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Various Artists

Next Stop Soweto Vol. 4: Zulu Rock, Afro-Disco & Mbaqanga 1975-1985

Joe Tangari

It’s hard to capture the complexity of a cultural scene in something as brief and necessarily cherry-picked as a CD-length compilation of music. And Strut hasn’t done that with the fourth volume of their Next Stop Soweto series. But in adding a fourth volume to the original three, the label has inched a step closer to focusing the musical kaleidoscope of 1960s and '70s South Africa into a coherent image. Perhaps 10 volumes from now, they’ll complete the trick. The first three sets focused, respectively, on mbaqanga and other township sounds, psychedelia and soul, and jazz. This one picks up most clearly where Vol. 2 left off, following the march of underground psych and soul into the disco era. In the process, it gives us a glimpse at the South Africa that grooved under apartheid’s heel; there aren’t attention-grabbing headlines in it, but people find a way to live and have a good time in even the most oppressive circumstances. In spite of the series title, not all of the music was made in Soweto, the sprawling city that grew organically on the edge of officially white Johannesburg. Likewise, while economic stratification in South Africa during this period was severe, don’t come expecting something too gritty—this is hi-fi music recorded on good gear. It’s also almost entirely unknown outside of the communities it was made for; most of these bands don’t yield much information when you look them up online. The pop music of South Africa, for whatever reason, hasn’t received as much attention from Western reissue labels as West and East Africa, so most listeners will find themselves getting acquainted with a whole lot of artists they’ve never heard of before. Almost all of them had something hot to offer, though. The Drive’s "Ain’t Sittin’ Down Doin’ Nothing" is a crunching funk instrumental with dive-bombing Moog and a slow-burning horn section, Abafana Bama Soul offers funk underpinned by the four-on-the-floor thump and bouncing basslines of mbaqanga, and the Movers’ "Soweto Disco" sounds like an Earth, Wind & Fire on-stage jam. Saitana’s group backing vocals on "1,2,3" cloak a pointed political message ("One, two, three, your turn is over/ ...our turn has started") in disco glitter, and the song builds tension and release with odd key changes and unexpected melodic shifts that mirror the message. During this period South Africans were steeped in American sounds, and the English-descended white population, which tended to be more anti-apartheid and more likely to associate with the black population than the Boer-descended Afrikaners, was well-connected to the British music scene, a connection that sometimes bled over sonically into the townships. Kabasa’s "Unga Pfula a Chi Pfalo" is charging heavy funk, but the guitar seems to be on loan from some British hard rock band, and it gives the song a nasty, ass-kicking edge. The cold synths of Damara’s "Mmamakhabtha" have an affinity with new romantic synth-pop and sound oddly up-to-date in a post-chillwave world. The excitement of hearing all these tracks for the first time is bolstered somewhat by knowing that this is just a first pass at South Africa’s disco era; there is a lot more to unearth and reassess. If there’s a chink in the armor here, it’s that the sheer amount of music there is to uncover from this place and time suggests that a generalist compilation may ultimately be a less effective way to explore it than to go deeper into the individual scenes and recording companies to find the stories that underlie the music. Nevertheless, Next Stop Soweto Vol. 4 is another well-assembled look at lesser-known music from a very complicated time and place.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Next Stop Soweto Vol. 4: Zulu Rock, Afro-Disco & Mbaqanga 1975-1985, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "It’s hard to capture the complexity of a cultural scene in something as brief and necessarily cherry-picked as a CD-length compilation of music. And Strut hasn’t done that with the fourth volume of their Next Stop Soweto series. But in adding a fourth volume to the original three, the label has inched a step closer to focusing the musical kaleidoscope of 1960s and '70s South Africa into a coherent image. Perhaps 10 volumes from now, they’ll complete the trick. The first three sets focused, respectively, on mbaqanga and other township sounds, psychedelia and soul, and jazz. This one picks up most clearly where Vol. 2 left off, following the march of underground psych and soul into the disco era. In the process, it gives us a glimpse at the South Africa that grooved under apartheid’s heel; there aren’t attention-grabbing headlines in it, but people find a way to live and have a good time in even the most oppressive circumstances. In spite of the series title, not all of the music was made in Soweto, the sprawling city that grew organically on the edge of officially white Johannesburg. Likewise, while economic stratification in South Africa during this period was severe, don’t come expecting something too gritty—this is hi-fi music recorded on good gear. It’s also almost entirely unknown outside of the communities it was made for; most of these bands don’t yield much information when you look them up online. The pop music of South Africa, for whatever reason, hasn’t received as much attention from Western reissue labels as West and East Africa, so most listeners will find themselves getting acquainted with a whole lot of artists they’ve never heard of before. Almost all of them had something hot to offer, though. The Drive’s "Ain’t Sittin’ Down Doin’ Nothing" is a crunching funk instrumental with dive-bombing Moog and a slow-burning horn section, Abafana Bama Soul offers funk underpinned by the four-on-the-floor thump and bouncing basslines of mbaqanga, and the Movers’ "Soweto Disco" sounds like an Earth, Wind & Fire on-stage jam. Saitana’s group backing vocals on "1,2,3" cloak a pointed political message ("One, two, three, your turn is over/ ...our turn has started") in disco glitter, and the song builds tension and release with odd key changes and unexpected melodic shifts that mirror the message. During this period South Africans were steeped in American sounds, and the English-descended white population, which tended to be more anti-apartheid and more likely to associate with the black population than the Boer-descended Afrikaners, was well-connected to the British music scene, a connection that sometimes bled over sonically into the townships. Kabasa’s "Unga Pfula a Chi Pfalo" is charging heavy funk, but the guitar seems to be on loan from some British hard rock band, and it gives the song a nasty, ass-kicking edge. The cold synths of Damara’s "Mmamakhabtha" have an affinity with new romantic synth-pop and sound oddly up-to-date in a post-chillwave world. The excitement of hearing all these tracks for the first time is bolstered somewhat by knowing that this is just a first pass at South Africa’s disco era; there is a lot more to unearth and reassess. If there’s a chink in the armor here, it’s that the sheer amount of music there is to uncover from this place and time suggests that a generalist compilation may ultimately be a less effective way to explore it than to go deeper into the individual scenes and recording companies to find the stories that underlie the music. Nevertheless, Next Stop Soweto Vol. 4 is another well-assembled look at lesser-known music from a very complicated time and place."

Comets On Fire

Field Recordings from the Sun

Experimental,Rock

Chris Dahlen

Field Recordings from the Sun starts off like the next drum circle over from the No-Neck Blues Band-- congas, singing bowl, "heaven bells", "camel bells", and other contraptions rattle over the horizon like a VW bus full of chandeliers. But that's just the intro: it suddenly drops off and you're hit by a screeching, high-end rock assault. A pounding rhythm section bursts in, followed by bare-chested, doped-up rock-god vocals, and more than anything, guitars-- lots of them, grinding, screeching, scratching, and wrung through effects and oscillation. And for the whole rest of the album, that's all you get. But isn't that enough? The craziest astro-named band since Uranus & The Five Moons, Comets on Fire plays noise/psychedelic/space-rock. You'll hear many familiar sounds and riffs, but the band jumbles them up and cranks them so high they sound fresh again; and they also have a kind of trademark in their excessive use of Echoplex, a delay and echo device that dates back to the early days of rock. It's the main job of one guy, Noel Harmonson, just to work the Echoplex and oscillations through which the Comets run the guitars and the vocals. This makes a sound that's not unlike being screamed at through a fifty-foot cardboard tube. Field Recordings is their second album, after a self-titled limited edition debut that got attention for its fierce cover of "Back in the U.S.S.R." This follow-up is just as nasty but much more involved: where the debut was sharp, terse and loud as fuck, Field Recordings is sprawling, massive, and loud as fuck. There are four guys in the band: Harmonson, guitarist and singer Ethan Miller, the awesomely named Utrillo Belcher (his business cards actually read "Potsie U. Belcher") on drums, and Ben Flashman on bass-- and they're joined by over half a dozen guests. Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and the Fucking Champs' Tim Green (who also produced the album) guest on guitar, and on "Beneath the Iceage", there's a handful of people who just drink, chant and shake stuff. Chasny also writes one of the songs: "The Unicorn", much as Shel Silverstein did for the Irish Rovers. This, the album's shortest and only quiet tune starts as a folky acoustic ballad until it's crept up on by a bunch of overdubbed electrics. (The liner notes call them "electric floating guitar", "electric destruction guitar"... hell, I don't even need my thesaurus to write this review.) Picture finding a grove full of hobbits and smashing them all with a hammer. But this is just an intermission compared to the other songs. Lean even at six-to-ten minutes each, the tracks are carefully arranged pieces coated with mess. The spontaneity of the playing belies the deliberate transitions, like the jerky end of "ESP" or the controlled breakdown into electric splatter on "Black Poodle". The guitars and electronics that scribble out the end of that track spill through a suburban guitar shop's worth of excessive gadgetry: this is definitely one of album's high points. You won't hum these tracks on your way to work, and who knows what the lyrics are-- never mind if they're any good. However, next time, Comets on Fire could bring in more variety. They might even turn down the volume a couple more times, you know, for artistic effect. Still, as a pure assault, this album's terrifically brutal and single-minded: with far better distribution than their debut, it'll be most people's introduction to the band, and it makes an awesome first impression.

Artist: Comets On Fire, Album: Field Recordings from the Sun, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Field Recordings from the Sun starts off like the next drum circle over from the No-Neck Blues Band-- congas, singing bowl, "heaven bells", "camel bells", and other contraptions rattle over the horizon like a VW bus full of chandeliers. But that's just the intro: it suddenly drops off and you're hit by a screeching, high-end rock assault. A pounding rhythm section bursts in, followed by bare-chested, doped-up rock-god vocals, and more than anything, guitars-- lots of them, grinding, screeching, scratching, and wrung through effects and oscillation. And for the whole rest of the album, that's all you get. But isn't that enough? The craziest astro-named band since Uranus & The Five Moons, Comets on Fire plays noise/psychedelic/space-rock. You'll hear many familiar sounds and riffs, but the band jumbles them up and cranks them so high they sound fresh again; and they also have a kind of trademark in their excessive use of Echoplex, a delay and echo device that dates back to the early days of rock. It's the main job of one guy, Noel Harmonson, just to work the Echoplex and oscillations through which the Comets run the guitars and the vocals. This makes a sound that's not unlike being screamed at through a fifty-foot cardboard tube. Field Recordings is their second album, after a self-titled limited edition debut that got attention for its fierce cover of "Back in the U.S.S.R." This follow-up is just as nasty but much more involved: where the debut was sharp, terse and loud as fuck, Field Recordings is sprawling, massive, and loud as fuck. There are four guys in the band: Harmonson, guitarist and singer Ethan Miller, the awesomely named Utrillo Belcher (his business cards actually read "Potsie U. Belcher") on drums, and Ben Flashman on bass-- and they're joined by over half a dozen guests. Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and the Fucking Champs' Tim Green (who also produced the album) guest on guitar, and on "Beneath the Iceage", there's a handful of people who just drink, chant and shake stuff. Chasny also writes one of the songs: "The Unicorn", much as Shel Silverstein did for the Irish Rovers. This, the album's shortest and only quiet tune starts as a folky acoustic ballad until it's crept up on by a bunch of overdubbed electrics. (The liner notes call them "electric floating guitar", "electric destruction guitar"... hell, I don't even need my thesaurus to write this review.) Picture finding a grove full of hobbits and smashing them all with a hammer. But this is just an intermission compared to the other songs. Lean even at six-to-ten minutes each, the tracks are carefully arranged pieces coated with mess. The spontaneity of the playing belies the deliberate transitions, like the jerky end of "ESP" or the controlled breakdown into electric splatter on "Black Poodle". The guitars and electronics that scribble out the end of that track spill through a suburban guitar shop's worth of excessive gadgetry: this is definitely one of album's high points. You won't hum these tracks on your way to work, and who knows what the lyrics are-- never mind if they're any good. However, next time, Comets on Fire could bring in more variety. They might even turn down the volume a couple more times, you know, for artistic effect. Still, as a pure assault, this album's terrifically brutal and single-minded: with far better distribution than their debut, it'll be most people's introduction to the band, and it makes an awesome first impression."

Bumps

Bumps

Rock

Nate Patrin

A couple of years ago, someone unearthed and posted a number of drum tracks from the recording sessions to Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. Running about 29 minutes and given the name "The John Henry Bonham Files", the tracks isolated the technique of one of rock's most versatile and powerful drummers: "Moby Dick" proved Bonham could solo, but it was rare to hear him just lay down the rhythm unencumbered by the rest of the band. As a scrap of music history, it's fascinating, but as an album it's not something you'd want to sit around listening to for more than about five minutes-- with nothing but the drums, you start missing Jimmy Page's guitar and Robert Plant's vocals and, hell, even John Paul Jones' synthesizer. So if Bonzo couldn't carry a half hour's worth of recorded material on his own, how could Tortoise's three percussionists pull it off? Apparently, their side project has a specific extra-musical intent: Bumps' debut has been calculated to serve a purpose as a breakbeat record of sorts, which goes a little way towards explaining its appearance on the hip-hop-centric Stones Throw label. And it makes a certain kind of sense, depending on how much it'd cost to farm these out to producers. Samples aren't exactly like fossil fuels-- they're not finite, for one thing-- but they do share the quality of being a lot more expensive than they used to be, and there's been a decade-plus groundswell of visionaries who've spent a lot of time developing inexpensive alternatives. Tortoise are one of post rock's most culturally omnivorous bands, so their percussive core-- consisting of Dan Bitney, John Herndon, and John McEntire-- seem like a good fit for a project like this. Bumps caters extensively to the sample-using demographic's core musical tendencies, with many of its 23 tracks couched in a number of different rhythmic contexts that fit almost every imaginable dance groove. And with nothing but the beat present, it's easy to imagine these rhythms slotted into multiple contexts. The conga and woodblock-augmented freight-train rattle of "A Safe Balm" could equally pass for afrobeat or the chase theme from a 1970s action film soundtrack. "Fun Injury" captures a lot of big beat's Northern Soul frenzy, but with a bit of judicious cutting and splicing it could also work like a version of jungle's "Amen" break turned inside-out. And it's anybody's guess as to who'd be the first to snatch up the bass-drum 4/4 boom of "Biotic Discussion": A one-man indie-punk bedroom producer piecing together a pastiche of his favorite A Certain Ratio songs, or a house producer-slash-disco revivalist hooked on recapturing that early 1980s West End Records feel. (Either way, they'd both benefit.) Most of the tracks ride on a malleable percussive tautness, usually starting with a deceptively simple figure and then rounding things out with some additional fills or transitions. And their timbre tends to range from subdued, almost drum machine-esque flatness ("Craven") to teeming walls of tight-wound bass ("Dawn at Dawn") to creaking, aluminum-echo-chamber dub ("A Dumb Month"). It's clear that they've accounted for all kinds of production styles and aesthetics for their potential usage as loops; "Bin Johnston" sounds clean and resilient enough for radio-ready neo-soul, while "Can You See?" pushes things so abrasively into the red that only the most junkyard-aesthetic corners of indie rap could comfortably rock over it. Unfortunately, this isn't just a breakbeat mine-- it's a record, and as a release aimed at the everyday consumer it doesn't provide the most substantial or satisfying experience. As tight and as professional as everything sounds, it's still hard to shake the feeling that this sounds like a demo track from some unfinished sessions. While a few of the tracks stand on their own as likeable diversions and would probably sound interesting coming out of nowhere in a 3,500-song shuffle, there's enough stylistic redundancy and a deliberate sense of unfinished composition (nearly half the tracks are less than 90 seconds, and all but one are 2:02 or shorter) to make listening to it beginning to end the epitome of pointlessness. Some records sound good on a shitty old boombox, and some are most easily appreciated on an expensive hi-fi system with an audiophile turntable, but Bumps is an oddity: album that doesn't really sound its best unless you're patching it through an SP-1200.

Artist: Bumps, Album: Bumps, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "A couple of years ago, someone unearthed and posted a number of drum tracks from the recording sessions to Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. Running about 29 minutes and given the name "The John Henry Bonham Files", the tracks isolated the technique of one of rock's most versatile and powerful drummers: "Moby Dick" proved Bonham could solo, but it was rare to hear him just lay down the rhythm unencumbered by the rest of the band. As a scrap of music history, it's fascinating, but as an album it's not something you'd want to sit around listening to for more than about five minutes-- with nothing but the drums, you start missing Jimmy Page's guitar and Robert Plant's vocals and, hell, even John Paul Jones' synthesizer. So if Bonzo couldn't carry a half hour's worth of recorded material on his own, how could Tortoise's three percussionists pull it off? Apparently, their side project has a specific extra-musical intent: Bumps' debut has been calculated to serve a purpose as a breakbeat record of sorts, which goes a little way towards explaining its appearance on the hip-hop-centric Stones Throw label. And it makes a certain kind of sense, depending on how much it'd cost to farm these out to producers. Samples aren't exactly like fossil fuels-- they're not finite, for one thing-- but they do share the quality of being a lot more expensive than they used to be, and there's been a decade-plus groundswell of visionaries who've spent a lot of time developing inexpensive alternatives. Tortoise are one of post rock's most culturally omnivorous bands, so their percussive core-- consisting of Dan Bitney, John Herndon, and John McEntire-- seem like a good fit for a project like this. Bumps caters extensively to the sample-using demographic's core musical tendencies, with many of its 23 tracks couched in a number of different rhythmic contexts that fit almost every imaginable dance groove. And with nothing but the beat present, it's easy to imagine these rhythms slotted into multiple contexts. The conga and woodblock-augmented freight-train rattle of "A Safe Balm" could equally pass for afrobeat or the chase theme from a 1970s action film soundtrack. "Fun Injury" captures a lot of big beat's Northern Soul frenzy, but with a bit of judicious cutting and splicing it could also work like a version of jungle's "Amen" break turned inside-out. And it's anybody's guess as to who'd be the first to snatch up the bass-drum 4/4 boom of "Biotic Discussion": A one-man indie-punk bedroom producer piecing together a pastiche of his favorite A Certain Ratio songs, or a house producer-slash-disco revivalist hooked on recapturing that early 1980s West End Records feel. (Either way, they'd both benefit.) Most of the tracks ride on a malleable percussive tautness, usually starting with a deceptively simple figure and then rounding things out with some additional fills or transitions. And their timbre tends to range from subdued, almost drum machine-esque flatness ("Craven") to teeming walls of tight-wound bass ("Dawn at Dawn") to creaking, aluminum-echo-chamber dub ("A Dumb Month"). It's clear that they've accounted for all kinds of production styles and aesthetics for their potential usage as loops; "Bin Johnston" sounds clean and resilient enough for radio-ready neo-soul, while "Can You See?" pushes things so abrasively into the red that only the most junkyard-aesthetic corners of indie rap could comfortably rock over it. Unfortunately, this isn't just a breakbeat mine-- it's a record, and as a release aimed at the everyday consumer it doesn't provide the most substantial or satisfying experience. As tight and as professional as everything sounds, it's still hard to shake the feeling that this sounds like a demo track from some unfinished sessions. While a few of the tracks stand on their own as likeable diversions and would probably sound interesting coming out of nowhere in a 3,500-song shuffle, there's enough stylistic redundancy and a deliberate sense of unfinished composition (nearly half the tracks are less than 90 seconds, and all but one are 2:02 or shorter) to make listening to it beginning to end the epitome of pointlessness. Some records sound good on a shitty old boombox, and some are most easily appreciated on an expensive hi-fi system with an audiophile turntable, but Bumps is an oddity: album that doesn't really sound its best unless you're patching it through an SP-1200."

Low

C'mon

Rock

Joe Tangari

The short version of the pre-release trailer for Low's C'mon was nothing but a still shot of Alan Sparhawk, sitting at a table in front of a microphone with headphones on, slapping the surface in time with music we can't hear. The space between slaps is long, allowing the sound to reverberate around the church he's sitting in. I wondered if the trailer's spartan approach might signal a return to the band's earliest days, when 39 seconds of slow, cavernously reverberating percussion might have constituted the intro of a song. That was not the case-- C'mon doesn't retreat from the more fleshed-out, strident sounds Low have spent the last decade cultivating-- but it was telling in other ways. The sound is still lush on the band's ninth album, but not in the same way as their two Dave Fridmann-produced LPs, Drums and Guns and The Great Destroyer. They recorded this album themselves with co-producer Matt Beckley in that old church, using the room's natural reverb to open up their sound. 2002's Trust, recorded in the same room, is a good reference point for the sonic character of C'mon, though the low end on this album is much airier. You'd expect Mimi Parker's drums to benefit from that approach, and they do, but Sparhawk's guitar also gets a lift-- the tone of his strumming on "Nightingale" is especially striking in its icy beauty. That guitar gets a couple of impressive workouts here, reflecting Sparhawk's work with Retribution Gospel Choir and on his Solo Guitar album. He hits upon this rough, dramatic sound on a few tracks, making for bracingly ragged lead lines. On "Witches", a drifting, clanging guitar line ties together the decidedly scattershot lyrics. On the groaning, eight-minute "Nothing But Heart", Nels Cline appears on steel guitar, but the song really takes off in its final third, when Parker's towering vocal appears from nowhere. Parker takes the lead on one of the album's best songs, "Especially Me", riding a bobbing 6/8 rhythm with a haunting, multi-tracked performance. The very basic instrumental arrangement is almost like a sped-up version of the band's stripped-down earlier work, at least until a rush of strings carries the song to its closing verse. Sparhawk and Parker showcase their distinctive harmonies on twinkling album opener "Try to Sleep"-- if all this is beginning to sound like a tour of the various twists and turns in Low's direction over the years, there's a good reason for that. Having covered a good deal of ground since breaking out of their original slowcore mold, on C'mon, Low seem undecided on a direction forward. As such, C'mon feels more like a collection drawn from throughout the last decade than a completely cohesive album. This could be viewed as the band sorting through the progress it's made in search of the next turn-- there are even a few songs that come close to revisiting the glacial sparseness of their earliest music. This is all to say that, if you already like Low, C'mon will not disappoint you, and though it's not their best album, it's a fairly accessible distillation of where they've been.

Artist: Low, Album: C'mon, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "The short version of the pre-release trailer for Low's C'mon was nothing but a still shot of Alan Sparhawk, sitting at a table in front of a microphone with headphones on, slapping the surface in time with music we can't hear. The space between slaps is long, allowing the sound to reverberate around the church he's sitting in. I wondered if the trailer's spartan approach might signal a return to the band's earliest days, when 39 seconds of slow, cavernously reverberating percussion might have constituted the intro of a song. That was not the case-- C'mon doesn't retreat from the more fleshed-out, strident sounds Low have spent the last decade cultivating-- but it was telling in other ways. The sound is still lush on the band's ninth album, but not in the same way as their two Dave Fridmann-produced LPs, Drums and Guns and The Great Destroyer. They recorded this album themselves with co-producer Matt Beckley in that old church, using the room's natural reverb to open up their sound. 2002's Trust, recorded in the same room, is a good reference point for the sonic character of C'mon, though the low end on this album is much airier. You'd expect Mimi Parker's drums to benefit from that approach, and they do, but Sparhawk's guitar also gets a lift-- the tone of his strumming on "Nightingale" is especially striking in its icy beauty. That guitar gets a couple of impressive workouts here, reflecting Sparhawk's work with Retribution Gospel Choir and on his Solo Guitar album. He hits upon this rough, dramatic sound on a few tracks, making for bracingly ragged lead lines. On "Witches", a drifting, clanging guitar line ties together the decidedly scattershot lyrics. On the groaning, eight-minute "Nothing But Heart", Nels Cline appears on steel guitar, but the song really takes off in its final third, when Parker's towering vocal appears from nowhere. Parker takes the lead on one of the album's best songs, "Especially Me", riding a bobbing 6/8 rhythm with a haunting, multi-tracked performance. The very basic instrumental arrangement is almost like a sped-up version of the band's stripped-down earlier work, at least until a rush of strings carries the song to its closing verse. Sparhawk and Parker showcase their distinctive harmonies on twinkling album opener "Try to Sleep"-- if all this is beginning to sound like a tour of the various twists and turns in Low's direction over the years, there's a good reason for that. Having covered a good deal of ground since breaking out of their original slowcore mold, on C'mon, Low seem undecided on a direction forward. As such, C'mon feels more like a collection drawn from throughout the last decade than a completely cohesive album. This could be viewed as the band sorting through the progress it's made in search of the next turn-- there are even a few songs that come close to revisiting the glacial sparseness of their earliest music. This is all to say that, if you already like Low, C'mon will not disappoint you, and though it's not their best album, it's a fairly accessible distillation of where they've been."

Jonti

Tokorats

Electronic

Calum Marsh

Jonti does not subscribe to the philosophy that less is more. Indeed, the Johannesburg-born, Sydney-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist can never seem to do enough: His busy perfectionism makes his every song an epic of pop flamboyance, lavish and wildly ornate. Jonti’s third album, Tokorats, has been almost six years in the making—recorded, then discarded, then recorded from scratch again. Jonti claims to have produced hundreds of variations of each of the album’s 15 tracks. And what is a tokorat? “A multicolored weirdo mutant composed of all the elements of your story and all the complexities of your character,” Jonti explains. Well, Tokorats is all that, and then some. It is the unwieldy work of an artist seemingly incapable of self-restraint. Before he was a musician, Jonti was a painter. When he painted, he has said, he “always tried to get as much detail on the canvas” as he could—an indulgent impulse he admits “carried over a little onto music” and that remains entirely apparent from song to song. (Even the album’s long list of collaborators feels like a product of this voracity.) Of course, maximalism isn’t necessarily a shortcoming: the same sort of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink extravagance is the presiding spirit of a number of magnificent albums, from J Dilla’s Donuts (which Jonti cites as a major inspiration) to Since I Left You by the Avalanches, for whom Jonti serves as a part-time live guitarist on tour. The difference is that those artists had a vision. Jonti seems to just enjoy the sprawl. Tokorats is aesthetically omnivorous. It encompasses a wide range of styles and moods: ethereal dream pop, sparkling electronica, vibrant hip-hop, mellow R&B. There is playful brass on “Zuki,” a spontaneous laugh riot on “Island Rose,” a melody of Atari bleeps and bloops on “Papaya Brothers.” But the musical diversity is flattened by Jonti’s doting, and in consequence the whole thing sounds the same—fussy and overproduced. The manifest intricacy of the material is totally at odds with the vague and nebulous result. The instrumentation may be elaborate, and the arrangements complex; nevertheless, Tokorats merely feels bogged down. Listening, one is wearied by the homogenous effect. Even the record’s most sprightly pop songs often lumber past the five-minute mark, making this slog more tedious still. Over all of it looms Jonti’s unifying persona: sanguine, buoyant, and wildly earnest. At times this sunny, heart-on-sleeve temperament seems harmless and even quite endearing. More often it simply grates: he’s too precious, too twee. But the whimsy is inseparable from the man: “It usually starts with a silly idea,” Jonti has said in an interview about his approach to songwriting. “Like, ‘I wonder what it would sound like if Kermit and Missy Elliott wrote a song together?’” Nothing on Tokorats sounds like a Kermit-Missy collaboration, to be clear. But everything sounds like the product of an artist who thinks that way. One imagines him sequestered in his suburban garage, tinkering with a delicate keyboard arrangement with obsessional fervor, dreaming up these “silly ideas” and slavishly realizing them. It may be such flights of fancy, as much as his perfectionism, that made his process last so many years.

Artist: Jonti, Album: Tokorats, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.0 Album review: "Jonti does not subscribe to the philosophy that less is more. Indeed, the Johannesburg-born, Sydney-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist can never seem to do enough: His busy perfectionism makes his every song an epic of pop flamboyance, lavish and wildly ornate. Jonti’s third album, Tokorats, has been almost six years in the making—recorded, then discarded, then recorded from scratch again. Jonti claims to have produced hundreds of variations of each of the album’s 15 tracks. And what is a tokorat? “A multicolored weirdo mutant composed of all the elements of your story and all the complexities of your character,” Jonti explains. Well, Tokorats is all that, and then some. It is the unwieldy work of an artist seemingly incapable of self-restraint. Before he was a musician, Jonti was a painter. When he painted, he has said, he “always tried to get as much detail on the canvas” as he could—an indulgent impulse he admits “carried over a little onto music” and that remains entirely apparent from song to song. (Even the album’s long list of collaborators feels like a product of this voracity.) Of course, maximalism isn’t necessarily a shortcoming: the same sort of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink extravagance is the presiding spirit of a number of magnificent albums, from J Dilla’s Donuts (which Jonti cites as a major inspiration) to Since I Left You by the Avalanches, for whom Jonti serves as a part-time live guitarist on tour. The difference is that those artists had a vision. Jonti seems to just enjoy the sprawl. Tokorats is aesthetically omnivorous. It encompasses a wide range of styles and moods: ethereal dream pop, sparkling electronica, vibrant hip-hop, mellow R&B. There is playful brass on “Zuki,” a spontaneous laugh riot on “Island Rose,” a melody of Atari bleeps and bloops on “Papaya Brothers.” But the musical diversity is flattened by Jonti’s doting, and in consequence the whole thing sounds the same—fussy and overproduced. The manifest intricacy of the material is totally at odds with the vague and nebulous result. The instrumentation may be elaborate, and the arrangements complex; nevertheless, Tokorats merely feels bogged down. Listening, one is wearied by the homogenous effect. Even the record’s most sprightly pop songs often lumber past the five-minute mark, making this slog more tedious still. Over all of it looms Jonti’s unifying persona: sanguine, buoyant, and wildly earnest. At times this sunny, heart-on-sleeve temperament seems harmless and even quite endearing. More often it simply grates: he’s too precious, too twee. But the whimsy is inseparable from the man: “It usually starts with a silly idea,” Jonti has said in an interview about his approach to songwriting. “Like, ‘I wonder what it would sound like if Kermit and Missy Elliott wrote a song together?’” Nothing on Tokorats sounds like a Kermit-Missy collaboration, to be clear. But everything sounds like the product of an artist who thinks that way. One imagines him sequestered in his suburban garage, tinkering with a delicate keyboard arrangement with obsessional fervor, dreaming up these “silly ideas” and slavishly realizing them. It may be such flights of fancy, as much as his perfectionism, that made his process last so many years."

Dead Meadow

Shivering King and Others

Metal,Rock

Andrew Bryant

"DR. STEERE!!!" The backhoe shrugged mechanically in the student's hand as she cried out for the professor to come and see what she had forcefully unearthed. Though Steere and his group had been digging in the river basin for the past 30 days, aside from a few common artifacts, the main object of their search continued to elude them. Taking care to remove the crystallized sludge surrounding the prize, he finally saw it-- the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a musically oriented tribe, known as Dead Meadow, if one followed the stencil on the still half buried drum set, huddled around a central egg-crate of ancient vinyl albums and compact discs. Cataloguing the records to maintain provenience, the dig-team ran into the exact same stratigraphical paradox that Dr. Steere had predicted: in an era of music where fast-paced dance tracks and flashy production techniques ruled, how did it come to pass that a collection like this could have influenced this group of musicians? While it was no surprise to find Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum, Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love, and Led Zeppelin II in the cinched arms of a creature a few meters below Dead Meadow's remains, it was quite a shock that any group of their time was swallowing and potentially outputting this style of music. A great boon to his research, Dr. Steere soon discovered that atop the assortment of music was a compact disc produced by Dead Meadow themselves, the group's Brendan Canty-engineered third album, Shivering King and Others. Finding an old player he had recently salvaged from an electronics boutique, Steere was eager to hear how well-- if at all-- the group was able to integrate and build upon the work of the late 60s/early 70s, an era they appeared to hold on high. "I Love You Too" certainly seemed to encapsulate the musical ideals of their inspiration, building upon a heavy Sabbath riff before Jason Simon's nasal vocals threaded deep into the mix with lyrics characteristic of the fantasy-filled air about the band. "Babbling Flower", "Everything's Going On", and "Good Moanin'" exhibited a similar style of stomp-and-circumstance, outfitting their sound with wah-heavy guitar solos worthy of a dirty Dinosaur Jr., and a tinge of far-eastern derived psychedelic rock. Steere choked back a cry of surprise as the opening chords of "Wayfarers All" heralded the quiet and unexpected onslaught of an acoustic track isolated amidst the growing homogeneity of "The Whirlings" and the meaty drone of "Golden Cloud". The track put together the missing pieces of the band's problematic and massive Neil Young jones, particularly the worn grooves of Zuma. Though incredibly short, the song manages to appropriately prepare the listener for the similar acoustic leanings of "Shivering King", exercising some of the prettiest harmonic ornamentation found on the album. This initially light melodic line is eventually overtaken by an undulating drum pattern and fuzzy-bass that serves as an interesting counterpoint to the introduction of various high-end guitar techniques. Jaw resting on fist, Dr. Steere grew weary near the end of the composition, nodding off at least twice during the fourteen minutes that comprise the final two tracks "Heaven" and "Raise the Sails". While the sitar sounds of the former and the Sonic Boom-drone of the latter did create an interesting soundscape for the album's climax, the sameness of the music had become irritating after an hour. Steere eventually found himself questioning the group's reasons not to trim some of the excess fat, but he was won over by the consolation that such invariability only further highlighted the musical bond the group has with the virtuosic pomp of its idols. Weaned on the tenets of "Dinosaur Rock", Dead Meadow does put too much stock in the belief that more truly is more, resulting in drawn-out passages not unlike those that plagued nearly all of the artists they worship. But they succeed in their drive to not merely reproduce but improve, beefing up their sound with influences ranging from post-rock to black-metal, proving that one doesn't need an army of synthesizers and fashion consultants. Dead Meadow embodies the modus behind archaeology: in order to move forward, it's sometimes necessary to look back.

Artist: Dead Meadow, Album: Shivering King and Others, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: ""DR. STEERE!!!" The backhoe shrugged mechanically in the student's hand as she cried out for the professor to come and see what she had forcefully unearthed. Though Steere and his group had been digging in the river basin for the past 30 days, aside from a few common artifacts, the main object of their search continued to elude them. Taking care to remove the crystallized sludge surrounding the prize, he finally saw it-- the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a musically oriented tribe, known as Dead Meadow, if one followed the stencil on the still half buried drum set, huddled around a central egg-crate of ancient vinyl albums and compact discs. Cataloguing the records to maintain provenience, the dig-team ran into the exact same stratigraphical paradox that Dr. Steere had predicted: in an era of music where fast-paced dance tracks and flashy production techniques ruled, how did it come to pass that a collection like this could have influenced this group of musicians? While it was no surprise to find Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum, Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love, and Led Zeppelin II in the cinched arms of a creature a few meters below Dead Meadow's remains, it was quite a shock that any group of their time was swallowing and potentially outputting this style of music. A great boon to his research, Dr. Steere soon discovered that atop the assortment of music was a compact disc produced by Dead Meadow themselves, the group's Brendan Canty-engineered third album, Shivering King and Others. Finding an old player he had recently salvaged from an electronics boutique, Steere was eager to hear how well-- if at all-- the group was able to integrate and build upon the work of the late 60s/early 70s, an era they appeared to hold on high. "I Love You Too" certainly seemed to encapsulate the musical ideals of their inspiration, building upon a heavy Sabbath riff before Jason Simon's nasal vocals threaded deep into the mix with lyrics characteristic of the fantasy-filled air about the band. "Babbling Flower", "Everything's Going On", and "Good Moanin'" exhibited a similar style of stomp-and-circumstance, outfitting their sound with wah-heavy guitar solos worthy of a dirty Dinosaur Jr., and a tinge of far-eastern derived psychedelic rock. Steere choked back a cry of surprise as the opening chords of "Wayfarers All" heralded the quiet and unexpected onslaught of an acoustic track isolated amidst the growing homogeneity of "The Whirlings" and the meaty drone of "Golden Cloud". The track put together the missing pieces of the band's problematic and massive Neil Young jones, particularly the worn grooves of Zuma. Though incredibly short, the song manages to appropriately prepare the listener for the similar acoustic leanings of "Shivering King", exercising some of the prettiest harmonic ornamentation found on the album. This initially light melodic line is eventually overtaken by an undulating drum pattern and fuzzy-bass that serves as an interesting counterpoint to the introduction of various high-end guitar techniques. Jaw resting on fist, Dr. Steere grew weary near the end of the composition, nodding off at least twice during the fourteen minutes that comprise the final two tracks "Heaven" and "Raise the Sails". While the sitar sounds of the former and the Sonic Boom-drone of the latter did create an interesting soundscape for the album's climax, the sameness of the music had become irritating after an hour. Steere eventually found himself questioning the group's reasons not to trim some of the excess fat, but he was won over by the consolation that such invariability only further highlighted the musical bond the group has with the virtuosic pomp of its idols. Weaned on the tenets of "Dinosaur Rock", Dead Meadow does put too much stock in the belief that more truly is more, resulting in drawn-out passages not unlike those that plagued nearly all of the artists they worship. But they succeed in their drive to not merely reproduce but improve, beefing up their sound with influences ranging from post-rock to black-metal, proving that one doesn't need an army of synthesizers and fashion consultants. Dead Meadow embodies the modus behind archaeology: in order to move forward, it's sometimes necessary to look back."

Swearing at Motorists

This Flag Signals Goodbye

Rock

William Bowers

Undisputed king of the lawyer-poets Wallace Stevens might have gotten his clock cleaned by Ernest Hemingway in an embarrassingly brief restaurant brawl, but he only met one abstraction he couldn't whup: everydayness. "The malady of the quotidian," as he called it, reduced life to a nondescript paralysis, as one's routine eclipses the "dumbly pent" self and a universal conveyor belt outpaces one's own drive. This feeling can leave one hankering for the coming afternoon when technology is so extravagant and handy that self-hate and ennui can be cathartically dispatched by committing genocide on a roomful of one's clones. Somehow, Swearing at Motorists' Dave Doughman finds inspiration in the quotidian; chronicling successions of unremarkable moments as if they were epiphanic is his stock in trade. Cramming fourteen songs into thirty minutes, this latest album's lyrics are impressionistic to the point of seeming like impulsive postcards or manic answering machine messages set to music. Anything can be a song: seeing an acquaintance in traffic, pressing buttons in an elevator, stumbling around drunk, stumbling around stoned, going to a show, watching TV up late-- even leaving the DC borough Adams Morgan warrants an evocative 40-second ditty. A previous album actually boasted an ode to a relationship stunted at an impasse over the work of Robin Williams. I wanted to know what Doughman's secret was. How did he maintain such a high tolerance for the abyss, for the sound and fury that signify jack-diddly? I stalked Swearing at Motorists for three shows to find out, only to be befuddled by why this band insists on being a rickety two-piece in concert. This Flag Signals Goodbye lays claim to full, multi-tracked walls of competing guitar tones, accompanied by Joseph Siwinksi's dramatic drumming, and keyboards, banjos, and trumpets, next to none of which is harnessed live. Doughman even leaps and slides apoplectically, as if he's hearing more than what's coming through the PA. The third time I saw him, he performed by himself, and I couldn't help but think during his cover of "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" that he was asking for an effing band to spontaneously manifest. He's fascinating to watch, at once: the basement rocker who brings the basement with him the skinny guy just Manson enough to fight you the Angus Young spoof artist Angus Old the unambitious firstborn son who pathologically oversleeps the public access troubadour the clever Bizarro-Jesus lookalike who plays "Galaga" before the performance and asks for mushrooms during it and the show-taping dynamo who makes up songs on the spot about the weather, the bar's neon signs, and bleached-blonde audience members talking too loud on their cellphones ("Daytona Beach is over," Doughman came into the crowd and told her, then sang a song about how he doesn't disturb her job at Whataburger, so why does she hamper his?) Doughman hails straight outta the gray, gridded neighborhoods of Pollardville (Dayton), and shares GBV's urge to redeem cotton-mouthed drudgery in imaginative pop drapes. Though his detractors claim to hear an indie-rock Mellencamp, his songs blend elements of an avalanche of impressive touchstones-- most pronouncedly the Meat Puppets, Nirvana, and Jonathan Richman, though "Fan Mail for a Criminal" raucously dips the early Pixies in early Pavement, and "The Real Thing" could be smuggled onto a 764-Hero LP without detection. Many of the tracks are love songs written too late to save anything, as the speaker's general "I" mourns the seismographic arc spent with a (sometimes off-puttingly) specific "you." Reassuringly, some folks can still appreciate affection as being more than misfiltered attention, and can muster belief that love isn't just an absurd ritual concocted to guarantee an audience for one's orgasms. Nostalgia is the only thing that stumps Doughman. "I can't seem to think past the past," he sings, crippled when his "mind's in reverse." This sentiment should comfort anyone with a tendency to crawl up yesterday's ass for naptime. After playing an old song at his solo show, he said, without pretense or false modesty: "Huh. I used to be clever sometimes." Unless recycled chord progressions or muted string-scraping gets you down, This Flag Signals Goodbye holds up replay after replay, its only fault being that some of the riskily earnest lyrics, if slightly recontextualized (say, if Tenacious D sung them) would be hilarious (Kraft example: "All I want for Christmas is you," etc). This singalong knows that it's slight, even as it skirts the heinous detritus of post-love love and summons the cloud whose job it is to always rain on that one small section of the interstate. Postpone your yammering pursuit of misery with this album that acknowledges its limits when Doughman honors an epidemic of premature conclusions with the refrain "I can't seem to makes these things last."

Artist: Swearing at Motorists, Album: This Flag Signals Goodbye, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Undisputed king of the lawyer-poets Wallace Stevens might have gotten his clock cleaned by Ernest Hemingway in an embarrassingly brief restaurant brawl, but he only met one abstraction he couldn't whup: everydayness. "The malady of the quotidian," as he called it, reduced life to a nondescript paralysis, as one's routine eclipses the "dumbly pent" self and a universal conveyor belt outpaces one's own drive. This feeling can leave one hankering for the coming afternoon when technology is so extravagant and handy that self-hate and ennui can be cathartically dispatched by committing genocide on a roomful of one's clones. Somehow, Swearing at Motorists' Dave Doughman finds inspiration in the quotidian; chronicling successions of unremarkable moments as if they were epiphanic is his stock in trade. Cramming fourteen songs into thirty minutes, this latest album's lyrics are impressionistic to the point of seeming like impulsive postcards or manic answering machine messages set to music. Anything can be a song: seeing an acquaintance in traffic, pressing buttons in an elevator, stumbling around drunk, stumbling around stoned, going to a show, watching TV up late-- even leaving the DC borough Adams Morgan warrants an evocative 40-second ditty. A previous album actually boasted an ode to a relationship stunted at an impasse over the work of Robin Williams. I wanted to know what Doughman's secret was. How did he maintain such a high tolerance for the abyss, for the sound and fury that signify jack-diddly? I stalked Swearing at Motorists for three shows to find out, only to be befuddled by why this band insists on being a rickety two-piece in concert. This Flag Signals Goodbye lays claim to full, multi-tracked walls of competing guitar tones, accompanied by Joseph Siwinksi's dramatic drumming, and keyboards, banjos, and trumpets, next to none of which is harnessed live. Doughman even leaps and slides apoplectically, as if he's hearing more than what's coming through the PA. The third time I saw him, he performed by himself, and I couldn't help but think during his cover of "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" that he was asking for an effing band to spontaneously manifest. He's fascinating to watch, at once: the basement rocker who brings the basement with him the skinny guy just Manson enough to fight you the Angus Young spoof artist Angus Old the unambitious firstborn son who pathologically oversleeps the public access troubadour the clever Bizarro-Jesus lookalike who plays "Galaga" before the performance and asks for mushrooms during it and the show-taping dynamo who makes up songs on the spot about the weather, the bar's neon signs, and bleached-blonde audience members talking too loud on their cellphones ("Daytona Beach is over," Doughman came into the crowd and told her, then sang a song about how he doesn't disturb her job at Whataburger, so why does she hamper his?) Doughman hails straight outta the gray, gridded neighborhoods of Pollardville (Dayton), and shares GBV's urge to redeem cotton-mouthed drudgery in imaginative pop drapes. Though his detractors claim to hear an indie-rock Mellencamp, his songs blend elements of an avalanche of impressive touchstones-- most pronouncedly the Meat Puppets, Nirvana, and Jonathan Richman, though "Fan Mail for a Criminal" raucously dips the early Pixies in early Pavement, and "The Real Thing" could be smuggled onto a 764-Hero LP without detection. Many of the tracks are love songs written too late to save anything, as the speaker's general "I" mourns the seismographic arc spent with a (sometimes off-puttingly) specific "you." Reassuringly, some folks can still appreciate affection as being more than misfiltered attention, and can muster belief that love isn't just an absurd ritual concocted to guarantee an audience for one's orgasms. Nostalgia is the only thing that stumps Doughman. "I can't seem to think past the past," he sings, crippled when his "mind's in reverse." This sentiment should comfort anyone with a tendency to crawl up yesterday's ass for naptime. After playing an old song at his solo show, he said, without pretense or false modesty: "Huh. I used to be clever sometimes." Unless recycled chord progressions or muted string-scraping gets you down, This Flag Signals Goodbye holds up replay after replay, its only fault being that some of the riskily earnest lyrics, if slightly recontextualized (say, if Tenacious D sung them) would be hilarious (Kraft example: "All I want for Christmas is you," etc). This singalong knows that it's slight, even as it skirts the heinous detritus of post-love love and summons the cloud whose job it is to always rain on that one small section of the interstate. Postpone your yammering pursuit of misery with this album that acknowledges its limits when Doughman honors an epidemic of premature conclusions with the refrain "I can't seem to makes these things last.""

Porcelain Raft

Microclimate

Electronic,Rock

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Since he first started putting out solo singles as Porcelain Raft in 2010, former Sunny Day Sets Fire frontman Mauro Remiddi has built a career on an indie/electro/dreampop blend so smooth it often obscures his songwriting gifts. With Microclimate, his third Porcelain Raft full-length, Remiddi grows as a songwriter/arranger while refining the subtlety of his approach. Of course, the problem with subtlety is that it’s not particularly noticeable when you get better at it. So when you compare Microclimate to 2015’s Half Awake EP, 2013’s Permanent Signal, and his 2012 full-length debut Strange Weekend, Remiddi doesn’t appear to be offering much of anything new. Like those previous releases, the sense of space on Microclimate is so vast and full that it’s as if Remiddi and mixing engineer Chris Coady meant for the music to be projected across a fluffy cloudscape that stretches for miles. The wide-angle scope of the music can sometimes engulf its central figure, especially as he relies more heavily on soft electronic beats and plush reverbs. On skittering numbers like “Distant Shore” and “Kookaburra,” for example, Remiddi recaptures the vibe of “West End Girls”-era Pet Shop Boys—but it takes multiple listens to notice that he’s managed to do so in his own image. If, say, Remiddi dressed these tunes in stripped-down arrangements centered around piano or acoustic guitar (as he does at the beginning of “Kookaburra”), the somewhat oddly-shaped relationship between his chord progressions and melodies would occupy center stage. Instead, you get songs like “Rising,” where the quietly moving parts nearly drown in a kind of auditory soup. On the other hand, wading through all the heavy layers of atmosphere to discern the song at the core of each track is one of Microclimate's rewards. Like the last two albums, Microclimate was heavily inspired by locale—this time, the California desert. Remiddi has expressed both a romantic fascination for place and a sense of rootlessness in the past. Lyrically, the new material covers very little new ground with its airbrushed images of distant shores, breezes, trees. For a person who has worked as a circus musician and shaken hands with Kim Jong-un, Remiddi’s lyrics don't disclose much. On “Big Sur,” he implores an unspecified person to come “to another world” and “come on come on come on this way.” At the end of the song, he reassures us that “before you know it/all the answers are on the way.” If the song asked more questions, perhaps the mystery of those answers would be more enticing. And when the album closes with the line “We are falling... falling into the sun” on “Zero Frames Per Second,” it would be nice to get a better sense for the kind of all-encompassing dissolution Remiddi wants to evoke. Nevertheless, as a pedal steel glimmers like setting sunlight reflecting over ocean waves on “Big Sur,” it's virtually impossible not to get nostalgic—even if you've never been to Big Sur. The music on Microclimate can be so potently affecting that the lack of lyrical precision ceases to matter. “Microclimate” is the formal term for a set of climatic conditions that apply to a small ecosystem within a larger one. Remiddi chose the title as a way of signaling that he wanted each song to stand apart from the rest. Sure enough, each song pulls you into its own standalone “world,” so to speak. But because Remiddi also sustains an ear-pleasing flow between those songs, it may take a few listens to recognize and appreciate what an artistic success Microclimate actually is.

Artist: Porcelain Raft, Album: Microclimate, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Since he first started putting out solo singles as Porcelain Raft in 2010, former Sunny Day Sets Fire frontman Mauro Remiddi has built a career on an indie/electro/dreampop blend so smooth it often obscures his songwriting gifts. With Microclimate, his third Porcelain Raft full-length, Remiddi grows as a songwriter/arranger while refining the subtlety of his approach. Of course, the problem with subtlety is that it’s not particularly noticeable when you get better at it. So when you compare Microclimate to 2015’s Half Awake EP, 2013’s Permanent Signal, and his 2012 full-length debut Strange Weekend, Remiddi doesn’t appear to be offering much of anything new. Like those previous releases, the sense of space on Microclimate is so vast and full that it’s as if Remiddi and mixing engineer Chris Coady meant for the music to be projected across a fluffy cloudscape that stretches for miles. The wide-angle scope of the music can sometimes engulf its central figure, especially as he relies more heavily on soft electronic beats and plush reverbs. On skittering numbers like “Distant Shore” and “Kookaburra,” for example, Remiddi recaptures the vibe of “West End Girls”-era Pet Shop Boys—but it takes multiple listens to notice that he’s managed to do so in his own image. If, say, Remiddi dressed these tunes in stripped-down arrangements centered around piano or acoustic guitar (as he does at the beginning of “Kookaburra”), the somewhat oddly-shaped relationship between his chord progressions and melodies would occupy center stage. Instead, you get songs like “Rising,” where the quietly moving parts nearly drown in a kind of auditory soup. On the other hand, wading through all the heavy layers of atmosphere to discern the song at the core of each track is one of Microclimate's rewards. Like the last two albums, Microclimate was heavily inspired by locale—this time, the California desert. Remiddi has expressed both a romantic fascination for place and a sense of rootlessness in the past. Lyrically, the new material covers very little new ground with its airbrushed images of distant shores, breezes, trees. For a person who has worked as a circus musician and shaken hands with Kim Jong-un, Remiddi’s lyrics don't disclose much. On “Big Sur,” he implores an unspecified person to come “to another world” and “come on come on come on this way.” At the end of the song, he reassures us that “before you know it/all the answers are on the way.” If the song asked more questions, perhaps the mystery of those answers would be more enticing. And when the album closes with the line “We are falling... falling into the sun” on “Zero Frames Per Second,” it would be nice to get a better sense for the kind of all-encompassing dissolution Remiddi wants to evoke. Nevertheless, as a pedal steel glimmers like setting sunlight reflecting over ocean waves on “Big Sur,” it's virtually impossible not to get nostalgic—even if you've never been to Big Sur. The music on Microclimate can be so potently affecting that the lack of lyrical precision ceases to matter. “Microclimate” is the formal term for a set of climatic conditions that apply to a small ecosystem within a larger one. Remiddi chose the title as a way of signaling that he wanted each song to stand apart from the rest. Sure enough, each song pulls you into its own standalone “world,” so to speak. But because Remiddi also sustains an ear-pleasing flow between those songs, it may take a few listens to recognize and appreciate what an artistic success Microclimate actually is."

Okay

Huggable Dust

Folk/Country,Pop/R&B

David Bevan

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be a muse? It has to be a bit weird, right? You could be the reason why someone got over someone, or why people fall in or out of love. You could be an aphrodisiac or heart balm. Your story could define summers and winters. In the case of Okay's Marty Anderson, you might be the reason why he wrote Huggable Dust. Much like High Road and Low Road, the twin debuts Anderson dropped in 2005, Huggable Dust is a shamelessly personal affair that succeeds as much because of Anderson's gift for pop atmospherics as his wide-swinging emotional outpourings. But while its predecessors toyed with questions and trapdoors of a more existential nature, Huggable Dust is focused on that which galvanizes, clouds, and tangles everything in between: love. At 18 songs, there's a lot of sonic acreage to get acquainted with; the album's length cuts both ways, depending on how you feel about Anderson's singing and lyrics. Described in an earlier review by Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner as "insectoid," Anderson's voice has a nasal, broken-sparrow quality that can be off-putting at times. But to my ears, it fits these songs well and works with his overall vision. His greatest talent is his ability to take small songs and make them huge, summoning out-of-nowhere climaxes as epic as the doodad-pop flourishes-- Xerox machines, Sega and R2-D2 effects galore-- are numerous. The resulting explosions tend to be both unexpected and breathtaking. "Panda", likely a reference to Okay member Amanda Panda, is one of Huggable Dust's best examples. What feels like very much like the plodding but pleasant acoustic pop strokes found throughout transforms to something totally different: an intergalactic mating dance in which Anderson pulls out every stop he can. "Only", a fingerpicked lullaby with a chord pattern not unlike Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life", finds Anderson duetting to powerful effect with a female voice that emanates from an answering machine. Huggable Dust definitely seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion, with so many songs pulling in so many different emotional directions that it's difficult to enjoy at once. But when Anderson succeeds-- and he does often-- there's much to love as well. Late in the album, during what is it easily its most bruising ditty, he sings of white flags, of the song's title: truce. Whether or not the muse who might have inspired these songs is still part Anderson's life, she's certainly the lifeblood of the album.

Artist: Okay, Album: Huggable Dust, Genre: Folk/Country,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be a muse? It has to be a bit weird, right? You could be the reason why someone got over someone, or why people fall in or out of love. You could be an aphrodisiac or heart balm. Your story could define summers and winters. In the case of Okay's Marty Anderson, you might be the reason why he wrote Huggable Dust. Much like High Road and Low Road, the twin debuts Anderson dropped in 2005, Huggable Dust is a shamelessly personal affair that succeeds as much because of Anderson's gift for pop atmospherics as his wide-swinging emotional outpourings. But while its predecessors toyed with questions and trapdoors of a more existential nature, Huggable Dust is focused on that which galvanizes, clouds, and tangles everything in between: love. At 18 songs, there's a lot of sonic acreage to get acquainted with; the album's length cuts both ways, depending on how you feel about Anderson's singing and lyrics. Described in an earlier review by Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner as "insectoid," Anderson's voice has a nasal, broken-sparrow quality that can be off-putting at times. But to my ears, it fits these songs well and works with his overall vision. His greatest talent is his ability to take small songs and make them huge, summoning out-of-nowhere climaxes as epic as the doodad-pop flourishes-- Xerox machines, Sega and R2-D2 effects galore-- are numerous. The resulting explosions tend to be both unexpected and breathtaking. "Panda", likely a reference to Okay member Amanda Panda, is one of Huggable Dust's best examples. What feels like very much like the plodding but pleasant acoustic pop strokes found throughout transforms to something totally different: an intergalactic mating dance in which Anderson pulls out every stop he can. "Only", a fingerpicked lullaby with a chord pattern not unlike Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life", finds Anderson duetting to powerful effect with a female voice that emanates from an answering machine. Huggable Dust definitely seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion, with so many songs pulling in so many different emotional directions that it's difficult to enjoy at once. But when Anderson succeeds-- and he does often-- there's much to love as well. Late in the album, during what is it easily its most bruising ditty, he sings of white flags, of the song's title: truce. Whether or not the muse who might have inspired these songs is still part Anderson's life, she's certainly the lifeblood of the album."

Sarah Nixey

Sing, Memory

Pop/R&B

Joe Tangari

"This is Sarah Nixey talking," goes the opening line of Sarah Nixey's first solo album. It's not the most promising beginning, bringing to mind Bart Simspon's Al Gore doll that says, "You are hearing me talk." She goes on to talk about the record you're about to hear over a soundtrack that could just as well welcome you to Epcot as her debut solo album. Mercifully, most of the rest of the record is solid dance-pop rather than a running narration. Nixey is best known as the voice of Black Box Recorder, a vessel for the morbid satirical musings of former Auteur Luke Haines and a strangely sensual foil for John Moore's minimal, plasticine musical environments. Haines' old Auteurs mate James Banbury is Nixey's primary partner in crime here, co-writing most of the album with her and providing the slinky Euro sound that permeates it. On her own, Nixey seems more concerned with making a genuine pop record than needling English society, though some of the archness of her band does rub off, especially in "Beautiful Oblivion", where she sets lines like, "I see the good in everyone/ Believe in fate," against lines like, "I lock the doors, stay at home all night long/ Keeping safe," over an Annie-ish neo-disco groove. One of the things I've always loved about Nixey's voice-- and one of the reasons she's perfect for Black Box Recorder-- is her utter Englishness. The thick accent, the deadpan delivery, the fortitude in the face of senselessness; it's all there whenever she opens her mouth to sing, and that poise works in her favor on the most upbeat material here. She sounds so in control over these pulsing beats it's almost unsettling, like she should maybe be losing her breath here. Nixey takes one of her best lyrical turns on "The Collector", which at first sounds like pretty standard trapped-in-a-web-of-love fare. But it slowly reveals itself to be a lyrical re-telling of the John Knowles book (later a Terence Stamp film) of the same name, about a man who catches butterflies, locking away their beauty behind glass, then decides to do the same with a woman. Where the album usually slips is when it strays too far from sinewy, shiny dance-pop. "Hotel Room" tries to get a little heavy with the formula, bringing in pentatonic riffs that only hobble the song and relying on a chorus that collapses under its would-be anthemic weight. "Endless Circles" is a ham-handed attempt to create an affirmation for re-starting your life that bogs down in a sung-spoke pre-chorus and doesn't get its chorus far enough off the ground for it to go anywhere. The album's slower back end is generally less electrifying than the early going, though the cover of the Human League's "The Black Hit of Space" that closes the record is enjoyable. Nixey proves she's a capable songwriter on her debut, even if it is an up-and-down affair. Her voice is as magnetic as ever on these songs, but when the music takes a step back, she doesn't make a big impact without Haines' biting wit behind her. I suspect most of her fans will find plenty to enjoy here, but Black Box Recorder is still the first place to hear her.

Artist: Sarah Nixey, Album: Sing, Memory, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: ""This is Sarah Nixey talking," goes the opening line of Sarah Nixey's first solo album. It's not the most promising beginning, bringing to mind Bart Simspon's Al Gore doll that says, "You are hearing me talk." She goes on to talk about the record you're about to hear over a soundtrack that could just as well welcome you to Epcot as her debut solo album. Mercifully, most of the rest of the record is solid dance-pop rather than a running narration. Nixey is best known as the voice of Black Box Recorder, a vessel for the morbid satirical musings of former Auteur Luke Haines and a strangely sensual foil for John Moore's minimal, plasticine musical environments. Haines' old Auteurs mate James Banbury is Nixey's primary partner in crime here, co-writing most of the album with her and providing the slinky Euro sound that permeates it. On her own, Nixey seems more concerned with making a genuine pop record than needling English society, though some of the archness of her band does rub off, especially in "Beautiful Oblivion", where she sets lines like, "I see the good in everyone/ Believe in fate," against lines like, "I lock the doors, stay at home all night long/ Keeping safe," over an Annie-ish neo-disco groove. One of the things I've always loved about Nixey's voice-- and one of the reasons she's perfect for Black Box Recorder-- is her utter Englishness. The thick accent, the deadpan delivery, the fortitude in the face of senselessness; it's all there whenever she opens her mouth to sing, and that poise works in her favor on the most upbeat material here. She sounds so in control over these pulsing beats it's almost unsettling, like she should maybe be losing her breath here. Nixey takes one of her best lyrical turns on "The Collector", which at first sounds like pretty standard trapped-in-a-web-of-love fare. But it slowly reveals itself to be a lyrical re-telling of the John Knowles book (later a Terence Stamp film) of the same name, about a man who catches butterflies, locking away their beauty behind glass, then decides to do the same with a woman. Where the album usually slips is when it strays too far from sinewy, shiny dance-pop. "Hotel Room" tries to get a little heavy with the formula, bringing in pentatonic riffs that only hobble the song and relying on a chorus that collapses under its would-be anthemic weight. "Endless Circles" is a ham-handed attempt to create an affirmation for re-starting your life that bogs down in a sung-spoke pre-chorus and doesn't get its chorus far enough off the ground for it to go anywhere. The album's slower back end is generally less electrifying than the early going, though the cover of the Human League's "The Black Hit of Space" that closes the record is enjoyable. Nixey proves she's a capable songwriter on her debut, even if it is an up-and-down affair. Her voice is as magnetic as ever on these songs, but when the music takes a step back, she doesn't make a big impact without Haines' biting wit behind her. I suspect most of her fans will find plenty to enjoy here, but Black Box Recorder is still the first place to hear her."

Main Attrakionz

808s & Dark Grapes II

Rap

Zach Kelly

The Oakland, California DIY hip-hop duo Main Attrakionz couldn't have come at a better time. It's no news that the indie rap spectrum is beginning to widen and mutate, allowing the agit-prop of Odd Future to beam into the eyeballs of 12.4 million viewers on VMA night, wiggling polarizing avant-weirdos like Danny Brown and (more notably) Lil B into the mainstream consciousness, ramping up demand for astrally fogged bedroom producer Clams Casino's beats and grabbing up page space for up-and-coming outsiders like Harlem's ASAP Rocky. It's no surprise then that Main Attrakionz are being lumped into the same discussions (after all, they've worked with the latter three aforementioned artists), and in turn are well on their way to gaining the similar levels of notoriety. At the end of last month-- hot off their new mixtape 808s & Dark Grapes II-- the pair headed East and rocked Manhattan's New Museum as part of its "Get Weird" series, a notable but fittingly offbeat inauguration. "Weird," however, seems a tad ill-fitting when describing Main Attrakionz's music: While unconventional in the sense that if you stripped away those titular 808s, you'd be left with glassy synths and watery textures that one could easily classify as ambient, rappers Squadda B and MondreM.A.N. seem simply to be products of their environment. And we're not necessarily talking about Oakland. While as prolific, as unafraid to integrate leftfield influences into their music, and as happy to keep things subwoofer-friendly as their Bay Area peers, most of their success and musical inspirations call cyberspace home. And in the case of 808s-- the fourth freebie mixtape full-length that these barely 20-year-olds have released in the past year (not including their solo efforts)-- Main Attrakionz seem to be neither the rule nor the exception, but rather a well-meaning, well-balanced rap act that has a sound that's both very "now" yet convincingly true-to-self. As rappers, Squadda and Mondre at first seem unremarkable. Thematically, it's weed, women, and ambition, mixed with some mild introspection and broad sloganeering ("Ain't shit gon' change, but yo' ass can," goes the hook on "Nothin' Gonna Change"). So while some might write the two off in the rhyme department, it's important to note that the rhymes aren't really the draw here. Instead, the simplistic approach reads like a mantra of self-disciplining restraint (or as Mondre explains on "Paperwork", "I keep the music simple so any nigga can see"). Though lacking Lil B's bizarro free-associative style, it becomes pretty clear that, if their work ethic and output wasn't evidence enough, these guys are just constantly rapping: You can almost imagine them rhyming their way out of a speeding ticket or through a city council meeting (see: "Rap Junkies"). Which is to say, it blends perfectly with the zoned-out production. And the fact that Squadda and Mondre aren't exactly foils-- I wouldn't have noticed that each rapper takes a solo cut here had I not had the tracklist glowing back at me-- everything on 808s seems to emulsify almost effortlessly. As the title suggests, this is music that will have you scrolling through your contacts to see if anyone's holding. Tracks like the new age-y "Perfect Skies" and the excellent "Chuch" spread out with a Zen-like grace that, coupled with Squadda and Mondre's fluid back-and-forth, invites you to melt into it. So, no, Main Attrakionz won't be spared the ridicule of jockeying the hipster zeitgeist-- after all, opener "Bossalinis & Fooliyones Pt. 2" samples Glasser's "Treasury of We"-- but these idiosyncratic pairings offer insight into where these guys are coming from. Main Attrakionz have often been described as "lo-fi rap," and while 808s & Dark Grapes II itself is sonically tight and clean, it reeks of homemade qualities. Just because you can't hear the vocals reverberating off the tacky wood paneling in some basement doesn't mean you don't get a feel for how it was made. These guys are very much of the digital age and clearly feel most comfortable between the hinges of their laptops-- never mind that when the two are backed by more traditional, blocky programmings, they come off as average at best. Thanks to having such a wealth of music at their fingertips, Main Attrakionz synthesize their influences and source material uniquely and offer an endearing voice where others simply troll. Or, to paraphrase another popular internet parlance: They're doing it right.

Artist: Main Attrakionz, Album: 808s & Dark Grapes II, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "The Oakland, California DIY hip-hop duo Main Attrakionz couldn't have come at a better time. It's no news that the indie rap spectrum is beginning to widen and mutate, allowing the agit-prop of Odd Future to beam into the eyeballs of 12.4 million viewers on VMA night, wiggling polarizing avant-weirdos like Danny Brown and (more notably) Lil B into the mainstream consciousness, ramping up demand for astrally fogged bedroom producer Clams Casino's beats and grabbing up page space for up-and-coming outsiders like Harlem's ASAP Rocky. It's no surprise then that Main Attrakionz are being lumped into the same discussions (after all, they've worked with the latter three aforementioned artists), and in turn are well on their way to gaining the similar levels of notoriety. At the end of last month-- hot off their new mixtape 808s & Dark Grapes II-- the pair headed East and rocked Manhattan's New Museum as part of its "Get Weird" series, a notable but fittingly offbeat inauguration. "Weird," however, seems a tad ill-fitting when describing Main Attrakionz's music: While unconventional in the sense that if you stripped away those titular 808s, you'd be left with glassy synths and watery textures that one could easily classify as ambient, rappers Squadda B and MondreM.A.N. seem simply to be products of their environment. And we're not necessarily talking about Oakland. While as prolific, as unafraid to integrate leftfield influences into their music, and as happy to keep things subwoofer-friendly as their Bay Area peers, most of their success and musical inspirations call cyberspace home. And in the case of 808s-- the fourth freebie mixtape full-length that these barely 20-year-olds have released in the past year (not including their solo efforts)-- Main Attrakionz seem to be neither the rule nor the exception, but rather a well-meaning, well-balanced rap act that has a sound that's both very "now" yet convincingly true-to-self. As rappers, Squadda and Mondre at first seem unremarkable. Thematically, it's weed, women, and ambition, mixed with some mild introspection and broad sloganeering ("Ain't shit gon' change, but yo' ass can," goes the hook on "Nothin' Gonna Change"). So while some might write the two off in the rhyme department, it's important to note that the rhymes aren't really the draw here. Instead, the simplistic approach reads like a mantra of self-disciplining restraint (or as Mondre explains on "Paperwork", "I keep the music simple so any nigga can see"). Though lacking Lil B's bizarro free-associative style, it becomes pretty clear that, if their work ethic and output wasn't evidence enough, these guys are just constantly rapping: You can almost imagine them rhyming their way out of a speeding ticket or through a city council meeting (see: "Rap Junkies"). Which is to say, it blends perfectly with the zoned-out production. And the fact that Squadda and Mondre aren't exactly foils-- I wouldn't have noticed that each rapper takes a solo cut here had I not had the tracklist glowing back at me-- everything on 808s seems to emulsify almost effortlessly. As the title suggests, this is music that will have you scrolling through your contacts to see if anyone's holding. Tracks like the new age-y "Perfect Skies" and the excellent "Chuch" spread out with a Zen-like grace that, coupled with Squadda and Mondre's fluid back-and-forth, invites you to melt into it. So, no, Main Attrakionz won't be spared the ridicule of jockeying the hipster zeitgeist-- after all, opener "Bossalinis & Fooliyones Pt. 2" samples Glasser's "Treasury of We"-- but these idiosyncratic pairings offer insight into where these guys are coming from. Main Attrakionz have often been described as "lo-fi rap," and while 808s & Dark Grapes II itself is sonically tight and clean, it reeks of homemade qualities. Just because you can't hear the vocals reverberating off the tacky wood paneling in some basement doesn't mean you don't get a feel for how it was made. These guys are very much of the digital age and clearly feel most comfortable between the hinges of their laptops-- never mind that when the two are backed by more traditional, blocky programmings, they come off as average at best. Thanks to having such a wealth of music at their fingertips, Main Attrakionz synthesize their influences and source material uniquely and offer an endearing voice where others simply troll. Or, to paraphrase another popular internet parlance: They're doing it right."

Castanets

City of Refuge

Rock

Brian Howe

Castanets' Raymond Raposa has never shied from mortality. His folk-electronic hybrids have often romanticized death, which isn't the same thing as honoring it. But for City of Refuge-- which is really no city at all-- Raposa decamped, alone, to a tiny desert outpost in Nevada, away from Brooklyn, away from social interaction. The resulting album is appropriately barren and full of spirits. You can tell Raposa was scoured clean by the desert: This is his most nakedly honest record. But here's the thing about deeply personal artifacts: Sometimes, they don't communicate. To investigate yourself through music without regard for audience is very worthwhile. But such an artifact can fit strangely into the commerce stream, where different imperatives apply, and where City of Refuge now resides. When I listen to it, I find myself feeling glad for Raposa that he made it, while wondering what I'm supposed to do with it. He's speaking to himself in a code so deep and personal it scans as almost autistic. Hearing it feels more like voyeurism than dialogue. City of Refuge hangs together oddly-- in fact, it barely hangs together at all. Stern electronic set pieces, high-desert guitar arrangements, and morose folk songs intermingle without discernible rhyme or reason. As a result, the album fits no particular mood, hobbled by awkward pacing. It contains a number of admirable tracks, but its packaging and sale as an album is problematic. The overdubbed cameos from Sufjan Stevens, Jana Hunter, and others add a sheen of completion, but fail to bind it together. It works best in small doses, and might have been more sensibly released as individual tracks via the Internet. The most interesting tracks are the simplest ones. Guitar overture "Celestial Shore" sounds like the national anthem of some sad, dusty country. "High Plain 1" sends scraps of delayed guitar ricocheting off the walls. "The Destroyer" is a seductive dirge for reverbed arpeggios and wobbly percussion. But sequenced consecutively, these three compelling tracks just seem erratic, especially when they let out into more run-of-the-mill Castanets tracks ("Prettiest Chain" and "Refuge 1") where Raposa's voice, distant and brassy as always, finally appears. Elsewhere, a work of purely abstract interference ("High Plain 3") sits next to an earnest cover of the hymn "I'll Fly Away"; a psychedelic guitar jam ("The Quiet") next to a simple acoustic tune ("Glory B"). City of Refuge seems more like a collection of ideas for three or four different albums than one complete work. I find Raposa's electronic improvisations more interesting than his songs, and would love to hear an album where he explores them more fully. And maybe Raposa is primed to make something more focused, having gotten this lost diary disguised as a record-- sometimes intriguing, sometimes banal, often incomprehensible-- out of his system.

Artist: Castanets, Album: City of Refuge, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "Castanets' Raymond Raposa has never shied from mortality. His folk-electronic hybrids have often romanticized death, which isn't the same thing as honoring it. But for City of Refuge-- which is really no city at all-- Raposa decamped, alone, to a tiny desert outpost in Nevada, away from Brooklyn, away from social interaction. The resulting album is appropriately barren and full of spirits. You can tell Raposa was scoured clean by the desert: This is his most nakedly honest record. But here's the thing about deeply personal artifacts: Sometimes, they don't communicate. To investigate yourself through music without regard for audience is very worthwhile. But such an artifact can fit strangely into the commerce stream, where different imperatives apply, and where City of Refuge now resides. When I listen to it, I find myself feeling glad for Raposa that he made it, while wondering what I'm supposed to do with it. He's speaking to himself in a code so deep and personal it scans as almost autistic. Hearing it feels more like voyeurism than dialogue. City of Refuge hangs together oddly-- in fact, it barely hangs together at all. Stern electronic set pieces, high-desert guitar arrangements, and morose folk songs intermingle without discernible rhyme or reason. As a result, the album fits no particular mood, hobbled by awkward pacing. It contains a number of admirable tracks, but its packaging and sale as an album is problematic. The overdubbed cameos from Sufjan Stevens, Jana Hunter, and others add a sheen of completion, but fail to bind it together. It works best in small doses, and might have been more sensibly released as individual tracks via the Internet. The most interesting tracks are the simplest ones. Guitar overture "Celestial Shore" sounds like the national anthem of some sad, dusty country. "High Plain 1" sends scraps of delayed guitar ricocheting off the walls. "The Destroyer" is a seductive dirge for reverbed arpeggios and wobbly percussion. But sequenced consecutively, these three compelling tracks just seem erratic, especially when they let out into more run-of-the-mill Castanets tracks ("Prettiest Chain" and "Refuge 1") where Raposa's voice, distant and brassy as always, finally appears. Elsewhere, a work of purely abstract interference ("High Plain 3") sits next to an earnest cover of the hymn "I'll Fly Away"; a psychedelic guitar jam ("The Quiet") next to a simple acoustic tune ("Glory B"). City of Refuge seems more like a collection of ideas for three or four different albums than one complete work. I find Raposa's electronic improvisations more interesting than his songs, and would love to hear an album where he explores them more fully. And maybe Raposa is primed to make something more focused, having gotten this lost diary disguised as a record-- sometimes intriguing, sometimes banal, often incomprehensible-- out of his system."

The Foreign Exchange

Leave It All Behind

Electronic

Ian Cohen

The 2004 album Connected by the Foreign Exchange (North Carolina rapper Phonte and Dutch producer Nicolay) was a record of unusual warmth and vibrancy. And yet, one bum line from Phonte still threatens to derail it with every listen-- "Applied for the job of rap nigga/ But I was overqualified." For better or (mostly) worse, this sort of mindset has boxed in just about everything he's done since with Little Brother, his project with rapper Big Pooh. Though obviously in pursuit of commercial adulation and positioning himself as a vanguard of thinking man's hip-hop, Phonte too often casts those who are more successful in simple and condescending terms while offering a one-step solution to all hip-hop's ills-- increased sales of Little Brother records. A slew of missed opportunities and disillusion with the game have resulted in a whole lot of disappointing Phonte projects. But knowing this can't prepare you for just how closely Leave It All Behind hews to its title, as Phonte opts out of hip-hop with a nearly full-on R&B record with exactly two rapped verses. And there's really no way of preparing for how good it actually turned out. I mean, Phonte's never shied away from doing hooks, but who knew he wanted to go all-out like this? But go straight long enough from the grid of the mainstream and you'll end up where you were-- word is that rapper-ternt-sanger is a pretty big with the kids these days. But while Leave It All Behind can certainly be judged in a different light post-808s and Heartbreak, it actually has more in common with Yo La Tengo's *And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-*Out, a similarly muted, lovely, and humane take on adult relationships worth working for (which makes it the complete opposite of the often embarrassingly juvenile petulance of 808s). Grown and maybe not-so sexy, but certainly lived-in. "All or Nothing/Coming Home to You" begins with the always-charming intro where its narrator arguing with a woman you can't see or hear. But when Phonte mutters, "That's cool-- I wanted to play Xbox on the big TV anyways" after being shuttled off to the couch, it's reminiscent of the kind of knowing detail Mike Skinner used to master in before coke and zen fucked up his brain. Phonte's voice isn't really suited for heavy lifting, but he's hardly alone on Leave It All Behind, getting contributions from Nicolay's more unheralded collaborators and making it rightfully feel like a conversation. Darien Brockington's easygoing lilt raises "Take Off Your Blues" out of a dangerously Love Below sentiment, while Musinah and Yahzarah give earthy counterpoint to the siesta soundscapes of "Daykeeper" and "If She Breaks Your Heart." And musically, Nicolay's in his comfort zone, making the sort of album he'd been more or less heading towards since Connected, an album that, while certainly rooted in hip-hop, knocked like a pillow fight. It's characteristically consistent, melodic, but rarely cloying, owing its dominant sound to ghost-white sheets of Rhodes and Stevie Wonder chord leaps that terms like "milky" do no justice. Opening track "Daykeeper" successfully applies the opaque synths of "Kid A" to a completely opposite exploration of bedsit contentment. Likewise, it's tempting to see the title of "House of Cards" as bait for curious Radiohead fans, but the liftoff it achieves during its hook is stunning on its own terms, live drums and guitar glimmers twisting in the wind. Wisely, Nicolay manages to steer clear of boilerplate neo-soul, or at least the interesting parts do. Leave It All Behind is mostly butter, but occasionally lapses into cheese. After "If This Is Love" pleasingly recalls Total's "Trippin'" with a simple but effective late-90's electronica touch, "Something to Behold" is the sort of crossover loverman rap that Little Brother would probably limply parody on The Minstrel Show. Meanwhile, some pretty terrible lyrics are hiding in plain sight amidst borderline easy listening. The closing title track tucks the kids in to bed while hoping they "dream of lullabies and clowns," and I dunno-- clowns singing lullabies tend to freak most discerning kids the fuck out. And above all, there's the possibility that it can be tagged as a great R&B album that spans the late hours and early morning...if you're into that sort of thing. And really, as with Connected, it would be a shame if Leave It All Behind were merely lauded for how it stood in opposition to more commercially dominant hip-hop trends or derided for the same reason. It's difficult to figure how to address these qualms without the whole Foreign Exchange franchise folding altogether. For guys who haven't spent a whole lot of time together, Phonte and Nicolay get lots of mileage out of the idea of their music being handcrafted as if they were actually were hanging out in the studio. Would Leave It All Behind be a better album if Phonte didn't admittedly sound something like Maxwell with weaker lungs so often? Would it be better if Phonte rapped more? Probably not-- these sorts of projects too often inspire catcalls to keep a day job, but the Foreign Exchange may have just earned an unexpected promotion.

Artist: The Foreign Exchange, Album: Leave It All Behind, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "The 2004 album Connected by the Foreign Exchange (North Carolina rapper Phonte and Dutch producer Nicolay) was a record of unusual warmth and vibrancy. And yet, one bum line from Phonte still threatens to derail it with every listen-- "Applied for the job of rap nigga/ But I was overqualified." For better or (mostly) worse, this sort of mindset has boxed in just about everything he's done since with Little Brother, his project with rapper Big Pooh. Though obviously in pursuit of commercial adulation and positioning himself as a vanguard of thinking man's hip-hop, Phonte too often casts those who are more successful in simple and condescending terms while offering a one-step solution to all hip-hop's ills-- increased sales of Little Brother records. A slew of missed opportunities and disillusion with the game have resulted in a whole lot of disappointing Phonte projects. But knowing this can't prepare you for just how closely Leave It All Behind hews to its title, as Phonte opts out of hip-hop with a nearly full-on R&B record with exactly two rapped verses. And there's really no way of preparing for how good it actually turned out. I mean, Phonte's never shied away from doing hooks, but who knew he wanted to go all-out like this? But go straight long enough from the grid of the mainstream and you'll end up where you were-- word is that rapper-ternt-sanger is a pretty big with the kids these days. But while Leave It All Behind can certainly be judged in a different light post-808s and Heartbreak, it actually has more in common with Yo La Tengo's *And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-*Out, a similarly muted, lovely, and humane take on adult relationships worth working for (which makes it the complete opposite of the often embarrassingly juvenile petulance of 808s). Grown and maybe not-so sexy, but certainly lived-in. "All or Nothing/Coming Home to You" begins with the always-charming intro where its narrator arguing with a woman you can't see or hear. But when Phonte mutters, "That's cool-- I wanted to play Xbox on the big TV anyways" after being shuttled off to the couch, it's reminiscent of the kind of knowing detail Mike Skinner used to master in before coke and zen fucked up his brain. Phonte's voice isn't really suited for heavy lifting, but he's hardly alone on Leave It All Behind, getting contributions from Nicolay's more unheralded collaborators and making it rightfully feel like a conversation. Darien Brockington's easygoing lilt raises "Take Off Your Blues" out of a dangerously Love Below sentiment, while Musinah and Yahzarah give earthy counterpoint to the siesta soundscapes of "Daykeeper" and "If She Breaks Your Heart." And musically, Nicolay's in his comfort zone, making the sort of album he'd been more or less heading towards since Connected, an album that, while certainly rooted in hip-hop, knocked like a pillow fight. It's characteristically consistent, melodic, but rarely cloying, owing its dominant sound to ghost-white sheets of Rhodes and Stevie Wonder chord leaps that terms like "milky" do no justice. Opening track "Daykeeper" successfully applies the opaque synths of "Kid A" to a completely opposite exploration of bedsit contentment. Likewise, it's tempting to see the title of "House of Cards" as bait for curious Radiohead fans, but the liftoff it achieves during its hook is stunning on its own terms, live drums and guitar glimmers twisting in the wind. Wisely, Nicolay manages to steer clear of boilerplate neo-soul, or at least the interesting parts do. Leave It All Behind is mostly butter, but occasionally lapses into cheese. After "If This Is Love" pleasingly recalls Total's "Trippin'" with a simple but effective late-90's electronica touch, "Something to Behold" is the sort of crossover loverman rap that Little Brother would probably limply parody on The Minstrel Show. Meanwhile, some pretty terrible lyrics are hiding in plain sight amidst borderline easy listening. The closing title track tucks the kids in to bed while hoping they "dream of lullabies and clowns," and I dunno-- clowns singing lullabies tend to freak most discerning kids the fuck out. And above all, there's the possibility that it can be tagged as a great R&B album that spans the late hours and early morning...if you're into that sort of thing. And really, as with Connected, it would be a shame if Leave It All Behind were merely lauded for how it stood in opposition to more commercially dominant hip-hop trends or derided for the same reason. It's difficult to figure how to address these qualms without the whole Foreign Exchange franchise folding altogether. For guys who haven't spent a whole lot of time together, Phonte and Nicolay get lots of mileage out of the idea of their music being handcrafted as if they were actually were hanging out in the studio. Would Leave It All Behind be a better album if Phonte didn't admittedly sound something like Maxwell with weaker lungs so often? Would it be better if Phonte rapped more? Probably not-- these sorts of projects too often inspire catcalls to keep a day job, but the Foreign Exchange may have just earned an unexpected promotion."

Medicine

The Mechanical Forces of Love

Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

This album kicks off aiming to stun, and you can't help but let it: "As You Do" bursts in with some psychedelic short-circuit funk that sounds like Sly Stone taking over Manitoba's laptop-processed pop, pressing every button on the console to make sure you hear something that trips you up and out. Sliced-in guitar scratches blip all jerky behind Shannon Lee's gospel belting. And when that tack's exhausted its tweakability, a sunny west-coast pop blur sweeps in underneath and carries the rest of the way through. You'd have to be awfully jaded not to drop your jaw, however metaphorically, during that first wow-inducing rush. HELLO, it says: this is the first time Brad Laner has dragged out and dusted off the Medicine name in around eight years, and he's clearly hoping to make an occasion of it. Not that the sound is a complete surprise-- if anything, it feels like the obvious culmination of the noises Laner's spent his long career making. (He's one of those Los Angeles music-biz lifers; his drumming brother even makes him a family lifer, like the Waronkers or the Hadens; he was in Savage Republic when I still had a flat-top; you will never stop this guy making records.) Medicine itself started off as a full band, and one of America's more interesting shoegazer troupes-- partly because Laner's guitar noise had more to do with ear-bleeding buzz than the tripped-out swooning of My Bloody Valentine, and partly because he was one of few to take note of MBV's tentative attraction to tech beats. But Medicine-- after collaborating with both Cocteau Twins and contributing a popular track to The Crow's soundtrack that painted them as gothy dreamers-- fizzled and stalled and shortly split. Since then, Laner's released a record nearly every year as The Electric Company, gravitating toward samplers and computers and a dozen breeds of guitar drone, electronica, Krautrock homage, and IDM tweakery. While this may have struck Medicine's rock fans as some sort of static purgatory, Laner's currently rising star says otherwise: he eventually linked up with Kid606's attention-grabbing Tigerbeat6 label (the Kid programs some drums here), lending him a visibility one imagines helped buoy him back up to the point of reviving Medicine. That, and\x97even though Laner sings quite a bit here\x97the re-addition of a female vocalist: Shannon Lee, daughter of Bruce, which brings the whole Crow thing full circle. That's the back-story. The Mechanical Forces of Love, as it turns out, is less a synergy of old-Medicine and Laner's Electric Company excursions and more just a fine-tuned pile-up of them. Both impulses are there, constantly jostling for space, and it's the unpredictable victories of each that make the record a surprising listen: just when you've locked onto a guitar-noise groove, the bottom drops out, revealing a pit of queasily acidic squelches; just when you think you've figured out which recognizable blend of pop and technology Laner's working with, the whole thing turns disorientingly on its head and leaves you hanging. There are times when this makes the record impressive and times when it seems like Laner's too interested in pulling out the rug to ever get the furniture set up. This makes for some gorgeous movements, whose occasionally fleeting appearances in the sifted jumble are half the fun. \x93Best Future\x94 spangles out acoustic guitars and arranges soaring choral harmonies like the airy and crystalline earnestness of His Name Is Alive; \x93I M Yrs\x94 kicks off with a dubby tech groove that's both sort of shocking and just chewily perfect. \x93Astral Gravy,\x94 which follows, is the big resurrection of old-Medicine circa The Buried Life, when Laner realized how great it sounds to filter rootsy guitar-boogie through the dream-pop sound. And above and beyond all of those solid moments, there are countless gorgeous half-minute stretches of meandering dub turns, of psychedelic crescendos, of enveloping atmospheres and out-of-nowhere guitar groans: tech-assisted as it may be, this is a psychedelic record at heart, and those are the bits that count. But even before the rush of the sonics wears off, the flip-side of that is obvious: the flip-side has, in fact, been obvious since Medicine's 1992 debut. Then, as now, there are the odd Medicine tracks that feel disturbingly empty, and not in the good way: the trebly drone or languid low end might be right to get lost in, but they meander less than thrillingly, as if Laner's response to a lack of concrete ideas is to disorient you and then croon druggily as if there's something there. Sometimes there isn't: it's a curious quality, particular to Medicine records, of extended murk with no way inside. With The Mechanical Forces of Love, that's a small caveat: whatever falls through the sieve is worth shrugging off in favor of the nuggets that stay inside. It's a striking return for Laner-as-Medicine\x97a psychedelic record with a robot inside, seriously woozy and surprisingly soul-touched trippiness of the lights-out, headphones-on, I-am-sinking-into-a-bottomless-fog variety. For some it might burn off quickly, but for just as many it'll sit just fine.

