the members of Supersilent still have more to reveal, more corners they haven't explored. Hell, next time I might even fly to Oslo.

Artist: Arve Henriksen, Album: Chiaroscuro, Genre: Global,Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Earlier this month, I flew across the country to see Norway's Supersilent play their first North American concert, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Maybe I made the trip to remind myself that there are still bands worth making big, expensive trips for; maybe I was just excited for the experience of watching the band in person. The quartet plays completely improvised music that's wrestled into shape by four distinct musicians; on record, it's difficult to tell how the players interact. At the show, I felt like a car-illiterate driver popping his hood just to stare at the engine: I wanted to watch the pieces working together, even if I wouldn't know what was going on inside of them. If Supersilent has a frontman, it's Arve Henriksen, who sat on stage between keyboardists and noise generators Ståle Storløkken and Helge Sten. In addition to playing trumpet into one of two mics (one had more distortion than the other), Henriksen also sings wordlessly, high and close to how I'd imagine an adult castrati would sound. Unlike a chamber singer, he sounds untrained, airy, and wholly naked: a broken plea stops your breath. Henriksen has rarely used his voice on recordings with Supersilent, but it becomes a crucial instrument on his new solo disc, Chiaroscuro. After working in monk-like solitude on his first album, Sakuteiki ("a treatise on garden making"), he collaborates on Chiaroscuro with two notable Norwegian musicians, percussionist Audun Kleive and sound artist Jan Bang. The thick but passive atmosphere they create warmly blankets Henriksen's trumpet and vocals. The album's most striking moment is its first track, "Opening Image". After a trumpet performance on which he struggles for breath-- making the brass instrument sound almost like a reed or a bamboo flute-- Henriksen emits a pure cry. It's such a personal revelation that you'd think professional training would ruin him-- not because it would strip away his beauty but because you'd know what to expect from note to note, and that would ruin the importance of his telling it to you. Chiaroscuro could have been a late '70s ECM date-- from Kleive's ambiguously world influences to the enveloping moods to the sameness of the songwriting. It's so obviously beautiful that you don't feel challenged but right when you drift off, it creeps up on you: Kleive plays an inventive pattern-- for example, the hand drums on "Parallel Action"-- or a melody starts to sink in. If the album had more variety or used these fragile-sounding elements less cautiously, this would be an exceptional session. At the concert, Henriksen also revealed a rougher side, first singing garbled scat vocals into his trumpet, and then using actual words, which was unexpected from an act as abstract as Supersilent. During a skronky noise piece, Henriksen screamed at us about the recent election: "OHIO! OHIO! WHY?! MOTHERFUCKER!" It may have grounded the musical flights but in blue state-housed Frisco, everyone loved it. On the other hand, Ståle Storløkken almost disappointed me. On the Supersilent albums, it's hard to separate Storløkken's contributions from Sten's. He usually reveals himself by playing melodic synth lines while Sten sticks to brutally neutralizing tones that can raze any assertion down to an ambiguous grey. Storløkken is more colorful, so in this context he risks being banal by trumping the band's subtle compromises: His loudest riffs on 6-- the solos on "6.1" and the dominating statement that ends "6.4"-- suit the pieces, but just barely. In concert, Storløkken locked in brilliantly with Sten when they played loudly but in the slow sections, he almost started to noodle-- to play lines that were merely pretty. But maybe I had an eye on him because I had just heard Humcrush, his new duet with drummer Thomas Strønen (Food). Humcrush gallops like a circus-- the first track is called "Acrobat"-- and it doesn't mind easy gestures: For example, the track called "Japan" sounds stereotypically Japanese. Both men use electronics to generate layers of beats, with Strønen adding rhythms that sound like playing cards on a window fan, but the live (in the studio) recording keeps even the densest textures frantic. I love Storløkken's signature analog synth, even though every time I hear it I picture a little plastic spaceship being pulled across a movie screen on a wire; when Storløkken deploys it, he smears fusion-like lines across the top, while at others times-- like "Sport'n Spice"-- he uses a quick, digital jabbing sound to grapple head-on with Strønen. While different moods emerge, Humcrush is one of the least reflective discs in the Rune Grammofon catalog: It breezes by instead of lingering, which is not a bad thing when you're listening to such proficient musicians dance each other in knots. Henriksen, Storløkken, and Helge Sten (as Deathprod) all released solo or duet records this year, and while each one has its strengths, Supersilent remains greater than the sum of their parts. The unique tension between their players creates something unique and frequently awesome. The humanistic, almost New Age-y Henriksen and the grimly neutral Sten especially become stronger when their different approaches are at odds with one another. But together or by themselves, live or on record, the members of Supersilent still have more to reveal, more corners they haven't explored. Hell, next time I might even fly to Oslo."

Tin Man

Vienna Blue

Electronic

Andrew Ryce

If you don't know Tin Man-- California-hailing, Vienna-based Johannes Auvinen-- he's arguably one of modern techno's most cultish figures, with a distinct sense of fashion and aestheticism both visually and aurally. But is he really techno? He made his initial fame off the back of a bunch of fabulous acid 12"s, but he's always had a darker, more experimental side, and since 2009's Cool Wave has been incorporating an introverted and dignified half-goth, half-baroque pop sensibility to his productions. Scared from 2010 was even less hospitable, all spooky atmospheres and post-punk vocals, and last year's follow-up, Perfume, brought back some of the techno-friendly snares and kicks but still centered around Auvinen's offbeat, sometimes off-key baritone. For the most part, it wasn't dance music. But last year also saw the release of the "Nonneo" 12", one of the year's most cherished techno missives, a gently bubbling acid bath. As 2011 wrapped to a close, Auvinen released another album, this one completely free of charge: but which Tin Man would we get, the weirdo dance auteur of "Constant Confusion" fame or something closer to Scared? The answer is neither. Inspired by his adopted home of Vienna, Vienna Blue is a gentle chamber-pop record not like much else Auvinen has put to his name before. Real chamber stuff, with cellos and violins overshadowing most of the synthesized elements. Auvinen calls it a "winter album," and the label fits: All cool hues of icy blue and white, Vienna Blue inhabits a chilly but cozy place that suits stereotypically romantic images of the Austrian capital draped in snow. It's not totally foreign; just as Perfume and Scared shyly hinted at techno elements and structures, the music on Vienna Blue shares that forward-thinking lateral movement, only this time expressed with the gentle strokes and plucks of strings, graceful rather than tracky. What can make Tin Man's music a little divisive-- what makes his albums difficult where his singles can be relatively smooth sailing-- is his own voice. Like a slurred and slovenly Stephin Merritt, he shares that singer's idiosyncratic sense of cultured class, but the cavernous space his vocals inhabit can be alienating and his melodies often feel makeshift or improvised. With the more tuneful accompaniment on Vienna Blue, however, his presence is less jarring: When his voice dips down to those dangerously low notes, it blends in with the bass instruments instead of billowing out into an uncomfortably empty echo chamber. "Music on the Radio" might be his best vocal track yet, in fact, with dramatic pianos and a laborious kick drum finding some happy medium between classically tinged instrumentation and techno. It's moments like this that raise Vienna Blue above side-project gimmickry: "Ice Blue Eyes" pulses faintly with a barely there beat, like it's impossible to tell what's "real" and what's artificial. Throw in Auvinen's groggy vocals, and you've got yourself a gorgeous lullaby of flickering, half-present sounds. Vienna Blue is split between longer, more structured vocal tracks and instrumental interludes, which range from string-led motifs ("Winterize" is especially majestic) to near-ambient mood pieces ("Ok, Improvise"). This lazily lapping flow nicely cuts up the length of the rather slow-moving record, but can just as easily render it drifting and aimless. The real-life instruments lend it a natural quality like sonic wallpaper that subtly blooms and and swells, but Vienna Blue lacks even the sparse momentum of his previous albums. The pleasantly slow creep of it all is rudely interrupted by the vocal tracks, and those times when the vocals don't quite mesh with their surroundings ("Gratitude") prove rather garish cracks in the record's otherwise uniformly glassy ice surface. As a whole, Vienna Blue is always caught between classicist ideas of the stately and that deeply experimental techno bent, so it never quite coheres. One thing Vienna Blue does make clear is Auvinen's uncompromising vision of his own style, folding in all sorts of latent impulses and confident to the point of confrontational. He remains defiantly independent from scene or context: Just as unfairly limiting as it is to call this chamber pop, it's equally ignorant to call it techno. "Rockers, ravers, you best beware. This generation don't care," he sang on Perfume's "Rockers Ravers", and Vienna Blue caps off Tin Man's most intriguing year yet, proving he really doesn't give a damn about genre. It might not be perfect, but "chamber techno" probably shouldn't work as well as it does on the best moments here: Leave it to someone as effortlessly suave and fearless as Tin Man to try and pull it off.

Artist: Tin Man, Album: Vienna Blue, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "If you don't know Tin Man-- California-hailing, Vienna-based Johannes Auvinen-- he's arguably one of modern techno's most cultish figures, with a distinct sense of fashion and aestheticism both visually and aurally. But is he really techno? He made his initial fame off the back of a bunch of fabulous acid 12"s, but he's always had a darker, more experimental side, and since 2009's Cool Wave has been incorporating an introverted and dignified half-goth, half-baroque pop sensibility to his productions. Scared from 2010 was even less hospitable, all spooky atmospheres and post-punk vocals, and last year's follow-up, Perfume, brought back some of the techno-friendly snares and kicks but still centered around Auvinen's offbeat, sometimes off-key baritone. For the most part, it wasn't dance music. But last year also saw the release of the "Nonneo" 12", one of the year's most cherished techno missives, a gently bubbling acid bath. As 2011 wrapped to a close, Auvinen released another album, this one completely free of charge: but which Tin Man would we get, the weirdo dance auteur of "Constant Confusion" fame or something closer to Scared? The answer is neither. Inspired by his adopted home of Vienna, Vienna Blue is a gentle chamber-pop record not like much else Auvinen has put to his name before. Real chamber stuff, with cellos and violins overshadowing most of the synthesized elements. Auvinen calls it a "winter album," and the label fits: All cool hues of icy blue and white, Vienna Blue inhabits a chilly but cozy place that suits stereotypically romantic images of the Austrian capital draped in snow. It's not totally foreign; just as Perfume and Scared shyly hinted at techno elements and structures, the music on Vienna Blue shares that forward-thinking lateral movement, only this time expressed with the gentle strokes and plucks of strings, graceful rather than tracky. What can make Tin Man's music a little divisive-- what makes his albums difficult where his singles can be relatively smooth sailing-- is his own voice. Like a slurred and slovenly Stephin Merritt, he shares that singer's idiosyncratic sense of cultured class, but the cavernous space his vocals inhabit can be alienating and his melodies often feel makeshift or improvised. With the more tuneful accompaniment on Vienna Blue, however, his presence is less jarring: When his voice dips down to those dangerously low notes, it blends in with the bass instruments instead of billowing out into an uncomfortably empty echo chamber. "Music on the Radio" might be his best vocal track yet, in fact, with dramatic pianos and a laborious kick drum finding some happy medium between classically tinged instrumentation and techno. It's moments like this that raise Vienna Blue above side-project gimmickry: "Ice Blue Eyes" pulses faintly with a barely there beat, like it's impossible to tell what's "real" and what's artificial. Throw in Auvinen's groggy vocals, and you've got yourself a gorgeous lullaby of flickering, half-present sounds. Vienna Blue is split between longer, more structured vocal tracks and instrumental interludes, which range from string-led motifs ("Winterize" is especially majestic) to near-ambient mood pieces ("Ok, Improvise"). This lazily lapping flow nicely cuts up the length of the rather slow-moving record, but can just as easily render it drifting and aimless. The real-life instruments lend it a natural quality like sonic wallpaper that subtly blooms and and swells, but Vienna Blue lacks even the sparse momentum of his previous albums. The pleasantly slow creep of it all is rudely interrupted by the vocal tracks, and those times when the vocals don't quite mesh with their surroundings ("Gratitude") prove rather garish cracks in the record's otherwise uniformly glassy ice surface. As a whole, Vienna Blue is always caught between classicist ideas of the stately and that deeply experimental techno bent, so it never quite coheres. One thing Vienna Blue does make clear is Auvinen's uncompromising vision of his own style, folding in all sorts of latent impulses and confident to the point of confrontational. He remains defiantly independent from scene or context: Just as unfairly limiting as it is to call this chamber pop, it's equally ignorant to call it techno. "Rockers, ravers, you best beware. This generation don't care," he sang on Perfume's "Rockers Ravers", and Vienna Blue caps off Tin Man's most intriguing year yet, proving he really doesn't give a damn about genre. It might not be perfect, but "chamber techno" probably shouldn't work as well as it does on the best moments here: Leave it to someone as effortlessly suave and fearless as Tin Man to try and pull it off."

Still Flyin'

Never Gonna Touch the Ground

Stephen M. Deusner

The popular image of the typical indie-rock concertgoer is that of a guy standing stock still, arms crossed, unmoving and seemingly unmoved by whatever music he is hearing. When things get intense, he nods his head approvingly; when he cuts loose, his foot will tap. Whether or not that cliché is accurate (Dear couple dancing near the stage at the Beirut show in D.C.: Thank you. Sincerely, Stephen), Still Flyin' exists seemingly to combat that image and those social reservations: A multinational party band based out of San Francisco but claiming members from as far away as Norway and Australia, the group infuses every moment of its full-length debut, Never Gonna Touch the Ground, with movement-- skittering beats, elastic basslines, snappy guitar riffs, ecstatic sing-alongs, all with the goal of making their audiences uncross their arms and maybe even dance. Sometimes Still Flyin' come across as over-evangelical in this tacit mission, sounding either maniacally insistent or dopily precious, but you can't say they aren't trying. Back in 2004, Sean Rawls, formerly of Athens, Ga., outfits Masters of the Hemisphere and Je Suis France, created Still Flyin' as a loosely defined jam band, and its constantly mutating line-up has included musicians who spend their day jobs in the Aislers Set, Rafter, Maserati, Love Is All, and Architecture in Helsinki. Because of the choir of female back-up singers punctuating Rawls' lead vocals, Still Flyin' will no doubt draw comparisons to the Polyphonic Spree or I'm From Barcelona, and because of its liberal use of white-guy reggae beats, the band may be lumped in with 311 and Matisyahu. They're cool with being uncool, though. What makes Never Gonna Touch the Ground so intriguing, however, isn't any one aspect like vocals or beats, but the entire overstuffed package. Just as the band gathers members from all over the world, so too does it draw influences globally. Afropop guitars twist and coil throughout "Forever Dudes" and "Good Thing It's a Ghost Town Around Here", while "Dead Memory Man" and "Aerosmith Take Me... to the Other Side" politely skank on reggae and ska beats. Shout-outs to Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" and Lipps Inc.'s "Funky Town" jostle elbows with nods to Swedish pop and show-tune punk, and it's all channeled through a North American indie sensibility, although one self-aware enough to counter knowingness with an exuberance bordering on silly. If Never Gonna Touch the Ground is Up With People covering Broken Social Scene, then some of these sing-alongs may be too complex to sing along with. That doesn't stop "Good Thing It's a Ghost Town Around Here" from unpacking its hooks one by one, each a little catchier than the previous. And "The Hott Chord Is Struck" spells out part of its title like cheerleaders at a pep rally. They got spirit. Unfortunately, that free-bird sensibility also means there are some dead-end interstitials during which Still Flyin' actually do touch the ground. Ten years ago, "Act of Jamming" would have been a hidden track on this CD, but it gets prime placement immediately following "Ghost Town". That's not progress. It's a half-assed half-groove that starts with a bass line straight out of a Stax revue, but doesn't build to anything at all. "Haunted Houses" in particular is a soggy gospel about the visceral joys of horror movies, yet its slack pace and dull sense of import communicate no such thrills. If Never Gonna Touch the Ground is less a party album and more an album as party-- self-contained, relentlessly upbeat, rowdy, self-celebratory-- too many of these songs come across as kegs of near beer.

Artist: Still Flyin', Album: Never Gonna Touch the Ground, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "The popular image of the typical indie-rock concertgoer is that of a guy standing stock still, arms crossed, unmoving and seemingly unmoved by whatever music he is hearing. When things get intense, he nods his head approvingly; when he cuts loose, his foot will tap. Whether or not that cliché is accurate (Dear couple dancing near the stage at the Beirut show in D.C.: Thank you. Sincerely, Stephen), Still Flyin' exists seemingly to combat that image and those social reservations: A multinational party band based out of San Francisco but claiming members from as far away as Norway and Australia, the group infuses every moment of its full-length debut, Never Gonna Touch the Ground, with movement-- skittering beats, elastic basslines, snappy guitar riffs, ecstatic sing-alongs, all with the goal of making their audiences uncross their arms and maybe even dance. Sometimes Still Flyin' come across as over-evangelical in this tacit mission, sounding either maniacally insistent or dopily precious, but you can't say they aren't trying. Back in 2004, Sean Rawls, formerly of Athens, Ga., outfits Masters of the Hemisphere and Je Suis France, created Still Flyin' as a loosely defined jam band, and its constantly mutating line-up has included musicians who spend their day jobs in the Aislers Set, Rafter, Maserati, Love Is All, and Architecture in Helsinki. Because of the choir of female back-up singers punctuating Rawls' lead vocals, Still Flyin' will no doubt draw comparisons to the Polyphonic Spree or I'm From Barcelona, and because of its liberal use of white-guy reggae beats, the band may be lumped in with 311 and Matisyahu. They're cool with being uncool, though. What makes Never Gonna Touch the Ground so intriguing, however, isn't any one aspect like vocals or beats, but the entire overstuffed package. Just as the band gathers members from all over the world, so too does it draw influences globally. Afropop guitars twist and coil throughout "Forever Dudes" and "Good Thing It's a Ghost Town Around Here", while "Dead Memory Man" and "Aerosmith Take Me... to the Other Side" politely skank on reggae and ska beats. Shout-outs to Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" and Lipps Inc.'s "Funky Town" jostle elbows with nods to Swedish pop and show-tune punk, and it's all channeled through a North American indie sensibility, although one self-aware enough to counter knowingness with an exuberance bordering on silly. If Never Gonna Touch the Ground is Up With People covering Broken Social Scene, then some of these sing-alongs may be too complex to sing along with. That doesn't stop "Good Thing It's a Ghost Town Around Here" from unpacking its hooks one by one, each a little catchier than the previous. And "The Hott Chord Is Struck" spells out part of its title like cheerleaders at a pep rally. They got spirit. Unfortunately, that free-bird sensibility also means there are some dead-end interstitials during which Still Flyin' actually do touch the ground. Ten years ago, "Act of Jamming" would have been a hidden track on this CD, but it gets prime placement immediately following "Ghost Town". That's not progress. It's a half-assed half-groove that starts with a bass line straight out of a Stax revue, but doesn't build to anything at all. "Haunted Houses" in particular is a soggy gospel about the visceral joys of horror movies, yet its slack pace and dull sense of import communicate no such thrills. If Never Gonna Touch the Ground is less a party album and more an album as party-- self-contained, relentlessly upbeat, rowdy, self-celebratory-- too many of these songs come across as kegs of near beer."

Laura Marling

I Speak Because I Can

Folk/Country

Joshua Love

Reviewing Laura Marling's Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, in 2008, I worried that the then-18-year-old might too quickly shed the teenage guilelessness that contributed so greatly to the record's appeal. Marling possessed an undeniable knack for writing about young love with directness and authentic feeling, but at times her pseudo-profound poetics suggested the young folkie was in too much of a hurry to be a serious adult. Clearly, I significantly underestimated Laura Marling's capabilities. Her sophomore effort, I Speak Because I Can, finds Marling, still only 20, shrugging off virtually all traces of girlishness and wide-eyed charm, instead delving into darkly elemental, frequently morbid folk. And yet, astonishingly, the expected growing pains never come. To say Marling evinces wisdom beyond her years on I Speak would be a criminal understatement, considering she's created a haunting, fully flowered gem of an album despite being younger than two-thirds of the Jonas Brothers. These are folk-rock songs, but Marling doesn't lazily trade on it like so many other would-be old souls. Instead, like Fairport Convention or Nick Cave or Cat Power, she uses folk as an archetypal form to get at the essential realities of love, sex, heartbreak, and death. Sometimes she does it with heart-stopping quietness, her voice dropping to conversational tones on "Made by Maid" and "What He Wrote". Just as often, Marling sets her allegories to raucous musical accompaniment, an especially impressive feat considering the calm of her debut. The bluesy jig of opener and first single "Devil's Spoke" might elicit a few less-than-ideal comparisons with KT Tunstall, but Marling blows that kind of politely insistent stuff out of the water on the soaring, thunderous "Rambling Man" and the gypsy-ish breakdown of "Alpha Shallows" (which makes up for that song's momentary slip into sub-Dylan poetic doggerel). It would have been all too easy for an album like this, so grimly fixated and coming from someone of such tender age, to be written off as the work of a morose young Romantic. However, Marling seems to have a great deal of self-awareness of her melancholic bent, lightly skewering herself on "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)" for writing an "epic letter" to an estranged lover that's "22 pages front and back/ But it's too good to be used." And yet, she's not playing dress-up. She's a wholly developed artist in full command of gifts that may not yet be finished arriving.

Artist: Laura Marling, Album: I Speak Because I Can, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Reviewing Laura Marling's Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, in 2008, I worried that the then-18-year-old might too quickly shed the teenage guilelessness that contributed so greatly to the record's appeal. Marling possessed an undeniable knack for writing about young love with directness and authentic feeling, but at times her pseudo-profound poetics suggested the young folkie was in too much of a hurry to be a serious adult. Clearly, I significantly underestimated Laura Marling's capabilities. Her sophomore effort, I Speak Because I Can, finds Marling, still only 20, shrugging off virtually all traces of girlishness and wide-eyed charm, instead delving into darkly elemental, frequently morbid folk. And yet, astonishingly, the expected growing pains never come. To say Marling evinces wisdom beyond her years on I Speak would be a criminal understatement, considering she's created a haunting, fully flowered gem of an album despite being younger than two-thirds of the Jonas Brothers. These are folk-rock songs, but Marling doesn't lazily trade on it like so many other would-be old souls. Instead, like Fairport Convention or Nick Cave or Cat Power, she uses folk as an archetypal form to get at the essential realities of love, sex, heartbreak, and death. Sometimes she does it with heart-stopping quietness, her voice dropping to conversational tones on "Made by Maid" and "What He Wrote". Just as often, Marling sets her allegories to raucous musical accompaniment, an especially impressive feat considering the calm of her debut. The bluesy jig of opener and first single "Devil's Spoke" might elicit a few less-than-ideal comparisons with KT Tunstall, but Marling blows that kind of politely insistent stuff out of the water on the soaring, thunderous "Rambling Man" and the gypsy-ish breakdown of "Alpha Shallows" (which makes up for that song's momentary slip into sub-Dylan poetic doggerel). It would have been all too easy for an album like this, so grimly fixated and coming from someone of such tender age, to be written off as the work of a morose young Romantic. However, Marling seems to have a great deal of self-awareness of her melancholic bent, lightly skewering herself on "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)" for writing an "epic letter" to an estranged lover that's "22 pages front and back/ But it's too good to be used." And yet, she's not playing dress-up. She's a wholly developed artist in full command of gifts that may not yet be finished arriving."

Plantlife

Time Traveller

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Nate Patrin

The title track that opens this album is kinda funny: As a minimalistic click-track/electric piano composition murmurs away behind him, a pitched-up Mr. Wiggles/Quasimoto voice claims to have a hand in dozens of pivotal moments in rap, funk, and rock history, sort of like a more benevolent b-boy geek-out version of "Sympathy for the Devil" ("I had Melle Mel's back when he was by the edge/ I used to wear them big suits with the Talking Heads"). It's cute and all, but it's also a bit of misdirection: most of the names dropped in this track belong to hip-hop artists, yet for all the invocations of rap icons from Bambaataa to Dre to Dilla, Plantlife's Time Traveller sounds a lot more like a record informed by those artists' production influences rather than the artists themselves-- a second cousin to hip-hop, once removed. And if that cartoon spaceman voice stops short of admitting he was there when Prince decided to start wearing purple, the rest of the record spends a good deal of time proving it. If the paisley vibe hasn't hit you after reading the tracklist ("Agirllikeudeservesamanwhotreatsuhowulike"; "Got 2 Find a Better Way"; "Fool for U"), it probably will after the dirty-minded heavy ballad "Don't Go Around Looking for a Broken Heart" and the panting, guitar-driven come-on of "Lovetoy" ("Sexy girl, I wanna be your lover boy/ Sexy girl, I wanna be your lovetoy"). And if lead singer/producer Jack Splash doesn't have Prince's vocal range-- he mostly sticks to a somewhat raspy falsetto, which is engagingly dizzy enough to help you ignore how one-dimensional it is-- he definitely has the baby-I'm-a-star routine down. And judging from the darkly comic references to ego tripping and loveless sex in "They Pay Me 4 This (Typqlsupastar)", he knows how to subvert it as well. But on the whole the album's more in the spirit of 1999's omnivorous r&b than a full-fledged knockoff of it, and there're plenty of other familiar funk touchstones all over its DayGlo surface-- P-Funk, Zapp, the Ohio Players, Rick James-- to give it a broader personality that isn't derivative of much else aside from a certain wide-spanning era. The music on Time Traveller is a bit more postmodern and outlandish than the neo-soul production and session work Splash has done for the likes of John Legend and Estelle, ranging from modernized Sly & the Family Stone-esque rave-ups ("Outta Control") to sleek roller-disco ("Rollerskate Jam") to semi-Latin yacht-soul ("Sun Shines Through Your Love") to a guitar-drenched closing slow jam Shuggie Otis would envy ("Fool for U"). What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by-- and funk yet to come.

Artist: Plantlife, Album: Time Traveller, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "The title track that opens this album is kinda funny: As a minimalistic click-track/electric piano composition murmurs away behind him, a pitched-up Mr. Wiggles/Quasimoto voice claims to have a hand in dozens of pivotal moments in rap, funk, and rock history, sort of like a more benevolent b-boy geek-out version of "Sympathy for the Devil" ("I had Melle Mel's back when he was by the edge/ I used to wear them big suits with the Talking Heads"). It's cute and all, but it's also a bit of misdirection: most of the names dropped in this track belong to hip-hop artists, yet for all the invocations of rap icons from Bambaataa to Dre to Dilla, Plantlife's Time Traveller sounds a lot more like a record informed by those artists' production influences rather than the artists themselves-- a second cousin to hip-hop, once removed. And if that cartoon spaceman voice stops short of admitting he was there when Prince decided to start wearing purple, the rest of the record spends a good deal of time proving it. If the paisley vibe hasn't hit you after reading the tracklist ("Agirllikeudeservesamanwhotreatsuhowulike"; "Got 2 Find a Better Way"; "Fool for U"), it probably will after the dirty-minded heavy ballad "Don't Go Around Looking for a Broken Heart" and the panting, guitar-driven come-on of "Lovetoy" ("Sexy girl, I wanna be your lover boy/ Sexy girl, I wanna be your lovetoy"). And if lead singer/producer Jack Splash doesn't have Prince's vocal range-- he mostly sticks to a somewhat raspy falsetto, which is engagingly dizzy enough to help you ignore how one-dimensional it is-- he definitely has the baby-I'm-a-star routine down. And judging from the darkly comic references to ego tripping and loveless sex in "They Pay Me 4 This (Typqlsupastar)", he knows how to subvert it as well. But on the whole the album's more in the spirit of 1999's omnivorous r&b than a full-fledged knockoff of it, and there're plenty of other familiar funk touchstones all over its DayGlo surface-- P-Funk, Zapp, the Ohio Players, Rick James-- to give it a broader personality that isn't derivative of much else aside from a certain wide-spanning era. The music on Time Traveller is a bit more postmodern and outlandish than the neo-soul production and session work Splash has done for the likes of John Legend and Estelle, ranging from modernized Sly & the Family Stone-esque rave-ups ("Outta Control") to sleek roller-disco ("Rollerskate Jam") to semi-Latin yacht-soul ("Sun Shines Through Your Love") to a guitar-drenched closing slow jam Shuggie Otis would envy ("Fool for U"). What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by-- and funk yet to come."

Solids

Blame Confusion

Paul Thompson

Montreal's Solids operate at one of two speeds: pretty fast, and stupid fast. The young duo's debut LP, Blame Confusion, is a gaussian blur, 37 minutes of speed limit violation, drawing equally on hardcore blister, dream-punk, and raucous cusp-of-the-1990s indie rock. But while Solids don't want for momentum, between their relentless propulsion and the billowing reverb that envelops much of Blame Confusion, they can sometimes lose the song amidst the static. Drummer Louis Guillemette and singer/guitarist Xavier Germain-Poitras' two-men-and-a-pedal-board set-up has a kindred spirit in No Age; not the tense, peculiar No Age of last year's An Object, but No Age at their most purely tuneful. You might even hear Blame Confusion as a kind of correction to the aggressively experimental An Object; it's something like a No Age record without the ambient passages or the rhythmic left-turns. The occasional rhythmic disruption or burst of static notwithstanding, Blame Confusion mostly just goes, breathlessly careening through its 10 songs at a mostly breakneck clip. But it's a lack of rising action that gets Blame Confusion into trouble. Whenever Guillemette gets a rhythm up to highway speed, he punches the cruise control; once set, tempos rarely dip, or bend, or do much of anything in the third minute they weren't already doing in the first. And Germain-Poitras' chugging riffs never seem to develop much over the course of these songs; he'll occasionally squeeze a gestural solo or a twinkly little outro into the mix, but it's never quite bold enough to cut through the thick patina of fuzz hanging over Blame Confusion. Most of these songs fall into two categories:  "Almost Crimes"-style bob-and-weavers like "Laissez Faire" or choppy punchers like "Not Complaining." But no matter which type of Solids song you find yourself listening to, they're all pretty much the same: a driving—yet somehow static—rhythm, a generous coating of feedback, and a distortion-strangled Germain-Poitras vocal. Solids' perpetual motion would be well served by bolder melodies or trickier rhythms. But, time and again, they opt for a path that's too straight and awfully narrow. For his part, Germain-Poitras tears into opener "Over the Sirens" and the revved-up "Cold Hands" like a phlegm-ridden Mac McCaughan. Sadly, these outbursts are short lived. Germain-Poitras he sings most of the rest of Blame Confusion in a weary, faintly stoned voice that frequently gets itself lost in the fog, and his lyrics—from the school of generalized discontent—rarely seem to rise above the fray long enough to give you much to go on. Between its reverb-ensconced sonics, its consistent rhythmic charge, its borderline-nebulous melodies, and Germain-Poitras' intermittently passionate, infrequently audible vocals, wide swaths of Blame Confusion quickly start to bleed together. And whether it's the moony near-ballad "Haze Away" or the all-too-infrequent squeal of a solo, you'll probably find yourself clinging to anything on Blame Confusion resembling a break in the fuzz-coated monotony. The hard-driving Blame Confusion, in too big a hurry to stop and take in the scenery, simply lets too much whoosh by in the periphery.

Artist: Solids, Album: Blame Confusion, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "Montreal's Solids operate at one of two speeds: pretty fast, and stupid fast. The young duo's debut LP, Blame Confusion, is a gaussian blur, 37 minutes of speed limit violation, drawing equally on hardcore blister, dream-punk, and raucous cusp-of-the-1990s indie rock. But while Solids don't want for momentum, between their relentless propulsion and the billowing reverb that envelops much of Blame Confusion, they can sometimes lose the song amidst the static. Drummer Louis Guillemette and singer/guitarist Xavier Germain-Poitras' two-men-and-a-pedal-board set-up has a kindred spirit in No Age; not the tense, peculiar No Age of last year's An Object, but No Age at their most purely tuneful. You might even hear Blame Confusion as a kind of correction to the aggressively experimental An Object; it's something like a No Age record without the ambient passages or the rhythmic left-turns. The occasional rhythmic disruption or burst of static notwithstanding, Blame Confusion mostly just goes, breathlessly careening through its 10 songs at a mostly breakneck clip. But it's a lack of rising action that gets Blame Confusion into trouble. Whenever Guillemette gets a rhythm up to highway speed, he punches the cruise control; once set, tempos rarely dip, or bend, or do much of anything in the third minute they weren't already doing in the first. And Germain-Poitras' chugging riffs never seem to develop much over the course of these songs; he'll occasionally squeeze a gestural solo or a twinkly little outro into the mix, but it's never quite bold enough to cut through the thick patina of fuzz hanging over Blame Confusion. Most of these songs fall into two categories:  "Almost Crimes"-style bob-and-weavers like "Laissez Faire" or choppy punchers like "Not Complaining." But no matter which type of Solids song you find yourself listening to, they're all pretty much the same: a driving—yet somehow static—rhythm, a generous coating of feedback, and a distortion-strangled Germain-Poitras vocal. Solids' perpetual motion would be well served by bolder melodies or trickier rhythms. But, time and again, they opt for a path that's too straight and awfully narrow. For his part, Germain-Poitras tears into opener "Over the Sirens" and the revved-up "Cold Hands" like a phlegm-ridden Mac McCaughan. Sadly, these outbursts are short lived. Germain-Poitras he sings most of the rest of Blame Confusion in a weary, faintly stoned voice that frequently gets itself lost in the fog, and his lyrics—from the school of generalized discontent—rarely seem to rise above the fray long enough to give you much to go on. Between its reverb-ensconced sonics, its consistent rhythmic charge, its borderline-nebulous melodies, and Germain-Poitras' intermittently passionate, infrequently audible vocals, wide swaths of Blame Confusion quickly start to bleed together. And whether it's the moony near-ballad "Haze Away" or the all-too-infrequent squeal of a solo, you'll probably find yourself clinging to anything on Blame Confusion resembling a break in the fuzz-coated monotony. The hard-driving Blame Confusion, in too big a hurry to stop and take in the scenery, simply lets too much whoosh by in the periphery."

Lawrence

Yoyogi Park

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Dance music, by definition, is communal—except when it's not. The German electronic musician Lawrence, aka Peter Kersten, makes house music that's as much about getting lost in one's head as being enfolded by the crowd. And while Kersten rarely strays too far from dancefloor-oriented forms, his work has spent the past several years getting steadily dreamier. Kersten is a key figure in German house and techno, having co-founded Hamburg's Dial label in 2000 and then, in 2006, the deeper-diving Smallville. Early Dial pursued a streamlined take on house music that, combined with the whittled-down sounds of early-'00s digital production, led to its characterization, not always accurately, as a minimalist enterprise. But the label never relinquished its fondness for the skippy rhythms and soulful undercurrent of Chicago house, and it went in hard for a strain of windswept romanticism that was easily apparent in both the label's sleeves and its titles. (From Lawrence's own catalog, just consider bittersweet songs like "Happy Sometimes," "The Night Will Last Forever," and the Smiths-referencing "Fifteen Minutes With You.") Smallville, meanwhile, has represented a distillation of those tendencies, resulting in a hyper-classicist style of house, heavy on all the analog signatures of pioneers like Larry Heard, that's also wistfully misty-eyed. Throughout, Lawrence's recordings—including his albums for Japan's Mule Musiq label, of which Yoyogi Park is the third—have served as a kind of ur-text for the Smallville aesthetic. His ambient inclinations peaked with 2014's A Day in the Life, a collection of songs that took all his typical hallmarks—the shimmer, the swirl, the open-ended tones—and muted all the drums. The result, delicate and ephemeral, was something like the logical conclusion of his most sensitive tendencies: music for Sunday-morning snuggling, walks in the garden, and gentle comedowns, with the merest memory of the dancefloor traced in the shadow of a pulse. Yoyogi Park starts where A Day in the Life left off. It's suffused in hazy synthesizers, sparkling arpeggios, and melodic lines that twist like green tendrils. But in places Yoyogi Park also marks Lawrence's wholehearted return to the dancefloor. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the three songs that have been reprised—upcycled, really—from the previous album, doubled in length and given a whole new rhythmic underpinning. Where the original version of "Nowhere Is a Place" drifted like a kelp forest, the new one leaps purposefully into motion, driven by tightly wound hi-hats and a walking bassline that's unusually fleet of foot. Flickering chords lend additional color and movement, and the result sounds a little like an updated version of Ricardo Villalobos' great "808 the Bassqueen," but even more full-bodied, if you can believe it. This is not an album for sitting still: "Marble Star" fleshes out its ultra-low lows and ultra-dreamy highs with rugged, rolling breakbeats, and "Blue Mountain" rides white-capped waves of synths and drums that bob like flotsam borne aloft on the tide. One of Kersten's favorite tricks is to juggle soft and hard textures until you're not sure which is which. "Tensui" starts off with knife-edged hi-hats and tough wooden thumps, but it's soon suffused in drowsy pads and bucolic flutes. It would be easy to imagine the same elements remade for A Day in the Life's beatless reveries; the fact that he manages to marry such diffuse sounds to a rhythm track so overwhelmingly physical—this isn't bass you simply feel; you savor it, with your whole body—only makes the track more remarkable. Nothing on Yoyogi Park is original, exactly; Lawrence has been making music like this for most of his career, and his peers on Dial and Smallville have spun the same material in similar ways. Still, no one else is making this music quite so well. And as far as Lawrence's catalog goes, this is his fullest realization yet of interior and exterior—of thought and movement, of daydream and dance. The line separating Saturday night and Sunday morning is no thicker than a second hand; Yoyogi Park invites you to clear out a space inside that sliver of time, and to luxuriate in it.

Artist: Lawrence, Album: Yoyogi Park, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Dance music, by definition, is communal—except when it's not. The German electronic musician Lawrence, aka Peter Kersten, makes house music that's as much about getting lost in one's head as being enfolded by the crowd. And while Kersten rarely strays too far from dancefloor-oriented forms, his work has spent the past several years getting steadily dreamier. Kersten is a key figure in German house and techno, having co-founded Hamburg's Dial label in 2000 and then, in 2006, the deeper-diving Smallville. Early Dial pursued a streamlined take on house music that, combined with the whittled-down sounds of early-'00s digital production, led to its characterization, not always accurately, as a minimalist enterprise. But the label never relinquished its fondness for the skippy rhythms and soulful undercurrent of Chicago house, and it went in hard for a strain of windswept romanticism that was easily apparent in both the label's sleeves and its titles. (From Lawrence's own catalog, just consider bittersweet songs like "Happy Sometimes," "The Night Will Last Forever," and the Smiths-referencing "Fifteen Minutes With You.") Smallville, meanwhile, has represented a distillation of those tendencies, resulting in a hyper-classicist style of house, heavy on all the analog signatures of pioneers like Larry Heard, that's also wistfully misty-eyed. Throughout, Lawrence's recordings—including his albums for Japan's Mule Musiq label, of which Yoyogi Park is the third—have served as a kind of ur-text for the Smallville aesthetic. His ambient inclinations peaked with 2014's A Day in the Life, a collection of songs that took all his typical hallmarks—the shimmer, the swirl, the open-ended tones—and muted all the drums. The result, delicate and ephemeral, was something like the logical conclusion of his most sensitive tendencies: music for Sunday-morning snuggling, walks in the garden, and gentle comedowns, with the merest memory of the dancefloor traced in the shadow of a pulse. Yoyogi Park starts where A Day in the Life left off. It's suffused in hazy synthesizers, sparkling arpeggios, and melodic lines that twist like green tendrils. But in places Yoyogi Park also marks Lawrence's wholehearted return to the dancefloor. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the three songs that have been reprised—upcycled, really—from the previous album, doubled in length and given a whole new rhythmic underpinning. Where the original version of "Nowhere Is a Place" drifted like a kelp forest, the new one leaps purposefully into motion, driven by tightly wound hi-hats and a walking bassline that's unusually fleet of foot. Flickering chords lend additional color and movement, and the result sounds a little like an updated version of Ricardo Villalobos' great "808 the Bassqueen," but even more full-bodied, if you can believe it. This is not an album for sitting still: "Marble Star" fleshes out its ultra-low lows and ultra-dreamy highs with rugged, rolling breakbeats, and "Blue Mountain" rides white-capped waves of synths and drums that bob like flotsam borne aloft on the tide. One of Kersten's favorite tricks is to juggle soft and hard textures until you're not sure which is which. "Tensui" starts off with knife-edged hi-hats and tough wooden thumps, but it's soon suffused in drowsy pads and bucolic flutes. It would be easy to imagine the same elements remade for A Day in the Life's beatless reveries; the fact that he manages to marry such diffuse sounds to a rhythm track so overwhelmingly physical—this isn't bass you simply feel; you savor it, with your whole body—only makes the track more remarkable. Nothing on Yoyogi Park is original, exactly; Lawrence has been making music like this for most of his career, and his peers on Dial and Smallville have spun the same material in similar ways. Still, no one else is making this music quite so well. And as far as Lawrence's catalog goes, this is his fullest realization yet of interior and exterior—of thought and movement, of daydream and dance. The line separating Saturday night and Sunday morning is no thicker than a second hand; Yoyogi Park invites you to clear out a space inside that sliver of time, and to luxuriate in it."

Deerhunter

iTunes Live from SoHo

Rock

Larry Fitzmaurice

Fake blood, cross-dressing, rambling banter, onstage scuffles, and extremely enthusiastic co-signs from Karen O and Liars: the early buzz that surrounded Deerhunter was the sort of myth-making that would have crushed lesser bands. Thankfully, the group's more headline-grabbing antics are now a distant second talking point to their eclectic sound. Over the past four years, Deerhunter have taken on ambient suites, 1950s balladry, charging krautrock, Stones-esque swagger, and blistering shoegaze with equal aplomb. On last year's Halcyon Digest, the final track, "He Would Have Laughed", ended abruptly; it's as if the band wished to leave to the listener's imagination what, exactly, their next move would be. As a studio act, they've played with refracted genre tics, maintaining a penchant for experimentation even while becoming more of a mainstream viability. As a live entity, though, the near opposite has happened: They've gotten tighter, more straightforward, more no-nonsense. The tour behind 2008's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. still contained a touch of tension-riddled shenanigans-- one needed only to take a look at the other band members' faces while former guitarist/actual cheerleader Whitney Petty did cartwheels on stage at one of the NYC stops to know how they felt about it. The controlled blasts of power packed within their setlists, though, suggested a band that had shifted their aim from stage banter to stagecraft. During the band's outing this past fall supporting Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter delivered a monolithic set that sometimes ended with Bradford Cox and guitarist Lockett Pundt creating squalls of guitar noise, a move reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine's infamous squall of noise at the end of live closer "You Made Me Realise". They possess an air of seriousness now, and when Deerhunter appeared on "Late Show With David Letterman" last month, one was tempted to use a word previously unassociated with the band: professional. It's that level of now-unquestionable ability that makes Deerhunter's iTunes-only live mini-LP, iTunes Live from SoHo, an excellent near-equivalent to catching the band live. Recorded the week of Halcyon Digest's release at the SoHo Apple Store, this 42-minute document is far from the tossed-off affair one would expect from an in-store appearance. Songs with previously tenuous connections craftily bleed into one another, like the dawn-rising transition from the Lockett-led "Desire Lines" to Cryptograms standout "Hazel St." There are welcome embellishments, like the descending, drip-drop extended intro to "Helicopter" and "Don't Cry"'s dreamy dropout. There's radical reconfiguring, too: witness the metamorphosis of the title track to 2009's Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP, which sheds its spindly clothes to reveal a gently stomping take with guitar work recalling forgotten 4AD heroes Pale Saints. Every take here sounds as good as the songs' LP counterparts; some of them actually improve on the originals. This success has to do with the fact that, at this point, Deerhunter are a band that knows how to play together very well, combining each others' strengths to create engulfing chasms of sound. And yet, it's also impossible not to notice how strong Cox has become as a frontman. One of Halcyon Digest's more left-turn moments was the swinging, sax-led "Coronado", and Cox has certainly applied that song's cocksure bravado to his vocal technique since. He exudes a commanding presence on "Rainwater Cassette Exchange", toying with phrasing to add drama and tossing in asides where he was previously content to let his voice become just another instrument. Occasionally, he breaks into a higher non-falsetto register, like in the middle melodic turn of "Don't Cry" or during "Hazel St."'s ascendant peak; the effect is thrilling and easy at the same time, and hopefully it'll be replicated in the future. Bradford isn't just a persona anymore; he's a performer, and here he relishes the notion wholeheartedly. iTunes Live from SoHo closes with a 10-minute-plus rendition of *Halcyon Digest'*s séance-like closer "He Would Have Laughed". The recorded version breathes in and out, trading gusts of open air with jangly darkness; here, the band wastes no time diving into deep sonic depths, creating a tense atmosphere that slowly and gorgeously dissolves like rain on a window. The full-bodied closure extends to the set as a whole, emphasizing an issue that some die-hards had with Halcyon Digest: The songs were ace, but compared to the full-on aural assault of previous highs like the throttling smash-bang of Microcastle capper "Twilight at Carbon Lake", there wasn't as much immediate texture. Sometimes, it felt like a part of the band that used to be was missing. iTunes Live from SoHo, then, serves as a reminder for fans that missed out on the last tour and are desirous for thicker sounds: Deerhunter still have plenty of meat on their bones, and if this release is any indication, they're not going hungry any time soon.

Artist: Deerhunter, Album: iTunes Live from SoHo, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Fake blood, cross-dressing, rambling banter, onstage scuffles, and extremely enthusiastic co-signs from Karen O and Liars: the early buzz that surrounded Deerhunter was the sort of myth-making that would have crushed lesser bands. Thankfully, the group's more headline-grabbing antics are now a distant second talking point to their eclectic sound. Over the past four years, Deerhunter have taken on ambient suites, 1950s balladry, charging krautrock, Stones-esque swagger, and blistering shoegaze with equal aplomb. On last year's Halcyon Digest, the final track, "He Would Have Laughed", ended abruptly; it's as if the band wished to leave to the listener's imagination what, exactly, their next move would be. As a studio act, they've played with refracted genre tics, maintaining a penchant for experimentation even while becoming more of a mainstream viability. As a live entity, though, the near opposite has happened: They've gotten tighter, more straightforward, more no-nonsense. The tour behind 2008's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. still contained a touch of tension-riddled shenanigans-- one needed only to take a look at the other band members' faces while former guitarist/actual cheerleader Whitney Petty did cartwheels on stage at one of the NYC stops to know how they felt about it. The controlled blasts of power packed within their setlists, though, suggested a band that had shifted their aim from stage banter to stagecraft. During the band's outing this past fall supporting Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter delivered a monolithic set that sometimes ended with Bradford Cox and guitarist Lockett Pundt creating squalls of guitar noise, a move reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine's infamous squall of noise at the end of live closer "You Made Me Realise". They possess an air of seriousness now, and when Deerhunter appeared on "Late Show With David Letterman" last month, one was tempted to use a word previously unassociated with the band: professional. It's that level of now-unquestionable ability that makes Deerhunter's iTunes-only live mini-LP, iTunes Live from SoHo, an excellent near-equivalent to catching the band live. Recorded the week of Halcyon Digest's release at the SoHo Apple Store, this 42-minute document is far from the tossed-off affair one would expect from an in-store appearance. Songs with previously tenuous connections craftily bleed into one another, like the dawn-rising transition from the Lockett-led "Desire Lines" to Cryptograms standout "Hazel St." There are welcome embellishments, like the descending, drip-drop extended intro to "Helicopter" and "Don't Cry"'s dreamy dropout. There's radical reconfiguring, too: witness the metamorphosis of the title track to 2009's Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP, which sheds its spindly clothes to reveal a gently stomping take with guitar work recalling forgotten 4AD heroes Pale Saints. Every take here sounds as good as the songs' LP counterparts; some of them actually improve on the originals. This success has to do with the fact that, at this point, Deerhunter are a band that knows how to play together very well, combining each others' strengths to create engulfing chasms of sound. And yet, it's also impossible not to notice how strong Cox has become as a frontman. One of Halcyon Digest's more left-turn moments was the swinging, sax-led "Coronado", and Cox has certainly applied that song's cocksure bravado to his vocal technique since. He exudes a commanding presence on "Rainwater Cassette Exchange", toying with phrasing to add drama and tossing in asides where he was previously content to let his voice become just another instrument. Occasionally, he breaks into a higher non-falsetto register, like in the middle melodic turn of "Don't Cry" or during "Hazel St."'s ascendant peak; the effect is thrilling and easy at the same time, and hopefully it'll be replicated in the future. Bradford isn't just a persona anymore; he's a performer, and here he relishes the notion wholeheartedly. iTunes Live from SoHo closes with a 10-minute-plus rendition of *Halcyon Digest'*s séance-like closer "He Would Have Laughed". The recorded version breathes in and out, trading gusts of open air with jangly darkness; here, the band wastes no time diving into deep sonic depths, creating a tense atmosphere that slowly and gorgeously dissolves like rain on a window. The full-bodied closure extends to the set as a whole, emphasizing an issue that some die-hards had with Halcyon Digest: The songs were ace, but compared to the full-on aural assault of previous highs like the throttling smash-bang of Microcastle capper "Twilight at Carbon Lake", there wasn't as much immediate texture. Sometimes, it felt like a part of the band that used to be was missing. iTunes Live from SoHo, then, serves as a reminder for fans that missed out on the last tour and are desirous for thicker sounds: Deerhunter still have plenty of meat on their bones, and if this release is any indication, they're not going hungry any time soon."

Various Artists

Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay

Joe Tangari

There's a tendency among Americans to think of the Bahamas as nothing but a tourist destination, a place to go snorkeling and get a tan. We tend to forget that people live there, that people were living there even before it became one of the first places in the Western Hemisphere to be spotted by Europeans. The country's population today is made up largely of the descendants of British loyalists who fled the U.S. after 1783, the slaves they brought with them and escaped slaves who took advantage of the short water route to the islands after slavery was abolished in the Crown colonies in 1834. The islands achieved self-governance in 1964, and 10 years later became fully independent from Britain, but most of the country's cultural and popular influence from outside came across the Straits of Florida. In the 60s and 70s, that meant jazz, rock, soul, and funk. The island of Grand Bahama is the closest to Florida, and during those decades played host to an intriguing music scene that lightly Caribbean-ized American soul and funk. The music that scene produced during its heyday is, like so much other global music from that era, very much in danger of disappearing from the collective memory-- a hot, rainy island that gets nailed by about one major hurricane each decade isn't the most conducive environment to keeping tapes and old LPs in top shape. Enter Numero Group, whose Cult Cargo series, now two volumes, extends the brilliant restoration work of their Eccentric Soul series beyond U.S. shores. They chose the word goombay for the title because of its myriad meanings on Grand Bahama-- it's a flavor, an annual festival, and most importantly for our purposes, both a drum and the style of music for which that drum provides the rhythm. In the 60s, Grand Bahama was in the early stages of a tourist boom that continues to the present day, and tourists begat hotels begat bands begat recordings. The key figure in the island's scene was a man named Frank Penn, a bartender/barber/carpenter who found himself in possession of the Bamboo East when its owner hopped the pond to the States. Penn set about transforming it into a youth music hotspot and ultimately parlayed its success into a record label, GBI International, which released most of the music on this compilation. Penn himself shows up on instrumental and vocal versions of his song "Gimme Some Skin", offering the opening couplet "Black is beautiful/ White is nice" in a gentle falsetto that floats right over the top of the locked-in drums, wah-soaked guitar, and bright, catchy horns. As his country gained its independence, Penn was integral in helping the people of his island discover their own thing, and interracial harmony was part of that vision. There were also plenty of good bands for Penn to record, and the Mustangs were one of the best. Their two tracks here are both laid-back soul killers. "Whatcha Gonna Do 'Bout It" bumps along on a slow but insistent rhythm, with the lead vocals joined in two-part harmony on key phrases, while "The Time For Loving Is Now" seems to be balancing influences from all over the Western Hemisphere, from Jamaica to Cuba to Detroit. The compilation incorporates a fairly eclectic batch of songs, including a few truly unexpected gems: Ozzie Hall's cover of Paul Desmond's "Take Five" is a brilliantly funky, even noir-ish recasting of the song (it also ignores the 5/4 rhythm that helped make the original famous), while Sylvia Hall's "Don't Touch That Thing" takes a slightly racy schoolyard chant advocating abstinence ("don't touch that thing/your belly gonna show," concludes the chorus) and turns it into a slice of breezy, instantly memorable funk. All these other artists are pretty much hors d'oeuvre for Jay Mitchell, though. The Grand Bahama native rules this compilation like he ruled the scene in Nassau, the Bahamian capital he left for as soon as he could. Mitchell very nearly had a career in the States-he toured with Otis Redding, who was slated to produce an album for him, but he instead returned to Freeport, Grand Bahama after tiring of road life and the pressure of trying to make it in the ocean of American pop music. It's clear from the five tracks here that he could have gone as far as he wanted to. The man was an adroit bandleader who presided over lengthy funk workouts like "Funky Fever" and "Tighter & Tighter" with charismatic authority, leading the band into fantastic breakdowns full of nasty breaks and peels of psychedelic guitar. He was capable of sweetness, too, as on his smooth, elegant 1968 cover of Edwin Starr's "I Am the Man For You, Baby". His "Goombay Bump", written by Penn, is a distinctively Bahamian creation, creating a dance around a fluid local rhythm. But it's his mind-blowing 13-minute cover of "Mustang Sally" that best highlights his genius. Apart from the lyrics, it doesn't even resemble the song we know, riding a sick drum beat and a healthy slathering of Hammond organ until it boils over. That cover closes the disc, which is fitting, because I don't know what you'd follow it with. It's a perfect capper for yet another ridiculously great compilation from Numero Group. It's not a perfect disc, mostly because of an embarrassingly inept cover of "Theme From 'Shaft'", but it's so full of great, nearly lost music that it's hard to fault the inclusion of a head-scratching curio like that. On the whole, Grand Bahama Goombay offers a peek into a musical world well worth preserving, and I can't wait to see where Cult Cargo goes next.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "There's a tendency among Americans to think of the Bahamas as nothing but a tourist destination, a place to go snorkeling and get a tan. We tend to forget that people live there, that people were living there even before it became one of the first places in the Western Hemisphere to be spotted by Europeans. The country's population today is made up largely of the descendants of British loyalists who fled the U.S. after 1783, the slaves they brought with them and escaped slaves who took advantage of the short water route to the islands after slavery was abolished in the Crown colonies in 1834. The islands achieved self-governance in 1964, and 10 years later became fully independent from Britain, but most of the country's cultural and popular influence from outside came across the Straits of Florida. In the 60s and 70s, that meant jazz, rock, soul, and funk. The island of Grand Bahama is the closest to Florida, and during those decades played host to an intriguing music scene that lightly Caribbean-ized American soul and funk. The music that scene produced during its heyday is, like so much other global music from that era, very much in danger of disappearing from the collective memory-- a hot, rainy island that gets nailed by about one major hurricane each decade isn't the most conducive environment to keeping tapes and old LPs in top shape. Enter Numero Group, whose Cult Cargo series, now two volumes, extends the brilliant restoration work of their Eccentric Soul series beyond U.S. shores. They chose the word goombay for the title because of its myriad meanings on Grand Bahama-- it's a flavor, an annual festival, and most importantly for our purposes, both a drum and the style of music for which that drum provides the rhythm. In the 60s, Grand Bahama was in the early stages of a tourist boom that continues to the present day, and tourists begat hotels begat bands begat recordings. The key figure in the island's scene was a man named Frank Penn, a bartender/barber/carpenter who found himself in possession of the Bamboo East when its owner hopped the pond to the States. Penn set about transforming it into a youth music hotspot and ultimately parlayed its success into a record label, GBI International, which released most of the music on this compilation. Penn himself shows up on instrumental and vocal versions of his song "Gimme Some Skin", offering the opening couplet "Black is beautiful/ White is nice" in a gentle falsetto that floats right over the top of the locked-in drums, wah-soaked guitar, and bright, catchy horns. As his country gained its independence, Penn was integral in helping the people of his island discover their own thing, and interracial harmony was part of that vision. There were also plenty of good bands for Penn to record, and the Mustangs were one of the best. Their two tracks here are both laid-back soul killers. "Whatcha Gonna Do 'Bout It" bumps along on a slow but insistent rhythm, with the lead vocals joined in two-part harmony on key phrases, while "The Time For Loving Is Now" seems to be balancing influences from all over the Western Hemisphere, from Jamaica to Cuba to Detroit. The compilation incorporates a fairly eclectic batch of songs, including a few truly unexpected gems: Ozzie Hall's cover of Paul Desmond's "Take Five" is a brilliantly funky, even noir-ish recasting of the song (it also ignores the 5/4 rhythm that helped make the original famous), while Sylvia Hall's "Don't Touch That Thing" takes a slightly racy schoolyard chant advocating abstinence ("don't touch that thing/your belly gonna show," concludes the chorus) and turns it into a slice of breezy, instantly memorable funk. All these other artists are pretty much hors d'oeuvre for Jay Mitchell, though. The Grand Bahama native rules this compilation like he ruled the scene in Nassau, the Bahamian capital he left for as soon as he could. Mitchell very nearly had a career in the States-he toured with Otis Redding, who was slated to produce an album for him, but he instead returned to Freeport, Grand Bahama after tiring of road life and the pressure of trying to make it in the ocean of American pop music. It's clear from the five tracks here that he could have gone as far as he wanted to. The man was an adroit bandleader who presided over lengthy funk workouts like "Funky Fever" and "Tighter & Tighter" with charismatic authority, leading the band into fantastic breakdowns full of nasty breaks and peels of psychedelic guitar. He was capable of sweetness, too, as on his smooth, elegant 1968 cover of Edwin Starr's "I Am the Man For You, Baby". His "Goombay Bump", written by Penn, is a distinctively Bahamian creation, creating a dance around a fluid local rhythm. But it's his mind-blowing 13-minute cover of "Mustang Sally" that best highlights his genius. Apart from the lyrics, it doesn't even resemble the song we know, riding a sick drum beat and a healthy slathering of Hammond organ until it boils over. That cover closes the disc, which is fitting, because I don't know what you'd follow it with. It's a perfect capper for yet another ridiculously great compilation from Numero Group. It's not a perfect disc, mostly because of an embarrassingly inept cover of "Theme From 'Shaft'", but it's so full of great, nearly lost music that it's hard to fault the inclusion of a head-scratching curio like that. On the whole, Grand Bahama Goombay offers a peek into a musical world well worth preserving, and I can't wait to see where Cult Cargo goes next."

Animal Collective

Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished

Experimental

Brent S. Sirota

Anyone ever stumble across Struwwelpeter, the 19th century German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann? Mark Twain himself translated it to English, although I doubt it made it to the bedside of too many American kids. This illustrated book is comprised of short lyrics describing the horrific things that happen to naughty children: Cruel Frederick is attacked by his own maltreated dog; Pauline plays with matches and burns to death while her cats watch; Conrad the thumbsucker winds up with his thumbs cut off by the red-legged scissor-man. I don't need to go on. There's something so downright un-American about the whole grisly affair, something alien about the gleeful proximity of children to violence and mutilation. Fortunately, I was a college German student when I encountered Struwwelpeter, and it freaked me out even then. Yet Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, the incredible but bizarre release by Avey Tare and Panda Bear brings the fates of those luckless kraut kinder back to mind. The marriage of psychedelia and fairy-tale imagery goes back at least to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Dead's Aoxomoxoa: the first flowering of psychedelia was joyously regressive, celebrating juvenilia as the antidote to modern rationality. Yet what was indelibly excised was menace-- what the gnomes and newspaper taxis conceal. Remember the boat ride through the tunnel in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? In the middle of this sucrose wonderland, there's something fucking awful. Don't choke on the references. Forget them. Avey Tare and Panda Bear's Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is a masterful piece of electro-acoustic fairy-tale music; yet its squealing electronics, and vitrified rhythms suggest something darker. Like a Snickers bar with a razorblade in it. Spirit They're Gone is Avey Tare's album; he sings, and plays guitars, pianos, and electronics. Panda Bear, meanwhile, mans the crumpled percussion. The album opens with the high-frequency squall and delicate vocals of "Spirit They've Vanished," offering little clue about future directions. However, the second track, "April and the Phantom" is crystallizing: expert acoustic guitars, fierce drumming and Daltrey-esque screams resemble the Who resurrected as the seventh member of the Elephant 6. Tinkling toy pianos, organs and exclamations of digital noise round out the track, while Tare perilously insists, "She ran out of nature," again and again. The wistful "Penny Dreadfuls" lays simple piano over needled electronics reminiscent of Pita or Christian Fennesz in a kind of lysergic dirge on the end of childhood. "Chocolate Girl" is dubbed-out calliope music, swirling and swirling: a strange meditation seemingly on sexual awakening, awkward but erotic in the midst of an enchanted forest of an album. The interstellar Nintendo drone of "Everyone Whistling" is irresistible space-pop, backed by some incredibly nimble jazz drumming. The twelve-minute "Alvin Row" is an epic closer, emerging from free-noise clatter, insect electronics and demented piano into sunny Beatlesque psych-pop. "Can you hear me, troubadour?" Tare asks before the eruption of furious ivories. Schlock horror organs abound and the cymbals crash like storms. The album collapses into the crackly sample of a child (Alfalfa from the Little Rascals?) saying, "My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone..." Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is not only outstanding, but one of the most original sounding albums out there. This record, as I've said, marries the pleasant and the violent and is not for timid ears: the sparkling pop never strays far from the lacerating noise. The lyrics are largely indecipherable but occasional gems and wonderful turns of phrase emerge from the bright din. Two mysterious fellow travelers (one-half of the four-man Animal collective) seem to have stumbled upon each other and created something truly beautiful. The only question is: which one of them is the walrus?

Artist: Animal Collective, Album: Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.9 Album review: "Anyone ever stumble across Struwwelpeter, the 19th century German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann? Mark Twain himself translated it to English, although I doubt it made it to the bedside of too many American kids. This illustrated book is comprised of short lyrics describing the horrific things that happen to naughty children: Cruel Frederick is attacked by his own maltreated dog; Pauline plays with matches and burns to death while her cats watch; Conrad the thumbsucker winds up with his thumbs cut off by the red-legged scissor-man. I don't need to go on. There's something so downright un-American about the whole grisly affair, something alien about the gleeful proximity of children to violence and mutilation. Fortunately, I was a college German student when I encountered Struwwelpeter, and it freaked me out even then. Yet Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, the incredible but bizarre release by Avey Tare and Panda Bear brings the fates of those luckless kraut kinder back to mind. The marriage of psychedelia and fairy-tale imagery goes back at least to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Dead's Aoxomoxoa: the first flowering of psychedelia was joyously regressive, celebrating juvenilia as the antidote to modern rationality. Yet what was indelibly excised was menace-- what the gnomes and newspaper taxis conceal. Remember the boat ride through the tunnel in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? In the middle of this sucrose wonderland, there's something fucking awful. Don't choke on the references. Forget them. Avey Tare and Panda Bear's Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is a masterful piece of electro-acoustic fairy-tale music; yet its squealing electronics, and vitrified rhythms suggest something darker. Like a Snickers bar with a razorblade in it. Spirit They're Gone is Avey Tare's album; he sings, and plays guitars, pianos, and electronics. Panda Bear, meanwhile, mans the crumpled percussion. The album opens with the high-frequency squall and delicate vocals of "Spirit They've Vanished," offering little clue about future directions. However, the second track, "April and the Phantom" is crystallizing: expert acoustic guitars, fierce drumming and Daltrey-esque screams resemble the Who resurrected as the seventh member of the Elephant 6. Tinkling toy pianos, organs and exclamations of digital noise round out the track, while Tare perilously insists, "She ran out of nature," again and again. The wistful "Penny Dreadfuls" lays simple piano over needled electronics reminiscent of Pita or Christian Fennesz in a kind of lysergic dirge on the end of childhood. "Chocolate Girl" is dubbed-out calliope music, swirling and swirling: a strange meditation seemingly on sexual awakening, awkward but erotic in the midst of an enchanted forest of an album. The interstellar Nintendo drone of "Everyone Whistling" is irresistible space-pop, backed by some incredibly nimble jazz drumming. The twelve-minute "Alvin Row" is an epic closer, emerging from free-noise clatter, insect electronics and demented piano into sunny Beatlesque psych-pop. "Can you hear me, troubadour?" Tare asks before the eruption of furious ivories. Schlock horror organs abound and the cymbals crash like storms. The album collapses into the crackly sample of a child (Alfalfa from the Little Rascals?) saying, "My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone..." Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is not only outstanding, but one of the most original sounding albums out there. This record, as I've said, marries the pleasant and the violent and is not for timid ears: the sparkling pop never strays far from the lacerating noise. The lyrics are largely indecipherable but occasional gems and wonderful turns of phrase emerge from the bright din. Two mysterious fellow travelers (one-half of the four-man Animal collective) seem to have stumbled upon each other and created something truly beautiful. The only question is: which one of them is the walrus?"

Akrobatik

Balance

Rap

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Six years ago, KRS-One started HipHop Appreciation Week to "decriminalize HipHop's public image and promote the unity of HipHop Kulture." Since then, events have been held in cities across America, from New York to San Francisco, to appreciate hip-hop and hopefully subvert some of the dickwads in the conservative media that continue to paint hip-hop culture as the sole root of our country's moral decline. It's a noble cause-- one that promotes KRS' ongoing devotion to "edutainment" and gets communities involved in the four elements-- and respect is due. However, I think they need some people working on the public imaging over there at the Temple of HipHop, 'cause this year, the theme is... "responsibility!" Now. While I'm all for behaving responsibly and not painting hip-hop in a bad light by, like, bumping Outkast out my boombox while shoplifting or something, there hasn't been a wonkier, more awkward theme for a positive event since Back to the Future's "Enchantment Under the Sea" prom motto. Responsibility. Since when did I go back to kindergarten? Was this in the syllabus? And most importantly, I thought we were gonna be getting some "tainment" with our "edu." Initially, I was feeling the same incredulity towards KRS collaborator Akrobatik's second record, which is titled, simply, Balance, and comes jam-packed with laidback, conscious, message-driven hip-hop. But where I expected raps about yoga or the medicinal benefits of yerba mate tea, I got: "Ring the sweat out ya pores when you done with these verbal calisthenics" and "When I kick intricate shit you get intimate witchya brain." Even when I thought Akrobatik (aka "the black action figure with the kung fu grip") might start to get preachy about his responsible way of life, he instead spat, "I don't waste my time writin' ignorant rhymes, but I know that makin' niggas laugh ain't no crime." (Friends at Temple of HipHop, please take note.) The Boston lyricist's themes are all fairly simple-- "Balance" is about balance, "Hypocrite" is about hypocrisy, "Time" examines of the concept of time and reality-- and his storytelling-rich style is smooth and easygoing. But, keeping with the theme, Akrobatik's raps are balanced with occasionally intense production by DJ Sense, DJ Therapy, Da Beatminerz, Edan, and DJ Fakts One (with whom Akrobatik and Mr. Lif have a crew, called The Perceptionists). The Edan and Fakts One cuts work best with Akrobatik's style, complimenting his relatively straightforward delivery with complex, isolated drumming which sometimes unravels simple breakbeats only to embellish them with surprising, firework-clatter drum fills, confident bass buzz, and quirky funk. Later, Akrobatik himself takes a stab at funk in his self-produced duet with Mr. Lif, "Wreck Dem"-- one of the record's best, despite that Lif's higher-pitched, sharper delivery steals the show out from under Akrobatik's lower timbre. In short, Akro's style is of an older, simpler school-- perhaps the same one where "responsibility" could pass as a theme without needing a fancy spin to entice the cynics.

Artist: Akrobatik, Album: Balance, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Six years ago, KRS-One started HipHop Appreciation Week to "decriminalize HipHop's public image and promote the unity of HipHop Kulture." Since then, events have been held in cities across America, from New York to San Francisco, to appreciate hip-hop and hopefully subvert some of the dickwads in the conservative media that continue to paint hip-hop culture as the sole root of our country's moral decline. It's a noble cause-- one that promotes KRS' ongoing devotion to "edutainment" and gets communities involved in the four elements-- and respect is due. However, I think they need some people working on the public imaging over there at the Temple of HipHop, 'cause this year, the theme is... "responsibility!" Now. While I'm all for behaving responsibly and not painting hip-hop in a bad light by, like, bumping Outkast out my boombox while shoplifting or something, there hasn't been a wonkier, more awkward theme for a positive event since Back to the Future's "Enchantment Under the Sea" prom motto. Responsibility. Since when did I go back to kindergarten? Was this in the syllabus? And most importantly, I thought we were gonna be getting some "tainment" with our "edu." Initially, I was feeling the same incredulity towards KRS collaborator Akrobatik's second record, which is titled, simply, Balance, and comes jam-packed with laidback, conscious, message-driven hip-hop. But where I expected raps about yoga or the medicinal benefits of yerba mate tea, I got: "Ring the sweat out ya pores when you done with these verbal calisthenics" and "When I kick intricate shit you get intimate witchya brain." Even when I thought Akrobatik (aka "the black action figure with the kung fu grip") might start to get preachy about his responsible way of life, he instead spat, "I don't waste my time writin' ignorant rhymes, but I know that makin' niggas laugh ain't no crime." (Friends at Temple of HipHop, please take note.) The Boston lyricist's themes are all fairly simple-- "Balance" is about balance, "Hypocrite" is about hypocrisy, "Time" examines of the concept of time and reality-- and his storytelling-rich style is smooth and easygoing. But, keeping with the theme, Akrobatik's raps are balanced with occasionally intense production by DJ Sense, DJ Therapy, Da Beatminerz, Edan, and DJ Fakts One (with whom Akrobatik and Mr. Lif have a crew, called The Perceptionists). The Edan and Fakts One cuts work best with Akrobatik's style, complimenting his relatively straightforward delivery with complex, isolated drumming which sometimes unravels simple breakbeats only to embellish them with surprising, firework-clatter drum fills, confident bass buzz, and quirky funk. Later, Akrobatik himself takes a stab at funk in his self-produced duet with Mr. Lif, "Wreck Dem"-- one of the record's best, despite that Lif's higher-pitched, sharper delivery steals the show out from under Akrobatik's lower timbre. In short, Akro's style is of an older, simpler school-- perhaps the same one where "responsibility" could pass as a theme without needing a fancy spin to entice the cynics."

Lackthereof

My Haunted

Rock

Joe Tangari

Lackthereof is the solo musical identity of Menomena's Danny Seim, but don't call it a side project: Seim had been producing self-released albums under the alias for years by the time he linked with Brent Knopf and Justin Harris to form Menomena. Seim put out six of them from 1998 to 2002, and in 2004, he released one through a label with the Christian the Christian LP. That was the same year he first performed live under the Lackthereof name as well, recruiting friends such as Viva Voce's Kevin and Anita Robinson to back him up. Seim has recently returned to his old, prolific ways, and his two most recent albums find him taking one last stand in the low minors before jumping to Triple A on Barsuk.* My Haunted*, a vinyl/digital release, is the second Lackthereof album to drop via FilmGuerrero, and true to the form of its predecessors, it has a home-spun, casual air to it. If you're used to Menomena's maximalist, heavily layered and sometimes abstract approach, don't expect this to sound much like it. To begin, the compositional approach is more conventional, with little-to-no involvement of crazy computer programs. The basic palette is acoustic guitar, vocals, and reverb, with Seim frequently layering his voice or slipping in a bit of percussion. "The Columbia", a haunting and repetitive crawl through a cavernous reverb chamber, is the album's most impressive track. A stuttering acoustic guitar alternates with Seim's layered pleas to "float with me to the mouth of the Columbia." Side one closer "Both of Us" is the other standout, with ghostly wordless harmonies and an odd, stream-of-consciousness structure. Other songs are more reserved-- opener "It's Over" sounds like a demo, with a vocal line that mirrors the guitar part, while there are several offerings that are little more than good-sounding sketches. The keyboard-heavy "Century" especially feels like it needs to blow up into a massive prog conflagration.* Your Anchor*, Seim's Barsuk debut, is much more widely available, and it rises nicely to the challenge of being Lackthereof's first high-profile release. He generates every sound on the album, from vocals to drums, and it feels like a happy medium between My Haunted and Menomena. The songs are fully fleshed, and a few are genuinely great. "Choir Practice" is especially awesome, with a hard drum beat and catchy vocal melody. Considering that the weakest part of an album by a multi-instrumentalist is very often the drums, Seim is dealing from a position of strength, and every song makes good on his abilities behind the kit. And he's no novice on the other instruments, either. "Doomed Elephants" has a great, hooky bassline; he plays surprisingly good slide guitar on "Fire Trial"; and "Ask Permission" features a great instrumental break with jangling guitars rising over a smooth bed of Rhodes piano. The latter is one of the album's finest tracks, a confirmation that Menomena's ear for texture runs deep in all three members. Seim's vocals have a Stephin Merritt-like croak to them here-- on his closing cover of the National's "Fake Empire", he sounds like he's struggling to avoid keeling over from exhaustion. He self-harmonizes fairly well on several tracks, too, and indeed opens the album backing his own lead vocal with a hushed falsetto. If a Menomena album feels like Seim coming over for a visit with his fellow band members, My Haunted is a little more like a postcard sent from far away-- a few thoughts strung together to form a nice but not quite satisfying reminder of a friendship. To strain the simile further, Your Anchor is like a nice, long phone call-- appeasing, but still not the same as seeing someone. Overall, the different release strategies for the two records seem appropriate: The interesting but flawed limited release is reserved for the superfan, while most indie rock fans will likely enjoy the bigger and more widely distributed record. Both, however, further demonstrate Seim's wealth of interesting ideas, showcasing two distinct sides of his creative alter-ego.

Artist: Lackthereof, Album: My Haunted, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Lackthereof is the solo musical identity of Menomena's Danny Seim, but don't call it a side project: Seim had been producing self-released albums under the alias for years by the time he linked with Brent Knopf and Justin Harris to form Menomena. Seim put out six of them from 1998 to 2002, and in 2004, he released one through a label with the Christian the Christian LP. That was the same year he first performed live under the Lackthereof name as well, recruiting friends such as Viva Voce's Kevin and Anita Robinson to back him up. Seim has recently returned to his old, prolific ways, and his two most recent albums find him taking one last stand in the low minors before jumping to Triple A on Barsuk.* My Haunted*, a vinyl/digital release, is the second Lackthereof album to drop via FilmGuerrero, and true to the form of its predecessors, it has a home-spun, casual air to it. If you're used to Menomena's maximalist, heavily layered and sometimes abstract approach, don't expect this to sound much like it. To begin, the compositional approach is more conventional, with little-to-no involvement of crazy computer programs. The basic palette is acoustic guitar, vocals, and reverb, with Seim frequently layering his voice or slipping in a bit of percussion. "The Columbia", a haunting and repetitive crawl through a cavernous reverb chamber, is the album's most impressive track. A stuttering acoustic guitar alternates with Seim's layered pleas to "float with me to the mouth of the Columbia." Side one closer "Both of Us" is the other standout, with ghostly wordless harmonies and an odd, stream-of-consciousness structure. Other songs are more reserved-- opener "It's Over" sounds like a demo, with a vocal line that mirrors the guitar part, while there are several offerings that are little more than good-sounding sketches. The keyboard-heavy "Century" especially feels like it needs to blow up into a massive prog conflagration.* Your Anchor*, Seim's Barsuk debut, is much more widely available, and it rises nicely to the challenge of being Lackthereof's first high-profile release. He generates every sound on the album, from vocals to drums, and it feels like a happy medium between My Haunted and Menomena. The songs are fully fleshed, and a few are genuinely great. "Choir Practice" is especially awesome, with a hard drum beat and catchy vocal melody. Considering that the weakest part of an album by a multi-instrumentalist is very often the drums, Seim is dealing from a position of strength, and every song makes good on his abilities behind the kit. And he's no novice on the other instruments, either. "Doomed Elephants" has a great, hooky bassline; he plays surprisingly good slide guitar on "Fire Trial"; and "Ask Permission" features a great instrumental break with jangling guitars rising over a smooth bed of Rhodes piano. The latter is one of the album's finest tracks, a confirmation that Menomena's ear for texture runs deep in all three members. Seim's vocals have a Stephin Merritt-like croak to them here-- on his closing cover of the National's "Fake Empire", he sounds like he's struggling to avoid keeling over from exhaustion. He self-harmonizes fairly well on several tracks, too, and indeed opens the album backing his own lead vocal with a hushed falsetto. If a Menomena album feels like Seim coming over for a visit with his fellow band members, My Haunted is a little more like a postcard sent from far away-- a few thoughts strung together to form a nice but not quite satisfying reminder of a friendship. To strain the simile further, Your Anchor is like a nice, long phone call-- appeasing, but still not the same as seeing someone. Overall, the different release strategies for the two records seem appropriate: The interesting but flawed limited release is reserved for the superfan, while most indie rock fans will likely enjoy the bigger and more widely distributed record. Both, however, further demonstrate Seim's wealth of interesting ideas, showcasing two distinct sides of his creative alter-ego."

Two Gallants

We Are Undone

Rock

Jonathan Zwickel

It takes more than guts to dredge below rock bottom. Certainly some degree of bravery is involved, but also naked desperation and a disregard for personal safety, and maybe you don't wanna sink that far into the darkness anyway. Two Gallants' new album lives down there in the depths, their most defeated, defeatist statement. Its emotional timbre is best described as abysmal—and this from a band that has continually found virtue in failure and upheld self-loathing as a form of self-awareness. There's very little virtue in We Are Undone, no emotional state upheld so much as examined and then discarded*.* It plays like a flag of surrender, singer/guitarist Adam Stephens and drummer Tyson Vogel sounding wrung out by their own integrity. Maybe it's a creative adaptation for a band born and raised in San Francisco: The city today, hypergentrified by web-enabled strivers and rich kids, bears little resemblance to the one that began nurturing their talents more than a decade ago. In its often inchoate roar, We Are Undone bears little resemblance to the laser-focus punk-blues of their earlier work. The songs just aren't as good. The most satisfying callback to Two Gallants' halcyon, mid-'00s prime comes in the album's second half. "My Man Go" demonstrates the patience and melodic intelligence that incites 2Gs live shows into sing-and-sway mosh pits. "In the ruins of my night I can still pretend," Stephens sings over acoustic guitar, "close my eyes, see my life as it could have been." "Katy Kruelly" references 200-some years of American folk-music tradition, from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to early 20th-century race records to '60s folk revivalism. As presented here, the song glows with Stephens' voice and acoustic guitar, as much a history lesson as a beautiful ballad of loss. It segues directly into "Heartbreakdown", another slow, somber number, literary in its lyricism and oozing regret. "There's So Much I Don't Know" closes the album with an anti-gentrification anthem that's equal parts preservationist and xenophobic. City living in 2015 is a thorny subject; urban evolution is a process both inevitable and stomach-churning. In the case of San Francisco, wealthy people are displaced by even wealthier people—plains-bred newcomers "trying to make it rain." Two Gallants rightly addresses the issue in folk-song form, but Stephens' response is to begrudge, flee, and burn the city to the ground on his way out. Die-yuppie-scum middle fingering is an appropriate first response of the self-possessed dispossessed, but it can't be the last. "All things blow eventually/ There's so much I don't know," goes the chorus. I wish there were more to say than that. Which is the overall sense the album leaves: The band wields the same righteous fury as always, regardless of a world evolving around them, without them. The only obvious shift within Undone is in Stephens' guitar tone, which occasionally takes on prog-ish, Malmsteenian melodrama—not necessarily for the best. That guitar roars into a satisfyingly ferocious riff on the album-opening title track, but thematically the song echoes "Waves of Grain" from their 2006 album What the Toll Tells, pitting a young idealist versus an aging cynic in a sort of epistolary folk-metal showdown. This time around the singer remains agnostic. Cynicism is realism. And that resignation hurts. This band has articulated youthful frustration so well for so long but what comes next? What's below rock bottom? At least the jaunty "Fools Like Us" injects a dose of what-me-worry? haplessness into the album a few songs later. But otherwise, we're left hurt and hopeless. Nobody should have to live like that.

Artist: Two Gallants, Album: We Are Undone, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "It takes more than guts to dredge below rock bottom. Certainly some degree of bravery is involved, but also naked desperation and a disregard for personal safety, and maybe you don't wanna sink that far into the darkness anyway. Two Gallants' new album lives down there in the depths, their most defeated, defeatist statement. Its emotional timbre is best described as abysmal—and this from a band that has continually found virtue in failure and upheld self-loathing as a form of self-awareness. There's very little virtue in We Are Undone, no emotional state upheld so much as examined and then discarded*.* It plays like a flag of surrender, singer/guitarist Adam Stephens and drummer Tyson Vogel sounding wrung out by their own integrity. Maybe it's a creative adaptation for a band born and raised in San Francisco: The city today, hypergentrified by web-enabled strivers and rich kids, bears little resemblance to the one that began nurturing their talents more than a decade ago. In its often inchoate roar, We Are Undone bears little resemblance to the laser-focus punk-blues of their earlier work. The songs just aren't as good. The most satisfying callback to Two Gallants' halcyon, mid-'00s prime comes in the album's second half. "My Man Go" demonstrates the patience and melodic intelligence that incites 2Gs live shows into sing-and-sway mosh pits. "In the ruins of my night I can still pretend," Stephens sings over acoustic guitar, "close my eyes, see my life as it could have been." "Katy Kruelly" references 200-some years of American folk-music tradition, from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to early 20th-century race records to '60s folk revivalism. As presented here, the song glows with Stephens' voice and acoustic guitar, as much a history lesson as a beautiful ballad of loss. It segues directly into "Heartbreakdown", another slow, somber number, literary in its lyricism and oozing regret. "There's So Much I Don't Know" closes the album with an anti-gentrification anthem that's equal parts preservationist and xenophobic. City living in 2015 is a thorny subject; urban evolution is a process both inevitable and stomach-churning. In the case of San Francisco, wealthy people are displaced by even wealthier people—plains-bred newcomers "trying to make it rain." Two Gallants rightly addresses the issue in folk-song form, but Stephens' response is to begrudge, flee, and burn the city to the ground on his way out. Die-yuppie-scum middle fingering is an appropriate first response of the self-possessed dispossessed, but it can't be the last. "All things blow eventually/ There's so much I don't know," goes the chorus. I wish there were more to say than that. Which is the overall sense the album leaves: The band wields the same righteous fury as always, regardless of a world evolving around them, without them. The only obvious shift within Undone is in Stephens' guitar tone, which occasionally takes on prog-ish, Malmsteenian melodrama—not necessarily for the best. That guitar roars into a satisfyingly ferocious riff on the album-opening title track, but thematically the song echoes "Waves of Grain" from their 2006 album What the Toll Tells, pitting a young idealist versus an aging cynic in a sort of epistolary folk-metal showdown. This time around the singer remains agnostic. Cynicism is realism. And that resignation hurts. This band has articulated youthful frustration so well for so long but what comes next? What's below rock bottom? At least the jaunty "Fools Like Us" injects a dose of what-me-worry? haplessness into the album a few songs later. But otherwise, we're left hurt and hopeless. Nobody should have to live like that."