Artist: Medicine, Album: The Mechanical Forces of Love, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "This album kicks off aiming to stun, and you can't help but let it: "As You Do" bursts in with some psychedelic short-circuit funk that sounds like Sly Stone taking over Manitoba's laptop-processed pop, pressing every button on the console to make sure you hear something that trips you up and out. Sliced-in guitar scratches blip all jerky behind Shannon Lee's gospel belting. And when that tack's exhausted its tweakability, a sunny west-coast pop blur sweeps in underneath and carries the rest of the way through. You'd have to be awfully jaded not to drop your jaw, however metaphorically, during that first wow-inducing rush. HELLO, it says: this is the first time Brad Laner has dragged out and dusted off the Medicine name in around eight years, and he's clearly hoping to make an occasion of it. Not that the sound is a complete surprise-- if anything, it feels like the obvious culmination of the noises Laner's spent his long career making. (He's one of those Los Angeles music-biz lifers; his drumming brother even makes him a family lifer, like the Waronkers or the Hadens; he was in Savage Republic when I still had a flat-top; you will never stop this guy making records.) Medicine itself started off as a full band, and one of America's more interesting shoegazer troupes-- partly because Laner's guitar noise had more to do with ear-bleeding buzz than the tripped-out swooning of My Bloody Valentine, and partly because he was one of few to take note of MBV's tentative attraction to tech beats. But Medicine-- after collaborating with both Cocteau Twins and contributing a popular track to The Crow's soundtrack that painted them as gothy dreamers-- fizzled and stalled and shortly split. Since then, Laner's released a record nearly every year as The Electric Company, gravitating toward samplers and computers and a dozen breeds of guitar drone, electronica, Krautrock homage, and IDM tweakery. While this may have struck Medicine's rock fans as some sort of static purgatory, Laner's currently rising star says otherwise: he eventually linked up with Kid606's attention-grabbing Tigerbeat6 label (the Kid programs some drums here), lending him a visibility one imagines helped buoy him back up to the point of reviving Medicine. That, and\x97even though Laner sings quite a bit here\x97the re-addition of a female vocalist: Shannon Lee, daughter of Bruce, which brings the whole Crow thing full circle. That's the back-story. The Mechanical Forces of Love, as it turns out, is less a synergy of old-Medicine and Laner's Electric Company excursions and more just a fine-tuned pile-up of them. Both impulses are there, constantly jostling for space, and it's the unpredictable victories of each that make the record a surprising listen: just when you've locked onto a guitar-noise groove, the bottom drops out, revealing a pit of queasily acidic squelches; just when you think you've figured out which recognizable blend of pop and technology Laner's working with, the whole thing turns disorientingly on its head and leaves you hanging. There are times when this makes the record impressive and times when it seems like Laner's too interested in pulling out the rug to ever get the furniture set up. This makes for some gorgeous movements, whose occasionally fleeting appearances in the sifted jumble are half the fun. \x93Best Future\x94 spangles out acoustic guitars and arranges soaring choral harmonies like the airy and crystalline earnestness of His Name Is Alive; \x93I M Yrs\x94 kicks off with a dubby tech groove that's both sort of shocking and just chewily perfect. \x93Astral Gravy,\x94 which follows, is the big resurrection of old-Medicine circa The Buried Life, when Laner realized how great it sounds to filter rootsy guitar-boogie through the dream-pop sound. And above and beyond all of those solid moments, there are countless gorgeous half-minute stretches of meandering dub turns, of psychedelic crescendos, of enveloping atmospheres and out-of-nowhere guitar groans: tech-assisted as it may be, this is a psychedelic record at heart, and those are the bits that count. But even before the rush of the sonics wears off, the flip-side of that is obvious: the flip-side has, in fact, been obvious since Medicine's 1992 debut. Then, as now, there are the odd Medicine tracks that feel disturbingly empty, and not in the good way: the trebly drone or languid low end might be right to get lost in, but they meander less than thrillingly, as if Laner's response to a lack of concrete ideas is to disorient you and then croon druggily as if there's something there. Sometimes there isn't: it's a curious quality, particular to Medicine records, of extended murk with no way inside. With The Mechanical Forces of Love, that's a small caveat: whatever falls through the sieve is worth shrugging off in favor of the nuggets that stay inside. It's a striking return for Laner-as-Medicine\x97a psychedelic record with a robot inside, seriously woozy and surprisingly soul-touched trippiness of the lights-out, headphones-on, I-am-sinking-into-a-bottomless-fog variety. For some it might burn off quickly, but for just as many it'll sit just fine."

Gang Starr

Mass Appeal: The Best of Gang Starr

Rap

Tom Breihan

Gang Starr always looked at rap as a problem to be solved. The Brooklyn-based duo of Guru and DJ Premier started with a sort of ideal vision of rap-- thick and organic beats and smoothly virtuosic rhymes-- and spent 15 years trying to recreate that sound. At their start, they identified themselves with a late-1980s/early-90s jazz-rap vanguard; witness the obsessively namedroppy early single "Jazz Thing", not included on this best-of. Before long, though, their jazz influence faded into the background, returning to front-and-center only on Guru's Jazzmatazz side project. Instead, Premier internalized that jazz influence, filing it alongside funk and film soundtracks for use in his sonic template, a warm but choppy classicist boom-bap that's barely changed in the past 18 years. Gang Starr's 1989 single "Manifest", with its itchy bongos and guitar ripples, might be slightly busier and less assured than their 2003 single "Skills", but the two songs could've still come out a week apart. Gang Starr arrived so fully formed that they never needed to evolve; fittingly, Mass Appeal ignores chronology, hitting shuffle on a blissfully consistent body of work. Mass Appeal is Gang Starr's second best-of, following the excellent 1999 2xCD Full Clip, which is still in print. The new collection includes some lukewarm rarities and rescues a couple of tracks from the spotty 2003 album The Ownerz, but all of Mass Appeal's best tracks were already on Full Clip, and Mass Appeal's single-disc constraints make for a couple of puzzling exclusions: no "You Know My Steez"? There's also a DVD that collects the music videos, which would be awesome if YouTube didn't exist. Still, Mass Appeal makes for a deeply satisfying end-to-end listen, an hour-long submersion into the group's dusty warmth. A huge part of Mass Appeal's listenablility is the thick, intuitive chemistry between Guru and Premier, two artists who always highlighted each other's strengths. Premier is one of rap's great producers, a staunch fundamentalist who stayed within his genre's self-imposed constraints and used them to test his own inventiveness, transforming his looped breakbeats and mutilated samples into intricately layered symphonies of rhythm. Premier has done great work with half of the greatest figures in rap history, but titans like Biggie and Jay-Z have always tended to fight against his float, going for booming dominance instead of crackly lilt. With Guru, he had a partner who knew how to step into the background and let his calm monotone blend in with the beats. Guru's voice is smooth and natural enough to bring an easy authority to even his most awkward and convoluted lines ("like Tom Hanks I earn long bank and cast you away"). The two of them worked up a formula with plenty of room for subtle variations. When Guru rapped about relationships, as on the breakup lament "Ex-Girl to the Next Girl", Premier let a little more melody creep into his basslines, giving a certain pathos to Guru's conversational candor: "Her thoughts were erratic, sporadic, crazy in nature/ I told her, 'Hey look, yo, I can no longer date ya.'" And when Guru rapped about violence, as on the nightclub-shooting story "Soliloquy of Chaos", Premier's loops took on a frantic, claustrophobic edge. Another great thing about the Gang Starr formula: Guru's voice was so flat and relaxed that it highlighted the peculiarities of every guest rapper who ever appeared on a Gang Starr track, making for some amazing collaborations. On the party-jam "DWYCK", Nice and Smooth take their cartoonish goofiness to insane highs. On "Militia", Guru's unflappability beautifully offsets the terrifying bluster of an on-fire Freddie Foxxx. And on "Above the Clouds", even Wu-Tang journeyman Inspectah Deck pulses with adrenaline. Those guest spots poke quick, ecstatic holes in the lush, controlled spell that Guru and Premier cast, but they can't break it: When those two guys were locked in together, everything complemented everything else.

Artist: Gang Starr, Album: Mass Appeal: The Best of Gang Starr, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "Gang Starr always looked at rap as a problem to be solved. The Brooklyn-based duo of Guru and DJ Premier started with a sort of ideal vision of rap-- thick and organic beats and smoothly virtuosic rhymes-- and spent 15 years trying to recreate that sound. At their start, they identified themselves with a late-1980s/early-90s jazz-rap vanguard; witness the obsessively namedroppy early single "Jazz Thing", not included on this best-of. Before long, though, their jazz influence faded into the background, returning to front-and-center only on Guru's Jazzmatazz side project. Instead, Premier internalized that jazz influence, filing it alongside funk and film soundtracks for use in his sonic template, a warm but choppy classicist boom-bap that's barely changed in the past 18 years. Gang Starr's 1989 single "Manifest", with its itchy bongos and guitar ripples, might be slightly busier and less assured than their 2003 single "Skills", but the two songs could've still come out a week apart. Gang Starr arrived so fully formed that they never needed to evolve; fittingly, Mass Appeal ignores chronology, hitting shuffle on a blissfully consistent body of work. Mass Appeal is Gang Starr's second best-of, following the excellent 1999 2xCD Full Clip, which is still in print. The new collection includes some lukewarm rarities and rescues a couple of tracks from the spotty 2003 album The Ownerz, but all of Mass Appeal's best tracks were already on Full Clip, and Mass Appeal's single-disc constraints make for a couple of puzzling exclusions: no "You Know My Steez"? There's also a DVD that collects the music videos, which would be awesome if YouTube didn't exist. Still, Mass Appeal makes for a deeply satisfying end-to-end listen, an hour-long submersion into the group's dusty warmth. A huge part of Mass Appeal's listenablility is the thick, intuitive chemistry between Guru and Premier, two artists who always highlighted each other's strengths. Premier is one of rap's great producers, a staunch fundamentalist who stayed within his genre's self-imposed constraints and used them to test his own inventiveness, transforming his looped breakbeats and mutilated samples into intricately layered symphonies of rhythm. Premier has done great work with half of the greatest figures in rap history, but titans like Biggie and Jay-Z have always tended to fight against his float, going for booming dominance instead of crackly lilt. With Guru, he had a partner who knew how to step into the background and let his calm monotone blend in with the beats. Guru's voice is smooth and natural enough to bring an easy authority to even his most awkward and convoluted lines ("like Tom Hanks I earn long bank and cast you away"). The two of them worked up a formula with plenty of room for subtle variations. When Guru rapped about relationships, as on the breakup lament "Ex-Girl to the Next Girl", Premier let a little more melody creep into his basslines, giving a certain pathos to Guru's conversational candor: "Her thoughts were erratic, sporadic, crazy in nature/ I told her, 'Hey look, yo, I can no longer date ya.'" And when Guru rapped about violence, as on the nightclub-shooting story "Soliloquy of Chaos", Premier's loops took on a frantic, claustrophobic edge. Another great thing about the Gang Starr formula: Guru's voice was so flat and relaxed that it highlighted the peculiarities of every guest rapper who ever appeared on a Gang Starr track, making for some amazing collaborations. On the party-jam "DWYCK", Nice and Smooth take their cartoonish goofiness to insane highs. On "Militia", Guru's unflappability beautifully offsets the terrifying bluster of an on-fire Freddie Foxxx. And on "Above the Clouds", even Wu-Tang journeyman Inspectah Deck pulses with adrenaline. Those guest spots poke quick, ecstatic holes in the lush, controlled spell that Guru and Premier cast, but they can't break it: When those two guys were locked in together, everything complemented everything else."

Mad Capsule Markets

OSC-DIS (Oscillator in Distortion)

Joe Tangari

I've never been huge on heavy music. People's individual definitions of "heavy music" vary quite a bit, but when I say it, I mean music that aims to be heavy in the bone-crushing sense-- usually metal or hardcore. I never went through a Metallica and/or Megadeth phase in school, and I never got into Earth Crisis when I discovered punk. I like plenty of noisy stuff, but browsing through my collection, you're not likely to find much that the average listener would call "brutal." My friends are pretty well aware of this, and virtually every one of them has reacted with a certain amount of shock when they've heard Mad Capsule Markets blaring from my stereo. And it's true-- OSC-DIS may be the heaviest album I own, yet I've been playing the hell out of it. For some reason, it speaks to me in a way most music of its ilk doesn't. There are a lot of reasons for this, and the primary one is probably that, for all of their stuttering riffs, dropped tunings and double bass fills, Mad Capsule Markets are never lacking in the melodic department, which makes listening a lot easier. It could also have something to do with the cultural filter the music is being sifted through before it gets to me. See, these guys are from Japan, and they approach their music with a certain open-minded eclecticism that seems to characterize a lot of the music coming from that country these days. I think one of the reasons a lot of Americans find Japanese music so fascinating is that it's such an incredibly pure synthesis of influences. Punk, surf, industrial, prog, radio-ready pop, and just about any other genre you can think of are all treated equally, and don't carry the same baggage in Japan as they do in the U.S. Thus, Mad Capsule Markets' ninth album (their second available in the States) pours all of those genres and more into a 40-minute adrenaline blast that never gets tiring. Released in Japan in 1999, this album has already spawned five major hits for the band in their homeland, and it's easy to see why. Given a fair shake on radio in the U.S., I could see it enjoying a similar reign here, despite the fact that the band veers back and forth between English and Japanese lyrics (often in the same song). Vocalist Kyono ably alternates scattershot raps, deep growls and melodic singing, constantly switching approaches, while bassist/programmer Takeshi Ueda and drummer/programmer Motokatsu Miyagami lay down an intense rhythmic onslaught designed to alternately move your ass and pummel it into oblivion. The odd guitar works its way into the mix here and there, but for the most part, Ueda handles everything with his bass, dishing up clean, elastic lines and window-rattling, distorted figures with equal aplomb. OSC-DIS opens with the pulsating electronic rhythms and four-on-the-floor kick drum of "Tribe" before blasting into the first of many blistering choruses. Admittedly, the lyrics don't translate that well, but the increase in heart rate the song provides renders any concerns like that pretty well moot. "Out/Definition" follows, layering Miyagami's octopedal kit drumming on top of frenetic drum programs and weaving loops of Kyono's filtered screaming into the heavily distorted bassline to create a dense low-end texture that supports the semi-melodic rapping taking place in the foreground. "N (Pulse)" bursts with melodies indebted to West Coast surf and old school UK punk while the music churns violently underneath, injecting thunderous stuttering passages after each chorus. Occasionally, the keyboard programming comes close to the Mutant New Wave of the Tokyo-based band Polysics (such as on "Multiplies"), though it's always featured lower in the mix. The brief "Mob Track" is one of the few tracks that subverts melody altogether, in favor of head spinning, industrial drum programming and meat-grinder bass not terribly far removed any of the hundreds of projects Alec Empire has put his name on. (That's a good thing here, by the way.) It's followed by the highly melodic, surf-drenched "All the Time in Sunny Beach," which features lyrics about literally walking around on a sunny beach, a hilariously mundane topic when you consider the urgency with which it's sung. This gives way to "Island," the real odd duck in this flock. The only song to feature guitar prominently, it sports verses that could easily be mistaken for the slow track on a mid-80s jangle pop album, complete with "ooh ooh" backing vocals (albeit with distorted lead vocals). These verses alternate with full-on hardcore punk choruses that feel strangely appropriate regardless of the abruptness they enter with. The rest of OSC-DIS swings wildly between the thrashing digital metal of "Restart!" and "Jag," the buzzy jungle-punk of "Step into Yourself," and the almost bouncy pop-punk of "Good Girl (Dedicated to Bride After 20 Years)," naturally cut though with ridiculously heavy passages that would make Blink 182 soil themselves. Then, it all ends with "Midi Surf," an aptly titled number that ties together all of the album's musical threads, with heavy as hell verses, rapped pre-choruses, freakishly fast drumming and a heavily melodic chorus. Sequenced rhythms lurk in every corner of the mix, pushing the song even harder toward its abrupt conclusion, which ends the album in just about the exact right amount of time. So, overall, the Mad Capsule Markets have it going on in spades, grabbing your adrenal glands and squeezing them as hard as possible. God knows what their name means (I suspect it's an odd translation of some sort of drug reference), but I hope that doesn't keep people from noticing this band. Like I said before, I've never really been into heavy music, but this gets my full endorsement.

Artist: Mad Capsule Markets, Album: OSC-DIS (Oscillator in Distortion), Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "I've never been huge on heavy music. People's individual definitions of "heavy music" vary quite a bit, but when I say it, I mean music that aims to be heavy in the bone-crushing sense-- usually metal or hardcore. I never went through a Metallica and/or Megadeth phase in school, and I never got into Earth Crisis when I discovered punk. I like plenty of noisy stuff, but browsing through my collection, you're not likely to find much that the average listener would call "brutal." My friends are pretty well aware of this, and virtually every one of them has reacted with a certain amount of shock when they've heard Mad Capsule Markets blaring from my stereo. And it's true-- OSC-DIS may be the heaviest album I own, yet I've been playing the hell out of it. For some reason, it speaks to me in a way most music of its ilk doesn't. There are a lot of reasons for this, and the primary one is probably that, for all of their stuttering riffs, dropped tunings and double bass fills, Mad Capsule Markets are never lacking in the melodic department, which makes listening a lot easier. It could also have something to do with the cultural filter the music is being sifted through before it gets to me. See, these guys are from Japan, and they approach their music with a certain open-minded eclecticism that seems to characterize a lot of the music coming from that country these days. I think one of the reasons a lot of Americans find Japanese music so fascinating is that it's such an incredibly pure synthesis of influences. Punk, surf, industrial, prog, radio-ready pop, and just about any other genre you can think of are all treated equally, and don't carry the same baggage in Japan as they do in the U.S. Thus, Mad Capsule Markets' ninth album (their second available in the States) pours all of those genres and more into a 40-minute adrenaline blast that never gets tiring. Released in Japan in 1999, this album has already spawned five major hits for the band in their homeland, and it's easy to see why. Given a fair shake on radio in the U.S., I could see it enjoying a similar reign here, despite the fact that the band veers back and forth between English and Japanese lyrics (often in the same song). Vocalist Kyono ably alternates scattershot raps, deep growls and melodic singing, constantly switching approaches, while bassist/programmer Takeshi Ueda and drummer/programmer Motokatsu Miyagami lay down an intense rhythmic onslaught designed to alternately move your ass and pummel it into oblivion. The odd guitar works its way into the mix here and there, but for the most part, Ueda handles everything with his bass, dishing up clean, elastic lines and window-rattling, distorted figures with equal aplomb. OSC-DIS opens with the pulsating electronic rhythms and four-on-the-floor kick drum of "Tribe" before blasting into the first of many blistering choruses. Admittedly, the lyrics don't translate that well, but the increase in heart rate the song provides renders any concerns like that pretty well moot. "Out/Definition" follows, layering Miyagami's octopedal kit drumming on top of frenetic drum programs and weaving loops of Kyono's filtered screaming into the heavily distorted bassline to create a dense low-end texture that supports the semi-melodic rapping taking place in the foreground. "N (Pulse)" bursts with melodies indebted to West Coast surf and old school UK punk while the music churns violently underneath, injecting thunderous stuttering passages after each chorus. Occasionally, the keyboard programming comes close to the Mutant New Wave of the Tokyo-based band Polysics (such as on "Multiplies"), though it's always featured lower in the mix. The brief "Mob Track" is one of the few tracks that subverts melody altogether, in favor of head spinning, industrial drum programming and meat-grinder bass not terribly far removed any of the hundreds of projects Alec Empire has put his name on. (That's a good thing here, by the way.) It's followed by the highly melodic, surf-drenched "All the Time in Sunny Beach," which features lyrics about literally walking around on a sunny beach, a hilariously mundane topic when you consider the urgency with which it's sung. This gives way to "Island," the real odd duck in this flock. The only song to feature guitar prominently, it sports verses that could easily be mistaken for the slow track on a mid-80s jangle pop album, complete with "ooh ooh" backing vocals (albeit with distorted lead vocals). These verses alternate with full-on hardcore punk choruses that feel strangely appropriate regardless of the abruptness they enter with. The rest of OSC-DIS swings wildly between the thrashing digital metal of "Restart!" and "Jag," the buzzy jungle-punk of "Step into Yourself," and the almost bouncy pop-punk of "Good Girl (Dedicated to Bride After 20 Years)," naturally cut though with ridiculously heavy passages that would make Blink 182 soil themselves. Then, it all ends with "Midi Surf," an aptly titled number that ties together all of the album's musical threads, with heavy as hell verses, rapped pre-choruses, freakishly fast drumming and a heavily melodic chorus. Sequenced rhythms lurk in every corner of the mix, pushing the song even harder toward its abrupt conclusion, which ends the album in just about the exact right amount of time. So, overall, the Mad Capsule Markets have it going on in spades, grabbing your adrenal glands and squeezing them as hard as possible. God knows what their name means (I suspect it's an odd translation of some sort of drug reference), but I hope that doesn't keep people from noticing this band. Like I said before, I've never really been into heavy music, but this gets my full endorsement."

Young Dro

Da Reality Show

Rap

Israel Daramola

Grand Hustle rapper and former T.I. sideman Young Dro has been surprisingly good at maintaining relevance in an ever-changing rap landscape. To anyone not paying attention, his return to the mainstream with his viral Vine hit "FDB" in 2013 was probably out of left field, but in truth he's been around the whole time: producing a steady stream of mostly solid mixtapes and using his always slightly-offbeat eccentricity to keep the songs exciting. Da Reality Show, Young Dro's third major-label album, is an acknowledgement of Dro's place in the current rap landscape; it's at once an album that could have easily dropped shortly after 2006's Best Thang Smokin'**, yet still feels refreshingly new without being forced. Dro has been making music since the early '00s, but we're coming up on 10 years since his first major album, and Da Reality Show is a celebration of and a reflection on a life well-lived, full of goofiness, giddiness and sobering reminiscence.  He's feeling himself—"I kilt the streets and made history", he boasts on "Coupe"—and very few are as good at doing that as Dro is, with as many undertones. On the song "Dead", he raps: "Hope yo ass be ready for the fed/Hope yo ass be ready for the lead/Hope you ready for the hospital bed/dopeboy, dopeboy, now the nigga dead" as a way of calling out another dealer as a sucker. It's typical braggadocio, but in it also is a glimmer of awareness about the inevitabilities of trap life. This introspective honesty carries the back half of the album.  "I know how it feel to be numba one/I know how it feel to be numba nothin’”, he raps soberly on “Feeling Myself”. Dro seems comfortable enough with who he is to put his real self on record, and the record carries the gravity that comes with seeing both the highs and lows a long rap career can bring. He also has a natural sense of how he fits into the sounds of rap radio today without compromising his essence.  The album finds Dro perfectly at ease with the sound of current Atlanta and making it work for him instead of the other way around. The Zaytoven-assisted "Ugh" is a melodic and busy hymnal, and amid Zaytoven's menagerie of sounds, Dro's is the best instrument. He glides through it,  crooning then rapping like his words are drum kicks to making playful ad-libs and ad-libbing on top of those ad-libs. It's an effortless energy and showmanship that he carries into the next track "Parallel Park". The church organs that surround the song are appropriate; Dro captures your attention and is as theatrical in his style as an Atlanta Megachurch Preacher. Da Reality Show would have probably been better off holding onto this momentum, because the traditional attempts at inspirational anthems in the back half feel a little forced, and lack the freewheeling excitement of the rest of the album. At the end,however, Dro allows himself to really get sentimental on "Hood Gospel", reflecting on lost love and the murder of his mother. The pain is audible in his voice, but so is the full-hearted joy and wonder at his rise from those traumatic experiences to where he is now. It is a beautiful moment and a reminder that behind all the boasts about exotic-colored cars and women, there is a man who just wants to share his testimony.

Artist: Young Dro, Album: Da Reality Show, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Grand Hustle rapper and former T.I. sideman Young Dro has been surprisingly good at maintaining relevance in an ever-changing rap landscape. To anyone not paying attention, his return to the mainstream with his viral Vine hit "FDB" in 2013 was probably out of left field, but in truth he's been around the whole time: producing a steady stream of mostly solid mixtapes and using his always slightly-offbeat eccentricity to keep the songs exciting. Da Reality Show, Young Dro's third major-label album, is an acknowledgement of Dro's place in the current rap landscape; it's at once an album that could have easily dropped shortly after 2006's Best Thang Smokin'**, yet still feels refreshingly new without being forced. Dro has been making music since the early '00s, but we're coming up on 10 years since his first major album, and Da Reality Show is a celebration of and a reflection on a life well-lived, full of goofiness, giddiness and sobering reminiscence.  He's feeling himself—"I kilt the streets and made history", he boasts on "Coupe"—and very few are as good at doing that as Dro is, with as many undertones. On the song "Dead", he raps: "Hope yo ass be ready for the fed/Hope yo ass be ready for the lead/Hope you ready for the hospital bed/dopeboy, dopeboy, now the nigga dead" as a way of calling out another dealer as a sucker. It's typical braggadocio, but in it also is a glimmer of awareness about the inevitabilities of trap life. This introspective honesty carries the back half of the album.  "I know how it feel to be numba one/I know how it feel to be numba nothin’”, he raps soberly on “Feeling Myself”. Dro seems comfortable enough with who he is to put his real self on record, and the record carries the gravity that comes with seeing both the highs and lows a long rap career can bring. He also has a natural sense of how he fits into the sounds of rap radio today without compromising his essence.  The album finds Dro perfectly at ease with the sound of current Atlanta and making it work for him instead of the other way around. The Zaytoven-assisted "Ugh" is a melodic and busy hymnal, and amid Zaytoven's menagerie of sounds, Dro's is the best instrument. He glides through it,  crooning then rapping like his words are drum kicks to making playful ad-libs and ad-libbing on top of those ad-libs. It's an effortless energy and showmanship that he carries into the next track "Parallel Park". The church organs that surround the song are appropriate; Dro captures your attention and is as theatrical in his style as an Atlanta Megachurch Preacher. Da Reality Show would have probably been better off holding onto this momentum, because the traditional attempts at inspirational anthems in the back half feel a little forced, and lack the freewheeling excitement of the rest of the album. At the end,however, Dro allows himself to really get sentimental on "Hood Gospel", reflecting on lost love and the murder of his mother. The pain is audible in his voice, but so is the full-hearted joy and wonder at his rise from those traumatic experiences to where he is now. It is a beautiful moment and a reminder that behind all the boasts about exotic-colored cars and women, there is a man who just wants to share his testimony."

Pavement

Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed.

Rock

Stuart Berman

For a band that often seemed be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough, Pavement made all the right moves-- they just did them in the wrong order. With its crystalline production (courtesy of R.E.M. architect Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin) and more refined songcraft, Pavement's 1997 release Brighten the Corners was the logical follow-up to 1994's indie hit Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. But of course, that move from A to B took a tangential turn back to Z with 1995's notoriously slapdash Wowee Zowee, an album beloved by the band's diehard fans, but one that effectively squandered any crossover potential Crooked Rain might have built up (and which would've made a lot more sense as Crooked Rain's predecessor than successor). Brighten the Corners' more focused, melodic approach could thus be heard as the sound of Pavement making amends, but it arguably came too late-- by 1997, modern-rock radio was already tuning out brainy indie-rock in favour of pre-fab pop-punk and numbskull nu-metal. Pavement understood this shift all to well, which could be why Brighten the Corners sounds like their most self-aware and, by extension, honest album-- when Stephen Malkmus yells, "listen to me, I'm on the stereo!" on the album's excitable opening track, it's with the implicit knowledge that he'd have to settle for hearing himself on his home hi-fi rather than on KROQ. Perhaps as an attempt to reconnect with their pre-Wowee Zowee catalogue, Brighten the Corners takes various structural cues from previous Pavement albums: as on 1992's Slanted and Enchanted, the second song fades into a brief instrumental; the slowly intensifying mid-song jam on third track "Transport Is Arranged" sounds like it was grafted from Crooked Rain's own third track "Stop Breathin"; and Malkmus still couldn't resist the glaring name-drop (though Crooked Rain's now-dated Stone Temple Pilots/Smashing Pumpkins swipes were replaced by more eternal ruminations about the peculiar oration of Geddy Lee). Consistent with this self-reflexivity, Malkmus cheekily addresses his own status as the most overanalyzed lyricist in 90s indie-rock, describing himself as "an island of such great complexity," declaring that "if my soul has a shape, well, then it is an ellipse," and even raging that he's "sick of being misread by men in dashikis and their leftist weeklies." (That said, it would take 11 years and one ridiculous Republican campaign to lend any significance to the line "there's no women in Alaska.") The May 1997 Alex Ross New Yorker essay that accompanies this reissue-- the fourth in Matador's superlative series of Pavement packages-- focuses on Malkmus' lyrical gift for extracting substance out of nonsense, and the folly of trying to saddle it with literal interpretations. But on no other Pavement album do all those bon mots and non sequitirs form such a coherent picture of the band's emotional state. Even the album title-- the only one that doesn't rely on rhymes and/or alliteration-- is telling: Rather than re-ignite the band's commercial prospects, Brighten the Corners marked the beginning of Pavement's slow fade into the sunset, while shedding light on its principal songwriter's future course. Not coincidentally, both Malkmus and co-founder Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg turned 30 during the album's recording, and both sound consumed by all the melancholy, anxiety, loaded significance, and renewed perspective that life-change carries. Malkmus' charming, chiming "Shady Lane" reasserts the "settle down" sentiment of Crooked Rain's "Range Life", and "Transport Is Arranged" seems to address the historically conflicted dynamic between relationships and life on the road ("a voice coach taught me to sing, he couldn't teach me to love"); Kannberg's two exemplary contributions-- the Big Starry-eyed power-pop rush "Date w/ Ikea" and the smooth Stonesy funk of "Passat Dream"-- equate responsibility and commitment with consumerism. Easter and Goggin's luminous production casts this wistfulness in an appropriately soft-focus lens; in return, the band, so scatterbrained on Wowee Zowee, turn in their most pleasingly patient performances of their career, establishing a deeper sense of space through the use of mellotrons, drum-machine breaks and synths set on "swoosh." The dreamily drifty centerpiece track "Type Slowly" now sounds like a dry run for the sort of exploratory jams Malkmus would fashion in his post-Pavement band the Jicks (a point driven home by the extended, more volcanic live version included here), while the closing two jangle ballads, "Starlings of the Slipstream" and "Fin" are two of the most affecting songs in the Pavement canon, each appended with guitar solos that compensate for Malkmus' still-developing chops with genuinely pained expression. If "Fin" didn't prove to be the band's actual swan song, the track does sound like a farewell to Pavement's wiseacre persona. But if Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around." Which means indie-rock in-jokes (the Pussy Galore pastiche of "Neil Hagerty Meets Jon Spencer in a Non-Alcoholic Bar"), 1960s pop goofs ("Nigel"), cartoon themes (two stabs at "Space Ghost"), and kill-yr-idols covers of the Clean (Kannberg's electro-fried take on "Oddity"), Echo and the Bunnymen (a Crazy Horsed interpretation of "The Killing Moon"), and heroes-turned-nemeses the Fall (a gleeful desecration of the already blasphemous "The Classical"). And in the seven-minute rough cut of stoner-rock dirge "(And Then) The Hexx" and the freewheeling biker-bar boogie of "Roll With the Wind", you can hear Malkmus moving ever closer to adopting his future role as beardless-hippie guitar hero. According to the liner notes, "(And Then) The Hexx" was originally intended to be Brighten the Corners' opener, but its sinister creep would've made an awkward introduction to the album's more winsome, mellowed-out material. (The song eventually surfaced on 1999's Terror Twilight.) However, that same rationale might also explain why the terrific "Harness Your Hopes" was demoted to B-side status, it being perhaps the most typically Pavementy Pavement song ever: the reductive, repetitive Velvet Underground riff; the rhyme-a-second wordplay ("nun is to church as the parrot is to perch"); and a line that seemingly sums up the band's conflicted, outsider relationship with the pop world-- "Show me/ A word that rhymes with Pavement." Given that Brighten the Corners captured Malkmus trying to break free fr

Artist: Pavement, Album: Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed., Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "For a band that often seemed be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough, Pavement made all the right moves-- they just did them in the wrong order. With its crystalline production (courtesy of R.E.M. architect Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin) and more refined songcraft, Pavement's 1997 release Brighten the Corners was the logical follow-up to 1994's indie hit Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. But of course, that move from A to B took a tangential turn back to Z with 1995's notoriously slapdash Wowee Zowee, an album beloved by the band's diehard fans, but one that effectively squandered any crossover potential Crooked Rain might have built up (and which would've made a lot more sense as Crooked Rain's predecessor than successor). Brighten the Corners' more focused, melodic approach could thus be heard as the sound of Pavement making amends, but it arguably came too late-- by 1997, modern-rock radio was already tuning out brainy indie-rock in favour of pre-fab pop-punk and numbskull nu-metal. Pavement understood this shift all to well, which could be why Brighten the Corners sounds like their most self-aware and, by extension, honest album-- when Stephen Malkmus yells, "listen to me, I'm on the stereo!" on the album's excitable opening track, it's with the implicit knowledge that he'd have to settle for hearing himself on his home hi-fi rather than on KROQ. Perhaps as an attempt to reconnect with their pre-Wowee Zowee catalogue, Brighten the Corners takes various structural cues from previous Pavement albums: as on 1992's Slanted and Enchanted, the second song fades into a brief instrumental; the slowly intensifying mid-song jam on third track "Transport Is Arranged" sounds like it was grafted from Crooked Rain's own third track "Stop Breathin"; and Malkmus still couldn't resist the glaring name-drop (though Crooked Rain's now-dated Stone Temple Pilots/Smashing Pumpkins swipes were replaced by more eternal ruminations about the peculiar oration of Geddy Lee). Consistent with this self-reflexivity, Malkmus cheekily addresses his own status as the most overanalyzed lyricist in 90s indie-rock, describing himself as "an island of such great complexity," declaring that "if my soul has a shape, well, then it is an ellipse," and even raging that he's "sick of being misread by men in dashikis and their leftist weeklies." (That said, it would take 11 years and one ridiculous Republican campaign to lend any significance to the line "there's no women in Alaska.") The May 1997 Alex Ross New Yorker essay that accompanies this reissue-- the fourth in Matador's superlative series of Pavement packages-- focuses on Malkmus' lyrical gift for extracting substance out of nonsense, and the folly of trying to saddle it with literal interpretations. But on no other Pavement album do all those bon mots and non sequitirs form such a coherent picture of the band's emotional state. Even the album title-- the only one that doesn't rely on rhymes and/or alliteration-- is telling: Rather than re-ignite the band's commercial prospects, Brighten the Corners marked the beginning of Pavement's slow fade into the sunset, while shedding light on its principal songwriter's future course. Not coincidentally, both Malkmus and co-founder Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg turned 30 during the album's recording, and both sound consumed by all the melancholy, anxiety, loaded significance, and renewed perspective that life-change carries. Malkmus' charming, chiming "Shady Lane" reasserts the "settle down" sentiment of Crooked Rain's "Range Life", and "Transport Is Arranged" seems to address the historically conflicted dynamic between relationships and life on the road ("a voice coach taught me to sing, he couldn't teach me to love"); Kannberg's two exemplary contributions-- the Big Starry-eyed power-pop rush "Date w/ Ikea" and the smooth Stonesy funk of "Passat Dream"-- equate responsibility and commitment with consumerism. Easter and Goggin's luminous production casts this wistfulness in an appropriately soft-focus lens; in return, the band, so scatterbrained on Wowee Zowee, turn in their most pleasingly patient performances of their career, establishing a deeper sense of space through the use of mellotrons, drum-machine breaks and synths set on "swoosh." The dreamily drifty centerpiece track "Type Slowly" now sounds like a dry run for the sort of exploratory jams Malkmus would fashion in his post-Pavement band the Jicks (a point driven home by the extended, more volcanic live version included here), while the closing two jangle ballads, "Starlings of the Slipstream" and "Fin" are two of the most affecting songs in the Pavement canon, each appended with guitar solos that compensate for Malkmus' still-developing chops with genuinely pained expression. If "Fin" didn't prove to be the band's actual swan song, the track does sound like a farewell to Pavement's wiseacre persona. But if Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around." Which means indie-rock in-jokes (the Pussy Galore pastiche of "Neil Hagerty Meets Jon Spencer in a Non-Alcoholic Bar"), 1960s pop goofs ("Nigel"), cartoon themes (two stabs at "Space Ghost"), and kill-yr-idols covers of the Clean (Kannberg's electro-fried take on "Oddity"), Echo and the Bunnymen (a Crazy Horsed interpretation of "The Killing Moon"), and heroes-turned-nemeses the Fall (a gleeful desecration of the already blasphemous "The Classical"). And in the seven-minute rough cut of stoner-rock dirge "(And Then) The Hexx" and the freewheeling biker-bar boogie of "Roll With the Wind", you can hear Malkmus moving ever closer to adopting his future role as beardless-hippie guitar hero. According to the liner notes, "(And Then) The Hexx" was originally intended to be Brighten the Corners' opener, but its sinister creep would've made an awkward introduction to the album's more winsome, mellowed-out material. (The song eventually surfaced on 1999's Terror Twilight.) However, that same rationale might also explain why the terrific "Harness Your Hopes" was demoted to B-side status, it being perhaps the most typically Pavementy Pavement song ever: the reductive, repetitive Velvet Underground riff; the rhyme-a-second wordplay ("nun is to church as the parrot is to perch"); and a line that seemingly sums up the band's conflicted, outsider relationship with the pop world-- "Show me/ A word that rhymes with Pavement." Given that Brighten the Corners captured Malkmus trying to break free fr"

Martin Courtney

Many Moons

Rock

Marc Hogan

Leave it to Martin Courtney to turn a solo album into a gesture of self-effacement. The singer/guitarist's New Jersey band Real Estate have spent the last six years elevating effortless indie pop into a deeply moving art form, and his fellow group members have routinely worked in side projects—bassist Alex Bleeker with his woolly'n'rootsy Freaks outfit, and guitarist Matt Mondanile with the watery dreamscapes of Ducktails. But Courtney's debut solo outing arrives with his own name pushed to the fore. And yet, Many Moons is hardly the work of a narcissistic singer/songwriter. ("I just couldn't come up with a band name," he recently shrugged.) Instead, the charmingly low-key album is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet grace. Courtney's voice, like his name, is front and center here, markedly stripped of Real Estate's signature reverb. And rather than relying on his familiar turn-of-the-millennium indie rock touchstones, the singer inhabits winsome, lightly orchestrated '60s psych pop and '70s power pop (documented in a nicely complementary playlist). The album gains shape thanks to an enviably accomplished band that includes Real Estate keyboardist Matt Kallman, like-minded Jerseyite Julian Lynch, and Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, who produced. Plus, for a set that casually began as a stress-relief outlet ahead of Real Estate's 2014 album Atlas, Many Moons works as a remarkably cohesive album, meandering its way across themes of past and present to a state of aching clarity that's modest, but no less genuine for it. Once heard quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad. The album’s title phrase occurs first amid a hodgepodge of images on the lushly jangling "Vestiges": "Many moons for it to grow/ Phases they will come and they will go." These are the musings of an artist often associated with nostalgia accepting the truism that what we really have left from yesterday is the same ol' never-ending flux. It's a concept he darts around on the equally fine "Foto", which finds Courtney reflecting on an old passport photo: "The past is just a dream." While a line like that could seem nursery-rhyme commonplace on its own, it builds force nestled amid tracks like "Awake", a gentle apology for strumming next door that offers its own ruminations on the past, and "Asleep", a backwards-effects reverie that's somewhere between an "Oh Yoko!" dream and "I'm Only Sleeping". The terrain may be narrow, but Courtney finds subtleties to explore in his quest for a wisdom that will keep growing in meaning as months and trend cycles pass. Many Moons isn’t all painstaking philosophy on the inevitability of change. A more immediate highlight is "Northern Highway", which cruises along, suitably upbeat, as it balances existential questions ("Do you feel just like a stranger?") with the narrator's avowal that he could never retire to a place without seasons—all via a chiming arrangement befitting the Left Banke. Or "Little Blue", a windows-down listen about windows-down listens that’s named after Courtney’s old car. By contrast, on "Focus", when Courtney implores, as if giving Magic Eye advice, "The trick really is not to try," it's a bit too on the nose; besides, he already put it better on Real Estate's 2011 sophomore LP, Days, singing, "Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise." The trick is not to reveal it's a trick. The simple complexities of Many Moons all come together on the 10th and final song, "Airport Bar". It's about, yes, airport bars—places that stay the same while the people who pass through them speed around the globe. The music here is the album's most hypnotic; the lyrics are its most observant. Courtney's raconteur has been asleep, dreaming, before he finally realizes what’s real: "Please don't go forgetting about me," he repeats, understanding full well that Timehop, Facebook's "On This Day" feature, or even ripped-jeans-pocket Polaroids are no substitute for "just being here." It's all unassuming enough that it almost breezes past, and, if Courtney didn't know better, he might even say that's the point.

Artist: Martin Courtney, Album: Many Moons, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Leave it to Martin Courtney to turn a solo album into a gesture of self-effacement. The singer/guitarist's New Jersey band Real Estate have spent the last six years elevating effortless indie pop into a deeply moving art form, and his fellow group members have routinely worked in side projects—bassist Alex Bleeker with his woolly'n'rootsy Freaks outfit, and guitarist Matt Mondanile with the watery dreamscapes of Ducktails. But Courtney's debut solo outing arrives with his own name pushed to the fore. And yet, Many Moons is hardly the work of a narcissistic singer/songwriter. ("I just couldn't come up with a band name," he recently shrugged.) Instead, the charmingly low-key album is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet grace. Courtney's voice, like his name, is front and center here, markedly stripped of Real Estate's signature reverb. And rather than relying on his familiar turn-of-the-millennium indie rock touchstones, the singer inhabits winsome, lightly orchestrated '60s psych pop and '70s power pop (documented in a nicely complementary playlist). The album gains shape thanks to an enviably accomplished band that includes Real Estate keyboardist Matt Kallman, like-minded Jerseyite Julian Lynch, and Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, who produced. Plus, for a set that casually began as a stress-relief outlet ahead of Real Estate's 2014 album Atlas, Many Moons works as a remarkably cohesive album, meandering its way across themes of past and present to a state of aching clarity that's modest, but no less genuine for it. Once heard quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad. The album’s title phrase occurs first amid a hodgepodge of images on the lushly jangling "Vestiges": "Many moons for it to grow/ Phases they will come and they will go." These are the musings of an artist often associated with nostalgia accepting the truism that what we really have left from yesterday is the same ol' never-ending flux. It's a concept he darts around on the equally fine "Foto", which finds Courtney reflecting on an old passport photo: "The past is just a dream." While a line like that could seem nursery-rhyme commonplace on its own, it builds force nestled amid tracks like "Awake", a gentle apology for strumming next door that offers its own ruminations on the past, and "Asleep", a backwards-effects reverie that's somewhere between an "Oh Yoko!" dream and "I'm Only Sleeping". The terrain may be narrow, but Courtney finds subtleties to explore in his quest for a wisdom that will keep growing in meaning as months and trend cycles pass. Many Moons isn’t all painstaking philosophy on the inevitability of change. A more immediate highlight is "Northern Highway", which cruises along, suitably upbeat, as it balances existential questions ("Do you feel just like a stranger?") with the narrator's avowal that he could never retire to a place without seasons—all via a chiming arrangement befitting the Left Banke. Or "Little Blue", a windows-down listen about windows-down listens that’s named after Courtney’s old car. By contrast, on "Focus", when Courtney implores, as if giving Magic Eye advice, "The trick really is not to try," it's a bit too on the nose; besides, he already put it better on Real Estate's 2011 sophomore LP, Days, singing, "Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise." The trick is not to reveal it's a trick. The simple complexities of Many Moons all come together on the 10th and final song, "Airport Bar". It's about, yes, airport bars—places that stay the same while the people who pass through them speed around the globe. The music here is the album's most hypnotic; the lyrics are its most observant. Courtney's raconteur has been asleep, dreaming, before he finally realizes what’s real: "Please don't go forgetting about me," he repeats, understanding full well that Timehop, Facebook's "On This Day" feature, or even ripped-jeans-pocket Polaroids are no substitute for "just being here." It's all unassuming enough that it almost breezes past, and, if Courtney didn't know better, he might even say that's the point."

Frankie Rose

Interstellar

Rock

Jayson Greene

Frankie Rose spent a few years kicking around the Brooklyn jangle-pop scene before striking out on her own: As the most charismatic member of Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, she was a reliable bolt of onstage electricity enlivening the often noncommittal presences around her. It was pretty clear, even then, that she was eventually destined for bigger things, but her first solo record, recorded under the name Frankie Rose and the Outs, still felt constrained by a reflexive sort of cool-kid slouch. Between that record and Interstellar, she has dropped the pretense of a backing band entirely, and is recording simply as "Frankie Rose." The implicit point is clear: This time around, she's going for it. The first moments of "Interstellar" make this point immediately. The song opens on a cool-blue vista of synthesizers, a transportingly vast sound of the sort Frankie's never made before. When her voice enters the mix, cooing about interstellar highways and moon dust, it's piped from above, passed through a series of filters so until she slightly resembles the Laurie Anderson of "O Superman". A minute in, a massive, Valhalla-pound drum hit resounds, the synths explode sideways, and Frankie hurls us down a flume ride of descending vocal harmonies. It's the most colorful, thrilling music of her career, and as grand a pronouncement as one can make that we're not doing things the same way anymore. Interstellar is a big, second-album leap of faith into deeper waters, a sparkling synth-pop record that wants very badly to mean something to dreamy, hyper-emotional twentysomethings. For her model, she's taken the impression of some of the dreamiest, most hyper-emotional records of her youth. The production on Interstellar is gorgeous, and clearly modeled on the Cure's big, panoramic pop records, like Disintegration: booming-canyon drums, acres of spannable horizon. The drum beat that opens up "Know Me" is virtually identical to that of "Close to Me", and the silvery guitar leads on "Gospel/Grace" are pretty much mimeographed from "Plainsong". But although Rose indulges pretty heavily in the Cure's primary colors, she paints something distinctly her own with them. The world of Interstellar is a vision of paradise as lifted from the front of a Trapper Keeper: air-brushed, pastel-hued, and gloriously vivid. Interstellar is not a thematically rich experience-- it basically has one single invitation, and that is to swim with Frankie in the glorious bath of echoes she's drawn for herself. "All that I want is a pair of wings to fly/ Into the blue, a wide open sky/ Show me your scars, I'll show you mine/ Perched out of the city on a pair of power lines," she sings over and over on "Pair of Wings", and you can hear this yearning for escape echoed in the record's every upward-spiralling note. Her singing has always been breathy and modest, but on Interstellar, her voice seems to mist on contact, even when she's swirling herself into a prismatic mini-choir of Frankies. On her record, she's just another celestial body orbiting larger ones. The resulting album isn't one you actively explore so much as bask in gratefully. The longer I spend immersed in it, the more I appreciate its details: the haunting, truncated piano chords that the melody of "Apples for the Sun" clumps around, or the way Frankie's voice melts into and becomes one with the bloom of synthesized strings in the last minute of "Gospel/Grace". Rose is tapping the same slightly shameless clear eyes/full hearts well of teen melodrama that sourced M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, and she demonstrates the same kind of focus and vision in carrying it off. On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band. Amen to breaking free of sonic restrictions when they outlive their usefulness.

Artist: Frankie Rose, Album: Interstellar, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Frankie Rose spent a few years kicking around the Brooklyn jangle-pop scene before striking out on her own: As the most charismatic member of Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, she was a reliable bolt of onstage electricity enlivening the often noncommittal presences around her. It was pretty clear, even then, that she was eventually destined for bigger things, but her first solo record, recorded under the name Frankie Rose and the Outs, still felt constrained by a reflexive sort of cool-kid slouch. Between that record and Interstellar, she has dropped the pretense of a backing band entirely, and is recording simply as "Frankie Rose." The implicit point is clear: This time around, she's going for it. The first moments of "Interstellar" make this point immediately. The song opens on a cool-blue vista of synthesizers, a transportingly vast sound of the sort Frankie's never made before. When her voice enters the mix, cooing about interstellar highways and moon dust, it's piped from above, passed through a series of filters so until she slightly resembles the Laurie Anderson of "O Superman". A minute in, a massive, Valhalla-pound drum hit resounds, the synths explode sideways, and Frankie hurls us down a flume ride of descending vocal harmonies. It's the most colorful, thrilling music of her career, and as grand a pronouncement as one can make that we're not doing things the same way anymore. Interstellar is a big, second-album leap of faith into deeper waters, a sparkling synth-pop record that wants very badly to mean something to dreamy, hyper-emotional twentysomethings. For her model, she's taken the impression of some of the dreamiest, most hyper-emotional records of her youth. The production on Interstellar is gorgeous, and clearly modeled on the Cure's big, panoramic pop records, like Disintegration: booming-canyon drums, acres of spannable horizon. The drum beat that opens up "Know Me" is virtually identical to that of "Close to Me", and the silvery guitar leads on "Gospel/Grace" are pretty much mimeographed from "Plainsong". But although Rose indulges pretty heavily in the Cure's primary colors, she paints something distinctly her own with them. The world of Interstellar is a vision of paradise as lifted from the front of a Trapper Keeper: air-brushed, pastel-hued, and gloriously vivid. Interstellar is not a thematically rich experience-- it basically has one single invitation, and that is to swim with Frankie in the glorious bath of echoes she's drawn for herself. "All that I want is a pair of wings to fly/ Into the blue, a wide open sky/ Show me your scars, I'll show you mine/ Perched out of the city on a pair of power lines," she sings over and over on "Pair of Wings", and you can hear this yearning for escape echoed in the record's every upward-spiralling note. Her singing has always been breathy and modest, but on Interstellar, her voice seems to mist on contact, even when she's swirling herself into a prismatic mini-choir of Frankies. On her record, she's just another celestial body orbiting larger ones. The resulting album isn't one you actively explore so much as bask in gratefully. The longer I spend immersed in it, the more I appreciate its details: the haunting, truncated piano chords that the melody of "Apples for the Sun" clumps around, or the way Frankie's voice melts into and becomes one with the bloom of synthesized strings in the last minute of "Gospel/Grace". Rose is tapping the same slightly shameless clear eyes/full hearts well of teen melodrama that sourced M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, and she demonstrates the same kind of focus and vision in carrying it off. On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band. Amen to breaking free of sonic restrictions when they outlive their usefulness."

Saba

CARE FOR ME

Rap

Sheldon Pearce

Last year, Saba’s cousin was stabbed to death in Chicago after a brief scuffle on the train. The killer tailed him for half a block before fleeing, just to make sure he would die. The way Saba raps about his cousin—born Walter Long Jr., who performed as dinnerwithjohn and was a founding member of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew—you’d think he was magical, kissed by fortune his entire life. He was Saba’s mentor, his wingman, dauntless and deathless until, suddenly, he wasn’t. To be young is often to be fixated on your own presumed indestructibility. Reality has a way of knocking that right out of you. Saba’s gorgeous, meditative new album, CARE FOR ME, begins with him singing the words “I’m so alone.” Isolation and trauma go hand-in-hand when you lose someone close, especially when that someone served as your shield for so long. “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat,” he raps. “I’m tryna cope, but it’s a part of me gone and, apparently, I’m alone.” CARE FOR ME processes grief and its attendant loneliness, the paradox of feeling secluded during the most connected era in history, and having to manage that misery inside the social gratification matrix—the machine of hearts, smileys, and dopamine hits. The album, in turn, bears out the exhaustion that comes with simply processing. Saba attempts to grapple with his ongoing depression as he wonders aloud if he’s really the only one. Through this inner turmoil, he finds his most powerful and diaristic storytelling. “Carefully editing every word, everything got to be charity/Give it my all, these melodies therapy,” he raps on “GREY,” a kind of subtitle for the all-caps plea of the album’s name. The songs are cathartic, yes, but they are also engaging. He seeks solace for his audience as much as he seeks it for himself. His writing carries within it an empathic power, the sensation of peering into a photograph so long it conjures the textures of a memory. “LIFE” uses personal dread as a lens through which to examine the rat race that is trying to survive. “They want a barcode on my wrist/To auction off the kids that don’t fit their description of a utopia (black)/Like a problem won’t exist if I just don’t exist,” he raps before nose-diving into a more pervasive existential crisis: “Life don’t mean shit to a nigga that ain’t never had shit.” Given the context under which CARE FOR ME was made, Saba’s 2016 debut, Bucket List Project, feels almost prescient. That album challenged listeners to see their ambitions through because time was of the essence. It was a sonic wishing well of sorts, a hopeful album of unfulfilled dreams and limitless potential. With a Walter-sized hole in Saba’s life, reassesses that optimism. Through carefully collected and arranged memory fragments—some clear and focused, some concealed and disorienting—Saba considers what it means now for his cousin’s dreams to go forever unrealized. Composed entirely by Saba with producer DaedaePivot and multi-instrumentalist Daoud, CARE FOR ME is meticulously structured, orchestrated, and arrayed. Songs reveal themselves to be mementos of transformational moments in his life. A choice few attempt to capture something more ephemeral: the fleeting feeling of being safe, being comfortable and well-adjusted. (At one point, Saba waxes nostalgically about a time before insomnia, sleeping peacefully and living sober and college-bound, harkening back to a childlike innocence.) The 23-year-old’s fleet, singsongy raps bend and tuck into his largely piano-centric arrangements, which build sets for the scenarios he’s reliving. His voice can sway from muted and understated to insistent in an instant; he subtly shifts from conversational to explanatory whenever the mood calls for it, but never at the expense of the narrative flow. He sees his reflection in these remembrances and confronts his own mortality, but in the process he finds something divine. So much of CARE FOR ME is an ongoing conversation trying to reconcile a cruel, unforgiving world with God’s plan. Saba hasn’t lost his faith, but his patience is running thin. Each note and phrase on the album is colored to depict this struggle. The instrumentation is bracing, almost as if played live for a crowd, but it has the intimate tenor and tone of Saba recording the entire thing alone in his basement. “FIGHTER” is submerged and glassy, its watery sheen glistening like it’s catching sunlight; Saba surfaces from this shimmer as if cresting in a wave pool. “It’s harder to love myself when all these people compliment me,” he raps, conflicted. It’s brutal moments of vulnerability like this that make CARE FOR ME such an enveloping experience. Saba’s stunning exploration of loss builds to a restorative climax: the one-two punch that is the dewy-eyed odyssey “PROM / KING” and the skyward-bound drifter “HEAVEN ALL AROUND ME.” The former chronicles Saba’s relationship with Walter, as seen through key events in their shared history—Walter finding Saba a last-minute date for prom, the pair getting skipped over at open mics, and early attempts on Walter’s life, leading up to the instant Saba learned his cousin was missing. “We got in the car, but we didn’t know where to drive to/Fuck it, wherever you are my nigga, we’ll come and find you,” he raps. His writing is so dense yet free-flowing, so delicate and tactile. The drums crescendo into a frenzy on “PROM / KING,” to the point that Saba keeps his own time, untethered to rhythm, while never missing a single beat. The song is devastating, but it would feel almost hopeless without “HEAVEN,” a glowing conclusion to the saga that imagines a reborn Walter ascending to a better place, looking down watchfully at his loved ones and looking after Saba. It’s a remarkably powerful scene, a moment where Saba comes to realize that, despite everything, he was never alone and he never will be.

Artist: Saba, Album: CARE FOR ME, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "Last year, Saba’s cousin was stabbed to death in Chicago after a brief scuffle on the train. The killer tailed him for half a block before fleeing, just to make sure he would die. The way Saba raps about his cousin—born Walter Long Jr., who performed as dinnerwithjohn and was a founding member of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew—you’d think he was magical, kissed by fortune his entire life. He was Saba’s mentor, his wingman, dauntless and deathless until, suddenly, he wasn’t. To be young is often to be fixated on your own presumed indestructibility. Reality has a way of knocking that right out of you. Saba’s gorgeous, meditative new album, CARE FOR ME, begins with him singing the words “I’m so alone.” Isolation and trauma go hand-in-hand when you lose someone close, especially when that someone served as your shield for so long. “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat,” he raps. “I’m tryna cope, but it’s a part of me gone and, apparently, I’m alone.” CARE FOR ME processes grief and its attendant loneliness, the paradox of feeling secluded during the most connected era in history, and having to manage that misery inside the social gratification matrix—the machine of hearts, smileys, and dopamine hits. The album, in turn, bears out the exhaustion that comes with simply processing. Saba attempts to grapple with his ongoing depression as he wonders aloud if he’s really the only one. Through this inner turmoil, he finds his most powerful and diaristic storytelling. “Carefully editing every word, everything got to be charity/Give it my all, these melodies therapy,” he raps on “GREY,” a kind of subtitle for the all-caps plea of the album’s name. The songs are cathartic, yes, but they are also engaging. He seeks solace for his audience as much as he seeks it for himself. His writing carries within it an empathic power, the sensation of peering into a photograph so long it conjures the textures of a memory. “LIFE” uses personal dread as a lens through which to examine the rat race that is trying to survive. “They want a barcode on my wrist/To auction off the kids that don’t fit their description of a utopia (black)/Like a problem won’t exist if I just don’t exist,” he raps before nose-diving into a more pervasive existential crisis: “Life don’t mean shit to a nigga that ain’t never had shit.” Given the context under which CARE FOR ME was made, Saba’s 2016 debut, Bucket List Project, feels almost prescient. That album challenged listeners to see their ambitions through because time was of the essence. It was a sonic wishing well of sorts, a hopeful album of unfulfilled dreams and limitless potential. With a Walter-sized hole in Saba’s life, reassesses that optimism. Through carefully collected and arranged memory fragments—some clear and focused, some concealed and disorienting—Saba considers what it means now for his cousin’s dreams to go forever unrealized. Composed entirely by Saba with producer DaedaePivot and multi-instrumentalist Daoud, CARE FOR ME is meticulously structured, orchestrated, and arrayed. Songs reveal themselves to be mementos of transformational moments in his life. A choice few attempt to capture something more ephemeral: the fleeting feeling of being safe, being comfortable and well-adjusted. (At one point, Saba waxes nostalgically about a time before insomnia, sleeping peacefully and living sober and college-bound, harkening back to a childlike innocence.) The 23-year-old’s fleet, singsongy raps bend and tuck into his largely piano-centric arrangements, which build sets for the scenarios he’s reliving. His voice can sway from muted and understated to insistent in an instant; he subtly shifts from conversational to explanatory whenever the mood calls for it, but never at the expense of the narrative flow. He sees his reflection in these remembrances and confronts his own mortality, but in the process he finds something divine. So much of CARE FOR ME is an ongoing conversation trying to reconcile a cruel, unforgiving world with God’s plan. Saba hasn’t lost his faith, but his patience is running thin. Each note and phrase on the album is colored to depict this struggle. The instrumentation is bracing, almost as if played live for a crowd, but it has the intimate tenor and tone of Saba recording the entire thing alone in his basement. “FIGHTER” is submerged and glassy, its watery sheen glistening like it’s catching sunlight; Saba surfaces from this shimmer as if cresting in a wave pool. “It’s harder to love myself when all these people compliment me,” he raps, conflicted. It’s brutal moments of vulnerability like this that make CARE FOR ME such an enveloping experience. Saba’s stunning exploration of loss builds to a restorative climax: the one-two punch that is the dewy-eyed odyssey “PROM / KING” and the skyward-bound drifter “HEAVEN ALL AROUND ME.” The former chronicles Saba’s relationship with Walter, as seen through key events in their shared history—Walter finding Saba a last-minute date for prom, the pair getting skipped over at open mics, and early attempts on Walter’s life, leading up to the instant Saba learned his cousin was missing. “We got in the car, but we didn’t know where to drive to/Fuck it, wherever you are my nigga, we’ll come and find you,” he raps. His writing is so dense yet free-flowing, so delicate and tactile. The drums crescendo into a frenzy on “PROM / KING,” to the point that Saba keeps his own time, untethered to rhythm, while never missing a single beat. The song is devastating, but it would feel almost hopeless without “HEAVEN,” a glowing conclusion to the saga that imagines a reborn Walter ascending to a better place, looking down watchfully at his loved ones and looking after Saba. It’s a remarkably powerful scene, a moment where Saba comes to realize that, despite everything, he was never alone and he never will be."

Black Lipstick

Sincerely, Black Lipstick

Rock

Jason Crock

Black Lipstick don't just nod to their influences, they bow. White Light/White Heat is an obvious inspiration for the shambling drums and gritty, basic blues riffs on Sincerely, Black Lipstick, but there's also a hint of peak-era Rolling Stones. On opening track "B.O.B F.O.S.S.E.", clean lead guitar melodies overlap with crunchy rhythm chords; it's both a throbbing blues vamp and an astonishing imitation of the Stones' tense pop classics. The trouble is, while the Velvet Underground were living their socially irresponsible lyrics-- and the Stones were at least convincing people they were-- Black Lipstick have a long way to go in the believability department. Much of this falls on vocalist Philip Neimeyer, who's doesn't have much range but compensates with clever lyrics and interplay between other vocalists, such as drummer Elizabeth Nottingham. His self-consciously decadent lyrics sound appropriate when sung in a Lou Reed monotone, but he has a hard time belting it out. "Over the nation/ All the haters/ Bow to thee" sung in a resigned mumble sounds about right, but underlining lines from "B.O.B.F.O.S.S.E." like "If the world's a stage/ Then the whole damn world should bow to us" with gusto is something Neimeyer can't pull off. Maybe because the band sounds so impossibly bored, melancholy suits it better than boastfulness. When things slow down, as they do on "Grandma Airplane", Black Lipstick manage to sounds even more lethargic than the Strokes; right down to the octave guitar solo, that band is a better reference point than Television or VU. "Throw Some Money at it" is a minor-key mid-tempo rocker that, like nearly every track here, ends in a Sonic Youth-esque breakdown of interweaving guitars and steady rhythm. These shifts in structure are proof that Black Lipstick have records at home dating past 1970, and their indie rock touch distances them from formulaic hero-worship. It sounds most captivating on "Throw Some Money", twisting and repeating its simple theme to a gradual crescendo. "Viva Max" and "..." are other somber highlights that navigate the line between disaffected and bored like expert cartographers. Black Lipstick's brand of revivalism is an oddity: Their sound is blatantly derivative, yet they sound the least excited to be playing in that style. Of the bands compared to the Velvet Underground, success often lies in the ability to seem energetic and enthusiastic about the rampant pillaging of the past. Black Lipstick have gone the complete opposite route, which is either really clever, or a complete cop out.

Artist: Black Lipstick, Album: Sincerely, Black Lipstick, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Black Lipstick don't just nod to their influences, they bow. White Light/White Heat is an obvious inspiration for the shambling drums and gritty, basic blues riffs on Sincerely, Black Lipstick, but there's also a hint of peak-era Rolling Stones. On opening track "B.O.B F.O.S.S.E.", clean lead guitar melodies overlap with crunchy rhythm chords; it's both a throbbing blues vamp and an astonishing imitation of the Stones' tense pop classics. The trouble is, while the Velvet Underground were living their socially irresponsible lyrics-- and the Stones were at least convincing people they were-- Black Lipstick have a long way to go in the believability department. Much of this falls on vocalist Philip Neimeyer, who's doesn't have much range but compensates with clever lyrics and interplay between other vocalists, such as drummer Elizabeth Nottingham. His self-consciously decadent lyrics sound appropriate when sung in a Lou Reed monotone, but he has a hard time belting it out. "Over the nation/ All the haters/ Bow to thee" sung in a resigned mumble sounds about right, but underlining lines from "B.O.B.F.O.S.S.E." like "If the world's a stage/ Then the whole damn world should bow to us" with gusto is something Neimeyer can't pull off. Maybe because the band sounds so impossibly bored, melancholy suits it better than boastfulness. When things slow down, as they do on "Grandma Airplane", Black Lipstick manage to sounds even more lethargic than the Strokes; right down to the octave guitar solo, that band is a better reference point than Television or VU. "Throw Some Money at it" is a minor-key mid-tempo rocker that, like nearly every track here, ends in a Sonic Youth-esque breakdown of interweaving guitars and steady rhythm. These shifts in structure are proof that Black Lipstick have records at home dating past 1970, and their indie rock touch distances them from formulaic hero-worship. It sounds most captivating on "Throw Some Money", twisting and repeating its simple theme to a gradual crescendo. "Viva Max" and "..." are other somber highlights that navigate the line between disaffected and bored like expert cartographers. Black Lipstick's brand of revivalism is an oddity: Their sound is blatantly derivative, yet they sound the least excited to be playing in that style. Of the bands compared to the Velvet Underground, success often lies in the ability to seem energetic and enthusiastic about the rampant pillaging of the past. Black Lipstick have gone the complete opposite route, which is either really clever, or a complete cop out."

White Rose Movement

Kick

Electronic,Rock

Adam Moerder

Almost unanimously, reviews of White Rose Movement's "Love Is a Number" appended the exact same disclaimer to their kudos-- this is as good as the band gets. Buzz surrounding the band stalled despite the single's acclaim, yet the anonymity only fueled its 1980s time capsule mystique. Vis-a-vis "Love Is a Number", Kick deflates the band's nostalgic value, much in the same way an hour-long documentary on Stuart Goddard's battles with mental illness would detract from Adam Ant's music. Flagrantly molding a hit single from parts of heavily-trampled touchstones seems fine, thanks mostly to its outright catchiness. Dragging the listener through an album's worth of emotional trials and tribulations, on the other hand, feels all been-there-done-that, unable to sustain the band's endearing over-the-topness. Almost every track on Kick plays up a handful of electro-80s tropes, and credit's deserved for the band not trying to mask their influences á la most self-aware dance-rock revivalists. The mopey title track kicks off the album with a cross-section of goth rock artillery-- quickened quarter notes on the bass pedal, churning bassline, frigid synthline, and tortured vocals enter in staggered succession, a dolled-up version of the Cure's "The Figurehead". On "Pig Heil Jam", frontman Finn Dyke's vocals dissolve in an electrical storm of synth and guitar squall, one of the album's several attempts at recreating early Human League's signature sci-fi vocal pastiche. While the homage comes off respectful, chic UK producer Paul Epworth pulls out all the stops. "Girls in the Back" knows no subtlety as gauche instrumental hooks gorge every second Dyke's silent, and nearly every track here features a faux-trance breakdown where everything cuts out except the electronic drums and a few beeps. Fact is, White Rose Movement's "electro-clash" 80s sound basically candy-coats Nine Inch Nails industrial and metrosexualizes the lyrics, making Kick pretty redundant. "Alsatian", for example, barrels through the verse on one chord, piling on vocal effects and synth squelches until reaching (ta-dah!) a chorus with two chords and the same sonic baggage. Tackiness aside though, the band displays a knack for hooks, even if many of them run about as cheap as "Sunglasses at Night". White Rose Movement may emit a nice turn-back-the-clock charm, but Kick commits the classic mythological errors-- it's Prometheus reintroducing new wave before strapping on wings and flying too close to the sun.

Artist: White Rose Movement, Album: Kick, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Almost unanimously, reviews of White Rose Movement's "Love Is a Number" appended the exact same disclaimer to their kudos-- this is as good as the band gets. Buzz surrounding the band stalled despite the single's acclaim, yet the anonymity only fueled its 1980s time capsule mystique. Vis-a-vis "Love Is a Number", Kick deflates the band's nostalgic value, much in the same way an hour-long documentary on Stuart Goddard's battles with mental illness would detract from Adam Ant's music. Flagrantly molding a hit single from parts of heavily-trampled touchstones seems fine, thanks mostly to its outright catchiness. Dragging the listener through an album's worth of emotional trials and tribulations, on the other hand, feels all been-there-done-that, unable to sustain the band's endearing over-the-topness. Almost every track on Kick plays up a handful of electro-80s tropes, and credit's deserved for the band not trying to mask their influences á la most self-aware dance-rock revivalists. The mopey title track kicks off the album with a cross-section of goth rock artillery-- quickened quarter notes on the bass pedal, churning bassline, frigid synthline, and tortured vocals enter in staggered succession, a dolled-up version of the Cure's "The Figurehead". On "Pig Heil Jam", frontman Finn Dyke's vocals dissolve in an electrical storm of synth and guitar squall, one of the album's several attempts at recreating early Human League's signature sci-fi vocal pastiche. While the homage comes off respectful, chic UK producer Paul Epworth pulls out all the stops. "Girls in the Back" knows no subtlety as gauche instrumental hooks gorge every second Dyke's silent, and nearly every track here features a faux-trance breakdown where everything cuts out except the electronic drums and a few beeps. Fact is, White Rose Movement's "electro-clash" 80s sound basically candy-coats Nine Inch Nails industrial and metrosexualizes the lyrics, making Kick pretty redundant. "Alsatian", for example, barrels through the verse on one chord, piling on vocal effects and synth squelches until reaching (ta-dah!) a chorus with two chords and the same sonic baggage. Tackiness aside though, the band displays a knack for hooks, even if many of them run about as cheap as "Sunglasses at Night". White Rose Movement may emit a nice turn-back-the-clock charm, but Kick commits the classic mythological errors-- it's Prometheus reintroducing new wave before strapping on wings and flying too close to the sun."

The Clean

Mister Pop

Rock

Stuart Berman

Ah, the Clean-- the Halley's Comet of indie-rock, appearing after prolonged absences in a flash of brilliance, only to disappear just as quickly and practically be forgotten about. But if the New Zealand trio's output has been notoriously sporadic over their 32-year lifespan, their releases have been fortuitously timed to capitalize on their unyielding influence: After a brief string of legend-making singles in the early 1980s, the band's relatively prolific 1990-96 run coincided with the ascendance of Clean acolytes Pavement and Yo La Tengo; their last release, 2001's Getaway, dovetailed with the Strokes and the Shins' back-to-basics ethos; while the new Mister Pop-- only their fifth full-length release-- arrives at a time when a new generation of lo-fidelity all-stars (Jay Reatard, Bradford Cox, Crystal Stilts, Love Is All) is displaying a voracious appetite for Kiwi pop. But the Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they'd still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices-- ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies-- irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean's periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on. Despite the eight-year layoff since Getaway, Mister Pop effectively picks up right where we left off, with a pair of warm-up exercises-- the metronomic organ-grinding jam "Loog" and the possibly self-referential dream-pop ditty "Are You Really on Drugs?"-- that feel like vapor-trail echoes of its predecessor's distended, psychedelic haze. Even in light of the Clean's lo-fi legacy, the tracks feel demo-grade, built on single ideas that, while lasting only three minutes each, still feel run into the ground, begging the question of whether eight years was actually long enough for the song reservoir to replenish itself again. But such quibbles are cast aside 30 seconds into "In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul", a headlight-bright jangle-pop pleaser (possibly about the new Beatles reissues?) that boasts all the hallmarks of classic Clean. On another track, David Kilgour makes an even more explicit reinforcement of Mister Pop's return-to-form intent: over a paisley-toned, mod-rock swing, he repeats, "It puts me right back in the day." And so Mister Pop stays the course for the rest of its relatively compact 10-song, 34-minute length, reshaping the Clean's core components into poignant bossa nova instrumentals ("Simple Fix"), propulsive Krautrock-outs ("Tensile") and, as only they can, bizarro fuzz-organ jigs that resemble White Light/White Heat-era Velvets auditioning for "Riverdance" ("Moonjumper"). But whenever Mister Pop threatens to drift off, it's grounded by an ace-in-the-hole strummer like "Factory Man", a Go-Betweens-worthy working-class-hero portrait that, rather than comment on the blue-collar life from an artist's distance, sees a kinship. "He's a factory man/ And I'm no better than he 'cause I'm a factory man, too," Kilgour concludes. And after all these years, the Clean's assembly-line craftsmanship is as well-oiled as ever.

Artist: The Clean, Album: Mister Pop, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Ah, the Clean-- the Halley's Comet of indie-rock, appearing after prolonged absences in a flash of brilliance, only to disappear just as quickly and practically be forgotten about. But if the New Zealand trio's output has been notoriously sporadic over their 32-year lifespan, their releases have been fortuitously timed to capitalize on their unyielding influence: After a brief string of legend-making singles in the early 1980s, the band's relatively prolific 1990-96 run coincided with the ascendance of Clean acolytes Pavement and Yo La Tengo; their last release, 2001's Getaway, dovetailed with the Strokes and the Shins' back-to-basics ethos; while the new Mister Pop-- only their fifth full-length release-- arrives at a time when a new generation of lo-fidelity all-stars (Jay Reatard, Bradford Cox, Crystal Stilts, Love Is All) is displaying a voracious appetite for Kiwi pop. But the Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they'd still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices-- ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies-- irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean's periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on. Despite the eight-year layoff since Getaway, Mister Pop effectively picks up right where we left off, with a pair of warm-up exercises-- the metronomic organ-grinding jam "Loog" and the possibly self-referential dream-pop ditty "Are You Really on Drugs?"-- that feel like vapor-trail echoes of its predecessor's distended, psychedelic haze. Even in light of the Clean's lo-fi legacy, the tracks feel demo-grade, built on single ideas that, while lasting only three minutes each, still feel run into the ground, begging the question of whether eight years was actually long enough for the song reservoir to replenish itself again. But such quibbles are cast aside 30 seconds into "In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul", a headlight-bright jangle-pop pleaser (possibly about the new Beatles reissues?) that boasts all the hallmarks of classic Clean. On another track, David Kilgour makes an even more explicit reinforcement of Mister Pop's return-to-form intent: over a paisley-toned, mod-rock swing, he repeats, "It puts me right back in the day." And so Mister Pop stays the course for the rest of its relatively compact 10-song, 34-minute length, reshaping the Clean's core components into poignant bossa nova instrumentals ("Simple Fix"), propulsive Krautrock-outs ("Tensile") and, as only they can, bizarro fuzz-organ jigs that resemble White Light/White Heat-era Velvets auditioning for "Riverdance" ("Moonjumper"). But whenever Mister Pop threatens to drift off, it's grounded by an ace-in-the-hole strummer like "Factory Man", a Go-Betweens-worthy working-class-hero portrait that, rather than comment on the blue-collar life from an artist's distance, sees a kinship. "He's a factory man/ And I'm no better than he 'cause I'm a factory man, too," Kilgour concludes. And after all these years, the Clean's assembly-line craftsmanship is as well-oiled as ever."

Johnny Marr

The Messenger

Rock

Steven Hyden

Declaring a man to be a "god-like genius" several months shy of his 5oth birthday implies he has no more worlds left to conquer. It's been like this for Johnny Marr since before his 25th birthday, when he co-wrote a couple dozen perfect pop songs with Morrissey and then departed for a series of celebrity rocker odd jobs in other people's bands (including Modest Mouse, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, and Pet Shop Boys). To say Marr ran up the score on his legacy with the Smiths, and has been treading water ever since, would be reductive. But Marr has been playing with house money for as long as many of today's indie-poppers chasing "Hand in Glove" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" have been alive. Johnny Marr is an institution now-- and institutions are supposed to stay in the same place, right where we left them, until they topple over. Marr (hopefully) has a long way to go before that happens. So, now that his extended tenure as a gun for hire appears to have been put on hold, he's set about making his first proper solo record, The Messenger. (Marr's 2003 album with the Healers, Boomslang, is apparently being passed off as an equal collaboration between Marr and whoever else was in the Healers.) If it seems like a strange time for Johnny Marr to finally make a record under his own name, that's because it is. The Messenger is precisely the big, bright, jangly guitar rock LP that Smiths fans would have killed for in 1994. The record's immediately appealing "Smiths plus 20 pounds of muscle" sound would have fit in perfectly alongside Oasis' Definitely Maybe and the Verve's A Storm in Heaven on a typical Anglophile's CD rack 20 years ago*.* In 2013, though, The Messenger exists in its own, hermetically sealed context. As Marr recently told Pitchfork, The Messenger was consciously crafted to appeal to his old fans. "I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel," he said. "I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them." Based on this criteria, The Messenger is a success. The guitar tones on this record are fantastic-- which is to say, they instantly bring to mind the dense, intricate, and yet lightly airy riffs that Marr strummed over Morrissey's asexual witticisms in the mid-1980s. "European Me" is manna for Marr obsessives, opening with a stuttering six-string barrage that quickly blossoms into a wondrous expanse of chiming Rickenbackers. The title track is another instant grabber, marrying disco rhythms with Marr's spidery guitar over a bed of mood-setting synths. Lead-off track "The Right Thing Right" is pretty awesomely Smiths-like, too, with Johnny throwing in some frisky Keith Richards licks in for good measure. The Messenger begs to be received on its own modest terms and its pleasures-- Marr's guitar playing, the no-frills production, those big and cavernous choruses-- wear off after prolonged exposure. Marr is still a top-flight musician, but he's not really a true solo artist. As a vocalist, he's a warm if unexceptional presence; he tends to get lost inside his own immaculately constructed guitar cathedrals, particularly when he has nothing to say in his lyrics. For "I Want the Heartbeat", Marr effectively grinds a metallic bass line against his own over-amped guitar, but the song's narrative about a man falling in love with a machine is a dopey metaphor for our culture's obsession with technology. In the latter half of The Messenger, even Marr's playing starts to lose some of its vigor; "Say Demesne" is draggy, late-period U2 balladry for aging Gen-Xers. The best parts of The Messenger have a sideman's sensibility; Marr is great at doodling in the margins but falters when it comes to filling up the center with substance. The result is a record that grabs your attention initially, but is unlikely to hold it in the long view. Not that it matters-- Marr was a legend before this record, and he'll still be one after it. The Messenger won't be included in the body of work that made Marr great, but it's a solid approximation of his strengths.

Artist: Johnny Marr, Album: The Messenger, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Declaring a man to be a "god-like genius" several months shy of his 5oth birthday implies he has no more worlds left to conquer. It's been like this for Johnny Marr since before his 25th birthday, when he co-wrote a couple dozen perfect pop songs with Morrissey and then departed for a series of celebrity rocker odd jobs in other people's bands (including Modest Mouse, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, and Pet Shop Boys). To say Marr ran up the score on his legacy with the Smiths, and has been treading water ever since, would be reductive. But Marr has been playing with house money for as long as many of today's indie-poppers chasing "Hand in Glove" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" have been alive. Johnny Marr is an institution now-- and institutions are supposed to stay in the same place, right where we left them, until they topple over. Marr (hopefully) has a long way to go before that happens. So, now that his extended tenure as a gun for hire appears to have been put on hold, he's set about making his first proper solo record, The Messenger. (Marr's 2003 album with the Healers, Boomslang, is apparently being passed off as an equal collaboration between Marr and whoever else was in the Healers.) If it seems like a strange time for Johnny Marr to finally make a record under his own name, that's because it is. The Messenger is precisely the big, bright, jangly guitar rock LP that Smiths fans would have killed for in 1994. The record's immediately appealing "Smiths plus 20 pounds of muscle" sound would have fit in perfectly alongside Oasis' Definitely Maybe and the Verve's A Storm in Heaven on a typical Anglophile's CD rack 20 years ago*.* In 2013, though, The Messenger exists in its own, hermetically sealed context. As Marr recently told Pitchfork, The Messenger was consciously crafted to appeal to his old fans. "I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel," he said. "I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them." Based on this criteria, The Messenger is a success. The guitar tones on this record are fantastic-- which is to say, they instantly bring to mind the dense, intricate, and yet lightly airy riffs that Marr strummed over Morrissey's asexual witticisms in the mid-1980s. "European Me" is manna for Marr obsessives, opening with a stuttering six-string barrage that quickly blossoms into a wondrous expanse of chiming Rickenbackers. The title track is another instant grabber, marrying disco rhythms with Marr's spidery guitar over a bed of mood-setting synths. Lead-off track "The Right Thing Right" is pretty awesomely Smiths-like, too, with Johnny throwing in some frisky Keith Richards licks in for good measure. The Messenger begs to be received on its own modest terms and its pleasures-- Marr's guitar playing, the no-frills production, those big and cavernous choruses-- wear off after prolonged exposure. Marr is still a top-flight musician, but he's not really a true solo artist. As a vocalist, he's a warm if unexceptional presence; he tends to get lost inside his own immaculately constructed guitar cathedrals, particularly when he has nothing to say in his lyrics. For "I Want the Heartbeat", Marr effectively grinds a metallic bass line against his own over-amped guitar, but the song's narrative about a man falling in love with a machine is a dopey metaphor for our culture's obsession with technology. In the latter half of The Messenger, even Marr's playing starts to lose some of its vigor; "Say Demesne" is draggy, late-period U2 balladry for aging Gen-Xers. The best parts of The Messenger have a sideman's sensibility; Marr is great at doodling in the margins but falters when it comes to filling up the center with substance. The result is a record that grabs your attention initially, but is unlikely to hold it in the long view. Not that it matters-- Marr was a legend before this record, and he'll still be one after it. The Messenger won't be included in the body of work that made Marr great, but it's a solid approximation of his strengths."

Sir Richard Bishop

Polytheistic Fragments

Rock

Marc Masters

He played around the world with the Sun City Girls for 26 years, and has released six solo albums in the last decade, but Polytheistic Fragments still feels like guitarist Sir Richard Bishop's international debut. It's his first record on Drag City, but more importantly, it's his widest-ranging one yet, a joyful trip through his many styles, influences, and obsessions. Most of Bishop's previous albums have had a stricter range, be it the improvised acoustics of Improvika, the electronic atmospheres of Elektronika Demonika, or the long-form experiments of While My Guitar Gently Bleeds, released earlier this year. But Fragments is a spectacular showcase of Bishop's multi-dimensional talents. Here we get fast-picked folk, Django Reinhardt-worthy gypsy tunes, Chet Atkins-style ditties, Hindi-influenced melodies, and a lode of other, less classifiable stuff. Interestingly, this catholic approach is closest in tone to Bishop's actual solo debut, 1998's Salvador Kali, which also freely rolled his polygonal sonic dice. But even compared to that stellar release, Fragments is remarkably kaleidoscopic. It's also Bishop's most ear-catching work so far. His playing is still open and exploratory, but nearly every track is also hummable. Opener "Cross My Palm With Silver" begins with typical Reinhardt-ish sketches, but halfway in coalesces into a sneaky rolling hook. "Elysium Number Five" matches that with a snake-like lead line, and "Free Masonic Guitar", made almost solely of ringing strums, builds melody from sheer momentum. Bishop has always been a stunning player, picking through blinding runs in a flash. But here his ability to think fast and play even faster is employed solely in service of songcraft. The album's centerpiece, the ten-minute piano meditation "Saraswati", might seem like an exception to Fragments' melodicism, with its searching tones and chilly drone. But as writer Grayson Currin recently pointed out, listen closely and the track seems to nick the melody from the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", stretching it into revelatory slow motion. One would imagine that "Saraswati" would be too daunting an achievement to follow, but in fact, Polytheistic Fragments' three final tracks  are the album's best. "Tennessee Porch Swing" is an unabashed country-road stroll, while "Canned Goods & Firearms" channels the bounce of Chet Atkins. And "Ecstasies in the Open Air" is the record's ultimate charmer, a denouement whose halting acoustics melt perfectly into a soaring flute line. It's probably the softest, dreamiest thing you'll ever hear Bishop play, but like the rest of Polytheistic Fragments, its gentle bliss fits perfectly inside this sound-painter's rainbow palette.

Artist: Sir Richard Bishop, Album: Polytheistic Fragments, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "He played around the world with the Sun City Girls for 26 years, and has released six solo albums in the last decade, but Polytheistic Fragments still feels like guitarist Sir Richard Bishop's international debut. It's his first record on Drag City, but more importantly, it's his widest-ranging one yet, a joyful trip through his many styles, influences, and obsessions. Most of Bishop's previous albums have had a stricter range, be it the improvised acoustics of Improvika, the electronic atmospheres of Elektronika Demonika, or the long-form experiments of While My Guitar Gently Bleeds, released earlier this year. But Fragments is a spectacular showcase of Bishop's multi-dimensional talents. Here we get fast-picked folk, Django Reinhardt-worthy gypsy tunes, Chet Atkins-style ditties, Hindi-influenced melodies, and a lode of other, less classifiable stuff. Interestingly, this catholic approach is closest in tone to Bishop's actual solo debut, 1998's Salvador Kali, which also freely rolled his polygonal sonic dice. But even compared to that stellar release, Fragments is remarkably kaleidoscopic. It's also Bishop's most ear-catching work so far. His playing is still open and exploratory, but nearly every track is also hummable. Opener "Cross My Palm With Silver" begins with typical Reinhardt-ish sketches, but halfway in coalesces into a sneaky rolling hook. "Elysium Number Five" matches that with a snake-like lead line, and "Free Masonic Guitar", made almost solely of ringing strums, builds melody from sheer momentum. Bishop has always been a stunning player, picking through blinding runs in a flash. But here his ability to think fast and play even faster is employed solely in service of songcraft. The album's centerpiece, the ten-minute piano meditation "Saraswati", might seem like an exception to Fragments' melodicism, with its searching tones and chilly drone. But as writer Grayson Currin recently pointed out, listen closely and the track seems to nick the melody from the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", stretching it into revelatory slow motion. One would imagine that "Saraswati" would be too daunting an achievement to follow, but in fact, Polytheistic Fragments' three final tracks  are the album's best. "Tennessee Porch Swing" is an unabashed country-road stroll, while "Canned Goods & Firearms" channels the bounce of Chet Atkins. And "Ecstasies in the Open Air" is the record's ultimate charmer, a denouement whose halting acoustics melt perfectly into a soaring flute line. It's probably the softest, dreamiest thing you'll ever hear Bishop play, but like the rest of Polytheistic Fragments, its gentle bliss fits perfectly inside this sound-painter's rainbow palette."