B L A C K I E

Imagine Yourself in a Free and Natural World

Lawrence Burney

One of last year’s most overlooked albums, Fuck The False, came from Houston’s folk-hero noise rapper (and sometimes-credited predecessor to Death Grips’ style), B L A C K I E. The self-produced, mostly industrial record not only saw him wailing motivational sermons to himself and listeners, it also highlighted what had been a recurrent source of adulation for Kanye West’s Yeezus—that is, exploratory rap production driven home by an exceptional level of vocal conviction. But while West's experimentation was met with surprise, B L A C K I E has been making such range in soundscapes a calling card for his entire career; his 2012-released standout GEN wielded similar subject matter, but over mostly acoustic production assisted by keys, horns, and guitar riffs. When I interviewed B L A C K I E last year, he told me that he’d recorded Fuck The False in one take, fueled by Red Bull and whiskey, and that his new project would be mostly jazz-based. The premise was a head-scratcher, but B L A C K I E’s career has consistently rested on the outskirts of rap. On his latest album, Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World, he’s barely clinging onto the genre. With two of the album’s three tracks eclipsing the sixteen-minute mark, B L A C K I E’s penchant for storytelling and intense imagery are at center stage. “Wings Blocking Out the Sun” and “Forest of Ex-Lovers” materialize piece-by-piece with scene-building electric bass riffs that abruptly crash into B L A C K I E’s commanding vocals. The latter begins with eerie screeches, placing him in a state of vulnerability where he faces his fears head-on and talks emptily to shadows. In the former, a vulture rises up and “Turns itself into a fist” in what feels like a post-apocalyptic dystopia. B L A C K I E’s layering of saxophone over bass in Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World adds to the uncanny atmosphere. The album’s instrumentation positions it more as an avant-garde, free-jazz effort in the line of Herbie Hancock and Sun Ra than the punk-rap that's come to be expected of B L A C K I E. Still, reference points be damned, the album doesn’t quite sound like anything else. On “Cry, Pig!”, the climb in B L A C K I E’s emotion conveys an effective message of frustration, and such catharsis is what makes his music so multi-dimensional. On Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World, B L A C K I E chooses to strip away an already minimal formula for music-making, showcasing his near-decade run of taking noise-rap to unseen levels of experimentation. Unfortunately, the striking, candid lyricism that made GEN and Fuck the False such solid pieces of work is missing as a result. Still, Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World showcases a writing approach that models itself more like abstract poetry than conventional verses, combining jazz with rap in a way that hasn’t been as exciting since the acid-jazz wave in the early '90s. The combo hasn't been as forceful as it is here, too.

Artist: B L A C K I E, Album: Imagine Yourself in a Free and Natural World, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "One of last year’s most overlooked albums, Fuck The False, came from Houston’s folk-hero noise rapper (and sometimes-credited predecessor to Death Grips’ style), B L A C K I E. The self-produced, mostly industrial record not only saw him wailing motivational sermons to himself and listeners, it also highlighted what had been a recurrent source of adulation for Kanye West’s Yeezus—that is, exploratory rap production driven home by an exceptional level of vocal conviction. But while West's experimentation was met with surprise, B L A C K I E has been making such range in soundscapes a calling card for his entire career; his 2012-released standout GEN wielded similar subject matter, but over mostly acoustic production assisted by keys, horns, and guitar riffs. When I interviewed B L A C K I E last year, he told me that he’d recorded Fuck The False in one take, fueled by Red Bull and whiskey, and that his new project would be mostly jazz-based. The premise was a head-scratcher, but B L A C K I E’s career has consistently rested on the outskirts of rap. On his latest album, Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World, he’s barely clinging onto the genre. With two of the album’s three tracks eclipsing the sixteen-minute mark, B L A C K I E’s penchant for storytelling and intense imagery are at center stage. “Wings Blocking Out the Sun” and “Forest of Ex-Lovers” materialize piece-by-piece with scene-building electric bass riffs that abruptly crash into B L A C K I E’s commanding vocals. The latter begins with eerie screeches, placing him in a state of vulnerability where he faces his fears head-on and talks emptily to shadows. In the former, a vulture rises up and “Turns itself into a fist” in what feels like a post-apocalyptic dystopia. B L A C K I E’s layering of saxophone over bass in Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World adds to the uncanny atmosphere. The album’s instrumentation positions it more as an avant-garde, free-jazz effort in the line of Herbie Hancock and Sun Ra than the punk-rap that's come to be expected of B L A C K I E. Still, reference points be damned, the album doesn’t quite sound like anything else. On “Cry, Pig!”, the climb in B L A C K I E’s emotion conveys an effective message of frustration, and such catharsis is what makes his music so multi-dimensional. On Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World, B L A C K I E chooses to strip away an already minimal formula for music-making, showcasing his near-decade run of taking noise-rap to unseen levels of experimentation. Unfortunately, the striking, candid lyricism that made GEN and Fuck the False such solid pieces of work is missing as a result. Still, Imagine Your Self in a Free and Natural World showcases a writing approach that models itself more like abstract poetry than conventional verses, combining jazz with rap in a way that hasn’t been as exciting since the acid-jazz wave in the early '90s. The combo hasn't been as forceful as it is here, too."

Giggs

Wamp 2 Dem

Rap

Ben Cardew

Giggs’ new mixtape arrives at a time when his profile has never been so high yet his reputation, at least in the U.S., has never dipped so low. A couple of guest spots on Drake’s 2017 playlist album More Life may have elevated the South London rapper to new levels of global renown, but the reaction of American audiences to his work—and in particular the Batman-referencing verse on Drake’s “KMT”—has proved tepid verging on hostile. “His flow is wack. It doesn’t go with the beats he’s on. His mixing engineer did an awful job with his vocals and he’s got some weak bars,” a 17-year-old rap fan told Noisey UK when the music website set out to investigate the biggest Anglo-American culture shock since U.S. audiences started taking Gavin Rossdale seriously. American criticism of Giggs tends to focus on two particular aspects of his performance. Many U.S. rap fans scoffed at the idea of a British rapper talking about drugs, guns, and gangs, as Giggs does on “KMT,” responding on Twitter with the timeworn clichés of tea and the Victorian empire. Others dislike Giggs’ brutally spartan rap style, comparing him unfavorably to Skepta, an MC who operates in an entirely different style of music. They may both hang out with Drake in London but Skepta is a grime don, while Giggs is the king of road rap, a name recently coined for the heavier, trap-infused style of modern British hip-hop. Giggs has said that Wamp 2 Dem—pronounced “W’appen to dem?,” a nod to the Jamaican patois that is omnipresent in South London—is meant in part as a rejoinder to the first charge. “What I did care about was people wasn’t really respecting England, like the hoods and shit,” he told Beats 1 host Ebro Darden. “I didn’t really like the disrespect of what man’s been through.” Wamp 2 Dem displays Giggs’ talent for painting brutally dark London scenes with a sparse lyrical touch peppered with enough British slang to keep Genius in advertising dollars for the foreseeable future. On paper, Giggs’ lyrics often don’t amount to much. But he writes perfectly for his own voice, a pitiless, bassy mutter that oozes like tar slopping out of a barrel, infusing lines like “Man ain’t really too confirming/None of these vermin” (from “Gully Niggaz”) with an ominous force. True, some of the lyrics on Wamp 2 Dem may be decidedly charm-free—“Moist Pussy” is about as artless as the name suggests—but you are left in no doubt that Giggs’ native Peckham is far from the Mary Poppins utopia that some stateside listeners clearly imagine it to be. The beats, meanwhile, show Giggs’ knack for mining the best in transatlantic rap production, a skill that dates back to his breakthrough track “Talkin’ da Hardest,” where he owned the instrumental of Stat Quo’s “Here We Go.” Production on Wamp 2 Dem comes from Florida duo Cool & Dre, Atlanta’s London On Da Track and Zaytoven, and Londoners Donae’o and Footsie, among others, and the overarching feel is of American trap bluster soaked in icy South London rain. American audiences may not find anything especially new here—particularly compared to the spikier, more frenetic sound of grime—but the beats on Wamp 2 Dem are finely tuned for Giggs’ crawling South London menace. Opening track “Gully Niggaz” is perhaps the best example of this simpatico voice and production fusion. The beat samples Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” an idea that sounds on paper like the kind of contrasting musical blend we should run to the hills to avoid. (In fact, it’s the second time Giggs has taken on the Tchaikovsky ballet, after the 2015 Dizzee Rascal collaboration “Nutcrackerz.”) But the classical bed sits well with Giggs’ bruising monotone; helped by a fantastically heavy, pitch-shifting drum pattern, it adds just enough musical polarity to really lift the song. “Ultimate Gangsta,” which follows, pulls off a similar feat, marrying an eerie string sample to a nervy beat made out of gunshots and hi-hats, over which Giggs and 2 Chainz exchange tales of gangster life. This high standard barely dips over Wamp 2 Dem’s 13 tracks, which are helped by sympathetic production and guest turns that do more than just take up space in the credits. “Times Tickin’” joins the dots between Giggs’ London hustle, Jamaican dancehall, and American hip-hop, thanks to a commanding guest turn from Popcaan; “Gangstas & Dancers” sees Giggs join forces with Lil Duke and Young Thug on a chilling, detuned beat; and London MCs Footsie and D Double E lend “Outsiders” a wonderfully paranoid energy. But don’t be misled by the A-list guests: Wamp 2 Dem is very much Giggs’ album, where his voice dominates and his aesthetics rule; it is Giggs in excelsis, whether he is being hard, crude, introspective, or playful. By the time “Ruler” closes the album in an epic, almost operatic fashion, the rapper has already made his point: London life isn’t all bangers and mash, British MCs don’t just make grime, and Drake fans who dismissed his performance on “KMT” have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.

Artist: Giggs, Album: Wamp 2 Dem, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Giggs’ new mixtape arrives at a time when his profile has never been so high yet his reputation, at least in the U.S., has never dipped so low. A couple of guest spots on Drake’s 2017 playlist album More Life may have elevated the South London rapper to new levels of global renown, but the reaction of American audiences to his work—and in particular the Batman-referencing verse on Drake’s “KMT”—has proved tepid verging on hostile. “His flow is wack. It doesn’t go with the beats he’s on. His mixing engineer did an awful job with his vocals and he’s got some weak bars,” a 17-year-old rap fan told Noisey UK when the music website set out to investigate the biggest Anglo-American culture shock since U.S. audiences started taking Gavin Rossdale seriously. American criticism of Giggs tends to focus on two particular aspects of his performance. Many U.S. rap fans scoffed at the idea of a British rapper talking about drugs, guns, and gangs, as Giggs does on “KMT,” responding on Twitter with the timeworn clichés of tea and the Victorian empire. Others dislike Giggs’ brutally spartan rap style, comparing him unfavorably to Skepta, an MC who operates in an entirely different style of music. They may both hang out with Drake in London but Skepta is a grime don, while Giggs is the king of road rap, a name recently coined for the heavier, trap-infused style of modern British hip-hop. Giggs has said that Wamp 2 Dem—pronounced “W’appen to dem?,” a nod to the Jamaican patois that is omnipresent in South London—is meant in part as a rejoinder to the first charge. “What I did care about was people wasn’t really respecting England, like the hoods and shit,” he told Beats 1 host Ebro Darden. “I didn’t really like the disrespect of what man’s been through.” Wamp 2 Dem displays Giggs’ talent for painting brutally dark London scenes with a sparse lyrical touch peppered with enough British slang to keep Genius in advertising dollars for the foreseeable future. On paper, Giggs’ lyrics often don’t amount to much. But he writes perfectly for his own voice, a pitiless, bassy mutter that oozes like tar slopping out of a barrel, infusing lines like “Man ain’t really too confirming/None of these vermin” (from “Gully Niggaz”) with an ominous force. True, some of the lyrics on Wamp 2 Dem may be decidedly charm-free—“Moist Pussy” is about as artless as the name suggests—but you are left in no doubt that Giggs’ native Peckham is far from the Mary Poppins utopia that some stateside listeners clearly imagine it to be. The beats, meanwhile, show Giggs’ knack for mining the best in transatlantic rap production, a skill that dates back to his breakthrough track “Talkin’ da Hardest,” where he owned the instrumental of Stat Quo’s “Here We Go.” Production on Wamp 2 Dem comes from Florida duo Cool & Dre, Atlanta’s London On Da Track and Zaytoven, and Londoners Donae’o and Footsie, among others, and the overarching feel is of American trap bluster soaked in icy South London rain. American audiences may not find anything especially new here—particularly compared to the spikier, more frenetic sound of grime—but the beats on Wamp 2 Dem are finely tuned for Giggs’ crawling South London menace. Opening track “Gully Niggaz” is perhaps the best example of this simpatico voice and production fusion. The beat samples Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” an idea that sounds on paper like the kind of contrasting musical blend we should run to the hills to avoid. (In fact, it’s the second time Giggs has taken on the Tchaikovsky ballet, after the 2015 Dizzee Rascal collaboration “Nutcrackerz.”) But the classical bed sits well with Giggs’ bruising monotone; helped by a fantastically heavy, pitch-shifting drum pattern, it adds just enough musical polarity to really lift the song. “Ultimate Gangsta,” which follows, pulls off a similar feat, marrying an eerie string sample to a nervy beat made out of gunshots and hi-hats, over which Giggs and 2 Chainz exchange tales of gangster life. This high standard barely dips over Wamp 2 Dem’s 13 tracks, which are helped by sympathetic production and guest turns that do more than just take up space in the credits. “Times Tickin’” joins the dots between Giggs’ London hustle, Jamaican dancehall, and American hip-hop, thanks to a commanding guest turn from Popcaan; “Gangstas & Dancers” sees Giggs join forces with Lil Duke and Young Thug on a chilling, detuned beat; and London MCs Footsie and D Double E lend “Outsiders” a wonderfully paranoid energy. But don’t be misled by the A-list guests: Wamp 2 Dem is very much Giggs’ album, where his voice dominates and his aesthetics rule; it is Giggs in excelsis, whether he is being hard, crude, introspective, or playful. By the time “Ruler” closes the album in an epic, almost operatic fashion, the rapper has already made his point: London life isn’t all bangers and mash, British MCs don’t just make grime, and Drake fans who dismissed his performance on “KMT” have a hell of a lot of catching up to do."

Laura Mvula

The Dreaming Room

Pop/R&B

Jia Tolentino

Laura Mvula, the soul singer from Birmingham, England, doesn’t really sound like anyone but herself. She’s often compared to other neo-soul artists, both those who shared her classical training, like Amy Winehouse, and those who don’t, like Jill Scott. The shoe that fits best doesn’t quite fit anyone: Mvula shares considerable DNA with Nina Simone, most obviously in her unyielding charisma, her musical virtuosity, and her profoundly central blackness. Mvula’s voice also shares some of Simone’s rawness, as well as its facility juxtaposing vulnerability and strength. She can sound supernaturally powerful, as on the wailed hook from “Green Garden,” off her first album, 2013’s Sing to the Moon; at other times she softens into nursery melodies, sung over a twinkle. And she recalls Simone’s era most, perhaps, in her epigrammatic lyrics: “Round the mountain all God’s children run,” she repeats, in “Overcome,” a song from her spectacular new album, The Dreaming Room, lyrics that indirectly reference Maya Angelou over the unmistakable funk guitar of Nile Rodgers. But Mvula’s sound doesn’t scan retro or referential. Rather, it feels visionary, and somewhat out of time. The Dreaming Room is a consolidation of Mvula’s dramatic instincts, her ability to burnish alienation and longing and bravery into set pieces saturated with coolly psychedelic soul. She’s a mannered artist with a degree in composition, and she favors careful and narrative orchestral accompaniment—she released a live version of Sing to the Moon, backed up by Metropole Orkest, and the London Symphony Orchestra provides backing on this album—that’s arranged more minimally and efficiently than its occasionally staggering effect would suggest. On The Dreaming Room, she and producer Troy Miller frame her voice with a slate of odd instruments; upright bass, vibraphone, strings, a jazzy celeste, all faithfully recorded—on “Show Me Love,” memorably, you can hear the pedals on her piano. Mvula’s reach is pop, but her form is classical. She expresses broad sentiments through abstract constructions; her melodies evolve at a clip, communicating directly but rarely giving you a hook you could repeat back. The result is most recognizable as theater, an impression heightened by the way Mvula hides in plain sight as a character, singing stage-play lines like “I will always remember/Our memories and journeys/And carry them always in my heart.” The penultimate song is actual theater: Mvula impersonates her grandmother to reconstruct a phone call between them—inspired, as she told Annie Mac, by skits on Kanye West albums, which she became acquainted with only recently. The skits felt “as important as the music,” she said. On “Nan,” both she and her grandmother are weary: as Nan, Mvula says, “Write a song I can lift me spirits, write a song I can jig me foot.” Mvula maintains some character distance for most of the album. When she does flip to her most personal, the changes are subtle, but the difference is arresting. In “Show Me Love,” one of the best tracks, she comes in on a single note and a swung, sustained phrase: “Oh God I need to belong to someone I miss the breath and the kiss I miss to wonder the future with somebody oh god show me love.” She keeps going, cycling the lines back like she’s chanting in front of an altar, letting her voice scratch and tug. Throughout the song, she changes characters by adjusting her vocal delivery: you can hear her singing about herself, to herself, then as herself, moving through time. Mvula has recently talked about panic attacks that surrounded the breakup of her marriage: the song transposes that story into something beautiful, swelling to a chorus that booms with timpani and strings. The Dreaming Room, as a whole, replicates this sequence: uncertainty, a fugue, transcendence. Track-by-track, it tells a clearer story than her excellent debut and a more sweeping one than many movies. It begins with a question of worth, then an exhortation to strength, then a plea for help; the fourth song is encouragement, the fifth exhaustion, the sixth attraction, the seventh a desperate and divine love, the ninth a goodbye. The album zooms out, ending heavily and happily: there’s “People,” a soothsaying song about black resilience, then “Phenomenal Woman,” a loving collective flex. It’s a pat narrative, made nearly invisible by many abrupt switches and strange moments. Ideas glimmer and then disappear; floods of major and minor emotions brush up against each other, in conflict and in concert. Memories return, too: her last album’s title track is reprised on “Renaissance Moon,” and the funk of the album-opener bubbles through halfway on “Let Me Fall,” and then again at the end. There are many resolutions in the story, and none of them final. The result is an album that feels much longer than the 36 minutes it takes up end to end. As with a stage play, *The Dreaming Room *requires a rigorous type of attention. It pays dividends, and yet Mvula’s artistry doesn’t require this particular type of staging to show through. In 2013, SOHN and Shlohmo remixed “Green Garden” and “She,” respectively—isolating and iterating single phrases to immensely suggestive effect. Any one of the many melodic ideas in any of these restlessly blooming songs could serve as the foundation for another song, and a magnificent one. But then again, why prune a garden when it’s so formidably beautiful as-is?

Artist: Laura Mvula, Album: The Dreaming Room, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Laura Mvula, the soul singer from Birmingham, England, doesn’t really sound like anyone but herself. She’s often compared to other neo-soul artists, both those who shared her classical training, like Amy Winehouse, and those who don’t, like Jill Scott. The shoe that fits best doesn’t quite fit anyone: Mvula shares considerable DNA with Nina Simone, most obviously in her unyielding charisma, her musical virtuosity, and her profoundly central blackness. Mvula’s voice also shares some of Simone’s rawness, as well as its facility juxtaposing vulnerability and strength. She can sound supernaturally powerful, as on the wailed hook from “Green Garden,” off her first album, 2013’s Sing to the Moon; at other times she softens into nursery melodies, sung over a twinkle. And she recalls Simone’s era most, perhaps, in her epigrammatic lyrics: “Round the mountain all God’s children run,” she repeats, in “Overcome,” a song from her spectacular new album, The Dreaming Room, lyrics that indirectly reference Maya Angelou over the unmistakable funk guitar of Nile Rodgers. But Mvula’s sound doesn’t scan retro or referential. Rather, it feels visionary, and somewhat out of time. The Dreaming Room is a consolidation of Mvula’s dramatic instincts, her ability to burnish alienation and longing and bravery into set pieces saturated with coolly psychedelic soul. She’s a mannered artist with a degree in composition, and she favors careful and narrative orchestral accompaniment—she released a live version of Sing to the Moon, backed up by Metropole Orkest, and the London Symphony Orchestra provides backing on this album—that’s arranged more minimally and efficiently than its occasionally staggering effect would suggest. On The Dreaming Room, she and producer Troy Miller frame her voice with a slate of odd instruments; upright bass, vibraphone, strings, a jazzy celeste, all faithfully recorded—on “Show Me Love,” memorably, you can hear the pedals on her piano. Mvula’s reach is pop, but her form is classical. She expresses broad sentiments through abstract constructions; her melodies evolve at a clip, communicating directly but rarely giving you a hook you could repeat back. The result is most recognizable as theater, an impression heightened by the way Mvula hides in plain sight as a character, singing stage-play lines like “I will always remember/Our memories and journeys/And carry them always in my heart.” The penultimate song is actual theater: Mvula impersonates her grandmother to reconstruct a phone call between them—inspired, as she told Annie Mac, by skits on Kanye West albums, which she became acquainted with only recently. The skits felt “as important as the music,” she said. On “Nan,” both she and her grandmother are weary: as Nan, Mvula says, “Write a song I can lift me spirits, write a song I can jig me foot.” Mvula maintains some character distance for most of the album. When she does flip to her most personal, the changes are subtle, but the difference is arresting. In “Show Me Love,” one of the best tracks, she comes in on a single note and a swung, sustained phrase: “Oh God I need to belong to someone I miss the breath and the kiss I miss to wonder the future with somebody oh god show me love.” She keeps going, cycling the lines back like she’s chanting in front of an altar, letting her voice scratch and tug. Throughout the song, she changes characters by adjusting her vocal delivery: you can hear her singing about herself, to herself, then as herself, moving through time. Mvula has recently talked about panic attacks that surrounded the breakup of her marriage: the song transposes that story into something beautiful, swelling to a chorus that booms with timpani and strings. The Dreaming Room, as a whole, replicates this sequence: uncertainty, a fugue, transcendence. Track-by-track, it tells a clearer story than her excellent debut and a more sweeping one than many movies. It begins with a question of worth, then an exhortation to strength, then a plea for help; the fourth song is encouragement, the fifth exhaustion, the sixth attraction, the seventh a desperate and divine love, the ninth a goodbye. The album zooms out, ending heavily and happily: there’s “People,” a soothsaying song about black resilience, then “Phenomenal Woman,” a loving collective flex. It’s a pat narrative, made nearly invisible by many abrupt switches and strange moments. Ideas glimmer and then disappear; floods of major and minor emotions brush up against each other, in conflict and in concert. Memories return, too: her last album’s title track is reprised on “Renaissance Moon,” and the funk of the album-opener bubbles through halfway on “Let Me Fall,” and then again at the end. There are many resolutions in the story, and none of them final. The result is an album that feels much longer than the 36 minutes it takes up end to end. As with a stage play, *The Dreaming Room *requires a rigorous type of attention. It pays dividends, and yet Mvula’s artistry doesn’t require this particular type of staging to show through. In 2013, SOHN and Shlohmo remixed “Green Garden” and “She,” respectively—isolating and iterating single phrases to immensely suggestive effect. Any one of the many melodic ideas in any of these restlessly blooming songs could serve as the foundation for another song, and a magnificent one. But then again, why prune a garden when it’s so formidably beautiful as-is?"

Young Money

We Are Young Money

Rap

Ryan Dombal

After recording a staggering amount of verses, hooks, and hallucinogenic hiccups for three-plus years, Lil Wayne topped-out with 2008's Tha Carter III, a success on every level imaginable. And then he basically took 2009 off-- relatively speaking, at least. He still grossed about $42 million in worldwide ticket sales, released two stellar mixtapes (Hottest Nigga Under the Sun and No Ceilings), and was the subject of one of the more fascinating music documentaries in recent memory, The Carter. (I'm just going to pretend to ignore his forever-delayed dalliance into mook-rock, Rebirth, for the time being.) But without new tracks and features hitting the web every week, it did seem like Wayne was M.I.A. He had spoiled us. And that missing feeling tugged harder when he pled guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon in October, a blunder that could put him in a New York jail for a year starting next month, when he's due to be sentenced. These dire circumstances loom over We Are Young Money, the first album from Wayne's cobbled-together hip-hop clique-- can his pupils come close to filling the creative vacuum left by their frighteningly prodigious mentor? Crazily enough, a couple of them just might be able to pull it off. Though Puff Daddy and the Family's pioneering 1997 boomtime opus No Way Out still boasts the greatest number of contributing stars-- Biggie, Mase, Lil' Kim, the L.O.X.-- when it comes to the single-ego-fueled-rap-crew-album genre, most of the time, side players have little chance of becoming anything but. Consider the sorry track record of Eminem's D-12, 50 Cent's G-Unit, Ludacris's Disturbing Tha Peace, or Young Jeezy's U.S.D.A. Even Jay-Z's most overt clique record, 2000's The Dynasty: Roc La Familia couldn't bolster main contributors Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek to much past staunch regional kudos. Last decade, Cam'ron was one of the more successful kingpins, with the 2003 album Diplomatic Immunity spawning semi-careers for Juelz Santana and Jim Jones before Dipset forgot why they were great and imploded. And while We Are Young Money undoubtedly marks a career high for most of Wayne's crew, there are two contributors who have an excellent chance of jumping out from behind their teacher's shadow. Drake is already there. After smashing with lover-not-fighter anthem "Best I Ever Had" and sussing out the logical continuation of Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak sound with his So Far Gone mixtape last year, the singer/rapper's forthcoming major label debut LP is the uncontested Most Anticipated Hip-Hop Bow of 2010. And for good reason-- more than competitors like Kid Cudi and Wale, Drake has the sensitivity, wit, and commercial wherewithal to create the breakout album hip-hop fans longed for, and didn't get, in 2009. His encroaching stardom probably hurts We Are Young Money as an album-- he seems to be saving his signature Auto-Hooks for the solo LP-- but his four verses act as apt teasers, highlighted by a melodic and horny masterclass on "Every Girl" and an anchor lap on "Pass the Dutch", where he boasts: "I told you catch up, did you make a mil yet?/ I can't predict how many of 'em I can still get." Could be quite a few. The other current YM bold face is 25-year-old Queens native Nicki Minaj. A vixen with outlandish curves and a flow that pings between valley girl sex goddess and cartoon thug, Minaj could probably carpet-bomb hip-hop mag covers no matter her skills on the mic. Thankfully, she's much more than a pair of boutique high heels and a dirty mouth-- in fact, with her five WAYM verses, Minaj is the most consistent (and consistently amusing) MC on the entire album. She's as outrageously raunchy as vintage Lil' Kim ("flow tighter than a dick in a butt") and as randomly hilarious as, um, Lil Wayne ("Switch my name, now I'm celebratin' Hanukkah/ Lewinsky, bitches, Young Money Monica/ I been hot since Hedgehog-- Sonic, the"). Like Drake, her 2009 mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty, was a powerful opening salvo, and-- considering recent collaborations with Usher, Robin Thicke, and Mariah Carey-- Minaj has the potential to become the first new out-and-out female rap star in years. In between appearances from Drake, Minaj, and Wayne-- who offers lukewarm verses and/or deranged-but-palatable Auto-Tune hooks on most tracks-- a slew of numbskulls, weirdos, and little kids sometimes make things interesting. On the bonehead front are Gudda Gudda, Mack Maine, and onetime Dipset pal Jae Millz, who show up a lot but have comically little to say. (Sample Mack Maine brain fizzle: "We on some other shit/ They on the same shit/ I'm Mack Maine/ I'm Mack Maine, bitch!") There's an awful singer (Atlanta-based Shannell), an awkward emo refugee (Tyga, who's the cousin of Gym Class Heroes leader Travis McCoy), and a couple of screechy voiced teens whose contributions are mercifully kept to a minimum. Along with its top tier talents, what keeps WAYM from slogging along is a stylistic diversity and a selection of beats that sometimes borders on phenomenal. Unlike most rap crews, YM features artists from all across the continent and not just one regional enclave, so even when the lesser lights take over, at least they don't sound exactly like each other. Meanwhile, upstart producers Chase N. Cashe and Kane Beatz keep things moving sonically, whether it's CNC's baroque, Grizzly Bear-esque (!) beat for "New Shit" or Beatz's bright and haughty instrumental for the hit "Bedrock", which wouldn't sound out of place on a Wes Anderson hip-hop movie score (not to say that should ever exist, necessarily). But reliable Southern stalwart David Banner takes best beat honors with his absolutely-evil subwoofer mulcher "Streets Is Watchin'". It's a shining moment from an album that signals hope for Lil Wayne's collective enterprise even during his imminent state-sanctioned breather.

Artist: Young Money, Album: We Are Young Money, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "After recording a staggering amount of verses, hooks, and hallucinogenic hiccups for three-plus years, Lil Wayne topped-out with 2008's Tha Carter III, a success on every level imaginable. And then he basically took 2009 off-- relatively speaking, at least. He still grossed about $42 million in worldwide ticket sales, released two stellar mixtapes (Hottest Nigga Under the Sun and No Ceilings), and was the subject of one of the more fascinating music documentaries in recent memory, The Carter. (I'm just going to pretend to ignore his forever-delayed dalliance into mook-rock, Rebirth, for the time being.) But without new tracks and features hitting the web every week, it did seem like Wayne was M.I.A. He had spoiled us. And that missing feeling tugged harder when he pled guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon in October, a blunder that could put him in a New York jail for a year starting next month, when he's due to be sentenced. These dire circumstances loom over We Are Young Money, the first album from Wayne's cobbled-together hip-hop clique-- can his pupils come close to filling the creative vacuum left by their frighteningly prodigious mentor? Crazily enough, a couple of them just might be able to pull it off. Though Puff Daddy and the Family's pioneering 1997 boomtime opus No Way Out still boasts the greatest number of contributing stars-- Biggie, Mase, Lil' Kim, the L.O.X.-- when it comes to the single-ego-fueled-rap-crew-album genre, most of the time, side players have little chance of becoming anything but. Consider the sorry track record of Eminem's D-12, 50 Cent's G-Unit, Ludacris's Disturbing Tha Peace, or Young Jeezy's U.S.D.A. Even Jay-Z's most overt clique record, 2000's The Dynasty: Roc La Familia couldn't bolster main contributors Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek to much past staunch regional kudos. Last decade, Cam'ron was one of the more successful kingpins, with the 2003 album Diplomatic Immunity spawning semi-careers for Juelz Santana and Jim Jones before Dipset forgot why they were great and imploded. And while We Are Young Money undoubtedly marks a career high for most of Wayne's crew, there are two contributors who have an excellent chance of jumping out from behind their teacher's shadow. Drake is already there. After smashing with lover-not-fighter anthem "Best I Ever Had" and sussing out the logical continuation of Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak sound with his So Far Gone mixtape last year, the singer/rapper's forthcoming major label debut LP is the uncontested Most Anticipated Hip-Hop Bow of 2010. And for good reason-- more than competitors like Kid Cudi and Wale, Drake has the sensitivity, wit, and commercial wherewithal to create the breakout album hip-hop fans longed for, and didn't get, in 2009. His encroaching stardom probably hurts We Are Young Money as an album-- he seems to be saving his signature Auto-Hooks for the solo LP-- but his four verses act as apt teasers, highlighted by a melodic and horny masterclass on "Every Girl" and an anchor lap on "Pass the Dutch", where he boasts: "I told you catch up, did you make a mil yet?/ I can't predict how many of 'em I can still get." Could be quite a few. The other current YM bold face is 25-year-old Queens native Nicki Minaj. A vixen with outlandish curves and a flow that pings between valley girl sex goddess and cartoon thug, Minaj could probably carpet-bomb hip-hop mag covers no matter her skills on the mic. Thankfully, she's much more than a pair of boutique high heels and a dirty mouth-- in fact, with her five WAYM verses, Minaj is the most consistent (and consistently amusing) MC on the entire album. She's as outrageously raunchy as vintage Lil' Kim ("flow tighter than a dick in a butt") and as randomly hilarious as, um, Lil Wayne ("Switch my name, now I'm celebratin' Hanukkah/ Lewinsky, bitches, Young Money Monica/ I been hot since Hedgehog-- Sonic, the"). Like Drake, her 2009 mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty, was a powerful opening salvo, and-- considering recent collaborations with Usher, Robin Thicke, and Mariah Carey-- Minaj has the potential to become the first new out-and-out female rap star in years. In between appearances from Drake, Minaj, and Wayne-- who offers lukewarm verses and/or deranged-but-palatable Auto-Tune hooks on most tracks-- a slew of numbskulls, weirdos, and little kids sometimes make things interesting. On the bonehead front are Gudda Gudda, Mack Maine, and onetime Dipset pal Jae Millz, who show up a lot but have comically little to say. (Sample Mack Maine brain fizzle: "We on some other shit/ They on the same shit/ I'm Mack Maine/ I'm Mack Maine, bitch!") There's an awful singer (Atlanta-based Shannell), an awkward emo refugee (Tyga, who's the cousin of Gym Class Heroes leader Travis McCoy), and a couple of screechy voiced teens whose contributions are mercifully kept to a minimum. Along with its top tier talents, what keeps WAYM from slogging along is a stylistic diversity and a selection of beats that sometimes borders on phenomenal. Unlike most rap crews, YM features artists from all across the continent and not just one regional enclave, so even when the lesser lights take over, at least they don't sound exactly like each other. Meanwhile, upstart producers Chase N. Cashe and Kane Beatz keep things moving sonically, whether it's CNC's baroque, Grizzly Bear-esque (!) beat for "New Shit" or Beatz's bright and haughty instrumental for the hit "Bedrock", which wouldn't sound out of place on a Wes Anderson hip-hop movie score (not to say that should ever exist, necessarily). But reliable Southern stalwart David Banner takes best beat honors with his absolutely-evil subwoofer mulcher "Streets Is Watchin'". It's a shining moment from an album that signals hope for Lil Wayne's collective enterprise even during his imminent state-sanctioned breather."

Ikue Mori, Julianna Barwick

FRKWYS Vol. 6

Experimental,Rock,Electronic

Brian Howe

Up to now, Julianna Barwick has not often engaged in collaboration. Her process, which involves layering her voice with a Loop Station, is defined by solitude; a feeling that comes across in her music with full force. So it was a nice surprise to hear that she would contribute to the Rvng label's FRKWYS series of 12" records, which pairs contemporary and classic electronic artists. Barwick drew Ikue Mori of the seminal no-wave band DNA, who has ably kept up with new technology, evolving from trap sets to drum machines to computer software. The four extended, improvised movements that compose FRKWYS Vol. 6 are familiar turf for Mori, but a whole new world for Barwick. The music was recorded in New York's White Columns gallery last fall-- half with the musicians each isolated in a cubicle; Mori with her laptop and Barwick with her looping console. (A video documenting the performance can be found here.) Right away, with "Dream Sequence", fans of Florine and The Magic Place will find themselves in new territory. Barwick's voice is lightly scattered amid an array of computerized slide whistles and metallic resonance-- not an enveloping presence, but a thing among things. Several minutes elapse before she unleashes one of her trademarked melodious shrieks. Playing against Barwick's usual placidity, it's almost chaotic, but still has a clear build, climax, and resolution. Mori's music comes from machines but evokes the natural world, pulling in sounds like dripping water, crackling electricity, and warped chimes. This is consistent across all four tracks, though each has a singular arc and feel once you get past the uniformly distressed surfaces. On "Stalactite Castle", Barwick's voice competes with mechanical vortices that call to mind Ellen Allien and Antye Greie. Then she takes a more leading and openly songful role on "Rain and Shine at the Lotus Pond" and "Rejoinder", with an almost choral home stretch bringing the record to an arresting close. Barwick fans may feel an initial wave of disappointment that this doesn't bash you over the head with holiness the way her records do. And those who appreciate her music through the filter of Enya, rather than Brian Eno, may find Mori's haywire electronics simply indigestible. It's not the sort of thing you just throw on in the background, as The Magic Place could be. But taken on its own terms, it's a sneakily bewitching record that bodes well for Barwick's future. Until now, we knew that she was very good at one thing-- FRKWYS Vol. 6 is an encouraging sign that she's willing and able to branch out.

Artist: Ikue Mori, Julianna Barwick, Album: FRKWYS Vol. 6, Genre: Experimental,Rock,Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Up to now, Julianna Barwick has not often engaged in collaboration. Her process, which involves layering her voice with a Loop Station, is defined by solitude; a feeling that comes across in her music with full force. So it was a nice surprise to hear that she would contribute to the Rvng label's FRKWYS series of 12" records, which pairs contemporary and classic electronic artists. Barwick drew Ikue Mori of the seminal no-wave band DNA, who has ably kept up with new technology, evolving from trap sets to drum machines to computer software. The four extended, improvised movements that compose FRKWYS Vol. 6 are familiar turf for Mori, but a whole new world for Barwick. The music was recorded in New York's White Columns gallery last fall-- half with the musicians each isolated in a cubicle; Mori with her laptop and Barwick with her looping console. (A video documenting the performance can be found here.) Right away, with "Dream Sequence", fans of Florine and The Magic Place will find themselves in new territory. Barwick's voice is lightly scattered amid an array of computerized slide whistles and metallic resonance-- not an enveloping presence, but a thing among things. Several minutes elapse before she unleashes one of her trademarked melodious shrieks. Playing against Barwick's usual placidity, it's almost chaotic, but still has a clear build, climax, and resolution. Mori's music comes from machines but evokes the natural world, pulling in sounds like dripping water, crackling electricity, and warped chimes. This is consistent across all four tracks, though each has a singular arc and feel once you get past the uniformly distressed surfaces. On "Stalactite Castle", Barwick's voice competes with mechanical vortices that call to mind Ellen Allien and Antye Greie. Then she takes a more leading and openly songful role on "Rain and Shine at the Lotus Pond" and "Rejoinder", with an almost choral home stretch bringing the record to an arresting close. Barwick fans may feel an initial wave of disappointment that this doesn't bash you over the head with holiness the way her records do. And those who appreciate her music through the filter of Enya, rather than Brian Eno, may find Mori's haywire electronics simply indigestible. It's not the sort of thing you just throw on in the background, as The Magic Place could be. But taken on its own terms, it's a sneakily bewitching record that bodes well for Barwick's future. Until now, we knew that she was very good at one thing-- FRKWYS Vol. 6 is an encouraging sign that she's willing and able to branch out."

Nils Frahm

Victoria OST

Electronic

Jayson Greene

Victoria is a German movie, filmed in one long shot. It observes the night of a young couple who meet, flirt, and stumble their way improbably into a violent heist. In the film's charged, uncertain atmosphere, the glow of anticipation from meeting someone new and the tingle of dread right before something awful happens both occur along one unbroken continuum: When life gets better, it is also one hair’s breadth away from getting worse. The German producer Nils Frahm composed the film's score, and if you listened to it and tried to imagine the film he was working on, you'd probably arrive at a very different movie—something sweet-toned and modest, slightly grave, and above all, muted. Maybe a family drama where none of the members can quite muster the strength to say exactly what they're feeling. It is a mood that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time with Frahm's solo piano albums, the most recent of which (Solo) he released for free just in April. The Victoria OST marshals more instruments than his solo piano works, but not many more—each new sound, whether it's a husky-throated cello on "Our Own Roof" or the subcutaneous hum of organ keys on "The Bank", tiptoes in carefully and gingerly. Frahm’s score works along Brian Eno's fabled ignorable/interesting divide: You can soak in the long, receding tones like you would sit in the sun beneath a big window, or you can fixate on surgically tiny details, like the way you can nearly hear the felt of the piano hammers being brushed into individual fibers on "A Stolen Car", or the rustle of whatever foreign objects he’s placed on the strings to make them generate extra noises. Frahm strikes little "off" notes in the interstices of that piece's simple major chords, so that when they ring, they don’t ring "clean"—there is a tendril of sour air in them, seemingly acknowledging the turmoil that plays out on the screen. Moments like this in Frahm’s score are furtive and quiet: There is a foreboding drone piece called "In the Parking Garage", full of room tone and tiny, human-sounding scrapes, that hits your ear the way a parking garage's sodium lighting assaults your eye. And the album opens with a DJ Koze edit called "Burn With Me", in which a dry techno thump meets a dull knock and some nauseated synths. Frahm’s aesthetic shares something in common with Koze, whose touch suggests someone who would prefer to cover all exposed hard edges with blankets so no one gets hurt. Frahm's awareness seems repeatedly drawn to glowing spaces where notes ring out after they've been struck. These spaces mimic the way a memorable event lingers in our minds, acquiring new shades of meaning and slowly receding into the morass of our lived experience. In echo-rich, contemplative music like this, the event itself doesn’t matter nearly as much as its aftereffects, the way it changes over time and the way it changes you.

Artist: Nils Frahm, Album: Victoria OST, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Victoria is a German movie, filmed in one long shot. It observes the night of a young couple who meet, flirt, and stumble their way improbably into a violent heist. In the film's charged, uncertain atmosphere, the glow of anticipation from meeting someone new and the tingle of dread right before something awful happens both occur along one unbroken continuum: When life gets better, it is also one hair’s breadth away from getting worse. The German producer Nils Frahm composed the film's score, and if you listened to it and tried to imagine the film he was working on, you'd probably arrive at a very different movie—something sweet-toned and modest, slightly grave, and above all, muted. Maybe a family drama where none of the members can quite muster the strength to say exactly what they're feeling. It is a mood that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time with Frahm's solo piano albums, the most recent of which (Solo) he released for free just in April. The Victoria OST marshals more instruments than his solo piano works, but not many more—each new sound, whether it's a husky-throated cello on "Our Own Roof" or the subcutaneous hum of organ keys on "The Bank", tiptoes in carefully and gingerly. Frahm’s score works along Brian Eno's fabled ignorable/interesting divide: You can soak in the long, receding tones like you would sit in the sun beneath a big window, or you can fixate on surgically tiny details, like the way you can nearly hear the felt of the piano hammers being brushed into individual fibers on "A Stolen Car", or the rustle of whatever foreign objects he’s placed on the strings to make them generate extra noises. Frahm strikes little "off" notes in the interstices of that piece's simple major chords, so that when they ring, they don’t ring "clean"—there is a tendril of sour air in them, seemingly acknowledging the turmoil that plays out on the screen. Moments like this in Frahm’s score are furtive and quiet: There is a foreboding drone piece called "In the Parking Garage", full of room tone and tiny, human-sounding scrapes, that hits your ear the way a parking garage's sodium lighting assaults your eye. And the album opens with a DJ Koze edit called "Burn With Me", in which a dry techno thump meets a dull knock and some nauseated synths. Frahm’s aesthetic shares something in common with Koze, whose touch suggests someone who would prefer to cover all exposed hard edges with blankets so no one gets hurt. Frahm's awareness seems repeatedly drawn to glowing spaces where notes ring out after they've been struck. These spaces mimic the way a memorable event lingers in our minds, acquiring new shades of meaning and slowly receding into the morass of our lived experience. In echo-rich, contemplative music like this, the event itself doesn’t matter nearly as much as its aftereffects, the way it changes over time and the way it changes you."

Sun City Girls

Piasa...Devourer of Men

Rock

Mike Powell

In February 2007, Charles Gocher, drummer for Sun City Girls, died of cancer. Alan and Richard Bishop, the trio's bassist and guitarist, respectively, retired the band's name after 25 years of recording. Gocher's death spawned at least one hard, unromantic fact: One of the hairiest discographies in indie music wouldn't get any bigger. Quality control not only wasn't the group's forte, it was posited as antithetical to their ethic, an affront to spontaneity. Editing responsibilities were, essentially, left to the listener. This is an admirable line to toe as an artist and an obnoxious one to force on a consumer. The band has about 20 albums to choose from if you're buying new; counting used bins, eBay, and purloined stuffing from clandestine sources, it's closer to 50. But part of their genius was their anti-commercial commercialism. They recorded compulsively and released a substantial portion of what they recorded. Sun City Girls promotional discs tend to come directly from Alan Bishop. They're a cottage industry: They'll never grow outside of the house, but they're not too bashful or precious to work their product like a mule. The other part of their genius was their style. Sun City Girls' music might be most succinctly described as pan-ethnic folk played as trebly, half-improvised punk rock. But even that's a detrimental redux. Better to say they auditioned just about every guitar-based sound you'd never hear on a "pop" record with agility, humor, and focus so intense it often slipped into sounding cross-eyed. The writer Byron Coley once said that without them, all underground music would sound like Merzbow. Blender noise. Not a pleasant thought. But Coley's comment was as much about attitude as sound. Sun City Girls' sense of showmanship was the snake-oil salesman's or a circus performer's more than the artist's. It was flashy and full of mysterious bullshit. It was based on mutual suspension of belief, on the idea that they were shamanic conduits bearing deep-ass mysteries in their rucksacks to produce to their audience like rare gems or exotic birds. Jack's Creek, Piasa...Devourer of Men, and Juggernaut were all out of print before this past fall. It's not like SCG to reissue, but now that Gocher's gone, it's not surprising that they're willing to till the catalog a little more before quieting down. Ostensibly, Jack's Creek is the band's Americana record. Given their treatments of non-Western music, the prospect is interesting. The results, though, are ironic. It's unlistenable. Bad. Why they'd re-release it over other out-of-print SCG albums is beyond me. Juggernaut and Piasa are both soundtracks, and in turn both explore the quieter, less intrusive sides of their music. Piasa fares better. SCG could never really assimilate to a background, though, and that's one of the nice things about listening to Piasa-- it's a mood record that errs on the side of getting your attention rather than making itself invisible. It's also an album where the band gave full reign to their timbral experimentation, incorporating Asian horns, metal percussion, hand drums, and acoustic guitars into a sound that usually prided itself on the economy of the rock trio. Tackling Sun City Girls in a review is essentially exhausting. Some releases are better than others. It's hard to imagine someone liking one album and finding nothing in the rest of their catalog to appreciate. I couldn't even say that these few reissues are particularly worth it, save Piasa. As callous as it might be to say, it's nice to be able to start thinking about SCG in retrospect--even on the weakest moments in these three records, evidence of their influence on modern underground music is apparent and, at times, even overwhelming. And while the Sun City Girls are a band more likely to get brainlessly name-checked than actually listened to, well, that's immaterial-- the curious vagaries of influence. I could certainly think of worse figureheads.

Artist: Sun City Girls, Album: Piasa...Devourer of Men, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "In February 2007, Charles Gocher, drummer for Sun City Girls, died of cancer. Alan and Richard Bishop, the trio's bassist and guitarist, respectively, retired the band's name after 25 years of recording. Gocher's death spawned at least one hard, unromantic fact: One of the hairiest discographies in indie music wouldn't get any bigger. Quality control not only wasn't the group's forte, it was posited as antithetical to their ethic, an affront to spontaneity. Editing responsibilities were, essentially, left to the listener. This is an admirable line to toe as an artist and an obnoxious one to force on a consumer. The band has about 20 albums to choose from if you're buying new; counting used bins, eBay, and purloined stuffing from clandestine sources, it's closer to 50. But part of their genius was their anti-commercial commercialism. They recorded compulsively and released a substantial portion of what they recorded. Sun City Girls promotional discs tend to come directly from Alan Bishop. They're a cottage industry: They'll never grow outside of the house, but they're not too bashful or precious to work their product like a mule. The other part of their genius was their style. Sun City Girls' music might be most succinctly described as pan-ethnic folk played as trebly, half-improvised punk rock. But even that's a detrimental redux. Better to say they auditioned just about every guitar-based sound you'd never hear on a "pop" record with agility, humor, and focus so intense it often slipped into sounding cross-eyed. The writer Byron Coley once said that without them, all underground music would sound like Merzbow. Blender noise. Not a pleasant thought. But Coley's comment was as much about attitude as sound. Sun City Girls' sense of showmanship was the snake-oil salesman's or a circus performer's more than the artist's. It was flashy and full of mysterious bullshit. It was based on mutual suspension of belief, on the idea that they were shamanic conduits bearing deep-ass mysteries in their rucksacks to produce to their audience like rare gems or exotic birds. Jack's Creek, Piasa...Devourer of Men, and Juggernaut were all out of print before this past fall. It's not like SCG to reissue, but now that Gocher's gone, it's not surprising that they're willing to till the catalog a little more before quieting down. Ostensibly, Jack's Creek is the band's Americana record. Given their treatments of non-Western music, the prospect is interesting. The results, though, are ironic. It's unlistenable. Bad. Why they'd re-release it over other out-of-print SCG albums is beyond me. Juggernaut and Piasa are both soundtracks, and in turn both explore the quieter, less intrusive sides of their music. Piasa fares better. SCG could never really assimilate to a background, though, and that's one of the nice things about listening to Piasa-- it's a mood record that errs on the side of getting your attention rather than making itself invisible. It's also an album where the band gave full reign to their timbral experimentation, incorporating Asian horns, metal percussion, hand drums, and acoustic guitars into a sound that usually prided itself on the economy of the rock trio. Tackling Sun City Girls in a review is essentially exhausting. Some releases are better than others. It's hard to imagine someone liking one album and finding nothing in the rest of their catalog to appreciate. I couldn't even say that these few reissues are particularly worth it, save Piasa. As callous as it might be to say, it's nice to be able to start thinking about SCG in retrospect--even on the weakest moments in these three records, evidence of their influence on modern underground music is apparent and, at times, even overwhelming. And while the Sun City Girls are a band more likely to get brainlessly name-checked than actually listened to, well, that's immaterial-- the curious vagaries of influence. I could certainly think of worse figureheads."

Gesaffelstein

Aleph

Jamieson Cox

In order to realize his brutal musical vision with Yeezus, Kanye West enlisted a congregation’s worth of collaborators with a highly diversified range of skills: honeyed indie crooners, European EDM wunderkinds, luminary rock producers, M.I.A.’s former fiancé. Another helping hand was lent by Mike Levy, the French producer who records and performs as Gesaffelstein. He worked on the bruising, stadium-ready “Black Skinhead” and the raucous, emergency-lit “Send It Up” alongside label mate Brodinski and sonic grandfathers Daft Punk, among others. A quick glimpse at Gesaffelstein’s professional mythology is all it takes to understand the heart of his appeal to West: a shared interest in art and fashion, a personal aesthetic possessed of palpable intensity and ripe with darkness and violence, and an eye towards intellectual concerns broader than music. (It’s captured neatly in his chosen moniker: Gesaffelstein is a portmanteau that combines the German word “gesamtkunstwerk,” meaning “universal artwork,” and Albert Einstein, an inspirational figure.) His debut album Aleph fuses those pre-existing aspirations to ideas about style that feel directly derived from his work with West, with its cover—a jewel case containing a gold disc, the case overlaid with complex patterns reminiscent of circuitry—serving as the most obvious hat tip. It’s a testament to Levy’s talent, and to the strength of his sonic identity, that Aleph merits comparison to Yeezus in terms of its thematic consistency and coherence. From the ferocious spoken introduction that marks opener “Out of Line” (one of several appearances by Parisian vocalist Chloé Raunet) to the slowly rising sirens echoing throughout “Perfection”, this is an absolutely relentless record: there’s no sunlight to be had on Aleph. Levy specializes in two types of songs: fiery, raging bangers meant for the dank club at the end of the world, and meditative mood pieces that bubble and loom while you’re fighting through the next morning’s hangover. Thoughtful sequencing choices help to amplify the magnitude of the difference between the members of these phylums, and have the added benefit of lending Aleph a natural-seeming cycle of attack and release. When doom-soaked, muscular lead single “Pursuit” glides into the ominous, slowly shifting “Nameless”, it’s as if we’ve been given a well-earned breather after enduring the intense assault of the former. It’s a trick Levy pulls multiple times without diluting its effect, made possible by the tonal differences between the album’s higher-octane tracks: “Send It Up” relative “Hellifornia” pairs a trunk-ratting hip-hop rhythm with a howling, DEFCON 1-level screech, while “Duel” earns its combative title by pitting a furious, hyper-kinetic beat against a friction-fried synth that refuses to let up. While the album’s dark, dance-ready techno cuts certainly demand their fair share of attention, Levy takes advantage of the album’s quieter moments and displays surprising levels of subtlety and restraint. With its eerie guitar melodies and digital choruses of the damned, the title track could slot neatly into a collection of outtakes from the Drive soundtrack; mid-album counterpart “Wall of Memories” fares even better, bulging and warping underneath a haunted piano line. By making room for both potential floor-filling wrecking balls and quieter, spookier moments on Aleph, Levy sets himself up as the sort of transcendental figure who can fill up festival EDM tents full of drop enthusiasts while simultaneously appealing to listeners who consider themselves more nuanced consumers of contemporary electronic material. If Aleph has a weakness, it's the album's lack of concision. At around an hour, this is a lengthy, demanding record, and the relentless push that constitutes a major part of its excitement in small blocks renders it somewhat exhausting when ingested as a whole. While some of the strongest songs—the stomach-churning “Hate or Glory”, the piston-powered techno workout “Trans”—are tucked near its conclusion, it takes an effort to make it to the finish line. The importance of brevity is a lesson Levy didn't pickup after working on Yeezus, a similarly dark record that clocks in at a brisk 40 minutes. A distillation of the sounds and themes contained within Aleph into an equally slim package would render his next record truly fearsome.

Artist: Gesaffelstein, Album: Aleph, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In order to realize his brutal musical vision with Yeezus, Kanye West enlisted a congregation’s worth of collaborators with a highly diversified range of skills: honeyed indie crooners, European EDM wunderkinds, luminary rock producers, M.I.A.’s former fiancé. Another helping hand was lent by Mike Levy, the French producer who records and performs as Gesaffelstein. He worked on the bruising, stadium-ready “Black Skinhead” and the raucous, emergency-lit “Send It Up” alongside label mate Brodinski and sonic grandfathers Daft Punk, among others. A quick glimpse at Gesaffelstein’s professional mythology is all it takes to understand the heart of his appeal to West: a shared interest in art and fashion, a personal aesthetic possessed of palpable intensity and ripe with darkness and violence, and an eye towards intellectual concerns broader than music. (It’s captured neatly in his chosen moniker: Gesaffelstein is a portmanteau that combines the German word “gesamtkunstwerk,” meaning “universal artwork,” and Albert Einstein, an inspirational figure.) His debut album Aleph fuses those pre-existing aspirations to ideas about style that feel directly derived from his work with West, with its cover—a jewel case containing a gold disc, the case overlaid with complex patterns reminiscent of circuitry—serving as the most obvious hat tip. It’s a testament to Levy’s talent, and to the strength of his sonic identity, that Aleph merits comparison to Yeezus in terms of its thematic consistency and coherence. From the ferocious spoken introduction that marks opener “Out of Line” (one of several appearances by Parisian vocalist Chloé Raunet) to the slowly rising sirens echoing throughout “Perfection”, this is an absolutely relentless record: there’s no sunlight to be had on Aleph. Levy specializes in two types of songs: fiery, raging bangers meant for the dank club at the end of the world, and meditative mood pieces that bubble and loom while you’re fighting through the next morning’s hangover. Thoughtful sequencing choices help to amplify the magnitude of the difference between the members of these phylums, and have the added benefit of lending Aleph a natural-seeming cycle of attack and release. When doom-soaked, muscular lead single “Pursuit” glides into the ominous, slowly shifting “Nameless”, it’s as if we’ve been given a well-earned breather after enduring the intense assault of the former. It’s a trick Levy pulls multiple times without diluting its effect, made possible by the tonal differences between the album’s higher-octane tracks: “Send It Up” relative “Hellifornia” pairs a trunk-ratting hip-hop rhythm with a howling, DEFCON 1-level screech, while “Duel” earns its combative title by pitting a furious, hyper-kinetic beat against a friction-fried synth that refuses to let up. While the album’s dark, dance-ready techno cuts certainly demand their fair share of attention, Levy takes advantage of the album’s quieter moments and displays surprising levels of subtlety and restraint. With its eerie guitar melodies and digital choruses of the damned, the title track could slot neatly into a collection of outtakes from the Drive soundtrack; mid-album counterpart “Wall of Memories” fares even better, bulging and warping underneath a haunted piano line. By making room for both potential floor-filling wrecking balls and quieter, spookier moments on Aleph, Levy sets himself up as the sort of transcendental figure who can fill up festival EDM tents full of drop enthusiasts while simultaneously appealing to listeners who consider themselves more nuanced consumers of contemporary electronic material. If Aleph has a weakness, it's the album's lack of concision. At around an hour, this is a lengthy, demanding record, and the relentless push that constitutes a major part of its excitement in small blocks renders it somewhat exhausting when ingested as a whole. While some of the strongest songs—the stomach-churning “Hate or Glory”, the piston-powered techno workout “Trans”—are tucked near its conclusion, it takes an effort to make it to the finish line. The importance of brevity is a lesson Levy didn't pickup after working on Yeezus, a similarly dark record that clocks in at a brisk 40 minutes. A distillation of the sounds and themes contained within Aleph into an equally slim package would render his next record truly fearsome."

Fleet Foxes

Sun Giant EP

Folk/Country

Stephen M. Deusner

The opening track on Fleet Foxes' debut EP is the perfect introduction to this Seattle band, whose carefully fashioned songs reward more active listening than your typical indie-roots outfit. "Sun Giant" begins with their soft harmonies reverberating in what sounds like a cathedral space. With no accompaniment, their sustained a cappella notes fade slowly, adding gravity to this hymn of contentment: "What a life I lead in the summer/ What a life I lead in the spring." The only other instrument is Skyler Skjelset's mandolin, which enters late in the song playing a delicate theme as singer Robin Pecknold hums quietly. The Sun Giant EP-- sold on tour and digitally through Sub Pop, with a proper release forthcoming-- contains familiar sounds, but Fleet Foxes make something new and special with them, following their own musical whims as closely as they follow tradition. (Maybe more closely.) These five songs-- modest but never spare, atmospheric but never as an end in itself-- change shape constantly, taking in elements of classic rock, church music, old-timey folk, and soundtrack flourishes. Already mistaken for Southern rock (there's not enough boogie in Nicholas Peterson's drums for that), Fleet Foxes will bear repeated comparisons, both praising and disparaging, to groups like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses, but those connections are based on superficial similarities like geography or the heavy use of reverb. In fact, Fleet Foxes' touchstones are much more diverse than that-- and not necessarily so contemporary. Until recently, their MySpace page listed Judee Sill, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Fairport Convention as influences, although now it reads "not much of a rock band." That's not especially true. You could also make a case that Fleet Foxes' demonstrative harmonies recall Fleetwood Mac; that their rearrangement and recombination of traditional styles hints at the Band or, more recently, Grizzly Bear; that their short, evocative instrumental phrasing bears similarities to Pinetop Seven. Such comparisons accompany the arrival of most young bands, but Fleet Foxes' songs inhabit a very specific, very rural space that's as much a product of how these songs are assembled as it is of how they sound. Like a novelist writing intricately winding sentences, the band craft hummable melodies that never quite go where you expect, but sound neither manipulated nor directed. After the quiet title track comes "Drops in the River", which builds gradually as the band patiently add instruments-- strange ambient clattering in the background and simple floor toms in place of a drum kit, accentuated with tambourine and a snaky electric guitar. Halfway through the song, Fleet Foxes reach a dramatic peak, and their next move is surprising: The music ebbs momentarily, as if to build anew through a second verse, but then picks up at that same dramatic level. Like the rest of the EP, "Drops in the River" possesses an intriguingly blunt concision, as though Fleet Foxes have no time for the luxury of long, slow crescendos or meandering jams. They focus their arrangements finely, emphasizing Pecknold's rustically impressionistic lyrics as much as their organic and inventive sound. "English House" and "Mykonos", the longest and most obviously "rock" songs, comprise the EP's rising action and reveal more of Fleet Foxes' range. The former is a graceful downward rush of guitars and percussion, with a falsetto chorus trimming the music like Christmas lights in the rafters. "Mykonos" doesn't travel as far as its title suggests, but thrives on the tension between Pecknold's wordless vocal intro and the band's intricate harmonies. Of course, it careens off in new directions. "Brother, you don't need to turn me away," Pecknold pleads, bringing the song to a dramatic standstill. Then the band just runs away with the song again. The Sun Giant EP ends with Pecknold alone once more, singing "Innocent Son" with only a few brusque strums as accompaniment. With only the sparsest elements, he turns the song into a sort of rough county-road soul, his voice unceremoniously fading out on the final words. This song, and the others here, reinforce the impression that Sun Giant is more than a tour souvenir or a promotional teaser for a proper release. It's a sovereign work: a statement EP, supremely crafted and confident.

Artist: Fleet Foxes, Album: Sun Giant EP, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "The opening track on Fleet Foxes' debut EP is the perfect introduction to this Seattle band, whose carefully fashioned songs reward more active listening than your typical indie-roots outfit. "Sun Giant" begins with their soft harmonies reverberating in what sounds like a cathedral space. With no accompaniment, their sustained a cappella notes fade slowly, adding gravity to this hymn of contentment: "What a life I lead in the summer/ What a life I lead in the spring." The only other instrument is Skyler Skjelset's mandolin, which enters late in the song playing a delicate theme as singer Robin Pecknold hums quietly. The Sun Giant EP-- sold on tour and digitally through Sub Pop, with a proper release forthcoming-- contains familiar sounds, but Fleet Foxes make something new and special with them, following their own musical whims as closely as they follow tradition. (Maybe more closely.) These five songs-- modest but never spare, atmospheric but never as an end in itself-- change shape constantly, taking in elements of classic rock, church music, old-timey folk, and soundtrack flourishes. Already mistaken for Southern rock (there's not enough boogie in Nicholas Peterson's drums for that), Fleet Foxes will bear repeated comparisons, both praising and disparaging, to groups like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses, but those connections are based on superficial similarities like geography or the heavy use of reverb. In fact, Fleet Foxes' touchstones are much more diverse than that-- and not necessarily so contemporary. Until recently, their MySpace page listed Judee Sill, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Fairport Convention as influences, although now it reads "not much of a rock band." That's not especially true. You could also make a case that Fleet Foxes' demonstrative harmonies recall Fleetwood Mac; that their rearrangement and recombination of traditional styles hints at the Band or, more recently, Grizzly Bear; that their short, evocative instrumental phrasing bears similarities to Pinetop Seven. Such comparisons accompany the arrival of most young bands, but Fleet Foxes' songs inhabit a very specific, very rural space that's as much a product of how these songs are assembled as it is of how they sound. Like a novelist writing intricately winding sentences, the band craft hummable melodies that never quite go where you expect, but sound neither manipulated nor directed. After the quiet title track comes "Drops in the River", which builds gradually as the band patiently add instruments-- strange ambient clattering in the background and simple floor toms in place of a drum kit, accentuated with tambourine and a snaky electric guitar. Halfway through the song, Fleet Foxes reach a dramatic peak, and their next move is surprising: The music ebbs momentarily, as if to build anew through a second verse, but then picks up at that same dramatic level. Like the rest of the EP, "Drops in the River" possesses an intriguingly blunt concision, as though Fleet Foxes have no time for the luxury of long, slow crescendos or meandering jams. They focus their arrangements finely, emphasizing Pecknold's rustically impressionistic lyrics as much as their organic and inventive sound. "English House" and "Mykonos", the longest and most obviously "rock" songs, comprise the EP's rising action and reveal more of Fleet Foxes' range. The former is a graceful downward rush of guitars and percussion, with a falsetto chorus trimming the music like Christmas lights in the rafters. "Mykonos" doesn't travel as far as its title suggests, but thrives on the tension between Pecknold's wordless vocal intro and the band's intricate harmonies. Of course, it careens off in new directions. "Brother, you don't need to turn me away," Pecknold pleads, bringing the song to a dramatic standstill. Then the band just runs away with the song again. The Sun Giant EP ends with Pecknold alone once more, singing "Innocent Son" with only a few brusque strums as accompaniment. With only the sparsest elements, he turns the song into a sort of rough county-road soul, his voice unceremoniously fading out on the final words. This song, and the others here, reinforce the impression that Sun Giant is more than a tour souvenir or a promotional teaser for a proper release. It's a sovereign work: a statement EP, supremely crafted and confident."

Azealia Banks

Fantasea

Rap

Marc Hogan

Here's a partial list of what Azealia Banks has been up to since the digital release of her debut 1991 EP less than two months ago: She said in a Tumblr post she would be quitting "the 'rap game'... or whatever the fuck that means." She split with her manager, who also represents Lady Gaga. She pushed back the release date of her mixtape, Fantasea-- previously titled Fantastic-- by a week. She performed live at what she billed as a Mermaid Ball, first in New York, and then in Los Angeles, being joined for the latter by Charli XCX, Rye Rye, and unannounced guest Robyn. A New York tabloid even published gossip about her love life. The 21-year-old Harlem native's use of mermaid imagery for this release is a revealing choice, and not just for its connection to the self-consciously ridiculous #seapunk subculture (which, hilariously, disavows mermaids anyway). Like Ariel with her thingamabobs, Banks is caught between worlds, a figure in transition. Her 19-track, 52-minute mixtape is an often thrilling document of a phenomenally gifted performer in a state of flux: between rapper and singer, between dance and hip-hop, between consolidating the gains built on last winter's raunchily transcendent single "212" and trying out new approaches. If, as she put it, Fantasea is a "test run," then Banks passes with aquamarine colors. Speaking of blue streaks, she's on one. The past several weeks also saw Banks rapping foul-mouthed circles around Missy Elliott on a remix of M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls". It's the nearest she's come to the conventional hip-hop path of showing up on a better-known rapper's track, although she has appeared on music by non-rappers Major Lazer, Scissor Sisters, and, inevitably, Lana Del Rey. And whether or not Banks wants to be known as an MC, many of Fantasea's best moments showcase her slang-wise verbal dexterity. "Jumanji", produced by TNGHT's Hudson Mohawke and fellow UK producer Nick Hook, is the closest thing to another "212", with rapidfire verses and an instantly quotable "real bitch, all day/ Uptown, Broadway" hook over what sounds like elephants escaping from an urban zoo. Diplo's marching "Fuck Up the Fun" lets Banks swerve between casual, non-rapped chatter and ratatat shit talk. In fact, Banks' sharp ear for Caribbean-inflected, rave-reminiscent electronic backing tracks is another major factor in Fantasea's considerable appeal. From the opening rework of Prodigy's jungle-crazed, Max Romeo-sampling 1992 single "Out of Space", the mood evokes nothing so much as Zomby's modernization of vintage electronic dance music on 2008's Where Were U in '92?. An early peak is the chipmunk-pitched house diva cries and disembodied Michael J. Fox anti-drug PSA of the title track, where Banks shifts between virtuosic fast rap and a flirtatiously sung refrain over Machinedrum's neon-blippy "Fantastix". Just as Banks has taken a non-traditional hip-hop path, she's avoiding lazy Calvin Harris-David Guetta club-pop trendfucking, too. Of course, vintage house also has loads of connotations when it comes to sexual politics. For all the bravery of Frank Ocean's unforgettable story of his unrequited love for a man, it's worth remembering that Banks-- like her fellow LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts alumna Nicki Minaj-- previously went on the record as bixexual. Fantasea is notably fluid in its highly explicit sexual voraciousness; guys get a taste of that, erm, cake on other TNGHT half Lunice's cloud-rap snake charmer "Runnin'", while on O/W/W/W/L/S' cash-register-accented production "Us", Banks chuckles: "I know niggas who probably dicked a nigga." Less successful is Banks' on-the-nose vogue-rap over Zebra Katz' minimal "Ima Read", previously cattily perfected by Njena Reddd Foxxx. "Fierce", the mixtape's most overt gay-culture ode, endearingly samples a former drag queen and suggests that financial success is better than acclaim. All that said, Fantasea is weakest when it comes to its aquatic theme. The mermaid references on "Aquababe" feel forced, despite riding a Machinedrum remix of Portland producer EProm's "Regis Chillbin" that brings to mind an air raid at a cantina for singing humpback whales. The guest rappers, too-- Yonkers hardass Styles P on acid-squiggling earworm "Nathan", London grime vet Shystie over an otherworldly Ikonika track on "Neptune"-- lend credibility, but can't quite enter Banks' self-contained world; her lack of non-producer collaborators more generally appears to be a wise choice. The brassily sung come-ons of "Chips" are forgettable, a rarity for Banks. And her pre-"212" no-holds-barred rhymes on "L8R" lack a bit of the artist's later fire, though they do offer a provocative reminder that her talk of bisexuality isn't just for interviews. That last song, "L8R", ends with in-studio banter about slang-term du jour "ratchet," a phrase that for many people might be destined for association with Banks-- once she decides who and what she wants to be. With her debut album, tentatively titled Broke With Expensive Taste, still slated for this fall, that moment of truth is coming soon. Maybe "Bambi", a trance-inducing track overseen by Adele producer Paul Epworth that premiered early this year at a fashion show in Paris, will finally get an official release on the LP. In the meantime, the best and penultimate cut on Fantasea, "Esta Noche", points in a promising new direction: conversational, cheater-luring pickup lines over a warmly inviting sample from Montell Jordan's 1999 R&B hit "Get It on Tonite", interjected with screeching nu-rave paroxysms courtesy of Dutch producer Munchi. The comparisons to Minaj, whose own recent singles tend to break out in strobe-lit beach-rave sections, might persist. But that wouldn't be such a bad thing. "Head of the class/ But I got principles, too," Banks purrs. The biggest surprise from the rapper who made "cunt" safe for the New York Times' Style section might be if she discovers a square, sensitive side. Still, I wouldn't bet on it. "I've been out for three years," she told the paper in February, reassuring those who fear her rise to fame has been too fast. "I've been around." Or whatever the fuck that means. This much has been officially confirmed by scientists since Banks' previous EP: Mermaids don't exist. The seapunks were right.

Artist: Azealia Banks, Album: Fantasea, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Here's a partial list of what Azealia Banks has been up to since the digital release of her debut 1991 EP less than two months ago: She said in a Tumblr post she would be quitting "the 'rap game'... or whatever the fuck that means." She split with her manager, who also represents Lady Gaga. She pushed back the release date of her mixtape, Fantasea-- previously titled Fantastic-- by a week. She performed live at what she billed as a Mermaid Ball, first in New York, and then in Los Angeles, being joined for the latter by Charli XCX, Rye Rye, and unannounced guest Robyn. A New York tabloid even published gossip about her love life. The 21-year-old Harlem native's use of mermaid imagery for this release is a revealing choice, and not just for its connection to the self-consciously ridiculous #seapunk subculture (which, hilariously, disavows mermaids anyway). Like Ariel with her thingamabobs, Banks is caught between worlds, a figure in transition. Her 19-track, 52-minute mixtape is an often thrilling document of a phenomenally gifted performer in a state of flux: between rapper and singer, between dance and hip-hop, between consolidating the gains built on last winter's raunchily transcendent single "212" and trying out new approaches. If, as she put it, Fantasea is a "test run," then Banks passes with aquamarine colors. Speaking of blue streaks, she's on one. The past several weeks also saw Banks rapping foul-mouthed circles around Missy Elliott on a remix of M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls". It's the nearest she's come to the conventional hip-hop path of showing up on a better-known rapper's track, although she has appeared on music by non-rappers Major Lazer, Scissor Sisters, and, inevitably, Lana Del Rey. And whether or not Banks wants to be known as an MC, many of Fantasea's best moments showcase her slang-wise verbal dexterity. "Jumanji", produced by TNGHT's Hudson Mohawke and fellow UK producer Nick Hook, is the closest thing to another "212", with rapidfire verses and an instantly quotable "real bitch, all day/ Uptown, Broadway" hook over what sounds like elephants escaping from an urban zoo. Diplo's marching "Fuck Up the Fun" lets Banks swerve between casual, non-rapped chatter and ratatat shit talk. In fact, Banks' sharp ear for Caribbean-inflected, rave-reminiscent electronic backing tracks is another major factor in Fantasea's considerable appeal. From the opening rework of Prodigy's jungle-crazed, Max Romeo-sampling 1992 single "Out of Space", the mood evokes nothing so much as Zomby's modernization of vintage electronic dance music on 2008's Where Were U in '92?. An early peak is the chipmunk-pitched house diva cries and disembodied Michael J. Fox anti-drug PSA of the title track, where Banks shifts between virtuosic fast rap and a flirtatiously sung refrain over Machinedrum's neon-blippy "Fantastix". Just as Banks has taken a non-traditional hip-hop path, she's avoiding lazy Calvin Harris-David Guetta club-pop trendfucking, too. Of course, vintage house also has loads of connotations when it comes to sexual politics. For all the bravery of Frank Ocean's unforgettable story of his unrequited love for a man, it's worth remembering that Banks-- like her fellow LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts alumna Nicki Minaj-- previously went on the record as bixexual. Fantasea is notably fluid in its highly explicit sexual voraciousness; guys get a taste of that, erm, cake on other TNGHT half Lunice's cloud-rap snake charmer "Runnin'", while on O/W/W/W/L/S' cash-register-accented production "Us", Banks chuckles: "I know niggas who probably dicked a nigga." Less successful is Banks' on-the-nose vogue-rap over Zebra Katz' minimal "Ima Read", previously cattily perfected by Njena Reddd Foxxx. "Fierce", the mixtape's most overt gay-culture ode, endearingly samples a former drag queen and suggests that financial success is better than acclaim. All that said, Fantasea is weakest when it comes to its aquatic theme. The mermaid references on "Aquababe" feel forced, despite riding a Machinedrum remix of Portland producer EProm's "Regis Chillbin" that brings to mind an air raid at a cantina for singing humpback whales. The guest rappers, too-- Yonkers hardass Styles P on acid-squiggling earworm "Nathan", London grime vet Shystie over an otherworldly Ikonika track on "Neptune"-- lend credibility, but can't quite enter Banks' self-contained world; her lack of non-producer collaborators more generally appears to be a wise choice. The brassily sung come-ons of "Chips" are forgettable, a rarity for Banks. And her pre-"212" no-holds-barred rhymes on "L8R" lack a bit of the artist's later fire, though they do offer a provocative reminder that her talk of bisexuality isn't just for interviews. That last song, "L8R", ends with in-studio banter about slang-term du jour "ratchet," a phrase that for many people might be destined for association with Banks-- once she decides who and what she wants to be. With her debut album, tentatively titled Broke With Expensive Taste, still slated for this fall, that moment of truth is coming soon. Maybe "Bambi", a trance-inducing track overseen by Adele producer Paul Epworth that premiered early this year at a fashion show in Paris, will finally get an official release on the LP. In the meantime, the best and penultimate cut on Fantasea, "Esta Noche", points in a promising new direction: conversational, cheater-luring pickup lines over a warmly inviting sample from Montell Jordan's 1999 R&B hit "Get It on Tonite", interjected with screeching nu-rave paroxysms courtesy of Dutch producer Munchi. The comparisons to Minaj, whose own recent singles tend to break out in strobe-lit beach-rave sections, might persist. But that wouldn't be such a bad thing. "Head of the class/ But I got principles, too," Banks purrs. The biggest surprise from the rapper who made "cunt" safe for the New York Times' Style section might be if she discovers a square, sensitive side. Still, I wouldn't bet on it. "I've been out for three years," she told the paper in February, reassuring those who fear her rise to fame has been too fast. "I've been around." Or whatever the fuck that means. This much has been officially confirmed by scientists since Banks' previous EP: Mermaids don't exist. The seapunks were right."

The Replacements

Tim

Rock

Mark Richardson

These reissues complete Rhino's ambitious treatment of the Replacements catalogue, with all eight of the legendary (a shopworn word in rock criticism, but these guys deserve it, for reasons good and bad) Minneapolis band's official releases in expanded and remastered deluxe editions. Rhino's decision to release the records in two flights-- the first covering the Twin/Tone years, the second their time on Sire-- cleaves their career into distinct halves, a division that seems sharper now than it did at the time. Yeah, everyone back then noticed Tim's horrible record cover and weird production, but to those not tuned into major/indie politics, it just seemed like "The record after Let It Be," not a talking point for a discussion on what happens when underground bands sign with a major. But returning to these four records after a lengthy re-immersion in the Twin/Tone platters, one gets a sense of exactly what had changed. The run of 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash to 1984's Let It Be, for all the variety on display, feels of a piece, the work of a wildly creative and energetic band with a strong sense of exactly who they were. Each of the Sire albums, on the other hand, seems to begin with, "Well, I guess we can try this and see what happens." There's no sense of continuity, nothing builds from record to record. Every one seems to come from a band starting over. Given its superior distribution and marketing push, Tim was the first Replacements album many people heard, which, as is so often the case, means that it's frequently mentioned as the favorite. And that's understandable. "Hold My Life", "Bastards of Young", and "Left of the Dial" are anthems, no doubt about it, real voice-of-a-generation kind of songs. But Tim also has range. The jazzy, midtempo "Swingin Party" is Westerberg with perfect emotional pitch-- funny ("Bring your own lampshade, somewhere there's a party") and also vulnerable (the narrator admits to being ignorant, weak, and terrified, but if he can find someone in the same situation to hang out with, he'll live). "Kiss Me on the Bus" is light, melodic, and charming guitar pop, another new wrinkle. Great songs abound, but Tim has its share of issues. Something that had changed markedly-- and whether it was erratic lead guitarist Bob Stinson's rapidly diminishing role in the band or self-consciousness, I can't say-- is that the Replacements would never again sound convincing on a dumb rocker the way they had so many times over on those first four records. You take "Run It" from Hootenanny or "Customer" from Sorry Ma and place them alongside "Dose of Thunder" or "Lay It Down Clown", and the latter seem downright anemic. The Replacements were having a harder time with "silly," something that was as natural as breathing in the early days, but they kept trying all the way until the end. Tim's other big problem is the sound. The remastering on all of these discs is done well, but problems with Tim go much deeper. Originally produced by Tommy Erdelyi of the Ramones, Tim comes over as thin, limp, and weirdly distant, hitting with less than half the force of the Let It Be. Ironically, since Erdelyi is a drummer, Chris Mars' percussion is especially feeble. The six bonus tracks included throw the production shortcomings into relief. The demo of "Kiss Me on the Bus"-- recorded with Erdelyi, but it sounds live in studio-- is raw and direct. The two outtakes of "Can't Hardly Wait"-- a song that wouldn't be officially released until Pleased to Meet Me, one acoustic and one electric-- both suggest a sonic road not taken in addition to highlighting how much Westerberg refined songs over time. Pleased to Meet Me could be heard as an overcompensation for Tim's failings. Much was made of it being a digital recording, which in 1987 was seen as extravagant, the kind of thing Peter Gabriel and Dire Straits indulged in. "Look ma, no hiss!" read a review discussing the moment of silence between the horn hits in "Can't Hardly Wait" (the fact that there were horns to hit-- not to mention strings-- was also shocking) and Pleased to Meet Me was presented as the Replacements finally ready for the big time. The reality, though, is that the record was all over the place, too schizophrenic for the band to be easily grasped, kind of like Hootenanny with fleshed-out ideas, more confidence, and way better songs. Here the Replacements were tacking cocktail jazz ("Nightclub Jitters"), wholly acoustic ballads (the gorgeous "Skyway"), gritty proto-grunge ("The Ledge"), and paying tribute to their Memphis surroundings-- local hero Jim Dickinson produced-- on buoyant, Big Star-channeling power-pop ("Can't Hardly Wait" and "Alex Chilton"). Perhaps with Bob Stinson now out of the band (he died of drug-related causes a decade later), Westerberg felt freer to experiment, to try genres that would have been given an ironic reading a few years earlier. The obligatory burners ("Shooting Dirty Pool" and "Red Red Wine") once again feel forced, but Westerberg more than made up with that with three of the best rock songs he ever wrote: "I.O.U.", "Never Mind", and "Valentine". More personal and specific than their counterparts on Tim, this trio is littered with lines that bands since have built an entire identity on. Songs like "Birthday Gal" and "Photo", which didn't make the record and are now included as bonuses, suggest that Westerberg was on a songwriting roll, and alternate versions of "Alex Chilton" and "Can't Hardly Wait" are welcome. And then the bottom dropped out. Or, so the story goes, anyway. For many, Don't Tell a Soul, with its slick production-- saxophones and violins were one thing, but synths?-- and generally muted tone spelled the end of the Replacements as we knew them, and the only point to debate is whether this record or All Shook Down was their career nadir. "End of the Replacements as we knew them" I can agree with, but then, they were pretty much a new band with each of their two previous records as well. Don't Tell a Soul was met with plenty of derision at the time, but an even larger reason for its bad rep since likely has to do with the fact that this is the sound emulated by the Replacements worshipers that took the band's somewhere bigger, your Goo Goo Dolls and Ryan Adams types. Not to mention that you can hear echoes of Westerberg's lackluster 90s solo output throughout, and "I Won't" is possibly the most unconvincing rocker they ever recorded, with its wailing harmonica and a mix that sounds like four guys recorded their parts on different continents. But I submit that the so

Artist: The Replacements, Album: Tim, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "These reissues complete Rhino's ambitious treatment of the Replacements catalogue, with all eight of the legendary (a shopworn word in rock criticism, but these guys deserve it, for reasons good and bad) Minneapolis band's official releases in expanded and remastered deluxe editions. Rhino's decision to release the records in two flights-- the first covering the Twin/Tone years, the second their time on Sire-- cleaves their career into distinct halves, a division that seems sharper now than it did at the time. Yeah, everyone back then noticed Tim's horrible record cover and weird production, but to those not tuned into major/indie politics, it just seemed like "The record after Let It Be," not a talking point for a discussion on what happens when underground bands sign with a major. But returning to these four records after a lengthy re-immersion in the Twin/Tone platters, one gets a sense of exactly what had changed. The run of 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash to 1984's Let It Be, for all the variety on display, feels of a piece, the work of a wildly creative and energetic band with a strong sense of exactly who they were. Each of the Sire albums, on the other hand, seems to begin with, "Well, I guess we can try this and see what happens." There's no sense of continuity, nothing builds from record to record. Every one seems to come from a band starting over. Given its superior distribution and marketing push, Tim was the first Replacements album many people heard, which, as is so often the case, means that it's frequently mentioned as the favorite. And that's understandable. "Hold My Life", "Bastards of Young", and "Left of the Dial" are anthems, no doubt about it, real voice-of-a-generation kind of songs. But Tim also has range. The jazzy, midtempo "Swingin Party" is Westerberg with perfect emotional pitch-- funny ("Bring your own lampshade, somewhere there's a party") and also vulnerable (the narrator admits to being ignorant, weak, and terrified, but if he can find someone in the same situation to hang out with, he'll live). "Kiss Me on the Bus" is light, melodic, and charming guitar pop, another new wrinkle. Great songs abound, but Tim has its share of issues. Something that had changed markedly-- and whether it was erratic lead guitarist Bob Stinson's rapidly diminishing role in the band or self-consciousness, I can't say-- is that the Replacements would never again sound convincing on a dumb rocker the way they had so many times over on those first four records. You take "Run It" from Hootenanny or "Customer" from Sorry Ma and place them alongside "Dose of Thunder" or "Lay It Down Clown", and the latter seem downright anemic. The Replacements were having a harder time with "silly," something that was as natural as breathing in the early days, but they kept trying all the way until the end. Tim's other big problem is the sound. The remastering on all of these discs is done well, but problems with Tim go much deeper. Originally produced by Tommy Erdelyi of the Ramones, Tim comes over as thin, limp, and weirdly distant, hitting with less than half the force of the Let It Be. Ironically, since Erdelyi is a drummer, Chris Mars' percussion is especially feeble. The six bonus tracks included throw the production shortcomings into relief. The demo of "Kiss Me on the Bus"-- recorded with Erdelyi, but it sounds live in studio-- is raw and direct. The two outtakes of "Can't Hardly Wait"-- a song that wouldn't be officially released until Pleased to Meet Me, one acoustic and one electric-- both suggest a sonic road not taken in addition to highlighting how much Westerberg refined songs over time. Pleased to Meet Me could be heard as an overcompensation for Tim's failings. Much was made of it being a digital recording, which in 1987 was seen as extravagant, the kind of thing Peter Gabriel and Dire Straits indulged in. "Look ma, no hiss!" read a review discussing the moment of silence between the horn hits in "Can't Hardly Wait" (the fact that there were horns to hit-- not to mention strings-- was also shocking) and Pleased to Meet Me was presented as the Replacements finally ready for the big time. The reality, though, is that the record was all over the place, too schizophrenic for the band to be easily grasped, kind of like Hootenanny with fleshed-out ideas, more confidence, and way better songs. Here the Replacements were tacking cocktail jazz ("Nightclub Jitters"), wholly acoustic ballads (the gorgeous "Skyway"), gritty proto-grunge ("The Ledge"), and paying tribute to their Memphis surroundings-- local hero Jim Dickinson produced-- on buoyant, Big Star-channeling power-pop ("Can't Hardly Wait" and "Alex Chilton"). Perhaps with Bob Stinson now out of the band (he died of drug-related causes a decade later), Westerberg felt freer to experiment, to try genres that would have been given an ironic reading a few years earlier. The obligatory burners ("Shooting Dirty Pool" and "Red Red Wine") once again feel forced, but Westerberg more than made up with that with three of the best rock songs he ever wrote: "I.O.U.", "Never Mind", and "Valentine". More personal and specific than their counterparts on Tim, this trio is littered with lines that bands since have built an entire identity on. Songs like "Birthday Gal" and "Photo", which didn't make the record and are now included as bonuses, suggest that Westerberg was on a songwriting roll, and alternate versions of "Alex Chilton" and "Can't Hardly Wait" are welcome. And then the bottom dropped out. Or, so the story goes, anyway. For many, Don't Tell a Soul, with its slick production-- saxophones and violins were one thing, but synths?-- and generally muted tone spelled the end of the Replacements as we knew them, and the only point to debate is whether this record or All Shook Down was their career nadir. "End of the Replacements as we knew them" I can agree with, but then, they were pretty much a new band with each of their two previous records as well. Don't Tell a Soul was met with plenty of derision at the time, but an even larger reason for its bad rep since likely has to do with the fact that this is the sound emulated by the Replacements worshipers that took the band's somewhere bigger, your Goo Goo Dolls and Ryan Adams types. Not to mention that you can hear echoes of Westerberg's lackluster 90s solo output throughout, and "I Won't" is possibly the most unconvincing rocker they ever recorded, with its wailing harmonica and a mix that sounds like four guys recorded their parts on different continents. But I submit that the so"

Boas

Mansion

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Brendan Reid

That old-time music... boy, I tell ya, it really kind of blows. I mean, naturally, people made good music at every point in history, but at present, more and more musicians are dredging up the recent past (new wave, electro, garage) and expecting to haul up gold. So, when the results of their wholesale extirpation turn out mixed, we're forced to admit that either a) the past wasn't up to snuff after all, or b) nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Chicago's Boas seem to think that by digging deeper than most bands, they have a shot at striking the golden vein, but they often disagree on how far back to reach. There's a bit of sappy orchestral pop in their mix, some vintage organ sounds here and there, a lot of languid C&W; picking, and above all, John Klos' sick-of-his-own-soul yowl, begging to be wrapped in static. It could be they get teary-eyed for mid-90s indie, with the meandering start/stoppage and often obtuse refusal to rock in any straightforward way. But however you want to describe their sound, it's all very intentional, and referentially "old." Boas come off like fairly competent young dudes with an ear for a lazy melody, on whom old age has been suddenly and painfully self-inflicted. Sometimes they profit from their wealth of influences: A song as exhaustedly sprawling as the piano-fueled shuffle "The Last Zoo House Band" covers so much territory, it's bound to hit something good eventually (the horn coda at its end). Often, though, the songs are too broken down to crawl toward any sort of significance: "Ghetto Pond" doesn't have the energy to make Klos' gargled non-sequitirs and stark declarations of, "Ain't nothin' not special no more," seem anything more than hollow; "Get Up, Crippled Wife" lacks the strength to break through its fog of synthesizers. Good or bad, Boas seem like they've been coated with an impenetrably thick layer of dust. It's not really clear why Boas want to engage in this sort of cover-up; when the outlines of real songs start to show at the end of the album, I like the pretty young things I see. "Mrs. Mother" dispels the pall with a burst of wistfully playful pop, while "For Sheriff Allison" trades in affected age for unstrained, deceptively simple folk. Finally, on "Oh, Doctor", the band's scattered Wowee Zowee-isms congeal into raucous, joyfully overdriven axe-thwacking. But just when they're really getting going, the album ends, its best songs buried behind a stack of less vital, less engaging material. Still, it's not every day that you get to watch years roll back right in front of your eyes; if time keeps on running in the wrong direction for Boas, they could hit upon the same sort of kaleidoscopic revue that worked so well for seasoned vets like The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev.

Artist: Boas, Album: Mansion, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "That old-time music... boy, I tell ya, it really kind of blows. I mean, naturally, people made good music at every point in history, but at present, more and more musicians are dredging up the recent past (new wave, electro, garage) and expecting to haul up gold. So, when the results of their wholesale extirpation turn out mixed, we're forced to admit that either a) the past wasn't up to snuff after all, or b) nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Chicago's Boas seem to think that by digging deeper than most bands, they have a shot at striking the golden vein, but they often disagree on how far back to reach. There's a bit of sappy orchestral pop in their mix, some vintage organ sounds here and there, a lot of languid C&W; picking, and above all, John Klos' sick-of-his-own-soul yowl, begging to be wrapped in static. It could be they get teary-eyed for mid-90s indie, with the meandering start/stoppage and often obtuse refusal to rock in any straightforward way. But however you want to describe their sound, it's all very intentional, and referentially "old." Boas come off like fairly competent young dudes with an ear for a lazy melody, on whom old age has been suddenly and painfully self-inflicted. Sometimes they profit from their wealth of influences: A song as exhaustedly sprawling as the piano-fueled shuffle "The Last Zoo House Band" covers so much territory, it's bound to hit something good eventually (the horn coda at its end). Often, though, the songs are too broken down to crawl toward any sort of significance: "Ghetto Pond" doesn't have the energy to make Klos' gargled non-sequitirs and stark declarations of, "Ain't nothin' not special no more," seem anything more than hollow; "Get Up, Crippled Wife" lacks the strength to break through its fog of synthesizers. Good or bad, Boas seem like they've been coated with an impenetrably thick layer of dust. It's not really clear why Boas want to engage in this sort of cover-up; when the outlines of real songs start to show at the end of the album, I like the pretty young things I see. "Mrs. Mother" dispels the pall with a burst of wistfully playful pop, while "For Sheriff Allison" trades in affected age for unstrained, deceptively simple folk. Finally, on "Oh, Doctor", the band's scattered Wowee Zowee-isms congeal into raucous, joyfully overdriven axe-thwacking. But just when they're really getting going, the album ends, its best songs buried behind a stack of less vital, less engaging material. Still, it's not every day that you get to watch years roll back right in front of your eyes; if time keeps on running in the wrong direction for Boas, they could hit upon the same sort of kaleidoscopic revue that worked so well for seasoned vets like The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev."

Charles Atlas

Felt Cover

Electronic

Mark Richard-San

Charles Atlas is two gentlemen from San Francisco making calm, quiet ambient post-rock. Guitars, vintage keyboards, ghostly voices and the occasional cello are all found on Felt Cover, but not all at once. This album is not minimal in the traditional melodic or rhythmic sense of the word; it's that the amount of stuff that happens in any one track is kept at a minimum. This is the kind of album where a plucked guitar note is allowed to ring unaccompanied until it decays completely, and two chords are more than enough. "The Light They Intend for You" is a perfect example of this sonic reduction, as two guitar chords, misty wet with rain, are slowly plucked as some dialogue (oddly, an excerpt from the Jerry Stahl book Permanent Midnight) is whispered beneath the sound. There are a couple chord changes and a bit of organ accent, but that's about it for this short piece. It's more than a little Labradford-esque, but at pop-song length, and without the tension that Labradford bring to the table. "Hinged and Still" has more teeth, as the guitar this time duals with a woozy, cascading synthesizer pattern that lends a sense of uncertainty. Charles Atlas stake out jazzier territory with "Valdiviam" where trumpet, brushed drums and a Fender Rhodes give the feel of an impressionistic early-70s Chick Corea piece, while the scraping, discordant guitar and unsettling drones of "Minor White" flirt with ugliness. "Five Teeth and Crawling" makes nice with a noirish sweep of strings that seems to fall behind the slowly strummed bass and guitar chords, the perfect soundtrack to a silent student film shot on an empty beach. A few tracks sound decent enough but lack musical substance. "Que Biblia" is a barely-there piece for solo electric piano that, while pretty, seems more like a throwaway film cue than an actual composition. But the damning problem with Felt Cover is not that any one track is particularly terrible, it's that the record as whole just seems, well, bland. Even after a half-dozen listens, I can't play a single track back in my head once the record is over. The best ambient music leaves some kind of aural after-image, flickering bits of texture and mood. Felt Cover, while not at all offensive, simply vanishes.

Artist: Charles Atlas, Album: Felt Cover, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Charles Atlas is two gentlemen from San Francisco making calm, quiet ambient post-rock. Guitars, vintage keyboards, ghostly voices and the occasional cello are all found on Felt Cover, but not all at once. This album is not minimal in the traditional melodic or rhythmic sense of the word; it's that the amount of stuff that happens in any one track is kept at a minimum. This is the kind of album where a plucked guitar note is allowed to ring unaccompanied until it decays completely, and two chords are more than enough. "The Light They Intend for You" is a perfect example of this sonic reduction, as two guitar chords, misty wet with rain, are slowly plucked as some dialogue (oddly, an excerpt from the Jerry Stahl book Permanent Midnight) is whispered beneath the sound. There are a couple chord changes and a bit of organ accent, but that's about it for this short piece. It's more than a little Labradford-esque, but at pop-song length, and without the tension that Labradford bring to the table. "Hinged and Still" has more teeth, as the guitar this time duals with a woozy, cascading synthesizer pattern that lends a sense of uncertainty. Charles Atlas stake out jazzier territory with "Valdiviam" where trumpet, brushed drums and a Fender Rhodes give the feel of an impressionistic early-70s Chick Corea piece, while the scraping, discordant guitar and unsettling drones of "Minor White" flirt with ugliness. "Five Teeth and Crawling" makes nice with a noirish sweep of strings that seems to fall behind the slowly strummed bass and guitar chords, the perfect soundtrack to a silent student film shot on an empty beach. A few tracks sound decent enough but lack musical substance. "Que Biblia" is a barely-there piece for solo electric piano that, while pretty, seems more like a throwaway film cue than an actual composition. But the damning problem with Felt Cover is not that any one track is particularly terrible, it's that the record as whole just seems, well, bland. Even after a half-dozen listens, I can't play a single track back in my head once the record is over. The best ambient music leaves some kind of aural after-image, flickering bits of texture and mood. Felt Cover, while not at all offensive, simply vanishes."

Hiss Golden Messenger

Heart Like a Levee

Folk/Country

Laura Snapes

Hiss Golden Messenger is a strange name for the music of M.C. Taylor. Rather than preach the word, he’s often scoured for it, doubted and discarded it. Faith, he learned, cannot save you from depression or from the temptation to self-destruct, and when hypocrites can play it as their “get out of jail” card, what’s the use of it at all? God barely comes into the equation on the sixth Hiss album, recorded in Taylor’s 40th year—around the time when the Big Questions tend to get outweighed by smaller, more immediate responsibilities. But his lifelong theme remains intact: What happens when you feel a distance from the thing that’s meant to sustain you? Hiss took flight with 2010’s Bad Debt, a record written in the quiet moments while Taylor’s newborn son slept. After years flailing in ’90s hardcore band Ex-Ignota and Americana outfit the Court and Spark, Taylor gave up trying, for the first time, to find an audience. The album’s charred hush found one anyway. Family and adulthood became central to the work, the revelations they offered making the hard times worthwhile. “The misery of love is a funny thing,” he sang on “Mahogany Dread” from 2014’s Lateness of Dancers. “The more it hurts, the more you think you can stand a little pain.” The album’s success tested his thesis. As his Merge debut and breakout moment, it necessitated endless touring, taking him away from his wife and two young kids, who inspired the music and gave it purpose as a vocation. Heart Like a Levee is Taylor reckoning with the guilt of being an absent provider whose work financially supports his family—and spiritually sustains him as a good father. It’s not “rock star writes home,” but a familiar theme to anyone who’s felt pulled to honor disparate callings, and the rare record that doesn’t treat adulthood as a punchline or a final resting place. Nor do the mature themes smother the songwriting, where Taylor locates a grounded soulfulness in his tapestry of folk, country, blues, and dub, whether he’s furrowing deeper into the groove he started digging on Lateness of Dancers—as on freewheeling standout “Ace of Cups Hung Low Band”—or easing back into his porch. Although Heart Like a Levee is often heavier than its sunny predecessor, the core Hiss band (Megafaun’s multi-instrumentalists Phil and Brad Cook, and drummer Matt McCaughan) tend to strike a major chord M.O., even when the lyrics are decidedly minor-chord: There are moments of profound communal joy here that continue the homespun gospel Taylor minted on Lateness. That contrast makes the music feel real and integral to a life, and the way that domesticity’s small lows and highs are always intermingled. As rollicking as it often is, Heart Like a Levee is a deeply intimate record, filled with anxious conversations about obligation. “It’s hard, Lord/Lord, it’s hard,” he sings on capering opener “Biloxi,” surveying the scene at his eldest kid’s birthday party. “There’s one way in and one way out and we’re gonna have a good time.” The title track unfolds with Taylor and his wife laying in bed on an ostensibly perfect morning. “We’ll pretend all we wanna,” he sings with his trademark reedy nuance. “Yeah, tomorrow I’ll be on my way.” His high-pitched acoustic guitar mounts the tension as he unleashes a series of rhetorical questions, each more desperate than the last. “Will you grieve me, honey?” he asks in a wrenched tone, then skews quieter: “Did I give you a reason to try?” he asks in one of the album’s more flooring moments. The pleas recur on “Happy Day (Sister My Sister),” a beautiful acoustic duet with Tift Merritt that sounds like a flood of relief but offers little of it. “Sister, my sister/What should I do?” Taylor sings with a sigh. “Should I wade in the river/With so many people living just/Just above the waterline?” If that sounds a little like liberal guilt, “Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer” is its flipside, exposing Taylor’s darkest inclinations to throw it all away rather than cause anyone more pain. “Should I drown in that Atlanta rain? Yes, babe—I can’t stand it,” he seethes, blurring into swampy dub funk shot through with mystic ricochets of reverb. The track stands alone in the record, its magnetic groove as myopic as Taylor’s mindset, doggedly pushing forward (and making the idea of a Have Fun With God-style album remix sound eminently necessary). If all this makes touring life sound like too much trouble, Heart Like a Levee offers two songs that trace Taylor’s bond to the road. “I can feel October coming on the backscratch wind,” he yearns like a weathered traveler on “Cracked Windshield,” where the tiniest golden synth gradually casts a piercing light on his gentle ruminations. The tension finally breaks on the impressionistic “As the Crow Flies,” a subtle, cantering groove that breaks into a raucous height-of-summer refrain led by Phil Cook’s euphoric holler. “Blue horizon—late again/West Lafayette, babe/And tomorrow’s a dream,” Taylor sings, and the view seems endless. Although younger male artists are returning to domestic settings in their music, there are few older male artists questioning how their work impacts upon the families they leave behind. It’s borderline inconceivable that a white, male, 40-something artist could bring a refreshing perspective to a traditional genre, but Taylor’s graceful accountability and invigorating songcraft makes him an anomaly. His own dose of perspective arrives at the end of the plainly gorgeous Heart Like a Levee. “When I set the river on fire, you laughed in my face,” he recalls on “Highland Grace,” over an easy tumble of a groove, the words and music aligned for once. He ticks off his old stubbornnesses: “And if you can’t buy it and you stand and deny it/And if you can’t see it and you refuse to believe it/And if you can’t count it but you can’t help but doubt it,” he yearns over softly twiddling piano. “But loving her was easy/The easiest thing in the world.” Love as salvation is Old Testament songwriting, but few artists make you feel it like Taylor does.

Artist: Hiss Golden Messenger, Album: Heart Like a Levee, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Hiss Golden Messenger is a strange name for the music of M.C. Taylor. Rather than preach the word, he’s often scoured for it, doubted and discarded it. Faith, he learned, cannot save you from depression or from the temptation to self-destruct, and when hypocrites can play it as their “get out of jail” card, what’s the use of it at all? God barely comes into the equation on the sixth Hiss album, recorded in Taylor’s 40th year—around the time when the Big Questions tend to get outweighed by smaller, more immediate responsibilities. But his lifelong theme remains intact: What happens when you feel a distance from the thing that’s meant to sustain you? Hiss took flight with 2010’s Bad Debt, a record written in the quiet moments while Taylor’s newborn son slept. After years flailing in ’90s hardcore band Ex-Ignota and Americana outfit the Court and Spark, Taylor gave up trying, for the first time, to find an audience. The album’s charred hush found one anyway. Family and adulthood became central to the work, the revelations they offered making the hard times worthwhile. “The misery of love is a funny thing,” he sang on “Mahogany Dread” from 2014’s Lateness of Dancers. “The more it hurts, the more you think you can stand a little pain.” The album’s success tested his thesis. As his Merge debut and breakout moment, it necessitated endless touring, taking him away from his wife and two young kids, who inspired the music and gave it purpose as a vocation. Heart Like a Levee is Taylor reckoning with the guilt of being an absent provider whose work financially supports his family—and spiritually sustains him as a good father. It’s not “rock star writes home,” but a familiar theme to anyone who’s felt pulled to honor disparate callings, and the rare record that doesn’t treat adulthood as a punchline or a final resting place. Nor do the mature themes smother the songwriting, where Taylor locates a grounded soulfulness in his tapestry of folk, country, blues, and dub, whether he’s furrowing deeper into the groove he started digging on Lateness of Dancers—as on freewheeling standout “Ace of Cups Hung Low Band”—or easing back into his porch. Although Heart Like a Levee is often heavier than its sunny predecessor, the core Hiss band (Megafaun’s multi-instrumentalists Phil and Brad Cook, and drummer Matt McCaughan) tend to strike a major chord M.O., even when the lyrics are decidedly minor-chord: There are moments of profound communal joy here that continue the homespun gospel Taylor minted on Lateness. That contrast makes the music feel real and integral to a life, and the way that domesticity’s small lows and highs are always intermingled. As rollicking as it often is, Heart Like a Levee is a deeply intimate record, filled with anxious conversations about obligation. “It’s hard, Lord/Lord, it’s hard,” he sings on capering opener “Biloxi,” surveying the scene at his eldest kid’s birthday party. “There’s one way in and one way out and we’re gonna have a good time.” The title track unfolds with Taylor and his wife laying in bed on an ostensibly perfect morning. “We’ll pretend all we wanna,” he sings with his trademark reedy nuance. “Yeah, tomorrow I’ll be on my way.” His high-pitched acoustic guitar mounts the tension as he unleashes a series of rhetorical questions, each more desperate than the last. “Will you grieve me, honey?” he asks in a wrenched tone, then skews quieter: “Did I give you a reason to try?” he asks in one of the album’s more flooring moments. The pleas recur on “Happy Day (Sister My Sister),” a beautiful acoustic duet with Tift Merritt that sounds like a flood of relief but offers little of it. “Sister, my sister/What should I do?” Taylor sings with a sigh. “Should I wade in the river/With so many people living just/Just above the waterline?” If that sounds a little like liberal guilt, “Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer” is its flipside, exposing Taylor’s darkest inclinations to throw it all away rather than cause anyone more pain. “Should I drown in that Atlanta rain? Yes, babe—I can’t stand it,” he seethes, blurring into swampy dub funk shot through with mystic ricochets of reverb. The track stands alone in the record, its magnetic groove as myopic as Taylor’s mindset, doggedly pushing forward (and making the idea of a Have Fun With God-style album remix sound eminently necessary). If all this makes touring life sound like too much trouble, Heart Like a Levee offers two songs that trace Taylor’s bond to the road. “I can feel October coming on the backscratch wind,” he yearns like a weathered traveler on “Cracked Windshield,” where the tiniest golden synth gradually casts a piercing light on his gentle ruminations. The tension finally breaks on the impressionistic “As the Crow Flies,” a subtle, cantering groove that breaks into a raucous height-of-summer refrain led by Phil Cook’s euphoric holler. “Blue horizon—late again/West Lafayette, babe/And tomorrow’s a dream,” Taylor sings, and the view seems endless. Although younger male artists are returning to domestic settings in their music, there are few older male artists questioning how their work impacts upon the families they leave behind. It’s borderline inconceivable that a white, male, 40-something artist could bring a refreshing perspective to a traditional genre, but Taylor’s graceful accountability and invigorating songcraft makes him an anomaly. His own dose of perspective arrives at the end of the plainly gorgeous Heart Like a Levee. “When I set the river on fire, you laughed in my face,” he recalls on “Highland Grace,” over an easy tumble of a groove, the words and music aligned for once. He ticks off his old stubbornnesses: “And if you can’t buy it and you stand and deny it/And if you can’t see it and you refuse to believe it/And if you can’t count it but you can’t help but doubt it,” he yearns over softly twiddling piano. “But loving her was easy/The easiest thing in the world.” Love as salvation is Old Testament songwriting, but few artists make you feel it like Taylor does."

Marianne Faithfull

Give My Love to London

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

“Give my love to London,” Marianne Faithfull sings on the title track to her latest album. At first it sounds like a friendly request, but it soon becomes a threat: “The river’s runny bloody, the towers tumbling down,” she sings, not exactly horrified by the tableau. “I’m singing ‘Pirate Jenny’ as the blackship’s bearing down.” It’s a sly reference. The second most popular number form Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (the first being “Mack the Knife”), “Pirate Jenny” is a stout song about bloody wish fulfillment: A bitter and beleaguered hotel maid imagines a marauding pirate ship destroying the city and murdering all the people who treated her so cruelly, ending with Jenny escaping with the swashbucklers and scallywags. Faithfull famously performed the tune in the mid 1990s during a Threepenny revival in Dublin, and her fascination with Weimar-era musical theater inspired her 1997 album 20th Century Blues, which includes her best version of the song. On “Give My Love to London”, Faithfull reimagines herself as Pirate Jenny returning to the scene of her greatest triumph and surveying a London still in ruins. Although the final verse resituates the song, it’s not hard to imagine Faithfull as the conquering anti-hero, especially considering how she was run out of the city in the late ‘60s for the same behavior that earned her male peers—including and especially Mick Jagger—their lucrative reputations as bad boys. And yet, there is some affection in “Give My Love to London,” which was co-written with Steve Earle, now a Londoner himself. Faithfull navigates the bouncy melody gracefully and generously, evoking the easy bonhomie of old friends who have long put any ill will behind them. The song announces an album that will confront the past, her own and our own, as though trying to sever it from the present. This is not necessarily a memoir set to music, mainly because these songs find Faithfull playing roles other than herself. As a result, it’s her best and most daring album of this century, featuring some of her heaviest and most haunting performances. Faithfull has spent most of the time since 20th Century Blues fashioning herself into rock’s grand dame, an avatar of European decadence redeemed into something like old-world authority. Working with Britpop survivors (Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker) as well as American alt-rockers (Beck, Billy Corgan), she's made a handful of fine albums that persistently reinforce her reputation as a formidable interpreter of others' songs, as if anyone still though otherwise. Before the Poison and Easy Come Easy Go may have put her in touch with a younger generation of artists who considered her both a hero and an influence, but Give My Love to London is something else entirely. Working with Roger Waters, Nick Cave, Anna Calvi, and a band that features Ed Harcourt, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, and members of the Bad Seeds, she has created an album that bristles with danger and even roils with anger. But it also has moments of disarming humor. Toward the end of Give My Love to London, she gingerly covers Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home”, a late-career rumination on the nature of creativity. It’s a monologue delivered by a muse who considers Cohen “a lazy bastard living in a suit”—in other words, a tool no different than a pen or quill. Faithfull does not replace his name with hers; instead, she plays the muse herself, claiming his triumphs as her own. It becomes a melancholic hymn to age and experience, but more wittily, it’s a funny and fitting turnabout for a songwriter who has repeatedly exploited his female subjects for his own spiritual gain (see, for example, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”). Faithfull has always conveyed a sensual gravity with that gravelly voice of hers, but the melancholy on Give My Love to London is tinged with angst and disaffection—perhaps inspired by her recent bout with cancer, or the back injury that left her bedridden, or just by a sense of alienation from a world that makes less and less sense by the day. For most artists of her generation, such topicality can sound either haughty (Neil Young’s recent orchestral protest song, "Who's Gonna Stand Up") or simply cloistered from the rest of the world (David Crosby’s latest album). But the theatricality of Faithfull’s performances lend weight to a song like “True Lies”, with its pendulum guitar riff and accusing lyrics: “True lies from your twisted little mind!” she glowers, her outrage absolutely withering. “Mother Wolf”, which Faithfull co-wrote with Patrick Leonard, may be her finest moment on Give My Love to London. It consists primarily of a single verse and chorus, each repeated throughout the song, but Faithfull sings each iteration with new dramatic emphasis. On the first time through, she delivers the allegorical lyrics almost passively, as though looking down on humanity from some high cloud. The next time, she has descended to earth and become a human amid the earthly horror of war. Faithfull doesn’t sing so much as she spits the words, her delivery grinding against the song’s meter. “How you disgust me!” she growls, turning those syllables into something acrid and poisonous and fundamentally ugly. Her performance meets violence with more violence, and the song’s pummeling pace and dark catharsis simultaneously underscore and undermine the song. The pirates are attacking London, and Faithfull is leading them onward.

Artist: Marianne Faithfull, Album: Give My Love to London, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "“Give my love to London,” Marianne Faithfull sings on the title track to her latest album. At first it sounds like a friendly request, but it soon becomes a threat: “The river’s runny bloody, the towers tumbling down,” she sings, not exactly horrified by the tableau. “I’m singing ‘Pirate Jenny’ as the blackship’s bearing down.” It’s a sly reference. The second most popular number form Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (the first being “Mack the Knife”), “Pirate Jenny” is a stout song about bloody wish fulfillment: A bitter and beleaguered hotel maid imagines a marauding pirate ship destroying the city and murdering all the people who treated her so cruelly, ending with Jenny escaping with the swashbucklers and scallywags. Faithfull famously performed the tune in the mid 1990s during a Threepenny revival in Dublin, and her fascination with Weimar-era musical theater inspired her 1997 album 20th Century Blues, which includes her best version of the song. On “Give My Love to London”, Faithfull reimagines herself as Pirate Jenny returning to the scene of her greatest triumph and surveying a London still in ruins. Although the final verse resituates the song, it’s not hard to imagine Faithfull as the conquering anti-hero, especially considering how she was run out of the city in the late ‘60s for the same behavior that earned her male peers—including and especially Mick Jagger—their lucrative reputations as bad boys. And yet, there is some affection in “Give My Love to London,” which was co-written with Steve Earle, now a Londoner himself. Faithfull navigates the bouncy melody gracefully and generously, evoking the easy bonhomie of old friends who have long put any ill will behind them. The song announces an album that will confront the past, her own and our own, as though trying to sever it from the present. This is not necessarily a memoir set to music, mainly because these songs find Faithfull playing roles other than herself. As a result, it’s her best and most daring album of this century, featuring some of her heaviest and most haunting performances. Faithfull has spent most of the time since 20th Century Blues fashioning herself into rock’s grand dame, an avatar of European decadence redeemed into something like old-world authority. Working with Britpop survivors (Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker) as well as American alt-rockers (Beck, Billy Corgan), she's made a handful of fine albums that persistently reinforce her reputation as a formidable interpreter of others' songs, as if anyone still though otherwise. Before the Poison and Easy Come Easy Go may have put her in touch with a younger generation of artists who considered her both a hero and an influence, but Give My Love to London is something else entirely. Working with Roger Waters, Nick Cave, Anna Calvi, and a band that features Ed Harcourt, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, and members of the Bad Seeds, she has created an album that bristles with danger and even roils with anger. But it also has moments of disarming humor. Toward the end of Give My Love to London, she gingerly covers Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home”, a late-career rumination on the nature of creativity. It’s a monologue delivered by a muse who considers Cohen “a lazy bastard living in a suit”—in other words, a tool no different than a pen or quill. Faithfull does not replace his name with hers; instead, she plays the muse herself, claiming his triumphs as her own. It becomes a melancholic hymn to age and experience, but more wittily, it’s a funny and fitting turnabout for a songwriter who has repeatedly exploited his female subjects for his own spiritual gain (see, for example, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”). Faithfull has always conveyed a sensual gravity with that gravelly voice of hers, but the melancholy on Give My Love to London is tinged with angst and disaffection—perhaps inspired by her recent bout with cancer, or the back injury that left her bedridden, or just by a sense of alienation from a world that makes less and less sense by the day. For most artists of her generation, such topicality can sound either haughty (Neil Young’s recent orchestral protest song, "Who's Gonna Stand Up") or simply cloistered from the rest of the world (David Crosby’s latest album). But the theatricality of Faithfull’s performances lend weight to a song like “True Lies”, with its pendulum guitar riff and accusing lyrics: “True lies from your twisted little mind!” she glowers, her outrage absolutely withering. “Mother Wolf”, which Faithfull co-wrote with Patrick Leonard, may be her finest moment on Give My Love to London. It consists primarily of a single verse and chorus, each repeated throughout the song, but Faithfull sings each iteration with new dramatic emphasis. On the first time through, she delivers the allegorical lyrics almost passively, as though looking down on humanity from some high cloud. The next time, she has descended to earth and become a human amid the earthly horror of war. Faithfull doesn’t sing so much as she spits the words, her delivery grinding against the song’s meter. “How you disgust me!” she growls, turning those syllables into something acrid and poisonous and fundamentally ugly. Her performance meets violence with more violence, and the song’s pummeling pace and dark catharsis simultaneously underscore and undermine the song. The pirates are attacking London, and Faithfull is leading them onward."

Rumah Sakit

Obscured by Clowns

Rock

Brad Haywood

In an ideal world, innovation would happen once, unmarred by copycats. But in the real world, there are no Radioheads without Coldplays, no Sunny Day Real Estates without Get Up Kids, no Strokes without Vines. Trends spawn idolaters, which in turn spawn shit. This, of course, is not limited to bands who break the mainstream; it happens with every genre, no matter how popular or underground. In recent years, post-rock has seen the worst of it. You had your pioneers (Slint, Tortoise, Mogwai, etc) and you had your everything else. And while most of the greats are still together, the "everything else" has left us tired-- no, sick and tired-- of the whole business. The post-rock subgenre most clearly running on fumes these days is the jazz-centered variation, influenced by Thrill Jockey powerhouses as Tortoise and Isotope 217. Rumah Sakit fits somewhere between that and a brand of math-rock championed by Don Caballero. Something, however, saves Rumah Sakit from the clichéd boredom commonly propagated by jazzy and mathy post-rockers. Never steeped too far in theory and proggy details, Rumah Sakit keeps a keen eye out for two things: emotional intensity and an awareness of unity and consonance. Both jazz-based post-rock and math-rock pride themselves on musical expression through complicated theory. As has been well-documented, though, it often comes at the expense of accessibility, reducing the music to an intellectual exercise. Rumah Sakit takes cues from bands at the opposite end of the spectrum-- the delightfully simplistic and overtly emotional Explosions in the Sky, for example (albeit less funerary)-- to avoid such pitfalls. "Go Horsey Go (Live)" typifies the approach, killing 2\xBD minutes of complex, winding, metallic rock into silence, then gradually resurrecting its more primal essence with a simple, climactic denouement, driven by non-sequitur guitar patterns and feedback, and a steadily mounting drumbeat. So now let's talk about "New Underwear Dance", which not only deserves a Grammy for year's best song title but is also further indicative of this band's balance of theory and passion. A bright, bucolic guitar passage draws strength from the gradual addition of drums, overdrive, modulation and counterpoint, finding a vibrant and complex, yet evocative, intensity. The band retreats from this opening section to a simpler groove, but again rises to maximum power-- this time uncomplicated, just balls-out volume. Rumah Sakit also understand a need for unity and consonance, foundations of rock music. "No One Likes a Grumpy Cripple" bluffs an unsettling modal jazz number, with something like a 7/8 time signature, but instead of leaving the tension unresolved, the band blows the song up with a chorus of attacking guitars. "Sausage Full of Secrets (Live)" also gets to the point, this time a bit more quickly, transitioning from a brief, sparse, Slint-like opener to ascend to atmospheric heights (and a 4/4 time signature welcome to the ears). Low points are predictable, coming when Rumah Sakit falls prey to the usual cerebral, antiseptic post-rock temptations. For example, the title track's obscured by excessive meandering, never giving any indication of the song's center, or the composition's significance. It winds down with a languid, free-form spaz-out, clocking in at a needless 10\xBD minutes (five of which are discombobulated spaz-time). Other pretentious interludes are less egregious, but their presence definitely hurts the album's overall appeal. Rumah Sakit largely manages to avoid stereotypes and clichés to carve a unique nook within the saturated panoply of post-rock. They may not have created a timeless legacy for themselves, but that doesn't mean this album isn't compelling enough for you to enjoy in the present.

Artist: Rumah Sakit, Album: Obscured by Clowns, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "In an ideal world, innovation would happen once, unmarred by copycats. But in the real world, there are no Radioheads without Coldplays, no Sunny Day Real Estates without Get Up Kids, no Strokes without Vines. Trends spawn idolaters, which in turn spawn shit. This, of course, is not limited to bands who break the mainstream; it happens with every genre, no matter how popular or underground. In recent years, post-rock has seen the worst of it. You had your pioneers (Slint, Tortoise, Mogwai, etc) and you had your everything else. And while most of the greats are still together, the "everything else" has left us tired-- no, sick and tired-- of the whole business. The post-rock subgenre most clearly running on fumes these days is the jazz-centered variation, influenced by Thrill Jockey powerhouses as Tortoise and Isotope 217. Rumah Sakit fits somewhere between that and a brand of math-rock championed by Don Caballero. Something, however, saves Rumah Sakit from the clichéd boredom commonly propagated by jazzy and mathy post-rockers. Never steeped too far in theory and proggy details, Rumah Sakit keeps a keen eye out for two things: emotional intensity and an awareness of unity and consonance. Both jazz-based post-rock and math-rock pride themselves on musical expression through complicated theory. As has been well-documented, though, it often comes at the expense of accessibility, reducing the music to an intellectual exercise. Rumah Sakit takes cues from bands at the opposite end of the spectrum-- the delightfully simplistic and overtly emotional Explosions in the Sky, for example (albeit less funerary)-- to avoid such pitfalls. "Go Horsey Go (Live)" typifies the approach, killing 2\xBD minutes of complex, winding, metallic rock into silence, then gradually resurrecting its more primal essence with a simple, climactic denouement, driven by non-sequitur guitar patterns and feedback, and a steadily mounting drumbeat. So now let's talk about "New Underwear Dance", which not only deserves a Grammy for year's best song title but is also further indicative of this band's balance of theory and passion. A bright, bucolic guitar passage draws strength from the gradual addition of drums, overdrive, modulation and counterpoint, finding a vibrant and complex, yet evocative, intensity. The band retreats from this opening section to a simpler groove, but again rises to maximum power-- this time uncomplicated, just balls-out volume. Rumah Sakit also understand a need for unity and consonance, foundations of rock music. "No One Likes a Grumpy Cripple" bluffs an unsettling modal jazz number, with something like a 7/8 time signature, but instead of leaving the tension unresolved, the band blows the song up with a chorus of attacking guitars. "Sausage Full of Secrets (Live)" also gets to the point, this time a bit more quickly, transitioning from a brief, sparse, Slint-like opener to ascend to atmospheric heights (and a 4/4 time signature welcome to the ears). Low points are predictable, coming when Rumah Sakit falls prey to the usual cerebral, antiseptic post-rock temptations. For example, the title track's obscured by excessive meandering, never giving any indication of the song's center, or the composition's significance. It winds down with a languid, free-form spaz-out, clocking in at a needless 10\xBD minutes (five of which are discombobulated spaz-time). Other pretentious interludes are less egregious, but their presence definitely hurts the album's overall appeal. Rumah Sakit largely manages to avoid stereotypes and clichés to carve a unique nook within the saturated panoply of post-rock. They may not have created a timeless legacy for themselves, but that doesn't mean this album isn't compelling enough for you to enjoy in the present."

Sailors With Wax Wings

Sailors With Wax Wings

Rock

Zach Kelly

Without even hearing a single long, drawn-out note from their self-titled debut, you could guess that metal collective Sailors With Wax Wings' intention is to completely overwhelm their listeners. Just look at the guest list on this thing: Helmed by Pyramids' R. Loren, the SWWW crew includes Swans' Ted Parsons on drums, Prurient's Dominick Fernow handling the noise, James Blackshaw on piano, vocals from Marissa Nadler, and a plethora of other duties handled by members of Unwound, Krallice, Slowdive, Nadja, Current 93, and more. Add to the fact that the record was inspired by a tripped-out encounter Loren had with The Red Badge of Courage author Stephen Crane's ghost, and you've got what appears to be one heady, crowded outing on your hands. In reality, Sailors With Wax Wings is anything but convoluted, using most of its sticky-slow 53 minutes to focus on ghosted textures, squalling riffage, and melodic theatrics. Think Earth taking on the brash demonstrativeness of Muse, and you're pretty close. The result is neither as mismatched nor potentially intriguing as that equation might indicate. Sailors With Wax Wings are instead perfectly happy doing one thing and doing it fairly well. Almost every track (each of which derives its title from the hand of Crane himself) follows a prescribed set of rules and features a few definable, overlapping segments: swelling guitars, wind-swept atmospherics, shrouded vocals, and the occasional break in the slow-rolling tension for nuanced flecks of cello or piano. Possibly as a byproduct of their literary genesis, these songs seem built to take you on little journeys. When executed properly, the results feel genuinely cinematic: "Yes, I Have a Thousand Tongues, and Nine and Ninety-Nine Lie" opens as a goth-swaddled chant-along before settling into an airy, cosmic psych breakdown. Moments like this seem to favor the drawn-out, peak-and-valley structure of these songs, but after the same effect eight times in a row, Sailors With Wax Wings is a bit harder to swallow whole. The lack of deviation helps foster a cohesive, singular feel-- impressive considering how many hands are in this pot. So it's to be expected that this exercise could get a little tiring after a while. When attention is paid to detail, it's easy to get back onboard: Genuinely mighty guitars make it easy to forget ones that are noodled aimlessly, and the ethereally twisted jangle of "There Was One Who Sought a New Road" makes it easy to forgive the dull waltz of the following "Strange That I Should Have Grown So Suddenly Blind". But with so many wicked tongues at Loren's disposal, it may prove too difficult to overlook Sailors With Wax Wings' underdeveloped spots.

Artist: Sailors With Wax Wings, Album: Sailors With Wax Wings, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Without even hearing a single long, drawn-out note from their self-titled debut, you could guess that metal collective Sailors With Wax Wings' intention is to completely overwhelm their listeners. Just look at the guest list on this thing: Helmed by Pyramids' R. Loren, the SWWW crew includes Swans' Ted Parsons on drums, Prurient's Dominick Fernow handling the noise, James Blackshaw on piano, vocals from Marissa Nadler, and a plethora of other duties handled by members of Unwound, Krallice, Slowdive, Nadja, Current 93, and more. Add to the fact that the record was inspired by a tripped-out encounter Loren had with The Red Badge of Courage author Stephen Crane's ghost, and you've got what appears to be one heady, crowded outing on your hands. In reality, Sailors With Wax Wings is anything but convoluted, using most of its sticky-slow 53 minutes to focus on ghosted textures, squalling riffage, and melodic theatrics. Think Earth taking on the brash demonstrativeness of Muse, and you're pretty close. The result is neither as mismatched nor potentially intriguing as that equation might indicate. Sailors With Wax Wings are instead perfectly happy doing one thing and doing it fairly well. Almost every track (each of which derives its title from the hand of Crane himself) follows a prescribed set of rules and features a few definable, overlapping segments: swelling guitars, wind-swept atmospherics, shrouded vocals, and the occasional break in the slow-rolling tension for nuanced flecks of cello or piano. Possibly as a byproduct of their literary genesis, these songs seem built to take you on little journeys. When executed properly, the results feel genuinely cinematic: "Yes, I Have a Thousand Tongues, and Nine and Ninety-Nine Lie" opens as a goth-swaddled chant-along before settling into an airy, cosmic psych breakdown. Moments like this seem to favor the drawn-out, peak-and-valley structure of these songs, but after the same effect eight times in a row, Sailors With Wax Wings is a bit harder to swallow whole. The lack of deviation helps foster a cohesive, singular feel-- impressive considering how many hands are in this pot. So it's to be expected that this exercise could get a little tiring after a while. When attention is paid to detail, it's easy to get back onboard: Genuinely mighty guitars make it easy to forget ones that are noodled aimlessly, and the ethereally twisted jangle of "There Was One Who Sought a New Road" makes it easy to forgive the dull waltz of the following "Strange That I Should Have Grown So Suddenly Blind". But with so many wicked tongues at Loren's disposal, it may prove too difficult to overlook Sailors With Wax Wings' underdeveloped spots."

Grandaddy

Below the Radio

Rock

Brian Howe

The box-office nosedive of The Real Cancun-- a throwaway cockumentary that combined The Real World with Girls Gone Wild-- taught the purveyors of this junk culture a painful lesson: Americans love reality-based entertainment as long as its free. Below the Radio, an album of songs compiled by Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, might prove to be a similar acid test for the indie fan's mixtape. You probably enjoy making, giving, and receiving mixes. The question is whether or not you're willing to pay regular CD price for one, even taking into consideration that its creator is an indie celebrity of, presumably, the most refined and immaculate tastes. Mixtapes are great for self-expression, for deepening interpersonal relationships, and for allowing non-musicians to participate in creating music's context. The creation of a successful mixtape is a delicate, nuanced art, and the phrase itself is so entrenched that it persists despite the primacy of CDs. But it seems dubious that such a populist, grassroots phenomenon can make the transition to regulated commerce and remain intact-- can Lytle's offering truly even be considered a mixtape? Collecting previously released music from various rock bands on a CD isn't a new idea; we simply call them compilations instead of mixes, which identifies by omission a couple crucial characteristics of the mixtape-- it must be free, and created specifically for the recipient. As such, Lytle's mix seems like a compilation in disguise. It was created for an unknown audience, and he sure as hell isn't giving it away. But while most compilations are united by a theme such as genre, label, time period, or subject matter, Lytle's is built upon the mixtape keystone of Songs I Like, and is being marketed as one as well. Often, the tapes you or I make are influenced by their recipients-- romantic songs for a significant other, heartbreaking songs for an ex, songs with happy associations for friends with shared history, etc. Since Lytle's mix is for strangers who only know him through his music, it seems prudent that, for the most part, the songs he selected sound quite a bit like his own band. Lush yet sleek and slightly sterile is the dominant style of Below the Radio, and one can easily imagine Grandaddy playing Beck's weary, 50s-style pop ballad "We Live Again", Beulah's gleaming, harmony-laden "Burned by the Sun", Earlimart's creeping wash of beeps and strings, "Color Bars", and Snow Patrol's frosty guitar anthem "Run". Because the songs are so redolent of Grandaddy, Below the Radio has a sense of continuity. The record flows through a polished initial section that culminates with the velvety jangle-pop of Goldenboy's "Wild Was the Night" and then shifts to a looser mode that includes Fruit Bats' comparatively shambolic "The Little Acorn", the four-track folk and cracking vocals of Home's "Comin' Up Empty Again", and the rickety, key-hopping charm of Little Wings' "Sand Canyon"-- the melody of which is strikingly similar to the Decemberists' "I Was Meant for the Stage". So the mix is well-sequenced, with no jarring transitions and even some that are ingeniously seamless (the percolating drone that closes Beulah's track seems to naturally birth the heart-rate monitor pulse that opens Earlimart's). The record is closed by its only previously unreleased track, Grandaddy's "Nature Anthem", a pleasant if undistinguished campfire sing-along that reasserts Lytle's kindred spirit with the songs he selected. Lytle should also be credited for avoiding obfuscation. Let's not shit ourselves-- when we make mixes, we don't always just choose songs we hope the recipient will enjoy. We create palimpsests of our personalities, and the urge to fudge is strong. You know that Swell Maps song you always put on mixes even though you never listen to it, knowing that the recipient will be impressed and pretend to like it as well? That's not included here. There are no hipster oddities or historical remnants on Below the Radio. The oldest and probably weirdest track is Pavement's 1995 melange of detuned organs and ratcheting embellishments, "Motion Suggests". Instead of presenting us with difficult, cool songs we'll start skipping after a couple listens, Lytle has packed his mix with more melodic and accessible fare, which is admirable-- if it's hard for us not to want one person to think we like Merzbow, how hard would it be to pass up the chance to make thousands think we like Merzbow? There's one more mixtape pleasure that we've yet to address-- on any good mix, the listener will inevitably come away with a new band to cherish and seek out. Somehow, until I heard Below the Radio, I'd managed to avoid ever listening to Giant Sand. After hearing "Bottom Line Man"-- a lovely, sly ballad that closely resembles one of my favorite bands, Silver Jews-- this will certainly be remedied. The discovery of a new favorite is worth the price of admission; perhaps there's a similar treasure for you to exhume from Below the Radio, or an old favorite to rediscover.

Artist: Grandaddy, Album: Below the Radio, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "The box-office nosedive of The Real Cancun-- a throwaway cockumentary that combined The Real World with Girls Gone Wild-- taught the purveyors of this junk culture a painful lesson: Americans love reality-based entertainment as long as its free. Below the Radio, an album of songs compiled by Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, might prove to be a similar acid test for the indie fan's mixtape. You probably enjoy making, giving, and receiving mixes. The question is whether or not you're willing to pay regular CD price for one, even taking into consideration that its creator is an indie celebrity of, presumably, the most refined and immaculate tastes. Mixtapes are great for self-expression, for deepening interpersonal relationships, and for allowing non-musicians to participate in creating music's context. The creation of a successful mixtape is a delicate, nuanced art, and the phrase itself is so entrenched that it persists despite the primacy of CDs. But it seems dubious that such a populist, grassroots phenomenon can make the transition to regulated commerce and remain intact-- can Lytle's offering truly even be considered a mixtape? Collecting previously released music from various rock bands on a CD isn't a new idea; we simply call them compilations instead of mixes, which identifies by omission a couple crucial characteristics of the mixtape-- it must be free, and created specifically for the recipient. As such, Lytle's mix seems like a compilation in disguise. It was created for an unknown audience, and he sure as hell isn't giving it away. But while most compilations are united by a theme such as genre, label, time period, or subject matter, Lytle's is built upon the mixtape keystone of Songs I Like, and is being marketed as one as well. Often, the tapes you or I make are influenced by their recipients-- romantic songs for a significant other, heartbreaking songs for an ex, songs with happy associations for friends with shared history, etc. Since Lytle's mix is for strangers who only know him through his music, it seems prudent that, for the most part, the songs he selected sound quite a bit like his own band. Lush yet sleek and slightly sterile is the dominant style of Below the Radio, and one can easily imagine Grandaddy playing Beck's weary, 50s-style pop ballad "We Live Again", Beulah's gleaming, harmony-laden "Burned by the Sun", Earlimart's creeping wash of beeps and strings, "Color Bars", and Snow Patrol's frosty guitar anthem "Run". Because the songs are so redolent of Grandaddy, Below the Radio has a sense of continuity. The record flows through a polished initial section that culminates with the velvety jangle-pop of Goldenboy's "Wild Was the Night" and then shifts to a looser mode that includes Fruit Bats' comparatively shambolic "The Little Acorn", the four-track folk and cracking vocals of Home's "Comin' Up Empty Again", and the rickety, key-hopping charm of Little Wings' "Sand Canyon"-- the melody of which is strikingly similar to the Decemberists' "I Was Meant for the Stage". So the mix is well-sequenced, with no jarring transitions and even some that are ingeniously seamless (the percolating drone that closes Beulah's track seems to naturally birth the heart-rate monitor pulse that opens Earlimart's). The record is closed by its only previously unreleased track, Grandaddy's "Nature Anthem", a pleasant if undistinguished campfire sing-along that reasserts Lytle's kindred spirit with the songs he selected. Lytle should also be credited for avoiding obfuscation. Let's not shit ourselves-- when we make mixes, we don't always just choose songs we hope the recipient will enjoy. We create palimpsests of our personalities, and the urge to fudge is strong. You know that Swell Maps song you always put on mixes even though you never listen to it, knowing that the recipient will be impressed and pretend to like it as well? That's not included here. There are no hipster oddities or historical remnants on Below the Radio. The oldest and probably weirdest track is Pavement's 1995 melange of detuned organs and ratcheting embellishments, "Motion Suggests". Instead of presenting us with difficult, cool songs we'll start skipping after a couple listens, Lytle has packed his mix with more melodic and accessible fare, which is admirable-- if it's hard for us not to want one person to think we like Merzbow, how hard would it be to pass up the chance to make thousands think we like Merzbow? There's one more mixtape pleasure that we've yet to address-- on any good mix, the listener will inevitably come away with a new band to cherish and seek out. Somehow, until I heard Below the Radio, I'd managed to avoid ever listening to Giant Sand. After hearing "Bottom Line Man"-- a lovely, sly ballad that closely resembles one of my favorite bands, Silver Jews-- this will certainly be remedied. The discovery of a new favorite is worth the price of admission; perhaps there's a similar treasure for you to exhume from Below the Radio, or an old favorite to rediscover. "

The Body

I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer.

Metal

Nina Mashurova

The Body have never thought of themselves as a metal band. Their last full-length, 2016’s No One Deserves Happiness, was the Portland duo’s version of a pop album, influenced by Taylor Swift, the Weeknd, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and various suicide novels, as well as their collaborators on the project, Thou and the Haxan Cloak. “We always saw ourselves as more of a noise band than anything else,” drummer Lee Buford told Thump in 2016. Constructed largely out of cut-up and processed samples of their previous recordings, the Body’s new album, I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer, combines noise with electronic music. The result falls somewhere between the harsh-noise body horror of Pharmakon’s Bestial Burden and the way Shlohmo turns his emotive synths and beatwork toward grief and loss on Dark Red. True to form, the record hides moments of grace within an impenetrably violent landscape, capturing a rupture at the boundary of what is bearable. The songs gain intensity as the album progresses, leading the listener deep into a hell of the Body’s careful making. Opening track “The Last Form of Loving” builds from a slow, melancholy prologue—violins to drums to heavy breathing—into a sort of hymn. Chrissy Wolpert, from the Body’s frequent collaborators Assembly of Light Choir, sings of “the light that survives us,” pausing on a moment of peace before “Can Carry No Weight” drops in with a thick drum beat, high-pitched chirp, and singer/guitarist Chip King’s disintegrated screams. The strings that accompany Wolpert’s gothic vocals feel ceremonial and portentous, evoking a ritual before sacrifice or the approach of a monster ready to devour the whole village. On “Partly Alive,” as rolling drums, horns, and layers of King’s blood-curdling shrieks coalesce into a cinematic wave, the thing arrives. Attacks. Spares no one. The rest of the album roils in a terrifying yet mesmerizing darkness. On “The West Has Failed,” King’s screams are distorted beyond the human, absorbed into similarly mechanized drums—like when the bear in Annihilation screams with a human voice, but over an IDM groove. “An Urn” is the most straightforward dance track on the album, generously deploying three distinct breakdowns, each more brutal and gratifying than the last. It’s cathartic and destructive, like a rave in a collapsing building. The single “Nothing Stirs” is the album’s massive, chilling apex, pulling together all the sounds that came before it. Built on industrial drums and ambient horror sounds, the track wouldn’t feel out of place as a Tri Angle Records release. Lyrics are important to the Body, but since King’s voice is used mostly as a sonic motif, they rely on guest vocalists to give their words life. On “Nothing Stirs,” Kristin Hayter (aka Lingua Ignota) delivers the lines, “When your love is gone/What is left/At night a prayer for death,” with a distinct bite. The closing refrain, “March on,” soars, breaks, and shatters, as though she is trying to launch the words into the atmosphere with a force they cannot withstand. The Body have long been obsessed with suicide. I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer is, in fact, a line pulled from Virginia Woolf’s suicide note—and a quote that took on a particular resonance for me when, as I was living with the album, a friend finally succumbed to a debilitating illness. The album is still a little bit metal in that it is still a little bit campy. But the struggle the Body relate on I Have Fought Against It is largely a prologue to the ultimate resignation, which manifests on the somber closing track, “Ten Times a Day, Every Day, a Stranger,” as engineer and drummer Seth Manchester’s father reads from Czech author Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Too Loud a Solitude. The song is a narrative of chronic pain and emptiness that resolves in sparse piano and silence. Thinking of my friend, I found myself stopping short of “Ten Times a Day” to avoid its stark implications. It felt easier to stop one track earlier, with “Sickly Heart of Sand”—where Hayter howls Woolf’s words, “I have fought against it but I can’t any longer,” but embedded in the kinetic brutality of her voice is the certainty that one is still fighting.

Artist: The Body, Album: I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer., Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "The Body have never thought of themselves as a metal band. Their last full-length, 2016’s No One Deserves Happiness, was the Portland duo’s version of a pop album, influenced by Taylor Swift, the Weeknd, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and various suicide novels, as well as their collaborators on the project, Thou and the Haxan Cloak. “We always saw ourselves as more of a noise band than anything else,” drummer Lee Buford told Thump in 2016. Constructed largely out of cut-up and processed samples of their previous recordings, the Body’s new album, I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer, combines noise with electronic music. The result falls somewhere between the harsh-noise body horror of Pharmakon’s Bestial Burden and the way Shlohmo turns his emotive synths and beatwork toward grief and loss on Dark Red. True to form, the record hides moments of grace within an impenetrably violent landscape, capturing a rupture at the boundary of what is bearable. The songs gain intensity as the album progresses, leading the listener deep into a hell of the Body’s careful making. Opening track “The Last Form of Loving” builds from a slow, melancholy prologue—violins to drums to heavy breathing—into a sort of hymn. Chrissy Wolpert, from the Body’s frequent collaborators Assembly of Light Choir, sings of “the light that survives us,” pausing on a moment of peace before “Can Carry No Weight” drops in with a thick drum beat, high-pitched chirp, and singer/guitarist Chip King’s disintegrated screams. The strings that accompany Wolpert’s gothic vocals feel ceremonial and portentous, evoking a ritual before sacrifice or the approach of a monster ready to devour the whole village. On “Partly Alive,” as rolling drums, horns, and layers of King’s blood-curdling shrieks coalesce into a cinematic wave, the thing arrives. Attacks. Spares no one. The rest of the album roils in a terrifying yet mesmerizing darkness. On “The West Has Failed,” King’s screams are distorted beyond the human, absorbed into similarly mechanized drums—like when the bear in Annihilation screams with a human voice, but over an IDM groove. “An Urn” is the most straightforward dance track on the album, generously deploying three distinct breakdowns, each more brutal and gratifying than the last. It’s cathartic and destructive, like a rave in a collapsing building. The single “Nothing Stirs” is the album’s massive, chilling apex, pulling together all the sounds that came before it. Built on industrial drums and ambient horror sounds, the track wouldn’t feel out of place as a Tri Angle Records release. Lyrics are important to the Body, but since King’s voice is used mostly as a sonic motif, they rely on guest vocalists to give their words life. On “Nothing Stirs,” Kristin Hayter (aka Lingua Ignota) delivers the lines, “When your love is gone/What is left/At night a prayer for death,” with a distinct bite. The closing refrain, “March on,” soars, breaks, and shatters, as though she is trying to launch the words into the atmosphere with a force they cannot withstand. The Body have long been obsessed with suicide. I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer is, in fact, a line pulled from Virginia Woolf’s suicide note—and a quote that took on a particular resonance for me when, as I was living with the album, a friend finally succumbed to a debilitating illness. The album is still a little bit metal in that it is still a little bit campy. But the struggle the Body relate on I Have Fought Against It is largely a prologue to the ultimate resignation, which manifests on the somber closing track, “Ten Times a Day, Every Day, a Stranger,” as engineer and drummer Seth Manchester’s father reads from Czech author Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Too Loud a Solitude. The song is a narrative of chronic pain and emptiness that resolves in sparse piano and silence. Thinking of my friend, I found myself stopping short of “Ten Times a Day” to avoid its stark implications. It felt easier to stop one track earlier, with “Sickly Heart of Sand”—where Hayter howls Woolf’s words, “I have fought against it but I can’t any longer,” but embedded in the kinetic brutality of her voice is the certainty that one is still fighting."

Pit Er Pat

High Time

Experimental,Rock

Eric Harvey

Like their name implies, Pit Er Pat are easy to miss if you're not looking for them. They make groove-based music, but those grooves are patient, at times exceedingly subtle. They're indie, but of the diffident sort that pairs Fay Davis-Jeffers' dispassionate, nearly naïve-sounding vocals with bony, bookish rhythms. It's not that they have anything to be embarassed about: The record sees them incorporating, largely successfully, all manner of exotic-sounding, museum-quality instrumentation into their repertoire, and doing it the only way they know how-- quietly. In terms of their Chicago predecessors and contemporaries, the new Pit Er Pat approximates Tortoise's rhythm-centered experiments while mostly avoiding their overthinking tendencies, suggests the deceptively complicated melodic structures of tourmates Fiery Furnaces, and at points echoes Mahjongg's frenzied, rhythmic whirl. Mostly, though, Pit Er Pat are fine with quiet tinkering, and much of High Time reflects the playful experimental legacy of dub reggae; most obviously on "Evacuation Days", in the way the reedy guitar weaves in and out of the bottomless bass, dodging random sound effects (like a Brazilian cuíca, most recognizable from Beck's "Tropicalia") like renegade cab drivers. Or that maniacal laugh on "Copper Pennies"-- sped up and tweaked so that it resembles a speed-addled chimp-- that matches the song's eerie funk, redolent of the pungent, gloomy Euro-fusion Can perfected on Ege Bamyasi and Tago Mago. "Trod-A-Long" pulls the band as far out of its shell as it's ever been, with playful organ licks, drawn out horn lines, melodica-derived ambience, and laser sound effects coalescing into a piece that suggests it should have its own dance to accompany it. The hieroglyphically-titled opening track "☉ In ♑ : ☽ in ♈ : Anno IVxx" asserts that High Time's occasional bouts of playfulness are still cloaked in mystery. "Anno"'s vocal consists of nothing but chanted numbers, as if the song held an embedded code to decipher. Well, I've deciphered it, and it turns out that "IV" means "4", and "xx" means "20", and the URL is already taken, bros. Pit er Pat may be telling us they're stoners (that would explain the dub), but a track like "Omen" suggests that they're not the Brightblack Morning Light, hippie variety. As melancholy brass rises and falls like foghorns signaling a funeral at sea, Davis-Jeffers intimates that the album's title isn't suggesting the magazine that celebrates sticky hydro, but the ultimate buzzkill. "Push me, push me under, where the cold river flows" tells us it's "high time" for either an underwater burial or the creepiest-ever baptism. Despite the band's significant steps forward, High Time isn't a complete rebirth for Pit Er Pat, but the record shows that in their own way, they can learn and perform a more extroverted language.

Artist: Pit Er Pat, Album: High Time, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Like their name implies, Pit Er Pat are easy to miss if you're not looking for them. They make groove-based music, but those grooves are patient, at times exceedingly subtle. They're indie, but of the diffident sort that pairs Fay Davis-Jeffers' dispassionate, nearly naïve-sounding vocals with bony, bookish rhythms. It's not that they have anything to be embarassed about: The record sees them incorporating, largely successfully, all manner of exotic-sounding, museum-quality instrumentation into their repertoire, and doing it the only way they know how-- quietly. In terms of their Chicago predecessors and contemporaries, the new Pit Er Pat approximates Tortoise's rhythm-centered experiments while mostly avoiding their overthinking tendencies, suggests the deceptively complicated melodic structures of tourmates Fiery Furnaces, and at points echoes Mahjongg's frenzied, rhythmic whirl. Mostly, though, Pit Er Pat are fine with quiet tinkering, and much of High Time reflects the playful experimental legacy of dub reggae; most obviously on "Evacuation Days", in the way the reedy guitar weaves in and out of the bottomless bass, dodging random sound effects (like a Brazilian cuíca, most recognizable from Beck's "Tropicalia") like renegade cab drivers. Or that maniacal laugh on "Copper Pennies"-- sped up and tweaked so that it resembles a speed-addled chimp-- that matches the song's eerie funk, redolent of the pungent, gloomy Euro-fusion Can perfected on Ege Bamyasi and Tago Mago. "Trod-A-Long" pulls the band as far out of its shell as it's ever been, with playful organ licks, drawn out horn lines, melodica-derived ambience, and laser sound effects coalescing into a piece that suggests it should have its own dance to accompany it. The hieroglyphically-titled opening track "☉ In ♑ : ☽ in ♈ : Anno IVxx" asserts that High Time's occasional bouts of playfulness are still cloaked in mystery. "Anno"'s vocal consists of nothing but chanted numbers, as if the song held an embedded code to decipher. Well, I've deciphered it, and it turns out that "IV" means "4", and "xx" means "20", and the URL is already taken, bros. Pit er Pat may be telling us they're stoners (that would explain the dub), but a track like "Omen" suggests that they're not the Brightblack Morning Light, hippie variety. As melancholy brass rises and falls like foghorns signaling a funeral at sea, Davis-Jeffers intimates that the album's title isn't suggesting the magazine that celebrates sticky hydro, but the ultimate buzzkill. "Push me, push me under, where the cold river flows" tells us it's "high time" for either an underwater burial or the creepiest-ever baptism. Despite the band's significant steps forward, High Time isn't a complete rebirth for Pit Er Pat, but the record shows that in their own way, they can learn and perform a more extroverted language."

VietNam

An A.merican D.ream

Rock

Steven Hyden

You probably thought you’d never hear VietNam again. The surrealist trad-rockers were last active back in the mid-2000s, when they generated a decent amount of buzz based on one EP (2004’s The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street) and a self-titled full-length released in 2007 featuring guest vocals from Jenny Lewis and production by Beachwood Sparks’ Dave Scher and (weirdly) Mickey Madden of Maroon 5. After that, VietNam just sort of faded away. Given how VietNam didn’t exactly set the world on fire commercially, it seemed safe to assume that these guys shaved off their beards and took office jobs somewhere. But, alas, head ’Nammer Michael Gerner kept the faith, and after several years of focusing his creative energy on film soundtracks and his solo project DA, he has assembled a new version of VietNam and recorded the band’s first album in six years, An A.merican D.ream. The passage of time did nothing to dilute Gerner’s ambition: Just as VietNam was a sprawling mess of stoner poetry and extemporaneous jams, An A.merican D.ream is a record thoroughly enamored with the thrilling possibilities and tired clichés of classic rock. For Gerner, each song is an opportunity to make a mind-blowing, motherfucking statement-- he pushes, stretches, elongates, and expounds every lyric and musical element, adding a couple of minutes of ambient noise to the bloat for good measure. Gerner’s best musical asset is unquestionably his conviction, as he speaks and performs utter bullshit with the fervor of a true believer. With his penchant for wordplay and the druggy, let-it-all-hang-out formlessness of Neil Young’s early 70s albums, he has the attitude and tastes of a great singer-songwriter. What he doesn’t have are the songs. Vietnam are not exactly understated or ideologically sophisticated. Gerner last checked out during the final throes of the Bush administration, and now that he’s back he’s not about to let the intervening years go without a chin-stroke-y remark or several. The one-minute piano dirge “1.20.09” memorializes Obama’s first inauguration by cursing out corporations picking through the “bones of human rights.” On the spacey “Blasphemy Blues”, Gerner plays a “dirty little devil” with a pitchfork and a “tail in my pocket” (we’re talking here about a literal devil, because of course) spying evil people lurking amid “mansions inside mansions inside mansions.” The campy would-be epic “W.orld W.ar W.orries” aspires to be “Desolation Row” and winds up somewhere closer to “Eve of Destruction”-- Gerner blares pseudo-profound gibberish (“I kill my wife/ I kill my brother/ For this trick/ Why do I bother”) for more than three minutes before anything resembling a song materializes, and then prattles on for several more minutes about post-modern confusion. “We’re all goin’ crazy from these visions in our heads,” he sings. Totally, dude. Totally. As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy. The "self-serious hippie" archetype is easy to make fun of, though Gerner’s passionate commitment to the material makes Vietnam oddly compelling. The amount of hyperbolic earnestness on display is bracing and, frankly, kind of refreshing given how aloofness is the default posture for so many indie bros these days. An American Dream was made by a guy drunk on delusions of grandeur-- even if Gerner whiffs more often than not, at least he’s swinging for the fences.

Artist: VietNam, Album: An A.merican D.ream, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.7 Album review: "You probably thought you’d never hear VietNam again. The surrealist trad-rockers were last active back in the mid-2000s, when they generated a decent amount of buzz based on one EP (2004’s The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street) and a self-titled full-length released in 2007 featuring guest vocals from Jenny Lewis and production by Beachwood Sparks’ Dave Scher and (weirdly) Mickey Madden of Maroon 5. After that, VietNam just sort of faded away. Given how VietNam didn’t exactly set the world on fire commercially, it seemed safe to assume that these guys shaved off their beards and took office jobs somewhere. But, alas, head ’Nammer Michael Gerner kept the faith, and after several years of focusing his creative energy on film soundtracks and his solo project DA, he has assembled a new version of VietNam and recorded the band’s first album in six years, An A.merican D.ream. The passage of time did nothing to dilute Gerner’s ambition: Just as VietNam was a sprawling mess of stoner poetry and extemporaneous jams, An A.merican D.ream is a record thoroughly enamored with the thrilling possibilities and tired clichés of classic rock. For Gerner, each song is an opportunity to make a mind-blowing, motherfucking statement-- he pushes, stretches, elongates, and expounds every lyric and musical element, adding a couple of minutes of ambient noise to the bloat for good measure. Gerner’s best musical asset is unquestionably his conviction, as he speaks and performs utter bullshit with the fervor of a true believer. With his penchant for wordplay and the druggy, let-it-all-hang-out formlessness of Neil Young’s early 70s albums, he has the attitude and tastes of a great singer-songwriter. What he doesn’t have are the songs. Vietnam are not exactly understated or ideologically sophisticated. Gerner last checked out during the final throes of the Bush administration, and now that he’s back he’s not about to let the intervening years go without a chin-stroke-y remark or several. The one-minute piano dirge “1.20.09” memorializes Obama’s first inauguration by cursing out corporations picking through the “bones of human rights.” On the spacey “Blasphemy Blues”, Gerner plays a “dirty little devil” with a pitchfork and a “tail in my pocket” (we’re talking here about a literal devil, because of course) spying evil people lurking amid “mansions inside mansions inside mansions.” The campy would-be epic “W.orld W.ar W.orries” aspires to be “Desolation Row” and winds up somewhere closer to “Eve of Destruction”-- Gerner blares pseudo-profound gibberish (“I kill my wife/ I kill my brother/ For this trick/ Why do I bother”) for more than three minutes before anything resembling a song materializes, and then prattles on for several more minutes about post-modern confusion. “We’re all goin’ crazy from these visions in our heads,” he sings. Totally, dude. Totally. As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy. The "self-serious hippie" archetype is easy to make fun of, though Gerner’s passionate commitment to the material makes Vietnam oddly compelling. The amount of hyperbolic earnestness on display is bracing and, frankly, kind of refreshing given how aloofness is the default posture for so many indie bros these days. An American Dream was made by a guy drunk on delusions of grandeur-- even if Gerner whiffs more often than not, at least he’s swinging for the fences."

Rondelles

Shined Nickels and Loose Change

Pop/R&B

John Dark

Listening to Shined Nickels and Loose Change, the collection of scattered songs by D.C. retro-fashion punks the Rondelles, had an inspirational effect on me. It made me want to invent updated 60s dances for the 21st Century. I mean, despite all its obvious merits, the Froog really hasn't stood the test of time that well. But, being the Terpsichorean genius that I am, it was with little effort that I concocted the following 14 rug-cutters for immediate infiltration into the "popular" culture-- one for each track on Shined Nickels, each designed to reflect the character and quality of the song that inspired it. Make sure you practice in front of a mirror, kids! "Six O'Clock" - The 'Cardiac' On this track culled from the Rondelles' first seven-inch, frontwoman Juliet Swango gives us her worst Justine Frischmann. Grab your chest in mock pain at the non-melody; let your left arm dangle numbly at your side; froth at the mouth if you can do that at will. Sway and teeter to the incompetent beat-keeping. It's all over in just a couple minutes. Just like a real heart attack! "Safety in Numbers" - The 'Dong (Fully Clothed Version)' This one involves a little imagination. Pretend you're painting a canvas-- or a house, it doesn't really matter-- using only your penis (girls, a strap-on). If the time signature and tempo changes throw off your rhythm, the handclap and drum breaks provide an opportunity to get back in the swing of things. It's all about momentum, and this song has it in spades. "Strike Out" - The 'Shrug' Another early vinyl-only number. Motivation for doing the 'Shrug' properly: you're trying to remove something off your back without the use of your hands. It's annoying. You try moving fast, you try moving slow. It still doesn't come off. "Shimmybecker" - The 'Harpy' The monstrous motions of a chicken-hag are perfectly suited to the jerky, accelerated "I Will Follow Him" verse. Flap your elbows, move your neck in goofy turkeyfowl thrusts. Tear into your prey in the aggressive, carnivorous chorus. "The Fox" - The 'Vespa' The title track from the Rondelles' last full-length release, the song has a catchy drive that propels it through Iggy Pop Land. Straddle your imaginary scooter and rev periodically with your hands. Sing-along to the grinding guitar hook with some "vroom" noises of your own. "Revenge" - The 'Spar' Follow the advice of the title and box out your frustrations with lovers that have spurned you. Thuddy bass and drums are your cues for the body blows. Remember to bob and weave on the half-tempo chorus: "I gave you my heart now/ I'm falling apart now/ ...Girls like me don't know when to quit/ You get revenge now." "Backstabber" - The 'Dong (Semi-Nude Version)' Outstanding lyrics, the most apparent 60s girl group influences, and the Church Lady's mini-organ result in a song that is complete beach-party bonfire fun. This absolutely calls for the removal of at least some clothing. See clothed version above (#2) for dance instructions. "Kersmash, Eye My" - The 'Living Dead' Atrocious. A song without a brain and with a lumbering, undead quality. Like in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, reach into the air with both hands-- first to the left, then to the right. Then break into spastic body jerks periodically like you're being riddled with shotgun blasts from a terrified human. "Like a Prayer" - The 'Whore' Once the slow, organic mini-intro concludes and the song kicks in, gyrate you hips to keep time to the slutted-up beat. Grab your breasts often. Spread and close your knees in time to the classic punk version of one of Madonna's better singles. Close your eyes often if you feel like being overly emotive. "T.V. Zombie" - The 'Sally' New-wave sweetness and a bass 'n' organ-driven melody set the stage for the story of losing your unrequited love to television set. The punkier chorus reminded me of Black Flag's similarly titled "T.V. Party." For the dance, just do your best Peanuts go-go dancer impersonation. "He's Got Heart" - The 'March' A swingy intro and verse alternates with a Bratmobile-like shout-chorus. The March is a simple enough dance: march in place with exaggerated arm swings. Keep it up at an aerobic "intervals" level. You'll burn calories, too, if you put the song on repeat. "Cafeteria Rock" - The 'Shimmybecker' Okay, so that's the name of the band that gets covered here (as well as acknowledged in the earlier track named after the band). But it's such an onomatopoeic word in this case, perfectly suited to the way your body will start involuntarily moving to the most garage rock song on the album. So how exactly do you 'Shimmybecker?' Just like it sounds, man! "Angels We Have Heard on High" - The 'Twirl' This one is easy. Despite the tempo and guitar crunch, the Rondelles haven't really altered this underrated traditional holiday carol. All you do is outstretch your arms and begin spinning-- slowly at first and then faster and faster. When the song ends, fall down. You can sing along with Swango's "Glooo-oo-oo-oooria's" if you want to for extra credit. "Fort Surrounded (Turbo Mix)" - The 'Mush' A bad experimental noise-collage calls for bad interpretive dance. So use a lot of the pseudo-goth, smoke-like hand manipulations. Also, sort of half-lift your feet off the ground, as if wearing Mafia-fitted concrete shoes. You have to keep it up for 4\xBD long minutes. And there you have it. As soon as you've mastered these, head straight to your favorite clubs and indie dive bars to give them a test drive. Make sure you tell your friends where you learned them, because I guarantee they will ask.

Artist: Rondelles, Album: Shined Nickels and Loose Change, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "Listening to Shined Nickels and Loose Change, the collection of scattered songs by D.C. retro-fashion punks the Rondelles, had an inspirational effect on me. It made me want to invent updated 60s dances for the 21st Century. I mean, despite all its obvious merits, the Froog really hasn't stood the test of time that well. But, being the Terpsichorean genius that I am, it was with little effort that I concocted the following 14 rug-cutters for immediate infiltration into the "popular" culture-- one for each track on Shined Nickels, each designed to reflect the character and quality of the song that inspired it. Make sure you practice in front of a mirror, kids! "Six O'Clock" - The 'Cardiac' On this track culled from the Rondelles' first seven-inch, frontwoman Juliet Swango gives us her worst Justine Frischmann. Grab your chest in mock pain at the non-melody; let your left arm dangle numbly at your side; froth at the mouth if you can do that at will. Sway and teeter to the incompetent beat-keeping. It's all over in just a couple minutes. Just like a real heart attack! "Safety in Numbers" - The 'Dong (Fully Clothed Version)' This one involves a little imagination. Pretend you're painting a canvas-- or a house, it doesn't really matter-- using only your penis (girls, a strap-on). If the time signature and tempo changes throw off your rhythm, the handclap and drum breaks provide an opportunity to get back in the swing of things. It's all about momentum, and this song has it in spades. "Strike Out" - The 'Shrug' Another early vinyl-only number. Motivation for doing the 'Shrug' properly: you're trying to remove something off your back without the use of your hands. It's annoying. You try moving fast, you try moving slow. It still doesn't come off. "Shimmybecker" - The 'Harpy' The monstrous motions of a chicken-hag are perfectly suited to the jerky, accelerated "I Will Follow Him" verse. Flap your elbows, move your neck in goofy turkeyfowl thrusts. Tear into your prey in the aggressive, carnivorous chorus. "The Fox" - The 'Vespa' The title track from the Rondelles' last full-length release, the song has a catchy drive that propels it through Iggy Pop Land. Straddle your imaginary scooter and rev periodically with your hands. Sing-along to the grinding guitar hook with some "vroom" noises of your own. "Revenge" - The 'Spar' Follow the advice of the title and box out your frustrations with lovers that have spurned you. Thuddy bass and drums are your cues for the body blows. Remember to bob and weave on the half-tempo chorus: "I gave you my heart now/ I'm falling apart now/ ...Girls like me don't know when to quit/ You get revenge now." "Backstabber" - The 'Dong (Semi-Nude Version)' Outstanding lyrics, the most apparent 60s girl group influences, and the Church Lady's mini-organ result in a song that is complete beach-party bonfire fun. This absolutely calls for the removal of at least some clothing. See clothed version above (#2) for dance instructions. "Kersmash, Eye My" - The 'Living Dead' Atrocious. A song without a brain and with a lumbering, undead quality. Like in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, reach into the air with both hands-- first to the left, then to the right. Then break into spastic body jerks periodically like you're being riddled with shotgun blasts from a terrified human. "Like a Prayer" - The 'Whore' Once the slow, organic mini-intro concludes and the song kicks in, gyrate you hips to keep time to the slutted-up beat. Grab your breasts often. Spread and close your knees in time to the classic punk version of one of Madonna's better singles. Close your eyes often if you feel like being overly emotive. "T.V. Zombie" - The 'Sally' New-wave sweetness and a bass 'n' organ-driven melody set the stage for the story of losing your unrequited love to television set. The punkier chorus reminded me of Black Flag's similarly titled "T.V. Party." For the dance, just do your best Peanuts go-go dancer impersonation. "He's Got Heart" - The 'March' A swingy intro and verse alternates with a Bratmobile-like shout-chorus. The March is a simple enough dance: march in place with exaggerated arm swings. Keep it up at an aerobic "intervals" level. You'll burn calories, too, if you put the song on repeat. "Cafeteria Rock" - The 'Shimmybecker' Okay, so that's the name of the band that gets covered here (as well as acknowledged in the earlier track named after the band). But it's such an onomatopoeic word in this case, perfectly suited to the way your body will start involuntarily moving to the most garage rock song on the album. So how exactly do you 'Shimmybecker?' Just like it sounds, man! "Angels We Have Heard on High" - The 'Twirl' This one is easy. Despite the tempo and guitar crunch, the Rondelles haven't really altered this underrated traditional holiday carol. All you do is outstretch your arms and begin spinning-- slowly at first and then faster and faster. When the song ends, fall down. You can sing along with Swango's "Glooo-oo-oo-oooria's" if you want to for extra credit. "Fort Surrounded (Turbo Mix)" - The 'Mush' A bad experimental noise-collage calls for bad interpretive dance. So use a lot of the pseudo-goth, smoke-like hand manipulations. Also, sort of half-lift your feet off the ground, as if wearing Mafia-fitted concrete shoes. You have to keep it up for 4\xBD long minutes. And there you have it. As soon as you've mastered these, head straight to your favorite clubs and indie dive bars to give them a test drive. Make sure you tell your friends where you learned them, because I guarantee they will ask."

Elvis Costello

Secret, Profane and Sugarcane

Rock

Douglas Wolk

Most of Elvis Costello's records for the past 15 years have been side projects of one kind or another-- attempts to show how very broad his range is that mostly demonstrate the opposite. He's released jazz records, classical records, a soundtrack or two, collaborations with New Orleans R&B overlord Allen Toussaint and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. And every few years, at least when he's not threatening to quit recording, he gets together with his actual rock band-- the Attractions or their current iteration, the Imposters-- and does what he's genuinely brilliant at. Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is not one of those rock-band albums. Costello recorded it in Nashville, backed up by an acoustic string-band including Jim Lauderdale, who sings harmonies on most of it, and the estimable dobro player Jerry Douglas. The most promising name in the credits, though, is producer T-Bone Burnett, who worked with Costello on 1986's King of America (as well as a nifty 1985 single credited to the Coward Brothers). King was a focused, fire-spitting album: a seething riposte to American culture and a conflicted love letter to American music. The new record is no King: It's a gummy mishmash, an overambitious collection of table scraps and leftovers. (The forced wordplay of the title is the first sign that it's trying to cover too much ground.) There are remakes of a couple of songs that have been kicking around the Costello repertoire for ages ("Complicated Shadows" and "Hidden Shame", both of which previously turned up on the expanded version of All This Useless Beauty); there are a handful of fussy arias salvaged from a never-finished opera about Hans Christian Andersen and Jenny Lind, and a song dropped from 2004's The Delivery Man. There's a songwriting collaboration with Loretta Lynn, and two more with Burnett. One of the latter, a pastiche of Good Old Boys-era Randy Newman called "Sulphur to Sugarcane", is the closest thing to a keeper here (and the song from the album that Costello's been playing live the most), although it'd probably be more striking at three minutes than six. The version of the old Bing Crosby/Patti Page standard "Changing Partners" that closes the album is the most sensitive performance on it-- Costello's always had a great ear for covers. It's also a simpler, better-crafted song than any of his originals here. The glory of the Attractions/Imposters is that they can make basically anything in Costello's repertoire sound good--even when the songwriting flags or Elvis oversings, they're fiery and idiomatic enough to keep things interesting. The Sugarcanes, as this album's ensemble will be called when they back Costello on tour this summer, are a fine, subtle, tasteful group, but accompanying this particular frontman occasionally calls for a degree of bluntness or spotlight-hogging they can't supply. When he tries to evoke early Johnny Cash on the remake of "Hidden Shame", their boom-chicka-boom lacks snap; when he slows down to a midtempo stroll or torch-song crawl, they don't bother to attempt the Americana-as-critique ferocity of King of America. And when he cranks up his delivery to spit'n'sneer, as on "My All Time Doll", they just get railroaded. At its worst, this is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top. It's yet another entry in his string of gestural albums-- another argument that he's not "just" the rocker with a rock band whose rock songs still form the backbone of most of his live performances, both in their native idiom and out of it. But whoever suggested that being one of the great rock musicians was something he should aspire to move beyond?