Anenon

Petrol

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Anenon's Petrol is bookended by the sounds of freeway noise, so you don't have to look very far to find the meaning behind the title. But it's fortuitous that the album, with its viscous, reverberant swirls of reeds and violin, has the same dusky resonance as the color. If this is an album about Anenon's native Los Angeles, the setting is somewhere just past sundown, the sky steadily leeched of color as lines of cars streak toward the horizon like rivers full of embers. Anenon is Brian Allen Simon, an electronic producer and saxophone player, and Petrol is his third album. It represents a major step forward for him. His debut, 2012's Inner Hue, evoked Tycho and the Field in its shimmering ambient sketches and crisp drums; 2014's Sagrada went further in its pursuit of a new kind of beat music composed using acoustic instruments, Fender Rhodes, and tons of reverb. But its rhythms lacked distinction—"Lights and Rocks" was basically an Aphex Twin pastiche, and the TR-808 sounds elsewhere on the album seemed out of place—while his saxophone melodies sometimes scanned as rote. But Petrol, a looser, messier album, does a better job of communicating new ideas, and its emotional depth feels less gestural and more genuine. The album's raw material comes from an improvisation session alongside violinist Yvette Holzwarth and bass clarinetist Max Kaplan; back in his studio, working with the drummer Jon-Kyle Mohr, he reworked those tapes, cutting and resampling them into their final, hybrid electronic form. The opening "Body" is typical for the album, with cool, analog-style synthesizers and the humming of distant cars creating a buoyant cushion for Simon's melancholy saxophone riffing. The mood is evocative of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, but elsewhere things are less placid and misty-eyed; the drums on "Once" and "CXP"  recreate the head-over-heels tumble of drum 'n' bass, inspiring greater urgency in Simon's sax work. "Mouth" and "Petrol," meanwhile, bring to mind Philip Glass' work. Simon has described how the album was partly inspired by the experience of standing on a pedestrian walkway above the freeway—"I found a sense of Zen in that as I was making the record," he told the Fader—and it's easy to hear parallels between the spinning chrome wheels his music evokes and the sped-up industrial choreography of the Glass-scored Koyaanisqatsi. But some of the finest moments on Petrol turn out to be the simplest. "Hinoki" is nothing but two minutes of downcast sax melody over fathomless reverb, and "Panes" takes a similar idea and adds a bassline fashioned from bleating bass clarinet. In the first few seconds of "Panes," a human voice is briefly audible—as far as I can make out, it says "Maybe"—before it disappears into the murk again. It's the only voice on the album, but its appearance seems fitting; if Petrol's twin themes are the way that cars and distance define the experience of Los Angeles, that snippet of speech is what creates a sense of human scale before the album's lonely denouement, when everything that has come before disappears beneath the din of freeway noise.

Artist: Anenon, Album: Petrol, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Anenon's Petrol is bookended by the sounds of freeway noise, so you don't have to look very far to find the meaning behind the title. But it's fortuitous that the album, with its viscous, reverberant swirls of reeds and violin, has the same dusky resonance as the color. If this is an album about Anenon's native Los Angeles, the setting is somewhere just past sundown, the sky steadily leeched of color as lines of cars streak toward the horizon like rivers full of embers. Anenon is Brian Allen Simon, an electronic producer and saxophone player, and Petrol is his third album. It represents a major step forward for him. His debut, 2012's Inner Hue, evoked Tycho and the Field in its shimmering ambient sketches and crisp drums; 2014's Sagrada went further in its pursuit of a new kind of beat music composed using acoustic instruments, Fender Rhodes, and tons of reverb. But its rhythms lacked distinction—"Lights and Rocks" was basically an Aphex Twin pastiche, and the TR-808 sounds elsewhere on the album seemed out of place—while his saxophone melodies sometimes scanned as rote. But Petrol, a looser, messier album, does a better job of communicating new ideas, and its emotional depth feels less gestural and more genuine. The album's raw material comes from an improvisation session alongside violinist Yvette Holzwarth and bass clarinetist Max Kaplan; back in his studio, working with the drummer Jon-Kyle Mohr, he reworked those tapes, cutting and resampling them into their final, hybrid electronic form. The opening "Body" is typical for the album, with cool, analog-style synthesizers and the humming of distant cars creating a buoyant cushion for Simon's melancholy saxophone riffing. The mood is evocative of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, but elsewhere things are less placid and misty-eyed; the drums on "Once" and "CXP"  recreate the head-over-heels tumble of drum 'n' bass, inspiring greater urgency in Simon's sax work. "Mouth" and "Petrol," meanwhile, bring to mind Philip Glass' work. Simon has described how the album was partly inspired by the experience of standing on a pedestrian walkway above the freeway—"I found a sense of Zen in that as I was making the record," he told the Fader—and it's easy to hear parallels between the spinning chrome wheels his music evokes and the sped-up industrial choreography of the Glass-scored Koyaanisqatsi. But some of the finest moments on Petrol turn out to be the simplest. "Hinoki" is nothing but two minutes of downcast sax melody over fathomless reverb, and "Panes" takes a similar idea and adds a bassline fashioned from bleating bass clarinet. In the first few seconds of "Panes," a human voice is briefly audible—as far as I can make out, it says "Maybe"—before it disappears into the murk again. It's the only voice on the album, but its appearance seems fitting; if Petrol's twin themes are the way that cars and distance define the experience of Los Angeles, that snippet of speech is what creates a sense of human scale before the album's lonely denouement, when everything that has come before disappears beneath the din of freeway noise."

Jan Dukes De Grey

Mice and Rats in the Loft

Rock

Matthew Murphy

Originally released in 1971-- a particularly ripe vintage for freewheeling progressive folk-rock-- British trio Jan Dukes De Grey's second album Mice and Rats in the Loft ranks alongside Comus' First Utterance as one of the wildest relics of the era. Now available on CD for the first time, complete with liner notes by Current 93's David Tibet, this album is the type of bizarre curio that-- though it can't honestly be said to have universal appeal-- should be an endless source of fascination for those with an appetite for florid post-hippie excess. Comprised of three lengthy tracks, Mice and Rats in the Loft amply showcases the formidable talents of multi-instrumentalists Michael Bairstow and Derek Noy, joined here by drummer Dennis Conlan. Throughout these pieces, the musicians gallop exuberantly across genre borderlines, gobbling everything in their path as though afraid that some stray idea or blinker of inspiration might somehow escape their clutches before they can commit it to tape. The album opens with the utterly staggering prog-folk epic "Sun Symphonica". Over the course of nearly 19 minutes, it careens chaotically from hyperactive folk strumming through meadows of muted jazzy woodwinds, lazing for a time in ornate chamber music splendor before again returning to THC-addled art-rock reminiscent of such groups as the Soft Machine or Gong. Overflowing with trilling, theatrical vocals and contributions by flute, violin, clarinet, and exotic percussion, this manic tour de force is so dense that after awhile it becomes difficult to name instruments that don't get used. Towards song's end they even cap the indulgence with a completely gratuitous harmonica solo, drawing the confounding piece to an appropriately arbitrary close. The following "Call of the Wild" finds Jan Dukes in somewhat more conventional British folk regions, raising their strident voices in praise of the liberated life ("I will be free to sleep where I want and with who and what I will.") These vocals emote even more fervently on the closing title track, telling gruesome tales of ancient bloody rituals ("The screams of the victims still echo/ though it's centuries since they died") with gleeful relish as heavy droplets of Hendrixian wah-wah guitar gather in puddles at their feet. Some of the more flute-heavy passages veer uncomfortably close to Jethro Tull territory, but Mice and Rats in the Loft generally manages to avoid the prog-rock pitfalls of bloated self-satisfaction and pomposity, as the Jan Dukes instead infuse their music with enough psychedelic grit, sonic invention, and sheer unfaked strangeness to make this album a knotty puzzle worth many return visits.

Artist: Jan Dukes De Grey, Album: Mice and Rats in the Loft, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Originally released in 1971-- a particularly ripe vintage for freewheeling progressive folk-rock-- British trio Jan Dukes De Grey's second album Mice and Rats in the Loft ranks alongside Comus' First Utterance as one of the wildest relics of the era. Now available on CD for the first time, complete with liner notes by Current 93's David Tibet, this album is the type of bizarre curio that-- though it can't honestly be said to have universal appeal-- should be an endless source of fascination for those with an appetite for florid post-hippie excess. Comprised of three lengthy tracks, Mice and Rats in the Loft amply showcases the formidable talents of multi-instrumentalists Michael Bairstow and Derek Noy, joined here by drummer Dennis Conlan. Throughout these pieces, the musicians gallop exuberantly across genre borderlines, gobbling everything in their path as though afraid that some stray idea or blinker of inspiration might somehow escape their clutches before they can commit it to tape. The album opens with the utterly staggering prog-folk epic "Sun Symphonica". Over the course of nearly 19 minutes, it careens chaotically from hyperactive folk strumming through meadows of muted jazzy woodwinds, lazing for a time in ornate chamber music splendor before again returning to THC-addled art-rock reminiscent of such groups as the Soft Machine or Gong. Overflowing with trilling, theatrical vocals and contributions by flute, violin, clarinet, and exotic percussion, this manic tour de force is so dense that after awhile it becomes difficult to name instruments that don't get used. Towards song's end they even cap the indulgence with a completely gratuitous harmonica solo, drawing the confounding piece to an appropriately arbitrary close. The following "Call of the Wild" finds Jan Dukes in somewhat more conventional British folk regions, raising their strident voices in praise of the liberated life ("I will be free to sleep where I want and with who and what I will.") These vocals emote even more fervently on the closing title track, telling gruesome tales of ancient bloody rituals ("The screams of the victims still echo/ though it's centuries since they died") with gleeful relish as heavy droplets of Hendrixian wah-wah guitar gather in puddles at their feet. Some of the more flute-heavy passages veer uncomfortably close to Jethro Tull territory, but Mice and Rats in the Loft generally manages to avoid the prog-rock pitfalls of bloated self-satisfaction and pomposity, as the Jan Dukes instead infuse their music with enough psychedelic grit, sonic invention, and sheer unfaked strangeness to make this album a knotty puzzle worth many return visits."

Nick Lowe

Jesus of Cool

Rock

Matt LeMay

In Jesus of Cool's iconic cover image, Nick Lowe appears decked out in a smorgasbord of over-the-top rockstar getups. These images are perfectly considered, down to the facial hair stylings and thematically appropriate guitars-- but Lowe comes off goofy and unconvincing in every guise. The cover images are apt not for their evocation of "cool," but rather for their combination of impeccable artifice and raw, gawkish charm. Indeed, Jesus of Cool sounds more like the work of a crafty fan than that of a self-serious auteur. Thankfully, Lowe's fandom was quite broad; Jesus of Cool is equal parts shimmering disco and dingy pub, with frequent surprisingly coherent stylistic asides. That this record came out in 1978 is nothing short of a small miracle; while punk rock and disco were battling it out in an all-too-familiar dialogue of authenticity and reactionism, Lowe cut the crap and made a clever, fierce, and far-reaching record. Chalk it up, perhaps, to the degree and nature of Lowe's experience; by the time he set about recording Jesus of Cool, Lowe was already a veteran of the decidedly more populist pub rock scene. Though Jesus of Cool is technically his debut, Lowe was already the elder statesman and in-house producer for the fledgling Stiff Label, positioning himself as the clever and detached pop craftsman to protégé Elvis Costello's angsty, spittle-flecked firebrand. Fans of Costello's early records, or those of the Damned, will find the sonics of Jesus of Cool immediately familiar. Recorded largely on borrowed studio time at a variety of locations, Jesus of Cool covers a lot of ground fidelity-wise, but is aptly produced throughout. The album's more polished cuts are studio-immaculate, and its rockers are gritty and packed full of energy, demonstrating the production style that earned Lowe the nickname "Basher". Lowe certainly knew well enough to avoid trying to make a straight-up pandering pop record, and his experience in the record business is written all over Jesus of Cool, in the words of songs like "Music for Money" and "Shake and Pop", and in the album's overall feel and conceit. These flip-offs at the record industry underscore the album's unerring ease and strength. Perhaps Lowe's deep familiarity with the ins and outs of the business cured him of the something-to-prove overzealousness that kills many records this ambitious. Indeed, Jesus of Cool comes across with little to no agenda; it draws from a wide and diverse pool of influences, but never in a way that seems showy or forced. Backed by an all-star cast of friends and contemporaries, many of whom shared time with Lowe in pub rock legends Brinsley Schwarz, Lowe tries on many different vocal personas on Jesus, cooing the ballad "Tonight" and barking the new wave stomper "Music for Money". Early singles "So It Goes" and "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" are highlights, remarkable for both their strength and for their disparity. "So It Goes" is driving, chiming melodic rock, while "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" is piano-tickled disco-pop. The diversity of Jesus of Cool helps keep even its weaker tracks sounding unique and interesting; the slightly reggae-toned "No Reason" and dark, synthesized "36 Inches High" would be distracting detours on a more myopic record, but make perfect sense in this context. Jesus of Cool has been sadly out of print for years, and Yep Roc's reissue is impeccable. The complex digipak fold-out is beautiful, and Will Birch's liner notes do a great job of explaining the record's origins without falling into hyperbole. The bonus tracks here are generally quite good as well, not surprising considering the singles-y feel of the album itself. "Rollers Show" and "They Called It Rock" (a reworking of "Shake and Pop" that lacks the album cut's gritty force) were both included on the U.S. release of Jesus of Cool (retitled Pure Pop for Now People for more sensitive U.S. audiences), and their inclusion here is welcome. Other highlights include an early version of Lowe's sole U.S. hit "Cruel to be Kind", the hilarious "I Love My Label", and a cover of Martha Sharp's "Born a Woman" from 1977's The Bowi EP. As guitar pop music comes back into fashion among indie rockers, more and more albums are sounding like awkward and self-aware approximations of the very thing that Jesus of Cool does so effortlessly. In a sense, Lowe's unpretentious inclusiveness may have stopped Jesus of Cool just short of becoming a huge record in any one world; the album is far too unabashedly admiring of pop music to be seen as a punk rock classic, but too gritty and ramshackle to be considered a seminal new wave pop record. Thankfully, Jesus of Cool is a rarer thing still: a timeless and bullshit-free masterpiece.

Artist: Nick Lowe, Album: Jesus of Cool, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.3 Album review: "In Jesus of Cool's iconic cover image, Nick Lowe appears decked out in a smorgasbord of over-the-top rockstar getups. These images are perfectly considered, down to the facial hair stylings and thematically appropriate guitars-- but Lowe comes off goofy and unconvincing in every guise. The cover images are apt not for their evocation of "cool," but rather for their combination of impeccable artifice and raw, gawkish charm. Indeed, Jesus of Cool sounds more like the work of a crafty fan than that of a self-serious auteur. Thankfully, Lowe's fandom was quite broad; Jesus of Cool is equal parts shimmering disco and dingy pub, with frequent surprisingly coherent stylistic asides. That this record came out in 1978 is nothing short of a small miracle; while punk rock and disco were battling it out in an all-too-familiar dialogue of authenticity and reactionism, Lowe cut the crap and made a clever, fierce, and far-reaching record. Chalk it up, perhaps, to the degree and nature of Lowe's experience; by the time he set about recording Jesus of Cool, Lowe was already a veteran of the decidedly more populist pub rock scene. Though Jesus of Cool is technically his debut, Lowe was already the elder statesman and in-house producer for the fledgling Stiff Label, positioning himself as the clever and detached pop craftsman to protégé Elvis Costello's angsty, spittle-flecked firebrand. Fans of Costello's early records, or those of the Damned, will find the sonics of Jesus of Cool immediately familiar. Recorded largely on borrowed studio time at a variety of locations, Jesus of Cool covers a lot of ground fidelity-wise, but is aptly produced throughout. The album's more polished cuts are studio-immaculate, and its rockers are gritty and packed full of energy, demonstrating the production style that earned Lowe the nickname "Basher". Lowe certainly knew well enough to avoid trying to make a straight-up pandering pop record, and his experience in the record business is written all over Jesus of Cool, in the words of songs like "Music for Money" and "Shake and Pop", and in the album's overall feel and conceit. These flip-offs at the record industry underscore the album's unerring ease and strength. Perhaps Lowe's deep familiarity with the ins and outs of the business cured him of the something-to-prove overzealousness that kills many records this ambitious. Indeed, Jesus of Cool comes across with little to no agenda; it draws from a wide and diverse pool of influences, but never in a way that seems showy or forced. Backed by an all-star cast of friends and contemporaries, many of whom shared time with Lowe in pub rock legends Brinsley Schwarz, Lowe tries on many different vocal personas on Jesus, cooing the ballad "Tonight" and barking the new wave stomper "Music for Money". Early singles "So It Goes" and "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" are highlights, remarkable for both their strength and for their disparity. "So It Goes" is driving, chiming melodic rock, while "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" is piano-tickled disco-pop. The diversity of Jesus of Cool helps keep even its weaker tracks sounding unique and interesting; the slightly reggae-toned "No Reason" and dark, synthesized "36 Inches High" would be distracting detours on a more myopic record, but make perfect sense in this context. Jesus of Cool has been sadly out of print for years, and Yep Roc's reissue is impeccable. The complex digipak fold-out is beautiful, and Will Birch's liner notes do a great job of explaining the record's origins without falling into hyperbole. The bonus tracks here are generally quite good as well, not surprising considering the singles-y feel of the album itself. "Rollers Show" and "They Called It Rock" (a reworking of "Shake and Pop" that lacks the album cut's gritty force) were both included on the U.S. release of Jesus of Cool (retitled Pure Pop for Now People for more sensitive U.S. audiences), and their inclusion here is welcome. Other highlights include an early version of Lowe's sole U.S. hit "Cruel to be Kind", the hilarious "I Love My Label", and a cover of Martha Sharp's "Born a Woman" from 1977's The Bowi EP. As guitar pop music comes back into fashion among indie rockers, more and more albums are sounding like awkward and self-aware approximations of the very thing that Jesus of Cool does so effortlessly. In a sense, Lowe's unpretentious inclusiveness may have stopped Jesus of Cool just short of becoming a huge record in any one world; the album is far too unabashedly admiring of pop music to be seen as a punk rock classic, but too gritty and ramshackle to be considered a seminal new wave pop record. Thankfully, Jesus of Cool is a rarer thing still: a timeless and bullshit-free masterpiece."

Amon Tobin

Supermodified

Electronic,Jazz

Taylor M. Clark

Dear Amon, How are you? I am fine. My name is Billy. I am 8 and 5/8 years old (9 in 137 days). I like soccer and playing with my rocketships. Do you like pizza? I think pizza is the best food in the whole world, especially with lots of cheese. One time, my big sister Beth ate way too much pizza and she threw up right in front of a guy she had a crush on. She was so embarrassed that all she could do for a whole week was sit in her room and listen to Alanis Morrisette on repeat, saying, "Isn't it ironic? Don't'cha think?" She's a major dork and has cooties. I am writing because I think my brother Kevin is obsessed with you. My parents are really worried. Before Supermodified came out, he had this countdown calendar up in his room between a giant poster of the cover of Bricolage and a framed picture of you looking off in the distance. Every day, he would sit in his room and stare at that calendar and rip off a number exactly at midnight. I think it's creepy. He says you are "the manifold deity of digital polyrhythms, descended upon this wretched corporeal shell of a world to illuminate the path to enlightenment through sonic perfection." He's really smart because he goes to college. Nobody understands what he's saying. Who do you think would win in a fight between a Velociraptor and Spider Man? I think Spider Man would, because he would use his spider sense to avoid danger, then wrap it up in super powerful webs. I think Spider Man is the coolest ever. One day, my brother Kevin got into a bad fight with his friend Eric. They both wear big pants and like those glow sticks that you use on Halloween and stuff. Anyway, Eric and Kevin were going to get into Eric's car and Eric wanted to listen to Roni Size. Kevin wanted to listen to your second album, Permutation. They got really mad at each other. Finally, Eric told Kevin, "Dude, Amon Tobin is too weird and esoteric. At least Roni Size won the Mercury Prize. That must mean he's better." Kevin sprang at him really fast and started to claw at his face, screaming words like "cretin" and "imbecile." This other time, my sister asked him why he didn't listen to more mainstream electronic stuff like Fatboy Slim and Moby, because they were so much cooler. I've never seen him so angry. He went off for like half an hour. He had just gotten Supermodified, so this is what he told her: "You poor plebeian, devouring mainstream culture like so many Chalupas and Doritos. If you would simply pause for a mere second and lend an ear to the remarkably intricate and razor sharp compositions offered on Supermodified, you would become revolted at only the thought of such derivative drivel. Amon Tobin creates aural treasures each time he touches studio equipment. He breathes vitality into a stagnant genre with each drum hit. He rejuvenates the pallid genre of electronica every time he permits the world to glance through the twisted digital window of his music. Take the opening track, 'Get Your Snack On.' In even the inaugural morsel of the album, Tobin breaks new ground for funk-infused rhythms. It is easily the most addictive song he's recorded to date, replete with thumping bass line and ludicrous drum breaks. Then we have 'Saboteur,' a subtle epic that hovers on the edge of genius, yet is able to shatter walls in its sheer restraint from exploding into rhythmic madness. 'Deo' again presents an intellectual Amon Tobin who allows his tracks to evolve, weaving a elaborate oriental rug of organic tones and beats. I am literally contorted with giddiness when hearing certain sections of Supermodified." She tried to walk out of the room, but he chased her around the house with a boombox that was playing "Four Ton Mantis" until my sister threatened to tell his girlfriend that he once said that "Believe" by Cher was "sort of interesting." I sometimes get funny feelings when I listen to your music. On your other two records, it was different because I kind of felt alienated from the music. It was so weird and random and intense at times. Now, the music sort of draws me in and I can't stop listening. Kevin says it's because this disc is much more "accessible than anything he's done before, yet it surpasses them insofar has he has shown the beginnings of a total sonic mastery of each subtle aspect of a work." Everything just fits together so well, like Lego blocks making a castle. It used to be that the beats would be really scary because they didn't quite fit the background music, but now everything is just so proper and seems in its place. Please help me, Mr. Tobin. I don't want to grow up to be obsessed with you like Kevin. I want to be able to leave the house sometimes when I grow up. I want to be a fireman! But I just can't stop listening now. Be kind, Mr. Tobin, I'm only 8 and 3/4 years old!

Artist: Amon Tobin, Album: Supermodified, Genre: Electronic,Jazz, Score (1-10): 9.1 Album review: "Dear Amon, How are you? I am fine. My name is Billy. I am 8 and 5/8 years old (9 in 137 days). I like soccer and playing with my rocketships. Do you like pizza? I think pizza is the best food in the whole world, especially with lots of cheese. One time, my big sister Beth ate way too much pizza and she threw up right in front of a guy she had a crush on. She was so embarrassed that all she could do for a whole week was sit in her room and listen to Alanis Morrisette on repeat, saying, "Isn't it ironic? Don't'cha think?" She's a major dork and has cooties. I am writing because I think my brother Kevin is obsessed with you. My parents are really worried. Before Supermodified came out, he had this countdown calendar up in his room between a giant poster of the cover of Bricolage and a framed picture of you looking off in the distance. Every day, he would sit in his room and stare at that calendar and rip off a number exactly at midnight. I think it's creepy. He says you are "the manifold deity of digital polyrhythms, descended upon this wretched corporeal shell of a world to illuminate the path to enlightenment through sonic perfection." He's really smart because he goes to college. Nobody understands what he's saying. Who do you think would win in a fight between a Velociraptor and Spider Man? I think Spider Man would, because he would use his spider sense to avoid danger, then wrap it up in super powerful webs. I think Spider Man is the coolest ever. One day, my brother Kevin got into a bad fight with his friend Eric. They both wear big pants and like those glow sticks that you use on Halloween and stuff. Anyway, Eric and Kevin were going to get into Eric's car and Eric wanted to listen to Roni Size. Kevin wanted to listen to your second album, Permutation. They got really mad at each other. Finally, Eric told Kevin, "Dude, Amon Tobin is too weird and esoteric. At least Roni Size won the Mercury Prize. That must mean he's better." Kevin sprang at him really fast and started to claw at his face, screaming words like "cretin" and "imbecile." This other time, my sister asked him why he didn't listen to more mainstream electronic stuff like Fatboy Slim and Moby, because they were so much cooler. I've never seen him so angry. He went off for like half an hour. He had just gotten Supermodified, so this is what he told her: "You poor plebeian, devouring mainstream culture like so many Chalupas and Doritos. If you would simply pause for a mere second and lend an ear to the remarkably intricate and razor sharp compositions offered on Supermodified, you would become revolted at only the thought of such derivative drivel. Amon Tobin creates aural treasures each time he touches studio equipment. He breathes vitality into a stagnant genre with each drum hit. He rejuvenates the pallid genre of electronica every time he permits the world to glance through the twisted digital window of his music. Take the opening track, 'Get Your Snack On.' In even the inaugural morsel of the album, Tobin breaks new ground for funk-infused rhythms. It is easily the most addictive song he's recorded to date, replete with thumping bass line and ludicrous drum breaks. Then we have 'Saboteur,' a subtle epic that hovers on the edge of genius, yet is able to shatter walls in its sheer restraint from exploding into rhythmic madness. 'Deo' again presents an intellectual Amon Tobin who allows his tracks to evolve, weaving a elaborate oriental rug of organic tones and beats. I am literally contorted with giddiness when hearing certain sections of Supermodified." She tried to walk out of the room, but he chased her around the house with a boombox that was playing "Four Ton Mantis" until my sister threatened to tell his girlfriend that he once said that "Believe" by Cher was "sort of interesting." I sometimes get funny feelings when I listen to your music. On your other two records, it was different because I kind of felt alienated from the music. It was so weird and random and intense at times. Now, the music sort of draws me in and I can't stop listening. Kevin says it's because this disc is much more "accessible than anything he's done before, yet it surpasses them insofar has he has shown the beginnings of a total sonic mastery of each subtle aspect of a work." Everything just fits together so well, like Lego blocks making a castle. It used to be that the beats would be really scary because they didn't quite fit the background music, but now everything is just so proper and seems in its place. Please help me, Mr. Tobin. I don't want to grow up to be obsessed with you like Kevin. I want to be able to leave the house sometimes when I grow up. I want to be a fireman! But I just can't stop listening now. Be kind, Mr. Tobin, I'm only 8 and 3/4 years old!"

Sage Francis

A Healthy Distrust

Rap

Brian Howe

It doesn't require a particularly puritanical moral stance to balk at some of the misogyny, homophobia, and bloodlust that are rampant in music culture, and particularly in mainstream rap, where these values have found their most fertile and overt purchase. This is not a new idea, regardless of whether you view the trend as toxic or innocuous. Possibly the last interesting facet of this phenomenon is how people with staunchly progressive politics and who countenance no hate speech in their everyday lives can switch these precepts off like a faucet when confronted with the hypnotic strains of the latest 50 Cent single. Maybe we're too postmodern to apprehend values so contrary to the ones we profess as anything but satirical cultural criticism. Or maybe we've just been lulled into compliance, taught that the small voice of the conscience is the priggish influence of Tipper Gore, to be suppressed and disregarded. In our neoconservative political environment, all dissent is treason. Rap eerily echoes this conservatism; all dissent is player-hating. Talib Kweli was onto this years ago: "Reverse psychology got 'em scared to say when shit is whack/ Out of fear of being called a hater, imagine that!" Sage Francis can be truthfully called a lot of not-necessarily-nice things: Self-absorbed, condescending, solipsistic, and heavy handed. But he could never be accused of docility. Francis never mastered the shoulder shrug that's become so natural a defense mechanism for many of us; his stockpile of moral outrage is limitless, and whether you agree with his renunciation of mainstream rap as repetitive, poisonous filler (on "Dance Monkey": "She likes the repetitive songs that keep playin'/ You know the repetitive songs that keep playin'?") or think he's a self-aggrandizing prick, it's fascinating to observe how strangely he rubs against the culture, turning its own weapons against it and criticizing its assumptions. On A Healthy Distrust, Francis continues to refine his contradictory blend of trash talk and activism, political polemic and introspection, pedantic bluster and profound insecurity. He's always emphasized substance above style: If you have something to say, you say it, even if it means losing the beat for a minute. But here his style has finally caught up with his intellect, and while his beats are passable but unexceptional, his voice locks onto and scans over them so ferociously they're almost obliterated. He's a Bizzarro-world Eminem, his voice low instead of high; using his ramifying metaphors and serpentine rhyming schemes to decry cultural decline instead of celebrating it. Ever the realist, Francis doesn't seem to hold any hope of closing these wounds, political or personal--his invective is depressive and irate, imbued with a sense of determined futility. "The Buzz Kill", erupting with antsy strings and explosive drums, laments the decadence and celebrity-worship of rap culture. "Sea Lion", all skittering drums and hypnotic melody, is equally pessimistic about the prospects of healing childhood injuries: "Ma, look what I did to my hands, I broke 'em/ You gave me the stone, gave me the chisel, didn't say how to hold them". And "Gunz Yo" is strikingly brave, taking on rap's firearm fetish with all of the stridency of what it attacks. Fire with fire. "Gunz Yo" isn't a plea for non-violence, it's a bald-faced threat. "It might remind you of a mic the way I hold it to the grill of a homophobic rapper/ Unaware of the graphic nature of phallic symbols/ Tragically ironic, sucking off each others gats and pistols". This isn't the first time Francis has overtly spoken out against homophobia, and it's lines like this-- and his classic turn from Non-Prophets's Hope, "I attended candlelight vigils for Matthew Shepard while you put out another 'fuck you faggot' record"-- that best exemplify the bipolar, counterintuitive nature of his style. Of course, I don't think Sage Francis is going to make anyone change their minds or behavior, and he doesn't seem to think so either. But he expresses an especially distinct, heartfelt worldview, and serves as a galvanic reminder to reevaluate your politics and morals on a personal level. The vast majority of hip-hop isn't harmful or hurtful, but that doesn't mean we should open wide for whatever they want to shove down our gullets. Amid such adverse circumstances of unclear implication, a bit of distrust seems healthy indeed.

Artist: Sage Francis, Album: A Healthy Distrust, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "It doesn't require a particularly puritanical moral stance to balk at some of the misogyny, homophobia, and bloodlust that are rampant in music culture, and particularly in mainstream rap, where these values have found their most fertile and overt purchase. This is not a new idea, regardless of whether you view the trend as toxic or innocuous. Possibly the last interesting facet of this phenomenon is how people with staunchly progressive politics and who countenance no hate speech in their everyday lives can switch these precepts off like a faucet when confronted with the hypnotic strains of the latest 50 Cent single. Maybe we're too postmodern to apprehend values so contrary to the ones we profess as anything but satirical cultural criticism. Or maybe we've just been lulled into compliance, taught that the small voice of the conscience is the priggish influence of Tipper Gore, to be suppressed and disregarded. In our neoconservative political environment, all dissent is treason. Rap eerily echoes this conservatism; all dissent is player-hating. Talib Kweli was onto this years ago: "Reverse psychology got 'em scared to say when shit is whack/ Out of fear of being called a hater, imagine that!" Sage Francis can be truthfully called a lot of not-necessarily-nice things: Self-absorbed, condescending, solipsistic, and heavy handed. But he could never be accused of docility. Francis never mastered the shoulder shrug that's become so natural a defense mechanism for many of us; his stockpile of moral outrage is limitless, and whether you agree with his renunciation of mainstream rap as repetitive, poisonous filler (on "Dance Monkey": "She likes the repetitive songs that keep playin'/ You know the repetitive songs that keep playin'?") or think he's a self-aggrandizing prick, it's fascinating to observe how strangely he rubs against the culture, turning its own weapons against it and criticizing its assumptions. On A Healthy Distrust, Francis continues to refine his contradictory blend of trash talk and activism, political polemic and introspection, pedantic bluster and profound insecurity. He's always emphasized substance above style: If you have something to say, you say it, even if it means losing the beat for a minute. But here his style has finally caught up with his intellect, and while his beats are passable but unexceptional, his voice locks onto and scans over them so ferociously they're almost obliterated. He's a Bizzarro-world Eminem, his voice low instead of high; using his ramifying metaphors and serpentine rhyming schemes to decry cultural decline instead of celebrating it. Ever the realist, Francis doesn't seem to hold any hope of closing these wounds, political or personal--his invective is depressive and irate, imbued with a sense of determined futility. "The Buzz Kill", erupting with antsy strings and explosive drums, laments the decadence and celebrity-worship of rap culture. "Sea Lion", all skittering drums and hypnotic melody, is equally pessimistic about the prospects of healing childhood injuries: "Ma, look what I did to my hands, I broke 'em/ You gave me the stone, gave me the chisel, didn't say how to hold them". And "Gunz Yo" is strikingly brave, taking on rap's firearm fetish with all of the stridency of what it attacks. Fire with fire. "Gunz Yo" isn't a plea for non-violence, it's a bald-faced threat. "It might remind you of a mic the way I hold it to the grill of a homophobic rapper/ Unaware of the graphic nature of phallic symbols/ Tragically ironic, sucking off each others gats and pistols". This isn't the first time Francis has overtly spoken out against homophobia, and it's lines like this-- and his classic turn from Non-Prophets's Hope, "I attended candlelight vigils for Matthew Shepard while you put out another 'fuck you faggot' record"-- that best exemplify the bipolar, counterintuitive nature of his style. Of course, I don't think Sage Francis is going to make anyone change their minds or behavior, and he doesn't seem to think so either. But he expresses an especially distinct, heartfelt worldview, and serves as a galvanic reminder to reevaluate your politics and morals on a personal level. The vast majority of hip-hop isn't harmful or hurtful, but that doesn't mean we should open wide for whatever they want to shove down our gullets. Amid such adverse circumstances of unclear implication, a bit of distrust seems healthy indeed."

Sons of Kemet

Your Queen Is a Reptile

Jazz

Madison Bloom

American jazz has often been described as an accumulation of cultural memory—music that survives by staying in touch with its own history. But the music of Shabaka Hutchings, the 33-year-old saxophonist and bandleader of London’s Sons of Kemet, insists that memory isn’t enough. Hutchings is a fixture in many projects, including cosmic jazz trio the Comet Is Coming, Afrofuturist outfit the Ancestors, and occasionally as a guest player with the Sun Ra Arkestra. His work with Sons of Kemet is notable for its fervent politics and open-borders approach to genre. On the group’s third LP, Your Queen Is a Reptile, Hutchings merges his classical clarinet and jazz orchestra training with the music he’s heard growing up in the Caribbean, traveling in South Africa, and living in London. “That’s an aspect of being a part of a musical diaspora,” Hutchings says in the press materials for Your Queen. “Not being from the place that jazz is born from means that I don’t feel any ultimate reverence to it. It’s just about finding ways of reinterpreting how we’re thinking about the music.” For Hutchings, jazz’s cultural memory is not just something to recite, but a rich language that informs an entirely new conversation. On Your Queen Is a Reptile, that conversation covers a lot of ground with a limited vocabulary. Rendered only with tuba, saxophone, drums, and voice, Hutchings’ compositions are diverse and rhythmically ambitious. He’s not only leveraging jazz, but a broader sonic lexicon including Afrobeat, dub, Caribbean soca, and grime. Your Queen is thematically aspirational as well—as the group’s first LP since the 2016 Brexit vote, it directly challenges the conventions of nationalism and the British monarchy. In their place, Hutchings offers his own version of a royal family, comprising visionary black women like Yaa Asantewaa, the Ashanti queen mother who fought against British colonialism in the early 20th century; the longtime radical activist Angela Davis; and Hutchings’ own great-grandmother, Ada Eastman. Hutchings’ coronation of these remarkable women is a celebratory act, but he’s also commenting on the arbitrariness of all inherited hierarchies. Royalty is a dangerous ideology, and Hutchings counters it with a high court of trailblazing women whose achievements, rather than their bloodline, inform their worth. On “My Queen Is Mamie Phipps Clark,” named for the social psychologist who researched the detrimental effects of segregation on African American schoolchildren, Hutchings melds sprawling dub and nocturne jazz. Led by Congo Natty, an English producer and vocalist who helped popularize jungle in the early ’90s, the track pays respect to dub’s Jamaican origins as well as its rebirth as 2 Tone ska in late-’70s London. Natty’s vocals seep to the song’s periphery on a wave of reverb while Hutchings’ sax paints in broad brushstrokes in the foreground. Theon Cross subs grumbling tuba for dub’s signature bass, letting out wonderfully guttural brass belches, for a fun and accessible fusion of genres that evokes the Specials’ woozy “International Jet Set.” “My Queen Is Albertina Sisulu,” an homage to a noted South African nurse and anti-apartheid activist, is an Afrobeat shimmy that suggests furious dancing. Cross’ tuba and Hutchings’ tenor tangle phrases, while drummers Sebastian Rochford and Moses Boyd provoke them with anxious raps on rims, hi-hats, and djembe. Hutchings plays in sweetly curving licks before fracturing into staccato blurts. His instrument often reaches manic, searching measures, bringing to mind something saxophonist Evan Parker once told him. “He said: ‘You need to play as if it’s your last chance to play,’” Hutchings recently told The Wire. Hutchings has said he wrote lead single and album highlight “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” as an interpretation of Tubman’s initial escape from slavery. The effect is urgent—the drummers mimic the pace and posture of someone running for their life, at times slipping and hitting a cowbell or snare with added force, but never losing speed. Saxophone and tuba reach bumblebee frenzy, sputtering by the end of their turbulent flight. It is an exhilarating and highly original piece of music that showcases Hutchings’ ability to translate politics to melody. Sons of Kemet are most effective when they transpose concept to instrument this way. But despite the group’s skill for conversing between genres and generations, words are Your Queen’s greatest weakness. Guest vocalist Joshua Idehen delivers his poems with a bravado that at times distracts from Hutchings’ nuanced compositions. On “My Queen Is Ada Eastman,” Idehen’s vocals don’t arrive until minute three, and when they do they dampen the song’s energy. His diction can be a bit goofy, and lines about London winds that “shiver my thin moustache” don’t necessarily help. The poet redeems himself, however, with a simple phrase that seems to speak to the resilient immigrant experience in post-Brexit Britain: “I’m still here,” he repeats. Your Queen is Sons of Kemet’s first release on Impulse!, the label that was home to Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders at their peaks. This adds another dimension to Hutchings’ relationship with American jazz, placing him among the players whose work he’s trying so hard to subvert and deconstruct. It is a peculiar achievement for him in some ways, but it is also a testament to his talents as a composer and player. Hutchings may not feel any “ultimate reverence” to the genre, but its tastemakers see a lot of promise in him. Given the passion and innovation he’s breathing into contemporary jazz, why shouldn’t they?

Artist: Sons of Kemet, Album: Your Queen Is a Reptile, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "American jazz has often been described as an accumulation of cultural memory—music that survives by staying in touch with its own history. But the music of Shabaka Hutchings, the 33-year-old saxophonist and bandleader of London’s Sons of Kemet, insists that memory isn’t enough. Hutchings is a fixture in many projects, including cosmic jazz trio the Comet Is Coming, Afrofuturist outfit the Ancestors, and occasionally as a guest player with the Sun Ra Arkestra. His work with Sons of Kemet is notable for its fervent politics and open-borders approach to genre. On the group’s third LP, Your Queen Is a Reptile, Hutchings merges his classical clarinet and jazz orchestra training with the music he’s heard growing up in the Caribbean, traveling in South Africa, and living in London. “That’s an aspect of being a part of a musical diaspora,” Hutchings says in the press materials for Your Queen. “Not being from the place that jazz is born from means that I don’t feel any ultimate reverence to it. It’s just about finding ways of reinterpreting how we’re thinking about the music.” For Hutchings, jazz’s cultural memory is not just something to recite, but a rich language that informs an entirely new conversation. On Your Queen Is a Reptile, that conversation covers a lot of ground with a limited vocabulary. Rendered only with tuba, saxophone, drums, and voice, Hutchings’ compositions are diverse and rhythmically ambitious. He’s not only leveraging jazz, but a broader sonic lexicon including Afrobeat, dub, Caribbean soca, and grime. Your Queen is thematically aspirational as well—as the group’s first LP since the 2016 Brexit vote, it directly challenges the conventions of nationalism and the British monarchy. In their place, Hutchings offers his own version of a royal family, comprising visionary black women like Yaa Asantewaa, the Ashanti queen mother who fought against British colonialism in the early 20th century; the longtime radical activist Angela Davis; and Hutchings’ own great-grandmother, Ada Eastman. Hutchings’ coronation of these remarkable women is a celebratory act, but he’s also commenting on the arbitrariness of all inherited hierarchies. Royalty is a dangerous ideology, and Hutchings counters it with a high court of trailblazing women whose achievements, rather than their bloodline, inform their worth. On “My Queen Is Mamie Phipps Clark,” named for the social psychologist who researched the detrimental effects of segregation on African American schoolchildren, Hutchings melds sprawling dub and nocturne jazz. Led by Congo Natty, an English producer and vocalist who helped popularize jungle in the early ’90s, the track pays respect to dub’s Jamaican origins as well as its rebirth as 2 Tone ska in late-’70s London. Natty’s vocals seep to the song’s periphery on a wave of reverb while Hutchings’ sax paints in broad brushstrokes in the foreground. Theon Cross subs grumbling tuba for dub’s signature bass, letting out wonderfully guttural brass belches, for a fun and accessible fusion of genres that evokes the Specials’ woozy “International Jet Set.” “My Queen Is Albertina Sisulu,” an homage to a noted South African nurse and anti-apartheid activist, is an Afrobeat shimmy that suggests furious dancing. Cross’ tuba and Hutchings’ tenor tangle phrases, while drummers Sebastian Rochford and Moses Boyd provoke them with anxious raps on rims, hi-hats, and djembe. Hutchings plays in sweetly curving licks before fracturing into staccato blurts. His instrument often reaches manic, searching measures, bringing to mind something saxophonist Evan Parker once told him. “He said: ‘You need to play as if it’s your last chance to play,’” Hutchings recently told The Wire. Hutchings has said he wrote lead single and album highlight “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” as an interpretation of Tubman’s initial escape from slavery. The effect is urgent—the drummers mimic the pace and posture of someone running for their life, at times slipping and hitting a cowbell or snare with added force, but never losing speed. Saxophone and tuba reach bumblebee frenzy, sputtering by the end of their turbulent flight. It is an exhilarating and highly original piece of music that showcases Hutchings’ ability to translate politics to melody. Sons of Kemet are most effective when they transpose concept to instrument this way. But despite the group’s skill for conversing between genres and generations, words are Your Queen’s greatest weakness. Guest vocalist Joshua Idehen delivers his poems with a bravado that at times distracts from Hutchings’ nuanced compositions. On “My Queen Is Ada Eastman,” Idehen’s vocals don’t arrive until minute three, and when they do they dampen the song’s energy. His diction can be a bit goofy, and lines about London winds that “shiver my thin moustache” don’t necessarily help. The poet redeems himself, however, with a simple phrase that seems to speak to the resilient immigrant experience in post-Brexit Britain: “I’m still here,” he repeats. Your Queen is Sons of Kemet’s first release on Impulse!, the label that was home to Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders at their peaks. This adds another dimension to Hutchings’ relationship with American jazz, placing him among the players whose work he’s trying so hard to subvert and deconstruct. It is a peculiar achievement for him in some ways, but it is also a testament to his talents as a composer and player. Hutchings may not feel any “ultimate reverence” to the genre, but its tastemakers see a lot of promise in him. Given the passion and innovation he’s breathing into contemporary jazz, why shouldn’t they?"

Mike Ladd

Negrophilia

Rap

Joe Tangari

Mike Ladd is one of contemporary hip-hop's great innovators, even though he often either operates on the very fringes of the genre or leaves it completely. He has a warm, versatile voice, and impressive flow, but more importantly, he has a lot of ideas. There are times when Ladd's vision and reach are so broad that his music can't quite keep up with it, but he's skilled enough to consistently produce satisfying albums-- twice creating absolutely brilliant ones: Welcome to the Afterfuture and Majesticons' Beauty Party. Listening to Ladd, it's clear that unifying concepts-- such as the underground vs. mainstream rivalry/soap opera of the Infesticons and Majesticons projects-- are important to him, and his first entry in Thirsty Ear's Blue Series is no exception. Negrophilia takes its title from and is inspired by the writings of Petrine Archer-Straw, who wrote a boom with the same name (subtitled Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s). Her tome expounded upon the Paris art world's embrace of black American and African ex-pats-- and its co-option of their art and culture, which played heavily into Art Deco, cubism (earlier in the century), and Euro-jazz. Now, if most artists were to say their album was influenced by a particular work of non-fiction, you might notice the influence in one song or a title or the cover art, but Ladd is serious. He weaves examinations of the book's themes-- as well as civil rights-related sound clips and references to both military and cultural imperialism and conflations of early 20th Century European art and modern American pop stars ("Brancusi sculpting Beyonce in Gold lame/ Blond negress")-- into his open-ended, heavily chopped and diced songs. The musical approach\xD0heavy improvisation revisited, reconfigured and reconstituted into dense sound collages yields plenty of interesting moments, but it also unfortunately marginalizes Ladd's rapping and also opens the door to passages that grow unfocused or cluttered. Ladd does have a crack band at his disposal, with drummer Guillermo E. Brown (a frequent David S. Ware collaborator) helping to shape the record through editing and electronics, Vijay Iyer adding keyboards, winds by Andrew Lamb, Roy Campbell on trumpet, and Bruce Grant on tape loops. They set a promising tone with "Fieldwork (the Ethnographer's Daughter)", opening with dry hand percussion and acoustic guitar to simulate a field recording and settling on an ominous groove for Ladd to drop a few lines over, manipulating his voice even as it's attacked from all sides by squirming loops and fluttering woodwinds and horn. "Shake It" runs away with the show, though, with its off-kilter, lurching beat, outbursts of sax and trumpet and Ladd's tense flow. "Worldwide Shrinkwrap (Contact Zones)" comes close to the glory of "Shake It", but questionable vocal processing-- including annoying pitch-shifting-- keeps it from getting there. That's indicative of the problems with the album's weaker tracks-- they wander through lengthy passages of wet noodle electro-jazz. Fortunately, the LP also has luxurious instrumental sections, such as the remarkable bassoon and trumpet duel of "Back at Ya," or Iyer's piano meditation and Campbell's dusty solo on "Sam and Milli Dine Out". It's a shame that the disc isn't more laserly in its focus, because its best moments are stellar and exhilarating. We know from history that Ladd is very capable of making instrumentals that feel like they're going somewhere, so it's something of a mystery as to why he gets such mixed results here, but even great musicians aren't fail-proof.

Artist: Mike Ladd, Album: Negrophilia, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Mike Ladd is one of contemporary hip-hop's great innovators, even though he often either operates on the very fringes of the genre or leaves it completely. He has a warm, versatile voice, and impressive flow, but more importantly, he has a lot of ideas. There are times when Ladd's vision and reach are so broad that his music can't quite keep up with it, but he's skilled enough to consistently produce satisfying albums-- twice creating absolutely brilliant ones: Welcome to the Afterfuture and Majesticons' Beauty Party. Listening to Ladd, it's clear that unifying concepts-- such as the underground vs. mainstream rivalry/soap opera of the Infesticons and Majesticons projects-- are important to him, and his first entry in Thirsty Ear's Blue Series is no exception. Negrophilia takes its title from and is inspired by the writings of Petrine Archer-Straw, who wrote a boom with the same name (subtitled Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s). Her tome expounded upon the Paris art world's embrace of black American and African ex-pats-- and its co-option of their art and culture, which played heavily into Art Deco, cubism (earlier in the century), and Euro-jazz. Now, if most artists were to say their album was influenced by a particular work of non-fiction, you might notice the influence in one song or a title or the cover art, but Ladd is serious. He weaves examinations of the book's themes-- as well as civil rights-related sound clips and references to both military and cultural imperialism and conflations of early 20th Century European art and modern American pop stars ("Brancusi sculpting Beyonce in Gold lame/ Blond negress")-- into his open-ended, heavily chopped and diced songs. The musical approach\xD0heavy improvisation revisited, reconfigured and reconstituted into dense sound collages yields plenty of interesting moments, but it also unfortunately marginalizes Ladd's rapping and also opens the door to passages that grow unfocused or cluttered. Ladd does have a crack band at his disposal, with drummer Guillermo E. Brown (a frequent David S. Ware collaborator) helping to shape the record through editing and electronics, Vijay Iyer adding keyboards, winds by Andrew Lamb, Roy Campbell on trumpet, and Bruce Grant on tape loops. They set a promising tone with "Fieldwork (the Ethnographer's Daughter)", opening with dry hand percussion and acoustic guitar to simulate a field recording and settling on an ominous groove for Ladd to drop a few lines over, manipulating his voice even as it's attacked from all sides by squirming loops and fluttering woodwinds and horn. "Shake It" runs away with the show, though, with its off-kilter, lurching beat, outbursts of sax and trumpet and Ladd's tense flow. "Worldwide Shrinkwrap (Contact Zones)" comes close to the glory of "Shake It", but questionable vocal processing-- including annoying pitch-shifting-- keeps it from getting there. That's indicative of the problems with the album's weaker tracks-- they wander through lengthy passages of wet noodle electro-jazz. Fortunately, the LP also has luxurious instrumental sections, such as the remarkable bassoon and trumpet duel of "Back at Ya," or Iyer's piano meditation and Campbell's dusty solo on "Sam and Milli Dine Out". It's a shame that the disc isn't more laserly in its focus, because its best moments are stellar and exhilarating. We know from history that Ladd is very capable of making instrumentals that feel like they're going somewhere, so it's something of a mystery as to why he gets such mixed results here, but even great musicians aren't fail-proof."

Machine Head

Unto the Locust

Metal

Brandon Stosuy

More than a decade after releasing 1994's Burn My Eyes, the groove metal group Machine Head, led by ex-Forbidden/Vio-lence guitarist Robb Flynn, won me back with their sixth album, the Grammy-nominated The Blackening. The 2007 effort made it onto my Show No Mercy year-end list and didn't leave my stereo for long stretches. It followed 2003's Through the Ashes of Empires, a solid enough return to form that came on the heels of a couple of misdirected nu/rap-metal duds-- 1999's The Burning Red and 2001's Supercharger. Which is why The Blackening caught a lot of other folks off guard, too. Once someone flirts with Limp Bizkit territory (and then feuds with Fred Durst and friends), it's usually safe to stop paying attention. In that sense, The Blackening was a revelation. I was drawn to its ambitious sprawl and its dark, angry scowls; its impressive scope, melodies, vastness, and unexpected changes. There was no attempt to make it easy: The opener was close to 11 minutes long, the closer not much shorter, and a couple of the tracks went over nine. The sound, too, was huge-- enough so that, at the time, I said the Oakland group was more mainstream than my usual taste. I meant "stadium-sized." Album seven, Unto the Locust, is just as big as The Blackening, but it feels tighter, more easily digested, and yet somehow pleasingly rougher around the edges. As a whole, I ultimately prefer its predecessor, but Unto the Locust's highs go places only hinted at on the earlier collection. See, for instance, opener, "I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)", an eight-minute, three-movement anthem that starts, somberly, with a mass of a cappella voices, Flynn singing elegantly in Latin about a female arsonist. A few moments later, the band cruises into a violent explosion, Flynn's voice shifting into rawer thrash mode. This is the sort of transition that would be easy to fuck up, but Machine Head pull it off. From there, the seven-song, 50-minute collection slows down for a number of these sort of curve ball intros before breaking open into magisterial head-bangers. There are curious details worth pointing out-- overlapping guitar and cello, the repeated use of a string quartet, crazy time signatures, a Pink Floyd-style children's choir-- but none of this would matter much if the material weren't strong enough to contain these elements. (Machine Head are still very heavy, they've just done away with their earlier template.) Despite the length of these songs, Unto the Locust is focused, with memorable choruses, expressive riffs, escalating dynamics, and swarming instrumentation. Crunching floor punching shifts easily into acoustic madrigals. Classical moments turn into vintage thrash. The guitar solos are expressive and self-contained but deepen the rest of the track. Standout "Be Still and Know" opens with ultra-technical, dueling double soloing topped only by the track's huge chorus. There, and elsewhere, you get clean vocals messing with and cascading alongside raspy howls. At its best, this music is invigorating, urgent, necessary. Unto the Locust does fall off a bit toward the end, but that's largely because the first four tracks add up to just under 30 minutes of the most exciting metal you'll hear all year. ("Pearls Before the Swine" is a solid enough thrasher and the anthemic closer "Who We Are" features the first use of kids in a rock context in ages that hasn't made me wince, though we could've done without the nu metal-ish "Darkness Within".) All told, like Master of Puppets-era Metallica, Machine Head are able to intelligently realize their ambition, weaving risky, progressive elements into the mix without forgoing their roots.

Artist: Machine Head, Album: Unto the Locust, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "More than a decade after releasing 1994's Burn My Eyes, the groove metal group Machine Head, led by ex-Forbidden/Vio-lence guitarist Robb Flynn, won me back with their sixth album, the Grammy-nominated The Blackening. The 2007 effort made it onto my Show No Mercy year-end list and didn't leave my stereo for long stretches. It followed 2003's Through the Ashes of Empires, a solid enough return to form that came on the heels of a couple of misdirected nu/rap-metal duds-- 1999's The Burning Red and 2001's Supercharger. Which is why The Blackening caught a lot of other folks off guard, too. Once someone flirts with Limp Bizkit territory (and then feuds with Fred Durst and friends), it's usually safe to stop paying attention. In that sense, The Blackening was a revelation. I was drawn to its ambitious sprawl and its dark, angry scowls; its impressive scope, melodies, vastness, and unexpected changes. There was no attempt to make it easy: The opener was close to 11 minutes long, the closer not much shorter, and a couple of the tracks went over nine. The sound, too, was huge-- enough so that, at the time, I said the Oakland group was more mainstream than my usual taste. I meant "stadium-sized." Album seven, Unto the Locust, is just as big as The Blackening, but it feels tighter, more easily digested, and yet somehow pleasingly rougher around the edges. As a whole, I ultimately prefer its predecessor, but Unto the Locust's highs go places only hinted at on the earlier collection. See, for instance, opener, "I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)", an eight-minute, three-movement anthem that starts, somberly, with a mass of a cappella voices, Flynn singing elegantly in Latin about a female arsonist. A few moments later, the band cruises into a violent explosion, Flynn's voice shifting into rawer thrash mode. This is the sort of transition that would be easy to fuck up, but Machine Head pull it off. From there, the seven-song, 50-minute collection slows down for a number of these sort of curve ball intros before breaking open into magisterial head-bangers. There are curious details worth pointing out-- overlapping guitar and cello, the repeated use of a string quartet, crazy time signatures, a Pink Floyd-style children's choir-- but none of this would matter much if the material weren't strong enough to contain these elements. (Machine Head are still very heavy, they've just done away with their earlier template.) Despite the length of these songs, Unto the Locust is focused, with memorable choruses, expressive riffs, escalating dynamics, and swarming instrumentation. Crunching floor punching shifts easily into acoustic madrigals. Classical moments turn into vintage thrash. The guitar solos are expressive and self-contained but deepen the rest of the track. Standout "Be Still and Know" opens with ultra-technical, dueling double soloing topped only by the track's huge chorus. There, and elsewhere, you get clean vocals messing with and cascading alongside raspy howls. At its best, this music is invigorating, urgent, necessary. Unto the Locust does fall off a bit toward the end, but that's largely because the first four tracks add up to just under 30 minutes of the most exciting metal you'll hear all year. ("Pearls Before the Swine" is a solid enough thrasher and the anthemic closer "Who We Are" features the first use of kids in a rock context in ages that hasn't made me wince, though we could've done without the nu metal-ish "Darkness Within".) All told, like Master of Puppets-era Metallica, Machine Head are able to intelligently realize their ambition, weaving risky, progressive elements into the mix without forgoing their roots."

Various Artists

Living Is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927-1929

Joe Tangari

Summarizing the back catalog controlled by the EMI conglomerate is like summarizing the ocean. Where does one even start? There is so much music there, some of it extant only on worn-out 78s, moldy reels, or ultra-fragile cylinders, with scarce documentation a chronic ailment of the oldest recordings. In searching for an organizing principle, Damon Albarn's Honest Jon's label has settled on probably the most logical ones available: geography, timeframe, and culture. They've been here before with their superb London Is the Place for Me series, but Living Is Hard is one of their first releases in an ambitious mining project that aims to bring EMI's 1920s ethnic recordings back from the abyss of obscurity. The recordings on the disc were made in London by an assortment of visiting and resident West African musicians and singers for the Zonophone label, which then marketed the recordings almost exclusively in West Africa. The Zonophone label has convoluted roots, stretching back to the founding of a talking machine and disc recording company called Zon-O-Phone in Camden, N.J., in 1899. After a series of civil lawsuits (a long story worth reading on its own), the company's European assets were absorbed by the UK-based Gramophone & Typewriter Company, later the Gramophone Company, and the parent corporation of His Master's Voice, now more commonly known as HMV. Though the original company died in the 1903 lawsuit, the Zonophone name, de-punctuated, lived on well into the 1980s, and was apparently revived again last year by EMI for a reissue project. For our purposes here, it's most important to know that among its many other uses, the Zonophone name was used from the 1920s through the 50s to market recordings of West African music, primarily in Ghana and Nigeria, which were British colonies at the time. This is not a compilation that caters to tastes shaped by rock'n'roll, funk, and soul, as a great many recent African music collections do-- this is primarily folk music, and voices, sometimes with a small amount of percussion, are all that comprise many of these tracks. A few feature heavier percussion, and a bit of guitar on four tracks is the only other instrument you'll hear. Little is known about many of the musicians-- the liner notes tell you what they can, including tidbits about Ben Simmons' African nationalism and informed speculation as to the hometown of Nicholas de Heer. The tracks featuring guitar fall mostly into a melodic, easygoing style. Harry E. Quashie's "Anadwofa" has a similar feel to the highlife that grew to dominate Ghanaian and Nigerian music in the 50s and 60s, and on "Akuko Nu Bonto" George Williams Aingo plays in a similar style, but augmented by backing vocals similar to those the answer the lead voice on some of the a cappella tracks included here. The Kumasi Trio's "Asin Asin Part 2" tells the story of the group's trip to Britain, mirroring the palmwine style then popular in Ghana, where the band was from (Kumasi is a city in south-central Ghana). The West African Instrumental Quintet's "Adersu No. 2" spices it Gold Coast rhythms with a surprising Spanish-influenced guitar part. Aingo had a second track, and it's one of the most interesting of the a cappella pieces featured. His backing singers give him wordless and very rhythmic phrases that push along his lead vocal, similar to the way the American Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet pushed along its gospel tunes. Prince Zulamkah sounds as if he's in a trance, repeating the same few phrases over and over again to a series of three answers delivered by a small chorus, one of which is "shingaling." No word on whether this usage of that word had anything to do with the name of the 60s dance craze, but these musicians wound their way through British music scenes, and in particular the jazz scene, with plenty of contact with Americans, so you never know. My favorite vocal and percussion track is probably John Mugat's "Bukay", which is about the funkiest thing I've heard from the 20s-- the hand drums give it a relentless rhythm drive, but even the backing vocals have a kind of stabbing, rhythmic intensity that's very much of a piece with a 70s horn section. So although this disc isn't meant to compromise with a Western listener, it's still quite easy to listen to if you meet it on its terms. This is a fascinating chapter in the history of global migration, and it could be argued with some success that the 20s were the greatest decade for the preservation of genuine folk music traditions on recordings. The Honest Jon's people have gone all out to make these recordings as clear and present as possible, but source limitations naturally come into play (I happen to like the roomsound element of early recordings). If this disc piques your interest, I suggest checking out Interstate Music's Heritage imprint, which has compiled the Kumasi Trio twice, once on their own, and again backing Jacob Sam. The company has also released a compilation of the West African Instrumental Quintet, and a Domingo Justus set chronicling his role in the evolution of the juju style. Their Early Guitar Music from West Africa, 1927-1929 compilation, while it shares few artists with this set, is also a logical place to investigate further. After one listen to this, you'll likely want to.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Living Is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927-1929, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Summarizing the back catalog controlled by the EMI conglomerate is like summarizing the ocean. Where does one even start? There is so much music there, some of it extant only on worn-out 78s, moldy reels, or ultra-fragile cylinders, with scarce documentation a chronic ailment of the oldest recordings. In searching for an organizing principle, Damon Albarn's Honest Jon's label has settled on probably the most logical ones available: geography, timeframe, and culture. They've been here before with their superb London Is the Place for Me series, but Living Is Hard is one of their first releases in an ambitious mining project that aims to bring EMI's 1920s ethnic recordings back from the abyss of obscurity. The recordings on the disc were made in London by an assortment of visiting and resident West African musicians and singers for the Zonophone label, which then marketed the recordings almost exclusively in West Africa. The Zonophone label has convoluted roots, stretching back to the founding of a talking machine and disc recording company called Zon-O-Phone in Camden, N.J., in 1899. After a series of civil lawsuits (a long story worth reading on its own), the company's European assets were absorbed by the UK-based Gramophone & Typewriter Company, later the Gramophone Company, and the parent corporation of His Master's Voice, now more commonly known as HMV. Though the original company died in the 1903 lawsuit, the Zonophone name, de-punctuated, lived on well into the 1980s, and was apparently revived again last year by EMI for a reissue project. For our purposes here, it's most important to know that among its many other uses, the Zonophone name was used from the 1920s through the 50s to market recordings of West African music, primarily in Ghana and Nigeria, which were British colonies at the time. This is not a compilation that caters to tastes shaped by rock'n'roll, funk, and soul, as a great many recent African music collections do-- this is primarily folk music, and voices, sometimes with a small amount of percussion, are all that comprise many of these tracks. A few feature heavier percussion, and a bit of guitar on four tracks is the only other instrument you'll hear. Little is known about many of the musicians-- the liner notes tell you what they can, including tidbits about Ben Simmons' African nationalism and informed speculation as to the hometown of Nicholas de Heer. The tracks featuring guitar fall mostly into a melodic, easygoing style. Harry E. Quashie's "Anadwofa" has a similar feel to the highlife that grew to dominate Ghanaian and Nigerian music in the 50s and 60s, and on "Akuko Nu Bonto" George Williams Aingo plays in a similar style, but augmented by backing vocals similar to those the answer the lead voice on some of the a cappella tracks included here. The Kumasi Trio's "Asin Asin Part 2" tells the story of the group's trip to Britain, mirroring the palmwine style then popular in Ghana, where the band was from (Kumasi is a city in south-central Ghana). The West African Instrumental Quintet's "Adersu No. 2" spices it Gold Coast rhythms with a surprising Spanish-influenced guitar part. Aingo had a second track, and it's one of the most interesting of the a cappella pieces featured. His backing singers give him wordless and very rhythmic phrases that push along his lead vocal, similar to the way the American Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet pushed along its gospel tunes. Prince Zulamkah sounds as if he's in a trance, repeating the same few phrases over and over again to a series of three answers delivered by a small chorus, one of which is "shingaling." No word on whether this usage of that word had anything to do with the name of the 60s dance craze, but these musicians wound their way through British music scenes, and in particular the jazz scene, with plenty of contact with Americans, so you never know. My favorite vocal and percussion track is probably John Mugat's "Bukay", which is about the funkiest thing I've heard from the 20s-- the hand drums give it a relentless rhythm drive, but even the backing vocals have a kind of stabbing, rhythmic intensity that's very much of a piece with a 70s horn section. So although this disc isn't meant to compromise with a Western listener, it's still quite easy to listen to if you meet it on its terms. This is a fascinating chapter in the history of global migration, and it could be argued with some success that the 20s were the greatest decade for the preservation of genuine folk music traditions on recordings. The Honest Jon's people have gone all out to make these recordings as clear and present as possible, but source limitations naturally come into play (I happen to like the roomsound element of early recordings). If this disc piques your interest, I suggest checking out Interstate Music's Heritage imprint, which has compiled the Kumasi Trio twice, once on their own, and again backing Jacob Sam. The company has also released a compilation of the West African Instrumental Quintet, and a Domingo Justus set chronicling his role in the evolution of the juju style. Their Early Guitar Music from West Africa, 1927-1929 compilation, while it shares few artists with this set, is also a logical place to investigate further. After one listen to this, you'll likely want to."

Hour of 13

333

Grayson Currin

It's OK if you need to laugh at Hour of 13: From their horror movie name to their most remarkable press photo, in which a pale, naked woman with her back to the camera kneels as if to worship at the altar of the band above her, the North Carolina classic doom squadron leans heavily upon the itinerant gestures of its genre. Frontman Phil Swanson's piercing wail pairs high-flying Ozzyisms with theatric harmonies and verses so pensive you'd swear he was cupping a chalice. Arranger and multi-instrumentalist Chad Davis wraps massive, squealing solos through most every space he can. It's a sound that Jack Black might conjure for his next rock'n'roll hero. Meanwhile, the title and cover of Hour of 13's latest and third album, 333, both seem custom-crafted by a marketing firm you'd never hire: "Let's cut the Number of the Beast in half, because everyone loves a good Crowley reference, etch it into a big-jawed skull lit by candlelight, and put it in the middle of three gold-embossed triangles. And don't forget the freak-show font. Those dark kids will just love it." While their gestures and symbols are inarguably mawkish and predictable, even in a field with an unending history of such, Hour of 13's swill of lurching Saint Vitus-style doom and gymnastic New Wave of British Heavy Metal technique makes the band itself a rarity-- an act evidently reverent to its stylistic forebears but energized as if they'd invented this music themselves. "Deny the Cross" takes the lead for 333; it's a passionate, dynamic expanse, shifting between moments of head-banging rumble and psychedelic smear. On "Rite of Samhain", Davis inlays crisscrossing guitars above a basic rhythm section, a prototypical doomy chug offset by kinetic bursts cutting constantly through the track. Swanson's voice is masterful, occasionally doubling and tripling itself to foster a sense of spectacle. The duo's transitions-- whether a basic drum fill or quick and extended guitar lick-- serve these songs well, too, helping the pieces Davis and Swanson put together actually stay that way. Indeed, Hour of 13's most audacious tracks are, at least on 333, also their best. "Lucky Bones" and "The Burning", the two multi-part tunes that break the eight-minute mark, overcome the obvious stylistic touchstones from sheer force of will, allowing the disbelief-- an American crew in 2012, making this music so well, in the South-- not to be simply suspended but almost forgotten altogether. After a compelling intro that touches at the edge of stoner metal, "The Burning" lets Swanson set up his story-- essentially, the cost of sin is damnation, and now you are burning, so whatever, mortal. The song's middle third picks up the pace to, if you will, turn up the heat on the same topic. "Divorced from salvation," Swanson sings over one of the record's best sprints, "into damnation." The shift in speed works, somehow making Swanson's warning about an embroiled eternity seem great-- the kind of stuff that, several decades ago, you might've pumped your fist to in an outsized arena. Closer "Lucky Bones" triggers back and forth between mid-tempo quake, squealing solos, and an inescapable chorus, with several short, forlorn sections lending appropriate gravity to the song's observations on burial, or being "given to the dust." Again, these sprawls work because they're so very immersive, temporarily beating back Hour of 13's revivalist stigma. But if this music already exists within a canon so well-established to not only have classics but successors who have pushed those sounds into dizzying new realms, why bother listening to it? It's a query that 333 refuses to approach or ease; there are no nods to funeral doom, noise or abstraction at large here, no post-modern referents to prompt lengthy features in The New York Times or the New Yorker. Hour of 13-- or at least this lineup, featuring Swanson and Davis-- broke up and reunited since the release of their 2010 album, The Ritualist. Swanson temporarily yielded the frontman throne. It's nearly possible to perceive that difficult delivery here within the enthusiasm and earnestness with which these seven songs are offered; Swanson and Davis play them hard, fast, and fun, a quality that might just be the record's chief surprise. In playing these tunes like they nearly never recorded them, Hour of 13 recharge the music of Cathedral, Candlemass, and Pentagram rather than simply remake it.

Artist: Hour of 13, Album: 333, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "It's OK if you need to laugh at Hour of 13: From their horror movie name to their most remarkable press photo, in which a pale, naked woman with her back to the camera kneels as if to worship at the altar of the band above her, the North Carolina classic doom squadron leans heavily upon the itinerant gestures of its genre. Frontman Phil Swanson's piercing wail pairs high-flying Ozzyisms with theatric harmonies and verses so pensive you'd swear he was cupping a chalice. Arranger and multi-instrumentalist Chad Davis wraps massive, squealing solos through most every space he can. It's a sound that Jack Black might conjure for his next rock'n'roll hero. Meanwhile, the title and cover of Hour of 13's latest and third album, 333, both seem custom-crafted by a marketing firm you'd never hire: "Let's cut the Number of the Beast in half, because everyone loves a good Crowley reference, etch it into a big-jawed skull lit by candlelight, and put it in the middle of three gold-embossed triangles. And don't forget the freak-show font. Those dark kids will just love it." While their gestures and symbols are inarguably mawkish and predictable, even in a field with an unending history of such, Hour of 13's swill of lurching Saint Vitus-style doom and gymnastic New Wave of British Heavy Metal technique makes the band itself a rarity-- an act evidently reverent to its stylistic forebears but energized as if they'd invented this music themselves. "Deny the Cross" takes the lead for 333; it's a passionate, dynamic expanse, shifting between moments of head-banging rumble and psychedelic smear. On "Rite of Samhain", Davis inlays crisscrossing guitars above a basic rhythm section, a prototypical doomy chug offset by kinetic bursts cutting constantly through the track. Swanson's voice is masterful, occasionally doubling and tripling itself to foster a sense of spectacle. The duo's transitions-- whether a basic drum fill or quick and extended guitar lick-- serve these songs well, too, helping the pieces Davis and Swanson put together actually stay that way. Indeed, Hour of 13's most audacious tracks are, at least on 333, also their best. "Lucky Bones" and "The Burning", the two multi-part tunes that break the eight-minute mark, overcome the obvious stylistic touchstones from sheer force of will, allowing the disbelief-- an American crew in 2012, making this music so well, in the South-- not to be simply suspended but almost forgotten altogether. After a compelling intro that touches at the edge of stoner metal, "The Burning" lets Swanson set up his story-- essentially, the cost of sin is damnation, and now you are burning, so whatever, mortal. The song's middle third picks up the pace to, if you will, turn up the heat on the same topic. "Divorced from salvation," Swanson sings over one of the record's best sprints, "into damnation." The shift in speed works, somehow making Swanson's warning about an embroiled eternity seem great-- the kind of stuff that, several decades ago, you might've pumped your fist to in an outsized arena. Closer "Lucky Bones" triggers back and forth between mid-tempo quake, squealing solos, and an inescapable chorus, with several short, forlorn sections lending appropriate gravity to the song's observations on burial, or being "given to the dust." Again, these sprawls work because they're so very immersive, temporarily beating back Hour of 13's revivalist stigma. But if this music already exists within a canon so well-established to not only have classics but successors who have pushed those sounds into dizzying new realms, why bother listening to it? It's a query that 333 refuses to approach or ease; there are no nods to funeral doom, noise or abstraction at large here, no post-modern referents to prompt lengthy features in The New York Times or the New Yorker. Hour of 13-- or at least this lineup, featuring Swanson and Davis-- broke up and reunited since the release of their 2010 album, The Ritualist. Swanson temporarily yielded the frontman throne. It's nearly possible to perceive that difficult delivery here within the enthusiasm and earnestness with which these seven songs are offered; Swanson and Davis play them hard, fast, and fun, a quality that might just be the record's chief surprise. In playing these tunes like they nearly never recorded them, Hour of 13 recharge the music of Cathedral, Candlemass, and Pentagram rather than simply remake it."

Digitalism

Idealism

Electronic,Rock

Marc Hogan

It's funny how casually some dudes still dismiss the house-rock hybrids filed under stupid but catchy genre tags "nu rave" and "blog house". Especially since acclaimed outfits like Soulwax, the DFA, Teifschwarz, and Vitalic-- not to mention the entire electroclash scene-- have already for years propagated some of the same ideas now championed by Daft Punk-loving dance labels Kitsuné and Ed Banger. This shit isn't supposed to be novel, just really fucking good. A quick recap: Justice show no mercy; Simian Mobile Disco aim to please; and on the summer's third high-profile indie-dance debut, Hamburg duo Digitalism turn out to be the artists probably most dedicated of all to the idea of merging rock and electronic dance music. Unfortunately, such purity of vision works better in concept than on the group's first full-length, Idealism. Digitalism's first actual release, a re-edit of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", helped them become the inaugural Kitsuné signees. A series of 12" singles followed, and the A-sides recur here in slightly edited form. Choked with heavy compression, these tracks show Digitalism making their Korg synthesizers and 900-MHz PC act like rock instruments, though without Justice's violent distortion. "Zdarlight" spreads repetitive filter-disco synths over nearly six minutes, climaxing after the beat drops out nearly halfway through (and the Air-y bass drops in). "Idealistic" puts lo-fi, Rapture-esque vocals-- "I had the idea that you were near"-- atop similar electro-house pulses and guitar-like squiggles. "Jupiter Room", issued on Kitsuné Maison 3 in a "Martian Assault" version, sends French touch to Europa. Or is it Io, the one with the volcanoes? Idealism's house-rock cross-fertilization goes both ways. Overcoming their rudimentary instrumental skills via sampler, Digitalism give newest single (and album highlight) "Pogo" a New Order-worthy guitar riff, live drums, and whirring pop-ambient loops recalling Swedish savant the Field. "Digitalism in Cairo" dismembers the Cure's "Fire in Cairo" for a dizzying, bass-heavy almost-banger. But other rock-leaning tracks such as "I Want I Want" or "Anything New" wind up sounding like Brooklyn dance-punk fallout given a haphazard Klaxons remix. Even unabashed softies the Postal Service would blush at the heart-on-sleeve lap-pop of "Apollo-Gize". Despite strong if not earth-shattering singles, Idealism falters when expanding its house-rock, rock-house devotion to 15-track album. There's a tenuous story involving trips to Cairo and outer space, but that can't justify weak interludes like "Departure from Cairo" or "Jupiter Approach". The robot romance of "Moonlight" and "Echoes" falls flat beside the better tracks here-- or elsewhere in their burgeoning genre, whatever you want to call it. "I have the biggest party ever at home," Digitalism brag over malevolent synths on "Home Zone". They're totally joking, but that doesn't make it true.

Artist: Digitalism, Album: Idealism, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "It's funny how casually some dudes still dismiss the house-rock hybrids filed under stupid but catchy genre tags "nu rave" and "blog house". Especially since acclaimed outfits like Soulwax, the DFA, Teifschwarz, and Vitalic-- not to mention the entire electroclash scene-- have already for years propagated some of the same ideas now championed by Daft Punk-loving dance labels Kitsuné and Ed Banger. This shit isn't supposed to be novel, just really fucking good. A quick recap: Justice show no mercy; Simian Mobile Disco aim to please; and on the summer's third high-profile indie-dance debut, Hamburg duo Digitalism turn out to be the artists probably most dedicated of all to the idea of merging rock and electronic dance music. Unfortunately, such purity of vision works better in concept than on the group's first full-length, Idealism. Digitalism's first actual release, a re-edit of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", helped them become the inaugural Kitsuné signees. A series of 12" singles followed, and the A-sides recur here in slightly edited form. Choked with heavy compression, these tracks show Digitalism making their Korg synthesizers and 900-MHz PC act like rock instruments, though without Justice's violent distortion. "Zdarlight" spreads repetitive filter-disco synths over nearly six minutes, climaxing after the beat drops out nearly halfway through (and the Air-y bass drops in). "Idealistic" puts lo-fi, Rapture-esque vocals-- "I had the idea that you were near"-- atop similar electro-house pulses and guitar-like squiggles. "Jupiter Room", issued on Kitsuné Maison 3 in a "Martian Assault" version, sends French touch to Europa. Or is it Io, the one with the volcanoes? Idealism's house-rock cross-fertilization goes both ways. Overcoming their rudimentary instrumental skills via sampler, Digitalism give newest single (and album highlight) "Pogo" a New Order-worthy guitar riff, live drums, and whirring pop-ambient loops recalling Swedish savant the Field. "Digitalism in Cairo" dismembers the Cure's "Fire in Cairo" for a dizzying, bass-heavy almost-banger. But other rock-leaning tracks such as "I Want I Want" or "Anything New" wind up sounding like Brooklyn dance-punk fallout given a haphazard Klaxons remix. Even unabashed softies the Postal Service would blush at the heart-on-sleeve lap-pop of "Apollo-Gize". Despite strong if not earth-shattering singles, Idealism falters when expanding its house-rock, rock-house devotion to 15-track album. There's a tenuous story involving trips to Cairo and outer space, but that can't justify weak interludes like "Departure from Cairo" or "Jupiter Approach". The robot romance of "Moonlight" and "Echoes" falls flat beside the better tracks here-- or elsewhere in their burgeoning genre, whatever you want to call it. "I have the biggest party ever at home," Digitalism brag over malevolent synths on "Home Zone". They're totally joking, but that doesn't make it true."

Tunde Olaniran

Yung Archetype EP

Rap

Kyle Kramer

On “Highway", the second song on his Yung Archetype EP, Tunde Olaniran matter-of-factly lays out a winking indictment that seems to double as a mission statement: “We off punk, we on trap,” he intones. Coming in a long rap about fracking, incarceration trends, and, especially, people who shop at Whole Foods while frowning on dudes with sagging pants (“they're white but still like rap”), it's a sharp observation—made sharper by the fact that thematically it's basically a punk song delivered over a skittering trap beat that samples a parrot. This type of witty confusion interlaced with a broader social message is pretty much par for the course for Olaniran. If the winking, Carl-Jung-goes-hip-hop title of the project or its cover showing Olaniran with a grill and a jacket tailored out of traditional Nigerian lace fabric weren't clear enough indicators, let's just say it outright: He's ready to fuck with your expectations. Part of this approach is simply something that's been thrust on Olaniran, whose music would rather explore identity than adhere to strict, conventional ideas of it. In interviews, he's talked about getting dismissed by blogs that say they don't cover hip-hop based on his picture while at the same time making music that didn't seem to belong on rap blogs. But he's also been a champion of the diversity of the music scene in his home of Flint, Michigan—a city, that, despite a rich musical history, is more commonly associated with industrial decline and crime—and he's vocal about making art from a place as an ally to marginalized groups. A Nigerian-American raised in London, Germany, and Flint whose formative musical experience was touring Europe with Berlin-based producer Phon.o after the two met on MySpace and collaborated, Olaniran's frame of reference is unsurprisingly broad. To further contextualize: He's collaborated extensively with the band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., and he's also known to keep a fog machine in the trunk of his car. Even in this brief five-song offering, Olaniran tries on a lot of different ideas. His approach probably most closely resembles the kitchen-sink genre pastiche and loosely political brio of M.I.A. or, to some extent, the silly perceptiveness and electronic experimentation of rap acts like Das Racist and Le1f. The product is a pitch-perfect mashup of where pop-leaning underground music, or perhaps underground-aware pop music, stands in 2014, incorporating the rattling percussion of trap and dance music with a presentational, genre-spanning glam sensibility. “The Raven”, for instance, feels a little bit like what would happen if Ellie Goulding and A$AP Rocky teamed up to make a song about magic, pairing Olaniran's grandiose, swooping sung vocals with screwed-down raps about “witches in Williamsburg.” “Critical” finds Olaniran doing a solid James Blake impression shot through with Yeezus-style bursts of distortion. The two-year-old “Brown Boy” might still be Olaniran's most vital offering, though, a thunderous, clattering four-alarm fire of a song. On "Brown Boy", Olaniran calmly cuts through by rapping lines like “And then these questions/ they can really trip me up/ Especially when they prove/ to be real tough/ Like can I be a man?/ Can I not love?” with a sardonic flair that seems increasingly profound on repeated listens. The hook offers a pithy look at racial prejudice that somehow manages to not feel reductive. Not every moment of Yung Archetype is quite as lyrically smooth. Olaniran sometimes namechecks ideas where it might be useful to explore them, and he also has a tendency toward simple, clever similes like “go hard like Thanksgiving for vegans” that are funny but don't necessarily do much beyond fill space on repeated listens. “The Internet", while catchy and funny, can feel a little bit circular, since it's a song that will likely be talked about on the Internet that's in part about promoting music on the Internet (on the other hand, that's probably the appropriate feeling for it to have). But these issues are minor qualms that don't necessarily take away from the music and only stand out because of the brevity of the project. For the most part, Yung Archetype is an explosive, dynamic offering from what is clearly a restlessly creative talent. Olaniran's ideas could have massive reach—anyone who seems to gunning for David Bowie, Kanye West and Missy Elliott right out of the gate is clearly poised for some big stuff—and this is a great look at that process beginning to happen.

Artist: Tunde Olaniran, Album: Yung Archetype EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "On “Highway", the second song on his Yung Archetype EP, Tunde Olaniran matter-of-factly lays out a winking indictment that seems to double as a mission statement: “We off punk, we on trap,” he intones. Coming in a long rap about fracking, incarceration trends, and, especially, people who shop at Whole Foods while frowning on dudes with sagging pants (“they're white but still like rap”), it's a sharp observation—made sharper by the fact that thematically it's basically a punk song delivered over a skittering trap beat that samples a parrot. This type of witty confusion interlaced with a broader social message is pretty much par for the course for Olaniran. If the winking, Carl-Jung-goes-hip-hop title of the project or its cover showing Olaniran with a grill and a jacket tailored out of traditional Nigerian lace fabric weren't clear enough indicators, let's just say it outright: He's ready to fuck with your expectations. Part of this approach is simply something that's been thrust on Olaniran, whose music would rather explore identity than adhere to strict, conventional ideas of it. In interviews, he's talked about getting dismissed by blogs that say they don't cover hip-hop based on his picture while at the same time making music that didn't seem to belong on rap blogs. But he's also been a champion of the diversity of the music scene in his home of Flint, Michigan—a city, that, despite a rich musical history, is more commonly associated with industrial decline and crime—and he's vocal about making art from a place as an ally to marginalized groups. A Nigerian-American raised in London, Germany, and Flint whose formative musical experience was touring Europe with Berlin-based producer Phon.o after the two met on MySpace and collaborated, Olaniran's frame of reference is unsurprisingly broad. To further contextualize: He's collaborated extensively with the band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., and he's also known to keep a fog machine in the trunk of his car. Even in this brief five-song offering, Olaniran tries on a lot of different ideas. His approach probably most closely resembles the kitchen-sink genre pastiche and loosely political brio of M.I.A. or, to some extent, the silly perceptiveness and electronic experimentation of rap acts like Das Racist and Le1f. The product is a pitch-perfect mashup of where pop-leaning underground music, or perhaps underground-aware pop music, stands in 2014, incorporating the rattling percussion of trap and dance music with a presentational, genre-spanning glam sensibility. “The Raven”, for instance, feels a little bit like what would happen if Ellie Goulding and A$AP Rocky teamed up to make a song about magic, pairing Olaniran's grandiose, swooping sung vocals with screwed-down raps about “witches in Williamsburg.” “Critical” finds Olaniran doing a solid James Blake impression shot through with Yeezus-style bursts of distortion. The two-year-old “Brown Boy” might still be Olaniran's most vital offering, though, a thunderous, clattering four-alarm fire of a song. On "Brown Boy", Olaniran calmly cuts through by rapping lines like “And then these questions/ they can really trip me up/ Especially when they prove/ to be real tough/ Like can I be a man?/ Can I not love?” with a sardonic flair that seems increasingly profound on repeated listens. The hook offers a pithy look at racial prejudice that somehow manages to not feel reductive. Not every moment of Yung Archetype is quite as lyrically smooth. Olaniran sometimes namechecks ideas where it might be useful to explore them, and he also has a tendency toward simple, clever similes like “go hard like Thanksgiving for vegans” that are funny but don't necessarily do much beyond fill space on repeated listens. “The Internet", while catchy and funny, can feel a little bit circular, since it's a song that will likely be talked about on the Internet that's in part about promoting music on the Internet (on the other hand, that's probably the appropriate feeling for it to have). But these issues are minor qualms that don't necessarily take away from the music and only stand out because of the brevity of the project. For the most part, Yung Archetype is an explosive, dynamic offering from what is clearly a restlessly creative talent. Olaniran's ideas could have massive reach—anyone who seems to gunning for David Bowie, Kanye West and Missy Elliott right out of the gate is clearly poised for some big stuff—and this is a great look at that process beginning to happen."