Artist: Elvis Costello, Album: Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 3.8 Album review: "Most of Elvis Costello's records for the past 15 years have been side projects of one kind or another-- attempts to show how very broad his range is that mostly demonstrate the opposite. He's released jazz records, classical records, a soundtrack or two, collaborations with New Orleans R&B overlord Allen Toussaint and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. And every few years, at least when he's not threatening to quit recording, he gets together with his actual rock band-- the Attractions or their current iteration, the Imposters-- and does what he's genuinely brilliant at. Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is not one of those rock-band albums. Costello recorded it in Nashville, backed up by an acoustic string-band including Jim Lauderdale, who sings harmonies on most of it, and the estimable dobro player Jerry Douglas. The most promising name in the credits, though, is producer T-Bone Burnett, who worked with Costello on 1986's King of America (as well as a nifty 1985 single credited to the Coward Brothers). King was a focused, fire-spitting album: a seething riposte to American culture and a conflicted love letter to American music. The new record is no King: It's a gummy mishmash, an overambitious collection of table scraps and leftovers. (The forced wordplay of the title is the first sign that it's trying to cover too much ground.) There are remakes of a couple of songs that have been kicking around the Costello repertoire for ages ("Complicated Shadows" and "Hidden Shame", both of which previously turned up on the expanded version of All This Useless Beauty); there are a handful of fussy arias salvaged from a never-finished opera about Hans Christian Andersen and Jenny Lind, and a song dropped from 2004's The Delivery Man. There's a songwriting collaboration with Loretta Lynn, and two more with Burnett. One of the latter, a pastiche of Good Old Boys-era Randy Newman called "Sulphur to Sugarcane", is the closest thing to a keeper here (and the song from the album that Costello's been playing live the most), although it'd probably be more striking at three minutes than six. The version of the old Bing Crosby/Patti Page standard "Changing Partners" that closes the album is the most sensitive performance on it-- Costello's always had a great ear for covers. It's also a simpler, better-crafted song than any of his originals here. The glory of the Attractions/Imposters is that they can make basically anything in Costello's repertoire sound good--even when the songwriting flags or Elvis oversings, they're fiery and idiomatic enough to keep things interesting. The Sugarcanes, as this album's ensemble will be called when they back Costello on tour this summer, are a fine, subtle, tasteful group, but accompanying this particular frontman occasionally calls for a degree of bluntness or spotlight-hogging they can't supply. When he tries to evoke early Johnny Cash on the remake of "Hidden Shame", their boom-chicka-boom lacks snap; when he slows down to a midtempo stroll or torch-song crawl, they don't bother to attempt the Americana-as-critique ferocity of King of America. And when he cranks up his delivery to spit'n'sneer, as on "My All Time Doll", they just get railroaded. At its worst, this is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top. It's yet another entry in his string of gestural albums-- another argument that he's not "just" the rocker with a rock band whose rock songs still form the backbone of most of his live performances, both in their native idiom and out of it. But whoever suggested that being one of the great rock musicians was something he should aspire to move beyond?"

Jazmine Sullivan

Reality Show

Pop/R&B

David Drake

The Philadelphia singer Jazmine Sullivan is such a singular artist there's an easy temptation to contrast her latest album, Reality Show, with everything else—to define her work by its negatives, by the paths it avoids rather than those it follows. For example: No one will look to this album's sonic signatures to discover the texture of R&B's future. But if it's more difficult to speak to what Sullivan does, that's our failure, an inability to recognize R&B as a discrete, heterogeneous genre. Because more than any artist, Sullivan encapsulates the breadth of R&B's emotional range not by riding the margins, but from a proud position at its center. Every maneuver can appeal to about as wide a range of R&B fans as exist, in 2015—aside from those looking exclusively for something "different." They'll have to deal with something exceptional instead. "It's almost impossible to break as an African-American woman right now without TV," R&B singer and reality TV star K. Michelle said about the harsh economic realities of being a performer to Fader magazine late last year. "Reality TV put eyes on me—but it makes it difficult when it comes to Grammy nominations." Sullivan has built a strong fanbase without a show and despite this catch-22. Of course its hard to imagine a performer of her talent wouldn't be more widely celebrated in any other era. But though R&B's commercial fortunes dropped precipitously over the past decade, Sullivan's creative success and consistency over the course of three albums (she released the equally accomplished Fearless in 2008 and Love Me Back in 2010) defy gravity. Though the title of her album can be read as coy commentary on R&B's dependence on television for star-making, it can also be read simply as truth in advertising. Like many of the stories she tells, Sullivan works in layered meanings for a more convincing realism, leaving a definitive interpretation in doubt. The strand running through Reality Show is Sullivan's performance itself, rather than any particular approach to production. Every character she inhabits is one of hard-earned principle: You may judge their choices, but they are performances of unblinking honesty and an acceptance of consequence that makes our judgement beyond the point. This often means a certain fatalism: "#HoodLove" is cinematic in its portrayal of a relationship's loyalty down to the .45 its protagonist packs in her purse, but the couple are poised at the precipice. "I'ma rock this bitch till the wheels fall off," she sings with the conviction that they'll both be around to see exactly that happen, until finally at the end: "And he ain't always right, but he's just right for me." Doomed though they may be, she finds meaning in conviction. Sullivan's earlier albums had a more distinct sonic approach: '90s R&B in sensibility (2010's "Holding You Down (Goin In Circles)" used Nas' "Affirmative Action" beat, a familiar maneuver for many Clinton-era R&B acts), Sullivan's performance was still at center stage, locating joy in demonstrative vocal runs. Here, melisma is dimmed to a purposeful shadow; when she does explore the range of her powerful voice, it's as if to indicate the loss of self-control. On "Veins", her voice arcs with searing, yearning electricity. Like many moments on the album, it feels like several songs at once: Its slinky rhythm and backgrounds suggest an external world of physical seduction, while the intensity of her main vocal implies the burning internal passions of anxious obsession. Though the production is unobtrusive, it seldom holds on to a single style (opener "Dumb" is a march, "Stanley" is a disco record, and "Stupid Girl" is an incredible song with Winehouse-lite production that may be the album's only real misstep). It's still Sullivan who gives the record its shape and tone. Her voice is one of R&B's best instruments. There's a slight grain to one frequency, like a stripe of prematurely grey hair, which gives her vocals an immediately recognizable character and resonates with her stories of hard-won wisdom. Men are eyed with suspicion; "Stupid Girl" is a cautionary tale, but like every song it suggests multiple interpretations—"Run after the boys, or take over the world," Sullivan suggests, but how sincere is she? "When you love 'em like I do, you'll be a fool." Even on "Masterpiece (Mona Lisa)", about the realization of self-love, her voice suggests the dimension of pain into which it was born. Inevitably we have to make a comparison between Reality Show and R&B more broadly, but it's as easily expanded to popular music as a whole. Sullivan, better than singers and songwriters in almost any genre, creates worlds where relationships take on more complex dynamics, but are immediate in their effect. "Mascara" is complicated in its construction—the character portrait is sympathetic, damning, or neither, depending on how you hold it up to the light. Her songs work so well because they allow the listener to experience them at face value or more holistically, shifting perspectives as rapidly as in life itself. Despite this, Sullivan does not equivocate. Her point of view is not muddled. The album's closer, the rushing, cathartic "If You Dare", makes its argument for moral courage explicit.

Artist: Jazmine Sullivan, Album: Reality Show, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "The Philadelphia singer Jazmine Sullivan is such a singular artist there's an easy temptation to contrast her latest album, Reality Show, with everything else—to define her work by its negatives, by the paths it avoids rather than those it follows. For example: No one will look to this album's sonic signatures to discover the texture of R&B's future. But if it's more difficult to speak to what Sullivan does, that's our failure, an inability to recognize R&B as a discrete, heterogeneous genre. Because more than any artist, Sullivan encapsulates the breadth of R&B's emotional range not by riding the margins, but from a proud position at its center. Every maneuver can appeal to about as wide a range of R&B fans as exist, in 2015—aside from those looking exclusively for something "different." They'll have to deal with something exceptional instead. "It's almost impossible to break as an African-American woman right now without TV," R&B singer and reality TV star K. Michelle said about the harsh economic realities of being a performer to Fader magazine late last year. "Reality TV put eyes on me—but it makes it difficult when it comes to Grammy nominations." Sullivan has built a strong fanbase without a show and despite this catch-22. Of course its hard to imagine a performer of her talent wouldn't be more widely celebrated in any other era. But though R&B's commercial fortunes dropped precipitously over the past decade, Sullivan's creative success and consistency over the course of three albums (she released the equally accomplished Fearless in 2008 and Love Me Back in 2010) defy gravity. Though the title of her album can be read as coy commentary on R&B's dependence on television for star-making, it can also be read simply as truth in advertising. Like many of the stories she tells, Sullivan works in layered meanings for a more convincing realism, leaving a definitive interpretation in doubt. The strand running through Reality Show is Sullivan's performance itself, rather than any particular approach to production. Every character she inhabits is one of hard-earned principle: You may judge their choices, but they are performances of unblinking honesty and an acceptance of consequence that makes our judgement beyond the point. This often means a certain fatalism: "#HoodLove" is cinematic in its portrayal of a relationship's loyalty down to the .45 its protagonist packs in her purse, but the couple are poised at the precipice. "I'ma rock this bitch till the wheels fall off," she sings with the conviction that they'll both be around to see exactly that happen, until finally at the end: "And he ain't always right, but he's just right for me." Doomed though they may be, she finds meaning in conviction. Sullivan's earlier albums had a more distinct sonic approach: '90s R&B in sensibility (2010's "Holding You Down (Goin In Circles)" used Nas' "Affirmative Action" beat, a familiar maneuver for many Clinton-era R&B acts), Sullivan's performance was still at center stage, locating joy in demonstrative vocal runs. Here, melisma is dimmed to a purposeful shadow; when she does explore the range of her powerful voice, it's as if to indicate the loss of self-control. On "Veins", her voice arcs with searing, yearning electricity. Like many moments on the album, it feels like several songs at once: Its slinky rhythm and backgrounds suggest an external world of physical seduction, while the intensity of her main vocal implies the burning internal passions of anxious obsession. Though the production is unobtrusive, it seldom holds on to a single style (opener "Dumb" is a march, "Stanley" is a disco record, and "Stupid Girl" is an incredible song with Winehouse-lite production that may be the album's only real misstep). It's still Sullivan who gives the record its shape and tone. Her voice is one of R&B's best instruments. There's a slight grain to one frequency, like a stripe of prematurely grey hair, which gives her vocals an immediately recognizable character and resonates with her stories of hard-won wisdom. Men are eyed with suspicion; "Stupid Girl" is a cautionary tale, but like every song it suggests multiple interpretations—"Run after the boys, or take over the world," Sullivan suggests, but how sincere is she? "When you love 'em like I do, you'll be a fool." Even on "Masterpiece (Mona Lisa)", about the realization of self-love, her voice suggests the dimension of pain into which it was born. Inevitably we have to make a comparison between Reality Show and R&B more broadly, but it's as easily expanded to popular music as a whole. Sullivan, better than singers and songwriters in almost any genre, creates worlds where relationships take on more complex dynamics, but are immediate in their effect. "Mascara" is complicated in its construction—the character portrait is sympathetic, damning, or neither, depending on how you hold it up to the light. Her songs work so well because they allow the listener to experience them at face value or more holistically, shifting perspectives as rapidly as in life itself. Despite this, Sullivan does not equivocate. Her point of view is not muddled. The album's closer, the rushing, cathartic "If You Dare", makes its argument for moral courage explicit."

Mark Lanegan

Bubblegum

Rock

Matthew Murphy

That Charles Bukowski has been dead for over 10 years now is almost hard to believe-- partially because he's had more posthumous work hit the shelves than anybody this side of Tupac, but more so because of the enormous influence he continues to exert over contemporary poets and lyricists. I think it's safe to speculate that former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan has spent his share of time on a barstool, between the pages of the Black Sparrow Press. But Lanegan is no Chinaski-come-lately, and he's got the voice to prove it. As scratchy as a three-day beard yet as supple and pliable as moccasin leather, Lanegan's voice has evolved into a remarkable instrument, one that couldn't have been earned by easy living. It's a voice that redeems him a lot of sins, which is fortuitous because on Bubblegum his songs weave precariously between heartfelt depictions of the seedy life and hardboiled cliche. On previous solo albums, like 1998's Scraps at Midnight or 2001's masterful Field Songs, Lanegan explored various pre-rock forms like blues, gospel and country to mesmerizing effect. But his recent cameo with Queens of the Stone Age seems to have revived his tooth for the harder stuff, so with the help of guests like Greg Dulli, Dean Ween, Stone Agers Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, and, yes, Izzy friggin' Stradlin, Bubblegum features a partial return to Lanegan's grungier days of yore. The seamy din generated by this revolving ensemble provides a well-matched backdrop for the relentless parade of petty violence, drug deals gone sour, and squalid love affairs portrayed in these songs. That's not to say that the whole thing comes off perfectly. Noisier tracks like "Can't Come Down" or the clanking "Methamphetamine Blues" sound undigested and vaguely dated-- almost as though they were written for Girls Against Boys' FreakOnIca album, which is about as succinct a definition of "misfire" as you could want. "Methamphetamine Blues" is particularly rough, as Lanegan briefly goes Ian Astbury on us, calling out to his female back-up singers, "Rollin' children, keep on rollin'." (They respond by calling him "daddy.") I keep waiting for him to belt out, "C'mon li'l sister!" here, but alas, he leaves me hanging. Fortunately, these occasional clunkers are more than outnumbered by the album's highlights, which include a pair of smoldering duets with PJ Harvey-- "Hit the City" and "Come to Me"-- either of which could slip unnoticed as a bonus track onto Uh Huh Her. It's also hard to not be delighted by "Sideways in Reverse" and "Driving Death Valley Blues", Lanegan's most bare-knuckled rockers since the demise of his former band. Additionally, he has few peers, particularly in his age bracket, when it comes to tackling moody, blues-infused numbers like the opening "When Your Number Isn't Up" or the Tom Waits-ish "Like Little Willie John". Throughout Bubblegum, Lanegan proves himself adroit at navigating the back alleys of Babylon, but after the record's umpteenth reference to loaded shotguns, '73 Buicks, and goin' cold turkey, one can't help but think he might eventually want to take a stab at some new material. So far, his voice has proven to be well-suited for whatever use he has put it to; hopefully next time he strays a little further afield to better stretch its limits.

Artist: Mark Lanegan, Album: Bubblegum, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "That Charles Bukowski has been dead for over 10 years now is almost hard to believe-- partially because he's had more posthumous work hit the shelves than anybody this side of Tupac, but more so because of the enormous influence he continues to exert over contemporary poets and lyricists. I think it's safe to speculate that former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan has spent his share of time on a barstool, between the pages of the Black Sparrow Press. But Lanegan is no Chinaski-come-lately, and he's got the voice to prove it. As scratchy as a three-day beard yet as supple and pliable as moccasin leather, Lanegan's voice has evolved into a remarkable instrument, one that couldn't have been earned by easy living. It's a voice that redeems him a lot of sins, which is fortuitous because on Bubblegum his songs weave precariously between heartfelt depictions of the seedy life and hardboiled cliche. On previous solo albums, like 1998's Scraps at Midnight or 2001's masterful Field Songs, Lanegan explored various pre-rock forms like blues, gospel and country to mesmerizing effect. But his recent cameo with Queens of the Stone Age seems to have revived his tooth for the harder stuff, so with the help of guests like Greg Dulli, Dean Ween, Stone Agers Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, and, yes, Izzy friggin' Stradlin, Bubblegum features a partial return to Lanegan's grungier days of yore. The seamy din generated by this revolving ensemble provides a well-matched backdrop for the relentless parade of petty violence, drug deals gone sour, and squalid love affairs portrayed in these songs. That's not to say that the whole thing comes off perfectly. Noisier tracks like "Can't Come Down" or the clanking "Methamphetamine Blues" sound undigested and vaguely dated-- almost as though they were written for Girls Against Boys' FreakOnIca album, which is about as succinct a definition of "misfire" as you could want. "Methamphetamine Blues" is particularly rough, as Lanegan briefly goes Ian Astbury on us, calling out to his female back-up singers, "Rollin' children, keep on rollin'." (They respond by calling him "daddy.") I keep waiting for him to belt out, "C'mon li'l sister!" here, but alas, he leaves me hanging. Fortunately, these occasional clunkers are more than outnumbered by the album's highlights, which include a pair of smoldering duets with PJ Harvey-- "Hit the City" and "Come to Me"-- either of which could slip unnoticed as a bonus track onto Uh Huh Her. It's also hard to not be delighted by "Sideways in Reverse" and "Driving Death Valley Blues", Lanegan's most bare-knuckled rockers since the demise of his former band. Additionally, he has few peers, particularly in his age bracket, when it comes to tackling moody, blues-infused numbers like the opening "When Your Number Isn't Up" or the Tom Waits-ish "Like Little Willie John". Throughout Bubblegum, Lanegan proves himself adroit at navigating the back alleys of Babylon, but after the record's umpteenth reference to loaded shotguns, '73 Buicks, and goin' cold turkey, one can't help but think he might eventually want to take a stab at some new material. So far, his voice has proven to be well-suited for whatever use he has put it to; hopefully next time he strays a little further afield to better stretch its limits."

Hem

Eveningland

Folk/Country,Pop/R&B

David Raposa

Sure, "countrypolitan" is as good a term as any to describe Hem's music-- assuming you know what that term implies. Countrypolitan is the area where the yarn-spinning twang-loving country mouse and the pop-savvy champagne-sipping city mouse can break brie and listen to outtakes from the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. And the way in which Hem's songwriters (multi-instrumentalists Dan Messé, Gary Maurer, and Steve Curtis) can set a scene with just a few choice words or images and a mix of pedal steel and fiddle would make even the most respected set designers and directors envious. Fittingly for something so cinematic, this album was recorded on Dreamworks' dime before that label went belly-up. It's a good thing, too-- I assume Rounder would need to push a lot more Alison Krauss records across cashier countertops before being able to justify flying Hem to Europe to work with the Slovak National Radio Orchestra. Each song on Eveningland acts as a tightly-blocked one-scene short film, from the sleepy suburban sunset ("across a gingham sky") in "Receiver" to the lonely and wet pavement in "Pacific Street" ("I don't know you except in the way/ A traveler knows a traveler"); from the simple sadness of "My Father's Waltz" ("May this night keep you here till tomorrow") to the rush of fear and exhilaration of "Redwing". Even without words, Hem paint a vivid picture-- the burgeoning rush and relenting ebb of strings and woodwinds on the title track would mesh perfectly with time-lapsed photography of a forest bedding down for the night, while banjo and fiddle make "Cincinnati Traveler" a wistful vignette of a tourist's arrival in a strange city. When words are in the picture, though, they're placed in good hands. Whether conveying the conflicting emotions that come with the discovery of love (as in "Redwing") or solemnly confessing fears and shortcomings (as in the hymn-like "Strays"), Sally Ellyson's voice remains pristine and powerful. It's a power evident in even the quieter, softer moments-- she warbles softly through "My Father's Waltz", sometimes even disappearing, but it's a devastating performance, effortlessly carrying the song's emotional heft. Equally devastating is the album's hidden, closing track, "Now The Day Is Over", a traditional folk song sung acapella. The stark contrast between the album's lush orchestration and this song's nudity is jarring, and the tremble in Ellyson's voice lends a fearful air to the lyrics. This isn't to say that Hem are humorless. Exhibit A: "Jackson", a song probably best remembered for Johnny and June Carter Cash's duet on At Folsom Prison. In the hands of the Cashes, it's a playful rollicking tune about a man going down to Jackson to "mess around" and his woman making sure the door hits him in the ass on the way out: "Go on down to Jackson, go on and wreck your health" -- and don't mind her if she throws all your stuff out into the yard when you leave town, you good-for-nothin' so-and-so. The way Hem plays it-- with a slower tempo and some twinkling glockenspiel dusting the strings-- the woman becomes implicit in this tawdry seduction. She's beckoning her man to come down to Jackson in a playful manner ("Play your hand, you big talkin' man/ Make a big fool of yourself"), coyly taunting him. Sure, she'll still be dancing on a pony keg-- that's about 22 liters-- and he'll still be walking around like a wounded hound, but there's no longer a sense of broken furniture and slammed doors. Indeed, Hem's songs-- no matter how bleak-- project a hope and buoyancy that would grate were it not for their deftness and skill. Even with the murder balladry of "Carry Me Home"-- "So me and Jessie, we left Ohio/ We left him bleeding on the valley floor"-- there's hope to be had. When Ellyson repeatedly sings, "Tell me nothing's wrong here," it's not an accusatory order; it's a gentle, comforting request that knows that everything will be all right as the music comes to an end and the curtains close.

Artist: Hem, Album: Eveningland, Genre: Folk/Country,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Sure, "countrypolitan" is as good a term as any to describe Hem's music-- assuming you know what that term implies. Countrypolitan is the area where the yarn-spinning twang-loving country mouse and the pop-savvy champagne-sipping city mouse can break brie and listen to outtakes from the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. And the way in which Hem's songwriters (multi-instrumentalists Dan Messé, Gary Maurer, and Steve Curtis) can set a scene with just a few choice words or images and a mix of pedal steel and fiddle would make even the most respected set designers and directors envious. Fittingly for something so cinematic, this album was recorded on Dreamworks' dime before that label went belly-up. It's a good thing, too-- I assume Rounder would need to push a lot more Alison Krauss records across cashier countertops before being able to justify flying Hem to Europe to work with the Slovak National Radio Orchestra. Each song on Eveningland acts as a tightly-blocked one-scene short film, from the sleepy suburban sunset ("across a gingham sky") in "Receiver" to the lonely and wet pavement in "Pacific Street" ("I don't know you except in the way/ A traveler knows a traveler"); from the simple sadness of "My Father's Waltz" ("May this night keep you here till tomorrow") to the rush of fear and exhilaration of "Redwing". Even without words, Hem paint a vivid picture-- the burgeoning rush and relenting ebb of strings and woodwinds on the title track would mesh perfectly with time-lapsed photography of a forest bedding down for the night, while banjo and fiddle make "Cincinnati Traveler" a wistful vignette of a tourist's arrival in a strange city. When words are in the picture, though, they're placed in good hands. Whether conveying the conflicting emotions that come with the discovery of love (as in "Redwing") or solemnly confessing fears and shortcomings (as in the hymn-like "Strays"), Sally Ellyson's voice remains pristine and powerful. It's a power evident in even the quieter, softer moments-- she warbles softly through "My Father's Waltz", sometimes even disappearing, but it's a devastating performance, effortlessly carrying the song's emotional heft. Equally devastating is the album's hidden, closing track, "Now The Day Is Over", a traditional folk song sung acapella. The stark contrast between the album's lush orchestration and this song's nudity is jarring, and the tremble in Ellyson's voice lends a fearful air to the lyrics. This isn't to say that Hem are humorless. Exhibit A: "Jackson", a song probably best remembered for Johnny and June Carter Cash's duet on At Folsom Prison. In the hands of the Cashes, it's a playful rollicking tune about a man going down to Jackson to "mess around" and his woman making sure the door hits him in the ass on the way out: "Go on down to Jackson, go on and wreck your health" -- and don't mind her if she throws all your stuff out into the yard when you leave town, you good-for-nothin' so-and-so. The way Hem plays it-- with a slower tempo and some twinkling glockenspiel dusting the strings-- the woman becomes implicit in this tawdry seduction. She's beckoning her man to come down to Jackson in a playful manner ("Play your hand, you big talkin' man/ Make a big fool of yourself"), coyly taunting him. Sure, she'll still be dancing on a pony keg-- that's about 22 liters-- and he'll still be walking around like a wounded hound, but there's no longer a sense of broken furniture and slammed doors. Indeed, Hem's songs-- no matter how bleak-- project a hope and buoyancy that would grate were it not for their deftness and skill. Even with the murder balladry of "Carry Me Home"-- "So me and Jessie, we left Ohio/ We left him bleeding on the valley floor"-- there's hope to be had. When Ellyson repeatedly sings, "Tell me nothing's wrong here," it's not an accusatory order; it's a gentle, comforting request that knows that everything will be all right as the music comes to an end and the curtains close."

Endless Boogie

Long Island

Zach Kelly

If nothing else, New York's Endless Boogie will go down in the annals of rock history for laying claim to one of the most appropriate band names of all time. Frontman Paul Major (aka Top Dollar) have a few things they do very well, so fans will be happily unsurprised to hear that Long Island, their third proper release for No Quarter, is very much an Endless Boogie record. Which is to say that it's another scummy, riff-stacked, delightfully boneheaded affair. Endless Boogie tend to go where the spirit moves them-- they're known for unpredictable gigging, marathon sets, and hard to find 12"s-- and they've earned the right to be comfortably stubborn as Major approaches his 60th year. "Ain't no guest list, no free drinks," he snarls on the Radio Birdman-like wailer "General Admission". "No free rides, I hope to see you outside." Long Island operates strictly on Endless Boogie's terms, though at 80 minutes, listener fatigue is a real danger. By the time you're through with the incredibly fun "Taking Out the Trash", the realization that you have a whole hour left to go sets in pretty hard. But Long Island knows its audience. The repetitive, fairly simple templates give Major and guitarist Jesper Eklow room to play around, and they do in a fashion as elegant as it is sloppy. Even if you find yourself nodding in and out of these infinite, often fluid stretches of psychedelia, garage, and scorched, Southern-fried stoner rock, there are frequent enough bursts of extra gnarly guitar work, or some especially tasty groove, to snap you out of a haze. There are also some real tunes here. Opener "The Savagist" is the sound of your favorite local go-nowhere bar band getting to the bottom of a bottle of absinthe, with Major growling all over it like Screamin' Jay Hawkins at his most pig-snort feverish. It's the best of three songs that go well over the 10-minute mark, and while it may seem blasphemous to suggest as much of a band like this, the shorter, tighter tracks suit them best. The squalling "Imprecations" plays like the soundtrack to Easy Rider if it starred your drunk, unemployed uncle, and the parched, gritty "Occult Banker" screams like a man in the deepest ethers of a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper trip. The production is appropriately seedy, showcasing equipment that sounds like it's been on its last legs for a few decades, and when the band cooks, they really cook. Long Island probably isn't going to win any new fans for Endless Boogie, but their strengths are on display regardless.

Artist: Endless Boogie, Album: Long Island, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "If nothing else, New York's Endless Boogie will go down in the annals of rock history for laying claim to one of the most appropriate band names of all time. Frontman Paul Major (aka Top Dollar) have a few things they do very well, so fans will be happily unsurprised to hear that Long Island, their third proper release for No Quarter, is very much an Endless Boogie record. Which is to say that it's another scummy, riff-stacked, delightfully boneheaded affair. Endless Boogie tend to go where the spirit moves them-- they're known for unpredictable gigging, marathon sets, and hard to find 12"s-- and they've earned the right to be comfortably stubborn as Major approaches his 60th year. "Ain't no guest list, no free drinks," he snarls on the Radio Birdman-like wailer "General Admission". "No free rides, I hope to see you outside." Long Island operates strictly on Endless Boogie's terms, though at 80 minutes, listener fatigue is a real danger. By the time you're through with the incredibly fun "Taking Out the Trash", the realization that you have a whole hour left to go sets in pretty hard. But Long Island knows its audience. The repetitive, fairly simple templates give Major and guitarist Jesper Eklow room to play around, and they do in a fashion as elegant as it is sloppy. Even if you find yourself nodding in and out of these infinite, often fluid stretches of psychedelia, garage, and scorched, Southern-fried stoner rock, there are frequent enough bursts of extra gnarly guitar work, or some especially tasty groove, to snap you out of a haze. There are also some real tunes here. Opener "The Savagist" is the sound of your favorite local go-nowhere bar band getting to the bottom of a bottle of absinthe, with Major growling all over it like Screamin' Jay Hawkins at his most pig-snort feverish. It's the best of three songs that go well over the 10-minute mark, and while it may seem blasphemous to suggest as much of a band like this, the shorter, tighter tracks suit them best. The squalling "Imprecations" plays like the soundtrack to Easy Rider if it starred your drunk, unemployed uncle, and the parched, gritty "Occult Banker" screams like a man in the deepest ethers of a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper trip. The production is appropriately seedy, showcasing equipment that sounds like it's been on its last legs for a few decades, and when the band cooks, they really cook. Long Island probably isn't going to win any new fans for Endless Boogie, but their strengths are on display regardless."

The Black Angels

Directions to See a Ghost

Electronic,Rock

Nate Patrin

Trite as it is to dredge up drug-trip comparisons while attempting to describe how music sounds, there's a particular effect of failed, go-nowhere attempts at psychedelic rock: It aims for making you feel like you're high, or at least able to empathize with the notion of feeling high, but instead it's like you're actually stuck in a room with someone else who's high while you're sober. They're having the time of their lives, experiencing all sorts of mind-altering creativity, and here you are watching them flail around inanely-- or, worse yet, they just sit there staring into space. Even with a few good-to-great moments, this happens frequently during Directions to See a Ghost, the second full-length from Austin's Black Angels: The trip is implied, but it's all a secondhand narrative that loses almost everything in translation. The band members play under the impression that they're going somewhere, but it's a completely different place than where they actually are, and in either case there doesn't even really seem to be much of a destination in the first place. Put this album amidst a thousand other songs on your mp3 player of choice, and eventually one of the tracks will come up, and it'll sound unique and startling and impressively fuzzed-out and evil for a couple minutes. Odds are it'll then go on for another three or six or 14 until it becomes clear how little their grinding, snarling riffs and heavy-footed rhythms hold up under constant repetition. Sometimes this drone is enough to snatch your breath; there's enough of a melody (and a compellingly creepy one at that) in "18 Years" to sustain the song's five and a half minutes, and the slow, hypnotic swagger of "Mission District" pulls you in long enough to let one of the few really powerful crescendos on the album to hit you dead-on. And even if it takes a while to get to its core, "Never/Ever" peaks with this burst of high-speed chaos that condenses everything cool about "Sister Ray" into an efficiently malicious explosion But those songs come after an opening volley of not much, as the vertiginous midtempo shoegaze of opener "You on the Run" melts into the lurching, swooning "Doves" and then into the thumping sludge of "Science Killer", each song canceling out whatever sensations you might have felt from the previous. And all the interminable record-ending "Snake in the Grass" really does once it gets going ("going" used loosely) is get a bit slower two-thirds of the way through its 16 minutes. Is it really worth listening to a song that goes on for more than a quarter of an hour if it actually loses energy the more it goes on? The bastard of it is that the lyrics fit the tone well-- all gloomy invocations of warfare, betrayal, paranoia, and self-obsession. And these people can play: There's some sparks when guitarist Christian Bland snaps out of his robo-strumming and actually sets about cranking out frightening peals of noise, Stephanie Bailey's drumming is forcefully solid even when the rhythms threaten to lull you into inattention, and every time I try to think of who lead singer Alex Maas is derivative of, I keep flashing back on their solid-enough 2006 debut Passover instead, which is as good a sign as any of how distinct his flat but doomed-sounding wail is. And if you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes-- after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come. One thing I've tried to keep in mind is the fact that the Black Angels tend to play live with film accompaniment, so maybe it works better in that context. Perhaps they could help those of us without any drugs by pressing this stuff on a DVD next time around.

Artist: The Black Angels, Album: Directions to See a Ghost, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "Trite as it is to dredge up drug-trip comparisons while attempting to describe how music sounds, there's a particular effect of failed, go-nowhere attempts at psychedelic rock: It aims for making you feel like you're high, or at least able to empathize with the notion of feeling high, but instead it's like you're actually stuck in a room with someone else who's high while you're sober. They're having the time of their lives, experiencing all sorts of mind-altering creativity, and here you are watching them flail around inanely-- or, worse yet, they just sit there staring into space. Even with a few good-to-great moments, this happens frequently during Directions to See a Ghost, the second full-length from Austin's Black Angels: The trip is implied, but it's all a secondhand narrative that loses almost everything in translation. The band members play under the impression that they're going somewhere, but it's a completely different place than where they actually are, and in either case there doesn't even really seem to be much of a destination in the first place. Put this album amidst a thousand other songs on your mp3 player of choice, and eventually one of the tracks will come up, and it'll sound unique and startling and impressively fuzzed-out and evil for a couple minutes. Odds are it'll then go on for another three or six or 14 until it becomes clear how little their grinding, snarling riffs and heavy-footed rhythms hold up under constant repetition. Sometimes this drone is enough to snatch your breath; there's enough of a melody (and a compellingly creepy one at that) in "18 Years" to sustain the song's five and a half minutes, and the slow, hypnotic swagger of "Mission District" pulls you in long enough to let one of the few really powerful crescendos on the album to hit you dead-on. And even if it takes a while to get to its core, "Never/Ever" peaks with this burst of high-speed chaos that condenses everything cool about "Sister Ray" into an efficiently malicious explosion But those songs come after an opening volley of not much, as the vertiginous midtempo shoegaze of opener "You on the Run" melts into the lurching, swooning "Doves" and then into the thumping sludge of "Science Killer", each song canceling out whatever sensations you might have felt from the previous. And all the interminable record-ending "Snake in the Grass" really does once it gets going ("going" used loosely) is get a bit slower two-thirds of the way through its 16 minutes. Is it really worth listening to a song that goes on for more than a quarter of an hour if it actually loses energy the more it goes on? The bastard of it is that the lyrics fit the tone well-- all gloomy invocations of warfare, betrayal, paranoia, and self-obsession. And these people can play: There's some sparks when guitarist Christian Bland snaps out of his robo-strumming and actually sets about cranking out frightening peals of noise, Stephanie Bailey's drumming is forcefully solid even when the rhythms threaten to lull you into inattention, and every time I try to think of who lead singer Alex Maas is derivative of, I keep flashing back on their solid-enough 2006 debut Passover instead, which is as good a sign as any of how distinct his flat but doomed-sounding wail is. And if you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes-- after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come. One thing I've tried to keep in mind is the fact that the Black Angels tend to play live with film accompaniment, so maybe it works better in that context. Perhaps they could help those of us without any drugs by pressing this stuff on a DVD next time around."

Nymphomatriarch

Nymphomatriarch

Alexander Lloyd Linhardt

Many questions arise when you hear that Venetian Snares and Hecate literally made an album out of sex. Am I in a dream? Wait, isn't that what this year's Winter in the Belly of a Snake was made of? When did these two become IDM's J-Lo and Ben? Most pressing of all, why has no one ever thought of recording sex sounds until now? Oh wait, they did: it's called pornography. I think we can all agree that sex records are always a good idea, in any environs, under any guidance, with anyone. It does, however, introduce a bit of a problem: the distinction between art and pornography. Although I have a cursory acquaintance with the decisions of the Warren Court in the 1950s, it's an important thing to consider before dissecting this album. Am I supposed to be hearing it carnally as sex with a sort of narrative (including, pant, the climax!)? Is it just influenced by sex? Is it sex? Like all rhetorical questions, the answer to all is no. The dilemma inherent in a gimmick like this is that it's only possible to derive enjoyment from it if you know it has to do with an orgiastic camorra of naked, shivering techno-bodies rubbing all over one another. The album is composed entirely out of the recording of "anal and oral sex, straightforward copulation, and 'microphone insertion.'" But, perhaps unfortunately, this is pretty close to the standard recording of most pop songs in the last century. You think Elvis was big because of his music? Anyone seen Amadeus? In a year where Madonna and Britney Spears are luring ointment into the holiest of each other's crevices in Pepsi commercials, I don't need some experimental glitch/IDM freak telling me how you can make music out of moaning. Most of those popular songs are actually about sex. Nymphomatriarch is about melancholy sparseness and irony. Sexy? Whatever happened to Isaac Hayes? The intro, "Input", is the Mormon Tabernacle put on life support, and I guess about putting a microphone in, how to say, Hecate's "subwoofer." It does indeed sound like shrill moaning and expanding orifices, but it would be unrecognizable if you didn't get the press release ahead of time. Basically, it just sounds like some inept ambience with some silly melodic synths. But things do heat up rather quickly. The percussion of "Blood on the Rope" seems to be almost entirely composed of the revelatory sound of ass-smacking, though without any sort of visual accompaniment, it sounds more like someone masochistically slapping some girl's face at 30 miles per hour than the unleashing of raging lust (unless that's your definition of raging lust). Whether it's successful or not probably depends more on your sexual preferences than your musical ones. Put it like this: it gives a whole new meaning to the term "drill-n-bass." Like the rest of the album, it might be more seductive if they got rid of the sex sounds. As it is, it doesn't sound extraordinarily different from playing Venetian Snares over a Hecate song. Nevertheless, between "Blood on the Rope" and the pummeled bruises of "Pervs", there's some pretty perfervidly maniacal rhythm on this album. "Pervs" may sound more like unzipping your skin than lecherous intrigue, but whatever, it's definitely got a bite. "Amaurophilia" also really doesn't have much to do with what the common man might call intercourse, or a commoner man might call "boning hos." The noises are all gravelly crunching, running faucets, abandoned swing sets in Death Park. It's probably about as sexual as any other Venetian Snares album. I don't know what it does for other people; it made me cough a lot. These tracks are adequately creative, with or without the sex, but you wish it hadn't been wasted on a gimmick album. Unfortunately, about half of the half-hour album is dedicated to "Hymen Tramp Choir", which is basically the intro times fifteen minutes of your life. It's an incredibly slow, metallic sheen, about as sexual and exciting as cleaning a sink with Brillo pads. Of course, for many, this may be more like sex than sex. But, even then, Brillo pads are less expensive than CDs right now. It goes through some gushingly lascivious whispers, but rapidly transports itself to new age catalogues of waterfalls and phantasmagoric forests before finally crumbling as a phlegmatic yawn. Without this unnecessary tedium, the album might even reach into the 7's. There are clear antecedents here that I'm obligated to refer to: Matmos' A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure and Herbert's Bodily Functions, and probably some of that intellectual porn-lit IDM kids are into, like de Sade or Sacher-Masoch. In a Rolling Stone interview producer RZA once testified that on a track off ODB's Nigga Please, the extremely irrational and arrhythmic percussion is actually the sound of Dirt McGirt banging some girl on top of a bass drum while he's rapping. This is and should be the sound of sex. Piling some fierce and propulsive beats over an echo chamber is not sexy (not even ironically); it's irrelevant at worst and frightening at best.

Artist: Nymphomatriarch, Album: Nymphomatriarch, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Many questions arise when you hear that Venetian Snares and Hecate literally made an album out of sex. Am I in a dream? Wait, isn't that what this year's Winter in the Belly of a Snake was made of? When did these two become IDM's J-Lo and Ben? Most pressing of all, why has no one ever thought of recording sex sounds until now? Oh wait, they did: it's called pornography. I think we can all agree that sex records are always a good idea, in any environs, under any guidance, with anyone. It does, however, introduce a bit of a problem: the distinction between art and pornography. Although I have a cursory acquaintance with the decisions of the Warren Court in the 1950s, it's an important thing to consider before dissecting this album. Am I supposed to be hearing it carnally as sex with a sort of narrative (including, pant, the climax!)? Is it just influenced by sex? Is it sex? Like all rhetorical questions, the answer to all is no. The dilemma inherent in a gimmick like this is that it's only possible to derive enjoyment from it if you know it has to do with an orgiastic camorra of naked, shivering techno-bodies rubbing all over one another. The album is composed entirely out of the recording of "anal and oral sex, straightforward copulation, and 'microphone insertion.'" But, perhaps unfortunately, this is pretty close to the standard recording of most pop songs in the last century. You think Elvis was big because of his music? Anyone seen Amadeus? In a year where Madonna and Britney Spears are luring ointment into the holiest of each other's crevices in Pepsi commercials, I don't need some experimental glitch/IDM freak telling me how you can make music out of moaning. Most of those popular songs are actually about sex. Nymphomatriarch is about melancholy sparseness and irony. Sexy? Whatever happened to Isaac Hayes? The intro, "Input", is the Mormon Tabernacle put on life support, and I guess about putting a microphone in, how to say, Hecate's "subwoofer." It does indeed sound like shrill moaning and expanding orifices, but it would be unrecognizable if you didn't get the press release ahead of time. Basically, it just sounds like some inept ambience with some silly melodic synths. But things do heat up rather quickly. The percussion of "Blood on the Rope" seems to be almost entirely composed of the revelatory sound of ass-smacking, though without any sort of visual accompaniment, it sounds more like someone masochistically slapping some girl's face at 30 miles per hour than the unleashing of raging lust (unless that's your definition of raging lust). Whether it's successful or not probably depends more on your sexual preferences than your musical ones. Put it like this: it gives a whole new meaning to the term "drill-n-bass." Like the rest of the album, it might be more seductive if they got rid of the sex sounds. As it is, it doesn't sound extraordinarily different from playing Venetian Snares over a Hecate song. Nevertheless, between "Blood on the Rope" and the pummeled bruises of "Pervs", there's some pretty perfervidly maniacal rhythm on this album. "Pervs" may sound more like unzipping your skin than lecherous intrigue, but whatever, it's definitely got a bite. "Amaurophilia" also really doesn't have much to do with what the common man might call intercourse, or a commoner man might call "boning hos." The noises are all gravelly crunching, running faucets, abandoned swing sets in Death Park. It's probably about as sexual as any other Venetian Snares album. I don't know what it does for other people; it made me cough a lot. These tracks are adequately creative, with or without the sex, but you wish it hadn't been wasted on a gimmick album. Unfortunately, about half of the half-hour album is dedicated to "Hymen Tramp Choir", which is basically the intro times fifteen minutes of your life. It's an incredibly slow, metallic sheen, about as sexual and exciting as cleaning a sink with Brillo pads. Of course, for many, this may be more like sex than sex. But, even then, Brillo pads are less expensive than CDs right now. It goes through some gushingly lascivious whispers, but rapidly transports itself to new age catalogues of waterfalls and phantasmagoric forests before finally crumbling as a phlegmatic yawn. Without this unnecessary tedium, the album might even reach into the 7's. There are clear antecedents here that I'm obligated to refer to: Matmos' A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure and Herbert's Bodily Functions, and probably some of that intellectual porn-lit IDM kids are into, like de Sade or Sacher-Masoch. In a Rolling Stone interview producer RZA once testified that on a track off ODB's Nigga Please, the extremely irrational and arrhythmic percussion is actually the sound of Dirt McGirt banging some girl on top of a bass drum while he's rapping. This is and should be the sound of sex. Piling some fierce and propulsive beats over an echo chamber is not sexy (not even ironically); it's irrelevant at worst and frightening at best."

Yellowman

Young, Gifted & Yellow

Global

Erin MacLeod

“Hi, my name is Yellowman, in the ghetto they call me Mr. Sexy,” begins “Mad Over Me”, the first track on Young, Gifted and Yellow. If you’ve not met Yellowman before, with this new collection VP Records provides a 40-song introduction. It also presents a case-- “nuff arguments”, as Yellow would say-- for the relevance of 1980s dancehall and the importance of one of Jamaica’s most well-known and well-loved deejays. Yellow’s accomplishments are significant because he was anything but sexy and successful early on in his life. In fact, his mother tried to throw him away in a dumpster for being a dundus—albino in Jamaican patwa. Winston Foster, the bwoy, was born in 1957 and came of age at Alpha Boys School, a Catholic-run institution for what used to be called “wayward children.” Alpha produced piles of musicians, providing a foundation for the development of ska and reggae-- and, through Yellowman, dancehall. As Bob Marley famously reminds us, “the stone that the builder refused shall become the head corner stone.” Foster provides snapshots of what it is like to be refused as an albino in Jamaican society in a number of songs featured on YG&Y; in “Bunn the Kutchie” he mentions that “when me did born me mother disown me.” Abandoned by his mother and ostracized as a dundus, Yellowman grew up to become the corner stone of dancehall in Jamaica and the world. He got what Jamaicans would call his bus in the late 1970s with St Thomas-based sound system Aces Disco with whom the deejay perfected songs like “Soldier Take Over”, “Them a Fight I”, and others included on the VP compilation. In the heyday of the soundsystem, artists not only had the to produce hits in the studio, but also had to work a crowd in the dance, hopping on the mic and riding riddims. The early dancehall era required performers to perform and Yellowman was a master-- danceable tracks like “Body Move” and “Strong Mi Strong” are but two examples. His style is characterized by sharp humor, clever wordplay, and experiments with different voices-- always with a smooth delivery that rocks back and forth, seamlessly shifting from chant into song. It’s the kind of talent and confidence that led to the first major-label signing of a dancehall artist by Columbia, which was looking for the next big thing out of post-Marley Jamaica in 1981. But YG&Y shows that Yellow wasn’t all about the hype. Sure, there’s self-aggrandizement on display in “Who Can Make the Dance Ram”, but tunes like “Eventide Fire”and “Jah Mek Us Fi a Purpose” provide evidence of Yellowman’s social conscience. However, if there’s one thing that he is known for, it’s for what Jamaicans term “slack”, meaning sexually explicit, lyrics. The hugging and squeezing Yellow chats and sings about in tunes like “Morning Ride” and “Rub and Go Down” may be downright tame in comparison to some contemporary tunes running the dance, but it certainly pushed the limits of 1980s Jamaica. Yellow’s slackness helped him to turn the tables on those who might wish to ostracize him due to the color of his skin. Researcher and Yellowman-biographer Brent Hagerman suggests that “slackness essentially allowed him to alter the representation of the dundus in society from that of an outcast to a sex symbol.” In doing so, King Yellow challenged and continues to challenge social mores in Jamaica-- confroting stereotypes and forcing his audiences to consider their own assumptions and preconceived notions. It’s no surprise he’s come out strongly against homophobia in the dance: "I don’t do songs against gay people…If you don’t like a person or you don’t like a thing, you don’t talk about it. You don’t come on stage and say kill them or burn them because everybody have a right to live." Jamaican dancehall is often discussed in terms of disconnect from the rocksteady, reggae, and dub era. It’s seen as a dangerous, and degenerative deviation from the golden 1970s. The range of songs represented on YG&Y, however, dispel any notions of Yellowman as a one-dimensional artist or of 1980s dancehall as a morass of slackness. He also demonstrates that dancehall is an integral part of the whole story of Jamaican music’s worldwide success. Take the song “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng”. After spitting this mouthful, Yellowman asks the listener to “catch it”, but following the thread of the song is actually tough to do. Scholar Wayne Marshall has tracked the memorable melody from 1982 to 2013, from Jamaica to NYC to Puerto Rico to Japan to the UK and back to Jamaica-- the nonsensical lyric plays an important role in rough and tough ragga, conscious hip-hop and party reggaeton. His ability to produce hooks that stick is matched by his ability to play with bits and pieces of tunes throughout his work: “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in “Night Flight”, “Three Blind Mice” in “Who Can Make the Dance Ram”, and “Bring it On Home” in “Yellowman Getting Married”, among many others. Winning multiple bouts with cancer left Yellow with a disfigured jaw in 1986, but he was and still remains able to control a crowd. He still actively tours, gracing stageshows in Jamaica and around the world, often one of the most well-received acts at reggae festivals. Alongside the two CDs, YG&Y offers a DVD of Yellowman at Reggae Sunsplash in 1988. This footage provides yet further evidence of his significance as a performer: with reams of hits up his sleeves, he’s got stage presence to spare. YG&Y is not an exhaustive collection spanning this artist’s nearly four-decade long career, but enough to provide a portrait of one of Jamaica’s most important artists. Given his major-label signing and related licensing issues, it’d be impossible to provide a comprehensive picture. Listening to the collection from beginning to end, however, proves that Yellowman is, and will always be, King of the Dancehall.

Artist: Yellowman, Album: Young, Gifted & Yellow, Genre: Global, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "“Hi, my name is Yellowman, in the ghetto they call me Mr. Sexy,” begins “Mad Over Me”, the first track on Young, Gifted and Yellow. If you’ve not met Yellowman before, with this new collection VP Records provides a 40-song introduction. It also presents a case-- “nuff arguments”, as Yellow would say-- for the relevance of 1980s dancehall and the importance of one of Jamaica’s most well-known and well-loved deejays. Yellow’s accomplishments are significant because he was anything but sexy and successful early on in his life. In fact, his mother tried to throw him away in a dumpster for being a dundus—albino in Jamaican patwa. Winston Foster, the bwoy, was born in 1957 and came of age at Alpha Boys School, a Catholic-run institution for what used to be called “wayward children.” Alpha produced piles of musicians, providing a foundation for the development of ska and reggae-- and, through Yellowman, dancehall. As Bob Marley famously reminds us, “the stone that the builder refused shall become the head corner stone.” Foster provides snapshots of what it is like to be refused as an albino in Jamaican society in a number of songs featured on YG&Y; in “Bunn the Kutchie” he mentions that “when me did born me mother disown me.” Abandoned by his mother and ostracized as a dundus, Yellowman grew up to become the corner stone of dancehall in Jamaica and the world. He got what Jamaicans would call his bus in the late 1970s with St Thomas-based sound system Aces Disco with whom the deejay perfected songs like “Soldier Take Over”, “Them a Fight I”, and others included on the VP compilation. In the heyday of the soundsystem, artists not only had the to produce hits in the studio, but also had to work a crowd in the dance, hopping on the mic and riding riddims. The early dancehall era required performers to perform and Yellowman was a master-- danceable tracks like “Body Move” and “Strong Mi Strong” are but two examples. His style is characterized by sharp humor, clever wordplay, and experiments with different voices-- always with a smooth delivery that rocks back and forth, seamlessly shifting from chant into song. It’s the kind of talent and confidence that led to the first major-label signing of a dancehall artist by Columbia, which was looking for the next big thing out of post-Marley Jamaica in 1981. But YG&Y shows that Yellow wasn’t all about the hype. Sure, there’s self-aggrandizement on display in “Who Can Make the Dance Ram”, but tunes like “Eventide Fire”and “Jah Mek Us Fi a Purpose” provide evidence of Yellowman’s social conscience. However, if there’s one thing that he is known for, it’s for what Jamaicans term “slack”, meaning sexually explicit, lyrics. The hugging and squeezing Yellow chats and sings about in tunes like “Morning Ride” and “Rub and Go Down” may be downright tame in comparison to some contemporary tunes running the dance, but it certainly pushed the limits of 1980s Jamaica. Yellow’s slackness helped him to turn the tables on those who might wish to ostracize him due to the color of his skin. Researcher and Yellowman-biographer Brent Hagerman suggests that “slackness essentially allowed him to alter the representation of the dundus in society from that of an outcast to a sex symbol.” In doing so, King Yellow challenged and continues to challenge social mores in Jamaica-- confroting stereotypes and forcing his audiences to consider their own assumptions and preconceived notions. It’s no surprise he’s come out strongly against homophobia in the dance: "I don’t do songs against gay people…If you don’t like a person or you don’t like a thing, you don’t talk about it. You don’t come on stage and say kill them or burn them because everybody have a right to live." Jamaican dancehall is often discussed in terms of disconnect from the rocksteady, reggae, and dub era. It’s seen as a dangerous, and degenerative deviation from the golden 1970s. The range of songs represented on YG&Y, however, dispel any notions of Yellowman as a one-dimensional artist or of 1980s dancehall as a morass of slackness. He also demonstrates that dancehall is an integral part of the whole story of Jamaican music’s worldwide success. Take the song “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng”. After spitting this mouthful, Yellowman asks the listener to “catch it”, but following the thread of the song is actually tough to do. Scholar Wayne Marshall has tracked the memorable melody from 1982 to 2013, from Jamaica to NYC to Puerto Rico to Japan to the UK and back to Jamaica-- the nonsensical lyric plays an important role in rough and tough ragga, conscious hip-hop and party reggaeton. His ability to produce hooks that stick is matched by his ability to play with bits and pieces of tunes throughout his work: “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in “Night Flight”, “Three Blind Mice” in “Who Can Make the Dance Ram”, and “Bring it On Home” in “Yellowman Getting Married”, among many others. Winning multiple bouts with cancer left Yellow with a disfigured jaw in 1986, but he was and still remains able to control a crowd. He still actively tours, gracing stageshows in Jamaica and around the world, often one of the most well-received acts at reggae festivals. Alongside the two CDs, YG&Y offers a DVD of Yellowman at Reggae Sunsplash in 1988. This footage provides yet further evidence of his significance as a performer: with reams of hits up his sleeves, he’s got stage presence to spare. YG&Y is not an exhaustive collection spanning this artist’s nearly four-decade long career, but enough to provide a portrait of one of Jamaica’s most important artists. Given his major-label signing and related licensing issues, it’d be impossible to provide a comprehensive picture. Listening to the collection from beginning to end, however, proves that Yellowman is, and will always be, King of the Dancehall."

Blood Orange

Cupid Deluxe

Pop/R&B

Ryan Dombal

Every night in New York City, around 4,000 young people face the darkness without a home. Many are teens. A disproportionate amount are gay, lesbian, or transgender, shunned by their families or the world at large. Some close their eyes under trees in Central Park. Some sell sex downtown. Others go underground and lean their heads on the dulled metal of subway trains traveling along the ACE line, from the top of Manhattan to the bottom of Queens. According to "Netherland", a harrowing New Yorker story from last year that chronicled the city's young, homeless, LGBT underground, the ACE is known to some lodgers as "Uncle Ace's house." This comforting nickname provides the title and inspiration for "Uncle Ace", a key track from singer/songwriter/producer Devonté Hynes' second album as Blood Orange. Starring the kind of battered-but-resilient souls who stroll through the city in the dead of night, the impressionistic song has Hynes switching between a low and high singing voice, subtly accentuating the androgynous characters within. It's mysterious, desperate, empathetic. "Not like the other girls," he offers, possibly taking the purview of a woman who feels like a man, or vice versa. Hynes shines a careful light onto his vulnerable subjects, inhabiting their travails with grace, all while a disco pulse and smoky saxophones harken back to his beloved 80s, when Times Square was a misfit's home away from home. The outcasts that live inside of "Uncle Ace" are Hynes' people. As the London-raised, New York-based 27-year-old has hopped from project to project and style to style over the last 10 years, he's maintained the air of an outsider. With Cupid Deluxe, he channels those vagabond emotions into something universal and inviting—an album that tenderly details various heartaches through the language of longing. Growing up, Hynes was bullied and beaten up enough to end up in the hospital on more than one occasion. He first directed his angst into Test Icicles' spazzed punk as a teen before moving onto Morrissey-style tragic confessionals with Lightspeed Champion. His first album as Blood Orange, 2011's Coastal Grooves, traded in Lightspeed's orchestral folk-pop for slick new wave and funk, streamlining his once-unwieldy songwriting in the process. But it wasn't until he co-wrote and produced two songs from last year—Solange's "Losing You" and Sky Ferreira's "Everything Is Embarrassing"—that he found the most suitable vessel for his melancholic odes to expired love. Both tracks are propelled by springing 80s beats that are tugged down by minor chords and wounded lyrics; the upbeat drums suggest good times past, making the reality-check vocals hit that much harder. Given the blaring nature of modern pop, the subtlety of these hollowed-out songs was genuinely refreshing; not just "indie" for the sake of it, but affectingly human. Cupid Deluxe largely (and winningly) follows the formula set forth by those modest hits, while bringing them forth on a full-length scale. Across the album, Hynes sings, writes, produces, and plays guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, synths. But this is hardly a solo act. In fact, one of the record's greatest strengths lies in its pitch-perfect deployment of guests. Not only does each member of the Cupid Deluxe team seem to fully understand the overarching wistfulness of the whole, but many of them show off heretofore unheard facets of their talent. While Hynes' girlfriend and Friends frontwoman Samantha Urbani and Kindness leader Adam Bainbridge exhibited tentative skills with their respective groups' debut albums last year, they make the most of their spotlights here; Urbani often sounds like she's mimicking the sultry chirpiness of an absent Solange, but her clear chemistry with Hynes makes the substitution more than adequate. Meanwhile, Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth and Chairlift's Caroline Polachek have never sounded more soulful. Typically ominous rap producer Clams Casino contributes light, skittering drums to the Longstreth showcase "No Right Thing", which could fit snugly into any Vampire Weekend setlist. Even the set's two rap cameos, from Queens' Despot and London's Skepta, are anything but your usual in-and-out 16-bar guest shots—both MCs are given plenty of space to weave tales that are tactile and intimate, while Hynes' vocals take on a more ghostly role on the tracks' edges. And while the inclusion of a bubble-funk remake of Britpop curio Mansun's pompously overwrought 2000 single "I Can Only Disappoint U" sounds almost comically random on paper, Hynes' Fat Boys scratches and Urbani's featherlight vocals make it fit into the album's loose after-hours milieu. Such awareness and selflessness consistently pays off, making all involved sound that much better. Especially Hynes, who's in complete control. Each drum machine snap, snippet of errant barroom chatter, Malcolm McLaren sample, and moist-eyed, questioning chorus snaps together to form a midtempo mixtape for the high-school dance you never had. The first-blush glances. The slowed mirrorball twinkle. The push and pull. "Baby are we on the line/ Tell me baby are you mine?" he sings, knowing full well that if you have to ask the question, you probably know the answer. Like many Manhattan iconoclasts before him, Hynes holds director Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary of NYC gay and transgender ball culture, Paris Is Burning, very dear. While everyone from Madonna to Lady Gaga has taken inspiration from these events—one of the few safe havens for participants to revel in their true selves without having to worry about the judging eyes of society—they often focus on their more outrageous or empowering aspects (see: "Vogue"). But Dev Hynes' music is more suited to the film's beautiful and wrenching quiet moments, like when transgender model Octavia Saint Laurent confesses her desire to "be somebody" or is seen worshipping cut-outs of supermodels taped to the walls of her bedroom. The message comes full-circle on the Michael Jackson demo of a closing ballad, "Time Will Tell", which repurposes some of Hynes' own lines while a refrain of "and it keeps on running back" underlines the repetition. Gay, straight, man, woman, black, white, or anywhere in between: Heartbreak is real. It won't stop.

Artist: Blood Orange, Album: Cupid Deluxe, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "Every night in New York City, around 4,000 young people face the darkness without a home. Many are teens. A disproportionate amount are gay, lesbian, or transgender, shunned by their families or the world at large. Some close their eyes under trees in Central Park. Some sell sex downtown. Others go underground and lean their heads on the dulled metal of subway trains traveling along the ACE line, from the top of Manhattan to the bottom of Queens. According to "Netherland", a harrowing New Yorker story from last year that chronicled the city's young, homeless, LGBT underground, the ACE is known to some lodgers as "Uncle Ace's house." This comforting nickname provides the title and inspiration for "Uncle Ace", a key track from singer/songwriter/producer Devonté Hynes' second album as Blood Orange. Starring the kind of battered-but-resilient souls who stroll through the city in the dead of night, the impressionistic song has Hynes switching between a low and high singing voice, subtly accentuating the androgynous characters within. It's mysterious, desperate, empathetic. "Not like the other girls," he offers, possibly taking the purview of a woman who feels like a man, or vice versa. Hynes shines a careful light onto his vulnerable subjects, inhabiting their travails with grace, all while a disco pulse and smoky saxophones harken back to his beloved 80s, when Times Square was a misfit's home away from home. The outcasts that live inside of "Uncle Ace" are Hynes' people. As the London-raised, New York-based 27-year-old has hopped from project to project and style to style over the last 10 years, he's maintained the air of an outsider. With Cupid Deluxe, he channels those vagabond emotions into something universal and inviting—an album that tenderly details various heartaches through the language of longing. Growing up, Hynes was bullied and beaten up enough to end up in the hospital on more than one occasion. He first directed his angst into Test Icicles' spazzed punk as a teen before moving onto Morrissey-style tragic confessionals with Lightspeed Champion. His first album as Blood Orange, 2011's Coastal Grooves, traded in Lightspeed's orchestral folk-pop for slick new wave and funk, streamlining his once-unwieldy songwriting in the process. But it wasn't until he co-wrote and produced two songs from last year—Solange's "Losing You" and Sky Ferreira's "Everything Is Embarrassing"—that he found the most suitable vessel for his melancholic odes to expired love. Both tracks are propelled by springing 80s beats that are tugged down by minor chords and wounded lyrics; the upbeat drums suggest good times past, making the reality-check vocals hit that much harder. Given the blaring nature of modern pop, the subtlety of these hollowed-out songs was genuinely refreshing; not just "indie" for the sake of it, but affectingly human. Cupid Deluxe largely (and winningly) follows the formula set forth by those modest hits, while bringing them forth on a full-length scale. Across the album, Hynes sings, writes, produces, and plays guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, synths. But this is hardly a solo act. In fact, one of the record's greatest strengths lies in its pitch-perfect deployment of guests. Not only does each member of the Cupid Deluxe team seem to fully understand the overarching wistfulness of the whole, but many of them show off heretofore unheard facets of their talent. While Hynes' girlfriend and Friends frontwoman Samantha Urbani and Kindness leader Adam Bainbridge exhibited tentative skills with their respective groups' debut albums last year, they make the most of their spotlights here; Urbani often sounds like she's mimicking the sultry chirpiness of an absent Solange, but her clear chemistry with Hynes makes the substitution more than adequate. Meanwhile, Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth and Chairlift's Caroline Polachek have never sounded more soulful. Typically ominous rap producer Clams Casino contributes light, skittering drums to the Longstreth showcase "No Right Thing", which could fit snugly into any Vampire Weekend setlist. Even the set's two rap cameos, from Queens' Despot and London's Skepta, are anything but your usual in-and-out 16-bar guest shots—both MCs are given plenty of space to weave tales that are tactile and intimate, while Hynes' vocals take on a more ghostly role on the tracks' edges. And while the inclusion of a bubble-funk remake of Britpop curio Mansun's pompously overwrought 2000 single "I Can Only Disappoint U" sounds almost comically random on paper, Hynes' Fat Boys scratches and Urbani's featherlight vocals make it fit into the album's loose after-hours milieu. Such awareness and selflessness consistently pays off, making all involved sound that much better. Especially Hynes, who's in complete control. Each drum machine snap, snippet of errant barroom chatter, Malcolm McLaren sample, and moist-eyed, questioning chorus snaps together to form a midtempo mixtape for the high-school dance you never had. The first-blush glances. The slowed mirrorball twinkle. The push and pull. "Baby are we on the line/ Tell me baby are you mine?" he sings, knowing full well that if you have to ask the question, you probably know the answer. Like many Manhattan iconoclasts before him, Hynes holds director Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary of NYC gay and transgender ball culture, Paris Is Burning, very dear. While everyone from Madonna to Lady Gaga has taken inspiration from these events—one of the few safe havens for participants to revel in their true selves without having to worry about the judging eyes of society—they often focus on their more outrageous or empowering aspects (see: "Vogue"). But Dev Hynes' music is more suited to the film's beautiful and wrenching quiet moments, like when transgender model Octavia Saint Laurent confesses her desire to "be somebody" or is seen worshipping cut-outs of supermodels taped to the walls of her bedroom. The message comes full-circle on the Michael Jackson demo of a closing ballad, "Time Will Tell", which repurposes some of Hynes' own lines while a refrain of "and it keeps on running back" underlines the repetition. Gay, straight, man, woman, black, white, or anywhere in between: Heartbreak is real. It won't stop."

Thuja

Ghost Plants

Christopher Dare

Thuja are a quartet based out of San Francisco. They play improvisational music and mostly lay down live takes, no processing. Glenn Donaldson and Stephen Smith were former members of psychedelicists Mirza, sound collagist Loren Chasse has worked with Id Battery, and pianist Rob Reger provides the most distinctive element of the band's sound-- his piano lines add a slight sense of structure to the instrumental meanderings. Thuja don't write songs, per se. Rather, their albums flow together like field recordings of poltergeists romping through abandoned factories. It's intense, sometimes dissonant music, but often highly rewarding. The review of Thuja's The Deer Lay Down Their Bones was my first for Pitchfork, so it might be forgiven that I never quite said outright what I was getting at. I mentioned that one of the virtues of ambient and improv music is that you can pay different levels of attention to it. It's an ideal form of music to play while at work, because you can get too caught up in pop songs and their catchy choruses. But I neglected to illustrate the implications of Thuja's music, which sounds for all the world like springs busting out of clockfaces at times. Their structural unsteadiness was a secret pleasure for me during the nine-to-five, a way to fantasize the collapse of all the machines of industry. Ghost Plants is more of the same. Again, with the new album's title and the tree photo in the insert, they seem to make an appeal to nature. The cedar (genus: Thuja) can cause dermatitis to those who touch its sap, but refined tinctures can ease a variety of toxic reactions. Ghost plants, a more informal grouping, are defined by their benign nature, so it's interesting that the music here should be more dark than that of the band's debut. You're greeted with the death knell of a chandelier, almost, sounds of glass fracturing and being swept about. Enter a guitar chord, plucked over and over, monotonous, dull yet aggressive. A few piano notes whisper from some faded place, but it does little to temper the alien modem-garble patches of noise. Each of the tracks are untitled, but they cut between each other more obviously now. Track three begins abruptly with hand-drumming and chainlike rattling, shackles being shaken perhaps. It's the only overt rhythm on the entire album, but of course the funk quickly fades from the musique concrète to be replaced by thick keyboard hum and phantom synth oscillations. The stark, oppressive atmosphere moves towards a more quiet, fluid flow by track six. Reger taps out short Morse code messages on the piano, and slivers of heartfelt melody are wrangled out of the guitar. The piano cadences and reverbed clangs later on would feel dissonant if left on their own, but cycled together they create a whirlpool similar to Günter Müller and L\xEA Quan Ninh's work on La Voyelle Liquide. The album shifts into a more appreciable silence, but could hardly be called peaceful. There's a moment when you realize the silt that's been sifting through the background is gradually becoming a giant cloud of distortion, shimmering prettily and yet hiding disturbing things inside like the best Ah Cama-Sotz tracks. And though there are signs of Harold Budd-style minimalist composition near the end, the faintest sample of a woman's voice singing wordlessly probably ends things best. Thuja's environmental allusions just don't hold truck; I'll opt for the other image in the title: Ghost Plants as phantom factories. If The Deer Lay Down Their Bones was the sound of those rusty iron cogs turning, these later tracks are the humming power sources that feed the wheels. Though I preferred the more consistent segues on the debut, it's amazing that this music is played by human beings. Fans of the Shalabi Effect and Einstürzende Neubauten would do well to track this one down.

Artist: Thuja, Album: Ghost Plants, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Thuja are a quartet based out of San Francisco. They play improvisational music and mostly lay down live takes, no processing. Glenn Donaldson and Stephen Smith were former members of psychedelicists Mirza, sound collagist Loren Chasse has worked with Id Battery, and pianist Rob Reger provides the most distinctive element of the band's sound-- his piano lines add a slight sense of structure to the instrumental meanderings. Thuja don't write songs, per se. Rather, their albums flow together like field recordings of poltergeists romping through abandoned factories. It's intense, sometimes dissonant music, but often highly rewarding. The review of Thuja's The Deer Lay Down Their Bones was my first for Pitchfork, so it might be forgiven that I never quite said outright what I was getting at. I mentioned that one of the virtues of ambient and improv music is that you can pay different levels of attention to it. It's an ideal form of music to play while at work, because you can get too caught up in pop songs and their catchy choruses. But I neglected to illustrate the implications of Thuja's music, which sounds for all the world like springs busting out of clockfaces at times. Their structural unsteadiness was a secret pleasure for me during the nine-to-five, a way to fantasize the collapse of all the machines of industry. Ghost Plants is more of the same. Again, with the new album's title and the tree photo in the insert, they seem to make an appeal to nature. The cedar (genus: Thuja) can cause dermatitis to those who touch its sap, but refined tinctures can ease a variety of toxic reactions. Ghost plants, a more informal grouping, are defined by their benign nature, so it's interesting that the music here should be more dark than that of the band's debut. You're greeted with the death knell of a chandelier, almost, sounds of glass fracturing and being swept about. Enter a guitar chord, plucked over and over, monotonous, dull yet aggressive. A few piano notes whisper from some faded place, but it does little to temper the alien modem-garble patches of noise. Each of the tracks are untitled, but they cut between each other more obviously now. Track three begins abruptly with hand-drumming and chainlike rattling, shackles being shaken perhaps. It's the only overt rhythm on the entire album, but of course the funk quickly fades from the musique concrète to be replaced by thick keyboard hum and phantom synth oscillations. The stark, oppressive atmosphere moves towards a more quiet, fluid flow by track six. Reger taps out short Morse code messages on the piano, and slivers of heartfelt melody are wrangled out of the guitar. The piano cadences and reverbed clangs later on would feel dissonant if left on their own, but cycled together they create a whirlpool similar to Günter Müller and L\xEA Quan Ninh's work on La Voyelle Liquide. The album shifts into a more appreciable silence, but could hardly be called peaceful. There's a moment when you realize the silt that's been sifting through the background is gradually becoming a giant cloud of distortion, shimmering prettily and yet hiding disturbing things inside like the best Ah Cama-Sotz tracks. And though there are signs of Harold Budd-style minimalist composition near the end, the faintest sample of a woman's voice singing wordlessly probably ends things best. Thuja's environmental allusions just don't hold truck; I'll opt for the other image in the title: Ghost Plants as phantom factories. If The Deer Lay Down Their Bones was the sound of those rusty iron cogs turning, these later tracks are the humming power sources that feed the wheels. Though I preferred the more consistent segues on the debut, it's amazing that this music is played by human beings. Fans of the Shalabi Effect and Einstürzende Neubauten would do well to track this one down."

Vein

Errorzone

Metal

Andy O'Connor

In hardcore, no sound is beyond reinvention or exploitation. If a strain of commercial rock or underground metal existed at one point, the question is when—not if—a younger generation will retool it in some cramped, dank basement. Boston hardcore quintet Vein are another band of interpreters, though they don’t draw from just one source. Their early material harkened back to the chaotic, pre-Jane Doe Converge, spazzing in technical bursts. Errorzone, their first full-length, adds vintage nu-metal fragments to that base, distorting them through the prism of technocratic dystopia. This approach makes Vein the most ambitious of their 1990s-infatuated cohort, using well-worn styles to unlock a hidden terror instead of settling for nostalgia. Vein’s appropriation of nu-metal is effective because it’s irreverent. Errorzone acknowledges that the genre reigned supreme for a time, and that it wasn’t an aberration so much as a gateway to better heavy music. But the band isn’t trying to convince you that Life Is Peachy is a secret gem, even if the minute-long track “Rebirth Protocol” clearly draws from the higher register of Korn’s seven-string guitar parts, bleeding them out so that they sound more dissociated than ever. “Doomtech,” “Untitled,” and the title track confine Slipknot’s most radio-friendly choruses to a serene prison, isolating the band’s archetypal lost-Iowa-kid listener in another dimension. For hardcore bands, clean vocals usually signal a turn toward melody, accessibility, and so-called maturity; in Vein’s case, they’re another whiplash in a series of sudden jerks, confounding expectations but providing no relief. Yesterday’s Active Rock playlist is ripe to ransack and reconfigure as a vaguely familiar agent of disorder, transforming aggression that once soothed teen angst into something more destructive. Nu metal and ’90s hardcore don’t quite speak a common language, but blocky rhythms comprise their shared root words and enable communication. Errorzone’s breakdowns muscle up as formidably as anything by Harm’s Way or Code Orange, the two acts closest to Vein’s space. It’s in these passages that Vein reassert themselves as a hardcore band, justifying their tinkering with history. “Broken Glass Complexion” concludes by merging brawn with scattershot drums and skronky guitar blasts, while “Old Data in a Dead Machine” ends with hammering downstrokes that are divorced from groove yet brimming with their own determination. “Virus://vibrance” shifts, not even two seconds into its runtime, to breakbeats, in Vein’s most unexpected ’90s excavation. Breakbeats in hardcore would have been game-changing 20 years ago, and they still sound subversive here. Like so many elements of the album, they too exist primarily to agitate, sharp turns on a proudly nonlinear collection of songs. This is the sound of retro-futurism finally reaching the turn of the last millennium. More than a particular sound, Errorzone evokes the late-’90s era when technology collided with rock and metal, as electronics crept in to threaten the dominance of guitar music and distribution models loosened. As artistic barriers crashed down, rock traditionalists put up new, higher walls and tightened their borders. Those years were tumultuous, and the dust hasn’t come close to settling; we’re still figuring out how placing the internet at the center of our lives fucked with our brains. Errorzone surfs this ongoing uncertainty: One of the most jarring sounds on the album is the sterile “goodbye” at the end of “End Eternal,” as if a rogue AOL free trial CD were shepherding you through a dystopian alternate reality. It’s terrifying, sure, but that unease sets the tone for one of the year’s most exhilarating heavy records.

Artist: Vein, Album: Errorzone, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In hardcore, no sound is beyond reinvention or exploitation. If a strain of commercial rock or underground metal existed at one point, the question is when—not if—a younger generation will retool it in some cramped, dank basement. Boston hardcore quintet Vein are another band of interpreters, though they don’t draw from just one source. Their early material harkened back to the chaotic, pre-Jane Doe Converge, spazzing in technical bursts. Errorzone, their first full-length, adds vintage nu-metal fragments to that base, distorting them through the prism of technocratic dystopia. This approach makes Vein the most ambitious of their 1990s-infatuated cohort, using well-worn styles to unlock a hidden terror instead of settling for nostalgia. Vein’s appropriation of nu-metal is effective because it’s irreverent. Errorzone acknowledges that the genre reigned supreme for a time, and that it wasn’t an aberration so much as a gateway to better heavy music. But the band isn’t trying to convince you that Life Is Peachy is a secret gem, even if the minute-long track “Rebirth Protocol” clearly draws from the higher register of Korn’s seven-string guitar parts, bleeding them out so that they sound more dissociated than ever. “Doomtech,” “Untitled,” and the title track confine Slipknot’s most radio-friendly choruses to a serene prison, isolating the band’s archetypal lost-Iowa-kid listener in another dimension. For hardcore bands, clean vocals usually signal a turn toward melody, accessibility, and so-called maturity; in Vein’s case, they’re another whiplash in a series of sudden jerks, confounding expectations but providing no relief. Yesterday’s Active Rock playlist is ripe to ransack and reconfigure as a vaguely familiar agent of disorder, transforming aggression that once soothed teen angst into something more destructive. Nu metal and ’90s hardcore don’t quite speak a common language, but blocky rhythms comprise their shared root words and enable communication. Errorzone’s breakdowns muscle up as formidably as anything by Harm’s Way or Code Orange, the two acts closest to Vein’s space. It’s in these passages that Vein reassert themselves as a hardcore band, justifying their tinkering with history. “Broken Glass Complexion” concludes by merging brawn with scattershot drums and skronky guitar blasts, while “Old Data in a Dead Machine” ends with hammering downstrokes that are divorced from groove yet brimming with their own determination. “Virus://vibrance” shifts, not even two seconds into its runtime, to breakbeats, in Vein’s most unexpected ’90s excavation. Breakbeats in hardcore would have been game-changing 20 years ago, and they still sound subversive here. Like so many elements of the album, they too exist primarily to agitate, sharp turns on a proudly nonlinear collection of songs. This is the sound of retro-futurism finally reaching the turn of the last millennium. More than a particular sound, Errorzone evokes the late-’90s era when technology collided with rock and metal, as electronics crept in to threaten the dominance of guitar music and distribution models loosened. As artistic barriers crashed down, rock traditionalists put up new, higher walls and tightened their borders. Those years were tumultuous, and the dust hasn’t come close to settling; we’re still figuring out how placing the internet at the center of our lives fucked with our brains. Errorzone surfs this ongoing uncertainty: One of the most jarring sounds on the album is the sterile “goodbye” at the end of “End Eternal,” as if a rogue AOL free trial CD were shepherding you through a dystopian alternate reality. It’s terrifying, sure, but that unease sets the tone for one of the year’s most exhilarating heavy records."

Mark Fosson

The Lost Takoma Sessions

Rock

Zach Baron

Kentuckian Mark Fosson grew up as a skinny kid in the 1960s. Too small to make his high school football team, he got a guitar instead. Years later, from 1971-1974, he honed his skills on the instrument while killing time in the Air Force, eventually making a demo. There was exactly one place at that time to send a vocal-less solo acoustic guitar tape: John Fahey's already legendary (and, by then, almost defunct) Takoma Records. Included in this Drag City release, The Lost Takoma Sessions, is the critique card Fahey wrote upon receipt of that demo; it reads, "Sighn Him Quick". The spelling was characteristic of Fahey, as was a more general malfeasance: By the time Fosson made it to Takoma's studios-- with a new mane of freshly permed hair and his guitar-- it was sunk into the kind of debt that had plagued Fahey his entire life. The master sold Takoma to Chrysalis, drank himself into another marriage, then handed Fosson his masters back. Fosson, his chance near-missed, handed the tapes off to his garage, where they sat for nearly 20 years. The upside of entering the frenetic Fahey orbit is that rediscovery and rehabilitation are as fundamental to the myth as the players themselves; so when Fosson's cousin discovered Fahey for herself, in this decade, his moment was again yet to come. Tiffany Anders, the cousin, made some inquiries: "My grandmother called me an hour later and exclaimed, 'John Fahey! Shoot, I went on a date with him! We went to the Troubadour and all he said the entire night was ‘I'm scared!'" Anders tracked her cousin down, one thing led to another, and The Lost Takoma Sessions were reborn. Clad in typeface echoing Tom Weller's work on early Fahey covers-- large, bubbly letters, equal parts psychedelic and graffiti-- Takoma Sessions is the last great record Takoma was never able to release. As a testament to how well Fosson plays, Fahey also scrawled on the tape, "best demo tape I've heard since Kottke". Where Fahey's manner was deeply steeped in blues, minor scales, and funereal syncopations, Fosson expresses far less pathos and far more, well, sunshine; rather than stomp or wail, he saves his most expressive moments for mutes, slides, harmonics-- he has a light touch, literally. Fosson, when he plays, drones not with the bass note (as Fahey did-- it sounds like death himself knocking at your door) but with the higher end of his picking pattern. Thus the gravity in his play shifts, as he feints one way or another (one song is called "Variations on a Thumb"). It also allows him to riff more than many in the Am Priv school: "Jubilaya" sees him rip off flurries of precise and clean harmonic mutes, breaking up his flow so he can slap right back with it. Or he'll sound accents with string bends (in this, he sounds something like his now contemporary Currituck Co.) and hammer-ons, as he does on "Wind Through a Broken Glass". Technical skill isn't all: Fosson is also a purely American-sounding player. The raga, drone, and concrete that almost inevitably make their way into solo players' repertoire are largely absent in Fosson's play. "Quarter Moon" evokes lazy, deep, Southern riverbanks and muddy sun-drenched afternoons; "Chillicothe" occurs on the same day, but later, as the light fails and the players have reported to their own porches and families. It's uniquely beautiful. On the way, apparently, is a more recent collection of Fosson's work. Finally, after 30 years, it looks like he will again have a go at a career slinging his guitar around the country. This is good news: Lost Sessions, as lovely as it often is, also sounds like an artifact. We need more living artists on this same tip, working with the younger generation-- of which Jack Rose, the Philadelphia-based guitar player, is by far the most serious-- so that music as good as this doesn't stay stuck in past.

Artist: Mark Fosson, Album: The Lost Takoma Sessions, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Kentuckian Mark Fosson grew up as a skinny kid in the 1960s. Too small to make his high school football team, he got a guitar instead. Years later, from 1971-1974, he honed his skills on the instrument while killing time in the Air Force, eventually making a demo. There was exactly one place at that time to send a vocal-less solo acoustic guitar tape: John Fahey's already legendary (and, by then, almost defunct) Takoma Records. Included in this Drag City release, The Lost Takoma Sessions, is the critique card Fahey wrote upon receipt of that demo; it reads, "Sighn Him Quick". The spelling was characteristic of Fahey, as was a more general malfeasance: By the time Fosson made it to Takoma's studios-- with a new mane of freshly permed hair and his guitar-- it was sunk into the kind of debt that had plagued Fahey his entire life. The master sold Takoma to Chrysalis, drank himself into another marriage, then handed Fosson his masters back. Fosson, his chance near-missed, handed the tapes off to his garage, where they sat for nearly 20 years. The upside of entering the frenetic Fahey orbit is that rediscovery and rehabilitation are as fundamental to the myth as the players themselves; so when Fosson's cousin discovered Fahey for herself, in this decade, his moment was again yet to come. Tiffany Anders, the cousin, made some inquiries: "My grandmother called me an hour later and exclaimed, 'John Fahey! Shoot, I went on a date with him! We went to the Troubadour and all he said the entire night was ‘I'm scared!'" Anders tracked her cousin down, one thing led to another, and The Lost Takoma Sessions were reborn. Clad in typeface echoing Tom Weller's work on early Fahey covers-- large, bubbly letters, equal parts psychedelic and graffiti-- Takoma Sessions is the last great record Takoma was never able to release. As a testament to how well Fosson plays, Fahey also scrawled on the tape, "best demo tape I've heard since Kottke". Where Fahey's manner was deeply steeped in blues, minor scales, and funereal syncopations, Fosson expresses far less pathos and far more, well, sunshine; rather than stomp or wail, he saves his most expressive moments for mutes, slides, harmonics-- he has a light touch, literally. Fosson, when he plays, drones not with the bass note (as Fahey did-- it sounds like death himself knocking at your door) but with the higher end of his picking pattern. Thus the gravity in his play shifts, as he feints one way or another (one song is called "Variations on a Thumb"). It also allows him to riff more than many in the Am Priv school: "Jubilaya" sees him rip off flurries of precise and clean harmonic mutes, breaking up his flow so he can slap right back with it. Or he'll sound accents with string bends (in this, he sounds something like his now contemporary Currituck Co.) and hammer-ons, as he does on "Wind Through a Broken Glass". Technical skill isn't all: Fosson is also a purely American-sounding player. The raga, drone, and concrete that almost inevitably make their way into solo players' repertoire are largely absent in Fosson's play. "Quarter Moon" evokes lazy, deep, Southern riverbanks and muddy sun-drenched afternoons; "Chillicothe" occurs on the same day, but later, as the light fails and the players have reported to their own porches and families. It's uniquely beautiful. On the way, apparently, is a more recent collection of Fosson's work. Finally, after 30 years, it looks like he will again have a go at a career slinging his guitar around the country. This is good news: Lost Sessions, as lovely as it often is, also sounds like an artifact. We need more living artists on this same tip, working with the younger generation-- of which Jack Rose, the Philadelphia-based guitar player, is by far the most serious-- so that music as good as this doesn't stay stuck in past."