Various Artists

Kitsuné Maison 7: The Lucky One

Marc Hogan

So Kitsuné has an iPhone app now. Some of the groups from previous Kitsuné Maison compilations have started playing live together under the tagline "Kitsuné En Vrai!" ("Kitsuné for Real!"). The influential French dance imprint has even taken to holding promotional contests: Your face could be on the next comp's crazy cover collage! As trend pieces about blogs give way to trend pieces about Twitter, the ragtag style of electronic music most memorably-- if least descriptively-- lumped together as "blog house" has become, almost literally, yesterday's news. And Kitsuné, after seven of these things, has long since lost its element of surprise. That's sort of what happens when you help launch the careers of Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Klaxons, Crystal Castles, and basically every fashionably trashy electro-punk act that isn't Justice. This is good, of course, but ascendancy can breed complacency. One way to look at last year's Kitsuné Maison 6: The Melodic One is as a victim of the series' success, largely playing it safe with glossed-up but less-great takes on the kind of banging rock-meets-dance hybrids these guys have been championing since the first half of the decade. Even so, there were still left turns (a ballad!) and blogworthy newcomers (Heartsrevolution, Ted & Francis). Kitsuné Maison 7 is a slight but welcome improvement over its predecessor. Bright guitar pop and mellow psych-outs now go with the usual French Touch-ed electro-house thumps. The type of slow and spaced-out disco lately repopularized by Lindstrøm, Studio, and others fields its biggest Kitsuné Maison representation yet. Sure, with 19 tracks (plus a 20-second "encore" break), the album still sometimes errs toward the generically danceable instead of the truly memorable. But the best cuts easily reconfirm the label's ear for promising talent. Not that you need Kitsuné to tell you Phoenix are fucking awesome, but a remix by L.A. duo Classixx gives Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's "Lisztomania" a gorgeously pillowy synth-disco framework, sort of like Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe" or Friendly Fires' "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)". Also graceful is Prins Thomas' "Sneaky Edit" of London folktronica singer/songwriter James Yuill's "This Sweet Love", with its feathery acoustic guitar and house beats suggesting a cosmic disco re-edit of José González-- or Matthew Sweet. Northern Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club open the comp with breezy pop, like a bubblegum Phoenix with Vampire Weekend on chirruping lead guitar. To give you an idea how mellow this disc can be: L.A.'s Heartsrevolution, last seen making croaky basement electro-punk the Crystal Castles way, are back this time with a woozy music-box commencement lullaby (and a neat The Little Prince-inspired video). Other choice selections include more predictable Kitsuné jams. New York blog darlings the Golden Filter stick to their Glass Candy-glazed nu-disco on "Favorite Things", which happy-birthday-Mr.-Presidents its target demo's turn-ons: "Paris, London, sweet girls, cute boys, vodka, whiskey, cameras, pictures." Nobody on Lookbook.nu listens to Coltrane? And new act Maybb, widely rumored to be an alias for big-time Eurohouse DJ/producer Benny Benassi, hits all the right Daft Punk buttons with "Touring in NY (Short Tour Edit)". Elsewhere, Manchester's Delphic flash promise on a euphoric house remix of their single "Counterpoint", all blinking synths and Underworld-echoing vocals. Even the inessential tracks are still likely to sound good out, though they're less fun around the house. Chew Lips' "Solo" has the misfortune of sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeahs gone electro-pop in a year when Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind of went electro-pop. And you can tell the one with former Le Tigre members (Men's "Make It Reverse") by the jagged post-punk bass lines, the defiant vocals. French group Chateau Marmont's "Beagle" is space disco in the original 1980s sense, with vocoders and galloping Moroder synths; also not far from the unremembered 80s is Chromeo-plated electro-funk from Beni and "Blue Monday" gloom-marching from La Roux. Other tracks, like We Have Band's "Time After Time", sound like they're trying to do too much: Eastern European spoken-word? "We'll be alone forever," a voice repeats on Crystal Fighters' "Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)". Nah, just until Kitsuné starts following us all on Twitter.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Kitsuné Maison 7: The Lucky One, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "So Kitsuné has an iPhone app now. Some of the groups from previous Kitsuné Maison compilations have started playing live together under the tagline "Kitsuné En Vrai!" ("Kitsuné for Real!"). The influential French dance imprint has even taken to holding promotional contests: Your face could be on the next comp's crazy cover collage! As trend pieces about blogs give way to trend pieces about Twitter, the ragtag style of electronic music most memorably-- if least descriptively-- lumped together as "blog house" has become, almost literally, yesterday's news. And Kitsuné, after seven of these things, has long since lost its element of surprise. That's sort of what happens when you help launch the careers of Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Klaxons, Crystal Castles, and basically every fashionably trashy electro-punk act that isn't Justice. This is good, of course, but ascendancy can breed complacency. One way to look at last year's Kitsuné Maison 6: The Melodic One is as a victim of the series' success, largely playing it safe with glossed-up but less-great takes on the kind of banging rock-meets-dance hybrids these guys have been championing since the first half of the decade. Even so, there were still left turns (a ballad!) and blogworthy newcomers (Heartsrevolution, Ted & Francis). Kitsuné Maison 7 is a slight but welcome improvement over its predecessor. Bright guitar pop and mellow psych-outs now go with the usual French Touch-ed electro-house thumps. The type of slow and spaced-out disco lately repopularized by Lindstrøm, Studio, and others fields its biggest Kitsuné Maison representation yet. Sure, with 19 tracks (plus a 20-second "encore" break), the album still sometimes errs toward the generically danceable instead of the truly memorable. But the best cuts easily reconfirm the label's ear for promising talent. Not that you need Kitsuné to tell you Phoenix are fucking awesome, but a remix by L.A. duo Classixx gives Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's "Lisztomania" a gorgeously pillowy synth-disco framework, sort of like Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe" or Friendly Fires' "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)". Also graceful is Prins Thomas' "Sneaky Edit" of London folktronica singer/songwriter James Yuill's "This Sweet Love", with its feathery acoustic guitar and house beats suggesting a cosmic disco re-edit of José González-- or Matthew Sweet. Northern Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club open the comp with breezy pop, like a bubblegum Phoenix with Vampire Weekend on chirruping lead guitar. To give you an idea how mellow this disc can be: L.A.'s Heartsrevolution, last seen making croaky basement electro-punk the Crystal Castles way, are back this time with a woozy music-box commencement lullaby (and a neat The Little Prince-inspired video). Other choice selections include more predictable Kitsuné jams. New York blog darlings the Golden Filter stick to their Glass Candy-glazed nu-disco on "Favorite Things", which happy-birthday-Mr.-Presidents its target demo's turn-ons: "Paris, London, sweet girls, cute boys, vodka, whiskey, cameras, pictures." Nobody on Lookbook.nu listens to Coltrane? And new act Maybb, widely rumored to be an alias for big-time Eurohouse DJ/producer Benny Benassi, hits all the right Daft Punk buttons with "Touring in NY (Short Tour Edit)". Elsewhere, Manchester's Delphic flash promise on a euphoric house remix of their single "Counterpoint", all blinking synths and Underworld-echoing vocals. Even the inessential tracks are still likely to sound good out, though they're less fun around the house. Chew Lips' "Solo" has the misfortune of sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeahs gone electro-pop in a year when Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind of went electro-pop. And you can tell the one with former Le Tigre members (Men's "Make It Reverse") by the jagged post-punk bass lines, the defiant vocals. French group Chateau Marmont's "Beagle" is space disco in the original 1980s sense, with vocoders and galloping Moroder synths; also not far from the unremembered 80s is Chromeo-plated electro-funk from Beni and "Blue Monday" gloom-marching from La Roux. Other tracks, like We Have Band's "Time After Time", sound like they're trying to do too much: Eastern European spoken-word? "We'll be alone forever," a voice repeats on Crystal Fighters' "Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)". Nah, just until Kitsuné starts following us all on Twitter."

Ladytron

Gravity the Seducer

Electronic,Rock

Larry Fitzmaurice

Seduction can be an evil art, and Ladytron are certainly capable of resisting it. The Liverpool mainstay's fifth album is titled Gravity the Seducer, but Newton's discovery clearly struggles to seal the deal throughout. During their dozen-year career, the band's refused to outright repeat themselves-- 2002's Light & Magic was a glossier, more robust update on the toy-store analog work of the previous year's debut, 604, while 2008's underrated, overstuffed Velocifero added a menacing stare and at-times mismatched experimentation to the void-creating shoegaze synths of 2005's game-changing The Witching Hour. For Gravity the Seducer, they've taken off the cinder block that Velocifero applied to the gas pedal, opting for a floatier, airy feel that often sounds as if its creators' feet are barely touching the ground. Hired gun Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) returns to lend an extra hand, but his touch is less heavily felt than on Velocifero, where, more often than not, throttling industrial rhythms prevailed. Change is good, right? Well, here's the rub: Ladytron aren't quite content to let go of the since-perfected Witching Hour sound that won them attention beyond the Cobrasnake crowd, so the push-and-pull between their new-look sound and the blank-eyed electrogaze of the past creates an unfortunate tension. "Ace of Hz" and "Mirage" are boilerplate, late-aughts Ladytron, right down to the charging synth melodies and vague political-naturalistic lyricism, and the former's shoulders-shrugged ordinariness is driven home when its melody is redone on the instrumental LP closer "Aces High". Earlier on the album, another sorta-instrumental rears its head in the form of "Ritual", a limp faux-rocker that, if nothing else, makes for an easy "Roxy Elevator Music" joke. Unsurprisingly, the weightless pomp of Gravity the Seducer's fresher material is more impressive. Opener "White Elephant" is a sneaky-good song with a swaying melody that belongs in the Great Ladytron Songs canon, while the drum machine-kissed ballad "Ambulances" bucks the band's trend for blush-worthy, Tolkien-esque lyricism in favor of a worrying plea in the name of lost love. Still, even when Ladytron attempt to fully escape the past, it haunts them: the melodic structure of album highlight "90 Degrees", in all its glistening beauty, can't help but recall Witching Hour closer "All the Way...", a song that's of the band's most directly affecting works to date and certainly more substantial than the majority of what's here. So Gravity the Seducer is a transitional album bearing the growing pains and separation anxiety that we usually associate with bands that are in between periods of true inspiration. It's not a bad record, but it is an upsettingly uneven one, especially considering the flashes of greatness that Ladytron are still capable of. I'm tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, based on their longevity alone. In his review of last year's greatest hits collection, Best of 00-10, ex-Pitchfork editor Scott Plagenhoef made an excellent case for why Ladytron demand more than a light dismissal-- and, let's face it, considering the flash-in-the-pan electroclash "movement" that first gave them recognition, it's a pleasant shock that they've stuck around this long and still manage to evolve. "Points for showing up" usually carries negative connotations, so how about we give Ladytron "points for surviving." After all, simply sticking around without growing totally stale is a feat that's not easily pulled off these days.

Artist: Ladytron, Album: Gravity the Seducer, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "Seduction can be an evil art, and Ladytron are certainly capable of resisting it. The Liverpool mainstay's fifth album is titled Gravity the Seducer, but Newton's discovery clearly struggles to seal the deal throughout. During their dozen-year career, the band's refused to outright repeat themselves-- 2002's Light & Magic was a glossier, more robust update on the toy-store analog work of the previous year's debut, 604, while 2008's underrated, overstuffed Velocifero added a menacing stare and at-times mismatched experimentation to the void-creating shoegaze synths of 2005's game-changing The Witching Hour. For Gravity the Seducer, they've taken off the cinder block that Velocifero applied to the gas pedal, opting for a floatier, airy feel that often sounds as if its creators' feet are barely touching the ground. Hired gun Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) returns to lend an extra hand, but his touch is less heavily felt than on Velocifero, where, more often than not, throttling industrial rhythms prevailed. Change is good, right? Well, here's the rub: Ladytron aren't quite content to let go of the since-perfected Witching Hour sound that won them attention beyond the Cobrasnake crowd, so the push-and-pull between their new-look sound and the blank-eyed electrogaze of the past creates an unfortunate tension. "Ace of Hz" and "Mirage" are boilerplate, late-aughts Ladytron, right down to the charging synth melodies and vague political-naturalistic lyricism, and the former's shoulders-shrugged ordinariness is driven home when its melody is redone on the instrumental LP closer "Aces High". Earlier on the album, another sorta-instrumental rears its head in the form of "Ritual", a limp faux-rocker that, if nothing else, makes for an easy "Roxy Elevator Music" joke. Unsurprisingly, the weightless pomp of Gravity the Seducer's fresher material is more impressive. Opener "White Elephant" is a sneaky-good song with a swaying melody that belongs in the Great Ladytron Songs canon, while the drum machine-kissed ballad "Ambulances" bucks the band's trend for blush-worthy, Tolkien-esque lyricism in favor of a worrying plea in the name of lost love. Still, even when Ladytron attempt to fully escape the past, it haunts them: the melodic structure of album highlight "90 Degrees", in all its glistening beauty, can't help but recall Witching Hour closer "All the Way...", a song that's of the band's most directly affecting works to date and certainly more substantial than the majority of what's here. So Gravity the Seducer is a transitional album bearing the growing pains and separation anxiety that we usually associate with bands that are in between periods of true inspiration. It's not a bad record, but it is an upsettingly uneven one, especially considering the flashes of greatness that Ladytron are still capable of. I'm tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, based on their longevity alone. In his review of last year's greatest hits collection, Best of 00-10, ex-Pitchfork editor Scott Plagenhoef made an excellent case for why Ladytron demand more than a light dismissal-- and, let's face it, considering the flash-in-the-pan electroclash "movement" that first gave them recognition, it's a pleasant shock that they've stuck around this long and still manage to evolve. "Points for showing up" usually carries negative connotations, so how about we give Ladytron "points for surviving." After all, simply sticking around without growing totally stale is a feat that's not easily pulled off these days."

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Xtra Acme USA

Rock

Jared Bane

One man that seems to be getting ignored in the frenzy of "best of the '90s" journalism is Jon Spencer. It really surprises me that Orange didn't make it into Spin's Top 90 (let alone the Pitchfork list). Especially since it seems they just called up the Village Voice and said, "Umm, we've been doing cover stories on Britney Spears and Kid Rock for the past few months, and before that it was the Backstreet Boys... uh... let's see. Spice Girls. Dang. The last hip thing we covered was Nirvana. What was cool in the '90s?" And then the Village Voice would say, "Well, for a while there we liked the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, but they didn't turn out to be gay enough for our tastes." "Then it's settled, we'll put another PJ Harvey album on the list, and finish 'er off with Basement Jaxx." Of course, Jon Spencer's done plenty that none of us should be proud of. Fortunately, this release of b-sides and remixes that accompany 1998's Acme is not one of those things. There are a few laugh- out- loud bits of musical comedy, like Spencer leering, "Baby, have you ever had a hot dog?" or listing his favorite condiments on the remix of "Magical Colors." Or the "Soul Trance" skit where the Blues Explosion headlines at a club that was supposed to feature Bel Biv Devoe. Not to mention a bit of Redd Fox- inspired smut on "Lap Dance." Xtra Acme USA's finest moments, though, are the brand spankin' new ones. "Wait a Minute" kicks the album off with Spencer coming as close to his dream of being the Rolling Stones as he's ever been. He conducts the hits like James Brown on "Get Down Lover" and reaffirms his rockabilly/ punk roots on "Electricity" and "Hell." Admittedly, this record's a little heavy on the filler, but there are moments here that leave the original Acme in the dust. Why didn't some of these songs make the cut? Instead of releasing two pretty good records, he could have made one great one. I guess that's why you don't see him next to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tom Ze and the Manic Street Preachers at the decade's end.

Artist: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Album: Xtra Acme USA, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "One man that seems to be getting ignored in the frenzy of "best of the '90s" journalism is Jon Spencer. It really surprises me that Orange didn't make it into Spin's Top 90 (let alone the Pitchfork list). Especially since it seems they just called up the Village Voice and said, "Umm, we've been doing cover stories on Britney Spears and Kid Rock for the past few months, and before that it was the Backstreet Boys... uh... let's see. Spice Girls. Dang. The last hip thing we covered was Nirvana. What was cool in the '90s?" And then the Village Voice would say, "Well, for a while there we liked the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, but they didn't turn out to be gay enough for our tastes." "Then it's settled, we'll put another PJ Harvey album on the list, and finish 'er off with Basement Jaxx." Of course, Jon Spencer's done plenty that none of us should be proud of. Fortunately, this release of b-sides and remixes that accompany 1998's Acme is not one of those things. There are a few laugh- out- loud bits of musical comedy, like Spencer leering, "Baby, have you ever had a hot dog?" or listing his favorite condiments on the remix of "Magical Colors." Or the "Soul Trance" skit where the Blues Explosion headlines at a club that was supposed to feature Bel Biv Devoe. Not to mention a bit of Redd Fox- inspired smut on "Lap Dance." Xtra Acme USA's finest moments, though, are the brand spankin' new ones. "Wait a Minute" kicks the album off with Spencer coming as close to his dream of being the Rolling Stones as he's ever been. He conducts the hits like James Brown on "Get Down Lover" and reaffirms his rockabilly/ punk roots on "Electricity" and "Hell." Admittedly, this record's a little heavy on the filler, but there are moments here that leave the original Acme in the dust. Why didn't some of these songs make the cut? Instead of releasing two pretty good records, he could have made one great one. I guess that's why you don't see him next to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tom Ze and the Manic Street Preachers at the decade's end."

Kiesza

Sound of a Woman

Pop/R&B

Larry Fitzmaurice

Disclosure’s Settle wasn’t just the best debut LP of 2013, it was also the best dance-pop crossover record from last year; with no dominant trend in the sub-genre cropping up this year, the Lawrence brothers have dominated 2014 by proxy, too. Their rising success can be found in industry-shepherded superstar collaborations and dance veteran co-signs; they were also responsible for putting the most boring new pop star of the year on the map. All of which has lead to the music industry’s typically craven search to find something, anything comparable when it comes to satiating the fuzzy-boots crowd’s sudden micro-thirst for vocal-driven house. It’s why UK producer Duke Dumont’s ebullient, bursting “I Got U” could be found on U.S. pop radio earlier this summer, and it also explains why the market has been flooded with knockoffs supposedly meant to catch some of Disclosure’s heat. If you thought the glut of post-dubstep singer/songwriter types or tortured alt-R&B auteurs proved tiring, the 4/4 onslaught that mainstream pop is about to undergo could prove even worse. Recently, the market’s been hit with two new artists in the Disclosure mold: first, there was Gorgon City’s competent, ultimately ineffective debut LP Sirens, and now we have the debut album from Calgary's Kiesa Rae Ellestad, Sound of a Woman. Kiesza's earliest music leaned toward folk, and then she hooked up with producer and current collaborator Rami Samir Afuni, who has written and arranged for the likes of LMFAO and Miley Cyrus. In 2012, Kiesza and Afuni released the single “Oops”, a pop trifle about unprotected sex that mixed bright, MOR synth-pop with the requisite wub-wub elements that marked big-tent dance music at the time; at the top of this year, they hit the pop bullseye forcefully with “Hideaway”, a throaty blast that sounded like the duo’s attempt to remake Robin S.’ “Show Me Love” for the millennial crowd. A minor U.S. hit that went platinum in four European countries, “Hideaway” was a stroke of low-level pop mimicry genius, and Kiesza and Afuni are clearly aware of its winning formula: Sound of a Woman, a record that proves as generic and bland as the catch-all title that adorns it, is largely made up of attempts to recreate that song’s success, right down to replicating its basic structure. Sometimes, this works: the effervescent “No Enemiesz” finds Kiesza shouting over squiggles and a hollow, pounding beat before hitting a chorus that utilizes her oversinging tendencies effectively, while “Giant in My Heart” blooms into a satisfying 4/4 pulse that carries superficial charms similar to off-brand cereal. Elsewhere, though, Sound of a Woman fails to spark, as its homogenous textures blend together to rob this music of the personality and emotion it has when done right. Kiesza and Afuni treat house music with all the studiousness of someone reading a textbook, as evidenced by her sorta-viral, sacrilegiously po-faced cover of Haddaway’s “What Is Love”. On one level, they’ve committed cultural thievery of the laziest kind, right down to European dance culture’s obsession with dusty, pre-2000s hip-hop (the shiftless “Losin’ My Mind” and “Bad Thing”, with respective features by American rappers Mick Jenkins and Joey Bada$$). Kiesza and Afuni come across as guests at a dinner party who couldn’t be bothered to bring anything and expect their presence to do the work for them. So Sound of a Woman’s most memorable moments are when the duo deviate from their established norm: “So Deep” is a brooding, bleeping slow jam that, midway through, breaks into a moderately appealing 2step rhythm, while "Piano” soothes and swerves with the druggy melancholy of certain strains of R&B, building to a pleading, drum-assisted chorus that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Jessie Ware’s 2012 debut Devotion. They’re capable, pretty songs, and like the rest of Sound of a Woman, they don’t give any clues as to who Kiesza is.

Artist: Kiesza, Album: Sound of a Woman, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Disclosure’s Settle wasn’t just the best debut LP of 2013, it was also the best dance-pop crossover record from last year; with no dominant trend in the sub-genre cropping up this year, the Lawrence brothers have dominated 2014 by proxy, too. Their rising success can be found in industry-shepherded superstar collaborations and dance veteran co-signs; they were also responsible for putting the most boring new pop star of the year on the map. All of which has lead to the music industry’s typically craven search to find something, anything comparable when it comes to satiating the fuzzy-boots crowd’s sudden micro-thirst for vocal-driven house. It’s why UK producer Duke Dumont’s ebullient, bursting “I Got U” could be found on U.S. pop radio earlier this summer, and it also explains why the market has been flooded with knockoffs supposedly meant to catch some of Disclosure’s heat. If you thought the glut of post-dubstep singer/songwriter types or tortured alt-R&B auteurs proved tiring, the 4/4 onslaught that mainstream pop is about to undergo could prove even worse. Recently, the market’s been hit with two new artists in the Disclosure mold: first, there was Gorgon City’s competent, ultimately ineffective debut LP Sirens, and now we have the debut album from Calgary's Kiesa Rae Ellestad, Sound of a Woman. Kiesza's earliest music leaned toward folk, and then she hooked up with producer and current collaborator Rami Samir Afuni, who has written and arranged for the likes of LMFAO and Miley Cyrus. In 2012, Kiesza and Afuni released the single “Oops”, a pop trifle about unprotected sex that mixed bright, MOR synth-pop with the requisite wub-wub elements that marked big-tent dance music at the time; at the top of this year, they hit the pop bullseye forcefully with “Hideaway”, a throaty blast that sounded like the duo’s attempt to remake Robin S.’ “Show Me Love” for the millennial crowd. A minor U.S. hit that went platinum in four European countries, “Hideaway” was a stroke of low-level pop mimicry genius, and Kiesza and Afuni are clearly aware of its winning formula: Sound of a Woman, a record that proves as generic and bland as the catch-all title that adorns it, is largely made up of attempts to recreate that song’s success, right down to replicating its basic structure. Sometimes, this works: the effervescent “No Enemiesz” finds Kiesza shouting over squiggles and a hollow, pounding beat before hitting a chorus that utilizes her oversinging tendencies effectively, while “Giant in My Heart” blooms into a satisfying 4/4 pulse that carries superficial charms similar to off-brand cereal. Elsewhere, though, Sound of a Woman fails to spark, as its homogenous textures blend together to rob this music of the personality and emotion it has when done right. Kiesza and Afuni treat house music with all the studiousness of someone reading a textbook, as evidenced by her sorta-viral, sacrilegiously po-faced cover of Haddaway’s “What Is Love”. On one level, they’ve committed cultural thievery of the laziest kind, right down to European dance culture’s obsession with dusty, pre-2000s hip-hop (the shiftless “Losin’ My Mind” and “Bad Thing”, with respective features by American rappers Mick Jenkins and Joey Bada$$). Kiesza and Afuni come across as guests at a dinner party who couldn’t be bothered to bring anything and expect their presence to do the work for them. So Sound of a Woman’s most memorable moments are when the duo deviate from their established norm: “So Deep” is a brooding, bleeping slow jam that, midway through, breaks into a moderately appealing 2step rhythm, while "Piano” soothes and swerves with the druggy melancholy of certain strains of R&B, building to a pleading, drum-assisted chorus that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Jessie Ware’s 2012 debut Devotion. They’re capable, pretty songs, and like the rest of Sound of a Woman, they don’t give any clues as to who Kiesza is."

Dios

Dios

Amanda Petrusich

If writers were allowed to draw maps, America would be promptly re-proportioned according to its most prosaic cultural mythology: The South would bleed into one colossal tobacco field where shape-note karaoke is scheduled for alternate Thursday nights and cornbread graces every pewter plate; the Midwest would flatten into snug, aluminum-sided subdivisions, with brown-haired families cuddling calmly into church pews and exchanging benign pleasantries; the Northeast would rise into a massive, ivy-wrapped liberal arts college, with everyone sporting purple fleece vests and distractedly steering Labrador-dribbled Volvo wagons; and the West Coast would become a continuous California, the sun perpetually beating down, ocean breezes gently kicking up grains of pink sand, its bands all sounding exactly like the Beach Boys. It's not unusual for iconic bands to lay claim to slabs of otherwise communal land (see Liverpool, Memphis, etc.), and the Beach Boys have long seized control of the Pacific shore, perpetuating unbreakable notions of harmony, jangle, and perfectly sugared sun-melodies. Californian upstarts Dios not only play psychedelic beach-pop, they're also natives of the Beach Boys' hometown of Hawthorne-- a collision of coincidence that would have rendered them annoyingly Californian were they not so independently great. Fusing squeaky electronics with acoustic guitars and soft, breathy vocals, Dios are dry and spacy, as indebted to Neil Young as they are to Brian Wilson. Constantly shifting focus-- from earnest folk-singing to found-sound experimenting to deliquescent indie psych-pop-- Dios are also stubbornly contemporary, a quirky, whimsical bit of California past, present and future. Brothers Joel and Kevin Morales sing and play guitar, and their harmonies are expectedly copasetic, complimentary in the way that only siblings' voices ever are. Backed by keyboardist Jimmy Cabez DeVaca, bassist J.P. Caballero, and drummer Jackie Monzon, Dios occasionally sound like the only proper soundtrack to your local schoolyard: playful, energetic, and sorta bizarre, with more than enough ups-and-downs to power every last see-saw. Opener "Nobody's Perfect" eases from aimless synth zaps into a sweet acoustic melody, periodically punctuated by a handful of piano notes and perfectly carried by Morales' able coo; like contemporaries Beachwood Sparks and All Night Radio, Dios playfully fiddle with listener-expectation, flip-flopping between nicely comprehensible pop and fuzzed-out bursts of psychedelic weirdness. "All Is Said and Done" has a brassy AM-radio glow, with a chorus of la-la-la-la breaking up already soft, hazy vocals; the jingling "You'll Get Yours" is a yawning bit of psych-rock, complete with totally random handclaps. Dios openly admit to an irrational interest in the Beach Boys, reportedly insisting that their international paperwork be inked in the same diner where the Wilsons signed their contracts, and even launching into an exaggerated homage to Pet Sounds' "You Still Believe in Me" towards the end of "50 Cents". Harmony-heavy tracks like "The Uncertainty" point towards their hometown heroes as well, but Dios are far from another mediocre Beach Boys cover band: Without ever attempting to reinvent California, Dios manage to make its pop a little less predictable.

Artist: Dios, Album: Dios, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "If writers were allowed to draw maps, America would be promptly re-proportioned according to its most prosaic cultural mythology: The South would bleed into one colossal tobacco field where shape-note karaoke is scheduled for alternate Thursday nights and cornbread graces every pewter plate; the Midwest would flatten into snug, aluminum-sided subdivisions, with brown-haired families cuddling calmly into church pews and exchanging benign pleasantries; the Northeast would rise into a massive, ivy-wrapped liberal arts college, with everyone sporting purple fleece vests and distractedly steering Labrador-dribbled Volvo wagons; and the West Coast would become a continuous California, the sun perpetually beating down, ocean breezes gently kicking up grains of pink sand, its bands all sounding exactly like the Beach Boys. It's not unusual for iconic bands to lay claim to slabs of otherwise communal land (see Liverpool, Memphis, etc.), and the Beach Boys have long seized control of the Pacific shore, perpetuating unbreakable notions of harmony, jangle, and perfectly sugared sun-melodies. Californian upstarts Dios not only play psychedelic beach-pop, they're also natives of the Beach Boys' hometown of Hawthorne-- a collision of coincidence that would have rendered them annoyingly Californian were they not so independently great. Fusing squeaky electronics with acoustic guitars and soft, breathy vocals, Dios are dry and spacy, as indebted to Neil Young as they are to Brian Wilson. Constantly shifting focus-- from earnest folk-singing to found-sound experimenting to deliquescent indie psych-pop-- Dios are also stubbornly contemporary, a quirky, whimsical bit of California past, present and future. Brothers Joel and Kevin Morales sing and play guitar, and their harmonies are expectedly copasetic, complimentary in the way that only siblings' voices ever are. Backed by keyboardist Jimmy Cabez DeVaca, bassist J.P. Caballero, and drummer Jackie Monzon, Dios occasionally sound like the only proper soundtrack to your local schoolyard: playful, energetic, and sorta bizarre, with more than enough ups-and-downs to power every last see-saw. Opener "Nobody's Perfect" eases from aimless synth zaps into a sweet acoustic melody, periodically punctuated by a handful of piano notes and perfectly carried by Morales' able coo; like contemporaries Beachwood Sparks and All Night Radio, Dios playfully fiddle with listener-expectation, flip-flopping between nicely comprehensible pop and fuzzed-out bursts of psychedelic weirdness. "All Is Said and Done" has a brassy AM-radio glow, with a chorus of la-la-la-la breaking up already soft, hazy vocals; the jingling "You'll Get Yours" is a yawning bit of psych-rock, complete with totally random handclaps. Dios openly admit to an irrational interest in the Beach Boys, reportedly insisting that their international paperwork be inked in the same diner where the Wilsons signed their contracts, and even launching into an exaggerated homage to Pet Sounds' "You Still Believe in Me" towards the end of "50 Cents". Harmony-heavy tracks like "The Uncertainty" point towards their hometown heroes as well, but Dios are far from another mediocre Beach Boys cover band: Without ever attempting to reinvent California, Dios manage to make its pop a little less predictable."

Dr. Dooom

Dr. Dooom 2

Metal,Rap

Ian Cohen

Being a Kool Keith fan requires a long memory-- Dr. Dooom 2 is the follow-up to 1999's First Come, First Served, a record released back when Keith had enough juice to share a headline review in Rolling Stone (fun fact: the other three co-leads were the debuts from Ja Rule and Memphis Bleek, as well as Keith's own Black Elvis/Lost in Space). Being a Kool Keith fan also requires a very short memory, since aside from a handful of laugh riots on Spankmaster ("N.B.A.", "Drugs") and the Diesel Truckers release that some will swear up and down was a return to form, he's since put out the same exact terrible album nearly every single year. Because it isn't a ream of loosely-related expletives and thinly-veiled threats at OutKast like Matthew, Dr. Dooom 2 isn't Keith's worst album, but it doesn't do a whole lot to break recent trends, as it follows the latter-day Keith format of "Oh, he's working with that dude again" (in this case, KutMasta Kurt) and "Oh, he's using that name again." And at the very least, he at least sounds in better form, since as recently as three years ago, there was the implication that he'd gone strictly spoken-word. But "first single"/selling point "R.I.P. Dr. Octagon" pretty much confirms how little there is to Dr. Dooom 2 if you're not interested in Keith's particular brand of inside baseball. Not that you'll be able to figure it out from the listless rambling about label conspiracies, but First Come was clearly borne out of Keith's surprising resentment of how Octagon's rhymes regarding chimpanzee acne and Manischewitz mostly caught the attention of Alternative Nation and glue-sniffing skate kids. Think of it as the first three Eminem albums on a exponentially smaller scale. Dr. Dooom 2 doesn't do much to acknowledge the narrative of its predecessor, which is pretty tough to do considering First Come, First Served managed to somehow house tracks like "Bitch Gets No Love" and "I Run Rap" with the surprisingly introspective "Leave Me Alone" under the auspices of a vengeful cannibal who also happened to be the best rapper alive. This being a 21st-century Kool Keith record, 75-85% of Dr. Dooom 2 finds him taking umbrage at artists that have the nerve to do things that might advance their career (networking, free drinks, and athletes seem to be particular hang-ups). For the most part, he just threatens to pee on people, which would be an interesting way to show one's superiority if Keith hadn't be doing some variation of the same thing for about the last ten years. In fact, a passing mention of Carmelo Anthony and a boast that pretty much contradicts the creation of Dr. Dooom ("white people love me like Fergie") are about the only evidence of Keith absorbing cultural input of the last five years. The record begins with "Simon", which boasts oh-so-timely rants about "American Idol" before going off on one of Keith's many pointless tangents about the Gap. Other than the embarrassing Monsters, Inc. narrative of "Run For Your Life" and "How Sexy", which answers the rhetorical question of its title with "not very," that's pretty much all you get. But really, Keith's in a no-win situation. The past two decades of his career have mostly been predicated on criticizing uncreative rappers with left-field disses ("I'm starting to feel like Jimi Hendrix when they covered the story [of] who started rock"), and while not all chart-toppers are inspiring, being a fan of popular rap these days likely means you're likely a fan of Lil Wayne, Ghostface Killah, or even Aesop Rock. Maybe all three. Point is, mainstream listeners aren't exactly struggling with abstract concepts, and while acknowledging the debt he's owed might result in insufferable KRS-One entitlement, it couldn't be worse than Keith becoming increasingly isolated and weird, refusing to gracefully bow out.

Artist: Dr. Dooom, Album: Dr. Dooom 2, Genre: Metal,Rap, Score (1-10): 3.7 Album review: "Being a Kool Keith fan requires a long memory-- Dr. Dooom 2 is the follow-up to 1999's First Come, First Served, a record released back when Keith had enough juice to share a headline review in Rolling Stone (fun fact: the other three co-leads were the debuts from Ja Rule and Memphis Bleek, as well as Keith's own Black Elvis/Lost in Space). Being a Kool Keith fan also requires a very short memory, since aside from a handful of laugh riots on Spankmaster ("N.B.A.", "Drugs") and the Diesel Truckers release that some will swear up and down was a return to form, he's since put out the same exact terrible album nearly every single year. Because it isn't a ream of loosely-related expletives and thinly-veiled threats at OutKast like Matthew, Dr. Dooom 2 isn't Keith's worst album, but it doesn't do a whole lot to break recent trends, as it follows the latter-day Keith format of "Oh, he's working with that dude again" (in this case, KutMasta Kurt) and "Oh, he's using that name again." And at the very least, he at least sounds in better form, since as recently as three years ago, there was the implication that he'd gone strictly spoken-word. But "first single"/selling point "R.I.P. Dr. Octagon" pretty much confirms how little there is to Dr. Dooom 2 if you're not interested in Keith's particular brand of inside baseball. Not that you'll be able to figure it out from the listless rambling about label conspiracies, but First Come was clearly borne out of Keith's surprising resentment of how Octagon's rhymes regarding chimpanzee acne and Manischewitz mostly caught the attention of Alternative Nation and glue-sniffing skate kids. Think of it as the first three Eminem albums on a exponentially smaller scale. Dr. Dooom 2 doesn't do much to acknowledge the narrative of its predecessor, which is pretty tough to do considering First Come, First Served managed to somehow house tracks like "Bitch Gets No Love" and "I Run Rap" with the surprisingly introspective "Leave Me Alone" under the auspices of a vengeful cannibal who also happened to be the best rapper alive. This being a 21st-century Kool Keith record, 75-85% of Dr. Dooom 2 finds him taking umbrage at artists that have the nerve to do things that might advance their career (networking, free drinks, and athletes seem to be particular hang-ups). For the most part, he just threatens to pee on people, which would be an interesting way to show one's superiority if Keith hadn't be doing some variation of the same thing for about the last ten years. In fact, a passing mention of Carmelo Anthony and a boast that pretty much contradicts the creation of Dr. Dooom ("white people love me like Fergie") are about the only evidence of Keith absorbing cultural input of the last five years. The record begins with "Simon", which boasts oh-so-timely rants about "American Idol" before going off on one of Keith's many pointless tangents about the Gap. Other than the embarrassing Monsters, Inc. narrative of "Run For Your Life" and "How Sexy", which answers the rhetorical question of its title with "not very," that's pretty much all you get. But really, Keith's in a no-win situation. The past two decades of his career have mostly been predicated on criticizing uncreative rappers with left-field disses ("I'm starting to feel like Jimi Hendrix when they covered the story [of] who started rock"), and while not all chart-toppers are inspiring, being a fan of popular rap these days likely means you're likely a fan of Lil Wayne, Ghostface Killah, or even Aesop Rock. Maybe all three. Point is, mainstream listeners aren't exactly struggling with abstract concepts, and while acknowledging the debt he's owed might result in insufferable KRS-One entitlement, it couldn't be worse than Keith becoming increasingly isolated and weird, refusing to gracefully bow out."

Black Sabbath

13

Metal,Rock

Hank Shteamer

The current Black Sabbath reunion has been star-crossed almost from the start. Original members Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward staged a splashy press conference in November 2011 to announce a tour and a Rick Rubin-produced album, but the mood quickly soured. Subsequent months brought a lymphoma diagnosis for guitarist and sole consistent member Iommi, a contract dispute involving drummer Ward, high-profile gigs with a fill-in behind the kit, and, finally, the eyebrow-raising news that the comeback LP-- the first full studio record to involve more than two members of Sabbath 1.0 since 1983's Ozzy-less Born Again-- would feature Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk. The peanut gallery snarked; fans despaired. That 13 isn't an out-of-touch embarrassment is a surprise. That it's cohesive, engaging, and even fun is a near-shock. As with most Rubin ventures, the goal from the outset was to help the band recapture their original mojo, the chemistry that made their initial 1970-78 run so brilliant. Does 13 measure up to classics such as Paranoid and Vol. 4? Of course not. No amount of good intention could recapture the black magic of the band's narcotically enhanced glory days, and while Wilk's performance is sturdy enough, no sub could eclipse Ward, one of the most distinctive rock drummers of the last 40 years and the engine behind Sabbath's signature sludge-blues cadences. But 13 does offer many of the primal joys that helped immortalize Sabbath in the first place, while documenting the spark that still unites Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler, all three of whom sound about as vital here as anyone could've hoped. The record's greatest strength is how well it captures the apocalyptic trudge that Sabbath nailed from the very first downbeat of their 1970 debut. The doomy passages in the first two tracks, "End of the Beginning" and "God Is Dead?", sound stupendously heavy. This isn't just a result of 13's raw production values; it's also that the band is clearly grasping for the same dire emotions (soul-deep malaise, reaper-fearing horror) that fueled their early work, emotions that from the mid-'80s on-- as Iommi carried on under the Sabbath banner with a Wiki-nightmare's worth of collaborators-- have shared album space with less weighty, more pedestrian hard rock. As Iommi, Butler, and Wilk lurch through the titanic riff of "End of the Beginning", with Ozzy sneering, "Reeeeeee-animation of the sequence," it's clear that a legacy is being reclaimed. Osbourne, for one, may have squandered any remaining mystique when he opted for reality-TV stardom, but he proves here that he still wields an eerie power at the mic. The album doesn't fixate on crawling gloom. Early Sabbath is often portrayed as monolithic, but the band's 1970-78 discography was as eclectic in its way as the canons of the Beatles or Zeppelin. On 13, the band salutes fans with obvious allusions to some of their early outside-the-box classics: sassy midtempo groover "Loner" and the faintly cheesy yet improbably moving ballad "Zeitgeist" recall "N.I.B." and "Planet Caravan", respectively. And the sliding-panel, multi-movement structures of "Age of Reason" and "End of the Beginning" serve as a reminder that the original Sabbath explored their own outlandish brand of progressive rock on later LPs such as 1975's Sabotage. Aside from "God Is Dead?", with its plodding, laborious verses, the album's many long tracks feel brisk and hooky. As sturdy as 13's songs are, the album's signature feature might be its pervasive jamminess. Sabbath were never much for the drawn-out grandstanding of Zeppelin, but they did begin life as a blues band on the nightly grind. The group flaunts those roots constantly on 13, in the process spotlighting the partnership that's always been Sabbath's heart and soul: the Iommi/Butler tandem. During triumphant instrumental breakdowns in "End of the Beginning" and "God Is Dead?", the guitarist and bassist braid together like a heavy-metal Garcia and Lesh, forming a single mercurial mass. Iommi indulges in his share of well-deserved guitar-heroism throughout the record-- most notably on the exuberantly bluesy "Damaged Soul"-- but with Butler shadowing him, these so-called solos feel more like hive-mind communions. It doesn't hurt that the bass tone on 13 is extraordinary-- one of the fattest and most gut-churning that Butler has achieved on record. Offsetting that blood-brother harmony is the odd man out behind the kit. The stiff unaccompanied drum intro to "Age of Reason" is just one of many reminders here that Wilk comes from an entirely different school, not to mention generation, than his collaborators. While Rage Against the Machine owed Iommi a significant debt in the riff department, that band's rhythmic orientation had far more to do with crisp funk than blues-based hard rock. (To find a truly sympathetic sub for 13, Rubin and the band might have looked to the contemporary doom-metal demimonde, home of drummers like Eyehategod's Joey LaCaze, who specialize in the grimy ooze that powered early Sabbath.) Often, as on the triplet-feel verse section of "Live Forever", Wilk sounds like he's trying hard not to mess up. And he doesn't, exactly, but something is lost in the effort. Bill Ward's genius was that he never seemed to care about meeting an objective standard of precision. The early Sabbath drum tracks are riddled with what could technically be described as flubs; they also feature some of the most exhilaratingly earthy percussion rock'n'roll has ever seen. To be fair, Wilk's appearance was always framed as a sideman gig. (The press materials for 13 diplomatically state that the band were "joined at the sessions" by the drummer.) And there are moments, such as on the sinister strut that opens "Dear Father", where Wilk achieves a real chemistry with his elders. Details aside, though, Ward's absence from 13 shouldn't be glossed over. His shaggy, intuitive swing may have been less commanding than the brontosaurus whomp of John Bonham, but it was no less integral to his band's signature sound. Sabbath has at times weathered their countless personnel shifts gracefully; for example, the lineup featuring late vocal great Ronnie James Dio, eventually billed under the name Heaven & Hell, attained its own special brand of dark majesty. Yet the fact that a full-on original-members reunion was promised and then retracted lends 13 a whiff of the consolation prize. In the end, 13 isn't what every Sabbath die-hard dreamed it might be: a true pick-up-where-they-left-off comeback for

Artist: Black Sabbath, Album: 13, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "The current Black Sabbath reunion has been star-crossed almost from the start. Original members Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward staged a splashy press conference in November 2011 to announce a tour and a Rick Rubin-produced album, but the mood quickly soured. Subsequent months brought a lymphoma diagnosis for guitarist and sole consistent member Iommi, a contract dispute involving drummer Ward, high-profile gigs with a fill-in behind the kit, and, finally, the eyebrow-raising news that the comeback LP-- the first full studio record to involve more than two members of Sabbath 1.0 since 1983's Ozzy-less Born Again-- would feature Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk. The peanut gallery snarked; fans despaired. That 13 isn't an out-of-touch embarrassment is a surprise. That it's cohesive, engaging, and even fun is a near-shock. As with most Rubin ventures, the goal from the outset was to help the band recapture their original mojo, the chemistry that made their initial 1970-78 run so brilliant. Does 13 measure up to classics such as Paranoid and Vol. 4? Of course not. No amount of good intention could recapture the black magic of the band's narcotically enhanced glory days, and while Wilk's performance is sturdy enough, no sub could eclipse Ward, one of the most distinctive rock drummers of the last 40 years and the engine behind Sabbath's signature sludge-blues cadences. But 13 does offer many of the primal joys that helped immortalize Sabbath in the first place, while documenting the spark that still unites Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler, all three of whom sound about as vital here as anyone could've hoped. The record's greatest strength is how well it captures the apocalyptic trudge that Sabbath nailed from the very first downbeat of their 1970 debut. The doomy passages in the first two tracks, "End of the Beginning" and "God Is Dead?", sound stupendously heavy. This isn't just a result of 13's raw production values; it's also that the band is clearly grasping for the same dire emotions (soul-deep malaise, reaper-fearing horror) that fueled their early work, emotions that from the mid-'80s on-- as Iommi carried on under the Sabbath banner with a Wiki-nightmare's worth of collaborators-- have shared album space with less weighty, more pedestrian hard rock. As Iommi, Butler, and Wilk lurch through the titanic riff of "End of the Beginning", with Ozzy sneering, "Reeeeeee-animation of the sequence," it's clear that a legacy is being reclaimed. Osbourne, for one, may have squandered any remaining mystique when he opted for reality-TV stardom, but he proves here that he still wields an eerie power at the mic. The album doesn't fixate on crawling gloom. Early Sabbath is often portrayed as monolithic, but the band's 1970-78 discography was as eclectic in its way as the canons of the Beatles or Zeppelin. On 13, the band salutes fans with obvious allusions to some of their early outside-the-box classics: sassy midtempo groover "Loner" and the faintly cheesy yet improbably moving ballad "Zeitgeist" recall "N.I.B." and "Planet Caravan", respectively. And the sliding-panel, multi-movement structures of "Age of Reason" and "End of the Beginning" serve as a reminder that the original Sabbath explored their own outlandish brand of progressive rock on later LPs such as 1975's Sabotage. Aside from "God Is Dead?", with its plodding, laborious verses, the album's many long tracks feel brisk and hooky. As sturdy as 13's songs are, the album's signature feature might be its pervasive jamminess. Sabbath were never much for the drawn-out grandstanding of Zeppelin, but they did begin life as a blues band on the nightly grind. The group flaunts those roots constantly on 13, in the process spotlighting the partnership that's always been Sabbath's heart and soul: the Iommi/Butler tandem. During triumphant instrumental breakdowns in "End of the Beginning" and "God Is Dead?", the guitarist and bassist braid together like a heavy-metal Garcia and Lesh, forming a single mercurial mass. Iommi indulges in his share of well-deserved guitar-heroism throughout the record-- most notably on the exuberantly bluesy "Damaged Soul"-- but with Butler shadowing him, these so-called solos feel more like hive-mind communions. It doesn't hurt that the bass tone on 13 is extraordinary-- one of the fattest and most gut-churning that Butler has achieved on record. Offsetting that blood-brother harmony is the odd man out behind the kit. The stiff unaccompanied drum intro to "Age of Reason" is just one of many reminders here that Wilk comes from an entirely different school, not to mention generation, than his collaborators. While Rage Against the Machine owed Iommi a significant debt in the riff department, that band's rhythmic orientation had far more to do with crisp funk than blues-based hard rock. (To find a truly sympathetic sub for 13, Rubin and the band might have looked to the contemporary doom-metal demimonde, home of drummers like Eyehategod's Joey LaCaze, who specialize in the grimy ooze that powered early Sabbath.) Often, as on the triplet-feel verse section of "Live Forever", Wilk sounds like he's trying hard not to mess up. And he doesn't, exactly, but something is lost in the effort. Bill Ward's genius was that he never seemed to care about meeting an objective standard of precision. The early Sabbath drum tracks are riddled with what could technically be described as flubs; they also feature some of the most exhilaratingly earthy percussion rock'n'roll has ever seen. To be fair, Wilk's appearance was always framed as a sideman gig. (The press materials for 13 diplomatically state that the band were "joined at the sessions" by the drummer.) And there are moments, such as on the sinister strut that opens "Dear Father", where Wilk achieves a real chemistry with his elders. Details aside, though, Ward's absence from 13 shouldn't be glossed over. His shaggy, intuitive swing may have been less commanding than the brontosaurus whomp of John Bonham, but it was no less integral to his band's signature sound. Sabbath has at times weathered their countless personnel shifts gracefully; for example, the lineup featuring late vocal great Ronnie James Dio, eventually billed under the name Heaven & Hell, attained its own special brand of dark majesty. Yet the fact that a full-on original-members reunion was promised and then retracted lends 13 a whiff of the consolation prize. In the end, 13 isn't what every Sabbath die-hard dreamed it might be: a true pick-up-where-they-left-off comeback for "

Jim James

Uniform Distortion

Rock

Stuart Berman

Roots music is, by definition, tethered to the land. It’s a naturalistic sound born of dust and dirt, and it’s a style that a young Jim James fully embodied when he emerged in 1999 as the frontman of Kentucky heartbreakers My Morning Jacket. But in the two decades since then, James’ approach to roots music has become less about preserving certain sepia-toned agrarian aesthetics and more about emulating what actual plant roots do with patient nurturing: They blossom into splendorous flora, sprouting toward the sky in unpredictable shapes and directions. As a result, the restlessly ambitious My Morning Jacket and James’ own increasingly prolific solo career have both flourished, yielding a dense thicket of work that becomes ever more difficult to disentangle as both acts continue to branch out. But on his third solo album of original material, James prunes away the excess foliage. Pulling an abrupt 180 from the cinematic future-soul of his previous release, 2016’s Eternally Even, he conceived Uniform Distortion as a quick-and-dirty affair. The album finds James fronting a power trio, supported by old pals Seth Kauffman on bass and Dave Givan on drums, and capturing the action with all the corroded fidelity of a cassette bootleg of a live radio session. (The only embellishment comes in the form of alternately soothing and sassy backing vocals from L.A. harmony-folk trio Dear Lemon Trees.) After several years of studio-sculpted experimentation both within and without his main band, James has reclaimed the electric guitar like a lost superpower, making Uniform Distortion closer in spirit to a quintessential My Morning Jacket record than anything that band has actually released in the past 15 years. This is great news for anyone who, back in 2003, was hoping James’ band would become a 21st-century .38 Special, not an American Radiohead. Uniform Distortion isn’t a simple back-to-basics move, however. Like any sentient being with a smartphone in 2018, James has been feeling overwhelmed by the daily avalanche of information at our thumb-tips, and the coarsening discourse that surrounds it. As he revealed on the podcast “Celebration Rock,” he even went off the grid for a week-long silent retreat in the Northern California woods to clear his head. The album’s front cover, a photo taken from ’70s eco-bible The Last Whole Earth Catalog, presents a this-is-your-brain-on-internet diagnosis—but the music within has a decidedly different tone from the grave, politicized prophecies of Eternally Even. Instead, James embraces simplicity and levity. While the new album’s deliberately muddy mix foregrounds his squealing leads—taking them to beard-scorching extremes—the most telling sound that pervades this record is laughter. There is James, nearly flubbing the second chorus of the boisterous roadhouse rocker “You Get to Rome” due to a giggling fit, and launching into the Replacements-like chugger “Yes to Everything” with a throaty chortle. When he’s not audibly cracking up, he exploits his full vocal range to comic effect: “Too Be Good to Be True” may be modeled after a ’50s breakup ballad, but it’s hard not to smile when James drops into a bassy, Bowser-worthy serenade. At times, irreverence can get the best of him: “Out of Time” doesn’t survive its impulsive transition from breezy freeway cruiser to sludgy stoner-metal jam, while the bluesy grind “No Use Waiting” is saddled with a goofy, Zappa-esque spoken-word hook. But Uniform Distortion is a deceptively lighthearted affair, as it taps into the doubt and discontent fueling all the carefree kicks. “Just a Fool” may roll in on a flatbed of boogielicious guitar licks, but it’s a drinking song that longs for a world where we don’t need the bottle to make it through the day. And while the melancholic power-pop missive “Over and Over” may not be a cover of the MC5 classic of the same name, it’s very much a spiritual successor, updating the original’s references to Vietnam and factory-worker unrest with allusions to drone strikes and building walls as it swaps out Rob Tyner’s incendiary rage for James’ weary resignation. Uniform Distortion abounds with displays of James’ fiery fretwork, but he rarely wields his other signature weapon—that angelic croon that trembles with vulnerability yet can soar high enough to rattle satellites. In the fleeting moments when it does surface, the effect is doubly stunning. Atop the mesmerizing Crazy Horse drift of “No Secrets,” James uses that sky-high coo to summon mounting waves of guitar discord, as the song cycles through its lone verse and chorus with ever-increasing intensity. And in the beautifully crestfallen “Throwback,” a knowing title and a wistful lyrical hook—“When we were young”—serve a song that sounds exactly like the sort of stargazing backwoods elegy James would’ve written when he was young. Since those early days, James has refused to be pigeonholed as the shaggy-haired Southern-rock revivalist many assumed him to be. Uniform Distortion shows he can easily revert to that mode when the mood strikes, but in this case, he’s conjuring the past as a means to take stock of our current condition. When he sings, “Throw back Thursday to the way that it was,” he’s yearning for a less complicated, more enriching way of life that can’t so easily be accessed through an Instagram hashtag. The ache in his voice says it all: This isn’t about nostalgia, it’s a cry for help.

Artist: Jim James, Album: Uniform Distortion, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Roots music is, by definition, tethered to the land. It’s a naturalistic sound born of dust and dirt, and it’s a style that a young Jim James fully embodied when he emerged in 1999 as the frontman of Kentucky heartbreakers My Morning Jacket. But in the two decades since then, James’ approach to roots music has become less about preserving certain sepia-toned agrarian aesthetics and more about emulating what actual plant roots do with patient nurturing: They blossom into splendorous flora, sprouting toward the sky in unpredictable shapes and directions. As a result, the restlessly ambitious My Morning Jacket and James’ own increasingly prolific solo career have both flourished, yielding a dense thicket of work that becomes ever more difficult to disentangle as both acts continue to branch out. But on his third solo album of original material, James prunes away the excess foliage. Pulling an abrupt 180 from the cinematic future-soul of his previous release, 2016’s Eternally Even, he conceived Uniform Distortion as a quick-and-dirty affair. The album finds James fronting a power trio, supported by old pals Seth Kauffman on bass and Dave Givan on drums, and capturing the action with all the corroded fidelity of a cassette bootleg of a live radio session. (The only embellishment comes in the form of alternately soothing and sassy backing vocals from L.A. harmony-folk trio Dear Lemon Trees.) After several years of studio-sculpted experimentation both within and without his main band, James has reclaimed the electric guitar like a lost superpower, making Uniform Distortion closer in spirit to a quintessential My Morning Jacket record than anything that band has actually released in the past 15 years. This is great news for anyone who, back in 2003, was hoping James’ band would become a 21st-century .38 Special, not an American Radiohead. Uniform Distortion isn’t a simple back-to-basics move, however. Like any sentient being with a smartphone in 2018, James has been feeling overwhelmed by the daily avalanche of information at our thumb-tips, and the coarsening discourse that surrounds it. As he revealed on the podcast “Celebration Rock,” he even went off the grid for a week-long silent retreat in the Northern California woods to clear his head. The album’s front cover, a photo taken from ’70s eco-bible The Last Whole Earth Catalog, presents a this-is-your-brain-on-internet diagnosis—but the music within has a decidedly different tone from the grave, politicized prophecies of Eternally Even. Instead, James embraces simplicity and levity. While the new album’s deliberately muddy mix foregrounds his squealing leads—taking them to beard-scorching extremes—the most telling sound that pervades this record is laughter. There is James, nearly flubbing the second chorus of the boisterous roadhouse rocker “You Get to Rome” due to a giggling fit, and launching into the Replacements-like chugger “Yes to Everything” with a throaty chortle. When he’s not audibly cracking up, he exploits his full vocal range to comic effect: “Too Be Good to Be True” may be modeled after a ’50s breakup ballad, but it’s hard not to smile when James drops into a bassy, Bowser-worthy serenade. At times, irreverence can get the best of him: “Out of Time” doesn’t survive its impulsive transition from breezy freeway cruiser to sludgy stoner-metal jam, while the bluesy grind “No Use Waiting” is saddled with a goofy, Zappa-esque spoken-word hook. But Uniform Distortion is a deceptively lighthearted affair, as it taps into the doubt and discontent fueling all the carefree kicks. “Just a Fool” may roll in on a flatbed of boogielicious guitar licks, but it’s a drinking song that longs for a world where we don’t need the bottle to make it through the day. And while the melancholic power-pop missive “Over and Over” may not be a cover of the MC5 classic of the same name, it’s very much a spiritual successor, updating the original’s references to Vietnam and factory-worker unrest with allusions to drone strikes and building walls as it swaps out Rob Tyner’s incendiary rage for James’ weary resignation. Uniform Distortion abounds with displays of James’ fiery fretwork, but he rarely wields his other signature weapon—that angelic croon that trembles with vulnerability yet can soar high enough to rattle satellites. In the fleeting moments when it does surface, the effect is doubly stunning. Atop the mesmerizing Crazy Horse drift of “No Secrets,” James uses that sky-high coo to summon mounting waves of guitar discord, as the song cycles through its lone verse and chorus with ever-increasing intensity. And in the beautifully crestfallen “Throwback,” a knowing title and a wistful lyrical hook—“When we were young”—serve a song that sounds exactly like the sort of stargazing backwoods elegy James would’ve written when he was young. Since those early days, James has refused to be pigeonholed as the shaggy-haired Southern-rock revivalist many assumed him to be. Uniform Distortion shows he can easily revert to that mode when the mood strikes, but in this case, he’s conjuring the past as a means to take stock of our current condition. When he sings, “Throw back Thursday to the way that it was,” he’s yearning for a less complicated, more enriching way of life that can’t so easily be accessed through an Instagram hashtag. The ache in his voice says it all: This isn’t about nostalgia, it’s a cry for help."

Bent Shapes

Feels Weird

Rock

Devon Maloney

For fans of Boston's relatively cloistered DIY punk scene, Bent Shapes' debut LP Feels Weird is a long time coming. Originally known as Girlfriends, the trio-- bassist Supriya Gunda, drummer Andy Sadoway, and guitarist Ben Potrykus-- has been a hometown hero of small venues and house shows since they formed in 2009, racking up nominations and wins for their high-strung, merciless garage-pop at the Boston Phoenix's annual Boston Music Poll. Aside from a handful of short, micro-distribution releases, however, they were almost exclusively a live act, one that required fans to seek them out in person to get a proper fix. Then in May of last year, blaming a need for change and the addition of a new guitarist (who vanished almost as soon as she appeared), Girlfriends became Bent Shapes. They collected the bitingly catchy punk songs they'd released over their three years as a band and released a compilation called Cull Shorts, a sort of scrapbook retrospective on the Band That Was Girlfriends. Though Cull Shorts marked the end of an era, its patchwork structure lingers on Feels Weird. Despite the new collection's intention as a formal album, it contains disordered messes of frenetic declarations, judgments, and uncertainties that have become part of the band's character. While incongruous, seemingly unplanned mishmash on a debut would sink a less experienced band, Bent Shapes' honed songcraft is such that missing the forest for the trees is actually a great idea. As a debutante collection-- celebrating the band's introduction to the world beyond New England at long last, something their contemporaries, and they too, until now, have eschewed-- Feels Weird serves as an eclectic, vivid primer on its creators' sprightly misanthropy. From the outset, "Behead Yrself Pt. 2" establishes the band's innate grasp on the alluring grievance: bullshit abounds, especially in their uniquely overeducated, often self-important city. Drawing on proto- and post-punk influences like the Feelies and Jonathan Richman, each track exposes a different blistering sore; Sadoway's mellow vocals and Gunda's bouncing, all-business ones knock Potrykus off his earnestly charming soapbox in healthy doses. "Brat Poison", the most explicit, electrifying, and outright funny cut on the record by a wide margin, drips with sarcastic contempt as it eviscerates the hypocritical arrogance of loudmouthed local-scene personalities. (With lines like "drum circle jerks" and "Go put yourself into orbit/ where verbose is verboten/ ferocious, forgotten," it's also a quintessential example of Bent Shapes' immaculate attention to wordplay.) You don't have to have spent time in Boston to appreciate its diss-track qualities, but those fans probably get an amplified experience. At times, their disgust waxes preachy; at others, like on the garrulous "Boys to Men", their need to say something the right way tangles a song in its own feet, like the words of someone who's been holed up alone in his apartment for too many days in a row, and the band stumbles. But for every overstep, there's a song like "Bites and Scratches", a personal and heartbreakingly sweet cut about love amidst baggage, that serves as a reminder that they're also dissatisfied with their own complicity and intimate failings. And even as it bubbles over into excess, it's hard to bemoan Bent Shapes' knack for marrying lyricism and melody. Every song-- save "Hex Maneuvers", a dreamy experiment that evokes Real Estate's aqueous twang with moderate success-- is irresistibly upbeat in its complaint. Their criticisms, on paper, can seem distant, but somehow-- whether it's vulnerable moments like "I'm not saying you need some deep-seated hatred of self/ But it helps" and "I met a girl, to my surprise/ Said 'I'm damaged goods', she said, 'So am I,' / so I held her hand," or the blithe delivery of even the most biting invectives, or merely a trick of the pop-guitar lick-- there's something genuinely warm about them. Ultimately, theirs are statements that both ask for and infinitely reward a second spin.

Artist: Bent Shapes, Album: Feels Weird, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "For fans of Boston's relatively cloistered DIY punk scene, Bent Shapes' debut LP Feels Weird is a long time coming. Originally known as Girlfriends, the trio-- bassist Supriya Gunda, drummer Andy Sadoway, and guitarist Ben Potrykus-- has been a hometown hero of small venues and house shows since they formed in 2009, racking up nominations and wins for their high-strung, merciless garage-pop at the Boston Phoenix's annual Boston Music Poll. Aside from a handful of short, micro-distribution releases, however, they were almost exclusively a live act, one that required fans to seek them out in person to get a proper fix. Then in May of last year, blaming a need for change and the addition of a new guitarist (who vanished almost as soon as she appeared), Girlfriends became Bent Shapes. They collected the bitingly catchy punk songs they'd released over their three years as a band and released a compilation called Cull Shorts, a sort of scrapbook retrospective on the Band That Was Girlfriends. Though Cull Shorts marked the end of an era, its patchwork structure lingers on Feels Weird. Despite the new collection's intention as a formal album, it contains disordered messes of frenetic declarations, judgments, and uncertainties that have become part of the band's character. While incongruous, seemingly unplanned mishmash on a debut would sink a less experienced band, Bent Shapes' honed songcraft is such that missing the forest for the trees is actually a great idea. As a debutante collection-- celebrating the band's introduction to the world beyond New England at long last, something their contemporaries, and they too, until now, have eschewed-- Feels Weird serves as an eclectic, vivid primer on its creators' sprightly misanthropy. From the outset, "Behead Yrself Pt. 2" establishes the band's innate grasp on the alluring grievance: bullshit abounds, especially in their uniquely overeducated, often self-important city. Drawing on proto- and post-punk influences like the Feelies and Jonathan Richman, each track exposes a different blistering sore; Sadoway's mellow vocals and Gunda's bouncing, all-business ones knock Potrykus off his earnestly charming soapbox in healthy doses. "Brat Poison", the most explicit, electrifying, and outright funny cut on the record by a wide margin, drips with sarcastic contempt as it eviscerates the hypocritical arrogance of loudmouthed local-scene personalities. (With lines like "drum circle jerks" and "Go put yourself into orbit/ where verbose is verboten/ ferocious, forgotten," it's also a quintessential example of Bent Shapes' immaculate attention to wordplay.) You don't have to have spent time in Boston to appreciate its diss-track qualities, but those fans probably get an amplified experience. At times, their disgust waxes preachy; at others, like on the garrulous "Boys to Men", their need to say something the right way tangles a song in its own feet, like the words of someone who's been holed up alone in his apartment for too many days in a row, and the band stumbles. But for every overstep, there's a song like "Bites and Scratches", a personal and heartbreakingly sweet cut about love amidst baggage, that serves as a reminder that they're also dissatisfied with their own complicity and intimate failings. And even as it bubbles over into excess, it's hard to bemoan Bent Shapes' knack for marrying lyricism and melody. Every song-- save "Hex Maneuvers", a dreamy experiment that evokes Real Estate's aqueous twang with moderate success-- is irresistibly upbeat in its complaint. Their criticisms, on paper, can seem distant, but somehow-- whether it's vulnerable moments like "I'm not saying you need some deep-seated hatred of self/ But it helps" and "I met a girl, to my surprise/ Said 'I'm damaged goods', she said, 'So am I,' / so I held her hand," or the blithe delivery of even the most biting invectives, or merely a trick of the pop-guitar lick-- there's something genuinely warm about them. Ultimately, theirs are statements that both ask for and infinitely reward a second spin."

Nü Sensae

Sundowning

Jenn Pelly

Rage at its most pointed can offer a footing, a way to define yourself through protest and negation. But it's more potent when left open to interpretation. Delivered in abstract terms, rage can elevate a punk band. Furious questions, not answers, leave a lasting impression. What does this band detest? Nü Sensae, the Vancouver trio of bassist and vocalist Andrea Lukic, drummer Daniel Pitout, and newly added guitarist Brody McKnight, explore the latter territory on their heaviest and finest noise punk record yet, Sundowning. Nü Sensae's approach feels like a cut-and-paste message-in-a-bottle from the early 1990s: the hysteric vocal ferocity of Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland; the unpredictable artistry of early Sonic Youth; the violent corners of post-hardcore noise à la Unsane. This band has learned a thing or two about sludge and volume from the year punk broke; in 2010, inspired by Bikini Kill zines, they began monthly fan-mailings to hundreds of followers around the globe. But Nü Sensae also have the finesse to break the mold: guitars that hint at mystic psychedelia, dirging death marches, wildly tense drum builds. Some verses border on floating, spoken word, as in the record's dread-laced final moment: "I'm in my own world. Life is a nice girl," Lukic deadpans on the massive "Eat Your Mind". "Sweet and secret subtle mess. My 45 is loaded. My head is exploding." Everything on Sundowning is heavier and more pronounced than the band's 2010 full-length TV, Death, and the Devil. The menacing lead single, "Swim", is a dynamic punk song about doing something new-- "I hit it for the first time/ You wouldn't even try"-- that packs more variation into three minutes than some punk groups manage on an entire record. It opens with sharp, ringing chords and pummeling drums that foreshadow Lukic's clenched, harrowing attack: shrill, full-throated roars that are improbably visceral. Here, and throughout, Lukic flips between coarse, grating shrieks and a hovering, emotionless style that channels Kim Gordon. It sounds both schizophrenic and seamless, anchoring the band's studied loud-quiet shifts. Sundowning's contrasted vocals create a friction that increases the album's velocity, even when thematically deluded, like on the maniacal "Dust": "Speak backwards/ Talk faster/ The walls become a monster/ You've realized/ Your nightmares/ Are thoughts and nothing matters." Melody is not a priority. The band seems more concerned with dismantling drum kits. Pitout's percussive assaults function like an additional voice of their own-- opening songs unexpectedly with crescendoing rolls, or working with negative space to create something tense and uneasy. The distant "Tea Swamp Park" and "Say What You Are" use skittish, barely-there instrumentation with peculiar, far-off harmonies. The album's introductory instrumental "First Born" conjures a slow, haunted sense of isolation, like peaking through the door to a musty old house, suspecting it's empty but imagining the potential horrors inside. "Tyjna", meanwhile, is a grim, anxious, and ultimately thrilling track sung in Lukic's native Serbian, centered on a jailed person hit with a supernatural fear of our internalized secrets. "What do I do now without my thoughts?" Lukic shouts. Its sentiment feels timely, with a delivery easily comparable to Pussy Riot. In a 2011 radio interview, a broadcaster asked Pitout about a t-shirt he wore in a picture online: "GIRLS INVENTED PUNK ROCK, NOT ENGLAND," the popular Kim Gordon shirt. The reporter inquired as to what Pitout thought women and non-straight men bring to punk. "Personally, I'm a gay male, and I really relate to female punk musicians," he said. "There's something inherently angry and punk about growing up a girl, or gay, or feeling like you don't fit into the top seat in society." Nü Sensae, despite their loud and endearingly torturous qualities, don't communicate so transparently on record. But Sundowning is an empowering listen, and Lukic's roars force you to reckon with what's raw inside yourself. Last weekend, I went running with this album. I happened upon a young man clad in a very different sort of shirt: "Cool story babe. Now make me a sandwich." Dumbfounded, I paused, and started towards him; took a photo, told him squarely to fuck himself, and moved away. Which is to say, bands like Nü Sensae can offer valid lessons for living; stay mad, make something of it. And they also offer reminders that so long as pricks like that guy exist, and better dressed versions of him are entrusted as lawmakers, our world will always have room for vital, liberative punk.

Artist: Nü Sensae, Album: Sundowning, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Rage at its most pointed can offer a footing, a way to define yourself through protest and negation. But it's more potent when left open to interpretation. Delivered in abstract terms, rage can elevate a punk band. Furious questions, not answers, leave a lasting impression. What does this band detest? Nü Sensae, the Vancouver trio of bassist and vocalist Andrea Lukic, drummer Daniel Pitout, and newly added guitarist Brody McKnight, explore the latter territory on their heaviest and finest noise punk record yet, Sundowning. Nü Sensae's approach feels like a cut-and-paste message-in-a-bottle from the early 1990s: the hysteric vocal ferocity of Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland; the unpredictable artistry of early Sonic Youth; the violent corners of post-hardcore noise à la Unsane. This band has learned a thing or two about sludge and volume from the year punk broke; in 2010, inspired by Bikini Kill zines, they began monthly fan-mailings to hundreds of followers around the globe. But Nü Sensae also have the finesse to break the mold: guitars that hint at mystic psychedelia, dirging death marches, wildly tense drum builds. Some verses border on floating, spoken word, as in the record's dread-laced final moment: "I'm in my own world. Life is a nice girl," Lukic deadpans on the massive "Eat Your Mind". "Sweet and secret subtle mess. My 45 is loaded. My head is exploding." Everything on Sundowning is heavier and more pronounced than the band's 2010 full-length TV, Death, and the Devil. The menacing lead single, "Swim", is a dynamic punk song about doing something new-- "I hit it for the first time/ You wouldn't even try"-- that packs more variation into three minutes than some punk groups manage on an entire record. It opens with sharp, ringing chords and pummeling drums that foreshadow Lukic's clenched, harrowing attack: shrill, full-throated roars that are improbably visceral. Here, and throughout, Lukic flips between coarse, grating shrieks and a hovering, emotionless style that channels Kim Gordon. It sounds both schizophrenic and seamless, anchoring the band's studied loud-quiet shifts. Sundowning's contrasted vocals create a friction that increases the album's velocity, even when thematically deluded, like on the maniacal "Dust": "Speak backwards/ Talk faster/ The walls become a monster/ You've realized/ Your nightmares/ Are thoughts and nothing matters." Melody is not a priority. The band seems more concerned with dismantling drum kits. Pitout's percussive assaults function like an additional voice of their own-- opening songs unexpectedly with crescendoing rolls, or working with negative space to create something tense and uneasy. The distant "Tea Swamp Park" and "Say What You Are" use skittish, barely-there instrumentation with peculiar, far-off harmonies. The album's introductory instrumental "First Born" conjures a slow, haunted sense of isolation, like peaking through the door to a musty old house, suspecting it's empty but imagining the potential horrors inside. "Tyjna", meanwhile, is a grim, anxious, and ultimately thrilling track sung in Lukic's native Serbian, centered on a jailed person hit with a supernatural fear of our internalized secrets. "What do I do now without my thoughts?" Lukic shouts. Its sentiment feels timely, with a delivery easily comparable to Pussy Riot. In a 2011 radio interview, a broadcaster asked Pitout about a t-shirt he wore in a picture online: "GIRLS INVENTED PUNK ROCK, NOT ENGLAND," the popular Kim Gordon shirt. The reporter inquired as to what Pitout thought women and non-straight men bring to punk. "Personally, I'm a gay male, and I really relate to female punk musicians," he said. "There's something inherently angry and punk about growing up a girl, or gay, or feeling like you don't fit into the top seat in society." Nü Sensae, despite their loud and endearingly torturous qualities, don't communicate so transparently on record. But Sundowning is an empowering listen, and Lukic's roars force you to reckon with what's raw inside yourself. Last weekend, I went running with this album. I happened upon a young man clad in a very different sort of shirt: "Cool story babe. Now make me a sandwich." Dumbfounded, I paused, and started towards him; took a photo, told him squarely to fuck himself, and moved away. Which is to say, bands like Nü Sensae can offer valid lessons for living; stay mad, make something of it. And they also offer reminders that so long as pricks like that guy exist, and better dressed versions of him are entrusted as lawmakers, our world will always have room for vital, liberative punk."

Young Prisms

Friends For Now

Experimental,Rock

Larry Fitzmaurice

Do not be fooled by the triangles and female nudity on the album cover: San Francisco's Young Prisms have absolutely nothing to do with witch house or whatever. The contents in their cauldron: shadowy, reverb-smothered guitar rock-- something that's never been in short supply, sure, but that doesn't diminish how well-timed the band's debut LP, Friends For Now, feels. In case your issue of Indie Rock Gossip ended up in your neighbor's mailbox last month, the knotty Canadian indie rockers in Women spectacularly dismantled on stage at the tail end of 2010, leaving a potential void for similarly styled up-and-comers to take their place while the band works their shit out. In a sense, Young Prisms are perfect placeholders; they seem to favor complexity and confusion above all else, and the notable moments of Friends For Now find the band utilizing those elements like able chemists. Not so fast, though: It seems the band forgot that while you're making music, it's a good idea to have some hooks. Instead, the record's leaden; as a straight-through listen, it plays like a monolith-- massive and somewhat uninteresting. Every once in a while, an enjoyable part of the record's whole emerges from the murk-- the menacing Sonic Youth-y guitar line that emerges in the middle of "Feel Fine", or the way that the submerged melody of "In Your Room" breathes like curtains near an open window. Otherwise, the fact that this 36-minute record plays like it's twice as long means that something went wrong here. As with a lot of bands of late, their vocalists, Giovanni Betteo and Stefanie Hodapp, are dragging them down. Just the fact that you need a Google search to tell that more than one person sings in Young Prisms is the reddest of red flags. Their personality-bereft voices take on a chameleonic quality in which, when surrounded by the accompanying music, they eventually become nothing at all. It's possible that the lack of inspiring melodies is a reason why there's no passion in their performances-- alternately, as the maxim of "Sugar" states, "I'm still high/ I'm still alive." With those extremely modest goals checked off the list, it's unclear if Young Prisms care much about accomplishing much else for the time being.

Artist: Young Prisms, Album: Friends For Now, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.5 Album review: "Do not be fooled by the triangles and female nudity on the album cover: San Francisco's Young Prisms have absolutely nothing to do with witch house or whatever. The contents in their cauldron: shadowy, reverb-smothered guitar rock-- something that's never been in short supply, sure, but that doesn't diminish how well-timed the band's debut LP, Friends For Now, feels. In case your issue of Indie Rock Gossip ended up in your neighbor's mailbox last month, the knotty Canadian indie rockers in Women spectacularly dismantled on stage at the tail end of 2010, leaving a potential void for similarly styled up-and-comers to take their place while the band works their shit out. In a sense, Young Prisms are perfect placeholders; they seem to favor complexity and confusion above all else, and the notable moments of Friends For Now find the band utilizing those elements like able chemists. Not so fast, though: It seems the band forgot that while you're making music, it's a good idea to have some hooks. Instead, the record's leaden; as a straight-through listen, it plays like a monolith-- massive and somewhat uninteresting. Every once in a while, an enjoyable part of the record's whole emerges from the murk-- the menacing Sonic Youth-y guitar line that emerges in the middle of "Feel Fine", or the way that the submerged melody of "In Your Room" breathes like curtains near an open window. Otherwise, the fact that this 36-minute record plays like it's twice as long means that something went wrong here. As with a lot of bands of late, their vocalists, Giovanni Betteo and Stefanie Hodapp, are dragging them down. Just the fact that you need a Google search to tell that more than one person sings in Young Prisms is the reddest of red flags. Their personality-bereft voices take on a chameleonic quality in which, when surrounded by the accompanying music, they eventually become nothing at all. It's possible that the lack of inspiring melodies is a reason why there's no passion in their performances-- alternately, as the maxim of "Sugar" states, "I'm still high/ I'm still alive." With those extremely modest goals checked off the list, it's unclear if Young Prisms care much about accomplishing much else for the time being."

TOBACCO

Ripe & Majestic

Electronic

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

When Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003, his approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada. By 2004, in time for the second BMSR full-length Start a People, he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 15 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But he hasn’t done himself any favors with albums that sound increasingly half-baked. Even at his most epic, namely BMSR’s sprawling 2007 breakthrough Dandelion Gum, Fec tends to throw songs together without much regard for finessing the flow between tracks. He has always maintained that BMSR and Tobacco are separate entities—BMSR is the more pop-leaning of the two—but by 2014’s Tobacco album Ultima II Massage, the line had gotten thin. On that album, it was hard to tell the difference between the more traditionally song-oriented style BMSR had evolved into, and the jagged edges that initially set Tobacco apart. Ultima II played like a hodge-podge of leftovers, so it could signal trouble that the latest Tobacco album Ripe & Majestic literally is a hodge-podge of leftovers spanning 2007 to present. It is almost completely devoid of vocals, and only two of its 24 tracks are more recent than 2015, one being an instrumental of a track he gave to rapper Beans, released as “Cemetery Wind.” Nevertheless, Ripe & Majestic actually flows. This is the first time Fec has recaptured Dandelion Gum’s sense of journeying through a landscape filled with peaks, valleys, and strangely-colored flora. With its synth line that echoes off into the distance, “Octogram” creates a feeling of looking out towards a windswept horizon. It also has an almost identical production style as Dandelion Gum—which is no surprise, since it hails from the same year. But unlike the abrupt, whiplash-inducing stops on previous Tobacco albums, “Octogram” segues seamlessly into “Feels Like Nothing,” a tune from a different period where soft synth chords percolate in an intricate, perfectly woven call-and-response with what sounds like a fingerpicked banjo filtered through light distortion. Shifting in style and tone ever so slightly from tune to tune, Ripe & Majestic sidesteps the punishing uniformity and sandpaper-y abrasion of last year’s proper Tobacco album, Sweatbox Dynasty. This time, in spite of the usual sophomoric song titles (“Slaughtered by the Amway Guy,” “Hick School,” “Pube Zone”) Fec doesn’t focus so much on obscuring the beauty in his music. “Wig Blows Off,” for example, skips along at a hopscotch cadence, the mood of the synths as sunny and hopeful as that childhood feeling of anticipation on a picture-perfect summer day. There are even times when Fec finally pushes himself beyond the musical limits that so strongly define him. On “Sassy Ministries” (the aforementioned Beans instrumental), slick keyboards and simulated handclaps show that, when he wants to, Fec is capable of crafting glossy electronica without sacrificing his individuality. And though the moody noise-collage of album closer “Moss Mouth” is 10 years old, it proves how much Fec has grown. Back in 2007, he probably wouldn’t have allowed a percussive thump of static to play out against a heartbeat for four and a half minutes—not without making it painful in some way. This time, his touch is spare and patient. And strangely enough, the lack of vocals on this material highlights what a proficient and attentive arranger Fec has been for a long time now. In spite of his efforts to scuff-up them up, his synths really do sing. A most unlikely late-career coup, Ripe & Majestic lives up to its name.

Artist: TOBACCO, Album: Ripe & Majestic, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "When Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003, his approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada. By 2004, in time for the second BMSR full-length Start a People, he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 15 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But he hasn’t done himself any favors with albums that sound increasingly half-baked. Even at his most epic, namely BMSR’s sprawling 2007 breakthrough Dandelion Gum, Fec tends to throw songs together without much regard for finessing the flow between tracks. He has always maintained that BMSR and Tobacco are separate entities—BMSR is the more pop-leaning of the two—but by 2014’s Tobacco album Ultima II Massage, the line had gotten thin. On that album, it was hard to tell the difference between the more traditionally song-oriented style BMSR had evolved into, and the jagged edges that initially set Tobacco apart. Ultima II played like a hodge-podge of leftovers, so it could signal trouble that the latest Tobacco album Ripe & Majestic literally is a hodge-podge of leftovers spanning 2007 to present. It is almost completely devoid of vocals, and only two of its 24 tracks are more recent than 2015, one being an instrumental of a track he gave to rapper Beans, released as “Cemetery Wind.” Nevertheless, Ripe & Majestic actually flows. This is the first time Fec has recaptured Dandelion Gum’s sense of journeying through a landscape filled with peaks, valleys, and strangely-colored flora. With its synth line that echoes off into the distance, “Octogram” creates a feeling of looking out towards a windswept horizon. It also has an almost identical production style as Dandelion Gum—which is no surprise, since it hails from the same year. But unlike the abrupt, whiplash-inducing stops on previous Tobacco albums, “Octogram” segues seamlessly into “Feels Like Nothing,” a tune from a different period where soft synth chords percolate in an intricate, perfectly woven call-and-response with what sounds like a fingerpicked banjo filtered through light distortion. Shifting in style and tone ever so slightly from tune to tune, Ripe & Majestic sidesteps the punishing uniformity and sandpaper-y abrasion of last year’s proper Tobacco album, Sweatbox Dynasty. This time, in spite of the usual sophomoric song titles (“Slaughtered by the Amway Guy,” “Hick School,” “Pube Zone”) Fec doesn’t focus so much on obscuring the beauty in his music. “Wig Blows Off,” for example, skips along at a hopscotch cadence, the mood of the synths as sunny and hopeful as that childhood feeling of anticipation on a picture-perfect summer day. There are even times when Fec finally pushes himself beyond the musical limits that so strongly define him. On “Sassy Ministries” (the aforementioned Beans instrumental), slick keyboards and simulated handclaps show that, when he wants to, Fec is capable of crafting glossy electronica without sacrificing his individuality. And though the moody noise-collage of album closer “Moss Mouth” is 10 years old, it proves how much Fec has grown. Back in 2007, he probably wouldn’t have allowed a percussive thump of static to play out against a heartbeat for four and a half minutes—not without making it painful in some way. This time, his touch is spare and patient. And strangely enough, the lack of vocals on this material highlights what a proficient and attentive arranger Fec has been for a long time now. In spite of his efforts to scuff-up them up, his synths really do sing. A most unlikely late-career coup, Ripe & Majestic lives up to its name."