Opossom

Electric Hawaii

Pop/R&B,Rock

Jayson Greene

New Zealand's Opossom are an excellent indie pop band whose excellence is so narrow they seem less a band than a sleekly designed indie pop delivery system. The 10 songs on their lightly grooving, lightly melancholic debut, Electric Hawaii, are all pretty in almost the exact same way: pitched at the same breezy, cool, Xanax-blue mid-tempo shuffle, with lead singer Kody Nielson laying his creamy, sighing voice atop in precisely the same way. If the drummer has mastered another drumbeat other than the "Tomorrow Never Knows" one, he's not letting on. The jazz-flecked chord progressions that send the choruses tumbling through their dreamy motions give the album a faint shpritz of spy-movie cool. They stop to indulge exactly one instrumental freak out (on "Cola Elixir"), and immediately afterward, they spit-smooth this stray lock back in place and carry on. It's an unsexy but rewarding approach: You might not need all 10 of these songs in a row, but any one, two, or three of them would make for pleasant company. Nielson is the brother of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Nielson, and you can imagine a family dinner table with some Felix-and-Oscar tension around it: Opossom are fussy where UMO are shaggy. If both bands seem stoner-friendly, UMO is a pipe clogged with resin and Opossom a carefully sterilized stainless-steel vaporizer. Electric Hawaii shines like a model kitchen's immaculate surfaces, which means that there is a whiff of Nowhere-ness to the band's sound: on "Blue Meanies", Nielson sounds eerily like Guero-era Beck, while on "Girl" he sounds more like Panda Bear's brother than UMO's. Even when the sound palette shifts sneakily-- the cello that courses gracefully through the chorus of "Getaway Tonight", for example, or the neatly orchestrated stop-and-start structure of "Watchful Eye"-- it can be hard to notice. None of it does much to disturb the music's glossy yawn. The vaguely Wes Anderson-styled video for "Fly"-- quirky scientists, quirky experiment, quirky UFOs-- cements the overall impression left by Electric Hawaii, that you could have stumbled across Opossom on MTV in the late 90s or early 00s, when a band could still surface with a memorable, narrow sound, an eye-catching video, and have a hit or two. (My mental Rolodex slots them somewhere north of Rooney's "Blue Side" and somewhere slightly south of Space's "The Female of the Species".) To Opossom's credit, there are several potential versions of that hit here: "Fly", "Blue Meanies", and "Outer Space" all seem equally viable. There is a lot of craft to admire in the songwriting, and in the perfectly sepia-tinged production. But Electric Hawaii is an album that's easier to bop your head to while idly imagining the technology commercial it could soundtrack than it is to engage with.

Artist: Opossom, Album: Electric Hawaii, Genre: Pop/R&B,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "New Zealand's Opossom are an excellent indie pop band whose excellence is so narrow they seem less a band than a sleekly designed indie pop delivery system. The 10 songs on their lightly grooving, lightly melancholic debut, Electric Hawaii, are all pretty in almost the exact same way: pitched at the same breezy, cool, Xanax-blue mid-tempo shuffle, with lead singer Kody Nielson laying his creamy, sighing voice atop in precisely the same way. If the drummer has mastered another drumbeat other than the "Tomorrow Never Knows" one, he's not letting on. The jazz-flecked chord progressions that send the choruses tumbling through their dreamy motions give the album a faint shpritz of spy-movie cool. They stop to indulge exactly one instrumental freak out (on "Cola Elixir"), and immediately afterward, they spit-smooth this stray lock back in place and carry on. It's an unsexy but rewarding approach: You might not need all 10 of these songs in a row, but any one, two, or three of them would make for pleasant company. Nielson is the brother of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Nielson, and you can imagine a family dinner table with some Felix-and-Oscar tension around it: Opossom are fussy where UMO are shaggy. If both bands seem stoner-friendly, UMO is a pipe clogged with resin and Opossom a carefully sterilized stainless-steel vaporizer. Electric Hawaii shines like a model kitchen's immaculate surfaces, which means that there is a whiff of Nowhere-ness to the band's sound: on "Blue Meanies", Nielson sounds eerily like Guero-era Beck, while on "Girl" he sounds more like Panda Bear's brother than UMO's. Even when the sound palette shifts sneakily-- the cello that courses gracefully through the chorus of "Getaway Tonight", for example, or the neatly orchestrated stop-and-start structure of "Watchful Eye"-- it can be hard to notice. None of it does much to disturb the music's glossy yawn. The vaguely Wes Anderson-styled video for "Fly"-- quirky scientists, quirky experiment, quirky UFOs-- cements the overall impression left by Electric Hawaii, that you could have stumbled across Opossom on MTV in the late 90s or early 00s, when a band could still surface with a memorable, narrow sound, an eye-catching video, and have a hit or two. (My mental Rolodex slots them somewhere north of Rooney's "Blue Side" and somewhere slightly south of Space's "The Female of the Species".) To Opossom's credit, there are several potential versions of that hit here: "Fly", "Blue Meanies", and "Outer Space" all seem equally viable. There is a lot of craft to admire in the songwriting, and in the perfectly sepia-tinged production. But Electric Hawaii is an album that's easier to bop your head to while idly imagining the technology commercial it could soundtrack than it is to engage with."

Lupe Fiasco

Enemy of the State: A Love Story

Rap

Ian Cohen

A brief, incomplete recap of Lupe Fiasco's 2009: a stirring, live-band performance at the still hip-hop-phobic Coachella, a Hewlett Packard commercial that gets reprised as the last skit on this mixtape, unrelated plans to film with Matt Damon and climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an appearance on the Twilight soundtrack, and his influence manifesting explicitly in East Coast rhyme spitters Charles Hamilton and Wale as well as implicitly in L.A.'s jerkin' scene. Hell, planning to retire even before you release your first album got kinda big in 09, and Lupe was doing that before it got all trendy and shit. That's about as good a year a rapper can have while releasing almost no new music whatsoever. To cap it off? Actual music-- albeit just 22 minutes of it, on this mixtape that popped up in the middle of December. Maybe that needed to happen: If Lupe embodies any aspect of post-Kanye hip-hop, it's using greater access to candor and transparency to prove himself more unlikeable with every statement he makes outside of the booth. A lot of times, it's been tough to remember that we were intrigued not because he rapped from the perspective of a cheeseburger, but rather because he simply rapped his ass off. But outside of a few blips-- most notably, a RZA-styled, self-satisfied anthropomorphology of the United States tagged on to end of "The National Anthem"-- Enemy of the State tends to steer towards the latter version of Lupe with often fantastic results. It's particularly true of "The National Anthem": Though rappers have been sampling Radiohead since the glory days of Chino XL, for the most part, it's an olive branch to alternative nation, the easiest way to show how refined your taste in non-rap music is. Suffice to say the biggest compliment you can give is that "Anthem" bangs even if you've never heard one second of Kid A. It's crucial that Lupe raps with the beat as opposed to merely over it, sounding equally adept atop the bassline as he is during the horn-led climax-- it's a great touch as his boast "I don't think I'm best, I just think I'm better than..." is completed by Thom Yorke singing "...everyone." A question that's been raised by Enemy of the State is whether it's Lupe "going at" Jay-Z. While it's been Lupe's M.O. to mostly beef with rap bloggers, there is a notable lean on Jay's material ("Thank You", "So Ghetto") that goes beyond "Blueprint 3 could've been something if someone else rapped over those beats." "So Ghetto" showcases Lupe's "Food & Liquor flow" as a kite to an incarcerated friend, and perhaps self-consciously, "Where I'm From", one of Jay's gulliest tracks, gets flipped into "Angels", a rangy, Auto-Tuned love song. But elsewhere, Enemy keeps things short, vital, and mostly current: "Back By Popular Demand" is a fair exchange for Clipse's inclusion "Dumb It Down" on their Road to Til the Casket Drops mixtape, and "The One" is proof that DJ Khalil's beat could've been something had it not been saddled with that hook and the relentlessly personality-free raps of Slaughterhouse. Sure, there are still plenty of times when Lupe's charmingly overreaching with his punchlines, but I wouldn't trade it considering how revitalized Lupe sounds. Though it's pretty much impossible to not be amped by the "Final Countdown"-styled bounce of Travis Porter's "All the Way Turnt Up" and the yo-yo synth of Lil' Wayne's "Fireman", the performances are potent reminders of Lupe's sheer technical prowess-- "All the Way" agreeably slouches through half-time punchlines ("I came to take it all back like I'm Miller High Life") and while the former cuts off at about two and a half minutes, he raps like he could go on for five times that. So, is that grade up there justifying a lack of, I dunno, ambition? Tough to say: Though a conceptual framework gave us "Gotta Eat", it also resulted in "Kick, Push". Then again, mere days after Enemy of the State dropped, you could find Lupe dedicating about as many words as there are on this tape to putting RapRadar.com on blast for god knows what. Whatever becomes of that, at least we'll have this reminder of what Lupe is capable of when he's given a mic instead of a soapbox.

Artist: Lupe Fiasco, Album: Enemy of the State: A Love Story, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "A brief, incomplete recap of Lupe Fiasco's 2009: a stirring, live-band performance at the still hip-hop-phobic Coachella, a Hewlett Packard commercial that gets reprised as the last skit on this mixtape, unrelated plans to film with Matt Damon and climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an appearance on the Twilight soundtrack, and his influence manifesting explicitly in East Coast rhyme spitters Charles Hamilton and Wale as well as implicitly in L.A.'s jerkin' scene. Hell, planning to retire even before you release your first album got kinda big in 09, and Lupe was doing that before it got all trendy and shit. That's about as good a year a rapper can have while releasing almost no new music whatsoever. To cap it off? Actual music-- albeit just 22 minutes of it, on this mixtape that popped up in the middle of December. Maybe that needed to happen: If Lupe embodies any aspect of post-Kanye hip-hop, it's using greater access to candor and transparency to prove himself more unlikeable with every statement he makes outside of the booth. A lot of times, it's been tough to remember that we were intrigued not because he rapped from the perspective of a cheeseburger, but rather because he simply rapped his ass off. But outside of a few blips-- most notably, a RZA-styled, self-satisfied anthropomorphology of the United States tagged on to end of "The National Anthem"-- Enemy of the State tends to steer towards the latter version of Lupe with often fantastic results. It's particularly true of "The National Anthem": Though rappers have been sampling Radiohead since the glory days of Chino XL, for the most part, it's an olive branch to alternative nation, the easiest way to show how refined your taste in non-rap music is. Suffice to say the biggest compliment you can give is that "Anthem" bangs even if you've never heard one second of Kid A. It's crucial that Lupe raps with the beat as opposed to merely over it, sounding equally adept atop the bassline as he is during the horn-led climax-- it's a great touch as his boast "I don't think I'm best, I just think I'm better than..." is completed by Thom Yorke singing "...everyone." A question that's been raised by Enemy of the State is whether it's Lupe "going at" Jay-Z. While it's been Lupe's M.O. to mostly beef with rap bloggers, there is a notable lean on Jay's material ("Thank You", "So Ghetto") that goes beyond "Blueprint 3 could've been something if someone else rapped over those beats." "So Ghetto" showcases Lupe's "Food & Liquor flow" as a kite to an incarcerated friend, and perhaps self-consciously, "Where I'm From", one of Jay's gulliest tracks, gets flipped into "Angels", a rangy, Auto-Tuned love song. But elsewhere, Enemy keeps things short, vital, and mostly current: "Back By Popular Demand" is a fair exchange for Clipse's inclusion "Dumb It Down" on their Road to Til the Casket Drops mixtape, and "The One" is proof that DJ Khalil's beat could've been something had it not been saddled with that hook and the relentlessly personality-free raps of Slaughterhouse. Sure, there are still plenty of times when Lupe's charmingly overreaching with his punchlines, but I wouldn't trade it considering how revitalized Lupe sounds. Though it's pretty much impossible to not be amped by the "Final Countdown"-styled bounce of Travis Porter's "All the Way Turnt Up" and the yo-yo synth of Lil' Wayne's "Fireman", the performances are potent reminders of Lupe's sheer technical prowess-- "All the Way" agreeably slouches through half-time punchlines ("I came to take it all back like I'm Miller High Life") and while the former cuts off at about two and a half minutes, he raps like he could go on for five times that. So, is that grade up there justifying a lack of, I dunno, ambition? Tough to say: Though a conceptual framework gave us "Gotta Eat", it also resulted in "Kick, Push". Then again, mere days after Enemy of the State dropped, you could find Lupe dedicating about as many words as there are on this tape to putting RapRadar.com on blast for god knows what. Whatever becomes of that, at least we'll have this reminder of what Lupe is capable of when he's given a mic instead of a soapbox."

Nina Nastasia

Run to Ruin

Rock

Chris Dahlen

When Nina Nastasia's latest record groans into view, it sets you up to expect the gloomiest entry in an already dark catalog: the mourning strings and her opening line00 "We never talk about the things we witnessed"-- suggest an album detailing the rural nightmare so many (urban) art-folk songwriters dwell in, where the men are monsters, the women are widows and the graveyards are above average. But just when the album's ready to fall prey to clichés, it turns into something far more intimate and complex-- moodier, yet more subtle than her previous outings. On last year's excellent The Blackened Air, Nastasia-- an acclaimed New York singer/songwriter in a world that thought it had too many-- wrote songs that were cool and dusty. Her lyrics confined her as a spectator, or at best, the victim of longings; the action kept happening to other people-- her dad chased a man down the highway, her dog was the one dying violently, and it was always someone else buried in that graveyard. But on Run to Ruin, the distance dissolves: Nastasia inhabits these songs and slowly surrenders to the material, as the graceful arrangements of her last album become messy and passionate. As before, Nastasia matches her acoustic guitar with a striking chamber string section and odd folk instruments like dulcimer, accordion, and no more than twenty notes twinkled on a piano. The strings grind and weave through "We Never Talked" and angrily swell across "I Say That I Will Do", while Jim White of Dirty Three-- a perfect drummer for this group-- intuitively balances timekeeping with colors that sputter like rain on soil. The emotions flare and subside, and so do the styles that Nastasia switches between: this is far more exotic than the straighter folk and country stylings of her earlier work, and she's writing longer songs with more room to breathe and swell. The meaty, gypsy melody of "On Teasing", the accordion weaving around the swarthy strings, is as unexpected as the tiny singing and almost too-precious arpeggios on "The Body". But the most striking improvement is her singing. She's a stronger vocalist, her almost-plain tone rising into higher registers, and her usual range has grown more earthily gorgeous. But more than anything, she demonstrates a new expressiveness: her singing at an even keel, but around the edges you can hear her start to let go. Like an anti-diva, Nastasia inches through her feelings instead of flaunting them. She can sound cutting and ironic, like the dry hatred in "You Her And Me", a song whose flat lyrics come to life in a delivery that resembles the smartest loner from high school. And she's gripping at her most vulnerable: the album's strongest track, "Superstar", at first sounds like a reasonable Cowboy Junkies-like ballad, until she draws us in with how lost and helpless she sounds. She sings the key line "I'm a superstar" in a voice that's almost delirious with fatigue, repeating it again and again in weakly ecstatic surrender. As with her two other records, Nastasia recorded Run to Ruin with Steve Albini. Once again he claims he "documented" the record instead of producing it, and although it's expectedly close-miked and sonically flawless, Albini gets credit for capturing what happened, then backing off. It would be too easy, say, to shine up the handful of perfectly sentimental piano notes on "The Body", but Albini lets them speak for themselves. He leaves Nastasia's beautifully arranged ensemble to make its own mood: the dynamic extremes aren't smoothed over, and nobody polishes the mood or smudges this into a genre. More importantly, nobody tries to be Nastasia's drama coach-- nobody dictated how she should open up on these songs. While her voice was just a part of the tapestry on her last albums, she has finally become the emotional core, and half the attraction of this record is hearing her stretch out and make these discoveries while we listen.

Artist: Nina Nastasia, Album: Run to Ruin, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "When Nina Nastasia's latest record groans into view, it sets you up to expect the gloomiest entry in an already dark catalog: the mourning strings and her opening line00 "We never talk about the things we witnessed"-- suggest an album detailing the rural nightmare so many (urban) art-folk songwriters dwell in, where the men are monsters, the women are widows and the graveyards are above average. But just when the album's ready to fall prey to clichés, it turns into something far more intimate and complex-- moodier, yet more subtle than her previous outings. On last year's excellent The Blackened Air, Nastasia-- an acclaimed New York singer/songwriter in a world that thought it had too many-- wrote songs that were cool and dusty. Her lyrics confined her as a spectator, or at best, the victim of longings; the action kept happening to other people-- her dad chased a man down the highway, her dog was the one dying violently, and it was always someone else buried in that graveyard. But on Run to Ruin, the distance dissolves: Nastasia inhabits these songs and slowly surrenders to the material, as the graceful arrangements of her last album become messy and passionate. As before, Nastasia matches her acoustic guitar with a striking chamber string section and odd folk instruments like dulcimer, accordion, and no more than twenty notes twinkled on a piano. The strings grind and weave through "We Never Talked" and angrily swell across "I Say That I Will Do", while Jim White of Dirty Three-- a perfect drummer for this group-- intuitively balances timekeeping with colors that sputter like rain on soil. The emotions flare and subside, and so do the styles that Nastasia switches between: this is far more exotic than the straighter folk and country stylings of her earlier work, and she's writing longer songs with more room to breathe and swell. The meaty, gypsy melody of "On Teasing", the accordion weaving around the swarthy strings, is as unexpected as the tiny singing and almost too-precious arpeggios on "The Body". But the most striking improvement is her singing. She's a stronger vocalist, her almost-plain tone rising into higher registers, and her usual range has grown more earthily gorgeous. But more than anything, she demonstrates a new expressiveness: her singing at an even keel, but around the edges you can hear her start to let go. Like an anti-diva, Nastasia inches through her feelings instead of flaunting them. She can sound cutting and ironic, like the dry hatred in "You Her And Me", a song whose flat lyrics come to life in a delivery that resembles the smartest loner from high school. And she's gripping at her most vulnerable: the album's strongest track, "Superstar", at first sounds like a reasonable Cowboy Junkies-like ballad, until she draws us in with how lost and helpless she sounds. She sings the key line "I'm a superstar" in a voice that's almost delirious with fatigue, repeating it again and again in weakly ecstatic surrender. As with her two other records, Nastasia recorded Run to Ruin with Steve Albini. Once again he claims he "documented" the record instead of producing it, and although it's expectedly close-miked and sonically flawless, Albini gets credit for capturing what happened, then backing off. It would be too easy, say, to shine up the handful of perfectly sentimental piano notes on "The Body", but Albini lets them speak for themselves. He leaves Nastasia's beautifully arranged ensemble to make its own mood: the dynamic extremes aren't smoothed over, and nobody polishes the mood or smudges this into a genre. More importantly, nobody tries to be Nastasia's drama coach-- nobody dictated how she should open up on these songs. While her voice was just a part of the tapestry on her last albums, she has finally become the emotional core, and half the attraction of this record is hearing her stretch out and make these discoveries while we listen."

Mira Calix

Eyes Set Against the Sun

Electronic

Liz Colville

Suffolk, England resident Chantal Passamonte has been incorporating field recordings into pulsating, grimy beats since the mid-90s, when a prolific career spinning as DJ Chantal gave way to organic experiments off the dance floor. With each successive album on Warp, Mira Calix has migrated away from any discernible genre. She scraps familiar structure in favor of "conducting" live crickets, using rocks as percussion, and masterfully orchestrating strings, winds, and piano around such innovations. Eyes Set Against the Sun is not unlike Herbert's Score in its visually evocative mood-making. The album is reverential to physicality, focusing on the organic rather than the theoretical. While the songs don't always confine themselves to the development-climax-denouement format, there's often a complex reworking of classical structures going on. With modern flair, Passamonte will stick with a line of melody for an unexpectedly long time: the pizzicato string section on "The Way You Are When", for instance, is a creepy filmic scene, but resists the added drama of counter-melodies and modifying twists. Instead, whispering vocals just barely enhance the pressurized tension of having the pizzicato riff repeated ad infinitum. Just under eleven minutes long, the song is epic without being overindulgent, and it turns out there is something of a backbone, a loop back to the soothing string legato of its opening minutes, much as a symphony might. At the close, a youthful choral section strives to reach emotive heights the song hadn't yet dared to. There's no discernible matrix enclosing the piece in precedent or audience expectation, and many of the songs seem to quietly thumb their nose at the human role even as they're dependent on it. Passamonte's curious meanderings with water effects and lifelike instrumentation (string plucks, pulls, and scrapes) on "Because to Why" make for a dark scene. Along with two other tracks, this opener conveys the most explicit verbal messages on the album, the rest of the songs liberated in our imagination by minimal or nonexistent vocals. On "Why" and its follow-up "The Stockholm Syndrome", she juxtaposes what could be joyous lyrics with minor keys and blasts of Dr. Who synths. "Umbra/Penumbra" brings us a resolute piano melody, happier string loops, and skulking drum machines amid the words, "You make me feel like summer's never coming/ You make me feel like nothing's ever true." Exploring this contrast both pokes fun at the decisive, long-understood emotional meaning behind major and minor keys. Or, if we are to retain those old meanings, suggests how her words may be connoted positively. Passamonte has performed alongside the London Sinfonietta and created soundscapes for art installations. As Mira Calix, she expresses her interest in crossing artistic endeavors with natural processes. Her effects borrow from nature, imitate it, and deferentially fuse it with man-made interpretation, as on "Belonging (No Longer Mix)", which draws on tribal music, dance halls, weather systems, wing-beats, and computers for a glaringly mechanized atmosphere that's still utterly free of human presence. Mira Calix hasn't exactly embraced lyricism, teetering between landscape soundtrack and songbook on many of her releases. Here, vocals take a definitive back seat-- when they do appear, it's as a ghostly, digitally fabricated instrument that inserts language into the broadly relatable wash of beautiful, scary, preliterate meaning. Passamonte's playful, deeply moving orchestration continually poses new questions about music's own language. Written English doesn't necessarily get in the way, but the voiceless material is a book without pictures that speaks volumes.

Artist: Mira Calix, Album: Eyes Set Against the Sun, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Suffolk, England resident Chantal Passamonte has been incorporating field recordings into pulsating, grimy beats since the mid-90s, when a prolific career spinning as DJ Chantal gave way to organic experiments off the dance floor. With each successive album on Warp, Mira Calix has migrated away from any discernible genre. She scraps familiar structure in favor of "conducting" live crickets, using rocks as percussion, and masterfully orchestrating strings, winds, and piano around such innovations. Eyes Set Against the Sun is not unlike Herbert's Score in its visually evocative mood-making. The album is reverential to physicality, focusing on the organic rather than the theoretical. While the songs don't always confine themselves to the development-climax-denouement format, there's often a complex reworking of classical structures going on. With modern flair, Passamonte will stick with a line of melody for an unexpectedly long time: the pizzicato string section on "The Way You Are When", for instance, is a creepy filmic scene, but resists the added drama of counter-melodies and modifying twists. Instead, whispering vocals just barely enhance the pressurized tension of having the pizzicato riff repeated ad infinitum. Just under eleven minutes long, the song is epic without being overindulgent, and it turns out there is something of a backbone, a loop back to the soothing string legato of its opening minutes, much as a symphony might. At the close, a youthful choral section strives to reach emotive heights the song hadn't yet dared to. There's no discernible matrix enclosing the piece in precedent or audience expectation, and many of the songs seem to quietly thumb their nose at the human role even as they're dependent on it. Passamonte's curious meanderings with water effects and lifelike instrumentation (string plucks, pulls, and scrapes) on "Because to Why" make for a dark scene. Along with two other tracks, this opener conveys the most explicit verbal messages on the album, the rest of the songs liberated in our imagination by minimal or nonexistent vocals. On "Why" and its follow-up "The Stockholm Syndrome", she juxtaposes what could be joyous lyrics with minor keys and blasts of Dr. Who synths. "Umbra/Penumbra" brings us a resolute piano melody, happier string loops, and skulking drum machines amid the words, "You make me feel like summer's never coming/ You make me feel like nothing's ever true." Exploring this contrast both pokes fun at the decisive, long-understood emotional meaning behind major and minor keys. Or, if we are to retain those old meanings, suggests how her words may be connoted positively. Passamonte has performed alongside the London Sinfonietta and created soundscapes for art installations. As Mira Calix, she expresses her interest in crossing artistic endeavors with natural processes. Her effects borrow from nature, imitate it, and deferentially fuse it with man-made interpretation, as on "Belonging (No Longer Mix)", which draws on tribal music, dance halls, weather systems, wing-beats, and computers for a glaringly mechanized atmosphere that's still utterly free of human presence. Mira Calix hasn't exactly embraced lyricism, teetering between landscape soundtrack and songbook on many of her releases. Here, vocals take a definitive back seat-- when they do appear, it's as a ghostly, digitally fabricated instrument that inserts language into the broadly relatable wash of beautiful, scary, preliterate meaning. Passamonte's playful, deeply moving orchestration continually poses new questions about music's own language. Written English doesn't necessarily get in the way, but the voiceless material is a book without pictures that speaks volumes."

Villagers

Where Have You Been All My Life?

Rock

Pat Healy

Look up "re-recorded" on whatever streaming site you use, and you’ll find original performers doing hasty and underwhelming renditions of their biggest hits. Everything from "Hang On Sloopy" to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" to "O.P.P." stand as testaments that it’s nearly impossible to improve upon a definitive version. Villagers prove to be the exception to this rule with Where Have You Been All My Life?, a collection of re-recordings of material from their three previous albums that reframes the songs in an impressively cohesive manner. Many artists re-record their best work because they’re in a dry spell and/or they’re sick of watching their old label make money off of the songs they made when they were young and signed a bad contract. What usually hinders re-recorded versions is a sense of "we got it right the first time" frustration that undermines the spirit of the original, but the new versions on Where Have You Been… swell with a different determination, one of "We’ve got to get it right this time." Recorded in one day last July, these mostly acoustic versions were reportedly all first or second takes with no overdubs.  The band had already been touring in support of last April’s Darling Arithmetic for three months by the time they went into RAK Studios in London. Arithmetic tracks account for half of the songs on here, but Villagers have restructured the older songs to fit the sound of the newer material, unifying them in their delicate harmonies, brushed drums, and double bass arrangements. A definite highlight on this collection is "Memoir," which Charlotte Gainsbourg recorded a version of in 2011 and which appeared as a Villagers B-side a year later. The distracting crowd noise and flat-tire-on-the-highway rhythm of that version were wisely left off this most recent recording, and the song touches a nerve even more discomfiting than before. Its desperate romantic lyrics hit more directly. "In the orgy I can vaguely hear the outline of your call," singer and songwriter Conor O’Brien sings at one point before telling the subject of the song, "you were the lighthouse to my broken boat." The latter image connects the song on this compilation with "My Lighthouse," which first appeared on 2013’s {Awayland}. "The Waves," also originally from {Awayland}, is another highlight. On that album, it had an electronic undercurrent, which was later taken several fathoms deeper when remixed by house duo Psychemagik. The drastic acoustic reinterpretation on this album feels like the song’s natural state, the long-building crescendo threatens to swallow the singer before he has finished saying his piece.  The Where Have You Been All My Life? title comes from a line in “The Soul Serene,” but naming it as such feels like Villagers begging for new audiences to ask that same question of the album. The music within warrants it. __ __

Artist: Villagers, Album: Where Have You Been All My Life?, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Look up "re-recorded" on whatever streaming site you use, and you’ll find original performers doing hasty and underwhelming renditions of their biggest hits. Everything from "Hang On Sloopy" to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" to "O.P.P." stand as testaments that it’s nearly impossible to improve upon a definitive version. Villagers prove to be the exception to this rule with Where Have You Been All My Life?, a collection of re-recordings of material from their three previous albums that reframes the songs in an impressively cohesive manner. Many artists re-record their best work because they’re in a dry spell and/or they’re sick of watching their old label make money off of the songs they made when they were young and signed a bad contract. What usually hinders re-recorded versions is a sense of "we got it right the first time" frustration that undermines the spirit of the original, but the new versions on Where Have You Been… swell with a different determination, one of "We’ve got to get it right this time." Recorded in one day last July, these mostly acoustic versions were reportedly all first or second takes with no overdubs.  The band had already been touring in support of last April’s Darling Arithmetic for three months by the time they went into RAK Studios in London. Arithmetic tracks account for half of the songs on here, but Villagers have restructured the older songs to fit the sound of the newer material, unifying them in their delicate harmonies, brushed drums, and double bass arrangements. A definite highlight on this collection is "Memoir," which Charlotte Gainsbourg recorded a version of in 2011 and which appeared as a Villagers B-side a year later. The distracting crowd noise and flat-tire-on-the-highway rhythm of that version were wisely left off this most recent recording, and the song touches a nerve even more discomfiting than before. Its desperate romantic lyrics hit more directly. "In the orgy I can vaguely hear the outline of your call," singer and songwriter Conor O’Brien sings at one point before telling the subject of the song, "you were the lighthouse to my broken boat." The latter image connects the song on this compilation with "My Lighthouse," which first appeared on 2013’s {Awayland}. "The Waves," also originally from {Awayland}, is another highlight. On that album, it had an electronic undercurrent, which was later taken several fathoms deeper when remixed by house duo Psychemagik. The drastic acoustic reinterpretation on this album feels like the song’s natural state, the long-building crescendo threatens to swallow the singer before he has finished saying his piece.  The Where Have You Been All My Life? title comes from a line in “The Soul Serene,” but naming it as such feels like Villagers begging for new audiences to ask that same question of the album. The music within warrants it. __ __"

My Favorite

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

Rock

P.J. Gallagher

In high school, I thought I was a victimized nonconformist trapped in a world that didn't understand me. The claustrophobic blandness of my existence in suburban Buffalo blinded me from the legions of disaffected youth across the country fighting the same battles. And not only was I cliché, in 1993 I was about ten years late. I was the blueprint for privileged, melodramatic suburban youth. Music was my oxygen. I would suck comfort out of my bright yellow Sony Sports Walkman, which was host to a parade of Maxell-brand mix tapes that were replaced biweekly, but always held the same songs. Sometimes they started with The Smiths, and usually they ended with The Cure. My Favorite captures these memories, and serves them up with the synth-infused respect they deserve. I love this music because I love everything that came before it. The Happiest Days of Our Lives is an unashamed love letter to 80s British new wave. Johnny Marr's jangle snuggles up to New Order's electronics. Singer/songwriter Michael Grace, Jr. wants to be an American Morrissey, telling tales of heartbreak from between the cinderblock walls of his dorm room. In "Badge", he croons, "I examine the pictures on my wall/ I am the pictures on my wall/ Then nothing." His songs tackle the mind-numbing stupidity of suburbia (the boy/girl pop-rocker "The Suburbs Are Killing Us"), college crushes ("L=P"), and confessions of love though depreciated audio formats ("The Black Cassette"). In splitting vocal duties with Andrea Vaughn, the melodrama becomes all the more convincing-- at times, it borders on poignant: "Loneliness is pornography to them, but to us it is an art." The Happiest Days of Our Lives compiles three out-of-print EPs released by My Favorite since 2000, as well as four new tracks. But it also includes an additional disc featuring fourteen "controversial" remixes by Soviet, Flowchart, Phofo, Alexander Peris, Future Bible Heroes, Double Agent, and a host of others. Somehow, My Favorite escaped the all-consuming maw of the recently defunct electro movement, but the majority of these remixes serve as a "what if," reworking the band's songs into irreverent dance hymns to Casey Spooner. A handful of others attempt to bring something new to the original material. Phofo's interpretation of "Le Monster" is a bizarrely enjoyable mash-up of styles, from mambo and bossa nova to 60s French pop, while three artists rework "Homeless Club Kids". Alexander Perls turns it into the dance anthem its title begs for. Double Agent's take on is a booming miasma of drums and echoing vocals, complete with a nuclear blast in the middle. However, though the electro-pop doodles of Stephin Merritt are usually a joy, the 8:22 runtime of the Future Bible Heroes remix is nearly impenetrable, even as far as club-friendly remixes go. All told, My Favorite set out to appeal to a distinct class of music fans: If you don't know every lyric to Meat Is Murder, or never patched a broken heart with Disintegration, you'll likely be mystified by the band's dreamy teenage anthems. Those of us who fall into this category, however, will find it an blissful journey back into days that were anything but.

Artist: My Favorite, Album: The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "In high school, I thought I was a victimized nonconformist trapped in a world that didn't understand me. The claustrophobic blandness of my existence in suburban Buffalo blinded me from the legions of disaffected youth across the country fighting the same battles. And not only was I cliché, in 1993 I was about ten years late. I was the blueprint for privileged, melodramatic suburban youth. Music was my oxygen. I would suck comfort out of my bright yellow Sony Sports Walkman, which was host to a parade of Maxell-brand mix tapes that were replaced biweekly, but always held the same songs. Sometimes they started with The Smiths, and usually they ended with The Cure. My Favorite captures these memories, and serves them up with the synth-infused respect they deserve. I love this music because I love everything that came before it. The Happiest Days of Our Lives is an unashamed love letter to 80s British new wave. Johnny Marr's jangle snuggles up to New Order's electronics. Singer/songwriter Michael Grace, Jr. wants to be an American Morrissey, telling tales of heartbreak from between the cinderblock walls of his dorm room. In "Badge", he croons, "I examine the pictures on my wall/ I am the pictures on my wall/ Then nothing." His songs tackle the mind-numbing stupidity of suburbia (the boy/girl pop-rocker "The Suburbs Are Killing Us"), college crushes ("L=P"), and confessions of love though depreciated audio formats ("The Black Cassette"). In splitting vocal duties with Andrea Vaughn, the melodrama becomes all the more convincing-- at times, it borders on poignant: "Loneliness is pornography to them, but to us it is an art." The Happiest Days of Our Lives compiles three out-of-print EPs released by My Favorite since 2000, as well as four new tracks. But it also includes an additional disc featuring fourteen "controversial" remixes by Soviet, Flowchart, Phofo, Alexander Peris, Future Bible Heroes, Double Agent, and a host of others. Somehow, My Favorite escaped the all-consuming maw of the recently defunct electro movement, but the majority of these remixes serve as a "what if," reworking the band's songs into irreverent dance hymns to Casey Spooner. A handful of others attempt to bring something new to the original material. Phofo's interpretation of "Le Monster" is a bizarrely enjoyable mash-up of styles, from mambo and bossa nova to 60s French pop, while three artists rework "Homeless Club Kids". Alexander Perls turns it into the dance anthem its title begs for. Double Agent's take on is a booming miasma of drums and echoing vocals, complete with a nuclear blast in the middle. However, though the electro-pop doodles of Stephin Merritt are usually a joy, the 8:22 runtime of the Future Bible Heroes remix is nearly impenetrable, even as far as club-friendly remixes go. All told, My Favorite set out to appeal to a distinct class of music fans: If you don't know every lyric to Meat Is Murder, or never patched a broken heart with Disintegration, you'll likely be mystified by the band's dreamy teenage anthems. Those of us who fall into this category, however, will find it an blissful journey back into days that were anything but."

Sleigh Bells

Treats

Pop/R&B

Mark Richardson

Once in a while a record comes along that makes you re-think loud: King of Rock; The Land of Rape and Honey; Nation of Millions; Super Ae; I Get Wet; Kesto. Setting aside the quality of the material-- there are classics here, along with albums I never listen to anymore-- these albums are notable for me because the first time I heard them, music just seemed bigger than it had before, like it took up more space and hit with more force and went further than once seemed possible. When I was getting into these records, I'd get a specific kind of kick just from putting them on. They felt like rides at an amusement park, and I'd get a feeling in my stomach when the first notes kicked in: Here we go. I'm adding another record to my list. Demos of songs from Sleigh Bells' Treats first started making their way around the Internet last fall, and they immediately served as conversation starters. The distortion in early track "Crown on the Ground" was so intense that every other second the song seemed on the verge of shutting down. But while Derek Miller's overdriven guitar and bass were distressed in the extreme, vocalist Alexis Krauss remained calm as chaos raged around her. Her cadence, somewhere at the intersection of singing, speaking, and chanting, conveyed an easy confidence, like she belonged in the middle of this maelstrom and knew she didn't need to shout to be heard. The contrast between her relaxed bearing-- where she seemed to rule over it all-- and the dangerous splatter of the music was striking to say the least. It was as easy to be taken in as it was to understand why someone else might be repelled. I felt some of both feelings, to be honest, but I also wanted to hear more. Treats delivers completely on the promise of those demos. Sleigh Bells haven't stopped living in the red, but the improved recording quality makes songs including "Crown on the Ground" that much heavier, and the duo have managed to extend their uncomplicated formula across 11 tracks without it wearing thin. The combination of the music's essentials-- jackhammer riffs clipped from punk and metal, mid-tempo beats from hip-hop and electro, and supremely catchy sing-song melodies-- is striking on its own, sounding remarkably fresh and unlike anything else right now. But an even greater source of the record's appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential. When so much music seems designed to evoke the mood and vibe of a specific era, either through direct imitation or playing with the memories of the music's context, Sleigh Bells deftly avoid any single pigeonhole. There are references, but it never feels like the music is merely pointing. Genre here is something to be twisted around and pulled and braided with something else, a mangled container struggling to hold the energy and ecstasy of the music. They gather up bits from all over and use them to create music that puts you squarely in the present moment. The music hits so hard, and in such a satisfying way, and it seems designed to bring you back to the totality of the sound. It's hard to say what the songs are about, since so many words are so difficult to make out, but they work. The lyrics of "A/B Machines" consist only of, "Got my A machines on the table/ Got my B machines in the drawer," repeated over and over, and who am I to question Krauss on this point? We're talking about "a-wop bop a-loo bop a-lop bam boom" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" here, which is just right for what the music tries for. So my ear on "A/B Machines" goes to the searing guitar lead, which screeches out a few penetrating notes, and then pauses on the clanging low-end and the interludes and Western-sounding guitar rumble. And on the opening "Tell 'Em", the focus goes to the call-and-response drum machine pummel, soaring riff, and finger snaps compressed into sharp little diamonds, as Krauss chirps a short, repetitive melody with the insistence of a pep rally cheer. "Rill Rill" takes the immortal acoustic guitar bit from Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That", blows it up to Hollywood blockbuster size, and loops it along with clicking percussion as Krauss sings what may prove to be the pop earworm of the year, the kind of tune you'd swear you were singing over and over to yourself years ago. "Straight A's" has some of the electro-punk rage of Crystal Castles, the less frantic tracks like "Rachel" have a bit of shoegaze, and the pacing of the album is just so, taking you right to edge in one song and then pulling you back a few inches in the next. Though both Krauss and Miller have been making music for a while-- he in the hardcore band Poison the Well, she in some kind of manufactured teen-pop group that never got off the ground-- it's easy to see them as a connected band with the right gimmick at the right time. They live in New York, they've played hip shows for important people, and from the beginning the online chatter has been almost as deafening as the guitar tones. But what works in their favor is that they've taken advantage of these breaks and marshaled their talent to make something that oozes joy. There's spirit to this music, and the sonic assault is celebratory, asking only that you come along with it and join in. All of which, for me, anyway, makes the hype melt away. And if it's true that records this intense and exhilarating don't always sustain themselves over the long haul, that's not a worry either. The visceral thrill of Treats may not last forever, but neither does life; right now, this feels like living it.

Artist: Sleigh Bells, Album: Treats, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "Once in a while a record comes along that makes you re-think loud: King of Rock; The Land of Rape and Honey; Nation of Millions; Super Ae; I Get Wet; Kesto. Setting aside the quality of the material-- there are classics here, along with albums I never listen to anymore-- these albums are notable for me because the first time I heard them, music just seemed bigger than it had before, like it took up more space and hit with more force and went further than once seemed possible. When I was getting into these records, I'd get a specific kind of kick just from putting them on. They felt like rides at an amusement park, and I'd get a feeling in my stomach when the first notes kicked in: Here we go. I'm adding another record to my list. Demos of songs from Sleigh Bells' Treats first started making their way around the Internet last fall, and they immediately served as conversation starters. The distortion in early track "Crown on the Ground" was so intense that every other second the song seemed on the verge of shutting down. But while Derek Miller's overdriven guitar and bass were distressed in the extreme, vocalist Alexis Krauss remained calm as chaos raged around her. Her cadence, somewhere at the intersection of singing, speaking, and chanting, conveyed an easy confidence, like she belonged in the middle of this maelstrom and knew she didn't need to shout to be heard. The contrast between her relaxed bearing-- where she seemed to rule over it all-- and the dangerous splatter of the music was striking to say the least. It was as easy to be taken in as it was to understand why someone else might be repelled. I felt some of both feelings, to be honest, but I also wanted to hear more. Treats delivers completely on the promise of those demos. Sleigh Bells haven't stopped living in the red, but the improved recording quality makes songs including "Crown on the Ground" that much heavier, and the duo have managed to extend their uncomplicated formula across 11 tracks without it wearing thin. The combination of the music's essentials-- jackhammer riffs clipped from punk and metal, mid-tempo beats from hip-hop and electro, and supremely catchy sing-song melodies-- is striking on its own, sounding remarkably fresh and unlike anything else right now. But an even greater source of the record's appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential. When so much music seems designed to evoke the mood and vibe of a specific era, either through direct imitation or playing with the memories of the music's context, Sleigh Bells deftly avoid any single pigeonhole. There are references, but it never feels like the music is merely pointing. Genre here is something to be twisted around and pulled and braided with something else, a mangled container struggling to hold the energy and ecstasy of the music. They gather up bits from all over and use them to create music that puts you squarely in the present moment. The music hits so hard, and in such a satisfying way, and it seems designed to bring you back to the totality of the sound. It's hard to say what the songs are about, since so many words are so difficult to make out, but they work. The lyrics of "A/B Machines" consist only of, "Got my A machines on the table/ Got my B machines in the drawer," repeated over and over, and who am I to question Krauss on this point? We're talking about "a-wop bop a-loo bop a-lop bam boom" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" here, which is just right for what the music tries for. So my ear on "A/B Machines" goes to the searing guitar lead, which screeches out a few penetrating notes, and then pauses on the clanging low-end and the interludes and Western-sounding guitar rumble. And on the opening "Tell 'Em", the focus goes to the call-and-response drum machine pummel, soaring riff, and finger snaps compressed into sharp little diamonds, as Krauss chirps a short, repetitive melody with the insistence of a pep rally cheer. "Rill Rill" takes the immortal acoustic guitar bit from Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That", blows it up to Hollywood blockbuster size, and loops it along with clicking percussion as Krauss sings what may prove to be the pop earworm of the year, the kind of tune you'd swear you were singing over and over to yourself years ago. "Straight A's" has some of the electro-punk rage of Crystal Castles, the less frantic tracks like "Rachel" have a bit of shoegaze, and the pacing of the album is just so, taking you right to edge in one song and then pulling you back a few inches in the next. Though both Krauss and Miller have been making music for a while-- he in the hardcore band Poison the Well, she in some kind of manufactured teen-pop group that never got off the ground-- it's easy to see them as a connected band with the right gimmick at the right time. They live in New York, they've played hip shows for important people, and from the beginning the online chatter has been almost as deafening as the guitar tones. But what works in their favor is that they've taken advantage of these breaks and marshaled their talent to make something that oozes joy. There's spirit to this music, and the sonic assault is celebratory, asking only that you come along with it and join in. All of which, for me, anyway, makes the hype melt away. And if it's true that records this intense and exhilarating don't always sustain themselves over the long haul, that's not a worry either. The visceral thrill of Treats may not last forever, but neither does life; right now, this feels like living it."

La Sera

Hour of the Dawn

Rock

Jeremy Gordon

Where Vivian Girls’ rough edges and droning harmonies suggested mystery, Katy Goodman’s La Sera has to this point made no such attempt at obfuscation: Here was the Vivian Girls bassist, here’s what was on her mind when she wasn’t with her bandmates. But Vivian Girls are no more, meaning Goodman’s instincts have run in a less solitary direction for Hour of the Dawn, La Sera’s third album. "I wanted the new La Sera record to sound like Lesley Gore fronting Black Flag," Goodman says in the album’s press material. "I didn't want it to be another record of me sad, alone in my room. I wanted to have fun playing music and writing songs with a band." How fun it is when album opener “Losing to the Dark” strikes that aggressive pose, the guitars pinballing off the walls as Goodman snarls about a boy who doesn’t seem to need her until he’s too drunk to take care of himself. “What a shame it must be to have to be in love with me,” she sings, both heartbroken and spiteful. Not that she’s suddenly gone mean. Hour of the Dawn is largely made up of romantic songs carried to their open-hearted potential by Goodman’s high, floating voice. She’s in love with people and with memories, from summer’s promise to the town that used to be filled with her friends. An album that could be sad based on the lyric sheet is stuffed with delirious fret runs, muscular drum fills, sunny guitars soaked with reverb. Vivian Girls’ girl group harmonies were usually cloaked behind a curtain of feedback. Here, Goodman stands in front of the band, her voice shining like a lighthouse on the shore. The Lesley Gore-fronting-Black Flag comparison is apt, since you could imagine the tougher directions the music would lean toward were Goodman’s instincts for melancholy and tenderness not there to soften the impact. The resulting sound is closer to Best Coast with more focus on the jamming. “Kiss This Town Away” leans into surf rock and a country singer’s sense of lament; the nimble picking of the title track builds to a triumphant outro even as she expresses unease about whether a new day will really bring something better. “10 Headed Goat Wizard” is straight-up Beatlesesque pop, like something you’d hear at the end of an episode of “Mad Men” and not even realize it was anachronistic. The moments where she lets the band get heavier are interesting: “Control” chants like the flip side of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2” while “Storm’s End” groans like its title, which is possibly a “Game of Thrones” reference (which Goodman has talked about in interviews) but probably doesn’t need to be read into beyond that. (Or does it? Okay, it doesn’t.) That’s when Goodman takes steps toward establishing herself beyond what she’s known for, which is personable if not always easy to distinguish from itself. Hour of the Dawn sounds like a summer record, meant to be played when emotions are high and the sun is out. Most importantly, it shows what she’s capable of when the shine has worn off.

Artist: La Sera, Album: Hour of the Dawn, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Where Vivian Girls’ rough edges and droning harmonies suggested mystery, Katy Goodman’s La Sera has to this point made no such attempt at obfuscation: Here was the Vivian Girls bassist, here’s what was on her mind when she wasn’t with her bandmates. But Vivian Girls are no more, meaning Goodman’s instincts have run in a less solitary direction for Hour of the Dawn, La Sera’s third album. "I wanted the new La Sera record to sound like Lesley Gore fronting Black Flag," Goodman says in the album’s press material. "I didn't want it to be another record of me sad, alone in my room. I wanted to have fun playing music and writing songs with a band." How fun it is when album opener “Losing to the Dark” strikes that aggressive pose, the guitars pinballing off the walls as Goodman snarls about a boy who doesn’t seem to need her until he’s too drunk to take care of himself. “What a shame it must be to have to be in love with me,” she sings, both heartbroken and spiteful. Not that she’s suddenly gone mean. Hour of the Dawn is largely made up of romantic songs carried to their open-hearted potential by Goodman’s high, floating voice. She’s in love with people and with memories, from summer’s promise to the town that used to be filled with her friends. An album that could be sad based on the lyric sheet is stuffed with delirious fret runs, muscular drum fills, sunny guitars soaked with reverb. Vivian Girls’ girl group harmonies were usually cloaked behind a curtain of feedback. Here, Goodman stands in front of the band, her voice shining like a lighthouse on the shore. The Lesley Gore-fronting-Black Flag comparison is apt, since you could imagine the tougher directions the music would lean toward were Goodman’s instincts for melancholy and tenderness not there to soften the impact. The resulting sound is closer to Best Coast with more focus on the jamming. “Kiss This Town Away” leans into surf rock and a country singer’s sense of lament; the nimble picking of the title track builds to a triumphant outro even as she expresses unease about whether a new day will really bring something better. “10 Headed Goat Wizard” is straight-up Beatlesesque pop, like something you’d hear at the end of an episode of “Mad Men” and not even realize it was anachronistic. The moments where she lets the band get heavier are interesting: “Control” chants like the flip side of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2” while “Storm’s End” groans like its title, which is possibly a “Game of Thrones” reference (which Goodman has talked about in interviews) but probably doesn’t need to be read into beyond that. (Or does it? Okay, it doesn’t.) That’s when Goodman takes steps toward establishing herself beyond what she’s known for, which is personable if not always easy to distinguish from itself. Hour of the Dawn sounds like a summer record, meant to be played when emotions are high and the sun is out. Most importantly, it shows what she’s capable of when the shine has worn off."

Junius

The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist

Metal,Rock

Jayson Greene

Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born Jewish scientist who believed that long ago Earth had suffered several near-catastrophic collisions with Venus and Mars. His alternate vision of the universe, which he laid out in the controversial 1950 bestseller Worlds In Collision, reads suspiciously like the plot to Stargate: ancient mythology, astrology, and astrophysics woven together into the kind of vividly apocalyptic swirl that attracts cults of believers. Velikovsky's theories, unfortunately for him, were debunked by every reputable physicist of the era. It's easy to see the appeal this doomed, charismatic fringe figure might have for a melodramatic goth-rock band. This is where Junius comes in: their second full-length is a loose concept album about Velikovsky's life and trials. He is the "catastrophist" of the title, and a recording of his thickly accented voice, straight out of mad-scientist Central Casting, graces the album's opening. Here Junius treat Velikovsky not unlike how metal bands behold Aleister Crowley: a compelling Faustian figure, a man who was punished by society for his forays into forbidden realms of knowledge. Junius are not a metal band, however. In spirit and sound, the Boston quartet are closest to darkwave bands of the 1980s, a kinship that only begins with lead singer and guitarist Joseph E Martinez's pitch-perfect Robert Smith wail. Like the bands they resemble (Tears for Fears, the Cure, and Depeche Mode, primarily), Junius have a knack for translating weepy melodrama into anthemic choruses. Almost every song makes its careful way through a maze of subsections, but this maneuvering is often hidden behind an instantly memorable hook, which tends to make the record's esoteric conceit melt away instantly. "We are so curious," Martinez howls on "Ten-Year Librarian", a song that is ostensibly about Velikovsky staying up endless nights to rewrite his life-changing thesis, but a line that probably resonates just as powerfully with sexually repressed teenagers. The sound of the record is similarly stadium-ready. The reverb is cranked to cavernous levels, so that every isolated sound-- the glimmering Interpol-style guitar leads, the hi-hat cymbal washes, the unison "whoa-oh-oh" vocals-- spirals endlessly upward into a starlit sky. "The Antedeluvian Fire" has tinkling chimes doubling its murmuring, arpeggiated guitars, while waves of Mellotron well up in the background of "Ten-Year Librarian". As you would expect from such an 80s-rooted album, there are rich bands of synthesizers here too, and they shimmer darkly from every corner of the mix. Taken as a whole (as it demands to be), Catastrophist is a rich, immersive experience, a bleak jewel of a record that takes obsession as its theme and rewards it in equal measure.

Artist: Junius, Album: The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born Jewish scientist who believed that long ago Earth had suffered several near-catastrophic collisions with Venus and Mars. His alternate vision of the universe, which he laid out in the controversial 1950 bestseller Worlds In Collision, reads suspiciously like the plot to Stargate: ancient mythology, astrology, and astrophysics woven together into the kind of vividly apocalyptic swirl that attracts cults of believers. Velikovsky's theories, unfortunately for him, were debunked by every reputable physicist of the era. It's easy to see the appeal this doomed, charismatic fringe figure might have for a melodramatic goth-rock band. This is where Junius comes in: their second full-length is a loose concept album about Velikovsky's life and trials. He is the "catastrophist" of the title, and a recording of his thickly accented voice, straight out of mad-scientist Central Casting, graces the album's opening. Here Junius treat Velikovsky not unlike how metal bands behold Aleister Crowley: a compelling Faustian figure, a man who was punished by society for his forays into forbidden realms of knowledge. Junius are not a metal band, however. In spirit and sound, the Boston quartet are closest to darkwave bands of the 1980s, a kinship that only begins with lead singer and guitarist Joseph E Martinez's pitch-perfect Robert Smith wail. Like the bands they resemble (Tears for Fears, the Cure, and Depeche Mode, primarily), Junius have a knack for translating weepy melodrama into anthemic choruses. Almost every song makes its careful way through a maze of subsections, but this maneuvering is often hidden behind an instantly memorable hook, which tends to make the record's esoteric conceit melt away instantly. "We are so curious," Martinez howls on "Ten-Year Librarian", a song that is ostensibly about Velikovsky staying up endless nights to rewrite his life-changing thesis, but a line that probably resonates just as powerfully with sexually repressed teenagers. The sound of the record is similarly stadium-ready. The reverb is cranked to cavernous levels, so that every isolated sound-- the glimmering Interpol-style guitar leads, the hi-hat cymbal washes, the unison "whoa-oh-oh" vocals-- spirals endlessly upward into a starlit sky. "The Antedeluvian Fire" has tinkling chimes doubling its murmuring, arpeggiated guitars, while waves of Mellotron well up in the background of "Ten-Year Librarian". As you would expect from such an 80s-rooted album, there are rich bands of synthesizers here too, and they shimmer darkly from every corner of the mix. Taken as a whole (as it demands to be), Catastrophist is a rich, immersive experience, a bleak jewel of a record that takes obsession as its theme and rewards it in equal measure."

Onra

Deep in the Night EP

Electronic

Nate Patrin

Long Distance was familiar enough to give Onra a context, well-crafted enough to show off his potential, and of-the-moment enough to paint him into a corner. Despite the precedent set by the two Chinoiseries volumes that straddled his 2010 breakthrough, the big pull of Long Distance was an instantly gratifying sound that demanded to be elaborated on. His beats reassembled fractured vintage synth funk and R&B tropes, glossy state-of-the-art in '87 tightness into a new stutter-step looseness, like machines rebuilt with duct tape and wire hangers. If that approach recalled a lot of oft-cited predecessors and peers-- imagine making a case for a Dilla-evoking beat-creator at that style's most overwhelming saturation point-- it at least did so favorably, and in a way that focused on a distinct space of his own. So is the next step to make that space more distinct, or just larger? The five-song Deep in the Night EP doesn't really answer that, which could be frustrating depending on how demanding you are of a 16.5-minute EP to represent forward motion instead of a mere supplement. Onra's gotten some enduring mileage out of these roller-rink throwbacks, owing equally to a keen ear for sources and a crafty idea of how to manipulate them. From a reverse-engineering perspective it can be fun to get at where he's going with his sample alteration, like how "L.O.V.E." slows Slave's '84 jam "Share Your (L.O.V.E.)" down to a first-gear residential neighborhood crawl and flips that percolating synthesizer burble in on itself over a door-kicking 4/4 kick-clap. But even when "Somewhere (Deep in the Night)" and "Hold Tight" embody everything great about this sound of Onra's, they pull right at the same pleasure centers in the same ways that "Send Me Your Love" and "Sitting Back" did: digital chimes rattle from the gusts caused by helicopter-blade keyboards, drum machines are manhandled into something more off-the-cuff and improvisational. Vocal hooks get reduced to the three or four notes that hit the hardest before getting split apart or cut off, appealing in the same ways as "Send Me Your Love" and "Sitting Back" are. Deep in the Night fits Long Distance's approach closely enough that you could append this EP to the end of that album, maintain that Michael Mann-directs-Soul Train feel, and still squeeze it all in the traditional 80-minutes-or-less CD length. It might help ward off suspicions of over-familiarity to pretend that some of the stylistic echoes are actually thematic callbacks instead of just redundancies. "After Hours" is a mid-tempo boogie-funk pastiche featuring a lover-man verse from Slum Village's T3, coming across like a breathless rebound to his break-up lament on "The One". And the beat-head romance of "V.B.B."-- Amalia actually answers Jay Kin's call for "old-school love" with the promise of "record-diggin' 'til the morning"-- is like the personification of every obsessive lifestyle-music synthesis that made Long Distance sound like the work of a collector turned creator. Deep in the Night just shows the early signs of a pressing need to dig a bit deeper.

Artist: Onra, Album: Deep in the Night EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Long Distance was familiar enough to give Onra a context, well-crafted enough to show off his potential, and of-the-moment enough to paint him into a corner. Despite the precedent set by the two Chinoiseries volumes that straddled his 2010 breakthrough, the big pull of Long Distance was an instantly gratifying sound that demanded to be elaborated on. His beats reassembled fractured vintage synth funk and R&B tropes, glossy state-of-the-art in '87 tightness into a new stutter-step looseness, like machines rebuilt with duct tape and wire hangers. If that approach recalled a lot of oft-cited predecessors and peers-- imagine making a case for a Dilla-evoking beat-creator at that style's most overwhelming saturation point-- it at least did so favorably, and in a way that focused on a distinct space of his own. So is the next step to make that space more distinct, or just larger? The five-song Deep in the Night EP doesn't really answer that, which could be frustrating depending on how demanding you are of a 16.5-minute EP to represent forward motion instead of a mere supplement. Onra's gotten some enduring mileage out of these roller-rink throwbacks, owing equally to a keen ear for sources and a crafty idea of how to manipulate them. From a reverse-engineering perspective it can be fun to get at where he's going with his sample alteration, like how "L.O.V.E." slows Slave's '84 jam "Share Your (L.O.V.E.)" down to a first-gear residential neighborhood crawl and flips that percolating synthesizer burble in on itself over a door-kicking 4/4 kick-clap. But even when "Somewhere (Deep in the Night)" and "Hold Tight" embody everything great about this sound of Onra's, they pull right at the same pleasure centers in the same ways that "Send Me Your Love" and "Sitting Back" did: digital chimes rattle from the gusts caused by helicopter-blade keyboards, drum machines are manhandled into something more off-the-cuff and improvisational. Vocal hooks get reduced to the three or four notes that hit the hardest before getting split apart or cut off, appealing in the same ways as "Send Me Your Love" and "Sitting Back" are. Deep in the Night fits Long Distance's approach closely enough that you could append this EP to the end of that album, maintain that Michael Mann-directs-Soul Train feel, and still squeeze it all in the traditional 80-minutes-or-less CD length. It might help ward off suspicions of over-familiarity to pretend that some of the stylistic echoes are actually thematic callbacks instead of just redundancies. "After Hours" is a mid-tempo boogie-funk pastiche featuring a lover-man verse from Slum Village's T3, coming across like a breathless rebound to his break-up lament on "The One". And the beat-head romance of "V.B.B."-- Amalia actually answers Jay Kin's call for "old-school love" with the promise of "record-diggin' 'til the morning"-- is like the personification of every obsessive lifestyle-music synthesis that made Long Distance sound like the work of a collector turned creator. Deep in the Night just shows the early signs of a pressing need to dig a bit deeper."

T.I.

Dime Trap

Rap

Stephen Kearse

For the past year, T.I., Gucci Mane, and spectators have been embroiled in a debate about who invented trap music. Trap has become such a force—in hip-hop, in music, in style—that its creators can credibly say they have helped shape modern culture. T.I. staked his claim to the genre’s origins on his 2003 album, Trap Muzik, arguing the proof was there in the title. But last month, announcing a new pop-up museum dedicated to trap, T.I. dropped the language of invention and proposed the genre was a group effort. “Trap Muzik wouldn’t be shit without ALL OF US,” he wrote. “I made it [an] album… but WE MADE IT A GENRE!!!!” This pivot from ownership to participation animates Dime Trap. For the first time in years, he sounds less like a copyright lawyer and more like a contributor to a culture he loves. Back in 2015, T.I. envisioned Dime Trap as the second installment of a trilogy that began with 2014’s pop-leaning Paperwork. He’d recently received a Grammy nomination for “Blurred Lines,” was Iggy Azalea’s mentor and defender, and was the patriarch of a reality-show family. In a sense, the T.I. vs T.I.P. duel—that is, the clash between the CEO and the streetside hustler—had been settled. But he wanted Dime Trap to reset the balance and provide “unadulterated trap music” with “young, hungry, talented producers.” This return to the trap was so straightforward that, at one point, Dime Trap was simply called Trap Music. But the Dime Trap of 2018 focuses on legacy instead of legend. T.I. still likes to flex, and balling remains a priority. But throughout this record, there’s an emphasis on consequences. Narrated by Dave Chappelle, another black artist who’s publicly wrestled with questions of legacy, Dime Trap finds T.I. in repose, mapping the choices he’s made and teasing out their effects. On “Seasons,” he quotes his marriage counselor, who tells him to focus on the pain his decisions have caused. When he dismisses the advice and sets his sights on hip-hop moguldom, instead, you can feel the weight of that choice. “What Can I Say” transforms T.I.’s unlikely ascent into a cautionary tale. “In the trap with a trap door,” he raps, insisting that a successful hustle only begets more hustles. The past serves as muse and burden. “Laugh at Em” melds T.I.’s memories of his days in the trap with observations from this ongoing era of hyper-visible police brutality. “Swear to God I coulda been Freddie Gray/Or Mike Brown, getting shot down/With a pistol on me and half a brick of yay,” he reflects. That single sequence is more potent than T.I.’s entire last album. He seems to have rediscovered the power of fluidity, zipping through his thoughts until larger ideas settle into place. A murderers’ row of both new and seasoned producers match his breezy rapping with zesty beats. For “Jefe,” Bangladesh blends mariachi horns and marching-band percussion into a spirited thump, landing between Nola bounce and Latin trap. Shawty Redd and Pyro da God’s “Big Ol Drip” beat is a slow, bluesy burner with bold drops and ragtime riffs. Scott Storch’s sparse arrangement on “Wraith” steadily expands and contracts, creating strange little pockets of dead air that T.I. punctures with his newly husky pitch. T.I has dabbled in a range of sounds since his debut, but that range resonates as renewal here. The record falters when T.I. gets maudlin. The weepy keys and morose verses of “Pray For Me” are monochromatic, as if YFN Lucci and T.I. were dramatically reenacting a self-help book. The frosty lechery of the Young Thug collab “The Weekend” is undercut by an outro where T.I. explains that trap music isn’t “one-dimensional” and describes Dime Trap as “TED Talk for hustlers.” Hasn’t his career made that clear? T.I. ends “Be There” by framing trap as a form of revenge against the carceral state and white supremacy. “I’m sure the people who put crack cocaine in our communities, infested us with all this hate, all these guns, all this violence, all this rage, you see, they never counted on us takin’ those very experiences, packaging them as philosophical presentations set to music,” he says. Like Jesse McCarthy’s essay “Notes on Trap,” the moment limits trap to its function and its impact. Trap has reached unexpected heights, but the genre’s soul exists in elusiveness—the way it shifts the moment it’s pinned down, the way its architects endlessly toil toward unpredictable ends, the way its originators don’t just invent but evolve. It doesn’t matter what “they” counted on. We made it.

Artist: T.I., Album: Dime Trap, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "For the past year, T.I., Gucci Mane, and spectators have been embroiled in a debate about who invented trap music. Trap has become such a force—in hip-hop, in music, in style—that its creators can credibly say they have helped shape modern culture. T.I. staked his claim to the genre’s origins on his 2003 album, Trap Muzik, arguing the proof was there in the title. But last month, announcing a new pop-up museum dedicated to trap, T.I. dropped the language of invention and proposed the genre was a group effort. “Trap Muzik wouldn’t be shit without ALL OF US,” he wrote. “I made it [an] album… but WE MADE IT A GENRE!!!!” This pivot from ownership to participation animates Dime Trap. For the first time in years, he sounds less like a copyright lawyer and more like a contributor to a culture he loves. Back in 2015, T.I. envisioned Dime Trap as the second installment of a trilogy that began with 2014’s pop-leaning Paperwork. He’d recently received a Grammy nomination for “Blurred Lines,” was Iggy Azalea’s mentor and defender, and was the patriarch of a reality-show family. In a sense, the T.I. vs T.I.P. duel—that is, the clash between the CEO and the streetside hustler—had been settled. But he wanted Dime Trap to reset the balance and provide “unadulterated trap music” with “young, hungry, talented producers.” This return to the trap was so straightforward that, at one point, Dime Trap was simply called Trap Music. But the Dime Trap of 2018 focuses on legacy instead of legend. T.I. still likes to flex, and balling remains a priority. But throughout this record, there’s an emphasis on consequences. Narrated by Dave Chappelle, another black artist who’s publicly wrestled with questions of legacy, Dime Trap finds T.I. in repose, mapping the choices he’s made and teasing out their effects. On “Seasons,” he quotes his marriage counselor, who tells him to focus on the pain his decisions have caused. When he dismisses the advice and sets his sights on hip-hop moguldom, instead, you can feel the weight of that choice. “What Can I Say” transforms T.I.’s unlikely ascent into a cautionary tale. “In the trap with a trap door,” he raps, insisting that a successful hustle only begets more hustles. The past serves as muse and burden. “Laugh at Em” melds T.I.’s memories of his days in the trap with observations from this ongoing era of hyper-visible police brutality. “Swear to God I coulda been Freddie Gray/Or Mike Brown, getting shot down/With a pistol on me and half a brick of yay,” he reflects. That single sequence is more potent than T.I.’s entire last album. He seems to have rediscovered the power of fluidity, zipping through his thoughts until larger ideas settle into place. A murderers’ row of both new and seasoned producers match his breezy rapping with zesty beats. For “Jefe,” Bangladesh blends mariachi horns and marching-band percussion into a spirited thump, landing between Nola bounce and Latin trap. Shawty Redd and Pyro da God’s “Big Ol Drip” beat is a slow, bluesy burner with bold drops and ragtime riffs. Scott Storch’s sparse arrangement on “Wraith” steadily expands and contracts, creating strange little pockets of dead air that T.I. punctures with his newly husky pitch. T.I has dabbled in a range of sounds since his debut, but that range resonates as renewal here. The record falters when T.I. gets maudlin. The weepy keys and morose verses of “Pray For Me” are monochromatic, as if YFN Lucci and T.I. were dramatically reenacting a self-help book. The frosty lechery of the Young Thug collab “The Weekend” is undercut by an outro where T.I. explains that trap music isn’t “one-dimensional” and describes Dime Trap as “TED Talk for hustlers.” Hasn’t his career made that clear? T.I. ends “Be There” by framing trap as a form of revenge against the carceral state and white supremacy. “I’m sure the people who put crack cocaine in our communities, infested us with all this hate, all these guns, all this violence, all this rage, you see, they never counted on us takin’ those very experiences, packaging them as philosophical presentations set to music,” he says. Like Jesse McCarthy’s essay “Notes on Trap,” the moment limits trap to its function and its impact. Trap has reached unexpected heights, but the genre’s soul exists in elusiveness—the way it shifts the moment it’s pinned down, the way its architects endlessly toil toward unpredictable ends, the way its originators don’t just invent but evolve. It doesn’t matter what “they” counted on. We made it."

Murs, 9th Wonder

ForNever

Rap

Zach Kelly

If it weren't for the promise to release an additional nine records this year, Murs' first 2010 offering, ForNever, might look like a foreboding back-to-the-drawing-board exercise. After his lukewarm major-label bid Murs for President in 2008, it makes a lot of sense to see the diehard Californian calling on an old friend to help get him back into a headspace that produced some of the rapper's strongest records to date. 9th Wonder-- a producer's gold standard for understated, laid-back cool-- is back for a fourth time helming the entirety of a Murs project. Unlike the pair's previous efforts, ForNever feels less like a proper album than a collaborative airing of ideas, as both producer and MC breeze through beats and song concepts with a laid-back, Cali-minded approach. Unsurprisingly, ForNever is very much a California affair, with nearly every guest artist hailing from the Golden State (including album bookending features from Kurupt, far less dynamic here than he appeared on last year's collaboration with DJ Quik). From smoking kush on your momma's porch, hitting the 7-Eleven for chips and a Sprite, trying to convince your girl to wait until halftime to argue and getting in over your head with a porn star, each one of these little vignettes has a certain day-in-the-life appeal that work just fine as individual concepts. String them together and you might as well be listening to a treatment for the next Friday installment. Succeeding at their most humorous (including "Let Me Talk", which features some hilarious insight from the pimp-wise Suga Free), most of the songs are toss-offs, but it's plenty of fun to be along for the ride as long as some restraint is issued. Without it, ForNever alternately struggles to keep its head above water with washed-out cautionary tales ("The Problem Is...") or slums it in the shallows with mildly tawdry goofs ("Asian Girl"). If Murs weren't keeping so busy (with everything from comic books to a collaboration with members of Bad Brains in the pipeline), ForNever could feel slight. But even ignoring those greater ambitions, it's just good to find him in encouraging company that, above all else, at least has the rapper feeling comfortable again-- a crucial look for a guy like Murs. And even if these ideas haven't been given much time to fully form, it's hard to feel totally cheated: ForNever is simple fun, and fun while it lasts. As Murs asks on the opening title track, "We do it for love, what the fuck you makin' music for?" It's further proof that a lot of good can come from simply making sure your heart is in the right place.

Artist: Murs, 9th Wonder, Album: ForNever, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "If it weren't for the promise to release an additional nine records this year, Murs' first 2010 offering, ForNever, might look like a foreboding back-to-the-drawing-board exercise. After his lukewarm major-label bid Murs for President in 2008, it makes a lot of sense to see the diehard Californian calling on an old friend to help get him back into a headspace that produced some of the rapper's strongest records to date. 9th Wonder-- a producer's gold standard for understated, laid-back cool-- is back for a fourth time helming the entirety of a Murs project. Unlike the pair's previous efforts, ForNever feels less like a proper album than a collaborative airing of ideas, as both producer and MC breeze through beats and song concepts with a laid-back, Cali-minded approach. Unsurprisingly, ForNever is very much a California affair, with nearly every guest artist hailing from the Golden State (including album bookending features from Kurupt, far less dynamic here than he appeared on last year's collaboration with DJ Quik). From smoking kush on your momma's porch, hitting the 7-Eleven for chips and a Sprite, trying to convince your girl to wait until halftime to argue and getting in over your head with a porn star, each one of these little vignettes has a certain day-in-the-life appeal that work just fine as individual concepts. String them together and you might as well be listening to a treatment for the next Friday installment. Succeeding at their most humorous (including "Let Me Talk", which features some hilarious insight from the pimp-wise Suga Free), most of the songs are toss-offs, but it's plenty of fun to be along for the ride as long as some restraint is issued. Without it, ForNever alternately struggles to keep its head above water with washed-out cautionary tales ("The Problem Is...") or slums it in the shallows with mildly tawdry goofs ("Asian Girl"). If Murs weren't keeping so busy (with everything from comic books to a collaboration with members of Bad Brains in the pipeline), ForNever could feel slight. But even ignoring those greater ambitions, it's just good to find him in encouraging company that, above all else, at least has the rapper feeling comfortable again-- a crucial look for a guy like Murs. And even if these ideas haven't been given much time to fully form, it's hard to feel totally cheated: ForNever is simple fun, and fun while it lasts. As Murs asks on the opening title track, "We do it for love, what the fuck you makin' music for?" It's further proof that a lot of good can come from simply making sure your heart is in the right place."

Buzzcocks

A Different Compilation

Rock

Marc Hogan

Buzzcocks were a different kind of punk rock band. Though inspired by the savage fury of Sex Pistols, the Manchester-based quartet founded by Pete Shelley and future Magazine leader Howard Devoto directed that energy toward explosively melodic songs that located their punk politics not in universal slogans or transgressive gestures but in personal anxieties. And Buzzcocks are still different today. The buzzsaw-sharp songs from the band's late-1970s peak have aged better than most, continuing to influence new generations of musicians. The group's more recent reunion albums and tours, moreover, have done nothing to diminish that formidable legacy. A Different Compilation, which brings together new studio recordings of 24 of Buzzcocks' most vital songs, can be seen generously as another example of the band's willingness to stand apart. "The original records now sound like demos," Shelley explains in the press materials. "These new versions, honed by years on the road, showcase the songs as we know they should be, the way we know audiences love to hear them." On the other hand, there's a reason the originals have grown so beloved, and anyone unfamiliar with the band would still be better off starting with 1979 classic Singles Going Steady; diehard fans wanting to hear newer recordings of the old songs, meanwhile, might already be content with 2007's 30 or other Buzzcocks live albums. Plus, there's a whole mixed history of artists re-recording their hits, from the unfortunate K-Tel oldies remakes to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's more imaginative Greatest Palace Music. Just in 2008, also on Cooking Vinyl, college rockers Camper Van Beethoven had to re-record a few songs for a best-of compilation due to label conflicts. Hand-wringing aside, this is a well-chosen set of compelling songs, and if new recordings can probably never match the charm of Buzzcocks' originals, there's still a certain modest appeal to hearing one of punk's most celebrated catalogs given a brawny, contemporary treatment. Where Singles sets out iconic singles like "Orgasm Addict" and "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" next to their B-sides, A Different Compilation also delves into Buzzcocks' often-underrated album tracks, from Ralph Nader-nodding Another Music in a Different Kitchen opener "Fast Cars" (here shorn of its introduction quoting the 1977 Spiral Scratch EP's "Boredom", ostensibly because that track now precedes it) to guitarist Steve Diggle's Dookie-predicting "When Love Turns Around", originally from 1993's Trade Test Transmissions. Then again, though these hard-hitting versions of such memorable punk-era nuggets as "Harmony in My Head" and "Why Can't I Touch It?" start from only the strongest source material, A Different Compilation lacks the adventurous spirit that helped make the band so worth compiling in the first place. Buzzcocks are often credited with inventing punk-pop, but that genre's modern-day conventions weren't so solidified then-- think of the difference between early disco records and the disco of Village People and Saturday Night Fever-- and there's little here musically you might not hear from some of the band's lesser descendants. And, too, it's not exactly as if there's a huge audience clamoring for re-recordings of late-70s and early-80s Martin Hannett productions (Joy Division, New Order), which is what we're given here in the form of "Boredom", fellow Spiral Scratch track "Breakdown", and Diggle-fronted former B-side "Why She's a Girl From the Chainstore". So while A Different Compilation definitely isn't a starting point for newcomers to Buzzcocks, it's nothing more or less than a novel document from one of punk's defining bands-- and one of the few from punk's first wave that's still a going concern, at that. "When people put punk rock records on in 1976, 77, they had to rethink their whole lives," Diggle told Pitchfork's Patrick Sisson in a January 2009 interview. "It changed your consciousness, the way you looked at the world, just like powerful records should." This latest compilation probably won't do that, but it might help point you back to the records that did-- and could again.

Artist: Buzzcocks, Album: A Different Compilation, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Buzzcocks were a different kind of punk rock band. Though inspired by the savage fury of Sex Pistols, the Manchester-based quartet founded by Pete Shelley and future Magazine leader Howard Devoto directed that energy toward explosively melodic songs that located their punk politics not in universal slogans or transgressive gestures but in personal anxieties. And Buzzcocks are still different today. The buzzsaw-sharp songs from the band's late-1970s peak have aged better than most, continuing to influence new generations of musicians. The group's more recent reunion albums and tours, moreover, have done nothing to diminish that formidable legacy. A Different Compilation, which brings together new studio recordings of 24 of Buzzcocks' most vital songs, can be seen generously as another example of the band's willingness to stand apart. "The original records now sound like demos," Shelley explains in the press materials. "These new versions, honed by years on the road, showcase the songs as we know they should be, the way we know audiences love to hear them." On the other hand, there's a reason the originals have grown so beloved, and anyone unfamiliar with the band would still be better off starting with 1979 classic Singles Going Steady; diehard fans wanting to hear newer recordings of the old songs, meanwhile, might already be content with 2007's 30 or other Buzzcocks live albums. Plus, there's a whole mixed history of artists re-recording their hits, from the unfortunate K-Tel oldies remakes to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's more imaginative Greatest Palace Music. Just in 2008, also on Cooking Vinyl, college rockers Camper Van Beethoven had to re-record a few songs for a best-of compilation due to label conflicts. Hand-wringing aside, this is a well-chosen set of compelling songs, and if new recordings can probably never match the charm of Buzzcocks' originals, there's still a certain modest appeal to hearing one of punk's most celebrated catalogs given a brawny, contemporary treatment. Where Singles sets out iconic singles like "Orgasm Addict" and "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" next to their B-sides, A Different Compilation also delves into Buzzcocks' often-underrated album tracks, from Ralph Nader-nodding Another Music in a Different Kitchen opener "Fast Cars" (here shorn of its introduction quoting the 1977 Spiral Scratch EP's "Boredom", ostensibly because that track now precedes it) to guitarist Steve Diggle's Dookie-predicting "When Love Turns Around", originally from 1993's Trade Test Transmissions. Then again, though these hard-hitting versions of such memorable punk-era nuggets as "Harmony in My Head" and "Why Can't I Touch It?" start from only the strongest source material, A Different Compilation lacks the adventurous spirit that helped make the band so worth compiling in the first place. Buzzcocks are often credited with inventing punk-pop, but that genre's modern-day conventions weren't so solidified then-- think of the difference between early disco records and the disco of Village People and Saturday Night Fever-- and there's little here musically you might not hear from some of the band's lesser descendants. And, too, it's not exactly as if there's a huge audience clamoring for re-recordings of late-70s and early-80s Martin Hannett productions (Joy Division, New Order), which is what we're given here in the form of "Boredom", fellow Spiral Scratch track "Breakdown", and Diggle-fronted former B-side "Why She's a Girl From the Chainstore". So while A Different Compilation definitely isn't a starting point for newcomers to Buzzcocks, it's nothing more or less than a novel document from one of punk's defining bands-- and one of the few from punk's first wave that's still a going concern, at that. "When people put punk rock records on in 1976, 77, they had to rethink their whole lives," Diggle told Pitchfork's Patrick Sisson in a January 2009 interview. "It changed your consciousness, the way you looked at the world, just like powerful records should." This latest compilation probably won't do that, but it might help point you back to the records that did-- and could again."