XTC

Coat of Many Cupboards

Electronic,Rock

Dominique Leone

XTC are a frustrating band. Founding members (and at this point, the only ones left) guitarist Andy Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding are at once highly idiosyncratic, obsessively formal, brutally honest as songwriters, and yet suspiciously self-aware. When Partridge references, in ten separate interviews, the same "exorcism of influences" in regard to his fondness for the music of Brian Wilson and the Beatles, or Moulding spins his bandmate's decision to stop touring as the best thing to ever happen to their writing, their old record contract with Virgin isn't the only thing that seems fishy. Though XTC could rave it up, most fans will tell you that their strengths probably were closer to the studio than the dressing room. However, it might have been nice not to read about the "quirky, cult heroes from Swindon" for the last twenty years, but rather to see headlines proclaiming the great bringers of creativity and classic pop back to the Top 40. I can't even imagine what Andy and Colin would look like on the cover of Spin-- these guys deserved more than they ever got. From the press, the public, their label, and various managers, XTC have been a tragically under-appreciated band in every sense. End sermon. Coat of Many Cupboards celebrates two things: the first being the history of XTC, as told through their own viewpoints, and with an extensive essay by super fan (and fellow obsessive-- Chalkhills regulars, you know what I'm talking about) Harrison Sherwood. The second is to raise the joyous flag for XTC's final chapter involving Virgin Records. The band left this label in the late 90s, and started up their own mess. Partridge, especially, has been quite happy to expound on the plethora of injustices and molestation brought against him by the label (who, ironically, are probably in worse shape now than he is), and this set collects material recorded during the band's residence under their no-good wing. Sound bitter? Tell me about it. The four discs of this set are roughly divided into the periods of 1977-79, 1979-81, 1981-86 and 1987-1992. Now, many bands half XTC's age already have career retrospectives in box form, so this set shouldn't really be special in and of itself. What's odd, though, is that when Partridge and Moulding were plucked their choices for the set, they decided that, rather than compiling a selection of singles and choice album tracks, they'd fill the majority of the box with demo versions and live recordings of their songs. Bam! Now you see why this set is so necessary for the devoted XTC fan. In fact, this set is another in a growing line of collectible paraphernalia for dedicated fans (along with recently issued demo recordings of their proper studio records), as the uninitiated will most likely prefer the studio albums over a set of rare rarities and alternate takes. The first disc showcases the only era in the band's history when they might possibly have been confused for punks. Tunes like "Science Friction," "Traffic Light Rock" and "Radios in Motion" are fast, a tad out of control (for XTC, anyway), and certainly not without their own charming irreverence. But even at this early stage, XTC were more DC Comics than CBGB's. And how many punk bands put Beach Boy sopranos in their songs like Partridge did in "Radios"? These boys cast themselves much nearer the new-wave camp with the Farfisa spunk of the previously unreleased "Fireball XL5/Fireball Dub" and the buoyant "Are You Receiving Me." Of course, the best songs are the ones that sound like they're too hard for real punks to play at all, like the single version (featuring way more funky clavinet than an English band in the late 70s should have been able to get away with) of Partridge's wonderfully lucid "This Is Pop" or Moulding's sophisticated acoustic jaunt, "Ten Feet Tall." The second disc picks up the story wherein XTC were making the transition from attention deficient rowdies to something altogether brainy (and yet, still rocking hard enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the Jam). "Life Begins at the Hop" is a peppy piece of ska-pop (reportedly featuring Sting on "lead handclaps"), and one of the last times XTC could claim to be addressing the "boys and girls" on record. The finest moments are during the room-clearing zeal of "No Language in Our Lungs" and the wonderfully quaint demo version of their minor 1982 hit "Senses Working Overtime." There's also an excellent, early live version of "Snowman" which is almost worth the price of admission, if only to show what kind of band they might have been had Partridge not suffered a crippling (and apparently permanent) bout of stage anxiety. The band sounds invincible, tearing through a song that sounded almost ambient at times on the English Settlement LP, yet never loses grasp of its whimsical atmosphere. Disc 3 begins with an unused single recording of the non-album track "Punch and Judy." "Punchy" is a good word to describe the rocky ping-pong groove of the tune, though it's clear that even by 1981, XTC were already more interested in working in the studio (check the nifty piano line, and subtle, panned guitar work) than onstage. "Fly on the Wall" is more processed pop strangeness (and as legend has it, a song which Virgin was planning as a single, only to listen with devastation at the rather impenetrable thing which XTC had produced), and the live "Yacht Dance" is a pretty convincing argument for the band not touring-- its refined arrangement, and emphasis on acoustic rather than electric textures wasn't the kind of thing that could ever rile up the concert crowds. Of course, the band would venture further into progressive pop craft and studio experimentation than most people ever might have predicted in 1978. 1983's gorgeous "Ladybird" and "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" sparkled with such delicacy and fine craftsmanship that you'd have a hard time besting it outside of classic Beatles or Kinks. A modest demo version of their biggest American hit, the controversial "Dear God," points toward their increasingly baroque tendencies, while at the same time showing that, despite the fact they'd given up the music biz game, XTC were hardly becoming complacent. The final disc captures the band at its most overtly Beatlesque (with a fair amount of Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach as well), and even features a couple of gems by their psychedelic alter egos the Dukes of Stratosphear. However, fans will probably want to check previously unreleased tunes like "Terrorism" (an aggressive, mildly Middle Eastern rocker), "Find the Fox" (a mild-mannered, loping

Artist: XTC, Album: Coat of Many Cupboards, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "XTC are a frustrating band. Founding members (and at this point, the only ones left) guitarist Andy Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding are at once highly idiosyncratic, obsessively formal, brutally honest as songwriters, and yet suspiciously self-aware. When Partridge references, in ten separate interviews, the same "exorcism of influences" in regard to his fondness for the music of Brian Wilson and the Beatles, or Moulding spins his bandmate's decision to stop touring as the best thing to ever happen to their writing, their old record contract with Virgin isn't the only thing that seems fishy. Though XTC could rave it up, most fans will tell you that their strengths probably were closer to the studio than the dressing room. However, it might have been nice not to read about the "quirky, cult heroes from Swindon" for the last twenty years, but rather to see headlines proclaiming the great bringers of creativity and classic pop back to the Top 40. I can't even imagine what Andy and Colin would look like on the cover of Spin-- these guys deserved more than they ever got. From the press, the public, their label, and various managers, XTC have been a tragically under-appreciated band in every sense. End sermon. Coat of Many Cupboards celebrates two things: the first being the history of XTC, as told through their own viewpoints, and with an extensive essay by super fan (and fellow obsessive-- Chalkhills regulars, you know what I'm talking about) Harrison Sherwood. The second is to raise the joyous flag for XTC's final chapter involving Virgin Records. The band left this label in the late 90s, and started up their own mess. Partridge, especially, has been quite happy to expound on the plethora of injustices and molestation brought against him by the label (who, ironically, are probably in worse shape now than he is), and this set collects material recorded during the band's residence under their no-good wing. Sound bitter? Tell me about it. The four discs of this set are roughly divided into the periods of 1977-79, 1979-81, 1981-86 and 1987-1992. Now, many bands half XTC's age already have career retrospectives in box form, so this set shouldn't really be special in and of itself. What's odd, though, is that when Partridge and Moulding were plucked their choices for the set, they decided that, rather than compiling a selection of singles and choice album tracks, they'd fill the majority of the box with demo versions and live recordings of their songs. Bam! Now you see why this set is so necessary for the devoted XTC fan. In fact, this set is another in a growing line of collectible paraphernalia for dedicated fans (along with recently issued demo recordings of their proper studio records), as the uninitiated will most likely prefer the studio albums over a set of rare rarities and alternate takes. The first disc showcases the only era in the band's history when they might possibly have been confused for punks. Tunes like "Science Friction," "Traffic Light Rock" and "Radios in Motion" are fast, a tad out of control (for XTC, anyway), and certainly not without their own charming irreverence. But even at this early stage, XTC were more DC Comics than CBGB's. And how many punk bands put Beach Boy sopranos in their songs like Partridge did in "Radios"? These boys cast themselves much nearer the new-wave camp with the Farfisa spunk of the previously unreleased "Fireball XL5/Fireball Dub" and the buoyant "Are You Receiving Me." Of course, the best songs are the ones that sound like they're too hard for real punks to play at all, like the single version (featuring way more funky clavinet than an English band in the late 70s should have been able to get away with) of Partridge's wonderfully lucid "This Is Pop" or Moulding's sophisticated acoustic jaunt, "Ten Feet Tall." The second disc picks up the story wherein XTC were making the transition from attention deficient rowdies to something altogether brainy (and yet, still rocking hard enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the Jam). "Life Begins at the Hop" is a peppy piece of ska-pop (reportedly featuring Sting on "lead handclaps"), and one of the last times XTC could claim to be addressing the "boys and girls" on record. The finest moments are during the room-clearing zeal of "No Language in Our Lungs" and the wonderfully quaint demo version of their minor 1982 hit "Senses Working Overtime." There's also an excellent, early live version of "Snowman" which is almost worth the price of admission, if only to show what kind of band they might have been had Partridge not suffered a crippling (and apparently permanent) bout of stage anxiety. The band sounds invincible, tearing through a song that sounded almost ambient at times on the English Settlement LP, yet never loses grasp of its whimsical atmosphere. Disc 3 begins with an unused single recording of the non-album track "Punch and Judy." "Punchy" is a good word to describe the rocky ping-pong groove of the tune, though it's clear that even by 1981, XTC were already more interested in working in the studio (check the nifty piano line, and subtle, panned guitar work) than onstage. "Fly on the Wall" is more processed pop strangeness (and as legend has it, a song which Virgin was planning as a single, only to listen with devastation at the rather impenetrable thing which XTC had produced), and the live "Yacht Dance" is a pretty convincing argument for the band not touring-- its refined arrangement, and emphasis on acoustic rather than electric textures wasn't the kind of thing that could ever rile up the concert crowds. Of course, the band would venture further into progressive pop craft and studio experimentation than most people ever might have predicted in 1978. 1983's gorgeous "Ladybird" and "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" sparkled with such delicacy and fine craftsmanship that you'd have a hard time besting it outside of classic Beatles or Kinks. A modest demo version of their biggest American hit, the controversial "Dear God," points toward their increasingly baroque tendencies, while at the same time showing that, despite the fact they'd given up the music biz game, XTC were hardly becoming complacent. The final disc captures the band at its most overtly Beatlesque (with a fair amount of Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach as well), and even features a couple of gems by their psychedelic alter egos the Dukes of Stratosphear. However, fans will probably want to check previously unreleased tunes like "Terrorism" (an aggressive, mildly Middle Eastern rocker), "Find the Fox" (a mild-mannered, loping "

Boosie Badazz

Out My Feelings (In My Past)

Rap

Israel Daramola

Since his release from prison in March of 2014, Boosie Badazz has made some of the best "adult" rap music imaginable. This is partly by design: Baton Rouge and the backwoods Southern communities that gravitated toward Boosie appreciated him for the thoughtful street rapper he always was, even as he came to fame off songs like "Wipe Me Down" and ratchet culture, and since his release, it feels as though Boosie has committed to living up to the 2Pac comparisons those fans gave to him. The other part of this is that Boosie (government name Torrance Hatch) has been through so much strife and ill will that it would be hard to talk about anything else on record. Past the familiar story of the existential dread that comes from street hustling, he went from staring the possibility of a death penalty in the face to serving time in one of the harshest prisons in Louisiana to a freedom nobody believed he’d get to see to the discovery that he had kidney cancer. It’s this diagnosis that led to Boosie’s most emotionally gripping album to date: In My Feelings (Goin’ Thru It), released just earlier this year. After a nephrectomy to remove half his kidney, Boosie was declared cancer-free: news that is both cause for joyous celebration and introspection on a life lived. His newest album Out My Feelings (In My Past) is borne of this introspection, filled with solemn musings about the old-school street life he came from, the people lost to prison, death, or just time over the years, and his inability to understand how much street codes have changed amongst the youth of today. "We grew up youngstas on the corner, tryna make a livin/ Tryna make it back home, so we take a pistol," he begins on "Takem Back," painting a grim snapshot of the most impressionable and vulnerable time in a young black man’s life in a rough environment. Throughout Out My Feelings, Boosie reflects on a life covered in scars and pain. Not just his own, but those of the people around him and people he’s interacted with; on "Look at Life Different" he raps about a mother with sons who are stuck in jail, one who is gangbanging and another abusing drugs. His tone is somber but resigned—he knows this story too well: "Asked me to pray wit her and asked me can I call Johnny/ That’s her baby boy who wylin’, catchin body after body." It's clear from his ragged delivery that he hurts for her and her sons the way he hurts for his own mother and the grief he brought her during his own wild days. "Thank God for Boosie" is repeated throughout the song, and the implication is that rap was the only thing that saved Torrance Hatch from these dire fates. Out My Feelings doesn’t have the rawness of In My Feelings, but its production is impeccable where that one was spotty, and it soars when Boosie reminisces on his pre-rap days or makes statements in line with Black Lives Matter about the murders of unarmed black people by cops. Its lows come more sporadically and feel uncomfortable—like the homophobic lyrics found on "The Truth," for example—and the lecturing to young street kids about not sticking to the code of his youth is understandable but carries an "old man yelling at a cloud" vibe after awhile. Incidentally, one of the best songs on the album is "Wanna B Heard," a wistful love letter to the forgotten where Boosie raps about the pull of gang life and the cry for help that the violence and crime committed by street kids really is. The most potent line: "I saw Glenn had something on his mind, I should’ve asked him what’s wrong/ Probably would’ve told me instead of blasting his dome." Above anything else, Boosie’s intense popularity began with those most ignored. He was their star, because he listened and he understood and recognized that their pain was real and it mattered in a way a lot of self-proclaimed "street" rappers have never been able to do. Thank God for Boosie.

Artist: Boosie Badazz, Album: Out My Feelings (In My Past), Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Since his release from prison in March of 2014, Boosie Badazz has made some of the best "adult" rap music imaginable. This is partly by design: Baton Rouge and the backwoods Southern communities that gravitated toward Boosie appreciated him for the thoughtful street rapper he always was, even as he came to fame off songs like "Wipe Me Down" and ratchet culture, and since his release, it feels as though Boosie has committed to living up to the 2Pac comparisons those fans gave to him. The other part of this is that Boosie (government name Torrance Hatch) has been through so much strife and ill will that it would be hard to talk about anything else on record. Past the familiar story of the existential dread that comes from street hustling, he went from staring the possibility of a death penalty in the face to serving time in one of the harshest prisons in Louisiana to a freedom nobody believed he’d get to see to the discovery that he had kidney cancer. It’s this diagnosis that led to Boosie’s most emotionally gripping album to date: In My Feelings (Goin’ Thru It), released just earlier this year. After a nephrectomy to remove half his kidney, Boosie was declared cancer-free: news that is both cause for joyous celebration and introspection on a life lived. His newest album Out My Feelings (In My Past) is borne of this introspection, filled with solemn musings about the old-school street life he came from, the people lost to prison, death, or just time over the years, and his inability to understand how much street codes have changed amongst the youth of today. "We grew up youngstas on the corner, tryna make a livin/ Tryna make it back home, so we take a pistol," he begins on "Takem Back," painting a grim snapshot of the most impressionable and vulnerable time in a young black man’s life in a rough environment. Throughout Out My Feelings, Boosie reflects on a life covered in scars and pain. Not just his own, but those of the people around him and people he’s interacted with; on "Look at Life Different" he raps about a mother with sons who are stuck in jail, one who is gangbanging and another abusing drugs. His tone is somber but resigned—he knows this story too well: "Asked me to pray wit her and asked me can I call Johnny/ That’s her baby boy who wylin’, catchin body after body." It's clear from his ragged delivery that he hurts for her and her sons the way he hurts for his own mother and the grief he brought her during his own wild days. "Thank God for Boosie" is repeated throughout the song, and the implication is that rap was the only thing that saved Torrance Hatch from these dire fates. Out My Feelings doesn’t have the rawness of In My Feelings, but its production is impeccable where that one was spotty, and it soars when Boosie reminisces on his pre-rap days or makes statements in line with Black Lives Matter about the murders of unarmed black people by cops. Its lows come more sporadically and feel uncomfortable—like the homophobic lyrics found on "The Truth," for example—and the lecturing to young street kids about not sticking to the code of his youth is understandable but carries an "old man yelling at a cloud" vibe after awhile. Incidentally, one of the best songs on the album is "Wanna B Heard," a wistful love letter to the forgotten where Boosie raps about the pull of gang life and the cry for help that the violence and crime committed by street kids really is. The most potent line: "I saw Glenn had something on his mind, I should’ve asked him what’s wrong/ Probably would’ve told me instead of blasting his dome." Above anything else, Boosie’s intense popularity began with those most ignored. He was their star, because he listened and he understood and recognized that their pain was real and it mattered in a way a lot of self-proclaimed "street" rappers have never been able to do. Thank God for Boosie."

Jason Isbell

Sirens of the Ditch

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Any fiction teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that details-- precisely chosen, concisely described-- are crucial for making stories and characters believable. At least from his very first songs with the Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell has proved he's innately aware of this maxim: "Outfit", "Decoration Day", and "Danko/Manuel" are crammed with telling observations, concrete imagery, and lots of proper nouns. Likewise, his debut solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, works so well because it sounds so specific, whether he's ostensibly singing about his own predicaments or about his characters'. On "Grown", he admits to "dancing to 'Purple Rain'" as a kid; on "Try", he advises himself to "take a year off and go back home," as if he's already worked out a plan in his head. With its observations about "bombs in the sand" and "scripture on grocery store signs," "Dress Blues" is the most complicated consideration of military heroism since the Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier". Best of all is the swamp-rock saga "Down in a Hole", which comes up one corncob shy of Faulknerian. In the first verse, Isbell describes a man "standing in the window with his tongue hanging out/ With a dirty white suit, a big white hat, and a bullet in his pocket." The man's wealth and ambition have corroded a small Southern town, but rather than preach outright, Isbell couches it in a character's advice to another not to work for this man. "It's like selling your soul," he warns. Isbell himself is obviously an ambitious songwriter and storyteller, and perhaps that trait led to his exit from the Drive-By Truckers earlier this year. Who but the band really know? When Isbell came aboard for the Southern Rock Opera tour in 2002, filling out the band's Skynyrdesque three-guitar attack, his work fit perfectly alongside that of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, both of whom specialize in story-songs drenched in local color and rich with regional detail. In 2004 and 2005, when the Truckers released Decoration Day and The Dirty South, it seemed unfair that one band should horde three top-notch songwriters, but in 2006, the lackluster A Blessing and a Curse showed the cracks in the unit. Like that album, Sirens occasionally sounds too slick, as on "Chicago Promenade" and "Brand New Kind of Actress", like he's trying to sell us something. With several Truckers in tow-- including Patterson Hood (who co-produces), bass player Shonna Tucker, and drummer Brad Morgan-- Isbell shows off his mastery of heavy Southern rock riffage on "Try" (which could be an epilogue to "Danko/Manuel"), but the mostly acoustic second half works hard to distance him from the Truckers' dense electric sound and to expand his lyrical and vocal range. "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades"-- five minutes of Muscle Shoals soul-- is the most obvious departure and features Isbell's most effortless and powerful performance. "The Magician" strums along at a front-porch clip that underscores the ache of the lyrics ("I had a bride/ I sawed her in half" is both sad and funny), and the tense guitars of "Shotgun Wedding" bolster its shoddy stalker story, but closer "The Devil Is My Running Mate" is dark and too heavy-handed, suggesting that political commentary isn't Isbell's forte. It's a weak ending for a strong debut full of the kind of confident, charismatic songwriting that just can't be taught.

Artist: Jason Isbell, Album: Sirens of the Ditch, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Any fiction teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that details-- precisely chosen, concisely described-- are crucial for making stories and characters believable. At least from his very first songs with the Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell has proved he's innately aware of this maxim: "Outfit", "Decoration Day", and "Danko/Manuel" are crammed with telling observations, concrete imagery, and lots of proper nouns. Likewise, his debut solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, works so well because it sounds so specific, whether he's ostensibly singing about his own predicaments or about his characters'. On "Grown", he admits to "dancing to 'Purple Rain'" as a kid; on "Try", he advises himself to "take a year off and go back home," as if he's already worked out a plan in his head. With its observations about "bombs in the sand" and "scripture on grocery store signs," "Dress Blues" is the most complicated consideration of military heroism since the Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier". Best of all is the swamp-rock saga "Down in a Hole", which comes up one corncob shy of Faulknerian. In the first verse, Isbell describes a man "standing in the window with his tongue hanging out/ With a dirty white suit, a big white hat, and a bullet in his pocket." The man's wealth and ambition have corroded a small Southern town, but rather than preach outright, Isbell couches it in a character's advice to another not to work for this man. "It's like selling your soul," he warns. Isbell himself is obviously an ambitious songwriter and storyteller, and perhaps that trait led to his exit from the Drive-By Truckers earlier this year. Who but the band really know? When Isbell came aboard for the Southern Rock Opera tour in 2002, filling out the band's Skynyrdesque three-guitar attack, his work fit perfectly alongside that of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, both of whom specialize in story-songs drenched in local color and rich with regional detail. In 2004 and 2005, when the Truckers released Decoration Day and The Dirty South, it seemed unfair that one band should horde three top-notch songwriters, but in 2006, the lackluster A Blessing and a Curse showed the cracks in the unit. Like that album, Sirens occasionally sounds too slick, as on "Chicago Promenade" and "Brand New Kind of Actress", like he's trying to sell us something. With several Truckers in tow-- including Patterson Hood (who co-produces), bass player Shonna Tucker, and drummer Brad Morgan-- Isbell shows off his mastery of heavy Southern rock riffage on "Try" (which could be an epilogue to "Danko/Manuel"), but the mostly acoustic second half works hard to distance him from the Truckers' dense electric sound and to expand his lyrical and vocal range. "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades"-- five minutes of Muscle Shoals soul-- is the most obvious departure and features Isbell's most effortless and powerful performance. "The Magician" strums along at a front-porch clip that underscores the ache of the lyrics ("I had a bride/ I sawed her in half" is both sad and funny), and the tense guitars of "Shotgun Wedding" bolster its shoddy stalker story, but closer "The Devil Is My Running Mate" is dark and too heavy-handed, suggesting that political commentary isn't Isbell's forte. It's a weak ending for a strong debut full of the kind of confident, charismatic songwriting that just can't be taught."

Total Control

Henge Beat

Rock

Martin Douglas

For the most part, "supergroup" is a relative term. It's a descriptor that itself holds a load of other nebulous, subjective ideas, such as "success," "relevance," and the notion of a "primary band." But with musicians-- especially nowadays-- being prone to enlist in three or four groups at a time, devoting a fairly even amount of attention to all of them, is there any way to logically keep track of which bands are bands and which bands are side-projects or supergroups? Total Control are as close to a supergroup as a tandem of cult Australian punks can get. Each member is involved in another band, the most well-known of which being guitarist Mikey Young's Eddy Current Suppression Ring-- which, if you only have a passing knowledge of current garage-rock, can elicit the same sort of confused blank stare as if you told someone your band's most famous member also plays in the Growlers. Thankfully, when mild obscurity is on a group's side, they are allowed few expectations to conquer and the chance to legitimately surprise people. But even if you're intimately familiar with Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race, Straightjacket Nation, and the Collapse, Henge Beat is startlingly good; good enough to surpass even the top-shelf efforts from the members' other bands. As you might expect from a band named after a six-minute Motels single, Total Control possess a rich knowledge of a very specific point in music history. Though bearing no resemblance to the song in which they've derived their name, most of their key influences were very much active in 1979, the year the single was released. Opener "See More Glass" is indebted to Suicide's second self-titled album. Shades of late-period Roxy Music can be found in closer "Love Performance". Wire, the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, and Swell Maps all slow up in the strands of Total Control's DNA. But if Henge Beat were simply a 36-minute post-punk genre exercise, it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. The band explores a different realm of possibilities in every song, punctuating creeping lurches with ear-splitting explosions and delivering spacey instrumentals not incredibly far removed from elevator music right after. "The Hammer" is eerie, black-clad darkwave. "Shame Thugs" sounds like alternate title screen music for beloved Super Nintendo RPG EarthBound. "No Bibs" comes off like SST hardcore thrown into vertigo. (If you have an older sibling that grew up in the 1980s and passed you all of their coolest punk records when they went off to college, give them a copy of Henge Beat and they may shed actual tears of joy.) As if the ultra-cohesive fusion of punk music's fruitful first decade wasn't enough, Dan Stewart (Straightjacket Nation) makes for a compelling frontman, a lyricist weaned on Salinger and Philip K. Dick whose vocal range stays in the pocket but exhibits a great deal of versatility regardless. His taste in literature proves that he knows the value of a good narrator: The greedy factory owner in "Retiree" barks, "keep them at work," in an icy, robotic tone while looking at a gold watch ticking down the days. "Meds II" captures the redundancy of self-medicated culture-- through methods both legal and otherwise-- with the lyric, "Taking pills to remember to take pills to forget." "Love Performance" can sound glittery and optimistic due to its blinking neon synths and "these are not the last days" refrain, but it's actually a rumination on our fantasies of being eulogized ("In the last days, they'll sing your praise"), finding Stewart pitching rocks at the celebratory stance of the supposedly righteous whenever they think the world's number is being called (think Y2k, the rapture, the end of the Mayan calendar). Album centerpiece "Carpet Rash" finds Stewart at his most detached vocally while crafting an array of evocative imagery ("Drinking detergent and licking the walls/ Eating your breakfast in shower stalls"), writing a song that fully embodies how desperate, unfulfilling, and hopeless sex can sometimes be. Throughout the entirety of Henge Beat, there is a sharp fluidity in all of its elements, from the interplay of the band's members to its lyrical concepts. In spite of being primarily described as a composite of members from other groups, Total Control display the kind of unity that veteran bands take years to cultivate. They make you realize that a lot of the best "supergroups" are merely regular old groups with members noteworthy for being excellent at what they do.

Artist: Total Control, Album: Henge Beat, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "For the most part, "supergroup" is a relative term. It's a descriptor that itself holds a load of other nebulous, subjective ideas, such as "success," "relevance," and the notion of a "primary band." But with musicians-- especially nowadays-- being prone to enlist in three or four groups at a time, devoting a fairly even amount of attention to all of them, is there any way to logically keep track of which bands are bands and which bands are side-projects or supergroups? Total Control are as close to a supergroup as a tandem of cult Australian punks can get. Each member is involved in another band, the most well-known of which being guitarist Mikey Young's Eddy Current Suppression Ring-- which, if you only have a passing knowledge of current garage-rock, can elicit the same sort of confused blank stare as if you told someone your band's most famous member also plays in the Growlers. Thankfully, when mild obscurity is on a group's side, they are allowed few expectations to conquer and the chance to legitimately surprise people. But even if you're intimately familiar with Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race, Straightjacket Nation, and the Collapse, Henge Beat is startlingly good; good enough to surpass even the top-shelf efforts from the members' other bands. As you might expect from a band named after a six-minute Motels single, Total Control possess a rich knowledge of a very specific point in music history. Though bearing no resemblance to the song in which they've derived their name, most of their key influences were very much active in 1979, the year the single was released. Opener "See More Glass" is indebted to Suicide's second self-titled album. Shades of late-period Roxy Music can be found in closer "Love Performance". Wire, the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, and Swell Maps all slow up in the strands of Total Control's DNA. But if Henge Beat were simply a 36-minute post-punk genre exercise, it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. The band explores a different realm of possibilities in every song, punctuating creeping lurches with ear-splitting explosions and delivering spacey instrumentals not incredibly far removed from elevator music right after. "The Hammer" is eerie, black-clad darkwave. "Shame Thugs" sounds like alternate title screen music for beloved Super Nintendo RPG EarthBound. "No Bibs" comes off like SST hardcore thrown into vertigo. (If you have an older sibling that grew up in the 1980s and passed you all of their coolest punk records when they went off to college, give them a copy of Henge Beat and they may shed actual tears of joy.) As if the ultra-cohesive fusion of punk music's fruitful first decade wasn't enough, Dan Stewart (Straightjacket Nation) makes for a compelling frontman, a lyricist weaned on Salinger and Philip K. Dick whose vocal range stays in the pocket but exhibits a great deal of versatility regardless. His taste in literature proves that he knows the value of a good narrator: The greedy factory owner in "Retiree" barks, "keep them at work," in an icy, robotic tone while looking at a gold watch ticking down the days. "Meds II" captures the redundancy of self-medicated culture-- through methods both legal and otherwise-- with the lyric, "Taking pills to remember to take pills to forget." "Love Performance" can sound glittery and optimistic due to its blinking neon synths and "these are not the last days" refrain, but it's actually a rumination on our fantasies of being eulogized ("In the last days, they'll sing your praise"), finding Stewart pitching rocks at the celebratory stance of the supposedly righteous whenever they think the world's number is being called (think Y2k, the rapture, the end of the Mayan calendar). Album centerpiece "Carpet Rash" finds Stewart at his most detached vocally while crafting an array of evocative imagery ("Drinking detergent and licking the walls/ Eating your breakfast in shower stalls"), writing a song that fully embodies how desperate, unfulfilling, and hopeless sex can sometimes be. Throughout the entirety of Henge Beat, there is a sharp fluidity in all of its elements, from the interplay of the band's members to its lyrical concepts. In spite of being primarily described as a composite of members from other groups, Total Control display the kind of unity that veteran bands take years to cultivate. They make you realize that a lot of the best "supergroups" are merely regular old groups with members noteworthy for being excellent at what they do."

Kode9

DJ-Kicks

Electronic

Andy Battaglia

Kode9 is distractingly smart, which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that it can be hard to figure out which way to take him more seriously. As a musician, he's helped negotiate some of the most interesting turns in dance music in recent years, both as a producer and as head of the epochal dubstep label Hyperdub. And then, as an academic, he recently published Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, a head-turning book that surveys aural culture at its most ideologically expansive and theoretically vital. But those expecting Kode9 in either of the above modes might be surprised by his habits as a DJ. In the mix, he's more worldly and more in thrall to thrills-- and way more likely to chase down moments of ecstatic confusion. His installment of the long-running DJ-Kicks series finds its way into more than a few such moments, but it wanders nicely as well. Indeed, more exhilarating than any particular selection or segue is the realization, in general, of just how much has been covered when the 63-minute set spins to a close. DJ-Kicks starts out bright and warm, and begins refracting early with the entrance of Aardvarck and Kode9's own "Blood Orange" and "You Don't Wash (Dub)". The first 10 minutes alone flit through heaving synths, breakbeats, patches of dainty syncopation, heavily modulated basslines, and what might be a thumb-piano-- all highlighting the friction between organic and synthetic, tough and tender, brooding and cool. From there it all pushes forward through manic rushes and spells of mellow reprieve. The tracklist includes stuff from the Hyperdub orbit (Cooly G, Ill Blu, Ikonika, Zomby, Terror Danjah) and markers of external sounds like South African house (Mujava's "Pleaze Mugwanti") and sassy-weird R&B (Rozzi Daime's "Dirty Illusions"). But nothing in a context so steeped sounds quite the same as it would otherwise. Kode9 is too fidgety for that, and too eager to smash tracks together for what might come out of the collision. Sometimes it's mesmerizing (the moody, glimmering blur around Zomby's "Godzilla") and sometimes it's straight-up insane (Addison Groove's "Footcrab"). Few of the collisions stand to shock followers primed to the ways that "dubstep" tends to digress in clubs. But neither have any failed, it's clear by the end, to line up as anything short of a thorough statement of purpose for a musician and thinker with much to say.

Artist: Kode9, Album: DJ-Kicks, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Kode9 is distractingly smart, which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that it can be hard to figure out which way to take him more seriously. As a musician, he's helped negotiate some of the most interesting turns in dance music in recent years, both as a producer and as head of the epochal dubstep label Hyperdub. And then, as an academic, he recently published Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, a head-turning book that surveys aural culture at its most ideologically expansive and theoretically vital. But those expecting Kode9 in either of the above modes might be surprised by his habits as a DJ. In the mix, he's more worldly and more in thrall to thrills-- and way more likely to chase down moments of ecstatic confusion. His installment of the long-running DJ-Kicks series finds its way into more than a few such moments, but it wanders nicely as well. Indeed, more exhilarating than any particular selection or segue is the realization, in general, of just how much has been covered when the 63-minute set spins to a close. DJ-Kicks starts out bright and warm, and begins refracting early with the entrance of Aardvarck and Kode9's own "Blood Orange" and "You Don't Wash (Dub)". The first 10 minutes alone flit through heaving synths, breakbeats, patches of dainty syncopation, heavily modulated basslines, and what might be a thumb-piano-- all highlighting the friction between organic and synthetic, tough and tender, brooding and cool. From there it all pushes forward through manic rushes and spells of mellow reprieve. The tracklist includes stuff from the Hyperdub orbit (Cooly G, Ill Blu, Ikonika, Zomby, Terror Danjah) and markers of external sounds like South African house (Mujava's "Pleaze Mugwanti") and sassy-weird R&B (Rozzi Daime's "Dirty Illusions"). But nothing in a context so steeped sounds quite the same as it would otherwise. Kode9 is too fidgety for that, and too eager to smash tracks together for what might come out of the collision. Sometimes it's mesmerizing (the moody, glimmering blur around Zomby's "Godzilla") and sometimes it's straight-up insane (Addison Groove's "Footcrab"). Few of the collisions stand to shock followers primed to the ways that "dubstep" tends to digress in clubs. But neither have any failed, it's clear by the end, to line up as anything short of a thorough statement of purpose for a musician and thinker with much to say."

André Bratten

Gode

Electronic

Nathan Reese

Some of Norway's best producers seem to compensate for the region's chilly climate by gravitating toward sunny sounds, from Todd Terje's escapist lounge-house to Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm's psychedelic nu-disco. This can't be said for 28-year-old producer André Bratten. Although he records in the same Oslo studio as Terje, Thomas, and Lindstrøm, Bratten's new album Gode is insular and experimental, from conception to execution. Gode is Bratten's second proper full-length record, following 2013's inventively titled Be a Man You Ant and this past summer's Math Ilium Ion EP. It's also the most ambitious work of his career, tackling social and historical injustices of the past—namely the serf-like arrangement between farmers and landowners in early 20th-century Norway. Now, if you're thinking that a double LP about the pre-industrialized Norwegian agrarian economy isn't going to get club kids on the floor, you're right. But this time around that's not Bratten's goal. He wants to tell a story with specific historical context within electronic music, which is an inherently difficult task: A synth stab, field recording, or a programmed drum pattern, however well-conceived, doesn't translate to "meditation on the darker days of Norway’s past, before the country discovered its oil wealth," as Bratten has said. But even if you'd never guess the album's larger themes without reading about it, it's clear from the music that he's attempting something more evocative and wide-ranging. Bratten's production can recall everything from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works to Andy Stott's murky experimentalism. He's cited Brian Eno as an influence, as well as 20th century classical musicians like Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi—known for creating music that plays off a single pitch that generates almost imperceptible microtonal oscillations. Bratten is resourceful at assembling whatever sounds or styles needed to fit the need of the moment: "Primordial Pit" uses mostly live instruments to create a sweeping, post-rock-like grandeur, while "Ins.", the album's shortest track, is a dissonant string arrangement that is as beautiful as it is unnerving. For all this wandering, the most overtly pleasing songs on Gode are the ones that call back to Bratten's roots. "Space Between Left & Right" has a techno pitter-patter that a patient nightclub crowd could easily appreciate, while the album's title track evokes Boards of Canada at their prettiest. Another clear highlight is "Cascade of Events", which features the Norwegian pop singer Susanne Sundfør, who Bratten had previously remixed, her voice shrouded in an analog haze. Having a voice like Sundfør, who has had multiple number one albums in her home country, gives Bratten an anchor to chain his more experimental inclinations to; it'd be fascinating to hear Bratten paired with Sundfør for more than one track. Given the intentions that Gode comes packed with, it's tempting to view its success in terms of that story. Does Gode accomplish Bratten's goal of creating a tribute to the farmers who never had the opportunity to make art because of their circumstances? Quite possibly! But like a museum plaque explaining abstract art to a layperson, background is only a tiny piece of a mostly visceral experience. What's easier to glean, and more universal, is that Bratten has made an expertly produced, emotionally honest record that defies genre and expectation. To understand that requires no homework.

Artist: André Bratten, Album: Gode, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Some of Norway's best producers seem to compensate for the region's chilly climate by gravitating toward sunny sounds, from Todd Terje's escapist lounge-house to Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm's psychedelic nu-disco. This can't be said for 28-year-old producer André Bratten. Although he records in the same Oslo studio as Terje, Thomas, and Lindstrøm, Bratten's new album Gode is insular and experimental, from conception to execution. Gode is Bratten's second proper full-length record, following 2013's inventively titled Be a Man You Ant and this past summer's Math Ilium Ion EP. It's also the most ambitious work of his career, tackling social and historical injustices of the past—namely the serf-like arrangement between farmers and landowners in early 20th-century Norway. Now, if you're thinking that a double LP about the pre-industrialized Norwegian agrarian economy isn't going to get club kids on the floor, you're right. But this time around that's not Bratten's goal. He wants to tell a story with specific historical context within electronic music, which is an inherently difficult task: A synth stab, field recording, or a programmed drum pattern, however well-conceived, doesn't translate to "meditation on the darker days of Norway’s past, before the country discovered its oil wealth," as Bratten has said. But even if you'd never guess the album's larger themes without reading about it, it's clear from the music that he's attempting something more evocative and wide-ranging. Bratten's production can recall everything from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works to Andy Stott's murky experimentalism. He's cited Brian Eno as an influence, as well as 20th century classical musicians like Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi—known for creating music that plays off a single pitch that generates almost imperceptible microtonal oscillations. Bratten is resourceful at assembling whatever sounds or styles needed to fit the need of the moment: "Primordial Pit" uses mostly live instruments to create a sweeping, post-rock-like grandeur, while "Ins.", the album's shortest track, is a dissonant string arrangement that is as beautiful as it is unnerving. For all this wandering, the most overtly pleasing songs on Gode are the ones that call back to Bratten's roots. "Space Between Left & Right" has a techno pitter-patter that a patient nightclub crowd could easily appreciate, while the album's title track evokes Boards of Canada at their prettiest. Another clear highlight is "Cascade of Events", which features the Norwegian pop singer Susanne Sundfør, who Bratten had previously remixed, her voice shrouded in an analog haze. Having a voice like Sundfør, who has had multiple number one albums in her home country, gives Bratten an anchor to chain his more experimental inclinations to; it'd be fascinating to hear Bratten paired with Sundfør for more than one track. Given the intentions that Gode comes packed with, it's tempting to view its success in terms of that story. Does Gode accomplish Bratten's goal of creating a tribute to the farmers who never had the opportunity to make art because of their circumstances? Quite possibly! But like a museum plaque explaining abstract art to a layperson, background is only a tiny piece of a mostly visceral experience. What's easier to glean, and more universal, is that Bratten has made an expertly produced, emotionally honest record that defies genre and expectation. To understand that requires no homework."

Gudrun Gut

I Put a Record On

Electronic

Brian Howe

Gudrun Gut's dazzlingly diverse quarter-century career began with an infinitesimally brief yet pace-setting stint as a percussionist in the earliest incarnation of Einstürzende Neubauten, and currently ends at I Put a Record On. In the intervening span, Gut became practically a thread unto herself in Berlin's underground art and music scenes. She explored cross-sections of new wave, techno, spoken word, multimedia art, and experimental rock in bands like Mania D, Malaria!, Matador, and Project Miasma. There have been film scores, radio plays, videos projects, gallery exhibitions, remixes, a record label, DJ gigs, and the eclectic, collective radio show "The Ocean Club". It seems as if Gut has tried just about everything except the obvious-- making a proper solo album. Now she can tick that off her list as well. It's surprising that it's taken her so long to get around to it, even more so that the album is ingenuous and approachable at a career point when Gut could get away with being as pretentious as she liked. Her zigzagging trajectory through Berlin music is certainly compressed in I Put a Record On, but to interpret her solo album as a career-capping statement is to miss the point. As its title so simply declares, it is a straightforward appreciation-- a record about liking records. While Gut's solo debut has certain overarching qualities-- her Marlene Dietrich-style purr, which implies a good-humored Teutonic chic; smeary, grayscale hazes of techno and dub; and a dark, crackling energy-- its stylistic divagations can be mapped only along the ley lines of Gut's musical honorees. The liner notes of the vinyl LP link each song to an artist, place, or concept that inspired it, and many of Gut's more predictable influences are present. "Cry Easy" pays homage to ESG with stiff, percolating funk, building bar by looped bar toward an itchy canter. "Blätterwald" leavens New Order's anthemic new wave with power-tool synths, and "The Land" is lambent, minimal techno in The Field's vein, couched in Gut's proclivity for detuned shimmy. But some of the best tracks here find Gut dovetailing more surprising influences with her playful, rough-hewn electro. Nowhere is her mischievous spirit more apparent than on "Rock Bottom Riser", the only actual cover on the album. Remaking Smog's folk dirge as a galumphing seether sounds like an awful idea on paper, but Gut pulls it off with aplomb, singing all around the beat and breaking into giggles near the end. She completely overhauls the song while remaining true to its spirit, making the impish energy undergirding all of Smog's music explicit. She also has an affinity for adventurous undie-hop: the shadowy, dubby billows of "Sweet" takes their cue from Dabrye, and cLOUDDEAD inspired the sweetly fractured nursery song "The Wheel". And album standout "Move Me", where snatches of polka are caught up in a scintillating web of swirling synths and ice-blue vocals, is dedicated simply to "Buenos Aires". Gut seems to understand that being able to get away with anything doesn't make it a good idea, and, paired with the confidence to wear her influences, quite literally, on her sleeve, she's produced an album that's charmingly humble and musically satisfying in equal measure.

Artist: Gudrun Gut, Album: I Put a Record On, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Gudrun Gut's dazzlingly diverse quarter-century career began with an infinitesimally brief yet pace-setting stint as a percussionist in the earliest incarnation of Einstürzende Neubauten, and currently ends at I Put a Record On. In the intervening span, Gut became practically a thread unto herself in Berlin's underground art and music scenes. She explored cross-sections of new wave, techno, spoken word, multimedia art, and experimental rock in bands like Mania D, Malaria!, Matador, and Project Miasma. There have been film scores, radio plays, videos projects, gallery exhibitions, remixes, a record label, DJ gigs, and the eclectic, collective radio show "The Ocean Club". It seems as if Gut has tried just about everything except the obvious-- making a proper solo album. Now she can tick that off her list as well. It's surprising that it's taken her so long to get around to it, even more so that the album is ingenuous and approachable at a career point when Gut could get away with being as pretentious as she liked. Her zigzagging trajectory through Berlin music is certainly compressed in I Put a Record On, but to interpret her solo album as a career-capping statement is to miss the point. As its title so simply declares, it is a straightforward appreciation-- a record about liking records. While Gut's solo debut has certain overarching qualities-- her Marlene Dietrich-style purr, which implies a good-humored Teutonic chic; smeary, grayscale hazes of techno and dub; and a dark, crackling energy-- its stylistic divagations can be mapped only along the ley lines of Gut's musical honorees. The liner notes of the vinyl LP link each song to an artist, place, or concept that inspired it, and many of Gut's more predictable influences are present. "Cry Easy" pays homage to ESG with stiff, percolating funk, building bar by looped bar toward an itchy canter. "Blätterwald" leavens New Order's anthemic new wave with power-tool synths, and "The Land" is lambent, minimal techno in The Field's vein, couched in Gut's proclivity for detuned shimmy. But some of the best tracks here find Gut dovetailing more surprising influences with her playful, rough-hewn electro. Nowhere is her mischievous spirit more apparent than on "Rock Bottom Riser", the only actual cover on the album. Remaking Smog's folk dirge as a galumphing seether sounds like an awful idea on paper, but Gut pulls it off with aplomb, singing all around the beat and breaking into giggles near the end. She completely overhauls the song while remaining true to its spirit, making the impish energy undergirding all of Smog's music explicit. She also has an affinity for adventurous undie-hop: the shadowy, dubby billows of "Sweet" takes their cue from Dabrye, and cLOUDDEAD inspired the sweetly fractured nursery song "The Wheel". And album standout "Move Me", where snatches of polka are caught up in a scintillating web of swirling synths and ice-blue vocals, is dedicated simply to "Buenos Aires". Gut seems to understand that being able to get away with anything doesn't make it a good idea, and, paired with the confidence to wear her influences, quite literally, on her sleeve, she's produced an album that's charmingly humble and musically satisfying in equal measure."

Mal Devisa

Kiid

Rock

Jenn Pelly

Deja Carr’s voice is a force of gravity, an instrument of rare range and seemingly limitless capacity for empathy. When she howls, her vocals clip into the red, and her rapping jolts you straight awake. On Kiid, her first full LP, her voice is raw, collected, and honest, scaling heights that you may have forgotten were there. Mal Devisa is Carr’s solo moniker. She grew up in the Bronx and, at five, moved to the college town of Amherst, Mass. Carr seems to have absorbed the intellectual rigor that is the oxygen of such a place—the societal critique in her songs and interviews is razor sharp—as well as its heart. (“I’m definitely a small town person,” Carr once said. “When I go to the city I’m like, ‘Why is no one returning my smile?’ It’s kind of sad.”) At 12, Carr attended a Girls Rock Camp lead by a former member of the ’70s outfit Fanny and started a funk band called Who’da Funk It; the group lasted until Carr was 17, and a year later, in 2014, she released her first music as Mal Devisa. Her debut EP included a cover of Feist’s “Honey Honey” as well as a remarkably classic-sounding blues ballad called “Daisy,” which appears here. Kiid pairs that enormous, smoldering voice with spare instrumentation—Carr is mostly accompanied by her rumbling bass, with occasional piano, drums, and beats. The minimalism of the music is a foil, highlighting how thundering Carr’s alto can be. Rhythm is her primary instrument, and it follows that her grandfather was the New York City-bred jazz drummer Bruno Carr, who recorded with Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. Warmed with tape hiss, Kiid was released with no label after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and it accordingly ascribes to its own genre-skewing logic. Brilliantly sequenced, it contains two sets of five mostly acoustic tracks, capped by a booming rap song at the end of each side—declarations of unwavering autonomy, bars that leave foes present and historical in the dust. Carr’s commanding songs have the wide-open, recursive feeling of jazz and blues. The bass guitar, plucked and strummed, makes Kiid feel tactile and alive. No matter the style, the spirits of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday lurk in all of these songs. Carr’s borderless voice has a similar way of luxuriating in every note. You would not be mistaken for hearing shades of Merrill Garbus, too. (Carr has a tUnE-yArDs tattoo.) The mesmerizing “Sea of Limbs” is performed so starkly that you can feel the dimensions of the room it was recorded in—the darkness and the tables and chairs and caverns of space. “If you swim in a sea of limbs/Don’t be surprised when someone tries to grab you,” Carr sings, wringing the stoic resolve out of such images as “Poseidon and his golden rage” and “skin like a tidal wave.” On the tender “Everybody Knows,” Carr’s melismatic singing twists syllables into sublime shapes. “Everybody knows that my heart grows deeper than the water,” she sings. “I will make a road map out of my heart.” There are more aggressive moments on Kiid, too. The clattering, densely layered “In My Neighborhood” is grounded by sinister industrial electronics. It sounds like an anti-gentrification anthem: “Girl don’t shut your eye/This is called the world,” she snarls, “Don’t look hip enough?/That’s cause I’m not hip enough/In my neighborhood.” Kiid ends with “Dominatrix,” one of the album’s two exhilarating rap songs, erupting all of its frustration into a restless flow. It is a jarring final purge, a menacing wrecking ball of feminist defiance: “I’m a dominatrix when the bass kicks/I’m eating up the spirits like the shackles on the slave ships,” she raps. “I’m better off being a queen in size 16 jeans… or the only black woman slaying science on TV.” These moments, and particularly the boiling-point of “Dominatrix,” underscore the more quiet rage that is simmering all along. The starry penultimate track “Forget that I.” is just Carr and piano, as if there is a sole light beaming down on her: “I am more than what you think of me/I fight fires in the dark/In the beauty of it all/I forget that I have lied/I am holding onto my own life.” Songs so precisely about survival are rarely so full of grace. In interviews, Carr has expressed the inspiration she’s drawn from the Black Lives Matter movement; she once evoked the lyrics to “Forget that I.” when discussing the colorblindness that permeates America, the forces that make it easier to “reject people that don't look like us.” “I know for a fact that everyone is more than what I see when I look at them,” Carr said, “and maybe more than what they see when they look at themselves.” These realities naturally charge all of Kiid. Even its abstract lyrics feel politicized: On “Live Again,” when Carr repeats its titular refrain—“Why do we live again?”—the answer seems to ring out in the song's echoes. Kiid’s opener “Fire” distills her power into its most heartbreakingly simple expression. She sings of “fire in the brains” of all those trying to make sense of our painfully nonsensical world. “Does it kill you to know that we’re all dying?” Carr sings. “It kills me to know.” Musically, it sounds classic—wise, like an old soul—and yet “Fire” is the sound of this very moment. Her lyrics ponder grave injustices, process immense breaches, and yet they are searingly lucid. Perhaps this is what makes Mal Devisa so profound: For 30 minutes, there is nothing between you and her voice.

Artist: Mal Devisa, Album: Kiid, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Deja Carr’s voice is a force of gravity, an instrument of rare range and seemingly limitless capacity for empathy. When she howls, her vocals clip into the red, and her rapping jolts you straight awake. On Kiid, her first full LP, her voice is raw, collected, and honest, scaling heights that you may have forgotten were there. Mal Devisa is Carr’s solo moniker. She grew up in the Bronx and, at five, moved to the college town of Amherst, Mass. Carr seems to have absorbed the intellectual rigor that is the oxygen of such a place—the societal critique in her songs and interviews is razor sharp—as well as its heart. (“I’m definitely a small town person,” Carr once said. “When I go to the city I’m like, ‘Why is no one returning my smile?’ It’s kind of sad.”) At 12, Carr attended a Girls Rock Camp lead by a former member of the ’70s outfit Fanny and started a funk band called Who’da Funk It; the group lasted until Carr was 17, and a year later, in 2014, she released her first music as Mal Devisa. Her debut EP included a cover of Feist’s “Honey Honey” as well as a remarkably classic-sounding blues ballad called “Daisy,” which appears here. Kiid pairs that enormous, smoldering voice with spare instrumentation—Carr is mostly accompanied by her rumbling bass, with occasional piano, drums, and beats. The minimalism of the music is a foil, highlighting how thundering Carr’s alto can be. Rhythm is her primary instrument, and it follows that her grandfather was the New York City-bred jazz drummer Bruno Carr, who recorded with Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. Warmed with tape hiss, Kiid was released with no label after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and it accordingly ascribes to its own genre-skewing logic. Brilliantly sequenced, it contains two sets of five mostly acoustic tracks, capped by a booming rap song at the end of each side—declarations of unwavering autonomy, bars that leave foes present and historical in the dust. Carr’s commanding songs have the wide-open, recursive feeling of jazz and blues. The bass guitar, plucked and strummed, makes Kiid feel tactile and alive. No matter the style, the spirits of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday lurk in all of these songs. Carr’s borderless voice has a similar way of luxuriating in every note. You would not be mistaken for hearing shades of Merrill Garbus, too. (Carr has a tUnE-yArDs tattoo.) The mesmerizing “Sea of Limbs” is performed so starkly that you can feel the dimensions of the room it was recorded in—the darkness and the tables and chairs and caverns of space. “If you swim in a sea of limbs/Don’t be surprised when someone tries to grab you,” Carr sings, wringing the stoic resolve out of such images as “Poseidon and his golden rage” and “skin like a tidal wave.” On the tender “Everybody Knows,” Carr’s melismatic singing twists syllables into sublime shapes. “Everybody knows that my heart grows deeper than the water,” she sings. “I will make a road map out of my heart.” There are more aggressive moments on Kiid, too. The clattering, densely layered “In My Neighborhood” is grounded by sinister industrial electronics. It sounds like an anti-gentrification anthem: “Girl don’t shut your eye/This is called the world,” she snarls, “Don’t look hip enough?/That’s cause I’m not hip enough/In my neighborhood.” Kiid ends with “Dominatrix,” one of the album’s two exhilarating rap songs, erupting all of its frustration into a restless flow. It is a jarring final purge, a menacing wrecking ball of feminist defiance: “I’m a dominatrix when the bass kicks/I’m eating up the spirits like the shackles on the slave ships,” she raps. “I’m better off being a queen in size 16 jeans… or the only black woman slaying science on TV.” These moments, and particularly the boiling-point of “Dominatrix,” underscore the more quiet rage that is simmering all along. The starry penultimate track “Forget that I.” is just Carr and piano, as if there is a sole light beaming down on her: “I am more than what you think of me/I fight fires in the dark/In the beauty of it all/I forget that I have lied/I am holding onto my own life.” Songs so precisely about survival are rarely so full of grace. In interviews, Carr has expressed the inspiration she’s drawn from the Black Lives Matter movement; she once evoked the lyrics to “Forget that I.” when discussing the colorblindness that permeates America, the forces that make it easier to “reject people that don't look like us.” “I know for a fact that everyone is more than what I see when I look at them,” Carr said, “and maybe more than what they see when they look at themselves.” These realities naturally charge all of Kiid. Even its abstract lyrics feel politicized: On “Live Again,” when Carr repeats its titular refrain—“Why do we live again?”—the answer seems to ring out in the song's echoes. Kiid’s opener “Fire” distills her power into its most heartbreakingly simple expression. She sings of “fire in the brains” of all those trying to make sense of our painfully nonsensical world. “Does it kill you to know that we’re all dying?” Carr sings. “It kills me to know.” Musically, it sounds classic—wise, like an old soul—and yet “Fire” is the sound of this very moment. Her lyrics ponder grave injustices, process immense breaches, and yet they are searingly lucid. Perhaps this is what makes Mal Devisa so profound: For 30 minutes, there is nothing between you and her voice."

Wovenhand

Mosaic

Folk/Country

Grayson Currin

Articles about David Eugene Edwards-- former frontman of 16 Horsepower and ringleader of the revolving door project Wovenhand-- use phrases like "evangelical Christian" and "the fire and brimstone Christianity of America's heartland." It's expected: In this decade, especially in this country-- and especially with a president that treats religion like a popular mandate to run amuck-- it's hard to write seriously about Christian devotion in a rock-and-folk context without being seen as a white religious zealot on a proselytizer's stump. That's especially true if, as with Edwards, one shares the last name of the Massachusetts minister who, in 1734, fueled The Great Awakening by inventing modern revivalism. But Edwards is a songwriter on a completely different tip. He has little but his Christian faith and the confidence of his convictions and their concomitant questions to guide him. He's not a minister, and he's neither aiming from nor for the Heartland. Mosaic, the third proper album from Wovenhand and the first since the dissolution of 16 Horsepower, makes that very clear: Though most of the songs here are based in archetypical Americana banjo, acoustic guitar and massive church organ swells, Edwards borrows heavily from European Christianity for source material and on European tradition for instrumentation. "Swedish Purse", an ode to Edwards' wife and God, lifts its melody from a medieval hymn. "Dirty Blue" plays primarily on violin, acoustic guitar, and percussion, but its staggered time signature and chiseled staccato violin lines speak more to Balkan than American folk. That song's heavy reliance on symbolism-- "the book of numbers," amber rings, and the bells of Leuven, Belgium-- runs counter to evangelical Christianity's literalist dogma. The album's most exquisite moment, "Truly Golden", was even written by Edwards' Belgian guitarist, Peter Van Laerhoven. It seems Edwards-- who has recorded with Daniel Smith in the past-- has found a transcontinental network devoted to the questions of faith that permeate his songwriting, and-- by now-- its "Americana heartland" only on the most fundamental level. As such, Mosaic rarely sounds or reads like a pilgrim meditation of faith: "Slota Prow" buries Edwards' voice in an industrial din, an indecisive violin line-- split somewhere between sprightly and doleful-- slicing through his imprecations. It's more Pyschic TV than Sun Records, spirituality literally and metaphorically marred by supreme secular woe via dissonance. Such erudite extroversion doubles when Edwards delivers the song's second verse in his invented language and segues seamlessly into "Full Armour", an extended metaphor for the divine protection Edwards feels in his God. These images are not an "Old Rugged Cross" redux. They are offered as Edwards': His words are his psalms, open to empathy, not instruction. Pedagogy only appears on "Twig": "Eternal creator of the world/ Who rules the day/ Who rules the night," Edwards intones. His voice echoes as though sung from the basilica of Milan Cathedral, the spiritual domain of Saint Ambrose, the fourth century bishop that wrote them. But Edwards' increasing distance from the American mantle that made 16 Horsepower so mighty and resilient does leave something to be desired: Songs like Horsepower's "Blessed Persistence" showcased his ability to work within an American primitive framework raised by songwriters like Johnny Cash, a troubleman grappling with hell and heaven. Very little on Mosaic pushes that zone of familiarity and immediacy into new contexts, choosing instead to reroute those questions through different musical molds and associations. But Edwards' heart and soul are still here, questioning, wondering and waiting, "New Morning on the stereo…inside the home [where] the folk pine grow."

Artist: Wovenhand, Album: Mosaic, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Articles about David Eugene Edwards-- former frontman of 16 Horsepower and ringleader of the revolving door project Wovenhand-- use phrases like "evangelical Christian" and "the fire and brimstone Christianity of America's heartland." It's expected: In this decade, especially in this country-- and especially with a president that treats religion like a popular mandate to run amuck-- it's hard to write seriously about Christian devotion in a rock-and-folk context without being seen as a white religious zealot on a proselytizer's stump. That's especially true if, as with Edwards, one shares the last name of the Massachusetts minister who, in 1734, fueled The Great Awakening by inventing modern revivalism. But Edwards is a songwriter on a completely different tip. He has little but his Christian faith and the confidence of his convictions and their concomitant questions to guide him. He's not a minister, and he's neither aiming from nor for the Heartland. Mosaic, the third proper album from Wovenhand and the first since the dissolution of 16 Horsepower, makes that very clear: Though most of the songs here are based in archetypical Americana banjo, acoustic guitar and massive church organ swells, Edwards borrows heavily from European Christianity for source material and on European tradition for instrumentation. "Swedish Purse", an ode to Edwards' wife and God, lifts its melody from a medieval hymn. "Dirty Blue" plays primarily on violin, acoustic guitar, and percussion, but its staggered time signature and chiseled staccato violin lines speak more to Balkan than American folk. That song's heavy reliance on symbolism-- "the book of numbers," amber rings, and the bells of Leuven, Belgium-- runs counter to evangelical Christianity's literalist dogma. The album's most exquisite moment, "Truly Golden", was even written by Edwards' Belgian guitarist, Peter Van Laerhoven. It seems Edwards-- who has recorded with Daniel Smith in the past-- has found a transcontinental network devoted to the questions of faith that permeate his songwriting, and-- by now-- its "Americana heartland" only on the most fundamental level. As such, Mosaic rarely sounds or reads like a pilgrim meditation of faith: "Slota Prow" buries Edwards' voice in an industrial din, an indecisive violin line-- split somewhere between sprightly and doleful-- slicing through his imprecations. It's more Pyschic TV than Sun Records, spirituality literally and metaphorically marred by supreme secular woe via dissonance. Such erudite extroversion doubles when Edwards delivers the song's second verse in his invented language and segues seamlessly into "Full Armour", an extended metaphor for the divine protection Edwards feels in his God. These images are not an "Old Rugged Cross" redux. They are offered as Edwards': His words are his psalms, open to empathy, not instruction. Pedagogy only appears on "Twig": "Eternal creator of the world/ Who rules the day/ Who rules the night," Edwards intones. His voice echoes as though sung from the basilica of Milan Cathedral, the spiritual domain of Saint Ambrose, the fourth century bishop that wrote them. But Edwards' increasing distance from the American mantle that made 16 Horsepower so mighty and resilient does leave something to be desired: Songs like Horsepower's "Blessed Persistence" showcased his ability to work within an American primitive framework raised by songwriters like Johnny Cash, a troubleman grappling with hell and heaven. Very little on Mosaic pushes that zone of familiarity and immediacy into new contexts, choosing instead to reroute those questions through different musical molds and associations. But Edwards' heart and soul are still here, questioning, wondering and waiting, "New Morning on the stereo…inside the home [where] the folk pine grow.""

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

Naturally

Pop/R&B

Cameron Macdonald

While the second grade assemblies chant the first two verses of "This Land Is Your Land" in the multipurpose rooms of elementary schools from suburbia to the inner-cities, Sharon Jones struts across the virgin American land and into the welfare office with Woody Guthrie in arm. The Dap-Kings-- the ace house band for Brooklyn heavy-funk revivalist label Daptone-- concocts a heavy-funk groove that saunters each step, twists in place, and then glides forward to onlookers' disbelief. Sitting in the office of Government Love is David Guy's trumpet that jitters in trying to keep a straight face, while saxmen Neal Sugarman and Otis Youngblood nudge his ribs. Tradition dictates every patriot must sing that song with a cornfed drawl to demonstrate he or she is thankful of the homestead lands that Uncle Sam gave away to his or her grandpappy, but Jones sings it like she's been promised everything and got nothing. In Aretha's "don't you know?" tone, she shoots each lyric as if in a cheatin' lover's ear. And then comes the verses erased in so many school songbooks: "In the squares of the city/ In the shadow of the steeple/ Near the welfare office/ I see my people/ And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'/ If this land's still made for you and me." Jones' second album, Naturally, is a testament to how much was lost in R&B; over the past decade. Her band's music and album covers may seem arcane if not retro, but there is an undeniable substance in a tradition bled dry from so many Boyz II Men, Mariah, and Babyface records. Instead of auto-piloted rimshots and faint piano melodies of bastardized Barry White soul, the Dap-Kings deliver high-fiber soul that recalls the best of the JB's, the Meters and countless garage bands who heard James Brown's call and recorded one-off 45s. Nary a gutbucket beat, horn blast, or chicken-scratched and honeycombed guitar riff are wasted; almost every melody and its haunting through hours both sleeping and awake, clicks. "How Do I Let a Good Man Down?" and "Your Thing Is a Drag" hiccups a groove that is nearly up there with the JB's classic trance, "Give Me Some More", as Jones belts out a melancholy that strikes between the eyes. Her songs mainly dwell on the "he loves me/he loves me not" premise that are so well sung that they evade cliche. "My Man Is a Mean Man" is a jaunt that runs from and then smacks up the wife-beater in question, while "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You" is a hit of sunshine that hypnotizes a noisenik like me. "Believe me when I tell you/ I got the kind of love, baby/ That's going to make you higher than what you're dreaming of," she sings in the enchantment under the sea ballad, "You're Gonna Get It". This was made for you and me.

Artist: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Album: Naturally, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "While the second grade assemblies chant the first two verses of "This Land Is Your Land" in the multipurpose rooms of elementary schools from suburbia to the inner-cities, Sharon Jones struts across the virgin American land and into the welfare office with Woody Guthrie in arm. The Dap-Kings-- the ace house band for Brooklyn heavy-funk revivalist label Daptone-- concocts a heavy-funk groove that saunters each step, twists in place, and then glides forward to onlookers' disbelief. Sitting in the office of Government Love is David Guy's trumpet that jitters in trying to keep a straight face, while saxmen Neal Sugarman and Otis Youngblood nudge his ribs. Tradition dictates every patriot must sing that song with a cornfed drawl to demonstrate he or she is thankful of the homestead lands that Uncle Sam gave away to his or her grandpappy, but Jones sings it like she's been promised everything and got nothing. In Aretha's "don't you know?" tone, she shoots each lyric as if in a cheatin' lover's ear. And then comes the verses erased in so many school songbooks: "In the squares of the city/ In the shadow of the steeple/ Near the welfare office/ I see my people/ And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'/ If this land's still made for you and me." Jones' second album, Naturally, is a testament to how much was lost in R&B; over the past decade. Her band's music and album covers may seem arcane if not retro, but there is an undeniable substance in a tradition bled dry from so many Boyz II Men, Mariah, and Babyface records. Instead of auto-piloted rimshots and faint piano melodies of bastardized Barry White soul, the Dap-Kings deliver high-fiber soul that recalls the best of the JB's, the Meters and countless garage bands who heard James Brown's call and recorded one-off 45s. Nary a gutbucket beat, horn blast, or chicken-scratched and honeycombed guitar riff are wasted; almost every melody and its haunting through hours both sleeping and awake, clicks. "How Do I Let a Good Man Down?" and "Your Thing Is a Drag" hiccups a groove that is nearly up there with the JB's classic trance, "Give Me Some More", as Jones belts out a melancholy that strikes between the eyes. Her songs mainly dwell on the "he loves me/he loves me not" premise that are so well sung that they evade cliche. "My Man Is a Mean Man" is a jaunt that runs from and then smacks up the wife-beater in question, while "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You" is a hit of sunshine that hypnotizes a noisenik like me. "Believe me when I tell you/ I got the kind of love, baby/ That's going to make you higher than what you're dreaming of," she sings in the enchantment under the sea ballad, "You're Gonna Get It". This was made for you and me."

Robyn

Body Talk Pt. 1

Pop/R&B

Marc Hogan

"I'm always going to feel like this person on the outside looking in," Robyn recently told Popjustice. The Swedish singer and songwriter has no fear of pop: A platinum seller in her own country, Robyn cracked the Billboard top 10 in the late 1990s working with famed teen-pop producer Max Martin. As the daughter of a couple who ran an independent theater company, however, Robin Miriam Carlsson is also a woman who enjoys doing things her own way. Robyn, first released in Scandinavia five years ago on the newly liberated singer's own Konichiwa label, ultimately led to a UK #1 hit, a tour with Madonna, and Snoop Dogg remix spots. Major labels turned out to be a necessary evil, but the deal's on Robyn's terms now. "It's pop music, you know?" she told us earlier this year. "It's entertainment and at the same time it has to mean something to me. I like dealing with that balance." With Body Talk Pt. 1, the first of a potential three new albums tentatively scheduled for 2010, Robyn doesn't just walk the line between what she has called the "commercial" and "tastemaker" realms. She obliterates it. Immaculately produced, fantastically sung, and loaded with memorable choruses, this eight-song effort has plenty to please everyone from post-dubstep crate diggers to teen tweeters-- often at the same time. Like most of Robyn's best tracks, though, from mid-90s teen-pop hit "Show Me Love" to "With Every Heartbeat" a decade later, Body Talk Pt. 1 is capable of not only appealing to many different people, but also touching them emotionally. "Play me some kind of new sound/ Something true and sincere," Robyn begs on "None of Dem", a dark, tense, early-morning type of dance track featuring Norwegian electropop duo Röyksopp. She's not being hypocritical. Opener "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do", a talky electro-house tirade against electro-age anxieties, really isn't like anything else in the singer's discography. "Dancehall Queen", her so-wrong-it's-right collaboration with tastemaking Philadelphia DJ/producer Diplo, may have purists grumbling at its 1980s dancehall synths, subwoofer wobble, and "Sleng Teng" shoutout-- the title's sideways allusion to ABBA appears to have gone generally overlooked-- but "I came to dance, not to socialize." It's here, dancing, with a chorus that Santigold and Gwen Stefani might kill for, that Robyn is free from all the worries that are "killing" her at the album's start. Robyn reintroduced Robyn as a Missy Elliott-loving badass. Body Talk Pt. 1 texts that persona into the 2010s. Most similar to songs like "Konichiwa Bitches", "Cobrastyle", and "Curriculum Vitae" is first preview "Fembot", a Klas Åhlund co-write that flips the script on Robyn's track for Röyksopp's 2009 Junior. On "The Girl and the Robot", Robyn was the neglected lover "asleep again in front of MTV." Here, to wonderful effect, she's a "scientifically advanced hot mama." But Robyn seems most comfortable watching from afar as somebody else goes home with her prize. Dancing, the narrator's escape on "Dancehall Queen", becomes a prison of her own making on the album's emotional peak, "Dancing on My Own"-- a clear descendant of Robyn's girl-loses-boy, boy-ties-Ms.-Whatshername's-laces classic, "Be Mine!". With unadorned piano and strings, "Hang With Me (Acoustic Version)" is closer to "Be Mine! (Ballad Version)" and hits similar emotional notes: You say you're just friends, well that's OK, but don't you dare "fall recklessly, headlessly in love with" her. If she's sitting on a killer dancefloor version of this one, good luck. In an album full of songs that manage to be both specific and universal, "Cry When You Get Older" might prove to be the most enduring: a prom song, a graduation song, an end-of-summer-camp-PowerPoint song. Dudes like Max Martin and Peter Bjorn & John meet at parties and brag about what great melodies they've written, Robyn told us a couple of years ago; this is one worth bragging about. The lyrics are conversational, the synths respond, and there's a Prince reference to go with a Smashing Pumpkins' "1979"-like perspective on teenage ennui. Everybody in the back, quote it: "I lost all my faith in science/ So I put my faith in me." Body Talk Pt. 1 ends painfully soon, but at least it ends with a pair of tracks focusing on Robyn's soulful voice. In addition to "Hang With Me", there's "Jag Vet En Dejilg Rosa", a Swedish traditional song the singer performed over Björn Yttling's piano accompaniment in a 2007 tsunami memorial. Here she's backed by bells, and her touch is lighter. Robyn's vocals aren't only about singing; they're also about untranscribeable details like the little flutter when she sort of smiles at herself on this slow song, or her goofy ad libs between lyrics on faster songs. Above all, Robyn puts herself on the line-- loses her cool for the sake of emotional connection-- like few other contemporary vocalists. In 2000, a guy I know e-mailed Robyn about singing technique. In her reply, she gave detailed advice about maintaining his jaw muscles, hips, back, tongue, and vocal chords. "But the most important thing," she wrote, "is to be happy, and I don't mean that you always should be in a good mood. Because all the emotional stress that you feel is reflected in your body and can easily affect your voice-- which is a good thing if you take care of it. Because it is a tool that will help you get to know yourself and remind you when it's time for you to look inside for answers." Head and hips are both important, but the heart is still the strongest muscle. Bring it, Body Talk Pt. 2.

Artist: Robyn, Album: Body Talk Pt. 1, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: ""I'm always going to feel like this person on the outside looking in," Robyn recently told Popjustice. The Swedish singer and songwriter has no fear of pop: A platinum seller in her own country, Robyn cracked the Billboard top 10 in the late 1990s working with famed teen-pop producer Max Martin. As the daughter of a couple who ran an independent theater company, however, Robin Miriam Carlsson is also a woman who enjoys doing things her own way. Robyn, first released in Scandinavia five years ago on the newly liberated singer's own Konichiwa label, ultimately led to a UK #1 hit, a tour with Madonna, and Snoop Dogg remix spots. Major labels turned out to be a necessary evil, but the deal's on Robyn's terms now. "It's pop music, you know?" she told us earlier this year. "It's entertainment and at the same time it has to mean something to me. I like dealing with that balance." With Body Talk Pt. 1, the first of a potential three new albums tentatively scheduled for 2010, Robyn doesn't just walk the line between what she has called the "commercial" and "tastemaker" realms. She obliterates it. Immaculately produced, fantastically sung, and loaded with memorable choruses, this eight-song effort has plenty to please everyone from post-dubstep crate diggers to teen tweeters-- often at the same time. Like most of Robyn's best tracks, though, from mid-90s teen-pop hit "Show Me Love" to "With Every Heartbeat" a decade later, Body Talk Pt. 1 is capable of not only appealing to many different people, but also touching them emotionally. "Play me some kind of new sound/ Something true and sincere," Robyn begs on "None of Dem", a dark, tense, early-morning type of dance track featuring Norwegian electropop duo Röyksopp. She's not being hypocritical. Opener "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do", a talky electro-house tirade against electro-age anxieties, really isn't like anything else in the singer's discography. "Dancehall Queen", her so-wrong-it's-right collaboration with tastemaking Philadelphia DJ/producer Diplo, may have purists grumbling at its 1980s dancehall synths, subwoofer wobble, and "Sleng Teng" shoutout-- the title's sideways allusion to ABBA appears to have gone generally overlooked-- but "I came to dance, not to socialize." It's here, dancing, with a chorus that Santigold and Gwen Stefani might kill for, that Robyn is free from all the worries that are "killing" her at the album's start. Robyn reintroduced Robyn as a Missy Elliott-loving badass. Body Talk Pt. 1 texts that persona into the 2010s. Most similar to songs like "Konichiwa Bitches", "Cobrastyle", and "Curriculum Vitae" is first preview "Fembot", a Klas Åhlund co-write that flips the script on Robyn's track for Röyksopp's 2009 Junior. On "The Girl and the Robot", Robyn was the neglected lover "asleep again in front of MTV." Here, to wonderful effect, she's a "scientifically advanced hot mama." But Robyn seems most comfortable watching from afar as somebody else goes home with her prize. Dancing, the narrator's escape on "Dancehall Queen", becomes a prison of her own making on the album's emotional peak, "Dancing on My Own"-- a clear descendant of Robyn's girl-loses-boy, boy-ties-Ms.-Whatshername's-laces classic, "Be Mine!". With unadorned piano and strings, "Hang With Me (Acoustic Version)" is closer to "Be Mine! (Ballad Version)" and hits similar emotional notes: You say you're just friends, well that's OK, but don't you dare "fall recklessly, headlessly in love with" her. If she's sitting on a killer dancefloor version of this one, good luck. In an album full of songs that manage to be both specific and universal, "Cry When You Get Older" might prove to be the most enduring: a prom song, a graduation song, an end-of-summer-camp-PowerPoint song. Dudes like Max Martin and Peter Bjorn & John meet at parties and brag about what great melodies they've written, Robyn told us a couple of years ago; this is one worth bragging about. The lyrics are conversational, the synths respond, and there's a Prince reference to go with a Smashing Pumpkins' "1979"-like perspective on teenage ennui. Everybody in the back, quote it: "I lost all my faith in science/ So I put my faith in me." Body Talk Pt. 1 ends painfully soon, but at least it ends with a pair of tracks focusing on Robyn's soulful voice. In addition to "Hang With Me", there's "Jag Vet En Dejilg Rosa", a Swedish traditional song the singer performed over Björn Yttling's piano accompaniment in a 2007 tsunami memorial. Here she's backed by bells, and her touch is lighter. Robyn's vocals aren't only about singing; they're also about untranscribeable details like the little flutter when she sort of smiles at herself on this slow song, or her goofy ad libs between lyrics on faster songs. Above all, Robyn puts herself on the line-- loses her cool for the sake of emotional connection-- like few other contemporary vocalists. In 2000, a guy I know e-mailed Robyn about singing technique. In her reply, she gave detailed advice about maintaining his jaw muscles, hips, back, tongue, and vocal chords. "But the most important thing," she wrote, "is to be happy, and I don't mean that you always should be in a good mood. Because all the emotional stress that you feel is reflected in your body and can easily affect your voice-- which is a good thing if you take care of it. Because it is a tool that will help you get to know yourself and remind you when it's time for you to look inside for answers." Head and hips are both important, but the heart is still the strongest muscle. Bring it, Body Talk Pt. 2."

Marc Ribot

Party Intellectuals

Experimental,Jazz,Rock

Joe Tangari

Marc Ribot is tough to put your finger on. He's a left-hander playing guitar right-handed who's turned his natural avant-garde tendencies into a prolific career as a collaborator; to say his music as a solo artist and bandleader is unpredictable is an understatement. He's done everything from straightforward rock to no wave to his own spin on Latin music in between outside gigs, where he's helped re-invent Tom Waits and worked with John Zorn, Elvis Costello, Alison Kraus, Foetus, Wilson Pickett, and Allen Ginsberg, among many others. This latest album (roughly his 19th) finds him in a power trio setting with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, with a sound somewhere between his freakiest no wave outbursts and his most direct rock output, with a bit more emphasis on the former. Ribot pokes a bit of fun at his own scattershot output on his website, specifying that Ceramic Dog is "not a project; a real band." There are traces of funk and ambient music running through the record, and it opens with the most sickly distorted and bastardized cover of the Doors' "Break on Through" imaginable-- the original's riff has been forcefully molded into a warped funk-punk groove. It's all done with a certain rambunctious humor that makes it seem pretty natural that the noisescape of "Digital Handshake" could sit just two songs from "Todo el Mundo Es Kitsch", a song that lives up to its name with wry spoken vocals and a Latin lounge beat. While "Kitsch" is charming, though, "Handshake" spends five minutes noodling with harsh noise before finally going somewhere, too late to make a difference. Ribot has shown in the past that the line between pushing the envelope and outsmarting yourself can be ambiguous at best, and this track is an example of him crossing that line. Ribot's past dips into Latin rock hybrids are traceable on certain songs, such as standout "For Malena", a song with a stripped-back cumbia feel that replaces the usual hand drums with simple clicking and keeps the rhythm reserved. The verses are separated by a cool horn arrangement that sounds vaguely Balkan, and the track come off as similar in tone and construction to some of his best work with Tom Waits. It's amazing the way the band just plows through anything he can cook up for it. "Malena" is immediately followed by the ripping Spanish-language dance track "Pinch", a punk disco number that leaves lots of room for a hellishly bent guitar solo. I think the best term to describe the record as a whole is "schizophonic." Every time you think the band has settled on psychedelic disco or blistering avant-noise, they throw another curve at you. "When We Were Young and We Were Freaks" is a barely-there spoken word/ambient/noise piece that reminds me of something Lee Ranaldo might have done on his own in the mid-1990s-- it's compelling in its decrepitude and just about the polar opposite of "Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch". The risk of experimentation is failure, and there are parts of this album that just don't work-- see "Digital Handshake" and the listless free rock mess of the first half of "Midost". As much as its variety sometimes translates to inconsistency, though, Party Intellectuals is a generally interesting listen and could even work as a nice introduction to Ribot's work as a leader for the way it runs so much of his gamut.

Artist: Marc Ribot, Album: Party Intellectuals, Genre: Experimental,Jazz,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "Marc Ribot is tough to put your finger on. He's a left-hander playing guitar right-handed who's turned his natural avant-garde tendencies into a prolific career as a collaborator; to say his music as a solo artist and bandleader is unpredictable is an understatement. He's done everything from straightforward rock to no wave to his own spin on Latin music in between outside gigs, where he's helped re-invent Tom Waits and worked with John Zorn, Elvis Costello, Alison Kraus, Foetus, Wilson Pickett, and Allen Ginsberg, among many others. This latest album (roughly his 19th) finds him in a power trio setting with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, with a sound somewhere between his freakiest no wave outbursts and his most direct rock output, with a bit more emphasis on the former. Ribot pokes a bit of fun at his own scattershot output on his website, specifying that Ceramic Dog is "not a project; a real band." There are traces of funk and ambient music running through the record, and it opens with the most sickly distorted and bastardized cover of the Doors' "Break on Through" imaginable-- the original's riff has been forcefully molded into a warped funk-punk groove. It's all done with a certain rambunctious humor that makes it seem pretty natural that the noisescape of "Digital Handshake" could sit just two songs from "Todo el Mundo Es Kitsch", a song that lives up to its name with wry spoken vocals and a Latin lounge beat. While "Kitsch" is charming, though, "Handshake" spends five minutes noodling with harsh noise before finally going somewhere, too late to make a difference. Ribot has shown in the past that the line between pushing the envelope and outsmarting yourself can be ambiguous at best, and this track is an example of him crossing that line. Ribot's past dips into Latin rock hybrids are traceable on certain songs, such as standout "For Malena", a song with a stripped-back cumbia feel that replaces the usual hand drums with simple clicking and keeps the rhythm reserved. The verses are separated by a cool horn arrangement that sounds vaguely Balkan, and the track come off as similar in tone and construction to some of his best work with Tom Waits. It's amazing the way the band just plows through anything he can cook up for it. "Malena" is immediately followed by the ripping Spanish-language dance track "Pinch", a punk disco number that leaves lots of room for a hellishly bent guitar solo. I think the best term to describe the record as a whole is "schizophonic." Every time you think the band has settled on psychedelic disco or blistering avant-noise, they throw another curve at you. "When We Were Young and We Were Freaks" is a barely-there spoken word/ambient/noise piece that reminds me of something Lee Ranaldo might have done on his own in the mid-1990s-- it's compelling in its decrepitude and just about the polar opposite of "Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch". The risk of experimentation is failure, and there are parts of this album that just don't work-- see "Digital Handshake" and the listless free rock mess of the first half of "Midost". As much as its variety sometimes translates to inconsistency, though, Party Intellectuals is a generally interesting listen and could even work as a nice introduction to Ribot's work as a leader for the way it runs so much of his gamut."

Corin Tucker Band

1,000 Years

Rock

Rebecca Raber

Sleater-Kinney went on indefinite hiatus in 2006. Since then, drummer Janet Weiss released albums with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus' Jicks, while guitarist Carrie Brownstein embarked on a comedy career with Fred Armisen and became a music blogger for NPR. (The two women also recently announced a new project together, Wild Flag, alongside Mary Timony.) But Corin Tucker has been strangely quiet-- which is ironic given that she was the shrieking-banshee warbler of the group. Out of the spotlight, Tucker has spent the last four years attending to her family in Portland, Oregon-- she has two children with filmmaker Lance Bangs-- and, more recently, working on her own songs around her kids' school and playgroup schedules with a new eponymous band that includes former Unwound drummer Sara Lund and guitarist Seth Lorinczi of the Golden Bears. These new tracks, which now comprise 1,000 Years, are recognizably Tucker's, though they derive their intensity not from volatile guitars, driving rhythms, or brash vocal melodies, but from their surprisingly muted, slow-burning intimacy. So be forewarned, though: fans jonesing for a Sleater-Kinney fix will be disappointed. Instead of bursting into the expected shrieking choruses, these songs smolder. Melodies meander, encouraging patience in their listeners. Tucker uses her bold caterwaul sparingly, which is partially a shame since we are so starved for it, but also gives great weight to the few moments when she finally unfurls the full force of her yelp (as on "Riley", one of the few tracks that recalls Tucker's more incendiary Sleater-Kinney past). Yet these songs have a quiet power of their own, and many surprise listeners by relying on gently finger-picked guitar lines or dreamy, sparse piano arrangements (as on the originally-made-for-Twilight: New Moon [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| track "Miles Away" or the opening of the life-during-recession tale [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| "Thrift Store Coats"). Without Weiss' fierce fills and Brownstein's fiery riffage, Tucker's tunes sound tame and downcast. Sometimes that restraint is lovely, as on "Half a World Away", a spare, staccato track about the difficulty of being separated from Bangs while he's traveling for work. That song is a bit of a fake-out for S-K fans, as it's built on a hiccupping vocal melody that recalls One Beat's "Combat Rock" in its verses, but fails to explode into a hollered chorus, which only makes its lyrical longing more palpable. But sometimes that restraint disappoints, as on the wilting, acoustic "Dragon", whose cutesy string pizzicatos only add to its overworked chamber-pop ambiance. This album's strengths-- its intimacy, its containment, its subtlety-- are not the qualities that made Sleater-Kinney great, but it would be ungenerous to dismiss this because it's not as thrilling, confrontational, or exuberant. Plus, 1,000 Years is clearly a personal collection-- it's hard to not hear songs like the aforementioned "Half a World Away" or the loneliness-tinged "It's Always Summer", with its lines about hotel bars and counting the days, as autobiographical tales of a marriage that is often plagued by work-related distance and separation. And the comparably subdued nature of the album's music complements such lyrical confidences. So, if you are looking for catharsis via Sleater-Kinney, pull out your copy of Dig Me Out or The Woods, but if you are interested in where Corin Tucker is now, 1,000 Years provides a thoughtful, subtle snapshot.

Artist: Corin Tucker Band, Album: 1,000 Years, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Sleater-Kinney went on indefinite hiatus in 2006. Since then, drummer Janet Weiss released albums with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus' Jicks, while guitarist Carrie Brownstein embarked on a comedy career with Fred Armisen and became a music blogger for NPR. (The two women also recently announced a new project together, Wild Flag, alongside Mary Timony.) But Corin Tucker has been strangely quiet-- which is ironic given that she was the shrieking-banshee warbler of the group. Out of the spotlight, Tucker has spent the last four years attending to her family in Portland, Oregon-- she has two children with filmmaker Lance Bangs-- and, more recently, working on her own songs around her kids' school and playgroup schedules with a new eponymous band that includes former Unwound drummer Sara Lund and guitarist Seth Lorinczi of the Golden Bears. These new tracks, which now comprise 1,000 Years, are recognizably Tucker's, though they derive their intensity not from volatile guitars, driving rhythms, or brash vocal melodies, but from their surprisingly muted, slow-burning intimacy. So be forewarned, though: fans jonesing for a Sleater-Kinney fix will be disappointed. Instead of bursting into the expected shrieking choruses, these songs smolder. Melodies meander, encouraging patience in their listeners. Tucker uses her bold caterwaul sparingly, which is partially a shame since we are so starved for it, but also gives great weight to the few moments when she finally unfurls the full force of her yelp (as on "Riley", one of the few tracks that recalls Tucker's more incendiary Sleater-Kinney past). Yet these songs have a quiet power of their own, and many surprise listeners by relying on gently finger-picked guitar lines or dreamy, sparse piano arrangements (as on the originally-made-for-Twilight: New Moon [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| track "Miles Away" or the opening of the life-during-recession tale [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| "Thrift Store Coats"). Without Weiss' fierce fills and Brownstein's fiery riffage, Tucker's tunes sound tame and downcast. Sometimes that restraint is lovely, as on "Half a World Away", a spare, staccato track about the difficulty of being separated from Bangs while he's traveling for work. That song is a bit of a fake-out for S-K fans, as it's built on a hiccupping vocal melody that recalls One Beat's "Combat Rock" in its verses, but fails to explode into a hollered chorus, which only makes its lyrical longing more palpable. But sometimes that restraint disappoints, as on the wilting, acoustic "Dragon", whose cutesy string pizzicatos only add to its overworked chamber-pop ambiance. This album's strengths-- its intimacy, its containment, its subtlety-- are not the qualities that made Sleater-Kinney great, but it would be ungenerous to dismiss this because it's not as thrilling, confrontational, or exuberant. Plus, 1,000 Years is clearly a personal collection-- it's hard to not hear songs like the aforementioned "Half a World Away" or the loneliness-tinged "It's Always Summer", with its lines about hotel bars and counting the days, as autobiographical tales of a marriage that is often plagued by work-related distance and separation. And the comparably subdued nature of the album's music complements such lyrical confidences. So, if you are looking for catharsis via Sleater-Kinney, pull out your copy of Dig Me Out or The Woods, but if you are interested in where Corin Tucker is now, 1,000 Years provides a thoughtful, subtle snapshot."

Brian Eno, Jon Hassell

Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics

Experimental

Aaron Leitko

The title Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics has a brainy and academic ring to it, but according to Jon Hassell, the record is at least 50% body music. "The basic metaphor is that of the north and south of a person is a projection of the north and south of the globe," the composer, improviser, and trumpet player, now 77, explained in an interview earlier this year. "A mind formatted by language and located in the head, compared with the area of wildness and sensuality below the waist where dance and music and procreation reigns." However, the first time through, Possible Musics—which Hassell created in 1980 in collaboration with producer Brian Eno—you might find that "wildness" and "sensuality" are not the first adjectives that come to mind. It is eerie, dreamlike, and otherworldly music. Throughout the record, Hassell’s trumpet is processed using a harmonizer effect, producing alien tonalities that seem to slide between the notes of a traditional Western scale. Often, his melody lines sound more like a human voice than a brass instrument. The rhythm tracks—made up of hand percussion and electric bass—are highly repetitive, but also wobbly and destabilized. The result is a sound that melds minimalism, jazz, and ambient sounds, but doesn’t fit comfortably into any of those genres. Though his name is not invoked as frequently as Eno’s, the last few decades have proven Hassell—who was born in Memphis, Tennessee—to be an influential presence in electronic music and modern composition. Active since the mid-'60s, his background is hard to duplicate. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen, played on the first recording of Terry Riley’s "In C", and has performed session work for Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. His solo work has provided the sonic blueprint for a number of contemporary musicians, as well, including Aphex Twin (See Selected Ambient Works Vol. II) and Oneohtrix Point Never (Returnal) to name a few. Possible Musics was, in a lot of ways, the first full realization of Hassell's Fourth World concept. Many of the sounds—the freaky trumpet tones, the drifting ambient structures—were already in place on his 1977 debut LP, Vernal Equinox, but while that album is as meditative and mesmerizing as anything he has released, it is clearly identifiable as a jazz fusion record. On Possible Musics, synthesizers and electronic treatments help to nudge things into less recognizable territory. The music is informed by minimalism, but Hassell's take is very different than the works of Philip Glass or Steve Reich that are linked to that style. For those composers, minimalism often involved rigorous structure and clockwork execution, whereas Possible Musics is conceptually dialed in, but loose and improvisational in its execution. Harmonic motion is limited and all attention is centered around the embellishment of a single melodic line. Hassell is playing lead on these songs, but his performances often blur seamlessly into the backing tracks. Like Eno’s ambient records, Possible Music is all about mood. However, where Music For Airports sought to reflect a highly impersonal environment, Hassell’s work is intentionally exotic. No specific nation or people is being quoted here, though. Hassell's landscape is an invented one—an imagined culture, where high technology and mysticism are blended together. "John’s experiment was to imagine a 'coffee coloured' world," explains Eno in an essay first published in the Guardian and excerpted for the reissue's liner notes. "A globalized world constantly integrating and hybridizing, where differences were celebrated and dignified—and realize it into music." In this sense, Possible Musics is an exercise in science fiction. Like the William Gibson book Neuromancer, the record offered an imperfect, but prescient glimpse toward the near future.  The subsequent decades have not produced much music like Hassell’s, but the concepts that informed Possible Musics have proven predictive of the way that technology would come to mesh with music-making in other cultures—whether that’s Konono N°1's amplified thumb pianos, Group Doueh’s electric guitars, or any number of global electronic and pop sounds that have been produced using a laptop computer. And once you acclimate to the weird and warbly tones, there is a certain sensuality to Possible Musics. In Hassell’s desire to crossbreed cultures there’s an implicit act of intercourse going on—a desire for personal renewal and transformation via an "other", be it a nation, culture, or another human being.