Gord Downie

Introduce Yerself

Rock

Calum Marsh

The Tragically Hip’s popularity in Canada is about as easy to explain to Americans as bagged milk. The old-fashioned rock band’s success seems almost unaccountably spectacular: sold-out nationwide stadium tours; two albums diamond-certified and a dozen more platinum; 16-time recipients of the Juno, the Canadian Grammy. And yet their success has remained confined to the homeland. In 1992, the Hip’s fourth album, Fully Completely, was the number-one record in Canada, and Billboard insisted the band was “now poised for international recognition.” It never happened. Abroad, the album flopped. By the late 1990s they no longer even had an American label. Last August, the Hip filled the nearly 20,000-capacity Air Canada Centre in Toronto three nights in succession; a scalped ticket cost thousands. When they performed in New York the year before, it was at the 2894-seat Beacon Theater. Many attendees, one presumes, were ex-pats from the north. So when Gord Downie—lead singer, lyricist, and charismatic frontman of the Hip, but also poet, activist, actor, accomplished solo singer-songwriter, and altogether one of the most illustrious men in Canadian pop-cultural history—died last month of glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and virtually unbeatable form of brain cancer, Americans were understandably mystified by the extent and depth of their northern neighbors’ grief. It is hard to convey to outsiders what Downie meant to his compatriots. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, upon learning of Downie’s passing, was compelled to issue a statement of mourning to the nation. “When he spoke,” Trudeau said, “he gave us goosebumps and made us proud to be Canadian. Our identity and culture are richer because of his music, which was always raw and honest—like Gord himself.” I mention this at length because it is essential to understanding and indeed appreciating Introduce Yerself, Downie’s final, posthumous solo album, released just 10 days after his death. Like David Bowie’s Blackstar and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, Introduce Yerself is the kind of confrontation with mortality afforded uniquely to artists who know or sense they’re near the end: It’s a farewell, a testament. The album was recorded over two wildly productive four-day sessions at Downie’s Bathouse studio in small-town Bath, Ontario, as Downie endured the often brutal effects of his illness and its treatment—memory loss, frailty. The process was a minor miracle of last-ditch vigor: 23 songs in all, many laid down in one take. “We were documenting how he was feeling, very quickly,” said Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, who produced the album. “There was an urgency that pushed us to create as much as we could.” That urgency looms over Introduce Yerself, even seems at times to haunt it. “In my life of get and get/I’ve got more than most, and yet,” Downie sings on “Wolf’s Home,” movingly. His reflections of regret are painful enough, but in the song’s final seconds one hears him sigh, almost beyond the range of the mic, and take a greedy draft of water. It’s a moment of profoundly wretched candor—a glimpse of weariness committed by mistake to tape. On the delicate, piano-forward title track, Downie relates the story of forgetting the name of a driver he could tell he ought to recall: a mild lapse, probably familiar to almost anyone. But knowing what one does of his condition, of the misery of his failing memory, the story gains a tragic dimension. Much of the power of Introduce Yerself derives expressly from woeful circumstance, perhaps inevitably. Listening, one is acutely aware of how much Downie still had to say—and how little time he had left. But it would be a mistake to characterize Introduce Yerself as despairing. Downie was an unrepentant optimist, and remained playful even at his most wistful and pensive. On stage, in concert, he played the howling maniac, the madman unhinged: He would rant and rave, improvise lyrics, toss his microphone around and pick it up with his feet—and continued to do so as his illness did its best to enfeeble him. That puckish exuberance is very much in evidence throughout Introduce Yerself, happily. “You Me and the B’s” is a spirited paeon to “the mistakes, the slumps, the streaks” of the Boston Bruins, replete with percussion by hockey stick (really). “My First Girlfriend” is an ode to an old flame—in particular to her “sophistication” and her bikini. And of course, the upbeat “Spoon” is about seeing Britt Daniel and company live: “We sat in the back row/Deerhunter opened the show.” The record’s prevailing theme, if it isn’t apparent already, is reminiscence. Downie has said that “each song is about a person,” and while he scarcely uses proper names, the abundant “you”s and “we”s feel unmistakably specific. “I say ‘I love you’ into your dark, unwavering eyes/That show caring, concern, disapproval, despair,” he sings with evident strain on “Faith Faith,” the album’s most overtly sentimental ballad. “But you’ll never leave me, never doubt me, never look elsewhere.” Downie’s lyrics generally have an ironic edge; in this case, as he was separated from his wife, it’s safe to assume one isn’t meant to take the romantic fervor in earnest. Mostly, though, the recollections are fond. “Bedtime” immortalizes a precious memory of rocking his baby to sleep. “Love Over Money,” a distinctly Kevin Drew-ish indie-rock jam, glories in Downie’s triumphs with his band. From beginning to end, Introduce Yerself is ardently, defiantly hopeful, even as Downie’s fate casts the record in a more melancholic light. True to his career-long reputation, he proves a paragon of warmth and generosity, democratic in spirit and comradely in temper. Downie spent his last year and a half not resigned to defeat but buoyant with enthusiasm. Tellingly, while his nationwide farewell tour last summer took an enormous toll on him physically, watching him perform, you would have had no idea he was ill. The man was irrepressible. His defiance and ebullience were the fuel that urged him on until the very end. To hear Downie tell it, he never cared that the Hip failed to find success in the United States. He was irritated to be so frequently defined by that lack. “[Interviewers] always ask us about our success or lack of success in the States, which I find absurd,” he said in 1997, plainly vexed. “All we’ve ever wanted to do was be successful on our own terms, which is to have a body of work become undeniable, to be known for 50 songs rather than one.” In Canada, if not elsewhere, the oeuvre endures; to the entire country it seems the Hip are etern

Artist: Gord Downie, Album: Introduce Yerself, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "The Tragically Hip’s popularity in Canada is about as easy to explain to Americans as bagged milk. The old-fashioned rock band’s success seems almost unaccountably spectacular: sold-out nationwide stadium tours; two albums diamond-certified and a dozen more platinum; 16-time recipients of the Juno, the Canadian Grammy. And yet their success has remained confined to the homeland. In 1992, the Hip’s fourth album, Fully Completely, was the number-one record in Canada, and Billboard insisted the band was “now poised for international recognition.” It never happened. Abroad, the album flopped. By the late 1990s they no longer even had an American label. Last August, the Hip filled the nearly 20,000-capacity Air Canada Centre in Toronto three nights in succession; a scalped ticket cost thousands. When they performed in New York the year before, it was at the 2894-seat Beacon Theater. Many attendees, one presumes, were ex-pats from the north. So when Gord Downie—lead singer, lyricist, and charismatic frontman of the Hip, but also poet, activist, actor, accomplished solo singer-songwriter, and altogether one of the most illustrious men in Canadian pop-cultural history—died last month of glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and virtually unbeatable form of brain cancer, Americans were understandably mystified by the extent and depth of their northern neighbors’ grief. It is hard to convey to outsiders what Downie meant to his compatriots. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, upon learning of Downie’s passing, was compelled to issue a statement of mourning to the nation. “When he spoke,” Trudeau said, “he gave us goosebumps and made us proud to be Canadian. Our identity and culture are richer because of his music, which was always raw and honest—like Gord himself.” I mention this at length because it is essential to understanding and indeed appreciating Introduce Yerself, Downie’s final, posthumous solo album, released just 10 days after his death. Like David Bowie’s Blackstar and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, Introduce Yerself is the kind of confrontation with mortality afforded uniquely to artists who know or sense they’re near the end: It’s a farewell, a testament. The album was recorded over two wildly productive four-day sessions at Downie’s Bathouse studio in small-town Bath, Ontario, as Downie endured the often brutal effects of his illness and its treatment—memory loss, frailty. The process was a minor miracle of last-ditch vigor: 23 songs in all, many laid down in one take. “We were documenting how he was feeling, very quickly,” said Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, who produced the album. “There was an urgency that pushed us to create as much as we could.” That urgency looms over Introduce Yerself, even seems at times to haunt it. “In my life of get and get/I’ve got more than most, and yet,” Downie sings on “Wolf’s Home,” movingly. His reflections of regret are painful enough, but in the song’s final seconds one hears him sigh, almost beyond the range of the mic, and take a greedy draft of water. It’s a moment of profoundly wretched candor—a glimpse of weariness committed by mistake to tape. On the delicate, piano-forward title track, Downie relates the story of forgetting the name of a driver he could tell he ought to recall: a mild lapse, probably familiar to almost anyone. But knowing what one does of his condition, of the misery of his failing memory, the story gains a tragic dimension. Much of the power of Introduce Yerself derives expressly from woeful circumstance, perhaps inevitably. Listening, one is acutely aware of how much Downie still had to say—and how little time he had left. But it would be a mistake to characterize Introduce Yerself as despairing. Downie was an unrepentant optimist, and remained playful even at his most wistful and pensive. On stage, in concert, he played the howling maniac, the madman unhinged: He would rant and rave, improvise lyrics, toss his microphone around and pick it up with his feet—and continued to do so as his illness did its best to enfeeble him. That puckish exuberance is very much in evidence throughout Introduce Yerself, happily. “You Me and the B’s” is a spirited paeon to “the mistakes, the slumps, the streaks” of the Boston Bruins, replete with percussion by hockey stick (really). “My First Girlfriend” is an ode to an old flame—in particular to her “sophistication” and her bikini. And of course, the upbeat “Spoon” is about seeing Britt Daniel and company live: “We sat in the back row/Deerhunter opened the show.” The record’s prevailing theme, if it isn’t apparent already, is reminiscence. Downie has said that “each song is about a person,” and while he scarcely uses proper names, the abundant “you”s and “we”s feel unmistakably specific. “I say ‘I love you’ into your dark, unwavering eyes/That show caring, concern, disapproval, despair,” he sings with evident strain on “Faith Faith,” the album’s most overtly sentimental ballad. “But you’ll never leave me, never doubt me, never look elsewhere.” Downie’s lyrics generally have an ironic edge; in this case, as he was separated from his wife, it’s safe to assume one isn’t meant to take the romantic fervor in earnest. Mostly, though, the recollections are fond. “Bedtime” immortalizes a precious memory of rocking his baby to sleep. “Love Over Money,” a distinctly Kevin Drew-ish indie-rock jam, glories in Downie’s triumphs with his band. From beginning to end, Introduce Yerself is ardently, defiantly hopeful, even as Downie’s fate casts the record in a more melancholic light. True to his career-long reputation, he proves a paragon of warmth and generosity, democratic in spirit and comradely in temper. Downie spent his last year and a half not resigned to defeat but buoyant with enthusiasm. Tellingly, while his nationwide farewell tour last summer took an enormous toll on him physically, watching him perform, you would have had no idea he was ill. The man was irrepressible. His defiance and ebullience were the fuel that urged him on until the very end. To hear Downie tell it, he never cared that the Hip failed to find success in the United States. He was irritated to be so frequently defined by that lack. “[Interviewers] always ask us about our success or lack of success in the States, which I find absurd,” he said in 1997, plainly vexed. “All we’ve ever wanted to do was be successful on our own terms, which is to have a body of work become undeniable, to be known for 50 songs rather than one.” In Canada, if not elsewhere, the oeuvre endures; to the entire country it seems the Hip are etern"

Cerberus Shoal

Mr. Boy Dog

Rock

Christopher Dare

Assigning ratings is risky business, especially in a ten-point tier system. After I gave Cerberus Shoal's 1999 album Homb a 7.5, I worried whether it should have been scored lower. I liked their solemn approach to left-field post-rock, but would others find it too serious and self-important? Their follow-up, Crash My Moon Yacht, took a dip down in quality, from the over-exuberant Lion King Africana of "Yes Sir, No Sir" to the hippie-dance vibe of "Asphodel." The band seemed to grow in expressive talent but the choral theatrics just didn't fly, which retroactively cast further doubt on the rating I'd given Homb. Mr. Boy Dog has been tagged as a major comeback, and as their "hardest" album yet. Maybe those descriptions came from critics hard-of-hearing; as with most double-disc albums, it's more of a spotty affair. The key songs continue in the modus operandi of the six-member group, combining ethnic instrumentation with oddly tuned guitars and brass to create tumultuous works chock-full of bizarre surprises. But the tracks between these epics indulge an ass-annoying experimental trend. Mr. Boy Dog's twelve tracks total about seventy minutes, and though each set of six songs flows together in a loosely structured narrative, I can't help but think they would have fit better on one disc. The first record begins with fierce start/stop squalls that share some real estate with Zorn's Naked City. But the blurts quickly settle into "Nataraja," a typical Cerberus piece featuring hand-drumming and slowly swooning horn lines that eventually lock into the kind of fluctuating arpeggios that (for better or worse) Philip Glass had already trademarked. It's far too single-minded and compromised to realize its full potential. Worse, "Camel Bell" follows, which begins promisingly with chiming glissandi but then busts into this absurd carnival arabesque, flinging itself headfirst into parody. The horns on this band's early albums added a nice depth to the bass/guitar/drums setup, but here there's a lot of pomp and too little circumstance. In case you had any doubts that there's a joke being played, "Tongue Drongue" begins with six minutes of belch-like vocals. It's not challenging, it's not the Shoal channeling the ghost of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and hopefully, it's nothing more than a field recording of someone croaking drunkenly. Maybe now I know what it's like to be on the business end of an April Fool's joke, but all the thumb pianos and funky drumming that follow in the next six minutes don't make up for the cringe-worthiness that precedes. Take heart, o reader, for the second record cures some of the injustices of the first. "Unmarked Boxes" contains many of the same instruments mentioned above, but weaves the guitar strands together in a carefully echoing chorus. This time the vocals comprise actual lyrics, which crest powerfully before fading into "Telikos II," an instrumental elaboration. The two brief pieces that follow, each titled with a symbol unrepresentable here, are some of the most fascinating on the album, juxtaposing an organ and building-block jam with television samples and the sound of a running faucet. And the album ends with its one essential composition, "An Egypt That Does Not Exist." The group blends their voices, singing, "I die daily/ I lay down," a mantra that repeats over and over as the flute mourns concordantly. Is there a contradiction? One minute, I'm accusing Cerberus Shoal of taking themselves too seriously, the next they're just screwing around. There are a few genuinely playful moments, as with the funky 70s bassline squonk on "Stumblin' Block," but more often, the grooves on Mr. Boy Dog are a Barnum & Bailey procession gone bad. Improvisation taken to the most zany extremes of logic can so easily result in music that's focused on process and technique at the expense of being stimulating. It's the Cerberus Shoal collective as cult, obsessed with ritual without the sacrament to make it meaningful. Groups like the No-Neck Blues Band are doing similar, more intriguing things. What's mystifying is that Cerberus Shoal seem incredibly satisfied with their current position, as if this is the peak they've always wanted to reach. If so, then march on! Their music will always be unique, but I can only imagine those dedicated to the weirdest tangents of rock to follow. The average listener's question will be: "What the hell are these guys on?!"

Artist: Cerberus Shoal, Album: Mr. Boy Dog, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Assigning ratings is risky business, especially in a ten-point tier system. After I gave Cerberus Shoal's 1999 album Homb a 7.5, I worried whether it should have been scored lower. I liked their solemn approach to left-field post-rock, but would others find it too serious and self-important? Their follow-up, Crash My Moon Yacht, took a dip down in quality, from the over-exuberant Lion King Africana of "Yes Sir, No Sir" to the hippie-dance vibe of "Asphodel." The band seemed to grow in expressive talent but the choral theatrics just didn't fly, which retroactively cast further doubt on the rating I'd given Homb. Mr. Boy Dog has been tagged as a major comeback, and as their "hardest" album yet. Maybe those descriptions came from critics hard-of-hearing; as with most double-disc albums, it's more of a spotty affair. The key songs continue in the modus operandi of the six-member group, combining ethnic instrumentation with oddly tuned guitars and brass to create tumultuous works chock-full of bizarre surprises. But the tracks between these epics indulge an ass-annoying experimental trend. Mr. Boy Dog's twelve tracks total about seventy minutes, and though each set of six songs flows together in a loosely structured narrative, I can't help but think they would have fit better on one disc. The first record begins with fierce start/stop squalls that share some real estate with Zorn's Naked City. But the blurts quickly settle into "Nataraja," a typical Cerberus piece featuring hand-drumming and slowly swooning horn lines that eventually lock into the kind of fluctuating arpeggios that (for better or worse) Philip Glass had already trademarked. It's far too single-minded and compromised to realize its full potential. Worse, "Camel Bell" follows, which begins promisingly with chiming glissandi but then busts into this absurd carnival arabesque, flinging itself headfirst into parody. The horns on this band's early albums added a nice depth to the bass/guitar/drums setup, but here there's a lot of pomp and too little circumstance. In case you had any doubts that there's a joke being played, "Tongue Drongue" begins with six minutes of belch-like vocals. It's not challenging, it's not the Shoal channeling the ghost of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and hopefully, it's nothing more than a field recording of someone croaking drunkenly. Maybe now I know what it's like to be on the business end of an April Fool's joke, but all the thumb pianos and funky drumming that follow in the next six minutes don't make up for the cringe-worthiness that precedes. Take heart, o reader, for the second record cures some of the injustices of the first. "Unmarked Boxes" contains many of the same instruments mentioned above, but weaves the guitar strands together in a carefully echoing chorus. This time the vocals comprise actual lyrics, which crest powerfully before fading into "Telikos II," an instrumental elaboration. The two brief pieces that follow, each titled with a symbol unrepresentable here, are some of the most fascinating on the album, juxtaposing an organ and building-block jam with television samples and the sound of a running faucet. And the album ends with its one essential composition, "An Egypt That Does Not Exist." The group blends their voices, singing, "I die daily/ I lay down," a mantra that repeats over and over as the flute mourns concordantly. Is there a contradiction? One minute, I'm accusing Cerberus Shoal of taking themselves too seriously, the next they're just screwing around. There are a few genuinely playful moments, as with the funky 70s bassline squonk on "Stumblin' Block," but more often, the grooves on Mr. Boy Dog are a Barnum & Bailey procession gone bad. Improvisation taken to the most zany extremes of logic can so easily result in music that's focused on process and technique at the expense of being stimulating. It's the Cerberus Shoal collective as cult, obsessed with ritual without the sacrament to make it meaningful. Groups like the No-Neck Blues Band are doing similar, more intriguing things. What's mystifying is that Cerberus Shoal seem incredibly satisfied with their current position, as if this is the peak they've always wanted to reach. If so, then march on! Their music will always be unique, but I can only imagine those dedicated to the weirdest tangents of rock to follow. The average listener's question will be: "What the hell are these guys on?!""

Various Artists

The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2

Andrew Gaerig

Amidst all the hand-wringing about the effects of software on electronic music, we've lost sight of one of the charms the soft-synth era has robbed us of: the joy of listening to artists learn to play with machines. Software like Ableton, Reason, and Maschine have steep learning curves but long plateaus. True amateurs don't sound blocky and tinny like vintage 808s-- that can require real skill-- but merely undistinguished. The Minimal Wave Tapes captures a group of far-flung amateurs putting themselves through the paces of learning early model drum machines and synthesizers, nibbling on techno, electro, and industrial music in ways that led to a distinct sound. I imagine their relationship to these instruments to be much the same as children tormenting one another: learning what parts to pinch, twist, and pull in order to achieve the desired effect. The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2 is again compiled by Stones Throw head Peanut Butter Wolf and Minimal Wave label founder Veronica Vasicka. It offers no new narrative or stated focus and thus represents nothing more than the second gleaning of tracks from the cloistered minimal wave universe. Still, there's something undeniable here. We're dealing with a sound that grew in loosely knit local networks hundreds of miles from one another and decades later has inspired DIY archivists and collectors. If nothing else we can say that this sound-- still reedy, red-eyed, and frayed-- is magnetic enough that disparate groups have arrived at it without much aid. Minimal wave is, perhaps, a natural sound to produce when you're isolated and have machines to fondle. And these musicians understood how isolated they were: "The Drum", a severe, pothole ridden jam, opens with a warped voice, "Hello, my name is O-ha-ma, and I live on a potato farm in western Canada." The liner notes for Vol. 2 are short but specific, often naming the specific drum machines, keyboards, and recordings equipment used. I'm reminded of the famous Silver Jews line, "When the sun sets on the ghetto all the broken stuff gets cold." Replace "ghetto" with "small European city." Intentional or not, Vol. 2 sounds more robust. There's fewer papier-mâché dance numbers and more carbonated sequencer work. The proto-techno of Antonym's "Cinnamon Air" and the congested arpeggios of Das Ding's "H.S.T.A." shift focus from the tinny drums that dominated Vol. 1. "What Happened to You?", by Belgian duo Subject, builds lo-fi science fiction around a stone-simple 2/4 rhythm. These mostly instrumental tracks are ripe for remixing. The only "modern" track is Geneva Jacuzzi's "The Sleep Room", recorded in 2004, and it employs buzzy post-punk to detail a haunted, psychedelic village: "Love to the village with the holes/ In their heads." At the end of his review of Vol. 1 in The Wire, Mark Fisher said "This compilation is like the Nuggets of early 1980s bedroom electronica." Maybe. Nuggets tracks were cumulative, each one participating in a national explosion of psychedelic rock. It made sense to pile them on top of one another. These minimal waves are are less celebratory and sometimes I feel that by collecting them I'm participating in a no-longer-imposed isolationism. That's dramatic, though. Minimal wave, as a genre, is rich enough to warrant a second compilation aimed at non-obsessives. Vol. 2 once again contains a kind of stylized amateurism that's all but extinct.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Amidst all the hand-wringing about the effects of software on electronic music, we've lost sight of one of the charms the soft-synth era has robbed us of: the joy of listening to artists learn to play with machines. Software like Ableton, Reason, and Maschine have steep learning curves but long plateaus. True amateurs don't sound blocky and tinny like vintage 808s-- that can require real skill-- but merely undistinguished. The Minimal Wave Tapes captures a group of far-flung amateurs putting themselves through the paces of learning early model drum machines and synthesizers, nibbling on techno, electro, and industrial music in ways that led to a distinct sound. I imagine their relationship to these instruments to be much the same as children tormenting one another: learning what parts to pinch, twist, and pull in order to achieve the desired effect. The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2 is again compiled by Stones Throw head Peanut Butter Wolf and Minimal Wave label founder Veronica Vasicka. It offers no new narrative or stated focus and thus represents nothing more than the second gleaning of tracks from the cloistered minimal wave universe. Still, there's something undeniable here. We're dealing with a sound that grew in loosely knit local networks hundreds of miles from one another and decades later has inspired DIY archivists and collectors. If nothing else we can say that this sound-- still reedy, red-eyed, and frayed-- is magnetic enough that disparate groups have arrived at it without much aid. Minimal wave is, perhaps, a natural sound to produce when you're isolated and have machines to fondle. And these musicians understood how isolated they were: "The Drum", a severe, pothole ridden jam, opens with a warped voice, "Hello, my name is O-ha-ma, and I live on a potato farm in western Canada." The liner notes for Vol. 2 are short but specific, often naming the specific drum machines, keyboards, and recordings equipment used. I'm reminded of the famous Silver Jews line, "When the sun sets on the ghetto all the broken stuff gets cold." Replace "ghetto" with "small European city." Intentional or not, Vol. 2 sounds more robust. There's fewer papier-mâché dance numbers and more carbonated sequencer work. The proto-techno of Antonym's "Cinnamon Air" and the congested arpeggios of Das Ding's "H.S.T.A." shift focus from the tinny drums that dominated Vol. 1. "What Happened to You?", by Belgian duo Subject, builds lo-fi science fiction around a stone-simple 2/4 rhythm. These mostly instrumental tracks are ripe for remixing. The only "modern" track is Geneva Jacuzzi's "The Sleep Room", recorded in 2004, and it employs buzzy post-punk to detail a haunted, psychedelic village: "Love to the village with the holes/ In their heads." At the end of his review of Vol. 1 in The Wire, Mark Fisher said "This compilation is like the Nuggets of early 1980s bedroom electronica." Maybe. Nuggets tracks were cumulative, each one participating in a national explosion of psychedelic rock. It made sense to pile them on top of one another. These minimal waves are are less celebratory and sometimes I feel that by collecting them I'm participating in a no-longer-imposed isolationism. That's dramatic, though. Minimal wave, as a genre, is rich enough to warrant a second compilation aimed at non-obsessives. Vol. 2 once again contains a kind of stylized amateurism that's all but extinct."

Zomby

Mercury’s Rainbow

Electronic

Ben Cardew

The London producer Zomby may have one eye trained firmly on the future, but he has never been one to neglect the past. His 2008 debut album, Where Were U In ’92?, was one of rave revivalism’s first major statements. Mercury’s Rainbow, an album recorded “over an intense couple of weeks” somewhere around the release of his debut (but only now seeing the light of day), finds Zomby revisiting another of his musical touchstones: the glacial eskibeat sound that Wiley pioneered in the early 2000s on tracks like “Eskimo,” “Ice Rink,” and “Ground Zero,” which drained UK garage of all its warmth, replacing heat with minimal synth melodies, corporeal bass, and sparse percussive touches. Zomby has made no secret of his admiration for Wiley, with whom he eventually worked, in 2015, on “Step 2001.” It is tempting to see Mercury’s Rainbow as a simple homage to eskibeat, a reverent cousin to Where Were U In ’92?’s throwback rave. Wiley used a limited (if hugely distinctive) sonic palette on his eski recordings, leaning heavily on the Korg Triton’s Gliding Squares preset along with percussive clicks, clinks, and stomps that were rumoured to be taken from a Nintendo “Ice Hockey” game (but which FACT later located on E-mu’s Planet Phatt unit). Zomby avails himself of many of these sounds on Mercury’s Rainbow, with the “ice puck” clicks on tracks like “Choke” and “Static” enough to send most early-2000s ravers into Proustian revery. The vast open spaces and minimal makeup, with drum sounds replaced by a rhythmic array of thuds, taps, and clicks, are clearly indebted to Wiley. And throughout, Zomby uses the eski formula of simple bass-synth riffs that continuously evolve, jumping up and down octaves or shifting in tone. But there is far more to Mercury’s Rainbow than mere imitation. While Zomby may borrow elements from classic eski, he also throws in new sounds, creating his own distinctive sonic palette, from the strident “yaw” vocal sample that lends percussive weight to 15 songs (Zomby calls it “a primal chant”) to the echoing splash on “Poison,” “Waterfall of Ice,” and “Patina.” Reusing the same sounds might be anathema to some electronic-music producers, but here it helps draw the album together, making for an intense, immersive listen. The celestial electronic experiments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop also feel like an influence: the astral synth effects on tracks like “Delvaux” and “Horizon” could easily have soundtracked “Dr. Who”’s excursions into the icy darkness of outer space. In 2008, Zomby had only been on the scene for a short while, and here he introduces some of the production quirks that would mark his later output. The brief, unexpected variation he makes on a riff in “Choke,” some 47 seconds in, pulls the rug out from underneath the unsuspecting listener—a trick he he would later employ at length on 2011 mini album Nothing. This is music that feels handmade, not machine-painted, loose rather than quantized, and the effect is head-spinning, full of shifting themes that fracture, dissolve, and remold like ice sculptures refreezing in new and unsettling shapes. When an idea has run its course Zomby simply stops, and the 16 tracks on Mercury’s Rainbow rattle by in just over 38 minutes. Despite its minimalism, Mercury’s Rainbow sees Zomby give full reign to his considerable melodic skills, constructing both nagging riffs that elevate the song (as on the title track, “Atoms,” and “Silver Ocean”) and frequently beautiful melodies, such as the ethereal violin sound in the background of “Tet5uo” that teases the song’s sliding synth riff. These elements come together on the wonderful “Waterfall of Ice,” which combines an eerily beautiful, proto-“Stranger Things” melody with a moody descending bass riff, “ice puck” clicks, and a lone, angry hi-hat hiss. Mercury’s Rainbow is both naggingly familiar and singularly odd. Had it been released in 2009, it might have been celebrated as a companion piece to Where Were U In ’92?; had it come out in 2014, it would have sat well with the emerging “weightless” sound of Mumdance and Logos. In 2018 it feels strangely out of time: a decade-old work by a forward-thinking producer paying homage to a musical genre that he has long since abandoned. But maybe this incongruity is appropriate. Zomby has long followed his own path, one occasionally out of step with musical fashion. Mercury’s Rainbow is both a fascinating example of British dance music’s ability to regurgitate its past and a telling work of Zomby’s singular talent.

Artist: Zomby, Album: Mercury’s Rainbow, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "The London producer Zomby may have one eye trained firmly on the future, but he has never been one to neglect the past. His 2008 debut album, Where Were U In ’92?, was one of rave revivalism’s first major statements. Mercury’s Rainbow, an album recorded “over an intense couple of weeks” somewhere around the release of his debut (but only now seeing the light of day), finds Zomby revisiting another of his musical touchstones: the glacial eskibeat sound that Wiley pioneered in the early 2000s on tracks like “Eskimo,” “Ice Rink,” and “Ground Zero,” which drained UK garage of all its warmth, replacing heat with minimal synth melodies, corporeal bass, and sparse percussive touches. Zomby has made no secret of his admiration for Wiley, with whom he eventually worked, in 2015, on “Step 2001.” It is tempting to see Mercury’s Rainbow as a simple homage to eskibeat, a reverent cousin to Where Were U In ’92?’s throwback rave. Wiley used a limited (if hugely distinctive) sonic palette on his eski recordings, leaning heavily on the Korg Triton’s Gliding Squares preset along with percussive clicks, clinks, and stomps that were rumoured to be taken from a Nintendo “Ice Hockey” game (but which FACT later located on E-mu’s Planet Phatt unit). Zomby avails himself of many of these sounds on Mercury’s Rainbow, with the “ice puck” clicks on tracks like “Choke” and “Static” enough to send most early-2000s ravers into Proustian revery. The vast open spaces and minimal makeup, with drum sounds replaced by a rhythmic array of thuds, taps, and clicks, are clearly indebted to Wiley. And throughout, Zomby uses the eski formula of simple bass-synth riffs that continuously evolve, jumping up and down octaves or shifting in tone. But there is far more to Mercury’s Rainbow than mere imitation. While Zomby may borrow elements from classic eski, he also throws in new sounds, creating his own distinctive sonic palette, from the strident “yaw” vocal sample that lends percussive weight to 15 songs (Zomby calls it “a primal chant”) to the echoing splash on “Poison,” “Waterfall of Ice,” and “Patina.” Reusing the same sounds might be anathema to some electronic-music producers, but here it helps draw the album together, making for an intense, immersive listen. The celestial electronic experiments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop also feel like an influence: the astral synth effects on tracks like “Delvaux” and “Horizon” could easily have soundtracked “Dr. Who”’s excursions into the icy darkness of outer space. In 2008, Zomby had only been on the scene for a short while, and here he introduces some of the production quirks that would mark his later output. The brief, unexpected variation he makes on a riff in “Choke,” some 47 seconds in, pulls the rug out from underneath the unsuspecting listener—a trick he he would later employ at length on 2011 mini album Nothing. This is music that feels handmade, not machine-painted, loose rather than quantized, and the effect is head-spinning, full of shifting themes that fracture, dissolve, and remold like ice sculptures refreezing in new and unsettling shapes. When an idea has run its course Zomby simply stops, and the 16 tracks on Mercury’s Rainbow rattle by in just over 38 minutes. Despite its minimalism, Mercury’s Rainbow sees Zomby give full reign to his considerable melodic skills, constructing both nagging riffs that elevate the song (as on the title track, “Atoms,” and “Silver Ocean”) and frequently beautiful melodies, such as the ethereal violin sound in the background of “Tet5uo” that teases the song’s sliding synth riff. These elements come together on the wonderful “Waterfall of Ice,” which combines an eerily beautiful, proto-“Stranger Things” melody with a moody descending bass riff, “ice puck” clicks, and a lone, angry hi-hat hiss. Mercury’s Rainbow is both naggingly familiar and singularly odd. Had it been released in 2009, it might have been celebrated as a companion piece to Where Were U In ’92?; had it come out in 2014, it would have sat well with the emerging “weightless” sound of Mumdance and Logos. In 2018 it feels strangely out of time: a decade-old work by a forward-thinking producer paying homage to a musical genre that he has long since abandoned. But maybe this incongruity is appropriate. Zomby has long followed his own path, one occasionally out of step with musical fashion. Mercury’s Rainbow is both a fascinating example of British dance music’s ability to regurgitate its past and a telling work of Zomby’s singular talent."

The Babies

Our House on the Hill

Rock

Jenn Pelly

My first inkling that Our House on the Hill would find the Babies offering something of a middle-ground between country music and their debut's kinetic garage rock came in January, at Downtown Manhattan's storied Clocktower Gallery. There I watched them perform on the occasion of a Western-themed multimedia exhibit, "Canyon Candy", which included cacti, a coyote, and audio samples of yodeling. The band, fronted by Woods bassist Kevin Morby alongside Vivian Girls' Cassie Ramone, played with a projection of the 1984 drama Paris, Texas, and for a portion of the set Morby wore a cowboy hat. While the Babies' first record pushed lines on mortality and social anxiety through a compressed, grainy filter, Hill feels more open and vital. The Babies' warm fuzz, captured at Woods' Rear House Studios, tended to mask the album's greatest asset-- its lyrics. Proper polish from an L.A. studio has cleared that up, and they've added an array of instrumental flourishes without straining too hard for maturity. Here, the Babies bend an ear towards Jimmie Rodgers, Everly Brothers, and Lee Hazlewood, along with Southern blues and gospel ("Lord"-summoning abound). Morby can be an expert storyteller as he waxes existential and sings tales of subterranean danger, slippery romance, drunken rebels; he variously offers funny colloquialisms or cutting desolation. We're left with a dense caricature of American counterculture, in constant movement towards dreams, thrills, or vice. Take the criminally infectious "Mess Me Around", which chronicles the dead-end aftermath of an ill-fated encounter with illusory tricksters. "I dreamt of the hell to come, if I didn't wake up and run," Morby sings with escalating, tongue-in-cheek paranoia, his corrupted character "swimming in a pool of blood" while "straining at the Texas sun." The scenario takes the fictionalized outlaw ballad to an absurd extreme. Who knows why the roughnecks did Morby in, but by nature there's amusement to be found with pistol-pointing rebels and their disregard of mainstream morale. Similarly liberated, "Alligator" puts forth a loveless character with no job to pay rent; here Morby also works in what Lester Bangs called "the Lou Reed 'I walked to the chair/ Then I sat in it' school of lyrics," dispassionately offering, "Life is funny/ Life's a laugh/ Life is lonely/ It's a drag," celebrating the multitudes before a light-hearted turn: "I like your hair/ How do ya do it?" Hill, then, can be unpredictably humorous. The call-and-response of "Chase It to the Grave" spouts a wry hillbilly line about falling in a ditch, centered on the archetypically American conquest of achieving one's dream. Conversely, the spooked and angry "Moonlight Mile"-- title culled from the road-weary 1971 Stones ballad-- chugs onward with a defeated promise of freedom, at a troubled site where the sky's limits are closed and dreams are broken. Morby's enraged narrator, a Billy the Kid-type "soul-slinger", is self-reliant in his pursuit of railroad escape: "And that's the train that I'm on/ If you don't want on, then get off/ It's just who I am." When he finally stares us down, wondering if our train's got direction-- "What train are you traveling on? Is it lost into the dark?"-- it sounds profound. Morby's just as strong a popsmith when taking on simple matters; a fed-up late-night question of lust on the trotting "Get Lost", or "On My Teams"s lovelorn yearning. But Ramone's easy "baby baby" rhymes pale in comparison to the lyrical ambition found across the record, as does the lackadaisical "See the Country", which tries at making a poem of the majestic American landscape. And while Morby's acoustic "Mean" gets at the universal feeling of wanting the annoying kid at the party to shut the fuck up-- individualism needs skepticism-- it's too precious. Other tracks in straight singer-songwriter mode are easy highlights. "Wandering" reflects on leaving home and the romantic notion of being born anew-- America's primary fantasy-- with a lonely stillness that treads passion and tension. Morby stretches out the song's epiphany-- "Become-- what? Become-- what? Become who you are"; it's an especially apt topic for 2012, as internet culture insists on connections to the burdensome past and hinders self-reinvention. Meanwhile "That Boy" is a harrowing strummer in the form of a traditional blues ballad, with piercing inner demons: "My best friend died/ Don't you see?/ His mother came and lied down next to me." The verse, overpowering and raw, leads into some terrifyingly human poetry: "Sometimes I get so scared that I can't breathe/ And the ground moves right out from beneath my feet/ And the sky's hanging low to the trees." It's not hard to see why. Since forming in 2008, the Babies have had a trying time escaping the context of Vivian Girls, Woods, and the questions of "lo-fi" those groups still curiously carry. But songs like "That Boy" offer a more illuminating origin story; Babies were born following the death of a mutual bandmate and friend. The backstory appears between the sunshine ripchords of their debut "Meet Me in the City" single, cutting its New York romanticism with funereal descriptions of "a church cross town," hospital walls, shitty feelings. These songs emphasize the band's emotional capabilities. Though imperfect, Hill's intensifying sonic clarity presents the Babies as a group that still believes in rock'n'roll as a powerful language, one that can help sort out mortal complexities and say something about the way we live.

Artist: The Babies, Album: Our House on the Hill, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "My first inkling that Our House on the Hill would find the Babies offering something of a middle-ground between country music and their debut's kinetic garage rock came in January, at Downtown Manhattan's storied Clocktower Gallery. There I watched them perform on the occasion of a Western-themed multimedia exhibit, "Canyon Candy", which included cacti, a coyote, and audio samples of yodeling. The band, fronted by Woods bassist Kevin Morby alongside Vivian Girls' Cassie Ramone, played with a projection of the 1984 drama Paris, Texas, and for a portion of the set Morby wore a cowboy hat. While the Babies' first record pushed lines on mortality and social anxiety through a compressed, grainy filter, Hill feels more open and vital. The Babies' warm fuzz, captured at Woods' Rear House Studios, tended to mask the album's greatest asset-- its lyrics. Proper polish from an L.A. studio has cleared that up, and they've added an array of instrumental flourishes without straining too hard for maturity. Here, the Babies bend an ear towards Jimmie Rodgers, Everly Brothers, and Lee Hazlewood, along with Southern blues and gospel ("Lord"-summoning abound). Morby can be an expert storyteller as he waxes existential and sings tales of subterranean danger, slippery romance, drunken rebels; he variously offers funny colloquialisms or cutting desolation. We're left with a dense caricature of American counterculture, in constant movement towards dreams, thrills, or vice. Take the criminally infectious "Mess Me Around", which chronicles the dead-end aftermath of an ill-fated encounter with illusory tricksters. "I dreamt of the hell to come, if I didn't wake up and run," Morby sings with escalating, tongue-in-cheek paranoia, his corrupted character "swimming in a pool of blood" while "straining at the Texas sun." The scenario takes the fictionalized outlaw ballad to an absurd extreme. Who knows why the roughnecks did Morby in, but by nature there's amusement to be found with pistol-pointing rebels and their disregard of mainstream morale. Similarly liberated, "Alligator" puts forth a loveless character with no job to pay rent; here Morby also works in what Lester Bangs called "the Lou Reed 'I walked to the chair/ Then I sat in it' school of lyrics," dispassionately offering, "Life is funny/ Life's a laugh/ Life is lonely/ It's a drag," celebrating the multitudes before a light-hearted turn: "I like your hair/ How do ya do it?" Hill, then, can be unpredictably humorous. The call-and-response of "Chase It to the Grave" spouts a wry hillbilly line about falling in a ditch, centered on the archetypically American conquest of achieving one's dream. Conversely, the spooked and angry "Moonlight Mile"-- title culled from the road-weary 1971 Stones ballad-- chugs onward with a defeated promise of freedom, at a troubled site where the sky's limits are closed and dreams are broken. Morby's enraged narrator, a Billy the Kid-type "soul-slinger", is self-reliant in his pursuit of railroad escape: "And that's the train that I'm on/ If you don't want on, then get off/ It's just who I am." When he finally stares us down, wondering if our train's got direction-- "What train are you traveling on? Is it lost into the dark?"-- it sounds profound. Morby's just as strong a popsmith when taking on simple matters; a fed-up late-night question of lust on the trotting "Get Lost", or "On My Teams"s lovelorn yearning. But Ramone's easy "baby baby" rhymes pale in comparison to the lyrical ambition found across the record, as does the lackadaisical "See the Country", which tries at making a poem of the majestic American landscape. And while Morby's acoustic "Mean" gets at the universal feeling of wanting the annoying kid at the party to shut the fuck up-- individualism needs skepticism-- it's too precious. Other tracks in straight singer-songwriter mode are easy highlights. "Wandering" reflects on leaving home and the romantic notion of being born anew-- America's primary fantasy-- with a lonely stillness that treads passion and tension. Morby stretches out the song's epiphany-- "Become-- what? Become-- what? Become who you are"; it's an especially apt topic for 2012, as internet culture insists on connections to the burdensome past and hinders self-reinvention. Meanwhile "That Boy" is a harrowing strummer in the form of a traditional blues ballad, with piercing inner demons: "My best friend died/ Don't you see?/ His mother came and lied down next to me." The verse, overpowering and raw, leads into some terrifyingly human poetry: "Sometimes I get so scared that I can't breathe/ And the ground moves right out from beneath my feet/ And the sky's hanging low to the trees." It's not hard to see why. Since forming in 2008, the Babies have had a trying time escaping the context of Vivian Girls, Woods, and the questions of "lo-fi" those groups still curiously carry. But songs like "That Boy" offer a more illuminating origin story; Babies were born following the death of a mutual bandmate and friend. The backstory appears between the sunshine ripchords of their debut "Meet Me in the City" single, cutting its New York romanticism with funereal descriptions of "a church cross town," hospital walls, shitty feelings. These songs emphasize the band's emotional capabilities. Though imperfect, Hill's intensifying sonic clarity presents the Babies as a group that still believes in rock'n'roll as a powerful language, one that can help sort out mortal complexities and say something about the way we live."

Various Artists

The Record Shop: 30 Years of Rough Trade Shops

Nitsuh Abebe

I don't imagine too many music geeks would quibble over the importance of London's Rough Trade record shops, or the label and distribution system that once spun off from them. Ever since the first flush of British punk rock, the Rough Trade system has been crucial to-- sometimes even synonymous with-- independent music in the UK. A more open question might be how much those shops should mean to us today, and how, and why. Rough Trade has tried to answer that question mainly by doing what all good record stores do, only on CD: Its themed historical compilations-- for singer/songwriters, or electronic music, or vintage indiepop-- are like particularly useful sale displays, and its annual Counter Culture compilations do the same thing as that Staff Recommendations bulletin board at your local shop. Note the pun in the title: They're quick to remind you that there's still a physical counter, somewhere out there, probably covered in promotional stickers. The Record Shop is Rough Trade's 30th anniversary collection, and for these discs they've brought in 30 luminaries-- musicians, critics, writers, fashion folks-- to pick one track each from across the store's history. Funny, then, that despite that-- and the lavish book-style package, filled with photos and notes from each selector-- this doesn't feel much like self-congratulations: It feels far more like a love letter to the old and possibly antiquated model of physical, brick-mortar-and-counter record shopping. It's a big wet kiss to the whole process of going to a specific, cherished location, thumbing through haphazard piles of plastic-covered objects, and asking actual nearby people questions about what's underneath. All of which has been largely replaced by something far more democratic and convenient and, depending on whom you ask, less annoying: Sitting down at your computer, consulting reviews and databases and forums, and downloading your Trentemøller remixes direct from overseas, while teenagers yell at you in all caps for having mislabeled tracks in your download folder. Here's the weird part: If you think that it doesn't really matter either way-- that it's all about the music, etc.-- the chronological tracks on these discs might convince you otherwise. It gets going, after some Modern Lovers, with the kind of post-punk gems the Rough Trade name is most associated with: a joyous bounce from Swell Maps, the arty Swiss punk girls of Kleenex, the impossibly hyper Rezillos. Recent tracks on the other end of things are just as in line with current tastes: There's a track from Matmos, LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" as the perfect record-shop closer, Björk, "The Light 3000". And there are plenty of the sorts of things that music-geek vinyl-thumbers have always loved to dig for, whether in 1980 or 2006: former Can member Holger Czukay doing shimmery exoticism with tape loops, an old-timey cut from the Carter Family, old folk from Karen Dalton, some terrific Ethiopian jazz. But somewhere along the line, we dip into an underground music aesthetic that seems almost unthinkable today. Keep in mind that before the internet, most of us had very little amateurism in our worlds: There was not so much trash. Understanding independent music of the 1980s requires remembering this, I think, mainly so we understand why so much of it was ugly and vulgar and obsessed with trash. The record store looms large here, because it was one of few places a person could go to dig through racks and come out with something like an album by a band called LARD with a disgusting sucking fish on the cover, and filled with sludgy grinding and spastic Jello Biafra yelping ("The Power of Lard" appears here). This was an era of bands called things like Bongwater ("His Old Look" appears here) and generalized who-cares slop and humor from artists who were pretty sure nobody would ever care about them. And there was something about digging for this amazing, seemingly random trash in grotty bins-- or mail-ordering it from crappy black-and-white ads in the backs of crappy black-and-white publications-- that feels like the exact antithesis of today's context, where there is enough trash and amateurism out there that it sounds like exactly what it is (trash), and there's so much music at our fingertips that we expect musicians to deliver something genuinely great, not amaze us with junk. Now it's the electronic thrill of something tight and lively beaming over from Norway or the Congo, rather than the weird excitement of seeing the crap in your own life-- sliced baloney, Saturday morning cartoons, a picture of a toilet on the LP cover-- suddenly and weirdly for sale as a physical object, some other band of freaks infecting your space. So we go from "just like us" to "please god anything but us." Pardon me if that sounds like nostalgia: The truth is that a lot of that stuff sounds terrible to me now, and I kind of thrill to the moment where this compilation's perfectly great Skinned Teen track gives way to Bikini Kill's live-wire "Capri Pants", and even more to the moment after that where we come to Stereolab and Nurse With Wound's "Simple Headphone Mind", long a big prize for the kinds of Stereolab fans who dig through crates. By this time, the comp's well into the elegant 90s. It's a strange reminder, though, of how much the way you get your music can affect the actual music that sounds good to you-- and how much it can affect the way the whole process feels, and why you do it, and what you're getting out of it. It's hard to say how much the actual tracks here make a case for the record store-- I could download most of these to my computer in about 15 minutes, even just using a couple legal subscription services, and without having to take off my bathrobe-- but they certainly manage to say something about that counter-based culture, and what a difference it can make. As for actually buying it, the problem-- besides prohibitive expense-- turns out to be that the kind of ardent shoppers being fetishized here can probably find this stuff for themselves.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: The Record Shop: 30 Years of Rough Trade Shops, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "I don't imagine too many music geeks would quibble over the importance of London's Rough Trade record shops, or the label and distribution system that once spun off from them. Ever since the first flush of British punk rock, the Rough Trade system has been crucial to-- sometimes even synonymous with-- independent music in the UK. A more open question might be how much those shops should mean to us today, and how, and why. Rough Trade has tried to answer that question mainly by doing what all good record stores do, only on CD: Its themed historical compilations-- for singer/songwriters, or electronic music, or vintage indiepop-- are like particularly useful sale displays, and its annual Counter Culture compilations do the same thing as that Staff Recommendations bulletin board at your local shop. Note the pun in the title: They're quick to remind you that there's still a physical counter, somewhere out there, probably covered in promotional stickers. The Record Shop is Rough Trade's 30th anniversary collection, and for these discs they've brought in 30 luminaries-- musicians, critics, writers, fashion folks-- to pick one track each from across the store's history. Funny, then, that despite that-- and the lavish book-style package, filled with photos and notes from each selector-- this doesn't feel much like self-congratulations: It feels far more like a love letter to the old and possibly antiquated model of physical, brick-mortar-and-counter record shopping. It's a big wet kiss to the whole process of going to a specific, cherished location, thumbing through haphazard piles of plastic-covered objects, and asking actual nearby people questions about what's underneath. All of which has been largely replaced by something far more democratic and convenient and, depending on whom you ask, less annoying: Sitting down at your computer, consulting reviews and databases and forums, and downloading your Trentemøller remixes direct from overseas, while teenagers yell at you in all caps for having mislabeled tracks in your download folder. Here's the weird part: If you think that it doesn't really matter either way-- that it's all about the music, etc.-- the chronological tracks on these discs might convince you otherwise. It gets going, after some Modern Lovers, with the kind of post-punk gems the Rough Trade name is most associated with: a joyous bounce from Swell Maps, the arty Swiss punk girls of Kleenex, the impossibly hyper Rezillos. Recent tracks on the other end of things are just as in line with current tastes: There's a track from Matmos, LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" as the perfect record-shop closer, Björk, "The Light 3000". And there are plenty of the sorts of things that music-geek vinyl-thumbers have always loved to dig for, whether in 1980 or 2006: former Can member Holger Czukay doing shimmery exoticism with tape loops, an old-timey cut from the Carter Family, old folk from Karen Dalton, some terrific Ethiopian jazz. But somewhere along the line, we dip into an underground music aesthetic that seems almost unthinkable today. Keep in mind that before the internet, most of us had very little amateurism in our worlds: There was not so much trash. Understanding independent music of the 1980s requires remembering this, I think, mainly so we understand why so much of it was ugly and vulgar and obsessed with trash. The record store looms large here, because it was one of few places a person could go to dig through racks and come out with something like an album by a band called LARD with a disgusting sucking fish on the cover, and filled with sludgy grinding and spastic Jello Biafra yelping ("The Power of Lard" appears here). This was an era of bands called things like Bongwater ("His Old Look" appears here) and generalized who-cares slop and humor from artists who were pretty sure nobody would ever care about them. And there was something about digging for this amazing, seemingly random trash in grotty bins-- or mail-ordering it from crappy black-and-white ads in the backs of crappy black-and-white publications-- that feels like the exact antithesis of today's context, where there is enough trash and amateurism out there that it sounds like exactly what it is (trash), and there's so much music at our fingertips that we expect musicians to deliver something genuinely great, not amaze us with junk. Now it's the electronic thrill of something tight and lively beaming over from Norway or the Congo, rather than the weird excitement of seeing the crap in your own life-- sliced baloney, Saturday morning cartoons, a picture of a toilet on the LP cover-- suddenly and weirdly for sale as a physical object, some other band of freaks infecting your space. So we go from "just like us" to "please god anything but us." Pardon me if that sounds like nostalgia: The truth is that a lot of that stuff sounds terrible to me now, and I kind of thrill to the moment where this compilation's perfectly great Skinned Teen track gives way to Bikini Kill's live-wire "Capri Pants", and even more to the moment after that where we come to Stereolab and Nurse With Wound's "Simple Headphone Mind", long a big prize for the kinds of Stereolab fans who dig through crates. By this time, the comp's well into the elegant 90s. It's a strange reminder, though, of how much the way you get your music can affect the actual music that sounds good to you-- and how much it can affect the way the whole process feels, and why you do it, and what you're getting out of it. It's hard to say how much the actual tracks here make a case for the record store-- I could download most of these to my computer in about 15 minutes, even just using a couple legal subscription services, and without having to take off my bathrobe-- but they certainly manage to say something about that counter-based culture, and what a difference it can make. As for actually buying it, the problem-- besides prohibitive expense-- turns out to be that the kind of ardent shoppers being fetishized here can probably find this stuff for themselves."

Girlsareshort

Earlynorthamerican

Pop/R&B

Jonathan Zwickel

For god's sake, can I really be so cynical? Have I really been so brutally chafed by this itchy, hand-me-down Clear Channel turtleneck that I can't cuddle up under Girlsareshort's velvet-blanket tweetronica? Something must've happened on the way to my thirties, because only a couple years and several all-nighters ago, Earlynorthamerican could've rubbed me just the right way. This is early-morning comedown music, quirky lullabeats buzzing along through blue skies and warm hugs, but I haven't grinned bleary-eyed into the sunrise in a really long time. Maybe the drugs were good for me after all. It's a lesson in the transitive property of music, only in reverse. I like The Polyphonic Spree, and I like Underworld, but I don't think I'd like Tim DeLaughter and a giddy nine-piece choir chirping along to "Dark and Long". Which is essentially what we get with the unflinchingly gleeful, Xanny-bar rattle of "Battle Team" and the childlike choral exhortations of "Sunshine", which (seemingly) earnestly inquires, "Why do you wanna stay home all day/ Rather be inside than go out and play/ Come on, hang with me/ What's it gonna be?" If Girlsareshort's Alex P and Daniel Z are sincere, if they're not dipping a toe in the chilly waters of irony, if I'm totally misreading this hopscotch hip-hop, then I'm playing Earlynorthamerican for my two-year-old nephew because this is some bangin' shit for toddlers. Of course, there's a market for this music beyond the Gymboree set. Even in its sterilized drum programming and cool, high-register hum, Earlynorthamerican is far cozier and much less daunting than labelmates The Russian Futurist's soaring, baroque pop, even if the two do share common G5 production values. And any IDM fan will recognize the flawless-- even innovative-- technique here, though most DJs wouldn't let Girlsareshort's immaculate geometry near their crates. But perhaps most alluring is the band's rosy-glassed twee reminiscing, evoked through cotton candy melodies, sunny analog synths, and the aforementioned falsetto (or possibly prepubescent) vocals. In fact, there's a pungent whiff of winking 80s nostalgia in the glistening churn of "Pinacolada". And yes, that is a sample of Rupert Holmes' campy ode to rediscovered love, "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)". If you have half a brain, or are still wearing Vuarnet and rocking Squeeze's Argybargy in your beat-up walkman, get on board. There's simply no edge to this music, which can be good if you're floating in a sensory deprivation tank. In the real world, though, it smacks of frivolity. There is at least some gentle contrast, as evidenced by the b-boy vocal sample and Hendrixian guitar snippet of "The Natural", or the dramatic electro bliss of "Mississaga Theme". These songs, the album's strongest, are something like musical igloos, hand-built icy shells that manage to retain a fair amount of lingering warmth within. Man. I just re-read that last sentence. God help me if I've become another shriveled, misanthropic music-loathing critic. I'm just calling 'em like I feel 'em.

Artist: Girlsareshort, Album: Earlynorthamerican, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "For god's sake, can I really be so cynical? Have I really been so brutally chafed by this itchy, hand-me-down Clear Channel turtleneck that I can't cuddle up under Girlsareshort's velvet-blanket tweetronica? Something must've happened on the way to my thirties, because only a couple years and several all-nighters ago, Earlynorthamerican could've rubbed me just the right way. This is early-morning comedown music, quirky lullabeats buzzing along through blue skies and warm hugs, but I haven't grinned bleary-eyed into the sunrise in a really long time. Maybe the drugs were good for me after all. It's a lesson in the transitive property of music, only in reverse. I like The Polyphonic Spree, and I like Underworld, but I don't think I'd like Tim DeLaughter and a giddy nine-piece choir chirping along to "Dark and Long". Which is essentially what we get with the unflinchingly gleeful, Xanny-bar rattle of "Battle Team" and the childlike choral exhortations of "Sunshine", which (seemingly) earnestly inquires, "Why do you wanna stay home all day/ Rather be inside than go out and play/ Come on, hang with me/ What's it gonna be?" If Girlsareshort's Alex P and Daniel Z are sincere, if they're not dipping a toe in the chilly waters of irony, if I'm totally misreading this hopscotch hip-hop, then I'm playing Earlynorthamerican for my two-year-old nephew because this is some bangin' shit for toddlers. Of course, there's a market for this music beyond the Gymboree set. Even in its sterilized drum programming and cool, high-register hum, Earlynorthamerican is far cozier and much less daunting than labelmates The Russian Futurist's soaring, baroque pop, even if the two do share common G5 production values. And any IDM fan will recognize the flawless-- even innovative-- technique here, though most DJs wouldn't let Girlsareshort's immaculate geometry near their crates. But perhaps most alluring is the band's rosy-glassed twee reminiscing, evoked through cotton candy melodies, sunny analog synths, and the aforementioned falsetto (or possibly prepubescent) vocals. In fact, there's a pungent whiff of winking 80s nostalgia in the glistening churn of "Pinacolada". And yes, that is a sample of Rupert Holmes' campy ode to rediscovered love, "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)". If you have half a brain, or are still wearing Vuarnet and rocking Squeeze's Argybargy in your beat-up walkman, get on board. There's simply no edge to this music, which can be good if you're floating in a sensory deprivation tank. In the real world, though, it smacks of frivolity. There is at least some gentle contrast, as evidenced by the b-boy vocal sample and Hendrixian guitar snippet of "The Natural", or the dramatic electro bliss of "Mississaga Theme". These songs, the album's strongest, are something like musical igloos, hand-built icy shells that manage to retain a fair amount of lingering warmth within. Man. I just re-read that last sentence. God help me if I've become another shriveled, misanthropic music-loathing critic. I'm just calling 'em like I feel 'em."

Tangerine Dream

Journey Through a Burning Brain (Anthology)

Electronic

Dominique Leone

There's a case to be made for Tangerine Dream as being among the most historically important experimental German bands from the early 70s. Beyond the fact that their mastery of all manner of synthesizer technology predated the digital boom in the 80s, they're arguably the grandfathers of ambient music (despite what the church of Eno may preach). Edgar Froese's outfit began as one of many rambunctious noisemakers in Berlin in the late 60s, but has survived as one of the most long-lived groups in rock. Of course, the group has tweaked their sound considerably over the years, and this curious set, containing one disc of early 70s pieces, and two of mid-80s live tracks, makes clear that not every chapter in Froese's manual is required reading. The first disc in the box contains the most interesting music, by a considerable margin. Covering the underrated early period of the band on Ohr Records (1970-73), the sounds are spacey, spacious and determinedly sprawling. "Genesis" and "Cold Smoke" are both taken from the band's first release, Electronic Meditation, the only record to feature future kosmiche icons Klaus Schultz and Conrad Schnitzler (later of Kluster). Similar to their peers Guru Guru, Ash Ra Tempel (also featuring Shultz) and Amon Düül II, Tangerine Dream were, at this point, about freeform mind-expansion, and that alone: "Cold Smoke" rumbles and skirts via heavily reverbed crashing drums, maniacal violin, post-Hendrix guitar ejaculation and even an excitable vagrant shouting cosmic obscenities in the distance. "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" and "Sunrise in the Third System" are taken from the group's second album, Alpha Centauri, with Chris Franke and Steve Schroyder replacing Schultz and Schnitzler. Keyboards began to play a greater part in the arrangements (as well as flute here), but the general ticket was still an acid-laced blur. In 1972, Tangerine Dream released their early masterpiece, Zeit (featuring Peter Baumann, and completing one of the most longstanding of the band's lineups), and because Castle Music felt the need to whip me into submission with two discs of live meh from the 80s, only one track from that double LP is included. That's too bad, because "Origin of Supernatural Probabilities" represents a command of sound on par with the greatest studio masters. The opening guitar chords sound as if they were recorded under two feet of water, and when the synth begins to babble and whales begin to cry, I'd as soon sport gills as leave my stereo. Simply put, 70s electronic music does not get better than this-- unless you count their follow-up, 1973's Atem, of which two pieces are included on this set: The Mellotron-soaked nature hymn "Fauni Gena" and an atypical vocal (of sorts) track "Wahn", also featuring primal percussion akin to that on the first record. Now, skip forward about 10 or 12 years to the mid-80s, when Tangerine Dream had become quite a different beast. Gone were the psychedelic trance-outs and echo chambers, replaced by big light shows and Jan Hammer's drum machine. In fact, Froese and company were still playing psychedelic music, but what that meant 20 years removed from the era was much different; they were providing escapists soundtracks for the overstressed and nostalgic alike, far from the boundless "mind-expansion" of a bygone time. And yes, I absolutely abhor those crystalline, programmed 80s beats-- Mannheim Steamroller at Christmas is one thing, but I will not stand idly by and listen to men who once tripped like kings through the nether regions of consciousness play crowd-control for yuppies. That said, if you don't pay attention-- and that's the real difference: early Tangerine Dream was good for escapism and repeated, detail-obsessed listening-- some of this works as decent background pitter-patter. Not surprisingly, the better tracks are the longest: the 22-minute "Poland" begins as a practically unlistenable exercise in new age pep, but does have scattered moments of old-fashioned krautrock whim, particularly during the parts that forgo dance beats for drone. And it's not as if Tangerine Dream + dance music is a necessarily bad concept (why hasn't there been a movement to remix these guys, a la Kraftwerk's The Mix or Can's Sacrilege?), but this stuff is perilously close to skincare instructional video soundtracks. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, disc three drops "Song of the Whale", parts one and two! Wow. In summary, skip this set and check out the early Tangerine Dream records instead-- they're all being remastered (with bonus tracks!), hopefully making Journey Through a Burning Brain obsolete sooner rather than later.

Artist: Tangerine Dream, Album: Journey Through a Burning Brain (Anthology), Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "There's a case to be made for Tangerine Dream as being among the most historically important experimental German bands from the early 70s. Beyond the fact that their mastery of all manner of synthesizer technology predated the digital boom in the 80s, they're arguably the grandfathers of ambient music (despite what the church of Eno may preach). Edgar Froese's outfit began as one of many rambunctious noisemakers in Berlin in the late 60s, but has survived as one of the most long-lived groups in rock. Of course, the group has tweaked their sound considerably over the years, and this curious set, containing one disc of early 70s pieces, and two of mid-80s live tracks, makes clear that not every chapter in Froese's manual is required reading. The first disc in the box contains the most interesting music, by a considerable margin. Covering the underrated early period of the band on Ohr Records (1970-73), the sounds are spacey, spacious and determinedly sprawling. "Genesis" and "Cold Smoke" are both taken from the band's first release, Electronic Meditation, the only record to feature future kosmiche icons Klaus Schultz and Conrad Schnitzler (later of Kluster). Similar to their peers Guru Guru, Ash Ra Tempel (also featuring Shultz) and Amon Düül II, Tangerine Dream were, at this point, about freeform mind-expansion, and that alone: "Cold Smoke" rumbles and skirts via heavily reverbed crashing drums, maniacal violin, post-Hendrix guitar ejaculation and even an excitable vagrant shouting cosmic obscenities in the distance. "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" and "Sunrise in the Third System" are taken from the group's second album, Alpha Centauri, with Chris Franke and Steve Schroyder replacing Schultz and Schnitzler. Keyboards began to play a greater part in the arrangements (as well as flute here), but the general ticket was still an acid-laced blur. In 1972, Tangerine Dream released their early masterpiece, Zeit (featuring Peter Baumann, and completing one of the most longstanding of the band's lineups), and because Castle Music felt the need to whip me into submission with two discs of live meh from the 80s, only one track from that double LP is included. That's too bad, because "Origin of Supernatural Probabilities" represents a command of sound on par with the greatest studio masters. The opening guitar chords sound as if they were recorded under two feet of water, and when the synth begins to babble and whales begin to cry, I'd as soon sport gills as leave my stereo. Simply put, 70s electronic music does not get better than this-- unless you count their follow-up, 1973's Atem, of which two pieces are included on this set: The Mellotron-soaked nature hymn "Fauni Gena" and an atypical vocal (of sorts) track "Wahn", also featuring primal percussion akin to that on the first record. Now, skip forward about 10 or 12 years to the mid-80s, when Tangerine Dream had become quite a different beast. Gone were the psychedelic trance-outs and echo chambers, replaced by big light shows and Jan Hammer's drum machine. In fact, Froese and company were still playing psychedelic music, but what that meant 20 years removed from the era was much different; they were providing escapists soundtracks for the overstressed and nostalgic alike, far from the boundless "mind-expansion" of a bygone time. And yes, I absolutely abhor those crystalline, programmed 80s beats-- Mannheim Steamroller at Christmas is one thing, but I will not stand idly by and listen to men who once tripped like kings through the nether regions of consciousness play crowd-control for yuppies. That said, if you don't pay attention-- and that's the real difference: early Tangerine Dream was good for escapism and repeated, detail-obsessed listening-- some of this works as decent background pitter-patter. Not surprisingly, the better tracks are the longest: the 22-minute "Poland" begins as a practically unlistenable exercise in new age pep, but does have scattered moments of old-fashioned krautrock whim, particularly during the parts that forgo dance beats for drone. And it's not as if Tangerine Dream + dance music is a necessarily bad concept (why hasn't there been a movement to remix these guys, a la Kraftwerk's The Mix or Can's Sacrilege?), but this stuff is perilously close to skincare instructional video soundtracks. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, disc three drops "Song of the Whale", parts one and two! Wow. In summary, skip this set and check out the early Tangerine Dream records instead-- they're all being remastered (with bonus tracks!), hopefully making Journey Through a Burning Brain obsolete sooner rather than later."

Young Montana

Limerence

Hari Ashurst

Jon Pritchard aka Young Montana is a 20 year-old beat-fiddler from Coventry in the UK-- a small city most musically famous for its two-tone ska scene in the 1980s, headed up by the Specials. Although Pritchard's production shares way more in common with Californian beat-makers Flying Lotus and Daedalus, there's a fidgety energy at the core of his debut album, Limerence, that aligns itself with small town boredom and restlessness. "Sacré Cool" emerged last year and still sounds fresh and vital, with its low-end pumping against a wonky beat culled from Chemise's "She Can't Love You". Pritchard's retooling of that sample is full of left turns as he pulls the beat this way and that, but still keeps enough of a solid centre to nod along to. Indeed, no matter how deeply Young Montana dives into noodly, intricate production on Limerence, there's still a party edge propping things up. Most of the record drips pretty heavily with the influence of beatmakers like FlyLo, Madlib, and Prefuse 73 but there are some nicely unexpected nods in Pritchard's production too. The start of "Mynnd" errs towards the type of glacial, icy sound of Boards of Canada as analog-sounding synths sprawl on top of each other before being overtaken by typically skronking beat. With grimey synths and a swarm of exaggerated sounds, "Legwrap" is probably the most uncompromising production on the record. Propelled along by a clattering beat, a collection of outré sounds jostle for attention in the mix. The rattle of drums eventually falls in on itself, giving way to a stark, wobbly synth interlude. It's an example of pretty meticulous beat-mapping and might be a bit alienating if not for a gorgeous end section that Pritchard ushers in out of nowhere. The passage recalls Prefuse 73 at his more playful with a smooth soul sample chopped and spliced with subtle horns and cut-up vocals. The sudden change in direction at the end of "Legwrap" is something Montana pulls on quite a few of these tracks, lending the whole record the feel of an endlessly tuning radio, flickering from station to station. It adds a kind of broken, wonky dynamic that makes things feel slightly intangible. But occasionally these interludes add an interesting context to beats just at the moment they almost lose steam. Take "Midnight Snacks" for instance, a track that pumps with robotic, destroyed threads and a concealed vocal sample repeating, "Can't take my eyes off you," until late on when Montana flips things again, delivering the sample back to its original old-timey roots. Moments like that, while not exactly groundbreaking, are nice touches that contribute to the overall sense of careful craft that exemplifies Pritchard's production. While his seamlessly stitched-together beats aren't quite as meticulous or obsessively compulsive as something like Prefuse 73's glitch-hop epic One Word Extinguisher for instance, there's still an impressive attention to detail. His thorough and restless production helps Pritchard transcend the efforts of many other bedroom producers by sheer virtue of his work ethic. Coming from a town like Coventry, one imagines you have to make your own fun, and that's exactly what Young Montana does on Limerence.

Artist: Young Montana, Album: Limerence, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Jon Pritchard aka Young Montana is a 20 year-old beat-fiddler from Coventry in the UK-- a small city most musically famous for its two-tone ska scene in the 1980s, headed up by the Specials. Although Pritchard's production shares way more in common with Californian beat-makers Flying Lotus and Daedalus, there's a fidgety energy at the core of his debut album, Limerence, that aligns itself with small town boredom and restlessness. "Sacré Cool" emerged last year and still sounds fresh and vital, with its low-end pumping against a wonky beat culled from Chemise's "She Can't Love You". Pritchard's retooling of that sample is full of left turns as he pulls the beat this way and that, but still keeps enough of a solid centre to nod along to. Indeed, no matter how deeply Young Montana dives into noodly, intricate production on Limerence, there's still a party edge propping things up. Most of the record drips pretty heavily with the influence of beatmakers like FlyLo, Madlib, and Prefuse 73 but there are some nicely unexpected nods in Pritchard's production too. The start of "Mynnd" errs towards the type of glacial, icy sound of Boards of Canada as analog-sounding synths sprawl on top of each other before being overtaken by typically skronking beat. With grimey synths and a swarm of exaggerated sounds, "Legwrap" is probably the most uncompromising production on the record. Propelled along by a clattering beat, a collection of outré sounds jostle for attention in the mix. The rattle of drums eventually falls in on itself, giving way to a stark, wobbly synth interlude. It's an example of pretty meticulous beat-mapping and might be a bit alienating if not for a gorgeous end section that Pritchard ushers in out of nowhere. The passage recalls Prefuse 73 at his more playful with a smooth soul sample chopped and spliced with subtle horns and cut-up vocals. The sudden change in direction at the end of "Legwrap" is something Montana pulls on quite a few of these tracks, lending the whole record the feel of an endlessly tuning radio, flickering from station to station. It adds a kind of broken, wonky dynamic that makes things feel slightly intangible. But occasionally these interludes add an interesting context to beats just at the moment they almost lose steam. Take "Midnight Snacks" for instance, a track that pumps with robotic, destroyed threads and a concealed vocal sample repeating, "Can't take my eyes off you," until late on when Montana flips things again, delivering the sample back to its original old-timey roots. Moments like that, while not exactly groundbreaking, are nice touches that contribute to the overall sense of careful craft that exemplifies Pritchard's production. While his seamlessly stitched-together beats aren't quite as meticulous or obsessively compulsive as something like Prefuse 73's glitch-hop epic One Word Extinguisher for instance, there's still an impressive attention to detail. His thorough and restless production helps Pritchard transcend the efforts of many other bedroom producers by sheer virtue of his work ethic. Coming from a town like Coventry, one imagines you have to make your own fun, and that's exactly what Young Montana does on Limerence."

Adem

Takes

Rock

Brian Howe

The feeling that the world used to be better, clearer, or more pure has been historically persistent enough to suggest that it's a fundamental part of being human, and it logically encompasses music as well. Arguments against reactionary ideologies such as rockism often hang upon accusations of social prejudice, which certainly can be a component of it. But there's a more empathetic and equally plausible explanation: It's not that new music is inferior to old music (although the feeling often gets twisted this way), but that older music's obsolescence can make us uncomfortably aware that the same thing could, and likely will, happen to much of what we listen to today. Being trapped in this relentless forward momentum, with losses stacking up behind us, perhaps explains why, as popular music moves ever forward, the individuals creating it tend to move backwards. Punks eventually try their hand at country, indie rockers get into classic rock, and Adem, aka the guy from Fridge who isn't Four Tet, puts aside post-rock and neo-folk long enough to record Takes, a largely acoustic album of unpretentious covers rendered more emotionally than cerebrally. Takes mainly consists of Adem's charismatic voice and deft acoustic guitar, although a kitchen sink's worth of embellishments, from vibraphone to dulcimer to autoharp, flesh it out. It has a heavy nostalgia component, as all of the covered songs were originally released between 1991 and 2001, Adem's self-professed formative years. This lends it a backwards-looking, "120 Minutes" vibe, and bolsters its sense of longing regression. You can tell from Adem's earnest renditions that what he's singing here is less a collection of covers than a specific, intensely personal vision of his life. His evident love of his source material and the material's alternative-era continuity make Takes a vanity project that's much better and more universally appealing than what we usually mean by the term. Adem renders his source material in a homogeneous style, so that it actually sounds like a bona fide album whose rewards aren't contingent upon familiarity with the covered songs. For anyone who was young in the 90s, however, familiarity will augment its appeal. The best part of Takes is Adem's song choices, which tend to be surprising even when the artist choices are not. The feeling of burgeoning recognition is so pleasurable that I'd advise listening to the album before you read the track list, or the rest of this review. It's a lot of fun to listen to a lyrical, hammer-on intensive acoustic melody with a sense of near-maddening familiarity until a certain lyric makes you realize that you're listening to Smashing Pumpkins B-side "Starla", spliced with a bit of Gish's "Window Paine". This splicing speaks to Adem's infectious, fanboy enthusiasm in constructing this album, which reportedly came about because fans frequently ask him for recordings of the solo covers he plays live. When he couldn't settle on just one track from a beloved artist, he simply hybridized two. So a loping, easygoing version of Bedhead's "Bedside Table" mingles with a bit of "The End of the Day", and Aphex Twin's "To Cure a Weakling Child" and "Boy/Girl Song" get wrapped up in one twittering, bell-laden folk number. (Yes, Adem not only transcribed Aphex Twin songs for acoustic guitar, but he did a great job of it-- its gentle, upsweeping chorus is an album highlight.) Plus, he's got a nice voice, and a nice voice is crucial for this material. It's just rough-edged enough to sound "alternative," but versatile enough to assimilate Björk's gulpy murmur (on a hovering version of "Unravel"), PJ Harvey's gruff purr (on an ornately finger-picked "Oh My Lover"), and Yo La Tengo's laundry-fresh harmonies (on a weary yet oddly uplifting "Tears Are in Your Eyes"). Mix in some Lisa Germano ("Slide"), Pinback ("Loro"), Breeders ("Invisible Man"), and Tortoise (a pretty but negligible "Gamera"-- the instrumental doesn't quite suit this vocal-centric album), and you've got a veritable '90s nostalgia-bomb on your hands. And maybe it's at least accidentally significant, as regards the desire to stop time and preserve lost innocence, that the most recent cover was released in 2001, right before a few hijacked airplanes set in motion a chain of events that would make life more complicated and perilous for most everyone.

Artist: Adem, Album: Takes, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "The feeling that the world used to be better, clearer, or more pure has been historically persistent enough to suggest that it's a fundamental part of being human, and it logically encompasses music as well. Arguments against reactionary ideologies such as rockism often hang upon accusations of social prejudice, which certainly can be a component of it. But there's a more empathetic and equally plausible explanation: It's not that new music is inferior to old music (although the feeling often gets twisted this way), but that older music's obsolescence can make us uncomfortably aware that the same thing could, and likely will, happen to much of what we listen to today. Being trapped in this relentless forward momentum, with losses stacking up behind us, perhaps explains why, as popular music moves ever forward, the individuals creating it tend to move backwards. Punks eventually try their hand at country, indie rockers get into classic rock, and Adem, aka the guy from Fridge who isn't Four Tet, puts aside post-rock and neo-folk long enough to record Takes, a largely acoustic album of unpretentious covers rendered more emotionally than cerebrally. Takes mainly consists of Adem's charismatic voice and deft acoustic guitar, although a kitchen sink's worth of embellishments, from vibraphone to dulcimer to autoharp, flesh it out. It has a heavy nostalgia component, as all of the covered songs were originally released between 1991 and 2001, Adem's self-professed formative years. This lends it a backwards-looking, "120 Minutes" vibe, and bolsters its sense of longing regression. You can tell from Adem's earnest renditions that what he's singing here is less a collection of covers than a specific, intensely personal vision of his life. His evident love of his source material and the material's alternative-era continuity make Takes a vanity project that's much better and more universally appealing than what we usually mean by the term. Adem renders his source material in a homogeneous style, so that it actually sounds like a bona fide album whose rewards aren't contingent upon familiarity with the covered songs. For anyone who was young in the 90s, however, familiarity will augment its appeal. The best part of Takes is Adem's song choices, which tend to be surprising even when the artist choices are not. The feeling of burgeoning recognition is so pleasurable that I'd advise listening to the album before you read the track list, or the rest of this review. It's a lot of fun to listen to a lyrical, hammer-on intensive acoustic melody with a sense of near-maddening familiarity until a certain lyric makes you realize that you're listening to Smashing Pumpkins B-side "Starla", spliced with a bit of Gish's "Window Paine". This splicing speaks to Adem's infectious, fanboy enthusiasm in constructing this album, which reportedly came about because fans frequently ask him for recordings of the solo covers he plays live. When he couldn't settle on just one track from a beloved artist, he simply hybridized two. So a loping, easygoing version of Bedhead's "Bedside Table" mingles with a bit of "The End of the Day", and Aphex Twin's "To Cure a Weakling Child" and "Boy/Girl Song" get wrapped up in one twittering, bell-laden folk number. (Yes, Adem not only transcribed Aphex Twin songs for acoustic guitar, but he did a great job of it-- its gentle, upsweeping chorus is an album highlight.) Plus, he's got a nice voice, and a nice voice is crucial for this material. It's just rough-edged enough to sound "alternative," but versatile enough to assimilate Björk's gulpy murmur (on a hovering version of "Unravel"), PJ Harvey's gruff purr (on an ornately finger-picked "Oh My Lover"), and Yo La Tengo's laundry-fresh harmonies (on a weary yet oddly uplifting "Tears Are in Your Eyes"). Mix in some Lisa Germano ("Slide"), Pinback ("Loro"), Breeders ("Invisible Man"), and Tortoise (a pretty but negligible "Gamera"-- the instrumental doesn't quite suit this vocal-centric album), and you've got a veritable '90s nostalgia-bomb on your hands. And maybe it's at least accidentally significant, as regards the desire to stop time and preserve lost innocence, that the most recent cover was released in 2001, right before a few hijacked airplanes set in motion a chain of events that would make life more complicated and perilous for most everyone."

Baio

Man of the World

Electronic

Philip Cosores

In the little more than four years since the last Vampire Weekend album, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City, the entire gang of bookish indie rockers haven’t struggled to keep busy. Leader Ezra Koenig hosts his own Beats 1 radio show “Time Crisis” and co-wrote with Beyoncé on Lemonade, all while spending time crafting songs for the next Vampire Weekend LP. Rostam Batmanglij released a series of well-received solo singles, eventually leaving the band to dive headfirst into his own career—first with the collaborative album with Hamilton Leithauser and next with a debut album under his own name due this fall. Even drummer Chris Tomson found time to release his own music, this year’s messy Dams of the West record Youngish American. And then there’s Chris Baio. Like Tomson, Baio occupies the space in Vampire Weekend outside of the core songwriting pair, and his solo career has had little to do with his main source of income. Still, the long VW break has given Baio time for a pair of solo releases. Baio’s 2015 album The Names lacked consistency, touching upon techno and pop, referencing DeLillo and Dostoyevsky, singing like Bowie and Ferry. It was an album that told us a lot about what Baio liked without directly carving a niche of his own. For his second full-length, Man of the World, the scope has narrowed and focused. Baio is finally sure of his sound, and he included an artist statement with the record to put his endeavor in context. Baio cites several specific events for Man of the World’s inspiration: the death of his favorite artist David Bowie, Brexit, the Trump presidency, and climate change. And he is fully aware of his perspective—that of a rich, white American living abroad—while delving into these topics, addressing them directly on the album’s penultimate song: “I know Iʼm deeply privileged/To be losing just my mind/Iʼm fearful for the bodies/Of the vulnerable and kind/Iʼve got shame in my name.” Still, Man of the World delivers 41 minutes of Baio wrestling with the weight of the world, all while singing in the pantomimed voice of his hero. Where the rest of us have the occasional Twitter meltdown, Baio has gone a huge step further and set his political angst to boisterous synth pop. The contrast is often jarring. Tonal juxtapositions aren’t too unexpected when Baio’s enunciating within spitting distance of Morrissey, but with the stakes so high, there is something unsettling at play here. For example, on the album opening “Vin Mariani,” Baio follows a line like “Learning to live with a decision/When the consequence is rather grave” with a triumphant blast of trumpets and hand-clap percussion. The consequences couldn’t sound less grave. The closest Baio comes to sounding serious is on “DANGEROUE ANAMAL”—Baio’s all-caps reflection on his own hypocrisy when it comes to climate change. The song pulses and sleeks with misguided sensuality, more seductive than anything else on the album (even if the line “I still eat meat” is not a euphemism). That’s often the trouble with Man of the World. There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight. The best moments manage to forget this is a “message” album and ease the Bowie-aping into just a vaguely British baritone. The whimsical “The Key Is Under the Mat” steps confidently closer to Vampire Weekend than any of his previous solo work, while “Sensitive Guy” winks with sly humor to match its four-on-the-floor rhythm and jubilant conclusion. But when Baio asks, “Can’t you see my aim is true?” on the title track, the album argues the opposite, and it fails to capture the wariness for the world that he’s desperate to comment on.

Artist: Baio, Album: Man of the World, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "In the little more than four years since the last Vampire Weekend album, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City, the entire gang of bookish indie rockers haven’t struggled to keep busy. Leader Ezra Koenig hosts his own Beats 1 radio show “Time Crisis” and co-wrote with Beyoncé on Lemonade, all while spending time crafting songs for the next Vampire Weekend LP. Rostam Batmanglij released a series of well-received solo singles, eventually leaving the band to dive headfirst into his own career—first with the collaborative album with Hamilton Leithauser and next with a debut album under his own name due this fall. Even drummer Chris Tomson found time to release his own music, this year’s messy Dams of the West record Youngish American. And then there’s Chris Baio. Like Tomson, Baio occupies the space in Vampire Weekend outside of the core songwriting pair, and his solo career has had little to do with his main source of income. Still, the long VW break has given Baio time for a pair of solo releases. Baio’s 2015 album The Names lacked consistency, touching upon techno and pop, referencing DeLillo and Dostoyevsky, singing like Bowie and Ferry. It was an album that told us a lot about what Baio liked without directly carving a niche of his own. For his second full-length, Man of the World, the scope has narrowed and focused. Baio is finally sure of his sound, and he included an artist statement with the record to put his endeavor in context. Baio cites several specific events for Man of the World’s inspiration: the death of his favorite artist David Bowie, Brexit, the Trump presidency, and climate change. And he is fully aware of his perspective—that of a rich, white American living abroad—while delving into these topics, addressing them directly on the album’s penultimate song: “I know Iʼm deeply privileged/To be losing just my mind/Iʼm fearful for the bodies/Of the vulnerable and kind/Iʼve got shame in my name.” Still, Man of the World delivers 41 minutes of Baio wrestling with the weight of the world, all while singing in the pantomimed voice of his hero. Where the rest of us have the occasional Twitter meltdown, Baio has gone a huge step further and set his political angst to boisterous synth pop. The contrast is often jarring. Tonal juxtapositions aren’t too unexpected when Baio’s enunciating within spitting distance of Morrissey, but with the stakes so high, there is something unsettling at play here. For example, on the album opening “Vin Mariani,” Baio follows a line like “Learning to live with a decision/When the consequence is rather grave” with a triumphant blast of trumpets and hand-clap percussion. The consequences couldn’t sound less grave. The closest Baio comes to sounding serious is on “DANGEROUE ANAMAL”—Baio’s all-caps reflection on his own hypocrisy when it comes to climate change. The song pulses and sleeks with misguided sensuality, more seductive than anything else on the album (even if the line “I still eat meat” is not a euphemism). That’s often the trouble with Man of the World. There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight. The best moments manage to forget this is a “message” album and ease the Bowie-aping into just a vaguely British baritone. The whimsical “The Key Is Under the Mat” steps confidently closer to Vampire Weekend than any of his previous solo work, while “Sensitive Guy” winks with sly humor to match its four-on-the-floor rhythm and jubilant conclusion. But when Baio asks, “Can’t you see my aim is true?” on the title track, the album argues the opposite, and it fails to capture the wariness for the world that he’s desperate to comment on."

Elf Power

Nothing's Going to Happen

Experimental,Rock

Eric Carr

Lo-fi hiss. Is there any finer sound than a power chord played through a four-track that sounds like it was built from Legos? It's like heroin to me; razorblades, anthrax, whatever-- wrap them in a few layers of fuzzed-up guitar and I'll eat it with my breakfast cereal. For years, Athens, GA stood as the richest resource of lo-fi hiss on Earth, but with the rapid expansion of the powerful Elephant 6 conglomerate, who controlled the area's supply, the hiss quickly dried up, leaving addicts like myself out in the cold. Fortunately, a handful of bands have emerged from E6 unscathed. Elf Power is one of the last remaining bastions of Athens' hiss production, having churned out irresistible fuzz-pop since the heady days of 1994. Now, on Nothing's Going to Happen, this Athens group has gotten its Elf Powers over sixteen tracks from all corners of the musical globe. And not just any songs. Great ones. Songs so near and dear to me that just the thought of having to do without the original versions makes me wanna fight. Naturally, I was a bit concerned as to whether Elf Power could do them justice, but the band quickly negated my worries with their trademarked geyser blasts of that precious opiate I cannot resist: lo-fi hiss. Out of the massive, monolithic indie stone-drone they've established as their signature sound, the Elves have hacked out an incredible array of covers from the most disparate group of names you're likely to see: Roky Erickson, Tall Dwarfs (classic lo-fi poppers in their own right), Jesus and Mary Chain (ditto), The... Misfits (what?), Bad Brains... "B-b-but these songs aren't going to sound like the originals! They'll be butchered!" some purist vainly cries. Silence! When I want your opinion I'll rattle your cage, even if you are half-right. On the surface, it may seem that a great many of these songs would be obscured by Elf Power's indie haze, but this is a labor done in earnest; these songs weren't chosen just to be buried. Hearing the D.C. hardcore of "Paid to Cum" through the light-hearted retro-buzz that only Elf Power can supply makes it overwhelmingly clear: the sincerest form of flattery isn't imitation; it's faithful interpretation. Despite the exterior differences in mood and instrumentation, everything here is carved from the same Rock, and as each track falls sway to Andrew Rieger's emotionally distant croons and wave after wave of acid-washed guitar crunch, it becomes evident that the band has accomplished something impressive. On one hand, Nothing's Going to Happen is so universally cohesive that someone unfamiliar with the roots of these tracks could be forgiven for mistaking this as an original effort. The slightly more subdued sound of Creatures plays well here, giving the group enough room to keep the acoustics cleaner when it counts (check out the bounce-pop of T.Rex's "Hot Love"), or as muddy as necessary on tracks like the title cut. Hell, even the subject matter doesn't stray that far from the trippy psychedelia of their other outings. There're no birds with candy-bar heads, but "Hybrid Moments", The Frogs' "Weird on the Avenue", and Erickson's "I Walked with a Zombie" (among others) have a distinct oddity that's immediately reminiscent of vintage Elfin material. But then, finally getting around to the other hand in this comparison, they never sacrifice the personality of the various artists they tackle. Sure, the adjustment gets a little rough in places-- fans may rankle at the sheer absurdity of Rieger's Gary Numan impression on "My Shadow in Vain", and four-out-of-five dentists didn't believe it, but "Upside Down" sounds even lower-fi than ever before. Fortunately, these slight missteps take nothing away from the incredible effort put forth on Nothing's Going to Happen; every cut comes away as a singular application of the Elf aesthetic to every sort of music available while keeping individuality intact. Should keep the hiss fiends satisfied for quite a while.

Artist: Elf Power, Album: Nothing's Going to Happen, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Lo-fi hiss. Is there any finer sound than a power chord played through a four-track that sounds like it was built from Legos? It's like heroin to me; razorblades, anthrax, whatever-- wrap them in a few layers of fuzzed-up guitar and I'll eat it with my breakfast cereal. For years, Athens, GA stood as the richest resource of lo-fi hiss on Earth, but with the rapid expansion of the powerful Elephant 6 conglomerate, who controlled the area's supply, the hiss quickly dried up, leaving addicts like myself out in the cold. Fortunately, a handful of bands have emerged from E6 unscathed. Elf Power is one of the last remaining bastions of Athens' hiss production, having churned out irresistible fuzz-pop since the heady days of 1994. Now, on Nothing's Going to Happen, this Athens group has gotten its Elf Powers over sixteen tracks from all corners of the musical globe. And not just any songs. Great ones. Songs so near and dear to me that just the thought of having to do without the original versions makes me wanna fight. Naturally, I was a bit concerned as to whether Elf Power could do them justice, but the band quickly negated my worries with their trademarked geyser blasts of that precious opiate I cannot resist: lo-fi hiss. Out of the massive, monolithic indie stone-drone they've established as their signature sound, the Elves have hacked out an incredible array of covers from the most disparate group of names you're likely to see: Roky Erickson, Tall Dwarfs (classic lo-fi poppers in their own right), Jesus and Mary Chain (ditto), The... Misfits (what?), Bad Brains... "B-b-but these songs aren't going to sound like the originals! They'll be butchered!" some purist vainly cries. Silence! When I want your opinion I'll rattle your cage, even if you are half-right. On the surface, it may seem that a great many of these songs would be obscured by Elf Power's indie haze, but this is a labor done in earnest; these songs weren't chosen just to be buried. Hearing the D.C. hardcore of "Paid to Cum" through the light-hearted retro-buzz that only Elf Power can supply makes it overwhelmingly clear: the sincerest form of flattery isn't imitation; it's faithful interpretation. Despite the exterior differences in mood and instrumentation, everything here is carved from the same Rock, and as each track falls sway to Andrew Rieger's emotionally distant croons and wave after wave of acid-washed guitar crunch, it becomes evident that the band has accomplished something impressive. On one hand, Nothing's Going to Happen is so universally cohesive that someone unfamiliar with the roots of these tracks could be forgiven for mistaking this as an original effort. The slightly more subdued sound of Creatures plays well here, giving the group enough room to keep the acoustics cleaner when it counts (check out the bounce-pop of T.Rex's "Hot Love"), or as muddy as necessary on tracks like the title cut. Hell, even the subject matter doesn't stray that far from the trippy psychedelia of their other outings. There're no birds with candy-bar heads, but "Hybrid Moments", The Frogs' "Weird on the Avenue", and Erickson's "I Walked with a Zombie" (among others) have a distinct oddity that's immediately reminiscent of vintage Elfin material. But then, finally getting around to the other hand in this comparison, they never sacrifice the personality of the various artists they tackle. Sure, the adjustment gets a little rough in places-- fans may rankle at the sheer absurdity of Rieger's Gary Numan impression on "My Shadow in Vain", and four-out-of-five dentists didn't believe it, but "Upside Down" sounds even lower-fi than ever before. Fortunately, these slight missteps take nothing away from the incredible effort put forth on Nothing's Going to Happen; every cut comes away as a singular application of the Elf aesthetic to every sort of music available while keeping individuality intact. Should keep the hiss fiends satisfied for quite a while."

Black Moth Super Rainbow

Dandelion Gum

Electronic

Mark Richardson

Black Moth Super Rainbow apparently consists of a few pals with funny nicknames like Tobacco and Father Hummingbird, who dress strangely, occasionally wear masks, and make music together off in some isolated rural area near Pittsburgh. It all sounds suspiciously engineered to cultivate an image for the band as eccentric pop outsiders. Fortunately, the backstory doesn't matter much, because the first thing to do with a record like BMSR's latest, Dandelion Gum, is to forget about who made it: The music discourages any engagement with personality. For one thing, the album's vocals are warped beyond repair by vocoder, even when its tracks occasionally veer toward a mutant electronic version of sun-drenched folk-pop. Most of the time, you can't understand a thing being said, but here, that's not a problem: The meaning of the music comes through regardless. As a band, Black Moth Super Rainbow, have been toiling away for a few years now, amassing several full-lengths, CD-Rs, and collaborations, most notably a 2006 split EP with the Octopus Project. But where the group's earlier records, when not traveling a purely instrumental path, incorporated more or less "regular" singing, Dandelion Gum takes a big risk: It relies on a single vocal filter throughout the course of the entire album. Typically, a processed voice so readily becomes the focus of a song that, without at least some change to the effect, a full record can seem samey or redundant. Luckily, Black Moth have an unusual enough mood going here that the uniformity becomes a strength. The vocals are playful but not played for laughs; to me they sound claustrophobic, almost sickly. It's not a voice that brings shiny singing robots to mind, but rather people who've spent so much time indoors that their bodies have begun to change in unhealthy ways. To that end, the vocoder gives the record a shade of darkness it wouldn't otherwise have. The keyboards throughout sound vintage, with textures that bring to mind Mellotron and Moog, while the guitars are thin, trebly, and speckled with analog dust. The central pulsating riff of "Sun Lips" sounds an awful lot like the dream-channeled refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever", even as it's used in service of what is ultimately a tremendously simple little pop tune. "We miss you in summertime," the singer (that would be Tobacco on the mic) intones through his machine, and since it seems kind of like a love song, the presence of "we" is a little odd. Does he have a mouse in his pocket? Maybe it's one of those songs that seems directed to a woman but is really about weed. Somehow, though, it works. Chalk it up to the world of this album. If much of Dandelion Gum sounds like something recorded at home on the cheap, "Rollerdisco", which forms an impressive 1-2 punch after "Sun Lips", demonstrates that Black Moth gets the most out of their modest set-up. Like much of their past work, it comes over like a spry, airy, and tremendously evocative instrumental Boards of Canada interlude, from back when the Scottish duo still did that sort of thing. And the acoustic guitar loop in "Jump Into My Mouth and Breathe the Stardust" has the old-tape-found-under-a-tree-stump vibe that gave BoC's The Campfire Headphase an appealing sense of water-damaged psychedelia. Early Beck is even invoked on "Melt Me", which sounds an awful lot like what "Devil's Haircut" would have been had Carl Stephenson helped lay it down for Mellow Gold. Still, despite the occasionally folky melodic sensibility, Black Moth's aesthetic is always spacey-- they're more likely to be scoring a laser show at a planetarium than busking on a street corner. Wherever these guys are holed up and whether or not they really call the drummer Iffernaut, Dandelion Gum is a nice surprise and a good example of why doing one thing very well is sometimes more than enough.

Artist: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Album: Dandelion Gum, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Black Moth Super Rainbow apparently consists of a few pals with funny nicknames like Tobacco and Father Hummingbird, who dress strangely, occasionally wear masks, and make music together off in some isolated rural area near Pittsburgh. It all sounds suspiciously engineered to cultivate an image for the band as eccentric pop outsiders. Fortunately, the backstory doesn't matter much, because the first thing to do with a record like BMSR's latest, Dandelion Gum, is to forget about who made it: The music discourages any engagement with personality. For one thing, the album's vocals are warped beyond repair by vocoder, even when its tracks occasionally veer toward a mutant electronic version of sun-drenched folk-pop. Most of the time, you can't understand a thing being said, but here, that's not a problem: The meaning of the music comes through regardless. As a band, Black Moth Super Rainbow, have been toiling away for a few years now, amassing several full-lengths, CD-Rs, and collaborations, most notably a 2006 split EP with the Octopus Project. But where the group's earlier records, when not traveling a purely instrumental path, incorporated more or less "regular" singing, Dandelion Gum takes a big risk: It relies on a single vocal filter throughout the course of the entire album. Typically, a processed voice so readily becomes the focus of a song that, without at least some change to the effect, a full record can seem samey or redundant. Luckily, Black Moth have an unusual enough mood going here that the uniformity becomes a strength. The vocals are playful but not played for laughs; to me they sound claustrophobic, almost sickly. It's not a voice that brings shiny singing robots to mind, but rather people who've spent so much time indoors that their bodies have begun to change in unhealthy ways. To that end, the vocoder gives the record a shade of darkness it wouldn't otherwise have. The keyboards throughout sound vintage, with textures that bring to mind Mellotron and Moog, while the guitars are thin, trebly, and speckled with analog dust. The central pulsating riff of "Sun Lips" sounds an awful lot like the dream-channeled refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever", even as it's used in service of what is ultimately a tremendously simple little pop tune. "We miss you in summertime," the singer (that would be Tobacco on the mic) intones through his machine, and since it seems kind of like a love song, the presence of "we" is a little odd. Does he have a mouse in his pocket? Maybe it's one of those songs that seems directed to a woman but is really about weed. Somehow, though, it works. Chalk it up to the world of this album. If much of Dandelion Gum sounds like something recorded at home on the cheap, "Rollerdisco", which forms an impressive 1-2 punch after "Sun Lips", demonstrates that Black Moth gets the most out of their modest set-up. Like much of their past work, it comes over like a spry, airy, and tremendously evocative instrumental Boards of Canada interlude, from back when the Scottish duo still did that sort of thing. And the acoustic guitar loop in "Jump Into My Mouth and Breathe the Stardust" has the old-tape-found-under-a-tree-stump vibe that gave BoC's The Campfire Headphase an appealing sense of water-damaged psychedelia. Early Beck is even invoked on "Melt Me", which sounds an awful lot like what "Devil's Haircut" would have been had Carl Stephenson helped lay it down for Mellow Gold. Still, despite the occasionally folky melodic sensibility, Black Moth's aesthetic is always spacey-- they're more likely to be scoring a laser show at a planetarium than busking on a street corner. Wherever these guys are holed up and whether or not they really call the drummer Iffernaut, Dandelion Gum is a nice surprise and a good example of why doing one thing very well is sometimes more than enough."

Ty Segall

$INGLE$ 2

Rock

Evan Minsker

Ty Segall's 2011 singles compilation collected material he recorded and released between 2007 and 2010—25 loose ends from his "scrappy upstart" beginnings. His songs weren't especially complex, but they hit their marks and made an impact. His crazed performances were undeniable. Sure, the recording quality was pretty crummy, but you could say the same of the Oblivians' and Reatards' early records (and Segall's demos stand up alongside Soul Food and Teenage Hate). It was easy to root for him on those early outings—the fresh-faced punk screamer unleashing his inner demon and making songs promising enough to make you wonder where he'd go next. His trajectory from there—following Melted in 2010—isn't as easily summarized. After signing to Drag City, he generally moved in a singer/songwriter direction, but still kept releasing one-off rippers on labels like Castle Face, Goner, and Permanent. And now, his prodigious output is what he's best known for: Segall has released a lot of music, heaps of stuff, to the point where it's hard to keep track of it all, and he's refused to conform to a single style or aesthetic. Sometimes, he'll sing in a detached croon ("Fine") and trigger full-on folk nostalgia with his acoustic rambles ("Gold on the Shore", "The West"). Elsewhere, he transforms into Mr. Hyde for blasts of vicious, blistering rock'n'roll (Slaughterhouse). So when presented with a compilation of singles from his past four years, the first question is which version of Segall will get top billing: the lizard-brained Kiss/Black Sabbath apostle or the sentimental balladeer. Thankfully, $INGLE$ 2's 12 songs avoid pigeonholing. Segall brings the fuzz and fury, but the aggression is cut with tracks like "Falling Hair" and "Children of Paul", the plaintive Goodbye Bread era B-sides. If his previous singles compilation showed an artist asserting his garage punk dominance, this is the teenaged wrecker all grown up and ready to prove that he's capable of much more. For a collection of odds and ends, $INGLE$ 2 works remarkably well as an album. To my ear, it's sequenced better than Twins or Manipulator, which makes some sense: the tracks are presented in chronological order, which makes for a natural narrative, each of his short-lived modes transitioning into his next. It also helps that there's no filler to speak of—any A-sides already found on Drag City albums have been omitted in favor of B-sides and rarities. The only track that previously appeared on an album is "Hand Glams", but the single version is another beast entirely, and, with the addition of vocal harmonies and a psychedelic warble, a far more interesting one at that. It's almost hard to believe that Segall's scraps are this strong—take "For Those Who Weep", a Twins era B-side that ranks as one of the best songs he's written. It was a sign of things to come from Sleeper—warm acoustic material that sounds classic, the sort of thing you could have seen the Byrds covering. On the other end of the spectrum, Segall delivers "Fucked Up Motherfucker", which, with its vicious churn and Steve Mackay-style sax, deserves a place in the spotlight instead of getting lost in the shuffle as one-twelfth of Castle Face's Group Flex II book. Segall even breaks the trend of covers that feel like hollow throwaways. (The low point of Slaughterhouse was the Segall Band's version of "Diddy Wah Diddy".) His ramped up version of the Velvet Underground and Nico's "Femme Fatale" excels in this comp's context, as does his stomping rendition of the Groundhogs' "Cherry Red". The album ends on a high note with "Pettin the Dog", a predictably vicious GG Allin cover (made G-rated for WFMU, with a more radio-friendly title). Segall's most recent album, Manipulator, was at times a frustrating listen. It was quite good on a song for song basis, but it often felt safe, and Segall's mix of thrilling and somber was muddied. All of which explains why this compilation is so welcome. In addition to rounding up odds and ends, it's an important LP in its own right. Don't be fooled by how tacky the two dollar signs look in that album title: $INGLE$ 2 is the best Ty Segall album that got released in 2014.

Artist: Ty Segall, Album: $INGLE$ 2, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Ty Segall's 2011 singles compilation collected material he recorded and released between 2007 and 2010—25 loose ends from his "scrappy upstart" beginnings. His songs weren't especially complex, but they hit their marks and made an impact. His crazed performances were undeniable. Sure, the recording quality was pretty crummy, but you could say the same of the Oblivians' and Reatards' early records (and Segall's demos stand up alongside Soul Food and Teenage Hate). It was easy to root for him on those early outings—the fresh-faced punk screamer unleashing his inner demon and making songs promising enough to make you wonder where he'd go next. His trajectory from there—following Melted in 2010—isn't as easily summarized. After signing to Drag City, he generally moved in a singer/songwriter direction, but still kept releasing one-off rippers on labels like Castle Face, Goner, and Permanent. And now, his prodigious output is what he's best known for: Segall has released a lot of music, heaps of stuff, to the point where it's hard to keep track of it all, and he's refused to conform to a single style or aesthetic. Sometimes, he'll sing in a detached croon ("Fine") and trigger full-on folk nostalgia with his acoustic rambles ("Gold on the Shore", "The West"). Elsewhere, he transforms into Mr. Hyde for blasts of vicious, blistering rock'n'roll (Slaughterhouse). So when presented with a compilation of singles from his past four years, the first question is which version of Segall will get top billing: the lizard-brained Kiss/Black Sabbath apostle or the sentimental balladeer. Thankfully, $INGLE$ 2's 12 songs avoid pigeonholing. Segall brings the fuzz and fury, but the aggression is cut with tracks like "Falling Hair" and "Children of Paul", the plaintive Goodbye Bread era B-sides. If his previous singles compilation showed an artist asserting his garage punk dominance, this is the teenaged wrecker all grown up and ready to prove that he's capable of much more. For a collection of odds and ends, $INGLE$ 2 works remarkably well as an album. To my ear, it's sequenced better than Twins or Manipulator, which makes some sense: the tracks are presented in chronological order, which makes for a natural narrative, each of his short-lived modes transitioning into his next. It also helps that there's no filler to speak of—any A-sides already found on Drag City albums have been omitted in favor of B-sides and rarities. The only track that previously appeared on an album is "Hand Glams", but the single version is another beast entirely, and, with the addition of vocal harmonies and a psychedelic warble, a far more interesting one at that. It's almost hard to believe that Segall's scraps are this strong—take "For Those Who Weep", a Twins era B-side that ranks as one of the best songs he's written. It was a sign of things to come from Sleeper—warm acoustic material that sounds classic, the sort of thing you could have seen the Byrds covering. On the other end of the spectrum, Segall delivers "Fucked Up Motherfucker", which, with its vicious churn and Steve Mackay-style sax, deserves a place in the spotlight instead of getting lost in the shuffle as one-twelfth of Castle Face's Group Flex II book. Segall even breaks the trend of covers that feel like hollow throwaways. (The low point of Slaughterhouse was the Segall Band's version of "Diddy Wah Diddy".) His ramped up version of the Velvet Underground and Nico's "Femme Fatale" excels in this comp's context, as does his stomping rendition of the Groundhogs' "Cherry Red". The album ends on a high note with "Pettin the Dog", a predictably vicious GG Allin cover (made G-rated for WFMU, with a more radio-friendly title). Segall's most recent album, Manipulator, was at times a frustrating listen. It was quite good on a song for song basis, but it often felt safe, and Segall's mix of thrilling and somber was muddied. All of which explains why this compilation is so welcome. In addition to rounding up odds and ends, it's an important LP in its own right. Don't be fooled by how tacky the two dollar signs look in that album title: $INGLE$ 2 is the best Ty Segall album that got released in 2014."

Dead and Gone

The Beautician

Chris Dahlen

Shane Baker has that deep, gravelly, threatening voice that works so well with West Coast hardcore (or as the band calls it, "suburban blues")-- the kind of smoky, throat-shredded menace that makes you think he wants to swallow the microphone and then the whole audience. If your camp counselor were telling a ghost story and this guy jumped out at you at the end, there is no doubt that you would wet yourself. If you were eight. The new album from the Bay Area's Dead and Gone, The Beautician, is the first release since Baker quit and rejoined the band. While he was gone the other members formed a separate group, Creeps on Candy, and it's easy to see-- especially from their work-- that Baker is what makes this outfit, putting a face to the horrorshow mood and pulp-like lyrics. And this is pulp in the best sense of the word: the imagery is wittily imaginative, so much so that I didn't even need to be told that "Towers on Fire" wasn't a mockery of the Twin Towers disaster ("See the flames through the windows... And we are the walking dead"); I already guessed that they chose such gruesome lyrics just because they sound cool. In fact, the lyrics are littered with cartoonish horrors-- "Rats as Big as Rats" is particularly notable for the lines, "Drinking all my liquor like a pack of politicians/ RATS RATS RATS RATS!" The album's best track is another reflexively titled song, "Leave the Dead to Bury the Dead". Baker's stay in a crummy hotel room, abandoned by a girl, becomes an epic dirge. He turns the squalid imagery into a vision of hell, sinking from "there's nothing on TV" to "you're allergic to your own skin/ She won't call back," before he hits rock bottom: "And dust is dust/ And Christ just keeps on dying." Depending on how you read it, this could be the best song about post-hotel-masturbation guilt ever written. All thirteen songs are solid-- so solid, in fact, that few of them stand up and make a difference, melding into a half hour of steady dirgecore. But there's enough invention on the fringes to keep the momentum (the interlude-like "Ultimate Remote Control Toy", for instance, has a great burst of synths) and guitarist Rockey Crane plays grinding chords and arch lines with restrained but perfect color. On tracks like "Towers on Fire", he bashes the ground and then slices through with a high staccato melody; when he slows down, his lines chime through the doom. The rhythm section (bassist Brian Stern and drummer Joey Perales) is reliably heavy, too. The Beautician is Dead and Gone's third album, following two that were produced by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong. I conveniently left that fact to the end, so that any of you who are too indie-hip to get near a Green Day-related hardcore band could give this one a fair hearing: the anti-commercial, rough-edged production, perfectly controlled mood and terrific lyrics make the music entertaining beyond the mosh pits. It's recommended to anyone who wants a good album to scowl with.

Artist: Dead and Gone, Album: The Beautician, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Shane Baker has that deep, gravelly, threatening voice that works so well with West Coast hardcore (or as the band calls it, "suburban blues")-- the kind of smoky, throat-shredded menace that makes you think he wants to swallow the microphone and then the whole audience. If your camp counselor were telling a ghost story and this guy jumped out at you at the end, there is no doubt that you would wet yourself. If you were eight. The new album from the Bay Area's Dead and Gone, The Beautician, is the first release since Baker quit and rejoined the band. While he was gone the other members formed a separate group, Creeps on Candy, and it's easy to see-- especially from their work-- that Baker is what makes this outfit, putting a face to the horrorshow mood and pulp-like lyrics. And this is pulp in the best sense of the word: the imagery is wittily imaginative, so much so that I didn't even need to be told that "Towers on Fire" wasn't a mockery of the Twin Towers disaster ("See the flames through the windows... And we are the walking dead"); I already guessed that they chose such gruesome lyrics just because they sound cool. In fact, the lyrics are littered with cartoonish horrors-- "Rats as Big as Rats" is particularly notable for the lines, "Drinking all my liquor like a pack of politicians/ RATS RATS RATS RATS!" The album's best track is another reflexively titled song, "Leave the Dead to Bury the Dead". Baker's stay in a crummy hotel room, abandoned by a girl, becomes an epic dirge. He turns the squalid imagery into a vision of hell, sinking from "there's nothing on TV" to "you're allergic to your own skin/ She won't call back," before he hits rock bottom: "And dust is dust/ And Christ just keeps on dying." Depending on how you read it, this could be the best song about post-hotel-masturbation guilt ever written. All thirteen songs are solid-- so solid, in fact, that few of them stand up and make a difference, melding into a half hour of steady dirgecore. But there's enough invention on the fringes to keep the momentum (the interlude-like "Ultimate Remote Control Toy", for instance, has a great burst of synths) and guitarist Rockey Crane plays grinding chords and arch lines with restrained but perfect color. On tracks like "Towers on Fire", he bashes the ground and then slices through with a high staccato melody; when he slows down, his lines chime through the doom. The rhythm section (bassist Brian Stern and drummer Joey Perales) is reliably heavy, too. The Beautician is Dead and Gone's third album, following two that were produced by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong. I conveniently left that fact to the end, so that any of you who are too indie-hip to get near a Green Day-related hardcore band could give this one a fair hearing: the anti-commercial, rough-edged production, perfectly controlled mood and terrific lyrics make the music entertaining beyond the mosh pits. It's recommended to anyone who wants a good album to scowl with."

Grateful Dead

May 1977: Get Shown the Light

Rock

Jesse Jarnow

While nearly every Grateful Dead freak has an opinion on the matter, the Dead’s May 8, 1977 show at Cornell University’s Barton Hall has achieved the unofficial status as their best show ever. Regularly topping collector polls in fan bible DeadBase, Barton Hall has been added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, remixed in 5.1 surround sound by audiophile tapers, pressed to vinyl in the recent bootleg LP revival, replicated by cover bands (and released as a live album in its own right), and earned its own truther conspiracy theory, all before the show’s first official release, just in time for its 40th anniversary. With Cornell’s 25-minute “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire in the Mountain” as a joyous centerpiece, a pristine-sounding 11-CD/10-plus hour/four-show box set extravaganza finally elevates the mythical 5/8/77 from the long-existing Deadhead trading network to the officially streaming ecosystem. Though Cornell ’77 is neither the Dead’s most adventurous nor creative performance, it also remains arguably the Best Ever for several enduring reasons. Perhaps chief among them is that it is live Grateful Dead at its most accessible, with the Dead sounding vivid and tight and full of pep, characteristics shared by all four shows on May 1977: Get Shown the Light. Compared to most Grateful Dead shows, Cornell ’77 (and its chronological neighbors) are excellent places for (some) newbie listeners to start. Though an ongoing critical reassessment of the Dead has been based on their woolly psychedelic jam experiments of the ’60s and sweeping Americana of the early ’70s, the revered May 1977 model was perhaps the most conservative of the band’s long career. Those hoping to find evidence of the boundary-pushing Acid Testers should first seek recordings from earlier eras, but those looking to appreciate where those boundaries settled will find them here. It’s a conservatism some Dead freaks can’t abide, their interests fading in parallel with the band’s sense of serious exploration. Cracking only short windows into open-ended jamming, the band had put their psychedelic space opus “Dark Star” on ice during their year-and-a-half touring hiatus in 1975, and quickly abandoned the fusion experiments of that year’s Blues For Allah. While still containing the core band that regularly went on extended free improv tangents a half-decade earlier, the return of second drummer Mickey Hart set the course for the arena thunder that would follow. Jerry Garcia’s voice still retained much of its youthful sweetness, and—key for casual listeners—the second-set anchoring “drumz/space” jam hadn’t been invented yet. Even more crucially, in spring of 1977, the Dead had also just spent the early part of the year with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen, shaping what would become Terrapin Station, released that July. Olsen, who stayed on the road with the band for late-night/off-day mixing sessions until just before the box’s start, reportedly told the band’s two drummers to tighten up. They did. Though Terrapin wasn’t the hit that their new label boss Clive Davis of Arista Records wanted when he signed the band, Olsen’s influence was arguably even more important, the last piece feeding into perhaps their most legendary tour. When the curtain rises on Get Shown the Light—on the 12th anniversary of the proto-Dead’s debut at a Menlo Park pizza parlor—the Dead sound ebullient as they crack into Chuck Berry’s “The Promised Land.” Almost inadvertently, the band created a new kind of greatest hits album on every night of the spring ’77 tour, churning out different combinations of classics and concise jams, plus a small handful of new songs. The result was a much-loved conceptual box set available for years exclusively via the Deadheads’ non-commercial alternative distribution network of tape traders. Instead of one mainstream smash, Keith Olsen yielded the band many more underground hits. And counting Get Shown the Light, 19 of the tour’s 30 shows have now been officially released. Alternating songs led by guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, the band virtually never worked from a setlist, though in 1977 they still occasionally repeated songs from show-to-show. Subsequently, *Get Shown the Light *winds up with four versions of Weir’s brand new paranoid space-reggae jam “Estimated Prophet.” On the former, one can very clearly hear the Dead’s creative process unfolding. Over the first three nights, “Estimated Prophet” stands alone, as it had during the previous 15 versions since its February debut, Garcia’s Mu-Tron III pedal giving his quizzical solos a whoa-his-guitar-is-talkin’-to-me tone, surely translatable by some Deadheads. On the last night of the box though—May 9 at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium—Weir lets the rhythm tension slack, the band shifts easily and thrillingly into the time of no-time, and (too soon) segue into the decade-old triplet-powered improv vehicle “The Other One.” By the year’s end, “Estimated Prophet” had settled permanently into its new second set slot, its non-ending a portal for the band’s evolving second set jam suite. The vast majority of the box showcases an improvisation of a different kind, though: the sound of the band changing slowly over time, fixed only temporarily as their 1977 selves. This is especially evident during the shorter songs of the first sets whose arrangements remained fairly constant from year to year. Introducing several albums worth of new material during Mickey Hart’s half-decade touring absence from the band, the band was still adjusting to his return. On Garcia favorites like “Bertha” and the traditional “Peggy-O” (both played all three nights besides Cornell), the band’s groove is in the process of shifting. The former’s barroom jaunt is taken over by a heavier two-drummer backbeat, the latter’s sparse ghost-folk is likewise taken over by a heavier two-drummer backbeat. It’s something of a motif. Elsewhere, as during the rippling and cresting “Mississippi Half-Step” at Boston Garden on May 7, the drummers create an even bigger sound for Garcia to ride. To Deadheads, each of the four shows of Get Shown the Light has its own personality. Defined predominantly by the shows’ big jams and song suites, all the tiny long-term changes in the band’s complexion find their biggest outlet as they mix with the real-time creative decisions of the musicians. Like Cornell, New Haven’s second set centers around the then-new pairing of “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain”, a 23-minute combination that opens into a quiet valley, tethered by Mickey Hart’s chat

Artist: Grateful Dead, Album: May 1977: Get Shown the Light, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "While nearly every Grateful Dead freak has an opinion on the matter, the Dead’s May 8, 1977 show at Cornell University’s Barton Hall has achieved the unofficial status as their best show ever. Regularly topping collector polls in fan bible DeadBase, Barton Hall has been added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, remixed in 5.1 surround sound by audiophile tapers, pressed to vinyl in the recent bootleg LP revival, replicated by cover bands (and released as a live album in its own right), and earned its own truther conspiracy theory, all before the show’s first official release, just in time for its 40th anniversary. With Cornell’s 25-minute “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire in the Mountain” as a joyous centerpiece, a pristine-sounding 11-CD/10-plus hour/four-show box set extravaganza finally elevates the mythical 5/8/77 from the long-existing Deadhead trading network to the officially streaming ecosystem. Though Cornell ’77 is neither the Dead’s most adventurous nor creative performance, it also remains arguably the Best Ever for several enduring reasons. Perhaps chief among them is that it is live Grateful Dead at its most accessible, with the Dead sounding vivid and tight and full of pep, characteristics shared by all four shows on May 1977: Get Shown the Light. Compared to most Grateful Dead shows, Cornell ’77 (and its chronological neighbors) are excellent places for (some) newbie listeners to start. Though an ongoing critical reassessment of the Dead has been based on their woolly psychedelic jam experiments of the ’60s and sweeping Americana of the early ’70s, the revered May 1977 model was perhaps the most conservative of the band’s long career. Those hoping to find evidence of the boundary-pushing Acid Testers should first seek recordings from earlier eras, but those looking to appreciate where those boundaries settled will find them here. It’s a conservatism some Dead freaks can’t abide, their interests fading in parallel with the band’s sense of serious exploration. Cracking only short windows into open-ended jamming, the band had put their psychedelic space opus “Dark Star” on ice during their year-and-a-half touring hiatus in 1975, and quickly abandoned the fusion experiments of that year’s Blues For Allah. While still containing the core band that regularly went on extended free improv tangents a half-decade earlier, the return of second drummer Mickey Hart set the course for the arena thunder that would follow. Jerry Garcia’s voice still retained much of its youthful sweetness, and—key for casual listeners—the second-set anchoring “drumz/space” jam hadn’t been invented yet. Even more crucially, in spring of 1977, the Dead had also just spent the early part of the year with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen, shaping what would become Terrapin Station, released that July. Olsen, who stayed on the road with the band for late-night/off-day mixing sessions until just before the box’s start, reportedly told the band’s two drummers to tighten up. They did. Though Terrapin wasn’t the hit that their new label boss Clive Davis of Arista Records wanted when he signed the band, Olsen’s influence was arguably even more important, the last piece feeding into perhaps their most legendary tour. When the curtain rises on Get Shown the Light—on the 12th anniversary of the proto-Dead’s debut at a Menlo Park pizza parlor—the Dead sound ebullient as they crack into Chuck Berry’s “The Promised Land.” Almost inadvertently, the band created a new kind of greatest hits album on every night of the spring ’77 tour, churning out different combinations of classics and concise jams, plus a small handful of new songs. The result was a much-loved conceptual box set available for years exclusively via the Deadheads’ non-commercial alternative distribution network of tape traders. Instead of one mainstream smash, Keith Olsen yielded the band many more underground hits. And counting Get Shown the Light, 19 of the tour’s 30 shows have now been officially released. Alternating songs led by guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, the band virtually never worked from a setlist, though in 1977 they still occasionally repeated songs from show-to-show. Subsequently, *Get Shown the Light *winds up with four versions of Weir’s brand new paranoid space-reggae jam “Estimated Prophet.” On the former, one can very clearly hear the Dead’s creative process unfolding. Over the first three nights, “Estimated Prophet” stands alone, as it had during the previous 15 versions since its February debut, Garcia’s Mu-Tron III pedal giving his quizzical solos a whoa-his-guitar-is-talkin’-to-me tone, surely translatable by some Deadheads. On the last night of the box though—May 9 at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium—Weir lets the rhythm tension slack, the band shifts easily and thrillingly into the time of no-time, and (too soon) segue into the decade-old triplet-powered improv vehicle “The Other One.” By the year’s end, “Estimated Prophet” had settled permanently into its new second set slot, its non-ending a portal for the band’s evolving second set jam suite. The vast majority of the box showcases an improvisation of a different kind, though: the sound of the band changing slowly over time, fixed only temporarily as their 1977 selves. This is especially evident during the shorter songs of the first sets whose arrangements remained fairly constant from year to year. Introducing several albums worth of new material during Mickey Hart’s half-decade touring absence from the band, the band was still adjusting to his return. On Garcia favorites like “Bertha” and the traditional “Peggy-O” (both played all three nights besides Cornell), the band’s groove is in the process of shifting. The former’s barroom jaunt is taken over by a heavier two-drummer backbeat, the latter’s sparse ghost-folk is likewise taken over by a heavier two-drummer backbeat. It’s something of a motif. Elsewhere, as during the rippling and cresting “Mississippi Half-Step” at Boston Garden on May 7, the drummers create an even bigger sound for Garcia to ride. To Deadheads, each of the four shows of Get Shown the Light has its own personality. Defined predominantly by the shows’ big jams and song suites, all the tiny long-term changes in the band’s complexion find their biggest outlet as they mix with the real-time creative decisions of the musicians. Like Cornell, New Haven’s second set centers around the then-new pairing of “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain”, a 23-minute combination that opens into a quiet valley, tethered by Mickey Hart’s chat"

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin IV

Rock

Mark Richardson

With Led Zeppelin, there was no break-in period, no "early phase" where they figured out what kind of band they wanted to be. They were fully formed from the first repetition of the "Good Times Bad Times" riff, and they powered along through their first half-dozen albums crushing everything in their path. Zep never had their Sgt. Pepper's, their Exile, their Who's Next, because every album was more or less that good—for a while, anyway. This was a band that knew the music it wanted to make and executed it with ruthless precision. The second trio of Led Zeppelin reissues (the fourth album and Houses of the Holy came out last fall, Physical Graffiti this week) found the band inhabiting what Neil Tennant once described (and Tom Ewing fleshed out) as their "imperial phase." Riding on their massive initial success, and pushed even further by the game-changing success of "Stairway to Heaven", everything they tried during these years somehow worked. If you grew up on classic rock radio, you sometimes felt like you were listening to Led Zeppelin's fourth album on shuffle. It has eight songs, all of them are huge, and one, "Stairway to Heaven", frequently lingers near the top of lists of the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. Given its place in culture, IV can seem like an album of moments more than songs. Individual parts have been selected, cropped, amplified, and dropped into both songs by other artists and into our collective unconscious. Every song has two or three sections that are instantly identifiable and always seem to be playing somewhere nearby. The circular guitar figure in "Black Dog"; the chiming mandolin in "Going to California"; Bonham's cymbal bashing on "Rock and Roll". It's hard to hear "When the Levee Breaks", by now, and not think of hip-hop. If Led Zeppelin's music formed the DNA of anything that could remotely be called "hard rock," IV is a petri dish overflowing with stem cells. The debut was darker and moodier, II was heavier, and III was prettier, but the fourth album is a triumph of form meeting function. "Stairway to Heaven" is so ubiquitous that it cycles through phases of deep reverence and self-parody, and the movement between these two poles is so rapid it all becomes a blur. This happens both for individual listeners (I'm going to guess the very young still discover this song and have their idea of what a rock song can be expanded considerably) and on the level of mass culture. It's both a marker of religion and an instant punchline, a singularity that sucks in a world of experience and observation and jeering laughter and sincere tears and compacts it all into an infinitely dense point. Like many who both love it and hate it, I pretty much never need to hear it again. But "Stairway" aside, IV is their least weird album. It's basically their stab at perfection, and they get there, but this band was always at its most interesting at the margins, when they had the possibility of failure. By 1973, Zeppelin's only competition for Biggest Band in the World was the Stones, who were losing their hunger. Later that year, the Stones would put out Goat's Head Soup, beginning a period of drift they wouldn't return from until 1978's Some Girls. The field was clear, with the '60s starting to recede in the rearview, but punk was still a couple of years away, Zeppelin didn't waste the opportunity. Houses of the Holy, their fifth album in four years, takes the most powerful moments of the fourth album and amplifies them, and also adds some oddball experiments that flesh out the Led Zeppelin story. They are most in the zone on "Over the Hills and Far Away", which is on a very short list of best songs Zep ever wrote, which is to say that it's among the best rock songs ever written. Everything they ever did well—pastoral beauty, crunchy riffs, stop/start changes, monster drum grooves—could be found on this single track. "The Ocean" features what could be Jimmy Page's single greatest riff. "The Rain Song" is a masterful study in the power of guitar tone, both for its full acoustic strumming and the electric guitar work that has always evoked the weather of its title. John Paul Jones' gorgeous Mellotron passage is one of the definitive uses of that strange instrument. And "No Quarter" is a disorienting bad-vibes epic, archetypal of the '70s, capturing the bleak interiority of a certain kind of drug experience. Houses of the Holy is a perfectly reasonable choice for best Zeppelin LP, even if it had signs that the band couldn't last forever. "The Song Remains the Same" is the first sign of Robert Plant using a more pinched sound for his upper register, adapting to that gradually disappearing top octave by contorting his vocals into a strange squeal. By the last two Zeppelin records this would be his default approach when singing in this range. "The Crunge" is a sour version of funk, a weirdly fascinating half-song complete with a groaner of a James Brown joke. John Bonham supposedly disliked "D'yer Mak'er" so much he refused to write an interesting drum part, sticking instead with the first shuffle beat that came to mind. It was Zeppelin's stab at reggae, and though they never try to breathe any space or light into the mix, it's impossible to dismiss the song's easy catchiness, its affection for doo-wop melody, the motion of Page's spindly guitar. Houses of the Holy might be Zeppelin's most impressive album on a purely sonic level, and this particular remaster reinforces that notion. The best remastering jobs always offer a subtle improvement—a touch of EQing here, a bit more volume there without overdoing it. Taken together, they hopefully offer more detail, and these versions make the grade. The bonus discs, however, continue to be disappointing. From one angle, there's actually something admirable about how little Led Zeppelin left in the vaults. It was a testament to their brutal efficiency as a rock machine. But aside from the live set released with the debut, the bonus discs so far have been the definition of "fans only." They are mostly filled with "alternate mixes," which is a strange concept. Mixes freeze in time a single moment that is the end result of many individual decisions; they document fader settings. Alternate mixes showing what could have happened are literally infinite; all these mixes are said to have been created while the album was being mixed, and there is no reason to doubt that, but the truth is Page could just as easily make an "alternate mix" of any one of these songs this morning and no one would know the difference. The fact that a mandolin was briefly

Artist: Led Zeppelin, Album: Led Zeppelin IV, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.1 Album review: "With Led Zeppelin, there was no break-in period, no "early phase" where they figured out what kind of band they wanted to be. They were fully formed from the first repetition of the "Good Times Bad Times" riff, and they powered along through their first half-dozen albums crushing everything in their path. Zep never had their Sgt. Pepper's, their Exile, their Who's Next, because every album was more or less that good—for a while, anyway. This was a band that knew the music it wanted to make and executed it with ruthless precision. The second trio of Led Zeppelin reissues (the fourth album and Houses of the Holy came out last fall, Physical Graffiti this week) found the band inhabiting what Neil Tennant once described (and Tom Ewing fleshed out) as their "imperial phase." Riding on their massive initial success, and pushed even further by the game-changing success of "Stairway to Heaven", everything they tried during these years somehow worked. If you grew up on classic rock radio, you sometimes felt like you were listening to Led Zeppelin's fourth album on shuffle. It has eight songs, all of them are huge, and one, "Stairway to Heaven", frequently lingers near the top of lists of the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. Given its place in culture, IV can seem like an album of moments more than songs. Individual parts have been selected, cropped, amplified, and dropped into both songs by other artists and into our collective unconscious. Every song has two or three sections that are instantly identifiable and always seem to be playing somewhere nearby. The circular guitar figure in "Black Dog"; the chiming mandolin in "Going to California"; Bonham's cymbal bashing on "Rock and Roll". It's hard to hear "When the Levee Breaks", by now, and not think of hip-hop. If Led Zeppelin's music formed the DNA of anything that could remotely be called "hard rock," IV is a petri dish overflowing with stem cells. The debut was darker and moodier, II was heavier, and III was prettier, but the fourth album is a triumph of form meeting function. "Stairway to Heaven" is so ubiquitous that it cycles through phases of deep reverence and self-parody, and the movement between these two poles is so rapid it all becomes a blur. This happens both for individual listeners (I'm going to guess the very young still discover this song and have their idea of what a rock song can be expanded considerably) and on the level of mass culture. It's both a marker of religion and an instant punchline, a singularity that sucks in a world of experience and observation and jeering laughter and sincere tears and compacts it all into an infinitely dense point. Like many who both love it and hate it, I pretty much never need to hear it again. But "Stairway" aside, IV is their least weird album. It's basically their stab at perfection, and they get there, but this band was always at its most interesting at the margins, when they had the possibility of failure. By 1973, Zeppelin's only competition for Biggest Band in the World was the Stones, who were losing their hunger. Later that year, the Stones would put out Goat's Head Soup, beginning a period of drift they wouldn't return from until 1978's Some Girls. The field was clear, with the '60s starting to recede in the rearview, but punk was still a couple of years away, Zeppelin didn't waste the opportunity. Houses of the Holy, their fifth album in four years, takes the most powerful moments of the fourth album and amplifies them, and also adds some oddball experiments that flesh out the Led Zeppelin story. They are most in the zone on "Over the Hills and Far Away", which is on a very short list of best songs Zep ever wrote, which is to say that it's among the best rock songs ever written. Everything they ever did well—pastoral beauty, crunchy riffs, stop/start changes, monster drum grooves—could be found on this single track. "The Ocean" features what could be Jimmy Page's single greatest riff. "The Rain Song" is a masterful study in the power of guitar tone, both for its full acoustic strumming and the electric guitar work that has always evoked the weather of its title. John Paul Jones' gorgeous Mellotron passage is one of the definitive uses of that strange instrument. And "No Quarter" is a disorienting bad-vibes epic, archetypal of the '70s, capturing the bleak interiority of a certain kind of drug experience. Houses of the Holy is a perfectly reasonable choice for best Zeppelin LP, even if it had signs that the band couldn't last forever. "The Song Remains the Same" is the first sign of Robert Plant using a more pinched sound for his upper register, adapting to that gradually disappearing top octave by contorting his vocals into a strange squeal. By the last two Zeppelin records this would be his default approach when singing in this range. "The Crunge" is a sour version of funk, a weirdly fascinating half-song complete with a groaner of a James Brown joke. John Bonham supposedly disliked "D'yer Mak'er" so much he refused to write an interesting drum part, sticking instead with the first shuffle beat that came to mind. It was Zeppelin's stab at reggae, and though they never try to breathe any space or light into the mix, it's impossible to dismiss the song's easy catchiness, its affection for doo-wop melody, the motion of Page's spindly guitar. Houses of the Holy might be Zeppelin's most impressive album on a purely sonic level, and this particular remaster reinforces that notion. The best remastering jobs always offer a subtle improvement—a touch of EQing here, a bit more volume there without overdoing it. Taken together, they hopefully offer more detail, and these versions make the grade. The bonus discs, however, continue to be disappointing. From one angle, there's actually something admirable about how little Led Zeppelin left in the vaults. It was a testament to their brutal efficiency as a rock machine. But aside from the live set released with the debut, the bonus discs so far have been the definition of "fans only." They are mostly filled with "alternate mixes," which is a strange concept. Mixes freeze in time a single moment that is the end result of many individual decisions; they document fader settings. Alternate mixes showing what could have happened are literally infinite; all these mixes are said to have been created while the album was being mixed, and there is no reason to doubt that, but the truth is Page could just as easily make an "alternate mix" of any one of these songs this morning and no one would know the difference. The fact that a mandolin was briefly "

Luke Slater

Alright on Top

Electronic

Paul Cooper

At great risk, I am making this top-secret memo public. If I'm found dead in a mangled car-wreck, you'll all know why: From: Ryan Pitchfork 126 W. Lake Shore Dr Chicago, IL 60601 To: George Tenet CIA Headquarters McLean, VA 22101 Dear Mr. Tenet, Thank you for your May 3 memo (your ref. "Pitchfork! I want some answers!"). I can understand your concern in the matter of Luke Slater and his recent Alright on Top release. In this reply, I plan to outline for you my understanding of the situation, what led to its occurrence and what remedies I have already put in place to prevent it from happening again. Allow me to briefly outline Pitchfork's engagement with Slater. First and foremost, I would like to state categorically that Slater has been one of Pitchfork's most effective operatives, domestic or overseas. Since joining the covert program, Slater has, until now, never failed to follow through on the program's directive, namely to offset and countermand hostile musical activities. Ever since one of our field operatives discovered the fifteen-year-old Slater manipulating his Commodore 64's sound card, Pitchfork Covert Operations (PCO) has recognized Slater's value in the struggle against the menace of formulaic music. In 1987, PCO sent Slater three truckloads of equipment and the back catalogs of Pitchfork-funded Detroit techno labels Transmat and Planet E. With little instruction, Slater began to prove his worth. His first releases on the UK GPR label under his own name and as Morganistic more than met expectations. With the unveiling of his Planetary Assault Systems project in 1992, PCO decided to maintain only a weather eye on Slater's activities. No one at PCO saw reason to monitor him any more heavily. In fact, his multi-album deal with Mute's techno division, Novamute, confirmed that PCO could trust Slater to carry out his mission without constant supervision. I need not remind you that many Americans are alive and enjoying fine music today because of Slater's ambitious and innovative Freek Funk and Wireless albums. When PCO's UK field office reported that Slater had communicated that his next album would be a slight change of direction and that he was introducing vocals, we saw no need to inquire any further. At the time, you will recall that PCO's budget was cut and POTUS had instructed you to ensure that something musically substantial should come out of his home state. If I may remind you, this confluence of events severely compromised PCO activities. Not only was the operating budget slashed, but I had to divert 86% of what was left to guarantee the actualization of POTUS' executive order. Do you know how much leave I had to cancel, how much mandatory overtime I had to insist upon in order to transform four Austin, TX douchebags into the cream of the indie rock nation? Hookwinking hipsters with a 10.0 isn't like falling off a log, sir. In short, Source Tags and Codes about crippled PCO. Something like Alright on Top was bound to happen. At first glance, Alright on Top seems a viable proposition-- Slater's UK spin on Motor City techno with vocals from Ricky Barrow, formerly of UK social-consciousness techno act The Aloof. I think you'd agree that that the single and album opener, "Nothing At All" pair up perfectly. Barrow's mannered R&B; moan is rendered all the more forcefulby Slater's relentless stomping techno funk. But the subsequent tracks definitely warrant thorough investigation. For one, I want to know from where Slater acquired that blip kick drum, outlawed by UN treaty since the 1993 Culture Beat incident. Similar Euro pappy trance vibes occur throughout Alright on Top. Slater is content to make his songs as banal as possible, and Barrow is content to croon his moon-in-June type lyrics as if no one really cares. Occasionally Slater takes on vocal duties and employs a vocoder, the use of which goes against internal PCO policy after the Cher debacle. But Slater's use of the device in no way contravenes international treaties. Alright on Top closes with (and I think you'll not deny this, sir) the unequivocal return-to-form "Doctor of Divinity," which at least gives me hope for the future of Slater's activities. I share your concern over symbolically disguised messages in the cover art. It doesn't take a Hoover or a McCarthy to recognize that the Trimphone prominently featured on the cover is nothing less that an invitation to wayward former Soviet Bloc nations to contact Slater about possible double-agent activities. Likewise, Slater's Rollerball costume proclaims his intent to go rogue. Remember Kim Philby? The British do have a track record of defecting and spilling the proverbial beans. To prevent such a disaster, I have taken steps to insure that Slater stays within the PCO program and furthers its crucial aims. Though I foresee no improvement in PCO's budgetary constraints, I will divert funds from other projects. Because the Trail of Dead project has successfully placed Texans at the top of the indie rock mountain (BTW, where was POTUS' acknowledgment or thank you card?) and PCO has contained the electroclash threat to just one section of Brooklyn, I have enough resources to guarantee the ongoing success of Slater and of the entire PCO. Substandard music will one day be eradicated from this world. My loyal and devoted team and I are proud to be part of this war on artistic terrorism. God bless America! Yours truly, Ryan Pitchfork Director-for-Life Pitchfork Covert Operations

Artist: Luke Slater, Album: Alright on Top, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 3.6 Album review: "At great risk, I am making this top-secret memo public. If I'm found dead in a mangled car-wreck, you'll all know why: From: Ryan Pitchfork 126 W. Lake Shore Dr Chicago, IL 60601 To: George Tenet CIA Headquarters McLean, VA 22101 Dear Mr. Tenet, Thank you for your May 3 memo (your ref. "Pitchfork! I want some answers!"). I can understand your concern in the matter of Luke Slater and his recent Alright on Top release. In this reply, I plan to outline for you my understanding of the situation, what led to its occurrence and what remedies I have already put in place to prevent it from happening again. Allow me to briefly outline Pitchfork's engagement with Slater. First and foremost, I would like to state categorically that Slater has been one of Pitchfork's most effective operatives, domestic or overseas. Since joining the covert program, Slater has, until now, never failed to follow through on the program's directive, namely to offset and countermand hostile musical activities. Ever since one of our field operatives discovered the fifteen-year-old Slater manipulating his Commodore 64's sound card, Pitchfork Covert Operations (PCO) has recognized Slater's value in the struggle against the menace of formulaic music. In 1987, PCO sent Slater three truckloads of equipment and the back catalogs of Pitchfork-funded Detroit techno labels Transmat and Planet E. With little instruction, Slater began to prove his worth. His first releases on the UK GPR label under his own name and as Morganistic more than met expectations. With the unveiling of his Planetary Assault Systems project in 1992, PCO decided to maintain only a weather eye on Slater's activities. No one at PCO saw reason to monitor him any more heavily. In fact, his multi-album deal with Mute's techno division, Novamute, confirmed that PCO could trust Slater to carry out his mission without constant supervision. I need not remind you that many Americans are alive and enjoying fine music today because of Slater's ambitious and innovative Freek Funk and Wireless albums. When PCO's UK field office reported that Slater had communicated that his next album would be a slight change of direction and that he was introducing vocals, we saw no need to inquire any further. At the time, you will recall that PCO's budget was cut and POTUS had instructed you to ensure that something musically substantial should come out of his home state. If I may remind you, this confluence of events severely compromised PCO activities. Not only was the operating budget slashed, but I had to divert 86% of what was left to guarantee the actualization of POTUS' executive order. Do you know how much leave I had to cancel, how much mandatory overtime I had to insist upon in order to transform four Austin, TX douchebags into the cream of the indie rock nation? Hookwinking hipsters with a 10.0 isn't like falling off a log, sir. In short, Source Tags and Codes about crippled PCO. Something like Alright on Top was bound to happen. At first glance, Alright on Top seems a viable proposition-- Slater's UK spin on Motor City techno with vocals from Ricky Barrow, formerly of UK social-consciousness techno act The Aloof. I think you'd agree that that the single and album opener, "Nothing At All" pair up perfectly. Barrow's mannered R&B; moan is rendered all the more forcefulby Slater's relentless stomping techno funk. But the subsequent tracks definitely warrant thorough investigation. For one, I want to know from where Slater acquired that blip kick drum, outlawed by UN treaty since the 1993 Culture Beat incident. Similar Euro pappy trance vibes occur throughout Alright on Top. Slater is content to make his songs as banal as possible, and Barrow is content to croon his moon-in-June type lyrics as if no one really cares. Occasionally Slater takes on vocal duties and employs a vocoder, the use of which goes against internal PCO policy after the Cher debacle. But Slater's use of the device in no way contravenes international treaties. Alright on Top closes with (and I think you'll not deny this, sir) the unequivocal return-to-form "Doctor of Divinity," which at least gives me hope for the future of Slater's activities. I share your concern over symbolically disguised messages in the cover art. It doesn't take a Hoover or a McCarthy to recognize that the Trimphone prominently featured on the cover is nothing less that an invitation to wayward former Soviet Bloc nations to contact Slater about possible double-agent activities. Likewise, Slater's Rollerball costume proclaims his intent to go rogue. Remember Kim Philby? The British do have a track record of defecting and spilling the proverbial beans. To prevent such a disaster, I have taken steps to insure that Slater stays within the PCO program and furthers its crucial aims. Though I foresee no improvement in PCO's budgetary constraints, I will divert funds from other projects. Because the Trail of Dead project has successfully placed Texans at the top of the indie rock mountain (BTW, where was POTUS' acknowledgment or thank you card?) and PCO has contained the electroclash threat to just one section of Brooklyn, I have enough resources to guarantee the ongoing success of Slater and of the entire PCO. Substandard music will one day be eradicated from this world. My loyal and devoted team and I are proud to be part of this war on artistic terrorism. God bless America! Yours truly, Ryan Pitchfork Director-for-Life Pitchfork Covert Operations"

Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury

DROKK: Music Inspired by Mega-City One

Electronic,Rock

Nick Neyland

The fictional Mega-City One is the ultimate impure vision of the future. Apartment blocks shoot toward the heavens, spilling over with bored and persecuted citizens. Unemployment rates are high. The crime rate is even higher. Forget about buying coffee-- it's been outlawed as an illegal stimulant. Patrolling the streets are a series of fascistic Judges, employed to keep the peace by any means necessary. It makes the Blade Runner universe look like Disneyland. At least, that's how the makers of popular Brit comic 2000 AD imagine it, as told through the eyes of their most famous character, the granite-jawed Judge Dredd. Portishead's Geoff Barrow was a kid who, like me, grew up devouring this world, buying 2000 AD week after week to see which perp was going to end up on the business end of Dredd's lawgiver. DROKK is Barrow's tribute to Mega-City One, coming out of a series of sessions with Emmy-nominated composer Ben Salisbury. Dredd is the kind of character who continues to leave a vivid imprint on the minds of successive generations of comic book fans, but he's been remarkably ill-served when removed from the confines of 2000 AD. The Fink Brothers' musical tribute to Mega-City One, and Sylvester Stallone's hacky 1995 interpretation of Dredd, are best forgotten. Despite this, hopes for Pete Travis' forthcoming big-budget adaptation, simply titled Dredd, are reasonably high. Even Barrow, who began this project with Salisbury to provide the soundtrack to Travis' film, only to find their work left on the cutting room floor, said he thought the feature was going to be "fucking brilliant." But Dredd will feel less foreboding without their music. Armed with three vintage Oberheim two-voice synths, the pair reaches into the grubby, blackened heart of Mega-City One, via a soundtrack flooded with the kind of trepidation that classic 2000 AD artists like Brian Bolland so often conjured up. DROKK reveals Barrow's comic book fandom, but it also highlights his taste in soundtracks. There's no escaping the specter of John Carpenter hanging over these tracks, especially his drone-heavy Assault on Precinct 13 score. But there's a relentless darkness at work here that even Carpenter might shy away from dipping into. The Escape From New York theme had a sanguine beauty to it, but Barrow and Salisbury lock into an obdurate form of austerity early on ("Lawmaster/Pursuit", "Helmet Theme") and never let the tension drop. Mostly, the atmosphere is meat-locker cold ("Scope the Block", "Clone Gunman"), and while it never reaches the extremities of Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle, it bears a similar kind of ornery undertow. Occasionally they work in pure drones, adding a portentous type of beauty to tracks like "Exhale" and "Iso Hymn", making it feel like all the air just got sucked out of the room. Elsewhere, it's not hard to hear traces of Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner and the work Tangerine Dream carried out for Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. Like those albums, the music on DROKK provides a definite sense of journey, a feeling that we're being tangled up in plot twists that unravel, conclude, and maybe leave a few questions open at the end. Soundtracks that work well often create a strong sense of narrative when isolated from the visuals they're representing, and DROKK functions in much the same manner. It's even easy to picture the credits scrolling over "End Theme". Sadly, we'll never see Dredd gliding through the city on his Lawmaster while the pummeling "Titan Bound" echoes through a multiplex. But maybe it's better that way. Instead, this album provides Dredd fans with a chance to fix this music to their own favorite stories, giving the unrelenting decay and despair of Mega-City One the ferociously solemn musical backdrop it's always deserved.

Artist: Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury, Album: DROKK: Music Inspired by Mega-City One, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "The fictional Mega-City One is the ultimate impure vision of the future. Apartment blocks shoot toward the heavens, spilling over with bored and persecuted citizens. Unemployment rates are high. The crime rate is even higher. Forget about buying coffee-- it's been outlawed as an illegal stimulant. Patrolling the streets are a series of fascistic Judges, employed to keep the peace by any means necessary. It makes the Blade Runner universe look like Disneyland. At least, that's how the makers of popular Brit comic 2000 AD imagine it, as told through the eyes of their most famous character, the granite-jawed Judge Dredd. Portishead's Geoff Barrow was a kid who, like me, grew up devouring this world, buying 2000 AD week after week to see which perp was going to end up on the business end of Dredd's lawgiver. DROKK is Barrow's tribute to Mega-City One, coming out of a series of sessions with Emmy-nominated composer Ben Salisbury. Dredd is the kind of character who continues to leave a vivid imprint on the minds of successive generations of comic book fans, but he's been remarkably ill-served when removed from the confines of 2000 AD. The Fink Brothers' musical tribute to Mega-City One, and Sylvester Stallone's hacky 1995 interpretation of Dredd, are best forgotten. Despite this, hopes for Pete Travis' forthcoming big-budget adaptation, simply titled Dredd, are reasonably high. Even Barrow, who began this project with Salisbury to provide the soundtrack to Travis' film, only to find their work left on the cutting room floor, said he thought the feature was going to be "fucking brilliant." But Dredd will feel less foreboding without their music. Armed with three vintage Oberheim two-voice synths, the pair reaches into the grubby, blackened heart of Mega-City One, via a soundtrack flooded with the kind of trepidation that classic 2000 AD artists like Brian Bolland so often conjured up. DROKK reveals Barrow's comic book fandom, but it also highlights his taste in soundtracks. There's no escaping the specter of John Carpenter hanging over these tracks, especially his drone-heavy Assault on Precinct 13 score. But there's a relentless darkness at work here that even Carpenter might shy away from dipping into. The Escape From New York theme had a sanguine beauty to it, but Barrow and Salisbury lock into an obdurate form of austerity early on ("Lawmaster/Pursuit", "Helmet Theme") and never let the tension drop. Mostly, the atmosphere is meat-locker cold ("Scope the Block", "Clone Gunman"), and while it never reaches the extremities of Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle, it bears a similar kind of ornery undertow. Occasionally they work in pure drones, adding a portentous type of beauty to tracks like "Exhale" and "Iso Hymn", making it feel like all the air just got sucked out of the room. Elsewhere, it's not hard to hear traces of Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner and the work Tangerine Dream carried out for Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. Like those albums, the music on DROKK provides a definite sense of journey, a feeling that we're being tangled up in plot twists that unravel, conclude, and maybe leave a few questions open at the end. Soundtracks that work well often create a strong sense of narrative when isolated from the visuals they're representing, and DROKK functions in much the same manner. It's even easy to picture the credits scrolling over "End Theme". Sadly, we'll never see Dredd gliding through the city on his Lawmaster while the pummeling "Titan Bound" echoes through a multiplex. But maybe it's better that way. Instead, this album provides Dredd fans with a chance to fix this music to their own favorite stories, giving the unrelenting decay and despair of Mega-City One the ferociously solemn musical backdrop it's always deserved."

Ecstatic Vision

Sonic Praise

Rock

Grayson Haver Currin

Ecstatic Vision want to get you high. On the band’s five-song and very fun debut LP, Sonic Praise, the three Philadelphia bros holler about an "astral plane where our herb will suffice," urge their audience to forego homes and bosses for a trip "through the astral sea," and demand that you "take the time" to "have a good time." They ply this blatant, positive peer pressure through spiraling psychedelic rock. Roaring organs, screaming guitars, and the occasional squawking saxophone seem always to be preparing for another narcotic liftoff. The rhythm section is brawny enough to be the dope pusher. By the time Ecstatic Vision peak during "Astral Plane", a 12-minute triumph where cosmic chants arrive over bulbous bass and hand drums and spirited solos spill from most every break, Ecstatic Vision’s preferred platform sounds like a thrilling escape hatch, even if you don’t want to get stoned with these or any other dudes. During the next decade, many of Ecstatic Vision’s chief touchstones—Hawkwind’s Warrior on the Edge of Time, Leaf Hound’s Growers of Mushroom, Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4, Amon Düül II’s Yeti—will reach the half-century mark. Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin’s catalog, which Ecstatic Vision reference liberally during mid-song breakdowns and through general riff-led ascendance, has survived yet another round of extensive reissues. Those records have helped build legions of stylistic descendants, from outbound psychedelic rock acts and burly stoner metal crews to bleary-eyed synth trippers and meditative new age gurus. It’s tempting, then, to dismiss an act so indebted to an obvious lineage (and so enchanted with a drug that’s increasingly less taboo and criminalized) out of hand. In 2015, who cares if you like to get high and jam all the livelong day with your pals? Ecstatic Vision, though, doesn’t get lost amid the seeds, stems, and stars. For all the band’s talk of escapism and their musical animations of such, they don’t write, play, or record with stoned indolence or mindless indulgence. Rather, like Virginia’s Pontiak or New York’s White Hills, they funnel that enthusiasm into compelling songs. Each of these five tracks breaks the five-minute mark, but three of them barely get there. Collectively, they betray senses of economy and premeditation rare to this field. A study in efficiency and impact, opener "Journey" shifts quickly from an introduction of pretty, back-masked vocals to a burly power-trio throb, from a cowbell-driven bridge to an electrifying instrumental break. They never surrender to their self-induced haze, so the song remains magnetic even as bandleader Douglas Sabolick steps out for multiple solos. The similarly terse "Don’t Kill the Vibe" feels like waiting bait for the sort of rock radio DJ who still references roach clips on air. Like Sleep on uppers, Ecstatic Vision power ahead at length with one riff and one vocal melody. The dual parts fit like puzzle pieces, with layers of guitars and noise tucked inside and around the motion. "Take what you want/ Take what you want now, baby," Sabolick shouts on repeat at the end. It’s the kind of simple refrain that could last forever, soundtracking some long, windows-down drive into the sun of a summer road trip. But it ends soon enough to make you crave more, an essential tenet of Sonic Praise’s success. To the same end, the new band’s prospects seem most exciting when they fold unexpected influences into Sonic Praise, especially during its two longest tracks. While "Astral Plane" ultimately charges through amplified bedlam and ricochets around a sharp riff, it works the patter of hand drums into the start. Somewhere near the middle, Ecstatic Vision accent a big bass-and-drum groove with stabs of dissonance and washes of chromatic textures. It sounds, briefly, like an early version of Nine Inch Nails, loosening up and zoning out. Almost as an afterthought, closer "Cross the Divide" suggests that Ecstatic Vision haven’t looked for ecstasy only in American and European rock trances. During one of the record’s most evocative moments, Sabolick nods to West African guitar styles while the band around him conjures the modal Middle Eastern electronics familiar from Omar Souleyman’s Western rise. The international jolt is a sudden reminder that, 40-plus years after many of its masterpieces were made, drug-induced rock needn’t be stale, stupid, listless, or long. Instead, the surprisingly incisive Sonic Praise is a celebration of higher aims in high times, for now free of many of the worst side effects.

Artist: Ecstatic Vision, Album: Sonic Praise, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Ecstatic Vision want to get you high. On the band’s five-song and very fun debut LP, Sonic Praise, the three Philadelphia bros holler about an "astral plane where our herb will suffice," urge their audience to forego homes and bosses for a trip "through the astral sea," and demand that you "take the time" to "have a good time." They ply this blatant, positive peer pressure through spiraling psychedelic rock. Roaring organs, screaming guitars, and the occasional squawking saxophone seem always to be preparing for another narcotic liftoff. The rhythm section is brawny enough to be the dope pusher. By the time Ecstatic Vision peak during "Astral Plane", a 12-minute triumph where cosmic chants arrive over bulbous bass and hand drums and spirited solos spill from most every break, Ecstatic Vision’s preferred platform sounds like a thrilling escape hatch, even if you don’t want to get stoned with these or any other dudes. During the next decade, many of Ecstatic Vision’s chief touchstones—Hawkwind’s Warrior on the Edge of Time, Leaf Hound’s Growers of Mushroom, Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4, Amon Düül II’s Yeti—will reach the half-century mark. Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin’s catalog, which Ecstatic Vision reference liberally during mid-song breakdowns and through general riff-led ascendance, has survived yet another round of extensive reissues. Those records have helped build legions of stylistic descendants, from outbound psychedelic rock acts and burly stoner metal crews to bleary-eyed synth trippers and meditative new age gurus. It’s tempting, then, to dismiss an act so indebted to an obvious lineage (and so enchanted with a drug that’s increasingly less taboo and criminalized) out of hand. In 2015, who cares if you like to get high and jam all the livelong day with your pals? Ecstatic Vision, though, doesn’t get lost amid the seeds, stems, and stars. For all the band’s talk of escapism and their musical animations of such, they don’t write, play, or record with stoned indolence or mindless indulgence. Rather, like Virginia’s Pontiak or New York’s White Hills, they funnel that enthusiasm into compelling songs. Each of these five tracks breaks the five-minute mark, but three of them barely get there. Collectively, they betray senses of economy and premeditation rare to this field. A study in efficiency and impact, opener "Journey" shifts quickly from an introduction of pretty, back-masked vocals to a burly power-trio throb, from a cowbell-driven bridge to an electrifying instrumental break. They never surrender to their self-induced haze, so the song remains magnetic even as bandleader Douglas Sabolick steps out for multiple solos. The similarly terse "Don’t Kill the Vibe" feels like waiting bait for the sort of rock radio DJ who still references roach clips on air. Like Sleep on uppers, Ecstatic Vision power ahead at length with one riff and one vocal melody. The dual parts fit like puzzle pieces, with layers of guitars and noise tucked inside and around the motion. "Take what you want/ Take what you want now, baby," Sabolick shouts on repeat at the end. It’s the kind of simple refrain that could last forever, soundtracking some long, windows-down drive into the sun of a summer road trip. But it ends soon enough to make you crave more, an essential tenet of Sonic Praise’s success. To the same end, the new band’s prospects seem most exciting when they fold unexpected influences into Sonic Praise, especially during its two longest tracks. While "Astral Plane" ultimately charges through amplified bedlam and ricochets around a sharp riff, it works the patter of hand drums into the start. Somewhere near the middle, Ecstatic Vision accent a big bass-and-drum groove with stabs of dissonance and washes of chromatic textures. It sounds, briefly, like an early version of Nine Inch Nails, loosening up and zoning out. Almost as an afterthought, closer "Cross the Divide" suggests that Ecstatic Vision haven’t looked for ecstasy only in American and European rock trances. During one of the record’s most evocative moments, Sabolick nods to West African guitar styles while the band around him conjures the modal Middle Eastern electronics familiar from Omar Souleyman’s Western rise. The international jolt is a sudden reminder that, 40-plus years after many of its masterpieces were made, drug-induced rock needn’t be stale, stupid, listless, or long. Instead, the surprisingly incisive Sonic Praise is a celebration of higher aims in high times, for now free of many of the worst side effects."

Division Day

Beartrap Island

Rock

Stuart Berman

As the recent yacht-rock revival has illustrated, the west coast has traditionally been associated with a certain sunshined contentment and peaceful easy feeling. However, the most prominent indie rock artists to have sprung from the region in the past decade have been defined by a notable lack of fun, fun, fun, from the macro, modern-world meditations of Grandaddy to the fraught, tender intimacies of Death Cab for Cutie. Situated between these two totems-- both geographically and spiritually-- are L.A.'s Division Day, who are seemingly so in tune with west-coast despondency that they named themselves after an Elliott Smith song. But Division Day are rarely shy about their diffidence-- their debut full-length, Beartrap Island, communicates its overarching sense of melancholy with assertive, sometimes aggressive gestures. The album has been gestating since 2005, and though one can't assume the tracklist reflects the songwriting's chronology, Beartrap Island plays like a spirited juxtaposition of ideas before tempering itself into a more refined, if less captivating, presentation. In its opening stretch, the album touches on wondrous, synth-swathed psychedelic reveries (the 80-second title track), scrappy, staccato rock rave-ups ("Ricky") and, in their most successful turn, a reconciliation of the two on "Catch Your Death", which locks into a swirling, stuttering drum beat (suggesting a nascent dub influence) before double-timing into an effectively urgent chorus. But with the onset of "Hurricane", Division Day's agenda comes into sharper focus: plaintive, pulse-regulating adult-contemporary indie rock that's often afflicted with a bout of mid-tempo-itis. Perhaps sensing that his bald sentiments (to wit: "I want your blood inside my head") could set off the emo alarm, singer Rohner Segnitz maintains a poised, breathy delivery that keeps the melodrama and histrionics to a minimum, but at the same time seems overly subservient to the songs' lazy haze; by the time we hit the second-act power ballad "Reversible", the portentous synth tones and Edge-y guitars render Division Day indistinguishable from any number of contemporary modern-rock bands striving for 1980s Big Music import. So it's no small consolation that Beartrap Island's most serious song topic is given an affectingly spare presentation that allows Segnitz's voice to stand on its own humble terms, without attempting to obscure or bolster it. The song is called "Dayenu", a reference to a Passover hymn commemorating the Exodus tale, wherein the title (which translates to "it would suffice us") is traditionally sung with joyous gusto. But in Division Day's case, the song's theme-- essentially, one of just being lucky to be alive-- is appropriated for a downcast rumination on surviving a near-fatal fever, illuminated by trolling organ accompaniment and sparks of feedback. Perhaps it's not the most appropriate selection for the Seder table this weekend, but in their own modest way, Division Day turn their own sorrow into something worth celebrating.

Artist: Division Day, Album: Beartrap Island, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "As the recent yacht-rock revival has illustrated, the west coast has traditionally been associated with a certain sunshined contentment and peaceful easy feeling. However, the most prominent indie rock artists to have sprung from the region in the past decade have been defined by a notable lack of fun, fun, fun, from the macro, modern-world meditations of Grandaddy to the fraught, tender intimacies of Death Cab for Cutie. Situated between these two totems-- both geographically and spiritually-- are L.A.'s Division Day, who are seemingly so in tune with west-coast despondency that they named themselves after an Elliott Smith song. But Division Day are rarely shy about their diffidence-- their debut full-length, Beartrap Island, communicates its overarching sense of melancholy with assertive, sometimes aggressive gestures. The album has been gestating since 2005, and though one can't assume the tracklist reflects the songwriting's chronology, Beartrap Island plays like a spirited juxtaposition of ideas before tempering itself into a more refined, if less captivating, presentation. In its opening stretch, the album touches on wondrous, synth-swathed psychedelic reveries (the 80-second title track), scrappy, staccato rock rave-ups ("Ricky") and, in their most successful turn, a reconciliation of the two on "Catch Your Death", which locks into a swirling, stuttering drum beat (suggesting a nascent dub influence) before double-timing into an effectively urgent chorus. But with the onset of "Hurricane", Division Day's agenda comes into sharper focus: plaintive, pulse-regulating adult-contemporary indie rock that's often afflicted with a bout of mid-tempo-itis. Perhaps sensing that his bald sentiments (to wit: "I want your blood inside my head") could set off the emo alarm, singer Rohner Segnitz maintains a poised, breathy delivery that keeps the melodrama and histrionics to a minimum, but at the same time seems overly subservient to the songs' lazy haze; by the time we hit the second-act power ballad "Reversible", the portentous synth tones and Edge-y guitars render Division Day indistinguishable from any number of contemporary modern-rock bands striving for 1980s Big Music import. So it's no small consolation that Beartrap Island's most serious song topic is given an affectingly spare presentation that allows Segnitz's voice to stand on its own humble terms, without attempting to obscure or bolster it. The song is called "Dayenu", a reference to a Passover hymn commemorating the Exodus tale, wherein the title (which translates to "it would suffice us") is traditionally sung with joyous gusto. But in Division Day's case, the song's theme-- essentially, one of just being lucky to be alive-- is appropriated for a downcast rumination on surviving a near-fatal fever, illuminated by trolling organ accompaniment and sparks of feedback. Perhaps it's not the most appropriate selection for the Seder table this weekend, but in their own modest way, Division Day turn their own sorrow into something worth celebrating."

Kiila

Tuota Tuota

Experimental,Rock

Andrew Gaerig

There is no beginner's Fonal band: Every artist on the familial Finnish label wilds off in strange directions, eschewing almost all Western music norms and most others as well. But Kiila, one of the only Fonal bands who occasionally flirt with English (their debut album: Heartcore), might be close: Tuota Tuota, the band's third album, trades in lush, North-country arrangements and silvery group chants. You can probably still count the truly coherent pop moments on one hand, but the fact that you can count them at all places Tuota Tuota squarely on Fonal's skinny axis of accessibility. Faust have long been considered the most bucolic of the Krautrockers, famously recording their albums in an old schoolhouse; Kiila aim for that sprawl on Tuota Tuota ("Well Well"), the six-strong troupe extending their many limbs over all manner of countryside tremble. Kiila unsurprisingly trade in European traditions, echoing the shapeshifting Incredible String Band, the elegant hum of John Martyn, or the accumulating stir of Peter Brötzmann and so many other free improv stalwarts. An intimidating list of influence, maybe, but Kiila rarely strain or stumble on Tuota Tuota. Opening hymn "Viisi Hirvasta" is as careful and reverent as anything the band has put to tape. Simple acoustic guitar lines mix with surface stirring until, three minutes later, a strident fiddle grabs the song by its collar, if only for a moment, and shakes some clarity out of it. That same fiddle announces the purposeful, rock-land gait of "Kevätlaulu", which Kiila proceed to rollick through for three no-fat minutes. This sort of between-tracks interplay benefits Tuota Tuota, whose seven tracks alternate between short and peppy and long and winding; it even spins like one of those old Faust albums. The affair is more strung-together and traceable than 2004's Silmät Sulkaset, which saw Kiila falling more in line with Fonal's reputation for untenable forest children. The contrasts are heartfelt and charming, if occasionally jarring: Moments after "Niin Kuin Puut" delivers the album's most tender country paean, "Kehotuslaulu" proposes to build an entire song out of a fiddle breakdown. It is fun music in a decidedly un-fun realm (Finnish-language experimental music), and even when Kiila return to softer compositions, Tuota Tuota retains an air of parlor-room conversation. The final six minutes-- devoted to "Pöllötulkin Mietteet", which charges downhill on strangely phasing funk guitars, wildman organ and ornery trumpeting-- provide a strange end to an album mostly intent on crafting homey, wooden revelries. But Kiila never ask you to gulp down their sprawl: the jamming is modest, the songcraft repeatable and molded. Tuota Tuota joyfully balances the band's experimental tendencies with tender, aged songcraft. Tuota Tuota is friendly skree for the intimidated.

Artist: Kiila, Album: Tuota Tuota, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "There is no beginner's Fonal band: Every artist on the familial Finnish label wilds off in strange directions, eschewing almost all Western music norms and most others as well. But Kiila, one of the only Fonal bands who occasionally flirt with English (their debut album: Heartcore), might be close: Tuota Tuota, the band's third album, trades in lush, North-country arrangements and silvery group chants. You can probably still count the truly coherent pop moments on one hand, but the fact that you can count them at all places Tuota Tuota squarely on Fonal's skinny axis of accessibility. Faust have long been considered the most bucolic of the Krautrockers, famously recording their albums in an old schoolhouse; Kiila aim for that sprawl on Tuota Tuota ("Well Well"), the six-strong troupe extending their many limbs over all manner of countryside tremble. Kiila unsurprisingly trade in European traditions, echoing the shapeshifting Incredible String Band, the elegant hum of John Martyn, or the accumulating stir of Peter Brötzmann and so many other free improv stalwarts. An intimidating list of influence, maybe, but Kiila rarely strain or stumble on Tuota Tuota. Opening hymn "Viisi Hirvasta" is as careful and reverent as anything the band has put to tape. Simple acoustic guitar lines mix with surface stirring until, three minutes later, a strident fiddle grabs the song by its collar, if only for a moment, and shakes some clarity out of it. That same fiddle announces the purposeful, rock-land gait of "Kevätlaulu", which Kiila proceed to rollick through for three no-fat minutes. This sort of between-tracks interplay benefits Tuota Tuota, whose seven tracks alternate between short and peppy and long and winding; it even spins like one of those old Faust albums. The affair is more strung-together and traceable than 2004's Silmät Sulkaset, which saw Kiila falling more in line with Fonal's reputation for untenable forest children. The contrasts are heartfelt and charming, if occasionally jarring: Moments after "Niin Kuin Puut" delivers the album's most tender country paean, "Kehotuslaulu" proposes to build an entire song out of a fiddle breakdown. It is fun music in a decidedly un-fun realm (Finnish-language experimental music), and even when Kiila return to softer compositions, Tuota Tuota retains an air of parlor-room conversation. The final six minutes-- devoted to "Pöllötulkin Mietteet", which charges downhill on strangely phasing funk guitars, wildman organ and ornery trumpeting-- provide a strange end to an album mostly intent on crafting homey, wooden revelries. But Kiila never ask you to gulp down their sprawl: the jamming is modest, the songcraft repeatable and molded. Tuota Tuota joyfully balances the band's experimental tendencies with tender, aged songcraft. Tuota Tuota is friendly skree for the intimidated."