Artist: Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Album: Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "The title Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics has a brainy and academic ring to it, but according to Jon Hassell, the record is at least 50% body music. "The basic metaphor is that of the north and south of a person is a projection of the north and south of the globe," the composer, improviser, and trumpet player, now 77, explained in an interview earlier this year. "A mind formatted by language and located in the head, compared with the area of wildness and sensuality below the waist where dance and music and procreation reigns." However, the first time through, Possible Musics—which Hassell created in 1980 in collaboration with producer Brian Eno—you might find that "wildness" and "sensuality" are not the first adjectives that come to mind. It is eerie, dreamlike, and otherworldly music. Throughout the record, Hassell’s trumpet is processed using a harmonizer effect, producing alien tonalities that seem to slide between the notes of a traditional Western scale. Often, his melody lines sound more like a human voice than a brass instrument. The rhythm tracks—made up of hand percussion and electric bass—are highly repetitive, but also wobbly and destabilized. The result is a sound that melds minimalism, jazz, and ambient sounds, but doesn’t fit comfortably into any of those genres. Though his name is not invoked as frequently as Eno’s, the last few decades have proven Hassell—who was born in Memphis, Tennessee—to be an influential presence in electronic music and modern composition. Active since the mid-'60s, his background is hard to duplicate. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen, played on the first recording of Terry Riley’s "In C", and has performed session work for Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. His solo work has provided the sonic blueprint for a number of contemporary musicians, as well, including Aphex Twin (See Selected Ambient Works Vol. II) and Oneohtrix Point Never (Returnal) to name a few. Possible Musics was, in a lot of ways, the first full realization of Hassell's Fourth World concept. Many of the sounds—the freaky trumpet tones, the drifting ambient structures—were already in place on his 1977 debut LP, Vernal Equinox, but while that album is as meditative and mesmerizing as anything he has released, it is clearly identifiable as a jazz fusion record. On Possible Musics, synthesizers and electronic treatments help to nudge things into less recognizable territory. The music is informed by minimalism, but Hassell's take is very different than the works of Philip Glass or Steve Reich that are linked to that style. For those composers, minimalism often involved rigorous structure and clockwork execution, whereas Possible Musics is conceptually dialed in, but loose and improvisational in its execution. Harmonic motion is limited and all attention is centered around the embellishment of a single melodic line. Hassell is playing lead on these songs, but his performances often blur seamlessly into the backing tracks. Like Eno’s ambient records, Possible Music is all about mood. However, where Music For Airports sought to reflect a highly impersonal environment, Hassell’s work is intentionally exotic. No specific nation or people is being quoted here, though. Hassell's landscape is an invented one—an imagined culture, where high technology and mysticism are blended together. "John’s experiment was to imagine a 'coffee coloured' world," explains Eno in an essay first published in the Guardian and excerpted for the reissue's liner notes. "A globalized world constantly integrating and hybridizing, where differences were celebrated and dignified—and realize it into music." In this sense, Possible Musics is an exercise in science fiction. Like the William Gibson book Neuromancer, the record offered an imperfect, but prescient glimpse toward the near future.  The subsequent decades have not produced much music like Hassell’s, but the concepts that informed Possible Musics have proven predictive of the way that technology would come to mesh with music-making in other cultures—whether that’s Konono N°1's amplified thumb pianos, Group Doueh’s electric guitars, or any number of global electronic and pop sounds that have been produced using a laptop computer. And once you acclimate to the weird and warbly tones, there is a certain sensuality to Possible Musics. In Hassell’s desire to crossbreed cultures there’s an implicit act of intercourse going on—a desire for personal renewal and transformation via an "other", be it a nation, culture, or another human being."

Comet Gain

Broken Record Prayers

Experimental,Rock

Mia Clarke

Comet Gain are one of the most underrated contemporary indie bands in the UK. Although in the 16 years since their inception they've never made major waves outside the DIY indie community (although those waves stretched far and wide-- the band is also well-loved in the U.S. and France), they have gained a fierce following of music lovers who seem to share their passion for Orange Juice, Anna Karina, old typewriters, George Orwell, Dexys Midnight Runners, and, above all else, vinyl. Like their riot-grrrl peers (guitarist Jon Slade was a founding member of Huggy Bear), this band doesn't distinguish art from life, and has stuck to its collective passion at all costs-- namely, relative obscurity. As the photograph on the cover of Broken Record Prayers states, in black marker scrawled on the back of a woman's hand, "Dreams Never End". This is Comet Gain's motto-- a dogma that has been declared throughout the years by vocalist/guitarist David Feck, and which they act on wholeheartedly. It's been four years since the release of their fifth album, City Fallen Leaves, so Broken Record Prayers, a "collection of A- and B-sides, new songs, session tracks, and stray dogs recorded between 1998-2008" is a timely and carefully filtered introduction to their discography. Impressively, these disparate songs flow together with bright, energetic fluency-- a difficult task for an archival project such a this. "Young Lions", "Emotion Pictures", and "Tighten Up!" are taken from a 1997 Peel Session, while a couple of their best tracks, "You Can Hide Your Love Forever" and "Beautiful Despair", were once available on limited vinyl only. Perhaps the most powerful of these early singles is the opening track, "Jack Nance Hair", which was originally released on journalist Everett True's now defunct Mei Mei label. A semi-spoken declaration of purpose, Feck takes turns with fellow vocalist Rachel Evans to comment on the importance of "going home and listening to records with stained sleeves" and "getting back that fire and making your feelings known." Its message burns with urgency: "Believe in art/ Believe in yourself/ Contradict yourself." All Comet Gain fans know what a special band they are, but this 20-song collection, lifted from half a dozen different releases, really brings home all their accomplishments over a lengthy and productive career. As sometime member Chris Appelgren (also of The PeeChees and The Pattern) astutely comments, the band is "messy, sweet, and tipsy." On Broken Record Prayers, there are echoes of Northern Soul ("Love Without Lies"), Felt ("Books of California"), and, of course, their obsession with Orange Juice leaks between every crack. They also bring their gawky magic to covers of Curtis Mayfield's "Hard Times" and Dena Barnes' "If You Ever Walk Out Of My Life", which is wrung with sorrowful lamentations that exquisitely fit the band's self-propelled image as romantic revolutionaries. One hopes that this excellent compilation will help shine a light on Comet Gain's escapades. Whether it does or not, you can be sure that the group will continue on the path they've set for themselves, recording garage pop in their London apartment, fueled by red wine and stories of heartbreak and adventure. As Evans affirms: "Together we stand and feel stronger and braver for it/ Young, free and single/ Like the crack in the 45/ That makes the guitar snap all night/ And in the morning it starts all over again."

Artist: Comet Gain, Album: Broken Record Prayers, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Comet Gain are one of the most underrated contemporary indie bands in the UK. Although in the 16 years since their inception they've never made major waves outside the DIY indie community (although those waves stretched far and wide-- the band is also well-loved in the U.S. and France), they have gained a fierce following of music lovers who seem to share their passion for Orange Juice, Anna Karina, old typewriters, George Orwell, Dexys Midnight Runners, and, above all else, vinyl. Like their riot-grrrl peers (guitarist Jon Slade was a founding member of Huggy Bear), this band doesn't distinguish art from life, and has stuck to its collective passion at all costs-- namely, relative obscurity. As the photograph on the cover of Broken Record Prayers states, in black marker scrawled on the back of a woman's hand, "Dreams Never End". This is Comet Gain's motto-- a dogma that has been declared throughout the years by vocalist/guitarist David Feck, and which they act on wholeheartedly. It's been four years since the release of their fifth album, City Fallen Leaves, so Broken Record Prayers, a "collection of A- and B-sides, new songs, session tracks, and stray dogs recorded between 1998-2008" is a timely and carefully filtered introduction to their discography. Impressively, these disparate songs flow together with bright, energetic fluency-- a difficult task for an archival project such a this. "Young Lions", "Emotion Pictures", and "Tighten Up!" are taken from a 1997 Peel Session, while a couple of their best tracks, "You Can Hide Your Love Forever" and "Beautiful Despair", were once available on limited vinyl only. Perhaps the most powerful of these early singles is the opening track, "Jack Nance Hair", which was originally released on journalist Everett True's now defunct Mei Mei label. A semi-spoken declaration of purpose, Feck takes turns with fellow vocalist Rachel Evans to comment on the importance of "going home and listening to records with stained sleeves" and "getting back that fire and making your feelings known." Its message burns with urgency: "Believe in art/ Believe in yourself/ Contradict yourself." All Comet Gain fans know what a special band they are, but this 20-song collection, lifted from half a dozen different releases, really brings home all their accomplishments over a lengthy and productive career. As sometime member Chris Appelgren (also of The PeeChees and The Pattern) astutely comments, the band is "messy, sweet, and tipsy." On Broken Record Prayers, there are echoes of Northern Soul ("Love Without Lies"), Felt ("Books of California"), and, of course, their obsession with Orange Juice leaks between every crack. They also bring their gawky magic to covers of Curtis Mayfield's "Hard Times" and Dena Barnes' "If You Ever Walk Out Of My Life", which is wrung with sorrowful lamentations that exquisitely fit the band's self-propelled image as romantic revolutionaries. One hopes that this excellent compilation will help shine a light on Comet Gain's escapades. Whether it does or not, you can be sure that the group will continue on the path they've set for themselves, recording garage pop in their London apartment, fueled by red wine and stories of heartbreak and adventure. As Evans affirms: "Together we stand and feel stronger and braver for it/ Young, free and single/ Like the crack in the 45/ That makes the guitar snap all night/ And in the morning it starts all over again.""

Various Artists

Daptone Gold

Stephen M. Deusner

One defining and instructive story often told about Daptone Records, the retro-soul label based in Bushwick, concerns a cover of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately", which appeared on the 2002 debut by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. So convincingly did the band and the singer transform the song and reset it in a soul-historical context that apparently many listeners, as yet unfamiliar with the band or with Daptone's mission, assumed that this was the original, exhumed after so many decades of obscurity, and that Jackson's was actually the cover. Daptone, however, is not a reissue label. It releases primarily new recordings often featuring old singers, studiously re-creating the sounds of 1960s and 70s soul, as if to unhinge that style from history and prove it timeless, sceneless. The label has been praised for the precision of its revivalism as well as the strength of its roster, which includes Sharon Jones, Lee Fields, and the Budos Band, among others. There's a fine line, however, between revivalism and slavish mimicry, and the concern for historical fidelity that has garnered praise for Daptone acts has caused other contemporary bands to be routinely dismissed for sounding too much like 70s Laurel Canyon folk-rock or 80s Mancunian post-punk. So why shouldn't the same critical standard apply to Daptone? Daptone Gold, which is either a very savvy label sampler or a very generous greatest hits, goes a long way toward answering that question. The nearly two dozen songs gathered here-- some new and familiar, others previously unreleased-- cover a lot of territory, from the urbanized (i.e., pre-Guiliani New York) afrofunk sounds of Antibalas to the soul-jazz struts of the Budos Band to the sanctified, secularized gospel of Naomi Shelton to the old-soul wallop of figureheads Sharon Jones and Lee Fields. Daptone's reach is both deep and wide, looking not to specific scenes or personalities from soul history, but to a generalized conception of the past as fertile territory for musical exploration. In other words, Daptone Gold (which features liner notes by Pitchfork contributor Douglas Wolk) benefits not so much from its associations with Stax or Motown or Philly or Hi or any other prestigious label, but from the excitement and directness of the music itself. The players not only know their history, but they have the chops to translate that knowledge into music that only rarely sounds academic. The Budos Band apparently live in the pocket: On their three songs on Daptone Gold, the horns, percussion, and rhythm guitar immediately click into place and never let up. Especially on "Budos Rising", the horns soar precipitously over the prickly guitar licks and rumbling bongo funk, creating a tense call-and-response with the organ. Similarly, the groove on Antibalas' makossa-style cover of Hector Lavoe's "Che Che Cole" seems propelled by gravity itself, clicking in sweetly with Mayra Vega's spry vocals. And the Dap-Kings, which are more or less the Daptone house band even though they're most commonly identified with Sharon Jones, construct dense grooves that allow space for scribbles of saxophone and organ. On the instrumental "Nervous Like Me", the reeds completely lose their shit while the guitar keeps everything together with a four-note theme. It's chaos rough-drafted into something barely orderly. As with the label, Daptone Gold lives and dies on personality. Binky Griptite's intro promising "four solid sides of soul" almost sinks the revivalism into kitsch, although his guitar playing on the B-side "The Stroll Part 2", recorded with the Mellomatics, proves he's a more inventive guitarist than singer. He shows a limited vocal and emotional range on "A Lover Like Me", but that may have less to do with his innate talents than with the company he keeps. Lee Fields shreds his vocal chords on the soul excoriation "Could Have Been", constantly threatening to go too far over the top but always pulling back at just the right moment. It's a measured, heart-rending performance that transcends retro assumptions, a telling counterpoint to the gimmicky skit he performs on "Stranded in Your Love", a duet with Sharon Jones. Exuding unbridled sass and boundless energy whether on stage or in the studio, Jones is arguably Daptone's biggest act, and she gets seven tracks on Gold. "I'm Not Gonna Cry" and "How Long Do I Have to Wait?" are stalwart soul songs of remarkable emotional complexity, and "Got a Thing on My Mind", from her 2002 debut, is a tongue-twisting take on social ills-- a protest party song. And even if her cover of Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Giving Up" sounds a bit clunky, especially compared to superlative covers of Janet Jackson, Woody Guthrie, and Prince, Jones nevertheless makes you believe she and Daptone are the real thing.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Daptone Gold, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "One defining and instructive story often told about Daptone Records, the retro-soul label based in Bushwick, concerns a cover of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately", which appeared on the 2002 debut by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. So convincingly did the band and the singer transform the song and reset it in a soul-historical context that apparently many listeners, as yet unfamiliar with the band or with Daptone's mission, assumed that this was the original, exhumed after so many decades of obscurity, and that Jackson's was actually the cover. Daptone, however, is not a reissue label. It releases primarily new recordings often featuring old singers, studiously re-creating the sounds of 1960s and 70s soul, as if to unhinge that style from history and prove it timeless, sceneless. The label has been praised for the precision of its revivalism as well as the strength of its roster, which includes Sharon Jones, Lee Fields, and the Budos Band, among others. There's a fine line, however, between revivalism and slavish mimicry, and the concern for historical fidelity that has garnered praise for Daptone acts has caused other contemporary bands to be routinely dismissed for sounding too much like 70s Laurel Canyon folk-rock or 80s Mancunian post-punk. So why shouldn't the same critical standard apply to Daptone? Daptone Gold, which is either a very savvy label sampler or a very generous greatest hits, goes a long way toward answering that question. The nearly two dozen songs gathered here-- some new and familiar, others previously unreleased-- cover a lot of territory, from the urbanized (i.e., pre-Guiliani New York) afrofunk sounds of Antibalas to the soul-jazz struts of the Budos Band to the sanctified, secularized gospel of Naomi Shelton to the old-soul wallop of figureheads Sharon Jones and Lee Fields. Daptone's reach is both deep and wide, looking not to specific scenes or personalities from soul history, but to a generalized conception of the past as fertile territory for musical exploration. In other words, Daptone Gold (which features liner notes by Pitchfork contributor Douglas Wolk) benefits not so much from its associations with Stax or Motown or Philly or Hi or any other prestigious label, but from the excitement and directness of the music itself. The players not only know their history, but they have the chops to translate that knowledge into music that only rarely sounds academic. The Budos Band apparently live in the pocket: On their three songs on Daptone Gold, the horns, percussion, and rhythm guitar immediately click into place and never let up. Especially on "Budos Rising", the horns soar precipitously over the prickly guitar licks and rumbling bongo funk, creating a tense call-and-response with the organ. Similarly, the groove on Antibalas' makossa-style cover of Hector Lavoe's "Che Che Cole" seems propelled by gravity itself, clicking in sweetly with Mayra Vega's spry vocals. And the Dap-Kings, which are more or less the Daptone house band even though they're most commonly identified with Sharon Jones, construct dense grooves that allow space for scribbles of saxophone and organ. On the instrumental "Nervous Like Me", the reeds completely lose their shit while the guitar keeps everything together with a four-note theme. It's chaos rough-drafted into something barely orderly. As with the label, Daptone Gold lives and dies on personality. Binky Griptite's intro promising "four solid sides of soul" almost sinks the revivalism into kitsch, although his guitar playing on the B-side "The Stroll Part 2", recorded with the Mellomatics, proves he's a more inventive guitarist than singer. He shows a limited vocal and emotional range on "A Lover Like Me", but that may have less to do with his innate talents than with the company he keeps. Lee Fields shreds his vocal chords on the soul excoriation "Could Have Been", constantly threatening to go too far over the top but always pulling back at just the right moment. It's a measured, heart-rending performance that transcends retro assumptions, a telling counterpoint to the gimmicky skit he performs on "Stranded in Your Love", a duet with Sharon Jones. Exuding unbridled sass and boundless energy whether on stage or in the studio, Jones is arguably Daptone's biggest act, and she gets seven tracks on Gold. "I'm Not Gonna Cry" and "How Long Do I Have to Wait?" are stalwart soul songs of remarkable emotional complexity, and "Got a Thing on My Mind", from her 2002 debut, is a tongue-twisting take on social ills-- a protest party song. And even if her cover of Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Giving Up" sounds a bit clunky, especially compared to superlative covers of Janet Jackson, Woody Guthrie, and Prince, Jones nevertheless makes you believe she and Daptone are the real thing."

Thee Oh Sees

Carrion Crawler/The Dream

Rock

Martin Douglas

Propulsive, careening, and at times, openly dangerous, Thee Oh Sees are like the house band for a runaway train. Much of their appeal comes from the fact that they're a machine with four equal parts: the wide-eyed, cult-leader charisma of frontman John Dwyer, the effortless cool of keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, the pulsating low end of Petey Dammit, and the steel-solid rhythmic anchor of Mike Shoun. With unspeakable chemistry and an instinctual bond that borders on telepathic, the band has taken its wildly cacophonous and setlist-free live show to must-see status, turning music venues populated by arm-folding spectators into anarchic riot scenes. An Oh Sees show is a place where combing the floor for your shoes when the house lights come on becomes ritualistic, where getting kicked in the face by a renegade crowd-surfer provokes a shit-eating grin instead of a scowl. Most of the band's best albums serve as recorded documents of their live sets; you can practically hear Dwyer swallowing microphones and spitting upwards to the rafters. Castlemania-- Thee Oh Sees' first record of 2011-- made it easier to remember that the band started out as Dwyer's solo project, a vehicle forged as a left turn from the eardrum terrorism of his garage-punk cult heroes Coachwhips. Rife with kaleidoscopic woodwind arrangements and vocals akin to the green cartoon monsters that grace the cover art of many Oh Sees full-lengths, the record was a refreshingly weird slab of hallucinogenic psych-pop, a headphones record for the arty garage-rock über-faithful. (You know, the kind of people who own more than two volumes of Back From the Grave or take a road trip to Gonerfest every single year.) The opening seconds of Carrion Crawler/The Dream feature the squawking of a saxophone-- the last remnants of Castlemania's woodwind-centered psychedelia sputtering out like smoke from a 1920s automobile that ran out of gas. Just as Castlemania was the apotheosis of Dwyer's cracked vision as a singer/songwriter, Carrion Crawler/The Dream showcases the full-band version of Thee Oh Sees at the height of their powers. Many of the album's songs have been road-tested for over a year, and Intelligence brain-trust Lars Finberg was drafted as the band's second drummer. Instead of disrupting the dynamic, Finberg fits in perfectly, occasionally adding some polyrhythmic flair, bolstering the already tight and rock-solid rhythm section. Dammit, Shoun, and now Finberg serve as the grounded basis that allow the songs to veer off on wild tangents without completely falling apart. Having the bassist and two drummers holding everything in place gives the high end room to explore, a task in part handled by the extraordinary vocal interplay of Dwyer and Dawson. In spite of the former being the creative nucleus of the band, there is no "lead singer" designation in Thee Oh Sees-- Dwyer and Dawson singing nearly every lyric in unison. As Dawson's straight-laced vocal presence stays in line on most of the songs, Dwyer naturally plays the madman, his voice coasting below, zigzagging between, and occasionally even scaling above hers-- the latter reminiscent of the way Black Francis would often take the higher octave over Kim Deal on several Pixies tracks. Dawson provides poppy "ba-bas," while Dwyer shouts his head off on "Contraption/Soul Desert", and she's there to eerily coo while he's practically speaking in tongues on "Crack in Your Eye". But more often than not, it sounds like Dwyer is singing backup for Dawson, a testament to how equal the parts in Thee Oh Sees really are. Scratching away at his strings with bloodthirsty ferociousness, Dwyer's guitar playing is best described in terms usually reserved for feral cats. His solos are not as much foot-on-the-monitor, spotlight-capturing moments as they are products of primal instinct. This is particularly evident on the album's two longform tracks, the two songs that combine to make up the album's title. Much like last year’s "Warm Slime"-- the audio equivalent of a pro-wrestling iron man match-- "Carrion Crawler" and "The Dream" experiment with what happens when you tighten things to a breaking point and then let go. Short blasts of distortion leave their mark throughout the album, guitar tones evoking the image of exploding paint cans in a mid-size room, adding to the unruly spirit of the band's albums and live sets. See, Thee Oh Sees understand the intrinsic value of making a huge mess.

Artist: Thee Oh Sees, Album: Carrion Crawler/The Dream, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Propulsive, careening, and at times, openly dangerous, Thee Oh Sees are like the house band for a runaway train. Much of their appeal comes from the fact that they're a machine with four equal parts: the wide-eyed, cult-leader charisma of frontman John Dwyer, the effortless cool of keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, the pulsating low end of Petey Dammit, and the steel-solid rhythmic anchor of Mike Shoun. With unspeakable chemistry and an instinctual bond that borders on telepathic, the band has taken its wildly cacophonous and setlist-free live show to must-see status, turning music venues populated by arm-folding spectators into anarchic riot scenes. An Oh Sees show is a place where combing the floor for your shoes when the house lights come on becomes ritualistic, where getting kicked in the face by a renegade crowd-surfer provokes a shit-eating grin instead of a scowl. Most of the band's best albums serve as recorded documents of their live sets; you can practically hear Dwyer swallowing microphones and spitting upwards to the rafters. Castlemania-- Thee Oh Sees' first record of 2011-- made it easier to remember that the band started out as Dwyer's solo project, a vehicle forged as a left turn from the eardrum terrorism of his garage-punk cult heroes Coachwhips. Rife with kaleidoscopic woodwind arrangements and vocals akin to the green cartoon monsters that grace the cover art of many Oh Sees full-lengths, the record was a refreshingly weird slab of hallucinogenic psych-pop, a headphones record for the arty garage-rock über-faithful. (You know, the kind of people who own more than two volumes of Back From the Grave or take a road trip to Gonerfest every single year.) The opening seconds of Carrion Crawler/The Dream feature the squawking of a saxophone-- the last remnants of Castlemania's woodwind-centered psychedelia sputtering out like smoke from a 1920s automobile that ran out of gas. Just as Castlemania was the apotheosis of Dwyer's cracked vision as a singer/songwriter, Carrion Crawler/The Dream showcases the full-band version of Thee Oh Sees at the height of their powers. Many of the album's songs have been road-tested for over a year, and Intelligence brain-trust Lars Finberg was drafted as the band's second drummer. Instead of disrupting the dynamic, Finberg fits in perfectly, occasionally adding some polyrhythmic flair, bolstering the already tight and rock-solid rhythm section. Dammit, Shoun, and now Finberg serve as the grounded basis that allow the songs to veer off on wild tangents without completely falling apart. Having the bassist and two drummers holding everything in place gives the high end room to explore, a task in part handled by the extraordinary vocal interplay of Dwyer and Dawson. In spite of the former being the creative nucleus of the band, there is no "lead singer" designation in Thee Oh Sees-- Dwyer and Dawson singing nearly every lyric in unison. As Dawson's straight-laced vocal presence stays in line on most of the songs, Dwyer naturally plays the madman, his voice coasting below, zigzagging between, and occasionally even scaling above hers-- the latter reminiscent of the way Black Francis would often take the higher octave over Kim Deal on several Pixies tracks. Dawson provides poppy "ba-bas," while Dwyer shouts his head off on "Contraption/Soul Desert", and she's there to eerily coo while he's practically speaking in tongues on "Crack in Your Eye". But more often than not, it sounds like Dwyer is singing backup for Dawson, a testament to how equal the parts in Thee Oh Sees really are. Scratching away at his strings with bloodthirsty ferociousness, Dwyer's guitar playing is best described in terms usually reserved for feral cats. His solos are not as much foot-on-the-monitor, spotlight-capturing moments as they are products of primal instinct. This is particularly evident on the album's two longform tracks, the two songs that combine to make up the album's title. Much like last year’s "Warm Slime"-- the audio equivalent of a pro-wrestling iron man match-- "Carrion Crawler" and "The Dream" experiment with what happens when you tighten things to a breaking point and then let go. Short blasts of distortion leave their mark throughout the album, guitar tones evoking the image of exploding paint cans in a mid-size room, adding to the unruly spirit of the band's albums and live sets. See, Thee Oh Sees understand the intrinsic value of making a huge mess."

Zed Bias

Biasonic Hotsauce: Birth of the Nanocloud

Electronic

Jess Harvell

For better or worse, the science-fiction concept album is a dance-music staple. In addition to being saddled with one of the most ungainly album titles of the year, Biasonic Hotsauce: Birth of the Nanocloud is the first part of a proposed trilogy of albums where UK garage/drum'n'bass/dubstep producer Zed Bias will tell the tale of… an experiment gone wrong? Something vaguely futuristic? To be honest, I've listened to this thing a bunch of times now, and the narrative thrust remains elusive. And the storyline, confined to a few ignorable skits of kitschy playacting, barely impinges on the music. Instead, the "Nanocloud" concept seems more like a flimsy and silly but ultimately harmless way to unite a dozen-plus tracks that might otherwise seem to belong on wholly different albums. Like many producers who refused to go away quietly when grime and dubstep stole UK garage's thunder, Bias has explored as many styles and subgenres as he's been able to get away with since his turn-of-the-millennium UKG glory days. So there's not much of a "signature" on Biasonic Hotsauce and certainly not much you haven't heard before if you've been following British dance music for the last 10 years. From hammering dancehall-inflected dubstep to slickly anonymous commercial house, Bias treats BH like an outsider-friendly party tape, heavy on the obvious hooks and boisterous rapping and layer of high-end gloss applied to even the starkest tracks. This little-bit-of-everything approach to modern UK dance culture is welcome, given how alienating "pure" dubstep records can be for non-fans. Biasonic Hotsauce can sometimes feel like an alternate universe take on Kevin Martin's the Bug project, with the nuclear-grade noise swapped out for radio-friendliness. (Or at least pirate-radio-friendliness.) But the jack-of-all-dance-trades tack also reveals that, for all his restless experimentation, Bias' skill set hasn't evolved much over the last decade. What he does best here-- merging the boom of Jamaican ragga with the runway-show opulence of deep house and the punchy-but-still-pop beats of R&B and soca-- sounds remarkably similar to the sound that first brought him to underground prominence over a decade ago. The great early run of tracks on BH work the same beguiling and unstable middle ground, where the rhythmic dexterity of high-class dance music for grown-ups meets blunt-force street kid grit, which defined the late-1990s/early-00s peak of UK garage. The low-end of "Yagga" has all the thuggish heaviness of dubstep, but the frisky rhythms show up the genre's stereotypical thump as a drag. Though BH has enough bass wobble and crass Ibiza synth hooks to mark it out definitively as a 2011 release, the drums on the first-tier tracks still have the intricate and far more interesting syncopations of old-school garage. It's sad but telling that Bias is still leaning on his biggest and best tune here, 2000's uptown dancehall smash "Neighbourhood", given a wholly unnecessary dubstep-era update for BH. After that bracing opening stretch, there are a handful of half-brilliant tracks in the same vein strewn across the album, especially the shiver-inducing "Lucid Dreams", echoing the minimalist future funk and disembodied vocals that once defined UKG at its outermost, without the dour murk Burial now brings to the mix. But whenever Bias leaves his comfort zone, the excitement and energy drains away, and he comes up with tracks that settle for being competent style exercises, like "Koolade" with its campy take on 1980s boogie. The final trio of "straight" dubstep tracks are just too damn polite to even be called bangers, risking neither the grossly enjoyable excess of the genre's populist wing nor the form-pushing innovation of its avant school. As so often when it comes to dance-music full-lengths, Bias' good ideas get lost in the sea of makeweight stuff, and his attempt to please just about everyone results in a frustratingly spotty album.

Artist: Zed Bias, Album: Biasonic Hotsauce: Birth of the Nanocloud, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "For better or worse, the science-fiction concept album is a dance-music staple. In addition to being saddled with one of the most ungainly album titles of the year, Biasonic Hotsauce: Birth of the Nanocloud is the first part of a proposed trilogy of albums where UK garage/drum'n'bass/dubstep producer Zed Bias will tell the tale of… an experiment gone wrong? Something vaguely futuristic? To be honest, I've listened to this thing a bunch of times now, and the narrative thrust remains elusive. And the storyline, confined to a few ignorable skits of kitschy playacting, barely impinges on the music. Instead, the "Nanocloud" concept seems more like a flimsy and silly but ultimately harmless way to unite a dozen-plus tracks that might otherwise seem to belong on wholly different albums. Like many producers who refused to go away quietly when grime and dubstep stole UK garage's thunder, Bias has explored as many styles and subgenres as he's been able to get away with since his turn-of-the-millennium UKG glory days. So there's not much of a "signature" on Biasonic Hotsauce and certainly not much you haven't heard before if you've been following British dance music for the last 10 years. From hammering dancehall-inflected dubstep to slickly anonymous commercial house, Bias treats BH like an outsider-friendly party tape, heavy on the obvious hooks and boisterous rapping and layer of high-end gloss applied to even the starkest tracks. This little-bit-of-everything approach to modern UK dance culture is welcome, given how alienating "pure" dubstep records can be for non-fans. Biasonic Hotsauce can sometimes feel like an alternate universe take on Kevin Martin's the Bug project, with the nuclear-grade noise swapped out for radio-friendliness. (Or at least pirate-radio-friendliness.) But the jack-of-all-dance-trades tack also reveals that, for all his restless experimentation, Bias' skill set hasn't evolved much over the last decade. What he does best here-- merging the boom of Jamaican ragga with the runway-show opulence of deep house and the punchy-but-still-pop beats of R&B and soca-- sounds remarkably similar to the sound that first brought him to underground prominence over a decade ago. The great early run of tracks on BH work the same beguiling and unstable middle ground, where the rhythmic dexterity of high-class dance music for grown-ups meets blunt-force street kid grit, which defined the late-1990s/early-00s peak of UK garage. The low-end of "Yagga" has all the thuggish heaviness of dubstep, but the frisky rhythms show up the genre's stereotypical thump as a drag. Though BH has enough bass wobble and crass Ibiza synth hooks to mark it out definitively as a 2011 release, the drums on the first-tier tracks still have the intricate and far more interesting syncopations of old-school garage. It's sad but telling that Bias is still leaning on his biggest and best tune here, 2000's uptown dancehall smash "Neighbourhood", given a wholly unnecessary dubstep-era update for BH. After that bracing opening stretch, there are a handful of half-brilliant tracks in the same vein strewn across the album, especially the shiver-inducing "Lucid Dreams", echoing the minimalist future funk and disembodied vocals that once defined UKG at its outermost, without the dour murk Burial now brings to the mix. But whenever Bias leaves his comfort zone, the excitement and energy drains away, and he comes up with tracks that settle for being competent style exercises, like "Koolade" with its campy take on 1980s boogie. The final trio of "straight" dubstep tracks are just too damn polite to even be called bangers, risking neither the grossly enjoyable excess of the genre's populist wing nor the form-pushing innovation of its avant school. As so often when it comes to dance-music full-lengths, Bias' good ideas get lost in the sea of makeweight stuff, and his attempt to please just about everyone results in a frustratingly spotty album."

Jon Hopkins

Immunity

Electronic

Brian Howe

Jon Hopkins is a respected keyboardist and sonic technician who instills ambient music and acidic techno with a classical sense of composition, but he tends to work around the edges of things: He got started backing Imogen Heap. He's played keyboards for Brian Eno, a clear influence, on albums such as Small Craft on a Milk Sea. Tagging along with Eno, he wound up co-producing and performing on Coldplay's fourth album. He also created subtle electro-acoustic atmospheres for the Scottish singer/songwriter King Creosote on the exquisite Diamond Mine EP, and crafted an acclaimed string-based score for the British sci-fi film Monsters*.* It's not a shabby CV, but it's not quite a name-making one, either. This habit of putting himself on the periphery seeped into his own albums-- until now. Insides from 2009 was impressive but felt faintly impersonal, streaming by like dazzling but disconnected vignettes in a film. But Hopkins' breakthrough fourth album, Immunity, bounds and writhes with its own life force. It's looser and oilier, more limber and dangerous. The aggressive dance tracks darkly obliterate everything else, while the wet and sunny piano-ambient ones wash out into the sounds of wind, waves, and gulls. The latter is impeccably done on "Sun Harmonics", where the boundary between electronics and coastal recordings dissolves. Lots of electronic music creates its own hermetic world, but on Immunity, Hopkins finds ingenious ways to let the world in. He created the album's warm, alive feel by shunning digital perfection in favor of the analog synthesis of original sounds, both electronic and physical. The ambient prelude of the haunting, scrambled glitch-house opener "We Disappear"-- a key unlocks the door of Hopkins' London studio and his footsteps lead in-- is more than idle window dressing: He is ushering us into the tactile space that suffuses the record. He drums on desks, plays salt shakers, slows down serendipitous recordings of nearby fireworks, boosts the kick-drummed rattle of a window. On "Form By Firelight", which sounds like Kanye West's "Runaway" remixed by Wolfgang Voigt, Hopkins processes beats and melodies right out of the piano, tapping the pedals and striking the strings. Spacious, with carefully shaped resonance, its delay-flickered counterpoint shows off Hopkins' classical background. This emphasis on our admission to a physical space naturally makes us feel like we have privileged access to Hopkins' private emotional space as well. Immunity is said to be inspired by the arc of a night out, and whether or not that matters to the listener, it gives the album a holistic pace and flow, from heroically hurtling along on molten bass synthesziers to hovering gorgeously on gathering ambient breezes. Around the monstrous dancefloor anthems "Open Eye Signal" and "Collider"-- the first oozing forward in anticipation, the second climactically crashing down at sharp threshing angles-- there is the lyrical ambient landscape of "Abandon Window" and the cunning merger of both styles in "Breathe This Air". The title track, with a trickle of legato piano turning a rickety rhythm, brings back King Creosote to add discreet vocal colors for a dreamlike conclusion. It all adds up to a remarkably visceral, sensual, confident electronic record that stays absorbing from beginning to end, and should finally catapult Hopkins to stardom in his own story.

Artist: Jon Hopkins, Album: Immunity, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "Jon Hopkins is a respected keyboardist and sonic technician who instills ambient music and acidic techno with a classical sense of composition, but he tends to work around the edges of things: He got started backing Imogen Heap. He's played keyboards for Brian Eno, a clear influence, on albums such as Small Craft on a Milk Sea. Tagging along with Eno, he wound up co-producing and performing on Coldplay's fourth album. He also created subtle electro-acoustic atmospheres for the Scottish singer/songwriter King Creosote on the exquisite Diamond Mine EP, and crafted an acclaimed string-based score for the British sci-fi film Monsters*.* It's not a shabby CV, but it's not quite a name-making one, either. This habit of putting himself on the periphery seeped into his own albums-- until now. Insides from 2009 was impressive but felt faintly impersonal, streaming by like dazzling but disconnected vignettes in a film. But Hopkins' breakthrough fourth album, Immunity, bounds and writhes with its own life force. It's looser and oilier, more limber and dangerous. The aggressive dance tracks darkly obliterate everything else, while the wet and sunny piano-ambient ones wash out into the sounds of wind, waves, and gulls. The latter is impeccably done on "Sun Harmonics", where the boundary between electronics and coastal recordings dissolves. Lots of electronic music creates its own hermetic world, but on Immunity, Hopkins finds ingenious ways to let the world in. He created the album's warm, alive feel by shunning digital perfection in favor of the analog synthesis of original sounds, both electronic and physical. The ambient prelude of the haunting, scrambled glitch-house opener "We Disappear"-- a key unlocks the door of Hopkins' London studio and his footsteps lead in-- is more than idle window dressing: He is ushering us into the tactile space that suffuses the record. He drums on desks, plays salt shakers, slows down serendipitous recordings of nearby fireworks, boosts the kick-drummed rattle of a window. On "Form By Firelight", which sounds like Kanye West's "Runaway" remixed by Wolfgang Voigt, Hopkins processes beats and melodies right out of the piano, tapping the pedals and striking the strings. Spacious, with carefully shaped resonance, its delay-flickered counterpoint shows off Hopkins' classical background. This emphasis on our admission to a physical space naturally makes us feel like we have privileged access to Hopkins' private emotional space as well. Immunity is said to be inspired by the arc of a night out, and whether or not that matters to the listener, it gives the album a holistic pace and flow, from heroically hurtling along on molten bass synthesziers to hovering gorgeously on gathering ambient breezes. Around the monstrous dancefloor anthems "Open Eye Signal" and "Collider"-- the first oozing forward in anticipation, the second climactically crashing down at sharp threshing angles-- there is the lyrical ambient landscape of "Abandon Window" and the cunning merger of both styles in "Breathe This Air". The title track, with a trickle of legato piano turning a rickety rhythm, brings back King Creosote to add discreet vocal colors for a dreamlike conclusion. It all adds up to a remarkably visceral, sensual, confident electronic record that stays absorbing from beginning to end, and should finally catapult Hopkins to stardom in his own story."

Matt Kivel

Days of Being Wild

Folk/Country

Jayson Greene

Matt Kivel's Double Exposure was a deeply solitary record. The lyrics brimmed with death, stillness, pale horses, and Kivel recorded it largely alone, away from his other projects, Gap Dream and Princeton. It was initially difficult to tell if anyone else even noticed this stark, beautiful little gem--it came out in late 2013, a tough time for indie records, especially ones by new, unproven names. I often wondered, living with it, if I was the only one listening. Someone else must have been, because Kivel was picked up from Olde English Spelling Bee by Woodsist, and his follow-up, Days of Being Wild, arrives less than one year later. Kivel is touring with Steve Gunn and the Clientele now, and his new record reflects a modest new warmth. If the mood of Double Exposure was frozen and desolate, Days is rainy and melancholy. "Little Girls" even feels like a Clientele song, with its drizzly mix of acoustic and clean reverb'ed guitars. Kivel's lyrics are still whispered , but this time they are addressed to an intimate crowd rather than the corner wall. The switch from acoustic to electric has a lovely lamplit effect on the songs. The chords and riffs make pleasant, friendly college-rock shapes, like the riff on "Insignificance", which feels like a watercolor made out of a Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain song, or the overdrive on "Open Road," which fizzes like a classic Yo La Tengo drone rocker. The power chords of "Blonde Boy", which Kivel barely articulates with the edge of his pick, feels like a Bachman-Turner Overdrive or Cars song creeping through a library on tiptoes. Kivel seems to be making his muted version of a radio rock record, which is something you can hear in the lyrics as well. On "Insignificance," he whispers fragmented FM rock signifiers—"Black is night/ The highway/ Her nails so red and wild/ Green and slip/ The oceanside"—like Bob Seger via William Carlos Williams. On "Little Girls," he sings "Honey I ain't got forever/ You take me now or never/ Just step into the night/ There I'll be gone." On the title track, Kivel quotes the melody of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", of all things. As with everything else, it's handled gently, cradled like a robin's egg. No one is actually being wild here per the album title, but the album is full of feeling for the memory of such days, the imprint they leave in the mind. Kivel's voice is as much a warm shape and the guitars: As on Double Exposure, he's barely intelligible save for isolated phrases. Pieced together, these little snatches of clear communication convey almost as much, in their evocative settings, as the full lyric sheet does. One of them, from "Only With the Wine," is "She fucks with other guys/ But why?", and another, from "End of Adventure," is "Slapped on your ass." One of the welcome surprises of spending prolonged time with Kivel's music is discovering how quietly libidinous it is. Of course, another clear, ringing lyric piercing the haze is "I don't wanna die/ But I will." But compared with *Double Exposure'*s central confession "I want to kill myself" (from "Whip"), the line feels positively life-affirming. Kivel is still troubled by mortality, but on Days he is pushing away from it, towards life and contact.

Artist: Matt Kivel, Album: Days of Being Wild, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Matt Kivel's Double Exposure was a deeply solitary record. The lyrics brimmed with death, stillness, pale horses, and Kivel recorded it largely alone, away from his other projects, Gap Dream and Princeton. It was initially difficult to tell if anyone else even noticed this stark, beautiful little gem--it came out in late 2013, a tough time for indie records, especially ones by new, unproven names. I often wondered, living with it, if I was the only one listening. Someone else must have been, because Kivel was picked up from Olde English Spelling Bee by Woodsist, and his follow-up, Days of Being Wild, arrives less than one year later. Kivel is touring with Steve Gunn and the Clientele now, and his new record reflects a modest new warmth. If the mood of Double Exposure was frozen and desolate, Days is rainy and melancholy. "Little Girls" even feels like a Clientele song, with its drizzly mix of acoustic and clean reverb'ed guitars. Kivel's lyrics are still whispered , but this time they are addressed to an intimate crowd rather than the corner wall. The switch from acoustic to electric has a lovely lamplit effect on the songs. The chords and riffs make pleasant, friendly college-rock shapes, like the riff on "Insignificance", which feels like a watercolor made out of a Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain song, or the overdrive on "Open Road," which fizzes like a classic Yo La Tengo drone rocker. The power chords of "Blonde Boy", which Kivel barely articulates with the edge of his pick, feels like a Bachman-Turner Overdrive or Cars song creeping through a library on tiptoes. Kivel seems to be making his muted version of a radio rock record, which is something you can hear in the lyrics as well. On "Insignificance," he whispers fragmented FM rock signifiers—"Black is night/ The highway/ Her nails so red and wild/ Green and slip/ The oceanside"—like Bob Seger via William Carlos Williams. On "Little Girls," he sings "Honey I ain't got forever/ You take me now or never/ Just step into the night/ There I'll be gone." On the title track, Kivel quotes the melody of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", of all things. As with everything else, it's handled gently, cradled like a robin's egg. No one is actually being wild here per the album title, but the album is full of feeling for the memory of such days, the imprint they leave in the mind. Kivel's voice is as much a warm shape and the guitars: As on Double Exposure, he's barely intelligible save for isolated phrases. Pieced together, these little snatches of clear communication convey almost as much, in their evocative settings, as the full lyric sheet does. One of them, from "Only With the Wine," is "She fucks with other guys/ But why?", and another, from "End of Adventure," is "Slapped on your ass." One of the welcome surprises of spending prolonged time with Kivel's music is discovering how quietly libidinous it is. Of course, another clear, ringing lyric piercing the haze is "I don't wanna die/ But I will." But compared with *Double Exposure'*s central confession "I want to kill myself" (from "Whip"), the line feels positively life-affirming. Kivel is still troubled by mortality, but on Days he is pushing away from it, towards life and contact."

Majical Cloudz

Turns Turns Turns EP

Rock

Lindsay Zoladz

On "Clean Up Your Dreams", a murky, mid-tempo reverie off Montreal duo Majical Cloudz' last LP II, vocalist Devon Welsh sings, "If you want someone, start trying to fix yourself." At least, I think he does. As on most of the record, Welsh's vocals are cryptic mumbles buried beneath an avalanche of samples, loops, and synth drones. No matter, though: you got the idea that a Majical Cloudz song wasn't supposed to be about what Welsh was saying, but more about the experience of getting sucked into its Spin Art swirl of smudged tones, contrasting textures, and fragmented melodies. II had hits and misses, but even when it was firing on all cylinders (the sunset blaze of "Francisco", or the heavenly "Dream World", which featured the ubiquitous falsetto of Welsh's close friend Grimes), it kept the listener at arm's length. It felt appropriate that one lyric of "Dream" began "I'm livin' in a dream world…" and then trailed off into indiscernible mumbles. That particular song now feels prophetic not because of its sound, but because of its title: in the time between II and their striking new EP, Turns Turns Turns, Majical Cloudz have gone and cleaned up their dreams. From the EP's no-frills cover to Welsh's appearance in the lead-off track's video (starkly shaved head; Rollins-minimal wardrobe), everything about their image is now streamlined and direct. Their sound has been de-cluttered too, and the songs on the EP greatly benefit from the added breathing room. Matthe Otto's tracks are immersive yet understated, while Welsh's vocals are confident and high in the mix, his melodies, as on the excellent "What That Was", given time to unfurl and bloom. The leap between II and Turns is so dramatic that Majical Cloudz almost sound like a different band, but listen closely and you'll hear echoes of their past: the particular way these songs feel personal, internal, and move with the churning rhythm of dreams. Turns Turns Turns documents Majical Cloudz' newfound confidence; it's the sound of a band trusting enough in their vision to funnel it into something simpler and more direct. And yet, there's something almost disarmingly vulnerable about these songs. "My idea of why I would make music became a lot simpler," Welsh said in a recent interview, describing a shift in his songwriting process that's happened over the past year. "Songs became a way to say something to someone that I wouldn't be able to say as clearly in person." That's the starkest difference between these tracks and their older material: Majical Cloudz has suddenly become very much about what Welsh is saying. These songs have the expressive power of confessions, or handwritten letters. Take the melodic and mesmerizing opening track, "Turns, Turns, Turns", which starts with a hypnotic loop of Welsh's voice singing, "I…" and trailing off. The song stammers like this for about a minute, as though it's on the brink of letting us in on a secret but keeps changing its mind. When he finally blurts it out-- "I did something free, I can't tell if it's wrong"-- the moment feels like a catharsis, and a breakthrough for their whole project. It's hard to believe this is a band that once seemed mysterious and obtuse. A lot of this comes from the fact that Welsh (who also once twirled knobs in now defunct electro-dreamers Pop Winds) is now embracing his inner frontman. He and Otto both used to man an assortment of samplers, drum machines, and synths during the band's live show, but now he's exclusively on the mic. It's a good look. You wouldn't know from II that Welsh actually has legitimate pipes-- a strong tenor voice that doesn't need reverb or manipulations to sound powerful. Trusting in simple pop melodies and never feeling a need to obscure the most enjoyable elements of these songs, Turns recalls the step Grimes took between her collage-like early LPs and her breakthrough EP Darkbloom. In both cases, the lesson's the same: streamlining your inputs doesn't have to mean compromising your vision-- it usually just makes an artist sound more uniquely and confidently themselves. Side B of Turns isn't quite as solid, but that's because the front half sets the bar so high. The most powerful song they've done yet is "What That Was"-- a largehearted, plaintive ode to Welsh's friendship with the Montreal artist Neil Corcoran. It's like a minimalist pop hybrid of Arab Strap's "The First Big Weekend" and LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends": a catalog of an average weekend's glorious banalities (going to friends' shows, wandering around until Friday becomes Saturday) shot through with just the right amount of warmth and sentiment. Like "Turns", it blurts out the things that seem difficult or too obvious to say in person: "Hey, I think that you're the best friend that I've ever had.../ I didn't think about it until now." Though the lyrics are full of specificity about Neil and places in Montreal, they never use self-referentiality as a distancing effect; they just express more clearly what's so universal about the song's feeling. Like all of Turns, it's got the warmth and force of a friendly handshake, a handwritten invitation into Majical Cloudz' dream world.

Artist: Majical Cloudz, Album: Turns Turns Turns EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "On "Clean Up Your Dreams", a murky, mid-tempo reverie off Montreal duo Majical Cloudz' last LP II, vocalist Devon Welsh sings, "If you want someone, start trying to fix yourself." At least, I think he does. As on most of the record, Welsh's vocals are cryptic mumbles buried beneath an avalanche of samples, loops, and synth drones. No matter, though: you got the idea that a Majical Cloudz song wasn't supposed to be about what Welsh was saying, but more about the experience of getting sucked into its Spin Art swirl of smudged tones, contrasting textures, and fragmented melodies. II had hits and misses, but even when it was firing on all cylinders (the sunset blaze of "Francisco", or the heavenly "Dream World", which featured the ubiquitous falsetto of Welsh's close friend Grimes), it kept the listener at arm's length. It felt appropriate that one lyric of "Dream" began "I'm livin' in a dream world…" and then trailed off into indiscernible mumbles. That particular song now feels prophetic not because of its sound, but because of its title: in the time between II and their striking new EP, Turns Turns Turns, Majical Cloudz have gone and cleaned up their dreams. From the EP's no-frills cover to Welsh's appearance in the lead-off track's video (starkly shaved head; Rollins-minimal wardrobe), everything about their image is now streamlined and direct. Their sound has been de-cluttered too, and the songs on the EP greatly benefit from the added breathing room. Matthe Otto's tracks are immersive yet understated, while Welsh's vocals are confident and high in the mix, his melodies, as on the excellent "What That Was", given time to unfurl and bloom. The leap between II and Turns is so dramatic that Majical Cloudz almost sound like a different band, but listen closely and you'll hear echoes of their past: the particular way these songs feel personal, internal, and move with the churning rhythm of dreams. Turns Turns Turns documents Majical Cloudz' newfound confidence; it's the sound of a band trusting enough in their vision to funnel it into something simpler and more direct. And yet, there's something almost disarmingly vulnerable about these songs. "My idea of why I would make music became a lot simpler," Welsh said in a recent interview, describing a shift in his songwriting process that's happened over the past year. "Songs became a way to say something to someone that I wouldn't be able to say as clearly in person." That's the starkest difference between these tracks and their older material: Majical Cloudz has suddenly become very much about what Welsh is saying. These songs have the expressive power of confessions, or handwritten letters. Take the melodic and mesmerizing opening track, "Turns, Turns, Turns", which starts with a hypnotic loop of Welsh's voice singing, "I…" and trailing off. The song stammers like this for about a minute, as though it's on the brink of letting us in on a secret but keeps changing its mind. When he finally blurts it out-- "I did something free, I can't tell if it's wrong"-- the moment feels like a catharsis, and a breakthrough for their whole project. It's hard to believe this is a band that once seemed mysterious and obtuse. A lot of this comes from the fact that Welsh (who also once twirled knobs in now defunct electro-dreamers Pop Winds) is now embracing his inner frontman. He and Otto both used to man an assortment of samplers, drum machines, and synths during the band's live show, but now he's exclusively on the mic. It's a good look. You wouldn't know from II that Welsh actually has legitimate pipes-- a strong tenor voice that doesn't need reverb or manipulations to sound powerful. Trusting in simple pop melodies and never feeling a need to obscure the most enjoyable elements of these songs, Turns recalls the step Grimes took between her collage-like early LPs and her breakthrough EP Darkbloom. In both cases, the lesson's the same: streamlining your inputs doesn't have to mean compromising your vision-- it usually just makes an artist sound more uniquely and confidently themselves. Side B of Turns isn't quite as solid, but that's because the front half sets the bar so high. The most powerful song they've done yet is "What That Was"-- a largehearted, plaintive ode to Welsh's friendship with the Montreal artist Neil Corcoran. It's like a minimalist pop hybrid of Arab Strap's "The First Big Weekend" and LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends": a catalog of an average weekend's glorious banalities (going to friends' shows, wandering around until Friday becomes Saturday) shot through with just the right amount of warmth and sentiment. Like "Turns", it blurts out the things that seem difficult or too obvious to say in person: "Hey, I think that you're the best friend that I've ever had.../ I didn't think about it until now." Though the lyrics are full of specificity about Neil and places in Montreal, they never use self-referentiality as a distancing effect; they just express more clearly what's so universal about the song's feeling. Like all of Turns, it's got the warmth and force of a friendly handshake, a handwritten invitation into Majical Cloudz' dream world."

R.E.M.

Green: 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Eight years into a career that had started at a reclaimed church in Athens, Georgia, and ended up at Warner Brothers with an extremely artist-friendly contract, the members of R.E.M. were getting restless. They’d been touring almost nonstop throughout the 1980s and were understandably growing tired of their assigned instruments and their assumed roles in the band. So in 1988, when they holed up in a local studio to demo new songs, drummer Bill Berry called dibs on bass for one tune, while bass player Mike Mills moved over to keyboards. Peter Buck set aside his electric guitar and strummed a mandolin. Michael Stipe sang. According to Tony Fletcher’s massive band bio Perfect Circle, now out in its sixth edition in 25 years: “The process was partly an education, forcing themselves to learn to play equipment they’d often taken for granted, and partly to explore the inherent chemistry of the group, to see whether R.E.M. remained R.E.M. even when its characters changed their roles.” The immediate result of this intraband game of musical chairs was “You Are the Everything”, a standout on their sixth album and major-label debut, Green. Against a chorus of nighttime crickets, Buck’s mandolin almost jangles, Berry’s bassline dances in the moonlight, and the effect is a curious Southern pastoral without precedent in R.E.M.’s catalog. The song would become crucial, however, to their future output, providing a musical and logistical blueprint for much of Out of Time and Automatic for the People-- the band’s most popular albums, which exploded their traditional drums-bass-guitar-singer line-up. This alone would have been sufficient to establish Green as pivotal in R.E.M.’s catalog. Released on November 8, 1988-- the day Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected as the 41st President of the United States of America-- the album marks many firsts for the band. It was their first effort for a major label, and so understandably represented a gigantic risk. It was their first to go double platinum, which proves the risk paid off. It was their first to gain a popular foothold in the UK-- testament to Warner Brothers’ international reach. And yet, it’s that complete rethinking of the band’s line-up that defines Green 25 years later; listening to this newly remastered anniversary edition, it’s impossible to miss that sense of renewed purpose within the band, which both expanded and solidified their sound. If nothing else here sounds quite like anything R.E.M. had done in the past, it still sounded undeniably like R.E.M. Green is an album of experiments. Freed from their usual roles, the band members tinkered with sugary pop, martial arena punk, fluttering folk rock, country flourishes, and dramatic dirges. Especially on the second side (referred to by the band as the “metal” side, referring not to the genre but to the element), these experiments collide for a set of songs as strong and as diverse as any sequence on previous albums. Stipe’s vocals overlap eerily on “The Wrong Child” to create an unsettlingly spectral roundelay. Against the military stomp of “Orange Crush” he sings through a megaphone that lends his vocals a corroded quality appropriate to the subject matter (namely, the degenerative effects of Agent Orange on U.S. soldiers). Foretelling the glam-rock attack of Monster, “Turn You Inside-Out” is a scabrous examination of the entertainer/audience relationship, while “I Remember California” grows so darkly ominous that it threatens to sink the Golden State in the Pacific. Whereas Document, their final release for I.R.S. Records, sounded grimly solemn, Green is often positively giddy as the band try out new tricks and as Stipe grows more confident and charismatic as a frontman. The album contains some of the jauntiest and most upbeat tunes they had ever recorded, revealing a self-deflating sense of humor as well as a sophisticated self-awareness. “Pop Song ‘89” is a pop song about pop songs, with Stipe introducing himself (“Hi! Hi! Hi!”) before wondering, “Should we talk about the weather?/... Should we talk about the government?” Both subjects had figured prominently into his lyrics on previous albums, and R.E.M. were trying to figure out what to sing about next. The joviality of tunes like “Get Up” and especially “Stand”, which dominated the “air” (or first) side, proved divisive, alienating long-time fans while attracting new listeners. Because MTV played the hell out of “Stand” and because this pop urge would culminate in the questionable “Shiny Happy People”, it’s all too easy to dismiss the pop songs on Green. They certainly haven’t aged as well as some of the other, graver tunes, but it’s intriguing to hear R.E.M. bring to the fore a playfulness that had previously only been shunted to the margins. Plus, there’s a certain charm to their unguarded goofiness, which seemed at odds with the band’s sense of purpose and Stipe’s cultivated enigma. And it extended to the packaging as well: the spot-gloss 4s on the over, the spiraling tree trunk on the CD, and especially the untitled closing track, which made it impossible to request at live shows. "Untitled" grows out of the same pop impulse that motivates “Stand”, yet the result is wide-eyed and big-hearted as Stipe delivers some of his most direct lyrics. The music is simple, shaky, even arguably unprofessional, as Buck lays down a rudimentary drumbeat and Mills interjects an emphatic organ riff. Even on a major label, R.E.M. were still trying to shirk the trappings of their newfound celebrity, to play with their own image, to bend the language of pop music to convey their own ideas rather than fix their ideas to the mechanics of pop. Still, R.E.M. were professionals. In the studio they might have switched things up, but on stage they hunkered down into their individual roles and did their jobs with exciting efficiency. The success of first Document and then Green meant they were playing increasingly larger venues, and the long run of dates burned them out so much that they would decide not to tour for their next two albums. So the live bonus disc on this reissue, recorded at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina (friendly territory for the band, as the crowd on this recording makes clear), shows R.E.M. at the height of their abilities as a live act, with a strong batch of songs and a relentless intensity. The tempos are quick, the dynamic rowdy-- almost impatient on “The One I Love” and “Life and How to Live It”. Songs from Murmur and Lifes Rich Pageant sound rejuvenated in this context, meshing naturally with the newer material; early v

Artist: R.E.M., Album: Green: 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Eight years into a career that had started at a reclaimed church in Athens, Georgia, and ended up at Warner Brothers with an extremely artist-friendly contract, the members of R.E.M. were getting restless. They’d been touring almost nonstop throughout the 1980s and were understandably growing tired of their assigned instruments and their assumed roles in the band. So in 1988, when they holed up in a local studio to demo new songs, drummer Bill Berry called dibs on bass for one tune, while bass player Mike Mills moved over to keyboards. Peter Buck set aside his electric guitar and strummed a mandolin. Michael Stipe sang. According to Tony Fletcher’s massive band bio Perfect Circle, now out in its sixth edition in 25 years: “The process was partly an education, forcing themselves to learn to play equipment they’d often taken for granted, and partly to explore the inherent chemistry of the group, to see whether R.E.M. remained R.E.M. even when its characters changed their roles.” The immediate result of this intraband game of musical chairs was “You Are the Everything”, a standout on their sixth album and major-label debut, Green. Against a chorus of nighttime crickets, Buck’s mandolin almost jangles, Berry’s bassline dances in the moonlight, and the effect is a curious Southern pastoral without precedent in R.E.M.’s catalog. The song would become crucial, however, to their future output, providing a musical and logistical blueprint for much of Out of Time and Automatic for the People-- the band’s most popular albums, which exploded their traditional drums-bass-guitar-singer line-up. This alone would have been sufficient to establish Green as pivotal in R.E.M.’s catalog. Released on November 8, 1988-- the day Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected as the 41st President of the United States of America-- the album marks many firsts for the band. It was their first effort for a major label, and so understandably represented a gigantic risk. It was their first to go double platinum, which proves the risk paid off. It was their first to gain a popular foothold in the UK-- testament to Warner Brothers’ international reach. And yet, it’s that complete rethinking of the band’s line-up that defines Green 25 years later; listening to this newly remastered anniversary edition, it’s impossible to miss that sense of renewed purpose within the band, which both expanded and solidified their sound. If nothing else here sounds quite like anything R.E.M. had done in the past, it still sounded undeniably like R.E.M. Green is an album of experiments. Freed from their usual roles, the band members tinkered with sugary pop, martial arena punk, fluttering folk rock, country flourishes, and dramatic dirges. Especially on the second side (referred to by the band as the “metal” side, referring not to the genre but to the element), these experiments collide for a set of songs as strong and as diverse as any sequence on previous albums. Stipe’s vocals overlap eerily on “The Wrong Child” to create an unsettlingly spectral roundelay. Against the military stomp of “Orange Crush” he sings through a megaphone that lends his vocals a corroded quality appropriate to the subject matter (namely, the degenerative effects of Agent Orange on U.S. soldiers). Foretelling the glam-rock attack of Monster, “Turn You Inside-Out” is a scabrous examination of the entertainer/audience relationship, while “I Remember California” grows so darkly ominous that it threatens to sink the Golden State in the Pacific. Whereas Document, their final release for I.R.S. Records, sounded grimly solemn, Green is often positively giddy as the band try out new tricks and as Stipe grows more confident and charismatic as a frontman. The album contains some of the jauntiest and most upbeat tunes they had ever recorded, revealing a self-deflating sense of humor as well as a sophisticated self-awareness. “Pop Song ‘89” is a pop song about pop songs, with Stipe introducing himself (“Hi! Hi! Hi!”) before wondering, “Should we talk about the weather?/... Should we talk about the government?” Both subjects had figured prominently into his lyrics on previous albums, and R.E.M. were trying to figure out what to sing about next. The joviality of tunes like “Get Up” and especially “Stand”, which dominated the “air” (or first) side, proved divisive, alienating long-time fans while attracting new listeners. Because MTV played the hell out of “Stand” and because this pop urge would culminate in the questionable “Shiny Happy People”, it’s all too easy to dismiss the pop songs on Green. They certainly haven’t aged as well as some of the other, graver tunes, but it’s intriguing to hear R.E.M. bring to the fore a playfulness that had previously only been shunted to the margins. Plus, there’s a certain charm to their unguarded goofiness, which seemed at odds with the band’s sense of purpose and Stipe’s cultivated enigma. And it extended to the packaging as well: the spot-gloss 4s on the over, the spiraling tree trunk on the CD, and especially the untitled closing track, which made it impossible to request at live shows. "Untitled" grows out of the same pop impulse that motivates “Stand”, yet the result is wide-eyed and big-hearted as Stipe delivers some of his most direct lyrics. The music is simple, shaky, even arguably unprofessional, as Buck lays down a rudimentary drumbeat and Mills interjects an emphatic organ riff. Even on a major label, R.E.M. were still trying to shirk the trappings of their newfound celebrity, to play with their own image, to bend the language of pop music to convey their own ideas rather than fix their ideas to the mechanics of pop. Still, R.E.M. were professionals. In the studio they might have switched things up, but on stage they hunkered down into their individual roles and did their jobs with exciting efficiency. The success of first Document and then Green meant they were playing increasingly larger venues, and the long run of dates burned them out so much that they would decide not to tour for their next two albums. So the live bonus disc on this reissue, recorded at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina (friendly territory for the band, as the crowd on this recording makes clear), shows R.E.M. at the height of their abilities as a live act, with a strong batch of songs and a relentless intensity. The tempos are quick, the dynamic rowdy-- almost impatient on “The One I Love” and “Life and How to Live It”. Songs from Murmur and Lifes Rich Pageant sound rejuvenated in this context, meshing naturally with the newer material; early v"

Young Dro

Ralph Lauren Reefa

Rap

Jayson Greene

Young Dro is an unspectacularly spectacular rapper. He's humbly astonishing. How to explain this guy? He's more agile, more playful, and more confident than most; almost everything that comes out of his mouth sounds catchy, even when he's just ranting semi-incomprehensibly in skits about how fresh he is. The "should be famous" line is a tired one, so we'll just observe that he's definitely not famous, at least not nationally like his sometime-benefactor T.I. and his other Atlanta colleagues. He had one hit in 2006, ("Shoulder Lean"), but he is a rapper's rapper, a nerd's favorite who will probably be a local legend in his hometown for the rest of his life. His legacy is secure; his epitaph is written. The Local Rapper Who Just Can't Get Over is everywhere, in every city-- here in NYC, we have Jadakiss, their grumpy-uncle patron saint, but you can find them in Philly (Young Chris, Peedi Crakk) to Chicago (Bump J) to L.A. (Kurupt, WC). Sometimes, these guys are their own worst enemies, smacking home runs when no one's looking and freezing up when the floodlights hit them. Some of them just seem content to work on a ground level, surrounded by familiar associates and making the music that retains their hometown flavor. That's Young Dro. "Freeze Me" was a classic of Atlanta hip hop in 2010, and did as much to push the style of street rap forward as Rick Ross' "B.M.F." from the same year. But you wouldn't know the song was a classic unless you lived in Atlanta or learned secondhand. Rap's folk history is usually written by these sorts of guys as much as by the megastars they bump elbows with, and Dro has been playing the mascot role to the hilt for the past six years. He can be counted on to put out slightly overlong mixtapes once or twice a year, each one containing at least five or six breathtaking, pull-it-back-six-times scorchers. Ralph Lauren Reefa, which was made available a few weeks ago, is shorter and several notches more consistent than usual, partly thanks to the involvement of DJ Burn One, an Atlanta rap producer with an unwavering devotion to the heavier, humid end of Atlanta's heritage. The two previously collaborated on Future Legends, Vol. 2; with Burn One curating, Young Dro's occasional reliance on cheap-sounding beats disappears. Dro can loop rings around any wide-open, Southern beat you give him: If you hand him an instrumental made up of just a few bleeps and an 808 clap, like "Smell That Pack" on RLR, he will make it feel like a piece of Silly Putty in seconds. If you sit him back in a plush piece of after-party VIP-room rap ("On Set"), he will pummel its surface ceaselessly.  His writing is packed tight with alliteration, colorful slang, and the occasional paper-cut-size confessional ("Momma get sicker, she need a liver") and his sense of rhythm is mind-boggling. When he flexes effortlessly into double-time, you can feel your hair blow back: It might take you six replays of "Check Me Out"'s first verse to fully hear it once. When Young Dro gets soulful or quiet, he sounds a little less comfortable: "She Gone" is a slightly awkward remorseful-player song, "Dreamer" a slightly strained achiever's anthem. But when he just lets his mind and mouth fly, he's unstoppable. On "Laid Back", he sets up the line "supermodel bitches flying down from New Zealand" just so he can rack up a series of increasingly dazzling slant rhymes for  it: "my boo vegan" and "a pound of new tree, and" are two highlights. It's like watching someone pound you in Words With Friends while simultaneously cooking dinner and moonwalking. It seems unfair, somehow. All said, Ralph Lauren Reefa is one of his strongest tapes in a while, showing him at his lyrical, funny, vivid, local-hero best.

Artist: Young Dro, Album: Ralph Lauren Reefa, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Young Dro is an unspectacularly spectacular rapper. He's humbly astonishing. How to explain this guy? He's more agile, more playful, and more confident than most; almost everything that comes out of his mouth sounds catchy, even when he's just ranting semi-incomprehensibly in skits about how fresh he is. The "should be famous" line is a tired one, so we'll just observe that he's definitely not famous, at least not nationally like his sometime-benefactor T.I. and his other Atlanta colleagues. He had one hit in 2006, ("Shoulder Lean"), but he is a rapper's rapper, a nerd's favorite who will probably be a local legend in his hometown for the rest of his life. His legacy is secure; his epitaph is written. The Local Rapper Who Just Can't Get Over is everywhere, in every city-- here in NYC, we have Jadakiss, their grumpy-uncle patron saint, but you can find them in Philly (Young Chris, Peedi Crakk) to Chicago (Bump J) to L.A. (Kurupt, WC). Sometimes, these guys are their own worst enemies, smacking home runs when no one's looking and freezing up when the floodlights hit them. Some of them just seem content to work on a ground level, surrounded by familiar associates and making the music that retains their hometown flavor. That's Young Dro. "Freeze Me" was a classic of Atlanta hip hop in 2010, and did as much to push the style of street rap forward as Rick Ross' "B.M.F." from the same year. But you wouldn't know the song was a classic unless you lived in Atlanta or learned secondhand. Rap's folk history is usually written by these sorts of guys as much as by the megastars they bump elbows with, and Dro has been playing the mascot role to the hilt for the past six years. He can be counted on to put out slightly overlong mixtapes once or twice a year, each one containing at least five or six breathtaking, pull-it-back-six-times scorchers. Ralph Lauren Reefa, which was made available a few weeks ago, is shorter and several notches more consistent than usual, partly thanks to the involvement of DJ Burn One, an Atlanta rap producer with an unwavering devotion to the heavier, humid end of Atlanta's heritage. The two previously collaborated on Future Legends, Vol. 2; with Burn One curating, Young Dro's occasional reliance on cheap-sounding beats disappears. Dro can loop rings around any wide-open, Southern beat you give him: If you hand him an instrumental made up of just a few bleeps and an 808 clap, like "Smell That Pack" on RLR, he will make it feel like a piece of Silly Putty in seconds. If you sit him back in a plush piece of after-party VIP-room rap ("On Set"), he will pummel its surface ceaselessly.  His writing is packed tight with alliteration, colorful slang, and the occasional paper-cut-size confessional ("Momma get sicker, she need a liver") and his sense of rhythm is mind-boggling. When he flexes effortlessly into double-time, you can feel your hair blow back: It might take you six replays of "Check Me Out"'s first verse to fully hear it once. When Young Dro gets soulful or quiet, he sounds a little less comfortable: "She Gone" is a slightly awkward remorseful-player song, "Dreamer" a slightly strained achiever's anthem. But when he just lets his mind and mouth fly, he's unstoppable. On "Laid Back", he sets up the line "supermodel bitches flying down from New Zealand" just so he can rack up a series of increasingly dazzling slant rhymes for  it: "my boo vegan" and "a pound of new tree, and" are two highlights. It's like watching someone pound you in Words With Friends while simultaneously cooking dinner and moonwalking. It seems unfair, somehow. All said, Ralph Lauren Reefa is one of his strongest tapes in a while, showing him at his lyrical, funny, vivid, local-hero best."

El Perro Del Mar

Love Is Not Pop

Rock

Matthew Solarski

Death, taxes, and life's other inevitability: break-up records. Sad-eyed Swede Sarah Assbring already has one under her belt, if you count 2005 Scandinavian release Look! It's El Perro Del Mar! (later refashioned with a slightly different tracklisting in the UK and North America as the self-titled El Perro Del Mar). But that's the thing about break-ups and, by extension, break-up records: At the time each feels like a cataclysm to end all cataclysms, the definitive statement on cessation. Yet in light of the next one-- and, God help us, chances are there will be a next one-- all the ones before can seem quaint, trite, overblown, and anything but definitive. So it makes sense that Assbring should craft another ode to getting over it, just as it makes a certain sad kind of sense that the gal who sang of being sad all day long (and thinking about being sad all night long) and suggested loneliness can be pretty would again find herself in a position to make such a record. Refreshingly, Love Is Not Pop does indeed make what came before it seem quaint, representing a significant maturation for El Perro Del Mar both in sonics and sentiments. If Look!/ El Perro Del Mar was Assbring rebounding from a failed high school romance to the tune of a candy bender and the familiar, comforting sounds of 1960s pop music, Love documents a more complicated, post-collegiate parting of ways against the more sophisticated sounds of late nights and dancefloors, courtesy of co-producer (and Studio half) Rasmus Hägg. For one thing, she initiates this one. "I've got something to tell you," Assbring begins over gentle acoustic strums and rays of synth sunshine on Love opener "Gotta Get Smart". "Don't wanna make you sad." Of course what she has to say will do just that, but like many an El Perro Del Mar song, this one adorns its lyrical miseries in only the most uplifting of arrangements. When much of the mix drops out to let Assbring deliver the kicker-- "It hurts now but deep down inside/ We both know it's better to part than live in a lie"-- she sounds like the patron saint of mercy, and when a chorus of multi-tracked vocals arrives to invite us to "Go on, go on, go on," it's as if they're leading us to the promised land. Getting dumped never sounded better. From there it's on to piano-and-groove album highlight "Change of Heart" and the dubbed-out midnight excursion "L Is for Love", its echoes suggesting the infinity of a night spent teasing apart those great questions of life and love in search of an elemental clarity. "Love isn't anything," the chorus would seem to mock here. Least of all pop? Yet El Perro's brand of pop is certainly easy to love, and a cozy sort of organic warmth-- characterized by thick, resonant drums and keys, and treated guitars that seem to lurch and lumber with the slightly irregular rhythms of real life-- pervades the new record. You're just as likely to swing your hips here as to curl up with the headphones on and rock yourself to sleep. Indeed, some tracks encourage both: just as "Heavenly Arms" threatens to carry the listener off to Nod, the beat gets reborn in double time, complete with handclaps that make for the most welcome alarm call ever. "It Is Something (To Have Wept)", meanwhile, hearkens directly back to the organ-saturated devotional hymns of El Perro's previous record, From the Valley to the Stars-- that is, until Assbring and Hägg blast the chapel straight into the stratosphere with a little bit of rhythm and a lot of production pyrotechnics. They really could have ended the record right there, but instead we get an epilogue of sorts, "A Better Love", wherein Assbring cuts to the very heart of the other thing about breakups: namely that the loves that come in between them (how's that for glass-half-empty thinking?) only tend to get, yes, better and better. "You deserve a better love than me," is Assbring's ultimate admission, and with that the break-up cycle-- as viewed from the unique point of view of the enacting party-- is complete. Whatever love is or isn't, who needs it when you've got records like this one?

Artist: El Perro Del Mar, Album: Love Is Not Pop, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Death, taxes, and life's other inevitability: break-up records. Sad-eyed Swede Sarah Assbring already has one under her belt, if you count 2005 Scandinavian release Look! It's El Perro Del Mar! (later refashioned with a slightly different tracklisting in the UK and North America as the self-titled El Perro Del Mar). But that's the thing about break-ups and, by extension, break-up records: At the time each feels like a cataclysm to end all cataclysms, the definitive statement on cessation. Yet in light of the next one-- and, God help us, chances are there will be a next one-- all the ones before can seem quaint, trite, overblown, and anything but definitive. So it makes sense that Assbring should craft another ode to getting over it, just as it makes a certain sad kind of sense that the gal who sang of being sad all day long (and thinking about being sad all night long) and suggested loneliness can be pretty would again find herself in a position to make such a record. Refreshingly, Love Is Not Pop does indeed make what came before it seem quaint, representing a significant maturation for El Perro Del Mar both in sonics and sentiments. If Look!/ El Perro Del Mar was Assbring rebounding from a failed high school romance to the tune of a candy bender and the familiar, comforting sounds of 1960s pop music, Love documents a more complicated, post-collegiate parting of ways against the more sophisticated sounds of late nights and dancefloors, courtesy of co-producer (and Studio half) Rasmus Hägg. For one thing, she initiates this one. "I've got something to tell you," Assbring begins over gentle acoustic strums and rays of synth sunshine on Love opener "Gotta Get Smart". "Don't wanna make you sad." Of course what she has to say will do just that, but like many an El Perro Del Mar song, this one adorns its lyrical miseries in only the most uplifting of arrangements. When much of the mix drops out to let Assbring deliver the kicker-- "It hurts now but deep down inside/ We both know it's better to part than live in a lie"-- she sounds like the patron saint of mercy, and when a chorus of multi-tracked vocals arrives to invite us to "Go on, go on, go on," it's as if they're leading us to the promised land. Getting dumped never sounded better. From there it's on to piano-and-groove album highlight "Change of Heart" and the dubbed-out midnight excursion "L Is for Love", its echoes suggesting the infinity of a night spent teasing apart those great questions of life and love in search of an elemental clarity. "Love isn't anything," the chorus would seem to mock here. Least of all pop? Yet El Perro's brand of pop is certainly easy to love, and a cozy sort of organic warmth-- characterized by thick, resonant drums and keys, and treated guitars that seem to lurch and lumber with the slightly irregular rhythms of real life-- pervades the new record. You're just as likely to swing your hips here as to curl up with the headphones on and rock yourself to sleep. Indeed, some tracks encourage both: just as "Heavenly Arms" threatens to carry the listener off to Nod, the beat gets reborn in double time, complete with handclaps that make for the most welcome alarm call ever. "It Is Something (To Have Wept)", meanwhile, hearkens directly back to the organ-saturated devotional hymns of El Perro's previous record, From the Valley to the Stars-- that is, until Assbring and Hägg blast the chapel straight into the stratosphere with a little bit of rhythm and a lot of production pyrotechnics. They really could have ended the record right there, but instead we get an epilogue of sorts, "A Better Love", wherein Assbring cuts to the very heart of the other thing about breakups: namely that the loves that come in between them (how's that for glass-half-empty thinking?) only tend to get, yes, better and better. "You deserve a better love than me," is Assbring's ultimate admission, and with that the break-up cycle-- as viewed from the unique point of view of the enacting party-- is complete. Whatever love is or isn't, who needs it when you've got records like this one?"

Milky Wimpshake

Lovers Not Fighters

Rock

Chris Dahlen

A lot of British pop beaches itself on our shores, but it's rare to find the voice of the common English punk nerd. You don't hear much from bookish lads chatting in pubs about "anarcho-syndicalist" politics or crapping about how they never get laid. Such topics, of course, seem gloomy on the surface, but... if you sugarcoat them in some catchy pop/punk you get something pretty damn good, as proven by Newcastle-upon-Tyne's everyday rockers, Milky Wimpshake. You can hear a little bit of Billy Bragg here, and a lot of punk, but I mostly get a serious vibe of Herman's Hermits doing "I'm Henry VIII I Am" to more spastic music. Pete Case's guitar is a gristly sandblast to the eardrums, buzzing over a keyed-up rhythm section, and the raw mix doesn't shave off the edges. It could sound like just so much noise except that these songs are catchy and their lyrics are witty. The hooks and jangle complement the distortion of "Scrabble" and "Philosophical Boxing Gloves," and the jerky strumming and haphazard squalls on "Dialling Tone" blanket a song that could be rehabbed (and ruined) as an American ska-rock hit. The band also uses harmonica, banjo and violin here and there, which adds just enough color, though the harmonium on "Philosophical Boxing Gloves" sounds a bit twee. Case has a slim set of pipes, best displayed on the band's cover of Phil Ochs' "Do What I Have To," where he strains through the broad lines of the song. But he's adept with biting words and nimble melodies, and he shines on "Jackass," his protest against Home Secretary and fanatic prison-builder Jack Straw. Case also proves himself earnest and expressive as his songs jump from politics to love gone wrong, to his personal history, to an entire song about how etymology relates to the validity of ideas passed on to us by zzzzzzzzzzzz... er, right. Yeah, okay, so some of these topics are a bit absurd, and the songs are sometimes reachingly wordy, but Case generally makes them work. And the great cover of Spraydog's "Lemonade" puts him through lines that are more abstract and emotional, not allowing him to hunch behind his own wit. Lovers Not Fighters at times makes me wish the band would tighten up a little more-- specifically, that Case would sharpen his own lyrics to show how clever he really is. His best lines are tight, witty and even silly: "This song has a verse but has no chorus/ The police are out in force and looking for us." On the other hand, he seems to have a rule that if he can't make a good rhyme in five minutes or less, he goes with whatever he has: "Your boyfriend seems so dull/ He was probably born in Hull." Indeed, Case could definitely tighten the screws, but the lack of polish and these few awkward moments are probably what make the band work. Milky Wimpshake are smart, noisy, and this close to outrage, but they're too modest and good-natured to let it get in the way of a good time. And you've got to like a guy who can cut himself down like on the pro-cheating anthem "Dialling Tone": "Yeah, I know I'm your bit on the side/ But I hope one day you'll be all mine." If only the Gallaghers could be so humble.

Artist: Milky Wimpshake, Album: Lovers Not Fighters, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "A lot of British pop beaches itself on our shores, but it's rare to find the voice of the common English punk nerd. You don't hear much from bookish lads chatting in pubs about "anarcho-syndicalist" politics or crapping about how they never get laid. Such topics, of course, seem gloomy on the surface, but... if you sugarcoat them in some catchy pop/punk you get something pretty damn good, as proven by Newcastle-upon-Tyne's everyday rockers, Milky Wimpshake. You can hear a little bit of Billy Bragg here, and a lot of punk, but I mostly get a serious vibe of Herman's Hermits doing "I'm Henry VIII I Am" to more spastic music. Pete Case's guitar is a gristly sandblast to the eardrums, buzzing over a keyed-up rhythm section, and the raw mix doesn't shave off the edges. It could sound like just so much noise except that these songs are catchy and their lyrics are witty. The hooks and jangle complement the distortion of "Scrabble" and "Philosophical Boxing Gloves," and the jerky strumming and haphazard squalls on "Dialling Tone" blanket a song that could be rehabbed (and ruined) as an American ska-rock hit. The band also uses harmonica, banjo and violin here and there, which adds just enough color, though the harmonium on "Philosophical Boxing Gloves" sounds a bit twee. Case has a slim set of pipes, best displayed on the band's cover of Phil Ochs' "Do What I Have To," where he strains through the broad lines of the song. But he's adept with biting words and nimble melodies, and he shines on "Jackass," his protest against Home Secretary and fanatic prison-builder Jack Straw. Case also proves himself earnest and expressive as his songs jump from politics to love gone wrong, to his personal history, to an entire song about how etymology relates to the validity of ideas passed on to us by zzzzzzzzzzzz... er, right. Yeah, okay, so some of these topics are a bit absurd, and the songs are sometimes reachingly wordy, but Case generally makes them work. And the great cover of Spraydog's "Lemonade" puts him through lines that are more abstract and emotional, not allowing him to hunch behind his own wit. Lovers Not Fighters at times makes me wish the band would tighten up a little more-- specifically, that Case would sharpen his own lyrics to show how clever he really is. His best lines are tight, witty and even silly: "This song has a verse but has no chorus/ The police are out in force and looking for us." On the other hand, he seems to have a rule that if he can't make a good rhyme in five minutes or less, he goes with whatever he has: "Your boyfriend seems so dull/ He was probably born in Hull." Indeed, Case could definitely tighten the screws, but the lack of polish and these few awkward moments are probably what make the band work. Milky Wimpshake are smart, noisy, and this close to outrage, but they're too modest and good-natured to let it get in the way of a good time. And you've got to like a guy who can cut himself down like on the pro-cheating anthem "Dialling Tone": "Yeah, I know I'm your bit on the side/ But I hope one day you'll be all mine." If only the Gallaghers could be so humble."

Mono

The Last Dawn

Rock

Jason Heller

Mono’s debut album, 2001’s Under the Pipal Tree, featured a few flourishes of cello amid its melodramatic, guitar-driven post-rock. Since then, the Japanese instrumental outfit has incrementally raised the presence of chamber sounds on their records, to the point where their last two full-lengths—the 2010 live album Holy Ground and the 2012 studio album For My Parents—were swamped with symphonic fluff. It’s pretty enough, but it also undercut one of the band’s initial strengths: tension. Crescendos and cannonades became as quaint as clockwork, and the band’s magnificence was made mundane. The best that could be said of Mono is that they were impeccable self-editors. That hasn’t changed on The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness, two new studio albums being released concurrently. Spread between two discs, the 10 songs feel more like an average Mono double-LP split in half and given two names. But there’s something at least nominally interesting about the way they’re divided: The Last Dawn continues along the orchestral arc that For My Parents followed, while Rays of Darkness strips things down to the rock-quartet bone—and adds a couple of tiny surprises that don’t make up for an overall lack of spark. The Last Dawn is a dreary exercise in being as obvious as possible. With violin and cello as its crutches, “The Land Between Tides/Glory” squanders a fantastic intro—Zeppelin-esque in tone, shoegazing in execution—with percussive clichés and a corny piano coda. The candlelit keys on “Kanata” are even worse; there are 70s soap-opera theme songs with more emotive potency. Mono’s debt to Mogwai and Sigur Rós has never been hidden, but the waltzing schmaltz of “Cyclone” could be the product of any Explosions in the Sky knockoff of the past 10 years. Make no mistake, The Last Dawn is both sweeping and elegant, full of grand melodic gestures and updrafts of euphoric distortion. You can hear the big punches coming from a light year away, and that’s part of their power: They tug at the nervous system like circadian rhythms. But when the title track sleepwalks out of the orchestra pit and into the realm of noise-pop lullaby, it might as well be the scratch of a pencil on a checklist. And, Rays of Darkness is just inexplicably dull. On it, Mono pulls off an impressive feat: smashing gargantuan swells of drama and volume into two-dimensional smudges, as if they were bugs to be afraid of. The removal of a string section might seem like a brave move on their part, especially after relying on its ostensible grandeur for so long—but they don’t substitute anything in its place except a higher setting on the fuzz pedal. “Recoil, Ignite” isn’t bad by any means, although its whale-song-through-a-Marshall-stack sound just sits in the midrange, inert and suspenseless. Making background music this loud is an accomplishment itself, even though “The Last Rays” confuses beige static with edgy experimentalism. A couple of guest artists help liven up two of the album’s four tracks: Calexico’s Jacob Valenzuela lends his trumpet to “Surrender,” and Envy’s Tetsu Fukagawa sings on “The Hand That Holds the Truth”. The former track is another case of missed opportunities; Valenzuela’s tone is dusty and ghostlike, but all he does is follow the guitar for a few bars. Nothing will make you wish harder for Rob Mazurek’s punchy, twisty trumpet on Tortoise’s “TNT”. Fukagawa’s vocals on “The Hand That Holds the Truth” are far more successful. True to form, he howls a hole through the flimsy, post-rock-patterned tissue of the song. If only the song pushed back—against him or anything. Post-rock works best when it embraces, or at least acknowledges, the subatomic friction within the conventional rock lineup. The same goes for cinematic music, another genre that Mono have a leg in; without counterpoint and textural contrast, it can slump into a pretty blob. These two new releases may be at attempt to point out some diametric dialogue at play within Mono’s music, but the range is so constricted it doesn’t allow for much beyond meek agreement. There’s a lack of texture and energy to these two albums, and also a lack of ideas; almost every song feels like a practice-space warm-up jammed and discarded by a far better band. At times in the past, Mono have been that band, and echoes of that exquisite urgency still surface here and there. It’s not enough. Mono have clearly evolved over the 13 years since Under the Pipal Tree—but if The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness are any indication, that evolution is going around in circles.

Artist: Mono, Album: The Last Dawn, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "Mono’s debut album, 2001’s Under the Pipal Tree, featured a few flourishes of cello amid its melodramatic, guitar-driven post-rock. Since then, the Japanese instrumental outfit has incrementally raised the presence of chamber sounds on their records, to the point where their last two full-lengths—the 2010 live album Holy Ground and the 2012 studio album For My Parents—were swamped with symphonic fluff. It’s pretty enough, but it also undercut one of the band’s initial strengths: tension. Crescendos and cannonades became as quaint as clockwork, and the band’s magnificence was made mundane. The best that could be said of Mono is that they were impeccable self-editors. That hasn’t changed on The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness, two new studio albums being released concurrently. Spread between two discs, the 10 songs feel more like an average Mono double-LP split in half and given two names. But there’s something at least nominally interesting about the way they’re divided: The Last Dawn continues along the orchestral arc that For My Parents followed, while Rays of Darkness strips things down to the rock-quartet bone—and adds a couple of tiny surprises that don’t make up for an overall lack of spark. The Last Dawn is a dreary exercise in being as obvious as possible. With violin and cello as its crutches, “The Land Between Tides/Glory” squanders a fantastic intro—Zeppelin-esque in tone, shoegazing in execution—with percussive clichés and a corny piano coda. The candlelit keys on “Kanata” are even worse; there are 70s soap-opera theme songs with more emotive potency. Mono’s debt to Mogwai and Sigur Rós has never been hidden, but the waltzing schmaltz of “Cyclone” could be the product of any Explosions in the Sky knockoff of the past 10 years. Make no mistake, The Last Dawn is both sweeping and elegant, full of grand melodic gestures and updrafts of euphoric distortion. You can hear the big punches coming from a light year away, and that’s part of their power: They tug at the nervous system like circadian rhythms. But when the title track sleepwalks out of the orchestra pit and into the realm of noise-pop lullaby, it might as well be the scratch of a pencil on a checklist. And, Rays of Darkness is just inexplicably dull. On it, Mono pulls off an impressive feat: smashing gargantuan swells of drama and volume into two-dimensional smudges, as if they were bugs to be afraid of. The removal of a string section might seem like a brave move on their part, especially after relying on its ostensible grandeur for so long—but they don’t substitute anything in its place except a higher setting on the fuzz pedal. “Recoil, Ignite” isn’t bad by any means, although its whale-song-through-a-Marshall-stack sound just sits in the midrange, inert and suspenseless. Making background music this loud is an accomplishment itself, even though “The Last Rays” confuses beige static with edgy experimentalism. A couple of guest artists help liven up two of the album’s four tracks: Calexico’s Jacob Valenzuela lends his trumpet to “Surrender,” and Envy’s Tetsu Fukagawa sings on “The Hand That Holds the Truth”. The former track is another case of missed opportunities; Valenzuela’s tone is dusty and ghostlike, but all he does is follow the guitar for a few bars. Nothing will make you wish harder for Rob Mazurek’s punchy, twisty trumpet on Tortoise’s “TNT”. Fukagawa’s vocals on “The Hand That Holds the Truth” are far more successful. True to form, he howls a hole through the flimsy, post-rock-patterned tissue of the song. If only the song pushed back—against him or anything. Post-rock works best when it embraces, or at least acknowledges, the subatomic friction within the conventional rock lineup. The same goes for cinematic music, another genre that Mono have a leg in; without counterpoint and textural contrast, it can slump into a pretty blob. These two new releases may be at attempt to point out some diametric dialogue at play within Mono’s music, but the range is so constricted it doesn’t allow for much beyond meek agreement. There’s a lack of texture and energy to these two albums, and also a lack of ideas; almost every song feels like a practice-space warm-up jammed and discarded by a far better band. At times in the past, Mono have been that band, and echoes of that exquisite urgency still surface here and there. It’s not enough. Mono have clearly evolved over the 13 years since Under the Pipal Tree—but if The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness are any indication, that evolution is going around in circles."

Chromeo

Head Over Heels

Electronic

Jesse Dorris

Karl Marx said that history repeats “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Like a slap bass or Zapp drum, it’s an irresistible cliché, but useful. Chromeo first got me thinking about Marx because they got me thinking about Daft Punk. Like the louche robots, Dave 1 and P-Thugg began in Francophonic bedrooms with a strong personal style and a predilection for funk licks, which they took to increasingly vast crowds as white, heterosexual guys rediscovered the joys of dancing their girlfriends and gay friends and POC acquaintances never forgot. Cue a crisis of credibility perhaps inevitable after sticking around for fifteen years and voila: Chromeo’s Head Over Heels, a bona fide all-stars album, Random Access Memories-style, that attempts to show off their own bona fides. Head Over Heels aims lower than its counterpart from a few years ago, and in all fairness, does achieve a funky kind of farce. Chromeo rounded up some studio legends—Jesse Johnson, who co-wrote classics like “The Bird” and “Jungle Love” as an original member of the Time; Raphael Saadiq, who seemingly produced every hit of the ’90s; and Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, who did the same in the ’00s, or at least those not produced by The-Dream, who also sings on this album—and enlisted their solid musicianship in the service of some really dumb ideas. Which is all to say, Head Over Heels sounds expert, expensive, accomplished, while being distasteful in almost everything else. First single “Juice” pours out a sugary, intoxicating groove reminiscent of ’80s boogie masters Mtume, whose Tawatha Agee provides backing vocals, then sours it with some gross ideas about power dynamics: “Relationships ain’t a democracy,” oh, Jesus, gross. “Must’ve Been” is a sort of “Fuck You” after the weed kicks in; it’s hard to get excited about a talk box these days, but Johnson’s guitar is so ticklish, and DRAM’s harmonies so pretty, you might as well giggle, if you can, at the lyric’s macho theatrics. To be fair, it’s the cost of doing business if you’re a fan of the band that brought you “Needy Girl” and “Sexy Socialite.” If the album is typically weird about women, it’s worse about money. “Slumming It” starts out with, “She got lipstick on my blue collar,” and it’s downhill from there. Imagine “Common People” without the class consciousness, or “Uptown Girl” with a protagonist even less believably marginalized than Billy Joel and a (pretty good) saxophone solo instead of the faux-Frankie Valli lilt. And “Bad Decision” is a very Ivanka Trump kind of love song, in which a guy gives his future over to the credit industrial complex to show his devotion. “Let’s book a shopping trip, maybe I could charter a jet/And I don’t give a shit if I never get out of debt,” he croons. “Take out all my money from the bank/Take you around the corner, buy a ring…You make me want to make a bad decision.” Falling for this acquisition-as-affection is a bad decision too. On the upside, “Just Friends” could tear the roof off a particular kind of penthouse party in DTLA or Williamsburg, mostly due to the super-charismatic Amber Mark and a groove that stays out of her way. But you might as well listen to Maroon 5 if you enjoy the slickness, and there are dozens of better bounces to be had from Atlantic Starr to Daft Punk themselves, nevermind Nite Jewel and Thundercat and Ariana Grande and the list goes on. Head Over Heels might replace the duo’s trademark mannequin legs on the cover for their own, but these days such co-opting of realness is real meh. It’s genderfluid like a tech bro in a stunt romper drinking a Monster. The farce is strong with these ones.

Artist: Chromeo, Album: Head Over Heels, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "Karl Marx said that history repeats “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Like a slap bass or Zapp drum, it’s an irresistible cliché, but useful. Chromeo first got me thinking about Marx because they got me thinking about Daft Punk. Like the louche robots, Dave 1 and P-Thugg began in Francophonic bedrooms with a strong personal style and a predilection for funk licks, which they took to increasingly vast crowds as white, heterosexual guys rediscovered the joys of dancing their girlfriends and gay friends and POC acquaintances never forgot. Cue a crisis of credibility perhaps inevitable after sticking around for fifteen years and voila: Chromeo’s Head Over Heels, a bona fide all-stars album, Random Access Memories-style, that attempts to show off their own bona fides. Head Over Heels aims lower than its counterpart from a few years ago, and in all fairness, does achieve a funky kind of farce. Chromeo rounded up some studio legends—Jesse Johnson, who co-wrote classics like “The Bird” and “Jungle Love” as an original member of the Time; Raphael Saadiq, who seemingly produced every hit of the ’90s; and Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, who did the same in the ’00s, or at least those not produced by The-Dream, who also sings on this album—and enlisted their solid musicianship in the service of some really dumb ideas. Which is all to say, Head Over Heels sounds expert, expensive, accomplished, while being distasteful in almost everything else. First single “Juice” pours out a sugary, intoxicating groove reminiscent of ’80s boogie masters Mtume, whose Tawatha Agee provides backing vocals, then sours it with some gross ideas about power dynamics: “Relationships ain’t a democracy,” oh, Jesus, gross. “Must’ve Been” is a sort of “Fuck You” after the weed kicks in; it’s hard to get excited about a talk box these days, but Johnson’s guitar is so ticklish, and DRAM’s harmonies so pretty, you might as well giggle, if you can, at the lyric’s macho theatrics. To be fair, it’s the cost of doing business if you’re a fan of the band that brought you “Needy Girl” and “Sexy Socialite.” If the album is typically weird about women, it’s worse about money. “Slumming It” starts out with, “She got lipstick on my blue collar,” and it’s downhill from there. Imagine “Common People” without the class consciousness, or “Uptown Girl” with a protagonist even less believably marginalized than Billy Joel and a (pretty good) saxophone solo instead of the faux-Frankie Valli lilt. And “Bad Decision” is a very Ivanka Trump kind of love song, in which a guy gives his future over to the credit industrial complex to show his devotion. “Let’s book a shopping trip, maybe I could charter a jet/And I don’t give a shit if I never get out of debt,” he croons. “Take out all my money from the bank/Take you around the corner, buy a ring…You make me want to make a bad decision.” Falling for this acquisition-as-affection is a bad decision too. On the upside, “Just Friends” could tear the roof off a particular kind of penthouse party in DTLA or Williamsburg, mostly due to the super-charismatic Amber Mark and a groove that stays out of her way. But you might as well listen to Maroon 5 if you enjoy the slickness, and there are dozens of better bounces to be had from Atlantic Starr to Daft Punk themselves, nevermind Nite Jewel and Thundercat and Ariana Grande and the list goes on. Head Over Heels might replace the duo’s trademark mannequin legs on the cover for their own, but these days such co-opting of realness is real meh. It’s genderfluid like a tech bro in a stunt romper drinking a Monster. The farce is strong with these ones."

Doomtree

Doomtree

Rap

Ben Westhoff

From to Crooked I's Block Obama mixtape (the title is not meant to be taken literally) to Ludacris' soliciting the Democrat nominee for "a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer," among many other examples, rap is politically motivated right now in ways rock isn't. (Daughtry, on the other hand, is playing a Foreigner song at both conventions.) And so, with the Republican National Convention on their home turf, Minneapolis collective Doomtree's eponymous debut is well timed if nothing else. Doomtree are about as politically correct as any hip-hop collective: Rolling as deep as the Supreme Court, they're multiracial, multigender, they flow in Spanish sometimes, and a guest emcee called I Self Devine even has a line about mock duck. Though they don't trash talk specific politicians much (as crew member P.O.S. said on his 2006 Rhymesayers' effort Audition: "First of all/ Fuck Bush/ That's all/ That's the end of it") the group is hellbent on venting their frustrations with corporations and the wealthy. And yet, even folks without 18 leftie bumper stickers on their cars will find it hard not to get caught up in the group's enthusiasm. Mostly forsaking the punk of Audition, Doomtree's beat-makers, led by Lazerbeak and Turbo Nemesis, are focused on updating golden-era structures to get the listener hyped-- particularly, "Drumsticks", "Game Over", and "Liver Let Die". At the same time, the production is nimble enough to pull back when it needs to, such as on the jazzy "Last Call", which recalls the narrative, working-class moments of Atmosphere's latest, touching on everything from lesbianism to pool sharkdom to alcoholism to waitressing. But like many liberal firebrands, Doomtree don't spend much time with anecdotal narrative, quickly returning instead to class warfare and conspiracy theories: "I sense a set-up through the bent antennae settling/ Federally approved amphetamines Ephedra peddling," claims Sims in one example. If you're a ninth-grader living in St. Paul, Doomtree will be your shit, but when the politics here turn preachy, you'd be forgiven for wanting a bit more balance between the two.

Artist: Doomtree, Album: Doomtree, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "From to Crooked I's Block Obama mixtape (the title is not meant to be taken literally) to Ludacris' soliciting the Democrat nominee for "a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer," among many other examples, rap is politically motivated right now in ways rock isn't. (Daughtry, on the other hand, is playing a Foreigner song at both conventions.) And so, with the Republican National Convention on their home turf, Minneapolis collective Doomtree's eponymous debut is well timed if nothing else. Doomtree are about as politically correct as any hip-hop collective: Rolling as deep as the Supreme Court, they're multiracial, multigender, they flow in Spanish sometimes, and a guest emcee called I Self Devine even has a line about mock duck. Though they don't trash talk specific politicians much (as crew member P.O.S. said on his 2006 Rhymesayers' effort Audition: "First of all/ Fuck Bush/ That's all/ That's the end of it") the group is hellbent on venting their frustrations with corporations and the wealthy. And yet, even folks without 18 leftie bumper stickers on their cars will find it hard not to get caught up in the group's enthusiasm. Mostly forsaking the punk of Audition, Doomtree's beat-makers, led by Lazerbeak and Turbo Nemesis, are focused on updating golden-era structures to get the listener hyped-- particularly, "Drumsticks", "Game Over", and "Liver Let Die". At the same time, the production is nimble enough to pull back when it needs to, such as on the jazzy "Last Call", which recalls the narrative, working-class moments of Atmosphere's latest, touching on everything from lesbianism to pool sharkdom to alcoholism to waitressing. But like many liberal firebrands, Doomtree don't spend much time with anecdotal narrative, quickly returning instead to class warfare and conspiracy theories: "I sense a set-up through the bent antennae settling/ Federally approved amphetamines Ephedra peddling," claims Sims in one example. If you're a ninth-grader living in St. Paul, Doomtree will be your shit, but when the politics here turn preachy, you'd be forgiven for wanting a bit more balance between the two."

Underworld

Everything, Everything

Electronic

Paul Cooper

The members of Underworld are smart, savvy lads. They've worked on solving the difficulties inherent in performing techno live. Or performing techno live at arenas or festivals, anyway. The first time I saw the band play out, just before Dubnobasswithmyheadman was released, was at a twisted club called the Soundshaft, which adjoined the famous London boite, Heaven. That night (a Good Friday, I almost recall), the owners of the two clubs opened up the doors that partitioned the very different styles. The Soundshaft Drum Club techno massive shimmied and sashayed with the amyl house of Heaven. After a few hours of DJ sets, a band took the small, almost ad hoc stage, and stylistic divisions in the area immediately vanished. Underworld, for it was they, performed extended versions of songs off Dubnobasswithmyheadman, liquidly morphing from "Mmm Skyscraper, I Love You" and "Rez" to "Cowgirl" and "Dirty Epic." I didn't know any of these classics at the time, but after a two-hour set and having been a part of the euphoria this band concocted, they became my most precious band. And rarely have they, in the years since that club gig, disappointed. I saw them perform before Second Toughest in the Infants saw release. Their set at the mid-sized Astoria mixed the familiar sounds of Dubno with the breakbeats the band had been experimenting with for the album. That set sounded like evolution, and the audience participated in the rolling out of the new style Underworld. Everything, Everything documents the live stage that followed breakbeat Underworld. Beaucoup Fish hinted at trance and electro, but depicted a more melancholy Underworld. Beaucoup Fish recapitulated the styles of its predecessors but struck them through with a palpable mourning. That Darren Emerson-- the member who took them from third on the bill opening for the Eurythmics to dance music icons-- would leave the band after that album, and their largest U.S. reception to date makes it all the more poignant. Though Everything, Everything is unquestionably a swan song for the Emerson years, it's far from a mopey affair. In fact, it tackles early tracks like "Rez" and "Cowgirl," and pumps them up with megawatt power. It also serves as a greatest hits package, including their most famed numbers, "Pearl's Girl" and "Push Upstairs," among others. Vocalist Karl Hyde predictably reserves his loudest delivery for the "Shouting Lager! Lager! Lager!" line in the 12-minute, bone-buckling rendition of "Born Slippy Nuxx." But as with all live albums, one misses the being-there. Sure, Everything, Everything documents the crowd's loopy joy when the piano vamps of "King of Snake" break though the filthy Giorgio Moroder-inspired bass line. But we miss the visuals. The sine qua non component of Underworld is Tomato, the experimental graphic design firm of which Hyde and Smith are members. The cut-up, scraggly, ugly beauty of Tomato's type solutions are matched and amplified in Hyde's Byron Gisin-ish lyrics (e.g. "Got my 501s freeze- dried with a new religion"). Underworld are aware of the significant piece missing from Everything, Everything and will soon release a DVD version, which will insert Tomato into the live document. Looks like these lads really have thought of everything.

Artist: Underworld, Album: Everything, Everything, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "The members of Underworld are smart, savvy lads. They've worked on solving the difficulties inherent in performing techno live. Or performing techno live at arenas or festivals, anyway. The first time I saw the band play out, just before Dubnobasswithmyheadman was released, was at a twisted club called the Soundshaft, which adjoined the famous London boite, Heaven. That night (a Good Friday, I almost recall), the owners of the two clubs opened up the doors that partitioned the very different styles. The Soundshaft Drum Club techno massive shimmied and sashayed with the amyl house of Heaven. After a few hours of DJ sets, a band took the small, almost ad hoc stage, and stylistic divisions in the area immediately vanished. Underworld, for it was they, performed extended versions of songs off Dubnobasswithmyheadman, liquidly morphing from "Mmm Skyscraper, I Love You" and "Rez" to "Cowgirl" and "Dirty Epic." I didn't know any of these classics at the time, but after a two-hour set and having been a part of the euphoria this band concocted, they became my most precious band. And rarely have they, in the years since that club gig, disappointed. I saw them perform before Second Toughest in the Infants saw release. Their set at the mid-sized Astoria mixed the familiar sounds of Dubno with the breakbeats the band had been experimenting with for the album. That set sounded like evolution, and the audience participated in the rolling out of the new style Underworld. Everything, Everything documents the live stage that followed breakbeat Underworld. Beaucoup Fish hinted at trance and electro, but depicted a more melancholy Underworld. Beaucoup Fish recapitulated the styles of its predecessors but struck them through with a palpable mourning. That Darren Emerson-- the member who took them from third on the bill opening for the Eurythmics to dance music icons-- would leave the band after that album, and their largest U.S. reception to date makes it all the more poignant. Though Everything, Everything is unquestionably a swan song for the Emerson years, it's far from a mopey affair. In fact, it tackles early tracks like "Rez" and "Cowgirl," and pumps them up with megawatt power. It also serves as a greatest hits package, including their most famed numbers, "Pearl's Girl" and "Push Upstairs," among others. Vocalist Karl Hyde predictably reserves his loudest delivery for the "Shouting Lager! Lager! Lager!" line in the 12-minute, bone-buckling rendition of "Born Slippy Nuxx." But as with all live albums, one misses the being-there. Sure, Everything, Everything documents the crowd's loopy joy when the piano vamps of "King of Snake" break though the filthy Giorgio Moroder-inspired bass line. But we miss the visuals. The sine qua non component of Underworld is Tomato, the experimental graphic design firm of which Hyde and Smith are members. The cut-up, scraggly, ugly beauty of Tomato's type solutions are matched and amplified in Hyde's Byron Gisin-ish lyrics (e.g. "Got my 501s freeze- dried with a new religion"). Underworld are aware of the significant piece missing from Everything, Everything and will soon release a DVD version, which will insert Tomato into the live document. Looks like these lads really have thought of everything."

Man Man

On Oni Pond

Experimental,Rock

Ian Cohen

Like every Man Man album, On Oni Pond finds the wolfish Philadelphia crew to be more traditionally tuneful and less grating than the last time out. The obvious play is to acknowledge it as part of the ongoing maturation of Man Man, yet it always feels strange talking about “maturity” for a band that never sounded young. That isn’t to say Man Man sounded old, as in tired and tame. It’s more in the sense that everything from Honus Honus’ lupine howling to their dilapidated percussion warranted adjectives like “grizzled,” “feral,” “untamed.” The junkyard dog descriptor made sense-- Man Man sounded like a band that lived on scraps and aged seven times quicker than everyone else. But really, “maturity” is something of a feint listening to On Oni Pond. Perhaps they’re becoming more “adult”, in that while Man Man puts forth the outer appearance of having their shit together, on the inside, their darker impulses are repressed into something more grotesque and frightening. But at first, what you’ll notice is the utter lack of the kind of squealing, squawking affectations that could clear the room on The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face or Six Demon Bag. As with 2011’s Life Fantastic, Saddle Creek majordomo Mike Mogis produces and more than ever, Man Man's reliance on pure rhythm becomes readily apparent-- I hesitate to call On Oni Pond a “danceable” record or even “funky”, though it’s got groove and Honus’ lyrics often function like chants, regardless of how verbose they are. I couldn’t imagine this getting booted off any radio playlist, but I think of On Oni Pond as positioning Man Man as an offbeat version of bands like My Morning Jacket or even Animal Collective-- rootsy and rooted in indie, but now a big deal rock band with a body-moving impulse that puts them up for pretty much every festival other than Warped Tour or Rock the Bells. By the same token, Man Man’s confrontational edge happened to be one of their greatest assets. Previous piano ballads like “Van Helsing Boombox” and “Rabbit Habits” were certainly heartbreaking due to their despondent lyrics, but there was an endearing, pathetic nature to the sound that drove the point home-- here was a guy unlucky at love, trying as hard as he can to make typically “pretty” music and failing. First single “Head On” is sweetened with a classic soul melody, strings and Honus’ chin-up solace directed at one of those poor souls who might’ve related to the aforementioned:  “hold onto your heart/ never let nobody take it over.” But don’t take “Head On” as being indicative of the lyrical direction here. On Oni Pond shifts Honus’ attention from the paranoia and morbidity that marked *Life Fantastic *to what can be heard as a concept album about male sexual futility. This is a theme that’s hardly new for Man Man. But while Honus is one of indie’s most lecherous lyricists, there’s always been a sadomasochistic bite to it. Here, there’s something of paradoxical swagger is in his ability to empathize with those getting no satisfaction. The inability to get one’s rocks off is arguably the lifeblood of rock and roll, and people tend to do crazy shit when engorged-- for example, using Anne Frank as a psychosexual muse and having the Civil War serve as a contextual framework for a tough time at college. Maybe you think it’s tasteless and even insulting for Honus to evoke Guantanamo, conflict diamonds and “that child raised by Kony," but he’s flexing and realizing his subject matter is inherently absurd. Just as often, the humor results in some real groaners (a played-out Silence of the Lambs reference, the faux-Oriental vocals on “Pink Wonton”, the title of “Pink Wonton”) and the narrowness of the subject matter can feel stifling for everyone involved-- the self-explanatory submission fantasy “Loot My Body” is the first song to really feel like Man Man madlibs. The worry here is that maturity might actually mean Man Man getting stuck in their ways, though “End Boss” can be read as a self-aware self-help talk: “if you won’t reinvent yourself/ you can’t circumvent your hell.” And if “Fangs” isn’t a late-album intervention, it’s a certainly a welcome acknowledgement of the other side in the war of the sexes. It’s not the first time Honus has written about a woman with something to hide. But unlike the murderous cross-dresser of “Poor Jackie”, the subject here is more relatable, someone who “had a fantasy of being the female Steve McQueen” but instead, “hides her fangs/ behind her back … pretends to laugh/ at the boxes she’s been born in.” Like most songs of this nature, there’s the threat of Man Man being far longer on good intentions than keen insight. Fortunately, “Fangs” avoids condescension as the rest of On Oni Pond serves as an unintentional vindication for Honus’ viewpoint here: when you consider the horny, slobbering suckers that populate the majority of Man Man songs, you might begin to understand how shitty it must be to have to deal with it all. So while softer and more empathetic the band isn’t quite tamed yet; On Oni Pond is a Man Man album through and through, delivering an occasionally bizarre and fantastical look at the very real human condition.

Artist: Man Man, Album: On Oni Pond, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Like every Man Man album, On Oni Pond finds the wolfish Philadelphia crew to be more traditionally tuneful and less grating than the last time out. The obvious play is to acknowledge it as part of the ongoing maturation of Man Man, yet it always feels strange talking about “maturity” for a band that never sounded young. That isn’t to say Man Man sounded old, as in tired and tame. It’s more in the sense that everything from Honus Honus’ lupine howling to their dilapidated percussion warranted adjectives like “grizzled,” “feral,” “untamed.” The junkyard dog descriptor made sense-- Man Man sounded like a band that lived on scraps and aged seven times quicker than everyone else. But really, “maturity” is something of a feint listening to On Oni Pond. Perhaps they’re becoming more “adult”, in that while Man Man puts forth the outer appearance of having their shit together, on the inside, their darker impulses are repressed into something more grotesque and frightening. But at first, what you’ll notice is the utter lack of the kind of squealing, squawking affectations that could clear the room on The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face or Six Demon Bag. As with 2011’s Life Fantastic, Saddle Creek majordomo Mike Mogis produces and more than ever, Man Man's reliance on pure rhythm becomes readily apparent-- I hesitate to call On Oni Pond a “danceable” record or even “funky”, though it’s got groove and Honus’ lyrics often function like chants, regardless of how verbose they are. I couldn’t imagine this getting booted off any radio playlist, but I think of On Oni Pond as positioning Man Man as an offbeat version of bands like My Morning Jacket or even Animal Collective-- rootsy and rooted in indie, but now a big deal rock band with a body-moving impulse that puts them up for pretty much every festival other than Warped Tour or Rock the Bells. By the same token, Man Man’s confrontational edge happened to be one of their greatest assets. Previous piano ballads like “Van Helsing Boombox” and “Rabbit Habits” were certainly heartbreaking due to their despondent lyrics, but there was an endearing, pathetic nature to the sound that drove the point home-- here was a guy unlucky at love, trying as hard as he can to make typically “pretty” music and failing. First single “Head On” is sweetened with a classic soul melody, strings and Honus’ chin-up solace directed at one of those poor souls who might’ve related to the aforementioned:  “hold onto your heart/ never let nobody take it over.” But don’t take “Head On” as being indicative of the lyrical direction here. On Oni Pond shifts Honus’ attention from the paranoia and morbidity that marked *Life Fantastic *to what can be heard as a concept album about male sexual futility. This is a theme that’s hardly new for Man Man. But while Honus is one of indie’s most lecherous lyricists, there’s always been a sadomasochistic bite to it. Here, there’s something of paradoxical swagger is in his ability to empathize with those getting no satisfaction. The inability to get one’s rocks off is arguably the lifeblood of rock and roll, and people tend to do crazy shit when engorged-- for example, using Anne Frank as a psychosexual muse and having the Civil War serve as a contextual framework for a tough time at college. Maybe you think it’s tasteless and even insulting for Honus to evoke Guantanamo, conflict diamonds and “that child raised by Kony," but he’s flexing and realizing his subject matter is inherently absurd. Just as often, the humor results in some real groaners (a played-out Silence of the Lambs reference, the faux-Oriental vocals on “Pink Wonton”, the title of “Pink Wonton”) and the narrowness of the subject matter can feel stifling for everyone involved-- the self-explanatory submission fantasy “Loot My Body” is the first song to really feel like Man Man madlibs. The worry here is that maturity might actually mean Man Man getting stuck in their ways, though “End Boss” can be read as a self-aware self-help talk: “if you won’t reinvent yourself/ you can’t circumvent your hell.” And if “Fangs” isn’t a late-album intervention, it’s a certainly a welcome acknowledgement of the other side in the war of the sexes. It’s not the first time Honus has written about a woman with something to hide. But unlike the murderous cross-dresser of “Poor Jackie”, the subject here is more relatable, someone who “had a fantasy of being the female Steve McQueen” but instead, “hides her fangs/ behind her back … pretends to laugh/ at the boxes she’s been born in.” Like most songs of this nature, there’s the threat of Man Man being far longer on good intentions than keen insight. Fortunately, “Fangs” avoids condescension as the rest of On Oni Pond serves as an unintentional vindication for Honus’ viewpoint here: when you consider the horny, slobbering suckers that populate the majority of Man Man songs, you might begin to understand how shitty it must be to have to deal with it all. So while softer and more empathetic the band isn’t quite tamed yet; On Oni Pond is a Man Man album through and through, delivering an occasionally bizarre and fantastical look at the very real human condition."

Neil Young

The Monsanto Years

Rock

Stuart Berman

When Neil Young gets angry, he gets impulsive. Mere days after the May 1970 massacre at Kent State, he had branded Richard Nixon a mass murderer; nearly 20 years later, he was redrafting George Bush Sr.'s inaugural address into a state-of-the-union screed dripping with so much bitter sarcasm, some conservatives still mistake it for an ad hoc national anthem. Those songs remain FM-radio staples to this day because their raging invectives still sting like a ripped-off bandage, decades removed from the moments that incited them. But the topical material that Neil has rush-released in recent years has turned both more lyrically obvious and musically frivolous; whether dramatizing 9/11 valor in a goofy bar-band grind or calling for Dubya's head with a cheery choral sing-along and chirpy cavalry-charge trumpets, these songs' shelf lives can be measured in weeks rather than years. As much as his legacy is tied to the politically charged tumult of the late '60s and early '70s, Neil has always been more compelling when playing the rugged, inscrutable individualist rather than the man-of-the-people populist—the urgency to get his message out tends to override the sublime lyricism and unnerving ambiguities that have yielded his most resonant, timeless work. On his new album, Neil revisits an old pet cause: the plight of the American farmer. But 30 years after he co-founded Farm Aid to save cash-strapped field workers from foreclosure, the terms of war have changed. The Monsanto Years fixes its crosshairs on the GMO-pimping agribusiness behemoth that has a stranglehold on the world's seed (and, by extension, food) supply, forcing farmers to comply their strict terms or be litigated into destitution. And, here, the buckshot splatter extends to other entities contributing to the suppression of the average American: Wal-Mart, Chevron, Citizens United, and even Starbucks (though in the latter case, the company insists it's just an innocent bystander). But despite the dawn-summoning optimism of the opening eco anthem "A New Day for Love", The Monsanto Years is ultimately less a call to topple an evil empire than an expression of helplessness in trying to fight it. As the album trudges through its treatises on corporate bullying, compromised democracy, and environmental degradation, Neil's not so much standing up for the embattled farmer as embodying the withered voice of one. Perhaps not coincidentally, the sound of the album hearkens back to Neil's immediate post-Harvest period, a time when the narrative concision and electric-guitar savagery of his early work was giving way to a certain fuck-it-all sloppiness and sundazed cynicism. His amped-up backing band for this set, the Promise of the Real (fronted by Willie Nelson's sons Lukas and, when performing live, Micah), never approaches the trance-inducing psychedelia of Crazy Horse, but they make for a solid Stray Gators substitute, encouraging the sort of rough'n'tumble rave-ups and slack-rock jams that defined early '70s detours like Time Fades Away. The appealing looseness of their performances proves to be the saving grace of an album too often hamstrung by heartfelt but hackneyed messaging. While the loping, whistle-hooked "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" and cowpunk stomp "Workin' Man" playfully highlight the absurdity of Monsanto's strong-arm tactics,  extendo-rants like "Big Box" forsake the rich characterization of Neil's most incisive social commentaries for worn-out catchphrases ("too big to fail"), broadstroked scenery ("Main Street's boarded up") and the blunt simplicity of a Change.org pitch ("people working part-time at Wal-Mart/ never get the benefits"). The album's preference for critique over craft is epitomized by the awkward ubiquity of the very word "Monsanto," which is wedged into several songs even when Neil can't be bothered to find anything to rhyme with it. (On the otherwise poignant seven-minute title track, a breezy "Mambo Sun" groove is tripped up by each utterance of the company name, delivered with all the grave weightiness of a movie villain appearing to the sound of dun-dun-dun.) With much of the songwriting on The Monsanto Years taking the form of hastily scribbled screeds, the most revelatory moments come when Neil grapples with the paradox of making complex politics more pop-song palatable. The album's most immediately engaging track—the raggedly glorious "People Want to Hear About Love"— isn't a protest song but a song about protest songs. Sure, its call-and-response structure provides Neil with another opportunity to check off all of his key talking points: the fragility of the environment, political corruption, the link between pesticides and autism, and so on. At the same time, it shrewdly addresses those concerns within the context of a more existential dilemma: that is, in a cultural landscape craving feel-good entertainment, The Monsanto Years' brand of straight-shootin' rock'n'roll activism is going to be a tougher sell than a Pono.

Artist: Neil Young, Album: The Monsanto Years, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "When Neil Young gets angry, he gets impulsive. Mere days after the May 1970 massacre at Kent State, he had branded Richard Nixon a mass murderer; nearly 20 years later, he was redrafting George Bush Sr.'s inaugural address into a state-of-the-union screed dripping with so much bitter sarcasm, some conservatives still mistake it for an ad hoc national anthem. Those songs remain FM-radio staples to this day because their raging invectives still sting like a ripped-off bandage, decades removed from the moments that incited them. But the topical material that Neil has rush-released in recent years has turned both more lyrically obvious and musically frivolous; whether dramatizing 9/11 valor in a goofy bar-band grind or calling for Dubya's head with a cheery choral sing-along and chirpy cavalry-charge trumpets, these songs' shelf lives can be measured in weeks rather than years. As much as his legacy is tied to the politically charged tumult of the late '60s and early '70s, Neil has always been more compelling when playing the rugged, inscrutable individualist rather than the man-of-the-people populist—the urgency to get his message out tends to override the sublime lyricism and unnerving ambiguities that have yielded his most resonant, timeless work. On his new album, Neil revisits an old pet cause: the plight of the American farmer. But 30 years after he co-founded Farm Aid to save cash-strapped field workers from foreclosure, the terms of war have changed. The Monsanto Years fixes its crosshairs on the GMO-pimping agribusiness behemoth that has a stranglehold on the world's seed (and, by extension, food) supply, forcing farmers to comply their strict terms or be litigated into destitution. And, here, the buckshot splatter extends to other entities contributing to the suppression of the average American: Wal-Mart, Chevron, Citizens United, and even Starbucks (though in the latter case, the company insists it's just an innocent bystander). But despite the dawn-summoning optimism of the opening eco anthem "A New Day for Love", The Monsanto Years is ultimately less a call to topple an evil empire than an expression of helplessness in trying to fight it. As the album trudges through its treatises on corporate bullying, compromised democracy, and environmental degradation, Neil's not so much standing up for the embattled farmer as embodying the withered voice of one. Perhaps not coincidentally, the sound of the album hearkens back to Neil's immediate post-Harvest period, a time when the narrative concision and electric-guitar savagery of his early work was giving way to a certain fuck-it-all sloppiness and sundazed cynicism. His amped-up backing band for this set, the Promise of the Real (fronted by Willie Nelson's sons Lukas and, when performing live, Micah), never approaches the trance-inducing psychedelia of Crazy Horse, but they make for a solid Stray Gators substitute, encouraging the sort of rough'n'tumble rave-ups and slack-rock jams that defined early '70s detours like Time Fades Away. The appealing looseness of their performances proves to be the saving grace of an album too often hamstrung by heartfelt but hackneyed messaging. While the loping, whistle-hooked "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" and cowpunk stomp "Workin' Man" playfully highlight the absurdity of Monsanto's strong-arm tactics,  extendo-rants like "Big Box" forsake the rich characterization of Neil's most incisive social commentaries for worn-out catchphrases ("too big to fail"), broadstroked scenery ("Main Street's boarded up") and the blunt simplicity of a Change.org pitch ("people working part-time at Wal-Mart/ never get the benefits"). The album's preference for critique over craft is epitomized by the awkward ubiquity of the very word "Monsanto," which is wedged into several songs even when Neil can't be bothered to find anything to rhyme with it. (On the otherwise poignant seven-minute title track, a breezy "Mambo Sun" groove is tripped up by each utterance of the company name, delivered with all the grave weightiness of a movie villain appearing to the sound of dun-dun-dun.) With much of the songwriting on The Monsanto Years taking the form of hastily scribbled screeds, the most revelatory moments come when Neil grapples with the paradox of making complex politics more pop-song palatable. The album's most immediately engaging track—the raggedly glorious "People Want to Hear About Love"— isn't a protest song but a song about protest songs. Sure, its call-and-response structure provides Neil with another opportunity to check off all of his key talking points: the fragility of the environment, political corruption, the link between pesticides and autism, and so on. At the same time, it shrewdly addresses those concerns within the context of a more existential dilemma: that is, in a cultural landscape craving feel-good entertainment, The Monsanto Years' brand of straight-shootin' rock'n'roll activism is going to be a tougher sell than a Pono."

The John Lurie National Orchestra

The Invention of Animals

Marc Masters

John Lurie has always had a big personality. If you’ve seen him act in films, all you need to hear is titles like Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law to be reminded of his distinctive speaking and gesturing. Yet even though he can steal a scene, he rarely comes across as an egotist. In fact, he’s usually a consummate collaborator. Though his most recent pursuit, painting, is a solo venture, he has mostly preferred collectivism, from the no wave films he directed in the late 70s, to his 90s pseudo-nature-show "Fishing With John" (in which he bantered masterfully with Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, and Dennis Hopper), to his most communal project, the punk-informed jazz outfit Lounge Lizards, whose rotating lineup included at least 30 different members. This penchant for collaboration extended even to the band that took his name, the John Lurie National Orchestra, who sounded more like a democratic group than a star vehicle. This despite the fact that they were just a trio, comprising Lurie on saxophones and Billy Martin and Calvin Weston—both Lounge Lizards—on drums. That instrumental setup makes Lurie obstensibly the leader, and indeed on The Invention of Animals —a posthumous collection of live recordings and studio tracks used for "Fishing With John" episodes—his playing is more free-flowing than the steady, loop-like drumming of his colleagues. But it never feels like Lurie is the commander and Martin and Weston are soldiers following orders. Every sonic element is equally important, and the mesh the three men weave forms both the spine and the heart of each track. The result of that mesh is a restrained, subdued record. The trio is in no hurry to get anywhere other than where they started, and more interested in stitching patterns together than fighting for elbow room. Filled with repetition and space, this isn’t exactly trance music, but it certainly has a way of making you feel hypnotized. So the tension on The Invention of Animals comes not from rapid shifts in tempo or volume, but smaller, more subtle variations. Playing things this low and understated can be risky; it would be easy for the group to drift into colorless new age reverie. But even the mellowest moments bubble with ideas and energy. That’s true even in the few instances where Lurie steps out in front of his comrades. Take the ballad-like “Little”, which is practically a Lurie solo. Here, his wistful soprano notes are central, but tiny clicks of percussion in the background are just as crucial, giving charge to a piece that could otherwise freeze. Similar dynamics mark the beginning of Invention’s peak, the closing title track. The build here is particularly mind-bending, as the trio navigate a series of crests by precisely modulating their levels of activity and pressure. Yet that precision never sounds clinical. There’s blood coursing through every second of the piece, in a way that makes it feel half its 19-minute length. So much blood, in fact, that it’s hard to fathom why the John Lurie National Orchestra isn’t an ongoing concern. Lurie himself has been out of the public eye in recent years, at least compared to his busy presence in the 80s and 90s as an always-interesting actor, director, and musician. If you’re unfamiliar with that latter role, there are some great Lounge Lizards records out there waiting for you. But *The Invention of Animals *is just as good a place to start, and hopefully it will help get people talking again about a man who’s carved out one of the most unique American artistic careers of the past four decades.

Artist: The John Lurie National Orchestra, Album: The Invention of Animals, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "John Lurie has always had a big personality. If you’ve seen him act in films, all you need to hear is titles like Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law to be reminded of his distinctive speaking and gesturing. Yet even though he can steal a scene, he rarely comes across as an egotist. In fact, he’s usually a consummate collaborator. Though his most recent pursuit, painting, is a solo venture, he has mostly preferred collectivism, from the no wave films he directed in the late 70s, to his 90s pseudo-nature-show "Fishing With John" (in which he bantered masterfully with Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, and Dennis Hopper), to his most communal project, the punk-informed jazz outfit Lounge Lizards, whose rotating lineup included at least 30 different members. This penchant for collaboration extended even to the band that took his name, the John Lurie National Orchestra, who sounded more like a democratic group than a star vehicle. This despite the fact that they were just a trio, comprising Lurie on saxophones and Billy Martin and Calvin Weston—both Lounge Lizards—on drums. That instrumental setup makes Lurie obstensibly the leader, and indeed on The Invention of Animals —a posthumous collection of live recordings and studio tracks used for "Fishing With John" episodes—his playing is more free-flowing than the steady, loop-like drumming of his colleagues. But it never feels like Lurie is the commander and Martin and Weston are soldiers following orders. Every sonic element is equally important, and the mesh the three men weave forms both the spine and the heart of each track. The result of that mesh is a restrained, subdued record. The trio is in no hurry to get anywhere other than where they started, and more interested in stitching patterns together than fighting for elbow room. Filled with repetition and space, this isn’t exactly trance music, but it certainly has a way of making you feel hypnotized. So the tension on The Invention of Animals comes not from rapid shifts in tempo or volume, but smaller, more subtle variations. Playing things this low and understated can be risky; it would be easy for the group to drift into colorless new age reverie. But even the mellowest moments bubble with ideas and energy. That’s true even in the few instances where Lurie steps out in front of his comrades. Take the ballad-like “Little”, which is practically a Lurie solo. Here, his wistful soprano notes are central, but tiny clicks of percussion in the background are just as crucial, giving charge to a piece that could otherwise freeze. Similar dynamics mark the beginning of Invention’s peak, the closing title track. The build here is particularly mind-bending, as the trio navigate a series of crests by precisely modulating their levels of activity and pressure. Yet that precision never sounds clinical. There’s blood coursing through every second of the piece, in a way that makes it feel half its 19-minute length. So much blood, in fact, that it’s hard to fathom why the John Lurie National Orchestra isn’t an ongoing concern. Lurie himself has been out of the public eye in recent years, at least compared to his busy presence in the 80s and 90s as an always-interesting actor, director, and musician. If you’re unfamiliar with that latter role, there are some great Lounge Lizards records out there waiting for you. But *The Invention of Animals *is just as good a place to start, and hopefully it will help get people talking again about a man who’s carved out one of the most unique American artistic careers of the past four decades."

Honeyblood

Honeyblood

Rock

Katherine St. Asaph

Honeyblood’s Thrift Shop EP was the stuff of serendipitous discoveries. The EP—basically a cassette single, B-side and all—was recorded in a bathroom and sounds as such, but its lyrics were at turns sharp and swooning, with just enough charm breaking through the lo-fi roar. The band's members, Glaswegians Stina Tweeddale (Boycotts) and Shona McVicar (Partwindpartwolf), met at a show both acts were playing and bonded over being women in their respective bands—in Tweeddale’s case, the only woman in the band—as well as the music they grew up with. Thrift Shop's crunchy cover of The Innocence Mission’s “The Girl on My Left”—an inspired choice from a 1990s act with a devoted cult fanbase—spoke to both connective threads. Honeyblood have since signed to Fat Cat and scrubbed out the static with producer Peter Katis (Interpol, the National); inevitably, the duo have picked up a slew of comparisons to acts of the past (the Breeders, Throwing Muses, Hole) that Honeyblood have also mentioned as influences. However, the band has no shortage of current-day peers, from hypermelodic rock acts like Best Coast, countrymates Camera Obscura, Speedy Ortiz, and Courtney Barnett (whom Honeyblood opened for). So it can be hard to hear the duo's self-titled debut on its own terms, but Honeyblood is far from pastiche: they don’t sound that much like their influence, except perhaps in how they arrange their harmonies or in short three-second bursts. The first bars of “Choker”, in particular, could fool a few people into thinking it’s a Deal sister singing; the raised-eyebrow inflections on “No Spare Key” are unnerving exact matches to Tanya Donelly’s repertoire. One part of ‘90s indie lineage that usually goes unmentioned among the nostalgics is that the era's albums tended to dissolve into filler in the back third, and Honeyblood is no exception. Just looking at the album's tracklist, you can almost pinpoint the spot where they’ll break the monotony with an uptempo cut—in this case, the clipped exasperation and petulant shout-along of “All Dragged Up”—but for the most part, Honeyblood admirably sidesteps the potential pitfalls. Some bands record lo-fi albums as a statement of purpose; others because that’s all they could afford. Honeyblood were previously in the latter position, and as a result their debut doesn’t sound overproduced as much as it does properly heightened, like a well-developed photograph.  The lovelorn “Fall Forever” melts on record like a sugarcube, “No Spare Key” and single “Bud” receive a clean frame around their lyrics, “Killer Bangs” is properly raucous, and the quieter “Super Rat” is gracefully produced, with guitars that initially sound like little pirouettes escalating the song to the level of ripping contempt: “SCUM! BAG! SLEAZE! SLIME! BALL! GREASE!” As you might imagine from that exultation, Honeyblood is populated by the canonical post-riot-grrrl cast of characters: asshole dudes, and the women exasperated or over them in the most cathartic ways. But though Tweeddale’s still working through growing pains as a lyricist—for every great opening salvo, there’s a throat-clearing hedge—Honeyblood’s got a sense of voice some debut acts would be lucky to possess. “Choker”, in particular, feints past platitudes and scumball-sleaze dude clichés to become something more layered; it was inspired by Angela Carter’s story “The Bloody Chamber,” about a bride marrying a man implied to be the Marquis de Sade, whose wedding gift is a choker of “flashing crimson jewels round [her] throat, bright as arterial blood”; the song, accordingly, whiplashes from hooky to doomy to unnervingly placid. It’s not exactly a dark song, though, which is key, as the best moments on Honeyblood work in complex emotions. “Biro” is the most wistful track on the album, a late-summer wash that sounds gorgeous on record. It possesses the record's most lasting hook, as well as its most indelible line: “All the pain you’ve been through will be the making of you.” It works both as something to take to heart and a to-date career statement, as the making of Honeyblood turned out all right, after all.

Artist: Honeyblood, Album: Honeyblood, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Honeyblood’s Thrift Shop EP was the stuff of serendipitous discoveries. The EP—basically a cassette single, B-side and all—was recorded in a bathroom and sounds as such, but its lyrics were at turns sharp and swooning, with just enough charm breaking through the lo-fi roar. The band's members, Glaswegians Stina Tweeddale (Boycotts) and Shona McVicar (Partwindpartwolf), met at a show both acts were playing and bonded over being women in their respective bands—in Tweeddale’s case, the only woman in the band—as well as the music they grew up with. Thrift Shop's crunchy cover of The Innocence Mission’s “The Girl on My Left”—an inspired choice from a 1990s act with a devoted cult fanbase—spoke to both connective threads. Honeyblood have since signed to Fat Cat and scrubbed out the static with producer Peter Katis (Interpol, the National); inevitably, the duo have picked up a slew of comparisons to acts of the past (the Breeders, Throwing Muses, Hole) that Honeyblood have also mentioned as influences. However, the band has no shortage of current-day peers, from hypermelodic rock acts like Best Coast, countrymates Camera Obscura, Speedy Ortiz, and Courtney Barnett (whom Honeyblood opened for). So it can be hard to hear the duo's self-titled debut on its own terms, but Honeyblood is far from pastiche: they don’t sound that much like their influence, except perhaps in how they arrange their harmonies or in short three-second bursts. The first bars of “Choker”, in particular, could fool a few people into thinking it’s a Deal sister singing; the raised-eyebrow inflections on “No Spare Key” are unnerving exact matches to Tanya Donelly’s repertoire. One part of ‘90s indie lineage that usually goes unmentioned among the nostalgics is that the era's albums tended to dissolve into filler in the back third, and Honeyblood is no exception. Just looking at the album's tracklist, you can almost pinpoint the spot where they’ll break the monotony with an uptempo cut—in this case, the clipped exasperation and petulant shout-along of “All Dragged Up”—but for the most part, Honeyblood admirably sidesteps the potential pitfalls. Some bands record lo-fi albums as a statement of purpose; others because that’s all they could afford. Honeyblood were previously in the latter position, and as a result their debut doesn’t sound overproduced as much as it does properly heightened, like a well-developed photograph.  The lovelorn “Fall Forever” melts on record like a sugarcube, “No Spare Key” and single “Bud” receive a clean frame around their lyrics, “Killer Bangs” is properly raucous, and the quieter “Super Rat” is gracefully produced, with guitars that initially sound like little pirouettes escalating the song to the level of ripping contempt: “SCUM! BAG! SLEAZE! SLIME! BALL! GREASE!” As you might imagine from that exultation, Honeyblood is populated by the canonical post-riot-grrrl cast of characters: asshole dudes, and the women exasperated or over them in the most cathartic ways. But though Tweeddale’s still working through growing pains as a lyricist—for every great opening salvo, there’s a throat-clearing hedge—Honeyblood’s got a sense of voice some debut acts would be lucky to possess. “Choker”, in particular, feints past platitudes and scumball-sleaze dude clichés to become something more layered; it was inspired by Angela Carter’s story “The Bloody Chamber,” about a bride marrying a man implied to be the Marquis de Sade, whose wedding gift is a choker of “flashing crimson jewels round [her] throat, bright as arterial blood”; the song, accordingly, whiplashes from hooky to doomy to unnervingly placid. It’s not exactly a dark song, though, which is key, as the best moments on Honeyblood work in complex emotions. “Biro” is the most wistful track on the album, a late-summer wash that sounds gorgeous on record. It possesses the record's most lasting hook, as well as its most indelible line: “All the pain you’ve been through will be the making of you.” It works both as something to take to heart and a to-date career statement, as the making of Honeyblood turned out all right, after all."

Sophia Kennedy

Sophia Kennedy

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

“Being lonely makes you special/But being special makes you lonely too,” Sophia Kennedy sings in “Being Special,” one of the witty, mysterious songs on her bewitching debut. Loneliness is a running theme throughout the album, yet her voice radiates delight; her language wears a faintly hallucinatory halo, placing the humdrum mechanics of living and longing in the shadow of melting clocks and “volleyball weather,” whatever that might be. Special she certainly is: Sophia Kennedy introduces us to a powerhouse voice and a unique sensibility, one where flickering electronic music mingles with scraps of Tin Pan Alley signage, and where knotty bon mots and curious non sequiturs make heartbreak seem almost surmountable. Her specialness begins with her trajectory. Raised in Baltimore, Kennedy moved to Hamburg to study film and ended up staying there, writing music for theater—hardly the usual path for an emerging singer-songwriter. Given the kind of music she makes, it’s also unusual that her album appears on DJ Koze and Marcus Fink’s Pampa Records, a label far better known for house and techno. Granted, the artists on Pampa’s roster—Axel Boman, Ada, Robag Wruhme, Isolée—are no strangers to quirk, and Kennedy’s idiosyncratic music is as at home there as it would be anywhere else. Her co-producer here is Mense Reents, a veteran of a number of oddball Hamburg acts including Egoexpress, Die Goldenen Zitronen, and the Pampa-signed Die Vögel. The latter duo’s primary claim to fame is “The Chicken,” a minimalist house track that turns an off-the-cuff comment from Werner Herzog (“Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity”) into an unlikely dancefloor refrain. Here, though, offbeat details never overpower the music’s sentimental pull. If you are accustomed to hearing pop music largely as a nexus of comparison points, a collection of small differences, Kennedy may leave you pleasantly flummoxed. It’s not entirely sui generis; she borrows Lou Reed’s sneering diction and boogie-woogie piano in “William By the Windowsill” and Stereolab’s gleaming organs for “Kimono Hill.” A trim, salsa-inspired bassline nestles inside the flickering machine beat of “3:05,” and “A Bug on a Rug in a Building” offers flashbacks to the DIY electronic pop of the German Wohnzimmerszene (“living-room scene”) of the 1990s. But these fleeting reference points function mainly like windows within an interior of her own design, one defined largely by bold, declarative keyboards and multi-tracked vocals. In “Foam,” trap beats and Phil Collins-grade drum fills serve as fuses for Kennedy’s close-harmonized fireworks. In “Dizzy Izzy,” a buzzing jaw harp twangs against cellos sampled from Nat Baldwin’s “In the Hollows”—an incongruous pairing, perhaps, but one that somehow makes sense in the glow of Kennedy’s arcing melodic line. It all adds up to a frequently exhilarating listen, so it’s ironic that Kennedy’s lyrics are so often full of doubt. In “William By the Windowsill,” her character longs to stick his head into “The gutter of the roof/And whistle all the saddest tunes.” Behind the inscrutable roll call of “Dizzy Izzy” lies an observation that any high-school-reunion attendee will recognize as true: “In the mirror of our hometown/We are all the troubled ones.” Much of the album’s anxiety revolves around home. “I don’t know/Where I live,” she admits in the slinky, nervous “3:05,” and in the opening of “Build Me a House,” one of the album’s most gripping and immediate songs, she pleads, “Build me a house/Where I can live in.” It’s the most prosaic of requests, but the intensity of her singing elevates the sentiment until it seems almost existential. Is this longing a kind of homesickness? A clue might be found in one of the album’s most affecting songs. In an early version, titled “Springtime in New Orleans,” she sings of blooming flowers and aching hearts in a voice reminiscent of Ella Fitzgerald. It feels like a pastiche of a silver-screen tearjerker, but in the album version, her voice has mellowed; gone is any trace of archness or irony. On the album, the song is called “Baltimore,” and with its new closing lines—“Gone without a trace, my love/Lost in Baltimore”—it no longer feels like a character study. Wreathed in warm strings but pierced by a sliver of digital noise, like a reminder that the prettification of grief has cold limits, it feels as real as a song can feel.

Artist: Sophia Kennedy, Album: Sophia Kennedy, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "“Being lonely makes you special/But being special makes you lonely too,” Sophia Kennedy sings in “Being Special,” one of the witty, mysterious songs on her bewitching debut. Loneliness is a running theme throughout the album, yet her voice radiates delight; her language wears a faintly hallucinatory halo, placing the humdrum mechanics of living and longing in the shadow of melting clocks and “volleyball weather,” whatever that might be. Special she certainly is: Sophia Kennedy introduces us to a powerhouse voice and a unique sensibility, one where flickering electronic music mingles with scraps of Tin Pan Alley signage, and where knotty bon mots and curious non sequiturs make heartbreak seem almost surmountable. Her specialness begins with her trajectory. Raised in Baltimore, Kennedy moved to Hamburg to study film and ended up staying there, writing music for theater—hardly the usual path for an emerging singer-songwriter. Given the kind of music she makes, it’s also unusual that her album appears on DJ Koze and Marcus Fink’s Pampa Records, a label far better known for house and techno. Granted, the artists on Pampa’s roster—Axel Boman, Ada, Robag Wruhme, Isolée—are no strangers to quirk, and Kennedy’s idiosyncratic music is as at home there as it would be anywhere else. Her co-producer here is Mense Reents, a veteran of a number of oddball Hamburg acts including Egoexpress, Die Goldenen Zitronen, and the Pampa-signed Die Vögel. The latter duo’s primary claim to fame is “The Chicken,” a minimalist house track that turns an off-the-cuff comment from Werner Herzog (“Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity”) into an unlikely dancefloor refrain. Here, though, offbeat details never overpower the music’s sentimental pull. If you are accustomed to hearing pop music largely as a nexus of comparison points, a collection of small differences, Kennedy may leave you pleasantly flummoxed. It’s not entirely sui generis; she borrows Lou Reed’s sneering diction and boogie-woogie piano in “William By the Windowsill” and Stereolab’s gleaming organs for “Kimono Hill.” A trim, salsa-inspired bassline nestles inside the flickering machine beat of “3:05,” and “A Bug on a Rug in a Building” offers flashbacks to the DIY electronic pop of the German Wohnzimmerszene (“living-room scene”) of the 1990s. But these fleeting reference points function mainly like windows within an interior of her own design, one defined largely by bold, declarative keyboards and multi-tracked vocals. In “Foam,” trap beats and Phil Collins-grade drum fills serve as fuses for Kennedy’s close-harmonized fireworks. In “Dizzy Izzy,” a buzzing jaw harp twangs against cellos sampled from Nat Baldwin’s “In the Hollows”—an incongruous pairing, perhaps, but one that somehow makes sense in the glow of Kennedy’s arcing melodic line. It all adds up to a frequently exhilarating listen, so it’s ironic that Kennedy’s lyrics are so often full of doubt. In “William By the Windowsill,” her character longs to stick his head into “The gutter of the roof/And whistle all the saddest tunes.” Behind the inscrutable roll call of “Dizzy Izzy” lies an observation that any high-school-reunion attendee will recognize as true: “In the mirror of our hometown/We are all the troubled ones.” Much of the album’s anxiety revolves around home. “I don’t know/Where I live,” she admits in the slinky, nervous “3:05,” and in the opening of “Build Me a House,” one of the album’s most gripping and immediate songs, she pleads, “Build me a house/Where I can live in.” It’s the most prosaic of requests, but the intensity of her singing elevates the sentiment until it seems almost existential. Is this longing a kind of homesickness? A clue might be found in one of the album’s most affecting songs. In an early version, titled “Springtime in New Orleans,” she sings of blooming flowers and aching hearts in a voice reminiscent of Ella Fitzgerald. It feels like a pastiche of a silver-screen tearjerker, but in the album version, her voice has mellowed; gone is any trace of archness or irony. On the album, the song is called “Baltimore,” and with its new closing lines—“Gone without a trace, my love/Lost in Baltimore”—it no longer feels like a character study. Wreathed in warm strings but pierced by a sliver of digital noise, like a reminder that the prettification of grief has cold limits, it feels as real as a song can feel."

Odesza

A Moment Apart

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

In the past couple of years, chill has become ubiquitous, not just as a verb (“Netflix and chill”) but as adjective (the “chill bro”), prefix (chillstep, chilltrap), and even noun: Per SoundCloud hashtags, at least, “chill” has become a genre unto itself. Contra Moore’s Law and all the breakneck terrors of an accelerated age, chill has been elevated to something like a state of being: a lifestyle, a philosophy, a categorical imperative. A whole musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. But as the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and trap, if you hadn’t guessed) suggest, ironically enough, the chill scene, at least in electronic music, is inextricable from its main-stage, peak-hour EDM counterparts. It derives its power from super-sized subtlety, exaggerated gestures, a kind of weaponized softness; in its side-chained whoosh and billion-watt sparkle, it practically screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED NOW! (It seems not coincidental that the rise of chill has appeared alongside not just marijuana’s widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted explosion in potency.) Odesza may not be the biggest stars of this movement (that distinction probably falls to Australia’s Flume), but they’re close. If their YouTube stats are impressive—23 million views for 2014’s “Say My Name,” 14 million for “Sun Models”—their numbers on Spotify are just mind-boggling: More than 82 million plays for “Sun Models,” nearly as much for “Say My Name,” close to a third of a billion cumulative plays across their top 10 songs on the platform. Not bad for a couple of guys who started making music together just five years ago, shortly before graduating from Western Washington University. The first Odesza album, 2012’s Summer’s Gone, offered a fairly innocuous contribution to the emerging chill canon, taking cues from Bonobo, Tycho, and Four Tet and smoothing them into a tantalizing array of chimes, feathery textures, and powdery drum hits. Two years later, In Return bathed in an even more opulent abalone glow; it also honed their pop instincts, fleshing out their usual ribbon-like strips of sampled vocals with chirpy guest turns that channeled the decade’s default pop-EDM vocal style into whimsical, helium-fueled shapes. It was original and meticulously produced, but it got cloying real fast, like chugging from an oversized hummingbird feeder. Today, Odesza are a proper stadium act. In May, they did two sold-out nights at Colorado’s Red Rocks, complete with electric guitar, eight-person choreographed drum line, and visuals by in-house live creative director Luke Tanaka. The new album is accordingly ambitious; it wants to be a lot of things, trigger a lot of feelings. It’s full of billowing vocal harmonies and seismic rumble and turbo-charged trap beats; its default mode is a kind of eyes-closed beatitude, and every climax is but a stepping stone to a bigger climax. That it’s an album about desire is obvious; you can sense their anticipation at feeling that brass ring brushing beneath their fingertips. After a ruminative introduction, the title track explodes with so much light and color that you half expect Animal Collective’s voices to come soaring through the flames. From there, A Moment Apart just keeps chasing bigger thrills, deeper colors, and more heartstring-tugging emotions across an hour-long set of bright-eyed electronic pop, pan-pipe trap, breakbeat soul, and slow-motion house. “Boy” is a gleaming trap/dubstep amalgam fitted out with a yearning vocal hook; “Meridian” flips cascading, exotic-sounding choral harmonies into a soundscape evocative of a CGI-enhanced rainforest flyover in IMAX. As they’ve beefed up their sound, though, Odesza have lost some of their uniqueness. “Higher Ground,” featuring Naomi Wild, borrows from Purity Ring’s Kevlar-coated twee; “Line of Sight,” featuring the singers WYNNE and Mansionair, is a moody, mid-tempo ballad reminiscent of the Chainsmokers’ “Closer,” right down to the wheezy, staccato keys. It doesn’t help that their guest singers’ lyrics rarely scale heights comparable to the duo’s vertiginous waveforms. “I need you now/Gravity can’t hold us down/So just take me there/To higher ground,” sings Naomi Wild, hemmed in by the confines of her rhyming couplet; two songs later, WYNNE falls into the same moon-June-spoon-shaped rut: “I’m feeling in and out/I turn full circle round and round/So will you help me down/Come grab my hand for solid ground.” But those vague platitudes may be preferable to Leon Bridges’ verses on “Across the Room,” a cloying slow jam whose sappy, sexed-up gravitas brings to mind Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.” The breakup song “Just a Memory” is less icky; Regina Spektor is a more convincing storyteller, but her soaring soprano coo feels better suited to a Disney theme song. Squeezing genuine emotion out of this music is about as likely as finding comfort snuggling with one of Jeff Koons’ balloon-dog sculptures. It all comes to a head with the closing “Corners of the Earth”: Over diffuse choral harmonies, RY X does his best Justin Vernon impression, while swelling synths and pounding drums conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. As the song builds, you can practically see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, their fuselages kissed with the colors of the fireworks exploding around them. “Tonight we run/Through love we never knew/Our love to everyone/We love tonight for love,” he sings, tautologically; “We’re golden/We’re golden/We’re golden/We’re golden.” But the harder the band strive to reach sublimity, the more earthbound their music feels. It’s fitting that he should begin with “Tonight we run/We run into the sun”; the song, like the album, has Icarus’ charred fingerprints all over it.

Artist: Odesza, Album: A Moment Apart, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "In the past couple of years, chill has become ubiquitous, not just as a verb (“Netflix and chill”) but as adjective (the “chill bro”), prefix (chillstep, chilltrap), and even noun: Per SoundCloud hashtags, at least, “chill” has become a genre unto itself. Contra Moore’s Law and all the breakneck terrors of an accelerated age, chill has been elevated to something like a state of being: a lifestyle, a philosophy, a categorical imperative. A whole musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. But as the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and trap, if you hadn’t guessed) suggest, ironically enough, the chill scene, at least in electronic music, is inextricable from its main-stage, peak-hour EDM counterparts. It derives its power from super-sized subtlety, exaggerated gestures, a kind of weaponized softness; in its side-chained whoosh and billion-watt sparkle, it practically screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED NOW! (It seems not coincidental that the rise of chill has appeared alongside not just marijuana’s widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted explosion in potency.) Odesza may not be the biggest stars of this movement (that distinction probably falls to Australia’s Flume), but they’re close. If their YouTube stats are impressive—23 million views for 2014’s “Say My Name,” 14 million for “Sun Models”—their numbers on Spotify are just mind-boggling: More than 82 million plays for “Sun Models,” nearly as much for “Say My Name,” close to a third of a billion cumulative plays across their top 10 songs on the platform. Not bad for a couple of guys who started making music together just five years ago, shortly before graduating from Western Washington University. The first Odesza album, 2012’s Summer’s Gone, offered a fairly innocuous contribution to the emerging chill canon, taking cues from Bonobo, Tycho, and Four Tet and smoothing them into a tantalizing array of chimes, feathery textures, and powdery drum hits. Two years later, In Return bathed in an even more opulent abalone glow; it also honed their pop instincts, fleshing out their usual ribbon-like strips of sampled vocals with chirpy guest turns that channeled the decade’s default pop-EDM vocal style into whimsical, helium-fueled shapes. It was original and meticulously produced, but it got cloying real fast, like chugging from an oversized hummingbird feeder. Today, Odesza are a proper stadium act. In May, they did two sold-out nights at Colorado’s Red Rocks, complete with electric guitar, eight-person choreographed drum line, and visuals by in-house live creative director Luke Tanaka. The new album is accordingly ambitious; it wants to be a lot of things, trigger a lot of feelings. It’s full of billowing vocal harmonies and seismic rumble and turbo-charged trap beats; its default mode is a kind of eyes-closed beatitude, and every climax is but a stepping stone to a bigger climax. That it’s an album about desire is obvious; you can sense their anticipation at feeling that brass ring brushing beneath their fingertips. After a ruminative introduction, the title track explodes with so much light and color that you half expect Animal Collective’s voices to come soaring through the flames. From there, A Moment Apart just keeps chasing bigger thrills, deeper colors, and more heartstring-tugging emotions across an hour-long set of bright-eyed electronic pop, pan-pipe trap, breakbeat soul, and slow-motion house. “Boy” is a gleaming trap/dubstep amalgam fitted out with a yearning vocal hook; “Meridian” flips cascading, exotic-sounding choral harmonies into a soundscape evocative of a CGI-enhanced rainforest flyover in IMAX. As they’ve beefed up their sound, though, Odesza have lost some of their uniqueness. “Higher Ground,” featuring Naomi Wild, borrows from Purity Ring’s Kevlar-coated twee; “Line of Sight,” featuring the singers WYNNE and Mansionair, is a moody, mid-tempo ballad reminiscent of the Chainsmokers’ “Closer,” right down to the wheezy, staccato keys. It doesn’t help that their guest singers’ lyrics rarely scale heights comparable to the duo’s vertiginous waveforms. “I need you now/Gravity can’t hold us down/So just take me there/To higher ground,” sings Naomi Wild, hemmed in by the confines of her rhyming couplet; two songs later, WYNNE falls into the same moon-June-spoon-shaped rut: “I’m feeling in and out/I turn full circle round and round/So will you help me down/Come grab my hand for solid ground.” But those vague platitudes may be preferable to Leon Bridges’ verses on “Across the Room,” a cloying slow jam whose sappy, sexed-up gravitas brings to mind Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.” The breakup song “Just a Memory” is less icky; Regina Spektor is a more convincing storyteller, but her soaring soprano coo feels better suited to a Disney theme song. Squeezing genuine emotion out of this music is about as likely as finding comfort snuggling with one of Jeff Koons’ balloon-dog sculptures. It all comes to a head with the closing “Corners of the Earth”: Over diffuse choral harmonies, RY X does his best Justin Vernon impression, while swelling synths and pounding drums conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. As the song builds, you can practically see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, their fuselages kissed with the colors of the fireworks exploding around them. “Tonight we run/Through love we never knew/Our love to everyone/We love tonight for love,” he sings, tautologically; “We’re golden/We’re golden/We’re golden/We’re golden.” But the harder the band strive to reach sublimity, the more earthbound their music feels. It’s fitting that he should begin with “Tonight we run/We run into the sun”; the song, like the album, has Icarus’ charred fingerprints all over it."

Benedek

Untitled EP

Andy Beta

At the very end of 2013, a white label 12” with only the name “Benedek” written on it came through the mail, bereft of any other information whatsoever. And when the full-length album began arriving in shops last month, it had about the same amount of info on it. There are eight tracks in total, all of them untitled, released by the Washington, D.C. imprint Peoples Potential Unlimited. For the PPU label, this is par for the course. Since 2008, PPU’s catalog makes for strange, eclectic listening, primarily reissuing demo recordings from the early 80s of African-American acts hoping to be the next Earth Wind and Fire or Marvin Gaye. The bizarro world of boogie and R&B that PPU unearths—far from the upper echelons of kings like Michael Jackson and Prince— is fascinating stuff and almost any toe dip into the PPU catalog will reward listeners. But the label also releases music from acts similarly informed by such lost musics, be it Tom Noble, Psychic Mirrors or Benedek. A bit of research revealed that Nicholas Benedek hails from Los Angeles and while he’s had a few cassette-only comp appearances, his only other release available to date is a collaboration with Dâm-Funk. Much like his peer Ariel Pink and how his hypnagogic pop vision influenced an entire generation of indie-rockers, Dâm-Funk’s aesthetic seems to have had a similar effect on a new generation of post-Dilla producers, drawing on obscure boogie, funk, freestyle, house music, modern soul and lost R&B to create a strange yet danceable new world of sound. There’s something uncanny and familiar about Benedek’s sound palette across these eight instrumentals: the bubbly synths, the popping basslines, the crisp drum machine hits, the canned handclaps, all of which evoke the production tropes of a bygone era. The first track has this sliver of sound that makes me think of Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings", which may just be a trick of the mind akin to Ariel Pink’s, in that it attaches itself to what you have stored in your own musical memory banks. Another section has the warm pads and chopped-up hand percussion reminiscent of a proto-house track, interspersed with chimes. There are sounds that might bring to mind a workout video from the 80s, unless you weren’t born in that decade, in which case the bassline might instead sound like something from the early 90s. The third track features the sort of harmonica preset of an old synth and Jacuzzi-warm keyboard chords, all set against the kind of boom-tick that my girlfriend would call “grown and sexy.” The fourth untitled track sticks out for me, laced with the kind of hook that could either be from an obscure lite jazz album, a rare modern soul 12,” or some sort of boogie track that might have gotten aired one night at the Paradise Garage, full of airy guitar upstrokes. But perhaps it’s not a sample at all, but rather from the mind and fingers of Benedek himself. His evocative debut, while scrubbed of track titles, vocals and eschewing easy genre categories from the past thirty years, nevertheless makes such blurred lines be part of its listening pleasure.

Artist: Benedek, Album: Untitled EP, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "At the very end of 2013, a white label 12” with only the name “Benedek” written on it came through the mail, bereft of any other information whatsoever. And when the full-length album began arriving in shops last month, it had about the same amount of info on it. There are eight tracks in total, all of them untitled, released by the Washington, D.C. imprint Peoples Potential Unlimited. For the PPU label, this is par for the course. Since 2008, PPU’s catalog makes for strange, eclectic listening, primarily reissuing demo recordings from the early 80s of African-American acts hoping to be the next Earth Wind and Fire or Marvin Gaye. The bizarro world of boogie and R&B that PPU unearths—far from the upper echelons of kings like Michael Jackson and Prince— is fascinating stuff and almost any toe dip into the PPU catalog will reward listeners. But the label also releases music from acts similarly informed by such lost musics, be it Tom Noble, Psychic Mirrors or Benedek. A bit of research revealed that Nicholas Benedek hails from Los Angeles and while he’s had a few cassette-only comp appearances, his only other release available to date is a collaboration with Dâm-Funk. Much like his peer Ariel Pink and how his hypnagogic pop vision influenced an entire generation of indie-rockers, Dâm-Funk’s aesthetic seems to have had a similar effect on a new generation of post-Dilla producers, drawing on obscure boogie, funk, freestyle, house music, modern soul and lost R&B to create a strange yet danceable new world of sound. There’s something uncanny and familiar about Benedek’s sound palette across these eight instrumentals: the bubbly synths, the popping basslines, the crisp drum machine hits, the canned handclaps, all of which evoke the production tropes of a bygone era. The first track has this sliver of sound that makes me think of Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings", which may just be a trick of the mind akin to Ariel Pink’s, in that it attaches itself to what you have stored in your own musical memory banks. Another section has the warm pads and chopped-up hand percussion reminiscent of a proto-house track, interspersed with chimes. There are sounds that might bring to mind a workout video from the 80s, unless you weren’t born in that decade, in which case the bassline might instead sound like something from the early 90s. The third track features the sort of harmonica preset of an old synth and Jacuzzi-warm keyboard chords, all set against the kind of boom-tick that my girlfriend would call “grown and sexy.” The fourth untitled track sticks out for me, laced with the kind of hook that could either be from an obscure lite jazz album, a rare modern soul 12,” or some sort of boogie track that might have gotten aired one night at the Paradise Garage, full of airy guitar upstrokes. But perhaps it’s not a sample at all, but rather from the mind and fingers of Benedek himself. His evocative debut, while scrubbed of track titles, vocals and eschewing easy genre categories from the past thirty years, nevertheless makes such blurred lines be part of its listening pleasure."

The Firebird Band

City at Night

Rock

Joe Tangari

The greatest blessing in life isn't health, wealth, or longevity-- it's low expectations. This works both ways-- when others expect little of you, it's easy to achieve an acceptable result because anything short of failure will be deemed success. Likewise, when you don't anticipate quality, you're more likely to be pleasantly surprised-- case in point: The Firebird Band's City at Night. I had deflated expectations of The Firebird Band for a reason: They lowered their own bar with 2001's lousy Drive EP. (Their more rock-oriented debut album, The Setting Sun & Its Satellites, was slightly better, but also disorganized.) The EP was such a cloudy mess that when the band didn't quickly follow it up, I figured it must have dropped off the face of the earth. Well, it turns out that the band-- a duo comprising ex-Braid guitarist Chris Broach and John Isberg-- had been holed up in studios and living rooms creating City at Night, which is a wholesale facelift and improvement. It's not a perfect record by any means--in fact I'd go so far as to say that nearly every song is too long, and a 74-minute running time gives it plenty of space to wear out its welcome-- but the basic material is strong and the new sound is seductive. True to its title and cover art (on which I can see the building in which I work), City at Night is a slick, urban album that feeds off the energy of streetlights, neon signs, and cool, brisk air. It's hard to listen to half of these songs without picturing Mitsubishis speeding through downtown tunnels in silver-green monochrome, their cabins packed with well-proportioned young urban professionals going God knows where...maybe nowhere. Mechanical beats with live accompaniment do most of the heavy lifting as the band piles on synths, guitars, basses, keyboards, and vocals, occasionally hinting at punk but never quite detouring all the way. The seagull synths that announce opener "Obsessive Compulsive" set the album's midnight clubland mood. That song is one of the best here, a propulsive piece of post-disco that finds Broach in fine vocal form, somewhere between The Faint's Todd Baechle and The Fire Show's M. Resplendent. Songs like "Dangerous", which features vocals by Elizabeth Black, and "Los Angeles" are decent examples of how the band stretches good ideas too far-- they each drag on because of grueling repetition. It's a shame, too, because "Dangerous" has a stellar chorus and great vocal turn by Black, while "Los Angeles" rides a sickly sweet Rhodes vamp (sadly, into the ground). Meanwhile, the heavily filtered, almost jungle-based pop of "Can't Stop" really needs to be a two-minute experiment and winds up going twice that distance with no real payoff. The band only slips into a terrible idea once, and that's on "Wake Up", which opens as a fairly nasty post-punk explosion but takes an ill-advised dive into hip-hop that sounds forced and awkward; guests rappers JB and Urban Myth of Kerbloki don't fit the tone of the album. The Firebird Band also take less-than-successfull forays into eclecticism on the acoustic ballad "Art" and the Chiba City doom and gloom of "Tokyo", which uncomfortably rub up against one another. They're not bad songs, but they don't feel at home here either. In the LP's liner notes, the band claims this album is the first in a three-part series. Presuming the band sticks to their new electro direction, one hopes they add concision to the equation because one of the things holding City at Night back is its longwindedness. The Firebird Band have come a long way in the last three years, but they still have a little bit of ground to cover before they're all the way there.

Artist: The Firebird Band, Album: City at Night, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "The greatest blessing in life isn't health, wealth, or longevity-- it's low expectations. This works both ways-- when others expect little of you, it's easy to achieve an acceptable result because anything short of failure will be deemed success. Likewise, when you don't anticipate quality, you're more likely to be pleasantly surprised-- case in point: The Firebird Band's City at Night. I had deflated expectations of The Firebird Band for a reason: They lowered their own bar with 2001's lousy Drive EP. (Their more rock-oriented debut album, The Setting Sun & Its Satellites, was slightly better, but also disorganized.) The EP was such a cloudy mess that when the band didn't quickly follow it up, I figured it must have dropped off the face of the earth. Well, it turns out that the band-- a duo comprising ex-Braid guitarist Chris Broach and John Isberg-- had been holed up in studios and living rooms creating City at Night, which is a wholesale facelift and improvement. It's not a perfect record by any means--in fact I'd go so far as to say that nearly every song is too long, and a 74-minute running time gives it plenty of space to wear out its welcome-- but the basic material is strong and the new sound is seductive. True to its title and cover art (on which I can see the building in which I work), City at Night is a slick, urban album that feeds off the energy of streetlights, neon signs, and cool, brisk air. It's hard to listen to half of these songs without picturing Mitsubishis speeding through downtown tunnels in silver-green monochrome, their cabins packed with well-proportioned young urban professionals going God knows where...maybe nowhere. Mechanical beats with live accompaniment do most of the heavy lifting as the band piles on synths, guitars, basses, keyboards, and vocals, occasionally hinting at punk but never quite detouring all the way. The seagull synths that announce opener "Obsessive Compulsive" set the album's midnight clubland mood. That song is one of the best here, a propulsive piece of post-disco that finds Broach in fine vocal form, somewhere between The Faint's Todd Baechle and The Fire Show's M. Resplendent. Songs like "Dangerous", which features vocals by Elizabeth Black, and "Los Angeles" are decent examples of how the band stretches good ideas too far-- they each drag on because of grueling repetition. It's a shame, too, because "Dangerous" has a stellar chorus and great vocal turn by Black, while "Los Angeles" rides a sickly sweet Rhodes vamp (sadly, into the ground). Meanwhile, the heavily filtered, almost jungle-based pop of "Can't Stop" really needs to be a two-minute experiment and winds up going twice that distance with no real payoff. The band only slips into a terrible idea once, and that's on "Wake Up", which opens as a fairly nasty post-punk explosion but takes an ill-advised dive into hip-hop that sounds forced and awkward; guests rappers JB and Urban Myth of Kerbloki don't fit the tone of the album. The Firebird Band also take less-than-successfull forays into eclecticism on the acoustic ballad "Art" and the Chiba City doom and gloom of "Tokyo", which uncomfortably rub up against one another. They're not bad songs, but they don't feel at home here either. In the LP's liner notes, the band claims this album is the first in a three-part series. Presuming the band sticks to their new electro direction, one hopes they add concision to the equation because one of the things holding City at Night back is its longwindedness. The Firebird Band have come a long way in the last three years, but they still have a little bit of ground to cover before they're all the way there."

Johnny Jewel

Digital Rain

Electronic

Calum Marsh

Like a film noir director shooting lamp-lit city streets at midnight drenched in rain, Johnny Jewel is enamored of the look and sound and feel of water. Dried out in Los Angeles, the Chromatics mastermind has been thinking about the hail in his native Houston and the snow in Montreal, Gulf Coast floods, and downpours in Portland, the city where he crystallized his twilit sound. “After living a few years in a desert climate, I realized I was nostalgic for the constant presence of precipitation from every city I once called home,” he recently wrote. Digital Rain is his response to that torrid absence. Jewel’s music—whether on his own, or as a composer for television and film, or with his bands Glass Candy, Desire, and Chromatics—has always captured less a style or sound than a mood. His work around the production of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (most of which went unused in the finished film) was so intensely expressive of a menacing, neon-lit Los Angeles that it all but coined a genre. His collaboration last year with David Lynch on the soundtrack to “Twin Peaks: The Return,” provided some of the show’s defining aesthetic pleasures, in particular his moody theme for Kyle MacLachlan’s Dougie Jones (“Windswept,” the title track from Jewel’s last solo album) and his otherworldly performances on stage at the Roadhouse with Chromatics and Julee Cruise. His talent is for atmosphere. He’s at his strongest when he’s encouraged to indulge it. Digital Rain does indeed sound wet. Composed without drums, vocals, or guitars, it’s a synth-streaked cloudburst, an electronic squall. A minute-long interlude called “Monsoon” churns and seethes. “La Ville De Neige” quivers with an expansive, frosty calm. The thunderstorms of “Magma” fizzle out into a gentle drizzle, while delicate slabs of ambience hang like mist on “What If?.” You get it. All these moody invocations of raindrops drumming on the windshield of a car as it glides down the highway at night seem carefully calibrated to resonate in precisely such a literal way. Digital Rain doesn’t merely bring to mind precipitation. It’s a full-scale concept album about inclement weather. The album is another of Jewel’s complete recreations of an aura. With austere means, he summons an often exquisite vision of a world of ice and water, snow and rain. And while its 41 minutes are largely tranquil, flowing smoothly with the aplomb of electronic artists Loscil or Keith Fullerton Whitman, the record sometimes erupts into sudden showers and storms. On “Air Museum,” one can feel the water coming down violently, a flourish of heavy synths pouring out in torrents, while on “Ship of Theseus” little electronic swirls crest and break like waves all around. It is a document not just of nostalgia for these conditions but affection as well: Jewel admires the downpour and the blizzard. They suit his temperament. One can well imagine him in the throes of making this album—fixed in a reverie in the arid heat of L.A., stirring up for us so effectively and poignantly his fondest memories of the much-missed sleet and rain.

Artist: Johnny Jewel, Album: Digital Rain, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Like a film noir director shooting lamp-lit city streets at midnight drenched in rain, Johnny Jewel is enamored of the look and sound and feel of water. Dried out in Los Angeles, the Chromatics mastermind has been thinking about the hail in his native Houston and the snow in Montreal, Gulf Coast floods, and downpours in Portland, the city where he crystallized his twilit sound. “After living a few years in a desert climate, I realized I was nostalgic for the constant presence of precipitation from every city I once called home,” he recently wrote. Digital Rain is his response to that torrid absence. Jewel’s music—whether on his own, or as a composer for television and film, or with his bands Glass Candy, Desire, and Chromatics—has always captured less a style or sound than a mood. His work around the production of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (most of which went unused in the finished film) was so intensely expressive of a menacing, neon-lit Los Angeles that it all but coined a genre. His collaboration last year with David Lynch on the soundtrack to “Twin Peaks: The Return,” provided some of the show’s defining aesthetic pleasures, in particular his moody theme for Kyle MacLachlan’s Dougie Jones (“Windswept,” the title track from Jewel’s last solo album) and his otherworldly performances on stage at the Roadhouse with Chromatics and Julee Cruise. His talent is for atmosphere. He’s at his strongest when he’s encouraged to indulge it. Digital Rain does indeed sound wet. Composed without drums, vocals, or guitars, it’s a synth-streaked cloudburst, an electronic squall. A minute-long interlude called “Monsoon” churns and seethes. “La Ville De Neige” quivers with an expansive, frosty calm. The thunderstorms of “Magma” fizzle out into a gentle drizzle, while delicate slabs of ambience hang like mist on “What If?.” You get it. All these moody invocations of raindrops drumming on the windshield of a car as it glides down the highway at night seem carefully calibrated to resonate in precisely such a literal way. Digital Rain doesn’t merely bring to mind precipitation. It’s a full-scale concept album about inclement weather. The album is another of Jewel’s complete recreations of an aura. With austere means, he summons an often exquisite vision of a world of ice and water, snow and rain. And while its 41 minutes are largely tranquil, flowing smoothly with the aplomb of electronic artists Loscil or Keith Fullerton Whitman, the record sometimes erupts into sudden showers and storms. On “Air Museum,” one can feel the water coming down violently, a flourish of heavy synths pouring out in torrents, while on “Ship of Theseus” little electronic swirls crest and break like waves all around. It is a document not just of nostalgia for these conditions but affection as well: Jewel admires the downpour and the blizzard. They suit his temperament. One can well imagine him in the throes of making this album—fixed in a reverie in the arid heat of L.A., stirring up for us so effectively and poignantly his fondest memories of the much-missed sleet and rain."