Various Artists

Wallahi Le Zein!! Wezin, Jakwar And Guitar Boogie From The Islamic Republic Of Mauritania

Joe Tangari

Most countries have some sort of music industry. It may be small or a little ramshackle but it's there, helping to make recordings available in some sort of semi-orderly fashion. It promotes performances, broadcasts music, talks about music in publications. Mauritania's Beydane and Haratine music has no industry to promote it-- the country is one of the few places in the world with no private or even state system in place to capture and disseminate music. The music happens live, played by musicians hired by an audience; it could be a wedding party, an official function, or just a group of friends who want to do a little dancing. The majority of the musicians live and work in Nouakchott, the sprawling, mostly improvised capital city Mauritania is a vast country, bigger than Texas and New Mexico combined, but in much of that space there are no people. Nearly every one of the country's roughly three million people lives in the Southwest, near the coast and the Senegal River, and a full third of them are in Nouakchott. The Beydane (who we call Moors) and the Haratine are Mauritania's dominant ethnic groups, and their language, a dialect of Arabic called Hassaniya, is the most widely spoken (along with French, which is used mostly in official contexts). To describe Mauritanian Beydane and Haratine music is superficially simple: It consists primarily of singers, improvising based on poetry, hand percussion, and guitar or a similar local stringed instrument-- guitar has since 1976 largely supplanted the tidinitt lute (played by men) and the ardin harp (played by women). The guitar is electric, I should add. This, in a city where electricity service is not comprehensive, to say the least. There have been a few attempts to record Beydane guitar music over the years in a controlled, high-fidelity environment, and one could get the impression from listening to these that the music is pretty sedate, but this is misleading. As one listen to Wallahi Le Zein quickly shows, this is music of immense energy. Trying to record it in a studio robs it of the primary engine that drives it, which is audience response. The musicians crank it up when the audience steps it up, and cool it down when the audience gets tired. Matthew Lavoie, the set's compiler, at first attempted to make some of his own recordings in specially arranged sessions with an audience, but to hear him tell it in his extensive liner notes, the lack of a proper music-making occasion resulting in sterile recordings that got the technical bits right but missed on the spirit of the music. But Lavoie was truly in love with this music, and wouldn't be deterred. Over the course of years and many visits to Mauritania, he collected privately recorded cassettes of performances until he had a massive archive to draw from. It's not unusual for the people paying the musicians to record a performance for a souvenir-- as you can imagine, though, the quality of those recordings is often abysmal, so sorting for a set of tracks that both captured the spirit of the music as it's normally performed and satisfied even some very rudimentary standards of fidelity took some work. The compiler's passion for the music and knowledge of its history, performance and underlying theory is on full display in the thick booklet that comes with this set-- expanding it into a book wouldn't be out of the question. Without getting too far into the specifics of it, all of the music on this set is built around a very basic modal structure. There are a set number of modes in the music, which must be played in a certain order, and each mode has two different rhythmic characters (one legato, one staccato), to be played in a specific order. But beyond that, it's wide open. Tempo, the actual melody played within the mode, the play of voice against guitar, the rhythm, and a host of other factors come into play in every piece. You have to really study the music to hear the ingredients as distinct from one another. The recordings are raw, essentially field recordings. People can be heard talking to the musicians, whistling; I swear there's one track where I can hear a chicken at one point. Some are instrumental, some are vocal, and most have muffled hand drums driving the rhythm. The singing is melismatic and full-bore-- it's recognizable if you know much Arabic of West African music. But the meat of this music for a listener who speaks no Hassaniya is the guitar. There is some breathtaking guitar playing in this music, a manic, psychedelic edge and free-floating intensity that makes me think of Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," but like that all the time. Distortion from blown speaker cones is a common sonic element, but you hear the occasional pedal or strange flanged tone as well. The music doesn't flow in the sense that Westerners typically expect dance music to flow. It will stop abruptly, turn in unexpected directions, stutter in the middle of a phrase-- this is how the music works, musicians responding to what their audience is doing or saying, how much money it's throwing their way. All of it is decided on the spot-- these musicians don't rehearse written pieces of music, and they frequently perform with musicians they haven't played with before. On a first listen, when you haven't acclimated yourself to what these men and women are doing with the music, it is disorienting. But once you learn to flow with it, it's a rush a minute, and the skill of the players really is something to behold. Baba ould Hembara does this thing on his tracks where he's hammering the strings with his left hand, finely articulating full melodies with a hammer-on-- it sounds like the chatter of birds as much as a guitar. To isolate one example, the distorted, sandstorm psych onslaught of Mohamed Guitar's "banjey" (banjey is a form, not a title), is pretty easy for anyone to understand. Wallahi Le Zein is somewhat similar to a Sublime Frequencies radio or field recording release, except that this has a much deeper interest in the musicological, historical, and cultural underpinnings of what's going on here. Lavoie isn't just putting this stuff out there for you-- the liner notes are an educational document reflecting years of research and real, focused passion for the subject matter, rather than a basic interest in otherness. This is in some ways this compilation's greatest gift-- this is the first curated collection of unfiltered Mauritanian guitar music ever, and I'm glad it's been introduced with such thoroughness and care.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Wallahi Le Zein!! Wezin, Jakwar And Guitar Boogie From The Islamic Republic Of Mauritania, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Most countries have some sort of music industry. It may be small or a little ramshackle but it's there, helping to make recordings available in some sort of semi-orderly fashion. It promotes performances, broadcasts music, talks about music in publications. Mauritania's Beydane and Haratine music has no industry to promote it-- the country is one of the few places in the world with no private or even state system in place to capture and disseminate music. The music happens live, played by musicians hired by an audience; it could be a wedding party, an official function, or just a group of friends who want to do a little dancing. The majority of the musicians live and work in Nouakchott, the sprawling, mostly improvised capital city Mauritania is a vast country, bigger than Texas and New Mexico combined, but in much of that space there are no people. Nearly every one of the country's roughly three million people lives in the Southwest, near the coast and the Senegal River, and a full third of them are in Nouakchott. The Beydane (who we call Moors) and the Haratine are Mauritania's dominant ethnic groups, and their language, a dialect of Arabic called Hassaniya, is the most widely spoken (along with French, which is used mostly in official contexts). To describe Mauritanian Beydane and Haratine music is superficially simple: It consists primarily of singers, improvising based on poetry, hand percussion, and guitar or a similar local stringed instrument-- guitar has since 1976 largely supplanted the tidinitt lute (played by men) and the ardin harp (played by women). The guitar is electric, I should add. This, in a city where electricity service is not comprehensive, to say the least. There have been a few attempts to record Beydane guitar music over the years in a controlled, high-fidelity environment, and one could get the impression from listening to these that the music is pretty sedate, but this is misleading. As one listen to Wallahi Le Zein quickly shows, this is music of immense energy. Trying to record it in a studio robs it of the primary engine that drives it, which is audience response. The musicians crank it up when the audience steps it up, and cool it down when the audience gets tired. Matthew Lavoie, the set's compiler, at first attempted to make some of his own recordings in specially arranged sessions with an audience, but to hear him tell it in his extensive liner notes, the lack of a proper music-making occasion resulting in sterile recordings that got the technical bits right but missed on the spirit of the music. But Lavoie was truly in love with this music, and wouldn't be deterred. Over the course of years and many visits to Mauritania, he collected privately recorded cassettes of performances until he had a massive archive to draw from. It's not unusual for the people paying the musicians to record a performance for a souvenir-- as you can imagine, though, the quality of those recordings is often abysmal, so sorting for a set of tracks that both captured the spirit of the music as it's normally performed and satisfied even some very rudimentary standards of fidelity took some work. The compiler's passion for the music and knowledge of its history, performance and underlying theory is on full display in the thick booklet that comes with this set-- expanding it into a book wouldn't be out of the question. Without getting too far into the specifics of it, all of the music on this set is built around a very basic modal structure. There are a set number of modes in the music, which must be played in a certain order, and each mode has two different rhythmic characters (one legato, one staccato), to be played in a specific order. But beyond that, it's wide open. Tempo, the actual melody played within the mode, the play of voice against guitar, the rhythm, and a host of other factors come into play in every piece. You have to really study the music to hear the ingredients as distinct from one another. The recordings are raw, essentially field recordings. People can be heard talking to the musicians, whistling; I swear there's one track where I can hear a chicken at one point. Some are instrumental, some are vocal, and most have muffled hand drums driving the rhythm. The singing is melismatic and full-bore-- it's recognizable if you know much Arabic of West African music. But the meat of this music for a listener who speaks no Hassaniya is the guitar. There is some breathtaking guitar playing in this music, a manic, psychedelic edge and free-floating intensity that makes me think of Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," but like that all the time. Distortion from blown speaker cones is a common sonic element, but you hear the occasional pedal or strange flanged tone as well. The music doesn't flow in the sense that Westerners typically expect dance music to flow. It will stop abruptly, turn in unexpected directions, stutter in the middle of a phrase-- this is how the music works, musicians responding to what their audience is doing or saying, how much money it's throwing their way. All of it is decided on the spot-- these musicians don't rehearse written pieces of music, and they frequently perform with musicians they haven't played with before. On a first listen, when you haven't acclimated yourself to what these men and women are doing with the music, it is disorienting. But once you learn to flow with it, it's a rush a minute, and the skill of the players really is something to behold. Baba ould Hembara does this thing on his tracks where he's hammering the strings with his left hand, finely articulating full melodies with a hammer-on-- it sounds like the chatter of birds as much as a guitar. To isolate one example, the distorted, sandstorm psych onslaught of Mohamed Guitar's "banjey" (banjey is a form, not a title), is pretty easy for anyone to understand. Wallahi Le Zein is somewhat similar to a Sublime Frequencies radio or field recording release, except that this has a much deeper interest in the musicological, historical, and cultural underpinnings of what's going on here. Lavoie isn't just putting this stuff out there for you-- the liner notes are an educational document reflecting years of research and real, focused passion for the subject matter, rather than a basic interest in otherness. This is in some ways this compilation's greatest gift-- this is the first curated collection of unfiltered Mauritanian guitar music ever, and I'm glad it's been introduced with such thoroughness and care."

José James

Love In a Time of Madness

Jazz

Seth Colter Walls

Modern jazz fans have a right to feel possessive about the singer José James. In the last decade, he’s been one of the suavest vocal improvisers on the scene. His 2015 album devoted to songs made popular by Billie Holiday, Yesterday I Had the Blues, sounded to me like the most soulful tribute to come out during Lady Day’s centennial. Steeped as he is in jazz, James has also shown a restlessness with strict genre categorization. He’s described his love of funk, R&B and hip-hop in interviews. And when Blue Note announced his new album, the label’s press release bore a striking quote from the artist: “I could make jazz albums the rest of my life, but I want to reach people, man. I like Jamie xx as much as I like Miles Davis, you know?” You could practically hear the well-drilled corps of Jazz Defenders grinding their teeth in response. But on this new record, James doesn't discard his old skill set. He’s merely doing his part to underline the music’s flexibility in relation to new pop trends—much as Louis Armstrong and Davis himself did in decades past. (Clive Davis once wrote that Davis asked Columbia to stop labeling him as a “jazz man.”) James knows all about this history. And so does Blue Note. So while there are indeed trap-music snares in a few songs on Love in a Time of Madness, there are also plenty of James’ more typical textures. On opening track “Always There,” a stark synth line presents a useful contrast with the light-touch smoothness of James’s baritone. During “Closer,” he responds to a looped, low-pitch sample by cutting back on melodic filigree—save for a brief escape, on the line “show you I can be the only one.” In the context of the song, it’s a standard line about romantic prowess. At the level of arrangement, it reminds the listener that James has more to offer when singing over a rhythmic grid. If you’re dead cold to trap beats or the dolorous mood of the Weeknd’s R&B, the subtle but real changes James works on these styles won’t be radical enough to win your affection. But there might be something else for you here, since the core strength of Love in a Time of Madness is its range of dance-pop appreciation. In the middle of the record, James includes a trio of songs that sound like an EP Prince could have produced for the Time in the early ’80s. Uptempo standout “Live Your Fantasy” contains call-and-response funk and the kind of synth chords Jamie Starr snatched from earlier waves of jazz fusion. “To Be With You” is the sultry ballad. And on “Ladies Man,” James flashes his newly drilled falsetto voice. Hewing this close to the Purple Formula is as risky as anything else James tries on the album, but he executes the play. There are a couple of songs that simply assist us in identifying this set as a 21st-century pop-crossover record on Blue Note. “Remember Our Love” looks at a failed romance, and counsels sweetness. The downtempo “Let It Fall” has just a hint of social commentary, but stays tranquil. These are the most easily forgotten tracks. James initially envisioned Love as a double-album set, in which social themes could alternate with intimate ones. Even without the protest music, the 12-song version can sound as though caught between imperatives: eager to test the boundaries of a contemporary pop and jazz, but not ambitious enough in scale to do all the work the singer can envision. Still, he’s clearly got the range to make a “big statement” record seem plausible. If he can put everything together, he’ll have more at his disposal than most singers in any tradition.

Artist: José James, Album: Love In a Time of Madness, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Modern jazz fans have a right to feel possessive about the singer José James. In the last decade, he’s been one of the suavest vocal improvisers on the scene. His 2015 album devoted to songs made popular by Billie Holiday, Yesterday I Had the Blues, sounded to me like the most soulful tribute to come out during Lady Day’s centennial. Steeped as he is in jazz, James has also shown a restlessness with strict genre categorization. He’s described his love of funk, R&B and hip-hop in interviews. And when Blue Note announced his new album, the label’s press release bore a striking quote from the artist: “I could make jazz albums the rest of my life, but I want to reach people, man. I like Jamie xx as much as I like Miles Davis, you know?” You could practically hear the well-drilled corps of Jazz Defenders grinding their teeth in response. But on this new record, James doesn't discard his old skill set. He’s merely doing his part to underline the music’s flexibility in relation to new pop trends—much as Louis Armstrong and Davis himself did in decades past. (Clive Davis once wrote that Davis asked Columbia to stop labeling him as a “jazz man.”) James knows all about this history. And so does Blue Note. So while there are indeed trap-music snares in a few songs on Love in a Time of Madness, there are also plenty of James’ more typical textures. On opening track “Always There,” a stark synth line presents a useful contrast with the light-touch smoothness of James’s baritone. During “Closer,” he responds to a looped, low-pitch sample by cutting back on melodic filigree—save for a brief escape, on the line “show you I can be the only one.” In the context of the song, it’s a standard line about romantic prowess. At the level of arrangement, it reminds the listener that James has more to offer when singing over a rhythmic grid. If you’re dead cold to trap beats or the dolorous mood of the Weeknd’s R&B, the subtle but real changes James works on these styles won’t be radical enough to win your affection. But there might be something else for you here, since the core strength of Love in a Time of Madness is its range of dance-pop appreciation. In the middle of the record, James includes a trio of songs that sound like an EP Prince could have produced for the Time in the early ’80s. Uptempo standout “Live Your Fantasy” contains call-and-response funk and the kind of synth chords Jamie Starr snatched from earlier waves of jazz fusion. “To Be With You” is the sultry ballad. And on “Ladies Man,” James flashes his newly drilled falsetto voice. Hewing this close to the Purple Formula is as risky as anything else James tries on the album, but he executes the play. There are a couple of songs that simply assist us in identifying this set as a 21st-century pop-crossover record on Blue Note. “Remember Our Love” looks at a failed romance, and counsels sweetness. The downtempo “Let It Fall” has just a hint of social commentary, but stays tranquil. These are the most easily forgotten tracks. James initially envisioned Love as a double-album set, in which social themes could alternate with intimate ones. Even without the protest music, the 12-song version can sound as though caught between imperatives: eager to test the boundaries of a contemporary pop and jazz, but not ambitious enough in scale to do all the work the singer can envision. Still, he’s clearly got the range to make a “big statement” record seem plausible. If he can put everything together, he’ll have more at his disposal than most singers in any tradition."

Chief Keef

Almighty DP

Rap

David Drake

In the 1985 William Friedkin film To Live and Die in L.A., Willem Dafoe portrays a murderous counterfeiter who paints in his spare time—only to burn the canvases. As his Instagram teasers and leaked YouTube snippets suggest, Chief Keef's official releases are just the tip of a massive recorded archive. But Keef is interested in what he's doing today, not what he's done; new projects make his old work irrelevant. Many of his songs, long-forgotten evidence of a particular tributary of his evolution, lay dormant, unreleased, or lost—like the original version of Bang 2, which promised songs such as the DP Beats-produced "Stop Calling". Although credited to Lil Keis when it leaked—DP was locked up at the time—the song was the first in a series of collaborations between DP Beats and Chief Keef. At the time, its addictive giddiness suggested a surefire smash; now it languishes in poor quality on YouTube—burned, essentially—and Keef has long since moved on. Almighty DP is a DJ-free CD-quality compilation put together by DP Beats himself, the first in a series of tapes culling the duo's work together, songs released primarily over the course of the past year. It's essential not just because the music is uniformly great—by any standard, this is one of the most consistent tapes in Keef's catalog—but because it captures a period of time in which each individual piece is in danger of being lost, released only as a low-quality YouTube snippet, or perhaps never seeing the light of day at all. Where Young Chop built upon more maximal tendencies, DP Beats is detail-oriented, conveying more subtle shifts of mood. Though the producer is based in North Carolina, his sound has shaped the popular music of the Midwest: the enigmatic melancholy of "Tec" and its sour brother "Fool Ya" were both major regional records last summer, with "Fool Ya" receiving regular spins on Power 92 and cresting 8 million views on YouTube. Though neither made an official Chief Keef project, both are included here in pristine quality, capturing drill music's recent drift into the disorienting. DP's more recent work is represented in cuts like "Don't Love Her" (originally intended for Keef's unreleased Thot Breaker project), which piles on layers of keyboard melodies to suggest a sugary rush. It's the kind of giddy thing which would normally accompany a song about a new crush, giving Keef's icy denials an ironic frame. Many of the best records here work similarly, as miniature synthesizer symphonies that aim for synapse-overload. Though DP's work shares the same roots as the 808 Mafia formula that dominates the Southern club circuit, he's got more ideas, a more subtle sense for vibe, and ornate tastes. DP likes active snares and tricky drum programming, and Keef—in splitting the difference between rapper, auteur, and songwriter—knows how to best complement these widely varying canvases. On "Runnin"—one of the tape's more recent records—he fits his voice right at the center of the cascading keyboards with a hooky central melody, letting the beat swirl around him. When the melody jumps up and down like a jagged EKG, as on "Worries," he raps with a deadened affect. The records which best illustrate the duo's chemistry, though, aren't always the most complex: "Know She Does" relies on a simple four-note melody, and its directness is euphoric. But perhaps the tape's best record—the bonus track "Rolls", hidden on the second half of "All In"—is the best example of DP's ability to effortlessly juggle intricate, interlocking melodic pieces without losing sight of the bigger picture. The swarming whirlwind of sound acts as a sweet release while Keef croons in craggy autotune. But the song's success is all in the details, the way DP plays with the EQ settings, giving shape to the track that makes it less loop than song. Anyone interested in current street rap's potential for emotional breadth shouldn't miss it.

Artist: Chief Keef, Album: Almighty DP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In the 1985 William Friedkin film To Live and Die in L.A., Willem Dafoe portrays a murderous counterfeiter who paints in his spare time—only to burn the canvases. As his Instagram teasers and leaked YouTube snippets suggest, Chief Keef's official releases are just the tip of a massive recorded archive. But Keef is interested in what he's doing today, not what he's done; new projects make his old work irrelevant. Many of his songs, long-forgotten evidence of a particular tributary of his evolution, lay dormant, unreleased, or lost—like the original version of Bang 2, which promised songs such as the DP Beats-produced "Stop Calling". Although credited to Lil Keis when it leaked—DP was locked up at the time—the song was the first in a series of collaborations between DP Beats and Chief Keef. At the time, its addictive giddiness suggested a surefire smash; now it languishes in poor quality on YouTube—burned, essentially—and Keef has long since moved on. Almighty DP is a DJ-free CD-quality compilation put together by DP Beats himself, the first in a series of tapes culling the duo's work together, songs released primarily over the course of the past year. It's essential not just because the music is uniformly great—by any standard, this is one of the most consistent tapes in Keef's catalog—but because it captures a period of time in which each individual piece is in danger of being lost, released only as a low-quality YouTube snippet, or perhaps never seeing the light of day at all. Where Young Chop built upon more maximal tendencies, DP Beats is detail-oriented, conveying more subtle shifts of mood. Though the producer is based in North Carolina, his sound has shaped the popular music of the Midwest: the enigmatic melancholy of "Tec" and its sour brother "Fool Ya" were both major regional records last summer, with "Fool Ya" receiving regular spins on Power 92 and cresting 8 million views on YouTube. Though neither made an official Chief Keef project, both are included here in pristine quality, capturing drill music's recent drift into the disorienting. DP's more recent work is represented in cuts like "Don't Love Her" (originally intended for Keef's unreleased Thot Breaker project), which piles on layers of keyboard melodies to suggest a sugary rush. It's the kind of giddy thing which would normally accompany a song about a new crush, giving Keef's icy denials an ironic frame. Many of the best records here work similarly, as miniature synthesizer symphonies that aim for synapse-overload. Though DP's work shares the same roots as the 808 Mafia formula that dominates the Southern club circuit, he's got more ideas, a more subtle sense for vibe, and ornate tastes. DP likes active snares and tricky drum programming, and Keef—in splitting the difference between rapper, auteur, and songwriter—knows how to best complement these widely varying canvases. On "Runnin"—one of the tape's more recent records—he fits his voice right at the center of the cascading keyboards with a hooky central melody, letting the beat swirl around him. When the melody jumps up and down like a jagged EKG, as on "Worries," he raps with a deadened affect. The records which best illustrate the duo's chemistry, though, aren't always the most complex: "Know She Does" relies on a simple four-note melody, and its directness is euphoric. But perhaps the tape's best record—the bonus track "Rolls", hidden on the second half of "All In"—is the best example of DP's ability to effortlessly juggle intricate, interlocking melodic pieces without losing sight of the bigger picture. The swarming whirlwind of sound acts as a sweet release while Keef croons in craggy autotune. But the song's success is all in the details, the way DP plays with the EQ settings, giving shape to the track that makes it less loop than song. Anyone interested in current street rap's potential for emotional breadth shouldn't miss it."

Lowlights

Lowlights

Folk/Country

Joe Tangari

As I understand it, in space, no one can hear you scream. Slide guitars, on the other hand, sound great. Earthbound as they usually are, country and blues lend themselves remarkably well to the atmosphere, set amongst the reverb and stars; witness Pink Floyd's "A Pillow of Winds" or Beechwood Sparks' "Sweet Julie Ann". These are just two of the bands that quickly spring to mind when Lowlights' self-titled debut drifts out of the speakers like a transmission from a drifting satellite. Another name-- one that flashes even brighter-- is Spiritualized, those masters of interstellar heartache who've lately given over to indigestible orchestral bloat, leaving behind a perfect vacancy for California's Lowlights to fill with their synthesis of Gram Parsons folk and regal, ionospheric psych. The album opens with a sweep of pure phase space-rock called "In the Distance", a slow descent overflowing with huge harmonies jerked earthward by dense clusters of distorted guitar. "Wave Goodbye" puts the brushes to the drumkit and the steel to the strings, but never comes down completely, floating a few miles up as bandleader Dameon Lee admonishes, "Don't turn around/ Just wave goodbye." Generally, Lee sticks to narrating human emotion in his songs-- there's none of the drug damage of Spiritualized or bedsit philosophy of The Verve to distract from the heartache and desperation in his songs. Lowlights definitely have a sound/bandname synergy going on-- the gentle repetition of "Brown Eyes", with its lonely, echoing trumpet and weeping pedal steel is a great way to come down from a physically active day of mowing the lawn and assembling Swedish furniture. The band squeezes a lot of variation from a fairly limited sound palette, constantly shifting tempos and making little changes, like subtly subbing in a harpsichord for an acoustic guitar, while keeping the overarching sound full of cavernous echo and open space. Lee's voice has gravel enough to sound weighty even when cast in the album's zero-gravity atmosphere, and he's well complemented by the silk-smooth backing harmonies of Angela Brown. On the whisper-quiet "Wheelbarrow", which features guest vocalist Brisa Roche backed only by a wandering Rhodes and a quivering Farfisa, Lowlights conjure some of Yo La Tengo's sparsest Georgia Hubley ballads, yet things close at a majestic crawl with "How Does It Feel?", a languid drift through the solar system topped by pining steel and lush, homespun folk harmonies. Thick electric guitar cuts in on the refrain, a false start that teases at a closing firestorm, but shuts down instead, bowing to the pastoral glow of the verses. It's an impressive debut, and Lowlights seem to have all the pieces in place to churn out at least a few more in the near future. They have a mastery of the texture that a record like this requires to pass as more than just an ambling experiment, and they've proven they have the ability to write more than one kind of song, which is something a lot of their peers simply can't do. They may not be doing anything terribly new, but their execution is beautiful, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Artist: Lowlights, Album: Lowlights, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "As I understand it, in space, no one can hear you scream. Slide guitars, on the other hand, sound great. Earthbound as they usually are, country and blues lend themselves remarkably well to the atmosphere, set amongst the reverb and stars; witness Pink Floyd's "A Pillow of Winds" or Beechwood Sparks' "Sweet Julie Ann". These are just two of the bands that quickly spring to mind when Lowlights' self-titled debut drifts out of the speakers like a transmission from a drifting satellite. Another name-- one that flashes even brighter-- is Spiritualized, those masters of interstellar heartache who've lately given over to indigestible orchestral bloat, leaving behind a perfect vacancy for California's Lowlights to fill with their synthesis of Gram Parsons folk and regal, ionospheric psych. The album opens with a sweep of pure phase space-rock called "In the Distance", a slow descent overflowing with huge harmonies jerked earthward by dense clusters of distorted guitar. "Wave Goodbye" puts the brushes to the drumkit and the steel to the strings, but never comes down completely, floating a few miles up as bandleader Dameon Lee admonishes, "Don't turn around/ Just wave goodbye." Generally, Lee sticks to narrating human emotion in his songs-- there's none of the drug damage of Spiritualized or bedsit philosophy of The Verve to distract from the heartache and desperation in his songs. Lowlights definitely have a sound/bandname synergy going on-- the gentle repetition of "Brown Eyes", with its lonely, echoing trumpet and weeping pedal steel is a great way to come down from a physically active day of mowing the lawn and assembling Swedish furniture. The band squeezes a lot of variation from a fairly limited sound palette, constantly shifting tempos and making little changes, like subtly subbing in a harpsichord for an acoustic guitar, while keeping the overarching sound full of cavernous echo and open space. Lee's voice has gravel enough to sound weighty even when cast in the album's zero-gravity atmosphere, and he's well complemented by the silk-smooth backing harmonies of Angela Brown. On the whisper-quiet "Wheelbarrow", which features guest vocalist Brisa Roche backed only by a wandering Rhodes and a quivering Farfisa, Lowlights conjure some of Yo La Tengo's sparsest Georgia Hubley ballads, yet things close at a majestic crawl with "How Does It Feel?", a languid drift through the solar system topped by pining steel and lush, homespun folk harmonies. Thick electric guitar cuts in on the refrain, a false start that teases at a closing firestorm, but shuts down instead, bowing to the pastoral glow of the verses. It's an impressive debut, and Lowlights seem to have all the pieces in place to churn out at least a few more in the near future. They have a mastery of the texture that a record like this requires to pass as more than just an ambling experiment, and they've proven they have the ability to write more than one kind of song, which is something a lot of their peers simply can't do. They may not be doing anything terribly new, but their execution is beautiful, and sometimes that's more than enough."

The Kills

Black Rooster EP

Electronic,Rock

John O'Connor

I first heard The Kills on the day that Waylon Jennings died and, despite a crushing bleakness that enveloped me like a giant pair of shit-stained undies, they made me feel a little better about life. Later that day I told a female acquaintance (someone who'd had the misfortune of being educated in Northeastern private schools and naturally had no idea of who Waylon Jennings was) about Waylon and she thought I meant Peter Jennings, the newscaster. "Oh noooo," she said slowly, cupping her hand to her mouth, "Not Peee-ter. He was soooo great." We were at a barbecue eating shish kabobs, and I credit The Kills with preventing me from plunging my metal poker straight through that girl's black heart. One-half of The Kills is Alison "VV" Mosshart, a Floridian who, along with Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, may eventually rehabilitate the sullied name of that near-forgotten state. She sings like Joan Jett, though initially, you might recall Happy Days' Pinky Tuscadero, whose coquettish growl stood in poetic juxtaposition to the leather body suit, kerchief and biker gloves that she sashayed in onstage. Remember the episode where Pinky battles the Malachi brothers in a demolition derby and gets righteously mangled? When the Fonz lifts her limp body from the wreckage he has this implacable look in his eyes-- a look he wore only once before, if memory serves me correctly, when Al's restaurant burned down-- and you just know some beatdowns are imminent. Man! That still gives me goose bumps. The point being, VV puts the melodrama to good use. Her voice has a frenetic, indignant quality much like Karen O's, and it's the foundation of four out of the five songs on their freshly reissued Black Rooster EP. The other half of The Kills is Londoner Jamie "Hotel" Hince. Aside from having the coolest nickname on the other side of the Big Drink, Hotel plays a furious, unwieldy guitar that provides the perfect accompaniment to VV's vengeance-minded crooning. Their transatlantic collaboration has a peculiar resonance on the song "Cat Claw", which sounds something like if The Stooges cut a single with Boss Hog. The drumming is relentless but understated, and the lyrics (some of which are inscrutable) are violently lustful: "Never know who comes it might easily be me/ You don't give a fuck for my love 'cause that's too much." On the title track, Hotel and VV trade come-ons in a call-and-response chorus: "You wanna fuck and fight?/ In the basement/ The kid gotta rattlesnake gun/ In the basement." Both songs bring to mind a softcore version of Backyard Wrestling with Sean Connery versus he-woman Jennifer Capriati. The Kills have earned comparisons to Captain Beefheart (which is sorta fucked), but they owe more of a debt to Sonic Youth and Royal Trux-- though Black Rooster is neither as self-indulgent or drug-obsessed as Herrema and Hagerty in their prime. Aside from the last track, an experimental throwaway titled "Gum", the songs on this EP make for an extraordinary debut.

Artist: The Kills, Album: Black Rooster EP, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "I first heard The Kills on the day that Waylon Jennings died and, despite a crushing bleakness that enveloped me like a giant pair of shit-stained undies, they made me feel a little better about life. Later that day I told a female acquaintance (someone who'd had the misfortune of being educated in Northeastern private schools and naturally had no idea of who Waylon Jennings was) about Waylon and she thought I meant Peter Jennings, the newscaster. "Oh noooo," she said slowly, cupping her hand to her mouth, "Not Peee-ter. He was soooo great." We were at a barbecue eating shish kabobs, and I credit The Kills with preventing me from plunging my metal poker straight through that girl's black heart. One-half of The Kills is Alison "VV" Mosshart, a Floridian who, along with Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, may eventually rehabilitate the sullied name of that near-forgotten state. She sings like Joan Jett, though initially, you might recall Happy Days' Pinky Tuscadero, whose coquettish growl stood in poetic juxtaposition to the leather body suit, kerchief and biker gloves that she sashayed in onstage. Remember the episode where Pinky battles the Malachi brothers in a demolition derby and gets righteously mangled? When the Fonz lifts her limp body from the wreckage he has this implacable look in his eyes-- a look he wore only once before, if memory serves me correctly, when Al's restaurant burned down-- and you just know some beatdowns are imminent. Man! That still gives me goose bumps. The point being, VV puts the melodrama to good use. Her voice has a frenetic, indignant quality much like Karen O's, and it's the foundation of four out of the five songs on their freshly reissued Black Rooster EP. The other half of The Kills is Londoner Jamie "Hotel" Hince. Aside from having the coolest nickname on the other side of the Big Drink, Hotel plays a furious, unwieldy guitar that provides the perfect accompaniment to VV's vengeance-minded crooning. Their transatlantic collaboration has a peculiar resonance on the song "Cat Claw", which sounds something like if The Stooges cut a single with Boss Hog. The drumming is relentless but understated, and the lyrics (some of which are inscrutable) are violently lustful: "Never know who comes it might easily be me/ You don't give a fuck for my love 'cause that's too much." On the title track, Hotel and VV trade come-ons in a call-and-response chorus: "You wanna fuck and fight?/ In the basement/ The kid gotta rattlesnake gun/ In the basement." Both songs bring to mind a softcore version of Backyard Wrestling with Sean Connery versus he-woman Jennifer Capriati. The Kills have earned comparisons to Captain Beefheart (which is sorta fucked), but they owe more of a debt to Sonic Youth and Royal Trux-- though Black Rooster is neither as self-indulgent or drug-obsessed as Herrema and Hagerty in their prime. Aside from the last track, an experimental throwaway titled "Gum", the songs on this EP make for an extraordinary debut."

Rakim

The Seventh Seal

Rap

Tom Breihan

A new Rakim album should be a big deal-- or at least a bigger deal than this. Talking about the man's career, it's hard not to lapse into hyperbole, to talk like he invented rap, because in some ways he kind of did. The things that make rap what it is in 2009 existed in various forms back in 1986, when Rakim's career launched, but Rakim isolated, elevated, streamlined, and developed them. The seen-it-all thousand-yard stare, the twisty internal rhyme schemes, the innate sense of the meter of speech and its possibilities, the mystic codes that intrigued just as they alienated, the emphasis on sheer weight of presence-- these are all Rakim's legacies, and without them, rap would look very, very different. Rappers and old-head fans talk about Rakim the way they talk about retired legends; but Rakim's out there, hungry, ready to work, making occasional guest appearances. He hasn't recorded an album in 10 years, but he's only one year older than Jay-Z or Diddy. For a while, he was signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath imprint, at work on a record that seemed so titanic (arguably the greatest rapper ever united with arguably the greatest rap producer) that it almost had to disappoint. But that didn't happen, and here he is, on an album full of budget beats and nobody guest singers, radiating rinky-dink half-hearted comeback attempt. He deserves much, much better. On "Won't Be Long", Rakim states his current aim: "Complete my legacy/ Without compromising my artistic integrity." In interviews, he's implied that he and Dre parted ways because Dre wanted him to record the sort of accessible gangsta music that's always been Dre's stock-in-trade, something Rakim wasn't interested in doing. And lyrically at least, The Seventh Seal sounds very much like the album Rakim wanted to make. There are a lot of love songs on the album, a lot of educating-the-youth songs, a lot of Obama namechecks. There's one song about God, another about the redemptive power of music. I'm pretty sure he doesn't curse once on the whole LP, and there's not a single crass commercial cash-grab here. That's great, admirable even, but you also hear what Rakim's missing without a Dre-level executive producer on board. The beats are generally flat, lifeless thumpers from unknown producers. And even the few decent beats from decent producers like Jake One or Nottz have to contend with the guest singers, who show up over and over and who feel like total dead-weight voids. No rapper would be able to maintain a consistent level of force or intensity in settings like these. Understandably, Rakim sounds exhausted more often than not, his laconic basso growl never quite as effortless as it once was. A Dre-type figure could also tell Rakim that it might not be such a good idea to rhyme "euthanasia" with "youth in Asia" or to point out that "love backwards is evil," simply because it's near-impossible to make moves like these without coming off corny. But this is still a Rakim album, and that goes a long way. Some of the man's greatest strengths, like his technical rigor and fluidity, are the sorts of things that naturally wear away with age. But others-- principally the rush that comes just from hearing the unrushed weight in his voice-- have stuck around. Some of the songs here also make great use of the boundless goodwill that Rakim's built up over the years. Rakim's always taken his love songs seriously, committing to them as intensely as he does to his dropping-knowledge tracks; 1990's "Mahogany" is my favorite example. He pulls that off a few times here, talking about everyday struggles between couples without sounding like he's pandering or doing token for-the-ladies songs. And on "Dedicated", he brings enormous pathos to a song about his recently dead mother, making even the terrible-idea No Doubt sample on the chorus sound acceptable. But this album still falls way short of what it could be, and I have to wonder how this even happened. Rappers should be lining up to work with this guy, but the only guest rapper on the whole album is perennial C-lister Maino. A second-generation Rakim disciple like Cormega can score DJ Premier and Large Professor beats for his new album, but Rakim himself gets stuck with pale imitations of those guys' best work. I can't say enough bad things about these hook singers. It's not a new thing for rap veterans to make limp, uninspired new albums that only barely hint at past glories. But it is a new thing for this rap veteran.

Artist: Rakim, Album: The Seventh Seal, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "A new Rakim album should be a big deal-- or at least a bigger deal than this. Talking about the man's career, it's hard not to lapse into hyperbole, to talk like he invented rap, because in some ways he kind of did. The things that make rap what it is in 2009 existed in various forms back in 1986, when Rakim's career launched, but Rakim isolated, elevated, streamlined, and developed them. The seen-it-all thousand-yard stare, the twisty internal rhyme schemes, the innate sense of the meter of speech and its possibilities, the mystic codes that intrigued just as they alienated, the emphasis on sheer weight of presence-- these are all Rakim's legacies, and without them, rap would look very, very different. Rappers and old-head fans talk about Rakim the way they talk about retired legends; but Rakim's out there, hungry, ready to work, making occasional guest appearances. He hasn't recorded an album in 10 years, but he's only one year older than Jay-Z or Diddy. For a while, he was signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath imprint, at work on a record that seemed so titanic (arguably the greatest rapper ever united with arguably the greatest rap producer) that it almost had to disappoint. But that didn't happen, and here he is, on an album full of budget beats and nobody guest singers, radiating rinky-dink half-hearted comeback attempt. He deserves much, much better. On "Won't Be Long", Rakim states his current aim: "Complete my legacy/ Without compromising my artistic integrity." In interviews, he's implied that he and Dre parted ways because Dre wanted him to record the sort of accessible gangsta music that's always been Dre's stock-in-trade, something Rakim wasn't interested in doing. And lyrically at least, The Seventh Seal sounds very much like the album Rakim wanted to make. There are a lot of love songs on the album, a lot of educating-the-youth songs, a lot of Obama namechecks. There's one song about God, another about the redemptive power of music. I'm pretty sure he doesn't curse once on the whole LP, and there's not a single crass commercial cash-grab here. That's great, admirable even, but you also hear what Rakim's missing without a Dre-level executive producer on board. The beats are generally flat, lifeless thumpers from unknown producers. And even the few decent beats from decent producers like Jake One or Nottz have to contend with the guest singers, who show up over and over and who feel like total dead-weight voids. No rapper would be able to maintain a consistent level of force or intensity in settings like these. Understandably, Rakim sounds exhausted more often than not, his laconic basso growl never quite as effortless as it once was. A Dre-type figure could also tell Rakim that it might not be such a good idea to rhyme "euthanasia" with "youth in Asia" or to point out that "love backwards is evil," simply because it's near-impossible to make moves like these without coming off corny. But this is still a Rakim album, and that goes a long way. Some of the man's greatest strengths, like his technical rigor and fluidity, are the sorts of things that naturally wear away with age. But others-- principally the rush that comes just from hearing the unrushed weight in his voice-- have stuck around. Some of the songs here also make great use of the boundless goodwill that Rakim's built up over the years. Rakim's always taken his love songs seriously, committing to them as intensely as he does to his dropping-knowledge tracks; 1990's "Mahogany" is my favorite example. He pulls that off a few times here, talking about everyday struggles between couples without sounding like he's pandering or doing token for-the-ladies songs. And on "Dedicated", he brings enormous pathos to a song about his recently dead mother, making even the terrible-idea No Doubt sample on the chorus sound acceptable. But this album still falls way short of what it could be, and I have to wonder how this even happened. Rappers should be lining up to work with this guy, but the only guest rapper on the whole album is perennial C-lister Maino. A second-generation Rakim disciple like Cormega can score DJ Premier and Large Professor beats for his new album, but Rakim himself gets stuck with pale imitations of those guys' best work. I can't say enough bad things about these hook singers. It's not a new thing for rap veterans to make limp, uninspired new albums that only barely hint at past glories. But it is a new thing for this rap veteran."

The Jet Age

Breathless

Rock

Joe Tangari

When you see a three-piece rock band live, that's all you hear: three guys playing and singing. On record, you almost never get that. It's much more likely that songs will be piled high with overdubs and double-tracked vocals. So Breathless, the first album by the Jet Age, winds up being different by virtue of its sheer simplicity-- with only one exception, the record sounds exactly like the band would live. The trio is led by Eric Tischler, a man whose love of the Who is evident in the way he puts a song together, allowing for ample drum fills and guitar tangents. Tischler spent years as the nucleus of the Hurricane Lamps, who made a series of very raw power-pop albums, and Breathless announces his intention to make the Jet Age his rock band. It's not that there's no pop songcraft here-- just that Pete Nuwayser's drums get a lot of leeway to roam and Tischler reels off a higher than expected number sharp fuzz-tone solos. Tischler opens the album with a long peel of cosmic lead guitar, but the themes he explores on the record are decidedly more terrestrial. His lyrics are full of natural forces, especially weather, and he relates them to family and the alternate feelings of safe harbor and tumult it can provide. "See what you thought you could never see/ A home, a hearth, a family/ A hundred feet below as you climb/ If you could just touch down before you die," he sings on "Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose," capturing a slice of the mind of someone who never made time for a such relationships. As basic as the sound is, the band does a lot with dynamics to keep it interesting. "Slope" has gentle, dream-like verses, but when it gets to the chorus, the drums slip out of time-keeping completely-- the four lines of the chorus are driven forward by nothing but drum fills and frenzied guitar strumming with the distortion pedal off. Tischler's tendency to stay away from the effects when he's not playing a lead keeps things clean and uncluttered. As fun as it is to hear a rock trio happily bashing away, there's evidence that they could do great things with a more produced sound on "Big Deaths, Little Deaths", the only song with an audible overdub. As the track stretches out past five minutes in a quick-tempo buildup, Tischler harmonizes wordlessly with several of himselves, and the effect is enough to make you wish he'd try it more often. Whether or not he does, the Jet Age figures to be entertaining. Good songs played by a straightforward rock trio will always find their way into people's playlists, regardless of what's big at the moment. The Jet Age provides exactly that on Breathless.

Artist: The Jet Age, Album: Breathless, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "When you see a three-piece rock band live, that's all you hear: three guys playing and singing. On record, you almost never get that. It's much more likely that songs will be piled high with overdubs and double-tracked vocals. So Breathless, the first album by the Jet Age, winds up being different by virtue of its sheer simplicity-- with only one exception, the record sounds exactly like the band would live. The trio is led by Eric Tischler, a man whose love of the Who is evident in the way he puts a song together, allowing for ample drum fills and guitar tangents. Tischler spent years as the nucleus of the Hurricane Lamps, who made a series of very raw power-pop albums, and Breathless announces his intention to make the Jet Age his rock band. It's not that there's no pop songcraft here-- just that Pete Nuwayser's drums get a lot of leeway to roam and Tischler reels off a higher than expected number sharp fuzz-tone solos. Tischler opens the album with a long peel of cosmic lead guitar, but the themes he explores on the record are decidedly more terrestrial. His lyrics are full of natural forces, especially weather, and he relates them to family and the alternate feelings of safe harbor and tumult it can provide. "See what you thought you could never see/ A home, a hearth, a family/ A hundred feet below as you climb/ If you could just touch down before you die," he sings on "Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose," capturing a slice of the mind of someone who never made time for a such relationships. As basic as the sound is, the band does a lot with dynamics to keep it interesting. "Slope" has gentle, dream-like verses, but when it gets to the chorus, the drums slip out of time-keeping completely-- the four lines of the chorus are driven forward by nothing but drum fills and frenzied guitar strumming with the distortion pedal off. Tischler's tendency to stay away from the effects when he's not playing a lead keeps things clean and uncluttered. As fun as it is to hear a rock trio happily bashing away, there's evidence that they could do great things with a more produced sound on "Big Deaths, Little Deaths", the only song with an audible overdub. As the track stretches out past five minutes in a quick-tempo buildup, Tischler harmonizes wordlessly with several of himselves, and the effect is enough to make you wish he'd try it more often. Whether or not he does, the Jet Age figures to be entertaining. Good songs played by a straightforward rock trio will always find their way into people's playlists, regardless of what's big at the moment. The Jet Age provides exactly that on Breathless."

Yo La Tengo

Nuclear War EP

Rock

Kyle Reiter

In 1982, jazz composer and self-proclaimed Saturnite Sun Ra recorded the song "Nuclear War" just as the Reaganization of the Cold War had swung into full effect. The song, a swampy, pulsating chant about the inevitable genocide that will ensue, sooner or later, as a result of nuclear weaponry, went largely unheard in the U.S. due to poor distribution, until seeing reissue recently as a part of the Chicago-based Atavistic label's Unheard Music Series. Twenty years on, the song now suddenly strikes with the same poignancy as it did upon release. Yo La Tengo have always made cover songs an integral part of their repertoire, and the release of their four-track Nuclear War EP follows in that tradition. The song began showing up in live sets almost two years ago, but has just now been recorded. And while the band's tastes are sweeping and informed, never before has one of their covers been so apropos outside of its immediate rock context. "Nuclear War" might not be a post-9/11 tribute, per se, but it rightly encapsulates the languid panic of a post-ironic America. While Alan Jackson celebrates his inanity for foreign policy and Steve Earle proves himself too careerist to impact anything outside of his own record sales, Yo La Tengo see how beautifully this song summarizes our nation's apathetic despair: "It's a motherfucker/ Don't you know/ If they push that button/ Yo ass gotta go." Poignancy aside, the single does dull the senses with its uncanny ability to become increasingly repetitive. Four distinct versions mark the single, and it's difficult to cross the finish line of one track knowing that ahead lies more of the same. The disc opens with the band chanting the song's mutating refrain for nearly eight minutes, accompanied by nothing more than tribal percussion. Sun Ra achieved an eeriness by only coolly stating the obvious, and with his relaxed delivery, he created an uneasy, irresistible tension. Yo La Tengo, however, have greatly accelerated the song itself, and stripped it of its fun. On the opening track, they seem almost to be pleading for the message to be heard, and their somewhat morose delivery dilutes its power. While the cacophonous horn trio on the 15-minute third version is perhaps musically the closest to Ra's original, version two is the best homage. Although it's nothing more than version one's backing track with the addition of an otherworldly guitar loop and a choir of children in the call-and-response, the resulting track is almost devilishly cartoonish. Upon first listen, the children create a lighter atmosphere (and a hilarious ploy when saying "motherfucker" over and over), but as the song plays on, the kids don't seem quite so funny anymore. The naïveté involved in an actual nuclear assault sets in, and with every response from the children comes an increasingly unsettling feeling. The song conveys the realization that everyone's in the hot seat, not just the adults. It's this twisted sense of structure that ultimately owes itself to Ra. I won't get into version four too much, as it's just a remix by the admittedly incredible Mike Ladd, and seems to exist here solely as additional bang-for-the-buck. It essentially closes the disc by rehashing the first three-quarters, adding a dubbed-out drone, a curious organ breakdown, and some additional percussion and effects. Needless to say, after a straight half-hour of this already repetitive song, we just don't need to hear another take on it. It's hard to point a finger at a band like Yo La Tengo because the intentions are obviously good. They do manage to kill two birds with one stone by revealing the coolness of their record collection while responding to a cultural state of affairs, but unfortunately, the results are less than stellar. Lucky for us, we can still look forward to the pending full-length due early next year, which, if their previous four albums are any indication, will be another winner.

Artist: Yo La Tengo, Album: Nuclear War EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "In 1982, jazz composer and self-proclaimed Saturnite Sun Ra recorded the song "Nuclear War" just as the Reaganization of the Cold War had swung into full effect. The song, a swampy, pulsating chant about the inevitable genocide that will ensue, sooner or later, as a result of nuclear weaponry, went largely unheard in the U.S. due to poor distribution, until seeing reissue recently as a part of the Chicago-based Atavistic label's Unheard Music Series. Twenty years on, the song now suddenly strikes with the same poignancy as it did upon release. Yo La Tengo have always made cover songs an integral part of their repertoire, and the release of their four-track Nuclear War EP follows in that tradition. The song began showing up in live sets almost two years ago, but has just now been recorded. And while the band's tastes are sweeping and informed, never before has one of their covers been so apropos outside of its immediate rock context. "Nuclear War" might not be a post-9/11 tribute, per se, but it rightly encapsulates the languid panic of a post-ironic America. While Alan Jackson celebrates his inanity for foreign policy and Steve Earle proves himself too careerist to impact anything outside of his own record sales, Yo La Tengo see how beautifully this song summarizes our nation's apathetic despair: "It's a motherfucker/ Don't you know/ If they push that button/ Yo ass gotta go." Poignancy aside, the single does dull the senses with its uncanny ability to become increasingly repetitive. Four distinct versions mark the single, and it's difficult to cross the finish line of one track knowing that ahead lies more of the same. The disc opens with the band chanting the song's mutating refrain for nearly eight minutes, accompanied by nothing more than tribal percussion. Sun Ra achieved an eeriness by only coolly stating the obvious, and with his relaxed delivery, he created an uneasy, irresistible tension. Yo La Tengo, however, have greatly accelerated the song itself, and stripped it of its fun. On the opening track, they seem almost to be pleading for the message to be heard, and their somewhat morose delivery dilutes its power. While the cacophonous horn trio on the 15-minute third version is perhaps musically the closest to Ra's original, version two is the best homage. Although it's nothing more than version one's backing track with the addition of an otherworldly guitar loop and a choir of children in the call-and-response, the resulting track is almost devilishly cartoonish. Upon first listen, the children create a lighter atmosphere (and a hilarious ploy when saying "motherfucker" over and over), but as the song plays on, the kids don't seem quite so funny anymore. The naïveté involved in an actual nuclear assault sets in, and with every response from the children comes an increasingly unsettling feeling. The song conveys the realization that everyone's in the hot seat, not just the adults. It's this twisted sense of structure that ultimately owes itself to Ra. I won't get into version four too much, as it's just a remix by the admittedly incredible Mike Ladd, and seems to exist here solely as additional bang-for-the-buck. It essentially closes the disc by rehashing the first three-quarters, adding a dubbed-out drone, a curious organ breakdown, and some additional percussion and effects. Needless to say, after a straight half-hour of this already repetitive song, we just don't need to hear another take on it. It's hard to point a finger at a band like Yo La Tengo because the intentions are obviously good. They do manage to kill two birds with one stone by revealing the coolness of their record collection while responding to a cultural state of affairs, but unfortunately, the results are less than stellar. Lucky for us, we can still look forward to the pending full-length due early next year, which, if their previous four albums are any indication, will be another winner."

Lithops

Mound Magnet

Electronic

Mark Richardson

To understand Jan St. Werner's work as Lithops, it helps to be familiar with Sonig, the label he started in 1997 with Frank Dommert. Sonig releases a certain amount of accessible music, such as Jason Forrest's noisy mash-up The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash and Nathan Michel's The Beast. But they also regularly explore the outer limits of listenability, from suites for analog squiggles by Michel Waisvisz to free improv Game Boy experiments by the Fan Club Orchestra. For Lithops, as for his label, St. Werner is interested in examining the boundaries of what can be considered music, walking the borders between playfulness and violence, seeing what lies beyond the threshold of annoyance. The experimental nature of this approach means some Sonig releases sound like nothing else out there; it also means that a good chunk of the catalog is something you'll put on very rarely. Here on his fourth full-length solo release, the Lithops project is more multifaceted than ever. Early records like Didot and Uni Umit worked in a realm similar to where Mouse on Mars was at the time, compressing the main gig's pop experiments into short, crude, and often humorous nuggets. But Scrypt, released in 2003, found St. Werner veering into abstraction of almost incomprehensible density, every corner stuffed with jagged digital distortion that took many listens to dissect. Mound Magnet sometimes heads for Scrypt's noisy hills, but it also makes room for more buoyant moments. Tracks like "Opposite of Windward" and "Vortext" aren't easy listens, with the former's extreme surges in dynamics, machinegun tempo, and rapidly crisscrossing layers of abrasive synths, and the latter's harsh metallic whine that serves as the central motif. But these are Mound Magnet's highlights, exhibiting St. Werner's original and highly developed musical language. All sorts of spazzy IDM in the late 1990s strove for this level of quick-cut abrasion, but St. Werner exhibits patience and refinement, letting the songs unfold in a logical manner despite the harshness. These tracks also hint at why Mouse on Mars' Varcharz may have been better off jettisoning its half-hearted pop aspirations, foregoing beats in favor of pure texture. "Cephalopod", "Peek", "Harpoon Point", and "Stratografic" are prickly, off-kilter tunes with chords and melodies, regular beats, and vague hints of dub; all impress with their inventive approach. Though these are electronic instrumentals in some way connected to pop history, they're not easily pegged to any one era and seem in no way retro. They are in that sense an honest go at creating a warped and challenging future music, fulfilling some of the promise of an original spirit of IDM. And yet, listening to these bouncy numbers, I'm reminded of Lithops' "Me We". This track was St. Werner's contribution to the 1999 label sampler Comp., Sonig's first CD release after a number of vinyl issues. "Me We" is short, weird, terribly catchy, and hilarious, a unique pop instrumental that comes over as a cheap re-write of an 80s cop movie theme updated with late-90s computing power. St. Werner's projects tended toward the whimsical and humorous then; they were unassuming and approachable even when they seemed they could turn in any direction next. St. Werner's current aesthetic has traveled some distance from those days, and though Mound Magnet certainly succeeds on its own terms, I can't help but pine for the old mischievousness.

Artist: Lithops, Album: Mound Magnet, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "To understand Jan St. Werner's work as Lithops, it helps to be familiar with Sonig, the label he started in 1997 with Frank Dommert. Sonig releases a certain amount of accessible music, such as Jason Forrest's noisy mash-up The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash and Nathan Michel's The Beast. But they also regularly explore the outer limits of listenability, from suites for analog squiggles by Michel Waisvisz to free improv Game Boy experiments by the Fan Club Orchestra. For Lithops, as for his label, St. Werner is interested in examining the boundaries of what can be considered music, walking the borders between playfulness and violence, seeing what lies beyond the threshold of annoyance. The experimental nature of this approach means some Sonig releases sound like nothing else out there; it also means that a good chunk of the catalog is something you'll put on very rarely. Here on his fourth full-length solo release, the Lithops project is more multifaceted than ever. Early records like Didot and Uni Umit worked in a realm similar to where Mouse on Mars was at the time, compressing the main gig's pop experiments into short, crude, and often humorous nuggets. But Scrypt, released in 2003, found St. Werner veering into abstraction of almost incomprehensible density, every corner stuffed with jagged digital distortion that took many listens to dissect. Mound Magnet sometimes heads for Scrypt's noisy hills, but it also makes room for more buoyant moments. Tracks like "Opposite of Windward" and "Vortext" aren't easy listens, with the former's extreme surges in dynamics, machinegun tempo, and rapidly crisscrossing layers of abrasive synths, and the latter's harsh metallic whine that serves as the central motif. But these are Mound Magnet's highlights, exhibiting St. Werner's original and highly developed musical language. All sorts of spazzy IDM in the late 1990s strove for this level of quick-cut abrasion, but St. Werner exhibits patience and refinement, letting the songs unfold in a logical manner despite the harshness. These tracks also hint at why Mouse on Mars' Varcharz may have been better off jettisoning its half-hearted pop aspirations, foregoing beats in favor of pure texture. "Cephalopod", "Peek", "Harpoon Point", and "Stratografic" are prickly, off-kilter tunes with chords and melodies, regular beats, and vague hints of dub; all impress with their inventive approach. Though these are electronic instrumentals in some way connected to pop history, they're not easily pegged to any one era and seem in no way retro. They are in that sense an honest go at creating a warped and challenging future music, fulfilling some of the promise of an original spirit of IDM. And yet, listening to these bouncy numbers, I'm reminded of Lithops' "Me We". This track was St. Werner's contribution to the 1999 label sampler Comp., Sonig's first CD release after a number of vinyl issues. "Me We" is short, weird, terribly catchy, and hilarious, a unique pop instrumental that comes over as a cheap re-write of an 80s cop movie theme updated with late-90s computing power. St. Werner's projects tended toward the whimsical and humorous then; they were unassuming and approachable even when they seemed they could turn in any direction next. St. Werner's current aesthetic has traveled some distance from those days, and though Mound Magnet certainly succeeds on its own terms, I can't help but pine for the old mischievousness."

Verdure

The Telescope Dreampatterns

Brandon Stosuy

Last we heard, Donovan Quinn had teamed with Jewelled Antler Collective's Glenn Donaldson to form bubblegum nature buffs The Skygreen Leopards. To date, that duo's One Thousand Bird Ceremonies remains one of the more understated and addictive slabs of lo-fi pop to pass through the treehouse this year. Now going it alone as Verdure, Quinn remains within that marble-green hemisphere, yet, where the Leopards write for the sunniest of Julys, Verdure spins a much more nocturnal cartography. Originally self-released on CD-R and kept close among friends and associates, The Telescope Dreampatterns has been given a proper CD release by the Australian psych label Camera Obscura. Even before listening to The Telescope Dreampatterns, a mood is established by its lush packaging: Chunky purple trees, moths, and skeletal root systems are rendered in glorious psych fashion on the cover by Dream Magazine's George Parsons. It's nearly as satisfying musically: Opener "Into the Blacktrees" merges archaic acid-folk with a properly pained and dusted lyricism, relaying the tale of a shape-shifting dream state: "I watched you take off your dress/ Lay yourself in the open road/ I didn't know if I should eat your flesh/ Or if I should pray for your soul/ Then you were two bluebirds at once/ And I watched you dancin' in the leaves/ And I watched you all of your life/ 'Til you disappeared into the black trees." Quinn's cough-syrup vocal pacing here (and on "Graveyard Porchlight") is at times reminiscent of Dylan, but instrumentally, he shies from simple, straightforward folk by wrapping his dense hums and bows with the shade of a misty-eyed Skip Spence, the vibe of countless downer-psych players, and Native American tradition. "The Greentrees"' relaxed pacing allows chimes to ring and sustain entirely before dissolving; its interludes are opaque and spacious. Organs drift, inducing a supine, dewy slumber, and when you finally catch a glimpse of these patterns, they feel like time-lapse guitar sparkle strummed and courted by Mr. Sandman: Quinn swivels into nightmare territory, but then quickly drifts back to idealized fluffy sheep and mossy hills. Likewise, "Fluttering Pastures" recreates its evocative title with Gregorian chants, rising chimes and all sorts of stringed vibrations. "The Coffin Split in Two" suggests the rock howl of The Seeds or The Troggs, and it delivers playful birdcalls over extant guitar wail. In other spots, I can pick out Iran guitar walls and Twisted Village chimes. There isn't much vocal and/or musical variation on the record, but this is a somnambulant daytrip, and, as with any level shoegaze plane, the lack of differentiation works to lull you into its zone. Songs don't emerge from some freakout garden in the sky, but pick at Quinn's roots and you'll find tiny blooming strata twisting through the rocky patterns of decay in Parson's landscaping. And the occasional instrumental adds some respite, giving the album the feel of a mystical found-sound field recording. Through every crag, The Telescope Dreampatterns is the ideal immersion tank for watching fireflies collide under graveyard porchlights. Now listen closely as they smear the summer with their woozy death-rattle glow.

Artist: Verdure, Album: The Telescope Dreampatterns, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Last we heard, Donovan Quinn had teamed with Jewelled Antler Collective's Glenn Donaldson to form bubblegum nature buffs The Skygreen Leopards. To date, that duo's One Thousand Bird Ceremonies remains one of the more understated and addictive slabs of lo-fi pop to pass through the treehouse this year. Now going it alone as Verdure, Quinn remains within that marble-green hemisphere, yet, where the Leopards write for the sunniest of Julys, Verdure spins a much more nocturnal cartography. Originally self-released on CD-R and kept close among friends and associates, The Telescope Dreampatterns has been given a proper CD release by the Australian psych label Camera Obscura. Even before listening to The Telescope Dreampatterns, a mood is established by its lush packaging: Chunky purple trees, moths, and skeletal root systems are rendered in glorious psych fashion on the cover by Dream Magazine's George Parsons. It's nearly as satisfying musically: Opener "Into the Blacktrees" merges archaic acid-folk with a properly pained and dusted lyricism, relaying the tale of a shape-shifting dream state: "I watched you take off your dress/ Lay yourself in the open road/ I didn't know if I should eat your flesh/ Or if I should pray for your soul/ Then you were two bluebirds at once/ And I watched you dancin' in the leaves/ And I watched you all of your life/ 'Til you disappeared into the black trees." Quinn's cough-syrup vocal pacing here (and on "Graveyard Porchlight") is at times reminiscent of Dylan, but instrumentally, he shies from simple, straightforward folk by wrapping his dense hums and bows with the shade of a misty-eyed Skip Spence, the vibe of countless downer-psych players, and Native American tradition. "The Greentrees"' relaxed pacing allows chimes to ring and sustain entirely before dissolving; its interludes are opaque and spacious. Organs drift, inducing a supine, dewy slumber, and when you finally catch a glimpse of these patterns, they feel like time-lapse guitar sparkle strummed and courted by Mr. Sandman: Quinn swivels into nightmare territory, but then quickly drifts back to idealized fluffy sheep and mossy hills. Likewise, "Fluttering Pastures" recreates its evocative title with Gregorian chants, rising chimes and all sorts of stringed vibrations. "The Coffin Split in Two" suggests the rock howl of The Seeds or The Troggs, and it delivers playful birdcalls over extant guitar wail. In other spots, I can pick out Iran guitar walls and Twisted Village chimes. There isn't much vocal and/or musical variation on the record, but this is a somnambulant daytrip, and, as with any level shoegaze plane, the lack of differentiation works to lull you into its zone. Songs don't emerge from some freakout garden in the sky, but pick at Quinn's roots and you'll find tiny blooming strata twisting through the rocky patterns of decay in Parson's landscaping. And the occasional instrumental adds some respite, giving the album the feel of a mystical found-sound field recording. Through every crag, The Telescope Dreampatterns is the ideal immersion tank for watching fireflies collide under graveyard porchlights. Now listen closely as they smear the summer with their woozy death-rattle glow."

Cold Cave

Full Cold Moon

Electronic,Rock

Ian Cohen

Shoot for the moon—even if you miss you’ll...probably end up making a total fucking faceplant. That’s a lesson many people in have learned the hard way in Hollywood, and to hear Wesley Eisold tell it, he's one of them. His last Cold Cave record, 2011’s Cherish the Light Years, was an explosive lunar launch that embraced every opportunity to tell you how awesome it was__—__nothing but souped-up goth-rock jock jams, bombastic lyrics and hyper-loud Brick Wall of China production. And yet, it failed to satisfy the one person most invested in its success:  Wesley Eisold. Eisold told us that Cherish the Light Years is “the Cold Cave I can’t stand to hear,” and in the time since, he’s treated 2011 like a rejected transplant. But in addition to separating himself from former collaborators, dealing with his internal demons and external demonization, Eisold got a prosthetic limb after spending his entire life hiding his missing left hand. The metaphor wasn’t lost on him__—__it’s a sign of being accountable, refusing to think of himself as a victim. These are themes that Eisold dealt with on the singles he intermittently released during 2013 as a free agent from Matador Records, and Full Cold Moon collects them to create an account of the imperfect progress of someone trying to take back control of his life. So is Full Cold Moon the "new Cold Cave album"? Not really__—__though in a strange way, the familiarity of these songs make it far more “singles”-packed than the overtly commercial Cherish the Light Years.  Eisold claims the new material is more “honest” as well, and that can be taken a number of ways, depending on whether you think the tag is a preemptive strike against the idea that he didn’t have much choice but to make more humble-sounding music. It’s clear that Eisold can’t stop writing anthems, as “Don’t Blow Up the Moon”, "God Made the World" and “People are Poison” are every bit as broad and striving as their titles indicate.  But while the songs are fully-formed, the production has a demo-like starkness and the underlying instrumentation is dank, rudimentary stuff that sounds like one man in his home studio, accountable to no one besides himself. On opener “A Little Death to Laugh”, synths bleep like first-gen ringtones over unyielding, old-school machine beats and wormy bass while Eisold inverts his prior vocal performances, sounding like he’s being deflated rather than projecting outwards. “Oceans With No End” and “Black Boots”, two singles which immediately recall the rock dynamics of Eisold’s recent past than the New Romantic S&M of Loves Come Close, are among his strongest and most passionate work—but they’re also the songs on this release that could’ve used bolder presentation or a dynamic shift to turn their choruses into legitimate singalongs. That said, even if Chris Coady’s hyper-compressed production on Cherish the Light Years is occasionally missed, over the span of an entire album, it was like a corset__—__meant to enhance and excite the onlooker, but it sure seemed painful for long periods of time. Eisold sounds freed on the first quarter of Full Cold Moon, which is almost an EP unto itself that reminds you Eisold is Cold Cave, and the project will sound however he chooses. After "A Little Death to Laugh", “Young Prisoner Dreams of Romance” is a black-on-black leatherbound punk burner that’s over almost as soon as you read the title, immediately followed by the off-kilter, strangely beautiful coldwave instrumental “Tristan Corbière.” But Full Cold Moon is more honest in the sense that Eisold is asking himself harder questions than he did on songs like “Underworld USA”, which were necessarily blank. It’s a shame that Eisold’s vocals are mixed curiously low; for one thing, they minimize the impact of his melodies, the immediate advantage he has over the hundreds of mid-fi coldwavers working in a similar range. Without the lyrics sheet, you can completely overlook his searching, often searing self-reckoning. During “A Little Death to Laugh”, Eisold mutters “I lost a limb on the left hand path/ And I never ever got it back”, a double entendre with a hell of a lot of resonance considering Eisold’s life story as well as Cold Cave's aesthetic. Meanwhile, “People are Poison” sidesteps the potentially Reznor-esque notebook scrawling to flatly state, “You better die young or you will be me or something/ And then they will say ‘in your prime, you were nothing.’” There’s a good chance your appreciation for Full Cold Moon will be inversely proportional to your appreciation of Cherish the Light Years’ flair for the dramatic, but remember that Cherish the Light Years is actually an outlier in Cold Cave’s discography__—__go back even further beyond the industrial New Order of Love Comes Close, to the days when Cold Cave was a noise project closer to former bandmate Dominick Fernow’s Prurient than Depeche Mode. As to what Cold Cave is now, “Meaningful Life” is coincidentally stuck right in the middle of Full Cold Moon and is presented as a kind of spiritual crossroads for Eisold. It’s an eerie, free-floating meditation of organ and flutes reduced to 8-bit versions of themselves. As for Eisold__:__ some people live very meaningful lives, some don’t. Which one will he choose? And what does "meaningful" even mean?  Eisold intimated that the next true Cold Cave album will be called Sunflower, so that probably gives an indication he’ll be choosing the right hand path out of the darkness.

Artist: Cold Cave, Album: Full Cold Moon, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Shoot for the moon—even if you miss you’ll...probably end up making a total fucking faceplant. That’s a lesson many people in have learned the hard way in Hollywood, and to hear Wesley Eisold tell it, he's one of them. His last Cold Cave record, 2011’s Cherish the Light Years, was an explosive lunar launch that embraced every opportunity to tell you how awesome it was__—__nothing but souped-up goth-rock jock jams, bombastic lyrics and hyper-loud Brick Wall of China production. And yet, it failed to satisfy the one person most invested in its success:  Wesley Eisold. Eisold told us that Cherish the Light Years is “the Cold Cave I can’t stand to hear,” and in the time since, he’s treated 2011 like a rejected transplant. But in addition to separating himself from former collaborators, dealing with his internal demons and external demonization, Eisold got a prosthetic limb after spending his entire life hiding his missing left hand. The metaphor wasn’t lost on him__—__it’s a sign of being accountable, refusing to think of himself as a victim. These are themes that Eisold dealt with on the singles he intermittently released during 2013 as a free agent from Matador Records, and Full Cold Moon collects them to create an account of the imperfect progress of someone trying to take back control of his life. So is Full Cold Moon the "new Cold Cave album"? Not really__—__though in a strange way, the familiarity of these songs make it far more “singles”-packed than the overtly commercial Cherish the Light Years.  Eisold claims the new material is more “honest” as well, and that can be taken a number of ways, depending on whether you think the tag is a preemptive strike against the idea that he didn’t have much choice but to make more humble-sounding music. It’s clear that Eisold can’t stop writing anthems, as “Don’t Blow Up the Moon”, "God Made the World" and “People are Poison” are every bit as broad and striving as their titles indicate.  But while the songs are fully-formed, the production has a demo-like starkness and the underlying instrumentation is dank, rudimentary stuff that sounds like one man in his home studio, accountable to no one besides himself. On opener “A Little Death to Laugh”, synths bleep like first-gen ringtones over unyielding, old-school machine beats and wormy bass while Eisold inverts his prior vocal performances, sounding like he’s being deflated rather than projecting outwards. “Oceans With No End” and “Black Boots”, two singles which immediately recall the rock dynamics of Eisold’s recent past than the New Romantic S&M of Loves Come Close, are among his strongest and most passionate work—but they’re also the songs on this release that could’ve used bolder presentation or a dynamic shift to turn their choruses into legitimate singalongs. That said, even if Chris Coady’s hyper-compressed production on Cherish the Light Years is occasionally missed, over the span of an entire album, it was like a corset__—__meant to enhance and excite the onlooker, but it sure seemed painful for long periods of time. Eisold sounds freed on the first quarter of Full Cold Moon, which is almost an EP unto itself that reminds you Eisold is Cold Cave, and the project will sound however he chooses. After "A Little Death to Laugh", “Young Prisoner Dreams of Romance” is a black-on-black leatherbound punk burner that’s over almost as soon as you read the title, immediately followed by the off-kilter, strangely beautiful coldwave instrumental “Tristan Corbière.” But Full Cold Moon is more honest in the sense that Eisold is asking himself harder questions than he did on songs like “Underworld USA”, which were necessarily blank. It’s a shame that Eisold’s vocals are mixed curiously low; for one thing, they minimize the impact of his melodies, the immediate advantage he has over the hundreds of mid-fi coldwavers working in a similar range. Without the lyrics sheet, you can completely overlook his searching, often searing self-reckoning. During “A Little Death to Laugh”, Eisold mutters “I lost a limb on the left hand path/ And I never ever got it back”, a double entendre with a hell of a lot of resonance considering Eisold’s life story as well as Cold Cave's aesthetic. Meanwhile, “People are Poison” sidesteps the potentially Reznor-esque notebook scrawling to flatly state, “You better die young or you will be me or something/ And then they will say ‘in your prime, you were nothing.’” There’s a good chance your appreciation for Full Cold Moon will be inversely proportional to your appreciation of Cherish the Light Years’ flair for the dramatic, but remember that Cherish the Light Years is actually an outlier in Cold Cave’s discography__—__go back even further beyond the industrial New Order of Love Comes Close, to the days when Cold Cave was a noise project closer to former bandmate Dominick Fernow’s Prurient than Depeche Mode. As to what Cold Cave is now, “Meaningful Life” is coincidentally stuck right in the middle of Full Cold Moon and is presented as a kind of spiritual crossroads for Eisold. It’s an eerie, free-floating meditation of organ and flutes reduced to 8-bit versions of themselves. As for Eisold__:__ some people live very meaningful lives, some don’t. Which one will he choose? And what does "meaningful" even mean?  Eisold intimated that the next true Cold Cave album will be called Sunflower, so that probably gives an indication he’ll be choosing the right hand path out of the darkness."

Klein

Tommy EP

Experimental

Ben Cardew

The rise of digital production techniques means that listeners tend to expect a certain clinical perfection in modern recorded music. Glitches are edited out and beats, confined to strict rhythmic grids, could run in perfect sync until the end of our days. Occasionally, though, an electronic artist will emerge who eschews the tight, rhythmic mapping of the sequencer in favor of cruder electronic tools. Burial once claimed to make music with the basic audio-editing program Sound Forge, and the wildly promising London producer Klein told FACT earlier this year that she uses Audacity, the freebie audio editor beloved of penniless media students everywhere, to arrange her music, recording hours of piano, guitar, and vocals that she later chops up and manipulates into strange new sounds. In the same interview Klein says that she uses her voice as her primary instrument, pushing her vocal tones to see how high and how low they can go. Tommy, Klein’s first release for Hyperdub after the self-released Lagata and Only EPs of 2016, builds on this approach. But whereas her earlier records were relatively spacious, Tommy sees Klein slather on vocals—from herself, her collaborators, and in sampled snippets—in thick, inky layers, manipulating her source material until the voices sound tarnished, rotting, and irregular. The result is music that overwhelms with its sickly density: a flawed, chaotic structure that feels both solid and strangely vulnerable, like a huge, poorly constructed skyscraper. “Prologue,” which opens the EP, is a brilliant example of Klein’s modus operandi. It starts with the abrupt, discombobulating rumble of processed piano chords, as if the listener has been dropped into the studio mid-session, followed by 20 seconds of random chatter. A lone voice starts singing a melody, which is then processed and pitched into a sound that is part human and part machine, the output of an Auto-Tune unit that has gotten bored and gone rogue. Slowly, more voices join and are themselves pulled in and out of focus, as the volume and intensity build and contract. “Prologue” is messy and feverish, the refracted, despairing sound of a chorus of ghosts calling from the bottom of the sea. It’s an intense, discomforting listen but never less than visceral in its impact. What makes this destructive approach particularly fascinating is that Klein—a fan of both Brandy and Andrew Lloyd Webber—can clearly write pop hooks, which she dangles in front of the listener like a conniving angler. “Cry Theme” starts with a fragment of catchy vocal melody, which is pitch-shifted into chipmunk territory as a spectral chorus echoes underneath; “Tommy” seems to initially borrow from 1950s-style doo-wop harmonies, while “Everlong” pulls a similarly teasing trick with the kind of earworm acoustic guitar riff you could imagine introducing a minor R&B hit in the late 1990s. Hidden deep among the EP’s opaque sonic layers are beautiful vocal and instrumental parts, which Klein occasionally allows to emerge from the mix like body parts floating to the top of a muddy river, before dragging them back under in a brilliantly contrarian act. If Klein’s sound is maximalist, though, her source material is anything but, cooked up largely from piano, guitar, and vocal snippets. Drums don’t make an appearance until five tracks in, on the brilliant “Runs Reprise,” where a helium R&B hook is rudely interrupted by a lurching, unsteady bass-drum thump and a furiously distorted breakbeat that rivals the bloodied intensity of Squarepusher’s best programming. It is a mark of the song’s almost unbearable density that when “Runs Reprise” finishes (barring a long, disorienting echo) just 37 seconds in, the listener feels overcome rather than underwhelmed. Elsewhere, an eerie synth drone and more frantic breakbeats give “B2k” the air of early ’90s jungle cut with ringing piano chords and snatches of a commercial R&B, rendered in an off-grid time signature that suggests a supreme disdain for musical convention. That “B2k” is one of the more straightforward tracks on Tommy says a lot about the fearsome originality of Klein’s music. While she may borrow from R&B and pop, Klein’s output has more in common with the abstract impressionism of Jackson Pollock. Such intensity makes Tommy a difficult and even exhausting listen, despite a running time of just 25 minutes. But as Captain Beefheart and the Shaggs have shown in the past—and as Klein demonstrates now—stepping off the musical path that leads to standardized perfection can prove hugely rewarding.

Artist: Klein, Album: Tommy EP, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "The rise of digital production techniques means that listeners tend to expect a certain clinical perfection in modern recorded music. Glitches are edited out and beats, confined to strict rhythmic grids, could run in perfect sync until the end of our days. Occasionally, though, an electronic artist will emerge who eschews the tight, rhythmic mapping of the sequencer in favor of cruder electronic tools. Burial once claimed to make music with the basic audio-editing program Sound Forge, and the wildly promising London producer Klein told FACT earlier this year that she uses Audacity, the freebie audio editor beloved of penniless media students everywhere, to arrange her music, recording hours of piano, guitar, and vocals that she later chops up and manipulates into strange new sounds. In the same interview Klein says that she uses her voice as her primary instrument, pushing her vocal tones to see how high and how low they can go. Tommy, Klein’s first release for Hyperdub after the self-released Lagata and Only EPs of 2016, builds on this approach. But whereas her earlier records were relatively spacious, Tommy sees Klein slather on vocals—from herself, her collaborators, and in sampled snippets—in thick, inky layers, manipulating her source material until the voices sound tarnished, rotting, and irregular. The result is music that overwhelms with its sickly density: a flawed, chaotic structure that feels both solid and strangely vulnerable, like a huge, poorly constructed skyscraper. “Prologue,” which opens the EP, is a brilliant example of Klein’s modus operandi. It starts with the abrupt, discombobulating rumble of processed piano chords, as if the listener has been dropped into the studio mid-session, followed by 20 seconds of random chatter. A lone voice starts singing a melody, which is then processed and pitched into a sound that is part human and part machine, the output of an Auto-Tune unit that has gotten bored and gone rogue. Slowly, more voices join and are themselves pulled in and out of focus, as the volume and intensity build and contract. “Prologue” is messy and feverish, the refracted, despairing sound of a chorus of ghosts calling from the bottom of the sea. It’s an intense, discomforting listen but never less than visceral in its impact. What makes this destructive approach particularly fascinating is that Klein—a fan of both Brandy and Andrew Lloyd Webber—can clearly write pop hooks, which she dangles in front of the listener like a conniving angler. “Cry Theme” starts with a fragment of catchy vocal melody, which is pitch-shifted into chipmunk territory as a spectral chorus echoes underneath; “Tommy” seems to initially borrow from 1950s-style doo-wop harmonies, while “Everlong” pulls a similarly teasing trick with the kind of earworm acoustic guitar riff you could imagine introducing a minor R&B hit in the late 1990s. Hidden deep among the EP’s opaque sonic layers are beautiful vocal and instrumental parts, which Klein occasionally allows to emerge from the mix like body parts floating to the top of a muddy river, before dragging them back under in a brilliantly contrarian act. If Klein’s sound is maximalist, though, her source material is anything but, cooked up largely from piano, guitar, and vocal snippets. Drums don’t make an appearance until five tracks in, on the brilliant “Runs Reprise,” where a helium R&B hook is rudely interrupted by a lurching, unsteady bass-drum thump and a furiously distorted breakbeat that rivals the bloodied intensity of Squarepusher’s best programming. It is a mark of the song’s almost unbearable density that when “Runs Reprise” finishes (barring a long, disorienting echo) just 37 seconds in, the listener feels overcome rather than underwhelmed. Elsewhere, an eerie synth drone and more frantic breakbeats give “B2k” the air of early ’90s jungle cut with ringing piano chords and snatches of a commercial R&B, rendered in an off-grid time signature that suggests a supreme disdain for musical convention. That “B2k” is one of the more straightforward tracks on Tommy says a lot about the fearsome originality of Klein’s music. While she may borrow from R&B and pop, Klein’s output has more in common with the abstract impressionism of Jackson Pollock. Such intensity makes Tommy a difficult and even exhausting listen, despite a running time of just 25 minutes. But as Captain Beefheart and the Shaggs have shown in the past—and as Klein demonstrates now—stepping off the musical path that leads to standardized perfection can prove hugely rewarding."

Black Milk

If There's a Hell Below

Rap

Clayton Purdom

Black Milk is a paradoxical artist, one defined by both wild reinvention and stasis. To this point, every other Black Milk album is a corrective, somehow a refutation of the album that came before it. He keeps pressing reset and then playing the game the same: Tronic was his vaunted abandonment of vinyl fetishism for synthesizers; Album of the Year his embrace of live-band instrumentation; No Poison, No Paradise his nightmare-filled stab at creating a '70s soul epic. But put them on shuffle and the delineations disappear—they all sound like Black Milk tracks. On If There's a Hell Below, for the first time, he consciously takes a sonic mulligan, trading in the same murky Castlevania synth-lines, wrecking-ball drums and dark-night-of-the-soul wails as its predecessor. So, why does it sound better than that album? Because it's a new Black Milk record, which always sound incrementally closer to some Ideal Black Milk Album that may or may not ever exist. This makes him a difficult artist to love, but an easy one to like. He’s constantly halving the distance to his target, getting closer but not quite getting there. But those infinitesimal improvements on Hell Below—indeed, the very places where it remains static—show, in some ways, what that Ideal Album might look like. Most importantly, he’s acknowledging where his talents lie. The old line on him is: great producer, shitty rapper. If the dude could quit spitting double-time platitudes about getting faded backstage, the thinking goes, he’d release a great record. On No Poison, No Paradise, though, he dialed back his eagerness on the mic and let the beats breathe. This trend continues on Hell Below, particularly on "Story and Her", a sprightly, smooth-jazz Tribe throwback that evokes Q-Tip more than Dilla. Over soft vibes, Black Milk drops sing-song come-ons that tumble organically into a low-key verse. The lyrics are as trite and sanctimonious as can be (think Dizzee Rascal’s "Jezebel"), but as the beat morphs, halfway in, to a keening, insistent guitar lick, Milk follows suit, with a wide-open flow painted in blank space. The crooning intro melts into an almost spoken-word outro, with a rhyme scheme that snaps into place as if only to tug the verse onward. He sounds, in other words, good on the track—a first for the emcee. He repeats the feat on the nearly 3-minute conclusion "Up & Out", which is just a drum loop, some scratches, and a delirious, stuttering mic performance. In both instances, he raps in reverence of the beat, letting his glorious drums hit without shouting punchlines over them. Elsewhere, he resolutely does not screw up highlights like the proggy "All Mighty", the dense, clattering "Quarter Water", or "What It’s Worth", which recalls early Kendrick Lamar, of all people, in its tuneful sense of melancholy. He’s always seemed to want to be Black Thought, but he comes across more like T.I. on the best parts of Hell Below, saying very little but saying it well. The focus, then, stays on the production, which is, as usual, an absolute feast. He’s grown fond of the mid-track left-field switch-up, sometimes just for a bar or two ("Hell Below", "Scum"), and of the short, dusty outro loop (pretty much every track). While this might sound scattered, in practice it’s just the opposite: He’s settled down a bit, flicking between beats with Madlib’s ease. A lot of his earlier stylistic about-faces were because of an anxiety, a tension between analog and digital production methods, which a recent LP and EP (tellingly called Synth or Soul and Glitches in the Break) seem to have eased. He found the ghost in the machine, and so he’s agitating less over realness—over fidelity to the "old school". The music on Hell Below is one big wistful wash of sound, unified, but full of idiosyncrasies. (Bun B, for example, raps atop a bed of trilling flutes.) We often talk about listening to Black Milk rap as the cost of entry for listening to Black Milk produce. That's cold, but valid: his relatively flat collaborative work suggests that he saves his best beats for himself. But perhaps it’s also a mis-framing of the argument, in light of Hell Below’s success. In an interview with Complex last year, he referred to an incongruous blast of free jazz on No Poison, No Paradise as "a Spike Lee movie … written via a rap song." A more skillful emcee would recreate Lee’s sense of place and character with words, but Black Milk needs the music to do the talking. On If There’s a Hell Below, he lets it.

Artist: Black Milk, Album: If There's a Hell Below, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Black Milk is a paradoxical artist, one defined by both wild reinvention and stasis. To this point, every other Black Milk album is a corrective, somehow a refutation of the album that came before it. He keeps pressing reset and then playing the game the same: Tronic was his vaunted abandonment of vinyl fetishism for synthesizers; Album of the Year his embrace of live-band instrumentation; No Poison, No Paradise his nightmare-filled stab at creating a '70s soul epic. But put them on shuffle and the delineations disappear—they all sound like Black Milk tracks. On If There's a Hell Below, for the first time, he consciously takes a sonic mulligan, trading in the same murky Castlevania synth-lines, wrecking-ball drums and dark-night-of-the-soul wails as its predecessor. So, why does it sound better than that album? Because it's a new Black Milk record, which always sound incrementally closer to some Ideal Black Milk Album that may or may not ever exist. This makes him a difficult artist to love, but an easy one to like. He’s constantly halving the distance to his target, getting closer but not quite getting there. But those infinitesimal improvements on Hell Below—indeed, the very places where it remains static—show, in some ways, what that Ideal Album might look like. Most importantly, he’s acknowledging where his talents lie. The old line on him is: great producer, shitty rapper. If the dude could quit spitting double-time platitudes about getting faded backstage, the thinking goes, he’d release a great record. On No Poison, No Paradise, though, he dialed back his eagerness on the mic and let the beats breathe. This trend continues on Hell Below, particularly on "Story and Her", a sprightly, smooth-jazz Tribe throwback that evokes Q-Tip more than Dilla. Over soft vibes, Black Milk drops sing-song come-ons that tumble organically into a low-key verse. The lyrics are as trite and sanctimonious as can be (think Dizzee Rascal’s "Jezebel"), but as the beat morphs, halfway in, to a keening, insistent guitar lick, Milk follows suit, with a wide-open flow painted in blank space. The crooning intro melts into an almost spoken-word outro, with a rhyme scheme that snaps into place as if only to tug the verse onward. He sounds, in other words, good on the track—a first for the emcee. He repeats the feat on the nearly 3-minute conclusion "Up & Out", which is just a drum loop, some scratches, and a delirious, stuttering mic performance. In both instances, he raps in reverence of the beat, letting his glorious drums hit without shouting punchlines over them. Elsewhere, he resolutely does not screw up highlights like the proggy "All Mighty", the dense, clattering "Quarter Water", or "What It’s Worth", which recalls early Kendrick Lamar, of all people, in its tuneful sense of melancholy. He’s always seemed to want to be Black Thought, but he comes across more like T.I. on the best parts of Hell Below, saying very little but saying it well. The focus, then, stays on the production, which is, as usual, an absolute feast. He’s grown fond of the mid-track left-field switch-up, sometimes just for a bar or two ("Hell Below", "Scum"), and of the short, dusty outro loop (pretty much every track). While this might sound scattered, in practice it’s just the opposite: He’s settled down a bit, flicking between beats with Madlib’s ease. A lot of his earlier stylistic about-faces were because of an anxiety, a tension between analog and digital production methods, which a recent LP and EP (tellingly called Synth or Soul and Glitches in the Break) seem to have eased. He found the ghost in the machine, and so he’s agitating less over realness—over fidelity to the "old school". The music on Hell Below is one big wistful wash of sound, unified, but full of idiosyncrasies. (Bun B, for example, raps atop a bed of trilling flutes.) We often talk about listening to Black Milk rap as the cost of entry for listening to Black Milk produce. That's cold, but valid: his relatively flat collaborative work suggests that he saves his best beats for himself. But perhaps it’s also a mis-framing of the argument, in light of Hell Below’s success. In an interview with Complex last year, he referred to an incongruous blast of free jazz on No Poison, No Paradise as "a Spike Lee movie … written via a rap song." A more skillful emcee would recreate Lee’s sense of place and character with words, but Black Milk needs the music to do the talking. On If There’s a Hell Below, he lets it."