Nine Inch Nails

Ghosts I-IV

Rock

Tom Breihan

When Trent Reznor got his Just Blaze on last year to produce the Saul Williams slam-opera The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, he sent it out into the world through a just-blazed distribution path, biting Radiohead's weeks-old pay-what-you want idea. Then, when not enough people paid actual money for the thing, he bitchily blogged about it. Now he's doing it again, this time under his own name. If you want the new NIN all-instrumental 36-track drone-marathon, you can pay as little as $5 or as much as $300. (Or, rather, you could have once paid as much as $300; the 2,500-copy limited run of the deluxe-packaging version of Ghosts I-IV sold out within three days.) That Radiohead model, it turns out, only works if you're a band on Radiohead's or Nine Inch Nails' level-- one with an arena-rock history and a rabid internet fanbase. Reznor stands to make millions from Ghosts, something that certainly wouldn't have been true if he'd released this two-hour 4xCD instrumental work on a major label. Reznor's defection from the music business might be the best thing that ever happened to him financially and ideologically. Aesthetically, it might be the worst. Reznor's greatest strength has always been his ability to let his fundamental pop sensibility show through his fuzzed-out industrial signifiers and screaming-at-a-wall tantrum-rock pretensions. For all its heavily processed walls of guitar and reptilian electro lurching and cusswords, Pretty Hate Machine, still my favorite of Reznor's albums, is basically a dirtied-up Human League album (and Human League albums, it turned out, could stand to be dirtied up). The gas-masks, megaphone yowls, and apocalyptic despair of his subsequent albums were fun, but his old-school devotion to song form and titanic hooks were the real reasons I once carved the NIN logo on a treehouse wall. As a producer, Reznor knows how to stack drones on top of each other and crystallize pianos like nobody else, but those studio tricks don't add up to much when he's not welding them to actual songs. There's not a song to be found anywhere on Ghosts; nearly every one of the untitled instrumental sketches here feels emaciated and half-finished. What we're left with is two hours' worth of really good soundtrack music for American remakes of Japanese horror films. In the 90s, Reznor played patron saint to IDM OGs, commissioning Aphex Twin remixes and signing Meat Beat Manifesto to his nothing label. In that regard, Ghosts is almost Reznor's IDM record, only he's never been all that interested in jittery side-panning drum programming or vintage-synth blob-farts. And this isn't ambient music either; nearly every piece here feels like a piece of a Nine Inch Nails song, a DVD extra to a movie we might never see. Many of the best tracks here are straight-up fuzz-rock stomps, but without the burden of lyrical conveyance or song-progression, that riffage just hangs there, churning without purpose. Elsewhere, Reznor pits staticy drones against each other to see what happens, and often there's a built-in sense of melody and a dynamic force at work; it's just frustrating that we never hear what Reznor might do with it. Sometimes he'll bury chattering electro beats under forebodingly tortured synth-tones. Sometimes he'll offer shockingly clear impressionistic Erik Satie-esque pianos, letting them plink prettily away for minutes at a time before sending some new ominous machine-hum to molest them. Every once in a while, he'll use a riff or a bassline that I could swear he's used before but can't quite place. But even if every one of these tracks stands as a formal experiment unto itself, after an hour or two these half-formed ideas begin to bleed indistinctly into each other, evolving into puddles of vaguely ominous aural mush. When Ghosts works best, it's as a showcase for Reznor's estimable studio skills. Plenty of the individual sounds here are just gorgeous, and Reznor even expands his palette a bit to encompass marimbas, banjos, and percussively Beck-like slide-guitar. He layers these sounds expertly, setting glassy pianos against distant roaring-siren counterpoints or interrupting a pulsing drone-hum with a surprisingly accessible bar-rock chug. But even as the tracks progress, nothing really goes anywhere or stands on its own-- even the best track here is essentially half of a really good Nine Inch Nails song. And maybe it still will be; Reznor could take the pieces here and and make great songs out of them, sort of like how James Murphy took a beat from his Nike-sponsored long-form LCD Soundsystem piece 45:33 to make the incandescent "Someone Great". Until then, though, we're left with pieces of songs, nothing more. If I were one of those early deluxe-pacakge customers, I'd want my $300 back.

Artist: Nine Inch Nails, Album: Ghosts I-IV, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.0 Album review: "When Trent Reznor got his Just Blaze on last year to produce the Saul Williams slam-opera The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, he sent it out into the world through a just-blazed distribution path, biting Radiohead's weeks-old pay-what-you want idea. Then, when not enough people paid actual money for the thing, he bitchily blogged about it. Now he's doing it again, this time under his own name. If you want the new NIN all-instrumental 36-track drone-marathon, you can pay as little as $5 or as much as $300. (Or, rather, you could have once paid as much as $300; the 2,500-copy limited run of the deluxe-packaging version of Ghosts I-IV sold out within three days.) That Radiohead model, it turns out, only works if you're a band on Radiohead's or Nine Inch Nails' level-- one with an arena-rock history and a rabid internet fanbase. Reznor stands to make millions from Ghosts, something that certainly wouldn't have been true if he'd released this two-hour 4xCD instrumental work on a major label. Reznor's defection from the music business might be the best thing that ever happened to him financially and ideologically. Aesthetically, it might be the worst. Reznor's greatest strength has always been his ability to let his fundamental pop sensibility show through his fuzzed-out industrial signifiers and screaming-at-a-wall tantrum-rock pretensions. For all its heavily processed walls of guitar and reptilian electro lurching and cusswords, Pretty Hate Machine, still my favorite of Reznor's albums, is basically a dirtied-up Human League album (and Human League albums, it turned out, could stand to be dirtied up). The gas-masks, megaphone yowls, and apocalyptic despair of his subsequent albums were fun, but his old-school devotion to song form and titanic hooks were the real reasons I once carved the NIN logo on a treehouse wall. As a producer, Reznor knows how to stack drones on top of each other and crystallize pianos like nobody else, but those studio tricks don't add up to much when he's not welding them to actual songs. There's not a song to be found anywhere on Ghosts; nearly every one of the untitled instrumental sketches here feels emaciated and half-finished. What we're left with is two hours' worth of really good soundtrack music for American remakes of Japanese horror films. In the 90s, Reznor played patron saint to IDM OGs, commissioning Aphex Twin remixes and signing Meat Beat Manifesto to his nothing label. In that regard, Ghosts is almost Reznor's IDM record, only he's never been all that interested in jittery side-panning drum programming or vintage-synth blob-farts. And this isn't ambient music either; nearly every piece here feels like a piece of a Nine Inch Nails song, a DVD extra to a movie we might never see. Many of the best tracks here are straight-up fuzz-rock stomps, but without the burden of lyrical conveyance or song-progression, that riffage just hangs there, churning without purpose. Elsewhere, Reznor pits staticy drones against each other to see what happens, and often there's a built-in sense of melody and a dynamic force at work; it's just frustrating that we never hear what Reznor might do with it. Sometimes he'll bury chattering electro beats under forebodingly tortured synth-tones. Sometimes he'll offer shockingly clear impressionistic Erik Satie-esque pianos, letting them plink prettily away for minutes at a time before sending some new ominous machine-hum to molest them. Every once in a while, he'll use a riff or a bassline that I could swear he's used before but can't quite place. But even if every one of these tracks stands as a formal experiment unto itself, after an hour or two these half-formed ideas begin to bleed indistinctly into each other, evolving into puddles of vaguely ominous aural mush. When Ghosts works best, it's as a showcase for Reznor's estimable studio skills. Plenty of the individual sounds here are just gorgeous, and Reznor even expands his palette a bit to encompass marimbas, banjos, and percussively Beck-like slide-guitar. He layers these sounds expertly, setting glassy pianos against distant roaring-siren counterpoints or interrupting a pulsing drone-hum with a surprisingly accessible bar-rock chug. But even as the tracks progress, nothing really goes anywhere or stands on its own-- even the best track here is essentially half of a really good Nine Inch Nails song. And maybe it still will be; Reznor could take the pieces here and and make great songs out of them, sort of like how James Murphy took a beat from his Nike-sponsored long-form LCD Soundsystem piece 45:33 to make the incandescent "Someone Great". Until then, though, we're left with pieces of songs, nothing more. If I were one of those early deluxe-pacakge customers, I'd want my $300 back."

Neil Halstead

Palindrome Hunches

Rock

Ned Raggett

The release of Neil Halstead's third solo album produces a new wave of speculation about whether or not Slowdive will reunite. But it's helpful to remember that his artistic position has basically been the same from the start. He's a craftsman of, as a friend described it, "cozy sweater folk". From the outset, Palindrome Hunches feels like the kind of hushed, close-gathered singalong that's been idealized in indie rock since the start of the millennium. The opener "Digging Shelters", in its calmly melancholy way, and the softly chugging "Bad Drugs and Minor Chords" that follows it, essentially define where the rest of the album goes. Between those two poles there's some variety; it does get a little too samey by the end, albeit never without feeling pleasant. Adding to the cozy feel, we're told Palindrome Hunches was recorded live in a weekend at a music room in a UK primary school. So, theoretically, it's neither Slowdive nor Mojave 3; instead, it's the kind of understated solo release that tips its hand to Nick Drake ("Full Moon Rising" is one of many moments where you basically can't think of anyone else) as much as it does a whole swathe of early-70s, acoustic guitar-based releases, Halstead singing a half-whispered reflection on where everything's been in his life and others. At this point, he's not about reinvention so much as he is exploring possibilities from a central start. Returning to the first Slowdive release, the self-titled 1990 EP, where both versions of "Avalyn" open with a treated acoustic strum and where on the first one Halstead's vocals (blended with Rachel Goswell's) are delivered softly and calmly, what has changed most in Halstead's work isn't the wellspring, per se, but the means of delivery. He has, even at Slowdive's loudest and Mojave 3's most sweeping and stately, always implicitly argued for the virtues of gentility, of understated retrospection and performance, and emotion recalled afterward. It's little surprise that the crypto-goth/post-punk roots of Slowdive via bands like the Cure and early New Order tie into this sense of splendid near-isolation, and that a solo career by default puts the focus all the more clearly on this core. So if "Wittgenstein's Arm" draws its lyrical inspiration from the story of a wounded pianist from World War I (and therefore includes piano) and if the title track is indeed all about palindromes (you'll never think of Satan quite the same way), then everything still comes back to that point of origin. But as with his earlier bands, it's the choice of arrangements and performance that drives his solo work, a specific aiming for a sound. Halstead's performing reinvents no wheels but never is anything less than well-done regardless, and the full performances can often find their own impact, the violin of Ben Smith-- one of several performers from Band of Hope playing as the backing group throughout-- often providing a softly killer touch on songs like "Love Is a Beast", "Full Moon Rising", and especially in the nervous opening moments of "Tied to You". By the time of the piano-led "Hey Daydreamer", one of the peppier songs in context, the album's been the type of thing that seems right for the closing in of the year through fall, something best heard in fading light, bundled a bit against the cooler air, a little shared warmth-- cozy sweater folk, indeed. Nope, it ain't shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?

Artist: Neil Halstead, Album: Palindrome Hunches, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "The release of Neil Halstead's third solo album produces a new wave of speculation about whether or not Slowdive will reunite. But it's helpful to remember that his artistic position has basically been the same from the start. He's a craftsman of, as a friend described it, "cozy sweater folk". From the outset, Palindrome Hunches feels like the kind of hushed, close-gathered singalong that's been idealized in indie rock since the start of the millennium. The opener "Digging Shelters", in its calmly melancholy way, and the softly chugging "Bad Drugs and Minor Chords" that follows it, essentially define where the rest of the album goes. Between those two poles there's some variety; it does get a little too samey by the end, albeit never without feeling pleasant. Adding to the cozy feel, we're told Palindrome Hunches was recorded live in a weekend at a music room in a UK primary school. So, theoretically, it's neither Slowdive nor Mojave 3; instead, it's the kind of understated solo release that tips its hand to Nick Drake ("Full Moon Rising" is one of many moments where you basically can't think of anyone else) as much as it does a whole swathe of early-70s, acoustic guitar-based releases, Halstead singing a half-whispered reflection on where everything's been in his life and others. At this point, he's not about reinvention so much as he is exploring possibilities from a central start. Returning to the first Slowdive release, the self-titled 1990 EP, where both versions of "Avalyn" open with a treated acoustic strum and where on the first one Halstead's vocals (blended with Rachel Goswell's) are delivered softly and calmly, what has changed most in Halstead's work isn't the wellspring, per se, but the means of delivery. He has, even at Slowdive's loudest and Mojave 3's most sweeping and stately, always implicitly argued for the virtues of gentility, of understated retrospection and performance, and emotion recalled afterward. It's little surprise that the crypto-goth/post-punk roots of Slowdive via bands like the Cure and early New Order tie into this sense of splendid near-isolation, and that a solo career by default puts the focus all the more clearly on this core. So if "Wittgenstein's Arm" draws its lyrical inspiration from the story of a wounded pianist from World War I (and therefore includes piano) and if the title track is indeed all about palindromes (you'll never think of Satan quite the same way), then everything still comes back to that point of origin. But as with his earlier bands, it's the choice of arrangements and performance that drives his solo work, a specific aiming for a sound. Halstead's performing reinvents no wheels but never is anything less than well-done regardless, and the full performances can often find their own impact, the violin of Ben Smith-- one of several performers from Band of Hope playing as the backing group throughout-- often providing a softly killer touch on songs like "Love Is a Beast", "Full Moon Rising", and especially in the nervous opening moments of "Tied to You". By the time of the piano-led "Hey Daydreamer", one of the peppier songs in context, the album's been the type of thing that seems right for the closing in of the year through fall, something best heard in fading light, bundled a bit against the cooler air, a little shared warmth-- cozy sweater folk, indeed. Nope, it ain't shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?"

New Radiant Storm King

Winter's Kill

Rock

Jason Nickey

What the hell happened to these guys? They sort of just fell off the map completely. Weren't they at one time supposed to be the "next big thing" in indie rock? The next Pavement, I seem to recall. Yep, back in the day, New Radiant Storm King had all the right connections: they called Amherst, Massachusetts home and hung with the Scud Mountain Boys, Guided by Voices, and the Silver Jews, among others. They even had a breakthrough album with 1996's Hurricane Necklace. Everyone I knew loved that record when it was first released, and it's a bit curious that nobody seems to remember it now. Reason for this, I hypothesize, has something to do with the combination of slacker-rock being dead and gone (at least until its impending revival in 2011), and that the band was, frankly, completely and totally cursed when its came to record labels. Suffice it to say they were just one of many talented bands to fall through the cracks when Rough Trade's American division folded-- and that was just the beginning of their problems. They soldiered on, but during the past few years, the band simply disappeared, its members presumably pursing higher degrees. Now, after much line-up shifting and label-hopping, New Radiant Storm King have pulled it together for Winter's Kill. At the center of the band remains the songwriting duo of Peyton Pinkerton and Matt Hunter, sharing vocal duties (both with a slightly affected British accent) and swapping guitar, bass, and a whole basement full of keyboards. Sadly, what they've turned out is far from groundbreaking. What it is is a solid collection of short, complex, introspective pop songs, sounding a lot like GBV if Pollard went on a heavy singer/songwriter-record-and-used-book-buying binge. Right from the first song, "In the Spirit of Distance," it's obvious these guys still have too many brain cells left to be compared too closely with GBV, talking about "a portrait of Dorian Gray" and all, though the melody does seem to lift from those other notorious drunkards, the Replacements-- most notably their song "Sixteen." On "Golden Parachute," the Radiant ones drop little nuggets of wisdom on you like, "Keep your suitcase close to your heart," while the shimmering Rhodes-heavy "Colony Falls" imparts, "You need to get lost to find out what you know." Hey, it's a didactic album, and worthy lessons all, if delivered a bit on the stiff and stodgy side. And that's really the only fault with this album: many of the songs are a bit too precious and sober. I respect restraint as long as it's kept in check. On Winter's Kill, though, I found myself wanting the odd little tempo changes or spaced-out interludes (such as the finale "View of a Wedding through the Hubble Telescope") to stray into weirder territory, and on the rare occasions where the band attempts to kick out the jams, it would've been nice had they been kicked with a wee bit more oomph. But maybe I'm just missing the higher subtleties. I can see how this album is a consciously constructed 'grower.' It's not the work of a band trying to capture some quick attention with clumsy stabs at the latest trends, and in some ways, with its lack of laptop glitchery and primal screaming, it does come off somewhat conservative. But maybe it's for this very reason that this album could prove to hold up better than the recent work of some other members of indie rock's illustrious Class of '92.

Artist: New Radiant Storm King, Album: Winter's Kill, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "What the hell happened to these guys? They sort of just fell off the map completely. Weren't they at one time supposed to be the "next big thing" in indie rock? The next Pavement, I seem to recall. Yep, back in the day, New Radiant Storm King had all the right connections: they called Amherst, Massachusetts home and hung with the Scud Mountain Boys, Guided by Voices, and the Silver Jews, among others. They even had a breakthrough album with 1996's Hurricane Necklace. Everyone I knew loved that record when it was first released, and it's a bit curious that nobody seems to remember it now. Reason for this, I hypothesize, has something to do with the combination of slacker-rock being dead and gone (at least until its impending revival in 2011), and that the band was, frankly, completely and totally cursed when its came to record labels. Suffice it to say they were just one of many talented bands to fall through the cracks when Rough Trade's American division folded-- and that was just the beginning of their problems. They soldiered on, but during the past few years, the band simply disappeared, its members presumably pursing higher degrees. Now, after much line-up shifting and label-hopping, New Radiant Storm King have pulled it together for Winter's Kill. At the center of the band remains the songwriting duo of Peyton Pinkerton and Matt Hunter, sharing vocal duties (both with a slightly affected British accent) and swapping guitar, bass, and a whole basement full of keyboards. Sadly, what they've turned out is far from groundbreaking. What it is is a solid collection of short, complex, introspective pop songs, sounding a lot like GBV if Pollard went on a heavy singer/songwriter-record-and-used-book-buying binge. Right from the first song, "In the Spirit of Distance," it's obvious these guys still have too many brain cells left to be compared too closely with GBV, talking about "a portrait of Dorian Gray" and all, though the melody does seem to lift from those other notorious drunkards, the Replacements-- most notably their song "Sixteen." On "Golden Parachute," the Radiant ones drop little nuggets of wisdom on you like, "Keep your suitcase close to your heart," while the shimmering Rhodes-heavy "Colony Falls" imparts, "You need to get lost to find out what you know." Hey, it's a didactic album, and worthy lessons all, if delivered a bit on the stiff and stodgy side. And that's really the only fault with this album: many of the songs are a bit too precious and sober. I respect restraint as long as it's kept in check. On Winter's Kill, though, I found myself wanting the odd little tempo changes or spaced-out interludes (such as the finale "View of a Wedding through the Hubble Telescope") to stray into weirder territory, and on the rare occasions where the band attempts to kick out the jams, it would've been nice had they been kicked with a wee bit more oomph. But maybe I'm just missing the higher subtleties. I can see how this album is a consciously constructed 'grower.' It's not the work of a band trying to capture some quick attention with clumsy stabs at the latest trends, and in some ways, with its lack of laptop glitchery and primal screaming, it does come off somewhat conservative. But maybe it's for this very reason that this album could prove to hold up better than the recent work of some other members of indie rock's illustrious Class of '92."

Faun Fables

Light of a Vaster Dark

Grayson Currin

Previous albums by Oakland folk benders Faun Fables often put the compelling lyrical ideas of founder and architect Dawn McCarthy in frames too baroque for the songs' good. The Transit Rider, the band's 2006 record, explored the woes and wonders that modern technology holds for our social existence. With subways, computers, and the Internet, our relationships might become more casual, McCarthy posited, and our encounters less meaningful. But willfully obtuse arrangements and overly intricate tangents often distracted from the themes, however engaging. And really, that's not surprising for a band that shares its multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl (and his stentorian baritone) with mind-trippers Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Faun Fables' fifth album, Light of a Vaster Dark, keys on the American prairie tales of writers likes Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder to explore the role of women in the early American Midwest. That might seem like an unlikely prompt for a band to reinvent itself, but, for Faun Fables, it's just that: Light of a Vaster Dark is as provocative musically as it is thematically, with rhythms and choruses that swell and arrangements that are smart because they stay out of the way. It's a pop reinvention, if you will, for a band whose intentions have often been subsumed by their own ambitions. Light of a Vaster Dark focuses specifically on the annals of women who powered families and generations with their quiet, steadfast labor. "Keeper of the keys with hidden worth," McCarthy sings on the strangely intoxicating "Housekeeper". "A tidy home will inherit the earth." McCarthy even writes her own old-fashioned work song, "Hear the Grinder Creak", a tune that turns the humdrum toil of flour-milling into a sort of survivalist mantra. Listen closely, though, and note the countering undercurrents: Heavily syncopated with handclaps and big drums, the song feels sexually suggestive. But ghastly harmonies and the moaning violin of Meredith Yayanos add a surfeit of foreboding, as though the labor wears on the singer with each cycle of the song. Indeed, McCarthy's examinations are more intricate than an issue of Good Housekeeping, as she plays on both the passions and perils that such hardscrabble times held for those that lived them. "Violet" muses on the seductive powers of Lena Lingard, one of the most intriguing characters in Cather's My Ántonia, with her deeply colored eyes and her "laughter, lazy and kind." The title track, on the other hand, depicts the universe as an eerie, consuming place, where body and soul are eventually surrendered. During the album's introduction, McCarthy sings a poem she wrote during winter 1998. She treats the invading winter like a new religion, something that changes the fabric of how life is lived. "It began with the cold/ How it crept up our sleeves," she intones, treating each word like drips of water that are nearly too cold to drop. "Covering the floor/ Making our blankets freeze." McCarthy uses that same text for "Hibernation Tales", the album's closer. In the intro, it's more of a recitative, where the words are sung simply and directly. But during "Hibernation Tales", a choir passes each lyric back and forth, repeatedly volleying their wintry realizations. The technique both humanizes and modernizes the esoteric work of Faun Fables. Suddenly, old American tales are pulled into the present. These long-lost ways of life-- the flour miller, the woman sweeping her dirt floor, the pioneers of open plains-- seem somehow germane. As with The Transit Rider, McCarthy is making a point about our daily life now-- the constant struggle against the elements, our nature, and each other. This time, though, the band at her back gives that point hooks, rhythms, and textures instead, not just tangents. It's a welcome, if obvious, deviation for a band that's finally more than interesting.

Artist: Faun Fables, Album: Light of a Vaster Dark, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Previous albums by Oakland folk benders Faun Fables often put the compelling lyrical ideas of founder and architect Dawn McCarthy in frames too baroque for the songs' good. The Transit Rider, the band's 2006 record, explored the woes and wonders that modern technology holds for our social existence. With subways, computers, and the Internet, our relationships might become more casual, McCarthy posited, and our encounters less meaningful. But willfully obtuse arrangements and overly intricate tangents often distracted from the themes, however engaging. And really, that's not surprising for a band that shares its multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl (and his stentorian baritone) with mind-trippers Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Faun Fables' fifth album, Light of a Vaster Dark, keys on the American prairie tales of writers likes Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder to explore the role of women in the early American Midwest. That might seem like an unlikely prompt for a band to reinvent itself, but, for Faun Fables, it's just that: Light of a Vaster Dark is as provocative musically as it is thematically, with rhythms and choruses that swell and arrangements that are smart because they stay out of the way. It's a pop reinvention, if you will, for a band whose intentions have often been subsumed by their own ambitions. Light of a Vaster Dark focuses specifically on the annals of women who powered families and generations with their quiet, steadfast labor. "Keeper of the keys with hidden worth," McCarthy sings on the strangely intoxicating "Housekeeper". "A tidy home will inherit the earth." McCarthy even writes her own old-fashioned work song, "Hear the Grinder Creak", a tune that turns the humdrum toil of flour-milling into a sort of survivalist mantra. Listen closely, though, and note the countering undercurrents: Heavily syncopated with handclaps and big drums, the song feels sexually suggestive. But ghastly harmonies and the moaning violin of Meredith Yayanos add a surfeit of foreboding, as though the labor wears on the singer with each cycle of the song. Indeed, McCarthy's examinations are more intricate than an issue of Good Housekeeping, as she plays on both the passions and perils that such hardscrabble times held for those that lived them. "Violet" muses on the seductive powers of Lena Lingard, one of the most intriguing characters in Cather's My Ántonia, with her deeply colored eyes and her "laughter, lazy and kind." The title track, on the other hand, depicts the universe as an eerie, consuming place, where body and soul are eventually surrendered. During the album's introduction, McCarthy sings a poem she wrote during winter 1998. She treats the invading winter like a new religion, something that changes the fabric of how life is lived. "It began with the cold/ How it crept up our sleeves," she intones, treating each word like drips of water that are nearly too cold to drop. "Covering the floor/ Making our blankets freeze." McCarthy uses that same text for "Hibernation Tales", the album's closer. In the intro, it's more of a recitative, where the words are sung simply and directly. But during "Hibernation Tales", a choir passes each lyric back and forth, repeatedly volleying their wintry realizations. The technique both humanizes and modernizes the esoteric work of Faun Fables. Suddenly, old American tales are pulled into the present. These long-lost ways of life-- the flour miller, the woman sweeping her dirt floor, the pioneers of open plains-- seem somehow germane. As with The Transit Rider, McCarthy is making a point about our daily life now-- the constant struggle against the elements, our nature, and each other. This time, though, the band at her back gives that point hooks, rhythms, and textures instead, not just tangents. It's a welcome, if obvious, deviation for a band that's finally more than interesting."

Sun City Girls

Carnival Folklore Resurrection 7: Libyan Dream

Rock

Luke Buckman

Once, a few years ago, I co-managed a record store. One day, the owner asked me to put together a section of music devoted to music that no one will ever buy. Apparently, the rest of our stock hadn't collected enough dust, so a new section entitled "You Won't Buy This, So Go Look at the Reggae" was devised. Actually, that wasn't his exact request, but this was how it went down: Owner: Luke, this store needs a new section and you're going to put it together. Here's the one-stop catalog. Have fun! Me: What kind of music are we talking about here? Owner: Let's see. What are all these wacky hipster kids listening to these days? I know: put together an avant-garde section. Get me some freaky music. I want a section for all those weirdo hipster kids. Got it? Groovilicious. Me: [shrugs] Uh... Owner: Oh, yeah. Try and find something that sounds like somebody dug up a bunch of graves and started beating the skulls together. And then they take apart the skeleton and beat the skulls with the bones from the arms and legs. Amazing! And so it began. I spent the next week circling titles in magazine reviews, scanning music guides, getting feedback from the customers who the owner had deemed "a little out there," and going about this whole project in a state of bewilderment and confusion. I ended up putting together a list of 100 titles for the next order. Somewhere near the bottom was a band I'd heard mentioned a couple of times, always with a look of disgust on the person's face. I'd scribbled near the bottom, "Sun City Girls - anything you can find," and faxed the list to our one-stop. Friday came and the first shipment arrived. A handful of titles from that order made it in with the next shipment, one of those being Sun City Girls' Midnight Cowboys from Ipanema. I ripped the shrinkwrap off and stuck it in the disc player. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was listening to what was widely considered to be the worst release in the Girls' entire catalog. Still, I couldn't help laughing at the atrocious, sloppy covers of "Fly by Night" and "Midnight at the Oasis." More SCG titles steadily trickled into the store. No one bought them. Except me. Unleashed almost twenty years ago, the Sun City Girls have reveled in the role of trickster since the very beginning. Comprised of three members (brothers Rick and Alan Bishop, and Charles Gocher Jr.), the band is characterized most easily by their erratic impulsivity. In fact, the one element that has remained constant over the years is their unpredictability. Sure, there have been recurring themes: a heavy bent of Middle-Eastern musical tradition and mysticism, demon and goddess obsession (Kali), extended improvisational freak-outs, dreadful covers of classic rock standards, infrequent live shows, audience baiting, attempts at breaking down the barriers between performance and art, late-60s-inspired jazz composition, and campfire psycho-babble storytelling. But any attempt at pigeonholing them to a specific genre remains futile. One of America's most prolific and proficient underground bands, the Sun City Girls are a collector's nightmare. It's not just the sheer deluge of releases that has record fiends scouring the used bins; it's the limited availability. After a few initial releases on now-defunct Placebo Records, the band disappeared from public view and began to unfurl a mountain of cassette releases (sold exclusively at shows or via mail-order) under the tag Cloaven Radio. Resurfacing in 1990 with the vastly underrated Torch of the Mystics, Sun City Girls slowly built a cult following over the subsequent decade. Despite a few scattershot live appearances, an ever-expanding catalog, and extensive global traveling, the band has spent the last ten years languishing in relative obscurity. Nevertheless, they've maintained, for all intents and purposes, a fairly high profile recently. In what's purported to be a neverending series of releases, the Bishop & Gocher Girls have (over a 24-month span) begun to flood stores with a string of albums under the guise of Carnival Folklore Resurrection, each limited to 1000 copies on the band's own Abduction label. And with eight installations so far, the series shows no signs of slowing down. One of the most recent, Libyan Dream, is a perfect example of the band's ability to cover vastly different musical territories, often within the timeframe of just one track. The seventh disc in the series begins with a burst of brutal guitar and drum buzz as they cover Amboy Dukes' "Journey to the Center of the Mind" for the second time in their career. Busting out with trashy guitar solos and the brothers' dueling vocals, it's a raunchy, shameless update of Nugent's original. What follows is a run of tracks encompassing familiar territory for Sun City Girls fans: squealing garage guitar, sprawling, drugged-out instrumentals, frenetic Middle-Eastern fuzz, an update of "The Vinegar Stroke" from Torch of the Mystics, and a few improvisational takes. "Instantaneous Decisions" begins with what sounds like Middle-Eastern hillbillies chanting over Gocher's endearingly messy drumming, but then unfolds into an angular, jagged display of bass and guitar. Each sudden burst of noise is followed by a series of nonsense squawks and yells from the band members. At times, the track falls apart at the seams; at others, Gocher and Rick Bishop maintain a stunningly open dialogue between guitar and drums. Most of the album, excepting the Amboy Dukes' update and an ode to opium, is instrumental, and it's an astonishing display of the Girls' musical adeptness. "Sangkala Suite" is a stunning, seven-plus-minute reworking of a traditional Middle Eastern tune that incredibly begins with a riff that sounds lifted by Dean Ween for "Mr. Would You Please Help My Pony?" Filled with the transcendent play and musical banter of a band that sounds truly enamored with the music they're making, it's a staggeringly beautiful piece. Unlike many of the other compositions and noise workouts here, "Sangkala" comes close to being, dare I say, inviting. What follows are two short tracks-- the acoustic "Tavoy Salon" and the hyper-charged Eastern blowup "Opium Den"-- and the amazing, Rick Bishop opus "Libyan Dream." Clocking in at almost fifteen minutes, it's a forum for Bishop's skills. Incorporating styles from across the globe and referencing everything from flamenco to rock to raga, Bishop proves that, contrary to what some have said, the Sun City Girls are no joke. Dismissed for years as a noise outfit, a novelty, and a band incapable of playing their instruments, the e

Artist: Sun City Girls, Album: Carnival Folklore Resurrection 7: Libyan Dream, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Once, a few years ago, I co-managed a record store. One day, the owner asked me to put together a section of music devoted to music that no one will ever buy. Apparently, the rest of our stock hadn't collected enough dust, so a new section entitled "You Won't Buy This, So Go Look at the Reggae" was devised. Actually, that wasn't his exact request, but this was how it went down: Owner: Luke, this store needs a new section and you're going to put it together. Here's the one-stop catalog. Have fun! Me: What kind of music are we talking about here? Owner: Let's see. What are all these wacky hipster kids listening to these days? I know: put together an avant-garde section. Get me some freaky music. I want a section for all those weirdo hipster kids. Got it? Groovilicious. Me: [shrugs] Uh... Owner: Oh, yeah. Try and find something that sounds like somebody dug up a bunch of graves and started beating the skulls together. And then they take apart the skeleton and beat the skulls with the bones from the arms and legs. Amazing! And so it began. I spent the next week circling titles in magazine reviews, scanning music guides, getting feedback from the customers who the owner had deemed "a little out there," and going about this whole project in a state of bewilderment and confusion. I ended up putting together a list of 100 titles for the next order. Somewhere near the bottom was a band I'd heard mentioned a couple of times, always with a look of disgust on the person's face. I'd scribbled near the bottom, "Sun City Girls - anything you can find," and faxed the list to our one-stop. Friday came and the first shipment arrived. A handful of titles from that order made it in with the next shipment, one of those being Sun City Girls' Midnight Cowboys from Ipanema. I ripped the shrinkwrap off and stuck it in the disc player. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was listening to what was widely considered to be the worst release in the Girls' entire catalog. Still, I couldn't help laughing at the atrocious, sloppy covers of "Fly by Night" and "Midnight at the Oasis." More SCG titles steadily trickled into the store. No one bought them. Except me. Unleashed almost twenty years ago, the Sun City Girls have reveled in the role of trickster since the very beginning. Comprised of three members (brothers Rick and Alan Bishop, and Charles Gocher Jr.), the band is characterized most easily by their erratic impulsivity. In fact, the one element that has remained constant over the years is their unpredictability. Sure, there have been recurring themes: a heavy bent of Middle-Eastern musical tradition and mysticism, demon and goddess obsession (Kali), extended improvisational freak-outs, dreadful covers of classic rock standards, infrequent live shows, audience baiting, attempts at breaking down the barriers between performance and art, late-60s-inspired jazz composition, and campfire psycho-babble storytelling. But any attempt at pigeonholing them to a specific genre remains futile. One of America's most prolific and proficient underground bands, the Sun City Girls are a collector's nightmare. It's not just the sheer deluge of releases that has record fiends scouring the used bins; it's the limited availability. After a few initial releases on now-defunct Placebo Records, the band disappeared from public view and began to unfurl a mountain of cassette releases (sold exclusively at shows or via mail-order) under the tag Cloaven Radio. Resurfacing in 1990 with the vastly underrated Torch of the Mystics, Sun City Girls slowly built a cult following over the subsequent decade. Despite a few scattershot live appearances, an ever-expanding catalog, and extensive global traveling, the band has spent the last ten years languishing in relative obscurity. Nevertheless, they've maintained, for all intents and purposes, a fairly high profile recently. In what's purported to be a neverending series of releases, the Bishop & Gocher Girls have (over a 24-month span) begun to flood stores with a string of albums under the guise of Carnival Folklore Resurrection, each limited to 1000 copies on the band's own Abduction label. And with eight installations so far, the series shows no signs of slowing down. One of the most recent, Libyan Dream, is a perfect example of the band's ability to cover vastly different musical territories, often within the timeframe of just one track. The seventh disc in the series begins with a burst of brutal guitar and drum buzz as they cover Amboy Dukes' "Journey to the Center of the Mind" for the second time in their career. Busting out with trashy guitar solos and the brothers' dueling vocals, it's a raunchy, shameless update of Nugent's original. What follows is a run of tracks encompassing familiar territory for Sun City Girls fans: squealing garage guitar, sprawling, drugged-out instrumentals, frenetic Middle-Eastern fuzz, an update of "The Vinegar Stroke" from Torch of the Mystics, and a few improvisational takes. "Instantaneous Decisions" begins with what sounds like Middle-Eastern hillbillies chanting over Gocher's endearingly messy drumming, but then unfolds into an angular, jagged display of bass and guitar. Each sudden burst of noise is followed by a series of nonsense squawks and yells from the band members. At times, the track falls apart at the seams; at others, Gocher and Rick Bishop maintain a stunningly open dialogue between guitar and drums. Most of the album, excepting the Amboy Dukes' update and an ode to opium, is instrumental, and it's an astonishing display of the Girls' musical adeptness. "Sangkala Suite" is a stunning, seven-plus-minute reworking of a traditional Middle Eastern tune that incredibly begins with a riff that sounds lifted by Dean Ween for "Mr. Would You Please Help My Pony?" Filled with the transcendent play and musical banter of a band that sounds truly enamored with the music they're making, it's a staggeringly beautiful piece. Unlike many of the other compositions and noise workouts here, "Sangkala" comes close to being, dare I say, inviting. What follows are two short tracks-- the acoustic "Tavoy Salon" and the hyper-charged Eastern blowup "Opium Den"-- and the amazing, Rick Bishop opus "Libyan Dream." Clocking in at almost fifteen minutes, it's a forum for Bishop's skills. Incorporating styles from across the globe and referencing everything from flamenco to rock to raga, Bishop proves that, contrary to what some have said, the Sun City Girls are no joke. Dismissed for years as a noise outfit, a novelty, and a band incapable of playing their instruments, the e"

Motion Graphics

Motion Graphics

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

“Does the internet dream of itself?” asks Werner Herzog in his new film, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. If it does, that subliminal soundtrack might be something like Motion Graphics, the debut solo album from the New York electronic musician Joe Williams. Until now, Williams has been known best as a sideman; he lent his hand to the squirrelly electronic textures of Co La’s 2013 album Moody Coup, and he also plays in Lifted, Maxmillion Dunbar and Co La’s drift-loving beats-and-improv ensemble. Only now, with his debut album as Motion Graphics, does the musician step out on his own—although “step in” might be a better way of phrasing it, as Motion Graphics is an album largely about inner space, virtual reality, and the infinite expanses that unfold behind computer screens. You might guess as much from his alias, and it’s clear from his titles, too: “Minecraft Mosaic,” a tribute to the blocky world-building computer game, or “SoftBank Arcade,” which references the Japanese multinational telecom company. It’s also clear from his lyrics, which weave sticky semantic webs that join the natural world with its digital analog. In a cool, clear voice, he sings of rewiring leaves, of windows and screens, of birds-eye lenses flying overhead. “Heaven sent the GUI,” he sings in “Minecraft Mosaic.” In “City Links,” he muses, “Links accelerate/Rendering a time zone/Moving in a mobile home.” It seems likely those aren’t double-wides he’s talking about, but rather our own peripatetic second homes, as we scuttle about like hyperconnected hermit crabs living out of our phones. But this isn't an album about words; first and foremost, it is an album about sounds. And here, too, Williams’ digital preoccupations are self-evident. Motion Graphics’ palette glows with a vivid, hi-def sheen: faux-choral synthesizer pads and ethereal, new age tones; digital sound effects like birdsong and splashing water; hyperkinetic chimes and pings that mimic your computer's alerts. In Motion Graphics’ universe, a sound is rarely just a sound; it’s often an avatar for something else, too. Nimble hi-hats dance across the gleaming surface of his music like long-legged water striders, but they’re also obvious nods to contemporary hip-hop production, just as his fluttering, phasing clarinets and MIDI-driven Debussy runs invoke classical references. Those classical influences run deep: “Anyware”—a dynamic relay race of short, staccato phrases passed between marimba, clarinet, and sampler—nods to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, while the gorgeous, freeform “Forecast” dials up a forest clearing on the holodeck and pipes in an ersatz rendition of Astor Piazzolla’s tango nuevo for added atmosphere. It’s rare to encounter references to both DJ Mustard and Steve Reich in the same piece of music, but that’s presumably part of the point of Motion Graphics, an album inspired in part by the seamless (yet jarring) experience of the infinitely scrolling media feed. Though these kinds of themes might not seem terribly novel—James Ferraro broached many of them with Far Side Virtual, and legions of vaporwave musicians have continued to beat that dead electric horse since—Williams renders it all so vividly and so lovingly that it hardly matters. Listen to the complexity of a track like the pulse-minimalist “Anyware” or the footwork-tempo “SoftBank Arcade” and it becomes clear that he is a proper composer, not just a cut-and-paste artist. And Motion Graphics’ contradictions—simultaneously placid and disorienting, warm and chintzy, intimate and distant—make it a seductively unusual listening experience as warm as the surface of your laptop. There’s no irony here; Williams’ lucid machine dreaming is deeply felt. As vaporwave grows stale, his album offers a breath of fresh air.

Artist: Motion Graphics, Album: Motion Graphics, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "“Does the internet dream of itself?” asks Werner Herzog in his new film, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. If it does, that subliminal soundtrack might be something like Motion Graphics, the debut solo album from the New York electronic musician Joe Williams. Until now, Williams has been known best as a sideman; he lent his hand to the squirrelly electronic textures of Co La’s 2013 album Moody Coup, and he also plays in Lifted, Maxmillion Dunbar and Co La’s drift-loving beats-and-improv ensemble. Only now, with his debut album as Motion Graphics, does the musician step out on his own—although “step in” might be a better way of phrasing it, as Motion Graphics is an album largely about inner space, virtual reality, and the infinite expanses that unfold behind computer screens. You might guess as much from his alias, and it’s clear from his titles, too: “Minecraft Mosaic,” a tribute to the blocky world-building computer game, or “SoftBank Arcade,” which references the Japanese multinational telecom company. It’s also clear from his lyrics, which weave sticky semantic webs that join the natural world with its digital analog. In a cool, clear voice, he sings of rewiring leaves, of windows and screens, of birds-eye lenses flying overhead. “Heaven sent the GUI,” he sings in “Minecraft Mosaic.” In “City Links,” he muses, “Links accelerate/Rendering a time zone/Moving in a mobile home.” It seems likely those aren’t double-wides he’s talking about, but rather our own peripatetic second homes, as we scuttle about like hyperconnected hermit crabs living out of our phones. But this isn't an album about words; first and foremost, it is an album about sounds. And here, too, Williams’ digital preoccupations are self-evident. Motion Graphics’ palette glows with a vivid, hi-def sheen: faux-choral synthesizer pads and ethereal, new age tones; digital sound effects like birdsong and splashing water; hyperkinetic chimes and pings that mimic your computer's alerts. In Motion Graphics’ universe, a sound is rarely just a sound; it’s often an avatar for something else, too. Nimble hi-hats dance across the gleaming surface of his music like long-legged water striders, but they’re also obvious nods to contemporary hip-hop production, just as his fluttering, phasing clarinets and MIDI-driven Debussy runs invoke classical references. Those classical influences run deep: “Anyware”—a dynamic relay race of short, staccato phrases passed between marimba, clarinet, and sampler—nods to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, while the gorgeous, freeform “Forecast” dials up a forest clearing on the holodeck and pipes in an ersatz rendition of Astor Piazzolla’s tango nuevo for added atmosphere. It’s rare to encounter references to both DJ Mustard and Steve Reich in the same piece of music, but that’s presumably part of the point of Motion Graphics, an album inspired in part by the seamless (yet jarring) experience of the infinitely scrolling media feed. Though these kinds of themes might not seem terribly novel—James Ferraro broached many of them with Far Side Virtual, and legions of vaporwave musicians have continued to beat that dead electric horse since—Williams renders it all so vividly and so lovingly that it hardly matters. Listen to the complexity of a track like the pulse-minimalist “Anyware” or the footwork-tempo “SoftBank Arcade” and it becomes clear that he is a proper composer, not just a cut-and-paste artist. And Motion Graphics’ contradictions—simultaneously placid and disorienting, warm and chintzy, intimate and distant—make it a seductively unusual listening experience as warm as the surface of your laptop. There’s no irony here; Williams’ lucid machine dreaming is deeply felt. As vaporwave grows stale, his album offers a breath of fresh air."

Tribes

Baby

Rock

Ian Cohen

"I wish it was the 60s. I wish we could be happy." "The kids of today should defend themselves against the '70s…look what it did to us." "The '80s almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly." Though delivered with various levels of irony, each of those lyrics makes the same point: Retromania is inevitably a practice in revisionist history. For those of us coming of age during this Kennedy administration, I present Baby, the debut album from Camden quartet Tribes. Though "We Were Children" is ostensibly meant as a narrative of youthful indiscretion, there's nowhere near enough specificity in Johnny Lloyd's lyrics to hear "these things happen, we were children in the mid 90s" as anything other than Baby's mission statement. It essentially recreates a 45-minute MTV rock block from 1995 in its most accurate and often unflattering terms. I can't stress the MTV aspect of it enough. Tribes are hardly alone in their studious appreciation of Clinton-era guitar rock these days, but unlike Surfer Blood, Male Bonding, or Yuck, they have absolutely no sonic or philosophical ties to indie rock whatsoever. If you're in a generous mood, you might hear the regally draped "Corner of an English Field" occupying the same cross-section of glam-rock and Britpop that Suede's Dog Man Star did, and "We Were Children" pretty much steals the riff and song structure from "Where Is My Mind?" wholesale. But due to the arrow-straight performances, slick and sober production, and overeagerness to please, a more accurate assessment would say that we're dealing with third-genners like Spacehog or the Toadies. These are two of Baby's maybe five memorable songs, for what it's worth... which for a supposed pop-rock record is worth everything. There is a good amount of hooky fun to be had when Tribes come off like the band on Baby's album cover-- scrappy but stylish, in search of the next available good time. In a weird way, the album actually feels like an alternative of some kind in 2012 if you're all but ignoring major-label rock: Lloyd's vocals are loud and brash, but in a charming way that's utterly necessary if you're gonna sell lyrics like, "I scream from California," pronounced like, "ice cream from Californ-eye-uh." Likewise, the liftoff achieved by the choruses on "We Were Children" and "Whenever" packs a tremendous kick in large part because Tribes harbor no delusions about being a garage band. This is market-tested and fail-proof keg-rock with all grunge and grit sanded off so it can leap out of jukebox speakers with the utmost velocity. Unfortunately, the sequencing of Baby takes too many cues from its Buzz Bin forerunners as well. After spending 15 minutes sounding like preordained headliners, Tribes trudge through half an hour of perfunctorily composed and performed verses and choruses that are all too deniable. The contents of Baby can be evaluated by a pretty simple calculus: The more esoteric the song title is, the worse the actual song is. Tribes aren't much for lyrics or book learnin', so the plug-dumb femme fatale fantasia "Sappho" more or less exists so these guys could prove to themselves they could write a song based on Greek mythology. And the best thing I can say about "Walking in the Street" is that, while its introductory roll of concrete-slab snares immediately reminds you of "Two Princes", a hook of, "All I wanna do is you," reminds you of the casually backhanding misogyny of "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" instead. Baby isn't a very good record, but I'm actually kinda happy bands like Tribes still exist. How many times have we thought fondly of all those guys who missed out on influence or longevity but got a stylish Jake Scott video as a consolation prize?  It's not Tribes' fault the necrophiliac Brit rags are calling these dudes the biggest thing since Viva Brother. But it's nice to know that there are rock bands out there aspiring toward that elusive, career-making hit single and major labels ready to throw money at 'em. I just hope Baby fulfills its destiny and finds itself comfortably nestled between Three Fish and Tripping Daisy in whatever used-CD stores are left out there.

Artist: Tribes, Album: Baby, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: ""I wish it was the 60s. I wish we could be happy." "The kids of today should defend themselves against the '70s…look what it did to us." "The '80s almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly." Though delivered with various levels of irony, each of those lyrics makes the same point: Retromania is inevitably a practice in revisionist history. For those of us coming of age during this Kennedy administration, I present Baby, the debut album from Camden quartet Tribes. Though "We Were Children" is ostensibly meant as a narrative of youthful indiscretion, there's nowhere near enough specificity in Johnny Lloyd's lyrics to hear "these things happen, we were children in the mid 90s" as anything other than Baby's mission statement. It essentially recreates a 45-minute MTV rock block from 1995 in its most accurate and often unflattering terms. I can't stress the MTV aspect of it enough. Tribes are hardly alone in their studious appreciation of Clinton-era guitar rock these days, but unlike Surfer Blood, Male Bonding, or Yuck, they have absolutely no sonic or philosophical ties to indie rock whatsoever. If you're in a generous mood, you might hear the regally draped "Corner of an English Field" occupying the same cross-section of glam-rock and Britpop that Suede's Dog Man Star did, and "We Were Children" pretty much steals the riff and song structure from "Where Is My Mind?" wholesale. But due to the arrow-straight performances, slick and sober production, and overeagerness to please, a more accurate assessment would say that we're dealing with third-genners like Spacehog or the Toadies. These are two of Baby's maybe five memorable songs, for what it's worth... which for a supposed pop-rock record is worth everything. There is a good amount of hooky fun to be had when Tribes come off like the band on Baby's album cover-- scrappy but stylish, in search of the next available good time. In a weird way, the album actually feels like an alternative of some kind in 2012 if you're all but ignoring major-label rock: Lloyd's vocals are loud and brash, but in a charming way that's utterly necessary if you're gonna sell lyrics like, "I scream from California," pronounced like, "ice cream from Californ-eye-uh." Likewise, the liftoff achieved by the choruses on "We Were Children" and "Whenever" packs a tremendous kick in large part because Tribes harbor no delusions about being a garage band. This is market-tested and fail-proof keg-rock with all grunge and grit sanded off so it can leap out of jukebox speakers with the utmost velocity. Unfortunately, the sequencing of Baby takes too many cues from its Buzz Bin forerunners as well. After spending 15 minutes sounding like preordained headliners, Tribes trudge through half an hour of perfunctorily composed and performed verses and choruses that are all too deniable. The contents of Baby can be evaluated by a pretty simple calculus: The more esoteric the song title is, the worse the actual song is. Tribes aren't much for lyrics or book learnin', so the plug-dumb femme fatale fantasia "Sappho" more or less exists so these guys could prove to themselves they could write a song based on Greek mythology. And the best thing I can say about "Walking in the Street" is that, while its introductory roll of concrete-slab snares immediately reminds you of "Two Princes", a hook of, "All I wanna do is you," reminds you of the casually backhanding misogyny of "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" instead. Baby isn't a very good record, but I'm actually kinda happy bands like Tribes still exist. How many times have we thought fondly of all those guys who missed out on influence or longevity but got a stylish Jake Scott video as a consolation prize?  It's not Tribes' fault the necrophiliac Brit rags are calling these dudes the biggest thing since Viva Brother. But it's nice to know that there are rock bands out there aspiring toward that elusive, career-making hit single and major labels ready to throw money at 'em. I just hope Baby fulfills its destiny and finds itself comfortably nestled between Three Fish and Tripping Daisy in whatever used-CD stores are left out there."

CSS

Donkey

Electronic,Rock

Eric Harvey

Had my shit been more together, I'd have written about Cansei de Ser Sexy's debut in our recent Sub Pop staff feature. To my ears, CSS was a NSFW Blondie, with Lovefoxxx and Adriano Cintra pulling their flamboyant aesthetic equally from the realms of disco and punk, as if "Atomic" were the exemplar of all music and its refrain of "your hair is beautiful" the highest compliment one could be paid. Though Cintra wrote all the music, Lovefoxxx was the heart and soul of the group; that rare lead singer able to easily slip between emotional extremes. At her best she was empathetic and jubilant, but she could turn misanthropic and snarky with equal vigor, aiming her venom at Art Bitches and Paris Hilton after preemptively guarding against a return blow on the opening track, "CSS Suxxx". Donkey, to put it lightly, brings a different type of energy; Lovefoxxx's presence is still strong, but Cintra's production and songwriting takes the music in a distinctly different direction. In a recent interview with Pitchfork's Paul Thompson, Lovefoxxx described Donkey as not only produced on the road (on their year-long, worldwide tour), but also for the road. Through playing live over their extensive world tour, she explained, they gradually smoothed the sharp extremes of the debut's ecstatic disco and garish electro, and Donkey was built from the idea that its songs would be much easier to recreate live. As a result, most of CSS' nuance, sense of irony, and genre schizophrenia have been excised in favor of, well, the exact sort of bland dance-punk they so skillfully avoided on their first album. Debut single "Rat Is Dead" hinted at this shift; stylistically, its closest cousin from CSS is "Off the Hook", the most traditional track on a record that defined itself through the jaggy peaks of dissimilar dance styles. "Rat" is of course much darker-- the band's own "Goodbye Earl", more or less-- and like "Hook" it would be fine as the sole bearer of its tone. As it stands, though, "Rat" is the lone bright spot on Donkey's surprisingly bad first half, which aside from the lightweight and forgettable "Reggae All Night", scarcely rises from a gloomy modern rock swamp. Despite hat tips to "Ab Fab" and John Waters, opener "Jager Yoga" isn't glitzy and grotesque but clunky, like "Take Me Out" reimagined for a hipster step-aerobics class. Considering that no other Donkey track deigns to reference pop culture, "Yoga" plays like a vague memory of CSS, with much of the rest a depressing capitulation to a newfound mediocrity. Appropriately for a record made in airports, hotels, and buses, travel (and what gets lost between destinations) is Donkey's most prominent lyrical conceit, but more often than not it leads the band astray. Cintra-penned "I Fly" is glossy riff-rock that metaphorically represents a touring musician as, you guessed it, a buzzing fly, and "Give Up" is ultra-orthodox love-on-the-road stuff that's not flattered by its Editors-esque backing track. "Left Behind" finds Lovefoxxx singing Cintra's lyrics over dirty laser synths, lamenting a cheating beau in Helsinki and contemplating flying back there to burn her shit and go on a table-dancing bender. These are all competent enough songs to suggest the work of a set of session musicians, but predictability is far from CSS' strong suit. More depressingly, these moments sound like a band that made its name by sniping from afar at the rich and well-traveled more or less becoming part of music's world-conquering, festival-hopping jet-set. Donkey's highpoints happen when Lovefoxxx's personality shines through clearest: "Beautiful Song" is her take on touring, and the tune is predictably sweet and joyful: it's "Flying high on the rug, with the ones you love," breaking beds instead of sleeping on them, taking goofy photos of your friends. "Believe/Achieve" and "Air Painter" capture her most endearing creative trait: merging romance with an abiding, and equally profound, love for music and art, so wonderfully rendered on CSS via "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" and "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above". Here, atop "Achieve"s breezy new wave, Lovefoxxx wants to literally and figuratively explore the tastes of her lover, singing "I'm going to eat all your food/ To try to feel what is that/ That music brings to you." "Air Painter" is a romantic lament that glosses as a love letter/CD combo slipped into a suitcase: "Send me a postcard, write me a letter/ And sing this song as loud as can be!" The joycore bricolage of CSS is all but missing on Donkey, but hopefully the band hasn't allowed itself to become completely jaded by increased celebrity and the rigors of globe-trotting. We're only young once, and it's too much to ask of any artist to maintain the same wide-eyed sense of abandon that made us fall for them in the first place. The road weariness that led to Donkey's by-the-books professionalism seems to have set in so quickly, though; here's hoping it wears off just as fast.

Artist: CSS, Album: Donkey, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "Had my shit been more together, I'd have written about Cansei de Ser Sexy's debut in our recent Sub Pop staff feature. To my ears, CSS was a NSFW Blondie, with Lovefoxxx and Adriano Cintra pulling their flamboyant aesthetic equally from the realms of disco and punk, as if "Atomic" were the exemplar of all music and its refrain of "your hair is beautiful" the highest compliment one could be paid. Though Cintra wrote all the music, Lovefoxxx was the heart and soul of the group; that rare lead singer able to easily slip between emotional extremes. At her best she was empathetic and jubilant, but she could turn misanthropic and snarky with equal vigor, aiming her venom at Art Bitches and Paris Hilton after preemptively guarding against a return blow on the opening track, "CSS Suxxx". Donkey, to put it lightly, brings a different type of energy; Lovefoxxx's presence is still strong, but Cintra's production and songwriting takes the music in a distinctly different direction. In a recent interview with Pitchfork's Paul Thompson, Lovefoxxx described Donkey as not only produced on the road (on their year-long, worldwide tour), but also for the road. Through playing live over their extensive world tour, she explained, they gradually smoothed the sharp extremes of the debut's ecstatic disco and garish electro, and Donkey was built from the idea that its songs would be much easier to recreate live. As a result, most of CSS' nuance, sense of irony, and genre schizophrenia have been excised in favor of, well, the exact sort of bland dance-punk they so skillfully avoided on their first album. Debut single "Rat Is Dead" hinted at this shift; stylistically, its closest cousin from CSS is "Off the Hook", the most traditional track on a record that defined itself through the jaggy peaks of dissimilar dance styles. "Rat" is of course much darker-- the band's own "Goodbye Earl", more or less-- and like "Hook" it would be fine as the sole bearer of its tone. As it stands, though, "Rat" is the lone bright spot on Donkey's surprisingly bad first half, which aside from the lightweight and forgettable "Reggae All Night", scarcely rises from a gloomy modern rock swamp. Despite hat tips to "Ab Fab" and John Waters, opener "Jager Yoga" isn't glitzy and grotesque but clunky, like "Take Me Out" reimagined for a hipster step-aerobics class. Considering that no other Donkey track deigns to reference pop culture, "Yoga" plays like a vague memory of CSS, with much of the rest a depressing capitulation to a newfound mediocrity. Appropriately for a record made in airports, hotels, and buses, travel (and what gets lost between destinations) is Donkey's most prominent lyrical conceit, but more often than not it leads the band astray. Cintra-penned "I Fly" is glossy riff-rock that metaphorically represents a touring musician as, you guessed it, a buzzing fly, and "Give Up" is ultra-orthodox love-on-the-road stuff that's not flattered by its Editors-esque backing track. "Left Behind" finds Lovefoxxx singing Cintra's lyrics over dirty laser synths, lamenting a cheating beau in Helsinki and contemplating flying back there to burn her shit and go on a table-dancing bender. These are all competent enough songs to suggest the work of a set of session musicians, but predictability is far from CSS' strong suit. More depressingly, these moments sound like a band that made its name by sniping from afar at the rich and well-traveled more or less becoming part of music's world-conquering, festival-hopping jet-set. Donkey's highpoints happen when Lovefoxxx's personality shines through clearest: "Beautiful Song" is her take on touring, and the tune is predictably sweet and joyful: it's "Flying high on the rug, with the ones you love," breaking beds instead of sleeping on them, taking goofy photos of your friends. "Believe/Achieve" and "Air Painter" capture her most endearing creative trait: merging romance with an abiding, and equally profound, love for music and art, so wonderfully rendered on CSS via "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" and "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above". Here, atop "Achieve"s breezy new wave, Lovefoxxx wants to literally and figuratively explore the tastes of her lover, singing "I'm going to eat all your food/ To try to feel what is that/ That music brings to you." "Air Painter" is a romantic lament that glosses as a love letter/CD combo slipped into a suitcase: "Send me a postcard, write me a letter/ And sing this song as loud as can be!" The joycore bricolage of CSS is all but missing on Donkey, but hopefully the band hasn't allowed itself to become completely jaded by increased celebrity and the rigors of globe-trotting. We're only young once, and it's too much to ask of any artist to maintain the same wide-eyed sense of abandon that made us fall for them in the first place. The road weariness that led to Donkey's by-the-books professionalism seems to have set in so quickly, though; here's hoping it wears off just as fast."

Hart Valley Drifters

Folk Time

Folk/Country

Jesse Jarnow

For those who think of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter as major figures in American music, the Hart Valley Drifters’ *Folk Time *is a monumental discovery. Recorded in 1962, *Folk Time *is Garcia’s only known surviving studio recording from his banjo days before attaining electricity a few years later. The future Dead guitarist is clearly the quintet’s leader, or at least most charismatic, and the primary singing voice through most of the 17-song session, with the group’s vocal trio also including Robert Hunter on upright bass and future New Riders of the Purple Sage founder David Nelson on guitar. *Folk Time *captures three lifelong collaborators during their invaluable time exploring the roots of American music before making their own. Though the front cover portrait of Garcia as an itinerant young Mumford with suspenders and bed-roll might read as a little doofy at first, it’s also accurate. Garcia and his friends took up bluegrass and old-time music in the early ’60s with the same bright-eyed bushy-tailed enthusiasm that young folkies have displayed in every decade since. The difference is what the soon ex-Drifters did with it. Garcia fed folk traditions into the Dead’s psychedelic maw and eventually became an influential figure in bluegrass in his own right, inspiring longhairs to take to the banjo after his participation in 1975’s best-selling Old & in the Way. Though Deadheads have traded hissy audience recordings of Garcia’s early projects for decades, the KZSU tape never even existed as a rumor. It was found by filmmaker (and liner note writer) Brian Miksis in 2008 and never circulated. Taped in mono around a single microphone in the last months of 1962 at Stanford University’s KZSU, the Hart Valley Drifters were decidedly non-Stanford students and the opposite of radicals. The quintet hew strictly to the bounds of bluegrass and old-time music, even making sure to distinguish between the two styles during their band introductions, with Garcia playing guitar on the former, banjo on the latter. And it’s not that they’re especially breathtaking or groundbreaking traditionalists, either. They pick well together and know *how *to sing as a group. Even some notes don’t arrive in perfect harmony, the gospel back-and-forth of “Standing in the Need of Prayer” and dynamics of traditional foot-stompers like “Pig in a Pen” come off with jubilance, offering a hint of the charm that would (for some) carry the Dead through their most ragged moments. The Drifters probably wouldn’t be of much interest if not for their personnel. Comparing the one track *Folk Time *shares with Garcia’s later bluegrass combo Old & In the Way, “Pig in a Pen,” reveals everything the Hart Valley Drifters lacked, but could taste. But, like Bob Dylan hoboing around Greenwich Village covering Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly songs, *Folk Time *is the sound of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter absorbing their own set of influences, building their repertoires, and finding their voices. Containing the only extant recordings of Garcia singing Dock Boggs’s “Sugar Baby” (likely learned from Harry Smith’s fabled Anthology of American Folk Music) and winking, 19th-century sexual-political ballads like “Billy Grimes, the Rover,” *Folk Time *will be a delight for acoustic-minded Dead freaks. Eventually becoming one of rock’s most distinct vocalists, often getting by on charisma and expressiveness more than note-for-note accuracy, Garcia’s singing on Folk Time is far more developed than other circulating audience-made folk era tapes (and the earliest Grateful Dead recordings) would suggest. The 20-year-old Garcia fakes the slightest Southern twang on the opening “Roving Gambler” and elsewhere, perhaps involuntarily, but mostly his affable California reediness is in place. Unquestionably the best performance on the disc is the closer, a blues arrangement of “Sitting on the Top of the World” featuring only Ken Frankel’s guitar and Garcia’s voice, and a sure stunner for Deadheads. There’s a touch more of the affected twang, but the performance and recording transcend Garcia’s age and experience, drawing from a quiet power and providing the only real glimpse of the singer he would become in the Dead. Perhaps even using the single microphone as an instrument, Garcia’s voice brushes down to a whisper. Moving with a lazy gait, Garcia catches the song’s carelessness with all the conviction of a California native. Though Garcia’s singing had a long way to go, it’s especially evident how the conversational instrumental details of the Hart Valley Drifters could turn into the improvisational pockets of the Dead, the traded lines of “Nine Pound Hammer” only a few volts away from the twining guitars of “China Cat Sunflower.” Picking up the banjo after being discharged from the Army in 1960, Garcia immersed himself in folk music for a half-decade, practicing obsessively, working as a music teacher, and playing in a series of bands around the Palo Alto area, including the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers, the Black Mountain Boys, and others. Like many other central ’60s musicians who would eventually plug in and freak out, Garcia came of musical age during the great folk scare, finding post-War solace in ancient (and ancient-seeming) songs. Only a few years from dashing headlong into the neon-pulsing present tense of LSD, Garcia and others first dove deep into a mythic past that seemed to come alive in the grooves of old records and zoetrope-like flicker between banjo rolls. But they don’t always sound as if they believe it themselves. The album’s most unconvincing performance isn’t one of the mountain songs or labor tunes, but the traditional “All the Good Times Have Past and Gone.” Nelson was 19, Garcia was 20, and Hunter was 21 and who even could take that sentiment seriously coming from them? It’s perhaps the same reason why Garcia seems to occupy “Sitting on Top of the World” so effortlessly, a song he would sing as an ebullient bounce on the Dead’s 1967 studio debut and keep in his songbook until just before his 30th birthday in 1972. But with the Hart Valley Drifters in the early ’60s, the good times were only just showing the first signs of starting.

Artist: Hart Valley Drifters, Album: Folk Time, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "For those who think of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter as major figures in American music, the Hart Valley Drifters’ *Folk Time *is a monumental discovery. Recorded in 1962, *Folk Time *is Garcia’s only known surviving studio recording from his banjo days before attaining electricity a few years later. The future Dead guitarist is clearly the quintet’s leader, or at least most charismatic, and the primary singing voice through most of the 17-song session, with the group’s vocal trio also including Robert Hunter on upright bass and future New Riders of the Purple Sage founder David Nelson on guitar. *Folk Time *captures three lifelong collaborators during their invaluable time exploring the roots of American music before making their own. Though the front cover portrait of Garcia as an itinerant young Mumford with suspenders and bed-roll might read as a little doofy at first, it’s also accurate. Garcia and his friends took up bluegrass and old-time music in the early ’60s with the same bright-eyed bushy-tailed enthusiasm that young folkies have displayed in every decade since. The difference is what the soon ex-Drifters did with it. Garcia fed folk traditions into the Dead’s psychedelic maw and eventually became an influential figure in bluegrass in his own right, inspiring longhairs to take to the banjo after his participation in 1975’s best-selling Old & in the Way. Though Deadheads have traded hissy audience recordings of Garcia’s early projects for decades, the KZSU tape never even existed as a rumor. It was found by filmmaker (and liner note writer) Brian Miksis in 2008 and never circulated. Taped in mono around a single microphone in the last months of 1962 at Stanford University’s KZSU, the Hart Valley Drifters were decidedly non-Stanford students and the opposite of radicals. The quintet hew strictly to the bounds of bluegrass and old-time music, even making sure to distinguish between the two styles during their band introductions, with Garcia playing guitar on the former, banjo on the latter. And it’s not that they’re especially breathtaking or groundbreaking traditionalists, either. They pick well together and know *how *to sing as a group. Even some notes don’t arrive in perfect harmony, the gospel back-and-forth of “Standing in the Need of Prayer” and dynamics of traditional foot-stompers like “Pig in a Pen” come off with jubilance, offering a hint of the charm that would (for some) carry the Dead through their most ragged moments. The Drifters probably wouldn’t be of much interest if not for their personnel. Comparing the one track *Folk Time *shares with Garcia’s later bluegrass combo Old & In the Way, “Pig in a Pen,” reveals everything the Hart Valley Drifters lacked, but could taste. But, like Bob Dylan hoboing around Greenwich Village covering Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly songs, *Folk Time *is the sound of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter absorbing their own set of influences, building their repertoires, and finding their voices. Containing the only extant recordings of Garcia singing Dock Boggs’s “Sugar Baby” (likely learned from Harry Smith’s fabled Anthology of American Folk Music) and winking, 19th-century sexual-political ballads like “Billy Grimes, the Rover,” *Folk Time *will be a delight for acoustic-minded Dead freaks. Eventually becoming one of rock’s most distinct vocalists, often getting by on charisma and expressiveness more than note-for-note accuracy, Garcia’s singing on Folk Time is far more developed than other circulating audience-made folk era tapes (and the earliest Grateful Dead recordings) would suggest. The 20-year-old Garcia fakes the slightest Southern twang on the opening “Roving Gambler” and elsewhere, perhaps involuntarily, but mostly his affable California reediness is in place. Unquestionably the best performance on the disc is the closer, a blues arrangement of “Sitting on the Top of the World” featuring only Ken Frankel’s guitar and Garcia’s voice, and a sure stunner for Deadheads. There’s a touch more of the affected twang, but the performance and recording transcend Garcia’s age and experience, drawing from a quiet power and providing the only real glimpse of the singer he would become in the Dead. Perhaps even using the single microphone as an instrument, Garcia’s voice brushes down to a whisper. Moving with a lazy gait, Garcia catches the song’s carelessness with all the conviction of a California native. Though Garcia’s singing had a long way to go, it’s especially evident how the conversational instrumental details of the Hart Valley Drifters could turn into the improvisational pockets of the Dead, the traded lines of “Nine Pound Hammer” only a few volts away from the twining guitars of “China Cat Sunflower.” Picking up the banjo after being discharged from the Army in 1960, Garcia immersed himself in folk music for a half-decade, practicing obsessively, working as a music teacher, and playing in a series of bands around the Palo Alto area, including the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers, the Black Mountain Boys, and others. Like many other central ’60s musicians who would eventually plug in and freak out, Garcia came of musical age during the great folk scare, finding post-War solace in ancient (and ancient-seeming) songs. Only a few years from dashing headlong into the neon-pulsing present tense of LSD, Garcia and others first dove deep into a mythic past that seemed to come alive in the grooves of old records and zoetrope-like flicker between banjo rolls. But they don’t always sound as if they believe it themselves. The album’s most unconvincing performance isn’t one of the mountain songs or labor tunes, but the traditional “All the Good Times Have Past and Gone.” Nelson was 19, Garcia was 20, and Hunter was 21 and who even could take that sentiment seriously coming from them? It’s perhaps the same reason why Garcia seems to occupy “Sitting on Top of the World” so effortlessly, a song he would sing as an ebullient bounce on the Dead’s 1967 studio debut and keep in his songbook until just before his 30th birthday in 1972. But with the Hart Valley Drifters in the early ’60s, the good times were only just showing the first signs of starting."

Alva Noto

Transform

Electronic

Mark Richard-San

Headphones. You must have headphones. Berlin-based producer Carsten Nicolai, who releases music as Alva.Noto, has assembled an album of tones so pure it would be a shame to sully them with the reflective surfaces of your listening area. There should be as little space as possible between your eardrums and the pulsing diaphragm of the speaker trying (possibly in vain) to translate Transform's pristine sound waves into vibrating pockets of air. If the technology were available, one might consider wiring the bitstream of a CD player directly into the auditory cortex, thereby eliminating the inevitable distortions introduced by irregular vibrations of the eardrum. Alas, such a brilliant invention is unlikely in my lifetime, so let's stick with the headphones. Like Ryoji Ikeda, whose +/- album is a major influence here, Carsten Nicolai is concerned with the fundamentals of electronic sound production. Sine waves, white noise, clicks, pops and beeps-- that's about all there is to the ten untitled tracks of Transform. Synthesizers could make all these sounds when Brian Eno was a wee lad eyeing the acoustic guitar hanging in the shop window. Music this minimal is like good cooking in that the ingredients are simple and the genius is in the arrangement. Transform is like a hot cup of delicious miso soup. Nicolai's keen sense of rhythm is the first thing you'll notice about Transform. Track 4 has a particularly propulsive drive, with a thrust of bass static, stop/start buzzing in the upper register, and something approaching a beat coming from the glitches in the midrange. The bass hook that leads into track 6 has something of a pop quality, with a classic ascending/descending motif (just don't hold your breath for a chorus). Nicolai sticks to clear rhythm structures and arranges his glitches in riffs, and memorable patterns abound. When he's not forcing his battery of microtones to dance the mashed potato, Nicolai delves into icy atmosphere. The tones here are as dry and cold as a drafty apartment with baseboard heat, and not even a hint of reverb colors the individual sounds. The studied aridity of the recording reinforces the need for headphones; hearing even the slightest echo from the back wall would negate what Transform seems to be going for. Track 2 is nothing more than a sine wave in the 400 Hz range that wavers slowly from ear to ear, topped with a cricket-like chorus of static that cuts out occasionally, leaving behind a single lonely beep. Track 9 is one of the few tracks to leave the grid behind, as hesitant, irregular crackles mimic the sound of a frightened animal, and another crystalline drone adds an ominous cast. While Transform is a solid success on its own terms, the record lacks a certain spark that might push it into greatness. There are no moments of wonder, where you pause and listen closer, straining to understand how something so little could affect you so much. It is possible to achieve the sublime with these limited ingredients (see Ikeda, for one), but Transform is merely good.

Artist: Alva Noto, Album: Transform, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Headphones. You must have headphones. Berlin-based producer Carsten Nicolai, who releases music as Alva.Noto, has assembled an album of tones so pure it would be a shame to sully them with the reflective surfaces of your listening area. There should be as little space as possible between your eardrums and the pulsing diaphragm of the speaker trying (possibly in vain) to translate Transform's pristine sound waves into vibrating pockets of air. If the technology were available, one might consider wiring the bitstream of a CD player directly into the auditory cortex, thereby eliminating the inevitable distortions introduced by irregular vibrations of the eardrum. Alas, such a brilliant invention is unlikely in my lifetime, so let's stick with the headphones. Like Ryoji Ikeda, whose +/- album is a major influence here, Carsten Nicolai is concerned with the fundamentals of electronic sound production. Sine waves, white noise, clicks, pops and beeps-- that's about all there is to the ten untitled tracks of Transform. Synthesizers could make all these sounds when Brian Eno was a wee lad eyeing the acoustic guitar hanging in the shop window. Music this minimal is like good cooking in that the ingredients are simple and the genius is in the arrangement. Transform is like a hot cup of delicious miso soup. Nicolai's keen sense of rhythm is the first thing you'll notice about Transform. Track 4 has a particularly propulsive drive, with a thrust of bass static, stop/start buzzing in the upper register, and something approaching a beat coming from the glitches in the midrange. The bass hook that leads into track 6 has something of a pop quality, with a classic ascending/descending motif (just don't hold your breath for a chorus). Nicolai sticks to clear rhythm structures and arranges his glitches in riffs, and memorable patterns abound. When he's not forcing his battery of microtones to dance the mashed potato, Nicolai delves into icy atmosphere. The tones here are as dry and cold as a drafty apartment with baseboard heat, and not even a hint of reverb colors the individual sounds. The studied aridity of the recording reinforces the need for headphones; hearing even the slightest echo from the back wall would negate what Transform seems to be going for. Track 2 is nothing more than a sine wave in the 400 Hz range that wavers slowly from ear to ear, topped with a cricket-like chorus of static that cuts out occasionally, leaving behind a single lonely beep. Track 9 is one of the few tracks to leave the grid behind, as hesitant, irregular crackles mimic the sound of a frightened animal, and another crystalline drone adds an ominous cast. While Transform is a solid success on its own terms, the record lacks a certain spark that might push it into greatness. There are no moments of wonder, where you pause and listen closer, straining to understand how something so little could affect you so much. It is possible to achieve the sublime with these limited ingredients (see Ikeda, for one), but Transform is merely good."

J Dilla

The Shining

Rap

Brian Howe

Before his untimely passing this year, Detroit producer and MC J Dilla had established himself as one of hip-hop's most reliable auteurs. "He didn't overthink things," said Karriem Riggins, whom Dilla enlisted to finish the nearly completed The Shining shortly before his death, to the Detroit Free Press. Dilla's knack for intuitive and engaging beats served MCs well: His lucid, live-instrument-and-breakbeat-intensive production is synonymous with socially conscious rap's 1990s heyday-- a milieu on which Dilla left huge footprints with production credits on staples like the Pharcyde's Labcabincalifornia, A Tribe Called Quest's Beats, Rhymes and Life, and De La Soul's Stakes Is High. Yet his prevailing focus on soulful, dynamic listenability instead of jazzbo hokum (let us pass over Common's Electric Circus in silence) instilled a durability in his music that allowed it to survive the seismic shifts in aesthetics that rocked hip-hop over the past decade. Despite the erratic quality of his own group Slum Village's output, Dilla's consistently sharp production kept the flame alive for the soul-jacking, pop-friendly rap that would enjoy a resurgence with recently influential records by Common and Kanye West. A good hook, in other words, never goes out of style, and in a rap climate broad enough to allow for everything from deep-space funk to minimal snap music, Dilla's classicism acts as a control group amid more exotic strains. His other 2006 release, Donuts, with its profusion of brief instrumentals, was his record for heads-- a glorified beat tape that put the raw stuff of his vision on enticing display. In contrast, The Shining is more of a general audience record, by virtue of its song-length tracks and pervasive vocals from Dilla and his crew. As such, it presents challenges that Donuts didn't. On a beat tape, you can make your point in a few bars and move on to the next boom-bap, but an album wants structure and continuity. Dilla imposed this structure upon The Shining by two primary methods, with varying levels of success. The first was by cultivating a sense of unified variety, and this is where The Shining truly excels-- it's a great digest of Dilla's various moods and modes. We get sumptuous neo-soul: "Love" recreates the Impressions' "We Must Be in Love" as a crackling swoon punched up with hearty brass, while "Baby" uses sped-up infant samples as bold, primary-color accents for its supple pastels. We get vertiginous, Madlib-esque fire: "Geek Down" weaves a sinister net of thunderclap drums, weird wavering bass, demonic incantation, and a dominant line like a sliced-up kazoo; the rock-solid stomp of "E=MC2" radiates as variegated vocoder textures swell and decay. And we get straight-up trunk-rattle: "Jungle Love" laces wowing sirens over skeletal trash-compacter percussion, while "Body Movin'" carves up a cymbal-heavy wash with off-kilter squelch and abrupt vocal drops. The Shining's second layer of structural integrity resides in the guest vocals that dominate the album. Many of the record's guests also rose to prominence in the 1990s, though none of them remind us how much hip-hop has changed since then more starkly than Busta Rhymes: The guy who once had one of the most bugged-out flows in rap squanders "Geek Down" with thuggish, boring ad-libs that pay homage to the "fucking godfather Dilla" while contradicting the essence of his playful spirit. Common fares a bit better on "E=MC2", dropping innocuous party raps into the tight slots between the scratches and drums. He's equally passable sparring gently with the always sublime D'Angelo on "So Far to Go", which sports the sort of inventively dreamy yet perfectly coherent landscape Dilla also showed off on Steve Spacek's "Dollar", reminding us that the producer was as good with r&b atmosphere as he was with rap thwack (he makes Dwele sound way better than he has any right to on the "Dime Piece" remix). MED and Guilty Simpson spit nails that are well-suited to the junkyard jangle of "Jungle Love", while Black Thought mounts a commanding presence amid the overlapping click-tracks of "Love Movin'". Dilla embeds his own utilitarian rhymes in the deep digital swirls of "Won't Do", and while they don't add much force to the track, they pretty much stay out of the way. Staying out of the way was one of Dilla's assets-- one hears his productions, first and foremost, as songs, not as stylized renditions of his brand. This is why his music is at once so enduringly listenable and why it never fully cracked a mainstream obsessed with personality and trademarked tics-- Dilla's trademark was self-effacement in the service of the groove. The mainstream wanted him, but he mostly didn't want it, preferring to work with friends and kindred spirits, admitting as much with the sample that closes out "Baby": "How do I feel about radio hip-hop? I think it's wack. Most of the shit they play is straight garbage." Whether or not one agrees with the sentiment is beside the point in the context of The Shining-- it's simply an expression of Dilla's steadfast commitment to his own vision amid the shifting tides of rap culture at large.

Artist: J Dilla, Album: The Shining, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Before his untimely passing this year, Detroit producer and MC J Dilla had established himself as one of hip-hop's most reliable auteurs. "He didn't overthink things," said Karriem Riggins, whom Dilla enlisted to finish the nearly completed The Shining shortly before his death, to the Detroit Free Press. Dilla's knack for intuitive and engaging beats served MCs well: His lucid, live-instrument-and-breakbeat-intensive production is synonymous with socially conscious rap's 1990s heyday-- a milieu on which Dilla left huge footprints with production credits on staples like the Pharcyde's Labcabincalifornia, A Tribe Called Quest's Beats, Rhymes and Life, and De La Soul's Stakes Is High. Yet his prevailing focus on soulful, dynamic listenability instead of jazzbo hokum (let us pass over Common's Electric Circus in silence) instilled a durability in his music that allowed it to survive the seismic shifts in aesthetics that rocked hip-hop over the past decade. Despite the erratic quality of his own group Slum Village's output, Dilla's consistently sharp production kept the flame alive for the soul-jacking, pop-friendly rap that would enjoy a resurgence with recently influential records by Common and Kanye West. A good hook, in other words, never goes out of style, and in a rap climate broad enough to allow for everything from deep-space funk to minimal snap music, Dilla's classicism acts as a control group amid more exotic strains. His other 2006 release, Donuts, with its profusion of brief instrumentals, was his record for heads-- a glorified beat tape that put the raw stuff of his vision on enticing display. In contrast, The Shining is more of a general audience record, by virtue of its song-length tracks and pervasive vocals from Dilla and his crew. As such, it presents challenges that Donuts didn't. On a beat tape, you can make your point in a few bars and move on to the next boom-bap, but an album wants structure and continuity. Dilla imposed this structure upon The Shining by two primary methods, with varying levels of success. The first was by cultivating a sense of unified variety, and this is where The Shining truly excels-- it's a great digest of Dilla's various moods and modes. We get sumptuous neo-soul: "Love" recreates the Impressions' "We Must Be in Love" as a crackling swoon punched up with hearty brass, while "Baby" uses sped-up infant samples as bold, primary-color accents for its supple pastels. We get vertiginous, Madlib-esque fire: "Geek Down" weaves a sinister net of thunderclap drums, weird wavering bass, demonic incantation, and a dominant line like a sliced-up kazoo; the rock-solid stomp of "E=MC2" radiates as variegated vocoder textures swell and decay. And we get straight-up trunk-rattle: "Jungle Love" laces wowing sirens over skeletal trash-compacter percussion, while "Body Movin'" carves up a cymbal-heavy wash with off-kilter squelch and abrupt vocal drops. The Shining's second layer of structural integrity resides in the guest vocals that dominate the album. Many of the record's guests also rose to prominence in the 1990s, though none of them remind us how much hip-hop has changed since then more starkly than Busta Rhymes: The guy who once had one of the most bugged-out flows in rap squanders "Geek Down" with thuggish, boring ad-libs that pay homage to the "fucking godfather Dilla" while contradicting the essence of his playful spirit. Common fares a bit better on "E=MC2", dropping innocuous party raps into the tight slots between the scratches and drums. He's equally passable sparring gently with the always sublime D'Angelo on "So Far to Go", which sports the sort of inventively dreamy yet perfectly coherent landscape Dilla also showed off on Steve Spacek's "Dollar", reminding us that the producer was as good with r&b atmosphere as he was with rap thwack (he makes Dwele sound way better than he has any right to on the "Dime Piece" remix). MED and Guilty Simpson spit nails that are well-suited to the junkyard jangle of "Jungle Love", while Black Thought mounts a commanding presence amid the overlapping click-tracks of "Love Movin'". Dilla embeds his own utilitarian rhymes in the deep digital swirls of "Won't Do", and while they don't add much force to the track, they pretty much stay out of the way. Staying out of the way was one of Dilla's assets-- one hears his productions, first and foremost, as songs, not as stylized renditions of his brand. This is why his music is at once so enduringly listenable and why it never fully cracked a mainstream obsessed with personality and trademarked tics-- Dilla's trademark was self-effacement in the service of the groove. The mainstream wanted him, but he mostly didn't want it, preferring to work with friends and kindred spirits, admitting as much with the sample that closes out "Baby": "How do I feel about radio hip-hop? I think it's wack. Most of the shit they play is straight garbage." Whether or not one agrees with the sentiment is beside the point in the context of The Shining-- it's simply an expression of Dilla's steadfast commitment to his own vision amid the shifting tides of rap culture at large."

Lisa/Liza

Deserts of Youth

Folk/Country

Sam Sodomsky

To listen to Deserts of Youth, Liza Victoria’s proper debut album, is to eavesdrop on moments of quiet intensity. Devoid of reverb or overt production effects—a radical choice, in the age of atmospheric GarageBand records—Deserts’ seven songs are comforting yet arresting, effortless while intricate. At times, the Maine-based songwriter’s feathery falsetto is barely audible, a wisp of wind blowing through a deserted street; other times, it’s powerful and clear. Her lyrics, when you can decipher them, feel mostly like conduits for her unusual vocal patterns, less a means of communicating thoughts than establishing setting and mood. Throughout, Victoria seems most keen on satisfying herself; after all, as she sang in an early recording, “I am the friend that I need the most.” In line with her 2014 release, The First Museum, Deserts of Youth begins as a light, psychedelic affair. The jazzy “Century Woods” opens the record with a lilting breeziness. On the ghostly “Another Window,” she counts to four without falling into a steady rhythm, speeding up and slowing down as she recounts observations literal (“Your keys are lying on the floor/At the bottom of the bed”) and abstract (“It’s the shadow of the morning… Watch the light breathe where the shadows began”). Although Deserts retains the simple guitar-and-vocal structure of Victoria’s early work, it is a sizeable step forward in songwriting and vision, a haunting, emotional experience that’s most effective as a whole. The album’s scope is captured neatly in its stunning centerpiece, “Lady Day of the Radio.” Although all the songs on Deserts hover around the five-minute mark, “Lady Day” feels especially epic. It boasts Victoria’s most evocative guitar playing yet as she shifts between sad, broken fingerpicking and a stirring climax, the closest she has tread yet to a genuine guitar solo. Situated right in the middle of the album, “Lady Day” is a song so commanding that it seems to dictate the record’s structure; the opening tracks builds up to it, and the closing numbers slowly resolves its cathartic rush. The self-contained world of Deserts of Youth makes the album feel more like a long song cycle than a collection of various pieces—a quality aided by Victoria’s penchant for ending songs abruptly in the middle of lines and writing familiar variations on her melodies. In “Wander,” a stirring ballad that plays like a heartbreaking coda to “Lady Day,” Victoria’s aimless narrator mirrors the music’s meandering quality. “We walk around the old part of town,” she sighs, before reaching one of the album’s most memorable refrains: “I never know where to go with new love.” A moment later, she amends the lyric to address “old love” as well, tying them together into a single entity, removed from time. It’s the record’s purest attempt at a singalong chorus and a lyric that’s emblematic of the album as a whole: a daring new work of strange, intimate beauty that already feels like an old favorite.

Artist: Lisa/Liza, Album: Deserts of Youth, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "To listen to Deserts of Youth, Liza Victoria’s proper debut album, is to eavesdrop on moments of quiet intensity. Devoid of reverb or overt production effects—a radical choice, in the age of atmospheric GarageBand records—Deserts’ seven songs are comforting yet arresting, effortless while intricate. At times, the Maine-based songwriter’s feathery falsetto is barely audible, a wisp of wind blowing through a deserted street; other times, it’s powerful and clear. Her lyrics, when you can decipher them, feel mostly like conduits for her unusual vocal patterns, less a means of communicating thoughts than establishing setting and mood. Throughout, Victoria seems most keen on satisfying herself; after all, as she sang in an early recording, “I am the friend that I need the most.” In line with her 2014 release, The First Museum, Deserts of Youth begins as a light, psychedelic affair. The jazzy “Century Woods” opens the record with a lilting breeziness. On the ghostly “Another Window,” she counts to four without falling into a steady rhythm, speeding up and slowing down as she recounts observations literal (“Your keys are lying on the floor/At the bottom of the bed”) and abstract (“It’s the shadow of the morning… Watch the light breathe where the shadows began”). Although Deserts retains the simple guitar-and-vocal structure of Victoria’s early work, it is a sizeable step forward in songwriting and vision, a haunting, emotional experience that’s most effective as a whole. The album’s scope is captured neatly in its stunning centerpiece, “Lady Day of the Radio.” Although all the songs on Deserts hover around the five-minute mark, “Lady Day” feels especially epic. It boasts Victoria’s most evocative guitar playing yet as she shifts between sad, broken fingerpicking and a stirring climax, the closest she has tread yet to a genuine guitar solo. Situated right in the middle of the album, “Lady Day” is a song so commanding that it seems to dictate the record’s structure; the opening tracks builds up to it, and the closing numbers slowly resolves its cathartic rush. The self-contained world of Deserts of Youth makes the album feel more like a long song cycle than a collection of various pieces—a quality aided by Victoria’s penchant for ending songs abruptly in the middle of lines and writing familiar variations on her melodies. In “Wander,” a stirring ballad that plays like a heartbreaking coda to “Lady Day,” Victoria’s aimless narrator mirrors the music’s meandering quality. “We walk around the old part of town,” she sighs, before reaching one of the album’s most memorable refrains: “I never know where to go with new love.” A moment later, she amends the lyric to address “old love” as well, tying them together into a single entity, removed from time. It’s the record’s purest attempt at a singalong chorus and a lyric that’s emblematic of the album as a whole: a daring new work of strange, intimate beauty that already feels like an old favorite."